BEFORE: Sure, I could have gone right on ahead to "Fantastic Beasts" sequel, with Katharine Waterston carrying over from "Alien: Covenant", but I'd rather squeeze in another film if I can, that's just going to make me land on the "right" film for Movie #3,200. So instead Carmen Ejogo carries over from "Alien: Covenant", and she'll be here tomorrow too. Her three-chain film comes at the same time as I'm trying to finish Season 3 of "True Detective", which she is also in, so it's a nice bit of synchronicity between my movie viewing and my TV viewing. 2 episodes to go, I should be able to watch them over the coming weekend.
I got this to go on a DVD with the movie about Miles Davis, and I couldn't find a way to link to this from the "Before..." trilogy I watched in February, so it's a bit of clean-up work tonight - get it off the list, everything must go. It's just over 90 minutes so this won't slow me down in any way.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Miles Ahead" (Movie #2,738)
THE PLOT: A re-imagining of jazz legend Chet Baker's musical comeback in the late 60's.
AFTER: Well, this was a real chore to watch - not because the film is terrible, but because the DVD just wouldn't PLAY in my 6-disc changer. I tried cleaning the disc, I tried putting it in a different slot in the machine, the menu would come up, but every time I tried to PLAY the movie, the machine would freeze up, like it couldn't read the movie on the disc. Well, it's a homemade DVD, I suppose I should expect this every now and again, except it just doesn't happen often at all. I even tried playing the movie BEFORE it on the disc, hoping that instead of going back to the main menu, it would go right into the 2nd film. Nope, it got stuck there too. Finally I had to move it to another DVD player just to stand a chance of watching it - must have been some kind of random error on the disc, or a stubborn speck of dust, who knows.
It's nice to know that if I couldn't watch the film on DVD, there's always iTunes, though I'd hate to pay $3.99 to watch a film I already have on disc, but at least the chain could still continue. I could have just removed it from the list, and the chain would have neatly sealed itself up without it, with Carmen Ejogo in three films in a row that wouldn't have been a big deal, except it would have thrown my count off by one. Oh, well, you can't have everything.
But let me get to the film - how is this a "re-imagining" of Chet Baker's story? What does that mean, that none of this is true? Or that the filmmakers took a bunch of liberties or filled in a lot of gaps about his story? Now I have to go look him up on Wikipedia to see how much of this film's plot is listed in his biography. What a chore, especially when I don't really care about jazz music. And boy, do I hate "semi-factual" movies - either get it right, or don't do it at all.
It's notable that there's no mention of Chet Baker being married on his Wiki page - and this film makes a point of showing him falling in love with the actress PLAYING his wife in a movie about him, which he is also starring in. Ugh, my head hurts now, with Ethan Hawke starring in a film playing Chet Baker starring in a film where he plays Chet Baker. You screenwriters think you're so damned clever, don't you? And the same actress plays his wife in the flashbacks and also the actress playing her in the movie, right? Wait, did David Lynch direct this? But it's a funny coincidence that yesterday in "Alien: Covenant", Michael Fassbender played two roles, the androids Walter and David, and now here we have Carmen Egojo playing both Jane and Elaine, and people remark that Chet's girlfriend looks a lot like his ex-wife...
I feel like calling a Mulligan on this one, though, just because I don't give a lick about jazz, and I don't know enough about Chet Baker to say whether this is an accurate portrayal of the man or the music. I certainly don't have the strength to raise any NITPICK POINTS tonight, so I think I'm just going to say this is "not my thing" and move on. OK, there's nothing here that offends me, like with "Spring Breakers", but nothing here really thrills me either. I'm just numb to it. It's really just about Chet Baker struggling to play trumpet again after he gets a few of his teeth knocked out by some thugs, presumably because he owed somebody some money for drugs.
So he has to take on odd jobs until he can get his mouth back in shape to play again - meanwhile his parole officer has to keep checking in on him to make sure he stays clean, or at least on the methadone, and isn't hanging out with the wrong people. Meanwhile, his goal is to get back to where he can play a set at New York City's famous Birdland club - which, by the way, was usually full of exactly the type of people he wasn't supposed to be hanging out with.
Amazingly, I think the Birdland club is still there in Manhattan. Well, not THERE exactly, because it was in a different location up until 1965, and then re-opened in 1986 in Harlem and then in 1996 moved to West 44th St., but it still exists in some form. Now it's close to 50 years in operation, that's no small feat.
Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Before Midnight"), Callum Keith Rennie (last seen in "Goon: Last of the Enforcers"), Stephen McHattie (last seen in "Mother!"), Janet-Laine Green, Tony Nappo (last seen in "Murder at 1600"), Kevin Hanchard, Dan Lett, Katie Boland, Barbara Eve Harris, Eugene Clark.
RATING: 4 out of 10 bowling pins
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