Cinema Verite

Year 13, Day 188 - 7/7/21 - Movie #3,889

BEFORE: Tim Robbins carries over from "Miss Firecracker", and before I forget, here are my actor/documentary subject links for the rest of July: Amy Adams, Billy Crystal, Chris Messina (yep, again), Will Ferrell, Zoe Chao, Hannah Marks, Kristen Stewart, Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie (or Larry King or Regis Philbin, your choice), Elton John, Dolly Parton, Johnny Carson, Sting, Jann Wenner, Andrew Young (yep, again), and Oprah Winfrey (YES AGAIN).  That chain may actually extend a little into August, I'm not sure yet how I'm going to space my movies out over the summer - but that should get us through the big Summer Music Concert and/or Documentary series. 

THE PLOT: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first reality show to feature a real American family. 

AFTER: Maybe there's a theme for the week, and maybe it's something about the American dream, and how hard it is to pursue it, but pursue it we must.  Does it even exist?  Stephen Glass couldn't find it - or did he end up personifying that pursuit?  Carleen in "Miss Firecracker" sure couldn't obtain it, and neither could the Lisbon girls in "The Virgin Suicides" - sorry, this is all I really have to work with this past week, this very American week that happened to have the 4th of July in it.  So, maybe I'm right on track?

I haven't watched a movie in three days, though, so clearly the Big Summer Slowdown has begun. I'm working two jobs, it's either hot as balls or there's a thunderstorm, so the weather sucks, and that (plus the two-job thing) means that even though the pandemic is essentially over, we can't really go anywhere.  Sure, I had about 40% of last weekend off (Friday night plus Saturday) and we did drive out to the Chinese buffet on Long Island, but that's about all we did to celebrate the holiday.  This weekend I'll just have Friday night free, then since "Black Widow" is opening in theaters, I'm working both Saturday and Sunday nights at the theater.  Things are about to get crazy, so cutting back on WATCHING movies makes perfect sense, I'll be lucky if I can squeeze in five per week over the next few weeks - and four seems more likely.

Still, let's make hay while the sun shines - today's film is about the first reality TV show, pioneered by Craig Gilbert, who never received half of the credit (or, umm, the blame) that he should have.  He came up with the idea of doing a 10-hour documentary series on PBS, called "An American Family", way back in 1973.  The reasoning seemed to be that the U.S. had put a camera on the moon, but still had not managed to put one inside the average household.  OK, but just because you HAVEN'T done something yet, that in itself does not make it a good idea.  Did this average family even WANT to have TV cameras in their house?  What effect would that have on a family, other than airing their personal problems and "dirty laundry" across the country?  What, exactly, was the purpose that Mr. Gilbert was trying to serve?  

More to the point, since Craig Gilbert did manage to achieve this, and enlighten the other families in America what the Loud family was up to, why did the HBO cable audience in 2011 need a dramatic re-creation of those same events?  What purpose did THAT serve, other than to duplicate the thing that already existed?  If anybody wants to know what happened on the TV show "An American Family", why not just WATCH that show?  Binge all 10 hours, come on, that's what the kids are all doing now, right?  So a cable movie does a dramatic remake of a documentary series - does this mean that someday we'll have to watch a fictionalized version of the first season of "The Real World", or actors re-enacting the first season of "Big Brother" or "Survivor" - seems kind of strange, right?  Bad idea territory for sure.  

What's weirder is the fact that this HBO movie (and yes, movies made for HBO count, according to my rules) worked in some of the footage from "An American Family", I guess to show us how close they were coming to the look of the original show and the Loud family members.  That's an odd choice, like you wouldn't expect a World War II movie to mix footage of somebody playing General Eisenhower or Patton with footage of the real guys, you'd realize right away that John Slattery, for example, looked nothing like Eisenhower, not a bit.  Brian Cox as Churchill, sure, but do a side-by-side with photos of Slattery and Ike and you'll realize some casting director was asleep at the switch.  That same inconsistency is on display here, as Tim Robbins looks (almost) nothing like Bill Loud - how am I supposed to overlook that?  If that's the case, then maybe DON'T include footage of the original guy he's supposed to be portraying.  Diane Lane also does not resemble Pat Loud (who died in January 2021, age 94) but maybe with Gandolfini they came the closest, with extra hair and a beard he did look just a little bit like Craig Gilbert.

(While I'm discussing side-by-side comparisons, I have problems distinguishing actor Johnny Simmons from actor Ben Platt.  Is that just me?  Google them both and let me know if you see the resemblance...  the only other time this happened for me was seeing Kyle Dunnigan on "Reno 911" as recurring character Craig Pullin, and I just assumed he was the same actor who played Kip in "Napoleon Dynamite", only he wasn't, that was Aaron Ruell.  Again, Google search them both...)

I suppose the only reason to re-create the footage from "An American Family" is to maybe add a more modern spin on it - like with the oldest Loud child, Lance Loud.  He's very dramatic, he wants to move to New York and be part of the scene, then he wants to go to Paris to do street theater, and he says "some man" will likely pay for his ticket - within five minutes, a modern viewer would realize that he's gay.  But not back in 1973, his own parents seemed unaware of this fact, or they were in some form of denial about it.  Mom figures it out first, but only after visiting him in NYC and attending a drag-queen theater show with him.  Was Lance's father, Bill, ever brought up to speed?  Did Bill even understand what it meant to be gay?  (And why couldn't this film have been in my June line-up, for Pride Month?). This is a reminder how far the gay rights movement has come, because back in 1973 it was very difficult for a family to deal with this issue without attaching some kind of stigma to it.  

On the other hand, there are Bill's multiple affairs, and in this re-creation it's not hard for Pat (and by extension, the audience) to see which way the wind is blowing on this one.  Bill returns from a business trip all sunburned, and he claims he was walking around a construction site without a shirt on for three days.  Right, because that's what foremen and contractors do on a hot day.  When another woman in town appears just as sunburned as Bill, Pat makes the logical conclusion that her husband was really on a beach with that woman, which is much easier to believe.  The director of the documentary series later learns that Bill has at least one other girlfriend on the side, and thus the filmmaker has to decide whether to break the trust of one spouse in order to maintain his bond with the other.  And that's how easily the "rules" of non-interference are to break when making a documentary, it's kind of like quantum physics in that the act of observation is always going to have an effect on the events being observed.  

