Hustle

Year 15, Day 7 - 1/7/23 - Movie #4,307

BEFORE: OK, will probably post late tonight because we're going out to dinner, the animator who I'm entering film festivals for invited us over, so that means a subway trip into Manhattan, and probably the first time over to another person's house for dinner since the start of the pandemic.  This is a thing that people used to do, right?  Just invite each other over to eat and chat?  Seems like so long ago that we did anything like that, unless you count our vacation in October where we visited my sister in North Carolina.  Changing habits is still going to take some time...

Ben Foster carries over again from "The Contractor". 

THE PLOT: A basketball scout discovers a phenomenal street ball player while in Spain and sees the prospect as his opportunity to get back into the NBA. 

AFTER: Well, the dinner went well, good food and good conversation.  I did well with relating the story behind "Narrowsburg", about the scammy film festival that took place upstate a few years back.  Filmmakers naturally find this to be an interesting tale, and then they start to wonder how many other film festivals out there are legit, and how many aren't.  The animator's partner is also a filmmaker, a documentary filmmaker, so there was plenty to talk about, he grew up near Rye Playland in Westchester county so I was able to also recommend "Class Action Park" to him.  

As for "Hustle", I was sort of at a loss here because I know next to nothing about basketball.  There are a ton of real NBA players in the film, past and present, but I only recognized a few of them, like Nowitzki and Iverson and of course Shaq and Barkley - I recognized Boban Marjanovic, but only because he's in a Cheez-Its commercial now, not from his time on the court.  

Other than that, I was kind of flying blind, I didn't know what the "Combine" was or how it related to the NBA draft, or even that 22 was the maximum age for the NBA draft.  OK, learning time tonight - but essentially, isn't EVERY sports movie the same?  From "Rocky" to "The Karate Kid", it's all the same narrative, right?  You need an underdog to root for, there's a training montage, and your guy or team wins in the end, or at least they go the distance.  The only exception I think is "The Bad News Bears", but at least they learned something about themselves by losing.

Despite the fact that this is an obvious formula, I enjoyed this film - the rough, untrained basketball player from Spain was the likable underdog, but Adam Sandler's character was also a likable underdog, somebody who wants to be a basketball coach but can never quite get there, because he's too valuable to the '76ers as a scout.  Nobody can possibly do as good of a job as he does assessing the players in other countries, or in the hidden corners of America, so he's on the road most of the time.  Then when he finally gets a break and the team's owner gives him a coaching job, things are looking up - until that guy dies and his son takes charge of the team, so it's back out on the road. 

So the real rivalry is between the basketball scout and the new team owner, however Stanley Sugerman (a former basketball player himself, although Sandler honestly seems a bit too short for that...) feels that he's found the newest and tallest player with incredible potential by accident in Spain, and if he could convince Bo Cruz to trust him and come try out in America, he could ride the new reputation as the guy who discovered the next NBA phenomenon.  Thankfully, Cruz is struggling to make ends meet in a construction job, and if he were to come to America and qualify for the draft, even making the league minimum would be a substantial windfall for him.  

It's believable, because the actor playing Bo Cruz is a real professional NBA player from Spain, who was drafted by the Timberwolves but has also played for the Celtics, Spurs and Jazz. 

Problems arise when the team owner disagrees with his scout's decisions, and a tryout that ends in disaster is about to force Sugerman back out on the road, when he decides to quit instead and train Cruz on his own, to get him ready for the Combine, which apparently is a real thing that takes place every May, ahead of the NBA draft in June, where college players are put through various athletic tests and shooting drills, and play five-on-five games for all the scouts, GMs and coaches in the NBA.  Leading up to this is what may be the longest "training montage" in film history - seriously it could be up to 15 minutes here, I'm not sure, and by the end of that, man, I sure was exhausted.  We get it, already, training is hard - I'd call this overkill but yeah, condensing three weeks of training down to 15 minutes probably was an editing challenge. 

However, news of a previous assault charge in Spain derails the plans to attend the Combine, but then hope is restored once Sugerman harnesses the power of social media to create "the Boa Challenge", where random people try to win a game of one-on-one against Cruz, and of course everyone in the audience has a phone, so news about the skills of the newcomer soon spreads, and fans all over start asking why he's not in the Combine or the draft.  OK, well, we got that sorted, didn't we?  Now all Cruz has to do is play the drills and not react to any trash-talk from his opponents.  Easier said than done, though?  

What felt less believable here was the relationship stuff, I don't know why they'd cast Queen Latifah as the wife of Adam Sandler's character, there's just no way.  For several reasons that I won't even get into here, but she's way out of his league, especially if he's playing a perennial loser character.  Instead it feels a lot like those Christmas commercials that want to cast inter-racial couples just to prove how non-racist they are, or to appeal to twice as many people and essentially hedge their bets.  Sorry to be so cynical, but that's how I see it. 

This movie is in contention for the 2022 Oscar race, and I haven't seen too many films yet that are.  My boss gets all the announcements about AMPAS eligible films screening around NYC, but unless they're animated, he can't afford to spend time seeing them.  I think he went to see the "Avatar" sequel yesterday, and he saw the animated features like "Pinocchio", "The Sea Beast" and "Wendell & Wild".  I've got only a few opportunities to see eligible films myself before my February romance chain starts, and unfortunately I've got to be really selective.  So I think this month I'll be able to get to "Glass Onion", "Wendell & Wild", and "Blonde", but I think that's all I'll have time for.  Wait, next week I want to watch "Everything Everywhere All at Once", is that going to be up for anything?  I'm not even sure.  With the nominations due on January 24, I simply won't have time after that to program anything, so I'll really have to guess blindly. My bes category will probably be Best Animated Feature, because last year I did manage to watch "Lightyear", "The Bad Guys" and "The Bob's Burgers Movie", and I think I can also get to "Turning Red" next weekend, so we'll see. 

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Queen Latifah (last seen in "Sphere"), Juancho Hernangomez, Kenny Smith, Anthony Devante Edwards, Robert Duvall (last seen in "The Handmaid's Tale"), Jordan Hull, Maria Botto (last seen in "My Life in Ruins"), Ainhoa Pillet, Raul Castillo (last seen in "Knives Out"), Heidi Gardner (last seen in "Otherhood"), Jaleel White (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Elvin Rodriguez, Moe Wagner, Boban Marjanovic, Michael Foster Jr., Julius Erving, 

with cameos from Matisse Thybulle, Tobias Harris, Kyle Lowry, Tyrese Maxey, Seth Curry, Doc Rivers, Dirk Nowitzki, Brad Stevens, Jay Wright, Jordan Clarkson, Trae Young, Aaron Gordon, Mark Jackson, Allen Iverson, Luka Doncic, Tim Young, Fat Joe (last seen in "Night School"), Mike James, Leandro Barbosa, James Goldstein, Aaron Owens, Lonnie Harrell, Larry Williams, Waliyy Dixon, Grayson Boucher, Ty Tanner, Chris "Lethal Shooter" Williams, Mark Cuban (last seen in "The Clapper"), Emeka Okafor, Bill Duffy, Jeff Schwartz, Pat Croce, Mo Cheeks, Kristine Leahy, Aaron McKie, Howard Wood, Fran Fraschilla, Khris Middleton, Greg St. Jean, Lonnie Cooper, Beanie Sigel, Tierra Whack, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O'Neal (also last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Dan Patrick (ditto), Ernie Johnson. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 cheesesteaks (from different restaurants)

