Hard Rain

Year 12, Day 116 - 4/25/20 - Movie #3,520

BEFORE: Well, I ran out of Uma Thurman movies (thank God, those last two were terrible) so now Minnie Driver carries over from "Motherhood".

I've moved on from playing "Grand Theft Auto 3", which I now can't finish, to "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", which has a lot more missions, including bank robberies and store robberies, so it makes sense for me to get back on the crime beat in movies, too.  Those last few missions in GTA 3 notoriously feature several armored cars (called "Securicars" in the game) so this one's very much in line with that.

THE PLOT: The nephew of an armored-truck driver tries to prevent three million dollars from being taken by a local gang during a catastrophic flooding caused by a severe storm.

AFTER: You have to wonder sometimes if form follows function, or if it's the other way around.  It's possible that this whole film exists just to establish a framework for a location shoot where three people on jet-skis are chasing each other through a flooded Indiana high school.  That feels like somebody had a weird vivid stress dream, and then set out to find a way to put that into a movie.  Inspiration is whereever you find it, I guess.

We were watching this week's "Top Chef" last night, and the main cooking challenge was to combine two of the five taste senses in a dish, like sweet & salty, or sour & umami.  This film works along the same lines, it's clearly "heist film" mixed with "disaster movie".  The disaster is flooding caused by rain, and it's not a bad setting for a heist, because the floods just make everything more difficult, from getting around (cars are useless, causing the need for boats and those jet-skis) to just plain surviving - once the water level reaches the electrical transformers, just being in the water could be deadly in some spots.  The simple situation of being locked in a jail cell is dangerous, too, once the police station starts filling up with water, and a couple other times people find themselves in enclosed spaces that force some kind of escape, from handcuffs for example, before they drown.

The complex situations take place in a very simple town.  How simple is it?  The sheriff played by Randy Quaid is considered the smartest man in town, that should give you an idea.  We don't really see the whole town, not very well, anyway, because most of it is under water - other than the high-school, we only get to see the police station, the cemetery and the church, which is undergoing a painstaking restoration, with elaborate stained-glass windows and it sure would be a shame if anything were to happen to them.  Thankfully there are no people shooting guns nearby, or riding motorboats down the street a couple stories about ground level.  Wait a minute...

There are also constantly shifting alliances between the security guard who's trying to protect the money, the robbers trying to steal it, and the cops who can't quite make up their mind.  It turns out that a few million in sealed moneybags is enough to get the sheriff and all his men to forget their obligations to the town and start thinking for themselves, and that's quite a game-changer.  It's not quite every man for himself, because that just wouldn't work, but it means that the remains of one faction have to team up with the remains of the other, just so they all have a chance against the cops.  As always, it seems like half a loaf is better than none, and the golden rule states that whoever has the gold makes the rules.  This is a classic scenario that goes back at least as far as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".  If you're not crazy about who's currently in possession of the money, just give it a few minutes.

It also answers the question, "Hey, did Betty White and Ed Asner ever appear in the same action movie?"  Why, yes, they did, though I don't really know if anyone was actively even asking that question.  Morgan Freeman's not really suited for the villain role, though he later did make something similar work as a bank robber in "Going With Style".  So, everything at the right time, I guess.

Also starring Christian Slater (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Morgan Freeman (last heard in "Alpha"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Edward Asner (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Michael Goorjian (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Dann Florek (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), Ricky Harris, Mark Rolston (last seen in "Daylight"), Peter Murnik (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Wayne Duvall (last seen in "Love Liza"), Richard Dysart (last seen in "The Thing"), Betty White (last seen in "The Proposal").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Swiss army knife tools

Motherhood

Year 12, Day 115 - 4/24/20 - Movie #3,519

BEFORE: Uma Thurman carries over from "The Con Is On", and it looks like I've hit on the Mother's Day topic a couple of weeks too early.  First off, it's never too early to highlight how important mother's are, so this can serve as a good reminder that Mother's Day is coming up, I'm building up to something perhaps.  (Go buy or order your Mother's Day cards and gifts now, so they'll arrive on time.  I always manage to send my Mom's card late, so it arrives the Monday or Tuesday after, I should try to stop doing that.)

The truth is, I had two paths set up, one shorter one because we were planning to take a few days in Florida next week, and I had a longer one in case the trip got cancelled, which it did.  This chain was set up before the virus lockdown, when I wasn't sure if I was going to join my wife on her trip, and then my having two paths served another function after we bought our tickets, since we didn't know if airplanes would even be flying, or if we'd be quarantined for two weeks after arriving in Florida, which would also effectively cancel the five-day trip.  So the shorter movie path is out, and the longer movie path is in, so this film is not landing on Mother's Day, but another mother-centric film will instead, OK?  And this is why I have back-ups, to maintain some flexibility in the chain so it can remain unbroken.  Thankfully there's usually more than one way for me to get somewhere - once I've established a holiday-themed goal, which is a key step in the process.

THE PLOT: In Manhattan, a mother of two preparing for her daughter's sixth birthday party has no idea of the challenges she's about to face in order to pull off the event.

AFTER: Clearly another film from the before times, because it's all about somebody running around town doing errands, standing in line with other people at Party City or at the bakery to pick up a cake, and nobody's wearing a mask or standing six feet apart from each other - so maybe this can remind you of happier, simple times, even though the tasks themselves are anything but simple.  In fact, it feels like the script went out of its way to make things more complicated than they should have been. (See, if you order the party supplies EARLY, then you don't have to run around like a crazy person on the day OF the party.  Just saying.)

I've got an odd connection to this film, I'm working (well, not right now, but I've BEEN working) for an animator who had a short film that played at Sundance in 2009, and it was screened right before this one, because both films were female-centric.  But while the feature was about motherhood (duh) the animated short was more about sex from a woman's P.O.V., and let's just say it was a bit graphic.  So my boss was sitting on a panel afterwards, with Uma Thurman, or so the story goes, and had to field some pretty graphic questions from the audience about certain sexual practices.  I wasn't there, but I heard that the conversation got a little out of hand, just because my boss is very open and honest when she talks about sex.  I should check to see if there's a video somewhere of this panel conversation, because I'd love to watch it.

But back to those complications - right off the bat, at the start of the film, we see a mother get out of bed to take a photo of her sleeping daughter, then she leaves her apartment to go down the hall to a different apartment, where she's got a copy of the printed photo and she writes on the photo with a marker, so she'll remember it was taken on the morning of the last day her daughter was five years old.  Wait, another apartment?  Suddenly I was wondering if this woman has two families that live on the same floor, or was cheating on her spouse with a neighbor, and now has to sneak back into bed with her husband.  The simpler explanation is that the family rents two non-adjoining apartments on the same floor of the same building, but how is that simple in any way, plus who does that?  Why not just have a larger apartment somewhere else?  OK, maybe after having kids this couple found out they needed more space, but this means they have two kitchens, pay double rent, it doesn't make any sense from any angle, and it leads me to suspect other motives that aren't part of the plot, so why?  Later Eliza explains "They're rent stabilized..." but that's not an explanation by any means, it just leads me to think the director doesn't understand how apartments work.  Would you want to have a second set of apartment keys just to go from your bedroom to your living room?

OK, maybe the second apartment is her (or his) work space - but then why not just get a studio with a loft, which would be larger and maybe even cheaper?  Besides, later, when she's writing on her laptop, she asks her husband to go play with their son in the other apartment, so she can finish something.  But it's a laptop, the whole point is that it's portable, and it would be so much easier for one person with a laptop to move instead of two people.  They tried their best to portray the husband as inconsiderate, but with situations like this, I'm thinking the mother was the more inconsiderate, selfish one.  Sure, I agree she worked hard taking care of her family, and barely had any time for herself, but she also made sure that EVERYONE around her knew how hard she was working, and that she never had any time for herself.  Again, these were the before times, but after the "ME" generation grew up, so there's a huge sense of entitlement among the "non-working" mother, forced to be the primary caregiver.  Get over yourself, honey.  Your husband's job somehow manages to pay the extra rent so you can have a second apartment just to work in, or to banish him to when he gets on your nerves.

