Movie of the Weak

And they say no new movies will be produced for a while because of the plague. Sort-of known guy Antonio Sabato's got news for y'all.

Here's the logline:  The Expendables + a cast of washed-up deplorables = The Availables.

Bakersfield; Calif — Antonio Sabato Jr. is getting set to shoot a new movie. One he is directing and writing called "Trail Blazers". It is a modern day western about "good" Vs "evil"; angels and demons.

It's a faith based movie that he hopes will encourage others to stand up for their faith, but at the same time provide tons of action. He is working on marital [sic] arts and gun fights for an action packed movie.

Antonio plans to bring back his acting friends that have been shun [sic] from Hollywood due to their conservative views or Christian faith. Actors such as, Lorenzo Lamas, Kevin Sorbo, Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson have all signed up to be in the movie. There [sic, Jesus H. Christ] hope is to shoot the movie in a few months in New Mexico.

Well, that was painful to read. I sure do hope Scooter got a decent grade on that book report. Guy works in the feckin' media you say? Forget the basic spelling and grammar errors, the content itself reads like a high-school intern cranked it out so he could go on a sandwich run.

Anyway, the movie. Sounds hilarious. Here's the poster. Try not to be surprised at the names in the cast. The brief character descriptions in the right-hand column are just [chef's kiss]. As writer, producer, director, and star, Sabato of course has cast himself as John, The Slick One. So there may be oil or Vaseline or Astroglide involved at some point.

For my money, though, the one that literally made me laugh out loud, startling the cat and prompting a What? from my wife, was Scott Baio's description, The Furious. Which instantly called to mind the 1999 cult comedy Mystery Men, about a gang of "superheroes" who all had shitty superpowers. Ben Stiller, of course, played Mr. Furious, whose "superpower" was -- you guessed it -- getting really pissed off. So now I just envision Chachi sitting there, smoldering and seething with rage until he finally blows his top.

In fact, looking at the other character descriptions after Baio -- The Wise One, The Shadow, The Gracious -- they might as well just plug in some of the other Mystery Men superhero names. I could definitely see Kevin Sorbo as The Shoveler or The Waffler.

The rest of it is padded out with Trump-humpers like Dean Cain and Kristy Swanson, people who couldn't hack it in Hollyweird and blamed it on political correctness instead of a lack of talent and a nose for lousy projects, and MMA fighters like Bas Rutten and Tito Ortiz. (Cain's real claim to fame is taking Brooke Shields' virginity, when she was 22 years old.)

Then there are lesser-known actors, such as Australian actor Robert Rabiah and Baywatch alum David Chokachi, who don't seem to be especially vocal about their politics, certainly not in the way Sabato and Baio (both of whom spoke at the Republicon convention in 2016) have been. Nor do they appear to be semi-pro trolls like Cain and Swanson. Nor do any of their public-facing outlets (Wikipedia, Twitter, etc.) have any mention of this thing. Which is kind of a hint.

So unless maybe Tony S. humps the right leg for money -- maybe Stephen Bannon or Robert Mercer, some shithead whackjob with money to match their mental problems -- it either won't get off the ground, or worse, it'll get made on a shoestring. It'll make the cheesy Sonny Chiba chopsocky stuff from the '70s and '80s look like Citizen Kane.

For what sounds like it's supposed to be an action movie, the cast is awful long in the tooth. Baio turns sixty this year, Sorbo, Lamas, Michael Dudikoff, and soap actor Ronn Moss are all well into their sixties. The only thing that kept James Woods and Jon Voight out of this was tertiary syphilis. Count on a lot of "creative" angles for the action scenes, especially for Mr. Furious.

The only real surprise in the cast is Robert Wagner, but since Wagner is 90 years old (and a more, uh, interesting character than his usual public persona has indicated), I'm betting he doesn't have much screen time in this little epic. In fact, I'm betting he never appears in it at all. Sabato is claiming that the cast will house together during shooting in New Mexico, in order to self-quarantine. If Wagner is involved, it'll only be because they spliced in five minutes of him on his veranda, reading a few expository lines about why he's the "Father of Faithful Ones."

Anyway. Looks like loads of fun, maybe one of those "midnight movie" type deals like Showgirls or Rocky Horror Picture Show. More likely, I'll see it on the rack at my local supermarket, peeking out from behind God's Not Dead 3 or something like that.

Mostly though, the world could really use less of this sort of shit, these tedious, thinly-veiled and poorly-written allegories claiming to impart moral truths, coming from people who gleefully support daily indecency and mendacity, open theft and shameless indifference to mass death.

They want to lecture us heathens about good and evil and christian values, maybe they should take a fucking look in the mirror, while reading aloud the Sermon on the Mount. They support death and lies and thievery and cruelty and shameful hypocrisy. They don't have enough goddamned sense to be ashamed of themselves and each other.

At the Movies

Scorsese is one of my favorite directors, although not infallible -- I thought Casino was about an hour too long and a pale follow-up to Goodfellas, couldn't make it through Age of Innocence, and oddly just never got around to seeing The Last Temptation of Christ.

But there was also one other Scorsese movie I had never seen, indeed wasn't really aware of, that apparently is seen as an overlooked classic by those in the know.

After Hours (1985)

(It's a 35-year-old movie, so of course there are spoilers.)

The premise actually sounds kinda promising, in a lighthearted '80s screwball comedy way:  office nebbish (Griffin Dunne) meets cute with a girl (Rosanna Arquette), gets invited to her place, and adventures ensue when he tries to return home. The cast looks promising. Teri Garr! John Heard! Cheech & Chong! Catherine O'Hara! Late '80s/early '90s babe Linda Fiorentino! Even Bronson Pinchot makes a brief appearance.

And it does start off promisingly, with Dunne as a bored office drone who catches Arquette's attention in a coffee shop while he's reading Tropic of Cancer. She gives him her number, he calls her later that night and she invites him over....at 11:30pm. Okay then.

Obviously, the plot of just about every screwball comedy turns on misunderstandings, implausibilities, and coincidences. Usually some combination of one or two larger ones, and maybe two or three smaller ones. Something to drive things along, and the audience just goes with it mostly because there's no movie without it.

