LOL

Year 16, Day 55 - 2/24/24 - Movie #4,656

BEFORE: Nora Dunn carries over again from "The Answer Man", and I'm back on track, just 2 films with Miley Cyrus and then 17 more romance films and I'm done with the topic for another year. 

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 16: 

Best Actress Nominees:

7:45 am "The Valley of Decision" (1945)

10:00 am "Alice Adams" (1935)

11:45 am "Suspicion" (1941)

1:30 pm "Wait Until Dark" (1967)

3:30 pm "Born Yesterday" (1950)

5:30 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)

Best Actress Winners:

8:00 pm "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989)

10:00 pm "Funny Girl" (1968)

12:45 am "Mildred Pierce" (1945)

2:45 am "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" (1974)

4:45 am "Two Women" (1960)

Another 5 (?) seen out of these 11 ("Suspicion", "Wait Until Dark", "Driving Miss Daisy", "Funny Girl" and "Mildred Pierce")  brings me to 66 seen out of 183, or 36%. "Born Yesterday" is on my list, though, it's a film that just fell through the cracks again and again for years, and then once I finally figured out how to get through a whole year with a linked chain, I haven't been able to find a way back to it. I probably should take this opportunity to watch "Two Women" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", but again, I've just got too much - wait, you know what, I'm going to record that last film, because it is a romance film, it's a super classic film I should have seen by now and I CAN work it into my chain in early March, right between two other Ellen Burstyn films.  We're going to make that one happen, I might have to double up on animated films leading up to St. Patrick's Day, but I can make that happen too.

THE PLOT: As a new school year begins, Lola's heart is broken by her boyfriend, though soon she's surprised by her best friend, musician Kyle, who reveals his feelings for her. 

AFTER: Yeah, I really need to watch more films like "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", films wiith adults in them, having adult relationships.  If I watch one more film with a high-school kid who wants to date the really unattainable attractive popular person, and doesn't realize that they really should be dating their best friend, I'm going to lose it.  Really, I just don't care if Lola dates Kyle after Chad breaks her heart, who even cares?  That's it, no more high-school films for me, I've aged out of that program a few decades ago, I don't know why I even bother.  Plus, haven't I seen all the high-school films by now?  It's getting so tired. 

OK, I checked through my list, it looks like I'm in the clear, no more high-school romances in this year's chain.  There might be a few left on the list, like "Blockers", "Bottoms" and "The Girl Next Door", but I can worry about them next year, and make a decision then about whether to screen them or ban them, depending on how I feel.  Je-SUS, why are high-school kids so dramatic?  They break up with a partner or two and it's like the end of the WORLD or something, kids, realize that your life is (ideally) long and you're going to have multiple partners over the next few decades, maybe a few marriages, and that means that you could find yourself alone at ANY stage in your life, either by divorce or death or just plain "we're not right for each other".  Sorry to be a Debbie Downer here, just being realistic, though.  

At least this film dispenses with the classic love triangle in the first 10 minutes, Lola breaks up with Chad and decides that maybe dating the guy she's kept in the friend zone isn't such a bad idea after all.  Hey, in "Sex Drive" and "A Guy Thing" and "Your Place or Mine" and "Whatever It Takes" it took those characters nearly the whole MOVIE to figure out that solution to the puzzle.  Lola's ahead of the game if she decides that Kyle is "The One".  

There are still hurdles to overcome, of course.  Kyle's in a band with Chad, so they have to work out this whole "who should be with Lola" thing and become bros again, or they're never going to win the Battle of the Bands.  And Kyle's also got trouble with his father, who doesn't want him playing music at all, and is threatening to ship him off to military school if his grades don't improve. (Well how the hell is he suppose to concentrate on schoolwork if every girl in school won't leave him alone in the courtyard?  Just asking...).  He also needs time to write those great lyrics, "To let you know how I'm feelin' / I'm high on hope, I'm reelin'".  Yeah, the professional rock bands don't really need to worry about these guys. 

Lola's family life is a mess, too, because her mother and dad are sleeping together again, and they think they're being covert about it, but they're not.  Lola knows about it, and her mother is very hypocritical, since she wants to know everything about Lola's sex life, but she's not telling anybody about her own.  Plus, sleeping with your ex is a terrible idea, because eventually you're going to remember why you broke up in the first place, those issues simply have not gone away.  Lola's Mom goes away for a weekend with Lola's dad, and Lola's grandmother is in charge of the house, which is just a terrible idea, because she lets Lola have three friends over, then three turns into five and five turns into thirty, and before long it's a rager, and everyone knows if you give grandma a few classes of scotch and coke she'll be down for the count, then everyone can just do drugs and have sex and forget to clean up after the party.  Ugh, teenagers are just the worst, I see that now. 

More hypocrisy abounds as Lola's Mom and their friends smoke pot when they get together, so how can they tell their kids to NOT do this when they're getting high themselves?  But this was back in 2012 and pot wasn't legal yet, so it was a very different time. So really, I'm blaming the parents here for Lola's messed-up situation. You just can't tell your daughter to stay away from drugs and not sleep around if you're doing exactly that yourself.  Of course, that's still no reason for Lola to lie about her life to her mother, but teens have been doing that for thousands of years, it's not going to stop now.  But communication is a two-way street, after all.  

Things get worse for Lola when she thinks Kyle cheated on her with a girl in the bathroom - the film went out of its way to make sure we knew that TWO girls had exactly the same purse, which was the reason for the mix-up.  And then there was another much more contrived reason why Emily wouldn't tell Lola why it was HER in the bathroom, because she was embarrassed about who she was having sex with in the stall.  Really, Emily, WE DON'T CARE.  Emily's only got eyes for her math teacher, honestly it seems like all the girls only took trigonometry to get closer to Mr. Ross, but you know, I can understand this, because there's simply no reason to take trigonometry in the first place. I passed that course in high school but I don't think I ever understood what exactly we were studying.  The area under curves or something?  Nope, I'm wrong, it was the specific functions of angles, whatever that means.  No, we don't need this, nobody needs this.  

Look, I don't know what Emily sees in Wen, or why anybody would even be named "Wen" in the first place - but if they're happy together, it's fine by me.  Even if their whole relationship is based on some random chat room where they both get naked anonymously, it's fine.  He's not as handsome as the math teacher, but then again, who is?  Ugh, this is all such stupid nonsense, but really, that describes all high school relationships, doesn't it?  Was that the point here, that high-school relationships are all just meaningless, because very few of them are going to make it past the college years, and even fewer will result in marriage or life-long relationships?  So don't worry about it, Lola, it's not your fault that your relationships with Chad or Kyle or whoever won't last, they're just not meant to last. 

And if you think American high-school life is weird, things get even weirder on the class trip to Paris, where the kids have to eat snails and brains, or stay with French people who are obsessed with Joan of Arc for some reason.  Yeah, that's all there is to French culture, after all. But the high-school kids can legally drink wine, so there's that.  Anyway, the trip to France totally fixes everything for everybody, even Kyle's dad somehow realizes that having a son who's a rock star is a good thing.  How did that happen, again? 

NITPICK POINT: Lola says at the beginning of the film that her nickname is "LOL", as in the famous internet acronym, but then over the next 90 minutes of movie, nobody ever calls her that.  Umm, nice try? 

