Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die (Movie Review)

 

Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Written by Matthew Robinson

Rated R

A group of random people are eating in a diner when a weirdo (Sam Rockwell) who looks like a homeless guy decked out in wires, explosives, and all kinds of computer circuitry and mother boards, barges in to interrupt the regular lives. He says he's from the future thats's gone all wrong due to an AI that took over the world a la Terminator's Skynet. It's up to him and a ragtag group of volunteers from the diner to see that that does not happen. Well, volunteers if you count the threat of Rockwell suicide bombing himself as incentive. Problem is, he's done it over a hundred times before and always failed. He knows that somehow there is a correct combination of people from the diner that will make his mission succeed but finding the right combo is nigh impossible.

He gets some volunteers but now the trick is to get out of a diner surrounded by cops that seem to shoot on sight. It's at this point we start to flashback to the lives the volunteers led up to this point in the story and find out they are not so normal really. All of them have gotten into some pretty scary situations recently that show the AI of the future is already starting to reach its tendrils into the technologies we all are addicted to, such as our phones. And of course the AI is going to do everything it can to stop the group of humans, including killing them!

 I knew NOTHING about this movie before seeing it. I knew Sam Rockwell was in it but really I don't even know who HE is. It's just a name I've heard. From the start the film gave me a strong Terry Gilliam Time Bandits feel. By that I mean, a cheap looking B movie that covered its low production veneer with high concepts. In this case, Verbinski hits you over the head with a rubber mallet about how bad the internet is for us. How phones control us. How AI is going to destroy the world. Well, I think we already know all this. Verbinski longs for a world where these things did not exist. Sadly, for anyone past Generation X, this world will not be known again. 

If you can get by the corniness of the film, there is some fun to be had. It almost feels like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure with Rockwell being the dungeon master because he already knows a lot of the possible outcomes and how the volunteers will react. You get excited wondering what's around the next corner or where the plot is going to go and what exactly is going on. While the movie raises interesting questions, it never really delivers in the payoff to the extent that the audience wants. But the adventure getting there is intriguing enough to keep you watching. 

The funniest subplot was Micheal Pena playing a substitute teacher who gets chased by zombie-like high schoolers after touching one of their phones. The other back stories we get are more tinged with drama such as Haley Lu Richardson's losing her boyfriend to a VR game or another volunteer who loses her son in a school shooting. 

The commentary on today's society can be a bit hammy but Verbinski is very sincere in what he's trying to say even though no imaginative solutions are offered. In face, his viewpoint seems to be that we can battle all we want, but the war is already over. We have lost. Don't get me wrong, the director mixes a lot of humor and camp in with the bleakness of his vision. Like I said, the vibe of Time Bandits is strong with its quirkiness and comedy, but also its darkness. 

Was this a good movie? Not sure. Was it fun, interesting, intriguing and worth seeing? Yes.

My Grade: C

The Bear by Andrew Krivak (Book Review)

 

The Bear 

By Andrew Krivak

Published by Bellevue Literary Press, 2020

Somehow the world has ended in apocalyptic fashion. Cities are gone. Civilization is gone. 

Advanced technology is gone. Like God did a reboot of the system. But this is not a beginning. It is the end. For there are only two humans left: A father and his 7 year old daughter living in a primitive cabin on the side of a mountain next to a lake and forest. Her mother is dead and buried under a stone cairn at the top of the mountain that is shaped like a bear. Supposedly, the father tells his daughter that the "Spirit of Thorn", a godlike shapeshifter watches over this place and them.

The highest tech that the two possess is a brass compass, flint and steel to start fires, and knives. Everything else they have to fashion from nature, including bows and arrows and the clothes they wear. If they want to eat, they have to hunt or harvest their food from the plants around them. This is not seen as hardship. It is seen as a normal course of life. 

When the girl is about 12 years old, her father tells her they must make a long journey to the sea to get salt which they use to preserve their food. Along the way her father is injured and the girl must begin to think about what she will do without him....Maybe a talking bear will have the answer! 

The Bear to me is another in a long line of literary works that is plastered with blurbs from supposedly important critics and authors as "destined for great things" or "a singular talent". The problem with this kind of writer is that the proof is in the pudding. My shelves are lined with authors who were seen as up and coming and 30 or 40 years later nobody reads their books or knows who they are. They gush "A writer of rare and powerful elegance"! Maybe the writer themselves becomes flushed with self importance. The problem with this author and with this book is that neither are very good. 