But that's all this movie is, is a string of increasingly dumb implausibilities and coincidences. Dunne heads over in a taxi traveling at roughly Mach 1, and decides for some reason to take a $20 bill -- his only money, important plot point here you guys! -- and stick it in an ashtray, with the door window behind his head wide open, in order to suck the bill out of the high-speed taxi. Nutty, right?

Dunne arrives and goes up to the loft, looking for Arquette, instead finds Fiorentino, the goofy "sculptress" roommate hacking out her papier-mâché objets d'fart. Even though Dunne just told Arquette on the phone that he would be there in forty-five minutes, she decided to bail down to the midnight pharmacy, as one does, thus leaving Fiorentino the golden opportunity to come on to Dunne before falling asleep on him.

Arquette returns, decides to take a shower before beginning their "date" (by now it must be around 1:00am or so), which is weird and disastrous, with Arquette talking about being raped for six hours by an ex-boyfriend (again, as one does -- did I mention that these two just met a couple hours prior?). Dunne wisely ditches her and leaves, only to begin his series of wacky misadventures.

And it just gets worse, and stupider. Rather than pick through every thread of the narrative, I'll just drop a few of the remaining low points:

• Dunne finds his way back to Arquette's building only to find out she killed herself. Talk about a bad first date!


• After failing to jump a subway turnstile, Dunne then finds himself at a bar. The bartender offers to give Dunne a couple bucks (uh-huh) so he can catch the subway back home, but goshdarnit, the bar's cash register -- you know, where currency is stored for exchange with paying customers, like in a business -- suddenly won't open, and the only key is -- get this -- back at the bartender's apartment. Probably stashed way up the tight asshole of an erratic pet chimp, or an impenetrable safe with a combination that requires knowing pi to the thirty-second place.


• As assurance that he totally won't burglarize the bartender's apartment, Dunne leaves his own house keys as collateral. Again:  two in the morning in New York City, these people have never fucking met before, they're exchanging house keys so that one of them can spot the other one two dollars. Jesus Christ.


• Just as Dunne is about to leave the bar, Mister Bartender gets a call that his old girlfriend has just killed herself. In order to make sure Dunne and the audience know that it's the same weird broad, Bartender yells her name about a dozen times, Stella! style, while pounding the bar. Of all the bars in the naked city, right? There's a lottery-ticket coinkydink for ya right there, podna.


• Instead of just saying, you know, I can walk a hundred blocks back to my place after all, I don't really need the two dollars that badly, and getting his keys back, Dunne heads for Bartender's apartment all the same. There's wacky comedic misunderstandings, and there's borderline retardation.


• Did I mention that there's been a string of burglaries in the area lately? Reader, there has, and Mister Bartender's up-all-night neighbors are totally watching everyone like hawks, and see Dunne going in and out of the apartment. Keep that one in your back pocket for later. Foreshadowing!


• Let's see, what else? Dunne comes back to the bar only to find the distraught bartender has left for a few minutes (at 3:00am or so by now), so he hangs out with the oddball waitress (Garr) at her place across the street. Then he heads over to the punk club where Fiorentino and her S&M boyfriend are hanging, which makes you wonder who called Mister Bartender so quickly. He hooks up with yet another weirdo (O'Hara), who drives an ice cream truck and decides he's the burglar, which results in a vigilante mob chasing Dunne through the streets of NYC at four in the fucking morning, raiding businesses and apartments to search for him. Probably because the entire NYPD was taken up with getting Suicide Arquette down to the morgue. Who fucking knows?

Oh yeah, Dean Wormer's wife is in this thing too. What an incoherent mess it is. Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have had a field day with this pile of crap. It's tonally all over the place, every character is a complete idiot or an insufferable goofball, and none of it makes any sense. Who writes this shit?

I'm telling you right now that the only thing keeping people from rating this turd lower than Battlefield Earth is that it has Marty Scorsese's name on it. But because it's him, it's a "hidden gem" or whatever. Bullshit. It gargles rhino balls. I was thinking maybe he had some alimony to pay down or something, but apparently he took this project on after Last Temptation got cancelled, and he was pissed and frustrated and needed something to do. It had a budget of $4M and made $10M, so that's something I guess.

Fuck this movie. I want my two hours back. The only thing that didn't suck is that Linda Fiorentino has decent tits, but she only shows them for a few seconds early on, and for no fucking reason.

Grade:  F- (yeah, I know there's no such thing as F+ or F-)

P.S. I'm still looking forward to seeing The Irishman.

At the Movies

Not a review this time, but this retrospective appreciation of A Perfect Getaway is pretty solid. It's certainly one of the more underrated movies of this century so far, imho. Not a great film, like people will be talking about it a hundred years from now, but it's a very good one, much better than most in its genre, with lively, quirky performances from Steve Zahn and Timothy Olyphant. Milla Jovovich and Kiele Sanchez are also great as the respective female leads, strong and resourceful.

It's tough to run a two-hour movie around just four characters for ninety percent of it, but this group pulls it off really well. It mostly takes place in Kauai, so the location shooting is frequently spectacular. As the review notes, Getaway strikes an unusual balance between suspense and comedy that works (again, thanks to great casting), building steadily and patiently, without losing momentum. It's violent in parts, but not gratuitously so. If you haven't seen it, you should. There are plenty of worse ways to spend an afternoon.

At the Movies

[Just the one movie this time. I'll do my best to avoid any major spoilers, but shit may happen. After all, it's a Tarantino movie.]

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- Tarantino's latest opus dropped Thursday night, and the premise seemed intriguing:  a washed-up cowboy actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt-double sidekick (Brad Pitt) navigate Hollywood in 1969, the former vainly attempting to resuscitate his flagging career, and the latter vainly striving to keep some sort of role in that career, since he can't have a career of his own (due to being effectively blackballed).

Oh, and did we mention that DiCaprio's next-door neighbors way up on Cielo Drive in Hollywood are none other than Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie)? Reader, you can rest assured that violent hijinks will eventually ensue, a couple hours or so down the road.

