The Children's Hour

Year 11, Day 208 - 7/27/19 - Movie #3,306

BEFORE: Damn, it's way too early for back-to-school stuff, so it's not really a good time for this one to come to the top of my queue.  But everything can't line up all the time, and I need the linking here to help get me back to modern times.  Audrey Hepburn carries over from "Paris When It Sizzles", and I didn't have too many options here.  I tried to work out a link to William Holden in "Picnic", which would be more summer-themed, I think - but that turned into a dead end.  I could have gone: "Born Yesterday", "Picnic", then via Susan Strasberg to "The Other Side of the Wind" and the documentary about that film, "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead", but then I couldn't go any further - I've tapped out the Orson Welles connections.

Actually, I do see the connection there - I could have followed the Peter Bogdanovich link to "They All Laughed", which I don't have a copy of, and that film has Audrey Hepburn in it, which would have led me back here, to "The Children's Hour", and the chain would have proceeded from here anyway.  But that would have meant adding FIVE films to the chain, and I just don't have the space, not this year, I've only got 95 slots left, and Halloween and Christmas are going to be here before you know it, I'm watching the number of days left in 2019 get smaller and smaller.

Speaking of October, I knew that there was a reason I didn't fill up the month completely, I left a couple week's time open, because I'll be working at New York Comic Con on the first weekend (after skipping the event last year) and then going on vacation in the third week.  We just booked tickets to Las Vegas - we haven't been there in over a decade, so it's probably all new and improved - so instead of a BBQ crawl this year we're going to do a Casino Crawl, or maybe a Buffet Crawl.  We're in the process of checking out what we want to do in each part of town so we can move from place to place more efficiently, treating each section of town like its own city.  It'll be just like the BBQ Crawls we did, only less driving, which means more eating.  But that's still almost 90 days, or 83 movies, away.

THE PLOT: A troublemaking student at a girls' school accuses two teachers of being lesbians.

AFTER: This is another film that has to be placed in a historical context, since it was made in 1961 and there were entirely different attitudes about gay people - for example, they could even SAY the word "lesbian" in this film.  And almost any mention of what these two teachers were accused of is either whispered between two people, or said in another room, or outside, down a path, while the camera remains inside and shoots from the door - either way, the definition never makes it on screen until nearly the very end.  So it's possible that some people back then watched this movie, had no idea what it meant for two women to be in love, so they might have been scratching their heads, thinking "I didn't understand why all the parents were taking their kids out of that private school for girls..."

Decades later, people struggled with a similar issue when it came to light that maybe some men who were running Boy Scout troops might have been homosexual, forcing that organization to take some poorly thought-out moral stand, and then of course there was the whole "gays in the military" kerfuffle.  Conservative Americans would apparently prefer that their children get raised without ever being instructed by, or even encountering any gay people.  Umm, good luck with that.  Or they would prefer that everyone keep their sexual preferences under wraps, completely compartmentalized and separate from their workplace identities.  Well, that's not so easy for some people, and it of course holds one section of the populace to a darn near impossible standard.  Anyway, years later we all learned that the real sexual predators weren't even scout leaders or military recruits, but studio executives, news anchors, pop stars and beloved comedians.  Go figure.  Oh, and casino owners/billionaires/reality TV stars, don't leave that one out.

People fear what they don't understand, and so hear they misguidedly think that a lesbian woman can't possibly teach their children - why, are they afraid that the children are going to catch "gay" from them?  Meanwhile, the little girls are reading some kind of dirty book (again, the details of the book's events aren't mentioned in the film, but they elicit a "double wow" from one of the girls, what could that possibly have been?).  But most of the little girls don't really understand the nature of the lesbian relationship that they imagine is taking place, when pressed for details, they say things like, "I saw them kissing, and, you know, STUFF."  Right, that sounds like a reliable witness, so case closed.

The real takeaway here is that kids are horrible creatures.  There's one girl who's a kleptomaniac, stealing anything shiny from her own mother and the other girl students.  But even worse is the girl who takes a bouquet flowers out of the trash and presents them to her teacher as new, and then when she gets in trouble she claims that the teachers have it in for her.  She also throws tantrums and fakes illnesses, like the patented Fred Sanford "heart attack".  She'll say just about anything to put another person down, which lifts herself up in the process.  But of course her grandmother can't see her as a terrible person, because she's just a kid.  But kids are even more likely to be terrible people than adults, they haven't yet learned to take things in stride, or how to properly follow the rules, or that not everything is rigged against them.  When has any kid ever had any success telling an adult that "It's not FAIR!" without the adult rolling their eyes and saying, "No kidding, duh, but life isn't fair..."

Plus, again, this was 1961, and the Swinging Sixties hadn't even gotten rolling yet - so after the scandal breaks, one teacher's boyfriend/fiancé of course dismisses the rumors at first, but eventually even he gets to the point where he reasons that if there's even a hint of truth here, then he'd probably be better off breaking off their engagement.  But if had been 10 or 15 years later, during the carefree pre-AIDS 1970's, perhaps his attitude might have been, "Hey, that's OK, we can still be together, and maybe your co-worker could even join us, once in a while, and we'd both be happier in the long run." But it appears that in 1961, even if there was little recognition for lesbians in proper society, there was even less understanding about bi-sexuality.  Women either had to be one thing or another, there was simply no fluidity allowed, which is ridiculous.  But throughout the intervening years, we've gained more understanding and acceptance, though some parts of even the gay community refuse to accept bisexuality, even on the other side of the argument some people still think women have to be either one thing or another.

Even though the rumors here are untrue (OK, maybe half untrue...OK, maybe true but if they are true, it's the rumor that brought the truth about, which is a bit like putting the cart before the horse...) I feel like I've been in a version of this situation myself.  My first wife came out as bisexual, first to me and then to everyone else, and as you may imagine, I didn't take it well.  Rather than celebrating her sexual freedom, I only saw the ways that it would negatively impact me and my situation, so I only saw the downside, not the upside. (Wait, there was an upside?).  I had only my Catholic upbringing to fall back on, and the fact that I wasn't as free-thinking as I thought I was, so perhaps it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it did lead to the break-up of the marriage.  Breaking off her relationship with her intended partner, as I requested, only had the negative effect of containing this aspect of her that yearned to break free - and I had to realize that trying to contain these feelings was the wrong way to go.  When she finally chose to identify as gay rather than straight or bi, I had to ask her to move out, so that we both could move on.  There might have been other paths, but I didn't see them at the time.

Even if society has worked out some of these issues, we're sort of going through them again now with transexual issues.  Again, I find myself struggling with problems that I don't fully understand - I've had an ex-coworker go through a transition and change pronouns, and then worked with two people after that in various stages of changing identity, and I still have a ways to go in trying to express acceptance in the proper way, when the tendency is to want to ask questions that I have no right to ask, and wouldn't affect me anyway if I knew the answers.  I'm just trying to live and let live now, since I don't have a dog in that fight, so to speak.  And since I don't have kids, I don't have to worry about who's teaching them or running their scout troop or who's serving next to them in the military.  I've tapped out of this issue, politically and morally I'm just going to hang back and sort of see where the dust settles, for the most part.  I mean, I'll stand against oppression and bigotry if I have to, I'm just hoping that it doesn't come down to that.  What's the term for being sympathetic to a cause without getting directly involved?

Also starring Shirley MacLaine (last seen in "Rumor Has It..."), James Garner (last seen in "How Sweet It Is!"), Miriam Hopkins (last seen in "The Chase"), Fay Bainter (last seen in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"), Karen Balkin, Veronica Cartwright (last seen in "Just Married"), Mimi Gibson (last seen in "Houseboat"), William Mims (also last seen in "The Chase"), Sally Brophy, Hope Summers (last seen in "Rosemary's Baby").

RATING: 5 out of 10 elocution classes

Paris When It Sizzles

Year 11, Day 207 - 7/26/19 - Movie #3,305

BEFORE: Looking back, this has really been the summer of "hot"-themed movies, even through some of the films in the documentary chain.  Between Apollo 11 launching from Florida in July 1967 to that shooter on the university tower on a hot Texas day, from another look at climate change via Al Gore to trips made through the jungle and down the Amazon and Congo rivers. Even Spider-Man went on a summer vacation that was somehow also a class trip.  But today the focus is on Paris, I assume during the summer if it's sizzling - yes, this is set just before Bastille Day, which is July 14.  I wish I'd known that before scheduling it, but I don't think I could have moved it a full 12 days - so I'm celebrating France's holiday today, just a bit late.

Mel Ferrer carries over from "Knights of the Round Table" to make a cameo in this film starring his then-wife, Audrey Hepburn.