Another complication is this film shoot that's taken over the couple's West Village block, only they put up the notice about the street closing too late, so she didn't find out about it until after they towed her car to a lot a few blocks away.  There was some line of dialogue about using the car to stash the supplies for her daughter's birthday party, so apparently she had to go out and shop AGAIN for the party supplies, and pick up the cake, all without a car, on a bike with a flat tire.  So why not just GET THE CAR from the lot, or at least go to the car to get the party supplies, then the only thing left to do would be pick up the cake, that's two trips max, instead of the four or five we see her trying to do on the bike.  There's a simpler solution that's completely ignored, or out of the realm of possibility, and I suspect maybe she was making things more difficult so she could trot our her martyr complex yet again, and whine about how hard she works for the family to make everything right, without anybody noticing.  God, I'd set the house on fire to get away from someone so entitled.

This is the kind of woman who goes out to move her car just before the street-sweeper comes by, because she wants to keep her car in the space for as long as possible.  While I've never been able to figure out the vagaries of NYC alternate-side parking rules, I know that it doesn't make sense to keep the car in the parking spot for so long, because even if the street cleaning vehicle comes by, and you SEE it go by, the spot still needs to be kept empty between certain times of day.  So leaving it there in the spot until the last minute solves nothing, and then when she finally pulls the car out of the spot, she doesn't circle the block with it, she just blocks traffic, even though the street sweeper is three vehicles behind her, and now can't continue cleaning the street, because she's blocking traffic.  "I don't want to lose my parking space!" ceases to become a valid argument the moment she pulls out of the space, and continuing to block traffic to get the space back means she's just an asshole, and the other drivers are correct to call her this, or worse.  Then when she finally agrees to circle the block, she's upset that she didn't get the same space back.  Well, it's public parking, it belongs to everyone, sorry.  This was filmed back before the new NYC meters were installed, but the principles are the same, you just can't "save" a spot on the street.

Eliza is a blogger-mom, and even though she's got a cutesy name for her blog, she's still probably one of thousands, and has to resort to revealing intimate details of her best friend's love life (or lack thereof) just to stand out in a crowded field.  She wants to submit a writing sample to a contest to hire a mom as a professional paid blogger, but I don't even think this was a lifestyle choice back in 2009.  Nobody was being PAID to blog back then, right?  Now we have influencers and trend-spotters in the blogging world, but back then I don't think anyone was doing it for money, I sure wasn't.  And it's another chance for her to complain about not having any time to just sit down and write - well, maybe if she had gotten all the party supplies out of the car, which would have been faster, and not spent so much time at the Barney's sample sale, she might have found an hour to think about what to write.  Yes, it's another (non-)fascinating look at the struggles of a wanna-be writer, who's convinced that their life spent thinking about what to write about is somehow going to be fascinating to the readers or viewers.  Spoiler alert, it's just not.

Why can't she write about her failures in time-management, think of a better way to have planned herr day, and then she might learn from her own mistakes?   OR maybe write about the messenger who delivered the envelope to her husband, who she conned into helping her carry the party supplies up six flights of stairs, and then she only gave him a drink of water, when he probably would have preferred a $5 bill for his trouble?  OK, she did dance with him to some music, but this was a bad idea, he probably then thought she was really into him and he was going to get some sexual favor from her while her husband wasn't home.  This was another overly complicated bad story idea that just ended up going nowhere.

The ending also seemed very contrived, since the husband got a big check for selling a rare book that he found, in a sense justifying both collecting/hoarding and dumpster-diving.  He gives the money to her so they can get a dishwasher (how romantic!) or school for their son so that she can have more time to complain.  I mean, to write.  This is a double-edged sword, though, because he's going to have to declare that money as income, and it didn't seem like any taxes were taken out of it, so if they spend that money on other things, it's just going to bite them in the butt come April 15.  Or maybe he doesn't want to declare that as income, which is illegal, and they'll get penalized after an audit - either way, it's not a solution, it's more trouble than it's worth.  Just like this whole film.

I've been itching to get back into Manhattan to work, but now after being reminded what some of the people who live in Manhattan are like, I'm fine with staying home for at least another week.  No need to rush things.  I mean, maybe there's a silver lining about people staying home, learning to re-connect with their families and get by on less, and then maybe the entitled people will learn to be a little less entitled, but I kind of doubt it.  With all the people who want the country to re-open sooner rather than later, just so they can get their hair done, or go to the beach, mainly selfish reasons, some people haven't learned a damn thing.  I mean, I want to go eat at restaurants and gamble in casinos and sit in a movie theater, but please, when it's safe to do so.  All in good time.

Also starring Minnie Driver (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Anthony Edwards (last seen in "Pet Sematary II"), Clea Lewis (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), Jake M. Smith (last seen in "Holes"), Betsy Aidem (last seen in "Winter Passing"), Dale Soules, Daisy Than, Alice Drummond (last seen in "I.Q."), Aunjanue Ellis (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Arjun Gupta (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Stephanie Szostak, James Lecesne, with cameos from Jodie Foster (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Samantha Bee (last seen in "Sisters").

RATING: 3 out of 10 loud cell phone talkers

The Con Is On

Year 12, Day 114 - 4/23/20 - Movie #3,518

BEFORE: Finally, something comedic to lighten up the week.  I'm over the 30-day mark for sheltering in place at home, playing old video-games to pass the time, trying to catch up on unread comic books so I won't be too far behind when they start publishing them again, and the better news is that according to the news, people in power are making plans to re-open things and re-start the economy.  I'm not saying they're GOOD plans, because nobody really knows that, and the jury's out on whether there will be widespread testing, or whether there will be a second wave, but I'm perfectly happy to sit back and let a state like Georgia open bars and restaurants again as a test case, I mean, who needs all those Trump supporters in Georgia anyway, and somebody's got to be the proverbial canary in a coal mine, right?  Let's pick a state that probably still runs on coal, there's something poetic about that.  New York City will re-open only when the science numbers say it's OK.

Uma Thurman carries over from "The House That Jack Built".

THE PLOT: In an effort to avoid paying off a massive gambling debt to a notorious mobster in England, a couple flee to Los Angeles and hatch a jewel theft plot.

AFTER: So many things wrong with this movie - let's start with the beginning.  There's a nun who delivers a bag full of money, then quite noticably swears and takes some drugs.  There's some comedic promise in a start like that, only the nun is never seen again, so it's really the first of many wasted opportunities.

I've been re-playing a video-game called "Grand Theft Auto III", which was a huge deal back in like 2001, what with all the running over NPCs and violent action and picking up hookers in player's cars for bonuses.  It caused quite a stir back in the day.  But there are quite a few glitches in the gameplay, one of which I didn't remember until after re-playing the game for the last three weeks.  It's called the "Purple Nines Glitch", the player has to accept a job from the leader of a gang, and that's to drive around a certain neighborhood and kill 20 gang members wearing purple jackets within two minutes. Only I couldn't find any members of the Purple Nines gang, because in another saved game on my memory card, I'd completed a mission where I helped the red gang eliminate the last few members of the purple gang.  This meant that for all of the games saved on that memory card, there could be no purple gang members generated, and I could therefore not complete 100% of the game, there would be five missions that couldn't be unlocked if I couldn't finish the first one in that sequence.  And there's no fix, the only solution is to start a new game from the disc without the memory card in place, after wiping all of the other saved game files from the card.  But it would mean starting over at this point, and it would take days or weeks to get back to where I am now.  Not worth it, I've played the game before and reached 100% completion before, so I'll just play whichever missions I can finish and then move on.  Still, it's discouraging.

(I wrote a note on a post-it, to remind myself about the glitch the next time I play the game, so I'll start the game in the proper way and avoid the Purple Nines problem.  I went to put the post-it inside the game case where I'd be sure to see it, only to find another post-it from four years ago with almost the exact same wording, to remind myself THIS time to start the game the right way - a warning which I obviously ignored in my haste to play the game last month.  It figures.)

