The Personal History of David Copperfield

Year 13, Day 352 - 12/18/21 - Movie #3,998

BEFORE: We're counting down the last two weeks of 2021 now (just two movies to go before I put the blog on pause for the holidays) and it looks like I'm going to end this year the way I began it, which is mostly sheltered in place.  Yeah, I've got two jobs but they're both shutting down after next week, and my sister cancelled her family's Christmas trip to visit my parents, and I'm one step away from doing the same. The new variant is spreading way too fast, we've got long lines at testing centers in NYC once again - and long lines at vaccination centers, too, I hope - so the end result is that even though I got my booster shot AND a flu shot, I'm just not sure it's safe out there.  There are breakthrough cases, admittedly they're not severe or life-threatening, but I also DON'T want to be a transmitter, because if Omicron can break through my vaccination, can't it also break through to my vaccinated parents?  

I just got a text from the staff at the theater, it seems like somebody who attended Thursday night's screening just tested positive, and saw fit to call the theater to let everybody know.  Today I've got a runny nose but no fever, so what does that mean?  Was I exposed on Thursday night, or is this just a reaction to the flu shot I got a week ago?  There's no way to know - I mean, yeah, I can go get tested but I'd rather not, I haven't had a swab shoved up my nose yet, and I was hoping to make it through this thing without that taking place.  Better to just shelter in place today, and see how I feel tomorrow - I'm scheduled to work a screening, but I'm thinking it may get cancelled now, or if I'm too sick to come in they'll probably encourage me to stay home.  We'll see how I feel tomorrow morning. 

A side benefit to cancelling everything again this Christmas is the fact that I haven't done much (any) Christmas shopping, and this maybe buys me another week, or even two.  I'd already told my sister we should just exchange gifts in January, we'd go visit my parents in January instead of December (thus we avoid all the holiday traffic, maybe) so after I work a couple more days, I may be looking at two weeks at home, I'm not sure. But what's two more weeks after I spent like eleventy months at home during 2020 and 2021?  Maybe this is a fitting end for the year, and I can return to a more normalish-routine after the winter surge - who can say?

Ben Whishaw carries over from "A Hologram for the King". 

THE PLOT: A modern take on Charles Dickens' classic tale of a young orphan who is able to triumph over many obstacles. 

AFTER: I've never read "David Copperfield" before, not even in high school, I've managed to avoid it all this time.  So I'm going in cold, this is really my first exposure to this storyline, believe it or not. I know just enough about it to answer trivia questions about it - Uriah Heep, Mister Micawber and all that.  But what's it really ABOUT?  Sure, I've read "A Tale of Two Cities", "Great Expectations" and of course "A Christmas Carol", but once you go any further than that into the Dickens canon, I'm a little lost.  OK, sure, "Oliver Twist", but I think I only saw two movie adaptations, and never read the book. Maybe I read "Hard Times", but I don't remember much about it.  That leaves a LOT unread, like "Nicholas Nickleby", "Little Dorrit", "Barnaby Rudge", "Edwin Drood", "Martin Chuzzlewit", and probably a dozen other books with characters with funny-sounding names.  "The Pickwick Papers", "The Old Curiosity Shop", "Dombey and Son", and Jesus, who the hell did Dickens think he was, the Stephen King of the 1800's? 

All right, calm down, let's focus on just getting through "David Copperfield", and then I'll worry about the rest later, maybe.  This has NOTHING to do with magic or magicians, that guy who pretended to make the Statue of Liberty disappear (what a bogus trick, when you learn how he "did" this, you're sure to be disappointed) was born David Seth Kotkin and just stole the name from Dickens.  This David Copperfield is a character from Victorian England, who eventually becomes a famous, wealthy novelist - and right away, that's got me thinking that D.C. is a stand-in for C.D., Dickens himself, he just switched up the initials to disguise this little fact, but maybe also drop a little hint.  

I'm reading up on Dicken's early life right now, and yep, there are similarities.  While he wasn't an orphan, Dickens' father was sent to debtors' prison when Charles was 12, and he was sent to live with a family friend (who inspired a character in "Dombey and Son") in Camden Town.  Then he lived in a back-attic of an agent for the Insolvent Court, who later inspired characters in "The Old Curiosity Shop". Charles worked long days in a factory, under harsh working conditions, and so did David Copperfield, whose job was to put corks in bottles, at the rate of 5 per minute!  Then his mother died (as Copperfield's did), and she left him some money, which allowed him to go to school for a while (as Copperfield did).  Dickens worked as a junior clerk in a law office (Copperfield became a proctor, very similar?) and was known for doing impressions of the lawyers and clients (Copperfield shows the same skills in this film).  

