For Keeps?

Year 8, Day 34 - 2/3/16 - Movie #2,235

BEFORE: Yup, it's Molly Ringwald week (OK, half-week) as I catch up on 80's films.  I'm guessing this one is referred to as "The One Where Molly Ringwald Gets Pregnant", as opposed to "The One Where Molly Ringwald Turns 16", "The One Where Molly Ringwald Gets Married" or "The One Where Molly Ringwald Finally Does a Topless Scene".  Hey, some people have trouble remembering titles, I get it. 

Here's a look at tomorrow's TCM "31 Days of Oscar" programming, with the 360 degree connections:

Carole Landis carries over from "One Million B.C." to:
"Topper Returns" with H.B. Warner carrying over to:
"The Green Goddess" with Ralph Forbes carrying over to:
"Stage Door" with Gail Patrick carrying over to:
"My Favorite Wife" with Randolph Scott carrying over to:
"Captain Kidd" with John Qualen carrying over to:
"A Patch of Blue" with Elizabeth Hartman carrying over to:
"You're a Big Boy Now" with Julie Harris carrying over to:
"East of Eden" with Jo Van Fleet carrying over to:
"Cool Hand Luke" with George Kennedy carrying over to:
"The Dirty Dozen" with Ernest Borgnine carrying over to:
"The Wild Bunch" with Warren Oates carrying over to:
"The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" with Ray Danton carrying over to:
"A Majority of One"

Of these 13 films, I've seen 6 - I watched "My Favorite Wife" last year in my Cary Grant chain, and I've also watched "Stage Door", "East of Eden", "Cool Hand Luke", "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Wild Bunch" as part of this project.  So I still haven't found anything to record this year, which is a good thing, because that would only increase my watchlist at a time when I'm really trying to shrink it down.  

THE PLOT: After she gets pregnant, a teenage girl must decide whether she should keep the baby.

AFTER: You can sort of take this film however you want, either as a relationship film featuring a young couple and a baby, or as a treatise on the socio-economic conditions in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the mid-1980's.  If you're pro-choice, it's an honest depiction of the difficulties that couples who choose to have children may face, and if you're pro-life, it supports the notion that abortion is "icky" and it's better to just have the kid and tough things out.  Or, you may choose to view this as an updated version of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi", only with college scholarships on the line instead of Christmas gifts.

Because unlike the last two films I watched, where Robert Downey played very selfish central characters, both characters here are unselfish, even to a fault.  Either would give up their own happiness to make sure that the other one is able to live out their dreams.  Which raises an interesting dilemma, should a person give up the relationship that they're in, if they're happy with it but their partner is not?  Neither one seems to take into account that things are going to change over time, people are likely to go through periods where they're down on relationships or parenthood, but that there are also ways to pull out of that funk.  

The other problem here seems to be the parents, her mother and his parents don't seem to be on the same page, each projecting their own experiences on to their daughter and son.  Since Darcy's mother was abandoned by her father after she was born, she naturally expects her daughter's husband to do the same.  Plus she's one of those mothers that tries to be her daughter's best friend, when what she really needs is some form of discipline and concrete advice instead of "Hey, let's go on vacation together."  Stan's parents have a more stable relationship, so to them getting pregnant before marriage is putting the cart before the horse, plus they're still holding out hope that their son will go to Cal Tech. (Am I missing something, are there no architecture schools in Wisconsin?)  

The school's guidance counselor is similarly not very supportive, her suggestion to a pregnant student is to transfer to night classes, for fear of setting off an epidemic of pregnancy among the other students.  This seems like terrible advice, but there have been cases in the U.S. of teen girls conspiring to get pregnant at the same time, I guess if one popular girl does it, then it can become a trend.  

(For the record, I am neither pro-choice or pro-life - because I'm blessed/cursed with the ability to see both sides of an issue.  While I am concerned that there are so many abortions in the world, I also understand that the planet is over-populated, so new people shouldn't be brought into the world if they're unwanted and unable to be taken care of.  What I am against, however, is the mindset that only the pro-choice or the pro-life argument can be correct, and that each argument needs to be yelled very loudly at the opposing side.  Can't there be some middle ground, like supporting a woman's right to choose by helping her to not get pregnant in the first place, if she doesn't want to? But no, it's as divisive an issue as they come, here in the U.S. where every hot-button topic needs to be championed to the extreme.) 

