Promising Young Woman

Year 14, Day 120 - 4/30/22 - Movie #4,123

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

Breaking News in Yuba County

Year 14, Day 119 - 4/29/22 - Movie #4,122

BEFORE: We're just about at the end of April now, one film left after tonight, and I've already got my May all mapped out.  I sort of noticed too late that I could have dropped the animated film "The Bad Guys" in here, that film features the voices of Sam Rockwell, which would have linked it to "Trust Me", and also Awkwafina, which would have linked to today's film.  There's already a link between those two films, so "The Bad Guys" didn't HAVE to go in-between, but it could have.  I was saving a space for that film in June, so I'm just going to stick with that plan, because I'm done with animation for the moment, and that will put "The Bad Guys" next to another animated film, I'll be back on that topic then.  

Look, it would work out either way, but I'm already cutting things too close in May, I had to double up in April just to hit Mother's Day on the nose, and I just got things aligned again, so I don't want to mess with that.  As I always say, we're gonna get there.  Instead, Allison Janney carries over from "Trust Me". 

THE PLOT: A woman takes advantage of her growing celebrity status when the police and the public think her dead husband is just missing. 

AFTER: Just the other day, I took issue with "Igby Goes Down" for a scene in which two teen boys are charged with killing their mother, and I just couldn't justify this, even after all the story-based gymnastics that the screenplay went through to bring this plot point about. Nope, not a good idea, try again.  

Standard SPOILER ALERT here, because I think there's no way to talk about this film without getting into what takes place, so if you haven't seen this one, turn back now.  This one is kind of in the same boat as "Igby Goes Down", because it really wants to bring us to a place where it's OK for Sue Buttons to kill her husband.  She's having a bad day, it's her birthday and everyone seems to have forgotten that, including her sister and her husband, who can't wait for an excuse to buy flowers, but they're for his mistress that he's meeting at a motel.  (After, of course, accepting a large satchel full of cash that some criminals want him to launder through his bank, but that's kind of a separate issue.)

So when Sue follows her husband and catches him in the act of cheating on her, and again, it's her birthday, maybe some wives WOULD kill their husbands - but that's not what happens here, it seems like he dies from the shock of getting caught in the act, so we've reached the same result, only we got there in a somewhat more elegant way, and now we don't hate Sue Buttons, at least, not as much.  She's still pretty messed up by this experience, and messed up overall, with her daily affirmations and her obsession with local daytime talk TV.  I'm just not certain if we're SUPPOSED to like her, or root for her, or just appreciate how messed up she is, or maybe feel sorry for her, I just don't know HOW to feel about her, I guess. 

And that's kind of a problem if you're going to do one of these "Fargo"-esque crime stories, which wants to be one part black comedy, one part crime thriller and overall just a collection of oddball characters.  I'd throw "murder mystery" into the mix, except there wasn't really a murder and there's no real mystery over what happened, not to the audience anyway.  Also, there's a bit of a spin here on the "missing persons" genre of true-crime TV, along side Sue's "missing" husband, there's an obsession over a missing young girl named Emma Rose, and it's clear this is meant to evoke JonBenet or Jessica who fell down the well, or any of the other missing children who have taken over the news cycle in years past. 

There's an ambitious police detective who's sure that Sue knows more than she's letting on about her husband's disappearance, a couple of competing local TV reporters who want to mine this disappearance for ratings, one of whom is Sue's half-sister, and then the missing man's brother, who's a professional thief trying to go straight, only half of the lesbian couple who run the furniture store where he works wants to commit more robberies with him, and then there's a pair of local gangsters, the ones who have been laundering money through Karl's bank, and they want to know where that satchel is.  It's a weird bunch of connections between these people, though - the thief has to rob a jewelry store with his boss in order to get the ransom money to pay the criminals, who are pretending to hold Karl hostage, only they don't know where he is, either, but they somehow think that if they collect the ransom from his brother, they'll be able to figure out where Karl really is?  I don't think that makes any proper sense, does it?  And then after a while Karl's mistress gets back into the mix and threatens to tell everybody what really happened to Karl, and that's not really good for anybody.  

Even if Sue didn't kill him, she's still responsible for improperly disposal of his body, and she causes so much more harm than good by burying that money with him, that sets off a chain of events that's quite unfathomable, and it doesn't end well for most of the characters.  This could have been a whole season of the "Fargo" TV series, all those twists and causes & effects, crammed into one 90-minute movie, so it's no wonder that if all feels a bit rushed and hyper, and maybe not well thought-out. 

Well, that theme of alcoholic parents didn't really make it through the week - but still, it's been quite a week, with abusive relationships and demanding casting directors, rival electricity magnates, cruel cryptid hunters, non-productive love triangles and invasive TV reporters.  So, really, it's all about man's inhumanity to man, but isn't it always?  One more film that I think stays on topic here, and then the week is over, the month is over and May is here, with Mother's Day on the horizon.  

Awkwafina update - I've railed about her before in this space, how I just don't think she's funny, she's far from a great actress, and she's always making that face, like she just smelled something bad.  Then I watched her in "Shang-Chi" and "The Farewell" in January and I didn't mind her so much - but now after "Breaking News" I hate her again.  Maybe she just shouldn't do comedy, maybe that's the problem, it causes her to "ham it up" way too much. 

