BEFORE: I've been chipping away at the list of films nominated for Oscars in 2022 (released in 2021) - but at the same time, I'm still working on the films that were nominated the year before (released in 2020), and it hasn't been easy. That was the year "Nomadland" won Best Picture, and I made that my opening film for the current Movie Year, that seemed to be the best way to handle a film that was very hard to link to. (Hey, it worked out for me with "Parasite" the year before...). Prior to that, the only other film nominated for Best Picture in that group - the films that LOST to "Nomadland" - was "The Trial of the Chicago 7". Two out of eight, that's not great progress. So, here today is the third of the bunch, and if I stick to the schedule that I've set up through August, I should get to three more: "The Father" (for a certain holiday in June), "Judas and the Black Messiah", and "Mank". That will leave just two unseen, "The Sound of Metal" (not impossible to link to, but a bit tricky) and "Minari", which isn't even on my list right now, but maybe it should be. Scott Haze or Will Patton, those would be my only linking options for "Minari" - so, it's gonna be a while.
Hey, at least I finished watching all of the films nominated for Best Picture of 2019 (presented in 2020), so there's that. I think "Parasite" was the last one, and I got to that on the first day of 2021. It IS possible for me to make progress, it just doesn't always feel like it.
Christopher Lowell carries over from "Breaking News in Yuba County".
THE PLOT: A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.
AFTER: An ongoing part of my process in watching movies O.C.D. style is kind of a sorting process, figuring out where movies "go" according to the calendar - romance movies go over HERE in February, horror movies go over THERE in October, most everything else is up for grabs. There are no hard-and-fast rules for this, any rules I made up can also be broken by me, and therefore it's not really possible to make any "mistakes". Even a film I hate isn't really a mistake, it's just a bad film, by my standards, but the silver lining there is that it's a link to something better, and that gives me a glimmer of hope. But it still feels tricky, like maybe there's a fine line between a romance film that's also about something else, and a film that's about something else entirely that looks like a bit like a romance film. This film is definitely in the latter category, and I might have easily slipped up and placed it in February, next to "An Education" with Carey Mulligan, if I didn't do a little pre-check on the plot of the film. (I think I held this one back because it happens to connect several horror films on my list, but of course it doesn't really feel like a horror film either.) There's a down-side to romance and relationships, of course, and films about divorce and such have qualified in the past - and I counted "The Power of the Dog" as a pseudo-romance film this year, but I still feel the need to be careful and preserve the integrity of the romance chain. It's a bit like knowing that a tomato is botanically and technically a fruit, not a vegetable, but you wouldn't put one in a fruit salad with apples, oranges, grapes and whatever else goes in fruit salad.
Massive SPOILER ALERT again tonight, since this is still a relatively new-ish film - I imagine it got some attention, what with several Oscar nominations and all, but still I don't think this was widely seen, and it feels like they took steps to not give away the whole film in the synopsis and the trailers. I went in knowing only the bare minimum about the plot, so if you haven't seen this one, please turn back now, there's danger in the road ahead.
OK, still with me? I'm glad this film ended up here, at the close of a week about man's inhumanity to man, a week where the only comedies were black comedies, and I don't mean like ones with the Wayans Brothers in them. Wikipedia calls "Promising Young Woman" a black comedy, but I think that's a mis-classification, as black comedies are usually funny, on some level, and really, there's nothing fun or funny about this movie. This film is about a woman who's haunted by past trauma, and she's set herself on a course for vengeance, in whatever form she can dish it out. Clearly this story found its moment, following up on the whole #MeToo movement, or #TimesUp or whichever, and the lead character is kind of in the same vein as Marvel's Punisher character, if that makes any sense. He would go anywhere, do anything, wear whatever disguise he needed to wear, just to take down the bad guys, any bad guys. (The Punisher is also a darker take on Batman, they're similar in that their families were killed by violence, so they've devoted their lives to taking down criminals, even if they have to get violent themselves to do that.)
Cassie Thomas is a former medical student who works in a coffee shop, and still lives with her parents, who can't understand why her career is on hold and she's not in a relationship. As the film moves forward, we gradually learn about the why of her situation, her best friend Nina died in some kind of traumatic situation, and this forced Cassie to drop out of school. Cassie's leading a double life, though, as she spends her nights going to clubs and pretending to be completely drunk, so that men will pretend to help her get home, but they're really trying to get her back to their apartments to take advantage of her. Cassie plays the victim role until she's sure of their intentions, and then suddenly she's sober and confrontational - at first we're not exactly sure what happens to the men, some apparently get off with a warning, others maybe not. We see Cassie making various colored check-marks in a journal of sorts, perhaps her punishment takes different forms once her ruse is revealed?
