I Feel Pretty

Year 11, Day 250 - 9/7/19 - Movie #3,348

BEFORE: We had terrible weather in NYC yesterday, the outskirts of the Hurricane Dorian activity, and I'm sure that people down south or in the Bahamas had it much worse.  The fall is tropical storm season now, and I think it's getting a little worse every year - but no, it couldn't possibly be due to global warming or the fact that we've broken the planet.  I've got both my bosses away at the same film festival in Martha's Vineyard this weekend, so I'm hoping things will clear up for their return on Sunday.  I don't like having a non-zero chance of a ferry accident taking away both of my jobs - plus I'm the one who booked their travel, so any problems are partially regarded as my fault.  Hey, I'm not responsible for the weather or any delays that it causes.

Amy Schumer carries over from "Snatched".

THE PLOT: A woman struggling with insecurity wakes from a fall believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet.  Her new confidence empowers her to live fearlessly, but what happens when she realizes her appearance never changed?

AFTER: I'm really not supposed to have any regrets, because every film with a valid link gets me one step closer to my goal, but I really want to regret watching this one.  Sometimes the worst thing I can say about a person, or a movie, is that it "means well".  When you say that a person "means well", what you're saying is that they want to be a good person, or do a good job at something, but they've failed miserably.  Who cares if they meant well, what matters is what they DID.  They ruined the meal, they embarassed you in front of your friends, or they blabbed that secret that you were trying to keep - oh, but they MEANT WELL, so I guess everything's OK now, only it's not.

This film meant well, in that it tried to champion body positivity, to reinforce the relatively new idea that all women are beautiful in some way, regardless of their weight or their appearance or their weird voice - but I think the pendulum has swung too far in that direction, because either beauty is subjective or it's not, and if you take away all reason from the equation, then there's no motivation for self-improvement.  And if everyone's suddenly satisfied with themselves the way that they are, why should anyone eat right or work out or buy new clothes or try to get a better job?  Don't get me wrong here, I think all people should strive for self-acceptance and be comfortable in their own skin, but to expect everyone to do THAT just sets another impossible standard, and that's what encouraging self-acceptance was designed to avoid in the first place.  So even if someone isn't perfect, they shouldn't get down on themselves because that creates a negative spiral, and it's tough to be depressed AND imperfect, sure, but come on.

Now instead of telling women that they have to be beautiful, skinny and perfect, we're expecting those who may not be those things to suddenly become self-confident, successful and happy, too - creating another goal instead of erasing the goals.  So if you ask me, this film ends up sending out exactly the wrong message by depicting a character who can only be self-confident after getting a blow to the head.  At best, this suggests that self-acceptance is not possible through conventional means, and at worst it's going to send women out in search of a fitness center concussion accident that will give them a similar boost of delusion-based confidence.  Why not some form of therapy to learn how to become truly happy, or set out on a personal quest to learn what would help develop some happiness, which can only really come from within?

Yes, ultimately this film delivers the message that tangible things like make-up and clothing can't bring happiness, that only people can change their attitudes internally - so then why is happiness even PART of the make-up pitch, why mention it at all?  Why does the woman who suddenly, almost magically gains self-confidence also start acting terrible to her friends?  Couldn't it be possible to have self-confidence and also treat other people right?  There's nothing about self-confident people that also says they have to be assholes, why assume that those two personality traits go hand-in-hand?  Suggesting this is very dangerous - younger women might see this and think, "I don't want to be self-confident, if that means I'm going to start belittling my friends or ignoring their feelings."

What someone was going for here was something along the lines of "Shallow Hal", or maybe even "It's a Wonderful Life", though that's a little more of a stretch.  Someone has an encounter that leads to a delusion, and ultimately they learn a better way to live their life.  But at least in "Shallow Hal" we got to SEE the delusion Jack Black's character was seeing, so it was easier to understand.  And in "It's a Wonderful Life", George Bailey learned that his life was important, that every man has friends, and that he did make a difference in their lives.  We're shown the reverse here, that once you get a better job and gain a better self-image, it's OK to trash your old friends and trade up.

It's disappointing when Renee suddenly becomes this person that succeeds, because by gaining this new persona, based on a delusion, she's jettisoned everything that was important to her before - though she FEELS happy about it, and that's the problem.  And I guess it self-perpetuates, because success leads to more self-confidence, which leads to more achievements, which leads to more success, and so on.  Why couldn't she just do this before, or do this without a head injury?  The film then shoots itself in the foot if her success is based on a delusion.  And then it's even more disappointing when the delusion, or "magic" goes away, because suddenly she feels that she CAN'T do those things, she DOESN'T deserve that boyfriend - but she DID those things!  The very fact that she's in that new job, that she has that new boyfriend, that proves those things are possible - why can't she see that?

NITPICK POINT: I disliked the implication that we're all supposed to know what a "diffusion" line of cosmetics is - from the context, I gather that it's a high-end brand that wants to start selling its merchandise in more middle-class stores like Target or K-Mart, but not all of us understand the finer points of cosmetics and fashion, so maybe dumb that part down a little, OK?  Plus that seems like a very cheap plot device to get to the point you're trying to make about "normal" women.  So, middle-class women are also the ones who tend to be overweight and not so beautiful?  The ones who need make-up?  Kiss my ass.

NITPICK POINT #2: The lead character was afraid to apply for a receptionist position at the cosmetics company because there was some kind of requirement that the receptionist be "beautiful".  That's illegal with regards to hiring practices, by the way, even if you accept that beauty is subjective - equal opportunity laws say that people can't be turned down for a job because of the way they look. There can be a dress code, sure, but anything beyond that is considered a form of discrimination.  A better film could have been made here if she applied for the position, got turned down because of her looks or her weight, and then sued to get the job.

The whole scene in the restaurant, after Renee loses her delusion, where she breaks up with Ethan, made no sense at all.  She goes there in person, believing he will not recognize her (because she thinks her appearance has changed, but it hasn't) and then texts him from across the room to tell him she can't make it there.  Then he comes over and talks to her, and she talks to him, then she suddenly has to leave, then calls him on the phone to say she can't come to meet him.  This convoluted mess of a scene only works if you believe the lead character is insane or incredibly stupid, and yet this takes place AFTER she regains her original personality.  So, that's a big fail.

To make matters worse, she only "learns" anything when she talks to a beautiful, skinny woman who has just been dumped by a boyfriend, and who also suffers from low self-esteem.  WHAT?  You mean women who are skinnny and beautiful don't lead magical, charmed lives where nothing bad ever happens to them?  Can she really be THAT stupid?  Again, this is supposed to be AFTER she's had some sense knocked back into her, when she's supposed to be thinking clearly - so I guess this proves she never had her head screwed on right in the first place?  Great, another terrible depiction of a "normal" woman in a film that's supposed to be championing them.