Also starring Miley Cyrus (last seen in "Dolly Parton: Here I Am"), Demi Moore (last seen in "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent"), Ashley Greene (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Douglas Booth (last seen in "The Dirt"), Adam Sevani, Thomas Jane (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jay Hernandez (last seen in "Lakeview Terrace"), Marlo Thomas (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Gina Gershon (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Fisher Stevens (last seen in "Asteroid City"), George Finn (last seen in "Just Before I Go"), Lina Esco, Ashley Hinshaw (last seen in "Chronicle"), Tanz Watson, Austin Nichols (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Jean-Luc Bilodeau (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Brady Tutton, Vivian Le Borgne, Bridget Brown, Sam Derence, Trevor Fahnstrom, Rebecca Finnegan, Lynnette Gaza, Loretta Higgins, Vichaan Kue, Madelyn Lasky, Emma Nolan, Dennis North (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Delphine Ponyvieux, Leisa Pulido (last seen in "Cedar Rapids"), Barbara Robertson, Russell Steinberg, Michelle Burke Thomas, 

RATING: 4 out of 10 phones ringing during French class (oh, if ONLY there were a way to stop that!)

The Answer Man

Year 16, Day 54 - 2/23/24 - Movie #4,655

BEFORE: Nora Dunn carries over from "Together Together", and I debated about including this one, it's a last-minute addition and the middle film of three with Nora Dunn, so I COULD drop it, and save it for next year.  It links here, but it also links to films that didn't make the cut and so I could make a case for saving it, but nah, let's get rid of it now so it doesn't take up space on the DVR.  I'll worry about next year next year. Anyway one of the films it links to might be a better Mother's Day film than a romance film, we'll have to see where it lands. 

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 14: 

Best Cinematography Nominees:

6:00 am "Captains of the Clouds" (1942)

8:00 am "Million Dollar Mermaid" (1952)

10:00 am "Northwest Passage" (1940)

12:15 pm "Lassie Come Home" (1943)

2:00 pm "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956)

4:00 pm "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

6:00 pm "Strangers on a Train" (1951)

Best Cinematography Winners:

8:00 pm "Laura" (1944)

9:45 pm "The Defiant Ones" (1958)

11:30 pm "MIssissippi Burning" (1988)

1:45 am "Ryan's Daughter" (1970)

5:15 am "The Good Earth" (1937)

Another 4 seen out of these 12 ("Somebody Up There Likes Me", "Strangers on a Train", "THe Defiant Ones", "Mississippi Burning")  brings me to 61 seen out of 172, or 35.4%, thankfully I've seen every Hitchcock film ever and also a lot of boxing movies and prison movies.  

THE PLOT: A reclusive author of spiritual books is pursued for advice by a single mother and a bookstore owner fresh out of rehab.

AFTER: There's a lot of stuff going on in this one, and most of it is pretty solid - so no matter how the linking shakes down, I'm glad I dropped this one into the chain at the last minute.  I've kind of reached the "romance AND" stage of things, where a film sort of doesn't have to JUST be about romance, it can be a romance and a comedy, or a romance and a historical drama, or a romance and a sci-fi film (could happen), well you get the idea.  

I'm also falling back on that theory I mentioned the other day about screenwriters, they don't want to highlight a character who's got their act together, because people who don't have it together, or whose lives are falling apart, are much more interesting in the long run.  And so we have reclusive author Arlen Faber, whose "Me and God" books have been publishing staples for almost 20 years, and there's a whole franchise built around them, kind of like those "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books from a few years back.  Other people have written books ABOUT Faber's books, there's the "Me and God" cookbooks, and his publisher reminds him that he's manage to corner 10% of the "God Market" in the self-help section.

So he's doing OK financially, successful in his career, but he lives alone, and even when the mailman comes to the door he pretends to be his own employee, not the author himself - and every day he throws a bag full of mail into a pile in a spare room of his Philadelphia brownstone.  Successful in his career, but not necessarily in the romance department, at least not until he has terrible back problems and visits a very attractive chiropractor.  There is a certain percentage of people who do fall in love with their doctors or therapists, I've heard. Part of that comes about because someone is paying attention to them and also making them feel good and healthy, so the love thing is sometimes an added side effect to all that. 

Meanwhile, there's Kris, a young man who runs a nearby independent bookstore who's just gotten out of rehab, and he's going through the 12 steps, trying to change the things that he can and also deal with the things that he can't change, like the fact that his father drinks all the time.  It's also hard for him to go to A.A. meetings, and this might have something to do with the fact that they demand that you surrender yourself to a higher power, not necessarily God but you have to pick something, even like a tree or a rock to surrender to, and admit that you yourself have no control over your drinking, but maybe the tree does?  I'm not sure how that all works. 

Kris' bookstore is in trouble, because he left it in the care of Dahlia, who lost her keys and couldn't open the store while he was in rehab.  For a month.  So the bookstore couldn't make any income if it couldn't open, I've got to call a NITPICK POINT here, though, because couldn't Dahlia have worked this out somehow?  Broken a window or called a locksmith?  We all know a business can't make any money if it doesn't open to customers, she had like 28 days to figure something out, and she just didn't - really, Kris should fire her for this, but he doesn't for some reason.  The characters all come together when Arlen, the reclusive author, tries to sell some of his excess books on religion to the store, only the store can't afford to buy any books because there's no budget for that.  Arlen even offers the books FOR FREE to the store, but Kris still refuses. (That's N.P. #2, if you run an independent business and somebody offers you stock for FREE, you should always say YES to that.)

But this sets up an exchange, once Kris learns the identity of the man who's been coming in to his store trying to unload books.  Kris will ask questions about life and God to Arlen, and after each set of questions, he'll also take five books for his store.  This is really quite contrived, because I saw right away that there were better ways that this best-selling author could help out his store, which happens to sell his books.  Why not a book signing, despite the fact that this author has not appeared in public for 20 years and almost nobody knows what he looks like?  Still, that would be a great idea, and a public relations event beyond compare!  OK, the film eventually gets there, but it takes a long time - so I guess I can say I saw this plot point coming a mile away, I was way out in front of the plot for once.   

Meanwhile Arlen and Elizabeth, his chiropractor, keep growing closer, however Arlen doesn't seem to know much about how relationships work, maybe he just hasn't had much experience.  Every time they grow a bit closer, like they go for a walk or he shows her his collection of movie monster figurines, there's also two steps back, like Arlen will try to tell her how to parent her son or freak out when his monster figurines aren't put back in exactly the right way.  (I feel you, Arlen, but you've got to learn how to relax, and not show your girlfriend just how bad your OCD is...)

There's a lot this couple needs to work out, and part of why Arlen is the way he is goes back to taking care of his father, who had dementia, and he's still processing the loss - also he's spent two decades hiding from the world and his fans, and so he may be a little rusty when it comes to interacting with other humans and showing empathy for them.  But that's not to say that Elizabeth isn't over-protective of her son, of course she is - but there's a reason for that, too, and it's going to take her time and patience to both accept the criticism and try to change her ways. (It's a somewhat similar situation to "Your Place or Mine", with the helicopter mom and the new man in her life, who just wants to be her son's friend and have fun with him, even if that means breaking Mom's rules...)

Finally, there's the big book signing at the independent bookstore, and Arlen also uses the opportunity to admit to the crowd that God never really spoke to him (DUH!) but he used that as a narrative technique to get his ideas about the answers to life's questions into a format that people would be willing to listen to.  I see what you did there - make everyone buy the book BEFORE you admit that you're a complete fraud. Elizabeth, however, is disappointed that he's been lying to his fans for 20 years (again, DUH!) but shouldn't she also be proud that he's finally chosen to reveal the truth, and stop living the lie?  They agree to start over from scratch, but that just kind of leaves things open, we still don't really know if this relationship is going to work out.  But this all feels very real, like it could happen, I'd just love to know what the inspiration was for this tale.  

