Swimfan

Year 15, Day 49 - 2/18/23 - Movie #4,350

BEFORE: I've got an endoscopy appointment today, to try to figure out if there's something wrong with me internally, which could explain why I get the dry heaves in the morning, I've been on antacids for months and they seem to be helping, but the problem's not going away.  If I get a clean bill of health today, then the problem is just general anxiety and stress caused by my job, and that would be a lot harder to fix, I think.  So part of me is hoping to find out that I've got an ulcer or something physical that would be easier to deal with.  

When I get back home, I think I'm going to try to sneak in a screening of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", which is likely to eat up the rest of my Saturday, but I've decided I need to break up the monotony of the romance chain, somehow.  I write a review but I'll save it for March, when I know I can link to it about a week after my St. Patrick's Day movies.  I'm starting to get shifts booked for March, the NY Children's International Film Festival could take up a few of my weekend days, so it wouldn't hurt to have a review or two ready to post. 

Jesse Bradford carries over from "The Year of Spectacular Men". 

THE PLOT: A high-school senior with a promising swimming career has a one-night stand with consequences. 

AFTER: I know, this doesn't seem to fit neatly into the "romance" genre - it's way more into the "complex and effed-up relationship" spectrum, but it's something that's been on my DVR for at least two years, and I'm still desperately trying to free up some space there.  Two or three more films coming up in the next week have also been clogging up the DVR, so this February chain was designed to clear off as many of those as possible, which not only frees up space on the device, but slots on my list.  I've got 300 films on the back-up list that would probably all want spots on the main list, but my self-imposed limit there is 225 - every film that I have on DVD or DVR frees up a slot there, and I can record something else in its place.  I'll just never be DONE, will I?

This is just "Fatal Attraction" set in a high-school, right?  Sad to say there wasn't a lot of new ground broken, it's the same moral - don't cheat - just transposed to a high-school senior on the swim team with a regular girlfriend.  And as we learned in "Last Night", swimming in a pool with somebody late at night who isn't your wife or steady girlfriend is just asking for trouble.  It's late, it's dark, it's wet, people have to take their clothes off and swim in their underwear, it's a damn recipe for disaster, and by the time you're close together in the pool, it's already too late, you might as well just go for it.  Because apparently nobody ever said, "Hey, this is a bit TOO wet and anyway, we might drown, so I know we're on the verge of something, but let's just call this off and get dry, maybe grab a burger, whaddaya say?"  Personally, I never learned to swim, so I don't see the appeal of getting in a pool with somebody.  I barely see the appeal of getting in a bathtub with somebody I care about. A shared shower? Maybe. But only as a precursor to getting clean before getting, umm, dirty again.  

What about the cold and umm, shrinkage?  That's not very sexy, so the logistics of pool sex would seem to be a hindrance.  Not to mention that's it's not very sanitary, other people have to USE that pool after you, and they don't need your fluids mixed in with the water.  Chlorine can only do so much, but I digress, I don't want to be gross.  Too late, I guess. 

Anyway, Ben Cronin wonders what it would be like to fool around in the pool, with someone who isn't his steady and uptight girlfriend, Amy.  Obviously he gets more than he bargained for, because Madison Bell, the new girl in school, doesn't like to take "no" for an answer, she's used to getting what she wants, and what she wants is Ben.  Even though she and Ben sort of agree to not talk about what happened in the pool, she moves in on his life, befriends his girlfriend, visits his mother and then starts dating his teammate on the swim team.  Is this all to get his attention, or is there more to the story?  She just doesn't want to be IGNORED, and next thing you know, there's a rabbit in the pot on the stove, right?  Wait, different movie, but same idea. When somebody's this close to being psychopathic, supposedly it doesn't take much to push them over the edge - or maybe they were over the edge all along and just hid it really well. 

Anyway, today's "Love Tip" is if you want to stray, make sure you break things off with the current girlfriend before you start something new with the new girlfriend.  Wait, that's terrible advice, it should be "Don't cheat in the first place," or something like that - how about "Don't go swimming late at night with no lifeguard on duty"?  Can we work with that? 

Also starring Erika Christensen (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Shiri Appleby (last seen in "Lemon"), Kate Burton (last seen in "Liberal Arts"), Clayne Crawford (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Jason Ritter (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Kia Joy Goodwin, Dan Hedaya (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Michael Higgins (last seen in "The Conversation"), Nick Sandow (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Pamela Isaacs, James DeBello, Phyllis Somerville (last seen in "Our Souls at Night"), Monroe Mann, Patricia Rae (last seen in "The Big Wedding"), Peter Hermann (also last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Malcolm Barrett (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Tom Cappadona. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 letterman jackets

The Year of Spectacular Men

Year 15, Day 48 - 2/17/23 - Movie #4,349

BEFORE: I've hit the wall on romance films, I simply do not want to watch another one.  This would only be a problem if I were 16 days into a planned 40-day chain of them.  Maybe it was those four high-school romance films in a row, all featuring yet-to-be-acclaimed acting sensation Wolfgang Novogratz.  But I've got to do something to break up the monotony - the weekend's coming up, maybe I can sneak in a viewing of "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" and sit on the review, now that I KNOW I'm probably going to be able to work that review in after St. Patrick's Day.  Yeah, that might help.  Next week I've got a bunch of films that were leftover from last year or I think maybe the year before that - and as it stands right now, I'm not looking forward to rom-coms from the 1990's that I passed on before, some of them several times. 

Lea Thompson carries over again from "Unplugging". 

THE PLOT: The story of Izzy Klein, a young woman fresh out of college as she strikes up and ruins relationships with several men and struggles to navigate the failures of adulthood, leaning on her mother and younger sister for support. 

AFTER: Ugh, this movie isn't helping, it's just more college-age people (or probably actors in their late 20's pretending to be college-age) and oh my GOD, they're so self-absorbed.  HOW FULL of yourself can you possibly BE?  Look, I'm sorry you're having trouble finding the love of your life, but that's your problem, not my problem, why should I have to watch a movie about someone else's struggle to find their soulmate.  Quite simply, I don't care. I'm guessing it's auto-biographical, written by the lead actress who happens to be Lea Thompson's daughter, and would this movie even have gotten made if it weren't written by a "nepo baby"?  No, because Lea Thompson directed the movie her daughter wrote, so I'm calling it, the fix is in. 