This film has characters making a similar mistake early in the film - they take the money from the nun that was supposed to be delivered to a high-ranking British gangster (or loan-shark, or something, it's not very clear) and one of the lead characters gambles with it and loses some, then loses some more, and then some more, and then it's pretty much gone.  It's a mistake that sets the rest of the film in motion, but it also causes so many problems that it starts to feel like there's no way to did themselves out, so I'm thinking the only real solution was to maybe NOT gamble with money that wasn't theirs in the first place. Right?  So if that's the case, then why the hell did they?

I guess you just can't unring that bell - so the criminal couple flies to Los Angeles, of course, and meets with an associate of theirs to find some work in town, to maybe get some money to pay back the female British gangster, and he's of course definitely not the type who would pretend to hire them and also call the gangster to tell her where to find them, so he can get a second cash payout for turning them in.  Just kidding, that's exactly what he does.  Meanwhile Peter and Harry (Harry is a woman) look up Peter's ex-wife or ex-girlfriend or something (this is also very unclear) who's living in L.A. and married to a filmmaker named Gabriel.

We know Gabriel's a filmmaker because he walks around saying things like "I'm a filmmaker" and "Don't you know, I'm making a film!"  OK, thanks for that, only we never really see him making a film, only getting ready for "The Awards" where his current girlfriend is going to introduce him and present him with "The Award" if he wins.  Clearly the Academy did not allow for the "Oscar" trademark or the phrase "Academy Awards" to be used in this film, and I think they made the right move. His wife, Jackie (Peter's ex-something) received a million-dollar ring from him, and Peter and Harry decide to have a duplicate ring made, get Jackie drunk at a party and switch the rings, making off with the million-dollar one.  Only they probably spend much more time talking about this than doing it, in fact the whole film is mostly people talking about doing things rather than doing them, it's essentially a five-minute story stretched out to ninety minutes.

Harry, meanwhile, seems to have this ability to walk around any house or other setting and not be seen, it almost feels like her character is invisible because people don't seem to acknowledge her when they're in the same room with her.  Believe me, if Uma Thurman were in a room with me, I would notice her.  But she's there at the party, in nearly every scene, and nobody seems to care.  Later on, probably when the director finally realized that other characters probably should notice that she's in the house, she's mistaken for the "dog whisperer" and has to spend the rest of the film telling rich people what their chihuahua wants to say.  Which is not even how the famous "dog whisperer" works, he's just a trainer for troubled dogs, not an interpreter, which anybody who's seen even one episode of Cesar Millan's show would know.

So this starts as a crime film, but rapidly turns into a bedroom farce with rich L.A. people that ultimately goes nowhere, similar to a film like "She's Funny That Way", where each person is sleeping with two or possibly three different people, except there are a couple female characters who only complain about how they're not getting enough sex.  OK, maybe pick a boyfriend that doesn't have a wife and another girlfriend on the side, have you tried that?  The talents of Parker Posey as the disenchanted "filmmaker's assistant" are particularly wasted here.  It's not that this is a bad movie, it's more like nobody seemed to care enough to take any steps to make it a GOOD movie.  Like, be good or be bad, but just don't waste my time.  I can find a lesson for these times even in a bad film, but today I'm really regretting wasting 90 minutes on this film.

Fun fact, the plot description on Wikipedia is factually one of the worst I've ever read, so this film is so below the radar that nobody's taken the time to spot-check or improve it.  And the Wiki page also says this film has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, very difficult (or perhaps too easy) to achieve.  And when I told my wife that, she said, "So, not even the director liked it?"  No, he clearly hated this story and these characters, because he invested exactly zero time in improving them.  Any points awarded below are given ONLY for the too-brief flashback love scenes between Uma Thurman and Maggie Q.

As an excuse, I think this film came on my radar because I'd heard about a heist film that took place at a Comic-Con, and "The Con Is On" would have been a great title for that.  But I was confusing it with another 2018 film starring John Malkovich, which is called "Supercon".  I'm going to try to get to that one later.  But now that the San Diego Comic-Con has been cancelled for 2020, there's not much incentive.  However, there's still a chance that New York Comic-Con will still take place in October, right now we're all waiting to find out if "The Con Is On".

Also starring Tim Roth (last seen in "Hardcore Henry"), Maggie Q (last seen in "Around the World in 80 Days"), Alice Eve (last seen in "Bombshell"), Sofia Vergara (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Kicking and Screaming"), Stephen Fry (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Crispin Glover (last seen in "Wild at Heart"), Michael Sirow, Edward Zo, Carly Steel, Daniel Franzese, Quinn Meyers (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Teresa Yenque (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), with a cameo from Melissa Sue Anderson.

RATING: 2 out of 10 parking valets at the Chateau Marmont

The House That Jack Built

Year 12, Day 113 - 4/22/20 - Movie #3,517

BEFORE: Bruno Ganz carries over from "The Boys from Brazil", and if I count the short clip of "Downfall" that appeared in "Look Who's Back", which I do, this makes five films in a row for Bruno, not a bad little string.  Except it's all been about Nazis and now a serial killer, and only one of them was a comedy - before that the last thing I watched that was even close to a comedy was "The Upside", and that was a dark comedy.  I'm thinking now that I probably should have re-programmed things a bit after the pandemic hit, because I could really use some laughs right about now, and the late-night shows are no help.  My wife and I re-watched "Life of Brian" over this past weekend, and that was some help, but I'd had some beer and ended up falling asleep, partially because the movie was so familiar and comforting.  Also, my sleeping schedule is completely messed up without a job to be late for, so I'm going to bed at 6 am most days and sleeping until about 1 pm.  Before the virus hit, I'd often sack out at 4 am and get up at 11 am - still late for work but at least I looked like I was trying, now all bets are sort of off.  Anyway, I think there are a couple of comedies on the horizon, and they're sorely needed, so I'll try to enjoy and appreciate them.  But first I have to get there.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" (Movie #3,393)

THE PLOT: The story follows Jack, a highly intelligent serial killer, over the course of twelve years and depicts the murders that really develop his inner madman.

AFTER: I'm going to end up on some watchlist, I just know it.  My one saving grace is that I've proven over the last few years that I will watch JUST about anything, so the matrixes that Amazon and Netflix and other services might use on me have pretty much given up on recommending things to me.  I imagine that some computer software somewhere is going, "Hey, we could recommend THIS movie to him - nah, he's already seen that.  What about - no, he's seen that, too.  What about this obscure Swedish detective film that won that prize at the Cannes Festival?  Nope, it's on his watchlist. To hell with it, he's on his own, let him watch whatever else he finds."  But at the very least, I expect to hear from some friends after I post on Twitter, thinking perhaps that my recent film selections are a cry for help - and perhaps they are.

Look, I don't know much about the films of Lars von Trier, before this I've only seen "Melancholiaa" and "Dogville", and I sure didn't understand that last one.  This one just seems like a bunch of murder porn, and that's not really my scene.  Some people swear by "American Psycho", but I just couldn't get into it.  Maybe everything in that film was real, maybe it was imagined, I don't care, it's still pretty sick.  I read a few passages from that book once and just could not believe what was on the page, if you're into that book for any reason, please, get some professional help.  And I don't care how "meta" today's film is, like even if the victims joke about the serial killer being a serial killer, and that's part of what helps turn him into a serial killer, that hardly matters.  You can't wink at the audience while one character is beating or stabbing another to death, it's not cool, or even that edgy, it's just gross.

