Cousins

Year 18, Day 34 - 2/3/26 - Movie #5,234

BEFORE: Isabella Rossellini carries over from "Vita & Virginia" and to say this has been on my list for a long time is an understatement, I'm sure. I had watched "Made in America" and sort of made this film impossible to link to as part of the romance sub-set. Because of the way the linking works, it was impossible to also watch this film at the same time as that one. 

So instead I split this one off from the herd of romance films because of a couple of documentaries, one about David Lynch that still eludes me, and another one called "The Rossellinis" that aired at Doc NYC (or maybe Tribeca) back in 2020. Now, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, because I know that Isabella was once married to David Lynch, and so there's a fair chance that she might appear in the doc about him, or he might appear in the doc about her family. However, five years have gone by now and the doc about the Rossellinis isn't streaming anywhere, it has not been part of PBS's "American Masters" show or aired on CNN in the midnight hours like that doc about Dionne Warwick did. So "Cousins" was put on hold because I felt it might provide a potential lead-in to the Doc Block one year if some channel should air the doc on the Rossellinis. 

It's a strange strategy, sure, let's get our film into some festivals and then not come up with a proper plan for distribution - but I watched this plan not work for an animator who still somehow managed to stay in business while his films weren't streaming anywhere. It's a tougher road, though. But I'm just not willing to wait any more, let's get "Cousins" off the list during February, where it belongs, so we can clear up a spot on the list for something else. And let's do this before I realize that Ted Danson is interviewed in the documentary about Dick Van Dyke, and this film would make a great lead-in to that. 

THE PLOT: Two couples go to a family wedding and end up swapping partners. 

AFTER: We're going WAY back to 1989 for this one - so I suspect many of this film's stars are. no longer alive, starting with Lloyd Bridges. And this had William Petersen from BEFORE there was a show called "CSI" and Sean Young BEFORE Hollywood realized that she was impossible to work with. That's a long time ago - I was just getting out of college that year, too. I probably have a good contender here for "Oldest Movie Watched This Year" at the end of December. 

Let's deal with the "ick" factor right off, because I think going into this, knowing that two people who are cousins decide to have a romance, that might keep some people away. The lead characters are cousins BY MARRIAGE, Larry's uncle Phil marries Maris's mother at the start of the film, so it's not like they are blood relatives, not at all. I'm not even sure if we recognize cousins by marriage as a thing, it's a little misleading here because there's no shared grandparent here, nothing that would make society prevent them from having a relationship. I always get confused about second cousins and that whole "once removed" thing, but legally in the U.S. second cousins can get married, because they don't share much genetic material and thus are less likely to have a kid born with two heads or something. I just Googled the laws on first cousins getting married (I hope that doesn't flag me somewhere) and it turns out that HALF of the states in the U.S. are now OK with first cousins getting married - others have restrictions and about 25 states still are against it. (But if you read between the lines, the laws only apply to marriage - dating your first cousin and NOT getting married, well they can't really legislate that, can they?)

This is based on a French film titled "Cousin Cousine" and I don't know where the French stand on this issue, but I'm guessing their attitude is probably, "Sure, why not?" or "Hell, go for it."

That would be "pourquoi pas" or "allez-y", but maybe "saisir le jour" or "tout ce qui vous permet de passer la nuit" is more appropriate. You get the feeling that maybe this was all written by someone who noticed there were a lot of films about people cheating on their spouses, but not so many about the people who were being cheated on. What would happen if two of them got to talking, and then decided to have a romance themselves? Clearly this was a thought experiment before it was a movie. They also could have called this "Three Weddings and a Funeral", but they didn't, so the door was left open for that other film to use that title, and up the ante from three weddings to four. 

The first wedding here is, as stated, Larry's uncle Phil marrying Maria's mother, Edie. This is where the cheating spouses, Larry's wife Tish and Maria's husband, Tom, hook up for the first time (though who knows, maybe it's been going on for a while, it seems like maybe it's a small town) when Tom allegedly takes Tish out for a test-drive in his BMW (he sells cars) and they're gone for a really long time. Well, you reap what you sow, really, because this gives Larry and Maria a chance to meet, as everyone else has left the wedding and they're still there, wondering where their spouses went. This was made before everybody had smart phones and could just text each other, or track somebody's phone if they didn't answer. But we see Tom breaking off all of his OTHER extra-marital relationships, because he thinks he's going to get caught, or perhaps he just wants to focus on Tish - he's found the ONE woman that he wants to cheat on his wife with, exclusively, so, umm, congratulations? You would think, though, that if he was such a great lover and these women were so upset that he won't be seeing them any more that one of them would probably drop a dime on him and reveal his true nature to his wife. 

But Maria's not stupid, nor is Larry - they get together for lunch to discuss whether they think their spouses are sleeping together, and if so, what they should do about it. They determine that if they confront them, they'll only deny it, and if they issue some kind of ultimatum, they'll just find themselves both single again - so they decide to wait it out, maybe it's a temporary thing. Then there's another family gathering, and it's so much fun that uncle Phil dies, which means that everyone gets together again for his funeral, including Larry's father from out of town. It's fairly obvious that they're going to hook him up with Phil's widow, because that keeps the story going and also keeps generating more reasons for the two cross-coupling couples to be in the same place, creating maximum drama. 

There's another wedding, but it's a lesser character and I couldn't figure out exactly who they were or how they were connected to the family. Really it's just another excuse to check in with everybody again and see how the affairs are going. By this point Larry and Maria are spending more time together, talking about their kids and making some vague plans for the future, but they both agree that their relationship needs to stay platonic, because if not then in the third act of the film the writers would have no place to go. 

Finally, you guessed it, Larry's father gets together with Edie - I mean, she's a widow and he's a widower and they're also family sort of, so that makes it just salacious enough to be interesting - I mean, there's no law against marrying your brother's widow, it's not like they're cousins or something. By this time the illicit relationship between Tish and Tom has heated up AND cooled down, so they're on the outs, so Tom's probably wishing he hadn't ended all of his other affairs. But he's back with Maria, for the sake of their daughter, probably, but anything romantic between them is kind of long gone now. Tish, meanwhile, has moved out so that Larry can decide what he really wants, she's giving him space because she knows she can't just go back into that relationship after what happened, it's just never going to be the same. It could be something else, but Larry has to want that to happen - I have to say, mostly everybody here is really acting mature about the whole thing, why it's almost like this sort of thing happens all the time and you just don't hear about it. It's almost Bergman-like in its complexity, only without all the moping and Swedish seasonal depression. 

At the final wedding, Larry's got nothing to lose, so he takes one more shot at romance with Maria - he asks her to dance, knowing that this will piss off Tom to no end. Maria had broken things off with Larry for the sake of her daughter, who was acting out at school. But Larry ups the ante and says forget the dance, will you run away with me and spend the rest of your life being happy?  Oh, sure, "pourquoi pas"? We don't really need to see what happens after that, but we can assume they relocated to someplace tropical and found a restaurant to run together, because that's what you do - and they never had any problems ever again. Really, it's all about karma in the end, and what goes around tends to come around. If only...

This probably works best as a cautionary tale - human nature dictates that you'll always want what you have, but also want what you don't have. If you're not satisfied and you want what you don't have, you could lose what you have, and then when you lose what you have, you want it back even though you didn't want it before. But it's too late now, you lost what you had because you wanted what you didn't have. So maybe it's better to have what you want and want what you have and not want what you don't have. We've all been there, right? 

