Not rated.  It's weird to call this one tame after some of the later entries that decided to push the limit a bit.  While there isn't nudity and the gore isn't excessive, the few times that the gore decides to be involved, it's mildy gross.  There are some limbs that are lost with some very paint-y blood on said limbs.  Again, there's Zatoichi appropriate death.  But in terms of really making anything that might be questionable, this movie kind of strays away from it.  I suppose the commentary that the gang of rogues has a leader who sleeps with her prey is something.  Still, this is more in innuendo than outright showing anything.

DIRECTOR:  Kimiyoshi Yasuda

I'm such a ridiculous human being.  I want to be playing video games.  I want to be relaxing. I also know that tomorrow might be too stressful to write this, so I'm knocking this one out as quickly as I can.  This should be my last Zatoichi viewing.  It's been at least the better part of a decade watching these Zatoichi movies.  Heck, I can probably attest that I've been watching these movies for 13 years.  Man, that is a bad track record.  25 movies in 13 years.  I should be able to knock out more than two per year.  I did take a whole bunch of years off from watching these, so that's on me.  But now that I've finally finished watching them, that means I'm done writing about Zatoichi, right?

Nope.  See, I started watching these movies before I started the blog.  So that means, because I'm obsessed with having whole collections on the blog, I'm going to have to start the franchise over.  It's okay.  I think I have most of them done.  Maybe I have four-to-six more movies to watch in this franchise so I can put it to bed.  I know.  I own these movies.  I should be excited to watch them again one day.  While I probably won't sell the box set any time soon, I do have to point out the major flaw of this box set:  So many of these Zatoichi movies are basically the same.  If you read every single Zatoichi blog I've written, the majority of them focus on them being basically same-old-same-old.  The way that Criterion dances around this is that it is a celebration of serialized storytelling.  But I've absorbed so much media.  I like serialized storytelling.  I also know that you can do incredible things with long-form storytelling.  I don't think that Zatoichi is necessarily effective long-form storytelling.

There are some real gems in there.  I wish I could tell you the names of these movies, but Zatoichi movies aren't most memorably named.  And the reason that they are more impressive than others is that they choose to do something different with the conceit that is planted in that first episode. I don't think I have to harp on that whole concept too much, especially considering that this is a blog technically about Zatoichi's Conspiracy (another entry that has almost nothing to do with the plot, considering that there isn't a conspiracy in this movie).  But the final entry in the series (which is technically not the end of Zatoichi, considering that the films were quasi-remade in television format for 100 episodes) is very appropriate considering that it embraces the problems of the franchise wholeheartedly.

Zatoichi's Conspiracy isn't terrible.  If anything, it's pure, uncut Zatoichi (no pun intended).  It has learned from the mistakes of some of those earlier and middle entries in the series and presents a Zatoichi tale without complication.  It's simple almost to a fault.  It only really has one plot line.  We know who the good guy is.  We know who the bad guy is.  There isn't much to unpack when it comes to presenting this character in his final film.  I'll even give the movie some points by returning Zatoichi to his home town, that he's been avoiding for 24 films.  That's a smart move.  It gives us a sense that this is the last film.

But that's the only thing that makes the movie a last film.  Okay, that isn't quite accurate.  The reason that Zatoichi's Conspiracy is less than good is the fact that it is just a distillation of all of the other films.  The worst of the Zatoichi films are ones that center around the following ideas: Zatoichi goes to a town where few people know who he is.  There's a big bad greedy boss who runs a gambling estblishment.  Zatoichi makes his presence known through said gambling establishment where he's good at identifying cheats at dice.  He falls in love.  He kills the bad guy and moves on.  That's this story.  That's this story and Conspiracy doesn't even try to hide it.  There have been entries that have followed that formula with at least an attempt to cover up the fact that they're just reusing the old stories.  Not so much.  I'm going to even say that the film decides to nerf the impact of Zatoichi's return home.  

If returning home is something that is something of an anathema to Zatoichi, there have to be rewards and consequences.  I don't hate the idea that Zatoichi arriving at his home after all of this time can be chalked up to fate.  After all, if one of the central conceits is being a nomad, it would take something mighty powerful for him to make the choice to return home.  And since this movie is so focused on bringing Zatoichi full-circle, back to the place that started it all, fate makes sense.  But fate also is a bit lazy, isn't it?  I mean, if the screenwriters actually gave him a motivation to return home outside just "arriving there", that means that the film couldn't depend on the old formula.

I'm (unfortunately) reminded about Die Another Day, the only canonical James Bond film I actively dislike.  (I'm not the biggest fan of Licence to Kill, but I keep on giving it other chances.)  Die Another Day was the 20th Bond film on the 40th anniversary of the franchise.  And in an attempt to bring the whole thing full-circle, they put references to every other James Bond movie in one film.  And the thing that suffered is the fact that nothing felt like it meant anything.  Nothing really means anything in this movie.  It's so close to the book that it has nothing.  Nothing.  I didn't even care about the relationship between Zatoichi and Miyo.  

Side note:  Miyo and Zatoichi is a choice.  Maybe it's a culture thing, but tying the relationship together based on the fact that they were both breastfed by the same woman?  It seems like it's playing up the fact that they were closer to siblings than relationship.  Heck, maybe the movie wanted me to think that the heartbreak came more from the fact that they had a familial tie than a romantic one was part of the story.  Still, don't you think that should have been made explicit.

Still, I'm glad that the last movie wasn't an abomination.  Like, I at least understood all of the beats of the movie.  Zatoichi was put in a position where he had to fight an old friend who kept on betraying him. It was a choice to absolve the morally grey choice of killing Shinbei by having him fall on a sword.  Still, it's a cool idea to have Zatoichi question killing a friend.  I wish there was more that tied these two together outside of a tenuous watermelon story. But I can't say that this last movie got me excited to know that I have to go back to the beginning and start again, just so I can complete my blog entries.  

You know the biggest confusing part for me?  I don't get why Quentin Tarantino loves these movies.  Is it just street cred?  Anyway, they're fine.  It's all...fine.

A pretty solid R rating.  The inciting incident is a visceral violent attempted rape followed by a murder.  There's a lot of language.  There's a fairly unnecessary sex scene that --oddly enough --doesn't really have nudity.  It's also a movie about a crime spree. I also am pretty sure that Thelma wears the stars and bars at one point. There's a lot that really earns this movie the R.  

DIRECTOR:  Ridley Scott

I'm tired and cranky.  No one is stopping me from going to bed.  I should just go to bed.  What am I doing instead?  Writing a blog about Thelma & Louise.  Sometimes, I even annoy myself.  There are a handful of modern classics that I've just avoided because I feel like I'm not necessarily the target audience.  I've been trying to make an effort by cathcing up on some of these movies.  But the second that I find out that these movies are on Criterion, I wait to own them.  It's the worst privileged snobby film thing I can think of.  Still, I now own Thelma & Louise.  I'll say that it ain't he worst Criterion to own.

At least 90% of this movie isn't the worst Criterion to own.  I wasn't prepped to like this movie the way that I did.  Thelma & Louise is one of those movies that is saddled with its memorable ending, so much so that people probably don't give this movie much of a watch anymore.  Heck, I considered myself culturally literate when it came to this movie because I knew the end.  (Just because I can, the movie ends with the eponymous characters driving the Thunderbird off the clipp into the Grand Canyon, ending it all.  I actually wonder how they filmed that show.) I always knew that it was Hollywood's answer to '90s feminism, but I was suprised for how much the movie got right.  It's just a shame that the parts that they got wrong really kind of take the wind out of my sails.

A little bit of confession time.  If I just turned 43 (yes, thank you for the birthday messages), I probably spent about the first 30 years of my life being a backwards, quasi proudly politically incorrect butthead.   I always thought that Thelma & Louise was probably a cornball, lightly progressive film and that's about it.  There was a string of movies that claimed to tout strong female characters, so much so that it became kind of a red flag when the phrase "strong female character" was thrown around in a press junket.  And it's not to say that Thelma & Louise doesn't fall into some of those trappings more times than it ought to.  Still, the movie actually has some pretty forward thoughts, especially for the politically incorrect early '90s.  

In my head, the issues I have with the movie (which I'm clearly dancing around) come from director Ridley Scott.  I always question what is the role of the ally.  Thelma & Louise is one of those rare movies that is part of the mainstream media that actually  called out some real issues of being an American woman in 1991. The movie is unabashedly and proudly calling out how hard it is to be a woman (I assume just because I'm trying to be a better person).  It straight up comments loudly that the notion of rape is more common with women than men give credit for.  Even more of a sledgehammer hit is the notion that men --especially law enforcement --tend not to believe reports of rape and sexual assault.  In fact, most of the movie hinges on the fact that Louise refuses to go to the police after shooting Harlan because she was raped in the events preceding the film.  I mean, good for this movie.  While the core of the movie is the friends and the accidental road trip that ensues as they flee pursuit, this is a movie about how women can't really talk about how hard it is to be a woman because there is a stigma to that kind of talk / support.  

So points to Ridley Scott for getting that right.  But there are two things that I really take issue with: 1) Everything before the inciting incident is pretty rough.  After Harlan is shot in the parking lot, the movie takes off and doesn't really let go.  But before that, I don't think that people really gave much thought to what life is like normally.  Boy-oh-boy, the choices that were made when Thelma and Louise were just people were kind of rough.  The movie wants to stress that Thelma finds herself on the roadtrip with Louise and that this nightmare scenario is the exact thing that Thelma needs to have at least a few moments of real living before she ends up driving off a cliff.  It's very Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Both of these character need to have their lives exploded in a negative way before they can appreciate the joy of independence that their more confident friend gives them.  But in an attempt to show the wide gulf (pun intended) between Thelma in Act I and Thelma in Act III, Scott shapes Geena Davis's character into something that doesn't even resemble reality.  And because Act I Thelma is such a rug to be walked upon, she has to make some pretty brazen choices for the story to move forward.  It's actually a little bizarre how paradoxcial Thelma's choices are considering what she is dealing with when it comes to Darryl.  She's absolutely terrified of how Darryl will react to even small requests.  Yet, when she leaves Darryl to go on this vacation with Louise, she isn't terrified of how he's going to take it.  Instead, she makes this major leap forward into the Thelma that the movie's going to end with.  It doesn't really make a lot of sense and it feels like Scott might be rushing his character development just so we can appreciate the kind of Thelma that would blow up an oil tanker by the end of the film.

But the second issue I have with the movie is the thing that really bothers me.  The one thing that I was floored by was how horrific it made rape seem.  A lot of this has to be taken into context of 1991.  Geena Davis is Hollywood royalty by this point (I think).  When talking about rape in a lot of these movies, especially movies that were meant to be drawing big crowds, rape tended to be an offscreen thing, often portrayed by shadows, insinuation, and protestation.  But the movie really goes all out and makes Harlan out to be an absolute monster. Immediately after Louise shoots Harlan and the duo flees the honky-tonk, it is visually upsetting to see the abuse all over Thelma's face.  (I actually don't like that she heals as quickly as she does because it seems like that is more bruising than it is just washable blood.)  I applaud how the movie wanted the audience to feel uncomfortable because it is an uncomfortable reality that a lot of women face.  But that makes the sex scene with JD abhorrent.

As a dad in 2026, I'm kind of glad that couples in films don't automatically sleep together nowadays.  It's weird to think that even a family film like Superman II had characters sleep together as a means to keep people's attentions.  But it seems in really poor taste to have Thelma have sex with JD.  The narrative that the film is pushing is that Thelma is reclaiming her sexual urges as a woman as opposed to the burdensome sex that she has had with her husband.  And from a plot point, Thelma needs to leave JD in the hotel room alone so that JD can steal the money, leading to an escalation of events that the film needs.  But she was raped the day before.  It was violet and it led to her witnessing her best friend murdering her rapist.  The movie even goes as far as to have conversations about the trauma that comes with a rape attempt.  Yet, the second she gets a chance, she has apparently amazing sex with this guy?  That scene minimizes the impact of the rape scene so poorly that I question a lot of what the movie was shooting for.  I didn't care for that.  On top of that, we're meant to be disappointed in JD for taking advantage of this woman and stealing her money.  Think about how much more of a gut punch would happen if JD started laying on the moves, Thelma tells him that she's not ready, and the two of them talk until the sun comes up.  When he steals the money now, we'd be crushed even harder and it would lnd itself to the motifs of patriarchy that the movie deals in.

I'm going to gripe here.  I'm going to take two seconds to remind you that I actually really dug a lot of this movie.  But I do have to gripe, mainly because it's pretty easy to write about the things you dislike about a movie than the things you like.  I have to go back to how the film treats law enforcement.  If we're talking about the main antagonist of Thelma & Louise, it would have to be the FBI.  I mean, they are the guys who pursue these two women off a cliff, forcing them to commit suicide.  For a lot of the movie, the FBI agents are portrayed as boorish and emotionally dead inside.  It's so weird seeing Stephen Tobolowsky as the head of the homicide task force (?) and that he's more than mildly competent.  (Sorry, I'm more used to Needlenose Ned characters than anything else.) We're meant to root for Thelma and Louise to escape these guys.  So the movie has to make them unlikable.  But the movie, simultaneously, wants us to desperately like the cops.  Hal, played by Harvey Keitel in some pretty lazy, on-the-nose casting, is both a dirty cop and a cop with a heart of gold.  Like, in a movie like this, it wants to take pot shots at the patriarchy.  One of the fundamentals of the patriarchy is that it comfortably rests on the back of law enforcement, who make up a sizable percentage of the force.  But Hal keeps saying the right thing.  Golly, if I didn't know better, the message of the film --when it comes to law enforcement --is "not all men."   I don't know how the movie goes as hard as it does for women, only to pull punches when it comes to the cops, who literally push them into suicide.

Still, the movie is incredibly good.  I don't know why I normally don't love Susan Sarandon.  It's not like I've ever disliked her.  It's just that I love a lot of what she's doing in this movie.  Maybe it was a real life bond behind the screen, but these two women acting across from each other absolutely slayed.  Like, you can feel the chemistry between these two powerhouses.  Maybe that's why I get so mad at the first 20 minutes because when they are firing off of each other, the movie gets so appropriately dramatic.  And, yeah, I found myself screaming at the screen when they made bad choices.  There were so many moments when I was yelling at them and I think that was the point.  As confident as Louise comes across, she's figuring stuff out too. I mean, we can even blame Louise for losing the money because there was no reason to give it to Thelma at this point.  After all, Thelma's entire bit at this poing was that she kept on accidentally sabotaging everything that was going on with these two.  

But the film still holds up.  Does it have weaknesses?  Sure.  But as a movie, it's pretty darned solid.

PG, despite the fact that it gets into some pretty heavy subject matter.  Remember, this is a pre-PG-13 era.  It's definitely not R because nothing really happens visually on screen.  But in this melodrama exploring the trauma affecting the adult child of a narcissitic mother, there's some pretty awful things that come up.  For example, the mother pressured the protagonist when she was a teen to get an abortion.  It's pretty brutal.  There's also a lot of cruelty of negligence in this movie.  For a PG movie, it's a lot. 

DIRECTOR:  Ingmar Bergman

Oh man, if I write faster than I've ever written before and actually can keep focused on the one distraction I know is happening in two mintues, there's a chance I leave today as the most accidentally accomplished day I've had in a while.  (Thanks much to a 12 pack of Dirty Mountain Dew which has caffienated me more than normal.  I wanted one to try.  I couldn't find one to try.  I bought a twelve pack.  Now I have cans of sugar keeping me typing quickly.)  

