Like Crazy

Year 13, Day 37 - 2/6/21 - Movie #3,739

BEFORE: After watching "Made of Honor", I had a nightmare about my ex-wife, so now I've determined that SIX is the number of relationship/romance films I can watch in a row before I spark a stress dream.  This one woke me up at 6 in the morning on Friday - in the dream I was in bed with my ex, and she was complaining about having spent $200,000 on fertility treatments to conceive a child with her wife, so the inference there is I guess she was in bed with me to get pregnant and try to save some money.  But every time I touched her, she got repulsed and started choking.  Nothing like this ever happened or will happen, of course, it was just my brain's way of torturing me after watching films about people with relationship issues.  The worst part is after waking up from a nightmare, and getting back to reality, but for 10 minutes or so, that dream is STILL your reality, and it just stung.  I had to go downstairs and watch an informercial about Emeril Lagasse's new pasta maker (which is also a juicer, and somehow also a frozen dessert maker) just to get my mind to relax again.  

It might be better for my brain if I were to transition to Black History Month films, or trim down the romance chain in some way, but nope, the groundhog saw his shadow, so that means five more weeks of this topic.  I'm a glutton for punishment, apparently.

Chris Messina carries over from "Made of Honor".  

THE PLOT: A British college student falls for an American student, only to be separated from him when she's banned from the U.S. after overstaying her visa. 

AFTER: This one brings together a lot of the themes from this first week of the romance chain - like "Almost Friends", "The Art of Getting By" and "Made of Honor", it's about a couple forming when one or both of them is a high-school or college student.  Like "Made of Honor", it's about a planned wedding between one American and one British person, and like "Little Italy", a woman has issues with her student visa.  And like "The Female Brain", it's about a couple that goes through some challenges, but isn't that every relationship movie?  

Just because it has similar themes as other films from this week, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, just by itself. The same themes run over and over through all romance films, basically, and I think overall this one did a really good job of taking some of the old stereotypes and putting them together in a new and unique way.  It's not a particularly positive or happy film, but still there are some happy moments in it, but hey, not all relationships end well.  Not all relationships continue well, either, sometimes it's all about those bumps in the road and how people navigate them, or perhaps fail to.  Bear in mind that this film won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Festival back in 2011, and the films that do well on the festival circuit aren't always the ones with happy endings.  

Without saying much more about the ending, it is rather ambiguous, and I'm trying to not regard that as a cop-out.  Maybe if you want these crazy kids to work things out then you'll be left thinking that they will, or if you think that at the end of the day they may not be right for each other after all, you might have a solid case also.  They have sort of an on-again, off-again thing going on for most of the film, because immigration issues and the resulting long periods of separation are what put a strain on their togetherness.  Anna knew that her student visa was about to expire, so the simplest solution would have been for her to return to the U.K. for a few months, then come back with a work visa or a tourist visa or something.  But since she'd JUST gotten together with Jacob a few months back, and things seemed to be going really well, she decided to stay, because doing so made her happy.  (I remember not knowing exactly what to do after college, but since I had a girlfriend for the first time in my life, I decided to stay in New York.  No visa issues, but I understand the impulse to stay solely to avoid being separated so early in a relationship.)

The director and co-writer drew this story from personal experience, he lived in Los Angeles and had an eight-year relationship with a woman who lived in London.  So even though most of the dialogue here was improvised, some story elements feel very believable because they were drawn from someone's real life. The trip to Catalina Island, the gift of the bracelet, and the visa troubles all happened, and Jacob therefore is clearly a stand-in for the director, even though his character makes furniture and not movies.  

There's no real way to mark the passage of time, though, so the audience doesn't always get a sense of how long it's been since they've met, how much time they're forced to spend apart in each instance, how long it's been since they've seen each other or talked on the phone.  Graphics on the screen that read "three months later" or whatever would be helpful, but I can also see how they'd be distracting.  You just kind of have to roll with things here and try to guess how quickly time is passing.  And it's painful sometimes to see two people who were on the same page at first, but are struggling to get back into their old form, to return to some kind of balance, but circumstances and their own feelings keep preventing this from being possible. 

We're also left to wonder if things might have worked out differently if Anna had followed the visa rules in the first place and left the U.S. for two months.  It's a debatable point, I wish we could see a split timeline here, like in "Sliding Doors" to see both outcomes.  But then if the director has used that format, I'd probably find a way to complain about that.  Let's just keep things the way that they are, even though they get complicated. Sometimes, life just is complicated, especially where relationships are concerned. Maybe it's a bit refreshing when a film acknowledges that, instead of just automatically making things work out in the end. 

Chris Messina is only on-screen for about a minute, playing one of Jacob's clients ordering furniture from him, but it counts.  I had no way of knowing how small his role was when I scheduled this between two of his other films...

Also starring Anton Yelchin (last seen in "Only Lovers Left Alive"), Felicity Jones (last seen in "The Aeronauts"), Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Charlie Bewley (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Finola Hughes (last heard in "All-Star Superman"), Oliver Muirhead, Alex Kingston (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Keeley Hazell (last seen in "Horrible Bosses 2"), Ben York Jones, Jamie Thomas King (last seen in "Tristan & Isolde"), Amanda Carlin, Natalie Hoflin, Robert Pike Daniel.

RATING: 6 out of 10 glasses of Laphroaig whiskey

Made of Honor

Year 13, Day 36 - 2/5/21 - Movie #3,738

BEFORE: As you could probably guess, the original plan was to have Beanie Feldstein carry over to "How to Build a Girl", however that film has not been made available to me on any of the streaming services we subscribe to, not for less than $12.99, anyway, and that's like a full-price movie ticket!  I'm not that desperate yet, not when I can just drop that film, reschedule another and have the chain continue.  (I'd be willing to rent it for $3.99, but that's not an option.). Then another actress would have carried over to "Tulip Fever" and then Kevin McKidd would have carried over to this one.  So I'm really in the same place I would have been before, I just got here two days earlier than planned, and now Whitney Cummings carries over from "The Female Brain".

Really, it's all for the best, because I'm really liking how my chain's going to line up now with Valentine's Day weekend.  I can't promise that the MOST romantic film will be reviewed on Feb. 14, but it's still very possible.  

THE PLOT: A man afraid of commitment but in love with his engaged best female friend tries to win her over after she asks him to be her maid of honor.

AFTER:  Wow, 2008 was not that long ago, this movie is only 13 years old, yet it somehow seems very, very dated.  The central character is allegedly some form of "commitment-phobe" guy, but essentially, this seems like just another way of saying he enjoys frequent casual sex with a large number and/or variety of women.  And we're supposed to, what, like him for that?  What's the term for a male slut?  Oh, right, a slut. There's a lame attempt to tie this to the fact that his father is getting married for the sixth time, after five divorces, and I guess, logically, by the transitive property of getting messed up by your parents, because Tom is the child of divorce, therefore his lifestyle is OK?  NO, it's not OK, and nothing's going to make it OK. Because he's also a rich person (and therefore some form of asshole) he's only a couple steps removed from being Matt Lauer or Charlie Rose or Bill Cosby - OK, maybe not that bad, but if he thinks that women are only there for his pleasure, and he wants all the benefits of relationships, especially casual sex, without commitment or doing any kind of long-term work, then he's no kind of hero, is he?  We're supposed to revere him because he invented the "coffee collar" and therefore he gets a free pass, again and again?  I don't think so.