I think too many companies have jumped on to this "diversity" band-wagon, and they've done it for the wrong reasons - not because they genuinely want to depict the world the way it is in their advertisements, but because it's "trendy" to be inclusive.  Last Christmas season I noticed that nearly every department store commercial featured an inter-racial couple, and it was so noticable that it started to come off as insincere.  The year before that, gay couples were all the rage in advertising, and this year, who knows?  Maybe it will be transgender people - but they won't be doing it because they're interested in equality, they'll be doing it with the motivation of profit.  The same sort of goes for plus-sized women, like have you noticed that they put Aidy Bryant in nearly every skit on "SNL"?  She often gets the most screen-time because the show wants to send out the message of "Look how supportive we are of larger women, we're not just feeding into the impossible standard that all women on TV need to be skinny!"  And again, too much of that just ends up feeling very insincere.

Also starring Michelle Williams (last seen in "All the Money in the World"), Rory Scovel (last seen in "The House"), Tom Hopper, Aidy Bryant (last seen in "The Big Sick"), Busy Philipps (last seen in "The Gift" (2015)), Emily Ratajkowski (last seen in "Gone Girl"), Lauren Hutton (last seen in "Once Bitten"), Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Sasheer Zamata (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Naomi Campbell (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Dave Attell (last seen in "Gilbert"), Olivia Culpo, Camille Kostek, Angela Davis (last seen in "Venom"), Caroline Day, Kyle Grooms, Nikki Glaser (last seen in "Trainwreck"), Kevin Kane (also carrying over from "Snatched").

RATING: 2 out of 10 Soulcycle sessions

Snatched

Year 11, Day 249 - 9/6/19 - Movie #3,347

BEFORE: I'm getting very close to Movie #250 for the year, which means after Monday I'll have only 50 movies left to watch before I close the book on 2019 - still on schedule to have my first Perfect Year, with an unbroken chain from Jan. 1 to Christmas.  I'm getting more anxious as it gets closer, and I don't think I've been awaiting Christmas this much since I was a little kid.  Each day that goes by, that means that one more thing went right with my chain, and that's one less thing that could go wrong between now and then.

Oscar Jaenada carries over from "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote". One last little vacation-themed movie before the end of summer, OK?

THE PLOT: When her boyfriend dumps her before their planned exotic vacation, a young woman persuades her mother to travel with her to paradise, with unexpected results.

AFTER: I watched three films with Goldie Hawn in February, and it would have been SO easy to slip this one in there, but a few things happened - first off, my February schedule was jam-packed, over-packed in fact, so at some point I was even looking for ways to trim it DOWN rather than beef it up.  And I still went long, with the romance chain extending well into March this time around - but hey, if it results in a Perfect Year, chain-wise, then every decision becomes a good decision.  But also this film didn't really seem to fit as a romance, so I paid attention to that little voice inside my head that said, "Hey, drop this one from the chain, at least for now, you can probably find a way to circle back later and include it somehow.  Plus, you never know, it could provide a valuable link later on that will make a larger chain possible."  And I've learned over time to listen to that little voice, because it's often right.  Look, here it is, providing a valuable link between the Adam Driver chain and, umm, tomorrow's film, which will get me to Movie 250 for 2019, which will ultimately get me to Christmas.

Ugh, but I'm really burning this one off tonight, if I'm being honest.  It's not really a laugh-out-loud comedy, and isn't that the first job of a comedy, to be, you know, FUNNY?  It comes from a weird place, like somebody decided to find the humor in a mother and daughter being kidnapped in Ecuador and held for ransom.  When we go to the movies, do we want to be reminded that there are bad people in the world who will abduct us if we decide to vacation in a Third World country?  Hey, maybe there are people out there that don't check travel advisories, or decide to leave the safety of the tropical resort to go out and explore those little native villages with "character", because they want to experience "the REAL South America".  OK, well, maybe those people need to be removed from the gene pool, that's just Darwinism at work, right?  The next generation will learn from their experience and be a lot less likely to leave the Club Med, or wherever, where the drinks are included and there are 7 meals daily.

(Which reminds me, I haven't been on a cruise since 2013 - my wife and I sort of ran out of Caribbean to explore, since we did the Western Caribbean on our honeymoon, the Eastern Caribbean a few years later, and then the Southern Caribbean (including Aruba, Curacao, Colombia and Panama) on the last one.  Seeing the Panama Canal was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and Cartagena didn't seem as bad as its reputation to me.  But what's my motivation to go and eat somewhere on shore in South America, when my meals on the cruise ship were already paid for?  And after breakfast came second breakfast, then snacks, then lunch, then the 2 pm taco party, then hamburgers/hot dogs at 4, dinner, then dessert with an option for late night Chinese food?  I think I gained a lot of weight on the last cruise, but I'm not sure how that happened.)

NITPICK POINT: Obviously the guy who seemed very interested in dating Emily's character was in on the kidnapping plot.  But the masked kidnappers rammed their van into his jeep before abducting Emily and her mother.  If he was in on the plot, does it make sense that they would wreck his jeep in the process?  That doesn't really track, because any money they get as a ransom would then have to go toward car repairs for both the jeep AND their van.  Seems like a losing proposition, if you ask me, and there are probably MUCH cheaper ways to kidnap people, instead of causing a car accident every time.  Even if they get the $100,000 they want, have you SEEN the cost of car repair?  Plus that's points on their insurance, so I don't think so - AND then they don't have the van ready to abduct the next gullible tourists, because it's in the shop.

The best character here is probably the one played by Christopher Meloni, an ex-pat American who seems like he knows his way around the jungle, and has a boat that can take the mother and daughter to Bogota after they escape.  But it turns out this guy doesn't know as much as he seems to, and may in fact be insane.  Meloni is GREAT at playing this type of character, who have a lot of bravado but also seem to have a screw loose.  For the short time that he appears in this film, he really takes over and steals every scene.  But NITPICK POINT #2, there's just no part of the Amazon River that could take a boat from Ecuador to anywhere CLOSE to Bogota, Colombia.

