The Blind Side

Year 12, Day 102 - 4/11/20 - Movie #3,505

BEFORE: I didn't really plan for Easter this year, like I just dubbed two Biblical movies from cable to DVD - "Mary Magdalene" and "Paul, Apostle of Christ".  There's just no time to re-work my schedule and try to fit them in, plus the line-up is already so tightly fixed in place that I'm afraid that pulling out one film will make the whole thing collapse, Jenga-style.  I tried to link from my upcoming Hitler-based films to the Ingmar Bergman chain, and it's possible - but then I can't find a way back to link up to my chain in time for Mother's Day, so it's probably best to scrap that whole idea.  I can start 2021 with those films, and then I've got a couple of possible outros from Bergman's oeuvre that hopefully will get me to where I might need to be on February 1, which is still to be determined.

Instead on something blatantly Easter-related, I've landed on "The Blind Side", which has been on my watchlist longer than almost any other film, let's say two or possibly three years, and before that I was actively avoiding it, because it seems like one of those corny films based on "Christian values" that gets high marks from the folks in the Bible Belt, and that usually turns my interest level way down.  Kind of like the crap you see on the Lifetime or Ion networks, or the really heavy-handed stuff like "The Shack" or "VeggieTales", why would I be interested in that?  But then I thought, wait, if it's one of those moral tales, isn't that appropriate for Easter weekend?  OK, to be honest I really just put this here for the linking out of necessity, to keep the chain alive, and any connection to Easter is an afterthought.

I had really been saving this to link to "Bad Santa 2", but a couple of Christmases have come and gone now, and I haven't gotten to that one, either.  So maybe it's time to re-think the plan, and just cross this one off the list to free up another slot for something else.  Ideally watching this in December would have had the extra advantage of being in football season, or maybe the NFL playoffs, whereas right now there are no sports being played, and nobody knows if the pandemic will be over in time for the next football season.  It's also a school-based film, and there's no school going on either, so I just can't win.

So Kathy Bates carries over from "On the Basis of Sex", and it is what it is.  I'll get back to both Armie Hammer and Felicity Jones sometime in May, and we'll see Kathy Bates one more time too, in late April.

THE PLOT: The story of Michael Over, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first-round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.

AFTER: OK, so it's not football season right now, or school season.  The whole calendar has gone awry anyway, because this week I watched both a winter-based crime drama and also a summer-based Swedish horror film.  Ah, but here's my saving grace - Mother's Day is on the horizon, so I could call this an early Mother's Day film (the first of, I don't know, maybe four this year?).  But also there's the NFL Draft, which as of this writing, is still scheduled for April 23-25.  I guess maybe they're going to do the whole thing by virtual teleconferencing?  If so, good for them.  I figure sports fans and bookies have already torn out all their hair over the cancelling of the NCAA March Madness tournament, plus baseball and basketball are on hold.  At least the fantasy football people will now have something to do - and it gives us some sense that life may go on after the pandemic.  See, I knew I could find a tie-in somewhere.

And there's the whole Christian tie-in here, too - the Tuohy family takes in "Big Mike" because it's the right thing to do, and their kids' faith-based school in Memphis gives him a slot for similar reasons, to live up to their motto.  There you go, practice what you preach.  Only don't gather together for Easter this year because you're putting yourself (and others) at risk when you gather in large groups.  I know it's tough, Evangelicals, because when you've been using religion as your feel-good crutch for so long, it's tough to walk without that crutch, but you've got to try.  The Bible says to "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," so please show your love for your neighbor by not exposing them to a virus at services, which you may be carrying right now without knowing it.  Church will still be there for you next month if you want it, but attending Easter services right now would be very selfish and self-serving, so don't do it.  Or think about it this way, the early Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire and had to gather in very small groups or practice their faith in secret at home, so really, this is an opportunity to get back to the basics of your religion.  (Or you may feel the need after a month away to NOT return to church, and that's OK too - I gave it up at age 17 and didn't go back, except for weddings and funerals.)

But let's get back to "The Blind Side", named after, I think the way that a left tackle approaches the quarterback, from his blind side.  There was an opening explanation that name-checked Lawrence Taylor, the greatest left tackle of all time, and how it later became a very crucial position on a football team, usually the second highest paid team member, after the quarterback, and how a certain type of person with a particular body type tends to make the best left tackle, and that's the type of person that Michael Oher, aka "Big Mike" was when he was in high school.  A giant kid, but apparently a "gentle giant".  If this film is to be believed, he might not even have been aggressive enough to play football, if Mrs. Tuohy hadn't convinced him to envision his team as his adoptive family, and the opposing team as people who are trying to harm his family.  (NITPICK POINT: Michael's school aptitude tests are not good, except for in some area called "protective instincts", which sounds like a bid load of B.S.  I don't remember any school tests for this, it's not anywhere on any report card after English, math and science scores...)

The whole film was pretty boring and white-bread, until it came time for Michael to be interviewed by someone from the NCAA, inquiring about his decision to attend the University of Mississippi, the school that both of his adoptive parents coincidentally (?) attended, and also his tutor, and then there's the fact that his high-school football coach was offered a position there, JUST around the time that Big Mike was trying to decide which school to accept a football scholarship from.  "AH HAH!" I thought, "now the fix is in!"  This called to mind some of the recent celebrity scandals regarding college recruitment, where some parents colluded with college sports coaches to get their kids scholarships, which involved doctoring up some resumes or falsely claiming that the kids were interesting in rowing or gymnastics or something, and I guess the celebs would then fork over a ton of money or pay for a new gym or a new field or some "sports equipment".  OK, to be honest, I didn't follow the scandal that closely, but didn't it suggest that this kind of thing goes on all the time, and by focusing on just the misdeeds of Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, maybe we were missing the big picture?

It sort of called into question, if even for just a minute, the whole motivation for the Tuohys taking Michael into their homes, like they obviously knew the importance of high school football, since their daughter was a cheerleader, and they watched a lot of college football and both rooted for "Ole Miss".  So just maybe the whole "Christian charity" thing was a ruse, and they'd been recruiting for their alma mater all along?  This was the best plot twist at just the right time, because it spoke volumes about the parent-child relationship, and how some parents sort of thrust their values (and their sports team preferences) on to their children, and somehow never get around to even asking their kids if they like playing sports, or if they want to go to college in the first place.  That's when you realize that there can be a very fine line between raising your kids the way you want and just plain programming them.  Too much of the first thing and you may accidentally be doing the second - so when they rebel (and they inevitably will) you have to be ready to take that in stride, and realize they may not turn out to be a carbon copy of their parents, at some point they're going to have to start thinking for themselves and make their own decisions.  That's my take-away, anyway.

I recognized a number of the college football coaches who play themselves in the film, because I used to record college football games as part of my old job, where I tracked commercials.  Lou Holtz, of course, and I recognized Nick Saban because he's doing AFLAC ads now.  It's been a while for me since I had to watch any college games, I think they've probably changed all the names of the Bowl games on me.  Yeah, football's not really my thing, but I love a good college athlete recruitment scandal.  And hey, there's actually a thematic tie-in with yesterday's film, "On the Basis of Sex" - both are "based on a true story" biopics where the subject makes a cameo appearance at the end.

Also starring Sandra Bullock (last seen in "The Proposal"), Tim McGraw (last seen in "The Shack"), Quinton Aaron (last seen in "Be Kind Rewind"), Lily Collins (last seen in "Tolkien"), Jae Head (last seen in "Hancock"), Ray McKinnon (last seen in "Mud"), Kim Dickens (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Adriane Lenox (last seen in "Black Snake Moan"), Ashley LeConte Campbell (last seen in "Get Out"), Joe Chrest (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Sharon Conley (last seen in "The Boss"), Omar J. Dorsey (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), David Dwyer (also last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Catherine Dyer, Rhoda Griffis, Eaddy Mays, Tom Nowicki, Robert Pralgo (last seen in "The Leisure Seeker"), Irone Singleton, Andy Stahl (last seen in "October Sky"), Libby Whittemore, Melody Weintraub, with cameos from Phillip Fulmer, Lou Holtz, Tom Lemming, Houston Nutt, Ed Orgeron, Franklin Rodgers, Nick Saban, Tommy Tuberville, with archive footage of Roger Goodell, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Theismann, and the real Michael Oher.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Taco Bell franchises

On the Basis of Sex

Year 12, Day 101 - 4/10/20 - Movie #3,504

BEFORE: I've got another film with Florence Pugh on my list, but having worked out a couple months of programming in advance, it looks like I can use that film in late May to help connect the Mother's Day and Father's Day films, so I'm going to hold off on that one, re-schedule it.  Instead I'll follow the other path, and have Jack Reynor carry over from "Midsommar".  (Ms. Pugh is also in the "Black Widow" film, which was supposed to be released this spring, but is now scheduled for November, right around the time I was planning to run my review.  How timely for me.  We'll be able to go out to the movies again in November, right?  RIGHT?)

