Blue Jay

Year 13, Day 51 - 2/20/21 - Movie #3,753

BEFORE: Mark Duplass carries over from "Duck Butter", where he played a fictionalized version of himself. And the Mark Duplass section of the chain is very helpful for making a dent in my Netflix list, all three of his romance-based films can be found there. 

Believe it or not, after today I'm only halfway through this year's romance chain - Valentine's Day is in the rear-view, but I've still got 20 more films about love and relationships before I get off this topic for the year - we're going into overtime, until mid-March.  This worked out well for me the last two years and led to perfect year-long chains, so I'm going to stick with what works.

THE PLOT: Meeting by chance when they return to their tiny California hometown, two former high-school sweethearts reflect on their shared past. 

AFTER: It's a simple little film, this one.  Just two former lovers bumping in to each other, and then re-connecting, or at least coming close to it.  From the title I think it sounded like some period piece or costumed drama, but no, it's a modern-set film, "Blue Jay" is just the name of the diner in town where these two former lovers drink some terrible coffee. And his name is Jim, not Jay, so even if he's "blue" or sad, that's not relevant to the meaning of the title.  

Also, is this "mumblecore"?  I'm never sure.  Wikipedia says that Mark Duplass is part of the mumblecore movement, but I never know what to look for.  I keep thinking that I'm going to recognize mumblecore when I see it, and I never do.  Independent films that are largely improvised tend to qualify, so I'm going to call this one mumblecore, just because that makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere, closer to maybe understanding the genre.  Ah, there's a list of mumblecore films on Wikipedia, and this one is ON THE LIST!  The other ones that I've seen are "Cyrus", "Frances Ha", "Save the Date", "Celeste & Jesse Forever", "Drinking Buddies", "The Overnight"  Man, I've come so far but there's still a LONG way to go - I've never watched "Humpday" or "Tiny Furniture" or "Jeff, Who Lives at Home", and the only mumblecore film currently on my list is "The Do-Deca-Pentathlon".  Then there's mumble-GORE, which is a whole different genre that I don't think I'm even interested in at all...

Anyway, Amanda and Jim bump into each other in a grocery store in their hometown, she's there because her sister is pregnant and close to giving birth, and he's there because his mother passed away a couple months ago, he's fixing up the house he grew up in, he may sell it, or not.  They spend an evening together, relive the old times, good and bad, we learn more about them now and what happened back then.  That's about it, but on some level, that's enough, it kind of has to be, right?  No complicated arrangements, no Jane Austen books, no intersecting character arcs where we have to determine what's real and what isn't.  No incidents that have implications that reverberate on another continent decades later, just two people meeting up again and talking about old times.  Boring by comparison, perhaps, but also refreshing in its own way.  

They buy beers from several countries, they eat jelly beans, and Jim saves Amanda the pink and purple ones.  They listen to old audio tapes they made, where they pretended to be an older married couple with two adult kids.  They find old love letters, try on old clothes, and dance to music from the early 90's.  They get close again, but then they also have to re-live the old pain and trauma again. Proving that you can go back again, but also really, you can't go back again.  The future is left open, perhaps it's up to the viewer what happens next - which usually I hate, but just maybe there was no other way to end this one.  

This is the kind of film that streaming was designed for, though - it made just $21,000 in general release, which is kind of pathetic.  At least on Netflix there's a better chance that people might actually watch it.  I think it's worth a look, and with an 80-minute running time, it's not going to take up too much of your day.  Probably the most interesting thing about it is seeing Sarah Paulson in an atypical role, I think she usually ends up playing villains in sci-fi or horror films, and she doesn't usually land roles like this, namely a straight woman in a romance film.  

NITPICK POINT: What happened to Amanda's sister, did she starve to death after Amanda never brought home the groceries?  And who lets ice cream melt in their car, isn't that a terrible waste of money, and a food crime?  Why couldn't they at least bring the ice cream in from her car and put it in Jim's freezer?  Now all the groceries she bought are covered in melted butter pecan ice cream.  

Also starring Sarah Paulson (last seen in "Bird Box"), Clu Gulager (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood")

RATING: 6 out of 10 romance novels on the bookshelf

Duck Butter

Year 13, Day 50 - 2/19/21 - Movie #3,752

BEFORE: Well, if the first part of this week was all about complex, many-charactered, split-timeline or interweaving stories, the second half of week is being turned over to Mark Duplass, he'll be here for the next three films.  And there will be lesbians, but we don't discriminate here at the Movie Year, love is love is love. And romance is romance is romance. 

Laia Costa carries over from "Life Itself". Annette Bening will be back in just a few days...

THE PLOT: Two women, who are dissatisfied with the dishonesty they see in dating and relationships, decide to make a pact to spend 24 hours together hoping to find a new way to create intimacy. 

AFTER: Here's what I don't quite get about gay people, and this comes from being around during the 1980's and 90's, a terrible time due to the AIDS crisis, which was the big U.S. pandemic before the one we're going through now, and if there was one silver lining to that terrible dark cloud, it was that more gay people came out publicly, and while there's still discrimination lingering, more people are out and proud these days than there were before.  For centuries gay people kept their private lives private, most of them anyway, and while this was probably for the sake of their own protection, it became the normal way to live a gay life, mostly in secret.  But the post-1980's was almost like a second sexual revolution, where it became (eventually) OK to be gay, or bi, and then this broke the barriers eventually leading to it being OK to be trans, or whatever the "I" and "A" stand for in "LGBTQIA".  (I'll look it up later, I promise.)

