The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him

Year 10, Day 27 - 1/27/18 - Movie #2,827

BEFORE: OK, now I face a dilemma - it's clear to me now that when I programmed January, I was trying to stretch out the chain I had in order to fill the whole month, and not re-work things.  So it made sense to include all THREE of the films with this name, that are essentially all re-cuttings of the same material.  (Umm, I think, I don't really want to read too far into the synopsis, to avoid spoilers...). But now that I'm up against it, do I really want to spend THREE slots on the same story?  These first two films (Him & Her) were released simultaneously, but then I read that the director, after watching both, decided to just make a third cut, which was released as "Them" - am I going to gain some greater understanding after watching all three in a row, or is it just going to make me upset that the story couldn't be told from two points of view in the first place?  I guess we're about to find out.

On the upside, no matter what happens, I'll clear three films from my Netflix queue this way.  However, the Netflix films are not part of my main watchlist, so this doesn't clear any slots there.

But then, the second dilemma - which one should I watch first, "Him" or "Her"?  Which screened first at film festivals, or was that not the way they were presented?  Again, the synopsis might offer a clue, but I don't want to learn too much in advance.  So maybe "Her", which comes first alphabetically?  No, maybe "Him", because I just came off a very McAvoy-heavy film and I could justify linking between them.  But then again, "ladies first", so maybe it should be "Her"?  Yeah, but on both posters it's "Him & Her", not "Her & Him", so "Him" goes first.

James McAvoy carries over for film #3 out of 5.

THE PLOT: Told from the male perspective, the story of a couple trying to reclaim the life and love they once knew and pick up the pieces of a past that may be too far gone.

AFTER: After watching the kidnappings in "Split", I feared the worst when I thought about the use of the word "disappearance" here, but thankfully the titular Eleanor does not meet with foul play, it's a relief to learn that the disappearance is of her own choosing.  So that means this is just a complex relationship drama, and could serve as a good sort of lead-in for the February programming.

But why does she drop out of life for a while, taking a break from the relationship?  Ah, there is a reason, but it takes a while for the film to get around to revealing that, perhaps as it should be.  The tragedy that strained the relationship is just one of many, I think, Conor's failing restaurant, and presumably the schedule that requires him to be away from Eleanor every night is tangential to that.  Anyone in the service industry, or who has to keep crazy hours as a policeman, fireman, doctor or nurse can probably sympathize.

And anyone's who's been in a relationship that's circled the drain can probably find something in common with Eleanor and Conor.  Maybe this film will end up speaking personally more to me just because it's from the male perspective - that feeling when your wife says she wants to go find herself and you have to resist the urge to scream back "But, you're RIGHT THERE!".  Or when she suggests that you should go out and have an affair, which seems like it comes out of left field, but is probably a trap rather than a genuine offer, or is possibly a sign that she's already had one herself.  Either way, she really doesn't mean that.  Umm, unless she does.

That's the thing that will drive you crazy as a relationship is failing, the uncertainty.  Do you try to hold on tighter, or learn to let go?  When she does go, does she want you to try and find her, or not?  Which course of action will benefit the relationship better in the long-term or is it time to start thinking about what's best for you as an individual again?   And is there a way to track down your wife without looking like a desperate stalker?

These dilemmas are mirrored somewhat in Conor's restaurant situation - is it better to keep the under-performing bar/restaurant that might get a good review someday and take off, or cut his losses and use his connection to his father to get a real job at a restaurant with a more active clientele?  (I did watch two films last year that also explored this exact conundrum, "Chef" and "Burnt", although they offered different solutions.).

I'm going to give this one a tentative rating based on how "real" it all felt, but I reserve the right to revise the ratings later, if this whole thing goes off the rails somehow in the second film.  Just knowing that there's another side to this story, however, can't help but make this film feel incomplete, and I wonder if that's what led to the re-cut.

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Bill Hader (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "Silence"), Nina Arianda (last seen in "Midnight in Paris"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Blackhat"), Isabelle Huppert (last seen in "Heaven's Gate"), Nikki M. James, Christian Coulson (last seen in "The Hours"), Isabelle McNally.

RATING: 6 out of 10 unpaid bills

Split

Year 10, Day 26 - 1/26/18 - Movie #2,826

BEFORE: This has not been a great movie week for women - we had the mother with the terminal illness in "A Monster Calls", then the sexual assault that took place in "Atonement", now tonight it's kidnapping and possibly worse.  Things aren't really looking good for the rest of the week either.  But hey, that's why these films are on the January schedule and not part of the February romance/relationship chain.

To be fair, it hasn't been a great week for men, either - we lost a lot of good soldiers on "Hacksaw Ridge", then there were priests being tortured in "Silence", and men being hunted by Alaskan wolves in "The Grey".  What a fun week...

