BEFORE: At this time last year, I was deep into Toni Collette movies, and she ended up making 6 appearences in 2024, which wasn't enough to win the year, but come on, that's a darn good attempt. Allison Janney carries over again today from "Lou" and so far she's in the lead for 2025 with four movies, but she's equally unlikely to hold that lead. Still, she's due to come back for two romance films in February, and if Father's Day goes the way I think then she'll be back for seven, it will be another darn good showing. You've got to be diverse if you want to win this thing, appearing in romances and comedies and action films is really the way to go. It's the "Paul Rudd" plan for success, really.
"To Leslie" feels like another one of those films that flew very under the radar - it did get one Oscar nomination a year ago, Andrea Riseborough for Best Actress, but so far I haven't met anyone who's seen this film or even heard of it.
THE PLOT: A single mother tries to reclaim her life and connection with her son after winning the lottery and spending all her money on parties and alcohol.
AFTER: Nobody ever tells you that there's a negative side to winning the lottery, do they? Let's start with the taxes, if you hit for one of those mega-jackpots you don't get THAT amount, they pre-take 50% of it right off the bat, which is actually a good thing because if they gave you the whole $40 million, admit it, you'd start spending like crazy and you wouldn't be thinking about the $20 million you owe the IRS at the end of the year. And then where will you be when you file your return and you can't pay what you owe? In some serious debt, that's where. So I think for the big jackpots they take the estimated tax amount out right off the bat, then you have to worry about everyone you ever knew hitting you up for money to make THEIR dreams come true, instead of yours. Even if you do the "smart" thing and invest your winnings, they're no guarantee that any investment's going to pay off, so you could also lose the whole thing if you invested it poorly, or the market takes a turn. Honestly, it feels like the only way to win at the lottery might be to never play it in the first place.
Leslie Rowlands didn't win a super-mega jackpot, she won $190,000 and that's perhaps a more dangerous amount, not necessarily a life-changing sum of money, OK maybe there are parts of Texas where that buys you a house, but then you're a homeowner and now you owe property taxes, plus repairs from time to time, electricity, gas, water, all that you have to pay for now, where those things might have been free if you'd just stayed in the apartment and kept paying rent. So unless you plan to flip that house in a few years for four times what you paid, that's maybe not the best investment because your whole cost of living just went up, and you spent all the lottery winnings just buying the house in the first place. Whatever dreams that Leslie had before winning this money, she forgot about them fairly quickly and just spent it all on liquor and drugs. Now that's crazy, because I would have spent it all on comic books, which at least have a chance or going up in value, but once the liquor passes through your system, it's practically worthless. But now we know how long a lottery-fueled binge lasts, and it's six years.
Leslie's getting kicked out of a residential motel for not paying rent when we first meet her, so yeah, maybe buying that house with the money would have put her on a different path. She reunites with her 19-year old son, who lives with a roommate and has an actual job, but he lays down some ground rules, no drinking, no stealing, and no sleeping with his friends or neighbors. Well, she starts right in breaking all of those rules, maybe it's a bit like taking a kid to an amusement park and telling them they can't go on any of the rides. After he finds the liquor bottles under the mattress, her son kicks Leslie out and she moves in with her friends, Nancy and Dutch. They have house rules, too, but they also have a friend who spots Leslie in a bar, so they lock her out as well. Another friend also won't put her up for the night unless she puts out, so really, ass, cash or grass, nobody rides for free.
She sleeps next to another motel, and accidentally leaves her suitcase behind. Sweeney, the manager of the hotel, takes pity on her and pretends to mistake her for someone who called about a job, and puts her to work cleaning hotel rooms in exchange for $7 and hour and room and board. Well, I guess if you've fucked up your life this would be one way to start to un-fuck it, but she doesn't really get that right off, she still sleeps late and goes out drinking at night. Eventually she realizes that this is a path to something, she's got an opportunity to get clean and that drinking might be part of her problem, not a continual attempt at a solution. Going cold turkey after a six-year binge hits her hard, though.
