The Tale

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

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

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

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

Laura Dern carries over again from "Lonely Planet".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directed by Jennifer Fox

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

RATING: 5 out of 10 family photo albums

Lonely Planet

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

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

Laura Dern carries over from "Certain Women". 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Run away and hide from everyone

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

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

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

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

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

Certain Women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

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

RATING: 4 out of 10 hay bales

The Fabelmans

Year 18, Day 40 - 2/9/26 - Movie #5,240

BEFORE: Paul Dano carries over again from "The Girl Next Door" and I have to just talk about Paul Dano for a minute, the beef that Tarantino has with him, which was a big news story in Hollywood about a month ago. I joked about it last night, but since I've now watched THREE films in a row with Dano, I can weigh in on this. Tarantino called him "weak" in an interview, and suggested that he was a terrible actor and that his performance ruined "There Will Be Blood", which he felt would have easily been one of his top five films if it had not been for Dano's performance as a set of twins. The insight that I get from watching three films in a row with the same actor might carry a little more impact than focusing on one performance - for example, after three Jesse Eisenberg films in January, I felt he had a "type" of role that he tends to play, namely Jewish and nebbish-like, complaining to the point of being irritable. Well, in those cases, that is what the role demanded, or if not, then his presence kind of pushed those roles in that direction, the audience can't really make that distinction. His characters in "The Double", "The Art of Self-Defense", "A Real Pain" and "Roger Dodger" sort of all feel like extensions of the same character, and part of that OF COURSE is because they're played by the same guy in a similar fashion. But you could just as easily blame the screenwriters, perhaps for creating the same characters four times over, the lovable loser nebbish type that, for all we know, were just begging to be played by Eisenberg. 

Paul Dano, on the other hand, has managed to play these total blank characters, again and again, and how much of that is the fault of the screenwriters, it's impossible to know. But the character he played in "Little Miss Sunshine" did not talk at all, like what is an actor supposed to do with that? It's a blank character, like he's almost not even there at all. The fact that Dano was able to do anything at all in that film, just with expressions, is a minor miracle - that's not an actor who is "weak". Brian Wilson in "Love & Mercy", Klitz in "The Girl Next Door", and Louis Ives in "The Extra Man", they're all that same kind of blank, "I don't know how to do this", sort of feather-in-the-wind kind of dumb guy who seems like he has trouble connecting socially and/or figuring out how to live his own life. This may be part Dano, part screenwriters, or him just being typecast in a certain type of role. His roles as the Riddler in "The Batman" and the guy he played in "Dumb Money" feel like maybe he realized he was doing the same thing over and over, and tried to go the other way with it, because the Riddler is known for being clever and in control of evil schemes. But if you look a certain way with a big round face, maybe casting directors tend to just see you as a blank. Still, if a director has a problem with an actor, they can just NOT cast that actor in their movies, and STFU. It's been a while since I watched "There Will Be Blood", but I'm betting that Daniel Day-Lewis' character seemed more powerful and dynamic when compared with those blankish twins played by Paul Dano, and that was the whole point. 

THE PLOT: Growing up in post-World War II era Arizona, young Sammy Fabelman aspires to become a filmmaker as he reaches adolescence, but soon discovers a shattering family secret and explores how the power of films can help him see the truth. 

AFTER: Well, perhaps this film proves my point about Paul Dano - he plays the quiet, nerdy father and husband who doesn't realize until it's too late that his more dynamic best friend has caught the attention of his own wife, and that he's the odd man out in a love triangle. Things might have been different if he had shown any emotion at any point, or spoke out sooner, or realized that he had all the personality of a block of wood. But again, that's the character here, not necessarily just the actor. If Mr. Fableman had been more fun or more loving or more expressionistic in any way, maybe his wife wouldn't have fallen for someone else - but that's impossible to prove, we can only deal with the story that we're given, and the heart is a fickle thing, it wants what it wants, and that can easily change over time. Expecting romance dramas to give us lessons about how better to live our own lives is a fool's game, I suspect.

There are a couple of odd things that carry over from yesterday's film, like mostly today's film would seem to have nothing in common with "The Girl Next Door", however both films have a character in high school who really wants to be a filmmaker, that's not a common plot point. Both films have a main character who doesn't really get along with the jocks in his high school, but I guess that's not too unusual - in one film they just travel in different circles, while in the other one there's outright bullying going on. One film has a sex ed film being made during prom, and the other features the filmmaker character screening a film during prom. Now THAT's a weird coincidence, I think, even if it's not an exact match. But I guess films are made by filmmakers, and those filmmakers probably did not have typical prom nights - most young filmmakers spent prom night alone at home, I would imagine, wishing they could be making a movie. Both films also had a plot point with high school kids ditching class to go to the beach - this must just be a California thing?

