Birth

Year 13, Day 317 - 11/13/21 - Movie #3,977

BEFORE: And just like that, I've reached the end of the week, and the end of the Nicole Kidman portion of the year, as she carries over from "Birthday Girl". Nicole will be back in February, if not before, and perhaps for Mother's Day as well, but that's a lot harder to predict right now.  Right now it's just seven films to Thanksgiving, and then I'll have to start thinking about how I want to start the Next Movie Year, and whether that film will connect to the start of the romance chain. 

No movie tomorrow, I've got to work all day long at a documentary film festival.  I'm finally seeing some money in my bank account again, after putting in some solid shifts at the theater.  It really took a while thanks to that month-long delay when you start a new job that pays bi-weekly, plus the H.R. department screwed up the hiring paperwork for a bunch of people, plus it took me a while to figure out the dynamics of the scheduling system.  Getting hired was just the start of the process, then I kind of had to prove that I could be counted on to show up and take on more shifts.

THE PLOT: A young boy attempts to convince a woman that he is her dead husband reborn. 

AFTER: Another tricky one tonight, it takes a while to figure out what's really taking place, they don't give you too much to go on at first, but the same can be said for "Monster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" and "Birthday Girl", too.  Hey, it's just that kind of challenging week, I guess.  If I wanted simple then I'd watch a bunch of animated movies for kids, like "Trolls World Tour" or "Tom & Jerry". 

The premise here is that Anna's husband died ten years ago while jogging - so naturally the film's moral here is "don't exercise".  Got it, I can get behind that. Ten years later, shortly after a party to celebrate her engagement to Bob, a ten year old boy shows up and claims to be her dead husband, Sean.  This sounds completely crazy at first, but the boy knows intimate details about Anna and members of her family, plus he seems to know his way around their Upper East Side apartment, their meeting place in Central Park, and other things that only a rich, entitled New York a-hole would know.  This is the only ten year old kid who enjoys cigars, champagne and caviar...yep, that's an Upper East Sider. 

The disbelieving family puts the kid to the test - Anna's brother quizzes him on details about his work history, family secrets and how to book at table at the Russian Tea Room.  But maybe they should have asked him how to drive a stick-shift, or what he remembers from calculus class, just a thought. Otherwise he's just a kid making lucky guesses about things. Anna's fiancé tracks down the boy's father, who tutors somebody in the building, but the kid sticks to his story, that he's Anna's husband, back from the dead, and he's in love with her.  (As I said last night, it's Nicole Kidman circa 2004, so come on, who's not going to try to board that train?)

He's so convincing that it puts serious doubts in Anna's mind about marrying Bob - after all, can anybody really say for sure that reincarnation isn't a thing?  Nobody really knows what happens when we die, and anybody who claims they do is full of it - but how does the system work, then, do our souls just re-appear in the body of the next baby born, or do you have to wait in line in the afterlife, or get on the list somehow?  And how many chances do you get at this life thing, if this is how it works, do you go around twice, or three times, or is there no limit?  But what about the fact that the Earth's population has always gone up, where do the new souls come from that account for the constant increase?  (I realize that Disney tried to answer these questions in "Soul", but they just made up a bunch of random junk, just like every other religion or cult has.)

The answers, of course, were there all along, if you were paying attention, but then it's pretty cagey, those scenes didn't really mean anything without proper context, which of course comes along later in the film.  Clarity almost comes too late, as Anna had almost called off her wedding and was making plans to basically elope with a small boy, to wait for him to turn 21 so she could marry him again for the first time.  But instead everybody learned something, Anna found out how gullible she could be, the kid learned how complicated love can be for adults, and everybody learned that Bob's a hothead who felt threatened by competing with a kid for his fiancée's love.  Yeah, it may be tough for them to put the pieces back together after all this. 

I feel sort of like this is the type of film I should be watching at this point in time - films that I've been aware of for YEARS, but just never seemed important enough to track down.  But after watching almost four thousand OTHER films, I'm finally catching up on all these "lost" classics, there seems like there might be enough time to get around to everything that maybe fell through the cracks before, or have been on the "someday" list for substantially long periods.  Yeah, I can maybe watch anything and everything, if you just give me enough notice.  There are maybe 12 or 13 films in the proposed February line-up that fit that bill, films like "Green Card" or "You Again" or "She's All That", where it's never been a high priority for me to watch them, but as long as they fit thematically and I can link to them, then why the hell not? 

