Zeroville

Year 13, Day 198 - 7/17/21 - Movie #3,895

BEFORE: Chris Messina carries over from "Everything Is Copy" - I wish I could have watched that Mike Nichols documentary next, since he was interviewed in the doc about Nora Ephron, but then I wouldn't be able to proceed with my chain, and I only JUST found my path to the end of the year, so I don't want to do anything to mess with that.  The rule is that if I add something, then I also have to take something from the plan away, and also if I add something, it has to lead me back to the path I've established somehow, now that there is a path.  I'll add "Becoming Mike Nichols" to my list, and maybe I can fit it in somewhere down the road. 

Chris Messina's making a sudden move toward the top of this year's leaderboard, and if I hadn't moved another film with him from July to September, he'd be just about there.  But I've got documentaries coming up, and that means a lot is going to change very soon, I know that Oprah's got a few more 2021 appearances in her, and then there are also the people who appear in the docs but aren't listed on the IMDB (yet, just wait...) so there could be some surprises still.  I'm not going to say more until the Summer Music Concert & Documentary series is done.

Oh, and by the way, a happy (belated) birthday SHOUT-OUT to Will Ferrell, who appears, apparently uncredited, in "Zeroville".  Yes, his birthday was yesterday, July 16, but I was on break, I'm only watching four movies a week right now.  Anyway, I started watching "Zeroville" a little before midnight on 7/16, so it still counts.  

THE PLOT: A young ex-communicated seminarian, Ike "Vikar" Jerome, arrives in Los Angeles on the same August day in 1969 that a crazed "hippie" family led by Charles Manson commits five savage murders, then finds work in the movie industry.  

AFTER: You know, I COULD have watched "Becoming Mike Nichols", because that documentary features archive footage of several celebrities, including Elizabeth Taylor, who's also featured prominently in today's film, via footage from "A Place in the Sun".  Only she wasn't listed in the IMDB credits for "Zeroville", so how was I to know?  This is what's so annoying about the IMDB, they have very arcane rules regarding archive footage - some of it is credited, but much of it is not - and then when I try to add it, I'm successful about 75% of the time, which makes me wonder why the IMDB editors reject 25% of my additions?  And why for only certain actors?  Don't they TRUST me by now, that I wouldn't suggest an addition of a celebrity unless I saw the footage myself?  It's so annoying, especially when the IMDB staff could easily prove my claims by, I don't know, watching the damn movie themselves?  Why isn't that automatically part of the plan to confirm submissions?  Because it would take too long?  OK, then why bother having any kind of database at all about who appears in what movie, if you're not willing to put in the time to do it RIGHT?  I made about 40 submissions for people who appeared in "Everything Is Copy" who weren't properly credited, and so far only 25 of them have been accepted.  What, are Cher and Jack Nicholson suddenly too important to have all of their archive footage properly credited?  What gives?  

Even so, I don't want to add "Becoming Mike Nichols" after the fact because that would throw off my count, I wouldn't land on the right film for Movie #3,900, which is coming up soon, and then I'd also have to delete something from the November/December line-up.  So Chris Messina remains my link from "Everything Is Copy", and in this film he plays Brian De Palma -

yes, the director.  There's a scene not too far in where Seth Rogen's character takes James Franco's character to a party, and there at the party are actors playing the soon-to-be-famous film directors of the 1970's - Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, some guy named "Marty", and this is all done in a bit of tongue-in-cheek sort of way.  Spielberg says he wants to make a movie about a shark terrorizing a town, Lucas talks about robots (sorry, DROIDS), and Rogen's character forbids them to ever make a movie together, which is only funny because it eventually happened.  