I'm going to have a hard time remembering this movie given a year.  Like, you will say, "I see that you saw Autumn Sonata and I'll just have to trust you."  It's not that it's bad.  In fact, this is much more in the vein of Bergman that I actually dig.  It's character driven.  It's tame.  For once, the adultery stuff is kind of mild.  (It's more of a background information thing as opposed to a major plot point.)  (Also, that's my big take on a Bergman movie at this point.  I don't expect "no adultery."  I expect "mild adultery.")  But it's got one of those incredibly forgettable titles saddled with a story that is almost dangerously small.  I mean, honestly, I split the movie into two sittings a day apart.  On the second day, I had to remind myself what the movie was about.  It actually took me a few seconds before I realized that this was one of those movies just about a mother and a daughter and that not much was going on.

Why am I cool with boring movies?  I'm not winning any friends by writing that sentence out.  But if I had to be honest with myself, thi sisn't exactly a barn-burner.  If anything, it is a movie that embraces the boredom of kitchen-sink melodrama, only it's a Swedish film.  What I find valuable about the film is that it is so locked into character and character dynamics that I don't even care that Eva and her mother were nothing like my relationship with my mother.  (By the way, I saw that Ingrid Bergman was in an Ingmar Bergman movie and never made the connection that the mother was Ingrid Bergman.) There's something oddly universal about the frustration that Eva carries for her mother.  Charlotte (Eva's mother) is a pretty unlikable character from moment one.  We get very quickly that she's a egocentric narcissist.  We understand also that she was a mother whose choice of cruelty was self-involvement and neglect.  That wasn't my mother.  But I also felt something incredibly relatable about how this movie built to a climax.

A lot of the movie is the dance of normality. I suppose the worlds of Ingmar Bergman tend to be a bit meaner than the world I live in.  People snipe at each other a lot more.  Me?  I'm a guy who keeps trying to make people happy.  I probably manipulate more than I should, but I get people happy while at least considering what I have to say.  (At least this is the relationship that I have with some people.) But the movie almost is just a scenario where Bergman is setting up a house of cards to knock them down.  There are lots of movies like this and some might even argue that all films are just the house of cards being stacked until the climax.  I probably disagree.  If there are some Bergman movies that thrive on their complexity, Autumn Sonata is just giving us a bunch of character moments where Charlotte does something passive aggressive and Eva seems to bite down on her tongue harder.  It's funny, thinking that I actually like the end of the movie a lot considering that the character change is just Eva telling her mother off for being a selfish pianist her entire life.  It's even a little bit of a cop out because Eva acknowledges that the only reason that the confrontation happens is because she's a little bit intoxicated by the time the confrontation happens.  It's a unique clock to be put on the climax.  Eva is almost aware that sobriety means that she must return to a life of silent suffering.  But by vocalizing that she's responding through liquid courage, it stresses that she's self-aware enough to understand that this is all nonsense.  

I wonder if Helena is a bit of a hat-on-a-hat.  I mean, Helena is almost a character that is meant to shorthand a lot of morality for us.  Eva, who has lost two children, is suffering from moment one.  She sits in her dead son's room --which has been left in tact from his death --and we automatically understand that she is deserving of sympathy.  Add to the idea that Charlotte is empathetically-dead when it comes to reacting to Eva's meditation and grief.  That moment gives us tomes of information about their character.  Yet, Helena's disability is just a way to cement how we should be viewing respective characters.  We get that Eva, for all of her distance, is a good soul who never views Helena as a burden. Meanwhile, Charlotte is put out by the notion that she has to spend time in the same space as her invalid daughter.  Yeah, I know.  It doesn't really hurt the movie to have Helena in there.  But I can't help but see that Helena's plot doesn't really reach a crescendo.  I suppose her climbing out of bed, begging for her mother to come to her is an emotional moment.  But we also don't really understand much about Helena.  It feels like her disability is being used a little bit of an emotional prop and not like it is integral to the relationship of Eva and Charlotte, which is the center of the film.

So why do I like this movie?  I don't know.  I wish I was the kind of film viewer who automatically liked the avant-garde.  I know that would make me superficial and kind of lame.  I like things a little weird sometimes.  But this is one of Bergman's really grounded pieces.  It feels incredibly true, even though it is over-the-top when it comes to Charlotte's treatment of the girls.  I suppose that I also like when things end on a bittersweet note as opposed to a full on happy ending.  Heck, I'm even trying to make myself seem less morose.  I like that this movie has a full-on sad ending.  I guess that's Bergman's success.  He made me believe that Charlotte and Eva were incapable of real change, even if Eva made one moment in time important to her through the consumption of alcohol.  Like I imagine Eva felt in those alcohol-soaked tears, there was probably a moment of liberation when she unloaded all of that trauma upon her mother.  And just becuase Charlotte was incapable of making real, redemptive change, it doesn't mean that it all wasn't worth it.  I suppose this was just a story of characters having that unstoppable object hitting an immovable wall moment.  A clear winner or loser would have taken away from the whole thing. 

It doesn't change that this title is going to make me immediately forget the movie.

PG-13, for scary scenes, I guess?  I don't remember that much that would justify a PG-13 over a PG outside the fact that the demographic is for an older audience.  The most morally dubious scene is the scene where a bunch of astronauts who are going on a suicide mission discuss ways that they think about killing themselves.  One of those methods involves heroin.  That's probably not the most kid-friendly scenes.  I was thinking that Project Hail Mary might be the closest thing we've gotten to an old school summer blockbuster where the movie is made for adults, but kids could totally handle it?  

DIRECTORS: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

I think Weebly purged all my bot numbers.  I've always suspected that my mildly high numbers were always inflated by bots.  I hoped my numbers weren't that many bots.  But this is the way of the world.  Anyway, I saw Project Hail Mary for my birthday!  Isn't that a nice birthday present?  My wife and kid saw it weeks ago and I was always bummed that I didn't get a chance to see it opening night. But I was also happy that my daughter and my wife got a chance to bond over a movie based on a book got my daughter more than mildly obsessed.

And people were preaching this to be the return of cinema.  I have lots of thoughts on that and I want to be on that side so badly.  I really do.  Honestly, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are some of my favorite creators.  That was way before the Spider-Verse movies.  I was a big fan of Son of Zorn and The Last Man on Earth.  The notion that there's a cut of Solo: A Star Wars Story out there created by these two madmen is one of those lost pieces of art that I might think about from time-to-time for the rest of my life.  I know that these guys are more than brilliant.  So understand that, while I may not seem the most enthusiastic guy about Project Hail Mary, I think it is a work of art.  It's just that this work of art is only very good for me as the audience as opposed to genius for the rest of the world.  

I want to get to my "why" in a second.  I want to explore the role that content plays in bringing people back to the movies.  I'm both an artsy-fartsy film snob while simultaenously enjoying popcorn blockbuster goodness.  I think high art is high art and low art is low art and movie theaters should be home to both.  I know that, in the promotion of this work, Ryan Gosling took the onus off of the audiences for the death of the movie theater and put it on Hollywood.  The concept of his message was that if Hollywood made better movies, people would be coming out to the theaters.  I get where he's going and I'm not wholly in disagreement with him.  I do think it is throwing generations of filmmakers under the bus.  I do think that the past decade has created some amazing cinema and I do think that the advent of new technology --more convenient technology --has hindered the role that movies play on box office.  It's almost horrifying how few movies my students have seen.  Do I think that great movies might bring people back to the theaters?  Yeah, probably.  But do I think it is an incredibly daunting task to expect perfection out of each movie that is released in theaters?  Yeah, probably.  Project Hail Mary is pretty good. It's got an amazing cast with some pretty buzzworthy directors.  It's based on a book that broke the cultural zeitgeist.  There was so much going for it that it is almost ignorant to say that every movie can play the same hand.  Honestly, if Project Hail Mary was a dud, it would be a crime because everything was basically handed to the filmmakers.

