Eddington

Year 18, Day 178 - 6/27/26 - Movie #5,358

BEFORE: It's Saturday again, which would usually mean I start watching my movie late Friday night, however I was out late last night, working my first concert at the Barclay's Center. This was a small career goal, to add concerts to my schedule in addition to basketball games, it seems you have to be there a while before they let you work concerts, so this kind of means I might be doing well at this job. Or they were just under-staffed, because a lot of people have been calling out to work at other sports jobs like MLB games and, I presume, World Cup games. If that means I'm one of the few people available and I can advance a little bit, that's fine by me. Except that working the concert last night was completely exhausting, we had to pour all the beers sold into cups, which is extra work and my hands are still cramping up. Tonight I think I'll stay home and open up a couple beers FOR ME. I didn't get home until about 11:30 and it was too late to start a very long film, plus I was too tired. So I got up early and watched this on Saturday morning after a solid night's rest. 

Austin Butler carries over from "Caught Stealing". 

THE PLOT: In May 2020, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, New Mexico. 

AFTER: This one kind of fits into the same category as the two films I was comparing yesterday - "One Battle After Another" and "Caught Stealing". I call them "fever dream" films - they tend to be action-packed but also kind of go on a bit too long, they're like those dreams that you have when you're sick or it's the last, longest dream of the sleep cycle and things get really crazy and don't make any sense, but you DO a lot in that dream. Like I could have a dream when I'm at home and I need to get ready for work, but then I can't find my sneakers and I'm checking everywhere and then the cat jumps on my back, only it's not really my cat and then I have to run outside and catch the subway, only the trains aren't running so I have to take a bus, and the bus is shaped like an RV and is somehow enormous inside, bigger than my apartment somehow, and I'm late for work but I can still make it if there's no traffic, but of course there is... and so on. 

This one comes from the director of "Beau Is Afraid", which was another very long "fever dream" movie, one that I did not enjoy because I could not find a point to it - it played out just like a long series of random terrible things happening, which does qualify it for the "what could possibly go wrong" category, but when the answer to that is "everything" a film can feel a little disjointed and overall very random sometimes. But tonight's film at least has a framework, envisioned as a contemporary Western film set firmly in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, May 2020. So there are people requiring others to wear facemasks, other people refusing to wear masks, some people trying to keep themselves alive and others refusing to give up their rights for the sake of other people's health. Then in the middle of all that we got hit with protests from the Black Lives Matter movement, people calling to defund the police, and others convinced that COVID was either a Chinese black ops lab experiment gone wrong instead of just a contamination from an unregulated meat market, and then others were seeing conspiracies everywhere, from Q-Anon to Antifa. What a weird time to be alive, most people stayed home to work or go to school, but others got out there and partied or protested, which seemed dangerous and counter-productive, but people stuck at home got together online and I guess needed to work some stuff out. Everybody's life changed, there are still people who have not gone back to work in an office or sent their kids back to learn in a school. 

All of this madness is symbolized by the goings-on in Eddington, New Mexico, the local sheriff< Joe Cross, refuses to wear a mask and drives around trying to stick up for others who feel the same way - if he sees someone denied service at a grocery store with a mask requirement, or who can't get into a bar because the bar owner is having a town council meeting and closed it to the public, Joe's going to stop and try to stick up for the little guy. But sometimes the little guy is someone with breathing issues, and sometimes it's just the local crazy drunk person - Joe really needs to pick his battles better, because he's butting heads with the mayor, Ted Garcia, and there's already bad blood between them because Ted used to date Joe's wife, Louise, who got pregnant six months after they broke up, had an abortion and now is emotionally unstable. Mathematically there's no way Ted could have fathered that baby, but don't confuse Joe with the facts, he's got his axe to grind. 

