Hollywood's Belated Best

February came and went without an Academy Awards program, and for a brief, blessed moment I thought we would be spared the annual self-congratulatory exercise in gonzo marketing. My blood pressure went down. My worry lines smoothed out like a character in a Sade song. I stopped angrily shouting at George Clooney. I even considered getting a pedicure. Alas, they only pushed back the ceremony a month to give Meryl Streep a chance to work on her new Esperanto accent. Also, my toenails look like grim death.

This year not only are they going to go through with it, but it will be co-hosted by, as near as I can tell, every single human being in show business. The usual three-hour show is expected to double in length, adding on an additional three hours for the credits and an extended musical number with Sir. Ian McKellen. This means it will be almost exactly like watching Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, only with better dresses.

Once again, the Best Picture nominee list consists of ten films, because the Academy were too lazy to whittle it down to five and also wanted me to work twice as hard as usual. The joke is on them, because I only work half as hard when writing this post, meaning that it's exactly the same. At least that's what Price Waterhouse told me.¹

And the nominees are...

Belfast

Kenneth Branagh's coming of age dramedy is set in 1969 Belfast, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles, so you just know what's coming. Trouble.

Buddy (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a young child growing up in a very Protestant family, the kind that doesn't have fish on Friday, trying to make sense of the sectarian hatred in his hometown of... you guessed it... Belfast, Ireland.

He meets a very, very, VERY Catholic girl, Sister Mary Katherine, (Kristen Dunst) who is equally troubled by the all-consuming hatred that some of the people feel. She is also deeply troubled by the Cheech and Chong routine "Sister Mary Elephant," especially the knife-throwing part.

Their relationship is severely tested when local rabble-rouser Billy Clanton (Ralph Fiennes, in full Voldemort makeup) threatens Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. After getting his ass shot up in the wild west (no, NOT Galway), Clanton comes to Belfast to rabble-rouse even more, culminating in his vicious attack on the city in a Vought SBU Corsair loaded with nuclear bombs. Fortunately, the bombs fail to detonate. However, they do land smack-dab on top of beloved local priest Father Brown, ending his life and any chances of solving the O'Riley murders.

Just as all hell is about to break loose (the O'Rileys), Buddy's grandmother (Dame Judi Dench), known to everyone as "Granny," reveals that she is in fact the retired head of MI6 and uses her connections to have Commander James Bond (Daniel Craig) shoot up the rest of Billy Clanton, in a fifteen-minute extended slow motion scene that both Protestants and Catholics loved in previews.

Coda

Coda is the heartwarming story of a young woman and her deaf parents, and if you think I'm going to make jokes about deaf people, you've got another thing coming. I would even sign this entry, if I knew how. (Walks out. Departs in a Vought Corsair.)

...

OK, I'm back now. What did I miss?

Don't Look Up

The chilling remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, only just with pigeons.

Kate Dibiasky is a post-grad ornithologist with a thing for leather, which explains why she's at Yale. During a clambake, she meets a bankruptcy lawyer named Rod Taylor, becomes intrigued with him (because who wears chaps to a clambake?), and playfully stalks him out to his palatial home on Martha's Vineyard.

After meeting Rod's charming mother, even more charming little sister, and not-at-all charming regular client Donald Trump, Kate begins to notice that she is the attention of some stalkers of her own, namely a flock of approximately one billion pigeons that she deeply offended when she offhandedly called them "feathered rats" during a symposium.

The pigeons begin to systematically torment her and her new friends. They start with a few well-aimed poop dive bombs (for Pete's sake, close your mouth). This is followed by the birds landing on a set of school monkey bars, pooping all over it, and then grabbing Kate's purse and placing it on top of the monkey bars. (Spoiler: She gets the purse back.) Next, they kill Kate's new schoolteacher friend, Suzanne Pleshette, by pooping her eyes out. This scene alone is the reason for the film's NC-17 rating.

This leads up to a spectacular attack on Martha's Vineyard which covers at least a hundred Lamborghini's and Bentleys, all convertibles, in ripe pigeon guano. The angry fowl also cover the streets with number twooooos, leading to some mildly amusing slipping videos that will be replayed on dozens of YouTube channels for the next decade. The townsfolk attempt to escape any way they can, by boat, town car, Prius, and Vought Corsair, all of which coincidentally crash into each other in a big fire-poop ball.

In the end, everyone is horribly, horribly killed, except for the charming little sister, who survives until an alien messily devours her 16 years later.

Drive My Car

This Japanese film about the making of the Beatles' song from their Rubber Soul album is in turns tuneful and argumentative, because the premise of the film is that Yoko Ono turned up in John Lennon's life a full year and a half earlier than in the real world. This explains the rough, tuneless, Japanese-accented "VRROOM"s in the film's version of the famous song.

The film is shot in documentary-style, which consists mostly of being black and white and having Ringo wander in and out of frame, wearing an awkward smile. (This is particularly awkward during the extended sex scene between John and Yoko.) 

Paul McCartney brings John the unfinished version of the title song, asking him for help with the lyrics, which up until that point consisted of "Baby, baby, baby" and an extended quotation of the play by play commentary of English boxer Brian London's 1963 bout with Ingemar Johansson. 