What's weird is that he IS getting all the other benefits of a long-term relationship - friendship, entertainment, shared experiences, long-term running jokes, and a constant companion to his father's many weddings, from his best friend, Hannah, who he's never slept with.  They met in college when he was dressed as Bill Clinton for Halloween (classy!) and was going to have a tryst with a woman dressed like Monica Lewinsky (also super classy!) only he accidentally got in bed with her roommate, Hannah.  Ha ha, isn't accidental sexual assault hilarious?  Umm, no, not any more. All the sitcoms and modern-day romantic comedies have made the adjustment, but you can't go back and fix a film from 2008. 

For some reason, Tom never thinks to merge his dating world with his friendship world - I know, there's a certain logic in never crossing the streams, or as some would say, pooping where you eat (those people are vulgarians) but for many people, it just makes sense to fall in love with a close friend - or, alternatively, becoming a good friend to the person you fall in love with.  It's not that complicated, really, it's just an offshoot of "treat people the way you want to be treated", so why do so many people seem to have a problem with this.  I have male friends, I have female friends, and then there's my wife, who should also be treated as a friend, if not my best friend, then a friend nonetheless.  Why on earth would I regard her any other way?  

If you're single, why NOT date a friend?  Because you don't want to lose a person as a friend?  OK, but you might be missing out on the best relationship in your life - and besides, all of that awkward getting-to-know-you period has already been taken care of, so what is the exact problem?  Tom has many "rules", though, like don't see the same woman twice between Monday and Friday, or more than once on the same weekend.  Gee, I can't imagine why he's still single and hasn't had a long-term relationship, like, ever.  I guess it's true that a man is only faithful when he doesn't have other options, because Tom has plenty of options and isn't faithful to anyone.  OK, then enjoy dying alone, good luck with that.  

Everything changes, however, when Hannah has to go to work in Scotland for six weeks (umm, what exactly is it that she DOES, anyway?  Something about restoring paintings in the Met Museum?  We only see her work for like a few minutes, and Tom's job is what?  Oh, right, he's wealthy because he invented a piece of cardboard to go around a coffee cup and still gets a dime's royalty from each one, which makes no sense because coffee shops don't CHARGE people for them.) and while she's away, Tom has nobody to go to THAT particular café with, or the antique shop.  Really, my heart bleeds for this guy, wait a few years and every restaurant and museum in the city will be shut down during the damn pandemic.

But after talking to his male friends, some of whom are married, and somehow managed to navigate those tricky waters and also regard their wives as friends, convince him that dating his best friend is a fine idea.  So he makes up his mind that once she gets back, he's going to profess his love for her and try to take their relationship to the next level.  Only wouldn't you know it, she met a guy in Scotland, fell in love and is now engaged - it seems that the cell phone service was so bad in Scotland (where it's still the 1800's, apparently) that she was never in a place with proper reception, and she kept missing Tom's calls or was always unable to respond.  Curse the demon technology that makes this plot point possible!  

So instead Tom has to deal with watching his now-idealized perfect partner making wedding plans with someone else, and worst of all, Hannah asks him to be her "maid of honor", despite the fact that he's not a "maid", and everyone from the priest to her intended's family is going to jump to the conclusion that he's gay.  Which, in 2008, was apparently the WORST thing that could happen to a heterosexual male, especially a rich one who dates, like, a LOT of women.  Again, somebody here seems really really BAD at creating a sympathetic character - I feel nothing at all for Tom's plight.  Really, screw this guy, seriously. 

Look, I'm all for dispensing with gender roles.  Burn the system to the ground, especially if any part of that system says "Boys can only do THIS, and girls can only do THAT."  Boy scouts, girl scouts, why can't we just have SCOUTS?  And they can all camp and build fires if they want, and they also ALL have to sell cookies. (Whatever gets me more cookies, I support.) We should have more female priests and more male nurses, women should play in the NFL and MLB and NHL, as long as they are capable and there are also male Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.  Hell, there are male swimsuit models on "The Price Is Right" now, and the world didn't end because of it!  Gay, queer, bi, transgender, drag queens and kings, whatever makes people comfortable, we should support, even if that's not our particular thing.  But bear in mind, the concept of a male "maid of honor" was still shocking to some - the question is, should it have been? 

We've got a female vice president now, and therefore a male "Second Lady" - except the term is properly "Second Gentleman".  See, it's not difficult!  A male "maid of honor" would be a "man of honor", and a female "best man", and I'm sure it's happened, would just be "best woman" or "best person". If a situation seems like it's not gender-neutral enough for reality, it's an easy fix, just change the damn name!  And if still seems wrong, then the problem is not the language, it's your own damn hang-up in your own mind.  We're rapidly approaching the point where gender-fluidity takes over and there are going to be new situations and maybe some in-between people, so get with the program, you old farts.

They really tried this "Long-time friends eventually get together" thing in "When Harry Met Sally", and did it a lot better there.  Notably, Harry and Sally both had to watch their friends get married to other people, and be supportive of that, because that's the right thing to do for your friends, even if you are secretly in love with them.  It's also the selfless thing to do, to allow them to proceed and make what you may feel is a mistake, because there's no way to suggest a course correction for another person without sounding like the bad guy, and a selfish person.  Tom here wouldn't even know what a selfless act is - he's always acting in his own best interest, not Hannah's, even after pointing out ways that Colin is not a perfect fit for her.  This brings me back to the point I made at the start of the week, which is that people these days don't tend to get into relationships for the benefit of the other person, it's usually for their own benefit, or at least to a mutual benefit.  

This means that Tom doesn't REALLY show much character growth over his arc during this movie, at the start he wants to date dozens of women because he sees the benefit to that, and then he wants to have a relationship with Hannah because he's suddenly realized that would also be to his benefit.  This whole business of him not being able to say "I Love You" to a human (though he can say it to dogs) is all a dodge - he starts out as a selfish ass and he ends as a selfish ass.  So, where's the change and growth, then?  

Bottom line, it's fine to fall in love with a friend, and it's also fine to fall in love and then be friends with that person.  It's as simple as that, all the rest is just window-dressing and buffoonery - you can film on location in Scotland, and it looks great, but that's hardly a proper substitute for character development.  And I still wonder for what reason I'm supposed to like Tom.