Stunt casting is involved here, too - Derek Waters plays Paul Schrader, and in a later scene, Horatio Sanz plays Francis Ford Coppola on a movie set in the Philippines that looks an awful lot like "Apocalypse Now".  Vikar, Franco's character finds himself there, too, making him the equivalent of a Forrest Gump-like filmworker for a while, turning up at some of the most important filmmaking moments in the 1970's.  Note to Hollywood - I would watch an entire 90-minute movie based on the scene at the party, with actors playing Lucas, Spielberg, etc.  (Rogen's character threatens to shoot Lucas in the face, and haven't all "Star Wars" fans felt that way, at one point or another?)

Unfortunately, the rest of film is a bunch of loose plot lines that don't seem to connect, it's a bunch of stuff that ultimately goes nowhere.  The connection to the Manson Family murders mentioned in the plotline is a non-starter, it's seen at the beginning of the film and then becomes just another loose thread that never gets picked up again.  Instead Vikar goes to work building sets at a movie studio, then spends a few months on the set of that Vietnam movie, but ultimately finds work as an editor, and then somehow loses himself in that job - before long, months and then years have gone by.  Umm, I think, actually this is a bit unclear, because this film doesn't really adhere to strict standards of continuity.  

Vikar becomes obsessed with an actress named Soledad, he meets her at a party, then gets a job editing a film that she appears in.  They do have a relationship off-set, but it's a brief one, she moves in with a producer (Vikar's boss, of course) perhaps for the sake of her young daughter (who appears years older every time we see her) but Vikar just can't get her out of his mind.  Eventually this appears to be some kind of one-sided relationship, but one that eats away at him while he spends hours, days, (months?) at the editing deck.  And this was back in the 1970's, before digital editing, when film had to be cut by hand, and if you made a mistake, you had to order a whole new print of that reel so you could fix it.  I remember those days, and trust me, it was very inconvenient - and wasteful.  

Months (or perhaps years) later, Vikar is watching a Jodorowsky film and swears that he sees a flash-frame of Soledad.  He goes so far as to steal the print from the projection booth, just to see if what he saw was real.  But by this point, there is the very real possibility that he's gone insane, driven by some combination of love, loss and grief.  There's some loose story presented by an (imaginary?) film archivist that there is a secret film, which can be assembled from flash-frames that are hidden in some of the world's most classic movies - but this is just plain impossible, for many reasons, chief among them the fact that the people in these images weren't even born when those classic films were made.  Umm, I think - so I'm going with the "Vikar's gone insane" theory.  

This movie was filmed in 2014, but the distribution company that acquired the film rights filed for bankruptcy soon after, so it didn't see any kind of release until 2019, and is now considered a box-office bomb.  Gee, you don't suppose that's because the film is really a bunch of loose plot lines that don't connect, and ultimately go nowhere, do you?  Or that none of the scenes seem to adhere to any kind of strict continuity?  Or maybe it's the impossible story of a film that can be assembled from frames cut from other films?  Take your pick, I guess.  

James Franco directed "Zeroville", in addition to starring in it, and I think that's all very ironic, considering he also starred in "The Disaster Artist", which was about another filmmaker who made questionable choices, was possibly insane in a creative-type way, and also made cult films.  "Zeroville" was made before "The Disaster Artist", but ended up getting released later.  Both "The Disaster Artist" and the film-within-the-film, "The Room", became underground sleeper hits, but will "Zeroville"?  Nah, I very much doubt it.  This feels more like the film that both David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino somehow intentionally forgot to make, if that makes any sense.  I'm awarding points tonight mostly just for that comic scene with actors playing Lucas and Spielberg, it's the highlight of the movie.