Yet another film that got its release delayed by the pandemic - when it did come out in February 2021, it made under $200,000 - so either people weren't ready to go to back to the theaters yet, or they were just staying away from this one in droves.  Geez, when the pandemic does you a favor and keeps a movie like this from getting released, maybe you should take that as a sign, the universe may be trying to tell you something.  As with "Trust Me", I like a lot of these actors, and I like a lot of movies that these actors have been in, but I'm just not sure I like THIS movie that they're all in.

Also starring Mila Kunis (last seen in "Get Over It"), Regina Hall (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Awkwafina (last seen in "The Farewell"), Wanda Sykes (last seen in "Snatched"), Ellen Barkin (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Matthew Modine (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Jimmi Simpson (last seen in "Seraphim Falls"), Keong Sim (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Running With the Devil"), Samira Wiley (last seen in "Nerve"), Bridget Everett (last seen in "Trainwreck"), T.C. Matherne (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Dominic Burgess, Chris Lowell (last seen in "The Help"), Michael Newcomer, Elizabeth Elkins, Lucy Faust (last seen in "Mudbound"), CC Castillo, Sampley Barinaga, Jock McKissic (also last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Virginia Patterson. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 smashed TV sets (they go back to this bit just a few too many times)

Trust Me

Year 14, Day 118 - 4/28/22 - Movie #4,121

BEFORE: Well, one boss is in Brazil for the next two weeks, so I've got a bit of a break.  I still work for him three days a week, but the pressure's off a bit - I can work at my own pace, get the payroll quarterlies paid, finish typing up the script for the co-writer, and just basically go into low-maintenance mode, keeping an eye on e-mails and making sure everyone knows that the Big Man is out of town, when he'll be back, and ask if anything needs to happen before that.  I've been at the movie theater for events three days this week, which is a bit exhausting, since two of those three events were very crowded, and the third was "The Bad Guys", which only 10 people showed up for on a Sunday afternoon. Still, I'm worn down and looking forward to no screenings over the next four days.  There's also my third gig, entering film festivals for a friend, but I've only put in 8 hours over the last 10 days, coming up with a festival entry strategy and plan.  Next Tuesday I'll have to actually start filling out forms and entering her animated short into the bigger festivals.  

Amanda Peet carries over from "Igby Goes Down". 

THE PLOT: In an attempt to sign a Hollywood starlet, struggling talent agent and former child star Howard Holloway must contend with her volatile father, a scheming long-time rival, and a producer and casting director who despise him. 

AFTER: Well, there's a bit of a loose theme developing for the week, "The Phenom", "Igby Goes Down" and "Trust Me" all feature alcoholic parents and their effects on screwed-up kids, that's not much to go on, but I'll take what I can get at this point.  (Did Nikola Tesla have alcoholic parents?  Was he screwed-up when he was a kid?  I'm not sure.  I think he went crazy much later in life.)

This film's got a pretty good cast - I like Sam Rockwell and William H. Macy in just about anything they're in - and Clark Gregg just doesn't make enough movies, either.  I enjoyed him on "Agents of "S.H.I.E.L.D.", and in various "Avengers" movies - I feel like I just haven't seen him in enough movies, even though I have, does that make sense?  He was in "Live by Night", "The To Do List", "The Human Stain", "Labor Day", "500 Days of Summer", "In Good Company" and "Choke", and I've SEEN all those movies in the past few years, but I'll be damned if I can remember his roles in those films.  Does he just somehow blend into the background, or does he so often play the nice guy or bureaucrat so well that afterwards, he's barely memorable?  

In "Trust Me", he's got the lead role - which itself feels a little weird, so yeah, I guess I'm used to Clark Gregg as the third banana, or the minor soldier or the guy sitting in the conference table in the board meeting.  I'm hard-pressed to think of another movie where he got top billing. Ah, he also wrote and directed this film, thus casting himself in the lead role.  That explains things somewhat. Well, who would understand the character better than the man who wrote the screenplay?  Maybe this just saved a few steps. 

Gregg plays Howard, a talent agent who deals mostly with child stars, getting them on TV shows and movies, taking his 10% and negotiating with producers and casting directors over three-picture deals, getting points of the gross rather than a share of the net, and so on.  It's a tough gig, but somebody's got to do it, I suppose. His arch-rival, Aldo Stankiss, will do anything to undercut him or steal his clients, and he's spent months pursuing a relationship with his neighbor, Marcy.  He meets a new client in a parking garage, having accidentally interrupted her audition before, and he's there for her when she gets an offer to headline a new series of big-budget films based on young adult vampire novels. (cough) "Twilight" (cough). 

The situation gets complicated, however, when Howard starts to suspect that the teen's father might be abusing her, he catches her sobbing in their hotel room while he takes a shower, and fears the worst.  Now he's faced with a difficult decision, because she's too young to file for emancipation, and going public with an accusation of abuse could scuttle the movie deal that he's just gotten for her.  But if he keeps quiet, she could have enough money down the road to file for independence from her father later - but is that the moral thing to do?  It's a definite conundrum, and possibly a no-win situation. 