Directed by Joel Schumacher (director of "The Lost Boys" and "St. Elmo's Fire")

Also starring Ted Danson (last seen in "Made in America"), Sean Young (last seen in "Once Upon a Crime..."), William Petersen (last seen in "Fear"), Lloyd Bridges (last seen in "David Crosby: Remember My Name"), Norma Aleandro, Keith Coogan (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Gina DeAngeles (last seen in "Broadway Danny Rose"), George Coe (last seen in "The Automat"), Katherine Isabelle (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Alex Bruhanski (last seen in "The Fog" (2005)), Stephen E. Miller (last seen in "Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed"), Gerry Bean (also last seen in "Fear"), Gordon Currie (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Saffron Henderson (last seen in "The Fly II"), Michele Goodger (last seen in "Little Women" (1994)), Andrea Mann (last seen in "Omen IV: The Awakening"), Sheila Paterson (ditto), Mark Frank (last seen in "Falling Down"), LeRoy Schulz, Gloria Harris, John Civitarese, Kate Danson, David Robert Moore, John Hurwitz, Babs Chula (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Bernadette Leonard, Denalda Williams (last seen in "The Professor"), Margot Pinvidic, Tom McBeath (last seen in "Nick Fury: Agent of Shield"), Dolores Drake (last seen in "Say It Isn't So"), Michael Naxos, Lorraine Butler, Ann Leong, Harold McDonald, Lorena Gale (last seen in "Things We Lost in the Fire"), Monica Marko (last seen in "Love Happens"), Wes Tritter (last seen in "Bird on a Wire"), David W. Rose, Sharon Wahl, George Goodman, Tom Heaton (last seen in "Bandolero!"), Cathy Bayer, John Paterson, Antony Holland (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller")

RATING: 5 out of 10 adult magazines (a gift from Grandpa!)

Vita & Virginia

Year 18, Day 33 - 2/2/26 - Movie #5,233

BEFORE: Happy Groundhog Day! Apparently Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, so that means six more weeks of romance movies. Yeah, sorry about that, but what can I do? We have to abide by the groundhog, both he and Bill Murray would have wanted it that way. 

Isabella Rossellini carries over from "Roger Dodger", and thanks to yesterday's film being a day LATE from the original plan, I get to issue a Birthday SHOUT out to Gemma Arterton, one of today's stars, who was born 2/2/86. See, that's how I know we're on the right track and everything's going to be fine - with movies, at least. But talk to me again after six more weeks of romance films, I'll probably be going insane. 

THE PLOT: The fascinating true story of the love affair between socialite and popular author Vita Sackville-West and literary icon Virginia Woolf. 

AFTER: People today seem to think that lesbians were invented some time in the late 1960's, like it was a hippie Woodstock thing - which would make some kind of sense because, well, it was a very experimental time with drugs and sex and people were trying to get back at their parents and reject everything that the 1950's stood for. Then you see a picture of Janis Joplin from back then and sure, it tracks. But the truth is that they've been around a lot longer than that, but you know, trends come and go and being gay or lesbian probably fell in and out of fashion, along with corsets and hoop skirts, and probably some women were wearing men's cut jeans and Doc Martens under those hoop skirts, but honestly we can't be sure. But we do know that actors had to dress up as women during Shakespeare's time, because women were NOT allowed on the stage, except one got away with it and then "Saving Private Ryan" lost the Best Picture Oscar as a result. 

Guys, this is not good - I'm two films into the romance chain and already I feel attacked. First off "Roger Dodger" reminds me of my time in film school and how I got screwed over by a future famous/infamous director who never crewed for me and was always hitting on ladies he didn't know. Now tonight I'm reminded of my first marriage, because I was married to someone who developed an attraction to someone in our D&D group and came out as a result. She swore to me there was not ONE specific woman she was attracted to, that it was more about identity, but that turned out to be B.S., there of course was one woman she had her eye on, so, umm, more confessions were imminent. I don't think it was a full-on affair, but the damage to our relationship was probably the same, more or less, plus the bond of trust had been broken. 

So naturally I tried to shut things down, say that clearly they couldn't see each other any more, communications had to be cut off - this is not anti-gay, of course, just self-preservation. How the hell was I supposed to react? Was I supposed to say, "No, it's fine, go out and explore things with her, and if you decide it's not for you, well then I'll still be here. No, you know what, I'll be here for you either way, go be a lesbian and this changes nothing between us, because I'm a confident person and I believe our bond is still strong, even if you go sleep with a dozen women, I don't care."  Well that's not the way things went down at all, over the next year we tried to put the pieces back together and had some intense break-up experiences, but no, ultimately I had to ask her to move out in addition to coming out. I did that FOR ME, I'm a selfish petty person in the end and it seemed to be the only way to improve my life in the long-term. Think of me what you will, because the chain is clearly into revealing all of my past shortcomings. 

Surprisingly, that's exactly what the people in this film are all about - staying married because society dictates that they have to, but also being understanding about the fact that their wife has a girlfriend or their husband has a few boyfriends, and somehow it's all OK. There's a futility factor, perhaps, because it's 1925 and feminism is still a growing movement, like women just got the right to vote and have actual jobs a few years before - but because the Great War and the Spanish Flu and whatever other illnesses were, life expectancy wasn't what it is today, so people had to live, live, live while they could and I guess life was too short for not trying to experience everything in a short period of time. The theory now is that Virginia Woolf had some form of bipolar disorder, but also she was subject to sexual abuse from her half-brother, and she had a breakdown after mother's death. Well, this is the cauldron that produces intense authors, perhaps, but also stress, depression and suicide attempts. Reportedly the adult Virginia was so fragile that any physical or mental exertion would give her a headache, followed by anxiety, insomnia, racing thoughts and irritability. This is represented in the film by her getting excited and losing the ability to speak coherently, frequently retiring to that dark room in the basement, which was the only thing that alleviated her symptoms. 

If you want to apply the psychoanalysis here, you can draw a crooked line between the sexual abuse and the death of her mother indirectly to her sexual preference to women over men, but even I know we're not supposed to try to "explain away" the gay. Still she apparently loved her husband/publisher, Leonard Woolf, who she considered to be the love of her life, and the relationships with women are still referred to as "affairs", which does seem a little bit belittling. Did she just never meet "the right woman" or did society at the time place define these relationships as something "less than" a fulfilling marriage. Either way, Woolf began a little gathering of intellectuals at Bloomsbury, where her sister Vanessa lived once they sold the family house in South Kensington. Other authors such as E.M. Forster and John Maynard Keynes gathered there, while Virginia began teaching at Morley College and working on the novel that would one day be titled "Mrs. Dalloway". They had the Friday Club to discuss fine arts, and also the Thursday Club with more progressive ideas, including open discussions of sexuality. Apparently if you didn't consider yourself at least bi-, there was no real point in showing up. 

After World War I, the group got back together, though Virginia was now married to Leonard and they'd moved several times - the Thursday club was now called the Memoir Club, with a focus on self-writing. Inspired by Proust, the "Bloomsberries" gathered to discuss and debate their own work, and author Vita Sackville-West joined up in 1922. Post-war depression, open sexuality and honest reviews of each other's novels-in-progress, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? Vita and Virginia were on-and-off lovers for about a decade, but stayed friends for longer than that - and yes, of course this all gets filed under the "It's complicated" heading, because they both had husbands, and it's implied here that Vita's husband, Harold, had several boyfriends, and honestly this sounds a lot more like a 2025 relationship than a 1925 one. Right? Yet history still tells us that Leonard Woolf was the true love of Virginia - maybe not? Who are we to say?

We also learn here that Vita was supposedly the inspiration for Virginia's novel "Orlando", about an English nobleman who lives a very long time and turns into a woman at age 100, with no real explanation offered for HOW or WHY this happens, but he/she goes on to have various romantic adventures and dresses non-gender-conformingly for the rest of their life. Obviously there's a leap in logic here, with someone who dated both genders suddenly being able to change genders, but if you want to point to a watershed moment in literature, this is defintely one - Woolf wrote about it before medical science could accomplish it, and debate over trans issues is probably the most divisive issue in our society today. 

A big irony here is that Vita Sackville-West was a more popular author at that time, while nowadays of course Virginia Woolf is regarded as a feminist icon and Vita is largely remembered for her gardening skills. But her status then, combined with her more aggressive, outgoing personality seems to suggest that she was in control of the relationship with Virginia Woolf. According to this film Vita decided when the relationship should start and what it should entail, then when she was ready for a new girlfriend, that meant the sexual relationship with Virginia was over. And wait, they stayed friends after that? I don't know how anybody can stay friends with the lover that broke their heart, and Ms. Woolf was already in a fragile state to begin with. Well, I guess that's any relationship really, gay or straight, one person has to drive the bus and the other one, man or woman, is kind of the passenger. Gender's just a social construct anyway, it just comes down to who has the more dominant personality, but even that can be fluid and change over time. Marriage is another social construct, obviously, and some people clearly think that they can both follow its rules and break them at the same time, but how exactly is that supposed to work? Clearly there are exceptions made for famous people, but if everyone is special, then really nobody is special.

