BEFORE: Do you want to know what's really odd about watching nine films starring Nicolas Cage in a row? It's the fact that it now feels strange to me to watch a film that does NOT have Nicolas Cage in it - and there were more films available to me, but I've got to move forward, Easter is coming. I might be late posting tomorrow, because I have to work both jobs and I may not be able to get a movie in - but this kind of works in my favor, because I have Tuesday off, and I might sneak out to the movie theater to see a certain superhero film. Yep, today's film links to it - I was going to go last week, but I'd just come back from Massachusetts and I really needed to sleep in last Tuesday.
Alex Wolff carries over from "Pig". Looking back at January, I now realize this film was the quickest way to connect between "The French Dispatch" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home", so why didn't I just watch it then? I must have missed it, or maybe that wouldn't have been enough steps, because I watched three films then in place of this one, did I not notice it as an option? Or maybe I just really wanted to work in "A Most Wanted Man", because it got left behind after watching "Jack Goes Boating" late last year. It seems I'm always playing catch-up. By May I'll be three Marvel movies behind, four if you count the "Doctor Strange" sequel - but I'm going to catch up on three out of four between Mother's Day and Father's Day, that's the plan. First "The Batman", then the Marvel films.
THE PLOT: The lives of two different families collide when their children begin a relationship that leads to a tragic accident.
AFTER: I wasn't sure what to expect from this one, because it sounds like a political film, like "Shock and Awe" or "Broken City", only it's going to be about human trafficking or something like that. Then I read the description and it sounded a lot like "Carnage" or "The Dinner", with a situation that brings two sets of parents together and puts them at odds. And it kind of is like those films, but it's also its own thing. And that's largely due to the structure, where we see the same events unfolding from different P.O.V.'s, which is both good and bad.
It's good because even though the film runs through some the same events several times, like the awards dinner, we learn a little more information about certain key events each time they run by, which really is the best way to do this. If you're going to bend the rules of time and space, repeat events, show us the other side of that conversation that we couldn't here before, the audience should slowly learn the information as it's carefully divulged, this way the film doesn't throw everything at us all at once, we've got some time to think about things, and really, there's only one piece of information that we want to get at, but instead the film says, "Hold on, we're going to get there, but first, consider this bit of new information about THIS character."
But it's a double-edged sword, this technique is bad because it's so frustrating, and it leads me to wonder if this is really just a half-hour of story that gets repeated three times to make up a feature-length film. I mean, "Pulp Fiction" kind of folded time back in on itself, too, but at least it didn't tell the same story twice, each segment was something new, and then it led us to piece the proper order of events together later. But here it feels a bit like a cheat, because we want to know who was driving the car that night, and then the first few times through, we don't learn that, and that can be very frustrating. This feels more like, "Oh, we KNOW you want to know who was driving that car, but we're not going to tell you just yet. For now, all we can tell you is that is wasn't THIS person, but stay tuned, you might get lucky in a bit."
Everybody here, in both families, has secrets - some they give up quite easily, others are harder to discern, but we can probably take a couple good guesses. Drew Hagel mentions upon first meeting that he's Shannon's dad, he's divorced and re-married to a "trophy wife", and then when he learns that his daughter's boyfriend's father manages an investment fund, he can't wait to try to invest in it, even though there's a waiting list. He also can't really afford to do so, but he fudges the numbers a bit at his own company, takes out a high-interest loan, puts the house up as collateral, because it's such a sure thing, only it turns out there's no such thing as a sure thing. The secret that he's been hiding, in addition to not telling his wife that they could lose their house, is that he's got a history of gambling addiction, and what's investing, after all, but a legal form of gambling?
The boyfriend's father, Quint Manning, seems to be a legit businessman, but is he? Is the volatile market he mentions really volatile, or perhaps is he some kind of Bernie Madoff type, running a pyramid scheme? Honestly, I couldn't tell - perhaps there's some wiggle room in the script here. His wife is a former horror-movie scream queen, who wants his company to invest in a rundown theater that she can renovate, because then she'll have something to do beyond being an idle rich person. Her secret is apparently that she's had a few extra-marital affairs, and is always looking for another one.
The families come together because their children, Shannon and Jamie, are dating. But, are they, really? Or is there another secret that nobody's talking about yet? Actually, there could be a few, and they may all get revealed after the accident, which followed the party, which followed the private school awards dinner. Umm, I think that's how it all went down, remember this film messes with the time continuum just a bit, but that order seems to make sense. And I got a bit worried because I didn't see Alex Wolff's character for the first hour, and of course I was counting on him to make an appearance, so my chain wouldn't be broken. Oh, yeah, he shows up and his character turns out to be pretty important, so there's that.
I don't want to say too much, because spoilers, but it's enough to know that the film eventually does get there, and all the secrets from both families are revealed. One thing I really appreciated was that this movie had a line of dialogue that I've always wanted to hear - after Shannon made a reference to "losing her mother", she had to clarify in the next sentence with "Oh, she's not dead, we just don't know where she is." That's kind of funny, a neat little play on words, but it would be funnier, I think, if it were about an elderly person, rather than an absent mother.
Simply nobody saw this film in the theaters, it grossed under $10,000 worldwide. I guess that's because of the pandemic, it's listed as a 2019 film on IMDB, but the release date was March 20, 2020 - yeah, that was JUST at the start of lockdown, a little over two years ago. Tough break - but it seems to have found a place for itself on HBO and HBO Max, perhaps. It's not terrible, so it may be worth a go. I've got to run now because I've got to shower and study for this fire prevention test, but I'll be back posting on Tuesday, I'll just have to double up.
Also starring Liev Schreiber (last seen in "A Walk on the Moon"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "An Education"), Maya Hawke (last seen in "Once Upon a Time.. In Hollywood"), Betty Gabriel (last seen in "Get Out"), Paul Sparks (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Aasif Mandvi (last seen in "Freedomland"), Dominic Colon (ditto), Fred Hechinger (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), John Ventimiglia (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), James Waterston (last seen in "Dead Poets Society"), Fredric Lehne (last seen in "Tallulah"), Daryl Edwards (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Alex Yiakoumatos, Nick Yiakoumatos, Carson McCalley, Mark Blum (last seen in "Down to You"), Eva Kaminsky (last seen in "The Dark Tower"), David Gibson (last seen in "Joker"), Marisa Ryan (last seen in "Riding in Cars With Boys"), Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Loni Ackerman, Christiane Seidel.
RATING: 5 out of 10 therapy sessions
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