BEFORE: Today is the SECOND day of my romance chain, but it's February THIRD, and I'm also listing the program for the FOURTH day of TCM's Oscar programming. Is it any wonder I feel a little out of sync? It's all good, because over the weekend I went on a linking frenzy, and I know now that I've got a clear path to hit April 20 (Hitler's birthday) right on the nose, and then Mother's Day after that. We're talking about maybe going to Florida for 4 or 5 days at the beginning of May, so I even have an emergency back-up plan if that happens, a place where I can skip ahead 5 days on my list, saving that little block of films for later, so I can still land on a Mother's Day film on the right weekend. Now that's planning. Of course I can make little adjustments here and there if necessary, but it's a solid framework of a plan that can be tweaked if necessary - that's the best kind to have, in case of emergencies.
It helps when I break down a big gap of, say, 36 films in to smaller steps. Another help is identifying what I call "nexus" films, those are ones with big casts and a LOT of linking possibilities - like "Avengers: Endgame" last year. I know I can get to a film like that many different ways, so it just comes down to which way serves my needs the best, and then from there figure out the way to get to the next nexus film. The recent film "Bombshell" has a huge cast, and so does "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood". By using these two nexus films, I was able to figure out a path between the end of the romance chain and the Hitler-based material, which was about 36 steps. And those two nexus films happen to link to each other, but that would be a waste of two large casts - fitting 8 or 9 films in-between them helped extend the chain to the size I needed it to be. Now I can pretty much coast until Mother's Day, at which time I'll figure out a potential path to some Father's Day material.
Speaking of father-based films, Chloe Grace Moretz carries over from "I Love You, Daddy"
Anne Baxter links from "Cimarron" to tomorrow's first film, can you fill in the other links? Answers below.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 4)
7:45 am "The North Star" (1943) with _____________ linking to:
9:30 am "When Ladies Meet" (1933) with _____________ linking to:
11:00 am "Emma" (1932) with _____________ linking to:
12:15 pm "Anna Christie" (1930) with _____________ linking to:
1:45 pm "Camille" (1937) with _____________ linking to:
3:45 pm "Rasputin and the Empress" (1932) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "None But the Lonely Heart" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Going My Way" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
10:15 pm "Road to Morocco" (1942) with _____________ linking to:
12:00 am "The Princess and the Pirate" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
2:00 am "White Heat" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 am "Here Comes the Navy" (1934)
THE PLOT: During a quarter-life crisis, Megan panics when her boyfriend proposes, then hides out in the home of her new friend, 16-year-old Annika, who lives with her world-weary divorced dad.
AFTER: OK, relationships are complicated, I think we can all agree. But if you want to see simplified versions of relationship stories, by all means schedule about 40 Hollywood romance stories in a row to watch. Heck, I'm only on the 2nd film of this year's chain and already I'm spotting some trends. Yesterday's film and today's both center on slackers, aka "laggies" in tonight's film, but yesterday's film was about a teen slacking off during senior year and sort of dating an older man, while tonight's film centers on a woman in her late 20's who can't get her life or engagement plans together, then she sort of dates an older man.
Back in my day we had lovable "slackers" like Ferris Bueller - maybe he took a few too many sick days, but who among us hasn't done that? (If I have a cold, I should stay home, because I'm just one person, and if I go to work and infect everyone, suddenly the whole company is shut down, so err on the side of caution, I say...). Somehow you just knew that Ferris was going to do well in college, or in whatever career he'd choose, because he was both charming AND crafty. (They really should have made a sequel, called "Ferris Bueller's Year Off", detailing what the character did during that "gap year" you just know he was going to take...)
But today's slackers are much more annoying, like Megan in this film, who has her degree in Social Work, but hasn't started any Social Working yet, because she doesn't know what KIND of social work she wants to do. Are you kidding me? Dive in and start somewhere, buttercup, for God's sake. Maybe you'll learn what kind you want to do by actually DOING some, am I right? Look, I feel you, I went to film school thinking I was going to be the next big hot director when I was done, but instead I learned how hard it is to be creative, and I revised my plans. But I still wanted to work in that industry, so after graduating I took ANY job to build up experience while I looked for something more permanent. (If I'd kept the job at the movie theater, I could have become a manager in 7 or 8 years...). I got very lucky - TWICE - when former co-workers took other jobs they really wanted and recommended me to replace them. I suck at networking, so this really saved my ass - TWICE.
