The Power of the Dog

Year 14, Day 64 - 3/5/22 - Movie #4,066

BEFORE: I know what you're thinking, why am I interrupting a perfectly good, if overly long, romance chain with a Western film?  Well, believe me, I agonized over this decision, and I maybe read a bit too far into the plot synopsis on Wikipedia before deciding to include this - this is partially for spacing reasons, I needed to add more films to hit my Easter film on the nose, but also the Oscars are coming up, and this film has the MOST nominations, with 12.  I can at least have a contender that I've seen in a bunch of categories, and if it wins anything, I can say, "Wow, I saw that one before it won the Award for Best Editing!" or if it wins nothing, I can say, "Yeah, I saw that one, it was OK, it makes sense that it got beat for Best Adapted Screenplay."

(Here are the two main arguments AGAINST watching this film today - one is that it's way off-theme, I had a nice quiet chain going about love and relationships and this may stick out like a sore thumb in the February line-up and the other is that with the new Doctor Strange movie coming out in May, perhaps I should save this one for then, because it will give me more linking options, it could be much easier to GET to "Doctor Strange 2" with a fair number of other Benedict Cumberbatch films on my radar.  I can't really worry about that now, especially since I haven't programmed May yet, only part of April.  But watching this film here also strands a film called "Leave No Trace", which stars Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster.  This film and yesterday's film therefore removed all ways to link to that film - but there's always hope, Thomasin McKenzie is in a number of films like "Last Night in Soho" and "Old" that I eventually want to watch - so this argument is therefore minimized.)

With this film and "Dune" combined, I could be interested in watching the telecast now.  Maybe. I think I can still get to "Free Guy" before the ceremony, which would give me a near clean sweep of the Visual Effects category, but all the other nominated films don't seem to fit in with my agenda right now, once again I started planning much too late - and once again I resolve to do better next year.  Kirsten Dunst carries over from "Get Over It", and she'll be here again tomorrow, again three appearances in a row seems to be working out for me a lot this month. 

I'm late getting to this one, because I had to work a 12-hour shift at the New York Children's Film Festival, but I still have a couple hours to post TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for Sunday, March 6 before it airs: 

6:15 am "Little Women" (1933)

8:15 am "Pygmalion" (1938)

10:15 am "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1952)

12:00 pm "Citizen Kane" (1941)
2:15 pm "The Great McGinty" (1940)

4:00 pm "Woman of the Year" (1942)

6:00 pm "Pillow Talk" (1959)

8:00 pm "The Iron Lady" (2011)

10:00 pm "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)

12:30 am "Jerry Maguire" (1996)
3:00 am "Antonia's Line" (1995)

5:00 am "Coquette" (1929)

It's another net-positive day for me, as I've seen 7 out of these 12: "The Lavender Hill Mob", "Citizen Kane" (of course), "Woman of the Year", "Pillow Talk", "The Iron Lady", "Shakespeare in Love" and "Jerry Maguire".  That brings me up to 29 seen out of 67, so now I'm running at just over 43%. So far, so good, I guess. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Slow West" (Movie 3,924)

THE PLOT: Charismatic rancher Phil Burbank inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love. 

AFTER: Standard SPOILER ALERT applies tonight, as this is a recent film (released in December) currently vying for Oscar gold.  It's also been in the news quite a bit (any publicity is good publicity?) recently after actor Sam Elliott picked a beef with director Jane Campion in a podcast, stating that a director from New Zealand had no right to come to America and mess with our Western movies, or words to that effect.  Well, Mr. Elliott is entitled to his opinion, being the man who killed both Hitler and the Bigfoot, after all - but I think he got a number of points wrong, or is perhaps mistaken about a few things.  First of all, anybody can make any type of movie they want to make, except for snuff films - the industry survives when new people come along and put their own spins on westerns, sci-fi movies, rom-coms, etc.  I may not like every movie, but I will champion every filmmaker's right to tell the stories that they want to tell.  It's called the free market, and once we start telling people what movies SHOULD be made, it's a short ride from there to telling people what books they can and can't read, and come to think of it, we're kind of there already, aren't we?  The point is the same though, all books and all movies should be made available to all people at all times, it's called the free market, and over time it decides which films and books are successful and popular from choice, not from enforced censorship, in an ideal world of course. 

I strongly suspect, however, that Sam Elliott's disdain for this film comes from a different place than his support of the "purity" of the American Western, which is a B.S. argument - hasn't he ever heard of "Quigley Down Under"?  It's clearly a Western, but it's set in Australia, which is very similar to the American West in some regards.  "Solo: A Star Wars Story" was just a Western in space, and really, the genre can survive a LOT - even if one particular film didn't go the direction you wanted it to go.  Remember "Posse"?  That was a great Western with a mostly black cast, sure, it's a bit of revisionist history, but it's a damn fine movie. Also, Mr. Elliott is forgetting a key factor in ANY period piece, be it a Western or a corseted European drama, or a sci-fi film set in the future - ultimately, they reflect more about the time they were MADE than the time they're set, meaning that a film set in another time period can't help reflect the values of the people who made it, WHEN they made it.  

I don't even need to hear the interview with Sam Elliott, I can bet you cash money that he was afraid to say what really bothered him, and no doubt it was the implication that there were gay cowboys.  Just admit it, Sam - people who hated the movie "Posse" came off as racist, though, and if you don't like "The Power of the Dog", and say so publicly, just know that you're going to appear homophobic.  There were gay people back in ancient Greece, the whole Spartan culture was built on it, and those were some MANLY men, right?  Gay men didn't just disappear then for a few thousand years, only to pop up again in 1970's San Francisco, that's not possible - they just learned to hide in plain sight, that's all.  And yep, some of them were probably cowboys, why else do you think one member of the Village People dressed that way?  It stands to reason, statistically, that some cowboys probably swung that way.  All those lone nights on the prairie, during cattle drives, men huddling together for warmth, what could be more natural?   They just didn't discuss it with the outside world, I bet.  