At the Movies

More movies, some spoilers.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? -- I was skeptical of this one going into it, but the outstanding performances across the board won me over. By now you probably know the premise -- bestselling biographer falls on hard times, can't crack the changing marketplace, not getting any help from her agent or publisher, and so turns to the rather esoteric niche market of forging art collectibles.

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant do most of the heavy lifting as Lee Israel and, um, Jack Hock, respectively. I strongly believe that comedians and comic actors tend to make excellent dramatic actors, and McCarthy reinforces that theory with her wonderfully nuanced portrayal of Israel, who wore an unpleasant, almost hermit-like demeanor as a defense mechanism, both from the world at large and from herself. Jane Curtin(!) is a nice surprise as Israel's agent, and the rest of the small supporting cast are wonderful as well.

The subject and scope of the story are indeed very niche-oriented, and might not hold everyone for the full stretch, but again this is a finely-tuned portrayal of the artist's contentious relationship with the world of commerce, and the fleeting caprices of talent and love.

Grade:  A-

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The Sisters Brothers -- The western genre hasn't traditionally lent itself to much introspection, but it seems that that has changed at least since The Unforgiven or perhaps Tombstone. Still, the western mostly depends on some sort of ending climax of saving the town from the bad guys or what-have-you. The Sisters Brothers takes these reliable plot devices and tweaks or ignores them altogether, preferring to concentrate on the inner motivations of its anti-heroes.

John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix portray the titular brothers with the unusual surname, contract killers who have never really done anything else. Reilly, as elder brother Eli, muses about their future after time eventually catches up with them, while Phoenix (Charlie), the more impulsive of the pair, lives in the here and now, moving across a violent landscape with nothing more on his mind than booze and whatever task his paymaster (Rutger Hauer, unfortunately unseen until the very end, and then as a corpse in a coffin) has set before him.

The brothers' mission this time is to track down a chemist who may have discovered a formula for finding surface and river gold, without having to pan or mine for it. As they near closer to their quarry, tracking through Oregon and California gold country, they begin questioning their purposes and motives, and what kind of men they want to be, and be remembered as. When it all goes bad, as these things inevitably do, the brothers come full circle to confront the origins of their violent lives.

Reilly and Phoenix are both quirky but versatile actors; here they play it straight, and it pays off with strong performances for both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed are also strong in key supporting roles. An interesting side note (for me, as a lifelong Californian who has been to every part of the state many times) is that the exterior location shooting was done primarily in Spain and France, and it sure as hell looked like California gold country to me. This is a terrific movie, directed with care and patience, belying the violent narrative throughout.

Grade:  A

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Bohemian Rhapsody -- This is a movie where you simply have to manage your expectations going into it. For one thing, it had been in various stages up production since 2010, with Sacha Baron Cohen originally cast to play Freddie Mercury, and ultimately departing the project for a variety of reasons. Several screenwriters and directors later, and recasting Mr. Robot star Rami Malek as Mercury, this is what you have -- a well-meaning but ultimately muddled Star Is Born template of excess, redemption, and tragedy.

Growing up in the late 1970s with parents that mostly listened to country or AM pop, bands like Queen helped me make a critical jump outside those relatively narrow parameters. There was especially heavy airplay around the Jazz and News of the World albums, culminating in The Game's smash hit success across the board. Just in those three albums, you can hear them successfully experimenting in multiple genres -- hard rock, arena anthems, cheeky pop confections like Bicycle Race, disco, and even rockabilly gems like Crazy Little Thing Called Love. But of course they had much more to offer throughout their career.

If you eschew the usual path of listening to one of the greatest-hit collections, and just go back through the catalog, you can hear and appreciate how truly fearless they were musically. Naturally the movie makes a huge deal of that with the conception and production of the title track, but A Night at the Opera was their fifth album, and they had been doing adventurous outings similar to Bohemian Rhapsody all along.

Hell, check out side two of Queen II, and imagine the guts it took to get something as intricately crafted and flat-out weird as The Fairy-Feller's Master Stroke onto vinyl. And then to have that song segue into Nevermore, a schmaltzy ballad which packs more passion and sorrow into seventy-eight seconds than you'll find in the entire catalogs of your Mariah Carey and Celine Dion types.

Most people have never heard either of those songs; most Queen fans are unfamiliar with them. They were never played in concert or on the radio. Sheer Heart Attack has a bunch of hidden gems as well; Flick of the Wrist and Stone Cold Crazy are much better than Killer Queen, which is pretty damned good to begin with. The radio hits were just the tip of the iceberg with these guys.

What Queen really did was take the chamber-pop aspirations of late-period Brian Wilson and Beatles, and put them in a prog-rock context, and then turned around and made those orchestrations accessible across a wide variety of musical genres. That's way more interesting (to me, anyway) than Freddie Mercury's conflicted personal life, although seeing Queen drove the point home much more than hearing them did, and it should be appreciated as well, Mercury unabashedly strutting and preening in unitards in giant arenas in front of traditionally homophobic hard rock fans, defying them to make the connection of people they were conditioned to hate making music that they loved.

Anyway, the movie and its expectations. If you watch it as a straight-up biopic, you'll be disappointed, not only because the musical chronography is botched (to cite just one example, Fat Bottomed Girls was released in 1978 and was a concert staple for years after; there is no way they could have toured with that song in 1973-74), but because it eschews real introspection for cliché.

There's an interesting situation with Mercury, clearly in love with his girlfriend Mary Austin (Lucy Boynton), not sexually attracted to her but wanting "everything else," and so keeping her in the mansion next door to his own. It's a dilemma of generosity and selfishness that is never adequately explored, just accepted after a while, as Mary gets a boyfriend and starts her own family, all while still inhabiting the house that Freddie bought. She clearly cares about him as well, but there is always that impasse, and she never fully moves on from being his muse/curator in the gilded cage.

One minor humorous note in the first half of the movie is the cameo appearance of a nearly unrecognizable Mike Myers as EMI Records exec Ray Foster, shit-talking Bohemian Rhapsody when the band presented it to him, and thereby turning the scene into an extended Wayne's World meta-reference. It's an interesting move, but again brushes over what, considering the band's earlier output, had to have been a much more complex discussion between the band and the record company. But we need the simplified Hero's Journey trope of Standing Up For Exalted Principles And Integrity, so that's where it lands here.