It's a strange thing to say, but I'm not sure there's a completed story here, a full narrative arc with a beginning, middle and end, or if this is just a collection of odd things that Spielberg remembers about his childhood, which amount to nothing when they're all put together. Except TO HIM, this makes sense, because he lived this as a young boy and a teenager, so it kind of feels like he made this film for an audience of one, himself, as it just can't resonate on the same level with a majority of the people. So unfortunately I have to go with the latter possibility on this one, the whole film is nothing more than a sum of its weird, random parts. 

It fits into the romance/relationship category because we know that Spielberg's mother left his father at some point, and committed to a new relationship with her husband's best friend and business partner. It didn't seem THAT odd when the Fabelman family moved to Phoenix, except that Mrs. Fabelman guilted her husband into creating a job there for "Uncle" Bennie, but it seems like maybe she had another goal in mind, perhaps she had already fallen out of love with Burt and was planning a few moves ahead? It's unclear...

It was a different time when the Fabelmans (Spielbergs) got married, that's for sure - people back then expected marriage to last a lifetime, if you did it right, however lifespans were also shorter, so probably half the people found themselves starting new relationships later in life, or just living out the rest of their days alone, I guess that's the alternative. Lifespans are longer now, and so I guess by extension fewer people expect their marriages to last until the end of their lives, and divorce is more commonplace, and also less stigmatized. So perhaps Mrs. Fabelman was just acknowledging that she had options, she didn't have to spend the rest of her life with the dull and boring "blank" that Burt was, geez that's a role that's right up Paul Dano's alley, right? Who wouldn't want to be in a relationship with the fun guy instead, I mean Burt's a symbol of the smart, silent type, but you've got to have some fun in life, too. 

It's telling that young Sammy learned the power of filmmaking when it revealed to him his mother's secret, she was seen in the background of the camping footage he shot, holding Bennie tight and perhaps kissing him as well. And yet Sammy still wanted to be a filmmaker, after learning how it could tear a family apart - does that track?  Then I suppose it's also ironic that Burt urged Sammy to make the camping film, in order to cheer up Mitzi, and then the truths it revealed ended up breaking up the Fabelmans' marriage. Well, I guess it was inevitable at some point. 

It's a bit odd that the same guy who played the young Steven Spielberg here was last seen in "Saturday Night" playing the young Lorne Michaels - he got to play two of the most iconic producers in the entire industry, back to back. That's either luck, or it's being typecast as the young nebbish to offset the success those two gentlemen have had, in order to gain the sympathy of the audience. Sure, they're millionaire geniuses, but they're also neurotic, just like us, that's meant to be comforting, I suppose. 

But I'm back on the fact that this story doesn't really have a beginning, it just kind of drops us into Sammy Fabelman's life the day that his parents took him to see the movie "The Greatest Show on Earth", like is that the earliest thing that Steven Spielberg can remember? It's so random - and then there's not really any kind of ending, either, here Sammy gets an offer to work on the TV show "Hogan's Heroes" and after the interview he gets a chance to meet director John Ford, who made the film "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", and is played by David Lynch. It's another great (?) moment in Spielberg's life, perhaps, but it doesn't mean much to me or, I'm guessing, too many people in the audience. It's also notable that the film ends HERE and not a few months later, when Spielberg just walked into Universal Studios and set up shop there to direct "Jaws", without ever really being officially hired to do so. Talk about "fake it until you make it", right? 

Directed by Steven Spielberg (producer of "Twisters" and "Maestro", director of "West Side Story" (2021))

Also starring Michelle Williams (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Seth Rogen (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Gabriel LaBelle (last seen in "Saturday Night"), Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord, Keeley Karsten, Alina Brace, Julia Butters (last seen in "Freakier Friday"), Birdie Borria, Judd Hirsch (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Sophia Kopera, Jeannie Berlin (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Robin Bartlett (last seen in "The Glass Castle"), Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley (last seen in "The War with Grandpa"), Chloe East (last seen in "The Wolf of Snow Hollow"), Isabelle Kusman (last seen in "Licorice Pizza"), Chandler Lovelle, Gustavo Escobar (last seen in "Pain & Gain"), Nicolas Cantu, Cooper Dodson (last seen in "Mr. Right"), Gabriel Bateman (last seen in "Unhinged"), Stephen Matthew Smith, James Urbaniak (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Kalama Epstein, Connor Trinneer (last seen in "American Made"), Lane Factor, Greg Grunberg (last seen in "The Pallbearer"), David Lynch (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Jan Hoag (last seen in "Faster"), Paul Chepikian, Brinly Marum, Larkin Campbell (last seen in "J. Edgar")

