Firestarter and Magic Mike 3 - How to waste an afternoon crossing movies off your watchlist

I was mad at Netflix having nothing to watch (seriously, it actually feels like they have less content than they supposedly do just by looking at the home page) and found Magic Mike's Last Dance. I decided to put it on and say I've finished the trilogy but I'll never watch it again. I barely made it through the whole thing. The second sequel had some moments that were kind of funny but the drive for the crew to put on a big money-making show seemed rooted too deeply in fantasy and not reality. Which the first movie excelled at. The whole point being: Mike can make it on his own doing his own thing. The second movie assumes he can't give up stripping, the third assumes he can't even make it as a carpenter, and he still can't keep a woman in his life.

The conceit of the third movie is... what if Mike was Julia Roberts and Selma Hayek was Richard Gere? Mike's bottomed out and bartends at a rich woman's fundraiser, where he runs into one of the women he stripped for in the first movie. She happens to mention to the rich woman, Maxandra, that Mike's an ex-stripper and could give her a lap dance to make her feel less shitty about her divorce. Mike says she can have one provided she doesn't expect getting off. I don't remember "happy endings" ever being part of Mike's previous arrangements. He was a bit of a manwhore but not for hire, that made his character more compelling. All the gritty realism gets replaced with more polished fantasy. Mike and Max do this insanely over-choreographed routine before going to bed, it's very difficult to watch and take seriously, as the movie has to build a plot around these set-pieces, something the original didn't need to do and kept sensibly delegated to montages and establishing scenes. Soon as Max is offering Mike a "job" in London, you immediately see how this has turned into himbo Pretty Woman. Once they start recruiting male dancers and talk about stripping, all I could think was this is just Pretty Woman meets The Full Monty. In the midst of this they try to make a commentary on feminism and women having it all. All the while we're treated to a "narration" from Max's adopted daughter, who's writing a novel (of a whopping forty pages) about Max and Mike. It's kind of cute and it introduces a rather precocious, geeky looking girl into the story without her being involved in the "scandalous" parts, and Mike warms to her and could genuinely make a decent father to the girl. She barely considers Max her mother. But her novel reads more like an essay on the cultural significance of dance that intertwines Max and Mike's story. It's tied up neatly but it's a weird device to utilise by the third sequel. 

Max is insufferable and self-sabotaging. But allegedly she's made for Mike and they're destined to be together. So much of the natural dialogue is stripped out of this installment, Mike isn't that interesting, you don't care that much he fights with Max and their sexual chemistry comes from their compatibility as dancers and creatives, it doesn't seem to provide that much substance to their relationship. His other girlfriends were down-to-earth but they were also "girls", Mike needs a woman, and by the end of the movie she can't be his sugar momma cause she's broke, I'm assuming from the fines the council put on her for gutting a heritage building. The foils in this movie are actual laws that Max thinks she can circumvent with her money and are being used against her by her ex, or when Mike thinks if he just "woos" the stuffy conservative member of the heritage council or whatever she is with a bunch of hot guys dancing on a bus (that was the point I nearly gave up). I saw that coming, the good old "get to the heart of the mean, conservative bureaucrat that's threatening to destroy the big show so they bend to the hero's needs". The show itself is okay but their little dance for the menopausal members of the audience was barely watchable. I had this on in my periphery while I played Stardew Valley and I couldn't bring myself to watch it. Plus if you're going to have an extended dance scene with twenty minutes of rain effects in an old building that would clearly do so much more damage than already done, to have it bankrupt the main characters like it never mattered, don't expect me to care that much when the two leads finally kiss. It was awful. The original guys come back for a Zoom call, which is a COVID trope at this point when a lot of sequels were being stymied by the pandemic. Now it's just a lazy way to get previous characters involved easily. That was probably the absolute worst scene. We didn't need Magic Mike XXL. We definitely didn't need Last Dance. Way back when I saw promos and billboards for Magic Mike, I was so against it, I hate seeing male strippers, I hate the double standards of men being groped or getting away with dry humping women who are squealing like idiots. Shit men can't get away with when women are stripping (and I'm not saying they should, it's just sad we accept this dichotomy). I assumed it'd be cringe, but it was a fantastic drama, it had interesting stakes, it had an ugly underbelly to examine and it had genuinely humorous moments. It's a highly regarded movie. It ended nicely. Everything else, including the international stage show, was a cash grab. We didn't need the Magic Mike Trilogy.

