Ain't Them Bodies Saints

Year 13, Day 93 - 4/3/21 - Movie #3,797

BEFORE: I'm doubling up on movies today, with Casey Affleck carrying over from "The Killer Inside Me", to get me to my Easter movie for tomorrow.  TCM and I are sort of on the same page, we've both programmed movies with Rooney Mara.  "Carol" runs at 2:00 am on Sunday, right in between me watching two Rooney Mara films, I suspect. 

THE PLOT: The tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met. 

AFTER: At first glance, it's a very simple story - two men rob a bank, one gets killed, the other breaks out of prison and tries to return to his wife.  But things get complicated very quickly here, then they continue to get more complicated throughout the picture. Things remain unsaid, letters are written, censored and perhaps not delivered, and therefore the overall picture feels a bit oblique at times, but digging into the story deeper reveals that these unsaid, undelivered things have great impact, and further repercussions. We the audience know what's been said, even if the messages don't always reach their intended recipients. 

Take that opening shootout, after the robbery.  Patrick, a deputy, shoots Freddy, one of the robbers.  Ruth, the wife of the other robber, shoots back and wounds Patrick.  When the police close in, Bob, Ruth's husband, takes responsibility for shooting the deputy, and claims that Ruth was an unwilling accomplice.  Based on how affectionate the two are when they're led away in handcuffs, perhaps the cops don't really buy this story, but Bob goes to jail for the robbery and for shooting the deputy.  (It's a bit like the reverse of that Bob Marley/Eric Clapton song...) 

Time goes by, and Bob swears that he will return to Ruth, and their young daughter (who brings a pregnant woman along with them on a shootout?  Just sayin'...). He writes letters but the prison staff censors them, as they tend to do.  Meanwhile, Patrick, after recovering from his shooting, seems to circle around Ruth, and perhaps is interested in her, though he doesn't seem to know (or want to know) that she's the one who shot him.  The father of the dead robber, who runs the local hardware/general store, also adopts a protective role. 

When Bob does bust out of prison (he claims that one day the cell door just opened up, and he strolled out, which doesn't seem likely) there are reports that he's been spotted heading north to Montana, but we all know he's probably headed south, back to Texas.  Once there, he's got to contend with all these factions and more, like a gnarly group of bounty hunters who figure he's likely to turn up in his old hometown, sooner or later.  He thinks he can just swing by the house, pick up his wife and daughter, and drive off again, but by no means could it possibly be that simple. Again, there are messages written, some get delivered but some don't, which means that there's no way everyone could possibly be on the same page.  

Because this is set in rural Texas, and because everyone communicates by letter, and not text or e-mail, there's a real timeless quality to this - we never learn what year it takes place, could be in the 1970's, or it could be the 2010's.  I'm not really proficient enough with car makes and models to nail it down, but I think ultimately that's a good thing.  And with a 90-minute run time, even if you don't care for the story, it won't take up too much of your time.  The director of "American Honey" could sure learn a thing or two from watching this, like how to tell a coherent story that keeps moving forward without repeating itself over and over. 

The IMDB tells me that the film's title is a "mondegreen" - a nonsense phrase based on misheard song lyrics, such as hearing the Beatles lyric "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as "the girl with colitis goes by" or the Jimi Hendrix lyric "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy". There are many other notable examples - but nothing on line tells me what song was misheard to create the title "Ain't Them Bodies Saints".  I have a feeling, however, that the song was "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" - but not the original version, I'm thinking it was the cover by the Rolling Stones.  Mick Jagger slurred so much while singing that song, it's probably possible to hear just about anything in those lyrics.  I used to hear that song on the radio and think that Mick was singing a song about Aunt Jemima...

Also starring Rooney Mara (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Ben Foster (last seen in "Hostiles"), Keith Carradine (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Kennadie Smith, Jacklynn Smith, Nate Parker (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Robert Longstreet (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Charles Baker (last seen in "Wild"), Augustine Frizzell (also last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Kentucker Audley, David Zellner, Turner Ross, Rami Malek (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Will Beinbrink (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Frank Mosley, Steve Corner, Annalee Jefferies, Gwen Waymon, Artist Thornton, Richard Jackson, Steve Corder. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 pickup trucks

The Killer Inside Me

Year 13, Day 93 - 4/3/21 - Movie #3,796

BEFORE: Elias Koteas carries over from "The Greatest Game Ever Played".  This is another film that's been on the books for so long that I've lost track - along with a few old Mummy movies, "Picnic", "Born Yesterday" and that movie with Andy Griffith, it just feels like it's ALWAYS been on my list, though I know that can't be possible.  Good film or bad film, I'm just happy to be done with it after today. 

Here's the line-up for tomorrow, Day 4 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Sunday April 4 - so if you like something you see here, you'll have time to set your DVR:

6:00 am "Citizen Kane" (1941) - SEEN IT

8:00 am "The Corn Is Green" (1945)

10:00 am "Dark Victory" (1939) - SEEN IT

12:00 pm "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) - SEEN IT

2:15 pm "The Defiant Ones" (1959) - SEEN IT

4:00 pm "Destination Moon" (1950)

5:45 pm "East of Eden" (1955) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "Easter Parade" (1948) - SEEN IT

10:00 pm "The Egg and I" (1947)

12:00 am "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945)

2:00 am "The End of the Affair" (1999) - SEEN IT

4:00 am "The Entertainer" (1960)

Ah, finally I see a glimpse of some rational thought behind the alphabetical listing - "Easter Parade" ended up on Easter Sunday, that can't be just a coincidence, then following with "The Egg and I", somebody's having some chuckles over there at TCM programming.  "East of Eden" is also a very biblical-based film, sort of.  And two films in a row with Bette Davis is probably just a coincidence - but I noticed.  Somebody's still trying to link these films by actor, I can feel it.  Anyway, another 7 films seen out of these 12 brings me up to 28 seen out of 46, or 60.8%.

