The Mountain Between Us

Year 12, Day 109 - 4/18/20 - Movie #3,512

BEFORE: Idris Elba carries over from "Beasts of No Nation", and ends a three-day stint.  I could have made it longer, like I'm skipping over "The Dark Tower" here, because I think I'll need that film in October, and I'm also skipping "Cats", partly because it's not available to me yet, and partly because I just don't want to.  Anyway I've got a schedule to maintain, and skipping those films sets me up perfectly for Monday.

THE PLOT: Stranded after a plane crash, two strangers must forge a connection to survive the elements of a remote snow-covered mountain.  When they realize help is not coming, they embark on a perilous journey across the wilderness.

AFTER: More stressful events taking place tonight, as an impending storm shuts down an airport, and two travelers desperate to get home pool their money to charter a small private jet, with an older pilot who doesn't see the need to file his flight plan with the FAA before heading out.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  Well, remember that storm front moving in?  This quickly becomes a how-to about what NOT to do when traveling.  If your flight gets cancelled and the airline offers you money or miles to re-schedule, plus a night in a hotel, always take that deal.  When I used to travel out to San Diego for Comic-Con, the flight from New York was overbooked, and Delta agents kept offering more and more rewards to anyone willing to take the later flight, I wished I could take the deal, but I was always the one who had to be there to pick up the merchandise from UPS, check in at the convention center, open up the booth and start selling.  (I ended my service in 2017, and this year, there won't even BE a San Diego Comic Con...)

Anyway, the unlikely pair has different reasons for emergency travel, he's a doctor who needed to get to New York to perform a life-saving operation, and she's a photographer who's rushing to her wedding.  Yeah, I've got some bad news on both fronts, neither one is going to make it in time.  They're stranded on a mountaintop somewhere in Utah, she has a broken leg, and they (along with the pilot's dog) try to survive inside the plane's cabin, with nothing to eat but some airline almonds (not even peanuts) and some knock-off Oreos.  After a few days they're forced to make a critical decision - stay in the plane cabin and starve, or head off into the wilderness and possibly freeze to death?

This is where their differing personalities come into play, she's more reckless and wants to leave (though she's still having difficulty walking) and he's more cautious and wants to stay with the plane.  I guess he's just waiting for another mountain lion to stroll by?  But it seems that both strategies are risky, so together they set out with the dog, despite not knowing which direction to head.  Might I suggest down?

I think I've stumbled on to something here that is unintentionally relevant to the current pandemic.  We're all sheltering in place (right? RIGHT?) even though one can only stay sane indoors for so long, but it's dangerous to go outside because of the coronavirus, yet somebody has to go out and get groceries, technically putting themselves at risk.  So collectively we're all making decisions every day that are similar to the ones these characters are making.  Do we stay 100% safe and starve in our own homes?  No, of course not, plus we can always get food delivered or if that's not an option, walk out for more groceries.  And soon many of us will face decisions about going back to work, but that comes with its own set of risks, too.  I'll have to get back on the subway at some point, walk around the Hot Zone that is Manhattan, and come home, hopefully without having picked up the virus.  And that's just Phase 1, at some point we'll have to get back in the habit of going to restaurants, stadiums, theaters, and that risk is going to start piling up again.

There's already talk about opening up Florida beaches and restaurants in Michigan, plus people are protesting in other states to end the sheltering orders and re-start the local economies.  These are the people who want to leave the crashed plane and head out into the unknown wilderness.  Other people are content to stay indoors for another month, only venturing out for needed food and supplies.  These are the people willing to stay in the crashed plane and risk starvation and constant boredom, believing that help will come in the form of a rescue plane or search patrol.  But this strategy is also risky, and it's difficult right now to determine the best way to survive.  I'm a stay-in-the-plane kind of guy, because I've figured out how to pass the time and occupy my mind, but I'm also the one going out for groceries once a week.  I don't want to go back to work until scientists tell me that it's OK.  I still understand (sort of) the point of view of people who want to protest the lockdown, but they just seem extremely self-centered, they don't seem to understand or care that their actions have consequences, that by returning to their previous habits they could infect themselves and others, and that once in a while, personal freedoms have to be put on hold for the common good.  Anyway, ending the personal sheltering isn't going to bring back movies or sports, so what's the point of that?

NITPICK POINT: This film was made in 2017, but the photo-journalist is still shooting on film?  Weren't most journalists using digital cameras by then?

But I think the lesson for the day is to be particular about whom you are sheltering with, because if you're not compatible with that person, the sheltering together is only going to highlight your differences and make a bad problem worse.  Or maybe the lesson is to try to be a better shelter-mate, like if there's something you can do for the other person, like making coffee or re-setting their broken leg, that's only going to make you a better partner in the long run.  But also, try to ensure that spending more time together brings you closer together rather than drives you apart, that means compromising and thinking beyond yourself, asking if there's anything you can do to make your shared sheltering experience more comfortable and enjoyable.  And when it's finally time to head back out in to the world, please do so with an over-abundance of caution and respect for others.  Thus endeth the lesson.

Oh, yeah, the movie.  Well, I suppose how you feel about this film has everything to do with the ending.  Do they make it back to civilization, and if so, how has their experience changed them?  Can they go back to the lives they had before, and should they?  It's a hell of a good question.

Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Movie 43"), Beau Bridges (last seen in "The Descendants"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III"), Linda Sorensen (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller").

RATING: 5 out of 10 canteens of melted snow

Beasts of No Nation

Year 12, Day 108 - 4/17/20 - Movie #3,511

BEFORE: I remember this film caused a bit of a stir back in 2015, and then I kind of forgot about it for a few years, and then it popped back up on my radar last year while I was doing a sweep through Netflix titles.  Then it took about a year to find a way to link to it, hoping that it wouldn't disappear from Netflix before I could get to it, which is a common problem for me.

Idris Elba carries over from "The Take".