Also starring Jeff Daniels (last seen in "2 Days in the Valley"), Lauren Graham (last seen in "Sweet November"), Lou Taylor Pucci (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Olivia Thirlby (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Kat Dennings (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Annie Corley (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Max Antisell (last seen in "The Music Never Stopped"), Thomas Roy (last seen in "Game Change"), Peter Patrikos (last seen in "21 Bridges"), Richard Lyntton (last seen in "Creed"), Richard Barlow (last seen in "Where'd You Go Bernadette"), Charlie Corrado, Sylvia Kauders (last seen in "Man on a Ledge"), Sandra Landers (last seen in "School Ties"), Ginny Graham (last seen in "Up Close & Personal"), Conor O'Brien (last seen in "Serenity"), Morgan Turner (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Brandon Hanson, Steven Pasquale (last seen in "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 pieces of soy protein bacon ("FACON!")

Together Together

Year 16, Day 53 - 2/22/24 - Movie #4,654

BEFORE: Tig Notaro carries over from "Your Place or Mine", and I'm hoping for a film that makes a little more sense than yesterday's - so, really, any logical sense at all would be greatly appreciated.  I'm home today and that means chores like emptying the dishwasher, laundry and going out to get lunch, but I'm happy to do all that if if means I get to sleep until almost noon and then spend some time later catching up on some TV. Hey, the snow's really melting so maybe some weather that's not so cold is in our future.  A good day for a walk to go get lunch, and there's a film crew set up two blocks away, they took over the bar on the corner so I wonder what they're shooting. 

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 13: 

Best Cinematography Nominees:

6:00 am "Algiers" (1938)

8:00 am "Waterloo Bridge" (1940)

10:00 am "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" (1939)

12:00 pm "Kismet" (1944)

1:45 pm "National Velvet" (1944)

4:00 pm "Jungle Book" (1942)

6:00 pm "King Solomon's Mines" (1950)

Best Cinematography Winners:

8:00 pm "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1943)

10:00 pm "The Black Swan" (1942)

12:00 am "Phantom of the Opera" (1943)

2:00 am "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945)

4:00 am "Cries and Whispers" (1972)

Wow, it feels like TCM dumped a bunch of random movies on us today, this is a category where movies ended up that just couldn't fit into the other day's schedules, it seems.  Maybe I'm just bitter because I've seen only one of these, the Bergman film "Cries and Whispers" - and if I hadn't chosen to focus on Bergman films back in 2021, I wouldn't even have THAT.  You know my story, I've seen versions of "The Jungle Book", but not this one.  I've seen "Kismet", but I watched the 1955 version, not the 1944 one.  And so it goes...Another 1 out of these 12 brings me to 57 seen out of 160, or 35.6%, I have a feeling it hasn't been my month, or even my year. 

THE PLOT: When a young loner becomes the gestational surrogate for a single man in his 40s, two strangers come to realize this unexpected relationship will challenge their notions of connection, boundaries and the particulars of love. 

AFTER: OK, so it's not a traditional romance, it may not even count as a romance at all, but the synopsis seemed very ambiguous so I dropped this one into the chain to make the required connections.  Maybe if I'd known more about the plot I would have found another way to get where I needed to go, but then the downside would be that this film would have stayed on the list, when the goal is to get films OFF the list and make room for new things, or old things I never got around to before.  2021 was the last year I had access to Academy screener DVDs, and I know this because I have a separate list of films from that year that I was trying to get to - it started out at like 100 films and now it's down to just 24.  Sure it's stupid and I could just STOP maintaining that list, but that list has "Coda" on it, also "Cry Macho", "Old", "Army of the Dead" and "Red Rocket", so maybe when I watch all of those films I can retire that list?  It's got a few films from a couple years before, but I don't think I'll ever get around to watching "Roma" from 2018, there's just no way to get there, and anyway it's been 6 years now.  

(BTW, when is the next edition of "1,001 Films to See Before You Die" coming out?  There was one every two years, and I got in the habit of updating my progress on that list, but there's been no sign of the 2023 edition, and it's already 2024.  Maybe someone stopped updating that list?  Or they got tired of adding 10 films to the end of the list every year and then having to remove those ten, instead of removing the shitty films from the 1920's?  Just wondering.)

Anyway, tonight's film is about modern relationships, which, thanks to modern science, don't even have to involve love any more.  This story is about Matt, who's a tech guy who designs apps, some of which help other people meet and/or fall in love, and he's got so much money that he can pay for a woman to be a surrogate mother, or more correctly, a gestational surrogate.  It's his, umm, genetic material combined with that of an egg donor, and he hires Anna to just bring the baby to term, as she's got a "womb to rent"  (it's funny if you say it out loud).  This is a business transaction, but after the interview process they have to spend time together, he goes to her pre-natal check-ups with her, she helps pick the colors for the baby's future bedroom, that sort of thing.

It's an unlikely friendship, perhaps, because the two people are so vastly different, he's in his forties and she's in her twenties, he's successful in business and she's trying to raise the money to finish school, that sort of thing.  Since they're united for this common cause, of gestating this baby, there's the chance here for some kind of situationship, possibly romance, but it's just as likely that she'll fulfill the terms of her surrogate contract and then they'll go their separate ways, especially if Anna's going to use the money she earns to focus on school.  So they spend time together but they're not TOGETHER together, get it?  

So many decisions to make, do they want to know the gender of the baby before it's born, and if not, what do they call it, (or do they just call it "it"?), should they talk to the baby, play music for the baby, is it OK if Anna spends the night in Matt's house, that sort of thing.  Everything becomes something of a negotiation, and they are forced to establish boundaries, but in many ways, that's true for ANY relationship.  Even when two people are in love they have to work out who does what when, and how to live together without driving each other crazy - hey, if it were easy then simply anybody could do it, and we know that some people can't.  All of life and all of love and all of romantic movies is based on the simple fact that some combinations of people work better together than others, and some don't work at all. 

 

Matt and Anna see a therapist together (or maybe it's his, I don't know) and they work on their issues, even though they're not really a couple, plus they also go to group therapy, but separately, not together, because that would be weird.  Then there are birthing classes in addition to all those check-ups, Anna still works in the coffee shop, so really, there's a lot to do, all day every day, while that nine-month clock is slowly advancing.  Then of course the movie ends with the big birthing day itself, and unfortunately we don't really know what comes after that, or do we?  It's a bit of a copout that we the audience have to try and tell the future for these characters, but hey, every movie has to end somewhere, and not everything can be summed up neatly with "And they lived happily ever after."  Chop off those last three words and you'll see something more like most of the endings we get, but perhaps rightly so.  

I heard a comedy routine last week, I think in a Taylor Tomlinson Netflix special, where she pointed out that nobody has both their work life AND their personal life in order.  If you're focusing on your career, then your personal life is probably a mess, and vice versa.  And if somebody does somehow have both their work life and their relationship going well, then at least their parents need to be divorced, or something like that.  I think that's kind of how screenwriters work, they feel the need to create characters whose lives are in shambles, and once they figure out how their characters are damaged, then they put the wheels in motion. Matt had some relationship fails and is now alone BUT his career seems to be going well, while Anna dropped out of college and is floundering there, BUT she finds boyfriends fairly easily AND also she's not in touch with her family because she got pregnant during high school and gave up the baby for adoption.  Meanwhile Matt's parents are divorced, but they each have new partners, so they function as sort of a foursome.  It's great to know you can find love at any age, or have a baby at any stage in this modern world, but naturally, there's also a potential down side to every move you make.

