The Last Station

Year 18, Day 174 - 6/23/26 - Movie #5,354 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #11

BEFORE: Well, darn, I went and programmed this film, then it seems like it disappeared from Hulu just a couple weeks later. I realize everything has an expiration date, but these things do tend to happen at the worst times. I'm programmed to make it to July 1 in a set number of steps, so I can land the right film on July 4. Usually it's no big deal, if a film is gone from Netflix, maybe it went to Hulu - if it left Hulu, maybe it went to Tubi or Roku, I don't mind a few ads. This one isn't screening anywhere that isn't going to charge me an additional fee, like YouTube or Apple TV, and I haven't found a new pirate site to replace the one that got shut down. 

Wait, maybe I can find a replacement film, another film on my list that could just happen to connect the same two films, that I could just drop into the place, with no lengthening of the chain.  Sure, there are two films I could watch instead - but one is a romance film, and it's firmly entrenched in a chain saved for February, so I could screw up a whole month's worth of films by watching that now. The other substitute is that film set during Christmastime about the dying mother, which I already passed on once, and now I'm saving that for Christmas some year. 

So damn it, I have to pay the $4 today to watch this film and keep the chain going without tearing apart a set chain of a week's length just to try to end up in the same place, I honestly don't even know if that would be possible. YouTube gets paid today, because iTunes is just a hollowed-out shell now, they never have any movies that I want to watch any more - and I can watch YouTube on my computer and not my phone, at least. OK, so that's the plan, pay the fee and I can stick with the chain that I know is going to get me to the Doc Block. John Sessions carries over from "Denial". 

THE PLOT: A historical drama that illustrates Russian author Leo Tolstoy's struggle to balance fame and wealth with his commitment to a life devoid of material things. 

AFTER: I have to admit I don't know much about Leo Tolstoy, I mean the man as opposed to the author - you can know an author by his works, but is that all that he was?  This film is an account of the last year of his life, 1910, during which his almost cult-like followers wanted him to create a new will, one which would place his copyrights in the public domain, which seemed like a very Socialist thing to do, and Socialism was kind of having a moment right around then on the Russian political scene. However, Tolstoy's long-term wife seemed to have other ideas about who should own those copyrights and profit from the book sales after his death. Well, she had gotten used to living in a nice big house and all the comforts therein, who could blame her? 

We see the strain on the marriage through the eyes of Tolstoy's new secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, who is assigned the job by Chertkov, the leader of the "disciples" known as Tolstoyans, not "Leo-Crats" as you might imagine. Valentin can see both sides of the argument, especially after Tolstoy's wife Sofya is very nice to him, but he also understands how much the author means to the entire nation, and there seems to be growing sentiment against the aristocrats and the other people who "own" stuff - shouldn't wealth be better distributed among the population?  Ah, but Valentin hasn't seen the other side of Sofya, the long-suffering wife who might also have anger issues or mental problems. Well, sure, who wouldn't after 40 years of marriage? These two can't be in the same room for 10 minutes without talking about killing each other. Yeah, that tracks. 

Tolstoy, of course, has 14 children, that's what makes this another addition to the Father's Day themed programming. See, I knew there was a reason why I stayed the course and didn't drop in a substitute film... Tolstoy came from a family of old Russian nobility, his father was a Count, and he was the fourth of five children, but both parents died before he was ten. When he went to university, his teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn". After running up gambling debts, the simplest (?) thing to do was join the Army and fight in the Crimean War - hey, that's my favorite go-to Jeopardy answer whenever there's a question about Russian Wars! His war service and two trips around Europe turned him from a privileged noble into a non-violent anarchist - well, sure, OK, I love that for him. Who knew that he had a running correspondence with Gandhi?  

After founding a number of schools for the children of peasants, Tolstoy decided to get married, and he chose Sophia Behrs, sixteen years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She acted as his support system - secretary, editor and financial manager - giving him the freedom to write "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". They had 13 children, eight of whom survived past childhood. But as Tolstoy became more radical in his views, the relationship with his wife kind of deteriorated, the film represents the ultimate result of all that. We see Tolstoy leave his estate after signing the new will, he really just needs to be somewhere else to "continue his work". This is that condition we call "artist brain", where an author or filmmaker refuses to admit that he's old and really needs to retire.  

Leaving his wife behind has unintended results - when she learns that he has left to parts unknown and has no plans to return, she immediately heads for the lake and tries to drown herself. Well, love makes people do some funny things sometimes - she couldn't stand to live with him any more, but the thought of living without him was even worse. He had taken a train to Astapovo station, which was literally (and figuratively) the end of the line - he apparently became ill at some point along the way. Their daughter Sasha did allow her mother to see him briefly before he died, I suppose that was the least she could have done. The new will stood for a while, but in 1914 the Russian senate allowed the copyrights of his works back to his widow. 

Helen Mirren does most of the heavy lifting here, Christopher Plummer is much more passive, but to be fair, he was playing Tolstoy as a pacifist. However, remember that he was also an anarchist, and we just don't really get to see that side of him here. Paul Giamatti is pretty passive too, but his character is a schemer, and the actor only gets to do his trademark "temper flare-up" thing once in this movie - probably the most Giamatti-esque that Paul Giamatti ever got was during his performance in "Big Fat Liar", I realize that now. Well, that and "Private Parts" and "Sideways", I realize you could edit a whole compilation together of scenes with characters played by Giamatti losing their tempers...

