The Assistant

Year 17, Day 67 - 3/8/25 - Movie #4,967

BEFORE: I am under the weather today, I had a small cold and then drank 2 beers on Friday night, thinking I could curtail it, or at least force myself to sleep it off.  It didn't work, so today when my manager texted me to remind me that I'm working Sunday morning AND I'm going to lose an hour's sleep to the stupidity of Daylight Savings Time, I figured I'd better back out while there was still time for someone to cover my Sunday morning shift at the NY International Children's Film Festival. Look, I have trouble getting up early as it is, but when you throw in the loss of an hour's sleep AND a head cold, I'm just not going to make it.  I would have woken up in a panic at 9:30 or 10 when I was supposed to be there at 9:00, and well, the results were not going to be pretty.  I've got a chance to use some of those sick hours that have been piling up for three years, I'm sure I'm at the maximum number they can give me because I never (OK, hardly ever) use them. Well, tomorrow I'm using them and the festival will have to go on without me. I need a weekend just to drink soup and coffee and DayQuil and just sit and watch TV until there's no more TV to watch. Sorry, but I'm tapping out. I took a COVID test and it came up negative, so it's just a cold, but why go to work in a public space and infect other people?  I've covered other people's shifts when they get sick, so this weekend, it's my turn. 

Dagmara Dominczyk carries over from "Priscilla". 

THE PLOT: A searing look at a day in the life of a powerful executive. As Jane follows her daily routine, she grows increasingly aware of the insidious abuse that threatens every aspect of her position. 

AFTER: Sad to say, we're in the dark side of the romance chain now, or else the chain is really over and we're on to something else, it's tough to say.  But I'm on powerful celebrities grooming teenage brides, and today it's an executive fostering an environment of toxic masculinity and abuse toward his female assistant.  This is the film they show us now in NYC as an example of harassment in the workplace, and also the way some managers try to stamp out reporting of that harassment, because really, in the end, what's the harm?  Male executives have run the film industry for a very long time and they've burned through hundreds of assistants and interns but the business is doing well, so why mess with a good thing?  

Actually, they just show that CLIP of Jane visiting the H.R. manager and then walking away without filing any sort of claim against her boss, which I'm sure goes on, however I had not yet seen the whole film, so I didn't really have the right context for the use of that clip in last year's anti-harassment training.  Honestly I was thinking, "No spoilers! I haven't seen the film yet, and now I know that she never files a claim!  How about a damn spoiler alert during this training session?"  

There's no surprise that there are bosses out there who abuse the system, they take advantage of young interns both work-wise and sexually, even though some of the worst offenders have been publicly removed from their positions, it's probably still happening, and cultural change is not system-wide just yet.  Although we never SEE the boss in question during this film, we hear his voice when he yells at Jane for her latest "mistake", like saying the wrong thing to his wife when she calls about her credit cards being put on hold, or asking too many questions about why the new intern is being put in a very nice hotel room, or writing out checks with no payee name, which will then be used for God knows what.  

Obviously, the boss is a serial cheater, and in other news, water is wet.  You don't get to be a chief executive, generally speaking, or the head of a network or the President of the U.S., or anyone in a position of power without, on some level, taking advantage of your position or re-defining your moral position on fidelity.  It's human nature, we want all that we have and just a bit more. I've been working in the studio recently with original art from an illustrated book about Monica Lewinsky, and that just kind of brings it all back, Bill Clinton's affairs and how Hillary had to look the other way, again and again. He was hardly the first President to have an affair, it was just the first time we all KNEW about it during his term. Right?  But Trump's no different, except for Biden, probably every President did it, going back to Jefferson at least. 

My first job in the film industry, I got a hint of what was to come, because I worked for a couple of directors who had been married but were recently separated, and they were each dating other people within the company or worked on productions with the company. I didn't feel like I was better than them, because I was with my first girlfriend/wife, who also worked as a sound assistant, and sometimes I got her jobs on shoots and sometimes she got me jobs on shoots, so it seemed very normal to be sleeping with an occasional co-worker, and that's just how the business runs. But when one director came back from a business trip to Asia and told me about the women he'd slept with there, I said, "Don't tell me, because I know your wife AND your girlfriend and you're putting me in a weird spot."  

So here's this film about an assistant to a film executive, and she has to return found earrings to her boss's hook-ups, and she has to arrive early each day to clean stains from his office furniture, and OK, that's a shitty thing to have to do, and maybe it's a terrible job, but I don't see those things as harassment or abuse, that's just part of a shitty job. He may have no right to yell at her for perceived mistakes, but again, shitty boss, not necessarily harassment in my book. Hey, she's free to leave the job at any time if she doesn't like the tasks - or she's free to find a better job in the same company or a different company. I didn't really like my job sweeping up trash in a movie theater during the COVID summer of 2021, but I needed the money, and I used my dislike for the job as motivation to find a better job and get the hell out of that one.  They asked me one morning to clean all of the bathrooms, and you know, that's really not my thing, but I did it, begrudgingly and then re-worked my schedule so I wouldn't be available for morning shifts, which is when they clean the bathrooms.  An alternative solution would have been to do a really terrible job cleaning the bathrooms, so they wouldn't ask me to do it again, but my strategy was a bit more elegant. 

You may notice that Jane is the first one in the office in the morning, and the last one to leave.  Again, part of being in a terrible job but this also doesn't really constitute abuse, not if she's being paid by the hour.  It's dark when she arrives and it's dark when she leaves, but this could just be a little thing we call winter.  I remember having days working on film shoots where I went into a studio before sunrise and left late at night because I was always the one who had to paint the backdrop in the morning and then paint it back to white at night, so yeah, there were weekends where I never saw the sun, and sure, that affects you. "Hooker hours", I used to call it, because I'd pass hookers on the West Side both coming to the set and when going home.  That was also a shitty job, but I kept at it until I found a way to get out and do something better. 

So I don't know, this is kind of a nothing-burger of a movie to me, maybe because I'm too close to it. I've been through many of these same struggles at low-paying jobs with long hours working for demanding bosses. Maybe this means I've been abused, but I was always compensated for my time, and I stuck with it until I was considered a veteran, then moved on to the next thing. I'm sorry if I don't sound sympathetic to the main character's plight here, maybe I've just built up my own tolerance over the years. Or maybe it's the fact that after this film came out, we've seen "Bombshell" and "She Said" and others that were more direct about this sexual harassment problem and who the perpetrators were. I'm sorry I took so long to get to this one, but as a result, the topic is kind of played out now. 