James McAvoy carries over from "Atonement"...

THE PLOT: Three girls are kidnapped by a man diagnosed with 23 distinct personalities.  They must try to escape before the apparent emergence of a frightful new 24th.

AFTER: Possible spoilers in the review tonight, there's no way around some of them.  If you haven't seen this film yet, then proceed at your own risk.

This is another spin on the "survival film" genre that's taken off in the last few years, the "locked-room" horror film.  I watched both "Room" and "10 Cloverfield Lane" last year, two other examples of this sub-genre.  Now this film comes along, with THREE girls kidnapped and held underground by a seemingly-insane man who has a split personality.  And what he does to these women, it's so gruesome I can barely talk about it - he keeps them in a room and he makes them watch his one-man show, where he plays all 23 of the diverse characters, male and female!  And this is the really horrible part, the show is unfinished, it's STILL IN THE WORKSHOP STAGE!  Oh, God, I can't even imagine, those poor girls.  I know that I'd be thinking, "Why doesn't he just KILL us already?"

OK, I'm sort of kidding about that last part.  But this film does play out as a bit of an acting display for McAvoy.  This is the sort of role that probably any actor would jump at, in order to prove the range of what they can do with different voices, postures, and body language.  Can anyone possibly keep 23 different characters separate and distinct?  Actually, I think the movie cheats a bit, because there are only 9 different personas named in the IMDB credits.  But it's still a challenge for the actor to perform, and for the audience to keep track of.  What makes "Dennis" different from "Barry", or how are we supposed to tell when he's "Patricia" and when he's "Jade"?

Now, are there REALLY people in the real world with split personalities, or is this just a movie thing?  I remember reading something somewhere about how this is no longer considered a genuine medical condition - but no filmmaker has ever let them stop that in the past, so why bother to do five minutes of research now to see if the film you want to make is close to accurate?  I'll look it up now (which I guarantee you, no writer did before making this film...).  Hmm, I guess it's called DID now, which is "Dissociative Identity Disorder".  But even the Wikipedia page acknowledges that increased rates of this disease could be due to factors such as media portrayals - in other words, people think they have this disease because they saw a movie about it.  Otherwise it seems to be an offshoot of PTSD brought on by trauma or abuse, where the "real" personality is hiding behind one or more others.

Some research also claims that the therapeutic techniques used to treat this disorder are also part of the problem, that therapists looking for this condition could unwittingly suggest to people that they have it, and this triggers the condition itself.  Jeez, the search for the cure is part of the problem, it figures.  But anyway, let's assume for the moment that this condition is a real thing and proceed from there. There are still a few narrative problems here, namely that we don't know which persona was in control when the three girls were kidnapped - was it Kevin, the primary, or Dennis, or Barry?  Or some combination of them working for some other purpose?  Any attempts to mollify the situation ("Oh, he just likes to watch girls dance...") don't achieve the desired effect, because when someone kidnaps people and locks them in a room, it's never for a good reason.

(EDIT: Marvel Comics had a mutant character like this, with many different personalities, called Legion.  They had a TV series on FX last year that was all about this character trying to deal with his condition and integrate his different personalities.  The added twist was that he might have absorbed some of the personalities from other mutants, who died during that process, and the most evil one in his head wasn't really him, but recurring X-Men villain Shadow King.  Now, in the comics,  Legion was the son of Professor Charles Xavier, and who's played Professor X in the recent X-Men movies? Right, it's James McAvoy...)

There are rules to dealing with the different personalities, as the girls soon learn, and some of the personas have OCD, which you might think keeps things neat and tidy, but this is a NITPICK POINT to me.  If several of them have OCD, why haven't they worked out a schedule where each persona gets allotted exactly 4.34% of the day?  Because the lack of a system means complete chaos, and that's what someone with OCD can't stand.

Then the possibility rises that the 23 personalities are preparing the way for a 24th, known as "The Beast".  I won't spoil anything about this here, but obviously it doesn't sound good.  It's another NITPICK POINT to me why this nutjob needs to leave home and go to the train station at this point, like he's picking up someone coming in from out of town.  Umm, that's just not the way this works, a new personality doesn't arrive by Amtrak.  That whole sequence seemed weird and out of place, even in a movie about weird stuff.

And my final NITPICK POINT is that in the same film that seems to have an agenda at first telling us that there are people with this condition who have learned various coping mechanisms and, with therapy, are able to hold down jobs and be productive members of society - because not everyone with DID is a psycho or a killer, and some people come to realize that their affliction is also a gift.  Well, that would be fine if the main character didn't turn into a psycho and a killer.  Wait, what was the point  you were trying to make again?  

And I guess it figures that a film about a split personality would have a split timeline.  But at least the one here just toggles between two timelines, the main one and flashbacks one of the girls has from when she was a small girl.  There are a lot of things that are just a little too coincidental where the flashbacks are concerned, but I can't really harp on this, I'm forced to allow it.

