Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tôko Miura in DRIVE MY CAR. Courtesy of The Match Factory.

I’ve seen three of the best movies of the year in the past week: Drive My Car, Don’t Look Up and Nightmare Alley. I’ve written up Don’t Look Up and will get to the other two soon. Drive My Car is the very best movie that I’ve seen in 2021. Another of the year’s best, The Power of the Dog, is now streaming on Netflix.

I’m dismayed that Drive My Car is so difficult to find. It is currently playing in only three Bay Area theaters, in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, plus a couple For Your Consideration screenings in San Rafael. It is currently the number one movie on many top ten lists, including mine and Barack Obama’s.

Note that the fabulous Noir City film festival returns in-person in January – this time to the 600-seat Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. 100 passes were sold in the first day, so check it out.

IN THEATERS

Don’t Look Up: Wickedly funny. Filmmaker Adam McKay (The Big Short) and a host of movie stars hit the bullseye as they target a corrupt political establishment, a soulless media and a gullible, lazy-minded public. I saw Don’t Look Up in a theater, but it will be streaming on Netflix beginning December 24.

Also in theaters:

  • Belfast: a child’s point if view is universal. If you have heartstrings, they are gonna get pulled.
  • C’mon C’mon: In Mike Mills’ charming and authentic film, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.
  • House of Gucci: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in this modern tale of Shakespearean family treachery.
  • Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s entertaining parable of belief and class, wrapped in scandal and sacrilege.

ON VIDEO

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time: This uncommonly rich biodoc of the social critic/humorist/philosopher benefits from having been paused and restarted several times, resulting in hours of filmed interviews with Vonnegut in different decades. Very entertaining because Vonnegut was so damn funny. Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.

Listening to Kenny G: Penny Lane’s surprisingly revelatory is a good watch even if you never ever think of Kenny G. HBO Max.

Some of my choices for Best Movies of 2021 are already on video:

More 2021 movies on video:

ON TV

Allen Baron in BLAST OF SILENCE

Any film noir aficionado will want to take advantage of Turner Classic Movies’ rare broadcast of Blast of Silence on December 18 and 19. Arguably the first neo-noir (and among my my Overlooked Neo-noir), Blast of Silence features a solitary professional hit man who is NOT emotionally detached. Instead, he has to work himself into a cauldron of seething hatred before he performs each murder-for-hire. Perversely, this most nihilistic story is juxtapositioned against a New York City Christmastime.

Blast of Silence is not available to stream, so the only ways you can see it are to purchase the Criterion DVD or to tune in this weekend to TCM’s Noir Alley, with intro and outro by Eddie Muller.

The juxtaposition of Christmas in BLAST OF SILENCE

DON’T LOOK UP: hilarious satire or…?

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Photo caption: Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio in DON’T LOOK BACK. Courtesy of Netflix.

In the wickedly funny Don’t Look Up, filmmaker Adam McKay and a host of movie stars hit the bullseye as they target a corrupt political establishment, a souless media and a gullible, lazy-minded public.

The satire begins when an astronomy grad student (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a new comet, and her professor (Leonardo DiCaprio) calculates that it will certainly strike Earth in 6 months and 14 days. This is a very big comet, so the scientists have pegged it as an “extinction level event”. In other words, the approaching calamity is apocalyptic enough to rule out any post-apocalyptic movies.

They get an immediate audience with the President (Meryl Streep), and they expect that their news will trigger an urgent, globally-coordinated effort to deflect the comet before it can end life on Earth. That rational and responsible response is not what they get. (Then again, you wouldn’t expect that vaccinating everyone against a deadly pandemic would be controversial, either.)

Instead, they find a public consumed with celebrity fluff and eager to turn any substantive conversation into tribalism. And a very greedy capitalist, who steers the US response into the ultimate example of privitization.

The media is represented by Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as the hosts of a popular television infotainment show. Expert in cynically dumbing down every subject, Blanchett and Perry are hilarious every time they are on-screen. Never sexier in a movie, Blanchett also gets to play a sexually voracious social climber (“I’ve slept with two former Presidents“).

McKay’s takedown of the media includes a televised meltdown worthy of Paddy Chayefsky’s Network.

