Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny

Year 13, Day 191 - 7/10/21 - Movie #3,891

BEFORE: Kirk Ward carries over from "The Onion Movie", where he played a hockey star who kept getting injured worse and worse, but continued to play the sport, even going on the ice when he was blind and in a wheelchair.  Look, I'm sure the joke made sense to somebody at one time, but it just didn't pan out as funny, sorry.  

This is NOT the start of the big Summer Music Concert and/or Documentary series, though Tenacious D is a band, this is (I'm guessing) not a doc and not meant to be taken seriously.  There may be music in it, but that doesn't make it a concert film - the real Summer Music films are still a few weeks away, so this maybe is like an opening act.  Also, it is Ronnie James Dio's birthday, another advantage of sneaking in "The Onion Movie" is lining this film up with what would have been his 79th birthday, if he hadn't died in 2010.  I guess it's still his birthday, up in rock & roll heaven...

THE PLOT: To become the greatest band of all time, two slacker wanna-bes set out on a quest to steal a legendary guitar pick that gives its holders incredible guitar skills from a maximum security Rock and Roll museum. 

AFTER: Probably my biggest problem here is that I'm just not into the band Tenacious D - I can't name any of their songs, I've seen them do this or that over the years but nothing's really stuck with me, so it's probably easier to appreciate this film if you're coming in as a fan.  But there's a long history of bands playing fictional versions of themselves, going back to "A Hard Day's Night", at least, so I get it - if they want to create an alternate history for how the band came together, they can do that.  Only now I feel like one of those old squares who didn't appreciate The Beatles when they played Ed Sullivan, and just called their music a bunch of noise.  

I will say the casting is great here, having Meat Loaf play Jack Black's father is a stroke of genius, as is getting Dave Grohl to play Satan for a spin on the traditional "musical duel with the devil" thing, a nod back to either Robert Johnson, Charlie Daniels Band or maybe just "Guitar Hero".  They add a few things to that old story here, like Satan's lost tooth being used as a pick that grants the user super guitar-playing skills, only the devil wants the tooth back so he can be complete again, and get un-banished from stealing souls.  

There are parallels here to the "Bill & Ted" films, not just battling Death/The Devil but also this being part of the path to fame and writing that killer song or winning the talent contest that will someday, somehow change the world and make the band rich and famous at the same time.  Two musicians willing to fake it until they make it, right?  And make it they will, despite having limited musical and songwriting ability, but tons of what they hope is the right attitude. Oh, and friendship, don't forget that, apparently it's very important.  

According to Jack Black, though, the film had underwhelming box office, due to the fact that the target audience was stoners, who couldn't be bothered (or were constantly too high) to go see the film in theaters.  For years, he would meet fans proclaiming, "I just saw it, it was awesome!", only, where were those people when the film was trying to make money?  

Eh, it's good for a few laughs, but there's not a lot more here that felt substantial to me.  Still, this is my week of films taking a look at all aspects of American society, from beauty pageants to reality shows, news channels running cross-promotions and conservative parents who don't want their kids to grow up or form bands.  (Yes, three films with overly strict parents, "The Virgin Suicides", "Cinema Verite" and now this one - so that's a loose theme in itself...). But come on, what's more American than rock & roll?  I think we practically invented the whole thing, right?  

Also starring Jack Black (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Kyle Gass (last seen in "The New Guy"), Ronnie James Dio, Dave Grohl (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Meat Loaf (last seen in "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead"), JR Reed, Ben Stiller (last seen in "Greed"), Paul F. Tompkins (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Holmes & Watson"), Cynthia Ettinger (last seen in "Thirteen"), Andrew Caldwell (last seen in "All About Steve"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Evie Peck, Ned Bellamy (last seen in "Twilight"), Jay Johnston, John Ennis (last heard in "Nerdland"), Troy Gentile (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor"), Molly Bryant, Mason Knight, Gregg Turkington, with cameos from Amy Adams (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Fred Armisen (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Colin Hanks (also last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), David Krumholtz (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Jason Segel (last seen in "The End of the Tour"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 fret symbols

The Onion Movie

Year 13, Day 189 - 7/8/21 - Movie #3,890

BEFORE: This wasn't part of the plan I just drew up a week ago - but it's been kicking around my list for quite some time, and I want to watch it, because I'm very curious about it.  A quick spin through the cast list for tomorrow's movie showed me an interesting possibility, that I could work this one in here.  Since this film probably spent a year or more on my DVR, and then a few more months on a DVD after I finally found something that would go with it on a disc, I'm anxious to get to it.  This kind of messes up my July plan just a bit, because adding it changes which movie is going to be Big Movie 3,900 - but I found a way to move one film from July to September, just before the horror chain, since it's got Fred Willard in it.  And wouldn't you know, the two movies on either side of THAT movie share an actor, so the chain's just going to close up around it.  So Movie #3,900 stays the same, and I'm still on track to finish the year the way I want, with two Christmas movies at the end.  OK, now NO MORE changes...umm, unless I want to add that "Last Blockbuster" documentary, but if I do, I can find something to drop from the November or December chain.