The rest of the band, played by unknowns, fall into the usual trite templates:  Brian May is the brainy astrophysicist who occasionally takes his head out of the stars to write some songs and play some solos; Roger Taylor is the pussyhound drummer who wanted to be a dentist; John Deacon is the quiet one, as all bassists other than Paul McCartney are. Who knew that Deacon was actually an electrical engineer who designed and built a custom amplifier for May's idiosyncratic guitar orchestrations? It's all second fiddle to whatever drama Freddie's cooking up at the moment.

The movie does succeed on its own terms in the final act, as Live Aid becomes the focal point of the band reuniting for Freddie's triumphant return, before becoming too ill to perform anymore. They did manage to record another studio album (Innuendo), and a very good one at that, but that's never even mentioned. (Although The Show Must Go On, from that album, does play over the final credits.) Basically they perform at Live Aid, and six years later Freddie dies, the end.

However. Malek is outstanding in his performance (especially the Live Aid performance at the end), despite the distracting prosthetic teeth, and the music....well, it's Queen. They could have just run two straight hours of music and that would have been great. This one gets two grades, one for the music and one for the movie.

Grades:  A+ (music); C (movie)

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Triple Frontier -- Another project that had been in the works for years, going through rounds of scripts and writers and directors and recasting, finally landing on Netflix and premiering last month. As action/heist movies go, the premise isn't half bad:  former black-op mercs, left high and dry by the gubmints they quietly did wetwork for, decide to rob a narco chieftain deep in the jungle near the convergence of the Amazon headwaters of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia (not to be confused with the Iguacu Falls intersection of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay).

The casting is solid enough, featuring Charlie Hunnam as the ringleader, and Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Garrett Hedlund, and Ben Affleck accompanying him on the heist. (Affleck pulled out of the project for a year to hit rehab, then returning for what seems like a fairly subdued performance, considering the premise.) And there are some nice action set pieces here and there, particularly in the opening scenes, but it ends strong as well.

The plot does make some use of the remoteness and lawlessness of the locale (although the movie was filmed in Oahu), but in the end, this sort of thing has been explored in movies ranging from A Simple Plan to Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the theme of greed getting the better of people.

Still, it's well-made and the cast is very good. It's an old theme but a good one, and the action moves along fairly tightly. There are plenty of worse ways to spend two hours.

Grade:  B+

At the Movies

Some recent viewings of note, in the order I saw them over the last month or so. There are spoilers here and there, but they're at a minimum.

Juliet, Naked -- Based on Nick Hornby's novel, this is a bright, small story about a reclusive rocker (Ethan Hawke) whose long-lost acoustic demo gets on the radar of an obsessive fan (Chris O'Dowd), who in turn pays far more attention to his fan board than to his long-suffering wife (Rose Byrne).

The cast is pitch-perfect, bringing the material into focus, and the writing is subtle but sharp, weaving solid observations about obsessives and self-appointed curators into the familiar tropes about lost connections and second chances. Bonus points for Hawke's rendition of Waterloo Sunset.

Grade:  A

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Landline -- This looked good on paper -- solid cast (Edie Falco, John Turturro, Jenny Slate) and a proven director (Gillian Robespierre) with a touch for comedy (Robespierre directed several excellent episodes of HBO's sorely underrated Crashing this season). And yet....

Two sisters (Slate and Abby Quinn) suspect that their father (Turturro) is cheating on their mother (Falco). And yet Slate is cheating on her own fiancé (Jay Duplass), so, go figure. Naturally, hijinks ensue. The younger sister is a bratty teen, who seems to delight mostly in being a disagreeable pain-in-the-ass.

Pretty much everyone in this movie is a spoiled, insufferable asshole. At the risk of stating the obvious, every story needs a protagonist -- that is, someone you can root for. But there's no one to root for here, really. They're all fucking jerky and unpleasant, except Duplass, who's just a pussy. Not to approach it from an academic Marxist (class-based) perspective, but after about an hour of listening to these privileged assholes bray at each other over their first-world problems, you kind of wish one of them would get mugged or beaten up, burglarized, something like that. Anything but listen to spoiled people whine for an hour and a half.

Grade:  D+

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Hereditary -- After the previous decade's spate of wretched torture porn, the horror genre has been enjoying something of a rejuvenation the last half-decade or so. The focus right now is on Jordan Peele, who with Get Out and now Us has managed to create entertaining pieces that have canny social observations baked into them. But Robert Eggers' The Witch was another terrific -- and sorely underrated -- addition to the canon, using flawless pacing and fantastic exterior shots to build real suspense, without a bunch of gratuitous blood and goo.

Hereditary lands closer to that latter category, starting with a well-used premise -- Grandma's dead, and the family starts finding out about the real Grandma. Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne lead a strong cast of mostly newer actors. It's a great ensemble and they thrive under Ari Aster's writing and directing. The movie probably could have been 10-15 minutes shorter in the first two acts, but it's not a major complaint.

It's hard to get into depth with this movie without giving too much away, but suffice to say that the suspense builds well and doesn't let up, there are a couple of gory shots but nothing unnecessarily graphic or overdone, and the powerful ending will have you recalling classics like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, the way the tension gets ratcheted up effectively, without letting go.

Grade:  A-

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Black Panther -- I mostly don't bother with superhero movies, as they are essentially the same Hero's Journey template iterated with slight variations. It's like hearing the same song played in all twelve musical keys, maybe replacing major chords with minor or altered dominant chords, maybe a tempo change, but still essentially the same deal.

That's not a value judgment; the movies are well-made and generally have solid casts. But you have to be invested in the characters to really get anything from these movies, and it's mostly just not in my wheelhouse. Also, they tend to run about 20-30 minutes too long. Seems like 100-110 minutes should be enough to paint the numbers and tack on the franchise teaser after the credits.