THE PLOT: The sprightly young assistant of a Hollywood screenwriter helps him over his writer's block by acting out his fantasies of possible plots.

AFTER: Normally I can't stand films that focus on writer characters who are stuck making their screenplays, it's an all-too-common trope that usually doesn't produce anything exciting or interesting.  But I'm prepared to make an exception for "Paris When It Sizzles", because it really kind of goes somewhere with it, the process of making the "film within a film" is a bit scattershot, but ultimately it seems to produce something worth watching, at least until it doesn't at the end.  But for the most part, this is a cut above the usual "writer's block" film, as a romance develops between the screenwriter and his typist, that also influences the story - or perhaps the story influences the romance, it's tough to say.

I've been in the situation of typing up screenplays for people - my first day as a college intern in a real (but small) production studio, one of the company's two directors was getting ready for a pitch meeting, and no one had yet typed up the script - so I was tasked with doing it, despite a lack of experience in following the screenplay form.  But I was a fast typist, and I have been since high-school - I took typing class during a summer course, at a time when nobody knew yet how much influence computers would have in our lives.  Typing back then was seen as sort of a lower-class skill, they taught it in the "business" part of my high-school, where the C-level students took courses.  My, how things have changed.  Still, I remember that day where the director had taken a shower, and was standing behind me in a bathrobe, yelling "Type faster!  Type faster!"  Welcome to the film business, young man.

A couple years before that, on my first day of Film Criticism class at NYU, they showed us "Duck Amuck", the famous Chuck Jones cartoon where Daffy Duck is constantly tormented by an unseen animator, who keeps changing the background scene, or his costume, even removing his beak with an eraser so he can't speak.  It could be the most meta-cartoon ever made, it starts with Daffy breaking the fourth wall and him and the audience being AWARE that it's a cartoon, and it progresses from there.  But it has so many great gags that are based around the language of film (I think that was even the NYU course title, or perhaps the title of the textbook we had to read, "The Language of Film".).  Daffy not only talks to the animator and the audience, but he somehow jars the film frame loose, he has issues with the film's sound effects, the story, the scenery, etc. and just can't get on the same page with whoever's in charge of the animation.  We've all felt that at one point or another, even in the narrative of our own lives - why can't we control the plot, the scenery, and why does the director (if there is one...) keep putting us in such awkward situations?  And life is like a movie - when that title comes that says "The End", inside we may want to scream like Daffy Duck and make the film go on for a few more scenes.  (Wow. deep...)

So, by showing us the different scenarios as they're being written on the fly, and with both the screenwriter and his typist serving as the stand-ins for the characters, there's something of a "Duck Amuck" situation here, the characters are frequently fully aware that they ARE characters in a story, there are a ton of internal references that use the language of film (dissolves to show the passage of time, rewinding to go back and change something, reminding minor characters that they are not very important) to start with a premise and then take it to a very crazy, madcap place.  The film-within-the-film is called "The Girl Who Stole the Eiffel Tower", and while that's the kind of title that grabs your attention, it's also an impossible feat, and the writer KNOWS that, but he's stuck for this very reason, he's pitched an idea that he has no idea how to pull off.  But then the characters in the inner film also point out that you can't steal the Eiffel Tower, so this becomes the name of a film-within-the-film INSIDE of the film-within-the-film, and the inner film is so bad that the film's producer is glad when the negatives are taken hostage, and he even offers to pay the thief to destroy them!

Now, a couple of things, because the writer hires the typist to be someone to live with him in his hotel room for the weekend, and that's a little on the creepy side.  Then he gets really familiar with her very quickly, and maybe you could get away with that in the 1960's, but there's behavior here that would be frowned upon in our current decade.  This is almost Harvey Weinstein-like behavior, inviting a woman to your hotel room to work closely together on a deadline, and then smelling her hair or lying down next to her after a couple of drinks.  There are references to the characters going to bed together and then doing something innocent like playing parcheesi, but in the framing story you really have to wonder what the screenwriter's intentions were.  And in real life, apparently, William Holden and Audrey Hepburn were ex-lovers, they'd had an affair when making "Sabrina" together years before, and putting them back together in a romantic acting situation was probably therefore a bad idea.  According to the host on TCM (I recorded this during that Audrey Hepburn tribute they did early last year) when you add in Holden's alcoholism on top of all that, it was a recipe for disaster.

After a couple of diversions into movie genres that don't really fit with the main story, like a musical dance number and a spoof of vampire horror, they finally come up with a passable ending at a costume party, where Audrey's husband Mel Ferrer is dressed as Dr. Jekyll, then Mr. Hyde.  Someone dressed as Charlie Chaplin is waiting for someone to fall on a banana peel, and others who look like the Marx Brothers are running around frantically, just like they probably would act at a party.  But by the time of the ending, there were so many transitions back and forth between the framing device and the film-within-a-film, I had a little trouble trying to remember if I was watching the writer and the typist, or their alter-egos, Rick and Gaby.  Also I couldn't remember if Maurice was really Philippe, or if it was the other way around.

But along the way, we learn that "Frankenstein" and "My Fair Lady" are really the same story, only one ends well and the other doesn't.  And that's another in-joke, making reference to another film that Hepburn was in.  They also play the song from "Funny Face" and they mention "Breakfast at Tiffany's", so now I wonder if there were any other subtle references that I missed.

In the real world, I work with two animators, who have entirely different approaches to screenwriting.  For one of them, the script is everything, and she spent months writing and re-writing the script, because she uses that as an exact road map to putting together the finished film.  I spent several days working on it, using a cheap version of a real screenwriting program, to make sure all the formatting was correct, and now, two years later, the dialogue is recorded and the film is half done, but the script is still the reference point.

The other animator works more on the fly, and wants to allow some room for actors to improvise their dialogue, so the script is more of a rough breakdown - he prefers to work more with storyboards and hope that the dialogue is somehow going to come together during recording.  On his last feature, the script was actually the LAST thing I worked on during production, which probably sounds a bit odd to anyone familiar with filmmaking, but we only needed a final script to be sent to our foreign distributor so they could work on making French subtitles.  And for his latest feature, I worked hard on 6 or 7 versions of an outline, I basically turned it into a rough script, only to find later that any dialogue from that script that didn't appear on the storyboards was suddenly being discarded.  Instead we've got a dialogue list now with a lot of empty sections, and again, there's that belief that somehow, during the recording process, it's all going to come together.  I tend to equate his process with jumping out of an airplane and knitting a parachute on the way down.  A lot of my work on that script was done in vain, but I have to keep reminding myself that I get paid by the hour - so if I have to re-do it all, I'll still come out on top.

Also starring Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "A Nun's Story"), William Holden (last seen in "damien: Omen II"), Gregoire Aslan (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Raymond Bussieres, Tony Curtis (last seen in "Who Was That Lady?"), Noel Coward (last seen in "The Italian Job"), Marlene Dietrich (last seen in "Stage Fright"), Christian Duvaleix, Michel Thomass, Dominique Boschero, Evi Marandi, Orestis Ganakis, Henri Garcin.

RATING: 6 out of 10 spies in trenchcoats

Knights of the Round Table

Year 11, Day 206 - 7/25/19 - Movie #3,304

BEFORE: Here's the second of the four "King Arthur" films that I'm going to watch before the end of summer - one in August and the last one in September.  I think this is the oldest film I'm going to watch this year, now that I'm not planning on watching those "Mummy" movies in October.

Niall MacGinnis carries over from "A Nun's Story".

THE PLOT: King Arthur's rule is threatened by the adulterous love between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, a relationship the king's enemies hope to exploit.


AFTER: Of course, this is the same basic story seen in "Camelot", but there are many important differences - that 1967 film was a musical, so in this 1953 version, it seems a little strange that everyone just says their lines, without singing (or sing-saying) them.  And unlike Richard Harris, King Arthur says the word "Camelot" without always sounding like he's hearing it for the first time.  14 years in film history makes a world of difference - the 1967 musical reflected (to some people) a commentary on JFK and the Vietnam War, here if there's any political message I guess that would be some kind of indictment of the Truman administration or something.  Or I guess back in the 1950's Hollywood didn't mix a lot of politics into their entertainment, people enjoying the post-World War II "era of good feelings" just wanted to be amused by knights and cowboys and mummies and gangsters.

Arthur isn't even king at the start of this film - he has to pull the sword from the stone first, but this film neatly combines that with the birthright challenge - Modred is the other contender, since Modred's mother, Morgan Le Fay, was the daughter of Uther Pendragon, so she feels her son is the rightful heir (why doesn't she want to be Queen?) and Arthur is the illegitimate son of Uther, and proves that by withdrawing the sword after Modred can't.  Ah, so THAT'S how the two stories can fit together.  Now, in some versions (like "Camelot") Modred is Arthur's bastard son, but if Arthur is Morgan's sister, and her son's father, then that would mean...ohhhh....Arthur slept with his sister, maybe he was seduced or he didn't know.  Either way, there's no mention here about Mordred being Arthur's son (and nephew), because 1957.  Also half of the characters say "MORE-dread", and the other half say "MOW-dred", so can we all get together on this, please?