Also starring Cameron Bright (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Danny Huston (last seen in "The Professor"), Lauren Bacall (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Alison Elliott (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Arliss Howard (last seen in "Concussion"), Michael Desautels, Anne Heche (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Peter Stormare (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Ted Levine (last seen in "The Report"), Cara Seymour (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Joe M. Chalmers, Novella Nelson, Zoe Caldwell (last seen in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"), Charles Goff, Sheila Smith, Milo Addica (last seen in "Monster's Ball"), Michael Joseph Cortese Jr., John Robert Tramutola, Jordan Lage, Libby Skala with the voice of Sean Oliver. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 horrible wallpaper designs

Birthday Girl

Year 13, Day 315 - 11/11/21 - Movie #3,976

BEFORE: I'm making rough Thanksgiving plans today, spoke to my parents in Massachusetts who are now staying in an assisted living facility, at least for the winter, possibly longer.  If they don't move back to their house in the spring, then my sister and I may have to work together to close it down in the near future, but that's a problem for another day.  Right now I just have to figure out when to drive up to visit them, probably the Tuesday before the holiday, which would give me time on Wednesday to plan and shop for some kind of holiday meal for them, most likely I can just go to a big grocery store near there and get a turkey breast, maybe a small ham and a bunch of side dishes, mostly just heat-and-eat type stuff, and I know I can at least make some stuffing and a green bean casserole, the rest is just buying some appetizers like cheese and crackers, mini hot dogs maybe, and a couple desserts like an apple pie and a birthday cake for Mom.  No big deal, with my wife's help I can put all that together in a day and make that happen for them as a Thanksgiving meal.  Still, to be safe, I'm taking time off from both jobs and I'll shut down my blog for a week as well - the Movie Year will be on break from November 23-27, then when I get back I can start thinking about wrapping up the year and planning some kind of Christmas.

Nicole Kidman carries over from "The Killing of a Sacred Deer". 

THE PLOT: A thirtysomething bank clerk from St. Albans has his small-town life exploded by the arrival of his Russian mail-order bride. 

AFTER: OK, I'm officially filing this week's programming under the heading of "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?"  You know, as in, "Somebody asks that black teen to check the corner deli for cops, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?" Or "This kid goes to the art museum with his mother, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?"  Even "This doctor forms a friendship with the son of  a patient who died, what could..." well, you get it.  All of these situations were springboards for situations that then spun out of control - maybe that's all it takes these days to inspire a movie, some screenwriter thinking up a situation and then taking it to a set of completely illogical, but quite dramatic, next steps.  Forget six-act structure, all you need is a powerful first idea, then add in a shooting or an explosion and you're basically good as the fallout should fill the next 90 minutes, maybe even two hours. 

Tonight's story is, "This British guy orders a Russian bride, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?"  Well, quite a bit really, once her cousin (who really isn't her cousin) shows up for her birthday party (and honestly, it's probably not really her birthday, either) with his friend and, you guessed it, things start to spiral out of control. Who are these other Russians, really, they claim to be actors or musicians or something, but, are they?  And one seems very comfortable around Nadia, John's Russian bride, maybe a little TOO comfortable.  And maybe a little jealous? 

The story really isn't that complex, when you reason out that John's a bank clerk who's recently been trusted with the keys to the vault, things start to make a little bit more sense in retrospect.  This film even predates the concept of "catfishing", I think, but it works along the same lines, the lonely guy with access to money was probably targeted from the jump, there are still maybe unanswered questions about whether Nadia really was available through the agency, or just targeted him at the airport when his real bride didn't show up, but it hardly matters. The concept was the same back in 2001 as it is today, if you put yourself out there, you make yourself vulnerable, and people can use your personal information against you.  

I'm under strict orders at the new job to not put any information out on social media about who's appearing at the theater, with good reason. But I can talk about it later, after it already happens - tonight I worked a screening of "Licorice Pizza", directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who also directed "Boogie Nights" and "There Will Be Blood". There were hardcore PTA fans lined up to see him, he was due to speak at a Q&A after both screenings - so even with a top-level film director, security has to be involved, and they're on hand to get him in and out of the theater, because you just never know. I mean, I respect his films and he is one of the top two Paul Andersons in the business, I can't imagine who would want to do him any harm, but then there's no such thing as being too careful. (What shocked me more was that there are still hardcore 35mm fans out there, people who showed up for this screening JUST because it was on film, not digital. Go figure, but then some people still listen to vinyl records and watch VHS tapes.)

Anyway, last night's question, raised by "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", concerned how far a parent would go to save the life of their child, or vice versa. Tonight's question concerns how far a man would go to save his fiancée, even one who doesn't speak much English and may not even be the woman he's been corresponding with - but come on, she's "2001 Nicole Kidman" hot, so probably pretty far. When he finds himself stuffing stacks of bills from a bank vault into a guitar case to pay off her cousin's friend, I guess we know the answer to that one.  Damn, man, don't throw away your whole career for a piece of tail! Then again, Nicole Kidman circa 2001, so I totally get it. Almost. 