Oh, and Patrick Wilson has a cameo in this one - he's another person I saw at the theater, for the premiere of a film called "Ordinary Angels", he was outside waving at the fans and I was on outside tent duty. Again, I'm not supposed to engage but if I had, I could have mentioned that I've spoken on the phone with his wife, Dagmara, who is also my acting link for the next couple days. I'll explain the circumstances on Monday.  But yeah, I'm a big fan of Patrick Wilson, who got to be in TWO big DC Comics movies, "Aquaman" and my favorite, "Watchmen". 

Directed by Kitty Green

Also starring Julia Garner (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), Matthew Macfadyen (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Kristine Froseth (last seen in "Sierra Burgess Is a Loser"), Makenzie Leigh, Noah Robbins (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Jon Orsini (last seen in "Girl Most Likely"), Alexander Chaplin (last seen in "The Report"), Juliana Canfield (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Bregje Heinen (last seen in "Babylon"), Patrick Wilson (last seen in "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom"), Patrick Breen (last seen in "For Love or Money"), Owen Holland, Rory Kulz, Migs Govea (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Daoud Heidami (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Ben Maters, Tony Torn (last seen in "Game 6"), Devon Caraway, Genny Lis Padilla, Clara Wong (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), James C.B. Gray (last seen in "Bruised"), Sophie Knapp, Hunter Hojnowski, Andrew Hsu, Ray Sheen, Chester Wai, Liz Wisan, Fang Du, Cherie Mendez, Purva Bedi (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Kirit Kapaida (last seen in "The Lovely Bones'), 

with the voices of Jay O. Sanders (last seen in "Music of the Heart"), Stephanye Dussud, Bray Poor (last seen in "Picture Perfect"), Lou Martini Jr. (last seen in "The Irishman"), Rafael Sardina (last seen in "The Brave One"), Jenna O'Gara, Heather MacRae (last seen in "The Namesake"), Cynthia Bastidas, Manu Narayan, Mark Jacoby (last seen in "The Post"), Karen Stewart. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 e-mailed apologies

Priscilla

Year 17, Day 66 - 3/7/25 - Movie #4,966

BEFORE: OK, this is still kind of a romance film - or is it?  We'll get into it in just a bit. But I have to flash back to November 12, 2023, which was during the Oscar campaign season for last year's Oscars. Certain film distribution companies have been known to rent the theater where I work for guild screenings, not just the Oscars but also the DGA, PGA, WGA, SAG, they want all the voters from all the guilds to come out and see their movie the way it was intended, in a dark theater with other people, and sometimes even snacks and food, plus they'll trot out some celebrities to do a Q&A afterwards, anything to curry favor with the voters. 

So they don't really tell us, the theater staff working at the screening, who's going to show - sometimes it's a bunch of actors (like the main cast of "Glass Onion") sometimes it's a director (Kenneth Branagh, Paul Thomas Anderson have stopped in) and in the case of "Nosferatu", it was a bunch of hair, make-up and production design people, because the film got no acting nominations.  Whatever, I take what I can get, they're all going on my life list, which is at least twice as big as it was before I started this job three years ago.  I'm like a bird-watcher, only for celebrities, and much like a bird-watcher I'm not supposed to bother the wildlife, just maybe sneak a photo but NO SELFIES. 

Well, for this screening of "Priscilla", back in late 2023 Sofia Coppola was there to be interviewed on stage after the film, and while most people know her as a director, I remember when she was an actor, and she had a bit part as one of the Queen's hand-maidens in "Star Wars: Episode I - the Phantom Menace" and while she once said she has no memory of acting in that film, well, I remember, so this counted as a tick on a different list for me, an interaction with a "Star Wars" actor, and I have had many of those.  Well over the average, if I include everything from spotting them across a large convention center down to seeing one walk into a BBQ restaurant in North Carolina while holding a table for my family. I'm serious, like don't even TRY to catch up with me, because you'll only get hurt in the process. I'm at the point where they just come to where I work, I don't have to go looking for them any more. I couldn't get an autograph, but I handed Sofia Coppola a bottle of water, does that count for anything? 

Jacob Elordi carries over from "The Kissing Booth 3".

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Elvis" (Movie #4,549)

THE PLOT: When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. 

AFTER: I also should point out that I've been to Graceland, which I've always pronounced with an equal emphasis on both syllables, the "Grace" and the "land", but everyone in this film emphasized the "Grace" more, with the "land" sounding almost like an afterthought, the way we say "Iceland". OK, good to know. But going to Graceland and visiting all the exhibits there - we saw ALL of Elvis' cars, all of his jumpsuits, all of his gold records - we also noticed there was something of a false narrative being presented to the public.  Sure, we all want to remember Elvis the way he was when he was alive, singing and performing on stage, and being able to fit into a jumpsuit, but then of course later in life, he dressed a different way and he favored those weird three-wheel motorcycles, out of necessity I think. Of course I didn't expect to see a TV set with bullet holes in it while touring around his house, but there's also artwork on display that shows the good times between Elvis and Priscilla, like I remember a prominent piece of art that shows the family exiting a car outside the mansion at Christmastime, getting ready to head indoors for a big Christmas dinner and probably presents to unwrap and such. The couple had MAYBE two Christmases together after Lisa Marie was born and before they separated, so that's a very specific time in Elvis' life to make a painting about. 

There's no mention of the words "divorce" or "separation" in the Graceland exhibits, because that would mess with the story of Elvis being a genuinely swell individual, a devoted husband and father, and certainly not someone with a drug addiction or a drinking problem, or someone liable to shoot at the TV if he didn't like the show.  But all that is part of who he was, you have to take in the whole Elvis, you can't just pick and choose the parts you like, say his Grammy awards for Gospel music, and ignore the rest.  Elvis and his parents are also buried at Graceland, there's a very lavish display around their graves, you really can't miss it, even if you try. We also toured the handball court that Elvis played on the day he died, but the upper level of Graceland, including the bathroom he died in, is strictly off limits.  Because they want you to remember Elvis in a certain way.  

The only other music celebrity on his income level is probably Michael Jackson, someone who also had his own mansion, complete with an amusement park and petting zoo and whatever the hell else he wanted. Maybe we thought a little about Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus, who also came into a ton of money when they were young, and so yeah, probably went a little wild with it.  My wife's opinion of Graceland was "This is what happens when you give a 20-year-old like a billion dollars, they buy and build and collect whatever they want."  And this also affects their relationships, Elvis' affairs with his co-stars like Ann-Margret are well-known, but then at the same time, he had Priscilla living at Graceland long before anyone ever knew about her.  He met her when he was serving in the army in Germany, she was the daughter of an Air Force officer stationed there, and she was one of probably many girls recruited to keep Elvis company while he served.  He apparently had a house not far from the base, because him living in the barracks with normal soldiers, how would that work, exactly?   