Also starring Patrick Dempsey (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Michelle Monaghan (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Kevin McKidd (last heard in "Brave"), Kathleen Quinlan (last seen in "Horns"), Sydney Pollack (last seen in "The Interpreter"), Chris Messina (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Kadeem Hardison (last seen in "Vampire in Brooklyn"), Richmond Arquette, Busy Philipps (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Emily Nelson, James Sikking (last seen in "Narrow Margin"), Christine Barger, Kevin Sussman (last seen in "Killers"), Mary Birdsong (ditto), Beau Garrett, Kelly Carlson, Valerie Edmond, Hannah Gordon (last seen in "The Elephant Man"), Eoin McCarthy (last seen in "Tomorrow Never Dies"), Clive Russell (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Myra McFadyen (last seen in "The Kid Who Would Be King"), Iain Agnew, Murray McArthur, Grant Thomson, Selma Stern, Ron Donachie (last seen in "Outlaw King"), with a cameo from Elisabeth Hasselbeck (last seen in "Gilbert")

RATING: 3 out of 10 Land Rovers

The Female Brain

Year 13, Day 35 - 2/4/21 - Movie #3,737

BEFORE: It's finally above freezing in NYC today, so that means getting out and shoveling the driveway in front of the car, so that we might have a chance of going somewhere by Saturday.  Restaurants are open on Long Island, so we might drive out east just to have something to do and somewhere to go.  But first I had to hack through a big pile of snow and ice on the driveway, plus when I cleared the walk on Monday I sort of threw the snow into the driveway, and it all piled up next to the car.  My bad.  

But I waited until the afternoon, when the sun comes around and shines on our side of the street, to help melt things a little bit.  In two hours of shoveling (I never shovel into the street, like my neighbors do, I always pile it on my property) I got mostly through it, there's just one foot-high ice ridge that's still keeping us homebound for the moment, but I was shoveling water on it, which I normally wouldn't do, because that usually just makes things icier, but for now the water was warmer than the ice and I hoped to reduce the ridge by enough of a margin to make it surmountable for the car. 

I hadn't eaten anything yet today, so when I was done shoveling I was really hungry, and just boiled up some water for instant ramen and I opened a can of Treet - if you're not familiar, it's Armour's knock-off of Hormel's SPAM, it's about half the price, but with a different flavor and none of the texture of SPAM.  It's less solid, and I imagine SPAM fans think it's too soft, so it's an acquired taste, I guess.  Somewhere between SPAM and scrapple, though I've never had scrapple?  Anyway, I was hungry enough to eat half a can of this, on some open-faced white bread with American cheese on it.  It's not a popular food item, maybe because of their slogan, which I think is "Hawaiian people love SPAM, but nobody, nowhere, likes TREET."  I think they were going for a play on "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee" but it seems awfully misguided.  

Jane Seymour carries over from "Little Italy". 

THE PLOT: A look at the science behind our romantic mishaps.  

AFTER: This was supposed to be a scientific take on the romantic comedy, a film that would use knowledge of brain function and certain neuro-chemicals to explain why people act the way they do when in relationships, what causes people to make certain mistakes, and so on.  But what it ended up being was more like a take on "The Love Boat".  Allow me to explain.  

"The Love Boat" was an ABC hour-long show in the 1970's and 80's, which itself was probably a spin on a show called "Love, American Style" that featured various comic vignettes and romantic situations - somebody clearly just pitched, "What if we did that same thing, but on a cruise ship?"  And so each episode was a Caribbean cruise (once in a while they went to Alaska or something, in the later years) with new couples or singles coming on board, and simply EVERYBODY who was ANYBODY in movies or TV guested on this show.  (I was a kid at the time, and I was dumb enough to think that the cast and crew went on a real cruise, which now sounds ridiculous, obviously there were ship-like sets built somewhere in a studio and all the island stuff was stock footage supplied by the cruise line.).  Occasionally there'd be a "very special" episode when an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend of one of the crew members would go on vacation, and that would end with the captain realizing that his real love is the ship, or the ocean itself, or something equally as corny.

But my point is that each week there would be three vacationing couples in crisis, and by the end of the cruise they'd either worked out their problems or (once in a while) decided to separate, but most likely they'd each found a new prospective partner somewhere on the boat.  Love always won, and if you were a kid who watched too many episodes of this, that can mess up your brain and give you skewed expectations about relationships - after all, not every problem can be solved during an hour of TV, or even a week-long cruise.  For a while there, the cruise-ship industry did really well, especially the Pacific Princess, with singles sailing in hopes of finding love on board, and married couples hoping to work out their problems - it makes sense, because a cruise is probably cheaper than couples counseling, and you also get to go somewhere.

So "The Female Brain" is sort of in the same vein, there are three couples with unique problems on display here, plus a scientist who's doing a study about the differences between men's brains and women's brains, and she ends up in a relationship of sorts with one of her test subjects.  (It's kind of like one of those episodes where Captain Stubing fell in love.). The problem is that Julia, the scientist, narrates the dilemmas that the other three couples are having, to tell us what's going on chemically or psychologically inside their brains, and I'm not sure how she knows the other people.  Were they all test subjects in one of her studies?  Are they her patients, or is she somehow omniscient enough that she knows every relationship dilemma everywhere?  It's really not clear. 

Steven and Lisa are a couple, married for 12 years, and they're wondering if the spark is gone. They function together fine, but haven't had sex in a long while, and their brains are no longer getting dopamine from their pairing (which you only get during the first two years, apparently).  After trying several things together, like taking ecstasy, they somehow land on the idea that they need to separate - not because they hate each other, they clearly don't, but it's more like they just need to have some kind of progression, and they've ruled out every other possible way to make things better.  This seems like some horrible logic, but I wonder if some people in real life don't end up on this same track, just because they're so familiar with each other that they feel bored.

Zoe and Greg have been married for one year, she works in advertising and he's a basketball player, who recently got injured and is sidelined at home while recovering.  He suddenly gets jealous about all the people who come and go around his own house, because he's usually traveling with the team, and then gets it in his head that he can renovate their bathroom, instead of hiring a contractor to do it. Zoe, meanwhile, wants to start her own advertising company, but is afraid of borrowing money from her husband to do this, because she doesn't just want to be a "basketball wife" and she needs to succeed on her own merits.  (NITPICK POINT: Greg's NBA contract would probably forbid him from doing a construction project at home, especially after the injury he had.  There would be too much chance of getting further injured while working at home, or aggravating the injury he already has, then he'd be away from the team longer.)

British Lexi and American Adam have been dating for 2 or 3 years and live together, but she's always fussing over her own looks, while also trying to get Adam to care more about his own.  (Except he's played by James Marsden, who looks fine...). She wants him to straighten his hair, and she really wants to pop that pimple on his back (yes, this is a major plot point) and this leads to them breaking up - but after she visits her mother and realizes the cause of her insecurities, she promises to stop working so hard to change Adam, and they reconcile.  

Meanwhile, Julia, the scientist, starts dating Kevin, one of her test subjects, even though she's seen inside his brain and determined that, like most men, he's incapable of empathy.  She also comes down hard on her lab assistant, Abby, who's always self-medicating with caffeine, Ritalin, Ambien, etc. but realizes that she herself does the same thing, only by exercising to feel endorphins, cuddling with her dog to feel the effects of dopamine, and so on.  So she goes on dates with Kevin, but it's more of an experiment for her, she's just going through the motions and trying to act like the humans do, it's like she's somehow just an observer in her own life.  But we eventually learn that she was married before and her husband left her, which may explain why she's so detached from her feelings, but it just doesn't explain why she's so clueless about relationships.  

I usually like Whitney Cummings' humor, like I watched her sitcom a few years back and I've seen her stand-up specials, but as an actress, she's only got two expressions, blank and disgusted.  And I noticed that her lips don't really move much when she talks.  These things were distracting - I wanted to like her, though, I guess that counts for something. 