Other comic highlights:

  • Mark Rylance as a tech billionaire, kind of a worst case cross between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. He bullies his way through every situation with a forced confidence (although mere mortals in his presence are advised “not to make eye contact and to avoid negative facial expressions”).
  • Noah Hill as the President’s son, Chief of Staff and Brat-in-Chief. This is what the Trump kids would be like if they were witty. ‘You’re the working class, and we’re the cool rich.’
  • Ariana Grande as a vacant pop diva who is ultra savvy about social media.
  • Lawrence’s grad student just can’t get over a general’s (Paul Guilfoyle) scam with snacks.
  • Melanie Lynsky plays the astronomy professor’s long-suffering wife, and no one throws off a muttered killer line better than Lynsky.

In The Big Short, McKay took us inside the subprime mortgage scam. His genius was in taking the story of guys in front of their computers figuring out the current and future values of other people’s home mortgages. – and turning it into an edge-of-your-seat thriller. Watching The Big Short, we laugh, and then we get mad.

Don’t Look Up is very funny but is it a somber prophecy in the clothes of a comedy? It’s very plausible that everything really would happen this way. In fact, the human response to Climate Change IS NOW happening this way (although it will take more than six months and 14 days to end life on the planet). And our rocky test drive with COVID does not inspire confidence, either.

This one of the Best Movies of 2021. I saw Don’t Look Up in a theater, but it will be streaming on Netflix beginning December 24.

Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry in DON’T LOOK BACK. Courtesy of Netflix.

KURT VONNEGUT; UNSTUCK IN TIME: when tragedy begets humor

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Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time” Review – Music City Drive-In
Photo caption: Filmmaker Robert Weide and Kurt Vonnegut in KURT VONNEGUT: UNSTUCK IN TIME. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is an uncommonly rich biodoc of the social critic/humorist/philosopher Kurt Vonnegut. Most importantly, there’s a heavy dose of Vonnegut himself, which is very entertaining because Vonnegut was so damn funny.

All of the Vonnegut is because filmmaker Robert Weide, early in his career, began to make this documentary of his literary hero, with Vonnegut’s participation. The film had to be paused and restarted several times, mostly due to the usual indie film obstacle of funding. Finally, Weide became very successful as the producer and director of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and didn’t have the time to finish. As a result, Weide collected hours of filmed interviews with Vonnegut in different decades.

Over the years, Weide and Vonnegut developed a personal friendship that facilitated even more access and allowed Vonnegut to be even more forthcoming.. Weide filmed Vonnegut in visits to the homes in which he had pivotal experiences (including the one where he found his mother after her suicide on Mother’s Day).

In Unstuck in Time, Weide adds lots of file footage and interviews with all of Vonnegut’s kids (he sired three and raised his sister’s four sons).

(Incidentally, Vonnegut’s hometown is Indianapolis, which has embraced him posthumously to the extent there is a multi-story Vonnegut mural in downtown Indy.)

Vonnegut’s anti-war attitude came out of his especially horrific experiences in WWII, and he had his share of peacetime family tragedies. But I need to emphasize that Unstuck in Time is anything but grim because of Vonnegut’s humor. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time is in some art house theaters and streaming on Amazon and AppleTV.

LISTENING TO KENNY G: derision, devotion and a hard-working guy

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LISTENING TO KENNY G. Courtesy of HBO.

Listening to Kenny G is director Penny Lane’s surprisingly revelatory biodoc of smooth jazz icon Kenny G. Lane chose Kenny G as a subject to focus on the dramatic and passionate conflict of opinion about his music. Kenny G has sold over 75 million albums and has millions of fans, many of whom have gotten married to his music. The consensus of music critics and academics, however, is that his music is insipid, shallow, commercial crap.

It turns out that Kenny G and his critics may disagree about whether it is Good Music or Bad Music, but not on the underlying facts that Kenny G isn’t trying to challenge listeners, to express ideas or to engage in any cultural conversation. He is just trying to be very technically proficient and to make people feel good, especially relaxed and romantic.

We spend a lot of time with Kenny G, a nice guy who is very comfortable in his skin. He doesn’t show the least bit of bitterness toward those who spew torrents of bile at his work. Kenny G, who comes from the any publicity is good publicity school of public relations, is the perfect subject for a documentary film, very accessible, open and transparent. What you see is what you get. And he gladly points out the moments that he got lucky.