That's it, not much to see here, honestly. There's a bit of a back-and-forth between John and the two Russians, with Nadia (not her real name) caught in the middle, and it ends like you were probably hoping it would, without taking up too much of your time. Thank you, next. 

Also starring Ben Chaplin (last seen in "Two Weeks"), Vincent Cassel (last seen in "Rio, I Love You"), Mathieu Kassovitz (last seen in "Haywire), Kate Lynn Evans, Stephen Mangan (last seen in "Billy Elliot"), Xander Armstrong (last seen in "Scoop"), Sally Phillips (last heard in "Ferdinand"), Jo McInnes, Ben Miller (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Jonathan Aris (last seen in "Churchill"), Steve Pemberton (last seen in "Match Point"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 bondage magazines

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Year 13, Day 314 - 11/10/21 - Movie #3,975

BEFORE: Nicole Kidman carries over from "The Goldfinch", and she'll be here for four films this week, which is one less than originally planned, because one of those films has to be withheld until February because it's kind of relationship-y and will be necessary then to make a crucial link in that romance chain. She can't possibly have the most appearances for this year, I think she'll end up with six instead of seven films for 2021, but that's still a good showing. 

THE PLOT: A charismatic surgeon is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behavior of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister. 

AFTER: Seriously. Effed. Up.  That's what this movie is - it comes from the same director who made "The Lobster", and that was a very weird, very twisted, effed-up movie also.  Only nothing like this, even with people being turned into lobsters and dogs, or having their brains put into lobsters and dogs and other animals, or maybe everybody pretending that people's brains were being put into lobsters and dogs, maybe the people were really being killed, it's impossible to say.  I mean, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you lost a family member who just couldn't find a way to get married, so society disposed of them, and in their place, you got a nice, friendly dog that you can pretend has your brother's brain in it or something.  Or they give you a nice big lobster that you can take care of, in place of your sister or mother, and then when that lobster dies, you get to have a nice dinner.  There's still the possibility that's what that movie was all about - right?  

But there's no question here that this is a seriously messed up movie about some seriously messed up people - so I can only conclude that it comes from one seriously messed up director.  Oh, and before I forget, SPOILER ALERT because it's going to be impossible to talk about this movie with potentially revealing some of the twists and turns in the plot, and there are a few real doozies here. 

I got the feeling really early on that something was just OFF about this movie, maybe it's because there was creepy music playing like the whole time or something - or maybe it's just that everybody just seemed a little TOO perfect, and that only seems to happen in films like "American Beauty" or "Happiness", where the film just can't wait to get to the part when it starts to reveal how messed up everybody really is, what's behind the curtain of these oh-so-perfect lives.  This surgeon has formed a relationship with a teenage boy, it seems to be as sort of a mentor to a kid who wants to get into the medical profession when he's older.  Also, the kid is a classmate of the surgeon's daughter, so it's possible that this surgeon, Steven Murphy, sees himself in this young man, or he may even be grooming this young man as a future boyfriend or husband for his teen daughter.  That would be unusual, sure, but it's certainly better than some of the other possibilities when a man takes an interest in a teen boy's development.  

But that's not the only thing that's a bit off here, Steven's wife is a doctor herself, but they work in two different sections of the medical world, he's a heart surgeon and she's some kind of eye doctor, be it an ophthalmologist or whatever, it hardly matters.  What sticks out is that when the lights go down and the kids are asleep, the couple's weird sex games kick in, and they seem to involve her pretending to be under anesthesia, or perhaps unconscious, or even dead.  Yeah, that's a bit of a warning sign - I mean, whatever floats your boat, great, but it still seems to be a bit over the line for a doctor to fantasize about having sex with an unconscious patient, if that is what's going on here. 

Then there's the kid himself, the teen that Dr. Murphy's taken an interest in, he's also a bit - well, OFF. I don't know if he's somewhere on the spectrum or just a bit of an odd duck, somebody with no social skills - though he seems to acquit himself OK socially, it's still very hard to get a read on him, like whether he's sincere and polite or if he's just learned to act that way.  He's got a smoking habit, and he seems to be getting along OK with Dr. Murphy's daughter, Kim, but he also just reminds you of that weird kid you maybe knew in high school who just couldn't get his act together, and all of his conversations were awkward to some degree.  If you can just imagine that kid you knew and maybe double up on the creep factor, you'd get Martin. (I just thank God that I can remember that kid in high school, because if you don't remember that kid, maybe you WERE that kid...)