But then something else happened, along the way there was a fight for marriage equality, which through some nifty legal work became the law of the land in all 50 states, and it almost feels to me like gay people settled for the right to have the lives that the straights have.  They had all this freedom, and it seemed like the sky was the limit, that they didn't have to live by the old rules of society, and then collectively it almost feels like the gay movement said, "Nah, we're OK with the old rules like marriage, because then we get spousal benefits like shared health insurance, co-owning property and the rights to adopt kids and co-parent them."  I think there was an opportunity there to really re-write the rulebook, go above and beyond the old ways of thinking and create something new - and I wonder how many gay people are aware of the potential of this missed opportunity.  Why have gay marriage be just like regular marriage in most respects, when it could have been something better, maybe higher or more noble?  It seems a bit like starting up a new colony of humans on the moon and then opening up a McDonald's there.  Do you really just want to settle for that, after such a momentous struggle and achievement? 

Anyway, that's neither here nor there.  Gay marriage rights means more gay divorces, it's only fair.  But it also didn't solve the lingering problems of how people meet and come together, how they form partnership bonds that last - that's a universal problem, gay or straight or "QIA".  This film shows a unique method of getting around that problem, even though it reminds be a bit of Charlyne Yi in "Paper Heart", who claimed she'd never been in love, and Josh Radnor's character in "Happythankyoumoreplease", who invites a woman he barely knows to live with him for three days, to see if they're compatible.  Naima meets Sergio after she sees her perform in a club, and they devise a plan to spend 24 hours together, having sex every hour.  Since Naima is an actress who's just been fired from the latest Duplass Brothers film, she's suddenly got the time - and she claims she's never really been "in love", so this starts as a sort of social experiment.  

(Let me back up a bit and go back to my theories for just a second - for many decades, even though people were aware of gay and lesbian relationships, the working theory among the straights was that gay people were somehow unable to form lasting relationship bonds, and that they all preferred quick, easy and shallow short-term sexual encounters. Which we all know now is blatantly untrue, as I think most blanket statements about large groups of people usually are. However, I suspect that some gay people either bought into this absurd line of reasoning, or took no steps to correct it, because why waste time correcting all the wrong people, especially when this belief gave them the perfect excuse to sleep around and not commit?  A permanent party-based lifestyle, based on a misconception about what it meant to be gay, it may have been wrong but it was probably a lot of fun while it lasted.  Meanwhile, without being bogged down with the time-drain of marriage and raising children, many gay people were able to devote more time to their careers or social networks, and probably advanced themselves quite well.)

So Naima and Sergio conduct their little social experiment - extending what is essentially their second date to a 24-hour marathon of getting to know each other, getting freaky with it, and perhaps learning more about themselves along the way.  How much time is too much time, when the relationship is that new?  And can we treat this 2018 film as a possible precursor to the pandemic?  At the start of the COVID-19 there might have been some people forced to make quick decisions about who they would let into their bubble, or if they wanted to quickly make a change in their roommate or relationship status, when it looked like we might all be sequestered with the same people for weeks, or possibly months.  (Side question - how many people made the wrong decision there, or found out that their marriage or other relationship just couldn't handle spending so much time together?). 

The real mistake that these two girls make here, in my opinion, is that once you regulate sex, you kind of kill it.  Sex is spontaneous at its best - when you say, "Hey, every alternate Thursday, 10 pm, let's get it on..." or in this case, it's on the hour for 24 hours, you've immediately put too much pressure on it.  And you've turned it from a fun thing into a chore, so that's just not going to work - the first time one of them doesn't feel into it just because the clock strikes twelve, there are going to be some questions and issues - and that's what happens here, more or less.

The running joke among straight men sometimes is that it might be great to be gay, you can talk with your buddy about football, share a beer, get it on together, then just roll over and go to sleep. I haven't got the heart to inform those people that this is probably not how it works between gay men, but then, what do I know?  Maybe for some of them this is exactly how it is.  But the reverse codicil to this is therefore - how's it going to work between two women?  Aren't they both going to want to talk about their feelings, gossip and then play those little passive-aggressive mind games with each other?  I realize I'm also stereotyping here, but who's to say that some stereotypes aren't true?  Besides, that's also what happens here, somehow the lack of sleep, the overabundance of sex and, well, let's call it petty jealousy (but that's perhaps an over-simplification) get in the way, and eventually the relationship here turns contentious, and the grand social experiment is over. 

Maybe you could say these women got too close together, too quickly. There's a reason why you're supposed to wait a week before your second date, you know.  And not call every day, not at the start of things - you've got to ease into these things gradually, generally speaking, like you're getting used to the temperature of the pool.  But there will always be some people who think it's better to just dive right in and get it over with - I think that's just too much of a shock to the system.  Now I want to know how many people have died in pools from jumping in suddenly, I bet it's a lot. 

And don't ask me to explain what "Duck Butter" means - it sounds like an ingredient that some chef-testant would make on "Chopped" or "Top Chef", right?  When I was a kid there was a novelty song called "Duck Butter", and that implied a reference to some kind of magical edible substance hidden inside a duck's body, like the tamale (or tomalley) of a lobster, and some people seek that out, while most avoid it. But here in this film it's neither of those things, it's fairly vulgar so I won't get into it, but you can look it up in the "urban dictionary" online. The meaning there implies it's something to do with male gay sex, here they just transposed that over to women. I know, we're not supposed to be ashamed of our bodies any more, nor any of the substances that are in them, but still, ewww.

Also starring Alia Shawkat (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Mae Whitman (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Hong Chau (last seen in "Downsizing"), Kate Berlant (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Lindsay Burdge (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Kumail Nanjiani (last seen in "Stuber"), Mark Duplass (last seen in "Bombshell"), Jay Duplass (last seen in "Beatriz at Dinner"), Jenny O'Hara (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Carlos A. Salazar, Mel Eslyn, Armando Ballestros, Andrea Byrd, Elizabeth Hangan, Yelena Koshelevskaya, Jibz Cameron, Kyle Field (last seen in "The Overnight"), Stacey Koff, Margie Gilmore, Angelina Llongueras and the voice of Marc Maron (last seen in "Spenser Confidential"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 hollow onion rings on set

Life Itself (2018)

Year 13, Day 49 - 2/18/21 - Movie #3,751

BEFORE: Another busy day in the trenches - my wife's vaccine appointment today, and I volunteered to go with her, since I'd been to the exact same site two days before.  She didn't want to drive in the snow, so we took the subway, just like I did on Tuesday.  Same process, same route, same leaving three hours early just so we'd have "stupid time" in case something went wrong.  And if they wouldn't give her the shot early, like they did with me, well the casino is RIGHT THERE so we could kill some time on the slots before her appointment.  But they took her early, she didn't have to wait long, and everything went off without a hitch.

