How to Deal

Year 17, Day 53 - 2/22/25 - Movie #4,953

BEFORE: Another weekend is here, they seem to be coming on faster and faster, is that because we all start looking forward to them on Tuesday, or does time somehow speed up when you make it to your mid-late 50's?  Well, I'm not working at the theater this weekend, so I've got two days to fill, or at least a day and a half after we get our taxes done and hit IHOP. You know, I'll probably waste a bunch of it by sleeping late on Sunday, and then the rest will probably be spent dubbing movies to DVD and then going through the lists of what's new on the various streaming platforms this month, I'm three weeks behind on that.

Allison Janney carries over from "The DUFF" and she's now in the lead for appearances this year all by herself, with 6 movies.  Sally Field is in second place with 5.  Now here's the line-up for Sunday, 2/23, Day 23 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".  Just over a week to go, the Oscars ceremony is right around the corner now. 

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

8:00 am "49th Parallel" (1941)

10:15 am "42nd Street" (1933)

12:00 pm "Grand Hotel" (1932)

2:00 pm "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958)

4:00 pm "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967)

6:00 pm "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989)

Oscar Worthy Journalists: 

8:00 pm "All the President's Men" (1976)

10:30 pm "The China Syndrome" (1979)

12:45 am "Network" (1976)

3:00 am "Woman of the Year" (1942)

5:00 am "The Front Page" (1931)

I was at 105 seen out of 255, and I've seen just another 8 out of Sunday's 11 - everything but the first two and the last one (I watched the remake of "The Front Page", made in the 1970's though)

SO now 113 seen out of 266 takes me back up to 42.4%.

THE PLOT: A teenage girl learns to cope with her parents' divorce, her sister's wedding, her best friend's pregnancy and the attentions of her first serious boyfriend. 

AFTER: This film is not streaming anywhere, though I did record it on my DVR, that was the OLD DVR that I turned in last month in favor of the new one. I lost about 45 movies that way, but once I watch one of those films through some other method, then I no longer consider each film "lost", I cross if off that list and add it to a different list, the list of films that I have seen but I don't have a physical DVD copy of.  You know, an emergency back-up collection in case all streaming suddenly stops one day or the Library of Congress burns down and they need someone to step in and re-supply them. Look, I don't know why I keep storing everything on DVDs, they probably laugh at me at Staples every time I buy a package of blanks, like "Oh, here's the last guy using DVDs, he's back to buy more!"  Maybe I just like finding the movies on cable and crossing them off the list, it brings me some satisfaction, or perhaps it's just a habit I can't seem to break. 

But I think I know WHY this film isn't streaming anywhere right now, it's, well, it's not very good. It's centered on Halley, a teenage girl and thankfully the movie spends almost ZERO time at her school, because we've seen all that in movies before, it feels like just yesterday because it was. But all that stuff is played out, they tried to make her home life more interesting vis-a-vis relationships.  Her parents are divorced, and her dad is a local soft-rock DJ who's planning to elope with his new girlfriend, only they also want to have an elopement party, which is really counter-productive, but this guy can't resist being the center of attention. Meanwhile her mother is busy being bitter about the break-up, an attempt to record a message for potential online dates ends in disaster when she yells at the camera.  OK, we'll circle back to that later. 

Halley just can't deal with how horrible her parents' divorce was, and more importantly, how it affected HER, because it's 2003 and she's a millennial who makes everything about HER.  Meanwhile her older sister, Ashley, just got engaged and she totally forgot to consider how her engagement announcement (happening on the same day as the finalization of Halley's parents' divorce) would affect Halley. How dare she try to live her life and be happy!  Doesn't she know that 100% of the marriages that Halley is aware of don't last? What's the point of trying to be happy in a post-Y2K world, anyway?  

Same goes for Scarlett, Halley's best friend, who starts a relationship with Michael, the school soccer champ, without realizing how that was going to affect Halley's ability to run over to her house and burst into her bedroom without knocking. It's like Scarlett didn't even THINK of that when she initiated the relationship.  Michael's best friend, Macon, is always hanging around, and it seems only natural that Michael and Halley should get together and then they'd be a foursome that could double-date - only Halley doesn't like Michael all that much, he's the bad boy type with hair hanging in his face and he also skips school for like a week at a time with no explanation.  Why couldn't Scarlett pick a guy to date whose best friend would be a better match for Halley?  That was very inconsiderate of her, and when Michael dies unexpectedly after a soccer match, it's like karma, right?  He deserved to die because he didn't have a better best friend for Halley to hook up with. 

Nevertheless, Halley starts dating Macon, after the funeral anyway, and after Scarlett finds out that her summer fling with Michael got her knocked up, which means at some point she'll have less time to spend with Halley, again, this is very inconsiderate of her. Halley's mother catches her making out with Macon and grounds her, so she can't go to the New Years Eve party, what a bitch Halley's mom is, especially since she's getting it on with the mailman, so what right does she have to dictate who Halley can make out with?  Remember, this is all about entitled Halley.  So even when she's in a car crash with Macon, and he drops her off at the hospital, she's very upset that he just drove away and didn't hang around, the NERVE of that kid. He explains that he didn't want to get in trouble with Halley's mother, but it's no use, he wasn't there when Halley woke up, so she simply has to break up with him.  How else is he going to learn to BE there for her? 

After that, Halley plays a part in breaking up her sister's engagement - really, they deserved it for not, umm, well I'm sure they did something that Halley didn't approve of, like they made her go to that stupid dinner with Ashley's future in-laws where she couldn't cut up a quail right and also got caught smoking in a bathroom where a dog jumped through a window for some reason.  Really, this movie's like some kind of fever dream, it doesn't make any sense and random things happen and also there's a dog that you've never seen before. But then the wedding is back on because Lewis brought flowers to the airport so Halley has to wear a very stupid unflattering purple bridesmaid dress, and again, people are just NOT taking her into consideration when they make these decisions, so she's got like an infinite number of things to complain about.

As the movie title suggests, maybe it's a lot to deal with, however the movie never, ever offers any advice on HOW to deal, which, you know, might have been appropriate.  Should Halley do yoga or meditate, or just dance to burn off some tension?  I don't know, but you'd think a movie called "How to Deal" would offer up some suggestions on that point, and it just doesn't, as if somebody forgot to write that part.  There's a lot that happens, sure, but do those things come together and tell a coherent narrative that makes sense and also maybe offers some insight to the human condition?  No, of course not. Life ain't nothing but a bunch of irritating problems that you have to deal with until you graduate from high school and move away, leaving your mother to figure out whether she wants to live there alone or move.  I'm not saying life ISN'T a never-ending succession of minor irritations and major life problems, but we all watch movies to get away from all that, don't we? 

I probably know what you're wondering, why not put the two Mandy Moore films this month next to each other, isn't that the point of all this linking?  For that matter, why not put the two films with Jayne Eastwood next to each other, or why have two sets of two Heather Graham films, instead of four all in a row?  Look, I only need ONE connection between each film and the next, there are connections all over the place that I don't follow, that's just the way it works, and I planned out a chain that was the right number of movies for the space I had to fill, and it works.  If you think you can do better than me at the linking, you're welcome to try. Knock yourself out. 

