In Good Company

Year 12, Day 67 - 3/7/20 - Movie #3,469

BEFORE: Nothing makes me happier than scheduling a film, to watch via iTunes or Hulu or even on an Academy screener, and assigning it a spot in the rotation, only to find as that date draws near that it's going to premiere on premium cable just a few days before.  I'm happy not only because this saves me a few bucks or the need to remember to carry a DVD home from the office, but also because for a moment I believe that I have some kind of scheduling "sixth sense", like somehow I knew the universe wanted me to have full access to that film by that date, even though it's probably just a matter of coincidence - if nothing else, it's good to have back-up ways to watch each film, just in case the cable goes out or the DVD is scratched.

This just happened with "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood", which I had tentatively scheduled for March 29 - and now I just found out from seeing a promo that it will run on Starz beginning March 27, perfect for my timeline.  The flip-side of this, though, is a film like "Yesterday", which premieres tonight on HBO, and I'd therefore scheduled it for March 24, right between other films with Kate McKinnon in them.  This caused a problem, though, because even though it looks like a film I might enjoy, it wasn't originally part of the March plan, so to watch it I'd have to double-up again, or drop a film from the rest of the romance chain.  And that's what I'd been planning to do, because I'm eager to get off this topic, but then I was debating back and forth over WHICH film to drop.

But hang on, before I ink in "Yesterday", I figured I should check the linking possibilities if I DON'T watch it in March - it turns out to have links to THREE different Christmas movies, which weren't linked to each other.  Damn, I have to take that into consideration, because I don't want to be stuck at the end of the year with a bunch of Christmas movies, several slots left, and no way to link them.  This one hurts, but I'm gonna have sit on "Yesterday" for a few months, until I can firm up my October and December plans.  If another way to make those connections pops up I'll consider it, but right now the October chain's looking pretty solid - I have a lead-in to the horror chain and also a lead-out, but until I figure out how many films I need to program to get from there to Christmas movies, nothing's set in stone.  If I keep over-packing my schedule now, then I could skip the whole month of November, link from the horror chain to "Parasite" and call the year over with no nod to Christmas, that's one way to go, but it's too early to tell if that will work.

But the end result of dropping "Yesterday" from March is that now I don't have to drop another film from the planned romance/relationship chain, I can just keep going and clear as many films from the category as possible.  That means the chain's back to being a couple days longer, and the more films I include, the fewer linking possibilities I'll have next year, but so be it.  There's plenty of time to find more films for next February, and October and December will be here first, so they take priority.  And I lose any hope of putting a chain together with films about mental illness and calling that "March Madness", which is a fun idea I thought of that I never get the chance to program.  C'est la vie.

For today, Topher Grace carries over from "Opening Night" - oh, and I shuffled the order around on the remaining romance films one last time, I swear, still ending in the same place though.  I decided a gradual tapering off the romance topic was probably best, so as I get further into March the films sort of focus less and less on the topic (I think).  I don't want to just suddenly stop, I'll get the thematic equivalent of "the bends".

THE PLOT: A middle-aged ad exec is faced with a new boss who's nearly half his age... and who also happens to be sleeping with his daughter.

AFTER: You can probably tell where I'm heading with this one, today's film was carefully programmed to link the Taye Diggs mini-chain with the Scarlett Johansson mini-chain.  I'm headed to "Marriage Story", I just have to make one more little stop first, and then the real clean-up work will begin, courtesy of Mary Steenburgen, Ryan Reynolds, Diane Keaton and Kevin Kline.  The theory is that the longer this topical chain goes, the easier it will be to link to 4/20 and then Mother's Day.

This one really isn't all about the romance, but it does have two perspectives on the topic - the lead character is in his 50's, married with two daughters, when he learns that his wife is pregnant again.  Not too long after a corporate take-over and his demotion, he learns that his college-age daughter has started dating his new boss, who's recently divorced and closer to his daughter's age than his own.  That's the premise, and ideally all the comedic situations are designed to cascade down from there.  It more of a workplace comedy, therefore, than a romantic comedy - like I said, I'm sort of tapering off.

What does it mean to be 51 or 52 and have to re-start your career, or take a demotion in order to keep your job?  When your new boss is half your age, knows nothing about good old-fashioned salesmanship, and suddenly takes over, telling you that your co-workers, the ones you hired years ago, now are being sacked?  When the executives that HE'S trying to impress start talking about things like corporate synergy and meeting the new needs of a more connected world, strategic partnerships between your sports magazine and some sugary breakfast cereal.  Increasing the ad space in the magazine to increase revenue, while also laying off staff to cut overhead.

Look, I feel this guy's pain, even though I don't have two daughters and one on the way, and I don't have any corporate overlords since I work for independent filmmakers - but I've had to deal with a lot of similar changes over the years.  When I started out there was no internet, no digital filmmaking and no crowd-funding, it was a simpler time - you make your movie, get the film cans out to the festivals and hopefully make a distribution deal so that Lionsgate or whoever picks up the publicity costs, and you just wait for the money to come.  It rarely worked out that way, but when it did, man, you were golden.  But gradually everything changed, and I had to learn how to create a web-site, with a web-store, ship BluRays out direct to the fans and backers, instead of boxes of VHS tapes out to the video retailers.  How to publicize our screenings on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and whatever's coming next.  How to run a successful Kickstarter campaign, which can generate enough income to finish the film, even more than the distribution deals that might come when the film is sold.  How to get the films on streaming sites, or at least Vimeo.  How to get the films to the festivals on DCP, or by FTP, or Filemail in a pinch.

I've looked at life from both sides now, I was the young buck at 25 who thought he knew it all, then became the veteran at 51 who had to learn the hard way to never stop learning.  For my latest trick I had to learn about grants and foundations to keep an animated feature in production - what are they, where are they, how do we find them, and what forms need to be filled out to qualify for them.  Thankfully this process paid off before I had to start cold-calling people at foundations to ask them to donate - to me that's much too close to tele-marketing, the devil's business.  I didn't go to film school to dial up random strangers and beg them for money.  Can't we just run another Kickstarter campaign and keep our souls intact?

