The Debt

Year 12, Day 95 - 4/4/20 - Movie #3,498

BEFORE: Helen Mirren carries over from "Eye in the Sky", and it's the last time for her, unless I watch that "Nutcracker" movie at Christmas time.  Hey, five in a row is not bad, I think the record for 2020 so far is only 7, and that's De Niro.  Mark Strong is second with 6 appearances, so Dame Mirren is tied with Al Pacino for third place right now.  Of course, it's still very early, I'm only about 1/3 of the way through this year that, quite honestly, can't end quickly enough.  Without my movies to keep me focused each day, and give me something to look forward to tomorrow, I think I'd go quite bonkers.

THE PLOT: IN 1965, three Mossad agents cross into East Berlin to apprehend a notorious Nazi war criminal.  Thirty years later, the secrets the Agents share come back to haunt them.

AFTER: Another good, twisty World War II-based suspense film tonight, which works fine for me, that's the 2nd film this month with Nazis in it, and I've got more coming up in a little over two weeks, which should synch up right with a certain date on the calendar.  But it's also another one of those films that toggles between the present and the past - or I should say, between 1995 and 1965.  We see one version of the past events at the start of the film - as one character reads from her daughter's new book, a novelized version of what happened in '65, and then later we flash back to the events as she remembers them, and we learn that there are some key differences between the story these agents told, and what really happened in East Berlin.

This has a bit of a jarring effect on the viewer, to be told one version of the story and then just when you think you know how the long flashback is going to end, we find ourselves in a different place.  But I think that's the point, the three Israeli agents made a choice, and they told themselves they had to live with that choice, and not reveal the truth.  But it's only later that they realize their choice had an impact beyond what they intended.

The choice to set the story in these particular years is no accident - in 1965 Berlin was still divided in to zones, East Berlin was the Soviet sector, and West Berlin had American, British and French sectors.  And twenty years after World War II ended, I suppose it's still possible that there still might be a former Nazi hiding out there.  For the later sequences, in 1995, that year is significant because it's 50 years after the war ended, and it's most probable that by then there might not be many still alive.  So it kind of had to be set in this exact time-frame.  These three Israelis entered the Soviet sector looking for Dieter Vogel, aka "The Surgeon of Birkenau", who might be working there as an obstetrician, with the goal of apprehending him and bringing him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes and experiments on Jews during the holocaust.

Tensions run high when two of the three agents need to pose as a married couple, only the close quartering and isolation needed for their cover threatens to get in the way.  Rachel pretends to be David's wife, only finds herself in a relationship with Stefan.  Then, as time wears on, her pretend feelings for David seem to take prominence over the relationship she's already got going on with Stefan.  As people all over the world are finding out this month, relationships can change when people are forced to spend more time together - I just read about a slew of divorces that may result from people sheltering in place with their own spouses during the Covid-19 pandemic.  I'm not sure that's true, could be just some sensationalist journalism, but I'll allow that it's certainly possible.

Here, however, is the greatest fault of the film, in my opinion.  It's always a little bit dicey when you run a split timeline like this, and different actors need to be cast to play the younger versions of the characters.  Or maybe they cast the young ones first in some cases, and have to find older actors to match.  But this is the key, they have to match!  As a viewer, I need to believe that the characters are the same, that the younger version of that character is going to age and turn into the older version someday.  While anyone's appearance can change a lot in thirty years, it still needs to be believable on film, and certain facial features - the eyes, the shape of the face, the earlobes, they're going to stay somewhat the same, and this needs to be taken into consideration at the casting stage.

Now, I've got no problem with Rachel's character between the two timelines - with a similar hair color, I can believe that Jessica Chastain's Rachel will look like Helen Mirren's Rachel, thirty years later.  But for the two men, David and Stefan, I'm just not seeing it.  Young David, Sam Worthington, does not look anything like old David, played by Ciaran Hinds - and young Stefan, played by Marton Csokas, doesn't resemble Tom Wilkinson as old Stefan, not one bit.  In fact, the facial features of Marton Csokas and Ciaran Hinds are somewhat similar, so now I'm wondering if they made a mistake in casting, and the two actors in the 1965 flashback were playing the wrong roles!  Given the shapes of their faces, I'd also be more likely to believe that Sam Worthington and Tom Wilkinson were playing the same character, younger and older.  So, what gives?

There may be other factors at work here, based on things like amount of screen time, number of lines, which actor gets higher billing, is more famous, etc.  But at the end of the day, the two actors playing the same character just need to resemble each other, to some degree, and here they just don't.  I was waiting for some kind of switcheroo, where when they came out of the mission, Stefan would pretend to be David and vice-versa, basically switching lives after their life-changing experience, but it didn't happen that way.  When a mistake in the casting then interferes with the storyline, then we've got something of a problem.  Don't believe me?  Go Google some photos of Marton Csokas and Ciaran Hinds, and then you may agree with me that they SHOULD have been playing the same character.  Now do the same with the other actors, and I think you'll see where I'm coming from.  Casting them the other way, however, was just distracting.

Again, I don't know if this was a casting mistake, like someone accidentally assigned one pair of actors to the wrong roles, or perhaps the filmmakers just didn't care too much that the younger actors didn't resemble the older ones.  Now, I'm not even sure which is the greater sin, but either way, it's wrong in my book.

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Ciaran Hinds (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Sam Worthington (last seen in "The Shack"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "A Good Woman"), Marton Csokas (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Jesper Christensen (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Romi Aboulafia, Yonatan Uziel (last seen in "Munich"), Brigitte Kren, Istvan Göz, Morris Perry

RATING: 5 out of 10 Krav Mega moves

Eye in the Sky

Year 12, Day 94 - 4/3/20 - Movie #3,497

BEFORE: Helen Mirren carries over again from "The Leisure Seeker", and I was wrong the other day, it's not four Helen Mirren films that I scheduled, it's really five. A Mirren-thon, if you will.  I'm not sure why I thought it was four, was I mentally not counting "The Good Liar" because it was on a screener?  That can't be, I guess it was just a simple mistake or a brain lapse.  Anyway, the films of Helen Mirren are going to get me very close to Movie #3,500 - and a big century milestone is usually a big deal around here, only I'm not really in the mood for celebrating that much these days.  Taking any pleasure at all in things feels very inappropriate when there's a pandemic going on, and people are dying in hospitals not that far away.  Anyway, people are being publicly shamed for having too good a time these days, so we're all supposed to pursue more noble pursuits, I guess, or set aside time each day for quiet reflection or something, when truth be told, it feels more like a time for panic and anxiety.  I'd run screaming through the streets if I could, truth be told, only that doesn't accomplish anything in the long run, and it puts me at greater risk.  So that's out of the question.

