The Photograph

Year 18, Day 47 - 2/16/26 - Movie #5,247

BEFORE: The safe move here would be to follow Nicole Kidman over to another romance film, but then my month would be too short, so I'm going to get to that other Kidman film in a couple days, I just found a way to squeeze three more romances here in-between. So we're not going to take the safe and easy route, which is fine because romance is a long and twisty path sometimes, or something to that effect. Maxwell Whittington-Cooper carries over from "Babygirl" instead. 

Here's the TCM "31 Days of Oscar" lineup for tomorrow, Tuesday, 2/17, and the themes are "Oscar Goes to the Desert" and "Oscar Goes Nuclear": 

6:30 am "The Desert Song" (1943)

8:30 am "The Wind and the Lion" (1975)

10:45 am "Morocco" (1930)

12:30 pm "Road to Morocco" (1942)

2:00 pm "Sahara" (1943)

3:45 pm "Khartoum" (1966)

6:15 pm "Them!" (1954)

8:00 pm "On the Beach" (1959)

10:30 pm "The China Syndrome" (1979)

12:45 am "Dr. Strangelove" (1964)

2:30 am "Seven Days to Noon" (1950)

Another wash-out for me, I've only seen "Them!", "The China Syndrome" and "Dr. Strangelove" out of this set. So 3 out of 11 brings me up to 25 seen out of 58, or 43%. Hopefully better days lie ahead. 

THE PLOT: When famed photographer Christina Eames dies unexpectedly, she leaves her daughter Mae a safe-deposit box that contains a photograph. Mae's investigation into her mother's early life leads to an unexpected romance with a journalist. 

AFTER: This film was released on Valentine's Day in 2020, and "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" was released on February 13 last year - so I guess people still go to the movies to see romantic films on Valentine's weekend, it's kind of comforting that that's still a thing. "Hey, let's stay home on Feb. 14 and stream something..." doesn't really have the same effect, unless you're going to "Netflix and chill" maybe. Nobody talks about "Hulu and chill" or "Tubi and chill", do they? 

There is a simple romance at the heart of this film, but really it's not that simple at all, it never is. These two people are affected by the past in their present, their past trauma dictates their actions, even if they're not fully aware of it.  Michael just got out of a relationship with Tessa, a girl from New Orleans, so sure, he's a little gunshy. Mae is still dealing with the effects of her mother dying, and with her final letter she told Mae who her father is, so she's spent a lifetime not knowing that, which has to have some effect on her dating life as well. Jeez, it's a wonder that any two people get together these days when they're all dealing with so much. But we all have to deal with hardship and loss and we have to be willing to try again, or else we're just running out the clock. 

Michael is a reporter interviewing people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and he asks a man named Isaac about his photographs, one in particular is a photo of a woman from his past, who left him to become a photographer. Back in New York, he visits Mae, the photographer's daughter, who works at the Queens Museum. By chance the photographer had passed away a month or so ago, and they swap numbers and agree to talk more in the future. But after some time passes and Michael doesn't hear from her, he goes to see a movie at the museum to set up a "chance meeting" with her again. They start dating but the timing isn't great, as Michael is applying for a job in London. 

Back in the past, we see Christina, Mae's mother, in a relationship with Isaac that her mother doesn't approve of. After living with Isaac for some time, she leaves to pursue a career in photography in New York. When she calls a friend in New Orleans to share the good news about getting a job, Mae learns her mother has died, and when she returns for the funeral, she finds out Isaac has married someone else. Bad timing all around, really.  Years later, when Christina returns with her young daughter, things are even more awkward and Isaac is afraid to even ask if Christina is his daughter, so we all just kind of have to wait while everyone figures things out. 

In the present, after Mae goes to New Orleans to meet her father for the first time, Michael comes back to finish his article and finds her there, so they re-connect and after another wonderful day together, he drops the bomb about moving to London, and they agree that a long-distance relationship isn't practical. But going through her mother's work again, Mae finds a video where her mother says she wished she had put more effort into loving people - so Mae meets up with Michael again and they vow to make things work out. 

It's really a simple story, made a bit more complicated by the jumping back and forth in time - but I suspect that without that, the film would have all been just a bit TOO simple. Some secrets have to be withheld from time to time, and sometimes we the audience figure things out before the characters do. Well, that's just the way these things go sometimes. The important thing is that we don't repeat our parents' mistakes and it's even more important that we don't repeat our own - so get out there and make some all new mistakes!

Directed by Stella Meghie

Also starring Issa Rae (last seen in "The Lovebirds"), LaKeith Stanfield (last seen in "Haunted Mansion"), Chanté Adams (last seen in "Voyagers"), Y'lan Noel (last seen in "Slice"), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Lil Rel Howery (last seen in "The Out-Laws"), Teyonah Parris (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Jasmine Cephas Jones (last seen in "Honest Thief"), Rylee Gabrielle King, Phoenix Noelle, Marsha Stephanie Blake (last seen in "See You Yesterday"), Wakeema Hollis, Rob Morgan (last seen in "Smile"), Chelsea Peretti (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Courtney B. Vance (last seen in "Ben Is Back"), Christopher Cassarino, Dakota Paradise, Roy Jackson,

RATING: 5 out of 10 debates over Drake or Kendrick

Babygirl

Year 18, Day 46 - 2/15/26 - Movie #5,246

BEFORE: Well, I hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day, we just stayed in and ate leftovers, and had some nice desserts - we'll go out to a restaurant tonight, when it should be less crowded, theoretically anyway. I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the romance chain, so there's still a LONG way to go, and there may be some ebb and flow here, it looks like things might heat up a bit and get steamy tonight. Dolly Wells carries over from "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy". 

Let me just catch up on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" programming for today and tomorrow - previously I was at 12 seen out of 23. 

Today it's Day 3, February 15, and the programming is "Oscar Goes Bad (Crime)":

7:00 am "Little Caesar" (1931)

8:30 am "The Letter" (1940)

10:15 am "Key Largo" (1948)

12:00 pm "Double Indemnity" (1944)

2:00 pm "Strangers on a Train" (1951)

4:00 pm "Rear Window" (1954)

6:00 pm "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967)

8:00 pm "White Heat" (1949)

10:00 pm "In Cold Blood" (1967)

12:30 am "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975)

2:45 am "Shaft" (1971)

4:45 am "The Window" (1949)

I'm claiming the middle seven here, starting with "Double Indemnity" and ending with "Dog Day Afternoon". I've seen the "Shaft" remakes but not the original, I know, for shame. But another 7 out of 12 brings me up to 19 seen out of 35, which is 54.2%. 

