<n>Read the explanation of method, madness, and <b>spoilers</b>.<fn></n> <ol> <a href="#Robocop">Robocop (2014)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234721/">6/10</a> <a href="#DieHard2">Stirb Langsam 2 (Die Hard 2) (1990)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099423/">8/10</a> <a href="#Punisher">Punisher: War Zone (2008)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450314/">5/10</a> <a href="#Simpson">Brian Simpson: Live from the Mothership (2024)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt31418394/">8/10</a> <a href="#Fatal">Fatal Attraction (1987)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/">8/10</a> <a href="#Sixth">The 6th Day (2000)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/">6/10</a> <a href="#OctoberSky">October Sky (1999)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/">8/10</a> <a href="#Shane">Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs (2023)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt28741830/">7/10</a> <a href="#Flyboys">Flyboys (2006)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454824/">8/10</a> <a href="#Schtonk">Schtonk (1992)</a> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105328/">8/10</a> </ol> <dl dt_class="field"> <span id="Robocop">Robocop (2014)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234721/">6/10</a> <div>Omnicorp has robot warriors. They use them all over the world to mop up and contain the unruly local populace wherever the U.S. military needs them. The movie starts with a demonstration of the efficacy of these machines, unfortunately ending badly for some young, presumably nascent little terrorist. He shouldn't have moved, though. That's on him. I wonder whether many of the people who watch RoboCop notice the irony of this whole movie? Do they understand that this is all subversive, like <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4722#Starship">Starship Troopers</a>? Or do they not see the satire in that film either? I bet they don't. I bet people think this stuff is a documentary. I bet they root for the bad guys the whole time. It's a nice trick, right? You can double the audience: half enjoy it ironically, digging to the layer underneath, whereas the other half enjoy the superficial story, doing no digging at all. I bet people in the Trump administration watch these types of movies and think not that they're documentaries, but <i>instruction manuals</i>. As evidence for that though, which I wrote <i>a month ago</i>, there's the still-fresh---barely days old---invasion of Venezuela to <i>kidnap that country's president</i>. Holy shit, I think the Trump administration is just straight-up living out scenes from its favorite movies. There are other things in the first fifteen minutes that stand out as satire. The subtitles for the Americans in the promotional video show what they're saying whereas the subtitles for the locals just say "speaking Arabic." It really hammers home the point that these aren't even really people because Arabic isn't even really a language that can be translated to anything that we might even begin to understand. It's like pigs grunting. What is there to understand? Just mow 'em down if they can't <s>behave</s>produce. There was also the interview with the general, where he says "never again," which is very much a dog whistle for WWII but also for 9/11, right? And when these people say "never again," they mean "never again" <i>to these specific groups.</i> That is, never again should Jewish people or Americans suffer from terror. They will be the ones to mete it out but never again to suffer it, forever and ever, amen. Or what about the suicide bombers? They had vests laced with what looked like sticks of dynamite---which is kind of hilarious because who uses actual sticks of dynamite outside of a cartoon?---but they also had guns and they were clearly trying to survive. What kind of a suicide bomber fights for his life? The film was clearly staged for the commercial. It very much mirrors how it's impossible to know what to believe in our world today, no matter how convincing it looks. It's meant to be convincing, and that veracity serves someone's agenda. Not yours, of course. Never yours. The whole presentation with over-the-top media talking-head Pat Novak (Samuel Jackson) could’ve been pulled straight from a Fox News show. Or a commercial on Fox News. Or both. Those scenes are all very ironic and satire-coded. Or maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear. The Pat Novak part was obvious, though, wasn't it? No? Really? On the one hand, this is a straight up story of corporate crime that we should all condemn. On the other, it’s a story that can be cheered on as billionaires and businessman win in protecting America. Look at how innovation wins. So beautiful. The most beautiful. In Robocoop's visor, he can see what people‘s emotional states are. Now, on the one hand, you might argue: This is bullshit; that doesn’t exist. No-one can tell what someone's exact emotional state is using a sensor. While that's true, it's also true that it doesn’t matter because when a machine says something like that, when a display shows something like that, it <i>becomes the truth</i> for most people. They don’t think: I wonder if this is true? They don’t ask themselves: How would it even measure these things? If it’s written on a screen, then it becomes true. So, it really doesn’t matter what you might think your actual emotional state is. You are in the emotional state that the machine says you are. You can be punished for what the machine thinks you’ve done or thinks you’re thinking. Easy-peasy. You might be wondering: what actually happened in this movie? Is he going to write about that? Maybe a little wouldn't hurt. The same thing happened in this movie, more or less, that happened in the original from 1987. Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) gets on the wrong side of local gangs that are also mixed up with the local government. He's a cop who nosed around so much that the gangs tried to kill him. They nearly succeeded: he's just a heart, a brain, a hand, and ... lungs. I think that's it. Most of his face is also still there. The rest of him is a high-powered robot, making him a cyborg. Omnicorp has complete control over his mental state. They can dump in whatever hormones they want. They can pretty much make him do what they want. They control his memories. Or do they? Will the man inside the machine triumph? Will his tremendous will to know what really happened and who's really responsible overpower whatever technological reins they've added to him? Will he be able to revenge himself on the guilty when the time comes? (You know that the answer to all of those questions is "yes.") Oh, I forgot to mention that the reason they made Alex into a cyborg is because the government wasn't allowing robots or anything sold by Omnicorp to be deployed in the U.S. Those weapons were only for <i>the colonies</i>. However, a cyborg is a man, right?! So that's OK! It's a loophole in the law. And when they dump him full of hormones, then they've basically shut down whatever made him a man in the first place, but we don't have to tell the American people that. They love their robot hero. He's there to defend them. As long as they <s>behave</s>produce. So there's a whole meta-narrative that hits pretty close to home as U.S. soldiers are currently marauding the streets of large cities in the U.S. instead of stomping mudholes in little brown people in colonial backwaters <i>as God intended</i>. Anything else? Oh, yeah, there were some good actors in this. Gary Oldman played Dr. Dennett Norton, who's in charge of the Robocop program. He served as Omnicorp's conscience, for what that's worth. Michael Keaton played Raymond Sellars, the CEO of OmniCorp. He's really good at playing a scumbag billionaire. Jay Baruchel was head of marketing and also excellent as a sleazeball. And poor Michael K. Williams was Alex Murphy's partner but barely got any screen time. It's not too hard to guess what happens, right? Sellars almost gets away with it but a rampaging Robocop saves his family and kills Sellars. Robocop gets pretty banged up but Dr. Norton fixes him up, good as new. Omnicorp doesn't get to deploy its robots in the U.S. and must be satisfied with siphoning dozens of billions in tax dollars to terrorize the world. Poor, poor Omnicorp. They really got their comeuppance.