Once again, a movie's tagline is completely wrong - here the tagline is "What makes a woman swipe right for Mr. Wrong?" and that's a question that the film has no intention of answering, when it focuses on three couples that are ALREADY together.  So there's no "swiping" in the film, nobody's doing any selecting of partners here.  As a result the movie never gets around to answering (or even asking) why people choose THIS person over THAT person, and that might have been more interesting.  Instead it just devolved into some sort of collection of "can this relationship be fixed" episodes, which again, is very "Love Boat".  

It's a low-budget film from two years ago (made for about $1 million) but it only brought in $21,000 at the box office, and now it's available on Hulu.  Seems about right.  Up until last year, I was working on an animated film that was kind of in the same ballpark, one that showed a woman's different relationships throughout her life, but with an emphasis on describing the biological and chemical reactions in her body that would encourage her to form relationship bonds, and then the different reactions that would take place after each relationship failed.  There's still a chance this film will get finished and released in the next year or two, but I'm apparently no longer involved with it, which is a shame, I worked on it for four years and I'd still like to help it get finished and screened in film festivals, if things get back to normal.  

Also starring Whitney Cummings (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Sofia Vergara (last seen in "The Con is On"), Toby Kebbell (last seen in "RocknRolla"), James Marsden (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Lucy Punch (last seen in "She's Funny That Way"), Beanie Feldstein (last seen in "Booksmart"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "The Boss"), Blake Griffin, Deon Cole, Marlo Thomas (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Will Sasso (last heard in "Klaus"), Ben Platt (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Adam Shapiro (last seen in "A Single Man"), Adam Korson, Phil Hendrie (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Neal Brennan (last seen in "Capone"), Alysia Reiner, Angel Parker, Xosha Roquemore, Gwen Hollander, Rebeka Montoya, Andrew Schulz, Lisa Linke, Jaylin Fletcher, Vinoj Zacharia, Rachel LaForce, Beejay Hunter, Maz Jobrani (last seen in "13 Going on 30").

RATING: 4 out of 10 wine tasting samples

Little Italy

Year 13, Day 34 - 2/3/21 - Movie #3,736

BEFORE:  Emma Roberts carries over from "The Art of Getting By", and so far this month the linking has fallen into a bit of a predictable pattern - one character from the lead couple carries over to the next film, then the next night, the other one does.  It really would have been great if I could have found a way to make that pattern last all month, but it's going to end after this one. 

And a Birthday Shout-Out to Adam Ferrara, even though my schedule's off by one day (again), since I started watching this film in the final hour of February 2, for me that counts. 

THE PLOT: A young couple must navigate a blossoming romance amidst a war between their families' competing pizza restaurants. 

AFTER: When I see a plotline like the one this movie has, I get really worried, for several reasons.  (The tagline "Love is an acquired taste" is even worse, but let's put that on hold for now.). What I envisioned was a blatant rip-off of "Romeo and Juliet", where the young lovers come from warring houses - like two pizza places across the street from each other, one named "Montague's" or "Monty's" and the other is called "Cappy's" so you might not realize right away that Shakespeare's being totally corrupted into a cheezy romantic comedy, rather than a tragedy. Remember, that play by Billy Shakes didn't end happily.  OK, that's Fear #1.  

Fear #2 comes from the fact that the cast only looks about half-Italian, and the two leads don't look Italian AT ALL.  This is sort of connected to Fear #3, which comes from non-Italians being asked to play Italians, and most likely needing to resort to loud, overblown stereotypes, and therefore I anticipated a crowded family setting where every actor is screaming things like "Hey, wazza matta fuh you?" and "Fuhgetta bout it!" and then probably "Everybody Mangia!" followed by "Pasta fazool!" for some random reason. (Count the number of times somebody screamed "OPA!" in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", it's probably a very high number.)

Well, this film isn't as bad as all that, probably a little better than I imagined, but let's say my fears were half-realized.  There's only one small reference to "Romeo & Juliet" made, sort of in passing, and then the story moves on.  We've already got "West Side Story" and other rip-offs of the "Romeo & Juliet" concept, so there's really no reason to do all that again.  But there ARE two feuding pizza restaurants, next door to each other, and two people, one from each family, do fall into a romance, but that's where the similarities end.  Romeo & Juliet never faced each other in a pizza-making competition, so there's that.  

Fear #2 is totally legit, Emma Roberts and Hayden Christensen don't look or act Italian, not even a little bit.  OK, they make pizza, together and apart, but anybody can make a pizza with a little practice.  Their two sets of parents act very stereotypically Italian, and their grandparents even more so.  Sure, you can easily argue that the grandparents are first-generation immigrants from Italy, so they naturally might act a certain way.  And perhaps these Italian mannerisms would be a little less prominent with each following generation, so perhaps their grandchildren would act the least like a stereotypical Italian person. But they would still be the children of Italians, and these two actors just don't read that way, in both cases the connection to their parents and grandparents has to be taken on faith, I guess, and then every single character here ends up coming off as "Way too Italian" or "Not Italian enough", and there doesn't seem to be any middle ground.  

There's another character who is obviously Asian and his name is Luigi, and this totally smacks of cultural appropriation in the worst way.  Let's face it, if a white character acted black or a black character acted white, this would bother people, in fact it probably wouldn't make it into a movie at all for fear of a backlash.  So how is it OK for an Asian character to act all "goombah"?  I don't think it should be.  Late in the film, Luigi is confronted with the fact that he's really Chinese, and he does explain his story, why he acts the way he does - he got kicked out by his Chinese father for being gay, and the Italian community took him in and made him feel at home.  Umm, OK, I guess, but if he's really Gaysian at heart, and that's who he is, shouldn't his goal be to feel comfortable being THAT, and not taking on a fake Italian persona instead?  If my family kicked me out my first impulse wouldn't be to just start acting Jewish or Korean or something else, because I'm not really that.  So this Luigi character sticks out as a real head-scratcher here. 

Fear #3 was realized, too, because the two older generations act very stereotypically Italian, and they shout at each other (and the customers) a lot, and they're very loud and they use a lot of standard Italian phrases and gestures (and some of them also say "verkakte", which I'm pretty sure is Yiddish, not Italian).  But here's the good news/bad news - this is not set in New York City, which was another assumption I made based on the title.  This is set in Toronto's Little Italy neighborhood, as proven by the skyline seen in the middle of the film.  This could explain a number of the inconsistencies seen and heard in the Italian people's mannerisms and speech - and why the police officers don't look like NYPD cops at all.  

There's a similar problem to the one seen in "Almost Friends", in that the main couple in the film are just not that interesting.  Part of this comes from the two actors - Hayden Christensen's acting has improved a bit since "Attack of the Clones", but not that much.  He's maybe a "4" on the expressive scale here, as opposed to the deadpan "2" he showed off in the "Star Wars" movies. But he still seems to have trouble displaying things like happiness, like his character seems unable to enjoy anything, or else he's afraid to really cut loose and just ACT in any particular direction.  Emma Roberts isn't that much more interesting, even though she's playing a professional chef here, she also feels like she's just going through the motions and unable to enjoy her own life. 

