The Dirt

Year 16, Day 7 - 1/7/24 - Movie #4,607

BEFORE: I took some time today and made another list, the Top 250 most popular features from 2023, because I want to know how many I've already seen. I went to the movie theater A LOT last year, mostly to work at them, but also I saw some movies there.  So I've got a head start on watching those movies that came out last year, or so I thought, but really, I've only seen 16 out of those Top 250.  Now bear in mind "most popular" doesn't mean "the best", nor does it means "the movies that I want to see or are most likely to watch", it's just based on the IMDB ratings at this moment.  BUT, it's something of a benchmark to let me know how far I've come, and how much further I may have to go.  

By comparison, I've seen 62 of the top 250 movies of 2022, with another 17 on the main watchlist, and probably more available on streaming, which I'm not counting.  Maybe another 30 that I'll watch streaming at some point, so that's about 110 total. I've seen 91 of 2021's top 250 films, with another 8 on the main watchlist, and let's say another 12 that are streaming that I would consider. That's about 111 total, same ratio.  OK, at least I'm being consistent.  2020 was a slow year for movies because of COVID, but I still saw 76 of the top 250, with another 5 on my list and another 5 I might watch someday, that's 86.  2019 was a BIG year for movies, I've seen 125 of the top 250, with another 2 still on the list and another 4 or 5 I might consider. 

So I'll probably spend most of 2024 watching the movies of 2023 when they become available, and then catching anything else from previous years as linking material.  During 2023 I watched 61 films that were released the previous year, so that's about 20% or 1/5 of my slots for that year. OK, that seems about right. It means I'm staying relatively current, I've got a pattern and the system works - as long as I don't need to run out and see a movie right away, I can be fairly sure that I'll catch it in the next few months when it becomes available. 

Joe Chrest carries over from "Quiz Lady" to play Tommy Lee's dad. 

THE PLOT: Based on the bestselling autobiography from Mötley Crüe, the film is an unflinching tale of success and excess as four misfits rise from the streets of Hollywood to the heights of international fame. 

AFTER: The other thing I did yesterday, before watching "The Dirt" after midnight, was convince my wife to join me for my re-watch of "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story".  I rented the film on Demand so I could burn it to DVD, because I loved the film, I'm a big fan of Weird Al and also I thought she would really enjoy the humor, how the film doesn't take itself seriously at all, not even for a minute.  I can't tell you the last movie we watched together, we're just not interested in the same films, or I'll watch my movies after she goes to bed and then I can tell her the next day what I watched, if it's something she might be interested in.  But mostly we go our own ways where movies are concerned, I don't think she's been in a movie theater in years, it's got to be pre-pandemic, at least.  

And I loved re-watching "Weird", it hit even harder for me the second time, and now I can watch it whenever I want, without connecting to Roku. (She said she would watch it on Roku, but WHEN?). The problem then was that that film is a parody of ALL biopics, especially music-based ones - so how could I possible take "The DIrt" seriously after that?  Whether I'm a Motley Crue fan or not (not, mostly) is beside the point, because that Weird Al fake biopic totally crushed it, and how is any movie on a similar topic going to hold up?  Not well, at least not for me.  I was still in the vein of not taking anything seriously because that was the tone of "Weird", with Daniel Radcliffe not being a dead ringer for young Weird Al, and lip-synching (well, but still...) to Al's vocals, and completely acting in a way that the real Weird Al never did.  If you know about Al, you know he's never had a drinking problem or a drug problem and is a vegetarian and from all accounts, a super nice guy, so of course his parody bio-pic has him getting stoned, drinking bottles of whiskey, having sex with Madonna and acting like a huge conceited jerk.  It's funny because none of it is true, yet the film is marketed as if it is. 

In a similar vein, I've got to wonder about the motivations here, to depict the Motley Crue story in exactly this way.  Remember that this is based on a book written by the band members, so they may have an agenda in promoting themselves in a certain way, no matter what behavior they want to talk about, good or bad, it's going to come across as bragging, or perhaps a form of therapy, or part of their mandated community service, I'm not sure which.  Yeah, the band decided to get clean and sober at one point, because they realized they couldn't maintain the party lifestyle, and that's usually the kiss of death for a rock band.  Once they go vegan or gluten-free and kick out the band member who won't toe the line, forget it, they've got one more good album in them maybe and then the career is nearly over.  You either ride that van until the wheels come off, like Keith Richards, or get out of the business, because you're not a true rocker at some point.  

But yeah, let's talk about that, why do rockers have such a bad reputation, because come on, in your mind you're thinking about the girls and the booze and the blow and trashing all their hotel rooms, right?  I read an e-mail newsletter once in a while from a guy who used to tour with the Sex Pistols, and it's all that and more, but WHY does it have to be that way?  Why can't the heavy metal band be made of people who are pure at heart, sober guys who just want to focus on the music, are faithful to their wives and carefully save their money from their tours so they'll have a retirement fund as a safety net?  Ha ha, just kidding, that's never happened.  I watched enough documentaries about rock bands, from the Beatles to the Grateful Dead to Nirvana and I'm sure the pattern continues today.  

I think it started with Elvis, honestly, or maybe Chuck Berry.  Somewhere back then the music and the popularity and the MONEY, so much money, came together and made it impossible for successful rockers to be normal people.  When we visited Graceland back in 2017, we were blown away by how many buildings there were on the estate, from the main house to the office building where Col. Parker worked, to the building with the squash court and the pinball machines and the gun range.  My wife said, "THAT is what you get when you give a 20-year old guy a million dollars," and she was right, he was like the Justin Beiber of the 1950's.  And I don't need to remind you that the drinking and the drugs followed soon after, and if you think he was faithful to Priscilla, you're fooling yourself.  Millionaires (OK, now billionaires) get to write their own rules, and they live like there's no tomorrow, and then you follow that path through the Beatles and the Stones, you hit Motley Crue at some point, following the same pattern.  

At one point the film follows a day in the life of Tommy Lee on tour - 5 pm, wake up in the hotel room, handcuffed to the bed, with no memory of what happened the previous night.  Hang out backstage, get drunk, punch out a record executive, then play the concert, have sex with a groupie backstage, then catch the plane to the next city, do some blow on the plane, get to the next hotel room, trash the hotel room, get punched out by the road manager and get handcuffed to the bed again.  And this went on for HOW MANY tour dates?  I'm always fascinated by those tour schedules, and how they're organized, as it's clear somebody with a brain puts them together, deciding the band would go from Detroit to Chicago to Milwaukee and then over to Minneapolis.  The dates of Crue's 1989-1991 tour scroll by on the screen, and the band complains that the record company keeps adding more dates at the end, so they'll never be done.  

And so what do you THINK is going to happen, given that two band members are in (semi-)stable relationships, and are then out on tour for two years straight?  And all that time, they're keeping count of how many women they've screwed in each city.  Add in all the money they spend at strip clubs, and it's a recipe for disaster.  Show me the rock and roll marriage that has stood the test of time, I dare you - and Paul & Linda McCartney don't count. And yet some people still marry rockers, thinking their experience is going to be different?  Keep dreaming.  So how am I supposed to find any sympathy for these band members, when they spend all their money, screw around, get drunk and wasted every night and well, completely act irresponsibly 24/7 - so I'm just watching and waiting for the time when it all comes crashing down.  

