The Hundred-Foot Journey

Year 14, Day 354 - 12/20/22 - Movie #4,299

BEFORE: Helen Mirren carries over from "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" - nothing against this film just yet, but it's really here because it links my two Christmas movies this year.  I've got about 10 more Christmas-movies on my list right now, I know that seems like a drop in the bucket when you consider just how many holiday-themed romances get released on Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel each season, but I don't pay any attention to those, I try not to mix my holiday movies with my romance movies.  That being said, tomorrow's film is such a mixture, and that's how I'm choosing to wrap up Movie Year 14.  Hey, I'm just happy when I can end on any kind of Christmas movie, as the choices right now are sort of made for me by my choice of format. Form is definitely following function - and which Christmas movie(s) I watch is determined by the choices I made throughout the year.  It's a process. 

THE PLOT: The Kadam family leaves India for France, where they open a restaurant directly across the road from Madame Mallory's Michelin-starred eatery. 

AFTER: It's kind of funny, we just had Indian food a couple nights ago - we remembered that there used to be an Indian restaurant 2 doors down from this diner in Queens that we went to regularly for at least a decade, before the diner closed down during the pandemic.  Since then we've only got about three regular places to eat when we dine out, and that means we can get sick of them pretty quickly.  But we have to be careful these days, just because a place we used to go to appears to be still in business, according to Yelp, it still might be gone.  I don't understand why Yelp doesn't do a better job of updating its NYC database, or taking a minute to check in with the thousands of restaurants in the country to see if they're still in business - you used to be able to report to Yelp that a restaurant had closed, I guess maybe they disabled that feature?  Were there too many false reports from rival restaurants?

I understand why so many restaurants closed during lockdown, but what I can't understand is why so many of them, at least in NYC, have not been replaced.  The pandemic is over, people are going out again, the economy is supposedly better - or is it?  But with all of the major eateries I used to go to that closed down in the last 2 1/2 years, I can't think of one that got replaced by a new restaurant in the same space.  Somebody owns every building, and for every restaurant that closed, that's a landlord that's not getting any rent for that space.  Does that make any sense?  Who would rather keep a space unoccupied and NOT generating income when they could put a new business in there?  Are there just not any people with the money to open new restaurants, or invest in them?  Sure, times are tough, I get it, but if I owned a building with a restaurant space I would try very hard to DO something with it, so it at least generated some income.  It seems like it's maybe a great time to start a restaurant, with so much space available, but what do I know?  It's not like I have the money or knowledge to open a restaurant myself, so I guess we all have to get by with fewer places to eat until things really improve, I just don't know when that will be.

Anyway, we ate at the new Indian restaurant that replaced the old Indian restaurant we went to twice in the before-times.  See, it IS possible to put a new restaurant where an old one used to be.  The old owners probably leapt at the chance to sell the restaurant, and now the new owners are probably sitting around, looking at balance sheets, wondering how they're going to cover next month's rent.  The place wasn't deserted on a Sunday night, but it wasn't exactly packed, either.  Now it's the time of year when you'd expect people to get together with family and go out to restaurants and celebrate together, except we're not doing that, we cancelled any Christmas trip and plan to just eat at home.  It's just as well, with this big storm coming in, it's going to be too cold to go anywhere, holiday travel's going to be the worst this year, so perhaps we made a smart move.  And I think now I know why nobody's going out to eat, it's just such a hassle, when you can push a few buttons on your phone and have the food brought to you.  Or, you know, you can always cook at home if that's your thing. I usually grab take-out meals on the nights I work at the theater, and that's usually two or three nights a week.  They're maybe starting to recognize me over at the Popeye's and the Taco Bell. 

For us, the Indian food begins and ends with chicken tikka masala, plus naan and maybe I'll get some samosas too, if I'm really hungry.  If I should get tired of that dish, then I'll get shrimp biryani, but that can easily get too spicy for me.  What more is there?  I'm sure there must be countless varieties of Indian food, but once you've found the best dish on the menu, there's no need to vary from that flight plan.  Wikipedia is telling me there are really 38 regional cuisines across India, but who has that kind of time?  Obviously there's curry, which I think is the most popular Indian dish anywhere, but I don't mess with it because it could easily be too spicy for me. And sure, I know there are kebabs and chutneys and various types of flatbread, but I really just want to stick to my two dishes, and I'm OK with remaining ignorant about the rest.  Maybe I'm missing out, maybe there's an Indian dish out there that would really knock my socks off, but this way I'll never find out about it, so there's no FOMO. As for those 38 styles of Indian cuisine, I'm just going to pretend it's like BBQ, essentially all the same stuff only each region puts a slightly different spin on it. 

Oh, yeah, the movie. It really starts out as a depiction of class struggle, because the Kadam family patriarch decides to open a restaurant in the town near where their van broke down, and it's across the street from an upscale French restaurant.  Prior to that, the family tried making it in London, only they found that they hated the cliimate and the vegetables weren't fresh enough, it's probably a fair cop, as the Brits say.  So they leave England and head to Europe, but I don't think they really understood that the U.K. is actually part of Europe - of course they mean mainland Europe, but it helps to be precise, I always say.  Anyway, their van breaks down somewhere in the Pyrenees, near the town of St. Antonin, and the woman who helps get them to town feeds them some of the local produce, which they enjoy.  Well, at least they did their research before settling on a spot. 

The family opens an Indian restaurant, what else, and then it's a battle for market ingredients and the hearts of the local populace with Le Saule Pleurer (French for "weeping willow") across the street. Madame Mallory is the rival proprietor, and Marguerite, the woman who drove the Kadams into town, is a sous chef there.  Hassan Kadam is the family's chef, but he also has a desire to study classical French cooking, and he's got an eye for Marguerite, so you can probably figure out where the storyline's going to go from here.  Part of this seems like one of those dreadful Hallmark Channel romance plots, with two people from different cultures and different classes falling in love as they cook side-by-side.  Hassan makes an omelet for Madame Mallory and it's so impressive, she offers him a job in her restaurant.  (Conveniently, she'd JUST fired a chef for taking things a bit too far when trying to drive the Hassans out of town.)

Naturally, Papa Kadam is against his son going across the street to work in the rival restaurant, but it is what's best for his career, so he can get some form of classical training.  So Mr. Kadam relents, and it turns out to be best for everyone - Hassan learns to cook the French way, Madame Mallory gets a chance to increase her number of Michelin stars, and Marguerite gets a rival, friend and love interest all wrapped in one. And a new fusion of French cooking with a bit of Indian spices is formed, which turns out to be great for the diners - umm, except the ones who liked eating at the Maison Mumbai, because Hassan's brother just isn't as great of a cook as he was.  Try as it might, this film can't escape painting the Indian food as lower class and the French food as upper class, but shouldn't that be a matter of perception?  I mean, there could be an Indian restaurant with Michelin stars, it's not impossible.  

But things being what they are, the French restaurant wins acclaim and notoriety with the help of Hassan, and then he simply HAS to go to Paris.  Once word gets out about the better rating, naturally the job offers flow in, and Hassan accepts a job at a fancy restaurant that specializes in that molecular gastronomy stuff.  But, NITPICK POINT here, why is this a fait accompli, as the French say?  Hassan doesn't HAVE to go to Paris, sure, it's fine that he chooses to go to Paris, but it's not an absolute MUST.  Surely there must be some chefs who are happy where they are, serving their local community, and not every chef has to travel to a big city to find out if they can handle that.  Like anything else, I guess you have to go where the jobs are - but he HAD a job at Le Saule Pleurer, he could have kept it, especially if he liked working side-by-side with Marguerite.  Right?  

In his absence, Papa Kadam begins spending more time with Madame Mallory, but the film just can't quite bring itself to call this an actual romance.  OK, they dance together, but she still calls herself his "not-girlfriend". OK, so, then what are they? Just besties? Frenemies? Dating adults who hate labels?  It's unclear. Then it takes Hassan's brother traveling to Paris to cook for him to remind him how good Indian food was back home - did Hassan forget how to cook Indian food?  No, I get it, eating food from home can bring back memories, and this makes Hassan homesick for St. Antonin (which is weird, you'd think it would make him homesick for Mumbai...) and so he travels back to give Le Saule Pleurer another go, and maybe to finally get with Marguerite. I mean, that's great, Hassan, you do you, but we all saw this turn of events coming a mile away. 

And hey, the director also carries over from yesterday's film, both this and "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" were directed by Lasse Hallström - I suppose that's bound to happen randomly once in a while.  He's Swedish, but I guess it takes a Swedish guy to direct a film set in France about a relocated Indian family?  Well, it's beside the point because I've got just ONE film left to watch in 2022, and then another type of work begins for me - writing my year-end wrap-up and then trying to figure out how I'm going to start Movie Year 15.  More on that next time, perhaps. 

Also starring Om Puri (last seen in "Gandhi"), Manish Dayal (last seen in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), Charlotte Le Bon (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Amit Shah (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Farzana Dua Elahe (last seen in "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"), Dillon Mitra, Aria Pandya, Michel Blanc, Clément Sibony (last seen in "The Walk"), Vincent Elbaz, Juhi Chawla, Alban Aumard, Shuna Lemoine, Antoine Blanquefort, Rohan Chand (last seen in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Masood Akhtar, Cédric Weber (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Saachi Parekh, Shaunak Parekh. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 wild mushrooms

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Year 14, Day 352 - 12/18/22 - Movie #4,298

BEFORE: It's one week to Christmas, and after tonight I've got just two films to watch this year - so why don't I feel very cheery?  It's nearly "mission accomplished" for 2022, but I've been in a funk that I can't seem to shake off.  My mother's been in the hospital, then rehab, since just after Thanksgiving, that may be part of it.  My boss is running out of money yet again, so I feel like eventually the studio's going to close, but that's been the case for some time.  I've also been over-worked and over-stressed, so on the days when I'm home I just want to sleep and watch TV and try to de-stress, but then that just means I keep going from one extreme to the other, I'm either working hard or doing nothing, and there's no in-between.  So now after Monday I'm staring at a week of inactivity for the holiday break, and I'm somehow both looking forward to that, and also dreading it, it's not good for my mental condition, whatever that is.  

Another part of the problem is that we decided to not travel and see my family for Christmas, I stand by the decision, but then that's a realization that there's a sadness to the holiday now, it's never going to be like it was when I was a kid, maybe every adult has to face this at some point, and it can be difficult to come to terms with.  We'll do something for Christmas like make lasagna, and maybe we'll hit the outlet stores during the break, but right now holiday depression is a real thing.  My Christmas music mix has been ready for over a week, but I can't seem to bring myself to sit down and address the Christmas cards.  I'm going to force myself to do it today, by telling myself that the cards HAVE to go out on Monday to stand a chance of reaching people before December 25.  We'll see if that works. Honestly, I have been very busy, but both jobs have now slowed down greatly, so there should be no more excuses. 

Richard E. Grant carries over from "Withnail & I". The original plan was to watch TWO versions of the "Nutcracker" story here, as Mr. Grant also appears in the 2010 film "The Nutcracker: The Untold Story".  This film was apparently one of the biggest box office bombs of all time, earning only $17 million against a $90 million budget.  As a result, the film is not available anywhere, not on cable or any streaming service - perhaps there's a good reason for this, it might be THAT bad.  Or perhaps since the film was made to be screened in 3D it can't be broadcast as a regular, non-3D film.  Maybe Disney killed it somehow on all platforms to reduce any confusion over their own "Nutcracker" film that was released in 2018. Anyway, I learned a few months back that it wasn't popping up anywhere, so I had to factor that into my plans, and "Withnail & I" came up as a possible substitute. It's staying on my list in case it becomes available in the future, but I'm no rush to seek it out. 

THE PLOT: A young girl is transported into a magical world of gingerbread clowns, toy soldiers and an army of mice. 

AFTER: From what I understand of the famous Tchaikovsky ballet "The Nutcracker", very little of that story was retained for this Disney film.  For that matter, the ballet was based on an 1816 short story called "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by Prussian author E.T.A. Hoffman - O just reviewed that plot on Wikipedia, and it's all about a little girl, Marie Stahlbaum, having dreams about the toys in the cabinet coming to life, and there's a battle between the dolls, led by the Nutcracker, and the mice, led by the seven-headed Mouse King and the Queen, Madame Mouserinks. There's a complicated back-story for how Nutcrackers came to be shaped like bearded soldiers, and a bunch of lard that was supposed to be put into sausages, but wasn't. And a princess got turned into a Nutcracker, the cure for that was to eat a magic nut that could only be cracked by a man who had never shaved or wore boots, and who could take seven steps backwards without stumbling. It's complicated.  But young Marie keeps dreaming about the Nutcracker at night, and one night she gives him a toy sword so he can defeat the Mouse King, this works and the curse is broken, he turned out to be the nephew of Drosselmeyer, the clockmaker and inventor, and once free he seeks out Marie in the real world, and a year later he finds her and brings her to the doll kingdom, where she's crowned the Queen, and she marries Drosselmeyer's nephew, even though she's only eight years old.  Yeah, there's something wrong with that ending for sure. 

The 1892 ballet scored by Tchaikovsky changed the story quite a bit, the girl's name was changed to Clara, for starters, and it starts on Christmas Eve during a party, which is interrupted by Drosselmeyer, the local councilman and part-time magician, also Clara's godfather. He brings four life-like dolls that dance at the party, also a Nutcracker in the shape of a man, which Clara likes, but her brother Fritz breaks. That night as Clara dreams, the Nutcracker grows to human size, and the room fills up with mice, who battle an army of gingerbread soldiers. The Nutcracker leads the army against the mice and the seven-headed Mouse King, and afterward the Nutcracker is transformed into a Prince, and he leads Clara into the forest. (Umm, and HOW OLD is Clara in this one?)

In Act 2, they reach the Land of Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy has been ruling during the absence of the Prince. There's a celebration of sweets from around the world (which has been deemed to be fairly racist in modern productions of the ballet, with Caucasian dancers dressing up as Arabs and Chinese people, but whatever) and Mother Ginger has her children emerge from under her large skirt to dance at the party.  After a final waltz, Clara and the Prince are ushered from their thrones to a reindeer-pulled sleigh, and they wave goodbye to their subjects.  OK, so there's not a lot of story there, just one battle and then they're off to the magical land for a party, and "THE END".  But I get it, it's become an annual favorite among ballet companies, and it's (more or less) a respected piece of classical music.  

But times change and stories have to change too, and I'm sure there was a meeting at Disney about whether they should just leave the Nutcracker story alone or update it - and once you start talking about those Asian and Arab dancers and the fear of cultural appropriation, the plan became to scrap most of the Tchaikovsky ballet story, wipe the slate clean, and start over with a story that would appeal more to modern audiences. (Look, even Tchaikovsky thought that "The Nutcracker" wasn't his best work, he much preferred his version of "Sleeping Beauty".) But let's imagine what went on in that story conference - somebody probably said, "Why have just ONE magical land when we can have FOUR?  We can have Candyland, the Land of Flowers, the Land of, umm, Snowflakes, and the Land of Amusements!"  Gee, what other place is divided up into four lands, like Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland and Tomorrowland?  This has got to be an inside joke...

So this is what got retained from the original story and ballet - there's still a Clara who gets transported to a magical land, there's still an inventor and toymaker named Drosselmeyer, there's still a Sugar Plum Fairy and a Mother Ginger, and there's still a ballet, but the whole thing isn't a ballet, the ballet is the story-within-the-story that explains how Clara's mother came to the magical realm before she did, and she invented this machine that turned the toys into people, or something.  So, it was a giant magical land that was filled with non-living toys?  That doesn't seem to make much sense.  And then how did she build that machine, all by herself, and what powered it, and did she have an engineering degree, and so on...  And then she built an egg for her daughter with the same lock on it as the transforming machine, and she made sure that her daughter would inherit the egg, but not the key that would open it?  That seems all kinds of problematic.  

The story-crafters here then decided to throw a whole bunch of other elements into the mix, and the result is that this film feels like a mash-up of "The Nutcracker" with "The Wizard of Oz", "Alice in Wonderland" and the "Narnia" movies.  All of those stories feature very normal, regular girls who all want something more out of life, and they find it in after being transported to a magical land of fantasy that's probably some kind of metaphor for the real world and it's problems.  They also all feel like stress dreams to me, where they have to figure out the rules of those fantasy realms and try to solve a problem, only more and more obstacles keep getting placed in their paths.  Follow the Yellow Brick Road, obtain the witch's broom, eat the cake, drink the drink, win the chess game, defeat the evil power and then somehow solve the problems, save the land and wake up back in the real world. 

Here Clara has to enter the magical forest, chase a mouse that has that key, cross the bridge into the Fourth Realm, face Mother Ginger, and only then can she determine who the REAL villain of the piece is and tinker with the Machine to defeat the evil power.  Yes, there's a very modern twist here, in that the first character to be depicted as the villain isn't the villain at all, and the real villain is the one you'd most likely never expect it to be.  I've still got some N.P.'s, though:

NITPICK POINT #1 - the egg turns out to be just a music box, but it also functions as the "ruby slippers" of this piece.  It also enables Clara to realize that she had the power to act within her all along, which is an OK message, but it also makes me feel like the screenwriter couldn't think of something that was inside the egg that could be helpful to the plot. 

NITPICK POINT #2 - in the early part of the story, Clara fixes Drosselmeyer's clock/device, which is running backwards.  She tinkers with it and is able to reverse something so that it runs forward.  This would be a great way to foreshadow how she tinkers with the machine at the end of the story, only it doesn't really work.  It would make sense for her to similarly "reverse" the device that turns toys into people and people into toys, but instead her tinkering with it merely changes the AIM of the beam, which isn't the same thing.  She should be able to "reverse" the function of the device, only the story won't allow that for some reason.  Try again. 

The seven-headed Mouse King is replaced here by one mouse who can rally the other mice around him to carry him, and together they all form the shape of a giant mouse.  That's a pretty cool effect, similar to what was seen a few years later in "The Suicide Squad", with a bunch of rats all working together.  This is perhaps the best use of special effects in the whole film, but some may also find it very disgusting. 

NITPICK POINT #3: I was looking for something that would make me feel all Christmas-ey, but this just isn't it.  Nearly every connection to Christmas was absent here, except for the fact that maybe the party seen at the beginning is a Christmas Eve party.  Again, one wonders if this was all removed during a story conference at Disney.  Try again. 

Also starring Mackenzie Foy (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Jayden Fowora-Knight (last heard in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle"), Keira Knightley (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), Helen Mirren (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Morgan Freeman (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It"), Misty Copeland (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Eugenio Derbez (last seen in "Geostorm"), Matthew Macfadyen (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Anna Madeley (last seen in "In Bruges"), Sergei Polunin (last seen in "Red Sparrow"), Aaron Smyth, Ellie Bamber (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Tom Sweet, Jack Whitehall (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), Omid Djalili (last seen in "Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again"), Meera Syal (last seen in "Yesterday"), Charles "Lil Buck" Riley (last seen in "Her"), Nick Mohammed (last seen in "The Kid Who Would Be King"), Charles Streeter (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 clockwork mice

Withnail & I

Year 14, Day 350 - 12/16/22 - Movie #4,297

BEFORE: I went out this week with a friend from my old pub trivia team, who happens to now be semi-famous because he was on a particular HBO show, which I'm not going to plug here. But let's just say there's been some debate online about whether this person is "real", because it was that kind of show - and it's a bit odd when you see strangers on the internet debating whether a friend of yours is real, trust me on this.  But it got me thinking about celebrity, or people who are known in different arenas, and I've encountered a lot of those in the real world. 

I've occasionally mentioned here that I've worked in animation or filmmaking for 30 years now, and I've been to Sundance 3 times, to San Diego Comic-Con 15 times, and now I work at a movie theater that is often hosts guild screenings, and is frequently visited by actors and directors doing Q&A panels after the films.  What this all adds up to is me having encountered a LOT of famous people over the years - but I've never kept comprehensive notes. So I racked my brains and thought about all my adventures over the decades, from casting films to working on shoots, going to book signings and sitting next to known actors on planes, everything counts, even bands that I've seen in concert. And once I opened up the memory banks, one thing led to another.  I saw Bob Dylan play at Letterman's 10th Anniversary show in Radio City, I met Ray Bradbury at the Toronto Film Festival in 1998, I lived in the same NYU dorm as Adam Sandler.  I was a P.A. when Leon Redbone and Dr. John shot a music video for "Frosty the Snowman", if you can believe that. I once shared an elevator ride with Alex Winter, and I once grilled a steak for Martha Plimpton. 

My point is, I've been places and I've done things and I've met some people, and the process continues, in fact it's been accelerating lately, last week I was within 2 feet of both Guillermo Del Toro and Emma Thompson - on different days.  But I want to start keeping a list, and that means flashing back through my photos and my brain, before my brain stops working right.  That list is about three pages long right now, and I'm stuck until I can find my Sundance diary notes - but at least I'll have a reference I can check now on my computer. 

Richard E. Grant (and several other actors) carry over from "An Accidental Studio".  Tonight's film is another production from Handmade Films, and footage from it was used in that documentary. Cheating, kind of, I know, but it's necessary. 

THE PLOT: In 1969, two substance-abusing, unemployed actors retreat to the countryside for a holiday that proves disastrous. 

AFTER: My wife watches this show called "The Great British Menu", because at this point we've basically run out of food-based competitions to watch on American TV, once we're current on "Hell's Kitchen" and we're waiting for the next season of "Top Chef" to start. I've watched two of the seasons with her, the one where the banquet celebrated Abbey Road Studios and the one that celebrated the heroes of the NHS. Essentially three chefs from a particular UK region compete against each other to get to the finals, where the judges taste the winner's four dishes and curate a menu for the banquet.  

But there's a language barrier, to be sure - we have to convert the cooking temperatures from metric, but also they have different food items over there, and different words for the same food items. They call beets "beetroot", and they have weird citrus fruits like sea buckthorns. They call parsley "lovage" for some reason, and they call shrimp "prawns" and zucchinis are "courgettes". (Don't even get me started on how their fries are "chips" but their chips are "crisps".). Look, I've known for years about Scotch Eggs and Toad in the Hole and even Black Pudding, but those are finished dishes, I'm talking about weird ingredients like flax, hop shoots, laverbread, verjuice and zanders. Then one chef will cook with "cobnuts" and I have to stop and look THAT up, only to find out that it's just another word for hazelnuts.  So we speak the same language, supposedly, as the Brits, but we really don't. 

So that was what I was up against tonight, in a way, watching "Withnail & I".  First off, that title, I didn't quite understand it at first, but it's one of the main characters' last name.  And it's not pronounced like "with-nail", but more like "withnel". But that's my problem across the board with British names, like "Leicester" really sounds like "Lester" and "Leominster" really sounds like "Lemster". I should be used to this because I grew up in Massachusetts, which shares some of the same town names with the U.K., like Gloucester ("Glos-ter") and Worcester ("Wuh-ster") and even Shrewsbury ('Shroos-bree"). Tonight's film is about two starving drunk actors from London who head out to the countryside of Penrith, or "Pith". JK.

Some other things that I needed to look up - Withnail calls a bunch of school girls "scrubbers", which means he's accusing them of being sexually active, I think.  There was another HandMade film called "Scrubbers", but it was about a bunch of girls in a borstal, which is an institution for youthful offenders.  In the U.S. we'd call a "borstal" by the name "juvie".)

The other half of the duo (the "And I") is Marwood, and he wants to leave town because someone at the pub is threatening him and calling him a "ponce", which is an offensive term for a homosexual. (The word "fag" over there is reserved for cigarettes...). Later in the film Marwood fears being thought of as a "toilet trader", which is a gay man who frequents bathrooms, it seems. 

I also had to look up the word "oomska", which seems to be synonymous with mud and muck, and "polythene", which is just the British name for plastic wrap.  Ah so, that's what the Beatles song "Polythene Pam" is about?  And finally there's the "saveloy", which is a red British sausage that used to be made from pork brains, but more recently is just made from any and all parts of the animal, so essentially it's just a British hot dog.  And in a "saveloy dip" the sausage is sliced in half and put on a bun with butter and peas pudding, with mustard and sage stuffing added before it's dipped in gravy.  Yeah, I'd give that a go. 

This film is set in 1969 - that took me a while to figure out, because they didn't say it right up front, only at the end, when Danny, the burned-out drug dealer is upset that the decade is ending and there are hippie wigs for sale in Woolworth's. Well, it wasn't going to last forever, but if anything, pot was destined to become more popular in the future, even acceptable.  Eventually even Marwood has to realize that his life of drinking and drugging with Withnail in their rat-infested apartment isn't meant to last forever, their whole trip to the country, as ill-fated and disastrous as it is, is also their last blast, their farewell tour. 

Both chronologically and thematically, this film fits into British culture somewhere between "The Young Ones" and "Trainspotting", if that makes any sense. And it's not just the man in the bar who thinks Withnail and Marwood might be gay, Withnail's Uncle Monty is gay and thinks they're a couple, so he lends them his cottage so they can go on holiday, but he also shows up there, to maybe cause a rift between them and get with Marwood himself. It becomes not just inconvenient, but downright awkward - especially when it interrupts Withnail's rigorous drinking schedule. 

Beyond all that, it's been quite a week for "Star Wars" actors - there was a cameo with Kenny Baker (the very first "Star Wars" actor I ever got an autograph from) and Jack Purvis in "Mona Lisa".  Both small actors also played Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi" - and so did all the other dwarf actors who were in "Time Bandits", who appeared in archive footage in "An Accidental Studio", but I think only one of them, Mike Edmonds, is still alive. Ralph Brown, who played Danny the drug dealer, played a spaceship pilot in "Episode I: The Phantom Menace", and Richard E. Grant played an General Pryde in "Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker". I've got Brown's autograph already, I really should look into getting Richard E. Grant's next, as I haven't added to my collection in a while. Meanwhile, Paul McGann played one of the versions of "Doctor Who" for a while, but I don't follow that show, who has that kind of time? 

It's also been a LONG time since I crossed another film off the list of the "1,001 Films to See Before You Die", but after this one, my total rises to 438. So there you go, progress is being made after all. 

Also starring Paul McGann (also carrying over from "An Accidental Studio"), Richard Griffiths (ditto), Ralph Brown (ditto), Michael Elphick (last seen in "The Elephant Man"), Daragh O'Malley, Michael Wardle, Una Brandon-Jones, Noel Johnson (last seen in "Frenzy"), Irene Sutcliffe, Llewellyn Rees (last seen in "The Dresser" (1983)), Robert Oates, Anthony Wise (last seen in "Justice League"), Eddie Tagoe. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 wolves at the zoo

An Accidental Studio

Year 14, Day 346 - 12/12/22 - Movie #4,296

BEFORE: Bob Hoskins carries over from "Mona Lisa", and so do the other stars of that film.  This is very sneaky on my part, because this documentary about the studio Handmade Films naturally features footage from their most successful films, one of which was "Mona Lisa", and another of which is tomorrow's film.  I couldn't manage to fit this film into my documentary block this year, though thematically it would have fit very well.  I figured that since watching this film was going to cost me $3.99 on iTunes or YouTube, maybe the universe was trying to save me a few bucks - so I was willing to wait to see if it would run on PBS or BBC-TV, or maybe pop up on some streaming service, so I was willing to sit on it until next year's doc chain.  But, then the need came to find some kind of link to Richard E. Grant because he's in a Christmas-themed movie, so the opportunity came to use it as a vital link, this year instead of next.  

There are so many actors appearing in this documentary, it almost seems a shame to use it here, but I don't want to think of this as going to waste - it's more like it's performing a vital service, connecting my post-Thanksgiving chain, which essentially had run out (OK, not really) to my Christmas movies.  If I'd known about "The Long Good Friday" maybe I could have gotten there another way, through Helen Mirren, but now that ship has sailed. 

Sticking with the program enabled me to watch this film with my BFF Andy, who's been staying over this weekend. I was going to take a few days off after "Mona Lisa" and save this for later in the week, but since both Andy and I are big Monty Python fans, I'd rather watch it earlier with him.  Andy and I once collaborated on a project to get the autographs of all the Monty Python members to sign the same book, which was one of his college textbooks.  Andy kicked it off by meeting Graham Chapman on his college tour, then I had the opportunities to meet John Cleese and Terry Gilliam to get them to sign the book as well. I also met Michael Palin, but Andy wanted to meet him as well, so I only ended up contributing two signatures to the book - and by the time Andy met Eric Idle, word had spread among the Pythons about the book, and then Andy topped it all off by traveling to the UK, and arranging a meeting with Terry Jones in a pub so he could be the last one to sign it.  Andy went above and beyond by then having the book signed by Carol Cleveland and Neil Innes, so that was a fun project to work on together.  I was happy just to meet three of the Pythons in person, and I got my own books signed by Cleese, Gilliam and Palin - just three separate books and not the same one, but that's fine.  

THE PLOT: Charts the early years of HandMade Films, seen through the eyes of the filmmakers, key personnel and the man who started it all: former Beatle George Harrison. 

AFTER: Well, December started off with some very American movies, but it's going to end for me with a bunch of British ones, with a few Germans mixed in. "Lassiter" was about and American stealing from Nazis in London, so there's the pivot point. "Mona Lisa" was pure British, and now a documentary about a British film studio, Handmade Films.  The studio was in business for 11 years, and produced more hits than misses - though they had some stinkers, too.  Honestly, I'd never heard of "Checking Out" or "Powwow Highway" before, or even "Cold Dog Soup", which everyone seems to want to forget.  And of course there's "Water" and "Shanghai Surprise", which are also terrible, but at least I'd heard of those. 

The secret can finally be told - the financier behind HandMade was George Harrison, who had been in some films before as a Beatle, perhaps reluctantly, and was also a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus. (Who wasn't?). But George had a problem, he had too much money - so much that the "Taxman" was liable to take away most of it, unless he could find something to invest it in, preferably a losing operation, with enough expenses to offset his income, and then in a roundabout way, he might be able to keep more of it, thanks to the vagaries of tax law.  Really, the only people who have this unique kind of problem are rock stars, a few of the top movie stars, and tech billionaires.  But the tech guys can set up a foundation to combat a disease, or start a corporation that builds rockets to go into space, and Mr. Harrison didn't have those opportunities, so really, it had to be filmmaking.  No other enterprise could possibly lose enough money to keep a Beatle from paying taxes.  "Wait, you have an screenplay?  Here's five million pounds, go and make that movie."  

It's really genius if you think about it, because if the movie bombs, then George Harrison has a write-off, assuming the director and film crew kept all their receipts.  So his music royalties would be offset by the film production costs, and therefore he's got less income, and pays less taxes.  Keeping half of $100 million is better than keeping 10% of $200 million, right? Look, I don't know how the numbers work exactly, but I know it's better to have a corporation with expenses if you can't have a charitable foundation.  But I just know in my heart that Bill Gates and George Lucas wouldn't give so much to charity unless it benefited them in the long run to do so - at their level they bring in so much money that the majority of it goes to taxes, and the charities they choose to support benefit, for sure, but so do the billionaires who donate at that high level. 

So George Harrison finance the making of "Monty Python's Life of Brian", which unfortunately became a smash hit, and a cult classic - it almost sounds like a real-life version of "The Producers", because they accidentally made too much money.  But fortunately they'd formed a studio with a large payroll and before long they were back in the red, fortunately. Then "Time Bandits" became another international smash hit, so the studio had to quickly release films like "Tattoo", "Venom" and "The Burning" just to balance the books. Films like "The Missionary" and "A Private Function" also turned profits, though, so it wasn't until the 1985 film "Water" that the company really succeeded at failing. Wait - no, that's right. 

Don't get me wrong, I loved "Time Bandits" as a kid, that was probably the gateway drug for me to get into Monty Python movies, I'd heard a few sketches on the Dr. Demento show but I wasn't allowed to watch their TV show, and I CERTAINLY wasn't allowed to watch "Life of Brian", because my parents only let me watch Disney movies and films that were approved by the Catholic newspaper in Boston. If they deemed a film sacrilegious, forget about it. But I got to see "Time Bandits", and I watched the hell out of it.  I watched it so much as a teen that I couldn't watch it for maybe 20 years after, I have it on DVD but the shrink-wrap is still on it.  Some films are like that, you've seen them so many times that you have to walk away for a time, right?  Like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark", or "Brazil", those are some of mine. You know every word, every beat, and it's better to leave them be, you can just watch them in your head any time you want. Wait a couple decades and then maybe you can go back. 

We learn in "An Accidental Studio" that the song that closes "Time Bandits", which is called "Dream Away", was written by George Harrison as a secret message to Terry Gilliam, the film's director.  It's a great song, I've loved it since I first heard it, but if you really look at the lyrics, it's the ultimate form of passive-aggressive behavior.  The songwriter, as the film's producer, was telling the director via the lyrics that he wasted too much time and money making the film.  "Greedy feeling wheeling dealing / Losing what you won / See the dream come undone" which is followed by "Lucky you got so far / All you owe is apologies / Measure the mystery and astound / Without taking up time."  Sure, it's a beautiful song about traveling through the centuries, but it's also saying, "Hurry up and finish the film, you god damned hack."

But "Time Bandits" got me to "Brazil" and "The Fisher King" and "12 Monkeys", also "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", and "A Fish Called Wanda", and so many others. Good times. But anyway, back to HandMade films.  I also watched "Mona Lisa" this past week, that's one of theirs, and so is tomorrow's film "Withnail and I".  I tried to block out the clips from tomorrow's film shown in "An Accidental Studio", because I didn't want to spoil anything.  So I'll fill in those gaps tomorrow. 

By 1986 HandMade had become as much of a boutique distributor as an independent film studio, so some directors were bringing finished films to the studio, while others were seeking financing.  While much of the company was struggling with the disaster that became "Shanghai Surprise", Neil Jordan snuck in there and quietly made "Mona Lisa" on a tiny budget, and damn, but it's a work of genius by comparison.  A couple of American movies like "Five Corners" and "Checking Out" just needed distribution, after being turned down by every other Hollywood studio, and Handmade was happy to scoop them up for their slate.  The studio would go on to have one more minor hit, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising", and one more major hit, "Nuns on the Run", but by this point the writing was on the wall, most of the Pythons had moved on to make movies elsewhere, and the studio was set to close up shop. Mission accomplished, I guess?

George Harrison ended up being the executive producer on 23 films, three of which received Oscar nominations.  Harrison also frequently made cameos in those films, like in "Life of Brian" he was in a crowd scene, and in "Shanghai Surprise" he played a nightclub singer, and in "Water" he played - get this - a guitarist in a band!  In the film "Checking Out" he played a janitor, and you wouldn't even see him if you weren't looking. You can do all this and probably have a fun time, if you're the one funding the whole production.  

The general consensus is that Handmade Films was lucky to stay in business for 11 years - perhaps this is because there was usually more money going out the door than coming in, I'll bet. But this makes me feel a little proud of myself, because I've been managing an independent animation studio for almost 30 years now, and so I'm going to just take a moment tonight and pat myself on the back. Now I've jinxed it, the studio could fold next week.  But still, I've kept it going for nearly three times longer than Handmade Films - apparently our secret is we've never had a huge success, that's the kiss of death apparently. I'm kidding, to a certain degree - I produced one animated feature that was in the Dramatic Competition at Sundance in 1998, that film was called "I Married a Strange Person".  That's a pretty big deal, and three years later I was back at Sundance with a film titled "Mutant Aliens" that was in the Midnight Madness section.  Still counts as a Sundance film.  Now a new feature that I was the studio manager on is called "My Love Affair with Marriage", and it's currently burning up the festival circuit, though I'm no longer employed by the production company that made it. But it's won 9 awards already in France and Norway and Romania, and it played in the Tribeca Festival here in NY.  It's not qualified for the Oscars this year, but maybe next year, we'll see - you better believe I'm putting that film on my resumé. 

Also starring Steve Abbott, George Ayoub, Ralph Brown (last seen in "Gemini Man"), Dick Clement, Ray Cooper, Julian Doyle, Mike Edmonds, Terry Gilliam (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Richard E. Grant (last seen in "Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard"), Terry Ilott, Terry Jones, Neil Jordan, Barrie Keeffe, Ian La Frenais, David Leland, Richard Loncraine, Jonathan Lynn, A Martinez, Denis O'Brien, Michael Palin (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Bruce Robinson, Cathy Tyson (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Brenda Vaccaro (last seen in "You Don't Know Jack"), Ernest Vincze, Jonathan Wacks, Stephen Woolley, 

with archive footage of Kenny Baker (also carrying over from "Mona Lisa"), Michael Caine (ditto), Robbie Coltrane (ditto), Jack Purvis (ditto), Alan Bennett, Humphrey Bogart (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Pierce Brosnan (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jim Carter (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Graham Chapman, Eric Clapton (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), George Harrison (ditto), Elton John (ditto), John Lennon (ditto), Valerie Perrine (ditto), Gene Shalit (ditto), John Cleese (last heard in "Trolls"), Sean Connery (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Billy Connolly (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Jeff Daniels (last seen in "Howl"), Bernard Delfont, Malcolm Dixon, Shelley Duvall (last seen in "The Portrait of a Lady"), Denholm Elliott (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Gary Farmer, Richard Griffiths (last seen in "About Time"), Ian Holm (last seen in "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells"), Eric Idle, Jon Lord, Joanna Lumley (last seen in "She's Funny That Way") John Mackenzie, Madonna (last seen in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), Paul McCartney (ditto), Paul McGann, Helen Mirren (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Sean Penn (last seen in "The Gunman"), Pete Postlethwaite (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), David Rappaport, Tiny Ross, Peter Sellers (last seen in "The Last Blockbuster"), Maggie Smith (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Ringo Starr (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Michael Tucker, Craig Warnock, Frank Whaley (last seen in "Drillbit Taylor")

RATING: 7 out of 10 religious protests

Mona Lisa

Year 14, Day 345 - 12/11/22 - Movie #4,295

BEFORE: I've got my BFF Andy staying over for a few days, and usually I would watch a film or two with him, let him in on my process - but that's difficult when the next film on my list is only on HBO Max, and not on HBO On Demand.  Why can't it be in both places?  And what's going on with HBO Max, why do films keep disappearing from that platform before I've had a chance to watch them?  I'm starting to wonder if the giant conglomeration that is HBO/Time Warner/AOL/Warner Bros. really wants me to be able to see movies, or if they're just messing with me.  For the life of me, I can't figure out why some films are available to stream at any given time, and others just aren't.  With the technology we have, and let's assume infinite storage space, why isn't EVERY film available to me at ALL times, not just when it's convenient for the streaming services?  I mean, I'm paying for several different streaming services each month AND premium cable, theoretically the world should be my oyster, and if the next film on my list is suddenly not available anywhere, well then somebody somewhere is losing money, because here I am, willing to pay for it, but where is it?  Doesn't Big Streaming want my money, don't they want me to use their service?  It's a very strange business model, making films available and then taking them away a few months later. 

Bob Hoskins carries over from "Lassiter". 

THE PLOT: A man recently released from prison manages to get a job driving a call girl from customer to customer. 

AFTER: The whole genesis of this film is rooted in the concept that when someone gets out of prison, it might be very hard for them to find an honest job, because who wants to hire an ex-convict?  Most employers might have qualms about this, or have company policies against it, but that former inmate still needs to make a living somehow.  So they might take a job with a less-than-reputable employer, and from there it's a short step to breaking the law yet again. And we wonder why the prison system is overcrowded. 

After seven years in the joint, George tries to make things right with his wife, and also meet the daughter who barley even knows him, but that's a no-go as well. So it's back to his underworld contacts, though the ones he knew before seem to have moved up the chain a bit, and are not hanging out at their old joints. George buys a white rabbit at a pet store, and delivers it to a bar frequented by his old boss Mortwell, and while the old boss has moved on, this does get him work as a driver for Simone, a woman who works as a high-class call girl.  She's got a couple regular customers, but also works the circuit of some mid-range London hotels, and it's handy for her to have a driver who also offers a bit of protection. The problem is, George wears cheap suits and sticks out like a sore thumb in these fancy hotels. He couldn't look more like a pimp, and he's not even trying. 

After some initial friction between the driver and his passenger, they learn to work together and form an uneasy alliance, and George starts to think that maybe there's something there between them. But then after a few fruitless trips to some bridge in London where the cheaper hookers ply their trade, Simone asks for his help in finding Cathy, a teen girl that's somewhere in the system of peep shows and bordellos, who she promised to come back for.  So George starts visiting the seamier parts of London, acting like a client, looking for a blonde named Cathy - but the problem is, any working girl will claim to be named Cathy if that's what the client wants. And the hair color doesn't help either, since any girl can put on a wig. It's a service-based industry, after all. 

George encounters a pimp named Smith, or so he says, but also finds a porn movie that Simone made that co-starred the same guy, only his name's not really Smith, go figure. But George trails him and learns that the real Cathy is one of his girls, but the trail also leads back to his own boss, Mortwell - and Mortwell wants to use Simone to blackmail one of her clients, some rich Arab guy.  Mortwell suspects that Simone does more with him every night than wear lingerie and drink tea, and sure, he's probably right, but poor George is caught in the middle of all of these low-level criminal masterminds. He and Simone take Cathy out of the system, only they don't travel far enough away to matter, they only go to Brighton (only 47 miles south of London, I checked).  