When they met, he was 24 and she was 14. FOURTEEN!  Now, I'm not saying that anything happened between them that shouldn't have happened, there were chaperones and military personnel were involved with finding girls to bring to parties at Elvis' place, so who knows, maybe this was all above board.  But after his time in the army was over, Elvis negotiated with Priscilla Beaulieu's parents to let her live at Graceland in Memphis, she had to finish high-school and age a few years before she could "date" Elvis, but this is what happened.  We have a word for this now, it's "grooming", but back in the day, it was just called "Elvis gets whatever he wants, even if that's a 14-year-old girl. And she was encouraged to never leave the house, especially if Elvis was out of town, I mean, how would THAT look?  It was a different time, sure, but one might also consider that if she spent all her time with Elvis when he was in Memphis, and she couldn't leave the house when he was on tour, that sounds like a form of captivity.  

Plus he used his money to buy her extravagant gifts, and his influence to keep her from disagreeing with him, and then if she should have an opinion, he would throw a chair against the wall or something, it's a form of psychological abuse.  Combined with him being the biggest recording star in the whole world, which is a position of power, and he is the biggest bread-winner of all time and the alpha male, and whatever he said was what was going to happen.  His girlfriend (and later wife) was just supposed to stay home and wait for him to come back from the concert, see to his needs, take drugs with him and then have breakfast in bed with him the next morning. Sure, it was a different time, the early 1960's, but meanwhile he was jetting off to Hollywood to make movies, probably sleeping with his co-stars and who knows HOW many other girls, and that hardly seems fair, does it?  

But sure, having a child together will probably fix everything, right? Well, that's when Elvis' career was suddenly hot again, with his 1968 TV comeback special, so then he was constantly touring while she was at home raising their young daughter. She had an affair, too, with her dance instructor, and he had a staggering number of affairs while playing in Vegas.  This was still a recipe for an unhealthy relationship, no matter how many magazine articles were written about how solid their relationship was.  So they split up in 1972 and got divorced in 1973.  The "Elvis" movie glossed over a lot of this, obviously the focus of that film was on HIM, not HER, but it did have that scene near the end when they exchanged words in that car. What I did was put both films back-to-back on one DVD, so I can watch both sides of the story in the future. 

What a shocker, Elvis Presley Enterprises did not approve of this film, and would not allow the Elvis versions of songs to be licensed. See, that just tells me that the director may have been hitting pretty close to the mark. If the Elvis corporation had nothing to hide, then they wouldn't deny access to his songs. 

Directed by Sofia Coppola (director of "The Bling Ring")

Also starring Cailee Spaeny (last seen in "Civil War"), Ari Cohen (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Dagmara Dominczyk (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Tim Post (last seen in "Nightmare Alley"), Lynne Griffin (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Daniel Beirne (last seen in "On the Road"), Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll (last seen in "Little Italy"), Dan Abramovici, Matthew Shaw, Tim Dowler-Coltman, R. Austin Ball, Olivia Barrett, Stephanie Moore (last seen in "Angel Eyes"), Luke Humphrey, Deanna Jarvis, Jorja Cadence, Josette Halpert (last seen in "Flash of Genius"), Evan Annisette, Daniel Lipka, Raine Monroe Boland, Emily Mitchell (last seen in "Women Talking"), Gwynne Phillips, Conni Miu, Megan Dallan, Tonia Venneri, Erin Mackinnon, Sarah Dodd, Alanis Peart, Kelaiah Guiel, Andrew Mackay, Kelly Irene Whyte, Fegan DeCordova, Kelly Penner, Preston Galli

with archive footage of Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "Call Me Kate"), Peter Lorre (last seen in "Silk Stockings"), Robert Morley (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love")

RATING: 6 out of 10 karate lessons

The Kissing Booth 3

Year 17, Day 65 - 3/6/25 - Movie #4,965

BEFORE: Well, as we say around here at the Movie Year, every chain has to end sometime. But the poster for this film points out that the end of one thing is the beginning of something else, ideally.  There are still a few films about romance and relationships coming up, but nothing on the horizon looks very rom-commy.  I'm going to transition off this topic back to action films and such, and right now the second half of March is pretty much open, I'm down for whatever gets me to Easter, but first I'll have to figure out where I want to be on April 20 and what films are going to get me there. I probably won't have time until Saturday to figure that out, I just know I've got 9 or 10 Liam Neeson films lined up, and one of them hopefully leads me to another something else, so that one will go last in that sequence. And I'll be on vacation for 6 days in late March, so the blog will go dark, and I'll have to factor that into the programming. 

Joel Courtney carries over again from "The Kissing Booth 2" - and so do 29 other actors. 

THE PLOT: It's the summer before Elle Evans is set to head off to college, and she has a big decision to make. 

AFTER: We left off at the end of "The Kissing Booth 2" with Elle getting acceptance letters from both UC Berkeley AND Harvard, and don't you just HATE when that happens. She always promised Lee they'd go to Berkeley together, because that's where their moms met and became besties, but she also promised Noah that she'd go to school in Boston so they can get an apartment together near campus.  What a dilemma, she's got to break the bad news to one of the two brothers, and her decision is... to NOT make a decision until the very last minute, which turns out to be the worst possible thing she can do.  The biggest problem with this film series is that nobody, especially Elle, seems to be learning from their mistakes, they just continue on because they don't want to have a potentially awkward conversation about something, but that just kicks the problem down the road a bit, and then later somebody's going to be really mad that they weren't part of the conversation about something. 

Elle's the worst offender at this, because she doesn't want to hurt anyone, even when she's promised different things to different people and those things are not going to work together at all. It might be the easiest solution for the moment to put her needs last and try to satisfy everyone else, but that's really not a viable long-term solution FOR HER, and one day hopefully she realizes this, only she never does.  Yes, of course, you can be in an exclusive lasting relationship with someone and still also have friends on the side, as long as everybody is open and honest about everything and everybody likes each other and gets along, and nobody has a sudden attack of jealousy over how much time is devoted to friends. But as we saw in the last film, this combination of trying to balance work, play, family, friends, and your hot-headed jealous long-term partner is pretty much a recipe for disaster.  But no, go ahead, try to lie your way out of these scheduling conflicts or the fact that you want to juggle three boyfriends while limiting your own partner's options.  Let me know how that goes. 