THE PLOT: A West Texas deputy sheriff is slowly unmasked as a psychotic killer. 

AFTER: This film's a tough sell, for sure. I'll admit I've been curious about it for years, or else it wouldn't be on my list in the first place, but the payoff here's just not worth all the wait.  Maybe I waited too long and built up the expectations too high, and no film could possibly live up to that.  

BUT, on the other hand, the main character is a sheriff who is also a killer.  Very hard to feel sympathetic toward that character.  Then when other people start investigating him, instead of the people he frames for his killings, then he has to kill again.  And AGAIN.  Where does it stop?  Is this how serial killers become, you know, serial?  Do they keep having to cover up their past mistakes, or knock off anyone who gets too close to finding out the truth?  Or is it more like what I saw portrayed in "The Hunted", once someone gets a taste for killing, they find it hard to stop -  aka the "Potato Chip" theory?  

This film is based on a 1952 crime novel by Jim Thompson, but that was back before crime novels were fun, like Elmore Leonard books that came along later.  This was back in the age of "In Cold Blood" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice", when men were men and women were sex objects and future corpses, and people killed to get ahead, like for the insurance money.  It was a different time, for sure.  But that's part of the problem, we don't live in that world any more.  People still kill each other, sure, in fact we've got whole TV channels and many podcasts devoted to "true crime" story, so the genre is alive and well, but do we want to see all this graphic violence in a narrative fiction story?  

Quentin Tarantino was attached to direct this film in the mid-1990's, but the project got scrapped after the Sept. 11 attacks, because the script was deemed too violent.  I guess timing is everything, because if anybody could have made something out of this story, it could have been Tarantino, he might have elevated it just by casting the right actors - I had a big problem with Casey Affleck here because I couldn't understand most of what he was saying, it was as if his jaw had been wired shut.  Is that the only way he could attempt a Texas accent, by never opening his mouth?  It's an odd choice, for sure.  Now, if this film had been available today on cable or streaming, I could have watched it with subtitles, which is always a help to me.  Sure, I have a hearing aid now, but subtitles help even more.  But since I couldn't find the film streaming, I had to watch my personal DVD, burned from VHS tape recorded off cable.  But no subtitles. 

So I had to read the plot summary on Wikipedia to learn WHY Sheriff Lou killed the first person - I sort of half figured it out, but the lack of basic information provided, combined with Affleck being unable or unwilling to open his mouth made it difficult - it all goes back to when the sheriff was a teenager, and he raped a girl.  But his older brother pleaded guilty for the crime to protect him, and went to jail.  Once the older brother got out of jail, he was hired by Chester Conway, and then died in a construction accident, and someone tells Lou that perhaps it was not really an accident. 

Meanwhile, Sheriff Lou is asked repeatedly to get Joyce, a local prostitute, to move out of the county, but in doing so he fights with her, and finds out that she kind of likes getting slapped around (well, duh, what woman in the 1950's didn't?  Actually, it was probably all of them...) and this dovetails nicely with Lou's love of hitting people, so they start a relationship based on this.  But before long Lou uses this prostitute to cover his murder of Elmer Conway, Chester's son.  Lou forgets, but apparently doesn't forgive.  First they run an extortion scheme to get $10,000 out of the Conways, and then after beating up the prostitute very badly (aww, just when things were going so well with her...) Lou shoots Elmer dead and puts the gun in her hand.  Thinking he's neatly solved two problems at once, while covering his tracks, Lou fakes a flat tire so it appears he was never there at the scene that night.  

The problem is, Joyce isn't really dead, she's only mostly head.  But they move her to a hospital so she can heal, then stand trial for murder and get executed.  I know, that doesn't make much sense if you think about it too long, so don't.  But she dies on the operating table in Fort Worth, so that becomes a moot point (or...does it?). Another problem comes when a gas station attendant becomes a suspect in Elmer's murder, because he's got some of the marked extortion money that Lou took.  Lou evidently bought gas from this guy, and passed a marked $20 bill.  So now Lou has to go visit this guy in jail, with the cover story of getting him to confess, only he "convinces" him to hang himself instead.  It's exhausting how one murder leads to more...

And so it continues, with Sheriff Lou constantly having to find new ways to cover his tracks, hinder the investigations and keep killing more people.  And then there's an attempt through a flashback to shift the blame for this whole mess over to a woman who seduced him when he was a child, apparently a housekeeper who also liked being spanked and slapped around (because again, what woman in the 1950's didn't?) but do we really want to trace this all back to a woman who molested an underage boy?  What about the part where Lou raped a girl when he was a teenager?  Can't we just go back to that incident and make this all HIS fault?  

There were reportedly many viewers who walked out of the premiere screening of this at the 2010 Sundance Festival - I can see why, it's disturbing to see graphic violence with a man beating women. Sure, we do have to admit that it happens, but it's still off-putting. This may be one reason why this film with a $13 million budget only grossed $217,000 in the U.S.  It made more money overseas, but then what does THAT say about foreign audiences, that they're OK with this?  

Also starring Casey Affleck (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Jessica Alba (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "Fool's Gold"), Ned Beatty (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Tom Bower (last seen in "River's Edge"), Simon Baker (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Brent Briscoe (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Matthew Maher (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Liam Aiken (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Jay R. Ferguson (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Caitlin Turner, Ali Nazary, Zach Josse, Noah Crawford, Blake Brigham

RATING: 3 out of 10 marked bills

The Greatest Game Ever Played

Year 13, Day 92 - 4/2/21 - Movie #3,795 

BEFORE: Last film with Shia LaBeouf, carrying over from "American Honey" - this grouping, and this film in particular, has been on my books for so long, I'm very happy to clear it off.  I don't even care that the U.S. Open is usually played in June, or that the one in 1913 was played in September, or there are no actors from this film with birthdays today - let's just watch this movie and get rid of it already!

