BEFORE: Well, the alumni meet-up last night was something of a bust, nobody else from the Tisch School of the Arts attended, which makes me wonder if I'm not being invited to the right events. I'd love to go to one of these where all the famous filmmakers and actors attend, but that just doesn't seem to be happening. I don't mind talking with interesting people who went to the Law school or the Nursing school, but I'm also there to network and for that I need to be around film and animation people. There was a survey in my e-mail this morning asking for my thoughts on the event, and I almost never fill out things like that, but today I had something to say.
Marisa Tomei carries over from "Love Is Strange". Just two weeks to go until I can call this romance chain over - I've made great strides this year in getting some of the older films off the list, based on both when they were made and when they were added to my list. So yeah, we're in the "clearance sale" section of the chain right now, everything's got to go because I've got to make room for the new merchandise coming in.
Tomorrow, Friday, is Day 22 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" so I know we're getting close to this year's ceremony. The themes for March 6 are "Oscar Goes International" and "Oscar Goes to Space":
6:15 am "Immortal Love" (1961)
8:15 am "Yojimbo" (1961)
10:15 am "Autumn Sonata" (1978)
12:15 pm "Bicycle Thieves" (1948)
2:00 pm "I Vitelloni" (1953)
4:00 pm "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964)
6:00 pm "The 400 Blows" (1959)
8:00 pm "For All Mankind" (1989)
9:30 pm "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968)
12:15 am "Marooned" (1969)
2:30 am "Forbidden Planet" (1956)
I'm claiming three today, because I DID watch every Ingmar Bergman film I could a couple years back. Also "2001" and "Forbidden Planet", which are sci-fi classics. I remember arguing with my boss over the ending of "2001", which he claimed had no meaning and was nonsense. Well, sure, if that's the way you want to look at it, but I will think much less of you if you say that. Anyway I'm past the century mark at long last and I'm up to 101 seen out of 246, still 41%.
THE PLOT: A waitress hardly notices a shy busboy who secretly loves her, until one night she's attacked and he comes to her rescue. From there a relationship sparks but one secret could mean disaster for these fated lovers.
AFTER: This one came out in 1993, that's like 33 years ago - surely I MUST have seen this film at some point, right? It's annoying when the film feels very familiar, because that suggests that I HAVE seen it, but then I only really started keeping good records by rating films on IMDB, and I started doing that in 2009, which is already 17 years ago. I'm taking a chance by saying that I have NEVER seen this film, I admit that it's possible, however it just can't be proven. Well, when in doubt, if it's not rated on my IMDB account, and it can help me with the linking, then it's fair game, right? So I started watching this and no, it did NOT feel familiar - so I think I'm OK. If I did watch this, it was so long ago that I forgot everything about it, so even THEN, with the remote chance that I watched this in the 1990's, I don't remember it at all, so it's still like watching it for the first time, OK? And now it's been on the list for a few years so it needs to be gone, linking to it now is the only answer.
It's a pretty short film, and a simple one at that, so it costs me nothing to include it here in the final third (?) of the romance chain. (33 down, with 14 to go, yeah I'd say I'm in the home stretch here.) Today's romance is set in Minnesota, where the winters are cold and people have to work two jobs, like washing dishes in a coffee shop and also carrying around Christmas trees that are for sale in the lot downtown. Adam is a quiet guy, though, and keeps to himself, doesn't talk much so even his co-workers are convinced that he's either mute or he is mentally disabled, and these menial jobs are the most he can handle. But he's not disabled, it's more like he just never had anything to say? He could have what we now call social anxiety, or maybe seasonal affective disorder because it is December in Minnesota, that's maybe enough to make somebody depressed and withdrawn.
Or you know, maybe he's just creepy. Adam's apparently been following Caroline home from the coffee shop when her brother forgets to pick her up when her shift is over, or he falls asleep - Adam just wants to make sure Caroline gets home OK when she has to walk, but still, that's a bit creepy. The guys who banged on the cigarette machine and then ordered a meal from her are worse, sure, they keep harassing her and chasing after her and before you know it, that's escalated to actual assault, with intent to rape even, but Adam appears on the scene, beats the two men up and then carries Caroline home to her front porch. This is when Caroline first learns that he can talk after all, and again, not creepy at all that he hasn't been able to vocalize his feelings until just then.