Anyway, the whole reason the doctor has taken an interest in this kid's future seems to be connected to the fact that the boy's father died a few years earlier, and Dr. Murphy was the surgeon who operated on him after the accident, but he was unable to save him.  It's hard to say that Dr. Murphy feels responsible, because he just doesn't give off that air - plus he point blank blames the anesthesiologist for the man's death, which is only a bit odd because the anesthesiologist blames HIM.  So, umm, what really went down?  

Martin does well when he has dinner with the Murphy family, but then he invites Dr. Murphy over for dinner with him and his mother - there things do not go as well.  It's clear that Martin's mother has the hots for Dr. Murphy, but hey, he's a married man.  It sure seems like Martin would love to set up Dr. Murphy with his mother, but is that the extent of his machinations, or is there more going on here than meets the eye? 

And then, boom, there it comes, one character says something that confirmed all of my suspicions, that eerie feeling I had all along that something else was going on just below the surface of these people's perfect lives, and then suddenly nothing after that could be the same. Well, at least my instincts were spot on - I'm doing well today, one of my guesses for the identity of somebody on "The Masked Singer" got confirmed, so I guess today I'm 2 for 2. I don't really want to say much more about the plotline of "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" though - just know that I kind of called it correctly, even though two years ago when I put this on the list, I would have wagered it was a film about hunting deer, or maybe a family that also hunts deer on the side. Nope, there's no deer to be found here. 

There's a lot that then gets called into question here after this point, like what exactly is the state of Dr. Murphy's marriage to Anna?  And how far would a parent go to protect their children, and vice versa?  You sometimes hear a parent say that they would die for their kids, but would they REALLY give up their life for their kids, or is this just something that people say?  Same goes for a marriage - it's so easy to say, "I'd die without you." but then on the other hand there's that "Till death do us part" thing, and if that's your deal, aren't you always secretly hoping that the other person's going to go first? I mean, just being honest, which way works out better for you?  And if you really care about your parents, like would you give them a kidney or part of your liver if it kept them alive a little longer?  There's no right or wrong answer here, these are just thought experiments so I can raise questions pertinent to this film without coming out and giving it all away.  

There's a strong connection here to "The Goldfinch", as both films suggest that the loss of a parent could drive somebody to act in unusual ways - without getting too into details about the different stages of grief, losing his mother led Theo in "The Goldfinch" to steal a painting.  OK, maybe it's not a direct or even logical connection, but that's where the film has chosen to plant its flag - quite similarly, "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" suggests that the loss of his father has turned Martin into something of a sociopath, he's incapable of empathy or he refuses to be aware of how his actions could harm another person. I may not agree with this as a story device, but in both cases, it's where we find ourselves. 

Does this create a perfect story?  No, of course not - but there's still a chance that the actions that follow are meant to be seen as metaphors rather than real occurrences, because some are just too gruesome to even describe.  Again, seriously effed up, but I wonder if that's somehow the point, that a filmmaker challenged himself to take the story to places where one has never been before, actions and consequences that are larger and more powerful than those depicted before, and then somehow once we get there, to these very shocking places, the fact that they were possible to reach makes them somehow not so shocking?  Wait, that can't be right, can it? 

I'm reminded of the Old Testament here, something that the wise king Solomon allegedly did when there were two women each claiming that a child was theirs, though one was really the mother of a child that had died. Solomon's solution was to offer to cut the baby in two, and each woman would be awarded half. One mother was fine with that ruling, and the other one offered to give up her claim to the child, as long as it was not killed - Solomon thus determined that the second mother was the true mother, because she genuinely cared for the child's life more than her own happiness.  Who knows if this story ever really took place, because there are versions of it in several cultures, it's possibly just a metaphor - but it illustrates a point. "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" just shows us what can happen when the world is full of people who act like the first mother, I guess, who just put their own concerns and pleasure before everything else.  

(You know, like when somebody refuses to wear a mask because it's uncomfortable or inconvenient, and just doesn't give two shits about the other people they could spread a deadly virus to, even members of their OWN FAMILY.  Just saying.  This film was released in 2017, well before the pandemic, but maybe there are a few lessons here about personal sacrifices that need to be made for the common good?). 

Yeah, I've got plenty of NITPICK POINTS here, but I can't really get into them without giving away all the twists and turns in the plot.  The biggest one is how the doctors can't really figure out what's wrong with the kids, but wouldn't there be some kind of checklist of the types of things that they should check for?  Why is everyone in the film so bad at medicine?  For that matter, why doesn't anybody seem willing or able to call the police when bad things happen?  Does this family live in a part of the U.S. where the police have been defunded, or 9-1-1 doesn't work? 

Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "Dumbo" (2019)), Barry Keoghan (last seen in "Dunkirk"), Raffey Cassidy (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Sunny Suljic (last seen in "The House with a Clock in Its Walls"), Alicia Silverstone (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Bill Camp (last seen in "Wildlife"), Barry G. Bernson, Herb Caillouet, Denise Dal Vera (last seen in "The Next Three Days"), Drew Logan, with archive footage of Bill Murray (last seen in "Zappa"), Andie MacDowell (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"). 

RATING: I seriously do not know how to rate this film.  For power and intensity and maybe even metaphor, it's like a 6, maybe even a 7.  But for being deeply dark and disturbing and for showing me things that I didn't really want to see, things I didn't even know could be seen, I feel like it deserves a 3 or a 4, because the scale is based on enjoyment, at the end of the day.  And I did NOT enjoy this, but still somehow I respect it, because it does have stones to go where it went.  So I don't know, maybe it's a cumulative wash and I give it a 5?  But not your typical 5, where a film is just kind of blah and THERE, this one swung for the fences and tried to be about something, just not something that was enjoyable.

The Goldfinch

Year 13, Day 313 - 11/9/21 - Movie #3,974

BEFORE: Between my two jobs, my November calendar is really starting to fill up - I'm still fairly sure I can get the November films watched before Thanksgiving if I just keep chipping away at it.  Who needs to sleep, anyhow? There's a family party this coming Saturday, so it's only Tuesday, and my weekend's booked up already. Jeez, remember last year when everything was closed, and the NY Marathon was scrubbed, Thanksgiving was a wash-out and almost nobody showed up for Black Friday?  You'd think there was a pandemic or something - anyway, people are going to party twice as hard this year, just to make up for last year, I suspect. So, bring it on, I guess?  

I just had one gig cancel next week, so there you go, I can sleep next Tuesday. Looking forward to it. Until then, on with the countdown, because the hits don't stop until we reach the top, or Movie #4,000, which is just 26 films away. Jeffrey Wright carries over from "Monster" - see, I told you we'd circle back around to him. 

THE PLOT: A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a rush of panic, he steals "The Goldfinch", a painting that eventually draws him into a world of crime. 

AFTER: In the before-times, back when I used to manage two animation studios instead of one, I had access to a giant library of Academy screeners from the past several years. This is how the major studios used to make sure that all the voters saw their film, they'd actually MAIL OUT a DVD (sometimes with a $10 bill inside and a little Post-it that read, "WHOOPS! How did THAT get in there?"), only that really wasn't a GREAT copy of the film, because every five minutes the movie would have "FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION" on the screen as a sub-title, just to remind you that this gift came with an implied promise of recompensation, that you then had to vote for this film, or at least THINK about voting for this film. I can tell you, having worked for TWO Academy members at the same time, that they can get drunk with power, and spoiled by having so many DVDs arrive in the mail between October and February - it's a bit like Netflix (old Netflix) that you don't have to pay for.  

The Academy has since migrated from copying OLD Netflix to copying NEW Netflix, most eligible films are now available on the Academy's streaming site, since there haven't been official in-person Academy or guild screenings in a while, but slowly, ever so slowly, they're coming back. I've worked a few of them, like "Passing" and "The Harder They Fall" over the past two weeks, and if the NYC COVID statistics keep dropping, they may be back in full force in January. But before all this craziness, I had access to about 10 years of Academy screeners for a while, because my boss at the time saved ALL of them, even the ones she didn't watch. I'd managed to look through them all and subtly move all the ones I hadn't seen and WANTED to see over to one particular section of the studio.  Hundreds of DVDs, and I took it upon myself to organize them into two piles - "SEEN IT or DON'T CARE" and "HAVE NOT SEEN, WOULD LIKE TO". By the time the pandemic hit, I'd borrowed enough of them to get that all-important second section down to just 30 or 40 films.  

Since then, most of those films have turned up on cable, or on one streaming service or another, so I've managed to keep chipping away at that list, and after watching "Mudbound" this past week, it's down to just 12 - 11 after today's film. Some of these films are just plain impossible to link to - "Roma", "I Lost My Body" and "The Breadwinner", for example, others just haven't been top priority for me - like "The Farewell", "The Two Popes" and "Faces Places". I feel like maybe I will get to them if I can, but if I don't, it's because there are 300 or 400 other films I've determined to be more pressing.  There's a whole new calendar year coming, though - and right now January's completely wide open, so we'll see what 2022 brings. 

SPOILER ALERT for "The Goldfinch", if you don't want to know about the plot, please turn back now, because I think there's no way to talk about this without giving some stuff away.  