Also starring Ed Helms (last seen in "Jeff, Who Lives at Home"), Patti Harrison (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "The Starling"), Nora Dunn (last seen in "The Oath"), Fred Melamed (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Timm Sharp (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Bianca Lopez (last seen in "The High Note"), Vivian Gil, Julio Torres, Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Sufe Bradshaw (last seen in "Murder Mystery"), Travis Coles, Jo Firestone (last seen in "Don't Think Twice"), David Chattam (last seen in "Almost Friends"), Heidi Mendez, May Calamawy, Greta Titelman, Tucker Smallwood (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Terri Hoyos (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Anna Konkle, Ithamar Enriquez (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Gail Rastorfer (last seen in "Being the Ricardos"), Caitlin Kimball, Lucy Kaminsky, Ayla Rose Barreau, Johnathan Fernandez (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Alicia Roca and the voice of Ellen Dubin. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 color samples

Your Place or Mine

Year 16, Day 52 - 2/21/24 - Movie #4,653

BEFORE: Zoë Chao carries over from "Somebody I Used to Know", and I'm 21 films into the romance chain, so you know what that means?  We've reached the halfway point - that's right, the old February groundhog saw his shadow, so that means three more weeks of romance-based entertainment.  I'm clearing as MUCH of them off of my list as I possibly can, we're going almost all the way up to St. Patrick's Day, I think I can stop like on March 13 and still get to something Irish in time. 

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 13: 

Best Documentary Nominees:

6:15 am "The Sea Around Us" (1952)

7:30 am "The Secret Land" (1949)

9:00 am "Freedom on my Mind" (1993)

11:00 am "Four Days in November" (1964)

1:15 pm "Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt" (1989)

3:00 pm "For All Mankind" (1989)

4:30 pm "When We Were Kings" (1996)

6:15 pm "Winged Migration" (2003)

Best Original Score Winners:

8:00 pm "The Man Who Skied Down Everest" (1975)

9:45 pm "Harlan County USA" (1976)

11:45 pm "Anne Frank Remembered" (1995)

2:00 am "Woodstock" (1970)

Damn, I didn't realize they were going to focus on documentaries, I've only seen 3 out of these 12 today, "When We Were Kings", "Winged Migration" and "Woodstock". So I haven't seen so many documentaries about politics and Holocaust stuff, I tend to lean more toward docs about comedic actors and rock stars. So now I'm at 56 seen out of 148, or 37.8%, still falling.

THE PLOT: Two long-distance best friends change each other's lives when she decides to pursue a lifelong dream and he volunteers to keep an eye on her teenage son.

AFTER: There's really just one rule here at the Movie Year: Don't be a stupid movie.  Tonight's film has a stupid premise, it progresses forward in a stupid way, and then it executes all this in a stupid way, so it's three times the stupid.  I shall explain.

The original idea, and I'll grant that it may BE an original idea, is only original because it's so stupid that no other film has chosen to tell this story, because it just. wouldn't. happen.  Two people who are "best friends" and have been for 20 years since they hooked up once and then put each other in the friend zone.  But then late in the film they still have to get together, because this is still aiming to be a rom-com, and you can't have that without the rom.  So it's got to follow that nonsensible pattern where the relationship's not possible, then it continues to be not possible, then it becomes downright very impossible, the chances of romance are practically nil or non-existent about 3/4 of the way through, and then something changes and suddenly it's all "Oh, we love each other now, and the relationship is very possible."  Nothing works this way, nothing in the world does.  It's like making a movie about a dog trying to be President, and he's not eligible, he's not eligible, he continues to be a dog so he's not eligible, and then all of a sudden near the end, something unlikely happens and dogs can suddenly serve as President - but that wouldn't work, because we were led to believe during 95% of the film that a dog couldn't become President.

You either put somebody in the friend-zone and they stay there, and you both remain friends, sure, that could happen - OR you lose touch after life takes you in two different directions and then years later you look that person up and OK, maybe you could try to date again, I would allow that after several decades of non-contact have elapsed, two people could start over.  But these two people have been ACTIVE best friends every day for 20 years, there's just no way to turn that into a romantic relationship, too much time has been spent in the friend zone, it's like living in New York City for 30 years, you just can't pick up all your stuff and move to another city, like Boise, Idaho, because you've put down roots and you've grown accustomed to NYC and you'll go absolutely bonkers in Boise. Twenty years as friends, you're just not going to convert that to a romantic relationship at that point, because the two people probably know EVERYTHING about each other, all their hopes and aspirations but also their faults and failures, nope, better to start fresh with a new person.

But Debbie and Peter's lives are about to change, because SHE decides to follow her dream and take a 2nd level accounting course or something, which would qualify her for better accounting jobs, not just one at a middle school (umm, I just don't think middle schools need accountants, as a rule?), and for some reason she HAS TO go to New York to take this course for two weeks.  I'm going to stop the screenwriter right there, because why can't she take the class online, or study the material by Zoom?  Doesn't the University of Phoenix offer this course, and if so, then why does she have to go all the way to New York?  See, it's stupid and it doesn't work.  Then when her usual babysitter has her first successful audition and gets her first ever movie role, after YEARS of trying, Peter (who's some kind of independent rich corporate person) volunteers to fly to L.A. and stay with Debbie's son while she's staying at HIS apartment in Brooklyn and taking this course.  Again, more stupid, nobody would do this, not even for their best friend.  And no mother would leave her son in the charge of someone with ZERO child care experience, it just wouldn't happen, not even if that person were her best friend.  I'm calling "shenanigans" on ALL of this stupid plotline. 

So once the main characters have switched places, it gets stupider, because Debbie has left Peter a bunch of rules to follow, and he proceeds to throw the rulebook (and the casseroles) right into the trash.  Well, that's just not something a friend would do, not even a male one.  Sure, Debbie may be a smothering helicopter mother who won't let her son do anything dangerous like play sports or ride in a convertible (I seem to recall I had a mother like that...) but she has these rules in place for a reason, even if her reason is self-serving, because she doesn't want to worry about her son - but THAT'S EXACTLY WHY Peter should follow these rules and respect her parental authority, so that she can relax knowing that her son is properly supervised for these two weeks.  First rule of babysitting is that you're not there to get the kid to like you, you're there to maintain the parental structure that the now-absent parent set in place.  Not following the rules is teaching the kid that it's OK to be defiant and break rules, and then they will continue to DO THAT once their parent comes home.  So, naturally Peter takes Jack for a ride in a convertible, then gets him on the hockey team so he can make friends - but come on, the people who will only be his friends if he can play hockey, aren't really his true friends then.  AND of course Jack goes right into playing hockey with NO practice or instructions on how to play, like what the HELL was Peter thinking - so yeah, of course he's going to get injured, it's hockey!