Tomorrow is Day 3 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and here's the line-up for Saturday, April 3:

6:00 am "Blithe Spirit" (1945) 

7:45 am "Block-Heads" (1938)

9:00 am "Born Yesterday" (1950)

11:00 am "Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) - SEEN IT

2:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968) - SEEN IT

4:15 pm "Caged" (1950)

6:00 pm "Calamity Jane" (1953)

8:00 pm "Carefree" (1938) - SEEN IT

9:45 pm "Carol" (2015) - SEEN IT

12:00 am "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) - SEEN IT

2:00 am "Charade" (1967) - SEEN IT

4:15 am "The Circus" (1928)

I'm hitting for another 6 out of 12, so that's basically a push, right?  Decisions I made 5 or 6 years ago to see as many films as possible with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant are really paying off now. A couple true classics in this bunch as we enter the "C" section, and my record dips a bit to 61.7%, I figured I couldn't stay up in the high 60's for very long. I'm just going to take things day by day and not peek too far ahead into the schedule, since most films are falling into two categories, I've either seen them or have no interest in seeing them, so I doubt I'll be recording anything this time around.  "Born Yesterday" is on my watchlist, though, I just can't find any way to link to it - but I would eventually like to see it. 

THE PLOT: In the 1913 U.S. Open, 20-year-old Francis Ouimet played golf against his idol, 1900 U.S. Open champion, Englishman Harry Vardon. 

AFTER: I'm just not a golf guy, I'm barely even a mini-golf guy - but hey, I watch boxing movies and I'm not a boxer or a boxing fan. So I don't have to be really into golf, every sports movie is (more or less) the same, right?  They focus on the winners, or the eventual winners, or the underdogs, because who doesn't root for the underdog?  

This is a true story, about Francis Ouimet, who won the U.S. Open as an amateur golfer - though the term meant something different back then, sort of.  Amateur golfers came from the wealthy class, while professionals were usually former caddies who gained knowledge of the sport by working the same greens over and over.  Caddies were expected to age out of the program and quit that job when they were 16.  Ouimet worked as a caddy, since his family owned a house right across from the golf course in Brookline, MA - but he was not wealthy, so the golfers in both classes treated him like he didn't belong. But he'd won the Massachusetts Schoolboy Championship, so a club member and the club caddiemaster had him play a round of golf to see if he was good enough to play in the U.S. Amateur, and if this film is to believed, he just missed qualifying for the U.S. Open. 

The whole pursuit of golf put him at odds with his father (Shia LaBeouf may have settled things with his father, but his character in this 2005 apparently also had some big daddy issues) because he'd wasted $50 on the entry fee, and $50 was a lot of money back in 1913.  So he agreed to go work in a sporting goods store, to earn money to help support his family.  Basically he was retired from playing golf, washed up at the age of 20. But a visit from the president of the U.S.G.A. to his store got him back in the game, into the U.S. Open, but then forced by his father to move out of the family home. 

The favorites to win the U.S. Open that year were British golfers Harry Vardon and Ted Ray - Vardon had won the Open before, and he was Ouimet's golf idol.  The two had met once before, when Ouimet was a small boy and Vardon was giving a golfing demonstation in downtown Boston. It's a bit odd that throughout the tournament, Ouimet never mentions to Vardon that they'd met before - I guess it doesn't really matter, what celebrity athlete remembers every little kid they meet along the way?  

They didn't really develop Vardon's character that well, all we really learn about him is that when he was a boy, some men in black robes came to his house and informed his family that they had to vacate, because the land was going to be turned into a golf course.  This event, again, if this film is to be believed, haunted Vardon as an adult, and he frequently had visions of those men in black.  I guess we all have our demons, and athletes meet them every day on the field of play?  This shouldn't really count as character exposition, because it's all speculative, but I suppose if we the audience knew too much about Vardon then we might root for him, and clearly we're supposed to root for the American amateur.  

Ouimet loses his caddy because he can't pay for one, like the other amateurs can, so he ends up using a 10-year old boy, the brother of a close friend.  The question then becomes, can this unlikely pairing of skilled amateur and tiny caddy compete with the big boys, come from behind against impossible odds to tie the match and force a playoff round?  Well, come on, it is a sports movie, so what do you think?  Never bet against the central underdog character.  To his credit, Vardon, as a former amateur himself, doesn't pull rank or look down upon Ouimet, and claims that if the young Bostonian wins, then he'd fully deserve it, and Vardon vows to take the loss with grace. 

Now, there are some deviations from the real history, namely that in real life, Ouimet won the Massachusetts Amateur in 1913, while here he just misses qualifying for it.  He did lose in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur, but that was held on Long Island, not in Brookline MA.  But shortly after that loss he was asked by the president of the USGA to play in the U.S. Open, and this is where the movie comes back in line with reality.  That year, the U.S. Open was delayed from June until mid-September, to allow both Vardon and Ray to play in it.  And as a result, the event was therefore moved to the Country Club in Brookline, which was the course that Ouimet knew the best - I think the film sort of downplayed the importance of this home-field advantage, Ouimet probably walked this course hundreds of times as a caddy, but we can't exactly say how much this factored into his victory.  But I'm guessing, it was a lot. 

The film also took a little license by having Ouimet win by just one stroke - I'm not sure why the truth here wouldn't be more impressive.  Sure, that produces a nail-biter here, but it also sells Ouiment short at the same time - is that fair?  Ouimet gets credit for creating a lot of interest in golf, by showing what's possible for an amateur to do - 10 years later, the number of golfers in the U.S. had tripled, and same goes for the number of courses.  If not for him, would it be a billion-dollar sponsored industry today, or would it be more of a fringe sport, like Ultimate Frisbee or beer pong? 

