White Noise

 Year 15, Day 140 - 5/20/23 - Movie #4,441

BEFORE: Because I needed to get up super early today, instead of watching a movie last night I mapped out a route to a couple Father's Day films. (The route to July 4 is still uncharted.) Is it the BEST possible list of films?  Impossible to determine - but it gets me to a couple films that are father-themed, and that's going to have to do.  I needed to know whether to watch ALL the Jude Law films next week, or to leave one for June - it turns out I do need one of them in June, but not the one I originally thought.  So, bottom line, I do need to watch a movie today, AFTER my theater shift, not before. C'est la vie. So I can't bookend the week with two films directed by Nicole Holofcener - if I'm going to make it to Memorial Day on time, I've got to watch this film directed by Noah Baumbach, as originally planned.  I can sleep in tomorrow, no big deal - and now that Hell Week is over, I've got a few days off next week, and then Memorial Day weekend, so I think I can stay on schedule, and then maybe program June with a few days off.  Maybe.

Bill Camp carries over again from "The Land of Steady Habits". 

THE PLOT: Dramatizes a comtemporary American family's attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world. 

AFTER: Well, the next step for me is to find a film that's somehow about America, to program for July 4 - last year it was "WBCN and the American Revolution", which qualified on the strength of the title alone.  Other July 4 films from recent years have included "In America", "The Birth of a Nation", "The Fog of War" and "Miss Firecracker".  We'll see what I can come up with this year, maybe "American Assassin" or "The U.S. vs. Billie Holliday", we'll all have to wait and see where the linking will lead me.  But here, without even trying, I may have stumbled upon the most American film ever. Umm, I think.  It's kind of hard to encapsulate what this is really about, it's about so many things, and yet maybe it's about nothing at all in the end.  I'll try to explain. 

I've gradually eased my way into the world of Noah Baumbach - I think I kind of crept in because he co-wrote some of the Wes Anderson films, like "The Life Aquatic" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox". But then I watched films like "Greenberg" and "The Squid and the Whale", and "While We're Young", I even went back and watched "Kicking and Screaming" (not the Will Ferrell soccer movie) but I watched that thinking is was "Walking and Talking", long story.  Then I kind of developed a taste for Baumbach, I sought out his other films like "Frances Ha" and "Margot at the Wedding", and of course "Marriage Story" when it became available to me.  So yeah, when I found out he had a new film, "White Noise" I certainly put that on the list and tried to link to it sooner rather than later. 

But "White Noise" just isn't like the other Baumbach stories - I mean, it is and it isn't. It's adapted from a novel by Don DeLillo, and usually Baumbach writes (or at least co-writes) the films he directs.  The conversations bear similarities to those usually heard in a Baumbach piece - is it mumblecore or not? - but the subject matter is way out of his usual comfort zone.  The only thing I can think of here is that this is all a giant allegory for something - but for what?  My first guess is the COVID pandemic, because it was on everybody's minds for two years straight, and I really have NOT seen that many films made about the medical lockdown that affected the entire country, the world even.  There was "Locked Down" (watched in December 2021) and "Alone Together" (watched in February 2023).  That can't be it, can it?  Sure, we all watched "Bird Box" and "Contagion", but those were made BEFORE Covid-19.  Some films like "Borat 2" and "Glass Onion" mentioned it, but they weren't really ABOUT it. 

So, I think filmmakers found a way to make films about COVID-19 without making them directly about COVID-19.  In "White Noise" there is an "airborne toxic event" in the second act which forces families to evacuate their homes and seek medical attention - or, if they have stayed in their homes, they're advised to quarantine in place until the emergency is over.  Now, the film is set in 1984 (or so) so it clearly CAN NOT be about COVID-19, but come on, it's all about COVID-19.  People are seen at the shelter sites spreading misinformation about the toxic event, nobody really knows how to combat the invisible enemy (radiation? chemicals?) and some people just want to get in the car and drive away from the event, but it's in the air, so, umm, where are you gonna go?  And you've got to step out of the car at SOME point, so maybe just stay home until it all (literally) blows over. 

Now, the event is caused by a truck hitting a train, which releases the toxic materials in an ominous black cloud over a few cities - I'll admit in appearance this doesn't resemble COVID but it does look a lot like the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which took place a little over a month after "White Noise" was released on Netflix.  Was that why this film got so popular for a few weeks, because life was imitating art, and everybody wanted to watch the movie about the train crash that released toxins into the air?  I'm not sure - but since the filmmakers could not POSSIBLY have predicted the train crash, I'm going to go on record and say that the train crash in the film, and the resulting toxins in the air, is instead an allegory for the coronavirus.  

The first act of this film is the set-up, in which we learn all about this blended family living in Ohio (yes, it's the same state as the real train crash, but again, coincidence...) and it's the fourth marriage for both Jack Gladney and his wife, Babette. They both have kids from their previous marriages, plus they have one young one together.  Jack teaches at a college, but a special course that he created, called (wait for it...) "Hitler studies".  This may raise a few eyebrows, but I think it's just here for the shock value - or the absurdity of it all, when you put this many weird things together in one film, it starts to resemble something that Kurt Vonnegut might have written as a dark tragi-comedy.  Yes, I know Don DeLillo wrote this, but it reminds ME of Vonnegut. 

The family has meaningless conversations about this and that, and Babette's daughter catches her take a prescription drug, and also both Jack and Babette love each other dearly, to the point where they both wish to die first, so they won't have to endure the agony of living without their spouse.  I can't decide if that's really sweet and sentimental or just another of the many messed-up weird things here. Maybe both. 

Then there's the train crash, and the family lives in a new kind of fear, they debate whether the toxic fumes are going to head their way or not, and if so, what will happen?  Jack promises his kids that they're in no danger, but he doesn't really know for sure, does he?  Parents have a way of sugar-coating the truth, and families have a way of not talking about things like death or emergencies until they actually happen.  So this all rings true, again, everything so far has been VERY typically American.  But eventually the family agrees, they need to evacuate, and maybe it was the fact that everyone else on the block is GONE that was the tip-off. 

