SMOL Tanks - Part 1

I don't just go see movies! I do paint stuff sometimes.

It's been literally years since I picked up a paintbrush. I didn't take the time to set up my painting space and because of that I didn't paint. I wanted to paint but didn't have anywhere to paint. It's a vicious circle. Eventually I had some help and did the work myself to make an area on the paint desk where I can reasonably work. I also set up for streaming while I was working on the desk. That's a whole 'nother topic.

I also had cataract surgery this year. When I'd healed up I sat at my desk, pulled on my Optivisor, and promptly freaked out because I couldn't focus on the mini I was going to paint. Turns out that the changes in my vision meant my trusty magnifying visor didn't work anymore.

Side note on that one regarding cataract surgery. They replace the little bag of clear goo in your eye with a plastic lens that has a serial number. One thing you lose is the ability to auto-focus, to squint and change your focal length. Squinting only gives me a headache now and I'm training myself not to do that. To top it off I chose distance lenses so I'd need glasses for reading but not for driving. The way the surgeries turned out I can see up close but need glasses for driving, really for anything more than six feet out if I want clarity. Turns out successful cataract surgery means your vision is correctable to 20/20, not that it will be that.

I pondered the vision thing and came up with a solution. I use my distance glasses to correct myself to 20/20, then add magnification on top of that. I tested it with the visor, it worked, now I have magnifiers that clip onto my glasses. I can now paint but I'm honestly not sure what level I'll be painting at yet.

Back to the tanks.

I asked my friend Randy to print some as he was winding down his printing for ReaperCon and because I don't have my resin printer going at the moment. Randy has a resin printer with the big bed so he printed a hella lot of tanks for me.

I got these from a Kickstarter because who can resist teeny tanks? They go with a ruleset the developer has been making. They're in two pieces - the tread and the turret. The turrets determine the model stat line. The treads hold turrets. Since there's a number of turret options Randy printed me a variety of turrets. A lot of variety of turrets.

The entire tank body is about the size of a regular d6 when you put them together. They're so cute! That picture shows an assortment of them I was cleaning up at the convention. I was removing support marks and I had to file down the peg on the turrets to fit the tread holes. I don't know if that was a model design or printing issue. Regardless, filing it resolve it.

There's a fair bit of detail on these but once you get into them you can find where they're variations on the same theme. The designer used the same turret base and modified them into different weapon systems for the most part. That's fine. It means more assembly line painting styles.

After counting things out I have enough to make ten sets of tanks. The game rules are for 1 to 4 tanks. I have more than forty treads but there's four styles and after sorting them out it turns out I can make ten different colored sets of treads. That's the color that will matter in game because I'm not dealing with having four of each turret for each set of tanks. That's just nuts. So look at the tread color for the army.

I've gotten to the point of putting all the metallics on the pieces. As you can see there's a lot of pieces. Some of them are metallic right over primer, some are black with metallic on top. It all depended on the piece I was painting. But all of them have been done with the silver and brass colors. Yes. I had to pick out details in brass. Sue me.

That's where I left things. Next up will be the white undercoat since I'll be using bright colors and I need to clean up where there's metallic and black overpainting. I know I could just touch up those spots but then I'd have two different whites under the colors and I simply can't have that.

I don't know quite what to do with the missiles. The tiny missiles on the tiny tank turrets. There's a few different versions of them - just the nose showing, the top third/half of a missile. and full missiles. When you're at this scale you need to be careful about how detailed your painting is because it's easy for what looks good up close to be less good or lost on the tabletop. I know the bodies will be white. It's the missile detail that's making me ponder my options.

I plan on getting to the white this week and it will take me a while because I'm in no rush and I'm learning what I can do again. My hands work just fine, thank goodness. It's the sight thing that I'm learning. Oddly enough I can get a brief moment of sharper focus my opening my eyes really wide. I don't get that.

I also need to decide what ten colors to use on my treads. White and black aren't options for me. Certainly the primary and secondary colors, which make six. There's this great electric blue that Vallejo makes I might borrow from the store for a set, which makes seven. I have so much paint that I'm not at all concerned about finding three more distinct colors.

Until I have something more exciting than the same picture above but with a more solid white I'll go back to reviewing movies. I'm making myself finish these before doing some ork skin color tests I've been champing at the bit to do. But nope. Gotta finish the project I've started. Willpower!

Song Sung Blue - My Take (Spoilers)

 

Of course I was going to see this one, even though I'm still annoyed at Hugh Jackman. I lucked out in that it was the Screen Unseen, which to me seemed a little odd. They'd been hyping this movie way too much for me not to be suspicious of it in the first place and to have it take an "unseen" slot was both odd and a lie. There had been an advance screen the previous day at Dolby cinemas so it had been seen. Well. It wasn't released so maybe that's the technicality.

Anyway. On to the movie stuff.

The first trailer had this being a fun romp of a movie. The second trailer hinted that it was going to be darker than that. I'm pleased to say they made this a movie rooted in people. It could easily have turned into cardboard cutouts all around but they pulled it together around the family motif.

I will say that making Hugh Jackman look like a middle-aged guy from Milwaukee in the late 1980s was a feat to pull off and they did. But the poor guy can't seem to get away from being made to wear muttonchops. People talk about him wearing bad wigs but they never saw the hairstyles, and lack thereof, in that time period.

The funny thing that people are saying the most improbable events of the movie bother them but those events really happened. They're not pointing out the things that were done to adapt the real-life story into a movie. If you want the full real-life story, go watch the documentary that inspired this movie.

Mike and Claire are both small time musicians and they pair up, both musically and personally. They click in both areas. They're both struggling and divorced. She's got custody of her two kids, his ex has custody of his daughter. They work on their combined show and combining the families.

Things are sailing right along when the second act tragedy kicks in. Claire gets injured and has a problem with pain pills. Mike is struggling to keep the family together, to keep her together, and keep himself together. They don't hide the dark issues that come up and they show that people break.

Their act was barreling along before the accident and then after Claire gets the help she needed they eventually do get back on stage together. By this time they're so in tune as a duo (ha ha) that Mike can't go back to his solo career, although he tries. Claire wasn't able to do any of it but when Mike breaks down she wants to try.

They do the work to come back and get their biggest break.

Time to interrupt our story for another part of the story. Mike's got a bad heart. They show him having small heart attacks a couple of times and powering through them. There's a good, if made up for the drama/humor, scene when Claire is brought into the emergency room after her accident when he needs her stepdaughter to help him through one. There's more than a bit of foreshadowing here.

Their big break is a major, sold-out show. Earlier in the day Mike has a heart attack in the bathroom and hits his head on the counter. He patches up the bleeding scalp wound with superglue (he was a Marine (I know there's no former Marines) and he's a mechanic so he'd know to do that) and doesn't tell anyone. He has a brief episode before they go on stage and another one during the performance. Yes. Foreshadowing all around although the one during the performance is well twisted so you're not quite sure if it's what it is.

After their show they're going to meet Neil Diamond. When they get to the place Mike isn't responsive. They cut to the funeral so it's pretty clear what happened.

One of the things the movie doesn't do is give clear time references. There's one scene with a desk calendar but there's no sense of how long things happen. There's no telling how long it took to get their initial music group popular. There's no telling how long Claire was in rehab. There's hints of it but nothing more. And that lets things happen organically in the movie because they don't need to spell it out.

There's been some criticism about the death situation. The real Mike died from complications from the head injury after lingering for a few days. The implication here is that Mike died of a heart attack in the car. But they stick with the lack of time reference so we honestly don't know what happened in the car and how long between that and the funeral. Nor does it matter.

I liked this movie. I liked the way it centered around people and how complicated things can get. Sure, seeing Hugh Jackman in tidy whiteys was amusing. Even he can't make those look good and they were smart enough to pair them with a long t-shirt so you only get to see a little underneath that. You see some bare chested Hugh and again it's done properly - costume fittings and when he's passed out on the hospital floor after unbuttoning his shirt (for a real reason). Mike walks around without pants. It happens.

I'd say this is a good movie. It's going to be one of those ones you watch once in a while when you need to lose yourself, shed a few tears, laugh, and hear some good music. There's nothing wrong with that.

Zootopia 2 - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'll use the same review I used in my very brief online ones on Facebook: "Perfect sequel. No notes."

This one picks up the week after the first movie. Nick is on the police force now, partnered with Judy. They're kind of a publicity stunt but they're still working together.

This story is about reptiles. We know there's no reptiles in Zootopia. They said so in the first movie. But there are and this is about what happened to them. There's also a side plot for stirring up discontent between prey and predator animals.