Directed by: Clare Kilner (director of "The Wedding Date")

Also starring Mandy Moore (last seen in "Love, Wedding, Marriage"), Trent Ford (last seen in "The Island"), Alexandra Holden (last seen in "In a World..."), Dylan Baker (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Nina Foch (last seen in "You're Never Too Young"), Peter Gallagher (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Mackenzie Astin (last seen in "Wyatt Earp"), Connie Ray (last seen in "Worth"), Mary Catherine Garrison (last seen in "Begin Again"), Sonja Smits (last seen in "Owning Mahowny"), Laura Catalano (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), Ray Kahnert, Andrew Gillies (last seen in "The Virgin Suicides"), John White, Alison MacLeod (last seen in 'The Time Traveler's Wife"), Bill Lake (last seen in "Fatman"), Charlotte Sullivan (last seen in "Fever Pitch"), Philip Akin (last seen in "The Man"), Claire Crawford, Ennis Esmer (also last seen in "Miss Sloane"), Thomas Hauff (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Darryl Pring (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Sants Day"), Patrice Goodman, Audrey Gardiner, Jayne Eastwood (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3"), Judi Croon, Sandi Ross (last seen in "Guilty as Sun"), Gabrielle Ashry, Dana Reznik, Darrin Brown (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Darrell Hicks, Jon Hyatt, Jeff White (last seen in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2").

RATING: 4 out of 10 grapefruit segments

The DUFF

Year 17, Day 52 - 2/21/25 - Movie #4,952

BEFORE: Well, "The Masked Singer" is back for it's big 13th season, we're already two weeks in and I'm 1 for 2, having correctly identified the famous person dressed as the Honeypot in the first episode, but failing to properly identify the celebrity dressed as "Fuzzy Peas" revealed in this week's show.  No spoilers here, watch the damn show yourself if you want to be up on things.  But today, one of the judges from that show, Ken Jeong, carries over from "Then Came You" to also appear in today's film.  Now my wife and I have TWO shows airing that we watch together, "Masked Singer" and "Tournament of Champions" on Food Network, and we're waiting for "Top Chef" to come back, and/or for "Master Chef" to start up again, in addition to "Spring Baking Championship", who needs that damn groundhog to tell you spring is coming up when you have a baking competition that will do the exact same thing without giving you rabies?

Here's the line-up for Saturday, 2/22, Day 22 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar".  I would say this month went by very quickly, only that doesn't seem true at all, somehow.  It's dragging, right?  

Best Picture Winners and Nominees:

5:30 am "The Hollywood Revue" (1929)

7:45 am "A Tale of Two Cities" (1935)

10:00 am "Naughty Marietta" (1935)

12:00 pm "The Maltese Falcon" (1941)

2:00 pm "Ivanhoe" (1952)

4:00 pm "Stagecoach" (1939)

5:45 pm "Chariots of Fire" (1981)

Oscar Worthy Soldiers: 

8:00 pm "Sergeant York" (1941)

10:30 pm "An Officer and a Gentleman" (1982)

12:45 am "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946)

3:45 am "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)

5:45 am "Battleground" (1949)

I was at 100 seen out of 243, and I've seen just another 5 out of Saturday's 12: "The Maltese Falcon", "Chariots of Fire", and then the first 3 soldier movies. SO now 105 seen out of 255 takes me to 41.1%. I've probably leveled off now, and my percentage isn't likely to change much with just 9 days left. 

THE PLOT: A high school senior instigates a social pecking order revolution after finding out that she has been labeled the DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by her prettier, more popular counterparts. 

AFTER: Lord help me, it's another high-school based romance tonight, and I think tomorrow as well. I'm in hell, WHY do I keep programming these?  Haven't I already seen the best of the whole genre by watching "She's All That", "Some Kind of Wonderful", "Boys and Girls", and, umm, all those others?  There's probably nothing new here, nobody ever does anything NEW with these high-school films, they just reduce everyone to stereotypes like the jocks and the mean girls and the stoners and the nerds and, well have at it, guys, you're teens and you're all horny and desperate so let's see some hooking up!  It's prom or homecoming or time for the Enchantment Under the Sea dance or something, or it's football season, shouldn't you all be making out under the bleachers or something?  

Well, not me, I was a conscientious objector in the battle between the sexes until my last year of college, and again, it was not by choice, it was just the way it worked out. I kissed a girl in first grade and left secret notes for a girl in third grade, and well, I know this is going to come as a shock, but those relationships didn't last. So I spend the next 12 years just thinking about what I would do if a girl would talk to me, and really, time well spent, because when one finally did then I knew what to say. Just kidding, I made a ton of mistakes, because we all do, and we laughed about it and cried about it and then we got married. Happily ever after lasted five years, then she fell in love with a woman and, well, as you can guess it ended badly.  But I'm here to tell you, that according to movies, you can meet someone and fall in love at any age, whether you're in high school or a senior living facility, where they're all just as randy as they were in high school, apparently. It's never too late, in fact I'm thinking about starting up a matching service for dead people, so even if you died alone, you can be matched up with someone and be buried next to them for all eternity, and boy, won't there be some gossip going on then?  Like, were they secretly together when they were alive and nobody knew about it?  Hey, you may be dead but you can still have a reputation as a player, retroactively. 

But let's get back to high school, the time that only made you WISH you were dead when you saw other people dating and fooling around and then you just never were.  But I'm sure you tried, and that's the important thing, isn't it?  I know I'd love a replay, a chance to go back to high school with all the confidence and experience I have now, I'd probably break a few hearts.  That's right, girls, I've got a letter on my jacket, and I earned it for math team AND orchestra.  Who wants to date me?  Wait, wait, there's more, because I've got a speaking role in the school play AND I just got my SAT scores back - 750 in maths, that's like just ONE question wrong. Yeah, I think I'm starting to understand why I didn't date anyone until college. 

Bianca Piper has a different problem, when her obnoxious classmate/neighbor lets slip that she's what's called a DUFF, that's the uglier, fatter friend of hotter girls, someone that the boys talk to because she's approachable, however what they all want to know is whether Jess and Casey are seeing anyone.  She's so used to this that she never really noticed that they boys don't ask if SHE'S dating anyone, or if SHE would like to go hang out after school or go make out under the bleachers. She's just been living her life as normal, trying to fit in, as you do, but now her whole world is turned upside-down because, well, why can't she be the one getting asked to the dance?  Why can't she ask someone to the dance herself?  Yes, yes, these are good questions that she doesn't have any answers to, because I guess the "D" in DUFF really should stand for Dumb?

She does have a crush on one boy, Toby, who can play the guitar and always has a crowd around him at parties - but she's struck speechless whenever they bump into each other, so you can see the problem, she's put him on some kind of pedestal, marked him as the unattainable, impossible dream and really, she's putting WAY too much pressure on herself, causing her to panic instead of just approaching the situation in straightforward manner and having a normal conversation as if Toby is just a regular person, which he is. SO, since obnoxious classmate/neighbor/jock Wesley is unable to play football until he can pass chemistry, she enters into a deal, she'll tutor Wesley and help get his grades up if he'll tutor her on dating and help get her confidence up.  

If you've seen any rom-coms before, this should be all the information you need to predict the rest of the film.  Say it with me now, because hanging out with Wesley for several weeks before the big homecoming dance, and sharing details with her life with Wesley as they tutor each other (and yes, there WILL be a big make-over scene where she tries on many outfits at the mall) then she and Wesley will slowly get friendlier and more comfortable with each other, and eventually Bianca may come to see him as a more suitable love interest for herself than the perceived impossible-to-obtain Toby is. Friendship is, after all, an important step on the road to romance, and once Bianca learns to look at herself in a different way, and also realize what a total lame-o Toby really is, she'll realize that she's actually been building the foundation of a solid relationship with Wesley through all the time they spent together, discussing relationships and such. 

It would work if it all wasn't so damn predictable, right?  Like it feels like we've seen every element of this in other high-school rom-coms before, maybe not put together in this exact way, but at heart, isn't this just like all the others?  Is this one maybe the ultimate expression of all things that ARE teen romance?  Like the divorced mother who is also a motivational speaker?  The Mean Girl who is also the social media star, with a person constantly filming her no matter what she's doing?  The principal who tries to ban cell phones in the school, only to (presumably) learn later that he can't do that, because the parents need to know that their kids can reach them in the event of a peanut-allergy based emergency?  Duh.

