Girlfriend's Day

Year 11, Day 47 - 2/16/19 - Movie #3,147

BEFORE: The next part of my chain is going to take me back to Netflix for all three days of this three-day holiday weekend.  Two actors carry over from "Hello, My Name Is Doris" - Natasha Lyonne is the more prominent one, the other's "that guy" from "Mad Men" and is listed below.

Ah, it would have been great if TCM could have played a little ball here and programmed crime films or film noir or something today, but no, they had to run Westerns today, didn't they?  Anyway, Musicals are finally here tomorrow (followed by "Favorite Movie Nun" in primetime and "Favorite Movie with Three Acting Winners" overnight), so here's the "31 Days of Oscar" line-up on TCM for tomorrow, February 17:

6:00 am "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944)
8:00 am "Top Hat" (1935)
10:00 am "Annie Get Your Gun" (1950)
12:00 pm "Bye Bye Birdie" (1963)
2:00 pm "Oliver!" (1968)
5:00 pm "South Pacific" (1958)
8:00 pm "The Nun's Story" (1959)
10:45 pm "Agnes of God" (1985)
12:45 am "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951)
3:00 am "Network" (1976)

I'm going 8 for 10 tonight, a perfect score on the musicals, but I've never seen "Agnes of God", and "The Nun's Story" is on my list, haven't watched it yet.  But that raises me up to 81 seen out of 196, and I'm back over 40% to 41.3%.

THE PLOT: In a city where greeting card writers are celebrated like movie stars, writer Ray used to be the king.  In trying to recapture the feelings that once made him the greatest, he gets entangled in a web of murder and deceit as everyone vies to create the perfect card for a new holiday: Girlfriend's Day.

AFTER: You can sort of see how I mistakenly thought from the title that this was some kind of romance-based film (or maybe I was thinking about the Valentine's Day holiday, and therefore greeting cards and whatnot) but it's just not that kind of film.  The problem for me, therefore, is that there's no way I could have KNOWN it wasn't that kind of film, except by watching it, and now that I've watched it, it's become part of the chain and there's no going back.

This is a weird little think-piece, I guess, it's set in am alternate world where people know the names of greeting card writers, and the work that they do is very well regarded, unlike the real world where their work is largely anonymous.  I'm somewhat curious about where this came from, like is it a thinly veiled analogy about writing for a sketch show like SNL, which Odenkirk did for several years, or does some other writer have experience working in the greeting card industry, or what?  There's this overall feeling that the events of the film aren't really meant to be taken seriously, that's it's some kind of metaphor, even if it's not exactly clear for what.  Or is this just a spoof idea taken to the extreme?

It calls to mind many of those old detective stories, like the works of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler that got adapted into all those movies with Bogart (and others) playing Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe working his way across town, following leads that link back to some vast conspiracy or cover-up and put him in conflict with various goons or thugs along the way.  (The IMDB pointed out the shout-outs to 1970's films like "Chinatown" and "All the President's Men", but since the nostalgia for the 1950's was so big in the 1970's, I think this nostalgia thing sort of works in waves.)

The backdrop here is the creation of a new holiday to celebrate the existence of girlfriends, and it's proposed by the mayor to boost the failing greeting card industry, only is that what's really going on?  Who benefits from another holiday being added to the mix?  Struggling card writer Ray Wentworth is told to "follow the money" to figure out if everything is on the up-and-up when another card writer turns up dead. How deep does the conspiracy go?

But to accomplish this, the other parts of the story have to sort of bend over backwards to make the main storyline possible.  For starters, of course Ray's got writer's block, he might have written the best-selling Valentine's Day card, three years in a row, but his best days seem to be behind him.  Then for some reason, this is also an alternate world where, in order to write some genuine sentiment, one has to actually FEEL it first, so this is a world where you can't write something that isn't true, so you can apparently tell a lie vocally, but you can't write one down?  That seems a little weird, unless someone's trying, in a roundabout way, to point out that it's weird in the real world to send someone a greeting card with a sentiment written by someone else, which now seems like a bit of a lie by comparison.  Does that make any sense?

Ray's wife split three years ago, and left him for another man, and he hasn't been able to write a good greeting card ever since, since he's depressed and not in love, and this alternate world's rules therefore dictate his failure.  Yes, obviously in the real world there's some connection between the mood of a writer and his ability to write, but here the connection is a direct and literal one.  In order to be able to write a heartfelt love note to a girlfriend, Ray has to go out and find a girlfriend and feel those feelings, just so he can write about it.  Only once that happens, Ray feels that to give that perfect card over to a greeting card company, instead of the girl herself, would be utterly dishonest.

What doesn't really make sense is why, for some reason, he can't do both.  Why can't he give the card to the greeting card company AND to the girl he likes?  Why is it one or the other?  Why can't those words on the card be mass-produced in the factory AND also hand-written by him on another card?  It's like somebody here can write something down only once, but not twice, and that's a little silly.  Unless, of course, there's some larger point being made about the absurdity of greeting cards, and it feels like this film is dancing around that point without making it outright.  Dumb it down a little for me, would you?

Also, this is a fictional world with all these quirks, but there also exist love songs like Air Supply's "Making Love Out of Nothing at All".  Why are there so many constraints on the greeting card industry and how sincere everything has to be, but there are no such limits on ridiculous pop songs?  Wouldn't they be affected by this sort of self-imposed ban on creativity, too?  NITPICK POINT for sure.

But hey, it's a relatively short feature (just 70 minutes) so watching this won't prevent you from getting to some other things around the house, or watching something else after it and crossing another Netflix comedy special off your list.

Also starring Bob Odenkirk (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Amber Tamblyn (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Rich Sommer (also carrying over from "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Toby Huss, David Sullivan, Hannah Nordberg, June Diane Raphael, Stacy Keach (last seen in "Gold"), Andy Richter (last seen in "Dr. T & the Women"), Larry Fessenden, Alex Karpovsky (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Stephanie Courtney (last seen in every Progressive Insurance commercial), Tucker Smallwood, Grady Lee Richmond, with cameos from Derek Waters, Ed Begley Jr. (seriously criminally underused here, but last seen in "Mascots") and the voice of David Lynch.

RATING: 4 out of 10 televised bumfights

Hello, My Name Is Doris

Year 11, Day 46 - 2/15/19 - Movie #3,146

BEFORE: Kumail Nanjiani carries over from "The Big Sick", though I don't think he's got quite as big a role in this film.  I didn't even notice, but today's film is from the same director as "The Big Sick", Michael Showalter, who's a person I've met in the real world.  I even hired him once by casting him as a voice-actor in an animated feature called "Hair High", back in 2004.

Tomorrow's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up on TCM is not going to help me any, the main theme is "Westerns", followed by the competitions for "Best Road Comedy" in prime-time and "Best Louis Malle Nominated Film" overnight:

4:00 am "The Naked Spur" (1953)
6:00 am "Cimarron" (1931)
8:15 am "Way Out West" (1937)
9:30 am "The Westerner" (1940
11:30 am "The Ox-Bow Incident" (1943)
1:00 pm "How the West Was Won" (1962)
4:00 pm "Broken Arrow" (1950)
5:45 pm "Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957)
8:00 pm "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (1963)
11:00 pm "The Great Race" (1965)
2:00 am "Atlantic City" (1980)
4:00 am "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1987)

To my shame, I've only seen the two road comedies, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" (one of my favorite films) and "The Great Race".  I feel like I should watch more Louis Malle, but for that matter, I should watch more Bergman films too, and I just never get around to it.  Another 2 out of 12 brings me only up to 73 out of 186, or 39.2%.  I'm fading fast, only the musicals can save me now.

THE PLOT: A self-help seminar inspires a sixty-something woman to romantically pursue her younger co-worker.

AFTER: This sort of falls in line with the other films I've watched lately about people who are socially or medically just a bit "off", like "Wilson" and "Wakefield" and "Adam", only this one's about an older woman who (like those others I mentioned) has trouble reading the social cues.  Wow, that's rapidly becoming a running theme here at the Movie Year, from that cop in "Game Night" and that guy with the weird dolls in "Welcome to Marwen", right down to Dick Cheney in "Vice", who wasn't self-aware enough to realize that he was an evil prick.  Go figure.  This will all (hopefully) find its way into my annual summary of running themes at the end of the year.  Self-awareness is something we should all strive for, whether you're a stand-up comic ("The Big Sick") or an over-bearing mother ("The Meddler").  Can we assume that if these characters were more self-aware about who they are, that they wouldn't act the way that they do?  Discuss...

But really, I think giving these characters one easily definable personality quirk has become something of a cinematic shorthand - oh, yeah, that's the film about the detective that has commitment issues, and THAT's the film about the performance artist who wears a giant fake head all the time.  See?  One quick little unique defining characteristic, and you can build a film around that using proper six-act structure.  (Act 5 - find a way to get the guy to take his fake head off...).  But Doris has a whole host of problems, and only one of them is a lack of self-awareness.

Now, of course, they're all connected, because she has fantasies about a young man in her office, and if she were more self-aware, she'd realize that there's a great gulf between having a fantasy about someone, and being in a solid, working relationship with them.  After a short time hanging out with this young man, she's made the mental leap to a relationship, and really, that can happen to anyone.  You thought you were dating someone, but THEY thought you were only hanging out.  Then you put yourself out there and realize that the feeling's not mutual, we've all been there, right?  OK, I have.

Doris is also a hoarder, or perhaps her mother was a hoarder, or perhaps both, it's not totally clear.  And the film starts with her mother's funeral, and if you've ever seen those "Hoarders" shows, you'll know that a personal tragedy is often behind the hoarding mentality, people who can't let go of their loved ones or their emotions also can't let go of physical things, even if those things are filling up the living room or preventing them from using their shower.  So it's the lack of self-awareness, the inability to read social cues, the hoarding, the relying on fantasies to get through the day, am I leaving anything out here?  She apparently has a dead-end job doing data entry, but this was also a little bit murky, I'm not sure they ever said what kind of company they all worked for.

Anyway, she lies a little bit to get this guy's attention, like she claims to be a fan of his favorite band and "accidentally" bumps into him at one of their concerts, she also stalks him on-line and in the real world, only to find out he's got a girlfriend.  Things kind of devolve further from there - but really, getting involved with a co-worker or boss is a terrible idea in the first place, no good can really come out of it.  The worst case scenario is that one or both of them will be in trouble with HR for some kind of sexual harassment violation, real or imagined, but even the BEST case scenario is that if things work out, they'll be spending all of their time together, at home AND at work, and really, nobody wants that.  Home should be the place you go to get away from work, and for some people, the opposite is also true.  In theory, those relationships where people see each other in both places are likely to burn out twice as quickly.

But what really pushes the limits of believability here is showing an older woman hanging out and having a good time with a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters - so this is clearly a fantasy.  The baby boomers and the hipsters are just not meant to get along - sure, they both listen to vinyl records, but that's about the only thing they have in common.  Do you enjoy hanging out with your grandparents, hearing stories about the Korean War, drinking pink lemonade and eating hard ribbon candy?  Of course not.  Boomers, do you want to go out clubbing with your grandchildren, dropping molly and snapchatting with their friends?  Of course not, I rest my case.  OK, maybe if drugs were involved, like if the older boomers were smoking pot for medical reasons and the kids were doing it recreationally, but otherwise, it's not going to happen.

Also starring Sally Field (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Max Greenfield (last seen in "A Stupid and Futile Gesture"), Beth Behrs (last heard in "Monsters University"), Tyne Daly (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last seen in "A Merry Friggin' Christmas"), Stephen Root (last seen in "Get Out"), Elizabeth Reaser (last seen in "The Family Stone"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Adam"), Natasha Lyonne (also last seen in "A Stupid and Futile Gesture"), Rich Sommer (ditto), Isabella Acres, Caroline Aaron (last seen in "The Rewrite"), Rebecca Wisocky, Jack Antonoff, Kyle Mooney (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Don Stark (last seen in "Cafe Society"), Nnamdi Asomugha, Roz Ryan (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Anna Akana, Amy Okuda.

RATING: 5 out of 10 rides on the Staten Island ferry

The Big Sick

Year 11, Day 45 - 2/14/19 - Movie #3,145

BEFORE: Holly Hunter carries over from "Swing Shift", and I'm watching today's film on an Academy screener - it's available on Amazon Prime, and I do have access to my wife's Amazon Prime account, but I haven't been able to get myself in the mode of watching movies on Amazon.  For starters, my browser needs a special plug-in and I haven't had any time to devote to figuring out how to install it - but that's really a poor excuse.  But because of that, it's an extra step for me to remember to ask my wife to leave her computer on at night and be signed in to her Amazon account.  But in the past, when I've done that, I've been burned with the promise of "free" movies on Amazon Prime, only the free ones never seem to be the ones I want to watch, and the ones I do want to watch end up costing me $2.99 or even $5.99, and at prices like that, I might as well watch the same film on iTunes and pay my money to Apple instead of Amazon.

But I should know by now, if a film that's a year or two old hasn't shown up yet on premium cable or on Netflix, it's probably because it's from Amazon Studios, and they want you to watch it on THEIR service, or sign up for their service to watch it.  The streaming service wars are definitely here, and I think we've only seen the opening salvos in this war.  I'm trying to hold the line, like I won't watch that new "Star Trek" show if it requires me to sign up for a new streaming service.  I'm not joining CBS All Access or HBO Go, or any other service I'm eligible for, even if they're free, because I've got plenty to watch on cable, Netflix, iTunes and Academy screeners.  Hell, I've got too much to watch as it is, so no more services.  With a little effort, maybe by the time Disney On Demand (or whatever they're going to call it) rolls around, I'll have seen everything they're offering and I won't need it.

But hey, it's finally Valentine's Day, and the half-way point of the month of romance, even if my chain is going to be running into March this year.  And as I mentioned yesterday, Turner Classic Movies' main theme today is "A Good Cry", and there's at least one film in that line-up ("Dark Victory") that pertains to a person in love with an illness, so finally I feel like maybe we're getting on the same page, TCM and me.  Plus I'm watching a film tonight with Zoe Kazan, while TCM is running "Splendor in the Grass", a film that was directed by her grandfather, Elia Kazan.

But it probably won't last - the main "31 Days of Oscar" theme for tomorrow, February 15, is "Kid Stories", followed by the face-off of "Best Survival at Sea" during primetime and "Favorite Non-Speaking Role" during late night:

4:00 am "The Window" (1949)
5:30 am "The Green Years" (1946)
8:00 am "Little Fugitive" (1953)
9:30 am "Little Women" (1933)
11:30 am "The Jungle Book" (1942)
1:30 pm "The Champ" (1931)
3:15 pm "Strike Up the Band" (1940)
5:30 pm "The Bad Seed" (1952)
8:00 pm "Titanic" (1953)
10:00 pm "Lifeboat" (1944)
12:00 am "Johnny Belinda" (1948)
2:00 am "The Miracle Worker" (1962)

I can really only claim two films here, "Lifeboat", which I watched during my Hitchcock phase, and probably "The Miracle Worker", though I'm not 100% sure.  Let me give myself the benefit of the doubt on that one.  Another 2 out of 12 (pathetic) brings me up to 71 out of 174, down to 40.8%.  Musicals are coming up this weekend, though, and I'm going to crush it.

THE PLOT: Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash.  When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail finds himself forced to face her feisty parents, his family's expectations, and his true feelings.

AFTER: Well, I feel like I can repeat what I was saying yesterday about more complicated romance stories feeling more real, this one is definitely complicated, and it's also based on the real-life romance between Kumail Nanjiani and his girlfriend, Emily.  They give her a different last name for the film, but the two co-wrote the screenplay, so let's assume that it comes fairly close to their real-life story.

This touches on so many complex, awkward things - like being a Pakistani-American and clashing with immigrant parents over cultural issues, such as arranged marriages.  Dating an American girl and being afraid to tell his parents about her.  Breaking up with someone, then still caring about them while they're dealing with an illness.  And of course, awkwardly meeting her parents AFTER breaking up with said girlfriend WHILE she's in a medically-induced coma due to her illness AND at the same time, clashing with his parents over their attempts to set him up with an arranged marriage.  Whew, that's a lot to take in.

There's no one direct road to happiness, there's really only everybody playing it by ear and doing what feels right, and that means being influenced by parents, the rules of society, how you feel about religion, how you meet people, where you meet people, the conversations you have with those people, it all becomes part of the confusing mix.  Then there are bound to be missteps along the way, and times where you have to wonder whether it's better to scrap what you have and start over, or try to fix things and put them back the way they were, if that's even possible.  And then there are going to be times where you feel one way about a person, but maybe they don't feel 100% the same way about you.  My point is, it's quite often not as easy as the movies make it out to be, unless of course, the movie is a complicated one like this.

I like the focus on a stand-up comedian here, I wish more comedians would focus on telling long-form stories like this that are likely to mean something relevant to other people, instead of just being in silly fluff like "Baywatch" or "CHIPS".  OK, maybe they have their place, but those seem like they're shooting for the lowest common denominator.  This film, by comparison, has a lot more to say about the immigrant experience, and what it means to be in a relationship.  Humor is an important part of a relationship, I believe, and it's nice to see a comedian using humor to get through the awkward parts of dating and family relationships.  But hey, I'm just a guy who kept cracking jokes through his divorce settlement, so what do I know?

I also faced a similar dilemma because my parents are hardcore Catholics, and I decided that I didn't want to be, that I'd rather be non-practicing, leaning toward agnostic.  It was a tough conversation, but it had to happen at some point.  And I caved on my first wedding and had it held in a church to placate them, but the second time I got married in a restaurant and told them that was just the way it was going to be, and I hoped they would join me there.  It's an important part of becoming an adult, when you stop doing things the way your parents want them and start doing things for yourself.  So yeah, even though I'm not Pakistani or Islamic, this film still struck a chord with me.  Kudos.

My only NITPICK POINT was with the scene where the doctor kept asking Kumail's character if he was Emily's husband, in order to get permission to intubate her.  It almost felt like he was asking him to lie about her marital status, in order to get this needed permission sooner, and I don't think a doctor would coerce someone to lie, just to get permission for a medical procedure.  Surely doctors must understand that not everyone is married, right?  I mean, single people deserve medical treatment too, I think.  I get that they didn't want to wait for her parents to arrive, that would take too long, but a hospital still has to worry about ethics, and getting someone who wasn't her husband to sign off on a procedure could get the hospital in serious legal trouble.  If the procedure was something she definitely needed right away, why couldn't they just DO it?  I'm not a legal medical expert, obviously, but something seemed off here - what do hospitals do when there's no official family member to authorize something?

Also starring Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Zoe Kazan (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis"), Ray Romano (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Bo Burnham (last seen in "Rough Night"), Zenobia Shroff, Anupam Kher (last seen in "Silver Linings Playbook"), Adeel Akhtar (last seen in "Pan"), Aidy Bryant, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Kurt Braunohler, Shenaz Treasury, David Alan Grier (last seen in "Return to Me"), Ed Herbstman, Jeremy Shamos (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Vella Lovell, Linda Emond (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Jeff Blumenkrantz

RATING: 7 out of 10 hospital visitor passes

Swing Shift

Year 11, Day 44 - 2/13/19 - Movie #3,144

BEFORE: It's almost Valentine's Day, and the holiday is all about couples, so it seems only appropriate today for a couple of actors (and they are a couple in real life, too) to carry over from "Overboard".  Yes, I'm talking about Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.  And this also sets me up perfectly for my chosen film for Feb. 14.  This aired on TCM a few months back, and I kept it on the DVR all that time, because with the last DVR upgrade, I lost the ability to dub films from TCM to DVD.  FML, I guess I'm SOL, not LOL.

TCM was "Taking on the Nazis" yesterday, and I couldn't get to this film until today.  Sometimes TCM and I just can't get on the same page.  Here's their line-up for tomorrow, February 14, Valentine's Day, maybe we can get our topics to align.  Their main theme is "A Good Cry", followed by "Favorite Movie Wedding" in primetime and "Favorite Movie Divorce" in late night:

6:00 am "Love Affair" (1939)
7:45 am "Random Harvest" (1942)
10:00 am "Waterloo Bridge" (1940)
12:00 pm "Dark Victory" (1938)
1:45 pm "Splendor in the Grass" (1961)
4:00 pm "All This and Heaven Too" (1940)
6:30 pm "Brief Encounter" (1945)
8:00 pm "The Philadelphia Story" (1940)
10:00 pm "Father of the Bride" (1945)
12:00 am "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979)
2:00 am "Dodsworth" (1936)

Thank God the IMDB helps me keep track of what I've seen.  I keep all my ratings there, so if a film displays my rating, I can be sure that I've seen it.  "Love Affair" sounds familiar, but I haven't seen it. "Dark Victory" for sure, and I don't even need to look up "Splendor in the Grass" and "The Philadelphia Story" to know I've seen them.  "Brief Encounter" is a no, but I'm fairly sure I've seen "Father of the Bride" (the Spencer Tracy one, not the Steve Martin one) before starting this project.  And "Kramer vs. Kramer" is checked off my list, too, giving me 5 seen out of 11, not bad.  My total is now 69 seen out of 162, still holding at 42.5%.

THE PLOT: A woman finds romance when she takes a job at an aircraft plant to help make ends meet after her husband goes off to war.

AFTER: I think the problem with a lot of Hollywood romance films is that many tend to be too simple - two people meet, they fall in love, they get married, the end.  Or maybe there are some problems with the wedding, somebody gives a bad toast, somebody knocks over the wedding cake, ha ha, but they get married anyway, the end.  And if the credits roll then, you extrapolate into the future, and those two people are together forever - just don't go looking for examples in the real world of two people who stayed together forever and never had any problems.  So when a film comes along and muddies the water a bit, and makes the relationships more complicated, it can sometimes feel more real, like this could happen in the real world.  Set it against the backdrop of history, and that can heighten the effect.  Hey, World War II happened, so maybe this story happened too.

History is written by the winners, of course, so anything set back then tends to evoke the "Greatest Generation", the people who sacrificed to put an end to fascism in Europe and Japan, meanwhile the folks at home were rationing butter and running scrap metal drives and running blackout drills so that the war could be won faster.  That's how we choose to remember it, anyway, even if we weren't there.  But what about the sacrifices of the wives who watched their husbands go off to Europe or the Pacific, not knowing if they were going to come back, or if they'd get that telegram delivered by a soldier with horrible news.  What effect did that have on thousands of relationships?

Meanwhile, all the men shipping out for military service left the workforce undermanned, so women were added to the workforce en masse, for menial jobs like riveting, because who knew more about doing menial jobs than women?  Who knew more about working long hours for little pay?  The situation was considered temporary, of course, since the men who survived the war were going to need their jobs back later, but progress on some level was made with the gender-based integration of the workforce.  If you stop and think about it, Adolf Hitler doesn't get enough credit for all the things he did for women's rights.  (Yes, I'm kidding here.)

A step in the right direction, overall, but like many things in history, it was simultaneously both good and bad.  For example, having woman and men working side by side just opened the door for sexual harassment in the workplace.  Men who were already feeling inadequate because they weren't fit for military service probably felt MORE inadequate when surrounded by women doing the same tasks.  Yes, of course they could have just sucked it up and kept their egos in check, but come on - you know that instead many of them took it too hard and lashed out to cover up their hurt feelings.

Then there's the freedom that came along with being in new territory, new positions - and in the case of the lead character in this film, a new relationship with a male co-worker, while her husband was on a destroyer somewhere in the Pacific.  How long was a woman expected to remain faithful during a long war, and was it even considered appropriate to have a good time while one's spouse was off in the military?  These are complex questions, and perhaps when we romanticize the past, we don't hear enough stories about the people who did what they had to do to survive and maintain a positive attitude during tough times.

And so we have this love triangle, the wife with the absent husband and the work boyfriend, which gets more complicated when the husband returns on leave, and the work boyfriend turns to the wife's best friend, so I guess it's sort of a love quadrangle at that point.  (Then her ex-boyfriend comes back, so for a brief moment it's a love pentangle, only that kind of geometry just can't be maintained for any length of time.).

According to Wikipedia, there was a huge conflict on the production of this film between the stars (Hawn & Russell) and director Jonathan Demme - the actors wanted a more lighthearted film about infidelity during wartime, and the director thought it was a more serious topic.  Yeah, I guess I can see the problem - the director won out and this plays out more like a drama then a comedy - how could you possibly make this topic more comedic, I wonder?  It's sort of like Shakespeare, the comedies are the ones where love conquers all and everyone lives, and the dramas are the ones where the lovers part or everyone dies.

I didn't even pick up on the double meaning of the title until the movie was over - and of course I think the contributions made by women on the homefront were important, but I also can't help but feel that this feels like a back-up story to that of the war.  OK, we're getting some perspective here, but maybe just a little bit too much?  Like we're focusing on the background players, and not the main characters of World War II, do you know what I mean?

Also starring Christine Lahti (last seen in "Smart People"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Mother!"), Fred Ward (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Holly Hunter (last heard in "Incredibles 2"), Belita Moreno, Sudie Bond, Patty Maloney, Lisa Pelikan (last seen in "Julia"), Penny Johnson Jerald, Charles Napier (last seen in "Melvin and Howard"), Roger Corman, Chris Lemmon, Stephen Tobolowsky (last seen in "Love Liza"), Susan Peretz, Joey Aresco, Alana Stewart, with a cameo from Belinda Carlisle (last seen in "Whitney: Can I Be Me").

RATING: 4 out of 10 taxi dancers

Overboard (1987)

Year 11, Day 43 - 2/12/19 - Movie #3,143

BEFORE: After a day at home recovering, which essentially made for a three-day weekend, I'm ready to go outside and get back to work - only there's snow coming down, which is scheduled to turn into freezing rain later, which means ice everywhere.  Great.  But tomorrow it's going to be in the 40's, and then 50 degrees the day after that, which means everything's going to melt.  Still, I'm sure my idiot neighbors will be out shoveling this afternoon, because unlike me, they have no patience.

Goldie Hawn carries over from "The Banger Sisters", and I'm going back to the long-forgotten year of 1987 for this one, which I think is regarded as a comedy classic now.  I know they re-made it last year, and I just realized that the new version is available on Epix On Demand - since the remake has Anna Faris in it, I might have found a way to work that one in, linking from "I Give It a Year".  But I missed that chance, and it's too late to go back and re-do it, so I'll have to put watching the remake on hold.

TCM is going even further back tomorrow for their "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for February 13, with a focus on silent films - I haven't seen any of those listed, but I've at least seen both films going head-to-head for "David Lean Best Picture Win" during prime-time, which are followed by two films vying for "Favorite Singing Cowboy":

4:30 am "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1928)
6:00 am "The Racket" (1928)
7:30 am "Two Arabian Knights" (1927)
9:15 am "A Woman of Affairs" (1928)
11:15 am "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928)
1:00 pm "The Divine Lady" (1929)
3:00 pm "Sadie Thompson" (1928)
4:45 pm "The Crowd" (1928)
6:30 pm "Speedy" (1928)
8:00 pm "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)
12:00 am "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)
3:00 am "Under Western Stars" (1938)
4:15 am "The Cowboy and the Lady" (1938)

"Lawrence of Arabia" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" bring me up to 64 out of 151, which is 42.3% seen.  Damn those silent films.

THE PLOT: A cruel but beautiful heiress mocks and cheats a hired carpenter.  When she gets amnesia  after an accident, he decides to introduce her to regular life by convincing her they're husband and wife.

AFTER: This film is over 30 years old, and I don't think it's holding up very well.  The main focus seems to be based on a class struggle, the rich heiress against the working-class carpenter, and that brings up all the Reaganomics-era debates over government's role in catering to the rich, giving tax breaks to the wealthy so that they will "trickle down" to benefit the working class in the long run (yeah, that didn't happen) yet this is sort of relevant again, because Trump's tax cuts turned out to favor the rich once again, and shafted the common man yet again.  Oh, sure, people got to take more home in their paychecks, but that's a cut in WITHHOLDING tax, not in income tax.  People are in for  a shock this April when they fill out their returns, and find out that the only thing that got lowered was how much was withheld to pay their taxes, and they're going to owe just as much, if not more, with their returns.

But as for gender politics, this film totally strikes out.  I can't even imagine what someone was thinking when they wrote this - somehow it seems to be OK, just because the rich woman stiffed her carpenter and wouldn't pay him $600 for building her a shoe rack in her closet, for him to track her down when she gets amnesia, and make her think she's his wife.  Really?  That's not only unethical, that's bordering on kidnapping, and then making her work as a cook, maid and caregiver for his five sons is something akin to slave labor, right?  He calculates that he's getting $25 of work out of her per week, so she'll work off her debt to him in a few months.  I know 1987 was a long time ago, but $25 per week?  That's way below the minimum wage.

There's just got to be something wrong with lying to someone with amnesia, taking her home as your wife, and then (eventually) sleeping with her, right?  Didn't anyone have a problem with this, back in 1987?  I know, it was a different time, but COME ON, that's just too close to being rapey, I think.  If someone were hanging out outside the mental trauma ward, trying to pick up dates, you'd call the cops on them, no?  This is clear manipulation of an impaired person, even if movie amnesia isn't really a proper medical condition.  I've got a real problem with this, even if she does feel like she's falling in love with the carpenter, that's all happening under false pretenses.

People who think this situation is "romantic" probably are the same people who think that the songs "Every Breath You Take" by the Police and "Keep on Lovin' You" by REO Speedwagon are love songs.  Oh, no, they are not, when you read the lyrics you'll realize they're both stalker songs, but they SOUND like love ballads.  Same goes for this film, it SEEMS like a romantic comedy, but I've got my doubts.  It doesn't even matter if the heiress's husband didn't want anything to do with her, and took the opportunity to go partying around after his wife got amnesia, that's beside the point.  You can't take a mentally impaired person and make her your slave, then your lover.

Whatever "love" she feels for him at this point is some weird variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, where people have been known to develop feelings for their kidnappers, right?  Now I know why the re-make of this film did a gender role-swap, you'd sort of have to in order to tell this story in the more enlightened age of 2018.

Also starring Kurt Russell (last seen in "Deepwater Horizon"), Edward Herrmann (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Katherine Helmond (last heard in "Cars 3"), Roddy McDowall (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Michael G. Hagerty (last seen in "Speed 2: Cruise Control"), Brian Price, Jared Rushton (last seen in "Pet Sematary II"), Jamie Wild, Jeffrey Wiseman, Harvey Alan Miller (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Sven-Ole Thorsen, Ray Combs (last seen in "Vampire in Brooklyn"), Frank Campanella, with cameos from Hector Elizondo (also last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Garry Marshall and the Wright Brothers Band.

RATING: 3 out of 10 miniature golf holes

The Banger Sisters

Year 11, Day 42 - 2/11/19 - Movie #3,142

BEFORE: I'm home from work today with a cold - I was going to say a "bad cold", but I realized that goes without saying - have you ever heard of a good one?  Well, maybe a good one is the kind that keeps you from having to go to work on a Monday, so I stand corrected.  OK, I'll stand corrected in a little while, right now I just want to go have a lie-down.

Susan Sarandon carries over from "The Meddler", and gets me to three films with Goldie Hawn.  I had two Kate Hudson films last week, now here come three with her mother, and I can clear a couple of 80's films off of my list - it is getting harder and harder to link to those, now that my main list is over 2/3 films from this millennium.

Speaking of older films, TCM is "Taking on the Nazis" tomorrow (damn, I scheduled a 1940's WW2 film for Wednesday, not Tuesday) in their "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for February 12 - then in prime-time there's the battle for "Favorite Movie Butler" and the late-night "Best Supporting Actress Debut Win" face-off between Eva Marie Saint and Jo Van Fleet:

4:15 am "Days of Glory" (1944)
5:45 am "Ship of Fools" (1965)
8:15 am "The Desert Song" (1944)
10:00 am "The Stranger" (1946)
12:00 pm "Watch on the Rhine" (1943)
2:00 pm "To Be or Not to Be" (1942)
4:00 pm "Night Train to Munich" (1940)
6:00 pm "Casablanca" (1942)
8:00 pm "The Remains of the Day" (1993)
10:30 pm "Merrily We Live" (1938)
12:15 am "On the Waterfront" (1954)
2:15 am "East of Eden" (1955)

I have seen the original "To Be or Not To Be", thankfully, along with "Casablanca" (of course), "The Remains of the Day", "On the Waterfront" and "East of Eden", so that's another 5 out of 12 added to my total, bringing me up to 62 out of 138, or just under 45%.  I'd love to break 50% again but it's probably not going to happen.

3 days until Valentine's Day, 13 days until the Oscars, and 73 days until "Avengers: Endgame".  Spring can't get here fast enough, if you ask me.

THE PLOT: Lavinia and Suzette, former rock groupies and best friends, reconnect after twenty years; one is still as wild as ever, while the other has adopted a more conservative lifestyle.

AFTER: Once again, I was unsure when I scheduled this if there was even any romance or relationship stuff in it - really, I just needed the link between the Rose Byrne chain and the Goldie Hawn chain - but I think there's enough to work with here.  Suzette picks up a guy on the way to Phoenix from L.A. because she needs gas money, but she ends up forming a relationship with him, and Lavinia's married, but her relationship is affected when her husband (and daughters) find out about her past as a rock groupie.

While it's not really a lifestyle to be championed, groupies used to be a real thing (are they still?  I have no idea...) because you can't really expect rock stars, even the married ones, to be celibate or faithful while on the road, right?  (umm, why not?)  And it just comes down to economics, right?  The groupies want something, to get closer to the bands, and they have something that the band members want, and they provide it more cheaply than hookers, right?  So everybody wins, in a way, though it still all seems a bit tawdry somehow, even if we're talking about the 1960's and 1970's, the golden age of rock & roll, running concurrently with the sexual revolution, how convenient.

Lavinia, of course, has traded in her fast-living ways for a life as a wife and mother, with a pool and a husband who's thinking of running for office, one daughter who's class valedictorian and the other who's taking her driving test.  It's supposedly an idyllic life-style, which could be shattered by the revelation of her past, I get that - but there are also signs that her daughters are as rebellious as she used to be, and that the perfect conservative suburban lifestyle is just a facade.

But I've got some issues - primarily, it's very clunky how they get the Banger Sisters back together.  Suzette has no job or source of income, so she drives to Phoenix to see her old friend "Vinnie".  She happens to arrive when the family is outside taking pictures of her daughter going to prom, so she doesn't disturb them, and drives back to her hotel.  Which just HAPPENS to be hosting the very same prom in its ballroom.  Is there only one event space in the city of Phoenix?  Then after the prom, Suzette recognizes Vinnie's daughter Hannah, after seeing her before from afar, for about 5 seconds.  Anyway, why would the kids be leaving the ballroom, which is on the main floor of the hotel, by way of the 7th floor, so they could pass by Suzette's room?  I gotta call a NITPICK POINT on this.  (Also, at the only hotel in Phoenix with a ballroom, it seems there's not much emphasis on security, as the front desk clerk will give away your room number to anyone who can properly describe you - what's up with THAT?)

She also acts like she's known Hannah all her life, but how is that possible?  Hannah's what, 18?  And Suzette hasn't seen Vinnie in 20 years, so there's no way she'd have any knowledge of her, unless she's seen pictures, but from how long ago?  This just doesn't work.  A better way to write this would be for Suzette to visit the house and talk to Vinnie before the prom, then leave, but this would have given her the opportunity to be introduced to Hannah, that way she'd recognize her later, after the prom.

Geoffrey Rush is somehow both slumming here AND terribly miscast as yet another writer who can't seem to write anything.  It sounded like he was doing an impression of James Woods, which seems odd - why not just let Geoffrey Rush be Geoffrey Rush?

Also starring Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Town & Country"), Geoffrey Rush (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Erika Christensen (last seen in "Flightplan"), Robin Thomas (last seen in "About Last Night..."), Eve Amurri (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Matthew Carey, Andre Ware, Adam Tomei, Sal Lopez, Kohl Sudduth, Tinsley Grimes, Larry Krask, Marlayna Garrett, and the band Buckcherry.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Polaroid dick pics

The Meddler

Year 11, Day 41 - 2/10/19 - Movie #3,141

BEFORE: Before going to bed on Friday night (OK, Saturday morning) I took another stab at trying to come up with a chain that would get me to "Avengers: Endgame" in the right number of steps, but one that maybe wouldn't go through "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote", a film that hasn't been released yet, which I do want to see, but maybe not on the big screen.  Logically there must be thousands of theoretical chains that would get me from early March to late April, but with an ever-changing line-up of 155 films (and more on the "someday" list) to choose from, how could I narrow it down?  As each film could lead to 3, 4 or a dozen others, as soon as you plan three films, I find I've increased the possibilities exponentially, so I soon hit a wall after being flooded with possibilities.

But somehow I worked on the problem while I was asleep, and I woke up on Saturday morning (OK, Saturday afternoon) with a way to narrow the focus.  I had programmed my post-romance chain up to a Netflix film called "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" (with a large cast) so I searched my list for every film that shared an actor with that film, and labelled those films with a code, BS1, to show me what options were one step away.  Then every other film that shared an actor with THOSE films, which would be two steps away, got labelled BS2.  Plus I worked it from the other end, so every film that shared an actor with "Avengers: Endgame" got labelled AE1.  This allowed me to see all of my options, and any time I circled back to a film with more than one code, that's a possible chain.  Of course, I didn't want to get to "Avengers" too soon, the preferred number of steps was in the range of 33 to 36.  So any combination of a film's BS number with its AE number that added up in that range would be a viable chain.

I didn't even get that far, because this allowed me to see a direction forming, giving priority to films that I really want to see in late March, like "Super Troopers 2", which is airing on cable now.  And if I got to another big tentpole film with a big cast, like "Fantastic Beasts 2", then I saved my progress and started labelling new options FB1 and FB2, then I could see a bunch of new paths that could get me closer to "Avengers", which at this point was 10 days closer in theory.  And if I hit an actor like James Franco or Bruce Greenwood, well, they're good for 5 or 6 films in a row, so that's another few steps closer.  I worked this method - find all the links, pick the path that gets to the next tentpole, look for a way to get within range of an "Avengers" actor - until I found a path that's not only the right number of steps, but also contains a bunch of films that I'm excited about.  I'm talking like "Venom", "Alien: Covenant", "Mary Poppins Returns", "A Quiet Place", and "The Death of Stalin"-level of excitement.

Now, of course I don't have to stick to it, I can always change it around later.  But it's comforting to know that I CAN get from here to there, and even though the sands are constantly shifting, there's a way to make some sense out of the strange combination of films that I have access to on cable, Netflix and a pile of recent Academy screeners.  Then once spring is here, I can figure out a path to "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" and/or "Toy Story 4".  I've already got a documentary chain attached to "Spider-Man: Far From Home", I just have to decide whether it's a lead-in or a lead-out.