Then I went to Amazon and put on Firestarter, which I've put off watching. The book is horribly boring, so I appreciate the film did a reasonable job of trimming off the boring shit. It was a slog getting through everything between Andy and Charlie being detained and them escaping. But Blumhouse being involved in this didn't make it that compelling. The acting's fine, the change of characters is fine. It's very whittled down. Also Charlie ends up with her parents powers as well, which is kind of lazy considering the point was nobody could predict Charlie would have pyrokinesis from the modified genes of her parents. In all honesty, she's more like Carrie when she's being bullied and finally fighting back with her powers, but it was too convenient to make her telepathic and telekinetic. She's also not endearing like Drew Barrymore's version, she's just the miserable, dark child stereotype that's been overused by now. (The 1984 trailer is basically a short movie that spoils the whole thing).

I liked that she's expected to save her dad rather than having her detained with him, however he doesn't want her to, he's obviously there as bait. I didn't expect Charlie to side with Rainbird, in the book he has a very twisted interest in Charlie which borders on pedophilic. In this, despite Rainbird being responsible for the mother's death, Charlie still takes pity on Rainbird and escapes with him. I think he mentions he considers her his kin as they both could've been used and she recognises this but not with much incentive to, in the book he spends more time emotionally manipulating her into trusting him until she no longer does. But the lack of budget also meant that all the big explosion set-pieces in the book and original film weren't done. The boring passages with the Shop workers aren't here but the replacements with Hollister (played by a black woman because fuck it, it doesn't matter) and Wanless, the doctor behind Lot Six, aren't all that interesting. We get exposition over Charlie being a potential WMD that Hollister wants to pacify and control, she's not going to make an army of Charlies (this line is delivered so badly), it's not particularly original. The 1984 version is pretty much faithful to the book, I saw it decades ago but don't remember a lot. This recent version feels low budget, it's not much of a cast, it's bare-bones, the effects look competent. Blumhouse movies are just that, reasonably competent but not the giant masterpieces, (outside of Get Out), nor do they need to be, I think they're okay with these breaking even. The Exorcist remake looks like utter dross I won't touch, but Firestarter isn't worth it, it critically bombed, and if Blumhouse's new model is just rebooting good to middling former franchises forever, I don't want to know about it. This is all terrible. I hope they don't go anywhere with either of these properties.

So, that was my afternoon barely watching two movies nobody asked for. Oh, and Magic Mike wasn't technically on my watchlist, I put it on for the sake of it to see how stupid it could possibly be and wasn't surprised.

We need to ban Disney from making movies personifying emotions.

Putting aside the fact Pixar/Disney depend on a lot of goodwill from fans and when they take chances with something "new" they always have something "familiar" in the pipeline to placate audiences, I don't see any need for an Inside Out 2.

I refused to watch the original. I just don't want to watch anything new by Pixar, I haven't for ages, the animation is kinda lazy, I don't enjoy them. I won't watch Up or Soul, to me they seem kind of manipulative and contrived. So when they did the whole "personifying emotions" angle, I was annoyed by it. It reduces feelings and memories down to digestible forms. So, bittersweet isn't a thing? (I suppose it is according to the lesson of the plot). Now I'm going to sound like Donnie Darko going on a rant about fear and love. It's a nice idea for a story, it's also reductionist. I guess it hinges on accepting sadness is necessary for life.