Oh, there's so much more here that we've all seen before - the weird kids who talk to themselves, the lunch lady who knows a bit too much about all the students' lives, and everywhere with the social media!  The whole first part of this film is presented in a style that looks like social media posts, only it seems that someone forgot to fill in the text in the captions.  What? Just blank spaces?  Same problem with the texts on the phones, I couldn't read any of them, they all looked blank. Was this an error in post-production that somebody didn't fix?  Or was it just 2015 and adults who make movies didn't quite understand text messages and Snapchat videos yet? 

Anyway, my point is that we're in the darkest days of the romance chain, cringy high-school movies chock full of stereotypes and teens being very cruel to each other while also somehow having unlimited access to alcohol at parties and slut-shaming each other on the socials.  Let's just hope I only have maybe one or two more of these movies to endure this week, and in my life overall. 

NITPICK POINT: If Caitlyn is supposed to be filming social media star Madison all the time, then how can she possibly be in other places, like she's also at the mall when Bianca is acting goofy during her extreme makeover fashion show, and then later Caitlyn is also out IN THE WOODS when Bianca first kisses Wesley. Like, was Caitlyn just randomly walking through the woods and stumbled on Bianca's secret thinking rock? That seems very unlikely.  

NITPICK POINT #2: Bianca needs to talk to Wesley right away about Toby, so she just barges into the boys locker room and gets a look at a lot of boys in their underwear or just out of the shower.  And there are no repercussions for this? No boys complain that they were made uncomfortable by being naked in front of a girl unexpectedly?  If a boy can't gain access to the girls locker room, then the reverse should also not be allowed, it's only fair. 

NITPICK POINT #3: Did they really try for a "Spartacus" moment here, when Bianca writes her article for the school paper about being a DUFF, and we see a bunch of people in their moment of realization, all saying "I'm a DUFF!".  No, that's not in line with what it means to be a DUFF, and that's also not how "Spartacus" works. 

Directed by: Ari Sandel (director of "When We First Met")

Also starring Mae Whitman (last seen in "CHIPS"), Robbie Amell (last seen in "When We First Met"), Bella Thorne (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Bianca Santos, Skyler Samuels (last seen in "Meg 2: The Trench"), Romany Malco (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Nick Eversman (last seen in "The Runaways"), Chris Wylde (also last seen in "When We First Met"), Allison Janney (last seen in "To Leslie"), Rebecca Weil, Seth Meriwether (last seen in "Blonde"), Erick Chavarria (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Brian Dewar McNamara, Benjamin Taylor Davis, RJ Shearer (last seen in "Yes, God, Yes"), Eric R. Moore, J.J. Green (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Paras Patel, Murielle Telio (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Mahaley Manning (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Alexandra Ficken (last seen in "Strays"), Jill Jane Clements (last seen in "Blockers"), Fiona Hardingham (last seen in "Godzilla: King of the Monsters"), Tony Cavalero (last seen in "The Dirt"), David Gridley, Beau Rich, Demetrius Bridges (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Lai-Ling Bernstein, Krissy Notes, Richard Kohberger, Benjamin Papac (last seen in "Goosebumps"), Marisela Zumbado (last seen in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back"), Kyle Wilkerson, Kurt Krause (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Jonathan Baron, Dorothy Reynolds, Cason Richter, Dani Sherrick (last seen in "Aftermath"), Emily Norcia, Danielle Lyn (last seen in "Allegiant"), Veanna Black, Turner Wheat, Madison Fitts, Kody Keplinger, Brittany Savoie, Curry Stone, Stephen Tsimpides.

RATING: 5 out of 10 zombie movie posters

Then Came You

Year 17, Day 51 - 2/20/25 - Movie #4,951

BEFORE: It's my day off at home, so I've got time to burn some DVDs and do a little grocery shopping (just milk and cheese, no eggs, who can afford them?) and re-schedule my dentist appointment for next Monday because there's a "Twin Peaks" themed event at the Brooklyn Brewery that I want to go to (who drinks beer on a Monday?) and also, we're getting our taxes done on Saturday, I know we're very early but we're going away in March for 5 days, so better to get it done now.  Anyway, if I can buy cat food today then we're clear on Saturday after the tax return, that's when we like to go to IHOP and celebrate another successful year of our mutually beneficial economic relationship (who calls their marriage this?).

This one's a no-brainer, Asa Butterfield carries over from "A Brilliant Young Mind".  Here's the line-up for Friday, 2/21, Day 21 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":

Best Costume Winners and Nominees:

8:30 am "Gate of Hell" (1954)

10:15 am "Les Girls" (1957)

12:15 pm "The Adventures of Don Juan" (1948)

2:15 pm "The Night of the Iguana" (1964)

4:15 pm "Indiscretion of an American Wife" (1954)

5:30 pm "8 1/2" (1963)

Oscar Worthy Comic Relief: 

8:00 pm "The Circus" (1928)

9:30 pm "Born Yesterday" (1950)

11:30 pm "Some Like It Hot" (1959)

1:45 am "My Favorite Year" (1982)

3:30 am "Ninotchka" (1939)

I was at 97 seen out of 232, and I've seen only 3 out of Friday's 11: "The Night of the Iguana", "Some Like It Hot" and "My Favorite Year".  I keep meaning to watch "Born Yesterday" and "8 1/2" but I never seem to get around to them. SO now 100 seen out of 243 takes me to 41.1%.  

FOLLOW UP TO: "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" (Movie #4,809)

THE PLOT: A hypochondriac working as an airport baggage handler is forced to confront his fears when a British teenager with a terminal illness enlists him to help carry out her eccentric bucket list. 

AFTER: I'm suffering from some advanced form of burn-out, because all I really want to do on my day off is burn those DVDs and play phone games, however I know all about phone addiction and brain rot, so I didn't allow myself to even START that today until I took care of those other things. And the universe helped, because just after I said that I needed to call the dentist to re-schedule, the dentist's office called ME and asked me to confirm, which gave me the opportunity to re-schedule without making the call. I manifested that, somehow, or more likely my subconscious knew that if it's four days before the appointment and I haven't confirmed, I'm going to get a call. Then I was kind of back in control of things, because I knew that if I didn't go get groceries, we (and our cats) would be short on food, eventually. But it's getting harder to tell which things I am in control of and which things the universe is in charge of.  Maybe everything is some combination of both, like the sailboat metaphor where you can't change the wind's direction, but you can change your sails to take better advantage of it. I can't control things like which movies run on cable, but I can make myself aware of what's on cable and what's on streaming, and plan accordingly.  

Maybe there's some relationship advice hidden in there somewhere, you can't really control who you meet out in the world, but you can get out there and try to meet MORE people, and thus increase your odds of finding that lid for your pot.  You can't make another person like you or love you, but you can be positive and be yourself and try to at least appear confident, and thus similarly increase your odds. Control the things that you can control, and then hope that the rest of the things fall into place, and appreciate it when they do and try to understand it when they don't. Because there's always the unexpected things happening, which you can't even anticipate just because of their very nature as unexpected things. You can date somebody but you can't foresee how long they'll be interested in you, how long you both will live, whether one of you will want to move away or just need something or someone different in their lives. Health is a whole other variable in that equation, and even though I'm pretty burned out on this as a topic (already "death of a spouse or family member" is proving to be a major topic this year, and we're only in February.)

So yeah, I'm burned out on the whole romance genre, but I'm specifically burned out on the people in relationships in bad health, aka the dead spouse or dying teen movies. In addition to "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl", there's "The Fault in Our Stars", "A Walk to Remember", "Sweet November", those are the ones I've seen, though there are a few more.  Then there are romances where someone else dies, like "Life as a House" or "The Last Song", and more where someone from an adult couple dies, like "Moonlight and Valentino", and I just don't know if screenwriters are just trying to find balance by placing love and death in the same movie, or if this is just the way life is and movies reflect that, or if everything's just random and movies are just trying to show it all. I guess I just have to take these films as they come and try to deal with everything they're throwing at me, but really I just want to get off this whole romance topic, eventually if not now.

