The Lady in the Van

Year 15, Day 252 - 9/9/23 - Movie #4,542

BEFORE: Claire Foy carries over again from "Women Talking". Since this one's in the middle of two other films with Claire Foy, I could have dropped this one, but I'm choosing not to.  I still have to drop two more films from the chain before the end of the year, but, well, not this one.  I've got my eye on two other films that seem like they'll cause less damage if I drop them.  But, today's film was some potential connective tissue for two romance films, one with Maggie Smith in it - I suppose I'll find another way, as this film seems to have very little to do with romance.  

We were planning to maybe drive out to the Long Island Fair today, it's something we did in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic, and we had a relatively good time - there was pig racing and high-dive acts and a brass band and such, plus some fair foods, which I always enjoy.  But my wife didn't want to go if it was too hot today, which it nearly was - when it seemed fairly cool I checked the schedule, and the events seemed really lame. No pig racing, no high diving, just some glass blowing, corn husking and a horse riding demonstration. Eh, that's all right, we took a pass.  Instead we went to a street fair here in Queens, which was also a bit of a bust, we went last year and I had some good Spanish food, but this time everything was overpriced, they wanted $20 for a turkey leg, and the same for just some Spanish pork and rice.  Umm, too rich for my blood, so we just went to a diner nearby, had the place to ourselves and just had dinner out.  Well, at least we got out of the house, and it didn't rain.  

THE PLOT: A writer forms an unexpected bond with a transient woman living in her van that's parked in his driveway. 

AFTER: Well, it's the last film in Brit Week, and I was kind of wondering why Jim Broadbent didn't turn up in "Breathe", it kind of felt like his sort of movie, but I guess they had Hugh Bonneville instead, and you just can't have them both in the same movie.  Not to worry, Broadbent turned up today at last.  

Honestly, I don't like how so many movies recently have been about people getting old or getting sick, with my mother in rehab after hospital after moving, it just feels like bad karma. Much of today's film is devoted to writer Alan Bennett visiting his mother, taking care of her and then arranging for her to be put in a nursing home, and then he continues to visit her, even when she's in a coma.  It's just hitting too close to home, and makes me want to just go watch a sci-fi or a superhero movie so I don't have to deal with it.  But I'm going to tough it out - of course, the main focus of the film is Bennett's relationship with the houseless older woman who lived in a van in his driveway for fifteen years.  

This wasn't his intention when he purchased the house, to allow an elderly lady to sleep in a van in his driveway, (or "carpark" or whatever they call it in the UK) but he kind of took one for the team because Miss Shepherd had parked her van in front of other houses on his block in Camden, but either the neighbors forced her out, or she left because someone in the house was playing music too loud, or she received some kind of "divine guidance" to move her van to a new location.  There's some debate here, I suppose, about her mental faculties, whether she truly believes she's getting messages from God or if this is just something she says to make things change in her favor.  

As time goes on, Bennett learns more bits of information about her past, how she was an ambulance driver in The War (WWI, I assume) and then spent time as a nun (twice?) and also was an accomplished concert piano player - and then through flashbacks we learn that maybe she got in trouble when her worlds collided, since when she was a nun she continued to practice piano, and this just wasn't allowed in the convent for some reason.  Learning her back-story allows him to regard her as a person who had some hard times and bad turns in her life, so this makes it very difficult for him to try and have her removed from his property.  I don't think that the Brits have something equivalent to "squatter's rights", the more likely problem is that they're all too damn polite to call the police and have the homeless person taken away, it just wouldn't be proper.  And so he endures the bad smells coming from the van, and from Miss Shepherd herself, and apparently since he let her use his lavatory once, she's got some kind of legal right to be there, or something. 

Anyway, he's bound to get a good story out of it, someday.  Gad, I really HATE these films where a writer is a main character, and he's working on (or planning to work on) a story about this exact experience, which is destined to turn into THIS movie that YOU are watching now.  It's all just a bit too meta and self-referential, and the writer character is therefore AWARE that he's in a movie now, and ugh, that's too self-indulgent and a bit too twee.  Just me?  What's worse here is that the actor plays TWO versions of Alan Bennett at the same time, the one who writes and the one who leaves the house and lives, and since that doesn't really happen, he's not two people, I don't think he should be portrayed as two people.  If this is the only way that a writer or director can portray inner conflict, by splitting a character into two characters, well, maybe it's time to rethink those filmmaking abilities - it's a very cheap (as in simple, not inexpensive) way to get this done.  You might as well just put a tiny angel on one shoulder and a tiny devil on the other, like they used to do in the movies of the 1950's. 

What does feel fresher is the fact that the central character is gay, and he just happens to be gay, it's not the main focus of the story.  You couldn't do that 20 or 30 years ago without THAT issue taking over the plot, but here it's just a minor detail, that the people who come to see him at night are male, big deal, that's just the way it is, and Miss Shepherd doesn't really understand it (or does she?) because she refers to the young men as "Communists".  But yeah, having a smelly old homeless lady living in your driveway probably doesn't help your dating game.  

It's clear this wouldn't happen this way in America, now that every city and town is filled with Karens, if your typical suburban American mother saw a homeless person camped out near where her children live or play, she'd be on the phone to the police so fast, at best to have social services relocate them, but more likely to have that person arrested for not owning a house.  We have this philosophy called "NIMBY" which stands for "Not in My Backyard", meaning that it's OK to have homeless people, as long as they're somewhere else.  But no matter where you put them, they're going to be near somebody else - that doesn't matter to some people, though.  