When I was 17 the Chernobyl disaster occured in the Ukraine, April of 1986.  I would have been a freshman at NYU at the time, and sometime later, maybe a few months after, I was visiting my parents in Massachusetts and they were telling me that their local parish was hosting some people from the Chernobyl area, so they could get away from the residual radiation.  But it was only for a few weeks, and after that, those people would return to the Ukraine.  I thought this was madness of a sort, why would they want to go back to the disaster area, why not keep them in the U.S., where they could make a fresh start?  Isn't the half-life of radioactive material a few thousand years, there's no way that area could still be safe, who in their right mind would want to return to an irradiated area?  Things were simpler in my mind as a teenager, I guess, because whatever else, I guess that was their home.  Since then I've made my own home in New York City, and I've stayed here through a terrorist attack, a blackout, a superstorm and a couple of snowpocalypses, and now this pandemic.  People around the country might be looking at my situation right now, sheltered in place near the epicenter of an outbreak and wonder, who in their right mind would stay in that disaster area?  And I realize now the Chernobyl situation might have been as complicated as my own.  Running right now would be both useless, ill-advised and a form of giving up, and I don't want to give up on my home or my city.  So I'm here for the duration, whatever that means or however long that takes, unless things get really ultra super-bad.  And I don't even want to think about what that would be like.

THE PLOT: Col. Katherine Powell, a military officer in command of an operation to capture terrorists in Kenya, sees her mission escalate when a girl enters the kill zone, triggering an international dispute over the implications of modern warfare.

AFTER: This film was probably intended to spark some kind of ethical debate about the use of drone technology in warfare, only it feels like it falls a little short, perhaps.  I kind of expected a questioning of drone tech itself, like whether it's fair to sit in a room hundreds or thousands of miles away, and use computers, cameras and lasers to direct a missile strike with pinpoint accuracy, taking out a combatant who might never even know he was a target.  Instead, the debate here concerns collateral damage, any innocent bystanders in the area who wouldn't realize that they're living next to or even passing by the house of a suspected terrorist, and they'd obviously be taken out by a drone strike from afar. In this specific case, it's a small girl who is selling bread right outside the house where a couple of terrorists are meeting with a former British national who seems to have turned to the other side.  With a missile strike, the U.S. and British combined forces could take three people off their most wanted list, but if there's a chance that they injure or kill this little girl, is the strike warranted?

The short answer is yes, if they can get the chances of the girl not surviving the attack down below 50%, at least on paper.  The damage and the fallout is speculative, of course, and nobody really knows for sure how big the blast radius will be, or even in the end, if it's OK to take out one innocent person to save the lives of many people.  If the allied forces do nothing, then there's a chance that three people in the house will put on suicide vests and attack a shopping mall, where they could kill 80 to 100 people.  So therein lies the ethical debate, can you kill one person to save 100 more?

But I don't know, there's only so much drama that you can wring out of a film full of watching people as they themselves watch screens, whether that's drone footage or video-chatting with each other.  It's a bit like the problem they're having with the late night talk shows right now, where they can't host a studio audience, so they're all broadcasting from the hosts' super-nice apartments or mansions, using iPhones for cameras and teleconferencing in the sidekick or the musical director.  I wonder if the networks were just contractually obligated to put on a show, because they're paying the union people who aren't working and they have to keep the advertising dollars coming in somehow, but the shows themselves are darn-near unwatchable.  I hate to be selfish, but I need this pandemic to end soon because I can't stomach all the bad phone-camera work being seen on the news, both the footage they're airing from the front lines, and also the non-studio newscasters with no make-up and all the shaking of the cameras!  Makes me sick to my stomach.  Nobody looks good on a video-chat, simply nobody, so really I think they should just run repeats for the duration of the crisis, that should be enough motivation to get everyone focused on staying indoors and staying healthy - you don't get any new TV shows until the pandemic is over!  Then you'll see people volunteering left and right and putting more pressure on scientists to develop a vaccine in record time.

Also starring Alan Rickman (last heard in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Jeremy Northam (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Iain Glen (last seen in "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider"), Monica Dolan (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "1917"), John Heffernan, Babou Ceesay (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Carl Beukes (last seen in "The Girl"), Aaron Paul (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Phoebe Fox, Lemogang Tsipa, Kim Engelbrecht, Gavin Hood (last seen in "Ender's Game"), Michael O'Keefe (last seen in "Michael Clayton"), Laila Robins (last seen in "True Crime"), Jessica Jones, Daniel Fox, Graham Hopkins (last seen in "Ali"), Francis Chouler (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Roberto Kyle, Lex King, Vusi Kunene, Barkhad Abdi (last seen in "Blade Runner 2049"), Warren Masemola, Ebby Weyime, Armaan Haggio, Aisha Takow.

RATING: 5 out of 10 plastic buckets

The Leisure Seeker

Year 12, Day 93 - 4/2/20 - Movie #3,496

BEFORE: More stress dreams this morning - I want to stay informed, but I should probably stop watching MSNBC between 3 and 5 am before turning in, because the damage is taking its toll.  Surprisingly, I don't tend to dream about the virus, or hospitals, or even sick people, the stress draws upon the fears that are already in my brain and jumbles them together to torment me.  This morning I dreamed that I was back in college, and got an assignment to draw some new animated characters for a proposed ad campaign, and it was like figure drawing, only the character had to be a sporty woman, who also looked smart, and I think the parameters kept changing.  I looked in some Playboy magazines for some inspiration in drawing the figure, but even though I could see in my mind what the character should ultimately look like, I couldn't seem to capture that on paper in a drawing.  Meanwhile the assignment time was running out, and I could hear other students presenting their work in the class and getting applause and good marks, but I was still having trouble making that first drawing, and this went on and on.  Meanwhile my roommate walked by and asked me if I could do a drawing for him, and I had to refuse, because I couldn't even get my own work done, and I just had that sinking feeling of failure, again and again.  So I woke up at 1 pm, just feeling defeated and worthless.

Helen Mirren carries over from "The Good Liar".  Another film about old people tonight, this couple takes off on a road trip in a Winnebago, which is another thing that people definitely should not be doing these days - I saw on the news how they've had to close down some national parks, including the Grand Canyon, because of the outbreak.  And a Manhattan woman got publicly shamed on Instagram for posting photos of taking her family on a cross-country road trip to get out of NYC, in defiance of the stay-at-home order.  Forget that people were mad at her because not everyone has the resources to just rent an RV and take off for parts unknown, it's irresponsible because this woman or her kids could have the corona virus and not know it, and then they're spreading it to other parts of the country.  Or they could all catch it at a rest stop or service station, you never know - so the only really safe thing to do is stay home for the next month, even if that means we all go a little stir crazy while waiting for the pandemic to ease up.

THE PLOT: A runaway couple goes on an unforgettable journey in the faithful old RV they call "The Leisure Seeker".

AFTER: It's a simple enough story, an older couple gets in their Winnebago and drives down to Key West, somewhere they've always wanted to go.  Turns out John Spencer was a literature professor and a big fan of Hemingway, so this makes sense - Hemingway had a house down there, and it's the home of an annual Hemingway festival, plus there's some great key lime pie served nearby, so I can see the appeal.  And his wife Ella just LOVES to travel, and to talk to everyone along the way and tell them their life story.  Does this remind you of anyone?  It should, that's basically every senior citizen mom or grandmother around, right?

But wait, there's more to the tale here, because their adult children, Will and Jane, are very concerned about their parents being out on the road.  And it's not just because their parents are at the age where they've basically circled around again to acting like children, or people who need constant care.  We soon learn that John has memory problems, dementia if not Alzheimer's, and he keeps forgetting where he is, or where they're going, or even why he stepped back into the camper, even if that was just to make some tea.  Yeah, this is probably not the person you want behind the wheel of a vehicle.  Ella's got her own health problems, though they're not specified until later in the film, she's often queasy and she wears a number of wigs.  You feel me?

