BEFORE: Miley Cyrus carries over from "LOL", obvi. And Greg Kinnear was in one of the first romance films this year, I said that I'd circle back to him, and now is that time. There was so much cross-over between the romance films that I simply couldn't follow every link, there was an embarrassment of riches in that regard, which can make it tough to land on an order - knowing that film #2 in the chain links to #25 is great, but it's also useless and ultimately confusing if putting those two films together doesn't make for a "better" order, whatever that is.
I'm trying to get back into playing some video-games, but as soon as I start, I realize I just don't have the time. Plus I remember having a lot of fun playing "Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories", and suggesting to my wife that she play it too, but she skipped that one and moved on to GTA 4 and 5, and I haven't played either of those. I never finished "GTA: San Andreas", I reached a point where the missions were too difficult for me, so I stopped. But I did play some of these games over during the pandemic, then I went back to work and didn't have time to keep going - movies, TV, comic books and work all pull me in different directions, and something's got to give. Mostly I play games on my phone now, that I seem to have time for, but I'm even falling behind on those. I've still got another week before my next shift at the theater, so maybe I can fit in some more video-games, but last night I stayed up until 5 am playing GTA and I really shouldn't do that often, then I sleep until noon and my sleep schedule is already terrible, I don't need to make it any worse.
Here's todays' line-up for TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Day 17:
Best Actress Nominees:
6:30 am "Camille" (1937)
8:30 am "I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)
10:30 am "Baby Doll" (1956)
12:45 pm "A Star Is Born" (1954)
4:00 pm "Far From Heaven" (2002)
6:00 pm "Gaslight" (1944)
Best Actress Winners:
8:00 pm "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951)
10:15 pm "Moonstruck" (1987)
12:15 am "The Country Girl" (1954)
2:15 am "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966)
4:45 am "Dangerous" (1935)
Another 6 seen out of these 11 ("A Star Is Born", "Far From Heaven", "Gaslight", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Moonstruck" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") This brings me to 72 seen out of 194, or 37.1%. Finally my score is improving, only now it's so late in the game that all progress will be slow. I'll do well on Special Effects but then probably terrible on Foreign Language Films.
THE PLOT: A rebellious girl is sent to a Southern beach town for the summer to stay with her father. Through their mutual love of music, the estranged duo learn to reconnect.
AFTER: This is another movie based on a Nicholas Sparks book, like "The Notebook" and "A Walk to Remember". There are a few more of those out there but the films ended up quite below the radar, so I have to decide if I want to add them in the future. Probably next year's brick films need some mortar to join them together, so I really should take a look - but there will be plenty of time for that. I won't need to land on a viewing order for next February until December of this year, and the landscape could be completely different by then. It's hard to do a chain AND stay within a genre, sure, but if there are enough films from that genre on the list, and enough connections, then certain things are possible.
But with a story from Nicholas Sparks, you can expect things to fall into the "It's Complicated" arena, and it won't just be that somebody thought she saw her boyfriend making out with someone at the bathroom stall in school, and made an assumption based on the purse she saw on the floor. We've got some serious issues tonight, like the fact that Ronnie's parents are divorced and she got in some kind of trouble up north for shoplifting, plus she got accepted into Juilliard and seems to have no intention of going. And then when she arrives in Georgia, she gets caught up in the plight of the sea turtles on the beach, and the fact that a very hungry raccoon wants to eat the eggs before they hatch. OK, I have no idea how a city girl knows so much about sea turtles, but since she's a vegetarian we can also assume she's big on animal rights, or something? She's got PETA on speed-dial, I don't know, but aren't raccoons also part of the natural order, and don't those little trash pandas have a right to flourish, too?
Ronnie's father also has problems, he's helping to rebuild the local church that burned down, because he was the last one seen inside, so naturally everyone in town assumes it's his fault, either he's a secret arsonist or he was careless with some candles, either way he's to blame. He seems to agree, because he was on some kind of medication last year that maybe clouded his judgment (umm, yeah, remember that, it might be important later).
Meanwhile Ronnie keeps bumping into local hottie Will, who first spills her shake when she walks too close to his beach volleyball game, so she hates him from the start. (Therefore, they're destined to be together?). Later the aquarium sends over a volunteer to help watch the turtle eggs, and what do you know, it's him. That's a small beach town for you. They bond, sort of, only her father says they have to sit 6 feet apart while watching the turtle eggs - HA! - doesn't he know that if he forbids them to get together then that's exactly what they'll want to do? Or maybe that was his plan all along, so his daughter would at least be happy or distracted and not be just moping around the house and getting into trouble at the carnival. Oh, yeah, there's a carnival in town, for like the fourth or fifth movie this year - it seems to be the go-to for this year's rom-coms, where should we send the teens on a date? Oh, just say there's a carnival in town, because isn't there always?
Will lets Ronnie into his world, which involves working at the aquarium - but then one of his exes tracks Ronnie down and tells her, "Oh, he does that with ALL his girlfriends..." so she cools on him for a while, but come on, what's the big deal? If you went to a movie or out to dinner with your previous lover, does that mean you can NEVER do that with your next partner? Let's be real here, the partners change frequently but the things that you DO with your partners tend to not change, because fun things are still fun things no matter who you're with. Right? Don't let the haters make you think you're not special, Ronnie.
Ronnie also gets caught up in the situation of Blaze, a local girl who's dating the very abusive dirtbag, Marcus. Things get so bad that Marcus interrupts Will's sister's wedding while Blaze is working there and Ronnie's a guest, forcing Will to engage in a fist fight - and who gets blamed for this? Ronnie and Blaze! It's just not fair, how is the male dirtbag's behavior somehow the fault of the girl he's been abusing? Calling shenanigan on this one, and Will's Rich parents needed to put the blame where it belongs. But that's really what this film is about, people feeling guilty for things that are just NOT their fault, while the real guilty parties go unpunished. Hey, life's not fair, sometimes you take the blame for burning down a church when you didn't do it, and sometimes a raccoon eats your eggs while you're off somewhere else, just being a turtle.
Ronnie eventually learns to lighten up, play music again and spend some quality time with her father before his illness is revealed, and her little brother pitches in to get the stained-glass window done for the church, which might be against child labor laws, but that's where we find ourselves. So then the only remaining question is, can Ronnie forgive Will for not telling the truth about her father's innocence, and can these crazy kids transfer to colleges in the same city and maybe get back on track to have some kind of life together?
Co-starring in this film led to a real-life relationship for Liam Hemsworth and Miley Cyrus, though they were on-again and off-again they got engaged in 2016, married in 2018, and divorced in 2020. There's no real record of the exact cause of the break-up, but Miley had been dating both men and women before that, and also, well, she's Miley Cyrus, so I think we can read between the lines there and understand what "irreconcilable differences" means. As one character says in this movie, "Well, sometimes love just isn't enough." Or we can go with "it's complicated."
Also starring Liam Hemsworth (last seen in "Empire State"), Greg Kinnear (last seen in "Loser"), Kelly Preston (last seen in "Eulogy"), Bobby Coleman (last seen in "Friends With Money"), Nick Lashaway (last seen in "In Time"), Carly Chaikin (last seen in "In a World..."), Adam Barnett, Kate Vernon (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Nick Searcy (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Melissa Ordway (last seen in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"), Carrie Malabre, Rhoda Griffis (last seen in "One Missed Call"), Lance E. Nichols (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), Hallock Beals, Stephanie Leigh Schlund (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"), Michael Jamorski, Phil Parham, Bonnie Johnson.
RATING: 5 out of 10 service shops in the Blakelee Brakes franchise
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