Marc Maron plays Sweeney, the motel manager, fellow addict and potential love interest who helps her get clean, and damn, show me the movie that Maron isn't great in. I love all his comedy specials, and, really, I'll watch any movie he's in, from "Respect" to "Frank and Cindy" to "Spenser Confidential" and "Worth". He even did a voice in that animated film "The Bad Guys", and what do you know, he was great at that too. I wish I could link to "Sword of Trust" from here, but it would take me too far away from the path I want to be on. Maybe I can get there one day soon.
Sweeney plays an old VHS tape of her big lottery win, and somewhere in there her son mentions that she once talked about opening a diner. But after watching the tape, Leslie quits her job at the motel and goes out drinking again, only this time she doesn't drink. And when Sweeney comes looking for her she hides out in an abandoned ice-cream shop across from the motel, and then at some point she realizes her old dream and wants to turn that shop into a diner, only it's going to take a lot of money and a lot of time - but hey, good news, she gets back together with Sweeney and they work on it together. I get it, this feels like a very American dream, to open a diner, work hard and maybe turn it into something successful while you're scrambling every day to try to keep it from closing. I've thought about this myself, since I love food and enjoy creating new sandwiches, the only thing holding me back is that I have no professional training in running a restaurant, no money to invest in one and all I ever see in NYC are diners and restaurants that are open for a couple years and then close down. So probably it's a terrible idea and I should probably stick with what I'm doing now.
This film is set in Texas, but it wasn't shot in Texas, it was filmed in L.A. in just 19 days during the COVID pandemic, on a budget of less than $1 million. It grossed less than half of that in theaters, but got picked up by Netflix, and then Riseborough's Oscar nomination was probably the best thing to happen for the film. There were some claims made about the promotions for her Oscar nomination might have violated Academy rules, because it featured known actors doing testimonials about the film on social media, and that's kind of a no-no. But in this day and age, how do you know that those actors just didn't really like the movie after seeing it, and were just giving their unsolicited personal opinions to their own fans? It's a fine line, sometimes. Also one promotion said that Riseborough's performance was better than the one Cate Blanchett gave in "Tár", and you're not supposed to do that, either, compare the star of your film to another actor in another film.
The word-of-mouth campaign worked, and Andrea Riseborough got an Oscar nomination, however the theory was that maybe Viola Davis didn't get one for "The Woman King" because Riseborough kind of came out of nowhere, the studio that made "To Leslie" couldn't really afford to do a big proper media campaign, so they kind of did what they could do. Still, the Academy apparently looked into it and did not disqualify Riseborough, however there was concern over using social media as a nomination tactic, but I'm afraid there's no going back, social media is here to stay and it really can't be controlled, we're finding out.
Starts as "Leaving Las Vegas" but ends as "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" with maybe a touch of "Nomadland" thrown in for good measure. Does that make sense? All I know is that it's Friday night and that means I get to have two beers after work, but not from a bar, from my beer fridge in the basement. Bars are WAY too expensive, I can buy a whole six-pack for what a NYC bar might charge for two beers.
Also starring Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Marc Maron (last seen in "Worth"), Andre Royo (last seen in "Freelancers"), Owen Teague (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Stephen Root (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), James Landry Hebert (last seen in "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"), Catfish Jean, Scott Subiono (last seenin "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire"), Blake Robbins (last seen in "Wind River"), Matt Lauria (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Drew Youngblood, Tom Virtue (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Lauren Letherer, Pramode Kumar (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Brandee Steger, Chris Jones, Alan Wells (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Alan Trong (last seen in "The Tomorrow War"), Francisco Javier Gomez, Mac Brandt (last seen in "Barbie"), John Gilbert, Juan Francisco Villa, Arabella Grant, Kourtney Amanda, Micah Fitzgerald (last seen in "The Call of the Wild"), Clayton Hoff, Jeanette O'Connor, Marcelo Olivas, Stephanie Wong.
RATING: 5 out of 10 late night underwear jogging runs
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