I bring this up because in any good boss/employee relationship, I feel like each party has something to learn from the other, and that's what ends up happening between Dan and Carter here.  Dan learns that the world is constantly changing, including corporate strategies, and also new blood's always coming into the picture, with new ideas and new technology.  Carter learns that sometimes the old ways are still good, there's no substitute for a face-to-face meeting with a new client, connecting on a personal level and treating employees with respect even when "letting them go", because you never know, you might need to hire them back.  I've gone through something like this with my co-workers, who are now sometimes half my age, and I find that some of them I can work with, if they're willing to work with me.  I'm able to impart my knowledge of running a Comic-Con booth if they want to hear it, but at the same time, the younger person may have some better ideas about what we should be selling, and how to publicize it.  It turns out to be a two-way street in the end.

Now, the romance part - it's all about making this 50-year-old father's life as miserable as possible here, and the only thing worse than dealing with his daughter's first adult relationship is finding out the identity of her boyfriend, and now of course that fickle finger of fate (aka coincidence) dictates that it's the one person in the world that would drive him the absolute craziest.  It's probably not good that the relationship developed without his knowledge, so that when he does find them together in a restaurant, he goes full-impact ballistic.  To be fair, he had a right to know, but on the other hand, once in college she's considered an adult, and entitled to her own personal life.  It's a tricky call, she's barely out of the nest, but if she's not allowed to make her own decisions and potential mistakes, then she's never going to learn.

On the point of acting ability, I'm not sure exactly when Ms. Johansson became a believable actress, I just know that this film was made before that point.  Something's just...off here, like I can watch her in an "Avengers" movie and I can forget that she's an actor acting, she's just Black Widow.  But here I was conscious at every single moment that this is an actress, saying lines, and, well, not saying them well.  She just didn't speak clearly, like she didn't enunciate enough, yet still technically managed to blurt out every line.  Did she have massive dental work at some point, did she get those lip injections that were all the rage at some point, or did she get horrible advice like "Never stop smiling at any point."  Because you have to stop smiling in order to properly talk, and it just seems like she forgot that little point - I don't know what her deal was in 2004, post "Lost in Translation", but she just seems like she was not having a good time, uncomfortable in her own skin, and that made ME uncomfortable.  Discuss.  She played tennis well, but speaking lines just felt so unnatural, and to me the best actors are natural ones, so that you won't notice that they're acting.  I guess that takes time for some people to achieve.

NITPICK POINT: In a basketball game between the corporate executives and the sales staff, would the sales staff really be trying THAT hard to win?  Seems like a no-brainer to me - tank the game and let the executives have their moment, you'll be doing yourself a favor in the long run.  I don't even WORK in a corporate job, and I know that much.

NITPICK POINT #2: The head of advertising sales personally packages up copies of the magazine to mail to potential clients?  Doesn't he have a secretary or executive assistant that would do that?

Also starring Dennis Quaid (last seen in "Movie 43"), Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Marg Helgenberger (last seen in "Mr. Brooks"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), David Paymer (last seen in "Lemon"), Philip Baker Hall (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Selma Blair (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Ty Burrell (last seen in "Rough Night"), Frankie Faison (last seen in "Adam"), Amy Aquino (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Kevin Chapman (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Lauren Tom (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Zena Grey, John Cho (last seen in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas"), Malcolm McDowell (last seen in "Filmworker").

RATING: 5 out of 10 furniture movers

Opening Night (2016)

Year 12, Day 66 - 3/6/20 - Movie #3,468

BEFORE: It's four in a row for Taye Diggs, now that I added "Rent", and tonight I'm back behind the scenes of a Broadway play, just like in "She's Funny That Way".  It's a fair bet there will be madcap relationships between the cast, right?  I'm headed into the home stretch on romance-related material - there are still 10 films in the original chain but I think I'm going to postpone two of them, so really, there's just over a week to go before I can transition to something else.

THE PLOT: A failed Broadway singer who now works as a production manager must save opening night on his new production by wrangling his eccentric cast and crew.

AFTER: There's probably JUST enough relationship stuff here for me to justify including this in the romance chain, like the production manager who's still pining for the understudy he broke up with - they used to be singers together in a previous musical - and he still wants to know who she's dating now, and if he's still got a shot at getting back with her.  Meanwhile backstage, a competition takes place between a different set of exes, to see who can sleep with the new dancer first (there's some debate over whether he's gay or straight, so why not wager on it?). Also, the star of the musical, who used to be in N'Sync, is probably sleeping with all of the chorus girls.

There's more going on that doesn't relate to romance, which is all about how crazy things can get when a Broadway musical opens - the washed-up actress playing the female lead gets hit on the head and can't perform, so the understudy has to fill in, which is a trope we've all seen many times, going back to the early days of film, at least to the movie "42nd Street" in 1933, and probably before that. (It's hard to Google where this movie trope started, exactly.)  The director is high-strung and yells a lot, the stage manager is a shy woman with a stuttering problem, and the bass guitarist wants to get high before performing.  There's probably a lot of stereotypes reflected there, plus the ones about all male dancers being gay or at least bi, so as a whole this feels like a story cobbled together from pieces of other stories, built on a foundation of mostly stereotypes and generalizations.

But the play-within-the-film is a nice idea, it's a musical revue featuring nothing but one-hit wonders, called "One Hit Wonderful".  There have been so many musicals put together built around the music of Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, Tina Turner, Cher, Diana Ross, etc. and then there are the "cover version compilations" like "Rock of Ages" and "School of Rock", this seems like sort of a natural progression, and I wonder why nobody has ever done this before as a real stage musical.  It's the thinnest possible slice of commonality to get songs like "I'll Melt With You", "Ice Ice Baby" and "Mambo #5" into the same production, but it could work.  Umm, except those last two songs really suck - if they could include better songs, I'd consider going to see such a production IRL.