I remember back in high-school (which was, for me, in the 1980's) though we weren't taught to "duck and cover" under our desks in the event of nuclear war (come on, how would that even help?) we were aware that there was some kind of evacuation plan if there was some kind of apocalypse.  As residents of Massachusetts, we were supposed to drive up to New Hampshire or something - only, it would take days to get there because the highways would be jammed with everyone else doing the same thing.  Also, how would that help?  And where would the people of New Hampshire go, or were we just supposed to pick a family up there at random, and live with them until the radiation fallout was over?  It didn't seem to make much sense.

The Gladneys make it to their designated sheltering place, which is a Boy Scout camp outside town, and, well, things go a bit crazy at one point, and they're forced to relocate to Iron City, where the people in a different shelter are similarly uptight and intensely curious about what's going on outside and wondering when things will be safe again.  You know what, probably never, because Jack is led to believe that while he was filling up the family station wagon with gas, he was probably exposed to the toxins, so the man who's always been anxious about his own death might suddenly have to confront it much sooner than he planned. 

Act 3 of the movie is about - well, I actually don't want to get into it, because that's where all the spoilers are, and the story gets really intense about relationships and pharmaceuticals and I don't want to give too much about it away.  Possibly this part of the film is a metaphor for the opioid crisis, but honestly, I'm not really sure.  Jack confronts Babette about this mystery medication she's been taking, and man, it leads to a whole thing.  But if you came here for the pandemic allegory, then it's going to feel like the Act 3 story just really went right off the rails.  Umm, so to speak. 

Don't worry, it all ends with a dance number in a supermarket - you might have seen this as a music video made to promote the film, with a song by LCD Soundsystem.  But it's weird, in fact the whole film is very weird - but possibly also brilliant.  I'm kind of toggling between weirdly brilliant and incoherent nonsense, I'm not quite sure how a film can be both of these things at the same time, but if any film could be, then maybe this one is.  Various directors had tried for YEARS to adapt this story into a film, but it's notable that nobody started to actually DO that until January 2021, when Baumbach took over.  Yes, that's DURING the pandemic, so I think I'm safe in saying this is mostly a metaphor for what I think it is.  And Wikipedia is telling me that the train crash here WAS filmed in East Palestine, Ohio, so life DID imitate art - make of that what you will. 

I'm forced to cheat a little here, and look up what the novel is "about" on Wikipedia.  Again, without saying too much about the events of Act 3, the BOOK is about rampant consumerism, media saturation, novelty academic intellectualism, underground conspiracies, the disintegration and reintegration of the family, human-made disasters, gun culture, obsession with death and the potentially regenerative nature of violence.  So, as I said before, this might be THE most American film when you look at what it's really about. 

Also starring Adam Driver (last seen in "House of Gucci"), Greta Gerwig (last seen in "Maggie's Plan"), Don Cheadle (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Raffey Cassidy (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Jodie Turner-Smith (last seen in "Without Remorse"), André Benjamin (last seen in "Jimi: All Is by My Side"), Sam Gold, Carlos Jacott (last seen in "She's All That"), Lars Eidinger (last seen in "Dumbo" (2019)), Barbara Sukowa (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Francis Jue, Henry Moore, Dean Moore, Gideon Glick (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Chloe Fineman, Kenneth Lonergan (last seen in "You Can Count on Me"), Meggie Loughran, J. David Hinze, Danny Wolohan (last seen in "Tallulah"), George Drakoulias (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), James Deforest Parker (last seen in "The Mule"), Dean Wareham (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Britta Phillips (last seen in "Frances Ha"), Sajjad Dolati (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Logan Fry, Daniel Repas, Thomas W. Wolf, with archive footage of Elvis Presley (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Citizen Ashe")

RATING: 6 out of 10 German nuns (who don't believe in heaven?)

The Land of Steady Habits

Year 15, Day 139 - 5/19/23 - Movie #4,440

BEFORE: I've circled back to another film from Nicole Holofcener, who directed "Lovely & Amazing", which opened the week.  Now I'm tempted to skip a day so I can also end the week with a film from the same director.  I've got to get up early tomorrow (on a SATURDAY?) for a shift at the movie theater, but it will be the end of thesis week, then I get a bit of a break.  So here's the plan, I need to figure out the path to Father's Day ASAP - maybe like three times so far this year I've been stuck, came to dead ends in the chain, and the solution was to split off a film from the herd - like the way I split off "The Pale Blue Eye" from the other Christian Bale films, and that allowed me to move forward.  So I strongly suspect, with a Jude Law chain coming up, that if I split one of those films from the others, it will create a path from Memorial Day to Father's Day.  It's funny, but over 15 years I've learned to sense these things.  If I'm right, then I'll have a hole in the line-up, I can skip Saturday and then THIS will be my last film for the week, and I therefore won't stay up too late tonight, and I won't oversleep.  In theory, anyway.

Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel carry over from "News of the World".  I happen to know that they're married to each other.  Is it weird that I know that they're married to each other? 

THE PLOT: After leaving his wife and his job to find happiness, Anders befriends a drug-addicted teen, sending him down a path of reckless and shameful behavior. 

AFTER: Yeah, there's definitely some DNA shared here, between this film and "Lovely & Amazing", even though that film was all about a mother and three daughters, and this one's about a divorced man finding his way in the world.  Both movies are absolutely FILLED with awkward moments, and cases where the main characters can't help but sabotage their own lives.  I just kind of get a feeling that's what Holofcener prefers to tell stories about - remember, she also directed "Walking & Talking", "Friends with Money" and "Enough Said". So, if you're a film studies student looking for an idea for your own thesis, consider Nicole Holofcener's collective body of work, and I've just given you all you need to get started on it. You're welcome.