The Contractor

Year 15, Day 6 - 1/6/23 - Movie #4,306

BEFORE: I've been playing catch-up with De Niro's career so far this year, and of course before that I was finally catching up with the film I backed on Kickstarter way back in 2012.  But now it's time to get to some more current fare, "The Contractor" was released in 2022, and it's already on cable, and the same goes for tomorrow's film, which also came out last year, but is already on Netflix.  I think the timeline for getting films to home TVs has been drastically accelerated, so there's a chance for me to watch a few things in January that MIGHT get nominated for something during awards season.  "Glass Onion", for example, which spent a week in theaters before landing on Netflix and maybe four other current films this month, like "Wendell & Wild" and "Blonde". I haven't had the time to really make a list of the 2022 movies that I want to see, or might get nominated, and I for sure haven't had a chance to sign on to see what's in the Academy's streaming room - but I bet there's some good stuff there. 

Ben Foster carries over from "Leave No Trace". Working another screening of "Women Talking" tonight at the theater, but so few people showed up that the theater staff outnumbered the viewers.  It happens - I guess everyone who wanted to see the film showed up on Tuesday?

THE PLOT: A discharged U.S. Special Forces sergeant, James Harper, risks everything for his family when he joins a private contracting organization. 

AFTER: An army sergeant who got a knee injury in Iraq gets a discharge because he used steroids to recover - damn, isn't that just like the government?  I mean, steroids are illegal for baseball players and Olympians, but when did we start imposing similar rules on our soldiers?  Come on, they're not technically ILLEGAL, just banned from professional sports, right? And even then, Lance Armstrong got away with using them for YEARS, and so did several prominent baseball players. I just looked this up, in New York and in the armed forces as well, steroid use is illegal unless prescribed by a physician - which means they ARE legal if they ARE prescribed by a physician.  So Sgt. Harper's crime isn't so much USING the steroids, it's that he didn't check with a doctor first.  Is that really enough grounds for a discharge?  And it's an honorable discharge, so what's the big deal?  

The big deal is that he loses his benefits and pension - which is probably one big reason why people enlist in the first place.  How will he provide for his family without those government checks?  It's not like there are NON-military jobs out there... But I guess if all you are is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. So Harper looks up his old army buddy and best friend Mike to see if he can join him running secret operations for a private military company, working for the Department of Defense.  He gets accepted, gets paid in advance, and then the whole operation goes very smoothly, there are no casualties and life is pretty sweet.

Ha! Just kidding!  That would be a terrible movie!  Of course something goes wrong and the mission is a disaster, and also something happens during the routine "data-stealing" operation in Germany to make Harper question what the mission is really meant to accomplish.  Supposedly the man that Harper's been trailing is working for Al-Qaeda and developing a bio-agent, but isn't it also possible that he's been developing a vaccine for a virus that's about to be unleashed on the world?  Oh, well, I guess it doesn't matter, because a job's a job, and he's already gotten paid for this one, so might as well see it through...

The German police show up early, because that's how efficient Germans are sometimes, so the squad gets into a shoot-out, so in addition to either saving or dooming the world, they're also cop-killers now.  Great.  Mike and Harper hide out in a storm drain with the data, and once their injuries are healed, they have to decide how to get back to the U.S.  Mike goes first, and after 48 hours Harper winds his way back to Berlin for a pick-up, only he gets the feeling that the exfil squad was sent to take him out, not extract him.  Could be all those guns they're shooting at him. He manages to take out the hit team, hides out at a safe house while he heals AGAIN, and then does a little more research into what, exactly, that scientist was working on. 

All that's left then is for Harper to somehow fly back to Atlanta and confront the military company's leader about the validity of the mission, and won't he be surprised to find out that Harper's still alive?  Not to mention Harper's wife and son, who got a $4 million pay-out after Harper "died" on the mission.  So then there's a conundrum, does he announce to his wife and son that he's alive, which might mean they have to return that money?  Or should he stay away from them, since they're financially set for life, which was kind of the whole point of taking the new job, to provide for his family.  Well, as they say, don't ask questions that you might now want to learn the answers to.  I guess this is one of those thought experiments, people sometimes fantasize about faking their own deaths and just moving away and starting over, would you do that if you could?  

I guess maybe $4 million doesn't buy as much as it used to - but how much money does a small family need to not have to worry about money any more?  There are actors out there who might make $4 million for a single movie, what the hell do they spend it on?  And most likely then they'll go on to make more movies, so how much is "enough", or is there never "enough"?  Or it is all just "mo' money, mo' problems" at that point?  I really wouldn't know. 

But I paid attention tonight!  So I knew right away when the flashbacks started that they were flashbacks to Harper's childhood, and not just some random kid being forced by his father to hunt, or get a tattoo.  Points for me. 

Also starring Chris Pine (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Gillian Jacobs (last heard in George Carlin's American Dream"), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "Their Finest"), JD Pardo (last seen in "Snitch"), Kiefer Sutherland (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Florian Munteanu (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Nina Hoss (last seen in "A Most Wanted Man"), Amira Casar (last seen in "Call Me by Your Name"), Fares Fares (last seen in "Child 44"), Sander Thomas, Toby Dixon, Dean Ashton, Dustin Lewis (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Cory Scott Allen (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Brian Lafontaine (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Regina Ting Chen, Tyner Rushing, Nicolas Noblitt, Eva Ursescu, Nico Woulard, Tait Fletcher (last seen in "Term Life"), Malosi Leonard, Brandon Melendy, Aristou Meehan, Tudor Velio, Christian Toma, Andrada Corlat, George Pistereanu, Sergei Dmitriev. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 smashed lightbulbs

Leave No Trace

Year 15, Day 5 - 1/5/23 - Movie #4,305

BEFORE: Man, but this was a TOUGH film to link to - it doesn't have many actors in it, and most of those I think must be Portland actors, because they've been in films like "The Hunted" and "Pig", which are also set there.  I thought maybe I had a chance with Thomasin McKenzie, but then I watched "Last Night in Soho" last September, and that took away a link.  She's also in "Old", but that didn't make the horror chain last year, so I couldn't put this one in between them. This doesn't feel like it belongs between two horror films, anyway - but it's probably been on my list for two years or maybe more, and this is the first valid chance I've had to fit it in somewhere.  My other option was to get it in between two Ben Foster films, but I haven't even been close to doing that.

So Dale Dickey carries over from "Being Flynn". As I mentioned I've got a bunch of films with Dale Dickey in them, but for the purposes of creating the best January chain, it makes sense to watch just two of them this week, and then the rest at the end of the month, as a lead-in to the lead-in for the February romance chain. When I've got an abundance of films with one actor, and my month's plan just isn't making sense, sometimes it helps to split one or two buffaloes away from that herd, and then the other ones can be corralled a bit easier. 

