My Old Ass, Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

“This is the long-distance call”

(taken from the lyrics of Paul Simon’s "The Boy in the Bubble" [1986 Graceland album],

which otherwise has no connection with this movie except for the similar oddities)

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

              My Old Ass (Megan Park)   rated R   89 min.

Here’s the trailer:

       (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

       activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

 While there were some interesting other choices for something to see/review this week, I took My Old Ass mostly because of its connections to what I explored last week, The Substance,* although while the similarities concern the meeting of a younger and older version of the same person the plot differences are drastic as the former’s about an aging (just 50, but you know how youth-obsessed our culture can be [apparently except for certain politicians who keep getting re-elected over the decades]) media celebrity who, through mysterious circumstances, creates a younger version of herself with calamity following whereas in My Old Ass the younger (18) version of Elliot (Maisy Stella)—finishing her summer after high school in Canadian cranberry farm country (her family’s been doing this for generations) before soon heading off to college in Toronto—suddenly meets the 39-year-old-version of herself (Aubrey Plaza) who’s somehow (never explained) come to offer some crucial advice to younger Elliot.  The Substance is ultimately a grotesque, mad-science horror film where the new woman (calls herself Sue, played by Margaret Qualley) never makes clear what she knows of the life and experiences of her older self (Elisabeth, played by Demi Moore) while in My Old Ass young Elliot knows nothing of her future beyond the present minute while older Elliot is clearly aware of everything that’s happened during the ensuing 21 years, although the primary change she asks of the younger one would presumably upset her current timeline (as with Marty McFly’s parents in Back to the Future [Robert Zemeckis, 1985]), so she may actually be asking for more than she can handle.  To better understand all of this, how about a quick summary of the plot?

*In that review I linked to a video about the film (14:50) which led to a comment by my wife, Nina, when she read my posting.  She wonders why it included graphics of quotes by director Coralie Fargeat rather than footage of the filmmaker saying what she does about her intentionally-disturbing work; I can’t speak to this, but I will let Fargeat speak for herself (along with her primary actors) in a 16:16 clip after the film’s screening at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.  Then, for balance, here’s director Park, (23:01) along with her main actors as they discuss their related-yet-quite-different-movie.  Thanks to Nina for steering me toward these explorations of the 2 narratives.

 Young Elliot is having a peaceful time, much of it spent in a rowboat around a lake near the family farm when she’s not in town kissing her girlfriend, Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera), as Elliot sees herself as a proudly-out lesbian.  Then, ruining a family (Mom Kathy [Maria Dizzia], Dad Tom [Al Goulem], brothers older Max [Seth Isaac Johnson] and younger Spenser [Carter Trozzolo]) surprise of a dinner cake for her 18^th birthday, Elliot goes on an overnight camping trip with her friends Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks), their true purpose being to get high from some mushroom tea.  Off by herself after indulging, Elliot’s shocked to suddenly be next to the older version of herself who tells her to get closer with her family and avoid a boy named Chad.  Next morning, Elliot assumes this was all simple hallucination but finds older Elliot (now a Ph.D. student) has left her phone number, under the name My Old Ass (as a response to her younger self wanting to kiss the older one or at least touch her butt) which works fine when younger Elliot makes a call (with the implication older Elliot’s receiving the connection in her own time frame of the future) so she’s mysteriously, jarringly real.  Soon enough, though, young Elliot meets Chad while swimming in the lake, then finds him invited to join a family breakfast as he’ll be doing some type of work at the farm.

 Elliot keeps trying to avoid him even as she realizes she’s attracted, decides maybe she’s bisexual after all, but can’t get a response from her older self as to what’s the problem with Chad.  ⇒ Over the course of the next few scenes Elliot finds out from Max that Dad’s about to sell the farm (this upsets her, even though she has no interest in inheriting it); she gets the last of the mushroom tea from Ro in an attempt to conjure up older Elliot but just hallucinates she’s Justin Bieber, sings his “One Less Lonely Girl” song; finds out Chad already attends her Toronto college and has sex with him.  Then, older Elliot comes back, finally admits Chad will die of cancer so she’s been trying to protect her younger self from the heartbreak that will cause but decides to simply go away and let teenage Elliot live her own life (although—unnoted in the script—she now knows her new lover will die, so she’ll have to start living with that sadness earlier in her life).⇐  My Old Ass is a pleasure to watch, although I’d have preferred to see more of older Elliot, but I have to understand the focus here is on the younger woman and the mixed feelings she has for Chad, knowing she’s seriously attracted to him enough to challenge her own identity-assumptions while knowing that something’s not right for her about him, as warned from her that’s-all-I’m-gonna-say older self.  (Very frustrating!)