Also starring James Franco (last seen in "Howl"), Megan Fox (last seen in "Friends With Kids"), Seth Rogen (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Joey King (last seen in "Wish I Was Here"), Jacki Weaver (last seen in "Bird Box"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Drunk Parents"), Dave Franco (last seen in "6 Underground"), Craig Robinson (last heard in "Dolittle"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Clear History"), Mike Starr (last seen in "Bad Santa 2"), Nick Buda, Jack Kehler (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Tyler Danna, Mia Serafino, Jason Fox, Horatio Sanz (last seen in "The New Guy"), Ryan Moody, Kevin Makely, Mino Mackic (last seen in "Captive State"), Thomas Ian Nicholas (last seen in "Rookie of the Year"), Derek Waters (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Nanghana, Keegan Allen, Steve Erickson, Jacob Loeb (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Nina Ljeti, Scott Haze (last seen in "The Vault"), Alberto Barbera, Thalia Ayala, Una Jensen, Aaron Garcia Silverman, Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Stewart Strauss, Vince Jolivette, Scott Reed, Melody Cole, Cadence Cole, 

with cameos from Gus Van Sant (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Wim Wenders, and archive footage of Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Anne of the Thousand Days"), Montgomery Clift, William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Jack Nance, Laurel Near, Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 lines flubbed by Ali McGraw

Everything Is Copy

Year 13, Day 196 - 7/15/21 - Movie #3,894

BEFORE: There's something wrong with the IMDB today, specifically the "Advanced Title Search" page that I use to determine what I've last seen each actor in.  This would only be a problem if I were scheduled to watch a documentary today with a very large, all-star cast.  Now I'll have to cross-reference each actor with each year-end summary page until I land on their last appearance, and it's not really an exact science.  The IMDB system is unreliable, anyway, because it doesn't always count archive footage as an "appearance", but I do.  And it looks like today's doc uses a lot of archive footage, which means I'll probably spot a bunch of actors who weren't credited with appearances, and that means submitting a list of 20 or 30 actors to the IMDB to get their credits added to this film's page. I like to think there's a room somewhere with a staff member working on the big database, and just dreading that submission from me, which means he (or she) has got to work late updating the database.  I wonder, though, if they're impressed that I kept notes, did my research and put in some time to make the listings better - or do they even care, maybe it's just a job for them.

Amy Adams carries over again from "The Woman in the Window", at least through archive footage from "Julie & Julia" that was used in this documentary with a very large, all-star cast. 

THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of writer/filmmaker Nora Ephron.

AFTER: Nora Ephron, of course, was probably most famous for writing "When Harry Met Sally", which was a huge mega-hit movie, and was then followed by "Sleepless in Seattle" and "You've Got Mail", combined these three movies changed the whole genre of romantic comedy, at least for all the Meg Ryan fans out there.  Yes, I realize Tom Hanks was in two out of those three films, some of the credit should go to him as well.  Before that she wrote the screenplays for "Silkwood" and the autobiographical "Heartburn", based on her marriage to Carl Bernstein.

But she wrote and/or directed some bombs as well, like "Mixed Nuts", "Lucky Numbers", "Hanging Up" and "This Is My Life", but she finished strong with "Julie & Julia" before she passed away.  (It's funny, this doc makes no mention of her writing the 2005 film "Bewitched", I guess we're all just supposed to ignore it...I wish that I could.). 

Her son, Jacob Bernstein, went back even further in this documentary, to the time of Nora's childhood, moving with her parents from New York City to Beverly Hills because they wanted to become screenwriters - and they did, they wrote "Desk Set" and "Daddy Long Legs" and "There's No Business Like Show Business".  After high school, Nora moved back east to attend Wellesley College, and then hit New York again, working in the mailroom at Newsweek, which at the time did not allow women to write for the magazine, which eventually got changed by a class-action lawsuit.  But by that time, Nora Ephron was a reporter for the New York Post, which then led to writing essays for the New Yorker and other magazines. 