Anyway, I digress.  Miss Shepherd actually goes through THREE different vans, and she paints them all yellow for some reason (I think I know why, but it's only a guess, and anyway, no spoilers) and from time to time, an older man comes by and taunts her from outside the van (this is later explained, but again, no spoilers).  Over the course of the film, we learn more about the incidents from her past that still trouble her, and also eventually, the social workers come by and check on her and occasionally take her to the "day center" for a proper bath and some time indoors.  Eventually, what happens to Miss Shepherd is what will happen to all of us, but it's treated here in almost comic fashion, my wife was watching the 2nd half of the film with me and she said it seemed almost like a Monty Python sketch at the end.  Well, sure, the writer took some creative license with death here, but also the real writer, Alan Bennett, was once part of a comedy troupe called "Beyond the Fringe" with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, and from what I understand, their skits greatly influenced those of Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

Also starring Maggie Smith (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Clare Hammond, Roger Allam (last heard in "The Book Thief"), Deborah Findlay (last seen in "Hampstead"), Gwen Taylor, Frances de la Tour (last seen in "Enola Holmes"), David Calder (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Cecilia Noble, Nicholas Burns (last seen in "Emma."), Pandora Colin (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Clive Merrison (last seen in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), Samuel Barnett (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Samuel Anderson (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Red Joan"), Dominic Cooper (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), James Corden (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Sacha Dhawan (last seen in "After Earth"), Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker (last seen in "1917"), Russell Tovey (last seen in "Effie Gray"), George Fenton, Richard Griffiths, Giles Cooper, Tom Klenerman, George Taylor (last seen in "Everest"), Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Selina Cadell (last seen in "Match Point"), Dermot Crowley (last seen in "The Wonder"), Michelle Reid, Sam Spruell (last seen in "The Informer"), Rosalind Knight (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), Elliot Levey (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Sarah Lieberson, Linda Broughton, Marion Bailey (last seen in "Allied"), Lorna Brown (last seen in "The Batman"), June Watson (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Sam McArdle, Tony Van Silva (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Geoffrey Streatfeild (last seen in "Rush" (2013)), with a cameo from Alan Bennett and archive footage of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "Blinded by the Light")

RATING: 6 out of 10 plastic bags

Women Talking

Year 15, Day 251 - 9/8/23 - Movie #4,541

BEFORE: Another day, another movie watched, another screening event managed. Yesterday was a special screening of two episodes of a new Hulu show called "Never Let Him Go", I guess the first two episodes are free, then you have to pay for the rest.  That's a classic scam to get you to sign up for their streaming service, just to find out what happened to the missing teen.  Watch out for that, umm, unless you already have a Hulu subscription.  And our house staff had to deal with a very fussy caterer who acted like HE was running the event, not us, I think he just liked to boss people around.  We had to move a whole bunch of sodas and waters up from the basement, then he decided that maybe half of the sodas and waters should stay in the fridge, so we had to lug them back down.  Then, guess what, we had to carry them up the stairs again when they started running out.  By the time I got home, I was exhausted - I just wanted to grab a bowl of coffee mocha chip ice cream and settle down to watch a relaxing movie.  Unfortunately, the next movie on my list was THIS one.  

Claire Foy carries over from "Breathe". I also worked at a screening of this film, months ago - I think it played in the Tuesday night adult education film appreciation class, but you know, my memory's getting faulty, this could just have easily played at Tribeca or in another festival at the theater, who the hell remembers?  I just remember I had to manage the screening and I couldn't watch it - not that I even really wanted to.

THE PLOT: Do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling a brutal reality with their faith. 

AFTER: Yeah, I have a feeling I'm going to get in trouble tonight with my review - I can't really make fun of this movie without running afoul of the #meToo movement, or coming across as anti-feminist, which I am not, I do think equality issues are very important.  I also have a lot of  questions about the real event that inspired this movie, but I feel like this movie has a particular point of view ("Men are pigs", and I'm not disagreeing with that...) and if I ask any questions about the actions of the men depicted here, try to understand what happened, that maybe comes a little too close to justifying their actions, and I sure don't want to do that. 

Ugh, I'm going to try to tread lightly here, and hope for the best - I'm bound to offend someone or everyone with my comments, that's probably a given.  There is a reason, I think, why the film only shows the point of view of the women in this Mennonite community - their views and debates ARE important, of course, because we still have a long way to go to make up for thousands of years of oppression and society treating women like second-class citizens, or worse, as property.  So sure, let's make the whole film about women talking about what happened, and what they should do next, it just makes sense, but also to investigate the men's reasons for their actions is an obvious non-starter, and again, it comes a bit too close to explaining or justifying their actions, also off the table. 

And I'm not an expert on Mennonites, either - are they like the Amish?  I'm sure there's some fundamental difference, like one group can't use electricity or machinery, and the other can only use them on any day that isn't the Sabbath, or something like that?  Or are they more like Mormons, where the men can have multiple wives and they all wear magic underwear? (Look it up...). I'll have to investigate this further - but here's what we DO know.  In the real-world events that inspired this movie, some of the male members of a Mennonite sect in Bolivia gassed some of the women with tranquilizer gas meant to be used on cows, and raped them while they were unconscious.  Terrible actions, by any measure, and again, I have questions, but I'm not going to ask them here, because that wouldn't be proper.  (Like, did they TRY asking the women out to dinner and a movie?  Just wondering...oh, right, they can't watch movies.)

OK, so Mennonites are the ones who favor dressing plainly, living without certain elements of modern technology, and a hardcore belief in the Anabaptist teachings developed during the Radical Reformation of the 16th century.  Right, Amish Lite - less filling, tastes great.  And it seems there's an emphasis placed on hard work, family and a somewhat, umm, conservative attitude?  Also, marrying within one's religion, pacificism and an emphasis on "obeying Christ" as they interpret the words of the Bible, and Lord knows there are many different interpretations. 

The film concerns the women having a meeting to determine their next action, after the non-raping menfolk have gone to town to bail out the rapists, and the men have told the women to use these two days to forgive their rapists, and if they are unable to do so, they will not be allowed to enter the kingdom of Heaven when they die.  Funny thing, though, it doesn't seem like the rapists themselves are being told the same thing - like shouldn't the rapists have to do some penance and maybe apologize, or do they still get to enter Heaven, no matter what they do?  Seems like an obvious double standard here, but since the men get to make the rules, and the women don't know how to read or write, it seems pretty clear on which Mennonites are keeping the other Mennonites down.  

So the women meet to vote, should they stay and do nothing (pacificism, submissiveness) or should they stay and fight (umm, fight who, the rapists or the men bailing out the rapists?) or should they just leave?  Don't worry, if you miss any of the finer points of their argument, they're going to repeat them a few times, and go around and around a few more before the movie is over.  It's very tedious, in addition to the subject matter being a real bummer.  BUT since it's a true story, it probably should be told, because this sort of thing really should not be allowed to go unchecked.  

If I've got a NITPICK POINT, it's that the 2010 census just, umm, well, it didn't work this way - for a long time, the census, at least in the U.S., has been a form that you fill out, or in underserved neighborhoods, the census taker may come and knock on your door.  But I'm fairly sure that a car doesn't drive up, blasting "Daydream Believer" out of some speakers and an unseen man demands that everyone come out of the farmhouses and stand around to be counted. Nope, it just doesn't work that way, sorry.  So why depict it like that?  