It just so happens now that most of the states where cattle ranches still exist, where there are still people who could be called cowboys, where they listen to both kinds of music, country AND western, are called "red states", they've adopted conservative values over time, and if you're still looking for homophobes during this more enlightened age, that's probably where you'll find them.  But it wasn't always that way - the Conservative Party has only been in bed with the Republican Party for the last few decades.  Parts of the Old West were notoriously lawless, that means that anything goes, sure, maybe more people were hard-core religious back then, but that doesn't mean that all of them were.  And who decided that gay love is immoral, anyway, that feels like another holdover from the Medieval times, when the priests were writing all the rules.  But if you think about it, when you hear about a priest molesting kids, it's usually boys, not girls, so where's your morality THEN?  

I'm getting a bit off track, but my point is, this film does qualify under the romance rules, not just because of the feelings and desires of the central character - which, admittedly, are mostly implied and not depicted outright - but also because his brother marries a widow, and they seem fairly happy together, or at least content, so there, there's your romance element.  Two people meet in the Old West, they fall in love and get married, end of story - only it's NOT the end of the story, is it?  Phil, the cattle rancher in question, does not approve of his brother's new marriage, he thinks she's a gold-digger scheming to get her hands on part of the family's cattle ranch, and their extensive collection of useless cattle hides - because that makes sense.  Phil also doesn't care for her teenage son, Peter, whose hobbies seem to include making paper flowers, dissecting rabbits and also dressing fancy.  

Again, they're all AROUND this topic without confronting it directly, which is a bit maddening.  Later in the film, the male bunch of Phil's ranchhands make catcalls at Peter, and yes, they use the insult that begins with "F", so FINALLY the film starts to talk about this.  But bear in mind, these ranchhands enjoy skinny-dipping together, so this calls the whole thing into question - are the ranchhands also gay, all of them?  Then if they make fun of another gay person, what is that, a form of self-loathing?  Phil doesn't participate in the weekly Burbank Ranch skinny-dipping party, instead he prefers to watch from a distance.  Phil apparently doesn't like to bathe, so over any extended period of time, well, he stinks.  And other people point this out to him, only it doesn't make a difference, he was part of this anti-bath-er movement that was popular back then, he was exercising his American right to smell bad and not take care of himself, public health be damned.  Why does this feel just a bit too familiar and current, hmmm?

When exactly is "back then", anyway?  There are CARS seen in the film, and that's not normal for a Western movie.  The typical Western movie tends to take place in the late 1800's, sometime between the Civil War and the turn of the century, and there are usually Native Americans to fight and there's talk of where the railroad's gonna be built - but based on the songs in this movie, and one character's mention of King Tutankhamen, I'd say this probably takes place in the 1920's (Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922) so that means this is NOT your typical Western anyway, because it's set during the jazz age, only so far out in the American West that most people haven't learned about flappers and wild parties and the end of Prohibition, not to mention reefer and the new hip craze, gay sex.  

And so since Phil hasn't learned yet that society's got new rules, he remains closeted, or his version of that anyway, and he's therefore caught in some spiral of self-hatred or bad self image, thinking that his thoughts and desires are somehow evil, and this manifests itself in his poor upkeep of hygiene, plus his terrible nasty attitude toward his brother and other family members.  Am I hitting some kind of mark here, or am I way off base?  I suppose other answers are possible, but this is two films this week ("Passing" was the other one) where the filmmakers just couldn't or wouldn't just plainly state that characters were gay, instead they hinted it strongly, I guess so that someone who is homophobic or chooses not to assume this about characters, because they don't want to watch movies about gay people, can still watch the film and enjoy it?  That seems a bit like an odd segment of the populace to market a film toward, just saying. 

I'm going to score this film with the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment - and then I guess we'll see in a few weeks if this story resonated with enough people to justify this particular spin on what a Western movie can be.  Perhaps this film will just prove too obtuse for most people to "get it", that's my prediction.  I'm a little bit behind now, because it took me two attempts to watch this film - I started on Friday night, but I knew that I had to get up early on Saturday morning to work, so I avoided my usual glass of Diet Mountain Dew, and stuck to water.  However, this insured that I fell asleep in the recliner, about an hour into the movie.  I think I woke up once and rewound back to where I fell asleep, but at that point, the damage was done and I fell asleep again. I had to finish the film late Saturday night, after the film festival, so now this means I have to get back ahead of the count somehow this week. 

Also starring Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "Slow West"), Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "Jojo Rabbit"), Genevieve Lemon, Keith Carradine (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), Frances Conroy (last seen in "Love Happens"), Peter Carroll (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Alison Bruce, Sean Keenan, George Mason, Ramontay McConnell, David Denis, Cohen Holloway (last seen in "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"), Max Mata, Josh Owen, Alistair Sewell, Eddie Campbell (also last seen in "Slow West"), Karl Willetts (ditto), Adam Beach (last seen in "The New Mutants"), Maeson Stone Skuccedal, Alice Englert, Bryony Skillington, Jacque Drew, Yvette Parsons (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows"), Aislinn Furlong, Tatum Warren-Ngata, Yvette Reid, Alice May Connolly, Stephen Lovatt.

RATING: 6 out of 10 hidden bottles of hooch

Get Over It

Year 14, Day 63 - 3/4/22 - Movie #4,065

BEFORE: Well, I started this romance chain back on February 1 with "A Rainy Day in New York", a film about college kids in love, then followed that with a high-school set film, "She's All That", and another one set in college, "Down to You".  Weeks later, as this theme is winding down a bit (still two weeks to go, though), I'm back in the school-based films like "The Rules of Attraction", and now this one, another classic high-school romance film.  So classic that I never got around to watching it, in 13-plus years of doing this.  Swoosie Kurtz carries over from "The Rules of Attraction". 

There were no romances on TCM today, I can't really get my programming to align with their "31 Days of Oscar" schedule - but there IS a western tomorrow on their docket, and my film tomorrow is also a Western, can you guess which one?  Hint: It's from 2021, and it's got Kirsten Dunst in it. Here's the TCM line-up for Day 5:

6:30 am "The Good Earth" (1937)

9:00 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)

11:00 am "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)

2:15 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949)

4:15 pm "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) - hey, that one counts as a romance, right?

8:00 pm "Tootsie" (1982)

10:15 pm "Rain Man" (1988)

12:45 am "Raging Bull" (1980)

3:00 am "Fanny and Alexander" (1982)

Come on, you can't just put two Dustin Hoffman movies next to each other, you're going to get me all excited!  See how easy it is to link movies by actor, TCM?  Why not just do that for the whole MONTH, come on, it's not that hard, I do it for a whole year!  Anyway, I've seen 6 out of these 9, the ones I haven't seen are "The Good Earth", "The Thief of Bagdad" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" - I'm OK with Westerns, but not really a fan of John Wayne.  But now I'm moving up to 22 seen out of 55, which is a full 40%!  I knew watching all those Ingmar Bergman films last year would pay off somehow.

THE PLOT: A high school senior's girlfriend breaks up with him. His friends try to make him think of something else.  His friend's sister Kelly helps him try out for the school musical, and spending time with Kelly has an effect. 

AFTER: Well, this film from 2001 manages to answer the question that absolutely nobody has ever asked, which is, "Hey, did 1990's music stars Sisqo, Coolio and Vitamin C ever appear in the same movie?"  Why, yes, they did.  Nobody talks about this amazing meeting of the musical minds, but it exists.  Oh, yeah, a bunch of actors are in here too, with a tale of love lost and love regained, and in true classical Shakespearean style, there's a play within the play, er, film, much like there was in "Hamlet".  Only the play here is a high-school musical version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and the love quadrangle among the human students sort of mimics the one that was in Billy Shakes' play with fairies.  (Thankfully, nobody in the film made any queer fairy-based jokes...)

High-school senior Berke Landers has his childhood sweetheart move back in town, so they hook up as a couple of horny high-school students - BUT the relationship wears out after a few months, and the (ridiculously named) Allison McAllister falls for "Striker" Scrumfield, a former boy-bander who sang with a group called the Swingtown Lads.  I'm not sure a boy-bander would be caught dead performing in a high-school musical, though - but this version of Shakespeare's play is called "A Midsummer Night's Rocking Eve", with songs written by the high-school's overly dramatic drama teacher, who can't stop name-dropping all the famous people he's ever not met. 

Berke enlists the help of Kelly, his best friend's younger sister to help him rehearse for the musical, and he manages to land a very small role, as attendant #3.  But that's OK, his plan is to just get close to Allison and win her back, umm, somehow.  Or he could also expose Striker for the cheating ladies man he probably is, he's basically up for anything that will get her back.  Only he ends up spending so much time with Kelly that they become friends and confidantes, and you can probably guess where this is probably heading, right?  Who needs Allison when you have Kelly, who's played by a much more famous actress, so hey, it's probably meant to be.  

The big stand-out, here, though is Martin Short as the drama teacher who's either a genius or an idiot, or possibly both.  He's perfectly cast because Short is always so freewheeling and over-the-top, and that's exactly what a drama teacher would be, and if he doesn't also turn up somewhere on this season of "The Masked Singer", well, then that would be a real shame, wouldn't it?  The judges have finally stopped guessing him as a likely candidate, so it's a perfect time to put him on the show.  Just saying.  (Also, I had a vivid dream a few months ago that U2 frontman Bono turned up on the show in a polar bear costume, singing "She Blinded Me With Science", so I just want to get that down in print, because if it happens, then my dreams can predict the future and I have the gift of prophecy.)

It's clear, however, that the screenwriter here has no actual experience with high-school musicals (I, on the other hand, do) because this is not the way I remember them working. High-school boys just do not, for example, sing like operatic sopranos. I played in countless high-school and community-level productions, as Uncle Max in "The Sound of Music", Lazar Wolfe in "Fiddler on the Roof", Big Julie in "Guys and Dolls" and General Bullmoose in "Lil' Abner", but my biggest role was probably as Chief Sitting Bull in "Annie Get Your Gun" (I wore a full Indian headress, but it was a different time, this would probably now be considered culturally inappropriate...). Look, I'll admit I wasn't much of a ladies' man in high school, but I must have been in 10 plays and never even made out with a girl backstage, what was I doing wrong?  I know, I know, it's all about the production and I didn't get into the game for that kind of action, but still...not even a kiss at the wrap party?

Said screenwriter also has no idea how strip clubs work, either, that much is clear.  A high-school kid would never end up on stage with the girls, tied up in a harness, just before the police raid the place.  Just. Doesn't. Happen.  Berke also has the coolest parents in recorded history, they're a couple of sex therapists with their own TV advice show, and they don't even care that there a wild party was thrown at their house without permission.  Must be another writer's fantasy there, along with very accident-prone New Zealand women.  

About that Kiwi girl, she goes sailing in the air late into the film, catapulted high up in the school theater's ceiling, and a character catches her in his arms.  I've got a big NITPICK POINT with any film that has somebody falling several stories, then caught safely - this happens a lot in superhero movies, too, but you can't just catch another human and stop their fall, not without doing damage to the catcher and the person being caught.  People are HEAVY, even the female ones, and when they fall a couple of stories they build up this thing called momentum, and it's not the fall that kills them, it's that sudden stop at the end.  Whether that stop happens in someone's arms, or on the floor, it's just as dangerous - you can't catch someone falling from a great height and save their life, it's just not that simple.  And you may hurt yourself in the process, too, so the general rule is, don't do this.  Even in a superhero movie, they've got to be slowed down first if they're going to survive - Superman can't just pluck Lois Lane out of her fall, he's got to grab her and fall with her for a bit, while slowing her down.

Ah, I'm just learning that Shane West was also in another high-school based romance, called "Whatever It Takes", loosely based on the Cyrano de Bergerac story.  Yeah, that would have been good to know before programming this chain.  Oh, well, put it on the "maybe" list for next year.. Well, at least today's film was a bit of fun, compared with yesterday's college film which was just such a big downer, all around.  Though, nowadays, hearing anybody sing "Love Will Keep Us Together" just reminds me that the duo most famous for performing that song, Captain and Tennille, ended up getting divorced. I'm not sure if that's ironic or just an admission of the inevitable. 

Also starring Ben Foster (last seen in "Contraband"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Melissa Sagemiller, Shane West, Colin Hanks (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Sisqo, Zoe Saldana (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Mila Kunis (last seen in "Third Person"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Lucky"), Martin Short (last seen in "Spielberg"), Carmen Electra (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Shawn Roberts (ditto), Christopher Jacot (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Kylie Bax, Dov Teifenbach (last seen in "Are You Here"), Jeanie Calleja (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2"), Jonathan Whittaker (also last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), Daniel Enright, Andrew McGillivray, Megan Fahlenbock, Sadie LeBlanc, Jordan Madley, Ravi Steve, Larissa Gomes, Lindsay Cole, Vitamin C (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Coolio

RATING: 4 out of 10 people on fire (doesn't anybody ever remember to stop, drop and roll?)

The Rules of Attraction

Year 14, Day 62 - 3/3/22 - Movie #4,064

BEFORE: Joel Michaely carries over from "Carrie Pilby", and now I know the real reason why I wasn't allowed to drop in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar", it was so I could send a Birthday SHOUT-out to Jessica Biel, born March 3, 1982.  If I had dropped in that other film, then THIS film with Ms. Biel would have landed on March 4.  They're always looking out for the integrity of this blog, those crafty judges.  At least I can get to another Oscar-nominated film on Saturday.

How are YOUR Oscar preparations going?  Are you getting out there, seeing a lot of films?  Or just streaming a bunch of the nominees from home?   If you're still housebound, here's the line-up of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar Winners" line-up for Friday, March 4:

7:15 am "Cromwell" (1970)

10:00 am "Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist" (1979)

10:45 am "Harlan County, USA" (1976)

12:45 pm "Bound for Glory" (1976)

3:30 pm "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974)

5:30 pm "Cabaret" (1972)

8:00 pm "Network" (1976)

10:15 pm "The French Connection" (1971)

12:15 am "Midnight Express" (1978)

2:30 am "The Omen" (1976)

4:30 am "Cries and Whispers" (1972)

Ah, they've reached the films of the 1970's. So then, why not just go chronologically for the whole month, start with "Wings" from 1927 and move forward from there, nah, that would be too easy, wouldn't it?  And then the people who don't like the older black-and-whites wouldn't turn in until the last week.  I think next week they're still splitting up films by decade, but after that it looks like a confusing mess, no rhyme or reason to it. Well, I've seen five of Friday's films: "Cabaret", "Network", "The French Connection", "The Omen", and last year I watched a lot of Bergman, including "Cries and Whispers". Another 5 out of 11 gets me to 16 out of 46, or almost 35%. 

THE PLOT: The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate. 

AFTER: This is another film that I TRIED to watch before, back in the before times (before the blog, not before the pandemic) and I just couldn't stick with it - "Walking and Talking" was another film like that. Or maybe I did watch them, and they didn't stick, or I forgot what it was about those films that made me not remember them, whatever.  Either way, those films are getting a proper watching this year, then I'm crossing them off the list, and my IMDB rating will prove to me in the future that I DID watch them, all the way through, and I never have to do so again.  Plus, the linking, I needed them for that, nothing's more important than not breaking the chain.  

There are a few strange things about this film, in addition to the fact that it somehow has no "good" characters, there's really nobody to root for here, because they're all damaged, they all act irresponsibly or in ways that will bring harm to themselves and others.  But what's strangest of all is that it was marketed as a teen comedy, the sex and drugs and partying was pitched as a draw, and there's nothing remotely comedic about it. Audiences showed up to see the next "American Pie", but were given the next "American Psycho" instead.  And it's no coincidence, this was based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis (I think my last five films have all been based on novels or graphic novels...) who wrote "American Psycho", and the lead male role here is Sean Bateman, and yes, he's the brother of Patrick Bateman from that other Ellis novel.  

The screenplay was written by Roger Avary, who co-wrote "Pulp Fiction" with Tarantino, so yeah, you can kind of see this film as a mix of those two writers, there's a lot of time-jumping, or rather time-reversing, in "Rules of Attraction", the film shows us the momentous events of the "End of the World" party, then rewinds a few weeks (?) to explain how each character got there.  Sean Bateman looks pretty beat-up at the party, but we won't find out until the end of the film who beat him up, and why - but chances are, he deserved it.  Sean is a drug dealer who's the connection between the rich college students and the unhinged drug supplier - so there's that.  Plus he's only interested in casual sex with hot blondes, not any interest in them as people or having solid relationships with them.  This might be fairly common at the college level, but Sean seems to be really good at not giving a crap about other people - he's always either forgetting people's names or at least pretending to.  He's got a thing for Lauren, so naturally he has sex with her roommate, just to get closer to her.  Yeah, that's bound to work, let me know how that goes. 

Lauren MIGHT have a thing for Sean, but she's really hung up on Victor, who's taken a year off to go have sex and drugs in every city in Europe.  She avoids all possible sexual relationships while Victor is away by looking through a graphic guide to STDs and what they can do to your body.  Yeah, that was the 80's, wasn't it?  Maybe the 90's too.  This prevents her from getting together with Sean, but really, didn't she kind of dodge a bullet there?  Much later, when Victor gets back, he doesn't even remember her - maybe that's from all the sex and drugs in Europe?

The third leg of the non-love-triangle is Paul, who used to date Lauren and now wouldn't mind dating Sean. (And I think my last like 18 films have all had some kind of love triangle in them...). This was probably more of a shocker back in 2002, to have a lead character who is bisexual, and the prevailing theory seems to be that Paul is the stand-in for the author, Bret Easton Ellis.  Paul's make-out session with Sean is shown in split-screen, to imply that there's one reality where they did it and one where they didn't, so perhaps the whole relationship only exists in Paul's mind. Paul is also seen coming on to a guy at the party after giving him Ecstasy, which honestly, is just as bad as having sex with a drunk girl or giving somebody a roofie, right?  

How many parties do these college kids attend?  There seems to be a very rigorous party schedule, in addition to the "End of the World" party (was this in 1999?  A Y2K thing?) there was the "Dress To Be Screwed" party (classy!) and then the weekly "Pre-Saturday" party - so, umm, Friday?  But yeah, there's that "Pulp Fiction" sort of structure, as we all end up back at the "End of the Film" party, which is where we started. The opening scene of "Pulp Fiction" showed us the robbery in the diner, and then the whole film drives us slowly back to that point, and picks up the action from there to the ending.  I really only give Tarantino and "Pulp Fiction" a pass on this sort of thing, Quentin did something similar with "The Hateful 8", messing with the time flow to conceal all the important information until it was needed, and that's really the way to do it.  "The Rules of Attraction" tried to get there too, only it felt like it was less successful in doing so. 

But hey, if you want to see Jessica Biel snorting coke or Fred Savage in his underwear, who am I to judge you?  Knock yourself out, only as I said before, I don't like any of these characters, not a one, but maybe that was the point of the film, who can say?  It's just kind of a relief to cross this film off, delete it from the DVR, and now I know I never need to watch it again.  

Also starring James Van Der Beek (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Shannyn Sossamon (last seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Ian Somerhalder (last seen in "Life as a House"), Jessica Biel (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Kate Bosworth (last seen in "Heist"), Kip Pardue (last seen in "Thirteen"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "The Replacement Killers"), Thomas Ian Nicholas (last seen in "Zeroville"), Jay Baruchel (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Faye Dunaway (last seen in "The Handmaid's Tale"), Swoosie Kurtz (last seen in "Overboard" (2018)), Clare Kramer, Russell Sams (last seen in "Wonderland"), Colin Bain, Eric Stoltz (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Fred Savage (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Eric Szmanda, Theresa Wayman, Skyler Stone (last seen in "Waiting..."), Quincy Evans, Anderson Goncalves (last seen in "Just Married"), Chasen Hampton, Malcolm Galt, Hayley Keenan, with cameos from Paul Williams (last seen in "Baby Driver"), Ron Jeremy (last seen in "The Boondock Saints"), Paul Oakenfold. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 intense waffles in Amsterdam

Carrie Pilby

Year 14, Day 61 - 3/2/22 - Movie #4,063

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

The Diary of a Teenage Girl

Year 14, Day 60 - 3/1/22 - Movie #4,062

BEFORE: OK, I've got a lot of notes to get out of the way, since it's now March 1, and the new month is here sooner than expected.  Here are the format stats for February, and even though there were 28 days, I still watched 29 movies - so much for slowing things down and allowing skip days at the start of the year...

15 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Walking and Talking, A Walk on the Moon, She's All That, Head Over Heels, Down to You, Legally Blonde, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, You Again, Catch and Release, Iris, Mansfield Park, Wuthering Heights (1992), Love Weddings & Other Disasters, Berlin I Love You, The Aftermath

7 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Feast of Love, For a Good Time Call..., Romance & Cigarettes, An Ideal Husband, An Education, Happy-Go-Lucky, Their Finest

2 watched on Netflix: Effie Gray, Passing

1 watched on Amazon Prime: A Rainy Day in New York
2 watched on Hulu: How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Ammonite
1 watched on Tubi: Carrington

1 watched in theaters: House of Gucci
29 TOTAL

I got back into a pattern where the vast majority of my movies came from cable, which helped me free up some space on my DVR (which I promptly filled with new movies) and also some spaces on my list, which is holding fast to a specific number that's probably much higher than you might think. 3 digits, though.  But 22 out of 29 from cable is about 75%, still, what I do would NOT be possible if I didn't have access to Netflix and Hulu, too.  

No actor or actress really dominated February, the most appearances anybody put in was three, which guarantees those lucky people a slot in my year-end round-up, but Bruce Willis is still safely on top of the leader board - thanks to all those movies in January.  Liev Schreiber made it to four appearances after being in three romances at the start of February, added to "The French Dispatch" the previous month. But we'll find out this month if Nicolas Cage can challenge Bruce for that top spot, it all hinges on the availability of a couple of his films. 

Alexander Skarsgard carries over again from "Passing" - and tomorrow I'll post the links for March, since I found a path to my Easter movie, so there's a confirmed plan for the rest of the month after the romance chain ends - BUT, I'd like to try a new method of organizing my links, just to see if that the BEST way to get to Easter.  If that system works, then I can also use it to figure out the best way to get from Easter to Mother's Day, with a method that doesn't involve a bunch of scrap paper and arrows connecting movie titles like some conspiracy theorist's vision board of who's really in charge of the government, with pushpins and string all over the wall. 

Here's the line-up for tomorrow, Day 2 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming: 

5:00 am "The Red Balloon" (1956)

8:00 am "Room at the Top" (1959)

10:00 am "Picnic" (1956)

12:00 pm "Written on the Wind" (1957)

1:45 pm "The Barefoot Contessa" (1954)

4:00 pm "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952)

6:00 pm "La Strada" (1954)

8:00 pm "Gigi" (1958)

10:15 pm "The King and I" (1956)

12:45 am "Love Me or Leave Me" (1955)

3:00 am "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954)

5:45 am "Limelight" (1952)

I have "Picnic" on my list, but haven't been able to link that far back.  So I've only seen "Gigi" (winner of 9 Oscars, including Best Picture), "The King and I" (winner of 5 Oscars, including Best Actor), and "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (winner of 1 Oscar, Best Scoring of a Musical).  Somehow I missed "Limelight" when I watched Chaplin's films, so another 3 seen out of 12 leaves me at 6 seen out of 25, or 24%. I'm up slightly, but it's a trick of math, because that's still a terrible score for me, I guess I haven't seen as many Oscar winners as I thought. 

THE PLOT: A teen artist living in 1970s San Francisco enters into an affair with her mother's boyfriend.

AFTER: With two more weeks left in the romance chain, things are about to get quite complicated, it seems.  I was going to say that we got all those "easy" romance films out of the way in February, but looking back, none of them were really "easy", were they?  There were always complications, either an age difference or a high-school rivalry, or somebody cheated on somebody else, and for a while there it felt like an "Oops! All Love Triangles!" month.  Well, I might as well roll with it and kick things into high gear, with 16 more days of love, weddings and other disasters to go. (Damn, it, where are the action movies when you NEED them?)

For tonight's film, a classic love triangle in the era of classic rock, between a mother, her boyfriend and her daughter.  Well, at least it's set during the era of hippies and "free love", though I suppose that was an ideal, and ultimately people might find out that love isn't as "free" as they thought, suddenly jealousy gets involved when it's YOUR boyfriend sleeping with somebody else, and that somebody else is your daughter.  Je-SUS, weren't there like 2.5 million people in San Francisco in the 1970's?  If you assume half of those were men, and half of THAT half was married or gay, that still leaves like 625,000 men to choose from, even if half of THOSE were too old for Minnie, that still leaves a lot of eligible men, why does she have to sleep with the same man as her mother?  

Clearly, there's more going on here than statistics.  One could surmise that the absence of her father (who does show up, about halfway through the movie) is partially at cause for her attraction to older men, especially one who's the stand-in for her father.  Is that what's going on here?  Some kind of Elektra complex manifesting in a child of divorce?  She proceeds to take things JUST a bit too far, one might say.  And as careful as they are to only get together when Minnie's mother is not around, the cat's bound to come out of the bag sooner or later, right?  I mean, especially since this is a movie, you can't just put this in a movie and expect there to be no consequences in the next-to-last act, that's how six-act structure works.  

I know, I know, we're supposed to celebrate a young woman's journey of sexual discovery, and later we see Minnie also get involved with other boys, plus a couple girls, but can we just focus on her choice for her first sexual partner, and how BAD that choice is?  I think the issue is somehow tied to her own self-image, as she reveals that she considers herself unattractive, so therefore she doesn't believe that she deserves better, and I'm thinking that a psychology student could probably have a field day with this film, parsing out all the whys and wherefores of the complicated love triangle here.  You just know this can't end well, right?  But after all is said and done, all the possible solutions for how to resolve this thorny little problem, I suppose it ends as best as it could, Minnie learns that she's never going to have a working adult relationship until she learns to love herself first.  Also, that working on her comic books is much more important than having a lot of sexual partners, I think we all get there eventually, it just takes some people longer to figure that out. 

I don't really like the device of watching a character record audio tapes to herself, or to whoever's listening in the future to cassettes, because it feels like a cheap method of breaking the fourth wall, since the character is essentially talking to the audience.  But this turns quickly into "Show, don't tell" and I think it would be better to SEE the events in question taking place, rather than having the character describe them to us.  But I also award points for a film with the nerve to really go there and create a very tough, uncomfortable situation that doesn't look like it could possibly get resolved in a positive way.

Also starring Bel Powley (last seen in "Equals"), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Christopher Meloni (last seen in "Marauders"), Abigail Wait, Miranda Bailey (last seen in "Time Out of Mind"), Carson Mell, John Parsons, Madeleine Waters, Austin Lyon (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Quinn Nagle, Davy Clements, David Fine, Anthony Williams, Margarita Levieva (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), and the voice of Susannah Schulman. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 costumed people in line to see "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"

Passing

Year 14, Day 59 - 2/28/22 - Movie #4,061

BEFORE: It's the last day of February, and they aired the SAG Awards last night, which reminded me of a few things:  

A) I've really got to start thinking about the Oscars, and maybe making decisions that will allow me to watch a few more nominated films before the awards are given out on March 27.  I've got a way to work in "The Power of the Dog", and maybe I should do that, because it seems to be some kind of front-runner.  So far the only nominated films I've seen are "Dune", "House of Gucci" (Best Make-up/Hair nomination), "Coming 2 America" (ditto) and the visual effects combo of "Shang-Chi" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home".  At this rate, I should be able get to "Free Guy" in time, but not "The Lost Daughter" or "Tick, Tick, Boom" - which is stupid, because I work at a theater that showed "Belfast" twice and "Licorice Pizza" about five times, also "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "The Lost Daughter", but I held back because of my stupid chain.  

B) I was, honestly, a little more prepared for the SAG Awards, because they nominated TWO actors from "House of Gucci" and Ruth Negga from tonight's film, plus they also gave a lifetime achievement award to Helen Mirren, who I JUST watched in "Berlin, I Love You".  Still, I'd seen none of the winning performances in motion pictures.

C) Where TV is concerned, I must REALLY be not watching enough of it.  I don't think I've watched even ONE series, network, cable or streaming, that got nominated for a SAG Award.  Sure, I've been focused on movies, not TV - and the TV I do watch is a mix of old, rebooted shows like "Law & Order" and "CSI", plus a lot of food competition shows like "Top Chef", "Spring Baking Championship" and "Man vs. Food".  So no time for "Mare of Easttown", "Halston", "The White Lotus", "Succession", "The Morning Show", "The Handmaid's Tale", "The Kominsky Method", "The Great", "Ted Lasso", "Only Murders in the Building" or even "Squid Game".  Jesus, I spent part of my pandemic time watching "Tiger King" and "The Queen's Gambit" and I thought maybe I was making some progress - nope, not one bit.  Where the hell do all you other people find so much free time to watch all these shows?  

Now, "Passing" is not nominated for any Oscars, but it did play at the theater where I work, and I did listen to a Q&A from the director, Rebecca Hall, and actor Bill Camp.  So this does help me, as does watching any film, and it reduces the number of films from my 2021 Oscar-eligible list by one, so there's that.  Alexander Skarsgard carries over from "The Aftermath", which allows me to get to this one.  

Speaking of Oscars, the annual TCM "31 Days of Oscar" programming starts tomorrow, and usually I'd list the films here and keep track of how many I've seen, and I MAY do that again, but my heart's just not in it, because I don't really like their organization method this year, other than the fact that all the films are Oscar WINNERS (sometimes they're just nominated ones) there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it.  I much prefer the years where they link films by actor, or organize by nominated category, or year, or even alphabetical.  Perhaps there is some system to this year's line-up, but I don't see it yet.  Anyway, here are tomorrow's films, so you can have some time to set your DVR: 

TCM - "31 Days of Oscar" - Day 1, March 1

6:00 am "The Westerner" (1940)

8:00 am "The Harvey Girls" (1946)

10:00 am "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)

12:00 pm "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)

2:00 pm "The Yearling" (1946)

4:15 pm "The Naked City" (1948)

6:00 pm "Key Largo" (1948)

8:00 pm "The Lost Weekend" (1945)

10:00 pm "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947)

12:15 am "Laura" (1944)

2:00 am "Gaslight" (1944)

4:00 am "Suspicion" (1941)

5:45 am "The Pride of the Yankees" (1942)

I think I've only seen three of these - "The Lost Weekend", "Gaslight" and "Suspicion", so I'm off to a terrible start, 3 out of 13 is just 23%. I'll stick with listing them for a while, but I don't think my stats will improve much, maybe I'm wrong. 

THE PLOT: "Passing" follows the unexpected reunion of two high school friends, whose renewed acquaintance ignites a mutual obsession that threatens both of their carefully constructed realities. 

AFTER: Even though this wasn't nominated for anything, my timing couldn't be better, because it's the last day of Black History Month (I may celebrate this topic later in the year, like I did in 2021) and tomorrow is the start of Women's History Month.  So I'm sort of bridging the two topics with a film about two black women at a particular point in history, get it?  I swear, my programming is a bit more random than that, but I do take advantage of the coincidences when they occur.  

The title has more than one meaning here, of course it refers to black people who are able to "pass" as Caucasian, but also the women sort of meet again in "passing" - and there may even be another meaning at play here, but no spoilers. From what I heard at the theater, and from what I've read about the film, there's also a potential lesbian subtext, though I think the film is quite ambiguous on this point, probably on purpose to have more appeal.  You could watch this whole film through and treat them as just two straight former friends, and that would work. You could also watch it and assume that they once had a sexual relationship, and are still attracted to each other on some level, despite both being married, and that would work, too.  Usually I'd fault a film for not picking a lane on this point, but it seems carefully crafted in a way that will leave this point up to the viewer.  

Irene and Clare bump into each other in NYC in the 1920's, after many years of not being in contact. Irene lives in Harlem, and Clare is just visiting town, and they meet in a hotel in a white neighborhood. Clare has been "passing" as white for some time, but Irene only manages to "pass" when she's by herself or in a mostly white crowd.  The whole film is in black and white, perhaps to make the racial distinction clearer, or perhaps easier for both actresses to "pass", or perhaps just because black and white cinematography evokes the time period, so that this modern film will more closely resemble the films from that time that we're so used to watching. 

Irene meets Clare's husband, who is, by our modern definition at least, very racist. Hell, he's racist for the 1920's, too, only they didn't call it that back then, they were just white people who hated black people.  And it was a lot more acceptable then than now, obvi.  After Clare writes Irene a letter and gets no response, she appears one day on Irene's doorstop, and gets to meet Irene's husband and two sons, who, well, have no chance of "passing" for white.  Irene joins the couple for several nights out on the town, before she has to leave for Europe, where her daughter is attending school.  

The reunion of the two women leads to complex problems in both of their marriages - while Clare seems to enjoy partying with Irene and her husband, eventually her presence causes some kind of division in that relationship - whether it comes from Irene's husband dancing with Clare, or Irene's own attraction to Clare, that also is up to the viewer.  Clare's relationship with her husband is even more perilous, because if that man should ever see through her deception and realize that he is, in fact, married to a "colored woman", there's no telling what he might do.

That's it, that's the movie, but it's both a simple and a complex story, depending on what you want to see in it, I guess.  And no spoilers here, for the usual reasons.  But any two people who get back together after a long period apart might display this sort of fascination with each other's lives, and similarly, there's no telling the effect that reunited friends might have on each other, after a long time spent apart. But then you add this layer of racial tension on top of that, and, really, all bets are off. 

It was very smart to shoot scenes in parts of NYC like Harlem and Brooklyn Heights, because there are still buildings in both neighborhoods that still have the look of the 1920's, from 100 years ago, just because that's when they really were built, and they haven't been changed at all. 

Also starring Tessa Thompson (last heard in "Lady and the Tramp" (2019)), Ruth Negga (last seen in "The Samaritan"), André Holland (last seen in "Selma"), Bill Camp (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Gbenga Akinnagbe (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Antoinette Crowe-Legacy, Justus Davis Graham, Ethan Barrett (last seen in "If Beale Street Could Talk"), Ashley Ware Jenkins, Amos Machanic.

RATING: 5 out of 10 glasses of iced tea

The Aftermath

Year 14, Day 58 - 2/27/22 - Movie #4,060

BEFORE: I'm sticking around in Germany one more day, but moving from Berlin to Hamburg and back several decades to World War II. I know, I said I wasn't going to mention the war, because the Germans don't like to talk about it. I mentioned it once yesterday, but I THINK I got away with it. (That's for all you "Fawlty Towers" fans out there.) Well, the gloves are coming off tonight, as romance and war become the new "peanut butter and chocolate".  Seriously, WHO walks down the street eating out of an open jar of peanut butter? Nobody I know. Old TV commercials LIE. 

This is only possible, of course, because acclaimed German actress Keira Knightley carries over from "Berlin, I Love You". 

THE PLOT: A British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-World War II reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German who previously owned the house. 

AFTER: As I've said several times in the last few weeks, movies would be very boring without love triangles, wouldn't they?  Hey, at least Keira's character is getting some in this film, she was in one of those non-romantic stories in "Berlin, I Love You", where she played a social worker who stole an Arab kid. This time she plays Rachael, the wife of a British army colonel who basically steals a German's house because they need to live somewhere while they're cleaning up Hamburg after a bombing and winning a war.  Because when you win a war, you get to live in the loser's houses (apparently) but only after they take down all their Hitler portraits.  Let this be a lesson to the people in both Russia and Ukraine right now - it's very important to come out on the winning side, because if your side loses, you can't own a house any more.  

The house is a really nice one, and Mr. Stephen Lubert and his daughter are SUPPOSED to go live in a refugee camp, because it's his dead wife who had all the money, so the rules of community property no longer apply, and so he can't own a house. WTF?  Isn't it enough that the Allies kicked their asses, what kind of weird rules were being put on the Germans after the war?  It's Hitler who stole all that valuable art, Lubert was just some guy, he wasn't even a member of the Nazi Party?  Or is that JUST the kind of thing that a member of the Nazi Party would say?  The Colonel feels bad about kicking the man out of his own house, so he suggests that Lubert and his daughter stay in the house, only they have to live in the attic, I guess it's what's known as a "reverse Anne Frank", that'll teach him a lesson!  Seriously, though, in a house that beautifully furnished, I'm supposed to believe that the attic looks like a total dump?  Why, it's practically wuthering up there, it looks so dank and drafty!  

So the Colonel's always working, and he leaves his wife (who, it turns out, is still grieving over their dead son) alone in the house with a more attractive and possibly Nazi man.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  And this same sort of thing happened in "Mudbound", is Jason Clarke just typecast as the type of husband who's likely to get cheated on?  I guess once you take one role like that, maybe it's all that Hollywood offers you.  Let's see, he's got a dead wife, she's got a dead son, they both like classical music and ordering the servants around, so yeah, they've got some things in common.  The Colonel really should have seen this coming, but to be fair, he's been pretty busy, and ignoring his wife has sort of become second nature at this point. 

I've got to really hand it to this one, they didn't just create a love triangle, they created perhaps the ULTIMATE love triangle, where she's a Brit and he's a Nazi and they're forced to share a house without driving each other crazy.  I know this was technically based on a novel, but it seems to share a number of plot elements with that little-seen 1980's German sit-com "That's Our Nazi".  To make matters worse, Lubert's daughter starts skipping school in order to go work at the bombing sites to recover bodies - because, why wouldn't she? - and this gets her into smoking cigarettes, drinking with other kids and also having sex with the remnants of the Hitler youth Resistance. Let's just say she's at that difficult age where teens want to rebel.

Rachael passes her time by getting back into playing the piano and watching Lubert chop wood, so it's not long before the Colonel has to go away for a week and do, umm, army stuff, so yeah, stuff's gonna happen back at the house.  Lubert and Rachael start knocking jack-boots, doing the Nazi Nasty, "machen das Tier mit zwei Rücken", if you catch my drift. And the Colonel was only gone SIX DAYS, but maybe that was six days too long.  Then once he comes back, unexpectedly, it's a wonder that the story didn't fall back on him catching them in bed together.  BUT, now Rachael has to make a decision, because her husband's been re-assigned back to a London post, and also Lubert's been cleared to leave Hamburg, he can go chop down some trees build that little Swiss chalet in the woods with a view of the mountains that he's been dreaming about. This is going to lead to an awkward conversation, for sure.

Meanwhile, though, remember the Hitler resistance? (it's called Werwolf here, only they're not actual werewolves, very confusing.)  Lubert's daughter's been fooling around too, and her pillow talk was all about the man who stole her father's house. She also stole that cigarette case with pictures of the Colonel in it, so her boyfriend wants to do the right thing and take the Colonel out - so it seems like this might be one way to resolve the love triangle, right? What's a little assassination between friends?  Ah, that would be an easy way out of this corner that the writer painted themself into, wouldn't it? 

Honestly, it's a toss-up over which man should end up with Rachael, they really went out of their way here to make this a difficult choice. (Does this mean there were "very fine people on both sides"?) There's so much flip-flopping done by Rachael, how could either man accept her after all that?  I'll admit, though, that I was more interested in who gets that beautiful house, and that remained, quite noticeably, unresolved.  Hey, relationships come and go, but real estate is permanent.  

Also starring Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Jason Clarke (last seen in "Mudbound"), Fionn O'Shea, Kate Phillips, Martin Compston (last seen in "Filth"), Alexander Scheer (last seen in "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales"), Anna Katharina Schimrigk, Jack Laskey, Rosa Enskat, Frederick Preston (last seen in "The Zookeeper's Wife"), Flora Thiemann, Jannik Schümann (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Henry Pettigrew (last seen in "The Danish Girl"), Tom Bell, Joseph Arkley, Abigail Rice, Naomi Frederick, Ivan Shvedoff, Pip Torrens (last seen in "Effie Gray"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 concentration camp photos