Ugh, let me count the ways I hate this self-entitled lead character - she's about to graduate college, but the problem is that she hasn't apparently done any of the required course work, for ACTING class, no less.  So she's got to perform a scene from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in order to get SOME kind of credit for the class - but instead of learning the lines, she just makes out with her scene partner every time they get together.  An acting degree MUST be one of the easiest college degrees to get, you just have to, umm, act.  And she can't bring herself to do that?  Why is she studying to be an actor if she can't even bring herself to learn ONE scene from ONE Shakespeare play?  She comes off as someone who's coasted her whole life, has never done one bit of work or put any effort into anything, and she just wants everything handed to her - degree, please.  Then to make matters worse, she blacks out during the performance, and only gets to graduate by blackmailing the teacher after catching him with a student. Disgusting. 

Then she wants to take a gap year - FROM WHAT?  From all the work she didn't do during college?  Gee, I can't imagine why all of her relationships keep failing, could it be because she's not putting any effort into maintaining them?  So she sets out to find the relationship she "deserves", because again, she feels like everything in life should just be handed to her - I can only imagine this is something the actress knows about first hand. Well, they say "write what you know" after all.  She moves to L.A. to stay with her successful actress sister, and right away goes to a party but hooks up with the drummer from her ex-boyfriend's band and leaves before the agent she was supposed to meet and network with.  Ugh again. 

After the drummer goes on tour, Izzy manages to go on a few auditions, but after just a couple unsuccessful ones, her agent dumps her and she announces she's done with acting.  Sure, the minute things get a little bit difficult, she just takes the ball and goes home so the game is over. And somehow, this of course is not her fault, it's just that "the world's against her".  So then she starts binge-watching TV and doesn't leave her room, for months. Sure, that'll make things better, that's a solid plan. 

Both sisters meet up with their mother, and mom's new girlfriend, in Lake Tahoe (see, entitled!). At the first opportunity, she claims that she can't remember how to ski and instead gets a handsome ski instructor to escort her safely down the slopes.  OF COURSE she hooks up with the ski instructor, that's her M.O., why work on her personal problems when she can just start a new relationship with a hot ski instructor and feel better about herself that way?  

But finally Izzy has to get some kind of job, so she works as her own sister's assistant on a movie set.  Just when you think there's some kind of hope that this character can accomplish something, maybe hold down the world's easiest position as her own sister's helper, she starts flirting with the director.  Yeah, that's either a shortcut to success in the movie world or a quick way to get fired from the set.  But it turns out they have something of a real connection, but it ends up going nowhere just because the director is so introverted and painfully shy.  Yeah, this makes no sense because shy people don't actually flourish in the director's chair - shy people write films, but they have to network to become directors, I know this for a fact.  My lack of networking skills in film school convinced me that directing wasn't for me, I'd be better off trying my hand at producing.  How many shy directors are there in Hollywood?  Zero. 

And through it all, Izzy never really gets a clue that she needs to work on HERSELF before she can navigate an adult relationship.  Instead she regards the end of her gap year as some kind of new beginning, but I don't think this character is capable of change, she just wants to coast her whole life trying to get ahead by flirting her way to the top, and wondering why she keeps bouncing from one negative relationship to the next while never breaking the cycle that she's put herself into.  And honestly I don't think any of her men were all that spectacular, so is the title meant to be ironic? 

Also starring Madelyn Deutch, Zoey Deutch (last seen in "The Professor"), Melissa Bolona (last seen in "Acts of Violence"), Avan Jogia (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Nicholas Braun (last seen in "The Stanford Prison Experiment"), Brandon T. Jackson (last seen in "Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters"), Cameron Monaghan, Zach Roerig, Jesse Bradford (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Bob Clendenin (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Alison Martin, Troy Evans (last heard in "The Book of Life"), Alec Mapa (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), D.W. Moffett (last seen in "Thirteen"), Lily Anne Harrison, Amy Pietz (last seen in "The Whole Ten Yards"), Alex Boling. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 broken ceramics

Unplugging

Year 15, Day 47 - 2/16/23 - Movie #4,348

BEFORE: I'm not even halfway through the romance chain, but I have to start thinking about what comes after - I had the chain worked out up to TWO Irish-themed films for St. Patrick's Day, but what happens after that?  I've got an Easter film left from two years ago (I couldn't link to it last time) and I think that if I can get to "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" a few days after St. Pat's, I've got not one but TWO paths that get me to Easter in the right number of days. There's some overlap, fortunately with a bunch of cool films that I definitely want to see sooner and not later.  But OK, THEN what?

The Easter film has an intro, just not much of an outro - the only thing I can link to is a documentary, but then do I program a bunch of docs or just get straight to "Top Gun: Maverick"?  It's a dilemma - I usually save my Rock & Doc Block for summer, but the linking's kind of telling me that maybe it should be in April. I guess it all depends on how much time I need to get to something for Mother's Day, and there's just no way to figure that out right now.  I'll have to table this discussion until late March or early April - maybe I can do a small doc chain in the spring and then another one in summer?  Maybe I'll never do another 40-film doc chain like last year ever again, so I should just work them in wherever I can.  It's a stumper.

Lea Thompson carries over from "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser".

THE PLOT: To revive their marriage and reconnect, a couple takes a self-prescribed digital detox weekend to a remote mountain town. What starts as a perfect weekend getaway without technology quickly spirals out of control. 

AFTER: This is one of those films that "means well" - as in it definitely has a point to make, and that point may even be an important one, namely that some of us are spending so much time on our phones, what with work e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, updating our calendars, buying stuff, booking flights and hotels, finding a place to eat dinner, trying to figure out where we've seen that actor before, paying the cable bill, checking our bank balance, and then don't even get me started on all the great games and all the movies to watch on those streaming apps. Does anybody even remember what life was like before we used our phones for everything?  It's got to be affecting our relationships, and if it's not all that time your significant other spends on their phone that's bugging you, it's probably that STUPID ring tone they have, you know the one, or it's that you don't "get" the videos they watch on YouTube, where people just unwrap stuff or describe how other people play video games. I mean, what IS the point?