So my main requirement from action or blockbuster movies is that the characters are engaging and the plot moves along, and Black Panther fits that bill. Like Wonder Woman before it, there is a certain aura of wokeness coming with this one, but it's not overdone. It takes some suspension of disbelief to buy that an isolated nation could use an essentially magical element (that only exists in one place) to build a technologically advanced civilization with no outside contact or trade. But as with all of these types of movies, the borders of verisimilitude tend to be blurry and selective, and are not meant to be scrutinized closely. It is, after all, a comic book.

The main thing is that the cast is strong, the story solid, the pacing steady, and the visuals interesting and innovative. Like Wonder Woman, it's woke, but in a good way.

Grade:  B+

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First Reformed -- Paul Schrader wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. It's not an exaggeration to say that if he had done nothing else at all, he's still a legend. But of course he's written and/or directed many other projects over the years, with varying levels of success. Last year's First Reformed belongs among his greatest works. It's a small, intimate film that poses large questions.

Ethan Hawke (once again) plays Rev. Ernst Toller, a former military chaplain who, after losing his son in Iraq and subsequently his marriage, finds himself ministering to a historic church in upstate New York that is more of a tourist destination than a true congregation. Toller drinks and writes, vainly attempting to crib together some sort of penance or redemption for himself.

An environmentalist couple enters his church, the pregnant wife Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asking for his counseling for her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), a climate-change obsessive who wants to abort the fetus rather than bring it into an already doomed world. A terrific one-on-one scene between Toller and Michael sets the trajectory for the rest of the movie, as Michael lays out his case in detail, and Toller convinces him to meet again for further counseling. When Mary finds Michael's suicide vest and informs Toller, Michael shoots himself, propelling Toller's soul-searching into new territory.

As Toller begins digging into the heart of Michael's environmental concerns, he begins putting them into a higher spiritual context:  Will God forgive us? (for destroying His creation). This leads him into direct conflict with the industrialist (Michael Gaston) who bankrolls the church as a token measure of green-washing, as well as the megachurch pastor (Cedric "the Entertainer" Kyles, in a terrifically subtle performance) who eschews Toller's introspective spiritualism for the more worldly concerns of "outreach" marketing.

The third act wobbles a touch, as Toller goes Travis Bickle on us rather abruptly, but pulls itself together for a strong (if jarring) finish. If you've read Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (and if you haven't you should) then you know Schrader's personal history, raised in a strict Dutch Calvinist home where movies were forbidden. Schrader also at one point considered joining the clergy (as did his frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese), and these characteristics imbue the story as a deeply personal effort from Schrader. The close, innovative camerawork complements the nature of the story perfectly.

There are a couple of moments here and there that feel, well, preachy, and again the ending could have been a bit tighter, but these are minor quibbles. It's a real shame this movie didn't get more (or any) attention. It's an outstanding work from a true master.

Grade:  A-

At the Movies

We're only reviewing one movie this time around, but it's a long review, and you should take the spoiler warning seriously.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

(***spoilers***)

This one presents a bit of a quandary. On the one hand, you have a Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) project with a top-notch cast, and solid performances throughout; on the other hand, the whole thing is wrapped in a tendentious Swiss-cheese plot that gets more annoying the closer you think about it.

By now, even if you haven't seen the movie you probably know the broader strokes -- a mother puts up billboards outside her small town, asking why her daughter's rape/murder from a year ago remains unsolved, and the town (especially the police force) turns against her. Naturally, hijinks ensue.

NFL Conference Championship Predictions

2-2 last week again. Count on 50% accuracy (at best) this time around as well; the fun is in guessing which half. Both games are on Sunday 1/21, times PST. [Note:  In the original post on Friday, I called the AFC game for the Fackin' Patsies, but after thinking about it for a day, decided the Jagwires could take this, and changed the pick on Saturday (1/20), well before game time.]

AFC Championship Game -- 12:15 PM
Jacksonville Jaguars (12-6) at New England Patriots (14-3)(-7.5):  Once again, I'll always root for whoever's going up against Belichick's Death Star, and not just because Belichick and Kraft are friends with Fuckface Von Clownstick (though that certainly doesn't help). But in this case, the Jaguars are one of those teams I tend to root for when the Raiders are sucking wind. So I'd definitely like to see the Jags pull this one off and make it to their first Super Bowl, and based on their performance last week in Pittsburgh (as opposed to their performance the weekend before at home against the Bills), they might have a decent shot.

The two keys to the Jaguars' success have been their outstanding pass defense (2nd in points and yards allowed), and QB Blake Bortles' improved efficiency under new OC Nathaniel Hackett. While his stats are not earth-shattering by any means (3,687 passing yards, 21 TD, 13 INT), his completion percentage (60.2) and interception percentage (2.5) are career bests. (Bortles will also be a free agent after this season, which means he's playing for a $100M contract, whether it's in Jacksonville or somewhere else. Expect a bidding war with Miami, Arizona, and the LA Chargers if Philip Rivers retires.) Rookie RB Leonard Fournette is already the best runner the team has had since Fred Taylor or Maurice Jones-Drew, putting up 1,040 rushing yards and 9 rushing TDs in 13 games in the regular season, and tacking on another 109 yards and 3 TDs against a top-10 Steelers defense in the divisional playoff round.

Despite what for the Patsies would be considered something of a subpar season (two of their three regular-season losses were at home; four of their wins were by less than a touchdown), the fact is that the team does nothing but execute, and generally without a surplus of star players. Brady completed two-thirds of his pass attempts and had a 4:1 TD:INT ratio, using Gronk and a rotation of select castoffs. Free-agent speedster Brandin Cooks is the only real deep threat for Brady to work with. And yet, in their last three games (against the Bills, Jets, and last week's divisional win over the Titans), they've outscored their opponents by a total of 98-36.

As much as I like to hate on the Patsies, the fact is that they get it done with strategy and execution. And this might be where, believe it or not, Jacksonville can get the upper hand. Turns out that not only is Jacksonville (+10) ahead of New England (+6) in the all-important turnover ratio stat, but even the actual takeaway-giveaway numbers (33-23 Jags; 18-12 Pats) indicate how much more opportunistic the Jaguars' defense has been. It's also a function of how much the Patsies have settled in as a time-of-possession team later in the season.

