 Yes, I am. Joining us from San Francisco is our resident film critic Michael Snyder. These are the movies he's going to be reviewing today. The Mummy, Megan and Levy, My Cousin Rachel, The Hero, The Hunter's Prayer, and The Last Men in Aleppo. Let's talk about The Mummy. Is that with Tom Cruise? I'm afraid so, and you will not want your mummy if you get my drift here. The Mummy is crummy. Let's put it this way. This is Universal's attempt to capitalize on their long-running monster movie series that developed in the 30s and 40s and went on to have many, many revisions, sequels, re-imaginings. Now they would like to do what Marvel and DC, the two comic book companies, have done respectively with Disney and with Warner Brothers, and that's to make a shared cinematic universe using all of these famous monsters of the past movie history, like The Mummy, The Wolfman, Frankenstein and his monster, Dracula, etc. They had a couple abortive starts. Dracula Untold should have been Dracula Unseen, for instance, and there was a Wolfman movie with Benicio del Toro, which I kind of liked, but they're starting fresh ostensibly with this mummy. And I'll tell you what, the Wonder Woman film that came out a week or so ago, certainly, As Head and Shoulders, the best thing that Warner's and DC did in their shared cinematic universe that includes the Batman and Superman films, and it's the way to properly do a blockbuster. But right out of the gate, Universal's branded dark universe is more like a dork universe in the most unflattering ways. The plot is a purile pastiche of old horror and sci-fi tropes with lead and dialogue and weak comic relief that counter very tired CGI effects, you know, sandstorms and the such. As soldier of fortune, Tom Cruise woefully miscast, and his buddy, also a guy out there that snatch up relics, despite being in the Middle East as part of America's military forces, come upon essentially an entombed mummy along with a young woman who has actually specialized in these relics. And of course, they bring the corpse, the bandaged corpse back to London and all hell breaks loose. I mean, one great action sequence in a plane is fine. And I mean, oh, for the joys of the Bretton and Frasier, Rachel Weisow did fair mummy movie that stole from Indiana Jones and some of the classic mummy tales of your, I think, 1999 that came out. But it did that with such bruv and a little, let's call it, Rick. Jake Johnson, by the way, who plays Cruise's pal, that is a guy from TV's new girl, Annabelle Wallace, who plays the young woman working for this organization that seeks out these monster oriented relics was wonderful as an Irish bartender and agent in Tiki Blangers, a period TV series that I highly recommend. Sophia Buquela, who plays the female mummy of the title, was great in the Kingsman movie. And we also get Russell Crowe, who is the only actor in this film who actually makes something of his character, someone meant to be the linchpin for this proposed universal shared monster verse. He's playing Dr. Henry Jekyll. Get it? You know, as in Jekyll and Hyde, he seems to be having a ball. They're going to maybe make Brighter Frankenstein next unless this thing tanks so terribly that they can't bring themselves to do it. There's rumors that Angelina Jolie's playing the Attitular Bride, but that presumes that this thing will not tank. The mummy, a grave, pardon the expression, this appointment should have been left inside the pyramid where it belonged. Yar. What studio made it? Universal? Yeah. They made the original, right? Right. That's what I just said. Universal has this stable of monsters and they're trying to have their universal monster verse that they're calling dark universe. The questionable brain. So yeah, there you have it. Should we move on to Megan Levy? Megan and Levy. No, no, just Megan Levy. Why do you say Megan and Levy? Because I wrote down Megan and Levy. You're just not paying attention. They were my original divorce attorneys. Ah, there we go. Now we're getting to the heart of the issue. Megan Levy is a very good docu-drama about a young Marine corporal whose discipline and her bond with a military combat dog saved a whole bunch of lives during their deployment in Iraq. It's a real story. It's very well told. It stars Kate Mara and Tom Felton, who is best known as Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films. She plays unrecognizably so and thoroughly American and noble. He plays an expert Army canine handler who is sort of the mentor of young Megan Levy. So it's the tale of a dog and the woman who grows to love it while she personally grows and begins to thrive as a human being in the combat zone. Are you saying this is a tale or she falls in love with the tale of the dog? It's the tale of a dog with a tale and I have to say as we tail off in sensibility here it's very, very well done. It's directed by a woman named Gabriella Calpriclate and written by a couple of women and a man. One of the