Umm, but THAT'S the point of this movie, and I'm not saying the movie's wrong, but the message is buried under so much lame comedy and so many dead-end subplots that go nowhere, how are we even supposed to FIND the message?  Jeez, the Wiki page for this movie doesn't even give a breakdown of the plot, as if to say, "Wait, there was a PLOT?"  Well, no, not really. A couple goes on a vacation to a place where there's bad cell service, that hardly counts as a plot.  There are also a bunch of drones flying around, and the locals act weird, so you might think that there's some secret military thing going on, or aliens have taken over the town, or everyone's a Russian spy - it's none of those things, but any of those things would have been better.  This is just a place in Oklahoma or Indiana or something where there's bad reception, and these two married people end up going bonkers because of it. 

They steal a car, they almost kill a chicken, they shoplift from a gas station - not their finest moments, to be sure.  Admittedly, they're concerned about their daughter that they left with her grandmother because they found their daughter's inhaler in the car, and the last half-message they received before their phones died was something about going to the hospital.  But is that enough reason to panic and cause damage to themselves and others, just because they DON'T know for sure what's going on back in Chicago?  Umm, no it doesn't. Maybe if I had kids, I might feel differently, but then again, maybe not. Dumb plot is dumb plot. 

The whole thing started because of a funeral, the husband was friends with the UPS guy, because he's got an artisanal hot sauce business and the UPS guy made frequent pick-ups.  The UPS guy died, and this maybe made the husband realize that he himself was mortal, and too much of his life and his time and his wife's time was being spent on the phone.  Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch - you'd think that someone's death might encourage you to get a better career because you realize your own personal clock is ticking, but this guy chose to instead push for a weekend in the country re-connecting with his wife, without any devices.  That was the plan, anyway.

His wife is the total opposite, she works for a commercial real estate leasing company or something, and she's on the phone all day every day, if she can't sleep she's sending out company e-mails in the middle of the night, and in fact she's TOO eager around the office, the head of HR got complaints about a JibJab video she sent, so she's invited to take a couple of weeks off to decompress and maybe develop a less eager approach to work.  Yeah, I find it hard to believe that a company would ask someone to stop working so eagerly, but that's where we find ourselves with this story.  

Again, this is NOT about the struggle to stay married, that part's sort of never in question - these two kind of deserve each other, despite being opposites. (Umm, opposites attract, right?). It's about how some people have let the phones come between them, because any time spent on your phone is time that you're NOT connecting with your partner.  But then, if you had to quit using your phone cold turkey, you probably wouldn't know how to do anything, and you'd also go a little mad from withdrawal - all those apps on your phone reward you with SOMETHING, whether it's "likes" or an in-game reward, or that movie you've been dying to see, or just seeing someone who isn't you falling down.  If you stop getting those little rewards, it's going to be a letdown, I'm just saying.  We've all come too far to stop now - sure, get off social media if you can, but you'll be back if you can't find satisfaction and gratification somewhere else. 

This movie grossed just $52 thousand last year, and if not for taking suggestions from Hulu, I never would have heard of it.  I'm entertaining the possibility that I might be the first person to both watch AND review this film, simply nobody else cares.  I get it, there's not anything here to really draw anybody in.  Essentially, since it's about city people having awkward interactions with the local yokels, this is just a re-packaged version of "Schitt's Creek", which itself was a re-packaged version of "Green Acres". Right? 

Also starring Matt Walsh (last seen in "Brigsby Bear"), Eva Longoria (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Keith David (last seen in "Gamer"), Nicole Byer (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Al Madrigal (last seen in "Morbius"), Johnny Pemberton (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Hala Finley, Joel Kim Booster (last seen in "The Week Of"), Tina Parker (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Brad Morris (last seen in "Bombshell"), Stacie Greenwell (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Gail Cronauer (last seen in "Dr. T and the Women"), Krista Perry, Heath McGough (last seen in "Please Stand By"), Lureena Cornwell, Anthony Parker, Nancy Friedrich, Morgan Walsh, Emmett Walsh, Pat Walsh, 

RATING: 3 out of 10 Chinese conspiracy theories

Sierra Burgess Is a Loser

Year 15, Day 46 - 2/15/23 - Movie #4,347

BEFORE: This is the second film this month - and second in Valentine's Week - that's (loosely) based on the classic tale of "Cyrano de Bergerac".  So that means that over the last few years in Hollywood, there were at least THREE films based on that story in production, I'm counting the "Cyrano" movie starring Peter Dinklage that came out last year.  I worked at the NYC premiere of THAT film, but mostly outside doing crowd control - I got to see all the stars arrive by limo that way.  That film turned out to be much trickier to link to, so I've got to see about next year, or if not whether I can work it in somewhere else. 

Wolfgang Novogratz carries over again from "The Last Summer", and I'm afraid I've run out of high-school based romances with Wolfgang Novogratz in them - I'm going to miss the guy, I think.  More filmmakers need to cast him as high-school jocks before next February rolls around. After four films, he's tied for second place (along with Robert De Niro and Liam Neeson!) for appearances in Year 15. 

THE PLOT:  A case of mistaken identity results in unexpected romance when the most popular girl in high school and the biggest loser must come together to win over their crushes. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one's a bit clunkier than "The Half of It", both films tried to update the story by switching out text message for love letters, which I suppose you have to do these days, it's just that "The Half of It" did it better. Plus it had lesbians, so way cooler. By contrast, "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser" had so much texting that I COULD NOT READ on my TV screen, and I've got a giant TV screen, by the way (it's not bragging if it's true...).  Some films resort to putting the contents of text messages in little extra "bubbles" on the screen, for the benefit of the viewers, which I just plain hate, but at least then I can read them.  Here some director or cinematographer just assumed that we'd all be able to read those text messages from the phone, as an actor with very shaky hands held them. Well, thanks to the bright text messages on an even brighter phone screen, most of the time I COULD NOT READ the text messages.  Once in a while a character would also SAY the message as he or she typed it, which was helpful because then the contents would also be in the captions, which I keep on.  But, most of the time, they didn't, so I couldn't. What a shame. 

