Gran Turismo

Year 16, Day 82 - 3/22/24 - Movie #4,682

BEFORE: Heading into another weekend, I'd try to catch up but Saturday we'll need to go grocery shopping, and Sunday I have to work, so it's not going to be easy.  I'm also behind on TV and a few other things, so maybe I should just try to stay current (or a day behind) and just leave it at that.  Any progress made is good progress, right?  Two weeks ago I went to that beer festival and then spent a couple days in Atlantic City, and that's where I fell behind, but it was OK because it actually made a better film land on St. Patrick's Day, and then I adjusted my chain from there.  It's OK, it's all going to be OK, the chain is still holding and I can always compensate by finding something to drop, or something to add.  Just have to keep my head down and stick to the schedule as best as I can.  

Archie Madekwe carries over from "Heart of Stone". The bigger question looms, which concerns what I'm going to watch after "Oppenheimer" - I have no idea, and just a little over a week to figure that out.  Mother's Day is SO far away, it gives me about 40 slots that have to be filled, and I could end in a number of different places, like there's "Because I Said So" and "Georgia Rule", or "All About My Mother" and "Parallel Mothers", or "Being Rose", "As They Made Us" or "All We Had".  I'll just have to riff for a while and see what's possible, because from "Oppenheimer" I can pretty much go anywhere I want. I think it would almost be easier to pick two good Mother's Day films and work backwards, because any tree-shaped chart of possibilities is bound to include "Oppenheimer" at some point.  I should probably start working on that. 

THE PLOT: Based on the inspiring true story of a team of underdogs - a struggling, working-class gamer, a failed former race car driver, and an idealistic motorsport exec - who risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world. 

AFTER: Yesterday's film touched on some issues regarding A.I., though things were very muddled indeed - those spies used the "ultimate" A.I. to predict possibilities, recommending courses of action, like if Rachel skis down the mountain, she won't get there in time to kill the enemies, and people will die, but if she uses the paraglider, she'll arrive in time and there will be a better outcome.  Of course we don't have this kind of predictive technology available to us yet, and we can't trust A.I. enough to follow its advice.  However, there is an exception to this rule, we've been using video-games like flight simulators to train pilots, because some of the simulations are that good.  There are occasional news reports of someone with flightsim experience landing a plane when the pilots are incapacitated, however getting a pilot's license still requires a substantial amount of real-world flight experience, you can't just study for x number of hours in a simulator and then expect to be handed the controls of a real plane. By contrast, there's a news story from last May of a person with NO flight experience landing a plane in Florida, just by taking the advice of air traffic controllers. 

But this movie wants us to believe in the power of the Gran Turismo video-game, which apparently is SO life-like and SO well researched that a team from Nissan agreed to put the top 10 players in the world through a real auto racing Academy - note that there was actual physical training involved, plus education on the mechanics and operation of a real car in the real world, and so people just did NOT go from being a champion in the Gran Turismo game to driving in a real-world auto race.  In other words, the racing simulator is good, but it's not THAT good.  I'm playing "Red Dead Redemption" now for the first time, and whatever happens in the game, I'm not going to consider myself an expert in fighting gun duels or skinning coyotes.  I've already died many times in shootouts, which the game allows me to do an infinite number of times, but in the real world, I know I can only do that once.  

I haven't watched a good auto racing movie in quite a while, and I think that's because there just aren't very many of them?  Boxing is a much easier sport to do a movie about, because two men get into a boxing ring, one is the star of the film, so guess which one is going to win (or at least go the distance), plus there isn't a lot to explain, they just punch each other and maybe we find out the best time to throw a left hook, or maybe we don't, but either way we understand punching somebody until they fall down.  Auto racing is a lot more complicated, there are different tracks and different driving conditions and techniques for getting ahead of the other drivers (I think going faster might be the key, not sure).  Why. somebody would have to spend hours and hours learning every track and every possible scenario to the point where every possible action to take under every possible set of circumstances was ingrained and had become second nature to them, and that's exactly what a gamer would do, play the video-game every possible waking moment until they had that down. 

Unfortunately Jann Mardenborough was born into a football (soccer) family, and his father was a footballer and his younger brother seemed to be on that track, but his father just couldn't understand the merits of video-gaming, because to him it wasn't real, and therefore a waste of time.  The first half-hour of this film is the same argument, over and over again, on this very point. "When are you stop playing that game and get a real job?" followed by "But DAD, you said I should do something I love!" followed by "Yes, but I meant something you love that I also approve of..." followed by "But DAD, you don't understand!" and then back to the beginning.  And the problem here seemed to be that Jann had no concrete plans to get out of working in a department store selling socks, and not even the fact that his mother was in the Spice Girls could help him advance. Until one day...

The GT Academy was dreamt up by a marketing guy at Nissan, which I've been pronouncing wrong all this time, apparently - my wife has leased three Rogues and we say "NEE-san", but now I guess we should have been saying "NISS-ahn", or "Niss-AHN" maybe.  He wants to tap into the group of gamers that are 80 million strong, because those are the people most excited about driving, but also those who think that dying in a fiery crash on a racetrack is really cool.  Well, you can just start the race over, right?  What's the harm?  Yes, realizing that the Gen Z gamers think they have infinite lives kind of explains a lot, doesn't it?  In my day you had THREE lives and that was it, before you had to put in another quarter.  Anyway he sends out messages via the game to the people with the fastest lap times, the ones who have been playing so long that they've got the game beat, and what do you know, they all live within traveling distance of the same track or else they all were able to come up with the airfare, I don't know.  But since this is EXACTLY what Jann had been dreaming of, he's able to quit his job and convince his parents to let him study to be a real racer in the real world. If this wasn't a true story, it would probably seem too far-fetched to even be a movie. 

There are hurdles, for sure - even after Jann beats out nine other teens to get his shot at real-time racing, the contract with NISMO is contingent on him finishing at least fourth in one of six races in the season, so at first he's an unlicensed driver - perhaps it's a bit like getting your SAG card, which you can't have until you've been in three movies, but then how do you get cast in a movie if you don't have your SAG card yet?  Then there are the other drivers, who totally resent this SIM driver being in the race, so they all do their best to either make him crash or not get past them in the race.  Driving "defensively" on a race track seems to be a bit different in the racing world, we use that term IRL to stand for driving safely, but on the track it means not letting the other racer get ahead of you.  