Ouimet never officially went pro, he tried to remain an amateur, while running a sporting goods business, but the USGA stripped him of amateur status, arguing that by selling golf equipment, he was profiting from the sport and therefore a professional.  But after he served in the Army during World War I, they quietly reinstated him as an amateur - he won the U.S. Amateur again in 1931, but lost several matches during the 1920's to Bobby Jones.  Damn, there's a movie about Bobby Jones, too, now I'll have to decide whether to add that one to my watchlist, also.  Since I never know which films I'll need to make my linking happen, I guess I should, better safe than sorry...

NITPICK POINT: Is this REALLY the way that the scoreboards used to work, back before there were electronic ones?  According to this, they hung little white squares of wood on pegs, that's 18 squares of wood for each golfer, one for each hole played.  But it seems like the golfers moved up and down in the rankings quite frequently, so that meant that each golfer's name needed to be moved when he rose up or down, along with every other square of wood for each hole played up to that point?  How is that efficient?  There had to be a team of guys doing nothing but moving little squares of wood around, then they had to do it all AGAIN after the next hole.  Didn't they have, like, chalkboard technology back in 1913?  Wouldn't that just be easier, to erase each golfer's name and write it in again, along with all the scores for each hole played?  Now I see why electronic scoreboards HAD to be invented, this just seems like way too much work.

Also starring Stephen Dillane (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Peter Firth (last seen in "MI-5"), Elias Koteas (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Luke Askew (last seen in "Frailty"), Josh Flitter (last seen in "Nancy Drew"), Peyton List (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Marnie McPhail, Len Cariou (last seen in "Death Wish"), Michael Sinelnikoff, Stephen Marcus (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Max Kasch (last seen in "Still Waiting..."), Mike Nahrgang, Walter Massey, Justin Ashforth, Jonathan Higgins (last seen in "Race"), Matthew Knight, Robin Wilcock, Nicolas Wright (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Danette MacKay, George Asprey (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Scott Faulconbridge, Luke Kirby (last seen in "Glass"), Tim Peper, James Bradford, Michael Weaver (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Dennis St. John, Jeremy Thibodeau, Johnny Griffin, with a cameo from Joe Jackson. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 tiny pencils

American Honey

Year 13, Day 91 - 4/1/21 - Movie #3,794

BEFORE: Shia LaBeouf carries over again - these four films have been scheduled by me a few times before, but then I ran out of space last year and couldn't get to them, something had to be cut late in the year so I could get to some Christmas movies.  So like many other films, they've been re-scheduled to serve another purpose, and it's to get me closer to my Easter movie.  I'm going to treat this as an appropriate April Fool's Day movie, because I'm guessing that the magazine-selling thing is a scam - originally I had "Honey Boy" scheduled for April 1, I guess that could have worked, too.  

Here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow, APRIL 2, in their "31 Days of Oscar" programming:

6:45 am "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956) - SEEN IT

10:00 am "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1987)

12:00 pm "The Awful Truth" (1937) - SEEN IT

1:45 pm "Baby Doll" (1956)

3:45 pm "The Band Wagon" (1953) - SEEN IT

5:45 pm "Being There" (1979) - SEEN IT

8:00 pm "Ben-Hur" (1959) - SEEN IT

12:00 am "The Best Man" (1964)

2:00 am "The Big Chill" (1983) - SEEN IT

4:00 am "The Birds" (1963) - SEEN IT

Still doing very well - another 8 seen out of 10 brings me up to 15 seen out of 22, or 68% seen.  Maybe there's something to this year's list after all.  It's funny, TCM is running "An American in Paris" today, while I've programmed "American Honey"...

But where I live, in the "Land of Linking", if things go according to plan, here are the upcoming links for April, after Shia LaBeouf: Elias Koteas, Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Chiwetel Ejiofor, James Earl Jones, KiKi Layne, Veronica Ngo, Chadwick Boseman, J.K. Simmons, June Squibb, Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mike Pence, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump, Walt Disney, and Oprah Winfrey.  I know, that's only 20 people, but that should get me to the end of April.   

THE PLOT: A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits. 

AFTER: OK, the first big problem with this movie is the length, it's two hours and 43 minutes long, that's way too long for any film where the Titanic isn't sinking, or Avengers aren't fighting Thanos.  Somehow I made it through, but this was a struggle, because there's just not enough plot to fill up all that movie time. And yet this film is leaving Netflix in just a few days, I can't imagine why.  Like, be a good movie or be a bad movie, just don't waste so much of my time. 

Really, it's just the same stuff, over and over, drive to the next city and repeat.  There are no real twists, there's no resolution, it doesn't really end but just STOPS.  And if there was no point to be made in this film, then why couldn't it have not made that point in a much shorter time-frame?  Seriously, a whole HOUR could have been cut from the middle of this film, and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.  

I think I was right about the magazine selling, it's a scam, right?  I mean, they never really come right out and SAY that here, but they use so many different sob stories about trying to win a trip to Florida, trying to earn college tuition, or build a new athletic field for their college, so they're all clearly untrue.  So these kids are the human equivalent of e-mail spam, so I don't like them - was I supposed to?  I live in a city where people ask me for money every day on the street, and I know better than to give them any, because clearly they're not responsible to do proper things with it, they're only going to get drunk or get high with it.  We've had something of a break in NYC because they rounded up most of the homeless people during the pandemic and stashed them in the city's hotel rooms that tourists are not staying in, which must be costing the city a lot of money, but I suppose that's better than spreading COVID around even worse than it is.  But soon if the numbers keep going in the right direction, eventually tourism will come back, and they'll have to release the street people back to the streets. (Do they, though?)

