RED 2

Year 7, Day 6 - 1/6/15 - Movie #1,906

BEFORE: Helen Mirren carries over from "The Queen" - and this is the first of 6 or 7 "secret agent" films for January, unfortunately they won't be all lined up in a row, but what can I do?  I'm at the point where I can either link by actors or go thematically, but I just can't do both.

THE PLOT: Retired C.I.A. agent Frank Moses reunites his unlikely team of elite operatives for a global quest to track down a missing portable nuclear device.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "RED" (Movie #1,148)

AFTER: This goes to support what I was saying the other day about franchises - in the case of action franchises, it seems like each film in a series needs to top the one before it, and the easiest way to do that is to keep adding characters.  "Lethal Weapon" added Rene Russo, Jet Li and even Chris Rock as it went along, and there are so many characters in "The Expendables" now that I think some of them are starting to live up to that title.

"RED 2" attempts to top the interplay of "RED" by adding an old love interest/Russian spy, a doddering British spy who may not be as clueless as he seems, and an Asian martial-arts expert who's out for revenge against the main characters.  Our heroes need to track down a WMD that got lost in Russia, so naturally they steal a plane and head straight to...Paris?  OK, there's a reason for that, but once it's dealt with, it's straight on to London.  But then, right after that, it's on to Russia, right?

Honestly, I couldn't keep track of all the flying around.  By the time they got to the Iranian Embassy, I couldn't even tell you what country that embassy was in.  Look, it doesn't really matter, because these are professionals who know exactly what they're doing, even if they don't always know where they're going.  If you want to see some cool stunts, and watch some stuff blow up, and laugh at John Malkovich wearing silly costumes, then you've come to the right place.

And this is just a lot more FUN than those "Expendables" movies.  Geez, Stallone takes himself so seriously in those films (or maybe he just can't move his facial muscles any more to smile, I'm not sure...) that all the fun gets sucked right out of them.  If you want fun and wisecracks in your action film, you've got to get Bruce Willis.  I felt more strongly that the people making this film enjoyed what they were doing - not that it's whimsical as such, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, even when getting shot at.

Who cares if people think that RED stands for "Really Elderly Dudes" instead of "Retired, Extremely Dangerous"?  They can keep making these for as long as they want, as far as I'm concerned.

Also starring Bruce Willis (last seen in "The Expendables 2"), John Malkovich (last seen in "Warm Bodies"), Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Thor: The Dark World"), Catherine Zeta-Jones (last seen in "The Terminal"), Mary-Louise Parker (last seen in "R.I.P.D."), Brian Cox (last seen in "Match Point"), Byung-Hun Lee, Neal McDonough, David Thewlis (last seen in "The New World"), Tim Pigott-Smith, Garrick "Biggs" Hagon (last seen in "Me and Orson Welles"), with a cameo from Titus Welliver (last seen in "Argo")

RATING: 6 out of 10 bottles of wine

The Queen

Year 7, Day 5 - 1/5/15 - Movie #1,905

BEFORE: OK, so I ran out of Meryl Streep films, and I didn't think I had a direct link from "The Iron Lady". I put these two films next two each other thematically, without regard for sharing actors - I thought I'd have to rely on the fact that Jim Broadbent was also in the film "Inkheart" with Helen Mirren (last heard in "Monsters University").  But then in scrolling through the cast lists, I found an actor who was in both "The Iron Lady" and tonight's film, and his name is Roger Allam.  Saved again.

THE PLOT:  After the death of Princess Diana, HM Queen Elizabeth II struggles with her reaction to a sequence of events nobody could have predicted.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The King's Speech" (Movie #1,119)

AFTER: Now, see, this is a proper way to structure a biopic.  Instead of jumbling up the important moments of Queen Elizabeth's life, or over-using the flashback technique, the film chooses a very important week in the subject's history and narrows its focus.  The film can then relate its subject to other time periods by making references to Winston Churchill, King George, etc. and we can extrapolate everything we need to know about the Queen by learning about her personality in a time of crisis.

Plus, I learned more about British government in the first five minutes of this film than I did in the entirety of last night's film.  The prime minister is the elected head of the U.K. government, but upon his election he must present himself to the monarch, so that she can "invite" him to lead the country on her behalf.  A very polite people, those Brits - one wonders what she would do if he declined?

The time period chosen here includes the election of Tony Blair, the death of Princess Diana, and the Royal Family's reaction to this death, then the public's subsequent reaction to their reaction.  The Queen followed standard procedure, considering that Diana was no longer a member of the royal family when she died, and didn't authorize a state funeral, leaving such matters up to her family, the Spencers.  However, the public had different ideas about how Diana should have been regarded, and wondered why it seemed like the Queen wasn't giving her death the proper respect.

Proving that it's possible to be right in matters of protocol, but wrong in the eyes of the media and the public.  The press probably seized upon the resulting outcry, because it helped deflect any blame being cast at the media itself, for contributing to Diana's death and spreading gossip about her while she was alive.  Before anyone could start sharpening pitchforks or wondering why the monarchy still existed in the first place, Blair was able to convince Her Majesty that protocol should perhaps take a back seat to appeasing the populace by at least showing some signs of grief and making a public statement.

It's been a pretty dark year so far in 2015 - both tonight's film and "August: Osage County" center around funeral plans, and "Into the Woods" had some pretty dark moments, with a few characters not making it to the end of that film.  Let's hope for some lighter material coming up this week or next.

Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "Midnight in Paris"), James Cromwell (last heard in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "Babel"), Sylvia Syms, Helen McCrory, Mark Bazeley, and (archive footage) cameos of Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Elton John, Nicole Kidman, and Tracey Ullman (last seen in "Into the Woods").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Corgis

The Iron Lady

Year 7, Day 4 - 1/4/15 - Movie #1,904

BEFORE: Meryl Streep completes a quatt-row (that's like a three-peat, only one higher) and I think there are no more films with her in them that I want to see, unless she makes another one before I finish.

Hmm, Streep has played three powerful women in the last four days, and one sheepish one.  Not sure what to make of that.

THE PLOT:  An elderly Margaret Thatcher talks to the imagined presence of her recently deceased husband as she struggles to come to terms with his death while scenes from her past life, from girlhood to British prime minister, intervene.

AFTER: I understand that it's tough to make an interesting biopic.  Sure, you can just start at the beginning of someone's life and move forward, but that doesn't really work because you probably want to get to the interesting parts a lot faster.  So writers and directors mess with the time-stream to make things more novel, or they start at the end and use a framing device, such as someone telling the story (like in "Amadeus") which results in a story that's very flashback-y, but hopefully more fast-paced and intriguing.

THIS film, on the other hand, chose to start at the end, but the framing device is Margaret Thatcher having flashes of memory, while she suffers from dementia.  That's a horrible idea.  Even if the flashbacks are more or less chronological, should we as an audience be relying on someone who's mentally slowly slipping away to remember everything correctly, or in the proper order?  How can we trust anything that we see as the truth?

I, for one, know very little about British politics - as an American, I'm not even sure I understand the difference between a president and a prime minister, or what a prime minister's role is in a royalty-based system of government.  And I know even less about what Thatcher accomplished, or failed to accomplish, during her time as Prime Minister.  So it's really a shame that this movie doesn't see fit to explain any of that, or even try to.  Instead it tries to get inside the head of one of the most powerful yet controversial political figures of the 20th century, which of course is impossible, so she still remains an enigma to me.

I know some people were upset when a Yank like Streep was cast to play Thatcher - I didn't really have any problem with her performance, I'm more upset over the fact that I didn't learn anything by watching this.  OK, so she was a conservative - what does that mean in the U.K.?  She apparently pushed for a flat tax, so I guess that explains why the lower classes (and several punk bands) despised her.  And she was a woman trying to succeed in a man's world, politics.  But she DID succeed, so therefore it was possible to do so, right?

But depicting her for so much of the movie as frail and feeble, having hallucinations of talking to her dead husband, and just getting continually lost in memories again and again, it makes me wonder if some writer or director got a thrill out of depicting her as weak, which I gather she wasn't during her political life.  I'm not sure showing her this way is either the equivalent of a cheap shot, or just a really ill-advised way to structure a biographical film.

This is really the sort of narrative time-jumping that I'll only allow when a film is about time travel, and only then.

Also starring Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), Alexandra Roach, Olivia Colman (last seen in "Hyde Park on Hudson"), Harry Lloyd, Iain Glen, Amanda Root, John Sessions, Anthony Head, Richard E. Grant.

RATING: 2 out of 10 car bombs

August: Osage County

Year 7, Day 3 - 1/3/15 - Movie #1,903

BEFORE: Meryl Streep carries over again - I've done Streep chains before, but I'm not done with her just yet.  This film just started airing on premium cable, and I was going to let it slide by, but I still had two holes in the January schedule, and the other could get filled by another trip to the theater.

THE PLOT: A look at the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose paths have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Oklahoma house they grew up in.

AFTER:  Three days into the new year, and a loose theme has already developed, that of family secrets.  "Into the Woods" had a couple of secrets about which character was related to which, and then "Hope Springs" delved into the sexual secrets that married people might keep from each other.  Tonight that theme gets expanded again, as a family gathers together and (eventually) their various secrets are exposed.

But the vehicle tonight through which those secrets come to light is not therapy, or the machinations of a witch - nope, it's good old-fashioned arguing.  The kind that only people who've grown up together, or spent too much time together can do.  Perhaps getting together with family over the holidays was a pleasant experience for you, and I hope it was, but once I reach my parents' house I can sort of feel a counter start, and with luck I can be out of there three days later before my patience counter expires.  Most times I'm not very lucky, but perhaps this is normal.

Parents have that way of reminiscing that also can get under your skin - "Hey, remember that time your leg fell asleep during the graduation ceremony, and when you stood up you fell over in front of your entire class?  What was the name of that girl you landed on?  Right, well, I saw her the other day at the supermarket, she's doing well."  Thanks so much for bringing up one of my more embarrassing moments...

This is a form of passive-aggressive behavior, you may also remember such hits as "How's the job hunt going?" or "So, are you seeing anyone?"  My wife sometimes points out her own passive-aggressive behavior, but she may not realize that I can handle it - I was practically RAISED passive-aggressive, as it was nearly a form of religion in my parents' house.  You just have to keep an eye on it, because it's easy for "So, what do you want for dinner?  We can have whatever you want..." to turn into "OK, we'll have what you want to eat AGAIN, like we've done every night for the last 2 weeks.  No, really, it's FINE!"  

What you have there is what I call "aggressive passive-aggressive", and tonight's film features a ton of it, when people aren't behaving just aggressively, that is.  My point is, there's a fine line.  The ultimate expression of A.P.A. behavior, of course, is suicide.  You just can't top that as an endgame.  Some say it's a cry for help, but I know different - it's a way of saying "In your face, family!"  Because you have to know that anyone who loves you is going to feel absolutely terrible after you're gone, and since they can't respond to what's happened, you've won - only you've also lost.