Spoiler alert, the women finally land on leave, after like a two-day debate.  Really?  It took them two days to get to the most obvious solution to their problems?  Just saying.  But then they have to decide what to do with their young sons, take them along or leave them behind.  Well, the problem with sons is that they grow up and become men, and so therefore before long, you're right back where you started, aren't you?  So yeah, probably best to leave the sons behind and start up an all-female Mennonite colony somewhere else.  Good luck with that.

I'm going to stop before I ask any more questions that might come too close to victim blaming, but I think maybe another root problem here - the main one being that men are pigs, of course - might have something to do with overly conservative women in a society with just a few too many rules in it?  Just a theory, I've got nothing to really back it up.  But "Law & Order: SVU" has kept telling me over the years that rape isn't about sex, it's about violence.  So you then maybe have to wonder what turned some of these very religious men into violent criminals, right?  But if I were to judge solely on entertainment value, I'm afraid there's just not much of that here. 

There is a transgender character here, a man who goes by "Melvin" but probably had another name at birth, and this person is allowed to take care of the children in the colony, but also they haven't spoken, at least not since the incident.  Maybe that's another NITPICK POINT, in a real Mennonite society I don't think they would be so accepting of a transgender man, someone who was once a woman.  Right?  

OK, I have to ask, because there's a stereotype about farmers and old jokes about people who live on farms - but why wouldn't the men just use the cow tranquilizers on the cows, and have sex with the cows?  Wouldn't that have been, umm, easier, with fewer repercussions?  Or would that have prevented them from someday entering the kingdom of heaven?  Am I way off base here?  

Also starring Rooney Mara (last seen in "Side Effects"), Jessie Buckley (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Judith Ivey (last seen in "Hello Again"), Ben Whishaw (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Frances McDormand (last seen in "City by the Sea"), Sheila McCarthy (last seen in "Pacific Heights"), Michelle McLeod (last seen in "My Spy"), Kate Hallett, Liv McNeil, August Winter, Kira Guloien, Shayla Brown, Emily Mitchell, Vivien Endicott Douglas, Lochlan Ray Miller, Nathaniel McParland, Eli Ham, Will Bowes, Marcus Craig.

RATING: 3 out of 10 lists of pros and cons

Breathe

Year 15, Day 250 - 9/7/23 - Movie #4,540

BEFORE: My movie schedule's booked up until 9/11, I can't take a day off - but then once I reach that benchmark, I'm going to have to space out the rest of the September films, but this was going to happen eventually, as mathematically there are just 60 films more to watch this year, and 115 days to do that.  So I'm looking at a lot of down-time, it's just a matter of when.  But sticking to the schedule allows me to send out an ever-rarer Birthday SHOUT-out to Dean-Charles Chapman, who carries over today from "Blinded by the Light".  If you're not familiar with his filmography, he had a prominent role in "1917" but I've also seen him in "The King", "The Commuter" and "Before I Go to Sleep".  Anyway, he turns 26 today, so just a few more years of playing high-schoolers to go...

I got out of the premiere screening of "A Haunting in Venice" late last night, because I had to lock up. So you can add that to the list of screenings where I've worked the event, but I DID NOT watch the film, too much to do in the front of house.  So my goal was to get out of there without learning the identity of the murderer, because I'm sure I'll watch the film sometime next year (2023 is all booked up) and as much as I love giving hints, I hate spoilers and I particularly hate having movies spoiled for me. No stars were in attendance because of the strike, but I did get to eat some leftover hors d'oeuvres for dinner and walked away with a few bags of popcorn, so that's a win-win. 

THE PLOT: The inspiring story of Robin and Diana Cavendish, an adventurous couple who refuse to give up in the face of a devastating disease.  

AFTER: Oh, great, I thought - another film about somebody with a terminal illness.  I've covered this already this year, from "The Fault in Our Stars" to "Paddleton", but this one had a bit of charm all its own, it wasn't as depressing as it COULD have been.  Again there's the "right to die" argument, as Robin Cavendish ended up deciding when his own life should end, but before that, he lived a lot longer than most people expected him to.  

The disease here is polio, which he contracted in Kenya in 1958 - and as he was paralyzed, his diagnosis at that time was, more or less, a death sentence.  Most people didn't "get better" after they got paralyzed by that disease and were unable to breathe on their own.  With the crude respirators available at that time, it was almost a given that at some point the machine would fail, or the patient wouldn't be able to swallow, or they'd just lose the will to go on with a machine breathing for them.  However over time and with the encouragement of his wife Diana, he did regain the ability to swallow, and eventually to talk, and she kept his spirits up so that he had to will to live and watch his son grow up.  

He eventually got around on a wheelchair, designed by friends with engineering experience, that had a respirator (ventilator?) attached, and while most patients with his condition were relegated to iron lungs, Robin was able to travel with the aid of a custom-designed van, which could also be flown in a cargo plane to other countries - so he was able to see some more of the world, and travel around as an advocate for the rights of the disabled.  And he teamed up with a medical organization to finance more of his special wheelchairs to allow more patients to travel around like he did.   While in Germany he learned that the hospitals for the disabled were run by the same government department as the prisons, and so he urged the doctors to treat their disabled patients in a different way, to encourage them to leave the hospital and be more mobile with the aid of technology.  

Other than his farewell party, that's really the whole story - it's bleak for a while, but then there's a turn for the better as Robin and his wife decide to make changes to improve their lives, and by extension the lives of many other people who shared his condition.  Good for him - Robin Cavendish's son, Jonathan, grew up to work in the film industry, and was a producer of this film in order to get his father's story told.  Good for him, too. 

This film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 - not exactly 6 years ago, but close enough - this year's edition of TIFF starts TODAY, Sept. 7, 2023.  

I've got no issues with Andrew Garfield here, but I'm reminded about how Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar two years before this film was released for portraying Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", and I maintain that I can't quite justify awarding an Oscar to someone for essentially sitting motionless in a chair and not speaking for half of the film.  Honestly, that feels like the opposite of acting, if you ask me - surely there must have been someone else eligible that year whose performance included moving around and, you know, speaking. 