writers of the script is Annie Molo who is Kristen Wiig's writing partner on Bridesmaids. So this is a real change of tone for her and I was you know... Does the dog poop outside as well like they did in Bridesmaid? The dog stands on its hind legs and delivers crazy quips down again as it's sniffing out bombs. You know, I just thought about sniffing out bombs. You'd think that the dog would have warned me about the mummy. Anyway, I thought this was what Kate Mara is very winning in this. She's playing a working class kid who's just aimless. Her life is going to crack. Her mom, played by Eddie Falco, you know, is a nightmare. She's a nightmare and she just enlists in the Marines and next thing you know... Is it pro-war? It's pro-dog. I think it's pro-dog. It's not really pro-war. It just accepts war as a circumstance that Megan finds herself in. Does it criticize our involvement? You know, American sniper, I had to turn off because it didn't question why he was there. I just couldn't get through. This is not about that. This is about a woman looking for purpose in her life who finds it in the armed forces and ends up getting kind of a sense of herself and becomes a better person because of her relationship with this dog and her attempt to save lives from the devastating IUDs out in the theater of war. Did you just say IUDs? That's what I meant. No, I guess I didn't mean IUDs. IEDs. Yeah, IEDs. It's blue. You sound like Ted Cruz. You sound like one of those pro-life Republicans who does another difference between the IUD and an IED. You think they both kill life. If you talk about IUDs and pro-life, it's kind of confusing. I know. IEDs, yes. IED. Yeah. All right, so we should go see Megan Levy. Well, you should maybe watch it on video or support it in the theaters. I think it's going to be a good view on one of the premium cable channels. It's worth your time. Speaking of American sniper, Clint Eastwood directed that. Not a fan of Clint Eastwood, not a fan of his politics, not a fan of his movies, maybe a million-dollar baby. I kind of like that. And I noticed The New York Times voted that one of the top 25 films of the 21st century. And I thought it was pretty good, especially the ending. It was very uplifting. Agreed. I think his next film, Maybe You Kids Get Off My Lawn, is going to be a good one, didn't he make that with the car, the Pontiac, or what was that Ford Transant? Yeah, it was called Transant. It should have been called Get Off My Lawn. I think that really would have sold the movie. Get Off My Lawn. But I watched Sully with Clint Eastwood directing and Tom Hanks. It's a masterpiece. If he's a fine director when he has a good script and he generally has great instincts for casting, he knows what he's doing. I'll tell you what, I talked about this last week. Some of these old guys have not lost a step. Ken Loach is 80, and I, you know, the movie that I reviewed last week, I, Daniel, whatever the hell his last name is, man, that's a fine, fine film. All right. My cousin Rachel, is this a sequel to My Cousin Vinny? You wish. Not at all. By the way, written and directed by Robert Mitchell, who is best known for doing Notting Hill, this is an adaptation of a Daphne du Maurier book, and it stars oddly enough, and we mentioned earlier as being the co-star of the good recent Mummy movie, recent being 1999, Rachel Weiss plays My Cousin Rachel. Must not have been too confusing on the set. Anyway, this is rather gothic as a young Englishman decides to mask and get revenge against this mysterious beautiful cousin that he thinks murdered his guardian and is just trying to collect all the money left to her in the wake of this guy's death. He doesn't really expect to be, you know, drawn into her whip by her beauty and grace and elegance, so it's not a modern romantic comedy like Notting Hill at all. Dark, gothic period piece, and it's well done, you know, with the storm-battered English coastal dwellings and, you know, the heather on the heath and etc. etc. You know, Weiss is deep and bewitching and inscrutable as Rachel. You can't beat that. She really does a wonderful job in, you know, kind of misleading you and drawing you in herself. The Sam Claflin, as Philip, who is both instigator and victim in the situation, he's quite good. You know, he's a little on the callow side and the pampered side, and he's trying to make sure that his mule ticket isn't taken away from him, the inheritance, and the lovely holiday granger who played, she actually played Lucretia Borgia in the miniseries of Borgias opposite Jeremy Irons as the Pope Borgia, the Borgia Pope. She's in this thing. Ian Glenn from Game of Thrones plays a family friend and advisor. Everybody does what they're supposed to do. Still, this gets a little bogged down and a little turgid at times with all the furtive whispers and hidden agendas. Again, start to wear you down a little bit. But, you know, far from the weathering crowd of sense and sensibility, you know, if