RATING: 5 out of 10 Boy Scouts working as a film crew

The Girl Next Door

Year 18, Day 39 - 2/8/26 - Movie #5,239

BEFORE: It's Super Bowl Sunday, and I suppose I should be glad that the Patriots are back in it, because that's my home team from my teen years - but they were never great when I lived in Massachusetts, they only won Super Bowls after I moved to New York. But I worked in an electronics store when they first played in the post-season (and lost) and I had to deal with the wave of people buying big-screen TVs and VCRs. Then later for maybe 20 years I was paid to watch the game and track the commercials that used animation or visual effects, so that got me in the pattern of paying attention to the annual most important televised event. So I still record the game every year, and mostly I fast-forward through the game and watch the cool ads. Yeah, if something really happens during the game or the half-time show, I'll pay attention just so I know what the late-night hosts will be making fun of in the coming week. But going to a party with friends, or paying top dollar to watch the game in a restaurant or bar? Yeah, not my thing. 

Today I'll be working a shift at the theater, just baby-sitting the construction of a tent for tomorrow's red-carpet event. Sure, an outdoor space during February, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? It's only the coldest damn weekend of the year, hell it's the coldest weekend of the last few years, but I'll only have to do an outdoor patrol like every 30 minutes - so yeah, I'll take the shift while all the young kids are out partying and watching the big game together. I'll watch it tomorrow, from the warmth and comfort of my bedroom, and I'll fast-forward through most of it, it should only take me an hour or two - just trying to make efficient use of my time. 

Paul Dano carries over from "The Extra Man". 

THE PLOT: A teenager's dreams come true when a porn star moves in next door and they fall in love. 

AFTER: Last year's romance film that fell on Super Bowl Sunday (it's a bit inevitable...) was "Murphy's Romance", and there was just zero tie-in with football. But it was on Carole King's birthday, so if you're going to insist on merging those two national holidays, well, what do you expect, something's got to fall by the wayside.  Today's film doesn't really have any good tie-in opportunities, either, except that it's set in a high school and there is a football team and cheerleaders and all that. There are jocks, and for my purposes that can be enough. The climax (!!) of the film takes place during prom night, and the main character is involved with making a sex-ed video in the school during prom, using porn stars and some of the school's students. It's a case of zigging when everyone else is zagging, sure, why not make a porn video during prom, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? As mentioned above, I'm also zigging today by working when everyone else is partying, so yeah, I get it. I would have loved to spend the day eating snacks and drinking beer and being warm in bed while fast-forwarding through the sportsball, but it's just not where we find ourselves today. Whatever. 

It kind of feels like I watched this film before, especially near the end. I think maybe I saw a bunch of things as I was dubbing this film to DVD, and so I kind of maybe stopped to take a look at a few scenes, but since MOST of the film was unfamiliar to me, I'm fairly sure I have not watched it through. Still, it feels like since this was released in 2004, that I had ample time to watch this before, so, umm, why didn't I? I think it's been on the list for a while, so if it feels like I'm crossing off a number of romance films that I should have gotten to by now but just didn't, it's only because I'm doing exactly that this year - I'm clearing the category as best as I can. When I'm done with this topic in mid-March, the romance section may only be half the size it was in January - here's hoping. 

This film was based on "Risky Business", a film from 20 years earlier that featured a high-school student falling in love with a call girl, they just updated this by turning her into an adult-film actress, and turning the film's villain from her pimp into her producer. What changed in those 20 years was the invention of the internet, and the creation of the first generation to be able to see every kind of pornography for free with just a few clicks on a computer. I don't think we all quite realize what this has done to American males (and I assume a few females) who can now watch as much porn as they want - my generation used to have to work for it, you had to either steal a couple Penthouse magazines from an adult or a newstand, or look old enough to rent porno VHS tapes from your local video store. Usually there was a room in back hiding behind a curtain and you had to kind of let somebody at the store know what kind of movie you wanted to rent, it was all very embarrassing. Umm, or so I heard. 

Matthew wouldn't have even known about his new neighbor's porn career if one of his besties, Eli, hadn't recognized her - so Eli's the one who's seen nearly every porn movie, and then by the end of this film he's directed his own porno/sex ed video, and then he's a diva bully like Brett Ratner, yelling at the audience during a Q&A.  Meanwhile, Klitz, who starred in the porno video, only with a fencing mask covering his face, is secretly famous for his impressive full frontal scenes. Well, everybody's got to have a talent, I suppose. 