And then there's the fact that this was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which means two things - he's going to make a cameo appearance, and there will be some kind of twist or reveal at the end.  The one here serves to connect this film to the larger M. Night world (the "Shymalan-iverse") but I'm not sure I understand why.  It certainly helps if you've seen his other films, I guess.  (Umm, no, not that one - the other one.) 

(EDIT: I forget one last NITPICK POINT, when the therapist addresses the patient and she wants to know which personality is currently in control, she asks questions like, "To whom am I speaking with?" Ugh, that's too many prepositions AND she ended the sentence with one of them, a language no-no.  I guess they didn't teach any grammar in whatever school she studied psychiatry or psychology.  There are at least a dozen better ways to ask this, or just drop one of those prepositions, please.)

Also starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley (last seen in "Another Woman"), Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Izzie Coffey, Brad William Henke (last seen in "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday"), Sebastian Arcelus, Neal Huff, Kim Director, with cameos from M. Night Shyamalan, (name withheld).

RATING: 5 out of 10 security cameras

Atonement

Year 10, Day 25 - 1/25/18 - Movie #2,825

BEFORE: I've heard a lot about this film over the years, it seems to have gained something like a cult following - but it was on that list of "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" for just a couple of years, it's already gone from that list, to make room for more current films.  What's up with that?  As I mentioned the other day, I think it's much more likely that older films or foreign films would lose relevance among today's audiences - I can't quite understand why they just clear some of the most recent films from that list each year to clear spots for OTHER recent films.  What's the point?

Nonso Anozie carries over from "The Grey" to get me to the first of my five James McAvoy films.  February 1 will be here before I know it...

THE PLOT: Fledgling writer Briony Tallis, as a 13-year-old, irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.

AFTER: This film is all about the repercussions of reporting a sexual assault  Even though it's set just before World War II, what could be more relevant to current events than THIS?  I can't make TOO many connections between this film and the #MeToo movement, precisely because "Atonement" depicts a false claim - or, rather, a real claim but a mis-identification of the man who committed the assault.  And we're not supposed to talk about false claims now (cough - Aziz Ansari - cough) because we're all supposed to be listening to women that are speaking up - but I guarantee you, that's only going to last until a few more claims are found to be false, filed by women trying to use the recent scandals for their own benefit.

Another film stands accused of excessive time-jumping, in a non-linear fashion.  A scene with the subtitle "Four Years Later" is followed by a scene with the subtitle "Six Months Earlier".  Huh?  Why did the movie jump four years ahead, only to then jump 6 months back - it's messing with me, right?  Why not just show everything in the proper order, like go 3 1/2 years forward, then skip ahead another 6 months like a normal movie would?  I can only hope this sort of thing was in vogue in 2007, and has since fallen out of favor, because of how manipulative it really is.  Maybe THAT'S why the film is no longer on the list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die"?  I guess now you can save "Atonement" to watch after you die?

Then there are several events that are seen twice, or maybe even three times, from different points of view.  The second time we see Cecilia remove her dress and take a dip in the fountain, we find out the real reason for it, and there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, provided you're a British rich person.   But do we really need to see this event twice, once from Briony's distant POV and again from close-up?  Wouldn't cutting to Briony's view from the house, not being able to hear what's going outside, accomplish the same thing, without fracturing the time-stream?   This repetition makes it seem like the event took place twice, and that doesn't make any sense at all.

I have a number of other NITPICK POINTS tonight, the major one concerns Robbie's "wandering" around in France as a soldier (after being offered the opportunity to enlist and therefore bounce out of prison).  He's seen milling about with 2 other soldiers, but they don't seem to be a part of a larger unit, like a squad or a platoon.  How is this possible?  This was never explained to my satisfaction.

This leads to a big scene in the middle that is set on the beach at Dunkirk, where the steadicam follows Robbie and his two fellow soldiers as they cross the beach, past some horses that are being shot in the head, over and around some soldiers mucking about on a beached sailing ship, some other soldiers singing a hymn on a bandstand, etc.  My boss says she hated this scene because of how manipulative it was - I didn't mind that, other than it felt really out of place in this film.  (This technique was used to great effect years later in the movie "Birdman" - but since the rest of "Atonement" is not like this, it sticks out here as a sort of aberration.)  Here it really called to one's attention that this is a scene, and it's being filmed, and that interferes with the suspension of disbelief.

But what really made parts of "Atonement" unwatchable was Keira Knightley, who seemed incapable of delivering any lines in a way that I could understand.  She failed to enunciate most of the time, and said most of her lines too quickly, and after a while I just gave up trying to understand her, and decided to pick up the meaning of her lines from the context.  The first rule of being an actor should be to say your lines in a way that the audience can understand them, so she failed that.   Sometimes I have problems with thick British accents, especially Cockney ones.  It could be 30 minutes into a film like "Snatch" or "Trainspotting" before something will click, and then I can understand the dialogue, but with Knightley here, that just never kicked in.