you like that kind of stuff, I think you're going to eat up my custom Rachel. And again, Rachel Weiss is, she's a wonderful and talented actress and, you know, she carries the film. And one of my favorite songs from The Sound of Music. Rachel Weiss. It would be what? Rachel Weiss. Oh, Rachel Weiss. Rachel Weiss. Yeah, yeah, I love that, dude. Was it as good as Notting Hill? Did we like Notting Hill? Yeah, Notting Hill was sweet entertainment, but this, this, you know, is a slog, a bit of a slog. It's, you know, again, she's wonderful in it. And the period detail is well, well executed. And, you know, it just, it just ended up being a little, oh, I guess I used the word already, but we'll use it again, turgid. Turgid. Speaking of turgid, speaking of turgid, I directed the porn version of Notting Hill. Did you know that? Yeah, it must have a zany title. What would that be? No, it didn't have a zany title. I directed it. I didn't write the script. I didn't come up with the title. It was called Notting, I'm sorry, it was called Not at Rag. It was a gay porn. Not at Rag? Not at Rag. It was a gay porno. I never understood. Huh? Oh, I know. I'm sitting here nodding. I'm nodding off. Hey, let's move. Can we move on? Yeah, I'm just a host standing in front of a movie critic asking him to love me. That's all. You mean to laugh at you? Well, you're going to have to do a little more prestidigitation in the humor department. But let's move on. Can we move on? Well, I just, I, yeah, we can move on. Don't get so grumpy. You're getting grumpy. No, no, no. I'm fine. You know, I'm thinking about the turgid Gothic romance and I'm thinking there must be something more to life than that. Okay. Chris Christie's favorite movie, The Hero. Delicious. No, that would be the hoagie or the grinder. The hero. Okay, man. The hero, to me, was very well done. And again, it's a personality profile. It's a portrait of someone in crisis, like Megan Levy in a way, but radically different. It's about a movie star aging and dealing with illness who has to kind of face what's going on in his life and confront his own mortality. And did they get the perfect guy to play the titular hero? I like that word titular. Sam Elliott, whose drawl is all over commercials, who always plays a rough hewn Western icon type. And so when they do little vignettes in the hero showing the work this actor did, it's always, you think, oh, yeah, I saw Sam Elliott in that movie, even though these are little scenes and segments that were shot and written and shot and acted specifically for this film. One of the wonderful things about the movie, other than Elliott being like a comfortable shoe in terms of the character, is that it probably truly reflects aspects of Elliott's life. You see this guy whose film career has sort of dwindled a little bit, but he's making bank doing commercial voiceovers. So you see Sam Elliott in what might really be a Sam Elliott commercial voiceover doing that. But he also has a personal life. And in that life, one of his best friends is dealer Nick Offerman. That's not actually the name of the character. He's the great comic actor. Nick Offerman plays the Sam Elliott character as dealer. And he also has a daughter who's been estranged from him, Kristen Ritter, of Jessica Jones, and don't trust the bitch from apartment 23. Is this text writer's granddaughter? Not at all. She's a lovely former model who was a wonderful and engaging actress and part of the big Marvel mega universe with the Netflix show. No relation to John Ritter. No, not at all. War to Jason Ritter, John Ritter's actual son is also an actor and former. This is yet another Ritter. There are other Ritters out there, my friend. Okay. And she's one of Laura Prepon from that 70s show in Orange is the New Black plays a young woman who becomes fascinated by this old dude. And of course, that's the sort of thing to give an old guy like me hope. But that aside, everybody's fine. We've kind of been here before we've seen this kind of thing before, but there is something so reassuring and engaging with Sam Elliott at the heart, essentially playing a less acclaimed version of himself. You know, it's it's it worked. I guess co written and directed by Brett Haley. I thought the hero again, like Megan Weavies, we're seeing it and would probably be just fine on your home entertainment setup if you catch it on online streaming or watch it on one of the cable channels. But you know, if you want to support this sort of thing, you know, go to a movie theater, the hero is a solid portrait of a man in crisis. Sam Sam Elliott was in a very underrated movie from the 70s called The Lifeguard, which when it came on television, I would watch over and over again. Because Paul Williams wrote the theme song. Do you remember a movie called The Lifeguard? He plays an aging lifeguard who plays an aging everything. Has he ever played a young man in his entire career? He always, you know, buy a Chevrolet and smoke this