DailyView: Day 279, Movie 394

As the calendar turned to February, one of the semi-focuses for the DailyView will be some rom-coms (as well as some films for Black History Month). Rom-coms will be the main films until Valentine’s Day. So for the first of February, I watched one of the most well known rom-coms of the last 20 years, the adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel, The Notebook.

In a nursing home, Duke (James Garner) read a story to a woman (Gena Rowlands) who was suffering from dementia and had no memory. In the story, Duke read about a young girl named Allie (Rachel McAdams) from a wealthy family who met a local worker Noah (Ryan Gosling) and they fell in love. Noah was not whom Allie’s parents wanted their daughter to fall for, and their disproval led to the young lovers to split.

Noah enlisted in the army and went to war while Allie waited and hoped to see him again. After years, Allie met a new man (James Marsden) and she fell for him. He proposed to her and she accepted.

Noah had returned from the war and, with the financial help from his father (Sam Shepard), bought his dream home, rebuilding it from scratch. When Allie saw a photo of Noah and his newly constructed home in the newspaper, she felt drawn to see him in order to wrap up the past. However, their love would not be denied.

I was torn by this movie. I thought the acting was superb from the cast, especially from James Garner and Gena Rowland, whose identities were anything but secretive. I found Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams to be exceptional as well, early on in their careers.

However, there was a ton of sentimentality in The Notebook that it felt overpowering at times, and not in a good way. I also had trouble with some of the character choices made, especially from Allie. She treated James Marsden’s character just horrendously, playing him along and treating him with a lot of disrespect that he did not deserve. I felt terribly for Marsden, and this made me feel as if rooting for Allie and Noah was a bad thing.

Then, there was an amazing scene with Garner and Rowlands in the third act that was heart-wrenching, but it was tainted by what had happened before. The “mystery” of who they were really ruined the story structure of the relationship with Noah and Allie.

There are a bunch of clichés throughout the movie and it felt somewhat manipulative because of it. I don’t think there is any doubt that Garner and Rowlands and their story was way more compelling than the story of Noah and Allie, which ends up being kind of ironic.

As I said, I am torn by The Notebook. Despite its flaws, there are some solid scenes and some great acting. I just wish that I liked the leads more.

DailyView: Day 278, Movie 393

Tonight, I returned to the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes movies for Sherlock Holmes Faces Death.

As always, Rathbone and Bruce are excellent together as Holmes and Watson. This film was loosely based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” from 1893.

The film is a mystery film where Sherlock Holmes is trying to solve the murders that are occurring at the Musgrave Manor, a home being used as a hospital for a number of servicemen who are suffering from events of the war. Dr. Watson was working at the manor, and called in his friend Mr. Holmes after his colleague Dr. Saxton (Arthur Margetson) was attacked and stabbed in the neck, though he survived the attempt.

This was not my favorite of the Rathbone/Bruce series of films. This one felt pretty forced and the conclusion was forgone. I saw that one coming from the beginning. The mystery was anything but mysterious. Holmes’ tricks were also very obvious.

This film abandoned the idea that Holmes was a bit of a spy hunter in the war protecting England. It is a new (or old) way to look at Holmes in this series. While I did not love this, it was a nice step to have Holmes back to his old ways.

DailyView: Day 277, Movie 392

Joel and Ethan Coen do this kind of film really well.

Burn After Reading falls right in with Fargo and Raising Arizona as black comedic crime films with complicated and intricate plots and somewhat cartoonish characters.

According to IMDB: “Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich), a Balkan expert, resigned from the CIA because of a drinking problem, so he begins a memoir. His wife (Tilda Swinton) wants a divorce and expects her lover, Harry (George Clooney), a philandering State Department marshal, to leave his wife. A CD-ROM falls out of a gym bag at a Georgetown fitness center. Two employees there try to turn it into cash: Linda (Frances McDormand), who wants money for cosmetic surgery, and Chad (Brad Pitt), an amiable goof. Information on the disc leads them to Osbourne who rejects their sales pitch; then they visit the Russian embassy. To sweeten the pot, they decide they need more of Osbourne’s secrets. Meanwhile, Linda’s boss (Richard Jenkins) likes her, and Harry’s wife leaves for a book tour. All roads lead to Osbourne’s house.”

This was a riot. I laughed multiple times and found these characters to be so over-the-top that they were so enjoyable. Are they too cartoonish? Maybe, but that did not bother me even a little bit. None of it took me out of the film.