The whole thing started when Matthew tried to fill out his yearbook entry with the things he'd done or remembered, and somehow he came up blank, meaning he felt like he hadn't accomplished anything during high school, but how is that possible? He's got two close friends, and some people don't even have that, then we find out he's the student council president - that's not nothing, it means his classmates voted for him. Also, he raised $25,000 so that a Cambodian math prodigy could come study in an American high school - did Matthew somehow forget about this? Because the film keeps reminding us about Samnang, so how the hell could he forget? Why does Matthew have FOMO if he's been so busy? I guess he's just hung up on the fact that he hasn't dated anyone or slept with a girl yet - but all those jocks who skip out of school early every day to go to the beach aren't going to get into Georgetown, are they? Focus on the academics, Matthew...

This kid's infatuation with his neighbor and his academic career are on a collision course, because not only does he miss the pop quiz - no matter, he already got accepted into college - but they go swimming at night in his principal's backyard pool, and then Kelly shows up to bring Danielle to the Adult Video Convention in Las Vegas. Matthew and his two buddies drive there, too, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? After that, Kelly manages to remove from the bank all of the $25K that Matthew raised to bring the Cambodian genius to the U.S. The only way Matthew can imagine fixing everything at once - his relationship with Danielle, the missing funds and getting revenge on the jock bullies - is to enlist the A/V squad minions to make an adult film which is really a sex-ed film. Their high school, and thousands of others, is still showing old films about STDs and condoms that were made in the (shudder) 1970's, or earlier. If only somebody could make one that looked more like internet porn and licensed that to schools, that could be a profitable venture - but enough to pay for a college education? Unclear. 

NITPICK POINT: The updated sex ed video claims it will demonstrate how to put on a condom WITHOUT using a banana, like the outdated instructional videos all do. So, they're going to use a real penis for this, and then show THAT video in class? Even though dicks are all over the internet, there would still be a scandal in high schools if they were to screen a film with actual frontal nudity in it. Some parents in each town would immediately file a lawsuit or ask for teachers or principals to be fired, even if their precious children were already sexually active.

NITPICK POINT #2: Kelly does have a point, he DID think up the idea for the updated sex ed film, shot like a modern porno. Or, rather he thought it would be great to make a porno film using high-school jock and cheerleader energy, same difference. Yes, he should not have stolen the $25K, or the master video of the sex-ed film, but neither should Matthew and Eli stolen his idea without at least offering him a writing credit, or a percentage of the royalties. 

Well, this film isn't terrible, as teen high-school sex comedies go - but then, I'm probably grading on a curve here. Three of the actors from this film, Emile Hirsch, Timothy Olyphant and James Remar, all appeared in Tarantino's 2019 film "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood". Gee, I wonder why Paul Dano didn't? 

Directed by Luke Greenfield (director of "Something Borrowed" and "Let's Be Cops")

Also starring Emile Hirsch (last seen in "Prince Avalanche"), Elisha Cuthbert (last seen in "Bandit"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Stop-Loss"), James Remar (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Chris Marquette (last seen in "Nostalgia"), Timothy Bottoms (last seen in "Elephant"), Donna Bullock (last seen in "All Good Things"), Jacob Young, Brian Kolodziej, Brandon Irons, Amanda Swisten, Lee Sung-Hi, Ulysses Lee, Harris Laskawy (last seen in "Slums of Beverly Hills"), Julie Osburn (last seen in "Intolerable Cruelty"), Laird Stuart (last seen in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective"), Dane Garretson, Richard Fancy (last seen in "Species"), Catherine McGoohan (last seen in "Imagine That"), Josh Henderson (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Nicholas Thomas, John-Clay Scott, Matthew Wiese (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Maria Arcé (last seen in "The United States of Leland"), Alonzo Bodden (last seen in "The Onion Movie"), Stephanie Fabian (last seen in "New Year's Eve"), Michael Villani (last seen in "Up Close & Personal"), Steven St. Croix, John Harrington Bland (last seen in "The Tao of Steve"), Shu Lan Tuan (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), Kayla Tabish, Nicholas Downs (last seen in "The Holiday"), Danny Seckel, Katie Stuart, Autumn Reeser (last seen in "Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball"), Olivia Wilde (last seen in "Love the Coopers"), Reda Beebe (last seen in "Kill Bill: Vol. 2"), Rudy Mettia, Chris Leone, Tara Gerard, Mike Sabga and the voice of Paul Aulicino.