I'm going to calculate one more day to get out ahead of this thing, so if there's anything I want or need to record, I'll have a day's notice, and you will too. The topics for Monday, 2/16 are "Oscar Goes to a Family Reunion" and "Oscar Goes to Class": 

6:00 am "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928)

7:30 am "Edward, My Son" (1949)

9:30 am "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942)

11:00 am "The Brothers Karamazov" (1958)

1:30 pm "I Remember Mama" (1948)

3:45 pm "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970)

5:30 pm "Auntie Mame" (1958)

8:00 pm "The Children's Hour" (1961)

10:00 pm "The Corn Is Green" (1945)

12:00 am "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

2:00 am "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (1969)

4:45 am "Good News" (1947)

I can really only claim three here, "The Magnificent Ambersons", "The Children's Hour" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" (finally, they're running the 1969 remake, which I've seen!) so another 3 seen out of 12 brings me up to 22 seen out of 47, which means I'm down to 46.8%. Last year I finished with 42.4% seen, so I was hoping to do better, but maybe not. 

THE PLOT: A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much-younger intern. 

AFTER: This film was getting a lot of buzz around this time last year, I want to say, but then it only got one Golden Globe nomination and zero Oscar noms, so after that it kind of cooled off very quickly. It's a bit weird, a gender-swap on the usual story of a male CEO having an affair with a female company intern, it almost feels like someone was trying to justify that by making it some kind of female empowerment story, but that effect was totally lost, like cheating is cheating and you can't really justify the unjustifiable. If the woman is in the position of power, that's not really an improvement, if the woman is just as self-serving and self-indulgent as the typical man, and having a male intern trying to get ahead by sleeping with the female CEO, same issue, if it's wrong for a woman to use sex to advance or to blackmail the boss, then it's just as wrong for a man to do that. Whatever novelty was gained here by swapping the usual gender roles is negated by this being just as sleazy of a story as it was before. 

I guess maybe there's some form of fantasy fulfillment here, like maybe some people are watching this JUST for the torridness and naughtiness of it all, so this is porn on some level for some people, maybe. If you just want to fantasize about an office romance that's cheap and tawdry and very, very down and dirty, sure, that's your right as a movie-viewer. But we already HAVE porn for that, we don't need to stoop so low in a regular Hollywood movie, do we? Although it's Nicole Kidman, and she was also in "Eyes Wide Shut" and "Billy Bathgate" and "Dead Calm" and "Hemingway & Gellhorn" and geez, are there any movies that she has NOT been naked in? Is there anyone out there who maybe has NOT seen her naked in a movie?  And I hate to be ageist, but she was 57 when this film came out, at what point is she maybe too old to do nude scenes? 

Look, I'm not going to say her penchant for nude scenes caused her most recent divorce, because there's no way to know that, but it couldn't have helped that she was frequently out making movies while Keith Urban was out on tour making music, and you know, two people grow apart if they're not spending that much time together. Nicole's character here in "Babygirl", of course, has a much different problem. She clearly wants something sexual that she's not getting from her husband, though the film opens with them having sex. So, umm, what exactly is the problem? It's got something to do with her wanting or needing to be told what to do, like OK, maybe I can understand that? But if you can't communicate that in bed with your husband, the person you're already closest to, how are you going to justify getting that from a relative stranger? More to the point, how did that stranger know that was what she wanted, that the boss wanted to be bossed around? 

I guess we have to assume that Samuel the intern is some kind of mind-reader, or human psychology expert? He's somehow an innate dog trainer, what does that mean, or is that part of the fantasy? He ends up telling CEO Romy to get down on all fours, so there's that. I have to think this is not a serious drama or even a think-piece on relationships, it's just like the next "50 Shades of Gray", women want to see a film about some man who's going to order them around sexually and it's going to touch some nerve, some secret desire to be dominated, when that's just NOT the energy they're giving off in the workplace, where they worked so hard to become the boss. How is this NOT a giant step backwards for women's rights? I don't think "equality in the workplace" should extend to women taking advantage of male interns, sorry - and this can't be anything but if she's in a position of power over him and they have sex. Even if she surrenders power in the bedroom and tries to retain it in the boardroom, it's still not OK.  

Samuel keeps working his way into Romy's life, finding excuses to deliver things to her from the office. OK, maybe she DID forget her laptop that day, but him turning up there because he was the one tasked with delivering it to her house, that's a pretty big coincidence. Maybe Samuel DOES hold some kind of power over her, because he can get her in trouble with just one phone call to HR, and she caves every time he threatens to transfer to another job in the company that's not directly under her. Well, file this one under "It's Complicated", I guess. 

And things get even more complicated when Samuel starts dating Romy's assistant, and that assistant is the one who wants to blackmail Romy to get ahead. Romy is forced to confess to her husband that she's been having an affair, though she's light on the details regarding who it's with, how long it's been going on, and what she's getting out of the affair that she can't get from her own husband. Perhaps it's better that way. Romy ends up learning a valuable lesson from her lesbian teenage daughter, who's in a committed relationship with one girl but is "having fun" with another one. OK, so maybe that's all this was, an older woman "having fun", sure, let's just sweep this all under the carpet, it's not like everyone involved has been psychologically damaged and probably needs to be in therapy. You know what, just to be on the safe side...

Really this is a throwback to the erotic thriller films of the 1980's and 1990's, like "Fatal Attraction" and "9 1/2 Weeks" and "Indecent Proposal" (which all came from the same director, Adrian Lyne). This theory is backed up by some of the songs used in the film, like George Michael's "Father Figure" and INXS's "Never Tear Us Apart". But bottom line while I applaud the depiction of older women still being interested in sex, I think that if they have to drink milk out of a saucer on the floor just to feel something, I'm not sure they're doing it right. 