Elle should be saving money to pay for college (if she ever manages to decide on one) BUT you can't take extra shifts at the restaurant AND also finish that "Best Summer Ever" bucket list you wrote years ago, because doing all of those things - the water-park, the go-kart races, sky-diving - costs MONEY.  And they take up time, you'd have to give up sleeping if you're bouncing back and forth between your hometown and the beach house.  Logistically, this is all just plain impossible.  Look, if you own a beach house by its very nature that's not going to be IN your hometown, it's going to be some distance away, because otherwise if you lived close to the beach, well, then you wouldn't need the beach house.

And let's talk about that beach house - I think it's bigger than the family's MAIN house, and that's saying something. It looks like it sleeps 27 people comfortably, which is handy when you want to throw that big summer rager beach party every couple of days.  But come on, this is a fantasy world, right? I mean, nobody could maintain this schedule, with the parties and all the summer activities and STILL show up for work AND handle extra shifts.  Even if this were possible, it doesn't exactly create a great environment for Elle and Lee, who are trying to keep their relationships afloat, but if you're always short on sleep, that's going to affect your mood, and that's ultimately going to affect your relationship, which is already on thin ice for the reasons above. 

It all comes to a head when Elle and Lee want to dress up like character from Super Mario Bros. and re-enact a Mario Kart race on the go-kart track, which is at the water-park managed by Marco, who was Elle's "Dance Dance Mania" partner in the last film.  He's sort-of boyfriend #3, or he was for a time, and Noah's not going to be happy that he's back in Elle's life. Marco agrees to dress up like Wario and let them throw silly string and whipped-cream bombs at each other (totally against the park rules, I'll wager...) but come on, is it WORTH IT in the end if it costs Elle her relationship with Noah? Completing your fantasy summer bucket list is bad for you, it turns out. Plus, there goes all that money she saved for college expenses, they wasted it on costumes and props.

Lee also tries to sabotage the sale of the beach house, which is NOT COOL, and surprisingly there are no repercussions for this, but there really should be. Dude, your parents own the beach house, not you, and they can do whatever they want with it.  Did he even stop for a second to think that they might need the money to pay for HIS college tuition?  No, of course he didn't, because he's also a petty person who thinks only about his own pleasure all the time, like a grown-up child.  God forbid that a Millennial kid be inconvenienced in any way, like why didn't HE get a summer job?  He swept up at the restaurant where Elle works, but he's not getting paid for that - and even UC Berkeley is expensive. Hope he enjoys paying off student loans for the rest of his life. Maybe lay off the cosplay a bit, kid, it's a very expensive hobby.

Elle deals with all the pent-up resentment from putting everyone ELSE'S needs first by taking it out on her father's girlfriend, who really has done nothing wrong, she hasn't been trying to replace Elle's mom or anything, and did not deserve for Elle (another spoiled millennial) from blowing up at her. Sure, Elle apologizes later, but it never should have happened in the first place. Linda just wants to tell Elle some cool stories about her mom, but Elle's always too busy to hear them, which is not a shock to anyone.  You get what you give, Elle, and taking things out on your dad's new girlfriend is just creating bad karma, you'll see. 

Eventually Elle learns to dial in on herself and what SHE maybe wants to do with her life, and she decides to learn how to make video-games. Right, but very few women end up working in this space, maybe she'll be an exception, and maybe that will be good for video-games in general, but who can say?  Anyway, she ends up disappointing both Noah AND Lee, so yeah, my prediction was wrong - I'm still Team Lee, though, Noah's a giant douche. Like, sure, you go girl, get out there and kill it, do NOT backslide and take Noah's ass back. You're better than that.

Noah and Lee's mom ultimately decides to not sell the beach house, which doesn't make much sense considering she now has TWO sons in college, one at Harvard.  It also doesn't make sense because some development companies wants to build condos there, so the LAND is probably more valuable than the house, she's passing on millions and will probably have to change her tune by the time that the third year of Noah's tuition comes due.  

It feels like somebody almost forgot to write a kissing booth into the script, which is a bit like making a "Star Wars" movie and almost forgetting to put in a war and some stars. You know, like maybe keep the focus on what got you there, right?  So they threw in a kissing booth right near the end, and it affects the plot not at all, it's just window dressing at this point, something that reminds everyone how this whole crazy mess gets started so they can be nostalgic and happy and sad all at the same time. 

OK, I've spent entirely too much time on the romantic life of one fictional teen, Elle Evans. I'm excited to be moving on to something else, really, anything at all right now will do just fine. 

Directed by Vince Marcello (director of "The Kissing Booth 2")

Also starring Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Molly Ringwald, Taylor Zakhar Perez, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Meganne Young, Stephen Jennings, Carson White, Morne Visser, Bianca Bosch, Camilla Wolfson, Zandile Madiiwa, Judd Krok, Sanda Shandu, Hilton Pelser, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Evan Hengst, Joshua Eady, Trent Rowe, Michelle Allen, Nathan Lynn, Byron Langley, Chloe Williams, Toni Jean Erasmus, Bianca Amato, Nadia Kretschmer, Matthew Dylan Roberts, Maria Pretorius, Lya du Toit (all carrying over from "The Kissing Booth 2")

Megan du Plessis, Lincoln Pearson, Michael Miccoli, Chase Dallas, Jesse Rowan-Goldberg, Juliet Blacher (all last seen in "The Kissing Booth"), Cameron Scott, Daneel Van Der Walt, Daniel Raj, Peter Butler, Colin Moss (last seen in "Then Came You"), Michael Kirch (last seen in "Bloodshot"), Vanessa-Lee Hamlett, James van Helsdingen, Caleb Payne, Kingsley Pearson 

RATING: 4 out of 10 bloopers during the end credits (please, send help)

The Kissing Booth 2

Year 17, Day 64 - 3/5/25 - Movie #4,964

BEFORE: Well, it turns out there are THREE "Kissing Booth" movies on Netflix, so I'm going to treat this franchise the same way I treated the "Hunger Games", "Twilight" and "Divergent" movies, it makes the most sense for me to watch all three movies in a row, maximizing the actor carry-overs, and thus preventing me from ever having to circle back this way again. But, you know, I said that about the "Purge" movies and then they went and made one more of those, so really, you never know. Three movies is an AWFUL lot of film devoted to just one teenage girl who lives by a bunch of secret rules but can never make up her mind about anything.  