This nomadic band of teens, traveling across the Midwest in a van, living day-to-day, under the thumb of a ruthless taskmaster, scamming people all day long to buy magazines that I'm sure never arrive by mail, what kind of life is this?  Who would choose this, if they had alternatives? Also, how long can it go on?  How long until people collectively get together and realize this is a scam, and the law enforcement in the next town is waiting for them to arrive?  Or do they drive far enough away each time that word doesn't properly spread?  Didn't those cowboy guys ever report their car as stolen, so how could it possibly be OK for Jake to keep driving it?  

Basically, I didn't like any of the characters here, not at all, from the very start when we see Star being a "freegan", aka dumpster diving, and coming away with a clearly unfrozen chicken.  OK, yeah, good luck with cooking that, I hope you enjoy salmonella.  Then when we meet the merry band of magazine sellers, I hated them even more, so I kept hoping that their van would somehow overturn on the highway, or when two of them were sticking out of the sunroof that the whole vehicle would travel under a low bridge.  No such luck. 

But hey, it looks like maybe Shia LaBeouf worked through his personal issues, and this time he's only playing a disreputable character, instead of being one for real.  Oh, wait, I'm going reverse-chronologically this week, it seems, so this film was released in 2016, three years before "Honey Boy".  Never mind. 

Also starring Sasha Lane (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Riley Keough (last seen in "Lovesong"), Arielle Holmes, McCaul Lombardi, Crystal Ice, Chad McKenzie Cox, Garry Howell, Kenneth Kory Tucker, Raymond Coalson, Isaiah Stone (last seen in "Winter's Bone"), Dakota Powers, Shawna Rae Moseley, Christopher David Wright, Verronikah Ezell, Will Patton (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Sam Williamson, Daran Shinn, Bruce Gregory, Johnny Pierce II, Laura Kirk, Kaylin Mally, Summer Hunsaker, Brody Hunsaker, Chastity Hunsaker. 

RATING: 2 out of 10 horny oil rig workers

Honey Boy

Year 13, Day 90 - 3/31/21 - Movie #3,793

BEFORE: This is it, last call for March - I made it through another month. (Still no second part-time job, but I'm working on it.  Jeez, you'd think a vaccinated person wouldn't have this much trouble getting a gig, now that I'm not able to catch COVID or spread it around an office or any other workplace...)  

Here are the format totals for March, then we can discuss April's line-up:

16 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): All About Steve, Isn't It Romantic, The Hustle, Hampstead, Victoria & Abdul, All Is True, The Dresser (2015), This Must Be the Place, The Last Stand, Finding Steve McQueen, The Hunted, Like a Boss, Fantasy Island, CHIPS, Life of Crime, The Peanut Butter Falcon

6 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Hall Pass, Can You Keep a Secret?, Becoming Jane, Angela's Ashes, Mr. North, The King of Staten Island

4 watched on Netflix: Lovesong, When We First Met, A Little Chaos, Tulip Fever

1 watched on Academy screeners: Wonder Woman 1984
1 watched on iTunes: Lucky Them
1 watched on Amazon Prime: Honey Boy
1 watched on Hulu: The Layover
1 watched on YouTube: Steal This Movie
1 watched on Tubi: Crash Pad

32 TOTAL

There's no question that cable dominated the month, which is good - more films off of cable means a clearer DVR, and it means I can record more - one added to the DVR for every film taken off.  April might be a different story, I'm planning to watch 12 or 13 documentaries, and most of those are on Netflix or HBO Max or Amazon Prime, so that DVR might be full again by the end of the month.  But those are the breaks - if I've got a doc series that doesn't break the chain, and connects to fiction films on both sides, I should really take that opportunity.  But I should get to "Palm Springs" in April, plus "The Trial of the Chicago 7", "Borat", "Soul" and the remake of "The Lion King" in some order.  

And before we get to today's film, here's the line-up for TOMORROW, Thursday, April 1 on Turner Classic Movies, as they kick off their "31 Days of Oscar" programming:

6:00 am "Adam's Rib" (1969) - SEEN IT

8:00 am "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) - SEEN IT

10:00 am "After the Thin Man" (1936) - SEEN IT

12:00 pm "Agnes of God" (1985) 

2:00 pm "Air Force" (1943)

4:15 pm "Algiers" (1938)

6:00 pm "Alice Adams" (1935)

8:00 pm "All the King's Men" (1949) - SEEN IT

10:00 pm "Almost Famous" (2000) - SEEN IT

12:15 am "An American in Paris" (1951) - SEEN IT

2:15 am "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959) - SEEN IT

5:15 am "Anna Christie" (1930)

As I've said many times, I'm not a fan of an alphabetical system of watching movies - linking by actor makes so much more sense to me at this point.  Come on, how can you program "After the Thin Man" without placing "The Thin Man" right before it?  It's madness.  But this is how I chart my progress - it's some consolation that I've seen 7 out of these initial 12 films, so I'm starting off with a 58.3% average, for me that's great!  My stats will probably decrease as the month progresses, though. Last year I finished with a solid 1/3 seen, or 33.3%.  Can I do better under this A-to-Z system?

Shia LaBeouf carries over from "The Peanut Butter Falcon". 

THE PLOT: A young actor flashes back to his stormy childhood as he struggles to reconcile with his father and deal with his mental health. 

AFTER: Well, it seems like Shia LaBeouf might have some lingering issues - he plays a character in this film that is based on his father, and the son is therefore based on his own experiences as a screwed-up little actor boy, who becomes a screwed-up actor man.  I've been becoming more and more aware of this sort of thing, like in "Little Women" and "The Tree of Life" last year, it can be helpful to dig a little into who wrote each story, and which character in a novel might represent the author or screenwriter.  Jane Austen's personal life also factored in to her novels, so I really should pay attention to this as a rule.  Geez, how much of Elmore Leonard's personal life spilled over into "Life of Crime" or "Jackie Brown", I forgot to check...

