A Rainy Day in New York

Year 14, Day 32 - 2/1/22 - Movie #4,033

BEFORE: Let's get to the format stats for January, now that February is here:

6 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, A Most Wanted Man, The Replacement Killers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Cold Light of Day, Freelancers

2 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Setup, The Man with the Iron Fists

10 watched on Netflix: Memoirs of a Geisha, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, Gunpowder Milkshake, Cosmic Sin, Reprisal, First Kill, Hard Kill, Extraction (2015), Fire With Fire, The Frozen Ground

2 watched on Academy screeners: The French Dispatch, Dune (2021)
2 watched on iTunes: The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, Escape Plan 2: Hades
4 watched on Amazon Prime: The Boondock Saints, The Farewell, Escape Plan: The Extractors, My Spy
2 watched on Hulu: Nomadland, Boss Level
2 watched on Disney+: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Mulan (2020)

1 watched on Pluto TV: Acts of Violence

1 watched in theaters: Spider-Man: No Way Home
32 TOTAL

Wow, Netflix had a really big month at my house, a larger share than cable.  That's great news for reducing my Netflix queue, but then the month didn't focus on my main watchlist, so really, my progress on opening up slots for new movies on the main list was really hampered.  I've got a long list of films airing on cable that I would like to add, but my DVR only holds so much.  All that's about to change now that I'm kicking off the romance chain - I've been storing up the movies about love and romance, I'm overstocked, and it's finally time to start crossing some of them off!  

And about that, a quick programming note, not that it matters to you, but in advance of February I went through my list, and bad news, several of the romance-based films that WERE available on streaming when I made the list are now unavailable. Well, they're still on iTunes, but at $3.99 a pop per rental, that's really going to set me back.  FIVE films that I'd now have to rent, that's 20 bucks, on top of what I'm already paying for cable and streaming services, so no bueno.  So I took a hard look at the list - there was a LOT of crossover, because certain actors specialize in the romance genre, and they make a certain kind of movie, again and again.  So over time I separated out any love-related film to a separate document, and highlighted all the links I was NOT following in a different color, so I could find them more easily, JUST in case something like this should happen.  It took several nights, but I figured out that if I abandoned a couple links, flipped THIS part of the list around the other way, removed THOSE five films that are no longer streaming on Hulu or Amazon, and added THOSE two films that are miraculously now airing on cable, I've got a re-worked plan for February and the first half of March. 

It's maybe one film shorter, but that hardly matters - it follows a new set of links, so I just needed to re-shuffle the deck, I'm still playing (mostly) with the same cards.  And this clears off about HALF of the romance films on my DVR and DVDs, a greater percentage, which is a good thing, it opens up more slots this month, which I'm sure to fill.  And it starts in the same place as before, and ends in the same place as before, which is also great - it was too late to set a new intro point, and now I don't have to expend a lot of energy coming up with a new outro, I can just move forward as planned.  You won't notice much difference, but five or six films I was going to watch have been released back into the wild, maybe I'll get to them next year, maybe I won't.  Maybe they'll be on new streaming services by then, who can say, and they won't cost me $3.99 each to watch them. (For the non-last time, just make every film available on streaming and KEEP THEM THERE. Really, who is helped by films disappearing?)   Another bonus, over the next 40-plus films, I'll only need to rent TWO films from iTunes now, instead of five.  And I still might be able to find those two for free somewhere, if I look a little harder.

Timothée Chalamet carries over from "Dune" (2021), and the beat goes on.  

THE PLOT: A young couple arrives for a weekend in New York City, where they are met with bad weather and a series of adventures. 

AFTER: OK, before you even start with me, I know, this is a Woody Allen film - and cancel culture got to Woody Allen a while back, and I approve of that. But Amazon made a multi-film deal with him just before the news stories broke, and I've literally watched every film this man ever directed, half before I started this project and then the other half in 2013, then I kept pace with his film-a-year output after that, even "Irrational Man", "Café Society" and "Wonder Wheel".  Last year I watched the "Allen v. Farrow" mini-series on HBO, which broke down all the allegations from Dylan Farrow, and I have no reason to dispute her claims. I don't know where to draw the line between artist and man, I already pegged this guy as a sleazoid just based on the fact that he married his long-time girlfriend's daughter when she was old enough. He's 87 now, so one way or the other, he's not going to be making many more movies - this is probably the last film of his that I'll ever watch, and I'm OK with that.  