By the mid-1970's she was married for the second time, to Carl Bernstein, and also took a stab at re-writing the screenplay for "All the President's Men", based on Carl's reporting on the Watergate scandal (with Bob Woodward, of course).  Man, they really got the casting right when they had Dustin Hoffman play Bernstein.  (Robert Redford as Woodward, not so much...).  The marriage lasted three years, until Ephron learned about her husband's affair, and of course this became the inspiration for the novel and screenplay for "Heartburn".  This is partially what the phrase "everything is copy" is about, that everything that happens to a writer (or a musician) becomes grist for the mill, something that can be channeled into a screenplay or a song, which can be a very convenient form of therapy.  Turning one's own life experiences into books, plays, movies, etc. is fine, as long as I don't have to watch characters sitting in front of typewriters, turning their experiences into stories - most of the time I don't care to see how the sausage is made.  

Around the time of "You've Got Mail", in which Meg Ryan's character falls in love with a reporter, Ephron was in another relationship, with author Nicholas Pileggi, and I suppose you have to wonder if there are just no coincidences, that once again she turned her experiences into copy.  I suppose writers are encouraged to go out and have grander experiences than most other people, because they need inspiration for their stories, right? Is that how it works?  We also learn that Nora was the oldest of four sisters, and the eldest child is typically the over-achiever in the bunch, right?  I speak, of course, as the under-achieving child youngest child in my own family - but I suppose that's just an excuse.  

After being diagnosed with leukemia, Ephron chose to keep her illness a secret, which many of her friends say felt a bit out of character - but I guess you never know how you might react to a diagnosis like that, until it happens.  Maybe there's no right or wrong way to deal with it, but this film depicts Ephron advising people to not wait to enjoy their last meal when it's time for their last meal, after all, you might be too sick to enjoy it, or you might die suddenly and not see the end coming, so maybe have that great last meal in advance.  Warren Zevon's advice after he learned he had a terminal condition was much simpler, it was just "Enjoy every sandwich" - and that's advice that I've taken to heart.

One thing I've taken away from watching documentaries like this, about all the changes that people go through over time, is that just when people think they've got life figured out, that seems to be when everything changes.  People, such as Nora Ephron, get married and think, "Oh, this is it, this is the way things are going to be, from now on..." and, of course, then something changes, like they learn their partner is having an affair.  Or they get a job, like as a reporter, only to discover that they really want to write screenplays, so they move on to that.  I've had my career shaken up now by the pandemic, I lost one of my two jobs so I had to move on (eventually).  But I kind of messed up, I took the first job available to me and now I want to make a change - what's keeping me going is the realization that this job isn't permanent, I can leave it at any time.  So instead of living in the moment I've got my eye on the future, and that's a very unusual way for me to live - normally I'd take a job and think, "Oh, this is it, this is the way things are going to be, from now on..." but now I think I know a little better.  When you look back at your own life, and see all the changes that have taken place, how can you possibly regard anything as permanent?  People are going to come and go, some people are going to pass away or move away and you'll lose contact with them, even marriages come and go, so I guess the only way to handle it is to accept the changes as they come, and not get locked in to any way of thinking or being, because inevitably it's all going to change, right? 

I wish I could move on to that documentary about Mike Nichols next, but that doesn't get me where I need to go - or I could watch that documentary about Spielberg, but I need to save that, I think it's going to get me out of a linking jam in October.  So I'm moving on in a different direction, just give me a couple days to get back to it.

Also starring Ken Auletta, Bob Balaban (last seen in "Howl"), Carl Bernstein (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon"), Jacob Bernstein, Marie Brenner, Kate Capshaw, Richard Cohen, Barry Diller, Lena Dunham (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood"), Amy Ephron, Delia Ephron, Hallie Ephron, David Geffen (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Dan Greenburg, Tom Hanks (last seen in "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"), Gaby Hoffmann (last seen in "Obvious Child"), Donald J. Lee Jr., Bryan Lourd, Laurence Mark, Victor Navasky, Mike Nichols, Lynda Obst, Rosie O'Donnell (last seen in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), Amy Pascal, Rob Reiner (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), David Remnick, Meg Ryan (last seen in "Proof of Life"), Joel Schumacher, Liz Smith, Diane Sokolow, Steven Spielberg (last seen in "Filmworker"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Gay Talese, Barbara Walters (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Rita Wilson (last seen in "The Art of Getting By"), Reese Witherspoon (last seen in "Becoming"), George C. Wolfe, 