Note: I hate me for being kind of "in the ballpark of Project Hail Mary but not actually talking about the film yet" too.  I do want to talk about Andy Weir.  It's so easy for me to get offended, guys.  Andy Weir offended me.  Not only that, but he used something that I love to offend me.  I talk about Mission: Impossible III a lot for this element of my blog.  I now love Mission: Impossible III.  It might be one of my favorite entries, if not the favorite.  But when it came out, I didn't enjoy it because Tom Cruise was being a lot.  This is jumping on couches Tom Cruise.  I watched that movie and couldn't stop seeing weird Tom Cruise instead of Ethan Hunt.  Andy Weir kind of tainted my viewing of that movie.  He has since apologized for this event, but it felt like it was the most non-apology ever.  Andy Weir started talking smack about a lot of Nu-Trek.  I like all Trek.  And it's okay for you not to like what I like.  But he claimed the reason that he didn't like Nu-Trek was because it was always so woke and political.  Yeah, Star Trek is meant to be political.  It's there to do that.  Also --and this is my big beef with what he said --all art is meant to be political.  He claimed that he intentionally avoided politics in his art and he wanted people to just enjoy a movie.  See, I was a fan of high art and low art, as I mentioned.  But even low art has politics attached to it.  I don't want people shutting their brains off and just have fun.  I want people to be challenged.  It seems like such a privileged position for Weir to be like "just enjoy this.  It's fun."  

By the way, even if Weir didn't want it to be political, it still is.  Even beyond its attempt to be apolitical.

Okay, let's talk the actual movie.  The one thing --and I'm probably saying this for the first time ever --is that I wished that I saved the book for after the movie.  This is not a book v. movie discussion.  I believe that books are books and movies are movies and I'm going to enjoy both.   I'm just saying that I didn't wish that I read the book first because 1) the movie is really close to the book (for the most part) and 2) the story of Project Hail Mary is incredibly plot heavy.  Like The Martian, also written by Andy Weir, STEM is the core of problem-solving in these stories.  I loved loved LOVED The Martian.  But I never read the book. (I'll get around to it.) The story of Ryland Grace is fascinating because we have a character who has savant level talents solving incredibly complicated problems.  With a long book, those problems present themselves and he has to take a bit of time unpacking those problems.  Those problems are challenging and the solves are, while being STEM-y, incredibly satisfying.  Here's where, as a viewer who has read the book, I have a problem.  I know what problems are going to arise and I know the solves that are going to accompany those problems.  And they're basically in the same order.  Is it fun watching Ryan Gosling and Rocky solve those problems?  Absolutely.  It still is a rolicking good time.  But in terms of any suspense?  I know exactly how and why everything is going to be solved.  It's kind of why I love the new It movies.  The It movies hit the same character beats, but took different turns to get there.  That means that the scares were in new spots.  That was satisfying.  In terms of plot, I knew where this one was going.

But Lord and Miller aren't dopes.  They know what's up.  They understood that their source material was, in a way, kind of sacred.  After all, it's really hard to make an adaptation out of something that is so scientifically specific.  Weir knew his stuff and coupled it with what had to be years of research and unpacking to make something like Project Hail Mary.  I'm just now thinking that it might be impossible to make changes there.  But, against all odds, both The Martian and Project Hail Mary have incredible amounts of heart --which is funny because I just realized that both stories are stories of science in isolation.  Still, Hail Mary has the benefit of a second character.  And that second character is the most adorable puppet character despite the fact that he's a rock character.

This means that I'm putting all of my emotional investment into a rock.  Listen, I know the story works.  It's a gorgeously shot story about a guy who is both simultaneously a good guy and a coward.  There's meat there. But what do I care about?  Rocky.  I know everyone's all about Rocky.  I honestly feel a little guilt in this very moment.  Because I want to explore that end.  (I mean, I still might.  I have that much guilt.)  But I feel so basic saying that Rocky is the core of this movie.  I talked about it with my wife's cousin.  Do you know who she was excited to see?  Rocky.  He's a little rock guy and he's got some alien sass.  I almost don't care that Andy Weir spent oh-so-much time figuring out some very challenging science and math.  Nope.  Rock guy says funny things and we care when he gets hurt?  That's absolutely the movie.  And you put him across from Ryan Gosling?  Yeah, that's a movie that is worth watching.  I don't care if you read the book.  I liked him in the book.  I like him even more as a movie character.  Do you know why?   Maybe it's the fact that that I had a hard time picturing him in the book sometimes.  Still, the movie version is pretty great objectively.

Do you know what?  I'm not going to talk about how the end made Grace a coward who would have sacrificed humanity.  It's my favorite part of the story and it makes Project Hail Mary a little bit of a dangerous story.  I think we all can piece the importance of that ending together without me belaboring morality.  It's a great ending.  

Yeah, I wish I saved the book for after the movie.  I'm not going to stop reading before the movie normally.  Heck, they just announced a Dungeon Crawler Carl series and now I want to really shotgun those books.  Still, it's an objectively good time.

PG-13 for some mild sexual humor.  For example, apparently one of the character has a collection of obscure erotica and we see the covers, which are incredibly tame, for a half a second.  There's also a lot of flirting with a member of the clergy.  Really, that might be the red flag for a lot of people.  There are a lot of borderline sacriligious jokes, but nothing too offensive.  There is also blood and death, but done in a twee, Wes Anderson manner.  But being a Wes Anderson movie, I simply assumed that it would be R.  I am on a streak of PG-13 films.

DIRECTOR:  Wes Anderson

Read the whole thing before you start yelling at me.  *Ahem*  Is Wes Anderson not that big a deal anymore?  I feel like the, "We have to go out and see the new Wes Anderson" era might be over.  Me?  I almost skipped this one, despite the fact that Wes Anderson and I haven't really had a falling out.  There have been movies of his that I have enjoyed less.  But I didn't really know anyone who ran out to see The Phoenician Scheme.  So I let it sit.  Heck, I let it sit so hard that I even ignored it when it hit Peacock. That's pretty bad.  But then Amazon had a 4K sale and I thought that it was a crime that I had judged a Wes Anderson movie before even giving it a chance.  That's so very unlike me.  So now I own this movie and guess what?

I really liked The Phoenician Scheme.

Yeah, I didn't see it coming either.  One thing that is incredibly true about me is that I thrive when I have low expectations.  My critique of Anderson for the past half-dozen films of his is that it feels like he's been doing an impression of himself.  If I rode that critique to its natural end, I don't know if The Phoenician Scheme necessarily disproves that.  Maybe what it does poke a hole through is the notion that it is a bad thing because, if I had a gun to my head, I'd have to say that The Phoenician Scheme might be a combination of The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel.  And here's what makes me a bad film blogger:  I like both of those movies a lot, so I like The Phoenician Scheme.  That's a horrible thing to say, but it absolutely works for me so I don't really feel like apologizing for it.

You guys also have to keep me accountable.  My Trump Derangement Syndrome, unfortunately, makes me see every oligarch as Donald Trump.  Korda / Trump.  That kind of thing.  I can't help it.  Watching an amoral billionaire alienate his family as the entire world wants him dead, my brain actively fights that comparison.  And sure, there's a chance that this is Anderson's take on the President of the United States.  I get it.  But I really don't think it is.  Again, I think that Anderson is pulled towards certain archetype.  With the case of Zsa-Zsa Korda, I can't help but imagine that Anderson wants to play in the Royal Tenenbaum sandbox again.  Korda is so aloof with everything that he does.  His self-centered nature is somehow fascinating to watch.  So while I write this, I will try to make this about general oligarchy, not any particular sitting president.  