Their classmates aren't represented well here either, particularly the blonde "Mean Girl", Michaela, who exists only to tease the pregnant girl, make a pass at the married Stan, and to pass along a piece of information that needed to be known, but in all cases, her acting ability is just horrible, nearly non-existent.  At no point is she capable of making herself sound like a character, and not an actress delivering a line. 

It's high time someone made a sequel to this film, because the baby character born in 1988 would now be 28 years old (good God...) and even if things went well in her childhood, if Darcy and Stan found a way to make it all work, maybe now Thea's all grown up, a working professional in the Detroit area, who gets sidelined in a similar way by her own pregnancy, with her (let's say) no-good hipster boyfriend.  Make it happen, Hollywood.  Wait, it sounds too much like "Knocked Up".  Never mind.  

Also starring Randall Batinkoff (last seen in "The Peacemaker"), Kenneth Mars (last heard in "The Little Mermaid"), Miriam Flynn, Conchata Ferrell (last seen in "Mr. Deeds"), Sharon Brown (last seen in "Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit"), John Zarchen, Pauly Shore (last seen in "Jury Duty"), Michelle Downey, Renee Estevez, with a cameo from Larry Drake (last seen in "Darkman").

RATING: 4 out of 10 golumpkis

The Pick-Up Artist

Year 8, Day 33 - 2/2/16 - Movie #2,234

BEFORE: Robert Downey Jr. carries over from "Two Girls and a Guy" for his fourth film in a row, and I think I've had enough of him, at least until "Captain America: Civil War" rolls around.  But a new chain of four also starts tonight, as I start batting clean-up on some films from the 1980's that I didn't see when they were first released. 

Now here's the TCM line-up for tomorrow, February 3, with the added actor connections:

Samuel L. Hinds carries over from "Blossoms in the Dust to:
"Little Women", with Frances Dee carrying over to:
"Of Human Bondage", with Reginald Denny carrying over to:
"The Lost Patrol", with Boris Karloff carrying over to:
"Five Star Final", with Frances Starr carrying over to:
"I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang", with Glenda Farrell carrying over to:
"Johnny Eager", with Van Heflin carrying over to:
"Madame Bovary", with Jennifer Jones carrying over to:
"Love Letters", with Joseph Cotten carrying over to:
"The Third Man", with Bernard Lee carrying over to:
"The Fallen Idol", with Michele Morgan carrying over to:
"Joan of Paris", with Alan Ladd carrying over to:
"Captain Caution", with Victor Mature carrying over to:
"One Million B.C."

Wow, 14 films in one day, and I've only seen one of those, "The Third Man".  But I think I'll take a pass on "Madame Bovary", because I've already scheduled 3 Jane Austen films, and isn't that enough culture?  And I thought maybe that "One Million B.C." was that caveman film with Raquel Welch, but no such luck.  I have a couple films with her on the list, that would have fit right in.  So overall, I'm down to 9 for 25, my stats are falling fast.

THE PLOT:   A womanizer meets his match when he falls for a woman in debt to the mafia.

AFTER: Well, this was at least a slight step up from "Two Girls and a Guy" - though Robert Downey Jr. plays another despicable character.  And not because he tries to pick up girls, but because of the way he parks - double-parking outside a coffee shop in Manhattan?  He deserves the death penalty, but I'd at least settle for him getting his car towed, which didn't happen.  Driving his Camaro over the walkways in Central Park?  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a capital offense.  

I think I know why I never watched this film back in 1987 - I was in film school at the time, and I was trying to concentrate on my studies, so I only had time for important films, like "Platoon".  And in production class I was put on a rotating team of four people, with three people on a crew.  That's one director and two assistants, with the fourth member working in the editing room.  One of the people on my crew later became a famous Hollywood director (I'm sure I've told this story here before) and when I was the director and he was supposed to be my assistant, he never EVER showed up.  And when he was the director and I was his assistant, the majority of his time was spent hitting on girls in Washington Square Park.  Not that I'm bitter or anything (wait, yes I am) but I'd also got in into my head that this film was somehow based on him, so I really had no interest in watching it.  His signature move was offering women a stick of gum, and that doesn't even happen in this film - but mentally, the damage was done.  

There is more to the story here, because 80 minutes of a man hitting on women doesn't really make for a spectacular movie.  But our womanizing hero suddenly gets interested in one woman in particular, because although they have a make-out session in his car, she seems immune to his charms.  And nothing drives a Don Juan crazier than finding the one woman who he can't seem to charm.  There is a certain truth to this, because in the early stages of a relationship, there's nothing more off-putting than desperation, and a true pick-up artist is desperate with a capital "D".  Women can sense desperation the same way dogs can smell fear, so the only thing to do is to play it cool, like it's not even a thing.  