THE PLOT: A drama based on the experiences of Agu, a child soldier fighting in the civil war of an unnamed African country.

AFTER: OK, maybe it wasn't the best time for me to watch a film that's so stressful, about teens being recruited as soldiers in an African war, not when everyday life in NYC is stressful enough right now.  But as I've said, every film has a lesson in it somewhere, so maybe I just have to put this fictional suffering seen in the film up against my own, and then maybe my own problems aren't really so bad right now.  It's a "count my blessings" kind of lesson, perhaps - thankfully I was born in the U.S. and kind of at the right time, because I was just a kid during the last stages of the Vietnam War and I was already out of college and working when Gulf War I came around.  My skill set isn't really one that the U.S. military would have benefitted from, anyway.  Being good at video-games didn't come in handy until we were using drones and flying spy cameras later on.

More blessings to count - there still seems to be something of a state of order being maintained in the U.S., at least for the moment, except maybe in Michigan, where armed protestors are not taking kindly to being told they have to shelter at home - I guess in their minds that's just one small step away from the guvment taking away their assault rifles.  OK, fine, you don't have to do the lockdown, but then it's your own fault when you catch the Covid-19 virus and need to be put on a ventilator.  At that point the hospital is free to deny medical care to you right-wing lunkheads, anyway you'd probably consider that socialized medicine, and we know you hate socialism, so feel free to self-medicate at home, let me know how that works out for you.

Look, the bar's been lowered, as far as I'm concerned.  As long as I don't go stir-crazy at home, as long as the TV and movies keep coming to my house, and I only have to leave once a week for groceries, I'm going to be fine on the other side of this.  They've taken away restaurants, bars, sports (not a big loss for me there), concerts, weekly comic books, vacations, casinos and the adjacent buffets, all other public events, but it's all in the name of the common good.  And this will end, it just becomes a question of when.  May 15? June? July?  I'll be on staycation until I get the all clear, just keep sending those unemployment checks via direct deposit.  And so I've learned not to say, "We'll be all right as long as..." because that's an instant jinx.  But we'll be all right as long as a civil war doesn't break out.  Whoops, I just jinxed it.

While they never say which country is supposed to be represented here, I remember there were news stories in the early 2000s about children becoming soldiers in Africa.  I suppose after a long period of killing adult men in any particular country, they would recruit teens as the next logical step.  And yes, this means that teens have guns and blades and were being sent out on missions to kill "rebels" (aka civilian refugees) or blowing up bridges with mortars, or doing whatever their commanders told them to do.

Without getting into details of the plot here, that means living under a chain-of-command structure, being expected to fulfill any orders given by a superior officer, and the lower a person is in the chain, the more people there are above him, telling him what to do, what drugs to take, when to sleep, when to march, and even who to kill.  In this story where Agu gets involved with the NDF (Native Defense Forces) he's taken under the wing of the charismatic Commandant.  But there's both an upside and a downside to being pegged as the Commandant's favorite.  Then there's a breakdown in the chain of command between the Commandant and the leader of the NDF, Dada Goodblood, and that affects the whole battalion.

According to the IMDB, this was Netflix's first original film.  There was some thinking back in 2015 that it might garner some Oscar nominations, so it was given a short theatrical release to qualify, but at the time the Academy had a clear bias against streaming services, and no Netflix film got nominations until "Mudbound", 2 years later.  Four theater chains essentially boycotted this film, because it streamed on Netflix during its theatrical release. Oh, how the tables have turned, because although a theatrical release is still necessary for Oscars qualification, the Academy itself streamed many nominated films to its members, and that process was more secure than sending out screeners by mail.  These days people don't seem to care much whether a film was made by Netflix, or Amazon Studios, instead of a major studio, all quality films seem to be getting equal consideration - "The Irishman" was on Netflix shortly after its theatrical premiere, and nobody really cared much, it just meant that more people, including Academy members, could see it sooner and more conveniently.
And right now, of course, Netflix is still open for business while movie theaters across the U.S. are closed. These are crazy times indeed.

Also starring Abraham Attah (last seen in "Spider-Man: Homecoming"), Ama K. Abebrese, Kobina Amissah-Sam, Emmanuel Nii Adom Quaye, Kurt Egyiawan (last seen in "Pan"), Jude Akuwudike (last seen in "Sahara"), Grace Nortey, David Dontoh, Opeyemi Fagbohungbe, Teibu Owusu Achcampong.

RATING: 5 out of 10 ammo boxes

The Take

Year 12, Day 107 - 4/16/20 - Movie #3,510

BEFORE: Of course, I realized too late that if I just dropped or postponed "The Upside", I could have gone from a film about Elvis Presley to one about Elton John, two huge music performers famous for wearing sequined jumpsuits.  That's something of a lost opportunity, I suppose.  But I had my eye on getting my count to work out the way I wanted it, setting myself up for next Monday.  I'm gonna get there, just need to stop in Idris Elba town for a couple of days first.

Richard Madden carries over from "Rocketman". I see that he's famous for being in "Game of Thrones", but that's one TV series that I sort of let slip by me, I never got in to it because I didn't have the time.  Well, I've got nothing but time now, so if the home sheltering goes on much longer, I may have to find some new old TV shows to watch, once I make my way through "Tiger King" (half done) and "Arrested Development" (still in season 1).  Of course, there's also "Lost", I may finally have to consider getting around to that classic.

THE PLOT: A young pickpocket and an unruly CIA agent team up on an anti-terrorist mission in France.

AFTER: You can see how this might be a very difficult film for me to link to, with a mostly French cast, just a few American or UK actors, and even those don't have huge resumés.  But sometimes when I have limited options it makes the path that much clearer, because I then either had to put this one between two other Idris Elba films, or link in via Richard Madden.  That's it, those were the options.  And somehow tomorrow's film with Idris Elba seemed even harder to link to, so that had to be the one sandwiched between two other films with him in them.

