The Sweet Hereafter

Year 11, Day 110 - 4/20/19 - Movie #3,208

BEFORE: "The Captive" was directed by Atom Egoyan, now where have I heard that name before?  Right, way back when I first started going to film festivals, to help promote an animated feature titled "I Married a Strange Person", another film of his was making the festival rounds at the same time - I passed on seeing it at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1997, because I was busy seeing films like "Orgazmo", "Regeneration", "Cube", "Twenty Four Seven" and Michael Moore's "The Big One" (also playing at the festival were "L.A. Confidential", "Seven Years in Tibet", and "The Spanish Prisoner", but I saw all of those later in other venues.).  I don't have many movie sins left to atone for at this point, but missing out on a big festival film still pops up - like I watched "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" last year, and I remember passing on that one at Sundance in 2001.  Quickly going through Egoyan's filmography yesterday reminded me about "The Sweet Hereafter", and I noticed it also had Bruce Greenwood in it, so I could slip it in here and absolve one of my last few forgotten movie sins.

Adding another Bruce Greenwood film at the last minute solves two problems, it lines up my Earth Day film with Monday, and it exactly lines up "Avengers: Endgame" with the day I'm going to see it - but skipping a day would have produced the same result, so which is better for me right now, adding a film or skipping a day?  It's difficult to determine, but I would hate to get to the end of Movie Year 11 and not have a slot for my last film - but it would probably be worse if I got to the end of the year and fell one film short, right?  So that settles it, I'm going to drop this one in and line up next week's films better.

One problem, though - it's not running on cable, or on demand, it's not on Netflix, and for some reason it's not even on iTunes, which is my safety net in case all else fails - jeez, I thought everything was on iTunes, but this is the rare exception.  You didn't hear it from me, but it was posted free on YouTube - but I don't want to support that, so I borrowed my wife's Amazon Prime password and watched it there, via her computer (after yet another failed attempt to get the Silverlight plug-in to work on my Mac, very frustrating).  Thankfully, it was FREE on Amazon Prime, and my usual solution would have been to watch it on iTunes for $2.99 or $3.99 - so if this cost me nothing, why not add it?  I can't keep some imaginary problem that could occur in late December from altering the chain if need be.  Thinking of this film and noticing it could be added to the chain easily, that's some kind of sign, right?

Bruce Greenwood carries over again from "The Captive", that's three in a row, with more on the way.

THE PLOT: A bus crash in a small town brings a lawyer to town to defend the families, but he discovers that everything is not what it seems.

AFTER: OK, I probably shouldn't make a snap judgment about a director after seeing only two of his films, but there's nothing else on his filmography that I'm interested in - wait, I've seen "Where the Truth Lies" and "Chloe", he directed those, too.  But if I take just yesterday's film and today and what they have in common, he likes to set things in small northern towns (this one's in Canada, "The Captive" was set in upstate NY, close to Canada) and he likes to find tragedy there, this time it's a school bus crash, and then the characters affected by the tragedy are shown wallowing in misery.

"The Sweet Hereafter" also jumps around in time, the story is not told linearly, but at least this time I was prepared for it.  And after the first scene had a prominent 1995 calendar hanging on the wall, the next scene showed a TV news broadcast with a 1997 date, so I caught on pretty quickly that we'd be toggling between at least two time-frames.  So there's the timeline shortly after the accident, when the lawyer comes to town, and then there's two years later, when he's flying somewhere to visit his daughter, who's back in some form of rehab situation.  It's misery upon misery.  The first timeline is also laden with flashbacks from the day of the accident, as people recall what happened - I'm not going to call that a third timeline, but then I think there is a point where there are flashbacks WITHIN the flashbacks, so once again, some assembly is required here to piece everything together.

I caught half of "Pulp Fiction" the other night after my movie ended (earlier than usual, before the Travolta/Thurman dance scene, usually I come in just before the scene with the gimp) and that reminded me that when this technique is used properly, it slowly reveals information that is important, unlike "The Captive" that told the audience everything at the start, then we all had to wait for the characters to catch up.  What happens here is that the bus crash is the very important part, and both timelines gradually work up to revealing what exactly did (or didn't) happen, and that's kind of the way it should be.  But then again, telling us early on that there WAS a bus crash still kind of tipped off too much, there could have been even more impact if we the audience didn't know such a tragedy had happened/was about to happen.

The second timeframe, with the lawyer on the plane, then flashed back even earlier, as he told a story about his daughter getting sick when she was a toddler, and it's a gripping one, and shows the highs and lows, the terrible dual nature of being a parent, the difficulty of watching them when they're sick which I guess somehow balances out the joys they bring when they're healthy?  Actually I think the point here is rather unclear, so I'm either hitting the nail on the head here or missing it completely, it's tough to tell.  The film's Wiki page doesn't mention this second timeline at all, which is kind of strange - so does that mean it has no relevance at all?  Why relate only PART of the film's plot in the description?   Many things happen in this film, and that's definitely one of them.  Then again, the Wiki page also suggests this film is a metaphor for the Armenian Genocide, and I didn't pick up on that at all - possibly because I've never heard of the Armenian Genocide.

But this is definitely a small town with secrets - and we, the audience get to see who's having affairs with whom, and what happens to the relationships between married couples (and the cheating ones) when a pending class-action lawsuit threatens to divide the town.  I kind of really had to pay attention here, because not everything was explicitly stated, particularly people's motivations for being for the suit or against it, or their reasons for telling the truth or lying about certain things.  It's hard when characters are avoiding talking about things like their deceased children, it took a little extra effort to figure out which child came from which parent, because nearly everyone was suffering and not willing to talk about their feelings.