Any actor in all three movies automatically makes it to my year-end breakdown, three's been the traditional minimum to get a shout-out. And the main actors are actually getting FOUR films each this year out of me hitting this franchise, because I need an intro and an outro, and Joey King's been in an animated movie already that was watched in January. 

Joel Courtney carries over from "The Kissing Booth", and so do 23 other actors. 

THE PLOT: High school senior Elle juggles a long-distance relationship with her dreamy boyfriend Noah, college applications and a new friendship with a handsome classmate that could change everything. 

AFTER: First we get a recap of everything that went down in those last few weeks of summer, before Noah left for Harvard (still can't believe he got in, look, he's not exactly a genius, he's a jock, movies have told us that someone CAN'T be both...). Elle hung out with her friends, read some books, volunteered down at the food pantry. Just kidding, she crossed a bunch of items off her sexual "to-do" list, mainly having sex with Noah in different places. On the beach, on a motorcycle, in his childhood room, in the pool, next to the pool, you get the idea.  But we ALREADY saw him get on the plane for Massachusetts, so really the film had to back up a little bit to properly set the scene.  

Once he's gone to college, Elle can finally focus on herself and what's really important - getting the high score back on "Dance Dance Mania" because they lost it somehow to the new kid who just moved from Italy and doesn't sound the slightest bit Italian.  There's really no way for an actor to sound Italian without reinforcing sterotypes, so I guess the solution was to not try at all?  Just talk regular?  OK, but now he doesn't sound like an immigrant AT ALL. They swung that pendulum too far in the other direction.  

The school year starts off with some kind of cross-gender intra-mural volleyball-slash-tug of war-three legged race competition, which is stuff teens do at camp, not in the first week of school.  Bad writers, I caught you cheating, you really wanted to make a camp movie, didn't you?  But you couldn't so you tried to work in the camp athletic games into an academic environment. But I see what you tried to do here...

If the first film had just one simple love triangle, this one's got SO many triangles that it's not even funny, you may not be able to keep track of them all.  You know that ball that drops in Times Square on New Year's Eve?  Yeah, look closely at it, it's a giant roundish object that's really made up of a massive number of lit-up triangles.  Yeah, it's kind of like that, this movie's flavor is "Oops! All Love Tringles.  Elle herself is involved in at least two of them, maybe three, and then there's Marco, that new Italian kid, he gets thrown into the mix as well (like, as the spare boyfriend though).  The original triangle was Elle, Noah and Lee, but now Lee's dating Rachel, so there's a new triangle of Elle, Lee and Rachel (which really pisses off Rachel, eventually) and Noah's off at college and might be dating Chloe, so there's another triangle over there, and WAIT, I guess that's it, just the two triangles after all.  But still, that's TWICE as many as the first film, it's a 100% increase.  

There's more lying going around, too - Elle never tells Lee that she's applying to other schools besides U.C. Berkeley, because she doesn't want him to freak out.  Lee never tells Elle that Rachel thinks she hangs out with them too much, and Rachel can't get any time with her own boyfriend, which is a problem. And of course Noah might be lying about not having another girlfriend at Harvard, when Elle finally visits him she finds a suspicious earring under the bed, and it's not even the kind Noah would wear...

Elle has a talk with her father about paying for college, which is a new wrinkle because it's the first time we get to hear her father talk, I think they weren't paying the actor enough to have him say any dialogue, anyway it's a film about the teens and not the parents, so who cares what he has to say?  Oh, right, college, which he can't really afford, not without financial aid and Elle getting a six-figure job somehow, which she couldn't possibly land unless she'd already BEEN to college. So Elle is forced to team up with Marco to try to win the Dance Dance Mania super championship, which I'm not sure is a real thing any more, I thought they did away with live video-game competitions years ago.                       

The tournament is held just before Thanksgiving, and so that of course is when all the relationships are tested, all the lies are revealed and all the triangles are celebrated over a large two-family meal.  The great American holiday was probably a lot less awkward when the teens in those families started sleeping with each other.  Now it looks like some kind of "Desperate Housewives" reunion, everyone flipping the table, or at least their plate, before storming off.  Never fear, the magic kissing booth, now with blindfolds, is here to save the day and put everything right again.  

Obviously I wasn't the only one to point out how problematic the whole kissing booth concept is, it's a violation of consent protocols, and it only seemed to celebrate straight relationships in the first film. Well, somebody got the memo afterwards, because the kids at Catholic County Day School opened up the field, and this time Ollie was allowed to express his love for Miles, the class president.  Gee, I thought he'd go for Cameron, who only went by the nickname "Yearbook" in the first film because he took photos for the yearbook and whenever he saw something picture-worthy, he shouted "Yearbook!"  Anyway Ollie get to kiss Miles and sorry, lesbians, you'll have to wait another year. 

Everyone is just WAY too excited by the action at the Kissing Booth - I mean, this is just kissing we're talking about, and kissing is not generally a spectator sport, but here everyone is about as excited as if they've found a new phone game or their candidate of choice got elected, multiplied by "There's free ice cream!"  Further proof that the writer (I think she's Dutch or Danish or something) is somehow way too interested in American customs that died out (or should have) decades ago. I mean, you could learn that you're top on the organ donor list and you're getting that new kidney you need to survive, and you wouldn't be this excited.  You could be at a monster truck rally during a solar eclipse, and people would NOT be this excited. Maybe teen girls at the height of Beatlemania were this excited, but is that really the league where you want to put a high-school kissing booth?  Is that what we're doing? 

I was working at a double-screening last night, the theater was showing the Tuesday night film appreciation class, which was a new indie film with Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, and, OK, people seemed to like it, though the premise seemed a little sad. In the bigger theater was a film called "Rebel with a Clause", which was about a woman traveling across the country to talk to people about the importance of proper grammar.  Sure, we need this film, because there are a lot of people confused about when to use the word "myself" instead of "I" or "me", and then there's that whole thing with the Oxford comma.  But are people going to be screaming with excitement, nearly exploding with fervor, over a film about how to use the English language?  No, they are not. There might be a few grammar freaks out there, but even they will probably show up, act normally and say, "Hey, that was a cool film about grammar, which I liked and appreciated." and simply no one is going to be screaming with excitement, that's just the way it goes. Same goes for a kissing booth, you might say, "Oh, that guy is kissing that girl now, that's new." and then go about your day as planned.  Absolutely no one, not even in high school, would enjoy watching the action at a kissing booth THIS much. 

I just think there needs to be a happy medium, that's all.  On the excitement level of 1 to 10, the crowd shouldn't be a 2, because then the audience won't care, but neither should they be at like 18.  