Yep, I'm spot on here, Wiki calls "David Copperfield" the most autobiographical work that Dickens ever wrote, so he's clearly the Dickens stand-in.  Dickens fell in love with a woman named Maria Beadnell, who was the inspiration for the Dora character here.  The filmmakers chose to have the same actress who played Copperfield's mother also portray Dora (just with different hair) so I guess that says something very Oedipal about the first girl you might fall for, you're looking for somebody who reminds you of your mother?  This is sort of a gender-flipped "Peter Pan" thing, where early stage productions usually cast the same actor as Wendy's father and Captain Hook. By extension, they're suggesting that a father can tend to be over-protective of his eldest daughter, trying to keep her away from irresponsible young men and might essentially keep her prisoner as part of all that. (However, it's also possible that the stage productions just couldn't afford another actor, so just used the same one twice.)

All right, enough about Dickens, we'll pick up the author's story tomorrow (hint hint) and let's just focus on Copperfield, whose father is already deceased when we meet him.  His mother sends him away to visit the family of his nanny, Peggotty, who live in an overturned boat on the beach in Yarmouth. When he returns, he learns his mother has married the cruel Mr. Murdstone, who beats him when he doesn't study hard enough. Young David is sent to work in Murdstone's factory in London, putting those corks in the bottles, and he lives with Mr. Micawber, who's always on the run from his creditors.  Fast forward a few years, and the Micawbers lose their house, and are sent to debtors' prison, meanwhile David is told that his mother is very ill - so ill, in fact, that she's dead.  AND the funeral was last week, sorry you couldn't be there - so life pretty much sucks for young master Copperfield, but he's determined that he's going to make something of himself and turn this all around. 

He tracks down his only living relative, Betsey Trotwood, and goes to live with her and her lodger (and lover?) Mr. Dick, who's so insane he thinks that thoughts from the decapitated King Charles I have somehow entered his own, but David shows him how to build a kite, write those thoughts down on the kite, and send them up into the air, thus clearing out his brain. (WTF was Dickens smoking when he wrote this?  Does this even make sense?).  Betsey's accountant is Mr. Wickfield, who has a daughter named Agnes and a clerk named Uriah Heep (this will all be important later, just wait.). Meanwhile, teen David Copperfield goes to a school for boys, where he meets James Steerforth and once again encounters Mr. Micawber, who's briefly one of his teachers before he's exposed as a former prison inmate and bad credit risk. 

David has tea with Uriah Heep and his mother, and finds out that Uriah is trying to court Agnes, the daughter of his boss, Mr. Wickfield. David also meets Dora Spenlow, the daughter of HIS boss at his new proctor position, and he falls for her, because she reminds him so much of his mother, presumably. (remember, same actress...). Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick then show up in London, claiming to be in dire financial straits, she's lost all her investments with Mr. Wickfield.  David arranges for them to be put up in a small London apartment, then he goes back to Yarmouth (Peggotty's family) with James Steerforth (friend from school).  This turns out to be a terrible idea, because Peggotty's adopted daughter, Emily, runs off from her fiancé (and adopted brother?) Ham with Mr. Steerforth, and nobody can find them. 

Back in London, David encounters Mr. Micawber again, he's living on the streets with his wife and whole family, so David moves them into that tiny apartment with Betsey Trotwood and Mr. Dick. (They steal back Micawber's concertina from a pawn shop, so there's that.).  And with that, all the pieces are sort of in place for all these threads to start resolving themselves in a big domino-like chain of events.  

Agnes figures out that Uriah Heep has been embezzling funds from Mr. Wickfield, and that's what happened to Betsey Trotwoods fortune.  They all storm the office of Mr. Wickfield and prove their case, so Uriah Heep gets fired and discredited and Betsey gets her money back (I think?).  Dora breaks up with David, clearing the way for him to start a new romance with another character who doesn't look like his mother.  And they track down Emily, who's been hiding out in London ever since Steerforth left her in France, saying she was better off without him.  He's right, of course, but it's just so rare when a man admits that.  