Calvin here is a young man in his twenties who's a hypochondriac, and keeps a journal of all of his symptoms that goes back years. His doctor, who believes him to be in good health overall, suggests that he go to a support group for people with cancer, just to gain some perspective. I don't think a doctor would really do this, because that seems kind of deceptive, maybe even belittling of the disease somehow, but here it's what causes confusion when he meets Skye, who really DOES have cancer, and she yanks his chain but also befriends him and then enlists him to help her complete her bucket list. But instead of things like "travel" and "make peace with people" it's got things on it like shoplifting and losing her virginity. Yeah, she's a bit of a wild one, but maybe that's what Calvin needs in his boring life.  Later he admits that Skye both terrifies and excites him. 

He works at an airport, and he's got a thing for a flight attendant, only he can never work up the nerve to talk to her. But Skye helps him break the ice, however she also mentions to Izzy that she met Calvin in a cancer support group, so naturally Izzy thinks that Calvin has cancer, when he does not. Ha ha, what a hilarious misunderstanding, only it's not, really.  Izzy is more upset that he didn't correct the misconception when he had the chance, which is really the same as a lie in her eyes.  The reason for Calvin's fear of death and his obsession with thinking he's sick is somehow related to the death of his twin sister, there was a car accident when they were 8 and Calvin's mother has never really mentally recovered from it.  Calvin also hasn't celebrated his birthday since, because it would only remind his mother about the daughter she lost. 

It's really one big bummer of a film, I'm not going to say it has a happy ending, because it obviously doesn't, and part of me just doesn't understand, I mean I know not every movie can be a "feel-good" movie, because that wouldn't represent the ups and downs of life, I just think it's odd to set out to make a movie that is so maudlin by design, Calvin's always either depressed or having a panic attack, because he hasn't yet learned that life has these ups and downs and you have to try to keep an even keel somehow, or else learn to accept the things you can't change or control.  I guess maybe you have to go through these great pains before you can learn to deal with them. 

This film was shot in and around Kingston, NY, which is a place that I've been - I've been to a number of places in upstate NY, like Cooperstown and Lake George and Monroe and New City and when I was a kid, we drove all around the state and stopped in Rochester and Niagara Falls (visited Lake George + Niagara twice, once as a kid and once as an adult). I'm pretty sure I also visited West Point on a junior high class trip. A couple of years ago my wife and I explored the Monticello area, which also included Bethel, Narrowsburg and Callicoon. But it was back in 2012 when we visited some of her family friends who were staying in a trailer park near Kingston, we also toured Rhinebeck on that same trip. Had some great meals, visited the Culinary Institute of America, and hit some antique stores and a big flea market in a parking lot. These days I tend to stay away from that whole area because I know my ex-wife lives up near there somewhere and I don't really want to run into her. 

Now I'm kind of glad I added that extra Sally Field film, because it put "A Brilliant Young Mind" into slot 4,950 - if tonight's film had ended up there it would have been something of a bummer.  But I need to start looking ahead to Big Movie 5,000 - because I'm just 49 movies away.  What do I even choose for that film? What film could possibly live up to such a nice, big, round number?  Should I even try to influence that, or just let it be?  It's kind of the same conundrum as above, do I want to try to manifest something for that special occasion?  I can't control how GOOD any movie is going to be, it's always something of a toss-up. I've only programmed through St. Patrick's Day right now, which will be Movie #4,978 I think, so I don't know what happens after that, or even what I want to happen after that. Plus we're taking a 5-day vacation in late March, so I can't quite see past that right now.  Easter's not until April 20, so that's too far off, I'll just have to pick an Easter movie that's somehow got marijuana in it and then see how I can connect to it, before I'll even have a hint about what will be Big Movie 5,000.

Directed by: Peter Hutchings (writer of "Can You Keep a Secret?")

Also starring Maisie Williams (last seen in "The New Mutants"), Nina Dobrev (last seen in "Barely Lethal"), Ken Jeong (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Tyler Hoechlin (last seen in "Palm Springs"), David Koechner (last seen in "Yours, Mine & Ours"), Peyton List (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Tituss Burgess (last seen in "Respect"), Sonya Walger (last seen in "The Gambler"), Margot Bingham, Colin Moss, Briana Venskus (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Ron Simons (last seen in "27 Dresses"), Angel Valle Jr., L. Steven Taylor, Francesca Noel, Ann Osmond (last seen in "Peace, Love & Misunderstanding"), Ken Tsukada, Crystal Tweed (last seen in "Paint"), Terri Gittens, Megan Peters, Vickie Russell, Morgan Larson, Rabbi Joseph Kolakowski, Obada Adnan.

RATING: 5 out of 10 brightly colored wigs

A Brilliant Young Mind

Year 17, Day 50 - 2/19/25 - Movie #4,950

BEFORE: My 50th movie of 2025 also marks the halfway point of the romance chain - there's still about 2 1/2 weeks to go, but numerically, we're half done. I should have the topic wrapped up by March 9 or so, because I need time to get to my St. Patrick's day film. (really, it's just a film set in Ireland with a big-name actor of Irish descent, but hey, I like to have the tie-in.). I was out last night at the theater but there was no movie screened, it was more like a creative conference, they bring in four people from different fields to talk about their careers, it's like a light version of TED talks, maybe. Anyway I had an ex-co-worker drop by, I could have sworn he knew I worked at the theater, but he said he was surprised to see me there. Whenever there's an animation event, of course I see people I recognize, but this was unexpected, for sure - great to catch up. 

Sally Hawkins carries over from "Maudie". And here's the line-up for Thursday, 2/20, Day 20 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":

Best Director Winners and Nominees:

6:30 am "The Crowd" (1928)

8:15 am "The Divine Lady" (1929)

10:15 am "Stage Door" (1937)

12:15 pm "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955)

2:00 pm "The Search" (1948)

4:00 pm "The Thin Man" (1934)

5:45 pm "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948)

Oscar Worthy Prisoners: 

8:00 pm "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962)

10:45 pm "The Defiant Ones" (1958)

12:30 am "I Want to Live!" (1958)

2:45 am "Cool Hand Luke" (1967)

5:00 am "I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang" (1932)

6:45 am "Caged" (1950)

I was at 92 seen out of 219, and I've seen 5 out of Thursday's 13: "Stage Door", "The Thin Man", "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", "Birdman of Alcatraz" and "Cool Hand Luke", I think that's quite reasonable. SO now 97 seen out of 232 takes me down a bit to 41.8%.  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Rocket Science" (Movie #4,845)

THE PLOT: A socially awkward teenage math prodigy finds new confidence and new friendships when he lands a spot on the British squad at the International Mathematics Olympiad. 

AFTER: IMDB said this was a romance, so I took it to be one - I'm not completely convinced, like it's not a traditional rom-com, for sure. But it's a school film, an English film that goes by the title "X + Y" in the UK, though. I guess that name just wouldn't fly in the U.S. because most people either wouldn't get the double algebra AND gender chromosome reference, or they just hate math and wouldn't know that letters stand for unknown numbers in math functions.  But since it's a British film instead of saying "math" all the characters say "maths" as if it's always plural, which I don't quite understand. I mean, I get it if you're talking about geometry, algebra and calculus all at the same time, but if you're just looking for a shorter word than "mathematics" I don't know why you'd pluralize it. You don't study geographys and grammars and Latins, any name of a school course should be singular, unless you're taking gymnastics or economics or social studies.  Do they have social studies in the U.K.?  And if so, what weird word do they call it? 

