BEFORE: OK, a couple more last-minute additions to the chain today, which is just really going to help me land something on the right day in July. But I promise that now that I've flipped some of my chain around and moved "Dark Phoenix" to October, I'm going to stop messing with it. (OK, probably not.). I really should be focusing on filling in the two gaps left in 2019, the one from mid-July to October 1 and the one from October 31 to the end of the year. But maybe it's a bit too soon to do that, maybe I have to have faith that I'll be able to fill those empty spaces when I get a bit closer.
I just figured out how to get Hulu through our Playstation, which is how I also watch Netflix - this prompted me to take a spin through Hulu's line-up of films, and I found a bunch of films there that had scrolled off of Netflix, some of them are docs I was planning to watch in June/July, so now I don't have to rent those from iTunes, which will save me some money. But there's another 20 or 30 films on Hulu that seemed interesting, so I added them to my watchlist there. I haven't gone through those cast lists yet, because that's a lot of work, I don't have time right now and I don't want to distract myself from clearing my Netflix list, which the current chain is helping with. I've finally got that list down close to 100 items, and I don't want to stop that progress now.
But eventually, I'll have to buckle down and go through those casts, because that COULD help me fill those two gaps and complete the chain this year, I'll never know if that could help if I don't start doing the research. More later.
Vera Farmiga carries over from "The Front Runner", and so does one other actor.
THE PLOT: A radio journalist and his technician get in over their heads when they hatch a scheme to fake their own kidnapping during a rebel uprising in South America and hide out in New York instead.
AFTER: This is an entire film that riffs off the concept of "fake news" - when a reporter's technician accidentally throws away their passports and they can't get to Ecuador to report on the news there, they decide to double down and phone in their reports from an apartment across the street from the radio station, with the help of some sound effects. Which leads to a couple of questions, like "Are radio reporters still a thing?" and "If so, then why don't all radio reporters just do this?" Oh, right, ethics. And then a variation on the questions about reporters from yesterday's film, where the Miami Herald and Washington Post were covering the same story - why do we need so MANY reporters, why can't each newspaper or radio station just get their news from the same reporter, and just repeat it? Why do we need local reporters in each market? I don't know, but I think it's got something to do with the Constitution.
(We should have superstar reporters, like we have superstar actors. Brad Pitt makes a movie and it's seen around the world, it isn't re-made by other actors in every local market. But maybe it's like stage acting, not everybody can come to Broadway and see the top actors do a play, so there are touring groups and local theater productions.)
The reporter here is already known as something of a B.S. artist, he's already making up stuff for his reports, so this seems like the next illogical step, in a way, he just has to make up everything about the fight in Ecuador. (Again, why doesn't he read the news from there before he records his report, or at least pay more attention to what the other reporters are saying before he goes on the air and does improv, why does he have to go so far out on a limb here?). Conveniently there's also a border shutdown, so not many other reporters made it into the country, so this reporter can just claim to be one of the few who made it through.
But there was such an easy out, which these characters didn't think of. After they said, "We're in Quito..." and their boss said "How did you get through the border shutdown?" they could have just said, "Umm, we didn't, we're at the airport and they won't let us leave, they're confiscating our passports and putting us on the next flight back." See? Problem solved, loose ends tied up, but also, movie over too soon. So the plot here depends on everyone being just a little bit dim, especially the Spanish couple (or are they brother and sister? It's hard to tell...) that owns a bar across the street from the station (in Queens, like maybe Long Island City, I'm guessing, that neighborhood isn't built up enough to be in Manhattan). There's almost an element of "Wakefield" or "Addicted to Love" here, where the main characters spy on their friends and co-workers to see how they're dealing with their own absences.
Relationship-wise, Finch, the technician/sound-effects guy, gets to see how his wife deals with his "kidnapping", even though they were on the outs, she starts the whole movement to raise money for his eventual ransom, and writes and performs a song calling for his release that also manages to land her a record deal. So, her motives may not be completely altruistic. And then there's the story complication when the reporter sees her on TV and realizes she's the woman he had a one-night-stand with just before the assignment and the hatching of the whole scheme. Sure, it's contrived, but it leads to another bonding moment between the very different men, when they realize they've slept with the same woman.
But at heart, it still feels like the comedy premise of NOT going to the war zone came from the fact that two actors hiding out in an apartment seems much, much easier to film than two actors actually going to a South American war zone. It must cost a lot to simulate a war on film, but an apartment set created in a studio is cheap, cheap, cheap. There's a bit of an attempt to make up for this when the two men realize that the only way to prove their story from the past week, and the only way to end their exile, is to somehow really get to the U.S. embassy in Ecuador. But it's a case of too little, too late in terms of storytelling, so there's a fraction of the movie that contains real action and drama, but the rest just ends up being smoke and mirrors, just like the scheme depicted in the plot.
I want to like Ricky Gervais, I really do, but I sort of wish he'd be in more movies that I'm interested in seeing, if that makes any sense. Outside of his appearances in the "Night at the Museum" films, it almost feels like he's avoided being in anything that appeals to me. Like, I get that some actors want to do their own thing, or only be in projects they really believe in or have written for themselves, but why only choose (mostly) such esoteric movies to appear in? Or maybe it's that I never watched the original British version of "The Office", so I feel like I sort of missed out on his early stuff, and thus I can't really figure out his career choices?
Also starring Eric Bana (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Ricky Gervais (last seen in "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey"), Kevin Pollak (also carrying over from "The Front Runner") Kelly Macdonald (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), America Ferrera (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon 2"), Raul Castillo, Benjamin Bratt (last seen in "Doctor Strange"), Ari Cohen (last seen in "It"), Kim Ramirez, Meghan Heffern, Mimi Kuzyk (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Pedro Miguel Arce, Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz, Walter Alza, with a cameo from Jim Norton (last seen in "The Comedian").
RATING: 4 out of 10 cups of vending-machine coffee
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