BEFORE: I've got to hustle now to get to the end of August and then I can block out the September schedule - no more breaks for a while, not for work or for road trips, it's time to buckle down and get through Labor Day weekend and the Sept. 11 anniversary, then I'll count the slots needed to get to October 1, and there should be some skip days there. Believe it or not, since I've got my path to Christmas movies worked out, it's time to start thinking about next year's romance chain and documentary chain - I've already done some preliminary work on February, and then yesterday I dug deep into researching the full cast lists of some of the docs on my list, and I've strung a chain of 13 together - with a little more work I can probably get that up to a chain of 20 or 25. Just looking at the subjects of those docs from the entertainment world, like Little Richard, David Bowie, Wham!, Rock Hudson and Keith Haring, I'm thinking that June would be an ideal month to watch the chain next year, I could add Billie Jean King and Elton John and do a whole pride theme - but we'll see, the linking may have other ideas about when I can place this chain.
Christine Woods carries over from "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore".
THE PLOT: An unlikely friendship between two misfit neighbors becomes an unexpectedly emotional journey when the younger man is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
AFTER: So I'm back on the Duplass Brothers to end the week - that's three films this week that they had a hand in making, either by directing or producing or starring in. I didn't have room for "Humpday", though, I'll have to table that one for now. BUT, I got to several films this week that have been on my list for YEARS, and that's a good feeling. Tonight's film was released on Netflix in 2019, and it's still there, but it's been on my list that whole time, taking up a slot. Maybe I need a better system for prioritizing the older films, because the longer a film stays on my list, the greater the chance it will scroll off of the streaming services and become unavailable - there's a Thanksgiving movie that I passed on so many times that if I want to watch it this year, I'll have to resort to an illegal site, and I don't like doing that. I'll do it, but. I won't like it - plus it's so much easier to watch films on the TV than the computer, and I can sit in a much comfier chair.
For some reason I equated this film with "The Do-Deca-Pentathlon", because both films feature two adult men who have invented their own form of sport, but really, that's where the similarities end. (And both films came from the Duplass Brothers - so I'm surprised that the two men in this film aren't brothers, I thought maybe I'd figured out their story formula, but apparently not.). But primarily this film is about a man with a terminal illness, and he asks his best friend to help him end his life before the cancer takes him. I'm not sure how I feel about that, I mean I was raised to believe that suicide is a sin, but also recently I've seen how much trouble my mother has moving her own body around, and it's a wake-up call that the last few months of anyone's life have the potential to be really difficult, and so that raises a lot of ethcial questions about what right anyone has to decide how and when they want to go out. I've had two cats put down over the years, so yeah, I get it, but obviously as a society we've decided that there's a big difference between terminating a pet and a human, and then when you allow people the right to end their own lives, the line sure does get a bit fuzzy.
This is also about the anxiety that the healthy people might feel when they know their friends or family are sick, which sure, that's a common enough thing. And so the healthy friend, Andy, uses humor to deal with the pain, and also he's written an inspirational "half-time speech" that could be used in an imaginary football movie, but really this is probably just another technique he's created to deal with the fact that his best friend is dying. Andy and Michael take a six-hour road trip to the nearest pharmacy that will sell them the suicide pills, along with the anti-anxiety and anti-nausea pills that are meant to be taken at the same time. Andy tries to pay for the medication and also the hotel they stay in on the trip, but his bank puts a freeze on the card because he's in another state, and so Michael foots the bill. I guess if someone knows they're dying, they might be a little more liberal in spending their life savings, that tracks.
(I had an incident a few years back where my best friend from grade school asked me to buy him a replica of Batman's utility belt while I was at San Diego Comic-Con, then ship it to him in Hawaii. I tried to put the $80 cost of the belt on my bank card, but my bank refused the charge because it was over a certain amount, and was being made in California - when I called the bank, they said the charge was outside of my normal spending habits. My response to that was to tell them that if they really knew me, and took a look at my routine, they'd know that buying a high-priced frivolous item at Comic-Con in San Diego was EXACTLY within my normal spending habits, but I guess over the years I've mostly used my credit card for that, and not the debit card. So I just used the AmEx, problem solved, but I kind of took offense at the bank judging me for my purchase.)
Andy and Michael get mistaken for a gay couple while at the hotel, because of their close friendship, and well, you know, two dudes sharing the same room and all that. They're together but they're not "together" because this isn't that kind of movie, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just platonic. Brotherly, which of course I now expect from the Duplass Brothers, and they share a love of pizza and beer and kung fu movies, especially "Death Punch", the film-within-the-film. The hotel owner catches them in the jacuzzi after hours, which of course reinforces her belief they're gay, but she joins them and learns otherwise - also she's a widow and believes that the spirit of her dead husband is everywhere around them, because he devoted so much time in life to co-running the hotel. I don't claim to know if there's a life beyond this one, I mean I was raised to believe that, but I've seen no real evidence to support it - but if our spirit just ends up hanging around our old jobs for eternity, I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
Of course I found this storyline thought-provoking, but I can't really say I found it entertaining, mostly it's a big bummer, and of course death is a part of life and naturally it should be portrayed in movies as such, however I come to movies mainly to have a good time and not be bogged down in this sort of thing. Eventually we all lose some of the people we love, and that sucks, and it of course always comes too soon and often unexpectedly. But death is also tough on those that get left behind, because not only do they have to deal with the loss of a friend or a partner or a co-movie-watcher, they also may be the one who has to clear out all that person's stuff, and really, that's often a huge task that involves adding insult to injury. Sure, it may be therapeutic but it's also a hell of a lot of work. I think I'll probably get the short end of the stick when I have to clean out my parents' house, it could take weeks because they left so much stuff there. Not looking forward to it, unless I can get some kind of tax break for donating a grand piano somewhere.
I wish the movie had shown me more about the rules of the Paddleton game, which I think is based on racquetball or squash, only what's the oil drum for? Really, this is why I came to this movie, and I did not get what I was expecting, not at all. Maybe that's my fault and not the movie's, but it hardly matters, I'm still left disappointed.
Also starring Mark Duplass (last seen in "Your Sister's Sister"), Ray Romano (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Kadeem Hardison (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Marguerite Moreau (last seen in "The Mighty Ducks"), Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Alexandra Billings, Matt Bush (last seen in "Trouble with the Curve"), Jen Kuo Sung (last seen in "Escape Plan: The Extractors"), Stephen Oyoung (ditto), Lu Junchang (ditto), Sierra Fisk, Ever Mainard, Jack McGraw (last heard in "Toy Story 4")
RATING: 5 out of 10 burnt pizzas
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