The Overnight

Year 10, Day 41 - 2/10/18 - Movie #2,841

BEFORE: As long as I'm on Netflix, I might as well hang around there and clear this one off the list, too.  And since I have no more Amy Adams films, Adam Scott carries over from "Leap Year".

Tomorrow's TCM "31 Days of Oscar" focuses on Best Director nominees and winners - I didn't expect such an important award to be given out so early in the broadcast.  But, I guess you've got to keep people tuned in.  Here's the line-up:

7:00 am "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) dir: John Huston
9:00 am "Shanghai Express" (1932) dir: Josef von Sternberg
10:30 am "Wilson" (1944) dir: Henry King
1:15 pm "National Velvet" (1944) dir: Clarence Brown
3:30 pm "The Third Man" (1949) dir: Carol Reed
5:30 pm "In Cold Blood" (1967) dir: Richard Brooks
8:00 pm "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) dir: John Ford
10:30 pm "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936) dir: Frank Capra
12:45 am "The Awful Truth" (1937) dir: Leo McCarey
2:30 am "Skippy" (1931) dir: Norman Taurog
4:15 am "Two Arabian Knights" (1927) dir: Lewis Milestone

Hmm, I'm a little iffy on "National Velvet", but for sure I've seen 5 of these: "The Third Man", "In Cold Blood", "The Grapes of Wrath", "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" and "The Awful Truth".  So another 5 out of 11 brings my total up to 44 out of 119.  Closer to 37% now.

THE PLOT: Alex, Emily and their son are new to Los Angeles.  A chance meeting at the park introduces them to the mysterious Kurt and Charlotte.  A family "playdate" becomes increasingly interesting as the night goes on.

AFTER: Admittedly I don't know much about the process of raising children - even first-time parents are probably confused about the process of registering for schools, finding reputable babysitters and such.  Then there are the "playdates", which we didn't have when I was a kid, because we just played.  And we were left on our own to navigate the rough waters of grammar school, hoping to find some sort of lifelong, or even temporary friend among the random strangers we were seated next to in class.  Maybe it's a city thing, this "playdate" concept, because it seems to be the kind of thing that busy urban parents arrange.

In this film, after setting up a playdate for their young boys (who form a bond quite quickly on the playground, for the sake of advancing the plot) the two sets of parents have a playdate of their own, while the kids are sleeping.  Look, you can't say it couldn't happen, people form friendships, they drink a little wine, take a few bong hits, and before you know it, the clothes are coming off and things are getting a little kinky.

But rather than being a straight film just about sex and swinging, there's something almost therapeutic here for the four characters involved.  There are attractions revealed (but not the ones you might expect) and some people have body issues (again, not the ones you might expect) and the uptight people learn to live a little, and maybe the free-spirited ones learn to dial it back a bit.  This is sort of the same principle seen in "Leap Year", where characters change based on who they spend time with, and so this feels like it rings a little true.

But it feels a little bit like I was sold a bill of goods here, like certain things were going to happen between these people and then most of the things you might imagine just didn't occur.  Like all indications were that the film was going to "go there", but I suppose I can see that if it did, that would have presented certain other narrative problems that would need to be dealt with.  But instead we get an ending that is an anti-climax in every sense of the word.

I hear a lot about "mumblecore" as a film genre, but I know very little about it.  I know the Duplass brothers are big in that movement, so when I saw them listed as producers of this film, I wondered if this counts as a mumblecore film.  Or "Junebug", does that count?  I have no idea.  I know that the emphasis is on dialogue over action, but I could say that about a lot of films.  Based on a list I found online, the only real mumblecore films I've seen are "Cyrus" and "Safety Not Guaranteed" - so what exactly makes us this genre, and why haven't I seen many of those films?  Are they that terrible, and why would I want to watch movies where I can't understand what they're saying, because they're mumbling?

Also starring Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Taylor Schilling (last seen in "Argo"), Judith Godreche (last seen in "The Man in the Iron Mask"), RJ Hermes, Max Moritt, Susan Traylor (last seen in "Masked and Anonymous"), Jim Turner (last seen in "The Lost Boys"),

RATING: 5 out of 10 terrycloth robes

Leap Year

Year 10, Day 40 - 2/9/18 - Movie #2,840

BEFORE: Now I'm finally getting to some romantic comedies - so I think the dark days are over for now.  In a few days I've got a neat little transition back to some classic films from the 1940's and 1950's, and those always tend to have happy endings.  But for tonight, I'm back on Netflix for this film, and Amy Adams carries over from "Junebug" and completes a hat trick.