Directed by Chanya Button

Also starring Gemma Arterton (last seen in "The King's Man"), Elizabeth Debicki (last seen in "Macbeth"), Rupert Penry-Jones (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Peter Ferdinando (last seen in "Lost in London"), Emerald Fennell (last seen in "Barbie"), Gethin Anthony (last seen in "Into the Storm"), Rory Fleck Byrne, Karla Crome, Adam Gillen, Brenock O'Connor, Amelie Metcalfe, Darren Dixon, Sam Hardy, Jane McGrath, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (last seen in "Dom Hemingway"), Thalia Heffernan, Bryan Murray (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Evelyn Lockley

RATING: 5 out of 10 diplomatic postings abroad

Roger Dodger

Year 18, Day 32 - 2/1/26 - Movie #5,232

BEFORE: Here we go again, new month and the start of this year's Romance and Relationship chain - I'm giving the whole month of February and half of March over to this topic, by choice - you might think this is limiting, and it is to some degree, however keeping the romance films (mostly) separate from the main list creates some unique linking opportunities, as there are actors out there who specialize in this genre, not just rom-coms of course but also romantic dramas, and maybe there will be one or two films in this chain that seem off-topic, but there are relationships in every film, so pretty much anything COULD fit in here, the challenge is in figuring out what SHOULD qualify a film for inclusion and which films might be considered tangential.

Jesse Eisenberg carries over again from "A Real Pain" and here are the links that should get me to the end of February: Isabella Rossellini, Dolores Drake, Marc Gaudet, Anna Kendrick, Rafael Sardina, Paul Dano, Michelle Williams, Laura Dern, Frances Conroy, Renee Zellweger, Dolly Wells, Maxwell Whittington-Cooper, Lil Rel Howery, Ayden Mayeri, Zac Efron, Liza Koshy, Geraldine Viswanathan, Nick Jonas, Celia Imrie, Emma Thompson, Gerard Horan, Ben Miles, Elizabeth McGovern and Terry Kinney. That's 24 people and 28 films, so some actors will be doing three films in a row. 

I'll be honest, this was a tough romance chain to put together, I had to think a bit outside the usual box because the number of romance-based films that I have NOT YET seen is dwindling - and as the list gets a bit smaller I find I have to do more with less, linking-wise. I don't have the luxury of moving from film to film in a carefree fashion any more, this all has to be planned out months in advance. I have to think about leaving enough films to work with next year, should I be able to continue this process, and that means sometimes not watching ALL of the Anna Kendrick films on the list, for example - there's a benefit to saving a film like, say, "Another Simple Favor" if there's a slot for it next year, to link another film with Blake Lively to something else.  

There's also the temptation to put the Nicole Kidman films together, or all the films with Isabella Rossellini in a mini-chain, but that may make the overall linking harder, instead of easier - splitting one of her films off from the herd could provide a linking opportunity that I accidentally ignored, and that could allow the romance chain to be longer than if I just took the easy way out every time. So it's a delicate balance, and sometimes I have to consider the bigger picture. Since I've got 47 films queued up and ready to go, I would like to think this is the maximum number I can link together before I mentally will need to move on to another topic. We'll see, I could always cut bait earlier if I really can't stand it - but seeing as I've built up a tolerance from years of doing this, I'm going to go for it. There's a chance to make some real progress on this part of the list, and then I can re-assess what's possible for next year from what remains. 

THE PLOT: After breaking up with his lover and boss, a smooth-talking man takes his teenaged nephew out on the town in search of sex. 

AFTER: This was initially supposed to be the last film in January instead of the first film in February, but those few empty days I left in January, well, I filled those up and then some, as I tend to do. I added one more film than I had empty slots for, so that pushed "Roger Dodger" into February - it's fine, there's enough on the "romance" topic here for this one to qualify, so once again I state that the chain knows what needs to happen, even if I don't completely understand. With a bit of luck, this will all make sense once the month is over and I look back on it. 

This is also a movie I meant to watch, umm, I think, like 20 years ago and then I never got around to it and basically forgot about it for the next 15 or so. Mea culpa, I was a little busy. I think one day maybe I saw it in the cable listings again and thought, "Oh, yeah, I was going to watch that movie and maybe I never got around to it..." and then I promptly forgot about it AGAIN and maybe 2 years after that, I remembered that I'm keeping a watchlist with a section called "Someday/maybe" so why not add it to that? Then two or three times I was maybe close to watching it - or perhaps I could have programmed it, but then it wasn't on cable any more and I didn't feel like paying $2.99 to rent it, because it would have been a middle film out of 3 and the chain could just continue on without it. FINALLY, maybe 20 years after the fact, it's come up again, kind of as the perfect lead-in to the whole romance chain, and it's on Tubi for FREE, umm, with ads but who cares about that. I can at long last move it from the "Movies to watch - streaming" list to the "Movies watched - but I don't have on DVD" list. Really, it's the small victories that make life worth living. 

My point is that it's almost 25 years now since this film won an award at Tribeca and was nominated for several Independent Spirit awards, and a lot has changed. When we look at the subject matter we're forced to say, "Well, it was a different time..." only, was it? There were no smart phones, no text messages, no SnapGrams or InstaChats and yet people still found a way to meet each other and come together. I know it sounds weird now, but people used to go to bars or clubs, get each other's attention and somehow have sex and propagate the species - we look back now on a time where nobody went to a bar or club for maybe two or three years, every human interaction was by Zoom or FaceTime and if you didn't have someone to shelter in place with, well, then you had to provide proof of vaccination before you could even start a conversation about maybe interacting remotely with the option of someday meeting face-to-face, just please let me check your forehead temperature first, you just can't be too careful about this.

But it's the old world we want to talk about tonight, the pre-COVID world of Manhattan bars and lounges, the men who went out on the prowl every night, and the women who for some reason let them. Even back then this was not really a good idea because the odds of finding a diamond in the rough were really low, the kind of person you want to settle down with and marry is not the same kind of person who goes to bars every night looking for a good time. Right? Those are two distinctly different groups of people. Maybe the guy you're looking for is at the library or the opera tonight, but he is probably NOT at the bar. Just saying. Hey, it's 2002 and this internet thing is really blowing up, maybe the potentially most successful person who you might want to think about as a long-term partner is teaching a class on HTML or he's working in the IT department, and maybe he's too socially awkward to ask anybody out. Nah, that's crazy, let's just go to the bar where all the sleazy drunks are. 

Roger is forced back into this world when his boss/girlfriend breaks up with him - he maybe has a hard time dealing with this because clearly he invested some time in choosing the lover who could help him advance in the company - sure, most successful long-term relationships probably began as an HR violation. Well, it worked for Walt Disney, but again, that was a different time. Roger invested a lot of time into that relationship, we assume, and now SHE wants to end it. Well, it happens, and maybe he has to take that hit because making any fuss over this would probably just highlight that he used sex to get ahead, maybe he got a promotion or a corner office out of it, so I don't know, just take the win and don't draw too much attention to yourself, since nobody knows you were sleeping with the boss - but everybody probably has their suspicions. 

Meanwhile, Roger's nephew Nick turns up in his office, unexpected, he says he had a college interview at Columbia and his mother said he should look up Uncle Roger while in town. They haven't seen each other since Roger's mother's funeral, so things are a bit awkward, but Roger uses this opportunity to teach Nick some of the finer points of hitting on women - it's basically a numbers game and you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and other sports analogies are also applicable, like Michael Jordan used to save some of his energy for "winning time" late in the game, he was apparently the G.O.A.T. because of his endurance, not his ability to score baskets or the fact that he was taller than 99% of the other people in the world. But as a 16-year old Nick knows very little of the world and also has an appalling lack of tolerance for alcohol, don't worry we'll get working on that straight away. 