The CIA supervisor, played by J.K. Simmons, was absolutely hilarious. His deadpan reactions to the ridiculousness of the story being told to him by David Rasche. The difference in POV between Simmons, who couldn’t give a bigger crap about what was happening and downplaying everything, and the chaotic thoughts of everyone else involved.

George Clooney is off the charts with his paranoid U.S. Marshal character. He was a real womanizer, bouncing around to several women as his wife was on tour with her book. Clooney threw himself into this role and he was fantastic.

Clooney was involved in the best moment in the movie with Brad Pitt that lead me to scream out in shock. It was so great and I couldn’t stop laughing at his behavior. In fact, that moment is when this movie really came alive and became more than just another clever black comedy.

This was a great film that I had a lot of fun with.

DailyView: Day 277, Movie 391

DreamWorks has had some great animated films over the years, from Shrek to How to Train Your Dragon, but the company has never reached the levels of Pixar or Disney. Still, they have had their successes. 2004’s Shark Tale is passable, but not one that will stick with you.

According to IMDB: “The sea underworld is shaken up when the son of shark mob boss Don Lino (Robert De Niro) is found dead, and a young fish named Oscar (Will Smith) is found at the scene. Being a bottom feeder, Oscar takes advantage of the situation and makes himself look like he killed the finned mobster. Oscar soon comes to realize that his claim may have serious consequences.”

Will Smith and Robert DeNiro stand out among the voices, but, honestly, Smith feels as if he is trying too hard. Jack Black voices Lenny and does not stand out at all. The animation is solid and looks good. Bright colors are interesting and stand out on the screen.

The story is simple and the characters are average at best. There are some clever jokes scattered throughout the film, but not enough to be sustainable.

There are a ton of pop culture references, way too many. Most of them stand out as not working. With all the quotes, are we to understand that these fish watch movies and TV from the surface? The music is okay, but I can not recall anything from the film.

Shark Tale is just an average, unremarkable animated feature that you can pass time with, but won’t fill you up.

DailyView: Day 277, Movie 390

I have watched several Charlie Chaplin films during the DailyView, but they have all been shorts, half hour or less. Today, I watched a longer film from his career for the first time, called The Circus. It was wonderful.

The Little Tramp found himself working for a circus after being chased by the police for a misunderstanding about a pickpocket crime. While he came running through while being pursued by the police, the crowd loved him and laughed at his antics. So much so that the ringmaster (Al Ernest Garcia) hired him to be a clown. However, it turned out that Charlie was not funny when he was trying to be.

The Ringmaster’s step-daughter Merna (Merna Kennedy) befriended Charlie, and he gave her some food. She was treated very poorly by the Ringmaster and appreciated the help.

The arrival of a tight rope walker named Rex (Harry Crocker) complicated the situation for the Tramp, who began practicing walking the tight rope himself.

The one thing that I noticed different in this movie in comparison to the shorts is that this felt like more of a developed story than they were. The shorts were more of a series of slapstick at time. Extremely funny, yes, but not much by way of storytelling. The Circus had a plot and a full story. I felt I knew the characters more than I did in the shorts and the pay off of the film was very satisfying. I found The Circus to be quite charming as well as extremely funny.

Charlie Chaplin was a remarkable talent. He wrote, directed, scored and produced the film as well as starred in in. The Academy gave him a special Oscar for the effort. Why they did that, I am unsure.

This was a more pleasurable film than the other ones that I have watched today.

DailyView: Day 277, Movie 389

I’m shaken.

I do not think I have had such a haunting experience watching a movie in… well, I am not sure when or if I have had quite an experience like that.

Requiem for a Dream was a masterful movie… and I never want to see it again.

The film was focused on the drug addictions/abuses of four main characters, Sarah Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connolly) and Harry’s friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). Each of the four of them had a different direction to take with their drug abuse, but it was portrayed in a much similar fashion. You could tell how the film, which was shot in a dream-like state in many of the scenes, was building to make this something that would stay with you.

The performance of Ellen Burstyn, in particular, was absolutely crushing; it wrecked me. She deserved every last bit of recognition that she received for this performance because it was utterly crazy.

The music was also designed to destroy you too, as every minute of the film progressed, the score was ripping into your brain, putting you on edge.

Then there is the third act. I literally watched this with my mouth open, not believing what I was seeing, and wrapping my arms around myself in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the feels. I have never seen anything like the montage at the end of this movie and it ripped my heart out of my chest (not literally, this time). Holy Hell, this was unbelievable. The closest I can come to comparing the feeling was as I watched Schindler’s List for the first time. I desperately wanted to shut Requiem for a Dream off and retreat within myself during this scene, but I persevered and watched it through to its depressing and heart-wrenching conclusion.

