BEFORE: OK, so this was always the plan for today, to have Bel Powley carry over from "The Diary of a Teenage Girl", but then after watching yesterday's film with Kristen Wiig, I got to thinking, I could like from that film to a movie on Hulu titled "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar", which looks like it might be funny. I'm not in a comedy chain, though, I'm in a romance chain - BUT after following the Kristen Wiig link, I could have easily linked back to this one, via Vanessa Bayer, and then I'd be back on track. Yeah, I ran it by the judges, but they didn't approve it, even though my road map to an Easter film is still about two films short, that COULD have made up half the shortfall right there. The judges are sticklers for this romance theme, though, a quick look at the synopsis determined that while that film might be a laugh riot, it's off-theme. "Passing" was another last-second addition, but it was for sure about relationships, and that means it counted and was allowed in.
I can drop in "The Power of the Dog" later this week, because that at least seems to be about love and relationships, on some level, from what I've heard about it. Plus that one has, like 12 Oscar nominations, thus it's important, and "Barb and Star", well, that has zero Oscar noms, go figure. So, that one's out, but I promise to try to circle back - look, the Nicolas Cage chain got cut in January, and now it's back on the books for March - while I'm at it, here are all the actor links that should get me from here to March 31: Joel Michaely, Swoosie Kurtz, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Richard Jenkins, Jessica Alba, Dan Fogler, Lucy Punch, Joanna Scanlan, Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, Blythe Danner, Eric Christian Olsen, Chris Evans, Ryan Reynolds, Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Cage, and Nicolas Cage.
I'm still trying to figure out if the path from there to Easter is the one I want, but it's slow going, because I'm trying to chart EVERY path, and that's so time-consuming that I may just go with the path that I have, because I simply won't have another one ready. We'll see - I thought maybe I didn't have an outro from Easter, but with the addition of one film that's on cable, I've got one.
TCM's third day of "31 Days of Oscar" starts in just a few short hours, so here's the line-up for March 3:
8:15 am "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961) - you know, something light to start your morning.
11:30 am "The Lion in Winter" (1968)
2:00 pm "Butterfield 8" (1960)
4:00 pm "Never on Sunday" (1960)
5:45 pm "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962)
8:00 pm "The Apartment" (1960)
10:15 pm "The Graduate" (1967)
12:15 am "Bullitt" (1968)
2:15 am "8 1/2" (1963)
4:45 am "Amarcord" (1974)
Ah, finally I see the pattern - Day 1 was all films from the 1940's, Day 2 was all films from the 1950's, and now Day 3 is (mostly) films from the 1960's. That took me way too long. Anyway, I've seen five of these films - "The Lion in Winter", "Butterfield 8", "The Apartment", "The Graduate" and "Bullitt". I probably SHOULD see "8 1/2" but I'm just too busy, they'll run that one again sometime. 5 out of 10 seen is 50% seen, but overall I'm now 11 seen out of 35, which is still just 31% - my stats are improving, though.
THE PLOT: A person of high intelligence struggles to make sense of the world as it relates to morality, relationships, sex, and leaving her apartment.
AFTER: Well, I said things were going to get complicated this week - yesterday's film had a teen girl sleeping with her mother's boyfriend (among others), but the same actress plays a teen girl in this film with kind of the opposite problem, she's not sleeping with ENOUGH people. She's intelligent but also anti-social, and tends to overthink everything and as a result of all that, she's a bit awkward, but in a smart kind of way - does that make sense? Like she expects everyone to be as smart as she is, then she's disappointed when they're not, so her attitude pushes them away, also she tends to keep to herself, so her personality is not even very conducive to being in a relationship.
She skipped a few grades, and got into Harvard early, which meant she got out early, but what good is a Harvard education when you're twenty and can't even find an entry-level job? Her father arranges a part-time job for her, proofreading legal briefs, and maybe being a proofreader is a good gig for her, she at least gets to correct other people a lot this way! Like the lead character in last night's film, she's estranged from her father, but for different reasons - instead of divorce, the falling out happened after her mother died, and she moved from London to New York. Usually her father comes to visit her for the holidays, but as the film starts, she learns that he won't be coming this year, because he's got a new girlfriend in London, and also he's engaged, and hasn't quite found the right way to tell Carrie.
Carrie spends time with her therapist, who is a friend of her father's, and the therapist challenges her to get out more, meet some people, get a pet, do things that make her happy, and maybe even go on a date. The list is designed to make her feel fulfilled, if not outright happy - but of course she ends up either overthinking or half-assing the items on the list. Get a pet? Well, the easiest out is to get a goldfish, like it requires the absolute minimum of care. Go on a date? Carrie ends up scouring the personal ads for a man looking to cheat on his fiancée, so she can sleep with him, then out him to his girlfriend as a serial cheater. This is either really ambitious, or she's working at cross purposes with herself - but there's no off switch on an over-achiever's mind, apparently.
This film is based on a coming-of-age novel about a girl who thinks she's better than everyone else, and finds most people to be immoral, sex-obsessed hypocrites - I'm reminded of Holden Caufield's hatred of "phonies", so maybe "Carrie Pilby" is a bit like "The Catcher in the Rye" for teen girls. Carrie even catches her therapist leaving the apartment of a married woman, so she calls him out for being a hypocrite. Boy, it's easy when you're 19 and haven't had too many relationships, and everything's black or white, right or wrong - later on, in her 40's she may discover that situations aren't always quite so simple. Heck, maybe she's due for this lesson right away, because it seems like she starts to have feelings for the married guy from the personal ad, but she can't quite seem to get together with him, physically anyway.
Later, she comes to realize that the shabby-looking guy who lives next door and hangs out on their shared fire escape isn't quite as shabby as he first appears, and even though he plays the didgeridoo (deal-breaker!) that's not the extent of his musical talents, and maybe she shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Because that's NYC in a nutshell, there are so many eligible people that you might as well just pick the one that lives closest to you, and work with that, it's just easier that way. If it falls through, you can then start dating guys on the next floor down, because ugh, who wants to walk upstairs to get lucky? Cliché alert, Cy is LITERALLY the boy next door.
Carrie's development towards happy and crossing off of the list items is mixed in with flashbacks to her time at Harvard, it turns out she had a relationship with one of her professors, and he broke things off rather abruptly, and this may have a lot to do with her inclination to spend most of her time alone in her apartment - but girl, you've got to get back out there sometime, even if that means putting yourself at risk of getting hurt again. Carrie's a mixed bag, though, wise beyond her years but also somewhat emotionally immature, either by choice or by design. But keep trying, everyone, even the geeky, can eventually find somebody they can connect with, on a similar level of geekitude.
Also starring Nathan Lane (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Gabriel Byrne (last seen in "Dead Man"), Jason Ritter (last heard in "Frozen II"), William Moseley (last seen in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader"), Vanessa Bayer (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Desmin Borges (last seen in "Private Life"), Colin O'Donoghue, Zachary Infante, Scott Keiji Takeda, Joel Michaely (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Cornelia Guest, Ayse Kirca, Poorna Jagannathan (last seen in "The Circle"), Mahaley Patel, Justin Dean, Bryan Winston, Coral Peña (last seen in "The Post"), Christina Concetta, Andy Bustillos, Frank Huerta, Julian Graham.
RATING: 6 out of 10 fireworks on New Year's Eve
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