BEFORE: OK, I'm crossing at least one thing off my summer "to-do" list each day I'm not working - today I figured out how to access the NYU job board, and getting in was really the hard part, now that I'm in I can just scroll through the job listings about once a week. I also filed for partial unemployment today, so that's something, I won't get any money at first because in New York State you don't get any money the first two weeks you file, but at least this way I'll have some money coming in July to tide me over - I should still have at least two paychecks coming from the job that's dormant until late August, so I should be all right. Plus my medical research meeting is on Thursday, so I should get some compensation from that, too. OK, money situation semi-sorted, what else is on my list? Right, summer movies, I'm going to sneak back to my former place of employment because it's discount Tuesday, and I can see "The Flash" this afternoon on the cheap, before Warner Bros. pulls it from theaters for underperforming. Watch for that review on the second weekend of July, I think.
Woody Harrelson carries over again from "Kate".
THE PLOT: A fashion model celebrity couple join an eventful cruise for the super-rich.
AFTER: I work for a director who's a member of the Academy, and I'm not allowed to talk about what movies he voted for when it comes to last year's nominations. But it turns out he hadn't seen that many films, because he's been working so much on his own film. Jeez, it's not like the Academy has their own streaming site where he can just log in and watch whatever eligible movie he wants at any time of the day. Oh, wait, that's exactly how it works, only he prefers going to the theater, getting an invite to a special screening or just showing his Academy card at select theaters and getting in for free. I guess that's the way it should be, first choice should always be watching something on the big screen if you can, second choice would be streaming it to your TV, computer or mobile device. But I think it's the technology holding him back, he wouldn't know how to watch a streaming movie on his phone or a computer unless someone set it up for him.
Me, I watch 300 movies a year, so I can't afford to go to movie theaters that often, I'd go broke. How much would 300 orders of popcorn cost? That's like $3,000 right there. No, if I didn't have streaming services, I couldn't do what I do. I seem to recall going to the movies a lot more often in a previous life, but this year if I only go to a theater four times, that's going to feel like a lot - provided I see the RIGHT four movies, the ones I need to fill in the gaps between the streaming movies and the cable movies, carefully curated, of course. (I really should try to get some kind of festival programming job, because I've been programming my own blog for 15 years now, you'd think I'd have gotten to be an expert by now.)
Whatever - I can't fix my life in a day or a week, no matter what I want to do or try to do, so instead I'm taking baby steps each day to try and improve things. Like I can watch a movie a day, and by the end of the year that's a huge list - so each day I'm trying to also check something off the to-do list or take a step on each bigger project so that even if I can't cross off something today, I've gotten a little bit closer to crossing that thing off, eventually. (I know it's a poor excuse, but I do have jury duty coming up in July, if I took a new job then I'd very quickly have to ask for time off from that job, and then where would THAT get me?).
"Triangle of Sadness" starts out as the story of a couple, Carl and Yaya, he's a model and she's an influencer, and things are going great for her, but Carl's modeling career, maybe not so much. We see them arguing over whose turn it is to pay the bill at the restaurant - of course it's her turn, and of course she pretends she didn't notice that the bill came, but maybe she didn't? It's all a big mind game, but it feels like it could be very true-to-life in the way that couples argue over things like this. Look, you pick any two people and chances are that one of them makes more money than the other, and it's going to be worked out at some point that maybe that person picks up the tab more often, or maybe picks up the bigger tabs. You can work this out to your satisfaction, but also, you've got to be a bit diplomatic about it - and I say this as the person in the relationship who makes less money on an annual basis. As such, I would prefer to go grocery shopping more often and not order from Seamless or Grubhub every night, because take-out is always going to be more expensive in the end. But yeah, if you're in a relationship you're probably keenly aware of how often you pick up restaurant checks, and how often your partner does also - even if you share money and have joint accounts (which I don't recommend in this day and age).
On top the money thing, people in relationships these days are also aware of the outdated nature of gender roles, and so they're always thinking about what it MEANS for the man to pick up the check, what it means for the woman to do the same, and jeez, it's a wonder that anybody gets together with anybody these days if they're always worrying about the social connotations of everything, being "woke" and all that. I've found that a relationship is something like a car, you're both riding in it and ideally going in the same direction to the same destination, but really, only one person can drive at a time. Hey, being a passenger is important, too, especially if you're good with directions and you want to help with navigation, or even just finding some really cool songs on the radio or YouTube to help pass time on a long car trip. (See, I'm helping!)
In the second part of the film, the couple is invited on a luxury cruise aboard a super-yacht, where all of the guests are wealthy and their every whim is catered to, even the weird requests. Like one wealthy lady who wants her female attendant to join her in the hot tub, and this leads to all of the ship's crew getting the opportunity to go swimming, even if they don't want to. Carl complains about one member of the crew who took his shirt off in the hot sun, and this led to Yaya being attracted to him, but Carl's complaint gets the guy fired, he has to leave the ship, but he turns out to be one of the lucky ones.