The older couple, played by Danny Aiello and Andrea Martin (as his grandfather and her grandmother) is at least twice as entertaining.  Both fall just a bit on that "WAY too Italian" scale, and I don't know, I think Andrea Martin used the same accent that she did in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", if I'm being honest.  Still, I think the movie should have been about these two oldsters getting a second chance at love, and having to court each other in secret because their adult children managed competing pizza restaurants.  

Instead I was asked to care about Nikki's dilemma upon returning home from her restaurant job in the U.K. - it was supposed to be a quick trip home just to change her student visa to a work visa, but then she got back in touch with her childhood crush, Leo, and that really ended up changing her plans, at least for a while.  But since we never saw her apply for a new visa, it almost felt like the director forgot why she came back to Toronto in the first place.  And then after falling back in love with Leo, her reasoning for NOT staying in Canada with him seemed so tenuous, like it was just added to create a bit of last-minute drama.  

Similarly, we finally find out via flashback what caused the feud between the two families in the first place, and it's very stupid.  But, it also explains why the two adult pizza-makers aren't allowed to enter the annual contest any more, and it does set up the big embarrassing family scene at the airport as everyone rushes to stop Nikki from getting on that plane. (That's two nights in a row that Emma Roberts' character has ended up at the airport, and expected to make a last-minute decision.  You know, if you don't use that ticket, you don't automatically get a refund, but you have to at LEAST check with someone at the desk about that.  I'm pretty sure if you walk out of the airport and don't do that, you lose the ticket.  And who DOES that?)

Good news, the two families finally get back on the same page, when they realize that the best pizza in Toronto is made with one family's crust and the other family's sauce.  Still, if they re-connect their pizza shops they should probably work in two different locations, or on two different shifts, just for a while anyway.  And our young lovers, Leo and Nikki, open up their own fancy pizza restaurant, serving those trendy flatbreads with figs and goat cheese on them.  Bad news, though, in just two short years they would have had to close down because of the COVID pandemic.  Sorry, just keeping things real.  

If you're interested in playing along at home, this one's available on AmazonPrime, but also it's FREE on imdb.com - with ads, that is, and also on Tubi, Pluto TV and YouTube. FREE, what have you got to lose?  But also, keep in mind that the best movies are usually the ones you have to pay for, and this one is FREE.  

Also starring Hayden Christensen (last seen in "Life as a House"), Alyssa Milano (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Danny Aiello (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Andrea Martin (last seen in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), Adam Ferrara (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Gary Basaraba (last seen in "The Irishman"), Linda Kash (last seen in "Man of the Year"), Andrew Phung, Cristina Rosato (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Amrit Kaur, Vas Saranga, Ava Preston, Nicky Cappella, Anjelica Scannura, Richard Zeppieri, Michael A. Miranda (last seen in "Kodachrome"), Aniela Kurylo (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Julian De Zotti, Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Quancetia Hamilton, Christopher Hayes, Geri Hall.

RATING: 4 out of 10 soccer goals scored in the rain (umm, nobody does this, either...)

The Art of Getting By

Year 13, Day 33 - 2/2/21 - Movie #3,735

BEFORE: It's Day 2 of the romance chain, but it's also Groundhog Day, one of our stupider holidays. We all know that the weather on one particular day has nothing to do with the prevailing weather coming up in the next couple of months, right?  I could maybe sort of get behind this holiday if they pulled the groundhog out of his burrow and held him up to see if it was sunny or cloudy, which is still silly, but it turns out the "predictions" are on two scrolls, 

at least this is the way it works in Pennsylvania - they bring poor Punxsutawney Phil over to this lectern with the two scrolls and he supposedly "picks" one for the club members to read.  So, it's even stupider than I thought, a rodent who can't read sniffs one piece of paper instead of another, and then a bunch of men in tuxes and top hats read that weather prediction, as if that means something.  

The other reason I never celebrate this holiday with a movie is that I've seen the only movie about the process, 1993's "Groundhog Day" - who hasn't? - so there's no reason to watch it again.  In fact, watching it again at this point would kind of be weirdly ironic, because it might generate the same feeling that the main character goes through, reliving the same situation over and over again, with each repeated day being much like the last.  Besides, haven't we had enough of that feeling during the pandemic lockdown?  But there is a romantic aspect to that Bill Murray film, I'll admit - and there are other romance movies, like "Palm Springs", that sort of follow the same premise, but I don't have any of those movies on my list to watch.  OK, that's not true, because "Palm Springs" itself is on my list, and it does connect to two romance films, but not ones that are next to each other, so working it in would mean re-ordering my list, and I promised myself I wasn't going to do that at this point.  Everything for February and March is just the way I want it, so I don't want to mess with it. 

Freddie Highmore carries over from "Almost Friends".

THE PLOT: George, a lonely and fatalistic teen who has made it all the way to his senior year without ever having done a real day of work, is befriended by Sally, a popular but complicated girl who recognizes in him a kindred spirit. 

AFTER: The insight I had yesterday, which I forgot to mention, is that there's something inherently selfish about getting into a relationship.  This goes for fictional characters as well as real people, I don't think that many people are starting relationships with the other person, or society in general, in mind. The reasons for forming that partnership bond seem to be mostly self-gratifying, in that someone is looking for happiness, pleasure, companionship, security, and some level of comfort - it's rare, I'm thinking, when two people get together and one of them is thinking more about the other person's needs than their own.  Maybe it does happen somewhere out there, but I don't know.  Charlie in "Almost Friends" probably wasn't putting Amber first when he chatted her up in the coffee shop, he was looking for a good time, plus using the potential of a relationship to get himself moving again, and out of his stuck situation.

"The Art of Getting By" features the same actor playing nearly the same character - OK, so his name here is George and he lives in New York City, not Mobile, Alabama, and he's still in high-school, but a lot of story elements carry over from yesterday's film.  George is "stuck" also, but only because he's obsessed with the thought of dying someday, and this prevents him from doing any of his schoolwork, which in turn puts him at odds with all of his teachers and the principal.  (Both characters are also children of divorced parents, living with their mothers and stepfathers, and both have shady fathers who left.  Other, smaller details are also shared, like being in a love triangle and such.)

The listed plotline can't possibly be true - it posits that George has never done any schoolwork, even, but then how did he pass sophomore and junior year, wouldn't he have been held back or forced to repeat a grade if he never did any of the work?  No, this simply HAS to be a recent change in his habits, something about getting close to graduating high school has made him shut down, and therefore logically he hasn't done any assignments during his senior year.  The film reinforces this when in the three weeks before graduation, he finally agrees to get it all done.  Which kind of works out, because after getting together with Sally, sort of, they end up on a kind of a break, and he's thus able to complete a year's worth of homework and tests in just three weeks.  What a time-saver!  If this were possible, and I'm not saying it is, why didn't he just do all the work in three weeks at the start of the semester, and then slack off for the rest of the year?  Oh, right, nobody does that.  