In the film, the adult Otis gets put in rehab, and is forced to go through therapy and anger management, and all this mirrors the real-life Shia's experiences, having been arrested in 2014 for disorderly conduct, harassment, and criminal trespassing. The actor sought treatment for alcoholism, then had similar charges against him three years later in Atlanta. He paid a fine and was sentenced to probation the second time.  Tthe third round of charges involved Shia being sued for sexual battery, assault and emotional distress by one of the actresses in today's film - but it almost feels like this film might exist in order to explain why Shia is so screwed up, and it seems to put the blame on the influence of his father, former rodeo clown turned stage dad.  

I guess we'll never know for sure if Jeffrey Labeouf really let his son smoke cigarettes or was jealous of his son's Big Brother taking him to baseball games, but we do know that he was a Vietnam veteran who went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and the actor has stated that his father also spent time in rehab for heroin addiction, so there you go. Perhaps this is a true peek into the lifestyle of living in a cheap motel near a movie set, away from the influence of a mother or mother figure, with one parent who seesaws between being overly controlling and passively neglectful.  Shia's described his parents as a couple of hippies, and they eventually divorced before his career on the Disney Channel took off, but the bottom line is that he ended up financially supporting both of them, perhaps that was part of the plan all along. 

OK, Jeez, we GET it, Drew Barrymore, Lindsey Lohan, Miley Cyrus and Shia LaBeouf, child actors get ground up by the system and become screwed-up adults - so then DON'T DO IT.  Teach your kids to play violin or get them to pass through college before they're 15, but for God's sake, don't let them become actors.  Or if it's for the money, then grab the cash and shut up about the other parts. 

It's too bad I couldn't save this one for Father's Day, but I haven't programmed far ahead enough to know for sure if I'll be able to link back to this one by then.  It's a mystery - so it's probably better to get it off the list by watching it here, as part of a 4-film LaBeouf-Fest.  I tried to get to "Ben is Back", which also has Lucas Hedges in it, in time for Mother's Day, but it looks now like that's not going to happen this year, either.  So here's where "Honey Boy" ends up, I think.

Also starring Lucas Hedges (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "Wonder"), FKA Twigs, Maika Monroe (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Martin Starr (last seen in "Paper Heart"), Byron Bowers, Laura San Giacomo (last seen in "The Meddler"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Craig Stark (ditto), Graham Clarke, Greta Jung, Mario Ponce and the voice of Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "Ad Astra").

RATING: 4 out of 10 cartwheels with a chicken

The Peanut Butter Falcon

Year 13, Day 89 - 3/30/21 - Movie #3,792

BEFORE: I'm gearing up for Oscar appreciation month, I'll be following the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" schedule as usual, though it's usually in February, not April, but that's where we find ourselves this year.  More on this in just two days time - actually, I should probably start tomorrow and get ahead of the game, if I really want to promote their annual offerings.  But it's an alphabetical list this year, and I find those really boring - I like it so much better when they link between films like I do, then I feel like somewhere there's a programmer who's somehow on the same page as I am, like we're sympatico or something.  Hey, if you're out there, Mr. or Ms. TCM programmer, please drop me a line.  

We're getting close to Easter, too - just five days and six films away, but I should hit it right on the button with something appropriate.  Winding down Women's History Month, today's the birthday of British author of "Black Beauty" Anna Sewell (born in 1820), American philosopher, psychologist and dream researcher Mary Calkins (born in 1863), Austrian-English psychologist and author Melanie Klein (born in 1882), American socialite and philanthropist Brooke Astor (born in 1902), and Iranian journalist and feminist author Shahia Sherkat (born in 1956). Also Tracy Chapman, Celine Dion and Norah Jones, Happy Birthday to them. 

John Hawkes carries over from "Life of Crime".

THE PLOT: Zak runs away from his care home to make his dream of becoming a wrestler come true. 

AFTER: It's a fairly simple story today, but at least it's one that resonates - and it apparently connected with audiences, too, because unlike some of the films I've watched in the past week, this one actually made some money.  It earned $20 million domestic and $133 million worldwide against a budget of about $6 million - that's a success, any way you slice it.  I missed the obvious references to "Huckleberry Finn", like rafting down a river while being on the lam, but that's why I check IMDB after every movie, that got me up to speed. 

I think this film has the potential to even more relevant during the pandemic, as Zak, the young man with Down Syndrome, has been placed in a state-run nursing home, since there's no other place to put him.  Well, OF COURSE he should try to escape from a place like that, it's just not safe!  His friends at the home assists with his escape attempts, and after a few tries, he finally succeeds.  Alone in the world and without much to wear, Zak's choice to hide on a fishing boat ends up pairing him with Tyler, a recently-fired fisherman who's made the mistake of taking out his frustrations by burning another fisherman's traps.  So both men are on the run, and Tyler takes Zak under his wing, gets him some clothes and food, and tries to teach him some lessons about surviving out in nature.  

Without any better plans, they set out on a journey to a wresting school in North Carolina, to fulfill Zak's dream of becoming a professional wrestler, or at least getting the chance to train under his idol, the Salt Water Redneck.  To its credit, the film ignores all the potential obstacles that would prevent this from being a realistic career goal for someone with a disability.  Anyway, it's not really about the destination, it's the journey and the people you meet along the way, and the lessons they may have to teach you.  Right now I'm applying for all sorts of jobs, many of which are total longshots for me, but in a way I only need one of them to pay off, so I understand Zak's ambitions just a bit - it's easier to continue with your day-to-day if you believe in an end goal, no matter how unrealistic that goal may be.  There's no specific date mentioned for when this story takes place, but it's a big hint that Zak's been dreaming about this wrestling school by watching promos for it on a worn-out VHS tape. 