Meanwhile, Debbie is living in Peter's apartment and she meets a few of his NYC exes, and she's starting to get in trouble herself, she meets a famous publisher at a random bar and she just HAPPENS to have read every book this publisher has published - this is pretty darn stupid, too, and beyond any rational working of coincidence.  Then also she learns that Peter once tried to be a novelist and still has his manuscript lying around in his apartment, and she now just HAPPENS to know a publisher, so she works on getting his book published, which is NOT why she's there, and she even works on this while she's supposed to be studying for that accounting course, which is stupidly beyond stupid.  I mean, isn't that the reason for the whole trip in the first place?  

My point is that when left to their own devices, these so-called "best friends" lie to each other, these may be lies of omission but those are still lies.  And then when the lies are revealed, the friends meet at the airport and are very angry with each other, as they should be, but then next logical step would be for them to just go their separate ways and never speak again, because they have betrayed each other, after all.  The fact that this doesn't happen means that the story that was stupid in the first place is now getting even stupider, and sure, this is all designed to bring them closer together somehow, only that's not what should logically happen between two people who have lied to each other and betrayed each other.  That's not love, that's not friendship, that's all something else.  They SHOULD NOT be allowed to fall in love with each other at this point, but of course that's why someone set this story in motion in the first place.  

And then on top of this there are huge execution problems, like there's probably five times as much dialogue here as would be needed to properly explain things, every single little point that anyone makes in this film is completely belabored to the point where I just didn't care about that THING any more.  Like at the end when they hold hands, they say, "Oh, look, we're holding hands!  Never been much of a hand-holder before, but look, we're holding hands and it feels good!  I guess we're both hand-holders now!"  Simply NOBODY talks like this, they didn't have to say anything at all, they could have just held hands and given each other a look and that would have been so much more effective, and quieter.  Everything else like this was similarly stupidly stupid, across the board. 

All right, let's move on and start the back half of the romance chain, if the movies are going to be like THIS then I can't wait to get them all over with. 

Also starring Reese Witherspoon (last heard in "Sing 2"), Ashton Kutcher (last seen in "Vengeance"), Jesse Williams (last seen in "Secret Headquarters"), Wesley Kimmel, Tig Notaro (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Steve Zahn (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Rachel Bloom (last seen in "The School for Good and Evil"), Griffin Matthews, Vella Lovell (last seen in "The Christmas Chronicles"), Shiri Appleby (last seen in "Swimfan"), Tanner Swagger, Mystic inscho, Michael Hitchcock (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Rene Gube (last seen in "Seeking a Friend for the End of the World"), Ted Griffin (last seen in "The Wolf of Wall Street"), Gloria Calderon Kellett (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Tom Yi (last seen in "The Purge"), Britney Young, Katie Hyde (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Christopher V. Nelson, Duncan Calladine, Kelsey Flynn.

RATING: 3 out of 10 ever-present coffee cups

Somebody I Used to Know

Year 16, Day 51 - 2/20/24 - Movie #4,652

BEFORE: Julie Hagerty carries over again from "She's the Man", and it seems that after being a headlining star in the 1970's, she had a whole second (third) career in the new Millennium, playing older Mom characters in romantic comedies. (she's a rom-com-Mom?)  Hey, more power to her, you've got to keep working to keep your SAG card and your AFTRA pension, I think. 

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 12: 

Best Original Score Nominees:

7:15 am "Carefree" (1938)

9:00 am "Night and Day" (1946)

11:15 am "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945)

1:00 pm "Of Mice and Men" (1939)

3:00 pm "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)

4:30 pm "The Harvey Girls" (1946)

6:15 pm "On the Town" (1949)

Best Original Score Winners:

8:00 pm "The Red Shoes" (1948)

10:30 pm "Spellbound" (1945)

12:30 am "Now, Voyager" (1942)

2:45 am "A Little Romance" (1989)

4:45 am "Lili" (1953)

Just 4 seen out of 12 today, "The Old Man and the Sea", "On the Town", "Spellbound" and "Now, Voyager". So now I'm at 53 seen out of 136, or 38.9%, I've got to do better if I'm going to get closer to 50% than 40%.  But hey, the last 7 days are all Best Picture nominees and winners, and I've seen the vast majority of Best Picture winners. 

THE PLOT: On a trip to her hometown, workaholic Ally reminisces with her ex, Sean, and starts to question everything about the person she's become.  Things only get more confusing when she meets Cassidy, who reminds her of the person she used to be. 

AFTER: Sometimes you can feel it when a screenwriter protests too much - like one character here asks another if they're trying to re-create a "My Best Friend's Wedding" situation, trying to attend someone's wedding just to break up the engaged couple and get back together with their ex-lover.  So that's a tip-off that this movie is ripping off "My Best Friend's Wedding", right?  Like if there was a movie about a shark attacking beachgoers and someone said, "Oh, this isn't like "Jaws", is it?" then my next thought would be, "Oh, so this is just like "Jaws", isn't it?"  Well, this is kind of like "My Best Friend's Wedding", therefore, but re-enacted by half of the cast of "Community".  

I suppose that's not really fair, because it's really just TWO actors here that were in "Community", but who's to say there couldn't have been more?  Show me a movie that can't be made better by adding Joel McHale to it, I'm just saying.  "Community" was a great show that I watched live when it first aired on NBC, but my wife didn't watch it until it was streaming on Netflix a year or two ago, go figure.  We each come to things on our own time - I just made a list the other day of streaming shows that I'd like to catch up on, if I have time, and it includes "Echo", "Ms. Marvel", "Titans" (after season 2), "Only Murders in the Building" (also after season 2), "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" (after season 1) and "Star Trek: Discovery" (also after season 1) because now we got Paramount+ free, since we pay for Showtime.  

Oh, right, "Somebody I Used to Know", which (almost) shares its name with a song that was a hit about five (nope, thirteen?) years ago, by some Swedish record producer named Gotye. which was about the slow, mysterious and painful process of breaking up with people, and how they then change from people who are very important to us into just people that we, you know, used to know.  

The film is right on track with several of the other romance films that I've watched this month, ones where people are engaged to be married but suddenly having second thoughts, like in "A Guy Thing" and "The Wedding Ringer", only not exactly like those, you know, because it's a riff on "My Best Friend's Wedding".  Ally is a successful reality show director and showrunner of the popular series "Dessert Island" (in which, apparently, contestants live on an island where they bake desserts competitively and also date each other, and WHY DOES THIS SHOW NOT EXIST ALREADY, and how soon can I watch this IRL?). However, the third season of the show, has not performed as well as the first two, and after learning the show is about to be cancelled, Ally flies to Washington state to spend a week with her mother in her hometown.

(She brings her cat with her, which I found a little odd, like when we go on vacation for a weekend or even a full week, we hire a cat-sitter, I don't think our cats would let us put them in a cat carrier, let alone fly with them on a plane, they'd be freaking out the entire time.  But maybe she took the time to train her cat better, we just can't be bothered.)

She runs into her ex-boyfriend, Sean, in Leavenworth and they spend a whole day going to various German pubs and restaurants as they catch up - that sure looked like fun.  But after Ally suggests they fool around, Sean says it wouldn't be a good idea.  When Ally visits his house to apologize, she finds his family is there and there's a party for Sean's upcoming wedding.  Now Ally is confused, why did Sean hang out with her for a whole day, was it just to remember the past times they shared, or is there a chance she could mess with the wedding plans and get back together with Sean?  

Ally works her way into one wedding weekend event after another, including the last performance of the band that Sean's fiancée, Cassidy, has been in for years.  Apparently she's giving up touring and playing music with her friends to devote herself to the marriage, and Ally sees in this situation a reflection of the choice she didn't make years ago, when she chose her career making documentaries and moving to L.A. over staying in Washington with Sean, and giving up on her dreams.  