This movie is based on a stage-play, which is quite evident in the fact that most of the action takes place in one location, the family house.  (On the rare occasion when characters drive to other locations like fields, they're given nothing to do except run aimlessly, or stare into space.)  And then the first act involves the various characters arriving at the home, while in the second act they storm off in turn after arguments or revelations.  This unfortunately made the story feel only half-written, since we'll never know what happens to anyone after the playwright has given them their exit.  Nothing feels very resolved in the end - not that everything needs to be resolved, but a few things might be nice.

There's some interesting material about the differences between the generations - we still have an older generation that was raised by people who lived through the Depression, and that's a part of why they are the way they are.  And today's younger generation is perhaps correctly portrayed (through one character) as a bunch of spoiled, self-indulgent vegetarian hipsters.  But these are still stereotypes, and if you took these away, along with the other stereotypes about Southerners displayed here, I fear that the movie would simply cease to exist.

And if I wanted to witness a bunch of screwed-up, passive aggressive people, I'd probably spend more time with my own family.

Also starring Julia Roberts (last seen in "Everyone Says I Love You"), Ewan McGregor (last seen in "The Island"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "The Rocketeer"), Sam Shepard, Dermot Mulroney (last seen in "Zodiac"), Julianne Nicholson, Benedict Cumberbatch (last heard in "The Hobbit; An Unexpected Journey"), Juliette Lewis (last seen in "Husbands and Wives"), Abigail Breslin (last seen in "Ender's Game"), Misty Upham.

RATING: 4 out of 10 prescription bottles

Hope Springs

Year 7, Day 2 - 1/2/15 - Movie #1,902

BEFORE: With apologies to Colbert, tonight I'm going to play "Tip of the Hat / Wag of the Finger".  First off, a Tip of the Hat to Turner Classic Movies, who's kept me readily supplied with material all this time.  I merely have to say "Hey, maybe I should watch the Marx Brothers films" and only two months later, they run a marathon of 6 films, which gets me most of the way there.  Will they run "Duck Soup" some time in the next 3 months?  Probably, they're good like that.  And the choice of Cary Grant as the December Star of the Month shows that they've got great taste, and someone over there in programming clearly thinks like I do - why watch 1 Cary Grant film when you can watch 20 or 30 of them in a row, and gain further insight into what his acting was all about?

But tonight I also send out a Wag of My Finger - to Turner Classic Movies, for slowing me down and making it impossible to make any progress in shrinking my list.  Adding 6 films a day to the list when I can only watch one in that timeframe is not helpful, especially when their "31 Days of Oscar" marathon is coming up in February, and always features stuff I need.  They're also starting to run films written by Neil Simon on Friday nights, which means I can grab the original "Out of Towners" with Jack Lemmon, and if I'm getting that one, I might as well also check out "The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue". Heck, if they're running the original "Heartbreak Kid" and "Goodbye Girl" films that could make a good pairing, and hey, I didn't know Simon also wrote "The Cheap Detective", which I accidentally caught some of two months ago, and it looked very funny.

At least now I'm not buried in incoming Cary Grant films any more - wait, who's the featured Star of the Month for January?  Robert Redford?  God damn it.  That'll be another 6 films right there, I know it....

Meryl Streep carries over from "Into the Woods".

THE PLOT: After thirty years of marriage, a middle-aged couple attends an intense, week-long counseling session to work on their relationship.

AFTER:  This is the year that I have to make some terrible decisions, if I'm going to wrap this process up in a definitive way.  What happens when a film falls into more than one category, where does it go in the chain?  I usually put relationship films in February, so is this a relationship film or a Meryl Streep film?  Since I happened to have one extra relationship-y film, my choice this time was easy, but tougher choices lay on the horizon.  Is "Charade" a Cary Grant film or an Audrey Hepburn film?  Do I need to move my Hepburn films next to my Cary Grant chain so it counts as both?

I had another Tommy Lee Jones film on the list, and I had to separate this one from it when I flipped part of the list around.  I can already see a lot of this happening, by programming thematically one Bruce Willis film has been separated from the rest, and ditto for a loose Harrison Ford film, which is sure to drive me crazy.  Now that some madness has been injected into the method, I won't rest easy until I know that as many of the remaining films link to each other as possible.

Anyway, let's get this over with.  They really should have put a warning on this film - if they can have warnings that kids shouldn't watch movies with adult material, they should also have a different warning for adults that a film's going to feature old people talking about sex and worse, maybe doing it.   Rated "M" for "Mature Sex".  Yeah, I get it, more Americans are living into their golden years, they have rights too, they lead active lives - but I shouldn't have to watch them do it.  What if I was trying to eat or something?

I favor the portrayal of the husband as an aging curmudgeon - I look forward to my 50's so I can act curmudgeonly too, finally with good reason.  But it's sad that this film has to fall back on so many tropes that should be seen as outdated by now.  Men are bullies, women are doormats.  Women are more likely to talk about their feelings, while men pretend they don't have any.  Men take their wives for granted, while women cook eggs and bacon every morning.  Men have orgasms, and women don't even think to ask for them.  Give me a break.  Of course this couple needs therapy, because they're fabricated to be blank test subjects straight out of a self-help book.

And since they have no therapists in their hometown (which is, where, exactly?) they have to fly to Maine (to one of those quaint towns where everyone seems to know each other's business) and spend thousands on an encounter weekend just to create an environment where they can talk about their sex lives.  (Again, eww...)  This leads to a lot of therapist-speak, like having to break the relationship before it can be fixed, tearing down the walls so we can rebuild them with trust, blah blah blah.  If you came here looking for some hot Meryl Streep action, boy did you come to the wrong place.  And why were you looking for that in the first place?  Let's discuss that.