Bill Loud is not really the last of a dying breed, but he does represent a certain patriarchal mentality, someone who believed that men get to go on "business trips" while their wives stay home and raise the kids, a woman could only get a job if that work didn't interfere with the housework and child care, and obviously a man could have a little action on the side, while a wife was expected to remain ever faithful.  Double standards, across the board - but then again, we're all looking at this from a modern-day point of view, and I'm not saying things were better back then, but they were different and we have to acknowledge that when we judge these people, after the fact. 

Eventually the show gets its most dramatic moment, the on-air request for the dissolution of the marriage, or rather the negotiation over how it's all going to go down.  She'll take the girls to Taos for a week, while he moves his clothing and personal effects to a hotel.  This part is never easy, it's one of the worst things that anyone ever has to go through, from either side.  But change is part of life, and there's no way through it but to do it, and you hope to come out the other side relatively sane and together, that's the best you can do.  

There's always more to the story, though, and one of Lance's last wishes was for his parents to get back together again - which they did, years later they moved back in together, which must have been some combination of comfortably familiar and incredibly awkward.  What's that saying, that you can't unring a bell?  This seems like it would be more like putting an egg back together after it dropped on the floor.  But it happened, so maybe there's some hope in the world, however fragile and transient love and life can be.  I don't know, it would be like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon getting back together again, I just don't see it happening (they're tied right now for appearances in Movie Year 13, with four each, this could get interesting).  But didn't Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez recently rekindle their romance, in April?  How long do we think that one's going to last? 

Also starring Diane Lane (last seen in "Serenity" (2019)), James Gandolfini (last seen in "The Mexican"), Kathleen Quinlan (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Thomas Dekker, Patrick Fugit (last seen in "First Man"), Shanna Collins, William Belli (last seen in "A Star Is Born" (2018)), Lolita Davidovich (last seen in "Play It to the Bone"), Kyle Riabko, Kaitlyn Dever (last seen in "Booksmart"), Nick Eversman (last seen in "Wild"), Johnny Simmons (last seen in "Dreamland"), Caitlin Custer, Jake Richardson (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Matt O'Leary (last seen in "Brick"), Stephen Caffrey, Monika Jolly, Dendrie Taylor (last seen in "Out of the Furnace"), Richard Fancy (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Cory Blevins, Don McManus (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Molly Hagan (last seen in "Some Kind of Wonderful"), Sean O'Bryan (last seen in "Trapped in Paradise"), James Urbaniak (last seen in "Where'd You go, Bernadette"), Patricia Scanlon, Danielle Sapia, Robert Curtis Brown (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), with archive footage of Dick Cavett (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Johnny Carson (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Margaret Mead, Craig Gilbert and the Loud family. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 rooms at the Chelsea Hotel

Miss Firecracker

Year 13, Day 185 - 7/4/21 - Movie #3,888

BEFORE: OK, I've reached my Fourth of July film, as planned. It looked a little touch-and-go there for a while, I had to work at the movie theater on the holiday, but then it turned out that not many people showed up for movies tonight, so they let me out early.  Sure, I could have stayed in Manhattan and watched the fireworks over the river, but ehh, you've seen one fireworks show, and you've seen them all, am I right?  Maybe such things still hold excitement for young kids, but I'm not really a fan.  Living in a major city like New York for a few decades can really turn you off regarding most major holidays, like on Thanksgiving there's that damn parade and around Christmas there are too many people visiting that stupid tree in Rock Center.  

Last year, during the pandemic there were so many illegal fireworks going off around the city, starting in June, that there was a major crackdown, and as a result for once the city didn't sound like a war zone on July 4. After public opinion demanded action, I thought, "Great, other people are FINALLY coming around to my way of thinking regarding fireworks, in other words, let's start making some arrests."  But here we are, a year later, and there's the sound of mortar fire in my neighborhood once again, and my cat's been hiding under the bed for about 6 or 7 hours.  It's not fair to pets or to veterans with PTSD that on this day, once a year, it's nothing but triggering noises.  The colorful displays just aren't worth being such a-holes for - I realize that everybody is desperate to party, but find another way.  Or, just blow yourselves up and don't endanger anybody else.  

This racket continues until about 3 or 4 am, and police are not enforcing any guidelines this year.  I'd go out and patrol the streets myself if the miscreants didn't, you know, possess a whole bunch of explosive devices. 

Scott Glenn carries over from "The Virgin Suicides". 

THE PLOT: Carnelle wants to escape her dreary life, so she enters a local beauty contest, much to everyone's dismay. 

AFTER: After today, I start going on a diet - no, not that kind, a movie diet.  I can't keep consuming movies at the pace I've been working at all year, not while juggling two jobs and also trying to maintain some semblance of a human sleeping schedule.  I've been over-filling my months, watching more movies than there are days in any given month, all year until June, when I took a few days off.  If I keep this up, I'll also run out of movie slots before I run out of calendar days, and that would mean taking a whole month off from movies in November, and that's tough to do as well.  So, the solution is to cut back to maybe four movies a week, five maximum, until I hit the horror chain - and even then, I've got 23 movies planned for October instead of 30 - that's fairly typical, though, because I usually leave room for New York Comic-Con.  

I've spaced it out on some calendar pages for July, August and September - and I can still hit a Fred Willard film before October 1, no worries there, but even with cutting back to five movies per week, I still get there about two weeks before needed, so either I go on vacation or I cut back to four per week.  No worries, on those nights I don't watch a movie I'll catch up on "Loki" or "The Queen's Gambit" or something - or I'll still be working nights at the theater, and maybe it will all work out.  

When I say that "Miss Firecracker" is a weird film, it's not like the usual weird, as in "two aging rock stars traveling through time trying to write a song that will save the universe" weird, or even "man raised by fake parents who kidnapped him and controlled him by teaching him lessons through a homemade TV show" weird - this is a look at small-town America, the fairs and the carnivals and the beauty contests that have been a staple across the country in decades past, before there was Twitter and Instagram and streaming movies.  I'm guessing you can maybe find these sort of events out there somewhere in the square states, but they can't possibly be the same sort of deals they were in the 1970's and 1980's.  Now everybody has to worry about exploitation and equality and sexual harassment, so the very concept of a beauty contest is incredibly suspect these days.  What is beauty, anyway, isn't that totally subjective?  And since there are no male beauty pageants on the same level as the female ones, isn't this just a holdover from the patriarchy being in control?  How very outdated the whole concept seems.