But so much of this is cornball, and we've seen it all before, in movies like "Noises Off", right?  All they did was just dress up the idea of a behind-the-scenes farce with some music from the 80's and 90's.  It's OK for wasting 90 minutes on Netflix, which kind of works out because you'd probably feel ripped off if you went to a movie theater and paid real money to watch this.  But I also feel that in a few short months, I'll have forgotten all about this one.

Also starring Topher Grace (last seen in "Playing it Cool"), Alona Tal, Anne Heche (last seen in "A Simple Twist of Fate"), Rob Riggle (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "Long Shot"), JC Chasez, Lauren Lapkus (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Lesli Margherita, Brian Huskey (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Zach Cregger, Johnny Ray Gill, Carlena Britch, Damian Gomez, Andrew Leland Rogers, Diego de Tovar.

RATING: 4 out of 10 clipboards

Rent

Year 12, Day 65 - 3/5/20 - Movie #3,467

BEFORE: This is the movie that I said the other day that I've been "avoiding" for a long time - not so much actively avoiding it, more like never really getting around to it, or being pressured by people I know who really dig it to watch it - only sometimes that can have a negative effect, like if I don't really trust those people's judgement, which can happen if they're really hardcore fans and end up being just a bit TOO enthusiastic about it, forcing me to then question how well I really know them, and how well they really know ME, because if they really knew me, they probably should know that nagging me to watch their favorite movie is not helpful, in fact it ends up making me put it off even longer, and why don't they know this about me, that I don't like being pressured to watch a film.  OK, that ends up sounding a lot like I've been actively avoiding this film, so let's just call it that, because it's simpler.

I've also learned that while I can have a set schedule for how to fill a month by linking actors, or how to get to the next big holiday thematically, that sometimes I have to pay attention when it feels like the universe is trying to tell me something - and with TWO actors from this film also appearing in "Just a Kiss", that's the feeling I get here, that maybe I have to loosen my ban on "Rent" and take this linking opportunity to drop it in here.  What are the odds that Starz Encore (motto: "The movies you love, or at least the ones you missed the first time around...") would start running this film AND that I would notice it in the listings (I always scan two days ahead, for reasons such as this...) AND that I'd be right in the middle of a Taye Diggs chain, so this could be dropped in without changing anything, except extending my romance/relationship chain by one more day?  It almost seems like divine providence when you look at it like that.  Not that I believe some god is telling me to watch this movie, but when you combine coincidence with proper planning and paying attention, it almost feels like it was somehow meant to be.

I feel like I'm a good scheduler now, but even a good scheduler has to have a flexible plan to take advantage of situations that arise - that's a skill that saved me three times last year when it turned out that my chain had an error in it, or when I discovered just before October that there were TWO new films on premium cable that could make a better, stronger horror chain than the one I had planned.  SO now I need to look at what's left in my March schedule, find something to drop here and there so I can still line things up with the calendar.  But I think I know what I have to drop.  It's impossible to think all the way to the end of the year, so there's no way to know whether I'll eventually find myself one film over or one film short, so I just have to try to make the best decisions I can make for the month ahead, that's all.

THE PLOT: The film version of the award-winning musical about Bohemians in NYC's East Village struggling with life, love and AIDS, and the impacts they have on America.

AFTER: Maybe it's sort of weird that "Just a Kiss" reminded me so much about the type of film made in the 1980's (due largely to the low production values, and cheesy visual effects) and then here I am, following that up with a film that's set square in that decade, based on a play first produced in 1996, but one that was clearly looking back at NYC during the AIDS epidemic.  Also, if I'm inclined to believe that maybe the universe is trying to tell me something, at this exact moment the world is being struck by Covid-19, aka the Corona virus, which is a potentially deadly form of flu, not an STD, but quite honestly nobody knows for sure how bad the current pandemic is going to get before there's a vaccine.  As I often misquote, "history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes".

I think another reason that I never got around to watching this before was that it was SO ingrained into popular culture that viewing it seemed almost unnecessary - I'd seen so many parodies of this, especially in the puppet-mation movie "Team America: World Police" (where the main musical number in the play-within-the-film is called "Everybody's Got AIDS! AIDS! AIDS!") that viewing the film, if I haven't yet, becomes sort of an afterthought.  This is also known as the "MAD Magazine effect", namely if I haven't seen a film by the time MAD gets around to doing a parody, what's the point?  It's probably why I took so long to finally see "The Hunger Games", and didn't see "The Godfather" until I was an adult - but as a kid, I read and re-read the MAD version.

But finally, after all is said and done, you kind of have to see the film itself, right?  I'll probably go through a similar delay with the recent film "Cats", which nearly everyone made fun of late last year and into awards season.  Could I possibly enjoy that now that reviewers and comedians have torn it to shreds?  I guess we'll find out when I finally get around to it in, oh, about 2034. (Considering it took me 15 years to watch the "Rent" movie.). Jesus, I don't even know much about "La Boheme", the opera this is based on, except I know enough trivial facts about it if it comes up on Jeopardy! - Puccini, right?  And there's a character named Mimi.  What more do I need to know?  (I promise, I'll read the synopsis of it on Wiki, right after I finish writing this...)

Now that I've watched "Rent", I know what category it belongs in, which is "Hmm, not really my thing.  Although, I now see why some other people really dig it."  Yes, that's a category.  For me there's a little too much of "Look how EDGY we're being right now!" and a bunch of "Look, we've got a gay male couple, a gay female couple, and a male-female couple, something for everyone!"  Meanwhile the cynical part of me noticed that, and saw right through someone's little plans.  Did the gays and the straights really hang out together in late-80's NYC?  I'm not so sure, coming out was all so new back then, and from my experience anyway, the two groups didn't mingle this much.  I remember when I was singing in the NYU Chorus, and the other guys in the group were talking about the newspaper picture they were all in, which was taken at an ACT-UP rally - and that's when I realized I was probably the only straight person in my section.  OK, good to know.  Something similar happened in my marriage a few years later.