Mick Mars has a degenerative bone disease, and Vince Neil has a young daughter who's sick, those are two things that could go some way toward garnering these rockers some sympathy, but if anything these plot points are de-emphasized and so everything feels out of balance.  You want my support?  Show the parts of a typical day where the band meets with a financial adviser to plan for their post-rock retirement, or when they call home to talk to their girlfriend or daughter and actually take a minute to think, "Hmm, what time is it in L.A. right now?" because you'd think after a while on their trip around the country, they'd figure out how time zones work.  Ha ha, just kidding again, they never quite figure this out. 

The best moment in the film, for me, is when Motley Crue is on tour with Black Sabbath, and they're hanging out by the pool when Ozzy Osbourne comes along, and he's flashing his privates to the other people poolside before he urinates next to the pool, and meanwhile the M.C. band members are counting how many women each one screwed in the last city.  They say to Ozzy, "Gee, it's great that you can still go out on tour and keep up with us younger rockers!"  And Ozzy says, "You wankers, I don't have to keep up with YOU, I've already LAPPED YOU!"  Oh, that's so great, I'm going to steal that whenever any of my co-workers comment about me being older than them.  And the guy they got to play Ozzy looked EXACTLY like he did in the 1980's.  

Well, OK, so this one was a bit of a struggle to get through, and I couldn't take it seriously, not at all.  But it's off the Netflix list now, which means there are only 125 films on that list to go.  Geez, I never seem to make that much progress on the Netflix list, do I?  For every film I add there, two more come along the next month and I'm starting to think I'll never clear it.  But lately it seems they're adding a lot of older films I've already watched, so that's helpful, I don't have to track those.  But will I ever CATCH UP?  No, probably not.  I'll just die one day with a long list of films that I wasn't able to get to in the time that I was given, more than likely.  Such is life. 

Directed by Jeff Tremaine (director of "Bad Grandpa")

Also starring Douglas Booth (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Iwan Rheon (last seen in "Berlin, I Love You"), Colson Baker (Machine Gun Kelly) (last seen in "Project Power"), Daniel Webber, Pete Davidson (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), David Costabile (last seen in "Side Effects"), Leven Rambin (last seen in "Mank"), Kathryn Morris (last seen in "Paycheck"), Rebekah Graf, Tony Cavalero (last seen in "When We First Met"), Max Milner, Katherine Neff (last seen in "The Disaster Artist"), Jordan Lane Price, Christian Gehring, Anthony Vincent Valbiro, Kamryn Ragsdale, Melanie Hebert (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Trace Masters (ditto), Courtney Dietz, Elena Evangelo, Vince Robert Mattis, Betsy Holt (also carrying over from "Quiz Lady"), Alyssa Marie Stilwell, Matthew Underwood, Aaron Jay Rome, Mark Ashworth, Avis-Marie Barnes (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers"), Eleanor T. Threatt, Kabby Borders (last seen in "Game Night"), Carol Ann Scruggs, Peter Jaymes Jr., Bernard Hocke, Alexanne Wagner, Martin Bats Bradford (last seen in "Blue Bayou"), Anthony Marble (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Michael Hodson. 

with archive footage of Nikki Sixx (last seen in "Count Me In"), Tommy Lee (ditto), Vince Neil (ditto), Mick Mars, Sammy Hagar, Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony, Nancy Reagan (last seen in "The Special Relationship")

RATING: 5 out of 10 TVs thrown through hotel room windows

Quiz Lady

Year 16, Day 6 - 1/6/24 - Movie #4,606

BEFORE: Well, talk about a movie coming along at the right time - this one's only been on Hulu since November 3 of last year, so for me to get to it in just two months is me working at a really good rate, I'd say I'm catching up but I think we all know that catching up is impossible, the best I can do is just not be too far behind. I'm not even a week into 2024 but I've already covered a wide variety of movies - a few festival favorites, a foreign film, a documentary, and a big Disney remake. Now I can free-form a bit and start to have a little fun.  I think the big movies for me this month might be "John Wick: Chapter 4", "The Whale" and "Babylon", then I've got a lot of connective tissue, namely films on Netflix and Hulu and Prime that I'm just looking to clear out, but I've got hundreds of films waiting in the wings to fill up the empty slots on my lists. 

I'm due back at the theater today, for a screening of "Rebel Moon: Part One". I had to ask my sci-fi fan friends what this was, I'd never heard of it before. It's a Zack Snyder film that he once pitched to George Lucas as a potential "Star Wars" movie, but Lucas went a different direction for Episode VII (?) and eventually Snyder just made the film on his own - it's on Netflix already so I can just add it to the watchlist and maybe I can get to it in 2024, maybe I can't, we'll have to wait and see.  Tomorrow there's a screening of "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" and that's a little tempting, but it would mean coming into Manhattan on my day off, and I'm not inclined to do that, especially if we get snow tonight, and not if the film's going to be airing on HBO and MAX in, I'm guessing, just two months' time.  I'd have to double-check, but I don't think it links to anything in my planned chain between now and St. Paddy's Day, so again, I'll just put it on the list and try to connect with it down the road, in April or thereafter.  There's at least 300 films I'm saying that about, probably closer to 500 when I consider both lists, the "I have a copy on hand" list and then "It's streaming on one of the services I can access" list. 

Awkwafina carries over from "The Little Mermaid" (2023). And Paul Reubens is listed in the credits for this film, that's great because I sent out my (really) long-distance dedication to him on January 1, meaning this whole year of movie-watching is done in his memory, and then he shows up posthumously five days later?  That's kismet.  The linking dictates all the possible directions, but I'm free to choose the direction that I want, or the one that links up best with the calendar, if I so choose.  I have more freedom to control the path than you might think, in the end. 

THE PLOT: A game-show-obsessed woman and her estranged sister work together to help cover their mother's gambling debts. 

AFTER: Well, it's not a slam dunk tonight, but it's a pretty funny comedy, or maybe it's a tragi-comedy, I'm not sure what they were intending.  Any personal feelings I have against Awkwafina and the types of characters she tends to play were kind of negated by all the self-deprecation inherent to Anne, and the topic of being on a popular quiz show, and all the comedy that came along with that. I don't exactly live in that world, because I'm not Asian and I don't have a screwed-up deadbeat sister, but I'm as consistently hardcore about watching "Jeopardy!" as Anne is about watching her show, "Can't Stop the Quiz".  Because of course they couldn't use a real quiz show, they had to create one, and they had to make it different, both for legal reasons and to stand out as its own narrative. 