They wouldn't let me go inside with her, though - they were only allowing that for people with physical disablilities, people in wheelchairs or who had trouble walking and needed someone for literal support, not just emotional support.  So I was outside in the cold for about 45 minutes, in touch with her by text message - still very worth it if it meant she got her shot today and didn't have to reschedule. These vaccine sites are being run with military precision - quite literally, there are army or National Guard people in camo gear all over, they're very nice but I'm sure they could all kick anyone's ass if they start causing trouble.  And who knows more about checking paperwork or maintaining order than the military people do?  Thank you for your service, one and all. And your understanding in letting us both slip in a couple hours early. 

It's funny how when you get your vaccine appointment, it changes your perspective - suddenly you want to be very careful crossing the street or walking on the ice, because it would totally suck on any day to get hit by a car or break an ankle falling down, but it would doubly suck if one of those things prevented you from getting your vaccine dose.  Same goes for dying in an accident the day after, that would be like the shot got wasted on you - so the impetus is there now to be careful and stay healthy going forward.  It's also funny how many people ask for advice when they find out you got the shot - which web-site did you use, how long did you have to wait, what day/time did slots become available, and so on.  I'm happy to give advice to anybody who asks, because who cares, I got my shot, why wouldn't I give advice to friends and family?  I can't help friends who have senior relatives in other states, though, I only know the NY state system and what worked for us, other states are on different schedules, with different procedures and different eligibility rules at this specific time.  But man, it's like the damn "Hunger Games" out there, with every district scrambling for their share of the resources.  Before long we'll have some kind of gladiatorial games to decide who gets the vaccine - or maybe not.  But much can be said about how inequitable the system is right now, especially for people who don't have computer access or don't know how to book stuff online.  

Olivia Wilde carries over from "Third Person". And a rare birthday SHOUT-OUT to Spanish actress Laia Costa!  She'll be here again tomorrow, also. 

THE PLOT: As a young New York City couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes. 

AFTER: The inside scoop here is that this film was written and directed by the creator of the TV series "This Is Us". I don't watch that show, but I've read a lot about it, how it's a split-timeline show that bounces back and forth between the past and the present, and that it's heavy on the drama, and over however-many episodes it slowly reveals the key information about the important events in this family's history, because why give everything away at the start when you can hook viewers in for seven seasons and then maybe a movie?  That's a good tip as to what tonight's film ended up being about, my unintended theme for the week is "lots of characters, several intersecting storylines and possible split timelines".  That's "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee", "Third Person" and today's film in a nutshell.  

There are five main acts in today's film, I'll try not to talk about how they're all connected because that would mean spoilers.  But good things happen, bad things happen, a couple terrible things happen, as auteurs try and try to depict this crazy thing called life in cinematic form.  People fall in love, people fall out of love, people leave other people in various ways, and yet somehow humans still continue to lurch forward awkwardly, some knowing who and what they want out of life, and others just taking it all as it comes, and dealing with it the best that they can.  Maybe you'll see a bit of your story reflected in the life of a Spanish foreman on an olive plantation or a NYC hipster punk singer, maybe you won't.  But they're all pieces of a big puzzle here, as they were in "Third Person" - but the difference lies in how the pieces come together, and whether or not they do so to your own personal satisfaction.  

As I said yesterday, I don't really like fake-out, and this film starts with a fake-out. But Act One is (eventually) about Will and Abby, and this act itself is a split-timeline, we see Will in a bad way after Abby has left him, then the story flashes back to explain how they got together in the first place. They met at a college costume party (shades of "Made of Honor" here) but they were dressed as characters from "Pulp Fiction" - pretty much the only film that pulls the split-timeline thing with me and gets a free pass for doing so. (That's gotta be a inside joke, I'm sure of it...) Will might be way more into Abby than Abby is into Will, but that's OK.  They also pull the "A Christmas Carol" bits here, where Will and his therapist can virtually travel into the past and observe moments from Will's past, and even Abby's past, though all that information is by nature second-hand, and they can't change the timeline, merely observe it.  

Abby wrote her college thesis about the "unreliable narrator" concept, and that's both the impetus for the action here and also another giant inside joke.  Her posited theory is that EVERY narrator is unreliable by default, and somehow that's a mix of 17th Century French philosophy as well as a take-down of every story, ever.  Umm, including this one?  But just because you make references to the potential faults of your own tale, that doesn't excuse those faults - I have a feeling that some writers think otherwise, though.  Anyway, Abby and Will get married, Abby gets pregnant, and eventually we learn the details of their break.  Again, no spoilers here if I can help it. But they definitely disagreed about the merits of Bob Dylan's album "Time Out of Mind", which tends to be a very divisive issue. 

Act Two concerns their daughter, Dylan Dempsey, that NYC punk rock singer that I mentioned. Act Three takes us to that olive plantation in Spain, where Javier gets promoted to foreman and earns the right to live on the plantation with his young wife., Isabel  They also get married and have a child, and that couple also has issues.  (It's probably about Bob Dylan again, isn't it? JK) Act Four is about their son, Rodrigo, who excels in track and heads off to college in America. And I won't say anything about Act Five, but again, if you're a fan of "This Is Us", maybe you can use some extrapolation and predict what eventually feels destined to happen.  