This is a buddy-cop movie and follows it down the line. The partners, the problems, the sidekicks. All of it. It's well done and if you like the format of movie, you'll like this one.

The new characters are all fun and I hope that if there's a third movie (yeah right, like there won't be) that they continue to have roles. Even the side characters should stick around, if they can afford the actors who provided the voices.

There's any number of reviews out there that go into the social dynamics this movie covers so I won't bother with that. There's a lot of them and I don't feel like detailing them this long after seeing the movie. Like the Wicked movies it's on theme with turning people against each other so the more powerful people can do whatever they like. I'm not surprised this theme is heavy this year, to be honest.

The movie gap between the first and second is nine years but the movie itself really does have the feeling of continuing right where it left off. The continuity on that is great and since I watched the first one the week before seeing this one it really stood out for me.

The movie hints at the other missing genus - birds - in a little bit at the end of the movie. It's not exactly a subtle thing either. It's the plot of the entirely expected third movie.

Wicked: For Good - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I waited to see the first movie until this one came out. I have no interest in waiting a year to see the second half of a movie. They rereleased the first one (not on IMAX) so I could see it in the theater, which was nice.

I've never seen Wicked. I'm not a huge fan of the Wizard of Oz movie. I've read a couple of the books and they never grabbed me. So this is all me and just about the movie, or movies since I'll have to refer back to the original Wicked at times.

The whole movie is about politics. Then again so are the books. Anyone who complains never got the point of the whole thing. The Wizard manipulates the people of Oz so that he can continue to do as he likes. He's good at it and has good help. People want to believe him, because to do otherwise means calling so much of their behavior into question.

This movie picks up with Elpheba on her campaign to expose the wizard as a fraud. She's the one he's using to unite the people against a common enemy. Glinda is powerless but is presented as the foil for the evil that's out there. She's kind of aware of her role as mouthpiece but also doesn't seem to mind it because it gets her the attention she craves.

I was working on going through the plot points here but got myself tangled up. Pretty much it's the bad witch, who can do real magic, and the good witch, who can't do magic but has excellent PR as a foil. Add in the prince who was going to marry Glinda but ends up going with Elpheba, only to be pretty much beaten to death by his own troops as a traitor.

Elpheba and Glinda are still friends through this. Glinda wants Elpheba to stop being evil. Elpheba wants to get Oz out of the grip of the wizard. They work together when they can.

The tinman is a munchkin that Elpheba's sister almost killed witn trying to use the spellbook but Elpheba scrapes out a spell to keep him "alive" without a heart.

The scarecrow is the price that Elpheba wanted not to die. If you think about it not having a brain means that while you can't live you can't die. Something like that?

The cowardly lion is the cub that Elpheba and the prince rescued in Wicked and set free. He's been used as an example of what happens when people don't treat animals as animals.

So all three of those were created by Elpheba and have a good reason to go after her when the wizard gives them their quest.

The tinman and the cowardly lion are kind of abandoned in the story at this point. The books go on with their stories but the movie used them to show the Dorothy band setting off and then set them aside. Which happens when they're not main characters.

Glinda works with Elpheba to stage her "death" by Dorothy. The wizard is exiled from Oz after finding out that Elpheba is his daughter. Elpheba and the prince-scarecrow leave Oz to live a new life. Elpheba seems to have given Glinda the ability to do real magic. Good wins all around.

The sets are just as brilliant. The songs are kind of forgettable. The characters seem to peter out in development as their stories are wound up. I have to agree with the bulk of the reviews that say this one isn't as good as the first movie. It feels too crowded and rushed. The character development that was done in the first movie stalls out here since they're coasting on what they've got.

I find it funny that people are giving the costumer grief for a grey knitted sweater Elpheba wears (the "sex sweater" since that's what she puts on before she and the prince have sex). I liked it. It was a nice shift from her wearing all black to moving to grey. In a way I think it's the best way they showed character development in the whole thing.

Fackham Hall - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I'd seen the trailers for this and then it was the Screen Unseen so I figured I scored - no need to use another of my movie slots for it. From the trailers it looked like a reasonably fun broad satire of English aristocracy in the time of Downton Abbey. I was half right.

Don't get me wrong. I like satire. I like an occasional broad easy-to-digest movie that's full of sight gags, pratfalls, and misunderstandings. They're like Tom Clancey books - no surprises and mind mulch for vacations.

I was to be disappointed.

The opening shot is a fancy car pulling through a big fancy gate to a big fancy house - Fackham Hall. Underneath that seems to be the family motto: "Incestus ad Infinitum" so yeah, it's gonna be broad humor and gutter humor.

Again, I can enjoy those if done well. Not everything has to be nuanced. The problem I had with this movie is that it never seemed to decide what it was going to skewer with the satire. They took a scattershot approach that left everything floating on the surface of truly beautiful sets - kind of like oil over a scenic pond. The pond is not improved by the oil nor was the manor house improved by the script.

I get it. It's satire. It's not supposed to be a literary masterpiece. But what I expect from a movie is some kind of coherency. That's where it falls very short. With their unfocused approach and habit of returning to jokes to the point of them being more eye rolling than amusing this movie, well, blows.

It has all the things they were looking to skewer - inbreeding in the aristocracy, the rebellious daughter, the runaway daughter, the obligatory "odd animals being shot out of the air", the requirement to marry a first cousin or the family is kicked out, the missing family member who lied about their age and ran off to fight in the war, the street urchin turned scoundrel, etc. There's so much of it that nothing comes into focus.

I'll give you the rundown, as much as I can remember it. I'm woefully behind on my movie reviews.

The scoundrel is given a job to deliver a letter to Fackham Hall. Yeah. In the affected accents you know exactly what that sounds like. The younger daughter is going to marry the first cousin to save the family. The older daughter refused to do it. The scoundrel is mistaken for someone applying for a houseboy type job and gets hired, without delivering the letter. The family member that lied about his age and went to the war is shown in flashbacks to be a toddler in an officer uniform. Ha ha, right?

Cue the scenes of sight gags racking up with the younger daughter running out of the church to go away with what seems to be the night soil collector, happily being treated like chattel, leaving the older daughter to marry for the sake of the family. The older daughter who has taken to the scoundrel, of course. The housekeeper takes a dim view of the whole thing. The father is murdered and the inspector comes in to figure it out. Or not. But it pushes up the urgency of marrying the first cousin.

The daughter has a roll in the hay with the scoundrel. The housekeeper sees them going into the barn. She decides to use that as a way to frame the scoundrel for the murder. The older daughter agrees to marry the cousin. The priest again (this is one place where they definitely went back to the same gag too many times when the priest reads the next word after a sentence to give it a whole new naughty meaning, then corrects himself) starts the marriage.

The scoundrel gets away because the police officer happens to be someone he met in the pub he took the oldest daughter to prior to the barn situation. He does get arrested, reads the letter, and finds out he's the older brother of the cousin. Cue farcical jail escape during the wedding. The housekeeper blocks him and relates what really happened to the father - a series of stupidly done actual accidents that ended up killing him (he fell onto the letter opener to stab himself, etc.) but he gets past. The two of them get married. All is sweetness and roses.

Of course she still married her cousin. In the credits where they show how each family member ended up the younger sister bucked tradition by marrying a SECOND cousin. Hilarious.

I wanted to like the movie. I was ready to give it a very fair chance. However they made it impossible to do so by, well, making a bad movie.

Rental Family - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I love Brendan Frasier. Always have, always will. It's his smile. It gets me every time. He's also a darn good actor who was done dirty.

This movie lets him ooze his shy charm over everything. I would almost think they wrote the role for him due to how well it matches his style. I wouldn't be surprised. But it works for him.

He's a commercial actor in Japan so expect some of the required "fish out of water" situations both physically and culturally. He had one very popular ad job and he's been doing bit parts ever since. We open with him going to yet another audition and being told they'll get back to him. His agent tells him about another job while he's waiting to hear back from this one.

Cue some shots of him not fitting in - standing out, quite literally, from the crowd, fitting into the public transportation seats (yeah, movie poster), etc. He does speak fluent Japanese and has the cultural basics down cold. We find out later he's been in Japan for eight years and decided to stay there. Reasons? Unknown.

The other job is what the movie is about and addresses social issues in Japan. One of the big ones is loneliness. Another is their strict social expectations. His first job is to be the American at a funeral. Americans are actually a status symbol in some Asian situations. Go figure.

He finds out the funeral was a set piece for the not-dead guy to experience the social ritual of the funeral he won't get because he's not of that status. Back at the office Phillip finds out more of what they do and why - they fill holes in people's lives. His first job is to be the groom at a wedding.

