Ava

Year 14, Day 141 - 5/21/22 - Movie #4,144

BEFORE: Well, I think I made the right call, dropping "Miss Julie" into the chain yesterday.  This way both Colin Farrell AND Jessica Chastain carry over to today's film, and I think I would have felt disappointed in a way if I'd counted yesterday's film as just a romance, I guess it's what we can call a "Swedish romance", which means the lead characters love each other and want to shag, but they also want to kill each other.  Love and hate are not true opposites, it turns out.

And this leads me to today's film, where the lead characters all want to kill each other, I think, but for vastly different reasons.  I do have one more Jessica Chastain film on the list, but I need it to make a different connection in about 10 days, right at the end of May, so I'm withholding that one for then, and I'll just follow up tomorrow with another Colin Farrell film. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Gunpowder Milkshake" (Movie #4,015)

THE PLOT: Ava is a deadly assassin who works for a black ops organization, traveling the globe specializing in high profile hits. When a job goes dangerously wrong she is forced to fight for her own survival. 

AFTER: Isn't this always the way - I sit down to watch a gripping action film with a beautiful actress playing a mentally messed-up assassin, and what ends up bothering me? The fact that she looks nothing like the actresses playing her mother and sister. Look, I realize not every woman looks like her mother or sister, but I expect at least a passing resemblance when actors are cast as family members.  Maybe Ava was adopted, I don't know, because the film doesn't explain it, or maybe her character is supposed to look more like her father, I don't know because he's not shown in the film, he's dead or living elsewhere.  But isn't it the casting directors job to hire actors to play family members and at least make sure that the relationship is at least somewhat believable?  Jessica Chastain's mother here is played by Geena Davis, and the two actresses look NOTHING alike, am I supposed to NOT notice that?  Sure, people can dye their hair, so Ava's mother didn't need to be a redhead, but come on, there are only a few different facial types out there, can't they at least make sure their faces look a LITTLE bit like the same shape?  I guess if you can get Geena Davis, you get Geena Davis, but then the down-side is that her character looks nothing like her daughter's character, which is a bit of a problem. 

Perhaps the casting of Geena Davis is a nod to the 1996 film "The Long Kiss Goodnight", where Ms. Davis herself played the lead role as a secret agent/assassin in an action thriller, and she had memory problems, whereas Ava is an alcoholic/addict, much easier to believe than the old amnesia plot device. John Malkovich also plays Ava's handler, and I'm sure I've seen him in similar secret agent roles before, like in "RED", "Burn After Reading" and "Ripley's Game", so maybe they're just having fun with the casting here.  

Ava's problems begin when she starts (again) asking too many questions about the people she's supposed to take down.  She wants to know, in their words, what they did to deserve someone putting a hit out on them, instead of just taking them out, quietly and efficiently.  From this we're supposed to derive that she has some kind of conscience, knowing that she's only killing "bad" people makes the job easier for her, but doesn't win her any points from her handlers.  After a job in Saudi Arabia goes wrong (honestly, it's a little unclear to me what her mistake was, something about the way she said her fake name?) her handlers decide to have her taken care of, hiring an assassin to take out their own assassin.  

There's something weird about the way the pieces fit together here, like I couldn't tell if the scenes were being shown out of linear order, or if Ava decided twice to go back to Boston.  But then was the failed operation in Saudi Arabia between two trips to Boston, or is it the backstory that happened before the job in France?  Did Ava choose to take time off, or did her handler tell her to take time off, or both?  It's all very unclear and confusing for the first half.  

Things become a bit clearer in the second half, because all the cards are on the table - the head of the organization takes out Ava's handler, and instead of just sending more assassins to take her out, he calls her on the phone and tells her this is going to happen.  It's good manners, I suppose, but it's a terrible strategy.  And this guy RUNS the international operation of assassins?  

I suppose there needs to be some kind of NITPICK POINT about the portrayal of alcoholism here - alcoholics who go to meetings, as part of their pledges, admit that they have no power over their addiction, so they have to avoid putting themselves into positions where they are around temptation, and for that reason I think many of them choose to request that their hotel minibars are either locked or kept empty.  Knowing she herself is an alcoholic, would Ava allow herself to stay in a hotel room with a minibar?  Obviously it's important to the plot that she relapse at some point, but it raises questions about why she didn't take proper steps to prevent this possibility when she was sober.  Anyway, nobody in the world could afford to drink all those tiny bottles in the minibar like that - even Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos would balk at that. 

Things in Boston also get complicated when Ava returns to visit her family after eight years away - she's been in touch with her sister and mother via e-mails and told them she works for the United Nations, but apparently Ava hasn't read those e-mails very closely, because she learns that her ex-fiancé is living with her younger sister, and yeah, that could get very awkward.  And so it does, especially when that guy, Michael, (himself a gambling addict) doesn't come home one night and Ava feels the need to track him down and get him clear of his bookies.  What a shame, because he was THIS close to winning that high-stakes poker game, and digging himself out of the hole himself.  Yeah, right, that's just what every gambling addict says.  

Eventually the top man in the organization travels from British Columbia to Boston just to take her out himself - but wait, doesn't he have other people who can do this?  I guess he really wants to handle this personally so it's done right.  OK, sure, let me know how that goes.  It's a knock-down, drag-out fight that also manages to trash a very nice hotel room - assassins are the new rock stars, I guess.  Geez, now Ava's got to cover not only a very large bill from the minibar, but all the damages down to the room, too.  

Yep, there's kind of a love triangle here, between Ava and Michael and her sister - this sure seems to be the week for them.  More complicated is the relationship between Ava and her mother, in the past Ava had caught her father cheating on her mother, and instead of admitting his guilt, her father chose to discredit Ava and basically kick her out of the family.  By the time seen in the film, Ava has reconciled with her mother, but hearing the interplay between mother and daughter, the typical Boston mother who finds fault with everything, I think I understand why Ava started drinking in the first place...