Directed by Halina Reijn

Also starring Nicole Kidman (last seen in "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story"), Harris Dickinson (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Antonio Banderas (last seen in "Bullet Head"), Sophie Wilde, Esther McGregor, Vaughan Reilly (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Victor Slezak (last seen in "That Awkward Moment"), Leslie Silva (last seen in "Vox Lux"), Gaite Jansen, Robert Farrior (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), Bartley Booz, Anoop Desai, Mary Ann Lamb (last seen in "Rock of Ages"), Gabrielle Policano, Michael Kirchmann, Mareau Hall, Tess McMillan, Molly Price (last seen in "The Life Before Her Eyes"), Maxwell Whittington-Cooper (last seen in "Rustin"), John Cenatiempo (last seen in "Mechanic: Resurrection")

RATING: 5 out of 10 Botox injections

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Year 18, Day 45 - 2/14/26 - Movie #5,245

BEFORE: Renee Zellweger carries over from "New in Town", and really, it was always going to be this one for Valentine's Day. My chain this year got re-structured and re-purposed a couple times, but this one was always the focal point, I think. Partially that's because it connects to so many other romance-based films on my list - I've got more films coming up with Emma Thompson, Jim Broadbent and Celia Imrie, that's just a few of the connections that were NOT needed as links. So I had some flexibility just by putting this one in the middle and then expanding out from there. Sure, I couldn't put all the Nicole Kidman films together - OK, so I'll have to split one Isabella Rossellini film off from the herd. It doesn't matter, as long as I can stick the right film on Valentine's Day - that's what it's all about, right? I mean, I'm not watching films about Christmas in April, unless one manages to sneak by me. By the same token, I'm not going to miss checking in with Bridget Jones on V-Day if there's an update on her life to be watched.

I'm getting a late start keeping track of Turner Classic Movies programming, since "31 Days of Oscar" started on February 13, in the middle of the month, which is very weird. I guess 31 days of something can start any time, but a month is still a month, right? I guess since the Oscars will be airing on March 15 they had to count back 31 days from that, but why not just celebrate the Oscars in March, if that's when the ceremony is? OK, let's play catch up, here are the movies TCM screened on February 13: 

The first theme is "Oscars Go to a Fantasy World":
6:00 am "Cabin in the Sky" (1943)

7:45 am "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" (1962)

10:15 am "The Thief of Bagdad" (1940)

12:15 pm "Juliet of the Spirits" (1965)
2:45 pm "Lili" (1953)

4:15 pm "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)

6:00 pm "Brigadoon" (1954)

followed by "Oscar Goes to a Wedding":

8:00 pm "Father of the Bride" (1950)
9:45 pm "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994)

12:00 am "The Graduate" (1967)

2:00 am "High Society" (1956)

4:00 am "Smilin' Through" (1932)

I think I've seen only 4 of these - "Father of the Bride", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "The Graduate" and "High Society", so that's 4 out of 12, or 25%. Not a great start. 

Today, the big day, Valentine's Day, the theme is "Oscar Goes to Paris":

6:00 am "Roberta" (1935)

8:00 am "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939)

10:00 am "Ninotchka" (1939)

12:00 pm "Casablanca" (1942)

2:00 pm "Midnight in Paris" (2011)

3:45 pm "Gigi" (1958)

6:00 pm "Charade" (1963)

8:00 pm "An American in Paris" (1951)

10:00 pm "Moulin Rouge!" (2001)

12:15 am "Amelie" (2001)

2:30 am "Irma La Douce" (1963)

I've done a little better on these, I've seen 8 of today's films - "Roberta", "Casablanca", "Midnight in Paris", "Gigi", "Charade", "An American in Paris", "Moulin Rouge!" and "Irma La Douce". So that brings me up to 12 seen out of 23, which is 52%, a lot better than yesterday. I'll keep track for the next month, unless this bores me. If you want to catch "An American in Paris" or "Moulin Rouge" tonight with your sweetie, well, you could do a lot worse. 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Bridget Jones's Baby" (Movie #2,859)

THE PLOT: After jumping back into the dating pool, widowed mother Bridget Jones finds herself caught between a younger man and her son's science teacher. 

AFTER: It's been nine years since the last "Bridget Jones" film, so long that I had to go back today and re-read the Wiki summary for "Bridget Jones's Baby" to remind myself about what happened. Bridget slept with two men and got pregnant, then while she was unsure of which one was the father we had kind of a love triangle thing going on. Bridget ended up marrying Mark, who I guess was the father, and had just split from his wife? And then suddenly Bridget's ex, Daniel, who was thought dead, was found alive - so it sure seemed like they were going to be setting up another boring love triangle for the next film. Yawn...

Well, thank God, that's not the way the story played out - whatever repercussions there were from Daniel being alive again didn't seem to affect Bridget's marriage to Mark, because they had a daughter in addition to that son, and things were apparently fine for a long while, until they weren't. We rejoin the story four years after Mark was killed on some kind of humanitarian mission to the Sudan, and Bridget's getting dressed up to attend some kind of anniversary memorial for Mark, with all of their friends. The weird thing is, Mark still seems to be hanging around, because the memories are that strong, Bridget sees him everywhere she goes, and so we see him too, just to drive that point home. Well, this isn't a movie about ghosts, except that it sort of is, I mean, how else can they depict a character's absence, outside of showing him? I mean, you can't really film him NOT being there, so we kind of have to allow this. Well, we have no choice. 

In another flashback with a dead person - Bridget's father - she remembers that she promised that she wouldn't just survive after he was gone, she would remember to live. Also, her doctor gives her the advice that she should return to work as a form of therapy, which doesn't really seem like a medical opinion, but whatever. The writing's on the wall, what with everyone giving Bridget advice from every direction, it's time to go back to work and maybe even start dating again. Also, her old boss keeps calling her for advice on how to do stuff, so yeah, maybe it's time. 

Bridget meets a park ranger who helps rescue her kids from a tree, and really, that's as good a place to start as any - Roxster is 29 and thinks that Bridget is 35 (I'm not sure how old the character is supposed to be, but Zellwever was like 54). Well, why should she correct him, OK, I guess we're going with 35. The contact with a younger man leads her to join Tinder and learn what sexting is, and how to send emojis of the Greek flag and a duck, whatever that means. (she wants to "duck" him?) Bridget's daughter is eager to call Roxster their "new daddy", and I bet Bridget's calling him "daddy" too, but her son is still coping with his father's death, so he's not really on board. However, eventually the age difference eventually becomes too much for Roxster to handle, and he "ghosts" her - I guess he finally figured out she wasn't 35? 