Ah, but Modred is not Arthur's son in this story, or even Morgan Le Fay's son, he's Morgan's lover and champion, so I guess that would make him consort to the Queen, assuming Morgan would be recognized as queen?  (Why can't SHE take a try at pulling out the sword from the stone?)  Since Merlin set up the challenge, and Arthur wins it, Modred calls foul or witchcraft, forcing a meeting at Stonehenge, where it's determined that Arthur must also prove himself by his deeds.  Geez, why did we go through all the trouble of rigging...  I mean, placing the sword in the stone in the first place?

When Lancelot appears on the scene, there's that same mistaken identity upon meeting Arthur that was so prominent in "Camelot" - here Lancelot and Arthur have a lengthy battle with broadswords that apparently neither one can win, so finally they have to give up and make small talk, which is when Arthur's identity is revealed.  Jeez, you'd think with all these heraldic symbols and those colored things that drape over their horses that the medieval knights would have worked out a way to tell who's who.

Oh, the accents (or lack thereof) in this film are just horrible, like I know it was made in Hollywood, but it's like somebody forgot that the knights were all supposed to be British!  And Lancelot's supposed to be French, right?  Only here he's got no accent at all, or at worst that sort of flat Californian-actor accent, and the actor was born in Nebraska, no less!  It hurt my ears to listen to that.   And the actor who played King Arthur, Mel Ferrer, was American, but of Cuban descent!  How's that going to work when playing a British King?  (It's another one of those Ingrid/Ingmar Bergman situations, because it turns out Mel Ferrer is not related to Jose Ferrer or Miguel Ferrer.  But he was married to Audrey Hepburn, who was not related to Katharine Hepburn.  More on Audrey Hepburn tomorrow.)  What a shame, to bring all of these American actors to England to shoot this mess.   Couldn't they just have hired British actors after they arrived?

Another case of hidden identity occurs here when Lancelot rescues Guinevere from Modred's men, without knowing that she is the fiancée of the King.  This sets up the standard familiar love triangle, of course, but it also means that one hour into this film, people are still meeting each other for the first time.  But to throw people off the trail of figuring out that they're an item, Guinevere convinces Lancelot to marry Elaine, her lady-in-waiting, who conveniently fell in love with Lancelot earlier in the picture.  Right, because marrying someone when you're in love with someone else is a time-tested solution to this problem.  When has THAT ever gone wrong?

But eventually Modred's men find Lancelot and Guinevere together, and they're both charged with treason.  Guinevere is confined to an abbey and Lance is banished, but Modred and others aren't happy since the proper sentence for treason is execution, and Arthur went easy on them.  This splits the Round Table knights apart, and civil war returns to the land.  Arthur is wounded in the ensuing battle and with his dying breath, Arthur commands Lancelot to kill Modred, which he does, but only after falling into what appears to be the only patch of quicksand in all of England.  Weird - thank God he's got a magic horse.

Finally, once all is said and done, the knight Percival (Elaine's brother, from before) sees a vision of the Holy Grail over the Round Table.  Damn, he went looking all across the countryside for the Grail, and it was right back at the castle?  What a waste of time.  Ah, but it's only an illusion, along with Arthur's voice preaching forgiveness for Lancelot, and letting everyone know that Galahad (Lancelot's son with Elaine) will be like the best knight ever, and may eventually even find the REAL grail, not some floating vision of it.  (Sorry, Percival, but seeing a drug-induced vision just isn't equal to finding the real thing...)

Also starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner (last seen in "The Night of the Iguana"), Mel Ferrer (last seen in "Charade"), Anne Crawford, Stanley Baker (last seen in "The Guns of Navarone"), Felix Aylmer (last seen in "The Mummy" (1959)), Maureen Swanson, Gabriel Woolf, Anthony Forwood, Robert Urquhart (last seen in "The Curse of Frankenstein"), Ann Hanslip, Jill Clifford, Stephen Vercoe, John Brooking, Michel de Lutry, Gwendoline Evans, Peter Gawthorne, Mary Germaine, Desmond Llewelyn (last seen in "The Curse of the Werewolf"), Barry Mackay, Howard Marion-Crawford, Henry Oscar (last seen in "The Brides of Dracula"), Patricia Owens, Roy Russell, John Sherman, Derek Tansley, Alan Tilvern (last seen in "Love and Death"), Ralph Truman, Martin Wyldeck, Dana Wynter (last seen in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"), and the voice of Valentine Dyall.

RATING: 4 out of 10 mentions of the "Happy Islands"

The Nun's Story

Year 11, Day 205 - 7/24/19 - Movie #3,303

BEFORE: I didn't realize that Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave were married in real life, after meeting on the set of "Camelot" - though it seems they didn't get married until 2006.  But they've been together a long time, I guess after 40 years they figured, "What the heck..." and took the plunge. They've both had long acting careers, and Vanessa Redgrave would have been a great link back to more current films - if only I hadn't seen all of the films on my list with her in them (two this year already, like 2017's "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool").  Each time I go back to watch a film from the 1950's or 60's, it's tougher and tougher to find a way back...eventually it will become impossible.

Never fear, I've got a few more films from those decades to watch, and I've already figured out a way back to the future, err, more recent past.  TCM ran an Audrey Hepburn marathon some time in 2017, I think she was their "Artist of the Month" and I picked up three films - this was before I had to change cable boxes and I lost the ability to dub movies from TCM to DVD in the process.  But this film is going to serve as a link between two films about King Arthur, and then tomorrow's film will link back to the other two films with Audrey Hepburn, and then I'll be back in the 2000's before you know it.

Lionel Jeffries carries over from "Camelot".

THE PLOT: After leaving a wealthy Belgian family to become a nun, Sister Luke struggles with her devotion to her vows during crisis, disappointment and World War II.

AFTER: According to TCM, Audrey Hepburn often said that this was her favorite of all of her films. Well, that makes one of us.  This was probably a big mistake for me to watch this film, all it really did was drag up all my old Catholic guilt over not going to church, and that just left me feeling uncomfortable and unsettled.

Don't get me wrong, if somebody wants to devote their life to the church and go out and do charitable works in God's name, that's fine.  But they can also get out there and do charitable works without the church being involved, because the church is obviously always going to take its cut.  Any religion has overhead and operating costs, despite being tax-exempt in the U.S. those are still going to keep adding up, and they probably take up the majority of the donations received.  You're better off cutting out the middle man and handing money to that guy sleeping on a bench, though he probably can't give you a receipt for it.  But maybe there are charitable organizations out there with low operating costs that can get more of your donation to where it can do some good.

I admit it's a little interesting to see the process that a woman goes through on the way to becoming a nun - but I didn't realize that this was a process of breaking down, I found it similar to military boot camp, at least the ones seen in movies.  Cutting hair short, putting on the same uniform as everyone else, not being in contact with friends and family - this is a form of training that tends to de-personalize soldiers, almost de-humanizing them, which in a way reflects their new status as expendable, willing to die for their country.  If this is how they really train nuns (or used to) then it seems like a similar process to me, like training soldiers for God's army.  But this whole "Brides of Christ" thing, I find that more than a little creepy.  It's bad enough that Catholics genuinely believe that bread and wine gets physically transformed into Jesus' body and blood so they can eat and drink it, now we're talking about people who "marry" their Lord and savior, at least metaphorically?  That seems rather suspicious to me.

Meanwhile, they can't talk for most of the day, they have to follow all orders given to them, walk a certain way, act meek at all times, seek penance for all their sins, real or perceived, etc.  Screw that!  Sure, it's all a part of this process that creates an air of humility so they can serve God, but who says that humility is required?  Show me that passage in the Bible.  Meanwhile, their order is sending missionaries to undeveloped parts of the world, telling the natives how GREAT Christianity is - how is that being humble?  You're bragging about your religion and what it offers to THOSE people over there, meanwhile the most devout people (that's the intention, anyway) aren't allowed to brag?  Give me a break.