Also starring John Malkovich (last seen in "Unlocked"), Common (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Geena Davis (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Jess Weixler (last heard in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Ioan Gruffudd (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Diana Silvers (last seen in "Booksmart"), Joan Chen (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Efka Kvaraciejus (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Christopher J. Domig, Michel Muller, Dieter Riesle, Aramis Merlin, Martin Lee, Simonne Stern, Steve Gagliastro (last seen in "American Hustle"), Nadezhda Russo (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Joe Sobalo Jr.

RATING: 5 out of 10 fake port-a-potties

Miss Julie

Year 14, Day 140 - 5/20/22 - Movie #4,143

BEFORE: Well, with Jessica Chastain appearing in yesterday's film, that creates another conundrum, do I drop this film in here, when it seems like it might fit better in a February romance chain?  The problem there is, it's got just three main actors in it, and none of them appear in any other romance films currently on my list - so the film is something of an orphan right now.  Sure, February and the next romance chain is a long way off, and any number of films could make it to my list as possibles, so there COULD be linking opportunities to come, there just aren't any at the moment.  OR, I burn it off here, and get rid of it, and this clears space next February for films that DO share actors with other films on the list.  It's always a tough call.

Screw it, the motto for this year is, if given the choice between watching it and not watching it, I should go with "watching it".  Even if that forces the rescheduling of something else, watching it is always the better choice to make, even if that means reordering or reprioritizing the list.  That worked for "A Quiet Place Part II", let's hope it works out again tonight. Jessica Chastain carries over from "The Eyes of Tammy Faye". 

THE PLOT: Over the course of a midsummer night in 1890, an unsettled daughter of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy encourages her father's valet to seduce her. 

AFTER: I don't know much about August Strindberg, but this is based on one of this plays.  I think with just three characters and a closed setting (they never leave the mansion or the grounds) even if I didn't know this film was based on a play, I probably would have been able to tell that this film was based on a play.  A little research on Wiki tells me he's considered the father of modern Swedish literature, and his plays are considered naturalistic dramas, building on Ibsen's "problem plays" while rejecting their structure. Particularly with "Miss Julie", he favored replacing plot with characterization - oh, great, that means a whole lot of nothing's going to happen in this movie, it will mostly be characters being introspective and complaining about their problems. 

Strindberg had a childhood affected by poverty, emotional insecurity, neglect and religious fanaticism - which means if you met him, you probably wouldn't have a good time.  His mother always resented her son's intelligence and she died when he was thirteen, so OK, some mommy issues there - the eternal quest for a maternal figure, probably.  And soon after his mother's death, his father married the family's governess.  Put a pin in that little fact, it may become important in a short bit...

But back to that naturalistic thing - when he started writing plays he believed they should reflect realistic speech, rather than stately verse. He worked as an assistant librarian at the Royal Library, but socialised with writers, painters and journalists - wisely, it seems he stayed away from puppeteers. But he also started seeing a married baroness, who was on her way to becoming a divorced actress at the Royal Theatre. 

Strindberg went bankrupt, but then also wrote what is now called the first Swedish novel, then he started writing against hypocrisy, and self-identified as a socialist, a nihilist, but once the reviews started coming in, he got despondent and declared that "everything was shit" and said he was on his way to becoming an atheist. Divorce, drinking, depression, all the great things that affect an author's mental health, they all came his way.  

Specifically, regarding his play "Miss Julie", which was produced in this "naturalism" style, Strindberg said at the time that his play was about Darwinism, which must have been a relatively new and trendy concept at the time.  Which only shows that people back then didn't really understand Darwin's theory of evolution, which describes changes in the development of animal species over thousands of years, yet Strindberg said that his two lead characters were engaged in an evolutionary "life and death" battle, survival of the fittest.  Umm, that's not how evolution works, it's not survival on a day-to-day, live or die, it's the theory that, over longer periods of time, mutations may occur, and if those mutations are helpful, then the mutated animals will tend to live and those that didn't mutate might be more likely to die.  And it's not that, say, giraffe's necks will evolve to be longer and help them reach leaves on tall trees, it's that a few giraffes may be born with longer necks, and they'll be more likely to survive and pass that trait down to their descendants.  

But what is really dying, slowly, in Strindberg's play "Miss Julie" is the aristocracy, as the daughter of the Baron, Julie is part of a dying breed.  It's true that as the upper class had children and divided up their properties among their descendants, each generation seemed to get a little bit smaller piece of the inheritance, and that's one reason that aristocrats got phased out in Europe, except for in a few countries where the upper class was SO rich that dividing up the wealth with each generation didn't really matter.  But the male servant character, John, is trying to rise upwards in rank, which isn't possible, though if he were to marry the daughter of the Baron, well, that could be a short-cut.  Sex is the great equalizer here, two people from different classes could fall in love (or at least into bed) and they're not really thinking about class struggles at the moment.  But then again, aren't they?  If one person's from the upper class, doesn't that imply some kind of power or influence over a sexual partner from the lower class?  I mean, either the rich person is paying the poorer person for sex, or they're using their rank to get the sex, and at least with a prostitute everybody gets what they want, since the prostitute provides a service and gets paid.

It's maybe a bit of a twist here that the female is the upper class character and the male is the servant - for centuries the rich and powerful men probably slept with whatever servant girl (or boy) or peasant girl (or boy) they wanted to, but you hardly ever hear a story about a queen or duchess lowering their standards just to get their freak on.  Maybe the women were just better about keeping it quiet.  