Meanwhile, Daniel has a health emergency, and had listed Bridget as his "next of kin", even though she's not. Daniel's in a situation-ship with one of his many younger girlfriends, so there's no chance of Bridget getting back together with him, however she urges him to get back in touch with his teenage son, now that he's alive again. It's, you know, not a terrible suggestion. 

An encounter on Career Day at school with her son's teacher, Mr. Walliker, leads her to consider him the next link in her chain, and a camping trip where she gets to see him without his shirt on kind of seals the deal, but there are still issues to work out. He's a pragmatic scientist, for one thing, who believes that when we die, that's it, there's no heaven, no soul left behind. Roxster comes back at one point, so we do have a love triangle here for like one brief moment, but it's too late, Bridget's moved on and doesn't think they can overcome the age difference. Can she finally be smart enough, for once, to only date one man at a time? So after a winter school concert, Bridget invites Mr. Walliker out to join them at the pub afterwards, and he almost doesn't, because he's socially awkward and more used to dealing with school children than other adults. 

Fast forward a whole year, and Bridget throws a New Year's Eve party for everyone, all family and friends, except maybe no ghosts this time? She's in a relationship with Mr. Walliker, now calling him "Scott", and Daniel has been re-united with his son, Enzo. Everything's seem pretty settled, at least until the next sequel. If they were going to stop making more entries in this franchise, this wouldn't be a bad place to call it. 

NITPICK POINT: Did we really need to check in with ALL of Bridget's friends, accumulated over the course of all three previous movies? That's like a LOT of people to keep track of, I certainly can't remember them all or recall what their back-stories are. OK, it's great that the actors are probably also friends and they get sandwiched into one of these films every few years when another one comes around, but who really cares about all 47 minor characters? Can't we assume that maybe over the years Bridget Jones was a busy mother and maybe lost touch with a few of them? Please? 

On the flip-side of that, what the heck was Isla Fisher doing in this film? She played some foil character who was also a mother, but one who threw her kids' video games out the window for some reason. Was her character some famous person that Bridget once interviewed or something? I'm just going off the fact that when her kids ask her who that is, Bridget says "Never meet your heroes..." and I just didn't get the joke. What was going on there? Who was this character supposed to be, because it was never explained? 

Directed by Michael Morris (director of "To Leslie")

Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (last seen in "Venom: The Last Dance"), Leo Woodall, Jim Broadbent (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Gemma Jones (last seen in "Ammonite"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Hope Springs"), Hugh Grant (last seen in "Unfrosted"), James Callis (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Neil Pearson (ditto), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "See How They Run"), Sally Phillips (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Jeff Mirza (ditto), Sarah Solemani (last seen in 'How to Build a Girl"), Celia Imrie (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Leila Farzad (last seen in "The Marvels"), Josette Simon (last seen in "The Witches"), Nico Parker (last seen in "Reminiscence"), Dolly Wells (last seen in "I Do... Until I Don't"), Claire Skinner (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Diary"), Anat Dychtwald (ditto), Ben Illis (ditto), Toby Whithouse (ditto), Casper Knopf, Mila Jankovic, Ian Midlane, Emma Thompson (last seen in "Tom Hanks: The Nomad"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "The Present"), Joanna Scanlan (last seen in "Kinky Boots"), Alessandro Bedetti, Elena Rivers, Neil Edmond (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Mark Lingwood (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Penny Stuttaford, James Rawlings (last seen in "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"), Ruth Gibson, Jane Fowler (last seen in "The Dig"), Ellie White (last seen in "Wonka"), Marina Bye (ditto), Rohan Berry, Seb Cardinal, Harry Goldsmith, James Goldsmith, Isla Ashworth (last seen in "Here"), Laura Bailey, Lin Yap, Rosie Holt, Naveed Khan (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Kath Hughes, Oli Green (last seen in "Lift"), Julie Bartlett, Paul Hunter (last seen in "Cyrano"), Daisy Duczmal (last seen in "Barbie"), Zheng Xi Yong (ditto), Maggie Livermore, Sebastian Dunn, Lucille Ferguson,

RATING: 6 out of 10 condom choices

New in Town

Year 18, Day 44 - 2/13/26 - Movie #5,244

BEFORE: Let's get back on track here, just a simple rom-com that will set me up for Valentine's Day. No heavy lifting here, I think, just a typical fish-out-of-water with a mismatched couple that turns out to be a better match over time. Frances Conroy carries over from "The Tale".

THE PLOT: A Miami businesswoman adjusts to her new life in a small Minnesota town.

AFTER: We've got the fish out of water in Lucy Hill, a Miami businesswoman who's trying to advance in her career, she gets sent to Minnesota to automate a food manufacturing plant and also "downsize" (aka fire) half of its workers. But first she needs to get them to install the new machinery before they're let go. Gee, you don't suppose she'll be won over by their folksy ways, do you? It's a bit hard to take her seriously because at first she's so dumb that she didn't realize it was going to be COLD in Minnesota in the winter? Come on, she brought 17 bags of luggage with her but she didn't pack a winter coat? How can someone so business-savvy (supposedly) be so stupid that she didn't check the weather in the city she was flying to? 

And similarly did she somehow expect a warm reception from the people that she's there to fire? She thought it was going to be easy to trick everyone into working themselves out of a job? What the hell, if you're going to make this character a smart businesswoman, you can't make her clueless at the same time, that's just not going to work, but yet it's where we're going to find out comedy tonight. The plant foreman tells her that "Gopher Day" is a state holiday and his crew needs to get the day off, and she FALLS FOR THAT? Give me a break...

Sure, it's a different world, one with ice fishing and potluck dinners, snow days and fish frys and sure, there are going to be some culture clashes.  Lucy starts making a list of the people who cross her path or seem weird to her, and those are going to be the first people fired. I'm sure that making that list and leaving it where people can find it won't have any possible repercussions at all... In the same fashion, she manages to bad-mouth country music, pick-up trucks and beer during her welcome dinner, and these are all the things held sacred by Ted, the guy she thought she was being set up with, only he turns out to be the union rep, somebody she needs to deal with on an almost daily basis at the planet. Whoopsie. Yeah, when you're "New in Town" you should probably not try to piss off so many people, especially the local waitress at the diner. 