Now they've decided anxiety, ennui, envy and embarrassment are "new" emotions associated with puberty/adolescence. Which suggests none of those can exist within a child. I call bullshit, I had anxiety as a kid I couldn't accurately identify and I described as shame and guilt since I hadn't the tools to deconstruct my emotions. I know I get shit for  not watching a movie and forming an opinion but I won't watch this to see if I like it. I don't know why it bothers me other than neurodivergent kids might not relate to this, or best case they do and realise their anxiety isn't a healthy thing to be burdened with constantly and it's more common than people realise. You should only feel guilt when you've done something terrible, it shouldn't be a persistent thing that doesn't abate for weeks over something trivial. Embarrassment isn't the same as shame, you're more self-conscious as a teen so yeah, more embarrassment would be an issue but why not explore what shame (which would relate to disgust) is in comparison?  I'm asking way too much from this, I want people to know feelings are nuanced and complex, I don't think a movie that personifies certain feelings is going to address it. I guess it's not supposed to.

Okay, I found a really useful chart that shows which orbs can work together but I don't know if that's factored into the movie since one is actually anxiety, which they've correlated to fear and sadness. I don't usually attribute my anxiety to sadness, it makes me depressed if it persists and way before that it makes me angry and uncomfortable. I've seen people turn fear into aggression/anger, which leads to hatred blah blah... I think the original movie is more a metaphor for memories rather than emotions. It's nice you want to say you can't be happy all the time, but they also don't offer many other positive emotions, people are asking "Where's love? You're doing a sequel, where's that? Is it a reveal?" (To be fair they're only introducing four new emotions not five). 

It's a pretty way to dress up schema issues and core memories. I think most of us dump boring memories and mundane moments, so what's boredom (sorry, ennui) going to contribute to the cause? Ennui is usually associated with a sense of tiredness, so will we get lackadaisical as an emotion? I'm too busy granulating this entire premise instead of letting it live superficially. Which is why I can't watch them, I'll just be ranting, "Okay, but what about this?" I write and use synonyms for most emotions, I never say sad, I say lachrymose, I never say joy, I say exuberant. I'm a pretentious dickhead and this movie will annoy me. Is annoyed an emotion we can personify?

These movies aren't for me. I don't like Pixar's keeping sequels in the chamber for when original ideas don't do well. I hate Disney's remaking everything as a live action film cash grab. We get nothing new, and when we do, it's subpar because the effort goes into the existing franchises, and the "new" ideas bomb at the box office or wind up on streaming, so they need to admit those movies are intended as filler content for their platform, not as something designed to make a proper profit. Yes, they want to cultivate more, newer franchises, but we have to suffer a Frozen live action remake on top of a third sequel as well. I keep wanting these movies to fail so they'll just fucking stop.

I'm going to post this chart I found here because I'm so fucking fascinated and I can't figure out if some fan just made it up or if it was incorporated into the movie. Calling joy and anger "righteousness" is kinda silly, shouldn't that be arrogance? Joy and disgust wouldn't necessarily make "intrigue" unless you equate it to morbid fascination, but I wouldn't attribute joy to that at all. Sadness and disgust would make self-loathing, so anger and disgust would be loathing, that kinda tracks. I want to see how they incorporate the "new" emotions into this when you've already found anxiety anyway, and where does boredom and disgust unite, I can't even think of an emotion that can marry boredom and become something else, unless boredom and anger lead to destruction. People of course were asking where's horny, like that's even an option. Envy and anger would be very destructive, but where would envy and joy correlate? Or envy and disgust? See where I'm going with this, it's too hard for me not to over-analyse  this entire premise. Will the new movie be about how you can learn to live with envy and accept what you can't have? That's important to learn. Will it be that boredom leads to you being unpleasant to be around, so joy has to kick their ass?  I stopped watching someone's vid on why this sequel will "work" compared to others, so far anxiety having "baggage" is so relatable to everyone. We're not going to look at how you can have nervous excitement which is like anxiety too? Because people don't want excitement and anxiety in the same bucket. And we'll never get to the bottom of the very essence of mania. (I've also heard the argument the comment sections of Disney trailers are always positive and full of very superficial feedback so if I went in there saying something stupid and negative it might get removed or downvoted into oblivion, which is why I rant here and not there).

