Proof

Year 10, Day 124 - 5/4/18 - Movie #2,926

BEFORE: Today marks the now-annual Star Wars Day, May the 4th, and I've got nothing for it.  I mean, I can celebrate getting two new Star Wars autographs in the mail, and buying a ticket for "Solo" on May 25, but that's about it, I can't mark the occasion here with a film.  I do have one documentary on my Netflix list called "Jedi Junior High", but I can't link to it, and I don't want to interrupt my chain.  So I'll just have to celebrate the holiday in my heart, and not with a movie.

Instead I'll finish off the Jake Gyllenhaal chain - for now, anyway, because it seems like I say that every year, and then there are always more Jake Gyllenhaal films to watch during the following year. This could have made an appropriate Father's Day film, but the chain just didn't work out that way.  This could have made a good lead-in to "Avengers: Infinity War" too, but the chain just didn't work out that way either.  I've got many other ways to link to that film, because the cast is HUGE, so let's just get this one off the books and move on, OK?

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Man Who Knew Infinity" (Movie #2,815)

THE PLOT: The daughter of a brilliant but mentally disturbed mathematician, recently deceased, hn

AFTER: Everything's coming up "Avengers", at least that's the way things are going to seem until I can finally see "Infinity War" in five days (or so) and post that review in two weeks (or so).  So now when I watch this film, I'm thinking, "Hey, there's Pepper Potts, and she's mourning the death of Odin, but she's being comforted by her sister, who happens to be Maria Stark somehow."  That's life in our heavily influenced by Marvel Comics world now, and yet still I couldn't drop the new "Avengers" film in here, because it would have ruined my lead-out, with another Anthony Hopkins film on the docket for tomorrow.

But I've got to GET there first, so let me deal with this one, which is so obviously based on a play - I mean, I KNOW that it's based on a play, but even if I didn't, that might have been easy to discern from the fact that 99% of the action in this film takes place in one location, the dead mathematician's house, there seem to be the minimum number of characters possible, and all of the plot points from the dialogue are each mentioned several times, because each one is SO important.  I mean, it's not like playwrights get paid by the word, but you might think so sometimes, because the fact that one character is in a band, and everyone in the band is a math geek, should take 10 seconds to day, but instead that gets drawn out over five minutes.  I mean, seriously?

Worse, we've got another fractured timeline tonight, because sometimes the math genius is dead, so we're proceeding in the present, and then sometimes he's alive, which means we're back in the past.  Didn't I go through this with Anthony Hopkins in "Westworld"?  There were two timelines there, too, only they didn't TELL us that, they just made everything very obtuse and challenged everyone at home to figure that out.  Screw you guys, I mean, just thanks for nothing.  And it would be one thing if we toggled between two timelines, present and past, where each one progressed in order, but "Proof" is like all random, like a series of editing mistakes - or it's just designed to confuse and confound, which isn't any better.  Oh, we MEANT to put all the scenes in the wrong order.  Nice try, but I ain't buying it.

Then I've got my issues with the premise - the math professor who has a house on campus.  But somehow it's HIS house, like he owns it, only then it's NOT a house on campus, is it?  Look, I'm not a professor, I don't know how colleges work, but when his other daughter says she's going to sell the house BACK to the college, that implies that he bought the house FROM the college in the first place, and I don't think that's how college houses work.  Either the college owns the house so the professor can live there, or he bought a house NEAR the college but not on campus, you just can't have it both ways.  It can't be a campus house that he owns, that his daughters will inherit.  NP.

Next we've got the professor himself, who's a genius, and he's also lost his mind.  Well, which is it?  He was brilliant, now he's not, I understand dementia, sure, but pick a damn road already.  He's spent the last few years furiously writing down equations in the hope of discovering some last proof, getting some last bit of math brilliance out of his dying mind, and the story here keeps both possibilities alive as long as it can, until we can't take it any more - in the end, was he brilliant or crazy?  The suggestion here is that there MIGHT be a fine line between the two, but that's not how math works.  You just don't hear a lot of people wandering the streets, talking to themselves in the form of math equations.

I've also got to call another NITPICK POINT on the daughter's choice of college - her father teaches at the University of Chicago, so naturally when she develops an interest in mathematics herself, she decides to enroll in Northwestern.  Huh?  Why would she go to the college an hour's drive away, when she could probably get FREE tuition at the University of Chicago?  That makes no sense.  I mean, I understand she wants to get out from her father's shadow, be her own person and not have her father as a teacher, but hello?  FREE tuition?  And she's already living in a home right on campus?  With the cost of tuition and board these days, she should have more strongly considered the school with the better deal.  Sure, she's only an hour away if needed, but getting free college AND still being close to her father who needed care was a no-brainer.

It's also a big cheat to have this whole back-and-forth conversation about math proofs, and never show us one, what it's about or how it might work.  That's about as bad as making a boxing movie with no fight scenes in it, having all the matches take place off-screen.

Also starring Gwyneth Paltrow (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Thor: Ragnarok"), Hope Davis (last seen in "Captain America: Civil War"), Roshan Seth (last seen in "Gandhi"), Danny McCarthy (also carrying over from "Stronger"), Gary Houston (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Colin Stinton.