Louise makes these weird dolls to sell on the internet, and the couple lives with Louise's mother, Dawn, who believes just about every conspiracy out there. Joe decides to run for mayor and challenge Ted, because Ted keeps pushing to build this big data center, while others are opposed to it because data centers are terrible for the environment and the water supply (this is true, someone explained to me once how cryptocurrency wastes a whole bunch of water, and I don't really understand it but it appears to be the case.). Joe puts his deputies to work coming up with slogans and pamphlets for his campaign, which I think is an illegal use of city employees. Meanwhile Dawn and Louise go to hear a lecture from Vernon Jefferson Peak, a radical cult leader who pushes those theories about child trafficking and rampant pedophilia, and there's a suggestion that perhaps Louise was abused by her late father, which you know, could explain a few things if true. 

Meanwhile, the mayor's son Eric gets involved with Black Lives Matter protesters, along with his friends Brian and Sarah, and Sarah tries to get deputy Michael on their side, seeing as he's the only black policeman and possibly the only black person in town. Poor deputy Michael is stuck in the middle, but it's only the start of his problems, things are about to get much worse. Sheriff Joe checks out a noise complaint at the mayor's house and ends up interrupting a fund-raising party, Mayor Ted ends up slapping Joe in front of the guests, which in retrospect was probably a mistake. Sheriff Joe suggests in an online video that Mayor Ted was the father of that aborted baby, and Louise doesn't take too well to this, and leaves town. 

Joe hits some kind of breaking point, and when that crazy drunk breaks into the town bar and tries to drink it dry, Joe shoots the man dead and dumps his body in the river. He then kills a few more people but stages it to be an Antifa attack. This causes some actual Antifa terrorists to head toward town on a private jet, which means that really everybody's going to be in some trouble soon - really, everyone in town is pretty much circling the drain at this point, even if they don't know it. The most honest officer in town is the Native American one, and he starts investigating the murders himself, since they were partially on tribal land. When Officer Butterfly Jimenez starts getting too close to the truth, Joe frames his own deputy, Michael, for the killings and puts him in jail to divert attention from himself. 

After this, the whole town is kind of in "One Battle After Another" mode, it's really hard to know who to root for with so many different factions involved, and weapons firing from all over, random gas explosions and dumpster fires, like did the protests get out of hand or are those Antifa terrorists acting in the shadows, causing trouble everywhere? Where did the snipers come from, and remember, this is a town where nearly everyone already had a gun, and the sheriff had been encouraging everyone to use them. Going with the Western theme, it gets really tough to know who's wearing the black hats and who's wearing the white ones. 

I guess all you really need to know about the ending is that the data center does get built, so, umm, Yay? We know that the pandemic eventually ended, there's a new mayor of the town, but let's just say he's a man of few words. And Louise ended up pregnant, but it can't really be Joe's baby so we can assume she found a new relationship and a new "family" to go with. It's fine, really, things are what they are, even if some people ended up in a weird new place. But like I said, we all had our lives changed by the pandemic, right? 

Directed by Ari Aster (director of "Beau Is Afraid" and "Midsommar")

Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Faye"), Pedro Pascal (last seen in "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"), Emma Stone (last seen in "Kinds of Kindness"), Luke Grimes (last seen in "The Magnificent Seven"), Deirdre O'Connell (last seen in "Fearless"), Micheal Ward (last seen in "Beauty"), Amelie Hoeferle (last seen in "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes"), Clifton Collins Jr. (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), William Belleau (last seen in "Killers of the Flower Moon"), Matt Gomez Hidaka, Cameron Mann, Rachel de la Torre (last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Amadeo Arzola, Landall Goolsby (last seen in "The Eye"), Robyn Reede (last seen in "Natural Born Killers"), Elise Falanga, King Orba (last seen in "You Gotta Believe"), David Pinter, Keith Jardine (last seen in "End of the Road"), Sam Quinn (last seen in "Only the Brave"), Ralph Alderman (ditto), Daniel Clowes, David Midthunder (last seen in "The Last Stand"), Juwan Lakota, Christine Hughes, William Sterchi (last seen in "The Space Between Us"), James Cady (last seen in "Army of the Dead"), Aby Townsend (ditto), Thom Rivera (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Mickey Bond, Manny Rubio (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Vic Browder (also last seen in "Just Getting Started"), Diane Villegas (last seen in "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"), Dan Davidson (ditto), Kristin K. Berg (last seen in "Maggie Moore(s)"), Joseph Ortega (ditto), Guia Peel, Mack MacReady, Marcela Salmon, Sterlin English, Jason Potter, Jean Dumont, Emery Barrera, Steven Foldy II, Eddie Garcia (last seen in "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief"), Justice McLean-Davis, Kaleb Naquin, Auburn Ashley, GiGi Bella, Ophelia Benally, Gabe Kessler, Bill Capskas, Robyn Casper, Bendicion Garcia, Giancarlo Beltran, Blane Aranyosi, Erika Clowes, John Roberts, Robert Mark Wallace