After an accident, there becomes a rising tide of anti-gamer sentiment, and the NISMO team decides that the only way to counter this is to have Jann and two other gamers compete at LeMans, which is a 24-hour race and an endurance test, if they can make it to the podium there, then it will prove that they were right to put SIM drivers behind the wheel.  It isn't easy, because during a pit stop a crew person drops a wheel nut, and doesn't have a spare, and the NISMO team drops from fifth to ninth, and in the end it's up to Jann to climb back up through the ranks, pass all the other drivers using the techniques he learned playing the video-game (again, I think going faster might be the key) and breaking the course lap record in order to win?  Nope, to make third place, which somehow is just as good as a win in this crazy mixed-up world. 

This depiction of pit stops is something I can sort of understand, like if a racer pulls into a pit-stop, and the crew takes too much time to fill the tank, change all the tires, and umm, do the other things, then naturally that racer will fall behind in the race.  What I still don't understand, no matter how many times someone explains it to me, is how they keep track of which car is in which position when they're always coming in and out of the pit stops. Like how can a car be in first place, go into a pit stop, spend the minimum amount of time off the track, and come out and STILL be in first place?  Didn't every other car pass THAT car while it was getting its tires changed and its tank filled?  How exactly does that work?  I'm still baffled.  

Anyway it's a solid effort, despite the fact that to make this one racer the hero, they had to make every other driver into villains (twice) and I'm just not sure that's how auto racing works.  Yeah, sure I get that it's every man for himself, but there are racing teams, too, and success on a circuit is cumulative, right?  I think in those NASCAR series there are individual winners for each race, but another winner for the whole season, unless I'm mistaken.  Bottom line is that there's still a lot I don't understand about the sport, learning one person's story didn't seem to be that much help there.  Still, "Rocky" but in racing cars is a hell of an idea.  And the message of being able to succeed in life by playing video games better than anyone else should appeal to people under a certain age. 

Also starring David Harbour (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Orlando Bloom (last seen in "Needle in a Timestack"), Takehiro Hira, Darren Barnet, Geri Halliwell Horner, Djimon Hounsou (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Josha Stradowski, Daniel Puig, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Pepe Barroso, Niall McShea, Nikhil Parmar, Thomas Kretschmann (last seen in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"), Akie Kotabe (last seen in "The November Man"), Sadao Ueda, Wai Wong (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Jamie Kenna (last seen in "Stuart: A Life Backwards"), Royce Cronin (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Harki Bhambra, Emelia Hartford, Lindsay Pattison, Mariano Gonzalez, Maximilian Mundt, Sang Heon Lee, Theo Christine, Lloyd Meredith, Ciaran Joyce, John Carter, Selin Cuhadaroglu, Richard Cambridge, Jann Mardenborough

RATING: 7 out of 10 Instagram posts

Heart of Stone

Year 16, Day 81 - 3/21/24 - Movie #4,681

BEFORE: I've fallen behind a bit on my blogging, usually I like to start a movie the night before so I can get the blog posted on the day it's due - but I gave myself a day off right before St. Patrick's Day, and since then I've been trying to catch up - so I'd love to start watching my Thursday film on Wednesday night so I can post the review on Thursday, but right now I'm watching the film on Thursday night and that means I have to post on Friday, and late on Friday at that. In order to catch up I'll either need to watch three films in a 24-hour period, or just skip a day completely, which would be much easier.  The problem is, I can't do that until after Easter, I stupidly booked myself solid so there's no chance to give myself a day off, not for a while anyway.  I could try to catch up this weekend, but I have this weekend job on Sunday so that's a no-go.  Really, with 300 films and 365 days in a year, I should give myself more free days now, then there will be less of a break come December.  OK, first week of April, I'm going to take a couple days off before I watch "Oppenheimer".  

Archie Madekwe carries over from "Saltburn". 

THE PLOT: An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon.

AFTER:  It's too bad, I realized too late that this film shares an actor with both "A Haunting in Venice" (Jamie Dornan) and "Oppenheimer" (Matthias Schweighofer) - but really, what film DOESN'T share an actor with "Oppenheimer"?  So I could have watched this one between those two films in the first week of April - that really would have helped me catch up now, if only I'd realized it in time.  It's too late now, I already watched the film, and I can't get that time back.

Generally, that's the feeling I'm left with on "Heart of Stone", that it represents two hours of my life that I won't get back.  It's a shame because this one started out as very promising, with the idea that within every major intelligence operation on the planet, there are double-agents embedded, ones who are also working for a shadow organization called "The Charter", and are there to promote a shared positive agenda for the world, to save more lives as a whole, and that's apparently not something that organizations like MI-6 or the CIA have as goals, necessarily.  It seemed like a good premise, it hooked me with that - so Gal Gadot plays Rachel Stone, who just works as a hacker and intelligence person for MI-6, but she's also got real spy skills that she keeps secret, and when her other boss gives her orders, she's in a position to do things that save lives, possibly the lives of MI-6 agents, or possibly civilians.

Maybe it's because I've been in this position, sort of - I work for two companies whose interests sometimes dovetail - sure, working at a movie theater is hardly the same as being a spy, but I've been at the same location sometimes as an employee and sometimes as a client, like when my animator boss screens something at the theater, as part of a school event, then I could be there as a guest of a guest, and work the merch table. That's kind of how I got the job at the theater in the first place, working at the events where my other boss's films were screened, and then when I saw a job opening for a manager the theater, I had that lightbulb moment where I said, "Sure, I could do that job, in fact I have done that job several times."  

So in the opening sequence here where Rachel is called into action during an extraction operation at a ski resort, her fellow MI-6 agents only need her to be the "person in the chair", giving instructions remotely to the agents from the van parked outside.  But a complication in the plan means she's got to go inside, in order to get close enough to hack their system, they're very concerned for her because they think she has no field experience, which is NOT the case, she's a fully-trained agent, just one working for a different organization.  She's basically been hiding in plain sight, and once she's left the van, she works behind the scenes to take the enemies out so that MI-6 can complete their mission, because this result lines up with the wishes of the other organization.  It's at least interesting that there are plans within plans.  