Look, Awkwafina is free to carve out whatever nerdy Asian niche she wants to fill in the film industry, I've got no issue with that.  If you want to think of her playing a certain "type" of nerdy self-deprecating Asian-American in "Neighbors 2", "The Farewell", "Ocean's Eight" and "Nora From Queens", it's fine, roll with it if that's working for you.  If you get to do a animal's voice in an animated film like "The Angry Birds Movie 2" and that leads to similar roles in "The Bad Guys, "The Little Mermaid" and "Migration", whatever, let one job lead to another - I wish I had the balls to quit my job and focus on voice acting, but I'm too chicken, so it's just something I do on the side when the opportunities present themselves.  Maybe I'll never be a famous v/o artist, because I'm not willing to take the risk. So probably it's just my hang-up, and I'm jealous that she gets to be in movies while I'm stuck behind the scenes helping to make them. 

Risk is a big thing for me, and the topic comes back when you start to talk about game shows. In the world I DO live in, I've passed the Jeopardy! test maybe five or six times over the years, but never made it to the show.  Let me clarify - I've passed the WRITTEN test or the ONLINE test five or six times, but then there is a second stage, which is playing a mock game live in front of the show's scouts.  They're looking for a number of things - are you vibrant, are you personable, are you talkative, do you have interesting stories about yourself to tell, and then during the game, if you get a question right, do you pick the next clue right away to keep the game moving?  I know I can do the last thing, but when it comes time to be friendly, vibrant, talkative and interesting, I tend to panic and shut down, which makes me none of those things.  Once or perhaps twice I've managed to fake it, and I got to the stage where they take my photograph and tell me that they COULD call me over the next few months, so I should be ready to drop everything and fly to California on a few days notice.  However, both times that call never came, which only feeds that feeling that I'm just not good on camera, either in appearance or in my mannerisms. So yeah, I've felt all the things that Anne Yum goes through here, the self-doubt, the performance anxiety, the feeling that even if I'm good at trivia the odds will somehow be stacked against me, and with my luck they'll put me up against a long-time champion who can't be dethroned, and I'll just be another loser in a long line of losers who lost to THAT player who was either decidedly better or in the middle of a hot streak. 

(Similar experience with "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", I passed the written test three or four times, no problem, but when it came to being vibrant, animated and excited, that's when I couldn't break out of my shell and be someone who I'm not, except that one time where I really focused on faking THAT instead of answering the questions, and it almost worked.  They also took my photo and told me I was in their files, and I might get a call over the next few months, but it never came.)

What I understand about the "Jeopardy!" process, should I ever try out again and be so lucky to get called for the show, is that there's a network of talent coordinators who've made the process as easy as possible for the contestants, like there's a hotel where all the contestants stay, there's a shuttle bus that takes them to the set each day, there are hair and wardrobe people so that contestants can just focus on playing the game. They tape five games in a day so if you win three or four times, that still could just be one day of your life on set instead of nearly a week.  And the third place contestant wins $1,000 now, which could easily be greater than the cost of a return flight to L.A. and two nights hotel, so really, there's no reason to NOT do this, because even if you lose, your travel expenses will be covered.  The travel costs only build up if you win more than five games in a row, and by then you should theoretically have enough money to cover it, even if that means going back to L.A. a few times. And if you win 10, 20, 30 games, then who gives a crap because you're a real player and you're rich, you can take a leave of absence or quit your job and not worry about things for a while. 

So what I have to do is to work up the confidence to try out again, and not just be like Anne, who never misses the show and calls out all the answers at home.  Obviously like me she would be GREAT at answering the questions, but being on the show also means that people will SEE you on TV, people will then KNOW that you're a freak, you'll hear from friends and co-workers you lost touch with years ago, and then the people who didn't know you before, well, they're all going to laugh at you, aren't they?  And then it's just grammar school all over again, isn't it?  You're too fat, your voice sounds weird and you do that strange nervous thing with your hands.  Even if you manage to work out that timing thing with the buzzer and you should do well for a while, then you're going to get a Daily Double, the camera's going to be focused on you and you could blow it, right there, in front of the whole world, you're going to forget who Zachary Taylor's VP was, even though you wrote an essay about how Millard Fillmore became President for U.S. History class in 10th grade, you idiot. 

Anyway, enough about my hang-ups.  There's so much more to like about this film that it ended up winning me over - Anne's got a pug dog named Mr. Linguini that pretty much steals the whole movie.  The dog gets pet-napped by Chinese bookies because Anne's mom owes them so much money, and she's flown off to Macao with her new boyfriend, and the tongs still want to collect that money.  So Anne's either got to sell her eggs for cash, or face her fears and try out for the game show that she's watched every night since she was a small child.  Anne's sister, Jenny, who showed up thinking that their mom was dead, not just AWOL, is there to act as Anne's life-coach-slash-support system-slash-drug dealer, even though her own life is a mess and she's currently living out of her car.  But isn't that just the way, that people who become life coaches don't always have their own lives in order? (See also: Jackie from the "Roseanne"/"The Conners" show)

Sure, the film falls back on Asian stereotypes a lot - the older Asians are addicted to gambling, the younger ones desperately want their parents' approval but since they're not doctors or lawyers they can't ever GET it, they're terrible drivers, they either drift through life without purpose or get stuck in dead-end jobs with no hope for advancing.  Yeah, all that and more.  It's maybe a bit hard to say where the stereotypes leave off and the individuals' problems start, but hey, at least the stereotypes save a lot of time when it comes to fleshing out these characters. 

Sibling rivalry, career delusions, fear of failure, fear of success, stressing out over money, having anxiety over having a pet instead of children, having anxiety over LOSING that pet, so really the movie is all one big ball of stress from start to finish, but isn't life like that sometimes?  

There's also the "Can't Stop the Quiz" game itself, and come on, we know from the start that Anne's going to end up on the show, one way or the other.  There's a contestant on the show who's got the show's third-longest winning streak, and he's so entrenched that he's got winning down to a science, and it's not hard to see that the film's going to come down to a showdown between him and Anne.  Writers call this "parallel storylines", which is really a misnomer, because in geometry parallel lines never meet, but parallel storylines always do, or if they don't, then the story feels incomplete and the audience feels unfulfilled. So the film finds its third gear later on, when Anne finally gets that call to come out to L.A.  

You can think of Anne's opponent, Ron Heacock, as sort of a Ken Jennings-type, only he's much more of an a-hole.  Ken, of course, became one of the game's longest-running champions after they changed the rules to allow more than five victories on "Jeopardy!" and now he hosts the show, and he does a great job. (Remember that the show's former producer, Mike Richards, tried out a number of potential hosts before selecting HIMSELF, and then got called on the carpet for that, and rightfully so. Actually he got cancelled because of harassment lawsuits from models on "The Price Is Right", but he SHOULD have been fired for auditioning dozens of hosts and then selecting himself, it was a blatant conflict of interest.)  Or maybe Ron Heacock could remind you of "Jeopardy James" Holzhauer, who was even more of an a-hole, your choice. Will Ferrell plays the show's Alex-Trebek-like host, Terry McTeer, which makes sense because Ferrell played Trebek several times on "SNL", despite not looking or sounding much like him. Here the host is a much more sympathetic character, of course because we all miss Alex so much, and anything people maybe DIDN'T like about him has been ignored or forgiven since he died. 