Anders Harris is the recently divorced man who's also given up his Wall Street job, the daily commute up to... Tarrytown, is it?  But even though he moved out of the family home and sort of "given" it to his wife in the divorce, he also stopped paying the mortgage a few months back and he hasn't told her that, which, umm, is not cool.  But NITPICK POINT, don't you think she should have been told this?  Wouldn't the bank or mortgage company try to send notices to the address of the house, trying to collect?  If you just got divorced and your spouse moved out, wouldn't that be the FIRST THING you would think about each month, whether the mortgage is being paid?  I just don't see any responsible human living in a house for six months without making sure that the bills are being paid.  (Then again, I know somebody who stopped paying their mortgage and didn't tell their spouse, and the spouse didn't figure it out until too late.  No names here - but I guess I have to admit that it could happen. Still, not a cool thing to do.)

Anders doesn't quite know where he fits in, now - he goes to the neighborhood Christmas party, but doesn't want to hang out with his ex-wife, and he certainly doesn't feel comfortable hanging out with the other financial execs, so instead he goes outside and encounters the stoner teenagers.  Worse, he takes a hit of what they're smoking before asking what exactly it is.  Big mistake, kids today are into smoking some pretty weird stuff, and it apparently hits hard.  One of those kids takes a bit too much and ends up in the hospital.  Anders goes to visit him and brings him a gift, but really, it's a bad idea to become friends with someone your own son's age.  It's not going to work - I work with a bunch of twenty somethings at my job, and jeez, I can't really be that buddy-buddy with them, because we're from different generations.  And I wonder if they just see me as that washed-up loser in his fifties who's still getting paid by the hour somehow. 

(I may go drinking with a younger crowd, but I can't see myself doing drugs with a bunch of teens.  My pot-infused chocolate bar purchase two months ago was a bust, I never felt high no matter how many of the chocolate squares I ate.  I either got ripped off, or I have superhuman tolerance for cannabis.)

Anders feels bad about not paying the mortgage (well, he should...) and tries to borrow money from a friend, who takes him to a strip club.  There in the club, he meets a woman, Barbara, and they hit it off and share a cab home.  Later, he arranges a date with Barbara, but the movie's not long enough to really get into whether that's going to be a long-term relationship.  Meanwhile, Anders' son, who works for his ex-wife, gets terminated after he takes money from one of her students and uses it to enter a poker game.  His son seems like a real chip off the old block.  The son, Donny, later gets a job delivering for a liquor store, and he manages to screw all that up, too. Plus he's living out of his car, because both parents believe he's too old to live with them.  This is kind of NITPICK POINT #2, because if you're a parent, and your child is an adult but has no place to live, would you really let him live in his CAR instead of in your house?  I mean, yes, he should be living on his own, but if he can't swing that, wouldn't you cut him a break and at least let him live in your basement or garage?  Times are tough, you know. 

Then that kid from the party who overdosed is about to go to rehab, but before he does he goes to visit Anders to see if Anders will take care of his pet turtle.  Anders makes another bad choice, he does drugs AGAIN with this kid - jeezus, when is ANDERS going to start acting like an adult, he keeps making one bad decision after another, and doing drugs with a kid who's on his way to rehab kind of takes the cake here - this whole film is just one lapse of bad judgment after another.  Nobody can seem to break out of the behavior patterns that they're accustomed to, or they're all just so tired of life that they just don't care any more, or have any sense of what's right or wrong.  Humans, in other words. 

There's a scene late in the movie where everybody comes clean - not sober clean, just honest with each other - and this kind of reminded me of the later scenes in "Secrets & Lies" where everyone's private pain and mistakes got exposed at that birthday party.  Anders and his ex-wife and her new boyfriend have a talk with Sophie and Mitchell, the parents of the drug-addicted Charlie, and it all comes out, everyone's secrets are exposed and everyone is mad at everyone else, and nobody ends up cutting anybody else any slack.  Well, why would they?  

I'm not quite sure what the point of this all is.  Everything in everyone's life changed, that's for sure, and who can say if it all changed for the better or for the worse?  Well, OK, definitely worse for Charlie's family, but other than THAT, who can say?  Anders is apparently in a relationship with Barbara and he has a pet turtle now.  Donny goes to school in New York City and Anders' ex-wife sells the house and plans her next wedding to take place in Hawaii.  Life goes on, but is that the only greater truth that gets stated here?  I'm just not sure.  I guess we're all destined to have a mid-life crisis at some point, and we're all just not going to see the twists and turns in our lives that it might bring us.  Is THAT the point?

Also starring Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Animal Kingdom"), Edie Falco (last seen in "Freedomland"), Thomas Mann (last seen in "Blood Father"), Michael Gaston (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Charlie Tahan (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Josh Pais (last seen in "Scream 3"), Connie Britton (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Natalie Gold (last seen in "Rough Night"), Victor Slezak (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Victor Williams, Mary Catherine Garrison (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Annabella Rosa, Joe Allanoff, Antonio Ortiz (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Georgia Ximenes Lifsher (last seen in "Hustlers"), Rao Rampilla (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Richard Lublin, Jordan Baker, Macc Plaise, Menachem Rosenblatt, Andy Prosky (last seen in "Up Close & Personal"), Peter Brensinger, Andre B. Blake (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Tia Dionne Hodge, Sarah Wilson.

RATING: 5 out of 10 toothbrush holders 

News of the World

Year 15, Day 138 - 5/18/23 - Movie #4,439

BEFORE: Back with another film in my "teens in trouble" series.  It looks like this one's going to fit in with this week's theme rather well...

Fred Hechinger carries over again from "Eighth Grade".  In the last two films, he managed to play the most annoying character - and in "Eighth Grade" there were SO MANY of those.  So let's see where he's cast today...

THE PLOT: A Civil War veteran agrees to deliver a girl taken by the Kiowa people years ago to her aunt and uncle against her will.  They travel hundreds of miles and face grave dangers as they search for a place that either can call home. 