NITPICK POINT: During the deposition scenes, there's a stenographer who's holding a weird device up to her mouth the whole time - I thought at first she was constantly sipping from a large coffee cup, but apparently it's a real device someone can use to record their voice, without interrupting the testimony of the witness.  OK, it might be a real thing, but it was distracting to the viewer, where someone typing on a dictation machine or writing notes in shorthand would have been less noticeable - so if it were up to me, I would have taken it out.

Hey, this film is on that list of "1,001 Movies To See Before You Die" - God, it's been ages since I made any progress on that list.  This moves me up to 416 seen out of the 1,001 - with four more currently on my watch list.  If I want to make any more progress on the list than that, I may have to start watching films directed by Bergman and Kurosawa, or "Das Boot" and "The Color Purple".  But let's not get too crazy.

And it was interesting to see Sarah Polley again, so this kind of answers the question about what happened to that little girl that starred in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen".  Also, she later directed the film "Take This Waltz", which I've seen.

Also starring Ian Holm (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Sarah Polley (last seen in "The Claim"), Tom McCamus (last seen in "Room"), Gabrielle Rose (last seen "The BFG"), Caerthan Banks, Maury Chaykin (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Alberta Watson (last seen in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), David Hemblen (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies"), Arsinee Khanjian, Earl Pastko, Stephanie Morgenstern, Brooke Johnson, Allegra Denton, Marc Donato, Sarah Rosen Fruitman, Devon Finn, Simon R. Baker, Fides Krucker, Russell Banks, Peter Donaldson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 business cards

The Captive

Year 11, Day 109 - 4/19/19 - Movie #3,207

BEFORE: Bruce Greenwood carries over from "Swept Away", and I've got nearly a week of his films ready to go - this is going to be a lot like the Willem Dafoe week back in March or the Domnhall Gleeson split-week in January.  You just never know where the linking is going to take me - it's a free-for-all that weaves wildly between the genres sometimes.  Why not link from "The Voices" and put the two films with Ryan Reynolds together?  Well, I tried it, but I was trying to hit the right number of films to see "Avengers: Endgame" on April 29, and that path fell just a little short.  By splitting the two films and inserting five films in-between, the chain puts that upcoming superhero film right where I need it to be.

Only it's not really that this week, there's been an unplanned loose theme about kidnapping and abductions.  Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her family were kidnapped in "The Most Hated Woman in America", and the Bellas were help captive in "Pitch Perfect 3" for a while - never get into an unmarked van, ladies.  And then in "Swept Away", Madonna's character was (sort of) held captive on an island by man she previously bossed around and tormented, then she kind of fell in love with her captor, as crazy as that sounds.  So in a weird way, this is the fourth film in a row about abductions.

THE PLOT: Eight years after the disappearance of Cassandra, some disturbing incidents seem to indicate that she's still alive.  Police, parents and Cassandra herself will try to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

AFTER: This film also bears a slight resemblance to "True Detective" season 3, which I finished a couple weeks ago - the series really picked up some steam in the last few episodes, and I recommend it.  In both cases, police get evidence that a young girl who disappeared years ago and was thought to be dead MIGHT be alive, and that's all I want to say about the similarities, for fear of spoilers on both stories.  But both stories employ the "split narrative" technique that just keeps popping up again and again for me.  "True Detective" employed it more artfully, as it bounced between 1980, 1990 and the present, with the lead detective character sorting through his own memories as he also battles through the onset of dementia.  It's a race against time in the past to solve the crime, and a race in the present to remember everything before it gets lost.

No aging detectives in "The Captive", but the story flashes back a few times to the abduction in the past, and the start of the investigation, then whips back to the present, 8 years later, with all of the same characters, so without any on-screen mentions of the current date, or "8 years ago" popping up now and then, it can get very confusing.  "True Detective" also made sure that the main characters had different hairstyles and clothing to reflect whatever year/timeline they were currently in, so I suppose I could have kept better track of what happened when if I just paid more attention to Stephen Dorff's receding hairline.

This movie also manages to tip its hand very early on, by revealing something very important to the audience in the first scene - unfortunately removing much of the mystery in this mystery, at least for the audience - so we get to know everything, even if we haven't put all of the pieces together yet. Then we have to wait for all the characters in the film to put it together, which can be excruciating at times.  Again, this is all caused by the time-jumping, and I say avoid starting with what is essentially a flash-forward and proceed with the entire story in linear fashion - a flashback to the abduction is OK, but constantly toggling back and forth just makes it harder to put it all in order.  Really, what would be the problem with the audience learning about the information in the case at the SAME TIME as the detectives and the victim's family - like, why can't WE be on the same page as the characters?  Letting us know something before they know it seems like dirty pool where a narrative is concerned, or at least a cheap shortcut.

Adding to the problem is the fact that this film is set near Niagara Falls, NY - and everything important seems to take place in winter.  But, to be fair, winter up there is probably about 10 months long.  Still, a change of seasons could have helped the audience distinguish what was happening when.