In the midst of all that, David Copperfield somehow becomes an author - they somehow found a little room for him in that tiny London apartment with 50 people living in it, for him to gather together all the little slips of paper that he wrote down quotes on, and he could kind of assemble all of them into a book, presumably that's the same writing technique that Dickens himself used.  And just as we saw in "Little Women", that book becomes a hit in the fictional world, and also in the real world, and the author of the book within the book represents the author of the book in real life. (It's not as confusing as I make it out to be, I just like to do things the hard way.)

David Copperfield (the character) becomes rich and famous, much as Charles Dickens did.  Dickens enjoyed celebrity status within his own lifetime, which seems appropriate for the guy who invented serialization, cliffhangers, book tours and merchandising.  Would we even have daily soap operas or monthly comic books without him?  We generally use "Dickensian" to describe stories about financial woes or poor working conditions, but I suspect that many more stories should be called "Dickensian" in the long run. 

There's that big elephant in the room, though, which I haven't even brought up, because I don't want to sound racist, but I just don't approve of this new-fangled multi-cultural approach to storytelling, where they cast a bunch of non-white actors to play what are traditionally all-white roles. ("Non-traditional casting") To some degree I support it, however I also find it very distracting, because it's just NOT a reflection of the way things were in the 1700's or 1800's.  I call this the "Hamilton" conundrum, because color-blind casting isn't as color-blind as it claims to be.  What it really IS seems to be, "Hey, let's cast a bunch of African-American, Asian-American and Latinos in white roles, because that will shake up the status quo and make a point about racial discrimination!"  OK, fine, you've made your point, but you had to essentially tell an inaccurate story to do it. And now you're purposefully casting a Latin actor as Alexander Hamilton or an Indian actor as David Copperfield, so that isn't really color-blind, is it?  You're just doing with minority actors what casting directors did for so many years with Caucasian actors, I'm not saying it's reverse discrimination but I can see how some might perceive it as such.  Truly color-blind casting would create a cast that's made up of a number of random races, and then I might believe that every actor was cast according to their talent, and not their ethnicity, but honestly, I don't think I've seen that just yet, I've only seen the films that are trying to be disruptive in their casting, in order to make the point. 

I just don't understand who benefits from anyone pretending in a movie that society in the 1800's was more racially diverse and minority tolerant than it really was. Is that wrong of me? 

Also starring Dev Patel (last seen in "The Man Who Knew Infinity"), Aneurin Barnard (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Peter Capaldi (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), Morfydd Clark (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Daisy May Cooper, Rosalind Eleazar, Hugh Laurie (last seen in "The Borrowers" (1997)), Tilda Swinton (last seen in "The Limits of Control"), Paul Whitehouse (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Benedict Wong (last seen in "Gemini Man"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Darren Boyd (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Gwendoline Christie (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Matthew Cottle (last seen in "The Dresser" (2015)), Bronagh Gallagher (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Anthony Welsh (last seen in "Red Tails"), Aimée Kelly, Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "Becoming Jane"), Victor McGuire (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Peter Singh (last seen in "Hampstead"), Ruby Bentail (last seen in "Mr. Turner"), Divian Ladwa (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp"), Rosaleen Linehan, Sophie McShera (last seen in "Cinderella" (2015)), Lynn Hunter, Jairaj Varsani, Fisayo Akinade, Faisal Dacosta, Freddie Meredith

RATING: 5 out of 10 broken bottles

A Hologram for the King

Year 13, Day 350 - 12/16/21 - Movie #3,997

BEFORE: I took a couple days off from movies, just to see if that would help. In other words, are the movies the problem, or am I the problem? I guess we'll find out. I binge-watched "Hawkeye" and caught the season finale of "Survivor", but I couldn't squeeze in the "Masked Singer" finale. Maybe tomorrow night, if I can avoid spoilers on the internet until then. 

But now I'm in a funk because we may not be going to see my parents for Christmas after all, my sister already changed her travel plans because there's been another positive test at the facility where my parents now live, so she was afraid that they'll be under lockdown again, and it made no sense to travel up there if she and her family won't get to interact with them in person.  I feel the same way, if I can't see them in person there's no point in traveling up, so we may be at home for a second Christmas in a row, and we'll drive up some weekend in January when there are fewer people on the roads, and have some form of Christmas then.  Still, it kind of sucks that other families are getting together this year, but our plans are curtailed.  I'll double-check in a couple of days to see what the visitation rules will be for the holiday weekend. 