For everyone else, there's just no consistency - the lead character, Emily, is supposed to be the likable central focus here, only she keeps acting in very annoying ways - taking too many selfies, being clueless about the dangers around her, acting entitled.  How can I possibly like her when I just want to slap her after everything she does?  Perhaps, like me, you might find yourself rooting for the kidnappers here.  Her mother, Linda, toggles between over-protective, insular and non-adventurous, and then she's also boring during the times when they forget to give her anything to do.  Emily's brother is an agoraphobic, spoiled momma's boy, and then when he learns his mother has been kidnapped, he turns into a manic and panicked desperate son, who has no recourse but to THREATEN the one man at the U.S. State Department who's in a position to help him.  Then there are two women vacationing at the resort who are supposedly some kind of former special ops military types (traveling together, but they're just "good friends" - riiiigght...) and the script can't decide if they should be professionally trained, or complete screw-ups.  Just a lot of really, really sloppy writing here.

Sometimes I really don't understand the pricing schedules of streaming movies - I got this one off of premium cable last year, and I dubbed it to DVD, so for me watching this was free - OK, not really "free" because I pay for cable, but it didn't cost me anything extra over my cable bill.  It's available now on YouTube for $3.99, iTunes for $5.99 and Amazon for $14.99 - what idiot would pay nearly $15 to watch this on Amazon when the other services are so much cheaper?  Anyway, they should pay YOU to watch this so-called comedy, not the other way around.  Jesus, it should at least be free with an Amazon Prime account, what's the deal with THAT?  Even if you want to see Amy Schumer's naked boob (and I'm not judging here, but WHY?) you can probably find that clip for free on the internet or get a good enough idea of what it looks like from her Instagram feed.

Also starring Amy Schumer (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Wanda Sykes (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Joan Cusack (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Christopher Meloni (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Bashir Salahuddin, Tom Bateman (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Randall Park (last seen in "Aquaman"), Al Madrigal (last seen in "Night School"), Arturo Castro, Pedro Haro, Sergio Sanchez, Tom Choi, Kevin Kane (also last seen in "Trainwreck"), Daniel Bess, Raven Goodwin.

RATING: 3 out of 10 tropical drinks

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote

Year 11, Day 248 - 9/5/19 - Movie #3,346

BEFORE: If there's any method at all to picking which films to review here - or which ones to include in Movie Year 2019 and which ones to put off until 2020 - the general rule is (or should be): which films am I most curious about?  Sure, there are some that I feel I HAVE to see, ones that are Oscar contenders or the latest installment in a franchise that I've followed from Day 1, but the first step for me in WANTING to see a film is being curious about it.

For today's film, the curiosity factor is very high, possibly through the roof.  And not just because I've been following Terry Gilliam's career since the days of "Time Bandits", and even before - listening to old (even at the time) Monty Python skits on RADIO, on the "Dr. Demento" show, back in the early 1980's.  Jeez, before I even watched "Monty Python" on TV or VHS, I knew the routines because of a radio show, which makes me feel really old, like I'm talking about listening to the serial adventures of "The Lone Ranger" or "Little Orphan Annie" back in the 1930's.  Thankfully, I'm not that old, even though it feels like it sometimes.

But at some point I watched that documentary, "Lost in La Mancha", about Gilliam's efforts to make this film, starting in 2002 with Johnny Depp in the lead role.  If you're not aware, this was a production that was plagued by disasters, including, but not limited to, the following:

The first actor cast as Don Quixote, Jean Rochefort, spent 7 months learning English, and then had to drop out because of a double herniated disc.

On the second day of filming, a flash flood (in the Spanish desert, somehow) washed away some props and equipment and changed the color of the cliffs, making all footage shot on the first day unusable, because the cliffs wouldn't match.

The main set location in Spain was plagued with the noise of fighter jets, since it was so close to a military base.  So it was tough to record audio due to all the noise, and everything shot needed to be re-dubbed.

Production halted after the first week of shooting, and didn't start up again until 16 years later.  During that time, there were eight attempts to start production over, with various actors including John Hurt, Jack O'Connell, Gerard Depardieu, Michael Palin, Ewan McGregor and Robert Duvall.

An insurance claim (for the flood damage) followed in 2003, which paid out $15 million but caused the rights to the project to belong to the insurance company, and this led to six years of legal battles before Gilliam could re-start work on this film.  By this time, the project had gained a reputation for being "cursed", and Gilliam directed other films while waiting for all the issues to be resolved.  

Then, once the rights issues had been worked out, and another attempt was made to start production, John Hurt was cast in the Don Quixote role, only he died in January 2017 before shooting could start. Another producer got involved, but he didn't get along with Gilliam, started cutting the actors' salaries and making other demands, and then after leaving the project (after failing to provide the funds to film it), that producer sued for creative control, and lost.

After ALL THIS, I'm practically desperate to see this film, because I need to know the answer to the burning question - "Was it all worth it?"  Tonight, I'm going to find out.

Adam Driver carries over again from "Paterson" to make three in a row (five appearances for the year so far for Adam, I think) and tomorrow I'll follow a different link.

THE PLOT: Toby, a disillusioned film director, becomes pulled into a world of time-jumping fantasy when a Spanish cobbler believes him to be Sancho Panza.  He gradually becomes unable to tell dreams from reality.

AFTER: Well, it seems that something (relatively) coherent did come out the other end of the production (and legal, and financial) nightmare behind this film.  That documentary, "Lost in La Mancha", showed a lot of production design elements, like storyboards and a SMALL amount of footage, and honestly it was all very confusing.  So finally I can see where all those little elements fit into the story, like the giants, and maybe things make some kind of sense now - only they really don't, because the story is designed to blend "reality" with "fantasy", and by the end of the film, the main character is unable to tell the difference.  Frankly, so am I.  Like, I can tell there are dream sequences, but it's difficult to determine when they start and when they end.  Maybe the audience isn't supposed to think about this too much, instead a better tactic might be to turn off your mind, relax and float downstream....

This is a common theme in Gilliam's work - most notably with "Brazil", which also featured Jonathan Pryce.  He played a character in a futuristic Orwellian society who had increasingly frequent fantasies about being a flying, winged man in a suit of armor who rescues a beautiful young woman from terrible beasts that represent society, conformity, governmental control, etc.  When he meets a woman who looks just like the woman from his dreams, he tries to find her and save her in a similar fashion, only to find out that she doesn't really need saving, and she thinks that he's crazy, part of the government machine, or possibly both.  So his dreams are in conflict with reality, and in the end you could say they sort of blend together, and we're not entirely sure what the end result is - perhaps he went mad and only IMAGINED the happy ending, which confounded me at first, then I got a little older and realized that was the way the film needed to end, and the distributor who re-cut it to create a happy ending totally missed the mark.

Other films like "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", "The Fisher King" and "The Brothers Grimm" also dealt with the erasure of the line between fantasy and reality, so you have to figure that this Don Quixote concept is right in line with where Gilliam wants to live and play.  Even in "12 Monkeys", perhaps the definitive time-travel movie, the lead character has some doubt about whether he genuinely traveled back in time to save humanity, or whether he's gone insane and only imagined the future he came from.  (And when he's back in the future, he wonders if he imagined his time in the past...)