Here's tomorrow's line-up for "31 Days of Oscar" on TCM for Saturday, February 10 - celebrating the nominees and winners for the Best Art Direction award:

7:30 am "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" (1962)
10:00 am "Little Women" (1949)
12:15 pm "Knights of the Round Table" (1953)
2:30 pm "The Red Shoes" (1948)
5:00 pm "America, America" (1963)
8:00 pm "Moulin Rouge" (1952)
10:15 pm "Julius Caesar" (1953)
12:30 am "Barry Lyndon" (1975)
3:45 am "Camelot" (1967)

I've seen 2 of these - "Julius Caesar" and "Barry Lyndon", plus I've got another 2 on my watchlist - "Knights of the Round Table" and "Camelot", which I plan to watch together (along with "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword") as soon as I can, in April or May, I think.  So I'm going to count another 4 out of 9, which brings me up to 39 seen out of 108.  Still hovering around 36%, and I still haven't found anything I need to record this year.  Which is fine, that frees me up to keep adding more current films to the watchlist.

THE PLOT: Anna Brady travels to Dublin, Ireland to propose to her boyfriend, Jeremy, because, according to Irish tradition, a man who receives a marriage proposal on February 29 must accept it.

AFTER: Around this time last year, I was watching a succession of rather horrible "road trip" movies, like "The Sweetest Thing" and "Just Married" - in that last one, a man and woman went on a honeymoon in Europe, and whatever could go wrong certainly did.  Ah, slapstick, the lowest form of comedy.  Today's film shares some DNA with that sort of "bad vacation" storyline, because most of the story is what happens on the way to Dublin, Ireland, not what happens when she finally gets there.  So on one level, everything HAS to go wrong, because if she arrives OK and on time, the story is essentially over.

So we get to see Amy Adams (as Anna) have plane trouble, then boat trouble, then car trouble, and finally train trouble. Which allows for many more beautiful views of Ireland's scenery, as mandated by the Irish Tourism Board (I'm guessing...).  However, any potential increase in tourism was no doubt offset by the depiction of how hard it is (apparently) to get from one point in Ireland to another - and the capital, no less.  Look, Ireland is just a little bigger in size than West Virginia, and if you can't get across West Virginia in one day, man, you're just not trying hard enough.

You'd think that at some point she would realize that the universe is against her, it really doesn't want her to get to Dublin, and a more superstitious person would take that as some kind of sign.  Oh, now the cows are blocking the road.  Oh, now it's raining, now it's hailing, now she rolled down the hill and fell in the mud.  BUT she's one of those obsessive planning types, and if I weren't one of those people myself, I'd probably hate the fact that she's one, too.  She had the good sense to build four extra days into the schedule, giving her time to not only find her boyfriend at the medical conference, but learn her way around, get a ring, do some shopping, and then find the perfect place and time to propose on Leap Day.  All that foresight goes out the window, and she finds her determination tested when she has to hire the local innkeeper to drive her to Dublin, and then when that fails, to get her there by whatever method he can.

He's her total opposite - she's a planner, he's not.  She's friendly and bubbly and loves to chat, he likes to brood silently.  She's got a positive outlook, him not so much.  But what she doesn't expect is the fact that when you travel, you change your point of view - and when you spend time with other people, you have an effect on them, and they have an effect on you.  See where I'm going with this?  So she learns to be a less obsessive planner, and he learns what it's like to spend time with someone who actually HAS a life-plan, and maybe they become a little more alike over time...

(Damn, I can't believe that's the actor who played Ozymandias in "Watchmen" - one of the channels has been running "Watchmen" recently, so I caught bits of it last week while flipping channels.  I really need to sit down and watch that film again, start to finish.  Actually, I need to watch the full expanded version with the "Tales From the Black Freighter" bits worked in - because the comic book showed us THAT'S how you toggle between two or three plotlines AND the story-within-the-story - are you listening, director of "Nocturnal Animals"?)

Anyway, the comedy of traveling errors continues, and they end up staying at a B&B as it takes them four days to get to Dublin.  But they have to pretend to be man and wife at the inn, because otherwise the innkeepers won't let them stay in the same room.  Sure, it's contrived, but it sets up the conflict that sets up the love triangle, and then maybe eventually she might be wondering why she made the trip in the first place, or whether the journey might be more promising than the destination, or something like that. 

Come to think of it, why DID she make this journey in the first place.  It's a really big NITPICK POINT that she didn't HAVE to go to Ireland to propose to her boyfriend on Feb. 29.  She could have done that in New York, really - she lives in the 21st century and it should be OK for a woman to propose to a man.  How can she be so sure of herself in other areas of her life, such an obsessive planner and so in control of everything, but not be willing or able to take charge of her life in this one aspect?  It doesn't really make sense.  But again, the fact that she decides to follow this "tradition" is what sets her on the journey in the first place, and if she hadn't made the journey, she wouldn't have learned more about what she really wanted in the end. 

NITPICK POINT #2: Nobody in 2010 had a cell phone?  Seems hard to believe.  Why did they always have to wait until they got to the next town to use a pay phone?  Was this story written in the 1980's or something?  The lead character has an unlimited travel budget, including last-minute tickets to Ireland, but can't afford a cell phone?

NITPICK POINT #3: A woman travels to Ireland for four days and only packs ONE small travel bag?  That's just not possible, at least according to my experience.

