BEFORE: Well, I ran out of Marvel movies already, so that's the end of March Marvel Madness. But "Avengers: Endgame" is just 35 days away, or just 39 movies if I stick to my schedule - because maybe I won't get to see it on Opening Day, if it's too crowded. I might have to wait until the following Monday - Monday's a great day to go to the movies, theoretically it might be a little less crowded (though the IMAX theater showing "Captain Marvel" was pretty packed on the first Monday). All I can do is set what I think is the best plan.
Speaking of that, I was fooling around with my schedule a little bit, and looking at the release dates for "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", so I marked all my films that are one or two links away from that film, and one of those happened to be my lead-in movie to this year's documentary chain, which I'd planned to put in July, because the other end links to "Spider-Man: Far From Home". When I counted the days, though, I realized that my documentary chain fits almost perfectly BETWEEN "Dark Phoenix" and the new "Spider-Man" film, so now I'm moving it up from July to June. What were the odds of that chain fitting right where I needed it to go? (I might need to make a quick adjustment or two, but this is still an amazing find. And if the chain runs a couple days long, that's still OK, I can just wait on the new "Spider-Man" film for a couple of days.)
Now, all I really need is to find a chain that will run between "Avengers: Endgame" (opening April 26, but I may watch on April 29) and "Dark Phoenix" (opening June 7, but I may not watch until June 10) and I'll then have a continuous linked chain between January 1 and mid-July. That's insane. But, since I've developed new, better techniques for finding the links, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. Really, I need a change that's between 39 and 42 movies long that connects to "Avengers" on one end (that's easy, since that film has an enormous cast) and the "X-Men" film on the other (a little tougher, still a big cast but the actors are more obscure) and ideally there should be a nod to Mother's Day somewhere in the middle.
If you think about it, there should be thousands of combinations of movies that will fulfill those goals, my problem essentially then becomes narrowing the focus of all the possible combinations to find the chain that works for me, contains mostly films on my watchlist, aka films on my radar that I WANT to see or have heard good things about, and then if necessary, finding the mortar to bring those bricks together. I'm going to get right on this later today.
In the meantime, Michelle Williams carries over from "Venom", to a film from 2017 that was Oscar-nominated and ended up getting a lot of attention for who did NOT appear in the film.
THE PLOT: The story of the kidnapping of 16-year-old John Paul Getty III and the desperate attempt by his devoted mother to convince his billionaire grandfather to pay the ransom.
AFTER: Yes, this is the film that became famous for firing Kevin Spacey, after his scandal broke back in 2017, and then any film or TV show that was made with him in it was tainted by scandal, so this film chose to fight back against the publicity nightmare by re-casting his part with Christopher Plummer. But that meant some re-shoots were needed, and when they brought back Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams for those, they paid Wahlberg much, much more than Williams, so that ticked off ANOTHER scandal, concerning the lack of equal pay in Hollywood for women. Another publicity nightmare, so it's really a wonder that any film got completed and managed to garner some award nominations, and the Oscar win for Plummer. (Wahlberg earned $1.5 million for the re-shoots, while Michelle Williams earned just $1,000 - but Wahlberg donated his re-shoot salary to the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund.)
This story got very muddled here by excessive jumping around in time - the temptation is to kick off the story with the "splash page", the most exciting bit, which is the kidnapping of the 16-year-old John Paul Getty III in 1973. But then the movie flashes back to an earlier time, let's say 1964, when the billionaire first contacts his son after a long time of not being in contact, to show us the first meeting between the billionaire and his grandson. Then the time period moves up to 1971, when the boy's father was addicted to drugs, and spending time in an opium den, the crackhouse of that time. His mother demands that her son be put on a plane and flown back to her, and the divorce proceedings move forward. Then we're back to 1973 when the boy is being held hostage. But there's simply no reason why the film couldn't have started in 1964 and moved forward in the proper order. A casual viewer could easily get confused here, if they're not paying attention then the boy is kidnapped, then he's suddenly younger and meets his grandfather, then he flies home to his mother, then he's kidnapped again - there's too much potential for cognitive error here if the viewer can't piece the timeline together properly.
I've come to find out that the film also mucked about with the time stream when it came to the depiction of events - like at the end of the film two key events appear to happen simultaneously, but in reality they took place three years apart. No spoilers here, so I won't mention what those two events are, but trust me, they're major. They also set the divorce of J. Paul Getty Jr. in 1971, when it really occurred in 1964 (the same year of the idyllic family breakfast scene shown near the start), and he remarried in 1971, but there's zero mention here of his second wife - no room for her in this fictionalized version of the story, I guess.
So, if I try to look past all the anachronisms, and all the controversy about casting Spacey, replacing Spacey, and underpaying women, is there a decent movie to be found here? Eh, I'm not sure. The main point to be made seems to be that J. Paul Getty was a right bastard, the kind of guy who wouldn't pay a ransom to get his grandson back. Well, to be fair, he did have other grandchildren, and if you pay one kidnapper, you end up encouraging others, and then you have to pay THOSE kidnappers, and so on. Like, where does that end? And why does a man struggle to control most of the world's oil supply and make an insane amount of money, just to GIVE IT AWAY to a bunch of felons? Eff that, am I right? Could J. Paul Getty's reasoning be sound here, or is he just a cheapskate?
I'm being somewhat facetious here, because if someone kidnaps a family member, OF COURSE you pay the ransom, that's what any decent human would do if they could, only the police also tell people (at least in movies) NOT to pay ransom money, because then there's no incentive for kidnappers to release your family member, or even to keep them alive, if they're not dead already, that is. So yeah, it's a bit of a moral quandary, whether to pay or not. But since it's such a hard, definite "HELL, NO" from Getty then we really learn all we need to know about him, right? So where's the suspense here?
Who knew that Michelle Williams, playing Gail Harris, would look so much like BARBARA Harris (star of the 1970's version of "Freaky Friday") when you give her a 1970's hair cut? I sure didn't.
Also starring Christopher Plummer (last seen in "Dolores Claiborne"), Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Romain Duris (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Timothy Hutton (last seen in "Everybody's All-American"), Charlie Plummer (last seen in "The Dinner"), Charlie Shotwell, Andrew Buchan (last seen in "Nowhere Boy"), Marco Leonardi (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico"), Giuseppe Bonifati, Nicolas Vaporidis, Ghassan Massoud (last seen in "Exodus: Gods and Kings"), Stacy Martin (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Kit Cranston, Maya Kelly, Clive Wood, Jonathan Aris (last seen in "Race").
RATING: 5 out of 10 ski masks
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