All of this leads us to Toby, a director working on a shoot in Spain who stumbles across a copy of his old student film, which was a version of the Don Quixote story.  Through flashbacks we see that Toby cast Javier, a local cobbler to play Don Quixote, and an underage barmaid to play a female role.  When he learns that his current shoot (a commercial that coincidentally also features a Don Quixote theme) is very close to where he made his student film, he gets the crazy idea to track down his old stars, to see if they're still alive, and how they've fared.  It's not good, the guy he cast as Don Q has gone completely mad and believes himself to really BE Don Quixote, and he now recognizes Toby as his "Sancho Panza".  Since Toby's in trouble for both sleeping with the producer's wife AND wanted on a trumped-up arson charge, he decides to hang out in the Sancho Panza role for a few days.

This leads to a variety of strange encounters, one of which is the young girl from his student film, who ran off to the big city shortly thereafter, trying to find work as an actress but instead found only "escort work", and is now a kept woman, in the employ of a Russian vodka executive, who coincidentally is being courted by that producer whose wife Toby slept with.  The young girl, Angelica, is now a woman, but she's in a terrible situation, and in need of some rescue herself.

There's a lot more to this story, but since there are notable dream sequences, it can be hard to state for sure what "happened" here, or didn't happen.  Like Toby/Sancho and Javier/Don Quixote take refuge within a community that seems inviting, only they learn that their hosts are Muslim, and possibly even terrorists.  But after falling asleep, they appear to wake up back in the 17th Century, with Spanish guards raiding the village looking for enemy Moors, or something.  This turn of events is most likely a dream, but is that really the answer?  The time period seems to get muddled a few other times, and sometimes these could be fantasies, and other times they appear to be modern people partaking in some kind of fancy 17th century costume party.

Another time, the pair encounter what seems to be a real medieval knight, and this leads to a jousting match between Don Q and the knight - but again, this was more cosplay, as Javier's friends were dressed up as people from the 17th century in an attempt to get him to come back to reality by playing into his fantasy.  Umm, wait, what?

I think sometimes a director gets stuck on a bad idea - or let's just say "an idea", because at an early  stage it may be hard to tell if it's going to turn out bad or good - and they HAVE to get it out of their system, because they're not going to produce any BETTER ideas until they have a chance to make THIS one.  I've seen it happen to other directors that I know personally.  (BTW, I did meet Terry Gilliam one time at a book signing, where I got his autograph and then put him in touch with MY boss, who Terry wanted to meet.)   How else am I supposed to explain the film "The Zero Theorem", which was horrible, yet came from the same director who made "Brazil", "12 Monkeys" and "Time Bandits", which are three of my favorite films of all time?  And then what about "Tideland" and "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", another couple of stinkers that Gilliam directed after the initial attempts to make "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" failed?

OK, so nobody knows where any inspiration initially comes from, but let's say it came to the director in a dream, or it's a dream that he's had for 29 years to make this film.  We all know that in someone's dream, they play all the characters, or all the characters represent some aspect of that person's self.  So there's possibly a little bit of Terry Gilliam in all of these characters - the central character is a film director who's made some mistakes in the past, so that doesn't seem too unlikely.  And then the other lead is an insane man who think's he's on a crusade, though it's a futile, useless one and he's very delusional about its importance.  That doesn't sound too far off the mark, either - Gilliam was very quixotic himself in all attempts to get this film made.  Gilliam is therefore part Don Quixote, part Sancho Panza, part Toby and part Javier.

I forgot to mention above that when production finally DID start on this film in 2017, and the film got shot (and you just KNOW that was a very tense shoot, because of everything that had gone wrong before...) after it wrapped, Terry Gilliam made a fake Facebook announcement about having accidentally deleted the finished film.  (Somewhat impossible due to all the safeguards inherent in post-production these days, but perhaps he was trying to make light of the potential downsides of digital filmmaking methods).  Hey, anyone who can make jokes about something like that, after going through development hell, might possibly have his head screwed on right after all.  So I'm really looking forward to seeing what Gilliam does next, now that this is finally out of his system.

Also starring Jonathan Pryce (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Stellan Skarsgard (last seen in "Dogville"), Olga Kurylenko (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Joana Ribeiro, Oscar Jaenada (last seen in "The Losers"), Jason Watkins (last seen in "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"), Sergi Lopez (last seen in "Pan's Labyrinth"), Rossy de Palma, Hovik Keuchkerian, Jordi Molla (last seen in "Criminal"), José Luis Ferrer, Ismael Fritschi, William Miller, Will Keen, Paloma Bloyd, Jorge Calvo, Mario Tardon (last seen in "Risen"), Antonio de la Cruz, and the voice of Terry Gilliam (last seen in "Concert for George").

RATING: 5 out of 10 gold Spanish coins

Paterson

Year 11, Day 247 - 9/4/19 - Movie #3,345

BEFORE: I know very little about this film, and honestly, that's the way I prefer it.  Who wants to know too much?  Then, why even bother watching the damn thing?  This one came out in 2016 and seems to have REALLY flown below the radar - though it did win a small prize at Cannes and got a bunch of other random nominations.  I haven't seen it airing on cable, though it's been three years since it was released, and I didn't find it on any streaming service until I brought home the Academy screener, as that seemed to be the only way I was ever going to get to see it.  But I checked Amazon Prime just on a whim, and there it was, so I'm not even skirting the law tonight in order to watch.

Adam Driver carries over from "BlacKkKlansman" - one more film with him in September after tonight, and then he'll be back in December for "Star Wars: Episode IX".

THE PLOT: A week in the life of a New Jersey bus drivers is an observation of the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry evident in its smallest details.

AFTER: Well, now I know why this film was so under the radar - it's just a quiet little indie film with no car crashes, no alien invasion, no bank robberies or bounty hunters on a suspect's trail.  There's this bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, and he - get this - drives his bus.  He wakes up every day at the same time, he has some breakfast, he goes to work, and every day there are different people on his bus and they talk about different things.  That's about it, so if that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, then you can probably skip this one and move along, and not even feel guilty about it.

Wait, he also writes poetry, though it doesn't rhyme, but I guess it doesn't have to - and he comes home to his girlfriend and he listens to her plans to learn to play guitar, or bake cupcakes to sell at the farmer's market, or paint various objects in the house, and he also walks his dog, usually down to the corner bar, where he's a regular and he drinks beer and talks with the bartender and the other regulars.
There are hints that this might turn into something, like there are some gang members (?) who admire his bulldog, and they make a joking remark about how somebody might steal the dog (I think) and then there's an ongoing love-feud at the bar where some woman wants to be just friends, but her friend keeps proclaiming his love for her.  And the bartender's wife is made because he "borrowed" her money so he could enter a chess tournament.  Any of these things could have turned into an important plot point, but it's just not that kind of movie.