It's kind of amazing how inaccessible the main plot of the movie is.  Maybe someone out there really gets the ins-and-outs of this movie.  But I get the vibe that we're not really supposed to be savvy to what Korda is fighting for.  Rather, this is a story of characters running into other characters.  It's nothing new in the world of Wes Anderson.  Anderson creates these characters who both epitomize the blahness of life while simultanously performing in such an exaggerated manner that you can't help but find them compelling.  If you take the eponymous Phoenician Scheme out of the plot, it is really just an excuse to have morally bankrupt Zsa-Zsa Korda encounter other morally bankrupt individuals.  These individuals, while quirky and unbalanced, never quite match the devilish selfishness of Korda, which makes the story more compelling to see how Korda is going to shift given a slight variation on himself.

But my job isn't to kiss anyone's butt here.  I mean, if the movie deserves a good butt kissing, sure, I'm all about that.  (Also, my job has little to do with this blog, but that's a completely different matter.) I have to account for the fact that I'm dancing around the fact that this movie almost doesn't have a plot.  If this is not an attack on Trump (see!  I'm doing it again!) and it's just an excuse for Anderson to play around with his Royal Tenenbaum archetype, what is the point of the film?  After all, this is a story deeply set in absurdism.  Yes, Korba ends the film by getting rid of almost all of his assets and he settles down into a profession where he can be near his daughter.  (I don't really recall that Korba had any interest in cooking or restaurant managment, but that's what the movie gave us.) However, as much as Liesl is the daughter that holds him accountable for his deplorable behavior, her flat affect never really seems to be an influential figure in his life so much as she is the avatar for the audience.

If Liesl is the reason that Korba makes real change in his life (or maybe it isn't!  I hope I come back to explore this.), it's only because we get a lot of tell-not-show.  Liesl's entire personality is flat affect.  She's always more annoyed with Zsa-Zsa than she is desperate to find a father figure.  Again, if this is The Royal Tenenbaums, she's Margot.  Heck, that Margot connection is really close.  After all, there's a good chance that Liesl isn't Zsa-Zsa's daughter in a similar way that Margot is the adopted child of Royal.  But Margot never really gets Royal to change.  If we use The Royal Tenenbaums as our foundational piece for what it means to have the impish grump make change, it's only because of Royal's relationship with his grandchildren and Chaz, who both have reason to want Royal in their lives.  But with Liesl and Margot, neither one of them really have a budding relationship with these people.  If anything, if Liesl is the catalyst for Zsa-Zsa's change, it is because he already desperately wants to make the change.

But maybe Liesl isn't the reason for his change.  (I regret not immediately writing the epiphany I had down because now I've mostly lost it.  Curse this desperate need for even rudimentary organization!) There is a chance that the very nature of being observed by Liesl as opposed to Liesl herself may be the impetus of her change.  I already mentioned that the parade of characters that Zsa-Zsa confronts to complete his buisiness holdings are more reflective of the man that Zsa-Zsa is than actually offering new characters.  However, each one of them is mildly disappointing compared to Korba himself.  After all, Korba is mostly able to swindle each one of them, despite the fact that they all claim to have the upper hand on Korba's shady.  Yet, Liesl doesn't change her disgust for Korba's behavior.  The only thing that she even mildly relents on is the notion of bringing her uncle to justice.  I don't see much of a connection between this vengeful behavior and a bonding moment.  

And that might be a problem with Wes Anderson.  Listen, I don't want him to change it.  I don't want Anderson to become like any other director.  He is who he is and I love it.  But his characters behave so uniquely that it is impossible to imagine them having truly vulnerable moments anymore.  Again, I can't stop talking about how much I love The Royal Tenenbaums.  With The Royal Tenenbaums, there were moments that were close to vulnerable.  We don't really get there anymore with modern Wes Anderson.  I couldn't see a moment where Liesl drops the whole closed-off nun thing and really has a heart-to-heart about what she needs with her father.  Similarly Zsa-Zsa Korba is not the kind of guy who will let down his guard to actually feel something.  If he does, he keeps it in his back pocket.  So when we have this ending where the two have bonded over the fact that Zsa-Zsa has defended himself from his brother / Liesl's mother's murderer / Liesl's biological father, I don't see that as the moment that really bonds them.  I also don't see it as the moment that leads Zsa-Zsa to make the first altrusitic choice of his life.

Still, I don't really care.  If anything, I kind of enjoy that this movie is a little bit more playful than Asteroid City (a movie that I need to watch again.) But read all of this knowing that this is the exact kind of Wes Anderson that I dig.  It may not be objectively his best movie, probably evidenced that it got no attention at the Academy Awards.  But it's something that I really enjoy.  (And with that, I'm caught up with blogs!  At least, until tonight when I finish Autumn Sonata...)

I'm on my tear of PG-13 horror movies.  I didn't mean to do it.  I just did.  The scariness of Day One is probably on par with the other Quiet Place movies.  There are monsters that are terrifying to look at.  They're really good at jump scaring the crap out of you.  A lot more people die in this movie, especially considering that this is an origin movie to the apocalypse.  There's some language and the movie talks about mortality a lot.  Also, if you are claustrophobic, this might not be the movie for you.

DIRECTOR:  Michael Sarnoski

I'm so far behind in my work all around.  Sure, I shouldn't be prioritizing this stupid blog.  Yes, I have very real responsibilities that need to get done.  But I also know how my brain works.  The further I get away from having actually watched these movies, the less quality these blogs will get.  Couple with that the fact that I'm doing the thing that I don't want to do might make me be more productive in the long run.  Just let me have my own stupid mental crisis when it comes to writing blogs about movies that people stopped talking about a year ago.

I don't know why I want to apologize for having watched a pretty quality movie.  The A Quiet Place movies have a very specific place in the cultural zeitgeist.  They are movies that people see, aggressively talk about for a period of a week, and then forget about.  I don't mean to disparage John Krasinski nor the team surrounding the Quiet Place movies.  It just felt very weird for me to be writing a blog about a movie that came out in 2024 in 2026.  I was on an airplane and I regretted having never have seen it.  The thing is, this movie was almost foretold.  It is the natural evolution of this franchise.  The original A Quiet Place does one of those things that Predator does. (I hate that I keep coming back to Predator as a reference, especially after immediately finishing writing about Predator: Badlands.)  It gave us just enough info to understand that aliens had killed most of the population, giving us a nice intimate story about John Krasinski trying to save his family.  The second film tried mirroring the structure of the first film, but --at least from my perspective --failed to capture some of the magic and specialness of the first film.  Like with Predator 2, the movie feels the need to explain some things. 

I don't like Predator 2.  There's too much of an attempt to explain things.  I like things ambiguous.  Day One kind of does a nice job balancing new information while keeping things cryptic.  If I'm being more critical than I'd like to be, I have to say that nothing in Day One is really necessary.  If anything, it might be breaking some rules by having characters in the early days of the invasion figuring out stuff that Krasinski's family took a minute to discover.  Ultimately, we want to see the thing that we imagined.  I can't help but make the compirson to shows like The Walking Dead.  When a horror franchise starts in medias res, often the inciting incident is so bombastic that the filmmakers spark curiosity on how that might have looked.  Now, with the case of The Walking Dead, we got Fear the Walking Dead, a show that started by giving us an origin story to the apocalypse.  While there is some great Fear the Walking Dead out there, the show's early seasons showing how the apocalypse actually happened are...mid?  I really don't like dogging on things.  I remember that it took a minute for me to really get on board of Fear the Walking Dead before really liking it.  (And then it ended quite poorly, but that's a different discussion. 

But A Quiet Place: Day One kind of pulls it off.  I don't deny that a lot of it is spectacle.  It's very cool seeing New York going from normal to being quite terrifying.  But the cooler thing that kind of came out of it is the scale of the film.  The first two Quiet Place films are very contained.  Yes, we feel for the family because they are our narrators.  Instead, what we have is something more akin to a kaiju film or something like Cloverfield, where the city itself becomes quite scary.  And, for the first time, a prequel actually makes the monsters more scary.  Usually when you throw a bunch of a creature at something, it nerfs it. Because this blog is bound to get repetitive, it's the problem that I have with Aliens.  When there was one xenomorph, that thing was unkillable.  When you have a bunch, you can take them out left and right.  But with Day One, you can throw a bunch of these creatures into a packed city and, because we know that the heroes aren't going to solve the problem.  (Note:  I just looked up what the name of the creatures in A Quiet Place were called and fans call them "Death Angels."  I'm going to try to avoid that moniker both because it is, as of yet, non-canonical, and also it's a little emo for me.)  These things are still tanks because we are allowed to kill off characters.