Ally then does a bad thing, it's done with the intention of driving Sean and Cassidy further apart, which theoretically could bring Sean and Ally closer together again.  It also plays on the fact that there are things that Sean and Cassidy are not discussing, but probably should.  Yeah, sure, the band thing is important, but what about the fact that Cassidy has dated mostly women up to this point, and is now marrying a man?  That seems much more important to me, but it kinds of gets glossed over here, probably out of fear of saying anything negative about LGBTQ+ issues, like it seems the writer doesn't even want to GO there, but then why make the character this back-story in the first place?  Yes, by all means, Cassidy should talk to Sean about her desire to keep playing music, to keep being HERSELF if this is a vital part of herself.  But again, what about dating women, isn't that a part of herself, too, and a part of her story?  What kind of marriage are they going to have, will she still want to date women, or be able to date women?  The silence on this point is deafening to me, but maybe that's just me. 

Yes, Ally tried to drive this engaged couple apart, for selfish reasons - but her actions also got them talking about the things they weren't talking about, and in a way that drove them closer together.  So I guess the plan backfired, but Ally realized what she did was wrong, so in the end if all kind of worked out?  Maybe?  Jeez, relationships these days are more complicated than ever, the rom-coms from 2003 and 2008 didn't touch on these sort of issues.  It was a different time back then.

Anyway, Ally eventually realizes that her presence at the wedding weekend was causing more harm than good, so she patched up the couple as best as she could and took off, back to her mother's place, where Mom's getting it on with her old third grade teacher. Umm, great, you go, Mom, live your best life.  The good news is that Ally's assistant managed to talk to another network about getting "Dessert Island" picked up for another season - TV shows change networks all the time, don't they?  Like "American Idol" used to be on Fox, now it's on ABC - and, well, that's about it, but it has happened before. Anyway, Ally also wants to make documentary shows about nudists, but it's a little unclear which networks could even air them - I guess there's that "Naked & Afraid" show, right?  Is that still a thing?  But for the love of God, what is the clever name of this nudism show that Ally is directing?  "Unclothed and Personal"?  "The Daily Nudes"?  "Grin and Bare It"?

Also starring Alison Brie (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Jay Ellis (last seen in "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"), Kiersey Clemons (last seen in "The Flash"), Danny Pudi (last seen in "Star Trek Beyond"), Olga Merediz (last seen in "In the Heights"), Haley Joel Osment (last seen in "Spielberg"), Ayden Mayeri (last seen in "Confess, Fletch"), Fabi Reyna, Marian Li-Pino, Ted Rooney (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), Amy Sedaris (last seen in "Handsome: A Netflix Mystery Movie"), Sam Richardson (last seen in "Senior Year"), Zoë Chao (ditto), Kelvin Yu (last seen in "Elizabethtown"), Evan Jonigkeit (last seen in "Tallulah"), Rochelle Maria Muzquiz, Loudon McCleery, Phillip Ray Guevara, Hanna Barefoot (last seen in "King Richard"), Leigh Guyer, Rachel Pate, Jeb Berrier (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), T'ai Hartley, Erika Vetter, Nick Bryant, Jeanine Jackson (last seen in "Fearless"), Anais Genevieve, Nevaeh England, Mark Pettet.  

RATING: 6 out of 10 strings of icicles hanging in the bar (year-round)

She's the Man

Year 16, Day 50 - 2/19/24 - Movie #4,651

BEFORE: Julie Hagerty carries over from "A Guy Thing", and here's another film that I missed out on years ago, from a time when I just didn't care about rom-coms or watching movies in a particular order, and now of course I'm still playing catch-up, it's been sixteen years worth of playing catch-up so far.  

Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 11: 

Best Original Song Nominees:

6:45 am "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air" (1937)

8:15 am "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944)

10:15 am "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)

12:00 pm "The Triplets of Belleville" (2003)

1:45 pm "The Sandpiper" (1965)

4:00 pm "Calamity Jane" (1953)

6:00 pm "The Gay Divorcee" (1934)

Best Original Song Winners:

8:00 pm "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)

10:15 pm "The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

12:15 am "Fame" (1980)

2:45 am "A Star Is Born" (1976)

5:15 am "Lady Be Good" (1941)

Finally, another day where I've seen most of the movies, 8 out of 12 today, everything BUT "Mr. Dodd Takes the Air", "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", "Calamity Jane", and "Lady Be Good".  So now I'm at 49 seen out of 124, or 39.5%, I've still got a shot at this. 

THE PLOT: When her twin brother decides to ditch for a couple weeks, Viola heads over to his boarding school, disguised as him, and proceeds to fall for his roommate, the school's star soccer player, and she soon learns she's not the only one with romantic troubles. 

AFTER: This film is loosely based on Shakespeare's "Twelth Night", so some attention must be paid to this, just like "Ten Things I Hate About You" was based on "The Taming of the Shrew".  I guess maybe whatever doesn't go back to "Cyrano de Bergerac" maybe can be traced back to Billy Shakes? 

There is a set of twins in "Twelfth Night", fraternal twins of course, because one is male and one is female, Viola and Sebastian.  All that carries over here, though in the Shakespeare play they are separated by a shipwreck, and here they're separated by the fact that Sebastian wants to go to London and tour with his band for a few weeks, and sure, he'll miss the first few weeks of high school, but there are never repercussions for that, are there?  Umm, wait, shouldn't there be?  

I get that Viola is upset because the girls soccer team at her high school got its funding cut, OK, that could happen if wrong-minded people think that boys sports are more important than girls sports, that's against Title IX, right?  But it's where we find ourselves tonight, because Viola needs the motivation to dress up like a boy to prove that girls are just as good at soccer as boys are, umm, as long as they dress like a boy and act like a boy?  OK, maybe that's a bit of a mixed message, because she transfers over from the Cornwall school to the Illyria school and pretends to be her own twin brother, only I have one question, doesn't anybody notice when VIOLA doesn't show up for the first two weeks of her school?  Don't her parents get a phone call after she misses five days of school in a row or something?  I'll admit, I don't have kids so I don't know how any of that works. 

But you can imagine that things go very smoothly, with her masquerading as a boy at her new boarding school - it kind of HAS to be boarding school, because boarding schools have dorms and roommates, and if it were a regular high school, then she'd just live at home with one or more of her parents, and we wouldn't have a story here, would we?  Yeah, the screenwriter needed a weird mix of high school and college dorms, so really, the only narrative solution was boarding school.  But also there are TWO boarding schools in the same town or district?  That's a little weird, but I think I also saw that same aberration last year in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser", right?  

Also NITPICK POINT, did Viola not realize that she would have to shower with the guys after every soccer game?  She kept making excuses for not getting naked in front of them (or her roommate, for that matter), but why didn't she factor this in from the start and realize that her plan just wasn't a very good one?  

Viola (as Sebastian) doesn't make the first string squad, though, she only makes second string.  AHA, so girls are NOT as good at soccer as boys, is that the mixed message here?  But she makes a deal with her roommate, Duke Orsino, he'll teach "Sebastian" how to improve his soccer skills if Sebastian will put in a good word for him with his science lab partner, Olivia, because Duke wants to date Olivia.  However (and you knew there'd be a "however", right?) Olivia only has eyes for Sebastian, because "he" just isn't like all the other "boys", he's more sensitive and caring, almost like.. a girl? Go figure. 