And the constant confessing about breaking the rules, or wanting to break the rules, or even being tempted to break the rules?  Doesn't that tell you something about the rules, that they're a pain in the ass, and run counter to human feelings and thoughts?  And they get you in these traps - like you're supposed to be humble, but if you succeed in being humble, you can't take any pride at all in the fact that you managed to stay humble, because then you've negated the progress.  So, that means there will be NO recognition for your accomplishments, so get used to the daily grind that's designed to wear you down and not reward or congratulate you at any point.  Plus, all this confessing for themselves and for others reminded me a LOT of the e-meter process that was shown in the Scientology documentary.  (Probably Scientology borrowed this from Catholicism, but the point remains, that I think there's a very fine line between a religion and a cult.  I'm inclined to lump the two in together and treat them the same, based on what I've seen over the years)

I forgot about the Belgian Congo - so I guess Belgian nuns were tasked with going there, working as nurses and also doing a little bit of proselytzing on the side, right?  You just know whatever they do for the natives to help them stay healthy, teach them how to bathe their children and treat illness, they're going to let them KNOW that this all comes from God.  Their God, the good one.  Oh, I can't stand this kind of pretension, that the white man knows better about heaven and the afterlife, their God is the only correct one, the natives couldn't possibly understand how to run their lives without a belief in the Christian true god...acting like know-it-alls when the real truth is that nobody knows ANYTHING about how the universe works spiritually, if at all, and anyone who does is just basing that on the way they WISH the universe works, which is not exactly the same thing.

And then when World War II rolls around, the order of nuns is told to just continue their work, not take a stand against the invading Nazis or pass judgement in any way.  What a crock - didn't the Pope apologize for the Catholic Church's non-involvment in World War II, decades later?  So if it's wrong NOW to not have condemned Fascism, then logically it was wrong back THEN too, but that would have taken some balls that apparently the Pope at the time didn't have.

Sorry, this just dredged up too many old lingering issues for me, this wasn't really enjoyable for me to watch.  I don't know why everyone in the 1960's and 70's was so enamored of nuns - "The Sound of Music", "A Change of Habit", "The Flying Nun", etc. - I just don't get it.

Also starring Audrey Hepburn (last seen in "Two for the Road"), Peter Finch (last seen in "The Flight of the Phoenix"), Edith Evans (last seen in "Fitzwilly"), Peggy Ashcroft (last seen in "The 39 Steps"), Dean Jagger (last seen in "The Robe"), Mildred Dunnock (last seen in "The Pick-Up Artist"), Beatrice Straight, Patricia Collinge (last seen in "Shadow of a Doubt"), Rosalie Crutchley, Ruth White (last seen in "To Kill a Mockingbird"), Barbara O'Neil (last seen in "Stella Dallas"), Margaret Phillips, Patricia Bosworth, Colleen Dewhurst (last seen in "The Dead Zone"), Stephen Murray, Niall MacGinnis (last seen in "Lust for Life"), Jeanette Sterke (ditto), Eva Kotthaus (last seen in "A Farewell to Arms"), Molly Urquhart, Dorothy Alison, Richard O'Sullivan (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Errol John, Diana Lambert, Orlando Martins

RATING: 3 out of 10 violent schizophrenics

Camelot

Year 11, Day 204 - 7/23/19 - Movie #3,302

BEFORE: Before I get too far into the last third of the year, let me give a quick preview of what's coming up, at least what's going to get me through the summer.  I'm diving back into the past first (more on that in a minute) for the first of FOUR films about King Arthur, made decades apart.  I'll have to keep an eye on the differences in the plotlines and report on that, for sure.  I've got a few more films in August about other British kings and queens - there were a few notable films last year about Queen Anne and Mary, Queen of Scots, plus I've got a way to work back in that film about King Edward VIII that I couldn't fit in earlier this year.  Another film is also about Robert the Bruce, who was Scottish, but that counts on the theme, too.  And I've also got that new version of "Robin Hood" that tanked at the box office last year, that's probably king-adjacent.

That's not all for the Brit films, I'm going to add to my World War II theme that began with "Defiance" and "The Zookeeper's Wife" by finally getting around to "Dunkirk", "Churchill" and "Darkest Hour", in some order.  Basically, it's a 10-day trip through British history in early August.  Before that, I've got a couple leftover Nicolas Cage films, and after, a couple Kevin Spaceys and two or three Matthew Modines.  A chain of John C. Reilly (who's been VERY prolific lately) will get me closer to the end of August, and I think I've got slots for a couple of animated films like "How to Train Your Dragon 3" and even one that I worked on.  A few crime films like "Baby Driver", "Widows", "The Highwaymen" and "The Old Man & The Gun", that should just about do it, and then we can take a look at September, with a couple more documentaries, some back-to-school films, and special focuses on Adam Driver, Melissa McCarthy and Dwayne Johnson, which should lead me into October's horror films.

Tonight, I'm being very crafty with my linking - Franco Nero carries over from "The Lost City of Z". He also appeared this year in "John Wick: Chapter 2" and I don't think I've seen him in many films, but man, he's had a LONG career.  I almost couldn't believe when I saw him in "John Wick 2" that this was the SAME guy who was in "Camelot".  And for him to turn up THREE times this year, it seems very unlikely, but I'm going to take advantage of it.  Too bad I couldn't get all three films in a row, but some concessions had to be made in order to make a year-long chain.  Sometimes the problem isn't having enough links to follow, sometimes my problem is having TOO MANY choices for what link to follow, and I can usually only follow one per day.  (Though during Documentary Month it often happened that three or four people would carry over from one film to the next, but that's a case where having so many choices really helped me re-structure my programming on the fly.)

THE PLOT: The story of the marriage of Englang's King Arthur to Guenevere - the plot of illegitimate Mordred to gain the throne, and Guenevere's growing attachment to Sir Lancelot, threaten to topple Arthur and destroy his "round table" of knights.

AFTER: This is the 1967 musical version of "Camelot", based on the stage musical by Lerner & Loewe - I think I must have seen parts of this when I was a kid, because my mother was such a fan of the classic musicals and forced most of them on me.  (I wonder sometimes how I ended up straight...)  The team of Lerner & Loewe is also known for "My Fair Lady", "Paint Your Wagon", and "Brigadoon", among others, but Frederick Loewe semi-retired after "Camelot" and Alan Jay Lerner went on to work with other composers, but damn, after you write "My Fair Lady" and "Camelot", there's really nowhere to go but down, am I right?

My background with the King Arthur story comes mainly from three places - reading the book "The Once and Future King", the futuristic comic/graphic novel "Camelot 3000", and the movie "Excalibur", which was the best movie adaptation of the story during my generation, and perhaps "Camelot" is the best movie version released during my parents' time - I suppose that's debatable.  But the classic story has always undergone substantial changes, and each version probably tends to reflect something about the time that produced it, not just the time period in which it takes place.  Wikipedia, for example, places this 1967 film in the context of Vietnam and John F. Kennedy - for example, Merlin teaching Arthur that borders are arbitrary and his "might shouldn't make right" speeches could be seen as a condemnation of the Cold War and the Domino theory that justified the Vietnam War, while the musical call to "Not let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot" could easily be a reference to the JFK presidency.

But let me put politics on hold for just a minute, because there are really two stories here, the love story and the political one.  At its heart it's a classic love triangle, Arthur and Gwen (called Jenny or Ginny here for some reason) and Lancelot.  But is it really that, or just a case of bad timing?  As is often the case with royalty, the Arthur/Guenevere marriage is depicted here as an arranged one, and really, who expects an arranged marriage and love to go hand in hand?  I suppose some people grow to love each other in these cases, but that's not the movie musical love - so really, it seems that Gwen falls in love with Lance (a lot) after the joust, when he appears to resurrect a dead opponent with the power of his faith.  (Or maybe he somehow knew an early version of CPR?).  Before that, she sort of appeared to HATE Lancelot, so I wonder if she really changed, or if her hate was a bravado that was covering up for an attraction - it's tough to say, but she had just gone through the "lusty month of May".

Let's say that it's bad timing, then - bad timing to meet the love of your life shortly after getting married.  Hey, it happens.  A wise friend once told me, "It sucks to be cheated on, but it also sucks to be the one doing the cheating."  Clearly he'd been on both sides of that equation - so there are no easy answers, unless you open your mind and realize that maybe love's not supposed to last forever, but two people can work toward making it last longer, or trying to grow together instead of growing apart.  So what really went wrong here, was Lancelot just her perfect match, or was Arthur so busy running his Round Table of knights that he forgot to nurture his marriage?  Discuss.  But it's worth noting that both Lancelot and Guenevere don't recognize King Arthur when they first meet him, they both endure cases of mistaken identity - that's a subtle but clever way of suggesting that they may have a lot in common, that they're more alike than they realize.

