Lucky Number Slevin

Year 13, Day 337 - 12/3/21 - Movie #3,989

BEFORE: I worked at an advance screening of "West Side Story" last night, just for a few hours, but I have to get my shifts in where I can, because I think in about a week there won't be very many screenings, because of the holiday season. I think everybody out there is going to go completely nuts for Christmas this year, because they were denied a real holiday last year.  That's not how things work, you don't get double-Christmas this year because of the pandemic, the fact that you couldn't see visit your family last year maybe sucked, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to double down this time around!  I got a taste of Christmas at home in New York, and I don't know, it seemed a lot calmer than going to visit my parents and cooking a giant meal and sitting around and unwrapping gifts together, all that pressure.  Who needs it?  But I think I'm probably in the minority here. 

Ben Kingsley carries over again from "Locked Down". That's enough Ben Kingsley for this year, but he should be back in January if my plans hold up.  It's funny, I could have watched "West Side Story" and linked to it next, via Corey Stoll - but I'm not sure where I'd go after that, plus I have my plan in place to get me to Christmas in just 11 films, and I don't want to mess that up. 

THE PLOT: A case of mistaken identity lands Slevin into the middle of a war being plotted by two of the city's most rival crime bosses.  Under constant surveillance by Detective Brikowski and assassin Goodkat, he must get them before they get him. 

AFTER: Well, see, this is just clearly a movie that was trying WAY too hard.  It wanted to be "Pulp Fiction" so bad that it fell victim to copycat syndrome, somebody felt that if they could just find a story twisty enough, so twisty that the plot would loop around and fold back in upon itself a at the end, with a lot of violence along the way, plus cast Bruce Willis as a man looking for redemption, people would love it, just like they love "Pulp Fiction". Sorry, it's just not that easy.  Tarantino learned over several films how to withhold important information and only release it in little bits when necessary, so the viewer assembles the whole story over the length of the film, but there's something of an art to it, just automatically following the pattern doesn't always get you there, if "there" is something akin to masterpiece status.  

At the start, we're shown a bunch of rather confusing images - a bunch of gangsters (we presume) taken down in rapid succession.  Two bookies (we learn their names later, it's not that important at first) also shot and killed, and then an man strikes up a conversation with another man in an airport, tells him a story about a gambler who bet too big and was killed by bookies, then after telling the story, the first man performs a "Kansas City Shuffle" and kills the second man.  Why?  Where does this fit in the grand scheme of things, and what's the connection to the killing of those two bookies?  Ah, all in good time. 

We then catch up with Slevin, a man who's recently come to New York after he found his girlfriend in bed with another man.  He came to crash with his friend, Nick Fisher, but as he tells Lindsey, the lady who lives across the hall, shortly after arriving in town he got mugged, losing his I.D. and cash, but for some reason, not his watch.  Nobody can find Nick Fisher, which is a bad sign, but fortunately he left the apartment door open for Nick.  But then two goons come around looking for Nick, and they find Slevin instead - since their orders are to bring the person from THAT apartment to see The Boss, that's what they do.  The Boss naturally assumes that this Slevin is Nick Fisher, despite his claim to not be Nick - you know, that's exactly what Nick would say, that he's not Nick. So The Boss says that Nick owes somebody who owes him, meaning Nick owes him a lot of money.  But instead he'll allow Slevin/Not Nick to work off the debt, all he needs to do is kill the son of The Boss' rival, The Rabbi, since the Rabbi had HIS son killed.  (Ah, that stuff from the start of the film is important, after all!)

Then Slevin/Not Nick gets called before the Rabbi, too - apparently Nick owed money to BOTH crime bosses, yeah, that totally sounds like a Nick move.  Then there are two cops who start following Slevin around, because they know he's Not Nick, but they don't know who we IS, and they also want to know who he's working for, and what his connection is to that assassin, Mr. Goodkat, the guy who kills people in airports mid-converation.  Instead of killing the son of The Rabbi, Slevin/Not Nick takes a different approach, he talks to him in the men's room and arranges a date with him.  Then when he shows up for the date, having gained his trust, of course THEN he shoots him.  I knew the dating scene was tough out there, but this seems like a bit much.  

My problem here is two-fold, first that the film's withholding information about who is who and what all their connections to each other are gets annoying pretty quickly, plus it makes every single transaction between two people about five times more complicated than it needs to be.  I'm not saying that things don't make sense once all of the truths are revealed, it probably does, but it took such a LOOONG time getting there, because the plot never charts a direct course there, or anywhere, it's just one diversion after another.  Sometimes these diversions turn out to be very important, other times, not so much.  If anything it felt a bit like the most recent season of "Fargo", which could have wrapped up the storyline in about three episodes after setting up the premise, only then how would they fill up the rest of the picture?  