It's a long turn-around for her to appreciate this town's people and their way of life, and things get worse when she swerves to avoid hitting a cow in the road during a snowstorm and getting her car stuck in a ravine. That union rep also happens to be the guy with the snowplow who rescues her, she kept warm by drinking alcohol (not recommended) and then said some more things about him while she was drunk. But she gets back in his good graces by giving his daughter a make-over before her first high-school dance. She and Ted start a romance, only it's probably a very bad idea for the plant executive to be dating the union rep, right? RIGHT? 

Christmas comes and goes, and so does Valentine's Day (seasonally appropriate!) but before the spring thaw, Lucy's corporate overlords want her to close the plant because the yogurt line is not selling well and is going to be discontinued. So now rather than laying off 50% of the staff (or perhaps because she sort of never got around to DOING that...) she's tasked with laying off 100% of the staff. But instead of doing that, she goes rogue and has the workers re-tool all the machines to make tapioca pudding instead, based on her assistant's family recipe, which they also somehow test-market and promote in just a matter of weeks, all without corporate's permission. Surprisingly, the new product is a hit and Lucy is somehow not fired outright for disobeying her bosses. Only in a movie, right? 

In a possible similar fashion, the director of this movie quit halfway through post-production. It sounds like he has just as many disputes with his producers as Lucy had with her company's executives. So you kind of have to wonder what sort of product he was trying to put out, and how that might have differed from the film that did get released. The end result isn't terrible, but it's hardly one of the best romance films out there either - still, it does conform to all of the standard rom-com techniques. 

Directed by Jonas Elmer

Also starring Renee Zellweger (last seen in "Bob Fosse: It's Showtime!"), Harry Connick Jr. (last seen in "Basic"), Siobhan Fallon Hogan (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "The Accountant 2"), Mike O'Brien, Ferron Guerreiro, James Durham, Robert Small (last seen in "Transporter 2"), Wayne Nicklas, Hilary Carroll, Nancy Jane Drake, Stewart J. Zully (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Marilyn Boyle (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), Dan Augusta, Jimena Hoyos (last seen in "The Devil Wears Prada"), Suzanne Coy, Ordena Stephens-Thompson, Devin McCracken, Leif Lynch, Adam Cronan (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Tom Wahl, Christopher Read, Peter Jordan, Vanessa Kuzyk, Matt Kippen, Ben Beauchemin, Kristen Harris (last seen in "Nobody"), Blane Cypurda, Brett Sorensen

RATING: 6 out of 10 scrapbook photos

The Tale

Year 18, Day 43 - 2/12/26 - Movie #5,243

BEFORE: I've got a few days off in a row, it makes sense, I had five days working in a row, and now comes some down time - this is the peril in having two temp jobs, there are going to be times when neither place of operation is open. The Brooklyn Nets are away on a two-week road trip, and the circus is coming to the stadium, only I don't work concerts or circuses just yet. The theater's going to be closed for five days for some repair work, so I'm not schedule to work again until next weekend. I could go on-line and try to pick up some temp work somewhere, or I can just relax a bit and catch up on some streaming shows, log in some comic books, that sort of thing. Most likely I'll slack off and then wish I'd looked for another temp job. 

It's been a weird week already, it started with the Super Bowl and it's going to end with Valentine's Day, with a Friday the 13th in-between. And then the Olympics are going on at the same time, I'm tuning in occasionally, for like curling and ice dancing but I'm not going to make. a regular habit of it. And then next week is both Lunar New Year and Mardi Gras - we sometimes go to a Brazilian churrascaria on Ash Wednesday because it's a day some religions don't eat meat, therefore less competition. But we went once on Mardi Gras, which is also Carnivale, and regretted it because there were scantily-clad dancers shaking their stuff a little too close to the buffet, it was a real strip-club sort of atmosphere, and that will kind of kill Date Night. We may go out for meat night halfway between Valentine's Day and Carnivale, you know, just to avoid the crowds. But that would be Monday, which is President's Day. Damn, all the holidays are running together, but I don't think a lot of people go out to eat on President's Day, so we may be OK. 

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I just finally scanned through the Pre-Game show, which was itself four or five hours long. This is when you'll see the next level down of ads, companies that couldn't afford to advertise during the game itself, so there were just regular, non-FX heavy ads for Domino's Pizza and Chunky Soup, some medications I've never heard of that only cure ONE thing instead of two (like Skyrizi does) and some of the cheaper mobile plans - for some reason every other ad starred Zoe Saldana. And yes, there were some ads that promoted the more expensive ads that would air later in the day, during the big game. So those were ads that were ads for other ads, this is the world we live in now. 

Laura Dern carries over again from "Lonely Planet".

THE PLOT: A woman filming a documentary on childhood rape victims starts to question the nature of her childhood relationship with her riding instructor and running coach. 

AFTER: We've got another problematic film tonight, which kind of puts this one under the "relationship" heading rather than the "romance" one. The main character here recalls a complex relationship she had when she was a young girl, one she wrote a story about, and the relationship was between an older man and his girlfriend (who was married to a different man) and let me be completely clear here from the start - any sexual contact between anyone under the age of 18 and an adult is wrong wrong wrong. Honestly I don't even see why I have to mention this to proceed, but I guess I do, at the very least I'm not comfortable even discussing this film without this as a disclaimer. It's the MOVIE itself that seems to do some back-pedaling on this point, and it kind of doesn't help that the director here is telling her own story, this is based on her childhood, so she's the one who seems to have some ambivalence over whatever happened back in the 1970's. 

Which is weird, because if she just came out and started with how WRONG that all was, we the audience would already be on her side, like WE'RE not the ones who need convincing that something very wrong happened, that this relationship was rooted in deception and illegality from the start, it never should have happened, instead it feels like the director made the film to convince herself that some very nasty things went down, though they felt beautiful and honest at the time. If anybody needs to be brought into the light and made to understand that bad people do bad things and there are repercussions for bad actions, even if those people seemed like extremely charming, loving and nice enough people. Yes, yes, of course there was an era of free love and a sexual revolution, however in now way was the freedom ever extended to minors. OK, are we all clear on this point? Even the director? 