You can kind of see where I was going with the schedule, right?  Instead of "Midsommar", I was going to watch three films with Timothee Chalamet, with the last one being "Call Me By Your Name", with Armie Hammer, and I would have ended up here, only in more steps.  Sometimes I feel like I'm definitely headed in the right direction when it seems that several different paths are all leading me to (roughly) the same place.

But I can't really think of two films that are more different, yesterday's and today's.  And I'm still in a bit of a state of shock from watching "Midsommar", so I think a nice, quiet little legal film today sounds just about perfect.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "RBG" (Movie #3,276)

THE PLOT: The true story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her struggles for equal rights and the early cases of a historic career that led to her nomination and confirmation as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

AFTER: This is basically the same story that was told in the documentary "RBG", only I guess now it's a trend that every doc also seems to get turned in to a live-action film that re-creates everything with actors, because I found out that "White Boy Rick", which I watched last year, started out as a documentary called "White Boy", and I managed to watch the story of the creation of the National Lampoon magazine in the 1970's twice, once as a documentary called "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead", and then again with actors playing all the same parts and doing most of the same things in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture".  I also watched both "Apollo 11" and "First Man" in the same week last July, and they re-made that documentary about Mr. Rogers into a fiction film with Tom Hanks, so watch for versions of "American Factory", "One Child Nation", "Icarus" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop", re-made as dramas, sometime very soon.

I guess the reasoning behind this is that some people just don't watch documentaries, they need their true life stories filtered through a Hollywood screenplay, much like how I need my news delivered to me by talk-show hosts doing comedy monologues.  I've been watching the real news for the past few weeks, and somehow it's just not as entertaining, I wonder why that is.  I'm dreaming of the day when I can watch the news again with punchlines added.  But that audience that spurns docs also needs to know what an important figure Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, and this film might be the only way those people are going to learn.  She and her husband, Martin Ginsburg, worked with the ACLU to file the first gender-discrimination cases, some of which she argued in front of the Supreme Court, long before she herself was invited to be on that court as a justice.

What's interesting is that the test case was a man, who could not get a tax deduction for expenses as his elderly mother's caretaker, because the IRS would only give such a deduction to a woman, based on an outdated stereotype that only women could be caregivers.  An investigation into the tax code found many statutes that discriminated by gender, and the feeling was that once there was some kind of legal precedent for gender equality, at least where the law was concerned, then other court cases could cite THAT case to challenge other laws that were discriminatory, and therefore unconsitutional.

It's also worth noting that the intent was not to radically change the world, but to force the courts to understand that the attitudes of U.S. citizens had already changed, and the laws needed to be amended to reflect that.  Women had of course worked in factories during World War II, but once soldiers returned from overseas, they expected their jobs back, and many women sort of returned to raising children and staying home.  By the late 1960's and early 1970's, though, women were seeking more professional jobs, such as lawyers, and the tax code, and by extension the U.S. legal system, hadn't quite caught up.

The Ginsburgs, though, were about as open-minded and forward-thinking as a couple could be.  Both Ruth and Martin had gone through Harvard Law School, Ruth at a time when there were maybe nine women in a class of five hundred, and the dean was still questioning why they wanted to be there, taking a spot away from a qualified male.  It's notable that the dean didn't ask each male law student why he was there, taking a spot that could have gone to someone smarter or more dedicated.

Gender bias was everywhere, it seems, and it didn't go away easily, it didn't go away overnight, and maybe in some places, it didn't go away at all.  We still haven't had a female President, for example, but it's great that we've had female Supreme Court justices, and secretaries of state, and a couple of generals, both attorney- and surgeon-class.  All that might have happened anyway, but it probably happened more quickly because RBG and her husband ended up with a list of all the gender discriminatory statutes and her Women's Rights Project at the ACLU started challenging them in court, one by one.  Things always seem to trace back to that Fourteenth Amendment, the one that allows "equal protection under the law".  It's how judges interpret that phrase "equal protection" that has affected high profile cases like Brown v. Board of Education and before that, gave women the right to vote.

This film is a little heavy-handed, sure, and it enjoys the benefit of knowing which side ended up on top of the long legal struggle, so it never wavers from displaying that one side is right and the other side is wrong, but we have to remember back to a time when this was a more complex issue and left older people scratching their heads, because it was challenging everything they thought they knew about gender roles.  People who thought that women couldn't be doctors or men couldn't be nurses, or women couldn't run companies while their husbands raised their children.  The film blatantly shows us Martin Ginsburg cooking for the family, to reinforce the point that they were a "modern" couple, but this is a little silly because even back then, everyone knew that men could cook, there were plenty of professional male chefs, it's just that women probably did the majority of cooking in homes.

It also seems a little coincidental that in the court case depicted, Ginsburg's opposing counsel team consists of not one, but TWO of her former professors.  I kind of want to fact-check that now, to see if that really happened or it's a Hollywood dramatic trope, a fictionalization of how that case went down.  But I'm guessing that they maybe fictionalized a few things, just to tell a better story - I guess it's more imporant in the end that the story gets told, rather than it gets told exactly correctly.

Also starring Felicity Jones (last seen in "A Monster Calls"), Armie Hammer (last seen in "Sorry to Bother You"), Justin Theroux (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "The Boss"), Sam Waterston (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Cailee Spaeny (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Callum Shoniker, Stephen Root (last seen in "Bombshell"), Ronald Guttman (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Chris Mulkey (last seen in "North Country"), Gary Werntz (last seen in "The Peacemaker"), Francis X. McCarthy (last seen in "Altered States"), Ben Carlson, Wendy Crewson (last seen in "Kodachrome"), John Ralston (last seen in "Stockholm"), Arthur Holden (last seen in "Long Shot"), Angela Galuppo, Arlen Aguayo-Stewart, Holly Gauthier-Frankel, Tom Irwin (last seen in "Marley & Me"), Geordie Johnson, Joe Cobden (last seen in "Born to Be Blue"), Sharon Washington (last seen in "Joker"), with a cameo from the real Ruth Bader Ginsburg (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9")

RATING: 6 out of 10 hip Rutgers students

Midsommar

Year 12, Day 100 - 4/9/20 - Movie #3,503

BEFORE:  I had a lot of different paths I could take from yesterday's film with such a high-profile cast, like I could have chosen "The Laundromat" with Meryl Streep, but that's already on the schedule for May, or "The Company Men" with Chris Cooper, only that doesn't really get me where I want to go.  Same goes for "City of Ember" with Saoirse Ronan, or "Dolemite Is My Name" with Bob Odenkirk.  I've got two films with Tracy Letts coming up in May, too, so that path is out.  For a while I was planning to follow the Timothee Chalamet path with three films that he's in, but then I found out that my proposed April chain had grown a bit too big, so I found that one film, "Midsommar", could get me to the same connection that three Chalamets would, plus one of those three films, "Beautiful Boy", seemed more on point for Father's Day in June, and those three films could also help me make the connection between Mother's Day and Father's Day, so that's a bonus for sure.

All that really left me was one notable path - or should I say that with such a large Swedish cast (and no crossover between this film and the Bergman chain, too bad...) so Florence Pugh carries over from "Little Women".  Ah, I'm kind of seeing now how I could have gone via Emma Watson to "The Circle" and then to "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" via Tom Hanks.  Chris Cooper's also in that one, so why didn't I notice several roads leading me to that film?  But since that's not a screener I grabbed from the office, it doesn't matter much, the die is cast.  Florence Pugh is the next connector, and I know my chain's good for another two months.  No time for regrets.

THE PLOT: A couple travels to Sweden to visit a rural hometown's fabled mid-summer festival.  What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT in effect, please turn back now if you haven't seen "Midsommar" or have any interest in doing so in the future.  It's impossible to talk about this one without giving some things away.