I was something of a math whiz in high-school, or at least somebody determined at the end of grade school that I was excellent at math - I think they gave everybody a test at the end of sixth grade and I got a perfect score or something.  So in seventh grade the school allowed me to attend an eighth grade math class, and in eighth grade they sent me up to the high-school to take a tenth grade math class.  Which was problematic, because the junior high and the high school weren't on the same schedule, so I often had to miss a history or english class to walk over to the high-school and attend Algebra II.  In the end, I think this caused more problems than it solved, because teachers would sometimes mark me absent when I was at the other school, and then when I hit 10th grade I ended up taking Algebra II over again, because it didn't really stick.  Then by the time I got to calculus I didn't even understand the course-work any more. We're doing what?  Charting the area under a curve on a graph?  I didn't even care.

So I kind of see where George is coming from, he's adopted a "What's the point?" attitude, and we're all going to end up there regarding all the courses we don't care about, but high-school's kind of about taking all the courses so everyone can find their "thing", whether that's wood shop or biology or music, and then focus on that if they go on to college or into the workforce.  I found my "thing" sort of by accident, and if my life had been just a little different my thing could have been music or math or science, but I fell in love with movies, so there you go.  And fortunately I took so many A.P. courses in high-school that I got college credits for them, and that meant I could take more film classes in college and fewer math, science and literature classes.  My point is, the high-school classes are still very important, even if you don't care for them, and the time to slack off and not care is supposed to be college, so George is ahead of the curve here.  

George's thing turns out to be art, since he's always drawing in every class - except for art class, for some reason.  There's some logic to this, maybe it's only fun for him when he's NOT supposed to be doing it, and when he is supposed to be doing it, then it becomes a chore.  I feel you, George. But then there's extra pressure to perform in art class, and whenever he tries to think about making a painting, and what the subject matter of that painting should be, he suddenly feels like he's a pretender, like he's full of crap and none of his ideas are any good.  That's pretty much how I felt in film school, but by that point, the die had been cast for me and I'd chosen my field of work - so I decided that if my ideas weren't any good, nothing I'd care to present or stand behind as my own, then I'd devote my life to helping other people make their films.  Makes sense, right?  But I guess for a wanna-be graphic artist, that's not really an option - what's he going to do, help other people make their paintings?  

He also gets his heart broken by Sally, and maybe it's better to get this over with in high-school, rather than college.  The first cut is the deepest, as they say, so even though he thinks he can get something going with Sally, she may not be on the same page as him.  But she offers sex and then retracts it a few seconds later, which is not cool.  You can't just say, "Oh, I was kidding about that..." because now it's out there, suspended in the air between them, and for George, a guy who's never had sex, now he's got to move forward thinking he missed his opportunity because he waited 10 seconds too long and didn't take her up on the offer when he had the chance. 

But hey, he's here to learn, we're all here to learn, and in your first relationship, there's bound to be a learning curve.  And you can't really skip out on any of the lessons, you've got to go through them, because even if this first relationship doesn't work out, if you go through all the steps and feel all the feels, even the non-pleasant ones, then you'll be better prepared for the next time.  

At least Freddie Highmore proves here that he's capable of showing emotion when he acts, he's not as deadpan here as he was in "Almost Friends" - but this film was released five years earlier, so, what, did he somehow forget that acting is about emoting?  Or was that a choice made by the director of yesterday's film, to just read every line flat?  And there's character growth here, too - when we first meet George he states that "We live alone, we die alone. Everything else is just an illusion."  By the end of the film, he might believe that other answers are possible.  (And for once, we get to SEE a painting!  Too many films in January didn't allow me to see the artwork in question...)

Also starring Emma Roberts (last seen in "Billionaire Boys Club"), Michael Angarano (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Blair Underwood, Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "Book Club"), Ann Dowd (last seen in "It Can Happen to You"), Elizabeth Reaser (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Sam Robards (last seen in "Life as a House"), Marcus Carl Franklin, Sasha Spielberg (last seen in "The Company Men"), Jarlath Conroy (last seen in "Heaven's Gate"), Andrew Levitas (last seen in "The Box"), Dan Leonard, Maya Ri Sanchez (last seen in "Motherhood"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 graduation gowns

Almost Friends

Year 13, Day 32 - 2/1/21 - Movie #3,734

BEFORE: OK, just a quick pandemic check and then it's on to the romance films for February.  After a slow start, New York's managed to hand out almost 80% of the vaccines it was given, which isn't that close to 100%, but I guess it's something.  I got my boss an appointment for March 31 at the Javits Convention Center, which seemed like a great idea, then a terrible idea, and now with all the cancellations and other delays, it's kind of back to being a great idea, because perhaps by then they'll be shipping enough doses to actually meet the ambitious schedule that they created in the first place.  My parents in Massachusetts are supposed to get their first shots tomorrow, February 2, because that state is opening up eligibility to people over 65 today, which New York did a few weeks ago, because not enough first responders were coming forward to get the vaccine for some reason, and doses were expiring.  But now there's a ginormous nor'easter blizzard, so we're back to appointments being cancelled again, all down the Eastern seaboard, because of the weather.  It figures, we're finally making some headway against this damn thing, they were starting to say that it might take less than a year to vaccinate everybody, instead of ten years at the pre-Biden rate, and boom, a snowstorm shuts the whole process down. I'm really starting to think that the Earth is upping its game in trying to get rid of the humans, and I'm thinking of not betting against Planet Earth on this one.  

The other news out of the pandemic is that the expected "baby boom" that some people predicted would happen, with nearly everybody either working from home or quarantined at home, just didn't happen. Sure, you're at home with your sweetie all the time, it's natural to think that there will be more opportunities for romance, and then consequences from that will follow nine months later.  But if you're home with your sweetie ALL THE TIME, and maybe for some people that's too much - plus people are unemployed, depressed, stressed out from watching the news (just me?), and that logically leads to letting personal hygiene slip maybe a bit, even the working people might wonder if they really have to take a shower before that Zoom meeting...  So, maybe we can just say that it's not really a great time for romance - no baby boom, if anything births are declining rapidly, as they were before.  Which honestly is fine, there are already still too many people on this planet, and maybe if there were fewer, the Earth wouldn't be trying so hard to kill us.  Just a thought.  We should still vaccinate and fight the good fight, try to save as many lives as we can, but in the end maybe the pandemic ends up being some kind of course correction.  

That being said, it's time for me to transition from movies about war, terrorism, gangsters, messed-up Swedish people and zoo animals to the topic of romance - both the upsides and downsides, the benefits and costs of relationships.  Maybe what the world needs now is (movies about) love, sweet love.  I hear it's the only thing that there's just too little of.  Now, a bit of explanation about this year's chain, which has been in the works since, well, just after last year's romance chain.  I maintain a separate list of romance films, because I spend some of my downtime shuffling them around and trying to find the best possible order, maximizing the focus on the romance films I have either on DVD or on my cable DVR.  Those are first priority, because they're tangible or taking up too much hard-drive space.  I then have to also be aware of romance films that are on streaming platforms, because they help me link together the ones already in my possession - so it's a constant process of trying to be aware of all the romance films available everywhere, even ones I'm not really that into watching, because any link is a good link when I'm stuck and can't move forward.