RATING: 4 out of 10 drunk theoretical physicists

Stronger

Year 10, Day 123 - 5/3/18 - Movie #2,925

BEFORE: The third of four Jake Gyllenhaal films in a row, all of which have one-word titles, for some reason.  And the latest film this year to feature amputated limbs, which is a bit of an odd theme, but I assure you this is largely random, I didn't set out to program a bunch of films together where people lose their body parts.  But a month ago I watched "Tusk" and then there was "Rust and Bone", of course, now I'm trying to remember if there were any others.  Oh yeah, "Hardcore Henry" starts with Henry getting a new hand, and then there are plenty of people losing body parts later in that film. Then there was "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", but that was about getting a very different part removed.  Anyway, it's a strange trend, but those come and go around here.

Back to another Academy screener tonight, that pile at the office is getting smaller, but very slowly.  Since I'm bouncing between films I already have on DVD and the screeners and what's on Netflix, I know I'm making progress overall but sometimes it's hard to see that because my numbers don't reflect that, and new films are always rushing in to replace what just came off the list.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Patriots Day" (Movie #2,672), "Rust and Bone" (Movie #2,908)

THE PLOT: The inspiring real-life story of Jeff Bauman, an ordinary man who captured the hearts of his city and the world to become a symbol of hope after surviving the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

AFTER: Whenever there's a film set in Boston, you know I'm going to be watching (and listening) closely, to see if they capture not only the feel of the first city I came to know well, but also the accents.  From "Good Will Hunting" to "Gone Baby Gone", from "The Fighter" to "Spotlight", sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they just don't.  Great actors like Johnny Depp in "Black Mass" and Leo DiCaprio in "The Departed" just couldn't quite get the accent down.  Of course, if an actor, say, Mark Wahlberg, grew up in that area, well then they have the inside track.  Jake Gyllenhaal was born in L.A., but he did a really good job here nailing the Boston dialogue.  I also forgot that Miranda Richardson was British, because she did such a good job here talking like a Bostonian.  Lenny Clarke was good, too, but of course he's from there as well. 

Then, of course, it's fun to guess what dialogue was added specifically to take advantage of the Boston accent - like in "Patriots Day" they used the word "backyard" (backyaaad) a lot, or my favorite line of dialogue from that movie was "Saage, I gotta go, the feckin' laabstaa is back, and he's trying to chaage the runnahs!"  Near the start of "Stronger" Jeff Bauman is trying to make a sign to catch the attention of his ex-girlfriend running in the Marathon, and he's looking all over the house for an "orange maakah", as in "Hey Maaa!  Do we have an orange maakah?" Classic. 

Then I know it wasn't meant as comedy, but I loved hearing Bauman's family arguing in the hospital, after his boss came from Costco, with the information about his insurance policy.  This family full of loud meatheads just laid right into him, barely letting him get a word in edgewise, saying "Don't let him in, he's probably a reportah trying to get a story!" and "For Gaad's sake, don't sign anything, that's how they get you!"  They also naturally assume that Jeff's injury means that he's lost his job, so they're on the defensive when they don't need to be, and that tells you everything you need to know about this middle-class family, made up of people who probably never got any breaks, and don't trust the government or insurance plans or anything they don't really understand.  They're like the rednecks of Massachusetts, and I know that people like that are really out there. 

Several times later in the film, the family is gathered for a paahty, or maybe just to watch the Saahx game, and there would be a shot of Jeff in the bathroom, struggling to use the shower or the toilet without falling down, and then it starts to really feel like someone's got an ax to grind, to depict this tight, loving family full of people who are clueless when their son needs their support, be it physical or emotional. But they don't have the software for it, they don't understand PTSD, or even how to give words of encouragement that also don't tear that person down.  But notably it's the older generation, and I get that.  Men who are in their 60's or 70's now came from a different time, when gender roles were more rigid, showing compassion was a sign of weakness, and men were raised to not display it.  Like my father had two kids and now two grandkids, and he's never changed a diaper in his life.  He's great with driving or fixing things, but taking care of someone medically, not so much. 

In addition to healing and undergoing physical therapy, Jeff here also has to learn to be a different kind of man, to break the programming that makes it so easy to just be a patient, go back to his mother's apartment and let her take care of him, or if that fails, to let his girlfriend pick up the slack.  When we're sick or injured of course there are some cases where we need to let people take care of us, but eventually it's better in the long-term if we can get back to a place where we're self-sufficient.  But since Jeff was never that independent or reliable before the bombing, he's really learning to be an adult for the first time, with all that entails.  With his track record of not showing up for things, and not being there for others, he now finds the need to get to a better place, but it's a place he's never been before.   (Those Costco chickens aren't going to roast themselves, after all.)

He also becomes an unsure symbol of hope for the "Boston Strong" movement, he waves a flag at the Stanley Cup finals and is invited to throw out the first pitch at Fenway Paahk, which would only be a problem if the Marathon bombing gave him a fear of large crowds.  Plus, he was notoriously anti-social to begin with.  But after the game he's approached by someone who was inspired by his story of recovery, and then another, and then another.  Gradually he learns to be gracious and talk to strangers, finding some common ground in other people's stories, and not just launching into a bar fight when someone suggests that the Marathon bombing was faked by Obama in order to draw the U.S. into a war with Iran.  (Great, another portrayal of Bostonians as alcoholic crackpots...oh well, if the shoe fits...)