Different people narrate different segments - because everything is connected, after all.  And everything ultimately ends up being important, which I think is something they were trying to hint at in "Third Person", but by comparison, man, that film really dropped the ball.  This one just puts the pieces together better, and that's ultimately how it ends up generating all the feels.  Are the situations unlikely? Probably.  Are the narrators unreliable?  Definitely.  But who cares? 

Also starring Oscar Isaac (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "Wonder"), Jean Smart (last seen in "Lucky You"), Olivia Cooke (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Laia Costa, Alex Monner, Isabel Durant, Lorenza Izzo (last seen in "The House with a Clock in Its Walls"), Annette Bening (last seen in "The Report"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Samuel L. Jackson (last seen in "Sphere"), Jake Robinson (last seen in "Set It Up"), Charlie Thurston (last seen in "Money Monster"), Gabby Bryan, Bryant Carroll, Carmela Lloret, Caitlin Carmichael, Jordana Rose, Kya Kruse, Yeray Alba Leon, Pablo Laguens Abad, Javier Verdugo Luque, Adrian Marrero. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 slices of meat loaf

Third Person

Year 13, Day 48 - 2/17/21 - Movie #3,750

BEFORE: Usually, my February is spent not only watching movies daily, but also tracking the annual countdown of "100 Days of Oscar" on TCM.  Not this year, because the Oscar ceremony is taking place later than usual - it's scheduled for April 25.  So TCM isn't starting their Oscar chain until April 1, and honestly, that's a bit of a relief for me.  I suddenly remembered about it last night and thought that maybe I'd missed 17 days of it already!  

Whatever the format is in any given year, TCM (like me) usually ends up watching romance-themed films on and around Valentine's Day, which is easy because there are just so many films about love and romance!  Sure, it gets a little harder each year for me to make my links, but I've found that for the month of February, my programming gets a little bit easier, at least in some ways.  If I'm stuck for a link, just add more films, and more links will appear!  Or, I can always go up and down the list of IMDB credits for each actor, and I'll probably find another romance somewhere in somebody's resumé...

Anyway, the Oscars are coming (eventually) and so is TCM's Oscar-themed block, we all just have to wait a bit longer.  We should be used to that by now - at least the Oscars aren't cancelled, just delayed. Let's hope by next year they're back on the old timetable, or maybe they'll work their way back to it gradually - I know for the last decade or so, the Oscars show has been creeping up earlier and earlier, kind of like how the Super Bowl used to be in January, but as they kept adding more levels of playoffs, now we've come to expect it in February. 

Maria Bello carries over again from "The Jane Austen Book Club". 

THE PLOT: Three interlocking love stories involving three couples in three cities: Rome, Paris and New York. 

AFTER: Warning, SPOILERS AHEAD for the ending of "Third Person" - turn back now if you plan on seeing this film in the future. 

Well, as Tom Petty once sang, "Some days are diamonds, some days are rocks."  I often think that through my system, some movies are bricks and some are just mortar - the mortar ones don't end up meaning a lot to me, except that they do hold the bricks together.  For a round-numbered day like this, signifying that I'm halfway to being one-third done with Movie 13 (I guess this means the year is one-sixth over already) I'd hoped to land on a brick, but it's just not one of those.  This movie is all over the place, hard to understand and intentionally cryptic - and any possible explanation for what, exactly, is taking place feels like it will ultimately fall short. 

It's another film like yesterday's, one that intertwines several stories together, and then feels like a juggling routine, trying to keep every ball up in the air or in motion as it toggles between the different storylines - but at least with "Jane Austen Book Club" all the characters came together at least once a month and interacted, they had shared experiences and inhabited the same city, and thus they shared a universe - but with this film, the shared universe is very much in doubt.  For starters, the three stories take place in different cities - New York, Paris and Rome, so how could they possibly interact?  

I should have paid a bit more attention to who the director here is - it's Paul Haggis, who followed a similar formula (umm, I think?) with the film "Crash", which ended up winning the Best Picture Oscar in 2006, but I think that's commonly regarded in the rearview as one of the more controversial winners, perhaps it even was the wrong choice for that year. What should have won?  Maybe "Brokeback Mountain", but maybe Hollywood wasn't ready for that yet. "Capote"?  I don't know.  Maybe I'm confusing things with the year that "Shakespeare in Love" somehow beat out "Saving Private Ryan"...

Anyway, as disjointed as I remember "Crash" being, this is much, much worse in that regard. There's so much jumping between the three stories that each one only gets a few minutes, sometimes even less than a minute, before we jump to another one of the stories, and that can be quite disconcerting.  Why couldn't they run the three stories consecutively, and give each one the time it needed to find its own pace, like Tarantino did with "Pulp Fiction"?  Ah, because somebody here wanted to be "arty" and highlight the connections, the similarities between the three stories.  The tagline on my cable box menu says that the three stories are about a new love, a relationship that's somewhere in the middle, and one that's in the past.  But I don't think that's the right formula for determining what's really going on here. 

One story is about a writer, and he's working out of a Paris hotel room, when he's visited by his assistant/mentee/lover, and they start playing these little relationship head games.  I can't tell if they were just supposed to be role-playing, messing with each other in a cutesy kind of way, or if their relationship mixed in a fair amount of contention with the affection.  And we the audience aren't given much time to really analyze it, because before long, we're whisked away to the other story taking place in New York.  

In New York, an ex-soap opera actress is starting as a hotel maid, because she needs to prove that she's stable and can hold down a steady job.  Through conversations with her lawyer, we learn that there was some kind of incident involving her son, who's now living with his father, and she needs to prove her mental capacity or stability in order to be granted some form of custody or visitation.  We're also shown scenes of a painter interacting with his son, and only later do we find out that painter used to be married to the actress-turned-maid.  But again, we don't have much time to consider this, before we're whisked away again to...