Now, for the political stuff - in addition to the so-called references to JFK and Vietnam, this film goes out of its way to depict a king who isn't really acting like a king.  He wants to bring representatives together from all the lands and set up some kind of fair, equitable legal system, like some kind of medieval United Nations.  Ideally this seems like a good idea on behalf of world peace, a proto-EU if you will, but how the heck is that going to work, within a monarchy?  There's just no way a medieval king was considering something akin to democracy, for sure this somehow comes from viewing a medieval government through our modern lens, right?  How would having a court system do anything but interfere with the "divine" right and justice dished out by the monarchy?

Like, courts are a good idea, if they're fair, but then who appoints the judges?  Who would write the laws that the judges are there to enforce?  Who would monitor the judges to insure that they would continue to give fair rulings, and what about the next king, what if he wants different judges on the top court, or disagrees with the whole court system in the first place?  It's just not going to work - even the round table idea appears to be fair, because nobody's sitting at the head of the table, but COME ON, we all know that the king's still in charge, right?  He's not fooling anybody with the shape of the table.

It's really convenient in the second half of the film, once this supposed fair legal system is in place, that anybody who speaks out against the king is suddenly on the hook for treason.  Any rumors of the queen's infidelity then put the burden of proof on the accuser, and if they have no proof, then they've spoken ill of the queen, so that's another treasonous act.  (Hmm, is this reminding anybody of something?).  The queen, herself, would be committing treason if she were sleeping with Lancelot (which she totally is...) because that in itself is an act against the king, and since the king has divine right, and there's no separation of church and state, it's also heresy.  Very convenient.

Meanwhile, there's some Trumpian level of hypocrisy going on, because the king can do anything he wants.  His illegitimate son, Mordred, shows up, and OK, maybe that kid was conceived accidentally before he was married, but the principle applies - the king can screw around and have a child out of wedlock, but the queen must remain faithful to the king, no matter what, or be burned at the stake.  This later came into play during Henry VIII's reign, since the king was also the head of the Anglican Church, and any act of betrayal or defiance, or not being able to produce a son, was an act against God and warranted execution.  Hey, that was medieval times for you.

Again, it's notable that this film was made during the "swinging sixties", not just because the adultery plotline is front and center, it's the idea that maybe Arthur shouldn't get so hung up on it, man.  And when you see the Queen working in the stables and grooming a horse (yeah, right, like what British Queen would do stable work like that...) it's easy to think of the Camelot castle like it's one big commune or flea market. Then during that "Lusty Month of May" song, the knights are out of armor and are cavorting with the maidens in the river, and they all look like a bunch of flower children.  Or was that just me?

There are a few things about the Arthurian legends that don't seem to make sense to me, not in any version - what was up with the sword in the stone?  (Monty Python made fun of this, along with many of the tropes seen in "Camelot" in their "Holy Grail" film, pointing out that if the Lady of the Lake hurled Excalibur at Arthur, that hardly seemed like an effective way to choose a country's leader...). And how do we justify Arthur pulling the sword from the stone (as mentioned in "Camelot") with him being the son of Uther Pendragon?  Did he not know he was Uther's son, and then pulling the sword from the stone confirmed it?  Is he king by birthright, or was the honor thrust upon him, who was he before he pulled the sword from the stone, because it's just not adding up.

Then we get to Merlin, who according to this film, "ages backwards", and that's how he knows so much about the future - does that mean he's like Benjamin Button, just growing younger as time goes on?  Or is everything backwards to him, like time is a river and his boat is going the other way?  What's going to happen to him decades later when he's a small child, and then what happens after that?  Does that mean that when he left Arthur, he wasn't really leaving Camelot, but arriving?  And did his advice to Arthur get worse over time, because there was constantly less and less future for him to predict?  Did people sound backwards to him when they talked, like was he THINKING backwards, too?  Did he have to talk backwards so that it would sound forwards and other people could understand him?   Or did he live through each day forward, but go to bed on Thursday night and somehow wake up on Wednesday morning?  Am I over-thinking this, or is there the germ of an idea here that needed to be explained a lot better?

Arthur often CAN'T remember Merlin's advice, which sort of helps to explain why a king taught by a wizard who ages backwards can't seem to take advantage of that fact.  Hmm, Merlin said I was supposed to keep an eye out for some knight named Lancelot, what did Merlin say about him, that he was going to bring good luck, or maybe get lucky with the queen, or something...  Now, did he say that Lancelot was going to be the strongest of the knights, or bring about Camelot's downfall, I just can't remember....

Also starring Richard Harris (last seen in "The Count of Monte Cristo"), Vanessa Redgrave (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), David Hemmings (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Lionel Jeffries (last seen in "The Revenge of Frankenstein"), Laurence Naismith (last seen in "Cleopatra"), Pierre Olaf, Estelle Winwood (last seen in "The Swan"), Gary Marshal, Anthony Rogers, Peter Bromilow (last seen in "Cheech & Chong's Next Movie"), Sue Casey, Gary Marsh, Nicolas Beauvy.

RATING: 6 out of 10 words that rhyme with "Camelot"

The Lost City of Z

Year 11, Day 203 - 7/22/19 - Movie #3,301

BEFORE: Well, I wrapped up what I was calling my "Stay at Home Comic-Con" by posting the review of the new "Spider-Man" film - though I watched it a couple weeks before, there were still plenty of geek-oriented things to watch this weekend, and it worked out well because it was just too hot to leave the house, except to grab a Sunday newspaper.  In addition to catching up on my talk shows and "Jeopardy!", I finished "Stranger Things" season 3, and started watching "Legion" season 3.  Plus there was all the moon landing anniversary stuff, a movie about rocketry, and reports from the real Comic-Con in San Diego.  That's a lot of geekitude.

200 films watched in 2019 - that means the year is 2/3 over, believe it or not, and I've still got an unbroken chain dating back to January 1.  I've never been this far into a year before with no breaks, so I'm planning on going all the way to 300 films and Christmas time, which is hard to believe when it feels like 100 degrees outside.  But 99 more films after tonight, and if my plan is solid it's going to happen.  I'm not exactly coasting yet, but I'm breathing easier now that I made it through Documentary Month.  I cheat, of course, by watching a few movies when they're in the theater and then sitting on the reviews for a couple weeks or a couple months, but this would be an impossible feat without allowing myself a little leeway.  I may go see "Toy Story 4" this week, now that all the kids are rushing out to see "The Lion King" remake, it should be easier for me to get a ticket - I need that movie for a critical link in August.  And I've already seen "Dark Phoenix" and "Godzilla: King of the Monsters", I'll need those for links in October.  Yep, I'm cheating, but at least I'm honest about the fact that I'm cheating - I can live with that.

Today, Tom Holland carries over from "Spider-Man: Far From Home" and I kick off the final 1/3 of the year.  My schedule's packed solid until we go on vacation in October, and then it looks like I'll only have to watch 10 movies in November and December.  C'est la vie - but it's worth it if I get a perfect year.

THE PLOT: A true-life drama, centering on British explorer Col. Percival Fawcett, who disappeared while searching for a mysterious city in the Amazon in the 1920s.

AFTER: There really was a Percival Fawcett, and he did really go and explore the Amazon jungles of Brazil - this film shows three expeditions, but in real life he headed up seven expeditions between 1906 and 1924.  He was friends with Arthur Conan Doyle, so his story is a likely inspiration for Doyle's novel "The Lost World".  Of course, many events of his journeys were likely combined or conflated into the three expeditions seen in this film, each of which takes years and keeps him away from his family.  Jeez, if he didn't want to take an active role in bringing up his kids, he should have just said so.

We have to remember that this is set in a different time - he loudly complains to his wife here that this is what men do, they go off and they explore, or they fight in wars, and women have to stay behind and raise children and maintain the household, this is the way it's always been, and this was never going to change.  I guess he didn't get the memo that women won the right to vote and everything - OK, so progress was a bit slow back at the first part of the 20th century.  Percy wasn't going to win any "Feminist of the Year" awards, that's for sure.

Each time he comes back, his two sons are older - or there's a new kid to meet, it seems his wife had the bad luck of getting pregnant just before each of his expositions.  I'm trying not to read too much into that, because if I do, it almost seems like he escaped to Brazil every time his wife got pregnant, and knowing what I know about this guy, I wouldn't put that past him.  Then again, before the second exposition it's his wife that finds the evidence about the Lost City of Zed in the library - so maybe she just got used to being alone and "found" this evidence so she could get rid of him again.

That's right, it's "Zed", not "Zee", because the explorers here are all British - so when they see the letter "Z" they pronounce it with a "D" on the end for some reason, which makes no sense.  The whole point of the letter symbol sounds is to be as simple as possible, to represent one basic sound.  It would be like seeing the letter "A" and calling it "Aid", or seeing an "O" and calling it "Ode" - WTF, Brits?  Look, I'm not saying Americans are perfect, like we call a "W" a double-You when it should be called a double-Vee, but at least we don't call a Z a Zed.  End of ASIDE.