There's only one Jeopardy!-like part of this quiz show's three sections, and it's called "The Blitz". The second round is very different, where contestants have to name all of the possible answers in a set of things (multiple Super-Bowl winning teams, or one-syllable words with no rhymes) and this, of course, is what Anne is the best at, even if she blanked out for most of Round 1.  And then the third round is "Say it or Show It", which is a lot like charades, and this sets up the potential for something akin to her "Slumdog Millionaire" moment, if she's willing to take the chance and put herself out there, looking quite ridiculous on camera, but simultaneously getting on the same page as her sister and mending that relationship at the same time.  It's a bit too simplistic perhaps, but also a brilliant way to tie everything together.  Ron is revealed as the petty a-hole that he really is, Anne gets revenge on her annoying next-door neighbor, and Paul Reubens shows up, who cares if he's confused with another actor, it's just good to see him one last time.  Anne gets a new job, Jenny gets a place to live and Mr. Linguini gets a new companion - it's all maybe a little too perfect, but hey, sometimes a risk pays off. 

Now I have to wonder if the universe is sending ME a message - the first film this year was about someone changing careers several times, and now there's a film about someone facing their fears and finally going on that game-show she'd been practicing for YEARS to be on, and that's pretty much where my head is at, too.  Maybe it's time for me to try the Jeopardy! online test again.  If I don't do it now, then when else am I going to do it?  My concern is that I'm not up on current music and such, so maybe it's better for me to wait until I'm eligible for the Seniors Tournament, which, honestly, isn't that far off for me. 

Directed by Jessica Yu

Also starring Sandra Oh (last heard in "Turning Red"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "The Ladies Man"), Holland Taylor (last seen in "Gloria Bell"), Jason Schwartzman (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Tawny Newsome (last seen in "How It Ends"), Paul Reubens (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Jon “Dumbfoundead” Park (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Camrus Johnson (last seen in "After Class"), Angela Trimbur (last seen in "Horse Girl"), Tony Hale (last seen in "Clifford the Big Red Dog"), Justin Davis, Davina Reid, Jodi Hou, Shirley Chen, Christine Lin, Alan Heitz, Betsy Holt, Matt Cordova (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Amy Tolsky (ditto), Jane Kim (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Luke Kim, Sarah Grace Welbourn, Hailey Perng, Dave Beaudrie, Charles Green (last seen in "Irresistible"), Ammie Masterson, Derek Roberts (last seen in "Term Life"), Ned Yousef, Joe Chrest (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Maria Bamford (last seen in "The Bubble"), Annie Karstens, Al Bayan, Atul Singh, Nicole Appleby, Esme Salzman, Larry Weissman, Eddie Davies, Blake Rosier, Choppy Guillotte (last seen in "First Man"), Mary Claire Smythe, Heather Alexander and the voice of Phil LaMarr (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)).

RATING: 6 out of 10 hair extensions

The Little Mermaid (2023)

Year 16, Day 5 - 1/5/24 - Movie #4,605

BEFORE: I've still got a lot of paperwork to do, here at the Movie Year, stuff that comes along with, or after the turning of the calendar and the start of a new chain.  I totalled up all the appearances from 2023 and posted them in the Year 15 wrap-up post, but now with the new chain planned out for the first two months, I've got to re-sort my IMDB files so THOSE films that I'm going to watch in January and February are at the top of the watchlist, or, rather the back-up watchlist, to make them easier to delete after I view them.  Then I got my monthly e-mail from IMDB telling me which films are newly available on the main streaming services, so I've got to go through those and find films I want to add to the watchlist for future months.  I've also got to re-do the watchlist's back-up back-up, which is a written list of the movies I have on - what's that old stuff - paper? Yeah, in a composition book, just in case the computer goes down.  And then I have to go through all the films I've seen but don't have on DVD to see which ones are newly available on cable, to see if I can burn any of them to DVD.  Then I really have to start scanning the cable listings again, looking for new films, I've been derelict in doing that these last few months. Now that the winter break is over and I'm back watching movies again, I'm going to need more material on my lists to replace the films I'm watching, that's just math. Then I have to find a list of the 300 most popular films of 2023, to keep track of films released that year which I've already seen, and cross off the ones I have seen once I've seen them.  After that I think I can take a break, unless there's a new version of that "1,001 Movies to See Before You Die" list, but I'm not sure if that's getting released at the end of 2023 or a few months into 2024. Either way, it's a lot of work and a lot of lists for me to keep track of. 

Jonah Hauer-King carries over from "The Song of Names". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Little Mermaid" (1988) Movie #2,129

THE PLOT: A young mermaid makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and impress a prince. 

AFTER: It's only been 7 or 8 months since this remake of "The Little Mermaid" came out in theaters, and I managed one screening of the film, hosted by the Visual Effects Society, back in May.  And it was nearly a disaster, as I checked in with the projectionist before a 2 pm screening, only to find that someone had loaded the non-3D-version of the film from the DCP, and I had a crowd showing up in the lobby to watch the 3-D version.  It was going to take about 20 to 30 minutes to upload the 3-D version, which meant the screening was going to be delayed - and I couldn't let anyone take their seats because the projectionist had to test the film once it got uploaded.  So I had a crowd standing around in the lobby for over 20 minutes while he uploaded and tested the film, but in that crowd was one of my bosses from the theater with her kids, and also my other boss from my other job, with his kid.  This was not my fault, which I made clear to them, and I just had to keep a big group of parents and kids calm and organized while we all waited for the "technical problem" to be fixed.  Sure, everybody got to see the film, for free, it just started 20 minutes later than planned, and nobody got angry and again, this was not my fault. 

Anyway, since I worked that screening, I knew exactly how long this Disney remake is - 2 hrs and 15 minutes, with credits. That is WAY TOO LONG for a kids movie.  Kids today have attention span that's about 90 seconds, although they will sit still for a movie IF THEY LIKE IT for a time not over 90 minutes.  And I think the first Disney version of "The Little Mermaid", the one from 1989, was a little over 80 minutes long, that's PERFECT for the kids today, who all have ADHD or are somewhere on the spectrum or have those peanut allergies and need to get epipen shots every half hour.  (Remind me again, why do people have kids? Really, we have enough people on the planet already, we don't need MORE.)

I peeked in on the film a few times back in May, like I'm supposed to do - you know, just to make sure that the sound and picture are at optimal levels, and that nobody is causing a ruckus in the theater, or worse, smoking or vaping. (We had a screening for a foreign film from a particular country in Europe, and I won't disparage an entire country for the acts of a few, but there were a LOT of secret smokers from a country that rhymes with Schmalbania.)  Anyway, since the film was screening in 3-D and I wasn't wearing 3-D glasses, it was impossible for me to tell if the picture was fine, let's assume it was.  But the underwater scenes seemed way too dark, and that problem persisted, even last night on Disney+.  Now, I think it is very dark when you get deep down in an ocean, but I think a little more liberty would have helped here, maybe some bioluminesceny CGI fish, just so we could all tell what was going on. 