Look, I figured some things out when I was a kid.  My grandparents slept in separate rooms, but even though the relationship wasn't working on one level, they stayed together, so you just have to wonder if that was only natural, for them.  You can't paint every relationship with the same brush, each one finds it own rhythm, or it doesn't and it ceases to exist.  And I don't know what's weirder, learning that my grandparents didn't sleep together, or knowing that my parents still do.  Yeah.

I'm sure therapy/counseling helps a lot of people, but in my experience, it contributed toward ending a marriage rather than saving it.  Sure, there were other factors involved, and in the end we were happier (first more miserable, though) but it's just too simple to show only the breakthroughs and benefits.  The reality is that therapy has its complex ups and downs, just like anything else.  And if someone's needs aren't being met, they shouldn't need a medical professional in the room to be able to express themselves.  Why wasn't the husband's bullying nature and outdated 1950's outlook addressed by the therapy?  That to me seemed like the larger issue.

That, and why the wife was trying to kill her husband slowly with all the cholesterol from the eggs and bacon every morning.  Forget Viagra, this guy needs some Plavix.  Did the therapist even check to see if these old-timers were even healthy enough to have sex?  That seems like a glaring, ill-advised course of action.

Also starring Tommy Lee Jones (last seen in "Coal Miner's Daughter"), Steve Carell (last seen in "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone"), Jean Smart, Ben Rappaport, Marin Ireland, with cameos from Elisabeth Shue (last seen in "Cocktail"), Mimi Rogers (last seen in "Lost in Space").

RATING: 3 out of 10 bananas

Into the Woods

Year 7, Day 1 - 1/1/15 - Movie #1,901

BEFORE: Well, I made it through Christmas, somehow.  (I probably say that every year...)  I took my usual day to walk around New York, which I've taken to calling "Festivus", but it's really just an excuse to take photos, shop the outdoor holiday markets, think about gift ideas, and put myself in a proper, Christmas-y mood.  Then my BFF Andy came to town, and we did something very touristy, namely go to see a taping of "Late Show with David Letterman" - but this was no ordinary show, it was the show that passes for their annual Christmas extravaganza, with Jay Thomas throwing a football at a meatball atop a tree, and Darlene Love performing her signature song, "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)".  Like Andy, I was just as fascinated with the choreography of musicians, singers, producers and crew involved in the SET-UP for the song as I was for the song itself.  You can hear Andy's review of the complicated proceedings here:

http://5by5.tv/ia/126

Then came the office Christmas party, and the following week was Christmas itself.  We drove up to Massachusetts on Christmas Eve (which involved a stop at Foxwoods Casino, since we've determined that their buffet constitutes the best food close to Route I-95) and then there were three days of eating, drinking and gift-exchanging.  I think once you outgrow the Santa/Rudolph stories, and if you start to seriously doubt the Jesus/Nativity mythology, then all that you're left with at Christmastime is family, food and fun, which is all still good.  I still cling to the music, and in fact got some great reviews for the mix CD I sent out with my Christmas cards this year - I went with an a cappella theme, and figured that might turn a few people off, but you can't please everyone all the time, so screw it.  One of my aunts praised me for sending out a disc of "traditional music", but I think she confused the medium with the style - although the disc was 100% choral, with no electric guitars or anything, many of the a cappella arrangements (and a few of the songs) I felt were quite modern, but I didn't have the heart or the time to correct her and explain why she was off-base.

As I write this, it's really a couple of days before January 1, but since we've already purchased our movie tickets for New Year's Day, I feel confident that this will be the first film of the year.  And as we find ourselves at the end of one year and the beginning of another, it's only natural to think about endings and beginnings.  Which people fell off my radar this year?  How many years did I have that job until just recently?  How many famous people died this year?  It's only because we live life in a linear fashion that we tend to focus on the endings of things - because we're less frequently aware of what's ahead, or how important the things that just began might turn out to be.  So it's only human to take count, to tally what I did in the last year, I just happen to take that process to the extreme, plus I'm keenly aware of what I plan to accomplish in the year to come, at least with regards to cinema.

But, why am I starting HERE, of all places, with a film that's recently released in theaters, when there are so many (185) older films still on the list?  Two reasons, which are of course related:

I don't have a deceased person I admire to dedicate this year to, which in essence is a good thing.  I don't feel strongly enough about Mickey Rooney, Robin Williams, James Garner et. al. to give them a shout-out here (though I will get to a Robin Williams chain, probably late in 2015) and besides, my wife has complained that I have not given her a proper dedication as of yet.  I told her this was because she is very much alive, and to dedicate to her would break tradition, but still she persists.  So, this year of bloggery is dedicated to my wife, for putting up with my shenanigans, which include, but are not limited to, discussing movies with her at great length, obsessing over watching films in the proper order, and falling asleep in random places around the house while viewing films.

This leads to the second reason, namely that she has been waiting to see the Hollywood version "Into the Woods", in fact it was difficult to convince her to wait until New Year's Day and to not spend part of Christmas Day at the cineplex.  She's graciously agreed to wait an extra week to view the film with me on my first available movie day of 2015.  (We also listened to the soundtrack of a production of Sondheim's play that was broadcast on TV years ago in the car on the drive home from Christmas in Massachusetts - so although that contained some spoilers for me, it also helped prepare me for the twists and turns in this film's plot.)  Hey, two years ago I led off with an equally-anticipated (by her) film, "Les Miserables", and that worked out pretty well.