Yeah, I realised why I'm pissed about this, it's all people new to the mental health party celebrating a movie that validates their emotions. Yay, good for you I guess. Apparently Inside Out is also one of their "old" movies from 2015 (yeah okay 8 years is "old" if you saw this as a kid. My point is, this shit doesn't leave so it never gets "old" before there's another sequel). I feel like you're supposed to be excited for the emotion characters and nobody seems to care about the little girl growing up. But yeah, "The feel ennui movie of 2024". Ugh okay, Disney. Keep being "clever". (Also, is Ennui going to be a pompous, French existentialist with a beret? So far they look like a little emo bitch, way to miss an opportunity to introduce them to Camus and Sartre). And I'm not being represented by my core emotion: fucking cynicism. 

Also, also, I keep forgetting how the Endless in the Sandman books have made a much more fascinating examination of states of being in humans personified. I feel like people knew this had been "done" before so it was irritating to have people think it was a genius concept from Pixar. It wasn't just, "Oh, this is Herman's Head". There was also the Oscars just giving this Best Animated because it's a Pixar movie and popular, it had to trample on more interesting animations. I saw right through The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse from the trailers, too.

Matt Johnson as... Matt Johnson: BlackBerry

I finally saw the one movie I wanted to this year, I rented it off Amazon once it was marked down to six dollars from 25. I didn't really want to see this in a cinema, so this was my compromise.

I'm amazed how Matt Johnson can basically get away with playing himself in these roles. Given he's now playing a real person vs a version of a person who might shoot up a school, or might be involved in faking the moon landing, it was interesting how he played someone who existed and was also obsessed with references and movie nights. From what little I found, the real life Doug Fregin developed tech to streamline and speed up editing films so it's not a stretch for Matt to insert himself into this character. It helps this might also be people's first intro, not their second or third or fourth if you're familiar with Nirvana the Band the Show. He's perfectly capable of demonstrating tension in the middle of a lot of ADHD energy but it's still Matt. Maybe it was to protect Doug, who's already a recluse, he agreed to just play himself rather than via mimicry. The leads do the lifting and Matt's direction has really advanced. We still have some shaky cam moments but everything's cleaner and well constructed. It's taking a competent film maker and giving him the resources to really do something special. Jay Baruchel gets to demonstrate something more interesting than secondary friend of stoners. Glenn Howerton's let off his leash to damaging effect, you need someone who can go from zero to eighty on the anger scale without breaking a sweat (and making the fake tan run). Cary Elwes is fun. Martin Donovan gets another bit part when the man can do more than a lead in a Hal Hartely film or a guest run on Weeds. Eric Osborn (Miles Hollingsworth III of the pink pants and Degrassi fame) has a great small role cowering around Howerton, which suits him. I had fun. It met most of my expectations. I saw someone complain the BlackBerry name gets no mention in terms of origin, in fact I think the trailer misleads you that it's even given a name at the prototype stage. I don't remember Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs explaining why he chose Apple or Macintosh. Pirates of Silicon Valley is my tech bro origin story benchmark to this day. I try to remind myself it's not gospel and neither is BlackBerry or the Social Network, but the three have kinda become my holy trinity of tech bro evil developer biopics. I'm looking forward to the three part series that fills in the gaps, which is a cool way of not simply releasing a director's cut. Jay McCarrol's score is beautiful and fitting but definitely not a standout compared to Ross/Resnor's Social Network score. The soundtrack is a nice blend of bops that fit the time periods. I've had Elastica's Connection stuck in my head all day.

Putting some early bets on BlackBerry's awards, some Globes and Oscars would be nice. I'm seeing it clean up at a lot of indie shows.