As many of these films do, it ends with photos of the real subjects, Jeff Bauman and Erin Hurley, and I was tearing up pretty good by then.  There is some flashbackery here, but it's kept to a minimum, I think.  Notably we don't see any graphic footage during the bombing scenes, they cut away and we next see Jeff in the hospital.  But this makes some kind of sense, because one might not remember the details of such a traumatic event right away,  and then it has more of an impact when it comes back to him during the hockey game.  This is part of the PTSD process, that the memories may take some time to return, and be triggered by other experiences.  And then he's got to deal with them at the most inconvenient of times, but if he doesn't come to terms with them, he can't move forward.

Also starring Tatiana Maslany (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Miranda Richardson (last seen in "The Crying Game"), Richard Lane Jr., Nate Richman, Clancy Brown (last heard in "Warcraft"), Lenny Clarke (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Frankie Shaw, Jimmy LeBlanc (last seen in "Spotlight"), Carlos Sanz (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Patty O'Neil, Kate Fitzgerald, Danny McCarthy, Cassandra Cato-Louis, Michelle Forziati, Sean McGuirk, with a cameo from Pedro Martinez.

RATING:  6 out of 10 mojitos

Brothers

Year 10, Day 122 - 5/2/18 - Movie #2,924

BEFORE: This is something of a last-minute drop in, I got it only a few weeks ago to pair with "Pawn Sacrifice" on a DVD, allowing me to clear that film off of the DVR.  I almost put "Chuck" with that film, since they both have Liev Schreiber in them, but I ended up putting that film with another one, so I needed to find something else with Tobey Maguire in it.  This fit the bill, plus I had an easy way to work it in, since I knew I had some Jake Gyllenhaal films coming up on the docket.

THE PLOT: A young man comforts his older brother's wife and children after he goes missing in Afghanistan.

AFTER: This is a lot more complex than your average Hollywood love triangle film, because there's the extra element of war, and being told that a soldier is dead when in fact he's just missing, and then of course there's the family angle, where his wife starts to have feelings for her husband's younger brother.  For added drama, the younger brother is fresh out of prison, and trying to act like an adult for perhaps the first time in his life.  They find each other through this shared grief, and then before things can go very far, the older brother is released from captivity in the Middle East and his family is informed that he's still alive.   (Awkward!  What do you do in this case then, hold an un-funeral?)

But the audience still wants to know about the relationship between the wife and the brother - did they or didn't they?   I think this was kept pretty vague for a reason, so that when the older brother came back we would be just as uncertain about it as he was.  He kept saying that he wanted to know the truth, but did he really?   And if they did sleep together, he said he'd be OK with it, but would he really?  Something tells me he was only being polite, meanwhile contrary forces were raging inside of him.

The whole family here is transformed by the experience of war, while one brother has trouble re-adjusting to civilian life, the other has just finished re-inventing himself as a different kind of person, someone who can interact better with kids and also a romantic partner.  Their father also transforms himself (slightly) into a more understanding, forgiving person - I wish they could have given their mother some character growth as well, but really, there wasn't any place to go with her.

What I don't recommend is doing what I did tonight, which was to go out to the movies to see "Isle of Dogs" (I'll post that review in a few weeks...) and then watching this one.  Because I had some very weird dreams last night, like one where my wife and I were living in a room in a strange house, and there was a disturbed veteran living there and we were both very scared of him, and trying to steer clear of him.  When we couldn't find our cat, Data, we were very concerned, and then he showed up outside our room and he was bleeding very badly, presumably because he'd been injured by the veteran with PTSD.  That was very unpleasant.

Also starring Tobey Maguire (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Natalie Portman (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Sam Shepard (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "Philomena"), Bailee Madison (last seen in "Parental Guidance"), Taylor Geare, Patrick John Flueger, Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Drive"), Clifton Collins Jr., (last seen in "Triple 9") Jenny Wade (last seen in "No Reservations"), Omid Abtahi, Navid Negahban, Enayat Delawary, Ethan Suplee (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Arron Shiver, Ray Prewitt.

RATING: 5 out of 10 "dad jokes"

Life (2017)

Year 10, Day 121 - 5/1/18 - Movie #2,923

BEFORE: It's a new month, time to get rolling on the sci-fi and fantasy films again.  This month I'm planning to go out to the theater quite a bit, starting with "Avengers: Infinity War" next week (review to follow about 2 weeks later) and then "Solo: A Star Wars Story".  I'm going to sneak out tonight and catch another film on the big screen, because it's about to vanish from theaters.  But I'm also going to work in some films this month that I've been putting off for a long while, like "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" and "War for the Planet of the Apes", and then some films from last year that are on screeners, like "Downsizing", "The Post" and "Stronger".  Hopefully it will all make some kind of sense once May is over.

But first, Rebecca Ferguson carries over from "The Greatest Showman", for her fourth film of the year - she's having a strong 2018, for sure.  But hey, so is Jake Gyllenhaal, as I kick off another chain featuring FOUR of his films, to add to the two I've already watched this year.

THE PLOT: A team of scientists aboard the International Space Station discovers a rapidly evolving life form that caused extinction on Mars and now threatens all life on Earth.

AFTER: In this film, scientists confirm the existence of life on another planet, and once that happens, everything is fine, really.  It's not dangerous or threatening in any way, and it definitely does not want to eat us.  Just kidding...

As exciting and entertaining as this film was, I have to wonder why anybody bothered making it, since it's basically just a carbon copy of the original "Alien" film.  Oh, sure, there are some minor differences, like this film is set on a space station orbiting Earth, and not in deep space like the Nostromo was.  (But this just increases the risk, because if the alien nasty gets loose, it could find its way to the all-you-can-eat buffet that is Planet Earth.)   At its core, this is just another "Alien"-like hunt aboard a space vessel as a creature works its way through (umm, in some cases literally) the crew.

