BEFORE: Owen Wilson carries over from "She's Funny That Way", and so do two other people, one major and one minor. And I've hit the Reese Witherspoon section of the romance chain, she'll be here for two more films following this one. (Sorry I don't have anything more appropriate for February 29, but I already watched the romantic comedy "Leap Year" two years ago, which is probably a good thing because it wouldn't have connected to anything in this year's chain. But if you're looking for a perfect film to watch today, you can't go wrong with that one.)
Now, since it's the last day in February, which seemed like a month that just did NOT want to end, here are my stats for the month by viewing format:
11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Hotel Artemis, Some Kind of Wonderful, Grace of My Heart, You Me and Dupree, Playing It Cool, Overboard, How to Be a Latin Lover, The Ugly Truth, The Bounty Hunter, She's Funny That Way, How Do You Know
8 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Love Happens, Long Shot, Happy Endings, Mermaids, What's Your Number?, Going the Distance, Waiting..., Still Waiting...
3 watched on Netflix: Laggies, Private Life, Frank and Cindy
1 watched on Academy screeners: I Love You, Daddy
1 watched on iTunes: Save the Date
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Dreamland
2 watched on Hulu: Lemon, Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
2 watched on Tubi: Paris, Je t'Aime, Before We Go
29 TOTAL
Cable is still providing me with 2/3 of my movies each month, it seems. So no cutting the cord just yet - although I will admit that I fudged these numbers just a bit - if a film was recorded off premium cable and burned to DVD, a few times I opted to watch that film instead via Netflix or Hulu (when available) simply because then I could turn the closed captions on, which I can't do with a DVD that I made. This choice was made purely for the sake of my (slowly) failing hearing, so that I wouldn't have to turn the volume way up or repeat sections I couldn't hear properly, which would probably wake my wife up. But if I had burned the film to DVD from cable, I counted it as such, even if I ended up watching the film via a streaming service with captions. OK? (Perhaps the captions would work with my DVD player, but I lost the DVD remote years ago, and I've been using my cable remote to control the DVD player. I agree this is less than ideal, but it works.)
Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, Cesar Romero links from "Hot Millions" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
SUNDAY, MARCH 1 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 30)
6:15 am "The Thin Man" (1934) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 am "G Men" (1935) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 am "Johnny Belinda" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
11:15 am "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
1:30 pm "12 Angry Men" (1957) with _____________ linking to:
3:15 pm "The Song of Bernadette" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "A Letter to Three Wives" (1948) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Pinky" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
10:00 pm "Cabin in the Sky" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 am "Black Narcissus" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 am "Great Expectations" (1946)
It's the next-to-last day of the Oscar-related programming, but I'm only hitting for three: "The Thin Man", "Days of Wine and Roses", and "12 Angry Men". This month has served to point out how far I've come with classic movies, but also how many Oscar-nominated films I have NOT seen. I'm only up to 114 seen out of 349, which is just 32.6%. Just one more chance to finish strong...
THE PLOT: After being cut from the U.S. softball team and feeling past her prime, Lisa finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy in crisis competes with her current baseball-playing beau.
AFTER: Honestly, it's a bit of a relief after "She's Funny That Way", which juggled about a dozen love triangles, to watch this one, which concentrates on just one. That feels just about right, like this is the way it should be, with one person trying to decide between two potential lovers, and a love quadrangle or pentangle or dodecahedrangle seems quite outlandish by comparison. I'm thinking somebody dared Peter Bogdanovich to co-write a screwball comedy with as many triangles as possible in it, what other explanation could there be?
Today's director, James L. Brooks, should know a thing or two about love triangles, since he directed "Broadcast News", which was one of my favorite films for a while, because I love the dry comedy of Albert Brooks. But eventually I came to learn that Holly Hunter's character in that film ended up with the wrong partner, in my opinion - she had years of familiarity with Albert Brooks' character, and I was certainly rooting for him to win her over, but she opted for the more charming, but more phony, newsman played by William Hurt. What a mistake - even that tacked-on ending that showed how all the characters were successful in their lives years later didn't make up for the fact that she made the wrong decision.
The scenario in "How Do You Know" is different of course, but the love triangle at the heart of the film is the same. Will Lisa make the "right choice" between George and Matty? Is there even such thing as a "right choice", or do you have to live with a person for years or marry them in order to find out? And then, over time, will a "right choice" become a wrong choice? People change, after all. Or is the existence of a "right choice" just a matter of opinion, and instead maybe we all just have to make the best decisions we can and then live our lives in the best way after making them? Discuss.
A big problem here is that this feels like two different stories that got mixed together - Lisa's story is about losing her place on a sports team, and then having to proceed with her life in some kind of different role, and figuring out what that is. Then George's story is about someone being blamed for some kind of corporate wrong-doing, and being made the scapegoat in a federal investigation. He does go on a date with Lisa, arranged by friends, and keeps pointing out why this is a terrible, terrible time for him to be starting a new relationship. OK, so then, umm, why do it? If I were single and I had WAY too much going on at work, maybe I'd wait for things to calm down a bit before looking for a date. Besides, he was in a relationship already, it's just that his girlfriend wanted to take a break while he was the subject of a federal investigation. That's not breaking up, that's taking a break, there's clearly a difference. (OK, it's possible she was just looking for an excuse to dump him, but the film doesn't really clarify this.)