But this film is really about the people on the fringes in those same smalltowns - this is set in Yazoo City, Mississippi, but they don't really stress that fact, so it could be Anytown, U.S.A., where Carnelle Scott works in a fishing cannery (?) but dreams of winning the Miss Firecracker pageant, held, of course,  on the Fourth of July each year.  Her cousin, Elain, won the competition years ago, and has been invited back to appear at the pageant and, I don't know, announce the winner?  Elain's other cousin, Delmount, has a job scraping dead dogs off the highway, and apparently spent some time in an asylum, but his dream is to sell the family house (where Carnelle lives) in order to start fresh somewhere else.  Carnelle is upset about losing her residence at first, but then when Delmount offers her half of the money, she realizes that if she gets this money AND wins the pageant, she can also make a fresh start.  NITPICK POINT: Why does she need for BOTH of these things to happen?  Why isn't the money enough?  It seems to me like an either/or proposition, but for some reason she needs both things, that's weird.

Much fuss is made over a red dress, Carnelle wants to wear the same red dress in the pageant that Elain did when she won years ago, only she's gone through the whole house and she can't find it.  Delmount then goes to Popeye Jackson's dress shop and tears it apart, looking for a red dress of equal or greater value, and this is also quite confusing - why does the dress need to be red?  Why does Delmount need to throw all the non-red dresses on the floor and make a huge mess?  Can't he see which dresses aren't red and just leave them all alone?  Plus Popeye, the dress designer, is already working on outfits for Carnelle to wear in the pageant, did Delmount think that somehow she had the perfect dress in her shop and she WASN'T going to let Carnelle wear it?  Nothing in this scene makes any sense...

Carnelle waits a long time to hear from the pageant coordinators, past the deadline, even - but then something happens to one of the entrants (it's a bit unclear, the information comes on the other half of a phone conversation, which we can't hear...) and suddenly there's an opening, so Carnelle gets it.  (Was she in sixth place out of all the contestants?  Also unclear.)  Again, she looks for the red dress, why is that damn dress so important?  For that matter, why is entering this pageant, in her last year of eligibility, so important?  We are given some answers at the very end of the film, but by then the film had asked these same questions so many times that I no longer cared at all.  

The important thing here is that Carnelle's talent act in the pageant involves tap-dancing (or as Delmount put it, stomping her feet to the music) to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner", and that's enough to make this count as the best film to watch today.  Then, of course, there's a fireworks display at the end of the night. That'll do. But, as I said before, if you've seen one fireworks display, you've basically seen them all.  I'm not sure how this tradition has kept people's attention for hundreds of years, now that we have streaming movies and phone games and so much porn.  I guess it's all to keep the kids entertained for a few minutes, or to satisfy people who just love explosions - what is wrong with those people?  

NITPICK POINT #2 - I don't see the point of watching the fireworks display from the town observatory, it only looks about ten feet high, and the fireworks are way up in the sky, those ten feet aren't going to make much of a difference.  

I guess it's the perfect film to celebrate Independence Day - but although I love the USA and what the holiday stands for, I just don't really get behind the way most people celebrate it. I'm down with beer, county fairs and BBQ, but not beaches, fireworks and beauty pageants.  To each his own, I suppose. 

Also starring Holly Hunter (last seen in "Manglehorn"), Mary Steenburgen (last heard in "The One I Love"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "City of Ember"), Alfre Woodard (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Veanne Cox (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Ann Wedgeworth (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Trey Wilson (last seen in "Great Balls of Fire!"), Amy Wright (last seen in "Breaking Away"), Kathleen Chalfant (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), Robert Fieldsteel, Greg Germann (last seen in "I.Q."), Avril Gentles, Bert Remsen (last seen in "Nashville"), Angela Turner, Lori Hayes, Barbara Welch, Mitch Saxton, John Burgess, Christine Lahti (last seen in "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood"), Brent Spiner (last seen in "Independence Day: Resurgence"), Murray L. Cain, Earle Ingram, Joyce Murrah

RATING: 3 out of 10 floats in the town parade

The Virgin Suicides

Year 13, Day 184 - 7/3/21 - Movie #3,887

BEFORE: Well, I went and did it last night - I found a path to the end of the year, I guess that would be Movie #4,000 - planned for December.  And yes, that's a Christmas movie - it's 75 degrees out today and I've set my sights on Christmas, hard to believe but that's where we find ourselves.  Things could change, obviously, between now and then, but it's comforting to know there's at least one path to the end of 2021, that another "perfect year" is possible, and that would make three in a row.  It can be done, as I've proven - assuming all my information is correct, and I stay a little flexible in the event that it's not.  

Hayden Christensen carries over from "Shattered Glass". 

THE PLOT: A group of young male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid 1970's. 

AFTER: What I regret not doing these last few years is prominently mentioning who the director is on each film - that should have been important, right?  Like I should say right before listing the actors who directed this - Sofia Coppola - and what the last film I saw directed by her was, which would be "On the Rocks".  Maybe I should go back and retroactively update each film - but that would take me HOURS, perhaps even days.  If I weren't due at the movie theater in a few hours, it's something I would consider doing on a quiet holiday weekend - but as it is, I've got no time for it.  

But it seems rather important to point out that this was Sofia Coppola's debut feature - young filmmakers tend to be quite over-dramatic at first, or they go for the cheap plot moves, like, say, suicide, which is a narrative cop-out both in movies and in life, if you ask me.  Some would say it's the coward's way out, and both in films and in life, I think it should only be considered when there are no viable alternatives, because it's permanent and undoable, and then everyone else around the suicide victim isn't quite sure how to react, and this has a jarring effect on them and the audience as well.  It's the dramatic version of a "cheap laugh", just without the humor - or what some writers have their characters do when they've metaphorically painted that person into a corner, and it often seems like maybe a better writer could have found a way out of the situation.