Two character actors carry over from "Cinema Verite" - Don McManus and Richard Fancy.  I'll get back to Tim Robbins in a couple days - his sister is in today's film, though. 

THE PLOT: Satirical interpretations of world events and curious human behavior are reflected in the news stories reported by a fictitious TV anchorman. 

AFTER: I have great respect for the Onion, I miss the days when it wasn't just online, when you could go to the corner in NYC and get a fresh paper copy out of a bin on the corner.  After the New York Press folded, it was the best source around here for movie listings as well as sardonic humor.  Now I just have to remember to check their Twitter feed once a week and re-tweet all the best headlines - who even has time to follow the links and read the whole articles?  The headlines are the best part, anyway. 

Honestly, if this film had been 86 minutes of JUST the fake anchorman reading Onion news headlines, followed by some clips of the fake reporters in the field, I would have been FINE with that.  But, I guess that's what we have "The Daily Show" for, and they haven't made a movie out of that show - yet.  Damn, I probably just gave somebody the idea.  But there's a back-plot here, with the anchorman being forced by his producers to work in promos for the new Steven Seagal film, "Cockpuncher", probably because the news channel is supposedly owned by the same giant media corporation (Global Tetrahedron) that produced that action film, and cross-promotion is king, after all.  (Come on, do you really think that Disney PAYS for ads on ABC and ESPN to promote their films and theme parks?  Of course not, they just move around some figures on paper and before you know it, your kids want to go see "Raya and the Last Something or Other" while you're watching SportsCenter.)

Then there are skits, or things resembling skits, that take place between the news stories, and those feel horribly out of place.  I came here for Onion headlines, and essentially I was tricked into re-watching "Movie 43", or something close to it.  Not cool. What's worse is that a lot of those jokes don't land, like the one about white teens acting black or men getting their penises stuck in mailboxes and library book slots.  Umm, do the writers here even understand male erections and masturbation?  Because it sure seems like they don't.  There's also a fake film review segment where experts criticize the very film that they're appearing in, and this leads to a black man protesting the portrayal of the black characters in the film so far, which leads to a segment where a black man merely asks for directions to the library, so he can go get a book.  Umm, OK, topical perhaps, but somebody forgot to make that segment funny.

The Steven Seagal action movie parody references run through the whole film, and I'm thinking that 2008 was probably the last year a comedy film could get away with that.  Same goes for the songs and videos from "Melissa Cherry", a clear parody of Britney Spears, who claims that her songs "Down on My Knees", "Take Me From Behind" and "Shoot Your Love All Over Me" aren't meant to be sexual, not at all - and then we see the videos and realize that, come on, of course they are.  But at that point, in 2008, Spears had already been a cultural punchline for close to a decade, so again it feels like this film came really late to that party.  Also, 2008 was apparently a great year for making fun of Arab terrorists - that seems about right, but now, after the pandemic, aren't we all past that?  But hey, Britney Spears is back in the news, and now that the U.S. is leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, maybe jokes about Muslim terrorists will be back in vogue again. 

The good news, if you can call it that, is that for every joke that doesn't land, at least there are two or three others that might.  The Bates computer 5000 that gets replaced by the Bates 6000 faster than you can upgrade from your Bates 4000 is a good gag, only it's clearly aimed at Bill Gates (the CEO of the fictitious company is Gil Bates...) only Gates's company, Microsoft, doesn't make computers, it only makes software.  Right? Or I think they do now, but they didn't back in 2008.  Similarly, the jokes about a teen demolishing his friends during a Dungeons & Dragons-style game goes nowhere, same goes for the fake ad for the gay cruise line and the press conference held by the old people with Alzheimer's.  The skit about people playing a board game similar to "Clue", only the crime involved is rape, not murder, seems like it should be funny, only it just ends up being really icky.  A joke shouldn't make me feel like I need a shower after it. Skits about landmines aren't funny either, it turns out.