Also starring Clark Gregg (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Sam Rockwell (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Saxon Sharbino, Paul Sparks (last seen in "Human Capital"), Allison Janney (last seen in "Walking and Talking"), Felicity Huffman (last seen in "Otherhood"), William H. Macy (last seen in "Cellular"), Niecy Nash (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Griffin Gluck, Molly Shannon (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Danielle MacDonald (last seen in "Paradise Hills"), Maxwell Smith, Stella Gregg, Gareth Williams (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Virginia Montero, Brian Gattas, Melissa Stetten, Randall Yarbrough, Sasha Jenson (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Ben Hernandez Bray, Brad Greiner, Jillian Armenante (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Jack Merrill. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 bodyguards

Igby Goes Down

Year 14, Day 117 - 4/27/22 - Movie #4,120

BEFORE: Jim Gaffigan carries over from "Tesla", to I think a cameo role as a hotel manager tonight.  That's three films this year for Mr. Gaffigan, but Susan Sarandon's having a bigger Movie Year in 2022, I think this will be her SIXTH appearance, she was in three films in the February romance chain (only they weren't all together) and now she's been in three April films - this one, "Robot & Frank" and she was the voice of Lunch Lady Lorraine in that animated film last week.  I think she plays Igby's mother here, and we are on the road to Mother's Day now.

If she keeps showing up, she could give Bruce Willis and Nicolas Cage a run for their money...

THE PLOT: A young man's peculiar upbringing renders him unable to competently cope with the struggles of growing up. 

AFTER: Ugh, I really didn't like this one, it just rubbed me the wrong way, that's for sure.  I didn't like the main character, I didn't like any of the characters, probably because they were all so darn unlikable. Just me?  OK, it's tough to be a teenager, no matter which kind, but telling me it's tough to be a teenager in a rich family, well, we're maybe just not going to see eye to eye on this point.  When we first see Igby and his brother, Ollie, they're in the midst of trying to kill their mother, so this is a really bad start, I'm going to hate these two from the jump, even if later it turns out that maybe there's a Very Good Reason for their actions, it's still not a great way to open a movie, especially if you want me to like these two characters. 

After this very odd opening scene, the film snaps back to show us the year (or so) leading up to that moment, but there are also flashbacks to when Igby was a younger kid (and his schizophrenic dad had a freak-out / accident / possible suicide in the shower one morning while Igby was brushing his teeth.  We don't see Igby's dad again for the majority of the film, so I assumed he was dead, but then very near the end there's a line about him being in an institution.  

Igby hates institutions, especially schools, and he's been kicked out of some of the best for acting out - or did he flunk out?  I think it was the latter.  His alcoholic mother sends him to a military academy, but before long Igby goes AWOL after being beaten up by his classmates, and he ends up in a room in a Chicago hotel, where the academy drill sergeant tracks him down. (Did he think the expenses on his mother's credit card couldn't be tracked?). Meanwhile, Igby's older brother, Ollie, studies economics at Columbia University.  

Igby's sent to New York for the summer to stay with his godfather, D.H. Banes, a real-estate developer on Long Island who's also renovating a loft downtown.  Banes needs the loft for his mistress, an actress who's hooked on heroin, and who also has another boyfriend, a performance artist.  While being driven to the airport to be sent to the next prep school, Igby ditches the driver and disappears into the sub-culture of NYC, but really he's staying at the loft with his godfather's mistress.  Every single character seems to be juggling two relationships here, maybe this is true in some circles, but whatever happened to serial monogamy?  

It's kind of a chain - Russel the performance artist is sleeping with Rachel, who's also sleeping with D.H. Banes. Rachel also gets it on with Igby, who then goes on to sleep with Sookie, but Sookie soon leaves Igby for his older brother Ollie, and so on. But there were several scenes where the creep factor was amped way up, like when Ollie first hits on Sookie, and he's just touching her again and again without consent, and that's his brother's girlfriend, it just wasn't cool and was deeply disturbing.  

Eventually, we catch back up with that opening scene, or close to it, and we learn that Igby's mother is dying from breast cancer, and she asked for her sons to help her to commit suicide.  Mmm, no, that still doesn't make it right, not in my book.  The whole point of this movie is that Igby's screwed up because of his mother's influence on him, and then having a part in her death, that's not going to make everything OK, that's probably just going to screw him up even more.  It's a bad idea, bad plot point, bad all around. Like that poisoned pudding, this whole film just left a bad taste in my mouth. 

Probably not a good film for Mother's Day, either.  It's best to burn this one off here before we get too close to the holiday. 

Also starring Kieran Culkin (last seen in "She's All That"), Claire Danes (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jared Harris (last seen in "Dead Man"), Amanda Peet (last seen in "Saving Silverman"), Ryan Phillippe (last seen in "Setup"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "The High Note"), Susan Sarandon (last heard in "My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea"), Rory Culkin (last seen in "Scream 4"), Peter Tambakis (last seen in "The Clapper"), Bill Irwin (last seen in "Irresistible"), Kathleen Gati, Celia Weston (last seen in "The Box"), Elizabeth Jagger, Michael Formica Jones, Glenn Fitzgerald, Reg Rogers (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Danny Tamberelli, Gregory Itzin, with cameos from Eric Bogosian (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Cynthia Nixon (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Gore Vidal (last seen in "The U.S. vs. John Lennon". 