This one hits a bit close to home because my mother's back in a rehab facility, after moving down to North Carolina to live with my sister.  She's got mobility issues, in addition to being 82 she had an entire lifetime of being overweight and not getting enough exercise.  Before the move she wasn't elevating her legs enough, and she got an infection, meaning that as soon as she got moved down there in a special van, she had to right into the hospital, and now she's trying to get healthy enough to move out.  I wish I could do more for her, but I could barely take care of her for an afternoon, I just don't have what it takes.  My sister has more time and might be able to finally instill some discipline in her, but it's an uphill battle at this point to keep her moving and active.  

Also starring Andrew Garfield (last seen in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Claire Foy (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Tom Hollander (last seen in "The Promise"), Hugh Bonneville (last seen in "The Gathering Storm"), Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Ed Speelers (last seen in "The House that Jack Built"), Steven O'Donnell (last seen in "Far and Away"), Miranda Raison (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Stephen Mangan (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), Jonathan Hyde (last seen in "Crimson Peak"), Amit Shah (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Penny Downie (last seen in "W.E."), Diana Rigg (last seen in "Last Night in Soho"), David Butler (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Andre Jacobs (ditto), John Herbert (ditto), Adam Neill (ditto), Camilla Rutherford (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Terry Norton, Charles Streeter (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Emily Bevan, Roger Ashton-Griffiths (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), David Wilmot (last seen in "The Wonder"), Patrick Godfrey (last seen in "The Duchess"), Lorraine Ashbourne (also carrying over from "Blinded by the Light"), Harry Attwell (last seen in "Genius"), Tom Turner (last seen in "Welcome to the Punch"), Marina Bye (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Tony Caprari (last seen in "Lord of War"), Sylvester Groth (last seen in "The 355")

RATING: 6 out of 10 bottles of vintage wine

Blinded by the Light

Year 15, Day 249 - 9/6/23 - Movie #4,539

BEFORE: Well, we had our little end-of-summer vacation to Greece, and now we're back in the U.K.  It's really another Brit-based week, I think 6 out of 7 films this week are set wholly or partially in the U.K. - I suppose that's bound to happen if I program by actor and I keep coming back to the same Brits again and again.  I thought I hadn't progammed anything for "back to school" topic, yet here we go, the chain took care of that for me, with a film centered on a teenager who, presumably, attends high school.  Well, that's all sorted, then, as the Brits say. 

Rob Brydon carries over from "The Trip to Greece".  But really, it should be "Get all these Brits cleared off my DVR" week...

THE PLOT: In England in 1987, a teenager from an Asian famiy learns to live his life, understand his family and find his own voice through the music of American rock star Bruce Springsteen. 

AFTER: Really, something tells me this storyline shouldn't have worked - what could the music of Bruce Springsteen, by all accounts a very successful, multi-millionaire and multi-platinum selling American recording artist, have sung about that would be relevant to the lifestyle of a teen Pakistani immigrant, living in the UK in 1987?  It seems like an odd combination of things, this character Javed doesn't seem to be in Bruce's demographic at all, not at first thought, anyway. 

Ah, but Bruce didn't start out as a rich, successful recording sensation, I suppose nobody does - he built his career on being from the working class, or at least singing about being from the working class, and the story of how he broke into the music industry and had broad appeal for that working class is part of his story - and there were working class people in the UK, too, so at a time where the UK music industry was all glam and glitter in the late 80's, that scene may not have appealed to everyone, and perhaps some American music about the perils of the working class broke through, I don't know.  "Born in the USA" is out just because of the title, I guess, but even that song talks about how the factory closed down and there's no work available, plus while I'm at it, let me mention Vietnam and my dead brother.  

Really, the common denominator here is complaining - and who's better at complaining than Americans?  If you think about it, we built a whole country around complaining - the Boston Tea Party was one big protest, then around the same time there was the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts, plenty to complain about where Great Britain was concerned, and perhaps Javed is feeling some of that, too, while living in the UK.  And what's the Declaration of Independence but a giant complaint against the King, written out longhand in a formal style?  And all along, we Americans have retained the right to complain, even about our own government, and that covers everything from anti-war protests to Black Lives Matter.  Then the Brits maybe learned a thing or two from us Yanks and let a protest against the EU, then another protest against Brexit, because they just couldn't make up their minds, but they knew they needed to complain about something, it's how we advance society forward. 

Javed hears certain things that call out to him from the song "Dancing in the Dark", like "sick of sitting 'round here, trying to write this book..." and OK, he was trying to write poems, not a book, but I guess we all hear how things might apply to us.  "Want to change my clothes, my hair, my face..." - sure, if Javed didn't look the way he did, then he'd encounter less prejudice in Luton, where there was racism against Pakistani immigrants.  But that's not really what Springsteen had in mind when he wrote the song, he probably just didn't want to look like Bruce Springsteen any more. (You know, Bruce, you can change your clothes and your hair, but I'm sorry, doing something about your face might be a little harder...).  So yeah, there are some connections here between Bruce's lyrics and what might be going on in Javed's life, but I think some of them are a bit of a stretch. The film is drawing some connections where there may not be any.  

The film's title, of course, comes from a Bruce Springsteen song, one he wrote, however it didn't really become popular until it was covered by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, who changed a few of the lyrics - or perhaps they misheard them, because Bruce does tend to mumble, and there are a few lyrics I never really understood myself until I watched this film with the captions on. (Oh, so THAT'S what he's singing there...). In "Blinded by the Light" Bruce sang "Cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night." but Manfred Mann changed that to "Revved up like a deuce", and of course many people misheard THAT as "wrapped up like a douche", because they didn't know that "deuce" is slang for a hot-rod car, a two-seater, like a little deuce coupe.  

Manfred Mann's Earth Band also added the basic two-finger piano lesson tune "Chopsticks" to Bruce's song, "Blinded by the Light", because they couldn't figure out how to get from the chorus to the next verse smoothly.  The band's drummer recognized the basic chords needed, though, and chimed in "play Chopsticks over it" and damn, if he wasn't right.  A tune that anyone who knows how to play on the piano saved the day, racist title or no - but if you listen to later live versions of the band playing that song, occasionally they would also drop in a notable bit of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and that's a hell of a lot classier. 

Anyway, that's two films in the same week set in the UK in the 80's, and both feature groups of racist skinheads and I suppose both are symbolically against Thatcher in some way - I never understand what the big beef was with her, but we had Reagan, so I guess I get it?  The lesson of the film is that it's OK to really dig that musician you like, but not to the point where you're not there for family functions or family emergencies.  Also you can turn that hobby of yours into a career, but it's also going to take some dedication, you can't just coast, because if you want to take that dream vacation, it's going to cost you. 