It took me a while to figure out where they left from, too - Ella referred to John as a Yankee, and there's a prominent copy of Boston magazine in the camper, but the description on Wiki of the novel this is based on says they left from their home in suburban Detroit, traveled hrough Indiana before heading east to Pennsylvania and then turning south toward the Carolinas and then Key West.  Some parts of this film were shot in Indiana, but most of the locations listed were in Georgia and Florida.  Actually, scrap what I said before, that itinerary makes no sense.  The best way to get from Detroit to Florida doesn't even go through Indiana, even Pennsylvania doesn't make much sense, unless there was some campground there they were familiar with that they wanted to re-visit.  The best route to South Carolina should have taken them through Ohio, then West Virginia.  But I guess when you've got someone driving with dementia, maybe all bets are off.

(UPDATE: The IMDB says the couple left from the Boston area, and a double-check of Wikipedia says they lived in Wellesley, Mass.  I guess this makes more sense, it explains the Boston magazine, but not why they stopped at a campground in Pennsylvania.  Everyone knows if you're headed to Florida from New England, you're probably going to take I-95 and hug the East Coast.  But again, dementia - plus if it's their last road trip, maybe they're trying to stop in as many states as possible?  Ah, the novel "The Leisure Seeker" has the couple traveling from Detroit along Route 66 to Disneyland, so the film changed both the starting point of the trip and the destination.)

Along the way they watch old slide-shows of family photos, birthdays and vacations and such.  This is great for jogging John's memory, he's got good days and bad days when it comes to things like remembering how old his own children are, or why he's not waking up in his own bedroom.  But this also has bad effects if there should happen to be some relationship in his past that he might have been hiding from his own wife.  So, yeah, it's possible that spending too much time in a small space with your spouse can have negative effects.  It cuts both ways, because Ella finds out about John's past misdeed, but John, in his addled state, gets hung up on Ella's relationship with her first boyfriend, and keeps accusing her of having feelings for Dan Coleman, and finally they have to track him down and visit him in a nursing home while on their road trip just to finally put the past behind them.  Only there's no guarantee that John will remember that they did that.

Kudos to Dame Helen Mirren, who really nails the accent of an American from South Carolina who's been living up north for a few decades.  You may even forget that she's British after seeing her in this.  I think the first film I'd ever seen her in was the sci-fi film "2010", where she had a prominent Russian accent. As I've said many times, the sign of great acting is when you're not aware that you're watching an actor acting, because the actor has essentially disappeared into the character.  Watch this (and yesterday's film, too) for prime examples of experienced, talented actors (that's McKellen and Sutherland, also) who really have a handle on how to do that.

The use of dementia as a plot device is very sneaky, it allowed for information about John and Ella's past to be revealed slowly and intermittently, as John remembered (or mis-remembered) it.  Most other films these days would do a lot of flashbacks or time-jumping, which is just another way of doling out the information to the audience as needed, slowly revealing the hidden truths, and allowing each new bit of information to change what had been previously known.  This is a very smart way of doing the same thing, but I don't recommend that filmmakers make a habit of using a mental disability in this way.  Still, I think I may have to bump up my rating by a point, now that I realize that the linear nature of the story was preserved, and that I really hate excessive time-jumping and flashbackery.

Eventually, though, you start to realize midway through that both of these characters are essentially circling the drain, and one way or another, this could be their last road trip together.  John really belongs in a home somewhere with supervision, and then Ella's condition seems to be getting worse.  So how could there possibly be a happy ending for these two?  I guess it all depends on how you look at it.  But if you think about it, any road trip could be your last road trip, you just never know, so it's up to you to enjoy each one.  As soon as we can all get out of quarantine or isolation, I bet there are going to be a lot of people going on their "bucket list" vacations.  I finally called the airline yesterday to cancel our May trip - because even if we went, since we're coming from New York, the state of Florida would want to detain us for 2 weeks, and it's only a 5-day trip, so that hardly seems worth it.  Epcot Center's not open, anyway, plus we'd never get out of quarantine in time to go there.  Thankfully the airline's allowing us to change our flight to any time between now and February, so we could even book the same flights next February to fly next May - that's a whole year's delay on this trip, but what else could we possibly do?

My wife and I have been to so many places - three cruises in the Caribbean, the last one went all the way down to Aruba, Curacao and Colombia, even the Panama Canal, then to Vegas twice with one side-trip to the Grand Canyon, two road trips across the South (Dallas to Little Rock to Memphis to Nashville, then Dallas to San Antonio to Houston to New Orleans) plus we've been up to Maine and over to Niagara Falls and Toronto, upstate to Lake George and Kingston, several trips to the Poconos, plus Hershey Park and Jim Thorpe, and we've lost count of how many road trips to Atlantic City.  We can't wait to get back on the road in some fashion, fingers crossed for May or June.  I've been to the West Coast many times, San Diego and also Portland, but we've never been there together.  At this point, I'd settle for just three days in A.C. when the casinos re-open.

Also starring Donald Sutherland (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Christian McKay (last seen in "The Young Messiah"), Janel Moloney, Dana Ivey (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Kirsty Mitchell (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Dick Gregory, Robert Pralgo (last seen in "The Boss"), Mylie Stone, Gabriella Cila (last seen in "Table 19"), Matt Mercurio, Marc Fajardo, Jerald Jay Savage and the voice of Donald Trump (last seen in "Bombshell").

RATING: 6 out of 10 pecan logs from Stuckey's

The Good Liar

Year 12, Day 92 - 4/1/20 - Movie #3,495

BEFORE: Got a paycheck in the mail today, from the job that laid me off in mid-March but agreed to pay everyone through the end of the month.  I worked from home for the other studio last week, but not many hours, just finished up the accounting for the 2019 tax return and a few other small things, that won't be enough hours per week to justify keeping myself employed in name only, so I requested a furlough so I could file for unemployment.  That looks like it won't kick in until next week, but New York's waived the usual 7-day waiting period by backdating my claim two weeks, so next week I should start getting some benefit money to keep me from going into debt.  We walked to the bank today so I could deposit my check and transfer some money from savings to pay my bills until the UI benefits arrive, and it was just weird being outside - I think I haven't been out anywhere in over a week, except to run around the corner to the deli for soda and milk.  My wife made me wear a rubber glove to use the ATM, and as we walked back we saw the street littered with plastic gloves and used masks.  Even in this time of crisis, people can't take a few seconds to properly throw away their used face masks?  That's part of the problem, how we got into this situation in the first place, because we're all too close together, and we don't properly throw dirty things into the trash!  We can't dig ourselves out of this unless we take better care to throw away things that might have come in contact with the virus!

Anyway, it's April Fool's Day, and the news is usually a lot of fun today, with fake reports of things or stories about pranks that people pulled, but I don't feel much like laughing today, not with people getting sick and dying all around.  I'll just be happy if this is over in a couple months and I'm still alive and have a job waiting.  I had a dream last night that I was in a restaurant with my family, and I suddenly realized I'd forgot to order food, so I saw there was a special on ropa vieja, all I could eat for $5, and I ordered that.  I had a special plate so the waiters knew to keep bringing me this stewed beef dish, even if I changed my seat, which I was apparently doing for some reason.  Then I couldn't find my family, so I just sat down at another table, with other customers' coats on the chairs, because it was time to eat another plate of rope vieja.  This shows a bit where my head is at these days - my greatest fantasy is to be able to go to a restaurant again, preferably an all-you-can-eat place like a churrascaria or a buffet.  We like to go to a churrascaria here in Queens on Good Friday, because it's less crowded, but unless something changes, that's not going to be possible this year.