RATING: 3 out of 10 meals at the Empire Diner

Tesla

Year 14, Day 116 - 4/26/22 - Movie #4,119

BEFORE: OK, Easter's over, I got a bunch of animated features out of my way, tipped my cap to the start of baseball season - what's next?  Well, Mother's Day, which is about 12 days away, by my count.  Time enough to buy a greeting card AND get it in the mail, but movie-wise, I'm back in random-ville.  Any and all subject matter, whatever gets me to the three linked films I've earmarked as being relevant to Mother's Day.  There are thousands of films about mothers, but three stood out, because they already were on my list and they all link together, so it just feels right - I'll just be a little all-over-the-place thematically until I get there. 

Ethan Hawke carries over from "The Phenom". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Current War: Director's Cut" (Movie #3,841)

THE PLOT: A freewheeling take on visionary inventor Nikola Tesla, his interactions with Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan's daughter Anne, and his breakthroughs in transmitting electrical power and light. 

AFTER: I tried to get to this film last year, since it's pretty much got the same plot as "The Current War", which was finished three years before in 2017, but got shelved because of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and wasn't released until 2019.  By then, the "Tesla" film was probably in production at another studio, and it was too late for either studio to scrap their plans, so once again, we've got duplicate films covering the same ground.  Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, J.P. Morgan - it's the same set of late-1800's characters, and that's why I was hoping to watch the two films a bit closer together, because, well, who played Edison better, Benedict Cumberbatch or Kyle MacLachlan?  Who made the better Tesla, Nicholas Hoult or Ethan Hawke?  For George Westinghouse, it's a choice between Michael Shannon or Jim Gaffigan, as odd as that sounds.  Maybe it's a wash, and you just have to go with the set of actors that you personally prefer. Cumberbatch is great, but Kyle MacLachlan brings a bit of that Dale Cooper optimism and cluelessness, if you know what I mean.  Michael Shannon - whoof, he can't help but come off as gruff and unapproachable, because that's what he does - and Jim Gaffigan?  Sure, gruff also, but he can't help but seem a bit goofy and overblown, so take your pick.

Ah, but Tesla, that's a challence.  Nicholas Hoult was a bit too young and naive, perhaps?  Ethan Hawke is older and almost seems to disappear into this character, leaving him as a bit of an enigma, and maybe that's the way he should be?  Tesla was not born American, he was Serbian, so there was the language barrier, plus like Edison he was a certified genius, so here Hawke plays him as the distant type, always lost in thought, perhaps.  In the end, who are we to say which portrayal is more accurate, and this is the problem with most historical fiction films, the filmmakers really have to read between the lines if they're setting out to create an accurate portrayal of people from the past.  How do you take a list of a man's inventions and accomplishments and extrapolate from that, when you hire an actor to then dress like that man, talk like that man, and even think like that man?  It's a hit or miss proposition, right? 

Well, not exactly, because of the two films, only one of them felt like it was striving for any kind of accuracy - "Tesla", perhaps realizing the shortcomings of the format, put actions and dialogue on film, then added scenes where one character breaks the fourth wall to say, "Wait, it probably didn't happen like that..." which seems at first like the film is undercutting its own premise.  Well, if that's not how it happened, why not show us how it happened?  Perhaps nobody knows.  Did Edison and Tesla have a conversation at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in which Edison admitted he was wrong about alternating current?  No, probably not.  Did Tesla smack Edison with an ice cream cone, just to prove that he did have a sense of humor?  Eh, probably not, and Edison probably wouldn't have admitted that, either, even if Tesla did that and it WAS funny.  (Hitting somebody in the face with a cream pie is funny, unless you're the one getting hit in the face...)

And I'm fairly sure that Nikola Tesla, who died in 1937, never sang the song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears, which wasn't written until the 1980's.  So, umm, why do we see Hawke, as Tesla, do this at the end of the film?  Well, it's probably a bit more enjoyable than watching Tesla die alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, especially since his body wasn't found for two days, thanks to a "Do Not Disturb" sign - who knew that some hotel maids actually pay attention to those?  Tesla had been struck by a NYC taxicab several days before, broke three ribs but refused to see a doctor.  

Either way, this film didn't really set out to be "historically accurate" - J.P. Morgan's daughter also addresses the audience at times and mentions how many hits Google produces for a search on Tesla, compared with the numbers for Edison.  But Anne Morgan must have died in the 1930's herself, so she'd never have known what Google is.  Some of this film is like that thought experiment where students have an imaginary conversation with a historical figure, and try to explain our present world to them.  Tesla was a lifelong bachelor, which is sometimes code for gay, but another theory is that he held women in high regard, as superior, and thought he wasn't worthy enough for one.  But he also held the opinion that in trying to gain equality with men, women were losing their femininity, and he was disappointed in that.  Well, if he said that aloud, then I can probably guess why he never married.  But that means that the relationship depicted here between him and Anne Morgan is probably an invented piece of history for this film. 

The debate between A.C. and D.C. power, the battles between Westinghouse/Tesla and Edison's companies over supplying electricity to various cities, the arguments over the best way to use electricity to kill animals or execute criminals - I've seen all this already, in "The Current War".  If you have, too, then there's almost no need to re-hash it all with "Tesla".  Ah, but then there are the later years, that's when things started to get interesting again for me.  Tesla wasn't seen much in the later part of "The Current War", and instead the film focused on Edison and Westinghouse meeting at the Columbian Exposition.  So, umm, what happened to Tesla?  