Until then, I've got a Movie Year to finish, so Tom Skerritt carries over from "Lucky". 

THE PLOT: A failed American sales rep looks to recoup his losses by traveling to Saudi Arabia and selling his company's product to a wealthy monarch. 

AFTER: This film's on a totally unique topic, but yet it still shares a few things with the previous two films, "Lucky" and "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot".  All three films are about male lead characters who are getting older, and find themselves at a point in their lives where every day is much like the one before, there's sort of a "Groundhog Day" motif going on in all three films.  There's always a daily routine, but these characters are all sort of caught in ruts that they can't seem to escape - that routine is clearly annoying them, but it's also comforting and perhaps even keeping them motivated, keeping them alive.  Perhaps this just seems all too familiar, here in the 20th or 21st month of an ongoing pandemic.  

For Alan, a washed-up sales executive (?) trying his hand at something new, this means (after getting accustomed to the rules and traditions of Saudi Arabia), waking up, realizing that he's overslept, shaving, showering, calling his driver to take him to KMET, checking in with his team, trying to get in touch with his Saudi contact, failing to make progress, learning that the King isn't likely to arrive for his pitch anyway, getting into trouble, drinking too much, and passing out.  Repeat over and over - only each time, there's just enough difference in what trouble he gets into to distinguish one day from the next.  This fish out of water keeps testing the boundaries of the new tank that he's in, but he keeps bumping up against the glass, so to speak.  

He's also got a strange growth on his back, which I thought at first came from the fact that he kept breaking or falling off of the office chairs he encountered, perhaps it was a bruise or some internal bleeding, but it's really perhaps something medically much worse. (If this were a David Lynch movie, it could have been something REALLY weird...). So on top of everything else, he's got to navigate a foreign country's medical system in order to figure out what's going on with his body - it turns out this thing isn't just a giant pimple that he can pop.  

I couldn't help but think about the business trips that I've been on, most of which involved working at the San Diego Comic-Con. I've had a couple of medical issues while traveling, and really, they're the worst.  OK, the worst was probably a kidney stone I had on the first day of the New York Comic-Con in 2010, and I had to leave the con by ambulance - but after a hospital visit and some pain meds, I was back at the booth two days later.  One time in San Diego I was pissing blood, and thankfully I had an assistant who could cover the booth that first night while I found a clinic, which happened to be in a neighborhood I knew very well. I got myself some antibiotics, as it turned out to just be some kind of UTI. I found that I frequently got sick near the end of each con, we used to call it the "Nerd flu", and it most likely came from spending five days inside of a convention center with poor ventilation, and about 120,000 people in that space, a portion of whom are bound to be sick with something, even in California in July. 

Anyway, our hero here has a lot of anxiety concerning the upcoming presentation, plus being a stranger in a strange land, where there are very strict rules about alcohol, women's rights, religious customs and so forth, and then there's always the possibility of terrorism and the American image of Arab culture, which has been not particularly positive over the last couple decades, and then the perceived Arab attitude toward American culture, which of course is a giant question mark for us.  Alan thinks he has what it takes to overcome all this, but does he really?  His daughter's future at college is uncertain, and he feels he needs to make this sale in order to pay her tuition and get her back into school.  

(We've all been there, some of us very recently, right?  The money still needs to keep coming in, you've got to do everything you can to keep that job, or say "yes" to a new one, because the bills keep coming and the rent or mortgage still needs to be paid and so even if it means taking a job out of town, or changing careers, well that's just what has to happen.)

Alan also gets a bit caught up in the personal lives of his driver, and his female doctor (a rarity in male-oriented Saudi Arabia) and he just can't help himself, this is who he is, or maybe it's just because he's played by Tom Hanks, or maybe this is WHY you cast Tom Hanks, so you'd really believe that this guy means well and has other people's best interests at heart, not just his own. Even though he's still pretty messed up by his divorce, he knows that if he keeps being a good person, (maybe) good things will happen.  And they do, only not necessarily in a way that he expected.  Hey, that's life. It's almost worth forgiving a story for being this erratic and confusing because that's the way life can sometimes be.  Almost. 