with archive footage of Nora Ephron, Dan Aykroyd (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Joy Behar (also last seen in "The Accidental President"), Scott Pelley (ditto), Meredith Vieira (ditto), Leslie Caron (last seen in "Daddy Long Legs"), Dick Cavett (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Cher (last seen in "No Direction Home; Bob Dylan"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Geena Davis (last seen in "In a World...", Joan Didion (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Roger Ebert (last seen in "Life Itself"), Kathie Lee Gifford, Cary Grant (last seen in "Cleaner"), Katharine Hepburn (ditto), Buck Henry, Shirley Jones (last seen in "Elmer Gantry"), Julie Kavner, Diane Keaton (last seen in "Hampstead"), Deborah Kerr, Hoda Kotb, Lisa Kudrow (last seen in "Like a Boss"), David Letterman (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Jane Lynch (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Ross Malinger, Steve Martin (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Richard Masur (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), Samantha Mathis, Walter Matthau (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Bruce McGill (last seen in "The Lookout"), Chris Messina (last seen in "I Care a Lot"), Marilyn Monroe (also last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band") Jack Nicholson (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Catherine O'Hara (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Jane Pauley, Nicholas Pileggi, Estelle Reiner, Charlie Rose (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Clear History"), Gene Siskel (also last seen in "Life Itself"), James Stewart (also carrying over from "The Woman in the Window"), Spencer Tracy (last seen in "Walt: The Man Behind the Myth"), John Travolta (last seen in "Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "The Color Purple"), Bob Woodward (last seen in "State of Play")

RATING: 6 out of 10 talk show appearances

The Woman in the Window

Year 13, Day 194 - 7/13/21 - Movie #3,893

BEFORE: I'm late getting this posted, I know - even though I've slowed down to just four films a week, I still have two jobs and a work schedule that often extends until 2 am, which means I get home at 3 am if the trains aren't running all the way home and I have to take a shuttlebus.  As you might imagine, my sleep schedule is even worse than it was before - I used to stay up late watching movies, now I stay up late sweeping movie theaters, and I wish I could say that's an improvement.  Well, it's some form of improvement because I'm getting paid to do that, but so far that's the only benefit.  It's nice to have a second paycheck, but it comes at a cost, I'm always tired and achy and I can't wait to line up some other job where I'm not reaching under movie theater seats to pull out mystery items of food that have maybe been there for a while.  Let's just say I've seen some things.  

Amy Adams carries over from "Hillbilly Elegy".

THE PLOT: An agoraphobic woman living alone in New York begins spying on her new neighbors, only to witness a disturbing act of violence. 

AFTER: This is one of those films from the "unreliable narrator" category, similar to "The Girl on the Train". I doubt this film would have been greenlit if that other film based on a book hadn't done well.  This time the main character is on medication for her condition, but also drinks alcohol, which of course is not recommended.  One of the possible side-effects is hallucinations, which then of course calls into question everything that we're seeing through her eyes.  Something tipped me off pretty early to the possibility that maybe even some of the characters weren't real, similar to, you know, those two very famous films that pulled that trick before.  I was willing to bet it was her therapist that wasn't really there, but I guess I got that wrong.

Anna Fox is a therapist of some sort, who works with children who have been traumatized, but she's also an agoraphobic, so she somehow works remotely and never leaves her house.  This all seems very pandemically appropriate, doesn't it?  How many people are STILL working remotely, either by choice or over lingering COVID-19 concerns?  Some people set up their home offices and now may be reluctant to give them up, considering that working from home gives them more time to spend with their families, or it's just easier to get into relaxing mode after their work is done, because they're already home.  Who needs to commute in this day and age, if they don't have to?  Also, she's got a pretty sweet Manhattan (?) townhouse, which is like six floors high, and it hasn't been broken down into twelve different apartments yet, so I guess if you've got that kind of situation, you want to hang on to it, and spend as much time there as possible.  