Did this movie get turned into a Broadway musical?  If not, I suppose it's just a matter of time...

Also starring Viveik Kalra (last seen in "Voyagers"), Hayley Atwell (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Kulvinder Ghir (last seen in "Bend It Like Beckham"), Nell Williams (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Dean-Charles Chapman (last seen in "The King"), Aaron Phagura, Meera Ganatra, Nikita Mehta, Tara Divina, Sally Phillips (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), David Hayman (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Billy Barratt (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Ronak Singh Chadha Berges, Kit Reeve, Lorraine Ashbourne (last seen in "Child 44"), Jeff Mirza (last seen in "Eternals"), Frankie Fox, Scott Folan (last seen in "Cyrano"), Marcus Brigstocke (last seen in "Love Actually"), Olivia Poulet, Leo Shirley, Kumiko Kaur Chadha Berges, James Ballanger (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Vincent Andriano, Kriss Dosanjh (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Paulo Andre Aragao, Kas Meghani, Daniel Surridge-Smith, with archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Air"), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "Nothing Compares") 

RATING: 5 out of 10 cassette tapes

The Trip to Greece

Year 15, Day 248 - 9/5/23 - Movie #4,538

BEFORE: Wow, what a nightmare I had trying to watch this film online - I'd swear it was on Hulu when I added it to my watchlist, but that was probably two years ago since I haven't done a Steve Coogan CHAIN in a while. So I was finally able to link to it, only to find it's not on Hulu any more, of course.  No worries, I'll just figure out which streaming service it IS on now, whether it's Tubi or Roku or Mubi or Freevee... Ah, great, it's on Amazon Prime, just like "Alan Partridge" was.  Umm, no dice because it's not free with Prime membership, you have to have the additional AMC+ add-on, which is another few bucks per month.  OK, where else is it - ah, great, my cable system has it available On Demand - but no, it shows up in the listings but I don't pay extra for the IFC channel, so it's not going to play for me.  Anywhere else?  Roku channel, if you pay for premium.  $12.99 on Vudu?  No WAY.  AppleTV and iTunes have it, but for $4.99 - that's still too much.  Any film that's three years old should be $2.99 on iTunes, no exceptions.

It's clear that the AMC/IFC organization wanted exclusive streaming rights, on all services, and great, I hope that works out for them, but how am I going to watch this film TODAY?  Normally I'd send Apple a few bucks, but they overpriced the rental, too.  I could join AppleTV, watch the film and then immediately quit the service, I've done that two or three times, but that would STILL cost me $5 in this situation.  I'm not proud of this, but I found the film on a bootleg streaming site, one I keep open in a tab (JUST for emergencies such as this, I swear) and I've found one of this year's three Thanksgiving movies there, also, because that film isn't on ANY streaming service... So yeah, mea culpa, I watched the film illegally - but come on, it was free with a Hulu subscription probably 6 months ago, I just missed the window.  I don't even know if the film is WORTH $5, so why should I pay it?  Anyway, it's not my responsibility to report bootleg streaming sites, I paid for FOUR movie tickets this summer, in addition to 1/2 of all the streaming subscriptions we have AND 2/3 of the cable bill, I should, theoretically, be able to watch any movie I want without paying any more than I already am, per month. 

Look, we fought this battle before in the early 2000's with music, and file-sharing sites like Napster.  The record companies (and Metallica) LOST - umm, I think - and music became like free (or close to free) everywhere, like, who buys ALBUMS any more?  Instead you just stream your music via Pandora or Spotify and the artists get totally screwed, unless they have billions of fans and can make their money selling t-shirts and concert tickets.  The same thing will happen to movies, they should all stream for free (or small monthly subscriptions) and they should all be available everywhere, at any time.  I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could find a way to download or view any movie for FREE, I choose not to because I believe in the streaming system, except for when it lets me down like this. 

Steve Coogan carries over from "Alan Partridge". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Trip to Italy" (Movie #2,977), "The Trip to Spain" (Movie #2,978)

THE PLOT: Actors Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan travel from Troy to Ithaca following in the footsteps of Odysseus.  

AFTER: OK, yes, I was right - this movie is not worth renting for $5.  I have to set my limits somewhere, and this is where I choose to draw the line.  Great movie to watch for free, or for a small portion of your monthly subscription (watch more, and your cost per movie drops!) but if I'd rented this for $4.99 I would have felt like a real dolt.  And I say this as someone who has enjoyed these "The Trip" movies.  But there's something unusual about all of the movies, and that is that they're edited-down versions of TV series - there are about 10 30-minute episodes for each "Trip" that Steve and Rob have taken together, but I've chosen to not watch the whole series, but instead to wait for the edited movie versions.  This is a MOVIE blog, after all, not a TV series blog.

Now, I would like to assume that someone has taken the BEST BITS from 10 30-minute episodes and shoved them all into a 90-minute movie, but how can I be sure?  Does it even really matter?  How is there a market for a 90-minute movie made from 10 TV episodes?  Could you imagine a 90-minute "Law & Order" film made from pieced-together clips from 10 different episodes?  OK, maybe that's a bad example.  What if they made a 90-minute movie with the Muppets, and it was just bits from 10 different episodes of "The Muppets" TV show (the one from the 70's, I guess...) and the editor still tried to create a coherent plot out of that?  There might be an untapped market here, the only thing I can think of that comes close was that last "Pink Panther" movie starring Peter Sellers, after he died they took the best gags with Inspector Clouseau in them and just strung them together, creating a movie that both was, and wasn't, a new installment in the franchise.  

But I digress - if you haven't seen the previous "Trip" movies, these two actors, who are also friends, play fictionalized versions of themselves as they go on an extended vacation through a European country, eating at fine restaurants, seeing the sights, and doing impressions as they poke fun at other actors and themselves.  So if you HAVE seen the previous films, same feckin' thing here.  You know at some point they'll be competing to see who can sound the most like Sir Anthony Hopkins, or Hugh Grant, or each other.  Sure, OK, there were a couple of new impressions here, Brydon points out that Coogan played Stan Laurel in a film, and this gives him a chance to suppose what if Laurel had to act opposite TOM Hardy, and not Oliver Hardy. 