This is another film from the before-times, when the biggest problem that France faced was the threat of terrorism, like bombings in public places.  Also, rampant pickpocketing while naked women walked down stairs to distract people.  That was a crazy summer, back in 2016, so many random naked women, but hey, that's France.  And darn the Covid-19 virus for taking all of that away, you almost never hear about naked women walking down stairs in public since the pandemic happpened. Maybe that's a Bastille Day tradition or something.

This film is titled "Bastille Day" outside the U.S., because that's when it takes place.  That title wouldn't work in the U.S., where most people don't know that holiday or what it's about or even what a Bastille is.  For the record, it's a holiday on July 14 that's kind of like France's Independence Day, people stormed a prison called the Bastille in order to get ammunition for the French Revolution in 1789.  Symbolically it represented the monarchy being removed from power, and this ends the historical lesson for today.  Just doing my part to keep kids educated while their schools are closed.

On Bastille Eve, a very successful pickpocket (who uses that naked women to distract people in a crowd) sees a very upset woman in a bad wig carrying a bag, and while she's talking to someone on the phone, he steals the bag, and her phone.  Inside the bag are just a few random items like a teddy bear, but when he throws the bag away, the trashcan explodes.  Security cameras catch him walking away just before the explosion, and soon a manhunt is on for the (accidental) bomber.  This brings him into contact with an American CIA agent (who has a British accent for no explained reason, except that he's played by Idris Elba) who's already in trouble for his unorthodox methods, but is also great at tracking people down.  The pickpocket is another ex-American, only he has a Scottish accent for no explained reason.

The pickpocket and the CIA agent have to join forces to track down the original woman who had the explosive teddy bear, but all they know is her name, her phone, what she looks like and where she was last seen, so of course, it's not going to be easy.  Thankfully, between them they have exactly the right skills for the task, the CIA agent is great with weapons and martial arts and being an overall bad-ass, and the pickpocket has the ability to steal things and cause chaos.  But only by finding the woman and retracing her original contact can they see the big picture, who's behind the bombing and who would ultimately benefit from terrorism and chaos in the streets.  The answers are almost enough to make you forget to ask why the CIA was running an operation in France in the first place.

Like many of the films who have recently had their releases put on hold due to the pandemic, this film couldn't catch a break either.  It was supposed to be released in February 2016 in the U.K., but was put on hold after real terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015.  Then it did get released in the U.K. in April 2016, and in France on July 13, 2016, to coincide with Bastille Day.  But then there was another terrorist attack in Nice, so it was pulled from French theaters on July 17.  As a result it only made under $15 million worldwide, against a budget of $20 million, only grossing $50K in the U.S. That's a shame, it's not a bad film, it just suffered from some really bad timing.  Try to catch this one on HBO or on streaming platforms (free if you have Hulu) if you can, now that enough time has passed and there aren't so many terrorist attacks.

With a 90-minute running time, it won't take up much of your day - and as a bonus, you'll get to hear star Idris Elba singing during the film's closing theme.

Also starring Idris Elba (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Charlotte Le Bon (last seen in "The Walk"), Kelly Reilly (last seen in "Pride & Prejudice"), José Garcia (last seen in "Now You See Me"), Thierry Godard, Anatol Yusef, Eriq Ebouaney, Arieh Worthalter, Mohamed Makhtoumi, Théo Costa-Marini, Jerome Gaspard, Ismael Sy Savane, Stéphane Caillard, Gregoire Bonnet, Jerome Quiles, Aksel Umtun.

RATING: 6 out of 10 riot shields

Rocketman

Year 12, Day 106 - 4/15/20 - Movie #3,509

BEFORE: It's the last day of "Based on a True Story" week, this is the big one.  I've been trying to find my way to this one for a while now, and this seems like the perfect opportunity.  After this I still need to find a way to work in "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was released the year before this one, but is quite a bit harder to link to, now that Mike Myers is semi-retired.  I must remember to look for other films with Rami Malek in them.

Tate Donovan carries over again from "The Upside", that's 3 in a row for him.  Will follow a different link tomorrow, and I'm just three Idris Elba films away from getting back to World War II stuff.

THE PLOT: A musical fantasy about Elton John's breakthrough years.

AFTER: Wow, I'm kind of blown away by this one.  Why the heck wasn't this nominated for Best Picture last year?  To me, it's better than at least two of the films that were nominated, and I'm not afraid to name names - "Little Women" in particular, and it would have edged out two others, based solely on my completely unscientific rating system.  OK, maybe musicals don't tend to do so well come Oscar time, but then, what about "Chicago"?  What about "The Sound of Music"?  Huh?  Would it have killed anyone to have 10 Best Picture nominees last year instead of 9?

The year before last, we had "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "A Star Is Born" nominated.  This is a similar subject matter as "Bohemian Rhapsody" (1970's rockers) and also it's a bit like a gay "A Star Is Born" told in the "break into song" style of "Mamma Mia!".  Does that make sense?  Where's the love?  Instead this film was only nominated for 1 Oscar, for the original song "I'm Gonna Love Me Again", and it won that award. Perfect score, 1 for 1.  Where's the love for Taron Egerton, though?  Technically this format is now called "jukebox musical", meaning there's just enough story to get from one song to the next, like in "Rock of Ages".  But may I suggest "musical bio-fic" instead?

If I'm correct, the genesis of this film goes back to Taron Egerton singing "I'm Still Standing" in the animated film "Sing", as the voice of the teen gorilla.  He sings that song again here as Elton John, and now he both looks and sounds the part as he re-creates one of the cheesiest music videos of the 1980's, shot for shot.  (Umm, I think, please don't make me go back and watch the original.). For the kids out there, I should explain that a "music video" is sort of like a short film that's a commercial for a record, and they used to air on a channel that we called MTV, before anybody knew about "Road Rules" or "Teen Mom" or "Jersey Shore".  I should probably also explain to the kids that a "record" was what we used to call a flat disc that contained a song or series of songs, and we had to go and buy them in a "record store" before everything was digitally downloadable.