But hey, they say that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take - even if you only hit 40 or 50% of the shots that you DO take, it's still worth swinging, I guess.  (Ah, the Trivia section on the IMDB tells me that this whole movie was filmed in 2003 and shelved for five years before release, that perhaps explains why so many of the jokes were stale.  Britney Spears, Arab terrorists, Steven Seagal, that does feel a lot more turn-of-the-millennium.  And it explains how Rodney Dangerfield made a cameo four years after he died.  He deserved a lot better than THIS film for his last appearance.)

Also starring Len Cariou (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), Larissa Laskin (last seen in "The Scarlet Letter"), Scott Klace (last seen in "The Pursuit of Happyness"), Steven Seagal, Erik Stolhanske (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Orlando Seale (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Sarah McElligott, Brendan Fletcher (last seen in "The Revenant"), Murphy Dunne (last seen in "The Main Event"), Alex Solowitz (last seen in "Alpha Dog"), Paul Scheer (last seen in "Clear History"), Alonzo Bodden, Nick Chinlund (last seen in "The Kid"), Jim Rash (last seen in "Captain America: Civil War"), Jed Rees (last seen in "American Made"), Jim Gleason (ditto), Kirk Ward, Greg Pitts, Greg Cipes (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Evgeniy Lazarev (last seen in "Lord of War"), Adam Gregor, Ahmed Ahmed (last seen in "You Don't Mess with the Zohan"), Amir Talai (last seen in "The Circle"), Robert Hoffman, Jen Cohn, Chrissy Metz, Sal Lopez, Jay Montalvo, Kate Fuglei, Abigail Mavity, Reid Weaver, Brian Powell, Adele Robbins, Barbara Pilavin, Sandy Kenyon, Kwame Boateng, Randy Ogelsby (last seen in "We Were Soldiers"), Murray Gershenz, Paul "Mousie" Garner (last seen in "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"), Helen Geller, Savannah Haske, Griffin M. Creech, Stefan Sacks, Rebecca Lowman, Amy Davies, Ben Braat, Bashar Rahal, Russell Steinberg (last seen in "Adventureland"), Todd Bosley, Michael Brainard, Dane Farwell, Mary Boucher, Chris Karwowski, Michael Harte, Charles Howerton, James Kayten, Sean Conroy, Christopher Boyer, S.E. Perry, Michael Harney (last seen in "Widows"), Gill Gayle, Robert Shampain, Tom Wright (last seen in "Murder at 1600"), Troy L. Collins, Marc Antonio Pritchett, Jerry Giles, John Viener, Mike Loew, David Chisum, Martin Morales, Micah Sauers, Clint Culp, Dustin Seavey, Bill Dearth, James M. Connor (last heard in "Kong; Skull Island"), Michael Delaney (last seen in "Sleeping with Other People"), Angel Cassidy, Mia Crowe, Eric Siegel, Charley Bell, Daniel Benson, Adam Crosby, Terrence Flack, Mo McRae (last seen in "Thirteen"), Michelle Buffone, Jim Ortleib (last seen in "Flatliners" (1990)), Kenneth C. Rosier, Bo Barrett, Jackson Bolt, Chris Cashman, Said Faraj, Bill Frenzer, Glen Hambly, Susanna Harter, Paula Price, Helen Slayton-Hughes, Ken Takemoto, 

with cameos from Meredith Baxter (last seen in "All the President's Men"), Michael Bolton (also last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Rodney Dangerfield (last seen in "Natural Born Killers"), Kevin Federline, Daniel Dae Kim (last seen in "Always Be my Maybe"), Joel McHale (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Gedde Watanabe (last seen in "The Last Word")

RATING: 4 out of 10 obscure racial stereotypes

Cinema Verite

Year 13, Day 188 - 7/7/21 - Movie #3,889

BEFORE: Tim Robbins carries over from "Miss Firecracker", and before I forget, here are my actor/documentary subject links for the rest of July: Amy Adams, Billy Crystal, Chris Messina (yep, again), Will Ferrell, Zoe Chao, Hannah Marks, Kristen Stewart, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie (or Larry King or Regis Philbin, your choice), Elton John, Dolly Parton, Johnny Carson, Sting, Jann Wenner, Andrew Young (yep, again), and Oprah Winfrey (YES AGAIN).  That chain may actually extend a little into August, I'm not sure yet how I'm going to space my movies out over the summer - but that should get us through the big Summer Music Concert and/or Documentary series. 

THE PLOT: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first reality show to feature a real American family. 