The pair is pursued by not only the violent fishermen, but also Eleanor from the care facility, who apparently takes it upon herself to visit every store in a 100-mile radius and knock on every house's door in order to find Zak.  Considering that Zak could have fled in any direction, it's a bit far-fetched that she stands a chance of finding him.  Sure, she's got a map with his likely destination, but there's no guarantee that he managed to orient himself and travel that way. 

I'm always a little wary about movies and TV shows that star an actor with Down syndrome, since not every film gets the tone right, and sometimes it feels like exploitation.  I go back and forth on this issue a lot, because clearly there are important stories there to be told, and instances of casting an actor without this condition often fall flat, so finding an actor with this condition (or someone with the condition who can act) therefore seems like the best solution, but I'm still not sure about it.  This film, however, got something called the Seal of Authentic Representation from the Ruderman Family Foundation, for an accurate depiction of a person with a disability, so I'm going to defer to that, and table the discussion. 

How prolific is Bruce Dern?  He's been around so long and appeared in so many movies that he's now co-starred with Dakota Johnson, her father, Don Johnson, her mother, Melanie Griffith, and her grandmother, Tippi Hedren.

Also starring Shia LaBeouf (last seen in "Holes"), Zack Gottsagen, Dakota Johnson (last seen in "Suspiria"), Bruce Dern (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood"), Thomas Haden Church (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Jon Bernthal (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Yelawolf, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Mick Foley, Bruce Henderson, Wayne DeHart, Lee Spencer (last seen in "Identity Thief"), Jonathan D. Williams. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 pudding cups

Life of Crime

Year 13, Day 88 - 3/29/21 - Movie #3,791

BEFORE: Kevin Corrigan carries over from "The King of Staten Island", that's three in a row, and four appearances so far this year for him.  

Getting very close to the end of Women's History Month, nearly last call for famous birthdays - March 29 is the birthday of singer Pearl Bailey (born in 1918), author and childbirth activist Sheila Kitzinger (born in 1929), Brazilian singer-songwriter Astrud Gilberto (born in 1940), tennis player Jennifer Capriati (born in 1976), and actresses Marina Sirtis, Amy Sedaris, Lucy Lawless and Elle MacPherson, we celebrate them today. 

THE PLOT: Two common criminals get more than they bargained for after kidnapping the wife of a corrupt real-estate developer, who shows no interest in paying the $1 million ransom for her safe return. 

AFTER: This story's set in Detroit sometime in the 1970's, but they filmed it around Greenwich Connecticut in the 2010's - a bit of movie magic, I guess. Another one of those box-office bombs, though, it cost about $12 million to make but only grossed $265,000 in the U.S. and $1.4 million worldwide.  Some studio got a big tax write-off for this one, I bet.  It's a bit of a shame, though, that nobody saw this, but hey, maybe on cable or streaming it can find some kind of audience, maybe even a cult following, though it's kind of not weird enough for that. 

It's based on an Elmore Leonard novel titled "The Switch", and some of these characters turned up again in Leonard's book "Rum Punch", which got adapted by Tarantino into "Jackie Brown".  You may notice that Yasiin Bey's character's name is Ordell Robbie, and that's who Samuel L. Jackson played in "Jackie Brown", so this is sort of a half-prequel to that Tarantino film?  I think one or two other characters are in both stories, too.  I've seen the film versions "Get Shorty" and "Out of Sight", but it's been too long since I watched "Jackie Brown" - maybe it's time for a re-watch? 

What impressed me here is that Leonard wrote what starts out as a simple kidnapping story, and those are notorious for only ending two ways - either the ransom gets paid and the captive gets released, or the ransom gets paid and the captive gets killed.  Thankfully Leonard came up with a third possibilily, namely what if the ransom DIDN'T get paid, and the kidnappers picked the wrong couple, one that was sort of on the rocks and the husband was about to file for divorce anyway?  The husband not only doesn't want to pay the ransom, but it actually benefits him if his wife gets killed, because then he doesn't have to divide assets with her, or pay any alimony.  It's a neat little twist, and it takes the power away from the bad guys and gives it back to the husband - who is also sort of a bad guy, but more of the corrupt developer with a secret bank account, cheating-on-his-wife kind of character.  (You know the type, you maybe even voted for a guy like that...)

Some form of Stockholm Syndrome also comes into play here, because Mickey, the kidnapped wife, forms a connection with one of her captors, and maybe there's even a bit of a romantic spark there.  Who can blame her, since she just found out her husband's got a girl on the side, AND won't pay for her release?  Can this marriage be saved?  Probably not.  Then there's friction among the three kidnappers, because they've got different ideas about how to salvage this criminal operation, and also one of them's got a not-so-secret Nazi fetish and is probably a white supremacist.  Yeah, I'm not rooting for him, either, but the other two guys seem like pretty cool anti-heroes. 

Things get more complicated when Mickey's potential extramarital love interest, Marshall, makes his play for Mickey at the worst possible time, and things continue to get more complicated when Mickey's husband's girlfriend connects with the kidnappers and she wants in on the scheme, too.  It could be that she'd been working her own con on the same mark from a different angle all along, who knows?  But that's the world of Elmore Leonard, everybody's got an angle and everybody's chasing some prize and/or having an affair.  Maybe that's just the way people were in the 1970's, a bunch of swingers?  IDK, I was just a kid at the time.  I remember being forced to take tennis lessons, so the film gets that right - tennis was very big in the 1970's.  So were martinis, culottes and Nixon masks...

NITPICK POINT: I remember international phone calls being much more complicated than this - and more expensive, too.  I don't think I even knew that you COULD call another country back then without talking to an operator.  And wasn't it super expensive to do that back then?  Long distance rates were much higher, right?  How did the kidnappers afford to call the husband in the Bahamas?  They should have threatened to reverse the long-distance charges, that might have got him to pay the ransom, because it would have been cheaper!