Things get more complicated when Olivia DOES go out with Duke, but only to make Sebastian jealous so he'll notice her.  They all double-date and Viola/Sebastian dates Eunice, and great, another person likely to fall for Sebastian and turn this love triangle into a love quadrangle.  Then things get even MORE complicated when Sebastian's ex-girlfriend, Monique, appears on the scene and refuses to acknowledge that they broke up, she still thinks that she and Sebastian can make things work, and she fails to realize that he's both A) in London and B) also a girl now.

Yeah about that, unfortunately the twins don't even look very much alike, and that's a problem for anyone who knew Sebastian before, they should realize that Viola is not him, or that he has a different face now, but nobody really seems to notice, except for the audience?  OK, sure, if they never met Sebastian before, they might buy that Viola is Sebastian, but COME ON.

(Also, why is there a carnival in every teen romance film?  They all just need someplace for the double dates to go that isn't a movie or a restaurant, right?  This is the third movie with a carnival or fair in a week, after "Whatever It Takes" and "Sex Drive".  But do they still have kissing booths at carnivals?  That seems so outdated, sexist and out of touch with today's sensibilities, I'm pretty sure the kissing booths have gone the way of the dinosaur, there's just too much objectification of women involved, along with a lack of consent, no bueno. 

Then things reach the acme of complication when the REAL Sebastian finally shows up after two weeks on the road, and he thinks he can just slide right into the life that Viola has crafted for him at the new boarding school.  OK, there's a hot blonde girl who's kissing him out of the blue, that's something he can work with, but then his teammates wake him up in time for the big soccer match against rival Cornwall, and he's got absolutely no soccer skills whatsoever.  Also he doesn't look like the Sebastian his teammates know, but some convenient face-painting helps take care of that.   

The rival characters think they have Viola/Sebastian's number, the school nerd, Malcolm (who really isn't as nerdy as he should be, also I'm unclear why he hated Sebastian so much) calls Sebastian out as being a girl masquerading as a boy, but by this point the real Sebastian is back, and can prove his gender just by dropping his pants (there simply HAD to be a better way to handle this...).  But then Viola takes his place again so their soccer team can win the game, however she then reveals that she is, in fact, a girl, by flashing her breasts (again, there simply HAD to be a better way to handle this, too...)

We could get into a whole debate here about gender in college sports, whether there should even be a separation into men's sports and women's sports, or whether girls should play on the boys team if there is no girls team, but the film can't seem to bring itself to make any coherent points on this matter.  Just saying, 'Well in OUR school we don't separate people by gender" doesn't really accomplish anything, because you haven't actually changed the rule book, you just let one girl play on the boys team for one game, because she's super at playing soccer.  Nothing really got settled here, and the debates on this topic will continue - there's a female college basketball player who just broke some kind of record for points, now do we acknowledge that she's just a good of a basketball player as most men, or do we belittle her accomplishement by pointing out that she was playing against a team full of girls?  

Look, this isn't just a follow-up to Shakespeare (and remember that back in the Elizabethan age, women weren't allowed to be actors, so all the females were played by men in dresses) and all the original storyline's transvestite issues, this is also a pre-cursor to all TRANS issues that we have today - what happens when someone changes their gender temporarily is also symbolic of what could happen when someone changes their gender permanently.  Right?  We have to give these people their rights and their dignity and not make them take their clothes off in the middle of a playing field just to prove some pointless point that we want to make for no reason.  Right? 

This particular storyline with the soccer game and the weird boarding school and the debutante ball is very, very wonky, but it hints at something greater that was yet to be, like what happens when a boy falls in love with a girl who looks like a boy, or wants to be a boy?  Or what happens when a girl falls in love with a boy who is really a girl?  Shakespeare couldn't really GO there, but movies today can, and perhaps they should, because that would create some new narrative possibilities, and anyway, the old ones are really getting worn out. 

Also starring Amanda Bynes (last seen in "Easy A"), Channing Tatum (last seen in "Dog"), Laura Ramsey (last seen in "Middle Men"), Vinnie Jones (last seen in "Freelancers"), David Cross (last seen in "Obvious Child"), Robert Hoffman (last seen in "Take Me Home Tonight"), Alexandra Breckenridge (last seen in "Orange County"), Jonathan Sadowski (last seen in "Live Free or Die Hard"), Amanda Crew (last seen in "Sex Drive"), Jessica Lucas (last seen in "Pompeii"), Brandon Jay McLaren (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Clifton MaCabe Murray (last seen in "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian"), James Snyder, James Kirk (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Emily Perkins (last seen in "It" (1990)), Robert Torti (last seen in "Race to Witch Mountain"), Lynda Boyd (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), John Pyper-Ferguson (last seen in "Drive"), Katie Stuart (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Colby Wilson, Jeffrey Ballard, Patricia Idlette (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Ken Kirby, David Richmond-Peck (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Mark Acheson (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Emma Jonnz (last seen in "Last Christmas"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 penalty kicks

A Guy Thing

Year 16, Day 49 - 2/18/24 - Movie #4,650

BEFORE: I've been so busy (or so distracted) by Valentine's Day and movie romances that I forgot all about TCM's annual "31 Days of Oscar" programming.  This was probably easier for me when the Oscars were in February and the channel worked off a different schedule, now the Oscars air in March and they started their Oscar programming on February 9, who starts something mid-month?  That's crazy.  Anyway, I'm like 10 days behind now and I have to decide if I want to go back and add the stats to my last 10 reviews, it's a lot of work, for a little payoff.  

BUT, I have to start getting ready for Oscar season somehow - I did add "Oppenheimer" to my list and I think I can watch that movie RIGHT after my St. Patrick's Day programming, fortunately there are like 87 big stars in that movie so I can probably fit it in just about anywhere, I just have to make sure I can watch it on, say, March 19 without ruining my chances of getting to some Mother's Day films.  But I'm crafty, I can probably adapt - now as for the other Best Picture nominees, liike "American Fiction", "Poor Things", "The Holdovers" and "KIllers of the Flower Moon", I suppose I'm waiting for them all to air on cable or streaming before I add them to my watchlist.  I'll have to try to get to "Barbie" this summer, that kind of feels like a summer film, right?  

Anyway, here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", it looks like this year they've broken down everything by Oscar category, which I have to respect, that makes more sense to me then grouping by decade or by theme - I also do like it when they program like I do, with one actor or actress shared between all adjoining films.  

Best Supporting Actor Nominees:

7:00 am "Romeo and Juliet" (1936)

9:30 am "Friendly Persuasion" (1956)

12:00 pm "Quo Vadis" (1955)

3:00 pm "Cool Hand Luke" (1967)

5:15 pm "The DIrty Dozen" (1967)

Best Supporting Actor Winners:

8:00 pm "Topkapi" (1964)

10:15 pm "Adaptation" (2002)

12:30 am "Cabaret" (1972)

2:45 am "Come and Get It" (1936)

4:30 am "Lust for Life" (1956)

Well, I've seen "Cool Hand Luke", "The Dirty Dozen", "Adaptation", "Cabaret" and "Lust for Life", so I'm starting off with a 50% seen-to-not-seen ratio, and for me that's very good!  Last year I ended up on Day 31 with 45.7% seen.  I'll take a solid 50%, but now I need to go back over the last 10 days and figure out what I missed, which could bring my score down a bit.  So after reviewing what I missed and adding 5 out of these 10, my cumulative score is now 41 seen out of 112, or 36.6%.  Up a tiny bit today, but still down from the initial 50% - so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks, maybe I can still hit the high 40's. 