But it also means that MI-6 isn't being thorough enough with their background checks, maybe, because if one agent can be working for another agency with good intentions, it means there could be another agent who's working for another agency with evil intentions, and that turns out to be the case.  That agent has been desperately seeking information about The Charter, because it uses an incredibly powerful probability calculator called The Heart, essentially an A.I. device that powers everything they do to bring about a positive change to the world.  But this is where the story kind of falls apart, because such a device, something that can calculate anything, hack anything, break any code and make planes fall out of the sky, for example, is nearly impossible to imagine and almost certainly will never exist.  Also, I saw similar devices used as macguffins in TWO different schlocky Bruce Willis movies a couple of years ago.  

This is where things get ridiculous, because The Charter doesn't store this super-computing nexus device on-site, or even in a vault, they store it in a dirigible that's floating over Africa, supposedly where nobody would ever look for it, except then of course the bad guys do a hack and learn exactly where it is, so then it turns out that was a terrible place to put it, wasn't it?  Also, the dirigible has hydrogen in it instead of helium, so apparently nobody learned ANYTHING from the Hindenburg disaster, and also you can probably guess what happens to the dirigible, can't you? 

Ugh, it's kind of downhill from there, because the coolest thing about the charter was that every agent was identified by a playing card, and there were four sections to the organization, based on the four suits, but then once the bad guys have the device then the King of Spades and the King of Diamonds are taken out, and the King of Clubs has to sacrifice himself just to give the King of Hearts a chance to come out on top.  This could have been the next franchise like "Kingman", which named its operatives after the Knights of Camelot, but come on, that knights thing is way cooler than just naming people after playing cards. 

It's really hot right now to talk about the downsides of A.I., but I honestly don't think it's going to bring about the creation of SkyNet.  I don't think software that allows high schoolers to cheat on their homework is going to bring about the downfall of civilization, not when the software can't even get the number of fingers on a human hand right when it generates images (or the number of arms, or legs, or whatever.). We might need software that can create photos on demand, or has the ability to write better movie plots than this one, it shouldn't be too hard.

As silly as it was, though, I will say that if they'd used this storyline for "Wonder Woman 1984", with Diana Prince going undercover in MI-6, it would have been far superior to the storyline that they landed on for that film.  "Heart of Stone" may be bad, but it's not "Wonder Woman 1984" bad, I'm still having nightmares about that one. 

Also starring Gal Gadot (last seen in "The Flash"), Jamie Dornan (last seen in "Belfast"), Sophie Okonedo (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Matthias Schweighofer (last seen in "Resistance"), Paul Ready (last seen in "The Dig"), Jing Lusi (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), BD Wong (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Alia Bhatt, Enzo Cilenti (last seen in "Juliet, Naked"), Jon Kortajarena (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Glenn Close (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Mark Ivanir (last seen in "Kajllionaire"), Joe Reisig (last seen in "Justice League"), Luca Fiamenghi, Thomas Arnold (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Ruth Keeling, Neran Persaud, Uriel Emil (last seen in "The Bourne Ultimatum"), Lanre Malaolu, Ndoye Bigue, Allan Hyde, Anna Andresen, Jonas Alfreo Birkisson, Joanne Elizabeth, Beatrix Rose Bagnall

RATING: 4 out of 10 blackjack chips

Saltburn

Year 16, Day 80 - 3/20/24 - Movie #4,680

BEFORE: All right, ten days until Easter, I've got to fill that space somehow.  Hey, what about this film that I could have worked in back in January, between two other films with Carey Mulligan, only I didn't really have the bandwidth for it?  It was a last-minute possible addition because it had just popped up on AmazonPrime, and I had worked a screening of it in the theater, back in December, with Rosamund Pike speaking on a panel afterwards. I peeked in on the screening a couple times, and what I saw was very confusing, which happens - like that screening of "Nope" where I walked in at the WORST possible time and couldn't make sense out of what I saw. 

They hit the circuit HARD with this one in November and December, a lot of guild screenings, a lot of live panels with Pike and Barry Keoghan, plus the director, who won an Oscar for writing "Promising Young Woman" and will probably be the first person to tell everyone about that, everywhere she goes, I'm guessing.  But hey, that's how the game is played.  Still, "Saltburn" failed to get any Oscar nominations, which is why I'm very suspicious of it. 

Barry Keoghan carries over from "The Banshees of Inisherin".  And now I really need this film to help connect St. Patrick's Day and Easter, so it was a really good move to NOT watch it in January - see, the chain knows and everything kind of has a funny way of working out. 

THE PLOT: A student at Oxtord University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family's sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten. 

AFTER: Ugh, this was for sure a challenging film for me, and not just because the captions wouldn't work on Amazon Prime for some reason, so I had to keep the volume up loud enough for me to hear everything, but not loud enough to wake up my wife upstairs (a delicate balance at times, since the film would often cut right into a party scene with loud music playing).  Even then, I had difficulty with the accents of several characters, so for long stretches of the film I had no idea what people were saying, because British people talk funny, and it's all based on region, like the Liverpool people talk funny in a different way from the Londoners, and then my brain can't really catch on to ONE accent and compensate, like it did for "The Banshees of Inisherin".  Man, I really need those captions - can somebody fix this please?  

The other problem is that they cast Barry Keoghan as a young college student for the flashback scenes set in 2006 - he's fine in the present day scenes, but come on, he's like 37 years old, and I'm supposed to take him seriously as a college freshman at Oxford?  That's really just one year older than a high-school student, so he was wearing so much make-up that at times it looked like his face was melting, and he already kind of looks like that anyway.  Yeah, I get that he often plays characters with complicated situations and loose morals, but does he have to keep making THAT face?  Or does he just look like that all the time?  That schtick of using a sad, confused puppy-dog look of a mentally impaired person is going to wear itself very thin at some point, I'd argue that  it has already. 