Anyway, "The Goldfinch" wants so badly to position itself as a mystery, only it tells us the identity of the art thief right away - so, umm, how much of a mystery could it possibly be? This kid, Theo, was in the museum with his utterly perfect mother at the time of a terrorist attack, and after surviving the bombing (apparently a lot of people didn't), he naturally does what anybody would do in the aftermath of a tragedy, he steals a painting. Umm, OK? Me, I think I'd thank my lucky stars for being alive, maybe go buy a lottery ticket or something, but this kid steals a painting. Is this a thing, or did the author go out of her way to think, "Hmm, what's the most unlikely thing I can have this kid do at this exact point in time?" The kid steals a painting, just because his mother liked it so much, I get that, but ewww, it's been on the FLOOR after a bombing, and it's all covered in dirt and dust and who knows what else?  

There's also a man who survived the bombing, at least for a while, though he's clearly out of his head and he encourages Theo to take the painting, for some reason. He also gives Theo his ring and tells him the name of the antique shop that he co-owns, and Theo's supposed to bring the ring to the shop, for some reason. Looking back on it, I think maybe this guy wanted Theo to steal the painting and bring it to the antique shop, because KA-CHING, only Theo totally screwed this up and kept the painting for himself? This is only one instance of a few maddening things about this film, where a lot of people do seemingly random things for seemingly no reasons. Again, it's like some author said, "You know what, motivations are boring. It's much more interesting if people just DID stuff and we'll sort out connections and motivations later."  Umm, no, you'd better sort that shit out NOW or we're going to have problems.  

The film then moves forward via a split-timeline format, one timeline follows young Theo and the other follows adult Theo, and we toggle between the two quite liberally. Sometimes the young Theo scene is a nightmare or flashback being had by adult Theo, but honestly, that feels like a big narrative cheat. As we move forward in our daily lives, we don't dream about what happened to us when we were 11 years old one night, and then the next night, we remember something that happened to us at age 12, that's not how memory works. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want this film to jump around Theo's teen years randomly, either, but this is equally not how memory or storytelling is supposed to work.  

I will admit, however, that this MAY be the best way to slowly reveal a set of unstated secrets and yet-to-be revealed events, and their effects, because as each timeline slowly unfolds, we gradually learn more about the effects the past has had on the future. That's the way a lot of people tell stories now, it's become sort of textbook, but it's also getting very trite, very quickly. It just makes me long for the days where stories started at the beginning and ended at the end, if you know what I mean - but so many authors and filmmakers have pulled this trick again and again that it's become trendy, almost expected. You can pull on that thread only so many times before the whole sweater unravels, if you ask me.  

The plan here was to cast actors as the young versions of key characters, and then cast other actors to play those same characters as adults, and ideally those actors should LOOK a bit like each other, only that never really truly works out. Sometimes all you need is two actresses with the same shade of red hair, and OK, I'm willing to go along for that ride.  But does young Theo look like he's going to grow up and look like adult Theo? Umm, not really, no - they both wear glasses, but is that really enough? Are you saying all men with glasses look alike, because that's not the case. I found that when adult Theo walked into a room to interact with someone he hadn't seen in 10 years, he was immediately recognized, and I just doubt that would be the case. Look, he could confirm his identity in 10 seconds, all he has to say is "It's me, Theo", but then we'd somehow lose the wonderment that comes from the recognition of the other character - sorry, I'm just not buying it. 

The worst offense here is probably the two distinct looks of the young Boris and the adult Boris, they look nothing alike. I heard that only your nose and ears keep growing larger after you become an adult, so how is adult Boris' nose SMALLER? Did he get a nose-job? Was he in an accident?  Already I've thought about this much more than anyone working on this film did, so did this film have two casting directors that just didn't communicate with each other, or one who ended up shrugging his shoulders and saying, "You know what? It's good enough, nobody really cares about this..."

Next there's the problem of Theo as a protagonist - again, don't forget he was an art thief at a very young age, but there are so many other reasons I find it hard to root for him...sure, he SEEMS like a decent, innocent sort, but the camera sees all, tells all - when it wants to, anyway, and so when we learn that young Theo's been drinking, taking drugs, well, then maybe I'm liking him a little bit less, I don't know. What happened to that innocent kid I thought I knew? Oh, right, the explosion thing. Look, tragedies happen to everybody, but they don't turn everybody into bad people, that's not the way things work. We still have free will, even the people who lost family members during 9/11 or during the pandemic still had to soldier on, and I think many of them continued to be honest and upright folks. You can't just blame bad behavior on the inability to deal with the tragedies that come your way, you still have to take responsibility for your actions, right?  