The key to figuring out these "Trip" films, I think, is determining what's real and what isn't - as you might imagine, anything that feels like a "reality" show on TV is probably scripted to some degree, or edited to create the necessary drama or conflict.  It's also not safe for celebrities to reveal too much about their personal lives, which is why LeBron James' family in "Space Jam: A New Legacy" was played by actors, there are a lot of nutcases out there who use the internet for more than just watching movies, they dig into the personal lives of celebrities and if they're not right in the head, terrible things could happen.  All you have to do here is look up the two stars on Wikipedia, and you'll see that their spouses and exes in real life have different names than the ones seen in the film.  (Yes, yes, I know that I technically did just invade their privacy, but I did it for edification only, so I can better understand the movie, what's real and what is not...)

So the comedy bits are real, the impressions are funny, and anything about the actors' personal lives here is not, that comes from the director giving them story beats and plot points, like the fictional Steve Coogan being concerned that his father is in ill health, or Rob asking his wife to come and meet them in Ithaca, the last stop on their journey, where they start in Troy (or where Troy used to be, in Turkey) and take the same route taken by Odysseus (or Ulysses, if you prefer) on his way home from the Trojan War.  Umm, more or less, that is, because Odysseus really took the LONG way home, traveling to Africa and going around the whole Mediterranean clockwise, where he could have made it home sooner, if he'd just gone anti-clockwise. It took him ten years when all was said and done (do you think maybe he just didn't WANT to go straight home?) and Steve and Rob only have like six days, of course they have modern things like travel agents and online hotel reservations, and assistants back in the UK, which of course Odysseus just didn't have.  Or GPS for that matter, I think he really could have used that.

Well, bottom line, if you just can't hear enough jokes about the Isle of Lesbos, or if you've ever wondered what Alexander the Great would say if he were played by Ray Winstone, then this film is right up your alley.  I think I'm a bit burned out on this format, maybe four films in this series was just one too many.  But I can probably say the same thing about the "Indiana Jones" or the "Guardians of the Galaxy" franchises, that the most recent film was perhaps one too many.  The box office would seem to suggest this as well, because "The Trip to Greece" earned only $8,000 in the U.S. and Canada, and only $259,000 worldwide. 

Also starring Rob Brydon (last seen in "Tristram Shandy"), Claire Keelan (ditto), Rebecca Johnson (last seen in "The Trip to Spain"), Marta Barrio (ditto), Tim Leach (ditto), Tessa Walker (ditto), Cordelia Bugeja, Justin Edwards (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Richard Clews, Harry Tayler (last seen in "Greed"), Kareem Alkabbani (ditto), Soraya Mahalia Häfner. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 Syrian refugees

Alan Partridge

Year 15, Day 247 - 9/4/23 - Movie #4,537

BEFORE: I didn't get to take the weekend off, because yesterday I worked a 12-hour shift at the theater, co-managing two screenings of "Long Live Love", which is an apparently very popular Thai film, about a man who treats his wife and daughter horribly, and then has an accident and gets amnesia and as he tries to learn again who he was through photographs, figures out that he was a horrible person and resolves to treat his family better in the future.  Yeah, I guess that's a very popular romance storyline in Thailand -

Monica Dolan carries over from "Empire of Light".

THE PLOT: When famous DJ Alan Partridge's radio station is taken over by a new media conglomerate, it sets in motion a chain of events which see Alan having to work with the police to defuse a potentially violent siege. 

AFTER: I've watched a bunch of Steve Coogan films over these past few years, from "Greed" to "Stan & Ollie", even "Tristram Shandy", and of course he's made appearances in the "Night at the Museum" franchise films, and also the "Despicable Me/Minions" movies.  Hell, I even watched "Hamlet 2" and I might be the only person who did - but I've never watched anything where he's played his recurring "Alan Partridge" character, it seems there are 47 different TV series that aired on the BBC where the character is up to something new, they date back to 1991 and I guess he was a fake "chat show" host at first, then later the character was in a sitcom where he got sacked from the telly and dumped by his wife, and moved to a trailer park near Norwich, where he then worked as a radio host during the graveyard time-slot.  The character stayed on the radar for a few years due to fake autobiographies and various mockumentaries, while Steve Coogan also appeared in other projects, like "Philomena" and "24 Hour Party People". 

This 2013 film, originally subtitled "Alpha Papa", whatever that means, brought the character back in a big way, leading to the character's eventual return to TV with a spoof current affairs show, "This Time with Alan Partridge", in 2019.  But for today's film, which turned out to be a perfect film for Labor Day (or "Labour Day" in the U.K., but do they even have this holiday?) because it deals with the radio station where he works being bought by a large media company, and they decide to cut the staff, leading one of the DJs to take over the station with a shotgun and hold hostages.  Well, technically that's a labor dispute, so my instincts to program this one today were accidentally spot on.  

There really shouldn't be anything funny about someone bringing a gun to work and holding hostages, but then, that's the challenge, isn't it?  If you can make comedy out of THAT, you can make comedy out of just about anything.  Alan Partridge, of course, is secretly responsible for things descending into chaos, because he found out that the corporate board's choice of whom to fire was between Pat Farrell and him, so although he burst into their meeting with the intent of sticking up for Pat, when he learned that would mean his own neck was on the chopping block, he changed his tune very quickly.  Then he tried to blow Pat off as he was packing up his things, either because he felt guilty over the situation, or perhaps just because he was being an arsehole. 

However, when Pat takes over the station, the police enlist Alan's help as a hostage negotiator - what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  So Alan's got to get back into the station, gain Pat's trust, and report the situation back to the cops, while looking for ways to possibly defuse the situation or disarm Pat. So yeah, he ends up playing both sides off against each other, of course.  But at least he and Pat get control of the airwaves for a few hours so they can put on their own favorite music and do their comedy bits together.  Meanwhile the police try a new tactic, sending in a police officer disguised as a pizza delivery man, with a taser hidden in one of the boxes, for Alan to use.  Naturally, this is the pizza that Pat ends up taking for himself, so the ruse doesn't work. 

The siege becomes national news, and freeing the hostages only allows Pat and Alan to escape on the radio station's mobile broadcasting bus, which takes them to one of those famous U.K. pier-based amusement parks for the final showdown.  The police snipers surround the renegade broadcasters, but then the question remains - which DJ do the police hate more, the one who took the station hostage, or the one who was supposed to be on their side, who was proven totally inept at defusing the situation?  Well, at least in the fictional world Alan Partridge got back in the spotlight and got to keep his radio show, and in the real world Steve Coogan got to keep the character alive and add to his story.  