Detectives have processes that they have to follow.  Like they HAVE to consider that one (or both) of the parents is also a potential suspect.  A few bad apples in the past can easily explain that.  But I doubt that the detectives are supposed to tip their hand, and let the father KNOW that they have to consider him a suspect.  There must be a better way to ask questions without being so blatant about it - like it's possible, but it's not automatically him, so why let him know and piss him off?  Here this forces the girl's father to go rogue, and since his wife already blames him for his daughter's disappearance, and the police half-suspect him, he spends his time out on the road making deliveries for his landscaping business, always checking out hitchhikers and teen runaways, on the off chance that one could be his daughter.  That's a recipe for disaster, though, isn't it, even if his intentions are good.

Ultimately what kills this narrative is a mistaken belief about how child predators operate - a belief that they somehow care about their victims, and will treat them as anything other than disposable.  It might be OK to imagine that's the case, but the alternative seems much more realistic.  Does it seem likely that their sick urges could be held in check if their victims share enough personal stories, sing songs for them and write them poems?  I kind of doubt it.  There are a ton of asides that never go anywhere, and the time-jumping is a big issue, but the portrayal of pedophiliacs and internet predators as something close to human is undoubtedly the biggest sin of all.

Also starring Ryan Reynolds (last seen in "The Voices"), Scott Speedman (last seen in "XXX: State of the Union"), Rosario Dawson (last heard in "The Lego Batman Movie"), Mireille Enos, Kevin Durand (last seen in "Fruitvale Station"), Alexia Fast (last seen in "Jack Reacher"), Peyton Kennedy, Aaron Poole (last seen in "Forsaken"), Christine Horne, Brendan Gall, Wiliam MacDonald, Jason Blicker (last seen in "Superstar"), Aidan Shipley, Ian Matthews, Ella Ballentine, Jim Calarco.

RATING: 4 out of 10 missing person flyers

Swept Away

Year 11, Day 108 - 4/18/19 - Movie #3,206

BEFORE: I know, I know, this is regarded as one of the biggest box-office bombs in history.  But it can't be all THAT bad, can it?  Famous last words, I suppose.  But again, I'll suffer through just about anything at this point, provided it gets me one step closer to "Avengers: Endgame".

Elizabeth Banks carries over from "Pitch Perfect 3"

FOLLOW-UP TO "Overboard" (Movie #3,143)

THE PLOT: A snooty socialite is stranded on a Mediterranean island with a communist sailor.

AFTER: OK, yeah, it kind of is THAT bad.  But in a "so bad it's good" kind of way, right?  Maybe not.

I didn't know this was a remake of an Italian film from 1974, and that film starred Giancarlo Giannini, and this one has his son, Adriano, in the same role his father played, that of the tortured deckhand who gets stranded on an island with the wealthy woman who made his life hell at every opportunity.  But it also bears a strong resemblance to the 1987 film "Overboard", where a wealthy woman falls off a boat and gets amnesia and a working-class father somehow manages to convince her she's his wife and the mother of 4 boys that look nothing like her.  Ah, a comedy about mistaken identity that involves a lot of fraud and rape...but this is essentially the same story, just told as a drama rather than as a comedy.  Maybe for some people this comes off as an unintentional comedy.

What happens on the island here is a flipping of the power roles, where suddenly the lowly deckhand who's been ordered around and teased and made to feel small for the past week or so suddenly realizes that he's the only one among them who knows how to fish, find water, build a shelter and survive.  So in a society without money, he has the only currency that matters, the knowledge that will keep them alive.  And so he orders Amber, Madonna's character, around, makes her wash his clothes, cook the fish he caught, and when she refuses or disobeys, he slaps her.  This might be difficult to watch and seem quite barbaric, but I say give it a chance, you might enjoy seeing Madonna slapped hard in the face and psychologically tortured.

As always, your mileage may vary - I was raised to believe that I should never hit a woman, but then I've never met Madonna.  And considering how the pendulum has swung so far against it, and any form of abuse toward women, it could be difficult to watch.  Essentially what's going on here is a form of the Stockholm Syndrome, right?  Because after she's made to do grunt-work, dance for him and (literally) kiss his feet, she starts to have feelings for him.  All that class struggle B.S. goes right out the window once you revert to caveman rules, apparently.  You wonder if this is what is was like back in the Stone Age, where it was all broken down between the hunters and the gatherers, and men needed women but also women needed men, and each defined their role as the opposite of the other.  Were things simpler back then, or just way more complicated now?

Anyway, the most laughable bit is probably when Miss High Society comes to realize that she LIKES her time on the island, doing forced labor and earning her meals, and she somehow becomes a better person, and someone who feels genuine (?) affection for a man she once thought of as crude, smelly and lower-class.  Yeah, right.  See, she JUST needed to be shown her place and beat up a bit to become a better human, doesn't everything work out for the best in the end?  Pardon me while I throw up.

Wait, I take it back - the most laughable bit is when a ship comes near the island, and she DOES nothing to contact the ship, because she loves her new life as an island girl, catching fish and eating raw coconuts with none of the comforts of modern society.  Ha ha ha hah HAH!

Eventually, they get rescued, which is shocking because Amber's husband probably wasn't looking for her very hard, he was enjoying the peace and quiet.  But this becomes a true test of her love for Giuseppe, will she still desire him after they return to society, or is their love only contingent on his survival skills and their captor/victim relationship?  Giuseppe desperately needs to know if their love will survive in the real world, but hey, be careful what you wish for.

Apart from a couple of cameos, Madonna has not acted in a feature film since this film killed her career - so you know there had to be an upside, right?  What can I say, I'm a glass half-full kind of guy.  And this film won five Razzie Awards, that's good, right?  No wait, that's bad.