 Stella does a solid job of holding the primary focus of this story, but as an older person myself (admittedly, decades beyond 39) I’d have been interested in getting a fuller sense of older Elliot, given we end up knowing so little about her (via one of those phone calls we sense she has at least one child; if there’s a mate of some sort as well in her life [or not] we’ll just have to imagine the details of that on our own).  Compared to the horrible events in The Substance, this movie’s pairing of different-aged-versions of the same person is quiet, generally comforting, encouraging for the teenage protagonist that her life will go on—despite whatever challenges she has to face—even take her far beyond her current foggy sense of a future into the higher realms of academia (although being a grad student at 39 implies she’s encountered quite a few sidetrips along the way of ongoing adulthood).  I can easily highly recommend a viewing of My Old Ass (even though we never get any clarity on how/why older Elliot’s time travel occurs), as does the CCAC with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a strong 90%, the Metacritic average score at 74% (encouraging for these misers; actually, these numbers are about what they gave to The Substance except MC was a bit higher for that one).  It was released in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on September 13, 2024 but seems to have disappeared from such venues (made $5.4 million gross, a bit more internationally for $5.7 million worldwide), so if you want to see it you’ll need to turn to Amazon Prime Video where it’s free to subscribers (or you can get a 30-day free trial, $8,99 a month if you choose to stay longer), so I think you’d find it to be a delightful (if a little thin once you’re settled with the foundational premise), easily-consumed investment of your entertainment options (not overdone there either with such a useful, compact running time) that won’t run your emotions into the ground as with the disturbing, much-longer The Substance (although I do consider that one to be a more profound cinematic experience as long as you can tolerate the increasingly-ugly images along with the misogynistic content intended for a critique yet still a shameful reality in our world, as grotesque as those visuals).

 I’ll wrap this up as usual with a Musical Metaphor, which may seem off-base this time because it’s the Beach Boys’ “When I Grow Up (to be a Man)” (on their 1965 The Beach Boys Today! album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EzEhW1VO9M (from 1964; a poor video but it does show the original 5 members of the band; a somewhat better version is here [for the visuals, but audio's not so great in this one], from their 2012 50^th anniversary tour [which I saw in Berkeley, CA], with short-termer [filled in for Al Jardine for awhile] David Marks up front [on screen left; I don't know who the guy is on your farthest left, out of the spotlight]] to join Mike Love and Jardine, then the camera pans right some to show Bruce Johnson [replaced Brian Wilson for live shows from the mid-1960s, also joined in on recordings] on the far right, then Brian on the far left; sadly, Carl and Dennis Wilson, both dead, could only appear via video clips).  Now, I’m not implying with this song that Elliot will go transgender (not that there's anything wrong with that; although if she did, she’d already have a gender-neutral name), it’s just that these lyrics, with slight modification, do speak to teenage Elliot’s quandaries about her future, so it you just imagine changing “man” to “woman” (with a little tweak in intonation when singing) and “their old man’s” to “their old Mom’s” it would all work just fine (at least to my silly assumptions).  In fact, if Elliot is bisexual then the line “Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?” fits as written (how convenient for my premise!).  Well, I’ll leave you to contemplate whatever you like about Elliot’s present/future situation (damn, I wish I knew what she does about what happens with the 2028 election and beyond, but at least the world doesn’t seem to have died from climate change or warfare yet) with encouragement to see it, evaluate it for yourself.

 One final bit of age-related-commentary comes to mind when I see this movie as an MGM release—celebrating that studio’s 100 years of Hollywood existence with its logo of Leo the lion and the Latin declaration Ars Gratia Artis, “Arts for Arts Sake”—yet it’s actually an Amazon MGM Studios product as a tentpole of America’s cinematic past is now joined with a current blockbuster corporation, so for me it’s not only a likely progression of how such big-budget enterprises navigate the commercial landscape but also a bit sad how this entertainment giant's now just a unit of a marketing juggernaut.

