Django (1966)

A lone man trekked through a muddy landscape, dragging a coffin behind him.  Though he carried a saddle, he had no horse.  Eventually, he stumbled upon several Mexicans whipping a woman.  Why?  No sooner had he spotted the horrific scene than the Mexicans were gunned down by five red-scarved men.  Were they to be her rescuers?  Maria (Loredana Nusciak) was a prostitute who had been a favorite of Major Jackson until she fled to the Mexicans.  Jackson hated Mexicans, killing them whenever he could.  Jackson's men - who all wore the red scarf - had been sent to execute Maria.  Before the men could burn Maria on a cross, Django (Frank Nero) finally revealed himself.  Jackson's men offered to put him in the coffin he dragged.  He gunned them all down.

The small town located near the Mexican border was almost completely abandoned.  Only Nathan's Saloon and Brothel was still active.  Everyone recognized Maria and suggested she leave immediately.  The same advice was given to Django.  He declined.  He was out for vengeance and would not leave until he had it.

Though entertaining, the story is ludicrous.  Django is a veteran of the Civil War, having fought for the North.  Unsurprisingly, Major Jackson fought for the South.  It is implied that Major Jackson killed Django's finance while Django was away.  Why else is he so obsessed with Jackson?  In any case, it is probably the late 1860s or so.  In his coffin, Django has a belt-fed machinegun.  Yeah, that didn't exist yet.  Worse, the belt with bullets hangs out of both sides of the gun and never feeds.  It appears to have unlimited ammo.  The gun is pure nonsense.  The setting must be in western New Mexico because the Mexican-American border isn't the Rio Grande, but Django mentions Pecos as a place to buy another machinegun.  The streets of town are always muddy, but it never rains.  Also, the mud is always fresh.  When Django leaves in the morning with his coffin and boots, the mud on both is still wet.

The movie is just a variation of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which itself was a Western retelling of Yojimbo (1961).  Considering the number of Django-titled films, I expected more from this.  What made this so popular?  It was viewed as extremely violent for its time and is rated as one of the best Spaghetti Westerns not directed by Sergio Leone.  As an odd sidenote, Django was named after Django Reinhardt, a jazz guitarist who had a crippled hand; by the end of the movie, Django has two mutilated hands.  Strange.

Just okay.

Superman (2025)

On a frozen landscape, Superman (David Corenswet) plummeted from the sky and crashed into the hard-packed snow.  He was bloody and beaten, having suffered his first defeat in battle.  He summoned Krypto, his dog, with a whistle.  The dog dragged him to the Fortress of Solitude.  Oddly, the fortress was inhabited by numbered robots - Four (Alan Tyduk) is the lead robot - who immediately tended to Superman's wounds.  Though far from fully healed, he left to resume his battle with the Hammer of Boravia.  The Hammer offered only a skirmish before withdrawing.  Recently, Superman had prevented a war between Boravia and Jarhanpur, thus the payback by the Hammer.  Superman's independent tinkering in foreign policy didn't please the Pentagon either and provided an excuse for Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) to move against Superman.  As the government knew they could not contain Superman, it outsourced the task to Luthorcorp.

This is a very different Superman movie than usual.  The immediate appearance of Krypto the superdog was a first.  The Justice League - here tentatively called the Justice Gang - is up and running.  In fact, it predates Superman, who has only been on scene as a hero for 3 years.  The Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion) is the leader of the gang, which also has Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi).  The staff at the Daily Planet is larger than expected (i.e., lots of characters with speaking roles) and included Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Cat Grant, Steven Lombard, and at least one other guy.  Lois already knows that Clark and Superman are the same person; they are currently dating.  Lex also has an extensive band of minions, most of them are human and computer jockeys.  However, there is also girlfriend Eve Teschmacher, and a couple of supervillains: Ultraman & the Engineer.  Then there are the add-on characters like Metamorpho, Jonathan & Martha Kent, Malik Ali the random citizen and Superman supporter, and President Vasil Ghurkos of Boravia.  So many characters.

DC has done this before.  Marvel has such a huge headstart in the cinematic universes that DC keeps trying to make a phase 2 or phase 3 movie when they haven't made the foundational movies.  Worse, it doesn't link with the existing movies.  Where are the crossover characters from Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, and so on?  There is a cameo of Peacemaker (John Cena), but that's all I noticed.