RATING: 6 out of 10 release forms

The Extra Man

Year 18, Day 38 - 2/7/26 - Movie #5,238

BEFORE: With this film I wrap up the first week of this year's romance chain, and so far, it's been, well, a bit hit and miss. Oh, there's been romance, of course, but so many other things have come along with it - serial killers, pregnant dogs, writing "Mrs. Dalloway" - what we're really lacking here is any kind of focus at all. What, did I think we were going to learn any real lessons about love from "The Dating Game"? Roger from "Roger Dodger" wasn't much of a teacher either, as all of his advice had to do with taking advantage of women, and we can assume that cancel culture probably took care of Roger at some point. "Vita & Virginia" gave us some insight into what lesbian/bi/poly culture might have been like in the UK in the 1920's, but honestly it was more confusing than anything else - why were the lesbian relationships "affairs" and how the hell did those women stay married? Which kind of leaves us with "Cousins" and "The Last Five Years", one film where two break-ups led to a couple coming together, and another film where two people coming together led to a break-up. Well, I suppose all that is par for the course. 

Rafael Sardina carries over from "The Last Five Years" - and I think maybe in the next week I'll really hit my stride on this topic. We've got one week until Valentine's Day, so really we do want to be building up to something right now, there's a long way to go until the end of this year's romance chain, so the one thing we don't want to do is peak too early. It's all about stamina, and if I time this right I think maybe we'll hit a good film on Feb. 14, however at that point I'll still have over a MONTH to go, so topic fatigue at some point is inevitable, it's only a question of WHEN, really.

THE PLOT: A man who escorts wealthy widows in New York's Upper East Side takes a young aspiring playwright under his wing.

AFTER: Yeah, it's another weird one tonight, so who knows, maybe tomorrow things will kick in. "The Extra Man" is almost an UN-romance, perhaps this was a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, to not just make another rom-com, to make something weird and funny only NOT that, there's almost an attempt to AVOID romance whenever there's the possibility of it. Kevin Kline plays Henry Harrison, an aging lothario who decidedly is NOT having sex with all of these NYC widows that he escorts, no, no, that would be too tawdry, too basic. However, he will get whatever he can out of those relationships, like an apartment in Palm Beach, Florida for the winter season if he can. But if at any point he feels like HE is being taken advantage of, well then he runs quickly in the other direction. When he dines at the home of Ms. Vivian Cudlip, and they are joined by her friend Meredith, Henry figures out that the dinner was offered so that Meredith could ask him to drive her to her doctor's appointment in Brooklyn, and at that point, the dinner is over and Henry is headed for the door. 

At this point, Henry is guiding his young protege and roommate Louis Ives through this world of upper crust ladies who are widowed and still holding on to their NYC apartments, or condos or whatever, but Henry notices that they are starting to die off, so at some point his con game won't work any more. His car breaks down, too, at some point - wait, who has a CAR in Manhattan these days? - and so he's forced to call upon Louis for rides while his car is being serviced. When he learns that the old Buick Electra can't be repaired, he needs Louis to drive him out to Southampton on Long Island, where another woman he knows is selling her car. That woman turns out to not be home, but the trip isn't a total loss, because Henry and Louis and Henry's friend Gershon dance on the beach for a while, at least until Henry's sciatica acts up. 

Henry keeps promising to set up Louis with one of these ladies, particularly Vivian's niece, although Henry keeps changing his mind about this, and we find out late in the film why - but also this is one of the carrots he keeps dangling to insure that people keep doing favors for him. Anyway, it's a bit unclear whether Louis would know how to date a woman, he can't seem to get anywhere with Mary, who works for the same magazine as him. Perhaps Louis blew it by pretending to be a vegan but then getting caught eating meat for lunch. He does ask Mary to be his date at a society wedding, however she declines because she has a steady boyfriend, who later turns out to be a jerk, but that's neither here nor there. Louis does steal a bit of lingerie from Mary's shopping bag, but it's not as pervy as it sounds. Louis just wants to wear it because he's toying with the idea of cross-dressing. OK, maybe it is as pervy as it sounds.

This came out in 2010, so really before the trans movement gained a lot of steam - this means that the directors probably felt America wasn't ready yet for a film about a trans person, really cross-dressing was maybe shocking enough back then? Or the trans movement wasn't as big back then as it is now, whichever. But Louis does like going to restaurants with drag servers, and drag shows, and he's been paying an older woman on the side for some form of spanking mixed with role play mixed with occasional sex, maybe? It seems like Louis doesn't really know WHAT he wants, because he kind of wants a bit of everything as long as nobody else knows about it. It's fine, whatever, Louis, go explore and if you find what turns you on, great, and if you don't, well at least you tried a bunch of stuff. 