Darren Aronofsky directed the heck out of this. I have not been a huge fan of Aronofsky over the years, with The Wrestler being the one film that I loved from his oeuvre. Aronofsky has been known for his surrealism in his movies and how he uses psychological aspects of character to deconstruct the archetypes of characters. The imagery of this film was outstanding and added to the overall tone that Aronofsky was building towards.

Requiem for a Dream was a trip of a film. As I said, I never want to watch this again, but I think that I am glad that I watched it. It left a pit in my stomach after viewing which is currently, as of this writing, is still there and when a film can affect you like this, it has to be a good thing, right?

DailyView: Day 276, Movie 388

No matter what your opinion on the WWE may be, you cannot deny that they know how to put together compelling documentaries about their Superstars.

Tommaso Ciampa is one of the biggest stars to come out of NXT, a developmental organization of the WWE, and he was the NXT Champion when he had to have neck surgery, missing out on Wrestlemania weekend.

This becomes the story of a pro wrestler who had to face a devastating injury that stopped his momentum dead and the struggle to come to grips about what this meant for his career and his family.

There are scenes of his neck fusion surgery and they spoke to plenty of his friends, colleagues and family. We heard from Triple H, Johnny Gargano, Shawn Michaels, Edge, as well as plenty from Tommaso himself. These are interviews that truly brought the passion of the man to the forefront.

The doc talks a great deal about Tommaso’s baby daughter, Willow, and the way she came to be. It was an emotional tale and added to the entire situation of the injury that flipped his world. She was so cute and the pictures of Willow were absolutely fabulous.

Tommaso Ciampa is one of my personal favorite performers and this slice of his life during such a tumultuous time is wonderful. The WWE documentaries hit it again.

DailyView: Day 276, Movie 387

The second film of the day, dedicated to wrestling was considerably better than the first one (but it would have to be. Ready to Rumble set the bar really low). This was the Jack Black film called Nacho Libre.

Jack Black played Ignacio, a Catholic friar from Mexico who moonlighted as a Luchadore in the world of lucha libre. Ignacio and his partner, Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez) struggled to find any success in the squared circle which caused frustration for the fighting friar. Yet, Ignacio continued his battle not only for his own glory, but for money to use to help the orphans.

Addressing this up top, Jack Black is about as white of a guy as you are going to see playing this Mexican man. His accent is ridiculous. I know some have made claim that this is racist, but I do not buy that. It may not be the most sensitive aspect of the film, but it did not disqualify it for me.

Nacho Libre had some decent moments and Jack Black is always fun. His dual role was well done, as he tried to balance the call of the ring with his duties as a monk. Some of the wrestling scenes were well done, especially the ones involving the bestial little people.

The real life Luchadore Silver King portrayed the film’s antagonist, Ramses. Silver King had a long career in wrestling until his death in the ring from a heart attack in 2019.

Like many Jack Black comedies, Nacho Libre is over-the-top, but with its heart in the right place. The film is carried very much by the personality of Jack Black and he fits right into the world of Luchadore.

Nacho Libre is a mixed bag, but I liked it more than I anticipated. It is Citizen Kane in comparison to Ready to Rumble, that is for sure.

DailyView: Day 276, Movie 386

Today is the WWE’s classic event, The Royal Rumble, which one of my personal premium live events the WWE presents. So I decided that I would honor the Rumble by watching some wrestling movies on the DailyView.

Unfortunately, I started the day with Ready to Rumble.

Gordie Boggs (David Arquette) and Sean Dawkins (Scott Caan) are a pair of dimwitted sewage workers who are huge wrestling fans, especially for Jimmy King (Oliver Platt), the WCW World Champion. When evil promoter Titus Sinclair (Joe Pantoliano) decided to screw The King out of his title, Gordie and Sean went on a mission to help return Jimmy King to his throne.

This is such a sad movie. It is terrible and it paints the wrestling fan in the worst light possible. It also makes the wrestlers look so bad. I cannot understand why the WCW stars involved themselves in this insulting and downright offensive film that denigrates the business of professional wrestling and its fans while enforcing every possible negative stereotype of wrestling.

It also put into motion one of the worst storylines of all time, when David Arquette actually won the WCW World Championship in the WCW. This storyline was a contributing factor in the eventual real life downfall of the promotion.

Back to the movie, it made no sense and tried to blend the fictionalized world of pre wrestling with reality, failing miserably. Gordie and Sean are absolutely horrendous and highlight nothing good about wrestling. Maybe that was the purpose of the film, but, again, I can not understand why the people at WCW would agree to this script or this movie.