The second problem is that the second half of the films delights in explaining how everything we were told in the first half isn't really true.  OK, so then WHY did you tell me all that stuff, if you were only going to remove it quickly later, I don't really enjoy having the rug pulled out from under me, that makes it very difficult to stay upright.  Know what I mean?  Sure, I could point out that there are probably a few too many characters, and at least one too many reversals, but I think the main problem is that it keeps the audience in the dark just a little too long, really tried to be mysterious and obtuse about everything, so you have to watch it a second time just to figure out what was really happening from the start.  It didn't HAVE to be that way, I maintain that not everything needs to be this difficult. 

Also starring Josh Hartnett (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Bruce Willis (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Lucy Liu (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Spielberg"), Michael Rubenfeld (last seen in "The Recruit"), Peter Outerbridge (last seen in "Mission to Mars"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Kevin Chamberlin (last seen in "The Prom"), Dorian Missick (last seen in "Monster"), Mykelti Williamson (last seen in "Streets of Fire"), Scott Gibson (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Daniel Kash, Dmitry Chepovetsky, Sam Jaeger, Danny Aiello (last seen in "Little Italy"), Gerry Mendicino (ditto), Oliver Davis, Corey Stoll (last seen in "The Seagull"), Howard Jerome, J.D. Jackson, Jennifer Miller, Sebastien Roberts, Robert Forster (last seen in "Middle Men"), Shira Leigh, Janet Lane, Nicholas Rice, Bernard Kay, Sam Stone, Darren Marsman, Diego Klattenhoff (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), Rick Bramucci, Rami Posner, Victoria Barkoff, Victoria Fodor, Barbara Barnes-Hopkins, Judy Sinclair (last seen in "Don't Say a Word"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 actors who played Blofeld

Locked Down

Year 13, Day 336 - 12/2/21 - Movie #3,988

BEFORE: Ben Kingsley carries over from "Operation Finale".  I know, you'd think that if I had a choice between this film and "Shang-Chi", naturally I should gravitate toward the Marvel movie and watch that one instead, except I have a few reasons. #1 is Awkwafina, I think I've been pretty open about the fact that I just don't think she can act, and that makes every movie she's in worse. Secondly, I've already figured out that I can link to "Shang-Chi" in January from the new "Spider-Man" movie, so right now, that's the plan. 

But also, from what I've heard, this is a pandemic-themed movie, and there just aren't many of those, not yet.  There are outbreak movies and apocalyptic zombie-virus movies, but very few movies made ABOUT the pandemic, also made DURING the pandemic.  The only other one that I know of is an animated film that I worked on, currently working its way through the Oscar eligibility process, and I'm helping all I can with that. I feel close to this one because I had a small hand in the production - I came up with the title, "Demi's Panic", which is a loose anagram for the word "pandemics" (OK, so it's got an extra "i" in there, so sue me.). I thought this might subtly convey the pandemic without coming right out and saying it, like, oh, I don't know, "Locked Down". ("Locked Down" might have been one of my 50 or so title suggestions, I don't remember.). 

Anyway, that animated short is all about what a young Latina woman working in NY goes through during the early days of the pandemic, when everybody was on edge and unsure what to do, how to protect themselves, how to start working from home and avoid other people, and mourn the loss of a loved one, and what all that does to her mental state.  We had a week-long qualifying screening in San Francisco in October, and then I filled out all of the Oscars paperwork (and there's quite a bit) so now we're hoping the film makes the "short list" of 15 films, and the short films branch votes on this in about a week.  Now I'm dealing with getting an ad approved that we're going to e-mail out to the branch voters.  We can't do this ourselves, we have to hire one of three approved companies to do this.  So the fun continues...

THE PLOT: A couple attempts a high-risk, high-stakes jewelry heist at a department store.

AFTER: Before I close the book on 2021, which I can't wait to do, let's get the damn pandemic out of the way, and honestly I want nothing more for it to be over, and then we can never speak of it again. Only that's just not the way it's going to work - much like Sept. 11, 2001, the whole COVID-19 thing has changed us all, in ways that we couldn't have anticipated. Jobs are different, relationships are different, how we think about our own health is different, politics are different (though they never should have been involved in the first place) and we can't go back.  We may WANT to go back to the before-times, but we can't and we shouldn't.  As Quiet Riot said, "Well, now you're here, there's no way back."  

Filmmaking is going to be different, too, though I don't think we've really seen the full effects yet, because like everything else, filmmaking was slowed down or shut down for months.  I imagine that studios were clearing old films off of their shelves for release, but the theaters weren't even open, so everything just got dumped to streaming there for a while, maybe after limited releases.  (The Oscars are different, too, they're still letting streaming films qualify, this year because theaters were shut down for months and months.). And then when filmmaking and TV production finally resumed, there were new rules, much testing, and a lot of mini-shutdowns whenever an actor tested positive.  Talk shows had no live audiences, so actors were promoting their projects via Zoom calls, and we only JUST got talk shows and Broadway performances back a couple months ago.  

