Ricki and the Flash

Year 8, Day 246 - 9/2/16 - Movie #2,441    

BEFORE: Meryl Streep carries over from "Heartburn", and so does her daughter, Mamie Gummer, who played her daughter in both films.  I know, it's a bit of a stretch.  But I've also got my unintended theme for this past week - family dysfunction.  From King Lear's ungrateful daughters to Barry Lyndon's bratty stepson, to the tension between Addie and her father-figure Moses in "Paper Moon". Then we had the tension between spouses in "Heartburn" and the wacko love-triangle in "Yentl", with a woman dressed as a man marrying a man's bride in his place, so that he could be with her later.  

Tonight, it's an absent mother returning back into her children's lives.  What a week it's been...
 

THE PLOT:  A musician who gave up everything for her dream of rock-and-roll stardom returns home, looking to make things right with her family.

AFTER: Another story based in real life, just like "Heartburn" - this film's writer, Diablo Cody, based the story on her mother-in-law.

I had a little trouble with the main character at first, largely because of her choice of music - why would she be covering songs by Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones, instead of singing her own songs?  Ah, but this in itself is somewhat insightful, she's not an A-list rocker, and the band is sort of a cover band, and she has to keep a day job at the grocery store to make ends meet.  So I'll allow it, even though it seems like a bit like a cheap way to get a bunch of rock songs that we all know into the film.  (Still, would the same band that covers Petty and the Stones have any interest in covering Lady Gaga and Pink?  I'm not sure...)

And if you're on the fence about Streep's ability to sing rock songs and play guitar, you can just tell yourself that perhaps the character is not supposed to be that talented, it's an easy out.  Her rock-star status is really there to create the reason why she left her family, and that's needed in turn to create the drama caused by her return.  And oh, what a lot of drama there is - primarily she comes back to help her daughter deal with a sudden divorce, but then there's the anger and resentment that comes to the surface, since she hasn't seen her children in what, 20 years or more?  

Getting together for a dinner with her sons only brings more family secrets to the surface, along with more anger, more resentment - and you wonder how bad this family's relationships are going to get before they start to improve.  

Still, there's a lot to like here - like the fact that Ricki's ex-husband is married to an African-American woman, and that's not any kind of issue at all.  That's notable and appreciated.  That one of Ricki's sons is gay and again, not a big deal, perfectly normal.  What's not cool is the sort of backwards politics that Ricki represents, when she can't quite wrap her head around the fact that her son is gay, and not bisexual.  Why the need to give her a bit of a conservative outlook?  She also speaks an aside or two while on stage against Obama, saying that "all the trouble" began in 2008.  I get that there are a few conservative rock stars, like Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, but this felt out of place for Ricki, especially considering her income level.  I would wager that most Republicans have more money in the bank.  Definite NITPICK POINT - why are the rich people in Indiana portrayed as hipstery, environmentally-friendly liberal Democrats, when the struggling rock star espouses the party line of the GOP?  

And I really liked the ending - wedding bands are nearly universally horrible, and it's nice to see some music played at a wedding that's relatively good.  Having a good time at a wedding isn't necessarily going to resolve this family's issues, but at least it's a start.  And here's a case where trying to fix everything with the power of rock music makes sense, unlike, say, "Star Trek Beyond".  Yeah, I'm still marveling at the hokey-ness of that one.     

Also starring Kevin Kline (last seen in "The Conspirator"), Rick Springfield (last seen in "Hard to Hold"), Audra McDonald (last seen in "Cradle Will Rock"), Sebastian Stan (last seen in "Ant-Man"), Nick Westrate, Hailey Gates, Ben Platt (last seen in "Pitch Perfect 2"), Charlotte Rae (last seen in "Bananas"), Rick Rosas, Joe Vitale, Bernie Worrell, Gabriel Ebert, with cameos from Bill Irwin (last heard in "Interstellar"), Diablo Cody.

RATING: 6 out of 10 tattoos

Heartburn

Year 8, Day 245 - 9/1/16 - Movie #2,440

BEFORE: When I started up blogging again at the start of 2016, I was semi-convinced this would be the last year of the project.  The likelihood of that has since come and gone, but for a while, when it looked like I'd be wrapping up soon, I thought about timing films on the anniversary of certain actors' deaths, because I'd done a year back in 2010 or 2011 when I timed a lot of films to coincide with actors' births.  But that seemed quite morbid to me, so I decided against it very rapidly.  