AFTER: I've been trying to get to this one for a while now - I keep thinking of this one as "that new Tom Hanks film I've been trying to watch", but it's not new at all any more, is it?  It's three years old, and most everyone seems to have forgotten about it.  Hanks has been in like FIVE films since then, including "Elvis" and "A Man Called Otto" and now I guess those films are going to become "that new Tom Hanks film I've been trying to watch".  I guess this happens because they tend to put only ONE mega-star in a movie, and then the rest of the film gets filled with scrubs who won't outshine the lead - so that just makes my linking task that much more difficult, doesn't it?  I really wish I could link to "Elvis" after this one, but then I won't make it to my Memorial Day film on time, believe me, I tried to make that work and it just won't. 

So I put this one on a DVD with "Hostiles" a few weeks ago, and if people have mostly forgotten about "News of the World" from 2020, you'd better believe they've really forgotten about "Hostiles" from 2017.  The world of movies is kind of divided into pre-pandemic and post-pandemic releases, and I can confirm that DURING the pandemic, it was a lot easier to get a film made eligible for an Oscar - I did it for an animated short, and there were all kinds of exceptions to the rules.  You could, for example, screen a film in a movie theater for a week in one of SIX cities, where previously you only had one option, Los Angeles.  And then since a lot of movie theaters were closed, instead of a letter from a movie theater manager saying that the theater DID screen your film for a week, the letter only had to say that they WOULD HAVE screened it for a week, had the theater been open, which it wasn't.  Well, damn, that's easy, you only had to know somebody who runs a theater and can sign a basic letter!  This must be how "News of the World" got nominated for four Oscars...

Notably, though, it did NOT get nominated for Best Picture, and I now agree, that was the right call.  This film is WAY too boring - sure, "Dances With Wolves" and "Unforgiven" were sweeping Westerns, but a lot HAPPENED in those movies.  This is just Tom Hanks crossing Texas with a young girl in tow, and...that's it.  All the thrills and excitement of a long car trip, just transposed back to a covered wagon in 1870 or so.  Are we there yet?  Are we anywhere?  Sure, there's a sandstorm, there's the threat of Native Americans (that never turns into a threat) and the threat of terrible white men who want to buy the girl.  There's also an encounter in Erath County, which apparently is located in the racist part of Texas (formerly known as "Texas") and it's run by a man who has expelled all the non-white residents removed (one way or another) and doesn't much care for the news stories that Captain Kidd reads to his residents.  This man is probably a stand-in for Rupert Murdoch, I'm guessing.  

Yes, the main character here is a former newspaper printer who travels from town to town and now reads the newspapers in front of crowds.  I guess maybe there were a lot of people in Texas back then who were illiterate (there probably still are) and they needed somebody to read and explain the events of the day (or more likely, two weeks ago) from New York and London and other places.  You can kind of see how this job (assuming it existed) kind of evolved into the modern day news anchor, which we have in every major city in America, reading the same national news though - keeps a lot of people employed, but how efficient is that?  A few years down the road, a news-reader would probably travel in a covered wagon with a weather woman and a sports guy would follow behind on horseback.  This would only last for a short time until the telegraph got invented, though. 

Here's the problem, though - I kept falling asleep during this film!  It just didn't hold my attention, and I kept dropping off at the same spot, waking up 10 minutes later, rewinding back to that spot, trying again, falling asleep again...  Now, maybe part of the problem was that I had put the film on DVD, and that meant that the subtitles didn't work, and with my bad ear I've become more dependent on the subtitles - so without them, it's harder for me to follow along.  And yeah, I've been working long shifts all week, so my body is definitely tired, that could have been part of the problem also.  But usually when this happens at least part of the blame has to be placed on the movie.  Not much happening in a film over a long-ass period of time is a killer, and naturally my attention is going to drift.  

Like the main character here, I have driven across Texas - twice, in fact, on BBQ Crawls in 2017 and 2018.  The first time, we started in Dallas and after three days drove off to Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville, but the second time we started in Dallas and then went south to Austin, San Antonio, then over to Houston and ended up in New Orleans.  Yeah, Texas is big, and there's still a lot of big, empty space there. But my wife and I had a clear advantage over the travelers in the 1800's, and it's a glorious thing called truck stops.  The big chains down there were Love's and Buc-ee's, and I think we preferred the latter, but on those big drives, either one will do.  There was one Buc-ee's outside Houston that was a godsend, it seemed to go on for miles inside, and outside you could get your propane tanks refilled and there was a welcoming display of bacon grease for sale - because Texas.  Inside there was also a wall of beef jerky, tons of candy, t-shirts, hats, decorative items for the home, and fresh BBQ sandwiches.  The BBQ portion of the crawl was carefully curated, I took care in choosing which restaurant we would patronize in each city, but I wasn't above grabbing a brisket sandwich at a rest stop, I must admit. 

Also starring Tom Hanks (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Helena Zengel, Ray McKinnon (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "Geostorm"), Elizabeth Marvel (last seen in "Swallow"), Michael Angelo Covino, Gabriel Ebert (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Clint Obenchain (last seen in "The Kid"), Thomas Francis Murphy (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Neil Sandilands, Winsome Brown, Bill Camp (last seen in "Reservation Road"), Chukwudi Iwuji (last seen in "Barry"), Christopher Hagen (last seen in "Hostlies"), Tom Astor, Andy Kastelic, Brenden Wedner, Bob Knowlton. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 skinned buffaloes

Eighth Grade

Year 15, Day 137 - 5/17/23 - Movie #4,438

BEFORE: Working every day this week, seven days in a row.  It's thesis time at the college, so every day one class or another has booked the theater space, and the shifts are all LONG and each one is followed by a reception afterwards.  So that's four late nights, I have to stay after each reception and make sure the porters clean up after.  I'm halfway through the cycle, and I'm just exhausted.  Took a quick nap when I got home from work today, but that wasn't much help. Three more days of "Hell Week", I think I can maybe allow myself one day off and still make it to my Memorial Day film on time, but I'm not sure if I'm going to need that. 