Now, in order to watch this film on January 1, I had to (once again) turn my list on its ear to maintain the chain of actor linkage.  The original plan was to start the year with "Wings of Desire", figuring that I ended the year 2014 with demons ("This Is the End"), thus I could start the next year with angels.  (The third, less-important reason for starting here is that over the Thanksgiving/Christmas break, I re-watched all of the Woody Allen films I'd seen before, the ones that weren't part of my chain in February through April of 2014, 14 films ranging from "Annie Hall" to "Small Time Crooks".  So, for me there was even less of a reason for Movie #1,900 to topically link to Movie #1,901.  But, as an added bonus just for me, Seth Rogen from "This Is the End" was also in "Paul" with Sigourney Weaver, who made a brief appearance in "Annie Hall" - then "Small Time Crooks" featured Tracey Ullman, who appears in "Into the Woods".  So I think I maintained a behind-the-scenes actor linking during the off-season.)

Heck, it's a new year so we'll start a new topic - even though I'd already worked out a pretty good chain that included nearly every film on my list.  So, I picked a point in my list that was another film with Meryl Streep in it, about 90 films deep, and then reversed the order of films 1 through 90, checking for ways to work in those last five un-linkable films along the way.

As a result, I've now got a January that's tight, tight, tight - 31 films in a row with overlapping stars, and I think only one point with indirect linkage.  This will lead nicely into the February romance chain, and even puts a film with the word "heart" in the title on Valentine's Day - I can live with that.  And February is also shaping up to be a thing of beauty with regards to actors carrying over to successive films, almost 28 times in a row.

March is now going to host a bunch of classic films, with a chain mostly consisting of films with Laurence Olivier, Mae West and Cary Grant.  Cary Grant was TCM's Featured Actor of the Month for December, and if there's any one reason why my list has ballooned back up from 147 to 185, that's it.  A month ago I had just 3 Cary Grant films on my list, and now there are 19.  Damn you, Turner Classic Movies, isn't it enough that I add a bunch of films every February from your "31 Days of Oscar" marathon?  I guess it's a good follow-up, since last year I watched 5 Cary Grant films (4 directed by Hitchcock) and there were still so many more good ones to find.  (EDIT: The number's gone up again, since TCM is running 6 Marx Brothers films today, and I promised I'd give the Marx Brothers a fair shake once I got through the Chaplin chain. So the watchlist is now at 193.)

Once I hit mid-April, I'll probably have to review what's left and move it all around again, anyway.  If my linking ends at any point, which I believe it will, my current plan is to watch some documentaries while I re-adjust the list to accommodate any new arrivals, then finish strong with a renewed, linked list. 

But perhaps by then my list will be smaller, assuming I can stop adding to it, and I don't go see too many films in the theater.  I can see some, though - there are spaces for 2 in January, and then I'll be looking to figure out how to work in "Avengers 2: Age of Ultron" in May, and I've just got to leave room at the end of the year for "Star Wars: Episode 7".  A list of 185 films means that I can't really add a film to the list for every one I watch, not if I still want to have a chance of wrapping things up this year.  I think I can add one for every TWO that I watch, assuming that the result brings the total up to 300 for the year.  (There must be a mathematical way to determine this, but it eludes me at the moment.  185 + 90 = 275, which brings me close, but that's not exactly how this works.  While I watch those 90 films it would mean adding an extra 45, then another 22, and 11 and so on.)

THE PLOT:  A witch tasks a childless baker and his wife with procuring magical items from classic fairy tales to reverse the curse put on their family tree.

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Tangled" (Movie #1,034), "Jack the Giant Slayer" (Movie #1,621)

AFTER: In the end, what do Christmas, fairy tales and movie franchises have in common?  They are all stories that are both never-ending, and constantly changing.  In the case of the Biblical Christmas, that's due to the fact that various popes and liturgical institutions, along with a few botched translations, have changed the content over time.  Same with the Santa/Rudolph story - it's the same every year, right?  Except the Santa story from, say, 100 years ago seems quite different from the one we have now - these days the simple toymaker has a rocket sled and probably uses drone cameras to see you when you're sleeping.  Someone should really investigate that guy. 

Movie franchises stay alive by falling into one of two categories - either they're made modular or never-ending, so future films can always be tacked on to the front or back of the others ("Star Wars", "Lord of the Rings", "Night at the Museum", "The Fast and the Furious") or else they just get remade or rebooted every decade or so with different actors ("Godzilla", "Dracula", "The Bad News Bears").  If you liked the old versions better, tough luck, because it's a new generation now, and they tend to like their movies a different way.

Which brings us to fairy tales - again, these have been around seemingly forever, but they also tend to change over time.  I haven't watch the updated versions of "Snow White" and "Sleeping Beauty" that were released in the last few years (though this would have been an excellent place to drop them in...) but I have a feeling that they bear little resemblance to the Disney versions of the 1930's and 1940's.  That's all OK, because those homogenized Disney versions probably had very little in common with the original Grimm fairy tales, which were, umm, more than a bit grim.  The TV shows "Grimm" and "Once Upon a Time" have also seized on this trend of re-adding the dark material, so that's probably why "Into the Woods" is finally seeing release now as a film instead of a stage production.

And since my wife was very familiar with the stage production, and not everything from that 3-hour play could fit into a 2-hour movie, naturally she felt like a few things were missing.  Two male characters, the Narrator and the Baker's father, had their roles reduced to almost nothing, and any comedy bits associated with them had to be discarded as well.  So if you're a big Sondheim fan, seeing this film may either please or displease you, in the end it's your call.  I was similarly bothered when the movie "The Time-Traveler's Wife" reduced a minor (but significant) character to almost nothing, so I understand the frustration.