Well, at least I'm seasonally appropriate tonight, because this is another film that premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2018, and that's a January thing. And the real-life sexual abuser (referred to in this film by another name) was a two-time Olympic medalist and a nine-time Olympic coach - OK, in rowing, that's a summer sport and the winter Olympics are going on right now, but really, I'll take any tie-in right now to justify this film being exactly HERE, like 1/4 of the way through a chain devoted to love and romance. I did have a chance to watch this last year, it could have fit in-between "Trial By Fire" and "Citizen Ruth", but I held this one back because I needed to hit Mother's Day in time. This film isn't really about mothers, but you know, "Citizen Ruth" was about a pregnant woman, so I guess that one fit and this one didn't. 

The film is about Jennifer Fox, a director of documentary films and a college professor, who is contacted by her mother, who found an essay that Jennifer wrote when she was 13, one that discussed being in a relationship with an older boyfriend. Jennifer dismissed the relationship as just something she hid to keep from upsetting her mother, however her mother knows (as we do) that regardless how Jennifer felt about the relationship then, or how she feels about it now, that in all ways legal and social, this was a form of rape. There's no possible way a 13 year old girl can be considered mature enough to give her consent for sexual contact, society came up with this rule at some point, and it's a pretty good one. 

The relationship began when she attended a horse-training camp with three other girls, and the woman who ran the camp, Mrs. G, insisted that the girls all go running every morning with her and Bill, an athlete and coach. At the end of the summer, Mrs. G and Bill reveal to Jennifer that they are lovers, even though Mrs. G is married to someone else - but sure, it's the 1970's, remember. Jennifer kept visiting the camp because that's where her horse was, and over time she was sexually groomed and lured into a relationship with "Bill". It's very likely that Mrs. G was recruiting many girls for Bill, and this all sort of feels like a Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell sort of situation. If you wonder how this all comes to be, you start with a couple of very charming people who know how to find young girls who hate their parents, and things kind of snowball from there. 

The adult Jennifer starts to recall her childhood experiences, perhaps with rose-colored glasses, as they say, but after re-meeting some of the other girls from camp as adults, as well as the older Mrs. G, she starts to realize that maybe she wasn't as in control of the whole situation back then as she thought, and that these very nice people were perhaps deceiving her about their intentions, though they just claimed at the time they were all about love and being honest and in favor of self-expression and personal growth. Well, a pair of serial child rapists really wouldn't be expected to present themselves as such, right? 

Jennifer refuses, on some level, to admit that she was groomed or raped, because she didn't want to think of herself as a victim. Through imaginary conversations with her younger self, however, she gradually starts to understand now what she didn't understand then. Her boyfriend and mother keep encouraging her to investigate the situation further and talk to more people, because perhaps if she realizes how many girls the couple was taking advantage of, she can finally think of herself as someone who was deceived and stop thinking of the events as something beautiful and wholesome. Again, we were all already there, it's just like waiting for the main character to catch up and join us. 

Finally, Jennifer remembers having anxiety attacks after every encounter with Bill, and she's able to put the pieces together - then she "broke up" with Bill right before the couple had planned a group encounter with her and another girl. From there things could have easily escalated to Jennifer being filmed, or trafficked or even sold into slavery, but at least she listened to her body's reactions and ended things before they went any further. Years of denial or intentional mis-remembering of the facts could then be counter-acted with therapy as an adult, perhaps. However it's just as likely that as an adult Jennifer would be incapable of having a normal relationship if she were unable to resolve or understand the events in her past. 

So yeah, we drew a tough one tonight, it's never easy when you learn that somebody you thought cared about you and said you were special was a complete liar, and that they were only interested in their own pleasure and took advantage of your innocence. The best I can offer up tonight is that we can gain a little bit of understanding about HOW this sort of thing comes to be, and we can extrapolate from here to maybe understand current events a bit, especially the Epstein Files. Understand, not forgive or explain away. OK, I'm going to move on now and try to get set up for all these holidays approaching. 

Directed by Jennifer Fox

Also starring Jason Ritter (last seen in "Swimfan"), Common (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Vita & Virginia"), Jessica Sarah Flaum, Laura Allen (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Juli Erickson (last seen in "Bernie"), Matthew Rauch (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Ellen Burstyn (last seen in "Faye"), John Heard (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Dana Healey, Aaron Williamson, Shay Lee Abeson, Isabella Amara (last seen in "Vengeance"), Jodi Long (last heard in "The Monkey King"), Isabelle Nelisse (last seen in "It"), Daniel Berson (last seen in "War Dogs"), Chelsea Alden, Frances Conroy (last seen in "No Pay, Nudity"), Tina Parker (last seen in "Men, Women & Children"), Scott Takeda (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), Noah Lomax (last seen in "Trial by Fire"), Grant James (last seen in "Factory Girl"), Madison David, Tarek Bishara (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Gretchen Koerner (last seen in "Irresistible"), Jaqueline Fleming (last seen in "Contraband"), Jacob Craig Bullock, Logan Chadwick, Cadence Lee, Kristi Taylor

RATING: 5 out of 10 family photo albums

Lonely Planet

Year 18, Day 42 - 2/11/26 - Movie #5,242

BEFORE: Between both jobs I've been working straight through for the last five days, but now the theater is closing down for a week of repairs, and the Nets are going on their last big road-trip of the season, I think. The circus is coming in to the stadium, but I don't get to work that event - so I'm free for like the next 10 days, unless I can find a new, quick temp job. I guess I'll look for one tomorrow, I can't do it today, one last basketball game tonight, then 2 weeks where I don't have to go there. There's work coming up at the theater, it's just a week and a half away - it would be fine, except there's nothing new on TV except the Winter Olympics, and I'm not really into that. C'est la vie. 

Laura Dern carries over from "Certain Women". 

THE PLOT: At a retreat in Morocco, a woman meets a young man whose acquaintanceship evolves into an intoxicating, life-altering love affair. 

