Paris Can Wait

Year 11, Day 68 - 3/9/19 - Movie #3,168

BEFORE: It's finally here, the end of Romance Chain 2019, after spreading out of February and into March, getting extended a couple of times - but there was a good reason for that.  I've got my eyes on April and things lining up there the way I want them to, and I'm hoping that lining up April doesn't make things more difficult in July.  I'll explain this later.

For now, Diane Lane is my outro to other topics, and in away she almost had to be, because there are only two Hollywood actors in this film, and very few in yesterday's film, so if it weren't her it would have to be Alec Baldwin or Sandra Oh, but another film with Diane Lane tomorrow will set up a week's worth of films with one actor, which will get me all the way to "Aquaman" and then "Captain Marvel".  Again, I'll explain later.

THE PLOT: The wife of a successful movie producer takes a car trip from the south of France to Paris with one of her husband's associates.

AFTER: Knowing that this was directed by the wife of Francis Ford Coppola might lead to the question, how personal is this story?  Was Eleanor Coppola ever on a road trip with one of her husband's associates, who tried to romance her along the way?  I suppose it's possible.  I watched one film already this year directed by a Coppola (Roman, director of "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan") so now I also wonder what it's like to know that your mother directed a better movie than you did...and she was 80 years old when she did it!

Admittedly, the romance is more of a sub-plot here, at least for most of the picture - so this is the way Romance Chain 2019 ends, not with a bang but a whimper, and a big question mark.  At first it seems possible that Jacques' offer to drive Anne Lockwood to Paris is quite sincere, for the sake of convenience, and that he has no ulterior motive in mind.  But, don't forget that he's a French man, and stereotypically we know that French people have a somewhat different definition of fidelity, and that affairs sort of happen spontaneously, and aren't that much of a big deal to them.  But Americans seem to take these sort of things more seriously, so he finds that he's got to up his game if he wants to seduce Anne.

My question, though, then becomes - what if he were successful?  What are the implications of sleeping with your business partner's wife?  Wouldn't that make it awkward for them to work together?  Or is Jacques just not thinking that far ahead?  So they take the long, circuitous route to Paris, going through Provence, Lyon (in Rhone-Alpes) and Burgundy.  I don't have the map of French provinces memorized, so honestly I couldn't tell how winding Jacques' chosen route was.  Now that I've checked, it seems like a direct route from Cannes to Paris, it's just the fact that he wanted to make so many stops that was slowing them down.  My phone is now telling me this should be an 8-hour car trip, and one almost HAS to go through Lyon, so the route was good, but still took them over 2 days when you factor in all the sightseeing, picnicking and gratuitous flirting.

My personal point of reference here is our vacation 2018, which was a BBQ Crawl from Dallas to Nashville, and those cities are 664 miles apart, just about 100 miles further than the distance from Cannes to Paris.  And it took us 5 days, of course we planned each stop along the way to last a day or two so we could eat the local cuisine of Little Rock, Memphis, etc. and get a feel for each town.  But I can see how easily a half-day's car trip can turn into a much longer journey when you add in so many stops.

Again, it's a fine line here between for-sure flirting and just making general dinner conversations, which could easily include compliments, dressing up to eat at a fancy restaurant, etc.  So you could take this film two ways - either Jacques is just being polite as they slowly make their way toward Paris, or he totally wants to get with Anne, he just can't be overt about that.  It's not really 100% clear until the end of the film, and even then, it's left open-ended enough that the audience sort of needs to decide what they would want to see happen next.  Yes, married people obviously do flirt, or at least get flirted with, and one could say it would be rude not to flirt back.  As for the question of whether that's healthy or unhealthy for their marriage, it's a bit like leaning back in a chair and balancing on the back two legs.  If you lean back too far then you'll fall over, but if you don't lean back at all, then you're just sitting in the chair.  So a little is probably OK, just not too much.

Perhaps a sequel is warranted, and Jacques even laid out where their next road trip should take them, so what is Eleanor Coppola waiting for?  There could be a whole trilogy here, like the "Before Sunrise" films.  A nice little drive from San Francisco through Napa Valley, call it "Seattle Can Wait", let's get going on that.

This film also calls to mind the Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon "The Trip To..." series, where they visited Northern England, Italy and Spain ostensibly to review restaurants, but really functioned as a story about a couple of mates bonding during a trip and figuring out whose Michael Caine impression was better.  "Paris Can Wait" is a bit about a possible romance, but also it's about the food, and the sights along the way.  Spending time with any other person opens up the opportunities for bonding with them, and how much anyone reveals about their inner thoughts and personal setbacks certainly plays a part in all that.

Also starring Alec Baldwin (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Arnaud Viard, Elise Tielrooy, Laure Sineux and the voice of Elodie Navarre

RATING: 5 out of 10 chocolate roses

Under the Tuscan Sun

Year 11, Day 67 - 3/8/19 - Movie #3,167

BEFORE: Today is International Women's Day, and I happen to have something on tap that's appropriate, about a woman who moves from the U.S. to Italy, and becomes an international woman, of sorts.  Well, I think it's a nice tie-in.  I've been all over the world this February, via the movies anyway, I sort of started the romance chain in Europe with the "Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight" trilogy, which was set in Vienna, Paris and Greece, plus we were in the U.K. for "I Give It a Year", and in Ireland for parts of "P.S. I Love You", and then of course India, Bali and Italy played starring roles in "Eat Pray Love".

Now, I watched just as many films in this romance chain that were set in New York or L.A. ("The Hero") or even Oregon ("Overboard").  But since this is International Women's Day, let's close things out in Italy today, and Paris tomorrow.  Diane Lane carries over from "Nights in Rodanthe", which was set in North Carolina.