She does have a basement tenant, however, and that apartment has its own entrance, which makes sense, only David insists on coming in through the main entrance, or spending time on the main floor late at night, only because that's very creepy when it happens, and this movie needed to generate startling moments at every possible opportunity.  Eventually we learn that David has some kind of shady past he's running away from, he's not even supposed to BE outside Connecticut because that's some kind of parole violation, but maybe he's not a villain and this is all just another red herring.  David does help out around the house in a handyman capacity, and he does clean the eggs off the stoop when the trick-or-treaters want to prank the weird lady who won't leave her house. 

Anna also takes to watching the new neighbors across the street, and that's when films like "Rear Window" get plot-checked here, because OF COURSE they moved to NY from Boston and OR COURSE there are shady circumstances in their past, and OF COURSE they all come across the street, one by one, and they all want to meet their new neighbors.  Doesn't everybody who has shady pasts go door to door and introduce themselves to all the people who they don't want to meet?  This is probably the most glaring NITPICK POINT in the film, because New Yorkers just don't do this, you could live next door to somebody for 20 years and never learn their name, that's much more likely in the Big Apple.  Most people just nod or wave to their neighbors and then just go about their business.  But then, if that happened, we wouldn't have a story here, now, would we?  

After Anna takes to spying on the neighbors with her telephoto lens (though, umm, she never seems to get around to taking pictures, just looking through the lens - NITPICK POINT, why not just use binoculars, then?) she sees a violent crime, and then the rest of the film is spent proving that she saw what she saw.  Only there was great confusion over who and what she saw, the person she saw killed is still alive, only she's a different person.  What?  To justify all of this, the film sort of has to bend itself over, backwards and sideways to explain what she saw and where all the miscommunication started happening.  It's not believable in the slightest way, but I appreciate the effort, if that makes any sense.  No spoilers here, but I'm fairly sure this particular dodge hasn't been used before.  

For future reference, if we're stuck inside again for long periods of time, maybe cyber-stalking your new neighbors and mixing your prescription drugs with alcohol is not the best use of your time.  Maybe just binge-watch something, or learn how to bake bread?

Also starring Gary Oldman (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Anthony Mackie (last seen in "Freedomland"), Julianne Moore (ditto)), Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Brian Tyree Henry (last seen in "Hotel Artemis"), Jennifer Jason Leigh (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Tracy Letts (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Jeanine Serralles (last seen in "Inside Llewyn Davis"), Mariah Bozeman, with archive footage of James Stewart (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "Mr. North")

RATING: 5 out of 10 glasses of wine

Hillbilly Elegy

Year 13, Day 192 - 7/11/21 - Movie #3,892

BEFORE: Gonna try and squeeze this one in on a Sunday late morning/early afternoon, before pulling an evening/night shift at the movie theater.  Since "Black Widow" opened, I'm working more hours this week (four nights, in addition to the three day shifts at my main job) so I may not have much time this week to watch movies - I'll be lucky if I can get my four films in. I think I started cutting back at JUST the right time - plenty of time left in the year 2021 to get my full 300 films in, since I'm almost at 200 for the year right now!

My sleeping schedule, on the other hand, is a complete mess.  Working until 1 or 2 am, getting home at 3 am sometimes, then having to go to the office the next morning by 10 (or more typically, 11) - something's got to give, eventually.  Even having two days a week to catch up on sleep, like maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays I can still sleep in, it doesn't feel like enough.  I'm walking around in a daze, like I'm a week behind on sleep.  I've got a plan to get another job and quit the ushering business, but it's by no means a sure thing, and even if that does come through, it wouldn't be until August - so it looks like I'll be six kinds of exhausted for the near future - I like having a little extra cash coming in, but at what cost?  I've never been so keenly aware of the exchange rate taking place, giving up hours/days of my time to get that money.