Still, this year seems to be, unfortunately, a very prolific one when it comes to celebrity deaths.  Prince, David Bowie, now Gene Wilder...  Garry Shandling, Patty Duke, Muhammed Ali.  George Martin, Kenny Baker, Alan Rickman, Glenn Frey.  Harper Lee.  Elie Wiesel.  Garry Marshall.  Morley Safer, Anton Yelchin, Chyna, Doris Roberts.  George Gaynes, Abe Vigoda and George freakin' Kennedy, for freak's sake.  This list is by no means complete, I'm just touching on the VIP's here. 

Since Steven Hill is my link tonight, carrying over from "Yentl", I would hate for him to get lost in that shuffle - he passed away on August 23, a little over a week ago.  He played D.A. Adam Schiff on NBC's "Law & Order", appearing in 229 episodes (and yet he was only the fourth-most prolific actor on that show).  He also appeared on the old "Mission: Impossible" TV show, and in the films "Brighton Beach Memoirs", "Billy Bathgate", "White Palace" and "The Firm".  

THE PLOT: Rachel is a food writer at a New York magazine who meets Washington columnist Mark at a wedding and ends up falling in love with him despite her reservations about marriage. They buy a house, have a daughter, and Rachel thinks they are living happily ever after.

AFTER: In any other year, this film would have landed squarely in the February romance chain - but as I stated, I desperately needed some link out of "Yentl", and this possibility popped up only recently.  I got this film only about two months ago, to pair on a DVD with tomorrow's film.  And THAT film presents a solid link to "Captain America: Civil War".  I've got nearly nothing to watch next February, except TCM just ran a bunch of Dean Martin and/or Frank Sinatra films that seem to fit the romance category - "Some Came Running", "Who Was That Lady?", "Bells Are Ringing" and "Marriage on the Rocks".  So I shouldn't have worried, there will always be more films to watch about love, with all its ups and downs.

And speaking of marriages on the rocks, this film is based on the real-life marriage of Nora Ephron and Carl Bernstein - of "All the President's Men"/Watergate fame.  There's no more satisfying revenge, apparently, than writing a thinly-veiled movie that proves that a marriage's break-up is all the other person's fault.  Sure, I get that some men cheat, as do some women, but there's often a reason, and thus I think it's too simple to state that any break-up is solely one person's fault.  There's always another possible perspective. Perhaps I'm just projecting, because when I got divorced, people tried to make me feel better by telling me that the break-up was all my ex-wife's fault, and that felt like a cop-out to me. 

At the start, it seems like Rachel is quite unsure of the marriage - she makes the wedding guests wait a LONG time before she enters the ceremony.  OK, so maybe she has her doubts, but is it OK to make the guests wait for hours, while she makes up her mind?  I mean, how self-entitled can one person be?  Couldn't she have expressed her fears and doubts at some time before the day of the ceremony itself?  No, no, everyone talk among yourselves while I decide if I want to get married.  Not cool.  

There's a line I love from another Nora Ephron-written film, "When Harry Met Sally" - when Sally asks Harry if she's "high-maintenance or low-maintenance", Harry says, "You're the worst kind - you're high-maintenance, but you THINK you're low-maintenance".  Rachel here is definitely cut from the same cloth - she's ultra-high maintenance, but refuses to admit it.  

But anyway, the film is at least notable for having the first screen appearance by Kevin Spacey, and featuring Nicholson singing "My Boy Bill" from "Carousel" for what feels to be much too long of a time.  I guess they blew their song budget on that, plus one Carly Simon song that's played over and over again throughout the whole movie.  After that, the only song they could afford was "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", and if you're like me, you'll have a devil of a time getting that children's song out of your head when the film is over.  Geez, how do parents stand singing such terrible song to their children?  

Oddly, there was almost a different way that this film could have linked from "Yentl" - Mandy Patinkin was originally cast in the lead male role, but apparently had no chemistry with Meryl Streep, and was replaced by Nicholson after just one day of shooting.  I guess that's the message of the film - if it's not working out, it's best to just cut your losses, pack your bags and head out.  

