Endings, Beginnings

Year 15, Day 72 - 3/13/23 - Movie #4,373

BEFORE: Wow, how about that Oscar ceremony last night? I'll admit I started it late, because my wife and I just HAD to stay current on "Tournament of Champions IV" on Food Network. Priorities. So then I had to stay off of social media while I caught up with the Oscars - but my trick was that I fast-forwarded over most of the acceptance speeches, the second half of all the songs, and any time the presenters tried to starsplain "Sound Editing" or "Production Design" to me.  Watched the whole thing in about an hour and a half - just jokes, award, next award, more jokes, award, and so on.  The ONE film I had seen that was nominated for Best Picture won, so that's a real time-saver for me, I won't have to catch up later, not on that. (I still have to see "CODA", though...)   Don't worry, I'll have plenty of films to put on my list, like "The Whale" and "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Triangle of Sadness" in addition to the ones that are already ON my list, like "Elvis" and "Pinocchio" and "The Banshees of Inisherin". I'll get caught up, someday. 

It's Day 13 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and today's themes are "Tearjerkers" (before 8 pm) and "Heists and Capers" (8 pm and after). Here's the line-up: 

6:15 am "Love Affair" (1939)

8:00 am "Little Women" (1933)

10:00 am "Penny Serenade" (1941)

12:15 pm "Random Harvest" (1943)

2:30 pm "One Way Passage" (1932)

4:00 pm "Waterloo Bridge" (1940)

6:00 pm "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)

8:00 pm "The Sting" (1973)

10:15 pm "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950)

12:15 am "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)

2:30 am "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1952)

4:00 am "Hot Millions" (1968)

Well, sure, I'm likely to do better on "Heist" films than "Tearjerkers", but I'm still hitting for only 4 out of 12 today... I've seen "Penny Serenade", "The Sting", "Dog Day Afternoon" and "The Lavender Hill Mob".  This brings me only up to 73 seen out of 146, so I'm right back at 50%.

Shailene Woodley carries over from "The Fault in Our Stars" 

THE PLOT: A 30-something woman navigating through love and heartbreak over the course of one year.  During that time, she will unlock the secrets to her life in a sudden turn of events and in the most surprising of places. 

AFTER: It's finally here, the last romance/relationship film for this year's chain - sure, another one may pop up here and there, especially if I need one to get me out of a tight linking corner, but this is Film #41 of the planned 41-film chain!  I think last year's chain was a little longer, it went on for five or six more days than this. But I had no St. Patrick's Day film last year, and this year I've got TWO, so I have to stop now to be able to link to them by Friday.  Still 41 films is a LOT and I think next year I need to make the romance chain even shorter, maybe try to contain it within February - 28 or 29 films would be ideal.  I can't even think about that right now, who knows if the fragments of chainlets I have left over could even be combined into a month-long chain?  I'll have to just keep adding to it and try to make some sense out of it in November or December, as always. 

But when I put THIS chain together, I figured that a film with a title like this one had to go at either the ENDING of the chain or the BEGINNING of the chain - with the knowledge that I could flip the chain around if needed.  But working backwards from "Licorice Pizza" got me to the starting point I wanted for the year, so that logically put "Endings, Beginnings" on the other end, and thankfully I was able to work out a way to get from HERE to something Irish-oriented in just four steps.  Sorry, it's not going to be "The Banshees of Inisherin" though. 

Look, I kind of eased into things with "Licorice Pizza" way back on February 1, and now I'm going out with a great big "MEH!"  There's just nothing special here, nothing that wowed me, nothing to make this film unique, it's just a simple love triangle, a woman dating two men who just happen to be close friends.  Umm, at first.  Once they start competing with each other for the affections of Daphne, that life-long friendship goes RIGHT out the window.  But so what, I've seen a dozen love triangles this year already, not to mention a quadrangle and a hex-angle (?) in "Something Borrowed", that's like six love triangles in one movie!  Was it excessive? Sure, but now a love triangle seems quite simple by comparison.  