Also starring Matthew Goode (last seen in "Self/Less"), Adam Scott (last seen in "Black Mass"), John Lithgow (last seen in "The Accountant"), Kaitlin Olson (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Noel O'Donovan, Tony Rohr (last seen in "Les Miserables"), Pat Laffan (last seen in "Barry Lyndon"), Alan Devlin, Ian McElhinney (last seen in "Rogue One"), Peter O'Meara (last seen in "He's Just Not That Into You"), Maggie McCarthy (last seen in "Calendar Girls"), Vincenzo Nicoli, Flaminia Cinque.

RATING: 5 out of 10 scenic cliffside views

Junebug

Year 10, Day 39 - 2/8/18 - Movie #2,839

BEFORE: I spent Wednesday morning at my doctor's office, trying to explain the noises that I was hearing at home (and also now at work) and my belief that they were coming from inside my head - thankfully I wasn't treated as a crazy person, they believed me and offered some possible treatments.  First I have to take ear drops for a couple of days, to make sure this problem isn't caused by excessive wax build-up on my eardrums or anything like that.  Then I have to start taking medication to lower my blood pressure, because that's another possible cause.  There's also the possibility that the noise in my head is a leftover effect of the month-long cold I had, and once these things get ruled out, only then will they investigate the possibility that this is something more serious.

In the meantime, they checked my hearing, and it turns out I have lost some hearing in my right ear - which comes as no surprise to me, because when I talk on the phone I'm always shifting it over to my left ear, so I can hear better.  So I sort of knew this already, but this makes it official.  But they said that some hearing loss is "normal at my age".  However, this doesn't make me feel any better, because growing old seems to be a succession of things that gradually become "normal at my age".  At some point, incontinence will be "normal at my age", or inability to climb stairs will be "normal at my age".  Eventually I think I'll reach a point where death will just be "normal at my age", and that will be that.

But for now, let's look forward to tomorrow's TCM line-up, for Friday, February 9, featuring nominees and winners in the Best Costume Design category:

6:15 am "Seven Samurai" (1956)
9:45 am "Nicholas and Alexandra" (1971)
1:00 pm "The Facts of Life" (1960)
3:00 pm "Travels With My Aunt" (1972)
5:00 pm "Tess" (1980)
8:00 pm "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" (1962)
10:30 pm "A Room With a View" (1986)
12:45 am "Darling" (1965)
3:00 am "The Age of Innocence" (1993)
5:30 am "Les Girls" (1957)

As you might expect, the costumed period dramas are a bit longer than average, so they only fit 10 films in today - but I've seen 4 of them: "Tess" (I was forced to watch it in high school), "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane", "A Room With a View" and "The Age of Innocence", so that brings my score up to 35 out of 99, just over 35%.

Amy Adams carries over from "Nocturnal Animals" - and that's back-to-back films with a lead female character who's an art gallery owner, which is an odd coincidence.  And I've seen so many dark or downer films in the past week, I feel like I should start to keep score to make sure I'm on the right track this February - is love winning or losing, in the end?  By my own count in this first week of February, I have to rule that love endures (at the collective ends of the films) by a slight margin, 4-3.  Maybe after tonight it can go up to 5-3.

THE PLOT: A dealer in "outsider" art travels from Chicago to North Carolina to meet her new in-laws, challenging the equilibrium of this middle-class Southern home.

AFTER: After all the dark subject matter, this is really where I want to be right now, just watching simple little films about couples and what they do.  Here a man brings his new wife back to where he grew up to meet his family, it sounds like a fairly common occurrence - what could possibly go wrong?  Ha ha, I'm just kidding, of course things are going to go wrong.  How boring would movies be if everything went right?  Since this is an indie film I'd heard about over the years, naturally I expect things to be a little quirky - this film won some big festival awards, and some Independent Spirit Awards, so it's right in the pocket of depicting a little quirky slice-of-life story.

The lead female character, Madeleine, seems possibly European, but she says she was born in Japan, and for sure she's upscale and urban.  Naturally one would expect a clash of cultures, therefore, when she and her new husband drive to North Carolina.  But she's also there to meet with an "outsider" artist and find art for her gallery - this artist seems like he's not all there in the head, and his medium of choice seems to be crude paintings of Civil War battles, where soldiers and slaves are killing each other in grotesque fashion, while none of them are wearing pants, and all of them have enormous genitalia.  Yeah, I bet the Chicago art scene is going to be all over that.

Problems arise when we meet the family, with a dominant mother figure and a distant, possibly senile father, a redneck brother who packages dishes and other home goods, and broods while trying to get his GED, and his very pregnant wife who's very friendly, but just rambles and doesn't seem to stop talking, ever.  What's the word for the combination of overly enthusiastic and annoying?

Unfortunately, Madeleine's husband George just seems like a big old blank, we never learn anything useful about him - is he part of the art world?  What's his job, what are his hobbies, what are his thoughts on life?  I guess it doesn't really matter, but it's a shame to just depict him as the most sane, levelheaded member of his family, and leave it at that.  He does a fine job singing a hymn at the church social, but that alone doesn't count as character development.  What a missed opportunity.  I mean, that's part of the story, that the wife doesn't know much about her own husband, but from a screenwriting standpoint, that's a narrative cop-out.