The film, right.  This is a bit unusual because clearly there wasn't much of an attempt to tell Elton John's story exactly as it happened, and that may be a bone of contention for some people, especially hardcore EJ fans.  There's a lot of metaphor involved, like Elton in rehab having a conversation with his younger self (inner child) which is narratively impossible.  But it still may represent what goes on as part of the rehab/healing/recovery process, so on that level, it works.

Similarly, for the years when Elton was performing and touring hard, but also getting addicted to drugs and alcohol, there's a sequence where he's rescued from his swimming pool after taking a load of pills and trying to kill himself in the middle of a party with family and friends.  Meanwhile he's drifting in and out of consciousness, but also singing lyrics from "Rocket Man" while refusing the oxygen mask that the paramedics are trying to put on him.  You'd think that the ambulance would take him to the hospital, but instead it pulls into a wide-open garage in a stadium, a team of doctors and assistants put him on a gurney and pump his stomach, then he's whirled around, dressed in a costume and dragged on to a stage to perform for his fans.  I'm guessing that these events never happened to Elton John in real life, but even if it didn't, it's a powerful statement about how he probably felt in those whirlwind days, just like a cog on an assembly line, a puppet being made to perform.

The sequence ends with Elton on stage, with flames and smoke coming out of his feet, while slowly rising up from the crowd and shooting into the sky, a literal Rocket Man.  Another metaphor, but for the exhilaration that came with performing in front of such a large crowd.  This is some brilliant storytelling, even though it's in the realm of the ridiculous.  After exploding like a firework, we next see him on a plane that was flying overhead, which suggests that due to the drugs and alcohol, he might frequently wake up in situations and have no memory of how he got there.  This happens again after another party where he wakes up in his L.A. mansion and has to ask a drag queen opening the curtains where he is.

Then there's Elton's brief marriage to a German recording engineer - this part of the story gets glossed over, which is exactly what I was afraid of happening.  Elton's marriage (to a woman) seems to me to be one of the most interesting chapters in his personal history, and absolutely none of the details are explored.  OK, they duet together on an impromptu "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" with some nice harmony, then next we know, they're at the wedding ceremony, and then they're seen living together, but coming out of separate bedrooms in the morning, followed by Elton drinking a mimosa and breaking down, saying "Sorry."  WHAT?  Can we get some more details here, what exactly transpired?  How come we can view a scene of Elton in bed with his first boyfriend, but not with his wife?  This seems unfair (and a bit hetero-phobic), is it just because the real Elton didn't want to be reminded of this chapter in his life?  It happened, man, own it.

Instead, it's very clear that Bernie Taupin loved Elton (only not it that way, like a brother) and Elton probably loved Bernie back (umm, yeah, probably in that way).  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but you probably don't mess up a songwriting partnership between two people who have never had an argument, not in almost 50 years of working together, by letting it get complicated.  OK, maybe it was always complicated, or at least awkward, but you can't argue with success.

I feel the need to point out that I'm not even that much of an Elton John fan - sure, his music's always been there on the classic rock stations, and I know many of his songs.  Or I should say that I THOUGHT I knew many of his songs, but it turns out that I've really been mishearing many of the lyrics for decades, or not bothering to look up the lyrics that I didn't understand.  Particularly on the fast songs like "Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)", where he really didn't enunciate the words very well.  I'd get as far as "Don't give me none of that aggravation..." but then I really couldn't tell you what the next line was, even while listening to the song.  I know there's something about a switchblade and a motorbike, but I'm not sure what he's saying in the line before that. Now that I've watched the film with the closed captions on, many of Bernie Taupin's lyrics have become much clearer, and I sort of regret not taking any time over the last two decades to research the song lyrics.  Look, I've been very busy, OK?  "Get about as oiled as a diesel train / Gonna set this dance alight".  Huh, so THAT'S what he was saying.  or "I'm a juvenile product of the working class / Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass."  Damn, it's poetry and it's been eluding me for how long?

Or take another song, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", another one that it's been hard for me to understand because of Elton's use of falsetto.  The real lyric is "Back to the howling old owl in the woods / Hunting the horny back toad."  I guess I thought he was singing "Back to the Hollywood town in the world / Hunting the horny black toe."  Which, I realize now, doesn't make much sense.  But now I'm not likely to forget the real lyrics the way they're supposed to be, I think.  And I was fairly sure that in the original song "Rocket Man" the lyrics were "I miss my wife", but they changed it to "I miss my life" for this film.

I think if I had been an Elton John fan, this would have been an easy "8", for sure.  In the end it doesn't really matter if some of the songs were out of sequence (sung in the wrong years), or if the events didn't really shake down accurately, not when the end result is so artistically constructed, somehow it ends up being more honest and insightful than the truth.

Also starring Taron Egerton (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Jamie Bell (last seen in "Defiance"), Richard Madden (last seen in "1917"), Bryce Dallas Howard (last seen in "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom"), Gemma Jones (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Steven Mackintosh (last seen in "The Muppet Christmas Carol"), Tom Bennett (last seen in "Mascots"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), Stephen Graham (last seen in "The Irishman"), Matthew Illesley, Kit Connor, Ophelia Lovibond (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Rachel Muldoon, Celinde Schoenmaker, Harriet Walter (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Sharon D. Clarke, Peter O'Hanlon, Ross Farrelly, Evan Walsh, Jason Pennycooke.

