I Give It a Year

Year 11, Day 40 - 2/9/19 - Movie #3,140

BEFORE: Rose Byrne carries over from "Adam", and this is the first of those films I mentioned that WAS on Netflix when I put this chain together, but now is no longer available there.  So I've decided to forge ahead with the chain as I initially conceived it, even though that means I'll have to pay $2.99 or $3.99 here and there to rent these films on iTunes.  Yes, it still seems odd that so many romances would disappear just as February, the month of romance, came rolling around.  So either they had to make room for a bunch of films to celebrate Black History Month, or (more likely, I think), these films were added to Netflix in anticipation of Valentine's Day, 2 years ago.  That means their contract terms would be up just before the holiday this year, right?  So that's probably what happened.  I just didn't find these films there until recently, and didn't realize they could help with my linking until even MORE recently, but my saving them for February just proved to be a bad idea.  My Netflix list is down to 122 titles right now, but if I keep watching what I can, both romances and stand-up specials, I think I can get that number down before the end of the month.

What I should be focusing on right now is what happens AFTER the romance chain ends in March - I can for sure get to "Captain Marvel" but so far I've been unable to figure out the best path between that film and "Avengers: Endgame", which comes out a little over a month later.  There must be a thousand different paths between them, but I haven't landed on one that I like yet.  I've got a tentative one that goes through "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote", but I have no access to that film - probably because it might still be released in theaters in March, or April.  Reports are spotty right now, and with Terry Gilliam's recent track record, who knows if that film will make it to theaters, or if it opens, how long it will be on the big screen.  I can't rely on that, so I probably should come up with a  different plan.

Speaking of plans, here's the TCM schedule for Day 10 of the "31 Days of Oscar", Sunday, February 10.  I've giving you advance notice so if you've always wanted to see "Around the World in 80 Days", the good one, before they re-made it with Jackie Chan, here's your chance. Block out about 3 hours for that one, though.  Don't miss "Royal Wedding", either, that's the one with Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in one number, thanks to the magic of practical visual effects.

The main topic for tomorrow is "See the World", followed by the "yap" battle of "Favorite Movie Dog: Lassie vs. Asta" and your choice of "William Wyler Best Picture Winners".  I pick Asta over Lassie, but the other battle's more of a wash:

4:15 am "Romance on the High Seas" (1948)
6:00 am "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" (1961)
8:00 am "Travels With My Aunt" (1972)
10:00 am "A Little Romance" (1979)
12:00 pm "A Passage to India" (1982)
3:00 pm "Royal Wedding" (1951)
4:45 pm "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)
8:00 pm "Lassie Come Home" (1943)
9:45 pm "The Thin Man" (1934)
11:30 pm "Mrs. Miniver" (1942)
2:00 pm "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)

Thanks to the length of these films, they could only fit 11 films into this programming day - and that works to my advantage, since I'm hitting for 6 out of those 11: "A Passage to India", "Royal Wedding", "Around the World in 80 Days", "The Thin Man", "Mrs. Miniver" and "The Best Years of Our Lives". The new total of 52 seen out of 114 brings me back up to 45.6%.

THE PLOT: Newlywed couple Nat and Josh are deliriously happy despite their differences, though friends and family aren't convinced that they can last.  With their first anniversary approaching and attractive alternatives in the mix, can they last?

AFTER: Yesterday's film had Rose Byrne in it, and tomorrow's will too - so I could have just skipped this one once I found out it wasn't on Netflix any more, and just closed the gap.  But now I'm glad that I didn't, because even though this starts out like a typical romance film, it sure doesn't end like one.  I'll try to explain without giving too much away.

It starts with a wedding, and a lot of things go wrong at the wedding, like a terribly uncomfortable speech by the best man, and then some horrible dance routine.  This is all pretty standard for a romance film, I've already seen this stuff several times this year, and we're only 10 days in to the romance chain!  Ha ha, something caught on fire at the reception - wake me up when it's over.  Due to the very short courtship that Nat and Josh had, several guests at the wedding doubt that the marriage will last very long, which of course leads back to the title of the film.  After a flash forward (or was the marriage scene a flashback, it's hard to tell...) to the happy couple in a counseling session, and it seems that whatever happened in the months after their wedding, it wasn't all that positive.

Sometimes it takes two people living together to determine that they're incompatible - I wish they could have dug a little deeper here and not fallen back on such simple stereotypes, like "men don't want to take the garbage out" and "women sing the wrong words to classic rock songs", but it is what it is.  Learning to put up with each other's faults is all part of the process.  But then Josh's ex-girlfriend comes back from Africa and works side-by-side with him, and Nat conveniently forgets to mention to a new client that she's married, and flirts with him to win his business, and so there seem to be new potential partners for them, just when their marriage is still new and they're trying to sort it all out.

Classic British humor seems to be based on avoiding embarrassment - just look at "Fawlty Towers", or "Are You Being Served", or (I'm guessing) any of the other ones.  When someone can't bring themselves to admit something slightly embarrassing, they don't say what needs to be said, and then it's too late to say it, and things spiral out of control from there.  There's some of that here, but also there's Josh's best man/best friend, who's just the opposite - he says whatever's on his mind, it's always at the wrong time and he seems incapable of being embarrassed, and his conversations just make everyone in the room uncomfortable.  Jeez, does he have Asperger's or something?  Why didn't anyone tell him to SHUT UP during the wedding speech, or in any scene after that, because he was saying such wildly inappropriate things?  I thought British people were all supposed to be stuffy and reserved, but this character (played by Stephen Merchant) was the opposite of that.  His crude humor often went too far, though, so unlike the awkward nerdy guy he played in "Table 19", here he just came off like a total arsehole.

The counseling sessions prove mostly unhelpful, partially because the therapist "expert" has to interrupt their session to have a screaming match over the phone with her husband, which is a bad sign.  "I Think I Love My Wife" did a similar bit, when Chris Rock's character noticed that their marriage counselor wasn't even married, so what could she possibly know?  That's just approaching the same joke from a different angle, but it works either way.  But here the therapist gives the couple a goal, something to shoot for - try to overlook each other's faults and make it to their one-year anniversary.  Place your bets...

But then, just when you think you might know how this film is going to resolve the love quadrangle, the film that started off like SO many other romantic comedies pulls off some things in the last half hour that I've never seen before, not in any movie.  And I liked it, not just because some writer was thinking outside of the usual formulas, but also because doing what they did felt real, it felt more honest, and I could believe in it, and I can't say that about a lot of romances - and think about how many I've seen at this point.

Maybe I'm just projecting here, because I've been married, divorced and married again, and I know that feeling when things are NOT working out, and you've tried everything to make it work, and you just want to give up and stop trying because you're sure that, while it will be difficult to go forward alone, you're also going to feel this great sense of relief that you're not going to keep trying to force that square peg into a round hole any more.  Umm, so to speak.  When you feel like you're a bear with its arm caught in a trap, and the only thing you can do is bite off the arm and go forward in life with just three legs, just to feel free again, that's a pretty clear sign.  Is it better to stay in a relationship that isn't working and be miserable all the time, just to be able to say that you're still married?  That's an important question to ask in these modern times.  Sure, occasionally you still hear about a couple that got married young and stayed together 50 or 60 years, but aren't they the exceptions?  The vast majority of people in their 60's have been through two, three or more long-term relationships, it's just the way it goes.

Also starring Rafe Spall (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Anna Faris (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Simon Baker (last seen in "The Devil Wears Prada"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Table 19"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Jason Flemyng (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Olivia Colman (last seen in "The Lobster"), Jane Asher (last seen in "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper & Beyond"), Terence Harvey (last seen in "Johnny English"), Nigel Planer, Clare Higgins (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Sue Wallace, Tim Key.

RATING: 6 out of 10 honeymoon photos

Adam

Year 11, Day 39 - 2/8/19 - Movie #3,139

BEFORE: Adam LeFevre had a small role in yesterday's film as a restaurant maitre d', and he carries over to today's film, let's hope he's got a bigger part to play here.  Quite an appropriate link, since he shares his first name with the title of the film.  He's the connection that gets me to a couple more films with Rose Byrne, and those connect to three films with Goldie Hawn, and that's going to get me one film away from Valentine's Day.  I'd point out that I had a "perfect" January and I'm on track to make it through February without missing a connection or breaking the chain, but that would only jinx it.  So let's not do that.

Another weekend is almost here, so if you're looking for some classic Oscar-nominated films to watch, here's the line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" (8 down, 23 to go) for tomorrow, February 9.  The main theme is "Biopics", followed by "Best Race Relations" and "Runner Up: 1980 Best Song":

5:00 am "The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
8:00 am "The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)
9:30 am "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939)
11:15 am "The Stratton Story" (1949)
1:15 pm "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942)
3:30 pm "Calamity Jane" (1953)
5:30 pm "The Agony and the Ecstasy" (1965)
8:00 pm "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)
10:00 pm "The Defiant Ones" (1958)
12:00 am "Nine to Five" (1980)
2:00 am "Honeysuckle Rose" (1980)

Damn, I can really only claim to have seen four of these for sure.  I thought maybe I watched "Young Mr. Lincoln", but no, I watched "Abe Lincoln in Illinois".  And I probably watched "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as a kid, but I can't really prove it.  So I'm only comfortable with saying that I've seen "The Agony and the Ecstasy", "In the Heat of the Night", "The Defiant Ones" and "Nine to Five".  So another 4 out of 11 brings my total to 46 out of 103, or 44.6%.  My score probably won't improve much until they hit the musicals. 

THE PLOT: Adam, a lonely man with Asperger's Syndrome, develops a relationship with his upstairs neighbor, Beth.

AFTER: Autism is a tricky, complex subject to tackle in a movie, especially in a romance-based one.  The more I learn about the disorder, the more questions I seem to have, but I think some of the most common questions asked include "What causes autism?", "How can it be treated?" and "How can I work this disorder into my screenplay?  This is the thing that won "Rain Man" the Oscar, right?"  Some people can be so self-serving. 

So it's very movie-convenient to use autism, not only because most people don't really understand the condition (myself included), but there's such a wide range of symptoms that an affected character can basically be whatever the screenwriter wants, like here he's a genius with regards to space travel and cosmology, only not great at social interactions or reading cues from other humans when he's droned on for too long about space stuff.  In "Rain Man" there was that whole card-counting thing, because where screenplays are concerned, an autistic person just isn't very interesting, unless he also happens to be a savant.  Who wants to tune in to a movie and watch a character just sit in a corner and rock back and forth for 90 minutes? 

To be fair, this film does depict Adam, the autistic character, with other aspects of the condition, like ritualistic behavior, always dressing the same or sticking to a very limited menu (All-Bran cereal for breakfast every day?  I think I'd shoot myself in the head...), a general resistance to change, compulsive behaviors, abnormal fixations on a particular TV show or game, and the possibility of self-injury.  Jesus, except for the self-injury thing, I've displayed many of these compulsive behaviors from time to time - I tend to eat the same breakfasts (though I have a weekly schedule, not a daily one) but that's really for convenience's sake, so I don't have to think about it every day.  I definitely have the OCD, with the time-consuming need to organize all of my movies and comic books, I'm very resistant to change, and when have I NOT been obsessed with particular movie franchises and TV shows?  If you get me talking about "Star Wars" or comic books, good luck getting me to stop.  (NOTE: I don't really think I'm autistic, but this is something I should perhaps keep an eye on...)

The thing about Adam is, he doesn't know when to stop, when the person he's talking with has had enough of a particular topic.  And he doesn't know how to read another person's emotions, or discern when it's a good idea to NOT ask a particular question.  This becomes a problem when his new girlfriend's father is accused of financial misconduct and faces a trial, and he can't help but ask the wrong questions at the wrong time.  Hollywood lately seems to love making movies about people who don't have appropriate boundaries, and here I'm thinking about films like "Welcome to Marwen" from last month and "Wilson" from last year.

But, generally speaking of course, it's not a great idea to get involved with your neighbor in a Manhattan apartment building.  Because if things don't work out, that means one of you is probably going to have to walk by the other one's apartment every day, and you're always going to be bumping into your ex while checking your mail or using the laundry room.  And if things do work out, then which apartment are the two of you going to spend time in?  Sure, you can each keep your own apartment and maybe switch off back-and-forth, but then you're paying double rent and maintaining two kitchens, which seems like a waste.  Though if you've got one of these giant, unrealistic movie-magic Manhattan apartments, I guess it doesn't matter.

NITPICK POINT: While my understanding of the Big Bang theory is limited (the scientific principle, not the TV show, although that's limited too) the way Adam explains it, the universe was compressed into a singularity point that exploded, and within under a second, the universe expanded to the size it is now.  I don't think that's correct, because that would mean that in that instance, the matter that would go on to form the universe had to be moving faster than light, and science has also told us that's impossible, matter can't move faster than light.  Isn't it more likely that during the Big Bang, all that matter exploded to a large size, though not anything close to the size the universe is now?  After all, we believe that the universe is still growing, so why isn't it likely that the universe has been constantly growing (at a speed less than light-speed) since that moment 13.8 billion years ago?  Why is a faster-than-light model the best one that Adam can describe?  I mean, there are still plenty of things wrong with the Big Bang model, like, what was there before the explosion, what space did the universe expand INTO?  But why make it worse by bringing time density fluctuations into the mix?

Also starring Hugh Dancy (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Rose Byrne (last seen in "Adult Beginners"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Amy Irving (last seen in "Yentl"), Frankie Faison (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Mark Linn-Baker (last seen in "Noises Off..."), Karina Arroyave (last seen in "Dangerous Minds"), Maddie Corman (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Steffany Huckaby, Haviland Morris, Mike Hodge, John Rothman (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), with a cameo from James Lipton.

RATING: 5 out of 10 images from Saturn

I Think I Love My Wife

Year 11, Day 38 - 2/7/19 - Movie #3,138

BEFORE: Chris Rock carries over again from "The Week Of", and after that film, since I was already on Netflix, I watched his latest stand-up special, "Tamborine".  I didn't know he got divorced, but he talked about it in the special, taking some of the blame for his cheating ways.  Sure, it takes some guts to admit wrongdoing in that sense, but of course he was also taking advantage of the situation by finding the humor in it and filling up time during a stand-up show, so in terms of self-improvement, it's probably a wash.

Now here's the line-up for the "31 Days of Oscar" programming on TCM tomorrow, February 8.  They're finally hitting "Comedies" as the main theme, followed by the face-off for "Most Effective Therapy Session" and "Best True Crime".  I've got a good feeling about this schedule:

4:15 am "The Front Page" (1931)
6:00 am "Adam's Rib" (1949)
8:00 am "Ninotchka" (1939)
10:00 am "Tom Jones" (1963)
12:15 pm "The Great Dictator" (1940)
2:30 pm "My Favorite Wife" (1940)
4:00 pm "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936)
6:00 pm "The Sunshine Boys" (1975)
8:00 pm "Now, Voyager" (1942)
10:15 pm "The Prince of Tides" (1991)
12:45 am "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)
2:45 am "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)

Finally, I'm hitting 10 for 12 tomorrow - I haven't seen the original version of "The Front Page", just the 1974 remake, and I haven't seen "Ninotchka", just the 1957 remake that was re-titled "Silk Stockings". But thanks to my other chains focused on Tracy + Hepburn, Cary Grant, Bette Davis and Gary Cooper, I've seen all the others.  So now I'll be at 42 seen out of 92, up to 45%.

THE PLOT: A married man who daydreams about being with other women finds his will and morals tested after he's visited by the ex-mistress of an old friend.

AFTER: After watching that Chris Rock stand-up special, now I'm starting to wonder if some of his more recent roles are partially autobiographical, because he played a divorced dad in "The Week Of", a divorced and remarried dad in "2 Days in New York", and in this one, released back in 2007, he played a married guy who was thinking of cheating on his wife.  At that point in his life he would have been married for 11 years, so it's certainly possible that this was on his mind.  But you can't really come down on someone for having fantasies about women other than his wife, right?  I mean, even Jimmy Carter admitted that he'd lusted after other women, committed adultery in his mind.  I get that we all draw that line in a different place, but just THINKING about it is very different from DOING it.  Then you've got Mike Pence, who won't have dinner with a female friend unless his wife is also there.  That's one way to deal with temptation, just by making sure that you're not putting yourself in a position where you're tempted in the first place.  Whatever works for you, I guess.

Be warned that Chris Rock co-wrote this film with Louis C.K., who's not exactly in many people's good graces right now, as a divorced guy himself who got called on the carpet for the way he was treating women, making unwanted sexual advances.  I know this film came out long before that scandal, but you can sort of see a precursor to it here, as Rock's character imagines himself as a single man, walking up to random women in the park and propositioning them quite blatantly.  Doesn't anybody want to date any more?  How many phone apps are there now for people who want to skip dinner and drinks and go right to the "Let's get it on" stage?  Apparently romance is dead.

But anyway, about the film.  Rock's character finds himself married to a woman who's lost interest in sex, now that they have two small kids - so it seems like there's been a long "dry spell". Any attempts to have sex with his wife are met with excuses, or petty arguments, or one or both of them being too tired, or scheduling conflicts.  Neither one is making the effort to get on the same page, it seems, which means they're enjoying all the comforts of being in a stable relationship - double incomes, spending time with the kids, having movie nights, having someone there to talk with about your workday, but not all of the benefits.  So naturally he feels like the thrill might be gone.  (Didn't he see "Wakefield"? Maybe he should try living in the attic over the garage and watching his wife from afar, just to prove a point.  No, wait, forget that, it's a terrible idea.)

Meanwhile, he goes into Manhattan every day and admires all the beautiful women on the train, the ones who eat at the pizza place, and the ones who work at Saks selling him shirts.  Umm, he knows they're not really interested in him, they just work on commission, right?  But I get it, it's kind of like how all food looks really great when you're on a diet.  And when you go a long time without eating, any food tastes better - I skipped lunch one day last week, came home and had just a ham sandwich, and it was amazing.  Hunger will do that, and sex kind of works the same way.  Not enough and you starve, but too much and you don't really appreciate it.

Into this dangerous situation comes an old friend - I don't know why the writers didn't make her an ex-girlfriend, that would have worked just as well here.  But she's a platonic friend from the past, and she's moved back to the city, and needs to use him as a job reference.  This leads to her needing his help to find an apartment, his help getting her things from her ex-boyfriend's apartment, and so on.  Before long she's showing up regularly at his job, and the secretaries are starting to talk.  Everyone figures he must be cheating on his wife, even his co-worker who DOES cheat on his wife, but tells him not to.  This is a bit of an odd choice for a character, how does a cheating man get to act as an expert on relationships?  It seems rather hypocritical to hold his friend to a higher standard than he holds himself.

Anyway, he tries to keep her at arm's length, but since a couple of mishaps at home lead to another argument, he finds himself drawn more toward the (hotter) single friend.  And then even when he tries to cut off all ties to her, that only seems to make her want him more.  She even gets engaged, but that also just seems like a ploy to get his attention, and force the issue.  The question then becomes, how close to the line he's drawn for himself is he willing to go?  No spoilers here, but the film's title does make for a pretty obvious clue.  It really just boils down to two choices - if you're not happy in your current relationship, you can either get out of it, or work on making it better.  Anything else just isn't a viable solution over time.  The main message of the film is that you can't choose where you're born, your family, or in some cases, who you love.  But you can choose HOW you love, and that's something to think about.

But (and you just knew there'd be a but, right?) if anything this film over-simplifies women - and we need to remember that many of them are very complex creatures.  To fall back on such simple stereotypes like "married women don't want sex" or "single women need to ask men for help with things" and the big one, "every woman you see, on the train, in the park, at the office is a potential sex object".  Yeah, that's the sort of thinking that got Louis C.K. in trouble, wasn't it?

NITPICK POINT: Much of the Manhattan geography seen here is random and doesn't make much sense.  We see Richard walking across Park Ave, just south of the MetLife building - this makes sense if he got off the Metro-North at Grand Central and his office is over near Times Square, let's say.  But then why does he go to the Spinelli's pizza shop on 7th Ave. across from Madison Square Garden.  Yep, I recognized the Pizza & Gyros sign, because after Spinelli's closed it was a Carl's Jr. for a couple of months last year, but that folded and the Pizza/Gyros sign is visible again now.  There just MUST have been another pizza place closer to his office, and who walks over 10 blocks in Manhattan just to get mediocre pizza?  Nobody, that's who.

Also starring Kerry Washington (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Gina Torres (last seen in "Serenity"), Steve Buscemi (also carrying over from "The Week Of"), Edward Herrmann (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Welker White (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Samantha Ivers (last seen in "Inside Man"), Cassandra Freeman (ditto), Michael Kenneth Williams (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Orlando Jones (last seen in "Bedazzled"), Stephen A. Smith, Wendell Pierce (last seen in "The Gift"), Milan Howard, Roz Ryan, Christina Vidal, Eliza Coupe, GQ, Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Gold"), Linda Powell, Eva Marcille, James Saito, Justina Machado, with a cameo from Matthew Morrison (last seen in "Music and Lyrics").

RATING: 4 out of 10 Biz Markie songs

The Week Of

Year 11, Day 37 - 2/6/19 - Movie #3,137

BEFORE: Chris Rock carries over from "2 Days in New York" and as long as I'm in the middle of a Chris Rock triple-play, I'm going to try to watch his latest stand-up special, "Tamborine", on Netflix, right after this film.  Anything that clears a title off of the Netflix list at this point is a positive step.  I got the list down to about 120 or so titles, but I think that's largely due to at least 5 movies I wanted to watch this month being dropped from the service.  Since it's too late for me to change the chain, that's going to cost me some extra money if I have to watch all of those films on iTunes now.

Before I get to this latest installment in Adam Sandler's Netflix deal (I'm assuming...) here's the Oscar-themed line-up on TCM for tomorrow, February 7.  The main theme is "Prison Movies", followed by the head-to-head matchups of "Favorite Joseph L. Mankiewicz Double Win (Writing & Directing)" and then "Favorite Swashbuckler".  Make sure you have your swashes buckled:

6:15 am "Weary River" (1929)
8:00 am "The Big House" (1930)
9:45 am "The Criminal Code" (1931)
11:30 am "I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang" (1932)
1:30 pm "Caged" (1950)
3:15 pm "I Want to Live" (1958)
5:30 pm "King Rat" (1965)
8:00 pm "All About Eve" (1950)
10:30 pm "A Letter to Three Wives" (1948)
12:30 am "The Mark of Zorro" (1940)
2:15 am "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938)

Damn, once again I'm only hitting for 2 films, having seen only "All About Eve" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood".  Things better pick up when I hit screwball comedies and classic musicals.  Another 2 out of 11 added to my total brings me to 32 seen out of 80 films, exactly 40%.

THE PLOT: Two fathers with opposing personalities come together to celebrate the wedding of their children.  They are forced to spend the longest week of their lives together, and the big day cannot come soon enough.

AFTER: OK, now this is really good scheduling on my part, because a lot of elements carry over from "2 Days in New York", along with the presence of Chris Rock.  Perhaps these are coincidences, but I'm just going to say it was sharp thinking on my part, or perhaps just a happy accident.  First off, there's an inter-racial couple at the center of things, and if you've been watching TV lately, and paying attention to the commercials (Super-Bowl and otherwise) then you might have noticed that they're all over the place, perhaps to the point of exaggeration.  Don't get me wrong, I've got no problem with inter-racial couples existing, I just don't think there needs to be one in EVERY commercial now - I noticed during the Christmas season that nearly every major commercial for the big stores had such a couple in it, and then once you notice that, it's very hard to NOT notice that, like if you see three ads in a row with multi-racial families, it starts to feel a little forced, like the ad agencies are just doing this to be trendy or P.C., not because they believe that they're accurately portraying the current racial make-up of the country.  I get it, if you've got white people, black people, Asians and Latinos in the same commercial, you've just doubled or tripled the target audience, but I'm just saying, dial it back just a little bit if you want me to take your advertising seriously.

The other theme that carries over is the comedy that comes from relatives coming to visit, in this case to attend the wedding, and crashing at the house of the lead characters, and then all the "comedy" that arises from family members annoying each other in close quarters.  Yesterday's film had three houseguests staying in a New York apartment of a blended family, so three guests plus four family members added up to seven people sharing an already too-small space.  Today's film has, I don't know, it feels like 50 family members who sleep over in a small Long Island house.  It seems impossible, like how do you even have enough floor space for all those people, or enough air mattresses - and here it sort of gets extended into the realm of impossibity and ridiculousness.

But that's the best thing I can say about this film - some of the jokes land, and some don't, but at least it was swinging for the fences.  If three people sleeping over is funny, fifty must be funnier, right?  Well, that's the theory, anyway.  And why have just a few things go wrong with the wedding when you can have nearly everything go wrong, at some point or another?  The only problem with that is that we've seen this sort of thing before, in films like "Betsy's Wedding" and "Bride Wars" and, most recently for me, "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past".  Hey, at least nobody here ruins the wedding cake by falling into it, but nearly everything else goes wrong.  There are problems with the hotel (caused by the bride's father trying to impress the groom's father), which leads to all those people sleeping back at the house.

