BEFORE: After 48 hours in Atlantic City, I'm back home and I only missed one movie-watching day, because I was able to watch this movie on Netflix while traveling. This one was suggested by the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" programming, I saw that it would be airing on TCM and so I recorded it, knowing exactly where it could fit into the romance chain - but now I can delete it and cross another classic movie (from 1974!) off the list. Ellen Burstyn carries over from "All I Wish".
While in Atlantic City, we stayed at the Tropicana, and I don't think we stayed there before on any of our many trips there - and we stay from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning, because that ends up being cheaper than staying Friday through Sunday like most people do. Room rates are better, but unfortunately many restaurants in the casinos close on Mondays and Tuesdays, but we were lucky that our favorite buffet at the Borgata stays open on Monday mornings in case the weekend's departing guests want to eat one more meal. Sunday night we had dinner at the new Hell's Kitchen restaurant at Caesar's, and I have to imagine that we were lucky enough to get a table just because most people were watching the Oscars broadcast.
The last time we were in A.C. was June 2022, and the city was still recovering from the pandemic, so many of the restaurants we'd come to know over the years were closed, there was an entire upscale mall out on a pier that was deserted (except for a candy store at the Boardwalk level) so the empty Apple Store and closed fancy restaurants like Buddokan made the place look like a ghost town. Well, things are better, and the city seems to have recovered because they're back to making money, any way they can. We parked in Harrah's lot after breakfast at the Borgata, and though it only cost us $5 to park at the Borgata, Harrah's charged us $20 on the way out, and although they said the rates were posted, it must have been on a very small sign, because we sure didn't see it on the way in. But at that point, they're basically holding your car hostage, you can't drive it out of there unless you pay the $20, which seems like highway robbery.
Our dining choices on Monday night were very limited, since it was still pre-season anything that was even open on the Boardwalk, like the BierGarten, closed up at 4 pm. There was a new BBQ restaurant at the Tropicana but it seemed way too expensive - they had a late-night combo meal discount that started at 11 pm, but who wants to wait until then for dinner, and also since the restaurant closed at 10 pm, I didn't see how it was possible to order after that. So, yeah, thanks for offering discounted food after the restaurant closes - were they selling their leftovers at that point? No thanks. So our choices were either deli sandwiches, eating at Hooters, or some place called Chickie & Pete's that served mostly seafood (which my wife doesn't eat) but also burgers and chicken sandwiches or fries, so we chose that over Hooters.
Also yesterday I watched the Oscars on Hulu, which took a day to post the telecast, but hey, no commercials, so I whipped through the whole thing in about 90 minutes, since I just watched the comedy bits and the award presentations, and I skipped over the acceptance speeches and also the musical performances, and that saved a lot of time. Also I skipped those tedious montages that over explain what stunt-work is or how a musical score is written. We know all this, because we're movie fans that already know how films are made!
Anyway, I've got plans to watch "Oppenheimer" ASAP - should be in the first few days of April, and I'm putting "Barbie" and "Poor Things" on the watch list, all the other films I'l have to get to whenever I can, as they start streaming I'll add them. I think the only nominated films that I had already seen were "Maestro" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and the Indiana Jones film that got a couple technical nominations. Oh, and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", which was nominated for visual effects - but nothing that I had seen won anything, so I kind of struck out this year. That's OK, it happens, and I'll spend the next few months watching these films that were (allegedly) better than the ones I happened to catch, and I'll go from there.
Tonight's film is also really connected to this year's nominations, since it was directed by Martin Scorsese, who was nominated for "Killers of the Flower Moon", and has Jodie Foster in it, she was nominated for "Nyad", but neither won.
THE PLOT: A recently widowed woman is on the road with her precocious young son, determined to make a new life for herself as a singer.
AFTER: When I was a kid I watched the TV sit-com "Alice" without ever really learning about where it came from - what did I know about Martin Scorsese movies? The show ran from 1976 to 1985 and of course I had no clue, in the same way I watched "M*A*S*H" around the same time without knowing much about the Korean War. But it seems that some TV executive really loved this movie and wanted to turn it into a weekly comedy, only they didn't want to focus on the relationship ups and downs of a single mother, they only wanted to focus on what happened in the diner, the waitresses and the cook and the weird clientele - in a way that show was "Cheers" before we had "Cheers", only instead of a Boston bar it was set in an Arizona diner. Gee, I can't imagine why Martin Scorsese didn't want to direct that - apparently there's a whole book written about how the movie got turned into a TV show, and what got changed in that process, but I'd hoped all of that would sort of be front-and-center on Wikipedia, I'm not curious enough to buy a book.
The movie's about the diner, sure, but not to the same extent - in the movie the focus is squarely on Alice, and her life after her abusive husband dies in a trucking accident. She's got no money left after paying for the funeral, so she and her son pack everything into the station wagon and leave New Mexico heading for a better life in Monterey, where she once worked as a singer. But their first stop is in Phoenix, Arizona, where she does find some work as a singer in a piano bar. She's constantly hit on by the men who frequent the bar, and she turns them all down except for a man named Ben, but then learns that not only is Ben married with a sick child, but he's also been abusive to his wife, and Alice really has found herself right back in a situation similar to the one she was in before, so she packs up the station wagon again and moves on.
She only gets as far as Tucson, where she looks for a job again so they'll have money to complete the journey to California. She takes that job at Mel & Ruby's Diner (which was the template for the famous Mel's Diner in the TV show) alongside waitresses Flo & Vera. Flo is the sassy Southern one and Vera is the quiet and incompetent one. Hey, I had breakfast at a diner this morning, what a coincidence. Alice develops feelings for one of the customers at the diner, a divorced horse rancher named David, however as they spend more time together she also realizes that David has a short temper where her son is concerned, and it appears that Alice does really have a "type", doesn't it? But let's face it, her son is very annoying and would probably get under anyone's skin eventually. Also, this was a different time, back when adults were still allowed to discipline kids with physical violence if they felt the situation called for it, so Alice does decide to stay in Tucson and move in with David at his ranch. Hey, it's not for me to judge.
Is this the greatest movie romance? Not by any means - but at least Alice ends up in a mostly positive relationship and she's learned that she has to put her safety first and also keep her singing aspirations alive, and all of that is important. It's actually one of the better relationship lessons in this year's chain, along with "never plan a bachelor party or wedding in Las Vegas".
Also starring Alfred Lutter (last seen in "Love and Death"), Kris Kristofferson (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "De Palma"), Lane Bradbury, Diane Ladd (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Valerie Curtin (last seen in "Best Friends"), Lelia Goldoni (last seen in "The Italian Job" (1969)), Vic Tayback (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Jodie Foster (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Billy Green Bush (last seen in "The River"), Harry Northup (last seen in "Beloved"), Mia Bendixsen, Marty Brinton, Dean Casper, Murray Moston (last seen in "The Front"), with cameos from Laura Dern (last seen in "Sheryl"), Martin Scorsese (last seen in "De Palma") with archive footage of Johnny Carson (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You").
RATING: 5 out of 10 Mott the Hoople records
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