How does Metropolis still exist?  During this film, the city is attacked by the Hammer of Boravia, suffers an attack from a Kaiju (think Godzilla), sees some giant jellyfish battling the Justice Gang, is ground zero for Superman's fight against Ultraman and the Engineer, and finally gets ripped in half by an expanding tear in the fabric of space.  No chance I would live here.

Considering the level of destruction, the portrayal of Superman saving people, dogs, and even squirrels was goofy.  Nonetheless, I like that David Corenswet is a return to the generally well-adjusted and cheerful Boy Scout rather than the grim and depressed Henry Cavill.

Too busy.  Too much background noise.  However, it was fun to watch.

Return of the War Department

President Trump has signed an executive order renaming the Defense Department to the War Department.  For most of American history, it was the War Department.  In 1949, it was changed to the Defense Department, presumably to be less hostile sounding.  Of course, since the change, the US has generally lost wars.  Defense is a passive term.  You stand behind your castle wall and hold off the attackers.  That's defense.  By renaming the department, we linguistically dumped half of the mission: offense.  Is it mere coincidence that we've lost wars ever since?  Probably.

Pete Hegseth becomes the first Secretary of War since Kenneth Royall in 1947.  Three presidents have served as the War Secretary - James Monroe, Ulysses S. Grant, and William Howard Taft.  Let's see how things go with a War Department for a few decades and hope things improve.

Road House (2024)

Frankie (Jessica Williams) arrives at an arena where two men are having a bare knuckles brawl, a poor man's UFC fight.  She needs a fighter.  In walks Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal).  The victor of the previous fight throws in the towel rather than fight Dalton.  Clearly, he is the man to hire.  He declines.  Instead, he ponders suicide by parking on a railroad track.  He opts against that too.  Dalton arrived in the Florida Keys to accept Frankie's offer.  He moved into a crocodile-haunted boat at the dock and cleaned out the riffraff from the bar.  However, the riffraff proved to be tenacious and increased despite Dalton's success.  Eventually, Knox (Conor McGregor) arrived to force Frankie to sell the Road House.

Dalton is a pleasant fellow and shows concern for those he is about to pummel.  Before trouncing a band of ruffians, he made sure there was a hospital nearby.  In fact, he drove them to the hospital.  Violence is a last resort.  He has a lot of experience with violence.  He is a former UFC Champion.  Gyllenhaal is good in the role.

Conor McGregor goes over the top in every scene.  Knox doesn't use brakes; he crashes to come to a stop.  He crashed a sports car into motorcycles, another car into a tree, and a truck into the Road House.  Does he have a driver's license?  Doubtful.  He has crazy eyes and an overexaggerated swagger when he walks.  He dialed it up to 11 whenever he was on screen.  For a minion, he caused his employer more trouble than he was worth.

The movie has its moments.  It also has a lot of plot holes.  Why would a UFC fighter know how to build a remote-activated bomb?  Does Charlie give every random guy who gets off the bus a copy of her book about Fred the Tree?  Why didn't Frankie mention that there were offers to buy the Road House?  The reason she needs a serious bouncer is kept secret from the bouncer.  What kind of idiot demands to be shaved with a straight razor on a boat on choppy water?  That was a terrible introduction for the villain, painting him as a blowhard dork.  He never recovers.

Just okay.

UK in Collapse

A Scottish girl - only 14 years-old - has gone viral by displaying a knife and an axe to a migrant.  Of course, she was arrested soon after.  The question becomes, why was a migrant following a teenaged girl and her 12-year-old sister?  And filming them with his phone?  Why would a teenage girl carry weapons at all?  Rapes in Scotland have tripled in the last 20 years, from 924 in 2002 to 2,897 in 2024.  Stories of grooming gangs have been mostly ignored by the government lest the open borders policy suffer from the bad publicity.  The UK has failed to protect its girls and this particular girl has taken her defense upon herself.  Tragic.

Coincident with this incident, the English have started a campaign of flying the St. George Cross throughout England.  While flying Ukraine flags and Palestinian flags was supported and protected by the government, the English flag has been taken down or painted over.  It is a sign of bigotry and intolerance.  Really?  The English can't fly the English flag in England?  Here is an obvious case of the government attempting to dissolve the people and import another.  London, the capitol city, is majority foreign.  England has been conquered by a hostile power, and the English are only now catching onto the fact.