The hotel is also the venue for the wedding reception, though - so the ceremony itself is in jeopardy too.  Then of course there are going to problems with the caterer, the beverages, the bachelor party, and the guests range from a teen just out of rehab (with a long list of "triggers" that must be avoided) to a couple of African-American guys who were just walking by the house and got mistaken for family members.  About the only thing that didn't go wrong were the things the bride was responsible for, like the dress and flowers and such.  (In this sort of film, that kind of represents leaving money on the table...)

So I gotta call a NITPICK POINT on something, even if it's played for comedy here.  I know that a bride's father might feel an obligation to pay for the wedding costs, like the reception and the tuxes and all that, but I've never heard of a case where the bride's family felt an obligation to pay the hotel costs for all the visiting guests.  That seems more than unlikely - both times I got married, the invitations included a number of hotel recommendations, and I think perhaps a group rate, but the guests were expected to book the rooms themselves, that's just how it's done.  And if someone can't afford the hotel, chances are they just won't attend then, c'est la vie.  A family paying for so many hotel rooms seems way out of line here, even if he got the best rate. 

It all depends, I suppose, on how much you like slapstick, and Sandler's particular brand of it.  If someone thought that it's funny for him to not know how to open a wheelchair, then you can bet that's going to come up about a half-dozen times.  I confess that I found it slightly charming once everything that had possibly gone wrong had finally gone wrong, and they forged ahead with the wedding anyway.  Hey, with any wedding some things are gonna go right, and some things are gonna go wrong, and you just have to be flexible and roll with the punches.  This is perhaps the most extreme depiction of that, and they could have fixed things easier if Sandler's character didn't let his pride get in the way, but it is what it is.

I could have used a little more romance, to justify putting this in the February chain - I feel like a lot of potential sentiment got very lost in the shuffle here.  But there's no way I could have known that going in - and what was I going to do, hold this one back just to link it to "Hotel Transylvania 3", which is more of a Halloween film?  Nah, that wouldn't make as much sense. 

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)", Rachel Dratch (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Allison Strong, Katie Hartman, Jake Lippmann, Scott Cohen (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Melanie Nicholls-King (last seen in "Going in Style"), Noah Robbins, Maury Ginsberg, Liz Larsen (last seen in "Keeping the Faith"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Flatliners"), Teddy Coluca, Jim Barone, Roland Buck III, Garry Pastore, Rob Morgan, Germar Terrell Gardner, Chuck Nice, Kenajuan Bentley, Joel Marsh Garland, Chloe Himmelman, June Gable, Suzanne Shepherd (last seen in "Mystic Pizza"), Christian Cappozzoli, Nasser Faris (last seen in "Jarhead"), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Jared Sandler (last seen in "Goosebumps") Andrew Polk, Jorge Luna, Rachel Pegram, Max Chernin, Liz Samuel, Griffin Santopietro, Alex Song, with cameos from Dan Patrick, Robert Smigel and Ronnie "The Limo Driver" Mund.

RATING: 4 out of 10 bats in a sack 

2 Days in New York

Year 11, Day 36 - 2/5/19 - Movie #3,136

BEFORE: Julie Delpy carries over from "Before Midnight", and I sort of stumbled on this film while looking for a way to connect the blocks, the 3-film block with Julie Delpy and the 2-film block with Chris Rock.  If some films are bricks and others are mortar, I'm definitely using this one as mortar - it's one of those neat little bits of connective tissue that make the chains possible.  It's a sinew, connecting muscle to bone, or something like that.  But this is what I have to do to devote an entire month (longer, even) to romance films.  I can't drop a music biopic with Ethan Hawke in here, or a sci-fi or sports film, just to make the connection, then I'd feel like I was losing my focus.

Speaking of things without focus, here's the schedule for tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 6 on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up.  The themes, plural, are "Fantasy", "WWII: Best Turning Point Film" and "Won Best Picture, but No Acting Nominations".  Umm, right, because I often hear people discussing what was the best film about the turning point in World War II that also got nominated for an Oscar.

4:30 am "Gulliver's Travels" (1939)
6:00 am "Lost Horizon" (1937)
8:15 am "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T" (1953)
10:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)
12:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)
2:00 pm "Tom Thumb" (1958)
4:00 pm "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)
8:00 pm "The Longest Day" (1962)
11:15 pm "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1971)
2:00 am "An American In Paris" (1951)
4:15 am "Gigi" (1958)

Once again, I've only seen the latter part of this line-up, the last three films.  Another 3 out of 12 puts me at 30 out of 69, taking me down to 43%.

THE PLOT: Manhattan couple Marion and Mingus, who each have children from prior relationships, find their comfortably family dynamic jostled by a visit from Marion's relatives.

AFTER: Well, TCM is showing "Mon Oncle" today, and "An American in Paris" tomorrow, but I'm watching French people in New York instead, so we're kind of programming at cross-purposes.

You can tell this was written and directed by one of the actors (actress, in this case) because there's very little focus, everything added as a little detail seems to be there because she said, "Hmm, I wonder what my character's reaction would be to THAT?" with no overall plan for what to do with all these random introduced elements.  So as a result the film seems to be firing in a dozen different directions at once, and things are introduced, go nowhere and then are never followed up with again.  A real director would have found a way to make some of those introduced elements important somehow, and if there was no way to do that, would then get rid of them.

The guy on the news who's protest-sitting in a tree in Central Park?  That goes nowhere.  The Russian repairman who eventually comes to fix the broken apartment buzzer?  Well, he comes and fixes the buzzer - so what?  This seems relatively unimportant at first, but that's only because it is, it goes nowhere.  The daughter's fascination with serial killers?  Goes nowhere.  The father keying a limo that he walks by seems like it might be about to go somewhere, but then it never does either.  A hundred little things come up and have absolutely nothing to do with each other, and all end up being meaningless.  Is this a French thing, like Godard or something discussing the banality of life?  Or just lazy, lazy storytelling or an inability to tie everything, or anything, together?

Chris Rock sort of does the best he can here, given what he was to work with, but he's drowning in a sea of nonsense.  He talks to a cardboard cut-out of Barack Obama, and even though it's a one-sided conversation, it's one of the most interesting exchanges in the whole film.

Well, apart from one, anyway, because if you ask me, the real story here (and you really, really have to dig if you want to find it) is that the lead character is a photographer/artist with a gallery show taking place on Halloween, and she's offered to (symbolically, at least) sell her soul, auctioning it off to the highest bidder as a publicity stunt.  Naturally she doesn't believe in the concept of a soul, because if she did, she just wouldn't do this, but then when she gets a real offer, she suddenly does an about-face and tries to get it back.  I've got about a dozen NITPICK POINTS about how this played out, one of which is that  the buyer made his bid anonymously, and then she demanded to know who it was, so that wasn't anonymous at all, was it?  Then her trying to get it back by force - it's just not a very well-thought-out business deal, and neither is it a well-thought-out part of the plot.

I'm not going to mention here who bought it or what she does to try to get it back, but I just want to highlight that she (as either the screenwriter, director or character, I'm not sure) seemed to be confusing the contract, the physical piece of paper, with the intangible soul, the thing being purchased.  OK, maybe she wants to get the contract back to tear it up, but that doesn't automatically void the sale. What if he made a photocopy?  Plus it was notarized - look, if I lose the deed to my house, or the title to a car, I still own the item, right?  So even if she could sell her soul, taking back the piece of paper that the contract was written on just wouldn't negate the deal.

But what changed her mind about not believing in her own soul?  I finally found something in this film worth exploring, something I wanted to know more about, and the film just let it lie there.  Worse, the action regarding the stand-off took place mostly off-camera, so it became just another story for someone to recount.  Did Julie Delpy learn this bad habit from Richard Linklater?  Again, it's supposed to be SHOW, don't tell.

Everything else in the film is very simple or stupid - French people like croissants, cheese and wine, family members argue with each other and get under each other's skin, French people aren't ashamed of their bodies, it's all a bunch of very simple stereotypes.  Then there's the confusion when some people speak only French and others speak only English, and there's no attempt by anyone to learn words in the other language.  Jeez, they have translation guides for exactly this sort of thing, or do you prefer people making jokes about you that you can't understand, right to your face?

And what is it, can someone please tell me, about small children that turns senior citizens into babbling idiots?  I just don't get it.  I mean, a parent I can understand because they've convinced themselves that their kid is adorable (probably not) or special (doubt it) or gifted (I'll believe it when I see it).  But why does a person in their 60s or 70s, French or American, just start doing baby talk gibberish?  Even if that's your grandchild, for God's sake, just talk to them in a normal voice, or they're never going to mature.  How are they going to learn to deal with rational adults if they're not surrounded by any?

NITPICK POINT: Who would ever schedule a non-Halloween themed gallery exhibition on Halloween?  That's the worst planning I've ever heard of - people with kids all want to get home early to go trick-or-treating with them, and people without kids all either want to go to an adult party or the Halloween parade, or perhaps a horror movie.  She should fire her agent, or whoever set this up at the gallery.

Also starring Chris Rock (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Albert Delpy (last seen in "Before Sunset"), Alexia Landeau (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Alexandre Nahon, Malinda Williams (last seen in "Idlewild"), Arthur French (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Kate Burton (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Ishtar"), Talen Ruth Riley, Owen Shipman, Emily Wagner, Petronia Paley, Carmen Lopez, Alex Manette (last seen in "Jane Got a Gun"), Marcus Ho, Gregory Korostishevsky, Bhavesh Patel, Seth Barrish (last seen in "Adult Beginners") with cameos from Daniel Bruhl (last seen in "Rush"), Vincent Gallo and the voice of Erin Darke.

RATING: 3 out of 10 confiscated cheeses

Before Midnight

Year 11, Day 35 - 2/4/19 - Movie #3,135

BEFORE: I had to wait until after the whole Super Bowl to finish off the trilogy, so let's hope this one's worth the wait.  Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy carry over again from "Before Sunset".

Here's the "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, Tuesday, Feb. 5 on TCM - the main topic is "Foreign Films", followed by the 2 head-to-head matchups of "Favorite Supporting Actor Win: Anthony Quinn" and "Noir Best Picture Nominee: Bette vs. Joan)":

5:30 am "Bicycle Thieves" (1948)
7:00 am "The Walls of Malapaga" (1949)
8:30 am "Rashomon" (1950)
10:00 am "Mon Oncle" (1958)
12:00 pm "Day for Night" (1973)
2:00 pm "The Battle of Algiers" (1966)
4:15 pm "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961)
6:00 pm "I Vitelloni" (1953)
8:00 pm "Viva Zapata!" (1952)
10:15 pm "Lust for Life" (1956)
12:30 am "The Letter" (1940)
2:30 am "Mildred Pierce" (1945)

I know they showed us "Bicycle Thieves" at film school, so that's a given, and during this project I've also watched "Lust for Life" and "Mildred Pierce".  Still, that's only 3 out of 12, so another non-positive day, the cumulative score is now 27 out of 57, and I'm down to 47%.  I'm hoping things will start turning around soon, maybe by the end of this week.

THE PLOT: We meet Jesse and Celine nine years later in Greece.  Almost two decades have passed since their first meeting on that train bound for Vienna.

AFTER: Well, there's good news and bad news here.  First, the good news is that Jesse and Celine are together, so at some point after the fade-out in the previous film, they finally got on the same page.  Of course, Jesse was married at that point and had a son, so there were clearly some issues that had to be dealt with, and as "Before Midnight" goes on, we gradually learn more and more about what took place in the nine year gap that we didn't get to see.  Because this filmmaker figures, on some level, why SHOW the audience the romance, when the two characters can just talk about it?  Isn't it more mysterious and enigmatic this way?  Sure, but it's also very boring, and it breaks the general rule of filmmaking as a visual medium, which is "Show, don't just tell."

The film starts with Jesse taking his son Hank to the airport in Greece (which is funny, I suppose, because the previous two films both ENDED with someone going to the airport, or supposed to be going to an airport).  Hank spent the summer with his father, so by showing him flying back to his mother in the U.S., we can start to deduce that Jesse's not with his mother any more.  Then, thank God, we confirm that he's still with Celine, because it would have been too much of a convenience for him to have to bump into her randomly for a third time.

Reading between the lines here, I think they make references to not really being married, but just acting like they are, and letting everyone think that they are.  Hey, some people do this, just act married in every important way except they don't have a license or rings or a ceremony.  This is something people might do as they get older, and after a few relationships that didn't work, they may conclude that no relationship is forever, or marriage as a construct is outdated, or perhaps they just need to know that there's an emergency exit of sorts, so that if they ever feel like they want to leave, there will be no need to hire a lawyer.  That's the theory, anyway, for people who reach a point in their lives where they know what works for them, and what doesn't work.  Or maybe they figured out that the only lasting relationship is the one that doesn't feel binding or constricting in any way.