What DOES work here is the popular girl giving out the unpopular girl's phone number instead of her own, to prospective dates that she wants to get rid of.  After all, she IS dating a college boy, so why does she need high-school boys calling her?  The poor sap gets Sierra's phone number instead of Veronica's, and Sierra is just so happy that SOMEONE is texting her that she doesn't take the time to correct him.  Umm, fine, if that's the way you want to handle this, but there's a term for pretending to be someone else on-line, and it's "catfishing".  How are we supposed to like Sierra as a main character if she's guilty about being dishonest, and pretending to be the most popular girl in school, just to be able to talk to an interested boy?  

Further problems arise when they stop sending emojis and memes, and Jamey starts sending pics from his workout sessions?  How is Sierra supposed to get photos of Veronica?  (Umm, the easy answer is to download them from her social media feed, but either she didn't think of that, or the film just doesn't want to go there.  But it's all catfishing, right?). Instead Sierra sees that Veronica is having troubles because her college boyrfriend doesn't think she's smart enough, so she agrees to tutor Veronica in exchange for some posed photos taken with Sierra's phone.  But then as things escalate, they have to fake a FaceTime session, and then Jamey wants a date with Veronica in the real world. 

To make things worse, Sierra has to pretend to be deaf to get close to Jamey herself, because she thinks he'll recognize her voice from all their phone conversations.  She pretends (badly) to be able to use sign language, only to discover that Jamey has a deaf brother, and her signing moves are all nonsense.  Yeah, this shouldn't end well - look what happens when an unpopular girl gets a little bit of attention, it's like giving water to a thirsty person in the desert, she just wants more and more.  It probably would have been better if she never got any attention at all in high school, because then she'd have her head on straight and she wouldn't cross these lines to deceive someone into kissing her.  Stealing is wrong, even if you're stealing a kiss, that's todays "Love Tip" from me to you. 

Look, I didn't date in high school, and I turned out fine. (It's convenient you don't know me IRL, so you can't verify this...). But the presence of Alan Ruck as Sierra's father reminds me of something that was said in the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" about his character, Cameron: "He's going to marry the first girl he lays, and she's going to treat him like shit."  Hey, I resemble that remark. (Sierra's mother is played by another actor from teen movies, Lea Thompson, who was in "Back to the Future", "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "All the Right Moves".)

Some things were very confusing here - like the fact that Sierra plays in the marching band and Veronica is a cheerleader for one school, but Jamey is a football player for a different school?  Wait, don't they all go to the SAME school?  If not, then how do they all know each other?  There's a reference to some kind of "East/West" game, so some characters go to East Pasadena High and others go to West Pasadena High, that's just odd and clunky - maybe there are two high schools in Pasadena, but the movie would be a lot simpler if they all attended the same school, so why not just make that happen?  Absolutely nothing is gained by making Jamey play football for a "rival" team.  (Who grew up in Pasadena, the screenwriter or the director?)

Likewise, nothing is gained by showing that the popular gal has a horrible home life, where her father left her mother and her sisters are brats straight out of "Dance Moms". This humanizes Veronica, sure, but it makes it a bit harder to hate her, and you don't want to come close to justifying her bullying of Sierra, that's not right.  Having Sierra's father be a successful author, and showing Sierra trying to beef up her college applications by trying out for the boys track team are other plotlines that go nowhere.  She's not a runner, so why try out for track, and even then, I'm sure there's a girls track team, is she trying to make a political point of trying out for the boys' team?  Very confusing indeed. 

Also, was there NO better time for Sierra to talk to her best friend, Dan than during band rehearsal?  Like, WHILE the band is playing?  This makes no sense, how do they even hear each other?  Why doesn't the band leader tell them to stop talking and pay attention?  For that matter, why can't Sierra date Dan, if they're such good friends?  Just wondering. 

Well, that's enough high-school films, for now, anyway.  Oddly, two of them had leads that are known for being on "Stranger Things", Natalia Dyer was in "Yes, God, Yes" and today's film had Shannon Purser, who was in Season 1 of the show but, her character, Barb, umm, disappeared a few episodes in, before anybody knew to look for her in the Upside-Down. Just bad luck, I guess. 

Also starring Shannon Purser, Kristine Froseth (last seen in "Rebel in the Rye"), RJ Cyler (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Noah Centineo (last seen in "Charlie's Angels" (2019)), Loretta Devine (last seen in "The Starling"), Giorgia Whigham, Alice Lee (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), Lea Thompson (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Alan Ruck (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Mary Pat Gleason (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), Chrissy Metz (last seen in "Muppets Haunted Mansion"), Elizabeth Tovey, Mariam Tovey, Matt Malloy (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Will Peltz (last seen in "Time Freak"), Geoff Stults (last seen in "12 Strong"), Shoniqua Shandai (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Joey Bell, Mario Revolori (also carrying over from "The Last Summer"), Cochise Zornoza, Joey Morgan (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), JT Neal, Brandon Thomas Lee (last seen in "Cosmic Sin").

RATING: 4 out of 10 hurdles (literal ones on the track, not metaphorical ones)

The Last Summer

Year 15, Day 45 - 2/14/23 - Movie #4,346

BEFORE: Well, I won't know if I picked the "right" film for Valentine's Day today, but I guess we'll find out.  This was a last-minute drop-in, because I wasn't sure if tomorrow's film was the best choice for the holiday.  I guess it doesn't really matter, because I've devoted the whole month to romance and relationships, but I'm a stickler for getting things lined up right, according to my own self-imposed rules. 

Wolfgang Novogratz again?  Yep, it's a Novogratz take-over for Valentine's Day - he's my new favorite actor.  He's been in just 6 films, according to the IMDB, and I'm watching four of them in a row.  I don't know if anyone else has ever watched four Wolfgang Novogratz films in a row, I'm not sure if even Wolfgang Novogratz has.  But somebody's got to, I suppose. 

THE PLOT: Standing on the precipice of adulthood, a group of friends navigate new relationships, while reexamining others, during their final summer before college. 