Some good news today, my mother's scheduled to get out of rehab tomorrow, and back to her senior living apartment.  I'm hesitant to put too much personal stuff in my blog, because somebody stole my review of "City by the Sea" and published it online in some weekly report about Cape May, New Jersey.  Sure, I mentioned Asbury Park's revival in there a bunch, but that's no excuse to steal a man's personal movie reviews.  I should probably look into some legal recourse, but I haven't got the time or knowledge to do that - I guess I'm OK with my life being an open book, to a certain extent. Whatever. If today's review turns up in a Portland, OR newsletter or one about living outdoors, it just raises my visibility. 

THE PLOT: A father and his thirteen-year-old daughter are living an ideal existence in a vast urban park in Portland, Oregon, when a small mistake derails their lives forever. 

AFTER: This film is based on a 2009 novel titled "My Abandonment", which is based on a true story.  But as I said yesterday about "Being Flynn", that's two chances for facts to be changed around, one when the book was written and another when the screenplay was.  Maybe making the film is a third chance, so I'm aware of NOT being aware how much truth is therefore in the film.  The story is about a father and daughter who live outside, in an Oregon forest park named Forest Park. OK, so another theme for the week, except last night's film dealt with involuntary homelessness, and these two CHOOSE to live outdoors. It's not just that they're campers, there seems to be some underlying condition that makes this preferable.

I'll admit it, I missed it - I would have guessed that there was a death in the family, as Tom refers to her mother in the past tense, and that would be the reason why they can't live indoors, perhaps it would remind them of their past family life indoors, which is gone.  But there's more to it, as Will, the father, is an Iraq War veteran with PTSD.  Mea culpa - but this does explain why his survival skills are so good, and why he's trying to pass them on to his daughter.  Together they travel into the city so Will can check in at the V.A. hospital, and he sells his medications to someone else living outdoors who knows what to do with them. 

Despite all their training, one day daughter Tom is spotted by a jogger, and not long after that, a bunch of park rangers show up, along with social services, and they're both taken into custody for assessment. They pass the mental and physical exams, but despite their preference to return to the park and continue on as before, the case workers find Will a job at a Christmas tree farm and this comes with a small house that they can live in.  While Tom makes some friends among the locals at a 4-H club, Will makes plans for them to bail - again, I didn't make the connection between his PTSD and the farm's use of helicopters to move trees around.  That was probably a trigger for him, but I missed that, too.

The pair returns to the wild, after a bus trip, a railroad boxcar ride out of town and a lift from a paranoid truck driver they re-settle in Washington, the state, and they find a new patch of forest, only this one's colder than the one they were used to in Oregon.  The cold forces them to break into a cabin to avoid frostbite or worse - and it seems like Will's rules about stealing go right out the window once the temperature drops below a certain level.  Then an injury forces the issue, and Tom is forced to seek help from others to get Will the medical help he needs.  This leads them to an RV camp where the people seem friendly, and Will is given a chance to heal, but he still wants to leave civilization as soon as he can.  But Tom seems comfortable at the RV park, and might prefer to stay, which leads to a tough choice.  

It's tunny, I was just talking with a friend about stray cats, and I've owned/shared space with 6 cats in my adult life, and 4 out of 6 have been taken in from the streets.  It's a long and tough process to train an outdoor cat to live inside, I know that for sure, because I've done it.  It doesn't really work past a certain age, so I can't really take in an adult feral cat, they're harder to train because they've lived outside for too long.  Once we took in two kittens but left their mother outside, because she was too old, and hearing her cry when she couldn't find her kittens nearly broke me - but those kittens went on to lead long lives after a friend adopted them, so I tell myself that it was the right thing to do. In the end some cats are outdoor cats and some can become indoor cats, and maybe some people are the same way?  That's all I've got tonight. 

Also starring Ben Foster (last seen in "Get Over It"), Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), Jeff Kober (last seen in "Sully"), Dana Millican (last seen in "Pig"), Michael Prosser, Derek Drescher, Isaiah Stone (last seen in "American Honey"), Alyssa McKay, Ryan Joiner, Spencer S. Hanley, Bob Werfelman, David M. Pittman, Susan Chernak McElroy, Ayanna Berkshire, Michael Draper, Jeff Rifflard, Michael Hurley, Marisa Anderson. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 references to seahorses (this meant something, but I missed that too)

Being Flynn

Year 15, Day 4 - 1/4/23 - Movie #4,304

BEFORE: Yeah, this Robert De Niro chain would have made a very good Father's Day chain, after all - my instincts were correct.  The only problem was that I needed them to connect "Narrowsburg" to the rest of the year.  I'm hoping I can find something else that's appropriate when June rolls around. 

De Niro's off to an early lead in the standings for the year, with four appearances - but keep an eye on Dale Dickey, who may have six appearances before the month is over. But there's so much year left, and if I can do another Summer Rock & Doc Block, well, then all bets are off.

THE PLOT: While working in a Boston homeless shelter, Nick Flynn re-encounters his father, a con man and self-proclaimed poet. Sensing trouble in his own life, Nick wrestles with the notion of reaching out yet again to his dad. 

AFTER: Well, this week's all about coincidence, I guess - like what are the odds of a school paper in France finding its way around the world to NYC and ending up in the jail cell of the ONE mobster that's going to recognize that joke about opera, and thus figure out where the mobster who turned evidence is hiding?  What are the odds of a dead body from Long Island washing up on shore in Brooklyn, investigated by cop father of the junkie who tossed it in the ocean?  Tonight we have to wonder - what are the odds that an absent father would turn up as a resident of the same homeless shelter where his adult son works?  Actually, this seems like the most likely random coincidence of the three.  Google's telling me there are 23 homeless shelters in Boston, so there you go, it's a start.  Let's say there's about a 4% chance that if he went to a shelter, it would be that one. 

We don't really have to calcuate the odds, because this is based on a true story, this is something that author Nick Flynn wrote about in a book titled "Another Bullshit Night in Suck City", which was published in 2004.  So this happened to Flynn in the late 80's, his father got evicted and spent time on the streets, and ended up at the shelter where Nick was working (called the Harbor Street Shelter in the movie, but in real life it was Boston's Pine Street Inn.)

Look, I don't know what really happened in Nick Flynn's life or didn't happen, God knows a story goes through a lot of changes when you write it in a book, then turn that book into a movie.  But in the movie, Nick's father Jonathan re-connects with him after many years, but only because he needs his help moving his furniture and effects into storage, after being evicted.  One assumes that this had something to do with losing his cool over the noise made by the band downstairs practicing, and it turns out that there are probably better ways to deal with this situation than to break in with a baseball bat and start breaking guitars and heads.  

I'm remembering that in the Brooklyn animation studio where I worked from 2016 to 2020, there was a recording studio next door that had not been properly sound-proofed, and the owner insisted that it wasn't preferable to use headphones, that his clients needed to experience the sound mixing at full volume, which made life unbearable for my boss who worked and lived next door. (Rumor had it that the Wu-Tang Clan was making an album there, but I was never able to confirm this.). My boss complained to the landlord, the city, the police, everyone she could think of, and tried every legal resource she could, to no avail.  Her choices were to fight back with noise of her own, by pounding on the walls, or to do nothing and go quietly insane - so I get it. But violence is probably not the best solution to such a problem. 