FOLLOW-UP TO "A Good Year" (Movie #2,909)

THE PLOT: A writer impulsively buys a villa in Tuscany in order to change her life.

AFTER: This film predated "Eat Pray Love" by about 7 years (and also predated "A Good Year" by 3 years) so if either film copied the other, we now know which way that went.  Though there's not much praying here in "Under the Tuscan Sun", but there's eating, and there's loving, so I guess two out of three ain't bad.  There are other similarities, like in both cases it's a woman who works as a writer, then gets divorced and takes a financial bath as a result, but still has the money for either plane tickets around the world, or to buy the villa.  In both cases, the numbers don't really add up.  Frances in "Under the Tuscan Sun" also has to pay to have the villa completely renovated, that could easily equal or exceed the cost of the property itself.  Funny how we never see either lead character spending any time doing any WRITING, either.  How can you call yourself a writer if you never devote any time to the craft - doesn't this make them ex-writers?  Maybe the old royalty checks pay for the repairs to the villa?  Seems like a stretch.

You may notice that Liz in "Eat Pray Love" doesn't fall in love while she's in Italy, which kind of tracks - she's got a clear agenda, and can only find the time to do ONE thing in each city.  Besides, she's not ready, coming off of two major break-ups.  But Frances in "Under the Tuscan Sun" has to pack both agenda items into Italy - she's ready for love.  Well, actually she's not really ready, but she feels ready, and it's probably hard for her to tell the difference.  Note that just because the romantic dialogue between an American woman and an Italian man FEELS corny and stereotypical, just because you reference the fact that their dialogue seems corny and stereotypical, that doesn't absolve the dialogue from being corny and stereotypical.  Just so we're clear on this point.

Frances also becomes friends with her neighbor, who owns an olive orchard next door, and three Polish immigrants who are hired to renovate her villa.  Then her pregnant lesbian best friend flies in from San Francisco after a break-up, and they all form this cozy weird little network of psuedo-family.  The whole sub-plot with the lesbian best friend was very confusing to me, because Frances made a reference to becoming an aunt, so naturally I assumed that the best friend's partner was Frances's sister, and apparently that wasn't true at all.  I guess she meant "aunt" instead of aunt? Anyway, the whole reason Frances went to Italy was because Patti was in the first trimester and didn't want to fly on a plane, but then why is it medically OK for her to fly to Italy later in the pregnancy?  I thought that sort of thing got more risky as a pregnancy came closer to term, not less risky.  Possible NITPICK POINT, but I'm not an expert on these things.  (I just checked, apparently the middle of a pregnancy is the safest time to travel, but considering any risk of blood clots or other complications, I'd nix air travel altogether, just to be safe.)

What I appreciate here is that buying the Tuscan villa isn't the solution to Frances' problems, as one might expect from a typical Hollywood romance film.  In many ways it's the start of a whole new set of problems - but it's nice that there are no quick solutions to feeling better and getting ready for a new relationship down the road, while at the same time, progress is definitely being made, though maybe not in the way that was originally planned.

Also starring Sandra Oh (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Lindsay Duncan (last seen in "Gifted"), Raoul Bova, Vincent Riotta, Mario Monicelli, Roberto Nobile, Evelina Gori, Kate Walsh (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Pawel Szajda, David Sutcliffe, Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Accountant"), Giulia Steigerwalt, Valentine Pelka, Sasa Vulicevic, Massimo Sarchielli, Claudia Gerini, Laura Pestellini, Don McManus (last seen in "Vice"), Matt Salinger, Elden Henson (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Jack Kehler (last seen in "Love Liza"), Kristoffer Ryan Winters, Nuccio Siano, Malva Guicheney, Dan Bucatinsky (last seen in "The Post").

RATING: 5 out of 10 nuns eating gelato

Nights in Rodanthe

Year 11, Day 66 - 3/7/19 - Movie #3,166

BEFORE: I'm finally hitting the home stretch of the romance chain - 3 films with Diane Lane, and then it's on to other topics.  Spring is right around the corner, as is "Captain Marvel" and the next "Avengers" movie after that.

One of the ways that I've kept myself sane over the course of this romance chain has been by catching up on the IFC show "Documentary Now!", which is also available on Netflix.  As a man who's also watched his share of documentaries, it's great to see someone, Bill Hader and Fred Armisen mostly, spoofing the whole genre.  They started out with parodies of classic docs like "Nanook of the North" and "Grey Gardens", then they ended Season 1 with a two-part fake rockumentary about a fictitious 70's band called The Blue Jean Committee, which was like a thinly-veiled "History of the Eagles".

In season 2 their episodes spoofed docs like "The War Room" and "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", then totally skewered Spalding Gray's monologue performance in "Swimming to Cambodia", then a completely wonderful take on the Talking Heads' concert film "Stop Making Sense".  Finally I just watched the two-part spoof of "The Kid Stays in the Picture", and now I can't wait to catch up with Season 3, which I can record on my DVR.  Clearly, past episodes on Netflix are a gateway drug.

James Franco carries over from "I Am Michael" - technically uncredited, but the IMDB and Wikipedia list his role, and I know I saw him in the film as I was dubbing it to DVD.

THE PLOT: A doctor, who is traveling to see his estranged son, sparks with an unhappily married woman at a North Carolina inn.

AFTER: This is the kind of romance film that female movie fans probably really go for - it's got the dissatisfied married woman, the tortured doctor in from out of town, and fate throws them together in a beach house (she's running the inn while her best friend is in Florida, getting her groove back) where he's the only guest (it's off-season, and the reason he's in town is a whole other story...).  Plus it's hurricane season, and there's one headed for the Outer Banks.  It's going to get stormy, both inside and outside, if you catch my drift.

