June 30th, Movies 31

The June Swoon comes to a close today with the final film in the binge. The choice I made was a football movie featuring J.K. Simmons and Stephan James called National Champions. Truth is the film is less about football and more about the system of college football and how the NCAA makes billions of dollars while the student-athletes get nothing.

In National Champions, two football teams are preparing for the college championship game when the star quarterback LeMarcus James (Stephan James) and his friend, another player Emmett Sunday (Alexander Ludwig) announced that they were going to boycott the game unless the NCAA changed their system and began paying and providing benefits to the players that the NCAA was building their brand upon.

LeMarcus and Emmett went around to players on the team trying to build up support, others to join in on the boycott. Meanwhile, Coach James Lazor (J.K. Simmons) was trying to hold his team together before the big game and met up with the officials of the NCAA trying to break down the boycott.

The fact that the NCAA is a billion dollar business that absolutely takes advantage of the young men to make that money, and then the athletes are not allowed to benefit for it. The small percentage that go on to the NFL may benefit from their college games, but the vast majority of the players will not play any more. Many of them find themselves back in poverty or in financial difficulties and facing injuries or pain from their playing days.

The film really did a great job of building tension as they approached the game and what the individuals involved would do in order to get the game played. JK Simmons was fantastic as always, but so was Stephan James. These performances were what this film depended on.

I do believe that the storyline involving Coach Lazor’s wife Baily (Kristin Chenoweth) and a professor at the college Elliott Schmidt (Timothy Olyphant) was too far, and, in the end, was a strange twist. This actually hurt the story and distracted from the overall story. It is a shame because I do love Timothy Olyphant.

The film’s message is one that is absolutely a problem that needs to be addressed and the movie does a great job of showing the troubles with the NCAA and college football. It is able to present the message while still being entertaining.

June 29th, Movie 30

The penultimate day of the June Swoon was filled with the Netflix film Beckett, starring John David Washington.

According to IMDB: “While vacationing in Greece, American tourist Beckett (John David Washington) becomes the target of a manhunt after a devastating accident. Forced to run for his life and desperate to get across the country to the American embassy to clear his name, tensions escalate as the authorities close in, political unrest mounts, and Beckett falls even deeper into a dangerous web of conspiracy“

Washington was solid in this man-on-the-run story. He made a good every man struggling to do whatever he has to do to survive. Are there things that Beckett does that he probably should not be able to do. Still, most of the action works well.

The story was convoluted. I liked the mystery of what was happening, but it never really felt like it came together well and some of the twists were hard to buy. Still, I liked the way it worked itself out and ended up.

Beckett may not be the greatest film ever but it is a fairly fun time and has an enjoyable lead character who battled to survive against the villains. It is not a deep film, but I liked watching it.

June 28th, Movie 29

As the June Swoon moves into its final few days, I have been having some troubles finding movies from 2021 that I wanted to watch. I have a list of films still, but a lot of them are films that just do not appeal for me. The DailyView was easier considering the number of years available, but, even then, I had stretches that it was tough to find what I was in the mood for.

Yesterday, I watched the Billy Crystal film Here Today which has been on my Amazon Prime for quite awhile and now I am getting to another longtime film on the “My Stuff” queue, Michael Caine’s Best Sellers.

Harris Shaw (Michael Caine) was a ill-manner, cranky retired author who was approached by Lucy (Aubrey Plaza) the daughter of his friend and editor. She was now in charge of her father’s publishing company and she wanted him to fulfill a contract he had signed years ago for another book.

Harris was anything but helpful and Lucy was nearing her breaking point. She had an offer to purchase the publishing company, but when Harris arrived with a new manuscript, she was ecstatic. She wanted him to go on a book tour, but he was unhappy with that idea. He eventually agreed but his bad behavior was not helping the book sales.

Michael Caine was his typically excellent self and he and Aubrey Plaza made a strong team. Much like Crystal and Tiffany Haddish in Here Today, Caine and Plaza were the best part of this movie.

The story was filled with clichés though: the alcoholic author, the lost wife, the sentimental home. The film does take a few of the clichés in a different direction, including the shocking moment near the end of the film in a book store.

A lot of what happened required some suspension of disbelief. I am not sure that social media would work the way this film indicated that it worked, but all of that could be dismissed if you connect to the two main characters.

Best Sellers had some good moments and a strong pair of leads. Again, it is not perfect, but it is interesting enough.