Last year I had to rewrite the order on the fly, I saw new connections and better ways of organizing them mid-month, and that's too nerve-wracking.  I scrambled and changed things around but basically ended up in the same place, still I'd like to avoid that again if I can.  So the other night I not only went through the IMDB to make sure all my connections were solid, I also checked every film I was planning to watch on streaming services, just to make sure they were all still available.  They all were, though some are now on DIFFERENT platforms that they were when I made the list - no worries, even if one was no longer available on Netflix or Hule, there's always iTunes as a safety net, right?

Umm, wrong.  There's one film that isn't available, perhaps it wasn't available in the first place, and I was hoping that by now it would air on cable, or at least Netflix - that film is "How To Build a Girl", and it's still at a purchase price of $12.99 on Amazon and YouTube.  I'm not spending that much - it's at a similar price on iTunes, too, so when does it become available for rental?  Probably not in time for this Friday, so it's got to be jettisoned.  But how can I remove one film from the chain and still make the linking happen?  Ah, that's where keeping a close eye on all the cast lists comes in handy - there are so many actors in more than one romance film this year that there are extra links - connections I wasn't taking advantage of, which are color-coded green on my lists.  This is what enabled me to flip around portions of the list last year at the last second - so it turns out if I delete "How to Build a Girl" and two other films next to it, then the chain will just close up around it, a new link connects Romance Film #4 with Romance Film #8. Of the three films jettisoned, one was easily re-scheduled for later in February, fitting neatly between two other films with Martin Starr, and another got moved to March, the week after the romance chain ends, but also slipping in neatly between two other films with Judi Dench.  That still left me one film short, which is fine, but that was also another opportunity to check all my other links, and it wasn't too hard to find another sort-of-romance film with one of those actors to pick up the slack.  The schedule's full again, I double-checked my plan, and the balance is restored.  

Taylor John Smith carries over from "Hunter Killer". 

THE PLOT: Charlie is an unmotivated man in his mid 20's still living at home with his mother and stepfather when he falls for a young woman who has a serious boyfriend.

AFTER: OK, I'm apparently going to ease my way into the romance chain, which is fine - it's a bit like a swimming pool, you don't just want to dive right in, that's too much of a shock to the system.  You've got to go down those little steps into the shallow end, get your body used to the temperature of the water, whatever it may be, maybe paddle around a bit before you start doing laps. I don't swim, but I imagine this is good advice.  Today's film is about two people in their 20's who circle each other for a while, but various forces, external and internal, keep them from sealing the deal.  It's OK, I'm sure we're gonna get there, even if they don't.  

Charlie still lives with his mother, who has remarried, works as the assistant manager of a small movie theater in Mobile, Alabama.  Everybody keeps asking him if he's depressed (no, that's just his acting style...) and he's apparently very good at cooking dinner, but unwilling to make that leap to working in a restaurant, and the movie strongly wants us to believe that this is where his true talent lies.  

(But I'm going to make a case for working in a movie theater - a job I had when I was 19, and again at 21, just after college. The first time I worked concessions, the second time (in NYC) I was an usher - the pay wasn't TOO bad and I worked mostly nights and weekends, so I still had my days free for job-hunting.  One day, two directors that I knew came to see a movie and saw me tearing tickets, and they hired me to work in their office - so part of me has always wondered what would have happened if I'd stuck with that job, would I be a theater manager by now?  Sure, I'd have fewer producing credits in the IMDB, but think how much free popcorn I could have eaten over the years!  Seriously, though, if this pandemic ever ends and they open up theaters again, I'm seriously considering re-applying for this kind of work.  Even if I have to sweep theater floors and disinfect seats, that's still noble work that SOMEBODY will have to do, why not me?  Then maybe in a year or two I could work my way up to assistant manager or something.)

Charlie also keeps trying to work up the nerve to talk to that girl who mops floors in the local coffee shop - mostly because she ends up spilling coffee or tea every time she serves the customers.  Like Charlie, her head is usually elsewhere, she's out of high school and she'll be leaving for college in the fall, her parents moved away for work-related reasons and she stayed behind, living with her cousin, to finish high school and because she's dating Brad, the track star. Charlie doesn't know about Brad, he only wants to make the connection with Amber - why, though?  I guess it's supposed to be symbolic of how he's "stuck" and looking for some small way to move something forward in his life.  

There are a lot of "friend" characters in this film, I'd almost say too many.  Charlie has Ben, his best male friend, and Heather, his platonic girl friend.  Amber has Brad, her cousin Jack, and her co-workers in her circle of secondary hangers-on.  But for a film to carry this many minor people, the lead couple really needs to be very dynamic, and they're...just not.  OK, we eventually find out WHY Charlie is stuck in second gear, and this really hasn't been his day, his week or even his year, but that really doesn't make up for how flat and listless both he and Amber seem.  Sure, we've all had our down days, in what's now the tenth (eleventh?) month of pandemic lockdown some of us wonder if it's even worth getting out of bed sometimes. But this took place in 2016, so what's Charlie's excuse for being down all the time?  

Freddie Highmore is currently appearing on a network show called "The Good Doctor", where he plays a medical professional who is also autistic or has Asperger's or something - I don't watch it, but that seems like a good fit for him, here he's similarly detached from showing emotions, or something, but then how do you work a romance film where nearly everyone seems incapable of feeling anything?  The side relationship that occurs late in the film, between Amber's cousin Jack and Charlie's platonic friend Heather, seems WAY more interesting, despite Jack being an asshole and only recently figuring out that this is not the way to be with women, that they'd rather get chocolate and flowers and hear you say something from your heart, even if you're not usually good at that.  

The adults come off much better here - they do have more acting experience, after all.  Flat Charlie's divorced parents are also more interesting characters than he is (again, it seems like a simple proposition, but try to make sure your lead characters are also the most interesting ones...) and I think a lot of that comes from years of experience being in movies and TV shows like "CSI" and "Law & Order: SVU" where directors are always saying "give me more emotion".  I imagine the director here comes from the George Lucas school of directing, always telling his actors "You've just got to give me less here" or "Right now you're at a 4, but I really need you at a 1, or better yet, a 0.5..."  Rewatch "Attack of the Clones" and focus on Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen, you'll see what I mean.  

All is not lost here, Charlie eventually makes that call and gets a job working in a Manhattan restaurant - because it's just THAT easy.  And Amber's going to attend NYU, so there's a chance that they'll see each other in the big city, but then if you think about it, Charlie's going to lose that restaurant job during the 2020 pandemic, when all the high-end restaurants are forced to close.  Maybe we don't even want to go there - this film is more of a celebration of that time in your life when you could move across the country on a whim, and everything you own (plus everything your best friend owns) would fit into a hatchback car for the big drive.  Remember that?  My father used to make the trip between Boston and New York twice a year for his 2 kids going to NYU, and our combined possessions didn't even fill up one van.  After just a few years of adulting, though, most people end up with a real bed and a couch and a giant collection of books and they find that as they move forward in life, it becomes harder and harder to change residences or relocate to another city.  My comic book collection alone makes this nearly impossible. 

Bottom line, though, this is primarily about two characters that I didn't really care about, and showcasing characters who are firmly stuck in their current situations and can't seem to break out of them.  And then when they finally do, when the right time arrives, the film is over.  That's a very questionable choice to make.  Since the worldwide box-office gross for this film is just over $46,000 I think that proves my point. 