Miss Julie, however, is just the opposite - she demands what she wants, and she usually gets it.  When the Baron is away, the sexual politics take over among those remaining in the house - Julie, John the butler and Kathleen the cook. John and Kathleen are clearly an item, not officially married but they've been working together for years and are so familiar with each other that they might as well be married.  They're confidants and probably frequent sexual partners, but Miss Julie inserts herself into the situation, flirts with John and demands that he dance with her in the barn.  John returns to the kitchen after a short dance, but Julie comes back and ups the ante by asking him to kiss her boot, and gets physical with him in other ways.  After Kathleen retires to bed, John confesses that as a younger man, he would spy on Julie in her garden when she was a small girl, and he basically fell in love with her then, and has been working his way up to a job at the Baron's house, just to be closer to her.  Yep, it's another love triangle, which has been a running theme around here for most of the week.  

Long story short, they sleep together, and then the rest of the movie concerns how they should deal with this - should they just cover it up as if nothing took place?  What does this mean for John's relationship with the cook?  Should they run away and get married?  And what would that mean if someone from the upper class married a servant?  Maybe they could all run away before the Baron gets back, steal some of his money and open up a nice hotel somewhere, with Kathleen as the head cook. Nothing seems to make sense any more, everything has changed somehow since Julie and John did the nasty, and they can't change things back.  There's symbolism in the earlier conundrum of Julie's dog, which has possibly been impregnated by the gameskeeper's dog, and Julie wants to abort its puppies, even though that could kill the dog.  John is much like the gameskeeper's dog, he's had sex with an upper class bitch and now who knows, maybe Julie is also pregnant and will have to deal with the repercussions of that, get an abortion or go away for a while and have their child in secret.  

A hundred different scenarios are envisioned, as they stay up all night, but none of them really work for John and Julie or produce anything close to a happy ending, and so a form of madness takes over in the morning hours. What else would you call it, when someone keeps working out the scenarios of their own life and can't find a happy path forward?  Yes, Miss Julie's bird is symbolic, too, as she states that if she can't bring her bird with her when she runs away, then she'd rather see it dead than to be owned by anyone else. Yeah, this is not a happy movie.  Once you factor in religion telling them that sex is a sin, plus the class struggle, plus the madness involved in staying up all night trying to solve the unsolvable puzzle that is their lives, life starts to seem quite hopeless.  Geez, I think Ingmar Bergman learned a lot from Strindberg.  This kind of calls to mind the problems seen in "Scenes from a Marriage" mixed with the madness of "Cries and Whispers".  

Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "The Batman"), Samantha Morton (last seen in "In America"), Nora McMenamy

RATING: 4 out of 10 useless travel brochures

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Year 14, Day 139 - 5/19/22 - Movie #4,142

BEFORE: Finally getting back to my second job tonight, that's why I'm late in posting. I missed a lot in two weeks, like a free screening of "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", and a bunch of student films - it's near the end of the school year and the college kids are getting their thesis films done, and shown on the big screen.  I missed about five shifts due to COVID, and now I'm playing catch-up, they've offered me so many shifts in May June that I should be able to keep the money coming in, I guess I can sleep when I'm dead. 

Andrew Garfield carries over from "Never Let Me Go", and I get to cross off another Oscar winner from my list, this one won for Best Actress and Best Hair and Make-Up, just a couple months ago. 

THE PLOT: An intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. 

AFTER: Well, I passed on watching this last September at work, as I just couldn't see how I could fit it in my 2021 chain - then I watched "Tick, Tick...Boom!" a few weeks ago in April, and I couldn't fit this in there either, because Easter was coming up, so I'm glad I was able to circle back to it.  

I remember when Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker dominated the news cycle in the late 1980's, after certain financial misdealings were revealed, then a sex scandal or two, then the couple broke up and Jim Bakker went to prison, and by now a lot of the players in this saga are deceased, like Tammy Faye and Jerry Falwell, so their story can finally be turned into a drama, not just a documentary.  There's a lot here that I didn't know, like that Tammy Faye started out doing Christian-based puppet shows. 

Look, I've been around a long time, I was a Catholic altar boy back when I was a kid, then I went to film school and fell in with a bad crowd - I'm talking about independent filmmakers. But it could have been worse, when I started in the film industry it was as a production assistant on music videos and a few things that looked like music videos but were done for Sesame Street, so for a couple years there I had connections at CTW and Henson Studios, but something deep down just told me to stay away from the puppeteers, they're just a weird bunch.  (I don't think my instincts were wrong, there have been scandals in all forms of entertainment over the years, and puppetry is no exception...).  But the common thread in my experiences is that once I get a peek behind the curtain, I see that there's no real mysteries involved, whether that's in the church or the moviemaking world, the principle's the same, it's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, there's no real THERE there, just a bunch of charlatans.  But at least the filmmakers are HONEST about the fact that they're trying to deceive you, with editing, special effects, make-up, etc.  The preachers and priests are worse because they'll lie to you and swear again and again that they're telling the truth, while asking for your money, so they're at least as bad as politicians, probably worse in my book, because we NEED politicians, we don't need preachers. 

Still, they're cut from the same cloth - and it's worse when they overlap, like with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who wanted to get religion and politics all mixed together, even though we've got a U.S. Constitution that says that's a really bad idea, and against the law.  But the "Moral Majority" in the 1980's supported candidates with the same agenda, which was anti-feminist, anti-homosexual, anti-liberal, anti-abortion and so on.  Hey, if you missed this period in history, I've got some news, it looks like this is all making a comeback!  It's throwback Thursdays every day once the Supreme Court overthrows Roe v. Wade...  

Tammy Faye was actually the decent one, she believed that gay people were, you know, people, too, and she was willing to talk to them and hear what they had to say and give them a platform, perhaps when no other religious figures would.  Her husband Jim toed the party line and got flak from Falwell for Tammy Faye's simple decency, and the ironic thing about that is that there were rumors about Jim Bakker's own sexual preferences over the years - the film tonight shows Tammy Faye catching her husband in a "tickle fight" with another man, and well, we all know what that probably meant.  But there was a scandal with him and another woman, Jessica Hahn, but this film explains that away as a sign of him overcompensating or something.  I don't know, the thing I remember most about Jim Bakker, for some reason, is that when times got tough after all the scandals, he consoled himself by drinking heavy cream - straight, no coffee involved - and I just don't know how anyone can DO that, it's certainly not recommended. 