Like nearly everyone else, my life got upended in several ways. I lost one job, but took on two new ones this year (not at the same time) and got back into film exhibition, not just production. As a result of that, I started working odd hours, learned some new tasks, and met new co-workers and some friends along that new path. My marriage is still solid, but that also feels like it might have changed or mutated along the way.  We've been together a long time, but quarantining at home is a very intense form of together, I see that now.  In the before-times we both had jobs outside of home, where we both spent the better part of our time, then we'd reconnect on the weekends, dine out on Friday night or take little road trips to Atlantic City a few times a year.  All of that went away as of April 2020, we couldn't go anywhere, and even if we could, there was no place to GO. Restaurants closed, airlines nearly shut down, all vacation plans on hold - we had a Florida trip planned for late April 2020, and it just didn't happen. We got credit for those flights we didn't take, and cashed the credit in for a trip to Chicago in June 2021, I don't think we'd go to (ugh) Florida now even if you paid us to. 

This film "Locked Down" kind of gets all of that, man - we meet Paxton and Linda in the early days of the pandemic, they're still living together but no longer functioning as a couple.  It's not just the pandemic, they refer to some "Christmas incident", so apparently their relationship's been on life support for some time, just maybe neither one was willing to pull the trigger and split, and now it's too late, because the U.K. is under lockdown and they're forced to quarantine together.  I'm sure this happened to somebody out there, but I have a feeling that maybe once you know it's over and you realize it's unhealthy to keep living together, you may do whatever it takes to get out, even rent another apartment a block away, just to get some peace of mind. I heard about people starting relationships a few weeks before lockdown and then quickly deciding to move in together, so you have to figure at least some of those people regretted that decision in short order, right? 

Thankfully, it's a big flat, like several stories, so they can maintain separate bedrooms as they make plans to separate as soon as the lockdown order is lifted.  They're still cordial to each other, at least for a while, before the tensions of their incarceration sink in, and the quirks of their roommate, which maybe they once found endearing, are suddenly quite annoying.  Paxton wants to try his hand at baking bread, but Linda begs him not to. (My wife took up baking, too, but she did so before the pandemic hit - and I pledged to eat all her mistakes, because that's the kind of guy I am.). Paxton wants to sell his motorcycle, because there's no place to drive to, but Linda secretly is the buyer, and she wants to give it back to him as a parting gift, if they ever get around to actually parting. 

This is textbook relationship stuff, of a sort - when they first get together, romantic partners recognize all the things they have in common, but when they're ready to separate, they highlight all of their differences.  Or maybe realizing their differences leads to the separation, it's tough to say - but the long-lasting romantic partners tend to reach this sort of equilibrium of understanding, where they share certain things, and celebrate those things, but also realize that they're two different people in other ways, and have learned to accept this as well.  It's notable that Linda is a CEO of a tech/entertainment/promotions (?) company, and has never told one co-worker that she's in a relationship. Paxton is a lorry (van) driver, who's having trouble getting promoted because of a past criminal record - so all of the reasons why Linda is keeping her relationship secret seem to be tied to race or class or both, and that's sort of not OK.  This kind of makes her a horrible person, and even if she's aware of this, it still doesn't excuse it. 

BUT, this is something of a plot point, because the shutdown forces London's department stores to close, and even though shopping is at a standstill, there's a ton of merchandise that needs to be moved into storage. Promotional companies that have displays need to remove them, and since Linda used to work at Harrod's, and has just been forced to lay off most of her staff, it's up to her as CEO to get the valuable jewelry being displayed in the store safely transported out.  Meanwhile, there's a call for available truck drivers to transport all this stuff to the airport, and Paxton's boss needs drivers with clean records, so he offers Paxton work, under an assumed name, to help clear out several stores.

YES, it is a major, major coincidence that Linda needs to have valuable merchandise removed from Harrod's, and that her former romantic partner and still current roommate would be assigned as her van driver under another name.  But that's what sparks the plot here, Linda realizes that the diamond on loan to them needs to be shipped to storage, that its new owner is a horrible horrible dictator, and that there's also a replica diamond in the display that could easily be switched out for the real one, without anyone realizing it for months. There are several NITPICK POINTS here for sure, such as if they had a replica diamond to put on display, why did the real one need to be in the store at all?  It could have stayed in a vault somewhere and the Harrod's customers would never have known the difference.  

Also, someone in Paxton's company, someone who hates him, has given him a fake name that's the same as a famous author.  Paxton's sure this will blow his cover, because every guard who checks it's going to realize it's a phony name.  Hmm, OK, but N.P. 2, there are all kinds of people who share their name with famous people, past or present - it's not unheard of. There are billions of people in this world, so chances are you can probably find another George Clooney or another Richard Nixon or another Alfred Hitchcock somewhere in the world. How many George Washingtons are there, alive, right now?  Probably a bunch of them.  So a name on a fake I.D. isn't automatically suspicious, JUST because it's also the name of a famous person.  