And that's where the real genius of Day One lies.  By taking solutions off the table narratively, Day One has to do something different.  Heck, they even imbue its narrative into its character.  Sam is dying from the moment this movie starts.  In most of these alien invasion stories, the goal is to survive.  While a natural goal for a character, it also means that we've been seeing the same movie, in some form, over and over again.  But because Sam doesn't really care about survival (it's not like she's anti-survival.  It's just not her priority), we can examine what makes her tick as a character.  And the absolutely bizarre thing about her goals is that they are wildly high-risk, low-reward (a phrase I've now used in two blogs, back-to-back).  I love it.  Her goal is to get the last slice of pizza from her favorite restaurant before the world completely collapses.  Yes, the filmmakers know that there's more imbued in this slice of pizza  than simply the taste of a pizza (that, at best, will be cold).  No, we learn a lot about her character by the way she treats this goal.  Sure, it's a little emotionally manipulative to associate this pizza joint with her dead father. But you know what?  I love it.  It's a sotry that is characer driven instead of plot driven.  After all, we know that she can't make a dent against these aliens.  (I almost wrote it, guys.)  

And through that small goal, she learns something about herself.  I mean, sure, it is coming to grips with her own mortality.  But I feel like Sam starts the movie being wildly cool with death.  Instead, Sam's major conflict isn't seeing the place where her father played piano.  Nope.  It's the fact that she has been doing things alone too much.  The narrative spins Eric into her world.  Eric isn't competent.  He's not meant to be.  It's how we'd probably all be flailing given the circumstances.  But her holding a cat is such a wonderful understanding of how Sam relates to the vulnerable.  While the cat is a very good cat --almost too good!  How does it not meow? --it is almost more trouble than its worth.  After all, Eric almost dies saving the cat from itself.  But that vulnerability is the door for Sam to relate to people.  After all, her caretaker in hospice is almost her enemy.  She's rude and beligerant to him, even though he's only fighting for her best interests.  She can't relate to that.  But Eric?  It made her feel a sense of connection again, mainly because Eric needs to be taken care of.

I don't know.  I really liked it.  Like, it still suffers from that idea that I posted initially: this doesn't really have lasting power.  But watching it at the time?  Golly, this is a great scary disaster movie that is character driven.  That's really what makes A Quiet Place something to look forward to.  We care about the characters rather than simply look for the spectacle.  This movie works.  I liked it.  

PG-13, which is wild because I never thought that I would see the day that the Predator franchise would go PG-13.  I mean, I mostly agree with that breakdown.  Yes, the movie is incredibly violent.  At times, it could be read as "gory."  But while this feels authentically set in the Predator universe, the movie doesn't linger on that gore.  It happens more in the Paul Greengrass way.  The violent thing happens and then the camera immediately pans to the next action.  But, yeah, the movie is still pretty darned violent.

DIRECTOR:  Dan Trachtenberg

I never thought that I would be seeing a movie like Predator: Badlands.  Honestly, just give Dan Trachtenberg whatever he wants when it comes to Predator movies (which I'm sure they are doing.)  They took a franchise that I didn't give a crap about and now have me waiting for the next movie.  And the absolute insane thing about these movies is that they are all fundamentally different films all set in the Predator universe.  

The lesson that all franchises should learn from Dan Trachtenberg is that there's a way to honor a franchise without being shackled by it.  Out of all of the big sci-fi franchises, I never thought that Predator would be the franchise to get it.  Predator, as a concept, is restrictive as heck.  It's why we don't have too many Klingon properties.  The Yautja (and thank you for making them have an actual race that is canonical) are limited by character arcs.  When one of the few things that we knew about these creatures, based on Predator 2, is that they are an entire warrior race that hunts almost exclusively, where is the story?  Apparently, Dan Trachtenberg knows.  Now, like with the early entries, he mostly sticks to people interacting mostly with the Yautja's target.  I mean, it makes sense, given the long history of sci-fi horror coupled with the fact that it is hard to make your protagonist an avatar for the audience if the audience...um...doesn't hunt people?

But somehow he did it.  Now, I know some people would probably read the follow thing with the wrong intention, but I can't help but view Predator: Badlands almost as the Star Trek: Prodigy of the franchise.  Again, with how violent this franchise tends to be, it's mind-boggling that there's a PG-13 entry to the series.  For me, that is the equivalent of at TV-PG entry for a series.  It's not like Badlands is childish.  I don't think that would be fair at all.  It's just less horror-heavy.  I can imagine, especially for some die-hard Predator fans, that it might be a dealbreaker to have a Predator movie cut back on the horror elements and play up the action elements.  But I gotta tell you, it's the only way that a franchise can survive.

I honestly think that the Predator franchise might be one of those life-support franchises.  Despite the fact that Dan Trachtenberg keeps turnining in banger-after-banger when it comes to these movies, it's not like the general public talks about Predator that much.  Even with the Wayland-Yutani stuff littered throughout Badlands, it really does seem like Alien has more prevalent role in the cultural zeitgeist.  Even that seems strained, given so many weak entries in the series.  (Not Alien: Romulus, though.  That movie slaps.) The only way that we're still making Predator movies in 20 years is to make movies like this.  This is an accessible entry to the series that is just a fun watch.  Yeah, it's comic at times.  I don't deny that.  I like that.  (Okay, I didn't love how cheeky the movie got.  Some of the humor fell flat.)  But that's how franchises survive.  They don't feel shackled to previous movies and that's what makes Badlands a nice add-on.

It almost feels like kismet that I watched Good Boy right before this.  Both are stories that take a traditional way of telling a scary story and change how the film is approached when we shift perspectives of our protagonists.  Dek, as a Yautja, should be a hard sell.  I mentioned the Klingon thing already.  But with Dek, he's got to make the protagonist someone that we can at least pretend to get behind.  By any litmus test, we have to see that the goal that Dek has is both simultaneously insignificant while somehow being life-or-death.  Ultimately, this is a story about high-risk, low-reward based on what the protagonist needs to accomplish.  Dek doesn't need to get the Kalisk, at least from a human point of view.  From our point of view, it actually makes sense that Dek never return home considering that he is the runt of the Yautja clan.  Really, from a human perspective, Dek actually avoids the consequence that we'd all be fearing: death.  When Dek's brother saves him and ships him off in a spaceship, technically Dek can go anywhere.  And, yeah, Dek does have an arc.  He goes from being a solo predator to being a predator with family.  Sure, it's a story about found family and that's weirdly adorable for a Predator film.  But the real message --again, from a human perspective -- should be about how we don't have to feel locked into our family's cultural values.

Like, I kind of love that?  Don't get me wrong.  I'm absolutely on board shedding cultural expectations for the sake of following one's own calling.  But in a movie like Predator?  Predator films traditionally only have the message, "Embrace violence, but not with weapons."  There's something incredibly cheeky about the notion that a Predator movie has a message, but intentionally pulls the leash back on it to avoid getting saccharine.  Yes, the found family stuff is great and for people who don't watch it with a sense of irony (normally something I encourage!) there is enough heart in the movie in the dynamic between Thia and Dek that even a first time viewer of the Predator franchise could appreciate something, even if they don't watch any of the other entries.  Sure, we also have themes of The Little Engine that Could, but that is way more secondary to the fact that we now have a Yautja talking and conversing with other characters with emotional needs.  Many would scoff at this, but I think it works overall.