AFTER: This is a sneaky way to make a movie about high-school kids without spending a lot of time in a bunch of boring classrooms, or watching them studying or fretting over finals.  Hey, if they were studying they wouldn't have time to go out on dates or drink at parties or play beer pong or whatever it is the kids do today.  Just set the film in the summer AFTER senior year, so they've all got plenty of spare time, and then there's extra relationship drama because they all feel like their lives are about to change in college, plus there's extra incentive to party because they have to get serious in September or think about their careers and we all know that nobody parties at college, right? Wait, that's not right....

There are 5 or 6 separate but interlocking stories here - it's an ensemble piece.  Wolfgang, if you're listening, you need to have a talk with your agent, because you played one of the main characters here, but your picture didn't make it to the POSTER?  That's some bullshit - there's plenty of room, the montage got divided up into 16 rectangles, and they could have easily put Mr. Novogratz's picture in ONE of them.  Some actors are on the poster TWICE even, and where's the love for Wolfgang Novogratz?  Is he at least one of the people in that silhouette group photo?  It's just not fair.  OK, so his story isn't the MAIN story, but it's one of them!  Hello? I guess Chad and Reece didn't make the poster either, but the baseball player did, and he's just a foil character!  OK, Tyler Posey is apparently the star of "Teen Wolf", but let's see some respect for Foster in THIS movie, played by Wolfgang Novogratz. 

Griffin and Phoebe have, I guess, the main story - Griffin is a nepo baby whose dad got him into Columbia, the business school, but secretly he wants to go to Berklee School of Music in Boston.  He re-meets his old crush, Phoebe, at a party - they roller-skated together once as kids - and she's making a documentary about (wait for it...) high-school people in love who aren't sure what will happen to their relationships once college starts.  Gee, that's a coincidence. But Phoebe won't go on a date with Griffin because she has to get the movie done before the end of the summer, since she's planning to attend NYU Film school and wants to have something to show there, or get into a film festival before that to raise some tuition. (I can confirm, the NYU expenses are enormous...). Griffin, since he's a music guy, has some experience with editing and sound design, so he helps her out with her film in order to get closer to her - and it works, because we know that spending time together is a solid way to test the waters of romance. (repeat "Love Tip" here, I already used that one so it doesn't count...)

A big monkey wrench gets thrown into the relationship when Griffin sees his father cheating on his mother, and the mystery woman turns out to be somebody very close to Phoebe.  He doesn't tell her right off, so when the truth comes out, it drives a wedge between them, since it's a lie of omission.  He probably just should have feigned ignorance here - pretended to find out when she did - but that's dishonest, too.  Can this relationship last once they're both in college in different cities, also both knowing that his father had sex with her mother?  That's just plain awkward. 

Erin and Alec, on the other hand, break up right at the start of the summer - they'll also be in college in different cities, so this makes some sense (?), why wait until September, let's take a break now and then it will be easier to deal with.  Only it's not - Alec is snatched up by the shallow, popular Paige and can't get loose, while Erin takes up with a rookie for the Cubs who fell into her lap while chasing a foul ball.  Ricky the third baseman seems like quite a "catch", he doesn't chase MLB groupies, seems like a down-to-earth Texas guy who's still under his minor-league contract.  But it turns out he's got a "complicated" relationship with his ex, so this pairing might also be doomed...

Foster is Alec's best friend, and they pour driveway asphalt together (Foster is also played by the inimitable Wolfgang Novogratz, accept no substitutes...).  Foster's got a summer wishlist of women he'd like to date, but he finds that some of them are out of his league, others have issues and hangups of their own, and then there are those that think having a summer wishlist is very creepy, and they may not be wrong about that.  Once word spreads about the list, his reputation is tarnished - so this tall, attractive senior who's secretly a virgin might never get laid, sure, there's always college but there's not one word said here about whether Foster's even going to college.  Oh, if only there were experienced, divorced women in the suburban Chicago houses who had a thing for high-school seniors doing manual labor...

Audrey is Erin's best friend, and she gets a summer job working as a personal assistant for a wealthy woman, who uses her as a nanny to take her young daughter on auditions.  Audrey's waiting to hear from her safety school, but over the summer gains enough confidence to realize that it doesn't matter, so when her safety school finally accepts her but puts her on academic probation, she takes a pass and chooses to do volunteer work instead - maybe college will still be in the cards, but down the road. You do you, Audrey, nothing wrong with taking some time to figure out what you want to do or who you want to date. 

Chad and Reece's story isn't really connected to the others, they're two high-school losers who realize that they blew it during freshman year by being outed as nerds, now they can't date the popular girls because they're inexperienced, and there's no way to get experience with women because of their track record.  But they stop into a bar on the way to a wedding and since they're wearing suits, they get mistaken for stockbrokers and they don't get carded.  Surprisingly, they don't just drink until they're sick, and become regulars at the bar, as long as they wear the suits nobody knows that they work at a fro-yo shop.  Halfway through the summer, they meet two women in the bar who work at an ad agency, and they start relationships based on their deception - what could possibly go wrong?  

There is one more story, but if Chad and Reece's story seems disconnected from the others, the story of Mason, the skateboarder, is WAY more disconnected.  Mason has one conversation with Griffin, then later we see him do a routine and win a spot on the national team, or something. Who the hell cares?  The screenwriters just couldn't find a way to intertwine his story with the others, so it feels really tacked-on.  Thankfully Mason was a black skateboarder and not a rapper, that would have been too stereotypical - still, this part of the story goes nowhere. 

There are lots of celebrity-adjacent people in this cast - look, there's Kevin Bacon's daughter, and Adam Sandler's wife, and I'm betting that's Kelsey Grammer's daughter, or maybe it's just someone with the same last name, I can't really be bothered to look this up.  Who am I kidding, of course I'm going to look all this up. And that girl with the promise ring must be Jim Belushi's daughter, she's got credits for being on his sitcom "According to Jim". The appearance of Jackie Sandler suggests that I could link to rom-coms like "Blended" and "The Wrong Missy", but I just don't have the time for those, maybe next year.  There are only so many 2023 slots, after all. 