Don't we know this drill by now?  First the creature gets aboard, then it grows in size and gets into the ventilation system, and then before you know it, it's eating people's faces.  It's one of those deals where you can almost predict what's going to happen from the dialogue, they telegraph all the twists and turns in the plot by saying, "Well be fine, as long as THIS doesn't happen..."  Like "We'll be fine as long as it doesn't get close to the reactor...." or "We'll be fine as long as it doesn't get past that airlock..."  Well, guess what?  (I altered the film's dialogue here to avoid spoilers, but you get my drift.)

The goal here, in the event that extraterrestrial life should be discovered, was to keep it aboard the space station, just as a precaution - and then to have a series of "firewalls" should anything go wrong, to triple-prevent any dangerous creature from threatening humans.  And they'll all be FINE as long as every one of those firewalls does its job...

The creature here starts as a sort of non-descript multi-celled organism, looking like a tiny liver or pancreas or somethiing, and then has an interim stage where it looks a bit like a clear cellophane starfish.  Then its tentacles make it look more octopus-like, so if you don't care for seafood, this may not be the movie for you.  Even if slimy seafood doesn't make you queasy, there are still plenty of gross-out moments here.  Maybe nothing akin to the alien in "Alien" ripping through that guy's chest, but even still...

Future astronauts should take note, in case the situation ever comes up where they are lucky (?) enough to be among the first to represent humanity when a form of extraterrestrial life is first discovered, because many mistakes were made here, not the least of which appeared to be a failure to have the right kind of food for an alien to eat, so it wouldn't have to eat people's faces.  I mean, did they even try giving it chocolate?  No, they did not.  All they gave it to eat were astronauts, so what the hell did they expect?  You've got to bring a lot of different foods and substances on board with you, to prevent the thingy from developing a taste for human flesh!  Rookie mistake.

Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "Rendition"), Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "Self/Less"), Hiroyuki Sanada (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Ariyon Bakare (last seen in "Rogue One"), Olga Dykhovichnaya, Naoko Mori, with cameos from David Muir, Elizabeth Vargas.

RATING: 5 out of 10 thrusters

The Greatest Showman

Year 10, Day 120 - 4/30/18 - Movie #2,922

BEFORE: It's the last day of April, and what a weird month it has been!  I covered everything from pirates to orcs to trolls and mini-Bratzies.  Somebody got killed on a train, someone else SAW someone get killed while on a train, and also the guys from "Trainspotting" got back together.  Jane lost her husband, and so did Dolores Claiborne, a butcher lost his step-son, Mildred lost her daughter, and so did an advertising executive played by Will Smith.  Anna Kendrick dated a hit-man, and then bonded with a bunch of losers at a wedding.  Russell Crowe's character inherited a vineyard, the Grace family inherited Spiderwick Estate, and T'Challa inherited the kingdom of Wakanda.  Then Hardcore Henry fought the army of cyber-zombies, the CIA and some hippies faked the moon landing, and let's not forget that a guy got turned into a walrus.  Wow, that all sounds very stressful in retrospect.

But the month began with Jesus, and now it ends with P.T. Barnum.  Make of that what you will.  Hugh Jackman carries over from "Butter" on Netflix to this one, which I'm watching on an Academy screener - though it's available now on PPV, as I'm reminded every time I turn on the On Demand channel, where a 10-second promo is running about twice every minute.  Seriously?

THE PLOT: The tale of P.T. Barnum, a visionary who rose from nothing to create a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation.

AFTER: I can't help but feel that in many ways, this film is employing a lot of revisionist history - Barnum here is referred to as the inventor of "show business", but was he?  I'll allow the portrayal of him as the inventor (or co-inventor) of what eventually became the modern circus, but ALL of show business?  The film itself depicts Barnum traveling on the road with Swedish singer Jenny Lind, if there was no show business before Barnum invented it, then where did Jenny Lind perform?  How did people even know to come out to an auditorium and exchange their money for a ticket?

This is really an over-simplification, to say that Barnum "invented" show business.  Hadn't the theater been around for a few thousand years?  What about the performance of Shakespeare's plays at the Globe Theater, wasn't old Billy Shakes involved in the day-to-day business of theater operations, paying actors, doing publicity via town crier, etc.?  You've got to be kidding me, Barnum couldn't have been the first person to figure out how to sell tickets to something.

Furthermore, there's a very modern take here on things like diversity, racism, transgender issues, all because Barnum created this thing called the sideshow, and for that he hired people of all sizes, colors, and disabilities.  The odder, the better, really, because it turned out that people would show up in droves to take a peek at these "curiosities", like the dog-faced boy, the Siamese (now called "conjoined") twins, the "world's fattest man", Tom Thumb the dwarf, and so on.  Barnum's show thrived during the days before the internet, because people generally had no way to prove that the person they paid a dime to see was NOT the "world's fattest man", and for that matter they weren't allowed to get close enough to weigh that person, or even confirm that he hadn't stuffed a few pillows up his shirt to make himself even fatter.

The timing is also a little suspicious here, because the company Barnum founded, which eventually became Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey circus, finally shuttered its doors last year, due to a combination of factors no doubt, including declining attendance in the age of the internet, rising costs, and an overall decrease in relevance.  Toss in allegations of extensive animal abuse, and other controversies stemming from an apparent lack of social correctness.  I can't help but think that the circus held on about 10 years longer than it should have, I was ready for them to go the way of the dinosaur just for the animal rights issues alone.  This entire business was built on exploitation, all the way around - you just can't tell me that the circus lifestyle was attractive to anyone who hadn't used up all of their other available work options.

So now we've got a film telling us that P.T. Barnum was not only the consummate showman, he was a champion of minorities and the disabled, like some kind of combination of Steven Spielberg, Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King.  Yeah, I'm going to be double-checking on that.  While he obviously did hire people who may have been on the outskirts of society, how well were they all treated?  Is it better to live in a nice house with your family and be afraid of going outside, or to live on the road, away from your family and be famous, gawked at by an army of ridiculing fans?  Is it better to serve in heaven, or rule in hell?  Debate.

So this concept of the "freak show" gets served back to us, decades after the fact, as if it was somehow an empowerment issue, before that was even a thing.  And don't get me wrong, I'm glad that times have changed, that people feel more comfortable talking about gender issues and non-binary pronouns and being people being comfortable no matter what their age, skin color, or body type.  All that is good stuff, and we've come a long way - but let's not pretend that things back in the 1840's were all sunshine and rainbows when they weren't.  There was no ADA, there were no civil rights laws in many places, and people could pretty much do anything they wanted to anyone else if that person was perceived as "different" or "less than" in some way.  Diversity was just not seen as part of "humanity" then, in fact just the opposite was true - people went to see the "dog-faced boy" because they believed that person was part animal, not just a guy with a hairy face.  And Barnum definitely took advantage of people's fear of, and fascination with people who were different.  I'm thinking that the only color in the diversity rainbow that he cared about was the green of people's money.

Let's just take one of these "freak" archetypes as an example, the bearded lady.  Years ago I went to the famous sideshow down in Coney Island, it's now sort of an artistic model of the old "ten act" sideshows from the past, only each performer serves about three functions.  The bearded lady (who's also the sword swallower and the "electric lady" at other times during the act, took questions from the audience and spoke plainly about what it meant to be a lady with a beard.  (And hers was a neat, thin beard, not the over-sized cartoonish one portrayed in this film...)  Speaking plainly, this woman told the audience in a very matter-of-fact way that most women have some form of facial hair, only society has dictated that they should shave it, pluck it, wax it or electrolyze it, and she was just a lady who had chosen not to do this.  It wasn't a transgender thing, it wasn't a broad social statement, she just grew out her beard.  That's it, very simple, she wasn't championing a non-binary reflection on society's outdated moral codes - she was just a woman who didn't shave her face for a while.

And this is how people who are different should move the needle on social issues, by standing in front of a crowd and being open and honest and answering questions about their lifestyle, which may be different from those of the people in the crowd.  "Step right up, but a ticket and see the freaky bearded lady!" seems very antiquated by comparison, and I just wonder if the methods of P.T. Barnum should be celebrated in a film, because they did more over the years to separate people than they did to bring them together.  "Hey, come over here and look at the freaks!  This lady's got a ton of tattoos, and this guy's looks like he has a third leg!"  You just can't tell me this guy was celebrating diversity, he was turning a profit at the expense of people who were unusual.  So this film's cop-out of "I'm a lady with a beard, there's absolutely nothing I can do about it, so I'm going to say "screw it" and use this experience to become empowered!" ends up ringing just a bit hollow.

If modern people want to feel empowered by the song "This Is Me", because it's being sung by people who are shorter, taller, fatter or hairier than nearly everyone else, I guess that's a good thing, but it's really like polishing a turd here.  It seems a bit like patting Hitler on the back for giving Jewish people a warm place to live, or a community where they can all gather and be Jewish together.  It's just probably not the way that things went down.  The truth about circus folks and carnival trash is that they moved around from place to place because they HAD to.  Eventually they'd meet with intolerance from the locals on some level, who after being entertained by the Siamese twins or the wild pygmies, suddenly then decided they didn't want them in their town.  Let's face it, given the bigotry and narrow-mindedness that still exists in the U.S. today, back in the mid-1800's it was probably a thousand times worse, so a nomadic lifestyle was probably always in the cards for circus folk.  And then during the off-season months, Ringling Brothers circus would hunker down in Florida.  Again, I'm going to leave you to draw your own conclusions there.

There are other real-world reasons for why the circus was the way it was.  Why a tent instead of a building?  Well, this way the circus never has to pay rent or any property tax, just roll up the big top, load the canvas on a train, and it's off to the next city.  Rent an unused field in the next town, or some space down by the docks, and they're back in business.  Sawdust on the floor is cheaper than wood, peanuts and popcorn are about the cheapest food with the highest profit margin, and so on.  Cotton candy?  Come on, it's about 1% sugar and 99% air, isn't it?

And whither Bailey?  According to this film, Barnum's partner in show biz was Philip Carlyle, but don't we all know it was James Anthony Bailey?  If the filmmakers couldn't get the rights to Bailey's name and likeness, probably because their intent was to champion one partner and minimize the involvement of the other, then quite plainly, we're just not getting the whole story here.  The replacement character, Carlyle, is almost a complete blank, we never really get to know much about him, except that he came from money, and saved his earnings from the circus so he could bail it out and become Barnum's partner.  (Didn't he learn?  You never put your OWN MONEY into the show...). Oh, and he falls for the attractive trapeze artist, but so what?  Anybody can fall in love with the young, shapely acrobat.  If they wanted this character to be interesting, he should have been attracted for the bearded lady, or even the dog-faced boy.  I mean, we're trying celebrate "diversity" before its time, right?  So put your money where your mouth is.

