BEFORE: Well, it's not really where I wanted to be on a semi-round number like 3,050 (midway between 3,000 and 3,100), I would have preferred to have the big Marvel movie land on such a round number, but hey, what can I do?
I just figured out how to get an advanced look at TCM's October schedule, so now I know who their "Monster of the Month" is going to be. Here's an insider's tip - October's monthly highlights are not posted yet, but if you check the DAILY schedule at tcm.com you can advance forward, day by day, and get a pretty good feel for how the next month is going to go.
Now, it happens that I was going to watch three films already with their "Monster of the Month", so what should I do? I was planning to knock off all the Dracula films left in my collection, and I'd rather not switch gears this late in the game. So I think I'm going to stay the course, more or less, add just three films featuring this year's profiled monster to my watchlist and cut my 2018 films with that same monster down from three to two - saving one to link up with the three I'm going to record, that should keep the best linking possibilities open for October 2019 with four films, with (I think) four varied casts. Remember, I now allow myself to link between films with the same character, so if the featured monster was, say, The Phantom of the Opera (it's not, but I don't want to spoil TCM's surprise) then I could link between films from different years starring that character, even if actors don't carry over.
This will also solve my problem over which film to cut from the remaining 51 on my 2018 schedule, which now has just 50 slots to fill. Still, I should probably take one more look at the cast lists for my October films, maybe there is a way that I can link through them based on actors, rather than characters...I do tend to see the same people over and over again in genre films. Stay tuned for an update, I guess.
For today, Judy Greer carries over from "Ant-Man and the Wasp".
THE PLOT: A lonely, neurotic and hilariously honest middle-aged man reunites with his estranged wife, and meets his teenage daughter for the first time.
AFTER: Truth be told, I already did one Woody Harrelson chain of three films this year, when "Solo" came out. But I couldn't do one big chain of six or seven films, because "Solo" was released in May, and one of the films seemed perfect for back-to-school time in September. So it made sense to split them up into two smaller three-film pieces, especially since those two pieces each could help me link to where I wanted to be, though in two different months. In a very similar way, I'm also going to have two chains this year with Samuel L. Jackson in them, four films in early may and I've got another 6 coming up at the end of September. Nicole Kidman's been all over the countdown, too, with 5 non-linked appearances in 2018 so far, and another 6 coming up after October that will be linked. There was just no way to keep 11 Kidman films together and still honor the calendar, I've just been sort of shearing the films off from the main block, one by one, if they serve another linking purpose for me.
If there's a main theme for this week so far, it's something about families, how they form in unconventional ways and then fracture, only to re-form in another fashion. Even "Mute" had a divorced father who was raising his daughter, using hookers to baby-sit while he and his non-gay life partner visited the brothels of future Berlin. Then in "The Fundamentals of Caring" the disabled teen came from a fractured family, but formed another loose one while on a road-trip with his caregiver, a hitchhiker and a pregnant woman. "Ant-Man and the Wasp" of course featured Paul Rudd as a divorced dad, trying to spend time with his daughter while also superheroing on the side, and forming another de facto family with the Pyms (father, daughter and quantum realm-errant mother).
And now tonight I've got Wilson, a middle-aged man who decides it's time to re-connect with his ex-wife, because his main regret seems to be that she was pregnant when they split, and he's naturally assumed all this time that she had an abortion - but when he tracks her down, she reveals that she decided to have the baby adopted instead. This might be a common pipe dream among divorced people - I know that it would be nearly impossible for anybody to have or raise a baby in secret, but it could happen, especially if the other parent wasn't inclined to track them them down, or if it was long enough ago that there was no internet to search. But in a way it's a worn-out stereotype that feels like it belongs in a soap opera, a revelation such as "I never told you, but you've got a child that you never knew about, and that child is now a teenager!"
The problem here, though, is Wilson's personality, or lack thereof. The film synopsis describes him as "hilariously honest" but I don't think that tells the whole story. He's obnoxiously honest, in that he doesn't seem to have any conversational filters, no safety check about whether what he wants to say is appropriate, so therefore no barriers, and limited social skills as a result. Maybe there are people like this out there, certainly these days many people are becoming brutally honest in their political and social opinions (umm, thanks a lot, Facebook) and so we now have to deal with these obnoxious people who don't hold anything back, even when it comes to calling the cops on people of color just for grilling in public, or selling lemonade, or just looking suspicious.
Wilson doesn't seem to be overtly racist, though - but he seems to have a knack for bothering people in public, which some might say is even worse. Like, if you're on a bus or train and there are dozens of empty seats, he's the kind of person who will sit RIGHT NEXT to you, and try to strike up a conversation, especially if that seems like the very last thing that you'd want him to do. OK, so he's honest, good for him, but this also makes him an asshole. We've got a ton of unwritten rules in society, like don't talk to strangers, don't make eye contact in an elevator, don't touch other people without their consent, definitely don't talk to another man while using the urinals - so what do you do with a guy who doesn't know any of the unwritten rules?
As you might expect, someone who doesn't know the rules of conduct, or chooses not to abide by them, is going to get into some form of trouble. And yes, getting back together with his ex-wife probably counts as a form of trouble. Tracking down their teen daughter together and contacting her (without first going through proper channels, such as contacting her adoptive parents first) definitely counts as big trouble. Even though Wilson's intentions are good, his actions are still very wrong. I personally didn't find that this made him "hilariously honest", in most ways he was anything but hilarious.
But if anything, his character came across here as sort of a modern-day "Candide", in that no matter how much trouble he got into, no matter how much he suffered setbacks from his actions, he still somehow maintained a positive attitude, which then comes across as somewhat delusional - or maybe he's just somewhere on the spectrum, like with Asperger's or autism? This is never made clear. Like, he seems to genuinely believe he can mend his old relationships, put the family back together (when it was never together in the first place) and everything's going to work out to be OK. What a nut. I mean, points for being an optimist, but it's just not realistic, by any stretch of the imagination. Once you burn your bridges with your friends and family, isn't it just easier to find new friends or start a new family somewhere else?
Also starring Woody Harrelson (last seen in "North Country"), Laura Dern (last seen in "Downsizing"), Margo Martindale (ditto), Isabella Amara (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Cheryl Hines (last seen in "Along Came Polly"), David Warshofsky (last seen in "Fair Game"), Brett Gelman (last seen in "Jobs"), Mary Lynn Rajskub (last seen in "The Anniversary Party"), Lauren Weedman (last seen in "The Five-Year Engagement"), Bill McCallum (last seen in "The Straight Story"), Alec George, Tom Proctor (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation").
RATING: 4 out of 10 doggie chew-toys
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