Year 13, Day 90 - 3/31/21 - Movie #3,793
BEFORE: This is it, last call for March - I made it through another month. (Still no second part-time job, but I'm working on it. Jeez, you'd think a vaccinated person wouldn't have this much trouble getting a gig, now that I'm not able to catch COVID or spread it around an office or any other workplace...)
Here are the format totals for March, then we can discuss April's line-up:
1 watched on iTunes: Lucky Them
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Honey Boy
1 watched on Hulu: The Layover
1 watched on YouTube: Steal This Movie
1 watched on Tubi: Crash Pad
There's no question that cable dominated the month, which is good - more films off of cable means a clearer DVR, and it means I can record more - one added to the DVR for every film taken off. April might be a different story, I'm planning to watch 12 or 13 documentaries, and most of those are on Netflix or HBO Max or Amazon Prime, so that DVR might be full again by the end of the month. But those are the breaks - if I've got a doc series that doesn't break the chain, and connects to fiction films on both sides, I should really take that opportunity. But I should get to "Palm Springs" in April, plus "The Trial of the Chicago 7", "Borat", "Soul" and the remake of "The Lion King" in some order.
And before we get to today's film, here's the line-up for TOMORROW, Thursday, April 1 on Turner Classic Movies, as they kick off their "31 Days of Oscar" programming:
As I've said many times, I'm not a fan of an alphabetical system of watching movies - linking by actor makes so much more sense to me at this point. Come on, how can you program "After the Thin Man" without placing "The Thin Man" right before it? It's madness. But this is how I chart my progress - it's some consolation that I've seen 7 out of these initial 12 films, so I'm starting off with a 58.3% average, for me that's great! My stats will probably decrease as the month progresses, though. Last year I finished with a solid 1/3 seen, or 33.3%. Can I do better under this A-to-Z system?
Shia LaBeouf carries over from "The Peanut Butter Falcon".
THE PLOT: A young actor flashes back to his stormy childhood as he struggles to reconcile with his father and deal with his mental health.
AFTER: Well, it seems like Shia LaBeouf might have some lingering issues - he plays a character in this film that is based on his father, and the son is therefore based on his own experiences as a screwed-up little actor boy, who becomes a screwed-up actor man. I've been becoming more and more aware of this sort of thing, like in "Little Women" and "The Tree of Life" last year, it can be helpful to dig a little into who wrote each story, and which character in a novel might represent the author or screenwriter. Jane Austen's personal life also factored in to her novels, so I really should pay attention to this as a rule. Geez, how much of Elmore Leonard's personal life spilled over into "Life of Crime" or "Jackie Brown", I forgot to check...
In the film, the adult Otis gets put in rehab, and is forced to go through therapy and anger management, and all this mirrors the real-life Shia's experiences, having been arrested in 2014 for disorderly conduct, harassment, and criminal trespassing. The actor sought treatment for alcoholism, then had similar charges against him three years later in Atlanta. He paid a fine and was sentenced to probation the second time. Tthe third round of charges involved Shia being sued for sexual battery, assault and emotional distress by one of the actresses in today's film - but it almost feels like this film might exist in order to explain why Shia is so screwed up, and it seems to put the blame on the influence of his father, former rodeo clown turned stage dad.
I guess we'll never know for sure if Jeffrey Labeouf really let his son smoke cigarettes or was jealous of his son's Big Brother taking him to baseball games, but we do know that he was a Vietnam veteran who went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and the actor has stated that his father also spent time in rehab for heroin addiction, so there you go. Perhaps this is a true peek into the lifestyle of living in a cheap motel near a movie set, away from the influence of a mother or mother figure, with one parent who seesaws between being overly controlling and passively neglectful. Shia's described his parents as a couple of hippies, and they eventually divorced before his career on the Disney Channel took off, but the bottom line is that he ended up financially supporting both of them, perhaps that was part of the plan all along.
OK, Jeez, we GET it, Drew Barrymore, Lindsey Lohan, Miley Cyrus and Shia LaBeouf, child actors get ground up by the system and become screwed-up adults - so then DON'T DO IT. Teach your kids to play violin or get them to pass through college before they're 15, but for God's sake, don't let them become actors. Or if it's for the money, then grab the cash and shut up about the other parts.
It's too bad I couldn't save this one for Father's Day, but I haven't programmed far ahead enough to know for sure if I'll be able to link back to this one by then. It's a mystery - so it's probably better to get it off the list by watching it here, as part of a 4-film LaBeouf-Fest. I tried to get to "Ben is Back", which also has Lucas Hedges in it, in time for Mother's Day, but it looks now like that's not going to happen this year, either. So here's where "Honey Boy" ends up, I think.
Also starring Lucas Hedges (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Wonder"), FKA Twigs, Maika Monroe (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Martin Starr (last seen in "Paper Heart"), Byron Bowers, Laura San Giacomo (last seen in "The Meddler"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Craig Stark (ditto), Graham Clarke, Greta Jung, Mario Ponce and the voice of Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "Ad Astra").
RATING: 4 out of 10 cartwheels with a chicken
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