So that's all there is to it for the Jacksonville Jaguars to get to the Super Bowl:  create turnovers, don't make offensive mistakes, and grind the clock. These are all things they've actually been pretty good at this season. They have one of the best pairs of cornerbacks in the league with Jalen Ramsey and A.J. Bouye. It actually isn't too difficult to envision a scenario where the Jaguars get ahead early like they did in Pittsburgh, and hold out just enough in the end to eke out a shootout win. The reality of it is more likely to be the Patsies being just one step ahead the whole game and heading to their umpteenth Super Bowl. I'm only half-kidding when I say they have the luck of the devil, and the refs on their side.

But the hell with it -- let's take the underdog.

Final Score:  Jaguars 41, Patsies 38.

NFC Championship Game -- 3:45 PM
Minnesota Vikings (14-3)(-3) at Philadelphia Eagles (14-3):  I'm not going to claim to be a full-on NFL historian, nor would I even know how to go about searching for such a statistic, but this has to be the only or one of the very few times in playoff history where teams that were seeded 1-2 face off in the conference finals with backup quarterbacks starting for both teams. Both QBs (Case Keenum for the Vikings; Nick Foles for the Eagles) have been respectable, helped greatly by strong defenses and solid running games.

The Vikings head into Philly after a highlight-reel finish against the Saints, with New Orleans leading 24-23 and Keenum hitting WR Stefon Diggs on a desperation 4th-and-5 lob with :09 remaining, just hoping to get within field goal range, but Diggs hauling it in for a touchdown to end the game. However, it never should have gotten that close in the first place, with Minnesota running up a 17-0 halftime lead, and the Vikings' offense collapsing in the second half. One of the Saints' comeback TDs was thanks to a wildly errant throw from Keenum from his own red zone, a slow rainbow falling straight into the arms of Saints DB Marcus Williams. (Then again, it was Williams who missed an opportunity to tackle Diggs on the final play and secure the win.)

While Foles is a decent backup, the fact is that the Eagles have been struggling on offense the last few games. Put it this way:  in Week 16, while they were still trying to finalize their playoff seeding and secure home-filed advantage, Philly did everything they could to give the game to the hapless Raiders, who were simply too incompetent to take it. The Eagles' final regular-season game was a 6-0 laugher loss against the Cowboys, who also had nothing to play for. Even last week's 15-10 win over Atlanta had as much to do with the Falcons' shortcomings as the Eagles' strengths.

This will probably be a low-to-mid-scoring affair, and it wouldn't be surprising to see something along the lines of 7-3 at halftime, with maybe some late scores. But the Vikings are just better enough to where they should be playing in their first Super Bowl in forty years, and become the first team to play in the big game in their home stadium.

Final Score:  Vikings 20, Eagles 9.

[Update 2/4/18 12:30 PM PST:  I'm less annoyed about going 0-2 on the conference championship games, than at the prospect of yet another Patsies Super Bowl. But again, as much as I like to hate on Hoodie and Tommy, the fact is they strategize and execute better than other teams. The Jaguars had it in the bag, and let it slip away. It's as if the Patsies haven't done that shit a million times before. All you have to do is watch the film and plan accordingly. That's all they do.

Anyway, Philly's defense turns out to be pretty damned good, but they are impacted by injuries at this point, so Nick Foles will have to step up the offense. If Chris Long can get in there and harass Brady enough, the Iggles  have a fighting chance, but as recent history shows, even when you have a boot on their neck, the Patsies (with a little help from the refs) have a knack for coming back. Rooting for Philly, but realistically it's probably another notch in the belt for Fuckface Von Clownstick's favorite team.

Final Score:  Patsies 27, Eagles 24.]

At the Movies

Maggie's Plan -- On paper, the lineup for this little indie thing seems solid -- Greta Gerwig, Julianne Moore, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph. In practice, these insufferable Park Slopeheads become tiresome within minutes after you meet them. These are Woody Allen characters without any of the charm or personality.

Gerwig plays the titular character, a New School administrator (I know, right?) who wants the kid, but not the relationship. She decides to go the in vitro route and gets some monkey butter from her friend who runs an artisanal pickle shop (for fuck's sake), but then meets half-cute with a struggling married writer (aren't they all), played by Hawke. They hook up, he knocks her up, they get married and have a kid, and then Gerwig decides she'd rather not be tethered to this guy after all, and so concocts a plan to reconcile him with his ex-wife (Moore).

It would actually be nice to say, even sarcastically, that the proverbial hijinks ensue, but alas no, there are zero hijinks to be had. It is less inventive than a typical Three's Company rerun, and Three's Company had Mr. Roper. These douchebags would have improved things by literally digging up the amazing Norman Fell, and simply placing his rotted, desiccated corpse in the shot, a la Weekend at Bernie's.

This is by no means a political film, but if you want some insight as to the current political climate, this is not a bad place to start. These character archetypes are exactly the kind of people conservatards in general and Drumpftards in particular despise, and rightly so -- spoiled, brainless, limo-lib yuppie assholes spouting terminally bad, self-absorbed dialogue. They're all terrible people, and you don't care about any of them.

Fergodsake, Gerwig's master plan to get Hawke and Moore back together involves a conference where Slavoj Zizek is speaking, because of course they both love Zizek. I'm half-surprised there wasn't a scene where Hawke and/or Moore didn't weigh in on Hegelian dialectics, while molding their own poop into a perfect sphere, and getting hung up on how to remove the handprints from the sphere. It's that fucking bad.

Did I mention there's an artisanal pickle guy named Guy? This could be a funny thing if done right, except it seems weirdly earnest about it, and doesn't seem to find the humor in such a thing. Gerwig seems to be channeling Jason Schwartzman's character in Rushmore (one of my all-time favorite movies), except Max Fischer is a sixteen-year-old dork, and Maggie is supposed to be a responsible adult around the age of thirty.