After the success in Chicago, and another success using Niagara Falls to supply power, Tesla started his own company, to market his previous patents and inventions and come up with new ones - but the Fifth Avenue building caught fire early on, destroying his notes and many of his models.  He moved his lab to East Houston Street, and started to experiment with X-ray imaging, radio control, wireless power, you know, future stuff. But then I guess he went a little crazy, because he decided that the best idea was to transmit electricity, long-distance, using the Earth itself.  You know, the thing we walk on?  He moved his lab from New York City to Colorado Springs, to take advantage of a higher altitude to electrically synch up the Earth and the sky, so he could send signals from Colorado to Paris.  But they already had the telegraph by then, didn't they? 

Tesla dusted off the old Tesla coils, built a huge tower on Long Island and claimed that he was receiving communications from another planet, probably Mars.  Some people believe, though, that he was just picking up echoes of Marconi's early experiments with radio.  Tesla asked J.P. Morgan for more money so he could get ahead of Marconi on the wireless radio thing - say, you don't suppose that Tesla just lived to be competitive, do you?  First Edison, then Marconi?  Always the bridesmaid, Nikola, never the bride...except Tesla DID beat Edison, it was A/C over D/C, he just didn't know how to quit when he was ahead, I guess.  So Marconi beat Tesla with the whole radio thing, and Tesla had to close down his Long Island lab and mortgage his property to cover his debts at the Waldorf-Astoria.  Geez, for a genius inventor he was pretty stupid with his money, for the same cost of living in a Manhattan hotel for five years, he could have bought a pretty nice house out on Long Island outright, then he'd have a place to live when another inventor was faster on the draw.  

The "Tesla" movie doesn't really make all this clear - again, it has Tesla singing a Tears for Fears song at the end - I'm mixing in a bunch of historical facts from Wikipedia just in case you're curious about the REAL story.  Tesla spent the 1910's and half of the 1920's slowly going bankrupt - he could have quit the game at any time, moved out of NYC and got a sweet college teaching gig somewhere, only he didn't do that. He moved to a new hotel every few years and always left a giant bill behind.  Then he just became another NYC weirdo, feeding and caring for the pigeons, that's the sad truth.  He always claimed to be working on some new form of energy or even a "death ray", but none of it was for real. 

And now, of course, there's the Tesla electric cars named after him. Maybe the Current War between those inventors back in the 1800's might remind you of the space race between Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, at least on some level.  No matter the decade, rich people and inventors are a bit crazy.  J.P. Morgan wasted a bunch of his money on collecting famous paintings, and though his hair was fine, better than Musk's, anyway, he apparently had a very bad skin condition on his nose.  Or is that another thing this "Tesla" film made up?

Also starring Kyle MacLachlan (last seen in "Capone"), Eve Hewson (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Jim Gaffigan (last heard in "Luca"), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Hannah Gross (last seen in "Joker"), Josh Hamilton (last seen in "Frances Ha"), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde"), Rebecca Dayan (last seen in "Celeste & Jesse Forever"), Donnie Keshawarz (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Lucy Walters, Blake DeLong (last seen in "Late Night"), Lois Smith (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Ian Lithgow, Dan Bittner (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), David Kallaway (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Karl Geary, Haley Elise Pehrson, Tony Hutaj, Corban Elwick-Schermitz, Emory Gleeson, Michael Mastro, Emma O'Connor, Steven Gurewitz, Rick Zahn (last seen in "Chuck"), John Palladino, Tom Farrell, David Weinberg, Joshuah Melnick, Peter Greene (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 painted backdrops (umm, we have green screens now...)

The Phenom

Year 14, Day 115 - 4/25/22 - Movie #4,118

BEFORE: Louisa Krause carries over from "Cryptozoo", and I'm on track with a baseball movie for once, the season just started about two weeks ago, and anything can still happen.  The baseball season for any team is kind of like my movie chain, I start every year with a clean record, and from there, it's a series of wins and losses, literally anything can happen during each game, and I never really can tell how the year's going to end.  That's how baseball works, right?  It's actually been a few years since I've been to a game.  I've been close to CitiField when we go to the Brazilian meat restaurant over in Flushing, Queens, but I haven't visited a stadium in quite some time - I don't dare show up at Yankee Stadium wearing Red Sox gear, that's like a suicide move. 

THE PLOT: A rookie pitcher undergoes psychotherapy to overcome the yips. 

AFTER: I thought the "yips" were a thing in golf, I didn't realize that baseball pitchers got them, too. When we first see Hopper Gibson, he's visiting the team psychiatrist to figure out why he threw wild pitches in a row, and he needs to be calmed down before the playoffs. It takes a while to figure out that his team is the Atlanta Braves, because the film flashes back to show Hopper's recent past as the number one high-school pitching prospect in the country, and he's from Port St. Lucie, Florida, which I know is a baseball town, that's the spring training location of the NY Mets. 

Hopper's got a girlfriend, Dorothy, but despite having dinner with her parents, he treats the relationship very casually, he's so flippant with her, it's actually insulting.  We get a bit more insight after Hopper's father moves back in with his mother, though we're not sure at first where he's been.  Was the relationship on the rocks, or did Hopper Senior have to spend some time at the old Graybar Hotel?  As the film soldiers on, it's clear that his father has been abusive to him in the past, and likely will be again - Hopper Senior had a shot at the majors but got caught up in substance abuse, among other problems.  So it's not too hard to posit that Hopper Senior is jealous of his son's success, he's mad at the world for his own failure and takes that out on his son.  