Using that same device more than once, however, well that really is going to feel like a cop-out, several times over. Right?  Well, I don't know what to do with this character, so maybe he (or she) just takes their own life, problem solved.  Only, was anything solved, or resolved?  I'm not sure, or did the writer just go for the cheap move that had the side benefit of ending things without really resolving anything?  

This story is told from the P.O.V. of one of the younger high-school boys who are in the orbit around the five sisters - four of the sisters are in high-school, ages 14, 15, 16 and 17, and honestly that feels a bit convenient, that one's a freshman, the next is a sophomore, and so on.  I guess Catholic families could be rather regular that way (did the parents have sex once a year on the same date, and conceive a daughter each time?).  Sure, be fruitful and multiply, but jeez, at some point, give it a rest... I don't think we ever find out which boy is telling this story, perhaps it doesn't matter.  I could have sworn that the narration was being provided by Hayden Christensen, who played one of the four OTHER boys who took the Lisbon girls to the homecoming dance, but no, that wasn't him, it was another actor.  

Also quite conveniently, Mr. Lisbon is a math and/or science teacher at the same high school the Lisbon girls attend.  Obviously this happens in America, that teachers live in the same town or district they teach in, but it's probably hell on any teenager to have to go to that same high school where one of their parents teaches.  I mean, I guess they'll always have a ride to school, but they have to spend all day in their parent's workplace, and then every kid in their class is also going to be familiar with their father or mother, and the embarrassment factor is potentially quite high - OK, maybe I can start to see why these girls wanted to commit suicide.  

But come on, there's so much to live for, like those first tentative yet also possibly horrible dating experiences, and there are so many great 1970's songs to listen to, as this movie demonstrates.  I guess once their parents made them throw away the cool rock records, that was the beginning of the end.  And once Lux (the, umm, second-oldest daughter?) stayed out all night after the dance and that meant she probably had sex with her date, I guess that was the beginning of the end?  Can we therefore draw the conclusion that the sex wasn't that great, or maybe it was, and therefore she should kill herself immediately after, because life just isn't going to get any better after she loses her virginity?  Again, I feel like maybe there's some faulty logic at work if you try to follow that line of thinking.  

What's the overall point here, that teen boys are simple, but teen girls are extremely complicated?  If so, why do you suppose that is, could it be that parents hold them to a different, perhaps impossible, standard?  Maybe the message is that kids are eventually all going to grow up and start having "adult" experiences, and parents can't change this fact, and it's pointless and counter-productive for them to even try?  

Or is the point that we build up certain experiences in our mind in anticipation of them, and then once they finally happen and don't live up to our expectations, we then spend the rest of our lives chasing that damn dragon to try and make things better, when we should just learn to be complacent with the things that do come our way?  I'm just not sure, and I'm not sure that the director here was able to come up with a clear message, or if she just put together a bunch of things that happened, and hoped for the best - which is something that a first-time director might be likely to do.  

I sort of side with the adult character, seen late in the film, who pokes fun at the Lisbon girls by jumping into a swimming pool, pretending to drown, who shouts out, "Look at me, I'm a teenage girl, and my life is SO complicated!" - or similar words to that effect.  In other words, get over yourselves, teen girls. 

NITPICK POINT: This film takes place outside Detroit - one public notice seen suggests the setting is Grosse Pointe, Michigan.  So, umm, how is there a diary entry for one of the girls that mentions going on a whale-watching trip?  I don't think there are any whales in the Great Lakes - maybe the whole family took a vacation on the East Coast, but this still feels a bit out of place.  Also, I'm not sure that whale-watching trips were even a thing back in the 1970's - but I'm not quite sure how to check on this. 

Also starring James Woods (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in America"), Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Kirsten Dunst (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Josh Hartnett (last seen in "Town & Country"), Michael Paré (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer"), A.J. Cook (last seen in "Elvis Meets Nixon"), Joe Dinicol (ditto), Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman, Chelse Swain, Anthony DeSimone, Lee Kagan, Jonathan Tucker (last seen in "Charlie's Angels" (2019)), Noah Shebib, Robert Schwartzman, Joe Roncetti, Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Danny DeVito (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Chris Hale, Suki Kaiser, Dawn Greenhalgh (last seen in "Maps to the Stars"), Allen Stewart-Coates, Sherry Miller, Jonathan Whittaker (last seen in "Breach"), Michele Duquet, Murray McRae, Roberta Hanley, Paul Sybersma, Susan Sybersma, Peter Snider, Gary Brennan (last seen in "Molly's Game"), Charles Boyland, Dustin Ladd, Kristin Fairlie, Melody Johnson, Sheyla Molho, Ashley Ainsworth, Courtney Hawkrigg, Francois Klanfer, Mackenzie Lawrenz, Tim Hall, Andrew Gillies (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Mairlyn Smith,  Sally Cahill, Scot Denton, Catherine Swing, Timothy Adams, Michael Michaelessi and the voice of Giovanni Ribisi (last seen in "Middle Men"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 diary entries

Shattered Glass

Year 13, Day 183 - 7/2/21 - Movie #3,886

BEFORE: The calendar says that 2021 is just about halfway done, but I've only got about two weeks to go until my Movie Year is 2/3 over, when I reach 200 watched out of 300 movies for the year.  How does that happen?  Oh, right, because of the pandemic I've been watching just a bit more movies each month than there are days, and that really starts to add up by now.  BUT, I'm planning to slow down if I can, space out my planned July movies to maybe reach into mid-August, if the chain will allow it.  Five movies per week should be fine for a while, and then I'll have less time off when September and November roll around.  

But, here's the question, does the math support this plan?  I've programmed up to Movie 3,918, originally planned for a point in the first week of August.  And the October chain is already set, though the plan for a horror chain is somewhat flexible, with multiple "outs", my favorite of the three endings results in a chain of 23 horror films, so 3,918 plus 23 is 3,941, leaving 59 slots open for late August, September, November and December.  

Now, the even bigger question, can I link from the end of my current chain to the start of the horror chain on October 1, and can I do it in the right number of steps?  Well, if you give me enough slots I can probably link from any movie to any other movie, so I'll give it a try - from the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Killing Gunther" to the 1977 horror film "Salem's Lot", which means my target actor is Fred Willard...  My first attempt got me there in 14 steps, which is actually too short, that would leave 46 slots open for November and December, and that's too much, I may be busy with Christmas cards and Christmas shopping.  My second attempt got me there in 17 steps, which was little better, but then, still, 43 slots to fill at the end of the year.  