Anyway, Nathan Ellis is a teen who's definitely autistic or on the spectrum somewhere, he's loved numbers and patterns since he was a little kid, and his mother brought him to take extra math classes after the death of his father, who had encouraged him to find enjoyment and entertainment in things like toy trains because apparently he wanted a son who was socially awkward. I'm kidding, because parents don't make their kids autistic, but then, neither do vaccines.  Don't just look for the easy out in the fact that we have vaccines now and also more autism diagnoses, but that doesn't mean one causes the other. It could just be that there were always autistic kids, but doctor's didn't know how to properly diagnose them for a very long time so they just called them "slow" or "introverted" or "dyslexic." Whatever the reason, we have more kids on the spectrum than ever, and maybe some of them have special talents, like memorizing all the chemical elements or being able to remember all the dinosaurs AND Pokemons. You can learn to remember a lot when you're an only child and the other kids at school just think you're weird, but then you maybe never learn how to read social cues or develop healthy relationships with the opposite sex. 

Anyway, the film skips a few years to when Nathan is finally eligible to take the exam to qualify for a chance to have a spot in a competition that could get him a place on the U.K. team for the International Mathematical Olympiad, where high schoolers from around the world come together to, well, math.  Nathan passes the test and this gets him a trip to Taiwan, where the U.K. team trains - look, I don't understand it either, I don't see why can't train at home, either, and I thought it might have something to do with Taiwan being a British colony, except that it's NOT, so I don't think this makes any sense.  The IMO that year was going to be held at Cambridge, which is just down the road, so WHY do all these British teens need to go to Taiwan?  Really, you can do maths anywhere. 

But I guess the teacher who runs the UK team is friends with the Taiwan math teacher, so off they go.  Suddenly Nathan isn't the smartest maths whiz in the room, all of them are brilliant and they're also all awkward in their own ways, whether it's the sullen girl who plays the piano well because music is also math, or the white boys who try to rap very badly or the one who just launches into quoting Monty Python routines without asking if the other people in the room even know what Monty Python is. But Nathan is paired up with a female student who is also the niece of the teacher in charge of the team (what could POSSIBLY go wrong here?) and begins to interact with a girl for the first time in a way that might be considered romantic if you gave it another few years to develop. Hey, it's an important lesson when a boy learns that girls are just other people you can talk to - sure, most figure this out in the second or third grade, so whatever, he's a late bloomer. 

Meanwhile, Nathan's mother is enjoying some time to herself for probably the first time in ten years, as she's not taking care of Nathan and cutting his breakfast toast into four identical right triangles or making sure that he gets a prime number of prawn balls with his lunch order from the Chinese take-away.  So naturally she puts the moves on Nathan's math tutor, as she's never seen him date anyone, which is probably due to his medical condition.  See, when you first re-enter the dating scene after a long time away from it, it's important to date someone attainable, so you can acclimate to the routine of a relationship again. Someone with a debilitating physical ailment is an easy get, like they're probably not seeing anyone because they spend so much time in hospital, and better still, they can't run away - well, not easily.  

When the Olympiad test day arrives, Nathan is just not in a good place - his first girlfriend (of sorts) has been kicked off the team, and the first question reminds him of the accident that killed his father, so in the parlance of today's kids, that's very triggering.  Suddenly his anxiety takes over and he leaves the exam, essentially surrendering his spot on the team. This is a perfectly rational response to excessive stress, however it's one that he'll no doubt regret later when his permanent record is reviewed as he's applying to get into college. Look, I know a few things about this topic, when I was in 6th grade I scored really high on a math aptitude test, and so in 7th grade they put me in an 8th grade math class, and then in 8th grade I was allowed to sit in on a 10th grade algebra class at the high school, but I really didn't know what was expected of me, was I supposed to consider math as a career just because I was slightly better at it?  The bad news was that my edge disappeared at some point, so in 10th grade I took the same course over again, however by 11th grade trigonometry and 12th grade calculus, I had no idea what I was doing. Perhaps I was gravitating more toward music classes and art history, but I didn't end up with a career in either of those subjects. Meanwhile I was hanging out with a bad crowd, namely community theater groups. Who wants to take math courses if they can have some kind of job waiting for them in the arts?  

But I was on the math team for most of high school - this allowed me to get out of school early on some days and travel to other nearby towns, where there were math quizzes to be taken in geometry, algebra, trig and calc. A round was three questions, they were worth 1, 2 and 3 points, and of increasing difficulty.  Strategy was involved, like should I skip ahead to the third question because it's worth more points, or focus on solving the first question because it's the easiest?  Sometimes I played on the "B" squad, and we figured out that we didn't need five people to compete, if we were short a player we just made up a fake name and had three diffferent people sign in under that name to take the required three rounds. Nobody ever checked to see if anyone by that name was enrolled in our high school. So yeah, I cheated on mathletics - but primarily I was a really good guesser, like if you didn't know the answer to a very hard trig question, just guess either "zero" or "90 degrees".  One time I didn't have time left to figure out the third question, so I just wrote down "9" and it turned out to be the right answer?  I couldn't show my work because there wasn't any!

But I can confirm that the mathletes are 99% percent awkward and unsure of how to deal with their emotions and romantic relations with the opposite sex (or same-sex, whatever).  If you had given me the choice in 10th grade between being on the math team and having the opportunity or courage to go on a date with a girl, there's no question, screw the math team. But that's just not how life works, we walk the roads we can walk until they lead us where we want to go, or we can reach a crossroads and make a choice.  Finally at college in NYC, I took my first few stabs at going on dates, but if I'm being honest, nerds at film school are maybe even nerdier than math team nerds in high school. So I didn't see any action until a month before the end of my junior year, which ended up being my senior year as I had enough credits to graduate early.  Finally, all that time studying in high school paid off, as I had passed enough AP exams to get enough college credits to take a YEAR of my sentence at NYU. I couldn't wait to get out and work in the real world, plus I was getting laid for the first time in my life, which was a powerful thing, but that's another story. 

My point is, I support Nathan's decision to quit the math team, if the girl he loved was headed out of the country and he just wanted to be with her.  Who needs all that anxiety anyway, about trains traveling at certain speeds or proving that there can't be four trains of the same color arranged in a parallelogram or whatever. I think, given a minute to think about it, the wise course of action would have been to just guess on every question, and therefore LOOK like a damn genius, write down just any old answer and get through the exam in five minutes, THEN get up and go find Zhang at the train station.  Sure, almost every answer would have been wrong, but for the next hour, at least every other mathlete in the room would think he was some kind of genius, and isn't that worth something?  

I've told the story here before about how I once took a summer computer science class at M.I.T. - yes, THAT M.I.T - but I realized in the second lesson I was in WAY over my head (I'd learned BASIC but this was PASCAL) and so I had to tell my parents that this wasn't really my thing, I hope they got a refund, and the fact that I just wanted to spend the summer NOT studying computer science and maybe watching summer reruns and having a good time had nothing to do with it, I assure you. Look, it's not like back in 1982 there was a big future in computer science, right?  RIGHT?

Directed by: Morgan Matthews

Also starring Asa Butterfield (last seen in "Time Freak"), Rafe Spall (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Eddie Marsan (last seen in "The Exception"), Jo Yang, Martin McCann (last seen in "The Informer"), Jake Davies (last seen in "Artemis Fowl"), Alex Lawther (last seen in "The Last Duel"), Alexa Davies (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Orion Lee (last heard in "Turning Red"), Edward Baker-Close, Percelle Ascott, Suraj Rattu, Jamie Ballard, Clare Burt, Adam Foster, Lee Zhuo Zhao, Shannon Beer, Tasha Connor, Bo-Han Huang, Paul J. Dove (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Karl Ng with archive footage of John Cleese (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Michael Palin (last seen in "An Accidental Studio")

RATING: 6 out of 10 numbers in the Fibonacci sequence

Maudie

Year 17, Day 49 - 2/18/25 - Movie #4,949

BEFORE: Kari Matchett carries over from "Angel Eyes". I kind of hate to lose "Angel Eyes" from the list, because it's the link between two sci-fi films in the same franchise, "Cube 2: Hypercube" and "Cube Zero", now they won't be connected at all, and I may never be able to follow-up "Cube", which I watched many years ago. C'est la vie. 