Fred Hechinger carries over from "The Pale Blue Eye". 

THE PLOT: An introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school. 

AFTER: Oh, God, this movie was just awful, and I try to not say that very often.  Look, I get that being a teen girl is awkward, but just SO many cringe-worthy moments here, WAY more than in "Moxie", even with all its rampant sexism and sexual assault and women being treated unfairly and inequitably.  This one just made me want to curl up in a ball and rock back and forth - not that it brought back bad memories of junior high, because I was never an eighth grade girl, but everything here was designed to make the viewer so uncomfortable, like as in "Why would anyone want to WATCH this?"  Was that the whole point or just a random side effect? 

Anyway, there's clearly an unintended theme for this week, what with all the self-sabotaging seen in the lives of the women in "Lovely & Amazing", that carries over here.  Self-doubt, non-self-awareness and so much self-sabotaging, but Kayla's at that tough age where she realizes that nothing is going her way, but still she persists in making YouTube videos about her life, and acting as if everything's OK, but it's just not.  She either needs to find a way to improve her life, or find a better way of dealing with how bad life can be, or seem.  

Remember that trend a few years back, when people were making videos on the theme of "It gets better"?  Those were for the LGBTQ crowd specifically, like maybe you're going through some shitty times now, people are mean and ignorant but eventually you're going to find your tribe or at least a few better people, or you'll learn better ways of dealing with people's ignorances and prejudices, so things are bound to get better.  Maybe.  Well, here comes this movie with a different message for today's teen girls, and that message seems to be "Things aren't going to get any better, so you'd better accept that, and maybe lower your expectations, because other people suck and they're going to continue to suck, so, really, change is going to have to come from within. Sorry."

(Also, your mother's not coming back, your father's going to continue to annoy you and the cute boy's not interested in you at all, so you'd better learn to have a relationship with the weird one.  Not that that's all bad, some of the best boyfriends and husbands started out as weird geeks, and if you think about it, they may treat you better, over time, because the cute boys, the ones who can have any girl they want, won't appreciate you at all.  Does that make you feel any better? Nah, probably not.)

This is listed as a "comedy-drama" but I didn't really find anything funny in it.  At least it's right in pointing out that making video blogs is really self-serving, and as a coping mechanism for your problems, that process is not really going to help, not in any way. Try a movie blog, I find that helps with some of my stress and anxiety, any time I'm in a bad mood, I can just come here and type up a negative review - I still have my problems, but I do get rid of some of the anger by pointing out how awful a movie was.  Same goes for doom-scrolling on Snapchat or Instagram, it will eat up a large portion of your time, but it's just not constructive in any way, and then you'll still have the same problems, but you'll be an hour older.  

But really, this is shaping up to be "teens in crisis" week - after the actress with all of the anxieties in "Lovely & Amazing", there was all the sexism and patriarchy that caused Vivian to start her feminist club in "Moxie", and then there was the thing that happened to Mattie Landor in "The Pale Blue Eye", and then something similar happens to Kayla here, when an older boy offers to drive her home after she met with the high-school kids at the mall.  This looks like a thread that will continue for another two or three days, depending. I didn't mean to set this up as a recurring theme, it just happened. C'est la vie.

This was filmed in and around Suffern, New York - I know a bit about the area because my ex-boss used to have a storage unit there, and we'd sometimes drive up to drop more things off there.  The mall scenes were filmed in White Plains and West Nyack - I know the Nyack area, too because I used to have an aunt and uncle that lived up there.  There's supposed to be a great BBQ restaurant in Suffern, so I keep trying to get up to it, but it's fairly out of the way for us.  But mostly I'm done with this movie now, so thank God I never have to watch it again. 

Also starring Elsie Fisher (last heard in "The Addams Family"), Josh Hamilton (last heard in "Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool"), Emily Robinson (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Jake Ryan (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Daniel Zolghadri (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Imani Lewis, Luke Prael, Catherine Oliviere, Nora Mullins, Missy Yager (last seen in "Manchester by the Sea"), Shacha Temirov, Greg Crowe (last seen in "Freakonomics"), Thomas John O'Reilly, Frank Deal, J. Tucker Smith, Tiffany Grossfeld, Trinity Goscinsky-Lynch, Natalie Carter, Kevin R. Free, Deborah Unger (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Dina Pearlman (last seen in "Bad Education") and archive footage of Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 school shooting drills

The Pale Blue Eye

Year 15, Day 136 - 5/16/23 - Movie #4,437

BEFORE: Today's film is the Christian Bale movie that I skipped back in April - because it looked like it would perform a valuable service in May, connecting Mother's Day with Memorial Day.  Now, of course, it looks like there are other ways I could have done that, but this is the one I chose, so I'm going to roll with it. 

Hadley Robinson carries over from "Moxie". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Raven" (2012) (Movie #1,434)

THE PLOT: A world-weary detective is hired to investigate the murder of a West Point cadet.  Stymied by the cadets' code of silence, he enlists one of their own to help unravel the case - a young man the world would come to know as Edgar Allan Poe. 

AFTER: Of course, I have my favorite authors - if you tell me that there's a documentary about Kurt Vonnegut, you'd better believe I'm going to work that into the chain, ASAP. Same goes if you tell me there's a murder mystery with Edgar Allan Poe as a character. Where is that playing? If it's in a theater, here, please take my money. Wait, it's on Netflix? OK, how soon can I work it into my mix? Hence the initial programming of this film into the April Christian Bale-a-Thon, it nearly broke my (tell-tale) heart to have to delay this one a full month, just because it was going to be an essential link between Mother's Day and Memorial Day films. OK, I've waited three months to watch this, I can wait a little longer...