In a way, this is a bit like a poem itself - just as a poem is a collection of words that may fit together in a pleasing way, or they may not, the scenes here form a collection of moments in this man's life, and you may find that they come together in a pleasing way, or you may not.  I know that after an hour I was desperate for a car crash, or an alien invasion, or a bank robbery - ANYTHING to perk this film up a little bit, but any of those things would have been horribly out of place here.  I don't know, maybe you can appreciate a quiet little film about a (relatively) boring life, maybe you will see yourself in this man, or maybe not.  Maybe this film will annoy the heck out of you because of all the things that DON'T happen in it.

But again, it's got the rhythm of a life, which is a bit like the rhythm of a poem - you get up, you eat, you go to work, you do what you do there, you go home, you watch a TV show or a movie, you talk with your spouse/lover/roommate, you walk your dog or feed your cat, you go to bed.  Or maybe you do some of those things, or none of those things, but you probably have your own systems, your own rhythms.  If you do it right there's a zen-like quality to it, and so there's also a zen-like quality to this movie.  I tried to sit back and relax and enjoy it, once I realized that nothing major was likely to happen.

A couple of things - the character is named Paterson, and he lives in Paterson, the town.  It's hard to say if this is just a coincidence, or if it means something.  Does he embody the spirit of the town?  Are we who we are because of where we live?  Or do we live where we live because of who we are?  Maybe this is just a convenience or a contrivance and has no higher symbolic meaning.

Also, something bad does (eventually) happen.  I won't get into it here, because they certainly telegraphed it enough, so it's not hard to see it coming.  It's a personal sort of setback that could happen to anyone, it's a tragedy that also has something of a comic element to it, and who knows, maybe it's for the best that it happened.  It's all a matter of perspective, or it's based on how much you like or hate amateur poetry.

Also, be prepared to learn a LOT about the famous people who were born in (or temporarily lived in) Paterson, NJ.  Like Lou Costello, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Allen Ginsberg, "Uncle" Floyd Vivino, William Carlos Williams, and Fetty Wap.  But they really only scratched the surface, I guess there wasn't enough time to name-check Teresa Giudice, MAD magazine cartoonist Don Martin, "West Wing" actor John Spencer, Patrick Warburton, Bruce Vilanch and sci-fi/comic book writer J. Michael Straczynski.

But this film also reunites the two young stars of "Moonrise Kingdom", who play two teens having a conversation on Paterson's bus, discussing Italian anarchist Gaetano Bresci, who also briefly lived in Paterson.  I met Jared Gilman a couple of times, he came to our booth at New York Comic Con two years in a row with his parents.  I think the first time was only a few months after I'd seen "Moonrise Kingdom", so it was a bit of a thrill.  I don't think he's been in many movies since, which is sort of smart if he's choosing his projects carefully, but if an actor doesn't make that many movies he also runs the risk of Hollywood forgetting who he is - some might argue that you have to appear in as many movies as you can before you wear out your welcome.

As for Adam Driver, it seems like he balances those high-profile appearances in the "Star Wars" movies by appearing in little indie films like this one (or "Frances Ha", or "The Meyerowitz Stories (New & Selected)".  Good for him, I suppose.  It's important to stay well-rounded.

Also starring Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), William Jackson Harper (last seen in "True Story"), Chasten Harmon, Rizwan Manji (last seen in "Don Jon"), Masatoshi Nagase, Kara Hayward (last heard in "Isle of Dogs"), Jared Gilman (last seen in "Moonrise Kingdom"), Method Man (last seen in "The Wackness"), Trev Parham, Troy Parham, Johnnie Mae (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Frank Harts (ditto), Sterling Jerins, Brian McCarthy, Luis Da Silva Jr. (last seen in "Mr. Right") and Nellie (the bulldog).

RATING: 5 out of 10 slices of "secret pie"

BlacKkKlansman

Year 11, Day 246 - 9/3/19 - Movie #3,344

BEFORE: There were 8 films nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year (which is technically films from LAST year, but you know that) and I've only seen 5 of them so far, today's film will be number 6.  I saw only one nominated film, "Black Panther", in the theater during its release, and I started playing catch-up after New Year's - I watched "Vice" in January, "A Star is Born" in April, and "Green Book" in May.  Then I had to wait until after my Documentary Month to program "The Favourite" in August's Britfest, and now that September is here, and I know for sure that I don't need to save my Adam Driver films to link to "Star Wars: Episode 9" in December, I can knock out the sixth Best Picture nominee in September.  That leaves just "Roma" (nearly impossible to link to, so who knows when I'll get to it) and "Bohemian Rhapsody", which is going to fall through the cracks this year, I can tell.  I promise to try and get to that one early next year if I can.

But the burning question - which is the "better" film, "Green Book" or "BlacKkKlansman".  Was Spike Lee right to raise a fuss over winning the Best Director Oscar and not Best Picture, or did the Academy get it correct?  Common wisdom states that whatever Oscar you win, or don't win, it might be best to act graciously, especially if you want to get more nominations in the future, which seems to be a lesson that Spike hasn't learned.  But tonight's viewing should shed more light on the situation.

Isiah Whitlock Jr. carries over from "The Old Man & The Gun" - and so does one other actor, it turns out, one who had a very small role yesterday, but has the main role tonight.  But this was always planned to be an Isiah Whitlock connection, the other one is really a bonus.

THE PLOT: Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer from Colorado Springs, CO, successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch with the help of a Jewish surrogate.

AFTER: I admit that I've had an uneasy relationship with Spike Lee over the years - I enrolled in NYU film school a couple years after he left the graduate program there, and his 1983 film "Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" was practically required viewing by the time I got there in 1986.  Personally, I thought that thesis film sucked, it was boring as hell - but what do I know, I didn't even MAKE a thesis film, I graduated early and found my own way around that little requirement.  I suppose I sort of regret that now, but since I didn't have any good ideas I felt like pitching to the class, graduating seemed like the easiest way (aka the coward's way) out.  I guess I'd rather make NO film than a film that I'm not proud of, and I sort of wish other filmmakers/filmworkers would follow suit.