Look, I get that there are new rules for the millennials, and where romance goes for the millennials and Gen Z, it's all very complicated.  And films should reflect that too, I'm all for complicated love triangles and quadrangles with same-sex yearnings, from a narrative point of view there are new opportunities and barriers to break and thresholds to be crossed, but there's no reason to be gross about it.  When Oliver gets invited to Saltburn, the home of the Catton family, it's clear that he's obsessed with his male classmate, Felix.  But when he gets there it's a long time before he makes any move on Felix, instead he makes out with Felix's sister, Venetia.  Then later he blackmails Felix's American cousin, Farleigh, into a sexual relationship.  Great, he's an equal opportunity creepo.  But I didn't find this entertaining at all, because every aspect of it was unsettling - was that the point?  

Oliver's always hanging around, circling Felix and watching him (and also...WATCHING him, if you get my drift).  Drinking Felix's bathwater is just gross, though, and the film can't help but returning to this gross bodily-fluid stuff that I don't think anybody is doing IRL, not even the Gen Z kids.  I'm reminded of "Call Me By Your Name", the stuff with the peaches, which I'm pretty sure wasn't even a thing, and the things here I'm hoping aren't things either, they only happen in the movies. RIght?  Here's hoping.  All througout this film, I was thinking, "Why do you all have to be so gross?"  What's wrong with karaoke parties and elegant dinners and watching "Superbad" together and OK, maybe doing some drugs here and there, that's all part of the fun that rich people have.  Whatever happened to the good old days when if you wanted to have some nasty little sexual fun you might suck on somebody's toes, assuming you knew they were clean, because otherwise ewwww.

My point is that you're not going to excite Academy members with gross sex stuff, remember that most of them are older and some are retired, so they have plenty of time to watch free movies all day and go to guild screenings and they have time to fill out their ballots, while the younger members are working on film sets and honestly don't have time to see a lot of movies or even cast their ballots.  Maybe this is why a movie about the creation of the atomic bomb during World War II won Best Picture, and a movie about a creepy old-looking kid having gross sexual encounters with various members of an upper-class UK family didn't even get a nomination.  Just saying.  They're working on making the Academy membership more diverse but I'm guessing that's a long, slow process and won't really show gains until more of the older members age out of the program.  I'm guessing the older voters didn't really "get" this film, or walked out in disgust. (see also: "Babylon"...)

Anyway, it's off the list now, and I can work on getting to "Oppenheimer", which I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy more, since I'm usually fascinated by the films of Christopher Nolan.  If "Saltburn" is indicative of the new wave of filmmaking, I'm not really there for it, which makes sense because I'm probably just too old for this movie myself in the end.  Yeah, it's all about the real estate, I get that, but why not get a job and a mortgage like everybody else if you want to own property, honestly that seems a lot easier in the end, it just takes time and the newer generation apparently doesn't want to wait that long for it. 

Also starring Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike (last seen in "Radioactive"), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe (last seen in "Voyagers"), Carey Mulligan (last seen in "She Said"), Paul Rhys (last seen in "Lionheart"), Ewan Mitchell, Sadie Soverall, Millie Kent, Reece Shearsmith (last seen in "See How They Run"), Dorothy Atkinson (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Shaun Dooley (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Lolly Adefope (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Joshua McGuire (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Richie Cotterell, Will Gibson, Tasha Lim, Aleah Aberdeen, Matt Carver (last seen in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Saga Spjuth-Sail, Joshua Samuels, Julian Lloyd Patton, Tomas Barry, Andy Brady, Michelle Thomas with archive footage of Michael Cera (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "You People"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 books on the summer reading list

The Banshees of Inisherin

Year 16, Day 79 - 3/19/24 - Movie #4,679

BEFORE: OK, we're a few days past St. Patrick's Day now, but this was originally my first pick for the film to land on that holiday, and then it just didn't work out that way.  Something similar happened last year around Memorial Day when I was trying to land "Dog" right on the holiday, but then settled on "Top Gun: Maverick" instead - this is why grouping films by subject matter helps me out, because if things don't work out like I intended, well then there's always a back-up plan, and I can skip a day or double up if I really need the chain to line up with a holiday. 

Jon Kenny carries over from "Wolfwalkers". 

THE PLOT: Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them. 

AFTER: See, the chain knows what needs to happen - sure, this film is set in Ireland, but is it the MOST IRISH film I could possibly watch?  Well, I guess that's debatable.  "The Secret of Kells" was very, very Irish, so I stand by my decision to change things up. Sometimes the chain just doesn't FEEL quite right, but it still feels close.  Sometimes my busy schedule or a weekend road trip will pop up and throw my plans a bit out of whack, but see, it's all for the best.  Four Irish films in a row this week, and I'm saving the fifth one for Easter Sunday, and I get to riff a bit on other topics between now and then. It's fine. 

Maybe to understand Ireland, I can do that by taking a closer look at the characters here - they really promoted the hell out of this one last year during Oscar season, they did so many Academy screenings in the NYC area, I saw all the e-mails pimping for Barry Keoghan AND Colin Farrell AND Brendan Gleeson AND Kerry Condon, and so it did get four acting nominations, and nine Oscar noms overall, but then it didn't win even one.  Not even editing or Best Original Screenplay, or even Original Score. It makes you wonder if nominating two people for Best Supporting Actor from the same film just ends up splitting the votes, which is what maybe enabled Ke Huy Quan to win for "Everything Everywhere All at Once" - I mean, he was great, too, but was he OSCAR-winning great?  Or did he just win because he was in the movie that got the most attention?  We'll never know, it's impossible to know what all the Academy voters were thinking. Kerry Condon lost to Jamie Lee Curtis, of course, and Brendan Gleeson lost to Brendan Fraser from "The Whale".  Also, there were TEN films nominated for Best Picture, so the chances of winning that were reduced mathematically, and now after tonight I've seen EIGHT of those ten, so yay me - I just have not seen "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "The Fabelmans" yet.  Which reminds me, I should probably go through all of last year's and this year's nominees to make sure they're on my watch list, now that I've seen "Babylon" and "Tar" and "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish".