RATING: 4 out of 10 city council Zoom meetings

Caught Stealing

Year 18, Day 177 - 6/26/26 - Movie #5,357

BEFORE: I think I'm going to make it - the start of the Doc Block on July 1 is just about here, I just need to make it through the weekend and a couple of LONG movies, but one film is already watched so I've got a bit of a head start. It was two weeks ago that I snuck out one day to go to a movie theater, I stupidly went to a theater just a block from Madison Square Garden and there was an NBA Finals game that night, so I walked out into a madhouse and had to pass through some police checkpoints - OK, that one's on me. Thankfully I still had my Tribeca Film Festival pass and I showed it to prove I only wanted to pass through the zone and get down to the theater, which was partially true. Really the crowd was so huge that was the last place I wanted to be, I probably should have just jumped on the subway and come straight home - but you never know, I checked in at work just in case somebody called out. 

Liev Schreiber carries over from "Golda". Tonight's film had the buzz about eight months ago, but then I didn't hear anything about it during awards season, that's maybe not a good sign. No Oscar nominations, but it's directed by Darren Aronofsky, who's got a pretty good track record, so we'll see. I've met the man three times, once at a screening and once at Comic-Con and once in the middle of Tribeca Fest. 

THE PLOT: When his neighbor asks him to take care of his cat, a former baseball prodigy now working as a bartender finds himself in the middle of gangsters without knowing why. He must use all his cunning to survive and understand what is happening. 

AFTER: I think there are a lot of similarities between this film and "One Battle After Another" - they don't share any cast members, though, obviously they're directed by different people and they're based on different books, and one's set in Los Angeles and the other's set in NYC, but I could perhaps make a case for today's film being kind of the East Coast version of "One Battle", but also one hour shorter, meaning it may not be as detailed, but it also won't take up as much of your time. You do you, and proceed as you want. But this film really captures the feeling of living in the dirty, messed-up and mobbed-up Lower East Side in Manhattan. I moved out of that neighborhood way back in 1989, after a summer spent watching drug carriers barf up pills to sell to customers in the park behind my apartment. Umm, thanks but no thanks - hand me those listings for apartments in Brooklyn - no, wait, maybe Queens. 

This is set back in 1998, so about 9 years after I moved out of there, before the smart phone craze but back when people had pagers or beepers. People of little means could still somehow get fourth-floor walk-up apartments, which of course can be a pain in the ass, not just the stairs but with those faulty unlockable windows, no air conditioning, steam heat, lots of street noise, and of course the weird neighbors who come and go at all hours. Somebody really nailed this, I assume the director lives or lived somewhere in this neighborhood. In fact, I know it for sure, because I worked a summer at the AMC Theater in the East Village, and there was an older lady there who worked afternoons scanning tickets. Her name was Miss Kitty, and she appears in this film, in passing, a little research tells me that she's spent years living in the same building as the director. Yes, it's the same "Miss Kitty" I worked with - I used to joke that she worked for whatever building was there before the movie theater, maybe it was a nightclub or a stage, and she stuck around and when they tore that building down and built the movie theater, they just built it around her. 