But what Jesse and Celine are still doing, after all this time, is debating the nature of relationships, especially on long walks through European landscapes with a steadi-cam in front of them.  But here in this film the debate slowly escalates to a full-on argument, which is something we've never seen them engage in before.  But that's to be expected, I suppose, after they've been together for so long, plus you throw in the pressures of an ex-wife, a son, Jesse feeling guilty for not spending enough time with his son, and then there's the debate over whether they should move to America to be closer to his son, which would mean that either Celine would have to put her career on hold, or else remain in Europe with their daughters while Jesse lived in America, which would of course put a strain on the relationship.

Once again, the dialogue feels very real, and allowing the actors to work freely, with just a few destination points in mind, seems like a great decision, if realistic dialogue portraying the way that a real couple would argue is indeed the goal.  And I'm talking about both fair arguing AND unfair arguing - his unfair tactics include implying in subtle ways that women are overly emotional while men are stereotypically practical, and her unfair tactics include saying "This is a conversation that leads to us breaking up..." whenever things don't seem to be going her way.  That, and having a fair part of the conversation while topless.  How is he even supposed to concentrate?  It's like she's hoping that when she takes her top off he's going to say, "Wait, what were we fighting about again?"

And once again, a movie in this series ends in a sort of ambiguous pause, as if we're supposed to decide if we want the couple to break up or stay together, remain dysfunctional or figure out some kind of effective compromise.  Sort of like an abstract painting, where you see in it what you bring to it, I guess.  Now, if Linklater holds true to form, there could be another chapter in this film series in 2022, just three years away.  But now I'm current, I'm all caught up for once.  But if this relationship survives and the couple is still together in their 50's, maybe they can make "Before Dusk", where they live in New York and they try to get their chores done, so they can go out to a restaurant together to catch the early bird special.  Just a suggestion.  But these days, very few trilogies seem to stop there, even if the story seems complete.

Also starring Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick (last seen in "The Dinner"), Jennifer Prior, Charlotte Prior, Xenia Kalogeropoulou, Walter Lassally, Ariane Labed (last seen in "The Lobster"), Yiannis Papadopoulos, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Panos Koronis with another cameo from John Sloss (last seen in "Before Sunrise").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Greek ruins

Before Sunset

Year 11, Day 34 - 2/3/19 - Movie #3,134

BEFORE: This one's stupidly easy, both leads - Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy - carry over from "Before Sunrise".  This is why I usually program in pairs, for years I've been putting two films with the same lead actor on DVDs (whenever I can) and it cuts my linking workload in half.  So a three-peat helps me out even more.  And I can check in with Jesse and Celine a few years down the road to see how they got back together.

The TCM line-up for tomorrow, February 4 is going to feature "School Days", plus the rap battles of "1949 Cinematography Winners: B&W vs Color" and "Olivier's Best Shakespearean Role" - duh, it's Hamlet.  Here we go:

5:30 am "These Three" (1936)
7:30 am "Cheers for Miss Bishop" (1941)
9:30 am "The 400 Blows" (1959)
11:15 am "The Children's Hour" (1961)
1:15 pm "The Corn is Green" (1945)
3:15 pm "Goodbye Mr. Chips" (1969)
6:00 pm "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)
8:00 pm "Battleground" (1949)
10:15 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)
12:15 am "Hamlet" (1948)
3:00 am "Henry V" (1944)

Damn, I've only seen 3 of these - "Goodbye Mr. Chips" and the two Shakespeare adaptations.  But I've got "The Children's Hour" on my list as part of an unscheduled Audrey Hepburn chain - I can't count that in good conscience.  And I really should watch "The 400 Blows" at some point if I want to be taken seriously, but I just don't have the time.  So another 3 out of 11 brings me up to 24 out of 45, and I'm down to 53%.  I just knew my high score wasn't going to last.

THE PLOT: Nine years after Jesse and Celine first met, they encounter each other again on the French leg of Jesse's book tour.

AFTER: I watched the first two films of this "Before" trilogy back-to-back, both on Demand, on an overnight mini-marathon, but one counted as my Saturday film, the other as my Sunday film.  Had to clear my schedule for Super Bowl Sunday, without any movie getting in the way of the game.

So now we know the answer to the question, "Did they ever see each other again?"  Yes, but it wasn't when or how either of them expected - because that would be boring, right?  When it comes to hemispheres, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, especially if they forgot to get each other's contact information.  Remember, they didn't have decent cell phones in 1995, not the kind you can just bump together to put yourself in the other person's contact list, or text messages where you can easily send each other your number.  Heck, those two characters didn't seem to have any cell phones at all in 1995, I think back then if you wanted your U.S. cell phone to work while you were in Europe you had to pay for the international plan, or get killed with the roaming charges.  Remember those?

Anyway, Jesse's a hot upcoming author in 2004, and he's written a book about (surprise) a woman he met on the train years ago, and their one night together in Vienna.  It's supposedly a work of fiction, but we the audience know better.  And maybe he wrote the whole thing to get Celine's attention again, in the hopes that she might learn about the book and recognize the story, because she lived it too.  And wouldn't you know it, his book-signing tour brings him to Paris, and he kind of hoped she still lived there.

People can change a lot in nine years, but these two find themselves in nearly the same situation - he's booked on a flight back to the U.S., and it leaves in just a few hours.  So they've only got time for a quick stop at a cafe, and maybe a short walk along the river, before hopping a boat to get back to where his driver's going to pick him up.  Can they possibly re-connect during that time and resolve any outstanding issues, maybe get back on the same page again?  Well, yes and no, it's complicated, but you know what?  Most things in life are complicated.  Whatever happens, good and bad, this feels more real than a typical Hollywood romance, with all of it's oh-so-convenient plot devices and we all just KNOW they're going to fall for each other in the end.  But you watch an indie film with a foreign feel to it, and all bets are off.  "Will they or won't they?" becomes a lot more difficult to predict.

A couple of interesting things here, like the fact that their story-time together is very close to the length of the film, so the events play out in something close to real time.  And though there were obvious story beats and talking points, the conversation was sort of half-improv-ed by the actors, who received screenwriting credits for their efforts.  And they shot in sequence, which is very unusual for any film - so when you put this all together, it's almost like the story was seeking out its own ending as they went along.  So how does it end?  Well, you're not going to hear it from me - this is a rare case where being on the journey is sort of its own reward.

This chapter is almost too short, it's just an 80-minute peek into the lives of Jesse and Celine, and now I have to wait until tomorrow and another jump forward in time to find out whether these crazy kids work it all out.  But it's certainly an improvement over last year's trilogy of "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby", where all three films told the SAME story, just from different POVs.