Anyway, after Jonathan gets the help from his son and his son's roommates to move his belongings, he's convinced that his many friends will welcome him as a houseguest, because of his vibrant spirit and reputation as a raconteur.  But this turns out to not be the case, Jonathan is either delusional or perhaps just putting up a good front.  Before long he's living out of his cab, which I'm sure was problematic for his passengers, and then once he fell asleep at the wheel and lost his hack license, he was living out on the streets.  Much like James Franco's character in "City by the Sea", he always had vague plans to leave town any day now, and take a job that was waiting for him in Florida but probably didn't really exist. 

Instead he entered the shelter system and was recognized by his son, and perhaps if it hadn't been for the moving day encounter a few months before, Nick might not have recognized his father at all in the shelter.  Perhaps there have been many people who encountered relatives in the shelter system and not been aware of it at all.  But then again, lost relatives sometimes manage to find each other accidentally, like those twins on "The Amazing Race" this past season who were Vietnamese girls adopted by different American families, and found each other decades later. Anyway, Nick finds it difficult to deal with his father, and Jonathan finds it difficult to adapt to life in the shelter.  

Obviously, there are a lot of issues to sort through, namely the gulf caused by the years of absence and neglect, resentment and then you throw substance abuse issues on top of that (for both of them, Jonathan's an alcoholic, but Nick's in denial about his drug abuse). Then of course there's the issues around Nick's mother, who committed suicide years ago - Nick blames himself and Jonathan doesn't, chances are they're both wrong to some degree. Jonathan is also a racist and a homophobe, but remember this is set in the late 1980's, before PC culture really took hold - Boston used to be a much more conservative city before it became the liberal-thinking birthplace of the gay marriage movement. Still, there's no excuse for his petty hatred of things he doesn't understand. 

Suddenly Nick can't handle working at the shelter, which makes his drug problem worse and his relationship suffers, and Jonathan's behavior becomes more erratic, and while some staffers are willing to forgive his rants and rule-breaking, Nick's in the majority of workers who vote to ban his father from the shelter.  The whole time, I'm thinking, "Can't he just be sent to a DIFFERENT shelter?"  Well, yeah, and the movie does get there, it just takes a while.  

I just want to point out here that this film proves that it IS POSSIBLE to make a movie whose main character is a writer WITHOUT an endless number of shots of that writer writing, or worse, staring at a blank page while suffering from writer's block.  Always, always (OK, almost always) I see films going back to this like it's a crutch, and the act of writing/typing is easily the LEAST interesting thing about writers. What's much more important is the LIVING, the rest of their life when they're not typing or staring at a blank page, because these are ACTIONS, which are more cinematic, and they are the things done that will end up inspiring that novel or script down the road.  So everyone, please, let's see more of the living and less of the writing, because, yeah, writers write, but they also do other things, and they need to live, interact and be inspired before they can get something down on the page.  

Think about your favorite band, would you rather see them writing a song, or performing the song that's already been written and rehearsed?  Just saying. I want to taste the finished product, not learn how the sausage is made. 

The opening part of the film was very confusing - both lead characters are writers, or one is and the other claims to be - so it starts out with both narrating their lives like chapter one of a book.  But then one takes over for the other, so, umm, who's the lead here?  We can really only follow one person's view of the world through the narration technique.  Nick's character gets the flashbacks to his childhood without a father, so that gives him the edge here as the lead role, but you've GOT to pick one horse here and you can't change mid-stream, as they say. Then there are a few scenes of the father and son reuniting, but one of them is clearly a fantasy and didn't really happen - so that was very confusing, also. 

I've got an uncle up in Massachusetts who's living in subsidized housing with his third wife, and something about De Niro's character here reminded me of him.  He's not a blood relation, his first wife was my mother's sister, but she passed away and I gradually lost touch with him.  When I was a kid I thought he was a great guy, but then he defaulted on two mortgages and didn't help with his son's college education, not one bit, so my opinion of him got drastically lowered over the years.  His son, my cousin, is now living in my parents house rent-free, because he'd moved in with them years before, and I don't mind that he's there because it's a set of eyes on the house after my parents moved to a senior living apartment.  

In Thanksgiving 2021, shortly after my parents moved to the facility in the next town, my wife and I drove up to cook a turkey dinner for them, and while there, I got a call from my uncle (is he still my uncle after my aunt died?) and so I invited him over for a Black Friday meal of leftovers. After I got off the phone, my mind put two and two together and realized that he probably had designs on my parents house, like why else would he mention that he's living in Section 8 housing?  Nevertheless, I invited him in, we had a nice meal together and I put all thoughts of him being a complete weasel out of my mind - until, on his way out the door, he asked me point-blank what was going to happen to the house.  AHA, I was right in the first place!  But why would I let him live there, if he'd lost two houses already in his life?  How could I know he wouldn't strip the house and sell everything in it, down to the copper wiring?  Forget it, I know I should be a charitable person and such, but I just don't trust the guy.  Maybe if he was homeless I'd take him to a shelter, but letting him live in my parents' house, assuming that's what he wanted to do, just seemed like a bit too much.  Bear in mind my parents had moved out just a month before this, though - my parents would probably have taken him in, they've had all kinds of people staying over for extended periods of time, but I am just not my parents, who are far too trusting. 

Also starring Paul Dano (last heard in "The Guilty"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Eddie Rouse (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Steve Cirbus (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Lili Taylor (last seen in "I Shot Andy Warhol"), Victor Rasuk (last seen in "The Mule"), Liam Broggy, Chris Chalk (last seen in "Godzilla vs. Kong"), Wes Studi (last heard in "Soul"), Thomas Middleditch (last seen in "Zombieland: Double Tap"), Dale Dickey (last seen in "Message from the King"), Dawn McGee, Billy Wirth (last seen in "The Lost Boys"), Michael Gibson, Kelly McCreary (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Katherine Waterston (last seen in "Robot & Frank"), Jane Lee, Rony Clanton (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Michael Buscemi (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), WIlliam Sadler (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Samira Wiley (last seen in "Breaking News in Yuba County"), Stuart Rudin, Thomas Hoffman, Dwight Folsom.

RATING: 5 out of 10 games of catch with Mom's boyfriends

City By the Sea

Year 15, Day 3 - 1/3/23 - Movie #4,303

BEFORE: I'm back at the movie theater today, for the first time since December 19, that's a full two weeks off from working screenings, and I need to get back in the swing of things, my sleeping schedule is even worse than normal, and I'm suffering from too much stress at the other job, because it always feels like the company is a few weeks from closing.  Making an animated feature is a great way to keep a company constantly running out of money, it turns out.  I'm not sure why anybody does this, because the choices seem to be making the film very quickly and running out of money quickly, or spreading the production out over time and running out of money a bit more slowly - there doesn't seem to BE a third option.  Anyway, the company is holding art sales and animation classes and DVD sales and bake sales just to get through the next couple of months, and then, who knows.  The future is uncertain, but that's independent filmmaking for you, you struggle like crazy just to stay afloat.  Or maybe you skip town like the festival organizers in Narrowsburg and leave a trail of unpaid debts behind...

Robert De Niro carries over from "The Family" and becomes the first actor to qualify for this year's year-end wrap-up.  Seems about right. Frances McDormand is here tonight, for the third film of the year, which is weird because she was also in the third film of 2022, "The French Dispatch" - maybe what's weird is that I realized that, this sort of thing probably happens all the time, but I'm just not aware of it. By coincidence, the film screening at the movie theater tonight is "Women Talking", with Frances McDormand in the cast. 