This is the most appropriate film I could come up with for April 1, as Helen Mirren carries over from "Phil Spector".

THE PLOT: Con man Roy Courtnay has set his sights on his latest mark: the recently widowed Betty McLeish, worth millions.  But this time, what should have been a simple swindle escalates into a cat-and-mouse game with the ultimate stakes.

AFTER: I want to be careful not to say too much about the plot of this film, because it was released just last year, I don't think it's hit many of the streaming services yet, it's on Amazon Prime for $4.99, YouTube for $5.99 and my OnDemand cable for $6.99.  I paid none of those prices, I borrowed an Academy screener, which I know is not technically legal, but hey, think about the free publicity I'm giving to a (probably) underseen film, and how many people will then rent it on those other services, once word gets out among my tens of loyal readers.  Don't let me down, guys...  So I'll try to avoid spoilers here, because I respect the storyline, I think it's that good.  Well, mostly.

Con-man films are a dime a dozen - the best ones are ones like "The Sting" where there are schemes within schemes, or "The Spanish Prisoner", where there's a good old double-cross or maybe even a triple.  For the first hour, I'll admit this one seemed pretty basic, that it wasn't going to deliver anything more than what it had at face value, which involved the elderly Roy Courtnay pulling fake investment scams, targeting rich British gentlemen to make them think they're in on a scheme to get money out of some Russian investors.  The scheme involves transferring money via these little electronic banking keypads, and for a moment I thought that maybe the keypads were just rigged, to make it look like money is being transferred when it isn't, but nope, it's not that kind of thing.  The con is just the electronic equivalent of the guy on the street who pretends to find money, and he offers to give you some if you'll just transport it to the bank in this handy bag, only he doesn't know if he can trust you or not, so you have to put some of YOUR money into the bag too, and then he wraps both piles of money in a cloth and does a switcheroo, so when you get to the bank you've got a paper bag with blank paper in it, and he's somewhere else counting your cash.

It's the kind of scheme where you might have to play it back to figure out who's zooming who, but once you know which people are who they say they are and which one's aren't, it's pretty basic.  Then Roy finds a new mark through a dating web-site for seniors, and there's some symmetry here because at first neither party uses their real name, not until they meet the other person for dinner and make sure that they look fairly legit, or at least somewhat attractive.  But Roy ends up bonding with Betty, and before long they're dating, or whatever the senior-age equivalent term is, and Roy fakes a knee injury so that he can stay at her house for a few days, and not have to walk up the stairs to his fourth-floor flat.

Betty's adult grandson, Stephen, doesn't like Roy at all, and hates having to drive him around, and is pretty much on to Roy from the start - only he's got a trip planned to Germany, the famous Spandau prison where they detained Nazi criminals in World War II - and Roy takes the opportunity to bring in Vincent, his partner in crime, as a phony investment manager.  Vincent delivers a large check to Roy, the return on an alleged investment, as the bait to convince Betty to put her money in a joint investment account with Roy so they can both increase their collective investment and see a larger return.  Betty reveals that she's not in perfect health, so Roy figures he wins either way - either he clears out the joint account sooner, or later if Betty doesn't live very long.  Pooling assets with someone and then waiting for them to die - that sounds a lot like what some people call "marriage", right?

Anyway, Roy and Betty celebrate by taking a trip to Germany, where Stephen is unexpectedly waiting for them, and that's about all I want to say about the storyline.  Bear in mind that what gets revealed has everything to do with the location of their trip, and Roy's age suggests that there's a connection back to his World War II service, and why he's reluctant to talk about it.  Elements of a larger con are revealed, some pretty good twists here, unless you happen to find them so far-fetched as to perhaps be unbelievable.  That's about where I am after watching this, I'm a bit on the fence on this point.  But since I've got more World War II stuff coming up in mid-April, this turned out to be a pretty good way to kick off the month.

Also starring Ian McKellen (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Russell Tovey, Jim Carter (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Mark Lewis Jones (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Laurie Davidson, Phil Dunster (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Lucian Msamati, Johannes Haukur Johannesson (last seen in "Alpha"), Spike White (also last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Stella Stocker (last seen in "Fury"), Daniel Betts (last seen in "Allied"), Nell Williams, Celine Buckens (last seen in "War Horse"), Lily Dodsworth-Evans, Athena Strates, Aleksandar Jovanovic (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Michael Culkin (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Dino Kelly.

RATING: 6 out of 10 English lessons

Phil Spector

Year 12, Day 91 - 3/31/20 - Movie #3,494

BEFORE:  It's the last day of March, and thanks to doubling up once in March, and twice in January, I'm three movies ahead of the count.  So really, if I'm three short in June, as I'm now expecting to be, everything should really even itself out in a couple of months.  I'm not even going to stress out that my chain between Mother's Day and Father's Day is three films short - it doesn't matter.  I can take it easy the first three weeks of June and watch six films instead of seven, who even knows if the movie theaters will be open then, or if we'll all still be streaming everything?

Anyway, here are my format stats for March, and I've just realized that between Academy screeners and the corona virus, I have not been inside a movie theater all year so far, the last movie I saw on the  big screen was "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" and now that feels like five years ago, but it was just in December.  Here's how March broke down:

15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): "Home Again", "Rent", "In Good Company", "A Good Woman", "Book Club", "The Proposal", "Definitely Maybe", "Dean", "Darling Companion", "Morning Glory", "Life as a House", "Men in Black: International", "Leap!", "The Spy Who Dumped Me", "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"
9 Movies watched on cable (not saved): "Just Like Heaven", "Just a Kiss", "Tomb Raider", "Tolkien", "The Kid Who Would Be King", "Johnny English Strikes Again", "Ferdinand", "You Don't Know Jack", "Phil Spector"
4 watched on Netflix: "Set It Up", "Opening Night", "Marriage Story", "Murder Mystery"
3 watched on Academy screeners: "Bombshell", "Uncut Gems", "Ad Astra"
1 watched on Amazon Prime: "Late Night"
32 TOTAL

Wow, cable's really made a big comeback, 24 films out of 32, that's 75%!  Still I managed to clear a few films from my Netflix queue in the home stretch of the romance chain, and only needed to supplement with three screeners to make the last week or so of March connections.  And two of those were available On Demand, "Uncut Gems" and "Ad Astra", but they would have cost me $5.99 each, and money's tight right now.  I just filed for unemployment today, for the first time ever, after 30 years of working in the film business.  But if I can't leave the house, I've been ordered by the government to stay home because my job is "non-essential" (umm, thanks for that, I think?) so what the heck else was I supposed to do, but go on the dole?  With both animation studios I work at essentially closed, and having done all the work I can do from home, I had to get furloughed from both part-time office jobs.  Should I run out and get some job delivering stuff, or working in Amazon's warehouse?  I hear those workers are threatening to go out on strike, so I think the best thing to do is collect some benefits for a month and see how quickly NYC is able to recover without my help.  I'm not proud of this, but my hands are sort of tied.