Listening to Kenny G works – even if you have zero interest in Kenny G – because of the Penny Lane’s imaginative approach. Lane (Our Nixon, Hail Satan?, NUTS!) has become one our funniest and most trenchant documentarians. Just watch the faces of the critics as they try to express, in a socially acceptable way, their views of Kenny G’s music.

Near the beginning, Lane asks Kenny G what he loves about music and gets this UNEXPECTED answer: “I don’t know if I love music that much. When I listen to music, I think about the musicians and I just think about what it takes to make that music and how much they had to practice.”

What Kenny G DOES love is doing something very well. His need to be the very best, without a bit of self-consciousness, drives him to work relentlessly at his skill on the saxophone – and at golf and aviation.

And here’s something I didn’t know: Kenny G’s Going Home from the Kenny G Live album has become the unofficial national closing song for businesses in China; every day, the song is looped over and over for the final half hour or so that businesses are open.

Listening to Kenny G is streaming on HBO. I highly recommend the 32-minute interview with director Penny Lane in HBO’s Extra Features.

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

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The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.“

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952) – shot on location in San Francisco.
  • Force of Evil (1948).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER. Courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

Movies to See Right Now

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The Power of the Dog: Kodi Smit-McPhee on his breakout performance | EW.com
Photo caption: Kodi Smit-McPhee in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Courtesy of Netflix.

This week – three new movies in theaters, but your best bet is The Power of the Dog on Netflix.

And it happened AGAIN, for the second time this month and the fourth time in thirty years: I had the whole theater all to myself at a Monday 1 PM screening of Benedetta at the Shattuck.

IN THEATERS

House of Gucci: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in this modern tale of Shakespearean family treachery.

C’mon C’mon: In Mike Mills’ charming and authentic film, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.

Benedetta: Paul Verhoeven’s entertaining parable of belief and class, wrapped in scandal and sacrilege.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Some of my choices for Best Movies of 2021 are already on video:

More 2021 movies on video:

ON TV

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

On December 13, Turner Classic Movies is airing eight of the most important films noir, including:

  • The Naked City
  • The Asphalt Jungle
  • Kansas City Confidential
  • Crime Wave
  • The Big Sleep
  • Out of the Past
  • Mildred Pierce.

I’m highlighting The Narrow Margin, a taut 71 minutes of tension from my Overlooked Noir. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw and Windsor’s performances are first-rate, and their hardboiled dialogue is terrific. Director Richard Fleisher, early in his career, imaginatively stages the woman-hunt up and down the tight corridors and compartments of the moving train. Masterpiece.

I love this movie, and a replica of the poster is next to my TV.

Director Richard Fleischer’s use of reflection in THE NARROW MARGIN

BENEDETTA: a mystery of belief, made scandalous

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Photo caption: Daphné Patakia (second from left), Virginie Efira (center) and Charlotte Rampling (right) in BENEDETTA. Courtesy of IFC Films.

Benedetta is Paul Verhoeven’s extraordinary film about belief, embedded in scandalous Renaissance history.

Let’s get right to the scandalous part, which has earned Benedetta notoriety since its premiere at Cannes. As a filmmaker, Paul Verhoeven has proven himself to be an enthusiastic provocateur with the lurid Basic Instinct and Showgirls and the more mature (and still subversive) Elle.

So, everybody expects something outrageous from Verhoeven, but, in Benedetta, he plunged right past naughty to sacrilege – two nuns pleasuring each other with a figurine of the Virgin Mary adapted into a dildo. I had originally titled this review “two nuns, a dildo and the Black Death“.

But Benedetta is really a highly entertaining parable, albeit a cynical one, about belief and class. Here’s the story.

It’s the early 1600s in Tuscany, and Benedetta, the precocious and spirited eight-year-old daughter of a rich family (more on that later) enters a convent. Even as a child she attracts strange happenings, which could be miracles or coincidences. She grows into a talented young woman (Virginie Efira of Sibyl). With a gift for performance and her education, she becomes indispensable to the abbess (Charlotte Rampling), whether as the star of religious pageants or in keeping the convent’s books.

When the earthy and saucy Bartolomea (Daphné Patakia) joins the convent, the two become secret lovers.

Benedetta starts having more intense visions – visions of a very tangible Jesus. She starts speaking in a male register, as if possessed by Him. Then she develops stigmata. Holy moly!

