Trainwreck

I used to like Amy Schumer’s comedy.  When I watched her on numerous Comedy Central Roasts almost a decade ago now, she was often the funniest comedian at the podium.  Fearless, biting, precise.  Her jokes drew blood and left lasting wounds.  She deservedly emerged as a breakout star.

Then she got a TV show and started making movies.  Suddenly, she was everywhere.  As a result, greater attention was paid to her work.

Her white feminism became a problem.  Her anti-sex work stance hypocritical.  Her Zionism shamefully given a pass.

Then I watched her movies.  Snatched was bad.  I Feel Pretty was worse.

The carefully cultivated persona that had worked in tight sets on TV now was grating in a feature-length setting.  The more you heard her speak, the more annoying she became and the less you liked her.

Good comedy doesn’t necessarily require likeable characters in the first place but if you’re the hero of your own story and you’re expecting the audience to root for you despite your flaws, you better possess oodles of charm or at least have great material at your disposal.

In Trainwreck, the least bad of her cinematic offerings, Schumer is snotty and selfish, cruel and emotionally distant, insincere and judgmental, the complete opposite of lovable.  This would be perfectly fine if only she wasn’t so self-aware and defensive about it.

Schumer plays Amy Townsend, a promiscuous drunk who works for a lad magazine.  You know, the kind that pander to pick-up artists and bros who need their misogyny vindicated.  Schumer, who also wrote the screenplay, gives one of her co-worker characters a very funny pitch for how to get away with jerking off at work.  None of the other ideas or finished articles are as amusing.  (“We Forgive You, Lance Armstrong”?  Fuck off.)

An almost unrecognizable Tilda Swinton plays her tanned boss.  Why she’s running a Maxim-style rag and not Vogue is not really explained.  Swinton is game and convincing but she’s too mean to be funny.  When Amy tries to talk to her, she complains repeatedly about being stuck in these conversations.  She never inspires a genuine laugh.

There’s a job opening at S’nuff (nothing in the magazine lives up to the pun).  Amy could get promoted to Executive Editor, a job she covets.  But it will ultimately go to her friend Vanessa Bayer who won’t stop awkwardly smiling.  Before she gets disappointed, though, she is assigned a big profile and not the one she proposed, either.

Dr. Aaron Conners (SNL’s Bill Hader) is a groundbreaking sports physician who has figured out a way to minimize recovery time from severe knee injuries.  In the second half of the film, he’ll be performing this radical surgery on a prominent New York Knick.

Unfortunately, Amy hates sports.  (Swinton wants that played up in the piece she ultimately doesn’t run because she thinks Conners is an ugly bore.)  When she lies about her enthusiasm, the doctor instantly calls her on it.  (The Orlando Blooms are not a real team.)  It’s not a dealbreaker for him, though.  As it turns out, he has no idea who he’s really attracted to. 

For you see, the neurotic Amy Townsend doesn’t really have serious relationships.  She has meaningless hook-ups.  The closest thing she has to a boyfriend early on is WWE Superstar John Cena who is easily the funniest person in the movie.  The bathroom towel gag is great and the scene where he tries to shut down a grumbling moviegoer by accidentally outting himself made me laugh even more than the wanking-at-work sales pitch.

When Cena finds out she’s not as committed to him, you sympathize with him more than her.  She is coldly dismissive and he’s deeply hurt.  When Cena exits the film, Trainwreck never recovers, although there is an odd laugh here and there.  (The Woody Allen burn is brilliant.)  Even creepy Marv Albert, now wearing a questionable blonde rug, gets off a funny one-liner.

Amy is supposed to be profiling Dr. Connors but then she seduces him thinking she’ll leave right after.  (The ethics of sleeping with an interview subject are never once addressed which is quite frankly inexcusable.)  However, he wants her to spend the night.  I don’t like how he won’t let her leave by blocking her exit from bed.  But Amy makes it even more awkward by making fake complaints about his breathing and insisting they don’t cuddle at all.  She even puts a pillow between them as a divider.  If you’re gonna leave, just fucking leave.

Why is she like this?  Blame her father Colin Quinn.

In the first scene, set 23 years before the present and shot like a home movie, he tells his two young daughters he’s leaving the family.  He tries to explain why in terms they can understand.  The bottom line is he feels trapped in his marriage.  He wants to sleep around.  “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” he asserts.

Amy has taken that mantra to heart but her sister Brie Larson, married to Mike Birbiglia and herself the stepmother of his young son, has long ignored it.  Amy has kept in touch (Larson far less so for a good reason) although Quinn is now bitter and resentful stuck in a nursing home.  He refuses to take his medication.  A Jamaican Method Man is his nurse.  It’s a nothing part.

In the meantime, as she continues to interview Dr. Connors about his job, they keep seeing each other and she keeps breaking her rules for avoiding intimacy.  As he grows closer to her, she keeps trying to pull away but can’t.  It’s a tired song-and-dance that eventually leads to that very standard scene where they finally split, in this case after 2 big fights, only to belatedly realize they can’t stand to be apart from each other.

Trainwreck was directed by Judd Apatow whose socially conservative comic influence is all over the movie.  Once again, a single woman can’t be single for her own reasons, even if they are misguided.  She has to find The One in order to be happy.  Amy mocks her sister and her family because she envies their happiness.  At least she doesn’t get knocked up herself.

The real Amy Schumer is smart, so why is she always playing dumb bimbos with bad attitudes?  Amy Townsend is her least appealing character to date.  She’s so detestable and inconsistent.  Her constant sarcasm so off-putting.  When she is sincere and direct, you don’t believe it and you don’t accept it.  It feels like a manipulative ploy to lure in suckers who know better.  She hasn’t earned our loyalty in any legitimate way.

Because Trainwreck is set in the sports world we get the expected celebrity cameos like NFL star Tony Romo (who presents Dr. Connor’s special award at an event) and tennis legend Chris Evert who makes a pass at the doctor during an intervention.  But multiple NBA champion LeBron James is given an actual supporting role playing himself, a close friend of Connor’s with a major jones for Downton Abbey.  He got a lot of good notices for his performance but the only funny thing he actually does in the movie is intensely glare at Amy for many seconds after warning her not to hurt his pal.  Like Michael Jordan, he’s not a movie star.

Bill Hader is a wonderful mimic who was very funny in Superbad but his otherwise earnest physician character is a bit controlling.  Just before their preemptive split he becomes needlessly preoccupied about her sexual history (she always uses condoms, dude, so relax) and the way she dresses (no one else cares about her revealing outfits).  He’s also a gluten for punishment.  No man would put up with the impossible Amy as much as he does.  (She actually yells at him for declaring his love for her after a funeral.)  The scene where she’s all over the place arguing with him the night before that important surgery is the loudest red flag of all.  He has the patience of Job.

Trainwreck is mostly unsentimental until a major character is killed off and the inevitable moment where Amy decides to make a bold move to win back her man.  Schumer tries to blend surprisingly skillful dancing with forgetful klutziness but to no avail.  I’m sorry but it would take a lot more than a cheerleader routine partially set to my favourite song to make me forgive you for being a selfish asshole.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, January 25, 2020
4:30 a.m.

Hot Tub Time Machine

Did John Cusack really produce this pile of shit?  What was he thinking?  Serendipity aside, making Hot Tub Time Machine was his worst decision.

Until he blocked me on Twitter.

Here we are again in a familiar scenario.  Estranged friends once incredibly close now at serious odds with each other.  What went wrong and what will it take to repair the damage?

Cusack has just broken up with his spiteful girlfriend who upon moving out steals his Television.  His nephew, Clark Duke, lives exclusively on the Internet in his basement.  He’d rather pretend to be a prisoner in Second Life than take a single step of freedom outside.

Meanwhile, Craig Robinson has given up a potential career as a rocker to exercise chubby bulldogs and pull car keys out of shitty asses at a pet store.  He believes his wife is cheating on him.

It’s Robinson who contacts Cusack to let him know about their mutual friend Rob Corddry in what is easily his most obnoxious performance to date which, considering his appearance as the dumb FBI guy in the second Harold & Kumar movie, is saying something.

Corddry is a real fucking mess when we first meet him.  While air drumming to Motley Crue’s Home Sweet Home (I’ll admit the start of this is funny as are parts of the rejigged video at the end of the film), he keeps the car running in his garage hoping for permanent sweet relief.

What he gets instead is a trip to the ER and a catheter on his cock.  Protip: don’t remove it on your own.

While in his room, Cusack and Robinson openly run down his hall of shame qualifications: divorce, sexual dysfunction, bad breath, numerous failed get-rich-quick schemes and much more.  An offended Corddry comes to life and then makes a suggestion.  Let’s all go back to Kodiak Valley, a ski resort that holds a lot of good memories for the trio.

Suddenly concerned for their asinine friend whose subsequent calls up to this point they’ve continually ignored, they jump in the car with Duke along for the ride.  Corddry isn’t happy about his participation.

But the current version of KV is a shithole, its best days long past.  Their bellhop, played by the reliably weird Crispin Glover who sadly isn’t given anything funny to do, only has one arm and a miserable attitude.  Things are about to get worse once they decide to jump into the hot tub.