THE PLOT: Vincent Lamarca, whose father was executed for a 1950's kidnapping of a child, grew up to become a police officer, only to see his own son become a murder suspect. 

AFTER: The "City by the Sea" mentioned in the title here is supposed to be Long Beach, NY which is a community out on Long Island - I've been there because there's a BBQ restaurant there called Swingbelly's, and I make it my business to know every notable BBQ restaurant within a 30-mile radius of my home.  Seriously, don't get me talking about BBQ because you'll never get me to shut up about it - or hey, if you need a recommendation on where to get some killer 'cue, I'm your guy.  Even if that's where to eat in Texas, Memphis, Nashville, the Carolinas, or upstate. (I have yet to visit St. Louis or Kansas City, but the other BBQ meccas, I've covered them.)

The tunny thing is, I remember Long Beach being a very nice little town, very suburban, homey, and even though I wasn't allowed to participate in the Swingbelly's eating challenge (that's a full slab of ribs, 1/4 pound of pork on texas toast, 1/4 pound of brisket on texas toast, 4 wings, 3 rib tips, 2 sides and 2 pieces of cornbread in 1 hour) because my wife nixed it, I don't hold any grudge against the town.  However, this film made it look like a really brokedown garbage pit full of abandoned seaside casinos and attractions - think Coney Island after you dropped a bomb on it. Ah, mystery solved, the IMDB is telling me that those scenes were shot in Asbury Park, NJ and/or Ocean Grove, NJ - so NOT Long Beach.  If I were the Long Beach town council I'd have sued the production company for defamation, just saying. So good news, if you're into beach culture, Long Beach might be a nice place to visit - I didn't visit the beach there, just the BBQ place. 

This makes some kind of sense now, because Asbury Park definitely went through some rough years around the time that "City by the Sea" was filmed.  Palace Amusements, prominently seen in this film (you can spot the old-timey mascot "Tillie" on the building exterior), shut down in 1988, and the whole area started a revitalization effort in 2002, with the casino and boardwalk pavilions re-opening in 2005. Perhaps the film studio swooped in and took advantage of the city's troubles since they were looking for that "bombed-out Beirut" look, and maybe if they paid a location fee that helped spur the rebuilding efforts. In a perfect world, anyway. I also see that Asbury Park was one of the few beachfront communities in NJ that wasn't affected that badly by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and they were ready for the summer season in 2013. 

The other thing I noticed in the background. when Vincent picked up his girlfriend every night from the Broadway theater where she worked, was the Howard Johnson's in Times Square.  Man, I've never eaten there but somehow I still miss it - that place was legendary, but closed down in 2005.  There were regulars who'd eaten there for decades, and waiters who worked there just as long.  I also miss the Automats, and I never ate at those either - what the heck happened to giant dining halls that served decent food at a fair price?  How did that business model manage to fail?  I know, I know, times changed and people wanted more out of their restaurants somehow, they wanted theme restaurants and entertainment, and became willing to pay higher prices for all of that.  All I know is, there's a Margaritaville off Times Square now, to go with the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and the Hard Rock Café, and I wish them well, but they all sound like rip-off joints to me.  If you can't bring back the Automat, at least make sure that Ellen's Stardust Diner stays in business - it's the one with the waiters who are all trying to get cast in Broadway shows, so they sing at the Diner while they're working shifts. If you don't get your food on time, it's probably because your waiter was literally singing for his supper. 

Anyway, the movie bounces between the two communities, Long Beach and the Times Square area.  Vincent Lamarca used to be a cop in Long Beach, and then moved to Manhattan.  Bear in mind that it's about 21 miles between the two, but 27 miles if you have to drive it. That's because there's no good way to go, you either have to take the Queens Midtown Tunnel out of town, and take 495 out to the Cross Island and switch to the Southern Parkway, or go all the way up to the RFK Bridge and catch the 678 out to JFK airport, from there it's just a hop, skip and a jump, but who wants to get stuck in airport traffic?  You could be there for hours...  

But looking at the map, I see a HUGE problem with the plot of the film, in which a dead body tossed into the "river" in Long Beach somehow makes its way to where it washes ashore, somewhere in Brooklyn (where you can see the South St. Seaport in the background).  Yeah, this just doesn't work, because if you look at Long Beach on the map, it's not on a river, the beach borders the Atlantic Ocean.  And the spot where they find the body is on the East River, but the water in the East River comes from Long Island Sound, which is NORTH of Long Island, and Long Beach is on the SOUTH of the island.  So that's not likely the body would wash that way, even if you account for the tides rolling in and out. I remember learning that New York Harbor is an estuary, which means that there's a complex system of tides and currents, but I think a body moving 27 miles from Long Beach to DUMBO is a bit of a stretch. 

What's even harder to believe, and this reminds me of what was unlikely in "The Family" last night, is that Joey kills the drug dealer Picasso in Long Beach, and then the next day the cop who investigates the body washed ashore in Brooklyn turns out to be Joey's father.  Exactly what are the odds against that?  There are about 36,000 police officers in NYC, so you tell me. Gotta call a big NITPICK POINT on this, for tidal reasons as well as the odds against the killer being related to the cop. 

After that, though, there's a good mix of family drama and crime drama here, as cop Vincent has a relationship with Michelle, the woman who lives in the apartment directly below him (commonly known as a "Manhattan Special", I think) and their relationship works, as long as neither one mentions the word "marriage" or tries to find out too much about the other's past.  But Michelle then decides that she DOES want to get to know him, but then once Vincent's son is in trouble, he has to own the fact that he never mentioned to her that he had a son.  Oopsie. So the relationship is off-again, until he comes clean, then it's back on.  But there are more revelations to come, and Vincent's always been the one to walk away when things got difficult - at least he's trying to do better, but that's just who he is.  Can this relationship be saved after he neglected to mention his adult son, and the fact that his father once kidnapped a child from a wealthy family, and got sentenced to death for it? 

Supposedly, Vincent walked away from his marriage and abandoned his son for their own sake, so his son wouldn't have to grow up knowing about Vincent's father being executed, but who's to say whether Vincent's departure led, directly or indirectly, to Joey's current life as a Long Beach junkie?  It's all very tough to say - but either way, an uplifting film, this is not.  Joey struggles to get clean, he wants to fly away to Key West and get a job in a beach bar, but he's never quite able to do any of that. Vincent wants to prove his son's innocence (at least for the second murder, not the first one...) but can't seem to convince any of his fellow cops to look at the evidence that proves someone else killed the cop. And Michelle wants Vincent to be a better father and step up for once, not just walk away like he always does - but can that possibly happen? 

Reportedly, the director referred to his three years spent making "City by the Sea" as the worst and most depressing period of his career.  Bear in mind that this man later directed "Basic Instinct 2", so that's really saying something. 