Anyway, the film follows Jim and Tammy Faye from their meeting in Bible College in Minneapolis, through their very quick courtship, marriage and then running that puppet show on Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, then Jim becoming the host of The 700 Club.  After hooking up with Falwell, Jim and Tammy started their own TV network, PTL, which stood for "Praise the Lord", though later all the jokes were about how it really stood for "Pass the Loot". Tammy started a singing career, if you can call it that, and got a little flirty with a record producer, meanwhile Jim started building a Christian theme park, and Tammy also got addicted to pills. 

Then came the scandals, as the PTL Network went into debt and people started inquiring about where all the donated money had gone.  News of Jim's affairs came to light, and all the things they owned, like an air-conditioned doghouse and gold-plated bathrooms, fur coats and other opulent things.  Tammy Faye stood by and publicly supported her husband as he was convicted of fraud, then she divorced him while he was in the joint.  Pay attention to the character of Roe Messner, the one helping to design the theme park, because that's who Tammy Faye married next.  He also served time for fraud, connected to the construction industry, which might be the only industry more corrupt than politics or organized religion.  

Tammy Faye went on to publish her autobiography and made a few appearances on sit-coms in the 1990's, also the reality show "The Surreal Life", and she became a gay icon to boot.  But by the 2000's she'd been treated for colon cancer, lung cancer, and fought those diseases for 11 years, but died in hospice care in 2007.  Nobody really deserves that, not even a person who lived in the intersecting worlds of preaching and puppetry.  

What astounds me is that Jim Bakker served time for fraud, Falwell was an absolutely terrible human, and time and time again in America one evangelist preacher after another is charged with fraud or accused of misconduct, and overall, nobody seems to put the pieces together to realize that they're ALL corrupt.  They're all selling a bunch of lies to the public, collecting donations and not paying taxes on them - what's wrong with this picture?  It's time to remove the tax-exempt status for religious organizations and make everyone pay their fair share.  Remember, we're supposed to have a separation of church and state in this country, it says so in the Constitution, so that means no special treatment for churches or religious personnel.  Right? 

Also starring Jessica Chastain (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Cherry Jones (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Mark Wystrach, Sam Jaeger (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Louis Cancelmi (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Gabriel Olds, Fredric Lenhe (last seen in "Human Capital"), Jay Huguley (last seen in "12 Years a Slave"), Chandler Head (last seen in "The Boss"), Randy Havens (last seen in "Geostorm"), Grant Owens, Coley Campany (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Lindsay Ayliffe (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Alan Boell, Lila Jane Meadows, Carolyn Mints, Elizabeth J Branca, and the voice of Jess Weixler (also last seen in "It: Chapter Two")

with archive footage of Jim Bakker (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Tammy Faye Bakker, Tom Brokaw (last seen in "Empire State"), Delta Burke, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Jay Leno (ditto), Dana Carvey (last seen in "Spielberg"), Dan Rather (ditto), Jerry Falwell (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project"), Ted Koppel (ditto), Jessica Hahn, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Sam Kinison, Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Pat Robertson, Charlie Rose (last seen in "Zappa"), Maria Shriver, Jean Smart (last seen in "Life Itself")

RATING: 6 out of 10 cans of Diet Coke

Never Let Me Go

Year 14, Day 138 - 5/18/22 - Movie #4,141

BEFORE: OK, so here's a movie that I've passed on TWICE already this year - maybe even three times. It would have fit somewhere in February, in between "An Education" and "Happy-Go-Lucky" because it's got Sally Hawkins in it, but then I determined the plot-line didn't sound like it belonged in the romance chain. Then I could have linked to it from "Tick, Tick...Boom!" because of Andrew Garfield, but the problem there was I needed to get to my Easter film, and I couldn't do that if I dropped this one in there.  Then Carey Mulligan showed up in "Promising Young Woman", but I couldn't drop this film in there next to that one, because I needed to follow the Alfred Molina link instead, to get to Mother's Day in time.  So it's been a real run of bad luck for this film, here in the year of the constant re-scheduling.  

Good news, both Carey Mulligan AND Andrew Garfield have come around again, so by rescheduling this film again and again, I was really freeing it up to be HERE, to connect "The Dig" with tomorrow's film. See? It all works out in the end, or at least it looks that way. 

Speaking of which, here's an updated list of the links that will get me to the end of the month: Andrew Garfield, Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Donald Sumpter, James D'Arcy, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mark Strong.  Then I'll print the new list of links on June 1, which is going to look a bit like the old May list of links, only in reverse. 

THE PLOT: The lives of three friends, from their early school days into young adulthood, when the reality of the world they live in comes knocking. 

AFTER: If you don't read a bit ahead in the plot summary on Wikipedia, then you might not know what's going on in this film at first.  So, umm, SPOILER ALERT just in case it's possible for me to spoil a film that was released in 2010.  Hey, if you haven't tracked down a film after 12 years, it's likely you weren't going to get around to watching this one, or you would have by now.  Anyway, you've been warned, I can't talk about this film without umm, talking about it. 

Nothing seems all that amiss at first, there's a quick shot of one lead character watching another one being prepared for surgery, nope, nothing wrong there, that's a common enough occurence, right?  Except she thinks to herself about being a "carer" and hoping to be a "giver" in due time, without really explaining the difference.  An on-screen graphic also explains this is a world where a medical breakthrough discovered in 1952 has allowed the average human lifespan to be extended past 100 years. Ah, but what IS it? We'll find out soon enough...

