BEFORE: Toni Collette carries over from "Clockwatchers" - both that film and THIS film were cut from the final months of Movie Year 15, so they've both been re-scheduled early in Movie Year 16, that's only fair. Now I also hope to reschedule "Men, Women & Children" and "Graveyard Shift" also, but something had to be cut. And last year I did manage to get to several films that had been cut time and time again, like "The U.S. vs. Billie Holiday", so this proves that I can get to everything, given enough time. So any romance films that end up getting cut from February will just be tentatively booked for next year, and all horror films I didn't get to last October, well, I've got another shot at them coming up in nine months' time.
They had the Golden Globes the other night and I feel like I should be mining those nominations and awards for material right now, as I feel like I've got nearly zero chance this year of seeing the Oscar-nominated films before THAT ceremony, which is on March 10. Last year I watched "Everything Everywhere All at Once" in January, which was a smart move - but I had no idea it would win Best Picture at the time. I guess "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" won the most, but I don't think "Oppenheimer" is available anywhere, and I just can't bring myself to put the "Barbie" film on my list, but I guess I'll have to at some point. "Poor Things", "The Holdovers", "Maestro" and "Killers of the Flower Moon" are all being talked about, but I already made my January and February schedules, so I've got no spare slots between now and March 10, so what can I do, except try to clear the list a little bit so I've got space for these films when they DO become available.
I remember that I went to see "Asteroid City" instead of "Oppenheimer" - I stand behind that choice, but now I'm paying the price for that, a little. I focused on the films that I thought I might enjoy more, like "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" instead of "Barbie" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" instead of "Killers of the Flower Moon", so be it.
THE PLOT: At the age of ten, Henry James Herman, a boy who was conceived in a petri dish and raised by his feminist mother, follows a string of Post-It notes in hopes of finding his biological father.
AFTER: OK, so now I know what THIS one it about - it's a little bit all-over-the-place, but it's about people losing their family and persisting, but eventually forming a new family. You can almost hear someone pitching this saying, "It's about LIFE, you know?" Patricia came from a family with four older brothers, three of them died shortly after her mother died on her 10th birthday, and the fourth took off for Canada so he wouldn't have to serve in Vietnam. All of this left her to take care of her father, who never did anything to help raise his family, as he came from that time when men didn't do that sort of thing. Patricia became a feminist, and at some point decided to have a baby girl via sperm donor, only that girl turned out to be a boy, who was able to talk at a very early age, and also remember every moment of his life from day one, which is a condition called hyperthymesia. He becomes a child prodigy who's bullied as a "freak" but enrolls in college when he's like 10 years old, so there's that.
At some point his grandfather pays off a nurse at the fertilization clinic to get a lead on Henry's half-sister, which puts him on the road to finding his biological father, even though these donation things are supposed to be random. His half-sister is Audrey, who also gets bullied at her school, everyone calls her "lesbo" and her father, a college professor, did try to raise her without the influence of gender stereotypes, and he wrote a book about that, only now he realizes that Audrey's embarrassed about the book and you maybe shouldn't turn your daughter's upbringing into a science experiment. He's got the opposite problem from Henry, he has trouble remembering things, so he uses Post-It notes, the greatest invention of our time, to organize all his thoughts. He also took his wife's last name, before she left him for his cancer doctor, and before he made donations to the sperm bank, but he's got a bad feeling that he's not really Audrey's father, because his wife was having that affair.
Wouldn't you know it, Henry gets accepted at the SAME college where his biological father teaches, and he inserts himself into his father's life after a failed book signing, but the two bullied half-siblings bond with each other, and they each just might be what the other one needs to get by, and down the road maybe Henry's parents will discover the same thing, and together they'll be one weird little happy family bonded by random sperm donation. But all that feels rather modern and appropriate, like who DATES any more, right? And marriages never work out in the end, so who needs them? It's better when you give up trying and just make things work with a person who shares some of the same attitudes as you about the hopelessness of it all.
Meanwhile, 2011 is a great time to be alive, isn't it? You don't need a husband to have a baby, your Muslim teacher lets you beat up your bully when her back is turned, and if you don't fit in at your junior high, just take a few standardized tests and then a college admissions officer will PAY you a stipend to attend his university. Wait, what?
I'm not sure about the weird attempt to get humor out of Patricia's mother and brothers dying - it's a series of freak accidents, like her mother burns up after lighting her birthday cake candles, which became even more traumatic when her father threw his whiskey on her to try to douse the flames. So she's not mad at her father for that? The twins die in a stupid police car accident and Jimmy dies from AIDS, but the family can't even seem to talk about that last one for some reason. Everyone has to deal with some tragedy in their life, sure, but this all seems particularly harsh and you'd think that looking through old family photos would make things worse, not better. Near the end Patricia's oldest brother finally comes back from Canada, and Henry asks why he didn't come back after amnesty was granted to the Vietnam draft dodgers, but we don't really get an answer on that point, do we?
But this is all about identity, embracing the things that make you unique, and if you want to be a lesbian, it's OK, and you shouldn't be bullied about it. If you want to be a 10-year-old who goes to college, that's fine too, and if you want to form a family out of people thinly connected by biology and chance, it's all good. That white male nurse at the clinic seems to think he's black, though, and for some reason the movie says that's OK, too. Umm, but it's not. We have to draw the line somewhere, after all.
Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Jason Spevack (last seen in "Sunshine Cleaning"), Frank Moore (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Samantha Weinstein (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Sarah Orenstein (last seen in "The Calling"), Hannah Bridgen, Jamie Johnston, Mark MacDonald, Mickey MacDonald, Cameron Kennedy, Kevin Hare (last seen in "Steal This Movie"), Rosalba Martinni (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies"), Devan Cohen, Nora Sheehan, Dewshane Williams, Aaron Abrams (last seen in "Take This Waltz"), Keith Dinicol, Austin MacDonald, Mishu Vellani, Paul Braunstein (last seen in "Undercover Grandpa"), Kate Hewlett, Mark Caven (last seen in "Maleficent"), R.H. Thomson (last seen in "Vision Quest"), Adie Merrell, Kristine Fairlie (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), with a cameo from Oprah Winfrey (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer")
RATING: 6 out of 10 spitballs
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