There were people buzzing about this film last year in both studios that I work in, but some of those people get to see almost every movie for free at Academy screenings - so often I have to take their recommendations with a grain of salt or two.  Would they have sought out this mostly-Swedish film if they had to pay for it?  But it still got me intensely curious about it, why was everybody talking about this film in hushed tones, afraid to divulge any of the key details?  Were they just being polite to avoid spoilers (that would be nice, but also uncharacteristic of some of them) or was there something there?  Either way, it put the film on my radar, and there it was destined to stay, perhaps, like with "Parasite", or so I thought, until it seemed like the most convenient way to shorten my April list by two films and make a more direct connection between "Little Women" and tomorrow's film.

It begins with a family tragedy suffered by college student Dani, and perhaps that sets the dark tone - but for a while things seem pretty OK, honestly who wouldn't want to get out of town for a month or so, go on a hiking trip in Sweden while your boyfriend and his mates do a little research into world cultures and ancient tribal rites, what could possibly go wrong?  The locals turn out to be part of a very tight-knit, insular farming-based group who all enjoy wearing white robes and giving back to the community, I'm not seeing the problem here.  Besides, there are psychedelic mushrooms and everybody seems to be cool with getting high in public, so what's the harm?  Anyway, I hear that Swedish people are very liberal, so it's like a college student's paradise, they've probably got some home-brewed alcohol and a refreshingly open attitude toward casual sex.  Their special festival happens only once every 90 years, so it's the chance of a lifetime to get a glimpse of another culture's traditions and also find some inspiration for that looming thesis, we'll eat, drink and dance, again, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Wait, what's that guy over there doing?  He couldn't possibly be...

Yes, this one turns out to be part of the horror genre, did you really think we were just going to be exploring other cultures in some kind of documentary fashion?  Or that a bunch of naive city folk were going to go visit an insular community in the countryside and everything was going to be just fine?  That's now how movies work, things have to go wrong (even in romantic comedies) for the plot to be propelled forward.  And what's the engine that moves things forward in horror movies?  Why, it's dumb people doing dumb things, of course.  THOSE teens have sex out in the woods near the abandoned summer camp, THAT couple foolishly buys a house without checking to see if there's any kind of Native American ancestral burial ground nearby, and THOSE idiots over there make the mistake of not properly servicing their car and breaking down in the deep South right near the old chainsaw repair shop that's just over the hill.  Clearly, they all deserve to die.

What helps a great deal is making the audience hate the characters, so we won't feel so bad once they're gone.  Here we've got some obnoxious (good...) American (nice start...) college students (I kind of like where you're going with this, yet I still sort of hate myself for it...) who drink, take drugs, are fantasizing about sex with the stereotypical loose Swedish women.  (And, it's like a perfect trifecta if you hate millennials or Gen Z-ers and all that they stand for.).  If they were to make a horror film full of skateboarding hipsters who walk around with their (probably empty) guitar cases while they over-discuss their proper gender pronouns, then I'm probably going to be rooting for the serial killer (or demon, or zombies, or whatever).  Sorry, that's just where I find myself these days.

So we all know what's coming here, or not exactly, but there's enough of a sense of dread built in to the system that we know SOMETHING'S gonna go down, and it probably isn't going to be pretty.  These bros are totally bummed that Christian brought his girlfriend, and to be honest, Christian was a bit of a dick when he invited Dani, just to score some points and make up for him NOT inviting her, because he completely figured she wasn't going to GO.  I mean, come on, who DOES that, accepts an invitation to go somewhere, when he CLEARLY didn't want her to say yes.  Besides, she's been a total buzzkill ever since her family died.  She's going to totally harsh their mellow, Christian!  Those mushrooms aren't going to give you a good trip unless EVERYBODY takes them, that's just how it works.

What can I say, I don't want to give away the details here, but you'll know it when you see it.  Then you'll probably wonder why all the Americans ignore the very obvious signs and stick around, instead of just heading for the hills.  Sorry, I mean heading AWAY from the hills.  Whatever you do, don't go near those hills.  But then we wouldn't have a film, just like the movie's over as soon as the remaining campers get in the car and drive away from Crystal Lake, or the family packs their bags and moves out of the haunted house, no, no, leave the furniture, you can buy a new couch later.  What's keeping the people here in the Swedish commune is the fact that two of them decide to write their thesis on world cultures on what they've seen so far in Halga, provided they don't use real names or reveal the location, which, by the way, would take all the credibility out of their research and would make it impossible for a proctor to fact-check.  Others are kept in place by the non-zero chance of scoring with one of the clueless-but-beautiful peasant local girls, or the fact that the meat pies are really delicious.  But it's a little odd that nobody wonders where the meat is coming from, since the communal farm doesn't seem to have any animals in it.  Just sayin'.

And those outsiders that do try to leave, well, they obviously succeed, right?  You mean Simon?  Oh, no, we drove him to the train station this morning, it must have been before you woke up.  Yeah, he said he wanted to catch the early train back, we wanted him to say goodbye to you but he thought you'd prefer to sleep in.  See, he left you this note!  Now, here, drink this and we'll start the festival!  Let there be much rejoicing while we prepare the sacred rituals!  Here, have another meat pie while we set up for the bingo game!

Look, this isn't really my bag, as much as I love to see backpacking millennials made to suffer.  I'm not a big fan of horror films, though I do force myself to watch them each October as part of some vast cultural experiment.  I had an OK time last year with films like "Rampage", "The Predator", and "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" but honestly I'm way out of my league here.  I can't even tell if this film was intended to have a serious tone, like "Bird Box", or a more comedic one like "Velvet Buzzsaw".  (UPDATE: According to the IMDB trivia page, Swedish people consider this to be a black comedy, not a horror film.). Either way, how can I possibly take this one seriously, after seeing what it wanted me to see?  Better, I think, to just make a quick clean-out with mental floss and try to move on.

I will note, however, that this year's line-up has had a notable Scandanavian/Northern European influence.  Near the top of the year I watched "Smilla's Sense of Snow", which was set in Denmark, and then later in January came "Stockholm", about a notable bank robbery in Sweden.  Put those together with this one, and I don't know, maybe it's all a warm-up for watching some Ingmar Bergman films?  I should probably check to see if there's a way yet for me to work them in, because who knows, maybe it's an omen?

Also, I watched today's film on Amazon Prime - my wife's going to kill me when she starts getting recommendations to watch all kinds of Swedish horror films...  It's been nice knowing you, guys.

(UPDATE: I forgot to mention how the situation depicted in "Midsommar" reminded me of a vacation that my wife and I took over a decade ago, at an "all-inclusive" resort somewhere in Pennsylvania, maybe the Poconos.  It was one of those very cheezy hold-overs from the 1970's, a place that catered to couples, with dining and dancing and outdoor activities like archery and such.  When we asked at the front desk about other activities to do in the area, they looked at us kind of strange and pointed out how many fun things there were to do at the resort, so why would we want to leave?  When I said that maybe we just want to go to a nearby shopping mall, or a silly museum or just eat a sandwich at a diner, again I just got a quizzical look, and that's when I started to get a bit of a commune or cult-like vibe from the place.  We started referring to the resort as "The Gulag" in hushed tones and wondering what we'd gotten ourselves into, and whether someone from the archery range would shoot us if we tried to go home early.  The good news is that it wasn't a cult, and we eventually were allowed to leave, but once you get that strange sinking feeling, it never really goes away - that makes me wonder why the Americans in this film didn't try to leave earlier, but of course, then we wouldn't have a movie.)

Also starring Jack Reynor (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), William Jackson Harper (last seen in "Paterson"), Vilhelm Blomgren, Will Poulter (last seen in "War Machine"), Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, Henrik Norlen, Gunnel Fred, Isabelle Grill, Agnes Rase, Julia Ragnarsson, Mats Blomgren, Lars Varinger, Anna Astrom, Hampus Hallberg, Liv Mjones, Louise Peterhoff, Katarina Weidhagen, Bjorn Andresen, Tomas Engstrom, Dag Andersson, Lennart R. Svensson, Anders Beckman, Rebecka Johnston, Tove Skeidsvoll, Anders Back, Anki Larsson, Levents Puczko-Smith, Gabriella Fon, Zsolt Bojari, Klaudia Csanyi.