There's certainly more of a purpose here than "Lucky" had, in that the lead character actually has a goal and a plan to reach that goal, even if he keeps messing up.  Lucky didn't seem to have much of a purpose at all, therefore the film didn't really have much of a point to make, because really, it had no place to GO.  All's good in this pandemic year, we have to appreciate characters who live by routine, because that's what most of us have been doing.  Routine will keep you alive, but at the same time, it will slowly kill you - I guess there's some irony there. 

I've got no room for "News of the World", another film with Tom Hanks.  Just three slots left, and they're all spoken for, so maybe next year.  C'est la vie.  Tom Hanks will still be showing up in the year-end countdown, it just wouldn't be the same without him. 

Also starring Tom Hanks (last seen in "Spielberg"), Alexander Black (Omar Elba), Sarita Choudhury (last seen in "Just a Kiss"), Sidse Babett Knudsen (last seen in "Inferno"), Tracey Fairaway (last seen in "Enough Said"), Jane Perry (last seen in "Genius"), Michael Baral, Lewis Rainer, David Menkin (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Christy Meyer (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Megan Maczko, Ben Whishaw (last seen in "Bright Star"), Eric Meyers (last seen in "Woman in Gold"), Khalid Laith (last seen in "RED 2"), Amira El Sayed, Waleed Elgadi, Dhaffer L'Abidine, Zaydun Khalaf (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Boughara Mohamed, Jay Abdo (last seen in "The Way Back"), Atheer Adel, Mohamed Attifi, Jon Donahue (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Janis Ahern (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy"), Rolf Saxon. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 receptionists making excuses

Lucky

Year 13, Day 347 - 12/13/21 - Movie #3,996

BEFORE: Well, before I close the book on 2021, let me get this film out of the way - I've had it programmed at least TWICE and then circumstances changed, making it not fit any more.  Originally I was going to fit both this film and "Mr. North" it at the end of last year, and then plans changed, I don't recall exactly why.  "Mr. North" found its way back in March 2021, but then I had to connect St. Patrick's Day and Easter, and I didn't have a slot for "Lucky", which at the time was free on YouTube, so I figured I could always get to it later.  Well, welcome to later.  

I also had a hunch that "Lucky" might get me out of a linking jam later on, and what do you know, here it is, serving a key purpose, getting me one step closer to my Christmas films.  I'd call that a noble purpose. But now I don't have room for "Paris, Texas" - maybe someday.  So Ron Livingston carries over from "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot" and I've got to head in another direction tomorrow.  

THE PLOT: The spiritual journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. 

AFTER: Wow, this one's a real head-scratcher, it's very Seinfeldian in that in many ways, it's a film about nothing.  Or if it is a film about SOMEthing, I must have missed it.  I'm just left thinking there's no "there" there, and that's what you get when you focus on a town in the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever happens and they all like it that way.  Nope, I said yesterday that I can learn something from EVERY film, just about, I have to believe that every film has something to teach me, some kind of message.  

Hmm, both yesterday's film and today's had older main characters who live alone, is my Movie Year trying to tell me something?  I turned 53 this year and my wife signed me up for AARP, but I think that was just to get all the discounts.  I can't retire yet, I just started a new job, and I certainly don't have a ton of money saved up, so how is THAT going to work?  I've got a modest 401K from a job years ago, I doubt it will last very long when the time comes, so really I'm counting on the house gaining some equity (which I only get if I sell it) or maybe the comic book collection (same problem, I'd have to sell it for it to be of value).  But who knows, there may come a time in my life where I'll be in my 70's and I'll need to fill up my time, find a way to get through each day and get ready for the next one.  

For both Lucky and The Man Who Killed Hitler, that means living according to a routine.  Exercising, eating right, drinking milk for stronger bones and what-not.  For Lucky, that also means a daily regimen of cigarettes and Bloody Marias at the bar.  His doctor doesn't care much for the regimen, but he also is forced to acknowledge that if these things haven't killed Lucky yet, they're probably not going to.  Guess he's just lucky, you know.  Actually he got the name by being a cook in the Navy, as we find out late in the film.  The cook got to just stay on the ship, and apparently that was one of the safer jobs during World War II, unless of course the whole ship went down.  