Hopper Senior had given his son a bunch of rules to live by, some for on the field and some for daily life, and it's possible that those rules have done more harm than good.  It's probably how Hopper Junior learned to bury all of his emotions, mistreat women and just be unable to feel or express any kind of joy, not even for baseball.  I'd hesitate to call it a breakthrough when the psychiatrist gets him to pitch again after remembering how he threw the ball as a child, before everything got so complicated with fatherly advice, playing to win in order to get that big-league draft money so he could buy his mother a bigger house with a pool.  But that's why we all strive and struggle, isn't it?  Except the pool thing, I can't swim so that would be pointless. 

A random encounter with a female fan at a motel has unexpected results, it's a humbling moment for Hopper, but also one that perhaps shows him that women aren't always the submissive ones, and they all don't exist just for his sexual pleasure.  Hey, some lessons are tough to learn, but they have to be.  I wish I could have seen a bit more baseball being played here, though - like we never really SEE the wild pitches in question that got Hopper sidelined, and I don't think we ever see him play a full inning of any game.  It might be nice to know whether the therapy worked, like did he end up helping out the Braves in the playoffs, or not? 

Instead Hopper gets the dirt on his psychologist and ends up calling him on his own B.S., so I guess that means he's going to be OK?  Not completely sure, though. 

I was willing to wager that this was the only time Paul Giamatti was in a film about baseball, which would be ironic because his father was Bart Giamatti, former MLB commissioner.  But no, Paul was also in "The Catcher Was a Spy", which was also about baseball - a bit, anyway.

It turns out this film is at least partially based on the story of Rick Ankiel, a pitcher who had a similar control problem, and had a similarly abusive father.  They just had to change the names of the pitcher and the psychiatrist, who in real life was named Harvey Dorfman.  That's a great name for a character played by Paul Giamatti, so it's a shame they had to change it to Dr. Mobley. Everything else lines up, though - Ankiel went to Port St. Lucie High, his father was a drug dealer who screamed at Rick's coaches, and when interviewed, Ankiel told reporters that his father was a fisherman.  Ankiel found that he couldn't throw strikes any more, and made the transition to playing as an outfielder, but we never learn if Hopper Gibson had the same fate.  I'd say that's a rather glaring omission - I mean, the film's under 90 minutes long, but I'd still like to know whether I wasted my time watching it. 

It feels like this film was trying to be the "Good Will Hunting" of baseball, but really, in the end, it's just the Brendan Fraser/Albert Brooks film "The Scout", only without the comedy.  Which means it might be time to re-watch "The Scout".  

Also starring Johnny Simmons (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Kid" (2019)), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Sophie Kennedy Clark (last seen in "The Danish Girl"), Alison Elliott (last seen in "Birth"), Yul Vazquez (last seen in "Nick of Time"), Paul Adelstein (last seen in "Memoirs of a Geisha"), Marin Ireland (last seen in "The Irishman"), Frank Wood (last seen in "Down to You"), Meg Gibson (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Elizabeth Marvel (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Emily Fleischer, Journey Smith, Niesha Butler, Aaron Judlowe, John Ventimiglia (last seen in "Human Capital"), Steven Marcus. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 ill-advised tattoos

Cryptozoo

Year 14, Day 114 - 4/24/22 - Movie #4,117

BEFORE: This is another film from the director of "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea", so it's no surprise that THREE actors carry over.  Some directors like to cast the same actors over and over, even in animation. Louisa Krause is one (she'll be here tomorrow, also), the other two are listed below. 

It's been one heck of a week in New York City, what with 4/20 and then Earth Day, and this confluence also meant that the band Phish has been in town, playing a series of concerts at Madison Square Garden.  There's some construction work being done at the MSG complex, so from what I can tell, the Phish-heads have taken over every hotel and bar within a four-block radius, so this means even MORE freaks and weirdos in midtown Manhattan than usual. And, at the same time, cannabis has just become legal in New York, as a few PSAs on TV have informed me, so yeah, as a result of all this, the whole city smells like weed now.  So here's another stoner film for you, I think.

THE PLOT: Cryptozookeepers try to capture a Baku, a dream-eating hybrid creature of legend, and start wondering if they should display these beasts or keep them hidden and unknown. 

AFTER: This was the film that made my boss, a professional animator, not like this Dash Shaw fellow.  He just couldn't understand the plot, I think, which concerns a group of people tracking cryptid beasts around the world and trying to capture them before the U.S. government can turn them into weapons.  Duh, simple!  I should note that my boss has always had a similar problem with the ending sequence of "2001: A Space Odyssey" - his argument was "nobody knows what that ending is about..."  That's also simple, especially if you read the source material, the Arthur C. Clarke novel and its sequels - that freaky ending sequence is astronaut Dave Bowman entering the monolith, unlocking its secrets and becoming the StarChild, gaining mastery over space and time.  Again, it's simple enough, if you just do a little research. 

The WHY of "Cryptozoo" is also very simple - the animator wanted to draw a bunch of crazy cryptozoological characters, like unicorns and Pegasuses and a purple Bigfoot, a griffin, a giant octopus and a super-giant serpent.  Anything else?  Sure, a Gorgon (Medusa) and a satyr (Pan) except here they're named Phoebe and Gustav, because they're not the SAME ones from the Greek myths, they're just that same species, I guess. And there's a Baku, which legend says was put together by the Gods from the leftover pieces that didn't go in to the other animals. It's got a trunk like an elephant and it devours your nightmares, so very helpful - it could help me get rid of that stress dream where I'm back in high school, or the one where I'm moving into a new apartment, or the one where my ex-wife is kissing another woman just to stick it to me. (I think I need a Baku.)

This is apparently set in the 1960's, near San Francisco, because a couple of hippie nudists out in the woods encounter the giant fence that surrounds the cryptozoo, and well, it doesn't end well for one of them thanks to a pissed-off unicorn.  The 1960's was probably the heyday for cryptids, so many of them ended up appearing on the covers of rock albums, and then in the 1970's, there was a show called "In Search Of..." where Leonard Nimoy introduced viewers to the Loch Ness Monster, the Bigfoot and UFO's, only the scantest of corroborative evidence was given, plus note that the show was all about the searching, and not the FINDING.  

The 1980's and 90's were tough, the only thing that kept the story of the cryptids alive was a little newspaper called the Weekly World News, which also introduced us to BatBoy and the aliens that the Clintons were banging or adopting, mer-people, cat-women, alligator people and kangaroo women. They were smart about this, for every five phony stories they'd drop in a real one, so if you saw that one story in another legit newspaper, then by extension the stuff about Bigfoot and Nessie just HAD to be real, too.  But these kept the stories alive long enough until the cable reality TV explosion of the early 2000's, which explains why every show on the "History" Channel these days is about Bigfoot, aliens or Nazi magic.  But I digress. 

So I didn't really enjoy this film, but it's for completely different reasons than my boss.  I just really want to call the animation techniques used here into question.  I was hoping for something really Terry Gilliam-like, because if you gave Gilliam enough drawings of fantastic creatures, he could really turn them into something.  But while this animation style is a quantum leap forward from "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea", it's not enough.  The animation is still BAD, and I say this as someone who took two semesters of animation production at NYU, and still had nothing good to show for it at the end.  The animated films I made stunk, big-time, but at least I'm man enough to admit it. I almost HAD to get a job in animation after graduating, just to justify the expense of the tuition.  But I get the feeling that somebody looked at "Cryptozoo" after it was done and said, "Why, yes, we did a fantastic job!" and nothing could be further from the truth. 

One thing that bothered me was the walking - imagine the foot of a walking person, it looks different when a step is first taken than when that same foot is in mid-step, with the person's full weight on it, then different again when it's behind the person, as it gets lifted up to move forward to take another step.  In animator lingo, this is called a "walk cycle", and everybody knows that the shape of the foot HAS to change at the different points of the cycle.  Not here, though. 

Does this animator know what people walking even looks like?  I don't know, maybe could he look at some footage of people walking, before animating that?  I'm sure he could find some footage online to study.  For that matter, does he know what people having sex looks like? People were barely moving in that orgy scene, so does that even qualify as an orgy, if it's in slow-motion?  Maybe the animator could look at some footage of people having sex, before animating that?  I'm sure he could find some footage online to study - but this raises a whole new set of questions for me.  I suppose that if the sex were TOO graphic here, then the film would get an NC-17 rating, but come on, you gotta give me something, or it becomes an orgy where everyone's drunk or on depressants or just all had a very heavy meal and can't perform, and that's not sexy at all. 

I can't believe this film played at Sundance, and won an Innovator Award there.  Actually, I kind of can, because one year at Sundance (2004?), I watched a film called "In the Realms of the Unreal", which was a documentary about Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor in the Chicago area who wrote an elaborate 15,000 page fantasy novel, with a ton of paintings and drawings that illustrated his concepts.  The book was, I assume, terrible - most writers have writer's block, this guy had the opposite problem - and the documentary used really terrible cut-out animation to bring his story to life, which really, never should have happened. Please, just let it die. 

And that's kind of where I land with "Cryptozoo", as in, was this trip really necessary?  Did we need to debate the topic of "zoos" any further, especially in relation to animals that don't even actually exist?  Cancel culture took care of circuses, and if they weren't being helpful in preserving certain species, I'm betting zoos would be next on the list.  But should we lock up Bigfoot and unicorns and pegasuses?  It's a ridiculous question, when you consider it - there's no point in even asking!  So go ahead, light up a joint or smoke a bowl if that helps you enjoy this film, but otherwise don't bother.  I only watched it because I was curious to see what pissed my boss off so much, and now I know, so I got what I needed, and I'm out. 

Also starring Lake Bell (last seen in "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy"), Michael Cera (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Angeliki Papoulia (last seen in "The Lobster"), Zoe Kazan (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Peter Stormare (last seen in "Birth"), Grace Zabriskie (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Thomas Jay Ryan (also carrying over from "My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea"), Alex Karpovsky (ditto), Emily Davis (ditto), Irene Muscara, Rajesh Parameswaran, Ami Patel, Owen K. Price, Joce Soubiran. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 tarot cards (and please, just do a little research about how tarot card readings work before you write one into your screenplay...you couldn't spend 10 minutes on this?)