Since there's a whole summer's worth of hook-ups, break-ups and make-ups here, this turned out to be a fine choice of films for Valentine's Day.  It may not be seasonally appropriate, since technically we've got another whole month of winter to get through, but I can't worry about that. This is the second film this month where a plot point is that somebody hasn't seen "The Big Lebowski" before, but that's just a coincidence, when you start dating somebody of course you want to show them your favorite movies that they haven't seen. (The other movie was "Life Partners", two screenwriters just had the same idea...). OK, so there's todays "Love Tip" - if she won't watch "The Big Lebowski" with you, she's not worth it, just end things and move on. 

Also starring K.J. Apa (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Maia Mitchell, Jacob Latimore (last seen in "Like a Boss"), Norman Johnson Jr., Sosie Bacon (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Jacob McCarthy, Mario Revolori, Halston Sage (last seen in "Late Night"), Tyler Posey (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Gage Golightly, Nicole Forester (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Audrey Grace Marshall, Valerie Jane Parker, Sameera Rock, Ed Quinn, Gabrielle Anwar (last seen in "Body Snatchers"), Heidi Johanningmeier (last seen in "The Dilemma"), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Greer Grammer (last seen in "Life Partners"), Brenna Sherman, Jamison Belushi, Dylan Doornbos Hayes (last seen in "No Strings Attached"), Amy Cates, Christopher Mele (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Michael May, Jeffrey Grover (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Layla Cushman, Dionnae Maree Ford, Ryan Edward Hill, Julia Kelly, Brianna Burke, Gabriel Vigliotti with archive footage of Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Seventh Son"), John Goodman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 longnecks in a bucket (just $10, that's a great deal, even though it's probably shitty beer...)

Yes, God, Yes

Year 15, Day 44 - 2/13/23 - Movie #4,345

BEFORE: Well, that Super Bowl was a letdown.  But then, I fast-forwarded through the game just to watch the commercials, most of which were strange and confusing.  Ben Affleck works at Dunkin Donuts now?  m&m's are clam-flavored after Maya Rudolph took over for the CGI candies?  Walter White is making corn chips now and giant rabbits are coming to throw us down the streaming rabbit hole. Will Ferrell and Kevin Bacon are driving electric cars, Mr. Peanut got roasted in more ways than one, and Steve Martin and Ben Stiller love Diet Pepsi, or perhaps they're just acting. 

In case you haven't noticed, I've once again re-scheduled Black History Month in favor of romance month.  I don't mean to seem racist - I just have a very full list of romances, more than a month's worth, so I need all of February and almost half of March to even make a dent in that list.  Even so, it may build up again before next February - but if it doesn't, I promise next year I'll consider watching some Black History themed movies in February.  Anyway, the only films on my list that might even qualify are "Antebellum", "Alice", and "The U.S. vs. Billie Holliday".  If I allowed documentaries to count, sure, there are docs about Miles Davis, Dionne Warwick, Buddy Guy, Willie Mays, Arthur Ashe and Venus and Serena Williams, but docs feel like more of a summer thing around here. 

Wolfgang Novogratz carries over from "The Half of It", and I promise you, if you're not already aware of who that is, you will be before this week is over. He seems to have cornered the market on playing handsome jocks in recent high-school films. 

THE PLOT: After an innocent AOL chat turns racy, a Catholic teenager in the early 2000s discovers masturbation and struggles to suppress her new urges in the face of eternal damnation. 

AFTER: This is a short feature about...doing it.  No, not that, the other thing, the one you do when you're by yourself.  Which is essentially the same thing, only you don't need somebody telling you how to do it or what to think about when you do it, and you just have to make sure you're alone in the house, it works better that way.  Or you can do it with another person, that's cool too, that seems like another meaning for the title "Alone Together".  I know I shouldn't quote Woody Allen, since he got cancelled for marrying his stepdaughter, but he's famous for the quip about masturbation, calling it "sex with somebody I love."  Who hurt you, Woody?  It was your first wife, wasn't it? Or the girls that wouldn't give you the time of day in college?  You probably gave off the vibe of a guy who was going to marry his stepdaughter one day...

Surprisingly, there are still people who are against masturbation, they only see the bad aspects, they don't see the benefits - which means one of two things, either they're too stuck up to do it themselves, or, more likely, they're totally doing it in private.  Isn't everyone?  What some people have against it is that it's not part of "God's plan". Umm, OK, when did God say that, and to whom?  What they mean is that it's not part of the Church's plan, and I mean the Catholic church from the medieval era.  Back then the Catholics believed that there just weren't enough Catholics, they needed more bodies to fend off the Visigoths or the Huns or the Vandals or other heathens, and more sex between two people meant more people, which meant more people to fight the infidels in the Crusades.  Also more parishioners who were obligated to donate to the church, you see where I'm going with this?  God didn't make the rules, a bunch of priests made the rules and then said they were God's idea.  Follow the money, who benefits from people having sex and not jerking off?  The church, that's who.  

And it's STILL that way, a thousand years later, because the Church did a great job of brainwashing everyone into believing their version of "right" vs. "wrong", everything is black or white with no gray area in-between.  Abortion BAD, birth control BAD, masturbation BAD and ant combination of those will send you to Hell.  Says who?  And what proof is there that there even IS a hell - what if you die and that's it?  Well, you won't be conscious or aware at that point, but if you COULD be, you'd probably wish you had a better life, with more sex and if that wasn't possible, then at least more masturbation.  Man, it's going to suck when you're about to die, you can feel your life force fading and you realize that there's no bright light, no stairway to heaven, your life is over and you think briefly about how you could have had SUCH a better time on Earth, only you just didn't, because somebody told you that touching yourself was wrong.

Look, I've been there - my sex education classes were taught by priests and nuns, and that's so ridiculous when you think about it.  First off, who knows less about sex and marriage than they do?  They're talking the talk, but most of them have never walked the walk.  And then the medical stuff is so tied up with their dogma that nobody can separate the two - we shouldn't be assigning "good" and "evil" to bodily functions.  Is a sneeze evil?  A fart?  Of course not, so how could ejaculation or an orgasm be wrong?  And even if they are, then why did the Creator give us the power to have orgasms and ejaculation by ourselves?  This is that whole free will argument, right?  What a bunch of crap.  And if blood pressure meds or insulin can't be considered evil, then birth control can't be evil either - it's all just science and medicine. 