But our hero here loses his cool, and goes into full stalker mode, trailing this redhead from her job at the Museum of Natural History all the way to her apartment in Coney Island.  Because that's not creepy at all.  And when he finds out she lives with an older man, he jumps to the conclusion that this man is her boyfriend, instead of the much more obvious possibility.  The film then takes a giant right turn when he realizes her goal of earning enough money to pay off her father's gambling debts.  

Now, I'm not against the gambling.  I favor slot machines myself, because they're fun and I'm not comfortable with table games.  But one thing I know about gambling is that if you're in debt, you can't keep betting bigger and bigger trying to dig yourself out of the hole.  By sticking with the slots, and limiting myself to $20 per machine before moving on, I feel like I've managed to have fun and minimize my losses.  (Honestly, my real goal at a casino is just to win enough to cover the cost of the buffet.  Because that's where the odds are in MY favor.)  

And gambling's been something of a repeating theme around here lately, what with "Maverick" and "Support Your Local Gunfighter" featuring poker and roulette, respectively.  Kids, the only real way to win over time is to not play, or at least to be in control of the amount you're betting.  Never bet money unless you're prepared to lose it.  It's only in movies like this one where people bet big and win big without much effort.  I've been to Atlantic City several times in the last two years, and it's very different there now from the way it's depicted in "The Pick-Up Artist" - like I'm pretty sure that the casino bosses hardly ever hold your family members hostage anymore while you're placing large bets.  

Also starring Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Breakfast Club"), Dennis Hopper (last seen in "EdTV"), Danny Aiello (last seen in "Jacob's Ladder"), Harvey Keitel (last seen in "Moonrise Kingdom"), Victoria Jackson (last seen in "Family Business"), Bob Gunton (last seen in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"), Victor Argo (last seen in "Shadows and Fog"), Fred Melamed (last seen in "Get On Up"), Tony Sirico (last seen in "Hello Again"), Mildred Dunnock (last seen in "The Trouble with Harry"), with cameos from Christine Baranski (last seen in "The Odd Couple II"), Polly Draper, Lorraine Bracco (last seen in "Medicine Man"), Vanessa Williams. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 dinosaur skeletons

Two Girls and a Guy

Year 8, Day 32 - 2/1/16 - Movie #2,233

BEFORE: It's finally here, the day I put all my complaining and nitpicking about action films and sci-fi films aside, and start a month-long celebration where I complain and nitpick about romance films.  And it looks to be an interesting line-up this year, I've got everything covered, from 1980's romantic comedies, to recent films like "Trainwreck" and "Sex Tape".  No Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts this year, but I've got actresses like Renee Zellweger, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cameron Diaz and Jennifer Lopez weighing in on love this time.  And I've got one or two films lined up that might surprise a few people, because they're not conventional romance stories.  But more on that later.  Oh, and I'm finally going to check out films based on this Jane Austen person, as long as that doesn't keep me from watching "Trainwreck" - hey, I have my priorities.

My linking is...well, I've done the best I could, given the films I had to work with.  Last year I think I had the perfect February, 28 films where there was always an actor in common, each film shared at least one star with the film before it and the film after it.  I double-checked my current cast lists the other night, and there's no way around it, I'll have to fall back on some indirect links two or three times - so you can see this will really be four smaller chains that are kind of grafted together.  And I'll have to watch a couple of films online, because cable TV just hasn't been willing to show a couple key films.  Not every channel gives itself over to Valentine's Day programming, I guess.

There are just a few films that only link to one other romance film, and I've learned to put those first and last in the chain, which allows me to use Robert Downey Jr. as a lead-in, and I think if everything stays on track, Ann-Margret will be the lead-out.  But no matter how much I shift the schedule around, I can't make everything link directly, so that's where I find myself, in Year 8 of the project.

Before I carry on, here's the TCM line-up for February 2, with the added actor connections.

Deborah Kerr carries over from "Edward, My Son" to:
"The Sundowners", with Michael Anderson, Jr. carrying over to:
"Dear Heart", with Angela Lansbury carrying over to:
"The Red Danube", with Walter Pidgeon carrying over to:
"Forbidden Planet", with Anne Francis carrying over to:
"Bad Day at Black Rock", with Robert Ryan carrying over to:
"The Battle of the Bulge", with Robert Shaw carrying over to:
"The Sting", with Paul Newman carrying over to:
"The Verdict", with Jack Warden carrying over to:
"From Here to Eternity", with Donna Reed carrying over to:
"The Human Comedy", with Marsha Hunt carrying over to:
"Blossoms in the Dust".