Rome, where an American businessman is having trouble getting around town in a taxi and ordering a beer in a bar. (NITPICK POINT - who goes to a foreign country without at least bringing a phrase book.  Also, who doesn't know that "birra" is Italian for "beer" and how to say "please" and "thank you" in Italian?  This seems like very basic stuff.)  He talks to a woman in that bar who leaves without her bag, and then later after he tries to do the right thing, he's drawn into her world of paying off a man who's smuggled her daughter into the country.  

The film continues bouncing between the three stories for what seems like a very long time, before hinting at the ways in which the characters from the three stories, in three different cities, might be connected.  Oddly, all of the stories also share a specific element, which is three different accidents involving small children.  That's too much of a coincidence to dismiss lightly, and possibly that's a hint to what's really going on here.  But after viewing, I read several interpretations online regarding what is real here, and what might not be.  Silly, I suppose, because in the end, none of this is real, they're all just stories.  Or maybe they're one big story, that exists in the mind and in the manuscript of the author character.  (Aren't we all just characters that exist in the manuscript of the Author?)

Again, several interpretations are possible.  One is that the author's story is real, and one or both of the other stories are from the book he is writing.  But other answers are possible, you'll have to watch the film and choose the reality that you prefer best, I suppose.  Some of the characters dissipate at the end, like superheroes killed by Thanos, and this could mean that the author has removed them from the book to make the story stronger - but other answers are also potentially legitimate.  

I started to feel the reality of the situation fold in on itself when one character in the New York hotel writes something down on a piece of note paper, but accidentally leaves it behind when she leaves the room.  We don't see who is staying in that room, but during a later scene set in the Paris hotel, someone finds that same note, flips it over and writes something else on the other side.  Huh?  How did the paper teleport from New York to Paris?  This can't be a simple mistake, because it's kind of an important plot point that the NY woman doesn't have this piece of paper - because it's now in Paris?  This means something, I guess, but also, it just doesn't make any sense. Yet the plot proceeds as if nothing has gone wrong.  Then this happens AGAIN later in the film with the white flowers - they're in the Paris hotel, then somehow they're also in the NY hotel.  It can't be a mistake, but it's also not possible - unless nothing in the entire film is real and is all just someone's dream or novel idea.   

Sure, it's all ultimately about love and betrayal - but I ended up with more questions than answers.  If nothing was real, what about the scenes where the author was talking to the book agent about the story he's writing, were those "real"?  What about the interplay between Michael and Anna, if they love each other, why do they play these mind games and pretend to hate each other?  Or do they hate each other and fool around anyway?  That was very confusing. Which accident involving a small child was real, and which were merely symbolic?  And was the author ever really in Paris, or was he in Rome all the time?  

Reading the Trivia section on IMDB now, apparently there are a few "misplaced" items that jump between the cities, and I only caught one of them.  But you know what, I don't like being tricked, not even by a film director, and I resent the attempts here to trick me with what is and isn't "real", if that word even means anything any more.  But asking why the director wanted to mess with the audience?  I might as well just ask why the director seemed to hate his own characters so much, he clearly didn't want any of them to ever be happy. And just what does that prove? 

Also starring Liam Neeson (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Moran Atias (ditto), James Franco (last seen in "Alien: Covenant"), Mila Kunis (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Adrien Brody (last seen in "The Singing Detective"), Kim Basinger (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Caroline Goodall (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), David Harewood (last seen in "Blood Diamond"), Riccardo Scamacio (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 2"), Loan Chabanol, Patrick Duggan, Katy Louise Saunders, Oliver Crouch, Daniela Virgilio, Fabrizio Biggio, Vinicio Marchioni, Vincent Riotta (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Michele Melega, Michael Margotta. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 broken cell phones

The Jane Austen Book Club

Year 13, Day 47 - 2/16/21 - Movie #3,749

BEFORE: OK, mission accomplished - I got my first dose of the COVID vaccine today.  I had to take a subway out to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, near the airport - only a 45-minute subway ride for me.  Had to bring all my forms, my health profile proving my qualifying underlying condition, and I got there about three hours early, which was a smart move.  For something as important as this, I factored in what we call "stupid time", meaning that if I get on the wrong train, there's a sudden power outage, or I do something stupid like slip on the ice or get hit by a car, then I'd still have a chance of making it there.  There's a casino adjacent to the track, so I figured I'd hit the food court, have a nice lunch, do some reading or even gamble and still make my appointment.

Well, I did a couple stupid things, I took the casino shuttle instead of walking across the highway, which seemed safer, only that dropped me off on the complete wrong side of the complex. I could still walk through the casino and eat lunch as planned - except the Food Court was still closed due to pandemic restrictions.  So I figured I might as well take the long walk around the place and see if they would vaccinate me early, which they did, because there was no line at the time I was there. So I got my shot two hours ahead of schedule - or is that three months and two hours ahead of schedule?  Anyway, I feel extremely lucky - maybe I should have played the slots, or had I already used up all my luck?  Now I'm not sure. 

It's a bit of an odd feeling, knowing that being overweight and having high blood pressure was a positive thing for once, it was good for my health in that I qualified early for a vaccine.  And I just realized today is "Fat Tuesday", which now seems very appropriate. 

Maria Bello carries over from "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Book Club" (Movie #3,472)

THE PLOT: Six Californians start a club to discuss the works of Jane Austen, only to find their relationships - both old and new - begin to resemble 21st century versions of her novels. 

AFTER: I guess you really have to be a big Jane Austen fan to appreciate this movie - I've seen the movie versions of "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma", but I didn't commit all of those stories' plot points to memory, which really would have come in handy here.  (I've also got two more Jane Austen-themed films coming up, the biopic "Becoming Jane" and the recent remake of "Emma" - sorry I couldn't slot them all in a row, the linking wouldn't allow it.)

So I kind of have to just watch this as a sort of ensemble comedy-romance with six main characters, and the interplay between them during book club meetings. I figured I could look up on Wikipedia which character here is meant to represent, or at least have something in common with, specific Jane Austen characters.  The club is formed when Bernadette meets Prudie - Bernadette is meant to be like Mrs. Gardiner from "Pride and Prejudice", and French teacher Prudie represents the Anne Elliott character in "Persuasion", since she's having marital problems and is tempted by the possibility of romance with a student. 