The original plan for this story was to have Middle Eastern terrorists hijack the BBC offices, but this probably was a wiser idea, to have the villain be a more sympathetic, down-on-his-luck radio host and have Big Corporate Radio be the real villain.  It's a tough challenge to take a TV character and build a big movie around them, the formula has really only worked out for Pee-Wee Herman and the cast of "Reno 911" unless I'm forgetting something. "South Park", maybe? "Downton Abbey"? Oh, right, and "Star Trek". 

Also starring Steve Coogan (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Colm Meaney (last seen in "The Cold Light of Day"), Felicity Montagu (last seen in "Resistance"), Simon Greenall (last heard in "A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon"), Sean Pertwee (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Darren Boyd (ditto), Nigel Lindsay (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight"), Karl Theobald (last seen in "Yesterday"), Simon Delaney (last seen in "This Must Be the Place"), Tim Key (last seen in "Love Wedding Repeat"), Phil Cornwell (last seen in "Cockneys vs Zombies"), Dustin Demri-Burns (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Simon Kunz (last seen in "Blithe Spirit"), Jessica Knappett, Kieran Hodgson (last seen in "The Flash"), Elizabeth Berrington (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Katie Males, Dan Mersh (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Lucy Briers (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Debra Stewart, Peter Singh (last seen in "Cruella"), Jayne Secker (last seen in "Kingsman: The Secret Service"), Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Robert Whitelock (last seen in "Hercules"), Martin Glyn Murray (last heard in "Enemy at the Gates"), and the voice of Darren Deans.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Large Questions

Empire of Light

Year 15, Day 246 - 9/3/23 - Movie #4,536

BEFORE: I suddenly realize that I might have, very accidentally, programmed the perfect set of Labor Day weekend films - FOR ME, that is.  I work part-time at a movie theater that's owned by a NYC college, and yesterday's film had Indiana Jones teaching at a different NYC college, and today's film is set mostly in a movie theater.  That would be weird if I weren't totally used to my own version of subconscious programming - there are no coincidences, after all, there are only the connections to my life and the calendar that I've witnessed, over and over again.  We'll see what tomorrow's film brings, and whether there's any connection to Labor Day.

(Yes, I realize Labor Day is very easy to program for, as long as any character in the film has some kind of job, well, that counts, doesn't it?  Sure, one year I programmed a film TITLED "Labor Day", but that can really only happen once - the rest of the time, I'm relying on the linking method to bring appropriate films to the top of the screening list at the appropriate times. My past Labor Day weekend films over the years have included "Genius", "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her", "The Old Man & The Gun", "Horrible Bosses 2", "The Paper", "To Sir, with Love", "9 to 5" and "How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying".  Hey, I find the connections where I can...)

Toby Jones carries over from "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny". 

THE PLOT: A drama about the power of human connection during turbulent times, set in a movie theater in an English coastal town in the early 1980's. 

AFTER: Yeah, this one kind of had me right from the jump - it opens with someone unlocking a movie theater and turning on the lights, getting things ready to open, which is something I do maybe three or four times a week now.  So this felt very familiar, and then getting into all the different people who work there, their different positions, the relationships between them, yeah, this was right up my alley, despite being set in the U.K. in the 1980's.  But I did work in movie theaters myself during the mid 80's, one in Massachusetts the summer before my senior year at NYU, and then one in New York during the summer of 1986, just after graduation.  I figured it was a great job to have, mostly nights and weekends, while looking for a full-time gig.  But three months after getting the job, two directors I'd worked for as a P.A. happened to come to that theater, and I tore their tickets, but they remembered me and suggested that I come work for them.  So I left the movie theater job and didn't come back to it until 2021, about 35 years later. 

I always sort of wondered how far I could have gotten if I'd stuck with that job, and now I'm wondering why I didn't keep BOTH jobs, I could have worked for the film production company during the day and also the movie theater on nights & weekends.  I could have been a theater manager by now - but I guess I couldn't have worked on long music video shoots, then, or taken a second job at a different production company.  Now I'm a part-time theater manager, just one block away from the NYC theater I started at as an usher, but that theater shut down in January of this year, after changing hands about 4 or 5 times. It's a great 9-screen theater, and I'm sure it will re-open again under new management, but nobody knows when, since it was a victim of the pandemic.  So it's all a bit weird, but I still feel that my career kind of came full circle, and I sort of ended up now back where I once didn't want to be, but going back to the old job was sure better than sitting at home doing nothing, at least until I got tired of sweeping up theaters and emptying trash cans. The move from usher up to house manager two years ago was a smart one, I think.  There are some very long shifts, especially during film festival weeks, but I'll take them.  

Another crazy coincidence - "Empire of Light" had its festival premiere on September 3, 2022 at the Telluride Film Festival, exactly one year ago.  Again, not planned, it just came to the top of my list on the anniversary of its first public screening.  The film got only one Oscar nomination, for Best Cinematography, but also got one Golden Globe nomination, for Olivia Colman as Best Actress, also 3 BAFTA nominations, if you care about those.  

The lead character is Hilary, a mid-manager at the Empire Cinema on the north coast of Kent County in the southeastern part of England. She's struggling with depression and/or bipolar disorder, and she's involved in some kind of affair with her boss, the theater manager.  Her life changes when she meets Stephen a new employee who is a younger black man, and they bond when she shows him the two closed theaters on the upper floors of the building.  Also on New Year's Eve they watch the fireworks together from the roof and share a kiss.  Well, they sort of fall into a relationship together, and it's nice and fun but also complicated in some ways. There's the age difference, the racial difference, and then there's Hilary's involvement with their boss, and her mental issues.  On top of this, it was a strange time in British history, after the punk movement and during the early days of Thatcher's administration, where racist skinheads were prevalent and sometimes prone to rioting. Also Stephen is working at the theater while he's considering applying to college to study architecture.