We find out that the bride has a same sex partner and wants to move to Canada with her so they can live in a way they can't in Japan. Her family knows but has to put up the pretense that she's marrying Phillip so not to be ostracized. It's an insight into the type of things he's going to experience.

We meet his coworkers who do things like pretend to be a mistress apologizing to the wife. It's actually called Apology Service. The man doesn't have to bring his real mistress to meet his wife but still gets the catharsis of the fake mistress apologizing for his mistakes. Cultural thing.

His main job is going to be pretending to be the father of a young girl so that she can get into an elite school. Single mothers have a stigma so she needs him to pretend to be the father who's around until the school interview. In preparation the mother wants to have him spend time with them so they seem like more of a family but also not tell her daughter that he really isn't her father, so that she doesn't spoil anything.

His other job has him pretending to interview an older Japanese actor because his daughter wants him to feel relevant. He's actually a fan of this guy so he's able to keep up the act and conversations. The man is getting forgetful, which means he can't get roles even though he's still famous.

OK. Enough plot detail. On to summaries.

The situation with the actor is that the guy wants to go back to his home province and have Phillip take him. His daughter won't do it. Phillip won't do it but does take him out for lunch. That's when he finds out that the guy wanders off. He does end up taking him to his home province so we get some lovely shots of unincorporated Japan. The actor has a heart attack and Phillip is arrested, accused of kidnapping him. More on this later.

The one with the kid is about the same. She warms up to him eventually and since she has no reason not to think of him as her father gets close. When the mother finds out she's upset and Phillip gets called on the carpet by his boss. Phillip gets upset because he's trying to do what he feels the company wants - for him to play the role. He gets schooled in how much to get involved.

The interview at the school goes well. The daughter is accepted. Phillip is told to take a hike. The daughter sees him on TV in one of his minor roles and finds out the truth. She eventually confronts him and they end up as friends. Heartwarming.

There's a small side story about him being hired by a guy to play video games with him. Over time the guy cleans himself up, the two of them clean his house up, and they end up doing things outside the house too. This is another loneliness thing in that this guy is buying a friend. It's both sad and relatable.

As the story progresses we find out the owner of the company has hired himself a wife and son to be waiting for him when he gets home every night. He's the same as any of their customers and the strain of the false situation finally has him realizing just how messed up the whole thing is.

Phillip gets accused of kidnapping the actor because they went off without permission from his daughter and it seems like they didn't tell her. It's a decent trip of trains, boats, then walking so it's long. The employees of the company decide to pretend to be lawyers to sort out things with the daughter, only to have a police officer show up. It's the company owner, pretending to be police to do the same thing.

The employees each break out of what they've been doing and see it for the damage it does. The company stays in business but without some of the less savory things they were doing. Specifically the owner tells a potential customer they no longer do Apology Service. 

I honestly can't remember what happens to Phillip and the job. The movie ends on something that was part of the actor's storyline which makes sense given the contemplative nature of the movie.

It's a melancholy movie. The only person who is actually happy is the little girl for a while when she thinks her father is back in her life, and that gets ruined too. I guess the actor got to take his trip, so that was good for him. The whole movie is about a closed society and relationship dynamics. It doesn't translate well outside of the Japanese culture because they have such a fossilized social system that most other places don't. I don't go for that "human experience" thing because the experience is based on the humans, and both of those change for context.

It's a good enough watch. It will draw you in to the stories to a certain amount. There's just a lot of storylines to juggle so none of them really get explored. Even Phillip's story isn't really there.

The Running Man - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I've read the book so I know the story. That doesn't mean I'm not going to try to enjoy a retelling of it. Book adaptations are rarely identical to the source material. That's what makes them adaptations. Stephen King stories can be particularly challenging because of how much is what happens in the characters' heads, which does not lend itself to a visual medium.

We know the outline. Man goes on the show to get money for his sick family. He has encounters along his time trying to stay ahead of everyone trying to kill him. He takes down the system. It's not a bad outline and it works for action movies or they wouldn't keep doing it.

In this telling Ben Richards has been blacklisted from pretty much any employment due to things like trying to form unions. He's A Good Guy who just wants to make life better for his family. While he's on the couch, due to quite literally not being able to get a job, he's watching the game shows and how much money people win on them. There's not just The Running Man. There's a variety of games designed to humiliate the players for the viewers' amusement and some cash. Cash? Credits? Whatever.

He decides to audition for one of the low risk shows. The wife is concerned. He assures her he's not going for the brass ring - The Running Man. He gets in line and goes through the audition process. Turns out they run through the audition process to find out what show best suits the person, if any. Ben, of course, ends up chosen for The Running Man along with two others.

He's hesitant but there's a graduating return scale based on how long he stays alive during the thirty days and how many of the show's Hunters he takes out. So his wife will get the money she needs for medicine for their sick child no matter what. They even put his family into their version of witness protection because it seems they've had situations where people have gone after player's families. He signs on the bottom line but is full of righteous fury about it.

OK. Onto the running and the head start. He stops by someone he knows who does electronic and other repairs to get some equipment, including weapons. He's got a stupidly obvious watch-type thing that counts down how long until his next video needs to be mailed. Then he's off and Running.

The bulk of the movie is him trying to not get killed, killing a couple of Hunters more or less by accident, and finding people out there who are willing to help him. One of those is a conspiracy theory podcaster who fills him in on some of the things about the game. They always choose three people - the quick kill, the overconfident mid game kill, and the one who will go near the distance. The podcaster helps him get to the boonies where he can wait out the clock. Calendar. Game.

Nope. Doesn't work out that way. He's ratted out by someone who wants the reward so he's off and Running again. He ends up taking a hostage when he's trying to get to the border (I think?) who goes from brainless network fangirl to seeing the larger issue underneath. She ends up helping him get to the next, and final, phase.

He demands a plane, he gets a plane. He's got the top Hunter with him. Woo. This is where it all comes crashing down on him. The smarmy network guy tells him his family has been killed, then offers him a deal to have his own show, hunting down people. Cue some angst. Cue the top Hunter trying to do the hunting thing. Turns out, gasp, that guy is the one who lasted the longest in The Long Run and was offered the job on the show. It's all rigged!

Ben reveals all of this to his now adoring fans. The network audience gets riotous. There's rioting all over. The network executive gets to find out what happens when the crowd turns against you. Ben flies the plane into the building. He's a martyr.

I believe the book leaves it open as to whether or not he survived the plane crash. The movie does not. They show him taking out network stuff and hooking up with his family, now in a tidy area of the city, so there's the happy ending that's necessary for The Good Guy.

It's a fun action movie if you like those. There's banter. There's some things that someone who's not special ops trained shouldn't be able to do but does anyway. There's characters to like and ones to dislike. Overall it's got the mix right and it's exactly what you should expect from the trailers.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I liked the first movie of the series and never got around to watching the second one, a situation I rectified before seeing this one. I liked the second one, by the way.

I'll get this out of the way because it bothers me greatly. The movie starts with a warning that there will be flashing lights and such for those people who are bothered by them. I'd be pissed if I were one of those people, bought my ticket, and then found out about this. They used to post signs in the lobby about it and I feel it should be noted in the online/app ordering as well.

This is what you can expect from one of the series - rather implausible situations where everything is pre-planned and goes perfectly. Of course, if you expect anything else you're watching the wrong movie series. This just takes it into slightly more absurd territory.

They're obviously ready to continue the franchise, weaning us off the existing characters, with a few new magicians. Younger ones, of course. They're big into the use of technology along with traditional magic so that gives more options for situations.

They're still The Horsemen. They still go after bad guys and drain their bank accounts. Nothing new there. They get an assignment, they do it. This time it's a thinly veiled DeBeers-like diamond mining family. The heiress is an icy blonde who, shocker, hates magic. Nope. I couldn't make that one up. The goal is for them to steal the signature diamond that just happens to be taken out of decades long storage in a secret Arabian buried vault for some event.

The secret Arabian buried vault. Seriously. It's set in the middle of the desert. There's two armed guards at the entrance. There's a high security keypad. There's the mandatory long elevator ride down to the vault. There's more security stuff. Sheesh. This one set piece is so, well, outré that I give it its own "WTF?" for whoever approved it.

Anyway.

They go to some special house out in the English countryside that's full of old magic tricks and history. They find the information they need to do their job. They use the magic stuff to confuse the police who the bad lady arranged to arrest them. Yeah yeah.

They do social engineering to get to the diamond, crash the fancy ball to do the close up magic to get it and such, use the company's F1 car to distract (that's why they're in the desert where the vault is), get caught, get dropped into a deathtrap, get out of the deathtrap, and eventually foil the bad guy. Or girl, in this case.