Are these real miracles on earth produced by God – supernatural events that result from sincere faith? Or are they a hoax, dishonestly manufactured by Benedetta for her own benefit? Or is she experiencing delusions, hallucinations and disassociation due to what we understand today as a mental disorder?

The canny abbess (Rampling) and the provost (Olivier Rabourdin) the town’s chief religious leader, both from the educated upper class, disdain any possibility of miracles here, but cynically choose to accept the financial benefits of their very own destination for pilgrims. The parish priest, mindful of his superiors’ authority and the new money, turns a blind eye. It’s established early in Benedetta that the convent is run on money, not only on devotion, and that the hierarchy of the Church is entirely corrupt. Unfortunately for the locals, the papal nuncio to Florence (Lambert Wilson) gets wind of the possible chicanery, and he won’t be made a fool of.

Of course, people tend to believe what conforms to their own narratives. In Benedetta, belief in the supernatural is presented not as faith, but as superstition – and it runs along class lines. Benedetta, the abbess, the provost and the nuncio are privileged to have been born to wealth, which brings education and power. The townspeople and the nuns from humble backgrounds are ignorant and gullible – why wouldn’t God appear in my time and my town?

Bartolomea is most assuredly from among the ignorant and powerless, but, between orgasms, she sees what is happening with her own eyes.

Benedetta is based on Judith C. Brown’s book Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. Benedetta Carlini, Sister Bartolomea, Father Ricordati and the papal nuncio Alfonso Giglioli are real historical characters. Benedetta and Bartolomea’s sexual liaison, Benedetta’s claims of stigmata and supernatural visions and the Plague in northern Italy all really happened. Verhoeven took some liberties with the ending (and the dildo).

Verhoeven sure lets us know that we are in 17th Century Italy. A hundred years before, Michelangelo and Brunelleschi may have been changing the world’s culture 45 miles away in Florence, but this is still an age where the Church can have someone burned at the stake. This is a world of the bubonic plague, roving bands of mercenary brigands, self-flagellation by the devout and horrific (off-screen) torture.

One of the pleasures of Benedetta is the medieval and Renaissance music on the soundtrack.

There isn’t a bad performance in Benedetta. I gotta say that Charlotte Rampling remains one of my favorite screen actors, with her eyes ranging from the most piercing to the saddest and most knowing. Benedetta is far from her most transgressive film, having starred in The Night Porter (1974). Rampling has delivered some of her most powerful work in the past decade: 45 Years and The Sense of an Ending.

Ever the carnival barker, Paul Verhoeven draws an audience into the tent with over-the-top sex and sacrilege for a thoughtful exploration of faith and superstition. Benedetta is now in a few art house theaters.

C’MON C’MON: parenting, even an adorable kid, is hard

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Photo caption: Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman in C’MON C’MON. Courtesy of A24.

In the charming and authentic C’mon C’mon, Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-intentioned, emotionally intelligent guy who gets an immersion course in parenting.

Phoenix plays Johnny, an NPR-style radio journalist whose current project is interviewing children, getting their views on their world, their parents and our future. Johnny is really good with his subjects, but he is not responsible for the 24/7 welfare of these kids.

His Los Angeles sister Viv (Gaby Hoffman) has to deal with an out-of-town emergency, so she asks Johnny tocome from New York and watch her nine-year-old son Jesse (Woody Norman) for a couple days. The emergency becomes extended, and Johnny takes Jesse back home to New York with him, and then on an assignment in New Orleans.

Fortunately, Jesse enjoys using Johnny’s professional sound equipment for recording the ambient sounds of Venice Beach’s Ocean Front Walk, a skate park, the bustling NYC streets, Central Park and a New Orleans street parade.

But Jesse’s life has been disrupted, and Johnny learns that parenting a kid whose life has been disrupted is hard. Jesse may be just a kid, but he’s more than a match for Johnny.

C’mon C’mon is written and directed by Mike Mills, who makes a feature film every five or so years: 2005’s Thumbsucker, 2010’s Beginners (Christopher Plummer won a Supporting Actor Oscar) and 2016’s 20th Century Women (Mills was nominated for a screenwriting Oscar). I wish his movies came more often. Mills is interested in making films for adults about inter-family issues.

Joaquin Phoenix is utterly believable as this well-intentioned and sympathizing character. Phoenix has never been more relatable. One critic had even described him as “endearing” (Joaquin Phoenix?) and, surprisingly, that adjective fits.