But instead of getting a job, Megan buys beer for a group of teens (because someone did that for HER when she was in high school, but that doesn't make it right...) and then impersonates one girl's mother when she gets into trouble at school. Umm, this is fairly bad behavior, and you'd think that someone with a Social Work degree would know better, and realize that these actions could have serious repercussions.
Then, since this girl Annika owes her a favor, Megan tries to "hide out" at the girl's house for a week, after telling her live-in boyfriend that she's going to a career seminar in another city. And she came up with this plan after her boyfriend tried to propose while they were at a friend's wedding. Another bad sign is when you lie to your partner about where you are - so clearly this relationship is in trouble. The proposal just sort of forced the issue, causing her to decide if this man she's living with is also the person she wants to spend her life with, which she is kind of already doing, but maybe she just doesn't like the whole permanent commitment thing.
This boyfriend doesn't seem like that bad of a fellow, because if he were, I guess that would make her decision easier, from a screenwriting POV. He's a little pushy, maybe, but when she balks at the idea of a church wedding, he's willing to entertain alternatives, like eloping to Vegas, just to satisfy Megan. If anything, Megan's issues seem to be with her pushy, social-media present girlfriends, and her boyfriend seems to be part of their circle, so he's kind of guilty by association, but that's not really his fault if they all went to high school together.
Megan has made a fatal, perhaps common, mistake, by tying her relationship happiness and her career happiness together, when they should be separate. How many people think they can't get married because they're not far enough along in their career? Maybe some people want to wait until they have a bit more money before tying the knot, but what about the expression "Two can live as cheaply as one"? It's not true, but it's something that people say. But even an unemployed person can be in a positive relationship and get married - just think of all the time they have to plan the wedding and the honeymoon! Hey, you can buckle down and find a job when you get back... Or is it just a coincidence here that Megan's not completely satisfied by either her job OR the relationship. If they've been together since high-school, and she's 29, they could just be going through the 11-year itch, some kind of relationship fatigue.
I gave my thoughts on her career problems - she should just take some kind of job to get started and stop dilly-dallying - but the relationship problem is bigger, and she's just not going to solve it by hiding from the world for a week, what will that accomplish? Then when she makes a connection of sorts with Annika's father, the temptation is there to sort of wipe the slate clean, choose the new guy over the old guy she's been living with, but is that really the best answer for her, or is the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? And some people are just habitually drawn to the "high" feeling of a new relationship, and all that it promises at first, without realizing that the new-car smell always wears off eventually, or at least dies down a little. Annika's dad is more fun, but he's also more cynical, I don't know, which one's the better lover?
Megan and Annika go on a road trip to track down her mother, who works as a lingerie catalog model (in Seattle?) and she mentions a bit about why she left, her theory is that if you try to be the "cool Mom", that easily turns into being the bad Mom" - a lesson that Glen in "I Love You, Daddy" should have figured out. Yes, Chloe Grace Moretz essentially plays the same character in both films, the slacking-off high-school senior who just wants to drink, party and be in love, with no intention of getting a job or going to college or living in the real world. The only difference was that in last night's film, her father was much richer, and here her father is a divorce lawyer, he probably does OK financially, though.
Don't get me wrong, I love Sam Rockwell, he's great in any movie, and his divorced disciplinarian dad here is probably the best character in the whole film. But what sort of future do he and Megan have together, how's this gonna work? The thing about Megan (or anyone) ending one relationship and starting up another right away is that she should probably take some time to examine what went wrong, to figure out if any of her actions or attitudes were part of the problem. Otherwise, if she doesn't do this, she might find herself right back where she started, with the same problems in her new relationship. And Annika's dad would essentially have TWO slackers, er, laggies, living in his house. Megan's going to keep on making non-decisions, because until you pick something to do, you can't succeed or fail at it, and she needs to move forward, try new things and fail at some of them so she can figure herself out.
Also starring Keira Knightley (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Ellie Kemper (last heard in "The Secret Life of Pets"), Mark Webber (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Tiya Sircar (last seen in "The Internship"), Gretchen Mol (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Jeff Garlin (last seen in a cameo in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Jodi Thelen (last seen in "The Black Stallion Returns"), Sarah Coates, Louis Hobson (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Kirsten DeLohr Helland, Daniel Zovatto (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Dylan Arnold, Larissa Schmitz, Sara Lynn Wright, Phillip Abraham, Rocki DuCharme, Maura Lindsay.
RATING: 6 out of 10 skateboard flips
ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Anne Harding, Myrna Loy, Marie Dressler, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Barry Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Virginia Mayo, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien.
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