There were two things, though, that were sort of semi-redeeming here, though SPOILER ALERT if you have any intention of seeing this one in the future, which I don't recommend doing.  (It was released in theaters for just one day, apparently, so either that's an admission of failure or an embarassment over the end result, or it's some distributor cutting their own losses before the public could decide that the film was a bomb.).  The first interesting thing, and the reason why I can't score this film as a "1", which I've only done in a very few rare cases, is that it depicts a serial killer with OCD - at least in one of the five "episodes", then his condition very noticably is not mentioned again in the other segments.  I mean, I guess maybe a compulsive disorder is possible, he has a compulsion to kill, why not also a compulsion to clean up afterwards?  So many serial killers have such bad manners, leaving a mangled corpse behind, or even if they remove the body, there's still a pool of blood and spatter everywhere.  Look, I watched a ton of "CSI" back in the day, and some killers do manage to clean up afterwards, and in real life some people do literally get away with murder, maybe it's the killers who clean up well afterwards that are the most successful.

But then, which is stronger, the compulsion to kill or the compulsion to clean?  You have to figure it's the killing one, right, because if the compulsion to not make a mess was stronger, then they wouldn't ever kill anybody, why make a bigger cleaning job for yourself if you don't have to?  Now I wonder if the police ever find a body that was stabbed exactly 50 times, and the coroner says, "Either someone really hated this guy, or we're looking at a serial killer with OCD, and he was trying to get it EXACTLY right..."  I think if von Trier had played up this OCD angle a bit more, we could be looking at an OK dark comedy like "The Voices", but as I said before, he dropped this story angle pretty quickly.  This doesn't make sense because people don't just get over their OCD, it tends to sticks with them, but a few killings later, Jack's all cool and nonchalant about hunting people, and that just didn't feel like there was any consistency to the character.

I think the less said about the middle part of this movie, the better. (It's just a guy doing a lot of killing - and again, if you find this interesting, look into therapy or get on some medication or something.). But at the very end, it gets a little interesting again.  Not much, but a little.  For the whole film, we've heard Jack dictating the details of these five incidents (murders) to someone named "Verge".  But one particular line of dialogue relates to the Greek hero Aeneas, and it was the poet Virgil who wrote the Aeneid.  But a little research tells me that Virgil was also a character in Dante's "Divine Comedy", he was the guide in the afterlife through all the levels of purgatory and hell.  Ah, now we're getting somewhere, though it's a little old school, maybe the serial killer is dead and he's got to describe these incidents from his life so the powers that be can decide what circle of hell he belongs in - like the sorting hat in "Harry Potter", only more morbid.

This would seem to be the most likely interpretation of the last act of the film, with Virgil acting as the guide and taking Jack on a Dante-like tour of the afterlife.  Though I admit that other interpretations are possible - Jack's having a dream, Jack has gone insane, etc.  But I think it's probably a form of wish fulfillment for the audience, we've seen the terrible things that Jack has done, and it might be helpful to think that he will end up paying for his crimes, if not in this life, then in the one beyond.  But what if that's not true?  What if Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy or even Hitler were never called to answer for what they did?  Would that mean, based on common Judeo-Christian ideology that the universe was fundamentally broken, or could we accept that it's just the way it is?  Is that a downside to being an atheist or an agnostic, that I have to acknowledge that some people don't get cosmic justice, other than no longer existing?  Or do we just have to move the bar a little and say, "Well, death is a state of non-being, and if there's nothing beyond this plane of existence, then maybe dying and no longer existing has to be punishment enough."  Just a thought, but it's also an incentive to stay alive as long as possible and help others to do the same.

The final trick, or temptation, in Hell turns out to be a stairway leading out of the underworld, only there's a bridge over the eternal fires to get to the stairway, and the bridge is broken.  This seems like a final test of character, because only the most arrogant person brought to Hell would think that they don't really belong there, like there must have been some mistake made (ironic for someone who also believes in the infallibility of God) or that they're clever enough to find a loophole in the laws of eternal damnation.  If the choices are to be punished forever in the 7th circle of Hell, or risk everything by trying to get to the stairway, what do you think Jack chooses, based on the type of person he is?

NITPICK POINT: Jack is also some kind of architect or engineer, but though he was very hung up on the difference between them, it still wasn't very clear to me.  And he's apparently been trying several times to build his "dream house", has started the build a few times and then scrapped the project, for reasons that were also unclear.  Was this another OCD thing, and if not, what forced him to stop construction and start over?  Unclear, unclear, unclear.

NITPICK POINT #2: In the first incident, Jack drives the woman with car trouble to a place where she can get her jack fixed.  If he did have the intention to help her (this scene was possibly set before his killing spree began) wouldn't it make more sense to drive her to a service station, or an auto repair shop, some place that could, you know, genuinely help her?  This felt very contrived, or perhaps the director doesn't understand how car repair works?

Also starring Matt Dillon (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Uma Thurman (last seen in "Movie 43"), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Sofie Grabol, Riley Keough (last seen in "Logan Lucky"), Jeremy Davies (last seen in "Dogville"), Jack McKenzie (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Mathias Hjelm, Ed Speelers (last seen in "Alice Through the Looking Glass"), Marijana Jankovic, Carina Skenhede, Rocco Day (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Cohen Day, Robert Jezek, Osy Ikhile (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Robert G. Slade, Vasilije Mujka, Emil Tholstrup, with archive footage of Idi Amin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini (last seen in "Vice"), Joseph Stalin (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Albert Speer, Willem Dafoe (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Charlotte Gainsbourg (last seen in "Norman"), Glenn Gould, Udo Kier (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Emily Watson (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle")

RATING: 3 out of 10 frozen pizzas

The Boys from Brazil

Year 12, Day 112 - 4/21/20 - Movie #3,516

BEFORE: I found out from the "Downfall" trivia section on IMDB that Bruno Ganz also had a small role in this other Nazi-themed movie, so while it wasn't part of the original plan, I'm dropping it in today as an extra.  This puts me behind a little, but I can double-up again in early May if I need to hit Mother's Day right on the button.

I have to be careful, though, and spread all of my Nazi-themed movies across several streaming platforms, I don't want to set off any alerts, or make even the bots think that I'm really into Nazi stuff.  So "The Reader" was dubbed to a DVD in-house, I watched "Look Who's Back" on Netflix, "Downfall" was on Amazon Prime, and today's film was free on Tubi.  I'll still be in trouble, though, if my wife starts getting Nazi-themed films recommended to her on the Prime account.

THE PLOT: A Nazi hunter in Paraguay discovers a sinister and bizarre plot to rekindle the Third Reich.

AFTER: I'm jumping back 27 years from "Downfall", at least in terms of release dates - I had no idea that Bruno Ganz had such a long career, or that he passed away last year.  I'm learning so much lately.   But in terms of the settings, I'm jumping ahead, from 1945 to 1978.  The movie that was made earlier than yesterday is actually set later, but of course now they were both made and set in the past, so it's all relative, I guess.  But still my brain needs to re-set itself, like when moving from one time zone to another.  There's no time travel here, like Hitler didn't suddenly disappear in 1945 and re-appear in 2014, but there's still something of an attempt here to bring him back, sort of, only in a very different way.

The story starts with an overheard Nazi plan to kill 94 seemingly random people around the world, most in Europe, some in the U.S., and a few in Canada.  All of the men are civil servants in their 50's, but otherwise appear to have nothing in common, except for younger wives.  What this all means and how it brings back Nazi Germany is something of a mystery, until an older Nazi hunter decides to visit all the men, only he does it by visiting the ones closest to him first, then working out a complicated travel plan to visit the others, only in a specific travel plan designed for maximum efficiency.  That sounds like a very German thing to do.  Perhaps if he can figure out the connection between these families before the men are killed, somebody can put an end to the extremely unlikely plot to take over the world by assassinating minor government employees.

In one sense, this film from 1978 was far ahead of its time, because things like IVF and artificial reproduction technologies were still considered science fiction, the first "test tube" baby was born in 1978, the same year this film was released, and the first successfully cloned mammal was Dolly, the sheep, who was cloned in 1996.  And now it's 2020, and human cloning still hasn't happened, at least not on the public record, and that might be partially due to films like this, that detailed the potential downsides if that technology fell into the wrong hands.  I just know that I wasn't allowed to see this film when I was a kid, probably because it had a reputation as a bit of a horror-based sci-fi movie, but I'm guessing it also wasn't approved by the diocese of Boston as an appropriate film, and that's the standard my mother used when deciding what films to let me watch.  Well, I'm an adult now and I can decide for myself, and I guess I've always remained a little curious about this one.