Woody Norman, a kid absolutely brimming with personality, plays Jesse.

Gaby Hoffman is excellent in a far less neurotic role than the ones she often gets; her Viv is a solidly competent working mom who is highly-stressed and then even more highly-stressed.

C’mon C’mon is playing in theaters.

HOUSE OF GUCCI: don’t wish, you may get it

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Photo caption: Lady Gaga and Adam Driver in HOUSE OF GUCCI. Courtesy of MGM

Lady Gaga and Adam Driver shine in House of Gucci, a story of sordid behavior among the rich and famous, “inspired by true events”. Driver plays Maurizio, the feckless scion of the famed Gucci clan. Lady Gaga plays Patrizia, the humbly born striver who snares Maurizio as a husband. In filmmaker Ridley Scott’s telling, the conniving Patrizia molds the charmingly goofy naif into someone with the wherewithal to screw his relatives out of the business.

This is Shakespearean family treachery – and Patrizia will learn the price of turning someone into a cutthroat. Lady Gaga is once again (A Star Is Born) absolutely magnetic on-screen. Driver makes the character of Maurizio very, very interesting as he evolves into (almost) what Patrizia wants him to be.

The flashiest role – and performance – is Jared Leto’s as Maurizio’s cousin Paolo. Leto is physically unrecognizable in the role – chubby, with the hair of the The Three Stooges’ Larry Fine and corduroy suits of absurdly wide wale. In The House of Gucci, every other character explicitly and correctly describes Paolo as an idiot. Many critics have compared Paolo, as the family’ weakest link, to Fredo in The Godfather; however, John Cazale’s performance as Fredo brought subtlety that was not on the written page, and Paolo is written to be a full-out buffoon. Leto is very funny, though.

Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons are excellent as the Gucci generation that built the business. Pacino’s Aldo (Paolo’s father) is a shameless hustler and Iron’s Rodolfo (Maurizio’s father) has reinvented himself as a patrician recluse.

Although it’s a smidgen too long, I was entertained by The House of Gucci. But The Wife, even less tolerant of long running times than am I, was bored and disgruntled by what she saw as a lack of redemption.

(For some reason, I keep calling this movie “House of Pizza” after the legendary San Jose joint.)

House of Gucci is now in theaters.

Movies to See Right Now

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Photo caption: Benedict Cumberbatch in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Credit: Kirsty Griffin; courtesy of Netflix.

This week – three more movies in theaters, five more now streaming and a note on my own William Randolph Hearst movie-going fantasy.

Every once in a loooong while, I have an experience that I treasure – seeing a movie as the only patron in a theater. Since I visited Hearst Castle as a kid, I’ve loved the idea of posing as the magnate at his very own private theater. One would think that this would happen more than it does. In a non COVID year, I will see 100+ movies in theaters, and I see lots of obscure movies at sparsely-attended weekday matinees. But, almost always, there’s at least one more audience member.

Anyway, it happened for the third time last Monday – The Souvenir Part II at San Francisco’s Landmark Embarcadero. My previous two solo screenings were of The Mariachi in 1992 at the Los Gatos and of Not Fade Away in 2012 at the AMC Cupertino Square.

IN THEATERS

The Power of the Dog: Jane Campion’s simmering drama of hostility that, most unexpectedly, meets its match. Brilliant performances by Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee. Also now streaming on Netflix.

Julia: This charming documentary, affectionate and clear-eyed, tells the unlikely story of how Julia Child broke through every expectation of her gender, class and upbringing to become an icon in her fifties.

The Souvenir Part II: An exquisite art film about a young woman’s emotional recovery. This won’t be in theaters for very long.

Also in theaters:

ON VIDEO

Brian Wilson (seated left) in BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD. Courtesy of Nashville Film Festival.

A slew of movies have become widely available to stream, by which I mean that they can be rented for $3.99-$6.99 from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube:

If you are willing to pay $19.99, you can already stream Lamb, No Time to Die, Last Night in Soho and The Many Saints of Newark. Or you can wait just a few weeks for these films to get down to $6 territory.

The most eclectic watch-at-home recommendations you’ll find ANYWHERE:

ON TV

On December 6, Turner Classic Movies airs Caged, the 1950s prototype for Orange Is the New Black?  Eleanor Parker played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod. Caged also features the fine character actresses Thelma Moorhead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman).  Sixty-four years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.

Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED