27 Dresses

Year 11, Day 61 - 3/2/19 - Movie #3,161

BEFORE: Finally, Oscar season draws to a close with TCM's last day of programming tomorrow, March 3, the main topic is "Stage to Screen", followed by a face-off for "Best Costume Winner (Edith Head)" and then "Favorite Epic Soap Opera":

5:00 am "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935)
7:30 am "Pygmalion" (1938)
9:30 am "Our Town" (1940)
11:00 am "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" (1940)
1:00 pm "Baby Doll" (1956)
3:00 pm "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1947)
6:00 pm "California Suite" (1978)
8:00 pm "Sabrina" (1954)
10:00 pm "The Heiress" (1949)
12:15 am "Raintree County" (1957)
3:15 am "Giant" (1956)

I think I can only claim three here - "Abe Lincoln in Illinois", "California Suite", and "Giant", but it hardly matters, I'm proud of my stats this year.  Another 3 out of 11 gets me to a final score of 151 seen out of 352, which is 42.9%.

Six more days of romance films, and then that programming will be over, too.  Katherine Heigl carries over from "Jenny's Wedding".  Oh, great, more weddings today.

THE PLOT: After serving as a bridesmaid 27 times, a young woman wrestles with the idea of standing by her sister's side as her sibling marries the man she's secretly in love with.

AFTER: Essentially, this is a story about Jane, a woman who hasn't learned to speak up for herself - the fact that she serves as a bridesmaid for everyone who ask her to is just a vehicle to bring this part of her personality to our attention.  Let's not forget that she does everything her boss asks her to, has put her personal life on hold for the sake of her career, and made who knows how many other sacrifices for her family and friends.  What's it going to take for her to start thinking about herself?  Apparently a lot of inconvenience and resentment, which eventually leads to self-loathing, and that's not going to stay contained for very long, one day it's all going to come out in an explosive fit of rage, right?  When she finally channels all that resentment outward instead of inward.

But who says that being a bridesmaid automatically means you have to be treated like a doormat?  I'd like to see the math on that one.  Sure, the bride always comes first when it comes to decisions about the details of the ceremony and the reception, but if we all do that for too long, then that's how we ended up with Bridezillas in the first place.  And who does that help?

Maybe this is why I put myself through this every February, watching way too many romance-themed films in a row - because once in a while, I find one that maybe has something to say, and it isn't just people meeting cute or having wacky misunderstandings that lead to people falling head-first into wedding cakes.  I'm not saying this one's on the level of a Shakespeare play, but at least it points out that we can't just live our lives doing things for others, or constantly worrying about what other people think of us, and being afraid to express that we want things, too.  Love is patient, love is kind, but love is also a bit inherently selfish.  If you love someone, you really should tell them, or you could end up watching them marry somebody else, and that pain will be amplified tenfold if they marry your sister.

There's a riff off of "You've Got Mail" here, as Jane gets noticed at a wedding by Kevin, who's there writing about weddings for the New York Journal, and Jane, because she's so into the bridal lifestyle, reads his weekly "Commitments" column, but doesn't put two and two together because he (conveniently) writes under another name.  So she's a fan of his writing, but can't stand him in the real world - sound familiar?  But he's determined to wear her down, and we the audience can probably figure out he's the one she really needs to be with in the end - only it's a shame that the movie has to bend so far over backwards in order to make it happen, when really, we could have just got there via a more direct route.

I've got to call a NITPICK POINT, I think, on Jane serving as a bridesmaid for two different friends at two weddings at the same time, forcing her to take a cab back and forth between Manhattan and Brooklyn several times, changing clothes along the way.  If you've ever taken a cab in NYC, assuming you can even FIND one that will take you to Brooklyn, let alone a driver that will let you change clothes in his cab, there's just no way.  During a couple of, let's say, 3-hour weddings, she MIGHT have time to take a cab ride between them two or three times, but certainly not the 7 or 8 trips she takes back and forth here.  Factor in bridge traffic on a busy Saturday night, and it's just not possible.  Then we come to this issue - what kind of friend agrees to be in two simultaneous weddings, when she knows that bouncing back and forth would most likely mean she'd miss the best parts of both receptions while stuck in a cab?  I could MAYBE accept this if both function rooms were a few blocks from each other, but in different boroughs?  Fagedda bout it. (Yes, we're supposed to believe that Jane can't say "No" to being a bridesmaid, but the right thing to do would be to cancel on one of these obligations, or risk losing both friends.)

The fact that she saves all of her dresses after the ceremonies, and that they take up a whole closet in a Manhattan apartment, where space is no doubt at a premium, is probably another minor NITPICK POINT, and so is the fact that Jane leaves one room after a situation to scream loudly into what she thinks is an alley, and then somehow doesn't notice that she's entered another fiction room where an anniversary party is being held.  (How did she NOT see this?  And why is a party with old people positioned so closely next to a loud party in a nightclub, with no one complaining about the loud music?)  For that matter, another NP is that many people these days use wedding planners, and fewer people rely on their bridesmaids and/or maids of honor for so much.  Hey, everyone's busy, right?  So for her to volunteer 27 times to be the main contact point for so many wedding details does stretch the limits of believability quite a bit.

But I'd rather point out that no newspaper anywhere would dare to run an article about someone, anyone, even in the "Commitments" column, without obtaining a proper release from the subject.  Yes, the newspaper is there to print the events of the day, but a profile article would require a release, for fear of libel charges - so there's just no way that the Journal could run an article about her as a perennial bridesmaid, and she would be surprised by it.  Could. Not. Happen.

Also starring James Marsden (last seen in "The D Train"), Malin Akerman (last seen in "Stolen"), Edward Burns (last seen in "The Holiday"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Wilson"), Melora Hardin (last seen in "Self/Less"), Brian Kerwin (last seen in "The Help"), Krysten Ritter (last seen in "What Happens in Vegas"), Michael Ziegfeld, Maulik Pancholy, David Castro, Peyton List, Charli Barcena.

RATING: 5 out of 10 "Mickey Mouse" pancakes

Jenny's Wedding

Year 11, Day 60 - 3/1/19 - Movie #3,160

BEFORE: I knew I was going to circle back to weddings before the romance chain was over, but obviously this one's a little different.  Let's just call the scheduling of THIS film on THIS day a little inside joke just for me.  Any convergence with my ex-wife's birthday is purely coincidental.  (Yeah, right... shout-out to her and her wife, by the way...)

Speaking of which, tomorrow on the penultimate day of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, after the main topic of "Science Fiction" there's the head-to-head battle for "Favorite Gender Bending Role", then late at night it's "Best Coming of Age".  (Geez, you'd think that gender bending would be more appropriate for the overnight, once the kiddies are asleep...)

5:45 am "2010" (1984)
8:00 am "Marooned" (1969)
10:15 am "The Time Machine" (1960)
12:00 pm "Forbidden Planet" (1956)
2:00 pm "Them!" (1954)
3:45 pm "Destination Moon" (1950)
5:30 pm "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977)
8:00 pm "Tootsie" (1982)
10:15 pm "Victor/Victoria" (1982)
12:45 am "The Graduate" (1967)
2:45 am "The Last Picture Show" (1971)

Ah, TCM's really speaking my film language here.  I love "2010", even more than I enjoy "2001", and I wish they'd make even more sequels, because Arthur C. Clarke wrote more books about HAL and the monolith and the future of mankind in that universe.  I've seen every film on this list EXCEPT for "Marooned" and "Destination Moon", so another 9 out of 11 gets me to 148 seen out of 341, which is 43.4%.  One more day left in the countdown, so I should be fine from here.

Grace Gummer carries over from "Frances Ha".

THE PLOT: Jenny Farrell has led an openly gay life - except with her conventional family.  When she decides to marry the woman they thought was just her roommate, the small, safe world the Farrells inhabited changes forever.

AFTER: Ah, Cleveland, city of lights, city of magic.  That's where my ex-in-laws lived, and I visited there several times during my first marriage, even during the period of unconscious uncoupling, which was let's say a two-year process.  So probably after watching this I'm going to get some stress dreams once some memories from 1995 get triggered in my brain.  Of course I never saw the end result of my ex coming out to her parents, but why would I?  Still, with a stubborn homophobic (and racist) father, I imagine it probably went something like this.

As a man who had a wife come out, as you might imagine, I've got some opinions about gay marriage - but probably not the ones you'd predict.  I do support marriage equality and gay rights, I just wasn't crazy about those rights being demanded from the woman I was married to.  But during the years (long after that break-up, obviously) leading up to the Supreme Court rulings on marriage equality and legislation passed by various states, when I realized what gay people were fighting for, I wondered, "Why?" I had gay friends and co-workers, too, and I supported their fight to be equal but I wondered, "Why stop there?  And why fight to be part of such a limiting system, when they could just go create a new system of their own?"  In other words, if marriage is an institution, why struggle so hard to be institutionalized?

Imagine there's an African-American guy who's applying for membership in a golf club, and the club's policy is that no minorities are allowed.  The rule is clearly discriminatory, and blatantly illegal and wrong by most accounts of rational people.  What I want to know is WHY this guy wants to join the club.  I figure that either he really really loves golf, which is possible, or really likes THIS particular club because of its location or some other reason, but most likely is the scenario that he's trying to prove a point.  Changing the hearts and minds of bigoted people, yes, it's a noble cause, but does he REALLY want to join this club, or just strike a blow for fairness justice in general?  Because if he sues the club and wins, then he gets to go play golf surrounded by a bunch of racist people who are already inclined to dislike him, because after all, they passed that rule to keep him out.

Two years ago I was at a high-school reunion and I was talking with a woman that I didn't know well (or at all) when we attended the same school.  And she didn't really remember me either, except she attends the church where my father is a deacon, so she asked if I was related to him.  Then it came up in the conversation that she's gay, and I asked her, "Then why do you go to a Catholic church?  They never stopped regarding being gay as a sin, they still don't recognize gay marriage, etc.  Why belong to a club that doesn't seeem to want you as a member, and treats you as a second-class citizen?"  Of course, I'd quit the Catholic church long ago, and the fact that they don't recognize divorced people as good Catholics either gives me no incentive to ever go back.

And that's how I felt about gay marriage in the years before the Marriage Equality Act - if gay people (in general) regarding marriage as such an outdated institution, which they previously didn't seem to want to follow the rules of, why were they struggling so hard to change the rules, only to impose those rules of marriage on themselves?  They were free of those rules, they seemed pretty happy to not conform, why take that step backwards and rejoin the outdated system of marriage, under which (at one time) women were treated as little more than property, unable to vote, unable to voice an opinion different from their spouse's, and there are laws against adultery (which, let's face it, both gays and straights are often guilty of, I'm betting at least equal rates).  That's all tied to marriage.  And then if you have gay marriage, then you have to have gay divorce, it's only fair.  Why, as a collective group, would you set yourself up for that, when before somebody just had to pack up their things and move out, end of story, both people move on with their lives, no legal fees that need to be paid?

But I go back to the analogy about the minority trying to join the all-white golf club.  Maybe he just really wants to play golf, or maybe this is the most convenient place for him to practice on a driving range.  Or maybe he just wants the same rights as others, to change the hearts and minds of other people over time.  But maybe he just wants membership in the club because he can't have it, and he wants to prove a point.  He wants the RIGHT to play golf there, even though he may never tee up.  Me, I think he could do much better, find a more productive way to spend his time, but that's just my opinion, and I don't think this comes from a racist place, I just hate to see people spending a lot of effort on pointless exercises for minimal gains.  So gay people want to get married, maybe it's because there's something about the institution they admire (even though it's rejected them in the past) or maybe it's for the insurance benefits or the convenience factor over time.  But maybe some people wanted it just because they couldn't have it, and were just trying to prove a point, that's what worried me.  They could have aimed higher, and founded a new system, but what does my opinion matter?

Now we're going through the same sort of issues with the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts.  For years it was very clear, the girls go over HERE and wear these colors and learn these things, and the boys go over THERE and wear these other colors and learn these other things.  Of course that's sexist, and that's no longer cool in today's world, so there were always girls who felt more at home learning about camping and computers and maybe there were boys who felt more at home learning about sewing and selling cookies.  (I was never a scout myself, but I speak as someone who did much better in home economics - cooking and sewing - when I was in junior high than I did in wood and metal shop.). So there were court cases over the years about whether girls should be allowed to join the Boy Scouts, and vice versa, whether the Boy Scouts had the right to eject gay scoutmasters, little issues like that.  Now that their membership is dwindling further, it seems like the Boy Scouts have re-branded themselves as Scouts USA, and girls are being allowed to join.  The Girl Scouts, meanwhile, are apparently upset - well, why can't the Girl Scouts adjust and offer the same merit badges as the Boy Scouts, that would reduce the need for tomboy girls to cross over to the other system.  You see where I'm going with this, right?  The analogy holds up, I hope - why do people need to get the courts involved, fight to be members of an institution that had marginalized them in the past?  Honestly, I just hope that all the kids get to go for the merit badges they want, and maybe change the system they're in from within.  Change takes time and effort, getting the courts involved seems like a punk-ass move to me.

That's really what we're talking about at the end of the day, changing hearts and minds on the issues we feel strongly about.  Getting back to today's movie, we see the point where Jenny realizes that by lying to her parents about her orientation for so long, she's bound by the limitations of their system, she can't be open about her relationship or life choices, and has to still endure them trying to set her up with her brother's friends or their older friends' sons.  It's an abrupt realization, probably too abrupt to seem believable, but at least she realizes that she has to force the issue, and tell her parents the truth and (eventually) get them to come around and celebrate who she is.  It's a struggle, and where her father is involved, it takes much longer.  But, to be fair, she did lie to them for a long time and that's a hard thing to deal with, even if you take their Midwest homophobia out of the picture.

So, as you might expect, this isn't really a romantic comedy, because I don't think most Americans are ready for a laugh-riot lesbian comedy.  It's more of a relationship piece, and even there, it's more about the relationships Jenny has with her family after coming out.  The gay relationship and gay wedding is almost an after-thought by comparison.

The foil relationship here is Jenny's younger sister, Anne, who comes off as a brat for the first part of the film, someone who was a real tattletale as a kid and then forgot to stop doing that when she grew up.  But when she accidentally sees Jenny browsing for wedding gowns with her partner, then kissing her partner and looking very happy, she's forced to take a look at her own marriage, to a lazy guy who won't even do the one chore around the house that he's asked to do, which is to water the grass.  Anne develops a theory that happy people don't mind doing chores, therefore happy people have green grass around their houses, so she decides to water the grass herself, and gradually learn to be happy on her own, without her husband.  There's some faulty logic here, like I can certainly imagine people who are both happy AND lazy, content in their relationships but still not wanting to water their lawns (perhaps they favor conserving water, or are forbidden to water their lawns because of local drought restrictions).  Anyway, it's a blatant masturbation metaphor as she learns to be happy from "watering her own grass".

Also starring Katherine Heigl (last seen in "The Big Wedding"), Alexis Bledel (last seen in "The Conspirator"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Snowden"), Linda Emond (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Matthew Metzger, Houston Rhines, Cathleen O'Malley, Sam McMurray (last heard in "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1"), Diana Hardcastle (last seen in "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Bill Watterson.

RATING: 4 out of 10 gossiping neighbors

Frances Ha

Year 11, Day 59 - 2/28/19 - Movie #3,159

BEFORE: OK, here's more proof that February is really the cruelest month - tomorrow's not February 29, it's March 1, which means that everybody has to pay their rent or mortgage THREE days earlier than usual.  How is THAT fair?  There were barely even four weeks in February, so that's two pay periods (assuming you get paid every other week), where in some longer months, you might get three.  Depending on your personal budget, there could be no room for error here, no cushion.  For god's sake, why can't we take that last day at the end of January and call THAT February 1?  We don't need two 31-day months (Dec. and Jan.) in a row, January could easily lose a day and still survive, only that rhyme won't work any more.  Same goes for July and August, they both have 31 days, so we could just make one of them 30 days long, and then February could be 30 days instead of 28 and be a real, legitimate month for the first time ever.  It's all arbitrary anyway, I'm not talking about changing the number of days in the year, just the number of days in February to 29 or 30 in a regular year, then 30 or 31 in a leap year.  We just all have to agree on it, or just go on treating February like some weird mutant of a month, but we'd all get an extra day or two to come up with the money to pay our March rent or mortgage, who couldn't use that?

Speaking of March 1, here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" for tomorrow, the main topic is "Planes, Trains & Automobiles", followed by the prime-time topic "The Softer Side of Scorsese" and the head-to-head late night battle for "Best Future Prediction":
4:45 am "Flight Commander" (1930)
6:45 am "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939)
9:00 am "The Harvey Girls" (1946)
11:00 am "Grand Prix" (1966)
2:00 pm "The Narrow Margin" (1952)
3:30 pm "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)
6:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968)
8:00 pm "Hugo" (2011)
10:15 pm "The Age of Innocence" (1993)
12:45 am "Logan's Run" (1975)
3:00 am "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

I think I've seen 7 out of these 11, which is great. I've seen "Only Angels Have Wings" (Cary Grant), "The Spirit of St. Louis", "Bullitt" (Steve McQueen chain), "Hugo", "The Age of Innocence", "Logan's Run" and of course "2001: A Space Odyssey".  That brings me up to 139 seen out of 330, or 42.1%.  With more science fiction ahead on Saturday I should be in good shape now.

Oh, and here are my stats for February, based on HOW I watched this month's films - how many came from cable, how many from Netflix, iTunes and from Academy screeners:

13 Movies watched on Cable (saved to DVD): How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, I Think I Love My Wife, The Meddler, The Banger Sisters, Overboard, Hello My Name Is Doris, Desperately Seeking Susan, Rumor Has It..., Thanks for Sharing, Frances Ha
5 Movies watched on Cable (not saved): Adam, Swing Shift, P.S. I Love You, Addicted to Love, You've Got Mail
5 Watched on Netflix: The Week Of, Girlfriend's Day, The Spectacular Now, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Kicking and Screaming
4 Watched on iTunes: 2 Days in New York, I Give It a Year, Peace Love & Misunderstanding, I.Q.
1 Watched on Academy screeners: The Big Sick

iTunes was up a bit from January, because I had to track down the romance films I'd planned to watch that disappeared from Netflix, and iTunes was the easiest way to do that.  And the number of Academy screeners was down, because obviously I had a special focus this month, and didn't spend my time catching up on what's been in theaters for the last year.  But as soon as the romance chain is over (8 days from now) I can get back on that beat.

Josh Hamilton carries over from "Kicking and Screaming".

THE PLOT: A New York woman apprentices for a dance company (though she's not really a dancer) and throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as the possibility of realizing them dwindles.

AFTER: After this, I'm going to consider the Noah Baumbach oeuvre pretty much crossed-off.  I mean, sure, I can seek out "Margot at the Wedding" or "Mistress America", or perhaps just wait and see if either of those happens to be airing and finds me, but I don't think I'm going to go out of my way to seek them out.  After watching "While We're Young", "The Meyerowitz Stories" and "The Squid and the Whale" last year, and two more films here, I think I've got a handle on this guy.  All the films really seem to be about people who can't QUITE get their shit together.  And that's fine, if that's what you want to make movies about, just make sure they're good movies about that subject, and not terrible ones like "Kicking and Screaming", whatever the terms "good" and "bad" may mean to you or to others.  Just try to keep the flashbacks to a minimum, and try not to waste my time, that's all I ask as a viewer.

No director sets out to make a BAD film, of course, the smaller indie ones just seem to stick to what they know, push themselves a little with each new film, but not TOO far, of course, and try to assemble a core group of actors that they like to work with again and again.  At the end of the day, if you're not a big Hollywood A-list director, I think that's about the best you can do.  And I still haven't cracked into mumblecore, but I think these sort of films are what I imagine mumblecore could be, or come close to what mumblecore SHOULD be, which is a lot of people talking about their lives and not really accomplishing anything, but perhaps coming close to the way that real people talk amongst themselves.

Wait, the wiki page for "mumblecore" specifically mentions the films of Greta Gerwig and the Duplass brothers, so maybe I HAVE seen some mumblecore!  Yes, "Frances Ha" qualifies as a mumblecore film, according to the Wikipedia!  At last, I've broached into this genre, nearly every other time I thought I was doing so, people would tell me, "Oh, no, that's not mumblecore."  Well, how will I know when I find it?  Friends would then say, "Oh, don't worry, you'll know."  In other words, they have no idea either.  But "Cyrus", "Celeste & Jesse Forever", "The Overnight" and "Adult Beginners" all qualify for this genre, so I can now prove that I've seen more mumblecore than I thought, and they don't all have to star Lena Dunham.  (Then of course, there's mumble-GORE, which is the mash-up of very talky films with horror movies, but that's really a different genre.)  Look, here's how you can tell you're watching a mumblecore film - if the director is an independent filmmaker who rejects and resents the use of the term, it's probably qualifies as a mumblecore film.

This film follows a central female figure and is divided up into segments based on the addresses where she lives in and around New York City.  I guess that's true for a lot of people, you can chop up your life into time periods based on the number of dwellings you've lived in - then I guess my life would have 7 segments: my parents' house, the NYU dorm, a tiny apartment on the LES with a loft bed (summer 1989), a better apartment in Rego Park, a fourth-floor walk-up in the South Slope of Brooklyn overlooking the BQE, 11 years in a condo in Park Slope, and 14 years in a house in Queens.  I'd like to think that my real estate has only gotten better (and more importantly, bigger) since the dorm.  That's called adulting.  But again, Frances can't quite seem to get everything together, whether it's the apartment thing, or the job thing, or the relationship thing.  Maybe she's not failing, she's just drifting, like so many hipsters do these days.

A lot of the problems Frances encounters would seem to be self-imposed (if you ask me) because there are times when she is just too proud to admit making a mistake, or too afraid of what people think or her, or maybe she's just too eager to be liked by others, and therefore afraid of being disliked?  Like when she's afraid to move in with her boyfriend, because that would mean moving OUT of the apartment she's sharing with her best friend, but then a week or so later, her best friend wants to move in with a different friend in Tribeca, so really, it's all just bad timing.  A lot of the events that befall Frances are downhill from there, so I'm not sure if this is supposed to show how someone's life can spiral out of control because of one simple choice, or if her life, like anyone's, is just going to be full of a lot of ups and downs, gutters and strikes.  And we all, including Frances, just have to do the best we can to take what comes our way, roll with the changes, and try to make something happen and also find our own joy and peace in the world.

It's clear that a lot of stuff HAPPENS as Frances bounces around from one living situation to another, but whether it all adds up to something that's greater than the sum of its parts, or just a set of random-ish occurrences, is best left up to the individual viewer.  Maybe this is close to how some people live their hipster lives, maybe not, it's not for me to say.  I'm probably too old now to be a valid judge of that.  But after so many close calls or failed attempts at getting something, anything going, it seems a little disappointing for Frances to take so long to make an adjustment to her vision board.  Just my personal feeling there. Never mind the people who want to know if she's ever going to find love with Benji, I want to know why she never considered finding love with Sophie.  Maybe someday.

The college that Frances returns to for a while, to work as an R.A. and catering wine-pourer, is Vassar College, which was also attended by, you guessed it, Noah Baumbach. (Gerwig did not attend Vassar, she went to Barnard...)  Baumbach and Gerwig are in a relationship, Gerwig wrote this film that Baumbach directed, and so on.  Plus Gerwig's real parents played Frances's fictional ones here.   There are connections all over this film to other famous people - that actress is the daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler, while THAT one is the daughter of Meryl Streep, and THAT one is the granddaughter of Elia Kazan, and even THAT one is the daughter of Griffin Dunne (director of "Addicted to Love") and the granddaughter of Dominick Dunne (the food critic in "Addicted to Love" who eats the bug).

Also starring Greta Gerwig (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Mickey Sumner (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Charlotte d'Amboise, Adam Driver (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"), Michael Esper (last seen in "Runner Runner"), Michael Zegen (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Grace Gummer (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Patrick Heusinger (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Maya Kazan, Justine Lupe (last seen in "Not Fade Away"), Britta Phillips, Juliet Rylance, Dean Wareham (last seen in "While We're Young"), Christine Gerwig, Gordon Gerwig, Hannah Dunne, Cindy Katz, with a cameo from Peter Scanavino

RATING: 5 out of 10 Christmas songs played on a trumpet

Kicking and Screaming (1995)

Year 11, Day 58 - 2/27/19 - Movie #3,158

BEFORE: I've decided that February is a fickle month - sure, we get Valentine's Day, which is a great day if you're in love or in a relationship, but a bad day if you're not.  Or, I suppose it's a bad day if you're in love with one person but in a relationship with another.  We also get President's Day, which celebrates the great Presidents our country had in the past, but it also reminds us about the bloated walking ego-ball that we have now.  And Groundhog Day?  Don't even get me started on that one.  The weather's up and down, too, like we'll get a day that's a bit warm and reminds us that spring is on the way, but it also feels like we could get snow or sleet with very little notice.  This is also reflected in the films I've been watching, because for every 5 or 6-rated film I watch, there's a 3 or a 4 to balance things out. Thankfully, it's almost over.

Tomorrow's the last day of February, and TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming features the topic "You're So Dramatic", which starts off with a film about college friends, just like my film today, then for primetime it's "Favorite Boxing Biopic", with the battle for "Best David Raskin Nominated Score" overnight:

4:15 am "The Big Chill" (1983)
6:15 am "Penny Serenade" (1941)
8:15 am "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)
10:00 am "Jezebel" (1938)
11:45 am "Kings Row" (1942)
2:00 pm "A Patch of Blue" (1965)
4:00 pm "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)
6:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955)
8:00 pm "The Great White Hope" (1970)
10:00 pm "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956)
12:15 am "Forever Amber" (1947)
2:45 am "Separate Tables" (1958)

I'm claiming 6 out of 12, which I think counts as a push: "The Big Chill", "Penny Serenade", "The Magnificent Ambersons", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Somebody Up There Likes Me".  Thankfully I've focused on Cary Grant movies, Orson Welles films, James Dean essentials, and boxing films.  So now I'm up to 132 seen out of 319, which is still 41.3%.

Parker Posey carries over from "You've Got Mail", and I'm back on the Noah Baumbach beat.

THE PLOT: After college graduation, Grover's girlfriend Jane tells him she's moving to Prague to study writing.  Grover declines to accompany her, deciding instead to move in with several friends, all of whom can't work up the inertia to escape their university's pull.

AFTER: I got on a Noah Baumbach kick last year, after watching both "The Squid and the Whale" and "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)" and finding both of those films to be pretty good. "Hmm, what else has he directed?" I thought.  And that led me to "Kicking and Screaming", and also tomorrow's film.  When I saw the poster for "Kicking and Screaming", I immediately felt I'd tried to watch that once, sort of paid half-attention and now couldn't remember exactly what the film was about.  But I remembered that it starred Anne Heche and Kevin Corrigan, and was probably worth another look.  Anyway, I found it on Netflix so I figured I'd add it to the list and make up for another movie sin from the past, and also get myself one step closer to seeing all of Baumbach's filmography.

As February drew near, I also noticed it was on Starz On Demand, and that's one channel that doesn't run that signal that prevents me from copying films to DVD, so I was all over that.  The only problem there was, when I selected the film, the On Demand service played the OTHER film with "Kicking & Screaming" in the title, which is that Will Ferrell film about a guy coaching a soccer team.  Starz claimed to be featuring both films on their service, but really, they're both just the Will Ferrell film. This should have been a warning sign to me, the fact that Starz is running the wrong film, and nobody has taken the time to correct the mistake - that means nobody's watching this film, or nobody cares, or perhaps they realize that the Will Ferrell film is better, so they'll just watch that.

Only today, when watching the film on Netflix, did I realize my mistake - this is not the film I tried to watch once with Anne Heche and Kevin Corrigan (and, it turns out, Catherine Keener...) because that film is called "Walking and Talking".  I totally confused the two titles in my head, because I couldn't really remember one, so when I saw something similar, I just assumed it was the same movie.  It's not.  BUT, the die is cast, the linking is already in place, so I just have to forge ahead and watch the wrong movie - what other choice do I have, if I want to maintain the chain?

But now I'm paying the price - because this film is just dreadful, like God-awful.  A bunch of students who can't seem to decide if they want to be preppies or stoners (because those are two very different classes of people) so they seem to be exhibiting traits of both classes.  And all they seem to do is sit around in bars and talk about meaningless trivia - like I played pub trivia for 8 years, but at least my team had a chance of winning a prize, a group of friends sitting around and quizzing each other for no prizes is just plain stupid.  None of them seem able to graduate from this college, either, and even the ones who do come back and take more useless classes, so what's the point?  Imagine the group of Delta frat boys from "Animal House", these guys are just as aimless, only they don't know how to party, like at all, so they're just plain boring.

Noah Baumbach based this story on his time at Vassar College, but made this film when he was 26.  Dude, you were 26 and still thinking about your college friends, and how great they were?  Somebody had trouble after graduation, I think, because by 25 I think college should be totally in your rear-view, unless you go to grad school for some strange reason.  Writers don't need to go to grad school, by the time they've got their first degree they should be out in the world writing, or filmmakers should be filming, and it should be about something besides college.  So essentially, this is a delayed student film, and here's the secret to understanding student films: they all suck.  My student films sucked, everybody else's student films at NYU sucked, every student film everywhere has sucked.  Spike Lee's student thesis film sucked, and I know because they made us watch it at NYU (I was there a few years after Spike graduated).  It's called "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads", and it sucks. It's one hour long, and I spent that whole hour wishing the film would just be OVER already.  (Even the first review I saw on the IMDB for "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop" reads, "with this film it's clear that Spike Lee would go on and make better and greater films."  That's the nice way of saying that it sucks.)

But student films suck for a reason, you're supposed to learn what NOT to do while making them, and start thinking about ways to make them better.  Mine were so bad that when it came time to submit ideas for senior year to make a thesis film, I found a unique way of getting out of this - I graduated.  I had enough A.P. credits from high-school, and they were in subjects like math and science that took care of many of my required liberal arts courses, so I found I had enough credits to graduate at the end of junior year.  Never made a thesis film, and I believe the world is probably better off for that - film school basically taught me that I didn't have the proper ideas, or the proper arrogant attitude, to be a director.  Because you not only had to have good ideas, you had to have the confidence to fight for them, and I had neither.

What I can't understand is why someone would hand around college for another five (or ten, as seen in this film) years.  You're in your twenties, it's the prime of life, why stagnate on a college campus when you can be out in the world, making things happen, or at least trying to?  I couldn't wait to get out there, good or bad, live in a shitty apartment on the Lower East Side and take a night job tearing tickets in a movie theater so I could job-hunt during the day.  I didn't sit around in a bar playing meaningless mind games (well, I was 20 and underage, so I bought my beer from the deli and sat around playing Trivial Pursuit, but that's neither here nor there...).

Thankfully, this does qualify for the romance chain, because Grover spends a lot of time flashing back to happier times, before his girlfriend went to Prague to study.  Something tells me this was the easiest way for her to dump Grover, and really, she's somewhere in New England, but I've got no proof of that.  Grover wouldn't know, because he never calls her while she's in Europe, because the international dialing codes are "too long".  What a guy.  Finally, after an hour of almost nothing happening, Grover decides to jump on a plane and visit Jane in Prague, only to discover that he doesn't have his passport handy.  So nothing continues to happen.  It's just as well, Grover probably would have just ended up living in an abandoned building in Prague so he could spy on Jane, if the other films I've watched recently are any indication.

I'm not sure which character is based on Baumbach himself, or if these are pastiches of his various college friends, but if so, he really should have tried harder to find better friends, or at least more interesting ones to write about.  Ding!  The best thing I can say about this film is that it made me forget, for a short time, how much I hate hipsters, but only by reminding me how much I hated preppies, back in the day.  Ding!

Also starring Josh Hamilton (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"), Carlos Jacott (ditto), Olivia D'Abo (last seen in "Conan the Destroyer"), Chris Eigeman (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Little Women"), Jason Wiles, Elliott Gould (last seen in "Nashville"), Marissa Ribisi (last seen in "The Brady Bunch Movie"), Dean Cameron, Kaela Dobkin, Perrey Reeves, Cara Buono (last seen in "Happy Accidents"), with cameos from David DeLuise, Noah Baumbach.

RATING: 2 out of 10 "Friday The 13th" movie titles

You've Got Mail

Year 11, Day 57 - 2/26/19 - Movie #3,157

BEFORE: This makes three in a row for Meg Ryan, who carries over from "Addicted to Love".  Now we're getting down to it - somehow I've succcessfully managed to avoid this film for over 20 years, but wouldn't you know, I've found that it finally serves a purpose, helping me get to the end of this year's romance chain, with a link back to the last Noah Baumbach films on my list (I think).

Just 5 more days of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, too - the focus for tomorrow, February 27 is on "Crime", with a head-to-head battle between Mickey Rooney and Jackie Cooper in "Favorite Young Best Actor Nominee" and then a fight for "Favorite Military Romance":

4:30 am "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934)
6:15 am "Doorway to Hell" (1930)
8:00 am "Johnny Eager" (1941)
10:00 am "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)
12:00 pm "The Naked City" (1948)
2:00 pm "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)
4:00 pm "White Heat" (1949)
6:00 pm "Mystery Street" (1950)
8:00 pm "The Human Comedy" (1940)
10:15 pm "Skippy" (1933)
12:00 am "From Here to Eternity" (1953)
2:15 am "A Farewell to Arms" (1932)

Oof, there's only a couple real films that stand out here, is that because it's Wednesday, or did they already play most of the GOOD Oscar-nominated films, and here in the last few days, it's time for the ass-end of the list?  Sure, I've seen "The Maltese Falcon", "White Heat" and "From Here to Eternity", but "Skippy"?  Come on, TCM, work with me here.  Plus, I've seen the 1957 version of "A Farewell to Arms", but not the 1932 version - so I'm only hitting for 3 out of 12 tomorrow, bringing me up to 126 seen out of 307, so I'm hanging on at 41% even. Just four more days, but I want to finish strong.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Shop Around the Corner" (Movie #1,045)

THE PLOT: Two business rivals who despise each other in real life unwittingly fall in love over the internet.

AFTER: Boy, this one looks really quaint, now, right?  People signing on to check their AOL mail via DIAL-UP?  People exchanging messages in an AOL chat-room, or using Instant Messenger?  How is this movie 20 years old, but it feels like the technology is from the Stone Age of the internet?  This is a film that's terribly in need of an update, like a version with Tinder and Grinder and Match.com and some freakin' WI-FI, for chrissakes.  But since nobody had a smartphone back in 1998, or a Facebook profile, that's what drives the plot here, that two people could carry on a conversation for months without ever seeing what the other person looks like - so I guess it couldn't happen today, unless some form of catfishing were involved.

Joe and Kathleen are two people who both live on the Upper West Side, and they nearly bump into each other several times a day, like on the way to work or at cafés or while going through Central Park, and they've been carrying on a long internet chat for months, despite both being in relationships.  Umm, that's called cheating, or a form of it, right?  Because the person you DON'T know in real life but are talking to online is always going to be a mystery, someone you can fantasize about when your real partner lets you down.  The grass is always going to look greener on the other side of the chat-room, or something like that.  That's why we have Facebook and Instagram now, so you can check someone out and see if there are a lot of pictures of them with friends and lovers and ex-lovers, right?