I know The Bear is supposed to be an important work. I think the author thinks so too. But just because you set a book at the end of humanity doesn't mean its good. It just feels like a survivalist to do list with Disney talking animals thrown in. Kind of like a cross between Jungle Book and Hatchet. Throw in a little Walden as well. But without the insight. Girl gets up, finds water, hunts, kills food. Clean eat sleep repeat. It just never seems to go anywhere. 

I get it, Krivak was going for the broad character strokes of the Bible but the book gets worn down in the boring Hemingway banal details. I never felt like I got to know these two people. They were more like mythic archetypes. And that's great too IF you have an interesting plot. When the plot is just survival....well....meh...you know....

I will definitely take a hard pass on reading any of Krivak's other works and this books is going in the Goodwill donation crate. 

My Grade: D-

Star Wars Dark Nest I: The Joiner King (Book Review)

 

Star Wars Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

By Troy Denning

Published by Del Rey, 2005

Set 35 years after the events of A New Hope,  It's 6 years since the Yuuzhon Vong War ended that left multiple worlds destroyed or devastated and countless millions, if not billions, dead. The Galactic Alliance is trying to pick up the pieces and restore order to the galaxy but its not going to be easy. Greed and corruption are already infecting the reconstruction efforts in the name of profit and opportunity. 

The Jedi are in a bit of disarray. The long war made them cut some moral corners and do some questionable things and their robes aren't quite so clean and sparkly as they used to be. The whole cliche in fighting a monster you become a monster argument comes up. They don't really see the world in black and white anymore, just grey. 

The plot gets rolling when a distress call is broadcast through the Force to a select group of Jedi, including Jacen and Jaina Solo. The other Jedi that hear the call are the other members of the Myrkr mission from the New Jedi Order book series in which a group of young Jedi were sent on a mission to destroy the voxyn breeding program. Voxyn were creatures bred by the Yuuzhon Vong expressly to kill Jedi. To survive that mission, the Jedi strike force entered a battlemeld, like a telepathic battle bond, and its through this battlemeld that the distress message comes. 

Soon enough, Jacen, Jaina, and the other survivors of Myrkr, including Tahiri, drop their Jedi duties and head to the Unknown Regions where the call is emanating from. 

When they get to the source they find themselves in the middle of a conflict between the Chiss Ascendency and a race of sentient insects known as the Kilik who are on the brink of war. They also find an old friend long thought lost. 

I started reading the New Jedi Order series because I thought the Last Jedi sucked so bad. So I saw these books as an alternative to the awful Disney take on Star Wars. I mean at least George Lucas was still running the show when these books came out. I finished all 19 books over the course of about 5 years and they weren't great but they were good enough to keep me interested enough to read all of them. 

For the most part, I liked this first volume of a trilogy that is next in the timeline. I do think the Kilik are kinda lame. Human sized ants? Is this the best you can do? Actually they come in all sizes, from Ant-Man size to the size of tanks or bigger. The scary thing is if you stay in their nests too long you become part of their groupthink, losing your individual will, and you become known as a "Joiner". That's the scary aspect of them, not their appearance. 

It's nice to see Luke, Han, and Leia having adventures TOGETHER again. In the Disney sequels everyone is dead now. So pathetic that they didn't get them back together even for ONE scene. I know George would have. Luke didn't become a total failure in this timeline. Him and Mara Jade are married and have a young son who is currently cutting himself off from the Force for some reason a la Luke in the Last Jedi. 

Han and Leia have two kids, Jacen and Jaina, who are both Jedi and are essentially Kylo Ren and Rey as far as their personalities. Jacen is starting to creep people out a bit with his moodiness and detachment and increasing Force powers while Jaina is impulsive and adventurous and wants to save the galaxy from all threats. 

It's kinda weird how many themes, characters, plot notes, and just the overall ambience of this novel remind me a lot of Disney Star Wars. 

For example, the Dark Side is seen as having a sexual seduction in this book. I remember one scene where Luke is in some dive and and an alien says something like "You'd be surprised to see what I can do with this claw. Are you interested?". Echoed a line of Lando's droid in the Han Solo movie. Another example is a Jedi having emotional difficulties wears skin tight almost see through suits and seems very horny. Seemed very Acolyte to me. 

