BEFORE: OK, so here's the dilemma, I've got my current programmed chain due to run out in just about a week, and there's a HUGE gap where September's supposed to be, the month is like this 20 to 28-slotted blank, and I have no idea what to put there. Second problem, tonight's film leads into something that's kind of back-to-school-ish, and it feels too early, September hasn't even started yet.
So, I started playing around with some new ideas, because it seems like the last "Divergent" film is going to connect quite easily to the start of my Halloween chain - a bit TOO easily, I could get there in two or three steps instead of 25 or 27. I search my list for the other stars of tonight's film and I've got the germ of an idea here, I think I may change the plan and go off on a tangent after tonight, get into some action films with Jason Statham or something and then try to re-connect to the chain as originally planned.
The more I played around with it, the further I seemed to get from the original plan, until I started to see a path back. So there's another option, instead of trying to fill a giant 28-day gap, I can delay tomorrow's film by dropping in 9 or even 11 films, and there are three "outs" that circle back to the film I had planned for August 28, which would then be delayed until September 6, and that's perfect timing for a back-to-school film. This could work, and it would leave me with just a 15 or 18-movie gap on the back end, which might be easier to fill. Assuming that I can connect from there to the first horror film, which I really should start figuring out anyway.
I've got about a day to decide - do I want to go off on a tangent now or leave more slots open for late September? There's no movie tomorrow because I have to work Orientation again Tuesday morning at 7 am, so right after I post this I'm going to try to go to sleep and get up at 5 am so I can leave the house by 6. That would be more ideal than trying to work an 8-hour shift again on zero hours of sleep. Then tomorrow afternoon I can try connecting the two ends of the September/October gap, if I can do that then I'll have a path to Halloween, and 72 slots left as of September 1. Even if September uses 30 slots and October takes 17, that still leaves 25 to play with in November and December, hopefully that's enough. And if I have a couple skip days in September, that will just free up more slots to connect to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Joaquin Phoenix carries over again from "Beau Is Afraid".
THE PLOT: When his sister asks him to look after her son, a radio journalist embarks on a cross-country trip with his energetic nephew to show him life away from Los Angeles.
AFTER: We had dinner last week with another couple (rare), someone my wife knew in high school and her boyfriend, and thankfully we're at a point where people can talk politics again, after you confirm that your dinner companions are on the same side as you, at least. Naturally I was charming and funny, but in that self-deprecating way I have. The recent buzzword from something that human thumb/vice president candidate said was something about "childless cat ladies" running his party, and this guy could really learn a thing or twelve about tact. Even if you think those are the people running your political party, good God, man, then why would you want to make fun of them? THEY RUN YOUR PARTY, according to you, even though they don't, but why not be nice to them then, if they hold your fate in their hands. Anyway, my wife's friend is like us, no kids, and she prefers the term "child-free" rather than "child-less". Sounds better, right? Plus we're free, we're not tied down by some being that controls our life with its silly needs and cries all the time and can't even form a sentence yet. We can pack two bags (OK, three) and jump in the car and go away for the weekend any time we want, and not have to think about who's going to take care of the kid while we're away. Or worse, take the kid with us. Uh-uh, no thanks, we're the couple who wouldn't take a Disney cruise or even a Carnival cruise, because too many kids, we researched and found the cruise line with the most old people, because duh, then we'd look young by comparison. (It's Holland America, BTW.)
Joaquin Phoenix here plays a radio journalist (that's a thing?) who is middle-aged and child-FREE, and yet for some reason he agrees to watch his nephew for a few weeks while his sister's husband gets his mental faculties together, or gets clean or gets his head straight or something. It's maybe a bit unclear, but hey, some relationships are like that. But dude, WHY would you agree to this when you've never taken care of a child before? You were WINNING, man, child-free and devil-may-care, OK, maybe a bit lonely but that's no reason to do something drastic like baby-sit for what, two weeks? I'd love to connect more with my niece and nephew, but I'd rather do it when I'm not also responsible for them.