RATING: 7 out of 10 piano lessons

The Upside

Year 12, Day 105 - 4/14/20 - Movie #3,508

BEFORE: At first glance, it seems like my movie choices have been all over the map lately, a legal drama, a couple of sports-based films, and then a comedy about a celebrity visiting the President - but there is a common theme, which I only just realized.  Let's call this "Based on a True Story" week, since the last thing I watched that was pure fiction was "Midsommar". The films about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Michael Oher and Carroll Shelby/Ken Miles are all forms of biopics, and then it is true that Elvis visited Nixon, we've got the photo to prove it, even if things didn't go down exactly like they did in the movie.

Tonight's film is also rooted in non-fiction, even if it came the long way around.  It's a sort-of-remake of a French film called "The Intouchables", which was inspired by the life of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, a quadriplegic billionaire who hired an Algerian assistant, Abdel Sellou.  For the U.S. remake they kept the character's names, Philip and Dell, and I'm guessing then just changed everything else.  But there's a truthy story in there somewhere, and then tomorrow I'll have another biopic before moving back to fiction stuff.

Tate Donovan carries over from "Elvis & Nixon".

THE PLOT: A comedic look at the relationship between a wealthy man with quadriplegia and an unemployed man with a criminal record who's hired to help him.

AFTER: Every film has a lesson these days, here in the pandemic-filled end times.  Often now it's a lesson to appreciate what I have, even if I'm out of work and housebound.  I'm still healthy, thank God, I'm still mobile, even if I can't go anywhere, and I'm not alone.  Of course I want the pandemic to end and I would love restrictions to be eased, so I can go to a restaurant, go on a road trip, go back to work (eventually, though unemployment checks are going to my bank account, and going back to work would mean something of a pay cut).  Life may be one big shit sandwich right now, but what would be even worse would be having no sandwich at all.  This is why we have movies, we can get glimpses into other people's lives and compare their experiences to ours, and then sometimes that allows us to feel better about our own situations.  Right?

Look, there are good signs in NYC right now, the death rate seems to be decreasing, hospital intakes are also down, and people are starting to argue about when and how to re-open businesses and schools.  Those are all good signs, and I said I wouldn't even consider going back in to Manhattan until the numbers got better, and the government had some kind of plan and schedule for ending the shelter-in-place orders.  And when I feel reasonably certain that I won't get sick from riding the subway or walking down the street.  How will I personally know when the crisis is over?  Probably when I'm sitting in a buffet restaurant in some casino in Atlantic City, that's how.  Until then I'm just resigned to the new routine, staying up late watching movies, sleeping until 1, eating two meals a day, and venturing out for groceries with my facemask once or twice a week.

Anyway, on to the film.  Somehow it worked, pairing the loud, comedic Kevin Hart with the quieter, drier wit of Bryan Cranston.  Chemistry was everything here, and perhaps this was a bit of a gamble, but it's one that I felt paid off.  Putting a billionaire businessman & author up against a street hustler of color, you might risk going down the same road as "Trading Places", or other mismatch buddy comedies, and that clearly wasn't the goal here.  What was a little contrived was getting the pair together in the first place, a situation where Dell thinks he's applying for a job as a janitor, only he's really just collecting signatures at interviews to prove to the unemployment office that he's looking for a job, though he really isn't, he just wants that weekly check.  (Hey, timely!)

We're supposed to believe that Philip somehow sees something in this random guy at the interview, who doesn't even really WANT the job.  Or perhaps Philip's intent was to pick the worst candidate so he'd have somebody to torment, it's not completely clear.  But if that's his motivation, it feels like some screenwriter really bending the plot over backwards, just to create the comic mis-match.  Which seems like a lot of work, but thankfully it does pay off.  Still, it's that really hackneyed Hollywood way of getting two different people together so they can learn from each other.  You know, it's a comedy, it's a drama, it's "about life". Gag.

The two men bond over opera and art, then bond further over smoking weed and those papaya hot dogs, and that I can kind of believe.  They learn each other's tragic stories, about how Philip got paralyzed in a paragliding accident (it's a trick of the language that those two words seem similar, but if you told me that it's called para-gliding because you could get paralyzed doing it, I'd be inclined to believe you.). The friendship progresses well, until Dell convinces Philip to set up a date with a women he's been corresponding with, and well, things don't go very well, which then causes a huge setback in the relationship between the two men.

Ultimately, the two men come back together as friends, Dell is able to purchase a home for his ex-wife and son, and start his own business.  Nothing is easy when it comes to getting everyone to a good place, but that's fine, because it should never be too easy, it should be hard work, like it is in real life.

As for the details, the fancy apartment is real - located at Park Avenue and East 63rd St. - as are many of the famous paintings, from artists like Twombly and Krasner and a custom-made mobile from Marco Mahler.  The painting that Philip buys for $80,000 isn't from a known artist, though, it's just a prop painting made for the film.  They also apparently shot much of the film in and around Philadelphia, and some outdoor locations in Pennsylvania, like when Philip and Dell go on the road near the end, or when Philip meets that woman in that fancy restaurant.

Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), Bryan Cranston (last seen in "Wakefield"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Bombshell"), Golshifteh Farahani (last seen in "Paterson"), Aja Naomi King (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Jahi Di'Allo Winston, Genevieve Angelson, Suzanne Savoy, Julianna Margulies (last seen in "Stand Up Guys")

RATING: 6 out of 10 catheters

Elvis & Nixon

Year 12, Day 104 - 4/13/20 - Movie #3,507

BEFORE: I figure it's Day 24 at home, that's how long I've been sequestered if you don't count one last drive to my office in Brooklyn and a couple walking trips to get groceries and facemasks.  That has given me a lot of time for noble pursuits like laundry, and learning how to make coffee with the new machine.  I should try to figure out online banking tomorrow, and try to make a dent in bagging, reading and organizing some comic books, I may never get this much time at home again until I retire.  Yeah, right, like I'll be able to retire some day.

