BEFORE: OK, I took my first stab at organizing my horror films for this year, and I'm taking the same approach that's worked before with the romance chain - putting little mini-chains together of two or three films, whenever I notice that films on the list share actors. Now I've got seven mini-chains of two or three films each, but I've also got a 6-film chain, a 7-film chain, and after noticing a convergence between three different franchises ("Scream", "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and the "Scooby-Doo" films) I've got one larger chain of 11 films. Well, it's a start. I could just watch the 11-film chain and leave it at that - or if I keep adding more films, like maybe the "Purge" series, something bigger could come together, coalesce. I need to do this in March, because "Godzilla vs. Kong" is coming to theaters and airing on HBO Max at the end of the month, and it will only be streaming for 30 days. So do I need to watch that film? Will it fit into my chain? Umm, maybe - it links to a couple films already on my list, but it's going to take me a few days to really land on something that will take up most of October, with a start point and an end point. It doesn't have to be 30 days long, because there MIGHT be a New York Comic-Con this October, so my chain can be shorter to allow me to work at the convention. Longer hours could mean I fall asleep as soon as I get home, so it's better to skip movies during the week of the convention - if it happens. Last year's convention was of course cancelled, but right now the 2021 edition is up in the air. Possible, if not likely.
Thomas Haden Church carries over again from "All About Steve". Tonight's film used to be on Hulu, but I took too long to watch it. It's one I couldn't schedule last February or March, so it might have been on my list for two years or more. I had to track it down on Tubi today, so you know what that means. It's probably not a great film if Tubi's streaming it for free. With ads, but still free.
Oh, right, Women's History Month - on March 4, 1917, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first female member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And on March 4, 1933, Frances Perkins became the U.S. Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet member in the country. If I can keep this up, I may be able to apply for some kind of educational grant...
THE PLOT: A hopeless romantic, who thinks he's found true love with an older woman, learns that she's married and that the fliing is merely an instrument of revenge against her neglectful husband.
AFTER: I'm trying to recover from the horror that is "All About Steve", but it's not going to be easy. Try that one out on your boss - say you watched a terrible movie and you need a day off to recover, and let me know how that goes. But maybe movies are a bit like relationships - if you have a bad one, it's best to jump right back on that horse, as they say, and get yourself out there again, even if it's just to restore your faith in the process. I've got just over a week to go on this topic, and now it feels like a bit of a slog to make it through the final 25% of relationship-themed films, but maybe that's because I'm working through the "It's Complicated" part of the chain.
Today's film drops us right into the middle of the situation - Stensland has spent almost two days in bed with an attractive older woman he met in a furniture store - thankfully the film doesn't flash back to their meeting and then do any kind of split-timeline thing - but later we do find out why he likes to loiter in the furniture store. Morgan has just dropped the information that she's married, and she only slept with Stensland to get back at her husband, who has cheated on her. It's a lot to take in, for both Stensland and us, but it ends with him storming out of her house, and feeling like his heart was broken. He's really wanted a girlfriend for some time, supposedly he's ready for it and sees it as an important part of his growth process, on the way to becoming a curmudgeon.
But in many ways he's been stuck - sitting on the couch, getting high and re-watching "Dawson's Creek", which is his comfort zone. Stensland has a lot of comfort zones. But his roommate soon moves out, because who wants to follow an unnecessary character (this feels a bit clunky, the character is introduced JUST to leave, and create a space in the apartment) and Stensland is soon visited by Morgan's husband, Grady. In a bad reaction to the break-up of his two-day relationship, Stensland had threatened to blackmail Morgan for $15,000 or he'd tell her husband about the affair. Morgan then raises the stakes, and Grady tracks down Stensland in order to kill him, or at least beat him up, or at least threaten him.
But Grady sees a bit of himself in lonely bachelor Stensland - once he was that guy, sitting in a messy apartment, eating mulligan stew straight from the can. (Jesus, can't they even heat it up first?) So Grady takes pity on Stensland, leaves his wife, moves into the apartment, and takes Stensland under his wing, also uses him as a wingman in order to get laid. Grady's plan is to cheat on his wife, even the score, and then maybe go back to her. Or maybe make a new life plan, that's a bit unclear. But either way, the plan involves clubbing and binge-drinking every night in order to get laid. This is a terrible plan, because you can't just quit your own life, and isn't Grady just returning to his own comfort zone, being a former expert on alcohol and non-committed relationships? There's no way this ends well, right?
Along the way, there are just too many distracting details, most of which were unnecessary. It's fine for a character to have a couple of quirks, but Stensland just has way too many. There's the Dawson's Creek thing, the furniture store thing, all the old-man stuff, the wearing weird clothing, and then they drop the Billy Ocean stuff in late in the film, and by then it's just too much. I still don't have a solid read on the character, after all that time I've invested. Sure, one day he's going to spread his wings and fly like a condor, but don't you have to walk before you can fly? Everybody here just wants to skip a bunch of steps in the personal growth department and not do the work involved, and that's just not going to get them there.
The director of this film has a lot more credits on IMDB as an editor, like thirty years worth and I think that's something of an insight. This is a well-edited film, in that it took a lot of disparate material and information and found some way to weave it all together. However, there's more to directing than editing, right? An editor only has to decide what to leave in, what to leave out, and where everything goes, and on the surface level that sounds a lot like directing. But a director also has to ask tough questions like, "Does all this information add up to something bigger?" and "Are we throwing too many different elements into the mix here?" and "Is this film, you know, any good or are we all just wasting our time?" That's what seems to be missing here, nobody looking at the big picture to determine if there's an overall point being made.
Really, what's the takeaway? Don't sleep with a married woman, unless you're a slacker who could really use the boost of confidence that (eventually) provides? Don't let your girlfriend's husband move in with you, except that he will pay the rent and take you on a binge-drinking emotional journey that will (eventually) be beneficial for all involved? Don't spend all your time getting high and watching "Dawson's Creek" because that's preventing you from landing that job at the furniture store? It's just so tough to land on the proper through-line here.
Also starring Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Christina Applegate (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Nina Dobrev (last seen in "Flatliners"), Dan Gill, James Yi (last seen in "The Interview"), Balinder Johal, Britt Irvin (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Anna Van Hooft (last seen in "Warcraft"), Anja Savcic (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Aliyah O'Brien, Nils Hognestad (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), BJ Harrison, Brenda Crichlow, Candus Churchill, Angela Moore, Vladimir Ruzich, Chris Nowland, Julian Christopher, Bill Croft with archive footage of James Van der Beek (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Ocean's Eight").
RATING: 4 out of 10 expensive suits (where did they come from? Grady moved in with just two small suitcases...)
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