But here in the fictional world she lives in the same building as Hank Thompson, a former baseball player who roots for the San Francisco Giants, and talks to his mother about them every day on the phone. But he's haunted by a car crash that killed his friend AND his baseball career at the same time, plus left him an alcoholic. Probably an alcoholic should NOT be working at a bar, but that's where we find ourselves. He works nights at Paul's Bar, and he's seeing a young woman named Yvonne who works at a hospital E.R. or something, and picks him up after he closes the bar for a booty call. Well, at least they're on the same schedule, this relationship could work unless one of them starts working day shift. 

Trouble comes when his punk neighbor, Russ, asks him to feed his cat while he's out of town. Before you know it, Russian mobsters come looking for Russ, and even though Hank explains Russ is gone, they still beat Hank up so bad he loses a kidney. After they come back and break into Russ's apartment, Hank calls a narcotics detective, Elise Roman, who reveals that Russ is a drug dealer working for a couple of Hasidic gangsters, the "scary monsters". Roman says that if the scary monsters show up again, he should call her right away. Hank finds a weird rubber poop in the cat's litter box, with a key inside - perhaps this is what the Russians are looking for, but what does it unlock? And where? Unfortunately Hank gets drunk at the bar and forgets where he put the key.  

The Russians come back, with a Puerto Rican associate named Colorado, and they beat him up too, threaten him with a gun, however none of this helps him remember where he put or lost the key. (At this point he really should get drunk again, to remember, but he's a kidney down and that's really not a great idea.) Once the Russians leave he gets chased by the Hasidim, gangsters, the Drucker brothers. He manages to give them the slip, but since it's not safe to go home, he circles back to Yvonne's apartment, only to find someone has killed her. 

With few places to turn, he goes back to Elise Roman, only to find that she's in league with the Russians and Colorado, however she claims that they did NOT kill Yvonne. So they all go to Paul's Bar to try and find the key, only it's not there. This is where impatient people start to get frustrated, and when they do, the bullets start flying. Paul tries desperately to defend his bar, but he's only got a shotgun against criminals with automatic weapons. Hank is able to lock himself in the back-room until the others leave, then he sets out on his own quest to find the key.  At this point Russ returns from London, and reveals that the key unlocks a storage locker with a large amount of money in it, Russ has been acting as a go-between for the various factions, because he's the only person everyone trusts to divide up the money and give everyone their share. The trouble came when he really did need to go to London for family reasons, and nobody wanted to wait until he got back. Russ wants to take all of the money and make Hank the fall guy, but Hank knocks him unconscious instead, reversing that situation. 

Hank spends a night on Coney Island, after Russ's head injuries kind of catch up with him, and then ends up going to the Hasidic Drucker brothers to shoot up the Russian's supper club, to kind of put an end to the Russian mob, but Roman is still active and threatening to kill Hank's mother. The Druckers agree to kill the dirty cop as long as Hank will lead them to the money stash afterwards. But first, a couple bowls of matzoh ball soup with the Drucker's bubbe. How nice. I won't say how it all ends up, but Hank manages to walk a very tight line, playing one faction off against the other, when all of the factions had reasons to kill or frame him at various times. 

Look, I don't know why two similar-ish films came out in the same year - and I don't know how one managed to win Best Picture and the other one had the buzz last September, like simply EVERYBODY wanted to see this, and now it's nine months later and you just don't hear anyone talking about it any more. That's just how it goes sometimes. 

Directed by Darren Aronofsky (director of "The Whale" and "Mother!")