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea

Year 14, Day 113 - 4/23/22 - Movie #4,116

BEFORE: I was saving this one because it connects several different ways into my upcoming documentary chain / Summer Concert series, one actor also appears in that documentary about the Sparks Brothers and another appears in my closing documentary about Conan O'Brien - but I've determined that there are about a million other ways I could get into the documentary and concert chain.  Right now the one I prefer is scheduled, but even if that path falls through for me, there are plenty of back-ups.  And that frees up THIS film to appear here instead, in my animation block, as Maya Rudolph carries over from "Luca".  Several of these actors carry over to another animated film tomorrow, and then a live-action path toward Mother's Day can begin. 

THE PLOT: An earthquake causes a high school to float into the sea, where it slowly sinks like a shipwreck. 

AFTER: Ah, this is a bit of a weird one. I learned about this one from a couple of sources, the director and animator, Dash Shaw, graduated from the School of Visual Arts a few years back (2005, I think) and I'm currently working for that school, by way of their theater, which used to a be a commercial cinema. People around the school still talk about their famous alumni, as you might expect, but also I work for a semi-famous animator (who also attended SVA for a time), and he gets to see nearly all of the animated films that get released, either through Academy screenings or at various festivals. So I've read my boss's reviews on HIS blog (which I type up for him) and I'm sure he must have reviewed this at some point, which is probably what put it on my radar.  

The animation here is very crude, not just when compared to the slick CGI of Pixar or Dreamworks or Sony Animation, but crude just on the most basic level.  Yes, we can understand that these are drawings of high-school students, but are they GOOD drawings of high-school students?  No, they are not.  There's not much consistency in the look of the characters over the course of the film, and then there are several key scenes where the characters are in silhouette or completely dark spaces - the professional animation term for this is "cheating".  The backgrounds are often psychedelic splashes of color, which represents another form of cheat, so don't show up for this one expecting to see the type of animation you see on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon.  This is one step above the film school student-level of animation, and it's clear that there wasn't a 20 or 30-person crew of animators working on this, probably just one, maybe two.  Now, that's not ALWAYS a bad thing, necessarily, there's software out there these days that would allow one animator to do the work of maybe ten in the past.  The days where there were rows and rows of lightbox desks in an animation sweatshop-type situation are long gone, now a couple of teens with laptops could probably bang out an animated film - but, the question remains, would that film be any GOOD?

The story is pure wish fulfillment - what teen hasn't wished that his high-school would be destroyed in cinematic fashion?  For school to be cancelled for the next - well, several weeks at least, maybe months if the disaster was big enough, like an earthquake or a meteorite, or a big enough flood.  The truth is, though, just because a building gets destroyed doesn't mean that's the end of school, you'd probably still have to go, they'd just hold classes at the town rec center or library or in the parking lot if they had to, because education is that important. That Alice Cooper song turned out to be very misleading. 

The story we're dropped into here is about Dash (an obvious stand-in for the director) and his friend Assaf, who write articles for the Tides High School Gazette. Assaf forms a connection with their school paper's editor, Verti, and jealous Dash writes something bad about Assaf (umm, how did it get printed?  Wouldn't the editor have rejected it?) and this goes on Dash's "permanent record".  Dash breaks into the school archives to clear his record, and accidentally finds out that the inspection records on the school's new auditorium were tampered with, and the school is not as earthquake-proof as it should be. Wouldn't you know it, this is when an earthquake strikes, and the entire high school falls into the sea, as referenced in the title of the film.  

From there, the story borrows quite a bit from films like "Titanic" and "The Poseidon Adventure", just with the giant ocean liners replaced by a high school. A plucky band of survivors has to make their way through the levels of the school, meeting various other survivors along the way, in the hope of being rescued.  But since each floor of the school is devoted to a different year of students, the sophomores have to pass through the junior and senior levels on their way out, and thus their journey becomes a metaphor for the high-school experience itself - there's only one way out of high-school, in other words, you've got to age out of the program. 

They've also got to work with Lunch Lady Lorraine, who manages to quell a riot, and Principal Grimm, who's feeling guilty over forging those inspection records - essentially, he's the captain who feels the responsibility for going down with the ship.  There are a few clever things here, but I'm betting this film is still better enjoyed if you're stoned, it's got that feel to it. I don't know much about the illustration or comic-book work of this Dash Shaw fellow, but much of it released by Fantagraphics, the company that publishes "Love & Rockets", "Neat Stuff" by Peter Bagge, "Ghost World" by Daniel Clowes, and so on. What we used to call "alternative" comics, not the Marvel and DC superhero stuff, so a lot of sex and drugs stuff aimed at the slacker crowd. 

I caught a couple references to "A Charlie Brown Christmas", too - all of the main characters (the ones that survive, anyway) dance at the end, and it's the same weird dance moves that you may recall the "Peanuts" characters doing.  

Also starring the voices of Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Reggie Watts (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Lena Dunham (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Thomas Jay Ryan (last seen in "Equals"), Alex Karpovsky (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Louisa Krause (last seen in "Young Adult"), John Cameron Mitchell (last seen in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"), Matthew Maher (last seen in "The Killer Inside Me"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "Feast of Love"), Adam Lustick (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Jennifer Kim, Dan Lippert, Emily Davis, Keith Poulson. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 lockers with air pockets