Well, after all that wait, maybe my expectations were a bit too high, because I sure wish this were a better film. It's too long, for starters, and then if you calculate velocity over time you'll probably realize that it moves too slowly as well. There are MAYBE five key reveals of information along the way, and I think I'm actually over-estimating, but that means that these five key pieces to the puzzle get doled out every 25 minutes or so, and that's just not soon enough.  I probably dozed off at least twice, and that's just not a good sign.

BUT, and there's a pretty big BUT here, those five bits of information, those five reveals, are big big BIG doozers. Without giving anything away, I think I can safely say that the last one is the biggest, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a reveal like that in any murder mystery before. It's not quite a "Fight Club" or "Sixth Sense" level reveal, but it does change everything that went before.  This might be worth watching a second time after you hit that ending, just to see if you missed anything along the way. But I will say no more about it. This is still a spoiler-free zone, but I just read something the other day about how the current generation of movie fans, at least some of them, don't mind reading about the ending of a film online before seeing it. Me, not so much. First time through a movie should always be as cold and clueless as possible. Curse the people who edit trailers and just can't resist giving away the best bits...

This mystery unfolds in 1830, as Augustus Landor, a retired detective who happens to live in a cabin near West Point Military Academy in upstate New York, is called to the U.S.M.A. to investigate a murder - as an impartial expert, apparently the Academy doesn't have anyone on staff accustomed to investigating such matters from a forensic P.O.V. A cadet was found hanged, with his heart removed from his body, that and the other evidence would indicate that he did not commit suicide, but was most likely murdered. Landor finds that there is something of a code of silence among the military men, they're not likely to talk to an outsider, so he enlists another cadet, one with an interest in poetry and mysteries, a youngish master E.A. Poe.

The only clue is a scrap of paper in the dead man's hand, but then a cow and sheep are found in butchered nearby, also with their hearts removed, and then, sure enough, another cadet goes missing and is found hanged as well. The investigation soon focuses on Dr. Marquis, who performed the autopsy on the first killed cadet, and his adult son and daughter, Lea, who suffers from frequent seizures. Poe becomes enamored of Lea and quite possibly the movie here is suggesting that she might represent the inspiration of the "Lenore" mentioned in his poem "The Raven".  

Ah, I really liked where this one seemed to be going - because Poe is generally regarded as the creator of the first detective story ("The Goldbug") and the first murder mystery ("Murders in the Rue Morgue") and you've got to wonder what first inspired him to write these, like how does one not just write a story, but also invent an entire GENRE of story at the same time? Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are to sci-fi what Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley are to monster stories, and that's what Poe was to mystery fiction. What events in his life did he draw from to create the mystery genre? This film is as good a guess as any, I suppose - but I think I'm overdue for a re-watch of the 2012 film "The Raven", I only watched it once, and that was 10 years ago, so I've forgotten everything about it by now. 

There's another thematic element that carries over from "Moxie", believe it or not, but again, no spoilers here.  Let's just say it's got something to do with Landor's absent daughter. I was worried I was jumping around too much in time and theme, but some things are universal, including man's inhumanity to man. Umm, to woman, I should say. Yeah, stick with this one to the end if you can, though it drags quite a bit and there are more than a few red herrings along the way, the end just might be worth the trouble of getting there.  But, as always, your mileage may vary. 

Also starring Christian Bale (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Harry Melling (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Timothy Spall (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Toby Jones (last seen in "The Wonder"), Harry Lawtey, Fred Hechinger (last seen in "Human Capital"), Joey Brooks (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Charlotte Gainsbourg (last seen in "Norman"), Lucy Boynton (last seen in "Locked Down"), Robert Duvall (last seen in "Hustle"), Gillian Anderson (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Steven Maier, Brennan Keel Cook, Orlagh Cassidy (last seen in "Shirley"), Scott Anderson (last seen in "The Informer"), Gideon Glick (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Jack Irving, Matt Helm (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Mathias Goldstein, Charlie Tahan (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Bill Cwikowski (last seen in "Manhunter"), Agnes Herrmann (last seen in "The Road"), Nicolas Bellavia, with a cameo from John Fetterman.

RATING: 7 out of 10 books about the occult

Moxie

Year 15, Day 135 - 5/15/23 - Movie #4,436

BEFORE: This is Mother's Day film #3 of my little mini-chain devoted to mothers.  This plotline seems to be about the relationship between a teen girl and her mother?  That's the plan, anyway - the previous two films were all about mothers and daughters so hopefully thematically these all go together somehow. Clark Gregg carries over from "Lovely & Amazing" and now I have to start planning for Father's Day, real soon at least. 

THE PLOT: Inspired by her mom's rebellious past and a confident new friend, a shy 16-year-old publishes an anonymous zine calling out sexism at her school.

AFTER: OK, there's some mother-daughter relationship stuff here, but it's not really the focal point of the film - so glad I didn't program this film exactly on Mother's Day, then. I think I played it just right by landing "Lovely & Amazing" right on the holiday.  But also, it's May, and this is my back-up month for programming films about school, if I can't fit them into a September line-up.  A school-based film can go anywhere, of course, but September is "back-to-school" month and May is graduation month, so if I can get a (non-romance) film set in a school into one of those months, I'm happy and satisfied. Whatever keeps the chain alive, of course, but also whatever fits with the calendar is appreciated, too.  I have another school-set drama scheduled for two days from now, so there you go, it's a loose theme for the week.

This is really a film about the struggle for gender equality, and how long it's taking to get there.  High school, of course, is a microcosm for the nation, or the world, so the negative attitudes that impede the progress of anything can probably be found there.  Until there are girls playing on the football team in addition to male cheerleaders, well, we're not THERE yet.  But first, maybe we have to determine if THERE is where we want to be - is it?  I suspect that women may find that they want the things that the boys have, and then when they get them, they may not want those things anymore.  And that's OK, it's really the RIGHT to have the same rights that everyone deserves, even if they don't take advantage of those rights, they may be nice to just have.  