I think part of the reason we have hipsters all over NY now is that "Rent" made that lifestyle look so attractive - the opening musical number is all about how people can't pay the rent, not the rent from last year, not the rent from this year, and I'm guessing things aren't looking good for next year, either. What?  Nobody's paying rent?  How?  Why?  Everybody's got to pay rent, right?  If you don't, you get evicted - I don't remember people in the 1980's not paying rent en masse, that wouldn't have been allowed in Reagan's America or Ed Koch's New York.  Isn't anyone going to get around to maybe getting a JOB?  Nah, let's just sit in the dark apartment where the heat doesn't work, I'm sure the problem will fix itself, you've just got to give it some more time...

Finally, somebody does get some money, Angel the drag queen gets paid for playing the drum, which somehow kills an annoying barking dog?  I'd like to see the math on that one, please.  OK, but now someone's got some money, so they're paying the rent, right?  After all, the film is called "Rent".  Nah, they're going to go out to a restaurant and waste that money on wine and beer.  Sure, why not?  At least that's a plan I can get behind.

We soon learn that Mark and Roger, the two male leads (both straight I think, but at least one is HIV+) are living rent-free, and their ex-roommate has a father who bought up all the buildings on the block, so I guess that explains why they don't pay rent, only now he wants to collect some rent.  Which they don't have, because again, apparently nobody works in this part of town.  I know, I know, songwriter and independent filmmaker, but those aren't really paying gigs.  (Jeez, at least Mimi's a dancer/stripper and a former dominatrix, she can probably buy and sell all the others...or she could, if she didn't spend so much money on heroin).

Anyway, the landlord offers them a deal, they can stay in their apartment and continue to be rent-free, as long as they stop the planned protest of the Cyber studio center.  That sounds more than fair - only that's not what ends up happening, because that would be too logical.  The protest is being put on by Maureen, Mark's ex-girlfriend, and for some reason, Mark ends up helping her, then filming the protest, rather than stopping it.  Did he miss the part where he could still avoid paying RENT, if he just would stop the protest?

I get it, if anybody does something that makes financial sense, or isn't totally edgy, then they've somehow "sold out".  But plenty of people also work for a living, and then they have, shocker, a little money to pay rent and live in places where there are things like heat, and electricity.  Feel free to join society when you've had your fill of raging against the machine, ya lazy squatters.

Oh, yeah, the other ex-roomate is Tom Collins, a philosophy professor and anarchist, who keeps dropping by the old flat, he falls in love with that drag queen and well, things are good for a while, anyway.  But it's not really a film about happy endings, is it?  Even when Maureen, Mark's ex, accepts the offer from her girlfriend to get married, Maureen flirts with a female server at their engagement party.  Well, I guess that was a glimpse into the future there, it's weird that the people who fought so hard to get gay marriage didn't seem to see the possibility of gay affairs and gay divorce on the horizon.  And then even the token straight couple, Roger and Mimi, have a falling-out and go their separate ways.

What the film gets right about New Yorkers, in my opinion, is how they dream about moving away and opening up a restaurant (or whatever) in a place like Santa Fe (or wherever) - only the vast majority of New Yorkers never get around to doing that.  Or if they do, they move back real soon, because the city got into their system, and they end up missing it.  Sometimes you just need to live in a place where you know that you can get a corned beef sandwich at 3 am, even if you almost never do that.

The negatives - I didn't get the "performance art" protest thing at all, it was just so stupid.  Performance art already gets a bad rap for being silly and pointless, did we have to continue that stereotype?  Why not show Maureen doing a performance piece that actually meant something?  It's like slam poetry, most of it sucks, but when it's seen in a film, written by professionals, why does it have to still suck?

Well, at least I've familiarized myself with the basics of this story now, so cross off another long-outstanding narrative.  And since last month I won the lottery and we went to see "Hamilton" live on Broadway, that's two so far this year.  What's next?  Good god, it's probably "Cats", isn't it?

Also starring Anthony Rapp (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson (last seen in "The Rundown"), Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia (last seen in "Flawless"), Idina Menzel (also carrying over from "Just a Kiss"), Tracie Thoms (last seen in "Death Proof"), Aaron Lohr, Chris Chalk (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Mackenzie Firgens, Shaun Earl, Rod Arrants, Mike Garibaldi (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Sarah Silverman (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Daryl Edwards (last seen in "The Judge"), Anna Deavere Smith (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Kevin Blackton, Bettina Devin, Wayne Wilcoc, Bianca Sams, Heather Barberie, Liisa Cohen (last seen in "Fruitvale Station") with the voices of Joel Swetow, Randy Graff.

RATING: 5 out of 10 burning screenplays

Just a Kiss

Year 12, Day 64 - 3/4/20 - Movie #3,466

BEFORE: I don't really know anything about this film, except it's one of those that keeps popping up in the cable listings on a certain channel (I forget which one) and I must have just noticed it while I was putting my chain together, looking for more romance-based material.  The more material I have, the easier it is to make a chain that's a month and a half long - as it is, there will still be a good twenty or so romance films that didn't connect that I won't be getting to this year, and then I'll spend the summer and fall looking for more material that might allow me to put another solid romance chain together next year, if it comes to that.

Taye Diggs carries over from "Set It Up", and now I have to decide if he will be in TWO more films in this chain, or just one.  A decision like this could turn out to be important, it could mean the difference between hitting the right film on April 1, or April 20, or for big Movie #3,500, which will occur in early April.  There's a lot to consider, that's all - fortunately there are several films that I can drop as needed (the middle film in a chain of 3 with the same actor) and that will help me make adjustments in late March or early April as needed.

THE PLOT: A group of NYC thirtysomethings having problems with fidelity gets an opportunity to turn back the clock.

AFTER: Taye Diggs was uncredited in this film, though he had a pretty important role, so thankfully there is the IMDB and Wikipedia now that alerts me to such things, so I will know all of the connections that can be made.  A bigger question is why (and how) actors manage to appear in a big role in a film and keep their name out of the credits, it seems to go against all the usual reasons that people become actors, like fame and recognition.  Who studies acting, gets an agent, makes connections, books the gig, does the work and cashes the check, and then tries to make sure nobody finds out about it?  It doesn't make any sense.  I can understand situations like Bruce Willis going uncredited for "Four Rooms", because he didn't want to get paid his usual salary, then ran afoul of SAG rules by working for free, so going uncredited seemed like a fair solution - but when that isn't the case, why would an actor want to go without credit for their appearance?