Adrienne's kids are off with their father - the couple is separated, and her husband wants to reconcile, but she's not ready to forgive him (he knows what he did...) and let him back into her life.  Paul is a doctor consumed by guilt after a patient died during an operation, and he's come to the area to apologize to the patient's family, even though his lawyer advised him not to.  Two broken people, can they learn to forgive themselves and be healed by the possibility of a new love?  BLECH, it's not possible to write about this plot without it sounding really corny.  Which, of course, it is.  The hurricane strikes JUST as they fall into each other's arms, or is it the other way around?  That's also pretty corny, and cheap symbolism to boot.

But there are also long walks on the beach, wild horses running around the island, and nightly crab boils down by the pier.  Plenty of good imagery, good music, good-looking food.  Paul's stay on the Outer Banks is only temporary, though, he's got to go visit his son, who's also a doctor, at some clinic down in Central or South America. It's terrible that he has to leave, since he just got this new romance started in North Carolina, but the two strike up a correspondence and discuss those title Nights in Rodanthe, and plan for the future.  (no spoilers)

But let's talk about the B&B - which isn't just near the beach, it's ON the beach.  Like the whole house is up on stilts in the sand, and during high tide there's water under the house.  This just can't be practical, right?  I was willing to bet this was a prop house built for the film, but no, it was real.  However, since the film shoot it was damaged by a real hurricane, and moved to a different location, further from the tide.  The interiors were clearly shot in a studio, but reportedly they've decorated the house to match the movie set, so life imitates art for people looking to spend a few nights inside a famous movie house.

The film is based on a novel written by Nicholas Sparks, who also wrote "The Notebook", "Dear John", "Message in a Bottle", and a few others that were adapted into films I haven't seen yet.  So be warned, have some Kleenex handy, and be ready to feel all the feels.

I'd love to visit North Carolina someday, my sister lives there (inland) but also spends time on the coast of South Carolina.  Me, I'm not really a beach guy - I just don't get the appeal of sandy feet, getting sunburned and potentially drowning - but I know there's some great BBQ in the Carolinas.  For our next BBQ Crawl I'd love to head back to New Orleans and take 5 days to drive through Atlanta and up into the Carolinas to sample the different BBQ styles.  Oh, yeah, and visit my sister too, I guess.

Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Justice League"), Richard Gere (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Viola Davis (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "Nashville"), Christopher Meloni (last seen in "They Came Together"), Pablo Schreiber (last seen in "13 Hours"), Mae Whitman (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Charlie Tahan (last seen in "Blue Jasmine"), Becky Ann Baker (last seen in "Table 19"), Carolyn McCormick (last seen in "The Post"), Ted Manson, Ato Essandoh (last seen in "Wish I Was Here").

RATING: 5 out of 10 pieces of outsider art

I Am Michael

Year 11, Day 65 - 3/6/19 - Movie #3,165

BEFORE: Slight change of plans here, because I was going to get right to the final three films in the romance chain, all of which star Diane Lane - and had I done that, then TWO actors would have carried over from "Eat Pray Love", and you know I love when that happens.  But then I realized I could include this other film with James Franco, which is now on Netflix, and I'm always afraid these films are going to disappear off that service before I get a chance to see them.  But this one could go here, or it could go later in the month, when I'm planning to watch another bunch of James Franco films - they do have a tendency to accumulate, after all.

So, how to decide, watch this one here and delay the end of the romance-themed chain by another day, or table this one for screening in late March, instead of early March?  Well, a couple of factors helped me decide.  First off, my calculations were off on the iTunes rental date for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", so I might have three days of down-time waiting for that.  (I know I saw an Academy screener kicking around the studio, but it seems to have vanished...)  Three days without a film is not necessarily a bad thing, because later on it could make the difference between rushing to see "Avengers: Endgame" on opening day, or having the luxury to wait until the following Monday, which sounds a lot more do-able.  It's usually much harder to get a ticket for opening weekend.

But then I realized today is Ash Wednesday (or as I like to call it, "Spot the Catholic") and this film is not just about love, it's also religion-themed.  So that's the deciding factor, this one gets moved up on the list, fits between two other James Franco films, possibly turns 3 days of downtime next week into 2, and I've got something that thematically fits with a religious holiday, potentially.  And after tomorrow, I'll be back on track and catch up on the other films in the Franco-file at the end of March.  OK?

THE PLOT: Based on the fascinating true-life story of Michael Glatze, a gay activist who became a Christian pastor after identifying as a heterosexual.

AFTER: Another connection between "Eat Pray Love" and this film is that both lead characters test-drive a couple of religions while they're going through their crises - for Elizabeth Gilbert, that meant praying to the Christian God, then giving Hinduism a while.  For Michale Glatze, he took a couple of runs at Buddhism and Mormonism before becoming a preacher himself.  Since I used to identify as Catholic myself, though no longer, I get where they're coming from.  Times change, people change and their situations change, we shouldn't judge anyone without walking a mile in their shoes first.

But I'll let you in on a little secret - "happily ever after" only really exists in fairy tales and Hollywood movies, which have the benefit of saying "The End" in big bold type, or just fading to black and letting the audience extrapolate potential happiness into the future.  But I did some research on the author of "Eat Pray Love", and even though the guru in Bali predicted a long, happy marriage, her union with the Brazilian businessman did not last into forever.  (Really, whose does?).  She and José (called Felipe in the film) got married in 2007, but they split up in 2016, when the author announced that she was in a relationship with her female best friend, and this was of course connected to the end of her marriage.  She realized her feelings for her best friend after a cancer diagnosis (the friend's, not hers) and though it may have shocked thousands of fans of the film, of course I'm not going to judge, not without walking a mile in her shoes, because times change, people change and their situations change, too.