              

SHORT TAKES

          

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:   

(1) How Conclave became a box-office hit (I’m anxious for it to come to steaming); 

and (2) Conan O'Brien to host the 2025 Oscars show (I also look forward to that).

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

               

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

          

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 3,779—a huge drop-off from the marvelous 40-50K of some recent months; never overestimate yourself! (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):

The Substance, Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

What Lurks Within

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

 The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)   rated R   141min.

Here’s the trailer:

       (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

       activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

 (This will be a long plot summary because there’s a “hell” of a lot going on here.)  Former movie star/current TV exercise guru Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore)—which we know about immediately by seeing her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a scene from her televised workout routine—has just turned 50, finds herself being pushed off of her show by sleazy/ratings-hungry producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid), who wants a younger, sexier presence for the format.  As Elisabeth’s driving away from the studio she becomes distracted by seeing a billboard of herself being torn down, crashes her car, is sent to a hospital for evaluation.  She’s deemed medically-fit but quietly receives a flash drive from a young nurse which is about a process called The Substance which promises a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of her so she acquires it only to find out the required injection doesn’t make her younger but instead results in a younger version of herself emerging from her back, causing her to go unconscious as the nude younger woman (Margaret Qualley) sews up Elisabeth’s gaping back skin, then knows she must inject her older self with a weekly liquid food supply and take out from Elisabeth’s spinal column a daily stabilizer fluid to inject in herself, with the absolute admonition each woman can only be conscious for 7 days before switching back with the other, as a male voice on their phone line to Substance HQ emphasizes these 2 are actually truly 1. 

 The younger woman calls herself Sue, goes to the audition for Elisabeth’s replacement, gets the job with the proviso she needs to be off every other week to care for her sick mother (may not fully be a lie, as Elisabeth—in a near-mythological manner [see Zeus and Athena]—gave “birth” to Sue).  Sexy Sue becomes an overnight sensation, with Elisabeth's downside when Sue wants more than 7 days awake at so she siphons off extra doses of her older self’s stabilizer fluid to inject into herself, giving her more days in control.  When Elisabeth next comes into consciousness she sees 1 finger aged noticeably, so she contacts Substance HQ only to learn there’s no reversal process, she has to accept she and Sue are one with the need for them to work out their problems (how they’re supposed to do this when one of them is comatose isn’t explained).  As time progresses, Elisabeth continues to age, becomes a recluse, sits around her elaborate domain gorging on junk food (in a grotesque scene, this causes Sue to pull a cooked chicken drumstick out of her navel) as the two women come to detest each other, even as Sue is scheduled to host a major New Year’s Eve telecast; Elisabeth's forced to continue the situation because if she stops her body will remain aged, even as Sue continues to abuse the process with those ongoing extra doses of Elisabeth's stabilizer.

 However, 3 months later just before the big event Sue no longer has any more stabilizer to steal.  Substance HQ says she must switch with Elisabeth again in order for the older woman to produce more fluid, but when Elisabeth awakens she finds herself as hideous: near-bald, a hunchback, other deformities.  ⇒She gets a serum intended to terminate Sue, then stops halfway through the injection awakening Sue; they fight, with Sue killing Elisabeth, then she’s off to the TV spectacular even as she begins to deteriorate as well as teeth, fingernails, and a ear fall off.  She rushes back home, desperately uses the original activator in an attempt to produce a better version of herself, but what comes out is even more hideous than older Elisabeth, a grotesque monster (a screen title calls it Monstro Elisasue [just as the previous 2 protagonists—who serve as their own antagonists—had been identified]); if you wish to know more about how it was created, go here) who tears a face photo of Elisabeth from a poster to hide her own face (actual faces of Elisabeth and Sue also protrude from the malformed body), takes the stage in front of a full auditorium, but the mask falls off, the audience is horrified, the creature is attacked which spews blood all over everyone, then it escapes but outside its body explodes, with just Elisabeth’s face and some body goo sliming its way to Elisabeth’s Hollywood star.  Next morning a sidewalk cleaner guy just washes this muck away.⇐

 Recently, I reviewed It's What's Inside, which I discussed as a mad-scientist horror film, not sci-fi, due to the technology being employed to shift a person’s consciousness into another body, with tragic results for all involved.  Likewise, The Substance is often called sci-fi because of the deadly technology involved (with clear warnings about dire consequences if procedures aren’t properly followed), but I’d put it in that same horror category due to the unnatural adjustments to a human body (Frankenstein, anyone?) which take their toll on both Elisabeth and Sue as they reject their supposed-“oneness” with dire consequences for both.  In this video (14:50) Lucas Blue goes into extensive analysis of this film (SPOILERS, of course), augmented by statements from Fargeat and Moore about society’s insidious, misogynistic expectations of women which become so engrained in far too many of our population (especially those in the public eye or who wish that for themselves, even on just a local level) that older women would sacrifice aspects of themselves for cultural recognition just as younger ones would do the same to achieve/maintain such a manufactured fame.