This film features a series of overlapping love triangles, similar to "She's Funny That Way", where another small group of New Yorkers was unbelievably interconnected to each other, and everybody was having at least one affair with somebody else in the group, even if nobody but the audience was aware all of the love connections.  Somehow this manages to sell both genders out equally, all of the men and women seem to be in some form of committed relationship, then as both films progress, we learn that nearly everyone is really in TWO relationships, one open and one covert.  I believe in serial monogamy, so it's a bit hard for me to swallow that EVERYONE in a group chooses to live their life this way.

Plus, this film was released in 2002 - at first this seems like the kind of film you might expect to come from the 1960's or 1970's, the time of the sexual revolution, free love, when many of the people in their thirties were anti-marriage, or possibly pro-open marriage, or just plain having affairs because they could.  But then there was that wave of Neo-conservatism that came along in the 1980's, not just with Reagan & Republicans in power, but also AIDS was a concern, I know I certainly would have cut back on my sexual activity - if I had been sexually active (umm, with a partner) during the 80's, that is.  I think I finally was, there at the tail end of the decade in 1989.  It felt like a bit of a rush to get locked down into a monogamous relationship, just because it felt safer - so once I finally found a girlfriend, I stopped looking, that just made sense - then that marriage fell apart in 1996 and I went through the cycle again.

So, honestly, I don't remember much about the sexual politics of the early 2000's - maybe the pendulum had swung back toward the liberal side of things, because by then people were talking about things like gay marriage, and maybe that resulted in less sense of responsibility for the straights, it's a bit tough to recall.  But I certainly don't remember a time when everyone, either single or married, could be counted on to be juggling two relationships at a time.  To me, that's the aberration rather than the norm, so that's part of why it's so hard to believe in a group of six or seven adults where ALL of them are double-dipping.

Then again, there's what I think is the point of this little storytelling exercise, to show what sort of events are set in motion just because Dag fooled around with Rebecca, his best friend Peter's girlfriend, despite the fact that he was in a committed relationship with Halley.  There's a cascade of failure that slowly develops once this fact is revealed to the group - Halley breaks up with Dag, Dag flirts with waitress Paula, Rebecca breaks up with Peter, Peter gets despondent on an airplane, meanwhile Halley sleeps over at Rebecca's apartment after moving out, and that's where she meets Rebecca's friend, Andre, and so on.  All of these people are either married or in committed relationships, but that fact doesn't stop ANY of them from getting a little something on the side.

I just wonder what the writer and/or director's motivation is in presenting this little morality play - was this based on real-life incidents, and if so, who hurt them so badly?  Was this film funded by the Christian Coalition, to show what bad things can happen from having an affair?  To make the audience realize how many bad things can follow from a small lapse in judgement?   But I think this might be too simple, because just because certain events come after one event, it doesn't necessarily mean that the initial event CAUSED all the bad things to happen.  Sometimes we confuse sequence with causality, and they in fact be different.

Still, this film left me scratching my head, because after all the bad things happen, time is seen rewinding back to that first "bad" decision, and we then get a small taste of how the timeline would play out differently.  There's no physical time machine, no magic spell, no mystical character with a stopwatch or a crystal ball, the rewinding just sort of...happens.  So, OK, how?  And also, why?  And who's to say that the resulting events are "better" or "worse" than the ones we've already seen, just because they're different?  I'd like to see the proper paperwork on this, please.  And even then, things are "better" until they're not, and that ending shot REALLY confused me.  Somebody, please explain!

NITPICK POINT: For a film from 2002, those cheesy video effects, like when you see a sort of (not animated, exactly, just altered) version of NYC through the windows of the cab - damn, I thought those type of effects stopped being used in the late 1980's.  They're so "Friday Night Videos".... or like something out of bad public access cable, know what I mean?  This was director Fisher Stevens' first film, and that really shows - at least he eventually turned to making meaningful documentaries.

Now I wish I could turn back the clock - if I'd known how pointless and confusing this film was, I would have skipped this one, and made room in my chain for a better film.  But that's the ongoing  problem, I never know for sure how good each film is going to be until I watch them.

Also starring Ron Eldard (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Marley Shelton (last seen in "Rampage"), Sarita Choudhury (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Patrick Breen (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Zoe Caldwell (last seen in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "The Boss"), Bruno Amato (last seen in "Live by Night"), Idina Menzel (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Ron Rifkin (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Donna Hanover (last seen in "Superstar").

RATING: 3 out of 10 sleeping pills

Set It Up

Year 12, Day 63 - 3/3/20 - Movie #3,465

BEFORE: Getting closer to the end of the romance chain, however I just noticed a film running on premium cable which is one that I've been avoiding for years, and I think it may fit in thematically, and of course I also see a way that it can fit into my chain this week, since it shares two actors with tomorrow's film.  I could just drop it into the mix very easily, however I just got my March line-up right where I want it, I'm even one film over, so as it is, I need to drop something from the last week of the month.  If I add one more film this week, then I'll need to drop TWO films from the set line-up, or else double-up on a weekend day if I can find two short-ish films.  I feel like I should lean toward being more inclusive, even if I have to watch 32 films during March instead of 31, because I thought of a good film to watch on April Fool's Day, and I don't want to mess with that - or getting the Hitler films to line up with April 20.  There is a time for everything, after all.

Jon Rudnitsky carries over from "Home Again".

THE PLOT: Two corporate executive assistants hatch a plan to play matchmaker for their two workaholic bosses.

AFTER: And now I have the official name for the Hollywood technique of getting two people to fall in love by sending them phony notes - here the assistants, Charlie and Harper, call it getting "Cyrano'd".  It's a modern version, where they communicate with each other by text message, phone, etc. to exchange information about each other's bosses, and make sure that the two potential lovers end up together on a stuck elevator, sitting near each other at Yankee Stadium, etc.