RATING: 5 out of 10 prophetic tapestries

Little Women (2019)

Year 12, Day 99 - 4/8/20 - Movie #3,502

BEFORE: I know, I know, I'm risking genre whiplash by having Laura Dern carry over from "Cold Pursuit".  But I had an opportunity to grab about 10 Academy screeners right before the lockdown, and I had to choose very carefully - and also quickly.  Thankfully I had worked out what I believed to be the proper combination of films, not yet playing on cable or streaming, that were going to get me through.  I had no way of knowing that "Little Women" would be available for iTunes rental on April 7, which was one day before it appeared in my linking chain.  Now I feel rather terrible, because my boss loved this movie when she saw it on the big screen, and she'd been looking forward to re-watching it while the studio was closed, now she can't because I have the disc.  Don't get me wrong, I would prefer not to pay the $5.99 to watch this on iTunes, free is always better, but I always reserve the right to feel guilty about the way things turned out.

Still, this was great timing, it's good to know that if I hadn't grabbed this screener, I still would have had a way to watch it today, I can't always say that.  Like, I didn't take the screener for "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" because I knew it was going to premiere on Starz about three days before I could link to it, that's just good (however unintentional) planning on my part.  I've also been rewarded lately with cable running movies that I'd programmed for late April and May, like "The Kitchen", "Good Boys" and "John Wick: Chapter 3".  Now if cable could just premiere "Angel Has Fallen" and "Motherless Brooklyn", I'll be golden.

THE PLOT: Jo March reflects back on her life, telling the beloved story of the March sisters - four young women, each determined to live life on her own terms.

AFTER: Did you ever play that game where you just hit shuffle on your entire music collection, and listen to whatever songs come up randomly in the mix?  There's an odd phenomenon that sometimes occurs when you do this, where you find songs that are particularly relevant to what's going on in your life.  I started finding songs that pertained in some way to the current pandemic, like a couple weeks ago "Life During Wartime" by the Talking Heads popped up - with lines like "I got some groceries / Some peanut butter / Should last a couple of days."  This happened right around the time people were panic-buying at the supermarkets.  Today it was "Underground" by Men at Work, with the lyrics "Keep all the home fires burning / Don't let the lights go out / The streets are empty, and there's nobody about."  There have been other examples, I probably should have taken notes and compiled some kind of "pandemic playlist", but that seems kind of crass.

In that vein, "Little Women" might be the perfect film for these times - of course, back then the big sickness going around was scarlet fever, and people were just starting to figure out how diseases get spread, because at one point in the story Beth goes to visit the Hummel family, on the poor side of town, and after that, she comes down with the disease herself.  It's also funny, just two days ago in "The Professor and the Madman", I saw two characters discussing what we now know as sanitary medical procedures like it was a recent scientific breakthrough, which of course it was.  In "Little Women", I didn't understand at first why Jo would share a bed with Beth, who had the scarlet fever, but I went back and checked a previous line of dialogue - everyone else in the family had the illness before, except for Amy, and they were therefore immune to it.

This is also a great film to watch if you're self-isolated or quarantined right now, because it's filled with all kinds of pre-internet indoor pastimes that the March sisters engage in, so if you're looking for ideas, inspiration is here.  They play piano, they write and perform plays, they do each other's hair, they plan to make dresses, they write letters and novels.  Throw in some baking and a few jigsaw puzzles, and that could be a full day's worth of hobbies, even now.  (They also go ice-skating, painting in the park and out to a debutante ball, but let's ignore the things we can't do these days.). So suddenly this great American novel by - ooh, I want to say Nathaniel Hawthorne - is very relevant again.  The March sisters are also home-schooled while their father was a parson on the front lines of the Civil War - and right now there are a lot of kids home from school while their parents might be doing essential front-line work to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Of course, just as there's no way that the author (which one of the Bronte sisters wrote this story, again?  I must remember to look that up) could have known what the news of 2020 would be - just as there's no way that director Greta Gerwig could have known when filming this that it could possibly be so particularly relevant to current events.  Unfortunately, I've got some very big beefs with the things that WERE done to "modernize" this classic story, which was set in Massachusetts during the Civil War.

The biggest fault, in my opinion, is the application of modern editing techniques - this is a trend that's been gaining much ground in the last decade, and I've railed against it here many, many times.  Directors these days like to chop up a story into little snippets, and effectively throw all the pieces of film up into the air, and however they land, that's the order they go into the movie.  It covers up a lot of narrative flaws that a perfectly linear story might have, because they can skip over all the slow parts of the characters' lives, and (ideally) they can draw connections between events in the past, present and/or future that otherwise dumb moviegoers might have missed in the first viewing.  It's a method of spoon-feeding the public, and God knows some in the audience need a whole lot of help, because it takes THIS event from five years ago and places it right next to THAT event five years later, and we can now easily see the connection, or the irony, between the two things.

Some films, like the 2019 "Little Women" (based on the classic story from....is it Jane Austen?  It's gotta be Austen, right?) prefer to have two timelines, and just kind of toggle back and forth between the present and the past (or in this case, 1861 and 1868).  The problem then becomes, you have to go out of your way to make it clear which timeline each scene is in, because this can get very confusing, very quickly.  It took me fifteen full minutes to realize that's what the editor here was doing, because they only had an on-screen graphic ONE TIME that read, "Meanwhile, seven years earlier..." or words to that effect.  From that point, the film bounces back and forth liberally in time, and it's quite distracting.  After a half-hour of this I had to stop and review the plot-line of "Little Women", (the novel by...Mark Twain?  No, that can't be right.) just so I could get it straight, what happens when.  What I realized, pretty early on, is that this editing technique can get used, but also easily abused.  What classic moments from the novel are we missing here, just because they couldn't be cheekily juxtaposed with a moment from another part of the timeline, with an ironic wink and a nod?

For example, there's a scene midway through when the March sisters go to the beach, and fly kites, and this happens to be where Amy meets Fred Vaughn (that turns out to be important later).  This is immediately followed by a scene on a beach with Jo and Beth sitting on a blanket, and if you're not paying close attention, it's easy to think that this is the same scene, same beach, same timeline.  You might notice that one beach day is much cloudier than the other, or that Jo is wearing a different outfit, but then again, you might not.  There's just too much potential confusion that gets sown by Frankensteining all these little story fragments together in such a cutesy way.  ("Frankenstein" was written by Mary Shelley - didn't she also write "Little Women"?  No, that's not right either.)

And so there had to be all these little indicators, clues to indicate which timeline we're currently in at any given moment - Jo had short hair in the later years, Amy was traveling with Aunt March in Europe later in the story, so if Amy's in the family house, or Jo has long hair, we're back in 1861.  People, this is way too much work, and none of it would be necessary if the story would just start at the beginning, have the middle in the middle, and end with the ending, as a story should.  There are great advantages to telling a story in linear fashion, as the great American author Harriet Beecher Stowe intended.  (Nope, that's not right either, she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin".)

There's this little thing called suspense and dramatic tension, which only comes about when we, the audience do NOT know what's going to happen, and that gets thrown right out the window here.  Very early on, when Amy's in Europe traveling, and she bumps into Laurie, she talks to him about how things didn't work out between him and Jo.  Hello, talk about a spoiler alert!  This happens before we even see the scene where the sisters MEET Laurie, and now we know that a) they're going to meet, b) Laurie and Jo have some kind of feelings for each other, and c) ultimately it doesn't work out that way.  We're giving away the whole store here, and we've only JUST opened for business!  I remember a similar problem with the film "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot", which had similar problems caused by the non-linear editing.  (We see John Callahan attend his first AA meeting about 17 times, it gets redundant after a while.)

I would love to find out now if they shot this whole film with the intent of spooling out the storyline linearly, as the author intended, or if this was always the plan, to put this toggling pattern into play, hoping for a Tarantino-like twist when we see a focus on Travolta's character alive in one timeline, after seeing him get shot and killed previously in another.  I'll allow Tarantino to get away with this style because he seems like he knows what he's doing, but "Little Women" is just full of random, piecemeal storytelling.