Also starring Austin Butler (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Matt Smith (last seen in "Morbius"), Regina King (last seen in "Daddy Day Care"), Zoe Kravitz (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Strange Days"), Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio / Bad Bunny (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Griffin Dunne (last seen in "Alright Now"), Carol Kane (last seen in "Pee-Wee as Himself"), Action Bronson (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), George Abud, Macy Rodman, Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kolokolnikov (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Brill (last seen in "Slice"), Tenoch Huerta (last seen in "The Forever Purge"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Dominique Silver, Shaun O'Hagan (last seen in "The Good Nurse"), Jake Bentley Young, Kitty Lawrence, Oleg Prudius, Gregg Bello (last seen in "Mother!"), Stanley B. Herman (ditto), Eddie De Harp, Nu Ka Ki, Renee Asofsky (last seen in "The Fountain"), Henry Wong, Matt Gauland, David Weise, Arishel Ramirez, Janelle McDermoth, Craig "Radioman" Castaldo (last seen in "Jurassic World: Rebirth"), Eric Ian (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending", with the voices of Mike Francesca (last seen in "Uncut Gems"), Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, Lee Harris, Judy de Angelis (last seen in "The Siege"),

RATING: 6 out of 10 loaves of challah bread

Golda

Year 18, Day 176 - 6/25/26 - Movie #5,356

BEFORE: All right, I've confirmed 42 docs for the Doc Block - I'm going to make one last pass on my list to try to get the total up to 50, but I think it's a long shot. The chain is kind of telling me that it only wants to be 42 docs long - last year I did 49 and it sure felt too long, so I should probably take the hint. Still, I've got a couple more days off before I have to report back in to one of my jobs, so maybe...I know, just take the win and move on. 

Helen Mirren carries over again from "The Duke". This one has surfaced at a time where it may have some relevance, after Israel has been in the news within the last year for starting a war, and of course once again there's no peace in the Middle East, so let's take a look back through history to another war, maybe I'll get some understanding. 

THE PLOT: Focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, also known as the "Iron Lady of Israel", faced during the Yom Kippur War. 

AFTER: I was alive during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, but honestly, this is the first time I'm ever hearing about it. I guess when you're only 5 years old you don't really pay attention to the wars around the world, and maybe your parents also protect you a little bit so that you don't. The first time I remember even thinking about the Middle East was probably around the time of the Camp David accords, where Begin and Sadat sat down with Jimmy Carter and a few things got worked out - but that kind of comes at the end of this movie, almost as a follow-up. 

Golda Meir was the first female Prime Minister of Israel, to date the only female head of that country's government. But she was there at the start when Israel became a country in 1948, she was one of the signers of Israel's Declaration of Independence. She served as Labor Minister and then Foreign Minister, appointed by David Ben-Gurion, and retired in 1966 for health reasons. But then in 1969 she was back, becoming Prime Minister after the death of Levi Eshkol, and during her tenure she made many diplomatic visits to Western leaders to promote peace in the Middle East. The only thing that could possibly get in the way of her plan was some country like Egypt or Syria (or both) starting some kind of military campaign against Israel - I mean, come on, really, what are the odds? 

According to this film, she received intelligence reports that Egypt was amassing a large force on the other side of the Suez Canal, and word was that a war would start by sundown. Israel's forces were largely caught off guard, and Golda Meir refused to launch a pre-emptive strike, because, well, how would that look? Israel could be seen as the aggressor in that scenario, and that really didn't fit in with the image of a country seeking peace, to strike first. However, a large portion of the country's forces were mobilized in response to the threat across the border, then Syria launched an attack as well, so the troops were ill-prepared, also throwing Meir and her defense minister, Moshe Dayan, for a loop. Egypt and Syria both infiltrated different parts of Israel, gaining land between October 7 and 8. Moshe Dayan proposed an air strike on Damascus, Syria, however Israel was short on planes, and had to ask Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State, to send them some extra jets. 

Kissinger was in a bit of a bind here, because he was trying to maintain good relations with all of the parties involved, like to keep the oil flowing from Egypt and Syria to the U.S., however he was also Jewish and had a relationship with Golda Meir, therefore he sent the jets, but I'm guessing it would have been a scandal if those other countries found out where Israel got them. 