And then there's the big "sucker punch" at the end.  Oh, those last few scenes that we showed you?  Yeah, it turns out that they didn't happen.  THEN WHY DID YOU SHOW THEM TO ME?  Ugh, the only movie that I'll let get away with this is "Brazil", director's cut (of course) because Gilliam did it so deftly, but here it's just more cheap manipulation, an attempt to pull the rug out from under you at the last minute.  To lull you into thinking everything might be OK, then here comes the rope-a-dope.  I just don't know how this sort of storytelling is acceptable, given these circumstances.

Also starring James McAvoy (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Keira Knightley (last seen in "Everest"), Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "The Way Back"), Romola Garai (last seen in "Scoop"), Vanessa Redgrave (last seen in "Foxcatcher"), Harriet Walter (last seen in "From Time to Time"), Patrick Kennedy (last seen in "London Has Fallen"), Brenda Blethyn (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), Juno Temple (last seen in "Lovelace"), Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Daniel Mays (last seen in "Rogue One"), Felix von Simson, Charlie von Simson, Jérémie Renier (last seen in "In Bruges"), Alfie Allen (last seen in "John Wick"), Peter Wight (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), with a cameo from Anthony Minghella.

RATING: 4 out of 10 chocolate bars

The Grey

Year 10, Day 24 - 1/24/18 - Movie #2,824

BEFORE: I could have followed the Toby Kebbell link out of "A Monster Calls", because he was also in the remake of "Ben-Hur", and last year's "Kong: Skull Island" and "War for the Planet of the Apes", all movies that I want to see, and that would have rivaled last fall's Michael Stuhlbarg festival for originality and obscurity.  But following the Liam Neeson link gets me to this film, and ultimately to where I want to be on February 1.  Which is really not that far off, just 5 films with James McAvoy and 2 with Miles Teller, and I'll be there.

I waited a long time for "The Grey" to pop up, it was in theaters in 2011 and then just never appeared on premium cable.  My guess is that it just sort of fell through the cracks, and I moved forward without it, I think I've done two or three Liam Neeson groupings while waiting for this one.  Finally it ran on the Sundance Channel, which I usually avoid because they run commercials now (it was not always so) and they also edit out curse words.  I supposed I could have watched it on iTunes for $3.99, but those charges add up after a while, and I don't get to KEEP a copy of the film that way.  

THE PLOT: After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.

AFTER: Well, it's been a quality month for survival films, especially winter-themed ones, and I can't really program January any better than that.  "The Finest Hours" was set during a blizzard off Cape Cod, and "The Way Back" featured prison escapees walking through frozen Siberia. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" also had some snowy scenes set at the Central Park Zoo, and "The Man Who Knew Infinity" showed an Indian mathematician trying to stay warm during his winters in the U.K.  But tonight's film is set in Alaska, I think - and there's just a whole lot of nothing up there except snow and wolves, apparently.

The "survival film" genre has really exploded in the last few years, with "The Revenant" being the most recent good example, but before that there was "All Is Lost", "Into the Wild", "Lone Survivor"  and "127 Hours", in addition to the other films I mentioned above.  I guess you can go back to "Cast Away" in 2000 and "Alive" before that in 1993.  Combine this with dystopian future-set films like "The Hunger Games" and a few dozen zombie films, and you get a feel for just how big this genre can get.  If there isn't one already, there really should be an entire film festival just for survival films.  (I tried to google it, but there are too many guides on the web to surviving film festivals themselves...)

For a brief minute I thought this film was not following a linear structure - since I knew the plot in advance, when we first see Neeson's character, Ottway, hunting wolves, I thought that might be taking place after the plane crash, and then we'd flash back to show how he got into that situation.  But no, the oil company paid him to hunt wolves around the drilling platforms, to keep the other workers safe.  But this job, or perhaps the climate, has taken its toll on this man, and we see him writing a letter to his wife, detailing his plans to commit suicide.  It's a little unclear whether his wife is alive or dead, real or imaginary - I suppose anything is possible, but either way, apparently the existence or the memory of his wife is not enough to sustain him.  Maybe he's got that Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) which can happen to people who are up north, where there's not much daylight during the winter months. 

Of course, it's his last day on the job and he's headed back to his wife (I suppose?) and OF COURSE, the plane therefore crashes in the most ironic way possible.  (Alanis Morissette, take notice, this is how it's really done...)  So the guy who wanted to end it all the day before now finds himself in the position of trying to keep himself and 7 other people alive.  (Or, maybe he died in the crash, and this is his concept of the hellish afterlife...mind blown!)  And as always with a Liam Neeson film, we find that his character has a particular set of skills that turn out to be just what's required to fix the problem at hand.  Or thereabouts. 