From then on, Adam can escort her home up close, now that he's gained her trust, and he even shows her where he lives, in a basement apartment, with a dog and a lot of books and records. But then she still has to walk home from his apartment alone? Why didn't he escort her the rest of the way, if he was so concerned about her. Sure, he's HOME, I get it, but do the decent thing and walk her home while you're walking her dog and then walk back home by yourself, that would be the decent thing to do. Anyway, there's a budding relationship here and she's thrilled when he brings enough Christmas trees to fill every room in her house, and somehow snuck into the house and crept into every room and decorated the trees without waking anyone up. That really is super-creepy, and he follows that up with the fact that he sometimes goes into her house just to watch Caroline sleep. Umm, yeah, she doesn't think that's creepy? She finds it adorable, which is very questionable.
Adam also has a scar from heart surgery or something, however he was told a story by the nuns in the orphanage that his father was an explorer that was killed in a battle against the Baboon King, who felt so guilty that he offered up his own heart to replace Adam's. And Adam believes this is what happened, so that brings us back to the theory that he's mentally not all there. After Adam is beat up and stabbed and hospitalized, the doctor confirms that he does have a heart defect, which confirms surgery at some point, however it's been untreated and neglected for far too long. Adam then breaks himself OUT of the hospital, and nobody thinks that's weird or takes the time to explain to him why that's a bad thing and he needs to go back in. There's things here that just don't seem to add up, but it's explained away by saying Adam thinks he's special with his "baboon heart" and doesn't want to get a transplant, because then he wouldn't be special. Yes, but he'd be ALIVE for a longer time, so why don't the people who care about him try to change his mind on this point?
Instead the relationship moves forward, in spite of all the danger, after Caroline identifies Adam's two assailants in a police line-up, and we can assume they'll be going to jail for a while. For Adam's birthday Caroline takes him to his first hockey game, and he catches a stray puck, which seems rather unlikely, but it's what we have to work with. Adam also bought her flowers and a gift, which suggests that he doesn't really understand how birthdays work. Geez, Valentine's Day was RIGHT THERE if a screenwriter was looking for a holiday where they could both exchange gifts and that would have made a lot more sense. But by this point we kind of know where the story is going because they play up the heart defect so much, pointing out that not taking care of it could have devastating effects.
Originally the screenplay had this film set in New Jersey, but when the filmmakers couldn't shoot there, for reasons, they scouted other locations and settled on Minneapolis. Marisa Tomei studied to get something of a Minnesota accent, while Rosie Perez just did not do that. It's weird that she's supposed to be midwestern but instead sounds like she's from Brooklyn. The film was called "Baboon Heart" at one point but changing the title was probably a good idea. Minnesota offered a tax credit to have the film shot there, but I wonder how the state film board felt after the film depicted all the men in the state as either spoiled rich kids, creepy weirdos or violent rapists. The coffee shop was real, as was the hockey team although shortly after this they moved out of Minnesota to become the Dallas Stars.
The film's tagline was "He doesn't make sense. She doesn't make sense. Together they make sense." Umm, I have to respectfully disagree.
Directed by Tony Bill (director of "Flyboys" and "Crazy People")
Also starring Christian Slater (last seen in "Blink Twice"), Rosie Perez (last seen in "Night on Earth"), Kyle Secor (last seen in "The Purge: Election Year"), Willie Garson (last seen in "Freaky Friday"), James Cada (last seen in "A Serious Man"), Claudia Wilkens (ditto), Gary Groomes, Pat Clemons, Charley Bartlett, Vincent Kartheiser (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Wendy Feder, Nancy Marvy, Paul Douglas Law, Joshua Schaefer, Marquetta Senters, Joe Minjares (last seen in "Wilson"), Sally Wingert (ditto), John Beasley (last seen in "Daddy's Little Girls"), Steve Cochran (last seen in "Grumpy Old Men"), Buffy Sedlachek (ditto), Richard Grusin (last seen in "Born on the Fourth of July"), Tom Sierchio, Aaron Kjenaas, Allen Hamilton (last seen in "Only the Lonely"), Kay Bonner Nee, Lia Rivamonte, Greg Sain, Margaret McGraw, John Paul Gamoke (last seen in "The Mighty Ducks").
RATING: 4 out of 10 sugar jars (I fail to see how empty sugar jars meant that Caroline got "good tips", but please, don't bother to explain that. Can't she just count the money?)
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