Martin Landau suddenly showed up as a wrestling trainer right out of the Stu Hart mold. I couldn’t believe when he opened the door.

I wanted this movie over five minutes into it. I hated this disrespectful and hate filled movie.

DailyView: Day 275, Movie 385

Whoa, this one was tough.

I found this on Amazon Prime a few days ago and added it to my Watchlist mainly because I like Tilda Swinton and I found the description to be intriguing. Little did I know how hard this movie would hit.

Swinton played Eva, the mother of a strange boy Kevin who seemed to have a lot of resentment and anger toward her. Any time his father, Frank (John C. Reilly) was around, Kevin seemed to be a normal boy. However, his behaviors began to escalate over the years and caused stress and anxiety for his mother.

There are flashes ahead showing something terrible that had occurred, but the film kept the mystery of what was about to happen close to the vest.

Kevin was played by several actors, but the two that really stood out was the teenage Kevin, Ezra Miller, and the younger boy Kevin, Jasper Newell. Both Newell and Miller do a wonderful job bringing a sinister performance of the clearly psychotic Kevin, creating a portrait of a mentally unstable child who wound up committing a horrendous atrocity.

The beginning of the film was confusing. I had some trouble following the story as Eva was all over the place. However, as it progressed the story, the plot became more clear and became more intense. John C. Reilly’s character was blind to the issues his son was having and the manipulation that he was pulling. There were not many characters to really root for, because even Eva had plenty of negativity to her. She was not a great mother.

There is a coldness in the film, which is obviously intentional. That tone carries through the entire film and, I have to tell you, the end of the movie was a real kick in the gut. The film does not try and sugar coat anything. It is not an enjoyable movie, but it is a fascinating one.

DailyView: Day 274, Movie 384

This has been referred to as Shawn of the Dead meets La La Land, but I got a lot more of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s musical episode, Once More with Feeling, vibes during the Christmas zombie musical, Anna and the Apocalypse.

Yes, I said “Christmas zombie musical.”

This is quite the mashup film, with the three genres slammed together. I enjoyed this film and it was more than a straight comedy. There were some great emotional moments for our main characters and all while singing.

With the arrival of a zombie apocalypse in the small town of Little Haven during Christmastime, Anna (Ella Hunt), a brash young woman who had just told her father (Mark Benton) that she was not going to college, but was going to travel, and friends had to struggle to try and survive. While many things were played for comedy, there were distinctive moments of pain and anguish facing our characters, and they all had to deal with the dangers of the new world.

And, of course, do it while singing.

The music was entertaining and fun. Again, some of the songs really had a Buffy the Vampire Slayer flare to them. One of the teachers at the school, Mr. Savage (Paul Kaye) found himself freed by the chaos in the school and became a epic villain in the film. He was not a zombie, just a man who had found that the zombie apocalypse had made him into a worse image of himself. Much like the Walking Dead, the most dangerous villains on that show were the humans, much like Savage.

Like all entries in the zombie genre, there are sad moments when some of our favorite characters are revealed to have been or are shown being bitten. There are a few moments like this in Anna and the Apocalypse and they pull on all the proper heart strings.

And, by the way, they did it while singing.

Have you got that yet?

I thought this was great and gave us the best moments of all of the mishmash of film genres in one. Anna and the Apocalypse was one that was not on my radar and a film I never would have seen without the DailyView, so I am very pleased that this binge has been such a success.

DailyView: Day 273, Movie 383

This was the film that made everyone wish that Morgan Freeman would narrate their lives.

The iconic documentary about the emperor penguin and their journey across the frozen tundra of Antarctica and the process of the family unit that the penguins undertake. The harrowing adventure is narrated with the ever smooth voice of Morgan Freeman, and the uncanny direction of French director Luc Jacquet.

Apparently, the film was first shot as a French film, with a different narrator and featured dialogue from the penguins and a pop music soundtrack, according to IMDB. This feels like a much better idea than that.

The part I liked the most about this documentary is that, unlike a lot of the Disney nature documentaries, they avoid the personification of the animals they are following. They do not give them cute little names or assign them an inner monologue designed to entertain the little children. Instead, it treats these animals as animals, following their behaviors and the nature of the animals. They keep the personification to a minimum.

And, of course, Freeman is gold. He is clearly the reason this documentary became such a smash hit, including an Academy Award for Best Documentary, feature.

The imagery is astounding and the shots of the penguins range from amazing to ridiculously adorable. It does not shy away from the real world consequences faced by the penguins on their dangerous journey.

This is a fantastic documentary and deserving of the status it holds.