Daphne is suffering from a break-up with her boss/boyfriend, when she decides to take some time off from men, checking in with her therapist and mother and friends about this.  She decides it's also a good time to stop drinking, because I guess for her it's all connected, dating and drinking and then fooling around for a while, then breaking up due to self-sabotage of some sort.  OK, sounds like a solid plan, abstention from men and alcohol - and it lasts for a few days, because at the next party she goes to, she meets Jack AND Frank, and has positive, meaningful conversations with them both.  And since she's not dating anyone right now, what's the harm in talking to a couple of guys at a party?  Yeah, you can see where this is going, both men find her sobriety and her not-dating-anyone very refreshing, and before long she's dating one and texting the other, only to find out later they're like besties.  Whoopsie. 

Well, at least she KNOWS she's got a problem, and self-awareness is half the battle toward correcting the negative behavior and... she's just going to date both of them, isn't she?  Yep. And before long, even after being honest with both men, Jack is throwing his friend under the bus by talking about how "unreliable" and "violent" Frank can be.  Umm, yeah, by selling him as a "bad. boy" to Daphne, that's not going to work, now she only wants Frank MORE, remember, she's the one famous for her bad decisions and poor judgment!  You also get the feeling that Frank now sees Daphne as "unattainable" because she's dating his best friend, so now HE only wants HER more as well.  This is a psychotic recipe for disaster, right?  

At some point Jack needs to go on a business trip, and he leaves Frank in charge of his dog.  But wait, Jack said Frank's very unreliable, so why would he trust him to feed and walk his dog?  He's right, though, because Frank brings the dog over to Daphne's house and leaves him there, even though she's got a "NO PETS" clause in her lease. Come on, that's just Frank being Frank, and Daphne can't resist him, even when he's a total a-hole.  Hey, that's kind of her thing, dating a-holes, so really, Frank's a perfect fit for her.  

There's more here, but not a lot.  I don't even remember half the characters listed as even BEING in the film, so it looks like another one of those "Narrowburg" acting school - green card scam deals.  For most of the cast, this is their first and only appearance in a film, so they're all either friends of the directors or D-level extras trying to break in to the business. An average plot with unknown actors tends to make for a very forgettable movie in the end. I just read one reviewer point out how dark the movie is - not depressing, just poorly lit.  Maybe that's why I don't remember many of the actors, because I just couldn't see them. 

Daphne herself is the most wishy-washy lead character I've ever seen, she can't decide on a job or a life-plan, so what are the chances that she's going to be able to choose between two men that she thinks she loves?  Zero, that's what.  She's going to just continue being a doormat and not making any kind of decision, and leave all that up to other people.  You can easily predict where that's going to end, Frank will split because he's unreliable (though he'll be gracious enough to pretend he's "bowing out") and then Jack will leave too, because his girlfriend slept with his best friend, and then Daphne will be alone again, right back where she started.  If only she'd stuck to her plan to abstain from dating men, none of this would have happened, it was so easily preventable.  Undecisive people also have a tendency (I assume) to end up in thrupples, and that might have been a better solution to the problem of dating two friends than what ended up happening here, but these characters probably couldn't have gotten over their own egos to allow that to happen. 

My final "Love Tip" for the season is this, therefore - in the end, what's just as important as WHO you choose to be your life partner is the fact that you're being decisive enough to make a choice.  Some people just let the choice get made for them, and then later they feel like they're not in charge of their own lives. 

Also starring Jamie Dornan (last seen in Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Matthew Gray Gubler (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Lindsay Sloane (last seen in "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy"), Shamier Anderson (last seen in "Destroyer"), Sherry Cola (last heard in "Turning Red"), Wendie Malick (last seen in "Waiting..."), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "Gamer"), Janice LeAnn Brown, James Trussart, Ben Esler, Jonathan Freeman (last seen in "Manson Family Vacation"), Kai Lennox (last seen in "Equals"), Kelly Albanese, Seth McSwain, Presciliana Esparolini, Lucius Baybak, Julian Works (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Penny O'Brien, Yasmine Diaz, Rashawn Nadine Scott, Mary Faber (last heard in "The Addams Family 2"), Courtney Reed, Noureen DeWulf (last seen in "When We First Met"), Kanoa Goo (last seen in "Other People"), Pia Shah, Allyson Reilly, Noelle Bonhomme, Garrett Coffey, Diane Kelber, Anais Lilit. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 missed opportunities to make some kind of decision