John is conflicted about how to help with the song until Yoko points to a small dot in the sky (an F4U Vought Corsair) and whispers into his ear, "birdy." John returns to the studio, argues with Paul for four straight hours about whether coffee or tea is superior, and then they magically write the song out in a three minute musical number.

Two minutes later, the Beatles break up for good, and we never get Sgt. Pepper's, dammit.

Dune

The remake of the adaptation of the cult classic of the something or other (which is how David Lynch successfully pitched his version), Dune takes science fiction to the next level, which is to say a film Zendaya would agree to do in those outfits. ("Dreadfully flowing!" - Melissa Rivers)

I'm not going to bother you with the plot at all, because I tried to read Dune in college back in the eighties and bogged down in the plot shortly into page 72 of the acknowledgements. David Lynch's version made as little sense to me, except as an extended Sting music video with a really crappy song made up of film dialogue and a guy with worse skin than Jabba the Hut.

Also, to my horror, there is not a single Vought Corsair in the entire picture, IF you don't count the one they accidentally left in the distant background of the love scene (a taut thirty seconds) at 152:35, just before the intermission. I love Corsairs, but couldn't they have used CGI to take the plane out, the way they removed Josh Brolin's body hair?

Needless to say... hmmm... if it's needless to say, let's move on to something else.

Anyway, the sand worms were quite impressive, screaming like the late, great Meatloaf, sweating through the second hour of an outdoor concert in July. The sheer size of the things was also amazing. It's the first-time critics have ever described something as "Texas-sized" and meant "literally the size of the state of Texas."

The ending was quite surprising though. I'm not going to give you any spoilers, but I did not expect to see Andy Kaufman AND Elvis in the same room. Because they are... sorry Andy... were... WERE the same person. 

Anyway, to paraphrase most of the critics' reviews, "What just happened here?"

King Richard

An adaptation of Richard III, only set during the Wimbledon Finals, the film opens with the death of famed tennis coach Hank Lancaster (Denzel Washington), whose even more famous father Hank Sr. (Kenneth Branagh) won five Wimbledon finals. After the obvious historical significance of this opening, like Shakespeare's play, the film quickly turns to murder, kidnapping, assassination, more murder, and most violently of all, a tiebreaking set on center court (Act V, Set V).

Henry's players are all inherited by his son Eddie "Rosie" Lancaster (Samuel L. Jackson) and his assistant Richie York (Will Smith), the latter known for his "hunches" about players. However, Ed is soon killed in a bizarre tennis ball cannon accident (for Pete's sake, close your mouth), leaving Richie tentatively in control of the Lancaster enterprise.

Richie has Eddie's daughters (Venus and Serena Williams), known worldwide as the Princesses of Tennis, imprisoned in the tower of a castle at an Orlando miniature golf course. He then proceeds to consolidate his grip (get it?) on the business. He and his friend Michael Corleone violently extort other coaches to send their best players to him. He appears regularly on The Tennis Channel Live as a analyst and bon vivant. He has gaudy advertising banners flown over London by plane (Vought Corsairs, natch). Finally, he arm-wrestles John McEnroe in a favorite pub of tennis players, only barely winning when he distracts McEnroe by coughing and shouting the name "Björn Borg" at the same time.

All of this is undone when Richie's best player is beaten senseless on the Bosworth Court at Wimbledon by an up and coming player named Zazou Pitts (Naomi Osaka), coached by Harry Richmond (Rowan Atkinson). The enraged Richard is accidentally killed when he shouts out, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" and is trampled by a startled Reg the Wonder Pony, making a special and unexpected promotional appearance at Wimbledon.

Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson's coming of age dramedy centers on a young couple's dare to find a pizza topping even worse than pineapple.

Alana (Rachel Ray) is a young working woman with a Cordon Blue diploma, specializing in chain restaurant menu development. After making her reputation by inventing the Gordita, her career takes an unexpected nosedive when she advises McDonald's to go all in on the McRib. This humiliation ("it stings like over-smoked BBQ sauce!") turns her to the dark, unsavory world of bizarre food, which seems a bit redundant after the McRib, if you ask me.

Gary Valentine (Alton Brown) is a strapping young lad (he likes to wear straps) looking for an experience that he thinks will make him into a man. He gets drawn into adventurous eating contests, devouring weird delicacies like fried grasshoppers and circus peanuts, but this is not enough for his unsettled bread basket.

Soon, Gary and Alana cross paths at a dangerous underground food party hosted by Andrew Zimmern. After an opening course of cinnamon-spiced menudo (the Skyline Chili version), the partygoers wheel out a build-your-own pizza buffet (build from a very modified Vought Corsair). Most of the partygoers are satisfied to stick to the usual weird pizza toppings (pineapple, tofu, broccoli) but Alana and Gary soon become embroiled in a reckless and frightening game of challenges to throw back slices covered with the most ridiculous and obscene toppings imaginable outside of a John Waters film. 