The film whips back in time to the leads in boarding school, again it's a common enough scene in the U.K. from the 1960's or 1970's, but this is really an alternate timeline where some medical miracle has been discovered, and it makes these students special in some way, special enough for them to be removed from society and not allowed to interact with it.  What they know about the outside world comes from a sort of acting class, where they practice things like going in to a tea shop and ordering tea, or perhaps coffee.  No, wait, water - in fact it seems like they're all just going through the motions, and the difficult part for them is having a want, or a preference, or an opinion, like they've all been told that this is not something that they deserve.  What is really going on here?  

Ah, at some point one of the teachers can't stand the secret any more, and she tells the children that they're being raised for a special purpose, they exist to be givers and at some point there are people somewhere else who will need them to donate something, and it's not going to be easy.  They won't get to grow up and have lives of their own, the only reason that they have any life at all is to grow replacement organs to be harvested.  That teacher then disappears and is not seen again by the children.  

Ah, so maybe it's cloning?  Cloning was invented earlier in this timeline, and humanity decided to make full use of it, and these are the future donors, and how long they'll live depends on the health of the originals, and what organs they may need, and at what times.  

Naturally, there's a love triangle (THIRD one this week, in a row, but who's counting?) as Ruth falls in bed with Tommy, but we later learn she's only doing it to keep him away from Kathy. As teenagers the children are moved from the boarding school to farm cottages and are allowed to leave on day trips, but must check back in every night.  And a select few are allowed to apply to become "carers", which are givers who travel around and visit the other givers who are in hospital making donations.  Kathy signs on to become a carer, and this helps her deal with the fact that she loves Tommy, but he's sleeping with someone else. 

Later on, Ruth regrets her decision, and encourages Tommy and Kathy to get together and enjoy whatever time they have left, following Tommy's first round of "donation".  After two or three rounds of donations, a giver usually "completes", which of course is a euphemism for no longer being able to survive after that round of donation.  

There have been rumors for years about "deferrals", which could occur if two givers fall in love and are able to prove it to the people in charge, then they could defer their donations for a few years and spend more time together before the harvesting.  However, the people who grew up in one school heard a rumor about the deferrals in the other school, which makes everyone wonder if the deferrals even exist at all.  And why were the children encouraged to make drawings which would be displayed in some art gallery?  The rumors are that only through the drawings could the givers prove that they had souls, were worthy of love, and thus eligible for a deferral.  

I can't help but think that this is all a big metaphor for something, I mean that clock is ticking for all of us, we start dying shortly after we're born, and it's inevitable.  Even if you love someone very deeply, that's not going to delay aging or death, it's only going to make the journey easier to handle, ideally.  I suppose there are questions here about the ethics of organ donations, and this explains why the most vital organs only come from recently deceased donors, living donors can only give up something they have two of, like a kidney, or something they can split, like a liver.  A living person giving up a heart would be WAY out of bounds in our world, but not in this fictional one.  

The larger question becomes, why did these donors complete their agreements, once they lived on their own, and had access to a CAR?  Why didn't they just drive away and start again somewhere else, under another name?  Well, that's where the school came in, they'd been programmed by the school to accept their fates, perhaps they were told that without the organ donation program, they wouldn't exist at all, so they needed to just make the most out of their short lives and be grateful for what time they had.  And again, I feel like maybe that's a metaphor for all living people, not just the ones bred for their organs.  

But I've got a bigger NITPICK POINT, perhaps this question might be answered in the novel this is based on, but then again, perhaps not.  How does cloning and harvesting the organs from the clones prevent such diseases as cancer, which are no longer prevalent in this alternate timeline?  The headmistress justifies the practice by saying that "nobody wants to return to the days of lung cancer and breast cancer and motor neuron disease..." and we're told that the average lifespan since the "medical miracle" is now over 100.  OK, so I can see that if an "original" gets lung cancer, the damaged lung could be replaced by one from the clone - but that's not PREVENTING cancer, that's just getting rid of the affected organ. That original could go on to get cancer somewhere else in their body, OK, swap out another organ, but eventually those organs are going to run out, and then what?  Raise another clone?  It could be too late at that point.  And again, swapping out the organs might eliminate the individual cancer, but it could not be regarded as taking steps to prevent, reduce or eliminate it worldwide. 

Also starring Keira Knightley (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Andrew Garfield (last seen in "Tick, Tick, Boom!"), Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Andrea Riseborough (ditto), Charlotte Rampling (last seen in "Dune"), Nathalie Richard, Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Isobel Meikie-Small, Ella Purnell (last seen in "Churchill"), Charlie Rowe (last seen in "Rocketman"), Kate Bowes Renna, Hannah Sharp, Christina Carrafiell, Oliver Parsons, Luke Bryant, Fidelis Morgan (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Damien Thomas (last seen in "W.E."), David Sterne, Lydia Wilson (last seen in "All Is True"), Monica Dolan (also carrying over from "The Dig"), Chidi Chickwe (last seen in "Filth"), Caroline Garnell.

RATING: 5 out of 10 songs on a Judy Bridgewater cassette

The Dig

Year 14, Day 137 - 5/17/22 - Movie #4,140

BEFORE: Good news, I've tested COVID-negative twice now, first on a home test and then today at a walk-in lab.  So, I'm done with testing, and I can go back to work at the theater on Thursday night, dealing with the public again, telling them to all wear their masks while milling about in the lobby after the screening. AND we can go to Atlantic City next month, for a Sunday-to-Tuesday thing, I may have to watch a couple movies in advance, but I think I can do that this week (Hel-LOO Doctor Strange!) and then I'll have the reviews ready to post before our trip.  Yep, it's cheating but I think I earned it, and it keeps the chain unbroken.  

Lily James carries over from "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"

THE PLOT: An archaeologist embarks on the historically important excavation of Sutton Hoo in 1938.