Here's the line-up for Wednesday, 2/19, Day 19 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":

Best Editing Winners and Nominees:

5:45 am "Air Force" (1943)

8:00 am "Odd Man Out" (1947)

10:00 am "Z" (1969)

12:15 pm "The Dirty Dozen" (1967)

3:00 pm "The Great Escape" (1963)

6:00 pm "Bullitt" (1968)

Oscar Worthy Teens: 

8:00 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955)

10:00 pm "The Last Picture Show" (1971)

12:15 am "American Graffiti" (1973)

2:15 am "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" (1968)

4:30 am "The Human Comedy" (1943)

I was at 86 seen out of 208, and I've seen 6 out of Wednesday's 11: "The Dirty Dozen", "The Great Escape", "Bullitt", "Rebel Without a Cause", "The Last Picture Show" and "American Graffiti". Hey, 2 Steve McQueen films in a row, you just KNOW somebody over at TCM wants to get in on the actor-linking game, right?  SO now 92 seen out of 219 takes me up a bit to 42%.  

THE PLOT: An arthritic Nova Scotia woman works as a housekeeper while she hones her skills as an artists and eventually becomes a beloved figure in the community. 

AFTER: This is maybe a bit of a tough one because it doesn't feature "love" in the modern sense that we've all come to know it, it's set back in the 1930's in Nova Scotia and somebody maybe really thought about what it meant back then to be in a relationship, it was a different time and things were different and people had different priorities in life. People had to clean their houses and have some job that was vital to the community, and they thought about what it meant if they were married and what it meant if weren't, and maybe there was more focus on what other people told you about how God felt about your life and what that all meant. Even in a small town in Nova Scotia, it meant something if other people in town thought you were odd or had a relationship that wasn't normal, whatever that means, and I guess people thought if two people were living together without being married then God would send bad weather to their village or something, like he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. 

Also, men didn't have emotions until the 1960's, or if maybe they did then they weren't allowed to express them, that meant they were soft and not normal, so that messed up a lot of generations of people, and caused a greater divide between men and women than there needed to be. Also there were no cell phones, texting, or internet, people shopped in small general stores or local markets and not big chain stores, and if you wanted to meet a life companion you had to go down to the market and post a paper notice to a bulletin board with a thumbtack that said you were looking for a cleaning woman, and maybe more, because you were too busy catching fish all day and trying to hang on to that service niche in your community to look after your own house and farm. Look, if you were a woman and had bad arthritis and your brother sold your family home, that probably sounded like a pretty good arrangement, being a cleaning lady for a cold, emotionless, fisherman who was very particular about the cooking and cleaning, but not enough to actually do those things himself. Well, he's got a job to do, damn it. 

Personal happiness? Fulfillment? Did they even have these things back then? There was a Depression going on, so I don't know what people thought about these things, or if everyone was just focused on getting by, and maintaining the chicken coop so they didn't have to buy eggs at the store - oh, that's coming back in style, I guarantee it with the egg-flation we're seeing now. I saw a news story about families in L.A. renting two chickens at $10 a day each so they could get a dozen eggs in a week's time without paying $6 per dozen at the store. I'm not sure that the math holds up there, but it's where we find ourselves. You know, why not spend thousands of dollars to move your whole family out of the city to a little farm in Canada so you can save a few hundred each month in rent and then you can work remotely and also be farmers?  I'm sure that makes financial sense in the long run, give it a try and let me know how that goes. Let's all get back to good old family values, like tending the land and also being able to smack your wife around when she gets too talk-backy. 

Maud Lewis was a real "outsider" artist, but obviously had some health problems and family issues, not just her brother selling the family home but also after she got pregnant while out partying her family just sold her baby, which was another thing different about the 1930's that I don't think you can do now, treat babies as currency.  But they told her that the baby was born deformed and then died, really they just didn't think she could handle the responsibility of raising a child, what with her medical condition and also never holding down a job and being like a weird artistic / autistic type of person. So yeah, there's that. Everybody seemed to know what was best for her, and then she went and did her own thing by moving in with a surly burly fisherman who showed her love or at least tolerance. But she spent a lot of time by herself and developed a style of painting that people seemed to like, and once she appeared on TV her art really took off, the only downside was that her husband/boss didn't like the way he looked on TV and then blamed her for that. 

I wonder which generation landed on the idea that marriage is all about love, but it's not a helpful way of thinking, because marriage is more than just that, it's an economic relationship.  It's, like, let's pool our resources because together we have more stuff, more income, more opportunities, plus it's easier to buy groceries for two, you don't have to make as many trips, if that makes sense. And most meals are shareable, plus I can sneak out on my day off and grab just enough TV dinners, bread and milk to make it to the weekend. There should be love in marriage, of course, but there's more to it than that, and these days people tend to cut bait when the love fades just a little, because that seems easier than making a non-working thing work again. So then they never get to settle in to a stable but perhaps slightly boring routine where two people have complimentary strengths, like one may be better at cooking and the other's better at ordering take-out. Or one person has a knack for driving, and the other person has better navigational skills, and better taste in driving music. Or I have a house, you have a car, together maybe we have everything we need. 

By today's standards, it's kind of weird here how this couple came together, like him hiring her to be his cook and cleaning lady, and then providing her room and board, so it's almost like "wife" was in parentheses or something.  And they end up sleeping together in the same bed just because the house was so small - a likely story, maybe Everett knew what he was after all along, and maybe Maudie was OK with that, it's maybe tough to say.  But I guess there's a lid for every pot, as some people say.  He's good at catching fish, but not so good at keeping records for his customers, so Maud steps in.  She develops an interesting painting style, but not so good with negotiating their value with buyers, so Everett steps in. Stronger together, see what I mean? 

This film screened at the Telluride Film Festival in 2016, and then at the Toronto International Film Festival and several others around Canada, like the Atlantic Film Festival, the Calgary International Film Festival and the Vancouver International Film Festival. I think I've entered films in all of those.  I caught it on the NYC PBS station, channel 13, on some Saturday night when they usually screen one classic film and one "indie", that's where I picked up several of this year's upcoming selections.  I just have to keep remembering to check the listings before Saturday night rolls around again. 

Directed by: Aisling Walsh

Also starring Sally Hawkins (last seen in "The Lost King"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "A Midnight Clear"), Zachary Bennett (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Gabrielle Rose (last seen in "Jennifer's Body"), Greg Malone, Lawrence Barry, Billy MacLellan (last seen in "Nobody"), Marthe Bernard, David Feehan, Nik Sexton, Judy Hancock, Mike Daly, Brian Marler, Denise Sinnott, Tom Dunne.

RATING: 5 out of 10 sardine cans with paint in them

Angel Eyes

Year 17, Day 48 - 2/17/25 - Movie #4,948

BEFORE: Happy Presidents' Day, I hope you enjoyed the long weekend if you had today off, I had to go to work, no rest for the weary - so I spent my Monday putting out virtual fires as per usual, trying to track down a missing bank transfer from France that was supposedly sent two weeks ago only it hasn't arrived, and then finally coming through with a streaming link for some Kickstarter backers that were expecting to watch the film they backed in July 2022, only we're very very late, of course. So I had to e-mail this link to 450 people with a note explaining why it's two and a half years overdue, that we couldn't show anyone the film online for fear they would download it and re-post it, which would nix the film's chances for any distribution or Oscar-nomination qualification, you're not supposed to post any feature on-line before you have a week's worth of screenings in NY or LA, I can't believe this rule is still in play in this age of digital streaming, but apparently it's still a thing. 