Paxton and Linda spend a fair amount of time debating whether stealing a diamond is OK - perhaps too much time debating it.  You may find yourself screaming at the screen here, like come on, either steal the diamond or don't steal the diamond, just, please, stop trying to justify it. They want to give 1/3 of the value to the National Health Service, which is admirable, especially during a pandemic, but you can't really erase a bad thing just by doing a different good thing, that's not how karma works. What they should be thinking about is whether stealing a diamond together is going to put enough spark back into their relationship to consider staying together a little longer.  Who's to say?  Maybe they both got boring together, and that's why they're both bored, and this could change their lives' course.  Maybe not, but isn't that worth a shot? 

Before their opportunity to steal the diamond, the couple takes a walk through Harrod's food court, helping themselves to expensive caviar, champagne, truffles and other costly items, essentially creating the world's most valuable rooftop picnic.  Linda points out that the items are all going to be donated to food pantries - so now they're not stealing from the rich, they're stealing food from the poor.  This is probably a narrative mistake, because I liked them a little less after this.  

Still, the film was made during London's COVID restrictions, and shot in only 18 days, so perhaps some concessions need to be made.  The film made extensive use of Zoom calls, actor's playing Linda's co-workers and Paxton's half-brother and sister-in-law thus could dial in from anywhere.  The drive to continue to make movies, even under near-impossible conditions, prevailed over any difficulties, so I'm inclined to be a little lenient in my scoring tonight.  They got some of the pandemic details right, even though they seem wrong - but that's the way things were in the early days of 2020, we all got masks wrong at the start.  Remember at first they told us that we needed to wear masks outside, but we could take them off once we got home?  Yeah, that was almost 100% backwards, it's inside where the virus is much more transmissible, and out in the fresh air, the chance of catching COVID is greatly reduced.  So we should have been wearing masks INSIDE from the start, and outside the danger was never really that great, unless someone was right up in your face. Live and learn, I guess. 

Also starring Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Stephen Merchant (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Mindy Kaling (last seen in "Late Night"), Lucy Boynton (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Dulé Hill (last seen in "Holes"), Jazmyn Simon, Ben Stiller (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Claes Bang (last seen in "The Burnt Orange Heresy"), Sam Spruell (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), Frances Ruffelle, Katie Leung (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), Bobby Schofield (last seen in "The Catcher Was a Spy"), Tallulah Grieve, Dan Ball, Eva Röse, Shereen Gray, Marek Larwood, Anna Behne, Andreas Grant, Alexandra Reimer-Duffy

RATING: 6 out of 10 banging saucepans

Operation Finale

Year 13, Day 335 - 12/1/21 - Movie #3,987

BEFORE: December is here, I'm in the home stretch.  Here are the format stats for the films of November: 

7 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Broken City, Contraband, The High Note, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Best of Enemies, Peppermint, Jack Goes Boating

3 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Birthday Girl, Birth, In Secret

6 watched on Netflix: The Midnight Sky, Barry, Mudbound, Monster (2018), Horse Girl, Manson Family Vacation

1 watched on iTunes: The Oath
1 watched on Amazon Prime: The Goldfinch
2 watched on Hulu: My Friend Dahmer, Ingrid Goes West

20 TOTAL

And here are the links that will get me to the end of the year, after tonight: Ben Kingsley, Bruce Willis, Jonathon Schaech, Ana de Armas, Keanu Reeves, Sean Bridgers, Ron Livingston, Tom Skerritt, Ben Whishaw, Morfydd Clark, and Justin Edwards. That's how close Christmas is now, just 13 films away!

Oscar Isaac carries over from "In Secret". I'm also giving a birthday SHOUT-out to director Chris Weitz - born on November 30, 1969.  I know, this is my film for December 1, but I skipped yesterday, and also I started watching this one on 11/30, and finished on 12/1.  So it counts. Chris Weitz also directed "About a Boy", "The Golden Compass", "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" and co-wrote the screenplay for "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story". 

You might notice that I could have crammed "Dune" before this one, between two other films with Oscar Isaac - and tomorrow's film could have easily been replaced with "Shang-Chi".  Well, I decided to move all these current hot films into January, partially because my December chain was built months ago, and it still WORKS so I'd rather not abandoned it, but there something else shared by many of the films scheduled for December.  They're all taking up TOO much space on my DVR (and the Netflix list) and something simply must be done.  Tonight's film has been on the DVR since April of 2020, and seriously, I need the space for new movies. So it's got to go!

THE PLOT: A team of secret agents set out to track down the Nazi officer who masterminded the Holocaust. 

AFTER: It's getting VERY close to that time when I usually look back on all the movies I watched this year, and try to make some kind of sense out of it all. (Forget it, it usually can't be done...). But right now, a quick check shows that there's been a rather surprising lack of Nazis in this year's films - which is odd, because the last two years, they've been all over the place, from "Downfall" to "The Reader" to "Jojo Rabbit". The only film in 2021 that even came close to the subject was "This Must Be the Place", and I don't think I can take that film seriously, not at all. Wait, I did watch "The Eagle Has Landed" back in June, about a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill, but with Robert Duvall playing a Nazi and Michael Caine and Treat Williams in starring roles, I don't think I can take that film seriously either.  They sure didn't. So between horror movies, time travel and documentaries about politics and pop stars, I haven't even had the time to think about World War II - it made a brief appearance in "Mudbound", though, and that documentary about Walt Disney? Oh, yeah, "Midway", of course, but that was the war in the Pacific, not in Europe. 