</div> <span id="DieHard2">Stirb Langsam 2 (Die Hard 2) (1990)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099423/">8/10</a> <div>John McLane (Bruce Willis) is at the airport to pick up Holly McLane (Bonnie Bedelia) but her flight is delayed because of a snowstorm. After John chats with Holly in midair---which, in 1990 was an absolutely fancy thing to do; I mean, hell, we barely ever see it happening <i>now</i>---John sees some suspicious people. He tracks them down in the baggage area and manages to kill one of them. The other one gets away. With Sergeant Al's (Reginald VelJohnson) help, he figures out that the guy that he'd killed had already been dead for two years. On the report of his past exploits, we see that he had served in <iq>Afghanistan</iq>. Oh neat, that means he'd served with the Mujahideen. But that's not really that guy; it's some other guy who'd stolen his identity. McLane's hackles are up now. John is smoking wherever he wants in the airport, which is kind of amazing, considering how normal the rest of the movie looks. It would be like seeing him drinking from a whites-only water fountain. The terrorists, led by Thornberg (William Atherton) take over the landing systems, fooling the plane into thinking that the ground is 200 feet lower than it really is. The plane has no visibility so it can't tell that it's so close to the ground. Luckily, John McClane is out on the runway, waving handmade torches around. The plane doesn't see him. It's too late. It smushes into the ground, exploding in a fireball. John is devastated. People start to believe McClane---a whole Seal Team 6 crew shows up, led by Grant (John Amos)---but also the head of the airport Trudeau (Fred Thompson) is behind him, yanking on the leash of Sergeant Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz). Together, they find the church where the terrorists had holed up and were running their operation. The terrorists wire the place to blow, then escape on snowmobiles. I'd forgotten that this is, essentially, a Christmas movie. It's very wintry. McClane gives chase, of course. I'd also forgotten how accurate McClane is with a pistol, from any distance. McClane discovers that the terrorists have two types of ammunition: blanks and live rounds. They used the blanks to fire on Grant and his crew. A few minutes later, Grant kills a young soldier on his crew who isn't in on it---and never will be. McClane commandeers a new helicopter, getting them to bring him close to the jumbo jet that the terrorists are all trying to escape in (with the Grenadan general that they'd rescued, which was like the whole point of the operation I guess but whatever). McClane drops onto the plane's wing from the helicopter (like you do), then ends up fighting Grant there, mano a mano. Grants ends up in the jet engine. Now it's Thornberg's turn to discover that being a seventh-level black-belt and Special Ops is no match for "severely beaten and bloodied LA cop with a smart mouth and a right hook." McClane is no match for him in a fight but neither does he seem to suffer from either the kicks to the face or falling off the plane onto the runway far below. On the way, he manages to rip out the fuel cap (is that even a thing?), which leaves a trail of kerosene not only on the ground, but even, apparently, <i>trailing behind it through the air</i> as takes off. McClane doesn't ask questions about physics. A flick of the Zippo, a <iq>Yippeekayay Motherfucker</iq> (well, <iq>Yippeyayay Schweinebacke</iq> in German) and the plane is not only no more, but the trail of its destruction lights up the length of the runway for all of the other planes to finally be able to land. Christmas-like music plays as McClane's bloodied self wanders the icy wastes like Frankenstein, yelling <iq>Holly</iq> again and again in a raspy roar.. He of course finds her in seconds. There were so many character actors, like Carmine's brother Vito (Robert Costanzo), a pilot (Colm Meaney), or John Leguiziamo, who was in this somewhere but I don't recall seeing him. He was probably some disposable soldier named Gomez or Rodriguez or something like that. My bad: his name was Burke. As with other, older movies I've watched, there is just no replacing actual real-life scenes with lights shining through grates, obscured by steam coming from several pipes, all falling on a rumpled sweater as McLane walks through the actual bowels of an actual airport, all lit expertly and all <i>actually real and there.</i> It's easier to enjoy movies with predictable or weak stories because there's something cool to look at. When the story is predictable and weak <i>and</i> the person driving the car is <i>very obviously not in a car</i>, then we're watching an SNL skit and it's harder to suspend disbelief. I gave it an extra star because I will always watch this again (so I must think it's good). I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Punisher">Punisher: War Zone (2008)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450314/">5/10</a> <div>This movie was made when all sorts of Marvel movies were being made, for all sorts of reasons. This one is kind of phoned in. If you thought that John McClane was accurate with a pistol from any distance, then you ain't seen nothing yet. The Punisher (Ray Stevenson) is a force of nature, never missing, and seeming to have choreographed his assaults to the last detail. Are we supposed to ignore that, when he crashes a mafia dinner party, that he, instead of just staying on the floor, chooses to hang himself upside-down on a chandelier, spinning slowly like a Cirque de Soleil act that sprays hundreds of unerring bullets from Uzis? That was a really weird choice. It's 2008, so everyone's doing parkour, too. Frank Castle AKA the Punisher moves on to the next target: Billy (Dominic West). The Punisher dumps him into a giant recycling machine full of broken glass. I guess this is why he's also credited as "Jigsaw". Castle discovers that one of the henchmen he'd shot was an undercover cop (or FBI officer or whatever). Oh look, it's Wayne Knight at Micro, Frank Castle's Q. Next up is the reveal of Jigsaw. The guy seems to be doing pretty well, considering his whole face had been torn off. He acts like all that damage hasn't cramped his style at all. He kills his plastic surgeon, of course, because that's how one-dimensional his character is. It's kind of too bad because Dominic West can be good. It's a dumb movie, so I left it on while I was cooking. I'm lying if I say I paid attention to it too much. You can skip it without panicking that you're missing some key pieces of the MCU. I watched it in German.</div> <span id="Simpson">Brian Simpson: Live from the Mothership (2024)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt31418394/">8/10</a> <div>All excerpts are from the <a href="https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=brian-simpson-live-from-the-mothership" source="Springfield! Springfield!">Live from the Mothership (2024) Movie Script</a>. <dl dt_class="field"> Racism <div><bq>This how you know how racist you are, okay? There's a... There's a... There's an amount of Black people that could've been in here when you walked in that would've made you go, "Wait a minute. Am I in the right... place." That's how racist you are. That...that number of people is how racist you are. You used to things being white things. 'Cause that's what racism really is. It's not about who you hate or don't or love. I mean, listen, obviously there's racists that hate people. Those are the professional racists. But all you amateur racists. It's still racist, you know? 'Cause you see a racist as a bad, evil person. And since you don't see yourself as a bad, evil person, you think that you ain't never been racist. And that's where you fucking up at. 'Cause racism don't got nothing to do with whether you a good person or whether you love or hate Black people. It's about your perspective. Like the way you've been brought up to see the world and where you rank in it, who's beneath you and who's above you. That's what it is. Right? Anybody could be racist.</bq></div> 200 Lifetime Nuts <div><bq>we gotta have more empathy for women, 'cause this is what I thought about when I woke up that morning. I was like, "Okay, imagine... imagine, sir, imagine we live in a universe where you born with just 200 nuts to bust. [...] You... You and your lady, you trying but it ain't working. I mean, y'all fucking, it ain't working. You sitting in the doctor's office. He like, "I got bad news, I don't know if, uh, if you thought it was a myth, or you lost count, but, uh...you fresh out of nuts, man." "But don't worry, I know you feeling vulnerable, but I'm right here with you." "Just give me $30,000." "Okay, take these vitamins and hormones for a little bit. Come back and see me." "I'll go up in your balls, I'll scrape a few off the walls. We'll... We'll pick out the best ones, we'll plant them shits," "And, uh, you know, it only works like 20% of the time. But don't worry." "We can try as many times as you'll give me $30,000." That's how they living out here. Have a little empathy.</bq></div> Tall guys <div>He hates 'em.</div> Shooters <div><bq>We got a gun violence problem, right? But what's the real problem? It's not guns, but it's who could get a gun. And we gotta stop these little-dick niggas from getting guns. 