But I digress - this "Banshees of Inisherin" is a very dark film, set in Ireland in the 1920's or thereabouts, it's about a group of people who live on this rather isolated island, and some of them are pretty morose, but especially these two lifelong friends who go through a crisis when one, Colm, decides he doesn't want to be friends with the other one, Padraic, any more.  It seems Colm's decided to devote the rest of his life to composing music, and this friend of his tends to ramble on for hours about nothing really important, and so he doesn't want to waste any more of his time listening to pointless stories.  Oh, if only it were that easy - Padraic doesn't want to give up on the friendship easily, so he keeps pestering to Colm, asking him WHY, what has he done to cause this break-up, how can he make it right again?  And persisting in this line of questioning really just makes things worse, the way he continues on and is unable to let go is representative of the underlying problem, namely that this guy just can't seem to shut up.

Nobody likes break-ups, either with a friend or a romantic partner or an employer - we all have a sense of self-worth, ideally, and nobody wants to believe that they're part of the relationship problem, because we tend to see things the way we want to see them.  We all want to think of ourselves as fun, interesting people with a library of great stories to tell, and we're all very fun and entertaining at parties and therefore, we all deserve to love and be loved and network our way to fame and fortune. Well, we can't all be right about that, can we?  Some people are NOT fun and in fact are quite annoying, are terrible at telling stories and livening up parties, and most of us will never be famous or rich, or at least not both at the same time, but we're just too close to the problem to really be aware of it. That seems like it could be quite common.

So yeah, maybe Colm is just getting old and crotchety - but maybe Padraic really IS that annoying and unaware of it.  Our impressions of him come from what we see in the film, so we don't really know how boring or stupid his conversations were before that, all we know is that Colm has heard enough of them to be done. I guess I can see that - maybe we all know somebody like that, only we don't feel courageous enough to either let that person know that they're not great conversationalists, and maybe we don't feel sure of ourselves to cut that person out of our lives and let them go bother someone else for a while, maybe we're all guilty of being too polite in this regard, because as a result the bad conversationalists may NEVER find out their true nature, and thus never be encouraged to change. 

Anyway, Colm breaks off the friendship, whether the reasons he gives are true or valid or a good thing or a bad thing isn't really the point - I guess the point is that Padraic can't let things stand, so he keeps coming around and trying to make up with Colm, and it's exactly the wrong thing to do - he should have just walked away or moved to another town and rebooted himself, it would probably be easier to burn down his life and try to start over somewhere else.  Which is what his sister Siobhan wants to do for her own life, leave the island and work in a library on the mainland.  Watching her brother go through this friendship break-up and not handle it in the best way only makes her more anxious to get out of town.  Meanwhile Padraic spends more time with his miniature donkey, now that he can't go to the pub with his best mate.  

Things get so bad that Colm threatens to cut off one of his own fingers each time Padraic comes around to try and mend the relationship, he's that serious about wanting his former friend to stay away.  This sure seems like an idle threat at first, I mean, Colm is a fiddle player, how is he going to play his fiddle with one less finger?  So sure, what's the harm in taking one more crack at getting back together with his chum?  So, yeah, Padraic was that persistent and perhaps that stupid.  I kept thinking this finger thing was all just going to be a metaphor for something else, like when I got divorced I likened the procedure of separation to an animal caught in a trap, and I had to ask myself if I was willing to give up an arm or a leg to be free again, at least that's what it felt like at the time.  

There are other stories going on in this island town, but it was hard for me to make much sense of them, well, it's a depiction of another world during another time, so I suppose some things might be a bit hard to understand.  There's Dominic, the son of the local policeman, who got beaten by his father for drinking his alcohol.  Padraic and his sister Siobhan take him in for a night, and this only leads to Dominic making a weird pass at Siobhan, and Padraic getting punched out by Dominic's father after bringing his abusive nature to light.  There's also a priest who seems to use all the information he learns in the confessional as gossip to spread around, and then there's Mrs. McCormack, who just seems to stand in the road most of the time wearing a big flowing dress and looking like a scary banshee or something.  Meanwhile the relationship between Colm and Padraic escalates into a full-fledged feud, and it doesn't seem like it's going to end well.

Actually nobody's story feels like it's going to end well, which is a narrative choice I suppose, and I'm not saying it's wrong, because in real life everyone's story is NOT going to end well, if you think about it. We're all getting older and we're all circling the drain and none of us know how much time we've got left on God's green earth, after all.  So you can just surrender and be miserable all the time, or you can try to focus on being productive and doing the things you're good at and also a few things which bring you joy.  That would honestly be the best that you can do, given the circumstances, and I think I see that now. 

Also starring Colin Farrell (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Brendan Gleeson (last heard in "Song of the Sea"), Pat Shortt (ditto), Kerry Condon (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Barry Keoghan (last seen in "The Green Knight"), Gary Lydon (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Sheila Flitton (last seen in "The Northman"), David Pearse (last seen in "Laws of Attraction"), Brid Ni Neachtain, Aaron Monaghan (last seen in "Assassin's Creed'), Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola.

RATING: 6 out of 10 well, Colm's fingers, obviously

Wolfwalkers

Year 16, Day 78 - 3/18/24 - Movie #4,678

BEFORE: Now I've got a bad track record with this "Irish legends" trilogy from Cartoon Saloon, because the first two films just put me to sleep, but I'm going to double-up on Monday because I need to reach a certain film on Easter Sunday.  If I don't double-up on the shorter animated films, when else am I going to do that?  So yeah, it's late on a Monday night and I'm tired but I can sleep late tomorrow, Tuesday's my day off and I'm not scheduled at the second job, either. 

Jon Kenny carries over from "Song of the Sea". 

THE PLOT: A young apprentice hunter and her father journey to Ireland to help wipe out the last wolf pack. But everything changes when she befriends a free-spirited girl from a mysterious tribe rumored to transform into wolves by night. 

AFTER: I think I dozed off for about five minutes but I was able to recover and go splash some water on my face, I drank some Mountain Dew and popped a couple chocolate-covered espresso beans so I could make it to the end.  Went to bed at 2 am, which is actually pretty early for me, all things considered.  So I guess this one is the winner for me, out of the three Irish animated features that may (or may not) all live in the same universe. My guess is that a lot of people, besides myself, expected "Song of the Sea" to be a direct sequel to "The Secret of Kells", and then when it wasn't, they were disappointed.  So it feels like the animation company tried to correct the complaints (?) about the second film and go back to basics, some of the things that people liked about "The Secret of Kells" like the forest setting and the presence of wolves and being set in the past, though the first film was set in the Middle Ages and this one takes place in the 17th century.  Still, listening to the fans is a good thing, though with the length of time needed to make a hand-drawn animated feature, it took about 10 years to give people what they said they sort of wanted. 