Directed by Michael Hoffman (director of "The Best of Me" and "Game 6")

Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Christopher Plummer (last seen in "The Exception"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Big Fat Liar"), James McAvoy (last seen in "The Bubble"), Patrick Kennedy (last seen in "The November Man"), Kerry Condon (last seen in "In the Land of Saints and Sinners"), Anne-Marie Duff (last seen in "On Chesil Beach"), Tomas Spencer (last seen in "Beyond the Sea"), Christian Gaul, Wolfgang Hantsch, David Masterson, Anastasia Tolstoy, Maximilian Gartner, Nenad Lucic, Henning Mosselman

RATING: 6 out of 10 broken plates

Denial

Year 18, Day 173 - 6/22/26 - Movie #5,353

BEFORE: Now I've really got to boogie, because it's just nine days until the start of the Doc Block and I've got nine films to watch to get there - so no more skip days in June, we're gonna ride this narrative train until we run out of rails. 

Sally Messham carries over from "Aftersun", and I really didn't have too many options coming out of that one, I mean it was either punt and look for another Paul Mescal film, or just go with this one. This is easier, I think.

THE PLOT: Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel. 

AFTER: This is a movie about the vagaries of the British legal system, as a Holocaust denier began to make arguments in favor of the theory that the Holocaust had not happened, it was all just a big misinterpretation of the facts of World War II, he started causing disruptions during lectures given by Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian and author. According to David Irving, Hitler did not have a particular grudge against Jewish people, he only put them in labor camps, not concentration camps, where a lot of them just happened to die natural deaths, as people tend to do. According to him, Hitler put a lot of groups of people into labor camps, like gypsies, gay people, the poor and the unhoused and the physically disabled - and he only had their best interests at heart, like who couldn't use the extra exercise and the structured life that only a labor camp could provide? And the meals, I mean, don't even get me started on the free meal service, you probably can't beat the food served to you in the chow line at a labor camp, plus the feeling of camaraderie that only comes from being on a work crew with a thousand other people, working from sun-up to sundown with no breaks. Concentration camps? Perish the thought, why would a practical German man like Hitler kill all those people when he considered them a resource, he would have put all that labor to good use!  

But when American historian Deborah Lipstadt labeled him as a "Holocaust denier", essentially calling him a nut and a wacko, he sued her and her publisher for libel, now ordinarily you might think that he would be seeking damages if he could just prove that her depiction of him had damaged his reputation, however in the U.K. the burden of proof in such a case would like with the defendant, in other words he would win his case unless the author could prove that her statements were true, and that he was lying about the Holocaust when he said it didn't happen. Therefore to win the case against her, Lipstadt and her legal team had to prove in court that the Holocaust DID happen, 60 years after the fact. Meanwhile Irving would have his day in court and a platform to state his own beliefs, as far-fetched as they might seem.  

This all hearkens back to the infamous "McLibel" case, where the McDonald's restaurant corporation sued a couple of environmental activists who were circulating pamphlets that promoted "What's Wrong with McDonald's" listing things about the company that they did NOT want people to know, like the animal cruelty endemic to their products, the damage done to the environment, low wages paid to employees and the overall unhealthiness of their foods. McDonald's, an American corporation used to American laws, sued the activists for libel and then found itself in the unique position of having to prove that those facts about the company were untrue, in order to win the case. Yes, the company then had to prove, after filing the suit, that McDonald's burgers, fries and shakes were NOT unhealthy, and that their method of harvesting cows and tearing down forests to create more pasture land were things that were GOOD for the environment, which of course they were not. At some point McDonald's Corp realized they would NOT be able to prove these things and settled the case.  

The best irony came at the end of the proceedings, when it was revealed that in a secret meeting, McDonald's said they would allow the activists to continue to criticize McDonald's privately, to their friends, but needed to cease talking to the media. The activists' response was that they would agree to these terms, but only if McDonald's would stop advertising their products and instead only recommend the restaurant privately, just to their friends. 

To prepare for her defense, Lipstadt and her lawyers visited the site of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, along with a research team, while a historian explained the operation of the gas chambers. Armed with this information, the legal team felt qualified to present their proof to the judge in the case (a single judge was determined to be more efficient than a jury of citizens, and surpisingly, Irving agreed to this) but the legal team also wanted to minimize the testimony of the author herself, they just wanted to present the facts and felt that perhaps she would be too emotionally involved. Also she wanted to call witnesses who survived the camps to testify, and the legal team nixed this as well, which really annoyed and confused her, like wouldn't the people who were there be the best witnesses?  

But since the primary goal was to discredit the arguments and evidence that Irving was using to support his claims, the legal team wanted to just focus on this, because it was the quickest path to legal victory. If they could poke enough holes in his "factual evidence" or prove that he was lying with his claims AND new it, that would be enough to win the case. As the trial concluded, the judge pointed out a paradox, that even if Irving was incorrect and the Holocaust happened as most of us believe, if he believed his own incorrect claims, then he could not have been lying as Lipstadt had asserted - meaning that he had a God-given right to be wrong, as harmful as that might seem to the Jewish faith. The defense lawyers countered that if Irving has acted in an anti-Semitic way, then that itself is proof that his falsification of history was deliberate. 

Well, the judge ruled for the defense, which meant that Irving was not believable and had really fudged the facts to support his own claims, and therefore the Holocaust did happen and umm, hooray, I guess? Haters are still going to hate, of course, there's nothing we can do about that, but we should be calling out lies and deceit and alternative facts whenever we see them. Are you listening, U.S. press over the last two Trump terms? That is your JOB, to call out the B.S. when you see it or hear it, and if the President is spouting alternative facts, that needs to be reported on, every single time. Because if you let it slide a few times, then he knows he can get away with it, again and again and again, and then, where are we? Oh, right, we're in a dictatorship where the man in power gets to determine what news gets reported and what doesn't, which comedians are allowed to say things about him on late night shows. He's been chipping away at our freedom of speech for ten years now, haven't we had enough of that yet? 

