We ended up with extra movies this week, because The Pip got Covid. We got a text telling us that one of the other kids on his baseball team had tested positive last Monday, and when he came home from school, he was coughing a bit, so we did a rapid test. Which came up with two lines instantly. He was very distressed about this, because there were a bunch of events scheduled for last week that he hated to miss, but as it happens, most of them got rescheduled; he can go back to school tomorrow, but has to wear a mask through Thursday at least.
This was pretty tough because he’s a very active Little Dude, so isolating in his room was not a great experience. He was never all that sick— kind of tired and a bit of a cough for a few days, but that’s about it— so every few hours he’d start jumping around upstairs. Then we’d go outside and shoot baskets in the driveway, or go to an empty park and hit baseballs to get a little of his nervous energy out.
On Friday and Saturday afternoons, the last two days of full official isolation, I agreed to watch movies with him, because the family movie night thing obviously wasn’t happening in the usual way. Then Friday and Saturday nights I watched movies a bit more normally. The end result being that we have four movies this week instead of the usual two.
A Fistful of Dollars:
The big news of Monday prior to the Covid test was The Pip getting a phone for the first time. This helped immeasurably with the whole isolation thing, because he could distract himself by playing with it, and texting various members of the family. My dad in particular kept suggesting movies, mostly old Westerns, which The Pip would then ask me about. It doesn’t look like the original The Magnificent Seven is streaming on any service we have, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is three hours long, which would’ve defeated the plan to watch a movie before SteelyKid got home for dinner. So I audibled to this, which is a tight hour and forty minutes.
Except it’s from 1964, so not actually that tight. There are several scenes— machine-gunning the cavalry, the gangs riding horses to the cemetary, the Rojo attack on the Baxters— that go on for several beats too long (I also suspect they re-used some of the bang-and-fall-down death shots to extend those scenes). That said, Clint Eastwood is incredibly cool in this, and the final showdown with Ramon is a stone classic.
I asked The Pip for his reaction at the end, and he shook his head admiringly and just said “Clint Eastwood, man.” I said I didn’t think we’d watched any Eastwood movies before, and he said “Yeah, but still… Clint Eastwood, man.” Which does pretty much sum it up.
The Batman:
After sending Covid Boy back to his isolation chamber, I asked SteelyKid about movies, and got a noncommittal response. I was sort of intrigued by the discussions of the angsty Goth Batman movie when it came out a few months ago, so decided to fire that up, and SteelyKid ended up watching more or less the whole thing with me.
This was fun, but is about 30% more movie than it needed to be. None of the individual scenes drag, or anything, but it’s just… a lot. Paul Dano’s Riddler is great, and while she doesn’t have much to do, Zoe Kravitz’s Catwoman is cool, but there are also mobsters and the Penguin and the Riddler has an incel army for some reason, and… it’s just more than needs to be here. Also, it’s thoroughly ridiculous and everything is at an operatic pitch, but you got that from “angsty Goth Batman.”
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut:
The Pip is a ten-year-old boy who revels in inappropriate language, so there really could not be a movie that’s more him than this. Well, OK, other than the sex jokes, which are more numerous than I remembered, and every one had him looking my way and saying “Dude, why?” Also, at one point he turned to me and asked “Does everybody in this movie get to sing a fucking song?”
I remember seeing this in a theater with some friends from Usenet and laughing so hard I thought I was going to hurt myself. It’s not quite that funny twenty-mumble years later watching at home with your ten-year-old when you’re both wearing N95 masks, but a lot of it still works.
The Protege:
After dinner, SteelyKid again declined to watch, so I scrolled through recommendations on various streamers, and landed on this. I sometimes feel a little guilty about not watching something more worthwhile, but then again, after a week of Covid Boy, I just wanted to drink a few beers and watch a bit of stylish violence.
And this worked just fine for that. Michael Keaton is clearly having a grand time, Maggie Q is great, and Samuel L. Jackson is playing his stock character, so it’s all good. I don’t think the plot makes any sense, but this was an actually tight hour and forty, and went well with some good craft beer. And sometimes, that’s all you need.
The Pip is back to school (masked up) tomorrow, and so far none of the rest of us have come up positive, so we’re hoping for more normalcy this week. If you want to know whether that works out, here’s a button:
And if you have thoughts on Clint Eastwood, Goth Batman, foul-mouthed cartoon children, or slick action movies, the comments will be open: