The Trip to Italy

Year 10, Day 181 - 6/30/18 - Movie #2,977

BEFORE:  I watched the first film, with Coogan and Brydon touring Northern England, a little over two years ago, then I think last year after getting heavy into Netflix, I noticed that the two sequels are available there.  Then it just became a matter of how best to work them in to the chain -

But since I watched the first film, my wife and I also took a vacation that was structured the same way - fly to one city, drive across part of a country to experience fine food at each stop, and fly home from the last city.  Last October we started in Dallas and then drove to Little Rock, Memphis and finally Nashville, and we enjoyed the best BBQ we could find in each city.  We did lots of other things, too, but the main structure was planned around the driving and hotel reservations, then we just tried to do things in each city that seemed like they would be fun.  A very successful trip, and now we're planning the follow-up, going back to Dallas and driving to Austin, San Antonio, Houston and New Orleans.  I cashed in all of my frequent-flyer miles, so the tickets are bought, now we just need to block out the days, select some restaurants and find fun things in each city.  This will kick off on my birthday in October, and maybe that will take some of the sting out of getting older, and entering a new decade in age.

Alessandro Cuomo carries over from "Secret in Their Eyes" - even if he had an uncredited role in that film, it still counts.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Trip" (Movie #2,327)

THE PLOT: Two men, six meals in six different places on a road trip around Italy - Liguria, Tuscany, Rome, Amalfi and ending in Capri.

AFTER:  These films that are half-fiction, half-travelogue are quite confusing.  Was this dialogue scripted, or unscripted?  How does an actor play a "semi-fictional" version of himself, what does that even MEAN?  Plus there seems to be a six-part BBC series of the same name, for both the original "The Trip" movie and this one - do those episodes cover different trips, or different material from the same trip, or what?  Do I have to watch those if I watch this film, or would that be pointless?  (Like 2/3 of the "Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby" movies...)

Ah, wait, I answered many of these questions two years ago, I should have checked my past review first.  The feature film is an edited-together version of the six-episode series, so there's no need to watch both.  And there are many differences between the real Coogan and Brydon and the fictional versions seen here, for starters the real Coogan doesn't have a son, so one had to be cast for dramatic purposes.  Brydon, meanwhile, has three children with his first wife and two sons with his second, but his fictional counterpart only mentions one three-year-old daughter.  Next I suppose you'll tell me that these men don't have awkward affairs while traveling through Europe, either.

I suppose it makes sense, this isn't pitched as a documentary, and what celebrity would want to have the personal details of their life mentioned on camera, what with all the crazy people around these days.  And once you start to realize this is fiction, the signs are everywhere - for example, we never see any camera or crew, nor any mention of one being hired or following these men on their trip, so how are we seeing the footage then?  And during some of the driving scenes, their car is seen from several different angles, so that means either multiple crews, or they had to drive down a stretch of road again and again to get that coverage.  And was there a camera crew in their hotel rooms to get those shots of them making late-night phone calls, or reading scripts before turning in for the night?

Still, we've all become so used to multi-camera techniques and also "confessional documentary" TV series like "The Office" and "Modern Family" that some people might not even think of these things. Ever since film school I've found that it's harder for me to NOT think about how a film was made, and  it's only on rare occurrences like intense sci-fi films that I'm able to switch that off for a while.

So I can't really believe anything that happens here, except the food is probably real (and delicious) and same goes for the scenery.  The gimmick here is that Brydon has been hired to travel in the footsteps of the great Romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, both of whom spent time in Italy, which I did not know.  They start in Piedmont and end in Capri (the original plan to visit Sicily doesn't work out) and if you should ever want to take this same trip, and you can afford it, it's not too hard to find the names of the hotels they stayed in and the restaurants they ate in.  They drive a Mini Cooper as a visual reference to "The Italian Job", and it's on to Byron's house in Genoa, the Italian Riviera, Pisa (no glimpse of the Leaning Tower? Really?) and then Rome, to see Shelley's burial site, the Spanish steps and the Colosseum.  From there they drive to the Amalfi Coast, where they view the ruins of Pompeii, and finally meet up with Coogan's fictional son in Capri.

I've just looked at their route on Google Maps, and I'm more confused than ever.  Obviously they had a specific agenda, because I don't know why anyone would come so close to Turin, Florence and Naples without working them in to the itinerary. (I did not realize Pompeii was so close to Naples.)  Yes, I understand that cities like Venice and Bologna are on the other side of the country, but what food tour wouldn't include them?  There's no better example of a country that has a distinct local cuisine in each city, and I can't fathom being in that country and not want to try something in each city's style - Bolognese, Florentine, Parmesan, Milanese, etc.  Why not go to Bologna, Florence, Parma and Milan to check out the original versions of these dishes?

I believe that I would do well in any foreign country, at least when it comes to the food.  I speak semi-fluent French and German, but I don't even need that, right?  Not when I can point to a food item (on a counter or on a menu) and hold up a certain number of fingers, right?  All you really need to know are "please" and "thank you" in another language and you probably won't starve, that's good enough for me.  (Neither of us spoke Texan, and we did just fine down there...).

Beyond the food and the scenery, this film is really about the impressions - all of the conversations during the meals naturally turn toward the actors that these two men can sound like, namely Michael Caine, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Hardy, Richard Burton, Hugh Grant and Robert De Niro.  Brydon wins the Hugh Grant sound-alike contest easily, but Coogan's De Niro is far superior.

But to really crack the code on this film, and I hate to be cynical about this, you have to understand that this is why some people get into acting in the first place, to travel around the world on the production company's dime.  Why else would people work long hours on film shoots, if not to get some time off in exotic locations, and to visit places that they probably couldn't afford to visit otherwise?  It's a scam at the end of the day, but it's a legal one.  The top actors like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise probably get so many offers that they can pick their scripts based on shooting locations, and if they can bring their families with them, with all costs covered by the production budget, where's the harm?

Nobody's paying ME to travel across the South eating delicious barbecue, I do it for the love of the sport.  Just saying.

Also starring Steve Coogan (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Rob Brydon (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), Claire Keelan (last seen in "The Trip"), Marta Barrio (ditto), Timothy Leach (ditto), the voice of Rebecca Johnson (ditto), Rosie Fellner, Ronni Ancona.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Alanis Morrissette songs

Secret in Their Eyes

Year 10, Day 180 - 6/29/18 - Movie #2,976

BEFORE: I'm going from hipsters to Republicans to serial killers.  Nothing in common except those are three groups of people I would rather not associate with.

Michael Kelly carries over from "Fair Game".  I realize now with tonight's cast list that I could have flipped the last three films around, and "Book of Henry" would have linked here also - and if I had flipped them, I think I could have fit in one more film, because Jacob Tremblay also links to Julia Roberts via the film "Wonder".  But then, squeezing in one more film would have thrown off my count, and I wouldn't hit July 4 with the film I want to land there.  So maybe it's for the best, I just need to find another way to get back to "Wonder" in the future. 

THE PLOT: A tight-knit team of rising investigators, along with their supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

AFTER: It made linking sense to split off another Nicole Kidman film from the herd - I'll still try to get to the remaining 5 in November, but there's just no way to guarantee that.  I'll have to see how many slots I have left when I get there.

This is another one of those films that tries to do a split-timeline thing - half of the action takes place in 2002 (and ties in nicely with the previous film, with terrorist suspects possibly trying to get their hands on enriched yellow cake uranium) and the other half is set in 2015, when a murder case is re-opened.  One of the investigators has continued to work the case in-between, but since that work is presumed to be boring - scanning thousands of mugshots from around the country - it's neatly left out of the film.  So the action toggles between the two timelines, but the main problem here is, doing so brings nothing new to the table, it just makes everything more confusing as the details are revealed, little by little.  Yep, chances are that this was done not to be "innovative" but to cover up some narrative problems that resulted from presenting the scenes in a regular linear form. 

The most recent narrative to pull this sort of trick, of course, is "Westworld".  Fans during the first season somehow figured out that two different timelines were being presented simultaneously, as if everything was all happening at the same time, even though it wasn't.  Silly me, scenes are presented to me in a particular order, and I'm inclined to believe that they also happened in that order, unless I'm presented with evidence to the contrary.  Congratulations, makers of "Westworld", you fooled me, I hope you're proud of yourselves.  Now in season 2, I'm supposed to understand that when I see a certain actor, in some scenes he's a real human person (in the past) and in other scenes he's a robot (in the present).  I'm on to your tricks now, and I read the recaps online after each episode so I don't miss things like that.  (Really?  I was supposed to figure this out from the fact that in some scenes his beard is SLIGHTLY less trimmed?  Give me a break.  Nobody should have to work this hard to watch a TV show...)

So there's something of the same effect here, since in the past scenes the assistant DA has strawberry blonde hair and in the present day scenes her hair is more yellow blonde.  But there was so much toggling back and forth that after a while my brain gave up and stopped asking whether I was looking at THEN or NOW, it was just too much work.  Just tell me everything that happened and I'll try to piece it all together at the end.  As best as I can tell:

In 2015, the lead investigator, though he left L.A. years ago to return to NY, has stumbled on the image of a man who greatly resembled the chief suspect in a murder case, and this man's been in jail for the last 10 years, ever since the suspect disappeared, so the timeline matches up, even if this man has a different name, the investigator is convinced it's him, and he's willing to bend the rules in order to prove it.  Turns out you can't get a warrant on a hunch like this. 

In the past, while one part of the team was trying to solve this murder case (even though they're not the homicide division, and since one of their team members was related to the victim, they really should have been pulled off this case...) another part of the team was hampering their efforts, because he was trying to protect his source, who was part of this terrorist sleeper cell.  So apparently if you're giving valuable information to the police, you can also commit a violent crime and skate on that, which seems ridiculous.  His protection would only extend to the crimes related to the information he's providing, and if he does something else wrong, he's still on the hook for that.  A whistle-blower who helps uncover insider trading, for example, would still be liable if he committed a hit-and-run. 

But justice seems to be a fuzzy concept here, only people seem to know it when they see it, and I think this is one of those things we're not supposed to notice because of all the time-jumping.  Ultimately the movie is forced to answer the question of whether the guy with the different name who greatly resembles the original suspect is the original suspect or not, and I'll give the film credit for doing this in a unique way, but it still counts as cinematic trickery. 

NITPICK POINT: I've watched enough episodes of "Law & Order" to realize that you probably can't get someone to confess that way.

Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Triple 9"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Julia Roberts (last seen in "Money Monster"), Dean Norris (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Alfred Molina (last seen in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"), Zoe Graham (last seen in "Boyhood"), Lyndon Smith (last seen in "The Forger"), Joe Cole, Don Harvey (last seen in "Vice"), Mark Famiglietti (last seen in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines"), Ross Partridge, Kim Yarbrough, Alessandro Cuomo.

RATING: 4 out of 10 stolen cars

Fair Game (2010)

Year 10, Day 179 - 6/28/18 - Movie #2,975

BEFORE: Of course, now too late I see the connections between "While We're Young", and another Noah Baumbach film on my list, I could have had Ben Stiller, Adam Driver and one other actor carrying over to that film.  BUT, I need that film as a link between the post-July 4 chain and the film right before the Summer Rock Concert series starts, so maybe it's for the better that I didn't notice all those connections until now.

It's better to finish off the Naomi Watts chain, with her carrying over from "While We're Young" for her 4th film in a row.  What's funny is that I could have watched these last three films in reverse order, and still ended up with a link to tomorrow's film.  To me that's often a sign that I'm on the right track, organizationally speaking.  It's all about getting to July 4 right now, in the correct number of steps, and that means putting the Baumbach film on hold for a couple of weeks.

THE PLOT: CIA operative Valerie Plame discovers her identity is leaked by the government as payback for an op-ed article her husband wrote criticizing the Bush administration.

AFTER: It's hard to believe, but way back in 2002 we thought that maybe we had the worst President in U.S. history.  Bush Jr. or "Dubya" was not very articulate, he made a lot of gaffes during speeches (many are still available online) and he seemed bent on getting our country involved in a war - and what's worse was that he hadn't even won the popular vote in the 2000 election, he was made President due to the vagaries of the Electoral College, a huge debate in Florida over missing ballots and hanging chads (which was very suspicious due to the identity of Florida's governor at the time), and finally a Supreme Court decision (which, if you think about it, was very suspicious because of all the SCOTUS justices that were placed there by Reagan and Bush Sr.)

And now, of course, we look back on all that through our current lens, and we realize that it was a much simpler time compared to the situation we have now.  The Cheney administration (sic), as evil as it was, almost seems like the glory days, a time you can now be nostalgic for.  But we have to keep reminding ourselves that our country was dragged into an unjust war because there was NO PROOF of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  All the administration had was a few blurry satellite photos that could have been anything, really - could have been an amusement park being set up outside Bagdad.  Or maybe a pipe organ.  I didn't personally have a problem with the invasion because I felt the other way, just because we didn't find any WMD's doesn't mean that they weren't there and got moved somewhere else, because there was plenty of time to do so.  But I guess a lack of evidence can't see seen as evidence, in that sense.

Still, there was opposition to the Iraq conflict, but it became the goal of the Cheney administration to squash it and proceed with the war.  (Is any of this sounding familiar to you millennials?  President who lost the popular vote, starting trouble around the world, claiming that everyone who doesn't agree with him is a damn liar?  Leaks from the CIA, do I need to keep going?)   In this case, one person who was asked to investigate Iraq's dealings with other countries (possibly to assemble nuclear components) was Joe C. Wilson, former ambassador to Gabon, basically a career diplomat who had served in many countries, including Iraq.  And his wife happened to be a CIA agent, one who recommended him as someone who could check out the link between Iraq and Niger, to determine if Iraq had purchased a quantity of "Yellow Cake" uranium.  Good thing they didn't ask me, because if someone from the CIA asked me what I knew about "yellow cake", the first thing I'd say would be "Well, I know that it's delicious!"

But Wilson couldn't find any evidence that Iraq had purchased this uranium.  And further CIA investigation of certain aluminum tubes, the kind that COULD possibly be used to enrich said uranium, determined that these tubes probably had another function.  The Cheney administration, however, apparently used bits and pieces of these CIA reports to justify the invasion that they wanted to happen.  (By the way, it's worth mentioning that Cheney was also on the board of Halliburton, a company that profited BIG TIME from the war.  Any of this also sounding familiar?  An official not serving the public interest, but his own corporate investments?  Anyone?)

When Wilson wrote an article about how his investigation in Niger was wrongly being used to justify the reasons for the Iraqi investigation, the Veep's office retaliated by mentioning the name of his wife, a covert agent, in the press.  Which basically ended her spying career, blowing her cover rendered her useless, and also put a number of people in jeopardy around the world, who were part of her ongoing investigations.  Oh, yeah, and knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent just happens to be illegal, in addition to dangerous.  The fall guy ended up being Scooter Libby, an aide to Cheney who got blamed for the leak - he was charged with obstruction of justice and perjury, but had his sentence commuted and pardoned by Presidents Dubya and Trump.

15 years later, we're just about all back where we started.  Just replace Libby with Comey, Hussein with Putin and Iraq with Ukraine, and the word obstruction is on everyone's lips again, we're all just waiting to see if the Mueller investigation ever draws any conclusions about election meddling and Russian collusion.  Once again, anyone who disagrees with the President's policies is either a damn liar or has their career ruined.  (For that matter, it seems anyone who also works FOR the President now also gets their career ruined, so I guess we're maintaining a balance somehow.)  But I don't think you can equate a few restaurant visits being ruined by the opposition with what happened to Valerie Plame, who lost her whole career, and apparently it seems she was pretty good at what she did.

However, finding out that one's close friend doesn't really work for an environmental law firm, but instead has held down a career as an undercover CIA agent probably leads to a lot of awkward conversations:

"So, I hear that you've been an undercover CIA agent for the 20 years that I've known you."
"Yes, that's correct."
"When did they recruit you, or did you volunteer?"
"Well, I can't really talk about that..."
"Right, CIA agent, of course.  So how many people have you killed?"
"Again, I can't discuss that, it's a matter of national security."
"Right, CIA agent, of course.  So, which countries have you been to?"
"Honestly, Sharon, what part of undercover CIA agent are you having trouble understanding?"

This film ended up feeling a little divided, however, because for a long while it couldn't seem to decide whether Joe Wilson going to the press to denounce the outing of his wife was a good thing, or a bad thing.  It caused a great deal of tension between Wilson and Plame, and whether this was just due to Valerie being slow to accept that her CIA career was over, or just being mad at him for writing the article after she asked him not to, this point remains quite unclear.  Ultimately she comes around to accepting what he did was the right thing, and she joins the resistance against the administration, and she goes public.

However, it's a futile attempt to get any Presidential administration to both admit its mistakes and make amends, which brings us right back to our current political situation.  When does anyone ever apologize on social media, when it's so much easier to shout back even louder, and also include a comment about one's opponent's mother?  And that's what we have, the first social media-created President/monster.  But I still don't understand why the Cheney/Bush administration has not been prosecuted for war crimes, and yes, I mean that sincerely.  We seriously need to take a look at our leaders' ability to pardon themselves.  I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how that serves the greater good.

I feel like Trump demonstrates the stupidity of George W. Bush with the evilness of Cheney, and that's a dangerous combination.  I realize that leaves nothing for Pence, but he's a giant blank anyway, right?  Except for his homophobia, which was a Cheney thing until Cheney's own daughter came out.  What a hypocrite.

Also starring Sean Penn (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Noah Emmerich (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Ty Burrell (last seen in "Butter"), Sam Shepard (last seen in "Brothers"), Bruce McGill (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Brooke Smith (last seen in "Labor Day"), Michael Kelly (last seen in "Everest"), Liraz Charhi, Khaled El Nabawy, Anand Tiwari, David Andrews, David Denman (last seen in "The Gift"), Geoffrey Cantor (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Nassar, Satya Bhabha, Jessica Hecht (last seen in "Whatever Works"), Norbert Leo Butz (last seen in "Dan in Real Life"), Rebecca Rigg, Tom McCarthy, David Warshofsky (last seen in "Now You See Me 2"), Polly Holliday (last seen in "Gremlins"), Ashley Gerasimovich, and archive footage of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Peter King, Dan Rather, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough and the real Valerie Plame Wilson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Senate hearings

While We're Young

Year 10, Day 178 - 6/27/18 - Movie #2,974

BEFORE: This film was directed by Noah Baumbach, who also directed "The Squid and the Whale". Again, I wish I paid more attention to who directed each film when I put these chains together, because linking by director might possibly make more sense than linking by actor - I think the only time I intentionally linked by director was when I worked my way through Hitchcock's filmography.  But now I've seen two Baumbach films this year, and if I stick to my chain, I think I'll get to a third one in mid-July, right before the Summer Rock Concert chain.

This makes three in a row for Naomi Watts, and she'll be here tomorrow as well to wrap up her chain.  This film's running on Netflix, so if it seems interesting to you, you'd better catch it while you can, these things have a way of disappearing without much notice.  I've been lucky for the last few weeks, everything on my Netflix queue that I planned to see in June has stuck around long enough for me, except for "On the Road", that is.

THE PLOT: A middle-aged couples careers and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple enters their lives.

AFTER: OK, so last night's film was about a child that acted very much like an adult, and his mother acting very immature - that theme sort of continues tonight with a story of a couple in middle age that interacts with another couple in their 20's.  But you might expect that the younger couple would be all about their cell phones, Facebook and other social media, etc. and the twist here is that the middle-aged couple is all about those things, and the younger couple reads books made of paper, not on an e-reader, listens to vinyl records, not CDs, and they aren't even on Facebook!  Yep, you guessed it, they're hipsters, so they make their own organic ice cream and they even have a chicken in their apartment so they can have natural eggs without chemicals and such.  This seems like a great idea, right up until you actual spend time with a chicken and realize how bad they smell - I have to walk by a live poultry shop in Brooklyn every day and I often have to hold my breath.

It gets worse, because the younger couple takes Polaroids, ride bikes (probably fixies, ugh) and wear stupid hats.  Plus they go to "street beach" parties, whatever that is, and they sit around in drum circles and drink hallucinogens that "cleanse" them (that is, make them puke - Ayahuasca, this is apparently a real thing).  The only thing preventing this fictional couple from resembling actual real hipsters is that they're not overly smug about everything they do, so really this isn't very accurate at all.  But the couple (Jamie and Darby) say they're married and they really seem to have it together, but do they?  And are they all they appear to be?

Jamie makes documentaries and claims to be a big fan of older documentarian Josh.  OK, but Jamie probably makes "artisanal" documentaries, if that's somehow a thing.  They form a fast friendship and before you know it, Josh and his wife Cornelia are spending more time with Jamie and Darby, doing hip-hop aerobics and buying hats together, and ignoring their other friends, the ones with kids.  If this were a Cinemax movie, you'd probably feel that some form of partner-swapping was in the cards here, and for a while this film seemed to be heading in that direction, until it didn't.

Once some inaccurracies pop up in Jamie's many different background stories, Josh starts to question how real these two youngsters are, and then starts to wonder if he's being punked, or if there was some kind of conspiracy that involved befriending him in order for Jamie to advance his career.  The film then gets into a discussion about the making of documentaries, and how accurate they need to be, like whether it's OK to stage something for a documentary, rather than answer the bigger questions about everyone's motivations for doing what they do.

I was willing to bet, for example, that Jamie was in fact making a film about Josh, like catfishing him and stringing him along to get a filmmaker's real, genuine reactions to the problems of making docs.  That would have been an interesting idea, but it never came to be.  Instead it felt like this film had the germ of an idea, but it needed to be explored and explained further for me to really feel invested in it.

Just remember this, in the end, because it's important - hipsters are terrible people, they want to replace us older people, and they're not to be trusted.  That message, I can get behind.

Also starring Ben Stiller (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Adam Driver (last seen in "Silence"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Charles Grodin (last seen in "The Comedian"), Adam Horovitz, Maria Dizzia (last seen in "Going in Style"), Dree Hemingway, Brady Corbet (last seen in "Martha Marcy May Marlene"), Matthew Maher (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Matthew Shear, Ryan Serhant, Peter Yarrow, Peter Bogdanovich, Guy Boyd.

RATING: 5 out of 10 baby music classes

The Book of Henry

Year 10, Day 177 - 6/26/18 - Movie #2,973

BEFORE: Now that I've posted my reviews for "Ready Player One" and "Isle of Dogs", I'm all caught up - there are no more outstanding reviews for films that I saw on the big screen that need to be worked in.  But I'm thinking of seeing three more films in the theater this year - "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", "The Incredibles 2" and "Ant-Man and the Wasp".  I think I have a way to work them all in, that last one in fact could provide a neat little outro to get back to narrative stuff after my Summer Rock Concert documentary series.  Plus I think I've got a slot for "Jurassic World" a few days after July 4 (which means I should try to see it on July 2, if possible).  And I've got more Samuel L. Jackson films planned for September, so working in "The Incredibles 2" should be no problem.  I'm guessing any film released in November, like "Venom", could be out of luck - but hey, a movie geek's got to have his priorities.

Naomi Watts carries over from "Chuck", and this is perhaps the most recent film I added to my list JUST to fill up a DVD.  Those days are behind me, now that I can't dub films from cable to DVD any more, so going forward I'll have to rely on just Netflix, iTunes, On Demand and Academy screeners.

THE PLOT: With instructions from her genius sons' carefully crafted notebook, a single mother sets out to rescue a young girl from the hands of her abusive stepfather.

AFTER: This is a film about several things, one of them being a really smart kid who essentially is the adult in his family - his single mother plays first-person shooter video-games, drinks too much and has trouble being a disciplinarian.  If not for her waitressing job and ability to drive a car, she'd seem more like a child in this family.  Henry, meanwhile, runs the family's financial plans, invests in the stock market, and has a clear moral sense about what's right and what's wrong - so he's not really your typical 11-year-old.

Which is all well and good, until he gets sick and this family unit starts to fall apart.  What will happen to his mother and younger brother if he's no longer there to help them?  More importantly, who will look after the girl next door, since Henry seems to be the only one trying to point out that she's clearly the victim of some form of abuse?  To the film's benefit, we never see for sure what form this abuse takes, because then it would have to be depicted on camera, and that wouldn't be appropriate.  Our imaginations can fill in the gap here.

But this film, through the accidental avoidance of clarity on this point, has stumbled into something resembling the moral dilemma that we all sometimes face - at what point do we stick our necks out to help another person?  Or perhaps it's not accidental, because early in the film Henry is in a grocery store with his mother and brother, and they witness a woman in the aisles, being menaced or threatened by her own boyfriend.  The mother's argument is that the situation is none of their business, but Henry, the smart one, feels strongly that this is their business, this is in fact everyone's business, to speak out against oppression or violence or abuse whenever we see it.  These are the thoughts of a child, but again, a very smart child.  However, the mother has some wisdom when she points out that there are many ways that inserting themselves into this situation could make things much worse.  The boyfriend might back down temporarily, but then enact an even greater punishment on the woman later, in private.  Or he could become even more violent on the spot, and cause harm to the people who were only trying to help.

This is, of course, foreshadowing for the situation the neighbor girl is in later in the film.  Henry knows she's being abused, he's reported this to his school principal, but since the girl's stepfather is an upstanding member of the community AND the town's police commissioner, AND his brother is the county investigator for reports of child abuse, it seems that there's nothing that can be done.  There's a bit of a logical trap here, because to assume that there's only one way to defuse this situation is to basically give up ahead of time, but let's put that on hold for a minute.  Henry makes anonymous calls to Child Protection Agencies, but notices no change in the situation - meanwhile, the girl is becoming more withdrawn and her grades begin lagging.

We live in confusing times, our country is divided and yet at the same time, opinions about how to "fix" everything are all over social media.  People speaking from behind the cover of anonymity are free to weigh in on every popular issue, and this results in people being tried and convicted of being "wrong" in other's eyes, and this seems to be the worst mistake that one can make.  And often the punishments are more severe than the crime.  Remember the dentist who shot that lion in Africa?  He ended up losing his entire dental practice after being shamed on social media.  Remember that white woman who claimed black heritage?  She may never work again.  And now the second wave of the #metoo movement seems to be going after male celebrities who are guilty of being bad boyfriends in the past, which up until recently had been a forgivable crime, or at least one that didn't precipitate their ability to have an acting career.  Now, by no means am I saying that any of these people's original actions were correct in any way, but there are no written rules that say that their actions should cause them to be ostracized from society or that they should be tarred, feathered and run out of town.  The majority of these cases in the past year have been tried only in the court of public opinion, something that would have been impossible a decade ago.

Take the case of that Colorado baker, which went all the way to the Supreme Court - if you missed it, a baker refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, because of his religious beliefs and conservative stance against homosexuality.  He felt that by making the cake, he'd be demonstrating tacit approval of the couple's lifestyle, which he did not want to give.  And the couple felt that it wasn't a baker's place to make a moral judgment on his clients' lifestyles, and that he should be forced to make the cake and keep his opinions about gay marriage to himself.  This is a complex legal conundrum, because the gay couple has the right to get married and have a cake, but the baker also has religious freedom, and these beliefs are in conflict with each other.  Now, of course, there's a simple solution, the baker could just say, "I'm much too busy, please go to another bakery" and the couple can then just hire a more open-minded baker, but then we haven't resolved which rights are more important here.  The only way to enjoy freedom of speech (and thought) is to go on and let someone who's homophobic continue to be that way, even though it may be difficult and painful, because in the end, you can't mandate someone's private opinion, which includes their right to be "wrong", according to your personal standards.

However, that's not what happened, which was probably a bunch of hate speech from both directions, liberal and conservative - because we now live in a culture where everyone can speak their mind freely, especially online, and things get personal in about 10 seconds once anyone realizes there are other people who enjoy a different point of view on things.  And before long, we're back to "There he is!  GET HIM!" when we see someone that doesn't agree with us.  When did "Love thy neighbor" turn into "Love thy neighbor, but only if he shares the same moral and political views as you do."  It's easy to love the people who agree with you, but harder to love the people who disagree, and yet everyone so easily makes the distinction between them.  Now, maybe it's impossible to love bigots, homophobes and Neo-Nazis, but there's the challenge - if you hate them, aren't you in essence becoming a little bit like them?

Now we've got the latest conundrum, people who work in the Trump administration, which is responsible for dealing with illegal immigrants with a new "no tolerance" policy that separated children from their parents, are suddenly finding that they can't go out in public without some form of upheaval.  Restaurants have recently refused service to both Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders and also Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and this is really just the gay wedding cake conundrum in another form.  Does a restaurant have the right to refuse service to someone in the Trump administration, just because the owner or staff disagrees with their policies?  Does someone who works all day to trample the human rights of others have any right to complain when their right to a peaceful meal gets taken away?  Why would they want to eat at a restaurant that doesn't want to serve them, anyway?  Do regular people have the right to then support this restaurant more, or give it bad reviews on Yelp, because the staff took a stand?  And where does this all end?  (Hopefully not with a riot at the restaurant, or the closing of said restaurant, but these days anything is possible.)

My point here is that there were several ways to deal with an "unfavorable" person eating at a restaurant, and public shaming probably wasn't the best way - but since tensions are running high, nobody's really looking for reasonable solutions right now, everybody wants to make a fuss and talk louder than the opposition, in order to get their point across, and perhaps more importantly, get everyone else to agree that the opposition is "wrong".  That's so not going to happen, because now it seems like 50% of people will take up the opposing argument on any debate.  (Damn it, it's the white dress/blue dress thing all over again... or "Laurel/Yanny", whichever.)  Why couldn't the restaurant manager have spoken to the Secretary in private, mentioned calmly that for fear of causing a scene, their service was being politely declined?  Nope, there's nothing between zero and 60 mph any more, so let's get right on to breaking stuff.  Again, I don't know where we should draw the line any more, since more often than not the prevailing argument seems to be "This person said or did something I didn't like, so therefore in the future they have no right to hold down a job of any kind and should be publicly humiliated for good measure."

But let me bring this back to "The Book of Henry".  Since nobody seems to be able to help the girl next door, Henry leaves his mother explicit instructions on how to handle this situation, in the form of tape-recorded messages that will allow her to follow a step-by-step plan, purchase a weapon without a waiting period, take down the evil stepfather, and leave no clear evidence of this crime.  There's simply no in-between here, no middle ground between "leave well enough alone" and "here's how to go from single mother to experienced assassin".  And even Henry, even in the condition that he was in, should have realized that there's a HUGE gap here, and there should have been many things of more reasonable bent attempted to fix this situation.  There are a dozen ways that his mother could have slipped up in this endeavor, and then been on the hook for forgery, illegal gun purchasing, fraud, intention to commit murder, and many other charges which would have put her, and her custody of his brother, in jeopardy.

So what's really going on here?  Was Henry smart, but not wise in the ways of the world?  Did he just mean well, without taking all of the possible consequences of certain actions into account?  Should the plans he generated while he was sick have been given this much weight, or should they have been ignored outright?  Did he miss some really simple solutions to the problem (like, I don't know, the girl could have been given money to run away from home, that would have been one option. Or, if Henry witnessed the abuse from his bedroom window, why not capture it on video?) or was he guilty of being so sure of his moral beliefs that his plan went from zero to sixty, so to speak?

It's a complicated situation, and there are no clear answers perhaps.  Please note that the situation did resolve itself, but in a different way - which almost felt like a narrative cheat.  Henry did manage to bring about some good and improve his neighbor's situation, but it just didn't play out in the way that he intended - therefore I can't tell if he should be congratulated or not.  My point, ultimately, is that nobody has the right to act as judge, jury and executioner for another person, based on just the suspicion of wrong-doing, meanwhile subverting their rights and due process.  And this should be the case both on the internet and in the real world.

NITPICK POINT: I know that some girls mature faster than boys, but this girl just did not look like she belonged in elementary school, she looked much too old to be a sixth-grader.  Was she held back a grade three times?  Henry looked 11, sure, but you could see in the talent show scene she was definitely older. (IMDB says she was born in 2002, so probably 14 at the time of filming.)

NITPICK POINT #2: The film shows that Henry has created all of these "Rube Goldberg"-type devices, with the intention of showing how smart he is, that he has skills for inventing things.  But if you're familiar with the work of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, you know that his inventions weren't designed to work in the real world, but instead to be funny cartoons, and often they would depict a very simple action (like lighting a cigarette) being performed by the most complex, ridiculous devices possible.  In other words, a smart person wouldn't create a device to do something in 40 complicated steps when it could be performed more simply and efficiently in another way.  So this was a bad use of these devices, if Henry liked them that would mean he had a flair for the ridiculous, and that's out of character for him.

Also starring Jaeden Lieberher (last seen in "Midnight Special"), Jacob Tremblay (last seen in "Room"), Sarah Silverman (last seen in "The Bachelor"), Dean Norris (last seen in "Gattaca"), Lee Pace (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Maddie Ziegler, Tonya Pinkins, Bobby Moynihan (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), Geraldine Hughes, Jackson Nicoll (last seen in "Bad Grandpa"), Joel Marsh Garland, Wass Stevens (also carrying over from "Chuck").

RATING: 4 out of 10 children's books

Chuck

Year 10, Day 176 - 6/25/18 - Movie #2,972

BEFORE: This is three in a row for Liev Schreiber, and this film not only co-stars his ex-wife (or ex-fiancée, the web is a little unclear over whether they ever tied the knot...) Naomi Watts, but she's going to be appearing in the next few films. 

THE PLOT: A drama inspired by the life of heavyweight boxer Chuck Wepner, who had a once-in-a-lifetime bout with Muhammad Ali that would inspire the film "Rocky". 

AFTER: There's a famous saying about how the unexplored life isn't worth living, but I think that we've got to start drawing the line somewhere.  Chuck Wepner's career was supposedly the inspiration for the original "Rocky" film, so why isn't that enough?  Really, it was just a springboard, and Stallone fashioned that story into Hollywood's ultimate boxing underdog story, with a tweak here and there, no doubt - then he took it to the extreme in Rocky's II, III, IV and V, and so on.  Chuck Wepner never fought a Soviet super-boxer, though apparently he did box against a bear.  So I guess then he inspired the movie "Semi-Pro", too?

The problem seems to be that movies about the best boxers have already been made - like "Ali", and "The Hurricane", "Cinderella Man" and "Bleed for This".  Not to mention "Raging Bull" and "The Fighter", then all the ones made about fictional boxers, like "Requiem for a Heavyweight", clips of that one are shown in this film, as it's Chuck's favorite movie.  I think I've reached burn-out on the boxing theme, like maybe if some channel runs "Hands of Stone" I'll take a run at it, but for the most part, I think I'm done with it.

"Chuck" takes a different sort of approach, since most boxing films would end on a high note, when the central figure had his greatest success, or at least had a shot at the title, even if he didn't win.  But "Chuck" gets there very early, about 1/3 of the way through the film, and then there's a long slow slide down the other end, after Chuck had his shot against Muhammad Ali.  Turns out they were just looking for a white opponent for Ali to fight, because think of the optics of that fight in 1975, and how it benefited the civil rights movement for Ali to come out on top, beating another black opponent might have seemed counter-productive.

So, really, Wepner had no shot - just like in the movie "Goon", he was more well-known for lasting a long time, or "going the distance", despite being injured.  That's how he got the nickname "The Bayonne Bleeder", one he apparently hated.  Even when he was the 8th ranked boxer in the world, he still kept his job as a New Jersey liquor distributor, which was probably a solid idea.  As long as his buddy could cover his route on fight night, that is.

Chuck's problems really began once he found out that Stallone had been inspired by his story when writing "Rocky".  That way Chuck took a win for the film, like the Best Picture Oscar, as a personal victory.  And that was probably enough in the 1970's to get a guy laid, or at least get him a few free drinks.  And then that disco-party lifestyle caught up with him once drugs and infidelity entered the mix, his wife kicked him out and eventually he ended up in jail.

What comes around goes around, though - and after making contact with Stallone and then blowing an audition for a part in "Rocky II", Wepner encountered Sly one more time, when Stallone was making the prison movie "Lock Up", and shot on location in the same jail where Wepner was serving his time.  But by then, Wepner was so over Stallone.  (Hey, aren't we all?)

So in the end it's a toss-up - it's a little refreshing that a movie chose not to beef up a boxer's credentials, turn him into the greatest thing since sliced bread so that the audience would cheer for him, but at the same time, if Wepner wasn't all that great of a fighter, why choose to make a movie about his life?  He just seems like a normal guy who came close to succeeding at something, then made a few mistakes while thinking he was famous.  I guess that's kind of the point?

It was nice to see a restaurant that I recognized in the scene where Wepner first met Stallone - it's not listed in the shooting locations on the IMDB, but that's Bamonte's, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  I've eaten there several times, everyone Italian (or married to an Italian) in Brooklyn probably knows it.  The sign on the window was quite prominent, and it's still got that crushed red velvet-like interior, which probably hasn't been changed since the 1970's.  Perfect setting, because eating there sort of is like stepping back in time to the "Godfather" days.  I bet if a car backfires outside, half the diners still duck under the tables.

Also starring Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "On the Road"), Naomi Watts (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Ron Perlman (last heard in "The Spiderwick Chronicles"), Jim Gaffigan (last seen in "Hot Pursuit"), Michael Rapaport (last seen in "Sully"), Pooch Hall, Jason Jones (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Morgan Spector, William Hill, Kelvin Hale, Wass Stevens, Sadie Sink, Melo Ludwig, Angel Kolev, Paul Mecurio, Megan Sikora, Catherine Corcoran, with archive footage of Anthony Quinn (last seen in "Lust for Life"), Julie Harris (last seen in "Harper"), Telly Savalas.

RATING: 5 out of 10 disco dancers

Isle of Dogs

Year 10, Day 175 - 6/24/18 - Movie #2,971 - VIEWED ON 5/2/18          

BEFORE: I made a special effort to get out to the movie theater to see this one in early May, because I believed that it wouldn't be in release for much longer.  I'd kept an eye on the ticket availability through the IMDB, and as of May 1, there were no screenings scheduled past May 3, so I believed it was my last chance, and if I missed it, I'd have to wait for the next Academy screener season.  But since I tend to love Wes Anderson films, I didn't want to let that happen, so I texted my old boss and ex-co-worker to arrange a night out, because it seemed like the kind of film that we would all have gone to see together, back when we worked together, representing stop-motion animators.

I went with just my former co-worker, Gina, because my boss had another commitment, but it was still good to see her and catch up over sandwiches after.  I invited my wife to come along too, but considering how much she loves dogs, I don't know if she could take a film where dogs are being abandoned by their owners, even though that story is in animated form here, and no real dogs are being harmed.

It turns out that the film stayed in theaters at least another week, so I could have (should have) maybe gone out to see "Avengers: Infinity War" on May 2, and held off on this one for another week.  But too late now, the die is/was cast.  And though I had no way to link to this back in early May, I knew I had some movies coming up with Liev Schreiber, the voice of one of the dogs, in them, so I could just sit on the review for a few weeks, and then a way to link to it would present itself naturally.  So, if I've done this right, then Liev Schreiber carries over from "Goon: Last of the Enforcers" on Netflix, and I'm back on track.

THE PLOT: Set in Japan of the near future, a boy's odyssey in search of his lost dog.

AFTER: This film is part of that trend where the natural assumption is that humanity's bad record on the environment will just continue to get worse, and the one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that there will be trash everywhere.  I think this may have started with "Wall-E" but it really picked up steam recently with "Blade Runner 2049" and then "Ready Player One".

I think this movie works best if you have a fascination with, or a least a familiarity with Wes Anderson's other movies.  This felt a bit like if "The Darjeeling Limited" and "The Life Acquatic" got married and had a baby, and that baby grew up, moved to Japan and started championing animal rights.  Does that make sense?  God, this is just so quirky and so adorable, this film has about three times the "heart" of most average movies, and it just hits you right where you live, assuming you like dogs - and come on, who doesn't like dogs?  Even though I'm more of a cat person, most dogs still love me, so I must be doing something right.

They didn't go crazy with the animation on the dogs, most of the time they're deadpan and stiff, but I thought that added to the comic timing.  When they move, or attack, they REALLY move and attack, so that stands out more.  Probably a lot of the standing still resulted from the laborious stop-motion process, but it's just as easy to think that the deadpan lack of movement was a stylistic choice.

This is set in a world where dogs talk, and they happen to talk in English, which makes things easier on the audience, and they sound like famous actors, which also helps.  Whatever personality people like Bill Murray and Jeff Goldblum have in their voices would therefore, theoretically transfer over to the personalities of their dog characters.  Meanwhile, the Japanese people speak in Japanese, and sometimes the film offers subtitles and sometimes the film offers translations, but other times it does not, but in those times we can probably infer the meaning of what's being said, so it all works out.

In this near-future society, both trash and disease are growing problems, and the dogs are blamed for spreading both "Dog Flu" and "Snout Fever", so the drastic solution is to exile the dogs to the Japanese island that also holds most of the country's trash.  For various reasons, this is easier than curing the diseases, however probably more expensive in the long run - but really, the government plan is the result of one man (or one family's) hatred of dogs.  That man happens to be the mayor of Megasaki City, and the first dog symbolically sent in to exile is Spots, the dog charged with taking care of the mayor's nephew, Atari.  Atari had been in a train accident years before, which killed his parents, and place him in his uncle's care, and the uncle chose to put most of the burden of watching him on Spots.

Atari defies the conventions of society and flies a small plane to Trash Island, to search for Spots.  After the plane crashes, he's tended to by a pack of wild dogs (four former pets and one long-time stray) who help him with the plan to search the island for Spots.  (Admittedly, it's a little unclear how the dogs and boy form and agree on the plan, since they don't seem to speak each other's language.)  But since four of the five dogs understand the unspoken master/assistant agreement between humans and canines, the majority tends to rule.

Yeah, that's the thing about these dogs in a Wes Anderson movie, they question themselves, spread strange rumors, and debate minute details about society and the meaning of life, just like the characters in a film like "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "Moonrise Kingdom" would.  And all true dog lovers already do this, they give their dog voices, or imagine what they would sound like if they could talk.  Right?  I mean, my wife and I do that for our cats, so I just assume that dog lovers do the same thing.

There's a scientist who's convinced that he can cure both snout fever and the dog flu, if only he had a few more months.  But of course the corrupt mayor will never give him that chance.  There was a real danger of verging into some kind of Trump analogy here, with the government being both ineffectual AND having some kind of secret agenda, but considering how long it takes to make a stop-motion film, this film simply HAD to be created before Trump was elected.  Same with the high-school girl who's convinced that a conspiracy is going on, and the Mayor is corrupt - it's very easy to see a reflection of the anti-gun protests going on at the high-school level right now, but it's got to be a coincidence, there's just no way the film could have directly reflected that.

As Atari and the five dogs cross the island, they're separated into two groups, and Atari journeys with Chief, the former stray dog who now is (slowly) learning how to bond with a human for the first time.  When Atari throws a stick for him to fetch, he refuses to do so at first, and then when he reluctantly agrees to fetch the stick, it's only after a lengthy discussion about his long dissociation from society, his apprehension about taking a command from a master, and a definite objection to any possible interpretation that fetching the stick will put him into a continual subservient role.  Just so we're all on the same page, you know, about what it means for this very verbose dog to fetch a stick.  Classic.

I've got a NITPICK POINT about Atari finding his dog's cage, and opening it with his key, but I don't want to give away any spoilers here.  I just don't think the key would have worked, based on other information we get later, but maybe, just maybe, the dogs are all smarter than we think and pulled a switch of their own, but I sort of doubt it.  Maybe he had some kind of master key or skeleton key, but again, this also seems unlikely.

And yet, after everything else, this film is very, very Japanese.  The sushi-making sequence (credited to someone I happen to know from my time working in the stop-motion world) is a thing of beauty, and highlights why if Wes Anderson could open some kind of water-theme park / sushi restaurant / pet adoption center in the real world, it would really be the most eclectic, adorable thing ever, and I would want to go to there.  And Wes Anderson would oversee the entire operation from his personal treehouse, which somehow has an ENIAC computer in it.  I don't know if this is how he really lives, but if he did, I wouldn't be all that surprised.

Also starring the voices of Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Drive"), Edward Norton (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Bill Murray (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Bob Balaban (last seen in "Mascots"), Koyu Rankin, Kunichi Nomura, Greta Gerwig (last seen in "Jackie"), Frances McDormand (last seen in "North Country"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "Youth"), F. Murray Abraham (last seen in "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), Tilda Swinton (last seen in "War Machine"), Yoko Ono, Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds"), Courtney B. Vance (last seen in "Terminator Genisys"), Akira Ito, Ken Watanabe (also last seen in "Godzilla"), Frank Wood, Kara Hayward (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Mari Natsuki, Akira Takayama, and vocal cameos from Roman Coppola, Anjelica Huston (last seen in "The Postman Always Rings Twice")

RATING: 7 out of 10 sumo wrestlers