I'm going to award an extra point for perfectly capturing the essence of visiting one's family, especially if you haven't seen them in a while.  You may look forward to getting there and spending time with them, but then after a few days, you can't wait to leave and go back to your regular life.

Also starring Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "Matilda"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Laurel Canyon"), Ben McKenzie (last heard in "Batman: Year One"), Celia Weston (last seen in "Far From Heaven"), Scott Wilson (last seen in "Monster"), Frank Hoyt Taylor (last seen in "28 Days"), Joanne Pankow (ditto), Alicia Van Couvering, Bobby Tisdale (last seen in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"), Chuck Russell, Tarra Jolly, with cameos from Matt Besser (last seen in "Bad Teacher"), Will Oldham.

RATING: 6 out of 10 baby shower gifts

Nocturnal Animals

Year 10, Day 38 - 2/7/18 - Movie #2,838

BEFORE: Michael Shannon carries over from "Loving", which brought me to a dilemma - should I include "The Shape of Water" here?  I'm not going to rush out to the theater to see it, but I do have access to an Academy screener.  BUT I said that I wasn't going to watch anything from the screener pile until the end of March, and then only if I needed to make a connection.  BUT from what I heard, there's something of a romantic angle to that creature/fantasy film, and it probably could fit in here.  BUT, on the other hand, my February schedule is already set, and in fact I have too many films for the month, I've got to double-up this weekend or next week as it is just to hit the right film on Valentine's Day.

So - do I watch "The Shape of Water" here or not, between two other films with Michael Shannon?  I'm going to hold off, because I think I can get back there easily, there are so many character actors in that film that it should be easy to link to later, I can already think of two or three films that will get me there.  Plus a romance between a human and a fish-man might be a little far off the mark for a February film, it's more like "The Creature from the Black Lagoon", which is more like an October film, right?  Arrgh, this could go either way, I just hope I don't fall one film short for the year, or lose my way to link back to that film later, because then I'll really regret not watching it now.  There's no way to tell, but the good thing about that is, there's really no right or wrong to my linking at this point, there are just paths and opportunities I take now and those I hope to take later.  So I'm going to proceed as originally planned, and in late March I can start linking to the Academy screeners - it's more important right now to get films off my watchlist and open up slots for new films that I'm recording off premium cable.

Now here's a look at tomorrow's line-up on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" program - all are nominees or winners for Best Sound:

6:30 am "Flirtation Walk" (1935)
8:15 am "This Land Is Mine" (1943)
10:00 am "The North Star" (1948)
12:00 pm "The Snake Pit" (1948)
2:00 pm "The Big House" (1930)
3:45 pm "The Great Caruso" (1951)
5:45 pm "Strike Up the Band" (1940)
8:00 pm "San Francisco" (1936)
10:15 pm "That Hamilton Woman" (1941)
12:30 am "The Alamo" (1960)
4:15 am "The Sound Barrier" (1952)

I somehow managed a "perfect" score today - I've seen none of these.  So another 0 out of 11 keeps me at 31 films seen, out of 89, so I'm back down to 35% overall.

Looks like another dark film tonight - I promise, brighter, more comedic romantic films lie ahead.

THE PLOT: A wealthy art gallery owner receives a draft of her ex-husband's new novel, and once she starts reading it, she just can't put it down.

AFTER: Even after watching this film, I wasn't sure if it belonged here - does this qualify in any way as a romance?  Or should I have watched "The Shape of Water" instead, and figured out another way to move forward?  Should I have moved this to later in the year, next to other Jake Gyllenhaal films like "Rendition", "Life" and "Proof"?

Upon further review, the judges have determined that the ruling on the field will stand - there's enough relationship-y material to allow this to be considered appropriate for the February chain.  Two of the three "sections" (I'll explain in a minute) are about relationships, and even the third one, which is the story-within-the-story, could qualify, even though it's a bit of a stretch.

This film "toggles" between three timelines, or sections - one is the gallery owner receiving the draft of her ex-husband's book, and as she reads the draft, she is captivated by the story.  We then see her go about her day, interact with her second husband, work at the gallery, and this acts as the framing device.  We assume that she is also continuing to read the story, whenever it's convenient or she has some down-time.  (NITPICK POINT: Couldn't she read the draft all at once?  How gripping is it, exactly, if she keeps putting it down?  Let's put a pin in that thought for a moment and continue.)

The second timeline is the flashbacks we get of her relationship with her ex-husband, the author of the book.  And you know I hate this excessive time-jumping, unless it's dramatically justified (a la "Pulp Fiction" or "Cloud Atlas") or unless there's an actual time machine in the plot.  But we do learn, eventually, how she and her first husband met, came together, and how they split apart.  There are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered, but again, let's put another pin there and move on.