Also starring Freddie Highmore (last seen in "The Spiderwick Chronicles"), Odeya Rush (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Haley Joel Osment (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), Christopher Meloni (last seen in "Snatched"), Marg Helgenberger (last seen in "In Good Company"), Rita Volk, Jake Abel (last seen in "The Host"), Lonnie Knight, Gary Ray Moore, Jon Hayden, Christie McNab, David Chattam, Grant Springate.

RATING: 5 out of 10 futile Candy Crane attempts

Hunter Killer

Year 13, Day 31 - 1/31/21 - Movie #3,733

BEFORE: OK, last day of January so it's time for a check-in. Because I added three extra Bergman movies that I hadn't planned on, it's been an over-full month.  Quite possibly I've never watched 33 films in a month before, but the goal was always to end HERE, with "Hunter Killer", because this connects to the planned start of the annual romance chain - more on that tomorrow.  (Today's film could also have slipped in between "RocknRolla" and "Capone", but since I needed to end the month with it, that was therefore out of the question...)

Right now it's one more action film, and as a pandemic bonus, it's set on a submarine, another enclosed space for all of us who are feeling claustrophobic these days.  I had a brother-in-law once who joined the navy and signed up for submarine training, and he couldn't do it, not everyone's wired to spend time in very tight spaces, deep under water, it takes a special kind of person.  Certainly not me, I don't go deep under water or up high if I can help it.  Deep-sea diving, skydiving, I don't even dive into pools, the only diving I do is into a buffet.  

Here's the format breakdown for January - 

8 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Wildlife, Warrior, The Reckoning, RocknRolla, Locke, Official Secrets, Connie and Carla, Unlocked
11 Movies watched on cable (not saved): End of Watch, A Kiss Before Dying, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Hour of the Wolf, Scenes From a Marriage, Autumn Sonata, Fanny and Alexander, Havana, Muriel's Wedding, Hunter Killer
4 watched on Netflix: Okja, Spenser Confidential, Birthmarked, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

4 watched on Amazon Prime: Capone, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2019), The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
1 watched on Hulu: Parasite
2 watched on Disney+: Dumbo (2019), The One and Only Ivan

3 watched on HBO MAX: Through a Glass Darkly, Persona, Cries and Whispers
33 TOTAL

In February, it looks like my AmazonPrime stats are going to go up, there's a lot of connective tissue that I'll need to add to link the romance films I've already dubbed to DVD or are still taking up space on my DVR.  I should be able to make another dent in my Netflix list, too.  

Michael Nyqvist carries over from "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", and I know it's super early, we're only one month into 2021, but here's who's leading in appearances so far, thanks to all the Swedish films - it's Bergman mainstay Gunnar Björnstrand, who appeared in six films.  Tied for second place with five appearances are Toni Collette, Tom Hardy, Erland Josephson, Liv Ullman and Max von Sydow.  And then trailing them are four more Swedes with four appearances: Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace.  It's still early and a lot can change, and there's no way I can predict who will win the year, because I haven't programmed anything past Easter yet.  

THE PLOT: An untested American submarine captain teams with U.S. Navy Seals to rescue the Russian president, who has been kidnapped by a rogue general.  

AFTER: You can practically hear what the elevator pitch for this one was - something like "The Hunt for Red October" meets "Olympus Has Fallen" (maybe with a bit of "Angel Has Fallen").  Then somebody else said, "Great, and let's see if we can get the guy from the "Has Fallen" movies, maybe he's available!"  Also, since the U.S. President is played by a female with blonde hair - clearly, they started filming this before the 2016 election and were expecting a certain outcome.  The actor playing the Russian president looks nothing like Putin, though - I wonder if they tried to cast Matthias Schoenaerts, who was in "Red Sparrow" and gave off a big Putin-like vibe there.  Maybe "Hunter Killer" tried to cast him, but he was busy filming "Red Sparrow"?

Either way, we're in a parallel 2018 universe here, where there's a woman president, and a coup attempt in Russia, where Admiral Durov takes advantage of President Zakarin's visit to the Polyarny naval base to hold him hostage and seize power.  Wouldn't you know it, the U.S. just happened to have a bunch of drone cams and satellite images available, and a submarine headed that way, AND a team of Navy Seals ready to deploy behind the Iron Curtain.  This is all because a previous U.S. submarine disappeared while tailing a Russian sub.  And this happened in the Murmansk peninsula a few days before the Russian President was scheduled to visit?  Seems mighty suspicious...

The good news is, there's plenty of action here, on all fronts, the sea, land and even air.  The SEAL team parachutes in to spy on the naval base, while the USS Arkansas approaches by sea, avoids torpedoes from a Russian sub hiding in the ice, and then somehow finds survivors in a sunken Russian sub, the Konek.  They save the captain of the sub and a few crewmen, and you can bet this is going to be very important later on.  The untested captain and crew of the Arkansas aren't even sure if they're at war with Russia or not, because the Defense Department back in Washington is still trying to make sense out of the situation.  

When they finally determine that Admiral Durov has taken control and intends to start a war, the crazy plan is enacted, for the SEAL team to capture the Russian President, and for the submarine to make its way into the Russian harbor (oh, if only they had a Russian captain on board to help them - wait a second, they do!) and pick up the Navy Seals, plus Zakarin. And it's just crazy enough to work, but also, it's quite ridiculous.  The biggest danger, of course, is that if anything happens to the Russian president while in the hands of the U.S. military, it's going to look like that was the goal of the operation, to invade Russia and capture & harm their leader. 

Thankfully I'm not a military expert, because if I were, I'd probably be more aware of technical mistakes regarding missiles, targeting systems, sonar, torpedoes and the like.  But being ignorant, I could more easily turn off the skeptical parts of my brain and just try to enjoy the ride.  Now that it's over, though, I want to know where the goofs are.  But this was based on a novel called "Firing Point", which was co-written by a former commander of a nuclear submarine, so maybe they got more things right than wrong.  The film's director and star Gerard Butler also spent several days doing research on that same sub, the USS Houston.  So, maybe it's legit?

Also starring Gerard Butler (last seen in "RocknRolla"), Gary Oldman (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Common (last seen in "Smokin' Aces"), Linda Cardellini (last seen in "Capone"), David Gyasi (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Gabriel Chavarria (last heard in "War for the Planet of the Apes"), Ryan McPartlin (last seen in "J. Edgar"), Carter MacIntyre, Zane Holtz (last seen in "Holes"), Taylor John Smith, Michael Trucco (last seen in "Next"), Michael Gor (last seen in "The Hitman's Bodyguard"), Yuri Kolokolnikov (ditto), Alexander Diachenko, Igor Jijikine, Ilia Volok (last seen in "Gemini Man"), Caroline Goodall (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Toby Stephens (last seen in "13 Hours"), Christopher Goh, Atanas Srebrev, Sarah Middleton, Corey Johnson (last seen in "Jackie"), Adam James (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Shane Taylor, Kola Bokinni (last seen in "Annihilation"), Mikey Collins (last seen in "Dunkirk"), Will Attenborough (ditto), Kieron Bimpson, Michael Jibson (last seen in "1917"), David Yelland, Stuart Milligan (last seen in "Spy Game"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 underwater mines