AFTER: Well, here we go, the first simple romance film of February so far - relatively speaking of course, because romance is never simple. But no serial killers tonight, no pregnant dogs, no porn stars moving in next door, no four-hour drive back home to Livingston after class. Just one love triangle to deal with, but as soon as that gets settled, I think we'll be moving straight on to the happy ending bit. Honestly, it's a relief - however, there is a downside, it's a double-edged sword, because now this film looks rather simplistic by comparison. No, no, I can't miss the serial killers or the porn stars, they were all just there to confuse things and get in the way of love. We're dealing with people at an author's retreat in Morocco - and we all know what happens in Morocco stays in Morocco, right? Oh, that's not a thing. 

Successful writer Katherine Loewe has been invited to this retreat, and she's really just looking for some quiet time alone to finish her latest novel. She's struggling with writer's block because her personal life is getting in the way, her partner (boyfriend? husband?) of 14 years, a sculptor, is asking her to move out, which she promises to work on, or at least think about working on, as soon as the retreat is over. Geez, you'd think if she has that much money from writing, she can just buy her own house and pay some movers to bring all her stuff there while she's out of the country, then once she gets back, she can start her new life. But I guess it's just not THAT simple, is it? Romance is never simple, and break-ups doubly so. 

Meanwhile, a younger author, Lily Kemp, has arrived at the same retreat with her boyfriend Owen, who is a finance manager or an equity trader or something. Doesn't matter, except that he's involved in a deal to buy some land because it has coal on it (under it?) and he promised the seller he could stay on in some capacity, and his business partners are against that and FOR screwing the seller out of any future earnings, completely. Owen is not happy about how this deal is about to go down, but what can he do, he's in Morocco where there's barely any cell phone signal. Anyway, Lily is an author who's written her first novel, and she's a big fan of Katherine, who's written many novels. BUT Lily also tends to belittle Owen because he doesn't know much about literature, and they argue all the time, so come on, do I really need to paint you a picture here? It's obvious from the start that this relationship is doomed, but THEY have to realize that, and it's going to take some time. 

It's also fairly obvious that Owen and Katherine are perfect for each other, they meet when they both want to go into town at the same time, though Katherine is still focused on her novel and barely notices the hunky man right in front of her. Give her some time, too, we're going to get there. As the retreat wears on, Owen and Katherine keep ending up alone together, and having more and more intimate conversations, while Owen and Lily are spending less and less time together and therefore realize that they don't really share the same interests, they don't want to hang out with the same people, and they have different attitudes about drugs, alcohol and fidelity. So, umm, what DO they have in common, then? Exactly. 

Lily keeps coming back to the hotel room half-naked and high - and Owen makes a pass at Katherine, only she declines because of their age difference. Age ain't nothing but a number, though, and finally Owen offers to take her on a road trip, really, anywhere that isn't this stuffy retreat, and so that's what they do. Owen ends up quitting his job because it feels like the right thing to do, anyway his co-workers are a bunch of dicks, and nothing really is standing in the way of Owen and Katherine getting together BUT then her manuscript is stolen (who walks around with the ONLY copy of their next novel in their purse?) and Katherine realizes that she let herself get distracted by this new romance, and she wasn't focused on protecting what's really important, which is her work. She leaves and goes back to New York, to put her new life together and start the next book over again. 

Well, New York City is a big place, but people still manage to find each other there, or bump into each other there, so there's still a chance for these crazy kids if they're willing to reach out and try again. So there's that - they can still find love in a hopeless place, and maybe she lost THAT book but she can write a different one, all about finding love with a younger man at a writer's retreat, maybe. Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes, Billy Joel once sang. Actually the first song that came up on shuffle play for me today, after watching this was "Don't Answer Me" by the Alan Parsons Project, and perhaps those lyrics are more appropriate: 

"When we were living in a dream world / Clouds got in the way

We gave it up in a moment of madness / And threw it all away

It ain't enough that we meet as strangers / I can't set you free

So will you turn your back forever / On what you mean to me?

Don't answer me, don't break the silence, don't let me win

Don't answer me, stay on your island, don't let me in.

Run away and hide from everyone

Can you change the things we've said and done?"

I think it's really easy to root for Katherine here, over Lily - partially this is because the character of Lily is so terrible. She's got "artist brain" after writing just ONE novel, and she's entitled and self-centered and quite horrible to Owen. I mean, he obviously doesn't fit in at a writer's retreat, so why keep pointing that out? Why bring him in the first place to somewhere he's not going to be happy? And then there's the fact that the actress is so cold and emotionless - at first I thought she was Madchen Amick, but of course she's too young. She kind of reminds me of Lily Collins, of course without the English accent and any acting skill whatsoever.

Directed by Susannah Grant (director of "Catch and Release")

Also starring Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "Cut Bank"), Diana Silvers (last seen in "Ma"), Younes Boucif, Adriano Giannini (last seen in "Swept Away"), Rachida Brakni, Shosha Goren, Heeba Shah, Jean-Erns Marie-Louise, Gustav Dyekjaer Giese, Michelle Greenidge (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Francesco Martino, Tao Guo, Muhammad Abdullah Arabi, Yahya Et Tonia, Sami Fekkak, Naoufal Sabri, Halima Ouhamou, Mohamed Askour, Adbelmalek Sadok, Rita Moak, Sundra Oakley, Arthur Clark, Bellina Logan (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Quintin Mims, Herbert Russell (last seen in "Boiler Room"), Nadia Kazar, Dillon Lane (last heard in "The Guilty"), Ada Mogilevsky,

RATING: 6 out of 10 novelists in a very tough game of Charades

Certain Women

Year 18, Day 41 - 2/10/26 - Movie #5,241

BEFORE: Timing is sort of everything these days - there's a right time to do things and a wrong time to do things. For me, yesterday was day #3 of working five days in a row, so there's been a lot less time to do other stuff. I agreed to work on Sunday night while this tent was built outside the theater on the sidewalk, and that's a shift where I don't have to do too much, but it can take a long time, so I was working the night of the Super Bowl, and so I had to record the game and watch it the next day. Then last night there was the premiere red-carpet event (the reason for building the tent in the first place) and I was scheduled to be there until the tent came down, which is another shift that tends to go long - it was supposed to end at midnight, but instead it took until 1 am. (I think the crew taking down the tent was being paid by the hour, they didn't have much pep in their step, and with the weather being as cold as it is, you'd think they would want to hurry so as to spend less time outside...). So I got home at 2 am and stupidly tried to watch a movie, I had some soda and an apple danish for a sugar boost, but that didn't help, I was asleep before I was an hour into the film. Now it's Tuesday morning and I'm going to try to finish it. 