I think I see the problem concerning the film's length, simply every little story point is fleshed out here to the point of absurdity - the wind blows a character's hat off, and in the old "Little Mermaid" film that probably took 15 seconds of screen time, and here the camera follows the hat for what feels like five minutes.  It's called editing, guys, please look into it.  Similarly, Ursula explains the deal with Ariel, how she's got three days on land to get a loving kiss from Eric, or she turns back into a mermaid. OK, done, get out of here, move along. But here Ursula OVER-explains all the twists and turns of the spell, and then adds a few more, like Ariel won't REMEMBER the terms of the deal, so now how's she going to succeed?  Also then there's another spell that kicks in down the road if this one doesn't work, and by that point, who the hell cares? I've lost interest because she keeps explaining something that wasn't complicated in the first place. 

Ugh, and this is such a DISNEY film, there's a talking fish and a singing crab and a seagull with a very annoying voice, and they gave that actress the most annoying things to say, so everything from Scuttlebutt was now SUPER annoying.  They did the same thing in Disney's "Pinocchio" live-action disaster, except the seagull there was voiced by Lorraine Bracco instead of Awkwafina. If I liked seagulls I would wonder what the Disney animators have against them, but who really cares?  It's just odd that they went out of their way to find two actresses with gravelly voices to play gulls in two separate films.  But really, isn't Disney's business model right now to just keep stealing ideas from themselves, and their own previous films?  What was the last Disney movie that was truly original?  Yes, I will accept "none of them" as a valid response. 

They re-made "Aladdin", "The Jungle Book", "The Lion King", "Pinocchio" and now this one, and I think there's something about a law of diminishing returns.  They're getting worse and worse, and it's just not 1957 any more, the world's sensibilities have changed, and I thought maybe fairy tales would be on the way out by now.  Case in point, Ariel in "The Little Mermaid" feels like her father doesn't listen to her, so she seeks out a way to go to the surface world and fall in love.  She COULD have done this on her own, but that might have been dangerous, so since she's afraid to ask her father for help, she gets help from a Sea Witch to turn her human for a few days, but the magical spell is a terrible deal, she has to give up her singing (and now also speaking) voice while the spell is in effect.  Now, you could say she learns she has to sacrifice something, overcome obstacles, to find Prince Eric and win him over, but you could also say that the message from Disney appears to be "She didn't feel heard, so she had to give up her voice." which makes no sense.  A shorter version could be "Women need to talk less to get ahead," and that's a terrible message to send out to little girls. For shame. 

The other implied message, of course, is "if your father won't let you do something, it's OK to go behind his back, strike out on your own in a dangerous place and you don't have to tell him anything about it..."  Which, of course, is also a terrible message to send out to little girls in the audience.  Hey, I'm all for taking down the patriarchy, and loving whomever you want, but you have to be at least 18 for all of that. 

Melissa McCarthy and Javier Bardem are just fine as Ursula and King Triton - this film implies they're related, like brother and sister or something, and I never knew that was part of the story.  It doesn't really make any sense, since he's a sea god and she's like half-octopus or something. For that matter, it doesn't make any sense that King Triton has seven daughters who look like they come from very different ethnic backgrounds.  Did they all have different mothers from different mermaid countries around the world?  Because that's a bad message, too, that King Triton played around and had seven different baby mamas.  But of course I'm overthinking it, Disney only cared that the seven princesses were ethnically diverse as a group, because that's what they're trying to be right now, a super liberal PC storytelling company.  Look, I don't care if the Little Mermaid and the Blue Fairy are African-American now, they can be that, and we can have black Santa Clause or gay LeFou in "Beauty and the Beast", it doesn't really matter, but I would prefer if this race-based affirmative action casting made sense in the story, and for all of King Triton's daughters to be a different race, that does not make sense, story-wise. 

(The decision was also made to make Prince Eric adopted, and the new character that is introduced as the Queen, his adopted mother, is also black. In a way, this takes some of the novelty out of the pairing of him and Ariel as an interracial couple.  You could imagine that he falls in love with her because she reminds him of his mother, and that really just lessens the impact of it, doesn't it? But I guess it's still an interspecies couple, man and mermaid, and no, that's not weird at all. Proceed.)

There are parts here that I think are STRAIGHT duplications of the 1988 "Little Mermaid", and those made me think, "Well, then WHAT was the point of doing the remake?" and then there are other parts that were added, and those made me think, "Well, then WHAT was the point of trying to fix something that wasn't broken?"  So yeah, they can't really win here, they're going to either hem too close to the last version, or go way far off the reservation with the new stuff.  May I suggest maybe trying to make a new film that doesn't just copy a previous one at all, because that's the way people used to make movies?  It sure seemed to be a tough row to hoe, even with regards to the music, like they kept in "Under the Sea" and "Part of Your World", of course, but they had to update the lyrics to "Kiss the Girl" because, well, it's not 1988 anymore and you can't just show a man trying to make a move on a girl in a film these days, it's not proper any more. 

But since the film made like half a billion dollars and became the latest film to "save Hollywood", I bet nobody's going to take anyone to task for all the mutli-culti casting decisions, or the liberal PC anti-white dude sensibilities, or the messages sent out to our nation's young girls by yet another spoiled cinematic princess, all is forgiven when you're counting so much money, right? 

NITPICK POINT: I don't really understand the whole mermaid thing, which I guess is fine because they're not real to begin with. But are they magical beings, or just aquatic humans?  Are they really half fish or just people who have a big fin instead of legs?  Do they breathe with lungs or gills or both?  If they have lungs, why can't they just go to the surface world and breathe there, and if they have gills, why don't we see them?  Lots of questions here about how this whole crazy thing works, but again, not real so it doesn't matter. 

Directed by Rob Marshall (director of "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Mary Poppins Returns")

Also starring Halle Bailey (last seen in "Quincy"), Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Starling"), Javier Bardem (last seen in "The Gunman"), Noma Dumezweni (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Art Malik (last seen in "John Carter"), Jessica Alexander, Martina Laird, Emily Coates, Christopher Fairbank (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), John Dagleish (last seen in "Judy"), Matthew Carver, Jude Akuwudike (last seen in "Beasts of No Nation"), Lorena Andrea (last seen in "Papillon" (2017)), Simone Ashley, Karolina Conchet, Sienna King, Kajsa Mohammar (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Nathalie Sorrell, Russell Balogh (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Adrian Christopher (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), with a cameo from Jodi Benson (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), 

with the voices of Daveed Diggs (last heard in "DC League of Super-Pets"), Jacob Tremblay (last heard in "Luca"), Awkwafina (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon")

RATING: 4 out of 10 fishing nets

The Song of Names

Year 16, Day 4 - 1/4/24 - Movie #4,604

BEFORE: Tim Roth carries over from "The Wolfpack" and becomes the first person in 2024 to have three appearances, so there you go, he's made the end-of-year wrap-up list already, and 2024 is only days old.  We're just getting started - who's going to win this year's race for the most appearances?  I won't know until I watch my documentary chain, but based on a quick look at the cast lists, my initial bet would be on Elton John. But it's impossible to say, there's so much that hasn't been programmed yet.  

