Greetings! Have you ever wondered if a movie's worth blowing the money on to see at the theater or what to add next to your NetFlix queue? Then you've come to the right place! Enjoy!
Q: What do you do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians?
A: The drummer.
Q: What do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend?
A: Homeless.
Q: How many drummers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They have machines that can do it without being too drunk to function.
Try the veal! I'm here all week!
The reason there are so many drummer jokes is because, well, drummers ain't typically the sharpest cards in the deck. (Wait, hold on...) But a non-ironic case can be made for their importance to a band's sound and vibe and that's what Count Me In does, explaining why only after the songwriting, guitar playing, singing, bass playing, keyboards, etc. etc. etc. the drumming is really important. (Yes, I'm piling on, but it's not as if any drummers are going to read this, right?)
Featuring interviews with a myriad of drummers including Stewart
Copeland (The Police), Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden), Steven Perkins (Jane's Addiction), Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters; thankfully no Dave Grohl for a change!), Topper Headon (The Clash), Rat Scabies (The Damned, bringing the very English teeth), Cindy Blackman (Lenny Kravitz), Emily Dolan Davies
(The Darkness), Roger Taylor (Queen), Samantha Maloney (Motley Crue, who looks like Pink), Ian Paice (Deep Purple), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and more, the documentary discusses the influence of seminal early drummers like Ringo Starr, Charlie Watts (who passed away this week), Keith Moon (who passed away over 40 years ago), John Bonham (ditto) as well as their own personal histories and challenges, particularly for the women dealing with cavemen who apparently never heard of Gina Schock of The Go-Go's (who isn't included, probably because the other girls featured are younger and prettier, which is kinda ironic when you think about it.
If you're a musician or are interested in music from the perspective of those who hang out with musicians (somebody STOP ME!), Count Me In is a breezy watch worth your time.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable. (Viewed on Netflix)
It's becoming more and more obvious that Netflix simply cannot produce good movies. Despite their growing Oscar acclaim for overrated hype art house wannabe films like Roma (which was boring), The Irishman (which was boring), and Mank (which was boring), when a Netflix Original movie pops up on a Friday with Big Name Stars in it promising a trip-to-the-movies-grade experience at home, it is almost certainly going to be a disappointing waste of time only "redeemed" by not having to put on pants, drive to a theater, and pay money to be let down. Yay for small favors, I suppose.
And so it goes with this week's appalling waste of time, Sweet Girl - which has nothing to do with the actually pretty good Netflix series Sweet Tooth. Jason Momoa stars as a grieving widower with a teenage daughter (mostly played by Isabela Merced) whom we first meet in a flash-forward as he on the roof of Pittsburgh's PNC Stadium (where the Pirates play, though the time of year seems wrong for baseball, but whatever) with the cops closing in, prompting him to leap off, landing in the river. We then flash back to "years ago" (How many? Don't know.) to meet his family including his wife who over a long montage has her cancer returning and putting her at death's door.
But there is hope for her as a new generic miracle drug called Sparrow (have you ever heard of ANY drug with such a name? Me neither) is about to get FDA approval. Except then the maker, BioPrime, decides to indefinitely yank the drug because of Big Pharma corporate greed of course. When the company's weasel CEO (Justin Bartha, Doug from the Hangover movies) appears on CNN, Momoa calls in and is promptly put on the air where he warns him that if his wife dies from the lack of this drug, "You've signed your death warrant." Naturally, the wife dies because we need the plot to happen.
Six months later, Momoa gets a call from a Vice reporter (Nelson Franklin, Comeau from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) wanting to meet him to discuss information about bribes and corruption that led to the drug being pulled. After taking several subway rides, with Merced tailing her dad, Momoa meets the reporter, but before the specifics of the conspiracy are explained, an assassin (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) attacks them, stabbing the reporter and Momoa and beating up Merced before escaping.
Then it's two years later and Merced is training at the gym her father worked out in MMA skills before going home to the squalid apartment they're sharing, presumably because the medical bills took their house. Momoa has been obsessed with finding those responsible for his wife's death and has a Wall of Crazy focused on Bartha's CEO. When he's going to be appearing at a charity auction, Momoa seizes the opportunity to infiltrate the event, attacking and killing Bartha and a bodyguard. Knowing the cops are likely to figure out he did it since he did after all threaten this guy on live television, he and Merced go on the run, now being hunted by more assassins as well as the FBI.
It's here where I need to spoil the movie. I am normally loathe to even hint that there is a twist in plots because it alerts viewers that a whammy is coming - it's particularly stupid when movie ads quote reviews like, "...and it has a twist that will blow your mind!" - but to understand what takes Sweet Girl from a tired Big Evil Corporations Killing the Poor For Money conspiracy flick to a jaw-dropping Razzie-worthy "Are you effing kidding me?!?!?" train wreck requires blowing the third act twist.
If you don't want to know, then stop here knowing that the score below is 3/10, skip it.
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Still here? OK, here we go....
When the chase finally catches up to the opening stadium rooftop scene, it is revealed that it's not Momoa on the roof, but MERCED! Whaaaaaaaaa? That's right, folks - MOMOA DIED OF HIS WOUND FROM THE SUBWAY ATTACK and everything we've seen were the actions of the daughter including the bruising hand-to-hand fights (which are one of the few decent bits of the movie). Now hold the freaking phone a second. Jason Momoa is 6' 4" tall and Isabela Merced is 5' 1" and her character is supposed to be about 14-15 years old. I know it's politically incorrect to suggest that tiny woman can't beat the crap out of burly male killers in movies like Atomic Blonde, Columbiana, and Black Widow, but this isn't jumping the shark, it's rocketing over Seaworld stupid. The montage showing what really happened with her alone makes the reveal in Fight Club, which I thought looked idiotic, seem rational in comparison.
And there was no family to take this orphan in after the subway attack? No sending her to a foster home? How about casting a larger actress and setting the plot ten years later where the daughter has grown up, joined the military, and trained in death-dealing skills and is now ready to hunt and kill those who killed her parents? Jeez, I just fixed the plot while typing that last sentence? DOES ANYONE READ THESE SCRIPTS AND SPOT HOW STUPID THEY ARE BEFORE FILMING THEM?!?!?!?!? Even the mediocre 2018 revenge flick Peppermint had grieving mother Jennifer Garner spend five years after the cartel murders of her husband and daughter disappeared and training to be a murder machine before returning for her vengeance.
There's also a certain darkly ironic humor about a movie filmed just before Hot Fad Plague 2020-21 about how Evil Corrupt Politicians and Evil Big Pharma murder to protect their power and profits arrive after 18 months of the HFP in a time where Big Government is commanding its subjects to take an unproven ineffective risky experimental gene therapy which is being dishonestly sold as a "vaccine" because we can totally trust Big Pharma. Ummmmm, whut? LOL.
Other than sympathetic performances from Momoa and Merced and the aforementioned fight scenes, the clunky, contrived, convoluted catastrophe of a "plot" and the third act reveal make Sweet Girl another misfire clogging up Netfiix's shelves. Even the title is wrong because it's meant to play off a pair of scenes where Merced quotes Guns 'n' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" so why isn't it called Sweet Child? Did anyone think for a moment about what they were doing here?
As for A/V grading, the Dolby Vision 2.35:1 picture looks nice and has a few moments of bright highlights, but is otherwise inconsequential. The Dolby Atmos mix has nothing going on that requires height channels, even in the scene where a helicopter is overhead. Atmos is a meaningless bullet point for a pointless movie.