But this was still good research, usually I'm scrambling to get to my benchmarks quickly, to avoid doubling up or cramming too many films into too tight a time-frame, it seems now I've just got the opposite problem, I've got two chains that will get me there, but I maybe need to add a few detours, some side-roads that will burn up some more slots and allow me to reach the same destination.  Maybe if I take a piece of the first chain, dabble a little into Westerns, a couple silly kids' movies, and I plan to see both "Black Widow" and "The Suicide Squad" in theaters, yes, this could work.  The third chain that gets me to a Fred Willard movie is 24 steps, that would leave just 36 open slots to fill in November and December.  Just 18 in each month, or 20 in November and 16 in December, whatever works, I can do that.  Now, if I can just get from the end of the horror chain to some kind of Christmas movie in 36 steps, then I've got the whole chain for the year sewn up, for the third year in a row.  That's a nice feeling - knowing that I"ve closed the gap way ahead of schedule.  

Cas Anvar carries over from "The Operative". 

THE PLOT: The story of a young journalist who fell from grace when it was discovered he fabricated over half of his articles for The New Republic magazine.  

AFTER: Going back to the past again today, for a film that was released in 2003, about a magazine writer who got caught up in a scandal in 1998.  It seems that back in those days, a scandal was when somebody wrote a bunch of magazine articles that turned out to not be fact-based.  Fifteen or twenty years later, a scandal was when someone who had their own news show or was a celebrity chef turned out to be sexually harassing all the women in their office.  These days printing or broadcasting news that isn't true barely even moves the needle any more, now we just call it "Fox News" (or "fake news", if you're on the other side) and we move on.  

I mean, really, seriously, what's the big deal here?  I don't recall following the Stephen Glass story at the time, because I didn't read "The New Republic" or "The New Yorker", and what's his sin, printing fiction as if it's fact?  If he had just created these articles as essays and printed them in a collection of fiction, there would be absolutely no harm done.  1998 was in the early days of the internet, and so it seems that this writer got caught just because people started being able to search for things on the web, and the people and organizations that he quoted and credited his information to turned out to be, shall we say, non-existent?  Whoopsie!  Did somebody forget to tell him that news articles need to be based on facts?  

The whole structure is weird here, because in the first part of the film, Glass' character writes an article about the hijinx performed by young, horny Republican men in a hotel during the CPAC convention - and what trips him up is the fact that he wrote they were drinking tiny bottles of alcohol from the hotel minibar, and it turned out that the hotel didn't have minibars.  What a very weird, oddly specific thing to get tripped up on.  But then, was his mistake really a mistake, because they could have rented a small refrigerator and brought in their own alcohol, plus Glass seemed VERY apologetic over his mistake, which might not have even been a mistake.  Still, if he was fabricating story elements, why wasn't this incident a clear sign to him that he should stop doing that?  

His next article concerned a teen hacker who then got hired by the company he hacked, to work security for them and prevent future hacks.  A great story, but very untrue, because another competing magazine couldn't find any proof that the hacker, the company or any of Glass' sources existed, so if the story couldn't be corroborated, then how in the heck did it get approved for print?  Again, if he had published this as a work of fiction, it could have been a modern-day O. Henry type of ironic story - how silly of the universe to make this event not happen to bring Glass' vivid imagination into reality.  But then again, if you think about it, how many teen hackers would then ACCEPT a 9-to-5 job working corporate security for a tech firm?  That would leave no time for skateboarding, loitering and smoking weed, which is what all teens want to do - why skip the fun parts of life and move straight on into his mid-30's?  That right there should have been enough to make the story unbelievable, so what gives?  

Also, what gives the other magazine the right to poke holes in the New Republic article?  Go find your own damn story, Forbes, do your own investigating on a different topic, why you gotta harsh another reporter's mallow?  This forced Stephen Glass to come up with a phony phone number for the fictional people he quoted, and he had his brother waiting on the other end of the phone line to answer the call with "Vandelay Industries", I suppose.  Stephen Glass was just a younger, hipper George Costanza, it turns out.  

So Forbes magazine investigated the New Republic articles Glass wrote, and Vanity Fair then did an article on Glass that got turned into this movie.  Probably the ultimate irony here is that we all know that most directors can't turn someone's life story into a movie without changing a few details here and there, but we call that "artistic license", as opposed to "fraud", which is what people called Glass' articles.  But it's the SAME damn principle - every time a story is told or re-told, minor details may get changed, added or omitted, it's practically inevitable.  Yet we give a pass to the filmmakers and hold the journalists to a much higher standard - why?  Just because it's "news"?  Again, there's plenty of fake news going around these days, or news told from a certain point of view or with a certain political slant, and that should be considered just as dangerous. 

BTW, Hayden Christensen is still a terrible actor - he just never advanced much beyond his deadpan, unemotional performances as Anakin Skywalker in two "Star Wars" movies.  Here I just couldn't really believe anything he said as Stephen Glass, he remained unconvincing throughout - but in playing a pathological liar, perhaps that was the point?  I'm not sure, this maybe made him the perfect casting choice.  Still, he always comes off as somebody who's trying too hard to be authentic. 

Also starring Hayden Christensen (last seen in "Little Italy"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "Hostiles"), Chloe Sevigny (last seen in "The Dead Don't Die"), Rosario Dawson (last seen in "Zombieland: Double Tap"), Melanie Lynskey (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Hank Azaria (last seen in "The Wizard of Lies"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Where'd You Go, Bernadette"), Mark Blum (last seen in "Desperately Seeking Susan"), Simone-Elise Girard, Chad Donella (last seen in "Taken 3"), Jamie Elman (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Luke Kirby (last seen in "The Samaritan"), Linda E. Smith, Ted Kotcheff, Owen Roth, Bill Rowat, Michele Scarabelli, Terry Simpson, Andrew Airlie (last seen in "Big Eyes"), Mark Camacho (last seen in "Arrival"), Lynne Adams, Caroline Goodall (last seen in "Third Person"), Sean Cullen, Louis Philippe Dandenault, Morgan Kelly (last seen in "The Lookout'), Christian Tessier, James Berlingieri, Brett Watson, Russell Yuen, Brittany Drisdelle. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 conference calls