The next day, after proving they have no business being on the slopes, they make a startling discovery.  Everyone dresses and acts like it’s 1986.  There’s a guy wearing a Miami Vice T-Shirt.  President Ronald Reagan is giving a TV speech from the Oval Office.  Someone just put a tape in their Walkman.  Michael Jackson is still Black!  (Hot Tub Time Machine was released in 2010 the year after Jackson died.  I’m surprised the joke didn’t get cut.  It wouldn’t have been missed.)

Back in their room, Corddry is taking a whiz when he notices himself in the mirror and starts missing the bowl.  He has hair again and looks like a teenager.  Cusack and Robinson walk in and see their younger selves as well. Only Duke remains the same.  But his image keeps flickering.

Somehow, through the hot tub, they’ve gone back 24 years to a pivotal time in their development.  But why?

It doesn’t matter why, although the mysterious Chevy Chase shows up from time to time to give cryptic clues about how to go back to the future while misgendering Duke for some reason.

While the audience still sees Cusack, Robinson and Corddry, the characters in 1986 see their younger versions, only visible to us in mirror reflections.  This doesn’t make any sense and, considering the situations they find themselves in, it’s also needlessly creepy.

After Chase’s first appearance, everybody agrees that they have to do exactly what they did before in order to not alter the future.  This means Corddry needs to get his ass beat repeatedly by the anti-Communist ski patrol, Cusack has to once again dump his loving girlfriend who upon hearing the news will stab him in the forehead with a fork and, after rocking the house with his band, The Nasty Delicious, Robinson (a good singer, it should be noted) has to fuck one of his fans, the delectable Jessica Pare from Mad Men.

While Corddry reluctantly but dutifully jobs to his enemies, Cusack hesitates not wanting to be the bad guy again.  To his ultimate horror, he discovers he will still be single and the fork this time will be steel.  Complicating his timeline is the presence of the lovely Lizzie Caplan, a Spin Magazine correspondent stuck covering Poison who just happen to have a gig at Kodiak Valley.  (A real-life tribute band is actually on the stage.)  She’s just a convenient substitute for Cusack’s ex.

As for Robinson, he’s too upset about his allegedly adulterous wife to enjoy being boned by a gorgeous Canadian.  (If it were me, I wouldn’t give a shit.)  There’s a very bad scene near the end where he calls her in a tearful rage (in 1986 when she’s still a nine-year-old child) berating her for her supposed future betrayal.

The truth is the boys were never going to relive this day in 1986 the exact same way because of a squirrel that Corddry barfs on.  At a local bar, knowing how a famous NFL play-off game turns out, he makes easy bets with a gun-toting dupe, collecting tons of dough.  But then, he makes one gamble too many.  And history does not repeat itself.  Fucking squirrel.

That leads me to discussing Hot Tub Time Machine’s biggest problem, its rampant hatred of gay people.  The bet that goes wrong for Corddry feels a lot like a scene from Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.  Because he lost, Corddry has to give a horrified Robinson a blowjob.  (If Corddry had won, the gun-toting guy’s wife would have gone down on him.)

Nothing happens because Robinson passes out on top of a relieved Corddry and the gun-toting guy doesn’t insist they go through with it.  There’s a gross pay-off to this when Robinson comes to in the bathroom and mistakes liquid soap on Corddry’s face for something else.

Corddry’s constant homophobia is brutal and uncomfortable.  In the present Kodiak Valley, he locates an anti-gay taunt he carved way back in the mid-80s on the inside of a bedroom dresser drawer at Cusack’s expense.  This makes him feel nostalgic and proud.  In the car ride on the way to the resort, after Duke insists he’s had plenty of girlfriends, Corddry, who bullies him the entire film, insists he’s only had boyfriends which makes the others laugh at his expense.

And Cusack’s a progressive?

Corddry might be the worst offender but he’s not the only one.  Cusack’s sister, Duke’s mom, is also here in 1986.  “Faggot” is in her own vocabulary.

She likes casual sex which reminds her son that he still doesn’t know who his father is.  (The reason he lives with Cusack is because he can’t stand her new live-in boyfriend.)  The reason he keeps flickering on and off is because he has to be conceived during this trip.  (He was born nine months later.)  If he doesn’t, he is erased from existence.  It’s not clear who really impregnated his mom in the original 1986 but if it was me I wouldn’t approve of his replacement.

It’s been a decade since Hot Tub Time Machine’s initial run at the show but by God time has not been kind to it.  I hate these characters and how they treat each other.  I don’t know why Corddry is so antagonistic towards Duke, a terrible pattern he’s followed for years, apparently.  Every time he verbally swats him down, which is almost every scene, it’s depressing not funny.  Also, what do I care if he gets his revenge against the ski patrol goons?  Nice spear, though.

Speaking of that, there are long stretches with no laughs.  There is far too much unnecessary cursing, a deflating sign that the material is weak.  The obligatory gross-out gags typically appalling.  There’s no warmth or joy here, just a lot of mid-life anger and fear.  The anti-gay crap is the worst, though.

Thank God for its always appealing retro soundtrack and the rare joke that does work.  As bad as Hot Tub Time Machine is, at least it’s not Weekend At Bernie’s.

It’s a little surprising that the film doesn’t take shots at Cusack’s 80s filmography since he’s so identified with the period.  Was that ever considered?  Did the film leave a bunch of unused zingers on the table?  We’ll never know but they could’ve at least made an effort.  Hot Tub Time Machine is too half-assed and predictable to even pontificate such an approach.

When the time warp to the present eventually happens, of course life has gotten a lot better for everybody.  But do they all deserve this improbable second chance?  Have they all suddenly become more affable?  And why is the most despicable character in the film now the happiest of all?

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, January 25, 2020
4:09 a.m.

Knocked Up (2007)

If Knocked Up was written by a woman, Katherine Heigl would not have kept her baby.

Think about her life for a moment.  She’s a floor director for the E! channel.  She has to work with noted creepazoid Ryan Seacrest.  That’s stressful enough.  Then, she gets offered an on-camera try-out, which means her already slender body has to become “tighter” for management’s approval.  They want her to lose 20 pounds.  Now the entire world will be scrutinizing her.  Unless you have exceptional coping skills and a solid support system, good luck keeping cool in all that heat.

By no means an independent person, she lives with her stay-at-home sister Leslie Mann and her A&R husband Paul Rudd.  Her day starts early: 7 a.m.  She doesn’t date and she’s not seen her old friends in a while.  Her whole life revolves around Television production.

Whenever she’s alone with Mann and Rudd’s two peculiar young daughters, she looks exasperated and uncertain.  At no time does she harbour any kind of desire, secret or otherwise, to bear a child of her own.  If anything, she looks relieved to be single.

After being offered a chance to become a future E! News personality, Mann takes her to a local club to celebrate where she meets Seth Rogen.  When an indifferent bartender ignores their orders, Rogen helps himself to two bottles (he lays the money down) and offers them to an appreciative Heigl.

With aggressive housemate Jason Segal as his wingman (he fancies the married, insecure Mann who is flattered by his attention but completely devoted to Rudd), Rogen approaches her again.  Eventually left alone, they talk, they dance, they drink excessively.  And they end up having sex at her sister’s place.  A ridiculous misunderstanding reunites them two months later.

Rogen lives with Segal, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Martin Starr and his girlfriend Charlyne Yi in a surprisingly spacious one-floor house (complete with swimming pool) where they spend their days living a perpetual post-adolescence without any real world consequences.  (How do they pay the rent when no one is working?)  When they’re not engaging in dumb pseudo-American Gladiator competitions, they’re getting high, going to amusement parks and hunting for nude scenes in movies.  There’s a funny moment when they belated realize that their idea for a website already exists.  As Ozzy would say, there’s a reason they call it dope.

Rogen doesn’t have a lot going for him.  He’s not particularly charming, he curses too much, he’s clearly a Zionist (Munich is one of his favourite movies), and he has a terrible temper.  Not helping are his housemates who are just as crude and unkempt as he is.  Starr, the only one with a partner, is relentlessly bullied for agreeing to grow a beard for a year in exchange for free rent.  I’m amazed he doesn’t shave it immediately.

When Heigl invites Rogen out to dinner in order to drop the bomb on him, they get into a fight.  On their fateful night together, Rogen thinks she changes her mind about him wearing a condom when in truth she’s grows impatient with his inability to open the notoriously stubborn packaging in time.  Both are too drunk to pause and reconsider their impulsivity in the first place.  Regardless, their hook-up feels inorganic.

At the dinner, a terrified Rogen wrongly blames Heigl for his own stupidity but after talking to his warmhearted thrice-divorced dad, a perfectly cast and much missed Harold Ramis, while still uneasy about his newfound dilemma he reconsiders his anger, if only for a moment.

Heigl’s own mother, the ageless Joanna Kerns, makes way too much sense about the bad timing of this pregnancy.  She rightly encourages abortion, citing a family member’s experience as a positive example.  But shortly thereafter, Heigl informs Rogen over the phone that she actually wants to go through with this.  He is fully supportive.

This is total bullshit.  These are completely dishonest reactions.

While Heigl’s financial situation is about to greatly improve, Rogen is down to less than a thousand bucks in the bank.  (By the time Heigl takes a look at one of his official bank statements, following an inexplicable earthquake, she discovers it’s dwindled down to less than two hundred.)  The only reason he even has money is because of a $14000 settlement he received from the BC provincial government after being hit by a car while living in Canada a decade ago.  He doesn’t have American citizenship but no one cares.  He’s white.