If "Butter" was an allegory for the 2008 Democratic Primaries, then perhaps by extension the story of P.T. Barnum is more obviously Trump-related.  According to this film, Barnum got the loan to create his first museum by claiming to hold the deeds to seven clipper vessels in the South China Sea, without mentioning that those ships were currently residing at the bottom of said sea, and therefore worthless.  And the news just broke that Trump probably falsified his net worth by claiming many of his father's holdings as his own, in order to get himself on to the very first Fortune 500 list, and then he probably leveraged THAT to get more loans, and borrow further against collateral that he just didn't have.  It sure sounds familiar, and I bet if we were to scratch the surface there would be many more similarities between Barnum and Trump.  Both took advantage of the disabled in public, both took great delight in separating other people from their money, and both were in charge of circus shows, one literal and the other figurative.  Really, at the end of the day, is there any difference between being a circus ringmaster and presiding over Trump Air, Trump Steaks and Trump University?

Also starring Michelle Williams (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Zac Efron (last seen in "Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates"), Rebecca Ferguson (last seen in "The Girl on the Train"), Zendaya (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Keala Settle (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eric Anderson, Sam Humphrey, Austyn Johnson, Cameron Seely, Paul Sparks (last seen in "Midnight Special"), Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Daniel Everidge, Gayle Rankin, Will Swenson, Byron Jennings (last seen in "True Story"), Betsy Aidem (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Fredric Lehne, Kathryn Meisle, Damian Young, Tina Benko, Caoife Coleman, Mishay Petronelli, Shannon Holtzapffel, Luciano Acuna Jr., Danial Son, Yusaku Komori, Jonathan Redavid, Nick Jantz, Timothy Hughes.

RATING: 5 out of 10 shot glasses

Butter

Year 10, Day 119 - 4/29/18 - Movie #2,921

BEFORE: I could have followed the path with Margo Martindale out of "Table 19", and I will get there, but I'm going to follow the Andrew Daly path instead, he carries over and plays a radio announcer in this film.  Suddenly I have a bad feeling that this film is going to be a lot like "Pitch Perfect", where the proceedings are ruined by an unnecessary sports-type announcer, when that isn't even a thing that exists at a cappella competitions, or butter-sculpting competitions, I'm betting.

THE PLOT: In Iowa, an adopted girl discovers her talent for butter carving and finds herself pitted against an ambitious local woman in their town's annual contest. 

AFTER: It's even worse than I feared, unfortunately.  Let me say that I've never been to a butter-sculpting competition, I don't know exactly how they work, like how the judging takes place or what exactly the rules are, or anything like that.  But here's something I feel confident in saying - whoever wrote and directed this film has never been to one either, and also has no fundamental idea how they work.  How do I know this? 

Well, I've been to a state fair - last year we went to the Texas State Fair in Dallas, and there was a butter sculpture there, featuring four famous faces from Texas history, in a sort of Mount Rushmore arrangement.  But what was in the sculpture's not important, here's the important part - it was already made and on display, it was NOT made during the fair, because these things take time to make.  So if there were a competition to judge the best sculptures, it already took place before.  OR there was no judging, and the scuplture was merely there as a showcase. 

Meanwhile, this film can't decide if the competition depicted is taking place on the county, or state level - because those are two very different things.  We first see a butter sculpture of the Last Supper, displayed at the Iowa STATE Fair.  So assuming it won a competition to be displayed, that competition would be at the STATE level, and would (theoretically) feature the winners from each county, being judged against each other - that would make sense.  But this film uses a contrivance to give us two butter-sculpting competitions with the same rivals, one at the county level and then a rematch at the State Fair.  (This is an obvious short-cut to set up a rivalry between the same competitors, without waiting for a year of screen time to pass.)  But then, where are the winning sculptures from the other counties?  Noticeably absent. Surely if sculpting butter is a thing, and that thing is popular in Iowa, there must be a number of county-level competitions, and the winners would progress to another competition at the state level. Right?

Nope, this is apparently a state-wide popular phenomenon that, for some reason, only two people can be technically good at at the same time, which makes no sense.  It seems that if you win the Johnson County competition, that's somehow exactly the same as winning the Iowa-wide competition. In my mind, that would only get your sculpture displayed at the COUNTY fair, not the STATE fair. 

And then for some other reason, the guy who's won this competition for the last 15 years is asked to not enter any more, which seems both arbitrary and unfair.  If he's talented, then he deserves to keep winning, and if someone else is better, then all the judges have to do is vote for that other person, so WHY is he being told not to enter any more?  And why is his wife so determined to follow in his footsteps, even though she's never carved butter herself before?  What gives her the feeling that she is not only capable, but somehow deserves to win?  Is she that non-aware and delusional, or just extremely self-centered? 

A little research on Wikipedia brings me a little closer to an answer - this is intended as political satire, believe it or not.  Think about it - Iowa, that's where the U.S. has one of the first Presidential primaries every four years.  This whole thing, believe it or not, is a loose take on the 2008 Democratic primary, like the Iowa caucus or something.  That means "Destiny", the young black girl with the natural talent for sculpting butter, is a stand-in for Obama.  (Making him a young boy named "Hope" would have been too on-the-nose, apparently.)  And the pretentious, stuck-up woman who's overconfident about her talent and chance of victory symbolizes Hillary Clinton.  Her husband, the previous champion, is prevented from entering the contest again, which symbolizes the term limits we have on the President (which is technically 10 years, not two terms, look it up).  And he gets in trouble for having sex with a stripper, which really drives home the Bill Clinton connection. 