After teaching Nick a few things about how to use the late-day Manhattan sunset to see through women's dresses (umm, ick, but again, remember there was very little internet porn back then) and how looking up women's dresses is all about finding a low position and the right angle (umm, ick again but he's not really wrong here) Roger stresses the importance of having a great opening line, you score more often when you score early. And lying is fine, because the most important thing is having a hook, because you can't catch fish without a hook. Roger picks the hottest woman in the bar and loads the dice, telling her that his nephew has something really important to tell her, as soon as he can think of something. Nick makes up a story about having a $1,000 bet with his uncle that he can make a woman fall in love with him before the end of the night. OK, it's not great but maybe it is original. 

Andrea and her friend Sophie spend the evening with Nick and Roger, and after the bar they drink privately in a park (illegal in NYC, but whatever) and Roger tries to set Nick up for success, only he can't close the deal - come on, he's 16! Roger even tries being horrible to the women to make Nick look better by comparison, or you know, maybe he's just horrible naturally, it's tough to say. Still, Nick can't wrangle going home with the girls, but hey, at least he took a swing, right? Remember when you said it was more important to take the shot because you miss 100% of the shots you don't take? I guess you only miss 50% of the shots you DO take, and somehow that's better, but a strike-out is still a strike-out. Hey, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains. 

Roger's not done, though, because he knows his ex-lover/boss is having a party that night, one which he was NOT invited to, obviously.  But Roger knows how to sneak past the doorman, so he and Nick are now in a party full of drunk, desperate women and this is now "winning time". Roger sets Nick up with Donna, who's about to pass out, and also tries with Joyce's bestie Patricia, saying she'd be a good fit for Nick because a teenage boy and an older woman have roughly the same sex drive. Classy to the end, right? But Nick's already in the bedroom with Donna and since she's passed out, he's finally got an opportunity to score - however he does NOT have sex with her because he's a decent human being, and those seem to be in really short supply, don't they? But rather than congratulate Nick for doing the right thing, Nick instead takes him to his "fail safe", an underground brothel, and sets him up for success with a prostitute. Right, winning time, this one's a slam dunk, sure, but Nick still isn't ready and instead gets very angry with his uncle, because this was NOT what he had in mind when he asked for advice about how to score with women. Roger changes his mind at the last minute and they get out of there, but that's probably as close to redemption as Roger is going to get. 

What this calls to mind for me, personally, is my freshman-level class in film school, which was all the basics of Super 8 film production. I've told this story before, how I was on a rotating crew of 4 people, each person would take a turn at being the director, or crew member, or editor over a 4-day span, so after a day directing you would spend 2 days on crew and then a day in the editing suite, working on your own footage. I was on a crew with my Norwegian friend Hakon, someone else who would later become very famous, and a girl whose name I can't remember, however she was a great help to me when I was directing, because that was the day Hakon was in editing and my crew was supposed to be her and the famous guy. She always showed up, the famous guy NEVER did, so I learned to make films with a crew of two people, not three. I won't give his name here but he's back in the news for making a propaganda documentary about the First Lady. 

While he was directing and I was crewing for him, he was CONSTANTLY on the prowl, trying to pick up women. We walked around Washington Square Park together so he could approach women and offer them gum and ask them if they wanted to be in a movie. Yes, that was the move. Again, when he was supposed to crew for ME, he never showed up, not once. OK, I knew who I was dealing with at least, somebody who would prioritize trying to get laid over his responsibility to my projects. Once you know, you can adjust and count on the fact that you can't count on him. I saw him once a few years after NYU, chatting outside a steakhouse, and honestly I should have just decked him then, I regret not doing so. But that's petty - and anyway he got cancelled a few years after that, I'm sure he had money saved up but suddenly nobody would hire him because there were at least six charges against him of violence toward women or using his position of power to ask for sex. Allegedly. The #metoo movement hurt him bad, and as of 2023 he had to move to Israel, where he now makes propaganda films for that country as well as for the U.S. I'm sure part of his salary for making "Melania" will be a presidential pardon, because if he's not all over the Epstein Files, I'll eat my shoe. 

The director of "Roger Dodger" graduated from NYU in 1991, which was two years after me, and I got paroled a year early, so it's POSSIBLE that maybe the main character here was also based on my nemesis, however I can't find any conclusive proof that the two men knew each other or crossed paths ever. Dylan Kidd has said that he based the character on someone he knew in college who had the ability to go up to strangers and take their psychology apart in minute detail, which was disturbing but also compelling. He works in advertising because that's a business designed to create insecurity in other people, as a way of trying to sell product, or himself. 

I just know that Roger's moves here feel very familiar and sparked a memory of film school class - I'm a very petty person, it turns out, and if someone crosses me I'm not above enjoying their misery, even if that takes 10 or 20 years. Sure, I languished in independent film production for three decades, and I don't have a lot of money on hand, but you know, I've still got a house. I've been married for 24 years (29 if you count both times) to somebody I care about. I also wasn't forced to leave the country to become a puppet of two fascist regimes AND there are no outstanding charges against me for harassment or assault. So, you know, life is good, and I can't wait for he-who-shall-not-be-named to get cancelled a second or third time. 

"Roger Dodger" got his name because he was always able to talk his way out of trouble. Yeah, that tracks, so come on, I think I know who this film is really about. The film hasn't really aged well, or at least the parts of it that encourage underage drinking and hostility and mistreatment of women, up to and almost including date rape. But hey, there are people like that in the world, it's part of this complex relationship salad that I'll be exploring over the next month and a half.

Directed by Dylan Kidd (director of "Get a Job")

Also starring Campbell Scott (last seen in "Manhattan Night"), Jennifer Beals (ditto), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "Conclave"), Elizabeth Berkley (last seen in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"), Ben Shenkman (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), Mina Badie (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Chris Stack, Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Lisa Emery (last seen in "Margot at the Wedding"), Flora Diaz, Stephanie Gatschet, Colin Fickes (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Tommy Savas, Gabriel Millman (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Libby Larson, Courtney Simon, Peter Appel (last seen in "Bad Education"), Ato Essandoh (last seen in "Reptile"), Michelle Six, Juliet Morgan

RATING: 5 out of 10 cigarettes smoked inside (boy, those were the days, huh?)

A Real Pain

Year 18, Day 31 - 1/31/26 - Movie #5,231

BEFORE: Last movie for January - I hesitate to call that a "perfect month" for movies, but really there's no such thing. Still, 31 days, 31 movies and they got me exactly where I need to be right now. Here's the format check:

12 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): The Games Maker, Rumours, Borderlands, The Naked Gun, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Friend, Black Death, Cleanskin, Living, Mickey 17, The Double, The Art of Self-Defense

7 watched on Netflix: Society of the Snow, The Penguin Lessons, The Thursday Murder Club, The Out-Laws, Fixed, A House of Dynamite, The Saint of Second Chances

6 watched on Amazon Prime: Black Bag, My Spy: The Eternal City, Walt Before Mickey, Heads of State, The Phoenician Scheme, Deep Cover
2 watched on Hulu: The Last Showgirl, Riff Raff

2 watched on YouTube: Daddy's Little Girls, A Real Pain
2 watched on Disney+: Freaky Friday (2003), Freakier Friday

31 TOTAL

It would have been one more for Hulu if they had JUST kept this film there, what the hell? It was on Hulu when I put it on the watchlist, why is it not there any more? Just keep everything where it is so I can find it again!  Now I had to pay a couple bucks to watch this on YouTube, what freakin' year is this? I'm paying for like three streaming services and you're going to pull my movies away from me before I can watch them? Son of a bitch. Sure, I could have just NOT watched this and moved on, but a plan is a plan and I have $3.99 in my budget. God damn it. 

Jesse Eisenberg carries over again from "The Art of Self-Defense". I'll post the February links tomorrow because Jesse's going to be with me for one more movie...

THE PLOT: Mismatched cousins reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history. 

AFTER: It was Holocaust Remembrance Day a few days ago (Jan. 27) so I maintain that the chain DOES know what it's doing, sure I could have swapped this one with "The Art of Self-Defense" and gotten it one day closer, but I was just never going to land it on the day itself. That's OK, points are awarded for at least getting close. This film tells the story of two cousins who visit their grandmother's homeland shortly after her death - she left them money for the trip, otherwise it's doubtful that Benji would have been able to cover the cost. This is called a heritage tour, one that visits concentration camps and noted sites commemorating the Warsaw Uprising and such. Hey, if that's how you want to spend your vacation time then no judgement here, but I think I'd rather go to the Caribbean, just saying - Grandma's not going to know if you go somewhere else, just saying. Really, they should pay YOU to go to Poland and visit the remnants of a concentration camp. 