Well, that's two movies down in the franchise, and so far this story is NOT following with the formula of the girl ending up with the male friend who helps her try to win over her dream guy.  But there's still one movie, so if Elle doesn't end up with Lee in tomorrow's film, then I'm never ever watching another "Kissing Booth" movie.

Directed by Vince Marcello (director of "The Kissing Booth")

Also starring Joey King, Jacob Elordi, Molly Ringwald, Meganne Young, Stephen Jennings, Chloe Williams, Morné Visser, Bianca Bosch, Zandile Madiiwa, Carson White, Judd Krok, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Evan Hengst, Sanda Shandu, Hilton Pelser, Trent Rowe, Michelle Allen, Joshua Eady, Nathan Lynn, Byron Langley, D. David Morin, Waldemar Schultz, Robin Smith (all 23 carrying over from "The Kissing Booth")

Taylor Zakhar Perez, Maisie Richardson-Sellers (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens"), Camilla Wolfson, Aidan Scott, Joseph Gaza, Caleb Swanepoel, Dylan Edy, Julian Place, Glen Biderman-Pam, Jason K. Ralph, Robyn Scott, Kevin Otto (last seen in "Chappie"), Maria Pretorius, Sean Barenblatt, Shana Mans, Toni Jean Erasmus (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Jeanne Neilson, Grant Ross, Motsi Tekateka, Kai Luke Brummer, Nadia Kretschmer, Lya du Toit, Bianca Amato, Matthew Dylan Roberts (last seen in "Chronicle")

RATING: 5 out of 10 fun things to do in Boston (but that's it, there are only 10 before you just end up drinking in a bar.)

The Kissing Booth

Year 17, Day 63 - 3/4/25 - Movie #4,963

BEFORE: I know, I know, I said "No more high school romances" but I said that after I'd set up this year's chain, and I had plans to get this franchise crossed off from my Netflix list. If I don't watch them now, they're just going to linger there forever, and I want my pop-up list to stay fresh, and not be filled with films way past their expiration dates. So I'm just going to have to endure three more films about high-school kids falling in love.  OK, four this week, but that's it.  I'm way too old to understand or even watch these films. 

Joel Courtney carries over from "Players".  I think when I set up this chain I confused him with Jai Courtney, who was in "Suicide Squad" and "Divergent", but this is a different guy. 

THE PLOT: A high school student is forced to confront her secret crush at a kissing booth. 

AFTER: I'm shocked that this got made at all, in this age of woke-ism and stuff. Wouldn't you think that the "Me too" movement would have killed a plot based around a kissing booth?  Forget the fact that it's a practice of selling kisses at an event to raise money, which is a bit too close to prostitution for a high school fund-raiser to even get involved with, but it removes that barrier of consent, it's more like compliance if you're the one working the booth.  You HAVE to kiss this person, on the lips, even if you don't want to. This is surprisingly icky when viewed through the modern lens. OK, so we're teaching high-school kids important lessons, like that person has five dollars, so pucker up, buttercup, the PTA or the drama club needs cash.  

It's all window-dressing here, unfortunately, for just a simple old-fashioned love triangle. You can cover it with kids playing "Dance Dance Mania" at the Santa Monica Pier or being on the soccer team, but this isn't "She's the Man" or "A Brilliant Young Mind", this is just about a junior girl being attracted to a senior boy, who is the older brother of her best friend.  Oh, if only the two friends weren't born on the same day, to two women who were ALSO best friends, and raised almost as if they were siblings!  That's just going to make things awkward and complicated, and if only the two friends didn't have a secret RULE about dating each other's family.  Which is really backwards, because it's clear that these rules were reverse-engineered by the screenwriters to forbid EXACTLY the situations that they wanted to bring into the story.  

Everything then was put in place BEFORE the romance between Elle and Noah, to make it all the more forbidden and naughty-like once it comes to pass. The big football-player Noah beats up anybody who threatens his little brother Lee, and also forbids any other boy in school from asking out Elle, because she's like his little sister in a way.  (Ooh, that's also going to make things more forbidden and naughty when they get together...). So Lee's mom is the surrogate mom for Elle, because her mother died in a very "Beaches"-like fashion, and the two families have been hanging out together ever since.  Well, if anybody understands complicated, problematic teen relationships, it would be Molly Ringwald, wouldn't it? 

Since Elle's always over Lee's house, swimming in their pool, there are a lot of opportunities to see big brother Noah walking around wearing very little, and she's in her swimsuit, so yeah, stuff is bound to happen.  And then when Elle and Lee hit on the idea for the kissing booth to raise money at the school carnival, and for some unknown reason the school with the strict dress code allows it, well, everything's going to come to realization, isn't it?  Elle had to manifest her fantasy relationship with Noah into the real world via the kissing booth. But honestly, with Elle constantly getting drunk and nearly taking off her clothes at every party, something was bound to happen sooner or later, even though Noah wouldn't let anybody even look at her.  Good thing, if it weren't for him she probably would have been sexually assaulted at a party due to her inability to keep her clothes on and her habit of blacking out. 

Noah gets accepted to Harvard, not quite sure how that happened. Maybe they finally decided to get a football team and they needed to enroll some jocks to explain the game to them. But that's going to put a time limit on Noah and Elle's relationship, as he's got to leave for Boston at the end of the summer. (Funny, we saw prom and then it was summer, but we never saw Noah's graduation. It's a strange omission, but he was absent so much in those last few weeks of school, maybe he missed it.). When he finally gets on the plane, Elle is unsure about the future, but she knows that she'll always remember her time with Noah.

Now, the formula dictates that Elle should end up with Lee, Noah's brother and her best friend.  But we don't get there in the first film, however I took so long to watch this that they did make two sequels, which are also on Netflix. I want to predict that Elle will eventually end up with the younger brother who is also her best friend, but perhaps there are a few more twists and turns in the story before we get there.  Then again, this first film got slammed for being clichéd in addition to sexist, so who knows, maybe that was the original plan but it got changed up, there's really only one way to find out. 

And to think it all started with a kissing booth. An outdated, sexist, misogynist, straights-only kissing booth. It sure seems like an idea that had its time and place, only that was long ago and we should all be past this sort of thing by now. It feels like maybe the writers grew up in the 1950s, or reading stories about the 1950s, and they didn't realize that times have changed? 