Now, the schedule for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for tomorrow, February 11, which is also focused on "Show Biz" during the daytime, with a prime time face-off for "Douglas Shearer Best Sound Award" and a late-night "East Coast vs. West Coast Dance-Off":

5:00 am "The Perils of Pauline" (1947)
6:45 am "Morning Glory" (1933)
8:15 am "What Price Hollywood?" (1932)
10:00 am "My Favorite Year" (1982)
12:00 pm "The Band Wagon" (1953)
2:00 pm "The Star" (1953)
3:45 pm "Inside Daisy Clover" (1965)
6:00 pm "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)
8:00 pm "Naughty Marietta" (1935)
10:00 pm "San Francisco" (1936)
12:15 am "On the Town" (1949)
2:15 am "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

It's almost an advance look at the musicals category, just the musicals that are about being in show biz, which is a lot of them.  I've seen "My Favorite Year", "The Band Wagon", "Inside Daisy Clover", "On the Town" and "Singin' in the Rain", so that's another 5 out of 12, which brings my total up to 57 out of 126, still at 45%.

Rose Byrne carries over again from "I Give It a Year".

THE PLOT: An aging widow from New York follows her daughter to Los Angeles in hopes of starting a new life after her husband passes away.

AFTER: At first I wasn't sure including this one in the romance chain was a good idea, because I thought it would be largely about the mother-daughter relationship, but there's enough here about romantic love that I can work with - the daughter's trying to get over her ex-boyfriend and the mother's dealing with the death of her husband, but she's also taking those first tentative steps toward finding a new relationship partner.  She meets one guy who's also from Brooklyn while at a bridal shower, but then happens upon an ex-cop from California later on in the film.  Yes, J.K. Simmons can play down-home, folksy divorced guy, in addition to sadistic white supremacist or sadistic music teacher.  (Which reminds me, I have to get started on watching Season 2 of "Counterpart", where he gets to play two characters, one good and one bad, from parallel universes.)

But, oh, how I wish that a comedy about a smothering helicopter mom were a narrative slam-dunk, if that were the case, I'd have enough material for my own TV series.  The story still needs to GO someplace, and this one just ambles around in circles, mostly.  So she doesn't have proper boundaries, there's been so much of that around here, between "Welcome to Marwen", "Wilson", "2 Days in New York" and even yesterday's film.  Just because she's following her motherly instincts, and has good intentions, that doesn't mean what she's doing is right.  Sure, she's dealing with a lot, but there comes a time when you have to take a stand against your mother, and not let her insert herself into every aspect of your adult life.

By the time the (supposedly) adult daughter here realizes that for her own sanity she has to take a stand, and lay down some ground rules if she and her mother are going to share L.A., it's nearly too late.  She needs a quiet space to write (or be unable to write, more likely, from what I've seen in films) and this is why you should never give a housekey to your mother, because she'll walk right in and not even ring the bell or wait to get you on the phone to tell you she's coming over.  Finally, the daughter has to go to New York to shoot a TV pilot, but then she puts her mother in charge of her house and her dogs, which is probably a mistake.  Some distance is needed here, but this way she still has to check in with her mother to see how the dogs are doing.

Plus, in the daughter's absence, the mother still needs someone to take care of, so she volunteers at the hospital, befriends a salesman at the Apple Store who needs career advice and then a ride to school, and offers to plan the lesbian wedding of one of her daughter's friends, even if she never gets around to learning the friend's full name.  Because it's good to be needed, and even if you're not doing things for yourself, doing things for others is almost as good.  Look, a favor here and there is fine, but this sort of behavior is beyond ridiculous, and yet the movie can't seem to decide if it's good or bad.  It should ultimately be portrayed as bad, but it feels like someone forgot to write that part.  Where are the people who SHOULD be telling her to butt out of their lives?  Why is this portrayed as having only good effects, when in reality, things should fall off the rails at some point?  Don't these other people have mothers who would be jealous if they knew someone else was mothering their kids?

Maybe I'm projecting here, because when I was a teenager, my family ran a local theater group and my mother, a music teacher by trade, got a lot of my friends and classmates involved in singing and performing, making them think (right or wrong) that perhaps theater was a viable profession for them.  Meanwhile, their own parents probably all wanted them to be on different career paths, like actuarial accounting or real estate, things that pay the bills.  Then here was this crazy lady, acting like a surrogate mom, showing them how they could get up on stage, have fun, and sing their hearts out while on a path to financial insolvency.  What right did my mother have to take a few dozen kids under her wing and get them interested in theater, leading them to think it's a viable career - OK, it might be, but for like 1 percent of the BEST performers...let's get real, following your dreams can only get you so far, and it's easier to adjust your dreams to match your skills and talents, rather than the other way around.

And the key to understanding this film is that the main character is named Lori, with a penchant for writing screenplays and a meddling mom, while the writer/director of the film is named Lorene, and I'm betting this is somewhat autobiographical.  But that's a double-edged sword, because that means the mother character never gets her comeuppance here, nobody ever rises up and tells her to butt out, which they should, because I'm guessing the writer/director herself never got around to that.  She just turned her into a character in a film and forgot to give her a narrative arc to follow, so this is just a simple character study.  Save that for your improv group, please.

NITPICK POINT: How did she even get her husband's convertible out to L.A.?  We know he died in the New York area, so why isn't the car still there?  Did she have it shipped all the way out to the West Coast so she could NOT drive it?  That makes no sense.

Also starring Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "The Snowman"), Jerrod Carmichael (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "Ghostbusters" (2016)), Michael McKean (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2"), Lucy Punch (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Jason Ritter (last seen in "W."), Sarah Baker (last seen in "Mascots"), Casey Wilson (also last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Randall Park (ditto), Amy Landecker (last seen in "Doctor Strange"), Billy Magnussen (last seen in "Game Night"), Megalyn Echikunwoke, Rebecca Drysdale, Bill Fagerbakke (last seen in "The Artist"), Robert Picardo (last seen in "The 'Burbs"), Lou Volpe, Tony Amendola, Harry Hamlin (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Laura San Giacomo (last seen in "Sex, Lies, and Videotape"), Shiri Appleby, with a cameo from Blues Traveler (last seen in "Blues Brothers 2000").

RATING: 4 out of 10 pregnancy tests