So, you see, this isn't really about a butter scuplting competition at all, which is unfortunate.  But then again, at least someone didn't try to make a Christopher Guest mockumentary-style movie about people carving butter, because that possibly could have been even worse.  Eh, who knows, maybe Bob Balaban and Ed Begley Jr. carving sculptures made by Parker Posey and Michael McKean could have been a fun film, but I guess we'll never know.  Anyway you slice it, in real life or in the film, it's still an enormous waste of dairy products.  I guess they just can't build sand castles in the Midwest, but that still doesn't mean this alternative art form makes any sense.

Buried under all the nonsense is a sweet story about a little girl being bounced around from one foster home to another, looking for a place to fit in and something to be good at - there's your damn movie, it's a shame that all this other stuff had to happen, and the storyline just couldn't get out of its own way.

Also starring Jennifer Garner (last seen in "Danny Collins"), Ty Burrell (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "People Like Us"), Rob Corddry (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "Clueless"), Ashley Greene (last seen in "CBGB"), Yara Shahidi, Hugh Jackman (last seen in "Pan"), Kristen Schaal (last heard in "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2"), Phyllis Smith (last heard in "Inside Out"), Corena Chase, Brett Hill, Garrett Schenck, Judy Leavell, Pruitt Taylor Vince (last seen in "Nobody's Fool").

RATING: 4 out of 10 racist ninjas

Table 19

Year 10, Day 118 - 4/28/18 - Movie #2,920

BEFORE: For once, I had other linking options coming out of "The Girl on the Train" - I've got more films with Rebecca Ferguson, and also more films with Allison Janney, but I'll get to all of those in the first half of May.  I've got a few other films on Netflix and Academy screeners before the clock runs out on April.

Lisa Kudrow, who played a key figure in "The Girl on the Train" (yet, one who it seems was NOT in the book...) carries over for another appearance tonight.  Sometimes I look to my Saturday film to tie up a week in some kind of meaningful way, but I don't know if I can count on this film for that.  However, it does feature Anna Kendrick playing a character looking for love (as in "Mr. Right") and seems to detail a family function gone wrong ("God's Pocket").  Stretching things a bit further, it is set at a hotel (like "The Florida Project") and features at least one marriage in trouble and a bit of ex-stalking (as in "The Girl on the Train").  But I think I'm trying to force connections at this point in the process.

THE PLOT: Eloise, having been relieved of maid of honor duties after being dumped by the best man via text, decides to attend the wedding anyway, only to find herself seated with five fellow unwanted guests at the dreaded Table 19.

AFTER: For the third night in a row, I'm joined in my nightly viewing process by my BFF Andy, who's staying with me while attending some events in NYC.  He bailed on "The Girl on the Train" about 15 minutes in, and I support that decision.  I had to finish the film, for the sake of being a completist, but he did not.  But when I'm joined by a guest, then "EbertFest" rules apply, meaning that I'm willing to pause the film at any point if either of us has an insight, or wishes to object to something.  When alone, I merely make a mental note about a Nitpick Point and try to soldier on.

There was a lot to object to here, because there seem to be massive story problems at every level, which I'll try to translate into NPs as best as I can.  But on the surface, this film wanted very badly to be an above-average wedding-based comedy, and it chose to do that by magnifying that feeling that most of us have had, of being outsiders in a room of insiders, of being different or made to feel "less than" for some reason, based on our looks, or some disagreement we had, or someone just plain telling us that we don't fit in somehow.  It's nice to think that if only all of those people, or heck, even if just TWO of those people who didn't fit in could find each other and unite, then things might be different for them, they could at least be united in their separateness, and therefore not separate any more.

(I always think back to Chris Rock's joke about the Columbine shootings, about how these kids who each felt bullied and alone should have just been friends with each other, because there were six of them in that "Trenchcoat Mafia" club.  But that was part of the problem, they did find each other, and it only led to them teaming up to shoot people more efficiently.).

The premise of this film is that the last table in the banquet hall, the one furthest from the head table, is the one where all the "leftover" people end up, the people who didn't fit in with any other groups, like the Single Cousins or the Bride's Father's Work Friends.  And if society is one giant wedding hall, then the "Randos", the ones without opportunities or social skills, tend to end up at the bottom, I get that.  The theory is confirmed when Eloise, who helped plan the wedding and organize the seating chart, finds herself moved from Table 2 way down to Table 19, with the bride's former nanny, a misfit cousin, a business rival couple, and an awkward teen.  What we're then led to believe, however is that these six strangers end up bolstering each other's confidence and are just the exact magic combination to not only save the wedding, but solve a whole bunch of long-term personal problems.  Umm, yeah.

(As unlikely as it sounds, the attempt at a meaningful theme is not terrible here, I've seen the real-world turn-around within my lifetime, thanks to the internet and Hollywood blockbusters, it's now so cool to be a geek, for example.  When I was a young man, it wasn't hip to be into programming computers, or reading comic-books, or even to be a fan of science fiction films.  These days, all of those things are HELLA cool.  OK, so guys who play football and drive amazing cars are still cooler than geeks, but a lot of progress has been made.  Whatever your thing is, you can now find other people who also dig that thing - it wasn't always like that.  Gradually, people of my generation found each other in high school or at conventions - people who also liked playing chess, building rockets or watching "Doctor Who" and we built those friendships and we paved the way.  Some of us even grew up and married people with similar interests, making it hip to be square, even if just in retrospect.).