But by the time I graduated, and was working for the summer in a movie theater while looking for other work, "Do the Right Thing" was heating up the screen.  Finally Spike was saying something that felt important, even if you didn't agree with it, it still felt like he had a point to make.  Then (if you ask me) he floundered and farted around for a very long time - "Crooklyn", "Clockers", "She Hate Me", "Girl 6" - seriously?  He made a few films that weren't all bad, like "25th Hour" and "Inside Man", but I never found his work particularly ground-breaking.  A lot of the time it felt like he was just killing time, making films because he didn't know what else to do, kind of like Woody Allen.

"BlacKkKlansman" sort of feels like one of those films that's a clever idea on paper, but then once the film gets into the mechanics of the plot, like how is that set-up actually going to WORK in a movie, there's just no workable way to pull this off.  (It almost feels like that Dave Chappelle skit about the black man who's also blind, so he doesn't know the color of his own skin, and accidentally ends up becoming a racist and a Klansman.)  Back in the day, before you could look somebody up on Facebook or some kind of biographical database, I suppose it COULD be possible for someone to join the Klan over the phone, or at least make contact that way, and then once he paid the entry dues, maybe he'd get a membership card, but upon first meeting, it would be patently obvious to the KKK that they'd accepted someone who probably didn't share their opinions about desegregation and miscegenation.

At this point in the writing process, most filmmakers would probably crumple up the piece of paper and start again with something a lot more manageable.  But in this case, the black policeman, working in the "intelligence" division, decides that now that he's made contact with "The organization", he should enlist another white officer to attend the Klan meetings under his name, to get the information about what they're up to.  Earlier in the film, the officer is sent undercover to a Black Power rally, a place where only he can go, because of the color of his skin, and the fact that he's the only black officer at that station.

But a strange thing happens by juxtaposing the Black Power rally with a Klan meeting - we know what the P.C. police will tell us, that one of these is currently acceptable, and the other one is not.  It's like a little pop quiz where you can tell what the "right" answer is, because the teacher has given you a lot of hints and context.  We're supposed to feel inspired, uplifted by the Black Power rally (Spike gives us a ton of hints here, like the long, lingering montage shots of the beautiful black faces in the crowd) and we're supposed to feel loathing and disgust when we see the Klansman ceremony and the cross-burning.  But here's where Spike Lee made a HUGE mistake, because putting both of these things in the same film comes awfully close to equating them - it allows us to do a compare/contrast, and if the two things are too similar (which they are, let's face it) then logically they either have to be BOTH right or BOTH wrong.  In one case we've got a crowd united by their black skin, and the speaker is talking about violence against white people, and in the other the crowd is united by their white skin, and the speaker is advocating violence against black people.  How are those NOT essentially the same?

The job of the filmmaker here should be to explain to us - in a SUBTLE way - what he wants us to believe, that the Black Power rally is acceptable and the Klan rally is not.  But it seems like Spike Lee somehow forgot to do this, which feels like a glaring mistake, and could easily lead to the conclusion, among the simple-minded or the impressionable, that these two events are merely opposite sides of the same coin.  And then this leads me to the logical conclusion that if white radicals are bad, and black radicals are also bad, then the problem isn't race, it's something inherent to radicalism itself.  How can we get people to enact social change the proper way, through legislation and the courts, instead of picking up guns or bombs and violently hurting others, and ultimately themselves?

Unfortunately, Spike Lee has not really grown that much as a filmmaker since making "Do the Right Thing" - in many ways it feels like we're all back where we started with him, only instead of Mookie asking, "Hey, Sal, how come you ain't got no brothas on the wall at the pizzeria?", we now have Ron asking, "Hey, chief, how come you ain't got no brothas working undercover at the police department?"  So there goes one of Spike Lee's main complaints, that "Green Book" was just a race-switched and gender-switched version of "Driving Miss Daisy".  (But I covered this during my review of "Green Book", the very fact that the races had switched was de facto proof that some racial progress, however slight, HAD been made since 1989.)  Anyway, Spike, it seems that you've shot your mouth off again, because "BlacKkKlansman" is therefore just "Do the Right Thing" only the action got moved from a Brooklyn pizzeria and neighborhood to a Colorado Springs police department.

Don't believe me?  What about that most controversial part of "Do the Right Thing", where the Brooklyn citizens rattle off every racial epithet they can for blacks, whites, Koreans, Jews in rapid-fire fast language, which serves no narrative purpose other than to shock the audience, and maybe stir up racial hatred, like pouring gasoline on the fire.  In the final phone conversation between Stallworth and KKK President David Duke, Lee falls back on the very same crutch, with Ron working every possible racial slur for both blacks AND whites into the same conversation.  You keep leaning on that same crutch, Spike Lee, and one day it's going to break.  There must be a way to make a film about race without sounding racist yourself, and Spike just hasn't found it - I wonder if he's ever even taken the time to look for it.

The film opens with some kind of newsreel broadcast, some fictional racist from the 1970's who would be that decade's equivalent of our Rush Limbaugh or Alex Jones, spouting a bunch of obviously wrong ideology about how white America is under attack, black children are now going to school with white ones, so our holy white Protestant value system is under attack, black people are rapists, murderers, mongrels - we've heard it all before and it was wrong then, it's wrong now, so why bring it all up again?  And then at times this horrible person occasionally spouts random syllables, as if he's having a stroke - but that's a low blow, you shouldn't have to resort to tactics like that to make this guy look stupid, when his words are enough to do that for you.  Anyway, he claims that the whole Negro takeover of America is a result of an international Jewish conspiracy, which makes no sense - why would Jews want Negroes to take over, when they could (according to your twisted logic) take over the world for themselves?  The casting of Alec Baldwin to play this part is probably not a coincidence, because he's been playing Donald Trump on SNL, and this seems like a veiled attempt to connect the dots between the Klan of the 1970's to the President of today.

Then, just in case there's any doubt left about the filmmaker's intent, the movie ends with real news footage of the alt-right (modern KKK) marches in Virginia, and the riots in Charlottesville, after which the President pointed out that there were violent protestors and "good people" on both sides.  MMM, thank you Mr. Lee for spoon-feeding the concept right into my mouth, since apparently you thought I wasn't smart enough to make the connection on my own.  Hell, this isn't even spoon-feeding, this is chewing the food and regurgitating it right into my mouth like a mama bird.  Duuhhh, thank you for informing me that we have a racist president, durrrr durrr.....

It doesn't even make SENSE how the movie gets from the conclusion of the story to Donald Trump.  We see Ron and Patrice in an apartment, there's a knock on the door and they both draw guns, but instead of someone threatening being at the door, they both sort of float/roll down the hall of the building in a dolly tracking shot, and they roll to a window where they see a cross-burning outside.  This is followed by the montage of news reports about the Charlottesville race rally violence from August 2017.  HUH?  I mean, the stories are important, but how do you justify the movie jumping ahead 30 years like that, it's certainly not motivated by the plot, so are the characters having a dream where they foresee the future, or are we just finishing up a piece of dramatic fiction with real news?  You can't just skip ahead to your answer, you've got to show your work, make the connection, and you can't just count on montage to do it for you!