Problem is, other than the scientific aspect (most of which ultimately proved to be true, or at least possible), I don't think the rest of the film has aged all that well.  It doesn't seem to have the same "scare factor" reputation that it might have once enjoyed, maybe because it's now mathematically impossible for any original Nazis to still be alive.  Neo-Nazis and alt-right Nazis are scary now, so I have to remind myself that back in 1978, when Josef Mengele might have still be alive, that was about the scariest thing that storytellers could come up with, that he and a bunch of Nazis were living in Paraguay and conducting scientific experiments.  You've got to admit, that seems quite ridiculous now, because everybody knows that the Nazis all moved to Argentina, right?  And they would have all been in their 70's by then, so they were probably more concerned with fighting heart disease and arthritis than trying to bring back the Third Reich.

There's a weird mix of actors here, too - some old Hollywood stars, others who were character actors in Hitchcock thrillers or those old Hammer Films horror movies, along with a couple young bucks/rising stars like this Steve Guttenberg fellow.  Watch out for that kid, he's really going places.  And now you know, if anybody asks you to name a film that somehow, impossibly featured Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and that guy from the "Police Academy" movies, you have your answer.  Most people have probably forgotten that he was once America's best defense against the spectre of elderly Nazis in the 1970's.

OK, I promise I'm off of the Nazi topic for the foreseeable future - I have a documentary called "Meet the Hitlers" about regular people with that notable last name, and I'm guessing there's some footage of the man himself in there, but none of these past few films did.  I also want to get to "Jojo Rabbit", but probably not until after October, since it links to "Black Widow".

Also starring Gregory Peck (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Laurence Olivier (last seen in "Dracula" (1979)), James Mason (last seen in "Julius Caesar"), Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen (last seen in "Reversal of Fortune"), Steve Guttenberg (last seen in "Drew: The Man Behind the Poster"), Denholm Elliott (last seen in "Alfie"), Rosemary Harris (last seen in "The Gift"), John Dehner (last seen in "Support Your Local Gunfighter"), John Rubinstein, Anne Meara (last heard in "Planes: Fire & Rescue"), Jeremy Black, Walter Gotell, David Hurst (last seen in "Kelly's Heroes"), Wolfgang Preiss (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Michael Gough (last seen in "Horror of Dracula"), Joachim Hansen, Sky du Mont, Carl Duering, Linda Hayden (last seen in "Taste the Blood of Dracula"), Richard Marner, Georg Marischka, Günter Meisner (last seen in "Funeral in Berlin"), Prunella Scales (last seen in "Howards End"), Raul Faustino Saldanha, Wolf Kahler (last seen in "Wonder Woman"), Jürgen Andersen, Mervyn Nelson, David Brandon, Monica Gearson, Gerti Gordon.

RATING: 4 out of 10 Doberman pinschers

Downfall

Year 12, Day 111 - 4/20/20 - Movie #3,515

BEFORE: It's a double-shot of Hitler movies today, because it's 4/20.  Now, when I first planned this, making a connection here was something of a conundrum, I couldn't see the path because I was only looking at the MAIN actors in each film.  But it turns out that the German filmmaking community is much smaller than the Hollywood one, and when I dug a little deeper into the cast lists, I found the connection.  Still, I couldn't believe my luck, that the two films I wanted to watch about Hitler - one comedy and one drama - shared not one but TWO actors, and the 2nd lead in "Look Who's Back" was Fabian Busch, who also had a small part in "The Reader" and a small role in "Downfall".  So he's the main connection.

But, there's also another actor carrying over from "Look Who's Back", and also that film had a brief clip from "Downfall" with Bruno Ganz in it, so Bruno's in all three of the movies with Fabian Busch, also.  But I didn't KNOW that going in, because it's not mentioned on the IMDB credits page - their listings get a little funny when one movie features a clip from another, like that doesn't count in their book, but it does in mine.

"Downfall" also shares two OTHER actors with "The Reader", so I could have watched "Look Who's Back" and Downfall" today in either order, and the chain would have been maintained either way.  That's good to know, it's a nice safety net, only it's too late to change the order, even if I wanted to.  But when I stay on theme, whether it's romance, animated films for kids, or films about Nazis, it's good to have options in case I make a mistake, or get some bad intel about who's in each film's cast.

Now, I started this one late on 4/20 and finished it in the morning hours of 4/21, but I'm going to count it as being watched on Hitler's birthday.  I'll double-up later in the week when the films are shorter and get back on track.  A combined four and a half hours of the two Hitler films in one day is more than enough for now.  But if I wanted to count this one as being watched on 4/21, that would work out too, because it happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Well, this is the more serious of the two films today, but nah, I'll keep them both on 4/20, that's extra motivation to not fall behind.

THE PLOT: Traudi Junge, the final secretary for Adolf Hitler, tells of the Nazi dictator's final days in his Berlin bunker at the end of WWII.

AFTER: I've had this 2004 film on my watchlist for a while, partially because it's on that list of "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die", and watching this gives me a current total of 426 seen from that list, with another 10 currently in my possession.  I doubt that I'll ever reach 450, but who knows. But that means it's likely the definitive movie version of what went down in April of 1945 - yep, that's 75 years ago this year.  And apart from the first scene in this film, which shows Hitler hiring his new secretary, the first scene in the bunker takes place on April 20, with someone wishing the Führer "Happy Birthday".  So that means I picked the right DAY to watch this, though the film spans at least 10 days' time, since we know he died on April 30, 1945.  As long as I hit the anniversary of one of the scenes, I guess I'm satisfied.

But it's probably going to seem a bit odd if I rate this one lower than I did "Look Who's Back", right? I mean, one film is a highly respected war drama that was nominated for an Oscar (Best Foreign Film category) and is one of the highest rated films on the IMDB, like in the Top 200, and the other is a silly satire about Hitler impossibly time-traveling to 2014.  But it's all about context, what mood I as a viewer might be in on any given day, and with everything going on in the world right now, do I need to be even more stressed out by watching Hitler's regime fall apart as the Russian army invades Berlin?  Do I need to see so many suicides by S.S. officers that seeing them shoot themselves in the head becomes commonplace, almost comical even?  No, I don't.  As usual, I prefer to have my history filtered through the lens of comedy, that's how I prefer to get my news, too.  So I'd rather watch something about Hitler's final days in his bunker on a show like "Drunk History" than watch a dramatic narrative that we all know is just not going to end well.  Sorry, but that's my personal preference.  I think I preferred "Look Who's Back" because I also found that the humor was very relevant to the current U.S. administration, and any time I can make comparisons between Hitler and Trump, I'm a happy boy.

This is one of those films that's important, sure, and maybe everyone SHOULD watch this, but when you take just the last ten days of Hitler's life and make that the focus of a film, then it turns out that has an appalling LACK of context.  We're not seeing the whole story here, there's nothing about how Hitler came to power, all of the atrocities that he was responsible for, instead we're just catching him at the very end, when everything is falling apart, and his days are numbered.  I dare say it might be easy to see him as a tragic figure here, and that would be dangerous in and of itself, considering what he and his Third Reich did, we should never, ever have any sympathy for him or allow him to be portrayed as tragic in any way, he brought his ending upon himself, and he deserved every ounce of misery he felt at the end, plus a whole lot more.

He took the coward's way out, and apparently so did a lot of his S.S. soldiers, I lost count very quickly of the number of Nazi officers who preferred death over dishonor, shooting themselves in their heads with their pistols, and by the end I was almost numb to it, and that's not a good place to be in, either.  There's a "Where are they now" segment before the end credits, and it turns out that not every Nazi captured by the Russians died in captivity, some were released in the mid-1950's and some managed to live until 1998 or 2003.  Why were the Nazi officers so sure that the Russians would execute them, leading so many to blow their own brains out, when clearly that wasn't the case - is a sudden death better than 10 years in a Russian prison?  I guess it must be.