Directed by Mick Jackson (director of "The Bodyguard")

Also starring Rachel Weisz (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "Burke and Hare"), Timothy Spall (last seen in "The Love Punch"), Andrew Scott (last seen in "Back in Action"), Jack Lowden (last seen in "Capone"), Caren Pistorius (last seen in "Unhinged"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "The Wings of the Dove"), Harriet Walter (last seen in "Man Up"), Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"), John Sessions (last seen in "Belfast"), Nikki Amuka-Bird (last seen in "Rumours"), Pip Carter (last seen in "1917"), Jackie Clune, Will Attenborough (last seen in "Hunter Killer"), Max Befort, Daniel Cerqueira (last seen in "Fade to Black"), Laurel Lefkow (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Elliot Levey (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), 

Helen Bradbury (last seen in "The Dresser" (2015)), Jacob Krichefski, Abigail Cruttenden (last seen in "The Theory of Everything"), Hilton McRae (last seen in "Macbeth" (2015)), Andrea Deck, Lachele Carl (last seen in "Wit"), Paul Hunter, Amanda Lawrence (last seen in "Matilda: The Musical"), Basil Eidenbenz, Edward Franklin, Ziggy Heath (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Sean Power (last seen in "Lost in London"), Tom Clarke Hill, Jeremy Paxman (last seen in "Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie"), Julie McCarthy, Bob Edwards, Amber Batty (last seen in "Philomena"), Nicolas Tennant, Ian Bartholomew (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Laura Evelyn (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Darcey Brown, Kirsty Curry, Michael Epp (last seen in "The Brutalist"), Ellie Fox (last seen in "Jason Bourne"), Glym Grimstead (last seen in "Saltburn"), Anne Wittman (last seen in "The Mystery of D.B. Cooper")

RATING: 6 out of 10 components in an English breakfast

Aftersun

Year 18, Day 172 - 6/21/26 - Movie #5,352 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #10

BEFORE: Scheduling wise, I don't think this could have worked out any better - it's not just Father's Day today, it's also the first day of summer, the solstice, so a film where a teen girl goes on a summer holiday with her father to Turkey, well, it's almost a little TOO perfect, if that could be a thing. Sure, I just programmed it here because it's a film about a father, but I'll take the other calendar connection too. 

Paul Mescal carries over from "Hamnet". 

THE PLOT: Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't. 

AFTER: To understand this film (because the first reaction when it was done was, "Umm, so what? What was the big deal about this film two years ago?") you have to learn a little bit about the filmmaker, Charlotte Wells. Her father died when she was 16, and she took a trip with him when she was 11, much as the main character does here, and it was really the last solid amount of time they spent together before he passed. So I think we can assume here that Sophie represents Charlotte, at least as a stand-in, and we can also assume that Sophie's father passed away not too long after their vacation together. That's not IN the film, but it's implied subtext because she's looking back on the past events with a blend of nostalgia and confusion, trying to understand what took place before because there is no NOW, she no longer has a relationship with her father because he is deceased, hence all the flashbackery. 

It would not have been difficult to mention at the end that this was Sophie's last trip with her father, or that he died a few years after the trip, maybe that would make things a bit too simple and would hit home for the director, possibly making the film also a little less universal, cutting back on the mass appeal. While if the ending is ambiguous or not detailed about what came later, there's a greater chance it will connect with more people who could see themselves somewhere in the pairing of Sophie and Calum Patterso. Live audience members may find it hard to relate to a dead character because they are not in fact dead themselves. 

So there's a lot that the film does NOT tell us about their relationship, instead we're supposed to try and understand the small so we can extrapolate the large. They connect with each other, they joke around, they have running gags between them, they talk about a lot of different things, and they get under each other's skin. See? Very relatable, that could be any father and daughter, or father and son, you can maybe see yourself or a version of you somewhere in the mix. But this is still best described as "semi-autobiographical", so we have to dive deeper into the life of the director to figure out what the movie is NOT telling us outright. Wells has apparently discussed the father-daughter dynamic in her other films, after all. 

LIke Sophie, Charlotte Wells did NOT live with her father, her parents had separated (or maybe not lived together in the first place) but she's described him as a very "involved" parent. He just couldn't continue to be involved with her mother, for some reason. She made a short film titled "Tuesday", about a 16-year old girl going to her deceased father's home and grieving his loss. She also made a short titled "Laps" about a woman who was sexually assaulted on a crowded subway train. "Aftersun" also details how Sophie's father's depression acted like a barrier between them while on holiday together - and we see Sophie making videos, and watching those videos later helped her piece together her memories of her father.

There are some confusing flash-forwards of Calum in a crowd, with light and darkness alternating maddeningly, in slow motion perhaps, so it's very difficult to determine what's going on. Later in the film, it becomes clear that we're seeing a dream that adult Sophie had about her father dancing at a rave, with strobe lights, and she's watching her father dance. But as she approaches him, and they briefly embrace, he then falls away from her, end of dream. And he is lost to her, the symbolism is finally made clear. Adult Sophie wakes up next to her wife/girlfriend, and I'm not allowed to draw a connection here between her sexual orientation - sorry, gender identity - and her complicated relationship with her father, because that would get me in a great deal of trouble, straights aren't allowed to do that. I suppose it's just easier to say that she was one way when she was 11 and kissing boys, and then she was different as an adult and found that she preferred girls. 

I'm glad I read into the background of the director, because I was wondering if there was an implied sexual relationship here between Sophie and her father - in addition to scenes of him rubbing tanning lotion on her (a very normal parental thing, but hey, you never know) and then also they are forced to share a bed because the hotel screwed up their reservation, they were supposed to get a room with two beds but they did not. It seems a little off that this man shares a bed with his 11-year old daughter, even if circumstances forced it. There's one scene where he's hungover and he seems very stressed when he woke up - I'm not saying they had awkward sex together, but it is one possible interpretation, if the footage is somewhat ambiguous. I'm probably reading too much into it and finding things that are not there. 