But are 7 people, one of whom has survival skills, enough to handle an angry, hungry pack of wolves, who allegedly are the only animals besides humans to understand the concept of revenge?  The movie states this, at least, I can't say as I've heard that little urban myth before.  Can these humans put aside their differences long enough to come together and get back to safety?  Ah, but that would be telling.  Wikipedia will tell you that the ending is rather ambiguous, but I'm not so sure about that.

But the movie has a clear message for anyone who flies on a plane and is super-annoying - you know, the kind of person who just wants to make conversation with you, and keeps saying "Bro!" in every sentence, when all you want is some peace and quiet, so you can take a nap?  Now at least you can console yourself with the knowledge that if your plane crashes, you can choose to NOT try and save the passengers who talk too much, or keep kicking your seat, or take the last kosher meal when you specifically requested one and they didn't.  Be sure to tell these people DURING the flight that you won't make any effort to save them after a crash - that should shut them up for a while, or at least curtail their offensive behavior.   You're welcome. 

Also starring Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "Truth"), Frank Grillo (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Dallas Roberts (last seen in "Dallas Buyers Club"), Nonso Anozie (last seen in "Pan"), James Badge Dale (last seen in "The Walk"), Joe Anderson (last seen in "Copying Beethoven"), Ben Hernandez Bray (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Anne Openshaw.

RATING: 5 out of 10 sharp sticks

A Monster Calls

Year 10, Day 23 -  1/23/18 - Movie #2,823

BEFORE: Both "Silence" and "Hacksaw Ridge" received Oscar nominations last year, so I'm still playing catch-up, really.  Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture of 2016, after watching "Hell or High Water" and "Hacksaw Ridge" this month, I've managed to see 6 of them.  I've got copies of 2 of the others ("Fences" and "Hidden Figures"), which just leaves "Moonlight".  I could watch the Academy screener tomorrow, but that doesn't seem sporting, I'll wait and find a way to legitimately link to it.

But it's time once again for nominations, the noms for 2017 were released today, and once again, the Academy and I just don't see eye-to-eye.  I've seen ZERO of the films nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and also the four top acting categories.  None of the animated features, either, since I skipped "Coco" and the others are relatively obscure.  Outside of "Blade Runner 2049", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" getting technical nominations, and "Logan" getting a nomination for Adapted Screenplay, I just don't have a dog in this fight, not yet.  I've got access to a pile of Academy screeners, but by the time I make room for them in my countdown, I think the awards will already have been handed out.  Such is the way of my process.

This is also the discrepancy I expect after naming "Thor: Ragnarok" and "GOTG2" my favorite films of last year.

Liam Neeson carries over from "Silence" to provide the voice of the titular Monster tonight.

THE PLOT: A boy seeks the help of a tree monster to cope with his mother's terminal illness.

AFTER: I'm back on kids at English prep schools, just a few days after "Like Minds".  As bad as the public school system is in the U.S., it seems (from movies, anyway) that a lot more sinister things happen at British prep schools, from bullying right up to murder.  I'm betting it has a lot to do with the tradition of "buggering" (look it up, I won't get into it here) which people turned a blind eye to for many years.  Talk about abuse of power, once the Hollywood perv scandals are dealt with, it's time to look into the "honored traditions" taking place at British prep schools.

But let's focus on what's depicted in this film about young Conor O'Malley.  He is the victim of bullying, probably because he looks a bit odd - like a young Bill Hader in a boy's body.  And kids will focus on any unusual features and bully anyone who seems different or odd to them.  Plus Conor's mother is sick, so he's forced to spend time at his grandmother's house, and then his errant father returns from L.A. for a visit.  So a lot of things are not going well, and he's having a recurring nightmare about his mother in a cemetery, where the chapel starts to collapse and the ground opens up, and he's holding on to his mother, who's dangling over the abyss.

Conor's got the imagination of an artist, though, so he envisions being visited by a giant tree monster, who offers to tell him stories in exchange for ultimately hearing his "truth".  And while the first 2 stories are ambiguous fairy-tales, the third inspires him to stand up to his bullies and fight back.  But is this the right message?  Earlier this week the debate around "Hacksaw Ridge" concerned one man's right to champion non-violence, and the message here seems to be that violence is sometimes the correct response.  But again, is that the right message for a kid going through a tough time?

I was bullied in grade school, because I was the chubby kid in class, so I know a bit about this.  I didn't really see myself fighting back, so I learned to either outwit my tormentors, or buy them off with something they needed (answers to the next test, or in one case, I bought a kid's entire Star Wars comic-book collection).  Conor here fights back physically and puts his bully in the hospital - and for some unclear reason, he does NOT get punished for that.  That's 100% the wrong message to send out to today's kids.  Even a kid who has a sick mother has to take responsibility for his actions, if he broke school rules or caused another kid to be injured.