I don't want to spoil all the things that happen on the boat after this, but there are quite a few. Instead I want to talk about the cruises I've been on, and maybe you'll get some hints from that. My wife and I went on three cruises in the Caribbean - this was 2002, 2007 and 2013, I think, so it was all pre-pandemic. But on the third cruise the staff was very conscientious of hygiene, as I think there had been some incidents on cruise ships before ours. We weren't allowed to serve ourselves at the buffet for the first few days, because that meant touching the same utensils as others, instead the staff put food on everyone's plates. Most commonly this is due to things like noroviruses, though I think there was at least one cruise ship that had people with COVID on it, and I remember after they docked people couldn't leave the ship for a month or something. Yeah, look up the Diamond Princess on the Carnival cruise line, it was anchored at Yokohama from February 3, 2020 through at least the end of March. Now, if I had to spend two months in quarantine, maybe a cruise ship might be an OK place to do that, as long as there's food and activities on the ship to keep you busy, but I'm guessing that most people had to isolate in their cabins, either because they tested positive for COVID or they didn't want to catch it from somebody else - so that sounds more like prison, then. Maybe a nice prison with a good view, but still prison.
But then there was the Carnival Triumph, which had many problems in February 2013, two months before we went on a Holland America Cruise in April that year. The Triumph suffered an engine fire and was stranded at sea for a week, and during that week there was no power, so no air conditioning, no running water and so there were no working toilets and the hallways filled up with human waste. Every deck was the "poop deck", I remember joking. Then the cruise line claimed in court that selling people tickets on their ship did not require them to guarantee that the ship be seaworthy, or that there would be enough food, or that the conditions would be safe and sanitary. OK, good to know. That ship is still in service, just under another name, keep that in mind. We chose Holland America because the clientele tended to be older, so we'd feel a lot younger - if you want to feel skinnier, just hang out with very fat people, right? I also felt smart playing trivia because the older people didn't know that much about modern movies and music acts. Also, the older people are slower, so they couldn't make it to every hourly food event held on different decks of the ship, like we could. Statistically, on a cruise with so many older people, I'm guessing that an average of 1 dies on each voyage. Just saying.
But I also remember that on our second cruise, which left from NYC (the others left from Florida) that there was terrible turbulence - choppy waters - coming back to NY from Puerto Rico. I don't usually get seasick, but this was so bad that they advised everyone to just stay in bed and not try to walk around that day, because the boat was rocking so bad. Sure, I'll stay in bed an extra day, we can still get breakfast sent to our room, right?
I can't really talk about the third act of the film at all, not without issuing a SPOILER ALERT. I can say, however, that not all of the characters of the second act are in the third act, and the situation calls for the ones that are there have to (as they say on "Survivor") "create a new society of their own", which isn't really what happens on "Survivor", instead it's just a bunch of people doing physical challenges, going without food and lying to each other. I mean, they don't have to build roads or invent their own form of government, so it's not really a "new society", come on, Jeff, you're overselling it. Solving puzzles, running obstacle courses and voting people out is hardly the foundation for a new society. (By the way, I met my first "Survivor" contestant last month, working at the Tribeca Film Festival - it was Jonathan Penner, three-time contestant and fan favorite, he's also an actor and producer and he programmed some films for the festival.)
Another thing I remember about the cruises we went on was the multi-tiered caste system among the employees, which seemed to be entirely race-based. The commanding crew was Dutch, the cruise directors and entertainment hosts were British or American, and then the wait-staff was all Indonesian, and there sure didn't seem to be much chance of people moving around between the jobs, meaning if you were Asian you were automatically a waiter or a bartender. I'm not sure if this was all as racist as it seemed, maybe they all made good salaries and sent money home to there families in Indonesia. But in the third part of "Triangle of Sadness", this sort of thing comes in to play when those race roles, and gender roles, are reversed among the characters, by necessity and everyone seems to struggle with the new order. That's about all I can say without giving it all away.
I did figure out what the ending was going to be before it happened - with a story like this there are really only a couple different ways it can end. Annoyingly the ending is also super-enigmatic, you maybe have to decide for yourself what happens at the very end, and I don't usually like that sort of thing. But remember, most of the people here are very rich so it's OK to hate them if you want to - kind of like with "Glass Onion" or "The Menu". Is that another recent movie trend?
The title is very enigmatic as well, it could refer to the space between the eyebrows where a male model's frown lines might form, or it could sound like a part of the ocean, like the Bermuda Triangle. Or it could mean something else, I guess it's up to you.
Also starring Harris Dickinson (last seen in "See How They Run"), Charlbi Dean, Vicki Berlin, Dolly De Leon, Alicia Eriksson, Zlatko Buric (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Sunnyi Melles, Carolina Gynning, Iris Berben (last seen in "Eddie the Eagle"), Amanda Walker (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Oliver Ford Davies (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Ralph Schicha, Henrik Dorsin, Arvin Kananian, Mia Benson, Stefan Gödicke, Jean-Christophe Folly, Nana Manu,
RATING: 7 out of 10 quotes from Lenin or Marx
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