David Koechner carries over again from "Sex Drive", so that's three in a row for him, and he makes my year-end countdown.  So far this month only Jason Biggs, Kevin Hart, Regina Hall, Jenifer Lewis and La La Anthony have qualified, but there's still time. 

THE PLOT: A soon-to-be husband wakes up on the morning after his bachelor party in bed with another woman. 

AFTER: Well, now I'm cursed because I know the formula, I've seen it again and again.  When a rom-com starts with a planned wedding, you can be almost sure that THOSE two people are not going to end up married, because where's the fun/drama/excitement in that?  Let's see, "Over Her Dead Body" started with a wedding set-up, so did "The Wedding Ringer", were there others?  By contrast, there have been some successful weddings this month, like in "You People", "Think Like a Man Too", and "A Walk to Remember", but the difference there is that the wedding plans started about halfway through the film, and there were obstacles to overcome.  Buf if two people are already at the bachelor/bachelorette party stage at the START of the film, statistically speaking, things aren't looking good.  They've got a few days to reconsider things and/or encounter someone else in a situationship, and that's going to set things in motion and lead to a dramatic non-wedding scene.  But hey, statistically we're 50% on wedding success this month, so maybe that seems about right. 

And I called it correctly, not just because Paul, the groom, wakes up with a woman from the bachelor party next to him in bed.  There's also his brother, Pete, who expresses his feelings for his future sister-in-law quite clearly at the start, and these affirmations get more prominent as the film goes on, Pete's always talking about how lucky Paul is to be marrying Karen, how nice and sweet and beautiful she is, it really couldn't BE more obvious that Pete's been carrying a torch for Karen for a long time, and they're really the ones who are destined to be together, if you believe in that destiny sort of thing.  It's just as likely that Pete married someone else, and was happy for a time, but then after getting divorced he looked back on the paths he took in life, and convinced himself that he made a wrong turn and should have been with Karen from the jump. 

As for Paul, of course when he realizes that he's slept with another woman, his first inclination is to get that woman out of his apartment ASAP, and then start lying about it.  Of course, that's what you do, it's "a guy thing" after all.  But since this is a moral fable, one lie leads to another and he lies to his fiancée and he lies to his parents and he basically lies to everyone, and he has to keep telling more lies to cover the lies that fell through, and this gets carried to its most illogical degree, of course - but most importantly, hasn't he been lying to himself?  It eventually dawns on Paul that "we're just not right for each other", but can we explore that a little bit?  Whatever he had with Karen shouldn't just be dismissed because he likes her cousin a little better, or his brother likes Karen a little more.

Isn't it more significant that he's marrying the boss's daughter, to somehow advance himself at work?  That's not a solid enough reason to spend the rest of your life with somebody.  Love shouldn't be tied to your career, or you shouldn't get married out of some sense of obligation, like "we're getting married because we're together" and also "we're together because we're getting married".  Then there's the way that Karen treats Paul, she's constantly nagging him about booking that string quartet for the wedding, she won't even LISTEN to his request to book a band for the reception that will play songs they both like, and she's always upset with the fact that he turns up late for everything, even the family dinner in his honor. (To be fair, he IS always late for everything, but come on, he's having a week, and anyway, she should forgive him for just about all his misdeeds and accept him for the always-late person that he is.). So really, it's funny that her name is Karen because she's acting like a total Karen, and as a society we didn't even know what that meant, back in 2003.  Hey, maybe this is where that started. 

What if he had told Karen what happened after the bachelor party from the start?  Sure, it would have been a difficult conversation, but maybe he could have spun it by saying, "Hey, funny story, but your cousin was working as a dancer at my bachelor party, and we were both drunk, and she needed a place to crash, so she spent the night at my apartment, but we didn't have sex, so we're still cool, right?"  OK, maybe that would have been the wrong move to make, and maybe Karen would have broken up with Paul, but they all would have ended up in the same place, anyway, or close enough, so is honesty REALLY the best policy or not?  Admittedly, that's all a bit confusing here.  

Right now, it's something of a game, if I keep on watching romantic comedies, can I keep predicting within the first 10 minutes who's going to be romantically involved at the end of the film?  Will they get married or won't they?  Look, even though this was all very formulaic, I have to give it up for "A Guy Thing" because there's a bad tradition in Hollywood rom-coms where the bride and groom call the wedding off at the last minute, and then the best man (or someone else) steps up and proclaims his (or her) love for the jilted party, and the new couple gets married on the spot.  This all goes back to "The Philadelphia Story", I think.  However, those two people do NOT have a marriage license, so it's the kind of thing that can ONLY happen in a movie, you can't do this IRL.  Still, the movie trope persists - however this does NOT happen in "A Guy Thing", the new couple does leave the church together, although they are NOT hitched, they're going to at least go on a few dates first.  Well, try before you buy, I always say. 

And people still insist on having bachelor parties and bachelorette parties, when in the movies at least, they are NEVER a good idea.  They're all disasters, right?  "You People", "Think Like a Man Too", "The Wedding Ringer", and tonight's film is just the latest example.  Sure, get together with your friends, maybe drink a couple of beers, but once you get strippers, drugs and/or Las Vegas involved, you're just asking for trouble.  I think for my first bachelor party I went bowling outside Cleveland with my future father-in-law and two of my fiancée's male friends. Well, at least there was no way that evening was going to go south, right?  

NITPICK POINT: I think maybe they should have worked the title in to the film a few more times - as it stands, it comes from the conversation that Karen had with the SpendMart manager about dirty underwear.  They could also have used it when Paul's boss and future father-in-law finds out that he slept with Becky, got crabs, and helped the IAB arrest her psycho cop ex-boyfriend.  He could have said, "I realize you screwed up, but as long as you make my daughter happy, I'm willing to overlook it, because it's a Guy Thing.  Wasted opportunity. 

Also starring Jason Lee (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Julia Stiles (last seen in "Down to You"), Shawn Hatosy (ditto), Selma Blair (last seen in "Legally Blonde"), James Brolin (last heard in "Lightyear"), Lochlyn Munro (last seen in "Cosmic Sin"), Diana Scarwid (last seen in "Heat'), Julie Hagerty (last seen in "Instant Family"), Thomas Lennon (last heard in "Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again"), Jackie Burroughs (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Jay Brazeau (last seen in "Antlers"), Larry Miller (last seen in "The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot"), Matthew Walker (last seen in "We're No Angels"), Fred Ewanuick, Lisa Calder (last seen in "Chaos Theory"), Dan Joffre, Michael Teigen (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Brody Smith, Miriam Smith (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Paul McGillion, Gina Stockdale, Michael Sunczyk, Zahf Paroo (last seen in "Scooby-Doo: Monsters Unleashed"), Peter New (ditto), Noel Fisher (last seen in "Capone"), Keith Dallas (last seen in "Snakes on a Plane"), Donavon Stinson (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Victor Varnado (last seen in "End of Days"), Larry Musser, Ron Selmour, Gus Lynch, Fiona Hogan (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Xantha Radley (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Colin Foo (ditto), Natassia Malthe (last seen in "Alpha"), with a cameo from Leslie Jones (last seen in "Coming 2 America")

RATING: 5 out of 10 burning photographs