So, anyway, Col. Fawcett is tasked with figuring out what (or where) the source of a certain river is, because that has something to do with a trade dispute between Bolivia and Brazil.  Why does a man from the U.K. need to do this, is he some kind of impartial party or something?  I guess one country was a Spanish colony and the other was Portuguese, so they needed somebody from a third country to settle this?  Why didn't they just use a satellite or send a drone or something?  Oh, right.  But who gives a crap about the "source" of a river anyway, like I don't get why this is such a big deal, finding the source of the Nile or the source of the Mississippi - the water's probably coming from a melting glacier on a mountain, or some giant flood plain, it's not like you're going to travel up-river and find a giant faucet, right?

Fawcett's expedition goes up-river and finds a beautiful waterfall, so they sort of go, "Well, there it is, there's the source!" and then they turn around and go home.  What?  Where is the water in the waterfall coming from, doesn't that mean that the source is further back, is there a river leading to the waterfall or what?  Man, these guys had ONE thing to do and they did a really half-assed job at it.  Get your asses up over that waterfall and figure out where the water is coming from, damn it!  But Fawcett interacts with the locals and then finds some pottery, so he gets it in his head that there's a lost city somewhere in the forest, and whoever lived there centuries ago left a bunch of trash close to the river.  And he doesn't even ASK the locals at the river if that was their pottery, so the natives were probably wondering why he's so interested in the garbage from the picnic they had last Thursday that they didn't feel like cleaning up.

So Fawcett goes back to his family, takes one look at his two crying kids, knocks his wife up again and says, "Welp, here I go, back to the Amazon, and this time I'm going to see what's past that waterfall.  Let me know how the third kid turns out, honey."  Dude, you were just THERE and you couldn't finish the trip.  But I get it, you need your time with your bro friends, exploring and drinking and trying to avoid deadly snakes and such.  Plus there's SO much indigenous nudity, and to a British person in the 1910's, that was probably a big deal.  Back then if a man saw a lady's bare ankles, he could lose control - so imagine how he must feel being among the Brazilian natives, who aren't wearing much at all.

Also, I sort of understand why he kept going back to Brazil, despite the hot weather, the deadly snakes, the deadly piranhas, and the even deadlier natives with their lazily-launched arrows - after all, I kept returning to San Diego every year for Comic-Con, despite the hot weather, the long lines, the smelly geeks and the deadly highway and train-track combination that for some reason runs right next to the Convention Center - it's the thrill factor, after all.  You never know when you're going to turn a corner and spy Matt Groening eating his lunch, or find a new food truck parked by the baseball stadium, or a new restaurant that has a beer float or an eating challenge.  I chased that excitement for 15 years, got a killer autograph collection out of the deal, but finally there comes a time when you have to say, I'm 50 years old now, that trip takes a lot out of me, and maybe it's time to dial it back a bit.  But I FEEL it every year around this time, the desire to hop on a plane to San Diego and just hang out and take it all in, the spectacle and the madness and the work and the fun.  So the Amazon jungle was maybe a bit like this guy's Comic-Con - he sure didn't want to stay home and then hear about how some OTHER explorer stumbled on to El Dorado or Machu Picchu by going 100 feet further into the jungle than he did on his last trip.

I guess that's the mentality that makes people do crazy things like travel up the Amazon river or get on a plane to San Diego - it's dangerous, sure, but even worse than the fear of getting killed on a trip is the fear of missing out.  I mean, sure, yeah, there's that fame and fortune thing, restoring the family name is all well and good, but maybe it was all really happening in the jungle, that's where he felt the most comfortable, so that's really where he wanted to be.

Also starring Charlie Hunnam (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Life"), Sienna Miller (last seen in "Live by Night"), Edward Ashley (last seen in "In the Heart of the Sea"), Angus Macfadyen (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Ian McDiarmid (last seen in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels"), Clive Francis (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Pedro Coello, Matthew Sunderland, Johann Myers, Aleksandar Jovanovic, Elena Solovey, Bobby Smalldridge, Tom Mulheron, Daniel Huttlestone (last seen in "Into the Woods"), Nathaniel Bates Fisher, Murray Melvin (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), Harry Melling (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Michael Jenn (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Franco Nero (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Bethan Coomber, David Calder (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Richard Croxford, Nicholas Agnew (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Infinity"), Adam Bellamy, John Sackville (last seen in "The Wedding Date").

RATING: 5 out of 10 machetes

Spider-Man: Far From Home

Year 11, Day 202 - 7/21/19 - Movie #3,300 - VIEWED ON 7/8/19

BEFORE: I probably could have waited, but I went to see this movie on the Monday after it opened, so really during the first week of release.  I was counting on the big crowd seeing it over the July 4 holiday week/weekend, and from the look of things, that's what happened.  But I picked the Monday after the four-day holiday, because for nearly everyone, that was "back-to-work" day - who thinks of seeing a movie on their first day back from break?  Nobody, except me, really.  If everyone's going to zig, I'm going to zag.

The main reason to get to the theater in the first week was the chance to appear on a podcast to discuss the film, to give the POV of an "older" comic-book geek who remembers what reading Spider-Man comics was like in the 1980's and 1990's, even though the movies don't resemble those comics, except for the names of the characters.  But the Monday after the holiday was the only day that all three commentors were free, so it had to be that day, or else I would have had to give up a day of MY weekend to see it, and that just wasn't going to happen.  I see movies after work, on Mondays or Wednesdays, the theater is a few blocks from my office, and I've got a good system going, why mess with it?

It means I have to sit on my review for a couple weeks, but that's OK, I'm sitting on a couple of reviews - the only way I'll have a "perfect year" is if I cheat, I realize that now.  But it will be perfect if I say it is, at least I'm honest about the fact that I'm cheating, which I guess is something.

Jake Gyllenhaal carries over from "Enemy" - that's the plan, anyway.  Massive Spoilers ahead, if you haven't seen "Spider-Man: Far From Home", please turn back NOW.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (Movie #2,686), "Avengers: Endgame" (Movie #3,217)

THE PLOT: Following the events of "Avengers: Endgame", Spider-Man must step up to take on new threats in a world that has changed forever.

AFTER: Time for the second "Spider-Man" film, or the fifth, or maybe it's the seventh or the tenth, depending on how you count these things.  It's the second film of the third iteration of the character in Marvel movies, it's been 17 years since the first film with Tobey Maguire, and somehow this character is still in high school.  Man, he's been held back for a long time - and he was dead for five years, along with half of the people in the MCU.  But what does that MEAN?  How can a character be there, and then GONE for five years, and then come back - sure, they do it all the time in comic books, but doesn't it stretch things just a bit too far?  How do we know that all the heroes (and regular people) who came back are exactly the SAME?  It's Infinity Stones magic, probably best not to question it too much - but you just know I've got to.

(I'll try not to repeat TOO MUCH of what I said on the podcast, but, frankly, it's inevitable...)

Like, how strong is the Infinity Stones "Snap" effect - where people turned to dust and blew away - five years later, another person wears Thanos' gauntlet, and "Blip", all those millions of people come back - how?  Tony Stark couldn't possibly have KNOWN all those people, how are they all back with their memories restored?  Did he just have to make an all-encompassing wish, like "everybody comes back", it's just too pat, too easy.  I might have believed it more if it was, "OK, bring back Spider-Man, just like he was five years ago.  Now, bring back Black Panther..." and so on.  You can't just say, "bring back 4 billion people", can you?  OK, I guess that's what we're doing...

"Far From Home" is more concerned with what that MEANS - people came back just as they were five years ago, before they disappeared.  But the people left behind are five years older, they've moved on.  They've moved into the nice apartments vacated by the disappeared people, took over their jobs, maybe they got remarried if their spouse turned to dust and blew away, that's probably complicated.  "Jesus, Harold, I was only gone out of existence for five years, and you didn't wait for me?  Did you meet your new girlfriend the following WEEK or what?"

At the end of "Endgame", I turned to my fellow geek movie companion and the first thing we discussed was the shot of Spider-Man reuniting with his high-school friends - how was that possible? They'd be five years older than him - unless, of course, they blipped out of existence, too.  Somehow all of Peter Parker's friends and family, and the girl he's got a thing for - they all blipped.  You'd think the chances for each one of them to blip would be 50/50, but that's apparently not how this works - every single person he was friendly with was a victim of Thanos' purge.  There's that old Parker luck, you betcha.  Isn't it JUST a bit too convenient that everyone in his social circle, everyone who would be needed for the sequel, was a blipper?  And they're all still 15 or 16, they all have to take junior year (?) over again, even though they took the midterms already - hella unfair!  God, that would also be really confusing, too, if half the people in the world had an age that didn't jibe with the calendar - or if you were born 25 years ago, but technically were only 20 years old.  You'd be reminded every DAMN DAY of your life that Thanos disintegrated you and you lost five years - but are you even YOU at that point, or just some cosmic magically-imagined replacement copy of you?