It's pointless to ask why, because there could be a dozen reasons.  And if I understood at all how and why someone's sexual orientation can change over time, then I might still be married to my first wife.  (Then again, who's to say, that still probably would have crashed and burned over time, I think the attraction to HER female friend only accelerated the process.). Again, I'm just going to shrug and say that times change, people change and their situations change, then everyone else just has to adapt.  And in all of these cases, I don't have any solid answers, just more questions, many of which I'm just not comfortable asking.  How can someone be straight and then gay, or in the case of Michael Glatze, gay and then straight?  Were they bisexual all along?  Because you rarely hear people say that, they tend to deal only in absolutes based on who they're with at the time.  Right?  Maybe it's hard to step back and take a look at your life from a distance and say that you were that way then and this way now?  Like I used to sing in a cappella groups, but I don't any more.  I used to play chess, but I don't really any more.  There's who I am, someone who can play chess, and there's what I do, which is, umm, other things but not that, factored over time am I both a chess player and a non-chess player?

Everybody's going to be a lot of different things over the course of their lives - a student, an athlete, a fast-food worker, an independent business owner, a musician, an artist, married, single, divorced or widowed - so do you define yourself by what you are RIGHT NOW, or by the entire road that you've traveled?  It's a tough call.  Maybe you're the type of person who falls in love with someone because they're funny or smart or they seem interested in you, and their gender isn't the first thing that you notice.  If so, good for you, you're open-minded and progressive and you've got the world on a string, plus you've got twice the odds of finding love (or just some action) as some others do.  George Carlin used to quip about bisexuality - "Just think about all the phone numbers you'd accumulate.  You might as well just walk around with the phone book under your arm."  (For the millennials out there, a "phone book" was a big bunch of dead-tree paper that listed the address and phone number of everyone in a city or town.)

And so we come to the story of Michael Glatze, a prominent gay activist and magazine writer who at some point changed his outlook or his attitude or his orientation (all of this is left fairly unclear, as you might imagine) and found religion and started dating women, or at least A woman.  Normally I treat anyone who says things like "God spoke to me..." or "Gold told me x, y and z" as being full of shit, from the Pope right on down.  The priesthood is a crock, celibacy is a bastardization of the Bible's teachings, and anyone who says they KNOW what happens after we die is lying, or at the very least misguided.  So what makes a gay activist suddenly turn his life in a different direction?

According to this film, it's a combination of health scares (Glatze thought he had a heart condition, but it turned out to just be panic attacks) combined with meeting some people while on a road trip who found comfort in their religion.  Is that enough?  I don't know, because the movie can't really get inside his head and tell us all of his thoughts.  This isn't just a failing of this film, it's a failing of the medium in general.  Films use all kinds of tricks like flashbacks and dream sequences to suggest what characters are thinking and feeling, but it's never really enough, is it?  Especially in cases like this, where having Glatze SAY what's on his mind would be too obvious, and would also be quite speculative.

It's too bad, because this is an interesting story, and it's thought-provoking, which most films these days seem to have forgotten how to be.  And the real tragedy is that Glatze used to be the guy who said that gay and straight, these are just social constructs, labels that people created in the last couple of centuries.  It's true, the ancient Greeks and Romans didn't seem to frown on same-sex love, it was just another flavor on the menu.  I guess people only got all uptight about it during Victorian times.  Glatze was in a perfect position to go out and speak with the young people, which he did for a while, to tell them that it's all the same, it's all good if it makes you happy.  But then what changed, why couldn't he take his own advice and accept himself in a different way?

How does a person's attitude change from "gay and straight are just labels" to "I'm straight, and being gay is abnormal"?  Was his turning against the gay community just a case of self-loathing directed outward?  More importantly, why?  Is there a difference between being happy and just believing that you're happy?  Is there a difference between believing in God and just wanting to believe in God?  Is changing your mind about religion as you get older just motivated by the fear of dying and finding out there's nothing afterwards?  Or is finding religion later on just wishful thinking?

I can only shrug and say that times change, people change, and their situations change.  There's been sort of a mini-wave lately of films about gay conversion ("Boy Erased" leaps to mind, I know there have been others, like "The Miseducation of Cameron Post") so I'm going to have to just put a pin in this topic and hope to gain more understanding later on.

Also starring Zachary Quinto (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Emma Roberts (last seen in "Nerve"), Charlie Carver, Avan Jogia, Devon Graye, Leven Rambin (last seen in "The Hunger Games"), Blake Lee (last seen in "The To Do List"), Kevin Cahoon, Jefferson Mays (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Jan Maxwell, Ahna O'Reilly (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), with cameos from Daryl Hannah (last seen in "Grumpier Old Men"), Lesley Ann Warren (last seen in "Secretary")

RATING: 5 out of 10 prayer circles

Eat Pray Love

Year 11, Day 64 - 3/5/19 - Movie #3,164

BEFORE: Julia Roberts carries over from "Mona Lisa Smile", and I suppose that I've managed to avoid this film for long enough.  It was released almost nine years ago, and just think, when I started my blog in 2009 this film hadn't even been RELEASED yet, so I avoided it during its theatrical release, then its release on home video, release on premium cable, and it's probably become a staple on commercial stations by now, though with its 2 hr and 13 min. run time, maybe not.  The lesser stations love those 90-minute romances that they can stretch out to 2 hours with commercials.  Anyway, I caught it last year when it returned to premium cable, and burned it to DVD with "Mona Lisa Smile".  I'm still catching films on premium cable that I missed in years past, like I just recorded "The Grifters", and a film like that, I want to say that maybe I've seen it, only I don't specifically remember doing so.  Well, on to the Watchlist it goes, then.  I've maintained the Watchlist at 155 films for what feels like months, though of course the secondary Watchlist (films I'd like to add to the watchlist, plus what's available on Netflix and Academy screeners) is always hovering around 200 additional titles.)   Maybe I should increase the Watchlist to 160 films, just to speed things along - plus that's a nicer, rounder number.

