Phew! It was a tough go, but I made it through two months of consecutive weekly posting. This month – to mix things up – I’m going to be digging into my home video archive to bring you a whole batch of articles on movies I own on the antiquated and inferior home video format known in some circles as the Reflective Optical Videodisc System, or DISCOVISION! I’m sure you’re thrilled.
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Rarely can I shut my brain off and simply enjoy a movie on its own terms: my thoughts will travel in a million different directions and any one of them can affect my impression. One can claim to be critically non-biased but if I have a bad day and I want to unwind by going to see the latest Jane Austin adaptation AND THEN I HATE IT (which I most surely will, if the trailer preceding this particular feature was anything to go by) then I have no one to blame but myself, don’t I? There are a minimum of three new domestic movies released EVERY WEEK OF THE YEAR, not including international films or re-releases. There will always be movies to see. If I had my choice, then, would I have seen Dolittle? The much-maligned reboot-slash-reimagining of Doctor Dolittle with an unshackled-from-Kevin-Feige’s-basement Robert Downey Jr? No: I would have sneaked into it for free. What do you want? It had terrible pre-screening reviews; worrisome press about “reshoots” and “retooling”; and then it was release-dumped in January: a time when no one wants to go to the movies because everyone is still exhausted physically-and-financially from Christmas and suddenly become very aware of how much popcorn should actually cost. Is your movie’s tone a little darker then you would like it and the Men In Suits pay you millions of dollars to reshoot the ending, only to have the new one ruin the continuity of the rest of the film? Dump it in January. Are you up against another Star Wars or Fast & Furious sequel on your current release date and all the big Studio boys have paid double then what you can afford for May-to-December slots? Dump it in January. Silly horror movie starring the only boy from that Netflix show who was willing to suck-a-dick for a career? January. Oscar bait? January. A foreign film re-edited by The Weinstein Company, and if that wasn’t bad enough Harvey gets slapped by your lead actress and he shelves the movie for three years? Nos vemos en Enero. Doctor Dolittle 2020? SEE YOU IN JANUARY. Guy Ritchie’s movies keep getting released in January: I’m sure he is not impressed. But my wife and sister LOVED King Arthur with Charlie Hunnam, and they were stoked for this “new vision” of the Dolittle story, too (which sadly is not directed by Guy Ritchie – but there is a “popcorn flick” for ya). Would it be like the Rex Harrison original, which my wife grew up on? The Eddie Murphy movies, which my sister grew up on? Or would it be closer to the books?
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Lincoln Rhyme is a living legend among the NYPD elite, and it’s a wonder he’s still living. The brilliant homicide detective-slash-criminologist has written the book – several in fact – on investigating crime, but since a tragic accident left him quadriplegic and bed-ridden he has lost the will to live. How can he do what he was born to when, along with being isolated, his colleagues think he’s more of a washed-up celebrity then the force of nature he was? A new serial killer is prowling the streets. When Rhyme is consulted on the crime scene photos, he sees a way to work from home: by letting the photographer, rookie Amelia Donaghy, be his eyes-and-ears on the ground. With his almost-supernatural ability to deduce and the cop’s instincts she inherited from her father, the duo grind the case out together but not quickly enough to save this murderer’s victims from the tauntingly-complex time-sensitive contraptions he has them hooked up to. Rhyme and Donaghy find out the killer is using a crime novel as his template and with the last murder in the book completed, he turns his attention to Rhyme. Turns out, the killer is not only one of Rhyme’s medical orderlies but a corrupt ex-cop who Lincoln slandered in one of his true-crime books, who was then “used as a human toilet” in prison and released with a taste for elaborately-plotted vengeance. How will Lincoln get himself out of this jam? Can he count on the new friends he made along the way? Will their kindness inspire a new joie-de-vivre in this crippled husk of a man? Am I digging for character depth too deeply in a movie where the lead actor got to lie down on a bed for ninety-nine percent of the time?
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It isn’t easy being a viking, especially when you’re young and just learning the ways. Erik is one of this new generation: jaded and disillusioned, he’s in line for his clan’s throne but can’t bring himself to participate in his family’s history of pillaging and carnage. There has to be more to life then violence, but what is peace after Ragnarok? The land has been shrouded in overcast and rain for so long that it couldn’t be anything but the Age of Ragnarok: the end of the world – couldn’t it? Erik isn’t sure of anything, other then he has never seen the sun, and the weight of his first kill (a woman he refuses to rape during a raid) weighs heavily on him. This needs to stop: the Gods must be awakened from their slumber to bring back blue skies and the promise of a future of genuine change. A chance encounter with a seer gives him the push he needs: if he could find the Gjallarhorn – or, the Horn Resounding – on the mythical island of Hy-Brasil and blow it, the rainbow road to the Gods’ home of Asgard will open and the sound could end their quietus. Joined by the other able-bodied men of his tribe, Erik sets sail to uncharted territory and his destiny. Days pass. The men are restless for action and begin to doubt the validity of the stories they grew up with, which isn’t helped by a converted Christian priest who joins them and questions the old legends. They enter a fog patch and think they see a light in the sky. Is it the sun? Does it really exist? But it isn’t a sun at all: it’s a bauble hanging from the fearsome Dragon of the North! If this beast exists then surely their expedition cannot be in vain. Can our heroes escape?
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Let me set the scene: you’ve had a shitty week and you want to escape. You haven’t seen a movie in theaters for a while and the January “dumping ground” of unmarketable trash is overflowing with sub-tier titles to get your tiddies hard from the thought of the camp value. You convince your wife to go with you to a double-feature (but nothing subtitled, so you still haven’t seen Parasite). What do double-features in my family mean to me? It means sneaking-in from one movie to another. It doesn’t mean LEAVING THE THEATER to re-up only to have to come back in and pay for the second ticket. You need to be prepared: bring edibles; make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom; and go on a day when the ticket-taker wicket isn’t set up at the West Wing entrance where your two movies are going to be (the apps let you check your theater number now too). We had it all worked out: Ford v Ferrari was at 12:15 and ended at 15:00; Dolittle started at 15:00; and the theaters were side-by-side. Dolittle is really what we wanted to see but the timing wasn’t working: sometimes the second movie starts right away, and sometimes the gap between them is too long. This sounded like it would have worked like a dream. THANKS GOD. And then I had to piss. And Ford v Ferrari is not a short movie. A good movie, but not short. So I held my pee. And what happens as I leave the theater? They have the wicket set up at the end of the hallway, AFTER the men’s bathroom. Granted it was “Cheap Tuesday” but usually they have the L-shaped divider set up and it wasn’t there this time. The women’s bathroom doesn’t have any security: it’s halfway down the hall. And the East Wing of the theater doesn’t have the wicket set up after the bathroom! So I had two choices: either pee into my water bottle that I sneaked McDonald’s ice tea into and try to remember not to drink from it for the next two-hour movie (because we couldn’t get any snacks from concession either because of where it was located; that’s why my wife brought her purse the size of a knapsack) or pee like a normal person and skip the second movie. So we skipped the second movie.
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theory of a daskeman 