So let's rectify that tonight, with a serious film about Israeli agents tracking down ex-Nazis in Argentina.  Totally different from "The Boys of Brazil", geez, I'm still having trouble getting over THAT one...send in Agent Steve Guttenberg!  Well, Hannukah is going on right now, so I don't know if this is appropriate, but let's score this one as a win for Israel anyway, how they tracked down Adolf Eichmann in 1960 and brought him to Israel to stand trial for Nazi war crimes.  Just 15 years after the fact, but hey, a win is a win. 

I don't know if I would have cast the actor who's most famous for playing Gandhi as Eichmann, though I will say that Ben Kingsley definitely has some range.  Right?  Arab, Egyptian, Indian, British, you give him an ethnicity and he'll play it. And he played a Polish-Israeli in "Schindler's List", don't forget.  But I wonder what goes through an actor's mind when his agent calls and says he's been offered a role as a prominent Nazi - is the temptation there to turn it down on principle, or is it just another acting challenge, to get inside the head of a man like Eichmann and maybe find something there to work with?  I have no idea. 

"Operation Finale" points out right at the beginning that Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels all committed suicide - aka "the cowards' way out" - so they were never put on trial, never held accountable for their actions.  There were those Nuremberg trials, which sentenced 13 men to death - most prominently Hermann Göring, who then committed suicide before he could be hanged. Hung? Either way, another coward.  After Nuremberg there were a series of smaller trials, but eventually those came to a close in 1949 or so, and after the other countries sort of dropped the ball, Israel decided to pick it up and keep the trials going.  Mossad agents in the field would scour the globe (and boy, did the globe need a good scouring!) looking for evidence of Nazis who escaped Europe, to bring them back to stand trial.  

The last trial of a World War II Nazi I can find a record for took place in 2020, if you can believe that, they found a 93-year-old man who served as a concentration camp guard, but since he was only 17 at the time he served in the war, he was tried as a juvenile and got a rather lenient penalty. (What, they only hung him once? JK.). He got a suspended sentence, not a "suspended" sentence.  After the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, there was the 1987 French trial of Klaus Barbie, and the trial of John Demjanjuk in Munch in 2011.  

So this is a true story, even if this 2018 film didn't get everything exactly right. (Who am I to say?) It's certainly a lot more believable then Sean Penn playing an aging glam rocker tracking down the Nazi who tortured his father, even though he's got no training for detective work, surveillance and is just no good in a fight.  Seriously, WTF?  Was that movie supposed to be a comedy, or what?  Because it just didn't WORK as a comedy, in that there was nothing fun about it, it was just too darn ridiculous.  

Agent Peter Malkin was a real person, a real Mossad agent, who later wrote a memoir about the capture of Eichmann.  The film sees fit to show a botched intelligence operation first, one where the wrong Nazi got killed (but hey, still a Nazi, so it's OK) and there's no sign of this on Malkin's historical record.  Perhaps this was added for this film to humanize him, to show the classic hero with feet of clay? Or to explain why he was later SO thorough in confirming the identity of Eichmann, who was living in Argentina under an assumed name.  But, he still lived with his son, Klaus Eichmann, who did NOT change his name, and Adolf pretended to be that young man's uncle, not his father. I guess this was what happened, it just seems odd that an ex-Nazi hiding out wouldn't take more steps to distance himself from his old life, or work harder to conceal his identity.  I mean, his wife kept her original first name, that was kind of a tip-off to the Mossad, that this man who MIGHT be Eichmann had a wife named Vera, just like Eichmann did. I thought Germans were stereotypically more organized and thorough than that. 

Once the Israeli agents had Eichmann in their possession, you'd think the hardest thing would be to get him to admit his true identity and the nature of his crimes, but he gives all that up pretty quickly here, perhaps in a display of over-confidence?  The agents also then find that El Al, the Israeli airline, won't agree to fly Eichmann to stand trial in Israel unless they have a letter from him, agreeing to get on the flight.  Rules are rules, I suppose, and maybe the airline didn't want to be an accessory to kidnapping, but this is a NAZI being kidnapped/extradited so it seems like an odd play to draw that moral line.  In the end they're going to drug Eichmann, dress him up like a pilot who's had too much to drink, and basically "Weekend at Bernie's" him on to the plane, so at that point, does consent really even matter?  

The team's flight is rescheduled for ten days later, and then they've got some time to work on Eichmann at their safe house, to get him to sign the paperwork and approve the flight.  Again, NITPICK POINT, he's going to be knocked out during the flight, so maybe just forge his signature on the letter?  Just a thought. Ah, if only one of the Israeli agents could develop some kind of rapport with the Nazi, gain his trust and learn how his brain ticks, so he can subtly influence him, play on his over-confidence and work the mental angles to convince him to sign the letter?  Hah, what do you suppose the chances of that happening are?  