AFTER: Well, I'm not going to say that Lily James plays the exact same character in both yesterday's film and today's, but there are notable distinctions - yesterday she played an author in 1946, and in this film she's a budding archaeologist in 1938.  BUT in both films, she's the focal point of a love triangle, and in both films she has to choose between two men, and in both films she ends up giving back a wedding ring. However, there are more differences, in yesterday's film she had to break up with her American soldier fiancé, and in today's film she had to break up with her English archaeologist husband - and in yesterday's film her publisher was the token pre-gay rights gay man, and in today's film, it's her husband who apparently prefers the company of other men.  STILL, I get the feeling that several screenwriters are using the same playbook, over and over. 

This is also another film set during the start of World War II - yesterday it was 1941's invasion of Guernsey, as seen in flashback, tonight it's the U.K.'s official announcement regarding entering the war in 1938, in response to Germany refusing to leave Poland. (Possibly similar to how Russia is refusing to leave Ukraine, but let's hope the similarities don't continue, because nobody wants World War III - right?). At this momentous time in British history, a wealthy land-owner, Mrs. Pretty, decides to hire an excavator to learn what's inside those mysterious mounds on her property, she just feels they couldn't possibly be natural hills, that's all. Well, geez, there's really only one way to find out, isn't there?  

She hired self-taught amateur archaeologist Basil Brown, also an expert on the various types of dirt found in the Suffolk area, and well, I guess somebody has to be.  His previous employers at the Ipswich Museum try to lure him back with more pay and the chance to work on the excavation of a Roman villa, but he stays with the job for Mrs. Pretty.  Whether there's an attraction between them is perhaps grounds for debate, but Brown stays faithful to his wife, who occasionally visits the site.  Brown finds rivets from a ship in the mounds, suggesting that perhaps someone important was buried here, in a ship that was sailed up the river and then carried on land to a place it could be buried, and the implications of that are that perhaps the Anglo-Saxons weren't savages as previously thought, they must have had some engineering skills. 

But news of Brown's discovery spreads, and a team of archaeologists is sent from Cambridge, and they declare the site to be of national importance, which gives them authority over the dig and means that anything found would most likely be earmarked for the British Museum.  So much for "finders keepers" I guess. Meanwhile Edith Pretty's health is declining, and also meanwhile German air raids have started over London, and British RAF training planes are seen passing over the site.  And in the midst of all this is the aforementioned love triangle, as the neglected Peggy (the pretty archaeologist with giant glasses) turns to Edith's cousin Rory, who was hired to assist with the digging and taking photos of what was found.  

This is great fare if you enjoy period pieces, not so much if you like a bit of action in your movies - this is more of an inaction movie, as the digging and the preservation of the site mostly proceeds at a snail's pace.  Just be aware that this is based on a true story, but in real life things didn't all go down as depicted here - the married archaeologists, Stuart and Peggy Piggott, were the aunt and uncle of the author of the novel this film is based on, and they were never anywhere near this excavation. Sorry. 

Also starring Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "The King's Man"), Johnny Flynn (last seen in "Emma."), Ben Chaplin (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Ken Stott (last seen in "King Arthur" (2004)), Archie Barnes (last seen in "The Batman"), Peter McDonald (ditto), Monica Dolan (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Danny Webb (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Robert Wilfort (last seen in "The Huntsman: Winter's War"), James Dryden (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Joe Hurst (last seen in "Ready Player One"), Paul Ready (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Christopher Godwin (also last seen in "Emma."), Ellie Piercy, Bronwyn James, John Macmillan (last seen in "Hanna"), Arsher Ali, Eamon Farren (last seen in "Lion"), Amelia Stephenson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 glasses of barley water (it's an earlier, healthier version of lemonade, apparently)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Year 14, Day 136 - 5/16/22 - Movie #4,139

BEFORE: And here's where things get a little tricky, because I don't have to watch this film, if I were to skip it the chain would still work, Ralph Fiennes would then just carry over from "The King's Man" to tomorrow's film.  But I choose to include this one, with Matthew Goode carrying over from "The King's Man", because I want to get a few World War II films in before Memorial Day.  But the IMDB says this is also a romance film, so there's an argument to be made for saving it for next February - already I can see that it could link to "Easy Virtue", the film I dropped from this year's romance line-up, and also "Quartet", a romance film currently connected to only ONE other romance film, so THIS one could make a connection on the other end.  Damn, it's hard to decide on this sort of thing, but for my sake I'm going to treat this as primarily a World War II film and not look back.  I'll deal with next February come December and work something out, my linking line-up could look completely different by then, and if not, I'll track down new films to close the gaps.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Their Finest" (Movie #4,056)

THE PLOT: In the aftermath of World War II, a writer forms an unexpected bond with the residents of Guernsey Island when she decides to write a book about their experiences during the war. 

AFTER: OK, time for today's history lesson - remember this is primarily a World War II film, the romance bit is in there but let's focus on the learning first. Guernsey is one of the U.K.'s Channel Islands, meaning that it's a British island in the English Channel, and it turns out to be much closer to France than to Britain, so it turns out that it was occupied by Nazis, starting in 1941. The Brits managed to evacuate most the children to the mainland to live with relatives, but the adults stayed behind and endured Nazi occupation, all their livestock was taken for soldiers to eat, and the farmers were told to grow potatoes instead. You know, for German potato salad, Nazis love potato salad with their stolen pork. And if any of the Guernsey residents showed defiance, they were shipped off to camps, and I don't mean summer camps. 