And that's not to even get into the tougher questions like, "Where WERE they?" Were the vanished people in heaven, hell, limbo, or some plane of non-existence, which I think doesn't even exist.  How could it?  And how does it FEEL for a character to know that they didn't exist for five years?  But Marvel would probably prefer that I not even ask such questions - our favorite characters are back, and we should just be happy that the stories can continue, so, please try to not get bogged down in the details.  It's more important that we remember the four Avengers who died so that the four BILLION could come back.

Top of the list is Iron Man - who was serving as a sort of mentor to Peter Parker before the events of the Infinity War + Endgame.  A surly mentor, but a mentor nonetheless - and it's debatable I suppose whether Spider-Man was made an Avenger, or just came REALLY close.  Again, Parker luck.  He can't ever get ahead, because Stan Lee created the character to represent the common man, the tendency we all have to fail when we're juggling too many things.  Like, he can beat up the muggers, but he'll have to ruin the date that he's on.  He can help save the world, but that means missing his aunt's birthday dinner.  Something about what comes with great power and all that.  But let's be honest, he's also a fuck-up, because we're all fuck-ups, and we all were socially awkward in high school in some way.

He also represents that confusion we all have when we want to be in a relationship, but we're not quite sure how to get there.  Or if we do get there, and we're not quite sure how to maintain it.  Or we can maintain it, but we've still got the option of screwing it all up later on.  See?  We're all just big balls of Peter Parker-like anxiety in the end, or he is us and we are him and we are all together.  Right? Goo goo ga joob.

The problem becomes, when keeping Peter Parker confined to high school, to connect with the teens, the film still has to be written by an adult (or several adults) who've forgotten what it meant to be in high school, (and forgotten what it means to date, if they ever knew).  So here's my other big problem with "Spider-Man: Far from Home" - this is NOT HOW HIGH SCHOOL WORKS.  There's simply no such thing as a "class trip" that takes place during the summer.  Summer is when teachers go on vacation (their union contracts even demand it...) and so a class trip HAS to happen during the school year.  That's been my experience anyway, but this "class trip" is also called, at various times, both a "vacation" and a "science tour".  So, umm, which is it?  It can't be all three at once, it just can't.  My experience of summer as a teen, and sure, yours might vary, is that this is when FAMILIES go on vacation together.  Or, if not, this is when teens get a SUMMER JOB, or if their grades were terrible last semester, they might have to take summer classes.  But Parker & co. are the SMART students, not the dumb ones, so school in the summertime, even in the form of a class trip, simply makes no sense...

(Yes, it's POSSIBLE, however unlikely, that these kids are in some kind of Montessori or magnet school that doesn't take a summer break, and this is a special case, or some kind of pre-arranged annual trip, but I'm just not buying it.  A much more likely explanation is that some screenwriter didn't do any research about class trips, and just ASSUMED that they take place during the summer, so as not to interrupt classes.  But there's no school infrastructure during the summer to support such a trip, and plus I guarantee I've already thought about this more than the screenwriter did - so by explaining it, I'm doing his job for him, and that's not cool.  Show me the school system that has a class trip during the summer, and I'll recant, but until then, I'm holding firm that this is a giant NITPICK POINT.)

Now, it's obvious WHY this unlikely trip was shoehorned into the plot, it's all about getting Spider-Man to Europe, which is where someone decided that the villains would be attacking - it's more scenic, I guess?  Plus we did Washington DC in the last movie, so we've got to up the ante somewhat?  And somehow Venice, Prague and London fit the bill?  Or were those just the cities that were available, or said yes?  Or because United Airlines is a prominent sponsor, these are three cities that they fly to?  Man, I'm just too cynical for my own good, it seems.

This leads me to NITPICK POINT #2, which is that the improbable "class trip" was supposed to go to Paris, and then suddenly the plot decides that Spider-Man has to be in Prague.  So Nick Fury, super-spy, makes some calls and suddenly the whole class is on a bus to Prague instead of on a flight to Paris.  What?  Do you know how hard it was to get those plane tickets, and how much they cost?  Those parents are going to be FURIOUS!  You don't get a refund for those tickets, so how is that an "upgrade" in any fashion?  Sure, this is played a bit for laughs, but on a practical level, if you have a plane ticket for Paris and you don't use it, you are up shit's creek.  (Unless, of course, you paid for trip insurance, or you bought the refundable ticket, but there I go, doing the screenwriter's job again.).

(The teacher who keeps trying to make the best of things, who falls for the "upgrade" scam, again and again, might be my favorite character here - that's Martin Starr, who was on "Freaks & Geeks" back in the day, and since then I think he's made every TV show and movie that he's been in much better.  Mad props.  The actor who played Ralphie in "A Christmas Story" is in here too, all grown up as one of the villain's henchmen, but he's no Martin Starr.)

Yes, there is a villain, or a few of them at first.  Mysterio appears as the new hero on the scene, also trying to fill the void left by Iron Man.  He claims to be from a parallel Earth, one where these elemental creatures (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) destroyed the planet, and he shifted over to our reality to battle creatures just like them on OUR Earth.  Umm, OK?  There's something like a germ of a good idea here, because in the comic books Spider-Man has villains like Sandman (earth), Hydro-Man (made of water) and Molten Man (guy on fire).  If you just add an air-based guy, that's a great team of super-villains for Spider-Man to fight, why hasn't anyone written a story like that?  There was a comic book a few years back called "The Deadly Foes of Spider-Man", which followed the adventures of a group of second-rate Spidey villains like Boomerang, the Beetle, Rhino, Shocker and Speed Deman all teaming up, sort of like the Sinister Six, only more comic.  And this was followed by another mini-series, "The Lethal Foes of Spider-Man" - why not a follow-up called "The Elemental Foes of Spider-Man"?

But if you've read the Spider-Man comics for any length of time, you probably know what's coming here, since Mysterio is a villain in the comics, usually part of the Sinister Six, but he also fights Spidey solo.  He uses movie-level special effects when he fights Spider-Man, things like smoke bombs to disappear, disguises, even hologram technology to distract, disorient and confuse Spider-Man.  So it's easy to put two and two together here, and realize who's behind all the bad nastiness - but for a comic book fan like myself, the reveal took way too long, I spent an hour waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for people to figure out that he was using tech to create problems that only he can solve - you know, like our President does with immigration and tariff issues.

So this means that the audience is seeing a villain who uses special effects, and if you think about it, his special effects were created for the movie by people who create special effects - it's just a bit too "meta" for me, it feels like cheating, almost.  What happens next, the Vulture gets distracted by some audience member's cell phone, and then Spider-Man punches him out?  Is the Lizard going to remind us that popcorn and soda is sold in the lobby?

But somehow Spider-Man figures out the plan, with the help of the new MJ, who doesn't seem or act as smart as he does, so how the hell does she figure anything out?  She (somehow, it's not explained) also figures out that Peter always disappears a few minutes before Spider-Man shows up, but again, she doesn't seem to be THAT SMART.  The comic-book Mary Jane was a model, they're notoriously vapid and air-headed, and this new MJ seems dumber than that, if that's possible (so how is she in a class with the smart kids?  Pick a lane - is she smart or not?)  The actress is clearly out of her league, she mumbled every single line of her dialogue and also delivered them with no emotion whatsoever, and in a movie with people who know how to act BIG in a comic-book movie (Sam Jackson, Marisa Tomei, Jake Gyllenhaal) someone with no acting ability at all is going to stick out like a sore thumb.  What, exactly, does Peter Parker even SEE in her?  She just comes off like a typical, disaffected, disconnected sullen teen, and the movie doesn't even give her a back-story or any internal conflict or really, much of anything to do at all, so she's just a big blank.  I don't get it.

(NITPICK POINT #2: There was a much simpler, more elegant way to allow MJ to figure out Spider-Man's secret identity.  During the first villain battle in Venice, Peter Parker is not wearing his Spider-Man costume, and instead disguises himself with a convenient party mask from a street vendor.  But he doesn't change his clothes, and it would have been so simple to have MJ take this disguised hero's picture, or even to just LOOK at him, and then realize later that Peter Parker was wearing the same outfit.  Easy peasy, no need for her to "guess" or make a leap in logic, this was right there in plain sight all along, all she had to do was open her eyes and pay attention.  But again, she's apparently not that smart.)