AFTER: Maybe there's a theme for the week, and maybe it's something about the American dream, and how hard it is to pursue it, but pursue it we must.  Does it even exist?  Stephen Glass couldn't find it - or did he end up personifying that pursuit?  Carleen in "Miss Firecracker" sure couldn't obtain it, and neither could the Lisbon girls in "The Virgin Suicides" - sorry, this is all I really have to work with this past week, this very American week that happened to have the 4th of July in it.  So, maybe I'm right on track?

I haven't watched a movie in three days, though, so clearly the Big Summer Slowdown has begun. I'm working two jobs, it's either hot as balls or there's a thunderstorm, so the weather sucks, and that (plus the two-job thing) means that even though the pandemic is essentially over, we can't really go anywhere.  Sure, I had about 40% of last weekend off (Friday night plus Saturday) and we did drive out to the Chinese buffet on Long Island, but that's about all we did to celebrate the holiday.  This weekend I'll just have Friday night free, then since "Black Widow" is opening in theaters, I'm working both Saturday and Sunday nights at the theater.  Things are about to get crazy, so cutting back on WATCHING movies makes perfect sense, I'll be lucky if I can squeeze in five per week over the next few weeks - and four seems more likely.

Still, let's make hay while the sun shines - today's film is about the first reality TV show, pioneered by Craig Gilbert, who never received half of the credit (or, umm, the blame) that he should have.  He came up with the idea of doing a 10-hour documentary series on PBS, called "An American Family", way back in 1973.  The reasoning seemed to be that the U.S. had put a camera on the moon, but still had not managed to put one inside the average household.  OK, but just because you HAVEN'T done something yet, that in itself does not make it a good idea.  Did this average family even WANT to have TV cameras in their house?  What effect would that have on a family, other than airing their personal problems and "dirty laundry" across the country?  What, exactly, was the purpose that Mr. Gilbert was trying to serve?  

More to the point, since Craig Gilbert did manage to achieve this, and enlighten the other families in America what the Loud family was up to, why did the HBO cable audience in 2011 need a dramatic re-creation of those same events?  What purpose did THAT serve, other than to duplicate the thing that already existed?  If anybody wants to know what happened on the TV show "An American Family", why not just WATCH that show?  Binge all 10 hours, come on, that's what the kids are all doing now, right?  So a cable movie does a dramatic remake of a documentary series - does this mean that someday we'll have to watch a fictionalized version of the first season of "The Real World", or actors re-enacting the first season of "Big Brother" or "Survivor" - seems kind of strange, right?  Bad idea territory for sure.  

What's weirder is the fact that this HBO movie (and yes, movies made for HBO count, according to my rules) worked in some of the footage from "An American Family", I guess to show us how close they were coming to the look of the original show and the Loud family members.  That's an odd choice, like you wouldn't expect a World War II movie to mix footage of somebody playing General Eisenhower or Patton with footage of the real guys, you'd realize right away that John Slattery, for example, looked nothing like Eisenhower, not a bit.  Brian Cox as Churchill, sure, but do a side-by-side with photos of Slattery and Ike and you'll realize some casting director was asleep at the switch.  That same inconsistency is on display here, as Tim Robbins looks (almost) nothing like Bill Loud - how am I supposed to overlook that?  If that's the case, then maybe DON'T include footage of the original guy he's supposed to be portraying.  Diane Lane also does not resemble Pat Loud (who died in January 2021, age 94) but maybe with Gandolfini they came the closest, with extra hair and a beard he did look just a little bit like Craig Gilbert.

(While I'm discussing side-by-side comparisons, I have problems distinguishing actor Johnny Simmons from actor Ben Platt.  Is that just me?  Google them both and let me know if you see the resemblance...  the only other time this happened for me was seeing Kyle Dunnigan on "Reno 911" as recurring character Craig Pullin, and I just assumed he was the same actor who played Kip in "Napoleon Dynamite", only he wasn't, that was Aaron Ruell.  Again, Google search them both...)

I suppose the only reason to re-create the footage from "An American Family" is to maybe add a more modern spin on it - like with the oldest Loud child, Lance Loud.  He's very dramatic, he wants to move to New York and be part of the scene, then he wants to go to Paris to do street theater, and he says "some man" will likely pay for his ticket - within five minutes, a modern viewer would realize that he's gay.  But not back in 1973, his own parents seemed unaware of this fact, or they were in some form of denial about it.  Mom figures it out first, but only after visiting him in NYC and attending a drag-queen theater show with him.  Was Lance's father, Bill, ever brought up to speed?  Did Bill even understand what it meant to be gay?  (And why couldn't this film have been in my June line-up, for Pride Month?). This is a reminder how far the gay rights movement has come, because back in 1973 it was very difficult for a family to deal with this issue without attaching some kind of stigma to it.  