Nevertheless, they start a relationship, trips to the beach and sharing stories from their pasts.  Things get more complicated when Hilary sort of goes off the rails during a special premiere of "Chariots of Fire", and after delivering her own remarks about racism, she blurts out the existence of her affair with her boss to her boss's wife. Normally this would just get someone fired, but the theater manager admits his affairs, and... well, we don't really know what happens between him and his wife, because the film sort of neglects to tell us.  Did they get divorced?  Did they work things out?  Did he quit his job at the Empire Theater?  I honestly don't know, because we never see him again after that.  He's treated like a fringe character, but still, it would be nice to know.  The film instead follows the other staff at the theater, like Stephen, who have to deal with Hilary's sudden absence, first at home and then at some kind of mental hospital. 

Stephen learns some tricks of the trade from the theater's projectionist, like how to watch for those "bubbles" on the screen that tell the projectionist when to start the next reel on the other projector.  Yes, this was once done BY HAND, if a film was in four reels, the projectionist had to time things JUST right to switch off one projector and switch ON the other one - if they didn't do it exactly right, the audience could miss several seconds of dialogue, or see a blank screen for a few seconds, both of which spoil the illusion of continuity that film relies on.  Film ain't nothing but a bunch of still images, BTW, and a quick of our optic nerves allows us to perceive the illusion of motion without seeing the change from one image to the next - assuming that the pictures run by at the proper speed, which is 24 fps.  So all movies are an illusion, in every sense of the word, but primarily at the base level of being a large set of still pictures appearing to move. 

By extension, isn't everything therefore some kind of an illusion?  The relationship between two people can end at any time, if one should get a better offer, or need to move away to attend school.  Was the relationship even real at all, then?  The projectionist mentions that he has a son who he's no longer in contact with - what about that relationship, is it real or just another illusion?  Everything we do, everything we create is just like a sand castle at the beach, it exists for a while until the wind or the tide dispose of it, or somebody else tramples on it, or we decide to tear it down and build something else. Wow, that's deep, huh?  And I got that just from how a movie projector works...

What does this movie get exactly right about working in a movie theater?  That the staff makes up one big, happy (?) crazy dysfunctional family, that's for sure.  And the staff is organized in a pyramid-like configuration, there's one theater manager, below him are a couple of middle managers, and then there are crew chiefs and training managers, then a whole lot of grunts selling tickets and concessions and sweeping up after the show.  And moving up the pyramid takes a WHOLE lot of time, in fact if you don't have ten or twelve years to invest in that job you're probably better off looking for greener pastures elsewhere, or at least having another gig or a side hustle.  

Also, you might get into it thinking you're going to see ALL the movies for free, and isn't that a great perk?  But the fact of the matter is, you're probably going to be so busy working at the theater that you WON'T see every movie that plays there.  After a long shift you're probably just going to want to go home, eat dinner and get some sleep, especially if you have to open up the next morning and do it all again.  Oh, sure, you could come in to the theater on your day off and watch a movie then, only on your day off, do you REALLY want to go to the place where you work?  Of course not, you'd rather sleep in and then do something else, like go to the beach or catch up on some reading or do some errands, maybe get to that doctor's appointment or see the dentist, I mean, it's been a while, hasn't it?  

I can confirm this is how it goes - in the summer of 2021, I was working at an AMC and I could see any movie I wanted, just not during one of my shifts.  I think I took advantage of this just ONCE in three months, to see "Black Widow".  Every other film that came out that summer, I caught up with on streaming if it was really something I wanted to see.  I've been working at a different theatre since September 2021, and I think I came in on my day off to see "Jurassic World: Dominion", and that's about it.  I work so many shifts, who has time to ALSO see the movies that play during the shifts I'm not there?  Some of this year's movies that I did NOT see when they played at the theater are: "Turning Red", "Glass Onion", "No Time to DIe", "See How They Run", "Licorice Pizza", "Belfast", "The Wonder", "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio", "Say Hey, Willie Mays!", "McEnroe", "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over", "Attica", "Cyrano", "Top Gun: Maverick", "Shazam! Fury of the Gods", "Where the Crawdads Sing", "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania", "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves", "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" and "Nope".  But I still got to see them all anyway, because they all went to streaming or cable, eventually.  That's about 20 films I WANTED to see, but didn't, at the theater where I work for every one that I did.  

So I can totally believe that Hilary has never seen a movie AT the theater where she works.  It doesn't sound possible, but it is.  But it also seems like maybe she's never seen a movie at all, which is damn near impossible, aka more than unlikely.  So let's just say that maybe since she works at a movie theater in 1981, maybe she hasn't seen a movie on the big screen in about 20 years, maybe more. I could believe that - but when she finally does take the time to watch a movie there, with the projectionist's permission, what does she watch?  "Being There" and "Stir Crazy" - one film about a simple-minded middle-aged gardener and another film with "crazy" in the title - I suppose this is meant to reflect her mental state, symbolically...  

One other strange coincidence before I go - this film features a bunch of skinheads protesting who then pass by the theater, break down the doors and start beating people up.  Earlier this year, I was working at the theater during a telecast of the SAG Awards for the NY members of that union - and the event got protested by a bunch of angry anti-vaxxers who were upset with SAG for not hiring back the actors who could not (or would not) get the COVID vaccine.  Thankfully their protest did not erupt into violence - all they did was write chalk messages on the sidewalk outside the theater - but it COULD have, if not for the actions taken by me and the other managers and our intrepid security guards. It's a whole story, which I probably already wrote about in detail on this blog, I'm just reminded about it because of the events portrayed in the film. Totally believable, at least to me. 

Also starring Olivia Colman (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Micheal Ward (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Tom Brooke (last seen in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties"), Tanya Moodie (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Hannah Onslow (also carrying over from "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Crystal Clarke (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Monica Dolan (last seen in "Cyrano"), Sara Stewart (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story"), Ron Cook (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Justin Edwards (last heard in "The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales"), Roman Hayeck-Green, Brian Fletcher, Dougie Boyall, William Chubb, Spike Leighton (last seen in "1917"), Jacob Avery, Jamie Whitelaw, Dylan Blore, Adrian McLoughlin (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), D.J. Bailey (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)), Mark Field, Ashleigh Reynolds (last seen in "Rebecca" (2020)), George Whitehead, Sam Boskovic, Eliza Glock, George Greenland, 

with archive footage of Richard Pryor (last seen in "Sammy Davis Jr: I've Gotta Be Me"), Gene Wilder (last seen in "Tom & Jerry"), Peter Sellers (last seen in "An Accidental Studio")

RATING: 6 out of 10 skipping stones