Hey, probably it's just an innocent week that a father and daughter spent in the country of Turkey two decades ago, they had some good meals, they sat in the sun, they did some karaoke (well, ONE of them did) and they did some tai chi and white person dancing. These are the times that teens need to cherish with their parents, because they never know when they could no longer be possible. Kids, even if your family vacations totally sucked (and I went on a few stinker trips with my parents, I had to sleep in a cargo van because my father was too cheap to pay for a hotel every night) you'll still have to look back on them when you're an adult and wonder how the hell you survived all the endless embarrassment. 

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and father figures out there!

Directed by Charlotte Wells

Also starring Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Sally Messham (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Brooklyn Toulson, Spike Fearn (last seen in "Alien: Romulus"), Harry Perdios, Frank Corio, Ruby Thompson, Ethan James Smith, Onur Eksioglu, Cafer Karahan, Kayleigh Ann Coleman, John Stuifzand, Typer Mutlu, Kieran Burton, Nijat Gachayev, Sarah Makharine, Erol Cengizalp. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 resort staffers dancing the Macarena

Hamnet

Year 18, Day 171 - 6/20/26 - Movie #5,351 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #10

BEFORE: Let's get right into the second half of Movie Year 18 - sorry, no halftime break here. I know that's very important to sports but this is not sports, except when it's about sports. It's Father's Day weekend and I got here right on time with my films, you should be able to easily figure out what I picked for the Father's Day film. But this is a great lead-in that's also very father-centric, from what I hear. 

Emily Watson carries over from "The Legend of Ochi". 

THE PLOT: In late 16-century England, Agnes, a healer sensitive to the world around her, builds a home with William, a local tutor and aspiring playwright. As their lives fracture, they are tested by distance, silence and grief. 

AFTER: Sure, this is a solid Father's Day weekend film, but how much of this is truth? We live in a world that still debates who William Shakespeare really was, or if he was ever real at all, or just another playwright writing under another name. Part of the problem was that there was such bad record-keeping back in the 1600's, it's almost like they didn't know how to keep a database or a proper phone directory or an e-mail contact list at all. And was he Shakespeare or Shake-Spear or Shaqspere or some other person at the end of the day? Similarly, we are told here that "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" are essentially the same name. Really? Are they? Same goes for Anne and Agnes, because I learned that Billy Shakes was married to one Anne Hathaway, only, umm, not the one that's famous and living now. Duh. Where the official records are concerned, it seems that if somebody could get half of the letters in someone's name right, that legally counted, it was close enough. 

There's a record of someone taking down a deposit for the marriage of "William Shagspere and Anne Hathwey", and well, close enough, I guess? There's another document that says the guy who wrote all those plays was engaged to "Anne Whateley", so either Shakespeare had two families or nobody back then was that concerned about proper spelling. These days if you even get somebody's pronouns wrong, you're in for an earful, imagine how Briitni or Sophya or Tiphaniee is going to completely LOSE IT if you spell their name wrong on their coffee cup. Right? 

Still, I'm taking all of these events portrayed here with a grain of salt, because, well, nobody really knows. Did Shakespeare truly love his wife, or was it a marriage of convenience? Did he marry her just because he got her pregnant? And what does a guy who wrote all those sonnets really know about love, anyway? In his will he left her his "second-best bed", and I really want to know who got the first-best one. Something could be rotten in the state of Denmark, just saying. What happened here is that someone noticed the similarity between "Hamlet" the play title and "Hamnet", the name of Shakespeare's son, and kind of reverse-engineered a story behind the story, thinking of possible real-life events that could have helped inspire the story of the tortured Danish prince, Hamlet. In this scenario, maybe Shakespeare saw himself as the late King, who appeared to Hamlet as a ghost in order to offer him advice and tell him that his uncle, who is now his stepfather, plotted to murder him. Yeah, people believed in ghosts back then, they also believed that there was an angel of death who would fly over people's houses and randomly select people to die, because they just didn't have the science that would explain things like the plague and other transmitted diseases. Shocker, there's no angel of death, I think most people have dispensed with that, but plenty of people still believe in ghosts - so progress is slow. 

Maybe we can agree that Shakespeare was working some personal stuff out through his plays, like he maybe wasn't the bestest father, he lived mostly in London while working on his plays, and his wife and kids lived in Stratford. This film (based on a speculative novel) would have you believe that his wife Agnes (or Anne) was some kind of forest-dweller/healer, and could not stand to live in a city situation. Or the kids had some kind of COPD or other mild disease and needed to live near open air, or perhaps that's just what their mother wanted for them. See how it's all a bit unclear? We can't really understand why people did what they did 400 years ago because it was a different time and people believed different things. 

Some people back then had maybe never seen a play before, and they didn't know you weren't supposed to talk to or touch the actors on the stage. Late in this film we see Agnes attend an early staging of "Hamlet" and she's very rude, she screams at the actors because it's her reality up on the stage, that's her husband as Hamlet's father's ghost and the young man playing Hamlet looks a lot like what her son would look like, had he grown up. Oops, spoiler alert, but hey, one out of every three children died back then from various diseases that they didn't even know how to prevent. So if you made it to adulthood in the 1600's, you kind of beat the odds, and if you were very lucky, you might make it to the old age of 40. Shakespeare made it to age 52, which was something, maybe he lived longer because he and his wife lived separately - if they had lived together his life could have been shorter and only FELT twice as long. 