I learned a few years back that it is simply IMPOSSIBLE to program a year's worth of movies in a continuous linked chain - however, it is POSSIBLE to program a month's worth of movies in a continuous linked chain, and if I can do that just 12 times in a row, then I've got a linked year, and I've done the "impossible". Now I find I can sometimes do 2 months at a time, and that just makes things a bit easier.  But breaking down the year into chunks is really the key - once February's planned then I can do January, then if I can get to specific themed targets on St. Patrick's Day, Easter (maybe), Mother's Day, Father's Day and July 4, well the year's almost 2/3 over at that point.  Then the Summer Doc Block gets me closer to October 1 and the horror chain begins, finally I can target Thanksgiving and Christmas and the year is over. It's simple, really. 

Oh, yeah, I forgot to post my actor links for January - after Tim Roth's 3 films, these are the links that will get me to February 1: Jonah Hauer-King, Awkwafina, Joe Chrest, Toni Collette, Shamier Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sean Cullen, Samantha Morton, Brendan Fraser, Mark Hamill, Jimmy Tatro, Riki Lindhome, Don McManus, Jean Smart, Max Minghella, Dato Bakhtadze, Daniel Bernhardt and Claire Forlani, who will carry over to the first romance film. If you can read between the lines, you may see that there are three or four of LAST year's Oscar contenders in the mix for this month, I unfortunately don't have time for THIS year's Oscar hopefuls though.  

THE PLOT: Several years after his childhood friend, a violin prodigy, disappears on the eve of his first solo concert, an Englishman travels throughout Europe to find him.  

AFTER: Well, I just want to take this opportunity to remind everyone that Holocaust Remembrance Day is Saturday, January 27.  Yeah, I looked it up, because I thought there was a slight chance it would be today, but it's not.  But you have plenty of time to prepare for it, and watching this movie wouldn't be the worst choice that day.  Who wants to watch "Schindler's List" again?  Not me - Spielberg is a hack, anyway, did you know he never was officially hired at Universal, he just snuck off from the studio tour, found an empty office and set himself up there?  By the time anyone realized he didn't officially work there, he was producing three features!  That just isn't fair to other people who apply for jobs and have to interview for them, so really, he doesn't deserve any of the acclaim he's received over the years, it's fruit of the poison tree, and one day, you'll see, his films will have to be removed from the National Registry of Historic Films, because of this technicality, he was never officially hired by a studio. Honestly I'm shocked this isn't a bigger scandal than it should be, like do you think people who want to be police officers or fireman can just walk into the police or fire station, find a uniform that fits and then just start working there?  No, no, no, this represents the total breakdown of society, we must have rules and order and you just can't start working somewhere, like a middle school or a hospital, so the same goes for a movie studio.  So all of his films need to be thrown out, destroyed and removed from the box office records, Universal has to refund all those movie tickets sold, you'll see, and he'll have to give back his Oscars, mark my words. 

So, yeah, watch this one instead, it's a fine film that imparts the weight of the Holocaust and the loss and anguish felt throughout the U.K. during World War II on its characters, especially a young Polish violinist, Dovidl Rapaport, whose father brings him to the U.K. right before the war starts, so he can study to become a concert violinist.  It takes years of practice, apparently.  He's offered a place to live with the Simmonds family while he studies, as Mr. Simmonds is involved in his training and has a son, Martin, who is about the same age. The two 9-year-old boys clash at first, but eventually become close friends, essentially brothers.  Once the war begins, Dovidl gets no news about his family, other than they may have been deported to Treblinka, but he's not sure if they are alive or dead.  This is problematic in the Jewish religion, because he's been instructed by his rabbi to not read the Kaddish for them, if he's unsure of this. 

Much of this story is told out of sequence, but in the introduction we learn that Dovidl disappeared when he was 21, on the night of the big concert that he'd been working toward for 12 years.  The mystery then becomes, what would make him vanish just before his music career was scheduled to finally take off?  Was he injured on the way to the concert hall, or kidnapped or killed?  Why practice for so many years, just to quit right before finally succeeding at this planned endeavor?  His adopted brother, Martin, has wondered this for years, and we also follow him as an adult, years later, in the mid-1980's, when he learns some strange clues that could lead him to where Dovidl went after he disappeared.  During a school concert where he's a judge, he sees a high-school student make the same gesture with his rosin bag as Dovidl always did, so he suspects that this boy learned violin from Dovidl, and then sets out to track him down. 

The storylines are intertwined from then on, as the movie jumps between the 1940's, the year of the concert (1952 or so) and the mid-1980's, with Martin traveling from Warsaw to New York City in what may be a wild goose chase.  And even if he was correct about where Dovidl went THEN, there's no real guarantee that he'd still be in any of those places, he could be anywhere.  But after so much time, he still really needs to know what happened, and therefore, so do we.  In the 1940's we see Martin and Dovidl dealing with the horrors of the war, in the 1952 scenes we see Dovidl renounce his Jewish faith, and then in the 1980's - well, you can probably guess whether Martin finds Dovidl, a simple scan of the cast list on IMDB can help you figure that one out. 

But WHY he disappeared and HOW he learned about what happened to his family, and WHERE he went after that, well, that's all very relevant.  It's also significant that he did return to his faith and his people, because that was such a big part of his character, and there are parts of his story that would be significant to anyone who survived the war and lost family during the war. The mystery part of the story is enough to make this interesting, and I can't say much about the device that the rabbis use to remember the names of the dead, except that I'm wondering if it's real or just a fictional device, and I can't say any more than that without giving too much away. 

Also it's about how most people tend to be selfish at heart, and fall back into those patterns very easily, again and again. Martin still wants that concert that didn't happen in 1950 to happen, as if that's going to solve everything wrong in his life, and no, that's probably not going to happen.  But we all want the wrongs of the past to be righted if possible, I suppose that's normal human nature.  Dovidl similarly wants his family back, only that's not going to happen either, and everyone struggles with their sense of self, which, it turns out, is a force that is counter-balanced by being part of a faith-based community.  We all have to find that balance, between wanting what we think is best for us and what might be best for the community, which does not, in fact, revolve around any one person.  What good is it to be talented and famous, which is a benefit to the self, if it comes at the expense of the community?  

And just like in "The Worst Person in the World", there might be times where you just want to burn your life to the ground and then disappear, go live in Montana or a housing project in New York where you don't have a job and are basically off the grid. Is that fair to the people who care about you?  It might, over time, be the thing you need to do to feel human again, but it's not really fair to the community, is it?  Where do you draw that line between self-expression and doing things for you vs. maintaining your relationships and fulfilling your obligations, even though you just feel like a cog in some giant machine?  Is it better to take control of your own life and strike out in a new direction, or keep on doing the same thing day after day, year after year, because people are counting on you for things?  Maybe I'm projecting a bit too much here, but that's what I got from this story. 

Obviously, World War II was a terrible period in history for nearly everyone, as 9-year old Dovidl points out.  He mentions there were thousands killed across Europe, every day, and history would never even record the names of most of those people.  Then in those instances when you DO know their names, it's all just a bit too real, isn't it?  I'm not going to draw any connections to the current war between Israel and Hamas, because I just don't know enough about it - and there are plenty of people getting in trouble for having strong opinions one way or the other, it's a cultural minefield right now.  At least when we watch films about World War II we know who we're rooting for, right?  Jeez, I know fascism's trying to make a comeback in several countries around the world, even the U.S., but can we please agree to try to not make the same mistakes again, at least?  