But since the husband was the one having an affair, shouldn't HE be the one that should leave the house that they bought and renovated together?  I kind of felt that any feminist statement made by Rachel leaving a cheating husband could be a bit stronger if she got to keep the house - packing up and heading back to New York, with a child (or two) without a real plan about where to live doesn't seem like a wise move.  Why not stay in the house with the kids and kick his ass out? 

Also starring Meryl Streep (last seen in "Prime"), Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Goin' South"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "The Martian"), Stockard Channing (last seen in "Practical Magic"), Richard Masur (last seen in "The Thing"), Catherine O'Hara (last seen in "Betsy's Wedding"), Milos Forman, Maureen Stapleton (last seen in "Plaza Suite"), Anna Maria Horsford, Mamie Gummer, Ron McLarty, Karen Akers, Joanna Gleason (last seen in "The Wedding Planner"), Mercedes Ruehl (last seen in "The Warriors"), Kenneth Welsh, with cameos from Kevin Spacey (last seen in "Horrible Bosses 2"), John Wood, Yakov Smirnoff, Dana Ivey (last seen in "Sabrina"), John Rothman (last seen in "The Hoax"), Natasha Lyonne (last seen in "Slums of Beverly Hills"), Tony Shalhoub (last seen in "Gattaca").

RATING: 4 out of 10 dinner parties  

Yentl

Year 8, Day 244 - 8/31/16 - Movie #2,439


BEFORE: First, allow me to explain why this film is even on the Watchlist.  When I started this project, I took inventory of every DVD and VHS tape in the house that I had not seen, no exceptions, including those belonging to my wife - she's the Streisand fan, not me.  But I never really intended to watch this, I just kept it on the list for the sake of being a completist.  In fact if I ever got to the end of my watchlist except for this film, I'd be content to call the project over and walk away - so that's always been the hidden goal, to get the watchlist down to one film, "Yentl", and call it a day.  

But then as I got my turn-around time down to about 4-6 months on average, sometimes I'd look at my list and realize that of the 450 (or so) films that I started with on my list, only one from that original list still persisted.  Then I got myself in a bit of a linking jam - films like "Paper Moon" just won't connect with anything except two other Ryan O'Neal films, it turns out.  And that led me to "The Main Event", and that allowed me to link here.  Oh, I'd passed on this film many times, like I could have watched it after "The Guilt Trip", but that would have been a dead end.  It's only recently that I've been able to connect this film to TWO films instead of one (I didn't realize that Mandy Patinkin made a cameo as a pool cleaner in "The Big Fix", mea culpa...)

More about the outro link tomorrow, but suffice it to say, watching this gets me one step closer to posting my review of "Captain America: Civil War".  So I've got that to look forward to, and help power me through.   Barbra Streisand carries over from "The Main Event", obvi.  

THE PLOT:  A Jewish girl disguises herself as a boy to enter religious training.

AFTER: There's a scene in one of my favorite films, "Beerfest", where the U.S. men's drinking team is training for the big competition at Oktoberfest, and their German grandmother suggests that they train by drinking ram's piss.  Why?  Because if you can drink ram's piss, you can drink ANYTHING.  So "Yentl" is, to me, a bit like the ram's piss of movies.  If I can make it through this one without falling asleep, I can watch just about anything.  

You know what, I was a little light on back-to-school movies this year, anyway, it's all good.  Sure, I had "Pitch Perfect 2" and "Breaking Away" that were set at colleges, but they came too early in August.  And I've got two films set in high-schools, but they're part of the October horror chain.  So I guess this year it's "Back to Shul" as Yentl cross-dresses to get into the yeshiva and study the Talmud.
And it's forbidden for girls to study the Talmud, which she would have known, if only she could read about that in the Talmud.  Which she can't, but she does anyway.  

Ugh, more father issues tonight - in hindsight this whole week should have 

I don't have to love this film, or even like it, but I do have to acknowledge the feminist message and the hot-button (now, anyway) issue of gender fluidity - with regards to the religious angle, obviously there are outdated orthodox rules about what women could and couldn't do.  As director I think Streisand walked a really fine line, promoting her religion while at the same time pointing out that so many of its rules are annoyingly passé.  I mean, I don't harbor any bias against Judaism, other than it's an organized religion, and I don't care much for any of those.  At least I'm consistent, I think if you want to discount one religion, whether that's Islam or Judaism or Greek mythology, then you have to throw ALL of them out.  You're either all in or you're all out, you can't just pick and choose the parts of an orthodoxy that appeals to you.