Conor also spends time at his grandmother's house, where she's got a delicate grandfather clock and a number of other fragile collectables.  After a dream sequence where he and the Monster are breaking windows and tearing down an imaginary house, we see that Conor has not only broken the clock, but trashed the entire room.  And once AGAIN, receives no punishment for his actions.  If I were his grandmother, I'd find a way to punish this kid for destroying a room full of valuables, not necessarily by hitting him, because that would be wrong, but punishment in some fashion is required - sick mother or no sick mother.

Because here's the thing about kids, which a lot of parents today seem to have forgotten - they're resilient creatures, and they don't need as much protection as you might think.  You may want to protect them from every bad thing and emotion that they're likely to encounter, but then you'd be doing them a disservice - because when the bad feelings inevitably come, those over-protected kids won't be equipped to handle them, and they'll break down.  Being bullied, as bad as it was, allowed me to build up some emotional scar tissue, so that if anyone insults me now, I can just brush it off.  I don't collapse into a fetal position and rock back and forth.  Negative emotions are like germs, kids need to be exposed to small doses so that they'll build up an immunity of sorts.

Too many participation trophies creates a false sense of self-worth, while dealing with loss builds character.   Kids have to be allowed to fail, because we all learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.  It's OK to get a bad grade or to learn that not every kid in class likes you, because those experiences all contain valuable lessons that will be carried forward into adulthood.  And along with that comes the realization that parents are people, and therefore mortal.  Whenever I see a movie where a parent says to a child, "I'll always look out for you," I think that nobody should make that claim, because they could be in an accident next week, and therefore they're lying to their kid.

In the end, I'm not sure if I'd be the best father ever or the worst, but I think it's probably one or the other.

Also starring Lewis MacDougall (last seen in "Pan"), Felicity Jones (last seen in "Inferno"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "The Year of Living Dangerously"), Toby Kebbell (last heard in "Warcraft"), James Melville, Geraldine Chaplin (last seen in "Nashville").

RATING: 4 out of 10 family photos

Silence

Year 10, Day 22 - 1/22/18 - Movie #2,822

BEFORE: My wife and I are finally recovering from our colds, enough to leave the house, anyway - we drove out to Long Island on Saturday to get her car inspected, and then we found a new little restaurant gem, we seem to have a knack for finding little hole-in-the-wall BBQ restaurants.  This one  (The Good Steer) has been in the same spot since 1957, and it's possible that they maybe have never changed the decor in all that time.  I got a big "Pitmaster's Plate", with 3 ribs (I think they gave me 4), some pulled pork, brisket and a pile of onion straws, along with rice and beans - I nearly couldn't finish it all, and I've had a lot of experience taking down big plates of barbecue.

Then today I went out to dinner in Manhattan with my friend Victoria, since it was her birthday last week.  My boss and his wife gave me a gift card (maybe 3 birthdays ago) that was good at a number of French restaurants around town, but the one where I wanted to use it, Café D'Alsace, is on the Upper East Side, and I almost never go to that part of town.  Which is a bit odd, since I'll travel to Dallas or Nashville for good BBQ, but dining out on a Monday I'll rarely go north of 42nd St.  But since it's Restaurant Week, I offered to use the gift card if Vic would venture to the northern part of town with me (they do have buses and subways that go there, after all) and it turned out to be a great meal.

After watching "The Way Back" I wrote something about how I'm not really in touch with my Polish heritage, and I'm more comfortable thinking of myself as mostly German and part Irish.  But that doesn't really extend to cuisine - I know Polish food, and Irish food, and German food from Bavaria.  But some of my German ancestors are from Alsace, which is a territory that's been both German and French at different times (yet my family would never consider themselves of French heritage, which is weird.).  So tonight I got in touch with my Alsace heritage from a culinary POV, and the results were amazing.  I had a savory winter tart with beets and goat cheese, a cassoulet with duck confit, duck sausage, foie gras and lamb, and a molten chocolate gateau with raspberry sauce and vanilla ice cream.  My friend had the frisée salad with pears and lardons, a fantastic beef short rib (I tried some) and a creme brulée.  If this is part of my culinary cultural heritage, then I say bring it on.

Of course, it's not just genetics that draws me to this food - it's all French & German comfort food, so naturally it was delicious.  Eating those foods is like getting a big warm hug from inside your stomach, but still, I feel I should go back and try some more things on the menu just to be sure.

Andrew Garfield carries over from "Hacksaw Ridge", and plays another man bound by religious convictions, only in another time and place.