Having made a very dumb decision to preserve their mistake, Heigl and Rogen force a relationship between themselves despite having already determined they have zilch in common.  They’re just not believable as a couple.  As Heigl tries very hard to hide her pregnancy at work (despite the constant, ill-timed vomiting), Rogen goes through the motions of preparing for his new responsibility.  That bag of purchased parenting books sits there completely untouched for quite a while.

Somehow, they fall in love (there’s even a botched proposal) but as the due date approaches, Rogen becomes deeply paranoid about hurting the baby during sex which annoys Heigl.  Actually, he becomes deeply paranoid about this whole disruption to his once peaceful life in slacker heaven.  Should’ve worn that condom, stupid.

Meanwhile, he grows closer to a receptive Rudd who has his own problems with Mann.  Instead of going out to check out new bands to sign to his undisclosed label, when he’s not going to see Spider-Man 3 on his own, he’s playing fantasy baseball with his secret friends in a house with a conveniently unlocked front door.  Originally thinking he was unfaithful, Mann is more upset about the truth because she realizes he’s happier the less time he spends with her.

Can’t exactly blame him.  Mann is always getting on his case about something or other.  She learned it from Oprah.

Here’s some free advice:  Don’t listen to Oprah.

As things predictably fall apart in both relationships, Rogen and Rudd flee to Vegas where they watch Cirque de Soleil on magic mushrooms and marvel at all the different chairs found in their suite.  There’s a very funny moment during a lap dance in a club where Rudd finds his face squished between a stripper’s ample ass cheeks.  (Bet that took a lot of takes.)  Rogen’s well-timed quip is also humourous.

Despite everybody depressingly bemoaning their chaotic lives, their imperfect bodies and their unresolved situations (Rogen & Heigl have a terrible fight during a gyno appointment), they all come to the same conclusion.  They’re lucky to have each other.  (No one else is gonna put up with them.)  Mann and Rudd easily make up but Rogen and Heigl drag out their tension until it’s finally time to get to the hospital.

Knocked Up was written and directed by Judd Apatow who is a much better TV creator than filmmaker (although I am a great admirer of Superbad) mainly because the limitations of the medium rein in his grosser self-indulgences.  (I loved Freaks & Geeks and enjoyed Undeclared during their criminally short runs in the early 2000s.)  Apatow obviously has a lot of affection for misfits and nerds (especially the actors he cast in those shows, many of them stars now who appear here), his core constituency.  He has a great deal of sympathy and respect for them.  He feels their pain and their rare tastes of joy and triumph in equal measure.  (You’d think he’d side with the Palestinians but I digress.)

But the isolated outsiders in Knocked Up are jerks not worth rooting for at all.  Poor Martin Starr, so hilarious on Geeks (and quite good in a very different role in the Veronica Mars movie), is reduced to being a dense punching bag for his so-called friends who do nothing but ridicule him.  Jason Segal is a creep.  Jonah Hill and Jay Baruchel are even more grossly inappropriate.  And Charlyne Yi, so cute and funny in the overlooked Paper Heart, is just a giggling idiot here.

As her due date approaches, Katherine Heigl starts lashing out reducing herself to that tired sitcom trope, the Angry Pregnant Lady, which carries over into the delivery room, the usual scene for such cliches.  Her underwritten character is a puzzle to me.  Every consequential thing that happens to her is because of the actions of a man.  The accidental pregnancy, the job promotion.  She’s not the driver of her own destiny.  And what’s with Kristen Wiig’s deadpan hostility towards her?  Her one-note performance is not funny at all.

Running a little over two hours, Knocked Up is also too long.  Some of it is funny (gotta love the awkward transition Paul Rudd makes from being yelled at to delivering his oldest daughter’s birthday cake and Mann groaning negatively to his earnest offer of sex), but the rest of it is alternately disgusting, disingenuous, mean spirited (especially all the homophobic comments) and whiny, a real downer of a romantic comedy.

There’s too much time wasted on Rogen’s deadbeat friends, too much investment in pairings we don’t care about, too many wasted celebrity cameos.  Despite its often sour tone, the film is far too conservative in its thinking to keep mismatched people apart from each other for very long.  Apatow believes in the chemistry of his actors more than we do.  He thinks Heigl would sacrifice her own future for a douchebag and that Rogen would suddenly develop a conscience and a work ethic after proving repeatedly he’s unreliable.

During one of his lowest moments, Rudd declares, “Marriage is like a tense, unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond, only it doesn’t last 22 minutes.  It lasts forever.”

Could’ve sworn he was describing this movie.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 23, 2020
2:48 a.m.

How To Watch All The 2020 Oscar-Nominated Feature Films

Tough break, Eddie Murphy.  Better luck next time, Greta Gerwig.  You’ll have to settle for making history, Apollo 11.

The 92nd annual Academy Award nominations are out and for the most part, it’s a predictable list.  1917, Joker, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and The Irishman collectively received an astounding 41 of the available slots.  Robert De Niro may have been passed over for Best Actor but his Irishman co-stars Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are on the shortlist for Best Supporting Actor.  Gerwig didn’t get singled out for Best Director (Marty Scorsese did) but her version of Little Women did manage to snag six including Best Picture.

Meanwhile, the ever problematic Scarlett Johansson keeps defying her detractors as she becomes the latest double acting nominee.  Her appearances in JoJo Rabbit and Marriage Story both secured spots in the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress categories, respectively.  No one has ever achieved the two-fer in a single year.  It’s highly unlikely she’ll win even one.

As always in this space, when the Oscar writ is dropped, I compile a list of all the nominated feature films and let you know how and when you can see them.  As usual, you can see a good number of them right now either through streaming services, a trip to your local multiplex or physical formats.  The rest are coming soon.  With the exceptions of Knives Out and the latest version of Les Miserables, I have information on everything.  When new information becomes available, as is tradition around these parts, I will update.

The Oscars air Sunday night on February 9.  Check your local listings for channels and start times.  In the meantime, happy screenings.

Ad Astra – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

American Factory – Now playing on Netflix

Avengers: Endgame – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood – February 18

Bombshell – March 10

Breakthrough – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

The Cave – Now playing in select theatres

Corpus Christi – Opens in theatres April 22

The Edge Of Democracy – Now playing on Netflix

For Sama – Now playing on Netflix

Ford V Ferrari – Digital: January 28, DVD & Blu-ray: February 11

Frozen 2 – February 25

Harriet – January 28

Honeyland – Now playing on Netflix

How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

I Lost My Body – Now playing on Netflix

The Irishman – Now playing in theatres & on Netflix

JoJo Rabbit – Digital: February 4, DVD/Blu-ray: February 18

Joker – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

Judy – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

Klaus – Now playing on Netflix

Knives Out – February 25

Les Miserables – Now playing in select theatres

The Lighthouse – January 14

Little Women – April 7

The Lion King – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil – January 14

Marriage Story – Now playing on Netflix

Missing Link – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

1917 – Now playing in theatres & DVD/Blu-ray: July 31 March 24

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

Pain & Glory – January 21

Parasite – Now playing in theatres; DVD/Blu-ray – January 28

Richard Jewell – March 17

Rocketman – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker – Now available on Digital platforms; DVD/Blu-ray: March 31

Toy Story 4 – Now available on DVD & Blu-ray

The Two Popes – Now playing on Netflix

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, January 13, 2020
5:10 p.m.

UPDATE: Knives Out hits home video February 25.  Meanwhile, the French remake of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables has just opened in select theatres.  Finally, if you can’t wait until January 28 to see Best Picture nominee Parasite, you can still catch it at a theatre near you.  The list has been updated.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 16, 2020
10:28 p.m.

UPDATE 2: The DVD/Blu-ray versions of Jojo Rabbit will be available February 18.  Frozen II is coming to home video the following week.  Bombshell drops March 10.  The week after that, Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell is out.  Not sure how accurate this information is but Amazon is declaring that 1917 will not be released to video until July 31.  Surely, that will change to an earlier date.  The list has been updated.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, February 9, 2020
7:34 p.m.

UPDATE 3:  Indeed, 1917 will not be released on home video in the summer after all.  You can pick it up starting March 24.  While you wait, you can watch Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker right now on digital platforms.  The DVD & Blu-ray editions drop on March 31.  Entertainment Weekly has more here.  And the most recent Little Women remake will be out April 7.  The list has been updated.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Saturday, March 14, 2020
10:10 p.m.

Passengers (2016)

Would you do it?  Would you open up Jennifer Lawrence’s hibernation pod just to put the moves on her?

That’s the creepy dilemma Chris Pratt wrestles with in Passengers, a truly strange and surprisingly dull space opera.

Pratt and Lawrence are passengers on a commercial space flight headed to an Earth-like planet owned by Homestead, a greedy intergalactic corporation that’s made kazillions off of colonizing far-off, presumably uninhabited worlds capable of sustaining human life.