On the other hand, there are Bill's multiple affairs, and in this re-creation it's not hard for Pat (and by extension, the audience) to see which way the wind is blowing on this one.  Bill returns from a business trip all sunburned, and he claims he was walking around a construction site without a shirt on for three days.  Right, because that's what foremen and contractors do on a hot day.  When another woman in town appears just as sunburned as Bill, Pat makes the logical conclusion that her husband was really on a beach with that woman, which is much easier to believe.  The director of the documentary series later learns that Bill has at least one other girlfriend on the side, and thus the filmmaker has to decide whether to break the trust of one spouse in order to maintain his bond with the other.  And that's how easily the "rules" of non-interference are to break when making a documentary, it's kind of like quantum physics in that the act of observation is always going to have an effect on the events being observed.  

Bill Loud is not really the last of a dying breed, but he does represent a certain patriarchal mentality, someone who believed that men get to go on "business trips" while their wives stay home and raise the kids, a woman could only get a job if that work didn't interfere with the housework and child care, and obviously a man could have a little action on the side, while a wife was expected to remain ever faithful.  Double standards, across the board - but then again, we're all looking at this from a modern-day point of view, and I'm not saying things were better back then, but they were different and we have to acknowledge that when we judge these people, after the fact. 

Eventually the show gets its most dramatic moment, the on-air request for the dissolution of the marriage, or rather the negotiation over how it's all going to go down.  She'll take the girls to Taos for a week, while he moves his clothing and personal effects to a hotel.  This part is never easy, it's one of the worst things that anyone ever has to go through, from either side.  But change is part of life, and there's no way through it but to do it, and you hope to come out the other side relatively sane and together, that's the best you can do.  

There's always more to the story, though, and one of Lance's last wishes was for his parents to get back together again - which they did, years later they moved back in together, which must have been some combination of comfortably familiar and incredibly awkward.  What's that saying, that you can't unring a bell?  This seems like it would be more like putting an egg back together after it dropped on the floor.  But it happened, so maybe there's some hope in the world, however fragile and transient love and life can be.  I don't know, it would be like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon getting back together again, I just don't see it happening (they're tied right now for appearances in Movie Year 13, with four each, this could get interesting).  But didn't Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez recently rekindle their romance, in April?  How long do we think that one's going to last? 

Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Serenity" (2019)), James Gandolfini (last seen in "The Mexican"), Kathleen Quinlan (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Thomas Dekker, Patrick Fugit (last seen in "First Man"), Shanna Collins, William Belli (last seen in "A Star Is Born" (2018)), Lolita Davidovich (last seen in "Play It to the Bone"), Kyle Riabko, Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Booksmart"), Nick Eversman (last seen in "Wild"), Johnny Simmons (last seen in "Dreamland"), Caitlin Custer, Jake Richardson (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Matt O'Leary (last seen in "Brick"), Stephen Caffrey, Monika Jolly, Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Richard Fancy (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Cory Blevins, Don McManus (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Molly Hagan (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Sean O'Bryan (last seen in "Trapped in Paradise"), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Where'd You go, Bernadette"), Patricia Scanlon, Danielle Sapia, Robert Curtis Brown (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), with archive footage of Dick Cavett (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Margaret Mead, Craig Gilbert and the Loud family. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 rooms at the Chelsea Hotel

Miss Firecracker

Year 13, Day 185 - 7/4/21 - Movie #3,888

BEFORE: OK, I've reached my Fourth of July film, as planned. It looked a little touch-and-go there for a while, I had to work at the movie theater on the holiday, but then it turned out that not many people showed up for movies tonight, so they let me out early.  Sure, I could have stayed in Manhattan and watched the fireworks over the river, but ehh, you've seen one fireworks show, and you've seen them all, am I right?  Maybe such things still hold excitement for young kids, but I'm not really a fan.  Living in a major city like New York for a few decades can really turn you off regarding most major holidays, like on Thanksgiving there's that damn parade and around Christmas there are too many people visiting that stupid tree in Rock Center.  