Amy Adams carries over from "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny". 

THE PLOT: An urgent phone call pulls a Yale law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future. 

AFTER: This story is told in half-flashback, the film toggles between the adult J.D. Vance traveling back home from Yale to care for his addict mother, who had the nerve to O.D. during his Interview Week, and flashbacks of his childhood years, during which he faced abuse and neglect due to his mother's mental instability, until essentially being adopted by his grandmother and getting himself onto a better personal path.  

Ron Howard directed this, based on a best-selling novel, but the timing of the film's release was notable - November 2020, on streaming, during a pandemic year when such a release would still qualify it for the Academy Awards.  Do you smell that?  It's "Oscar bait" of the highest order - only it didn't work.  Sure, this film got two Oscar nominations, one for Glenn Close and another for Make-up & Hairstyling, but it sure feels like somebody was expecting a few more.  Maybe for Amy Adams, maybe for Ron Howard, maybe for Adapted Screenplay, whatever, it feels like they were swinging for the fences and only made it to the infield warning track.  Why?  What, if anything, went wrong, or was the film simply not worthy?  

One possible theory is that the film explored "white person problems" at a time when such a thing has fallen out of favor - just look at which films did get more nominations: "Judas and the Black Messiah", "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom", "Minari", "One Night in Miami" and "Soul" are some films that got more nominations than "Hillbilly Elegy" got - see what I mean?  "Nomadland" was also about white people struggling (umm, I think), but it also had a female director of Asian heritage who won.  "Hillbilly Elegy" is told from the POV of a white male college student at Yale Law School, and really, come on, who cares about his struggle?  

I'm being facetious here, of course - it's great that J.D. Vance got out of rural Ohio/Kentucky and got to Yale, more power to him, but still, STFU about it. It's impossible to tell this story of someone who escaped a lower middle-class situation by volunteering for military service in Iraq, then I guess qualifying for YALE via the G.I. bill without also somehow coming across as a celebration of his own entitlement.  "Oooh, poor me, I've got interviews with high-profile firms at Yale this week, and I don't know if I can make the interviews!"  God, what a douchebag.  I don't know the man personally, but his character just won't shut up about his scheduling problems, which most other people would be lucky to have.  Dude, you've got two choices, go visit your mother in the hospital or keep your interviews, you simply CAN'T DO BOTH.  And whichever one you do, stop second guessing yourself or wondering if you're doing the right thing, just pick a god-damned road and stay on it!  

Much is made of the 10-hour distance between Middletown, Ohio and Yale, which is in New Haven, CT. Vance drives back to Ohio when he gets the news about his mother, without any reasonable plan for returning in time for his interviews.  OK, so then, mother it is, forget the interview - because apparently once you're double-booked, there's simply NO WAY to reschedule an interview, or explain that there were extenuating circumstances involved.  Instead it's just better to bitch and moan about the vagaries of fate or the stupidity it takes to double-book YOURSELF and then not do anything to correct the problem.  And then what's weird is that Vance has like a dozen credit cards to pay for his mother's stint in rehab, but never considers the possibility that he could also buy a PLANE TICKET and get back to Connecticut more quickly.  Nope, 10-hour drive it is.  Look, I've made that run from Ohio to New York several times, in a previous life - it's not easy, Pennsylvania seems to drag on forever, and I wouldn't have made it without my first wife as a driving partner and a bunch of Jolt Cola.  But come on, there's an easier way to DO things, figure it the eff out!

Before we find out if this previously underprivileged white person gets to continue his upward mobility into a life of being more privileged than before, there's a ton of flashback material to Vance's childhood.  Excessive time-jumping for sure makes things very confusing, but I think it's just a split timeline, the scenes in the past are told (more or less) in order, detailing his mother's many failed relationships, her getting fired from her nursing job for using drugs while on shift, and basically she's somebody who never took responsibility for any of her own actions. I realize that the forces of addiction are strong ones, but people who skate by and never develop a hard-working attitude tend to have children who do the same, and thus the cycle is perpetuated.