 In part, this challenging film is a quite depressing story because it speaks to truths that shouldn’t need to exist, along with being hard to watch when Monstro emerges, but if you can stomach the disturbing visuals that increase with the various deteriorations I think you’d find The Substance to be a marvelous cinematic achievement with intense acting, powerful visuals (especially closeups on the faces of the women, fisheye-lens exaggerations of Quaid’s disgusting character), and a worthwhile message even if you have to endure surreal circumstances to understand it.  Certainly, the CCAL joins me in highly recommending this disturbing experience, as the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are at 90% while the Metacritic average score is a hefty (for them) 78%.*  Need further incentive?  At the 2024 Cannes Film Festival it was nominated for the Palm d’Or top prize, won Best Screenplay for Fargeat.  If you’re interested, you have several options to see it: The Substance still plays in 205 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters, down from a high of 1,949, having made about $16 million so far ($48.5 globally); you can buy it for $19.99 from Apple TV+ (this platform’s free for 7 days, then $9.99 monthly if you stay); it’s also free for 7 days on MUBI (again, $9.99 a month if you stay) or there’s a MUBI-Amazon Prime Video combo free for 7 days (it's $10.99 monthly if you stay).

*Which, by my interpretation, brings me in line with these more-acknowledged critics in that my 4 of 5 stars, 80%, essentially matches the current MC score while with RT numbers the question isn’t how good but just is it good or bad so their results are usually higher than the MC reviews' average.  With RT the highest they can go is into the 90s up to the extremely-rare 100%; yet, for me, my normal highest is the aforementioned 4 stars (saving 4½ and 5 stars for truly medium-defining-cinema), so my usual highest I find to be plausibly similar to what RT pushes into their highest level, as an RT 95% simply means one of the best offerings of a given year whereas my 95% (4½ stars) is based on the entire sweep of cinema from the early 20^th century.  So, of 52 releases both I and RT/MC have reviewed this year, by my rationale I’ve agreed with at least 1 of these critic-compilation services for 32 of them with at least 1 match of those 2 sites (where we diverge in these, I’m often higher, although it’s about 50/50 regarding higher or lower when we don’t converge our results at all).

 By now, you may have sensed a similarity between this film and the famous Oscar Wilde novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)—adapted into a play and a few films including one by Albert Lewin (1945), another by Oliver Parker (2009)—where a handsome, aristocratic young man sells his soul so he’ll stay young while the image on his painted portrait ages over time, but, hidden away, no one sees it—while Dorian lives a life of debauchery—until circumstances lead to tragedy, so there are certainly parallels with, or at least allusions to, Wilde’s narrative and our current film.  Yet, the ultimate focus of Wilde’s book is on the dangers of moral transgressions by anyone whereas The Substance is a harsh critique of how women are marginalized in contemporary media content, brainwashed to actively buy into such dehumanization.  As with my recent review of Woman of the Hour about a serial killer who preyed on females, The Substance isn’t an easy experience to watch, but both are quite well-made (especially the latter) with lessons to be learned that aren’t truly fictional.  To bring all this to closure, here’s my Musical Metaphor, Pink Floyd’s “Time” (1973 The Dark Side of the Moon album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEGL7j2LN84, not only because of lyrics such as “The sun is the same in a relative way / But you’re older / Shorter of breath / And one day closer to death” but also in this video what you have is an edited compilation of band members David Gilmore and Roger Waters from separate concerts after Waters left in an acrimonious manner so it would seem they’re again one but actually are as separated as Elisabeth and Sue.  Even if you don’t explore this film I hope you’ll enjoy the song which may help with “Ticking away / The moments that make up a dull day” (or an awful election nightmare, as the case may be).