One of the new kids is revealed to be the half brother of the evil lady who she thought she killed when she killed his mother, who was obviously fooling around with their father. He's the rightful heir. Yeah yeah.

They do the reveals of how they did all the tricks and that's where you have to suspend disbelief. Things like knowing exactly what the secured display for the diamond looks like so they can duplicate it to their needs, faking her out into thinking she's going to the vault, etc. It makes for interesting cinema and showing how everything has to work perfectly. But it has to work perfectly or none of it works and that's where the movies show their cracks.

Did I enjoy it? Yes. It's pretty much what I expected. Did I find it required me to force myself not to get angry at the incredible sequences of events that had to happen? Also yes. The acting was fine. The new characters to continue the franchise are fine.

I'm not unhappy that I saw the movie. I'll go see the next one, because I know there will be a next one. I will not be doing a movie marathon of these three because I've seen the tricks and how they work. That makes rewatching them rather pointless.

Bugonia - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I was intrigued by this movie from the trailers. I like a good conspiracy theory movie and it seemed like it would have a comedic aspect as well.

I was wrong. It was a good conspiracy theory movie with a good dark comedy aspect as well. There's a big, huge, gaping, yawning difference between comedy and dark comedy. Good dark comedies are difficult to come by these days. It seems like they stopped writing those in the 90s. Maybe this is the return of them?

On one side we have the conspiracy theory guy and his cousin, on the other we have a high-powered executive going about her life. Yup. The conspiracy theory guy believes the high-powered executive is an alien and not one from a different country. An actual honest-to-goodness outer space alien.

I'm going to abbreviate going forward since there's a lot of words I don't want to have to keep typing them. Yes. I know I could abbreviate then search-and-replace but then I'd have to read the whole thing over to make sure it didn't replace things I didn't want replaced.

CG - Conspiracy guy
CGC - Conspiracy guy's cousin
HPE - High-powered executive

The CG is positive that his research shows that the ship from Andromeda will arrive in four days during the lunar eclipse. He's also positive that the HPE is from Andromeda and can get him a meeting with the royals on the ship to try to save earth.

CG is positive that the planet can only be saved with outside intervention. He plans on asking the Andromedans (nicely) to give that help. But first he needs to find one and have them bring him to the ship. The two live out in the county in a typical Midwestern style house and keep bees. They're big on the bees as an analogy for how life intersects, etc.

CGC is neurodiverse. He follows his cousin but isn't as on board with the alien theory. So he's asking questions about whether things are right or not, etc. Fun note - the actor who plays this character is also neurodiverse. He's also got great hair.

The HPE lives in a fancy modern house, does fancy rich person things, has a fancy new black SUV, and wears a fancy black suit (and black Louboutin shoes as demonstrated by a shot from behind as she walks, showing those famous red soles). She's got the big office with glass walls and there's a bit where she's telling her employees to leave on time unless they really have to stay late but she'd prefer if they leave on time unless they have work they want to complete. It's quite the rollercoaster of work-life balance talk.

The two of them come up with a plan to kidnap the HPE. The CG gives his cousin a shot to chemically neuter him (doesn't really, pretends to do it (I think)) so they're both immune to the physical wiles of the HPE, who's female. They also get a lot of an antihistamine cream, which is supposed to protect them as well. There's a lot of details in this movie that it's easy to forget some.

They plan it out and succeed in kidnapping the HPE. She puts up a darn good fight but ends up unconscious in her own SUV. The CGC is given the task of shaving her head, because the CG says they communicate with the ship through their hair. Big props to the actress because they did shave her head for real in that shot.

When they get her back to their house they put her in the basement, chain her down, and slather her exposed skin with the cream. No liberties are taken! Exposed means outside of clothing. The lotion streaks show and were part of what made one of the trailers interesting because it makes her skin look not quite human.

When she wakes up they tell her why they kidnapped her, as stated above. They want to use her to get onto the ship. She does a very good job of using all the negotiating and active listening techniques used in the corporate world to try to get them to let her go. Spoiler - they don't.

The day divisions are placecards showing the earth and counting down the days to the lunar eclipse. More on that later in the review.

The movie quickly skips over time so as not to get repetitive. It comes out that CG's mother is gone and there's a couple of times they show her floating like a balloon. CGC continues to ask questions. HPE is cooperating more in putting on the lotion herself.

CG has created equipment to determine if a person is an Andromedan or not. It's a jury rig that includes electrical pads. He straps her in, twists the dial, and watches the readouts. He keeps turning the dial and watching. He keeps turning the dial and watching. The house lights flicker. CGC rips the pads off, saying that he's going to kill her. The monitoring equipment shows a whole lotta things in red by this time.

CG gets all kinds of apologetic because according to his readings she's part of the Imperial Court. He's seriously apologizing. But he doesn't let her go. Back into the basement as he figures out what to do. He's continuing to ask questions. But when he brought the HPE out of the basement to have a meal (suitably chained to the floor, as is her chair) he gave her a dress, with a name on the dress tag.

HPE puts some things together and remembers that CG's mom was part of a medical drug trial gone bad. There's a flashback to the settlement meeting and now we know that CG's mom is still around, just in a coma. Just. I know. But she's not dead, as it was rather implied.

Oof. Lots going on. Let's keep reviewing. This movie is following a fairly common conspiracy theory theme and there's dark comedy in the whole setup and execution of the plans. It's good.

CGC is getting increasingly bothered about the situation. The lunar eclipse is getting closer and CGC wants to go with the aliens. He wants to go away. CG rather dismisses that and talks around the situation, saying that of course he'll take his cousin with him when they go to the ship but the whole point is to fix earth and live there.

(There's a minor subplot with a police officer who used to babysit CG and still feels bad about something he did during that time, wants to make sure he's doing all right without his mother around, and ends up getting a shovel to the face multiple times later. It's not really part of the main plot but it's there so it's here.)

Every time CG goes into the basement to talk to HPE he has CGC hold a rifle on her. CG is getting more and more upset that HPE won't admit she's an alien. To be fair she does give in and say so but it's patently obvious she's trying another technique to get free. The lunar eclipse is almost happening.

Now I remember (thanks to Wikipedia) the purpose of the police officer-shovel interaction. It gets CG out of the house.

During that time CG is gone CGC goes into the basement to talk to HPE and finally asks her to take him away, that he wants to go away. She agrees that she will. CGC then puts the rifle under his chin and pulls the trigger. Oof. Didn't expect that one.

HPE is able to get the keyring from CGC's pocket and unlock herself. While searching for a way out she finds CG's lab. The lab has a lot of dissected bodies and notebooks. Oddly enough HPE doesn't run out screaming. She takes the time to read those notebooks.

CG comes back into the basement to find his cousin and HPE walking free. HPE uses CG's distress at everything falling apart to tell him there's a cure for his mother in her car. It's hiding in a bottle marked antifreeze. All he has to do is give it to her. He believes her, does it, and watches the predictable result of putting antifreeze into someone's IV bag. He's quite upset, as could be imagined.

HPE reveals she really is an Andromedan and details what they've been doing with earth since the age of dinosaurs. She's got that same air of control she tried to give in the beginning but now it's solid. It's a Christopher Reeves Clark Kent/Superman kind of change. She asks how many Andromedans he's found. He said two. She agrees to take him to the ship. All right then. The day of the lunar eclipse is upon us.

She drives him to her office (at gunpoint), wearing her rather wrinkled suit (she'd changed into a bathrobe for most of her time in the basement) and a wig he'd offered her earlier. She's got that panicked expression and body language as she takes him to her office. Various employees are surprised and glad to see her after her disappearance. She goes into her office, closes the drapes, and pulls out a wooden box that holds the control for the transporter in her office closet. The control is a calculator. When he questions that she tells him it has to look inconspicuous. Fair.

While she's "trying to remember the 58 number sequence" CG shows her that he's wearing a suicide bomber vest, just to make sure she doesn't try anything funny. This does not help her with trying to "remember the number".

She finally gets it, he has to go first since she's got the control, and he gets himself in the closet. The closet holds a couple more identical black suits, another pair of shoes, etc. He closes the door, she presses a key, there's a flash, and his bomb detonates. In true dark comedy fashion she's hit in the head with his head as it flies across the room.

She wakes up in an ambulance with a neck brace and tells them to take her back. Of course they refuse. She gets up, rips off the brace, and runs very fast back to the office. When she gets there she takes the control, gets into the closet, and there's a flash.