But of course we're dealing with polar opposites represented in the two cousins, it's the "Odd Couple" formula, because two people of similar mind-sets doing something together is quite boring, there's room for conflict if you introduce opposing viewpoints and personalities and make them have to work together. Eisenberg originally wrote this story about two characters traveling to East Asia together, then saw the opportunity to re-write it and deal with his own family history and his own feelings about the Holocaust. How do we compare the depression and anxiety felt by today's millennials against the backdrop of a generation that dealt with so much more, war and horror and the attempted extinction of entire cultures? It's like comparing a hangnail to losing your entire hand - but does knowing that make people feel better or worse about their own petty hang-ups? I guess it's more like comparing your own hangnail against somebody else losing a hand.

So Benji is the free-spirited drifter, the burn-out, the wash-out, but also the artist and the one ruled by his emotions, while David is the pragmatic one, the married one, the one who has a job and some kind of life direction, however he's also riddled with anxiety and self-doubt and keeps his emotions on the inside. These are the two types of people, and they're going on this heritage tour together, what could POSSIBLY go wrong? I kind of thought that they'd get locked out on the hotel roof that first night they stepped out to smoke a joint, and then get stuck there and miss the whole tour - no, this isn't "The Hangover", so they did make the bus and they did go on the tour. 

They did, however, miss their stop on a train, and it was largely due exactly to the difference in their personalities - Benji didn't feel right sitting in first class, because his Jewish ancestors would have been unable to do so, also they would have been in the BACK of the train, crammed in on the way to the camps. Well, he's not wrong, he's just got Survivor's Guilt and it hits when it hits. So he leaves the first-class section, and David brings him food because that's who David is. Then David falls asleep and they miss their stop, because Benji wanted to let his cousin sleep, and that's who Benji is. David was very mad when he woke up, as they got off at the wrong stop and their luggage was still on the train - this forced the cousins to work together to find a solution to get back to the right stop, and thankfully the other tourists had kept track of their luggage. But they still made the tour wait several hours for them to catch up - didn't anyone have a cell phone that worked in Poland? 

The tour also includes an older couple from Ohio, a recent divorcee from California who just moved back to Brooklyn, and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism, and it's led by James, a mild-mannered guide who's full of facts and figures and has maybe forgotten that history is about people, not facts. Benji at one point criticizes him for his coldness and inability to socialize, and you have to wonder if Benji's really mad at him because he's mad at his own cousin, or himself. That night Benji acts up during the group's communal dinner, and as a kind of apology, David reveals the complex nature of the relationship between the cousins. Benji was Grandma's favorite, but she was also extra hard on him because she knew he needed tough love - Benji also suffered an overdose after their grandmother's death, and David still hasn't forgiven him for this. It might be tough to say if that was a suicide attempt or not, but it doesn't matter, he can still be mad at him for taking drugs though. 

More perspective is gained by visiting the Majdanek camp, and then their grandmother's old house in Krasnystaw. Well, sort of, they tried, anyway. What's important is that the cousins got everything out in the open, dealt with how they've changed over time and the fact that David's always busy with his wife and son and they barely ever visit each other any more, and David had to get it out there, that he couldn't bear the thought of losing somebody with Benji's passion and charm to something as stupid as a drug overdose. We're not really sure what the long-term effect of this trip on the cousins is going to be, since Benji remained at the airport, surrounded by strangers. That's kind of an appalling lack of a resolution, isn't it? 

Most likely both characters here represent aspects of writer/director Eisenberg, with his internal conflict just split into two characters for the convenience of the audience - if this is true, then the film is kind of in the same category as "The Double", two people with opposing personalities, but essentially they are identical, or at least related and coming from the same place. But my guess is that Eisenberg contains both natures, the anxious and introspective one, and the outgoing and emotional artistic one. We all do, to some extent - and the setting was just a place for him to explore his own complicated thoughts and feelings about the Holocaust and being descended from immigrants. The first-gen Americans were hard workers so that the second-gen Americans could become doctors or lawyers, which enabled the third-gen Americans to become artists and live in their parents basements and smoke weed. Well, he's not wrong. 

Directed by Jesse Eisenberg

Also starring Kieran Culkin (last seen in "No Sudden Move"), Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey (last seen in "Bounce"), Kurt Egyiawan (last seen in "Beasts of No Nation"), Liza Sadovy (last seen in "Disobedience"), Daniel Oreskes (last seen in "Mountainhead"), Ellora Torchia (last seen in "Midsommer"), Banner Eisenberg, Jakub Gasowski, Krzysztof Jaszczak, Marek Kasprzyk

RATING: 6 out of 10 visitation stones

The Art of Self-Defense

Year 18, Day 30 - 1/30/26 - Movie #5,230

BEFORE: OK, another weekend (not that I can really tell the difference these days, because I work on an irregular schedule) and we're getting very, very close to the start of February and the romance chain. So after tomorrow the next time I can be on "regular" (as in non-romance) films will be sometime right after St. Patrick's Day. It's going to be a cold, cold winter, it seems, but I've got love to keep me warm. Bleargh.

Jesse Eisenberg carries over from "The Double".

THE PLOT: After being attacked on the street, a young man enlists at a local dojo, led by a charismatic and mysterious sensei, in an effort to learn how to defend himself from future threats. 

AFTER: I don't know anything about karate, outside of "The Karate Kid", anyway, or any martial arts, really - it's just not my thing. I have to imagine, however, that most martial arts dojos aren't run in the manner depicted here, however there are a lot of places that one can find "big boss energy", or BDE, like the sensei shows here. I've had a few bosses like this, and I just found out one of my old bosses (who was very nice to me) is now being seen by some employees as more tyrannical than I remember. Umm, yeah, sure, it's lonely at the top and you have to pay the cost to be the boss, and if you don't run your dojo (or studio) then it's going to run you. But all that is still no excuse for not being nice to people and not treating your employees (or students, or followers, or whatever) with respect and decency. I shouldn't have to say this, yet it's where we find ourselves. You can be a leader without being a total dick - or I don't know, maybe not, which is why I'm not running anything right about now. I'm selling beer to sports fans and I'm managing screenings, I just want to be helpful and nice without copping an attitude. 

Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, a nice-enough but insecure mensch who can't seem to stand up for himself (OK, so clearly he had a "type", because this is almost exactly the same type of character he played in "The Double") and he has trouble being social with co-workers, and he has trouble standing up to his boss, and pretty much he just lets people walk all over him. Something changes, however, when he's assaulted in broad daylight by a bunch of motorcycle riders wearing all black, they tackle him and beat him up, all while he was on a run to get dog food. After that he's afraid to leave his apartment for a while, and his poor dog gets very hungry and his boss wants to know if he's ever going to come back to work. NOTE: This film was made pre-pandemic, before half of everybody insisted on being able to work remotely so they wouldn't die from COVID.

Finally he takes a stand and checks out a self-defense class - it's all a little unusual to him, even seems a bit cult-like, having to follow a new set of rules for interacting with people (the late-night all-male "cool down" sessions seem like a lot, for example) but he's on the path to gaining some self-confidence back, figuring out this whole colored-belt coding system and navigating the difference between the day class and the night class, and trying to memorize the 10 or 11 Rules that are posted on the wall. No sneakers on the mat, no eating in the dojo, etc. It maybe seems significant that people who disagree with Sensei either get banned from class or crippled in one-on-one combat. Sensei might be wise in martial arts, but he's got a terrible business plan, since crippled people can't continue with their karate lessons. 

Eventually, a new Casey emerges, one who is more confident and sure of himself, although he doesn't appreciate some of Sensei's advice, like to stop listening to soft rock and start listening to heavy metal. Or to ditch his tiny dachshund in favor of a more manly, "non-gay" dog. Sensei also likes to micro-manage, but admits that he's got no head for accounting, so when Casey gets fired after standing up to his boss (relatable) he puts him to work straightening out the financials at the dojo. Well, somebody's got to get those W-2 forms filed properly. Going through the ledgers, Casey learns that people who've been kicked out of class are still paying monthly fees, they all either neglected to cancel their memberships or they were afraid to. It's probably fine. 