The journey from Earth to the planet renamed Homestead II is so long you have to be in suspended animation for 120 years, a curious procedure with a long history in science fiction that allows you to not age a day.  (Eat your heart out, Botox.)  But a quarter of the way into the odyssey, a big-ass asteroid crashes into the Avalon spaceship and suddenly, Pratt has been released from his own hibernation pod.   He’s the only one firmly aware there’s a problem.  (A rather obvious contrivance.  Wouldn’t all the pods open up?)

Confused and panicked about the inevitable, he initially tries sending a video distress message back home.  Unfortunately (but hilariously), he is informed that his plea for help won’t be received for decades.  He’ll be lucky to be alive when they bother to reply, if they bother to reply at all.  Even funnier is how much this wasted call costs.  Long distance charges still apply.

Pratt tries to pass the time by enjoying this underwhelming Love Boat in space.  There’s a basketball court, a movie theatre and a Dance Dance Revolution game.  (What?  No arcade?)  Whenever he enters new parts of the ship, he is greeted by a rotating group of computer voices all programmed to cater to his every need, with one big exception.  He’s not a Gold Star passenger so it’s the same shitty cafeteria food every day.  At least he can enjoy supper in a restaurant run by robot waiters and have every possible drink in a bar overseen by amiable android Michael Sheen.

At the same time, he is desperate to get back in his pod and go back to sleep for a lifetime.  But everything he tries is a failure.  Because of the high level security in the command ring of the ship, he can’t even break into the bridge with his extensive collection of power tools.  (He’s a mechanic from Denver.  If only he was a hacker.)

Letting his appearance go to shit, for a time he grows a rather fake looking beard and walks around bottomless, yelling at the futuristic Roombas always lurking nearby to clean up his messes.

Then, after throwing an unbreakable bottle of booze, he sees her, the good looking blonde from New York whose hair mysteriously stays short.  He becomes obsessive, looking up her video interview with Homestead and reading her past journalism.  He foolishly confides in Sheen about his lust for her.  Did we not learn anything from the Alien movies?

After a year of uninterrupted solitude (where he gets so lonely he hugs displayed spacesuits), a now clean shaven Pratt says fuck it and opens up Lawrence’s pod.  For a writer, you’d think she’d be just a tad suspicious about why only two people are awake but no.  The two soon become inseparable.  Lawrence, an active runner and swimmer, uses her Gold Star status to upgrade Pratt’s cafeteria menu.

They fall in love and just when it looks like Pratt is going to propose a deeper commitment, Sheen becomes a blabbermouth probably because of an understandable misinterpretation.  Lawrence is furious about why she’s really awake and their cold war begins.  A smarter character would’ve figured things out well before this moment.

As their relationship becomes as frigid as the picturesque view outside (have to admit the spacewalks are pretty cool), another pod unexpectedly opens.  Larry Fishburne plays one of the high ranking crew members and is stunned to learn about the Avalon’s growing list of mechanical problems.  He’s in rough shape himself.  A quick trip to the infirmary reveals he has over 600 disorders.  In other words, this is a cameo.

He only seems to exist because of his incredibly valuable ID bracelet which finally allows Pratt and Lawrence to enter the previously restricted areas of the ship ending their two years of ongoing frustration.  It is at this late stage of the picture that they ultimately realize the reactor that energizes the Avalon (which has been flying on autopilot this entire time) has been gradually heating up inching ever closer to the dangerous possibility of meltdown, hence all the occasional, inexplicable malfunctions.

Why hasn’t this happened sooner?  As Fishburne explains, when one part of the networked computer system breaks down, the others pick up the slack resulting in “overthinking”, hence the elevator suddenly stopping with Pratt stuck inside it and in one very cool sequence, the temporary loss of gravity that nearly drowns Lawrence in mid-air.  (Although nominated for its spaceship interiors (which are not as consistently stunning as they should be) and forgettable music score, it’s truly surprising the film didn’t get a Best Visual Effects Oscar nod.  It deserved one.)

Thank goodness for this crisis because for much of Passengers, I was bored.  Pratt and Lawrence aren’t believable as a couple (her “took ya long enough” schtick is particularly unpersuasive) and their whole pairing is uncomfortable to begin with.  Their inevitable reconciliation purely formulaic.  Lawrence knows there are 4998 other passengers (plus over 200 crew members) on board.  She has other options in the distant future.  At one point, she literally tells Pratt, “You murdered me!”  Considering her justifiable rage through the second half of the movie, her belated change of heart is horseshit.

Because of Fishburne’s handy ID bracelet and the usual hooey about a character dying only to be miraculously resurrected a minute later, the couple learns that it is actually possible to go back into hibernation mode after all.  There’s another pod in the infirmary but of course only one can lay in it.

Passengers resolves this final dilemma with a truly phony ending where we’re expected to believe that one character who has had a legitimate gripe (and cause to sue) is now perfectly fine with abandoning their ambitious dream for a dull life of journaling with their bland stalker.  All that anger and resentment instantly melted away for a limited, compromised lifespan in a moving, confined space with a creep.

If it was me, I would’ve climbed in the goddamn pod.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Monday, January 13, 2020
2:38 a.m.

Fatal Attraction

They got it wrong, very wrong.

The real villain of Fatal Attraction isn’t Alex Forrest, it’s Dan Gallagher.

I mean, none of his actions are defensible.  Despite being happily married for nine years, he stupidly embarks on a weekend fling with a complete stranger.  And he gets her pregnant.  When she refuses to get an abortion at his insistence, he doesn’t offer child support.  (“You play fair with me, I’ll play fair with you.” is not an unreasonable demand for her to make of him.)  The only reason the affair happens in the first place is because his wife Beth (Oscar nominee Anne Archer) and young daughter are conveniently out of the city.  He instantly fails a major test of his marriage.  It couldn’t have been the first time, either.

When Alex continually contacts him, he gives her excuses, that is when he even bothers to respond.  This makes her very angry.  “I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan.”

And she can’t be.  She’s carrying his fucking baby.  For a moment or two, you wonder if she’s faking the whole thing.  But Dan, calling her bluff, speaks with her gyno.  She’s not faking.  And he’s fucked.  When he breaks into her apartment, he discovers a pregnancy test in her medicine cabinet.  He’s a goddamn lawyer!

At one point, he aggressively confronts her which only makes things that much worse.  Now his personal safety is at risk.  At no time during much of this escalating crisis of his own moronic making does he ever confess to his oblivious wife.  (It’s only close to the end when Alex threatens to reveal all that he mostly fesses up to his now incredulous, incensed partner.  This wasn’t a one-night stand, pal.  You banged her like five times in two days.  She cooked you spaghetti.  She played with your fucking dog!)  Even when Alex shows up unexpectedly at his family’s apartment pretending she’s interested in renting the place (the Gallaghers are moving to a house in the country), he plays dumb.  Tired of her phone calls (she always hangs up when the wife answers), he quietly changes his number.  Now she has the new one.

He can’t get out of the city fast enough.  But she knows where he lives.  What a mistake to buy your daughter that pet bunny.

As played by Michael Douglas, Dan Gallagher seems too smart and too together to embroil himself in such a preventable calamity.  He performs legal cover for a book publisher whenever there’s an issue of plagiarism or when a litigious horny politician worries about being exposed by a former paramour he’s not married to.  Dan’s very good at his job, a straight shooter.  But when it comes to sex, why is he so easily compromised?

And let’s be perfectly blunt here.  Alex Forrest, as played by Oscar nominee Glenn Close, isn’t much of a temptation.  When we first meet her at a launch party for some samurai self-help book (this whole bit feels very racist today), she looks scary, not hot.  She gives herself away in a single, unappetizing glance.  The moment Dan lays eyes on her when he sits next to her at the bar is the second he stops being an intelligent character.

It’s supposed to be lust at first sight but it’s just not believable.  Her eventual off-the-rail shenanigans, even less so.

It turns out Alex is a helpful book editor for that same publisher who just happens to attend that work meeting about the philandering politico.  (It’s the only time we ever see her working.)  Later on, when a frustrated Dan struggles with his cheap-ass umbrella, a carefully observing Alex sees her opening.  As they share a drink, Dan’s dick takes over his brain.  Alex says the right things to initiate the launch sequence.  Dan’s rocket is already on the launch pad.

Can we talk about how unscintillating their sex scenes are?  I mean, what’s the deal with splashing tap water all over themselves?  Then again, the movie was directed by Adrian Lyne who previously helmed Flashdance, another film that oversells water as an erotic enhancer.

Alex is right about Dan.  He doesn’t care about her.  She’s just a temporary play-thing.  She has a great line about this late in the film that truly sums up his selfishness and how wounded she is by his rejection.  The problem is the movie doesn’t see her as sympathetically as it should.  The Other Woman can’t be a victim.  Instead, she has to be transformed into a complete psycho.  I can’t think of a more sexist plot twist, frankly.

From destroying his car to upsetting his daughter (which in a way she makes up for) to making a threatening audiotape (Dan only hears snippets; the homophobic attack is rather odd and out of place) to eventually targeting his wife (who threatens the pregnant woman over the phone), Fatal Attraction attempts to put so much heat on Alex the paradigm it briefly establishes in its early stages is mistakenly yet inevitably reversed.

But Dan doesn’t deserve our support.  He did this all to himself.  Look at what he needlessly puts his family through, especially in that preposterous final scene, the now legendary reshot ending.  (His wife literally has to clean up his own mess.)  I mean how is it possible to come back from a goddamn drowning?  And how the fuck did she get in the house without detection…twice?

The movie’s insistence on playing out as a thriller is its ultimate undoing.  Fatal Attraction.  They had to live up to that fantastic title, didn’t they?  (It sounds more like a bodice ripper from Jackie Collins.)  You can’t deliver a thoughtful drama about the frailty of human relationships and the boorishness of bored husbands.  Nope.  You have to offer a lurid thriller about a crazy pregnant bitch who won’t leave that poor rich married lawyer who knocked her up alone.

Even if the film had stuck to its original ending (which pays off the audiotape story and at least leads to a logical conclusion based on Alex’s earlier moment of self-abuse), the final result would remain unchanged.  Dan Gallagher would still be off the hook for his parental responsibility.  Glenn Close, as wonderful an actor as she is, isn’t seductive enough to suck Douglas into all this bullshit.  And Douglas isn’t sympathetic enough to stand by and root for as she becomes completely unhinged, which also isn’t persuasive.  He certainly isn’t worth dying for.

Boiling the little girl’s bunny punishes Ellen, the daughter, more than it does Dan, the father, since he had been against this idea for much of the movie.  Let’s put it this way, if Beth, the wife, was played by Alanis Morissette she wouldn’t be so forgiving.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 10, 2020
4:09 a.m.

Last Year Aside, The Golden Globes Are Still Not A Major Predictor Of Oscar Winners

Tonight, the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards, the most unprestigious back patting event in human history, will be airing live on national Television.  Essentially a glorified bowling banquet organized by the ever mysterious and yet easily bribed “Hollywood Foreign Press Association”, for decades it’s been nonetheless widely considered a sharp predictor of the Academy Awards.

On two past occasions, I’ve closely examined the results of both ceremonies and noted that its reputation as an influencer is not exactly deserved.  It’s been six years since I last focused on past results, so let’s play catch up with the last half decade.  Have things significantly changed?

2014

Of the last five Golden Globe events, this one had the most misses when it came to duplicating Oscar results.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, an experimental epic that was filmed slowly over a decade so its child star could legitimately grow up before the camera, snagged the Best Motion Picture – Drama bowling trophy with Linklater himself named Best Director.  At the Oscars, it was another offbeat title Birdman and its celebrated director Alejandro G. Innaritu who would win the more respected prizes in the same categories respectively.

How To Train Your Dragon 2 won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature while the Oscar went to Big Hero 6.  The Russian film Leviathan won Best Foreign Language Film but it was the Polish Holocaust movie Ida that the Motion Picture Academy preferred.  And as for Best Original Score, Oscar went with Wes Anderson’s overrated The Grand Budapest Hotel over the GG’s pick The Theory Of Everything about Stephen Hawking.

At least J.K. Simmons, Eddie Redmayne, Julianne Moore and Patricia Arquette were all double winners.

2015

A year later, Inarritu was once again in contention for some major dust collectors.  At the Golden Globes, he won Best Director and his movie The Revenant was named Best Motion Picture – Drama.  Because he won the DGA prize, he took home the equivalent Oscar but the academy selected Spotlight, the highly regarded drama about the Boston Globe’s expose on the Catholic Church’s cover-up of rampant childhood abuse, for Best Picture.

Sylvester Stallone, who the Globes named Best Supporting Actor and, to be fair, was seen as a favourite to win the biggest prize of all, was upset by first time nominee Bridge Of Spies’ Mark Rylance at the Academy Awards.  Kate Winslet, a previous Oscar winner for The Reader, lost the Best Supporting Actress gong to the hot young Swede Alicia Vikander, the second Tomb Raider, who starred in The Danish Girl with Redmayne, the Best Actor winner for The Theory Of Everything.  Curiously, Vikander was nominated for Best Actress – Drama at the Globes.  She lost to Brie Larson, the Best Actress Oscar winner.

Unlike its lead acting categories which are separated by genre, the Golden Globes doesn’t distinguish original scripts from adaptations.  They’re all lumped together into the Best Screenplay category.  Regardless, GG winner Aaron Sorkin did not win a second writing Oscar for penning Steve Jobs.  In fact, he wasn’t even nominated.

2016

A slight improvement over the two previous years, the Globes only missed three categories this time.

Kick Ass star Aaron Taylor-Johnson somehow snagged the Best Supporting Actor trinket at the GGs for appearing in Nocturnal Animals but it was his fellow nominee Mahershala Ali who won his first Oscar in this category for his revered performance in Moonlight.  Taylor-Johnson wasn’t even in the running.  His name was left off the list.  Paradoxically, his co-star, Michael Shannon, was an Oscar nominee in the same category but not a contender at the Globes.

Meanwhile, La La Land won the Globe for its screenplay but was defeated by Manchester By The Sea at the Academy Awards.  Best Foreign Language Film went to Elle at the bowling ceremony.  The Iranian film, The Salesman, secured the golden naked man.  Elle didn’t even make the Oscar shortlist.

2017

For this particular year, The GGs and the Motion Picture Academy both agreed on all four acting winners but split on four other categories.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the story of a determined mom hoping to get justice for her murdered daughter, won the bowling gong for Best Picture – Drama.  The Oscars selected The Shape Of Water for Best Picture.

Three Billboards also won the Best Screenplay Globe.  The MPA named Get Out and Call Me By Your Name as its Best Original and Adapted Screenplays, respectively.  Neither were nominated for Globes.

For Best Original Song, the Globes championed This Is Me from The Greatest Showman while the Oscars pushed Remember Me from the animated blockbuster Coco.

Finally, the Best Foreign Language Film category.  The GGs embraced In The Fade (not nominated for an Academy Award) while The Oscars went with the trans drama A Fantastic Woman.

2018

It’s a Festivus miracle.  Only one miss and only in a technical category to boot.  The Globes selected the music from the excellent Neil Armstrong biopic First Man, a Best Visual Effects Oscar winner, for Best Original Score.  The Motion Picture Academy went with Black Panther instead.  First Man was excluded from the running.

So does this mean that this longtime public embarrassment is suddenly relevant again?  We’ll know for sure in the coming years but for now, based on its entire history, consider this a rare anomaly.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, January 5, 2020
7:50 p.m.

The History Of The Mystery Track – Nirvana Gets Sappy For Charity

On October 26, 1993, a new compilation went on sale.  No Alternative was the third album spearheaded by The Red Hot Organization, a New York-based non-profit co-founded by lawyer John Carlin and Leigh Blake, a longtime activist and TV/film producer.

Established in 1989, there were two goals for the organization:  raise awareness about the dangers of AIDS & HIV through TV documentaries & public awareness campaigns, and raise money for a cure through the sales of CDs & associated home videos.  Following 1990’s Red Hot + Blue (a various artists tribute to Cole Porter, a legendary closeted gay songwriter) and 1992’s Red Hot + Dance, it was modern rock’s turn to join the cause.

The CD version of No Alternative lists eighteen songs by some of the biggest and most influential acts of that era, some of which were written and recorded exclusively for the compilation.  But as purchasers of that record immediately discovered upon placing their copies in their players, there are actually nineteen.

Sometime in the late 80s, a young Kurt Cobain made a demo at his family home in Washington State.  Accompanied solely by his electric guitar, he laid down this unpolished first version of a song he would revisit and revise constantly for the next several years.  (This original recording, long bootlegged, would make its official debut on both versions of the soundtrack to the 2015 documentary, Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck.)

Originally titled Sad, the song would alternately be known as Verse Chorus Verse and Sappy.  According to Wikipedia, Nirvana first played it in concert at a show in Germany on November 13, 1989.  Another live version, this one from a gig in Switzerland captured sixteen days later, almost made the cut for what ultimately became From The Muddy Banks Of The Wishkah.

In the first week of the new year, while still signed to Sub Pop, Nirvana worked with producer Jack Endino at his Reciprocal Studios.  On January 2, 1990, according to Endino, the band, with Chad Channing on drums, spent seven hours trying to record one solitary track.  The next day, they returned for an additional three hour session.

“This was when they came in and just did one song, ‘Sappy.’  That was the first time I knew that Kurt was fallible, because everything he’d done had been brilliant to me up to then.  And then there was this song which just didn’t seem that interesting.  And he was determined to get it.  And I was like, ‘No, write some more songs, Kurt!'” he later told Gillian Gaar.

Why was the futile process taking so long?

“They literally wanted an Albini drum sound,” Endino told Gaar.  They also “spent a lot of time experimenting with reverbs and gated room mics and just doing lots of strange stuff during the mix.”

This version finally emerged on Sliver: The Best Of The Box in 2005.

While continuing to play it in concert (the DVD on the With The Lights Out box set features a performance captured during a California show on February 16, 1990 while the expanded version of Bleach includes another audio rendition from a show a week earlier in Portland), Nirvana would return to the studio to try again.

In the first week of April that same year, they began the demo sessions for Nevermind with Butch Vig at his Smart Studios in Wisconsin.  Seven songs, including Sappy, were put on tape.  20 years later, it would finally make its official debut on the deluxe edition of Nevermind.  By the time Nirvana relocated to Sound City in California to record the album in 1991, Channing had been replaced by Dave Grohl.