Once again, I've seen 4 out of the films in the line-up.  "Forbidden Planet" is a classic, of course, but I can really see how things are going to pick up in prime time - if you've never seen "The Sting", "The Verdict" or "From Here to Eternity", those are just can't-miss movies.

THE PLOT:  Two girls, Carla and Lou, meet on the street outside a loft waiting for their boyfriends. In a short time, they find out that they're waiting for the same guy.

AFTER: I remember when this film was released, in 1997.  It was very provocative, because based on the title, people thought that maybe they'd go to the theater and see some three-way sex scenes.  And when that didn't happen, and they realized the film was just three people arguing for 80 minutes, they felt really ripped off.  (At least, that's what I think happened...)

A love triangle situation in a movie is classic, just classic - but it's also common.  If you're going to do it, you really have to go out of your way to make it special, or different, and that's clearly what's missing here.  It's just so formulaic - with the 2 girls meeting each other outside the guy's apartment, and then forming a sort of uneasy friendship and ambushing him.  I think that if they HAD turned the film into a three-way relationship (and based on what one of the girls says, her character would have been into that...) that could have been unique and exciting for 1997 Hollywood.  But like the main male character realizes here, that great (?) opportunity was missed.

The other problem here is the terrible dialogue, and since the film is 99% dialogue, that becomes a huge problem.  People just don't talk the way the women do when they're hanging out on the stoop - and if anyone talked like that to another person in the NYC that I know, giving up their life story in a few rapid-fire sentences, they'd probably get a well-deserved punch in the mouth, just for being so annoying.  (Wait, maybe that's what happens in my brain when I hear overly talkative people on the street...)

Then we've got the main conflict, a man is caught juggling two girlfriends.  So what?  Sure, it's a scummy thing to do, especially if he told each girl she was the love of his life, but the key thing to remember here is, they're not married.  I don't think there's even an expectation of exclusive commitment in either case - so essentially, he was just keeping his options open, in case one relationship fell by the wayside.  Not a crime, not in most cases.  And anyone in a modern relationship who doesn't expect this sort of thing is usually seen as a relic - so, really, his "cheating" shouldn't mean anything.  That is, unless it means EVERYTHING to the women he's dating.

But even if that's the case, this should be a 5-minute film.  Women discover they share the same boyfriend, one or both of them walks away, maybe if they confront him it gets a little heated, a door or two gets slammed, and that's it. Most sensible people would shake it off, walk away, and try to pick a better partner the next time.  End of scene.  But this 5-minute premise is dragged out here to a full feature film, with nothing else really added to it, except for his phone calls to his sick mother.   So it's a full violation of the "Show, don't tell" rule, combined with "Stall, stall, stall."

Oh, wait, there is one thing that happens - after being confronted by both girlfriends, our man decides to go into the other room (he lives in, like, the largest Soho loft, ever - no kidding, it's unbelievably huge, even for a movie) and pretend to kill himself.  Because, apparently, that's what you do to prove a point.  What, exactly, was his game plan here?  Did he think both girlfriends would run screaming from the apartment, and he'd be in the clear?  Then things would all blow over, so to speak.  OK, maybe he was trying to prove that they both cared for him, but jeez, there had to be a better way to do that!  It's a bitch to try and explain the situation to the police and the EMT, how you're just pretending to be dead so your girlfriends will GTFO, and can you please circle back with the ambulance and drop me off after you drive away with me in the bodybag?  Yeah, they're not going to do that.

Karma's a bitch, and I've got no sympathy for these characters, because they're all the type of selfish, self-serving young professionals that we learned to HATE in the 1980's, and that got replaced by the hipsters of today.  Not for one second do these characters think of anyone but themselves - they're the kind of people who take the elevator to the second floor, or take 5 minutes to order a donut and coffee when there's a long line behind them.  Even when his mother is sick, Downey's character is only concerned about what that means for HIM.

As a result, we learn NOTHING here about relationships, other than that some men are dicks, and some women have low self-esteem and stick with them, regardless.  But really, no nutritional value - if this movie were a bag of potato chips, watching it would be like dumping out all of the chips and being forced to eat the bag.  There's simply nowhere to go from here but up.

