BEFORE: The big trend this year has been movies with smaller and smaller casts - as you may imagine, that makes my job quite a bit harder. The fewer people there are in a movie, the harder it is to link it to other things. Of course, the flip side of that is when Liam Neeson is in 8 or 9 films on my list, I can just put them together and coast for a bit. Today's film only has 18 cast members, according to the IMDB anyway, but on the other hand, it's got Liam Neeson, so no worries.
Except one worry, this was on Netflix when I added it to the list, but I signed on to Netflix only to find that I couldn't find it, it's already gone. And it hasn't popped up on Hulu or Roku or Tubi or ZipZorp yet, so I have to punt. I checked iTunes next, only to find out that the iTunes service is no longer working for my Mac OS. Great. So iTunes is now just a storage platform for ALL of my music, I'm not going to Apple Music or whatever because my music library is HUGE and I'm just not importing it or exporting it. So Apple, you get NO MORE of my money now, I hope you're happy.
Next option, there is exacly ONE pirate web-site I trust, I know that most movies are posted there, and I won't get malware or spam e-mail after using that site. They did have "Made in Italy", however the file wasn't working. So it feels like the universe really did not want me to watch this movie - I persisted and found it on DailyMotion, which meant a ton of ads, however it was there and it was free. I feel like nobody considers DailyMotion an option, they'd rather pay for 17 streaming services with monthly charges just to eliminate ads. OK, you do you, I'll endure a few ads and save some money.
My chain that will get me to Easter is carefully curated, however if I get very busy there are multiple ways I can shorten the chain, dropping this film here or those two films there. I would rather NOT do that, because it's going to affect which film lands on the big 5,000 mark, but I will drop films if I have to. Flexibility is the key, so I can change parts of the chain without affecting the larger chain and the next holiday destination, Easter.
Liam Neeson carries over from "Ordinary Love".
THE PLOT: A bohemian artist travels from London to Italy with his estranged son to sell the house they inherited from their late wife/mother.
AFTER: I know I keep saying it, over and over, but I really really mean it this time - today's film is the really official end of the romance/relationships chain. This was an unexpected one, because there was no mention of romance in the synopsis or the IMDB description, but the son is going through a divorce, and the father is still working through the death of his wife, so he hasn't been in a steady relationship for years, and has probably been sabotaging his hook-ups, but wouldn't you know it, they both manage to find love when they start their loves over in Italy. Although the film correctly points out, you can try to start over, but you never really do start over, your experiences always go along with you, and no matter where you go, there you are. Really the best you can ever do is make the most out of whatever time you have left, no matter how old you are. We really need a new term because "starting over" doesn't really do it - but sometimes you need to burn your old life to the ground and just go somewhere else. Relocating? Replanting? Repotting? Rebuilding?
Ah, let's go with that one, rebuilding. There's an Italian villa that neither of them have been to in 20 years, because it came from Robert's wife's family. They've been dealing with the loss by NOT dealing with the house, but now Jack needs money to buy the art gallery back from his soon-to-be ex-wife, only he's afraid to tell his father about the failed marriage, but together they're going to fix up the house, sell it for top dollar, and everything's going to be fine again, except they'll still have their other problems to solve. But we've seen this before, right? Like in "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "A Good Year", the house is just a symbol for their neglected life problems, and if we can fix up the house, maybe we can fix a few other things while we're at it. "Life as a House" also used the same exact metaphor, and was also nice enough to put that right in the title so we wouldn't miss it.
It's a bit odd that Lindsey Duncan was in both "Under the Tuscan Sun" and today's film, which both riff off the same theme, that people from the UK or U.S. can move to Tuscany to improve their lives and romantic situations, provide they're willing to renovate a villa. And she played "Katherine" in one film and "Kate" in the other, is this supposed to be the same character? It's not too much of a stretch to imagine that her aging starlet character from one film could take up real estate as a new career in the other. And then we have the plot point that Italian pasta is delicious, which of course is a no-brainer, and was probably also seen in those other films, or perhaps just borrowed from "Big Night".
One reviewer just called this "Under the Tuscan Sun" for dudes, and he wasn't far off. Jack and his father bond over the renovations, fight over the renovations, get drunk, eat pasta, fight over their reactions to losing a wife and mother, then bond over their feelings about losing a wife and mother. It's the standard stages of grief, played out in cinematic form. The only new twist here is that awful mural on the wall that Robert painted after his wife died, and he refuses to sell the villa to anyone who doesn't appreciate it or says they're going to paint it over. He's got artist brain, for sure, and he's a little too attached to his own work and therefore the house, but hey, there's a simple solution for all of that.
And there's another way for Jack to buy back his art gallery, only by the time he gets there, he finds he doesn't really want it, he's already mentally moved on, so he's finally able to sign the divorce papers. See, there's really no problem that moving to Tuscany can't fix, right? Sure, there's no one way for them to grieve, locking up the old paintings and photos didn't help, and staying away from each other was also the wrong way to go. Both men needed some time together to make up for all the time they spent apart.
NITPICK POINT: The drive from London to Tuscany is a long one, I checked it on my map app and got a result of about 16 hours. Sure, I don't expect the film to show me the whole trip, but this 16-hour trip gets edited down to under five minutes, and that didn't feel realistic at all. It felt like they took a left turn outside of London and suddenly the scenery was all Tuscan, when they should have had to stop somewhere for an overnight at a hotel along the way. Plus, only Jack was driving, Robert hadn't driven since the accident, so he would have needed to take breaks. We needed, at the very least, to see footage of them driving through the chunnel, which probably takes at least 30 minutes, or on a ferry, which takes 90 minutes.
Liam Neeson's son here is played by, get this, his actual son, who now acts professionally under his late mother's name to honor her side of the family. So it calls into question how much of this film is them acting and how much is a form of therapy, considering that they've been through a similar situation together in real life. He was in another Liam Neeson fiim playing the same role, only it was one of those where the main character's family gets kidnapped (no, not THAT one) and he has to chase the bad guys on a zamboni or a snow-mobile or something in order to expose the corrupt mayor or oil company executives or something.
I've got a few more Liam Neeson films to get through over the next week, but I'm trying to organize them so that all the ones where he plays the common man with a secret past as a hitman or FBI agent or something will sort of end up together. I hope it will make more sense if I just pick the proper order. Then again, it doesn't really matter as long as the last one links me to more action films. After 40 days of romance and relationship films, all I really want to see is stuff blowing up, I don't even care what.
Directed by James D'Arcy (last seen in "Oppenheimer")
Also starring Micheál Richardson (Neeson) (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Valeria Bilello, Lindsay Duncan (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Marco Quaglia (last seen in "The Talented Mr. Ripley"), Gian Marco Tavani, Helena Antonio, Yolanda Kettle, Julian Ovenden (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Chelsea Fitzgerald, Flaminia Cinque (last seen in "Attack the Block"), Souad Faress (last seen in "Dune: Part One"), Claire Dyson, Lavinia Biagi, Gabriele Tozzi, Costanza Amati, Eileen Walsh (last seen in "Nicholas Nickleby"), Deborah Vale
RATING: 5 out of 10 holes in the ceiling
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