THE PLOT: A married woman realizes how unhappy her marriage really is, and that her life needs to go in a different direction.  After a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey to "find herself".

AFTER: Oh, I really wanted to hate this film, and I'm not saying I didn't (not yet, anyway) because I imagined that it contained the biggest, most pretentious platitudes about how one should live one's life, coming from a well-connected, privileged white writer.  Did you ever realize how many films center on writers?  How many books, too - I guess since all those books and movies are written by writers, the easiest cop-out is for writers to write about themselves, or people sort of like them, because they believe that their experiences are somehow going to contain some universal magic advice that the rest of us are starving for.  Oh, please, magic writer, tell me what I'm doing wrong in my life, I need your help!  Give me a break.  If you really wanted to flex those writing muscles, you'd write a story about a guy who works in a factory or is a janitor or something, and if that sounds boring, well, it's your job as a writer to find a way to make that interesting, isn't it?

But I'm going to let this slide for a minute and let a writer write a story about what it means to be a writer, a travel writer in this case.  So she travels around on the company's dime, and she's still not happy.  She's married to a man who's really into her, only she's not happy.  She lives in NYC, the capital of the world, has a good job, good husband, gets to travel and she's still not fulfilled.  So, instead of trying to figure out how to GET happy and fulfilled, instead of getting a hobby or seeing a therapist, it's somehow easier for her to tear down the life she's built for herself, divorce her husband, and go off on a year-long trip around the world.  All because an old, wise man in Bali read her fortune once, and told her she would lose all her money, have one short marriage and one long one, and someday return to Bali and spend several months there.

Apparently, she never heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is where the fortune teller gets so inside her head that she (either consciously or unconsciously) takes steps to make the prediction come true.  When she finds herself at odds with her husband, just because he can't seem to land on a solid career, and then wants to go back to school, she thinks, "Ah, this is how I'm going to lose all my money, paying for his college courses..."  (So how come SHE'S allowed to go around the world to find herself, but he's a bastard for wanting to go back to school? ).  His other crime is that he doesn't want to go to Aruba with her - how dare he, what a terrible person he is.  She should divorce him right away because he doesn't like tropical beaches or island paradises!  Ironically, since he doesn't want a divorce (again, what a bastard...) it ends up costing her all of her money to get rid of him.  At this point, I wondered if it would have been cheaper just to pay for him to go back to school.

Anyway, take it from me, there were probably a dozen or so better ways for her to handle her clingy husband if she truly wanted a divorce.  Her character is so blah and lifeless that she doesn't even know how to break up with someone properly.  Geez, maybe he's still stuck on her because she hasn't given him enough of a REASON to want to end the marriage, instead it's just sort of a "I'm not feeling it any more" kind of thing.  Have the decency to give him something to get mad about, like sleep with his best friend or his brother (or sister, whichever).  Then he'll get so mad that HE will want a divorce.  See, the roundabout way is always best, convince the other person that they want the thing you want them to want.  Or just refuse to pay for his classes, and otherwise make his life so miserable that HE will want out.  Problem solved.  Alternatively, suggest marriage counseling - that should make any American male want to run for the hills.

But instead she tries the rebound-boyfriend thing, which is always a terrible idea.  Everybody knows you can't love a new person while you're still feeling guilty over the last one, so the new relationship with the struggling actor is bound to fail.  Plus he can't travel with her, not because he doesn't want to, but because he can't afford it.  Plus she feels like she's going to lose herself in this new relationship, and fade into the background of her own life again, like she did with her husband.  Geez, lady, get OVER yourself already.  What's it going to take for her to realize that the common denominator in all these failed relationships is herself - her spoiled, entitled self?

Now, since she's divorced and feeling down, the only way for her to heal is to visit three beautiful places - Italy (Eat), India (Pray) and Bali (Love, hopefully).  But then my question is, if she lost all her money in the divorce, who's paying for this trip?  Must be nice to be a rich white woman who can just get take a year off and travel around the world, right after a divorce.  But, it's a terrible idea because she hasn't worked on her issues yet, so she's essentially just running away, and as they say, no matter where you go, there you are.  So until she's fixed her ego and her personality, she's just going to be an awful person in a new location, and I fail to see how that's an improvement.  Again, I point out that seeing a therapist would be faster and cheaper in the long run.

But let's take the three trips one by one - first we have Italy, or "Eat".  I can get behind this, because the last two big vacations that my wife and I took were BBQ Crawls in the South, one was Dallas to Little Rock to Memphis to Nashville, and the other was Dallas to Austin to San Antonio to Houston to New Orleans.  We've taken cruises before, and also like to go to Atlantic City, the land of the buffets (except for Vegas, of course, but we've been there too.)  Instead of "Eat Pray Love" our trips are a little more like "Eat Eat Eat".  So I can get behind going to Italy - I think I'd do well there, or in France, because I basically know all the words for foods and I can hold up a particular number with my fingers, plus I can point to things, then my open mouth.  So if you drop me anywhere in France, Germany, or Italy, at least you know I'm not going to starve.  They make a big fuss about Julia's character here FINALLY being able to order a meal in Italian - big deal, I can do that now.  Ziti Siciliano, per favore, et pizza margherita, tortellini alfredo, linguini bolognese, tiramisu et due cappuccini.  See?  Nothing to it.  I'm even better ordering in French or German.