After starting with snails (shells on!), they soon move to more exotic fare, such as buffalo wings (from actual buffalos), Rocky Mountain Oysters, actual oysters, Bazooka bubble gum, pickled herring, kippers, black pudding, Jello-brand gelatin black pudding, souse, haggis, gas station sushi, McRib, and Carolina Reapers.

Finally, they look at the last ingredient on the buffet: Licorice. The old school kind that feels and tastes like the vinyl seat in a beat up Ford Edsel. They slowly pile heaping mounds of it on a fresh pie. Their eyes water with grim expectation as the pie slowly inches its way through the scorching pizza oven. They draw in the sickly-sweet aroma of the melted goo as it is sliced and lovingly presented on their plates, and then, just as they are about to masticate the monstrous mountain of, well, licorice... they both drop dead.

Gas station sushi. It'll get you every time.

Nightmare Alley

The remake of the adaptation of the cult classic of the... here we go again! Guillermo del Toro's remake shifts the focus of the classic tale of twisted greed and ambition to a single alley in the carnival where "all the nightmares occur." This is in conjunction with Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios attraction "Nightmare Alley: The Ride," which will be the first Disney ride with nudity, though thankfully none of the passengers.

Bradley Cooper plays Stanton "Stan, Stanley, Stan the Man, Stanorino, Stan By Me, Stan Lee, Stan Antonio, Stan Diego, Stan Francisco, Stana Stana bo-banna Banana-fanna fo-fanna Fee-fi-mo-manna Stana" Carlisle. However, most people know him as "Jack."

Jack is a lowlife drifter who becomes a carnival worker. (I'd make a joke here, but I prefer my funnel cake without spit.) He begins working in a mind-reading act with Madame Zeena (Toni Collette, in a Harpo Marx wig) and her husband Foster Brooks (Foster Brooks). After Zeena's husband is killed by being accidentally impaled during a performance by carnival chakram-thrower Xena: Warrior Princess, Jack takes over the act, and a slightly blood-stained and aerated sportscoat.

It's at this point that things get weird. 

One night, Jack and Xena... sorry, Zeena! One night Jack and Zeena are walking through the carnival when they turn down into (JARRING CHORD) Nightmare Alley! After waiting out the enormous queue (because Jack wasn't clever enough to get Disney Genie+), they enter the shadowy, eerie, foreboding, 100% trademarked alley.

Soon they are on a nightmarish trip worse than the ones in a Roger Corman film, although only slightly worse than the one at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Jack watches Zeena's body turn inside out, while Zeena watches Jack's body turn outside in. Jack turns into Jack from 30 Rock while Zeena turns into you-know-who the Warrior Princess. Then they both turn into Spiderman and point at each other, just like the dreadful meme. Finally, Jack turns into a Vought Corsair and explosively sinks Zeena's battleship (not a euphemism). They wake up just before Zeena screams, "You sunk my battleship!" which would have triggered a lawsuit from an even cheesier film.

After the experience, Jack and Zeena promise to never enter Nightmare Alley again and henceforth take the slightly longer route through Gasoline Alley instead. Also, they swear off the LSD for good.

The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion's trenchant and powerful adaptation of Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl (TM), reimagined as a gritty western, begins when troubled loner Frisky (Rex) enters the rustic frontier town of BARK-er, Montana. Frisky and his brother Boomer - named for his loud flatulence - are in the middle of a long cat drive across the unforgiving wilderness. This explains Boomer's catchphrase, "This is just like herding cats (loud fart)."

Frisky soon meets a saucy bitch (calm down; I'm talking about a dog) named Saucy (Ginger) and falls head over tail for her. Saucy has a thing for puppies in chaps and boots, as they make great chew toys at playtime.

Soon, and unpredictably, Frisky, Boomer, and Saucy are competing against the team of Rover, Princess, and Rowdy Boy in the inaugural Puppy Bowl I, played in beautiful, downtown Miss-AROOO-la, Montana. Initially, the game goes badly for Frisky and Friends (their official GEICO team name), but the tide turns when Saucy realizes that Rowdy Boy is very easily distracted by squirrels. At halftime, she hires a notorious gang of flying squirrels to fly by at a critical point in the game (in a Vought Corsair for some reason). This leads Rowdy Boy to adorably collide with Rover and Princess, while Frisky romps into the end zone, sealing F & F's victory.

Unfortunately however, during the excitement of the game, the cats Frisky and Boomer were herding were rustled. They were only found two years later in the one-room apartment of an old woman in PURRRiest Lake, Idaho.

The film then ends with a completely unnecessary and extremely bloody gunfight, which the critics loved.

West Side Story

Steven Spielberg's remake of the beloved Broadway musical adds some unusual twists and turns to the familiar retelling of Romeo and Juliet, not the least being the ending, where the couple realize that everything is OK and fly off together in a Vought Corsair to Brazil. There they open a Puerto-Rican/Italian fusion bistro named Maria's. 

The film ends with an extended television ad punctuated by the jingle, "Maria's! You'll love all the grub at Maria's!"

1. There are no footnotes for this year's list. Except for this one. Listen, deal with it, OK?