Bob Hoskins got a ton of awards for this film, but lost the Oscar that year to Paul Newman for "The Color of Money".  Still, this may have been the highlight of his career, except of course for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", of which I'm definitely overdue for a re-watch. But then on the other hand, perhaps this film is nothing more than the UK version of "Taxi Driver".  I'm kind of torn on this point. Perhaps I'll have a different perspective on this film after I watch tomorrow's film, which is a documentary about Handmade Films, the studio that made "Mona Lisa", also "Time Bandits", "Monty Python's Life of Brian" and the infamous "Shanghai Surprise". 

Also starring Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Robbie Coltrane (last seen in "Effie Gray"), Clarke Peters (last seen in "Harriet"), Kate Hardie (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Zoe Nathenson, Sammi Davis (last seen in "Four Rooms"), Rod Bedall, Joe Brown, Pauline Melville (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Hossein Karimbeik, John Darling, Raad Rawi (last seen in "Official Secrets"), David Halliwell, Maggie O'Neill (last seen in "Gorillas in the Mist"), Perry Fenwick, Bryan Coleman (last seen in "The Crying Game"), Robert Dorning, with cameos from Kenny Baker (last seen in "I Am Your Father"), Jack Purvis. 

RATING: 6 out of 10 light-up Virgin Marys

Lassiter

Year 14, Day 341 - 12/7/22 - Movie #4,294

BEFORE: I'm watching this on late Tuesday/early Wednesday, but I may be a bit late in posting because Wednesday night I have to work at a screening of "Pinocchio" - not the new Disney remake, but the newer Guillermo del Toro stop-motion one. The director's going to be there - actually, both of them, and the co-director I know from one of my past jobs.  Should be a wild evening, and the theater's probably going to be packed. I'll post this as soon as I can, after. 

Jane Seymour carries over from "The War with Grandpa", which was released in 2020 (but filmed in 2017).  Today's film was released in 1984, which means I'm jumping back 36 years in Ms. Seymour's career - I love actors with LONG filmographies, it really makes this a lot easier for me. 

The reason this is on the list is that it was on the HBO Max platform, but just for a brief time.  So I added it to my list there, but then I wasn't able to link to it from "Quigley Down Under", which I watched last year - was it last year?  I want to say last year.  Anyway, this one made it to my list, then got stranded there after I couldn't link to it - and it's not even on HBO Max any more, which means I have to rent it from iTunes for $3.99.  But I'm OK with that, because this film is going to get me closer to Christmas, and hey, now it's off the list - it's very rare that I have to delete something from my list because it's not available anywhere, but I did have to do that with one of my planned Christmas movies this year.  More on that in a couple of weeks. 

THE PLOT: A handsome jewel thief is arrested and in order to avoid prison, must break into the heavily guarded German Embassy to steal millions in diamonds. 

AFTER: Well, I knew there was a reason why I don't dip back into movies from the 1980's very often, it's just too depressing.  Bob Hoskins (who'll be in my next movie, too) died back in 2014, and everybody agreed it was too soon.  Warren Clarke died the same year, and so did Christopher Malcolm, and Ed Lauter the year before - when I go through the IMDB list, it seems like half the cast of this movie is no longer alive.  Tom Selleck is still alive, I know because there are new episodes of "Blue Bloods" airing, but while searching the internet it's easy to find his fake obituary being used as clickbait - sure, you can follow the link to "Dead Celebrities-dot-net", but they phrased the article VERY carefully to not really indicate whether he's alive or dead.  I guess so when he does pass away, they won't have to re-write it?  That's kind of sick, but also genius.  

The other reason is that everyone else is getting older - Jane Seymour and Lauren Hutton have both reached the age where the IMDB graciously doesn't even LIST their birth years, and you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how old they are. (Jane's 71 and Lauren's 79.). We just lost Kirstie Alley at the age of 71, and honestly it kind of feels like every famous woman I had the hots for when I was in my teens is over 60 now.  Brooke Shields is 57, Lynda Carter is 71, Loni Anderson is 77, and it just gets worse from there. Phoebe Cates is 59, do I have to go on?  It's too painful that everybody keeps getting older, but I guess that beats the alternative. 

But I avoided "Lassiter" for 38 years, somehow.  Hey, today's the day, no time like the present - or no time like 1939, when the film takes place.  This was released JUST as Tom Selleck had hit it big on TV as "Magnum, P.I.", but after "High Road to China".  The story is that Selleck was supposed to be cast as Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", but he had to make a choice, it was either Magnum or Indy, and he chose Magnum, which left the role open for Harrison Ford. Selleck later played an Indy-like character in "High Road to China", then followed that up with another period piece, "Lassiter".  Back then it wasn't very easy for movie stars to do TV shows, or for TV stars to make movies, but Selleck crossed over like it wasn't even a problem. (Selleck is back on TV and he's 77 now, but nobody seems to care how old male actors are.) 

"Lassiter" is supposed to be a film about a jewel thief, but there are really only two scenes where he steals anything, one at the beginning and one near the end, and then the entire middle part of the film is him either trying to avoid doing the embassy heist, or talking about how to do the embassy heist - and it's a LONG middle part in a shortish movie.  During this long middle part he gets threatened a lot by the British inspector, cajoled by the U.S. FBI agent, and seduced by the German fraulein with a taste for torture and rough sexplay.  Oh, and he's married, by the way, and his wife keeps threatening to cheat on him, but she never goes through with it.  Lassiter, on the other hand, keeps saying he'll never cheat on his wife, but then of course he does.  He says she would know if he were lying because he'd tell her - yeah, right.

But if he doesn't steal the gems from the German embassy, then the Inspector's going to frame him for some made-up crime and he'll serve 20 years in prison.  Why does the inspector need to make up a crime, if he knows that Lassiter is a thief?  Why not just arrest him for his real crimes?  Ah, but they need to steal those Czech diamonds and keep Hitler from selling them in South America to fund the Nazi military buildup.  OK, sure, let me know how that works out.  

It's important above all to remember that there were NO GOOD Nazis. We don't talk about World War II and say, "There were good people on both sides."  Why do people like Donald Trump and now Kanye West think that they can advance themselves somehow by saying good things about neo-Fascists, or even Hitler?  Who, exactly, are they trying to appeal to?  Saying "I like Hitler" is only going to get you shut down, it's not going to appeal to anyone.  If you admire Hitler even a little bit, it's best to keep that to yourself - and I say this as someone of mostly German descent. If you're out there saying Hitler was great, you might have missed the message somewhere. 

Well, just six more films to go - and five more shifts at the theater - before Christmas break and the end of Movie Year 14.