Al Pacino carries over again from "You Don't Know Jack".  And now I realize I've got a bit of a thematic progression of sorts here, from Charles Manson to Dr. Kevorkian to Phil Spector.  Right?  Crazy cult killer to rational mercy killer to famous accused killer.

THE PLOT: A drama centered on the relationship between Phil Spector and defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden while the music business legend was on trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson.

AFTER: Wow, it's been a long time since I've seen a film with Helen Mirren in it, almost two years, I think - and now here come four of them in a row.  That's just how these things work, name any actor and a Movie Year could have five or six of their films, then the next year, nothing.

Before watching this, I'll admit that I knew very little about the Phil Spector murder case - this film definitely has a motivation for focusing on certain details, and by telling the story from the point of view of his defense team in his (first) murder case, it sure feels like someone, writer or director, wants the public to draw the conclusion that he is innocent.  We are shown repeatedly that blood spatter from the gunshot was noticeably absent from Spector's clothing, indicating that he was nowhere near the victim, Lana Clarkson, when the gun was fired into her mouth.  Ballistics tests (which ultimately were not demonstrated in the courtroom) show that someone holding the gun in someone's mouth would likely end up covered in blood and brain matter, and Spector's clothing only had a few tiny drops of blood on it, more consistent with someone who was ten feet away, and then reacting in a defensive manner to a gunshot in the same room.  So logically we're supposed to believe his version of events, which stated that he entered this room of his house, where Ms. Clarkson was holding a gun in her own mouth, and while he yelled for her to not shoot, she shot herself.  Another test supposedly conducted by the legal team with volunteers, asked to place a fake gun in their own mouths, would, when suddenly yelled at, be likely to try to remove the gun from their mouths, only to have the gun's sights catch on their teeth, forcing them to accidentally pull the (fake) trigger.

It all seems to constitute a valid defense, only there are still lingering questions, plus we are not able to hear the victim's versions of events, only one person who was there is able to disclose what happened.  Why was she putting the gun in her mouth in the first place?  Did she think that would turn Spector on?  Did she know the gun was loaded?  If she did shoot herself, was that intentional, or an accident, was she indeed distracted by Spector as the tests conveniently suggest, or did something else happen?  It's only when we've eliminated all of the other possibilities that we can arrive at a certainty, however improbable, right?  I just don't know if the defense got us there - but it turns out that there was enough doubt to not convict Spector the first time, instead the case was deemed a mistrial with a hung jury.  On the retrial, Spector was convicted of murder and is still serving 19 years to life, eligible for parole in 2025.

Then we have the other women who claim they were threatened by Spector before, also with guns.  That doesn't mean the same thing happened between him and Clarkson, I'll admit, but it does demonstrate a pattern of behavior.  While this HBO movie doesn't claim to be "based on a true story", it does depict several notable things, including footage of Spector (Pacino as Spector) threatening musicians in a recording session with a gun, and firing two shots into the ceiling when angered.  Then there's ex-wife Ronnie Spector's testimony of being abused by her husband, and his general reputation as an (admitted) hot-tempered individual.  So I'm really on the fence here, forensic evidence seems to suggest one thing, while reputation a little common sense says another.

His reputation also suggests he was a genius producer, from the Ronettes and the Crystals and Darlene Love to "River Deep, Mountain High" for Ike and Tina Turner and "Unchained Melody" and "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin'" for the Righteous Brothers.  And for all the grief that Beatles fans have thrown his way for adding his Wall of Sound techniques to "Let it Be", who's to say the Beatles would have even been able to finish that album without him, since they were constantly fighting at the time?  And if he did such a bad job with it, why did George Harrison work with him soon after on "All Things Must Pass", and John Lennon did the same with the "Imagine" album?  None of this has anything to do with his personal life, or whether he's guilty or innocent of murder, I understand - but with any famous person, how do you balance the professional career and the personal life if it seems at all dicey?  As with Michael Jackson, R. Kelly and many others, sometimes it's hard to know.

The theory that jurors would be sympathetic to Spector because of his fame was essentially negated by the fact that many millennials wouldn't even know what a phonograph record is.  Another school of thought, however, is that jurors might not favor the next celebrity on trial after the O.J. Simpson trial didn't convict him, and take their dissatisfaction with the system out on Spector. And while it might have been a good idea for Spector to take the stand in his own defense, a mock trial apparently also showed how close to the edge he tended to be, and just a minor insult from a prosecutor could set him off on a loud diatribe, which would have made him look unhinged - so therefore he was not called to the stand by his own lawyers.  And bringing up evidence about Clarkson's depression and those strange videos she made (imitating Little Richard while in blackface) were not used in court either, because that would have been a form of victim-blaming, which Spector's lawyer didn't want to do.  Ultimately a jury delivers a verdict based only on what gets admitted in court, and the movie depicts much more than that, so the audience can easily draw a different conclusion.

There's a lot to take in here - there's no question about whether Spector was eccentric, demanding and ego-driven, but a murderer?  Now, I'm not so sure.

Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), John Pirruccello (last seen in "Secret in Their Eyes"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), Rebecca Pidgeon (last seen in "Bird Box"), James Tolkan (last seen in "Back in Time"), David Aaron Baker (last seen in "The Irishman"), Matt Malloy (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Dominic Hoffman, Philip Martin, Clara Mamet, Natalia Nogulich, Matthew Rauch (last seen in "No Reservations"), Linda Miller, George Aguilar, Yolonda Ross.

RATING: 5 out of 10 focus groups

You Don't Know Jack

Year 12, Day 90 - 3/30/20 - Movie #3,493

BEFORE: Al Pacino carries over from "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood".  Sorry that I didn't get more of his films in January, to connect with "The Irishman" and "Stand Up Guys", but I guess there was a reason, and to every thing there is a season - now I can use his other films to get me further along in the chain.

I had some time today (after essentially doing the last bit of work I can do from home, so starting tomorrow I really have to start on my personal "to do" list...) so I took a look at the path I had to get me from Mother's Day (May 10) to Father's Day (June 21).  It's still very early, so the fact that I had any confirmed path at all was perhaps unusual.  However, the path I had was about 18 or 19 films short.  I had about 10 to 12 films that seem to be on topic about fathers, but even counting from the last one in the chain, I was still going to come up short.  Now, I could just take two weeks off in June and not watch anything, but really, that feels like a last resort, I'd rather take time off from movies in November and December.  So I started with the chain I had, and looked for films on my primary and secondary watchlists that could fit in-between, or maybe little deviations I could take that would then link back up with the next film in the chain.  I found quite a bit, thankfully.

Much of what I found was unexpected, and most hadn't been linked up to anything, connections I hadn't yet noticed, and some were films that had been in my chain before, but got removed when I did one shake-up or another, so now they're back in.  It's not perfect, and it's still three films short, but right now it's the best I can do, at least without access to more Academy screeners, since I don't know when I'll be going back to my offices.  But I can confirm that whatever else happens, I'll at least be blogging until Father's Day and my chain will get me there.  Maybe in May I'll review it to see if I can fill up those last three spaces, or who knows, maybe by then the lockdown/isolation will be over, and in June maybe we can take a short three-day trip somewhere, and I won't have to watch movies then.  Here's hoping, right?

THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of doctor-assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian.

AFTER: This might seem a little strange or ironic, watching a film about a doctor helping patients kill themselves at a time when there's a global pandemic, and so many doctors and nurses right now are doing all they can to help people survive it.  But I've learned over time that there are so many coincidences like this in my programming, more than I'd ever expected, that essentially they may not even be coincidences at all, just events depicted that I can draw on for lessons that have more relevance when I juxtapose them with things happening in the news.  And just as "Bombshell" both took on new meaning when seen through the prism of the Harvey Weinstein verdict, perhaps the tale of Jack Kevorkian can shed some light on the current crisis, or vice versa.  We're hearing all kinds of stories out of hospitals right now - one day last week it was reported that 13 people died at a hospital in Queens, and now I see footage on Twitter of hospital corridors that seem empty.  Which political party benefits from each conflicting side of the story?  And how could there possibly even BE conflicting sides of the story during a crisis?  And who's even trying to politicize this story in the first place.

The 1990's were a confusing time, perhaps, at least when people started to raise the issue about terminal patients and their right-to-life, and conversely their right to terminate that life, which seems to go against all rational thought concerning medical care.  First, do no harm, and then as per the Hippocratic Oath, help the patient as best as you can.  It's here in the second part that things get a little fuzzy, because does "helping the patient" mean that it's OK to help them die, if they're suffering?  Yes and no, I guess - if a patient is actively dying, then the goal is to rid them of pain and make them as comfortable as possible during that process.  But if they have a terminal condition, then what constitutes "help"?  Do they have the right to check out early, bring about their own death in a painless way?  Dr. Kevorkian clearly thought so and felt strongly about it, but the government of Michigan, and apparently many others, disagreed.  Religion plays a role in this controversy for many people, which seems both good and bad to me.  Good that people have a strong opinion and believe that life is sacred and should be preserved and extended whenever possible, but bad because these people believe in an afterlife and eternal judgment, but what if they're wrong?  What if there is no afterlife, and dying early just means an end to suffering, and that's it, no further moral consequences in heaven or hell.

I'm not completely sure where I fall on this argument, thankfully I've never had a family member with a bad enough health condition that they were begging to die, and perhaps if I did that would greatly color my perceptions.  I've had two cats who lived long enough that their bodies were basically worn out and betraying them, one just last November who we had to euthanize, and my wife and I debated for a very long time, before and after, whether it was the right thing to do.  Eventually when he could barely walk or jump, fell down a lot and could no longer use a litter box, the choice seemed clear, and we had to take him on that last ride to the vet's office.  We stayed with him while they injected him, and we watched him die, it was sad but necessary - I always regretted not staying with my previous cat, who somehow lived to nearly 25, in the last minutes of his life.

Some people view Kevorkian as a mass murderer, while others as a savior who brought peace to the terminally ill and their families in their final days.  Which is closer to the truth, or does the truth lie somewhere in-between?  What lessons, if any, can be drawn from this argument at a time when the Covid-19 virus is killing a certain percentage of the older and weaker people, and some people who have pre-exisiting conditions, or are in ill health.  It's tough out there right now, and easy to paint the corona virus as the villain, but is it?  It's just a virus, a series of molecules acting to reproduce itself as best as it can, it doesn't think or feel or realize its impact on humanity, right?  So it can't be evil, per se, if it's acting with no evil intent, just self-preservation and replication.  Follow the logic, and humanity itself is a virus on the planet Earth, humans all want to live and prosper and reproduce, and we don't view that process as good or evil, it's just life.  The effects of the smaller virus on humans is incredibly terrible, but aren't we humans damaging the vessel that we live in, too?  So if you hate the virus for killing humans, you've got to also hate humans for damaging the planet.  Right?

I'm sort of getting off the track here - the fact is that Kevorkian developed a machine, which he called the "Mercitron", and it used an IV drip that would introduce several chemicals into a person's bloodstream, in a process similar to the "lethal injection" used in the capital punishment of mass murderers.  The first chemical is a harmless saline solution, the second causes the recipient to fall into a coma, and the third one stops their heart.  At some point, Kevorkian encountered difficulty procuring the chemicals, and switched over to tanks of carbon monoxide, in a process similar to when people commit suicide in their closed garages when they leave their car running.  In most cases Kevorkian built the machine and hooked people up to it, but it was left to the terminal patient to flip the switch, or release the valve, which introduced the deadly chemicals into their own body.  I suppose this became the fine legal point, whether this constituted suicide or murder, and Kevorkian was arrested and put on trial many times.

It's worth noting, perhaps, that Kevorkian chose his cases very carefully, he allegedly turned down about 97 percent of the people who requested his help in ending their lives.  Look for a 26-year old (pre-Star Wars) Adam Driver, in his first feature film role here, playing a young man who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, but survived setting himself on fire, asking Kevorkian to help him finish the job.  Kevorkian refuses, because the man's not terminally ill, just clinically depressed.  Meanwhile, the Michigan prosecutors had to lobby for stronger laws to be passed, banning physician-assisted suicide, because the existing ones were too weak or vague to get "Dr. Death" convicted.

As seen here, Kevorkian kept defending his practice, challenging the laws, and testing the legal limits of them.  In 1998 he assisted the suicide of a man with ALS, who was unable to self-administer the drugs. So, Kevorkian did it for him, and got convicted of second degree murder.  Kevorkian was willing to appeal his case all the way to the Supreme Court, only it never got that far.  Instead he served eight years, was released in 2007 and lived another four years on the lecture circuit before he died in 2011.  He died of liver cancer, kidney problems and while hospitalized for pneumonia.  I don't know whether it's fitting or ironic that his death was described as painless, and there were no artificial attempts to keep him alive.  At some point, I guess it just is what it is.

The worst reports out of NYC hospitals these days seem to indicate that when there's a lack of beds or equipment, doctors are being forced to make tough decisions over who lives and who dies due to the pandemic.  I hesitate to draw any analogies here, because the people working in our medical system right now are true heroes, putting themselves at risk for the greater good.  We all need to support them as best we can, and if we can't do so directly the very least we can do is keep ourselves healthy and isolated if possible, to prevent any further drains on an already-taxed system.  People in the affected states and cities who are still going about their business, or traveling to escape the virus, and therefore potentially also spreading it, are acting irresponsibly and probably extending the severity and length of the lockdowns.

For a while I thought a little differently, that perhaps it would be better for more people to get the corona virus sooner, because then humanity as a whole might develop an immunity more quickly, and once we reach a saturation point where the majority of people have recovered and are (theoretically) immune, then the virus could die out, having no place to go and reproduce further.  But the human cost involved is just too great, and every person who dies in that scenario leaves a void in some family somewhere, so ultimately, it's the wrong way to go.  If we could somehow insure that everyone would just stay indoors and avoid all human contact for two weeks, it should bring about the same conclusion with less loss of life, only it's impossible to get EVERYONE in any city, state or region to comply with the orders.  We just have to do the best we can and hope for a swift result, either a developed vaccine or a communal immunity.