Before I continue I want to talk about the time reference place cards. The interesting thing to note is that the closer it gets to the day of the lunar eclipse the more the earth goes from round to flat. By the last card it's full on flat earth with oceans flowing over the sides.

Next we see her rising out a pool of goo, with people in very bulky knitted jumpsuits helping her out. They're not speaking English. They say they couldn't contact her because they'd cut off her hair. Turns out she's the Empress and they've been experimenting on various people from earth, with no success for the future. She decides, while wearing a bulk knitted beehive beanie, to end the experiment and pops the bubble over a model of the flat earth.

The movie closes with scenes of dead people everywhere. They just dropped where they were, whatever they were doing. Guess that pesky problem of people destroying earth got settled after all.

Enough about what happened in the movie. Time for some observations.

I liked this movie. I felt it started to drag a little during the "tell me you're an alien" repetition but it wasn't enough to draw the movie down. When she said she was Andromedan it all made more sense. When she was admitting to being an alien she never said Andromedan, as he demanded she do. She just said "OK. I'm an alien!" in hopes of being let go. She said it after getting free and reading his notes.

The movie had dark comedy moments scattered throughout like treats and tidbits. The set was exactly what you'd expect to see in a family home, right down to the random stuff in the basement and the fire pit outside. That normality contrasted with the perceived absurdity of what was going on.

CG listens to conspiracy podcasts while riding his bicycle throughout the movie. He's got things he worked up at home, including what he says the Andromedan ship looks like. He made that detector, that turns out to darn well work. He's been hunting, and finding, Andromedans to refine everything.

That switch from conspiracy theory to "he was right!" is sudden and rather unexpected. The whole movie leads you down the rabbit hole but you don't expect to find the rabbit. In the transporter scene you see a yellow flash before the bomb goes off. When she uses it, there's a yellow flash. Either she knew the bomb would detonate or she was honestly going to take him to the ship we won't know. But she did activate it, as she said she would.

My movie buddy is a big fan of this director and knew what kind of twists they put into their films. He said he envied me going in cold so I could experience everything as it happened. I'm not sure I want to dig into the director's film library or not. I enjoyed this but I don't know if it's completely to my taste ongoing.

The character development was good all around. The CG is suitably unhinged. The CGC is suitably pulled along for the ride. The HPE is suitably scared for her life, until she's not. The whole movie pivots when the CG comes back after killing his mother and finds an actual real royal Andromedan in his basement, and she's asking the questions now.

I can't really nitpick anything except that bit of drag about halfway through the movie and what seems to be the pointless story with the police officer. It might have been for exposition. They never say what the police officer did while he was babysitting so that one is left up to the imagination. I still say having him in the movie was for the sole reason of having him ask if they'd seen her car since they were near-ish and on a main-ish road, and to get killed when he hears the gunshot when CGC does his thing to himself.

This isn't at all subtle when it comes to being about climate change and all that stuff. The bee decline is real so by having them have hives the discussion flowed naturally into that and how people have that same hive instinct that makes them easy to control. That was one of the things CG accused the HGE of during a basement discussion/rant.

I don't need to watch it again. It was good. It wasn't great. It doesn't have rewatchability since I know the twist ending. That's a problem with twist endings. Once you know there's a twist, the only reason to watch the movie again is to see if there were clues to the twist you missed. I'm not interested enough to look for things I might have missed because I think I got the two big clues - her saying Andromedan only after finding the experiments and her truly using the transporter on CG.

Nuremberg - My Take (Spoilers x 2)

 

Normally I review the fun and fluffy movies. I like those. But this is one of those movies that I wanted to get into and talk about. It's my blog and if this isn't a topic you want to read about feel free to read other movie reviews or other material here. I know this topic isn't for everyone.

This is going to be a double feature, because I read the source book after seeing the movie. I'll keep the movie review to the movie and use the book section to show any differences. And yes, there are differences.

Movie Review

The short form review is that this is a movie people should see. It's well done and it shows a part of history that we need to keep remembering. It's not a typical "Nazis are bad" kind of thing. Yes. We all know how it ends. Good storytelling is all about how you get to that ending and this is mostly good storytelling.

I didn't know this was based on a book until I saw it in the opening credits. The characters in the movie are based on real people. This is not - and I repeat not - a documentary. A number of reviews are nitpicking things like language, knowledge of events, etc. If you're a purist, you're going to have the same issues. Accept it or not.

The main character here is Hermann Göring. Second to him is who is probably meant to be the main character Dr. Douglas Kelley as the psychiatrist who's in Nuremberg prison to make sure all the prisoners are mentally fit to stand trial. Russell Crowe takes over this movie, which casts a shadow over Rami Malek. Rami tries and does a decent job of holding up his end of the story, I'll give him that.

But on to the movie itself.

The opening is great. It's also historically accurate. Hermann Göring surrenders to an American force, and tells them to get his luggage out of the car. After that things slow down considerably.

There's debate over what to do with the captured German high command. The prevailing attitude is to just shoot them and be done with it. But US Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson wants more - he wants legal justice. Of course there's no precedent for it and this is where the movie bogs down. These parts are interspersed with what's going on in the prison so it makes for uneven pacing.

The "how do we do this and make legal history" part has to be slow, because it was slow. In short, the justice has to convince the US command, then get the rest of the allies on board. No one thought it would work. Heck, even he had his doubts. The Russians were the last to give in and at least make a show trial of it. This kind of thing simply can't be exciting. It can't. It's necessary to set it up but it's more the times when it's safe to take a bathroom break.

The trailer scene with Colonel Burton C. Andrus saying "Welcome to Nuremberg" has to do with the prison, not the trials. The movie expands on that by telling them the conditions of their imprisonment (bleak) and that they don't get any special privileges as captured officers under the Geneva Conventions because they aren't captured officers. The rather smartly done methods to prevent suicide are explained as well.

The battle of wits between Göring and Dr. Kelley, and the battle of everything between Dr. Kelley and prison commander Colonel Burton C. Andrus take up the slack.

Note here - Colonel Burton C. Andrus is not a pleasant man. Not at all. He's the one who sets the rules at the prison and he's not at all hesitant to enforce them or make new rules as needed. He's not happy about having the psychiatrist there since he sees the prisoners as being held until they're found guilty. But he'll follow his orders.

Where the movie falls flat is trying to show why Göring and Dr. Kelley would become friendly-ish, not that they did do it. The movie makes a reference to the prisoners wanting to talk and Dr. Kelley is more of a neutral listening board than anyone else there. Actually, he's the only one they're allowed to talk to more or less. But they do this to build up how much Göring is a smart opportunist and someone that is going to be a problem to corner in the trial.

Another psychiatrist is brought in to examine the prisoners and there's friction between the two doctors. The new one is immediately talking about how he's planning on writing a book about this and eventually Dr. Kelley admits he's been working on getting the material for one too. There's a tentative agreement to write one together. The new doctor brings in the conflict of someone who's there for the opportunity to talk to the famous Nazis while he still can, while Dr. Kelley is shown as someone who cares for what he considers his patients.

Dr. Kelley warns the justice that he's not going to win against Göring. He's also been asked/told to share anything the prisoners say that will help him win. This brings out the ethical dilemma of Dr. Kelley vs Colonel (I think that was his rank at the time) Kelley. It's pointed out that since his command has been reading his reports there is no violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. Seems he didn't think of that one.

He gains, and then loses, Göring's trust. First by not telling him that his wife and daughter were arrested, then by passing along what he meant to do at the start of the trial. So it's not just sitting out there - his wife was arrested in connection with art theft and the daughter was sent to "the nuns" since she didn't have any parents to take her in. Dr. Kelley lied about it, the other psychiatrist brought it up as a casual aside with a smarmy "Didn't he tell you?".

There's a little scene where Dr. Kelley confronts the prison commander about this, saying "It's not who we are". Later it turns out the commander agreed and worked to have them freed. Adds a touch of humanity to the commander.

There was a suicide by someone who was determined to do it. Given the method anyone could have done this and even after they tightened up the surveillance it could have been done. It just took someone with courage and determination.

The second loss of trust is when Dr. Kelley tells the justice that Göring is going to read a statement before the trial truly starts. When he's asked to enter his plea he starts and one of the tribunal judges shuts him down saying they'll only be able to make statements before sentencing. To be honest that's a bit of a stretch in blaming Dr. Kelley because it's more procedural than anything and none of them wanted to be subject to hearing pre-trial statements from all the defendants. But they made it a betrayal.