Last year, during the pandemic there were so many illegal fireworks going off around the city, starting in June, that there was a major crackdown, and as a result for once the city didn't sound like a war zone on July 4. After public opinion demanded action, I thought, "Great, other people are FINALLY coming around to my way of thinking regarding fireworks, in other words, let's start making some arrests."  But here we are, a year later, and there's the sound of mortar fire in my neighborhood once again, and my cat's been hiding under the bed for about 6 or 7 hours.  It's not fair to pets or to veterans with PTSD that on this day, once a year, it's nothing but triggering noises.  The colorful displays just aren't worth being such a-holes for - I realize that everybody is desperate to party, but find another way.  Or, just blow yourselves up and don't endanger anybody else.  

This racket continues until about 3 or 4 am, and police are not enforcing any guidelines this year.  I'd go out and patrol the streets myself if the miscreants didn't, you know, possess a whole bunch of explosive devices. 

Scott Glenn carries over from "The Virgin Suicides". 

THE PLOT: Carnelle wants to escape her dreary life, so she enters a local beauty contest, much to everyone's dismay. 

AFTER: After today, I start going on a diet - no, not that kind, a movie diet.  I can't keep consuming movies at the pace I've been working at all year, not while juggling two jobs and also trying to maintain some semblance of a human sleeping schedule.  I've been over-filling my months, watching more movies than there are days in any given month, all year until June, when I took a few days off.  If I keep this up, I'll also run out of movie slots before I run out of calendar days, and that would mean taking a whole month off from movies in November, and that's tough to do as well.  So, the solution is to cut back to maybe four movies a week, five maximum, until I hit the horror chain - and even then, I've got 23 movies planned for October instead of 30 - that's fairly typical, though, because I usually leave room for New York Comic-Con.  

I've spaced it out on some calendar pages for July, August and September - and I can still hit a Fred Willard film before October 1, no worries there, but even with cutting back to five movies per week, I still get there about two weeks before needed, so either I go on vacation or I cut back to four per week.  No worries, on those nights I don't watch a movie I'll catch up on "Loki" or "The Queen's Gambit" or something - or I'll still be working nights at the theater, and maybe it will all work out.  

When I say that "Miss Firecracker" is a weird film, it's not like the usual weird, as in "two aging rock stars traveling through time trying to write a song that will save the universe" weird, or even "man raised by fake parents who kidnapped him and controlled him by teaching him lessons through a homemade TV show" weird - this is a look at small-town America, the fairs and the carnivals and the beauty contests that have been a staple across the country in decades past, before there was Twitter and Instagram and streaming movies.  I'm guessing you can maybe find these sort of events out there somewhere in the square states, but they can't possibly be the same sort of deals they were in the 1970's and 1980's.  Now everybody has to worry about exploitation and equality and sexual harassment, so the very concept of a beauty contest is incredibly suspect these days.  What is beauty, anyway, isn't that totally subjective?  And since there are no male beauty pageants on the same level as the female ones, isn't this just a holdover from the patriarchy being in control?  How very outdated the whole concept seems.

But this film is really about the people on the fringes in those same smalltowns - this is set in Yazoo City, Mississippi, but they don't really stress that fact, so it could be Anytown, U.S.A., where Carnelle Scott works in a fishing cannery (?) but dreams of winning the Miss Firecracker pageant, held, of course,  on the Fourth of July each year.  Her cousin, Elain, won the competition years ago, and has been invited back to appear at the pageant and, I don't know, announce the winner?  Elain's other cousin, Delmount, has a job scraping dead dogs off the highway, and apparently spent some time in an asylum, but his dream is to sell the family house (where Carnelle lives) in order to start fresh somewhere else.  Carnelle is upset about losing her residence at first, but then when Delmount offers her half of the money, she realizes that if she gets this money AND wins the pageant, she can also make a fresh start.  NITPICK POINT: Why does she need for BOTH of these things to happen?  Why isn't the money enough?  It seems to me like an either/or proposition, but for some reason she needs both things, that's weird.

Much fuss is made over a red dress, Carnelle wants to wear the same red dress in the pageant that Elain did when she won years ago, only she's gone through the whole house and she can't find it.  Delmount then goes to Popeye Jackson's dress shop and tears it apart, looking for a red dress of equal or greater value, and this is also quite confusing - why does the dress need to be red?  Why does Delmount need to throw all the non-red dresses on the floor and make a huge mess?  Can't he see which dresses aren't red and just leave them all alone?  Plus Popeye, the dress designer, is already working on outfits for Carnelle to wear in the pageant, did Delmount think that somehow she had the perfect dress in her shop and she WASN'T going to let Carnelle wear it?  Nothing in this scene makes any sense...