Well, we know that Eichmann eventually DID get put on trial in Israel, so the attempt to get him there is something of a foregone conclusion, so that does manage to dispel the suspense quite a bit.  It's good that he was punished for his war crimes, but knowing that in advance is a pretty big spoiler, sorry to say. 

Also starring Ben Kingsley (last seen in "Spielberg"), Lior Raz (last seen in "6 Underground"), Melanie Laurent (ditto), Nick Kroll (last seen in "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy"), Joe Alwyn (last seen in "Harriet"), Haley Lu Richardson (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Michael Aronov, Peter Strauss (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Ohad Knoller (last seen in "The Operative"), Greg Hill, Torben Liebrecht, Michael Benjamin Hernandez (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Greta Scacchi (last seen in "The Red Violin"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Defiance"), Tatiana Rodriguez, Pepe Rapazote, Simon Russell Beale (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Rocio Muñoz, Rita Pauls, Ana Luzarth, Ezequiel Campa, Aitor Miguens, Antonia Desplat, Eduardo Green, Patricio Witis, Pablo Flores Maini, Julian Rodriguez Rona, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 forged passports

In Secret

Year 13, Day 333 - 11/29/21 - Movie #3,986

BEFORE: After I settled back in at home, post-Thanksgiving trip, I took a stab at making some kind of movie plan for January, but so far, it's a no-go. I've made two attempts, starting where I want to start, to see if I could build a chain to February 1, I even marked all the films that are two links away from the proposed start of the romance chain, and it's not that I can't find a path, the problem is there are too many paths. I'd love to start the year with "Nomadland", but the only real place I can go from there is "The French Dispatch", and that's a film loaded with actors, right away there are too many branches for me to pick one and see where it goes. There are at least 13 possible paths leading out of that film, then that number probably doubles or triples by the time I'm at movie #5 for the year. 

Another problem, that film links to "Dune", and then "Dune" links to the start of the romance chain, at the end of the month. That won't do at all, then I'd only watch 5 or 6 movies in January, and that's not enough. I think what I'm going to have to do is set some signpost films in-between, like "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Shang-Chi", I know I can link to those films, but I'm not sure where to go next. (The new "Spider-Man" film also links to "Dune", do you see my problem?  Everything leads me to the end of the month too quickly...)

I hope to have some time after Christmas to figure all this out, because I suddenly have NO time. I'll explain below. Elizabeth Olsen carries over from "Ingrid Goes West". 

THE PLOT: Thérèse grows up with her aunt and cousin - around 1860 the aunt decides they should move to Paris and that her son and Thérèse get married. The joyless and loveless life changes when her husband brings a friend home. The affair turns ugly for all. 

AFTER: I swear, I thought I was on top of things, I even crammed a few more movies into November then I originally planned to - I was going to only watch 17 this month, and save the last 17 for December, but I watched 20 in November instead. And now I'm staring Christmas down, and I'm running out of time.  The movies, no problem, I can watch 14 movies before Christmas, that's easy.  But I haven't bought any holiday gifts yet, and my family's probably going to expect them this year, after we basically called a pandemic mulligan on gifts and getting together, last year my wife and I just stayed home and we made lasagna.  I've got to get Christmas cards out, because last year the mail was slow and some of mine arrived late, and then my holiday mix CD is pretty useless if it arrives after Dec. 25.  I was going to go all virtual this year, just send everybody a link to the songs on Dropbox, and send my older aunts instructions on how to ask their kids for help downloading.  But now I can't get Dropbox to work right, I uploaded the films and created a link to share the folder, however I tested it at the office and the link won't work. It only takes you to a Dropbox sign-in screen, and some family members probably don't have a Dropbox account, so that may not work.  If I can't find another solution, then I'm back to burning CDs and mailing them out, and if I need to do that, I'm already late. Making the CDs, labelling them, getting padded mailers, addressing those - it's a lot of work.  

Tomorrow I'll take another stab at getting the Dropbox link to work correctly, because if I could do that, then I just have to send out cards with the download instructions, and that will be a lot easier, cheaper and faster. I'll save money by not buying more blank CDs (maybe I'll make one or two for myself and any Luddite friends) and also reduce waste - honestly, I don't know how many friends listen to the CDs and how many just throw them away because they don't dig holiday music.  

Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about "In Secret", because it feels a lot like a throwaway film.  It's based on an 1867 novel by Emile Zola, called "Therese Raquin", and honestly, I don't know much about Emile Zola. Was he any good? I can't name you one other novel that he wrote, so I have no idea. I guess he was like the French O. Henry, because this whole story is just dripping in irony.  But this story also feels kind of Shakespearean, sort of that whole Romeo & what's-her-name, star-crossed lovers and all that. Then throw in some Edgar Allen Poe, because there's a bit here that reminds me of "The Tell-Tale Heart", and well, I guess that's Emile Zola for you.  