Anyhoo. The American justice is running as primary and uses the mountain of documents as his prime material for the trial. Turns out, Göring is a slippery son of a bitch and catches him up on the foundation of his prosecution. The British barrister steps up and rescues him, forcing Göring into an admission that he was doing more than following orders and did know more than he was saying he knew.

Note - they used actual concentration camp footage in the movie trial. It's tough to watch and they didn't spare the horror of what happened. They showed a little too much, in my opinion. It went from gravitas to gratuitous. Not to say that it wasn't horrible, just that they chose to use too much footage. Pacing again.

By the time the trial starts Dr. Kelley has been kicked out of the military for talking to a reporter and only stuck around for the opening of the trial, most likely at the behest of the American justice since I doubt just anyone could get into the courtroom. He forced his way in to see the American justice rather than leaving after being told he was discharged, and told him that he's not going to win using his strategy, then gave him all his notes to use anything there to help him in the trial. Obviously it didn't help him, but if the British barrister read them it did help him. They give him back his notes after that scene in the trial.

I won't leave you hanging, although it was tempting. Early in the movie Dr. Kelley asks Göring why he joined the party. He said he saw Hitler talk above a beer hall and what he said made sense, that he gave hope to Germans after the Treaty of Versailles. He joined immediately. The British barrister got Göring to admit on the stand that he'd still follow Hitler, if he could. That was him admitting that he did know what was going on and was a part of it, which he'd done a very good job of slipping out of in the American justice's questioning. Dr. Kelley took the credit for it, saying he knew that Göring would never betray Hitler.

The movie skips over the trials themselves. The high point was tripping up Göring and the movie didn't need anything after that.

Since it's history I can say that Göring was able to suicide by cyanide capsule just before his execution. This was a real wrench in the works because he was the prize and he took his own way out. They had a brief "what do we do now?" moment then went ahead with the rest of the executions. All the bodies are shown in a cart being taken away. It's not said in the movie but I'll tidy it up here. They were cremated and dumped in the local river to prevent future monuments. 

They do show one execution by hanging and it was done more to follow a narrative and for shock value than to add anything to the story, in my opinion. It also shows that whoever was doing the execution didn't know how to properly be a hangman, as the records do show. But I digress on that point.

In the end this is a movie about Hermann Göring, not Dr. Douglas Kelley. The Academy is going to have a really tough time dealing with how to reconcile what I think is an award-winning performance by Russell Crowe with who he portrayed. I also don't know if he'll be presented as a lead or supporting actor. Regardless it will be interesting to see what they do with him.

The movie ends with Dr. Kelley on the promotion circuit for the book he wrote and drunkenly saying how the Nazis weren't different from anyone else, that everyone has the same capability in them to do these things, that fascism sneaks up on you, etc. His views are not popular. This was before the experiments that show he was right about situation and people doing terrible things to other people if they're ordered/allowed to.

The timing on releasing this movie and the themes are very much timely as to the current situation in America. They go a bit heavy handed on that one without going off script too much. While it's true that the real Dr. Kelley said these things it's far too coincidental that they're part of this movie as well. Funny how a movie about how Nazis are bad uses some of their propaganda techniques itself.

The Book

If you're not into the minutia of the Rorschach Test then this book is not for you. There's a scene in the movie of Dr. Kelley performing the test on several prisoners but for fuck's sake does this book go into how much he absolutely loves the test, who else loves the test, who's a proponent of the test, the history of the test, how the test works, where the test should be used, etc.

The short version here is that Dr. Kelley used the Nazi prisoners as lab rats to try to find a way to identify evil via psychiatry. Most of what he did was not to deal with the prisoners' mental status for trial but for his own research for the book he fully intended to write from the beginning. He did get closer to Göring than any of the other prisoners but Göring was also the most well-known and therefore most marketable prisoner. And to be honest he was the most interesting of the bunch.

The book spends more time on various prisoners and what their mental states were, or at least what he perceived them to be. When the new doctor showed up, that doctor gave different interpretations. Which led to Colonel Andrus being sick of them both. Other psychiatrists and psychologists of various Allied nationalities also had their chances to talk to and examine the prisoners. It was a veritable revolving door of mental health professionals at that prison.

Colonel Andrus deserves a bit more explanation than just being a hard-ass. He was a career military prison administrator who didn't fool around. His job was to enforce discipline and that's what he did. In Nuremberg the prisoners weren't allowed to talk, were on a rigid schedule, were subject to thorough cell searches often, and he would rotate mealtime seating to prevent cliques and potential disruptions. Anything that interfered with the efficient running of his prison was dealt with. For the record he did help Göring's wife and daughter but by having the daughter brought to where her mother was imprisoned, not by getting them freed. The movie got it half right.

The movie had Dr. Kelley taking letters back and forth between Göring and his wife/daughter. This didn't happen. Not at all. Dr. Kelley had no real interest in anything but the prisoners and what he could get from them while he could.

Dr. Kelley asked for transfer once the trial started. He'd gotten everything he could and wasn't interested in the trial itself. He wasn't discharged. He got promoted before leaving the service and went into private practice.

When he left Germany he took all his notes, his souvenirs (he was getting prisoners to autograph copies of their books, that he looted from a local library), and copies of the other doctor's notes. The other doctor was upset about all this. He had to find employment and was kind of full of himself, thinking that his role at Nuremberg had more weight than it did back in civilian life. He also did work on his book but it wasn't a success either.

He had a lecture circuit and settled into criminology since it was something new and he felt that he had a unique insight into it, due to Nuremberg. He milked that for as long as he could and sometimes longer. He settled into teaching and lecturing police departments on using testing, such as the Rorschach Test, on new recruits. He kept those roles for most of his life.

He did talk about how there was no real difference between the Nazi command and anyone else. That's a true thing. He lectured on it. He believed it. And later, after his death, the famous Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgrim experiment proved him right that people will do terrible things if they're given the opportunity to do so.

Dr. Kelley committed suicide, taking cyanide. Kind of ironic but that's what he did. It wasn't a capsule but for some reason he had it in his house.

The book paints a very different picture than the movie. Dr. Kelley is not a likeable person. He was in an unhealthy marriage and was an uncaring, abusive parent. He was out for fame and did whatever he felt he needed to do to get it. The fact that the other doctor's book, and subsequent second book, did do well was probably another reason he took the paths he did.

The book also doesn't paint as pretty of a picture of Göring either. The book has him as more of a petty tyrant who needed constant approval rather than the scheming and composed temporarily inconvenienced man the movie portrays.

The myth that the bodies were cremated at Dachau, which was then torn town, is just that - a myth. They were cremated at a local cemetery. The ashes being scattered in the local river was true and the reason of not wanting a central focus for future neo-Nazis was true. It's why Hitler's bunker is a parking lot. They really did do their best to remove centers for potential martyrs.

I did try to find a way to read the book the real Dr. Kelley wrote but that's in various rare book libraries since it didn't sell well and the publisher didn't print all that many copies. If I could have found it to read I would have, just to contrast it with the movie and this book. But alas, it's not to be.

Tron: Ares - My Take (Spoilers)

 

First and foremost I'm not doing the "It's Tronning Time" or bashing the movie because it stars Jared Leto. That's just lazy when it comes to making a movie review. I also only saw the movie once so I'm going to get things out of order. Deal with it.

The short version is that it's too much story for too little movie. My movie buddy and I agree that this much story would have fit better into one of the six episode series that are so popular on streaming services. That would have given far more time for creating depth, both in characters and story. However, they did not do that so I'll review what they did.

They introduced an interesting concept of disposable, replaceable battlefield assets. When one becomes a casualty, build another. This is especially interesting when it comes to soldiers because it means they show up trained and equipped to continue fighting, with no sense of anything but completing the mission they're given and knowing what prevented that to this point. That's something that could have, but did not, have some very interesting plot development on the ethics and ramifications on the future of warfare.

We got Tron red lasers creating things in the material world. And because they're the red lasers you know they're working for the bad guys. It's nice that some things stay the same - red for bad, blue for good. Red in this movie is the Dillinger company, blue is still Encom. There's no orange as in Tron: Legacy because there's no CLU anymore.

The core plotline is the inherent problem - both red and blue - of object permanence in the material world. Creations last twenty-nine minutes. After that, they disintegrate into dust that for some reason sticks around. You'd think the dust would go back to the Grid or something. I know, they did it for cinematic reasons because watching something/someone crumble to dust instead of just fading out is more interesting. But it's one of those things that make you kind of tilt your head upon reflection. Maybe it did go away later? Maybe it's just the cohesiveness that's lost after twenty-nine minutes but the material sticks around? Dunno. Never mentioned.