'Cause I got a theory. I think a man shooting, I think that's little-dick activity. It's something about shooting up an area that screams "little-dick activity" to me. You know? 'Cause... And don't misinterpret... I'm not... I'm not suggesting that dudes with big dicks don't kill people. But we...we usually kill specific people. You know? 'Cause I can empathize with a man being fed up. Being at his limit, you know? We all get frustrated at work, whatever, life, whatever, society...That's why we go home, drink a little beer, smoke a little weed, so we can calm down and don't kill no-fuckin'-body. Right? If I ever got to the point where I'm like, "Imma kill a motherfucker tomorrow," I'm walking into work, and I'm shooting Cheryl. 'Cause she the one been fucking with me for three and a half years. I'm not gonna shoot up Accounts Receivable and hope Cheryl get the message, right? What kind of man does a passive-aggressive murder? A little-dick man, if you ask me.</bq></div> COVID <div><bq>Everybody's gathered here. Having a good time. People from all walks of life. Right? And...We didn't cure COVID. We just... We just stopped caring. [...] the only difference between conservatives and liberals, when it came to COVID, was how long you gave a fuck. [...] Motherfuckers was losing friends, stopped talking to family... "I'm not gonna sit at Thanksgiving table and..." Right? I ain't lose nobody. I knew my uncle was a dumb bitch way before the pandemic. You know? I still love him, you know what I'm saying? Like, "Fuck Dr. Fauci. He don't make peach cobbler, nigga."</bq> <bq>COVID is the last thing that happened to everybody in the world since World War II. And what happened after World War II? Baby boom. 'Cause when people think the world about to end, we like, "We got to get it in!" When you think you might die, you wanna fuck. Scientifically proven, around the world, everybody hornier than a motherfucker. Hornier than ever. And I personally think America is hornier than the rest of the world. Right? Because we got caught off guard the most. Which made it scarier, which made us hornier. And why did we get caught off guard? Well, because we the best. And we been the best for so long, a lot of us was born in the best country. And we spoiled about a lot of shit. And... And one of the things that we spoiled about the most is new diseases. We don't have to worry about those, we just hear about 'em. Right, remember SARS? Remember bird flu? Remember swine flu? Ebola? Yeah, that was all shit we read about, it didn't stop our lives. We were like, "Oh, oh, shit. Okay, damn. That's horrible." "For them. Okay, can I please get a number two with a..."</bq> <bq>What made it even scarier, which made us even hornier, is that dumb motherfuckers always talk first. Way before scientists. That's just how the world works. Science take time, stupid is instant. Don't forget, we were scared to death. All we knew was it was here. It had killed people and it was spreading, and it was in the air. And we waiting for fuckin' answers, and scientists are collecting samples, and waiting for centrifuges to stop spinning. And the dumbest nigga you know was on Twitter going, "It's coming from the 5G antennas, everybody. We knew these next-generation speeds would come at a price. They broadcasting it to us all, and it's all the worst things mixed together. It's AIDS mixed with Ebola, mixed with child support! Run for your lives! Hide wherever you can!"</bq></div> The stages of WAP <div><bq>I'll let you get a fair fight with my mama. She talk a lot of shit. Sh... She got a mouth on her, you know? But she got hands to match. Right? She legendary in the hood. She like 49 and 12, something crazy, you know?</bq> He defines WAP level 4 as Wallis Simpson.<fn></div> The Gay Spectrum (5% gay) <div><bq>No, seriously, guys, listen, there's no lessons in my jokes. Know what I mean, if you learned something, or shifted your perspective, or you feel enlightened by something, that was purely a coincidence by...You know what I'm saying? That's just a side effect.</bq> <bq>I discovered this guy, Dr. Kinsey. 'Kay? He's an American scientist. He's the first person to actually study sexuality in depth. He did it for 40-some odd years. He did so many surveys and experiments, and he founded the Institute of Sexuality. And he invented the Kinsey Scale. Which is a measure of how gay you are. And so, Dr. Kinsey says, "'Are you gay, ' is a silly question. The real question is 'How gay are you?' And... And I've lost a lot of you, especially the older people, 'cause y'all grew up like me, in the '70s and '80s. Okay, it was a simpler time. You was either gay or straight. Or ugly. But now we know better than that, it's not binary. It's a spectrum, my niggas. Okay? And you somewhere on there. It goes all the way from Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson to Lil Nas X's backup dancer. And you... And you somewhere on there. And... Look, in other words, it's... We used to think it was a light switch. Now we know it's a dimmer switch. See, this... this is the part of the night where I realize, oh, the crowd is full of a bunch of bitch-ass niggas. That's what you are. You... I been... For 55 minutes, I been shittin' on women's mustaches and ovaries,and I gave you a list of reasons I will punch 'em in the face, and all y'all was... [mimics chuckling] "Yeah, get her!" And now, I'm just making a general observation that mildly threatens your sexuality, and you motherfuckers can't handle it. [...] Ladies, this is the one area where y'all really actually do have a... an advantage, you know? 'Cause, like, sure, you know, your eggs are running out, right? But... But your sexuality is infinite and untouchable. Y'all can go to college and eat 45 pussies. And right after graduation, be like, "You know what? It's not for me." And go get you a husband. Tell him all the stories, show him the pictures. These dudes can't even laugh at this joke too hard, because... because masculinity is a prison. Okay? Manness is a club, okay, it's a box. You gotta stay in the fuckin' box. You can lose being a man, you understand? It's like being stripped of the title, no rematch. One gay shit, you're out the club.</bq> <bq>We're trapped, we're trapped. We got all these dumb rules that make us behave weirdly to y'all. Every time you see a man doing something you don't understand... Y'all got all these names for it. "Oh, it's misogyny, it's homophobia, it's all this." It's just the same phenomenon, you just naming it different shit. It's nigga's tryin' to stay in the box. Okay, because one step out, it's cold out here. Out here, they treat you like a woman, oh no! So, we do everything we can to stay right here with it. We got dumb... Like, you know one of the rules for men... This is crazy to me. We allowed to hug our friends but we not allowed to exhale. No, you gotta hold your breath during that hug.</bq></div> Barbershops <div><bq>"I'd risk it all again to look this good."</bq></div></dl></div> <span id="Fatal">Fatal Attraction (1987)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093010/">8/10</a> <div>Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) is wearing headphones while he works in the living room. His kid is watching Nickelodeon. This looks like it could be happening today. The headphones don't even look that outdated. His wife Beth (Anne Archer) is getting ready to go to an event with him. At the event, where Dan and his friend Jimmy (Stuart Pankin) casually make fun of Japanese people, he meets Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), who, I gotta say, has one of the scariest hairstyles I've ever seen from the eighties. The eight-head look was absolutely <i>not</i> common. it was much more of a bangs-and-perm thing that most people had going. She's in a book-pitch meeting with him, where he works. They leave in the rain together and end up getting lunch, with drinks. She lights up a cigarette after dinner. It's the 80s. Close does a good job; she seems slightly off-kilter, aggressive, a slightly too-wide grin. They're in his kitchen, having extremely enthusiastic and acrobatic sex. Like, he's carrying her like a bag of groceries while he's scraping his pants off with his feet but also negotiating the eight-inch step from the kitchen to the dining room without being able to see it, which is probably the riskiest part of the whole endeavor. I know I shouldn't be focusing on it, but <i>what kind of an idiot architect puts a step like that in that place?