Say this for the characters -- they all have very punchable faces and personalities, even the women. It is at least heartening to see that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, this movie mode only $3,302. That is not a typo -- three thousand, three hundred and two dollars -- and the audience score is nearly thirty points lower than the critics' score, usually not a good sign. So there are countless YouTube videos of random idiots thumbing their dicks, that cost nothing to make, that have monetized themselves better than this movie.

There are some nice location shots of the NYC. That is the only positive thing I can say about this tedious, insufferable time-suck.

Grade: D

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Green Room -- This is a strangely fun genre romp, about a punk band trapped in a neo-Nazi skinhead club owned by none other than (who else?) Patrick Stewart, who has traded in his elegant elocution for a slightly more working-class rumble, almost like Lemmy at times. The action starts quickly and never lets up, ramping up the tension at just the right times. The ending is somewhat anticlimactic, and there are a couple of minor drops along the way, but overall this is a lean, mean machine that really should have done a lot better than it did.

I'd give you more details, but as long as you're down with the genre and have a strong stomach (there are a couple of scenes of fairly graphic violence), you'll enjoy this one.

Grade:  B+

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The Lobster -- Even though my tastes tend to run more fartsy than artsy, I wanted to like this, I really did. The premise seemed ripe for satire and metaphor -- in a dystopian future, single people are given 45 days to find love, or be transformed into the animal of their choice and set loose in the forest. Sounds fun, right?

Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz are pretty solid in the lead roles, so the acting is not the problem. The problem is in the heavy-handed production, with repeated bursts of morose Beethoven and Shostakovich string quartets barging into scenes that are too quiet and slow in the first place. THE STRINGS AREN'T HELPING, GUYS. Additionally, the premise itself makes little sense in the context of the film -- no rationale for such a policy, much less a real mechanism for enforcement (considering the participants are consenting to irreparably disfiguring themselves) seems to exist. There's no Handmaid's Tale or even Hunger Games explanation for this. They're just doing it because they're supposed to.

I suppose The Lobster was intended to function as some sort of satirical tone poem on desirability as a component of sexuality, and how people can define themselves solely by what they have to offer to others, instead of developing themselves and presenting that. What hope for the thoughtful soul in a Tinder hookup world, that sort of thing. Whatever. At two hours, it feels more like three, and ultimately there's no point, not even a satirical one. Again, strong performances and great location shots abound, but there's just not a lot of plot to hold things together.

Grade: C-

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Okay, let's dip into the recent past for what I would consider a "new millennium classic":

Bad Santa -- As you might imagine, I can take or leave Christmas in general, and Christmas movies and music in particular. As far as Christmas music goes, there are only three songs -- Fairytale of New York, Father Christmas, and everything else. I fucking hate most Christmas music -- derivative, sappy, consumerist jabber.

And I don't need to see the Peanuts Christmas special ever again; the only reason I ever watched it more than once in the first place is because I grew up with literally three teevee channels, until I was in my twenties. There was nothing else on, and no internets yet. No wonder I played guitar, rode motorcycles, brought girls home to bang in the hot tub, and partied as hard as anyone has outside of Motorhead. Seriously, there are days when I wonder how I made it to my 28th birthday.

As far as Christmas movies go, I tend to like The Ref, Die Hard, and (oddly) Elf, maybe a couple others here and there. Bad Santa was one that had slipped by me when it first came out, but a recent spate of summer reruns on HBO served to remind me what a terrific movie it is in general, and what a great Christmas movie in particular.

Billy Bob Thornton is spot-on as Willie, the mall Santa from hell. With his dwarf/elf sidekick, played with hysterical energy by Tony Cox, Willie works the malls during the holiday season, then robs the safes of the proceeds. It's a low-bar racket, but one that works well for these two unambitious losers.

Director Terry Zwigoff nails everything down to the details in this movie, from the music used throughout the movie to Willie's nihilistic alcoholism and his against-all-odds friendship with a weird, inscrutable kid. Thornton drinks, bangs, and bellows his way through these interchangeable consumerist shitholes, never looking up, never wanting more, knowing all the while that he's running head-first to a early grave.

In lesser hands, this would have been an unrelentingly bleak vision, but Zwigoff remembers that it is a Christmas movie after all, finds the humor in it, and doesn't resort to that sappy Miracle on 34th Street bullshit. It doesn't hurt to have two great comic actors (Bernie Mac and John Ritter, both sadly gone far too soon) supporting things.

There are a couple of discordant notes, but no bad ones, and Thornton and Cox chew up the scenery like a couple of wolverines. Christmas movie or no, this is one of the most mordantly funny movies around, but the fact that it is a Christmas movie makes it even better. If you had told me a year ago that I would have watched a Christmas movie multiple times throughout a blazing hot summer, I would said you were out of your fucking mind.

But I'd watch it again tomorrow, even though I just saw it about ten days ago, and I've watched it probably six or seven times in the past twelve weeks, and we're months away from Christmas, for the same reason we listen to great songs over and over again -- to savor the notes, the rhythm, the arrangement, the virtuosity of the players, to feel the hair on your neck or arm stand up because everything hits just right. Such a great movie.

Grade: A

The Universe Thinks I Deserve a Worsening

Dammit, how is it that I didn't know about this site? Nothing against Jeff Bridges or Ryan Reynolds, but R.I.P.D. looks DOA, and few things are better than funny bad reviews.

Battlefield Afterbirth

Not to read much of anything into this, just amusing anecdata passing through, but which is more hilarious:  that the Fresh Prince's cobbled together, Shamalama-dingdong-directed CGI hoke-fest is transparently a $cientology home movie, only slightly less tedious and preposterous than Battlefield Earth; or that huge chunks of the comment thread at The Hollywood Reporter read like a Stormfront recruitment ad?

Well, we can just say that they're both hilarious in their own right, but not so much as what is apparently the central premise of this vanity project cum video game -- that humans abandoned Earth 1,000 years ago, and since that time, predatory species have evolved to kill humans. Yes, ladles and spoons, multiple species evolve specifically to eliminate another species that disappeared. Oh, and it gets deadly cold at night, and the air is only partially breathable by humans, yet mammals and jungle flora proliferate. Science!