They invite four others to join the book club - recently separated Sylvia (representing Fannie Price from "Mansfield Park"), Sylvia's daughter Allegra (Marianne from "Sense and Sensibility"), Bernadette's friend Jocelyn (who's sort of like the matchmaking "Emma") and Jocelyn's writer friend Grigg, who represents all of Austen's under-written male characters.  Each member gets to host the book club meeting at their house or apartment in successive months, and for the benefit of the audience, each month's meeting place corresponds with the novel that the host symbolizes, and they give Grigg "Northanger Abbey" for his hosting because nobody has ever read that book, not ever, so somebody has to be the first one, I guess. 

(You can probably guess the Rules of Book Club - Rule #1, talk about books.  Rule #2, talk about books.  And Rule #3, if this is your first time at Book Club, you WILL talk about books.)

And so we check in with our group of players monthly, which allows for there to be a steady progression in each one of their romantic stories.  Fairly ingenious format, I'd say, except that in-between there's so much footage of them READING the books.  I've often commented here about how there's nothing more boring than a film that shows a writer writing, or worse, having writer's block, but it turns out that there IS something worse to show in a film, and that's watching six different characters READING.  Can't we just take it as given that the members of a book club, you know, read the material?  Can't we skip ahead to the discussion period each month?  Nope, we've got to show all six people sitting in bed, or at a coffee shop turning pages to show proof of concept, I guess.  And not one of them uses a tablet or an e-reader or cheats by watching the movie versions?  Nope.  

Jocelyn (the matchmaker) invited Grigg to join the group so she could set him up with newly-divorced Sylvia, but Grigg doesn't pick up on this at first, because he joined due to his attraction to Jocelyn. So there's one love triangle that's bound to resolve itself sooner or later, provided longtime independent single Jocelyn can change her thinking.  Sylvia, meanwhile, learns to be more independent after her divorce, but she still stays in touch with her ex-husband, and their accident-prone daughter Allegra might bring them back together again.  Allegra, meanwhile, dates another 20-something woman, but finds out her girlfriend has been stealing story ideas from her, so that leads to a bad break-up. Prudie's insensitive husband leads her to consider a romance with her student, but eventually she forces her husband to read a Jane Austen book, and this magically changes his life and makes him a better person, so they decide to stick with it and give it another go. (Who needs couples counseling when you can just make your husband read a book that he doesn't want to read?) And Bernadette eventually finds love at the end of the film, but honestly this part felt very tacked-on, as there was no set-up for it.

OK, a couple of NITPICK POINTS.  Prudie's husband cancels their trip to France, because his boss sends him on some basketball-based client trip instead.  If the first trip was a work trip, then Prudie has every right to be disappointed, but she does act a bit childish and bratty about not going to Paris. If her husband had refused his boss's request, he could have been fired, and I think Prudie should have cut him a little slack here.  It's better for them both if he keeps his job, and Paris will always be there, they can just go another time.  It's a bad situation, sure, but it's not really his fault.  Also, you can't make somebody read a book or watch a movie that they just don't want to read.  (N.P. #2 - Prudie's husband takes that week-long basketball client trip and then appears to be gone for three or four months.  WTF?) 

Unless, of course, you consider Jocelyn's situation. Grigg gives her MANY opportunities to read some good sci-fi books that he recommends - Ursula LeGuin - and she never gets around to it.  After the 30th time he asks her to read one small book, at that point she's just being contrary.  Is she that afraid that she might like a little science fiction?  I'm torn here because of the above point, that you can't force someone to read your favorite books, but you also can't wait forever for them to come around and like the things that you like. At that point it's probably easier to  instead find some things in common that you both hate.  

Prudie's mother is also a very weird character - an older, pot-smoking hippie British woman who seems to have been only introduced into the story for one reason, and that's to pass away later in the film, so that Prudie is forced to travel to San Diego for her funeral, and be away from the group for an extended period of time.  I'm not sure that the end justifies the means here, plus it's so blatantly obvious why this character exists in the first place. 

The Allegra character stands out, also, because she's a lesbian character, and this calls into question whether same-sex couples follow the same rules as heterosexual ones, and if not, then why have one here?  Representation, sure, but notably there are no lesbian characters in Jane Austen's novels, not obvious ones anyway, because authors back then just didn't write about this topic, it wasn't considered proper.  I'm sure there were lesbians back then, but they lived in secret, more or less, and thus I'm having trouble making the connection here. This plot point also seems only to exist for one reason, and that's to make things awkward for Grigg when he thinks Jocelyn is trying to him up with Allegra, not Sylvia.  (Just how dumb IS Grigg, anyway?)

Perhaps I've just become accustomed to more focused romance stories - most of this year's February films have concentrated on just one romance, like in "Like Crazy" or "Almost Friends" or "Manglehorn" or "Destination Wedding".  "Happythankyoumoreplease" juggled three romances, and even that felt like a bit too much.  With SIX characters here, and no less than FIVE potential romances going on at a time, this felt very scattershot, all over the place, firing in all different directions at one time in hopes of hitting something.  

NITPICK POINT #3 - the film opens with a montage of the characters going about their daily routines - pumping gas, ordering coffee, getting money out of ATM's, making the point that life is filled with annoying encounters with technology, but this seems very disconnected from the rest of the film, and hardly even seems related to the plot or even any point that the rest of the film makes. For God's sakes, why is this montage even there?  Unless this is meant to show contrast to the simple pleasure of reading books and then discussing them, I can't find any reason to open the film this way. 