Also starring Brenda Vaccaro (also carrying over from "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Danny Huston (last seen in "Stan & Ollie"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), John Goodman (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), Eric Lange (last seen in "Danny Collins"), John Engler, Richard E. Council (last seen in "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing"), Sandra Seacat, Neil Brooks Cunningham (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Logan Crawford (ditto), Adam Driver (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Cotter Smith (last seen in "The Post"), David Wilson Barnes (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Deirdre O'Connell (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Todd Susman. Jeremy Bobb (last seen in "Marshall"), John Rue (last seen in "The Irishman"), Allen Lewis Rickman, Ana Reeder, Angela Pierce, Tom Kemp (last seen in "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women"), Mary Boyer, Deborah Hedwall, Daryl Edwards (last seen in "Rent"), Rondi Reed, Adam Mucci, with archive footage of Mike Wallace (last seen in "First Man"), Barbara Walters (last seen in "Mermaids").

RATING: 5 out of 10 uneaten prison meals

Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood

Year 12, Day 89 - 3/29/20 - Movie #3,492

BEFORE: Here's the one you probably saw coming, with Brad Pitt carrying over from "Ad Astra".  This is the second of the two films this month with enormous cast lists - sure, I could have programmed this one right after "Bombshell" and had Margot Robbie carry over, but then that's six films I would have missed out on!  And similarly, I've got one more film with Brad Pitt in it on my list, but instead of watching that one tomorrow, I can fit another six films in between, so that one comes up via different links next week instead.

When I link out of this one, I've got at least a dozen choices, but I'm going to be smart and circle back to an actor I've already used as a link this year, but I picked up two more films with him JUST a bit too late to be included in January's chain.  So I kind of have to make up for that before March runs out.

THE PLOT: A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry in 1969 Los Angeles, during the final years of Hollywood's Golden Age.

AFTER: Before I begin, giant-sized SPOILER ALERT regarding what follows, if you haven't seen this film yet, either go and watch it now or proceed no further.  I can't possibly talk about this film today without mentioning certain details.

Time for another check-in regarding the 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Picture, I've now seen 5 out of the 9, with another two ("Little Women", "Ford v Ferrari") scheduled for April.  That will just leave me with two to see, "Jojo Rabbit" and "Parasite".  "Jojo Rabbit" fits in thematically with my April Hitler-based chain, only it doesn't link to any of those films by actor - so I'm waiting to hear news about when "Black Widow" will be released, and I'm saving a slot for it in late September, the plan is to link into (or out of) the horror chain via Taika Waititi.  But hey, plans can change, so I'll have to review things in late summer, assuming that we're all still active and alive.  "Parasite" is on the back burner because it's exceptionally hard to link to, and I may have to wait for the next available January 1 in order to program it, unless I relax my own rules.  C'est la vie.  All I can do now is take things one month at a time, that's all that any of us can do.

But let's get to the latest from Tarantino, a film that was a contender for Best Picture less than two months ago, which feels like five years ago now that everyone's life is on some form of pause.  Remember when that was our biggest concern, wondering which film is going to bring home the Oscar?  Now we've got some bigger perspective, but it's too much.  Anyway I had a feeling that "Once Upon a Time..." might win, because I'd seen the other "sure things" like "The Irishman" and "Joker" and found them a bit lacking.  I couldn't quite get to the Tarantino film (only I COULD have, I realized the Pacino connection a bit too late) so logically, therefore, with my luck, the big contender I haven't seen is bound to take home the big prize.  People were buzzing about it, but not as much as they were buzzing about "Parasite", apparently.  Whoever I knew who'd seen "Parasite" was REALLY all in on it, and that should have been an omen.  People who'd seen "Once Upon a Time..." were more like, "Yeah, it's good, a bit long, but, you know, it's Tarantino, and he's an auteur, so it's a good film, I guess..." which by comparison, hardly feels like a ringing endorsement.

Now I've finally seen it, after perhaps learning way too much about it from reviews and press coverage, so now I get my chance to say, "Yeah, it's good, a bit long, but, you know, it's Tarantino, and he's an auteur, so it's a good film, I guess..."  I'll try to get a bit more specific about all that, too.  Let's start with "it's a bit long".  Two hours and 41 minutes?  Damn it, Quentin, I've got other stuff to do, comic books to read and video-games to play!  At least with a heads-up on the length I was able to schedule this for a weekend, but then they went ahead and cancelled the work-days because of the Covid-19 virus, so now it scarcely matters.  Hey, if you're under quarantine or just self-isolating at home, you've got nothing but time now, so watch this film to kill nearly three hours, or hell, find a new series to binge-watch or even go back and watch an old mini-series like "The Stand" - you've got nothing but time now, right?

This leads to the naturally logical question - could this film have been, you know, shorter? SHOULD it have been shorter?  I say yes, but I'm willing to entertain some debate.  Tarantino has a reputation as an auteur, someone who has earned and demands final cut.  On that level, if he says it needs to be 161 minutes, then that's what it's going to be.  But this is the same guy who split "Kill Bill" into two movies when it was running too long.  So that suggests that there should be a limit - how am I going to dub this to DVD if it's too long to fit on an 8-hour VHS tape at SP speed?  (Actually, I think I can JUUUSST fit it...). But if I were a director, and my film was clocking in at 161 minutes, I think that would certainly prompt me to take another pass through it, take a really hard look at some scenes to figure out if there's more stuff that could be excised, or perhaps trimmed.  I'm willing to bet that if I watched the film again with that in mind, I could find a bunch of stuff - like when Rick Dalton is flubbing his lines on the set of the "Lancer" western, do we really need to see him mess it up THAT badly, and then sit through the entire repetition of the same scene, with him saying the lines properly. That felt a little bit like overkill.  Additionally, there are at least a dozen characters and asides introduced that don't feel crucial at all, why is Tim Roth the only actor listed in the credits for having his scenes cut?  There are so many characters here, more non-essential characters could have been cut without affecting the overall structure of the film.

I think there was also an opportunity near the start of the film for some heavy trimming.  The first 10 minutes is all introduction, and Al Pacino's character is blatantly used in a dinner conversation with Rick Dalton that tells us everything we need to know about his career so far and where it's headed - but after that, there's about minutes of downtime, and therefore nothing essentially "happens" for the first half-hour of the film.  But because of his reputation, and because he demands and receives final cut, Tarantino is apparently under no pressure to make tough choices on timing - however, the length of the film could still affect the box office, because it then puts limits on how many times a day each theater can show the film.  Assuming a 12-hour theater day, a venue could screen a film under two hours six times, but a film pushing three hours only four times, and that affects the bottom line when it comes to ticket sales.  Bear in mind, however, that the first cut of the film clocked in at FOUR HOURS and 20 minutes.  So editing work was clearly done at one point, but I think much more could have helped with the film's slow parts.