The framing story here takes place in 1946, when an author received a letter written by one of the Guernsey residents, asking for the address of a bookshop in London in order to make a purchase - the letter writer had found the author's address in a book he'd bought second-hand, I guess it was the custom back then to write your address in every book you owned, just in case you lost it, and then you could never change houses, or else people wouldn't know where to return the books that you'd lost. (Yeah, this part of the plot is just a bit contrived.). The author, Juliet Ashton, corresponds with the man, Dawsey Adams, tracks down the book he was looking for, but also learns about the secret book club that formed during the war so that some friends had an excuse to get together and eat the last pig that hadn't been taken by the Nazis.  They also started a custom of making pies from potatoes and potato peels, which seems a bit weird because they could have just made mashed or fried potatoes, which actually both go better with pork than potato pies do.  (Yes, this part of the plot is also quite contrived...)

Of course, Juliet is engaged to a rich American soldier.  And of course spending time away from him changes her view on marriage just a bit.  And OF COURSE as she learns more about the stories of the Guernsey residents, she finds herself drawn toward Dawsey, who's raising the young daughter of another member, Elizabeth, who appears to be missing, and everyone is anticipating her return, someday. Maybe. Hopefully?  Really, this is an excuse to set up a giant love triangle between Juliet, her fiancé Markham, and the down-to-earth farmer raising his surrogate daughter - you can probably guess right where this is leading, provided you've seen a romance film or two or a hundred over the years.  

And as we slowly learn the stories of what took place on Guernsey during the years of Nazi occupation, we figure out why the members of the book club didn't want their story to be told, not in the London Times, anyway.  But as Juliet gets closer to them, befriends them and learns their secrets, she eventually realizes she HAS to write their story as a book, and she slowly wins them over by pointing out that it should make a cracking good movie about 70 years down the road.  Oh, well, by all means, proceed with the book then.  Yep, it's another movie about a writer who's writing a book within the movie which will eventually become the popular book on which this movie is based. Wait - no, that's right, I think. 

I'm sick of movies about writers writing - you may come to this film for the romance, I'll allow it, but I'm here for the history lesson.  Matthew Goode plays Juliet's publisher or agent or something, which is fine, but it's a bit of a waste of his talents. He's got the token gay role here (see also "Jungle Cruise") as any movie made these days about the 1900's to 1940's has to have at least one gay character to prove that they existed back then but were marginalized. 

Also starring Lily James (last seen in "Yesterday"), Michael Huisman, Glen Powell (last seen in "Set It Up"), Jessica Brown Findlay (last seen in "Victor Frankenstein"), Katherine Parkinson (last seen in "Pirate Radio"), Tom Courtenay (last seen in "45 Years"), Penelope Wilton (last seen in "Carrington"), Bronagh Gallagher (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Nicolo Pasetti, Clive Merrison, Bernice Stegers (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), Andy Gathergood (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Kit Connor (last seen in "Rocketman"), Florence Keen, Alexa Povah (also last seen in "The King's Man"), Tom Owen (last seen in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips". 

RATING: 5 out of 10 bottles of homemade gin

The King's Man

Year 14, Day 135 - 5/15/22 - Movie #4,138

BEFORE: Time for a COVID update, I feel mostly fine, and I've never had a fever or lost my sense of taste in the last week and a half (except for my decision to watch "Jungle Cruise", that is...) so it's probably time to think about getting back to work. If I can pass a home test today then maybe I'll get a real lab test on Tuesday and return to the theater on Thursday night, if I can.  I missed a free screening of "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" but maybe I can catch a cheap matinee screening this week, and review it in June. I've been going stir crazy at home, leading me to sneak out for a walk yesterday to get cold cuts from the pork store and again today to get bagels. 

Djimon Hounsou carries over from "A Quiet Place Part II". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Kingsman: The Secret Service" (Movie 2,289), "Kingsman: The Golden Circle" (Movie #3,064)

THE PLOT: In the early years of the 20th century, the Kingsman agency is formed to stand 

AFTER: OK, I feel much better about flipping around those twenty or so movies in my chain - tonight's film is set during World War I, aka the Great War, and I've got a bunch of stuff set during the World War II era in the next two weeks, and isn't that right where I'd want to be, with Memorial Day coming up?  I'm just glad that I caught the opportunity when I did, and made the adjustment in time.  

This film uses the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as something of a jumping-off point, Gavrilo Princip is a character here, and the shooting goes down in Sarajevo more or less like it did in real life, though with a few liberties, I'm sure.  But here Princip is part of a larger cabal that includes Mata Hari, Vladimir Lenin, Rasputin and others.  It's all in fun, done for the convenience of the story, and I'm sure there are some conspiracy theorists out there who will shout, "I KNEW IT", and that other sound you hear is your high school history teacher slamming his face into his palm.  

King George V, Kaiser Wilhelm and Tsar Nicholas were COUSINS?  Yes, this is true...umm, mostly. The conceit here is that all three historical figures are played by the same actor, to highlight this point - identical cousins, just like on the Patty Duke show, or that kid from school who somehow looked exactly like Peter Brady on "The Brady Bunch" (they never did explain that one fully...).  This is a historical fact that I've never heard before, though - the family tree of the British, Danish and Russian royal families are so inter-connected that it turns out that THREE of the world leaders during World War I were closely related - Kaiser Wilhelm and King George V were first cousins, and George and Tsar Nicholas II were also first cousins, but Wilhelm and Nicholas were third cousins, and all three men were also FIFTH cousins. But NITPICK POINT, the film states that all three men were grand-children of Queen Victoria, when as far as I can tell, only two of them were, Wilhelm and George. Nicholas married Victoria's granddaughter, Princess Alix, so she was only his grandmother-in-law. But why didn't I learn this in history class?