And when a Jedi says "Blank is gone. I am what remains" (Name redacted for spoilers) which was a line Darth Vader speaks in the Obi-Wan series. 

And again, there's the moral relativism that the Jedi exhibit in this first book, where they are more interested in the ends than the means which a Master like Yoda would never condone. All this makes me wonder if the writers of the Disney sequels read this trilogy for ideas. 

I liked the book and will definitely continue on with the second volume in the series. 

My Grade: B

Song Sung Blue (Movie Review)

 

Song Sung Blue (Movie Review)

Directed and Written by Craig Brewer

Mike "Lightning" (Hugh Jackman) and Claire "Thunder" (Kate Hudson) are two middle aged over the hill cover song performers ready for a change, sick and tired of playing low dive clubs and fairs. On their own, they would probably live out the rest of their lives doing the same songs over and over again. But once they meet, sparks happen, both romantically and creatively. She suggests that Mike start singing Neil Diamond songs with her singing harmonies. But they want to go further than just singing the notes and wearing the outfits. They want to make it an "Experience" for the audience. What ensues is a roller coaster of events that take them to the pinnacle of success in their field to the lowest lows of failure. And then it begins again. Like life. 

I have to say I was aware of this film coming out but my depth of knowledge about what it was about was just the movie poster. I'm like oh is this some kind of biopic of Johnny Cash and June Carter or a Star is Born type story. There was zero chance of me seeing it but it happened to be the Cinemark Secret Movie screening last Monday. Jackman and Hudson did like a 25 second intro before the movie started so I knew what I was in for. But I went into it with a open mind and ended up enjoying it. 

First of all do not go see this movie if you hate Neil Diamond. Because you are going to hear a lot of his songs. As for me, Diamond was always more of an artist my parents liked. I just basically know the hits and enjoy them if they play on the radio but I never bought one of his albums. So it was cool to hear music of his that I had never heard before in this film. It made me go out and get the Essentials cd of his work. 

Hugh Jackman I like but he's not one of my favorite actors, but he's great in this movie. I assume he did his own singing as well, and it was spot on. Just like the real singers, he was more concentrated on the spirit of Neil Diamond's singing which actually made the songs more authentic than just straight up mimicking.  

Honestly, I did not even know that was Kate Hudson as Thunder until the movie credits rolled at the end. That's how clueless I was about the movie going in. She also did a great job acting and singing. Both actors had to do the full range of human emotions, almost like a mini Hamlet performance. They had to cry in depression and laugh in the highest exuberance and everything in between. 

It was also nice to see Fisher Stevens and Jim Belushi in supporting roles. 

I had never heard of the real Thunder and Lightning documentary that this movie was based on or even the original performers back in the day. The original doc can be viewed for free on Youtube. 

The cool thing about Cinemark Secret Movies is you get to see a movie before its release for like $5 and a lot of times it will be a movie you would have never went to but end up enjoying. The worst I have done was see an "OK" movie. I haven't experienced anything truly awful.  Check your local listings. 

My Grade: B

The Housewife by Frieda McFadden (Book Review)

 

The Housemaid

By Freida McFadden

Published by Bookouture, 2022

Millie has just gotten out of a long prison stint in her late 20s and has gotten fired from her first post penitentiary job. She's living out of her car and if she doesn't find another job, she might violate her parole and end up behind bars again. 

That's when she finds out about a job as a housemaid in a rich gated home in New York that is going to pay well and also be a live in position. If she can get it, it will solve her money and housing problems in one go! So she purposefully pads a fake resume hoping her employer won't make a background check. 

Her interviewer, Nina Winchester, is very professional and a perfectionist. She will be doing cleaning and some cooking for Nina, her husband Andrew, and their young daughter, Cecilia, who seems as creepy as one of the undead twins from The Shining. 

Things start to go south a bit when Millie is shown to where she will be staying, a tiny attic room with a cot, and small porthole window that doesn't open. It is only lit by two loosely hanging light bulbs. Something that begins to ring alarm bells in Millie's head is that the attic room locks from the OUTSIDE and she notices what could be scratch marks on the inside of the door like someone had desperately tried to free themselves.....

Add to that the hot ripped Italian landscaper that works for the Winchesters, who can hardly speak English, warns Millie that she is in danger.....

But Millie doesn't really have a choice in her mind. She can handle anything except going back to prison. All the danger signs probably have some other explanation right? RIGHT?