Directed by Francois Girard (director of "The Red Violin")

Also starring Gerran Howell (last seen in "1917"), Misha Handley (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Clive Owen (last seen in "The Informer"), Jonah Hauer-King, Luke Doyle, Stanley Townsend (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), Catherine McCormack (last seen in "The Weight of Water", Magdalena Cielecka, Saul Rubinek (last seen in "The Family Man"), Jakub Kotynski, Tamas Puskas (last seen in "Max"), Amy Sloan (last seen in "Head in the Clouds"), Marina Hambro, Steven Hillman, Sharon Percy (last seen in "Billy Elliot"), Viktoria Kay, Max MacMillan, Richard Bremmer (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Zoltan Schwartz, Julian Wadham (last seen in "Colette"), Istvan Darvas, Zsofi Toth, Joanna Caplan, Howard Jerome (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Chaim Paskesz, Pinchasz Weisberger, Daniel Mutlu, Jeffrey Caine, with a cameo from Eddie Izzard (last seen in "Six Minutes to Midnight")

RATING: 6 out of 10 naughty playing cards

The Wolfpack

Year 16, Day 3 - 1/3/24 - Movie #4,603

BEFORE: OK, let's take a minute tonight to talk about documentaries - I didn't use to program so many of them, because I was afraid of them breaking my chain, but then in 2018 I went on a real tear, I watched every doc I could find about rock stars, starting with the Beatles, Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and ending with Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rush.  In between were docs about Chicago, Janis Joplin, the Stones, Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Doors, Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, George Michael, Whitney Houston, the Eagles, Talking Heads, Michael Jackson, the Beach Boys, Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot.  And you know what, there were connections all over the place, I should not have been worried about it. (Half the films had footage of the Beatles, but that's really a cheat...).  Now, that year I didn't have a chain that lasted all year, but it was NOT the fault of the documentaries. 

Since then, I've programmed at least a month of docs each year, but I expanded the scope of the subject matter to include movie stars, TV stars, authors, sports stars, Presidents and other political figures, last year there was even a mysterious bank robber (D.B. Cooper) and a prison riot (Attica). As long as it doesn't break the chain, it's in the mix.  The Doc Block has now become the third annual programmed month on my schedule, though it started as a summer thing last year I found a place for it in April & May, leading up to Mother's Day. How do I do it? Well, I cheat, of course, I study the IMDB lists about who appears in each film, and sometimes I do pre-watch spot checks to see if the IMDB missed anybody, especially talk-show hosts and U.S. Presidents, that really makes my linking job easier.  Last year I had 24 docs in a linked chain, and the year before that I had FORTY-SIX docs that were arranged in a giant circle, meaning that someone who appeared in the last doc also appeared in the first one, which meant that I could have entered the chain at ANY point, and moved in either direction. This allowed me to watch a movie on July 4 with a title that had "The American Revolution" in it, a little verbal pun for Independence Day, even if the subject matter had little to do with U.S. history. 

For 2024, I've taken the docs that I couldn't get to last year, added in a bunch of new ones that I learned about (I swiped the program from DocFest when it played at the theater where I work, that's always helpful) and organized them as best as I could, so I think I'm ready to go.  I've got 28 documentaries arranged in a linked chain, but if needed, I could cut two off of one end and then the last film would circle back to the first, again that would give me the chance to pick ANY film as the starting point, and move either up or down on the list.  Now, if I can place "American Symphony" on the schedule for July 4, that would again be ideal, based on the title alone.  But I'm not married to watching the docs during the summer, they could just as easily fill the space between, say, Mother's Day (May 12) and Father's Day (June 16) which a little math tells me is 35 days.  Damn, that's almost perfect, since I may encounter a few more docs between now and then, and I may want to work them in.  But we'll see how the linking plays out - I know that if I see Adolf Hitler unexpectedly in any film, there's an opportunity to quickly change gears and start watching docs. 

The one thing I know is that there's not going to be a slot for "The Wolfpack", because there are no real stars appearing in this, just archive appearances of some actors from "Pulp Fiction" are credited.  Isabella Rossellini, too, but the documentary about her family, called "The Rossellinis", doesn't seem to be streaming anywhere, so nah, this one's not going to fit into the 2024 doc chain.  But it didn't fit into the 2023 doc block or the 2022 one either, so if I don't find another place for it, then I'm simply never going to watch it.  So, new plan, stash it between two dramatic films with Tim Roth in them, that will finally clear this off my DVR - so Tim Roth carries over from "Bergman Island", and he'll be here tomorrow too.

THE PLOT: Confined in an apartment in a New York City housing project, the six Angulo brothers learned everything they know about the world through watching films and spend their time reenacting their favorite movies with intricate homemade costumes. 

AFTER: Surprisingly, there's a throughline - the first film of the year was about Julie, who (eventually) works as a photographer on a movie set, and "Bergman Island" was about a married pair of screenwriters/directors who, against all sense and reason, work together and bounce ideas off each other. (Sorry, it can't last, from what I've seen. Don't mix your work lives and your personal lives together.). And tonight's film is about a large family of sheltered teens in NYC who make their own knock-off versions of Hollywood movies.  That's still filmmaking, right?  So I'm on a thematic roll, unintentionally. 

But man, parts of this are hard to watch, because as hard as these kids try, and as much as they love movies and want to MAKE movies and BE movies, their home movies, well, they're just not good.  There's some promise near the end when one brother finally decides to tell his OWN stories instead of just copying the ones that Tarantino and Christopher Nolan already made.  OK, that I can get behind, but the production values are so damn low, and I say this as someone who made sophomore (and sophomoric) 16mm films at NYU that I freely admit had zero production values, and essentially zero budgets.  I kind of learned the hard way that I would NEVER EVER be a big famous director, not that I didn't want that, I just didn't see a path for me to get there.  I just didn't have my own stories to tell, and you kind of need that - plus I'm more of an introvert at the end of the day, and directors need to be the other kind of person. Extrovert, that's it. 

So before graduating, I set myself on a new quest, to learn to become a producer or animation coordinator or even P.A. if the industry would let me, and I'd spend my life helping other people make THEIR movies, and maybe get paid in the process.  Genius move, I don't regret it, because I get screen credits, I was eventually able to save up and buy some property, I've got 30 years of a reputation in a very niche section of the biz, and loads of great stories to tell. But mostly I'm thinking people would very much love for me to shut up about those three times I went to Sundance, call it a hunch. 

The other upside to my lifestyle is that if a film tanks, it's not (usually) my fault.  Blame the director or the writer or the publicist or the lack of proper distribution channels, but nobody ever says, "Hey, that film was a total bomb!  I bet the office manager was terrible, and didn't do anything right!"  or "Can you believe the terrible job that person did, doing voices for that crowd scene?  It ruined the whole movie!"  See, you never hear that, so I'm totally in the clear. I'm the guy behind the scenes who's depositing the payroll taxes or filling out the festival entry forms, or ordering more toner for the office printer, and so if I screw something up, you're not really going to see that on the big screen. Plus, I still get paid next week, right?  Sweet...