DailyView: Day 272, Movie 382

Carl!!!!

So I watched Only on Netflix because of the thumbnail on the streaming service of Chandler Riggs, who played Carl on The Walking Dead. Of course, he ONLY had about five minutes in this movie. Hardly worth even putting on a resume.

So, that was working against the movie… if ONLY that was the ONLY problem I had with ONLY, I would get by. Unfortunately, ONLY has plenty of issues as a film.

ONLY is a film that deals with a comet that brought a virus to earth that began killing all the women on the planet. Virus movies are a little shaky at this point in humanity because of what we all have gone through the last two years. I could get by with the idea of a killer virus, if it had been done well.

Another major problem was the story structure as it was told in a non-linear fashion that simply did not work. The flashbacks were confusing and did not provide specifics to the tale. These scenes simply muddied the water of the tale and made it less cohesive of a story.

Leslie Odom Jr. starred as Will who was trying to protect his girlfriend Eva, played by Frieda Pinto, from the virus. One moment we see the pair trying to quarantine themselves in an apartment and the next they are traveling the countryside and she is sick.

Frieda Pinto was trying to make herself look like a male, but she is a strikingly lovely woman and tucking her long hair under a stocking cap and rubbing some ash on her face to make it look like stubble simply did not make her look like a man. That whole situation destroyed any suspension of disbelief I had in ONLY.

We also saw some scenes in the flashbacks that made me just dislike Eva, and I found her terribly stupid and completely selfish. These flashbacks did not help me feel for her, even a little bit. It did not help that I found the scenes horribly overacted by Pinto. She was much better in other parts of the film, but there were some scenes that were practically unwatchable.

Odom Jr. carried the film. He was very solid in what he had to do. There were dumb things tossed at them to cause conflict (as if his girlfriend, sick with a killer virus wasn’t enough of a conflict). The entire bit with Chandler Riggs could have been left on the cutting room floor. Maybe it should have been left there. It presented nothing to the overall story.

In fact, neither did the story of all the women of the world dying or being taken to harvest their eggs in an attempt to be able to repopulate the species. This was, at best, background noise.

I had some hope that this might be a hidden gem on the Netflix queue, but, unfortunately, this died quickly.

DailyView: Day 271, Movie 381

Some documentaries tell a story that is so amazing that it is hard to believe that it is real, that it actually happened. Docs such as Three Identical Strangers, Tickled, The Imposter each told a tale that proves the old cliché true: Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The 2019 Netflix documentary Tell Me Who I Am falls right in to that category.

Tell Me Who I Am started off with a terrible motorcycle accident that caused 18-year old Alex Lewis, twin brother of Marcus, to lose his memory. He remembered nothing, but he knew his twin. The connection between them was still there despite the amnesia.

Marcus began to help his brother by showing him photos and filling in the missing gaps in Alex’s memory of their childhood and his missing life. For fourteen years, this was they way their relationship went, with Marcus helping to create new memories of the old events.

However, when their mother died, a dark secret came out causing Alex to question everything that he had been told.

The entire film was basically Alex and Marcus speaking to the camera about their different lives developed and how the amnesia affected each other.

Most importantly, without revealing any details, you can see and feel the love these two men have for one another despite being separated with knowledge for years.

The doc was shot beautifully, adding to the tone and mood of the film. Director Ed Perkins creates a must see documentary that has some deeply painful information. If you like docs, this one is a worthy watch.

DailyView: Day 270, Movie 380

I found a film on the “leaving HBO Max this month” list called My Best Friend is a Vampire and it was from the 1980s and I thought… how could this go wrong? I had a feeling about the type of film this was going to be and I felt in the mood for one of those silly, 80s vampire flicks. That was exactly what it was.

Jeremy (Robert Sean Leonard) is a teenage delivery boy who found himself at an old mansion with a beautiful woman who wants the boy in a sexual manner. During the encounter, she bit him on the neck. It is revealed that she was a vampire and he was turned into one too.

There was a professor (David Warner) with an aide (Paul Wilson) chasing after Jeremy (actually, Jeremy’s friend played by Evan Mirand) to kill him because they were trying to kill all vampires. René Auberjonois showed up as a friendly vampire to help Jeremy along. There is a girl (Cheryl Pollak) that Jeremy had a dream about and now is interested in. Fannie Flagg is here too.

This was such a stupid movie, but it had its fun times as well. The acting was not good and the story was just as ridiculous as you would imagine. Some of the adjustments they made to the vampire mythos were cool,

The first half hour or so things were decent but the longer the film continued , the worse it got.

Not much else to say. It was a decent time watching a stupid movie.