Then I get a couple e-mails from backers who of course are glad we're finally giving them this reward, only one slams me for sending everyone an "automatic response".  Dude, I'm not going to sit there and type out 450 individual e-mails to everyone on the list, I copied and pasted the same e-mail message over and over, and if I put you on the "bcc" part, it's only because I don't want the other people getting the same e-mail to see your e-mail address, that's just proper netiquette so you don't get anyone putting you on spam lists.  Hey, if you think you can do my job better than me, spend 30 years humping for an independent animator only to be working late sending out hundreds of e-mails on a holiday that you did NOT get to take off.  Really, come take my job, you can have it, I'm so over it. You wouldn't last a week, you little twerp. 

So, yeah, I was in a mood when I got home, I just wanted to have a coffee, turn my brain off and watch the 50th Anniversary celebration show for "SNL" - you know, it was much better than the regular weekly show, which yes, I still watch, even though it's never funny after Weekend Update and in all the time the show's been on, they've never learned how to end a skit with anything close to a punchline. Why bother?  Anyway, I found myself laughing out loud at a number of things, which thankfully overwrote my job frustration to some degree.  And man, did they get big stars to show up - Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks, Paul McCartney and Paul Simon and Miley Cyrus performing.  Sure, there were expected montages of the best fake ads and the best pratfalls, but they did do some NEW skits, so I can't believe I'm saying this, but check out the new 3-hour episode of "SNL" because it's something close to watchable.  Maybe it just looked so good in comparison to the first half of my day.

Jennifer Lopez carries over from "Gigli" and here's the line-up for Tuesday, 2/18, Day 18 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":

Best Adapted Winners and Nominees:

8:30 am "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931)

10:15 am "Pygmalion" (1938)

12:00 pm "Room at the Top" (1959)

2:00 pm "Blackboard Jungle" (1955)

3:45 pm "Father of the Bride" (1950)

5:30 pm "Friendly Persuasion" (1956)

Oscar Worthy Shakespearean Characters: 

8:00 pm "Hamlet" (1948)

10:45 pm "Henry V" (1989)

1:15 am "Romeo and Juliet" (1936)

3:30 am "Julius Caesar" (1953)

I was at 83 seen out of 198, and I'm only claiming 3 out of Tuesday's 10: "Father of the Bride", "Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar". SO now 86 seen out of 208 takes me down just a bit to 41.3%.  

THE PLOT: A mysterious man is drawn to a feisty female police officer and an unusual relationship ensues, as not everything is as it seems. 

AFTER: In much the same manner as comparing "SNL" to my workday, really, whatever film I program right after "Gigli" is going to look like "Citizen Kane" or "Gone With the Wind", that's how this crazy juxtaposition thing works.  So this is a weird little romance with J. Lo in it, you would think it should fare pretty well by comparison to the previous film. There will always be ups and downs, I'm always just hoping for a few more ups to help me overcome the downs. 

But it's weird - I'm supposed to take Jennifer Lopez seriously as a cop?  That's almost worse than trying to believe she could pass for a low-level mobster - she's too beautiful for that, sorry.  Look, I know that in real life she could be a real diva, maybe she's very difficult to work for or live with, it's not for me to say. But she's easy on the eyes, and in Hollywood that goes a long way.  The poster (as seen above) is really whited out, they really went out their way back in 2001 to hide the fact that she's Latina.  Did they keep her out of the sun for six months, or just use Photoshop to whiten up her photo for the poster?  

The movie starts with a few POV shots at accident scenes, since she's a first responder she's seen comforting the injured people, and so maybe the last thing they see before they pass out or die is her face, and that's a really weird plot point, but it does become kind of important later on.  After a drive-by shooting that she survives, she and another officer chase down the culprits, and just as one is about to shoot her, the guy is knocked down by a street person who saw her through the diner window a few minutes before, and he felt like he recognized her from somewhere.  

So she (Sharon) starts hanging out with this guy, Catch. And he lives on the top floor of a building, but in a very spartan fashion, no furniture, no possessions, just a bed and a few changes of clothes in a very large, empty space. He claims to have no memory of his past, not even his real name, and honestly there are so many red flags there, it's not easy to see why she's interested in him, except that maybe he's a broken person who needs help to integrate back into society.  

Sharon's kind of on the outs with her family, because of some incident with her father, who was beating up her mother or something.  She arrested her own father (which probably shouldn't be allowed, it's some kind of conflict of interest, right?) and it drove a wedge between her and her parents, and now they're preparing to have some kind of renewal of their wedding vows, and she really isn't sure if she should attend.  Also, her brother is apparently following suit and beating up his own wife, so she gets kind of upset about that, too.  This all seems maybe like the wrong way to approach a romance-based film, as it all feels more like an episode of "Law & Order: SVU". 

Of course, her detective skills eventually kick in and she follows Catch, then one night when they're out in a jazz club he suddenly remembers how to play the trumpet, and someone at the club recognizes him and calls him by his real name. OK, I guess that really doesn't count as detective work, and from a narrative standpoint it's really cheating, but hey, whatever moves the plot forward, I guess.  Sharon looks up the name and learns about the accident, and visiting his old house gives her more clues about who he is and why he lives such a spartan lifestyle and wanders the streets, doing good deeds. Sure, it's a stretch, like who has a house and doesn't live in it?  Just Sally Field's character in "Kiss Me Goodbye", I thought.  

But honestly, there's not really much more here than that, it's a quick one tonight that starts in an odd place and then really just doesn't go anywhere, just around in circles a few times and once the secrets are revealed, the film is over.  Sharon does decide to go to her parent's vow renewal ceremony, but she leaves early. There you go, make a statement.  Anyway she's got more work to do with Catch to get him out of his funk and back to some kind of life in the real world. But maybe there's no one way to get over a big loss, you can try to get comfortable spending time by yourself, but that could also drive you insane.  Plus, you're going to have to get out there and interact with other people at some point, but, you know, go at your own pace.  Don't force it. 

I think I cleared the J. Lo category, I had just "Gigli" left from last year and then "Angel Eyes" came on cable after last February, so I've run out of her films.  New link to tomorrow. 

Directed by: Luis Mandoki (director of "When a Man Loves a Woman")

Also starring Jim Caviezel (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), Jeremy Sisto (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Terrence Howard (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Sonia Braga (last seen in "Shotgun Wedding"), Victor Argo (last seen in "The Yards"), Monet Mazur (last seen in "Monster-in-Law"), Shirley Knight (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Daniel Magder, Guylaine St-Onge, Connor McAuley, Jeremy Ratchford (last seen in "The Way Back"), Peter MacNeill (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Eldridge Hyndman, Kari Matchett, Michael Cameron, Marcello Thedford (last seen in "Employee of the Month"), Dave Cox, Ron Payne (last seen in "Serendipity"), Paul A. MacFarlane, Dan Petronijevic (last seen in "Suicide Squad"), Stephen Kay, Grant Nickalls, Jim Feather (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), Chuck Campbell (last seen in "Superstar"), J.J. Authors, John Shepard (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Stephanie Moore (last seen in "John Q"), Neil Brathwaite.  

RATING: 4 out of 10 bulletproof vests

Gigli

Year 17, Day 47 - 2/16/25 - Movie #4,947

BEFORE: I was out late last night, working a screening of "Captain America: Brave New World".  It's probably the first big Marvel movie in a while, if you don't count the third "Venom" film and also "Kraven the Hunter" - I'm waiting for both to make it to some streaming platform, really, I'm in no rush, I already did my Tom Hardy chain for this year.  For the new Cap movie, I'm willing to wait to see it too, since I'm deep into this romance chain - like, who releases the new Marvel joint in February?  Look, it's gonna be on Disney in 3 months, so maybe I'll catch up with it around Memorial Day, or July 4 or even Veterans Day, those all seem thematically appropriate.  Or as soon as I can, once I know when it will be streaming.  I've got bigger fish to fry.