In the little, we sometimes see evidence of the big - so if there's inequality in something like the high-school dress code, or if male football stars are regarded higher by the faculty than, say, female soccer stars, well, then there's an inequality.  The English lit teacher in this film gets called out by his students for not speaking up for equality, but as a white male he doesn't feel comfortable in weighing in on issues that affect women and minorities.  But then, of course, he risks being accused of "not doing enough", or really anything.  Well, if you're silent than you're really only helping the people in power, and these days it's "Down with the patriarchy!"  I recently had a job interview for a company that has stated that diversity is one of their main goals, and now I've almost convinced myself that I may not get the job because I'm a white male.  Why couldn't I, for example, be a white male who champions the cause of diversity?  Unfortunately that's something of a contradiction, because diversity would be more easily obtained by just giving the job to someone else. I may agree that white men should maybe be a little less outspoken for a while, but then how do I say this publicly without mansplaining it? 

Right, the movie.  Vivian is in the 11th grade, and she and her bestie Claudia get a little grossed out every year when the male students at Rockport High release their "superlatives" list online - they rank the girls as "Best Ass" or "Most Bangable" and everyone is aware of the list and how sexist it is, but nobody DOES anything about it.  Not until Vivian creates her own underground comic 'zine called "Moxie" and calls out the boys at school for being sexist a-holes. She leaves copies in the girls bathroom and before long everyone is talking about the 'zine and speculating over who published it.  Lucy, the new girl in school is the most likely candidate, because she's already been harassed by Mitchell, the captain of the football team. Of course. 

Lucy takes her problems to the school principal, who refuses to sign off on her "harassment" charge, because that's a loaded term that would require her to fill out a form.  Instead, the principal takes Lucy to the band director and suggests that she join the marching band to channel her energy more positively.  OK, so the principal doesn't want to tarnish the school's reputation or that of the star quarterback, I get that - but RIGHT THERE Is the answer for how to best deal with the problem, simply pursue the charge of harassment, and involve the media or the courts if necessary.  The principal has accidentally tipped her hand and revealed the thing that she's most afraid of, so that's the course the girls should pursue.  Comic magazines and stickers on lockers will only get you so far, a court ruling is, like, legally binding.

The girls register "Moxie" as an official school club, one with feminist goals, and really, this is fine, I think we need more of this sort of thing in our country's schools, no question.  But the meetings are disjointed, and along with issues over the unfairness of the dress code, and the complaints over the sports scholarship practically HANDED over to the male football star over the female soccer star, some of the club's concerns seem, well, rather petty, like black girls being sensitive about white people touching their hair.  I'm sure this is an important issue to some people, but in terms of priority, maybe we should start by dealing with unwanted sexual assault and rampant sexism, and work our way down to unauthorized hair touching?  Just a thought.

Vivian learns that her mother was a bit of a rebel herself, and was involved with student protests back in her day - perhaps these were important protests regarding equal rights, or against a war, or who knows, maybe it was like my junior high, where we just protested to get better school lunches.  And just another NITPICK POINT here, just because you listened to Bikini Kill music back in the day, that doesn't make you a rebel, just a fan of a certain kind of music.  The film seems to equate the two things, which is kind of a misnomer, because not all punk music fans are radical protesters, and vice versa.  I'm sure there are more intellectual protesters out there who maybe prefer classical music, or jazz - the two things don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, that's all I'm saying. 

Vivian gets a bit caught up in the feminist movement and the protest culture, which I think did happen for a number of people during the pandemic, when the Black Lives Matter movement came along, I think a large part of it was that people were out of work, tired of being confined at home, and just looking for an outlet to vent their frustrations.  Not that the cause wasn't valid, it certainly was, but there were a lot more people with time on their hands than usual, again, just saying.  For Vivian her interest in being part of a movement comes along just when her mother is starting to date again, and when Mom's new boyfriend comes over for dinner, he can't do anything right by Vivian, who's currently dreaming up ways to take down the patriarchy.  At the same time, her newfound radical nature is calling her first romantic relationship with classmate Seth into question.  

Someone leaves an anonymous note for the Moxie founder and reveals that she was raped by the football star, and this leads Vivian and her group to stage a full walk-out protest.  Well, they can punish five people for skipping school, but they can't really punish five hundred, can they?  Not if that's half the school - so I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere, if you've got to make a point, you've just got to go big.  Unfortunately, the movie never really follows up with what happened to the football star, did he lose his scholarship after the rape allegation?  Did it then go to the second-place finisher?  This seems like a glaring omission, that's there's no follow-up with any successful effects of the walk-out protest.  Well, either way, Vivian finally has something to write about in her college essays, so there's that. Starting a radical feminist high-school club is bound to go a long way these days, at least with certain colleges. 

It's also a great idea to have diversity in casting, there are people of all races, colors and gender identities in this cast.  That's wonderful, but it's also a bit of a problem because they cast a wide net and found a number actors without a lot of acting experience.  Sure, everybody's got to start somewhere, but most movies also tend to be a bit better when they feature people who can convincingly deliver lines without calling attention to the fact that they are, in fact, reading lines. Again, just saying. 

Also starring Hadley Robinson (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Lauren Tsai, Alycia Pascual-Pena, Nico Hiraga (last seen in "Booksmart"), Sabrina Haskett, Patrick Schwarzenegger (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), Sydney Park, Anjelika Washington, Emily Hopper, Josie Totah (last seen in "Other People"), Amy Poehler (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Ike Barinholtz (last seen in "The Oath"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Josephine Langford, Joshua Darnell Walker, Charlie Hall, Avery Bagenstos, Eon Song, Ron Perkins (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Aaron Holliday, Greg Poehler (last seen in "Wine Country"), Helen Slayton-Hughes (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Kevin Dorff (also last seen in "Other People"), Corey Fogelmanis (last seen in "Ma"), Cooper Mothersbaugh, Gracie Lawrence (last seen in "The Sitter"), Ji-Young Yoo, Brady Reiter, Raven Kimoy, Doug Smith, David Schwartz, Sydney Bell, Kelly Vanryan, Earl John Verzo.