Only it's NOT really being "Cyrano'd", is it?  The Cyrano de Bergerac character wrote lines for his friend to say to profess his love for Roxanne, and Cyrano really was in love with her, too, only he didn't think he could land her, so he was willing to settle for love by proxy.  It's a little more correct when Charlie calls it "parent trapping", based on a 1961 movie with Hayley Mills (Lindsay Lohan was in the remake) about two separated twins who find each other at camp, and scheme to get their parents back together.  It's not completely correct, either, because this is more of a "Boss trap" - by the way, what kind of horrible bastard parents separate a set of twins and decide to each raise one of their daughters when they split up?  That does not seem fair to either twin, to let them grow up without knowing they have a twin sister in another city.

What we need, instead, is the correct term for two people working together toward a common goal, usually solving a love-related dilemma, who then realize, through working together and spending time together, that they are perfect for each other - just this February alone, I've seen this formula repeating in the films "What's Your Number?", "Before We Go", "The Ugly Truth", "Some Kind of Wonderful", and to a lesser extent, "How Do You Know" and "Just Like Heaven".  I don't even know how to Google this or look it up in the urban dictionary to see if such a term already exists.  I'll ask on Twitter and update here if anyone supplies the proper term.  (Is it worth noting that the female lead in today's film, Zoey Deutch, is the daughter of the star (Lea Thompson) and director of the film "Some Kind of Wonderful", which also has two people falling in love while trying to make another love match happen?)

Anyway, the plan is put into motion here because both assistants believe they have the "boss from hell" - her boss is very demanding and always in a bad mood, while his boss is also demanding, and very jealous that his ex-wife filed for divorce suddenly and is already getting remarried.  They both figure, if they can just get these two to keep bumping into each other, maybe sparks will fly, and they'll both end up in better moods, plus they may stop spending so much time in the office, making their assistant's lives hell.  It's a nice theory, but I'm not sure the logic is completely there, because if both bosses are Type A people, then they have tremendous drives to be successful - being in a relationship isn't necessarily going to change how much time they spend in the office, or for that matter, how nice they are to their assistants.  But I'll admit that if their bosses are dating, that's probably at least a few nights per week where they'll be out on dates and not working late.

Surprisingly, the plan works, umm, until it doesn't.  There's a date at a Korean BBQ that goes horribly wrong (I agree, it shouldn't be up to the customer to grill their own meat, too much can go wrong.  My wife and I got that same vibe from a certain fondue restaurant that wanted us to cook our own chicken.  So, umm, what exactly are we paying the restaurant for?)  During the good dates, though, our two stalwart assistants found some spare time for Harper to start a new relationship with "mini-golf guy" and Charlie got to reconnect with his hot Brazilian girlfriend, only to find out that he's her "back-up", her go-to when she's not seeing anyone else.  And then when "golf guy" stops calling, it's not too hard to see that the writers have been planning to get Harper and Charlie together this whole time...

Perhaps there's a better analogy to be found somewhere in the works of Shakespeare, some comedy like "Twelfth Night" or "Measure for Measure", only my knowledge of the Bard is still somewhat limited, I didn't get too far past "Romeo & Juliet" and "Hamlet", though there are plenty of plays I'm sort of familiar with, like "The Tempest" and "The Taming of the Shrew".  Again, I don't know what the term is, but at some point in a farcical rom-com, all of the plans are revealed, and the truth comes out.  Charlie and Harper's plan works a little TOO well when their bosses get engaged, and guess who gets stuck doing all the work for the last-minute elopement?  Guess who has to pick out the ring, make the travel arrangements, etc.  Honestly, this is probably where the assistants should have scrapped the whole plan, because the whole point of this exercise was to REDUCE their workload, not increase it.  The film then gives them another reason to stop the wedding, which seemed a bit like overkill to me, because a reason to stop it already existed.

At the very end, Charlie's boss comes to his apartment, to ask for the folder of information that he's collected over the years about the boss's ex-wife.  Apparently at least the boss learned to start paying more attention to what his lovers like and don't like, so one good thing came out of it.  But here Charlie has something that his (ex-)boss wants and needs, why he didn't use this as leverage is also beyond me, this doesn't seem to make much sense at this point in the story, for him to just hand it over.

NITPICK POINT: Harper can't collect her boss's dinner which she ordered from a delivery service, because she doesn't have any cash on her.  Really?  This film was released in 2018, when most delivery services (GrubHub, Seamless, DoorDash) would all take credit cards as a primary source of payment, and this would happen at the time of the order, not at the time of delivery.  Charlie is able to then use his cash to buy the dinner for HIS boss, but how was the ordering completed without any payment being made?  The trend in NYC restaurants has been AWAY from "cash only" in the last few years, and more towards "credit cards only".

There's a bit near the end where struggling writer Harper finally forces herself to FINISH writing something, and unlike the usual Hollywood (false) depiction of writer's block - why directors love to make audiences watch writers staring at a blank piece of paper or a blank screen is just beyond my understanding - but here Harper's inability to finish one article, over the course of months, has a valid excuse, because she's always too busy running errands for her demanding boss.  But then she finds that, even given the time, she can't write something GOOD because she's put too much pressure on herself to write something good.  Her friend's solution is to just write something, even if it's bad, and then fix that up later.  (Similar advice was given in the film "Under the Tuscan Sun", I believe.)  But here is what I've learned, after writing over 11 years of short essays about movies - the best thing that can make you write, blocked or not, is a deadline.  Maybe that's why Harper couldn't finish an article before, because there was no set deadline.  A ticking clock is a great motivator, I've found - and I never let myself watch the next movie (umm, unless I'm saving a review for later in the chain) until I finish writing the review of the one before.  The chain, and my life, simply can't progress because I haven't finished making a (hopefully) coherent thought about the last film I've seen.  And each review doesn't have to be great, I get that - but the self-imposed deadline always manages to do the trick, at least so far.