There's also a lot of time for movies and TV, now that I finished "McMillions" I'm trying to watch at least one episode of "Arrested Development" each day, and last night I finally broke down and watched the first episode of "Tiger King" - I should be able to get through that in a week, just under an hour a day, I can do that.  Beyond that, and re-playing some old video games, I'm working on all the list maintenance I have to do for my movies.  I checked out the New Releases on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, something I usually do each month for Netflix and iTunes, but things also pop up on the other platforms, so a deep dive was long overdue.  I found a few films on Amazon that scrolled off of Netflix before I could get to them, and then a bunch more (nearly 50) that I missed on cable, or in some cases hadn't heard of before, and adding them to the list is going to be a little time-consuming, but hey, I've got nothing but time right now.

There's another 36 on Hulu that aren't on my secondary watchlist yet, but anything I add now is just going to help me make more or better connections down the road, so I'd better get to it.  Add another 14 from Netflix, and that means a full hundred films waiting for me to type up their cast lists, just so I can have a text document to search easily, so I'll find those connections and color-code them.  And just when I'd gotten my main list down to 160 and my secondary under 200 (that's a year's worth of movies, assuming they all somehow link together, which is very unlikely).  I'm going to try to keep a cap on the main list (that's the films available to me either stored on my DVR or on DVD) but the secondary list (Academy screeners and streaming films) is about to balloon up to about 320, and I'll basically spend the next year trying to get it back down to a manageable size.  But since Hollywood's not releasing anything to theaters right now, I might as well increase that list, because it's all that I'll have to draw from until the lockdown is over and theaters re-open.

Of course, when the lists get that large, I can't clear them within a year's time, not even at one film a day - so it's very easy for something to stay on the secondary list for so long that it disappears from streaming because the contract with Netflix or Hulu runs out.  Thankfully everything's on iTunes as a back-up, only too much of renting films that way becomes cost-prohibitive.  I have to hope that if something scrolls off of the platform I found it on, that it pops up on a different one, or plays on cable.  But keeping track of which platforms over 300 films are playing on soon becomes a job in itself.  Sometimes it's easier just to check on where a film is playing when it finally rises to the top of my plan.  At that point, if I have to pay $2.99 or $3.99 to see it, I don't mind as much because it validates my plan and keeps the chain alive.

Tracy Letts carries over from "Ford v Ferrari".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Elvis Meets Nixon" (Movie #1,126)

THE PLOT: The story behind the meeting between Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n Roll, and President Richard Nixon, resulting in a revealing yet humorous moment immortalized in the most requested photograph in the National Archives.

AFTER: Yes, this is the second film I've seen covering the same topic, the day in 1970 when Elvis visited the White House.  Tangential to what I said above - that every film eventually becomes available on cable or streaming, if I wait long enough - it's also true that they'll make a movie about nearly any topic or event if you wait long enough, heck, sometimes they'll even make TWO!  Me, I've got a t-shirt with the famous image of Elvis shaking hands with Nixon, and I'll wear that on July 4 or even President's Day, because it also says on it "I Call It America...and I Love It!"

That other film on the same topic was more of a mockumentary, because honestly, there's only about five minutes of story to this event, so they had to fill up the rest of the movie with other things.  Here they clearly had the same problem, so they had to kill time in a different way, by adding extra characters. Elvis has not just one, but two friends along for the ride this time, who act as his fixers, enablers, roommates and additional problem causers.  There's Jerry, who Elvis flies from Memphis to L.A. to pick up before they fly together to Washington, DC. and Jerry's due back in L.A. the next night for dinner with his girlfriend's parents, a fact that he reminds us of every five minutes.  A clear attempt to create some dramatic tension where none exists - will Jerry get home in time?  Honestly, who cares?  The other friend is Sonny, who drives in from Memphis, which, honestly, Elvis should have done in the first place, so why didn't he?  Sonny doesn't really bring much to the table here, either, except to stand around and then later show off some karate moves.

Admittedly, there is some tension when Elvis shows up at the White House gate, unannounced, and tries to get a written message through to Nixon via the guards.  Nixon doesn't seem to want to meet with Elvis, in fact he barely seems to understand who Elvis is - how is that even possible for anyone who lived through the 1950's?  Nixon couldn't have possibly been that out of touch, it's not feasible. Nixon's aides clearly want the meeting to happen, so they meet in a parking garage, Deep Throat-style, with Elvis's buddies to try to make it so.  The aides end up making the same pitch that Lee Iacocca made to Henry Ford II in yesterday's film, which is "We should do this because it's cool, and will improve your rating with the younger crowd."  But then there's another half-hour of dicking around before the two men get together, a very lengthy security check as Elvis tries to get in without giving up all of his guns, but finally the two men meet and bond over a dislike of the Beatles.  (In the previous film on this same topic, the dialogue was about how they'd never let their daughters marry a weird pop star, which was a nod and wink to Elvis' daughter marrying Michael Jackson in the future - hey, it was 1997 and people were just starting to figure out how much of a freak he was.)

Speaking of that, I'm not supposed to comment about Kevin Spacey any more, it's just not PC and we're all supposed to try and forget he exists, I think.  (Remember his botched attempt to come out of the closet and own his sexuality, but only after the sex assault charges?  Super bad timing, dude.).  Michael Shannon, however, does an amazing job as Elvis by playing him completely straight, not doing the exaggerated, stereotypical gestures (for the most part, except the karate) and really playing him low-key.  It's not even that Elvis was that old, he would have only been 35 in 1970, but Shannon plays him here as something of a naive man-child, somebody who's had every whim catered to for the past two decades, and doesn't know how to do anything for himself.  My wife's theory is that's what happens to somebody who grows up poor and then suddenly has more money than anybody else on the planet.  In the end, though, if he seems sincere, it raises the question over whether that's just who he was, a simple sincere man, or somebody in deep denial about his own addictions.  You have to admit, it does seem weird that he would want to volunteer as a DEA agent, knowing now what we know about how he died.

