BEFORE: I'm finally back to where I WOULD have been on May 14, if I hadn't watched "A Quiet Place Part II", this was the film that was originally going to follow "Jungle Cruise", but I flipped this whole section of the chain around, so that the World War I and World War II films would get watched before Memorial Day. I stand by that decision - any time I make an alteration like this to line things up with the calendar it seems to work out, however it meant I had to drop a few films, like "An Accidental Studio", and even a minor change like dropping one film could hurt me at the end of the year, there's no way to know. Probably I could just fix a shortage of one movie now by adding another at the end, but I can't be sure.
So now Jesse Plemons carries over from "Judas and the Black Messiah", instead of from "Jungle Cruise" and I'll link back up to the film tomorrow that originally would have followed "The King's Man". Oh, and I dropped two other films with Jesse Plemons for time constraints, as there are only so many days in June, it turns out. Those films are "The Discovery" and "Antlers", the judges have ruled that they're both horror films, or horror films of a sort, so some effort should be made to watch them in October. And they DO link up with other horror films, but I've got two different chains building for this year's ShockFest, and I'm not 100% sure which one I'm going to go with. Maybe I'll find a way to link them together, but I don't have it yet. Anyway, I think I'm still on schedule for Father's Day and July 4.
THE PLOT: A man breaks into a tech billionaire's empty vacation home, but things go sideways when the arrogant mogul and his wife arrive for a last-minute getaway.
AFTER: This film is from the director of "The One You Love", which I watched in February 2021, and sure sounded like a romance film, but it turned out to have a big twist that involved...well, I won't reveal it here. But it was the kind you don't forget when you go in expecting something about love and romance, and you get THAT. So I was all prepared to be surprised again today, but then "prepared to be surprised" is something of a contradiction, isn't it? If I'm prepared, how can I be surprised?
Anyway, when presented with the situation, which is just three people in a vacation getaway, one of whom is NOT supposed to be there, I started thinking about where this could possibly go, what's the angle? Is there an angle? There's got to be an angle... The most illogically logical one I could think of was, maybe this is a hidden love triangle, maybe there's trouble in the marriage between the CEO and his wife, and the guy crashing in the vacation home is really her secret boyfriend, and the whole thing's a set-up to get money from the billionaire, and the more time they spend together, the more likely that all the truth's going to come out and all the secrets will be slowly revealed.
Sure, that was possible, and it would have been fine, but that's NOT where this movie ended up going. Yes, there was some trouble in the marriage, that's to be expected when one character is a tech billionaire and his wife runs their charitable foundation (*cough* Bill and Melinda *cough*) but it didn't feel like the wife and "Nobody" were in cahoots from the start. (There are no character names in this film, in the credits they're just "CEO", "Wife" and "Nobody".). But Nobody is definitely in this to get some money, the best theory is that he's one of the many people who were laid off or made expendable by the CEO's various business dealings, buyouts and downsizings or corporate leveraging or deals that made other companies worthless.
And Nobody was willing to take all the cash on hand at the house, plus a nice watch, to go away without the police being called or lawyers getting involved. But then he spotted a security camera, and realized that maybe his problems were just beginning, if there was a digital record of him breaking in or leaving the property with a bag of cash, he'd need MORE money to get further away and start a new life off the grid. So he comes BACK to the house, this time with the gun that the CEO supposedly didn't have, and holds the couple hostage until they can arrange to get him a bigger payday. A windfall, if you will.
This feels very much like the kind of movie that gets made during a pandemic, with just four actors (one of which is married to the director) and one location, though it is a BEAUTIFUL location. This same director filmed "The One You Love" in his parents' (Mary Steenburgen and step-dad Ted Danson) Hollywood home, perhaps this beautiful Ojai, CA estate (complete with orange grove) belongs to his father, Malcolm McDowell or somebody equally famous. But once again, it's all about the real estate. (EDIT: Ah, it's the Casa Ojai Inn, a three-star hotel which was conveniently available during the pandemic, since fewer people were traveling and staying in hotels.)
But it's not just a film that was clearly made with pandemic restrictions in place, it's also about what happens between people when they're sequestered together for any length of time, and so that's also related to the pandemic. How many relationships were affected by people spending more time together, in close quarters, and realizing new things about their life partners or themselves? How many people questioned their life choices when they had to re-assess their jobs, their priorities, their relationships, due to quarantine and isolation? Not everyone can pick up a phone and have an assistant arrange for a large amount of cash to be withdrawn from the company account and left as unmarked bills, dropped off in a bag. Most of us had to scramble to either find a new job we could do from home or file for unemployment - and for most of us, breaking into a tech CEO's home wasn't an option, either. Perhaps the interactions of the people forced together here is an extreme example, but could it happen?
I think the IMDB has finally figured me out - while visiting the page for "Windfall", they're showing me clips of the film I'm going to watch tomorrow. This has happened a couple times on Netflix and Hulu, when I sign on and the first film they recommend is the one I'm about to watch. My plan is usually so random and my approach is so scattershot, that I'm now a bit concerned.
Also starring Jason Segel (last seen in "The End of the Tour"), Lily Collins (last seen in "Okja"), Omar Leyva (last seen in "The Gambler") with archive footage of Steve Martin (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Martin Short (last seen in "Get Over It"), Chevy Chase (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019))
RATING: 5 out of 10 personal sleeping cabins by the sauna
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