Carnelle waits a long time to hear from the pageant coordinators, past the deadline, even - but then something happens to one of the entrants (it's a bit unclear, the information comes on the other half of a phone conversation, which we can't hear...) and suddenly there's an opening, so Carnelle gets it.  (Was she in sixth place out of all the contestants?  Also unclear.)  Again, she looks for the red dress, why is that damn dress so important?  For that matter, why is entering this pageant, in her last year of eligibility, so important?  We are given some answers at the very end of the film, but by then the film had asked these same questions so many times that I no longer cared at all.  

The important thing here is that Carnelle's talent act in the pageant involves tap-dancing (or as Delmount put it, stomping her feet to the music) to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner", and that's enough to make this count as the best film to watch today.  Then, of course, there's a fireworks display at the end of the night. That'll do. But, as I said before, if you've seen one fireworks display, you've basically seen them all.  I'm not sure how this tradition has kept people's attention for hundreds of years, now that we have streaming movies and phone games and so much porn.  I guess it's all to keep the kids entertained for a few minutes, or to satisfy people who just love explosions - what is wrong with those people?  

NITPICK POINT #2 - I don't see the point of watching the fireworks display from the town observatory, it only looks about ten feet high, and the fireworks are way up in the sky, those ten feet aren't going to make much of a difference.  

I guess it's the perfect film to celebrate Independence Day - but although I love the USA and what the holiday stands for, I just don't really get behind the way most people celebrate it. I'm down with beer, county fairs and BBQ, but not beaches, fireworks and beauty pageants.  To each his own, I suppose. 

Also starring Holly Hunter (last seen in "Manglehorn"), Mary Steenburgen (last heard in "The One I Love"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "City of Ember"), Alfre Woodard (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Veanne Cox (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Ann Wedgeworth (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Trey Wilson (last seen in "Great Balls of Fire!"), Amy Wright (last seen in "Breaking Away"), Kathleen Chalfant (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Robert Fieldsteel, Greg Germann (last seen in "I.Q."), Avril Gentles, Bert Remsen (last seen in "Nashville"), Angela Turner, Lori Hayes, Barbara Welch, Mitch Saxton, John Burgess, Christine Lahti (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Brent Spiner (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Murray L. Cain, Earle Ingram, Joyce Murrah

RATING: 3 out of 10 floats in the town parade

The Virgin Suicides

Year 13, Day 184 - 7/3/21 - Movie #3,887

BEFORE: Well, I went and did it last night - I found a path to the end of the year, I guess that would be Movie #4,000 - planned for December.  And yes, that's a Christmas movie - it's 75 degrees out today and I've set my sights on Christmas, hard to believe but that's where we find ourselves.  Things could change, obviously, between now and then, but it's comforting to know there's at least one path to the end of 2021, that another "perfect year" is possible, and that would make three in a row.  It can be done, as I've proven - assuming all my information is correct, and I stay a little flexible in the event that it's not.  

Hayden Christensen carries over from "Shattered Glass". 

THE PLOT: A group of young male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid 1970's. 

AFTER: What I regret not doing these last few years is prominently mentioning who the director is on each film - that should have been important, right?  Like I should say right before listing the actors who directed this - Sofia Coppola - and what the last film I saw directed by her was, which would be "On the Rocks".  Maybe I should go back and retroactively update each film - but that would take me HOURS, perhaps even days.  If I weren't due at the movie theater in a few hours, it's something I would consider doing on a quiet holiday weekend - but as it is, I've got no time for it.  

But it seems rather important to point out that this was Sofia Coppola's debut feature - young filmmakers tend to be quite over-dramatic at first, or they go for the cheap plot moves, like, say, suicide, which is a narrative cop-out both in movies and in life, if you ask me.  Some would say it's the coward's way out, and both in films and in life, I think it should only be considered when there are no viable alternatives, because it's permanent and undoable, and then everyone else around the suicide victim isn't quite sure how to react, and this has a jarring effect on them and the audience as well.  It's the dramatic version of a "cheap laugh", just without the humor - or what some writers have their characters do when they've metaphorically painted that person into a corner, and it often seems like maybe a better writer could have found a way out of the situation.

Using that same device more than once, however, well that really is going to feel like a cop-out, several times over. Right?  Well, I don't know what to do with this character, so maybe he (or she) just takes their own life, problem solved.  Only, was anything solved, or resolved?  I'm not sure, or did the writer just go for the cheap move that had the side benefit of ending things without really resolving anything?  