Since watching that other film, I also gained some insight about the man by visiting Graceland in 2017.  We went on a four-city BBQ crawl, from Dallas to Little Rock to Memphis to Nashville.  We just had to stop at Graceland while in Memphis, you just don't drive a few hundred miles from Dallas and NOT pay tribute to the King - I might never find myself in Memphis again, after all.  I can confirm that this film got Elvis' TV room EXACTLY right, so they either filmed on location or they re-built the room perfectly somewhere else.  I pulled up my photo and it was a perfect match, down to the yellow throw pillows, three TV sets and the weird monkey statue on the coffee table.

We also paid extra to see all of Elvis's famous cars (there's an entire airplane-hangar sized museum just for those) and also his private plane (complete with a blue suede bedroom) - so again, why did he choose to fly commercial on this particular weekend, when he didn't have to?  And then we took a spin through the museum of personal memorabilia, and there's so much art of Elvis and Priscilla together, no mention of the word "divorce" in the whole estate.  I also saw that he did have a large collection of honorary badges from many state police departments around the country, and my own personal theory was that he carried the collection around with him as he traveled, so that if he got into trouble in any U.S. state, he could flash the right badge and make the trouble go away.  When viewed this way, in my opinion, this totally explains why he wanted some kind of special agent badge from the DEA.  That way, if he got caught in possession of drugs, he could just say he was undercover and had confiscated them.

Anyway, hindsight is always 20/20, and since the screenwriters based this particular version on written accounts from both Elvis's buddy Jerry and Nixon aide Bud Krogh, who's to say it didn't go down just like this?  Still, I worry that the more time passes since the event, the more the story takes on a life of its own.  I'm just as inclined to believe that this whole thing was something of a non-event, that Nixon of course knew who Elvis was, and it probably didn't take more than five minutes out of either man's day.

Also starring Michael Shannon (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Kevin Spacey (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Alex Pettyfer (last seen in "The Butler"), Johnny Knoxville (last seen in "Movie 43"), Colin Hanks (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Evan Peters (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Tate Donovan (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Sky Ferreira (also last seen in "Baby Driver"), Ahna O'Reilly (last seen in "Bombshell"), Ashley Benson (last seen in "Spring Breakers"), Dylan Penn, Joey Sagal, Geraldine Singer (last seen in "Green Book"), Hanala Sagal (last seen in "The Last Laugh"), Danny McCarthy (last seen in "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"), with cameos from Poppy Delevingne (also seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Marcus Lyle Brown (last seen in "The Host") and archive footage of Huey P. Newton, Peter Sellers (last seen in "What's New, Pussycat?")

RATING: 5 out of 10 silver bullets

Ford v Ferrari

Year 12, Day 103 - 4/12/20 - Movie #3,506

BEFORE: Lets stay on the sports theme, because if there's anything I know less about than football, it's probably auto racing.  Another sport I used to have to watch and tape - because sometimes there were ads from NASCAR sponsors that didn't air anywhere else.  But there's a lot I don't understand about racing - heck, I don't even know how to drive a stick-shift, so I've got a terrible lack of knowledge with driving stuff - so I'm hoping this film explains a lot.

Thanks to today's screener, and the one for "Little Women", I've now seen most of the films that were nominated for Best Picture of 2019, 7 out of 9.  I'm just missing "Jojo Rabbit", which seems like a good bet to help me make an important connection between the October Halloween chain and "Black Widow" in early November, so that's the plan there.  "Parasite" is nearly impossible to link to, it connects to only one other film on my list, so I may have to wait for an open slot at the first or last day of another year, either 2021 or 2022.  Yep, that's where I find myself, if I stick with my system.

Ray McKinnon carries over from "The Blind Side".

THE PLOT: American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.

AFTER: What don't I understand about racing?  Really, I think it's the pit stop thing that trips me up more than anything else.  I get horse racing and marathons and stuff, because every entrant starts at the same place, and the first one that crosses the finish line is the winner (for the most part, anyway, except for Rosie Ruiz and Maximum Security).  But how the heck do they keep track of how many times a car has gone around the track, when it pulls over into the pit so many times, for gas and new tires, or as seen in this film, to change drivers and such?  While that car is in the pit, other cars are still going around the track, so how do they tell which one has done the most laps?  I've had this explained to me in the past, and I never quite understand it.  I get that they probably use computers now, or GPS devices on the new cars that can quite easily count the laps, but what did they do back in the old days?  If they relied just on humans to count the laps, even with one person devoted to each car, there's still room for human error.  And then when there are two cars out on the track, and one's out in front of the other, it's possible that the one in back has done more laps, so it's really ahead of the car that it's behind.  This just makes my head hurt, like thinking about time zone differences during daylight savings time.

Then you've got this Le Mans race, which apparently goes on for 24 hours.  So somebody in 1966 was up and counting the laps for each car at 3 a.m., what if that person drifts off for a few minutes in the middle of the night, what happens then?  Also, if the race is really 24 hours long, is it a distance race or a timed race?  Is the winning car the one that goes the furthest in exactly 24 hours, or is there some kind of limit on the number of laps.  Most races are distance races, like a marathon is 26.22 miles, and that's it.  Imagine a road race where it was just 4 hours long, no matter what, and whoever could run the farthest in that time would be the winner - that would be really weird, right?

Still, I've just looked it up on Wiki and this seems to be the way this particular race works, whichever car travels the greatest distance in 24 hours is the winner - so it's not just whichever car passes the finish line first, once the time limit is over.  Good to know.  It's also a delicate balancing act, putting the demands on the car to get maximum speed and efficienty, while still allowing the same car to run for 24 hours without mechanical failure.  So greater speed puts more of a strain on the car, but slower speeds will allow that car to function longer, but obviously aren't going to help when it comes to covering more distance.  That seems to be entail more strategy than the average car race.  Then there's the team of drivers that has to fight fatigue, and stagger their meal and nap break schedules to ensure that someone is always ready to drive.  OK, now I'm more interested, because I love logistics and planning and stuff like that.  I can figure out how other races count the laps correctly later, let's just focus on this Le Mans thing and move on.  But if you think about it, a car that hugs the inside of a track travels significantly less distance over the course of a car race than one that stays on the outside of the track, so how do they account for that?