THE PLOT: In the 17th Century, two Portuguese Jesuit priests travel to Japan in an attempt to locate their mentor, who is rumored to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.

AFTER: I sort of skirted by the topic yesterday, but I just can't avoid the subject of religion here, it's front and center.  I don't really agree with the concept of missionaries, who travel to foreign lands to spread their chosen religion to the "heathen" natives, as if their Jesus is really SO much better in the end than Allah, or Buddha, or the Sun God Ra.  Can anyone really be that arrogant, as if their religion is not only the BEST religion, but also the only REAL one?  Why yes, I've found that in fact most religious people adopt that attitude, even though very often the only reason that someone is Catholic, or Jewish, or Muslim is because they were born into a family of that belief.  How does that make their religion RIGHT?  I can sort of take religious converts a bit more seriously, someone who's just born into a religion strikes me as someone who never really learned to think for themself.  Because once you think for yourself and start to ask questions, the belief in any religion tends to unravel quite a bit.

And think about all the times that people died because they were SURE that their religion was right, and the other guy's was wrong.  The Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust - and that's just off the top of my head.  Hundreds of thousands dead in the last few thousand years because they were practicing the wrong religion in the wrong place at the wrong time, and someone more powerful was upset that they weren't practicing the RIGHT religion.  Meanwhile, both religions probably had some precept against killing that was conveniently ignored, or didn't seem to apply to the heathens.  And in all cases, neither party was able to take a step back and say, "Hey, maybe we're BOTH wrong about this religion thing..."  Nope, that's just never an option, now, is it?  Everyone's sure that the answer that THEY were given as a child about how the universe works is the correct one.   What a damn shame.

Maybe I'm just not in the target audience for this film, which features people clinging to their faith during the most difficult times, and here I spent several years during my twenties trying to get AWAY from organized religion.  Life is much simpler when you're not living for an imaginary guy up in the sky and worse, dealing with his human representatives on Earth who want to tell you how to act, what to eat and who to marry.  And it is possible to still maintain a moral code while still not practicing a religion - I like to say that I "practiced" enough, and at some point it's time to stop practicing and go out to start doing.  Heck, I practiced the clarinet for about 6 years, and when I realized I wasn't ever going to be great at it, it was time to stop wasting my time and try something else.

Anyway, the Jesuit priests here travel from Macau (a Portuguese territory) to Japan to find out what happened to a missing Jesuit priest, even though he sent them a letter (that took a few years to arrive) that said he was doing fine in Japan, had renounced his Catholic faith, and not to come looking for him.  So of course they ignore that last part and head straight for Japan - it couldn't possibly be that a priest got tired of all the Catholic B.S. and started thinking for himself, could it?  (Yes, apparently I still have an ax to grind against Catholicism...)

What they find is a populace that is full of Christians desperately in need of priests, natives who were baptized at some point by missionaries but do not have regular access to the sacraments of Communion and Confession, and I can confirm that this religion really stresses the need for both, and of course without them they're not likely to be eligible for paradise when they die.  What a racket.  Nothing like keeping the rubes in line with the threat of eternal damnation.  The samurai, meanwhile, are traveling from village to village looking for any signs of Christian iconography, and asking the locals to step on an icon of Jesus, or to spit on a cross, to prove that they're not Christians.

This sets up something of a conundrum, over whether it's all right to lie to the Inquisitors if telling the truth will get you killed.  It's a sin to tell a lie, of course, but surely God wouldn't want his followers to die if they don't have to, right?  But then again, if they die for the cause then they're guaranteed everlasting paradise, and how is that not a good thing?  But then again, doesn't Christianity start to sound a lot like the Muslim faith with its promise of 47 virgins for those who die for the religion?  And if heaven's so great, why aren't we all rushing to die in order to get there?

And once the samurai find the two Jesuit priests, they're forced to watch as the locals they converted are put to death, quite gruesomely - a process that could end if only the priests would renounce their faith.  Which then becomes a no-win proposition, really - even if they could keep converting the Japanese, what good are converts if the government insists on killing them?  The only thing that I can really agree with here is the fact that conversion is depicted as an ultimately futile effort - but that's probably not the message that the director, Martin Scorsese, intended.

Even though I didn't really appreciate all the religious stuff, I found that Andrew Garfield looked enough like Hayden Christensen from "Star Wars: Episode II" that I could imagine this as some impossible lost tale from the Star Wars Universe, with Anakin somehow teaming up with his future grandson, Kylo Ren (Driver), to track down his original somehow-alive mentor, Qui-Gon Jinn (Neeson).  After all, the priests here all wear Jedi-like robes, and what are Jedi but the priests of the Star Wars movies?

Also starring Adam Driver (last seen in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"), Liam Neeson (last heard in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Ciaran Hinds (last heard in "Justice League"), Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Tadanobu Asano (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Issey Ogata, Yoshi Oida, Yosuke Kubozuka, Nana Komatsu, Ryo Kase, Bela Baptiste.