cigar. One of those guys, you know, he seems to have that thing. I would rather sit down and have a beer with Sam Elliott than, you know, Clint Eastwood any day. Yeah. And he took a lot of ribbon growing up in that small British coal town wanting to be a dancer. Oh, no, I was Billy. You're confusing him with Billy Elliott. Come on. Come on. Oh, my mistake. All right. Was there any movie that Sam Elliott was in that was a big hit? I mean, up in the air, he, you know, he came in at the end. But I mean, what plays a dancer? No, did Sam Elliott ever break through? And he's been, he's been in a few good westerns and stuff. Yeah, he's got a nice filmography. We don't have to rattle it off, but he does. He's made some fine films and he always delivers that sort of rough hewn, sometimes folksy, frequently effortlessly charming despite his, you know, his sort of draw on his like leather chaps and what have you. He's just a good actor and he's got a great presence and a very specific one. The Hunter's Prayer You know, if you've seen Leon, the professional, you've kind of seen a better version of this movie. If you've seen the Taken movies and we were joking about them last week, you've seen a better version of this movie. If you would sub Liam Neeson for Sam Worthington of Avatar fame in this film, you've got a slightly better B movie, but still it's not bad for what it is. It's basically about an assassin who has as his target, a young girl, a college girl who is away at school in Switzerland when her father and her father's second wife are killed by other assassins and there's one more member of the family that's got to be taken out and it's our heroine and that would be the character Ella played by Odea Rush. So Sam Worthington is Lucas the assassin and it turns out that the assassin, in addition to having a drug problem, also kind of has a heart and decides he's going to protect her from the villainous and vile head honcho of a grand and perverse corporation. And interesting in the case of the villain, it's played by Alan Leach, who was one of the more lovable people on Downton Abbey. He replays a full on prick and does a really good job. And I don't know if you've ever watched Line of Duty, which is a terrific British police procedural that it goes beyond what we do on our American police procedurals, because you know, the British, Martin Compton, who's kind of I should mention that line line of duty was also a documentary about the Porto San at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan on Sunday. I know, I know it's all about the beans. Martin Compton plays the other assassin. And you know, you figure they're going to eventually face off. I was entertained by this. It plays out the way you expect you to hope and expect it would I stream it, you know, I'm just telling you, it's not anything to go seeing a movie theater, but the Hunter's Prayer. How shall I put this not terrible? Boy, is that damning with pink grace. This one is intriguing. Last Men in Aleppo. This is a documentary that opened a few weeks ago in New York and Los Angeles, if I'm not mistaken. And it won the grand jury prize for documentaries at Sundance, and rightly so. It is the collaborative effort of a Syrian filmmaker, a guy named Firas Fayad, and a Danish co-director, Stine Johansson. And it's basically cinema verite right in the middle of the Syrian conflict. As they follow with their cameras, a few of the members of the White Helmets, which apparently basically it's kind of like a citizen's militia who are trying to save people when the bombs drop in Aleppo. And so there's a few of them, Khaled, Subi, and Mahmoud are kind of founders of the group, White Helmets. And the movie follows them during their days in the middle of this horror as they try to get people out of the rubble and also deal with the fact of either they're going to be in the midst of this ground zero nightmare in Syria, or they and their families are going to bail out if they can and take the refugee route. So there's the aspects of the morality and the question of whether or not you abandon your home country just for the salvation and the greater safety or whether you fight for it or try to preserve what you love and what was so dear to you. And it's kind of amazing. These people have guts, man. They are courageous and steadfast. And I thought it was, you know, eye-opening to say the least and obviously worth seeking out and watching. Your thoughts on the passing of Adam West, the star of Batman, who gave us a second career parroting himself much the same way William Shatner did. Adam West, great sense of irony. Terribly, terribly funny charming man. And everyone I know who knew him now knew him said he was a sweetheart and very generous as a performer and generous as a celebrity to those who followed him and loved him. You know, not only has Gotham City lost its protector or it's the most beloved protector because it's kind of hard to love the Batman of the Dark Knight series. He's kind of a bastard. And you know, it was wacky and campy, but the 60s TV Batman TV program was for many people the quintessential Batman. The first thing they saw in electronic media that depicted the comic book hero that is now obviously not only a brand, but a marketing giant and obviously central to DC's Warner Brothers movies that we talked about a little earlier. Adam West was funny and wacky and at the same time elegant in the way and we've lost that Batman and we've also lost the mayor of Quayhog in the guy. For some reason, Seth MacFarlane thought, you know, we're going to bring Adam West in to play the mayor of the town where the cartoon family, the Griffins lives and he made fun of his persona. He delivered some of the biggest laughs and the whole family guy run as far as I'm concerned. There's a sequence where the noise shows up from the piece of ads and the mayor West takes the little guy and basically slams him against the wall and you know, renders him unconscious and you know, I had laughed out loud at innumerable times when Adam West delivered his lines on Family Guy. Great stuff. Some of my children came of age comedically watching Family Guy and Adam West, Mayor West was one of my daughter's obsessions. She thought Adam, not having seen Batman, you know, who else loved Adam West was Conan O'Brien and Robert Smigel. They were huge fans of Adam West. They put together that pilot for that hilariously funny TV show that was way ahead of its time starring him. It was a parody of, you know, the private detective, police procedurals and such. Extremely funny, no laugh track and the networks didn't buy it. You can actually seek it out on YouTube, I think, but you know, he was a very talented man and he had a lot of, he was just lovable and genial and people just got a kick out of him. One of the last things he did that had anything to do with the Batman franchise was something called, I believe, Return of the Caped Crusaders and it was a DC animated cartoon that came out in the past year that was inspired by and kind of mimic and, you know, reproduced the campy 60s Batman stories. And it was funny. He did the voiceovers and obviously Batman was depicted as a young and vital man, but you could still hear, you know, the quaver, a slight quaver of age that he had and it was a little, you know, kind of, it made me think. It made me think about how much longer we have this guy on the planet and sadly he took the bat rocket into the heavens where he's joining a lot of my pop culture heroes right now. Before you go, there's some videos I'm considering watching this week on Netflix to stream very quickly a United Kingdom. It's a very earnest, documented drama that deals with one of the most high-profile interracial couplings in recent history. While we have had issues here in America, the idea of a white British woman marrying a black tribal king of one of England's, I guess you would call, allies in Africa was horrific to the populace in the 50s and these folks, you know, went ahead and said, screw you, we're living our lives and it's actually pretty well done. Good chance, too. David, what's his name? Oh, Yellowo and the girl, Rosamund Pike, who was in a Pierce Brosnan Bond film. And is it, don't ruin it for me, but is it pro-interracial marriage or anti, is the message anti-interracial marriage or pro? No, the message is, hey, what people live their lives, you know, you can't legislate love, you know, it's a pretty, you know, pretty inspiring film on some levels. Well, I'm gonna put that on a double bill with loving. That would be appropriate. It's odd that the two came out around the same time and they are sort of twins in a way. I think loving is a slightly better and more moving film, but the story behind, you know, the United Kingdom movie is one worth learning about. Well, I'm gonna watch both of those films in black and white, and then I'm gonna kill myself for making stupid jokes like that. Land of Mine looks interesting. Have you seen that? It is one of my favorite films of the past year or so. It is a historical drama. You know, it's, you can only hope that people have learned the lessons that Ward teaches us because this is one of those situations where, you know, it's almost unbelievable the cruelty and, you know, the craving for revenge that seems to be inherent in a lot of, you know, these situations that we're, that we confront, you know, it's, this is a very powerful film and it's about forgiveness. It's about revenge. It's about a lot of things. And you know the basic premise, right? No. At the end of World War II, there were unexploded minds that were lining, I believe, the Danish coast. Is that right? Maybe. And they were put in place by the Nazis. And so in order to get them removed, what they did was they brought in German prisoners of war and said, okay, boys, you're going to clean up the mess that your fellows left, like it or not. And man, oh man, it's some powerful stuff, as