I'm reminded of that early audience that saw a film of a train and they all thought they were about to get hit by a train, they didn't understand what images on a movie theater screen were. Well, that's what Shakespeare was up against, he had to keep reminding the audience that all the world's a stage, and that these actors on the stage were just shadows of life, and if they have offended, "think but this, and all is mended, / that you have but slumbered here / While these visions did appear."  In other words, nothing is real, and if you don't like the play, please bugger off, because you probably were sleeping through it anyway. Note that Shakespeare even had to tell people to applaud at the end of "The Tempest", "But release me from these bands / With the help of your good hands." Way to kiss up to the audience, right? People were all kind of dumb that way. 

We also learn here the problem with trying to foretell the future - Agnes has a vision of two children sitting by her own deathbed, but then is surprised when she gives birth to fraternal twins, making her total number of children three. Uh-oh, now part of her does NOT want her vision to come true, because that means one of her kids will die early. Well, it was common. But she kept reading Hamnet's palm and predicting a great and long future for him, so, well, there goes THAT method of prophecy, too. She also had no idea that her husband would become such a famous playwright, but I guess nobody saw that coming, not even William himself. And she said Hamnet could join his father's theater company when he grew up, and well, he kind of did, but not in the literal sense, just as a character in the most famous play of all time. 

I guess the moral here is to just keep on living, and doing what you do, because you never know when that book, play, film or podcast you've been working on is going to really hit. And if it doesn't, well at least you gave it your best shot. Also, don't let anybody tell you who you can and can't marry, and what kind of life you need to have together - that's up to you and your partner, it's not up to anybody else to define or pigeon-hole. Also, your life is going to be part comedy and part tragedy probably, so you've got to learn to be ready for both. You might win an Oscar for your work, or you may just watch someone else in the film you were in win one, while you get overlooked. It happens. 

I did work at a screening of this film, and there was a Q&A after with most of the cast, including Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley and Emily Watson. For some reason I don't seem to have a photo of that event, I wonder why. 

Directed by Chloe Zhao (director of "Eternals" and "Nomadland")

Also starring Jessie Buckley (last seen in "Women Talking"), Paul Mescal (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Joe Alwyn (last seen in "Kinds of Kindness"), Jacobi Jupe (last seen in "Peter Pan & Wendy"), Olivia Lynes, Justine Mitchell (last seen in "Imagine Me & You"), David Wilmot (last seen in "Ordinary Love"), Bodhi Rai Breathnach, Freya Hannan-Mills, James Skinner, Elliot Baxter (last seen in "1917"), Dainton Anderson, Louisa Harland (last seen in "Lost in London"), Noah Jupe (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Raphael Goold, Shaun Mason (last seen in "Death Defying Acts"), Matthew Tennyson, El Simons, Clay Milner Russell, Sam Woolf, Hera Gibson, Jack Shalloo (also last seen in "1917"), Javier Marzan (last seen in "Paddington"), Zac Wishart, James Lintern, Eva Wishart, Effie Linnen, Laura Guest, John Mackay (last seen in "Living"), Albert Mccormick, Faith Delaney (last seen in "Here"), Smylie Bradwell, 

RATING: 6 out of 10 hard-boiled eggs

The Legend of Ochi

Year 18, Day 170 - 6/19/26 - Movie #5,350 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #9

BEFORE: Here we are, at the halfway point for Movie Year 18. Though can I really call anything a halfway point when I've been doing this for so long? Halfway to what? It's just another year, after all - what an exciting year it's been already, and still there are miles to go before I sleep. Just kidding, I sleep all the time, but usually I crash just before the end of a movie. Maybe I sleep too much, but can you ever sleep too much? 

Willem Dafoe carries over again from "Inside", that's four films for him if you count "The Phoenician Scheme" from January, and I have to - so he'll make the year-end countdown for sure, and so will Emily Watson, who gets her third appearance tomorrow as we head into Father's Day weekend. I think I saved the most relevant father-based material for that, but we'll see. I think tonight's film qualifies, too. 

THE PLOT: In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a girl is raised to fear an elusive animal species known as ochi. But when she discovers a wounded baby ochi, she escapes on a quest to bring him home. 

AFTER: Sure, plenty of father-clashing going on here in this film - Yuri is a teen girl who's been raised by her father, Maxim, to hate and hunt the Ochis. She doesn't get to REALLY participate in the hunt, because that's work for boys and men. (Down with the patriarchy!) He gives her a token Swiss Army knife, but come on, the boys have guns and spears, how's she going to defend herself with a pocket knife? The real insult comes when Maxim talks about how the Ochis "stole" his wife, preventing him from having the son he always wanted, so he adopted Petro, who was orphaned at a young age. Clearly Maxim prefers his pseudo-son over his real daughter, maybe some people can relate to that. 

So who can't see the rebellion coming? Yuri realizes that the Ochi creatures are not vicious, they're just misunderstood, and this creates the chasm between her and her father. Look, if it wasn't this, it was bound to be something else - like clockwork, when we're teens we usually end up rejecting everything our parents stand for, whether that's their religion or their profession or their hobbies, at some point if our goofy Dad is into it, we want no part of it. Relatable. So Yuri takes off with the little ochi she rescued on a mission to return it to its family, its mother was killed but maybe she can get the little one back to his tribe. 

I'm not going to lie here, there's an amazing similarity between the ochi and Grogu from "The Mandalorian". Just going to put that out there and mention that the "Mandalorian" TV series came first, but this film predates the "Mandalorian" movie - make of that what you will. But at least I'm getting to both movies within the same month so I can compare and contrast. In the first two seasons of the Disney "Mandalorian" series, there was an attempt to figure out what Grogu was and maybe get him back to his people, whether those people were Jedi or his own species, and it took a while, but eventually it came to pass that your family is the armor-clad bounty hunters you meet along the way, not some Jedi that are halfway across the galaxy, let's say. 