But it's awfully convenient here that Kathleen seems to be in a serious relationship at the start of this film, and then when the partner needs to go away, it turns out that neither he NOR she were very serious about the relationship at all.  Or perhaps it just seems very convenient to someone who's watched over 20 romantic comedies this month, I'm not sure.  And then of course it's also very convenient that Joe suddenly realizes that his current girlfriend is an annoying, self-centered person, and he wants out.  Well, why were they together in the first place?  It must have seemed like a good idea at some point, right?  Was it the AOL chats that poisoned the well, or did they turn to the AOL chats because something was fundamentally not right with their relationships?  This is more or less unclear.

For a minute, I thought there was going to be a repeat of the "When Harry Met Sally" plot idea where the four lead characters would switch partners, like when Carrie Fisher's character connected with Bruno Kirby's character, and they split off, leaving Harry and Sally in the dust.  Well, both films were written by Nora Ephron, after all.  But "When Harry Met Sally" came first - still, when Joe's girlfriend Patricia seemed to connect with Kathleen's boyfriend Frank at a party, I thought, "Oh, no, here we go again, she's going back to that old well..."  Thankfully, the film went in a different direction from there - but that was a close one, for sure.

The twist here is that instead of meeting cute like in most romantic comedies, the (eventual) couple finds themselves at odds with each other - Kathleen runs a small, independent children's bookstore, and Joe Fox is the head of a chain of giant bookstores, intent on expansion and taking over as much Manhattan retail space as possible, selling books at discounted prices, but making up for it with volume, volume, volume.  So Kathleen (once she figures out the true identity of this man who bought a bunch of books at her store) can only see him for what she perceives him to be - a callous, greedy mogul from a rich family intent on driving her store out of business.  Which, to be fair, he more or less is.

But, WHY does it have to be this way?  Why can't both bookstores exist and cater to different markets?  If Joe really liked the way that "The Shop Around the Corner" operates, why not just maintain a giant chain bookstore without a children's section?  Why not say, "Well this nearby store has a lock on that market, so we'll carry every OTHER type of book here, because she already has a loyal clientele."  Especially when Joe learns that his business rival is ALSO the woman that's he's fallen for on-line, why doesn't he work something out, send a little business her way?  Surely his giant conglomerate mega-bookstore doesn't need to hog EVERY sale of every book, does it?

For that matter, why doesn't Joe just hire Kathleen, is he afraid that she's too proud?  Why doesn't he buy her tiny bookstore to give back to her, or just to keep it in business, or make it the annex to his giant mega-bookstore?  Why is it so important for the plot that he becomes "the guy who put her out of business", just to create another obstacle in their relationship, when there were simple plot solutions that would save her store, keep her employees employed AND redeem Joe Fox as a caring human character at the same time?

It seems that I've accidentally set up a running theme for the past week, and it lies somewhere at the intersection of romance and deception, aka lying.  Even a lie of omission is still a lie, whether it's Diane's mother in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding" setting her up with a local musician while carefully omitting some details about him, or the person delivering the messages to Holly in "P.S. I Love You" in secret.  Then in "Rumor Has It..." Sarah went off with Blake Burroughs without telling her fiancé about it, and that turned out to be a bad idea.  In "Thanks for Sharing" Adam sort of neglected to tell his new girlfriend that he was being treated for sex addiction, and in "I.Q." Ed the mechanic couldn't find a way to tell Catherine that he wasn't really a scientific genius.  Then in "Addicted to Love" there was a whole lot of destructive behavior, like the couple spying on their exes, and Sam taking a job in Anton's restaurant, lying about his identity to sabotage his career.  And now today we've got Joe Fox, who is lying to Kathleen by befriending her and NOT telling her that he knows they've been communicating in the chat room.  This lying really should disqualify him as a future romantic partner, but come on, it's a Hollywood romance, so of course somehow it doesn't.

The inspiration here was probably what was going on in NYC in the late 1990's, with big stores like Barnes & Noble putting independent "mom & pop" bookstores out of business, just like Starbucks moved in and took over and killed a lot of smaller coffee shops.  But now in the last few years Amazon has been dominating the market, like I still love Barnes & Noble, but who doesn't go there just to browse, then go home and order the same books on Amazon?  Like, who wants to carry a big bag of books home on the subway, when they can be delivered by mail?  Someday we'll all be working for Amazon...

Or maybe not - the recent Amazon scandal in NYC was that the company got a ginormous tax break to set up their East Coast headquarters in Long Island City, but then the debates began over whether this plan was good for NYC or bad for NYC.  Sure, it meant 25,000 more jobs in the city, but at what cost?  That giant tax break meant that the city was essentially getting screwed, which meant that all the other New Yorkers would have to pick up the slack and foot the bill for that, somehow.  And more  Amazon workers meant more people on the subway going to work, more people getting paid minimum wage (or close to it) for slaving in Amazon's soulless warehouse, and oh, yeah, those people are all going to need apartments, which means fewer apartments for everyone else, so that means rents would go up, and then what about all the things that COULD have been built on the site of Amazon's East Coast headquarters, like maybe some low- or moderate-income housing?  Wouldn't that help problems like homelessness in the long run, which would mean less of a drain on city services like shelters and hospitals?   Yes, this was a complex issue, and people are still debating now whether Amazon pulling out of NYC real estate is a good thing or a bad thing.

Somehow, the events seen in "You've Got Mail" are some kind of prescient metaphor for this, even if I can't quite articulate it properly.  Though the plot is very clunky and awkward, this movie still could have been a lot worse than it was.

Also starring Tom Hanks (last seen in "Concert for George"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Mascots"), Jean Stapleton (last heard in "Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Saving Silverman"), Heather Burns (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Dave Chappelle, Dabney Coleman (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), John Randolph (last seen in "Frances"), Hallee Hirsh (last seen in "One True Thing"), Jeffrey Scaperrotta, (ditto) Cara Seymour (last seen in "The Music Never Stopped"), Katie Finneran, Sara Ramirez, Chris Messina, with cameos from Michael Badalucco (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Jane Adams (last seen in "Orange County"), Deborah Rush

RATING: 5 out of 10 quotes from "The Godfather"

Addicted to Love

Year 11, Day 56 - 2/25/19 - Movie #3,156

BEFORE: Still recovering from watching the Oscars - I kind of liked the "no host" format because that kept things moving.  There's no need to have a host waste 10 minutes on a monologue, or work themself into a montage like Billy Crystal used to do, because then the show always runs long.  They also got rid of the montages that explain concepts like "Hey, this is what a musical is, let's look at clips from 100 famous ones to really drive the point home."  And then to have a host introduce the next presenters always seemed like a waste of time too, because as last night's show proved, a P.A.-style announcement works just as well.  