You should also probably avoid this movie if you don't like seeing all the fairy-tale characters messed with in one film.  I sort of equate this with the "Avengers" movie, since Marvel had made movies starring Hulk, Thor, and Captain America and then threw them all together - so this is like the fairy-tale Avengers, uniting Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack (of "and the Beanstalk" fame), plus throwing in the baker (and his wife) and stranding them together on Gilligan's Island.  No, wait, that's not right.  And arguing about the characters or story here would be like complaining that Ant-Man and Wasp weren't shown as founding members in the "Avengers" film - again, stories change over time, new writers take over and do things the way they want, if you're a fan of comic books or fairy tales, you've just got to learn to roll with it.

Also, please avoid dragging kids to this film if you're looking for the next "Frozen".  It's just not that kind of movie.  We saw a fair amount of kids in the theater today, and I wonder how a fairy-tale story with some majorly adult themes messed with their heads.  Yes, that too is sort of a throwback to the fairy tales of old, because in the end anything like Rapunzel or Little Red Riding Hood is really about the sexual awakening of young girls, if you want to take it that way.  You can depict the Big Bad Wolf as just a wolf, or you can make him into a lecherous pervy pedophile if you choose.

That being said, this is all very clever, making me wonder about the process, someone chose THESE fairy-tale characters and not THOSE, perhaps they saw what was common to all of their stories, and wondered what would happen if they all went on their various quests into the same woods on the same day, and how they'd all react to each other.  And then once that writer started, he realized that this one could be that one's neighbor, this one could be related to that one, and so on.  And by having two princes instead of one, there could be one suitor for Cinderella and one for Rapunzel, neatly done.  In the end I'm just as fascinated with the process of creating this story as I am with the end result.

In another nod to stagecraft, there are clearly two acts here as well, one where the characters are introduced and drawn together, and the other where their plans start to fall apart and their true natures revealed.  Stop and think about Cinderella for a moment - why was she so eager to get to the ball, and then so eager to run away?  And if Jack climbed the beanstalk, stole the gold and slew the giant, does that really sound so heroic in the end?  Seems more like a dick move, right?  This is the sort of thing that gets explored here.

I was picking the story apart as the characters' quests kept intersecting, as they bounced off of each other in various new ways, and I was looking for loose ends, pieces that didn't fit.  Nope, they're not really there.  Sondheim (or Lapine, or whoever) was always one step ahead, they'd already considered every little detail, robbing me of nitpick points, but making for a very tight tale.  Still, I can see how some people might not like the second half as much, because they might still be clinging to the idea that a writer should get to the "Happily Ever After" part and then stop, but this one keeps on going.

Which I take as a big positive - seeing what comes after "Happily Ever After" is somewhat innovative, as stories go.  What happens when you get the thing (or person) you wished for, and then realize that you're not as satisfied as you thought you'd be?  Characters are flawed, people make mistakes, and those goal posts keep on moving, don't they?  You can be disappointed in others, or your own flaws, but you've still got to get up the next day and try again.  That's a fairly adult notion appearing in a children's story.  Before "Into the Woods", we saw a trailer for the upcoming "Cinderella" film, and it looks like a live-action clone of Disney's famous animated version - but I'm willing to bet it's all sizzle and no steak, and the last thing it will do is try to make people think.

"Into the Woods" will at least make you think about the nature of stories, the futility of wish fulfillment, and the character of, umm, characters, and therefore by extension what it means to be human.  And even if you don't pick up on all that, there are a lot of clever rhymes in the songs.  I think this is a game-changer for fairy tales, in much the same way that "The Princess Bride" was years ago.

Starring Meryl Streep (last seen in "Postcards From the Edge"), Anna Kendrick (last seen in "Rapture-Palooza"), Johnny Depp (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), James Corden (last seen in "The Three Musketeers"), Emily Blunt (last seen in "Looper"), Chris Pine (last seen in "Celeste & Jesse Forever"), Daniel Huttlestone (last seen in "Les Miserables"), Christine Baranski (last seen in "Welcome to Mooseport"), Tracey Ullman, Tammy Blanchard, Lucy Punch (last seen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"), Lilla Crawford, Mackenzie Mauzy, Billy Magnussen, Simon Russell Beale, Frances de la Tour.

RATING: 8 out of 10 lentils

year 6 wrap-up / year 7 preview

What did I learn from the films I watched in 2014?  A review:

1) This was the year of Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, and to a lesser extent, Charlie Chaplin.  Most of my process in watching movies has been actor-based and not director-based, but I felt I needed to make an exception for these three very distinct filmmakers.  This meant going back to their earliest works which were not always great - watching silent films these days just seems like such a futile process, but I wanted to see where Hitchcock and Chaplin got their starts, even though Hitch's early work was so damn rough.  Similarly for Woody, that meant enduring awful films like "What's New, Pussycat" and the pointless "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" just to get to the better stuff like "Broadway Danny Rose" and "Match Point". 

I ended up feeling like I'd cracked the code on these three filmmakers - for Hitchcock, so many of his mid-career films involved mistaken identity or someone being accused of a crime, and then going on the run to find the evidence to prove themself innocent, and usually falling in love along the way.  By the time he got to "Psycho" and "The Birds" he was finally able to break out of the pattern, but after that his career was really back to being somewhat erratic. 

