BEFORE: Anya Taylor-Joy carries over from "The Northman" and here are the links that should get me to the end of April:
Christian Bale, Emily Watson, Geoffrey Rush, James Faulkner, Joanne Whalley, Robert De Niro (again), Spike Lee, Billie Jean King, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Quincy Jones, Walter Cronkite, Morley Safer, George W. Bush, George Clooney, George H.W. Bush, Joe Pesci, George Hamilton and Michael Caine.
I kind of forgot that I programmed so much Anya Taylor-Joy, she's rising through the ranks quickly, I think she may tie with Dale Dickey - but with three upcoming appearances by De Niro added to his previous total from January, he should pass them both. And don't count out Walter Cronkite, it's going to be a whole different game once I start watching docs. This is the way.
THE PLOT: Two upper-class teenagers in suburban Connecticut rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. Together, they hatch a plan to solve both of their problems - no matter what the cost.
AFTER: This one's kind of cut from the same cloth as "The Card Counter", where not much really happens for most of the film, and then one big, important thing happens at the end. I see the risk in making this kind of film, because what happens if somebody falls asleep during the 75 minutes when a whole lot of nothing is happening? What if someone bails out 5 minutes before the end and doesn't see the Big Thing, which is the whole payoff, the whole point of watching this to begin with? The fact that I never really heard of this film before it appeared on cable is a suggestion to me that most people are unaware of it, even with a shocking ending it get much attention at the box office in March 2018.
Probably it would have stayed firmly under the radar, except that Anya Taylor-Joy became a mega-star after appearing in the movie "Emma." and the TV series "The Queen's Gambit", both in 2020. Everybody was watching that show during the pandemic, after they finished "Tiger King", and everyone was stuck at home desperate for something to watch. Then she tried to follow up the stink-fest that was "The New Mutants" with "Last Night in Soho", which was a fine film that also under-performed in 2021 - but then "The Northman" was a minor hit and "The Menu" was a HUGE hit, so I think she'll be OK. When someone breaks big like this, the cable channel programmers start looking through their filmographies, I bet, trying to find an early appearance that they can license on the cheap - this happened with Timothee Chalamée in "Hot Summer Nights" or Selena Gomez in "Spring Breakers".
There's just nothing here for me to hang my hat on, not for the majority of the movie. One girl tutors the other, they used to be friends years ago, one of them is kind of messed up because she can't feel emotions, and the rumor is that she killed her horse a few years back when it was sick, there were probably better ways, medically, to euthanize a horse, instead of the way she did it though. But the cardinal rule here is "better to see it rather than just have a character talk about it", and for the most part, this film is all talk and no action. The girls drink, the girls teach each other how to fake cry, and one wants to hire a drug-dealer to kill her stepfather. Wait, what? OK, most of this is "who cares" territory, but that last one seems pretty impactful.
You may think, at some point in your life, that there's someone you don't like, or there's someonne in your way, or somebody giving you a hard time, and you may have a passing thought about how your life might be better off if they died. Well, first off, you might be wrong, and second, even if that's true, it's not enough justification for YOU to kill them. But if you indulge that fantasy too often or for too long, it might seem like the answer to all of your troubles. Still, there's more than a fair chance that it won't be, that it could be the START of more trouble than you can imagine. To suggest otherwise seems like maybe a bad idea for a film to have in its plotline.
The poster for "Thoroughbreds" name-checked the movie "Heathers", but it's just not in the same league - "Heathers" was definitely a dark comedy, and I just don't get that vibe here. This is just two spoiled rich (?) teens who think they're better than everyone else, and they're so entitled that they believe life owes them everything, which, umm, it just doesn't. If your step-father is giving you trouble, there are better ways to deal with it. Moving out in a few years and proving him wrong is one better way to go, so is family therapy. Loosening the nuts on his bike tire might seem like a valid short-cut, but again, probably not recommended.
So, yeah, that ending - no spoilers here, you'll have to decide for yourself if it makes sense to you, if people's motivations properly explain what happened and how and why. I don't think it worked for me, but as always, your mileage may vary. Plus I hated these characters, all throughout the film.
Why do people kill sick horses, anyway? I never really understood why a horse with a broken leg deserves to be killed, but a dog with three legs is fine, or a dog with two legs gets a little wheelchair. It doesn't seem fair, especially if that horse served a farmer or cowboy faithfully for many years, or won somebody a lot of money as a racehorse. Nope, if a horse breaks a leg it's got to be killed right away, for some reason. I just Googled it and learned that horses have heavy bodies but delicate legs, and often their leg bones shatter and surgery is impossible. But another web-site says that veterinary medicine has come a long way, and a fractured leg is no longer a death sentence for a horse. Good to know, but then someone really should have updated the screenwriter of this movie.
Also starring Olivia Cooke (last seen in "Life Itself"), Anton Yelchin (last seen in "Rememory"), Paul Sparks (last seen in "Trust Me"), Francie Swift (last seen in "Two Weeks Notice"), Kaili Vernoff (last seen in "Café Society"), Alyssa Fishenden, Jackson Damon (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), James Haddad, with a cameo from Alex Wolff (last seen in "Human Capital").
RATING: 4 out of 10 giant stone chess pieces
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