The Operative

Year 13, Day 182 - 7/1/21 - Movie #3,885

BEFORE: Before I kick off July's movies, here's a look at the formats for the movies of June:

13 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): After Class, The Limits of Control, City of Ember, The Last Word, The Jesus Rolls, The Burnt Orange Heresy, The Calling, Arbitrage, Employee of the Month, Brigsby Bear, Bill & Ted Face the Music, The Way Back (2020), Ode to Joy

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Clear History, The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper, Atlantic City, Trapped in Paradise, Let's Go to Prison

4 watched on Netflix: The Kindergarten Teacher, Thunder Force, Middle Men, Like Father

1 watched on Amazon Prime: Brittany Runs a Marathon

1 watched on Apple TV+: On the Rocks
1 watched on Tubi: The Bill Murray Stories

2 watched on HBO MAX: The Eagle Has Landed, An American Pickle
1 watched on a random site: Howl
28 TOTAL

Cable's still coming on strong, but July is going to be very different - I anticipate fewer movies out of the next 31 coming from cable.  I still have to clear some films off the DVR and make progress on that front, but I'm also getting ready to start my big Summer Music Concert and/or Documentary series, and many those films will be streaming from Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Max (I know HBO is technically cable, but I'm counting films watched via their streaming service separately...)

Now, WHEN the Summer Concert series begins is a bit at issue, because after July 4 I think I'm going to slow things down a bit, maybe watch 4 or 5 movies each week instead of a solid 7 - it's just becoming too difficult to juggle two jobs and the movie habit, plus all the other things in my life.  So while I've got the next 31 movies planned already, if that chain creeps into August, it should still be OK, and it will take the pressure off of me.  I still have to link up the end of the Summer Concert series to the start of the Shocktober horror chain, but I'll discuss these plans more tomorrow.

For now, Martin Freeman carries over from "Ode to Joy". 

THE PLOT: A German woman is recruited by the Mossad to work undercover in Tehran. 

AFTER:  What troubles me greatly tonight is the fact that this film WAS available on HBO Max - perhaps right up until the time I, you know, wanted to watch it.  Now, of course it's gone - and I had to rent it from iTunes, which was one dollar cheaper than renting it from iTunes.  But WHY, WHY did it scroll off HBO Max?  I thought that service was going to be different - and I've got five more films in the July chain that are on HBO Max, are they going to disappear, too, before I get a chance to watch them?  HBO Max, you're just as bad as Netflix, it seems - films on my watchlist could disappear with no warning, and then I have to shill out three or four bucks just to maintain the chain.  At least I KNOW with Netflix that the usual availability period is two years for most films, a bit longer for ones that Netflix funded themselves.  What's YOUR availability period, HBO Max, because your service has only been around since May 2020, so how could a film like "The Operative" disappear so (relatively) quickly?  

Maybe it's because this film's plot is such a mess - and maybe that's why HBO Max dropped it so fast?  I found it very difficult to follow, and I don't think the plotline that's posted on Wikipedia got it right, it's full of mistakes.  Umm, I think.  "Working undercover" shouldn't be an excuse to have a character whose motivations and mission are unclear - the Israeli Mossad agency inserts Rachel as an ESL teacher to get close to Farhad through his son (nephew?), but WHY, exactly?  He's the heir to an electronics company that makes computer servers and racks that hold computer servers, but his job seems to be tangential to something else that is very unclear.  It might have something to do with Iran's potential nuclear capability, but I'm just not sure, and I swear I was paying attention.  There's that standard spy scene where an agent is copying information from the company's computer to a flash drive, but what, exactly, was she copying?  That's also unclear.  

To make matters worse, Farhad then asks Rachel to smuggle something in to the country, which he claims has something to do with medical tech, but does it really?  I have no idea.  Her agency also asks her to smuggle in some equipment, which has to do with explosives.  So, umm, which is it?  Is she smuggling in the medical stuff, or the bombs, or both?  And why does she only have a problem with the bomb part, is it just because of the danger involved, or is it because she loves Farhad and will do whatever he asks, and that makes it less of a job and more of a favor?  Again, unclear.  Unclear, unclear, unclear.  What is the mission and how do her personal feelings for Farhad affect it?  And what was it about Farhad that took precedence over the terms of that mission?  

Then we come to the plot posted on Wikipedia, which states that "Rachel's personal involvement with Farhad allows Thomas to involve him in the smuggling of parts for Iran's nuclear program, which ill work to undermine that program and make Farhad a target for recruitment as a Mossad resource."  Nearly every word of that sentence is incorrect, I think.  Thomas's smuggling was separate from the smuggling that Farhad wanted Rachel to do, nobody said anything about her smuggling nuclear parts, it was always either "medical tech" or "bombs" or maybe both, and then why would Mossad want to recruit Farhad?  That was never part of the deal, it seemed more like they wanted to arrest and prosecute him than recruit him.  Now I just don't even know which way is up, after reading this.  Was I watching a different movie than the one recapped on Wiki?  

To make matters even worse, Rachel becomes pregnant, and at one point visits an abortion clinic in Tehran.  But she's spotted there by someone she met at a party, so she leaves - but does this mean she wanted the baby, or didn't want the baby?  And why did seeing somebody from that party make her leave, it's a big narrative cop-out, right?  Then later she gets in a car accident, and Rachel's obviously concerned about the fetus, but we never really find out if the baby was OK, or if there was anything bad that resulted from the accident.  Then Thomas asks her about going to the abortion clinic, but he doesn't seem to make the logical conclusion from this that Rachel was pregnant.  Huh?  Is he THAT stupid, that he doesn't realize that only pregnant women do that?  Again, I'm scratching my head.  

Then there's the ultimate cop-out at the end, where the agency that employed Rachel suddenly wants to dispose of her, again, there's no WHY presented, it's just something that happens.  And the movie ends before we get to find out if they succeeded, which is just maddening.  You can't just pull a choose-your-own-ending at the last minute, you've GOT to give me something concrete before you go away.  