The third timeline is the story-within-the-story, the plot of the book her ex-husband wrote.  This is played out visually, just like all the other scenes that are "real", and this may be a bit confusing because Jake Gyllenhaal plays two roles, the ex-husband, and the lead male role in the more fictional story.  Maybe this could have been less confusing if a different actor was used, but I get the point that all writers sort of ARE their central characters, if an author wants to write something authentic it has to be about him, even if it's not.  Makes sense?  Now, I'm not going to discuss the details of the story-within-the-story, other than to point out that they are DARK.  Proceed at your own risk here.

What we're supposed to take away is that the fictional story is somehow connected to the author's real story, or perhaps he wrote a wish-fulfillment story.  Or maybe he's just a sick bastard, like Stephen King, who knows how to craft a gripping yarn.  Or maybe he finally figured out how to get his ex-wife's attention, or prove a point to her, years after the fact - I don't know, this is largely open to interpretation, I think.  And the ending is left VERY open for each viewer to interpret as they see fit.

But you probably can guess what I'm going to ask about this film, with the toggling between the three timelines.  Was this time-jumping done to cover up the fact that this story just never would have worked if everything was presented in order, or if she had read the entire draft in one sitting?  Was some screenwriter trying to compensate for the fact that he essentially had three incomplete short stories, and by stitching them together, was there an attempt to make them some kind of "arty" intangible whole?

Because the end result here comes across as proto-Lynchian, an attempt to make the viewer question what is "real".  Aren't all three stories fictional, in the end?  How can one be more fictional than the others, just because the character in one timeline wrote it?  Or are they all somehow equally fictional, equally unlikely? 

I have to take issue with the opening credits of the film, which feature three obese women who appear in the nude in some kind of fantasy sequence, though it's never explained whose fantasy this is, or why we're seeing what we're seeing.  I know that the PC thing is that we're supposed to celebrate all body types now, including plus-sized models, and champion different forms of beauty other than what the fashion industry has fed us over the last few decades, but still, it's hard not to take this as a form of exploitation.  What point, exactly, is being made by showing us three naked fat women holding sparklers?  Since this doesn't connect to any part of the main story at all, it's extremely questionable in my book.

And what was that throwaway line about her second husband being gay?  We never see this confirmed, it's just alluded to by her friend in the gallery.  Sure, he spends a lot of time working and on the road, and he's well-groomed and well-dressed, but that doesn't add up to "gay".  And same NITPICK POINT as in "Far From Heaven", if he's married and has a daughter, then why isn't he falling under the "bisexual" heading, rather than "gay"?   I think perhaps I misunderstood her friend, who may have only been referring to her OWN husband as gay.

I assume the second husband is the father of her daughter, anyway, thought they never state this outright.  When she reads the draft it's been 20 years since her divorce, so it's more likely that that her second husband is the father.  If the first husband were the father, then he would be likely to have visitation rights or something, or at least be more in contact with his ex-wife.

I still have unanswered questions, and I'm not completely buying into the way that the three timelines influence each other.  I can see how reading the book might spark her flashbacks of the time when she was married, but the fictional story doesn't bear a close enough resemblance to the "reality" to have a direct influence on it, or vice versa.

Also starring Amy Adams (last seen in "Justice League"), Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "Demolition"), Armie Hammer (last heard in "Cars 3"), Laura Linney (last seen in "Sully"), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Keeping Up With the Joneses"), Ellie Bamber, Michael Sheen (last heard in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "Birdman"), Jena Malone (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), India Menuez, Zawe Ashton, Kristin Bauer von Straten, Karl Glusman, Robert Aramayo, Graham Beckel.

RATING: 5 out of 10 packs of cigarettes

Loving

Year 10, Day 37 - 2/6/18 - Movie #2,837

BEFORE: I didn't talk much about it, but I was sick for the entire month of January - it was definitely a bad cold, but I'm not sure about whether it was the flu - today's news is full of terrible statistics from the flu epidemic, like the number of deaths and the terrible inaccuracy of the flu tests at doctor's offices around the country.  (Seems that Punxsutawney Phil does a better job of predicting the weather, and he only reaches 36%)  I haven't FELT sick for the past two weeks, but I've still been coughing up junk - but that's normal for me, almost every cold I've ever had has gone down into my lungs and made itself at home for about a month.

A few weeks ago, I also started to hear a strange humming sound in my house.  I began to hear it when I was at my computer late at night, writing this blog or logging in my new comic books - it sounded like it was coming from outside, a sound sort of like someone strumming the same note on a bass guitar, over and over.  I thought maybe a neighbor was learning to play the bass, and maybe got stuck on Lesson #1, playing just the low "E" over and over.  But over time the sound grew louder, and started to sound more like a constant hum - and while it still sounded like it was coming from next door, it began to resemble the sound of machinery, like a generator or something.

Now, we had repair work done to our heating system in December, and before that, there was a lot of banging coming from the walls.  Someone had dialed up the temperature on our boiler (instead of our hot water heater) and over time, this caused all of the water in the radiators to boil away.  So we got the system fixed, with a new feeder to get water BACK into the radiators, and then the repairman dialed down the temperature on the boiler, and dialed UP the temperature on the hot water heater, which was what should have been done two years ago.  Bottom line - we're having hotter showers now and our dishwasher is getting our dishes much cleaner.