Lucky doesn't have kids, not as far as he knows, anyway.  And he pours out tomorrow's glass of milk today, for some reason - I couldn't quite figure this one out, why not keep the milk in the carton as long as possible?  Must be a life-hack I'm not aware of.  Lucky hangs out with his friends at the coffee shop in the morning and his other friends in the bar at night, and it's somehow not surprising at all to see that his closest friends is played by David Lynch, as a man who's bemoaning the loss of his pet tortoise, who escaped from his ranch somehow at a very slow pace.  

Lucky does crossword puzzles.  Lucky attends a store clerk's son's Mexican birthday party.  Lucky regrets shooting a bird with a BB gun when he was a small boy.  Lucky has a diner waitress over to watch a tape of Liberace performing in concert. Lucky tries to buy a pet but then for some reason buys a box of live crickets instead, maybe to prevent them from being fed to reptiles?  Lucky wants to light up a cigarette at the bar, but is told that it's no longer allowed.  

I guess this is all supposed to be philosophical somehow, Lucky delivers a rant about how we all come from nothing, and one day we'll all be nothing again, that life is essentially a zero sum game, and what are we supposed to do with that knowledge?  Just smile and try to enjoy ourselves.  Well, it's not exactly full enlightenment, but I guess it will have to do.  Still, I'm hard-pressed to discern any meaning to all of this, but that may (or may not) be the exact point that someone was trying to make?  However, it would be VERY hard to distinguish between that and the film being just a big waste of time. 

I think I need a couple days off, I just feel like I'm living through the ass end of 2021's movies, and I'll try taking a little break before finishing the year.  Just four films to go, but I can take some time and catch up on Marvel's "Hawkeye" show on Disney+ before I wrap things up.  Spoilers are circulating around and I want to watch the show before I learn too much online. 

Also starring Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice"), David Lynch (last heard in "Girlfriend's Day"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "CHIPS"), Tom Skerritt (last seen in "Up in Smoke"), Barry Shabaka Henley (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), James Darren, Beth Grant (last seen in "All About Steve"), Yvonne Huff Lee, Hugo Armstrong, Bertila Damas, Pam Sparks, Ana Mercedes, Sarah Cook, Amy Claire with archive footage of Liberace. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 phone calls to an unseen friend

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot

Year 13, Day 346 - 12/12/21 - Movie #3,995

BEFORE: Just five films to go after tonight, and this Movie Year comes to a close.  I think these days I get more excited for capping off a "perfect year" than I do for watching the ball drop on New Year's Eve.  Screw Dick Clark anyway, and screw Guy Lombardo while I'm at it.  The only thing worse than having to watch the Thanksgiving Day parade is watching a promo-filled, network sponsored New Year's Eve show, where nothing happens for two hours and 57 minutes, and they'll do ANYTHING to kill another 5 or 10, then you'll probably fall asleep and miss the thing that you've been trying to stay up to see.  Actually, the only thing worse than THAT is probably going to Times Square live, and really have nothing to do for hours but stand in one spot, without any bathroom break or you'll lose your "great" spot, and then you slowly freeze to death. No thanks, I've got my movie countdown to keep me warm.  Not even last year, when only a few people were allowed in Times Square, socially distanced and all that.  Hey, if this is your thing, more power to you, but please, consider seeking professional help. 

Sean Bridgers carries over from "The Whole Truth".  I'm not making any changes from here on, the linking is going to drive the bus.  If I were a marathon runner right about now I'd be running on fumes, hoping that momentum alone would get me over the finish line, where I'll probably collapse, that's just how I feel.  But what a delight to get to the end via a film like this, which might be a shitty movie, for all I know, but with a title like THAT, how could I possibly say no to this one? I'm all in. 

THE PLOT: A legendary American war veteran is recruited to hunt a mythical creature. 

AFTER: Well, we all know what happened to Hitler, or at least what history SAYS happened to Hitler, how he shot himself in his bunker on April 30, 1945.  Please refer back to "Downfall", which I accidentally (?) watched on Hitler's birthday in 2020, 75 years after his death.  But we all know by now there are no accidents, right?  Because the Russians got to the bunker before the Americans did, and you never can trust those sneaky Russians, rumors persisted for years that maybe Hitler didn't die after all, he moved to Argentina and hung out with Eichmann, or he couch-surfed with his family on Long Island (that's right, they're out there, and they probably voted for Trump, twice.).  

