BEFORE: And just like that, I've reached the end of the week, and the end of the Nicole Kidman portion of the year, as she carries over from "Birthday Girl". Nicole will be back in February, if not before, and perhaps for Mother's Day as well, but that's a lot harder to predict right now. Right now it's just seven films to Thanksgiving, and then I'll have to start thinking about how I want to start the Next Movie Year, and whether that film will connect to the start of the romance chain.
No movie tomorrow, I've got to work all day long at a documentary film festival. I'm finally seeing some money in my bank account again, after putting in some solid shifts at the theater. It really took a while thanks to that month-long delay when you start a new job that pays bi-weekly, plus the H.R. department screwed up the hiring paperwork for a bunch of people, plus it took me a while to figure out the dynamics of the scheduling system. Getting hired was just the start of the process, then I kind of had to prove that I could be counted on to show up and take on more shifts.
THE PLOT: A young boy attempts to convince a woman that he is her dead husband reborn.
AFTER: Another tricky one tonight, it takes a while to figure out what's really taking place, they don't give you too much to go on at first, but the same can be said for "Monster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" and "Birthday Girl", too. Hey, it's just that kind of challenging week, I guess. If I wanted simple then I'd watch a bunch of animated movies for kids, like "Trolls World Tour" or "Tom & Jerry".
The premise here is that Anna's husband died ten years ago while jogging - so naturally the film's moral here is "don't exercise". Got it, I can get behind that. Ten years later, shortly after a party to celebrate her engagement to Bob, a ten year old boy shows up and claims to be her dead husband, Sean. This sounds completely crazy at first, but the boy knows intimate details about Anna and members of her family, plus he seems to know his way around their Upper East Side apartment, their meeting place in Central Park, and other things that only a rich, entitled New York a-hole would know. This is the only ten year old kid who enjoys cigars, champagne and caviar...yep, that's an Upper East Sider.
The disbelieving family puts the kid to the test - Anna's brother quizzes him on details about his work history, family secrets and how to book at table at the Russian Tea Room. But maybe they should have asked him how to drive a stick-shift, or what he remembers from calculus class, just a thought. Otherwise he's just a kid making lucky guesses about things. Anna's fiancé tracks down the boy's father, who tutors somebody in the building, but the kid sticks to his story, that he's Anna's husband, back from the dead, and he's in love with her. (As I said last night, it's Nicole Kidman circa 2004, so come on, who's not going to try to board that train?)
He's so convincing that it puts serious doubts in Anna's mind about marrying Bob - after all, can anybody really say for sure that reincarnation isn't a thing? Nobody really knows what happens when we die, and anybody who claims they do is full of it - but how does the system work, then, do our souls just re-appear in the body of the next baby born, or do you have to wait in line in the afterlife, or get on the list somehow? And how many chances do you get at this life thing, if this is how it works, do you go around twice, or three times, or is there no limit? But what about the fact that the Earth's population has always gone up, where do the new souls come from that account for the constant increase? (I realize that Disney tried to answer these questions in "Soul", but they just made up a bunch of random junk, just like every other religion or cult has.)
The answers, of course, were there all along, if you were paying attention, but then it's pretty cagey, those scenes didn't really mean anything without proper context, which of course comes along later in the film. Clarity almost comes too late, as Anna had almost called off her wedding and was making plans to basically elope with a small boy, to wait for him to turn 21 so she could marry him again for the first time. But instead everybody learned something, Anna found out how gullible she could be, the kid learned how complicated love can be for adults, and everybody learned that Bob's a hothead who felt threatened by competing with a kid for his fiancée's love. Yeah, it may be tough for them to put the pieces back together after all this.
I feel sort of like this is the type of film I should be watching at this point in time - films that I've been aware of for YEARS, but just never seemed important enough to track down. But after watching almost four thousand OTHER films, I'm finally catching up on all these "lost" classics, there seems like there might be enough time to get around to everything that maybe fell through the cracks before, or have been on the "someday" list for substantially long periods. Yeah, I can maybe watch anything and everything, if you just give me enough notice. There are maybe 12 or 13 films in the proposed February line-up that fit that bill, films like "Green Card" or "You Again" or "She's All That", where it's never been a high priority for me to watch them, but as long as they fit thematically and I can link to them, then why the hell not?
Also starring Cameron Bright (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Danny Huston (last seen in "The Professor"), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Alison Elliott (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Arliss Howard (last seen in "Concussion"), Michael Desautels, Anne Heche (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Peter Stormare (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Ted Levine (last seen in "The Report"), Cara Seymour (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Joe M. Chalmers, Novella Nelson, Zoe Caldwell (last seen in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"), Charles Goff, Sheila Smith, Milo Addica (last seen in "Monster's Ball"), Michael Joseph Cortese Jr., John Robert Tramutola, Jordan Lage, Libby Skala with the voice of Sean Oliver.
RATING: 6 out of 10 horrible wallpaper designs
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