A chance encounter with Ryan, a former school-mate, now a pediatric surgeon, puts her in touch with a female classmate, Madison, who's connected to Nina's fate - she apparently refused to believe that anything bad happened to Nina that night. Cassie's revenge is to get Madison, a married mother of twins, drunk at lunch, and she pays a man to take her to a hotel room and leave her in bed. Madison gets off lucky - perhaps she thinks she cheated on her husband, and that's enough punishment for now. Next Cassie targets the female dean of the medical school, who also didn't believe Nina was a victim, and stood up for the accused male student instead. Cassie pretends to kidnap the dean's pre-teen daughter, saying that she's placed her in the care of several untrustworthy male students, thus driving the point home to the dean, that every female victim is somebody's daughter, and her own daughter is just as likely to become a victim.
Time moves on, and it seems for a while that Cassie's need for vengeance is satisfied, she even starts a relationship with Ryan, and it's a very positive thing, for a while. But Ryan happens to see Cassie out on the town one night, on one of her fake-drunk excursions, and that calls everything into question. Cassie has to make a choice, to either keep up her quest or move on to a new chapter in her life. Again, it seems like she might re-prioritize her life goals, put her own happiness first and let everything go, but then a video of the fateful night years ago re-surfaces, and she's back on the quest, re-focused on moving up the chain until she can target the main offender, Al Monroe, who was never charged.
Cassie pressures Ryan until she learns the location of Al's secret bachelor party, she dresses up like a stripper in a nurse costume, and crashes the bachelor party. She's determined to get Al alone in a room and confront him over his actions, and she'll do whatever it takes at that point. And that's all I can say about the plot, but the level of dedication in this character is truly astounding, just saying that she's willing to go to extremes doesn't even do this story justice. How rare it is to find a movie that's willing to go THERE and then even beyond that. Cassie had plans within plans within plans, which might be a bit unbelievable, but the point made is still valid. The effects of the traumatic event in the past set her on this course, and nothing was going to convince her to get off of it.
It's certainly an eye-opener, like it made me look back on all those cases from the past few years, everyone from Donald Trump to Matt Lauer to Michael Jackson to Harvey Weinstein et al. - these people didn't just operate in a vacuum, they had people working for them, lawyers and managers and assistants who are all complicit, who had a hand in making lawsuits disappear or harassing victims into not pursuing legal actions. It takes a village to cover up bad behavior, and if some people know that the accused are guilty and still help them avoid prosecution, then what does that say about them? Yes, there's a wave of "cancel culture" going through the country - but most likely there are people who deserve to get cancelled. If they rise to positions of power and the best plan they have once they get there is to take advantage of others, then please, cancel them.
I can't imagine the challenges involved in making a film like this - like walking on a tightrope without a net and if you move just a smidge in either direction, you're going to fall, and it will be hard landing, for sure. And then even when the story is done and you've made it to safety, you still don't even know if you've entertained the audience, but that's kind of a secondary concern, because the performance here, and its larger meaning, is the main issue.
Also starring Carey Mulligan (last seen in "An Education"), Bo Burnham (last seen in "Hall Pass"), Alison Brie (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Clancy Brown (last heard in "Lady and the Tramp" (2019)), Jennifer Coolidge (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Laverne Cox (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Molly Shannon (last seen in "Trust Me"), Connie Britton (last seen in "Bombshell"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Scream 4"), Max Greenfield (last seen in "The Oath"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Steve Monroe (last seen in "Suburbicon"), Samuel Richardson (last seen in "Good Boys"), Alfred Molina (also last seen in "An Education"), Ray Nicholson, Timothy E. Goodwin, Alli Hart, Loren Paul, Scott Aschenbrenner, Gabriel Oliva, Bryan Lillis, Francisca Estevez, Lorna Scott (last seen in "Cellular"), Casey Adams, Vince Lozano, Mike Horton, Angela Zhou, Austin Talynn Carpenter with archive footage of Robert Mitchum (last seen in "Mr. North").
RATING: 6 out of 10 cat-calls from construction workers
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