But around the time that this banging in the walls ceased, the humming noise began - so this led to the theory that there was a new problem in the heating system, only now it was some weird vibration in the walls, instead of banging.  What concerned me, though, was the fact that only I could hear it, and my wife couldn't.  Was my hearing better than hers, especially in the bass register?  (Makes sense, I'm a man, with a lower singing voice...)  Was the hum coming from the television, another appliance, or from the construction site down the block?  Was there a generator or an iron lung next door that got moved too close to the walls?  Or was I slowly going crazy?

Yesterday, I finally figured it out when I started to hear the same low humming sound at work.  The only constant in every scenario was ME!  The sound is being produced in my own head, possibly some form of low-frequency tinnitus.  And somehow the noise in my ears is registering in my brain as a vibratory sound coming from outside, or from the house next door.  I proved this last night by tipping my head up to look at the ceiling, which made the hum stop.  Face forward, I hear the hum - tip my head back, it stops.  Maybe there's some fluid build-up in my Eustachian tube after the month-long cold or something, I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow to try to find out, plus I should get my hearing checked at the same time.  It's a relief to know that I'm not going crazy, not for this reason, anyway.

Today's film is another easy choice - Joel Edgerton carries over from "The Gift".  And it looks like I finally found a way to acknowledge Black History Month in my romance chain!  "Far From Heaven" was close, but didn't really count as "history" since it was pure fiction - but this film is based on the 1967 Supreme court case of Loving v. Virginia, which had an impact on the anti-interracial marriage laws and marked an important moment in civil rights.

Here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow - Wednesday, February 7, featuring nominees and winners in the Best Special Effects category:

6:15 am "Blithe Spirit" (1945)
8:00 am "One Million B.C." (1940)
9:30 am "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)
11:15 am "The Time Machine" (1960)
1:15 pm "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)
3:45 pm "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1957)
6:15 pm "The Enemy Below" (1957)
8:00 pm "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
10:45 pm "Cocoon" (1985)
1:00 am "Logan's Run" (1975)
3:15 am "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972)

Ha, now we're getting into my wheelhouse - I've seen 6 out of these 11: "The Time Machine", "The Spirit of St. Louis", "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Cocoon", "Logan's Run" and "The Poseideon Adventure, bringing me up to 31 seen out of 78, or just under 40%.

THE PLOT: The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a couple whose arrest for interracial marriage in 1960's Virginia began a legal battle that would end with the Supreme Court's historic 1967 decision.

AFTER: While it's not an outright entertaining film, it can still be an important one, right?  Maybe there should be more films about Supreme Court decisions, like, umm, "Amistad"?  Or maybe I just need to take this as a simple story about a man who wanted to marry his pregnant girlfriend and then build her a house.  That's really all this is, except for the fact that it was technically ILLEGAL in Virginia for him to do this.  There really were laws on the books in that state in the mid 1960's against that, which seems insane now in retrospect.

The couple was clearly aware that they were breaking the law, because they drove to Washington, DC to get married, assuming or hoping that Virginia would recognize their marriage as legal.  People have been driving over state lines to get married for decades, for one reason or another, right?  But I think it's only recently, with the gay marriage issue, that all states have been forced to recognize marriages they don't like which were performed in other states.  Richard and Mildred are found guilty of breaking Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, and told they can avoid serving time by leaving the state, and not returning together for the next 25 years.

Which, by the way, seems like a very strange penalty, essentially it almost seems unenforceable.  I mean, Virginia is a rather large state. What happens if one of them appears in western Virginia while the other one visits the family in eastern Virginia?  Who would even know that they're in the state at the same time, or be able to prove that?  I guess essentially this is just a way of this one county in Virginia saying, "We just don't want to see the two of you together."  But the legal fight against this Virginia law ultimately affected 15 states that still had active similar laws - that's huge.

But then when their ACLU lawyer is unable to appeal their case, because too much time has passed, he advises them to return to Virginia together JUST to get arrested, so that the new arrest can be appealed and challenged.  The Lovings refuse, so I guess they just weren't that committed to the cause after all.  Whenever I see people protesting, they're just BEGGING to get arrested, because that's more publicity for their cause - or perhaps they're trying to impress someone.

But I think the ACLU lawyer was on to something here - because this sort of tactic was used again on the gay marriage issue.  Gay people got married in a state where it was legal, then moved to a state where it wasn't, and forced the new state to accept their marriage.  When the homophobic state then passed a law specifically making gay marriage illegal, that law could then be challenged as unfair and unconstitutional, which meant that it would be struck down, thereby making gay marriage legal in a roundabout way.  (I'm not a legal expert, but I think that's how it happened...)

I think I just prefer my films to be more entertaining, though, and this just wasn't, even though the issue in the film is very important.  Because at the end of the day, that's what I base my score on, by how entertained I feel, which I understand is quite subjective.  Taking a dry subject matter and MAKING it entertaining, that's exactly what I expect a director to do, even if that seems impossible.