Michelle Williams carries over from "The Fablemans", but the bigger news is that I'm starting a three-film chain with Laura Dern, and I get to send a big birthday SHOUT-out to Ms. Dern today, born February 10, 1967. That's a sign that I'm on the right track with this chain, or at least I'm going to take that as a sign. This year's chain is kind of also about the films I'm NOT watching and saving for next year, like "Showing Up", which has Michelle Williams in it, and could have easily been dropped in - however, I need it to make a different connection next time around and link to some other films, so I'm NOT watching it - and as a result, I've landed a Laura Dern film right on her birthday, see? Now, with a little luck here I'm hoping to build up to some better romance films and kind of peak on Valentine's Day...

THE PLOT: The lives of four women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail. 

AFTER: Well, this film has kind of the same problem as "The Fabelmans", only this is really three short stories grafted together, though they kind of intersect with each other, with some characters appearing in two of the segments. But again there is no clear beginning, middle or end, so overall we're just dropped into these people's lives for a short time, we go out the same way and we're left wondering just what that was all about. Why are we being shown THESE particular moments in their lives, what is the message, or is the message simply that there is no message at all, and all events are random and only have meaning because we impart meaning on them? Is all life just a bunch of unconnected events, people bumping into each other and reacting to each other and then one day, maybe after a very long time, we all die? 

This film premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2016, so, OK, that's seasonally appropriate, and it's set in a Pacific Northwest state (we assume Montana, but other answers are possible) during winter time, so OK, it's doubly seasonally appropriate - but based on what happens in the film, what can we learn about life and/or love, because this is February and we're looking for advice on that front. 

The first story is about an attorney who has a client, Mr. Fuller, who is unemployed due to a workplace injury, however she has to keep telling him that he simply can not sue his employer to get more money, because he already accepted a small settlement and signed something to that effect. But he keeps pestering her so she takes him to another lawyer who specializes in this sort of thing, and he is once again told that he can take no further legal action. On the ride home, Fuller casually says something about wanting to shoot his former employers. 

That night, Laura is called by the police, as her client has taken a security guard hostage at his former place of employment. The hostage crisis team preps Laura to go in and talk to Fuller, and while inside she does find his file, which proves that his employer cheated him out of his rightful settlement money, however it's still too late to fix this. Fuller tries to slip out the back of the office but is arrested by the police.  

The second story is about Gina and Ryan, a married couple with a teen daughter, and they are living out of a tent while they build their house. The tension between the parents comes from Ryan constantly undermining Gina around their daughter. Tension might also be coming from the fact that Ryan is having an affair with Laura, from the first story. The couple meets with Albert, an elderly friend who has a pile of sandstone blocks in his yard, and they want to buy the stones to use as the foundation for their house - however this proves to be a challenge as Albert is very unfocused, he may have dementia, and even if he agrees to sell them the stones, he may not remember their agreement the next day. Gina complains again that her own husband did not really support her during the negotiations. 

The third story is about a ranch hand named Jamie, who lives in isolation during the winter, tending to the horses on the ranch. One night, she randomly joins a group of people at a school and attends a class on law that pertains to education, taught by Beth, a young female lawyer who lives in Livingston, which is a four-hour drive away. Twice a week she has to make this eight-hour round trip drive from her job, which makes you wonder if she couldn't just get her company to spring for a hotel room and maybe make the drive once a week instead of twice, and just stay over the extra day or two between classes. That would be safer and more convenient, no? 

Beth goes out to eat at a diner with Jamie after class, then starts the drive back - Jamie comes back week after week just to spend time with Beth, I'd say she was smitten but she seems kind of incapable of displaying any emotion at all. But one week she brings a horse to class so they can ride to the diner together on the horse, it seems like they both enjoyed that, and perhaps there's a relationship budding here, but the next week Jamie learns Beth has quit and a local lawyer has taken over teaching the class. Jamie then drives her truck all the way to Livingston to find Beth (along the way, she encounters Laura from the first story, only very briefly...) and when she finds her, Beth is very confused, she doesn't understand why Jamie drove four hours just to see her. 

For God's sake, woman, put it together - she rides horses, she drives a TRUCK, she came to your class even though she had no interest in educational law. She's into Beth, but I guess Beth doesn't swing that way or if she does, she's not interested in Jamie. Oh, well, back to the ranch because those horses aren't going to feed themselves. Gay or straight, love is tricky and a bit like baseball - sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes it rains. Or maybe it was all just bad timing, maybe the whole film is about bad timing, if you get right down to it. 

In other news, Gina and Ryan host a barbecue and Laura visits Fuller in prison and agrees to keep writing him letters. Again I wish I could say that there was a point to all of this, unless maybe the point is that there is no point in anything. Intersecting short stories kind of suggests "Pulp Fiction", only this is kind of like "Pulp Fiction" moved to Montana and left all of its action and comedy back in L.A. I mean, it's OK to be weird, it's OK to be quirky, it's OK to be outrageous, just please don't be boring. 

And what the hell does the title even mean? Does the film mean that certain women are lawyers, certain women are lesbians?  Is there something that they're all certain about? Because some of them don't seem very certain about anything? Or are we just supposed to focus on these certain women and ignore everyone else in the movie? A little help here, please. 

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

Also starring Laura Dern (last seen in "Music by John Williams"), James Le Gros (last seen in "Destiny Turns on the Radio"), Jared Harris (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Ashlie Atkinson (last seen in "13"), Guy Boyd (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Edelen McWilliams, John Getz (last seen in "Trumbo"), James Jordan (last seen in "Wind River"), Matt McTighe, Joshua T. Fonokalafi, Sara Twist, Rene Auberjonois (last seen in "Eulogy"), Lily Gladstone (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Kristen Stewart (last seen in "Welcome to the Rileys"), Stephanie Campbell (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Kilty Reidy, Marceline Hugot (last seen in "The Last Five Years"), Zena Dell Lowe, Gabriel Clark

RATING: 4 out of 10 hay bales