Still, I can't see myself even remembering this movie six months from now, it's so basic and run-of-the-mill, if I'm being honest - and why wouldn't I be? It's about an affair, one that ends badly, like, do any of them in literature end WELL? The "sinners" need to pay a price for their sins, and the illicit lovers here take things a step further when they come to believe that the only way they'll be happy is by taking Therese's husband, Camille, out of the picture. Yes, I know Camille sounds like a woman's name, but it's a man's name here - he's French. Everybody's French, but they all talk English here so we Americans can understand them. Try not to think about that. 

To be fair, Therese sort of got railroaded into marrying her cousin, it's not like she had any say in the matter - back in the 1860's very few European women had any say in running their own lives, this was back when wives were considered property, I guess. Jeez, I thought France near the start of the Industrial Revolution might have been a little more liberal and forward-thinking, but I guess not. So Therese is married to her cousin and her aunt also becomes her mother-in-law before she can even raise any kind of objection. She also has to work in the shop that her aunt/mother-in-law buys, she's got no choice there, either. Before long she's pretending to be sick nearly every day, because that gives her more time to mope around and hate her situation, while her husband relieves the pressure of his clerking job by going to the zoo every day and watching the bears.  

One fateful night, Camille brings home Laurent, a fellow clerk who comes from the same town, they apparently knew each other as teens in school, but lost touch somewhere along the way.  Therese hates Laurent at first, but as he hangs around more and more, telling stories about being an artist and seducing young models, she finds herself fantasizing about him, being one of his models, and, well, one thing leads to another and she starts getting everything from Laurent that her husband/cousin won't give her, if you catch my meaning.  

After they hatch their plan to get Camille out of the way, they allow a certain amount of time to pass, respectfully appearing to grow closer together out of shared grief. Everyone else suggests that they get married, and they then pretend like that wasn't their plan all along. However, they soon find out that while they made excellent lovers in secret, being married to each other is a whole different situation.  It's like something is missing - ah, it was probably the forbidden nature of their relationship that made it so enticing in the first place.  It felt so wrong, but so right at the same time, and then when they're allowed to be together, it's no fun any more. Hey, life is like that sometimes, you want something and then when you get it, it's not all it's cracked up to be, and you start wanting something, or someone, else. 

They're still obligated to take care of Camille's mother (and Therese's aunt/mother-in-law) even though she's been wracked with grief over the loss of her son, and then she starts acting crazy, or senile, or both. (EDIT: Ah, I guess she had a stroke?) And they can't really kill her, they're already feeling guilty about the first murder. But it's driving a wedge between the two lovers, who have already realized that their relationship is fading, because it was only fun when it was an illicit affair. I guess this could be a warning to anyone out there cheating on their spouse, that killing or dumping your spouse and marrying the girlfriend or boyfriend isn't necessarily the best solution. True happiness and contentment lie within, and if you don't have it as a married person, then changing partners may not solve the problem. It was true in 1860 and it's probably still true today, but as always, your mileage may vary. Caveat emptor and all that. 

Also starring Oscar Isaac (last seen in "Life Itself"), Tom Felton (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Jessica Lange (last seen in "The Gambler"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Filth"), Matt Lucas (last heard in "Missing Link"), Mackenzie Crook (last seen in "City of Ember"), John Kavanagh (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Lily Laight, Matt Devere (last seen in "Terminator: Dark Fate"), Dimitrije Bogdanov, Richard Sharkey, Nicholas Blane (last seen in "Hope Gap"), Jo Korer. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 games of dominoes

Ingrid Goes West

Year 13, Day 332 - 11/28/21 - Movie #3,985

BEFORE: I'm back from Thanksgiving, after a 7-hour drive that's really only supposed to be about 4 hours long. I think the problem was that we left on Saturday so we'd beat the Sunday holiday return traffic, and probably a lot of other people had that same idea.  It's kind of like how "everybody" travels to Thanksgiving on Wednesday, but then many people travel on Tuesday to avoid the Wednesday traffic, so Tuesday gets crowded too. Then some people try to beat the Tuesday traffic by traveling on Monday, and at that point you might as well take the whole week off, just to make your traveling easier. 

We drove up to Massachusetts on Tuesday, stopped at the casino in Connecticut for lunch, and then settled in at my parents' house - they moved to an assisted living facility a couple months ago, which started really enforcing the strict visitation rules for the holidays. We're not out of this pandemic yet, of course. My father called me when we were 90% of the way there, and told us not to come because he didn't think we'd be able to visit and share a meal with them.  I had no connections with the staff of the facility, so I texted my sister and she investigated - the rules stated that if we visited my parents, we had to keep our masks on, and we could NOT share a meal with them.  We could, however, drop off a meal for them, but in that case, we could not visit with them for any length of time, to prevent us sharing the meal and thus engaging in an activity which would require removing our masks. 