Another big problem is that, beyond the hair and costume changes, there's supposed to be a span of seven years between the two timelines, and as you might imagine, they shot this all at once, so most of the characters don't look seven years younger in the past scenes, or alternatively, seven years older in the more recent scenes.  The only way to really do this properly was to pull a "Boyhood" and hire the actors for the 1861 scenes, then shut down the production for 5 years, call everybody back and then shoot the 1868 scenes, and the young actresses would have matured enough for this to be believable.  It doesn't matter so much with the adult actors, but with teenage girls turning into women in their twenties, they could look very different after seven years.  You have to admit, it would have been easier to tell immediately if we were seeing a scene set in 1861 or 1868 if the actresses looked more mature in the later scenes.  (Another big problem, three of the girls look somewhat alike, but Emma Watson as the oldest sister doesn't resemble the others.  It's mostly OK, unless it causes you to wonder if she had a different father, and then it does become something of a distraction, because it affects the story.)

Another big problem is the fake-out - and if you're a fan of the original novel (by...is it George Elliot?  I know that was a woman, even if she was named "George") you might know exactly what I'm referring to.  Even if you're not familiar with the story, I can see movie fans getting very, very angry after being shown a scene as if it is REAL, which then turns out to not be so.  Filmmakers need to be very, very careful about this, when depicting something that is a character's dream, or fantasy, to do enough to distinguish that from the surrounding reality that is the rest of the movie.  Again, if someone in the theater or at home is not paying close attention, it's very easy to mistake a character's fantasy as reality, especially if you don't make the picture go all wavy and play that ethereal music that lets us know we're looking at a dream.  And then when you take that scene, which didn't happen, and juxtapose it against on that looks almost exactly the same that DID happen, it almost feels like both contradictory things happened, and that's just not possible.

Then we have a character who becomes a writer, and as I've learned from watching MANY movies with writers struggling to write in them, the character is probably a stand-in for the writer.  (Who I know is Louisa May Alcott, I've just been funning with you this whole time.). This is another trendy, modern-like thing, most recently seen by me in "Marriage Story" and "The Tree of Life", where a writer/director used the elements from his own life to tell, and the characters are based on real people, with some of the elements changed.  So I think maybe I can use this to crack the code on Alcott - Jo, the sister who wants to be a writer, is the stand-in for Alcott herself.  Then when I looked up the details of Alcott's life, everything sort of fell into place - she was the second oldest of four sisters, and  surprise, they also lived in Concord, Massachusetts.  Alcott's younger sister Elizabeth died of scarlet fever, and another sister's name (Abigail MAY) is an anagram for AMY, so there you go.  One major difference between Alcott and Jo March is that Alcott never married, but it seems crucial to the plot of Jo March that she eventually find a suitable husband.

So the film has to do this "book within the book" bit, where Jo March brings her novel (also called "Little Women" to a publisher and argues with him about the ending, whether Jo (in the book) should consent to marriage, even if Jo (in the film) remains against it, like Alcott.  Again, like the fake-out I complained against above, this feels like an attempt to have both things part of the story, even though they clearly contradict each other.  You've got to pick a road here, either remain faithful to the novel, or don't, but for God's sake, don't be cheeky about it and wink at the audience, as if to say, "Ahh, look what we're doing here", I just hate that.  Besides, this sets up a logical fallacy if there are TWO versions of "Little Women", one in our reality and another inside the book's reality - in Jo March's novel of "Little Women", is there another fictional Jo March inside the already fictional universe, and did SHE also write a version of "Little Women"?  This is like "Inception" or something.

Ugh, and I always hate it in a movie when a fictional writer, who has been staring at a blank sheet of paper in a typewriter, or perhaps a blank computer screen with a blinking cursor, for nearly the whole movie, and then when he (or she) finally resolves the other issues in his (or her) life, suddenly the whole novel or screenplay just practically pours out on to the page, and it somehow becomes the movie that WE ALL JUST WATCHED.  This is as inexorable as is it inevitable, I suppose, because writers as a whole are just not as creative as they believe themselves to be, so naturally they all fall back on stories about writers who can't seem to get their shit together and write something, it's a huge cop-out.

There's a vast difference, however, between a modern screenwriter revealing their personal life and writer's block to the world, and Louisa May Alcott writing (essentially) about her own family and experiences during the time of the Civil War, partially because it was very important, both now and then.  What a shame that such a classic American story has now been spoiled by these modernist editing techniques that ultimately proved to be more of a distraction than an innovation.  Perhaps we can trace the thinly veiled "based on the author's own life" technique back to Alcott.  But just because a director and editor can randomize the scenes from his story and try to be cheeky about making some ironic connections, that doesn't necessarily mean that they SHOULD.  Just my opinion.

Also starring Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "Loving Vincent"), Emma Watson (last seen in 'Beauty and the Beast"), Florence Pugh (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Eliza Scanlen, Timothee Chalamet (last seen in "Hostiles"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "October Sky"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Bob Odenkirk (last seen in "Long Shot"), James Norton (last seen in "Flatliners"), Louis Garrel (last heard in "At Eternity's Gate"), Jayne Houdyshell (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Dash Barber (last seen in "The Queen"), Hadley Robinson, Abby Quinn, Maryann Plunkett (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Tom Kemp (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack")

RATING: 4 out of 10 yards of fabric

Cold Pursuit

Year 12, Day 98 - 4/7/20 - Movie #3,501

BEFORE: I was reminded today that I really didn't think my little blogging project would last for so long, when I started I figured I would run out of movies in 3 years, maybe 4 tops.  But that didn't happen, I kept finding films on cable, and then streaming came along, and by then watching movies was so incorporated into my daily routine that it would have been unthinkable, impossible to stop.

In the last month or so, it's been a big bright spot, something to help me look forward to tomorrow, more so than before.  10:30 pm comes around, my wife goes to sleep, I may eat dinner then if I haven't already, feed the cats, watch an episode of "Arrested Development" and start tomorrow's movie.  It's only after the movie that I even think about turning on the news channels now, but with an appalling lack of good news I think most nights I'm better off playing a video-game (working my way through some "Grand Theft Auto" games again, and if the pandemic continues, there's always "Lego Star Wars"...) or reading or logging in some comic books, still working on catching up there. For what it's worth, I think that's a healthier strategy then focusing on numbers of deceased people in the greater metropolitan area.  Those numbers are important, sure, but me getting more depressed than I already am isn't going to help anyone.

David O'Hara carries over from "The Professor and the Madman".  Ideally I would have preferred to watch this during a winter month, but that's not a hard and fast rule.  This January I watched "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and in January 2019 I programmed "The Snowman", but the linking is the most important thing right now.  Linking's first, and hitting certain holidays right on the nose is second priority.  I keep the chain alive and the way I want it by watching tonight's winter-based crime film in spring, c'est la vie.

THE PLOT: A grieving snowplow driver seeks revenge against the drug dealers who killed his son.

AFTER:Well, the good news is that Liam Neeson's now going to make my year-end countdown, as this is his third appearance in a film in 2020.  Laura Dean also makes the cut as of today, and she'll be here tomorrow, too in a certain 2019 Oscar contender that only JUST became available for rental on iTunes.  (Of course, I had the foresight to grab a screener of it, just before the lockdown began.  I still don't know when either animation studio I work for will re-open, but I've got at least enough movies to make it to Father's Day, probably more if I can keep the chain alive past June, to the next benchmark on July 4.  Stay tuned.)

I think this film caught some flak for just being, essentially, "Taken" on a snowplow, just as "The Commuter" was pitched as "Taken" on a Metro-North train.  But I think that sells this film just a bit short, "Cold Pursuit" is much more than a riff on "Taken", of course in some ways it's also a bit less.  It should be its own thing, but, really, Liam Neeson has got to step out of this comfort zone at some point, only he already did that, he was in "Men In Black: International", and the result was just not that good.  So, OK, it's back to one man taking down a crime organization to save/protect his family, I guess.

The "Taken" films were rescue operations, though - save the daughter, save the ex-wife, using a particular set of skills.  In this remake of the Swedish film "Kraftidioten" (which roughly translates to "In Order of Disappearance", somehow) Neeson's character's son is killed quite early, and the killers get rid of the body by taking him to an outdoor café, total "Weekend at Bernie's" style, putting a pair of sunglasses on him and then walking away.  Real classy, guys.  But this means that all bets are now off, and it changes the mission of his father, snowplow driver Nels Coxman, from rescue to revenge.  He's free to terminate the low-level drug dealers responsible, and then work his way up the crime chain until he figures out the identity of the crime boss that ordered the hit.  So, really, it's more "Punisher"-style than "Taken".