Someday someone will put together a transvestite/transgender film festival, if they haven't already, and they can screen "Tootsie", "Mrs. Doubtfire", "The Birdcage", "Rocky Horror Picture Show", "Mulan", "Some Like It Hot", "Dressed to Kill", "Boys Don't Cry", "Victor/Victoria" and "Just One of the Guys" in rapid succession.  It goes all the way back to Shakespeare, and no doubt before that.  But since I've got "The Danish Girl" coming up in a week or two, it's a fine time to start addressing the topic.  You can't really see how Yentl fooled anyone, because at all times she just looks like Barbra Streisand with short hair, wearing a hat.  Hey, maybe back then that's all it took.  (But, also the actress was 41 at the time, playing a character who was supposed to be 17!!)

But if this society of Polish Jews thought a woman was a "demon" just because she read the Talmud, one can only imagine how they would consider a woman who dressed like a man, or who then shared a bed with a man without being married, or entering into a sham marriage with another woman!  I mean, there was simply no gay rights movement back then, or really much understanding of same-sex marriage or even same-sex attraction at all, especially in religious communities.  It might have been more daring if the film had further explored the possible attractions between Avigdor and Anshel (Yentl's name when dressed as a boy), or for that matter, between Yentl and Hadass.

The author of the original tale, Isaac Bashevis Singer, reportedly did not like the (relatively) upbeat ending, the way that the film Hollywoodized his story.  In the original tale, the moral price that Yentl pays for masquerading as a man was to be forever trapped in that new identity, and be condemned to a life of pain and alienation.  That has a more "religious" feel to it, since it involves a karmic balance and makes the character do a form of penance for going against Talmudic law.  But I don't think that would have sold a lot of movie tickets, so I guess I see the inherent need to change it. 

I think the secondary goal here was to create one of those "impossible" love triangles, where it seems like there could be no possible resolution - he loves her, but she's married to him, but that him is really a her, who loves the first guy.  Ugh, this could go around and around for weeks without ever getting resolved.  The only reasonable answer is probably for everyone to say "whatever" and get freaky together, throwing all morals out the window and just have a good time together.  But again, it's a very religious community so you just know they're not going to do that.  Not in this movie, anyway.  (Was there ever a porn parody of this film?  Because that's got some potential...)

I would like to catch that Glenn Close film, "Albert Nobbs", which told a similar story, I think.  But no channel seems to want to run that one.  I swear, sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when films premiere on cable.  A film can take four or five years sometimes to hit the premium channels, and what's all that about?  Why does a stinker alien invasion film like "The Fifth Wave" hit cable a few months after its theatrical release, but I'm still waiting for films like "Drive" and "Nightcrawler" to be on the premium channels?  Can we just get organized, please? 

OK, now please, can I just watch "Captain America" or something... 

Also starring Mandy Patinkin (last seen in "The Big Fix"), Amy Irving (last seen in "She's Having a Baby"), Nehemiah Persoff, Steven Hill (last seen in "Eyewitness"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Ruth Goring, David de Keyser, Miriam Margolyes (also last seen in "The Guilt Trip"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 prayer shawls

The Main Event

Year 8, Day 243 - 8/30/16 - Movie #2,438 

BEFORE: This film was originally scheduled for a couple of weeks ago, while the Olympics was still going on.  (They still have boxing at the Olympics, right?)  But then my plans changed because I had to start looking at the big picture for the rest of the year and find a path to my Christmas movies, which I have now done.  So the film's back on the books - and just at the right time, too.

Because who's suddenly back in the news?  Barbra Streisand, who's got a new duets album out.  And also there was a news item about Apple's iPhone assistant, Siri, now being able to correctly pronounce her name (umm, how was it pronouncing it before?).  On top of all that, there's a new boxing film being released, "Hands of Stone".  So, it would seem that there's a sudden confluence of relevance for both Barbra and boxing.  Lucky me.  

Ryan O'Neal carries over again from "Paper Moon".  