Alice goes on a religious retreat here - it's like summer camp but all the songs are about God.  Lately there'd been a rumor around her parochial school that she "tossed someone's salad" when they were alone together at a party, but she's not even sure what that phrase refers to.  Now she's been branded as some kind of slut, and it's prompted her to enter the AOL chat rooms (this is set in the early days of the internet) and some guy sent her some dirty photos and wanted to have "cyber-sex" with her.  Up until this point, she'd only felt any kind of erotic energy after watching the steamy sex scene in "Titanic" over and over.  

Meanwhile, she has to sit through a sex education lesson from a priest who talks about how it's a sin to "spill your seed" or to have sex for pleasure and not procreation, within marriage, which is between a man and a woman only.  What a bunch of crap - the sex organs are designed for both, pleasure and reproduction.  The religious types don't seem to understand that there's a choice, or they refuse to acknowledge it, but you can have the pleasure without potential parentage - oh, right, birth control's a sin, too. How convenient.  Anything that interferes with God's plan is a sin, and somehow they know what God's plan is.  Today's "Love Tip" is to not pay any attention to the religous right, and practice your human right to pleasure yourself whenever you want.  Only, you know, not in public.  By yourself or with a consenting adult partner, please. 

Sex is a lot like reading - you can read by yourself, you can read with a partner, you can read in a 6-person Book Club if you want.  But when somebody comes along to tell you WHAT you can read and what you can't, WHO you can read with and tries to make laws about HOW you read, well, you know that person's full of crap, and it's all about controlling you. We have laws in this country that say you can read whatever you want, we're supposed to have freedom of speech and freedom of expression - and a separation of church and state, for that matter.  So how come there are movements gaining ground about banning certain books?  You know who banned books? Nazis and Communists, just saying.  And what do you know, it's the same people who don't want their kids to learn about "alternative lifestyles", like being gay and trans and being able to love whomever you want.  That's not a coincidence, it's brainwashed religious extremists who want everyone to have their same beliefs about Heaven and sin and God's plan, never mind all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, pertaining to the pursuit of happiness.  Freedom of religion grants everyone the right to believe in God, but not to the extent where you don't allow conflicting thoughts about God or gods or the lack of God. 

Anyway, Alice discovers on her retreat that some of the retreat leaders are getting it on, and even the priest is watching porn movies on his computer.  (With AOL and dial-up speed? Seems unlikely...). OK, since nobody else is abstaining, why should she?  She awkwardly kisses Chris, the big strong retreat leader (Wolfgang Novogratz!) but it turns out she doesn't need him, not when she puts her phone on "vibrate".  Later she gets some more perspective from hanging out in a lesbian bar, since the owner is a former Catholic herself, who recommends that Alice get herself to a college on the East or West Coast, and away from the silly Midwestern attitudes about sex.  Well, I think we've all learned something tonight. Everybody masturbates, it's just that some people are better at hiding it, or are unwilling to admit it. 

Also starring Natalia Dyer (last seen in "Velvet Buzzsaw"), Timothy Simons (last seen in "The Hustle"), Francesca Reale, Susan Blackwell, Alisha Boe, Donna Lynne Champlin (last seen in "Downsizing"), Parker Wierling, Allison Shrum, Matt Lewis (last seen in "Irresistible"), Pat Fisher (ditto), Carey Van Driest, Blair Nesbitt, John Henry Ward, Paige Hullett, Tre'len Johnston, RJ Shearer, Teesha Renee, Zach Allan, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 "mortal sin" marshmallows

The Half of It

Year 15, Day 43 - 2/12/23 - Movie #4,344

BEFORE: I realize that by sticking to my linking process, I've created an imperfect system - not that any system could be "perfect", but I suppose under a "more perfect" system I would become aware of a movie, watch it and be done with it.  Instead there's a feeling that I'm chasing after something here that I'm never going to accomplish - I can't, for example, watch every movie ever made, not in one lifetime, anyway.  I can't restrict myself to "good" movies over "bad", because I don't know which ones are good or bad without watching them.  I haven't even gotten to every movie on a list of films that played on the Academy's web-site for Oscar qualification LAST year, because of my slow linking process.  I have reduced that list from 65 films to 46, with plans to watch two more in the next month.  But the progress is so slow that I'm afraid to check the Academy's site for THIS year, because it will only give me another 60 or 70 films to try to get to.  Instead I think I'll stick to adding films based on the e-mail I get once a month from IMDB, which tells me what's new on all of the streaming platforms - it's certainly more efficient than doom-scrolling through Netflix or Hulu trying to find something decent to add to my lists. 

Instead, I have to take comfort in what I call a "perfect year", that's a chain from January 1 to Christmas of 300 films that are all linked together by shared actors, with no breaks.  I've managed to create those chains for the last four years now, and I'm currently working on a fifth one - at the end of the year, by brain then has a feeling of accomplishment, I get a mental "lift" from that, I'm momentarily happy, even if not every film during that year satisfied me.  But there's a danger involved with this, what happens when there are no more movies to link, what happens when there's a break in the chain, which may be inevitable at some point?  Will I feel bad or let down?  Probably - it's easier to focus on the "bad" thing in the moment than to look back on the "good" things that were accomplished in the previous five years. 

This is where I find myself in my career, also - if I should lose my job or determine that I can't do it any more, then I will probably feel bad, like I failed.  But looking back on 30 years of work that got done, 30 years of running animation studios and keeping them afloat, getting things done, that's nothing to sneeze at and it's what I should focus on if the inevitable failure should happen. When I talk about my mental health, I'm really talking about how my career has really messed with my head - I have stress dreams at night that are centered around filmmaking, and it's like I'm working old jobs when I should be relaxing.  Last night I had a dream that I was working on a film with a crew on an island somewhere, and the two camera crews needed to be hired, and I had to walk them both through this process of explaining how many scenes they each needed to shoot, and how to divide that number by the number of shoot days, so they knew how many scenes they had to shoot per day.  Then there was some problem with the plane not returning to the island every day, because the cinematographer thought that the plane would take the exposed film to the labs every day, and without that happening, how was the film going to get back to the mainland on a regular basis?  (I haven't brought film to a lab in almost 30 years, but my brain still thinks this is a problem that needs to be solved...)