Also starring Tom Selleck (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Lauren Hutton (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Bob Hoskins (last seen in "Mermaids"), Joe Regalbuto (last seen in "The Goodbye Girl"), Ed Lauter (last seen in "Magic"), Warren Clarke, Edward Peel, Paul Antrim, Christopher Malcolm (last seen in "Reds"), Barrie Houghton, Peter Skellern, Harry Towb (last seen in "Barry Lyndon"), Belinda Mayne (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), W. Morgan Sheppard (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Brian Coburn, Jane Wood (last seen in "Legend"), Tristram Jellinek (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), David Warbeck, Nicholas Bond-Owen, Clive Curtis (last seen in "The Gunman"), George Lane Cooper. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 crazy boxing fans

The War with Grandpa

Year 14, Day 339 - 12/5/22 - Movie #4,293

BEFORE: I know, after seeing what I watched last week, you all probably really want to ask me, "Why the hell is THAT film on your list?"  It's a question I get asked a lot - or I would if I took questions from the audience.  This just looks like a silly, stupid family comedy, though, so why did it even make it to the list?  I'm always thinking about next year's holidays, and there's a little section of my list devoted to possible films for Father's Day.  In that small sub-section there's a film with Christopher Walken ("One More Time"), and two with Robert De Niro ("Being Flynn" and "City by the Sea").  I've got a few De Niro films on the list, but this film would have been the easiest way to link all those Father's Day films together.  I needed to separate this one from the herd, however, to help me link my Thanksgiving films and my Christmas films.  Not to worry, though, there's another film with Christopher Walken in it that links to "Being Flynn" via Dale Dickey.  So since I don't need THIS one THEN, I'm free to watch it now. 

But then why not just come straight here from "Friendsgiving", via Jane Seymour?  Ah, but then I would have arrived here too quickly, and I'd have two empty slots to fill. Sure, I could have filled them easily, but you know, all things in due time.  I'm right on schedule, don't worry. 

Rob Riggle carries over from "True Memoirs of an International Assassin". 

THE PLOT: Upset that he has to give up his bedroom when his grandfather moves in, Peter decides to declare war in an attempt to get it back. 

AFTER: OK, this one COULD have been a lot worse.  It's a movie meant for kids, which means there's a lot of "Home Alone"-style slapstick, physical comedy where De Niro falls down or De Niro gets splatted with ketchup or covered with foam, or worse, he loses his pants (it happens at least twice, and both times the "humor" derives from his character's son-in-law being unlucky enough to view his genitals. Har har.). 

If you can get past all that, which was tough for me but I think I survived, there's the makings of a semi-heartwarming story here, where the kid first views his grandfather as the enemy, the old guy who took over his bedroom, the reason he had to relocate to the attic, and eventually through their conflict they realize they're evenly matched, and even form something akin to a friendship as a result of their pranks on each other.  I think that's a good thing?  Not sure. Then at the VERY end of the film they're back to being adversaries - talk about dropping the ball on the 1-yard line.  

Look, it's great that De Niro is still working - but part of me can't believe he's playing grandfather roles now, instead of aging gangsters.  I mean, sure, the calendar says he's 79 years old (he was 77 when this was released) but part of me still wants to remember him from "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull" or "The King of Comedy" or "Midnight Run", and this is the SECOND film he's been in with "Grandpa" in the title, so I should be used to it by now.  And here his character is the father of Uma Thurman's character - didn't they play love interests in "Mad Dog and Glory"?  Just saying. 

It's a bit sad to see him playing a widower, someone who's lived longer than their spouse, and long enough to have his driver's license taken away, forcing him to move in with his daughter and her family.  And there's no time to build a room on to the house, or find him a senior-friendly apartment nearby, or a nursing home, so he's got to take over his grandson's bedroom.  Peter, the grandson, holds his grandfather fully responsible for him having to move to the attic, which for some reason his parents couldn't afford to have carpeted or painted or insulated in any way.  I can see why the kid is pissed, but it's not his grandfather's fault.  It's not like they could SHARE a room.  Wait, why couldn't they share a room?

This turns into a battle between two stubborn individuals, and it's clever youth vs. wise army veteran.  One has combat training, but the other has experience surviving middle school - OK, we'll call that a wash. The kid has experience with electronics, but the grandfather has experience with tools. Another draw, as the grandson changes the ring tone on his grandfather's cell phone, but the grandfather dismantles all of his grandson's furniture with a power drill. There's a dodgeball showdown/throwdown where they can each bring three friends, but even that proves to be a stalemate - the kids are more agile but the seniors are craftier.  But if you told me that someday I'd watch Cheech Marin, Jane Seymour and Christopher Walken bouncing around in a trampoline park, I'd say that would be very strange - maybe some night after eating too many tacos I might dream that? 

There's some kind of a narrative problem here, I want to say it feels like there are too many loose ends that never get connected?  This "war" features some ground rules that get summarily ignored, for example - one rule is "no collateral damage", meaning that they both promise that the war won't hurt the other family members.  But that's what ends up happening, Peter puts a snake in his grandfather's room, for example, and it ends up in his mother's car the next morning.  Depending on the type of snake (I'm not an expert) that could have been very harmful to his mother, thus it's a clear violation of the rules of war, but there are no consequences from this.  

Another disconnect is the way Grandpa shows up to school to handle Peter's bully from the 8th grade. Once again, a Hollywood film shows that it doesn't know how to properly handle the issue of bullies - having a bigger bully show up to bully the bully is not an acceptable solution to the problem.  That's the wrong message to send out to the kids, also, it took place during the war - why would Grandpa want to beat up Peter's bully, when Grandpa was in the middle of his own war with Peter?  It's as if he's saying, "Nobody gets to beat up my grandson, except for me!" which is another bizarre message to put out there in a movie.  Anyway, adults shouldn't be showing up at a middle school to throw bullies into dumpsters.

The grandfather and grandson call a "truce" during Peter's younger sister's birthday party, which for some reason is Christmas-themed.  Sure, kids like Christmas, I get it, but nobody, repeat nobody, throws their kid a Christmas party for their birthday.  For one thing, Christmas decorations aren't usually readily available until after Halloween, but OK, let's assume that the parents went to some year-round Christmas store or found them all on eBay or something.  Still, why would anybody DO this?  It feels more like some screenwriter couldn't decide whether to have the big film climax at a birthday party or a Christmas party and said, "Well, why not do BOTH?"  Because that doesn't happen in real life, that's why.

Still, I'm forced to allow that narrative hiccup today, because it's December for me and it kind of justifies me including the film here and now.  See, the chain knows, the universe knows.  It's still a silly, stupid movie but I'm feeling generous since it's the Christmas season.

Also starring Robert De Niro (last seen in "Mr. Saturday Night"), Uma Thurman (last seen in "Motherhood"), Oakes Fegley (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Laura Marano (last seen in "Lady Bird"), Cheech Marin (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), Juliocesar Chavez, Isaac Kragten, T.J. McGibbon (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Poppy Gagnon, Lydia Styslinger, Joe Gelchion (last seen in "Escape Plan 2: Hades"), Colin Ford (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Faizon Love (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Rutanya Alda (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Drew Scheid, Veronica Alicino, James Martin Kelly, Joanie Stewart

RATING: 5 out of 10 self-checkout stations