Millie gets the job and so the story begins...starting with psychotic behavior exhibited by Nina. 

The writing of this book, at least Part 1, just from a technical aspect, is not very good. Everything in the first part is on the surface. Nobody really has an inner life. The characters are about as shallow as you can get. The cliches fall like daggers from the sky. When Millie uses the word "dreamy" to describe Andrew you know as a male exactly who this book is aimed at. Millie is constantly a horn dog and commenting how ripped and sexy the landscaper, Enzo, and Nina's husband are. 

The whole time you are reading Part 1, you are thinking "Is Millie really this DUMB?". I did not like her. She reminded me of heroines from early 80s slasher movies like Halloween or Friday the 13th. Ok, you put a machete through Jason's shoulder, but you're going to leave him there, not sure if he is dead, WITH the machete??? You shot him five times. Please just go up and shoot him in the head. Don't drop the gun and run away!!! 

It is in Part 2 that the book turns around with a point of view change. Without giving anything away Nina and Millie finally become real living breathing people. And the reader is the richer for it. So if you are reading Part 1 and thinking the writing is bad, the characters are bad, start Part 2 before putting it down. It was like Frieda flipped a switch and what was dim and dark about the characters becomes light and revelatory and you get caught up in the whys and eureka moments of all that has come before. 

I will definitely be reading the next book in the series. I read this one on kindle and most of McFadden's books on Amazon go for about $5 so it doesn't cost that much for a great read!

I read the book a week before going to see this movie on opening day last Thursday so I will also be posting a movie review soon. 

My Grade: A-

Batman (1989) 4K Movie Review

 

Batman (1989) 4k Ultra HD

Directed by Tim Burton

Screenplay by Sam Hamm and Warren Skaaren

Rated PG-13

Do I really need to give you a plot synopsis of a Batman movie at this point after 1000 different versions? Batman (Michael Keaton) fights crime in Gotham City and accidentally causes an up and coming mobster named Jack (Jack Nicholson) to fall into a vat of unknown chemicals that turns him into the Joker. Not only is it a physical transformation, dyeing his skin white and turning his hair green, it causes the already innate psychosis of a cruel criminal to become even worse. He goes mad. He no longer cares for material power. He wants to kill people. LOTS of people. It's up to Batman to stop his plans but his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, might be falling in love with a photographer named Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), who is town to get pics of the Batman! This distraction could spell his doom.

I remember when this came out in the movies back in the day. Trust me, it was an EVENT. Besides the original Christopher Reeve Superman movies, there really weren't any other superhero movies to this point. I also remember there being a lot of WTF? when it was learned that Michael Keaton would be playing Batman. I mean he's basically a shrimpy, average looking dude, and short. How was he going to play the dark brooding toughness of Batman? And Tim Burton, the director of Pee Wee and Beetlejuice, two weird comedies? It just didn't seem like it would work on paper, but the visual product was very successful. 

Let's get something out in the open first. To me, this movie is more about the Joker than Batman, which was repeated almost 19 years later. Jack Nicholson steals the show completely much as Heath Ledger did a generation later. Jack Nicholson is even listed on the marquee first.  I think if you added up the screen time between Batman in costume and the Joker, the Joker would have tipped the scale. Nicholson plays the Joker somewhere between the campy goofiness of Cesar Romero's Batman tv show and outright subdued matter of fact violence of Ledger's portrayal. He is funny but also dangerous and unpredictable. 

Keaton, on the other hand, seems to play it more like Christian Bale. Doing more through action than speaking. There's not really a wide palette of acting on display for his part. His was never my favorite Batman. Mainly because if you're going to act mainly through body language and facial expressions, you have to be a GREAT actor. Also, physically, Keaton just is NOT a good Batman. You're telling me this shrimpy guy is going to lift a full grown man by his jacket 2 feet off the ground? I bet Keaton did like zero body building training or fight choreography for this film. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE Michael Keaton. Bird Man is a great movie! But here he was just serviceable. 

As for the 3rd member of the main cast, Kim Basinger as Vicki Vale, she is a beautiful woman, but my god, what was up with her hair in this movie? Most of the time it looks like she has 3 or 4 different hairstyles on her head at any one time. She just looks really bad in this film, and that's hard to do for a such a gorgeous woman. Again, she's ok. 