Also starring Madonna (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Adriano Giannini (last seen in "Ocean's Twelve"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Jeanne Tripplehorn (last seen in "Reality Bites"), Michael Beattie (last heard in "Despicable Me 3"), David Thornton (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Yorgo Voyagis.

RATING: 3 out of 10 hallucinations

Pitch Perfect 3

Year 11, Day 107 - 4/17/19 - Movie #3,205

BEFORE: See, I told you we'd get here.  Just wanted to squeeze in a few extra films so that I'll hit "Avengers: Endgame" on the right day.

Anna Camp carries over from "The Most Hated Woman in America", where she played a teacher who didn't see what was wrong with enforced prayers in school.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Pitch Perfect" (Movie #1,522), "Pitch Perfect 2" (Movie #2,413)

THE PLOT: Following their win at the world championship, the now-separated Bellas reunite for one last competition at an overseas USO tour, but face groups who use both instruments and voices.

AFTER: Boy, this franchise really has followed the rule of diminishing returns - each film in this series has been a little harder to believe than the one before, so that by the time they've put out the third film, the events depicted are so far-fetched that I'm betting they don't bear any resemblance to what goes on in the modern music world, or the world of a cappella.  The first film is a bit like a restaurant that I had a sort-of OK meal at, though there were some service issues, and I keep checking back every couple years to see if the service has improved, only to find out that it hasn't.

Looking back on my previous reviews of "Pitch Perfect" 1 and 2, there are two main things that bother me most about this series - the use of sports-like sideline commentators during the a cappella competitions (it just doesn't happen) and the infamous "riff-offs" that appear to be spontaneous underground battles between (vocal) bands, but from the way they go down, couldn't possibly be what they say they are. These are both STILL problems in the third film, but let me address my issues one by one.

First off, I used to live in this world.  I sang in vocal groups in high school and college, and then as an adult I was a big fan of groups like the Nylons and the Bobs, and when I couldn't seem to land a spot in a real a cappella group myself, I found a few like-minded people and we formed our own group.  I did this TWICE - neither group really went anywhere, but we had a lot of fun and I learned to arrange music (it's tough, but I managed) and for a few years I went to this annual East Coast a cappella summit (this was before I discovered Comic-Con). Back then, the big group was Rockapella, before they broke up and re-formed and replaced nearly every founding member in the group - and at that point, is it even the same group any more?

So I've been to many, many competitions, like the Harmony Sweepstakes.  There is never, NEVER any running commentary from sports-like experts, because this is not a sport.  And these competitions are rarely, if ever, broadcast, so who would even be listening to commentary, when all that people want to hear is the music?  A few years back they had an "American Idol"-like a cappella competition on TV, it was called "The Sing-Off", and while there were judges rating each performance, that all took place AFTER the singing, not during.  They sort of tried to solve this problem in this third film by taking those commentators and turning them into de facto documentary filmmakers who follow the Bellas around - this gives them an excuse to ask strange questions and throw a lot of shade at the girls, because if they can catch them in embarrassing moments, or show their lows as well as their highs, that's all grist for the documentary mill.

However, this leads to more problematic questions about following the Bellas around and filming them - like if they don't seem to even LIKE the Bellas very much, then WHY are they doing this?  And as any good filmmaker knows, you can't make a documentary about someone without their permission, or at least getting them to sign a release.  (Yes, you can make a documentary about a public figure or famous person, but the Bellas don't really qualify as that.)  So any doc made about the Bellas that intentionally made them look stupid or incompetent couldn't be released, not without the permission of the subjects, or the filmmakers would be on the hook for a potential lawsuit.

Now, the next issue concerns the Bellas getting back together - an accidental non-reunion, plus some personal setbacks in their careers, and the fact that there's a new batch of college-age Barden Bellas that replaced the graduated alumni, this all gives the older Bellas the idea to really get back together and go on the road. But it's very far-fetched that they would choose to go on a USO Tour, and even MORE far-fetched that there would be some kind of secret, unspoken, tacit competition where the "best" group out of four contenders gets to open for DJ Khaled and maybe get a record contract, or something.  It's all very unclear, and seems like the kind of thing a record company would float out there to get people to go on the road and do concerts for free.

It would have made more sense for the Bellas to get back together and transition from a college a cappella group to a professional one.  That's a valid career option, we have those now - Pentatonix is the best example, but I'm sure there are others (Straight No Chaser, Home Free, Take 6, plus the ones I named above).  Why is this not an option they consider?  Because it's too much work?  Sure, let's stake all our chips on some nebulous record contract promise and a possibly non-existent competition, why not.  Probably the answer here is that a USO tour of military bases in Spain, Italy and France is much more cinematic - whereas a USO tour through Iraq and Afghanistan would be much more dangerous and not as scenic.  And watching them just slog through a bunch of mediocre local concerts, do publicity and promotions, hang posters and network - yeah, that sounds boring.

Now, the riff-off, which I thought couldn't get any more ridiculous than the one seen in "Pitch Perfect 2" - it turns out I was wrong.  The chances that any group would be able to come up with a song ON THE SPOT that not only meets the criteria of a particular topic (party songs or artists that are secretly Jewish) but also is one that they already know and have worked out the harmonies on, even though they don't know what key they're going to be singing in - and then to be able to think of the first word of that song, and how it's going to match a word that's coming up in the song that the OTHER group is currently singing....  Uh-uh, no way, this would make someone's head explode.  And then to have some kind of group-mind take over so that everyone somehow knows when to jump in and how to harmonize with the others, without their starting notes - it's impossible. And it's clear that someone behind the scenes pre-picked songs that all mash up together, arranging is a LOT of work and does not happen instantly like this.

Let me try a sports analogy - imagine you're an Olympic gymnast, and you have to do certain things in your floor exercise routine, in order to get a great score.  BUT you can't work out your routine in advance, or practice in any way, because they don't tell you what flips and jumps you'll have to do until right before the competition.  AND you have to start your routine the moment that the gymnast from the other country stops, and you also must be ready to STOP your routine if someone else starts theirs.  Maddening, right?  Oh, and you have to time your routine so that when you finish, you'll hit the mat at the exact same time as that guy on the pommel horse.  Or imagine a bunch of synchronized swimmers who has to do the exact same movements, only it has to be improvisational, they can't plan out the routine in advance - that would be impossible, as is the riff-off depicted here.

The film also has to bend itself over backwards and sideways just to get Anna Kendrick's character in front of one of those sampling/mixing devices, so I'm guessing her solo song from the last film turned out to be one of the most popular.  But this really takes the focus away from the group songs, which I think are more powerful and better-arranged overall.  This is supposed to be a TEAM, and any plot points that take the focus away from the team shouldn't get so much air time.  Case in point, they tried to give each Bella a little bit of a solo story, and they range from misguided (Aubrey's absent daddy issues) to completely nonsensical (Fat Amy's father is a dangerous criminal, or terrorist or something).  And the Asian girl never even spoke before?  That seems weird, and everyone just assumed that she couldn't speak English, but could somehow sing it? Ad then the "real truth" about her is even weirder than that.

NITPICK POINT: This is meant for humor, I suppose, but there are two characters in the group that have been so neglected by the screenwriters that when they finally get mentioned, the other characters jokingly say how unimportant they are, or that they don't really like them or know much about them.  Then why, for God's sake, were they invited to go on tour with the group?  Are they singing some harmonies that nobody else can sing?  If you have a musical group with 11 people and nobody else liked two of them, wouldn't it make more sense to kick them out and have a 9-person group?

On the issue of personal growth, it's too bad that these two girls have trouble either getting their father's attention, or getting out from their father's shadow.  Two of the other girls try to act like strong, independent women, but lose all sensibility as soon as they're around eligible men like their military liaison or a record executive.  Combined, this is a terrible message to send out to younger women, because that's four cases where the women are letting themselves be defined by their relationships with men. I would have greatly preferred that these girls figure out that true happiness and satisfaction in life can come from within, and not from being in a high-paying job or in a relationship with a successful man.

So this movie couldn't really decide what it wanted to be - was it a singing movie, or a movie about a bunch of friends getting back together, is it a comedy, is it a drama about finding your path in life, or is it an action movie about getting kidnapped by terrorists and conducting a dramatic escape?  It's a shame that there's so little focus, because in the end a movie just can't be about all of those things - it's firing off in all directions without landing any meaningful points.  The second film ended with all the Bellas, past and present, coming together and singing together and promising to always be there for each other, as a network of strong women.  So this series SHOULD end with the group becoming successful together, and anything but that is just unacceptable, and makes me feel like I've wasted my time.

It's past time for me to say goodbye to this series, anway - out of all the songs the Bellas sang (not including the ones in the riff-off) I only recognized two of them, the Britney Spears one and the George Michael one.  I think I've aged out of the program, I don't know songs by Flo Rida and Aloe Blacc and Iggy Azalea.  I had to look them up after, it's just not my kind of music.

Also starring Anna Kendrick (last heard in "Trolls"), Rebel Wilson (last seen in "The Brothers Grimbsy"), Hailee Steinfeld (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Elizabeth Banks (last seen in "Shaft"), John Michael Higgins (last seen in "Mascots"), John Lithgow (last seen in "Leap Year"), Brittany Snow (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Ester Dean (ditto), Hana Mae Lee (ditto), Chrissie Fit (ditto), Kelley Jakle (ditto), Shelley Regner (ditto), Alexis Knapp (ditto), Matt Lanter, Guy Burnet, DJ Khaled (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Ruby Rose (last seen in "XXX: Return of Xander Cage"), Andy Allo (last seen in "The Hero"), Venzella Joy Williams, Hannah Fairlight, Troy Ian Hall, Michael Rose (last seen in "Kill the Messenger"), Jessica Chaffin, Moises Arias (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Jeff Hortillosa, Andrew van Voorhees, Bobby Fitzgerald, James Gwyn, James Bookert, Trinidad James, D.J. Looney.

RATING: 4 out of 10 custom-made juice drinks

The Most Hated Woman in America

Year 11, Day 106 - 4/16/19 - Movie #3,204

BEFORE: Back on Netflix today, let's hope I can catch this one before it disappears from the service with no notice, like maybe right in the middle of my viewing...

Juno Temple carries over from "Wonder Wheel".

THE PLOT: The life of Madelyn Murray O'Hair, the outspoken activist and founder of American Atheists.

AFTER: We're supposed to have a separation of church and state in the U.S., which means that one is not supposed to influence the other - but in many ways, it's been impossible to keep them separate.  You always hear about Congresspeople saying that they vote according to their morals, and if you press them, it's always those "Judeo-Christian" morals, so how is that even permitted by the Constitution?  They should all be voting in accordance with what's best for their constituents on a day-to-day level, not what's best morally to get everyone in their district into heaven by trying to outlaw abortion or same-sex marriage.  Right?