Adult Theo tries to get something going with Pippa, a girl who was also damaged by the explosion, and clearly she's got feelings for Theo somewhere, but she's already married to somebody in the U.K. by the time Theo makes his move. Sure, coincidence happens, and we can take advantage of those coincidences if we want, we can even tell us that some force bigger than we can understand - God, fate, karma - may have had a hand in pushing people together.  But then there's an even bigger force at work - chaos, entropy, Satan or just plain old bad luck - and that can undo the good work of coincidence if we allow it to. 

Besides, another relationship is always just around the corner, if one falls through, just find another (a.k.a. if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with) so Theo moves on to Kitsey Barbour, the daughter from the family that took him in after the tragedy. They're engaged, but Theo finds out before the wedding that she's been seeing another man - which is technically not cheating, because they're not married yet, except that it's totally cheating. UNLESS Theo forgot to have the conversation with her about being exclusive, which if he did, that's sort of on him. Anyway, I get the feeling that Theo might rather be with her mother (or was that just me?) or maybe even with Boris (again, just me?). Look, if that's the case, Theo, just drop Kitsey and go for it, I don't know with whom, just pick one. 

Bottom line, this is an epic story that spans a decade and travels across the country and over to Europe, but ultimately feels like it didn't really go anywhere, and it's filled with characters I didn't really care about, played by actors who you THINK you might have seen before in something else, but for most of them, it turns out you haven't. (Except for the five or six bankable stars, they all just sort of look like that other actor you know from that show...). And who the heck was I supposed to root for here, I'm still not sure - and was this the best possible outcome, given the premise? That's very, very hard to tell, because they really muddied up those waters here. 

The only mystery here seems to be, why did I spend two hours plus on watching this movie, an investment of my time that didn't really get me much in return. Did I miss something here, or was there not much here to get? Like Boris said, "Good things, bad things, does it even matter?"  What the frick is the big deal about this painting, anyway, it's just a damn bird, who even cares?  If it were the Mona Lisa or a Warhol or something I could maybe get behind this, but at the end of the day, it's just a stupid little painting about a bird. I'm begging, just give me one reason to care about it. Nothing? Yeah, didn't think so.

Also starring Ansel Elgort (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Oakes Fegley (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Prom"), Luke Wilson (last seen in "Scream 2"), Sarah Paulson (last seen in "Blue Jay"), Willa Fitzgerald, Aneurin Barnard (last seen in "Dunkirk"), Finn Wolfhard (last seen in "It Chapter Two"), Ashleigh Cummings, Aimee Laurence, Robert Joy (last seen in "Atlantic City"), Boyd Gaines (last seen in "Heartbreak Ridge"), Carly Connors, Luke Kleintank (last seen in "Midway" (2019)), Hailey Wist, Ryan Foust, Jack DiFalco, Austin Weyant, Collin Shea Schirmacher, Denis O'Hare (last seen in "Late Night"), Joey Slotnick (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Gordon Winarick, Nicky Torchia, James Donahower, Peter Jacobson (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Caroline Day (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Kevin Owen McDonald, Matteo van der Grijn, Mark Kingsford, Bill Barberis, Milan Sekeris, Sandy Lopez, Misha Osherovich, Harry Smith, Angela Cove, Alton Fitzgerald White, Don Castro (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Robert Turano, Pamela Dunlap (last seen in "Nick of Time").

RATING: 4 out of 10 cabinet veneer samples

Monster (2018)

Year 13, Day 312 - 11/8/21 - Movie #3,973

BEFORE: Back from two semi-late nights working at the movie theater, and I'm back on Netflix tonight with a film that was super-trending there about two months ago, which was about when I put together my last chain for the year, the one that's going to get me from Halloween to Christmas.  So naturally it made sense at the time to include this one, but I haven't heard much about it lately, so the heat for it may have cooled a little bit.  Anyway it's time to find out why it was trending in the first place - or maybe it was just new to Netflix. 

Kelvin Harrison Jr. carries over from "The High Note". 

THE PLOT: A smart, likeable 17-year-old film student from Harlem sees his world turned upside down when he's charged with a murder. We follow his dramatic journey through a complex legal battle. 

AFTER: This is a cagey one, naturally with any court-based drama you're not going to know the verdict until the very end, but this film jumps around in time so much that the audience doesn't even know if the lead character is guilty or innocent until some time after THAT.  I should hate this one for excessive time-jumping, this non-linear narrative thing really gets on my nerves if I see it in more than one film in a week.  But since this is also a film about a film student, whose teacher tells him that every film is a complex series of choices, which shot to cut to next, how long that shot's going to be, and all of those choices influence the sensory experience, the mood of the film, and the experience of that other reality - it's almost apologetic in tone here, explaining that this film is just a series of shots, short segments that have been curated to produce a specific overall conclusion, really, that's just the language of film.  