Also starring Frances McDormand (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), James Franco (last seen in "Zeroville"), Eliza Dushku (last seen in "The New Guy"), William Forsythe (last seen in "Freedomland"), George Dzundza (last seen in "Salem's Lot"), Patti LuPone (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Anson Mount (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), John Doman (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Brian Tarantina (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Drena De Niro (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Michael P. Moran, Nestor Serrano (last seen in "Definitely, Maybe"), Matthew Cowles (last seen in "Shutter Island"), Linda Emond (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Cyrus Farmer, Jay Boryea, Leo Burmester (last seen in "Sweet Liberty"), Gregg Edelman (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Jason Winther, Orlando Pabotoy, Leslie Cohen, Michelle Daimer, Stephi Lineburg, Mark La Mura (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Jill Marie Lawrence (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Michael Della Femina.

RATING: 6 out of 10 bacon cheeseburgers from the drive-thru

The Family

Year 15, Day 2 - 1/2/23 - Movie #4,302

BEFORE: OK, one down, 299 to go in this new Movie Year. Paul Borghese, the infamous director of "Four Deadly Reasons", carries over from "Narrowsburg". I've been planning a whole De Niro chain, I figured I'd get to it around Father's Day maybe - but starting the year off with "Narrowsburg" forced me to move it up on the schedule.  And to think I felt bad about taking "The War with Grandpa" out of that chain, but I don't think I could have completed the 2022 chain without it. Or at least the year would have ended differently.

THE PLOT: The Manzoni family, a notorious mafia clan, is relocated to Normandy, France under the Witness Protection Program, where fitting in soon becomes challenging, as their old habits die hard. 

AFTER: This is a bit like the ultimate "fish out of water" story - and I managed to get to a few of those in the closing days of 2022.  "Mona Lisa" was a FOOW story, and so was "Withnail & I", really they're all over the place.  One of the best ways to start off a story is to take a character, or a whole family of them, and take them to a place they're not comfortable, and then make the conflicts happen. "The Hundred-Foot Journey" did the same thing, it took a family from India and dropped them off in France, where they opened a restaurant and feuded with the fine-dining restaurant across the street.  "Last Christmas", same thing, take a Slovenian (?) family to London, and follow up with them a few years later to see how they're doing.  

So here we have an American family, headed by a father who left the mob and testified against them, in exchange for getting his wife and kids to safety in Europe.  He left one family, and rediscovered another, but now comes the difficult task of staying in hiding for, well, the rest of their lives, moving from town to town every time a Mob hit-man figures out where they might be living.  And things being what they are, and these people being who they are, keeping a low profile is quite difficult for them.  Giovanni, the father, keeps getting into side businesses, which lead to arguments with the locals, and he chooses to settle those arguments with baseball bats, or whatever the European equivalent is, or maybe a hammer if there's one handy, and so their FBI handler keeps having to move them around to a new town every 90 days or so. 

Meanwhile, after relocating from the Riviera to Normandy, his wife can't help herself but torch a store if she thinks the locals are looking down on, just for asking for something American like peanut butter at the store, daughter Belle takes it upon herself to beat up the first French teen to tries to touch her without consent, and his son Warren figures out on the first day of high school what everyone's game is, who the biggest bullies are, and how to take them down and run the school himself.  Well, I guess high school is a bit like jail, on the first day you need to find the biggest kid and deck him if you're going to survive, he's not entirely wrong. 

Mr. Manzoni, now going under the name "Fred Blake", is the worst of them all, though.  First he sets to writing his memoirs on an old typewriter he finds in the new house.  Oh, great, another film where we just watch somebody typing for hours while he narrates his life story in his head.  Jeez, you'd think that screenwriters would know a few things about writing, but they somehow are the most clueless of all - nobody writes their first draft of ANYTHING on a typewriter. If you're old school, you write it out longhand, THEN type it up, and if you were born after the Korean War then you use a word processor.  Why ON EARTH would anyone use a typewriter for a first draft, it's the ONE device that you simply CANNOT make corrections on?  At least if you use a pencil you can erase things, and with a pen, you can cross stuff out, but on an old typewriter, forget it, unless you want half of the page to be covered in Liquid Paper.  Why don't writers, of all people, understand this?  It can't be that using a typewriter is "cinematic", because there's nothing interesting about watching someone type, so is it just for the clackety-clack sound?  That's a poor reason to allow this part of your movie to not make any sense. 

Anyway, typing up his memoirs is exactly what Fred, er, Giovanni, is NOT supposed to be doing.  He's supposed to living quietly, off the radar, and writing something to expose the Mafia's secrets isn't going to help.  But thankfully Fred gets involved in another hobby, trying to figure out why the water in his new safe house is running brown.  But when the plumber arrives, and explains how they could replace all the pipes in the house at an enormous cost and maybe still not fix the problem, that's not what Mr Manzoni wants to hear, and the plumber ends up with some broken bones.  Well, at least Manzoni was nice enough to take him to the hospital after his "accident".  Then he sets his sights on the town's corrupt mayor and also the factory in town that might be letting chemicals get back in the water supply.  Eventually, he gets results, but not without causing a few more "accidents".  Well, at least he's getting out of the house.

Umm, did the citizens of Flint, Michigan ever try anything like this?  I guess maybe there are no mobsters in Flint, because when all else fails, maybe there are a few city officials up there who need some bones broken. Just saying. (OK, I just checked - it seems like the Flint water crisis has perhaps been resolved - as of July of 2021, so that means it took five full years, and $400 million to inspect every water line in that city and replace over 10,000 lead pipes.  Glad to see it got fixed EVENTUALLY, but it never should have gotten that bad in the first place.)

As bad as my NITPICK POINT over typewriters is, there's one here that's even worse.  And I saw it coming a mile away - in order to create the main conflict for the film, the NY mobsters have to figure out where the Manzonis are hiding, because the hitman that was sent to kill them lost their trail after they left the French Riviera.  So in order for the story to move forward, there needs to be a tip-off, some clue that gives away their location - what happens is that Warren, the son, has an assignment to write something for the school newspaper, and it needs to be in English (even though they're in France) and it needs to involve wordplay, and it's due in five minutes.  Contrivances all around - first of all, the French people are very particular about their language, they speak French and they're proud of it - so WHY would a French teacher give out an assignment in English?  (For that matter, why are most of the French people in this film speaking English all the time?  There's one scene in the grocery store where French people speak French, then the rest of them speak English in the rest of the film.  Bizarre.). Secondly, why would the teacher FORCE a student to write something for the school newspaper?  Usually a high school newspaper is written by volunteers, students who have an interest in journalism or are looking for extra-curricular activities to impress college recruiters.   On top of this, why would the SCHOOL newspaper be printed and sent to newsstands around town, like it's a real newspaper?  Usually the material inside is of interest only to students, like what's going to be for lunch in the cafeteria next week, or who won the high school sports game. 

Warren relates a joke that he remembers hearing at a mobster's barbecue back in NYC - and then there are two more incredible contrivances, one being that this school newspaper, which is 99% in French with ONE joke in English, would find its way, somehow, not just to NYC but also to the exact jail cell where the head of that NYC Mafia family is being held.  Sure, they show it happening, but in all likelihood the path this newspaper takes is akin to a golf ball shot during the U.S. open landing on the moon.  And then, come on, it's a JOKE, one that's probably been told a hundred times in the history of classical opera, you can't tell me that a joke that plays off the title of "Boris Godunov" was only told ONCE ever, at a mobster BBQ and no other time ever on Earth. So HOW does the mobster, after glancing for two seconds at an English joke in a French newspaper that somehow came to be around the wine bottle that he had smuggled into jail, instantly realize the location of where the Manzoni family is hiding?  Sorry for the spoilers, but this is just plain unbelievably impossible.  It's like seeing "Why did the chicken cross the road?" in print and from that, discerning where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.