So we kind of expect nothing less here, as Yuri's escape from her father puts her in peril, but also back in touch with her estranged mother, who has not only been studying the Ochi and their lifestyle and language, but she secretly already taught it to Yuri years ago, in the form of flute music. So Yuri has a unique ability to learn the trilling language of the Ochi, in fact she already knows it, which is maybe just a bit too convenient. The convenience factor also comes into play when we're dealing with a fictional animal species, it can be whatever the director wants it to be - cute, friendly, sometimes vicious, and with a "language" all its own. Who's to say this couldn't exist, except for the fact that we know that it doesn't, anywhere in the world? 

The symbolism of the "lost bird" is clear - if a bird leaves its nest, and is taken in by humans, if it returns to its old nest, it could be rejected by its parents, because it has the "smell of man" on it, and therefore by extension if a person runs away from home, or say, goes away to college, they can never really return home to their parents without some form of problems, because they've seen a different part of the world, they are no longer the same person and they won't see their own parents the way they used to, nor will the parents see their child in the same way. 

This is a very different, unusual film, and I usually try to reward that - however the conflict between the animals and the girl's father is rather by-the-numbers when you get right down to it, so naturally I'm torn here. It's very original except for the parts that seem like every other lost animal saved by humans kind of story, like "Born Free" or "E.T."  In the end, this felt like a monster film made by Wes Anderson, if he were to make a monster film it might be all weird and twee like this is, and Willem Dafoe would definitely be in it, front and center. 

My biggest problem was trying to understand the things Yuri was saying, the actress has a distinct strong accent that made it hard for me to know what she was saying - remember that I'm half deaf in one ear. So when it got really bad I had to switch from the DVD I made (with no captions) to watching the last half of the film on Hulu (with captions, ah, so THAT's what she said...). But sure, cast foreign people to speak English with a thick accent, that won't make things difficult for viewers at all!

Directed by Isaiah Saxon

Also starring Helena Zengel (last seen in "News of the World"), Emily Watson (last seen in "On Chesil Beach"), Finn Wolfhard (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Razvan Stoica, Carol Bors, Andrei Antoniu Anghel, David Andrei Baltatu, Eduard Mihail Oancea, Tomas Otto Ghela, Eduard Ionut Cucu, Zoe Midgley, Stefan Burlacu, Emanuel Stoicescu, Andreea Mustata, Gabriel Spahiu, Pulu Mircea Lascus, Victoria Dicu, and the voices of Paul Manalatos, Alexandra Dusa, Ana Maria Cucuta, Alexandru Condurat, Anna L. Coats. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 geese and cats missing from the farm. 

Inside

Year 18, Day 169 - 6/18/26 - Movie #5,349

BEFORE: All right, while we're on the topic of imprisonment, let's try this one, which I recorded to fill up a DVD with "Kinds of Kindness" on it. Because "Poor Things" and "Kinds of Kindness" were both long movies by the same director, and they would not fit on a DVD together, so I looked for a couple shorter movies so I wouldn't waste space. Really there's an infinite space when you store stuff on DVDs, but still, I wouldn't want to waste any. 

Willem Dafoe carries over from "The Man in My Basement" - I think this is really a solo show-piece for him, I don't recognize any of the other actors, so the only way for me to watch it (aside from scheduling it as the first or last film of the Movie Year) is to program it between two other films with Willem Dafoe in them - OK, done. 

THE PLOT: A high-end art thief is trapped in a New York penthouse when his heist doesn't go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and ingenuity to survive. 

AFTER: Well, just like last night's film this is certainly something I've never seen before. Sure, this makes two films in a row where Willem Dafoe has been imprisoned, not sure what that says about the man but he does tend to be drawn to a certain type of unsavory character, perhaps. If he's in prison in any way in tomorrow's film then we've got a theme going. This is another one of those think-piece films, like we're never really sure if what we're being shown is meant to be taken literally or if it's all one big metaphor for something. When you throw in the hallucinations that Nemo has when he's been in the same fancy apartment for days or maybe weeks on end, I'm not sure if anything here is meant to be taken at face value - the situation kind of starts out at far-fetched and then kind of gets more unbelievable as things go on. 

I mean, surely there must be a way out, surely someone can hear him screaming behind the very thick apartment door - oh, wait, the maid is wearing headphones as she's cleaning the hall, never mind. But if the apartment owner is so rich, and the paintings were that valuable, wouldn't he have somebody watching his space, maybe not all the time, but you know, dropping in once a day or once a week to check on things? I don't know if this is a full-on NITPICK POINT because maybe not, and I guess if he did then we wouldn't have a story here. But there is a simple way out of there, however it probably involves getting caught for breaking and entering at least. If he were willing to just call the police, he could be out of there very quickly, though then he might end up in jail for real. Still, if you're going to break in somewhere, you've got to envision the worst case scenario, and maybe bring a cell phone and charger instead of just the walkie-talkie. Just saying. 

Anyway, we're dealing with the situation as it stands, where this man gets trapped in the high-end apartment which is essentially an art gallery that someone sleeps in. The owner is out of town, so once the security system malfunctions and he can't escape, he could be there a while. Worse news, there's very little food, the fridge looks like a typical bachelor's, there are a bunch of sauces and ingredients but little actual food, because the guy was planning to be away for a while. Hey, here's an idea, call for a pizza and then promise the delivery guy a big tip if he'll help you get out of the apartment. Or get him to report the faulty security system and then hide in a closet or something, once the repairs are done maybe you can sneak out after. 