Look, I'm not really a big World War II scholar, or even a war buff.  I've been known to mix up Goebbels with Göring, I couldn't tell you Heinrich Himmler's official title, and then once I get beyond that inner circle, I'm pretty clueless about names like Albert Speer or Hermann Fegelein, or Wilhelm Mohnke - but I know there are probably a lot of experts out there who did this historical stuff, and probably love seeing these figures from history hanging out at the bunker.  OK, so now I know that Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda were in the bunker, along with their six children, while Hermann Goering was not there - he was somewhere else stealing artwork or something, and waiting to take control of the government after Hitler surrendered or was killed.

For that matter, there were a LOT of people in Hitler's bunker - it looked like hundreds!  Check out the big cast list below and imagine most of those people crammed into what I always thought was a tiny little bunker, only if this film is accurate, there were a lot of rooms!  Council rooms, dining rooms, rooms with cots and bunk beds in them, one room just for Goebbels' family, and so on.  Was there anybody left in the German army who WASN'T in that bunker?  (Oh, yeah, Goering...)

Before Hitler's end, there's a lot that goes down in those last ten days - Himmler tries to get Hitler to leave Berlin, but he stays put.  Then Himmler leaves to go negotiate with the Allies, leading Hitler to brand him as a traitor.  Dr. Schenck is ordered to leave Berlin, but stays behind to help treat wounded soldiers with Dr. Haase.  Albert Speer, minister of armaments, comes to visit, but doesn't want to follow Hitler's orders to destroy Germany's infrastructure.  Eva Braun throws a party, as one does I suppose, and her brother-in-law Hermann Fegelein tries to convince her to leave Berlin, but she also stays put. General Weidling is called to the bunker to be executed for ordering his unit to retreat, only he claims he did no such thing, so Hitler promotes him.  Hitler learns that SS Commander Steiner's units were to weak to launch a counter-attack, so Hitler starts yelling that all of his generals are cowards or traitors.  Umm, except Weidling, I guess.

That's when Göring offers to take over the country, Speer visits again, and Hitler orders the execution of Himmler for meeting with the Allies.  Supplies run low, morale plummets and the 12th Army never arrives to save them all.  So Hitler writes his will, marries Eva Braun, and plans his own suicide, as one does, I guess.  Whoops, sorry, World War II SPOILER ALERT.  But hey, it was in all the papers, so I can't be held responsible.

Again, the portrayal of a government falling apart here, with aides and personnel being trusted allies one day and branded as traitors the next, with the end result that nobody seems to know what's going on or be able to accomplish anything, it's all too real right now, and it hits too close to home because it reminds me of the current administration and the (lack of) pandemic response.  I know it's a completely different situation, only it doesn't really feel like it, not when both scenarios feature paranoid leaders who seesaw between blind optimism and childish tantrums.  I'm going to have a full complement of stress dreams tonight, that's for sure.

But for now, I'm going to leave my own bunker at take a walk to see if the butcher shop near by is open today.  Listening to all this German being spoken over two movies makes me want to get some authentic cold cuts, definitely some head cheese and some smoked Gouda, and whatever else I can find.  Maybe some knockwurst, we'll see.

Also starring Bruno Ganz (also carrying over from archive footage in "Look Who's Back"), Alexandra Maria Lara (last seen in "The Reader"), Matthias Habich (ditto), Ulrich Matthes, Corrina Harfouch, Juliane Köhler, Thomas Kretschmann (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Heino Ferch, Christian Berkel (last seen in "Trumbo"), André Hennicke (last seen in "A Dangerous Method"), Anna Thalbach (ditto), Götz Otto (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), Ulrich Noethen, Christian Redl, Rolf Kanies, Michael Mendl, Birgit Minichmayr, Dietrich Hollinderbaumer, Dieter Mann, Justus von Dohnanyi (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Alexander Held (last seen in "Schindler's List"), Donevan Gunia, Thomas Thieme (also carrying over from "Look Who's Back"), Thomas Limpinsel, Hans H. Steinberg, Heinrich Schmieder, Klaus B. Wolf, Thorsten Krohn, Jürgen Tonkel, Igor Romanov, Igor Bubenchikov, Michael Brandner (last seen in "The Monuments Men"), Christian Hoening, Bettina Redlich, Devid Striesow, Elizaveta Boyarskaya, Mathias Gnädiger, Alexander Slastin, Elena Dreyden, Olver Stritzel, Aline Sokar, Charlotte Stoiber, Gregory Borlein, Julia Bauer, Laura Borlein, Amelie Menges, Norbert Heckner, Silke Nikowski, Leopold von Buttlar, Veit Stübner, Oleg Khoroshilov, Mariya Semyonova, Boris Schwarzmann, Oleg Popov, Mikhail Tryasorukov, Vsevolod Tsurilo, Vasiliy Reutov, Jurij Schrader.

RATING: 5 out of 10 cyanide capsules

Look Who's Back

Year 12, Day 111 - 4/20/20 - Movie #3,514

BEFORE: Well, here we are, this is one of those wayposts I set for myself at the start of the year, so on some level, mission accomplished.  I could not have predicted that I'd be sequestered at home, technically unemployed while a pandemic ravages New York City and U.S. politics would be approaching a boiling point.  Who can ever see such things?  Anyway, it's Hitler's birthday, which is a dubious sort of holiday at best, and we only really know this because of stoners who want to light up at 4:20 pm, or Neo-Nazis who made the news a couple of years ago and probably DO consider this a real holiday.  It's not, unless you want to take some time today to remember what happened in Germany in order to insure that it never happens again.  However, some people would say that it DID happen again, in one form or another, though I'm not naming any names here, so maybe it is important to pause and think about how we got where we are.  They can try to hide behind terms like "alt-right" or "neo-conservatives" or, umm, "hipsters", but come on, we really know what they're all on about.

I should point out that just by watching a film (or two) about Hitler today, this should not be considered an endorsement of his politics, or what he stood for, or a defense in any way.  Yes, I am of (mostly) German descent, but there's some Irish and Polish mixed in there too, so I'm not "pure" by the standards of the Fuhrer.  Anyway, I found out that my German ancestors on one side came from Alsace-Lorraine, a territory that has changed hands between Germany and France so many times that for all I know, I should be calling myself part French, too.  I'm down with that, it's the part of France where their cuisine looks very, well, German.  So proud.

I've got this uncanny ability to second-guess my own linking chain, so when I saw that Lena Olin was in "The Reader", I wondered why I didn't link to "Fanny & Alexander" and do a proper Bergman chain, I could have linked back through his films in reverse order, ending with "The Seventh Seal" as a tribute to Max von Sydow.  From there I could have watched "A Kiss Before Dying", linked via Matt Dillon to a film with Bruno Ganz in it, from there to "Downfall" and ended up right back here on April 30 (the date of Hitler's death) rather than the date of his birth.  So just for kicks I charted that path out, and sure enough, that would have meant the end of my chain - I would then have nowhere to go from today's film, the only connection would be back to "The Reader", so that's a dead end, no chance of another "perfect year" that way.  See, I was right in the first place - now I just have to learn to trust my own instincts.  Quite often there can be a better way to re-work the chain, but it's not always the case.

So, Fabian Busch carries over from "The Reader".  He had a small role in yesterday's film as a lawyer, but a much larger part to play today.

THE PLOT: Adolf Hitler wakes up in the 21st century.  He quickly gains some media attention, but while Germans find him hilarious and charming, Hitler makes some serious observations about society.