Also starring Zoey Deutch (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Glen Powell (last seen in "Everybody Wants Some!!"), Lucy Liu (last heard in "Mulan II"), Taye Diggs (last seen in "Chicago"), Joan Smalls, Meredith Hagner (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Pete Davidson (last seen in "Trainwreck"), Tituss Burgess (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie"), Jake Robinson, Noah Robbins, Ralph Byers (last seen in "Regarding Henry"), Leonard Ouzts, Jaboukie Young-White, (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet") Jeff Hiller (last seen in "Adam"), Wai Ching Ho (last seen in "Hustlers").

RATING: 5 out of 10 slices of New York pizza

Home Again

Year 12, Day 62 - 3/2/20 - Movie #3,464

BEFORE: Today I had my first encounter with the effects of the Corona virus (sorry, Covid-19) since my boss left for an appearance at a college in North Carolina, and the plan was for him to, upon returning to New York on Thursday, board a plane two hours later leaving from the same airport to fly to France for another event.  Which meant I wouldn't see him for a week, and could get some work done at the office without the distractions of doing other little odd jobs for him all day long.  Only when he left for North Carolina, he forgot to bring the folder with him that had the Paris travel info, despite my mentioning many times that he would have to bring everything needed for both trips with him on the first trip.  So I dashed to the post office to send the folder by Express Mail to his North Carolina hotel, and then later I got the e-mail saying that the Paris event was cancelled.  So now he'll be back on Friday instead of Tuesday, and I wasted money on postage for something that didn't need to be mailed.

But it seems they're not dealing with the effects of the virus in Europe as well as we are in the U.S. - and by the effects I don't even mean the illness, I mean the paranoia and the political wrangling over how best to deal with a viral illness.  I'm in my early 50's, but fairly confident that I could ride out a flu-like viral illness, so I'm willing to take my chances.  But, on the other hand, if the medical community decides that maybe everyone should stay home from work for a couple of weeks until this all boils over, JUST so those that have it don't end up spreading it to the ones that don't, well, I'm willing to make that sacrifice, too.  Look, I've got food and beer at home, movies to watch and three weeks of comic books to catch up on, not to mention chores around the house that I would love to pretend to get to.  So I'm all for shutting everything down (school, work, all social events) for two weeks (OK, three, tops) while we all get a handle on the Corona virus.  Who's with me?

It's Day 3 (out of 3) for Reese Witherspoon movies, as she carries over from "Just Like Heaven".  I blocked out my films for the rest of March, what I'm going to watch if - sorry, WHEN - this romance chain eventually ends.

THE PLOT: Life for a single mom in Los Angeles takes an unexpected turn when she allows three young guys to move in with her.

AFTER: Another film that I had NOT been looking forward to, because I remembered the commercials that ran in 2017 when the film got released, and they made the film seem terrible.  Without knowing any details of how the three men came to live in this house with a family, it just seemed so contrived, so sitcom-like, I was prepared to hate this film.  And it turned to be very contrived, only I didn't hate it so much.  That's why we have to play out the games, because often my first impression of a film could be a wrong one.  (I'm probably right more often than I'm wrong about which films I'm going to like, but I read the three Witherspoon films all wrong, the one that I thought I would like the most, "How Do You Know", just left me scratching my head, asking "How Do You Make a Movie Like THAT?")

Sure, this is a contrived situation - single Mom Alice goes out for a birthday night on the town with friends, and they party with three male friends who just HAPPEN to be working on pitching their own independent movie idea, and then they all end up passed out at Alice's house, which just HAPPENS to have a spare guest house that nobody is using, and Alice's deceased dad just HAPPENS to have been a famous filmmaker that the young guys admire, and they flatter Alice's mom just enough so that she HAPPENS to suggest that they stay in the guest house while they finish their screenplay.  Because, you see, the young men just HAPPEN to have been thrown out of their last apartment, earlier that very same day.  Whoof, that's a lot of happen-stances - one can almost see the divine hand of the screenwriter bringing all these random elements together to form a near perfect storm of coincidence.

Oh, yeah, Alice just HAPPENS to be separated from her husband, who's a band manager back in New York, and she recently moved back to L.A. with her two daughters.  So having three young men hanging around the same house seems like a totally terrible idea, except then it isn't, because they get along well with her daughters, provide some kind of missing stable male influence in their lives, and one can even help her older daughter with writing a one-act play for school.  The fact that one of the three men is romantically interested in Alice doesn't hurt either.

Alice's ex, meanwhile, thinks it's a terrible idea to have three male strangers crashing at the house where his daughters live (and he doesn't even know that one is sleeping with his wife) so it forces him to come to L.A. and investigate the situation.  Another coincidence that it takes this situation to spend time with his own family, something he should have been doing more of in the first place, perhaps.  And if you thought things were tense in the house before, just wait until Alice's husband shows up, and everything comes to a boil.

But fortunately, the situation also finds ways to be more charming than inconvenient, and that's really saying something - you start to maybe think that maybe things are going to work out for the best, whatever that specifically means, though, is a little up-for-grabs.  Having three extra sets of hands around to pick up the kids when needed, cook dinner occasionally and, umm, spend time with after hours (that one guy in particular, thankfully Alice isn't sleeping with all three of them...) turns out to be just what the family needs, again, in a very coincidental, barely-believable sort of way.

So it's not a Shakespearean drama, but neither is it a silly bedroom farce, it's sort of right down the middle.  A film that acknowledges that it's tough to be a single parent, also tough to be separated from your spouse while you try to figure out the next direction to go in life.  I'm sure this strikes a chord with at least a certain segment of the population.  For that matter, it's tough to pitch a screenplay, it's tough to work with a writing partner, it's tough to design a web-site for your decorating business, and it's tough to drive a stick-shift.  But at least everyone in this film is trying to do the best that they can, and that's not nothing.

Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "Norman"), Candice Bergen (last seen in "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"), Pico Alexander (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Jon Rudnitsky, Nat Wolff (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Lola Flanery, Eden Grace Redfield (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Lake Bell (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Dolly Wells (last seen in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"), Michael Cyril Creighton (ditto), Reid Scott (last seen in "Venom"), P.J. Byrne (last seen in "Rampage"), Ben Sinclair (last seen in "Sisters"), Josh Stamberg (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Jen Kirkman, Paige Cato.