The film teacher also shows "Rashomon" to his class, and we therefore learn that the truth can change from person to person, depending on what they saw, or what they believed they saw, or what they ate for breakfast that day.  That's film, but it's also justice, which hangs on both reliable and unreliable witnesses, attorneys that may be bending the truth or not allowing certain evidence into court, or filing motions to supress, etc. and then of course there's the jury, and everything could depend on who and what those 12 people believe.  I should hate that "Rashomon" is used to drive this point home, because it feels like a cheat, a dirty filmmaking trick.  What is an event witnessed by a few, describe to many but a complex, changing thing that can be re-interpreted and therefore, doesn't reality greatly depend on one's point of view?  

Then again - this teen accused of murder is a film student, and take it from me, you just can't trust them.  I used to be one myself, only I wasn't very good at it - I didn't pull a diva director move when my errant crew member never showed up for my shoots, I just went ahead and made the films by myself.  I COULD have gotten that guy in trouble for not showing up, if I'd snitched to the instructor maybe he would have failed that class, not received his degree from NYU and then the world would have been spared a few terrible Hollywood movies ("The Family Man", "Rush Hour 3" and "X-Men: The Last Stand") - only I didn't do that, as always I just didn't want to make any trouble, I just wanted to put my head down and get my work done - so clearly I didn't have the stones to be a big-time director.

Anyway, this kid, Steve Harmon, makes a few friends in his Harlem neighborhood, and these guys are bad news - worse than film students, even.  Steve stands accused of acting as a lookout for a robbery gone bad, which leads to a murder charge.  It's possibly a huge NITPICK POINT here, because from my extensive legal experience watching episodes of "Law & Order", wouldn't it make more sense to charge Steve as an accessory to murder, rather than murder itself?  That's probably an easier charge to make stick, with a reduced sentence most likely - but Steve maintains his evidence and works closely with his attorney to go over his testimony and act in ways that will, ideally, lead the jury to clear him of the charges.  

Also on trial are James King and Richard "Bobo" Evans, and slowly, as the trial progresses, and winds its way through the past and the present, the details of the day in question slowly come to light.  One witness says she saw Steve signal the other defendants, but Steve says he was just putting his arm up to shield his face from the sun.  Steve's testimony claims that it was a hot day and he just went into the store to get a cold beverage - but how do we know he's telling the truth, how does anybody ever know what's going on in someone else's mind?  It's a tough neighborhood, after all, and just because somebody's a film student, that doesn't mean that they AREN'T mixed up with criminals or running with a gang.  People can be more than one thing, after all. 

Overall I'm just thinking about how much manipulation was used here, which again stems from the deliberate withholding of information until deemed necessary, this is exacerbated by the time-jumping, non-linear nature of the film to deliberately set up the situation where we the audience can't determine the lead character's guilt or innocence.  A weird sort of balancing point is achieved if you believe that the trial's verdict could go either way, and the same could be said for Steve's guilt or innocence - and those are potentially two distinct, different things.  You the viewer are forced to maybe come to terms with some things in your own mind, be that based on race or class or whatever, and then you've got to be comfortable with the conclusions that you come to.  I sort of see WHY of telling the story this way, but I'm still not sold on the HOW. Does that make sense? 

BUT I think I see why this film was so popular earlier this year, a few months (?) back - this film premiered in at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018, but I can't find any box office information, so perhaps it was never released theatrically?  Then it finally got a release on Netflix in May 2021, so really, that was the first chance for most people to see it - that might explain things. 

Also starring Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Cats"), Jeffrey Wright (last seen in "Broken City"), Jennifer Ehle (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Tim Blake Nelson (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Rakim "A$AP Rocky" Mayers (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Nasir "Nas" Jones (ditto), Paul Ben-Victor (last seen in "The Irishman"), John David Washington (last seen in "Tenet"), Jharrel Jerome (last seen in "Moonlight"), Dorian Missick (last seen in "Freedomland"), Willie C. Carpenter (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Rege Lewis, Jonny Coyne (last seen in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"), Lovie Simone, Liam Obergfoll, Mikey Madison (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Nyleek Moore, Roberto Lopez, Amanda Crown, Danny Henriquez (last seen in "Barry"), Teresa Avia Lim, Jeremy Dash, Joel Van Liew, Manuel Joaquin Santiago, Adriana Ducassi, Mitch Roberson, Vincent Veloso.

RATING: 5 out of 10 supervised family visits