Actually, this whole film comes from a familiar place, we've seen it many many times here at the Movie Year - a guy does something simple, like enrolls in karate class, and now some screenwriter posits, "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" and so it does. Sensei's not just a dick, he's also criminally insane. He tells Casey that he's found the guy who beat him up a few months ago, and what bar he'll be at on Friday night - expecting Casey to join him in giving the guy a little payback. But it's all bogus, because shortly after that, he asks Casey to join him on a jaunt around town on motorcycles, wearing all black, looking for people to beat up. Wait a minute, that all feels a little familiar. You don't suppose - is this Sensei's way of drumming up business for his karate class, terrorizing the town to make people realize they need to take self-defense classes? 

Casey slowly realizes that Sensei is completely out of control - and the breaking point comes, just like in "John Wick", when the bad guy messes with his dog. You shouldn't have done that, because nobody loves anything more than their dog. Casey's now got to take down Sensei, no matter what lengths he has to go to. Here you might think, hey, why not just tell the police department who's been driving around town on motorcycles and beating people up, in a crazy scheme to get more people to enroll in karate class? And that would be a very good question, but it's not where the film chooses to go. After all, Sensei has video-tape of Casey beating up the man who he thought beat him up in the first place, so he's ready to blackmail Casey as being complicit in the scheme, if it comes to that. 

Things get worse before they get better, and the bodies keep piling up, but it seems this takes place in a city where the cops never figure out that all of the missing people in town were all enrolled at the same dojo. Nor do they ever crack the case of the motorcycle terrorists, so I don't know, maybe this police department got de-funded or something, or you know, detective work is hard and they just didn't want to be bothered? I mean, they get paid either way, right? Still, it's not a good look. 

I didn't really take this to be a comedy, but Wikipedia swears that it is one, just a black comedy (not the Wayans brothers kind, the dark humor kind). The only part I found even remotely funny was when Casey had colored belts made for everyone in the dojo and everyone was surprised that in addition to symbolizing their progress in karate, belts can also function to hold your pants up. Wow, that's some breakthrough thinking, were you guys all just raised in suspender-based families or what? 

Directed by Riley Stearns

Also starring Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Kraven the Hunter"), Imogen Poots (last seen in "That Awkward Moment"), Steve Terada (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), David Zellner (last seen in "Person to Person"), Phillip Andre Botello (last seen in "Funny People"), Jason Burkey (last seen in "They Cloned Tyrone"), Mike Brooks, C.J. Rush (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Nicholas Hulstine (ditto), Davey Johnson, Hauke Bahr, Katherine Martin, Cameron Murphy, Lena Friedrich (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Louis Robert Thompson (last seen in "Mom and Dad"), Dallas Edwards (last seen in "Masterminds"), Katherine Smith-Rodden, Frederic Spitz, Alex Haydon (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Mark Sawyer-Dailey, Josh Fadem, Scott Goodman, Justin Eaton and the voice of Caroline Amiguet, with a cameo from Leland Orser (last seen in "Runaway Jury")

RATING: 5 out of 10 yellow items purchased at the grocery store

The Double

Year 18, Day 29 - 1/29/26 - Movie #5,229

BEFORE: How about this for a coincidence, I've got back-to-back films where the same actor plays multiple roles - this was NOT planned by me, at least not intentionally. It seems that my subconscious kind of took over, or else the chain has a mind of its own, I can't be sure. Robert Pattinson played Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 and both were on screen at the same time, tonight I think we've got a similar situation with Jesse Eisenberg playing the main character AND his double, using this advanced "split-screen" sort of technology, which probably isn't that advanced at all, like they were doing this in Charlie Chaplin movies back in the day, probably not much has changed, as of 2013 anyway. In 2026 they'd probably film two actors and use face-swap software to make them look the same, but when this was made they probably just filmed the same actor twice to get the reverse shots they needed. 

It suddenly occurs to me that January is named after Janus, the Roman god who had two faces, or a double-sided head. This seems about right. Janus was also the god of duality, beginnings, transitions, passages, time and endings. Well, that just about covers it, right? "Deep Cover", "Freaky Friday", "The Out-Laws", "A House of Dynamite", every one of my January films fits into one of those themes, so maybe Janus the god has been in charge of selecting my movies? 

Tim Key carries over from "Mickey 17".  But it's Jesse Eisenberg who's going to get me into the February chain, and since the new "Now You See Me" film still is not available, I'm going to get there in exactly the right number of steps. Why, it's almost like I know what I'm doing. 

THE PLOT: The unenviable life of a government-agency clerk takes a horrific turn with the arrival of a new co-worker who is both his exact physical double and his opposite otherwise - he's a confident, charismatic ladies' man. 

AFTER: This film is a modern update of the Dostoyevsky novella "The Double", in which a low-level bureaucrat is having trouble advancing at work, due to his anti-social nature. After getting thrown out of a party for his office manager's daughter, Yakov Golyadkin meets a man in a snowstorm who looks exactly like him - at first they are friends, but eventually become bitter enemies after "The Double" tries to take over his life, using all of his charm and social skills, which Yakov lacks. Yakov then begins to see replicas of himself everywhere, has a psychotic breakdown and ends up in an asylum, which, for a Russian story, counts as a happy ending. Free room and board for the rest of his life, plus probably a lobotomy coming at some point, then the sweet release of death. Really, when it came to writing stories about depressing circumstances, Dostoyevsky was second only to Kafka - probably the only scenario worse than getting replaced at your job by your evil twin would be waking up after being turned into a giant cockroach. But maybe Dostoyevsky was just the Scott Adams of his day, or vice versa. 

"The Double" focuses on Simon James, who's been working at the same job for seven years and has difficulty getting noticed, his boss calls him "Stanley" and the guards still won't let him in without looking at his ID, he is essentially very forgettable, nearly invisible. He is infatuated with Hannah, a co-worker who works in the photocopying room, and he won't get his printer fixed because he needs an excuse to go and spend time with her, however he has not taken steps to ask her out, and prefers to spy on her at night using a telescope. This is a little bit odd, I mean what are the odds that he would have an apartment that could look into hers, was this a happy (creepy) accident or did he choose the apartment based on the view? Either way, it's not a good look. Simon's hobbies also include going through her trash and piecing together drawings she made and tore up. 

One day, while creeping on Hannah with his telescope, Simon thinks that he sees a man in another apartment who looks just like him. But then he sees a man standing on a ledge who waves to him, as if he KNOWS he's being watched, and then he steps off the ledge and falls to his death. The jaded detectives who interview him just say that his happens more often than one might think, like all they do is investigate suicides like this, just in a five-block radius really. It seems life really sucks all over and people can't wait to get out of it. Simon resolves to improve his life by asking Hannah out, and even trades in his TV set to get money to buy her a gift, but then he decides to not give it to her, that would be too forward - well, she did mention that there was a guy who was obsessed with her and moved too quickly so Simon doesn't want to do that. 

Then there's a new guy hired at the company, James Simon, who looks exactly like him, though nobody else seems to be able to notice the resemblance. But James is everything Simon isn't, he's confident and likable and knows how to navigate office politics and get ahead - he has Simon take an aptitude test for him and then he steals all of Simon's proposals and presents them as his own - James starts dating the boss's daughter and also Hannah, at this rate he's going to get everything that Simon wants and probably push him out of the picture, and yet somehow they're still FRIENDS, umm, until they aren't. Really, there's a case to be made here for killing your double straight away if you should happen to meet them, like don't wait on this, just kill them before there's a reason and then maybe nobody would suspect you of the crime. 

Instead James starts using Simon's appearances for his sexual encounters, using blackmail of photos of HIMSELF with the boss's daughter, because everyone will think that Simon's the one in those photos. Suddenly James doesn't have a key to his own apartment and is forced to sleep on the bus, he's fired after going on a tirade bad-mouthing the very successful James, and he's about ready to kill himself when he sees that Hannah has overdosed, after being depressed because James cheated on her and also got her pregnant, but now she's miscarried. Instead of being thankful that Simon saved her life, Hannah suggests that he should now kill himself - OK, wow, maybe next time somebody sees you in trouble they should just let you die, how about that? 