I could boycott it, I probably SHOULD boycott it - but it ended up at the top of my connecting chain, it's on Amazon Prime and I saw the way I could get to it via Timothée Chalamet, either linking from "Dune" or "The French Dispatch", two recent films I really wanted to see.  Two years ago, around this same time, I had the opportunity to watch "I Love You, Daddy" on an Academy screener, just as Louis C.K. was getting cancelled, so I watched that film, with similar reservations, due to the curiosity factor alone - there is some precedent here.  Either way, I'm looking for some insight into the cancelled man's head-space, what drives these men to keep moving forward and not give up, when it seems like the entire culture is encouraging them to just stop making product and disappear, like so many have - Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein, now they're working on Armie Hammer, Chris Noth, Shia LeBeouf, Marilyn Manson and others. I'm not in a position to pass judgment, and if I boycotted everyone who the media went after for misconduct, I might be left without many movies to watch.  So I'm moving forward, of course with comments and reservations.  

We all really should have seen it coming with Woody, one of his most celebrated films is "Manhattan", which depicts his central character, played by himself, as a divorced 42-year old man in a relationship with a 17-year old girl. Say it with me, "Ewwwwww."  Just because you can get away with it, that doesn't make it right.  And if his character was a professional writer working in the TV industry, in a position of power, and she wasn't, well, that just makes it worse.  But that was  made in a different time, I'm sure this sort of thing took place frequently in the late 1970's/early 1980's, and now we know it's wrong wrong WRONG. Then when you look at Woody Allen's entire oeuvre, as I have, you come to realize that the central character is almost always a writer, director, comedian, some form of artist, always nebbish-y and neurotic in some way, often but not always played by Allen himself, yet always clearly representing him, his thoughts and feelings, his sensibilities.  Write what you know, they say - this is not uncommon, as even in classic novels like "Little Women" or other films, like "The Tree of Life", you can break it down and figure out which character represents the author/director.  These are just the two examples I keep handy in my memory.  

A Woody Allen film like "A Rainy Day in New York" is kind of like one of those dreams you have where you play every character, even if you don't realize it during the dream, but you do after you wake up and think about it.  The central character here is Gatsby, a college student who's unsure of himself, nebbish-y and neurotic, and he's already flunked out of an Ivy League college during his freshman year, and he's transferred to a smaller school in upstate New York.  (Woody started studying film at CIty College of New York in 1954, but left after one semester.) So Gatsby is Woody, but from a time early in his career, when he was unsure of his path.  Then there's a film director, Roland Pollard, who's completed a film but doesn't like it very much, and when Gatsby's girlfriend, Ashleigh, interviews him for her school paper, he starts pointing out how much they have in common - a classic pick-up technique.  Later in the film, he'll end up suggesting that he could become her mentor, she should fly to France with him, and of course it's implied that he would be sleeping with her as part of this deal.  There's no question that Pollard is another stand-in for Woody, they're both film directors in positions of power that can't wait to use that to get into sexual relationships with college-age girls.

There's more, the screenwriter of the film is Ted Davidoff, and he connects with Ashleigh at the same screening, because she loves Pollard's film, and she can be used as a device to help Pollard get his confidence back. Davidoff has problems of his own, because in the car on the way to the studio in Queens, he happens to see his wife entering the apartment of his best friend, which indicates that they're having an affair.  After confronting his wife, post-affair, the wife naturally assumes that Ashleigh is Ted's young girlfriend, and she mentions all the times that HE has cheated on HER. Ted Davidoff also represents Woody Allen, both men can't be faithful to any one woman, blame everybody else for that, and clearly they both like the younger college-age girls, too. Then we also have Francisco Vega, the popular actor at the studio - he may have a Spanish accent, but he also represents Woody, because he's a movie star who (you guessed it...) is interested in the younger journalism student.  He invites her to his trailer, takes her to dinner, gets her drunk, and before long they're back at his place and he makes his move.  Factor in the fame, the age difference and the alcohol, and this all adds up to despicable behavior - it's pretty odd that Woody Allen couldn't see it that way, though.  