The only reason I think she's there is because she has that "multi-cultural" look, and it feels like in general, someone made an effort to put a little color into Peter's Friends - the white Ned Leeds became an Asian Ned Leeds (why not "Ned Lee"?), the white Flash Thompson became more of a person of Hindu or Arab (?) descent, and while on one level this helps the cast look more like a typical American class (at least in NYC), it also throws all the continuity from the comics out the window, and if they did this JUST to do it, that almost seems like pandering.  Do you really want to get cast as Spider-Man's love interest through some kind of cinematic affirmative action plan?  Race-blind casting doesn't just mean "Hey, let's cast more brown people..." it means casting the BEST actor or actress for each part, regardless of color, and obviously they didn't do that here, because Zendaya.

I don't know where the story goes from here, for "Spider-Man 3", they haven't made too many announcements yet about the future of Marvel's movies, but it makes sense to do another movie, one that could easily riff off the first of the TWO post-credits sequences here (I saw the first one, but then REALLY needed to get to the restroom, so I missed the second.  Mea culpa.)  If they follow a trend, then the next film could take place during Peter's senior year, and be called "Spider-Man: Graduation Day".  Or they could send him on another "class trip" to Africa where he could fight Kraven the Hunter in "Spider-Man: Home on the Range".  Or put him in college and have him return to NYC for winter break in "Spider-Man: Home for the Holidays".  Hey, I'm an idea guy, what can I say.

Also starring Tom Holland (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Samuel L. Jackson (ditto), Jon Favreau (ditto), Jacob Batalon (ditto), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Life Itself"), Zendaya (last heard in "Smallfoot"), Tony Revolori (last seen in "Table 19"), Angourie Rice (last seen in "The Beguiled"), Remy Hii (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Martin Starr (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming), Jorg Lendeborg Jr. (ditto), J.B. Smoove (last seen in "Movie 43"), Cobie Smulders (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Numan Acar (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Peter Billingsley (last seen in "The Break-Up"), Toni Garrn, Clare Dunne, Nicholas Gleaves, Claire Rushbrook, with cameos from Paul Bettany (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Robert Downey Jr. (last seen in "Lucky You"), Chris Evans (also last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Scarlett Johansson (ditto), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "A Place Beyond the Pines"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "The Gift"), Sharon Blynn (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Pat Kiernan (last seen in "The Commuter").

RATING: 8 out of 10 lost passports

Enemy

Year 11, Day 202 - 7/21/19 - Movie #3,299

BEFORE: This one had just enough of an interesting premise for me to add it to my Netflix queue - of course, I've been known to do that for movies that I never get around to, or I wait too long and they scroll off that service, and then I have to track them down on Hulu or iTunes or YouTube.  So far I've been pretty luck in that the important movies that I don't get to on Netflix are then still available SOMEWHERE, it's just a matter of figuring out where.

Jake Gyllenhaal carries over from "October Sky", and you can probably guess where I'm headed after this, even if I hadn't already discussed it.

THE PLOT: A man seeks out his exact look-alike after spotting him in a movie.

AFTER: This is one of those films that could leave you scratching your head, or wondering if you really understood it, or if there was anything there to understand that you might have missed.  You may want to watch closely, for several reasons.  I haven't quite figured it out yet, but since I don't want to give away any spoilers, I'll try to talk about what this film is NOT all about, rather than what it IS about, that often works well for me.

I can get behind the premise, because anyone who watches a lot of movies is probably familiar with the "Hey, it's THAT guy..." phenomenon, when you see an actor and you know that you've seen him before, but you can't remember where.  I do that all the time, out of necessity, because my brain's not going to stop trying to figure it out until I know for sure.  I follow a lot of those clickbait links like, "Why that actor in Stranger Things looks so familiar" - only then if I follow that I could learn that he was in the Power Rangers movie, only that doesn't help me because I would never watch a Power Rangers movie.  Thanks for wasting my time, though.  It also doesn't help if you happen to know a few actors in the real world, because you could go crazy trying to think about what film you saw him in, when it wasn't a film at all, he's a friend of a friend that you've met IRL at a party or something.

But in this film a man, Adam, spots someone in a "local film" that looks exactly like himself, which probably is enough to creep anybody out.  There are a lot of Hollywood films that shoot in Toronto, so that part is believable, but I have a harder time with someone renting a "local film".  What films are considered "local films" in this age of the global village?  There's no such thing any more, is there?  And who rents a film these days, like do they still have video stores in Canada, don't they have streaming there yet?  I mean, I guess you can rent a film from iTunes or Amazon, but it's weird to hear someone phrase it like that.  You'd probably just say, "I watched it on iTunes" without making a distinction between renting or buying, because it doesn't matter.  Anyway for the price of renting you can probably get a used DVD for less, the only reason I don't do that more is the convenience factor.

But let's assume that he rents this film - even then, it's a bit odd that a work colleague mentioned this "local film" to him without saying something like, "Hey, there's a guy in that film I saw that looks a bit like you..." or even "Hey, I didn't know you did any acting on the side."  But for the sake of continuing with the premise, let's assume that the work colleague wasn't very observant, or maybe he looked away and didn't notice the guy with his face.  If I saw a film that had an actor who looked just like my co-worker, I'd like to think that I would notice that.  And then I'd probably bring it up, instead of just recommending that film to him - why would I recommend it to him if I thought he was IN IT? That would mean he's aware of the film, and he's probably also seen it already.  But again, let's assume for the moment that work colleague was asleep at the switch, and him bringing this film up is a giant coincidence.  For some reason, the man takes the recommendation and rents the film, without any indication that his doppelganger is in it - slightly unbelievable, but possible.  Maybe he's bored with his life and looking for any entertainment he can get, even a non-glowing review from a colleague is enough to get him to check out a "local film".

All this coincidence seems designed to get these two men who look alike in contact with each other.  Now, there are really only a few movie scenarios that allow two characters to look exactly alike - either they're twins separated at birth (or identical cousins, don't laugh, I've seen it before) or they just happen to be two people who look exactly alike - it's either "The Man in the Iron Mask", or it's "The Prince and the Pauper".  And if you've read both of those classic tales, then you know they share an important plot point in common, there's really only one reason to have two identical characters, if you think about it.

But "Enemy" kind of complicates things, in a way similar to the way "Fight Club" complicated things (only this is not a Tyler Durden-type situation either, at least I don't think it is.). Adam tracks down the actor, Anthony, and calls him up.  Anthony's girlfriend or wife recognizes his voice, and assumes the caller is Anthony - so they have the same voice, so they must be twins.  But Adam checks with his mother, who swears she didn't have twins, never gave up one child for adoption, or anything like that.  So what IS going on here, if it's neither of the above.  I have to refer to either "Memento" or another Jake Gyllenhaal film here, "Donnie Darko", both of which were also very obtuse about what was happening.  People debated the meaning of those films for a long while, and it seems that repeat viewings were a big help, so that could also help here.

Of course, we now know through social media that it IS possible to have a doppelganger, because it turns out that there are so many people in the world, and only so many possible facial configurations. So even if humans believed for many years that each individual appears unique, now we know different, and people have gotten in touch with others across the world who look almost exactly like them.  But it doesn't seem like that's what's happening in this film, either.  Because people would probably treat that as a weird but fortuitous and ultimately positive occurence, and what takes place here is anything but.  Umm, I think.

I did see my own doppelganger one time, I think it was at Symphony Hall in Boston, and there was a choir singing on the stage.  (Or perhaps this took place during college, when I sang with the NYU Chorale, it's hard to be sure.) There was a tall singer in the choir onstage who looked a lot like me, at least from my balcony seat, enough to set my mind to wondering, anyway.  After the performance I came down to the main level and looked for my doppelgänger among the choir members, but I couldn't find him - I thought I saw a tall guy with a ponytail ducking down a staircase, but I followed and couldn't find anyone.  All these years later, this feels like maybe it was a dream I had, or if it was real then perhaps I haven't thought about the experience again until now.  But it can be a creepy feeling to think that there's another version of me walking around somewhere.

I've already read a few different interpretations of this film, and I can't tell yet if I agree with them, or if they're all rubbish and the meaning of this film is entirely subjective.  I have no solid answers - like is there a non-linear timestream at play?  Could Adam's mother be lying or unaware that she had twins?  Is everything that we've been shown real, or is part of it imaginary?  I have no concrete answers, I'm afraid, which is simultaneously baffling and a bit intriguing.  Proceed at your own risk, but keep your eyes and mind open, that's my best recommendation.

Also starring Melanie Laurent (last seen in "Beginners"), Sarah Gadon (last seen in "Dracula Untold"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Kedar Brown (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Joshua Peace (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Darryl Dinn, Tim Post (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Jane Moffat (ditto), Stephen R. Hart.

RATING: 5 out of 10 German philosophers