Again, it feels like the teacher (Lee) is giving the kids in the class the answer that she wants them to put on the test, but that's not really teaching, is it?  At least "Green Book" put the problem on the board and let the audience work out what the answer should be - and this is a case where we need to feel like we're part of the process, part of the solution and not part of the problem.  A teacher could get a whole class to act like parrots and repeat the fact that Columbus "discovered" America in 1492, but what good does that do if the fact that they've learned to recite is now considered intrinsically wrong?  (Because indigenous tribes, Vikings, etc.)  At the end of "Green Book", I felt uplifted, just like the central character, there was that revelation of "Oh, I GET it now, there's a better way to treat people of different races..." but at the end of "BlacKkLansman" I was thinking, "So that's the big reveal, that the President is a big racist doozy-head?  Big deal, we already KNEW that."

Also, this was marketed as being based on a "true story", but I'm not sure how a film can be marketed that way when the year was changed from 1979 to 1972, the bombing plot was added in from a separate incident, and the identity of Stallworth's white surrogate who infiltrated the Klan in his name was kept secret in reality, so Adam Driver's character here was created for the film.  I guess this is "based on a true story, only we changed a bunch of stuff".  So, therefore, NOT based on a true story, or based on a partially-true story.

I don't even feel the need to get into the unlikely contrivances that move the plot forward - like the guy who happens to recognize the undercover officer from a previous encounter, and then the whole thing with the bomb is an even larger contrivance. So sorry, Spike, but the Academy voters appear to have gotten this right, at least from where I sit. You should have just accepted the Best Director award and thought of it as a career-topping achievement, then been a little bit more gracious about this film not winning the top prize.

Also starring John David Washington (also carrying over from "The Old Man & The Gun"), Adam Driver (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), Laura Harrier (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Topher Grace (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Jasper Paakkonen, Ryan Eggold, Paul Walter Hauser (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Ashlie Atkinson (last seen in"Eat Pray Love"), Corey Hawkins (last seen in "Kong: Skull Island"), Michael Buscemi (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Ken Garito (last seen in "Summer of Sam"), Robert John Burke (last seen in "True Story"), Frederick Weller (last seen in "The Fundamentals of Caring"), Nicholas Turturro (last seen in "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2"), Harry Belafonte (last seen in "Bobby"), Alec Baldwin (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Damaris Lewis (last seen in "The Rewrite") with archive footage of Vivien Leigh (last seen in "Gone With the Wind"), Martin Luther King (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine", David Duke, Steven Mnuchin (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Donald Trump (last seen in "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work").

RATING: 5 out of 10 surveillance photos

The Old Man & the Gun

Year 11, Day 245 - 9/2/19 - Movie #3,343

BEFORE: Another one from the "True Crime" files tonight - it's funny because I was just talking about Robert Redford the other day after watching "The Highwaymen", a film that he and Paul Newman were once scheduled to appear in, before a decade of development limbo made him too old for that role.  But here's proof that seniors are living longer, being more active and robbing more banks.  Wait, what?

Robert Redford carries over from "Our Souls at Night".  There were rumblings about this being Redford's last film, but he's talked about retiring before.  You have to wonder if a director casts him at the age of 83 that there's a secret fantasy that the actor will die right after shooting wraps, so they can get some extra publicity by promoting it as Redford's last film, for real.  But then he made a cameo appearance in "Avengers: Endgame", so that wasn't an option.

THE PLOT: Based on the true story of Forrest Tucker and his audacious escape from San Quention at the age of 70 with an unprecedented string of heists that confounded authorities and enchanted the public.

AFTER: It's tough to tie this one in with Labor Day (two years ago I got lucky with the film titled "Labor Day", but you just can't count on that sort of thing happening again) but I'll give it a go.  Forrest Tucker was a career criminal - that's a career, anyway - but they say that if you love what you do, then you'll never work a day in your life.  Well, he clearly loved robbing banks, so there you go.  OK, that was lame, but what about all the work done by the police and FBI in order to track this guy down?  Let's take a moment to acknowledge that.

Most of this film is set in 1981, when Forrest Tucker and two associates he met in prison had a streak of 80-plus bank robberies, mostly small ones and then one BIG one, most of which went under the radar because of the small amounts, the non-violent, almost friendly tactics employed by the robbers, and the fact that they were spread out over five states, so nobody made the connection between all of the heists.  But I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on the locations here, because at one point they say that the heists are all spread out, but when John Hunt, the detective from Dallas, puts a bunch of pushpins on a map to represent the robberies, he sees that they're all arranged in a straight line.  So, which is it?  Wouldn't you think that a gang of robbers would be incredibly stupid to rob banks in a straight line, making it very easy to determine which town they'd be hitting next?

Tucker later spots Detective Hunt while both are eating in a restaurant in Dallas (Tucker's got a girlfriend outside Dallas, and again, it seems rather stupid that Tucker would be out on the town in a city that's got so many men looking for him) and, instead of hiding or getting his food to go, Tucker approaches Hunt outside the men's room, as a random stranger asking him how the investigation is going.  This is either very bold, very stupid, or very arrogant - perhaps Tucker was counting on the strength of that phone mustache he wore during every heist.  (Right, like a trained police detective is going to think, "Hmm, this guy is the same age as that bank robber I'm looking for, he's got the same build, same color eyes, same color hair, but no, that guy had a mustache.  There's just no way the robber could have shaved off his mustache, or wore a false one!  So this can't possibly be him!").  Or maybe he's just fond of playing this elaborate game of "cat and mouse" with the detective.  Either way, the detective blows it by calling him out by name.  This is NITPICK POINTS number 2 and 3, the third being - why didn't Hunt arrest him, right then and there?  This was his goal, to arrest Tucker before the FBI took over the investigation - was this character afraid of success, or was he also enjoying the game too much?

You'd think this would be enough to make Tucker stop robbing banks, and you would be wrong.  He kept going, even knowing that the cops and FBI were on his trail.  He loved robbing banks, he loved running from the cops, but even more than that, he loved escaping from prison.  There's a montage of his 17 or 18 escapes from juvenile hall and then various prisons and work camps over the years - which cleverly uses footage of young Robert Redford from the movie "The Chase".  Hey, no age-removing software or facial-replacement effects needed for those shots!  (What, no footage from "Brubaker" or "The Last Castle"?).