</i> I get that they wouldn't anticipate two people stand-up fucking while negotiating their way from one room to another, but did they not anticipate someone carrying something hot or precarious or both to the dining room? Anyway, now she's blowing him in an elevator after they went out for more drinks and dancing. The elevator goes up to her apartment (or one of her apartments or whatever). They are insatiable. Real "cocaine" energy. He scuttles out the next morning, before she's up. Talks to his wife, who's in the country with her parents. Alex calls. Wants him to come back over. He says he has work, has to walk the dog. <bq>Bring the dog, I love animals... I'm a great cook.</bq> This seems innocuous until you know what happens later. He's at her place. She's cooking dinner for him. She's trying to get things going, to turn it in to a relationship. He says no, they can't They're back in bed. She starts getting frantic, ripping his shirt so that he can't leave. He's leaving and she asks him to come say goodbye nicely. Her hands are behind her back. She kisses him desperately, hungrily. He feels her hands. They're wet. With blood. She's slit her wrists. She's gotten him to stay. Ok, so he did no work all weekend. He has to muss up his own bed, take a shower, feed the dog the food that he would have eaten had he eaten at home, and then his family comes home. His son wants a rabbit. They go look at a house in the country. It's a beautiful house. <img attachment="alex_forrest_s_shoulder_pads_are_spectacular.webp" align="left" caption="Alex Forrest's shoulder pads are spectacular">Back in the city. Alex is at his office. She has a leather jacket with the widest damn should pads I've seen in a long time. She wants to take him to Madame Butterfly, the opera they'd listened to in her apartment, while she'd cooked, and that he'd told her was a formative experience for him. He turns her down as gently as he can. It was a fling. She knew he was married. She came on like a freight train. Dan's boss Arthur is played by Fred Gwynne, who I will always see as Fred Munster. Alex's call interrupts them. She keeps calling the office. He tells her that they can't talk anymore. It's so wild that Dan got himself into this because Anne Archer is a smoke show. But this is the kind of character that Michael Douglas played in the 80s. It was the beginning of addressing the impunity with which men cheated. It was teaching us that cheating was about power, not sex, blablaba. That affair certainly did not start with "power". Dan wasn't trying to "own" his wife to show that he could. He had a rock-hard boner for Alex and it sucked all the blood from his brain. He didn't tell his wife because we are a monogamous society and he didn't want Beth, the woman he actually loved, to think less of him for having given in to such a base impulse, to say nothing of the venereal diseases he likely schlepped home with him. <bq>I'm pregnant.</bq> Dan breaks into her apartment to find out more about what's going on with her, to find out whether she's really pregnant. Instead, he finds a folder with some papers. Some are wild, erratic sketches. One paper is an obituary for a 42-year-old man, presumably a former husband. Alex is in his apartment, talking to his wife about possibly buying their apartment when they move to the country. He goes to her place (again, though she doesn't know this) to tell her enough's enough. She's doing her best to goad him to violence. He gets a bit violent but nothing she wasn't expecting or hoping for. He's gotten a rabbit for his son. He's carrying it in a cage through a parking garage. It doesn't seem perturbed at all, which is absolutely not what would be happening. When the car alarm goes off, it doesn't flinch. When he discovers his car covered in acid, he drops the cage. Again, the rabbit is indifferent. This is not the attitude that rabbits have when they are out of their element. I suppose, back in the 80s, that they couldn't CGI in a panicked rabbit, and, even then, they weren't allowed to <i>harm animals in the making of a movie</i>, so the rabbit felt fine the whole time. The rabbit is a shitty actor. They're in the car. He's listening to a cassette tape that she sent him. It's a creepy, threatening message. <bq>'Cause part of you is growing inside of me, and that's a fact, Dan, and... you'd better start... learning how to deal with it. 'Cause you know, I... I feel you. I taste you. I think you. I touch you. Can you understand? Can you? I'm just... asking you... to acknowledge your responsibilities. Is that so bad? I don't think so. I-I don't think it's unreasonable. And, you know, another thing is that you thought that you could just walk into my life, and turn it upside down, without a thought for anyone but yourself. You know what you are, Dan? You're a cock-sucking son of a bitch. I hate you. I bet you don't even like girls, do you? Ha! You disappoint me, you fucking faggot!</bq> Dan tries to get the police involved, for a "client of his". They say there's not much they can do. Beth gets home to find the double-boiler on the stove. She didn't put it there. Her son runs to the backyard to see his rabbit. That rabbit's hutch is <i>way the fuck out on the edge of the yard</i>, like, where the wolves or foxes or coyotes would have gotten to it sooner rather than later. What were they even thinking? And the hutch was <i>so small</i>. Like, give it a two-level home, for God's sake, especially if it's going to live alone. It needs some space to move around. Christ, Alex was doing it a favor by popping it in the double-boiler on the stove, where Beth finds it. That's the final straw. Dan's gotta come clean with Beth. She's fine with it at first...until he says that Alex is pregnant. The boy sees them fighting because he came downstairs because he couldn't sleep because he was crying over his dead rabbit. Poor kid. It sucks to lose a rabbit. He moves into a hotel. He and Beth show a common front, though; when he calls Alex, he lets Beth issue a death threat that she'll make good on if Alex ever comes near their family again. I like that about Beth but what I don't like about Beth is that she's the kind of person who, when driving, swings out right to turn left. You can even see a pedestrian have to jump out of the way because she's such an erratic driver. Again, I'm getting distracted by minutiae because she was turning in to the school parking lot to pick up Ellen---and HOLY SHIT I JUST REALIZED THAT THE SON IS A DAUGHTER<fn>---who'd already been picked up by Alex. Now, this is a major plot point of course, but I'm going to go ahead and get distracted by the fact that I thought the kid's name was "Allen" this whole time and she looks just like a boy, in <i>1987</i>. And I don't remember anybody flipping their wig about <i>the trans agenda</i> at the time. Hell, I remember my mom chopping off my twin sister's long hair at about the same age to make her look kinda like a boy for a couple of years, until it grew back. We really looked like twins then. Wait. Where were we? Oh, yes, A child-kidnapping that has a completely different flavor because the kidnapper is <i>female</i>. We figure she might hurt the child, but not <i>diddle</i> it. They're on a rollercoaster, which is hilarious because there is literally no way that the girl would have met the height requirement. Also, I'm still not seeing her as a girl. Completely and unremarkably androgynous.. Beth rear-ends a car because she's so distracted by grief. Dan visits his wife in the hospital, with his father-in-law glaring at him the whole time. Opiates make you sign like a bird. I guess Beth told him everything. Dan's at Alex's apartment. She answer the door and he <i>blows</i> the chain lock off the doorframe and pursues her through the apartment, finally tackling her and nearly choking her out on the kitchen floor, before he comes to his senses. She rallies and almost gets the drop on him with a kitchen knife. Dan goes to the police again, begging them to pick her up for harassment. They agree. Beth's back home, with two black eyes. She's drawing a bath. This all feels very ominous.. Dan makes tea in a kettle. He locks the back door. Beth wipes the fog from the mirror to find she's not alone. It's Alex. <bq>What are you doing here? Why are you here? [said to Beth] He tried to say goodbye to me last night. But he couldn't, because he and I feel the same way about each other. Do you know how it is when you meet somebody for the first time and you get this instant attraction? And don't you think I understand what you're doing? You're trying to move him into the country. And you're keeping him away from me. And you're playing happy family. But you wouldn't understand that because you're so selfish. And he told me about you. He told me about you. He was very honest. If you weren't so stupid, you'd know that. But you're so stupid. You're just so stupid, you're a stupid, selfish bitch! You're a stupid, selfish bitch!