BEFORE: Well, I did test out some names, and I found some actors who have appeared more times in my countdown than Liam Neeson, with 44 appearances. Research is in the early stages, and it takes me a while to test out names because I have to SUBTRACT each actor's producing or directing credits (thanks so much for lumping everything together, IMDB...) and also times they were "thanked" at the end of films they weren't in. Then I have to check their appearances as "SELF" in documentaries, because those DON'T pop up in an IMDB advanced search. (again, thanks for nothing, IMDB programmers...).
I only tested out about 35 names, because this process is so time-consuming. But so far I've learned that ahead of Liam Neeson's 44 appearances in my countdown are Matt Damon with 45 films, Bruce Willis with 47, and Samuel L. Jackson with 49. It wouldn't surprise me if those numbers hold up and SLJ turns out to be the overall leader in the end, because he's been around for a long time, and he's turned up A LOT in the last few years, what with all the Marvel movies, and he's been very busy in other franchise films too. The highest woman on my list (so far) is Meryl Streep with 40 appearances, and the highest character actor is Steve Buscemi with 37, beating out both J.K. Simmons and Richard Jenkins. If I can land on a definitive Top 10 then I'll publish it, but it's also constantly in flux - James Franco will be adding five films to his total this week, for example, and today he carries over from "Flyboys". This is his 6th 2019 appearance tonight, and three more are on the way, so he should finish the year with 9 appearances at least, could be more.
Now, since this is my last film for March, here are my monthly stats on viewing formats:
10 Movies watched on Cable (saved to DVD): 27 Dresses, Mona Lisa Smile, Eat Pray Love, Nights in Rodanthe, Paris Can Wait, Streets of Fire, All the Money in the World, Lucky Break, Shaun the Sheep Movie, The Commuter
6 Movies watched on Cable (not saved): Under the Tuscan Sun, The Great Wall, Early Man, Super Troopers 2, Flyboys, 127 Hours
5 Watched on Netflix: I Am Michael, What Happened to Monday, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Chappaquidick, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
2 Watched on iTunes: Jenny's Wedding, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
3 Watched on Academy screeners: The Hero, Vox Lux, At Eternity's Gate
2 Watched in Theaters: Aquaman, Captain Marvel
1 Watched on Purchased DVD: Venom
29 Total films for March (Yeah, I took two days off, I deserved it...)
Big deal, right? Only if I compare the number of movies watched on cable (saved plus unsaved) each month, I'm noticing a trend - in January it was 20, in February it was 18, and this month it was 16. Hmmm, a quick look at April and May suggests that it may drop even lower, to about 12. So maybe I am getting to a point where premium cable movies are less important. Or maybe I'm just using so much "mortar" (films on Netflix and Academy screeners) between the "bricks" (films I've already recorded off of cable) that it's skewing the results. I'm not going to cut the cord just yet, but the mathematical trend is suggesting that the need is lessening, so perhaps in the future I'll need to make a decision about this.
THE PLOT: An adventurous mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures to survive.
AFTER: Sometimes I just know it's going to be one of "those" weeks here at the Movie Year. Like on one end of the spectrum I had this nice animated film about a flock of sheep going to the city to find a lost farmer, but since then there's been a lot of violence and bloodshed. OK, so maybe in "Super Troopers 2" people only got hurt in comic fashion, but apart from that, there were a lot of people getting shot in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", fighter pilots getting killed in "Flyboys", and a bunch of college students accidentally killing themselves in "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil". Several people got shot or died on a train in "The Commuter", plus there was that very infamous drowning in "Chappaquiddick". Notably, there was also a man with no arms and legs in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", and last night in "Flyboys" a pilot crashed his plane and couldn't pull his hand out from under it, so that hand had to go. All of this, and still I wasn't really prepared for "127 Hours" - where you probably already know what happens, unless you've also been trapped under a rock for a long period of time.
This is why I put off watching this film for so very long - I don't handle gore well in films, especially if it's very realistic. Cartoon violence I can take, of course, but the more real it seems, the more it turns my stomach - and so this film was very difficult for me to watch. I can't watch those surgery shows on TV, either, or even videos where people pop a pimple or a cyst or something, though that's trendy these days for some weird reason. Oddly, I'm fine during minor surgery on my own body, like I've had a root canal, two ingrown toenails removed and got stitched up after a head injury, and I was totally calm the whole time, just give me some novocaine, do what you have to do and don't make me watch.
Of course, this is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, whose arm got trapped under a rock in a canyon, forcing him to survive alone with little food or water while he struggled to free himself, one way or the other. Calling for help didn't work, and for some reason he didn't have a cell phone and had not told anyone exactly where he was going. "Oops". Once he knew that help was not on the way, and that moving the rock was not possible, he had a limited amount of time to act, before he died from boredom. I don't think I could go one day with television or a movie, but for the younger kids, just imagine 5 days without Candy Crush or even Sudoku...
SO, what have we learned this week? How about never get on a train with Liam Neeson, or for that matter, never get in a vehicle with a Kennedy. More importantly, never go camping in hillbilly country, and never go rock-climbing, or mountain climbing, or free climbing, or canyoneering. None of that, no thank you, don't do it. I mean, if you have to do it, go with friends or at least tell people where you're going or have a working cell phone, but I think it's safer to just not go at all. It's funny, when we were in Aruba we went on one of those cave tours, and I thought maybe I could handle it, but once we got inside the first cave and they closed the door, suddenly I just wanted to be anywhere else, preferably outside. So when a woman in back said she wanted to leave, I leapt at the chance to escort her down the mountain path, you know, just to make sure she made it back to the visitor's center OK.