I remember the debates when I was in grade school (mid 1970s), when they made us stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance - should we be required to say "under God"?  Could we skip those words if we wanted to?  Heck, could someone be allowed to leave the room and not recite the Pledge if it was against their beliefs?  Once in a while I heard about some kid in another grade or another school who was a Jehovah's Witness or something and they didn't have to say the pledge, but generally the basic rule of grade school was "try to fit in, don't be different or call attention to yourself in any way, or you'll be bullied or ostracized".  Grade school was a bit like prison back then, I was surrounded by kids who were bigger and tougher than me, and I just wanted to put my head down, serve my time and look forward to my daily lunch and my 30 minutes outside in the yard.

But Madalyn Murray O'Hair was exactly right about school prayer - it shouldn't be mandated, based on the laws that make our country great.  Besides, if kids WANT to pray at school, they certainly can, most likely right before exams, so why did they try to bring back school prayer during the Reagan years, and I'm guessing the conservatives have brought this up again in recent years, when it's a losing battle?  If you want your kid to pray in school, send him or her to parochial school and not public school, why keep trying to enforce YOUR religious beliefs on everyone else?  It's right there in our mission statement, freedom of religion, which also includes freedom FROM religion.  So you can't legislate morality, either, it's a contradiction in terms - but people keep trying.

So I agree with the attitudes and struggles of Ms. Murray O'Hair, she seemed like a person ahead of her time.  Problem is, she didn't know how to do what she did without ruffling many feathers, and pissing off a whole lot of people.  She would rather be right than be liked, and I get that too.  But there's another side to her, according to this film, and it has to do with how much money her Atheists Society brought in, and how much of that was making its way into her own pockets.   I knew almost nothing about her going in to this film, and I think that was for the best.  I would suggest not reading up on her before watching the film, because there's some dramatic tension in not knowing the ending when you start the story.

But we're bouncing around the timeline again tonight - the film toggles between O'Hair's past, the development of her activism and the formation of her American Atheists society (1953 to 1995) and the "present" timeline, set in 1995-2001, which details the kidnapping of O'Hair, her son Garth and her granddaughter Robin (from her other son Bill) and the kidnappers attempts to get O'Hair money from offshore accounts, and then what (allegedly) happened after they couldn't get as much as they wanted.   Umm, let's just say it doesn't end well for the O'Hair family.  She pissed off so many people that it seems when she was reported missing, the police didn't really investigate very hard.

But when a film jumps around in the timeline like this, and I've said this many, many times, it's ultimately one of the more confusing ways to tell as story, as the audience has to sort of assemble everything after the fact when it's not presented to them in clear linear fashion.  Obviously this was done to make the story more interesting here, because if they didn't do this, there would be a long, long section of the film detailing O'Hair's history and her court victories (a rather dry topic) before getting to the much more exciting kidnapping part.  But I got confused in the latter part of the reporter's investigation into their disappearance - it seemed like maybe several years passed before someone recognized the sketch of the guy who sold their car.

Perhaps this was just me - having just watched Season 3 of "True Detective", which bounced between a 1980 investigation, a 1990 re-opening of the case and a modern-day re-examination through a documentary, maybe I was reading a little too much into the time-jumps.  In the real world, it was only a few months before the reporter found a solid lead to the identity of one of the kidnappers, and arrests were made I think that same year.  The trials and conviction process might have been a lengthy one, because it was another 5 or 6 years before they found out what exactly happened to the Murray O'Hairs.

I found the relationship between Ms. Murray O'Hair and her eldest son Bill quite ironic - she raised him as an atheist, and he was a big supporter of his mother's activism, but then the time inevitably came when he rejected her beliefs and felt he was wasting his life as part of her organization.  I think it's only natural to reject your parents' beliefs at some point - for me that meant leaving the Church, and regarding my parents as suckers for spending so much of their time (and money) there.  Bill Murray (not that one) broke from his mother to get himself sober, but going through the 12-step program meant he had to put his faith in a higher power, so he converted to Christianity.  It's a shame that the 12 steps can't be separated from religion - like somebody should fix that.  I've heard that some people choose a rock or a tree as their "higher power", but I bet for most people, they can't get clean without having faith in the more conventional God, and that seems a little faulty to me.

Also starring Melissa Leo (last seen in "Snowden"), Josh Lucas (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), Michael Chernus (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Devin Freeman, Rory Cochrane (last seen in "Hostiles"), Vincent Kartheiser (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Sally Kirkland (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Adam Scott (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Alex Frost, Brandon Mychal Smith (last seen in "Dirty Grandpa"), Peter Fonda (last seen in "Easy Rider"), Ryan Cutrona (last seen in "The Last Boy Scout"), Anna Camp (last seen in "Café Society"), David Gueriera with archive footage of Rev. Billy Graham, John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Super Duper Alice Cooper"), Ed McMahon, Phil Donahue.

RATING: 5 out of 10 talk show appearances

Wonder Wheel

Year 11, Day 105 - 4/15/19 - Movie #3,203

BEFORE: It's that kind of day where everything seems to go wrong - our house got invaded by ants, which sometimes happens in the spring, so we've got to set up a network of bait traps in every room where we've seen them.  Then my wife woke me up at 5:30 am to tell me the refrigerator wasn't working, so we had to fill a cooler with ice and try to save as many meats and frozen foods as we could, while performing triage and risking all the dairy products and eggs in the refrigerator.  It was also a very rainy morning, and I feel like if one more thing had gone wrong, like water coming in the basement, all together this would have been some sign that we're supposed to sell the house or something and go live in a cabin in the woods, or move upstate or something.  But no flooding, and thankfully it was just a part on the fridge that needed to be replaced, and now we just have to win the battle against the invading ants.  I guess we're not ready to give up on city life just yet.