Some things are still unclear here, like how come some humans can turn into wolves when they sleep, but other wolves are just wolves?  How did this specific form of lycanthropy come to be the way it is?  What is it about being a human/wolf hybrid that gives them the power to heal each other, and with enough wolves giving off the healing energy, does this mean that they are essentially immortal?  The injury to Mebh's mother is so severe that it almost seems like it should have been impossible for her to heal from it, of course that would mess with the happy ending, but it also makes that ending feel so very unlikely.  And if the main thing the wolfwalkers can do is heal people who have been bitten by wolves, wouldn't it make more sense for them to just not let wolves bite people in the first place?  Or is that just not an option? 

But yeah, I get it, it's really cool to be able to turn into a wolf, you get wolf vision and you see the world in terms of smells rather than shapes. And you should always be yourself, unless you can be a wolf, in which case you should try to get yourself bitten by one.  Wait, what?  This feels more like a consolation prize, like maybe it sucks to get bitten by a wolf, but hey, cool powers. There can't possibly be a downside, can there, what with civilization cutting down the forests or just burning them up to make the world safer for people who live in gated communities. But who the hell wants to be able to turn into a seal, because that only gets you the ability to swim in freezing water and eat raw fish.  Not seeing the benefits there. 

I'm wondering now if I need to add this film to the contenders for "Best Romance - LGBTQ edition" at the end of the year.  Or am I reading too much into this?  Original the main character here, Robin, was going to be a boy, but then the filmmakers felt that didn't work - probably because that plot would seem like a carbon copy of "The Secret of Kells".  Why do all these films feature overbearing parents who won't let their children go out and explore the world because it's "too dangerous", yet the plot can't possibly move forward until the kids do exactly that?  God, it's the same conflict over and over, right, with the parents saying "You have to obey and you can't leave the walled fortress!" and the kids then saying, "But DAD you don't understand I have to go outside because that's where everything cool and not boring is!"  Nope, sorry kid, you need to stay indoors and learn how to mop floors, because that's safe and honest work and it's going to just occupy the rest of your life from now on. 

Something was way off on the art here, or was it just me?  Perspective be damned, I couldn't understand how the characters could stand in the forest, miles away from the castle, and somehow get an overhead aerial view of the town.  Umm, no, that's just not how optics work, the town would be on the horizon and would appear flat, because they're just not standing above it.  In some rooms in the castle, the scene depicted a similar overhead view of some elements, while we saw the characters from the side, and how does that work?  Those characters wouldn't be able to walk through that room from the angle they're standing at.  Even the dining room table in the Goodfellowe home was some weird blend of 2D and 3D, like that Escher drawing of that structure with the water flowing upward somehow to then cascade down a waterfall and repeat.  I guess the art here is supposed to mimic Irish tapestries or woodblock art, but artists back then really didn't have perspective figured out, so why repeat their mistakes? 

"Wolfwalkers" got scooped up by Apple TV shortly after its theatrical release in 2020 - that was about the start of films being made "exclusive" for streaming sites, so that you'd have to sign up for Apple TV in order to watch it.  Meaning that if the first two films were available on free cable for a while, then you'd have to join a streaming service to watch the third one. Meaning that film distributors have essentially adopted the practices of drug dealers - we'll give you a taste for free, but then once you get hooked it's going to cost you.  And if you've just got cable and not high-speed internet and the money to subscribe to six different services, you may be out of luck.  Me, I'm tired of joining Apple TV just to watch a specific movie and then canceling (which you can do multiple times, I'm just saying...) so I watched this on a pirate site, which at one point in my life I said I would never, ever do, but still, this is where I find myself.  Why is this film on AppleTV but not iTunes?  Some of us still use iTunes.

I've got one more Irish-themed film for St. Patrick's week, OK, really I've got two but I'm saving the second one for Easter Sunday because it's all churchy, I think.  Brendan Gleeson will be back for both of those.  

Also starring the voices of Honor Kneafsey (last seen in "The Bookshop"), Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean (last seen in "Equilibrium"), Simon McBurney (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Tommy Tiernan, Maria Doyle Kennedy (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), John Morton, Nora Twomey, Oliver McGrath, Paul Young (last heard in "The Secret of Kells"), Niamh Moyles.

RATING: 6 out of 10 scullery maids

Song of the Sea

Year 16, Day 78 - 3/18/24 - Movie #4,677

BEFORE: I made it through a 12-hour shift at the New York International Children's Film Festival.  Dealing with kids can be the absolute worst, which is one reason why I don't have any of my own - it's bad enough I have to deal with OTHER people's children once in a while.  They cry, they scream, they make other noises, they run around and make messes everywhere - what's the upside of having them, again?  I'm sure not seeing it.  OK, so they take care of you when you're old and sick, maybe, if you're lucky, if you haven't driven them crazy or made them hate you enough to move away and not visit. Uh uh, it's not worth the chance.

Anyway, I got home Sunday night around 9 and we watched the latest "Tournament of Champions" battles on Food Network - by then I was completely worn out and I figured I should probably go to bed early as I was up so damn early Sunday morning, but then I realized I still had to watch another short (thankfully short) animated film or I'll fall behind and I won't get to my Easter film on time.  So can I do it, can I make it through another Irish-based film before my eyes close involuntarily?  Let's find out....

Brendan Gleeson and at least one other voice actor carries over from "The Secret of Kells". 

THE PLOT: Ben, a young Irish boy, and his little sister Saoirse, a girl who can turn into a seal, go on an adventure to free the fairies and save the sprit world.  

AFTER: These "Irish legends" films from Cartoon Saloon have such a great reputation in the animation industry, but I don't know, I'm just not feeling it.  Maybe I'm just too exhausted this weekend to relax and enjoy these, maybe they're a bit too complicated, maybe I just don't know all this Irish mythology about selkies and fairies and witches and sages, they don't call to me the same way that mutants and Skrulls and Asgardian frost giants do.

