BEFORE: Where do I even GO after "Deadpool & Wolverine"? There's just too many paths radiating out from it, like it's some big transportation hub, such as the Atlanta airport. There are flights to everywhere, once you get to an airport you can go anywhere in the world, even if it's not a non-stop flight, that's probably the best analogy I've come up with so far for the linking system. The best thing to do right now is think about where I WANT to go and then ask how many layovers it's going to take to get there.
I had no more Hugh Jackman on the list, but the most obvious next stop would be "IF", a movie with Ryan Reynolds AND Blake Lively so that would be two links, which doesn't matter but I kind of like when there's more than one link. But the movie looks very silly and it also has a big cast list, so that means it's another big transportation hub, and maybe I don't want to waste those. It's almost a sure thing I'm going to get there one way or another. My next thought was to pick up on the Jennifer Garner path and that would lead me to "Family Switch" or "Men, Women & Children", the latter is a film about how the internet and phones have changed relationships, and I passed on this one last year, so I've been meaning to try again, PLUS that could lead me to "Next Goal Wins" after that, via Kaitlyn Dever. BUT, it looks like this film could be useful next February in connecting a couple other films, so I want to pass on this one again, I think. Sometimes a film can pop up in the travel recommendations a few times before I visit it.
Out of respect for the IMDB (and as a method of narrowing down my choices) I decided to not follow any link that involved an actor from the "20th Century Fox tribute" during the closing credits of yesterday's film. Sure, I believe an appearance is an appearance, and the closing credits are PART of the film (though the footage in the opening Marvel logo is not) so I've declared a bunch of links today to be insufficient or at least unpreferred, so I went a different way with it, really one of the more unobvious links I could find, but the benefit here is two-fold, I can stay on the theme of death and loss for one more film, and also, I can still get to "Next Goal Wins", and I think I see a way to also work in the new "Mission: Impossible" film and also "Napoleon" before the summer's over. Now I've bought myself about two weeks before I need to find a connection between the end of the "Divergent" movies to the start of my horror chain.
This is all a long way of saying that Emma Corrin carries over from "Deadpool & Wolverine".
THE PLOT: When his husband unexpectedly dies, Marc's world shatters, sending him and his two friends on a soul-searching trip to Paris that reveals some hard truths they each need to face.
AFTER: Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, so now I'm regretting including the "Rebel Moon" movies among all these dramas about dying and losing family members or pets. Or really, if I'd known I would have flipped the order and put "Armageddon Time" after "Rebel Moon", because it seems like maybe "Armadeggon Time" has more in common with "The Son". But then I would have gone from the documentary about Katharine Hepburn straight into sci-fi, and that felt like it would have been too much of a jolt. Anyway, in the last week I've seen the dead grandfather movie, the dead son movie, the dead dog movie, and the dead classmate movie, but I think the trend ends tonight with the dead husband movie. Oh, and the dead superhero/dead timeline movie, of course. Grief Week ends with a movie called "Good Grief", I'm OK with that.
It's really a new world where we can HAVE this kind of movie, one where a man is grieving his dead husband, I mean, sure, there were gay relationships depicted on film back in the 1970's, but those were films like "Cruising" and "Dog Day Afternoon", nothing really about regular couples who just happened to be two gay men. Gradually things changed and of course gay marriage became legal at some point, nationwide in the U.S. in 2015, I want to say. So I think a movie like this would have been ground-breaking 10 years ago and probably impossible 20 years ago, but now seems just about right on time.
Losing your spouse CAN feel like your whole world has ended. Maybe you built part of your world around theirs, you got used to doing certain things together, eating some meals together and others apart, taking vacations together or watching some TV shows together. What do you do, who can you be when that's no longer possible? Marc had managed to escape dealing with the pain of his mother's death by marrying his older, richer boyfriend, Oliver. But once Oliver dies, too, right after a Christmas party, how can he deal with this? Well, with the support of his two closest friends, Thomas (also his ex) and Sophie. After a year of grieving (which we don't see), the holiday season comes around again, and Marc learns from Oliver's accountant that some expenses need to be dealt with, like the cost of the apartment in Paris that Marc knew nothing about. This leads Marc to finally (?) read the last letter that Oliver wrote him, in which he mentioned meeting someone else, and feeling the need to explore that new relationship. At the apartment in Paris, perhaps.
So Marc offers to take his two best friends from London to Paris for both Christmas and the anniversary of Oliver's death. Also, he feels the need to check out that apartment, you know, just to see what it might be worth, and if there's any evidence of his husband's infidelity, which he only just learned about. Paris brings a chance encounter with a stranger at a wine bar, and a possible new relationship for Marc, and Sophie and Thomas also manage to find new Mr. Rights, or at least Mr. Right Nows. But the three also bounce off each other after their nights on the town and it seems they've all got some issues to address.
Marc meets Theo again, and admits that he stopped painting after his mother died, and that he possibly never really went through the stages of grief properly, instead he just dived into the marriage with Oliver that turned into an open marriage, at least for Oliver. Theo brings Marc to a museum with some giant Monet water-lily art, and explains that Claude Monet painted them after the death of his wife and son, and that was his own method of dealing with loss. Then one day a young dancer turns up at the apartment, and this apparently was Oliver's new boyfriend, he had been the winner of an art scholarship, and one thing led to another. Thus Marc's real reason for planning the trip is revealed, and the friends argue once again.
Thomas is afraid of never being "the one" to his boyfriends, and Sophie admits to having commitment issues too, so maybe in the end nobody really ever has their shit together. Marc decides to sell the house he shared with Oliver and takes up painting again, having finally come to some form of acceptance, Sophie gets back together with Terrance and Thomas finds a new beau. The biggest obvious metaphor here is the giant ferris wheel in Paris that the three friends ride, and they stay on to go around one more time. That's what we all do in life, we're all riding on a giant ferris wheel of sorts, and if we're lucky, we get to keep going around in circles, until the ride is over.
Also starring Daniel Levy (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Ruth Negga (last seen in "Passing"), Himesh Patel (last seen in "Enola Holmes 2"), Luke Evans (last seen in "Pinocchio" (2022)), Celia Imrie (last seen in "The Gathering Storm"), Arnaud Valois (last seen in "Paradise Hills"), David Bradley (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), Medhi Baki, Jamael Westman, Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Outside In"), Yoli Fuller, Noé Besin, Cyrielle Debreuil (last seen in "War Machine"), Nigel Lilley, Gabriel Marc, Zoe Bruneau (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Siu-See Hung, Régis Vallée, Nay Murphy, Félix Dumant, Gérald Jean.
RATING: 5 out of 10 karaoke songs (Elton John, of course)
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