RATING: 5 out of 10 boxes of old screenplays

Just Like Heaven

Year 12, Day 61 - 3/1/20 - Movie #3,463

BEFORE: It's day 1 of March but day 2 of the Reese Witherspoon programming, as she carries over from "How Do You Know".  Two weeks left of romance films before I change gears, and I imagine that spring will be in the air when I watch my next non-relationship-based film.  The Easter candy's in the stores already - why isn't there any good St. Patrick's Day candy?  Why do the candy makers just sort of always skip that one?  I mean, they skip Independence Day, too, but I assume that's because chocolate tends to melt in the summer.  Where's the good Irish candy, like chocolate leprechaun coins or Irish minty chocolates or something?  Guinness-flavored chocolate?  No?  Just me, then?

Tomorrow on Turner Classic Movies, it's the LAST DAY of Oscar-nominated films, so it's your last chance to tune in my last chance to get ahead. Valerie Hobson links from "Great Expectations" to the day's first film, can you fill in the other links?  Answers below.

MONDAY, MARCH 2 on TCM (31 Days of Oscar, Day 31)
6:00 am "The Card" (1952) with _____________ linking to:
7:45 am "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1969) with _____________ linking to:
10:30 am "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) with _____________ linking to:
2:30 pm "The Window" (1949) with _____________ linking to:
4:00 pm "Strangers on a Train" (1953) with _____________ linking to:
6:00 pm "I Want You" (1951) with _____________ linking to:
8:00 pm "Laura" (1944) with _____________ linking to:
9:45 pm "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947) with _____________ linking to:
11:45 pm "My Fair Lady" (1964) with _____________ linking to:
3:00 am "The Nun's Story" (1959) with _____________ linking to:
5:45 am "Tom Jones" (1963)

I'm scoring big tomorrow with 6 films seen: "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (the 2nd version), "Lawrence of Arabia", "Strangers on a Train", "My Fair Lady", "The Nun's Story" (caught it last year) and "Tom Jones".  That bumps me up to 120 seen out of 360, or 33.3%, exactly one-third seen, which is right where I predicted I would finish.  How about that?  I was hoping for more, but they had to pick some pretty obscure movies to make the chain work out - and that last film, "Tom Jones", links via Albert Finney back to the FIRST film in their chain, 30 days ago.  So that means it's one big loop - so they could have started it anywhere, I don't know why they didn't make more love stories line up with Valentine's Day, then.  And they never used the same link twice, which I do all the time.  I love this format, but I think my score would have been higher if they just programmed the big, more well-known nominated films - I'll get 'em next year.

THE PLOT: A lonely landscape architect falls for the spirit of the beautiful woman who used to live in his new apartment.

AFTER: With such an eclectic cast, really the only place I could put this one was between two other films with Reese Witherspoon in them - OK, maybe Mark Ruffalo turns up on films pretty often, but not in romances - last year he was in the relationship-based film "Thank You for Sharing", but that was something of an anomaly.  How many other romances have Donal Logue or Jon Heder in them?  So this is where it had to go.

I wasn't looking forward to this one, because from what little I knew about it, it seemed like a film where a guy falls in a ghost that's haunting his apartment, and how is THAT story going to end?  He's alive, she's dead, talk about a long-distance relationship, and they can't be with each other until he dies or she gets reincarnated?  Fortunately that's not what this film is about, he falls for her spirit, not her ghost, and there's a big clue to her condition in the lyrics of "Just Like Heaven", the Cure song which this is apparently based on, and which opens and closes the movie.

Thankfully, she's only MOSTLY dead, even though this doesn't explain how Elizabeth's spirit can be back in her apartment, or why the new tenant David can see her, and nobody else can.  Eventually there's something akin to an explanation, only not really, but this is a movie where anything can happen and usually does.  But naturally if he's going to help her get back into her body and live again, then maybe in the process she'll come to appreciate his help - and as we've seen, it's always the guy who helps the woman out that she'll eventually regard as a suitable mate. Right?

We the audience get to see a day in the life of Dr. Elizabeth Masterson before her accident, but as a spirit she seems to have little memory of her life, so she and David have to do some detective work to find out who she is and what happened to her - even though he's subletting her old apartment, completely furnished, month by month, the renting party won't tell him anything about the previous tenant, so they have to kind of go the long way around.  But eventually they stumble on her medical knowledge and her familiarity with a particular hospital and they manage to put the pieces together.

Of course, there are issues here about re-writing how comas work, and trying to define the abilities of a spirit that somehow got separated from its physical body - not to mention the suggestion that there's some larger force at work that must be causing these events to happen, be that fate, karma or some divine intervention.  Which therefore implies there must be certain things destined to happen, and destiny is therefore stronger than accidents or chance, and then logically free will is the next casualty if you follow the thread a little further.  Another problem is that this film could give false hope to relatives of people in comas in real-life.  But I think this film ended up being charming enough to allow me to forgive a great deal of all that.  At least it was an original idea for a romance that I haven't seen in a film before.

Also starring Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), Donal Logue (last seen in "The Cloverfield Paradox"), Dina Waters (last seen in "The Haunted Mansion"), Jon Heder (last seen in "School for Scoundrels"), Ben Shenkman (last seen in "Must Love Dogs"), Ivana Milicevic (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "I Am Sam"), Caroline Aaron (last seen in "Hello, My Name Is Doris"), Ron Canada (last seen in "The Human Stain"), Kerris Dorsey (last seen in "Moneyball"), Alyssa Shafer, Willie Garson (last seen in "The Polka King"), Joel McKinnon Miller (last heard in "The Swan Princess"), Catherine Taber, Raymond O'Connor.

RATING: 6 out of 10 books on the occult

ANSWERS: The missing TCM "360 Degrees of Oscar" links are Petula Clark, Peter O'Toole, Arthur Kennedy, Ruth Roman, Farley Granger, Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn, Edith Evans.