SO, we worked around the rules - on Wednesday, after picking up the holiday meal package at the local grocery, and adding some extras like butter, milk and a cake, we went to visit my parents without bringing food.  Then on Thursday, we brought them two turkey dinner plates, plus a plate of apple pie and cake, but we didn't stay to eat with them, we went back to the house and called them on Zoom.  Friday, we visited them again without food and brought them their printer from the house and connected it to their laptop. This way we got to do everything we wanted with them and delivered Thanksgiving dinner without violating any of the visitation rules. That's the best we could hope for this holiday - better than last year but still not back to normal. 

Billy Magnussen AND Meredith Hagner carry over from "The Oath". 

THE PLOT: An unhinged social media stalker moves to L.A. and ingratiates herself into the life of an Instagram star. 

AFTER: This film sort of fits in with this month's collection of sociopaths and miscellaneous weirdos - right in line with characters seen in "The Goldfinch", "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", "Birth", "Horse Girl", and of course "My Friend Dahmer".  There's also a connection to yesterday's film, which touched on the effects of social media with regards to news and political opinions - today's film demonstrates the possible results when someone is too deep into Instagram or Facebook, to the point where they're only satisfied when they get the "proper" number of likes or replies or retweets or whatever, and they become depressed and withdrawn when they don't.  

I'm prepared to say this is POSSIBLE, because we've accidentally created this society that has become driven by the social media, instead of the other way around.  We're supposed to be the humans in charge, running our accounts, but in some ways, aren't they maybe running US?  I'm guilty of this myself to some degree, I'm happy when my blog posts get a few dozen hits, and when they only get a few, I wonder what went wrong. But then if I should happen to get a couple HUNDRED hits, I also wonder what went wrong - did my BFF with many more followers than me re-tweet my tweet?  If not, that probably means that some Slovakian web-site is re-posting my content, I couldn't possibly earn 300 hits on my own merits!  

When we first see Ingrid, we catch the tail-end of her relationship with somebody named Charlotte, and it ends badly, with Ingrid crashing her wedding and spraying the bride with mace.  What possibly could have led to this?  Ah, it's an online relationship gone horribly wrong, and then Ingrid spends time in a recovery facility, learning about boundaries and perhaps better ways to react when somebody online leaves a nasty comment on one of her posts.  But soon after being granted her release, Ingrid realizes that everybody in her small Pennsylvania town knows about the incident and her incarceration and her time spent in the mental ward, so she decides to take the money she inherited from her mother's will and start fresh somewhere else. 

But, where to go, with a wide world out there and a bag full of cash?  Unfortunately, Ingrid's new direction looks a lot like the old one, she sees a magazine article about a new Instagram "influencer" named Taylor Sloane, who lives in Venice Beach, California and appears to lead an idyllic life with her husband, cute dog and a whole bunch of trendy fashionable clothing while frequenting a bunch of farm-to-table cafes that serve avocado toast. Ingrid makes her way across the country, rents an apartment in Venice and starts frequenting the same cafés and hair salons as Taylor, hoping to run into her, but always one step behind, obviously.  

Eventually she does encounter Taylor, only she's too nervous to approach directly - she's already built up Taylor in her mind as an ideal human, and she needs an ice-breaker.  So, naturally she follows Taylor home, kidnaps her dog and waits for a reward notice to be posted.  This is not a recommended way to find one's new best friend, of course - but Taylor and her artist husband, Ezra, are very grateful to have their dog returned and invite Ingrid to stay for dinner. Before long Ingrid and Taylor are hanging out frequently, and then petty jealousy rears its ugly head when Taylor prefers the company of Ezra, or her visiting brother, or another rival potential female friend.  

Of course, Ingrid could just roll with the punches, let the friendship develop naturally, understand this process takes time - but of course she can't do that, it's all about getting more photos and hashtags NOW to make more posts and get more likes and really, it's a vicious cycle that represents a form of addiction.  Ingrid may not even realize WHY she's resorting to more desperate behavior, or mistreating one friend to get closer to another, or breaking promises to her landlord, then manipulating him to become her boyfriend, just to maintain the back-story that she's told to Taylor.  What's that old quote about the vicious web that we weave, once we've started to deceive?  Yeah, that. 

Ingrid butts heads with Taylor's brother, Nicky, who's a recovering addict and a manipulator himself (it takes one to know one) and that's the start of Ingrid's undoing, to maintain the relationship with Taylor she's got to get Nicky out of the way, she'd probably even kill him if she could get away with it.  One problem here, though, is that even when she's exposed and the friendship she so desired is damaged, she never really pays the price for her stalker activity, she's ultimately rewarded in a way, and narratively speaking, that may be a problem.  How will she ever learn where the social media limits are - how will any of us ever learn what they are, if there are no consequences for improper behavior?  

Also starring Aubrey Plaza (last seen in "Playing It Cool"), Elizabeth Olsen (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Wyatt Russell (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Pom Klementieff (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Hannah Utt, Joseph Breen, Angelica Amor, Charlie Wright, Dennis Atlas, Luis Deveze, Jason Weingarten.

RATING: 5 out of 10 emojis