Also starring Ruth Negga (last seen in "Warcraft"), Marton Csokas (last seen in "The Equalizer"), Nick Kroll (last heard in "Sing"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Bill Camp (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), David Jensen (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Terri Abney (last seen in "Triple 9"), Alano Miller, Jon Bass, Chris Greene (last seen in "The Founder"), Sharon Blackwood, Christopher Mann, Winter-Lee Holland, Michael Abbott Jr., Will Dalton, Matt Malloy (last seen in "Far From Heaven").

RATING: 5 out of 10 cinder blocks

The Gift

Year 10, Day 36 - 2/5/18 - Movie #2,836

BEFORE:   David Denman carries over from "Smart People", for what I hope is just a nice, calm film about buying someone a gift.  That's a normal Valentine's Day thing, right?

Here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow - Tuesday, February 6, featuring nominees and winners in the Best Film Editing category:

7:00 am "The Great Waltz" (1938)
9:00 am "The Long Voyage Home" (1940)
11:00 am "The Black Stallion" (1979)
1:00 pm "Doctor Dolittle" (1967)
3:45 pm "Z" (1969)
6:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968)
8:00 pm "Air Force" (1943)
10:15 pm "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)
12:15 am "How the West Was Won" (1962)
3:15 am "Grand Prix" (1966)

I've seen 4 of these: "The Black Stallion", "Doctor Dolittle", "Bullitt" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood", bringing me up to 25 seen out of 67, or 37%.

THE PLOT: A young married couple's lives are thrown into a harrowing tailspin when an acquaintance from the husband's past brings mysterious gifts and a horrifying secret to light after more than 20 years.

AFTER: OK, I didn't realize this was such a dark psychological thriller.  I mean, I was joking before, I knew this was maybe a complicated relationship film, but I didn't know it was going to be so creepy.  Not in a horror way, exactly, but it's more like a stalking sort of film.  Anyway, it still qualifies as a good February film because it's about a relationship, just a very tricky one with a couple dark secrets, and an old friend who keeps turning up like a bad penny and just won't get the hint that he's not welcome in this couple's life. 

But there's more to this story, things I won't spoil here - just don't go in expecting a happy reunion with an old high-school friend, because just isn't that kind of movie.  The friend in question is named Gordon, "Gordo" for short, although it seems people called him by the nickname "Weirdo" in high-school, for good reason.  He comes across as someone who means well, but just doesn't have the same social graces as other people, or at least no way to tell when he's not wanted.  And it starts with a gift to welcome his old pal back to his hometown, and then before you know it he's dropping by at all hours of the day, extending dinner invitations and gifts like items needed around the house, bottles of wine, etc.  What could possibly be wrong with all that? 

Well, the unwritten rules are if someone gives you a gift, then you have to give THEM a thank-you gift for that gift, then the first person might feel the need to give ANOTHER gift in return, and then where does that end?  Or if you have someone over for dinner, then they feel obligated to invite YOU over for dinner at their place, and so on.  Too many people like this in your life, and you'll never get anything done.  Like I had a little Super Bowl party yesterday, with chips, dips, salsa, queso, some of those little cocktail franks, chicken wings, some ribs, and then my wife asked me how many guests we were expecting.  "Guests?" I said, "Who needs guests?"  They'll only come over and eat our food and spoil the fun - this way we could eat whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted it, and we didn't have to share, or even clean up right away.  The perfect party.

Anyway, this film is really about a descent into paranoia, fueled by the appearance of the mysterious stranger, and the doubt that he sows.  While it's not a monster-based horror film, it's shot in such a way as to create all that great dramatic voyeuristic tension, proof that people who live in glass houses really ought to invest in some curtains.   By the end you may not know which end is up, or who's telling the truth about anything - and you may pledge to be more careful about what information you reveal to casual friends. 

Also starring Jason Bateman (last heard in "Zootopia"), Rebecca Hall (last seen in "The BFG"), Joel Edgerton (last seen in "Black Mass"), Allison Tolman, Tim Griffin (last seen in "American Sniper"), Busy Philipps (last seen in "He's Just Not That Into You"), Beau Knapp (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Wendell Pierce (last seen in "Horrible Bosses"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Mirrah Foulkes, Nash Edgerton, Katie Aselton.

RATING: 5 out of 10 pub trivia questions

Smart People

Year 10, Day 35 - 2/4/18 - Movie #2,835

BEFORE: This one's an easy choice, with Dennis Quaid carrying over from "Far From Heaven".  Sometimes it's difficult for me to determine which films "belong" in February, like how far can I stretch the definition of romance, or how can I be sure if a film is romance-y or relationship-y enough to qualify, if I haven't seen the film before?  I'm forced to rely on the IMDB classifications, like this one is simultaneously a comedy, drama AND a romance.  Or I rely on what I may have heard about a film from other sources, so I'm pretty sure that I shouldn't link to "Hard Candy" after this one, for example, despite the Ellen Page connection and the current presence of that film on my list in the "unlinkables" section.