I know that cave has been there for thousands, if not millions of years, and the chances against it collapsing on the very day I'm there are astronomically huge, but why chance it? Especially when my lizard brain is telling me to stay out of tight spaces, plus nobody else on the tour wants to see a grown man reduced to an emotional wreck just because he feels the walls closing in. I didn't care what the optics were of me leaving the tour, because that still looked better than crying or screaming in front of other adults. Instead I had a Coke at a picnic table and thought about how I'd made the right move, especially if the cave DID collapse that day - or if not, and the tour group made it back safely, how they'd have me to thank for that.
But hey, "127 Hours" proves me right. Franco's character, during one of his more lucid moments in the canyon, imagines how this rock fell from space millions of years ago, and had no purpose until HE came along, and his weight somehow pushed it into the canyon, where it could crush his arm. And everything he did, every choice he made in his life, was something that pushed him toward his own fateful meeting with that rock. That's a staggering thought, and it's all the more reason why nobody should ever go rock-climbing or canyoneering or whatever - your destiny could be in that canyon, so you should avoid meeting up with your destiny for as long as possible, right?
I suppose I should be grateful, because watching Franco's character performing his own amputation was so stomach-turning for me that I had no desire to eat dessert or a late-night snack, and I've recently given those up - not for Lent, that's a bunch of hooey. But I went to the doctor's almost a week ago for an annual physical, and was told (again) that I need to lose some weight. Usually I just laugh this sort of thing off, or try to ignore it, but after two years of BBQ-themed vacations, it seems my weight has gotten out of hand. So I've been fasting the last few days, again not in a religious way, but something called "intermittent fasting", where I can eat for an 8-hour period, and then not during the following 16 hours. Basically it just means no breakfast and no dessert, which I think can fit right into my schedule since I usually sleep through breakfast anyway - so skipping dessert is the only tough part. The goal is to maximize the time that my body is drawing energy from stored calories rather than ones I just ate, because at some point after a few hours without food, that switches over. And 16 hours isn't that much time, especially if I'm asleep for 8 of those hours - so really, the goal is to lose weight while I sleep, and if I wake up hungry, well, it's just a couple hours until lunch, isn't it? I don't even have to do it every day, like weekdays only would work, though it could work faster if I also do it on the weekends, and choose slightly more sensible meals than usual. I've been at this for 5 days now, and already my jeans are a little looser. I even went almost 24 hours without food last week, nothing between Thursday's lunch and Friday's lunch, just to prove I could. 16 or 24 hours without food isn't going to kill me, it would probably take 5 or 6 days, so really, it's a mental game.
I think they took a great risk in turning Ralston's story into a movie - because these days, you never know what the next viral craze is going to be, stupid things like planking or the mannequin challenge or trying to drink a whole gallon of milk (which is impossible, like you're not even supposed to drink a whole gallon of WATER at one time, you can overdose even on that). God forbid the next big internet challenge becomes people getting themselves stuck in very tight spaces and then having to cut off a body part to get out. Those crazy millennials with those stupid extended earlobe things, they're all about the body modifications, right? Why not really challenge yourself and hack off a limb, you stupid twits? I internet-dare you. Because the rock-climbing addiction just gets worse and worse as these thrill-seekers keep chasing bigger highs, and then where does it end? With them trying to climb Mount Everest or K2 and losing a limb or two to frostbite, anyway, so why not just stay home, hack off a limb there and save some money and time?
The film ends with an update on the real Aron Ralston, who apparently thought that a grappling hook hand would be a better replacement than one that mimics a real hand - and he continued to go mountain-climbing, so the only conclusion I can draw is that he learned nothing from his bad experience. He also got married and had a kid, so my best to that young kid who will be raised by his mother when Daddy climbs one mountain too many... Sorry, but I call them the way I see them.
NITPICK POINT: I'm no expert on rock climbing, or rescue operations or even medical procedures, but it seems to me that if you had to amputate an arm, that would best be done at a joint like the elbow, no? The place where he cuts into his arm makes no sense, like what was his plan, to saw through his arm bone with his dull multi-tool? Am I crazy? You go for the joint, right? Then there wouldn't have been the need to break the arm bone first. But I guess if you're dumb enough to go rock-climbing, you're also dumb enough to not know the best place to cut off your arm.
I think I prefer to take this film as a metaphor for something, only I'm not sure what. But I could see this film being used by therapists when their patients are in a tough spot - for one thing, no matter how bad you're feeling about your life, at least you're not stuck in the bottom of a canyon with a giant rock on your arm - in other words, no matter how bad things are, they could always be worse. And maybe if you're in a bad situation like a terrible job, or a relationship you want to get out of, or bad living conditions, well, that's your "canyon". And maybe there's a person or a thing that's giving you trouble, and that's your "rock". You've got to do whatever it takes to get out from under your rock and then out of that canyon, even if it means leaving a piece of yourself behind.
Thankfully, in the grand scheme of things, it only a very small percentage of people who find that their metaphorical canyon and rock are a real, genuine canyon and rock. My heart goes out to those people, but they should have heeded my advice - never go rock climbing.
Also starring Kate Mara (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), Amber Tamblyn (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Clemence Poesy (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Kate Burton (last seen in "2 Days in New York"), Treat Williams (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Pieter Jan Brugge, Rebecca C. Olson with a cameo from the real Aron Ralston.
RATING: 4 out of 10 carabiners
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