</bq> Alex tries to kill Beth but Dan shows up in time to thwart her. She slashes him up with her butcher knife but gets the drop on her, drowning her in the bathtub. Or not. She rises like a mummy from the water, knife swinging. BANG! It's Beth with the family handgun, taking that Terminator-like bitch down for good. The end. It was a decent film but, if I'm honest, I might have spent a bit too much time focused on how the rabbit part of the story was unrealistic. Luckily I was distracted from that by the gender-fluidity of the child.</div> <span id="Sixth">The 6th Day (2000)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0216216/">6/10</a> <div>Johnny Phoenix is quarterbacking an XFL game<fn> when a blitz drops him on his neck. Instead of the care he needs, though, he's ... terminated. Oddly, he's back on the field the next weekend to helm another game. Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) wakes up on to almost getting birthday sex from his wife Natalie (Wendy Crewson) but his daughter Clara (Taylor Reid) barges in. On the TV at home is a commercial for RePet, a service that will revive your family pets, good as new. Clara wants a SimPal as a present for Adam's birthday. His fridge has a screen that tells him he needs milk and offers to order some for him. He smashes that one-click-pay button. He gets into his friend Hank Morgan's (Michael Rappaport) giant truck, which has a center console that's just a single screen with an interactive nav/GPS. The truck drives itself (with OnStar<fn>), so Hank's telling Adam about his virtual girlfriend, to which Adam says, <iq>here you are, a grown man, and your primary relationship is with a piece of software?</iq> At work, Adam is apparently a pilot for <i>Double X Charter</i>, a heli-boarding service for rich kids. Phew, quite a few things were pretty spot-on. Way to go, movie from 25 years ago. Because an extremely rich guy wants to engage their services, they have to take a drug test. It's definitely not a drug test, though; that test just stole all of their biometric and genetic data. <iq>All clear.</iq> Sure. Anyway, Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) shows up for his day of snowboarding. Hank takes the shift instead of Adam, so that Adam has time to go pick up a new Oliver from RePet. He doesn't clone Oliver but he does pick up a super-creepy SimPal that will not shut up the entire cab ride home. Wait, does he not have a car? That's so odd. Anyway, he's already at his birthday party. A clone of him is. Vincent (Terry Crews) and Talia (Sarah Wynter) show up to tell him that there's been a sixth-day violation and that he needs to go with them. He does <i>not</i> go with them. There's a big car chase and Adam seems to get away, or maybe he died. He didn't die. Who are we kidding? At Dr. Griffin Weir's (Robert Duvall) lab/headquarters, he's telling an angry crowd that his company doesn't do cloning research. The rich dude Drucker is there, speechifying in the same tired, illogical, and shallowly philosophical way that the billionaires of today talk, all proud of himself with how smart he thinks he is. He's yelling about how scared politicians are handcuffing him from benefitting humanity even more with the largesse of his intellect. But he's a moron. He said that a brain can't be cloned, but that a whole body <i>can</i>. That makes no sense. They're always morons. Speaker Day (Ken Pogue) has a sick son, so of course he's going to get a clone for him. Drucker continues with his limited understanding of what "clone" means by promising that the clone would be cured of the genetic disease that is killing the original. Oh, really? Then it's <i>not a clone</i>. Anyway, corrupt politicians breaking the law to their own benefit feels like we're on very familiar ground. Weir's main henchman Marshall (Michael Rooker) is resurrecting the two agents that Adam had killed, which is an opportunity to show off some cool practical effects as the bodies grow back. Adam's in an interrogation room at the police station. A news report plays on the television in there, saying something about <iq>Microsoft trying to buy a state of the union.</iq> This is not relevant to the plot but is interesting that, 25 years later, that same report wouldn't be at all out of place. Hank's sycophantic AI girlfriend (Jennifer Gareis) is a shallow toy invented by a 12-year-old. This is literally what we're looking at 25 years later. We are, as a species, utterly predictable. Hank's dead, shot by an activist. It doesn't really matter why, though. Adam's becoming more and more of a bad-ass, just dropping henchpeople right and left. Weir's wife Katherine (Wanda Cannon) is a clone, to absolutely no-one's surprise. She's dying of the same disease that the other clones died of because <i>they're clones</i>. But he keeps resurrecting her and hoping for a different outcome. She begs him to let her go. Adam breaks in to Replacement Technologies without a disguise, using a thumb he'd ripped off of clone of Talia, wearing a jacket with his company's logo on it, and carrying a giant lunchpail like the one he had in <i>Total Recall</i> or <i>Running Man</i>. Man, he likes to carry giant lunchboxes. Schwarzennegger was 53 years old in 2000. Bizarrely, when Adam confronts Weir, he is incredibly cooperative, revealing the entire history of cloning and how Drucker had been killed and cloned three years ago already. He's been infecting the clones with diseases as a failsafe in case they go back on their word, or to ask for more money, or whatever. Weir confronts him on it, and tries to quit. Drucker shoots him and resurrects both him and his wife, with no memory of having ever tried to quit, or of ever having learned about the failsafes. A bunch more stuff happens but absolutely nothing surprising. Drucker and his next clone both die. Adam and his clone both survive. The clone moves to Argentina. The movie was set in 2015. Some of the things it predicted were dead-on, just 10 years early. We never did end up banning tobacco to the degree that the film predicted. We also don't have clones. Right? Right?!?!?! It started off more promising than it ended up being. I found it a bit too long.</div> <span id="OctoberSky">October Sky (1999)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132477/">8/10</a> <div>The movie starts with the announcement of Soviet success with Sputnik. This was a grand achievement for humanity. Of course, it is broadcast in the U.S. like a tragedy. But the U.S. has always been about being a bunch of pearl-clutching fucking babies. Always grabbing all of the toys and crying if they miss even one. No wonder the U.S. is best friends with Israel: neither country can ever stop whining about its own incredible mistreatment no matter how much they are winning. That's how winners win more, right? The scene is a coal-mining town. It is dark, hues of dark blue and blue. Smoke and fog and cold breath everywhere. The trees are bare. Color has been leached from the world. The tragedy of the U.S. having just lost the Cold War to the <i>Commies</i> is etched into every face. It is the owners of these wretched faces who will be exhorted to enthusiastically back their own further immiseration to focus the cold-war effort, to fund increased arms with the few pennies they have left over at the end of the month. The maw must be fed. The very next announcement on the radio is to announce that <b>[THE NOTORIOUS NAZI HERR]</b> Dr. Werner von Braun would be assisting the U.S in following the Soviets into space. Well, thank <i>the LORD above</i> for that. If it weren't for ex-Nazis, then where would be, as a nation, even be? Losing ground to those Godless communists, that's what! Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) is 17 years old and he wants to build a rocket. His dad John (Chris Cooper) works at the local mine. He's in charge of what goes on underground but the company's the one that decides that the mine is closing. He decidedly does not believe in anything other than the mine and, therefore, does <i>not</i> believe in his misbegotten, good-for-nothing son. Miss Riley (Laura Dern), though, she believes in him. Homer doesn't know shit. Not yet. So he throws in with the local nerd Quentin (Chris Owen). They actually get a rocket up in the air but it flies sideways and nearly takes someone out at the mine. The two of them are playing in the woods with two other friends, Roy Lee (William Lee Scott), and O'Dell (Chad Lindberg). Homer is brainstorming how to get into the science fair. All of the colors are still very muted. On the road, a car from out of town stops. It is bright, cherry red. The lady in the passenger seat is colorful, with bold makeup. The man driving is colorfully dressed too. They appear, ask a question, receive an answer, and disappear. They were there to show what the world outside the village of Coalwood looks like, metaphorically speaking. The boys try again and again, refining their materials, testing different propellants. At first, Ike Bykovsky (Elya Baskin, who's actually a real-life Russian, having come from the Soviet Union) helps them