That being said, with so much screen time to play around with, this is perhaps more linear than most Tarantino films, especially the pretzel-logic plotline that is "Pulp Fiction".  I'm reminded also of "The Hateful Eight", when we're halfway through the film when it jumps back in time to show us something that happened the day before, which is suddenly going to be important NOW, and to be fair, if the film had started with that scene first and progressed in accordance with the timeline, that aside wouldn't have made sense because the audience would have had no frame of reference for it.  So I'll allow Tarantino to mess around with the time-stream, because generally he seems like he knows what he's doing, and only jumps around in time when doing so creates more clarity, and not confusion, generally speaking.  Here there's really only one extended flashback, the sequence with Bruce Lee, but it happens out of sequence to explain why Cliff can't find much work as a stuntman any more, and instead finds himself fixing the TV antenna on Rick's house.  Then there's a part closer to the end where the timeline jumps ahead six months, then later has to go back to show us what happened during those six months, but at least there are title cards that explain why we're jumping around in time.  Rick's been off in Europe making a couple of "spaghetti westerns", and a few other films, and Cliff went with him, and they had a conversation there where they reflect on whether it might be time to terminate their employer-employee relationship.

Now, the thing about this 6-month jump forward in time, is that to me, it's an odd break in the momentum that the film seemed to be building up - Cliff had been out to the Spahn Ranch and learned that there were a bunch of hippies living on the ranch, possibly taking advantage of the ranch owner in order to get a free place to live.  We've also been following the young pregnant actress Sharon Tate as she goes to parties and also to watch herself on-screen in the Dean Martin movie "The Wrecking Crew", and we know that she lives in the house next-door to Rick, along with her husband, director Roman Polanski.  Then this bearded long-hair named "Charlie" shows up at her house, looking for his friends that used to live there.  If you're at all familiar with the history of 1969, and the murders committed by the Manson family, you might be ahead of the game here in figuring out where this is all leading.

That being said, even if you ARE up on your detailed history of serial killers, things here might not progress the way you would expect.  Believe it or not, as soon as this film was over, I tried to catch a little Covid-19 virus update on MSNBC, only they were running an old episode of "Dateline", focusing on the Manson family and their crimes.  Coincidence?  I've sort of learned that there's no such thing.  My movie chain tends to bring me the information I need at critical times, why shouldn't random channel-surfing do the same?

So here's the thing - there's a definite point of deviation between what happened in real-life and what happens in this film.  This threw me for a loop at first, I had to pause the film and say, "OK, what exactly is going on here, and why doesn't it line up with what I know to be true and real?"  I haven't really gotten in to it yet on Wikipedia or the IMDB trivia section, but what I suspect is that Tarantino has turned the real-life Manson Family events into something of a fairy tale - a point bolstered by the use of "Once Upon a Time..." in the title.  What we're witnessing is a story, a fantasy, the way we might have preferred things to happen rather than the way they really did.  This is not uncommon in Tarantino's work, think about "Inglourious Basterds", was there ever really a time when someone locked a bunch of Nazis in a screening room and then set them on fire with flamethrowers?  No, of course not, but clearly somebody WISHES that could have happened.  Was there ever an African-American former slave named Django who got to work as a bounty hunter and then blow up an entire plantation mansion?  Again, it's doubtful.  But in those cases Tarantino put something on film that was stronger than reality, it's reality augmented by our collective sense of justice trying to improve on the past.  My best guess is that's what's up with "Once Upon a Time", the same auteur is looking at incidents in the past and saying, "But what if THIS happened instead, and that would create a stronger story for the film?"  Now I'm going to go check to see if I'm right....

Because it's a long movie, and because Tarantino just couldn't resist, there's SUCH a huge cast list - over 200 people listed on the IMDB!  I had to draw the line somewhere, because just tracking all of these actors for my year-end breakdown would take me HOURS.  I mean, I've got the time right now, but I'm only going to list the crucial roles, and some of the archive footage appearances that the IMDB apparently doesn't count as "appearances".  Looking up some of these actors led me down some really weird pathways - for example, I found out for the first time that Nicholas Hammond, who played Spider-Man on TV in the 1970's, also played one of the Von Trapp children in "The Sound of Music" in the 1960's.  Now I'm not going to be able to forget that.

There's also a fair amount of tunt casting - like in "Bombshell", part of the fun here is seeing which actors of today play the most notable people from real life.  That's Dakota Fanning as "Squeaky" Fromme, who later tried to assassinate Gerald Ford.  Other actors make cameos as Bruce Lee, Mama Cass, Connie Stevens - but I think my personal favorite is seeing Damian Lewis playing Steve McQueen, he had McQueen's cadence and vacant stare DOWN, a very believable portrayal.

NITPICK POINT: Why do we have to see so many bare feet, especially women, and usually with dirt on them?  This must be Tarantino's particular fetish, I also noticed this a lot in "Death Proof", too.  Personally, I don't find feet attractive - I mean, whatever floats your boat, I guess, but even when I see a very beautiful woman with nice legs, it's kind of a bummer to think that there are feet at the end of those legs, and most of them look odd, and most of them probably smell bad.  Who gets turned on by this?  All feet should stay covered up, that's my feeling, with shoes you can't see through and two pairs of socks for good measure.  And if your feet are dirty, maybe wash them?  Walking around barefoot or even in flip-flops, or taking your shoes off in public is just plain disgusting.  Being a big-time director doesn't give you the right to force your kink on me, Quentin.  I mean, you can, but be aware that you're turning off more people than you're turning on.

Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Body of Lies"), Margot Robbie (last seen in "Bombshell"), Emile Hirsch (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Margaret Qualley (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Timothy Olyphant (last heard in "Missing Link"), Julia Butters (last seen in "13 Hours"), Austin Butler (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Dakota Fanning (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "Our Souls at Night"), Mike Moh, Luke Perry, Damian Lewis (last seen in "Queen of the Desert"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Nicholas Hammond, Samantha Robinson, Rafal Zawierucha, Lorenza Izzo, Costa Ronin, Damon Herriman, Lena Dunham, Madisen Beaty, Mikey Madison, James Landry Hebert (last seen in "Seven Psychopaths"), Maya Hawke, Victoria Pedretti, Sydney Sweeney, Harley Quinn Smith (also last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Dallas Jay Hunter, Kansas Bowling, Parker Love Bowling, Cassidy Vick Hice, Ruby Rose Skotchdopole, Danielle Harris, Josephine Valentina Clark, Scoot McNairy (last seen in "Destroyer"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Mule"), Marco Rodriguez (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Ramon Franco, Raul Cardona, Courtney Hoffman, Dreama Walker (last seen in "Compliance"), Rachel Redleaf, Rebecca Rittenhouse (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Rumer Willis (last seen in "Hostage"), Spencer Garrett (also last seen in "Bombshell"), Clu Gulager (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Martin Kove, Rebecca Gayheart, Kurt Russell (last seen in "Swing Shift"), Zoë Bell (last seen in "Billy Elliot"), Perla Haney-Jardine (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Monica Staggs (last seen in "Hesher"), Omar Doom (last seen in "Death Proof"), Kate Berlant (last seen in "Dean"), Daniella Pick, Tom Hart, David Steen (last seen in "Django Unchained"), Toni Basil (last seen in "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Rage Stewart, Maurice Compte (last seen in "A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Ronnie Zappa, with cameos from Michael Madsen (last seen in "The Hateful Eight"), James Remar (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in "The Clapper"), the voices of Quentin Tarantino (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Corey Burton (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Burt Ward, and archive footage of James Farentino (last seen in "Ensign Pulver"), Norman Fell (last seen in "Catch-22"), Ann-Margret (last seen in "Going in Style"), Dean Martin (last seen in "Scared Stiff"), Joe Namath.

RATING: 6 out of 10 cans of Wolf's Tooth dog food