About 45 minutes in, we had to pause the film and note that the story really hadn't settled on a direction yet, and that it could go several different routes from that particular point - essentially, it could still redeem itself or confirm itself as a terrible story, depending on the ending.  And since the "true nature" of each character hadn't been revealed yet, we took stabs at directions it might take. We each correctly predicted one thing - however, Andy scored a point and guessed the deal with the nanny because he was trying to predict "What's the lamest possible thing this storyline could reveal?" and I think I got mine because I've seen so many wedding-based romantic comedies, but essentially I correctly predicted the identity of Eloise's "mystery man" Huck the same way, by thinking of the most ironic, and therefore worst possibility.

Not long after that, the six members of Table 19 commit a large "party foul" and for this reason, decide to leave the wedding, so it seems like perhaps this is the end of the story, or perhaps a dramatic 90-degree turn.  But honestly, it did seem like the comic possibilities of these six characters in that situation had been exhausted, so perhaps it was for the best.  They retired to one hotel room for quiet reflection, bonding and some reefer, and slowly started the process of coming together as a unit to work on their collective and individual problems.  I've heard it's bad form to leave a wedding reception before the bride, but in this case it seems an exception must be made.  Since the film took its sweet time in presenting the proper back-stories for these characters, it needed to carve out some time to do this in the middle, rather than at the beginning.

Now, all that being said, this film ends up hitting everyone over the head with its attempts at symbolism.  "We're all at the same wedding, it's the same celebration no matter what table you're at." Give me a break!  Beyond the sappiness of this idea, that we're all equal riders on Spaceship Earth, which obviously isn't true, this concept goes against the premise of the film, which is that there ARE people who are awkward and don't fit in.  While they shouldn't have to conform to society's standards, it's also not helpful to pretend that there's no social hierarchy in the first place.  There are other examples, like the married couple walking through the woods, saying "Well, I don't know which way we are going..."  Oooh, there's some deep, meaningful dialogue right there!  You can almost hear the screenwriter patting himself on the back for that one!

Finally, FINALLY in the last half-hour, this film starts to resolve a few things, about who these six characters are and what they all want to get out of life.  And there are a couple of good comic turns there, but it sort of feels like it might be too little, too late at that point.  Besides, too many things still don't make any sense, such as:

NITPICK POINT: What was up with that ferry leaving the wedding, with the entire wedding party on it?  Who DOES that?  I've seen weddings where the bride and groom depart, ostensibly to leave for their honeymoon, but I've never seen an entire wedding party leave the scene.  Aren't any of them staying over at the hotel that night?  Where is the ferry going, and why did the best man, maid of honor, etc. have to go along?  The boat seems pretty full, so WTF?  And then, which wedding guests didn't go on the ferry, and waved goodbye from the dock?  This made no sense, it was clearly written in just to separate Eloise from the best man, so therefore it's very contrived.  Meanwhile, the bride's mother was back at the banquet room, passed out drunk, so did nobody notice that she was missing?  That doesn't seem right.

Tied closely to this is NITPICK POINT #2, which is, if everyone left on the ferry, why didn't the wedding band start packing up?  Did they decide to have a rehearsal immediately following their performance?  Again, the screenplay dictates that the members of Table 19 need to dance to something, but there would be no motivation for the band to stick around, unless someone forgot to pay them, or paid them by the hour instead of a flat fee.  Like MAYBE the ferry ride was some kind of half-hour fun event between the dessert course and last call, but this seems very unlikely, and now I'm doing the screenwriter's job for him again.

And then there's this problem with the set-up, if Eloise is such a good friend of the bride, AND she was deeply involved with the event planning, why didn't the bride fight for her to maintain her status as the maid of honor?  They always say a wedding is "the bride's day", so the implication there is that the bride should get what she wants.  There's no rule that says that the best man and the maid of honor can't be ex-lovers, OK so maybe it would be awkward if they have to dance together once, but these petty things ideally should be put aside so the bride and groom can have their perfect day.  Anyway, who chooses the bride's brother as a best man?  Back in the old days, the best man was supposed to be a potential substitute for the groom, he could marry the bride if the groom backed out at the last minute.  OK, so that's no longer a convention in today's society, but still, it seems a bit awkward to have a best man for whom that would constitute incest.  So let's call this another half NITPICK POINT.  Anyway, why is Eloise even remotely interested in her ex at this point, because it sounds like his whole family didn't stick up for her - so what makes her think things will be different in the future?  Dealing with his family would be one long, relentless struggle - so is it really worth it?

Also starring Anna Kendrick (last seen in "Mr. Right"), Craig Robinson (last heard in "Sausage Party"), June Squibb (last seen in "Far From Heaven"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Logan"), Tony Revolori (last seen in "The 5th Wave"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "22 Jump Street"), Amanda Crew (last seen in "Race"), Thomas Cocquerel, Becky Ann Baker, Andrew Daly (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Maria Thayer (last seen in "Hitch"), Andy Blitz, Rya Meyers, Richard Haylor, Andy Stahl, Megan Lawless, and the voice of Margo Martindale (last heard in "Cars 3").

RATING: 5 out of 10 place cards