Here's where my stats are really going to sink on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" list, the programming for Monday, February 5 features these nominees and winners in the Best Documentary category:

6:45 am "The Sorrow and the Pity" (1969)
11:15 am "The Battle of Midway" (1942)
12:00 pm "The Sea Around Us" (1952)
1:15 pm "On the Bowery" (1957)
2:30 pm "Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel With the World" (1963)
3:45 pm "Freedom on my Mind" (1994)
5:45 pm "Four Days in November" (1964)
8:00 pm "An Inconvenient Truth" (2006)
9:45 pm "The Times of Harvey Milk" (1984)
11:30 pm "Woodstock: The Director's Cut" (1970)
3:30 am "Hearts and Minds" (1974)
5:30 am "The Secret Land" (1948)

Don't get me wrong, I've seen my share of documentaries, and I'm glad that TCM is giving them their due, because they're not usually part of their Oscar programming, but this is some DRY subject matter.  A four-hour French doc about the Nazi occupation of France?  A film about men on Skid Row in the 1950's?  The JFK assassination, Harvey Milk's assassination, and global warming?  Ugh, I'd rather watch anything else - if you ask me, they should have put this programming up against the Super Bowl, since 99% of people wouldn't be watching TCM today anyway, and those who would are the REAL film nerds who would appreciate these documentaries.

I'm hitting for just 2 out of 11 today, "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Woodstock", so my total films seen drops to 21 out of 57, or about 37%.  I'm getting dangerously close to 1/3 instead of 1/2.

THE PLOT: Into the life of a widowed professor comes a new love and an unexpected visit from his adopted brother.

AFTER: My review tonight was delayed by the Super Bowl, I had to watch since the Patriots made it, but I guess you can't win 'em all.  I finished this film around 2 am, then bagged and boarded some comic books, went to bed at 5 am and slept until nearly 3 pm.  I usually like to get up at noon on Super Bowl Sunday, so I have time to accomplish a few things before the Puppy Bowl airs, but no such luck today, so I feel like I've been behind and playing catch-up all day.  Snacking began at 3 and continued until about 5:30, then resumed again at kick-off.  Well, it is our country's third biggest eating holiday, after Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Wait, I forgot Easter.  And Fourth of July BBQ's. Hell, they're all great eating holidays.

(At this point, I really can't wait for the Winter Olympics to start - not because I'm really into curling and figure skating, it's because all of the other networks sort of give up for 2 weeks, and I can really catch up on some TV during that break.  I'm still watching some shows I taped in November, so I'm still seeing Christmas commercials and everything.  I need to clear some VHS tapes and make some room on the DVR.  Plus I have to watch 10 films in the next 9 days, if I want the best film to land on Valentine's Day...)

Anyway, this film is set in Pittsburgh (not Philadelphia, but at least I got the state right) at Carnegie-Mellon University, where the lead character is an English literature professor, and we catch up with him after the death of his wife (see, I told you this grief thing is an ongoing theme this year...) and he's not doing well.  His son is attending his college for free (umm, NITPICK POINT, why does he live in the dorms, instead of at home?  My college didn't let people live in the dorms if they resided nearby.) and his daughter is studying for the SAT's, while also basically running the house.  Then his no-good adopted brother shows up, which turns out to be just in time to drive him around after an accident and a seizure.

Things start to look up when he finds out that the E.R. doctor who had his driver's license suspended is not only a former student who had a crush on him, but also attractive and available.  But then things start to fall apart again, because he's still not in a good place in order to start dating again.  I don't know about this, I realize that after his wife's death he might not be mentally ready to date, but I don't see how her death caused him to forget HOW to date.  I think they sort of oversold this one - we're supposed to believe that in his grief, he's just come to hate everyone, I get that, but that shouldn't make him an idiot either where dating is concerned.

The weirder storyline involves the friendship formed between his smart daughter and her adoptive uncle.  He takes her out drinking, they smoke pot together, probably because the uncle feels she needs to lighten up quite a bit, but this still seems like very inappropriate behavior for an uncle and niece to engage in.  Then they have to deal with the fact that a sort of attraction has developed, which seems incestuous, only he's not her real uncle, so it kind of isn't.  Only it still feels wrong, doesn't it?

So in the end I can't decide if the title is meant to be ironic or not, I mean a professor is usually a smart person, and a doctor generally is too, and the daughter's applying to Stanford, so she's supposed to be smart, yet all of them do things that might be considered not smart, so how am I supposed to justify all that?

One Asian actress is all over this film, appearing first as a student in Prof. Wetherold's class, then as some faculty member in his department who's on the staffing committee AND as the girl dating his son?  How can the same character be all of these things at once - was there a shortage of actresses or something?

Also starring Sarah Jessica Parker (last seen in "The Family Stone"), Thomas Haden Church (last seen in "Spanglish"), Ellen Page (last heard in "My Life as a Zucchini"), Ashton Holmes, Christine Lahti, Camille Mana, David Denman (last seen in "Jobs"), Scott A. Martin, Don Wadsworth.

RATING: 6 out of 10 rejection letters