(I've tried once again to figure this all out with the help of the internet, but honestly, I'm more confused than ever.  Some races with the number "500" in their name are 500 miles long, while others are 500 kilometers, and still others are 500 laps around a particular track, which may or may not be one mile long. I trust that somebody, somewhere, is keeping this all straight, I just don't have the time.)

Anyway, the film is about the rivalry between American car company Ford and Italian car company Ferrari.  Henry Ford II had some kind of midlife crisis, and threatened to fire all his middle-men and executives unless someone could come up with a great idea to best up-and-coming Chevrolet.  One Ford executive, a young Lee Iacocca, came up with the idea to partner with Ferrari and get involved with auto racing, because it's cool, would raise the company's visibility and also attract younger people to buy Fords.  The meetings with the Ferrari company in Italy to partner in a racing team, well, they did not go well.  So suddenly the rivalry between Ford and Chevy shifted to a rivalry between Ford and Ferrari.  Corporate executives are very petty people, it turns out.

The Ford executives brought on Carroll Shelby, a former race-car driver who had won Le Mans in 1959, and was now designing and selling sports cars.  The Shelby American company was formed, and Shelby tapped the race driver and hotheaded mechanic Ken Miles to come on board.  Taking Shelby's design, and using Miles to test out the car and find the design flaws, the Ford team competed in the 1965 Le Mans, only Ken Miles didn't seem to fit the image that the Ford Company wanted - which apparently was a clean-cut American who didn't drink, smoke, or curse.  Yeah, good luck with that.  None of the Fords were able to finish the race in 1965, and the film would have us believe that it was all due to the poor choice of driver.  I suppose it makes sense, the man who knew the most about driving the car during development is probably the most logical choice to race it.  Plus Miles had that unique combination as both a risk-taker and someone striving for perfect efficiency with each lap.

Obviously any racing film is going to rely on certain conventions, just as any film about boxing would when it shows a boxer getting certain advice from his cornerman, or adjusting his fighting style in the middle of the bout, based on the way his opponent is boxing.  In "Ford v Ferrari" they rely a few times on Miles drafting behind the car in first place, and then speeding up at just the right moment to pass that car and take the lead, just before the finish line.  Also, cutting to Shelby on the sidelines, calling out "Now!" when that moment comes, even though Miles can't hear him - this was back in the day, before they had radio mikes so the racing team captain could communicate with the driver.

I'm obviously a huge "Star Wars" fan, because I couldn't help but notice how much the 1966 Le Mans race has in common with the pod-racing sequence from "The Phantom Menace", especially when the hero character finishes the first lap in last place, and then comes from behind to have a last-minute showdown with his main opponent.  Obviously two filmmakers could be drawing from the same playbook where competitions are concerned, and anyway, assuming this film is faithful to true events, that means that the 1966 Le Mans race came first - so perhaps George Lucas was drawing inspiration from a real car race, I'll have to check on that.

I'll try to avoid spoilers here, but I don't think I'm giving away much to say that Miles gets his shot the following year, 1966, at Le Mans.  He's one of several drivers on the team, but since he sets lap records for the course during his shifts, the implication is that his driving is the main reason for the result of the race.  The winning car/team is a matter of public record so I don't feel the need to mention it here, but it's a thrilling film all the way up to that point, with the design and racing team both overcoming setbacks at every stage of the process.

What seems a little odd here, to me at least, is not showing any footage from the 1965 Le Mans race - instead we listen to it over the radio, while we see Ken Miles doing the same.  This feels like it violates the over-arching principle of "Show, don't tell" but viewed another way, he does provide valuable insight when he correctly surmises from the commentator's description of the race that certain drivers are pushing the car too hard in some places, not treating the gearbox right, and this does re-confirm the fact that he should have been chosen in the first place.  Plus I'm forced to admit that it would have taken up too much screen time to show the 1965 race, and the film was already running long as is - 2 hours and 32 minutes, which is nearly as long as "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"!

Out of the seven Best Picture nominees from last year that I've seen, if I go just by my own scores to determine which film should have won, I find myself in a three-way tie between this one, "Joker" and "The Irishman".  I know I'm very late to the party, but that's where I find myself.

By the way, that guy playing Henry Ford II (grandson of the original Henry Ford) is the same actor who was arguing over publishing royalties with Jo March last week in "Little Women", and he'll be here tomorrow, too.  That's Tracy Letts, and I know he's also a playwright, he wrote "August: Osage County" and a new play called "The Minutes" that I saw advertised in the subway before everything shut down.

Also starring Matt Damon (last seen in "The Great Wall"), Christian Bale (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "Widows"), Caitriona Balfe (last seen in "Money Monster"), Josh Lucas (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Little Women"), Remo Girone (last seen in "Live By Night"), JJ Feild (last seen in "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women"), Jack McCullen, Corrado Invernizzi, Joe Williamson, Ian Harding, Christopher Darga (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw'), Shawn Law, Darrin Prescott, Alex Gurney, Benjamin Rigby (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Ben Collins, Francesco Bauco, Guido Cocomello, Adam Mayfield, Sean Carrigan (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Giles Matthey (last seen in "Jobs"), Rudolf Martin, Wallace Langham (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Brad Beyer (last seen in "42"), Giovanni Cirfiera, Drew Rausch, Luigi Debiasse, Tanner Foust, Arron Shiver, Gian Franco Tordi, Jan Munroe (last seen in "The Grifters"), Brent Pontin.

RATING: 7 out of 10 crash barriers