all I can tell you. I was, you know, everybody in the cast is spot on. It's a very, very good film and, you know, it's inspired by actual events. And, you know, the Danish didn't really know what to do. There were two million land mines that the German army planted on the coast there. So they have to have these kids dig them up. And they're mostly young POWs, dig up the mines with their bare hands. So it's brutal, very disturbing, very provocative, beautifully acted. And, you know, again, a story that should be told that people should know about war is monstrous. And hey, these guys didn't apparently care about the Geneva Convention. Hey, boys, you're going to dig up mines. Well, America still will not be a signatory to the worldwide ban on mines. We still believe in planting land mines. That was one of Princess Diana's causes. And finally, the sense of an ending. The sense of an ending. Trying to recollect that. I believe I saw it. And I think it's probably worth watching. Okay. And so leave it at that, if you will. I will leave it at that. It's probably the best way to look at it. Yeah. And finally, your beloved San Francisco Giants. They're in the tank. I think they may be sellers instead of buyers around the All-Star Break. It's not a pleasant situation for a giant span to see them 10, 12 games under 500. I'm far more concerned with the Golden State Warriors somehow eliminating the evil empire from Cleveland and their vile leader, LeBron James. I've had enough of that guy. Let me tell you. So yeah. How the Mets do it. How the Mets and Yankees do it. The Mets are not doing that great. They're still within striking distance of the leader role in their division. The Yankees are winning the American League East right now. And frankly, I'm not a big fan of either team. But if I had to say or choose between the two, I'm more of a Mets supporter. But that may only be because the Mets logo is an orange NY stolen from the original New York Giants ball caps. And so I have a little San Francisco New York Giants connection to the Mets. And the Dodgers before you go. Hate them. Can't stand them. They're my arch enemies. They are flirting with the top of the National League West at the moment. And I think maybe a game out or game or two. And I can only hope that they go down like the dogs they are. I'd rather have, you know, my whole philosophy in terms of the National League West is A B D anybody but Dodgers. And certainly I would prefer the Giants to somehow rally from all these games under 500. But they've been beset by injuries. And, you know, again, I can only crow about three world championships over the past six, seven, eight years. So that's unheard of the Giants did it. I should be satisfied with that. But you know, I would not be happy if the Dodgers won the division. Well, before you go, I'll tell you a story about one of my one of my sons called me as freshman year in college and said, Oh, man, I got a taste of what it's like to be you dad. I said, Really? He said, Yeah, there was a lecture hall filled with 300 students and the professor was a San Francisco Giants fan. And he started the lecture by saying, Well, it looks like the San Francisco Giants are going to the World Series. Isn't that great? And everybody applauds. And he says to my son, I noticed you weren't applauding. And my sons, he says, my son says, Yeah, I'm a Dodgers fan. And everybody starts booing my son, right? And my son says, boo, all you want, we put that guy in a coma. Remember that? Wow. I have bad guys, Brian Stowe. And I don't know whether the people that beat him are still in the clink or not, but they certainly deserve to be his life is destroyed. Oh, is it really? Yeah. Yeah. But how badly did they beat him? They beat him into a coma that he stayed in for a number of months. Is he okay now? He will never be okay. These constant rehab, constant care, you know, it's, it's a tragedy, a real tragedy. Well, I'm going to have to yell at my son. I didn't know that because yeah, nothing funny there. No, I know. And he said everybody booed me. And I finally, he goes, I finally figured out how you feel all the time. And I laughed really hard, but I didn't know that the guy was that messed up. So that was inappropriate. I'm sorry. I apologize. Incidentally, I recall the sense of an ending, and it's a little drive. It's one of those British character studies that they do so well. I've got a great cast. So you may want to look into it. But, you know, seriously, land of mind is the movie of the ones you mentioned that I would say seek out on Netflix. I did the porno version of a sense of an ending. Really? Was it something about the tip of a penis? Come on. Please. Oh, sorry. It was a gay porno film. It was called The Scent of an Ending. A little subtler than what I said. Yeah. I will grant you that. But still, come on. Come on. Come on. Speaking of endings, Michael Snyder is our resident film critic. Fantastic job. We'll talk to you next week. Sure.