Still, all of this in one movie is like A LOT and just like this whole Movie Week, if there had been a bit of focus here I think that would have gone a long way toward some kind of understanding. If Louis doesn't know what he wants out of life or a relationship, well, then neither do we know what we want for him. Right? At this point last year, I was watching films like "Spoiler Alert", and that film was about a gay relationship that changed its course, several times. So gay, trans, straight, it doesn't matter, people are going to come together and break apart, several times over, and the only constant really is change. Some people stay in the same relationship for a long period of time, but there still may be changes in their dynamic over time. 

There is some helpful stuff here, like if you want to know how to sneak into an opera, or how to treat a couple of aging widows to a roast chicken dinner on the cheap, maybe this film could come in handy? But it also represents a lifestyle that has an expiration date, especially with the rising costs of NYC real estate - like it used to be that people could rent an apartment in Manhattan at a reasonable price, and now I think with landlords raising rent every time a tenant dies, you'd have to be already super-rich to rent in Manhattan these days. Also I think if you live in Manhattan your choice would be between an apartment and a car, I don't think anyone can afford both, not with the new congestion pricing and the fact that you also need to pay monthly for garage space, unless you want to spend three hours every night driving around looking for parking. I say go live in the outer boroughs, you can maybe get a house in Brooklyn or Queens and put the money you're paying for Manhattan rent toward making mortgage payments instead and build up some equity. 

Directed by Shari Springer Berman (director of "Cinema Verite" and "Girl Most Likely") and Robert Pulcini (ditto)

Also starring Kevin Kline (last heard in "The Bob's Burgers Movie"), Paul Dano (last heard in "Spaceman"), Marian Seldes (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Celia Weston (last seen in "Runaway Jury"), John C. Reilly (last seen in "Hard Eight"), Patti D'Arbanville (last seen in "I Know What You Did Last Summer"), Dan Hedaya (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Alex Burns (last seen in "13 Conversations About One Thing"), Jason Butler Harner (last seen in "The Family Fang"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Teaching Mrs. Tingle"), Alicia Goranson (last seen in "How to Make an American Quilt"), Lynn Cohen (last seen in "The Life Before Her Eyes"), John Pankow (last seen in "The Object of My Affection"), Lewis Payton Jr., Marisa Ryan (last seen in "Human Capital"), Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs, Victoria Barabas, John Leighton (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Beth Fowler (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Jackie Hoffman (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Betty Hudson (last seen in "Girl Most Likely"), Jean Brassard (last seen in "The Fault in Our Stars"), Justis Bolding, Peter Kybart (last seen in "An American Pickle"), Jonathan Ames (last seen in "The Great Buck Howard"), Gisele Alicea, Philip Carlson, Barbara Christie, and the voice of Graeme Malcolm (also last seen in "Girl Most Likely")

RATING: 5 out of 10 re-entry stubs

The Last Five Years

Year 18, Day 37 - 2/6/26 - Movie #5,237

BEFORE: Yesterday's film was kind of on the edge, I mean it's a little questionable whether that one really belonged in February or not - it was by no means a "romance" film, it was more about the inherent danger involved in dating. You could find the person of your dreams, or you could date a psycho killer, that's the game, unfortunately. But it was kind of like a film that fits into a few places, I could just as easily have put it in October and treated it like a serial killer film - I have a similar problem with Christmas-themed romances, should they be watched in February or December? Well, it depends on the linking, really, in which month will they fit in, where is there a space for that one?  But then sometimes February will roll around and I'll think, "Nah, that's a Christmas film..." and then December comes and I'll think, "Nah, that's a February romance..." and as a result, the film does not get watched. Look, it's got to go in one place or the other, full stop. But now as a result, I've been all over the place, genre-wise, and it's still only the first week of the romance chain - I've had a rom-com, a family drama, a period drama, a serial killer movie, and today it's a musical. Makes perfect sense. 

Anna Kendrick carries over from "Woman of the Hour". Yes, I do have a third Anna Kendrick film on the romance/relationship sub-list, but working that one in seems just a bit counter-productive as I currently have it linking two other films that did NOT make the countdown, and if I should want to go in that direction next year, I will need that film as mortar - maybe that film is really a "brick", I don't know, and maybe I should work it in here and another linking path may be generated in the next few months, there's no way to tell. I have to play the cards I'm dealt and try to leave open the right linking opportunities for the future, though. My mantra is always "Don't worry, this will make more sense tomorrow..." but will it? WILL IT? 