It's not a perfect film. The funny thing, I have having this debate with Henson and he said it's his fourth favorite Predator film.  I initially got really annoyed by that, but then realized that's more of a compliment than I realized it was.  Three of those films were Dan Trachtenberg movies.  Like, yeah, it's Trachtenberg's weakest entry and it's still pretty darned good.  It's weird that we're all becoming Predator fans again.  I'm sure the '80s Die Hards will be angry that I'm saying it.  But I'm also an "All Trek is good Trek" guy.  Just because something is new doesn't mean it's bad.  Dan Trachtenberg has made some of the most compelling Predator stuff to a point where I'm actually excited to see what the franchise offers next.  Yeah, it's not the same as the other ones, but that's a good thing!

PG-13.  Apparently, I went on a PG-13 horror kick without planning it.  This is a movie that I genuinely thought was R because it had an f-bomb along with another use of language.  There's also enough blood and messed up stuff in the movie that I thought was going to earn this film a mild-R rating.  It's one of those movies that makes you say, "That's a pretty intense PG-13."  But because I'm a bad dad, I watched it on a plane next to my kid, who was really into Dora the Explorer on her screen.  It was also so dark and there's not that much messed up stuff in it. 

DIRECTOR: Ben Leonberg

Hey guys!  Am I writing quickly today?  After all, I did say that I had way too many of these blogs to write, so clearly I wrote like my life depended on it.  The answer is: No.  I am writing very slowly and am having great difficulty right now with all of this ahead of me.  Don't worry, I only have to collect essays tomorrow to grade, so that's probably going to ruin my week.   Still, even if I make baby steps into catching up on my blog, I'm going to do my darndest.  Either that or fall asleep, which sounds way better right now.

I was waiting for this one.  I think I like the idea of a gimmicky horror movie more than I actually enjoy the movie.   I often think that meta horror movies have a lot of potential, but the reality of the situation is that they probably don't make movies like Good Boy too often for a reason.  I am linking Good Boy to In a Violent Nature.  For people who have seen In a Violent Nature know what I'm talking about, but for people who haven't, I'll explain.  In a Violent Nature takes the old summercamp slasher, like Friday the 13th, and shows the events from the killer's perspective.  I like the idea of that a lot.  It changes what we assume a formulaic horror movie has to be and tips it on its head.  But like with In a Violent Nature, there's something missing.  With In a Violent Nature, the idea gets a little stale.  It literally has to pan away from the killer just to make the film make sense.  Good Boy has a little bit of the same problem.  With Good Boy, there's almost no reason to make the protagonist a dog in the film.

That's a weird take, but let me explain.  The use of pets in horror movies has always been "They see things we can't see."   They are a tool of storytelling saying that something is on the horizon and the tension is going to build up until the thing that the dog sees is going to be visible by people.  I kind of like that as a concept for a film.  If we get to see what the dog sees from minute one, then there's something new.  We get to see why they can see through the veil and there might be a new perspective on the ghost story.  Good Boy...doesn't do that.  I mean, we get the haunting immediately.  I don't deny that.  But instead of seeing the haunting of humanity though the dog's eyes, this is really a story about the dog surviving the same thing that a human would.  This is a bit harsh, but you could have made the protagonist a human and the story might play out exactly the same.  Because it's not that the demon is haunting just the human.  The demon is also haunting the dog.  I kind of wish that the demon just didn't care about the dog.  The dog should be inconsequential.

And that's kind of where the story falls apart.  Like with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, I'm going to complain about this movie a lot only to remind you that I kind of had a good time watching it.  Unlike The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, I do think that Good Boy is a good movie.  It just lacks greatness. It's when my imagination goes to a place that the film doesn't that I get disappointed.  And here's where I have to have my come-to-Jesus moment: Maybe the original version of this movie tried that and ran into a roadblock.  After all, I'm basically asking the film to invent a new drama.  That's wildly unfair of me.  But this new genre wouldn't be horror so much as it would be horror adjacent.  Because in the background of this movie about a dog that sees things would be a full-sized horror movie.  Instead, when we make the movie about the dog being haunted, it's just transferring the focus.  If anything, the gimmick doesn't become about a dog.  Instead, the gimmick is really about how the protagonist can't communicate what is happening to it. This is an irresponsible stretch, but it becomes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly for horror movies.  And that's fine.  But I see this movie as having all of this potential and none of it is really being tapped.  We know that we probably aren't having another horror movie from the dog's perspective without it at least acknowledging that this movie exists.

But if I accept all of the things that I wrote, complaining about the fact that this is just a standard horror movie with the exception of a dog as the protagonist, does the movie work?  I mean, mostly.  There's some kind of cool things that have a bittersweet element to them.  (The amount of dancing that I threw in there to avoid "double-edged sword" was astounding.) When the protagonist is a dog, we are limited by what the protagonist can do.  If anything, the sheer amount of agency that is removed from the protagonist is unique.  Usually, we can yell at the screen and critique bad choices that the hero makes is part and parcel of horror movies.  The audience is left having to accept a lot of choices because, again, a dog.  I'm sure that there were audiences out there screaming at the dog as well, but more as a stressed out life-coach as opposed to offering criticism.  After all, he is a "good boy."  But part of hauntings are the protagonists trying to figure out what the mystery of the haunting is.  After all, if you are going to shut the whole thing down, you have to have insight into what the problem actually is.  But a dog can't do that.  (I'm writing this sentence a lot.  I mean, Air Bud swears that there's nothing that says that the dog can't do that.) As an audience, we have to write a lot of mythology for that mud monster.  

The cool part about the mud monster is that it seems like the filmmakers depend a lot on metaphor and symbolism.  If you watch this as a supernatural film, and only as a supernatural film, there's implication that Todd is being poisoned by this creature out in the woods that killed his father as well.  It makes the entity vague and ambiguous and I think that read of the movie leaves something to be desired.  However, if we use the entity as a symbol for something more universal, there's actually something cool going on here.  If that is true, Good Boy becomes a commentary on mortality.  I'm not saying that we're going full Seventh Seal here, but I don't hate that comparison.  When the depiction is seen as supernatural, we see that the mud creature is corrupting Todd.  But we never really see Todd as a nice guy until his death.  A little bit death-bed repentance.  But as a metaphor, we get to see the ill at their most vulnerable.  It explains why Todd and Vera don't like their grandfather's cabin.  (I may have called him Todd's father earlier.  I don't quite know which is true.) Again, my job is to make some crazy stretches on this blog, but that helplessness that the dog has is something that we all feel in the shadow of illness.  There is a line --and as far as I understand, it's true --that says that dogs can smell illness on people.  The notion that Indy is afraid of the illness that stalks and surrounds Todd.  Yes, there are moments in the film where straight up supernatural things happen.  I think these moments are to mkae the creature more frightening than a slow moving cancer.  But I like the fact that we don't need this ancient mythology, a la The Evil Dead.  Nope.  Todd has a genetic disease that killed his grandfather.  It just so happens to have happened in the same house, imbuing the audience with a sense that the house is haunted when, instead, this is just a place that a family has experienced tragedy in.

While The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was actively bad, this movie just didn't live up to its potential.  But the things that it gets right, it seems to get really right.  Yeah, I wish that we had a new subgenre of film.  But even if the demon is stalking the dog instead of just being something in the background, that's okay to me.  I like the imagery.  I like the dog.  I'm not even a pet person and I was all about protecting this good boy.  So, yeah, kind of worth it.

PG.  Honest to Pete, outside the fact that there is constant videogame action throughout, I have a hard time saying anything that might be even slightly inappropriate for children.  There are some mildly scary moments.  A realistic dinosaur chases a cartoon dinosaur?  I don't know.  This all seems fairly tame.  It's made by Illumination, so it has the same level of questionable content.  Actually, it might be less.  People aren't farting in these movies, as far as I remember.