Flag Burning

President Trump has signed an executive order directing the DOJ to prosecute flag burners.  Interesting.  As it happens, I remember when the Supreme Court declared flag burning to be an exercise in free speech and generally accepted the ruling.  However, there has been something of a double standard on this topic.  Burn the US flag and most people yawn.  Burn a Koran and government officials come out of the woodwork and vociferously denounce such sacrilege.  Leave tire tracks on a rainbow crosswalk and outraged voices denounce the offender.  Yes, a Florida man (of course) did a burnout on an LGBTQ crosswalk and found himself charged with crimes.  No free speech here?  Should flag burning get equal treatment to tire tracks on a painted street?

Even with the court being more conservative than it was in 1989 when the flag burning ruling was handed down, it isn't going to side with Trump.  He knows that.  However, as a matter of public relations, do you want to be the guy who is upset by protesters burning the American flag or indifferent to it?  Yeah, even when the court overrules him, he wins.

Looking at the practical side, it is generally illegal to start fires in public.  In response to Trump's EO, a protester lit an American flag on fire in Lafayette Park near the White House.  Shortly after, he was arrested.  Was it for flag burning?  Not exactly.  That he started a fire in the park was illegal; it didn't matter that it was a flag.  Enforcing laws against starting fires in public spaces - where such laws exist - could be a route to jailing flag burners.  It's like how the government got Al Capone for tax evasion.

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Kate was at Heathrow with plans to fly to Norway.  The man in front of her at the ticket counter proved to be a massively built though apparently dull-witted fellow and not owning a credit card to book his flight.  Growing increasingly frustrated, Kate offered to buy his ticket.  Then it turned out he didn't have a passport.  No sooner had she abandoned her trip to Norway than Heathrow exploded!

Dirk Gently slept through the urgent ringing of his phone.  Eventually, the repeated phone calls ended and he was able to slip back into a pleasant sleep.  When he finally awoke, he realized that he was late for an appointment with a paying client!  That explained the phone ringing!  How to explain his lateness and still get paid?  He made his way to the client's home and was troubled to see so many police cars parked out front.  His client was inexplicably dead in a basement locked from the inside.  Suicide?  Unlikely.  His decapitated head was sitting on the record player.  The situation was clearly impossible, which was just the sort of mystery Dirk liked.  If only he had a paying client.

Odin, the All Father of the Norse Gods, has retired to a mental hospital where his linen sheets are changed frequently and he lives in comfort.  Annoyingly, Thor had demanded a challenge in Valhalla, which was going to interrupt Odin's joyous retirement.  Yes, it turns out that the gods still exist though they have not adapted to the modern world.  Most of them are tramps wandering the streets.  In fact, until very recently, Odin had been one such tramp, but he sold off the power of the gods for a clean bed and fresh linens.

Dirk proves to be a hapless oaf, a man who puts immense effort into avoiding small tasks until they became insurmountable.  The most obvious example of this was his fear of opening his refrigerator for discovering what might have become of the contents.  It hadn't been opened in months and his cleaning lady had likewise avoided opening the refrigerator.  Funny?  Not really.  He was so determined not to open it that he bought a new refrigerator and had the old one hauled away, unopened.  In the course of the day, he managed to get his nose broken, his hand clawed by an eagle, twist an ankle jumping out of a window, rip his coat, crash his car twice, and get run over by a motorbike.  Is this an effort at slapstick?  Dirk was quirky and mysterious in the last book, here he is mostly an idiot who literally crashes into the solution to his questions.

Thor is a lot of fun.  He is full of godly fury and has an epic temper-tantrum to clear his mind.  He's usually gruff and laconic, but his interactions with Kate are fun.  His punishment of having to count all the stones on the beaches of Wales was rather funny, especially when he refused to say how many.  "Count them yourself!"

As for the mystery, it really isn't explained.  Like in the last book, Dirk's great solution - if there was such - takes place off screen.  What happened to get Odin back to his linens and Thor on his way to Norway?  The end is very abrupt and unsatisfying.

Skip.