I loved that montage, and I loved a lot of little quiet sequences here - just take the scene where Tucker is shopping with his girlfriend for a piece of jewelry.  With almost no dialogue, they go through so many emotions in a continuous sequence.  Astonishment at the beauty of the bracelet, concern that it costs so much, confusion when he starts leading her out of the store, the thrill when she realizes they're stealing a piece of jewelry, guilt and shame when she doesn't feel right about stealing, his confusion over her guilt, his resistance to change who he is as a thief, then acceptance when he quietly agrees to go back and return the bracelet.  That's like a master-class in acting and using their mannerisms to tell part of the story without words.

I like a lot of the complex questions raised, too - for a career criminal, when is it enough, is it ever enough?  Was robbing banks an acquired habit that Tucker couldn't break, did it form this vicious cycle of stealing, getting caught escaping from prison, and repeating that, once initiated, couldn't be stopped, not even for the love of a good woman?   Why couldn't he just settle down with her on her horse farm and learn to be happy with that?  Why couldn't he see that his actions affected her also, not to mention the people around him, the people who had money in the bank, or the people whose cars he stole to get away from the cops?  (I can't wait for my year-end wrap-up now, since bank robbery is clearly a running theme this year, between "The Highwaymen", "Baby Driver", "Robin Hood", "The Vault", "Destroyer" et al.)

Also starring Casey Affleck (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Danny Glover (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Tom Waits (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), Sissy Spacek (last seen in "The Straight Story"), Tika Sumpter (last seen in "Get on Up"), Elisabeth Moss (last seen in "Chuck"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Thanks for Sharing"), Keith Carradine (last seen in "Nashville"), John David Washington, Augustine Frizzell (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Gene Jones (last seen in "The Hateful Eight"), Ari Elizabeth Johnson, Teagan Johnson, Barlow Jacobs (last seen in "The Master"), Robert Longstreet (last seen in "Aquaman").

RATING: 6 out of 10 police sketches

Our Souls at Night

Year 11, Day 244 - 9/1/19 - Movie #3,342

BEFORE: Back on Netflix tonight, I'm slowly chipping away at my list there, even 4 or 5 films off that list each month is still technically progress, but it's slow going.  I wish I could move that process along faster, because going at this rate increases the chances that the films are going to be removed from that service, and I'll have to track them down somewhere else, which could be more expensive.  But I've got the plan that should get me to the end of the year, so it is what it is.

Also it's time to check the web for that monthly report on "What's Coming to Netflix This Month", and hope there isn't too much stuff to add to my list.  I've skated by the last two months without adding much of anything, so that helps reduce the list - as does watching a comedy special after the movie each time I go on Netflix.  I'm dancing as fast as I can, but films still keep piling up, if not on Netflix then I see there's new stuff on iTunes, or new films on premium cable.  The end will never be in sight as long as I keep finding movies to add.

Iain Armitage (aka "Young Sheldon") carries over from "The Glass Castle".

THE PLOT: Addie Moore and Louis Waters are a widow and widower who've lived next to each other for years.  The pair have almost no relationship, but that all changes when Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbor.

AFTER: Well, I hadn't PLANNED to hit the back-to-school films for another two weeks, but it seems like the countdown had a few ideas of its own and took care of things at the proper time anyway.  Yesterday's film had a family of four children who were being home-(non)schooled, and the kids took it upon themselves to enroll in classes.  And tonight's film features a young boy sent to stay with his grandmother for a few weeks, until his classes start in September.  That means this film is very possibly set in August, or late summer anyway, so the timing couldn't have been better if I'd tried, which of course I didn't.  My chosen school-related films will still come around in a few weeks, so this is maybe a nice soft lead-in.

But the timing of the young boy coming to stay with Grandma just couldn't be worse.  The boy's mother has taken off, so his father needs some time to get his head together and deal with the situation, but Grandma has just started a relationship of sorts with the equally old man next door, not a sexual one just yet, but one based on a mutual respect and desire to not sleep alone.  And it's all about getting to sleep at their age, you know what I mean?  Each of them has outlived their life partners, with their children either grown up (or deceased) the nights are long and lonely, so why not spend them together?  Sounds like a plan, until that damn kid shows up.

There's also a concern about the gossip in this small Colorado (or is it Utah?) town, that neighbors will see him knocking on her door, night after night, and assume they're not just sleeping together, but also "sleeping together".  But since they're both in their 70's, they figure, so what?  Let people gossip if they've got nothing better to do.  And they've been around, they've lived life, played the marriage game and came out the other side, so it really doesn't even matter what they do at this point.  But as they get together each night, drink wine and/or beer, and make small talk before retiring, they talk about their pasts, their deceased spouses, what went right and what went wrong over the years, and gradually they form a partnership bond.  Well, I guess it's either this or get into a retirement home and really start playing the field.

Eventually her son shows up and doesn't approve of this arrangement, but later his daughter also visits, and she's fine with it.  She remembers the year or so when her father wasn't there very differently, and she took it as an opportunity to become a stronger individual.  He remembers the time separated from his wife as a failure of sorts, but enough time has passed that both of these seniors can admit their mistakes, confess their sins and clear their consciences together.  Good for them - it's not easy to form a partnership bond, no matter what your age, so if you've got a chance at something like this, you've sort of just got to take it and see where it leads.

So there's not really a lot of tense drama here, it's more of a slice-of-life partial romance film, unless you enjoy watching Robert Redford showing a kid his old model train set or teaching him how to throw a baseball.  Whatever keeps the kid from staring at his phone all day, I guess.  But I've got to call a NITPICK POINT on letting the kid sleep in the same bed with his grandmother AND her non-boyfriend.  Even if that man is a fine upstanding member of the community with no criminal record, it still doesn't feel very appropriate.  OK, MAYBE if the kid had a nightmare it might be sort of OK for him to crawl into bed with Grandma, but the male neighbor that he doesn't even know?  Not in this day and age.  If the boy's father had found out about that, he would have been very upset, and I think rightfully so.

They also take the boy on a camping trip, again, without the father's knowledge or assent, and while that may be less of an offense, it still seems like the sort of thing they should have cleared with the boy's father.  It's a very cruel thing indeed to take a young boy camping, in my opinion, but if anything had happened on the trip, they could have been in some really dubious legal territory.  They couldn't make a phone call to the boy's father to inform him about it?

Also starring Jane Fonda (last seen in "Filmworker"), Robert Redford (last seen in "Jane Fonda in Five Acts"), Bruce Dern (ditto), Matthias Schoenaerts (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Judy Greer (last seen in "Pottersville"), Phyllis Somerville (last seen in "Lucky You").

RATING: 5 out of 10 pizza boxes