with welding, until he's sent to the mine (not incidentally, by Homer's father). After that, Leon (Randy Stripling) helps them, even coming to their rocketry field to watch his handiwork go up. Finally, with the whole village watching, they get a rocket to launch pretty far up into the air. It was a controlled launch and it didn't explode. It's time for the science fair. As in <a href="#NorthCountry">North Country</a>, many of the men in this movie are real shitheels. When you see Chris Cooper in a movie, you <i>know</i> he's going to be a shitheel, just as night follows day. But you also know, if he's not playing a CIA officer, that he just might turn things around by the end of the movie. Let's keep our fingers crossed. The police show up one day, looking to pin a forest fire on one of their errant rockets. Their rocketry days are over. The boys head to a party to, as Homer put it, <iq>have fun, for once</iq>. Poor Quentin has a lorn look, wondering whether that isn't what they'd all been having for months now. At any rate, O'Dell shows Quentin how to parlay his newly minted bad-boy status---they'd been arrested after all---into pull with the ladies. A mining accident kills Ike and nearly kills Homer's father, who might lose an eye. With his Dad out of commission and there of course being nothing remotely communist like workmen's compensation, the family needs money, so Homer takes a job in the mine. He's working there for a while. His dad joins him when he's better. He's still got both eyes. But rocketry calls to Homer, with Miss Riley's subversive encouragement. He figures out that the rocket on which the cops had blamed the forest fire couldn't have caused it. He needs Quentin to check his work. Quentin is blown away that Homer's learned all of this. In the end, he demonstrates a relatively simple acceleration equation on the chalkboard but OK, Homer's a genius, I guess. We don't want to overwhelm the viewing public with an actually difficult equation. Homer quits the mine because he's so sure that they'll be able to take up rocketry again once he proves that they couldn't have caused the forest fire. He tussles with the principal again but manages to convince him that it really wasn't their rocket. When they examine the rocket that the police had found, they discover that it wasn't one of theirs at all, that it was an aeronautical flare from a local airport. The principal's on his side now, which is kind of trite. Still, couldn't they have done that in the first place? Like, they just accepted that the rocket they'd been shown was theirs and no-one noticed it wasn't? His dad is now also on his side but Daddio also wants him to keep working at the coal mine in the interim, because once you start something, you finish it. No can do. Homer quits. The miners go on strike. Homer's in Indianapolis for the National Science Fair, where he overhears from some people that they think his rocket is going to win. He discovers that someone has stolen his rocket and his picture of Werner von Braun. John ends the strike, so that the miners can help build a new rocket for Homer and ship it out by the next morning. Like, wait, what? This is kind of nuts now. Like, Homer's mom threatens to leave John if he doesn't do this. Says she's going to go <iq>live in a tree</iq> rather than stay with him, which is low-key hilarious. Guess who wins the National Science Fair? Just like that. The scholarship offers start flowing in. Werner von Braun is there to shake his hand. I am not kidding. it is that straightforward. Homer tells his father, <bq>I may not be the best, but I come to believe that I got it in me to be somebody in this world. And it's not because I'm so different from you either, it's because I'm the same. I mean, I can be just as hard-headed, and just as tough. I only hope I can be as good a man as you. Sure, Wernher von Braun is a great scientist, but he isn't my hero.</bq> <i>Jö</i>.<fn> At the final launch, his father is finally there. He even gets to push the button and put his arm around Homer's shoulders. The rocket can be seen from Miss Riley's hospital bed (she had Hodgkin's Disease) and from the mines. It's a nice period piece with very little tension but a few decent moments. Gyllenhaal was 19 years old for this movie. Oh! Holy shit! I hadn't realized that this was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Hickam" source="Wikipedia">true story!</a> Homer went on to train astronauts for NASA. All the boys graduated from college. Huh.</div> <span id="Shane">Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs (2023)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt28741830/">7/10</a> <div>Shane starts off his stand-up set talking about travel, then Australia. He segues to 9/11 jokes, talking about how the Australian accent is funny, no matter what. Even on 9/11, it would have been funny. Even in the buildings. Next up, his girlfriend's ex is a Navy Seal. He says that Navy Seals are kind of chickenshit because they sneak up on you. <bq>You know who’s actually brave? Al-Qaeda. That takes courage and bravery. With their pajamas, throwing rocks at tanks. Heroic shit, dude, just you and your boys going out. [laughing] In flip-flops. You’re all gonna get fucked up, dude. No training. Zero military training, dude. Those guys… Those dudes had fuckin’… They had one set of monkey bars. That’s what they all trained on. And they were proud of the monkey bars. You remember that video? You’ve seen them using the monkey bars. They were pr… They… They filmed themselves using the monkey bars, and then sent that tape out to the world, like… “Not bad.” [...] I felt like I could relate more to the monkey bars guys. They were a little more my speed. Ever wonder how you would do out there? Watch those guys. Those are just normal fuckin’ dudes. The second shots are fired, there’s no game plan, they’re just, “Oh, shit!” Very relatable. Guns jamming. Trying to fire a rocket. It goes straight fucking backwards. They look like me trying to fire a gun, their feet move when they shoot. [...] They would blow up like one truck every five months. They’d be just as surprised as everybody that shit finally worked out. You can hear it in their voices. Something blows up, they’d be like, “Oh!” Yeah, dude, that’s a human reaction. That’s relatable. That’s what I would do if I saw a fucking explosion. I’d go, “Oh!” That’s human. You ever watch <i>us</i> kill people? I can’t relate to that at all. There’s some Black Hawk helicopter pilot with night vision who mows down, like, 40 people. Pilot gets on, he just goes… [mimics radio chatter] “Clear.” [audience laughs] Just flies away? It’s like, “Yo, that’s a psycho. That guy didn’t give a fuck about that.” At least ISIS is down there having fun, dancing afterwards.</bq> So, he goes pro-ISIS for a while, which is a great take for someone who looks and talks like he does, and for someone who has such a predominately white, southern, and male audience. He knows that most of them are definitely pro-military, gung-ho, hoo-rah no matter what, but he makes them laugh at these jokes anyway. He shows them the truth of it. There's the nearly obligatory section on having sex and pornography, which was the weakest part. The next part, though, starts with him saying that he's an <iq>early-onset Republican</iq>, <bq>I’m a bit of a history buff. Which, by the way, that is early onset Republican. That’s very… It’s a very serious warning sign. If you’re a white dude in your 20s and 30s and you’re like, “I can’t stop reading about World War II,” it’s coming, brother. You might not be Republican right now. You might be young, cool and liberal. Might think you’re safe. Dude, you’re not. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes time. It takes… You think your dad wanted to be Republican? That he got out of high school and like, “Time to be a prick about everything.” No, dude, it takes time. I’m not a Republican right now, but I can feel it. It grows. “Ugh.” I’ve gotta fight it. Every day. Like a fucking werewolf. I’ll just be watching TV, out of nowhere… “Ah, why are Black guys in every commercial?”</bq> This segues into a long segment where he talks about having visited George Washington's plantation during COVID, where all of the people on the empty plantation stay in character, despite the fact that he's pretty much the only guest. He papers over a lot of judgment and awkward moments by pretending to have Down's Syndrome, which isn't such a stretch of the imagination as he illustrates with a few facial gestures. During the tour of the <i>slave dungeon</i>, he points out how uncomfortable it was having a young black man giving this part of the tour <i>because he would not break character</i> and Shane's <iq>got the body type of a guy who says, “Let’s see the rest of the bodycam footage before we jump to any conclusions.”