I was rooting for the films I'd seen to win - which was only "Vice" and "Black Panther" in the Best Picture category - "Vice" only won for best make-up, but "Black Panther" won like 4 craft awards.  The category where I'd seen the most nominees was "Best Visual Effects", since I'd seen both superhero films and the "Star Wars" knockoff, and then in Best Animated Feature I'd also seen both "Incredibles 2" and "Isle of Dogs", but those awards went to "First Man" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse".  But I know one of the directors of the Spider-Man film, so I'm happy for him.  Now I'm already on track to watch several of the winners and nominees during March and April, like the Spider-Man film, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", "Mary Poppins Returns", "Christopher Robin", "A Star Is Born", "The Mule" and "Green Book", plus I'm finally going to cross off "Moonlight", which won two years ago.  I can't see much further than that right now, but I want to get to "BlackKklansman", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "First Man", "Ralph Breaks the Internet" and even that documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the end of 2019.  

The end is in sight for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", just 6 more days to go.  Tomorrow, February 26, it's "War" films during the day, "Favorite Best Actress Win: Ingrid Bergman" during primetime, and the battle for "Favorite Conrad L. Hall Western Cinematography" overnight:

3:15 am "Glory" (1989)

5:30 am "Sergeant York" (1941)

7:45 am "They Were Expendable" (1945)

10:00 am "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" (1944)

12:30 pm "The Young Lions" (1958)

3:30 pm "The Dirty Dozen" (1967)

6:00 pm "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)

8:00 pm "Gaslight" (1944)

10:15 pm "Anastasia" (1956)

12:15 am "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969)

2:15 am "The Professionals" (1966)

I've seen "Glory", "Sergeant York", "The Dirty Dozen", "Gaslight", "Anastasia" and of course, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", so that's another 6 out of 11, that counts as progress.  So now I'm up to 123 out of 295, which is 41.7%.  I may reach my goal yet.  Meg Ryan carries over today from "I.Q."

THE PLOT: Maggie's and Sam's former partners are in love; she wants revenge and he wants his lost love back, so they work together to break up the happy couple.

AFTER: Ugh, I don't know where to start with this one - it's filled to the brim with bad behavior, people doing the wrong things for the right reason, or maybe the other way around, and somehow justifying it all for the cause of love.  Where, really, nobody seems to be exhibiting loving behavior at all, or doing things that should lead to them being rewarded with love, so I just don't get it.

First off, we see Sam, who's an astronomer of some ability - he can accurately predict when a star is going to explode into a supernova, just by studying its behavior for a long period of time.  It's funny, last night's romantic comedy with Meg Ryan also dealt with astronomy, specifically a comet (and for some reason it didn't even bug me when a smart woman believed that her dead father would be "coming back" to her when the comet returned.  Now I'm thinking that it probably should have bothered me...because that's not how comets or dead people work.)

But right off, I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the proper use of tenses when it comes to stargazing.  Because a star is so far away, it's not proper to say that the star is "about to go supernova", by using the future tense.  The proper terminology is to theorize that the star already WENT supernova years ago, and the light is finally reaching us - if that star is six light-years away, then if it exploded six years ago, it would take that long for the light to reach us and for us to find out about it.  When you get into these interstellar distances, then space is also time, and when you look at the stars, you're really gazing into the past.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned about break-ups in this point, because Sam's girlfriend, Linda, is chosen to go teach at some magnet school in New York for several months (umm, I don't think this is how teaching works, either, you kind of just teach where you are, or you go where the jobs are, but you don't get the privilege of teaching at a special school for a short period, right?).  Anyway while she's gone, she falls out of love with Sam and he gets the break-up note read to him by her father (umm, no, again, nobody does this, a real adult would write a break-up note directly to the person they're breaking up with).  But really, the break-up is like the light from a star - by the time the news reaches Sam, it's already over, the break-up happened like two light-weeks ago, and there's nothing he can do about it.

But instead of being a reasonable adult about it, he packs up and heads off to NYC without a plan (or a place to stay, again, nobody does this either...) and then after somehow figuring out where Linda lives now (this is also very unclear) he rings the doorbell, but gets spooked and runs away before her boyfriend can answer the door.  This is really where things start to break down, because you realize that the whole story is driven by people not acting like rational adults, and pretty much this is going to continue in this vein for the whole movie.

So, naturally, illogically and impossibly, he breaks in to the abandoned building across the street, and sets himself up rent-free in a room that's falling apart but yet somehow also livable, where he can set up a telescope-like lens that allows him to project an image onto a blank wall and then obsessively spy on Linda and her new beau, "Wakefield"-style (only, umm, this film came first.). No, no, no, no, no, this is not the behavior of a rational adult.  And obsessively tracking all of their little behaviors in order to determine when their relationship will implode (supernova-style, I guess...) is a tell-tale sign of a demented person.

Before long, he's joined by Maggie, who's the ex-girlfriend of Linda's new boyfriend, Anton.  And somehow she instinctively, magically, impossibly knows when she sees Sam going into the abandoned building that he's the ex-boyfriend of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend.  (wait - no, that's correct). And somehow she knows what he's doing there, and she wants in - only she doesn't want to get back together with Anton, like Sam wants to get back with Linda, Maggie only wants to destroy his life.  So they team up to spy on Linda and Anton and figure out ways to make their lives worse.

For a while, this means planting evidence that Anton is being unfaithful, like getting a street performer's monkey to douse him with perfume.  Umm, I think?  This was weird and unclear.  Then Sam and Maggie break into their apartment (I guess they overheard talk of them going away for the weekend?  Again, unclear.) in order to plant evidence of various affairs, like hiding stray panties in the couch cushions.  But then they do something that doesn't make much sense, they fool around together in Linda and Anton's bed.  Umm, how does THIS help the cause?  Anton and Linda are going to come back from their weekend trip, and it's going to look like two strangers had sex in their bed?  This won't look like Anton's been unfaithful, because he was away for the weekend WITH LINDA.  Come on, this is just lazy screenwriting.

Unless, it's possible that the fooling around in the bed was unplanned, and both Sam and Maggie got caught up in the moment.  Because eventually it does seem like the script is pushing those two crazy kids together, since they have a common goal, they spend a lot of time together, they get used to each other's jokes, etc.  But here's the kicker - it doesn't feel like ANY of the characters deserve to be in love and happy, because they're all horrible people.  At first it seems like Linda and Anton are bad people, because they broke up with Sam and Maggie, but at least they seem to be in love with each other, right?  Anton is annoying, dictatorial and French, but still seems like a much less evil person than Sam, even if you assume that he was trying to marry Linda just to get his green card.

Sam and Maggie continue to do horrible things, like Sam gets a job in Anton's restaurant, and gets Maggie to bring him a bunch of cockroaches from the abandoned building, which he then releases in the restaurant on the night when a big food critic is eating there, so his entire reputation and livelihood is ruined.  And Maggie hides some strawberries in his pillowcase, knowing that he's terribly allergic.  These are not the actions of healthy people - Sam probably had to catch roaches for weeks and somehow store them somewhere they could be easily accessible, and that means feeding them, caring for them.  This is not the act of a rational man, it requires premeditation and seems like the act of a psychopath.  