June 27th, Movie 28

Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish starred in a film called Here Today, a story about a successful long time comedy writer who was suffering though the onset of dementia and who met a much younger singer who helped him face the troubles of his life.

The film’s strength was easily the pair of Billy Crystal and Tiffany Haddish. They had an easy chemistry and a platonic charm that carried most of the film. The intimacies that they shared was much greater than sexual and they worked extremely well.

There are some definite laughs in the film, much through the dialogue and banter with Crystal. Crystal, who played Charlie, worked on a SNL-type sketch show as a comedy writer, and a mentor to some of the others on the writing staff. Though this was a secondary plotline, I really enjoyed this piece of the movie. It brought the strength of Billy Crystal to the forefront.

However, the film is too sentimental and emotionally manipulative through much of the dementia storyline. Parts of it worked very well, but other parts of it felt as if it was being included to pull on the heart strings. I think some of the dementia sections of the film needed some tightening up.

These sections were intertwined with the story of Charlie’s wife, who had died in a car wreck. These were mostly well done and the flashbacks were used effectively.

Here Today had been on my list at Amazon Prime for quite awhile and I am happy that I finally got around to watching it. It is not a perfect movie, but it has enough entertainment value to watch.

June 26th, Movie 27

“This is garbage. I don’t know why they are trying to remake the classics. They’re never as good as the originals.” — Jeff McKenzie (Rob Delaney), Home Sweet Home Alone.

You know, this is never a good sign when a movie makes a meta reference about how bad films that try to remake classics are, when that is exactly what your film is trying to do.

I did not watch this last year when Home Sweet Home Alone came out on Disney +, but, if I had, this atrocious film would have been atop the Top 30 Worst Films of the Year, over taking Tom and Jerry.

We know the general story. Little kid, this time named Max (Archie Yates), gets left behind by his family who are on their way for vacation over seas (this time to Japan) and he has to defend his house against two intruders.

Now, most of the time we have seen this concept, the intruders are criminals looking to rob the house, or to get revenge on the kid. This time however is a little different.

The intruders are a married couple Jeff and Pam McKenzie (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper) who are trying to retrieve a rare doll they think Max has stolen. Instead of being reasonable and, I don’t know, calling the police, they decide to break into the house to find the doll. This leads to a series of non-creative yet violent assaults on the McKenzies.

It is completely full of crap and a horrendous movie.

I do want to say that I do not blame the kid, Archie Yates. Archie was great in Jo Jo Rabbit and he has plenty of upsides to his career. He just should fire those people who got him this script and had him star in this movie. They do not have your back.

Home Sweet Home Alone is a mess. If you have some kind of morbid curiosity about it, it is on Disney + but otherwise, stay away.

June 25th, Movie 26

House of Gucci was one of the films that I did not get to in the theater, that was nominated for Oscars but one that I planned on doing during the June Swoon.

I have now watched House of Gucci, and I have to say that I did not get into it at all. I found it uninteresting and dull and I just could not get into it.

There are some positive things. I did like the soundtrack. There were some great songs included. Both Lady Gaga and Adam Driver play their characters well and deserved the praise that they received.

There was an impressive cast of actors in the film including such notables as Al Pacino, Selma Hayek, Jeremey Irons, Jack Huston, Camille Cottin and Florence Andrews.

Jared Leto is here too, but the less spoken about his performance, the better.

I thought it was too long and meandered through Lady Gaga and Adam Driver’s relationship.

It was just not a movie for me.

June 24th, Movie 25

An absolute icon.

West Side Story. Electric Company. The Rockford Files. The Muppet Show. Oz. E.G.O.T. winner. Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Rita Moreno was always a personal favorite of mine. I loved Electric Company and a child and I am sure that is where I got to know hoer so well.

This documentary on Netflix was a great trip down memory lane of one of the greatest performers in my lifetime. Spoken directly in Rita’s own words, as well as several others including Morgan Freeman and Linn-Manuel Miranda, the documentary talked about all aspects of her life, not only the high points of her career, but the way she was treated early on, and the sexual assaults that she had to handle. It spoke about a 19-year marriage that appeared to be perfect on the outside, but was far from it on the inside.

This documentary was paced quickly and involved a lot of humor and music, even when dealing with the terribly serious subjects. Everything came together to make her Rita Moreno.

This is an amazing woman who never lost the energy and never gave up on becoming more than what anyone expected. A Latina role model to be sure.