Directed by Vince Marcello

Also starring Joey King (last heard in "Despicable Me 4"), Jacob Elordi (last seen in "Saltburn"), Meganne Young (last seen in "The Giver"), Stephen Jennings, Chloe Williams, Carson White, Molly Ringwald (last seen in "Teaching Mrs. Tingle"), Morné Visser (last seen in "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom"), Jessica Sutton (last seen in "Escape Room"), Zandile Madliwa, Bianca Bosch, Michelle Allen (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Joshua Eady, Byron Langley, Judd Krok, Frances Sholto-Douglas, Evan Hengst, Sanda Shandu, Hilton Pelser, Trent Rowe, Nathan Lynn, D. David Morin, Waldemar Schultz, Megan du Plessis, Lincoln Pearson, Jack Fokkens, Michael Miccoli, Juliet Blacher, Jesse Rowan-Goldberg, Chase Dallas, Lindsey Abrahams, Robin Smith (last seen in "Invictus"), Khanya Kerwath, Alex Henry (last seen in "Irresistible"), Dan Elijah Rudin

RATING: 5 out of 10 Halloween costumes

Players

Year 17, Day 62 - 3/3/25 - Movie #4,962

BEFORE: OK, thanks to some coffee when I got home last night, I made it through 2 hours of Tournament of Champions, then I speed-watched the 4-hour Oscars show in just 2 hours, because I fast-forwarded over all the speeches, the unnecessary tribute to James Bond songs, and the lifetime achievement awards. I only slowed down for the nominees in each category, then as soon as I heard the winner, fast-forwarded to the next one. I watched the "In Memoriam" segment, because I'm not a monster, also I watched the clips from each Best Picture nominee, because I had only seen ONE of them and heard another one. HINT: It was very screamy and also won Best Picture. I'll get to some of these films, probably most of these films, it's all just coming at a very inconvenient time, as I'm wrapping up the romance chain.  Look, tomorrow I'll add whatever Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films that I can to my list if they aren't already ON it. But only the ones already available streaming somewhere, because if they're not, well, what's the point?  The ones that aren't, I'll catch up with them along down the road somewhere. I've still got nominated films from 2023, 2022, and so on back to 2018 that I haven't been able to work in. Progress is slow, sorry - and "Roma" is a very difficult film to link to.

Damon Wayans Jr. carries over again from "Long Weekend". 

THE PLOT: A sports writer unused to relationships falls for a fling, leading her to reconsider playing the field in favor of commitment.  

AFTER: It's another film focused on a group of friends who are nearly all horrible people. This group of four friends (which grows to five or six by the end of the film) just wants to get laid out on the NYC nightclub scene, and they're not above pulling a few tricks to make that happen.  They work as each other's wingmen (or wing-women) to have loud break-ups that also make them sound rich and fabulous, and look, I'm not saying it works, but it apparently works, and then if there's even a chance of getting into a relationship, they never gave out their real name in the first place, so after sex they just disappear and move on to the next con game. Well, they probably get a lot more work done this way, it is pretty efficient to not be tied down and texting to your spouse all day because you don't have one. 

Mackenzie (Mack) is a reporter on the NYC sports beat - which means she doesn't cover the major league teams, she focuses on sports like chess boxing (yes, it's a thing) and axe-throwing and other little sports that nobody watches on TV, like soccer.  This takes her all over the city, and I recognized places like Yankee Stadium and the running path in Brooklyn along the East River.  The building that housed the newspaper (or web-site, or whatever) that they all worked for looked REALLY familiar, like maybe I've walked by it in my neighborhood, or nearby in Brooklyn. We do get a lot of famous graffiti around where I live, there are even guided tours of it.  And that bowling alley was The Gutter, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, they have animation screenings there sometimes. 

You know this film got a grant from "Made in NY", right?  The goal was to show that there's something fun to do every. single. night. in New York.  Whether that's a concert at the Guggenheim or a Yankees game or a shuffleboard tournament, you will literally never run out of things to do. Sure, I get it, nobody went outside for like three years and the economy suffered, they are so desperate to get people back out there again, but money is still tight, and nobody can afford the prices all of these places are charging for cocktails.  Really, it's a choice between drinks at night or eggs in the morning right now, because only the super rich can afford both.  

I paid attention more to the filming locations, I guess, because the film narrative itself is so damn BASIC.  Mack has a fling with her neighbor at the start of the film, but only because she knows he's moving out in a few days.  OK, so then why go to so much trouble to PRETEND to be interesting in fishing and camping, if you're never going to go fishing with him?  Plus it's stupid because even if a guy's like really into fishing, he's not going to have sex with a woman just because she's also into fishing - he'll have sex with her because she's a woman, and she's cute and nearby. So it's a lot of effort for a small return, I think. But Mack has a problem, because she suddenly, inexplicably, out of nowhere, uncharacteristically, wants to be in a long-term relationship with one of her flings. A very attractive, rich, fling who's also a writer and has a Pulitzer nomination. Well, sure, they may have a few things in common, BUT he doesn't want to date her seriously, probably because she can't stop making that FACE.  Anxious face - once you notice she keeps doing it, you can't NOT notice it, and I guess he noticed it.

Mack rallies her friends to help her track her prey, Nick, across the city.  They put him under surveillance, they figure out his routine, when and where he goes running, how many women he's dating casually, how many times he's dated each one, etc.  There's only one problem, nobody in this group of friends seems to know what to do next, because they've been running these seduction games for years now and they don't know any other way to go about it.  Wait, you mean she wants to go on a real DATE and have an adult conversation about grown-up stuff?  Wow, her friends really can't help her here at all, because they're adult children who only want flings.  Still, she gets some good help from her friend Adam, and it makes sense, because later we find out that Mack and Adam used to date, but it didn't go well and they just became friends and work-mates.  BUT they say the same expressions, have the same dance moves and finish each other's sentences.  

OK, wait, wait, because now it's all starting to look really familiar, it's the same formula as "The DUFF" and "What If" and "That Awkward Moment", so this really is a running theme this year - we can really just save a lot of time here and identify VERY EARLY that Mack should be dating Adam, and that's probably what she's going to be doing by the end of the film. "Desperados" is another one that fits this same patter, the lead female character there ALSO enlisted the help of a friendly African-American man that she dated before, in order to gain the affection of the rich, attractive Caucasian man, only to enjoy spending time with her friend MORE once she realized the guy she was crushing on wasn't all he was cracked up to be.  

It's no surprise that she's destined to end up with her best friend, because we've seen this before - the person who helps you land the relationship with the person of your dreams is really THE ONE, after you realize that you don't really want what you tried so hard to get. Suddenly you realize that person isn't all that you imagined them to be and it's not settling, but you realize you have a deeper connection with the friend who helped you get there. And also, you've got more of a connection there and you like many of the same things and eat some of the same foods and you have catch-phrases and little dances you do together. 