Over time, Nemo learns how to live on caviar and crackers, and to drink the water that comes from the sprinkler system for the indoor garden - well, that's a lot easier than licking the permafrost in the freezer, I suppose. It's too bad you can't eat expensive art - wait, can you? I think it's OK (relatively) to drink the water from the toilet tank in an emergency, but not the water in the bowl, obvi. But then at some point the plumbing stops working, too, so now he's really in some shit, so to speak. I guess if he's not eating much, then he's not pooping much either. Things continue to get worser when the security system malfunction also affects the thermostat and climate controls, so one day it's 100 degrees F and the next it could be 32 degrees or colder. So it's either bundle up or walk around in his undies. 

After that, it's a vain attempt to stave off madness, or cabin fever, or whatever you want to call it. Nemo can watch the building staff interact with each other and other tenants on closed-circuit TV, but that's no substitute for real human interaction. Also, the cable's on the fritz, that tracks, otherwise it would be a good time to binge-watch something other than the pigeon that's trapped on the balcony that came in through the hole in the screens that he created when he broke in. The pigeon doesn't seem to be doing well, and that for sure is foreshadowing of what could happen to Nemo if he doesn't get out soon, he'll either starve or go insane. Or both. 

So his artistic and engineering-based brain creates a giant pyramid of furniture, so he can climb to the VERY high ceiling and try to get out through the skylight. But this means creating some kind of dark lenses out of a broken vase so he doesn't go blind from the sun. Or, you know, maybe work on this project at night, just saying. At some point he falls from the high furniture tower and injures his leg, he fashions a brace of sorts, but now he might need medical attention in the near future, great. 

Once the hallucinations start, really, all bets are off - the homeowner and that attractive maid come to him in visions, and now we don't know if the events he's remembering are real incidents from the past or just his brain dreaming stuff in high gear because it's got nothing else to occupy it. I think a lot of people who were stuck at home during the COVID pandemic maybe struggled with confinement, but perhaps not to this degree. Who's to say? But this is what makes me think this whole story is a metaphor for something, maybe the pandemic. 

As for the ending, I can't really say what it means - did he get out through the skylight? And if so, where did he go? Wouldn't that put him on top of this skyscraper, in the hot sun? He could just as easily get stuck up there, unless there's a convenient window-washing scaffold nearby or a random open door to the building's interior. It might be just as likely that this was a fantasy or a fever dream as he lay dying on the apartment floor. But before he left (one way or the other) he created some art of his own on the wall, along with a cryptic message for the owner. Heck, you could say that giant furniture tower was a piece of art, too, so we have to wonder what the home owner's reaction is going to be once he gets back in town, to find that none of his art was stolen, but some of it got destroyed and also, some art got created in the process. Is he likely to see things that way? 

Directed by Vasilis Katsoupis

Also starring Gene Bervoets, Eliza Stuyck, Daniel White, Josia Krug, Cornelia Buch, Ava von Voigt, Youl Samare, Salim Angelo Karas and the voices of Andrew Blumenthal (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Vincent Eaton

RATING: 6 out of 10 helicopters passing by

The Man in My Basement

Year 18, Day 168 - 6/17/26 - Movie #5,348

BEFORE: I almost forgot, we're not just coming up on Father's Day and the start of the Doc Block and July 4 and our country's 250'th birthday, but we're just two films away from the halfway point of the year - that's in just two sleeps!  I didn't really plan anything special, that kind of just happens, I want to say last year that happened with "Daddy Day Care". There's only so much I can plan...

I worked at a screening of "Backrooms" last night, it looked very intriguing and it's the hot film right now, but I couldn't watch the whole thing, I just saw a minute or two of the movie and it got my attention, like with "Nope". But I'm thinking it's going to be very difficult to link to, and the odds of me dropping it in here, even if I did watch it, which I did NOT, would be next to impossible. C'est la vie, things I cannot control. 

Tamara Lawrence carries over from "On Chesil Beach", and this film screened in the weekly Tuesday night film appreciation class at the theater, and I did work that screening. Again, I only saw a minute or two of this film, and it similarly seemed very intriguing, so therefore I put it on the list. But that screening couldn't have been more than a year or so ago, it's not like some films I knocked out this year that have been hanging around on the list for five years or more. 

THE PLOT: Charles Blakey, a man living in Sag Harbor, is stuck in a rut, out of luck and about to lose his ancestral home when a peculiar businessman offers to rent his basement for the summer. 

AFTER: I feel like this is one of those films that people talk about for a brief time because of the shocking plot twist, and then stop talking about it just as quickly. Does anybody remember "Nope" or "Us"? Somebody told me after watching "Backrooms" that it reminded them of "Us" - but why isn't anybody talking about "Us" any more? It was so shocking, and I don't want to give away anything about the ending, but just the fact that there were clones or something that were hyperactive and trying to replace everybody they looked like, that was significantly shocking, you'd think people would be buzzing about that one for a while. But the only film that was shocking and hit on a racial level that people are still talking about seems to be "Get Out", why is that the one that everybody remembers? What about "Sorry to Bother You", everybody was buzzing about it because of the jokes about black people having "white voices" so they could get ahead, and then there's a shocking twist in the film that nobody still talks about - was it so confusing that people didn't want to try and understand it, or did everybody just watch the first 30 minutes of that film and not stay tuned for the big shock twist? 

The problem is, I can't really talk about this film without mentioning what the big shocking twist is, so if you don't want to know, like if you're planning on watching this film next week and you don't want it spoiled, then PLEASE STOP reading now, go away, come back tomorrow. I have to talk about what happened here and what it "means", if it means anything, or I just can't proceed. OK, are you gone or are you still with me? Don't answer that if you left...