THE PLOT: A struggling actress and her novelist husband each illustrate the struggles and deconstruction of their love affair through song. 

AFTER: Well, let's hear it for Tubi, which is essentially like the safety school of streaming services. If there's a film that premium cable is ignoring (and there are a lot of those), it could be on Netflix - however some films are only on Netflix for two years, then the contract expires and they go to Hulu. But what happens after that? Exactly. It's really a mixed bag, some films are on AmazonPrime and others get bought up by Apple, but when all else fails, they go to Tubi. Guys, it's FREE with a few ads, why doesn't anybody talk about Tubi? Oh, sorry, it's not COOL like YouTube, and nobody ever invites you over to "Tubi and chill", it's probably more like "Tubi and eat some stale pretzels and let me complain to you about my last few boyfriends" but still, there's an opportunity there, you're going to watch a movie for free, and whatever else the night turns into, that's up to you. Again, safety school, you didn't get into Yale, but hey, you took your shot, and now you're still going to college, and your parents can afford this, try to make the most of it, OK? At least you won't have a crippling student loan burden that will take ten years or more to overcome. 

What ended up on Tubi here is a film with exactly ONE star in it, Anna Kendrick - and this came out between "Pitch Perfect" and "Pitch Perfect 2", before that, sure, she had a small role in the "Twilight" movies and that break-out part in "Up in the Air", small roles in "End of Watch" and "Scott Pilgrim", but she wasn't a mega-star yet. This might have even been filmed before "Pitch Perfect", there's no way to tell, it's more like an indie film and it could have spent years in production while somebody tinkered with it, then realized that Kendrick's career was blowing up and they needed to get this out there. But it also illustrates the difference between character actors and background actors - character actors are at least recognizable, they usually have lines and you've seen them in a thousand movies, like Margot Martindale or Stephen Tobolowsky, and they probably get paid better than the people who play "Dancer #4" or "Woman at book signing". Well, the casting director who worked on "The Last Five Years" probably had zero budget, because there aren't even any character actors here, just background ones - as a result the film's credits feel very incomplete, there are a lot of spelling errors in the names and nobody could even be bothered to submit the information to IMDB. Don't worry, it's not like there's some idiot out there who's tracking all the actors for his blog and trying to figure out where he last saw that ukulele player before. And even if there were, eff that guy. 

This is based on a stage musical, OF COURSE, and the structure is somewhat unique, at least. On stage the characters always sang separately, and HIS timeline started at the beginning and moved forward while HER timeline started with their spoiler-ish break-up and moved in reverse, and the two timelines meet in the middle when he proposes in Central Park. I think the film shows this event twice so we get it, it's part of both timelines. And then his timeline keeps moving forward toward the break-up and hers keeps moving backwards toward their first date, and this could be easily confused with a film that's just jumping around randomly, so probably on the second viewing if you pay attention you can really figure out what's happening, or rather WHEN it's all happening. Sure, if they started at the beginning, they meet, they move in together, they meet her parents, they deal with all their old relationship issues, his writing career takes off, she does summer stock in Ohio while he's tempted by other women in NYC, they have problems in their marriage (shocker!) and then he moves out, well, we've all seen that a thousand times, right? And some of us lived it two or three times, too. So that would be boring. 

But crossing the time-streams after reversing one, well, sure, it's confusing but also more interesting at the same time. The whole things ends rather awkwardly when they sing something like a duet, and hers is more hopeful because she can't wait until she can see him again, and clearly this is the sign of something big, while (?) he's walking out of their apartment with his last packed bag and he's left a note for her inside with all the reasons, claiming that he really really tried but at this point there's no chance of fixing things. The symmetry is absolutely beautiful, because at the start he was the hopeful one, thinking things might be moving a bit too fast but also throwing himself into this new relationship because it's THE ONE, while she's sitting in the dark with the break-up note in front of her, singing "Jamie is over and Jamie is gone, Jamie's decided it's time to move on."

But I don't know, you could end up feeling like you're very tossed around by the whole time thing, and at the end, you could be saying, "What the hell just happened? God, what a relief, it's over." Exactly. That is the feeling one could get right after a break-up - what the hell just happened? Then eventually, it might take a few months, but you might get to "God, what a relief, it's over." and then you're going to replay those road-trips you took and those parties you went to and those fights you had, and guess what? They're not going to be in the right order, inside your head, they're going to be all jumbled up! So, you know, the film gets this exactly right. Moving forward, on your good days maybe you're going to remember the good times, and on your bad days, well, you know, you're going to see those photos in a different light. I have a memory of getting socked in the head with a loaf of white bread on the way to a camping trip with friends, and that was kind of the beginning of the end of that marriage. The camping trip itself was the rest of the end, but that's a whole other story. 