During the sessions that spring, Sappy was dusted off for another go.  This time, Cobain seemed happier with the result.  In his Journals (later released in 2003) the song was continually appearing on hypothetical track listings for a time.  But when Smells Like Teen Spirit was completed, Sappy suddenly disappeared from contention.  This version remains unreleased and might possibly be lost forever thanks to that covered up fire in Universal’s music archives.

“Sometimes you get a song and you record it one way and you go, ‘The song just didn’t happen,’ Vig explained to Gaar.  “Then you try it again.  But after three tries, you’ve gotta give up.  You have to realize the song is not meant to happen.  But maybe Kurt heard something that we didn’t hear, and that’s what he was trying to get, and he never got it.  Sometimes that happens; you get these mental images of a song, and you know it’s going to be good, but if it gets to a certain point and it never gets there, it kind of drives you crazy.”

It wasn’t until the band recorded In Utero with Steve Albini in Minnesota’s Pachyderm Studios in the dead of winter in February 1993 that the song was finally recorded in a manner Cobain deemed acceptable for eventual release in his lifetime.  A serious contender for the album (when it was still Verse Chorus Verse which was also an early title for the overall collection), when the Red Hot Organization came calling for a song, rather than work up a new one, they offered Sappy instead as an exclusive.

With In Utero scheduled for a mid-September release, over a month before No Alternative’s debut, the cold hearted Geffen Records didn’t want Nirvana’s name attached to the charity project.  (Ironically, its founder David Geffen has long donated and raised millions for AIDS charities.  Red Hot itself has generated over ten million for the cause in its own right.)

It’s not clear if the company resorted to threatening a lawsuit in order to assure that Sappy, still known as Verse Chorus Verse at this point, would become a mystery track, but Red Hot ultimately relented and agreed not to mention it in the track listing, in the liner notes (which do mention that there are actually “nineteen songs” instead of the credited 18) and in any promotion published in magazines.  (On their official website, where they finally publicly acknowledge the song, they diplomatically explain that Sappy was hidden “for legal reasons”.)

By not advertising Nirvana’s association with the project, since they were the highest profile act on the disc, No Alternative was doomed to be a poor seller, at least in North America.  Despite selling less than 300000 copies, however, it still managed to raise a million dollars for AIDS charities.  (It did better overseas.  To date, it’s been purchased more than a million times globally.)

Curiously, Sappy wasn’t the only song to be named Verse Chorus Verse in the Nirvana catalogue.  During the making of Nevermind, there was another Verse Chorus Verse (also known as In His Hands), with a completely different melody and lyric, first laid down during those 1990 demo sessions.  (It was briefly added to live setlists in 1990 before being dropped forever.)  Because it remained unreleased for years (until it appeared on the 20th Anniversary reissue of Nevermind), Cobain simply recycled the title for Sappy.

Despite Geffen’s insistence on downplaying Nirvana’s involvement in order to not interfere with In Utero’s promotion and sales, the song still generated some decent radio airplay and became a fan favourite both in its live and studio incarnations.  When the With The Lights Out box set emerged in 2004 (Courtney Love told Spin magazine that Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl wanted to call it Sappy which she opposed), only the No Alternative version was included and properly listed.  In 2013, when In Utero was expanded into a two-disc set, the mystery track was remastered and fully credited in a new mix by Albini.

As for live shows, after a four-year break, Cobain revived it for some selected dates on the final Nirvana tour.  It was performed for the last time on February 25, 1994 during a gig in Milan, Italy.

Three months earlier, the band taped their famous Unplugged show for MTV.  After they played the Ledbelly cover, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, the band walked off stage and never returned.  In her 2013 memoir, former VJ Kennedy reveals that wasn’t supposed to happen:

“…Unplugged producer Alex Coletti told me they all disappeared into the control room at Sony Studios where he and other executives begged the band to go out and do an encore with some better known songs (‘Teen Spirit,’ cough, cough…) but no one was down for that, though Dave and Krist were more accommodating and were willing to try ‘Sappy’ from the No Alternative record, but Kurt flexed his fascist muscle and said no bueno, so the thing was wrapped.”

When he spoke to Gillian Gaar, Jack Endino remained unimpressed with Cobain’s tenacity:

“It’s just not a memorable tune…I mean, Kurt just could not give up on that song!”

But on his website, Endino admits that the No Alternative version of Sappy is “the definitive and best version“.

He’s absolutely right.  In his original demo, where he open picks instead of strumming chords, Cobain plays a brief intro before singing the opening verse, the same way he played it in concert before Nevermind.  On No Alternative, he sings and plays right at the top with Grohl and Novoselic jumping in just after the first couplet.  A much stronger approach.

On the Montage Of Heck recording, which is decidedly slower than the full band versions, Cobain sings low and deep (something he almost never did on disc which makes it all the more special), whereas on all the other takes he adopts his signature mid-range melodic croak.

Although there are some slight lyrical tweaks on all the available versions, the basic sentiment is the same.  Cobain warns his female friend that she’s in an abusive relationship.  First, she can’t be sexual with anyone else.  (“And if you save yourself, you will make him happy”)  Second, she won’t have any freedom (“He’ll keep you in a jar”) and be treated like a caged animal (“He’ll give you breathing holes”).

Some of the lines are repeated while others (“And if you cut yourself…And if you fool yourself…You’ll wallow in the shit”) are only sung once.  All the while, there is always an urgency and deep concern for her well being.

The peculiar chorus (“You’re in a laundry room/Conclusion came to you” or is it “The clues that came to you”?) suggests the bitter irony of a victim belatedly recognizing she’s a prisoner forever stuck in this dilemma.  Endino seriously undervalued this song.  It’s the best Nirvana mystery track.

Speaking of stubbornness, Cobain also wouldn’t give up on the name Verse Chorus Verse.

As first noted by Charles Cross in Heavier Than Heaven, his excellent biography of Cobain, when Geffen Records rejected the first mix of In Utero, the frontman had a somewhat sarcastic back-up plan as he noted in his journals at the time:

“After many lame reviews and reports on carmudgeonly, uncompromising vinyl, cassette, eight-track-only release <of I Hate Myself And Want To Die [another working title for In Utero], the Steve Albini original mix of the album>, we release the remixed version under the title Verse, Chorus, Verse.”

According to Cross, Cobain also wanted a disclaimer that read “Radio-Friendly, Unit-Shifting, Compromise Version”.  Geffen refused.  Less than a handful of the original mixes would officially surface 20 years later on the 20th Anniversary reissue of In Utero.  The rest have long been bootlegged.

In 2013, No Alternative, which had previously only been available on CD and cassette (the latter excluded Sappy but included two extra tracks only found on the analog format), was finally pressed and released on limited edition double vinyl for its own 20th Anniversary.  On all three thousand copies, Sappy remains an Unlisted Bonus Track on track six at the end of side four.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, January 5, 2020
2:15 a.m.

Angel Has Fallen

First, he helped foil a North Korean invasion.  Then, he played a major role in thwarting an Arab conspiracy in Ol’ Blighty.  Now, he’s after a traitor.

Doggedly determined Secret Service Agent Mike Banning is back in Angel Has Fallen, the third and hopefully final installment in this predictable and often irresponsible war propaganda series.

As played by the rugged Gerard Butler (who has thankfully stopped torturing people), Banning is still working for the Gerald Ford of fictional leaders President Turnbull (Morgan Freeman) on his security detail.  (Turnbull was Speaker Of The House in Olympus Has Fallen, then promoted to Vice President in London Has Fallen.  He became Acting President in both titles.)

During an impromptu fishing trip, Turnbull offers him the important job of Secret Service Director, something he’s been thinking about for some time.  His loyal, beautiful wife (Piper Perabo replacing Radha Mitchell’s meaningless supporting role) isn’t keen on the promotion.  She wants him at home more often to help look after their baby daughter.

More importantly, Banning is in no shape to embark on such a stressful undertaking.  We learn early on he’s quietly suffering from a serious concussion.  This means lots of sudden, excruciating migraines and no sleep.  Unbeknownst to his closest confidants, he’s bribed four doctors in six months to give him pills that, no matter the dosage, are clearly not working.

During that fateful fishing trip, a mysterious van arrives and a whole fleet of buzzing drones swoop in killing every Secret Service agent in the area, 18 in total, except Banning who curiously is spared.  He somehow manages to protect the President by taking him deep underwater in a cool visual.

They’re eventually rescued but neither are in great shape.  Turnbull’s in a coma while an aching Banning wakes up handcuffed to his bed.  In a film that desperately wants to be The Fugitive, FBI Special Agent Johnson (a miscast yet glamourous, long-haired Jada Pinkett Smith) is put in the doomed role of not believing anything he says, unlike the far more adept Tommy Lee Jones.

It takes her almost an hour to realize Banning didn’t get secretly paid ten million by the Russians to off his own team while somehow sparing his boss.  Honestly, this bogus conspiracy against him instantly collapses upon even the slightest scrutiny.  (There’s a curious scene where the colours red, white and blue repeatedly flash across his face while he’s sitting in a federal vehicle.  The symbolism is unmistakable.  He’s being fucked by his own country.)