This is it, the last Woody Allen film - maybe.  This one was released in 2017, not long after I'd watched "Café Society", so it seemed like as soon as I caught up, there was still one more to go.  And there was NO Woody Allen movie released in 2018, though theoretically he could still have one coming out this year, but there's no set release date for it, so who knows.  He signed one of those big-money deals with Amazon Studios, so information on his next film "A Rainy Day in New York" is not available.  The guy is 83, so he probably works at his own pace.  It took me two years to link to his next film, but for the moment at least, I've cleared the board.

You might be thinking - wait, what happened to "Pitch Perfect 3"?  With Anna Kendrick appearing in two films, why not make it a three-peat?  Ah, but I need that film in a couple of days to make another connection between two specific films, so I will get there, I just found a way to squeeze in two more films before I circle back.  So instead I'm following the other track, with Justin Timberlake carrying over from "Trolls".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Café Society" (Movie #2,579)

THE PLOT: In Coney Island in the 1950's, a lifeguard tells the story of a middle-aged carousel operator, his beleaguered wife, and the visitor who turns their lives upside-down.

AFTER: It's not just that Woody Allen has started to repeat himself, because really, he's ALWAYS done that - perhaps it's just the fact that I watched most of his filmography from end to end that I became hyper-aware that I was seeing the same themes over and over, and similar characters also.  It's just that this has become a sort of plot shorthand for him, and he's started to skip the necessary steps in between that are supposed to get us from Plot Point A to Plot Point Z - you can't just leave out Points B through Y!

So this is obviously set back in the 1940s or 1950s - people make references to serving in the war, so it can't be the 1930's  And there's a kid growing up in the shadow of the roller coaster near Coney Island (NOTE to IMDB - nobody says "ON Coney Island", because it's not really an island...). We've seen kids like this before, in "Radio Days" and I think one other film.  And there's a woman who used to be an actress, but now works as a waitress - that feels right out of "Hannah and Her Sisters" or "Broadway Danny Rose".  And there are a couple of gangsters trying to find her husband's daughter, this feels like something from "Bullets Over Broadway", right?  And then there are a couple cases of infidelity, which is, well, just about every Woody Allen film, right?  What is it about this particular time-frame and location that makes him keep coming back to re-visit it, when he's already set a number of stories there?

I kind of miss Woody's films from 2005 to 2012, when he started setting things in Europe, it felt kind of like a fresh start, new locales for someone who had set most of his films in NYC - it seemed like he was really stretching and challenging himself by setting films in the U.K. or Paris or Rome, and now he's reverted to his old ways again, and it just feels stale to me, like this ground has been covered before, and better, by the same director earlier in his career.

Plus, I've never seen a Brooklyn apartment that looked more like a set - from what I know about Coney Island I don't see how any apartment could possibly be located THERE with such a great view of the ferris wheel and the Boardwalk.  Not today, and not back in the 1940's either.  Plus there are windows everywhere, who would live like that in NYC where privacy would be absolutely impossible?  Next it seems like they overdid it with the cinematography, because every important event in these characters' lives seems to take place during the "magic hour", which is just around sunrise or sunset, when you get this great orange light that slowly fades away.  Sure, it's symbolic, but once you notice that it's there again and again, it's impossible to NOT notice it, and surely these people must have important conversations in mid-afternoon sometimes too, right?

(EDIT - Yep, my hunch was right.  The apartment scenes were shot at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, so that means the backgrounds were probably either a matte shot or were added later digitally.  But to my surprise, there IS a Chinese Garden on Staten Island, as stated.  I was willing to bet those scenes couldn't possibly have been shot in NY.  So I stand corrected.)


Still, I feel like Woody employed too many narrative shortcuts here - by making one of the characters a writer, that gives free rein for him to discuss himself in terms of his own "character flaws" or other people get defined by their "fatal weaknesses".  These are not things that are supposed to be stated, these should be parts of characters that we, the audience, pick up on, and telegraphing them like this is very lazy indeed.

Later in the film, people managed to know things they're not supposed to know, and then just said, "Well, I figured it out."  BUT HOW?  Again, this seems very lazy to just explain away with a line or two of dialogue how somebody learned valuable information, and I maintain that this is like a math problem, you can't just come up with the right answer, you have to show your work to explain how they got there.

The kid in the family is a pyromaniac, he keeps getting into trouble for starting fires - but again, WHY does he do this?  It's put forward as a thing that exists, and then never really explained or properly dealt with.  It can't just be that way because it is that way, there should be a reason for this existing, and then there should be some consequence or resolution from it.  The same goes for a lot of other things here, they just are the way they are, because.  Partially this is meant to show people who are stuck in their situations, because much like the carousel or the ferris wheel, they're all going around in circles, without getting anywhere.  Maybe that's the point, but it still seems lazy from a storytelling angle.