AFTER: Perhaps this originated as one of those "thought experiments", like "What if George Washington showed up today, in Washington DC, what would he think of our country?"  Would he stand in awe of the modern marvels that he saw before him, or would he get sick to his stomach once he saw how partisan politics have divided our country?  What would he think about cars, cell phones, Pop Rocks and Lady Gaga?  Similarly, if any of us could sleep for 100 years or more and wake up at the same age, would we even recognize the world, assuming that it still existed?  Would it be a post-apocalyptic hellscape or a paradise?  We'll never know, because it turns out that cryogenic freezing is a bunch of bullshit, they can't revive you on the other side, I heard they cut off your head or something before they freeze you, what good does that do you 100 years later?  So until there's real time travel, all answers to the above questions are purely theoretical.

But somehow, in this film, Hitler wakes up in 2014, and other than being very confused, he's none the worse for wear.  Umm, yeah, explanations here are noticably absent, just roll with it, because German comedies turn out to be very rare indeed, so since this is a satirical comedy (I think) let's chalk it up to time travel, or a wormhole or perhaps some kind of magical restoration brought on by the zeitgeist.
("spirit of the times").  Don't call it a comeback, but Hitler's back with a brand new invention ("Eis Eis, Baby").  Just kidding, it's the same old racism.

We quickly find out that Hitler has some very strong opinions about the modern world.  He digs the idea of television, what a great tool for spreading propaganda to the masses!  But he soon changes his mind when he watches a cooking show and some reality TV.  Yeah, that sounds about right.  He doesn't care much for hip-hop (I'm with him there) or its frequent use of the N-word, I guess he only ever wanted to use it in a derogatory way, not as a sign of friendship.  Makes sense.  He loves the look of the newer cars, remember back when he was around the first time, all cars were very boxy and non-aerodynamic.  I bet he would have loved to see how Volkswagens caught on, but the film didn't pick up on this opportunity.

Rather quickly, he falls in with a recently-fired TV segment director, who's been making a film about lower-class kids playing soccer (sorry, football or "fusball") but the TV executives just aren't interested.  Naturally, he mistakes the revived Hitler to be an impersonator, and films him as a character actor interacting with German citizens, having political discussions, sort of "Ali G" or "Borat"-style.  The average German's reaction to being approached by Hitler in a pub or on the street is kind of a mix of confusion and disbelief, but here, more often than not, they end up agreeing with what he has to say.  Unless they're old enough to remember World War II, then they're usually scared, even if they think he's not the real thing.  Other people mistake him for one of those costumed people walking around in a public place, posing for photos - is that a thing in Germany?  Too soon?

Then from something as innocent as a conversation with a dog-breeder, we realize that old Hitler hasn't changed one bit. But you can imagine one of those AKC people thinking along his mental lines, when he points out that if you allow a German shepherd to mate with a dachshund, what do you have?  According to dog fanciers, you're diluting the "purity" of the breed, creating a "mutt".  Honestly, it's not a big leap from there to eugenics.  I remember the first time we went to Las Vegas, we visited the zoo at the Mirage that held Siegfried & Roy's white tigers (this was in 2003, a few months before the biting incident) and while listening to the audio-tour, hearing the magicians with their German (Austrian?) accents, talking about mating white tigers with other white tigers to preserve the "purity" of the species, I felt a chill run through my body, it was a little too close to Hitler's reasoning for maintaining the Aryan race back in the day.

What rings true here is that most people have forgotten how Hitler came to power in the first place, he was charismatic enough to win an election, despite the horribly racist speeches and anti-immigrant rhetoric, he took advantage of a vulnerable populace, making empty promises and hiding his real agenda.  Gee, I don't know, that sort of reminds me of somebody else.  But then once he took office, he started rounding up people with ethnic backgrounds he didn't like and putting them in camps and cages.  Wait, wait, that feels familiar, too - don't tell me, I'll get it, just give me a minute.  And then we have to remember that his policies caused the deaths of thousands and thousands of people.  I swear, this is right on the tip of my tongue, I'm gonna figure this out, who the hell does Hitler remind me of?  Somebody else with a huge ego and a bad combover, right?

It took maybe 70 years, but some Germans are finally able to laugh about Hitler - I guess that's a good thing, because it shows some personal growth, but I'm still torn wondering if that's ultimately positive.  Sure, Mel Brooks did it in "The Producers", but as I saw in the documentary "The Last Laugh", Jewish people kind of get a pass on this, and rightfully so.  If the Gentiles start laughing too, the danger is in people letting their guard down, and allowing anti-Semitism to flourish again.  Which, unfortunately, has been the case in America, and no doubt in Germany, too.  There's an interesting point made here when Hitler is talking to a modern German politician who hates Islamic people (though he called them "Salafists", and I admit I had to look that word up) yet at the same time, he acknowledges that he's benefited greatly from taking advantage of the public's Islamophobia.  So, by extension, Trump and the alt-right might hate Mexican immigrants, for example, but if they weren't in our country, then who would they have angry speeches about?  Just as we need non-documented immigrants to perform tasks like farm labor that most Americans don't want to do, the haters need them too, because if they weren't here, who would they hate?

Here Hitler ends up on the sketch comedy show "Krass Alter", (roughly, "Whoa, Dude!") only he doesn't perform the jokes that the writers gave him.  (Sample: "What does a Jewish pedophile say?  Hey, kid, wanna buy some candy?").  Instead he rails against the state of television today, among other things, and Hitler calls it a "great abyss".  He's not wrong, it's taken the place of religion from Karl Marx's quote calling it the "opium of the people".  So when religion is on TV, that's a double-whammy, right?  Look, I agree, most TV sucks, but what are you gonna do, stop watching?  We've got to pass the time somehow during all this sheltering in place, maybe if you can watch a little less, maybe balance it out with some books or crossword puzzles, or have a conversation with your family, you'll be better off in the long run.

My big problem is that this film gets too meta at the end - in Germany, this film is titled "Er ist wieder da", which means "He's here again." And within the film, Hitler writes a book with the same title, "Er ist wieder da", and wouldn't you know, that book gets turned into a movie which looks suspiciously like the movie that I just watched, only with different actors playing the roles that I saw actors in.  So there's a film-within-the-film which is somehow supposed to be the film I watched, only different.  So when I see the end of my film, which one am I seeing, the end of the film or the film-within-the-film, and are they the same, or different, and if they're different, in what way?  This is "Little Women" all over again, and it's part cop-out and part paradox or logical impossibility.  What is or isn't real in this Hitler-based "Inception"?  Either everything or nothing is real, I'm going with nothing - but this is how sophomore-level students used to end their short movies in film school, it's really amateurish.

But as a bonus, there are visual references here to other time-travel movies, like one character wears clothing similar to Marty McFly in "Back to the Future", the lightning effects around Hitler appearing in the present are similar to the ones seen in "The Terminator", and there's a slow-motion action scene late in the film that mimics the angles of the airport finale in "12 Monkeys".  There may be more.  Now, me, I would love to make an action film about that old conundrum about traveling back in time to try to kill Hitler when he was a baby.  In this scenario, Hitler's mother would be a real bad-ass, like Linda Hamilton-style, but she'd be weary from having to constantly defend baby Adolf from all the time-travelers from different future eras, all trying to make a name for themselves by changing the past.  (You can't do this, for several reasons, one of which is the theoretical paradox that would be created...). I even have the perfect name picked out, I would call the film "The Germanator".  Yeah, it would be something of a parody.  But it's a good idea, right?

Also starring Oliver Masucci, Katja Riemann, Christoph Maria Herbst, Franziska Wulf, Michael Kessler, Thomas Thieme, Michael Ostrowski, Lars Rudolph, Ramona Kunze-Libnow, Gudrun Ritter (last seen in "Hanna"), Stephan Grossmann, Christoph Zrenner, Fred Aaron Blake, Bernardo Arias Porras, Jakob Bieber, Maximilian Strestik, Marian Meder, Piet Fuchs, Paul Maaß, Jens Reimann, Christian Harting, with cameos from Klaas Heufer-Umlauf, Joko Winterscheidt, Daniel Aminati, Jörg Thadeusz, Frank Plasberg, Roberto Blanco, Micaela Schafer, Kim Gloss, Dagi Bee, and archive footage of Bruno Ganz (also carrying over from "The Reader"), Angela Merkel (last seen in "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power"), Geert Wilders.