We don't really know where Coxman gets his skill-set, how he knows how to make a sawed-off gun or where he learned to fight, but he mentions hunting trips with his son, and probably everyone out in Colorado (though they clearly filmed this in Vancouver) knows how to fire a hunting rifle, I guess?  Plus he's got a snowplow, which is great for running cars off the road if needed, or carrying bodies in the truck bed to the nearby gorge, a place where nobody's going to be visiting in the middle of winter.  There may be some questions arising after the spring thaw, though.

I don't think this was intended as a comedy, not even a black comedy, but I found some odd comic elements in this story about a man named Kehoe's "Citizen of the Year" (for his tireless dedication to snow-plowing) going on a killing spree.  There's a bit of a "Fargo"-like tone, because sometime the number and severity of the deaths creates a similar feeling.  Nobody here ends up in a wood-chipper, but a few of the gangland deaths are similarly inventive.

It's a long climb up the criminal ladder to Trevor "Viking" Calcote, and since Coxman is basically coming out of nowhere, Calcote makes a few wrong guesses about who's taking out his low-level dealers.  He assumes that the local Native American tribe, who had been granted rights to deal drugs in Kehoe years ago in an agreement with Viking's father, is behind it, and that starts a turf war, which Coxman is positioned to take advantage of, one young local cop is eager to investigate, and her partner (the grizzled veteran cop) is inclined to ignore.

Before long there are several factions all involved in a Rocky Mountain gang war, and it's all poised to come to a head, thanks to plans within plans, right outside the snowplow garage.  Honestly, I still can't decide if this is a thrilling new entry in the crime genre or some kind of ridiculous parody of one.  Maybe every viewer has to figure that out for themselves.  There's plenty of room to make a prequel film or series based on this, but Neeson has stated publicly that this is his last action movie.  Yeah, right - is he going to do musical comedy now?  But there are actors out there that could play a young-Neeson type.

Also starring Liam Neeson (last seen in "Men in Black: International"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Tom Bateman (last seen in "Snatched"), Tom Jackson, Emmy Rossum (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "How Do You Know"), Julia Jones (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), John Doman (last seen in "You Were Never Really Here"), William Forsythe (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Raoul Max Trujillo (last seen in "Sicario; Day of the Soldado"), Benjamin Hollingsworth, Michael Eklund (last seen in "Mr. Right"), Bradley Stryker, Christopher Logan (last seen in "Saving Silverman"), Nathaniel Arcand, Ben Cotton, Micheál Richardson (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Mitchell Saddleback, Manna Nichols, Arnold Pinnock (last seen in "Against the Ropes"), Wesley MacInnes, Elysia Rotaru, Nicholas Holmes (last seen in "The Shack"), Michael Adamthwaite (last seen in "War for the Planet of the Apes"), Aleks Paunovic (ditto), Elizabeth Thai, Gus Halper, Kyle Nobess, Glen Gould, Michael Bean (last seen in "Love Happens"), Nels Lennarson, Glenn Wrage.

RATING: 5 out of 10 fantasy football picks

The Professor and the Madman

Year 12, Day 97 - 4/6/20 - Movie #3,500

BEFORE: I've reached another milestone, another century mark, in a 12-year quest (at least).  But it hardly feels like a time for celebrating, with people sick and dying around the country and around the world.  I guess there always are people sick and dying, but just not usually at this rate.  So I'm far from feeling like bragging, not when I haven't really done much, just watched a ton of movies and wrote something about them, it's a scant accomplishment compared to what some other people do, people who put themselves at risk to work in hospitals, EMTs who take people to hospitals, and even people who deliver vital supplies and people who re-stock grocery shelves.  I'm fooling myself if I start to think of myself as a hero just because I'm staying inside and not riding the subway to work, really I'm doing all that for my own survival, not contributing to the spread of the virus is really just an extra side benefit.

But the news keeps showing signs of inspiration and hope among the front-line workers and even those quarantined and self-isolated, people are finding new ways to connect with each other and stay informed, others are volunteering in ways they didn't before, and maybe some people are getting things done around their houses, or being able to spend more time with their family while their work is on pause.  It's still a terrible, terrible time to be alive, and nothing can ever compensate for the loss of life and the levels of anxiety and fear that are off the charts right now, but maybe there are one or two silver linings in the dark cloud.

Someone pointed out online that with the schools closed, that means no school shootings, right?  And that's something to think about.  We've also heard in the news that after the Javits Center was converted to a hospital to treat trauma patients and accident victims during the pandemic, allowing other hospitals to focus on the virus, it was revealed that accidents and violent attacks are way down across the city, and that's amazing, right?  It's logical with everyone sheltered at home that there would be fewer car accidents because nobody's going anywhere, and major violent crimes are likewise nearly non-existent.  Even gang members and bank robbers seem to have put their work on pause, is that possible?  It almost sounds positive in a weird way, but it's still a strange thing to celebrate, that everybody's too sick or afraid of getting sick to be out killing each other.  I guess we'll know that things have returned to normal when the crime stats start going up again.

Then again, other people are warning about a spike in domestic violence or child abuse while everyone's sequestered at home.  So what can you do, but try to fight against the darkness with each new day?  I went to the grocery store yesterday, with facemask and rubber gloves on, and disinfected my groceries when I got home, that was basically my Sunday.  That and TV and my daily movie.

Sean Penn carries over from "The Tree of Life".

THE PLOT: Professor James Murray begins compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from Dr. William Minor, a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum

AFTER: This is a true (mostly, I'm guessing) story about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which wasn't the first dictionary, but some would say it was the first to get things right, o really properly trace the origin and certify the existence of each word.  They began working on the first edition in 1870's, after a committee had spent 20 or so years exploring the mysteries of starting, and, this is true, getting distracted by other pursuits, like printing up a bunch of old Chaucer manuscripts that they found.  The first editor, Herbert Coleridge, published the plan for the dictionary, compiled about 100,000 little slips with quotations on them to prove the existence of certain words, and then died a month after the first sample pages were printed, but considering what came after, his death from tuberculosis actually now seems like a brilliant career move.

The second editor, Frederick Furnivall, is the one who got distracted by those Chaucer manuscripts, so while he spent 21 years preparing to publish the dictionary, at the end of that time he realized that he hadn't actually done any cohesive work on it, he'd just wasted two decades preparing, then decided that he wasn't cut out for the job.  The work of 800 or so volunteers, who'd been mining British novels for quotations with key words, was handed off to his successor.

And that's where this movie starts, with the hiring of the third OED editor (actually, at first it was called "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Founded Mainly on the Materials Collected by the Philological Society") named James Murray, in 1878.  Murray built a "scriptorium" to house all the little slips of paper, and then decided to move forward with words beginning with "A", with a staff of three men, and they basically crowdsourced the rest of the work out to the British reading public, who were asked to find unusual or notable words in common English texts, like Shakespeare, the Bible and Milton's "Paradise Lost".

Around the same time, a certain William C. Minor, an American former Civil War surgeon, had arrive in the UK, seeking asylum.  I think somebody must have misheard him, because instead the British government put him in an asylum, which is not really what he had in mind.  JK.  According to this film, he shot a man in the street because he mistook that man for Declan Reilly, a soldier who he had branded as such, and Minor believed Reilly was stalking him for revenge.  (According to Wikipedia, though, Minor shot George Merrett because he mistakenly believed Merrett had broken in to his room.). Anyway, Minor was put on trial and sentenced to the Broadmoor Asylum in Crowthorne.  Since he was not considered dangerous, he was allowed to keep his military pension and use it to purchase books to pass the time.

Maybe you can see where this is going - over here, there's an editor who needs people to read books and find certain words, and over there is a man with nothing but time on his hands. (It's very timely to watch this now, with everyone in the U.S. sequestered at home, looking for things to do - too bad we don't need another dictionary right now, but who knows what else will come from the pandemic?  Probably just a ton of terrible screenplays...). Anyway, Minor contacted Murray because he'd managed to find an enormous amount of quotations for the words that were needed, and the OCD inmate got befriended by the OED editor.  When the men finally met, they bonded over their shared love of words and classic literature.  With Minor's contributions, the first fascicle (A-ANT) was published in February 1884, and by 1888 they'd finished up the words beginning with "B".