Why is he being set up?  His old army buddy (the instantly suspicious Danny Huston) runs a private contracting firm but business is slow.  (Really?)  Reduced to continually training his band of machine gun-toting thugs at an old, abandoned missile factory he bought for peanuts (there’s a transparent, weak-ass training exercise that opens the film), he needs a war to get in the black.  With an overeager Vice President Kirby (Tim Blake Nelson), newly sworn in as the acting President, as his co-conspirator, he might very well get one with Putin.

Before he’s attacked, the previously bellicose President Turnbull announces during a White House press briefing that he’s planning on scaling back America’s racist colonial wars.  That’s unacceptable to the villains and not believable to the audience.  Even Obama didn’t do this.

Banning’s overly glowing reputation gets traipsed through the mud once the DOJ throws the book at him.  (His family home is soon stalked by the media.)  But you know he’s not going to be in custody for very long.

In a very tired scene we’ve seen a bazillion times before, Banning is being transferred from the hospital he’s been recuperating in to a federal prison.  Huston’s travelling hacker shuts down all three vehicles in the federal caravan transporting the patsy and everyone is killed again except for Banning who is kidnapped.

That leads to another familiar scene where despite all his health problems (you can add temporary hearing loss to his growing list of ailments) and the fact he’s in chains, Banning still manages to off four heavily jacked guys in a moving, cramped car that crashes without causing any further damage to his already fragile psyche.  Have to admit his method of getting out of those chains is pretty damn cool.

Now on the run with a slow but determined Special Agent Johnson on his trail, the wannabe Dr. Kimble reconnects with his estranged father (a super grizzled Nick Nolte) who looks like he’s auditioning to join The Wyatt Family.  A shaky, disgruntled Vietnam vet secretly writing his memoirs, he turns out to be the perfect ally.  It’s not paranoia if it’s true.

When government surveillance tracks them down in a secluded forest in West Virginia, it’s go time.  Like Laurie Strode in the last Halloween movie, Nolte’s been preparing for this moment for decades.  When Johnson and her team arrive following the explosionpalooza, a helpfully carved message finally snaps them out of their stubbornness.

In the meantime, President Turnbull awakens from his coma deeply alarmed by VP Kirby’s sudden urge to book a war with Mother Russia while being puzzled by the government’s insistence that Banning has turned heel.  Deep down, he suspects something’s amiss.  He knows Mike.  He wouldn’t do this.  Kirby, on the other hand, he clearly underestimated.

There aren’t a lot of surprises in Angel Has Fallen, nor is there any real suspense, but America’s former Cold War enemy being an innocent scapegoat for duplicitous warmongers is certainly unexpected and quite frankly welcome.  With the real Democratic Party putting needless heat on Putin and Trump’s scary inconsistencies leading to the dangerous end of an anti-nuke treaty, any counternarrative offered by Hollywood is a relief.  No one should be nostalgic for dangerous macho bullshit.

But this idea that only rogue elements are war capitalists and that endless war is not a fully bipartisan federal government policy is pure nonsense.  America has bases in well over a hundred countries and continues to orchestrate illegal coups, most recently in South America.  Obama increased America’s reliance on weaponized drones.  He bombed twice as many countries as George W. Bush.  Until Trump took over, Obama cruelly retaliated against more whistleblowers than anyone in history.  Trump just authorized the assassination of a popular Iranian general.

It’s obvious that Turnbull is a fictitious stand-in for the former Democratic President, an idealized version of the man and not the heartless reality.  Despite voluminous evidence to the contrary, it’s startling how this phony “progressive” perception of him stubbornly persists.

Huston’s mercenary company seems to be modelled after Blackwater (Johnson mentions in passing that she investigated them for war crimes in the Middle East) which explains Turnbull’s public distancing act.  When a White House correspondent asks him about this, he suddenly ends the press conference without responding.  Did Kirby leak this information hoping it would become official policy?

Regardless of the parallels, whether they use Navy Seals, army soldiers or private contractors, American governments love war.  And it’s nowhere near convincing to have an onscreen President, one who had no problem ordering military strikes in the past, suddenly declare the opposite.

Even more offensive is the drone attack 20 minutes into the film.  Anyone who read or saw Dirty Wars knows that those on the unfortunate receiving end of such brutality don’t just die, their bodies get obliterated to the point where identification becomes next to impossible.  With the exception of one quick camera shot, all the bodies of those dead Secret Service agents are fully intact.  White cinematic privilege.

Because Turnbull survived his first assassination attempt, Huston and his disposable goons figure out a way to infiltrate his hospital in order to snuff him out for good.  They must not have screened Olympus Has Fallen or London Has Fallen ahead of time.  Otherwise, they would’ve thought of a better plan.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 3, 2020
3:54 a.m.

Remembering 2019, My Fourteenth Year Of Blogging (Part Two)

Before dizziness and a plugged left ear became my temporary, highly annoying reality for a few weeks at the start of the year, my life was strictly movies with a few good ones worth writing about.

My overall goal was to see more of the worthy and less of the dreck.  Penelope Spheeris’ The Decline Of Western Civilization, which I screened on New Year’s Day, turned out to be a good place to start.  I was fascinated by the players in these now highly influential LA hardcore bands from the early 80s, even if Spheeris didn’t always follow up properly on curious things they say and write about in their music, most particularly the uncomfortable white supremacy elements.

The sequel, The Metal Years, the more famous of the two films, for me, is Spinal Tap but more pathetic.  The overemphasis on deluded pretenders and talentless glam metal flameouts, at the expense of their more significant predecessors who deserved their own documentary, is a miscalculation.  They’re not interesting and relentlessly making fun of them is punching down, just like Spinal Tap which is hit and miss for me.

Unlike her earlier film, here Spheeris almost never lets a live performance play all the way through.  (There are constant talking head interruptions.)  Even she doesn’t have the patience to suffer through this pretentious bullshit (with the notable exception of the genuinely talented Megadeth).  I had a difficult first screening of Metal Years (my Blu-ray player has an irritating tendency to cut to black constantly; I played most of it on my computer) so I watched it again but my negative feelings towards it were strengthened and solidified.

Shortly thereafter, I had a look at Evocateur, the CNN film about legendary TV blowhard Morton Downey Jr., one of the more maddening figures in the so-called glory days of the syndicated talk show.  It’s surprising in a way that the film doesn’t mention Downey’s famous appearance at WrestleMania 5 considering how crucial it was in disturbing the carefully cultivated image the man had molded for himself, that of someone who was always in charge and never lost a “debate” (if you can call screaming at someone that).

The appearance on Piper’s Pit as well as an earlier guest spot on Wally George’s program (which actually is shown in the film) proved he could only triumph if the game was rigged, a timely theme in our current fucked-up political environment.  Just a few months after WrestleMania 5, Downey’s talk show was cancelled and his once high profile media presence would greatly diminish throughout the 90s.  He would ultimately die of cancer after smoking for most of his life in the early 2000s.

To write longer, more thoughtful reviews like this was a delightful, welcome breakthrough that I hoped would continue for the entirety of 2019.  And while, sadly, that did not exactly happen, there were other written assessments of similarly worthwhile films I was pleased to have posted in this space.

It may have taken me nearly a decade to see it, but David Fincher’s The Social Network is a brilliant character study of an asshole, and not just any asshole, the asshole of assholes:  Mark Zuckerberg.  As eerily portrayed by the equally slimy Jesse Eisenberg (and sharply written by another asshole Aaron Sorkin who deservedly won an Oscar), what unfolds is the story of an ingenious creep who turns his sudden rejection by his girlfriend into a multi-billion dollar media enterprise, but remains deeply unloved and isolated.

Facebook exploded like no other social media website in history but this past decade has shown that its future is potentially rickety thanks to a plethora of reputation-destroying scandals that have put Zuckerberg in the precarious position of routinely defending stupid policy decisions.  I would love to see Eisenberg play him again in a worthy follow-up.

Another standout was the original Cape Fear.  Released in 1962, it has aged rather well despite the needless restrictions of its time.  I’ve always loved the minimalist score, which was replicated in Scorsese’s superior remake, and from the opening credit sequence it sets an appropriately ominous tone for the entire film.  I admired the brutally clever performance of Robert Mitchum, a sickening misogynist who constantly tests the stubborn liberalism of his former lawyer Gregory Peck, once again playing a decent resister of high moral character.

Having waited two years to screen The Force Awakens, I needed to play catch-up with this recent wave of Star Wars films.  For what it’s worth, I prefer the New Hope prequel Rogue One over The Last Jedi, even though both titles feature extraordinary visuals, sensational action sequences and genuine laughs.  But Solo is the worst in the franchise since The Clone Wars.  Only Harrison Ford can play the iconic nerf herder, thank you very much.

Atom Egoyan’s Remember is a sneaky little thriller about manipulation, memory and the undying need for closure.  One character is so convinced of who he is, he agrees to go on what turns out to be a fateful mission to find an elusive Nazi.  The big reveal in the climax is genuinely shocking.  Christopher Plummer’s terrific performance is the key to making the whole thing work.

I never bought the conceit of The Amityville Horror, one of the weakest haunted house movies of all time, but Daniel Lutz firmly believes he lived it.  He’s the real-life subject of My Amityville Horror, a challenging documentary about how the tragic blurring of reality and delusion can be difficult to definitively untangle.  A small child when his dysfunctional blended family moved into that infamous New York house, his experience ultimately shattered his sense of inner peace.  Divorced, bitter and angry, he tells his story for the first time.  There’s not much we buy, but he’s a hypnotic figure with his distrustful stare and surprising skill as a master shredder.  Eat your heart out, Yngwie Malmsteen.