OK, so Charles owns a house, it's in Sag Harbor, Long Island, and he inherited it from his late mother (there's a lot of that going around, I hear...) and lately he's been having trouble making ends meet. The whys and wherefores of that are to be discussed later in the film, but you know, it's not uncommon these days for someone to be falling short on their monthly payments. It's maybe a little stereotypical to focus on an African-American who's behind on his bills, but let's overlook that for the moment and think about inflation and the cost of living increases. We're all paying more for everything these days. Anyway, he gets contacted by a man (who happens to be Caucasian) who wants to rent his basement for two months, and Charles rejects him right away, because he doesn't want a roommate. Umm, why not? When I got divorced the first thing I did was get a roommate so I could keep making my mortgage payments and also put aside the money that I needed to pay my ex so I could keep the condo. We do what we must. 

Charles takes a look in the basement, though, and finds a bunch of African-type artifacts, and a few other things like furniture, and his buddy puts him in touch with an antique dealer, who's willing to work on consignment, for a percentage, however this means it's going to be a while before he has cash in hand, so he calls back the rich white guy and accepts the offer. There are a few conditions, like he has to pick the guy up at the train station the first night he arrives, the payments will be made in cash, and some items will be delivered to the basement prior to his arrival. All of these things are acceptable to Charles, though if someone's paying that much in cash it sure suggests that something untoward might be going on. Let's put a pin in that one for the moment. 

Charles gets the down payment on the rent and starts paying his mortgage and bills again, also treats himself to some groceries, fills up his gas tank and enjoys a night out on the town - there's a phrase for suddenly spending a lot when you strike it rich, but I'm not allowed to use it. The renter, Anniston, arrives, Charles picks him up at the train station, and as he settles in they share a couple glasses of vermouth, everything seems fine until Charles learns the next day that Anniston has constructed a jail cell in the basement and locked himself in it. Well, this wasn't part of the deal, Anniston claims that he is a criminal and belongs in jail, and now Charles will have to bring him meals and act as his jailer of sorts. Well, a number of explanations come to mind, but none of them make much sense, either this guy is insane or an actual criminal or is pulling some kind of a scam. But what's his end game here? 

After further questioning, Anniston claimed to be in the business of "reclamations", some of which would be considered illegal, so my assumption was that this would lead, in some way, to him taking Charles' house away from him, due to some real or imagined value in or maybe under the house. Oil? Diamonds? Not sure, but just one phone call to the police or scream for help and it would appear that a black man had captured a white man and was holding him hostage. Surely that would lead to an arrest, and then Charles would be in jail and unable to pay his mortgage, and Anniston could buy it on the cheap after foreclosure. Well, that's not the way the story really pans out. Assuming that his intentions in self-imprisoning himself are what he says they are, he's not really after the house but some form of self-redemption for himself, and it's at least a bit racially motivated. 

The more interesting part of the film, therefore, is the effect that knowing a man is locked up in his basement has on Charles - also Anniston keeps asking him personal questions about how he got "stuck" in Sag Harbor and what happened when he was the caregiver for his mother and uncle. Yeah, there's maybe something there because Charles has some guilt which manifests itself in various ways - there's often banging in the house that the guests don't seem able to hear, so either the place is haunted or Charles has some secrets that are giving him auditory hallucinations. (I had those for a while, but I think they were caused by high blood pressure, and I'm on medication for that now...). There are certainly ways in which this film feels like a horror movie, but at the end of the day, it just isn't - which is too bad, because if I treated it as one I could have used it in October to link films like "Vampires" and "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" - but now that ship has sailed. 

I can't help but think this situation is also intended to be a metaphor for something, whether it's white guilt or black slavery, or possibly the reverse of that to prove a point. I'm back where I was at the start, wondering why more people haven't been talking about this movie if it's got such a shocking turn of events in it. But something remains elusive, either the metaphor isn't very clear-cut or we saw so many more shocking things in "Get Out" and "Us" that a guy renting a basement to put himself in prison doesn't even move the needle on the shock-o-meter these days. Or maybe the second half of the film just doesn't deliver the same one-two punch that the first half does, it's hard to see this story going anywhere significant in the last act, so when enough time has passed, there's a quick and convenient way to wrap up the story, and then it's kind of like nothing even happened, except maybe Charles isn't the same man any more. 

It ends with Charles in the same basement, he's inside the cell that's still there, but the door is open and he's reading a book. Did he similarly put himself in jail to pay for his own misdeeds? I suppose that's one way to work things out, but if he really did something bad, it needs to be confessed to the authorities and real jail would need to be involved, you can't self-sentence yourself or be your own jailer. I think that Willem Dafoe was perfectly cast here, it's hard to imagine anyone else playing a character who needs to be friendly, potentially sinister and sympathetic at different times. I wish I understood more about the racial meaning of it all, as it stands I'm not sure if this should count as an appropriate film for Juneteenth or not. I'm going to give it a positive score just because it's unique, I've certainly never seen a film with this as a plot point before. 

Directed by Nadia Latif

Also starring Corey Hawkins (last seen in "The Piano Lesson"), Willem Dafoe (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Anna Diop (last seen in "Us"), Jonathan Ajayi (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), Gershwyn Eustace Jnr (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Pamela Nomvete, Brian Bovell (last seen in "Secrets & Lies"), Lizzie Lomas, Mark Arnold (last seen in "Wrath of Man"), Kayla Meikle (last seen in "Mickey 17"), Tim Dewberry, Bret Jones (last seen in "The Flash"), Josiah Leonardo Kabeya, Miah Hasselbaink (last seen in "Matilda: The Musical"), Dominique Tipper (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Olivia Michi Shrenzel, Shellia Kennedy, Brooke Walter.

RATING: 6 out of 10 gravestones in the backyard