It's probably a convention of this movie that they set up some kind of relationship between Minor and the widow of the man he killed - Wikipedia mentions that she visited him, but there's nothing to suggest that it was romantic in any way, so I think probably the film took a few liberties here.  In the film, Minor gives his military pension over to the Merrett family, in exchange for a few new books to read, and the chance to teach Mrs. Merrett how to read, but this is where things started to feel very far-fetched.  Would you date the person who killed your spouse, even if that person was sorry?  Oh, yeah, and by the way, the court ruled him insane.

But the casting's great here, Sean Penn got short shrift in "The Tree of Life", I think, but here he's got quite a lot to do as the insane William Minor.  It's debatable whether he's insane at the start, or perhaps just a little, and then becomes more insane after spending time at the asylum.  It turns out that the techniques they used in the 1800's to "cure" the mentally ill look a lot like what we call torture today, and to survive in a madhouse, you probably have to go a little mad.  Or more mad.

Despite the success of the OED, because who back then didn't want to buy a dictionary that took 50 years to publish and an entire bookcase to store all the volumes in, it was a huge scandal when someone broke the news that one of the dictionary's most prolific contributors was an insane murderer.  Murray nearly lost his position as the book's editor as a result, but (again, according to the film) Murray's wife made an impassioned plea to the publishers that allowed her husband to continue his work.  This is also a little unbelievable, that a bunch of old white men in the 1890's would follow the advice of a woman.  Nevertheless, Murray kept his position and while he didn't live to see the OED completed, he did get up to the letter "T", and that's saying something.

Minor, on the other hand, took a turn for the worse in 1902.  He believed that people were entering the asylum at night, abducting him and forcing him to commit sexual assaults on children, so as a precaution, naturally he castrated himself.  Murray campaigned for him to be released from the asylum because of the horrible conditions, and pled his case before the Home Secretary in 1910.  Fortunately for Minor, the new Home Secretary, in charge of police and prison services, was a young Winston Churchill, who believed in prison reform.  Churchill allowed for Minor to be deported back to the United States, which got him away from the torture, only he lost contact with his dictionary friends.  He lived another 10 years at a hospital in Washington, DC - a city which often bears some resemblance to a mental hospital itself.

I found this film rather fascinating, of course it ticks off a number of boxes for me personally, and also is on topic with some recent events, especially concerning matters of isolation, boredom, and finding a project to occupy your time.  Working on an enormous undertaking, such as a dictionary, is both a blessing and a curse - the good news is that you've got job security for the duration of the project, but the bad news is, you're going to be doing the exact same thing, day after day, for a few decades.  Not everyone is cut out for that - but I think I would be.  If there wasn't an IMDB right now then I'd be first in line to work on creating one, spending tedious hours and days working on cast lists and watching movies to improve the database sounds quite appealing to me, and I think that would be something like the modern equivalent of the OED.

The Oxford University Press finally finished the first edition of the OED in 1928, then published a supplement to cover the new words that had arisen in the last 50 years, then finally wrapped up production in 1933.  But within the next 20 years, the first edition was hopelessly outdated.  And so they began work on the second supplement, which took another 29 years, and in that time the supplement itself had grown to four volumes.  Eventually they had to publish a complete second edition, starting in 1983 and finishing in 1989.  That itself represents some form of progress, getting the work down to just 6 or 7 years.  And the work on the new revised Third Edition is still ongoing, it began in 2000 and is on track to be completed in 2037.  Talk about job security, right?  You'd think that with computers they'd be able to work faster, but the third edition looks more labor-intensive than the second, and they may end up doubling the size of the OED once again before they're done.

This is why you hear odd news stories every year about words being added to the OED, it's work that will never be finished as long as people keep making up new words like "burkini".  (Yes, this is a real word, a combination of "burqa" and "bikini" that was added in December 2018.  It's a modest swimsuit for Muslim women that only exposes the face, hands and feet, and was banned by some French cities in 2016, sparking claims of Islamophobia.)

Also starring Mel Gibson (last seen in "Daddy's Home 2"), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Natalie Dormer (last seen in "W.E."), Jennifer Ehle (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Steve Coogan (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Stephen Dillane (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Ioan Gruffudd (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Jeremy Irvine (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Laurence Fox (also last seen in "W.E."), Anthony Andrews (last seen in "The King's Speech"), Lars Brygmann (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Bryan Murray, David O'Hara (last seen in "Tristan & Isolde"), Sean Duggan (last seen in "The Sisters Brothers"), Olivia McKevitt, Robert McCormack, Aidan McArdle (last seen in "Ella Enchanted"), Shane Noone, Brendan Patricks, Philip O'Sullivan (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Bryan Quinn, Ruaidhri Conroy.

RATING: 6 out of 10 glaring omissions

The Tree of Life

Year 12, Day 96 - 4/5/20 - Movie #3,499

BEFORE: Jessica Chastain carries over from "The Debt". You might very well ask, "Why not watch this one with the other two Brad Pitt films?"  It's a very good question, and the simple answer is that I work holisticly here, I look at two or three months of the schedule at a time, so I don't feel the need to get to every one of each actor's film at one time, I might need one of the films for a crucial link, like I do today.  I needed an outro for the Helen Mirren chain, and this one gets me to a big film (I'm hoping...) for round number 3,500 tomorrow.  You just never know, or correction, I just never know, which films are the shining moments and which ones are going to turn out to be duds.

Besides, if I'd watched this one right after "Ad Astra" and "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood" then I wouldn't have been able to squeeze in those two Al Pacino films, and then connected to the Helen Mirren films, one of which was perfectly timed for April 1.  So while it seems like madness, I assure you there's some method in my madness.  Not a huge amount, but some.

THE PLOT: The story of a family in Waco, Texas in 1956.  The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence and struggles with his parents' conflicting teachings.

AFTER: Terrence Malick, of course, has a high reputation as a director, from what I hear and read about, anyway.  Before today, I'd only seen one of his films, "The Thin Red Line", which was a long World War II film with a cast of hundreds.   Checking my notes, I gave that one a "4", I must have thought it was too long.  But it was also based on a novel by James Jones, so perhaps I didn't really give Malick his due, and I shouldn't judge anyone based on just one film.  How does a film both written and directed by Malick compare?

Well, that's not an easy question to answer - because this is either Malick's visionary masterpiece, or a confusing, rambling montage of life events.  Can it possibly be both?  I feel like maybe somehow it's both.  I'm going to try to write something here while the film is still fresh in my mind, then at some point I'll go check out the plot summary on Wikipedia and the trivia section on IMDB to try to gain some insight.  Yesterday I was (almost) complaining about the use of flashback in "The Debt", this one takes it to the extreme.  After a short intro sequence where we see the O'Brien parents being notified about the death of their son in the past, we're shown a segment from the present where the adult Jack O'Brien is working in an office, and is seen apologizing to his father on the phone for something he said, reflecting, finding it difficult to concentrate, and then he's seen wandering in a desert.  Does he suddenly leave the city and go on vacation, or is the desert a metaphorical one, a symbol for how he feels about his life?

Then the film flashes WAY back, like maybe to the dawn of time, and Malick shows us footage of various nebulas, galaxies spinning in the cosmic ether, suns forming and planets cooling, and it's clear at this point that somebody's aiming for "arty", but who's to say it didn't look like that as the universe was forming?  We've got no frame of reference for it, after all.  Eventually we're on what looks like Earth in prehistoric times, and cells merge in the primordial ooze and form simple lifeforms that look like jellyfish, and as the montage continues we see sea dinosaurs, sharks, then land dinosaurs and finally some mammalian hearts beating.  A wave seen moving across the Earth's surface could be one of several extinction-level events, perhaps the meteorite that led to the end of the dinos.  Back then there were a lot of extinction-level events, they're part of the reason that mammals and then humans were able to evolve and thrive.  Some of the events shown, like one dinosaur showing compassion to another by not killing it, would seem to be a throwback to the opening sequences of "2001: A Space Odyssey", only with the opposite result.

But this also relates to the O'Brien family, because the film then skips over most of human history to get us back to Waco, Texas in 1956.  But the voice-overs tell us that there are two ways to live, the way of nature and the way of grace.  (This, I believe, is connected to that compassionate dinosaur, somehow.).  One parent will come to represent the harshness of nature, man's inhumanity to man, and the other the compassion of grace.  Yep, Dad is nature and Mom is grace.  Only don't call him "Dad", because he demands that his three sons refer to him as "Father", followed by a "Yes, sir" or a "No, sir".  You know what, better make sure that's a "Yes, sir." because any back-talk from his kids tends to set him off.  He claims to love his sons, but also believes that he needs to instill discipline so they will be tough enough to survive life's challenges.