So Johnny comes to Los Angeles and stays at the house and takes care of Jesse while Johnny's sister goes to Oakland and makes sure her estranged husband gets the mental care he needs for his bipolar disorder or his drug problem or whatever it is. This takes longer than intended, and Johnny has to go back to his life in New York City, so he gets permission to take Jesse with him. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?). Actually, not a lot goes wrong, there's maybe once or twice where Jesse ALMOST gets lost and then a couple times where Johnny gets mad at him and Jesse shuts down, but generally speaking here, no permanent harm is done.
Later on they both travel to New Orleans, where Johnny's job is to interview school kids about, I don't know, the future or something. I tuned a lot of this out because listening to kids today and the way they talk is an absolute nightmare - it's not even the slang, it's the overuse of the word "like" every two seconds and their overall inability to put words together in a sentence to form a coherent thought. Couldn't they find any kids to interview in this movie that were just a bit more eloquent than normal?
Anyway, that's it, that's the film. Uncle takes care of nephew and they work some shit out and they create a bond that may stand the test of time. Big whoop, I'm not really impressed. But then, I'm coming off of "Beau Is Afraid" which is totally super OUT THERE and maybe I need some normalcy in a movie after watching that, but then maybe this is too far of a swing in that direction. It's so freakin' normal that it's incredibly boring, so what's the worse sin, being three hours long and radically unique and weird and impossible to take seriously, or being under two hours long and never really taking any risk at all and going nowhere and ultimately being nothing to write home about?
I have to think being boring is worse than being weird, because I'm going to talk to people about "Beau Is Afraid", I'm going to find out if they've seen it and if not, I'll tell people how freakin' weird it is. But this movie? I doubt I'll ever mention it again to anyone, because why would I? There's no THERE there, really. I'm just going to use this as a connector to other things and move on, in fact I've forgotten about most of this movie already, and I just watched it last night. Who cares? The main message of the film is that you've got to "c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon" as the kids says, which I guess in kid talk means you've got to keep going in life because really, what other choice do you have? But we learned this before from "Shawshank Redemption", that we'd all better get busy living or get busy dying, and there it was stated much better. Anyway, be a good film, be a bad film, be a weird film, just don't be boring.
This whole film is in black and white? We have color film now, you know, they invented it in the 1930's. Why any director insists on filming in black and white in this day and age is beyond me. I understand the old films are in black and white, because that's all they HAD back then, and people accepted it only because they had no choice. But why go back to that? It makes no sense. People can leave the theater and remember that their lives and the world are in color, and suddenly they feel better about themselves? That's the only reason I can imagine. I kept thinking at some point this film is going to transition to color, like in "The Wizard of Oz", that was like the big change-over moment, and quite frankly, I think we should keep moving forward, not backwards. There was an opportunity here to start the movie in Detroit and Los Angeles and have those terrible (so I've heard) cities appear in black and white, but come on, when the action changes to New York City, the film should have transitioned to full color, right? New York is only black and white in Woody Allen movies. That would have made a statement. Like the kid gets to see the Atlantic Ocean and realize that oceans should be blue, not like that crappy one on the West Coast is. (I've seen the Pacific from San Diego, and it looked fine, but I just assume the water around L.A. is some terrible other color. Prove me wrong.). And then they go down to New Orleans and again, COME ON, if ever there was a city that deserves to be seen in color, it's that one. Just saying.
Also starring Gaby Hoffman (last seen in "Everything Is Copy"), Woody Norman (last seen in "The Current War"), Scoot McNairy (last seen in "The Rover"), Molly Webster, Jaboukie Young-White (last heard in "Strange World"), Deborah Strang (last seen in "Eagle Eye"), Sunni Patterson, Brey'on Shaw, Keisuke Hoashi, Gita Reddy (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Elaine Kagan (last seen in "The Big Fix').
RATING: 3 out of 10 chapters from "The Wizard of Oz" read at bedtime
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