She claims to be gaining weight eating all of these delicious Italian foods, and pretends like she has to squeeze into her jeans, but come on, this is Julia Roberts we're talking about.  They're not going to sell movie tickets by showing us a chunky Julia Roberts.  Nice try, she's not really gaining weight here, she just says that she is.  (If they really wanted to show the results of a vacation in Italy, they should have put the actress in a fat suit, like Gwyneth Paltrow in "Shallow Hal".)  But you can't eat Italian food forever (umm, unless you're Italian) so it's off to the land of curry and Tandoori chicken.

Part 2 - India, or "Pray".  The character tried praying for the first time earlier in the film, when she needed guidance over whether she should get divorced or not.  Umm, that's not how it works, you can't just flip a switch and suddenly start talking to God, if you've been ignoring him all your life.  Anyway, most people go the other way with it, they're taught to pray when they're children and then gradually stop the practice.  But that's the Christian god, and that didn't work for her, so she tries the Hindu ones.  This involves her staying at a sort of religious work camp, scrubbing floors and chanting in groups several times a day.  Booo-RING!  She gets very frustrated here, looking for a quick fix (again, entitled white rich person...) and finds it impossible to meditate, because her mind only focuses on decorating ideas (do I even need to say it?).

She meets "Richard from Texas" who's there for penitent reasons of his own (when we finally learn his back-story, it's truly heart-breaking - possibly the only part of the movie that expresses some genuine emotional content) and keeps telling her that she's "got to do the work" and that "change comes from within" and other dime-store philosophy B.S.  I don't pretend to understand the Hindu religion, with its elephant-headed gods and such - but last October we stopped at a Hindu temple outside Houston, and we were fascinated by the place.  We had to endure a fair amount of proselytizing, as various tour guides told us how great the religion was, but we were mainly there to see the architecture.  The pieces of this temple were made of Italian marble, hand carved and shipped to the U.S., to be assembled like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, it was amazing.  We had to take our shoes off and then we waited for the afternoon prayer service, heard a bit of the chanting and then we went to the gift shop.

But Julia's character feels she's too good to scrub floors, so she really doesn't get around to DOING the work, does she?  I mean, what would have happened to Daniel-San in "The Karate Kid" if he said that waxing Mr. Miyagi's car was a bunch of B.S.?  Then he never would have learned his karate skills, right?  I feel like maybe I missed something here in the middle segment, or else maybe IT was missing something - like, whatever happened to that rogue elephant?  Did she help get it to safety, or did it go on a violent rampage crushing villagers, what gives?  What about the arranged marriage of her friend Tulsi, did that work out for the best?  Did Liz ever get to talk with Corella and catch up?  Which country has better Indian food, India or the U.S.?  So many unanswered questions...

But there's no time to answer them, because we're off to Part 3, "Love" in Bali.  Liz returns to see Ketut, the man who screwed up her life in the first place with all of his prophecies.  Ketut doesn't even recognize her at first, because she's happier now then she was when she last visited.  But he immediately puts her to work transcribing his Sanskrit collection of sayings, remedies (and, I don't know, recipes?) because the paper is deteriorating, and she immediately starts to figure out ways to avoid doing the hard work, like stashing a stack of paper every day in her bag and riding in to town to make photocopies.  Ugh, so she learned NOTHING in India about the humility of doing hard work - perhaps the drudgery of this task was part of the lesson, why can't she understand that?  And she never met a problem that she couldn't solve by throwing more money at it, so his papers end up in a leather-bound portfolio with his name inscribed on it.  For some reason, he's happy about this, when by rights he should have thrown this office-supply abomination in the mud and said, "Clearly, you have learned NOTHING during your time here."

My point here is that self-improvement is a journey, not a destination.  You can't just skip to the part that you think you're going to enjoy - like my movie chain, I can't just go straight to watching the film "Captain Marvel", I've got to get there my own way, and that involves hate-watching "You've Got Mail" and "Eat Pray Love", apparently.  Julia's character here instead says, "Ugh, copying all this Sanskrit is going to take FOREVER, let me break all of Ketut's rules and get this done quickly so I can go find a new lover, even though this journey isn't really supposed to be about that, but yet somehow it totally is."

Problems arise because she once again feels like she's going to lose herself and her newfound sense of "balance" in this new relationship with the Brazilian businessman.  But Ketut tells her that with love, it's OK to lose your balance once in a while.  Boy, if she'd only known this back in New York, she could have stayed married, saved a lot of money and not wasted anyone's time. (Especially mine.)  But then I guess her healer friend in Indonesia would never have gotten her own house - which, NITPICK POINT, Liz had the nerve to pay for by crowd-funding and hitting up her friends in America and Italy.  It's a baller move, sure, but also a very crass one - she could have easily bought a house for Wayan herself by staying in a slightly less expensive house during the four months she was in Bali, if you ask me.  The rent on that place probably cost a fortune, unless, like, somebody died in that house a few weeks before.

I suppose I figured right, because I usually hate stories about people going around the world to "find themself".  You were RIGHT THERE, there was no need to travel!  Can we just call this film what it really was?  I suggest "Julia Roberts Wanted Three Free Vacations".

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Javier Bardem (last seen in "Mother!"), Billy Crudup (last seen in "Justice League"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), Viola Davis (last seen in "Fences"), Sophie Thompson (last seen in "Emma"), Mike O'Malley (last seen in "Sully"), Christine Hakim, Arlene Tur, Hadi Subiyanto, Gita Reddy (last heard in "Zootopia"), Tuva Novotny (last seen in "Annihilation"), Luca Argentero, Rushita Singh, Welker White (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Giuseppe Gandini, Elena Arvigo, Michael Cumpsty (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), David Lyons, with a cameo from Lisa Roberts Gillan (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa Smile").

