BEFORE: I can't remember why exactly I put this one on the list, it must have been streaming somewhere, on one of the platforms I can access with a monthly subscription, but wherever that was, it's not there any more. It's allegedly on AmazonPrime, but not with a main subscription, I'd have to get the AMC+ add-on. Same goes for Roku, it's not available for free, I'd have to subscribe to one of two premium services, which I don't want to do. But hey, there's always iTunes, but it's $4.99 there, and only $2.99 on YouTube if I watch it in SD and not HD. So YouTube wins the prize tonight, they get $3 of my money - I don't want to make a habit of that, but it's OK once in a while, I'm working every day next week so I'll have some extra money coming in. February is a cruel month because it's so short, which means that the first of March comes a little earlier than you might think, and bills are due two days earlier than usual. Not cool.
Chris O'Dowd carries over from "Juliet, Naked". This film is important, because it's going to allow me to cross off those Andie MacDowell films that have been on the list too long, they're the ones I dropped last February at the last minute - but I'm having a clearance sale this year, everything must go. Watch, with my luck this film will probably turn up on "Reel 13" on PBS a few weeks from now as their "indie" film of the week.
EDIT: The TCM "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for March 2, added here after the fact, is:
6:30 am "Dillinger" (1945)
8:00 am "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" (1960)
10:00 am "Little Caesar" (1930)
11:30 am "Doorway to Hell" (1930)
1:15 pm "White Heat" (1949)
3:15 pm "I Want to Live!" (1958)
5:30 pm "In Cold Blood" (1967)
8:00 pm "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961)
10:15 pm "Wuthering Heights" (1939)
12:15 am "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940)
2:30 am "Around the World in 80 Days" (1956)
5:45 am "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)
7:30 am "Lolita" (1962)
7:30 am "Lolita" (1962)
The theme for the first 7 films is "Gangsters/True Crime" and for the last 6, it's "Literary Adaptations". I'm claiming another 7 of these as "watched", namely "White Heat", "In Cold Blood", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "The Grapes of Wrath", "Around the World in 80 Days", "The Old Man and the Sea" and "Lolita". So another 7 out of 13 gives me 15 watched out of 25, or 60%.
THE PLOT: Following the death of their father, two sons deal with the trials of their own lives while watching their mother explore new beginnings of her own.
AFTER: Yeah, this one's got some indie cred, for sure. It played at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017 and got a limited release from IFC Films. It was directed by Russell Harbaugh, who I think also coaches one of the NFL teams, so he must have made this during the off-season. JK.
It's not a romance, per se, because the characters don't do a lot of romantic things, except they do have relationships, but hardly anybody remains faithful to anybody, they mostly screw around and mess up their lives, but that is a real thing that some people do, so maybe this ends up being closer to reality than all those stupid silly Hollywood rom-coms. It's tough to say, and as always, your mileage may vary, but perhaps you'll see a bit of yourself in one of the characters, or if not, then they may resemble somebody you know.
The core family - a mother and two adult sons - are viewed in the aftermath of the patriarch's death, which is a rough opening to a movie, but then again it probably should be. We're all going to go through this or something like this sooner or later, if we haven't already. One of the sons is a stand-up comedian, or a wanna-be stand-up comedian, and the most telling part of the film could be the comedy routine he performs about his father's death. He's clearly working through some stuff, but within that routine, his take-downs of Jesus are pretty funny. Neither of the film's co-writers seems to have a comedy background, so I wonder if this is in fact the actor's real stand-up routine. It's possible - James Adomian has a background writing for comedy shows, but mostly political stuff (He's performed the voices of Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz on a bunch of late-night shows and cartoons.)
But this comedy routine also points out some hard truths about death in our society, how we go to funerals and pay our respects when close family members die, but then after feeling like crap for a week or so, we're (more or less) back to normal. The same apparently goes for relationships, when they end it's kind of like a death, we get the urge to curl up in a ball and sleep late for a month or so, but before long it's business as usual, and we can start looking for the next love of our lives, we all use that metaphor about how you've got to get right back up on that horse, right? We see that reflected in the other brother, Nicholas, who goes through about three life partners over the course of this film. He's with Rebecca at first, a co-worker at the same publishing company, and when they start to have issues then he cheats with Emilie, and before long there's an engagement party to celebrate his upcoming marriage, and then shortly (?) after THAT, he sleeps with his mother's co-worker, Karen.
I guess you can attribute SOME of this behavior to Nicholas dealing with his father's death, but maybe he's just a serial cheater, maybe he doesn't have it in him to be faithful to anyone. There must be some people like this, right? The problem is that he doesn't seem to be learning from his experiences, he just keeps doing the same thing over and over, and not changing the pattern. Well, I guess it is what it is, we're all serial monogamists to some degree, it's just that some people like to think, I don't know, that relationships are worth saving, that you do what you can to make them last longer, and maybe that you get out of it what you put into it. But maybe he's just not that kind of person.
You can choose to like these characters or hate them, that's up to you, I suppose - this may depend on your own experiences or whether you believe people are meant to play the field or try to stay with the same partner for as long as possible. But a hundred years from now, it's not really going to make much difference, is it? So I guess you do whatever you have to do to stay sane and get through your life as best as you can. Sorry if I'm bringing the mood down, but don't blame me, blame the movie, I'm just the messenger.
Also starring Andie MacDowell (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), James Adomian (last heard in "Recount"), Juliet Rylance (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Dree Hemingway, Gareth Williams (last seen in "Trust Me"), Francesca Faridany (last seen in "Black Panther"), Matt Salinger (last seen in "The Ice Road"), Romy Byrne, Alex Goldberg, Graham Mason, Doris Lowerre, John Magary, Andrew Beadle, Graig Thurtell, Rebecca Dreyfus, Kate Hoffman, Seth Barrish (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), Scott Sibilla.
RATING: 5 out of 10 poached pears (what is it with Nicholas and those damn pears?)
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