On the fifth day of the war, Major General Ariel Sharon proposed sending the 143rd Tank Division across the Suez Canal to challenge the Egyptian armies. Israeli intelligence learned that the Egyptians would not be able to cross the canal for two days, because that would leave Cairo undefended - then when they did, they were defeated by the Israeli tank forces waiting for them. A few day after that, Sharon's forces crossed the canal at an undefended point, and despite being ambushed, they held their position - meanwhile the Third Egyptian Army got barricaded and Egypt was forced into negotiations. Kissinger came back to talk Golda Meir into accepting a ceasefire, but she went ahead with her plans because Israel had the upper hand at that point. 

What followed seems a lot like what we went through after the Israel-Palestine conflict - diplomatic talks, exchange of POWs, and a re-drawing of borders based on who won and who lost. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes. Golda Meir got treated again for cancer, and maybe it's just who she was or maybe the times were different, but apparently, according to this movie, if you were the Israeli Prime Minister you could light up a cigarette right there in the hospital while you were receiving cancer treatments. I suspect times have probably changed, and you can't do this today, or maybe only the leaders of countries could do this. 

 A year later, Golda Meir testified before a commission regarding her conduct during the war - this film is rather non-linear, it's possible that the whole war is seen here during flashbacks while she is testifying, but I suppose other answers are possible, perhaps it just jumps around in time for artistic or confusing reasons. Anyway, Golda does not mention how her general's plan to monitor communications from Egypt failed to warn them of the attack - either the eavesdropping didn't work, or perhaps nobody was listening to the monitors at all. Either way, her generals dropped the ball, but she took the hit for not being ready to respond to the attack at first. Instead she chalks her delay up to resistance to retaliate, however she still maintained that she felt the Yom Kippur War was inevitable, even if nobody knew when it would arrive, they knew war was coming. Umm, OK, that's your defense, if you're comfortable splitting hairs like that. 

And four years after that, Golda is seen dying in a hospital bed while watching footage of her meeting with Sadat in 1977. Still, she's chain smoking, so I guess some people never learn - I'm pretty sure that smoking in a hospital ward while using an oxygen tank is a recipe for disaster. But again, it was a different time and that's how addicted some people were to smoking in the 1970's. 

Directed by Guy Nattiv

Also starring Camille Cottin (last seen in "A Haunting in Venice"), Rami Heuberger (last seen in "Schindler's List"), Rotem Keinan (last seen in "The Operative"), Emma Davies (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Lior Ashkenazi (last seen in "Norman"), Dominic Mafham (last seen in "Ophelia"), Dvir Benedek, Ed Stoppard (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ohad Knoller (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "The Daytrippers"), Jaime Ray Newman (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Zed Josef, Henry Goodman (last seen in "Their Finest"), Jonathan Tafler (last seen in "Yentl"), Ellie Piercy (last seen in "The Dig"), Mark Fleischmann (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Daniel Ben Zenou, Sara Matin, Dalia Librus, Kit Rakusen (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), 

with archive footage of Menachem Begin, Jimmy Carter (last seen in "The Iron Claw"), Henry Kissinger (last seen in "Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything"), Golda Meir, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Rather"), Anwar Sadat, 

RATING: 5 out of 10 aerial photographs

The Duke

Year 18, Day 175 - 6/24/26 - Movie #5,355 - FATHER'S DAY FILM #12

BEFORE: Just one week left in June now, and that's also one week until the start of the Doc Block, neatly coinciding with July 1 to line up the best film for July 4 and the (nearly) All-American line-up of documentaries for our country's 250th Birthday - I added a couple more films into the mix, so I think now I'm up to 41 or 42 docs. I mean, 50 would be great for 50 states and 50 stars on the flag, but I don't think I can make that happen in time. 

Helen Mirren carries over from "The Last Station". Keeping track of everyone who appears in every doc is going to be a logistical nightmare, that's why I started early by compiling the cast lists in advance, but it's still going to be a lot of work, all that archive footage. Today's film has footage of John F. Kennedy in it, so he's got a bit of an unfair head start. Honestly, I don't know who's going to have the most appearances, it could be a U.S. President or it could be a talk-show host like Johnny Carson or Conan O'Brien or Letterman or Cavett, I'm just fairly sure we'll have a new front-runner when the Doc Block is over, the leader right now is still Jason Statham with 6 appearances this year. 