RATING: 6 out of 10 "Hitler selfies"

The Reader

Year 12, Day 110 - 4/19/20 - Movie #3,513

BEFORE: Kate Winslet carries over from "The Mountain Between Us", and I'm back on World War II as a topic, just in time.  See, I told you I'd get here.

I've done some real next-level linking already this year, working in films with largely Swedish casts, like "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and "Midsommar", which both thankfully had some English or American cast members to work with.  Now I'm going mostly German with the next three films, and I'm saved once again by the fact that they at least share actors between them.  I've already given up any thought of linking to the Bergman films after this little German excursion, it's possible, but then I can't link away.  I noticed too late that this film has Lena Olin in it, and she could have been a link to "Fanny & Alexander", but that would mean dropping the Hitler-based films, or watching them on a date other than 4/20.  No way, I've worked too hard to make that happen, so I'd rather re-schedule the Bergman chain for next January, if it comes to that.

I've also got a loose plan for next February, if you can believe that.  I had about 10 or 11 romance films that link together, then a couple little mini-chains of 3, 4 or 5 films.  I took a stab at finding other romances NOT on my list that could link those chainlets together, and it is possible.  However, I'm going to need to dip into the romance category just before Mother's Day in order to keep the chain unbroken, so the trick will be deciding between two paths, both get me to Mother's Day, but I need to watch the less-linkable romance films, and hope that next February's line-up doesn't collapse as a result.  If this year was any indication, I had a list of 45 or so films that linked together so many different ways, that in the end I could shift them around on the fly and still be relatively certain that I could link back up with the chain, and still end up in the same place.

Ralph Fiennes (also in today's film) is involved heavily in this decision - do I watch two more films with him in May, or three?  If I reduce it to two, that delays two films to next February that link together, and also link to other films on the docket.  That's the safer play, keep as many linking options open as possible, clear off the films that NEED to be part of the chain this year, ones I don't necessarily have a way to get to in the future.  So that's decided then, unless I change my mind later. (Also, which is a more "romance-y" kind of film?  "The Wings of the Dove" or "The Constant Gardener"?  That's something to consider, also.)

THE PLOT: In post-WWII Germany, nearly a decade after his affair with an older woman came to a mysterious end, law student Michael Berg re-encounters his former lover as she defends herself in a war-crime trial.

AFTER: For that matter, I wasn't really sure how "romance-y" today's film was going to be.  Or yesterday's for that matter.  Certain situations don't seem to lend themselves to romance, like being stranded on a mountaintop together, or, say, a Nazi war criminal on trial.  Yet novelists and screenwriters persist in sticking romances into these stories.  Oh, and a big SPOILER ALERT for today's review if you haven't seen (or read) "The Reader".  I think there's probably no way to talk about the film without mentioning the twist/reveal/secret.  Don't say I didn't warn you, though it's probably pretty easy to figure out.

The romance, or as close as Germans get to it, comes into play when Michael Berg, a teen boy, encounters Hanna, an older single woman living in Berlin in 1958.  He's come down with scarlet fever (last seen in "Little Women", and hey, another pandemic tie-in...) and stops to rest in the lower courtyard of a building.  There he meets the woman, a resident who offers him water.  Months later, after recovering and self-isolating, he returns with flowers to thank her for her kindness.  She puts him to work doing chores (I guess that's the German equivalent of showing affection) and afterwards, allows him to take a bath.  Before long she's seducing him, and probably there's some long German word for "casual sex with an older woman who's emotionally unavailable but still really digs good hygiene".

The relationship serves a purpose, it's the boy's introduction to relationships and sex and how to deal with emotionally distant German women - good experience all around - and for her, there's intellectual stilmulation as she's constantly asking about his schoolwork and getting him to read to her.  They go on a cycling trip together in the countryside, but eventually the age difference proves to be something of an issue, and she's promoted to the trolley company's head office, and moves without contacting the teen again.

Years later, when Michael is studying law, his professor takes the class to watch the legal trial of five people accused of crimes committed when working as guards in concentration camps.  Michael recognizes one of the accused as Hanna, and once again he is obsessed with her.  This opens up a debate in his legal class about the culpability of Nazis who were "only following orders", and for that matter, whether something such as the Holocaust could possibly be both technically legal (according to the laws of the Third Reich) and blatantly immoral at the same time.  Key evidence comes from a Holocaust survivor who was a little girl at the time, and she describes how Hanna would choose inmates at the camp to read to her on some evenings.  Meanwhile, the other accused guards band together and single out Hanna as the guard in charge, the one who wrote and signed off on all the reports of the atrocities committed.

Michael, however, has figured out Hanna's secret, and determined that while she is culpable in some way, she could not have written the reports.  However, Hanna refuses to admit her secret in court, and is therefore sentenced to life in prison.  I'm not convinced that this tracks logically, I mean, there are things to be ashamed of that don't seem important when compared to a life sentence.  Imagine the trial of, say, Phil Spector, and if he could prove his innocence by admitting that he had thinning hair and needed to wear a wig.  If it came down to that (not that it would) don't you think he'd admit to something mildly embarrassing, if it could clear his name?  Or if O.J. Simpson could prove that he was somewhere else on the night his wife was murdered, like say he was with a hooker at the time, wouldn't it make sense to admit that, rather than go to prison?

And also, huge NITPICK POINT regarding her secret.  The Germans, again, are known for their efficiency.  Would it make sense that she would be working in the camps, or later working on the trolley, and nobody else ever figured out her secret?  How did she work, get around, make it through life on a daily basis without, you know....  it just doesn't track on some level.  Remember, she got promoted to a clerical job at the trolley company, wouldn't someone there have figured out her secret in about 10 seconds?

Michael is permitted to visit Hanna at this point, but apparently can't go through with it - this also seemed a bit contrived, that the one person who figured out her secret and could convince her to reveal it, to clear her name, can't seem to pull the trigger on making this happen.  Instead he goes on with his life, waits a few decades, then starts sending her audiotapes of him reading classic novels to her.  This sort of seems similar to "The Professor and the Madman", both films have people in prison with plenty of time on their hands, who end up finding solace in reading or reading-adjacent literary pursuits, like finding quotes for dictionary entries.

For everyone stuck at home these days, it's a sign - now's the time to catch up on reading (I'm still 4 weeks behind on comic books, but without new ones being printed, it's an excellent chance for me to get current) or if that's not your thing, tackling that new video-game you've been having trouble getting to, or I guess there's also home improvements and household chores once you run out of TV and movies to watch.  If you really have to, I guess you can take a whack at that screenplay or novel you've been meaning to write, just bear in mind that we've already got a ton of terrible books and films being written right now, the world doesn't really need another.  Just saying.

By the way, I obviously had Hitler's birthday in mind when planning my schedule, but today is an anniversary of a different sort - April 19, 1943 was the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of resistance that took place after the Nazis entered the ghettos in Poland to round up the remaining Jews.  So there's today's history lesson for you kids.

Also starring Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), David Kross (last seen in "Race"), Bruno Ganz (last seen in "The Counselor"), Alexandra Maria Lara (last seen in "Rush"), Lena Olin (last seen in "Trespassing Bergman"), Vijessna Ferkic, Karoline Herfurth, Burghart Klaussner (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Linda Bassett (last seen in "Calendar Girls"), Hannah Herzsprung, Jeanette Hain (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Susanne Lothar (last seen in "Anna Karenina"), Matthias Habich (last seen in "Enemy at the Gates"), Florian Bartholomai, Alissa Wilms, Friederike Becht, Sylvester Groth (last seen in "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."), Fabian Busch, Volker Bruch, Jürgen Tarrach (last seen in "Casino Royale"), Beata Lehmann,

RATING: 5 out of 10 prison library books