But now along comes a movie that says that's right, Hitler didn't die in 1945 in the Berlin bunker, he died some time BEFORE that, and was replaced by a look-alike for several years after that, because the Germans couldn't back down from the war, they'd come too far and there was an impetus to keep the dream going. Right. And the man who killed him acted alone, he was an American spy who passed as a German officer in order to get close, and apparently all he needed to do was look the part, speak German and then just walk right in to headquarters. Again, right....

Clearly these are "alternative facts", but these days, what isn't?  Aren't there several accounts of everything these days?  There's always another take, on everything from the pandemic stuff, to the BLM movement, the George Floyd killing, abortion, gun control, voter fraud and the 1/6 Insurrection.  There were "good people" on both sides, remember?  How is this possible, how did we get here, why isn't there any agreement on what the facts of the matter are - on EVERY matter up for debate?  

We didn't get here overnight - history is written by the winners, after all, so the key to looking like a winner is to get your story out there, so that people can start believing it.  Columbus discovered America (umm, no he didn't, Vikings and Native Americans were here first) and the South shall rise again (let's hope not) and manifest destiny, slavery, women's suffrage, all through U.S. history, we're still finding "facts" or things that seemed like good ideas at the time, only now we look back on them and realize that most historical figures were full of crap, or at least willing to overlook moral wrongs or to not even recognize them as such.  

We also have a rich alternate history that comes from storytelling, the inability to distinguish fact from fiction. Was the moon landing faked? What about the UFO that crashed in Roswell, is it kept in Area 51?  Did BatBoy serve as a White House advisor to the Clintons?  And what's that Loch Ness Monster been up to, lately?  Bigfoot himself is a perennial moneymaker, how many shows on the "History" Channel are devoted to people tracking him, or feature "experts" on alien landings, Illuminati activities, or what Jesus did or didn't do?  I understand this channel needs ratings, just like any other, but they focus on real history about as much as MTV (MUSIC Television) focuses on music.  And maybe this is how we got where we are, because it's not THAT much of a leap from believing in Bigfoot, aliens and chupacabras to some of the Q-Anon theories about celebrities and Democrats drinking baby blood in DC pizzerias, is it?  

What we really should be worried about is how easy it was to get so many people on board in believing lies about politicians, lies about the vaccine and lies about voter fraud.  It turns out that if you can just get a message out there, 10% of people will believe it, right away, no questions asked. Sometimes it's not even intentional, the misinformation used to come from folk tales, urban myths, even jokes that passed through the brains of people who don't understand humor, and/or don't bother to take the time to research things to find out if they're true before they pass them on. (Show me ONE person who's against vaccines and claims to "prefer to do their own research" who actually HAS done any of that research.). So this film is probably pretty dangerous, because there will be a faction of people, somewhere, who might take all this as fact, or start to think that California wildfires are set by the U.S. government to control the migration of the Sasquatch population. 

There's more - this film, released in 2018, goes on to suggest that Bigfoot is real (again, as implied by the title) and is also the carrier of a deadly virus that's killed every creature within 50 miles of his lair (umm, or perhaps Bigfoot was hungry) and if left unchecked, this virus could create a global pandemic - sure, like THAT could happen.  So a joint task force of U.S. and Canadian government agents, after investigating an old man who somehow took down three muggers in a parking lot, then realizing he's THAT guy, you know, from World War II, see fit to enlist him to infiltrate the woods and take Bigfoot down to save the world.  

OK, a couple of things. The two missions here are very, VERY different - why would the agents think that the same man who posed as a Nazi to kill Hitler would also have the skills to survive in the woods and track down Bigfoot?  I mean, the character's played by Sam Elliott, and if anybody could do both things, sure, probably him. But one on level, he's just an old guy, and maybe his best years were back in the 1940's, and since then he's been worn down by life and out of shape.  Ah, so the writer throws in an extra little bit of information, that statistically he's one of only THREE people known to be immune to this particular virus, and the other two are a baby and a deceased person, so it's up to him, unless the baby's got hunting skills.  NITPICK POINT, this is clearly a case of a screenwriter covering his tracks, finding a longshot way to make the unbelievable believable, I mean, come on, who tests a BABY for viral immunity to a thing that isn't even spreading yet?  Did they somehow test everyone on the planet for this, and now, here in 2021, we know just how long it takes to give every single person a shot, especially when some of them don't even want it, so how did they test so many people?  