Continuing on the things not explored is the power consumption needed to make this stuff. The cinematic effect of (red) lasers playing over the things they're building is great but where is it getting the source material, how much energy are those lasers using, and how practical is the whole mess to do on a larger scale? The intent seems to be completely military in function so those things would matter, even in the initial demonstration.

Good timing in the bad guys kept their presentation under the deadline so the potential buyers didn't see that everything crumbled to dust in a short period of time.

This is where we get to meet Ares, the super soldier. It seems he's the head super soldier - the new CU (Control Unit. Don't quote me on that because it could also have been MCU for Master Control Unit but that term has very different meaning since the original Tron movie came out so it was probably shortened to prevent confusion and lawsuits) of the entire shebang. He's supposed to be super strong, super smart, and super something else. They say "Biblically strong" for some reason, maybe referencing Jared's cult status or some throwback to when they used more religious allegory in the movies. But onward.

Onto the blue side of the board.

There's a quick wrap-up of Sam Flynn stepping away from the company and the sisters who stepped up into leadership. They're also highly skilled computer geeks. Spoiler - one of them has already died of cancer at this point, leaving the other sister grieving and floundering. All future references refer to the living sister as a solo entity.

The Encom CEO is looking for code that Sam left behind somewhere that gives these constructs permanence. The Dillinger CEO is also looking for that code, obviously. So there's your McGuffin - The Permanence Code. She found some way off-grid lair that Sam Flynn left behind, complete with 80s computers and memorabilia. Digging around she finds it and copies it to a very fancy flash drive. She tests it and leaves the test object in place, conveniently pointing the way to the lair for later. Then she's off to bring the code home.

That's our intro to the female lead. She's smart and she's focused on the goal. There's hints that she's doing it because her dead sister was also focused on it but at this point she's pretty one dimensional.

The Dillinger company head finds out she's got the code by doing fancy computer searching using surveillance cameras, etc. just like every computer themed movie has ever used. Grainy footage stays pretty grainy tho and that's a refreshing change from Temu level camera footage being processed into 8k beauty.

Dillinger creates another Ares and team to go get the very fancy flash drive from her. After a chase scene where she's cornered on a pier she breaks it in half and drops it in the water. Obviously the only thing they can do is bring her back to Dillinger so that they can extract the information from her brain. No one brings up the fact that data recovery exists, if they go back and get the pieces of the drive she dropped.

They put her into the Grid as a user so she's in the blue light suit. I guess it's easier for them to get code from her brain when she's code herself? Whatever. She's blue light in a sea of red. There's talk of whether or not she'll survive the process and eventually the Dillinger CEO decides it doesn't matter. He shows up as a Wizard of Oz talking head when he's communicating with the Grid. OK then.

Ares has been spending time doing his own browsing while he's back in the Grid and in another actor it might be seen that he's seeing a world beyond his programming. Leto is stoic so all you see is close up shots of his face as his eyes move, showing that he's reading the stuff that's been inserted by CGI later. Right around now it seems that he's deciding he wants permanence and the only way to get it is to save the Encom CEO to get the code for himself. He also seems to have a moral quandary about the lack of care for the person of the Encom CEO. It shows Ares is growing beyond his programming, as a plot development.

I forget the place in the story where the Encom CEO and Ares kind of team up in the material world and she sends him back to the Grid using their one and only laser portal gun things, promising to bring him back and make him permanent when she can. Of course, the laser portal gun thing, their one and only laser portal gun thing, gets damaged by the Dillinger n second in command when she's there to capture the Encom CEO. Conveniently she drops her red laser portal gun when she disintegrates. This time there's a reason for the laser portal gun remaining - the Dillinger CEO gave it to her when they started the chase.

The laser portal gun thing is important, as you can tell by the amount of film time they spent on them.

Onward.

Ares decides that they only way he's going to get to be permanent himself is to help her, so he does. He gets her to the portal, they meet up with Kevin Flynn who's intrigued by Ares as a "malfunctioning program". There's fancy blue light CGI as he manipulates stuff to bring out the orange Permanence Code, which he calls the Impermanence Code. There's a bit of moralizing because he wants to make sure Ares realizes that he's a one and done if he accepts the code. That's pretty decent of Flynn and is one of the few deeper moments in the movie. Ares accepts the code and his red light turns blue.

The Encom CEO realizes there's another functioning laser portal gun right in front of her freaking face and she and her unmemorable sidekick work to create a single functioning laser portal gun from the two of them to bring Ares back as they promised.

Ares shows up in his new blue light glory. The Dillinger CEO is miffed that he lost out on getting the code and creates a big red light task force to get her back including one of the flying cargo lift shaped ships seen in Tron: Legacy. During this the second in command gets promoted because Ares has gone off his programming and the first thing she does is stab the CEO's mother who's going to shut the whole thing down because she does have ethics. A throwback to Tron: Legacy to the whole "create a perfect world" situation. This is the character defining moment for that CEO as he holds his mom and sees what his directives have done. It doesn't stop him from changing his orders to his creations, tho.

Funny enough both Ares and the second in command have triangle shaped identity disks rather than the more common round ones. The corners pop out into stabby things. I guess they needed to show something special on the higher command models? More than likely it was a merchandising thing. But there it is. The rest of the mooks have the standard round ones.

Sidebar since I can't remember where it fits into the narrative. Pre-permanent Ares sums up the Encom CEO's life, motivations, hopes, and dreams in a single monologue as they're driving through the city. She never gets a chance to develop as a character since it's all laid out for us nice and tidy so we can focus on the special effects and Jared Leto staring at things.

Battle in the city with lots and lots of red lights. There's only one blue light to oppose all this - ARES. Yeah. There you go. The Biblical thing. There's light cycles, there's light flyers, there's light tanks, there's light all kinds of vehicles and weapons. All of which will disintegrate twenty-nine minutes from creation. So really all the good guys need to do is hole up somewhere for a while and it all ends. But that wouldn't be very exciting or colorful.

The end battle is predictably between Ares and the second in command. Somehow he still can do all the fancy fighting that he could before he was made permanent. It's one of those things that was necessary for the movie but brings up the whole moralistic thing of what is Ares when he's code made permanent?

Ares wins, with a little help from time and I think the Encom CEO using a broken red light polearm. He conveniently disappears from the area. The Dillinger CEO ends up putting himself into the Grid to avoid the jail time he earned and gets his own identity disk of unknown origin and while it's round it's of a different design than the regular ones. (Edit: IMDb trivia says its the SARK program from his grandfather.)

There we go. The movie. There's a way to get things between the two worlds now. There's a way, only found in one program so far, to make Grid things permanent in the material world but it's implied that once they're gone they can't make another Grid-to-material one even though they have the code sitting right there. 

We're set for another Tron movie with the Dillinger CEO out in the Grid. He's in red so he's technically a program at this point but who knows what they'll make of that. Maybe his company's process doesn't turn the light blue when they go in that direction. Maybe he's a program now. Maybe he's a hybrid of some kind. There's that odd identity disk that was waiting for him.

I saw it in the fake IMAX and the sound was way too loud. I'm not talking "I'm old and the sound was too loud". I'm saying it was flat out too loud. Hopefully they'll mix it better for the digital releases because the contrast between the music/effects and dialogue was atrocious. I guess they wanted to make sure that everyone knew there was new NIN music to be had.

The Jared Leto bashing is a bit overdone, imo. Pretty much any good looking action hero actor could have stepped into his jumpsuit and done the role. Given the material it's not like they could have done worse. For everyone bashing him for his performance they're not giving enough bashing to the writing and directing that created the role. It was a joint effort to make him that forgettable.

There is an after credit scene where it's Jared Leto in all his beard goodness riding a Ducati somewhere in the world. He'd sent a postcard to the Encom CEO saying he's working on finding himself. No one asks how he's funding his world adventures or how he can travel outside the country (implied by location) without a passport or any identification of any kind, unless it's also implied that he's got networking skillz to make fake stuff.

I like the Tron movie. I like Tron: Legacy. I'm disappointed in Tron: Ares and hope that someone can smack people around enough to either make a smaller movie the next time around or stretch it out into the multiple episodes and do justice to the Tron universe itself.

I don't plan on seeing the movie again. It's best seen in IMAX and I just can't stand the idea of sitting through that noise again. Seeing it in the digital format means losing out on the big screen, with the potential of badly mixed sound on fewer speakers. It wasn't compelling enough for me to risk it.

Superman - My Take (Spoilers)

 

I found out I can watch movies in FauxMAX! I call the movie chain theater IMAX that because it's not real IMAX. I have a friend who's a movie snob cinephile and they go to one of the thirty-one actual IMAX theaters when they can for certain movies. But I digress.