Apart from that, there's some good material here, the interplay between De Niro and Tommy Lee Jones, for one.  The irony of a character played by De Niro being invited to introduce an American film (because, you know, he's pretending to be a writer) and then having the film turn out to be "Goodfellas", a Martin Scorcese joint that you know, he was also in.  What's odd is that nobody in the audience notices that he looks a lot like one of the movie's stars... And I guess in this alternate universe where De Niro is a mobster on the run, there's also a "Goodfellas" movie, but does that movie have De Niro in it, or somebody else?  Where in the DeNiro-verse does this take place, exactly?  Hell, there's probably a dozen little in-jokes and Easter eggs I missed, so I should go find a list of them now. 

Also starring Robert De Niro (last seen in "The War With Grandpa"), Michelle Pfeiffer (last seen in "French Exit'), Dianna Agron (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), John D'Leo (last seen in "Unbroken"), Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Jimmy Palumbo (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Domenick Lombardozzi (last seen in "Freedomland"), Stan Carp, Vincent Pastore (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Jon Freda, Michael J. Panichelli Jr., Anthony Desio, Ted Arcidi (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), David Belle, Raymond Franza (last seen in "Café Society"), Christopher Craig, Cédric Zimmerlin, Tonio Descanvelle (last seen in "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets"), Jonas Bloquet (ditto), Christophe Kourotchkine (last seen in "Taken"), Dominique Serrand, Serge Tranvouez, Mario Pecqueur, Oisin Stack, Annie Mercier, Florence Muller (last seen in "Paris, Je t'aime"), Come Levin, Camille Gigot, Vincent Claude, Robin Rafoni, Terron Jones, Dominic Chianese (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Louis Arcella (last seen in "Our Brand Is Crisis"), Kresh Novakovic, Moussa Maaskri, Samira Sedira, Joe Perrino (last seen in "A Walk on the Moon") with archive footage of Larry Hagman, Linda Gray. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 missing boxes (umm, yeah, whatever happened to them?)

Narrowsburg

Year 15, Day 1 - 1/1/23 - Movie #4,301

BEFORE: Happy New Year 2023!  I've been working diligently behind the scenes to get my 2022 Wrap-up post done, and also to figure out my new chain - I've got it figured out until St. Patrick's Day, which is something, and I guess I'll work on Easter next.  Picking the starting point for January depends completely on the starting point for February, so the important thing to know about tonight's film is that I KNOW I can get from here to "Licorice Pizza" in exactly 31 steps.  That's comforting, I can sleep at night knowing that I'm not just jumping into the linking abyss.

But the other great thing about this film is that it appears to be a "one-linkable" film, namely that with the information I have from the IMDB, it links to only ONE other film on my list, and that means it's the kind of film I'm looking for to start off the year. Since I start a new chain each year, I could only watch a "one-linkable" on either the first day or the last day.  Well, the last day's often ends up being a Christmas movie, so this seems like an ideal spot for "Narrowsburg". 

Last year I started with "Nomadland", which only linked to other movies via one link, through Frances McDormand.  The year before that started with "Parasite", which was full of Korean actors, and only linked to one other film, "Okja" from the same director.  Both of those movies were Best Picture winners, and I would have preferred to continue that trend by watching "CODA", but it's only available on Apple TV+, which I don't subscribe to.  Yes, I joined that service twice, to watch "On the Rocks" and "Swan Song", but I cancelled the service immediately after watching those films.  Could I pull that off a third time?  Maybe, but in principle I really hate these "exclusive" streaming deals, it feels like blackmail to make people sign up, and then before you know it, you've got 18 streaming service subscriptions and all those monthly fees.  So, I'm drawing a line in the sand, and NOT watching "CODA", which I hope I can still get to someday, somehow.  Guess I'll put in on my list and pull the "subscribe & cancel" scam again in a few months. 

Oh, yeah, I usually announce my long-distance dead-ication here on Jan. 1 - and man, there's a LOT to choose from.  I went through a list of famous people who died during 2022, and it was extensive, but it just made me sad, too.  And it looks like Pope Benedict and Barbara Walters made a last-ditch effort to make the 2022 list, like Betty White did last time.  Who do I pick, Queen Elizabeth, who appeared in 5 films I watched last year, or Ray Liotta, who appeared in 3?  Bob Saget, Anne Heche, Jerry Lee Lewis?  Coolio, Kirstie Alley or Sesame Street's Bob McGrath?  Too many choices.  But I've been working lately on a list of famous people I've met or seen in person over the years, I wanted to get a record of all that before I start forgetting things.  So there are two people who I saw from a distance in the past who passed away in 2022 - Meat Loaf (in concert) and Gilbert Gottfried (across a crowded theater lobby).  So that's my choice, I'm splitting the dedication like I did last year for Betty White and Fred Willard. 

THE PLOT: The stranger-than-fiction story of a French film producer and her mafioso-turned-actor husband who attempted to turn a tiny town into the "Sundance of the East". 

AFTER: You're probably thinking, "What the heck is Narrowsburg", I've never heard of this film before!" But let me try and explain how a copy of this DVD ended up in my possession, and therefore on my list.  I work for an animator and I'm often in charge of entering his films in festivals, and I also work at a theater, so I know a bit about the different screening venues around NYC.  So I supported a Kickstarter campaign a few years back, it was being run by a guy named Dan Nuxoll of Rooftop Films, which is an organization that screens films on top of NYC buildings, I think it's kind of a floating performance space kind of deal.  But I read the plotline for the film being made and I thought, "Yeah, that's something I can get behind, I know a thing or two about festivals, and that seems like the kind of documentary I'd like to watch."  So I pledged at the level that would get me a DVD of the film down the road - I honestly don't remember what year I made this donation, I kind of forgot about it and moved on, until one day I got contacted about making sure my mailing address was updated, because the DVDs would be shipping out soon. 

I just checked - the campaign ran in 2012, and the estimated delivery for the DVD was March 2013 - and at the time the name of the film was "The Mystery of Marie Jocelyne".  I guess it took a few extra years to make the film, because it played at a festival called DOC NYC in 2019 (coincidentally at the theater where I now work) and I got my DVD in 2020. Well, better late than never, I guess, I know I've run Kickstarter campaigns that didn't meet their deadlines, and I know that backers can get very frustrated and angry over that.  Me, I just kind of forgot that I supported the film that eventually became "Narrowsburg", but when I got the DVD in the mail I put it on the living room table, right under my monthly rotating pile of DVDs that I'm getting ready to watch.  So every month for 2 years I've been switching out the DVDs on top of this one, but never watching the one on the bottom of the pile - but at least each month I made a mental reminder to TRY to get to it. 