This story is told from the P.O.V. of one of the younger high-school boys who are in the orbit around the five sisters - four of the sisters are in high-school, ages 14, 15, 16 and 17, and honestly that feels a bit convenient, that one's a freshman, the next is a sophomore, and so on.  I guess Catholic families could be rather regular that way (did the parents have sex once a year on the same date, and conceive a daughter each time?).  Sure, be fruitful and multiply, but jeez, at some point, give it a rest... I don't think we ever find out which boy is telling this story, perhaps it doesn't matter.  I could have sworn that the narration was being provided by Hayden Christensen, who played one of the four OTHER boys who took the Lisbon girls to the homecoming dance, but no, that wasn't him, it was another actor.  

Also quite conveniently, Mr. Lisbon is a math and/or science teacher at the same high school the Lisbon girls attend.  Obviously this happens in America, that teachers live in the same town or district they teach in, but it's probably hell on any teenager to have to go to that same high school where one of their parents teaches.  I mean, I guess they'll always have a ride to school, but they have to spend all day in their parent's workplace, and then every kid in their class is also going to be familiar with their father or mother, and the embarrassment factor is potentially quite high - OK, maybe I can start to see why these girls wanted to commit suicide.  

But come on, there's so much to live for, like those first tentative yet also possibly horrible dating experiences, and there are so many great 1970's songs to listen to, as this movie demonstrates.  I guess once their parents made them throw away the cool rock records, that was the beginning of the end.  And once Lux (the, umm, second-oldest daughter?) stayed out all night after the dance and that meant she probably had sex with her date, I guess that was the beginning of the end?  Can we therefore draw the conclusion that the sex wasn't that great, or maybe it was, and therefore she should kill herself immediately after, because life just isn't going to get any better after she loses her virginity?  Again, I feel like maybe there's some faulty logic at work if you try to follow that line of thinking.  

What's the overall point here, that teen boys are simple, but teen girls are extremely complicated?  If so, why do you suppose that is, could it be that parents hold them to a different, perhaps impossible, standard?  Maybe the message is that kids are eventually all going to grow up and start having "adult" experiences, and parents can't change this fact, and it's pointless and counter-productive for them to even try?  

Or is the point that we build up certain experiences in our mind in anticipation of them, and then once they finally happen and don't live up to our expectations, we then spend the rest of our lives chasing that damn dragon to try and make things better, when we should just learn to be complacent with the things that do come our way?  I'm just not sure, and I'm not sure that the director here was able to come up with a clear message, or if she just put together a bunch of things that happened, and hoped for the best - which is something that a first-time director might be likely to do.  

I sort of side with the adult character, seen late in the film, who pokes fun at the Lisbon girls by jumping into a swimming pool, pretending to drown, who shouts out, "Look at me, I'm a teenage girl, and my life is SO complicated!" - or similar words to that effect.  In other words, get over yourselves, teen girls. 

NITPICK POINT: This film takes place outside Detroit - one public notice seen suggests the setting is Grosse Pointe, Michigan.  So, umm, how is there a diary entry for one of the girls that mentions going on a whale-watching trip?  I don't think there are any whales in the Great Lakes - maybe the whole family took a vacation on the East Coast, but this still feels a bit out of place.  Also, I'm not sure that whale-watching trips were even a thing back in the 1970's - but I'm not quite sure how to check on this. 

Also starring James Woods (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Josh Hartnett (last seen in "Town & Country"), Michael Paré (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), A.J. Cook (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), Joe Dinicol (ditto), Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain, Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, Jonathan Tucker (last seen in "Charlie's Angels" (2019)), Noah Shebib, Robert Schwartzman, Joe Roncetti, Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Chris Hale, Suki Kaiser, Dawn Greenhalgh (last seen in "Maps to the Stars"), Allen Stewart-Coates, Sherry Miller, Jonathan Whittaker (last seen in "Breach"), Michele Duquet, Murray McRae, Roberta Hanley, Paul Sybersma, Susan Sybersma, Peter Snider, Gary Brennan (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Charles Boyland, Dustin Ladd, Kristin Fairlie, Melody Johnson, Sheyla Molho, Ashley Ainsworth, Courtney Hawkrigg, Francois Klanfer, Mackenzie Lawrenz, Tim Hall, Andrew Gillies (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Mairlyn Smith,  Sally Cahill, Scot Denton, Catherine Swing, Timothy Adams, Michael Michaelessi and the voice of Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Middle Men"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 diary entries