The big problem here, the cause of all the other little problems, is the time-jumping.  At the start, handler Thomas gets a mysterious phone call from undercover agent Rachel, and this should set his plans in motion for immediate extraction, only it doesn't, it sets off a series of discussions between him and other Mossad agents, which essentially tell her whole story via flashbacks.  But there were no dates given via subtitles, so it was very difficult to tell when we entered flashback mode, or if the scenes with Rachel were also happening NOW.  As a result Rachel's timeline was very difficult to piece together, plus why wasn't he rushing to help her out, why did he take the time to re-tell her entire storyline to another agent?  Isn't she in, you know, some form of danger, isn't that why she CALLED you?  

Also starring Diane Kruger (last seen in "Fathers & Daughters"), Cas Anvar (last seen in "Room"), Liron Levo (last seen in "This Must Be the Place"), Yaakov Zada Daniel, Ohad Knoller (last seen in "Munich"), Rotem Keinan, Lana Ettinger, Yoav Levi (last seen in "Zero Dark Thirty"), Johanan Herson, Daniel Wandelt, Gal Friedman, Barnaby Metschurat (last seen in "Race"), Werner Daehn (last seen in "Enemy at the Gates"), Doron Tsabari, Dayani Rahmani, Arie Tcherner, Sogand Sara Fakheri, Eitan Mansuri, Tamar Gov Ari, Sarit Haimyan, Farzana Cohen, Rona Navon. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 Isuzu pickup trucks (are they THAT common in Iran?)

Ode to Joy

Year 13, Day 181 - 6/30/21 - Movie #3,884

BEFORE: I know this seems like a film that belongs in February, and maybe it does, but I need it to link to my July 4 film, which is coming up this weekend, assuming my job at the movie theater doesn't start making me late.  I've been getting sneaky and watching films in the mornings and afternoons on my days off, but I think a better plan will be to slow things down a bit after July 4, maybe cut back to 4 or 5 films a week - I should be able to do that and still finish the year on time, heck, I'm almost at my 200th film for the year, and 2021 is only half over, as of today.  I'll print the format stats for June tomorrow, again I'm in a bit of a rush today.

But I watched about half of this film, one late night a few months ago - it was on in the background while I scanned through the listings looking for new movies on cable, and it caught my attention.  But then I figured I should probably STOP watching it if I wanted to count it later on, and sure enough, it became important to making my connections now. 

Hayes MacArthur carries over from "The Way Back" - according to the IMDB, anyway, I didn't see him yesterday, so I'm trusting he was there somewhere...

THE PLOT: Charlie has a neurological disorder where strong emotions, especially joy, make him faint. Working as a librarian gives him a quiet environment but then Francesca enters the library and his life. 

AFTER: Cataplexy is a real condition, and it's possibly tied to narcolepsy - it's got something to do with a neuropeptide that stabilizes the transition between the waking and sleeping states.  And if the neurons in the hypothalamus that produce this neuropeptide (hypocretin) get damaged by the autoimmune system, this results in a condition where any strong emotion - crying, laughing, terror - can trigger a fainting spell, which technically is the unexpected transition to the sleeping state.  The brain is essentially tricked into thinking it's asleep.  This film comes into my life just as I'm undergoing strange effects, too - namely that I'm getting exercise, which is unusual for me, and I've noticed it's harder for me to stay asleep for long periods of time, I'm waking up before the alarm, and I don't like that.  I sort of have the opposite problem right now from the main character here, he feels joy and falls asleep, while I'm feeling depressed and can't stay asleep.  

But I'm also asking the universe for guidance through movies this week, and essentially this film is about learning how to be happy, despite the risks involved.  Sure, it's easy to just get yourself to a comfortable place in life, where everything is the way you want it, you never put yourself out there career-wise or romantically, and then you just sort of put your head down and get through your life to the end, with nothing ever really changing, and you die alone.  Sure, it's a way to go, but then, are you really living?  Life is change, as much as I hate to face that myself, and then when you look back on the last couple of decades and realize how much has changed over the years, then changed again and changed again, it may be hard to re-connect with that person you were 20 or 30 years ago.  But that all happened, that was you then, and this is you now, even if you've forgotten all the steps in-between.  

Charlie here feels an instant attraction to Francesca, who breaks up with her boyfriend very publicly and very loudly in the Brooklyn Library where he works.  After one date, and one very forward invitation to get physical with her, Charlie faints on her doorstep and hits his head on the sidewalk.  After that, he nixes any possible relationship with her, and sets her up with his brother, Cooper.  Charlie then goes on to date Bethany, a quiet girl who knits and studies ancient grains, and Bethany is definitely more his speed - she's pleasant, sure, but she's nothing to get excited over, and he believes that's just what he needs.  But he's essentially kept Francesca at arm's length, he still enjoys her company, but watching her date his brother makes him miserable enough to compensate, and thus keep from fainting every five minutes.  

I can't help but wonder if this is really a metaphor for something - like we all want to be happy, but perhaps some combination of self-sabotage, watching the news of the day and constant concern and angst over what COULD go wrong in life keeps us from being TOO happy.  Or is that just me?  I'm not sure any more.  Collectively we've all gone through a bunch of stuff over the last year and a half, and perhaps watching 500,000 people die in the U.S. alone just from a virus is enough misery for a while, and maybe we're all due for a little happiness this year.  But some people spent more time at home, reconnected with their immediate family, learned new ways of doing their job from home, and thus some small measure of balance was achieved?  I don't know, who can say.  I was dining out on Sunday on break and I was surrounded by people celebrating after the Pride parade, and it sure seemed like people are ready to go out and party right now, it's going to be a hot summer for sure, but that's not going to stop people who have been cooped up indoors for a long time.  People are ready to travel and ready to get their groove back.  

But, ARE they, though?  Isn't there still some trepidation involved, like people aren't ready to be joyous just yet?  Who can celebrate when so many people have recently died, and are still dying in parts of the world?  Joy still has to be tempered with somberness, and that's really what this film is about.  Can anybody truly BE happy, and take pleasure in that, in and of itself?  Or is life just a constant struggle to find that balance between doing the things that make you happy, and doing the things you have to do so that you have the time to do the things that make you happy?  It's another topic for debate.  