</iq> He claims that he can play the Down's Syndrome card because he actually has a few people in his family with Down's Syndrome. He tells us about his uncle Danny, <bq>I do have family members with Down syndrome. It almost got me, I’m… I dodged it, but it nicked me, it nicked me. Bit of a daywalker myself. When you bring up Down syndrome, you can always tell who’s never been around it in their lives. If I tell people, like, “I have family members with Down syndrome,” people that’ve never been around it are always like, “Oh.” Like Down syndrome is the fucking end of the world. Like, “Oh.” “Are they okay?” “Your family? Are they doing okay?” It’s like, yeah. They’re doing better than everybody I know. They’re the only dudes I know having a good time pretty consistently. Sorry they’re not on fucking Adderall and anti-anxiety like the rest of us. They’re on fucking Capri-Suns… …having a good time. My uncle Danny sneaks grilled cheese sandwiches in restaurants, just in case they don’t serve grilled cheese sandwiches.</bq> He finishes up with some <i>stellar</i> Trump impressions and utterly believable scenarios. <bq>I miss the speeches with Trump. You remember that? We used to get five speeches a day when he was in office. Anytime you turned on the TV, the guy was giving another fucking speech. Live, dude. Be in front of a helicopter, screaming, ... calling a lady a lesbian or something.</bq> At least Shane isn't missing those speeches anymore, I guess. He was dead-on with that joke. <i>Quiet, piggy.</i> Finally, he recounts his favorite Trump speech of all time. <bq>It was the night the United States killed the leader of ISIS. Trump comes out of the Situation Room, at like, midnight, in the White House. He walks down that fucking tunnel and gives a press conference, like he’s giving a post-game NBA… …just killed a guy press conference. He walks up in front of the entire world at midnight and just goes… [imitates Trump] “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead.” “He died like a dog.” I didn’t change one word of that, that’s what he opened with. And then he did 40 minutes. The speech is 40 minutes. For no reason, it wasn’t a prepared speech. He free-styled 40 straight minutes. Not even a speech. Just mean shit-talk for 40 minutes. The meanest shit talk you’ve ever heard in front of the whole world. [sucks teeth, imitates Trump] “Abu…” “We could hear him crying. I said, ‘Abu, don’t cry. Abu.'” “Let me tell you something. Abu cried, he cried quite a bit.” “I wouldn’t have cried.” “‘Cry-baby Baghdaddy, ‘ that’s what we were all calling him.”</bq> Citations were taken from <a href="https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/comedy/shane-gillis-beautiful-dogs-transcript/" author="" source="Scraps from the Loft">Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs (2023) | Transcript</a>.</div> <span id="Flyboys">Flyboys (2006)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454824/">8/10</a> <div>Blaine Rawlings (James Franco) volunteers for the French military before the U.S. entered WWI, He goes to France to learn how to fly, with a squad of like-minded Americans that includes his roommate Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis), who is black and with whom some of the French and some of the Americans have a problem. But not all: Capt. Thenault (Jean Reno) couldn't care less. He's just training them to fly. The training camp montage is pretty cool, with little model airplanes, balance-under-duress training, a cockpit on rails to simulate gunning, etc. The Americans must learn French, of course, although I think the original film probably had them speaking a lot more English. It's hard to tell in the French-dubbed version. On a training flight where Blaine is sent up as an instructor for one of his compatriots who can't shoot straight, it turns out that he also can't check whether he has enough fuel. They crash-land and Blaine awakes in what looks like a brothel, tended to by several gorgeous angels. He quickly heals and, as he leaves, sees Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), a pilot in the French squad, drive up with a bottle of Champagne for the ladies. The French deliver some new planes, especially made for their American squad. They spend some time painting their call signs on them. They have their first mission: Jametz. Before they leave, Reed asks to speak with him, to give him advice. The dude has a pet lion. Was that a thing that people had at the beginning of the last century? They're in the air, in the thick of it. The flak forces them up into the waiting arms of the German planes. They have no radios; each is alone. They have no parachutes; don't get hit. It's their first combat; they're getting shot up pretty good. One of them crash-lands but is too joyous, standing in an open field, celebrating his survival, only to be gunned down by his murderous assailant. Even the German's compatriots chastise him for the transgression. Only eleven planes return from this sortie. I don't think they even came close to hitting their target. Blaine tells Capt. Thenault that he saw a Black Fokker. Reed overhears and goes out to find it. He returns empty-handed. Blaine seeks out Lucienne (Jennifer Decker) at the brothel, but it turns out that she'd never worked there---she'd just <i>been</i> there to take care of him. He visits her on her homestead and ingratiates himself with her orphaned nephews and nieces by goofing around on his horse. He's back in the air. The baron is back, taking out one of his friends. He fights him to a standstill and has the baron in his sights but his gun jams. The baron gets behind him...but lets him go, pulling up alongside to salute him instead. He wants to defeat him without taking advantage of an equipment malfunction. He's a young man, just like Blaine. Blaine salutes him back. Back on the ground, Jensen (Philip Winchester) succumbs to acute anxiety, Blaine flies to Lucienne's farm to ask her if she wants to fly with him. She says no. The adorable children urge her to try. It's worth it just to see her in those flight goggles. Adorable. She prepares a speech in English: <iq>It's not good for me to fall in love with you, because I fear for you.</iq> (or something like that, because it had been translated to French and now I'm translating it back. 😂 ). The next battle begin with Germans firing on civilians. Those dastardly Huns! The Yanks take most of the them out but one of them is hit and crashes between trenches. Blaine lands and rushes in to help his comrade, whose hand is stuck under his plane. The French try to give them cover but it's trench warfare. Luckily, Hans has terrible aim with his mortars. Blaine chops off his friend's hand with a shovel and they make it to a trench. In another cliché moment, the young man who didn't want to room with a black man offers the same black man a cognac as thanks for having saved his ass. Lucienne's village and home are surrounded by Germans. Blaine steals his plane to pick up the kids, then returns again to pick up Lucienne. She is wounded but is expected to recover. She is sent to the local hospital to convalesce. Blaine receives a French medal of honor for having saved four French civilians, though he is half-admonished by his captain never to do something like this again. The next cliché is that the flyboys are to attack a German zeppelin intent on bombing Paris---this feels very much like a video game at times, to be honest---and they lose two pilots, one of them being Reed, who loses out to the Black Fokker. He gets his revenge as, with his last breath, he dive-bombs straight into the zeppelin. Lucienne has recovered enough to move with her niblings to England, where she hopes that Blaine will join them when his duty is done. The final mission, baby: the Americans have finally entered the fray. Jean Reno chews a bit of scenery telling his remaining crew how proud he is of the pilots---and men---that they've become, under his command. When they return from yet <i>another</i> mission---this one with U.S.-American bombers---Blaine turns around to head out alone, just like Reed used to do. He attacks the German aviation base---like, why haven't they done this before?---arousing the ire of the Black Fokker. They're in the air. It's a one-on-one dogfight. Blaine squints. He ... doesn't fire! Two other planes come up behind him, strafing. The Germans aren't fighting fair! That's OK! Help is on the way! I mean, you could so easily have predicted this, no? Everyone nods to each other. And then the Block Fokker is, predictably, back. And he's got Blaine on the ropes! His plane is all shot up! Blaine's got a big hole in his left shoulder. The Black Fokker pulls up next to him, all smug, even though he'd be dead if his buddies hadn't saved his ass. Blaine is pissed. Pulls up next to him and shoots him with his pistol. Um, ok? Was that always an option? Salutes all around. Back to base with their shot-up crates. The end. The notes mention that Skinner (the black guy) joined the Americans but they refused to let a damned n***er fly, so he went back to the states and because a pilot for the post office. God Bless America. Blaine never found Lucienne but he did end up having the biggest ranch in Texas. He never flew again, after the war. I watched it in French with no subtitles (they weren't available). It went surprisingly well! The movie is too long and there are a few too many, similar dogfights, some of which could have been truncated. Many scenes lingered longer than necessary. The soundtrack was doing a lot of work, but became noticeable as trying way too hard.