Then things get really weird - Simon's mother dies and he rushes to her funeral, which is held right away and also at midnight outside the nursing home. This makes no sense and probably also reveals to the audience that this whole adventure is really just one giant office stress dream, and trust me, I know a few things about those. (I woke up screaming while we were on the cruise in December, I was sleeping more deeply than usual, and guess where THAT took me...). But Simon finds James at the funeral, impersonating him, no doubt. When he punches James he finds that his own nose bleeds, the two men are somehow connected to the point where they share injuries. What does this mean? Are they really somehow the same person, or twins who were separated at birth that share psychosomatic feelings? This is never really made clear, but I guess it doesn't really matter. 

Simon's ultimate "solution" is to handcuff James to the bed while he's sleeping in Simon's apartment, then to go to the ledge in the other building and jump off, much like the man he witnessed at the start of the story. Only Simon knows from the detectives how to jump off the building and hit the awning and probably survive, however he'll be inflicting injury on the sleeping James and nobody will arrive to give him medical attention. What a terrible cruel world it is when his only recourse is a suicide attempt that will also potentially kill his doppelganger who has taken his job and his apartment and his girlfriend away from him. Like, double WOW. All because HE couldn't hack it and he had to take out his competition to remain unique. I have a NITPICK POINT here because eventually Simon is going to have to explain the dead body in his apartment, right? 

We've all heard about twins or triplets who get separated and end up working in the same industry, or living a few miles from each other or marrying spouses with the same name. But one of the weird things about social media these days is that is has allowed a few people to find their own doppelgangers, people they are not related to, they just happen to look exactly alike, because of how many people there are in the world, and how few configurations there really are for facial features, if you think about it. It's just math and probability in the end - I don't think we have a word for this, but if you google "strangers who met their real-life doppelgangers" you can see what I'm talking about.  The odds of meeting your doppelganger are estimated at being one in a trillion, yet it DOES happen. 

I had a couple experiences where I (almost) met my doppelganger. I remember being at Symphony Hall in Boston one time, watching a choral performance. I was in the balcony, sure, but there was a bass singer who I thought looked like me - big guy, glasses, ponytail. And I sing bass, too - so I went down after the show and tried to look through the singers for my exact double, and I was just a bit too late, I did see someone with a ponytail leaving the building but I was just a bit too far behind him to be sure. Another time a guy came to our booth at San Diego Comic-Con and he was also wearing a baseball cap and a Hawaiian shirt over a t-shirt and we were total twinsies, except I was a bit taller. That photo is still in my old office, I should probably try to drop by and get it. The third time was when my BFF took a photo of someone at a chowderfest in 2007 who looked a LOT like me - big guy, Red Sox cap, comic-book t-shirt - and I was AT that event, but missed bumping into myself. Probably a good thing, because I know the best course of action for when that happens, and, well, it's not pretty. 

Or, you know, just putting this out there, if you find that you have met your doppelganger, and that person has taken over your life, your job and your apartment and the love of your life, maybe just let it go? Maybe it was time to give up that life anyway, I mean, what were you really DOING with it? Just pack a bag and move to another city, don't tell anyone where you're going, especially your Double, and just start fresh. It's the only move that makes some sense and also doesn't land you in jail for murder or bring bad karma your way. If some other monkey takes over your circus just go find another one somewhere else. 

Directed by Richard Ayoade (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme")

Also starring Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in "The Hummingbird Project"), Mia Wasikowska (last seen in "Stoker"), Phyllis Somerville (ditto), Wallace Shawn (last seen in "I Could Never Be Your Woman"), Yasmin Paige (ditto), Noah Taylor (last seen in "Skyscraper"), James Fox (last seen in "Cleanskin"), Cathy Moriarty (last seen in "Matinee"), Gabrielle Downey (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Jon Korkes (last seen in "Riding in Cars with Boys"), Craig Roberts (last seen in "The Current War"), Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (last seen in "Wonka"), Susan Blommaert (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Bruce Byron, J. Mascis (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Tony Rohr (last seen in "The Long Good Friday"), Karima Riachy, Andrew Gruen, Morrison Thomas, Sally Hawkins (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Lloyd Woolf, Lydia Fox, Christopher Morris, Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "Calvary"), Donal Cox, Kierston Wareing, Paddy Considine (last seen in "Deep Cover"), Dirk Van Der Gert, Liam Bewley, Gemma Chan (last seen in "The Creator"), Nathalie Cox (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Martin Crossingham, Joanna Finata, Steve Saunders, Rade Serbedzija (last seen in "The Fog" (2005)), Chuen Tsou, Natalia Warner.

RATING: 6 out of 10 episodes of "The Replicator"

Mickey 17

Year 18, Day 28 - 1/28/26 - Movie #5,228

BEFORE: Well, we're all in shutdown/survival mode, it seems. I'm working tonight but I haven't worked in 5 days, and after tonight it will probably be another 5 days before I work again. Just waiting for my next paycheck from shifts I did two weeks ago to come in so I can pay my monthly bills for February. I'm also going to the comic-book shop today but I haven't been there in a month, and I scaled my pull list WAY back, so there's that. I'm really only stepping outside if I need to get food or there's a basketball game I need to work. Riding the storm out is fine, but there's still another two months of winter left, so it's going to be a while before things warm up, I guess - and there's another snowstorm they're tracking that could hit this weekend...is this the fun part? All of the news is horrible, all of it, I don't even want to turn on the TV some days, however these are exactly the headlines that we should NOT be turning a blind eye to, if you follow me. We're well on the way to living in a dictatorship unless somebody puts a stop to it. 

Patsy Ferran carries over from "Living". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "High Life" Movie #4,818

THE PLOT: During a human expedition to colonize space, Mickey 17, a so-called "expendable" employee, is sent to explore an ice planet. 

AFTER: Yes, this is the SECOND film where Robert Pattinson plays a space explorer on a long journey who really gets the short end of the stick and ends up learning just how terrible space travel can be. That feels kind of like a conscious choice, to play a very particular type of character in sci-fi movies, ones who are just covered in bad luck no matter what they do - here we are, ready to back to the moon again for the first time in like 50 years, and now these films come along and are ready to harsh my mellow. Sure, it's maybe not all going to be "Star Trek" peace and love and united cultures and no need for money in the future because everybody just has whatever they need (awfully convenient...), surely there must be a down side somewhere. 

And this is from director Bong Joon Ho, who made films like "Snowpiercer" and "Parasite", also "Okja", this film kind of ends up being a combination of all of those things - it takes place on a vehicle headed to a very snowy planet, there are forms of class warfare on board, and then there are weird creatures on that planet, and at one point Mickey has to hide in his cabin, much like the poor family hid themselves inside the rich family's house in "Parasite". Hey, this maybe is like the ultimate Bong Joon Ho combo film!  

The main hook here is that Mickey has signed on for this space expedition as their "expendable", a special job that requires him to die over and over again, being exposed to radiation or viruses or hungry alien creatures as a sort of test subject, so the upper class people on the spaceship can remain safe. If there's a terrible job to do that could kill someone, well, he gets to do it, and if he dies, they just restore him using a 3-D printer and a back-up of his brain. In the bowels of the ship there's a "recycling" furnace, just throw garbage or leftover food or dead bodies down there and it will burn up that material and turn it into new, usable material to make more Mickeys with. Or probably also make some form of flavorless, nutrition-less food for the second-class passengers. It's probably best not to think too much about how it all works.

This would seem, at first, to be a riff on the Tom Cruise film that was originally called "Edge of Tomorrow", but that title honestly seemed very vague and boring, so the posters were filled with the words "Live. Die. Repeat" and many people thought that was a better title for the film - so on cable right now it's airing under a title that's a combination of both, which is now the most confusing possible way to promote it. Whatever your movie's title starts as, just KEEP IT that way and don't ever change it. If it's a good movie, people will want to find it, and they can't do that if you change its name. Anyway, in that film Tom Cruise battled aliens unsuccessfully, over and over again, and each time he died he went through a time-loop and started over, with a bit more knowledge and skill to help him defeat the aliens. Eventually. 