I lucked out and was finally able to watch this on an Academy screener, but much like "Last Flag Flying", this highlights the problem that I'm having with streaming services - this film is available on Amazon Prime, but not in many other places.  OK, so I COULD have watched it on iTunes or YouTube for rental, but when it's produced by Amazon Studios, that means that it's NOT going to be on Netflix for sure, and it's not going to be on premium cable either.  So it, and many other movies, are being screened on certain exclusivity deals that prevent some people from being able to see it, which seems sort of against the point.  When a studio makes a movie, why don't they want the maximum number of people possible to be able to see it?  I can't watch movies on Amazon right now due to a technical issue, so should I be prevented forever from being able to watch it?  Same goes for Netflix exclusives, since not everyone has Netflix.  And why are shows like "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek: Discovery" good enough to air on CBS All Access, but not on CBS-TV?  Are we going to go through this too with Disney's upcoming streaming service?  If you want to watch the new "Dumbo" or the new Star Wars TV series, then you MUST join another streaming service and pay another subscription fee - it's a form of entertainment blackmail, and I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Carnage"), Juno Temple (last seen in "Atonement"), Jim Belushi (last seen in "About Last Night..."), Jack Gore, Tony Sirico (last seen in "Café Society"), Steve Schirripa (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Tommy Nohilly, Thomas Guiry, with cameos from Max Casella (last seen in "Live by Night"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Debi Mazar (last seen in "Lovelace"), Bobby Slayton (last seen in "Get Shorty").

RATING: 5 out of 10 broken plates

Trolls

Year 11, Day 104 - 4/14/19 - Movie #3,202

BEFORE: Ugh, I am not looking forward to this one tonight, but it's an unfortunately necessary evil that gets me to tomorrow's film, and it's part of the collective that gets me closer to "Avengers: Endgame", so I'm just going to hold my nose, get this over with and get on with my countdown. Anna Kendrick carries over from "The Voices"

THE PLOT: After the Bergens invade Troll Village, Poppy, the happiest Troll ever born, and the curmudgeonly Branch set off on a journey to rescue her friends.

AFTER: Yeah, it's about as bad as I thought it was going to be, about as bad as movies get, even for a movie aimed at kids.  I haven't found many films that would warrant a score of a "1", which I think means that I would prefer to stare at a blank screen for 90 minutes instead of that film. So far 11 films have qualified for that "honor", this one's right on the edge of being the 12th.

When I hear "Trolls" I think about the Tolkien kind, the ones that are big, green and nasty and have bad teeth and who tie up and eat nasty Hobbitses, but these are the kind that are tiny, have enormous brightly-colored hair and dance and sing and fart glitter.  Geez, go hug a rainbow, you hippies.  But they had to have villains in the film, so someone created Bergens, who are big, green and nasty and have bad teeth and who tie up and eat brightly colored Trolls.  So everything's way off base and turned around, if you ask me - we should be calling the Bergens trolls and calling the little things fairies or something, but since there are already Troll dolls on the market, it's too late, the damage is done.

There's one Troll who's already convinced that the end is near, the Bergens are sure to attack any day now, and he's already built himself an underground bunker so he can last 10 years after the attack - he's the only Troll prepper, and he turns out to be right.  So, was this movie made so that kids can better understand why their parents have a stockpile of canned food and weapons for when the zombies or liberals (or worse, liberal zombies) attack?  Great news, the prepper Troll turns out to be right, the Bergens attack and capture nearly all of the Trolls, because eating the Trolls is the only thing that gives the Bergens happiness.

OK, that's it, the Trolls are captured to be eaten, roll credits, movie over, I'm fine with that ending.  Only that's not the end, Princess Peppy and prepper Branch have to travel across the wasteland back to Bergentown to influence the election - I mean, free their friends and convince the Bergens that they don't really want to eat Trolls, and that true happiness comes from within, provided you can sing and dance.  Let me guess, the Bergens are supposed to live on nuts and berries now, instead of meaty Trolls?  Look, nature is things eating other things, the sooner that kids learn to deal with that the better - who wrote this screenplay, PETA?  It's high time these Trolls figured out their place in the natural order of things.  Can you guess I was rooting for the Bergens here?

I figured out the flaw in the Bergen's logic right away - they say that only eating trolls can make them happy, but early on in the film, right before their holiday of Trollstice (ugh again) some trolls were happy at the mere THOUGHT of getting ready to eat a troll, so there you go.  If the church says that in addition to committing a sin (your choice) there are also the additional sins of WANTING to sin and also ENJOYING the sin, then the opposite must also hold true.  If something makes me happy, then anticipating that thing can also make me happy, and then thinking about the thing afterwards can also make me happy.

This somehow got nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song, but it also features a fair number of unoriginals ones, too - a random selection of hits from the 80's and 90's that were probably very available, like "Hello" and "True Colors".  For the older people, they also managed to ruin "The Sound of Silence", just to reinforce the fact that the ideals of the 1960's are truly gone.

It's probably fine to let your kids watch this, but only if you truly don't like them.

Also starring the voices of Justin Timberlake (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Zooey Deschanel (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Russell Brand (last heard in "Despicable Me 2"), Gwen Stefani, James Corden (last heard in "Peter Rabbit"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Ron Funches (last heard in "Get Hard"), John Cleese (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2"), Aino Jawo, Caroline Hjelt, Kunal Nayyar (last heard in "Ice Age: Continental Drift"), Walt Dohrn, GloZell Green, Kandee Johnson, Meg DeAngelis, Ricky Dillon, Quvenzhane Wallis (last heard in "The Prophet"), Mike Mitchell, Grace Helbig, Curtis Stone, Rhys Darby (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle").

RATING: 2 out of 10 fanny packs