Also starring Emily Blunt (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Kathy Baker (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Amy Brenneman (ditto), Hugh Dancy (last seen in "Late Night"), Maggie Grace (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Jimmy Smits (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Marc Blucas (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Lynn Redgrave (last seen in "Peter Pan" (2003)), Kevin Zegers, Nancy Travis (last seen in "Internal Affairs"), Parisa Fitz-Henley (last seen in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), Gwendoline Yeo, Myndy Crist, Miguel Najera. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Rhodesian ridgebacks 

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Year 13, Day 46 - 2/15/21 - Movie #3,748

BEFORE: Well, I was successful on Sunday morning, I booked COVID-19 vaccine appointments for both me and my wife, two days apart - both at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, NY. I'll get my shot on Tuesday (which is now tomorrow) and her appointment is on Thursday.  Perhaps when we get our second doses we can schedule them on the same day.  I know there are still some senior citizens out there who are having trouble booking shots on web-sites, so I kind of feel a little guilty for taking an appointment now, but we're both legally qualified to do this now, so I figure we should grab the opportunity when we can.  

There were reportedly about 4 million more New Yorkers who became eligible on Sunday, and I read that about 500,000 were all trying to book vaccine appointments at the same time on Sunday morning, and there were about 73,000 slots.  Somehow I got through twice, so I really feel like I won a lottery jackpot, and then won another one.  Anyway, I think that was a successful Valentine's Day gesture on my part, and once we get our shots, then we'll step aside and other people can book their slots, I think it's a bit like when you're on an airplane and the cabin pressure drops and those masks come down, they say you should put on your own mask before you help someone else, like your child, put on their mask.  This gives you a greater chance to survive while you're helping someone else, right?  So we'll just be two of the several million Americans getting vaccinated this week, and then next week it will be other people, no big deal. I'm not taking anybody else's slot or jumping the line or anything like that, I just got lucky on the first day that I was eligible - and you've got to be in it to win it.  We'll get our shots and this helps everyone, really, because then as a society we'll all be a tiny bit closer to herd immunity. 

Possibly married couple Keanu Reeves AND Winona Ryder carry over from "Destination Wedding" - though I read that they aren't in any scenes together in this film. I guess they needed some time apart? 

THE PLOT: After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown. 

AFTER: I think perhaps my romance chain peaked on Valentine's Day, which is good, that's the most appropriate time for a film about a couple coming together, even if they hated each other at first and didn't seem to WANT to be in a relationship, on some level.  The romance/relationship chain isn't even half over yet, but things might start to get a little complicated in the storytelling - maybe some relationships won't work out, they'll end badly (is there any other way?) or perhaps just END, if you know what I mean.  There are no guarantees in life and love, not even life itself, and to all things, an ending, or so I'm told.  

This is another one of those "split timeline" films - came out in 2009, that's about the time that trend was peaking, I think - where we follow Pippa both in her 40's and then also back in her teen years, through flashbacks.  Thankfully each timeline moves only forward, so it's not TOO confusing, there's no jumping backwards and then forwards again in each of the timelines.  And gradually, then we know that the teen years/early 20's timeline is going to end with her being married to Herb Lee, because that's the status quo in the present timeline.  There are a few more twists and turns in the teen years, like Pippa moving out from her parents' house to go live with her lesbian aunt and her aunt's girlfriend.  The film conveniently never mentions if Pippa was ever influenced by this to try a relationship with a woman, but she did pose for some erotic photos, which were supposedly book covers for lesbian fiction.  (Only, why did it take two weeks of photo sessions to produce one image for a book cover?)

In the present timeline, as I said, Pippa is married to Herb, who is 30 years her senior - that puts him in his 70's, and they've moved to some kind of senior living community for his benefit, even though he's still active as a book editor, and also they're slowly growing apart, after Pippa has spent two decades being a supportive wife, raising their two children.  "Growing apart" is sort of a euphemism here for each person getting interested in another partner - for Herb it's one of Pippa's neurotic friends, and for Pippa, that's Chris, the thirty-something son of a different friend, he's just left his wife and moved back in with his mother, trying to piece his life back together or perhaps start something new himself.  For the moment, that means working as a convenience store clerk.  

And Pippa keeps ending up in that convenience store, she's developed some ability to sleep-walk, and also sleep-drive, so she'll come to the store looking to buy cigarettes, but she's not fully conscious.  I thought you weren't supposed to wake up a sleep-walker, but what other choice does Chris have?  At least he's nice enough to drive her home each time after she shows up in his store again.  But is this some kind of metaphor for something, or a sign that Pippa wants to be with Chris, since she keeps showing up at his counter, in her nightgown? I'm not sure this is something that should be taken as an omen of a future life choice to be made. 

Overall, I'm just not sure I'm sold on the whole premise here.  This film is certainly different from anything else I've seen, and that can sometimes be a good thing - different means original, certainly, but different also means odd.  Maybe too odd - there are some plot elements that seem very specific, this is based on a novel from Rebecca Miller, who also directed the film, but now I'm curious to know if the novel was based on specific incidents from Ms. Miller's life, or if it's all just an original, odd story.  (Reading up on Rebecca Miller's life via Wikipedia, I'm not seeing much of a connection to Pippa's story, but her rejection of established religion sort of reminds me of the Keanu Reeves character here.)

There are also plot elements, particularly in Pippa's past, that are so worn-out as to be nearly passé - 1950's housewives taking speed, 1960's teen girls doing drugs, and then women in their 40's having midlife crises, looking to get out of their marriages somehow and just drive off with a younger man.  Sure, there are a few plot points here that seem original and unique, but the basic framework is exactly that - just so basic.  There's one animated sequence in the film, which uses the metaphor of a relay race, as Pippa passes the responsibility of taking care of her older husband off to someone else, but since it's the only sequence of its kind in the film, it sort of sticks out, and not in a good way - it's more like "What is this even doing here?"

I'll give an extra point for the casting - it was very easy to believe that the younger Blake Lively as Pippa would grow up to look like Robin Wright.  Very often there are actors cast as younger versions of characters that look NOTHING like the actors playing the older versions - like in "The Debt", which I watched last year.  This one's really spot on, though.  