But OK, yeah, there's this lighthouse keeper, Conor, who fell in love with a selkie, which is a bit like a mermaid, so right off I'm thinking this movie stole that part of the plot from "Aquaman", except this was released in 2014, which was four years BEFORE "Aquaman" happened, so who really stole from who?  Together they had one human son and one daughter, except Bronagh, the selkie mother, disappeared right after her daughter Saoirse was born.  Here I thought she died in childbirth, but I guess things aren't that simple.  

Six years later, the kids' grandmother comes to visit, and the kids fight over a seashell flute that Bronagh gave to Ben - but when Saoirse plays it, she finds a white coat that allows her to turn into a seal. When the girl turns up on the seashore in the morning, Conor throws the coat into the ocean and Granny decides to take the kids away from the lighthouse, only for some reason they can't bring their dog along, and of course Conor needs to stay and work in the lighthouse, or all the ships will crash during the night.  The kids decide to try and find their way back from Granny's house to the lighthouse, but only to get their dog.

But Saoirse gets kidnapped by fairies who can't return to their homeworld unless she wears her coat and sings them the Song of the Sea.  But then they're attacked by owls that belong to a witch, who kidnaps fairies and keeps them in glass jars for some reason.  So now the kids have to go find that coat, which isn't easy because their father threw it in the ocean.  They hide in a hut and Saoirse falls down a well (there sure is a lot of falling in these movies...) and when Ben and the dog go after her, they find a cave inhabited by an old wise man with an extreme amount of hair, and every hair is a story somehow?  There's a story here about a giant who tried to flood the whole world, but I just couldn't understand how THAT story tied in with the main story, it was all so very unclear.  But following a different strand of hair allows Ben to learn that Saoirse was kidnapped by Macha and then another strand of the beard lead him to Macha's lair, where the witch turns the fairies she kidnaps to stone.  

But Macha's doing this for the fairies own good, so they won't suffer or be sad any more?  Her motivations didn't really make sense, either.  And Macha HERSELF was partly turned to stone, which makes about as much sense as a giant snake eating its own tail and then disappearing, if I'm being honest.  But just before Saoirse is fully turned into a stone statue, Ben has her play the seashell flute, which breaks the jars, saves all the fairies, and also turns Macha from a bad witch into a good witch again, and then they all get back to the lighthouse with the help of two magic dogs, not their own dog.  

Back home with their father, Ben dives into the ocean and gets the chest with the coat in it, with the help of some seals, and then the girl can finally sing the Song of the Sea properly and free all the magical beings from their stone prisons, and the kids' mother even shows up again, but it's only so she can return to her homeworld and leave her annoying human family behind.  She wants to bring her daughter with her, but Saoirse gives up her magical abilities so she can be human and live with her father and brother, and that part of the story seems to be a bit like Ariel's story from "The Little Mermaid", maybe.  

Whew, it's all very complicated, because it's a hard life in Ireland, even for the magical folks.  I know I'm exhausted, just from trying to figure this all out. I should get some sleep, but maybe just one more movie so I can clear this damn non-trilogy from the books. 

Also starring the voices of David Rawle, Lisa Hannigan, Fionnula Flanagan (last seen in "Birthmarked"), Lucy O'Connell, Jon Kenny (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), Pat Shortt, Colm O Snodaigh, Liam Hourican (last heard in "The Secret of Kells"), Kevin Swierszcz

RATING: 4 out of 10 birthday candles

The Secret of Kells

Year 16, Day 77 - 3/17/24 - Movie #4,676

BEFORE: Michael McGrath carries over from "Ira & Abby", at least I think he does.  The IMDB, my primary source for cast information, is a little unclear on this point - according to the IMDB there are multiple people with movie credits who have that name, and the Michael McGrath listed for "Ira & Abby" does not also have "The Secret of Kells" on his filmography - BUT the IMDB lists him as doing a voice for "Wolfwalkers", which is a sequel to "The Secret of Kells". SO I strongly suspect that the IMDB has an error, and perhaps the voice-work for tonight's film was credited to the wrong Michael McGrath.  I can't prove it for sure, however I've seen this sort of thing before.  There is a director named Mike Mills, who made the films "Beginners" and "20th Century Women", and he shares his name with a band member from R.E.M., who also happens to compose music for many movies - so their credits were all mixed up together for a long while, and I stepped in to try to straighten the whole thing out. 

Fortunately, this actor also has a page on Wikipedia, and it confirmed that the Michael McGrath who played that Irish doorman in yesterday's film is the SAME Michael McGrath who did a voice in "The Secret of Kells" - so I feel a lot more confident about not breaking the chain, but now I have to somehow convince the IMDB that their listing is incorrect, which is often not easy.  I suggest additions and corrections all the time, but I'll go on a good run where they just approve every suggestion I make, and then for a week or two they'll reject everything - like I noticed that they didn't list Patton Oswalt in their credits for "Nostalgia", but I've submitted the addition twice and they won't believe me.  But, come on, he's listed in the credits on Wikipedia, and on-screen at the end of the film, plus, I SAW HIM in the movie.  So why not believe me?  Why would I lie?  You trusted me about 10 corrections last week, why suddenly think I"m trying to pull a fast one here?  How would it benefit me if I were to get Patton Oswalt credited for a movie that he's not really in? 

THE PLOT: A young boy in a remote medieval outpost under siege from barbarian raids is beckoned to adventure when a celebrated master illustrator arrives with an ancient book, brimming with secret wisdom and powers. 

AFTER: Of course, it's St. Patrick's Day, and my original plan was to land "The Banshees of Inisherin" on the holiday, but that didn't really work out, because of where my romance chain ended, coupled with the fact that the next film in my chain was going to be "Calvary", and then that one started to feel like a better fit for Easter.  So I stretched my chain out just a little bit, and I found some bridging material - two weeks worth - to fit between the two films with Brendan Gleeson in them, and then it started to make sense to watch THIS film instead on March 17, thus figuring that this film might even be more Irish than that other one - but really, they can both be Irish, I don't need to worry so much over which one lands on 3/17.  