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Champ"  (Movie #2,351)

THE PLOT:  A successful Perfume magnate finds out that her accountant has robbed her blind and left for South America. Going through all of her remaining assets she finds a boxer, purchased as a tax write off, but she decides to take Kid Natural into the ring and use him as her key to riches.

AFTER: I've come to accept that I may never be done with boxing films - whenever I cross one off, it seems there's always a new one, like "Creed" or "Southpaw" that needs to be added to my list.  I did a whole chain of them last year, with "Grudge Match" and "Play It to the Bone" and "Undisputed" and "Against the Ropes", and now I regret calling that chain "Boxing's Final Round", because it wasn't.  But the thing about recent boxing films, probably from "Raging Bull" and "Rocky" right up to "Ali" and "Southpaw", is that they all take the sport so seriously.  OK, except for "Grudge Match" maybe.  

But it wasn't always so.  I watched "Buck Privates" recently, and Abbott & Costello made light of it, and back in the day the Three Stooges and Harold Lloyd all had their comic turns in the ring.  And back in the 1970's, they tried mixing boxing, comedy, disco music and umm, aerobics into "The Main Event".  There's even foreshadowing of economic scandals like Bernie Madoff's, as an accountant takes off with a bunch of his rich client's money, leaving a rich perfume executive with no assets.  (See, she's an expert on perfume because she has a large nose, get it?  That's what passed for visual comedy in the 1970's, before subtlety was invented.)  

But she still has a boxer under contract, because I guess back in those days if you had more money than you needed, you sponsored athletes.  Or maybe the boxer was in on the scheme with the accountant, because he apparently got a monthly salary to not fight, but instead sit around the gym all day.  Who said there was an unemployment problem?  Getting paid to not work seems like a great deal.  

But our heroine takes a crash course in boxing technique, and in nagging her boxer from the sidelines as he tentatively steps back into the ring.  Much hilarity ensues when she works as a cornerman, and doesn't know when to put the stool down, when to bring the spit-bucket, etc.  Our strong feminist executive suddenly turns all nebbishy when she realizes she's in over her head.  I wonder why Woody Allen never played an inept boxing trainer - I guess Streisand beat him to it.  But some of her schtick, like not getting any food at the training camp, certainly hearkens back to classic slapstick, almost like Chaplin in "The Gold Rush".  

But it turns out that after spending time together, a sort of boss/employee love/hate thing starts to develop, and since he can't really punch her, though he'd really like to, he channels his aggression into the fight, and starts knocking them down.  The boxing commissioner notices their tension (and I swear, I thought he was going to make them box each other, creating the scene on the poster...) and agrees to set up a rematch with Kid Natural's old opponent, from "The Match That Never Was".  OK, so that's not as catchy as "The Rumble in the Jungle" or "The Thrilla in Manila" but I guess you take what you can get.  

But ugh, some screenwriter was really enamored of beverages.  It feels like every time someone goes over to someone else's house or apartment, it's all, "Would you like a beer?  No, how about some water?  Maybe a soda?"  At one point, one character says, "Would you like some tea?  No?  Well, that's good because I don't have any tea."  Umm, real people just don't talk like this.  I know for sure that if I didn't have any tea in the cupboard, I sure wouldn't offer some to a guest.  It just feels like this was the fallback conversation for a writer whenever he didn't know what the characters should talk about.

And why do Ryan O'Neal's characters always seem to owe somebody money?  In "Paper Moon" he owed little Addie $200, and she wouldn't stop demanding it.  In this film he owes Barbra's character $61,311.00 and she won't let him forget it either. 

The poster tagline reads "A Glove Story", which spoofs Ryan O'Neal's earlier film, "Love Story" - and they do work in a romance, too, in addition to everything else.  Which reminds me, I've got to start keeping an eye out for romance-based material, if I'm going to keep this thing going for another year.  I cleaned out all the romantic films on the list in February, except for a few that I watched during the Burt Reynolds chain.  I don't know if I'll be able to slap something together for February 2017 at this rate. 

