BEFORE: I'm back from Atlantic City, things lined up SO well with the films that I'd watched in advance - I know, I cheat, I can't help it, but I watched 2 extra films in April and May and I sat on the reviews, because I could see IN ADVANCE where those films could slip into the chain, if my plans held up. So my plans DID hold up, and thanks to other films with Awkwafina and Benedict Cumberbatch, they slid right into where they belonged, and I essentially took three days in A.C., to relax a bit, recharge and catch up on ONE streaming show, namely "Obi-Wan Kenobi", because priorities. Now I pretty much have to work every day for the rest of June, at either one job or the other, and then the theater's shutting down for July due to roof repairs, and I'll either have to find another part-time gig, or file for partial unemployment and then catch up on my sleep.
It was tough to really enjoy Atlantic City, because so much of it felt like a ghost town, like there weren't tumbleweeds rolling down the Boardwalk, but it felt like a shadow of its former self, I know they've had down-times there before and bounced back, so I hope they can do it again. No more Apple Store, no more Budakkan, and if you had a favorite restaurant there, it's even money that it's not there any more. Now, maybe you'll like the new restaurant that replaced it, or maybe not. And the slots weren't paying out for us - of course, the casinos can control the odds, so what are the chances they'll allow a jackpot after nearly two years of down-time? It's not likely. So we had a couple nice meals, and via the slots we essentially made a contribution to the city's Post-Covid Redevelopment Fund, but I think we'll give it a while before we return, now that we know that recovery is still ongoing.
Meanwhile, I'm going to double-up today, because I still need to make it to Father's Day on time, and now I've got too many Benedict Cumberbatch films, and not enough days to watch them - I've got to drop one, but which one? Now I'm glad I watched "The Power of the Dog" back in February, because otherwies I'd have TWO too many...Benedict Cumberbatch carries over from "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"...
THE PLOT: A writer takes a backwards look at the life of his unlikely friend, Stuart, a homeless alcoholic who experienced a traumatic childhood event.
AFTER: It's weird sometimes to jump back 15 or 20 years, via the power of movies - this BBC TV movie aired in 2007, and it's now on the popular HBO Max service, as was "The Gathering Storm" and "Into the Storm". These two lead actors are huge superstars now, and it feels like they now tend appear in very different movies - "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "The Current War" sort of feel like they're on opposite ends of the spectrum, if you know what I mean. Tom Hardy played Al Capone, while Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing - two very, very different people. But are they all that different? They've both played villains in "Star Trek" movies - though in different timelines, Hardy was in "Nemesis" and Cumberbatch was in "Into Darkness", and they're both playing Marvel Comics characters, they were both in "Spider-Man: No Way Home", though they had no scenes together.
I caught a bit of "Swingers" the other night on late-night cable, and I just couldn't believe how young Vince Vaughn was, and how skinny Jon Favreau was back then. I get that same kind of feeling watching Hardy and Cumberbatch together in "Stuart: A Life Backwards", I mean, logically they both HAD to be young men at some point in their lives, but still, it's a bit jarring when we've come to know them so well as grown-up stars of action movies and period pieces.
Hardy, of course, plays the troubled alcoholic homeless guy, and Cumberbatch plays the cerebral writer who's volunteering at the shelter - or the British term for it appears to be "Wintercomfort Day Centre". Remember, those Brits have different words for everything, they call an apartment a "flat" and a homeless person is called a "dosser". Stuart is a mentally ill person, and they call that "a nutter" or perhaps "barmy". People in this film also said several times that he's got "all legs in the show", and I have no idea what that really means. At one point in the film, a young Stuart is screaming that he needs to be "put in care", and I couldn't quite figure out if that was Brit-speak for a hospital, or an asylum or something else.
But this is based on a true story, there was a real Stuart Shorter, and a real Alexander Masters who wrote a book about him, only his life story was told in reverse - I'm also not sure how you do that in book form, I guess you write the story from beginning to end and then you just put the chapters in reverse order? There must be more to it than that. But unfortunately we don't really get that same sort of structure from the film, because the film is very limited, we have to see Alexander meeting Stuart first, and there story has to progress forward from there - but we slowly learn more details about Stuart's life, like his diagnosis for muscular dystrophy and then he talks about his various prison sentences as he learns to trust Alexander more. Near the close of the film, we learn about the abuse he suffered as a child, first molested by his brother and then sent off to school, where he was further molested by the headmaster.
After that (or before, in this reverse timeline) he attended classes full of people with special needs, I guess to prepare him for his future status as a disabled person? I don't know, so much was unclear here that this film probably sold a lot of books, people probably watched the movie on the BBC and then ran out to the book shop (which in Cockney slang would be a "fish hook lollipop") just to figure out the right order for the details of the horrible events in Stuart's life. I'm just not sure that's how I'd want to spend my free time, that's all I'm saying. Yes, bad things happen to people all the time, but there's not really anything I can do about it, so why dwell on it?
The real reason to watch this one is probably to see how a method actor like Tom Hardy approaches a character with both mental and physical disabilities - how does that character talk, think, get through the day? Is it possible to play a character who's prone to violent outbursts, someone who, at certain times in the film, is seen naked (starkers) while holding a knife, with his apartment (flat) on fire, and he's either drunk or high, maybe both, clearly a danger to himself and others, and still end up being a character worthy of our sympathy? I'd say that Hardy does manage to pull this off, although it's probably knowing about the abuse that the character endured as a boy that goes a long way toward making this possible.
Of course, now I also realize there was a much easier way to connect all the Marvel movies - why didn't I just watch THIS one to connect "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" with "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"? Honestly, I have no idea - but if I'd done that, then I would have missed out on including "The Bad Guys", "Swan Song" and "Raya and the Last Dragon", among others. Of course, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but when it comes to my movie-watching method, the winding road often covers more territory, and thus fills up the calendar between any two given dates.
Also starring Tom Hardy (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Nicola Duffett (last seen in "Howard's End"), Claire-Louise Cordwell, Edna Doré, Candis Nergaard, Joanna Maude, Trevor Sellers, Caroline Parker, Laurence Hobbs, Giles Taylor, David Chittenden, Felicity Dean (last seen in "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells"), Sagar Arya, Lorna Bennett, Sandra Maitland, Timothy Carlton, Adam Payne, Franco Lombardi, George Nolan, Daniel McMillan, Marston Bloom, Jamie Kenna (last seen in "The Bank Job"), Steve King.
RATING: 5 out of 10 bowls of "convict curry"
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