Also starring Heather Graham (last seen in "The Hangover Part III"), Natasha Gregson-Wagner (last seen ringside in "Play It to the Bone").

RATING: 2 out of 10 movie posters

In Dreams

Year 8, Day 31 - 1/31/16 - Movie #2,232

BEFORE: Programming Note: Tomorrow is February 1, and while I'm giving over the month to films about romance (sorry once again, Black History Month...) Turner Classic Movies is running their annual "31 Days of Oscar" programming, and they've copied my idea of linking films with actors.  Beginning at 6 am, tomorrow's line-up is: "Gigi", which links through John Abbott to "The Merry Widow", which links through Una Merkel to "Broadway Melody of 1936", which links through Paul Harvey to "Calamity Jane", through Doris Day to "Billy Rose's Jumbo", through Stephen Boyd to "Ben-Hur", through Jack Hawkins to "Lawrence of Arabia", through Alec Guinness to "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and through James Donald to "Edward, My Son".  Wow, someone uses even more obscure links than I do!  

But, it's a good test to see how far I've come - I've seen 4 out of those 9 films, and two of those were part of this project, so roughly, I've seen twice as many "classic" movies now as I had before.  I'll try to keep score during the next month, and I'm not interested in adding much to the watchlist - of the five films tomorrow that I haven't seen, not much interests me.  But if you've never seen "Ben-Hur" or "Lawrence of Arabia" or "The Bridge on the River Kwai", it's a fine time to start bingeing on TCM.

One last Robert Downey film before I kick off the February chain.  This one sort of slipped through the cracks when I did serial killers as a theme, I only picked it up when I needed to fill a place on a DVD with "The Judge", and I knew I'd be covering this actor.  

THE PLOT:  When a stranger kidnaps a girl, Claire Cooper dreams about the man but Detective Jack Kay ignores her concerns. But when her daughter disappears during a school play, she learns that her visions were actually premonitions and she is connected to the killer through her dreams.

AFTER: I didn't really get this one, it didn't speak to me, and I think part of the problem stems from someone not understand what the audience wants out of a movie, if that makes any sense.  Sure, there's a fascination with serial killers, but I think we only want them to be successful, up to a point.  They're not sympathetic characters to begin with, but the more success they have, the more anti-heroic they become, logically, unless they're killing other serial killers, like on "Dexter", or they're already incarcerated, like Hannibal Lecter in "The Silence of the Lambs".  With tricks like that, at least the audience can relax, knowing that justice, or at least ironic justice, will eventually be served. 

But here, there are no such promises, so the killer is free to kill again and again, moving on to the next little girl.  It's not a happy situation, especially when the woman who's having dreams about these killings is something of a Cassandra, either no one believes her, or she's unable to interpret the meaning of her dreams until after the next crime is committed.  Meanwhile, her dreams are getting worse and they even start happening in the daytime, when she's not even asleep.  This also puts the audience in a terrible position, because now there can be no certainty over what's real and what's imaginary.

So there's a heavy buy-in here, you have to believe not only in mental powers but the ability for two people to be connected, and that there's some kind of similarity between the power of precognition and the twisted thoughts of a killer.  OK, maybe there are still things not known about how human brains work, but that doesn't mean that a screenwriter or filmmaker can make them work however they want, however it's necessary to make the story work.  It's another case of "Because movie, that's why."  

NITPICK POINT: OK, so a girl gets killed - and the woman who claimed to have foreseen it is not taken seriously, and she says this case is connected to another disappearance upstate, although the police don't seem to agree.  She then gets moved to a mental hospital where?  Upstate, of course - and no one sees the implication of this?  Unless the cops were using this psychic woman as bait to track down the killer, which doesn't seem like they have her best interests at heart.  

Again, it's what's necessary to move the plot forward.  What do you suppose the chances are that this woman would be put not only in the same mental hospital that the killer was once in, but in the exact same room?  Chances are astronomically against that, unless some kind of divine providence is at work.  So there you go, mental powers, useless prognostication, God and the afterlife, all rolled up into one big ball of nonsense and futility.  This is really not how I would choose to spend my time, all things considered.

Also starring Annette Bening (last seen in "The Face of Love"), Aidan Quinn (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Paul Guilfoyle (last seen in "Amistad"), Stephen Rea (last seen in "Angie"), Dennis Boutsikaris (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "Nobody's Fool"), Katie Sagona.

RATING: 3 out of 10 fairy tales