Also starring Barbra Streisand (last seen in "The Guilt Trip"), Paul Sand, Whitman Mayo, Patti D'Arbanville (last seen in "Perfect Stranger"), James Gregory (last seen in "The Manchurian Candidate"), John Reilly (last seen in "The Great Waldo Pepper"), Tim Rossovich (last seen in "Nice Dreams"), Richard Lawson, Chu Chu Malave, Earl Boen, with cameos from Ernie Hudson (last seen in "Congo"), Len Lesser (last seen in "Lust for Life"), Brent Musberger (last heard in "Planes: Fire & Rescue").

RATING: 4 out of 10 bunk beds

Paper Moon

Year 8, Day 242 - 8/29/16 - Movie #2,437 

Ryan O'Neal carries over from "Barry Lyndon", and I'm well on my way to posting "Captain America: Civil War" at the end of this week.  It could be a tough slog getting there, though.  But if I can just stay the course for another 2 weeks and get to movie #2,450, I'll feel like I'm over the hump, and I can take a lot of breaks after that, and pretty much coast to the end of the year.  The final 50 films in 109 days?  No sweat.  I can take breaks for New York Comic-Con, Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping... Yep, it may still be August, but I'm already planning for the holidays. 

THE PLOT:  During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.

AFTER: Boy, this chain would have been great, if only I had scheduled it around Father's Day.  My bad.  "King Lear" was all about a man and his three daughters, and then "Barry Lyndon" focused on a faux nobleman and his impudent step-son, and now tonight we've got a con-man and his (perhaps) daughter traveling around the Midwest.  Three nights of fathers quarreling with children, in other words. 

But even with the fights (and the kid tonight probably wins more than she loses) this film is mostly endearing - there's something inherently endearing about films made during the Great Depression, I don't know why that is.  Is it just nostalgia for a simpler time, or does the hardship of the times just make our lives today seem so much better?  Maybe it's the fact that you could get a hot dog and a soda for under a nickel, or a new set of tires for your car for about 6 bucks.  (I looked up the general causes for inflation over the decades, and there's a lot of economic mumbo-jumbo, but pure human greed never seems to be listed as one of the factors.)

The father/father-figure and his daughter/surrogate daughter aren't together long before she starts helping with his cons - there's the one where they sell monogrammed Bibles to recent widows, and then there's tricks to get too much change back from a store.  I'll admit, I had to watch the sequence a few times, because the exchange of money is a bit complicated, but I eventually figured it out.   

I just wish more movies could be like this, namely relatively short, mostly enjoyable, endearing and entertaining.  Because it turns out you can set a film during the Great Depression without the story being so, you know, depressing.

Also starring Tatum O'Neal (last seen in "This Is 40"), Madeline Kahn (last seen in "Betsy's Wedding"), John Hillerman (last seen in "A Very Brady Sequel"), P.J. Johnson, Noble Willingham (last seen in "The Last Boy Scout"), Burton Gilliam (last seen in "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "The Paper").

RATING: 6 out of 10 hair ribbons   

Barry Lyndon

Year 8, Day 241 - 8/28/16 - Movie #2,436

BEFORE: Ugh, another long film tonight - three hours!  Is it worth it, just to check off another film from the list of "1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die"?  (Can't I wait until after I die on this one?)  But I'm working towards posting my reviews of "Captain America: Civil War" and "Deadpool", so I think I'll get something of a break next weekend, because those films were previously viewed.  But, strange as it is to say, the road to those superhero films seems to go through Ryan O'Neal, Barbra Streisand, and Meryl Streep.  What possible combination of films with those actors could get me to "Captain America" in under a week?  It seems odd, right? 

Patrick Magee, who played Cornwall in "King Lear" yesterday, carries over to play "The Chevalier".

THE PLOT: An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England.

AFTER: I picked this one up 6 months ago, during TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" February marathon.  It was at the bottom of the list for a while, along with the films coming up in the next two days, before I added "King Lear" to the list and noticed the link.  That's how these things go, sometimes films are on my list for years and I can't seem to find a slot for them, and then suddenly I see an actor's in more than one film (I can now conveniently scroll down an actor's filmography with the IMDB app on my phone, and a bright green checkmark means that a film is on my watchlist - any actor with multiple checkmarks represents a linking opportunity) and boom, connections are established.  But with only so many slots to go this year, I have to start turning down some linking opportunities - more on this in a week. 