It's a bit annoying that we don't learn anything about the investigation, like what corporate crime George is accused of, until about 2/3 of the way into the film. Before that, there's a large number of instances of characters saying, "I can't discuss this with you...." or "We can't talk about this here..." or in one case, George literally running away just as his father is about to discuss what the case is about. Doesn't it make more sense that a person would want to learn what crime he's being charged with? If you were being arrested, for example, and you hadn't done anything wrong, wouldn't your FIRST question be "What am I being accused of?" Instead it's a blatant case of delay, delay, delay because the film's writer or director has determined that the audience shouldn't know yet, but this doesn't really work from the character's P.O.V. Nobody is so much of a doormat that they would just take the fall for whatever their father did and not even be slightly curious about it. Or maybe the director doesn't think we can properly juggle the two storylines at once, so they have to get the love triangle to a certain place before we can learn about the criminal case? I don't know, something was very odd here with this story.
Instead we have to wait, while Lisa dates Matty, then has a date with George, then moves in with Matty, then moves out and seeks refuge with George, then goes back to Matty, then bonds with George again. After several rounds of this, I just wanted to yell "PICK ONE already!"
Tony Shalhoub is VERY underused here as a therapist (or psychiatrist, not sure because he's only on screen for about 30 seconds). Which is also a missed opportunity story-wise, because I think his patient, Lisa, could really have used some therapy or analysis. It's not just that she had to decide between two men, it's the fact that she kept walking out on one boyfriend whenever he did something that she considered immature. Do you know what else is immature? Packing your bags and moving out whenever there's a small bump in the rocky road of relationships. Mature people stick around, discuss their feelings, and let the other person know that what they did was inappropriate or immature - how else is the immature person ever going to learn how to grow up unless someone tells him? She probably shouldn't have bothered to unpack when she moved in with Matty if she was going to move out at the drop of a hat. Matty acted jealous one time, she stormed out. Matty had different theories about monogamy, she stormed out. So maybe Matty's not the only one acting immature - boy, if only there were a therapist that she could have talked to about this....
What woman gives up this quickly on a guy, and so many times? I thought that if a woman marked a man as possible husband (or at least live-in boyfriend) material, she would consider any problems with his habits as "fixable" and then set out to change him. Isn't that the way it's supposed to work? Look, I might have been rooting for George over Matty here, but I still think that maybe Lisa didn't give Matty much of a chance to change his ways. No matter what your gender, orientation or social status, I'm all for giving people second chances, even third chances, and doing everything possible to see if you can get a relationship to work out. Only when you've deemed that it's absolutely impossible, that person is never going to change or try to improve themselves, that's when it's OK to walk out. (Or if they're violent, or prone to violence, but that's another issue.) I wanted Lisa to choose George for the right reasons, and I'm just not sure that "Matty's self-centered and being a bit of a jerk" are the right reasons. But at least I agree with the choice this time, made by a character in a James L. Brooks film to settle a love triangle. Matty might be like a Camaro and George is more like a Camry - you might want to test-drive the Camaro for fun, but you should probably buy the Camry, it's more reliable and requires less maintenance.
I wonder to what degree the character of Matty was based on Derek Jeter, who was notorious for giving his conquests lovely parting gifts after a one-night stand. Here Matty's got a full selection of Washington Nationals sweatshirts that women can wear home, so they don't have to do the "walk of shame" in the same clothing that they wore on their date. This film came out in 2010, and the news about Derek Jeter giving out gift baskets after his dates broke in 2011, so now I'm not sure. Jeter had a good thing going, until he accidentally gave a woman the same gift basket a second time, thereby proving that he didn't really remember having dated her before. Whoopsie.
By all accounts, this film was a box-office bomb - the budget was $120 million due to the high salaries demanded from certain cast members, and it only made $30 million in the U.S. and $48 million worldwide. (Somebody probably got fired over this...) It came out 10 years ago, and Jack Nicholson has not been in a feature film since, even though this would be a terrible choice to be the last film in his career. Sounds like somebody needs to lower his salary if he wants any kind of career re-invention like Joe Pesci got - then again, he doesn't have to work again if he doesn't want to, his filmography will always be quite respectable, if you discount this one.
Also starring Reese Witherspoon (last seen in "A Wrinkle in Time"), Paul Rudd (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Kathryn Hahn (also carrying over from "She's Funny That Way"), John Tormey (ditto), Mark Linn-Baker (last seen in "Adam"), Lenny Venito (last seen in "God's Pocket"), Molly Price (ditto), Ron McLarty (last seen in "Heartburn"), Shelley Conn, Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "The Irishman"), Teyonah Parris (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Tony Shalhoub (last seen in "Movie 43"), Dean Norris (last seen in "Fist Fight"), Andrew Wilson (last seen in "Whip It"), Yuki Matsuzaki (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2")
RATING: 5 out of 10 unopened toothbrushes
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Harold Huber, Monty Blue, Charles Bickford, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram, Sabu, Jean Simmons.
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