Also starring Robin Wright (last seen in "State of Play") Blake Lively (last seen in "The Age of Adaline"), Alan Arkin (last seen in "Dumbo" (2019)), Maria Bello (last seen in "The Company Men"), Zoe Kazan (last seen in "Happythankyoumoreplease"), Mike Binder (last seen in "Reign Over Me"), Monica Bellucci (last seen in "The Passion of the Christ"), Ryan McDonald, Julianne Moore (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Shirley Knight, Robin Weigert (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Tim Guinee (last seen in "Promised Land"), Madeline McNulty, Adam Shonkwiler, Christin Sawyer Davis, Adam Grupper, with a cameo from Cornel West. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 cigarette butts on the car floor (Really? Do cars not have ashtrays any more?)

Destination Wedding

Year 13, Day 45 - 2/14/21 - Movie #3,747

BEFORE: Happy Valentine's Day! I'm kind of pinning my hopes for an appropriate film on this one, which is available on Hulu - that is, if you can call a film being on Hulu "available".  But there was an article last year about Winona Ryder considering herself "married" to Keanu Reeves, since they played a married couple in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" years ago.  I guess to her, that counts?  She doesn't know the difference between getting married in a movie and getting married in real life, it seems.  To be fair, Francis Ford Coppola used a real Romanian Orthodox priest in the wedding scene of that film - but maybe Winona didn't realize you also need to get a marriage license?  Anyway, at least I imagine they've got some history and thus maybe some on-screen chemistry, too.  Keanu Reeves carries over from "Always Be My Maybe".  

I'm up early this morning to search for COVID-19 vaccination appointments online - my wife and I both become eligible in New York as of tomorrow, but some centers are taking appointments for people with conditions today in anticipation.  I got lucky and got myself in a "virtual line" for appointments out at a racetrack in Queens, so I booked myself for Tuesday at 3 pm, now I'm in another virtual line to schedule something for my wife.  I hope this qualifies as a romantic gesture of sorts - who even knows any more, during a pandemic?  (Flowers are so last year, same for jewelry - vaccine appointments are the new hip, trendy gift...?)

THE PLOT: The story of two miserable and unpleasant wedding guests, Lindsay and Frank, who develop a mutual affection despite themselves.  

AFTER: I think we've got a winner here - I enjoyed this one more than I thought I would, so it's great that this is the film that landed on Valentine's Day, against all odds, and after a schedule change.  See, the system works!  

It's such a simple formula that I'm surprised there aren't a dozen more films just like this one - two people traveling to the same destination find that they're both connected going to the same event, and though they've never met, there's an instant connection.  Lindsay was once engaged to the groom, and Frank is the groom's brother (half-brother?) - so they were once almost in-laws, and since it's not exactly a close-knit family, this explains why they've never met before.  Also, since they've heard so many bad things about each other in the past, they immediately hate each other. You couldn't imagine a worse pairing, and they've got to sit next to each other on the plane, in the cab, they've got adjoining rooms at the hotel, PLUS then they have to sit together at the rehearsal, the ceremony, the reception...

It's a recipe for disaster, except you know that Hollywood doesn't make too many of those, so instead it's more like a set-up.  Even if their families didn't set them up, a screenwriter obviously did. These are two people who are very negative, so they hate everything, and perhaps counter-intuitively, this is an OK foundation for the start of a relationship. As one comedian put it, as a couple you don't need to like all of the same things - but you do need to hate some of the same things.  So there you go - Lindsay and Frank start out hating each other, but given enough time, they're going to find a few things that they hate in common.  This starts with Frank's mother, Frank's father, that song being played at the reception, and so on.  Given enough material, these crazy kids just might make it work out. 

Since they already act like a married couple, bickering and arguing that is, plus in Winona's mind they've been married for years, we're all kind of rooting for them, even though they've developed negative attitudes about relationships - Frank's already played out the whole relationship with Lindsay in his mind, so he's pre-broken up with her, you could say.  Lindsay's still got a thing for Frank's brother, even though he broke off their engagement and her heart - she never got closure, but who does?  It's simple enough for her to transfer her affections from one brother to the other, but will that solve her problem or just create another one?  She's got to take that big leap to find out.  

Thankfully, there's a lot to hate at a wedding - immediately after this, I finished watching the Iliza Schlesinger Netflix special "Iliza Unveiled", and it was all about her recent wedding, and how stupid wedding traditions are (the veil, the garter, the bachelorette party...) so that all tied in nicely. A so-called "destination wedding" to Napa Valley is portrayed here as the ultimate expression of self-importance - forcing friends and family to travel hundreds of miles just to pay homage to the happy couple.  Get over yourselves!  Who the heck wants to go to San Luis Obispo anyway?  Nobody goes there by choice, it seems.  Could have been worse, I guess, at least there's a lot of wine there and Toblerones in the mini-bar.  

Frank and Lindsay both enjoy watching old movies and hate-watching medical dramas, so that's something.  But Frank's not completely sold on the relationship, despite a shared life-threatening encounter with a wild animal and a hook-up with Lindsay in the fields behind the vineyard, he's convinced that right after the flight home, he can just go back to his regular solitary existence.  But this might not prove to be so easy...

The film is a bit unusual, because only the two main actors have speaking roles - it's a little strange to see other people in the airport, on the plane, and at the wedding who don't have any lines.  But it also works, because the story here is JUST about these two people, and their conversations over that weekend, so anything else would just get in the way, if you think about it. And it was all filmed in under ten days.  

Also starring Winona Ryder (last seen in "Mermaids"), DJ Dallenbach, Ted Dubost, D. Rosh Wright, Greg Lucey, Donna Lynn Jones, Curt Dubost, Michael Mogull, Scott Andrews, James Gallardo, Sean Sullivan.

RATING: 7 out of 10 little bottles of wine with screw-off caps