BEFORE: So I know now where I want to be on October 1, and oddly, it's got something to do with Conan O'Brien. Conan's been around the Movie Year a lot, remember he was in the last film of my DocBloc last year, "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop", even though that film was made during the PREVIOUS time he was off the air between gigs, it was still relevant. (Now, of course, there's still a writer's strike going on, so ALL of the talk shows hosts are on break for the duration...). But what I'm concerned with now is Conan O'Brien's cameo in a particular horror film, it's an interesting way to get into the horror chain this year. He was also in "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On", and I can maybe work my way backwards from there.
So let's see, by the end of June I should be on Movie 182 for the year, that leaves 118 slots, but if I spend 26 slots on the horror chain, that leaves me only 92 for July, August, September, November and December, which is 153 days. Man, I've just GOT to slow down. Last year I only watched 15 movies in November and 10 in December, but even if I do that again, I'll have 67 slots for the 92 days from July to September. Any way I slice it, I'm looking at some down time. Well, I've got lots of time to figure out where to put the breaks, the important thing is to calculate the NUMBER of movies between July 4 and October 1, given what I know now.
The good news is that I know my July 4 movie and my October 1 movie now, and if you give me 63 slots, I SHOULD be able to get from any movie to any other movie, in theory at least. So I've got the start of a plan, and it's to get from "Bulletproof Monk" to "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" in that number of steps. Really, I can't solve a problem like that without first defining the problem, and now that I've done that, I just need to work it all out. And really, if I need 65 or 70 slots to do that, I've got the days, I'll just transfer slots over from November to September, whatever it takes to make that chain happen. What's harder is trying to prioritize my movies, I need to pick something like "Elvis" or "Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania" that I really want to see and mark that as a midway point, that might make things easier.
I see there's another way to get to my October 1 movie, and I should look into that because "Marcel the Shell" is not an easy film to link to. There are two action films with Kevin Costner that might present more linking opportunities - anyway, I've got months to work this all out. For today, Christopher Lloyd carries over again from "Nobody".
THE PLOT: A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.
AFTER: I would prefer not to write anything about this film tonight, but that's just not an option for me, is it? I can't link to my next film without reviewing this one - if it were the center film of a Christopher Lloyd-based trilogy, sure, I could drop it, or just pretend I didn't watch it, but it's not the middle, it's the last of three and I need the connection to tomorrow's film, so let's get this over with.
I decided years ago that my rating would be based on how much I enjoyed a film, that to me is the primary function of film, so if my rating below seems low to you, it's a reflection that I did not enjoy watching this very much. How could I? It's just about a woman with stage 4 cancer, so it's NOT going to end well, and all it's going to do is remind me that cancer sucks, which I already know, which everybody already knows. So, what's the point. OK, so film has another purpose, which is to educate and inform - so great, I'm educated and informed about how much cancer sucks. Look, I watch movies to get away from reality points like that, let me watch a superhero movie or a violent action film so I can forget for 90 to 120 minutes that someday I'm going to get sick and die, if I don't stabbed in the streets of NYC and I"m lucky enough to make it to 70 or 80, I'm just that much closer to the inevitable end.
I'm not aware of cancer in my family, we're more of a heart-disease clan, but that doesn't mean it can't happen to me. I'm overdue for a colonoscopy, last time I did that Cologuard thing where you crap in a bucket and mail that off to the lab - it was VERY difficult for me for reasons I don't want to express, but I did it. Now I'm thinking I need to have the colonoscopy with the exam because with the Cologuard, you only find out about the cancer AFTER you get it, but a doctor can see early polyps during an exam and deal with them before they're malignant. (Umm, this is the second film in a week where a character gets cancer, so IDK, maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?)
The play this film is based on won a Pulitzer Prize, I could take that into consideration, but that still doesn't help me ENJOY it any more - but I guess enjoying this is a little beyond the point. But the film came out in 2001, is it too much to hope that medical science has made great strides in the last 22 years, I know cancer's still a leading cause of death in this country, but maybe things are getting a little better? Honestly, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea what the trending cancer stats in the U.S. are.
If I'm being honest, I see a lot of narrative shortcuts in this prize-winning story - like the fact that the cancer patient is a college professor who teaches English poetry, with a specific focus on John Donne, which allows for a lot of citings of his "Death Be Not Proud" poem, which is of course a huge coincidence here. Another shortcut is the fact that her attending physician is one of her former students, and he had to take her poetry class to be "well-rounded" - I mean, I guess it makes sense if she teaches at a university that also has a medical school, and that's linked to the hospital where she's getting her treatment, but how many pre-med students seriously choose to dabble in English poetry? I'm sure they might have to take a literature class as a requirement, but why THAT one? I'm calling shenanigans on this.
On top of that, I'm not sure about cancer treatment being used as a device here for a woman to have intense reflections about her past - having never been treated for cancer, I can't say for sure, but I'm not sure that's the way to put everything in one's life into perspective. Or if you choose to do that, it's probably TOO MUCH perspective, if you know what I mean. Maybe during a long hospital stay or an eight-month series of chemo someone might have time to review life's ups and downs over the years, but then again, you can also read some books or do some crossword puzzles or something. Just saying.
I'm going to cut this short because I'm worried about the bad karma, maybe at some point in my life I'll feel differently about a story like this, but tonight I just want to move on to the next one. I'm taking a mulligan, essentially. I did see Emma Thompson when she dropped by the theater where I work to introduce a screening of "Matilda the Musical", but she just walked past me - what was a bit weird was that I was thinking about her ex-husband, Kenneth Branagh being in the same building just about 10 months before that, to introduce "Belfast". But really, nobody was aware of that coincidence except for me.
Also starring Emma Thompson (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Eileen Atkins (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Audra McDonald (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Jonathan M. Woodward (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page"), Harold Pinter (last seen in "Mansfield Park"), Rebecca Laurie, Raffaello Degruttola (last seen in "The Hustle"), David Menkin (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), with cameos from Benedict Wong (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), David Zayas (last seen in "Tallulah"),
RATING: 4 out of 10 orange popsicles
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