Then there's Maggie's weird collage/art project - WTF was the point of that?  It added nothing to the plot, was it just a way for her to pass the time in the abandoned building?  And what kind of people put their jobs and lives on holds for weeks or months just to spy on their exes, anyway?  Neither of them deserve to find love, not even with each other, until they can grow up and learn to handle their failed relationships in a more dignified manner.  Because if they're always looking back, then they're just not moving forward.  Spending all their time looking at the dying light of a fading thing is a pointless exercise.

Also starring Matthew Broderick (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Kelly Preston (last seen in "52 Pick-Up"), Tcheky Karyo (last seen in "The Patriot"), Maureen Stapleton (last seen in "Reds"), Nesbitt Blaisdell, Remak Ramsay, Lee Wilkof, Dominick Dunne, Larry Pine (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), with a cameo from Daniel Dae Kim.

RATING: 3 out of 10 hobo showers on the roof (I assure you, nobody in NYC does this...)

I.Q.

Year 11, Day 55 - 2/24/19 - Movie #3,155

BEFORE: Well, when I was putting together this romance chain I went as far as I could with the films that I had, and that got me to "Thanks for Sharing", which had been on my list for, I don't know, let's say six months.  Then I had another chain that I wanted to end with, because it would end with several films with Diane Lane, most of which had been on my list for even longer.  That chain was about 11 or 12 films long, and started with a Meg Ryan film.  So, with a gap between a Tim Robbins film and a Meg Ryan film, I remembered this film, starring both of them, and added it as a maybe.  I looked for it on premium cable for a few months, and it didn't show up, but hey, there's always iTunes.  And now since I didn't come up with some alternate linking plan, I've got to bite the bullet and shell out a few bucks to rent this one from iTunes if I want to finish the romance chain the way I planned.  I can't help but think there must have been a better way to arrange the films that I had, that I should have paid more attention to the uncredited cameos from actors like Colleen Camp or Michael Badalucco, that there had to be another way to get from A to B without going through THIS film, which seems like it has a very dumb premise.  But I didn't find it in time, so I've got no other way out - live by the linking, die by the linking.

Just one week left in TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and tomorrow, February 25, they've circled back to "Romantic Comedies", just like I have, followed by the primetime face-off for "Favorite Gangster" and the late-night competition for "1941 Best Screenplay: Original vs. Adapted":

4:00 am "Holiday" (1938)
6:00 am "The Awful Truth" (1937)
8:00 am "Designing Woman" (1957)
10:00 am "It Happened One Night" (1934)
12:00 pm "Libeled Lady" (1936)
2:00 pm "The Tender Trap" (1955)
4:00 pm "The Goodbye Girl" (1977)
6:00 pm "Woman of the Year" (1942)
8:00 pm "The Public Enemy" (1931)
9:45 pm "Little Caesar" (1930)
11:15 pm "Citizen Kane" (1941)
1:30 am "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941)

Thanks to my past marathons featuring Cary Grant, Debbie Reynolds and Katharine Hepburn, and because I've devoted so much time each February to romance films, I think I'm racking up eight tomorrow - "Holiday", "The Awful Truth", "It Happened One Night", "The Tender Trap", "The Goodbye Girl", "Woman of the Year", and of course, "The Public Enemy" and "Citizen Kane".  8 out of 12 is a good score for any day, and that brings me up to 117 seen out of 284, or 41.2% with just 6 days to go.

THE PLOT: A mechanic romances the mathematician niece of physicist Albert Einstein, with help from Einstein and his friends.

AFTER: OK, so maybe I didn't hate this one as much as I thought I would.  But it's still an unforgivable movie screenwriting sin to muck up the details of Albert Einstein's life to make it fit your rom-com screenplay.  Yes, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1933, and he did live in New Jersey until 1955, had an affiliation with various institutes located in Princeton.  But he never had an American niece, and though he was friends with Kurt Gödel, another character in this film, they were not old at the same time, Gödel was 27 years younger than Einstein.  Someone did the least amount of research on Einstein required to shoe-horn him into this story, and got many basic details wrong.  Einstein's character here even claims to have always been "terrible at math", but nothing could be further from the truth - he taught HIMSELF algebra and geometry at the age of 12, and mastered calculus at 14.

And still, at the end of this film, they posted this disclaimer that the people and events in this film are fictitious, and "any similarity to actual persons or events is unintentional".  Really?  So you dressed up Walter Matthau to look like some OTHER brilliant physicist named Albert Einstein, not the famous one?  Give me a break.  This is just some legalese to cover the movie studio's ass, but I bet if Einstein's descendants sued them, their defense wouldn't hold up in court.  Similarity to the real Einstein was clearly intentional.  And yes, I also hate it when a cable show claims to be "New" or even "All-new" and then turns out to be a clip show full of footage from previous episodes or the same old episode with pop-up trivia balloons added or something.  How can that be "ALL new"?

I'm hard-pressed to even justify the premise here - was the idea supposed to be that since Einstein was smart with regards to physics, then he'd logically also be an expert on love?  Or since he was famous for his theories and thought experiments, therefore logically he'd be into conducting romantic experiments on his own family members?  I'm not following the train of thought here.  He didn't even really have to be Einstein, the story would have worked if he were just some random college professor who didn't like his niece's arrogant British boyfriend, and wanted to see if he could get her to fall for the American mechanic who really cared for her instead.

Because I watched that whole "Genius" miniseries last year on NatGeo about Einstein, and as smart as that guy was about math and the speed of light and the effects of gravity, he wasn't exactly a genius when it came to relationships.  He married a Serbian woman named Mileva who was also very smart when it came to math, and they had 2 sons, Hans Albert and Eduoard.  But then Albert was attracted to his first (and second) cousin, Elsa, and drifted apart from Mileva.  He married Elsa in 1919, and they emigrated to the U.S. together in 1933, but she died in 1936.  And there were plenty of affairs along the way, so in no way would I regard Einstein as anything close to an expert on affairs of the heart.

Still, there's something slightly charming in seeing Einstein and three other senior citizen scientists get involved in the love lifes of the younger folk, bonding with the auto mechanic who's going to turn Albert's car into a souped-up convertible, eating ice cream together and talking about science-fiction stories and real-world physics as if some common ground could be found there.  And they pull pranks on the niece's suitor that they don't like, such as letting all his lab animals out of their cages, ha ha, destroying two years' worth of scientific study.  And then they help perpetuate the lie that this auto mechanic is some kind of genius / idiot savant, totally helping him to cheat on his I.Q. test, because what great relationship doesn't get founded on a comic misunderstanding?

But then when you look at the big picture, it's like Einstein helped his niece find love, but only at the cost of his own integrity, and that's pretty sad.  Maybe the fact that this premise and plot never happened, and is a big pile of fictional B.S. is the best news after all.

Also starring Meg Ryan (last seen in "Against the Ropes"), Walter Matthau (last seen in "Grumpier Old Men"), Stephen Fry (last seen in "Le Divorce"), Lou Jacobi (last seen in "Irma la Douce"), Gene Saks (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Joseph Maher (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners" (1999)), Tony Shalhoub (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Frank Whaley (last seen in "Red Dragon"), Charles Durning (last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Keene Curtis, Alice Playten, with cameos from Greg Germann (last seen in "Get Hard"), Daniel von Bargen (last seen in "Shaft" (2000)), Alice Drummond (also last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas").

RATING: 4 out of 10 anachronisms