Also starring Veron Dobtcheff, Louise Lemoine Torres, Rodolphe Pauly, Mariane Plasteig, Denis Evrard, Albert Delpy, Marie Pillet.

RATING: 5 out of 10 James Joyce references

Before Sunrise

Year 11, Day 33 - 2/2/19 - Movie #3,133

BEFORE: When I was putting this year's romance chain together, and things just weren't all linked up yet, I did something that can be very hard to do - I looked at the list and thought, "What's missing?"   Sometimes you can't see the things that aren't there, if you know what I mean.  When I was a kid I read the book "The Phantom Tollbooth", and at one key point in the narrative the traveling heroes get delayed by someone who directs them to make a list of all the books they've read, and then a list of all the books they haven't read, and I thought that was weird - who could possibly keep track of all the books they haven't read?  But now I'm an adult, and I do almost exactly that, keep track of all the movies I haven't seen.  OK, not ALL, but the ones that I think might be relevant or I might enjoy.

So I thought about romances and remembered this trilogy, which I'd heard about off and on over the years, and put it on the wish list.  I figured that by the time February rolled around some channel might run them all, and if not, well, there's always iTunes.  They're available right now on my cable's OnDemand, for $2.99 apiece, and since I didn't bother to change my chain around, now I'm kind of stuck, I have to pay for them to proceed, or else re-work my list at the last minute.  Let's get them out of the way so I can move on.  Adam Goldberg carries over from "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", today (according to IMDB) he's got an uncredited role as a man sleeping on a train.  But that still counts for me.

Here's tomorrow's TCM "31 Days of Oscar" (aka counter-programming for the SuperBowl) schedule.  The main topic is "Romance", and then the two head-to-head battles are "Hepburn vs. Streisand" and "Best Way to Take on Political Corruption":

5:00 am "Camille" (1937)
7:00 am "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
8:45 am "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945)
10:30 am "Marty" (1955)
12:15 pm "Wuthering Heights" (1939)
2:15 pm "The Way We Were" (1973)
4:30 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965)
8:00 pm "The Lion in Winter" (1968)
10:30 pm "Funny Girl" (1968)
1:15 am "All the King's Men" (1949)
3:15 am "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)

Really, TCM?  "Romance"?  Try programming a whole freakin' month of those films, then come back and talk to me.  And stop copying me, while I'm at it.  I've seen "Marty", plus "The Way We Were" and then everything else on tomorrow's list, so that's another 7 out of 11 I don't have to worry about, so I'm at 21 out of 34, up to almost 62%.

THE PLOT: A young man and woman meet on a train in Europe, and spend one evening together in Vienna, both knowing that this will probably be their only night together.

AFTER: My own romance chain rolls on, so maybe this film is no "Doctor Zhivago", but then, how many films are?  Once again, I feel I should be paying more attention to who directs what, because I didn't realize how much Richard Linklater I'd been programming - he also directed "Last Flag Flying", which I just watched a few days ago, and also "Everybody Wants Some!!", which I watched last year at back-to-school time.  And the year before that, I think I watched "Boyhood" and "Bernie" and maybe even "Tape", I'll have to check my notes.  (No, I'm wrong, "Boyhood" and "Bernie" were in 2016.).

Anyway, you can kind of see the same progression that he later used in "Boyhood", following a young boy through his childhood and teen years, watching the actor age in something close to real time by filming over a long period.  The "Before" trilogy uses the same idea, following the course of a relationship, checking in with them every few years.  Right?  And we can watch these two characters age over an 18-year period.

It's definitely a change from your typical Hollywood romance, since it's an indie film "Before Sunrise" isn't bound by the same rules, there doesn't have to be a wedding ceremony where everything that can go wrong will, or two people who are goaded into making some unlikely bet with their boss, where they'll be awarded the new accounts if they can make a woman fall in love or drive a man away with abhorrent behavior.  (Seriously, in what workplaces is this likely to happen?).  This is just a simple film about two people having conversations, trying to determine if they share the same worldview, the same feelings and desires, to determine if they're a good match.  It's the awkward part of the "getting to know you" phase of a relationship, but it's an important one.  No American man wants to get into a relationship with a Communist or a Socialist or a French woman who doesn't shave her legs, and no French woman wants to get into a relationship with an American who's rude or boorish or an Evangelical Republican.

It's funny, right before watching this my wife and I were out having dinner at one of our regular Queens diners, and in the booth next to us was an elderly couple, and the old man just seemed like he complained all the time and was very nasty to his wife.  She raised her voice once or twice during the meal, but we found them fascinating on a couple of levels.  First off, the old man ate an order of French fries with a side of toast (who DOES that?) and she had a frittata or something, and stopped when she had about five bites left, and got the rest to go.  I wish I could have heard more of their conversation, I only heard him barking "No!" and "I don't know!" and "You don't know what you're talking about!".  The lovers in "Before Sunrise" get together because of an arguing German couple on their train, which forces Celine to go find another empty seat, across from Jesse.  And later they mention the couple, and the fact that older men and women lose certain frequencies in their hearing, which causes them to be unable to hear each other in old age, which can maybe prevent them from killing each other.  Whatever, we just don't ever want to get to a point in our lives where we can't stand each other's company.

Here it's knowing that their relationship is destined to end at sunrise, when Jesse has to go to the airport to fly home, that sort of defines and shapes it from the start.  If you found someone you were a good match with, and you knew it had to end, and when, how would that affect the course of the night?  What if your first night with someone was also your last, and you knew that going in?  Would you constantly be thinking of the future, like how you're going to look back on this night someday, and what it all meant?  How can you possibly live in the present if you know the relationship has no future?  Is it possible to feel nostalgic for something that hasn't happened yet?  And if you're loving but always thinking about what it means for the future, are you really present in the present?  It's a simple idea with a lot of deep ramifications.

Or, you know, it just two people telling each other stories from their past and trying to kill time until the next opportunity to kiss.  Whichever.  They do make plans to get together again at a point in the future, but it's important to remember that before this was a trilogy, it was just one film, and for years their next meeting was not a guarantee, so the conclusion was a lot more open-ended.  You could look at that either way, if you wanted.

Also starring Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Julie Delpy (last seen in "The Hoax"), Andrea Eckert, Hanno Poschl, Karl Bruckschwaiger, Tex Rubinowitz, Erni Mangold, Dominik Castell, Haymon Maria Buttinger, Bilge Jeschim, with a cameo from indie producing legend John Sloss.

RATING: 5 out of 10 vinyl records