So, single ladies out there, the answer is simple, just form a friendship with a man and confide in him for years, maybe even a decade, or enlist his help to win the man of your dreams, because then at the last minute, you'll realize the man you're pursuing isn't so dreamy, and you'll be better off in a relationship with the male friend who's been giving you dating advice all along.  Or so I've heard, several times, that this is the way it needs to work out.

There's another repeated plot point here, where Mack shows a story she's written to Nick, the guy with the Pulitzer, because she values his opinion, and he tears it apart and tells her better ways to write it, because he hates it.  Well, this is a lot like the main plot point in "You Hurt My Feelings", isn't it?  Only that couple was married, and here, not so much, but the idea is the same.  I see both sides, because there really should be a way for someone to give an author constructive criticism on their writing without hurting their feelings, but apparently the people in these two movies didn't get that memo.  But Adam kept telling Mack that her writing was great, and that Nick didn't know what he was doing, plus he cut out everything that made her story personal to her, and that's kind of important. So clearly Adam is proper boyfriend material and Nick isn't, I predicted this very early on in "Players" because now I know the formula. 

It's probably a very clear indicator that I should get off this topic very soon - the fact that I'm seeing repeated plotlines.  

Directed by Trish Sie (director of "Pitch Perfect 3")

Also starring Gina Rodriguez (last seen in "Kajillionaire"), Tom Ellis (last seen in "Isn't It Romantic"), Augustus Prew (last seen in "Ibiza"), Joel Courtney (last seen in "Super 8"), Liza Koshy (last heard in "Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), Ego Nwodim, Marin Hinkle (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Brock O'Hurn, Sarah Dacey-Charles, Sterling Jonatan Williams, Jerry Kernion (last heard in "The Princess and the Frog"), Claudia Maree Mailer, Nicholas Shields, Ashley Paige Albert, Dan Cordle, Tony Foggia,

RATING: 5 out of 10 obituaries for celebrities, written in advance

Long Weekend

Year 17, Day 61 - 3/2/25 - Movie #4,961

BEFORE: I have to work today at the NY Children's Film Festival, and then when I get home first priority is going to be dinner and then second will be watching Tournament of Champions on Food Network, so chances are I will NOT get to see the Oscars live tonight. Maybe I'll have time to fast-forward through them before bedtime, but most likely not.  So I don't know how I'll be able to avoid spoilers, probably not - it's doubtful I can make it to Monday night without hearing about the big winners.  BUT I haven't seen the majority of the nominated films, only "Dune: Part Two" and "Inside Out 2", really.  Something tells me I'm going to regret not dropping "The Wild Robot" into my Catherine O'Hara chain in January, but we'll see. 

Damon Wayans Jr. carries over from "Love, Guaranteed". Now here's the line-up for Monday, 3/3, Day 31 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" - final day!

Best Visual / Special Effects Winners and Nominees:

6:00 am "A Stolen Life" (1946)

8:00 am "Tom Thumb" (1958)

9:45 am "7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (1964)

11:30 am "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)

2:00 pm "The Time Machine" (1960)

3:45 pm "Mighty Joe Young" (1949)

5:30 pm "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)

Oscar Worthy Heiresses: 

8:00 pm "Pride of the Yankees" (1942)

10:15 pm "Norma Rae" (1979)

12:15 am "Blossoms in the Dust" (1941)

2:15 am "Sister Kenny" (1946)

4:15 am "The Story of Louis Pasteur" (1936)

I was at 148 seen out of 344, and I've seen another 3 out of Monday's 12: "The Spirit of St. Louis", "The Time Machine" and "2001: A Space Odyssey".  I have a copy of "Norma Rae" but it never seems like the right time to watch it - like I've tried to land it on Labor Day, and it never works out.  Maybe I should have included it in this month's Sally Field chain, but it didn't feel like a very romance-based film.  SO now 151 seen out of 356 takes me to a final score of 42.4% - almost a half a percentage point ahead of last year's score. 

THE PLOT: A struggling writer meets an enigmatic woman who enters his life at the right time..

AFTER: There is a twist here, something that helps this film stand out from all the other "two people meet each other" movies.  Sure, this seems really simple at first, Bart, a male writer is down on his luck, he's forced to move into his friend's garage, he has to take a job writing item descriptions for a medical supply catalog. Then he meets this cute girl who wakes him up after he falls asleep after drinking alcohol in a movie theater screening "Being There". She seems really into him, and she invites him out for more drinks, and this turns into spending days together, and that turns into spending nights together, everything seems great except for the fact that the woman is so weird - she has no cell phone, she has no job and she walks around with big amounts of money and pays for everything with cash. Like, who does that? 

I can't even really talk about the twist, because it's a spoiler, even me saying that there is a twist is a bit too much, because now you'll know going in to expect one.  It might be on the level of the one from "Fight Club" or the one from "The Sixth Sense", only it's neither of those.  It could have been either one of those, like the woman could have been imaginary or she could have been a ghost. But she's not either of those, at least I don't think she is - no, it's something else. When she finally reveals where she came from, why she doesn't have a job and why she doesn't have a phone or a credit card, sure, the answer is quite unbelievable. Bart can't believe it, he doesn't want to believe it, but SHE believes it, however she could be lying or she could be crazy. All answers are possible. 

That's all I can really say, but hey, props for trying something different here, I sure wasn't expecting it, or I might have scheduled this one for another time if I had only known, which I didn't. It's a paradox, I know - but you only know what you know when you know it. Things are always very hard to predict, even with movies that follow formulas - so it's even worse when a movie goes way off the reservation and pulls something you never saw coming. But this one is quite clever, and the more I think about it, the cleverer it gets. I'm not going to say any more, I'm going to cut this short because I've got to get to Tournament of Champions tonight and then speed-watch the Oscars. I wish I had a long weekend so I could catch up on everything!

Directed by Steve Basilone 

Also starring Finn Wittrock (last seen in "The Normal Heart"), Zoë Chao (last seen in "Your Place or Mine"), Casey Wilson (last seen in "Always Be My Maybe"), Wendi McLendon-Covey (last heard in "Elemental"), Jim Rash (last seen in "Fly Me to the Moon"), Carter Morgan, Steve Basilone, Jennifer Irwin (last seen in "Superstar"), Jess Jacobs, Ellison Randell, Dylan Wittrock, Deanna Barillari, Andrew Secunda (last seen in "Our Idiot Brother"), Haley Rawson (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Cyrina Fiallo. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 photo booth photos