THE PLOT: In 1961, a 60-year-old taxi driver named Kempton Bunton steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery of London. 

AFTER: This film is intended as both comedy and social commentary, but it is based on a true story, the real 1961 theft of a Goya painting from London's National Gallery - now we the audience have a tiny bit of information at the start of the film about who nicked the art, but you kind of have to read between the lines a little to figure that bit out. It is very easy to leap to the conclusion, as the police did, that Kempton Bunton stole the painting, simply because he was the one who was trying to return the painting for the cash reward. Which raises a few questions, namely was there honestly a reward being offered for the painting's return, or was this just a desperate attempt to lead the thief to come forward, in order to claim that reward? It sure does not seem to be a "no questions asked" type of reward if Bunton showed up with the painting (approximate value: 140,000 British pounds) and they didn't just hand him a check, or even a cheque. Nope, he was arrested and put on trial, for a number of several but connected charges. They charged him with the theft of the painting, the theft of the frame, and also for the damage done to the country's citizenry as they were deprived of the opportunity to enjoy the sight of the painting for several weeks. 

Yes, we're exploring the vagaries of the British legal system once again, second night in a row, and just because a man tries to return a painting for the reward money, naturally that man immediately becomes the prime suspect in the art's disappearance, but, you know, other answers are possible. His fingerprints were not on the painting, but he could have worn rubber gloves. There was no footage of him entering the gallery or taking the painting, but who knows, maybe this elderly bus driver and part-time bread baker was somehow a criminal mastermind and an expert at avoiding cameras and picking locks. Hey, it could happen. 

After all, this is a guy who tried to get out of paying the license fee for his television, because he had disabled the coil on the telly that allowed the signal from BBC1 and BBC2 to be picked up, he claimed that he only watched the other channels, and not the ones financed by the U.K. government, therefore he didn't owe any money to the government for their services. Well, the TV inspectors didn't really see things his way, Mr. Bunton argued that TV should be free for all people, but especially senior citizens who were already having enough trouble making ends meet on a limited income. And he was willing to campaign and petition around his neighborhood for support on this issue, while his wife would have much preferred if he paid the 2p or whatever the fee was, then she could enjoy watching her TV without the fear and shame of breaking the law. 

My own father was kind of the same way, we never had cable TV when I was a kid, because my father felt we shouldn't have to PAY for television, it should be free, and after I moved to New York City I couldn't WAIT to get cable and the hundreds of channels that came with it. Years later I offered to buy cable for him because I knew how much he and my mother enjoyed PBS shows, and they deserved to watch them in HD, plus all the shows on A&E, Animal Planet, etc. We fought for years about this, but finally I just went ahead and arranged the cable installation and had the bills sent to me, and this was just a couple years before they stopped sending TV signals out over the airwaves, and suddenly everybody had to have cable if they wanted clear reception. You know, it kind of benefited me because then I got to keep enjoying cable TV when I went and visited them - but I had to kind of force my father around to my way of thinking. 

Anyway, Kempton had a difficult time after he lost his taxi driver job because he was too talkative and tended to say a lot of crazy things - he then kept promising his wife he'd find a new job, however he tended to sneak off to London to try and drum up press coverage for his TV license cause, while also trying to get someone at the BBC to buy his scripts to turn into TV shows. Kempton also got a job baking bread, but made the mistake of pointing out his supervisor's inherit racism in forcing the workers with darker skin back off their breaks earlier than the white workers. Kempton's wife worked as a housekeeper and babysitter for a local councillor and his wife, however once Kempton got accused of art theft they were forced to fire her, as they were afraid of bad publicity. Kempton's son Jackie worked on building boats, while his elder brother Kenny who lived in Leeds had a job in construction but you know, that probably meant he did low-level jobs for the mob. 