I went to the movie to be entertained. I have no opinion about the director, which seems to put me in a distinct minority. Nor do I have an opinion about the previous director, which puts me in a Venn diagram distinct minority. Don't expect any of that nonsense in this post.

First and foremost. I have on very big beef with something that was obviously filmed for the 3D version of the movie. During a fight scene Superman punches a bad guy, teeth go flying towards the camera, and they actually make a "ping" noise and bounce away. Seriously? They're flying and teeth bounce off clear air and make a noise? Gratuitous makes me angry.

I liked this take on Superman. He's not invincible. Lex Luthor is completely, totally, and unrepentedly evil. There was a moment in the theater when there was a collective gasp at what he was doing. That's impressive. He wasn't unhinged evil either. He was focused on his goal/goals. Obsessed might be a better word. They didn't try to give him redeeming qualities or excuse away the fact the guy was just bad.

Having Hawkgirl, Mister Terrific, and Green Lantern in the mix is something that helped. It helped a lot. It gave Superman some balance in that there were other people who had powers and he wasn't this solo entity. Each one of them had enough screen time to flesh them out as distinct characters and they were true to the comics. Well. As true as they could reasonably be because let's face it - sometimes the comics go off the rails.

The movie opening setting up the state of the world was just right. It was a series of bullet points with a timeline of what led up to the moment the movie itself started. No long intro scenes, no origin story. It was "These things happened and here we are now". Those come up while the camera moves into find the beaten Superman in the snow that's in all the trailers. The bullet points are helpful in knowing how that happened.

There's an excellent secondary story going on and I think it's the base for the next movie. I said there's spoilers so I'll talk about it. The main story is, of course, Superman and Lex Luthor. But a pivotal event is when Superman intervenes in an international event, causing problems with a US ally. Of course that US ally was invading a neighboring country but that's beside the point. The problem the government has is that Superman decided to deal with it by himself without any input from them. They're not wrong.

Another part of this comes out when Lois Lane is interviewing Clark and is asking real questions. It turns out Clark Kent has been doing all the Superman interviews and Lois rightly calls him out on how hollow, if not misleading, that is. He finally agrees to do a real interview with her and things get very tense when she asks real and difficult questions to the point where he storms out of her apartment.

Yes, they have Superman being the Kansas farm boy here. He's very much that farm boy. His core value is that people shouldn't get hurt or killed. While that's not a bad thing, it's going to happen. It worked out fine until he went for international policy.

In the Fortress of Solitude he's got helper bots which I have to assume are canon. How he got them is not explained. Nor is how he got a Fortress of Solitude. When he's there he watches a message from his Krypton parents that was sent with him but got corrupted so he watches what he can. It's a loving message on how they picked the best world for him then it glitches. But he gets to see and hear his birth parents.

The Fortress of Solitude is only around when he is. When he approaches, it unearths itself. It opens for him. When he leaves, it goes back underground. So imagine everyone's surprise when Lex Luthor approaches the spot with a couple of his people and it unearths and unlocks. They find the recording (seems to be on autoplay when the door opens), trash the place, and leave.

I know. This is getting long. So what? And I'm going out of order because I've only seen it once and didn't write this directly after.

Lex Luthor took a copy of the recording and was able to have the rest of it reconstructed. He did so in a way to make it incontrovertible. The second half of the message that Superman hear for the first time when everyone else did on international TV is that he was sent there to rule over the planet and to (this one bugs me too) gather a harem to have as many Kryptonian children as he could. This is a turning point in the movie, of course.

Public opinion immediately turns on him. Lex refers to him as "the alien" and "the Krytonian", reminding everyone he can that Superman isn't human or American or even from Earth. Of course Superman is rocked by finding out what his parents were really like and what they really intended. He goes where he needs to go. He goes home.

Ma and Pa Clark are very much alive in this version and they're very much Kansas farmers. They also are loving parents. They believe in him and what he's like, because they're the ones who raised him with those values. Pa gives a very good speech which comes across as real, not corny. Pretty much they help Superman reconcile who he is with who people think he is now.

Lex had been lobbying the government to use his special enforcement teams for things like, oh I don't know, handling threats like aliens from another planet. The government has not been keen on this, until their pet alien has been "proven" to be something other than he seemed. Lex gets the go-ahead and Superman gets imprisoned in a pocket dimension that Lex has created. Lex ain't stupid here.

While he's gone it's up to the reporters at The Daily Planet and the Justice Gang (as they're called here) to figure out the truth and to get him back. Mister Terrific finds and rescues Superman and is aghast that Lex has made a pocket dimension, since getting it even the slightest bit wrong can cause the destruction of Earth. Of course, Lex knows the possibilities as we find out later.

While in the pocket dimension prison he's caged with a similarly, but worse, imprisoned Metamorpho since he can create Krytonite. Lex covers all his bases. Metamorpho is shackled by having his child held hostage, right across from him. So he's not particularly sympathetic to helping Superman since it endangers his child. The two of them come to an agreement, Metamorpho recharges Superman (no yellow sun in the pocket dimension), Superman grabs the child, there's a kind of chase scene, they all escape through the almost closed gateway Mister Terrific opened and was holding open. It's the car chase scene, really. It also sets up that there's black holes in the pocket dimension and Mister Terrific gets to explain why pocket dimensions are A Bad Idea.

OK. Superman is back and he's pissed. The US ally starts another invasion. Lex looses the pocket dimension's instability to keep Superman from interfering this time. Jimmy Clark uses a source's information to figure out what Lex's part is in the invasion. Lois and her gang write up and publish the story. (Lex is subsidizing the war in exchange for half the territory.)

The bad guy who's been kicking Superman's ass, directed by Lex who gives him fight moves as they go at it, turns out to be a Superman clone. Hence why he could get to the Fortress of Solitude that's keyed to Superman's DNA. (Is DNA universal?) Lex had obsessively visited every known scene where Superman had fought, looking for anything he could use and finally found a hair which was used to make the clone. This really was a twist.

Superman is dealing with Metropolis being endangered by the rift in the pocket dimension, leaving him unable to interfere with the invasion. There's a confrontation in Lex's headquarters. One of his employees has some morals and wants to enter the code to stop/close the rift but Lex won't allow it. This is where Lex gets to go on his bad guy spiel and reverse what it all seemed to be. He wasn't distracting Superman to conquer the country. He was conquering the country to end Superman. He really doesn't like that he's an alien who shows that he's better than everyone else on the planet.

Mister Terrific shows up to enter the code and close the rift. Lois gets her story out and Lex is exposed. He's shown being taken away.

The invasion? Superman took care of that by "calling in friends". Hawkgirl takes care of the leader of the invading country, who thought he was safe because Superman doesn't kill. Spoiler - Hawkgirl does. Green Lantern takes care of the invasion force and sends them back on their way. Metamorpho shows up and helps out too. Green Lantern brings him into the Justice Gang, mostly because he likes the name and no one else does.

Having Superman not have to be the guy who fixes everything is important, in my opinion. Having him ask others for help, and having them give help, is important. It's a setup for the Justice League, I know. But it's good to see the comic source material as well as showing Superman knows how to work with others.

The dog. I know I haven't talked about the dog. That's because he's kind of a dux de machina at times. Yes, he's funny and yes, he advances the plot. He's also the reason for the audience gasp when it seems like Lex kills him (he doesn't but we all know it was possible because there's no way to make an evil character more evil than to have them kill the dog). But overall he's not much more than obvious comic relief. In the mid-credit scene we find out that it's not Superman's dog. It's Supergirl's dog and she collects him when she shows up in the fortress. She's a party girl rather than a superhero here.

The post credit scene is Superman and Krypto sitting on the moon, looking at Earth.

All in all I liked it. I liked Nathan Fillian's Green Lantern best. I know he's been doing the character voice for a while but he really did portray this Green Lantern well. Hawkgirl is the least developed of the characters but I'm not sure how much there is to develop with her. Mister Terrific is defined well enough to carry him forward and make all his parts in the movie believable.

The setup for the next movie, I think, revolves around the government and how superheroes seem to be making decisions without consideration for what the government might want. That's the secondary story I mentioned way earlier. It's also a good continuation of what's been done here and draws all of the characters into the mix, since this is the second time it's happened and it's a different group of superheroes. Not to mention they killed the leader of what was probably a US friendly country.

There's a cheese factor in this movie. Superman is very boy scout but loses some of that by the end. He's still who he is, he accepts that Ma and Pa Clark are more his parents than the ones from Krypton, and he's once again beloved by most of the world. As long as they keep the ensemble around him in future movies they should be good.