RATING: 5 out of 10 tank tops

Lovely & Amazing

Year 15, Day 134 - 5/14/23 - Movie #4,435

BEFORE: This is Mother's Day film #2 of 3, and the same actress who played the mother in yesterday's film, Brenda Blethyn, carries over from "Secrets & Lies" to play the mother in THIS film. Got it?  This film had been kicking around my romance list for a while, but since it's essentially about the relationship between a mother and her three daughters, it's been repurposed - even if there's some romance or relationship stuff in here, let's treat this as a Mother's Day film, OK?

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Walking and Talking" (Movie #4,034)

THE PLOT: Self-esteem and insecurity are at the heart of this comedy about the relationship between a mother and her three confused daughters. 

AFTER: This is a follow-up to "Walking and Talking" because it was made by the same director, five years later, and also Catherine Keener is in both films.  Nicole Holofcener is the director of both of those films, and I just re-read my review of her 1996 film, in which I declared that there wasn't much THERE there, and that's why I didn't remember much about maybe watching that film before, way back in 1997.  It didn't register then, and it didn't really register with me in February 2022, either. Now here's another film by the same director, and there's the same problem - what the HELL is this movie about, in the end?  A whole lot of nothing happens, so it makes me wonder how much nothing can happen in a movie before it counts as something?  Does it ever count as something? 

My verdict is "NO", because the narrative rules just weren't followed in either film - movies work better when they have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and in both cases we the audience are just dropped into the main characters' lives for a particular period of time, stuff happens, people get together, people break up, people get sick, people yell at each other, people go to parties, people go swimming, and there's just no freakin' POINT to it all, nobody learns anything or becomes a better person, there's no punchline, no resolution, I'd say this was perhaps a very early example of mumblecore based on how rambling it all is, but to confirm that, I'd really have to understand what mumblecore means, and I don't think anybody really does, it's kind of like "woke" or "boho chic" or "hygge" - you kind of know it when you feel it, but you can't really pin it down. 

I had to cheat and look at the synopsis on Wikipedia to see what the point was here - all of the women allow their personal insecurities to affect their lives.  Mother Jane wants to look younger and thinner, and so decides to get liposuction, or maybe she does this just so she can flirt with the doctor, it's tough to say. (Honey, he's seen thousands of women naked, he probably doesn't even notice any more.). Oldest daughter Michelle, after years of failing to sell any of her arts and crafts, she takes a job in a one-hour photo store, then has a fling with her high-school age boss.

Might as well, since her husband's already having an affair with her best friend.  Middle daughter Elizabeth is an actress, who finally got a small role in a film that's about to be released, but also breaks up with her boyfriend because he doesn't understand the anxieties of being judged on her personal appearances, then she hooks up with an actor who's more eager to critique her looks.  Yeah, that'll fix those self-esteem issues.  Also, she keeps bringing home stray dogs without realizing she's basically stealing them from their own yards.

Finally, there's adopted daughter Annie, who's African-American and the daughter of a crack addict, and she has trouble fitting in, and trouble with her weight, and issues over race arise when she decides she wants to get her hair straightened.  Well, having a white adopted mother and two white adopted sisters might not be the best thing for Annie, not unless she really wants to grow up with as many issues as they have, if not more.  Can you tell me for sure that she wasn't better off being raised by a drug addict?

This one hits hard for me, though, because the mother has complications after her liposuction surgery, and spends the second half of the film in the hospital.  My own mother got admitted to the hospital yesterday, for the same issue she had six months ago, and six months before that, and six months before that.  She's got a heart condition and fluid builds up around her heart, so this happened last Thanksgiving, she started swelling up and had to go to the hospital, they need to reduce the fluid build-up, and what usually goes along with this are fatigue, swelling in the extremities and a rapid heartbeat.  These are the signs of congestive heart failure, so this is why she's in an assisted living facility, her heartbeat and these other symptoms need to be monitored every day, and every six months it's back into the hospital, then rehab for a few weeks before she's able to go back to her apartment.  And yeah, one of these trips to the hospital is bound to be the last time, but when that will be, who can say?  

Anyway, my point about this film is that all these random happenings in the lives of these women just isn't enough for me, I've got to feel afterwards that we all LEARNED something as humans, is that too much to ask?  What does this all add up to, in the end?  What's it all about, what does it mean?  Women are insecure, women are self-sabotaging, women are desperate for love and acceptance, whether that's from men or film critics or stray dogs.  Is that the point?  Why can't women feel secure and confident and be enough for themselves?  I don't know the answer here.  But hey, Happy Mother's Day, we salute all of the biological mothers and the adoptive mothers and the neurotic mothers and the non-mothers with pets.

Also starring Catherine Keener (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Emily Mortimer (last seen in "Scream 3"), Raven Goodwin (last seen in "Snatched"), Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "The Guilty"), Michael Nouri (last seen in "The Proposal"), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (last seen in "King Richard"), Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "The Mountain Between Us"), James LeGros (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Clark Gregg (last seen in "Trust Me"), Spencer Garrett (last seen in "Blonde"), Dreya Weber (last seen in "This Is It"), Romy Rosemont (last seen in "The Bachelor"),  Ashlynn Rose, Christine Mourad (last seen in "Friends with Money"), Mariah O'Brien, Jeanne McCarthy, Evan Mirand, Ivy Strohmaier (last seen in "Enough Said"), Branden Williams (last seen in "The Sweetest Thing"), Nate Richert, Lee Garlington (last seen in "The Little Things"), Greer Goodman, Elayn J. Taylor (last seen in "Something's Gotta Give"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 chicken nuggets