RATING: 5 out of 10 rosary beads

Hacksaw Ridge

Year 10, Day 21 - 1/21/18 - Movie #2,821

BEFORE: As I explained yesterday, I'm choosing to not follow the Toni Collette link out of last night's film, so instead Richard Roxburgh carries over from "Like Minds", and gets me one step closer to the end of January.

THE PLOT: WWII Army medic Desmond Doss, who refuses to kill people, serves during the Battle of Okinawa and becomes the first man in American history to receive the Medal of Honor without firing a shot.

AFTER: I'm glad they included footage at the end of the film of the real Desmond Doss, who lived until 2006, because otherwise I would have thought this film was a complete rip-off of "Sergeant York", which also featured a conscientious objector - at first, anyway.  York struggled with his conscience and eventually picked up a gun.  Of course, that film was set during World War I, and this one's set during WWII, but the main thrust of the storyline is the same, the soldier opposed to violence for religious reasons ends up saving many lives through his heroism.

Not to take anything away from the real Doss's actions, but perhaps Garfield's portrayal of him was just a little too hokey, and a little too self-righteous.  There's a way for a character to hold to his religious beliefs without coming off like he feels that he's better than everyone else, and I just didn't feel that here.  Like, of COURSE there's a discrepancy between what soldiers do during war and then some of them still believing that they're following the commandment that says, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", but since it benefits those of us protected by soldiers, it's just polite to not point this out.

But even though this story is based on real events, unlike, say, "The Way Back", there's still something that just doesn't add up here.  Why was there so much confusion over Desmond's unwillingness to fire a gun?  Was he lied to by the recruiting officers, who said something like, "You know, that won't be a problem, I doubt it will even come up during basic training..." or did everyone just assume that once he got to Fort Jackson, he'd see the error of his ways and get so caught up in following orders that he'd fall right in line?

If he was so sure that he wanted to be a combat medic, was he even in the right training program to begin with?  I'll admit I know next to nothing about army procedures - during World War II were medics pulled from the same training facility as regular soldiers, or were they recruited from medical school or something?  I'd imagine that there might be a completely different set of training drills for a medic, but then again, I can see how it would be handy for the medics to also have the ability to handle a rifle, and be acquainted with the same terrain skills, obstacle courses, etc. as the regular soldiers.

As the film itself points out, Desmond could have served his country in some other way, like working in an arms factory, or in some clerical capacity, so it's still a little unclear why he felt he HAD to be on the front lines, close to combat.  In the end it was great that he was, it's just a little hard to understand why he had to buck the system and risk a dishonorable discharge just to prove a point.

And I'm still left with the NITPICK POINT, where if Desmond (and presumably his family) was really a Seventh-Day Adventist, and therefore morally opposed to violence, then why was he allowed to fight with his brother when they were younger?  Why didn't his religious parents act more quickly to stop this particular fight, which escalated and caused an injury to his brother?  It almost feels like the film tacked this lesson on just in case the audience wouldn't really buy the religion angle.  The fight depicted between a teenage Desmond and his father, in which a gun is involved, causes the same conundrum - did this event turn him off from guns, or was it a necessary component of his religion?

The movie places a great emphasis on Doss' heroic actions at the Battle of Okinawa, spending days avoiding Japanese patrols while locating injured men who were left behind on the battlefield, carrying them to safety and lowering them down off the ridge by rope.  But still, the movie also manages to sell his heroic actions short, and also changed a number of facts along the way - reading about the real story of Doss on Wikipedia makes it clear how the movie took shortcuts and simplified the story - his Medal of Honor citation covers events that took place over three weeks, for example, where the movie shortens this to just a few days time.

Also starring Andrew Garfield (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"), Hugo Weaving (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Rachel Griffiths (last seen in "My Best Friend's Wedding"), Teresa Palmer (last seen in "Triple 9"), Vince Vaughn (last seen in "Into the Wild"), Sam Worthington (last seen in "Everest"), Luke Bracey, Ryan Corr (last seen in "Where the Wild Things Are"), Luke Pegler (last seen in "The Great Raid"), Richard Pyros, Ben Mingay, Firass Dirani (last seen in "Pitch Black"), Damien Thomlinson, Matt Nable (last seen in "Riddick"), Robert Morgan (last seen in "The Proposition"), Nathaniel Buzolic, Michael Sheasby, Nico Cortez, Goran D. Kleut (last seen in "Gods of Egypt"), Ben O'Toole, Jim Robison, Bill Young, Benedict Hardie, James Mackay, Ori Pfeffer, Darcy Bryce, Jacob Warner, Milo Gibson, Tyler Coppin.

RATING: 6 out of 10 flamethrowers