Then something else happened, in November 2020, right after the Presidential election, we decided to go upstate for a small road-trip, and we chose Monticello because there's a casino there.  The pandemic lockdown was still in effect, so technically we weren't supposed to leave the state, plus Atlantic City hadn't really re-opened yet, so we headed north.  And after gambling in Monticello and accidentally finding the Woodstock concert grounds in Bethel, we took a drive around Sullivan County, went antiquing in Wurtsboro and visited a brewpub in Calicoon - very quiet, peaceful towns.  While looking around the maps, I spotted the village of Narrowsburg and said, "Hmm, where have I seen that name before?  Isn't that the name of that movie about the scam film festival?"  And sure enough, that was the same place.  So I doubled my efforts to watch the film that I backed, but with linking being what it is, that took me over two years to find a way to get to it. 

I'm working the festival beat now for a different animator, and things are going well - but once in a while she'll forward me an e-mail she got from a festival that wants her to submit her film, and right away, my scam sensors go off, because most well-known festivals don't need to send directors an e-mail with a promo code for 65% off the entry fee (which was probably overpriced by 70% to begin with) and some of those festivals I could only find on the FilmFreeway platform by following the link in the e-mail, the entry pages were not available to all.  Hmmm....  Look, a few years back somebody broke the code and realized that even the Sundance Festival is a form of a scam, if you add up the number of entries that Sundance gets each year and divide by the number of people they have watching submissions, you'll realize that there's simply no possible way for them to watch all of the potential entries in the time-frame for entry, they'd need ten times more people screening films just to watch them all.  So they don't watch all of the films, but they do accept thousands of entry fees from filmmakers who have no shot of getting their film in.  By rights they should refund the fees collected for films that don't make the cut, right?

And there are THOUSANDS of film festivals now, you could go broke just paying entry fees and never getting one acceptance - but it helps to know which festivals are legit and worth entering, and that's where my experience comes in.  If a festival says it's their first year, or the rules don't explicitly state when and where the screenings are going to be, well, those are red flags.  It seems my efforts are paying off, because this animated short has been accepted into 12 festivals (so far) that I've heard of, and it's won two awards.  But since about 50 festivals have also turned the film down, I suppose in the end it's just a numbers game - and if your film gets one acceptance for every five entries, you're probably doing well.  OK, so Telluride and Sundance and Toronto took a pass, it's just not their kind of film - and if the Chicago Film Festival says no, there's always the Chicago Independent Film Festival or the Chicago Short Film Festival.  I'll keep trying until there's a screening in Chicago, I'm funny that way. 

Anyway, there was a Narrowsburg Film Festival, back in the year 2000.  Jocelyne Castaldo had come to town a few months prior with her actor husband, Richie Castellano, whose biggest acting credit was a role in the De Niro film "Analyze This".  Together they opened a film production office in this small New York village, and began production on a film titled "Four Deadly Reasons", directed by Paul Borghese. Many residents of the town were used as extras during the shoot, some others had production jobs, and still others took acting classes that were being taught by Mr. Castellano.  Later it was revealed that several local residents had invested money in the production, or loaned money to the producers, and never received any loan repayments or dividends on their investments.  

At the same time, plans for the Narrowsburg Film Festival were taking shape, and "Four Deadly Reasons" was a lock for one of the screenings, only it came to pass that the film wasn't ready in time for the festival, and only about ten minutes of excerpts were screened, instead of the entire film.  Well, sure, as I said before, things happen and setbacks take place, and before you know it, deadlines are being missed.  And then one day someone noticed that the film's production office wasn't open, and nobody had seen Richie or Jocelyne in a while, and well, that might have seemed to be the end of that, except for a bunch of angry residents who lost their money and never got to see the finished film.

The director, however, persisted, and Mr. Borghese managed somehow to get the funding to finish "Four Deadly Reasons", which played in (or at least near) the Tribeca Film Festival back in 2002.  And Jocelyne Castaldo popped up a few years later with a slightly different name, working with the Queens International Film Festival, only someone recognized her from her publicity photos as the brains behind the failed Narrowsburg Festival (and the failed Hollywood Film Festival before that) and then before you know it, the TV reporters showed up in Queens to ask that festival's director about the string of bad debts she always seemed to leave behind her. That's where the guy from Rooftop Films entered the story, he rented some equipment to her for use during the 2007 QIFF, and she never paid for it. A year later, he spoke to her again about the money she owed him, and he was again rebuffed, so he alerted the Queens District Attorney, and with the help of another filmmaker, began investigating the mystery of Jocelyne, aka Marie. 

Then in 2010 she was arrested upstate for hoarding animals, but transferred back down to NYC via the prison system, to face charges of fraud, on top of the animal abuse.  She ended up getting deported to France and perhaps returned to the island of Reunion, near Madagascar, where she (claimed to have) grew up.  And her husband, Richard Castaldo, aka Castellano, served a year in jail for his scam to sell wanna-be actors SAG cards in exchange for money - it's unclear at what point he might have parted ways with Jocelyne, but since he died in 2015 it doesn't matter much.  

Anyway, this film ends up hitting me at a very strange, but perhaps appropriate time - I kind of feel like I'm at a crossroads in my career, I've been working at the same animation studio for 30 years (as of this coming October) and maybe it's time for a change. I get stressed out just thinking about being out of work or job-hunting, but that also means that maybe I've gotten too comfortable where I am, and if I don't make a change, I'll be stuck there and unable to do anything else. But I get stressed out and anxious if I stay, also, because the company is always running out of money and always about two months away from closing, despite my best efforts to raise money through Kickstarter campaigns and art sales. If the landlord got pissed tomorrow about the back rent that's due and locked the doors, then I suppose I'd have to move on to something else.  The job at the movie theater isn't enough of an income, because there are down times like now when it's closed for winter break and I'm not working.  Sure, I could go work for a film festival, now that I have experience working screenings for DOC NYC and Tribeca Film Festival and others, but that work is largely seasonal, each festival is only operational and pays staff for a few months each year, so I'd need to work for three different festivals to get a viable income.  Jeez, I don't know what to do with my life, and also I think I'm too old to be saying something like that. 

Well, whatever else happens to me, I've started off Year 15, so now the chain rolls forward again, hopefully towards Christmas 2023, which is just 299 films away.  I've got a map to get me part of the way there, but of course there are always unexpected turns and delays along the way.  That's life, but at least I've got a full schedule of movies in January to keep me busy. And I watched this on DVD, but you can check the film out on Roku (free sign-up)

Starring Paul Borghese (last seen in "The Irishman"), Jocelyne Castaldo, Richard C. Castellano, Joe Dinki, Larry Revene, Zac Stuart-Pontier, Brian Vincent, Steve Agoston, Isil Bagdadi, Lurch Campfield, Rich Castaldo, Cecilia Coacci, Tom Coacci, John Conway, Richard Crandall, Ralph Huebner, Liz Krause, Frank Labuda, John Marchese, Tom Prendergast, Paul Salzberg, Michael Sergio

with archive footage of Billy Crystal (last seen in "Here Today", Max Casella (last seen in "Late Night"), Pat Cooper, Robert De Niro (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Shirley Jones, Chazz Palminteri (last seen in "Legend" (2015)), Robert Preston, Leo Rossi (last seen in "River's Edge"), Vinny Vella (also last seen in "The Irishman"), Joe Viterelli (last seen in "Shallow Hal"), Tracy Baxter, John J. Borg, Dawn Schob. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 bounced checks