Lainie Kazan carries over from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3", and I know, I know, everyone ever has only ever said this is a terrible movie, but that's kind of made me very curious about it - I knew it was on Amazon Prime so I put it on my list, and then I dropped it from the J. Lo chain I did last February, because I got spooked. Or maybe I had a feeling that I would need it for better linking down the road, in which case I was totally right.  However horrible this film is, it's serving a function now, it's connecting other films and therefore making this year's chain more possible.  Oh, and the film's no longer on Amazon Prime, it moved to Peacock, just like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3" did. This is happening more and more, a film will be on one streaming service when I program it, and then it's on another when I go to watch it.  It's very annoying because some services I access through the Playstation, which is downstairs, and others I connect to through my computer, which is upstairs.  So I can get my drinks, get settled in the recliner, fire up the PS3 and then load Netflix or Amazon, only to find that the film's no longer available.  Then I have to de-camp and climb the stairs and move all my supplies with me, snacks AND drinks, it's a whole process - and it's better for my legs to be in the recliner with my feet up.  Just saying. 

Here's the line-up for Monday, 2/17, Day 17 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar":

Best Foreign Film Winners and Nominees:

7:00 am "Loves of a Blonde" (1966)

8:30 am "The Virgin Spring" (1960)

10:00 am "Kapo" (1960)

12:00 pm "The Burmese Harp" (1956)

2:00 pm "Babette's Feast" (1987)

4:00 pm "Mon Oncle" (1958)

6:00 pm "La Strada" (1954)

Oscar Worthy Politicians (and First Ladies): 

8:00 pm "All the King's Men" (1949)

10:00 pm "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939)

12:15 am "The Best Man" (1964)

2:15 am "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" (1940)

4:15 am "Sunrise at Campobello" (1960)

6:45 am "The Gorgeous Hussy" (1936)

I was at 80 seen out of 185, and I had a VERY productive Sunday for my stats, but I've only seen 3 out of Monday's 13: "All the King's Men", "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "Abe Lincoln in Illinois" - duh, it's President's Day tomorrow, I just got it.  SO now 83 seen out of 198 takes me back down to 41.9%.  It looks like I'll be lucky to end up with 42% again, when all is said and done. 

THE PLOT: Larry Gigli is assigned by a crime boss to kidnap the brother of a prominent district attorney, and a beautiful woman known only as Ricki is sent to stay with him to make sure he doesn't mess up the job.  

AFTER: Now, usually about this time of year, I'd be very burned out on typical Hollywood rom-coms, so anything with a hit-man or a cowboy or a space alien would be welcome indeed, because if nothing else, it represents a change of pace.  While I sure could use something different around here, God, not like this. Somehow this is like a weird combination of "Chasing Amy" and "Midnight Run", only without any of the comedy of the first or any action of the latter. So don't say I didn't warn you, this is terrible. 

The director is the man behind "Midnight Run", which is one of my favorite films - I don't quite understand how somebody can make that great film and also make this POS, which tries to find its humor in making fun of lesbians, people with mental disabilities, and the misplaced machismo that is Ben Affleck and all the characters he played. You know when he was good?  As Batman, because Batman didn't have to talk much. I already miss Batfleck, of course Christian Bale was on point as both Batman and Bruce Wayne, but I don't think Ben was too far behind. Robert Pattinson as Emo Batman I can kind of do without, but the film would still have been pretty good with just about anybody under the cowl. Daredevil didn't say much either, so maybe Ben should get back into superhero movies, just saying. 

When I scheduled this film for last year, Affleck and J. Lo were still a couple, for the second time, if I remember right they were engaged in 2003 but called it off, and then she moved on to Marc Anthony and Alex Rodriguez, and he moved on to another Jennifer. But then 20 years after they met while making "Gigli", Bennifer 1 was back on, and they got married in 2022 and divorced in 2024. I really kind of missed that window, didn't I?  I had like one chance to watch this film while they were married and I blew it. The relationship in the film is therefore maybe a microcosm of Bennifer's relationship, perhaps both of them - they came together under weird circumstances, they argued a lot before they fell in love, and then perhaps they knew this thing was never going to last.  

OK, so the reasons why this film is terrible: 

1. Horrible treatment of a gay character. I know it was 2003, and things were different then, but still, COME ON. It's an all-too-common practice of blaming a woman for being a lesbian or bi, because somehow this is an affront to white males, that there are women who don't fawn over them or consider them attractive. You can't hold someone responsible for this, while also saying that it's OK to be gay. You also shouldn't act like this is just a phase, or a temporary thing because she just hasn't met the right man yet, one who can satisfy her.  Sure, I know being gay is a complex combination of past history, experiences, opportunities and maybe genetics, but the party line now is that it's not just preference, it's an identity and state of being, not state of mind. So sure, you can try to get somebody to switch, but it's not as easy as the movies suggest. 

2. Horrible treatment of a character with a mental disability. For many of the same reasons, you shouldn't have an actor playing someone with Tourette's or autism or whatever this kidnapped brother has. They never really define it, which of course means that the director didn't want to name it or didn't fully understand it, and how can you treat this properly if you don't understand it?  No, let's just make a regular actor play it dumb and say a lot of things like he's stupid, while also throwing in a bunch of swear words, those are always funny, right?  Hmm, not so much. The actor here does a lot with what little he was given to work with, but this whole part of the plot is very, very unfortunately handled. Basically the other characters just treat Brian like a child, and I know that's not right. 

3. The director also didn't want to define Affleck's character, like is he a hit-man or a loan-shark or just a low-level guy who takes orders from the mobbed-up guy he works for?  Again, very poorly defined - the thing about organized crime is that it's organized, people have clear roles and it would be great here to know exactly what Mr. Gigli DOES do on a daily basis, I mean he's got to pay the rent somehow, is he getting a cut of the money he shakes down people for?  Does he work long hours, are there benefits?  Nah, let's just leave it all open and up in the air because putting labels on this sounds a bit like too much work.  

4. It's really unclear what the point of all of this is, we know that Brian's brother is somebody, a federal prosecutor of note, but what exactly is kidnapping the brother intended to accomplish?  We had a clear goal in "Midnight Run", get the mob accountant to L.A. within a certain period of time, but there's really no goal here, just kidnap the mentally-impaired brother, bring him back to the apartment and...await further instructions?  That's not a plan, not a good plot for a movie, that just feels like lack of effort and creativity.  OK, it creates a set of circumstances where two people have to share a bed and not have sex, which admittedly is a metaphor for marriage, but it's not helping to advance the movie story to have all this down-time where the characters never GO anywhere. 

I know I'm just scratching the surface here, and I'll think of many more reasons why this is terrible and not worth two hours of anyone's time, but really I just want to move on and forget about this.  My bonus is that I never, ever, ever have to watch this again or even think about it, I'm done.  Note that the director has not made another movie since, maybe he knows what he did and cancelled himself, which would be appropriate punishment.  OK, I'll admit there's a few exciting minutes in the film, when Al Pacino shows up, that's the only reason I don't score this any lower.  Still, turning a mob movie into a rom-com is like putting chocolate sauce on an onion - just don't do it.

Directed by: Martin Brest (director of "Meet Joe Black")

Also starring Jennifer Lopez (last seen in "Marry Me"), Ben Affleck (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Justin Bartha (last seen in "Sweet Girl"), Al Pacino (last seen in "Next Goal Wins"), Lenny Venito (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Missy Crider (last seen in "Frailty"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Dune: Part Two"), Terrence Camilleri (last seen in "Superman III"), Peter Van Norden (last seen in "The Best of Times"), Alexandra Fatovich (last seen in "All Is Bright"), David Pressman (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Shelby Fenner (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Robert Silver, David Backus, Luis Alberto Martinez, Todd Giebenhain (last seen in "Babylon"), Brian Sites (last seen in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines").

RATING: 2 out of 10 ingredients in Tabasco sauce