                

SHORT TAKES

                

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:   

Some options: (1) Paramount adds 3.5 million streaming subscribers despite TV, movie losses; (2) Sony Pictures profits slip in second quarter; (3) IMDb's November screening calendar; (4) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch on the week of 11/11/2024 (help yourself; I’m not all that interested).

We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts* (scroll to the bottom of this Summary page to see additional info about your wacky critic, Ken Burke, along with contact info and a great retrospective song list).  Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage.  If you’d like to Like us on Facebook (yes?) please visit our Facebook page.  We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it unto us!  Please also note that to Post a Comment below about our reviews you need to have either a Google account (which you can easily get at https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount if you need to sign up) or other sign-in identification from the pull-down menu below before you preview or post.  You can also leave comments at our Facebook page, although you may have to somehow register with us there in order to comment (FB procedures: frequently perplexing mysteries for us aged farts).

*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.

If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here at the blog please 

use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work.

           

OUR POSTINGS PROBABLY LOOK BEST ON THE MOST CURRENT VERSIONS OF MAC OS AND THE SAFARI WEB BROWSER (although Google Chrome usually is decent also); OTHERWISE, BE FOREWARNED THE LAYOUT MAY SEEM MESSY AT TIMES.

           

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month the total unique hits at this site were 3,779—a huge drop-off from the marvelous 40-50K of some recent months; never overestimate yourself! (As always, we thank all of you for your ongoing support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers.)  Below is a snapshot of where those responses have come from within the previous week (with appreciation for the unspecified “Others” also visiting Two Guys’ site):

Brothers plus Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

Brotherly Love … Sort Of

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

11/6/2024 In Memoriam: Farewell to what I’ve for (too) long thought were the enduring, decent values of the U.S.A.; I’ll also mourn the loss of sanity in many of the deluded American electorate.  Oh well, back to the irrelevant issues this blog was intended to address, beginning with a silly movie.

             Brothers (Max Barbakow)   rated R   90 min.

Here’s the trailer:

        (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

        activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

 Fraternal—but vastly different—twins, Moke (Josh Brolin) and Jady (Peter Dinklage) Munger—not their actual given names, but these mistaken pronunciations from their early-childhood days seem to have stuck—come from a line of criminals, including their mother, Cath Munger (Jennifer London), who drove away with her lover, Glenn (Joshua Mikel), 30 years ago, seemingly disappearing from their lives forever.  I forget how these getaways had possession of some stolen emeralds, but those gems set the rest of this plot in motion as Glenn swallowed them as the pursuing cops closed in although Cath managed to elude them even as Glenn suddenly died.  She dumped his body into a sort of freshly-dug grave in a field (?), hid herself, mostly in Mexico, for decades.  Meanwhile, the brothers were in the midst of a heist when other cops almost caught them, yet Moke escaped as Jady was sent off to prison.  However, he got out early due to a plot by corrupt guard Jimmy Farful (Brendan Fraser) and his even-more-corrupt Dad, Judge Farful (M. Emmet Walsh in what seems to be the final role prior to his passing earlier this year) to retrieve the emeralds, sets it up so Moke can’t get hired at a fast-food franchise (due to his past convictions) so the brothers team up again for one last job, despite Moke trying to go straight, especially with a wife, Abby Munger-Jacobson (Taylour Paige), and baby.  Then things get more complicated when Moke finds Mom’s been writing letters to Jady in prison so the guys end up meeting with her, despite Moke’s anger at both of them.

 Nevertheless, after some bottomless margaritas in a karaoke bar they reconcile, head off to get the emeralds as Cath (now played by Glenn Close) knows the location’s now a golf course.  On the way, though, Jady wants to visit a woman who also corresponded with him, Bethesda Waingro (Marisa Tomei)—shares her home with Samuel, a cigarette-smoking orangutan—resulting in a stolen I.D. badge from her allowing them to get access to heavy equipment needed to dig up Glenn’s long-decomposed-body.  Moke finally gets up the gumption to reach into the gut cavity to retrieve the emeralds, followed by a chase from some golfers angry about their torn-up fairway, then Mom absconds with the jewels, takes them to a fence for a $4 million payout.  Eventually, her boys catch up with her, lawmen (including Jimmy) chase all of them to an empty mall, she volunteers to give herself up so the sons can get away.  ⇒Moke takes half of the cash to the judge (Jimmy died in a burning Xmas tree in the mall—don’t ask) in exchange for a gun with Jady’s prints on it, a clear parole violation, but then finds Jady gave the other half away setting up a trust fund for Moke’s baby.  As this all wraps up, the boys and Abby visit Cath in prison, then as they’re leaving we learn (as best I recall it; I try to treat these streamers like in theaters with no rewind to verify anything) there were a few other stones that had been secretly swallowed by Cath, then passed on to Jady.⇐ Admittedly, there’s a lot of intentional silliness in this movie, but it’s entertaining to watch with all of the big-named-stars holding up their end of the bargain quite well, along with other actors in solid support.