I know, this film's clearly not meant to be taken seriously, I mean, the odds of this scenario taking place are incalculable, even the parts that might be somewhat factual, and there sure aren't a lot of those.  Between the two incidents, this man's run-ins with famous figures, real and unreal (in a way, he's like the "Forrest Gump" of World War II and cryptozoology) we do get to see a lot of his daily life, as he visits his brother, gets a haircut, and turns in a winning scratch-off ticket he found, although he doesn't claim the money, because that wouldn't be right. OK, so he's honest and moral, to a fault.  I guess that's the guy you'd like to think killed Hitler?  He even regrets doing that, and how many of us have posited that we'd be willing to kill Hitler ourselves, given a time machine and the opportunity? 

This is assuming, of course, that the incidents portrayed here are "real", or as real as anything can be within a movie.  There's a good chance that our hero is old and senile, and has made up his own back-story for what happened during the war, in order to cover up some other tragic loss. There are flashbacks of him dating a teacher before serving in the war, and since he's not with her as an old man, either she took up with someone else while he was killing Hitler or perhaps she died, as some people tend to do.  There's a bit of an implication that the U.S. government kept him in seclusion after killing Hitler, that they couldn't allow him to interact with society, let alone get married, lest he become too famous or put others in danger if the enemy should choose to retaliate. Either way, he seems to have been unlucky in love, and now as an older person, he may have some regrets. 

I do try to learn something, however small, from every film, even a silly throwaway one like this.  There was a time when I didn't think I could live on my own, but after I got divorced, I had to, and I had to believe that better days were ahead.  While I didn't like living by myself, dining alone and all that what-not, I proved that I could do it, if only for a few months.  And as we see here, if you're lucky enough to live a long time, that could easily mean living on your own once again, after all your friends and most of your family are gone.  And again, that's if you're LUCKY.  I had two aunts who lost their husbands fairly young, and neither one remarried, I guess there's a part of me that never really understood why, and maybe I still don't.  We're meant to be social animals, I don't think we're meant to live alone, I know I can't do it without going a little crazy.  

It's also important to have a routine, visit the friends and family you have left, take care of a pet, something that's life-affirming, instead of just getting older and bogged down in the memories you have, because you'll just end up rehashing your mistakes and then maybe regret will eat you alive.  Or you could end up remembering events differently from how they happened.  Our hero has a routine, every day he pulls out that box from under his bed and considers opening it, only he never really gets around to it - saying that, well, there's always tomorrow.  We the audience might wonder what's in this box, but you might as well ask what's inside the glowing box seen in "Pulp Fiction".  It's a movie "MacGuffin", a thing that helps drive the plot, even if we don't know exactly what it is.  In this movie, it could be anything from a German gun to maybe the Holy Grail, but it doesn't really matter, because nothing seen on screen could be as powerful as whatever's in our own imagination.  Still, it might be nice to know that the screenwriter had something specific in mind, otherwise it's just another narrative cop-out. 

But it does make for an odd pairing, to draw any kind of analogy between Hitler and Bigfoot, in both cases the main character here takes a life to stop the spread of a disease, it's just that Hitler's disease is an ideological one.  In both cases, The Man is willing to take a life only if it can save the life of millions of others - but still, he's filled with regret, which makes him a decent guy at the very least.  What's the difference between Hitler and Bigfoot?  Well, one's a reclusive legendary monster who probably smells very bad, and the other one, of course, is Bigfoot. 

Also starring Sam Elliott (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Aidan Turner (last heard in "Loving Vincent"), Caitlin FitzGerald (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Ron Livingston (last seen in "The Professor"), Larry Miller (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Ellar Coltrane (last seen in "Barry"), Rizwan Manji (last seen in "Equals"), Mark Steger (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Rocco Gioffre, Joe Lucas, Alton Fitzgerald White (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Terry Holland, Dean Neistat (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), David Armstrong, Nikolai Tsankov, Kelley Curran, Dianne Bischoff. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of candy from the barber's jar