RATING: 4 out of 10 durian fruits

Mona Lisa Smile

Year 11, Day 63 - 3/4/19 - Movie #3,163

BEFORE: Just five films left in the romance chain, including this one - the end is in sight.  Just two Julia Roberts films, then 3 with Diane Lane, I can get through this now, no problem.  The worst is behind me, right?  Like "P.S. I Love You" and "Kicking and Screaming"?  See, we need bad movies too, so we can appreciate OK ones and really good ones when they come along.

So now it's almost time to put the romance films back on the back burner, and let that part of the list grow a little bigger again - but what DIDN'T I get to this year?  Somewhere between 40 and 50 films, if I count all the ones on Netflix that seem like they might count as romances, along with ones that are already in my collection on DVD, but I think I should take a few months before I start to look to see what might fit into a chain for next February.  Oh, who am I kidding, they're already starting to coalesce into a loose chain for 2020.  I've got three with Kevin Kline, including "Darling Companion" and "Dean", and that's going to dovetail neatly with a Mary Steenburgen chain ("Dean", "Book Club", and possibly "The Proposal"), which of course leads me to Sandra Bullock.  I've got two with Reese Witherspoon ("Home Again" and "How Do You Know"), which could connect to an Owen Wilson thing, and then there are some classics like "Picnic" and "Paris When It Sizzles", both with William Holden, that could easily connect to a couple with Toni Collette ("In Her Shoes", and let's say "Muriel's Wedding").  A couple Kate Winslets, two with Gerard Butler and a few Anna Kendricks, and I might be on to something.  I'll just have to treat these films like the bricks, and hope that when winter rolls around again, I can find the right mortar to slap a chain together from what know looks like a bunch of leftover odds and ends.

For now, Krysten Ritter carries over again from "The Hero", serving as my mortar between the Katherine Heigl films and the Julia Roberts films.

THE PLOT: A free-thinking art professor teaches conservative 1950's Wellesley girls to question their traditional social roles.

AFTER: Now, this film could easily have ended up in my annual August/September "Back to School" programming, but there's enough relationship-heavy material to justify putting it here.  How did I decide between programming it here or there?  Easy, I needed the linking, so that made my decision for me.  (Arrgh, now I see the connection to the film "Wonder", which is also set at a school.  Maybe I should have thought this through a little more.).

But this film can't help but belabor the point that 1953 was a different time, with different values, and that even in a women's college, they were part of a patriarchal system that educated women only to make them better wives and mothers, because that's what "society" expected of them.  So, say farewell to all those feminist gains achieved during the war by Rosie the Riveter and all the other women working on the "Swing Shift", I guess.  Men were expected to study science and engineering, and women were allowed to study poise and elocution, and (apparently) also Art History.  Was the basket-weaving class already full?  Never fear, because into this unfair system steps their intended savior, played of course by the star of the film, who arrives to tell them that it doesn't have to be this way, they can have careers and relationships too.  Which seems odd, that she's the only person in 1953 who seems to believe this, so it's like she just time-traveled in from the year 2000.

The problem then becomes that most of these young women don't want to be "saved", in fact some of them can't even tell that the system isn't giving them a fair shake.  So, "Mona Lisa Smile", which is it, are these girls smart or stupid?  Can we make up our minds here?  Where's the rebellion that one expects to find in each generation, don't any of these women want to step out of the shadow of their rich parents and go dancing at the local beatnik bar?  No, I guess not.

Wellesley College later complained about the way they were portrayed here, because the filmmakers played a little fast and loose with the truth, in order to make more of a point about the 1950's.  The college dean has a problem with Katherine teaching modern art, but in reality they'd been teaching modern art there for decades.  Their student body in 1953 was also more racially diverse than this film suggests, with nearly every actor and actress here Caucasian.  The staff was also not as conservative as suggested - even today Massachusetts is fairly liberal on most political points. The state may have a stuffy reputation, but it's well established as a "blue" state these days, and that didn't happen overnight.  Even my parents were raised as conservative Catholics, but always voted Democratic, and then in the last decade I've manage to poke holes in so many right-wing fallacies that they've become much more liberal in their thinking.

But wait, college students were allowed to miss classes for weeks after they got married?  In what universe did this happen?  It's all part of this patriarchal system where the needs of the husbands have to come first, and there was NO WAY to schedule a honeymoon during the semester or summer break?  I'm starting to think that the implication is that these women weren't serious about their studies, and only interested in college so they could find husbands.  So, umm, why attend an all-girls school, then?  For the mixers?  This seemed like a bit of a stretch.  But then, I don't claim to understand the sexual politics of the 1950's.

As a NITPICK POINT, there's a contradiction here, because if they set out to show that these women weren't serious about their studies, and therefore their careers, then how come the prank that they chose to play on the new art history teacher was to read the ENTIRE BOOK and do all the course-work before the first class?  Wow, you girls really stuck it to her by doing all your homework in advance!  Now she can take the whole semester off, because you already learned everything she was supposed to teach you!  Wow, I bet she felt really embarrassed - sure, go on and take all the rest of the class on an independent study basis, while she goes on vacation.  That could be the dumbest prank ever, "Hey, watch me spend all summer doing all this course-work, so the teachers will have nothing to teach me when class starts in September!  Then I can devote all that time I would have spent in class on synchronized swimming and binge-drinking!"