The use of Rasputin as a villain here is also inspired - history describes him as a mystic, healer, reigious charlatin and advisor to the tsar, and his scandalous reputation indirectly led to the fall of the Romanov dynasty - he was assassinated a few weeks before the tsar was overthrown. Really, it's just a small narrative leap to suggest that he might have been working to take down the monarcy from within.  And it's been a historical theory that British Secret Service agents might have been involved with Rasputin's death, because he was urging for the tsar to negotiate peace with Germany, which would have allowed Germany to concentrate its forces on the Western Front, making things more difficult for the U.K. and its allies.  And then on the night of Rasputin's death, he was poisoned with cyanide in a cake, which appeared to not affect him at all - then he was shot THREE times, which is true, and that means the first two shots didn't seem to be fatal, so that raises some questions, and then after the third shot to the forehead, he was drowned in the river for good measure.  Either this was a very tough dude, or some kind of weird juju magic or supernatural healing was taking place. 

But Princip, Mata Hari and the others are all taking their orders from the mysterious Shepherd here - whose face is always obscured by a mask or a fencing helmet, or he's seen from the back or in shadows. I must say I was surprised here, I couldn't figure out who the character really was, but I probably should have.  No spoilers here, but kudos on keeping me guessing somehow. 

This film reminded me of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", an underrated film that I really like - that's another film based on a comic book that took a bunch of literary characters from a bunch of different genres and blended them all together for great affect.  "The King's Man" basically does the same thing, just with real historical characters from the early 20th century - it's a great idea and a VAST improvement over the last film in the franchise, which got very silly indeed.  I'll once again make my pitch for a sequel to TLOEG, I know Sean Connery's no longer alive, and his character died in the first film, but neither of those things should be an impediment, his character could easily be resurrected and recast, and the story could continue.  Or they could adapt the second volume of the comic book, which featured Dr. Jekyll, Mina Harker, Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man taking on Martians in a "War of the Worlds"-type scenario. Allan Quartermain could easily be replaced by John Carter, or Terry Prendrick from "The Island of Dr. Moreau", and defeating the Martians with anthrax or streptococcus could be a nice nod to the pandemic.  Just saying.  

Speaking of viruses, I went back and re-read my review of "Kingsman: The Golden Circle", which was released in 2017 and featured a Trump-like president who wanted to round up all the sick people and put them in camps - and that was TWO YEARS before COVID-19 was even a thing, so what was going on there?  Now, this wasn't a slam-dunk bit of prognostication, because people were getting sick from drugs, and not from a virus - but still, kind of on the nose, right?  But as I pointed out in my review, it didn't make much sense that a cabal dealing a drug would want their customers to get sick, because then if they die, that's bad for business.  I also had huge problems with the film's obsession about putting characters into this giant meat grinder and having them come out the other side looking just like ground beef, with no explanation about what happened to their clothing, bones, or dental fillings.  Also, it didn't make sense that the Golden Circle would attack the Kingsman agency, which wasn't even aware of its presence. 

Anyway, "The King's Man" is a vast improvement over the last film in the franchise, which I scored as a "7", so this film's score has to be at least one better. It's a clever idea to have a network of servants (maids, butlers) that stretches across the globe and works for some very influential people on both sides. The Duke of Oxford, who we all figure will someday form the Kingsman agency, hides in plain sight as a pacifist who secretly controls all the other agents, and has the king's confidence. Because of the loss of his wife, he forbids his son from entering military service, begrudgingly allowing him to learn fighting skills and military tactics, without allowing him to enlist.  His army of servants manages to decode the Zimmerman telegram, which is another piece of real history - Germany was trying to get Mexico to attack the U.S. so that America would be too busy to enter World War I.  I'm not sure I follow the logic here, because if America had been attacked, as it later was in Pearl Harbor, wouldn't that have drawn the U.S. INTO the war, rather than kept it out?  

As extra insurance, Mata Hari heads to the White House and seduces President Wilson, for blackmail material to keep the U.S. out of the war.  This is very Clintonian, but come on, we all know that most of the U.S. Presidents had something going on the side, this should come as no surprise. FDR was a horny beast, and Eisenhower had a side piece assistant, and don't get me started on JFK and Trump - Bill Clinton was nothing new, this has been going on back to the days of Thomas Jefferson, right?  Maybe one or two of them were faithful to their wives, but come on, that's why an American man runs for President, for the extra action.  

Now I'm going to request a "King's Man II", as soon as possible - the film ends with the actual formation of the agency, with a star-studded line-up among the first five agents, and a hint about who the main villain in the next film might be. (Hint, he's got a unique moustache...). I know you've got to be careful with anything related to Nazis, it could easily devolve into cartoonish depictions of the Holocaust - but if they could just maintain THIS tone into the next film, and respect history just enough, then I'm all for it. 

Also starring Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "Wuthering Heights" (1992)), Gemma Arterton (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Rhys Ifans (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Harris Dickinson (last seen in "Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales"), Tom Hollander (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Daniel Brühl (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Charles Dance (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (last seen in "A Milliion Little Pieces"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Shall We Dance?"), Joel Basman (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Valerie Pachner, Alexandra Maria Lara (last seen in "Geostorm"), Olivier Richters (last seen in "Black Widow"), Todd Boyce (last seen in "The Batman"), Aaron Vodovoz, Ron Cook (last seen in "Lucky Break"), Barbara Drennan (last seen in "Rocketman"), Branka Katic (last seen in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"), Alison Steadman, Cassidy Little, August Diehl (last seen in "Allied"), Ian Kelly, (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1") Alexander Shaw, David Kross (last seen in "The Reader"), Kristian Wanzi Nekrasov, David Calvitto, Alexander Shefler, Rosie Goddard, Dora Davis, Lucia Jade Barker, Molly McGeachin, James Musgrave, Nigel Lister, Russell Balogh, Stefan Schiffer, Tim Bruce, Ian Porter (last seen in "Dumbo" (2019)), Simon Connolly, Neil Jackson (last seen in "Welcome to Marwen"), Alexa Povah, Ross Anderson, Pippa Winslow, Constantine Gregory (last seen in "6 Underground").

RATING: 8 out of 10 glasses of Statesman whisky