</div> <span id="Schtonk">Schtonk (1992)</span> --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105328/">8/10</a> <div>This is a movie about the early 1980s, when con men fooled Germany's biggest publishers into spending millions of Deutschmarks on Hitler's diaries. It is a deeply sarcastic, cynical, and satirical film and I loved nearly every minute of it. We follow the "careers" of <i>der schmierige</i> Hermann Willié (Götz George) (<iq>mit accent auf dem E</iq>) and Fritz Knobel (Uwe Ochsenknecht). Hermann cons Freya von Hepp (Christiane Hörbiger) (or does she con him?), while Fritz has a tumultuous relationship with Biggi (Dagmar Manzel). Those are the main players. Biggi poses for Fritz in paintings that he's making that are supposed to have been made by Adolf Hitler of his dear wife Eva Braun. Biggi is fed up and refuses to continue doing this. Fritz engages the talents of the <i>voluptuous</i>, <i>young</i>, <i>nubile</i>, and <i>nearly impossibly frisky</i> Martha (Veronica Ferres). Fritz meets the crooked Professor Strasser (Karl Schönböck) while selling a painting to a rich Nazi aficionado. The Professor has been engaged to verify the authenticity of the newly minted painting. He does so with gusto because he's also a con man, pretending that he <i>was there</i> when the painting was painted by Hitler, in a field, with Eva as God made her. Meanwhile Hermann is trying to sell Hermann Göring's ship, which is in a sorry state of disrepair but to which he has apparently obtained the title. Hermann is a sorry drunkard, constantly hitting up his friends for a few hundred marks. He is, ostensibly, a <i>journalist</i>, though he does nothing journalistic throughout the film. He works for the HH press, which is both the license-plate abbreviation for Hamburg but is also well known to mean <i>Heil Hitler</i>. Fritz comes up with the brilliant idea of writing Hitler's diary, managing to sell it for a nice bit of money. Hermann is at the auction. They meet and discuss plans for "finding" more of these books. Hermann's job as a journalist does give him connections to the large publishing houses of Hamburg. In particular, they easily con Dr. Wieland (Ulrich Mühe), who, for a long time, hides his purchases from the owners of the company Uwe Esser (Martin Benrath) and Kurt Glück (Hermann Lause). They initially purchase 3 of the volumes, then 30, then 60, the first few at 40K DM, then at ever-increasing prices, as Hitler-memorabilia---and, quite frankly, Nazi fever---grips the elite ranks of the publishing world. This is all quite hilarious and satirical and bitingly cynical and wonderfully presented. They're just all so ostentatious and completely un-self-aware---and all such suckers. After writing so many volumes of the diary, Fritz begins to come apart at the seams, unsure of who he even is anymore. In one wonderful scene, he is ill, writing of his illness in Hitler's voice, sneezing, his hair slicked back---recognizable as Hitler's style rather than his own customary afro---and a smear of pen-ink staining his upper lip. He answers the door like this when Willié rings him up, causing even Willié to jump back. Martha stays by his side the whole time, for unknown reasons, though it appears that she really does love him. Biggi returns after Fritz proposes with a giant ring, and makes peace with Martha, who isn't going anywhere. It is these two who stop him before finishing his final three volumes before he (A) completely collapses from exhaustion and (B) is caught for forging. They close up his shop, destroying all of the evidence that he'd ever done anything and they get out of dodge in a little moving truck. Hermann is not so clever nor so protected by his dear Freya, who puts up with him despite his shockingly domineering ways. That is, she puts up with him until she doesn't, leaving him at the peak of his triumph. He doesn't really care. He pretends to, but he really only loves himself, that manic grin pasted to his face throughout. The magazine has spent DM 9M on the diaries and they are ready to reveal them to the world. The first few had been verified as authentic---through Hermann's subterfuge, of course---and they'd gone full steam ahead in purchasing many, many more. Now, they were ready. At the release of the Hitler Diaries to the rest of the world, Uwe says, <iq>Von Heute an, müssen grossen Teile der deutschen Geschichte neu geschrieben werden.</iq> That is just wonderful. Chef's kiss. Willié doesn't deserve any of success, and yet he got it all, for such a long time. And then, the jig is up! Herman's subterfuge is uncovered and he's in deep shit. Or is he? He is a con-man par excellence. He pleads his case to Dr. Wieland: he concedes that the paper and ink are too new to have been available in Hitler's time. However, three notaries have verified that it <i>is</i> Hitler's handwriting (faked authentication, of course). Therefore, there can be only one conclusion: <i>Hitler lived through the end of the war</i> and is probably still alive! He hisses, through a manic rictus, his eyes swimming behind his dirty glasses, <bq>Er lebt!</bq> Brilliant. Take a bow, Willié. The publishers aren't buying it, but he does manage to walk out of there. He vows to go find Hitler. We next see him, navigating his boat while learning Spanish. <iq>Estoy buscando a un viejo con bigote negro. [I am searching for an old man with a black mustache.]</iq> (because he is, presumably heading to Argentina or Brazil). He is accompanied by police boats, as he repeats this all in English. Fritz, Biggi, and Martha escape in a <i>Wohnwagen</i> into Switzerland. It's hilarious how they seem to be entering from somewhere mountainous, perhaps Austria, rather than Germany, where the border is nearly completely flat---it certainly doesn't have any towering mountains, as depicted. But they have gotten away with their ill-gotten gains, the three of them. The film was wonderfully shot and was so much better than I'd expected. What a gem. I can't believe that not one of my friends had ever recommended it.</div> </dl> <hr> <ft>These are notes for me to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. The amount of text is not proportional to my enjoyment. I might write less because I didn't get around to it when it was fresh in my mind. I rate the film based on how well it suited me personally for the <i>genre</i>, my mood and. let's be honest, level of intoxication. I make no attempt to avoid <b>spoilers</b>. Links are to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1323291/ratings">my IMDb ratings</a></ft> <ft>If you know, you know. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson" author="" source="Wikipedia">Wallis Simpson</a> was so amazing that she caused Prince Edward to abdicate his throne so that he could be with her. Look at her picture in her Wikipedia entry. She's lovely.<fn> <img src="{att_link}vincenzo_laviosa_-_duke_and_duchess_of_windsor_-_google_art_project_(cropped).webp" href="{att_link}vincenzo_laviosa_-_duke_and_duchess_of_windsor_-_google_art_project_(cropped).webp" align="none" caption="Duchess of Windsor, photo by Vincenzo Laviosa" scale="75%"></ft> <ft>I can confirm that I am not alone in this. As luck would have it, my sister had also just watched <i>Fatal Attraction</i> and she, too, only noticed that the son was a daughter quite late in the film.</ft> <ft>Vince McMahon must have strong-armed someone to include this in a Schwarzenegger film for marketing.</ft> <ft>Presumably another very obvious product placement.</ft> <ft>That means <i>aw</i> in German, usually expressed very sarcastically, which is how I meant it here.</ft> <ft>I was going to write that she's "quite lovely" but I just learned today---from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fQGz6CHP4w" author="Evan Edinger" source="YouTube">Words that Mean the Opposite in America</a>---that, whereas "quite" is a magnifier in American English, it reduces the strength of the following word in British English. So, I elected not to describe a woman who's a U.S.-American but who married British as "quite lovely", because it might mean "very lovely" or "somewhat less than lovely," depending on who reads it.</ft>