All that really matters here is that Charlie's plan to keep Francesca close to him by watching him date his brother looked really good on paper, but it's just not practical in the long run.  And it's certainly not fair to Bethany, not at all - so eventually he's going to have to take that leap, and that means returning to frequently passing out. Oh, well, there's no way to do it but to go through it, I guess - every relationship is going to have its positives and negatives.  But that right there makes this an unconventional romance movie, and maybe that's part of why it ended up outside of the usual February romance chain?  Just a thought.  

Also starring Martin Freeman (last seen in "What's Your Number?"), Morena Baccarin (last seen in "Deadpool 2"), Jake Lacy (last seen in "Otherhood"), Jane Curtin (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Melissa Rauch (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Shannon Woodward (last seen in "The Comebacks"), Adam Shapiro (last seen in "My Dinner with Hervé"), Jackie Seiden (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Fool's Gold"), Sabrina Sloan, Sharon Gee (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Ellis Rubin (last seen in "The Greatest Showman"), Willie C. Carpenter, Mike Britt, Ed Herbstman (last seen in "Hustlers"), Neal Lerner, Tyler Bourke, Chris DiStefano.

RATING: 6 out of 10 blatant pans of the Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn waterfront

The Way Back (2020)

Year 13, Day 180 - 6/29/21 - Movie #3,883

BEFORE: Michaela Watkins carries over from "Brittany Runs a Marathon", plus it's her third film of the week, she was also in "Brigsby Bear", non-consecutively.  But I've also programmed back-to-back films about sports, so I guess that's something.  

THE PLOT: Jack Cunningham was a high-school basketball phenom who walked away from the game, forfeiting his future. Years later, when he reluctantly accepts a coaching job at his alma mater, he may get one last shot at redemption. 

AFTER: See, now I'm starting to wonder if the universe is trying to tell me something again, through my movie choices.  I know I set up this chain months ago, so this couldn't be anything but random coincidence, but I've seen too many of these coincidences to believe that's what's going on.  Just when I've resigned myself to sticking with the new job at the movie theater for a while, the same job I had thirty years ago, I watch a movie with a character who goes back to coach basketball at his old school, where he played thirty or so years ago.  And yesterday's film was about a woman starting to exercise in order to lose some weight, and since my job is more physical than what I'm used to, it counts as exercise for me, and I'm starting to lose some weight.  I have to tell you, it's a bit eerie. Is there a film I can watch about somebody landing the producing job of his dreams and then quitting his minimum-wage side hustle?  Somebody let me know, maybe it could help me out. 

Look, I know that coaching basketball and my current situation don't have that much in common, but we see ourselves in the movies we watch sometimes, especially when films try to have universal themes or focus on characters that are "everyman" types, and that often means people who don't succeed.  Because if you think about it, like 99% of people aren't phenomenal successes at what they do, just look at actors - maybe 1 in 100 actors has the name recognition of a Ben Affleck or a Keanu Reeves, the vast majority of them are hard-working, but also very interchangeable types, like Todd Stashwick or Anthony Carrigan.  (Those last two are maybe bad examples, because they fall into the "Hey, it's THAT guy!" category, notably that guy from the "12 Monkeys" TV show and that guy who played Zsasz on "Gotham".  But maybe that's just me.)

So in any line of work, trading stocks or running restaurants or even politics, most people are not going to encounter tremendous success, because it's all a numbers game, and not everybody can be successful.  Sports movies try to bend that curve, in a way, because who wants to watch a movie about a team that assembles a bunch of ragtag misfits, tries really hard, shows a lot of heart, and then falls short?  But think about how many professional baseball, football or basketball teams there are, and only ONE gets to have a winning season each year - you see my point, right?  It's a numbers game, only one out of the 30 or 36 teams in that league is going to come out on top.  

THIS may be that movie, though, the one about the team that's made up of the unlikely, ragtag misfits, the team that tries really hard, shows a lot of heart and then comes up a bit short - I can't really tell you here, because no spoilers, but if you've seen this film, you know that this film is just as much about failure as it is about success, and that in itself is a little refreshing.  In most sports-based films it's so clear-cut who they want you to root for, and then you'd be a fool to bet against that team pulling out an unlikely and unexpected victory, in an unlikely and unexpected way.  

The question becomes, can Jack stop letting his personal life get in the way of his new gig, coaching the teens from his old school?  Can he stop swearing in front of the priests?  Can he stop drinking long enough to get it together?  Can he put his marriage back on track, or is his wife just ready to move on?  Late in the film, we do learn a bit more about what derailed the marriage in the first place, and perhaps once you find this out, you can forgive Jack his sins, or perhaps not, I suppose that's up to you.  We also learn more about why Jack didn't accept the basketball scholarship he was offered, and perhaps when you find this out, you can forgive Jack for not following through, or perhaps not, again, it's up to you.  

But either way, you have to accept that Jack is a screw-up, and he's been self-sabotaging himself for years.  Maybe you'll see a bit of yourself in Jack, as I did, or maybe not.  Maybe Ben Affleck saw a bit of himself in Jack, and that's why he took the role, who can say?  Or maybe you just want to watch some basketball being played, and that's OK too, just be aware that the movie's going to give you a lot of stuff about redemption and personal responsibility along with it.  Maybe right now we're all trying to find our way back to something, to what we had before, only we may find out that there is no way back, only forward, and that can be a tough thing to come to terms with.  

Also starring Ben Affleck (last seen in "Jay and SIlent Bob Reboot"), Al Madrigal (last seen in "Snatched"), Janina Gavankar, Glynn Turman (last seen in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"), Brandon Wilson, Charles Lott Jr., Will Ropp, Fernando Luis Vega, Rachael Carpani, Marlene Forte (last seen in "Knives Out"), Melvin Gregg, Ben Irving, Jeremy Radin (last seen in "The New World"), John Aylward (last seen in "North Country"), Da'Vinchi, Matthew Glave (last seen in "First Man"), Todd Stashwick (last seen in "You, Me and Dupree"), Chris Bruno, Dan Lauria (last seen in "Another Stakeout"), Nancy Linehan Charles (last seen in "Charlie Wilson's War'), T.K. Carter (last seen in "The Thing" (1982)), Jeremy Ratchford (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Jayne Taini, Sal Velez Jr., Yeniffer Behrens, Eric Tate, with an uncredited cameo by Hayes MacArthur (last seen in "Super Troopers 2", but remember this for tomorrow...)

RATING: 6 out of 10 free throws