Meanwhile, the police are working hard to try to figure out the identity of the thief, they even brought in a handwriting analysis expert to study the notes that Kempton was sending to the newspapers, in which he was suggesting a plan to exhibit the painting to raise money for his political cause of paying for the TV licenses for older people, however when this plan seemed like a no-go, he resorted to just walking back into the museum with the painting to try to return it via the lost & found department. This was the point at which he got arrested. 

His barrister's propsed defense argument in court involved around proving that Kempton never meant to "steal" the painting for good, but just to "borrow" it for his fund-raising campaign with plans to return it once he'd raised the money for the TV licenses. The court couldn't really view this as a valid excuse, for fear that other people would then walk into art museums and help themselves to the valuable paintings whenever they were short on cash. Well, you can't blame a defendant for trying. But something happened as Kempton was giving testimony on the stand, he just seemed so plain and down-to-earth and friendly that he won people over. It was really hard to believe in the first place that an older man could have been such a nimble thief, plus he didn't really fit the profile of "criminal mastermind" at all, so he was acquitted of the crime of stealing the painting, however the jury did hold him responsible for the theft of the frame, which was never returned or ever found. 

Meanwhile, back at home the true art thief reveals himself, and then of course WHY Kempton was willing to take the blame and go on trial and serve time made perfect sense. Eventually even the police figure out who the real thief was, but re-opening the case and having another trial might cause them to be seen as inept, plus the fact that Kempton was incarcerated even though he was innocent would give him a reason to sue them for false imprisonment, so the police intentionally did not pursue the matter any further. Really this became a comedy of errors across the board, and while not much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, a lot of it is slice-of-life, isn't-that-quite-peculiar funny. 

Really, there's just one thing missing - the film could have used an animated bear who liked marmalade and wears a rainhat who also could have been falsely accused of art theft and gone to prison for it. I mean, this all feels a bit like a "Paddington" film only it doesn't have Paddington in it. Do you remember someone used to alter the "Garfield" comic strips to remove Garfield from every panel? Those were kind of weird because there was just empty spaces where Garfield should have been and it all felt kind of surreal and sad. Yeah, this is kind of like that, it's definitely a Paddington movie without Paddington. I wonder if somebody could add him now, using A.I. JK. 

The real theft was so famous that it got referenced in the first James Bond film, "Dr. No" - the painting of the Duke of Wellington is seen in Dr. No's hideout, implying that maybe he was the one that took it - well, at the time it was just as good a guess as any.

Directed by Roger Michell (director of "Morning Glory" and "Notting Hill")

Also starring Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Jay Kelly"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "Imagine Me & You"), Fionn Whitehead (last seen in "Voyagers"), James Wilby (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Anna Maxwell Martin (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Sian Clifford (last seen in "See How They Run"), Charles Edwards (last seen in "The Witches" (2020)), Charlotte Spencer (last seen in "Dark Shadows"), John Heffernan (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Aimee Kelly (last seen in "The Personal History of David Copperfield"), Richard McCabe (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Joshua McGuire (last seen in "Saltburn"), Jack Bandeira (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Sam Swainsbury (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Andrew Havill (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Neal Barry, Craig Conway (last seen in "The Current War"), Michael Hodgson, Dorian Lough (last seen in "Far from the Madding Crowd"), Sarah Beck Mather (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Michael Mather, Austin Haynes (last seen in 'The Boys in the Boat"), Simon Hubbard, Matthew Steer (last seen in "Criminal"), Val McLane, Michael Gould (last seen in "Radioactive"), Heather Craney (last seen in "Child 44"), Claire Lams, Stephen Rashbrook, Ashley Kumar, Darren Charman (also last seen in "Deep Cover"), Sparrow Michell, Michael Adams (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Steve Giles, Andrew John Parker, Cliff Burnett, Sarah Cotton, Sarah Annett, Alice Stokoe, Sharon Facinelli, with archive footage of Sean Connery (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?", John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Apollo 18"), Joseph Wiseman (last seen in "Dr. No")

RATING: 7 out of 10 ginger nut biscuits 

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