 So, here I am again with something for you that’s been panned by the OCCU, with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at 41%, the Metacritic average score at a surprisingly-higher 50%; however, that’s based on only 22 responses from the former, a mere 10 for the latter, and while that may be enough votes to determine the U.S. Presidency in a purple battleground state it’s not a very big sample for assessing the quality of a movie,  so I say you can trust me as much as you might trust these other critics.  (Really, how often have I been wrong?  Oh, well if you’re going to go by “fake media” facts, then anything might be possible!)  I mainly watched it due to a vote by my viewing companions (beating out a long-overdue re-screening of All the President’s Men [Alan J. Pakula, 1976—which, along with Network {Sidney Lumet, 1976}, would have led to tough choices from me for that year’s Best Picture Oscar, with either being better than the actual winner, the not-bad-but-not-superior Rocky {John G. Avildsen, 1976}], which my wife, Nina, and I did watch last Saturday as a reminder justice can come to Presidential abuses so we’d be sure to have something to feel good about as the reality of Election Day 2024 came upon us).  I had no problems with the choice, though, given my curiosity to see what kind of vehicle these top performers had entered into, with a decent sense of satisfaction about what transpired.  Nevertheless, you might be thinking “Haven’t I seen this movie before?,” a reasonable thought given the prior existence of Twins (Ivan Reitman, 1988) also about fraternal twin siblings, one (Arnold Schwarzenegger) noticeably bigger than the other (Danny DeVito), $4 million worth of stolen stuff, and the sons' mother missing from their lives for years.  Otherwise, there are a lot of differences between these 2 movies, but I have to wonder how much—if any—inspiration the older one might have provided for storywriter Etan Cohen (not to be confused with another notable brother, Ethan Coen, even though Brothers in many ways does resemble some of the kind of tales the Coens have long been associated with) and screenplay author Macon Blair.

 As to how Brothers compares with Twins I’ll have to plead “no contest” because it’s been far too long since I’ve seen the latter, but it did make lots of cash ($216 million, a huge amount that long ago) for all concerned even though it too was castigated by the OCCU (RT 42%, MC 50%). Sorry, but I can’t offer you the option for a comparison because while Brothers is free to Amazon Prime Video subscribers (or you can get 30 days free, $8.99 monthly after that if you like) Twins doesn’t seem to be available for streaming, even as I vaguely remember enjoying it.  What I’m even more vague about, though, is a reasonable choice for my usual review-ending-tactic of a Musical Metaphor which hasn’t connected for me yet (suggestions in the Comments box very far below are always welcome, even if a better choice needs to be an after-the-fact edit in this posting), so I’ll just go with Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou” (on his 1963 In Dreams album) at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HiMl4yX1JiA, which basically has nothing to do with the events of Brothers, but the filmmakers used a bit of it in their soundtrack toward the end (maybe referencing Moke, Jady, and Mom Munger’s dreams of better days in the future … maybe) so if they can incorporate it so can I; plus, for me, it’s never a waste to hear Roy’s gorgeous voice again (yeah, I know, Linda Ronstadt had an even bigger hit with it, but I’m going with Roy here) in marvelous memory of seeing him live once, in Houston about 1965.  If you ever “feel so bad,” you’re “so lonesome all the time,” I hope you can someday be “Looking forward to happier times” when “dreams come true” wherever you may be.

          

SHORT TAKES

               

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:   

Some options for your consideration: (1) What's new on Netflix in November 2024; (2) What's new on Amazon Prime Video in November 2024; (3) What's new on Hulu in November 2024; (4) What's new on Disney+ in November 2024; (5) What's new on Max in November 2024; (6) IMDb Staff Picks for November 2024 in theaters and streaming; (7) 24 movies new to steaming in November 2024; and (8) IMDb's 5 Things to Watch in the week of 11/04/2024. 

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