I was less impressed with the recent Halloween sequel.  Completely erasing all of the previous chapters, as expected it fails to do anything fresh with the Michael Myers character.  Instead of a young guy stabbing and strangling teenagers, now he’s an old man stabbing and strangling teenagers.  The unresolved ending and the box office success of the film means another unnecessary chapter is forthcoming.

It wasn’t the only derivative horror film I wrote about in 2019.

The House On Sorority Row is a blatant rip-off of Prom Night, admittedly a much sillier film.  Speaking of laughable, The Beast Within is a really bad possession movie with terrible special effects.  Speaking of lame visuals, The Legend Of Hell House is a not so spooky haunted house movie in its own right, despite a decent set-up.  And speaking of implausible horror films from the 70s, Hands Of The Ripper and The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times don’t know how to scare you, either.

Death Ship is another whopper about how easy it is for a Nazi ghost to transform an already grumpy George Kennedy into a killing machine.  Pathology is an out-there thriller about a med student sucked into a dumb game of random murder.  The Pit features a weird, bullied pre-teen with a MILF fetish who disposes of his enemies by feeding them to mysterious midgets in monster costumes.  Dead Silence is an eye-rolling precursor to the Annabelle franchise while Creepers is a Dario Argento bomb that wastes the talents of Donald Pleasance and a very young Jennifer Connelly.

I also dismissed a couple of early Abel Ferrera films.  Ms. 45 actually starts off with a provocative premise:  does the lead character become psychotic because she kills her second rapist or was she was always a serial murderer lying in wait?  Unfortunately, the movie loses its way when its anti-hero becomes less discriminating about her targets.

Much worse is The Driller Killer, another nonsensical cheapo 70s thriller about a nutty artist who sees an ad on TV for a portable drill with its own battery pack which becomes his weapon of choice as he mostly disposes of the homeless.  I don’t know what’s more annoying:  the pointless horror sequences or the shitty punk band rehearsing in his apartment building.

I didn’t just torment my eyeballs with older forgotten fare, I also suffered through recent mediocrity like Neil Jordan’s Greta, about a naive young woman with a clingy elderly stalker; Ma, featuring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer as a once bullied high schooler now luring the reluctant kids of her enemies into impromptu garage parties and, when they eventually reject her, death traps of her own devising; Brightburn, about a young, uninspired supervillain protected by a stupid mother, and The Curse Of La Llorona, about a social worker who unwittingly releases an ancient malevolent spirit which kills her client’s kids while terrorizing her own.

For the first time in nearly five years, I went back to the cinema to screen the Pet Sematary remake.  The most memorable moment?  When the picture cut out during the final scene.  Months later, I borrowed a copy from the library and realized that the projectionist did all of us a favour.

Horror movies don’t have a monopoly on crap as I was reminded once again when I continually subjected myself to terrible comedies.  Honestly, doesn’t anyone remember laughter?  Because Wedding Crashers, Isn’t It Romantic, Can’t Buy Me Love, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, the original That Darn Cat!, Swearnet, Daddy’s Home Two, Ernest & Celestine and the first version of The Out-Of-Towners sure as hell don’t.  To drive home the point, there are more unexpected laughs in The Room than planned ones in The Disaster Artist.

Actually, the funniest movie I wrote about this year was the infamous Chuck Norris action craptacular Invasion U.S.A.  Released by Cannon Films in 1985, it envisions an invasion of America that could only happen in the fever dreams of Dick Cheney.  It’s a film so embarrassing even the very right-wing Norris has disowned it.  Honestly, if you’re feeling really down and need to laugh really hard at something incredibly stupid, punch your ticket to this one.

If that doesn’t work, maybe take a gander at Gotti featuring John Travolta’s less than intimidating portrayal of the late New York mobster.  Most of the unintended laughs come early, though.

When I first saw Wanted in a theatre back in 2008, the audio was cut out for the first few minutes which pissed me off so much I deliberately lost focus on what turned out to be a wasted screening.  After all this time, I finally watched it again on DVD.  What a disappointment it turned out to be.

The Equalizer didn’t work for me, either, but at least it wasn’t as deplorable as Vendetta.

For much of the year, these movie reviews dominated the site.  (I posted 44 overall.  Look for my delayed assessment of Angel Has Fallen shortly.)  That is until October when The History Of The Mystery Track series debuted.  Originally a short-lived radio show I did in college, having failed to figure out a way to turn this impossible subject into an organized book, after more than 20 years I finally decided to write about it in this space instead.

Much to my surprise, the results have been quite rewarding.  Once I completely rewrote my book introduction and substantially revised the section on definitions & categories, I plowed ahead with full-length pieces on Guns N’ Roses, Alanis Morissette, The Clash, MuchMusic’s Master T, The Rembrandts, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Britney Spears & The Backstreet Boys.  Speaking of that last piece, if anyone out there knows what the mystery track on the All I Have To Give CD single is, please leave a comment here, send me a DM on Twitter (@DennisCEarl) or fire off an email so I can update that portion.  I tried getting answers from a Backstreet Boys superfan (who was very nice but wasn’t 100% sure if indeed it’s the same one found on Selections From A Night Out With The Backstreet Boys) as well as a boy band-obsessed Jezebel journalist (who never emailed me back, unfortunately).

Additionally, I offered two stories on The Beatles, two more on the first two Friends soundtracks as well as my first Nirvana piece.  (Look for a second one very soon.)

Rather than acknowledge corrections and updates, I decided to quietly make changes where appropriate and there might be more down the road.  My hits are down substantially this year (barely over 11000 compared to 21000 in 2018) so I hope no one minds me doing this.  However, if a reader points out a mistake or something pertinent I missed, I’ll make an exception and acknowledge the assistance which is only fair.  I’m hoping to do more Mystery Track pieces in 2020.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I have many poems left in me.  I’ve written dozens over the years but in 2019, I only managed to present two, the best of which clearly is A History Of Disappointment, a belated kiss-off to all those wasted times interacting with incompatible women online.

After staying out of chatroom websites for over seven years, I broke down and returned.  I blame Her, the entertaining Spike Jonze dramedy that made me feel an intense loneliness I couldn’t shake.  It didn’t help that I had also come out of a prolonged on-again/off-again period of anxiety at the end of June.  And I haven’t had sex in almost 15 years.

Most of the sites I used to visit are long gone and it was difficult to find a new one that was accessible and easy to navigate.  I ended up going back to a place I hadn’t been in since the early 2000s.  Still overcrowded and moving at the speed of speed, it was a surreal, mostly miserable experience.  Being rejected by countless women of various types saps your soul.  Being insulted by someone who can’t spell is a sign I shouldn’t come back.  (It’s “bore”, not “boar”, you fucking idiot.)  And there were far too many weirdos.

It wasn’t all terrible, though.  Some women were friendly and cute even if we only chatted one time.  Others shared with me some rather personal stories and unusual fantasies.  In those moments, I was simultaneously skeptical and titillated.  One woman claimed to be Sara Jay, the famous porn star.  I’m convinced it was an imposter.  After four evenings trying to get something going, I bailed for good.

Haven’t Felt In Years (I must’ve thought of Matthew Good’s Haven’t Slept In Years when I came up with the title) is about drug addiction.  I thought about someone in immense pain and how numbing it is seen as their only solution.  But of course it only temporarily masks discomfort.  It never really eliminates it.  And the more you avoid reality, the more reality comes for you.

As President Trump continues to infuriate a growing amount of Americans, more books are being written about his ineptness.  I read three this year.  Cliff Sims’ Night Of Vipers, Omarosa’s Unhinged, and Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump White House.  None of them were consistently insightful but there were enough revealing quotes from each of them that were worth sharing in this space.  As we enter an election year and the impeachment process reaches the Senate, uncertainty abounds in the American Republic.  All I know for sure is that Bernie Sanders would’ve won in 2016.  And barring some unforeseen circumstances, he can win in November.

Since The Writings Of Dennis Earl began in 2006 (back when I was on Windows Live Spaces), it’s been tradition to end the year with an annual retrospective of my blogging experiences.  But because of an inexplicable family emergency in the last three days of 2019, real life demanded a rescheduling and further reflection.

It’s been a rough ending to the year which has carried on into the early days of 2020, but I’m thankful that my dad has been getting proper care and will start to feel a lot better again very soon.  He’s the strongest person I know.  My family will get through this together.

As for me, despite the many frustrations I personally experienced in 2019, I’m very proud of the work I produced in this space in the past 12 months.  These pieces are among the best writing I’ve ever done and had I not had so many interruptions, I would’ve offered more.

Why have my hits plummeted after some modest progress just a few years ago?  I wish I had a good answer.  I simply don’t know.

What I do know is that I’m not giving up.  My life itself may seem forever stalled but I still have things to say and this platform in which to post them.  I’m always grateful and appreciative to you, my blog followers (almost 200 now), commenters and readers for visiting and engaging.  Please continue to do so.  Let’s keep the conversation going.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, January 3, 2020
3:05 a.m.