But I am now very close to having seen EVERY Stanley Kubrick film, I think the only one I haven't watched is "The Killing", and that was so early in his career that I think it may not have much insight to his personal style.  But this film was based on a novel by William Thackeray, who also wrote "Vanity Fair", and...I just don't get it.  Meaning that I get what takes place, because the plot is rather straightforward, but I don't understand what it all means, why it's important to tell THIS story.  Being such a matter-of-fact account of how Redmond Barry travels through Europe, fights for various armies, and slowly ascends the social ladder to become the aristocratic Barry Lyndon, despite his shortcomings, if anything, it reminded me of an 18th century "Forrest Gump".  And we never did figure out how exactly life is like a box of chocolates, if you ask me.  (What, it's full of nuts?  Sometimes you get a candy that you don't like?  The metaphor never really worked...)  

Maybe it's the whole royalty/nobility thing I don't get.  Being raised in the U.S., a country that disposed of the whole aristocracy centuries ago, I understand how someone becomes wealthy, through the wonderful thing called capitalism.  But how does one become "noble"?  Is it through inheritance, like in "King Lear"?  By killing off rivals and rising through the ranks, like "Macbeth"?  Or is it more like a state of mind, a way of life?  Barry Lyndon's fortunes rise and fall, and Thackeray's book (and Kubrick's film) take us along for every single excruciatingly detailed turn of events.  

First he fools around and falls in love with his cousin (that was more OK, back then...) but when she gets engaged to a British army officer, Barry becomes insanely jealous and challenges the captain to a duel - even though the marriage is going to be financially beneficial for his family.  The results of the duel force him to leave town, but before he can even get to Dublin, he's robbed of all his possessions and has no choice but to enlist in the army himself. 

During the Seven Years' War, he deserts the infantry by disguising himself as a courier and heading for Holland.  But the Prussians deduce that he's not who he says he is, and he's drafted into the Prussian army, which is even worse. But with an act of heroism he saves an officer's life and gets a commendation (this is what reminded me of Forrest Gump, saving Lt. Dan's life in Vietnam...) but when the war ends, the Prussian police enlist him to work as a servant for a Chevalier, who's also a gambler and possibly a spy.  But instead of spying on him, Barry turns the tables and joins up with him, together they run a successful gambling racket across Europe.  After a few years of success, Barry decides his life is going nowhere, so he marries a recently-widowed Countess, and even takes on her last name.  

You'd think acquiring a title and marrying into wealth would be the end of his troubles, but that's not the case.  The Countess has a son, Lord Bullingdon (again, I don't get how these titles work...) who can't stand him and acts out, forcing Barry to discipline him, which only deepens his hate.  And when Barry and the Countess have a son together, this sows the seeds of jealousy, and the older son's behavior gets worse, leading to more discipline, etc. etc. 

Meanwhile, Barry is worried that everything is in his wife's name, and if anything should happen to her, he could be left penniless - so he invests in expensive artworks and a horse for his young son.  The drains on the family fortune cause tension, and then I'll stop talking about the plot here, because at some point things just keep getting worse, and eventually, just like in "King Lear", you realize everyone's circling the drain and it's not going to end well for anyone.  

The end title card reminds us that since these people live long ago, whatever they were in life - rich, poor, good, bad, handsome, ugly - they're all equal now.  Umm, is that supposed to be comforting?  Because it's not, really.  I mean, I guess we can all take solace in being currently alive, but it just reminds us that situation is also temporary.  But I'm still left wondering about the overall message of the whole film - is it that we carry within us the self-destructive seeds of our own behavior?  That nothing we accomplish will amount to anything in the end?  That we can try to rise above our stations, but to no avail?  What a bummer.

Also starring Ryan O'Neal (last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Marisa Berenson (last seen in "Cabaret"), Hardy Krüger (also last seen in "A Bridge Too Far"), Steven Berkoff (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Murray Melvin (last seen in "The Phantom of the Opera"), Frank Middlemass, Marie Kean, Gay Hamilton (last seen in "A Man For All Seasons"), Leonard Rossiter, Godfrey Quigley (last seen in "Get Carter"), Arthur O'Sullivan, Leon Vitali (last seen in "Little Children"), Liam Redmond, Dominic Savage, David Morley, Billy Boyle and the voice of Michael Hordern (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies").  

RATING: 5 out of 10 candelabras