It's great that J.D. had a strong grandmother figure who was there to put him on another path - since my parents both worked I also spent a lot of time with my grandmother, but that can potentially be both good and bad - I learned my ethics from a Depression-era German immigrant who told me to "stay away from girls" until I finished college (umm, I missed that goal by about two months) and one time, I caught her saying that Hitler had some good ideas for running Germany, he just took things a bit too far.  Thanks, Gram, that's good to know. 

The book this was based on was actually intended to be a hard look at suburban and rural America, like welfare recipients spending money on cell phones, and Vance's resentment of people who seemed to profit from their own poor behavior while he struggled as a grocery store cashier.  People with no work ethic complaining about their job's long hours and then post on social media blaming everything on the "Obama economy" - very little of that is in this movie, which chose instead to focus on his mother's attempts to marry out of poverty, and constantly backsliding during her attempts to stay clean and sober.  When you find yourself asking your own son to pee in a cup for your drug test, this could be a chance for some self-reflection and a realization of a need to make better choices, perhaps. NITPICK POINT: Wouldn't the drug testers be able to determine that Mrs. Vance's urine specimen came from a male?  

Look, I get it - I've got two parents who are turning 80 this year, and my mother's showing signs of dementia.  I can visit for a couple days here and there and try to do some tasks around the house, get the printer working again, entertain them with some movies and order  take-out meals for them, but those are stop-gap measures at best.  My father is now in charge of my mother's prescriptions and doctor's appointments, and he's never cared for another human, a pet, or even a houseplant before.  So if he goes down, I've got to drop everything and catch a train for Massachusetts right away.  But still, I've got to lead my own life, I've got jobs and responsibilities in New York, so ultimately there needs to be some decision made about their long-term care at some point.  J.D. found himself in a similar quandary, pulled in two directions by his education and career on the East Coast, and his family in Ohio (or was it Kentucky?  Honestly, that was never quite clear.).  But for God's sake, hurry up and figure it out, because watching somebody on the fence on this issue, navel-gazing through his whole upbringing, searching for an answer, was quite agonizing.  Perhaps that was the point? 

NITPICK POINT #2: If you pay for your mother's rehab, on twelve different credit cards, and then she doesn't stay there, do they refund you right away, or do you still have to pay for her treatment?  They never really answered this.  Little inconsistencies like this make me then wonder how much of this story was really true, in the style of "A Million Little Pieces". 

Be aware that Glenn Close somehow received both an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress AND a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for her role as "Mamaw" in this film - how is that even possible? 

Also starring Glenn Close (last seen in "Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her"), Gabriel Basso (last seen in "Super 8"), Haley Bennett (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Freida Pinto (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Bo Hopkins (last seen in '"The Newton Boys"), Owen Asztalos, Jesse C. Boyd (last seen in "The Highwaymen"), Stephen Kunken (last seen in "Otherhood"), Keong Sim, Morgan Gao, Ethan Suess, Jono Mitchell, Bill Kelly (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted") David Dwyer (last seen in "Selma'), Sarah Hudson, Ted Huckabee (last seen in "Are You Here"), Helen Abell (ditto), Max Barrow, Sunny Mabrey (last seen in "The New Guy"), Brett Lorenzini, Tierney Smith, Kinsley Isla Dillon (last seen in "The Mule"), Ryan Homchick, Joshua Stenvick, Bill Winkler, Chase Anderson, Amy Parrish, Ed Amatrudo, David de Vries (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Abigail Rose Cornell (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), David Jensen (last seen in "Loving"), Rohan Myers, with archive footage of Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger (last seen in "The Last Stand")

RATING: 4 out of 10 Joe Montana trading cards