BEFORE: I would say that April so far has been a little "hit or miss" and that's really been by design. In trying to link these big hit movies, I've relied on little indie films that fly a bit below the radar, that's just the way this linking thing works. So it's big blockbuster, then sleeper hit, then another big blockbuster, then another sleeper. This is WHY the sleepers are on the list, I need mortar to link the bricks together, that's how you build a wall. Otherwise you just have bricks stacked together and there's no structural integrity, the whole thing's going to fall apart. The upside is that I end up watching a lot of films that I might otherwise never have paid attention to, and the whole thing "works" if I say it does, and I put in the effort to build chains, let's say 9 or 10 chains make up a Movie Year, and Christmas will be here before you know it.
I'm just surprised that I've been able to get to certain films that have spent maybe two or three years on the someday/maybe list - "iBoy", "Southside with You", "Society of the Snow", "Walt Before Mickey", "The Saint of Second Chances", "Roger Dodger", "The House of Mirth", "Wicker Park", and "Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul" - I had deemed all of these impossible to link to, at one point or another, and usually adding more movies to the watchlist, to replace what's been watched, has been the solution to the puzzle. Maybe nothing is unlinkable this year, it just takes time, effort and more movies. The average cast size is WAY down this year, some movies, like today's, have had 25 people or less in the cast, and one movie only had THREE actors.
Marc Maron carries over from "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere".
THE PLOT: Cynthia and Mary collect inheritance from Cynthia's deceased grandfather, and the item she receives is an antique sword that was believed to be proof that the South won the Civil War.
AFTER: Well, after all that - after putting this film on my watchlist and then forgetting about it for a couple years, then working so hard to schedule it, in between the bigger films, and then, you know, actually watching it, I really wish it had been a better film. It's kind of mercifully short, coming in at just 88 minutes, but honestly there's only about FIVE minutes worth of story, and the rest is just filler - delays and awkward conversations.
Really, seriously, almost nothing happens here - half of a lesbian couple inherits a sword, takes it to a pawn shop and tries to get more than it's worth, based on this legend that somehow it "proves" that the South won the Civil War. Then the pawn-shop owner finds videos on YouTube about collectors who value this sort of artifact, and the lesbian couple, the pawn-shop owner and his employee are all taken in a windowless van to the compound of some die-hard southern good old boys, and sure, there might have been some danger there, but it's minimized very quickly, I won't say any more about the plot twists, but trust me, there's not much there for me to conceal.
The filmmaker didn't do everything wrong, she did quite a few things right, like she cast Marc Maron as the pawn-shop owner, and casting Marc Maron is almost always a very good idea. I like him in every movie I've seen him in, I've watched all of his stand-up specials, too. Nobody is better than contrasting the little joys and absurdities in life with the very dark tragic moments and the responses that we have to them in order to survive. It's through those stand-up specials that I know that the director here, Lynn Shelton, had a relationship with Maron after casting him in this movie, and they were quite happy together until she died suddenly from myeloid leukemia. Again, that's terrible but we're also balancing the good and the bad here, it's great to be in a relationship with someone until it isn't.
The other thing this film does right is make fun of Southern people, especially those rednecks who are more than willing to believe that the South won the Civil War, or Trump was robbed in the 2020 election. Yeah, I'm betting it's the same people, prove me wrong. As a side note it also makes fun of people who believe the Earth is flat and can't be convinced otherwise. But that's about it for the good things the film does, the rest of the film doesn't really go anywhere - it can't even keep the alternate story about the South winning straight, because the story was written down by a senile old man the names keep changing or are uncertain, and the same goes for all the other details. Still, some people are going to believe what they want to believe, however I shouldn't have to waste my time hearing about it.
I'm just grasping at straws, trying to figure out what the point of this little exercise was, and I'm coming up empty. OK, well, at least I got it off my list, and I've opened up another slot on the someday/maybe list, I guess for tonight that's going to have to be enough.
Directed by Lynn Shelton (director of "Outside In" and "Your Sister's Sister")
Also starring Jon Bass (last seen in "Baywatch"), Michaela Watkins (last seen in "You Hurt My Feelings"), Jillian Bell (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Toby Huss (last seen in "Nutcrackers"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "The Starling"), Lynn Shelton (last heard in "Prince Avalanche"), Whitmer Thomas, Tim Paul, Benjamin Keepers, Al Elliott, Michael Patrick O'Brien (last seen in "Booksmart"), Scotty Lee, Robert Longstreet (last seen in "I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore"), Elise Mayfield, Prasanna Avadhanula, Tilcia Furman, Patierra Knight, Blake Funderburke, Joshua Alford, Brian Bremer, T'Darius Murphy, John Winscher (last seen in "The Out-Laws")
RATING: 4 out of 10 "truther" videos
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