If I'm not solving filmmaking problems in the real world, and I'm not solving filmmaking problems in my dreams, then I'm writing blog posts that are pointing out the problems with a film's plot, or I'm looking up where a film was shot, how a film was shot, or musing about how a screenwriter decided to write about a subject that he or she didn't fully understand.  So by extension I'm trying to fix the problems that I see in films that were already made - when obviously it's too late to do anything to correct these mistakes.  I have to regard this now as a form of sickness, it's something in my brain that I can't switch off.  My complaining about the plot points in "Alone Together" is not helpful at this point, they're not going to change the film because I pointed out that Katie Holmes' character said "wine opener" instead of "corkscrew", that's ridiculous.  So why the hell do I do this?  It's 30 years of programming, and I may need to just stop, because it's really stressing me out. But then, what would I do with my time?  Let's face it, I'm in too deep.

Becky Ann Baker carries over from "Alone Together".  And I still haven't gotten to the films "Together" and "Together Together".  I wish I were kidding. 

THE PLOT: When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush. 

AFTER: I want to hurry and get my review up today, because it's a big day for television - the Puppy Bowl XIX starts airing at 2 pm, and the pre-game show starts an hour before that. I'm kidding (actually I'm not...) because we all know it's Super Bowl Sunday, and I still watch the game even if I'm not rooting for either team, because I want to see the ads.  I had a job for over 15 years where I tracked commercials with animation, and I still have that conditioning left over, that I NEED to watch this game and eat a lot of snacks while I do that. It's my JOB, even though it hasn't been my job for about 10 years now.  It's another case where things are never going to be what they were before, but just try telling that to my brain. I may need some form of therapy. 

Anyway, let's get to the latest film that I'm probably going to try to "fix" even though that's impossible.  This is a spin on the classic story of "Cyrano de Bergerac", where a smart, literate person tries to help a not-so-smart person win over the person they love, only to fall in love with that person themselves.  What's different is that the film is set in high school, and the smarter person is a teen girl, and if we follow the logic and the plot of the classic story, we can easily predict that Ellie, the smart girl, is going to fall in love with Amber, the girl Paul loves, even though Amber is dating Trig, the most popular boy in school.  Wow, this is super trendy, it's a class struggle and an immigration story and it's a coming-out story, and it's kind of like this all needed to happen to breathe some life into an old tale.  I support this. 

BUT (and you knew I was going to have a BUT, right?) there are still some very clunky bits to the plot here.  Ellie, who's in the "Cyrano" role, is in the habit of writing for others, she writes essay papers for other students in her school, and she does this to raise money not just for herself, but for her father, who has a dead-end job running a railroad station in their small town, but he should have been some kind of mechanical engineer, it's his immigrant status and poor English skills that are holding him back.  So he just sits around watching old movies, which were meant to help him speak English better, but it's not working out well. We're supposed to root for Ellie, but helping other kids cheat on their homework is still wrong. 

There's a teacher who KNOWS her student is writing essays for other people, but doesn't turn her in. Does this make sense?  Supposedly the teacher is impressed by Ellie's skills, writing several essays on the same topic without repeating herself, but it's still wrong.  The teacher just doesn't want to be bored by reading the terrible essays that the kids would write themselves, but instead is entertained by the different essays that Ellie writes for other students?  Yeah, this doesn't make sense, or this is a horrible teacher, and the students aren't being prepared for the adult world if the teacher keeps allowing them to cheat.  Huge NITPICK POINT here. 

The preface includes this old Greek story from Aristophanes about how humans once had four arms, four legs and two heads, but the Gods split them in half so that they'd spend their whole lives feeling incomplete, and wander around the Earth looking for their other half - I don't think this is meant to be taken seriously, this was a COMEDIC thought that Aristophanes once proposed, certainly we're all not meant to take this as an explanation for love, right?  It's a bunch of B.S. somebody thought of thousands of years ago that's still screwing us all up.  You, with the two arms and two legs and one head, you can be complete, you don't NEED to find your other half.  It's great if you do find a partner, and by all means be happy together, but if you think of yourself as "incomplete" because you're not in a relationship, you're setting yourself up for trouble. Today's "Love Tip", therefore, is to not think of yourself as incomplete if you're not currently in a relationship - stop making yourself feel this way. 

The classic films that Ellie's father watched were chosen carefully - they all have love triangles in them.  A love triangle is the easiest way to create conflict in a romance film - and obviously the "Cyrano" story uses the same device, but it's a very specific love triangle, one where an identity is concealed, and the smart person uses the dumber one to express their love secretly.  I've got another spin on "Cyrano" coming up in a couple days - but ironically, not the 2021 film "Cyrano" with Peter Dinklage, which unfortunately I couldn't link to, so it will have to be watched at a later time.  Maybe next February?  I support "The Half of It" because it's like "Cyrano de Bergerac" with a fair amount of "Napoleon Dynamite" thrown in, along with bits of "Heathers", "Mean Girls" and let's say "Paper Heart" mixed in.

This film is set in the town of Squahamish, which really sounds like it should be in Washington or Oregon, but it was filmed in upstate New York.  Yeah, I looked it up, I can't help it, I need to know this sort of thing.  It's all part of the sickness.  OK, that's it, grab yourself a "taco sausage" and go watch the Super Bowl or the Puppy Bowl, whichever. 

Also starring Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, Alexxis Lemire, Wolfgang Novogratz, Collin Chou (last seen in "The Matrix Revolutions"),  Enrique Murciano (last seen in "Rough Night"), MacIntyre Dixon (last seen in "Reds"), Catherine Curtin (last seen in "Bad Education"), Patrick T. Johnson, Gabi Samels, Haley Murphy (last seen in "The Kindergarten Teacher"), Patrick Noonan, Dean Tierney, Cronin Cullen, Kathryn Ainsley Grant, Billy Thomas Myott, with archive footage of Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Charlie Chaplin (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"), Cary Grant (last seen in "Mel Brooks: Unwrapped"), Katharine Hepburn (last seen in "Lucy and Desi") and Rosalind Russell. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 bottles of Yakult