But really, this is more based on a thought experiment that is also based in science fiction, and I'm thinking about the transporters seen on "Star Trek", the ones that disassemble Federation officers into millions of tiny atoms, and then re-create them on the other side by putting those atoms back together again. It's impossible IRL, and I'm guessing this will also be impossible in the future - your body contains millions, billions of atoms that would need to be put back together in the same exact way they once were, and if they don't do that exactly right, you're not going to be YOU on the other end, or your large intestine's not going to line up with your small intestine, or some other body part's not going to be in the right place. OK, but let's assume for a second that your body could be broken down into atoms, or energy or whatever, and sent through a transporter device to another location and could be assembled again on the other side of a large distance. Great, that's all sorted out, why do we need spaceships, then? Just asking. 

Now, imagine that instead of sending your atoms across that distance, it was easier just to break your body down, destroying it, but also re-creating it on the other side of that distance, just using the elements and materials on hand THERE - or turning energy into matter, whichever. Essentially you would step into a transport chamber on Earth, the device would disintegrate you but also take an inventory of every single molecule, every atom - then this information would be relayed to a similar chamber on, say, Mars, which would re-create you, atom by atom, using the elements and materials there on Mars, creating a version of you over there. Is that you, or just a replica of you? It would appear to an outsider that you were "transported" from Earth to Mars, but were you? Or were you destroyed on Earth and re-created on Mars? Now, does that Mars version of you also have your memories, or is it a blank slate, mentally? Is that person on Mars a clone or a replicant or something completely different, or is it still you? 

I think that's kind of what we're dealing with here in "Mickey 17". Mickey has died 16 times in the service of this spacecraft, and each time he's been re-created using a 3-D printer and that brain back-up. My main NITPICK POINT here is that people keep asking him what it's like to die, only he wouldn't know, would he? If Mickey 10 died they would create a Mickey 11 using the brain back-up of #10, but the back-up would have been made a few days before his death, so the death part just wouldn't be in his memories, right? The X-Men tried something like this a few years ago, they had all of Earth's mutants living in harmony (sort of) away from humans, on their own island nation of Krakoa (the island itself was a living mutant, long story) and they found that a combination of the powers of five specific X-Men (Egg, Proteus, Elixir, Tempus and Hope Summers) could be used to resurrect any mutant who died. They similarly made back-ups of each mutant's memories so those could be implanted into the new body of any resurrected mutant, essentially the comic book writers had "solved" death, not that any comic book character ever really dies, because for important characters like Black Widow or Captain America, the writers always find a way to bring them back. Why? To sell more comic books, duh. In my time I think I saw each member of the Fantastic Four "die" at least once, probably twice. Then there's always a time loop or a black hole or a "that was really a Skrull masquerading as Human Torch" moment that brings them back.

What a story "crutch" for the X-Men writers, though, they could have any character sacrifice themselves in battle, and be back up and running with a new version of Gambit or Rogue or Cyclops within 48 hours. But again, I have questions, because if Cyclops died, and the Five Mutants resurrected him, is he still him, or is he something else? He has all of Cyclops' memories, sure, but only before the last "back-up". Also, how many times can you kill off Cyclops before the audiences realizes that in this scenario, death has no meaning if they can just be brought right back. Why should I care, then, if Cyclops dies? Also, what happened to his "soul" when his body died? Or is there no such thing as a "soul"? Are you saying we're all just crude matter with electrical neurons firing in our brains, creating the illusion that we are alive and have consciousness? Are "WE" our bodies, our brains or our souls, or a unique combination of all three things working together? What happens when we die, does our life energy just get dispelled into the universe and do we just stop feeling and thinking, lights out and that's it? Or are there going to be 17 versions of Cyclops' soul meeting up in comic-book heaven? 

Anyway, back to "Mickey 17", what really is forbidden in this scenario is the concept of "multiples" - like, under no circumstances are you supposed to make more than one version of Mickey, or anyone, at a time. Because that would mean that there are two Mickey souls walking around in different bodies, and therefore maybe there's no soul at all, we're just bags of chemicals that think we are smart and alive, and that's too horrible to contemplate. Also, knowing how humans are, most people would probably want to have sex with their clones, and we can't allow that either. Like if you can't have sex with your twin, well then you can't have sex with your clone either, I think we just maybe like over-regulating this sort of thing, but I get it. Then again, having sex with your clone is just another form of masturbation, right, it's sex with somebody you love AND you probably know just how to please them, so I don't know, maybe just go for it and then let me know how it was... No, wait, don't tell me. No, wait again, please do and don't leave out any detail. No, wait...

Wouldn't you know it, Mickey 17 is left for dead on this alien world of Niflheim - they come and pick up his weapons, because you know, they have value, but Mickey 17 is at the bottom of a really deep ice crevasse, and it would be kind of dangerous to get him out, what's the point when they can just make a new Mickey? Funny story, Mickey is attacked by the Creeper aliens but they DON'T eat him, they bring him back to the surface, and he hitches a ride back to the spaceship on a transport truck, but that takes so long that by the time he gets back, there's Mickey 18, living in his cabin and sleeping in his bed. Uh, oh, what happens NOW? Multiples are strictly forbidden, but you know, Mickey's girlfriend has been thinking about the possibilities of a threesome. Should they? No, it feels so wrong, but if that's wrong then they kind of don't want to be right...

The guy in charge of the mission is Kenneth Marshall, half-failed politician and half-failed preacher, it seems, and he wants to colonize this new planet with only the FINEST genetic stock (sounds a bit like Hitler) and also turning a hefty profit (sounds a bit like Trump) all while Making Alienworlds Great Again (sounds a lot like both Hitler and Trump).  But he can't do that if there are "impure" soulless multiples on his ship, and also the planet is full of these Creeper aliens that need to be eliminated/exterminated. Eventually somebody calls him on his own B.S. by pointing out that the Creepers ARE already the dominant species on this planet, and they're not the aliens, but the HUMANS are. Whoa, Niflheim is just really Greenland, if you think about it, and this movie could NOT BE more relevant and timely. We in America are former colonists, mutts, people who were kicked out of every other country on Earth, given a second chance, and now WE are invading Venezuela and threatening to take Greenland from Denmark? It's just not a good look.

The Creepers eventually realize that there are thousands of them, and they way outnumber the humans, so they surround the ship and demand justice for the baby Creeper that was killed, also they want the living one that the humans have to be returned. I won't say anything about how it all turns out, but all they want is a life for a life. If only the humans had a spare person kicking around that they didn't really need...

This one's really way far out there guys, but a lot of great and interesting ideas here, some we've seen before and some that we haven't. The director adapted this film from a novel, and claims that none of the characters are meant to be mirrors of active politicians, but come on. Or maybe we're all just taking what we know about Trump and applying that to the corrupt leader seen here, I don't know. Overall it drags on a bit too long, like maybe if they could have trimmed 20 minutes or so out from somewhere I'd give it a higher score. But it's still wild, man.

It also occurs to me that today's film is like a reversal of yesterday's film - "Living" was about a man who had to learn how to live, and he kept living until he died. "Mickey 17" is about a man who had to learn how how to die, and he kept dying so he could live. Just me?

Directed by Bong Joon Ho (director of "Okja" and "Parasite")

Also starring Robert Pattinson (last seen in "Good Time"), Steven Yeun (last seen in "Nope"), Michael Monroe, Cameron Britton (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Christian Patterson, Lloyd Hutchinson (last seen in "Florence Foster Jenkins"), Samuel Blenkin, Ian Hanmore (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Tim Key (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Rose Shalloo (last seen in "Emma."), Angus Imrie (ditto), Bronwyn James (last seen in "The Dig"), Holliday Grainger (last seen in "Tulip Fever"), Milo James (last seen in "The Phoenician Scheme"), Steve Park (ditto), Naomi Ackie (last seen in "The Thursday Murder Club"), Daniel Henshall (last seen in "Okja"), Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Poor Things"), Toni Collette (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Jude Mack, Anamaria Vartolomei, Ellen Robertson, Haydn Gwynne (last seen in "Beauty and the Beast" (2017)), Edward Davis (last seen in "Radioactive"), and the voice of Anna Mouglalis,

RATING: 7 out of 10 cafeteria trays