Also starring Jennifer Aniston (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) (last seen in "Amy"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Greed"), Will Forte (last seen in "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy"), Mark Boone Junior (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), John Hawkes (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Clea Lewis (last seen in "Motherhood"), Charlie Tahan (last seen in "Nights in Rodanthe"), Leonard Robinson, Kevin Porter Young, Alex Ladove, Jenna Nye, Jill Abramovitz, Seana Kofoed, Kofi Boakye, Chyna Layne, R. Marcos Taylor (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton") with archive footage of Demond Wilson. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 peepholes

The King of Staten Island

Year 13, Day 87 - 3/28/21 - Movie #3,790

BEFORE: Kevin Corrigan carries over from "Steal This Movie", and I've got another Birthday SHOUT-out, comedian Bonnie McFarlane (born March 28, 1969) has a cameo in today's film.  It's also the birthday of Dianne Wiest, Reba McEntire, Lady Gaga, these other famous women from history: Angela Ruiz Robles, Spanish inventor of the electronic book (born in 1895), Ingrid of Sweden, the Queen of Denmark (born in 1910), Eileen Crofton, British physician and anti-smoking crusader (born in 1919)

THE PLOT: Scott spends his days smoking weed and dreaming of being a tattoo artist until events force him to grapple with his grief over his firefighter dad's death and take his first steps forward in life. 

AFTER: This one started out very janky, and for the whole first half I was wondering if this was going anywhere at all, or if it was just going to be an aimless movie about an aimless guy.  Sure, Scott Carlin's arrested development can easily be traced back to his father's death, but is that an explanation for his lifestyle, or more of an excuse?  He and his friends watch a lot of movies, smoke a lot of weed, and then he practices being an amateur tattoo artist on his friends, though they're not crazy about his design skills and getting rather tired of the less than stellar results.  

So the film starts out in a rather weird place, not a bad place necessarily, but there's a sense of everything feeling pointless, or hopeless.  Scott's stuck in his career path, has very little ambition, still lives at home and has no plans to change that situation.  I can sympathize, I've been working only part-time since the pandemic hit, and though I've been searching for part-time jobs on LinkedIn and Indeed, I've received zero responses to all the applications I've made, all the resumés I've sent out.  I thought maybe I could ride the wave of hirings at NYC movie theaters, but so far, that's led to nothing, too.  Last week I applied for positions at movie theaters, ice cream shops, parks, museums, and a BBQ restaurant, but still no responses.  To be fair, I have little experience in the food-service industry, and I'm probably well past the age range these McJobs are looking for, also there are probably 1,000 other people applying for each job, given the state of unemployment right now. 

So, I wait at home for some manager somewhere to call or e-mail, because jobs similar to the one I have now are hard to come by - and the best matching jobs I've found are full-time, meaning I'd have to quit my current position to take one.  Really, I just want something seasonal to do on the weekends and maybe a few nights a week, just to get out of the house more often.  The other option is to work fewer hours and maybe go back on partial unemployment, but I'd rather not do that.  I bring this up because I can sympathize with the lead character here, sometimes you can see where you want to be, and just not know how you're going to get there. 

This is obviously a very personal film, Pete Davidson did have a firefighter father, who died on 9/11/01, and over the years he's had to deal with that.  He also lived in Staten Island with his mother, even after joining the cast of SNL and earning the money that comes with that.  I know the guy's had his issues, because he's joked about them on SNL's Weekend Update.  So perhaps this film was also a form of therapy in some way.  His character here clashes with the man who starts dating his mother, who's also a firefighter, and that eventually leads to Scott doing odd jobs at the local firehouse, and finally developing some form of responsibility.  Plus his slacker friends end up in trouble after trying to rob a pharmacy, so this helped him too, to be no longer running with the "bad crowd".  

The film ends in a much better place than it started in, and I guess sometimes that's the best you can hope for.  I'm not sure, though, that wait-staff and busboys in Staten Island restaurants have to participate in late night "fight clubs" to see who gets to keep their tips.  This could be a fiction created for the film, one hopes. There are several other divergences that seem to keep the film from getting somewhere at a good rate, but, hey, at least it gets there. 

The Staten Island Yankees no longer exist, I just found out. Their whole AAA-league (NY-Penn) was disbanded, so there's no minor league baseball being played on Staten Island as of last year.  Perhaps also it was too confusing to have two teams named the Yankees playing within the city limits?  I don't know, but I echo Bill Burr's characters feelings about going to the Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, as a former Masshole I wouldn't even consider it, unless they were playing the Red Sox.  I've gone there (OK, to the old Yankee Stadium) in Sox gear, and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake - you should only do that if you like being doused by other people's beers.  

NITPICK POINT: Did Scott ever make good on his promise to Oscar, to take care of his cat?  I just wonder if he forgot to do it, or the director forgot to show it. These are the things I worry about. 

Also starring Pete Davidson (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), Bill Burr (last seen in "Stand Up Guys"), Ricky Velez, Bel Powley (last seen in "Mary Shelley"), Maude Apatow (last seen in "Other People"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "Dead Man"), Pamela Adlon (last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Jimmy Tatro (last seen in "Bad Education"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "The Gambler"), Mike Vecchione, Moises Arias (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Carly Aquilino, Lou Wilson (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Derek Gaines, Pauline Chalamet, Colson "Machine Gun Kelly" Baker (last seen in "Captive State"), Mario Polit (last seen in "Hustlers"), Luke David Blumm, Action Bronson (last seen in "The Irishman"), Keith Robinson, Lynne Koplitz (last seen in "Top Five"), Nina Hellman, Jack Hamblin, with cameos from Rich Vos (also last seen in "I Love You, Daddy"), Bonnie McFarlane, Robert Smigel (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Jessica Kirson (last seen in "The Comedian"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 questions from the civil service exam