I have never been a big fan of Tim Burton, but I think he did a really good job with this movie. He was able to meld his weird expressionistic sets with a superhero that matched his aesthetic. He would not have been a good choice for Superman or Wonder Woman. He needed a hero with dark dystopia vision. A hero that was weird and broken.  

It was also cool to see Jack Palance and Billy Dee Williams in small roles. 

Prince did some songs for the movie but to me they were subpar for him. I would say this was his last hurrah as a relevant and powerful pop figure but he was definitely on the way out. Danny Elfman's symphonic score was much more memorable, especially the iconic Batman theme he wrote. 

The main attraction of this movie is the Joker and the action scenes and fun still hold up 36 years later. 

The 4K picture looks amazing! I have the box set of all 4 movies so I plan on watching and reviewing them all. Then on to the Bale trilogy and maybe even the Twilight Batman with Edward in them. 

My Grade: B+

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust (Book Review)

In Search of Lost Time Volume 1: Swann's Way

By Marcel Proust

Translated by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kimartin

Revised by DJ Enright

Published by The Modern Library, 2003

List Price: $16

The narrator of Swann's Way is fond of beds and sleeping. In fact, laying in bed is what you might say is his hobby. In our day and age he would be someone that likes to "bedrot". Of course, this novel was published in 1913, long before you could lay in bed and watch tv or be on your phone. Instead, for entertainment and/or combat insomnia, the narrator enters into a virtual world of his memories. This is because being in bed is a place where he can remember all the places he has slept through his life, and along with the places he remembers the people and circumstances of his life during those moments in time. He is especially fond of Combray, a small town where him and his parents stayed at his grandparent's house when he was a child. 

Even though his family is quite interesting, being upper bourgeoisie,  they think they are better than the common rabble and always aspiring to be the envy of their neighbors, he is more intrigued by a family friend named Swann. At first, Swann visits a lot, but then the narrator's family begins to shun him because in some way Swann's wife is scandalous. 

The second half of the book, entitled "Swann in Love" flashes back to an earlier time as Swann meets and falls in love with Odette, a charming woman who isn't exactly beautiful, but has some intriguing x factor that Swann finds undeniably attractive. Another problem is she isn't averse to playing the field with other men and even other women. You get the feeling she'd be up for a threesome if Swann introduced the subject. 

In Search of Lost Time, which is comprised of 6 volumes, is a series that is hardly read anymore to completion these days. I know of NOBODY that has even read the first book. I am sure they are out there though. Despite that, it has the reputation of being one of the greatest works of literature produced in the West. I've always had the ambition to read the whole thing but it always felt like a work you would read in retirement so you could focus your entire thought on it without distraction.

It was not an easy read by any means. It took me about 2 and a half months to read this first volume. It has to do with the density of Proust's writing/thought. He can be looking at a lamp on his nightstand or the shape of his pillow and slip into all manner of time and space adventures. He travels back to Combray and is once again anxious and melancholy when his mother does not have the time to kiss him goodnight, which feels like the meaning of his existence. 

That's one of the things that stands out about the book, that every object, every place, is a catalyst for memory or emotion. Even Swann gets affected by this theme, over and over being almost spiritually overpowered by a musical variation he hears. So strong that it might have been what made him fall in love with Odette. 

The narrator is not fond of particular points in time and space, because time does not stop. It keeps barreling forward. He values his memories of the places or things much more than the current reality of them because they are eternal, not subject to decay and death. 

The love affair between Swann and Odette is to me one of the most realistic depictions of unrequited love that I have ever read in literature. I don't know that Odette loves Swann. I got the sense that she was just using him for money. She didn't DISLIKE him, she just wasn't in love with him. He was convenient, and when he becomes inconvenient she begins to disrespect him more and more. Meanwhile Swann just becomes more and more of a simp. 

I said it was a somewhat hard read. Sometimes you just want to say "Ok, Marcel, we GET it! Next scene!" but Proust just sinks deeper and deeper in his thought and language. It's almost like a musical invention where he weaves a theme or a thought into different contortions or variations in an effort to write a perfect statement. Don't get me wrong. This is not purple flowery prose. Just very creative and very exact when dealing with very abstract ideas.

To me, this is definitely not a series you can read back to back. I need a break from Proust's world. But I will definitely be returning for Volume 2: Within a Budding Grove after a brief siesta of a month or two....or three. 

My Grade: B+