Setting the Record Straight

There seems to be some confusion about something that I happen to think is very simple and obvious. Nonetheless, let's clear it up right now:  there is nothing gratuitous about Alice Eve, i'ight? That's good times right there, and I will gut the fool who says otherwise.

Damon Lindelof, on the other hand....

And Now For Something Completely Different

So I assumed that in going to see the new Muppet movie over the holiday weekend, I would simply be fulfilling another parental duty, handing good money over to the Mouse Cult in exchange for two hours of cloying sentimentalism. And it is sentimental, and wears its sweetness and innocence on its sleeve.

But writer/star Jason Segel is clearly passionate about this project, and his joy in the story is infectious. Amy Adams is her usual perky, cute, engaging self. The Muppet characters feel like old friends, long time no see, and the movie makes an earnest but true point about the role for their style of entertaining in a steadily coarsened culture.

But what really makes it a very good movie are the songs, especially the ones written by Flight of the Conchords alum Bret McKenzie. The songs are fun and silly, play off the story's abundant meta jokes, and move things along (and the movie isn't two hours, more like a crisp 90 minutes or so). And there are a couple of extremely funny sight/music gags toward the end.

I know, I was surprised too. This may ruin my reputation as a foul-mouthed intartubez curmudgeon. Go see it anyway, you'll be glad you did.

Culture Vultures

Heh. I'll never lay any claims to pop-culture awareness, but am I the only person who didn't realize that they had even made a Butterfly Effect 2? Of all the clunkers that seemed least likely to spawn a franchise, it seems to be right down there with Glitter. If it's this easy to get crap made, I really do need to start cranking out some shoddy spec scripts, or an idea for another reality show.

Maybe a spec script about two people trying to start up a reality show, and along the way they have merry misadventures that bring them closer together, and the audience falls in love with them as they fall in love with one another and make the bestest reality show evah. I'm thinking either Vin Diesel and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Nicolas Cage and Katherine Heigl, or Zeta-Jones and Heigl. And a masturbating zoo animal, probably a monkey or a bear, or Seth Rogen. Fun for the entire family!

Double Feature

Valentine's Day had two rather counterintuitive movie choices, one new and one recent. Didn't plan it that way, just happened so.

The cineplex entry was Coraline, in 3-D, and it's an amazing technological feat that it even got made. The 3-D is used tastefully and judiciously, moving the story forward and adding to its wonderment. The last third of the movie might be a bit scary for kids under ten, but not too bad. Unlike your usual animated film, there's no real moral to the story -- not much of a conventional storyline, for that matter, more of a set of intricately designed and connected set pieces around a loose narrative. But there's plenty for kids and adults to ooh and aah over. Great stuff.

The Netflix choice was Oliver Stone's W., and was somewhat more problematic, yet basically what I expected. For the most part, Stone leaves his, erm, creative historical tendencies out of it. Most of the noticeable factual off-notes revolve around the placement of the more famous Bushisms, and some of the more notable events are compacted into scenes, presumably to conserve length.

Perhaps the most grating problem with the film is that Stone chose to portray Fredo in a predictably Oedipal context, which is understandable, yet incomplete. Certainly he has exhibited such traits in many of his actions and deeds throughout his life and political career (not to mention the various Poppy-driven "bidness" ventures), yet there has always been a darker side to Bush's temperament that the usual daddy issues do not sufficiently describe.

Bush was always a beta dog determined to act like an alpha, belittling contemporaries and subordinates with amusing (to him) nicknames, proclaiming his Decider role with a possessiveness that bespeaks insecurity, whenever he perceived anyone to be stepping on his toes. He surrounds himself with cynics and fawning acolytes, and here Rove is adeptly shown as a puling little sack of shit nursing his lifelong mancrush, while Condi is a nattering yes-woman with her own emotional stake in it.

Even Bush's nauseating habit of yammering at people with a load of food in his gob, something that should have been slapped out of his fool head by one or both of his WASP asshole parents by the time he was six, has the familiar whiff of one-upmanship that always characterized his personality. It's an important trait to note, this streak of his, because since he has no natural talents aside from an unusual memory for baseball statistics, it takes the place of what would be a competitive streak in a person who has an actual skill.

Of course this Oedipus-schmedipus complex culminates in poor ol' Poppy's eternal grief, tragically remaining loyal to his bumptious, misguided progeny whilst maintaining the quiet dignity of having his own legacy roundly undone by impetuous ignorance. That rang least true for me, in accordance with my personal stance on that particular issue. I hope he is haunted by it to his final moments, but cannot find sympathy even for his cinematic portrayal.

In the end, W. is a skillfully woven pastiche of scenes geared to that Oedipal vision, leaving out a whole lotta stuff, most notably Katrina. Until the hurricane hit and Bush's manifest incompetence was forever exposed, even the bungling up to that point in Iraq had been forgiven by many to some extent. But Katrina knocked him down to the thirties in job approval, and Bush spent the final three years mostly at or well below that dismal mark, trudging in his little bubble from scandal to scandal, not even pretending to give a fuck in his final year, as the economy unraveled and the rest of the world began to quietly plan how best to chip us away on the ice floe before we start noticing.

W. might have had more impact and heft if it had come out late this year or even next year, when people have more time and perspective to reflect on the reign of error that just came to a close. It would have stretched it another hour to incorporate Katrina, the economy, and the undermining of the Constitution with the unitary executive doctrine, but it would have been a more complete picture. And Bush's ascension and failure is, after all, the failure of the media to be on the ball, and the electorate to pay attention. Like Vietnam, we won't be over it until we own it and move past it.

Ultimately what's lacking in Stone's treatment is a worthy subject. Movies about historical figures are supposed to cast their topics as larger than life, and more than ever, George W. Bush comes out as he always was -- much smaller than life, five pounds of shit in a ten-pound bag, a man who would have been nothing without his last name, yet spent most of his life running from it.

Still, the movie abounds with strong performances, especially Josh Brolin, so I can't entirely dismiss it. You can certainly see the effort, I just don't know if there is a good movie to be made about a clown who floats through life, fails upward into power, and lawn-darts his country. The mini-doc in the DVD special features on the Bush dynasty comes closer on that count.