Wait, why does Katherine break up with the guy she had a long-distance relationship with?  Just because he proposed to her?  That hardly seems like grounds for a break-up, unless this is Opposites Day or something.  OK, so he just sort of assumed that she would say yes, but how is that suddenly a crime? And her choice of a rebound guy is the teacher who's noted for sleeping with his students?  I realize this is set in 1953, but just HOW is that an improvement?  I'm pretty sure that behavior was frowned upon, even back then.  Oh, but he SAYS he won't do that again, right, because men are notorious for keeping their word on such things.  Give me a break.  The boyfriend in California did absolutely nothing wrong, except propose at a time when Katherine was feeling sort of anti-marriage.  The Italian teacher is a proven liar, and I fail to see how this gives him an edge, or any sort of appeal, really.  Later, due to an entirely different set of circumstances, she determines that he's not trustworthy.  Gee, YA THINK SO?

NITPICK POINT #2 - why was there an a cappella group that sang at the Spring Fling, with 10 guys all singing the same melody?  The whole point of an a cappella group is to have harmonies, if they're all going to sing the same note, you don't need 10 guys, you can get the same effect with 4 singers.

Also starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Julia Stiles (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Maggie Gyllenhaal (last seen in "Frank"), Ginnifer Goodwin (last heard in "Zootopia"), Dominic West (last heard in "Finding Dory"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Whip It"), John Slattery (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Juliet Stevenson (last seen in "Emma"), Marian Seides (last seen in "Town & Country"), Donna Mitchell (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), Terence Rigby, Topher Grace (last seen in "War Machine"), Laura Allen, Jordan Bridges (last seen in "J. Edgar"), Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Taylor Roberts, Lisa Roberts Gillan (last seen in "Mother's Day"), John Scurti, Annika Marks, Emily Bauer, Lily Rabe (last seen in "Vice"), with a cameo from Tori Amos.

RATING: 4 out of 10 slides of cave paintings

The Hero

Year 11, Day 62 - 3/3/19 - Movie #3,162

BEFORE: You might wonder, why not put this film next to "A Star Is Born", which is also on the list?  Ah, for several reasons - one is that I've already worked "A Star Is Born" into my chain for viewing in May, because I'd already isolated every film with a possible acting connection to "Avengers: Endgame", and I've got a different intro and outro already planned.  Now, of course, things could change, but right now putting this film next to that one, because of the Sam Elliott connection, would force changing my plan, and I'd rather not.  Plus I peeked a little at the plotline for this one, there's enough of a romance angle, I think, for me to justify putting it here.

Krysten Ritter carries over from "27 Dresses", where she played the office assistant with the Goth wedding.

THE PLOT: An ailing movie star comes to terms with his past and mortality.

AFTER: There was quite a bit of buzz for Sam Elliott this year at the Oscars, considering that the guy is turning 75 this year, has been working in movies for decades, and had never been nominated before "A Star Is Born".  Sometimes the Academy seems to give out awards that basically reward an actor for their entire career, not just one role.  It wasn't in the cards for him, of course, but if you want to know where the Oscar buzz for him started, it was the year before, with the campaign for him to be nominated for his work in "The Hero".  I watched this one on an Academy screener left over from last year, and since the whole movie centers on him, it's a character-driven piece, one in which it might be a little hard to tell where the character leaves off and the story of the actor starts.

That's mainly because he's an actor famous for being in Westerns and also for doing commercial voice-overs for manly food products like BBQ sauce (Elliott starred in "Tombstone" and was, for many years, the voice known for saying "Beef. It's what's for dinner" on your TV screen.).  But he's getting on in years, and finding that Hollywood isn't making too many Westerns any more.  So he ambles around Hollywood, much like "The Dude" in that other film Elliott was famous for being in, visiting his pot dealer and dropping in on his ex-wife, telling everyone he's going to be working on a new movie, because that's a whole lot easier than telling them the diagnosis he recently got from his doctor.

But then he meets a woman in her 30's with the same dealer, and she happens to have a thing for older men.  The possibility of a new relationship at his age inspires him to re-connect with his estranged daughter, and also accept that invitation from the "Western Appreciation Society" to receive their lifetime achievement award.  All he has to do is show up, take some pictures, give a short speech, and try not to do anything embarrassing or outrageous.  Well, OK, 3 out of 4 isn't really that bad, if you think about it.  But if you'd like to imagine about what Sam Elliott's Oscar speech would have sounded like, you can maybe get an idea from what his character said here, accepting the award from the Western Appreciation Society.

Not much happens beyond that, Lee auditions for some kind of sci-fi film but finds that the character is also an estranged father figure, and that hits a little too close to home.  His new girlfriend turns out to be a stand-up comic who can't wait to make jokes on stage about the 70-year old man she started dating, and Lee is forced to finally make some decisions about whether he's going to take any steps to fight his medical condition.  And then there are a lot of shots where he's either in a Western movie or staring at the waves on a beach, occasionally both, and it's a bit unclear on whether these are memories, dreams or drug-induced hallucinations.  Maybe when you get to be in your 70's there's very little distinction between those things?

It sort of feels like this film only scratched the surface of this character, I wish they'd dug in a little deeper here, but there's still something very intangible about him.  If you want to qualify for an award beyond Best Supporting Mustache, you've got to really get in there and put yourself out there.

Also starring Sam Elliott (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Laura Prepon (last seen in "The Girl on the Train"), Nick Offerman (last seen in "Casa de mi Padre"), Katharine Ross (last seen in "The Shadow Riders"), Max Gail (last seen in "Night Moves"), Patrika Darbo, with cameos from Ali Wong (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Cameron Esposito (last seen in "Mother's Day").

RATING: 5 out of 10 street tacos