The film is also another love-letter to New York, but of course only the places that Woody Allen likes to go, like the Minetta Tavern, Metropolitan Museum and the Carlyle Hotel.  Woody's band played at the Carlyle's bar every Monday night for a good number of years, so it's not surprising that he'd want to film there, and that Gatsby would know the place and everyone who works there, even though he hasn't visited in years I'm sure it's a fine place, but for some reason, Woody Allen thinks that you can easily find a high-class prostitute hanging out there, does he know something that the rest of us don't? Gatsby, flush from yet another poker game victory, considers her offer of a night of sex for $500, but instead makes her a counter-offer, $5,000 if she will attend his mother's party and pretend to be his girlfriend, Ashleigh. This could be the worst example of re-negotiation ever, if sex costs $500 then being a party escort with NO sex should only cost $200 - and he blows it by offering $5,000? That's not how anything works.  

Putting all instances of bad acting aside (I think when you sign on for a Woody Allen film, there's some kind of course you have to take, where the lead actor learns to talk internally in Woody's cadence and the lead female learns how to be wacky 1976 Diane Keaton as Annie Hall. "La-di-da, La-di-da, I'm a flighty dummy...") this film is extremely clunky at best.  Every little decision any character makes is overly telegraphed - it's a carriage ride in Central Park, do they really need to overthink it to this degree?  Ashleigh was so dumb that while meeting the actor, Francisco Vega, she LITERALLY forgot her own name.  Some people SAY they get so starstruck they forget their name, but it doesn't really happen, you always know your name. But this is a device here used to justify her pulling out her driver's license to remember her name, and pay attention here, the actor looks at it to confirm that she is over 18. Very telling. Also lazy.

It's clear that Woody's been repeating himself and coasting for some time, it's like he's stuck going over a few key moments from his career and relationships, and reliving them through his characters.  The news just broke that his latest film, "Rifkin's Festival", had the lowest box-office opening of his career, earning just $24,000 last weekend in 26 theaters.  Part of that is pandemic-related, perhaps, but he's down to just one theater chain, Landmark, that will run his movies. The distribution company probably can't promote the film without causing some kind of backlash, so let's face it, the guy's done. We're going to wake up one day and there will be a news story about him, or he'll be trending on Twitter, and that will be that, we'll all have to re-assess his place in the firmament of motion pictures, and figure out where we stand on both the artist and the man.  

A number of the actors involved, Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Hall, donated all or parts of their salaries from "A Rainy Day in New York" to charities and organizations involved with the Time's Up movement and anti-violence organizations - maybe that's the right way to go, I can't really say.  But this is a very insightful look into the way Woody Allen's mind works, if nothing else.  The lead character switches girlfriends very easily, in fact most of the men in the film do, as if one woman is just as good as another, it doesn't matter, as long as you're getting sexually satisfied, who cares? This probably also represents the last time he was allowed to be working with such young actresses, Elle Fanning and Selena Gomez, who you may notice are nearly always wearing short skirts, or being put in scenes where they need to change clothes or have their clothes removed. It's odd how the writer found so many different ways to make that happen, right?  

I choose for my rating to reflect the way I feel about the structure of the story, the likelihood of it all, but even then, what does this mean, that if a young couple visits New York City, they're probably going to break up at the end of the weekend, and somehow this is the city's fault?  That's a weird message to put out in the world, isn't it?  Come to think of it, you'd all better stay where you are and not visit NYC, even though the city needs income from tourism.  In terms of what this movie says about Woody Allen as a human being, well, it's pretty disgusting, kind of like how I felt about Woodstock '99.  

Also starring Elle Fanning (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Selena Gomez (last heard in "Dolittle"), Jude Law (last seen in "Genius"), Diego Luna (last seen in "Contraband"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Kelly Rohrbach (last seen in "Baywatch"), Annaleigh Ashford (last seen in "Bad Education"), Rebecca Hall (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Cherry Jones (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Will Rogers (last seen in "Hearts Beat Loud"), Suki Waterhouse (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Ben Warheit (last seen in "Joker"), Griffin Newman, Don Stephenson, Suzanne Smith, Olivia Boreham-Wing, Mary Boyer (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Ted Neustadt (last seen in "Arbitrage"), Jonathan Hogan, Rory Calhoun (last seen in "Wonder Wheel") with cameos from Pat Kiernan (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Annika Pergament (last seen in "Broken City")

RATING: 4 out of 10 Egyptian statues at the Met