2) Writers, artists, actors and musicians had a big year - biopics were hot, like "Pollock", "Coal Miner's Daughter", "Sweet Dreams", "My Week with Marilyn", "The Notorious Bettie Page", TWO films about the stage career of Orson Welles, "Sylvia", "Shadowlands", "Julia", and "Frances".  More fictionally, actors turned up in  "Postcards From the Edge" and "The Hard Way", while writers popped up in "Ruby Sparks", "The Shipping News", and all those Woody Allen films.  Fictional (?) musicians also made their presence felt in films like "Purple Rain", "Quadrophenia", "Velvet Goldmine", "8 Mile" and "Hustle & Flow".  So I've definitely got this topic, about what it means to be a creative type, covered.

3) Superheroes showed up again this year - my highest-rated film of the year was "X-Men: Days of Future Past", which received a "9", surprising no one.  Superheroes, time travel, lots of action, what's not to love, aside from a few Nitpick Points?  But this was also the year of "Thor: The Dark World", "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", "Amazing Spider-Man 2" and "Kick-Ass 2" - winners all, to some degree. 

4) And for other, non-superhero forms of sci-fi, fantasy and horror, always strong topics around these parts, you could say I covered this from A to Z - that's Aliens to Zombies.  For straight-out sci-fi I watched "Oblivion", "Elysium", "Zathura", "Solaris", "Gravity", "Ender's Game", "After Earth", "Lost in Space", "Pacific Rim" and "The Island".  In the realm of fantasy, there were the two "Conan" films, "Jack the Giant-Slayer", "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey", and "Oz the Great and Powerful".  And for horror, I nearly finished up Stephen King films with "Hearts in Atlantis", "Cujo" "Cat's Eye", and "Pet Sematary", and then along came the walking undead in films like "R.I.P.D.", "Warm Bodies", "World War Z" and "Cockneys vs. Zombies".  Then I got raptured with "This Is the End".  Oh, and whatever the hell "Cloud Atlas" was, I watched that too.  

5) The February romance chain was a bit underwhelming this year - "The Notebook" and "The Vow" sort of stood out, but the rest was pretty average.  There was a weird upswing in romances involving reporters ("Up Close & Personal", "His Girl Friday", "It Happened One Night"), but the rest sort of felt like the remnants of previous chains on the topic.  There was also a preponderance of films with ampersands ("Celeste & Jesse Forever", "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry", and "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice") - I'm not sure what that means, probably just a coincidence.

6) Thank God the animation category was there to pick up the slack.  In addition to "Cheatin'" (now officially an Oscar-eligible film for 2014!) I got to some recent animated hits like "Rango", "Brave", "Wreck-It Ralph", "Planes", "Monsters University", "Madagascar 3", "Ice Age: Continental Drift", "The Adventures of Tintin", "Epic" and "Frozen".  I came darn close to clearing the category, I think there are just 4 or 5 animated films on the watchlist now.  I also dipped back into past years to finally watch "Mulan", "Dinosaur" and the lost classic "Gay Purree".  

7) Crime films, always another hot topic.  From the classics "The Big Heat", "White Heat", "The Public Enemy" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice" to "Payback" and both versions of "Get Carter", right up to more modern comedies like "The Heat" and "Identity Thief", it seems I was a bit scattered on this topic this year.  But, in my defense, it's a wide-ranging topic.  Where do more modern films like "Lawless", "The Newton Boys" and "Gangster Squad fit in if they're made recently but set in the crime-ridden 1920's and 30's?  Who can say?  And how do I compare those to films set in the present, like "Compliance", "The Call" and "Perfect Stranger"?  

If I had to pick an over-arching theme for the year (and really, I don't have to) it would be something about identity.  This manifested itself most blatantly in films where there were switches between identical-looking non-twins, like in "The Prince and the Pauper" and "The Man in the Iron Mask".  Late in the year, this repeated with "The Great Dictator" and "The Dictator".  Who is someone, really, when they look just like someone else?  Then we had films where people were going under false identities, like "We're the Millers", "The Stunt Man", "Apt Pupil" and "Identity Thief" (duh).  Who is someone, really, when they're pretending to be someone else?

You can carry this theme even further, into the typical and not-so-typical "fish out of water" stories, where a character is thrust into another environment and forced to change.  Great examples are "Rango", "Oz the Great and Powerful", and "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey".  Who is someone, really, when they're taken away from home and put somewhere else?  Do they become a new entity, or remain true to their original nature, or perhaps a little bit of both?  Other riffs on this theme: "Madagascar 3", "Hugo", "Wreck-It Ralph", "Anchorman 2", "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", "Doc Hollywood", "A Good Day to Die Hard", even "Lilies of the Field".  

Now, a shout-out to the actors who showed up a lot...at least three times each this year:
Jim Carrey ("Lemony Snicket", "Mr. Popper's Penguins", "Anchorman 2", "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" and "Kick-Ass 2")
Michelle Pfeiffer ("A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Age of Innocence" and "Up Close & Personal")
Halle Berry ("The Call", "Perfect Stranger", "Cloud Atlas" and "X-Men: Days of Future Past")
Kevin Spacey ("The Big Kahuna", "Swimming with Sharks" and "The Shipping News")
Natalie Portman ("Anywhere But Here", "Where the Heart Is", "No Strings Attached" and "Thor: The Dark World")
Scarlett Johansson ("Match Point", "Scoop", "Vicky Cristina Barcelona", "The Island" and "Hitchcock")
Wallace Shawn ("Clueless", "Admission", and "My Dinner With Andre")
Tom Hanks ("Captain Phillips", "Saving Mr. Banks", "Volunteers" and "Cloud Atlas")
Paul Rudd ("Clueless", "Admission" and "This is 40")
Adam Sandler ("Big Daddy", "Grown-Ups 2", "Mr. Deeds" and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry")
Mel Gibson ("Bird on a Wire", "The River" and "Payback")
Colin Farrell ("Epic", "Alexander" and "Saving. Mr. Banks")
Ingrid Bergman ("Spellbound", "Notorious", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "Anastasia" and "Gaslight")
Joan Crawford ("Grand Hotel", "Mildred Pierce" and "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?")
Cary Grant ("His Girl Friday", "Suspicion", "To Catch a Thief", "Notorious" and "North by Northwest")
Jimmy Stewart ("Rope", "Rear Window", "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo")
Grace Kelly ("Dial M for Murder", "Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief")