DIRECTORS: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Fabien Polack, and Pierre Leduc

I'm in trouble here, guys.  I took my kids to go see the Super Mario Galaxy movie immediately before leaving for a one-week vacation.   They were so excited.  I knew I wasn't going to have time to sit down and write about it in a timely manner, so I said I was going to hold off for about ten days.  Is this blog an immediate take on The Super Mario Galaxy Movie?  Absolutely not.  The most generous version of this blog is admitting that I had time to sleep on the movie.  I hate that.  I hate that for you.  I hate that for me.  But here I am, refusing to watch this movie again before writing about it.  (Also, how would that even happen?  This week is going to be straight hell, so I can't --as a grown man! --sneak off and rewatch The Super Mario Galaxy Movie for the sake of a blog. I'll be fine.   I remember enough.)

I don't have the hot take on this.  I basically align with the consensus on the quality of this film.  The nice version is that Illumination has proven that you don't actually have to make a movie to make it entertaining.  Geez Louise, how is this a feature length film?  Here's the deal.  I've played almost every major Mario game.  I beat Super Mario Galaxy.  I didn't even play Super Mario Galaxy 2, but my knowledge of the first game seems more than what most people probably know about this story.  Normally, movies --especially kids' movies --at least attempt to welcome new audiences into the series.  Heck, the Super Mario Brothers Movie did a fabulous job of getting new audiences involved in the movie.   It has everything that you need to know to help new people understand.  The first movie?  Princess Peach lives in a magical mushroom world.  She's kidnapped by a dragon person.  These two plumbers from our world have to save her.  (Actually, let me remind myself.  Princess Peach isn't really kidnapped for the majority of the movie.  Luigi is kidnapped, but still!)  But this movie?  I understood everything that happened because I've played decades of Mario games, but what did my 80-year-old mother understand?  She wanted to make her grandkids happy by accompanying them to a movie that they're excited to see.   There's nothing that's even trying to help her.

But the thing that people are talking about relentlessley --and justly so --is the fact that the movie has no plot or arcs.  I don't know about "No" arcs.  The movie introduces a pretty compelling storyline.  The problem is that the film undoes it immediately.  I'm sorry if you heard this other places first because it has been out there.  But Mario has nothing to do in a movie called Super Mario Galaxy.  As a character, that dude is straight up flat.  There's a little something about asking Princess Peach to be his girlfriend.  But nothing advances that plot whatsoever.  It quickly becomes an afterthought in the story.  This is a bit of a stretch, but we can kind of see Luigi as a character as opposed to a plot device.  But even Luigi has nothing to offer except for another version of Mario.  The character who almost has a story is Bowser.  I didn't see that coming.  As the trailer shows, the movie starts off with Bowser resenting Mario for the events of the first movie.  Luigi believes in rehabiitation, so he spends the first act asking Mario to give Bowser a second chance.  When Mario is in the thick of it, he concedes to Bowser's request.  And from there, the story seems to be about the power of forgiveness and change.  After all, Bowser sacrifices himself for Mario and understands that Mario was doing what he thought was right.  The biggest frustration is that the second and third acts kind of forgot the path that they laid out for Bowser.  When Bowser Jr. appears, Bowser Jr. reminds what makes Bowser a compelling villain.  All that stuff then disappears, which is disappointing because Bowser's tranformation is the only dynamic thing that happens in this movie.  If anything, this movie has a weirdly negative message about the role of fatherhood.

One of the things that Bowser suffers from is the notion that he's a bad father.  (I'm not arguing against that.  The dude is a literal monster who abandoned his children for his own selfish world domination schemes.)  But Bowser Jr. bonded with the toxic version of Bowser.  He loved the idea that his dad was this great bad guy who was going to take over the galaxy.  Now, when Bowser Jr. interacts with Bowser eventually, he reminds Bowser of all the great times that the two of them had plotting the destruction of the cosmos.  But this is at a time when Bowser has been doing some soul searching about his own mistakes.  Bowser Jr. spends the rest of the movie trying to manipulate his father into being the toxic one who made Bowser Jr. feel like the most important kid in the universe.  I find it odd that there isn't a lot of pushback at any point to have Bowser sit Bowser Jr. down and have a talk about what manhood and parenthood means.  Instead, it feels like Bowser Jr. parents Bowser into returning to old addictions.  And there really isn't a clear resolution that "What Bowser believes is bad."  If anything, it ends with a message that "I'll do anything for my kid, even if that thing is bad for my kid."  Yeah, it's an incredibly dumb movie and it's stupid that I'm putting this much thought into this.  But the overall concern is that is that Bowser actually became a likable character in this one.  You are meant to despise Bowser in the first movie.  He's incredibly unsympathetic, as a lot of great villains are.  But with this one, the movie really tries to get you to like Bowser.  To have him abandon any pretence of redemption is good for the franchise, but terrible for storytelling. 

And a lot of the problems of this movie come from the idea that the priority is the franchise, not the movie itself.  Golly, there has been a lot of frustration with the dangers of fan service.  As a Marvel and a Star Trek fan, I don't deny that fan service can be really fun.  When the Enterprise-D was rebuilt by Geordi in Picard, I think I actively cheered.  It was beautiful.  But nothing in this movie feels even remotely earned.  Is it fun to see Fox McCloud in a movie?  Absolutely.  Is he portrayed as a fun character?  I mean, yeah, he's just Han Solo, but I don't care.  But so much of this movie is going out of its way to capitalize on the Nintendo nerds.  Like Pikmin?  Mr. Game-and-Watch?   These are fun moments that don't make a lick of sense narratively.  I go back to thinking of my 80-year-old mother wondering why the camera is focusing on these tiny aliens for no reason.  Or why there's a poorly designed character appearing out of nowhere to fight Dry Bowser.  These are just choices that are meant to make nerds scream.  But good fan service feels earned.  I'm not even claiming that the Picard fan service is necessarily the best example.  But it was nowhere near as rough as the Super Mario Galaxy fan service.

The most baffling thing of it all, as almost submissive as the plot --what little there was --is to Super Mario Galaxy the game, the story didn't matter.  Listen, maybe a lot of this is coming from the fact that I don't really care that much about Mario lore.  But I also think that Rosalina was kind of wasted in this movie.  Again, I cannot stress enough that I do not care about Rosalina as a character.  It's fun to have a Super Mario Galaxy movie and good for this movie giving her some attention.  But I also don't know much about her overall placement in this universe outside the fact that she's one of two alternate princess that this movie could be about.  But Rosalina shows herself to be a capable fighter in the first act, only to be captured and sidelined for the majority of the film.  What she was doing to power a big cannon didn't make a lot of sense.  Rather than actually being a character, she's just there to push the story forward.  My frustration with the first movie is the fact that we didn't really get to see Luigi as a character and only as a plot device.  The same could hold true for Rosalina in this film.

The insane thing of it all is that I don't hate this movie.  Like, it's actively bad.  It's not as funny.  It's a chaotic mess.  But in terms of eye candy, it does a mildly decent job.  I've been hearing that Super Mario Galaxy is a response to TikTok culture and I don't know if I agree with that.  More along the lines that, because nothing matters, all you can do is choose to watch the silliness without any stakes.  My soul hurts from that concept.  There needs to be stakes to tell a story.  But instead, like playing a video game, you are often more interested with the aesthetics and the mechanics of the story.  Like, it's funny to see Yoshi walking around and eating stuff.  I can't believe that the folks at Illumination strung together enough novelty to piece together a whole movie.  But somehow, it works better than it should.  I'm never going to admit that it works.  I got a little bored halfway through the movie.  But I was nowhere near saying "Ah, look at this hot trash."  I was just thinking that this movie is incredibly dumb and maybe there might be some resolution.  Maybe this is a movie that weaponizes your own apathy against you, but I left the theater thinking that I at least was mildly entertained throughout.  

The worst part about all of this is that I'm probably going to end up watching this movie half-a-dozen more times.  It's going to be the car trip movie and I'm low-key depressed about that because I'll be hearing this movie instead of watching it.  Like, if the first movie has funny lines that I can hear while driving, this movie is just going to be noise in the background.  But my kids liked it, so who really cares?