Then I realized that I'd be working at the New York International Childrens Film Festival today, so yeah, sure, an animated film with kids in it seemed to tie in with that.  Once I got to work, I saw that one of the screenings today is "Puffin Rock and Friends", based on a Netflix animated series, but produced by Cartoon Saloon, which is the studio that made, you guessed it, "The Secret of Kells".  Two of the animators spoke on a panel after the film, and yeah, I looked them up, at least one worked on "The Secret of Kells" which came out 15 years ago.  (I think I remember meeting this film's director, Tomm Moore, at a party in NYC in maybe 2010, when he was traveling to promote the film.).   So there you have it, another fantastic coincidence, that I would avoid watching "The Secret of Kells" for 15 years and then finally watch it the day before a special St. Patrick's Day event at my job, promoting a different film from the same studio.  I'm kidding, there are no coincidences, just confluences that are all around, and at times we are lucky enough to witness and acknowledge.  

I didn't have much time to focus on this film last night, just enough time to watch it quickly and then try to get some sleep, because I had to be up at 6:30 am in order to leave the house at 7:00 and open up the theater by 8:00.  So I'm exhausted right now, 3/4 of the way through the festival's workday with just two screenings to go after "Puffin Rock and Friends".  And oh, great, it's a theater full of screaming kids (whether from happiness or crankiness, does it even matter?) and I'm on my fourth dose of caffeine hoping that I won't crash until I'm safe at home at 8:00 pm.  Weekend shifts are the longest, and festival shifts can be the toughest. 

Unfortunately I didn't really understand most of what occured in "The Secret of Kells".  Part of the problem could have been that the film isn't streaming anywhere, not for free or even "for free", so I was forced to watch it on my favorite pirate site, and that meant that no working captions were available, and thus the combination of my bad hearing and some strong Irish accents meant that I was frequently confused about what was happening in the film.  I get that young Brendan lives in an abbey and cannot leave for his own safety, but a visit from a famed illustrator of religious books who needs materials for his inks means that Brendan is tasked with entering the forest for the first time to obtain berries that he needs to make a special green ink. 

It's a contrivance for sure - why did the visiting Brother Aidan only need GREEN ink, did he bring all the other colors with him, but forget one color?  If the berries produce the best, brightest green ink, why not plant those berries somewhere else, more convenient to the island where he works on his illustrations?  Why does this forest supply berries that make great ink that is green, but not other plant-based materials that are other colors?  Is it because we're in Ireland and green is the national color, or is green the national color BECAUSE of those super berries?  It's all maybe a bit unclear, the only thing that's clear is that the story needs to push Brendan out into the larger, more dangerous world. 

Abbot Cellach is obsessed with building a wall around the Abbey to prevent attacks from the Vikings - I think this plot point can be taken at face value, more or less, it's not some big metaphor for the anti-immigration policies of certain politicians, for example - anyway this film came out years before U.S. Republicans started to drum up xenophobia and anti-immigrant rhetoric to get elected.  So I'm inclined to take this at face value, the abbot just wants to protect the illustration work being done by the monks (friars?) inside because it has so much religious importance.  

Speaking of religion, I need to point out that the real Book of Kells is a fancy decorated Bible, or the Gospels at least, and that fact is never even mentioned in this movie.  I suppose I should be happy that a film isn't promoting the Catholic religion as a tangential part of its story, but then again it just seems like an odd thing to fail to mention.  Sure, the art is very pretty and the calligraphy is ornate, but isn't it a bunch of important words first and a decorative relic second? Focusing on the art in the Book of Kells is a bit like reading the Dead Sea Scrolls for the recipes.  When the book is said to "turn darkness into light" I naturally assumed this was a metaphor, that the book sheds the light of knowledge on the world, dispelling the darkness of ignorance - but there are some points in the film where someone opens the book and beams of light come out, so perhaps that was meant to be literal? 

Brendan meets a fairy (?) named Aisling in the forest, or she's a nymph or a druid or maybe just a regular person who lives outside, all that was unclear too.  Jesus, don't be afraid to spell it out, because I'm kind of ignorant that way, just tell me what's happening, PLEASE.  I had to look the plot up on Wikipedia to figure out what happened - they go deep into the forest and find a deity of death named Crom Cruach, which calls Brendan dangerously closer and AIsling knocks down a statue to prevent him from entering the demon's (?) inner chamber.  But when Brendan gets back to the monastery, Brother Aidan talks about a special magnifying lens that will assist in creating the art for the book, and it's called "The Eye of Colm Cilie", and wouldn't you know it, Brendan has seen that lens before, on the eye of that forest demon.  So it's BACK out into the deadly forest to get this lens - couldn't Brother Aidan have mentioned it before Brendan went to get the berries, so he'd only have to make ONE trip? 

But Brendan goes back, he battles the dark deity to get the eye/lens, and tricks the blind snake/demon into eating itself, forming an ouroboros and then ceasing to exist.  I've got to call this into question, maybe, like would a snake eating its own tail just blink out of existence, or would it just die at some point, leaving a half-eaten snake with its body filling its own mouth?  Discus

Later, after young Brendan (somehow) uses the Eye of Colm Cilie to become a masterful illustrator almost overnight (oh, if only it were THAT easy...) the Vikings attack the Abbey - well, I guess the Abbot was right after all, but his timing was absolutely terrible, I'm guessing that wall wasn't even CLOSE to being finished.  The Abbot is stabbed and the village is burned, but Brendan and Aidan escape through the forest, where the Vikings destroy the book and steal the jewels from it, but the pages are saved, and Brendan spends the next twenty years finishing it, finally returning to show it to the aged Abbot Cellach.  So, umm, hooray? 

It's a beautiful-looking film, although I thought some of the characters were too stylized, they had weird body shapes or features that were too cartoony, but my main problem was the story, that I never really knew what was happening or what it all meant in the long run. 

Also starring the voices of Evan McGuire, Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Christen Mooney, Mick Lally (last seen in "Circle of Friends"), Liam Hourican, Paul Tylak, Paul Young.

RATING: 5 out of 10 quill feathers