and joining the "Four-in-a-Row" club:
Bette Davis ("Dark Victory", "Now, Voyager", "The Catered Affair" and "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?")
Jane Fonda ("Coming Home", "The China Syndrome", "Klute" and "California Suite", plus "Julia")
Ewan McGregor ("Velvet Goldmine", "A Life Less Ordinary", "The Impossible" and "The Island")
Bradley Cooper ("The Hangover Part III", "The Words", "Silver Linings Playbook" and "American Hustle")
Leonardo DiCaprio ("Shutter Island", "The Beach", "Revolutionary Road", "The Great Gatsby" and "Django Unchained", plus "The Man in the Iron Mask")
Goldie Hawn ("Private Benjamin", "Butterflies Are Free", "The Out-of-Towners", "The Sugarland Express" and "Bird on a Wire")
Anthony Hopkins ("Shadowlands", "Howards End", "The Remains of the Day", "Hearts in Atlantis", and "Hitchcock", plus also "Alexander" and "Thor: The Dark World")
Diane Keaton ("Play It Again, Sam", "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex", "Sleeper" and "Love and Death", plus "Interiors")

But the real champs this year were Mia Farrow, showing up in 8 Woody Allen films, and the Wood-man himself, showing up as an actor an astonishing 21 times (that's what happens when you're the director and you can hire yourself...) with a run of at least nine back-to-back appearances in my rundown.  (Though I guess if I count Alfred Hitchcock's cameos, he might have Woody Allen beat...) Right now, I'm going through the Woody Allen films that I skipped in March and April because I'd seen them before, just because I want to be able to say that I watched EVERY Woody Allen film in this calendar year - plus this sets me up to watch "Hannah and Her Sisters" as a lead-in to Thanksgiving, and several Thanksgiving dinners are seen in that film.

In the meantime, it's hard for me to NOT watch a new movie for the next month and a half.  Films like "Interstellar" and "The Theory of Everything" are opening in theaters and they look really appealing and interesting - plus I'm turning down invitations to see films like "The Boxtrolls" that are competing against my boss's film "Cheatin'" for the Animated Feature Oscar nominations, it's very tempting to check out the competition, but I'm holding back.  Same for "The Lego Movie", it's airing this weekend but I'm just going to record it and watch it next year.

But there is a purpose to finishing my year early - I'm re-sorting my entire comic-book collection, which is a labor-intensive job that involves moving some heavy longboxes.  I'm on the letter "H" right now, but I can only move about 10 boxes of comics a day before my shoulder gives out, so that's my free time for the next week.  Then it will be time to put together my annual Christmas mix CD that I mail out with Christmas cards, not to mention addressing all those cards, and getting started on catalog shopping and then the buying of Christmas gifts.

When all that's done, and January will be here before I know it, I've got to start thinking about either seriously buckling down and doing some writing, or alternatively looking for some more employment somehow.  As it is, I'm home four days a week and I'm getting caught up in the drama unfolding in my backyard, with birds, squirrels and stray cats all sharing the same space.  I'm feeding all three right now, because if I fail to put out peanuts for the squirrels, then they eat the bird seed, and the whole process falls apart.

Looking ahead to the films to watch in 2015 - what could possibly still be on the list at this point?  Turns out, 150 films right now, but I expect that number to rise a bit before January 1.  Still, that number represents great progress made in 2014 - there were 205 films on the watchlist at the end of last year, so the list is down by about 25%, and I've got my best chances ever of finishing this project off in 12 months.  150 films to go, plus there are the new releases coming out on cable, plus things I may want to see in the theaters next year, plus TCM's annual Oscar salute in February that always adds things to the list - so yeah, 150 films could easily become 300 to watch next year.

The next best stopping point would be film #2,200 - and I've love greatly for that to be "Star Wars: Episode 7", due out next December.  Film #1 was "Star Wars: The Clone Wars", so that would create some great symmetry, and define the project as sort of what I watched between installments in my favorite franchise.  I think I've devised some ingenious linking for the end of next year that will get me there. 

Thematically, coming up next year will be another look at various crime films in January, then the annual February mostly-romance chain, and then my linking will take me about up to the start of baseball season.  After that there's a big gap in the proceedings which I'm hoping will get filled in somehow, because the next topics are the fall ones like horror films, political films and back-to-school.  You can expect tributes to Laurence Olivier, Mae West, Harrison Ford, Hugh Grant, Julia Roberts, Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vince Vaughn, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Jeremy Renner, Matt Damon, Matthew McConnaughey, and of course, Robin Williams. 

What am I looking forward to watching in 2015?  "Nebraska", "12 Years a Slave", "Moonrise Kingdom", "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol", "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug", "About Time", and a bunch of others - admittedly, part of the fun is finding the undiscovered gems.

So, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, plus a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hannukkah, and I'll see you back here right after New Year's.