Many parents thought along these lines in the 1950's, and times may be different now, but for the most part, we've got a couple generations' worth of really soft kids, with their gluten allergies and their participation trophies and their desires to grow up and be social media influencers.  Being in my early 50's now, I'm kind of on the fence about which method of child-rearing is better, the old-school discipline one or the modern, gentle approach.  When I was a kid, my father also had a bit of a temper (he's since mellowed considerably) but he never hit me, just yelled, mostly at my mother.  I'm tempted to say I had things pretty easy, as long as I did well in school and mowed the lawn once in a while, I pretty much got a pass from them, but I find myself now struggling with my own self-discipline issues, so I almost wish they'd been a little stricter on me.  Almost, because when I think back on my childhood it was pretty darn good, so maybe I shouldn't wish it was any different.

For the next hour, I thought that was what this film was going to be about - those great moments of childhood, shown rapid-fire style in a very long montage, things like summer picnics and holding sparklers outside at night, trick-or-treating and activities like jigsaw puzzles or shadow-puppets.  Then, of course, since you have to take the bad with the good, there are times when Dad made you do a lot of yardwork, or punished you for slamming the door by making you close it quietly fifty times in a row.  Dragging you to church on Sunday, ugh, I wish I could get all that time I spent in church for 17 years back, all in a big chunk, now.  Who the hell reaches middle age, looks back and says, "Darn, I wish I'd spent more time in church!"?

Then pre-teen Jack experiences some real lows - a friend drowns in the lake, and another is burned in a house-fire (again, this is part of the montage/tableau, so the film really doesn't slow down much to explain each individual thing.). He becomes angry at his father for being abusive and angry at his mother for her tolerating that.  Then when Mr. O'Brien goes away on a long business trip, the three boys have a number of fun experiences with just their mother, only Jack also starts rebelling, committing acts of vandalism and breaking into houses.  Shortly after Mr. O'Brien returns, he loses his job at the plant, but is given an option to take another job in another location, so the family has to pack up and move away.

That's the end of the flashback, but when we're back to adult Jack in the present, he's having strange visions, I guess?  Actually, what happens after this point seems to be a matter of interpretation, because it's impossible from a narrative viewpoint, Jack is (or imagines himself to be) walking along a sandbar with his family members, and honestly, I couldn't tell if he was supposed to be dead at this point, or just experiencing a dream or some wishful thinking.  How is adult Jack walking on this imaginary (?) plane next to his young brothers.  He's with his parents, who seem to be the same age as him, how is that possible?  And if this is the afterlife, do you just stay the same age in heaven that you were when you died?  What if you lost an eye or an arm or something, do you get it back in heaven or do you just spend eternity without it?

There also seems to be a lot of detail missing - like, which son died at the start of the film?  Obviously not Jack, but there were two other brothers, so which one?  And apparently the third brother died at a different time, was this not worth mentioning?  Come to think of it, we know very little about the adult Jack - I had to learn from the IMDB credits that he had an ex-wife, what happened there?  When Jack is an adult, is his mother still alive?  All of this is unclear, and the lack of a clear linear narrative here isn't really helping.  For that matter, adult Jack is an extremely underdeveloped character, what's his deal, what's he all about?  Reportedly there was a lot of footage of Sean Penn as adult Jack that didn't get used in the film, some say enough to make an entire other movie.  That seems like a bit of a curious choice, unless the footage is terrible, or Sean Penn had trouble delivering his lines or something.

What makes this film particularly timely for this month, this week, is the fact that the Book of Job quoted at the beginning of the film.  It's a completely unintentaionl reference to our troubling times, perhaps.  Job was tested by God, after being prompted by Satan, who suggested that Job was pious only because he had been blessed with wealth, health and a family.  After God gives Satan permission to take away those things, Job still praises God.  (I realize, this is the short version, I'm leaving out a lot...). Eventually Job becomes an outcast, sick with boils and demands God explain why he is made to suffer, when he lived by principles and did nothing wrong.  Basically, God pulls rank and acts all righteous, claiming that it's not something that Job would ever understand.

Over some of the more artistic scenes in "The Tree of Life", we hear some of the characters saying lines, and one stood out for me: "Why does our father want to hurt us?" This was probably one of the O'Brien sons wondering why their father was abusive, but it has a double meaning if you think of God as the father.  Why does God plague people with troubles?  Again, religion falls back on the old "it's not for us to understand" and "God works in mysterious ways", which are awfully convenient things for theologians without answers to say.  Or, there's another possibility, that the troubles don't come from God, because he doesn't exist.  It's just as likely, that's all I'm saying.

I was reminded of a documentary from the 1980's, called "Koyaanisqatsi" - the title is a Hopi indian term for "Life out of balance".  It contrasted a bunch of beautiful nature photography with images of big-city life, sped up to the point where cars on city streets appeared to be like blood cells pulsing in veins.  Everything was set to Philip Glass music, and I think I watched it on PBS back in 1983, and it really had an impact on me.  I think it might be time for a re-watch of this film, which also had gritty footage of random street people, I remember a lot of clouds moving in time-lapse footage, and then it ends with a rocket exploding at the end.  Perhaps this was my first encounter with non-narrative composition, a film that has no plot but still manages to convey an idea, which is that man is living out of harmony with nature, and that city life, outside of the influence of Earth's environment, is a crazy, disintegrating thing.  This is a point that was driven home again lately, think about how quickly the Covid-19 virus spread through New York, with its high population density, crowded subways and often unsanitary conditions.

Anyway, back to "The Tree of Life".  That IMDB trivia page confirmed what I suspected, that many of the narrative points here in the story of the O'Brien family came from Malick's own life - he grew up in rural Texas with two brothers, his father was an aspiring musician who played the organ in church, and worked as a geologist for an oil company.  One of Malick's brothers committed suicide at age 19 while studying music in Europe, the other died at age 60, years after being burned in a car crash.  Both of Malick's parents were alive when "The Tree of Life" came out, so I guess we sort of have to fill in the details not seen in the film with those from Malick's life, and we can sort of read between the lines.  So therefore Jack O'Brien is a stand-in for Terrence Malick, and also the biblical Job in a way (initials J.O.B.).

I did recognize some Austin, TX landmarks, like the Texas State Capitol building, which my wife and I visited in October 2018.  There's a very prominent rotunda, and I recall taking photos of it from below, which gave me a very dizzying feeling.  Then as you walk around the floors surrounding the open central space, there are portraits of all of the past Texas governors, like Ann Richards, George W. Bush and Rick Perry.  Also there's footage of bats flying around in formation, and I recall that as one of the tourist attractions in Austin, the bats live under the Congress Avenue bridge, and fly around in the evenings in spring and fall, eating mosquitos.  They didn't the day we were there, though, because it was raining.

This film used to be on the list of "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" - at least it was on the list when I started tracking my progress in 2014, but by 2017 it had dropped off the list, in favor of newer movies.  So I can kind of see, from a critical POV, why it made the list originally, but also why it kind of scrolled off of it. Whatever committee decides on this list seems very hesitant to remove some of the older classics and foreign films, but if you ask me, some of those old films really need to be jettisoned to make room on the list for newer films.  Removing the not-quite-as-new films from the last decade seems a bit counter-productive, because modern movies are just better, in all senses of the word.  Am I likely to go and watch "Broken Blossoms" from 1916, or "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" from 1922?  No way, they should be removed from the list so they can keep slots open for "Spotlight" from 2015 and "Arrival" from 2016.

I swear, I didn't even realize that today is Palm Sunday, and I just watched a film that's tangentially about religion, and has a tree in the title.  I must have known on some subconscious level, but really, this was a total accident, one of many.  Once again, my chain managed to be coincidentally relevant.

Also starring Brad Pitt (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Sean Penn (last seen in "Fair Game"), Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Kari Matchett, Joanna Going (last seen in "Love & Mercy"), Michael Showers (last seen in "I Love You Phillip Morris"), Kimberly Whalen, Jackson Hurst, Fiona Shaw (last seen in "Pixels"), Crystal Mantecon, Tamara Jolaine (last seen in "Boyhood"), Savannah Welch (ditto), Dustin Allen, Michael Dixon, Finnegan Williams, Michael Koeth, John Howell.

RATING: 5 out of 10 patent claims