This whole story was inspired by the playwright's marriage, and you know, that's what writers do, spin straw into gold, or try to polish a turd, and therefore everything they do becomes grist for the mill. But, funny thing, his ex-wife sued him because she felt that the musical violated the non-disclosure terms of their divorce, and then HE sued HER for interfering with his creative process. There you go, every marriage starts with a contract and ends with a lawsuit. Some elements of the play were therefore changed so that Cathy would not resemble the playwright's ex so much. Now I really want to hear the song that got removed, because I bet there's some real dirt there. 

As a stage musical, "The Last Five Years" only ran for two months off-Broadway, but it did get two Drama Desk Awards, so it was at least popular enough to warrant being turned into a film, but clearly there was no budget for more than one professional actor (yes, I said one, not two, name one other movie Jeremy Jordan was in) and I'm willing to bet they spent more money on catering than on the casting. Well, food is expensive and you do have to feed both the cast and the crew. Seriously, though, the entire budget is estimated at $3.5 million and the film grossed under $300,000 - that's not good. I guess it's easy to see how the film ended up on Tubi. 

If you really wanted to, there's a list of the songs in the IMDB section in chronological order, so if you were watching on DVD, you could chapter skip and watch everything the way it would be if it were a normal movie, which I would support. I think the only real reason to arrange scenes in a non-chronological order would be to gain some insight by juxtaposing THAT scene with THAT OTHER one, and honestly I don't think that theory applies here. The formation and dissolution of a relationship is so universal that our minds can essentially understand what came before what, I mean if he's cheating on her, the cheating scene obviously took place before the break-up scene, because if it came after, then that wouldn't be cheating. But you can go around and around on this one if you're looking for the reason why they broke up - and you'll probably land on the fact that HIS career was successful and HERS was not. 

Look, life is long and if you live long enough, you may find yourself in some situation like this - you could be the one driving the bus or you could be the one riding in the bus, or you may have different roles in different relationships. This BY ITSELF, the fact that one of the two people is more successful - I can see how this could cause tension but it doesn't always break people up, there are a lot of lifelong relationships where one person makes more money, or is further along in their career, but you know, time goes by and things change and every relationship ultimately ends, it just becomes a question of how. For these two crazy kids, maybe they were young and they just couldn't deal with one of them being more successful than the other. It happens, but we all have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and maybe try again once we're ready. 

This is kind of what we're looking for, here at the Movie Year, when we put together a romance chain. Universal truths - things in a tiny not-often-seen movie that we can all connect with, lessons we can apply to our daily lives that might make it easier for us to endure. Check it out if you can endure the whole non-linear thing and the Jewish song about the tailor that is rather cringe-y.

Directed by Richard LaGravenese (director of "Beautiful Creatures" and "P.S. I Love You")

Also starring Jeremy Jordan, Tamara Mintz, Cassandra Inman, Kate Meltzer, Emma Meltzer, Bettina Bresnan, Charly Bivona, Alex Stebbins (last seen in "The Other Woman"), Lily LaGravenese, Betina Joly, I. Ginzburg, Lisa Herring, Nina Ordman, Robert Immerman, Michael Fawcett, Jerome Schwartz, Bill Hunter, Anna Ackerman, Susan Moses, Marcy Orloff Prastos, Maia Bliskovski, Chelsea Chrostowski, Leah Shapiro, Natalie Knepp (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Marceline Hugot (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Wade Dooley, Ashley Spencer, Nic Novicki (last seen in "Marry Me"), Rafael Sardina (last heard in "The Assistant"), Laura Harrier (last seen in "The Starling"), Luis Castro de Leon, Jason Robert Brown (last seen in "tick, tick...BOOM!"), Georgia Stitt (ditto), Meg Carriero (last seen in "The Night Before"), Stephanie Corbett, Kurt Deutsch, Sam Gilroy (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures" (2013)), Randy Redd (ditto), Linda Hendrick, Cat Lynch, Allison Macri, Will MacAdam (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Sherie Rene Scott (last seen in "P.S. I Love You"), Alan Simpson, Betsy Wolfe, Williemgc (last seen in "Lucky Them")

RATING: 6 out of 10 Shapiros in Washington Heights