My point here is, there's a lot more to making movies than just dressing up and remembering your lines.  It's kind of sweet and naive that these teens found paying homage to their favorite movies as a way to pass the time, but it also feels like a big waste to me, because they're just never going to have the same resources as a multi-million dollar production, so then, umm, why do it?  Sure, because they LOVE the movies, but ultimately, what does it get them?  Look, when I was a kid I was obsessed with "Star Wars", and I remember listening to the radio drama and typing out the whole script because I loved it so much, but other than being good practice for my current job, essentially it was a waste of my time.  That script already existed SOMEWHERE in the world, what good did it do me to type it all out myself, except to learn how to flip over a typewriter ribbon so my mother didn't know that I used up all the ink on it.  

Sure, Spielberg and Lucas made home movies before they had the resources to make real ones - and don't forget that Spielberg never got hired at Universal, he just walked in off the studio tour one day and set up shop in an empty office.  "Fake it till you make it" CAN BE a viable plan, provided that you do, eventually, make it.  But until then, you also need to be aware that you are, umm, faking it. The oldest Angulo brother DOES move out on his own near the end of this documentary, and he gets a job working as a production assistant on real movies, at least for a time. I just wonder how long he stayed in the industry once he learned how hard it is to do things the proper way - he's got some credits for writing and directing shorts, but none since 2015. 

But also, he missed the family field trip to the apple orchard, which had been a longtime goal of Mrs. Angulo, to get her 9 kids out of this rundown NYC apartment and get them to live (or at least visit) someplace like a farm or a national park or someplace that's green and not all made of concrete.  So this makes me wonder about a lot of things, like how the decision was made to raise this family in NYC, one of the more expensive cities to live in, then there's the decision to home-school 9 kids, and before that, the decision to even HAVE 7 kids in the first place.  Does anyone really need more than two or three?  Were times getting tough feeding 4 kids and then somehow they thought to themselves, "Hey, let's have three more kids, that'll help."  No, it won't, it's only going to make things harder with more kids to feed, especially since their father seems to have a problem with having a steady job, or any job. 

I don't have ONE kid and maybe I never will, but still I would have trouble making ends meet if I didn't always have two jobs at the same time.  True, I do have a steady comic book habit to feed and that also creates a storage-unit expense, and I really should do something about that one of these days, but I'm getting by, and my bank account is finally back to a pre-pandemic level.  Oh, jeez, I didn't even think about that, this doc was made in 2015, what happened to this family during COVID?  Well, at least they were already used to spending most of their time indoors and only going outside about once a week, so maybe they made it through OK.  Or maybe they finally moved out of NYC, which would have been a smart move.  Can we get some kind of update on the Angulo family?  Parents still together?  Did a few more kids grow old enough to move out on their own?  Are they still wasting their time making janky home movies?  

Sorry, I don't mean to be rude here, I probably just hate the way I was as a young teen who wanted to make movies but then didn't know how to go about it, except to volunteer to video-tape high school musicals for, probably, an audience of one - my mother.  OK, maybe a few parents of the cast members.  And when I told my father I wanted to make movies, he suggested I make a documentary about the Catholic Church in Boston and all the great charity work they do.  Umm, yeah, Dad, that's not really the kind of movie I want to make, have you not seen how much I love "Star Wars"?  Can we please keep your religious agenda out of my career fantasy?

Who knows, maybe if I had picked up a camera too early and learned how HARD it is to make good-looking movies, then perhaps I never would have applied to NYU film school in the first place, and then right now I'd be somewhere else, doing something else other than stressing out three days a week trying to keep an animation studio in business and operating legally.  Who can really say?  But the path isn't linear, I keep telling myself that there's a lot of circling back, so that's why I'm also working at a movie theater, like I did 35 years ago, only in a much more adult capacity, and I don't think any less of myself for returning to something that feels comfortable for me, because I think I'm actually a little good at it, and it's honest work, like being at a bookstore. People come in, they want to be entertained, and for a couple hours they are, unless the movie sucks, then they leave happy, or at least they leave, and I reset the theater and lock up.  And the theater's owned by a college, so it's probably never going to close down, so therefore my position is guaranteed, at least as long as my knees hold out. It's another genius move, I don't regret it.  If the movie sucks, it's not my fault, plus I still get paid next week, right?  Sweet...

NITPICK POINT: If I knew that a documentary crew was coming over to my apartment to interview me, I'd maybe clean up some of the dirty laundry from the floor. Just saying. 

Directed by Crystal Moselle

Also starring Mukunda Angulo, Narayana Angulo, Susanne Angulo, Bhagavan Angulo, Jagadisa Angulo, Krsna Angulo, Oscar Angulo, Visnu Angulo, Govinda Angulo, Chloe Pecorino, Ned Shatzer, with archive footage of Christian Bale (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Isabella Rossellini (last heard in "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"), Amanda Plummer. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 cereal boxes used to make a Batman costume

Bergman Island

Year 16, Day 2 - 1/2/24 - Movie #4,602

BEFORE: I got so caught up in the excitement of the New Year that I forgot to check the birthdays of the cast of yesterday's film on IMDB, as I usually do.  I found out tonight that Anders Danielsen Lie, who carries over from "The Worst Person in the World", was born on January 1, 1979, so yesterday was his 45th birthday, and he deserves a proper Birthday SHOUT-out. 

THE PLOT: A couple retreat to the island that inspired Ingmar Bergman to write screenplays for their upcoming films when the lines between reality and fiction start to blur. 

AFTER: I heard a lot about this film, too, about two years ago, but nothing really definitive - it's another festival favorite that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and then had its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.  That's a pretty good track record. And of course I did a whole Bergman chain a couple of years ago, and also watched the documentary "Trespassing Bergman", so I know a lot about this Faro Island, where Bergman made a lot of his films and lived for his last few decades. Apparently there's a whole film society that's centered there, and they get a lot of Bergman fans who show up and want to sleep in one of Bergman's old houses and walk where he walked and go on a "safari" through the locations they've seen in his movies. And endlessly talk about his films, or watch one of the scheduled screenings in the projection room, so I guess this is a thing and will continue to be one for some time. 

Apparently when you get to Faro Island (and it seems to be pronounced "Four-ah", not "Far-oh" or "Fair-oh") you're greeted by the actress who also played the greeter in "Midsommar", so that would be a big "Nope" for me, I'd suggest turning right around so you don't end up in some kind of bear suit during a folk dance ritual surrounded by feasting cult members.  Yeah, I've seen a bunch of Bergman films, so this wouldn't be that far from the realm of possibility.  Other people can't wait to sleep in the same bedroom as the couple from "Scenes from a Marriage", which is a film that reportedly caused a million couples to get divorced - so I can't tell if this would be romantic or ironic or really pressing your luck, either way, I'd err on the side of caution and avoid this situation altogether. 

Tony and Chris Sanders are a couple that make movies, possibly together and possibly apart, or they write some screenplays together and also work on some separately, I'm not really sure of their process, but apparently it works for them as long as they give each other some space from time to time.  I really don't recommend that married couples work together, especially in the filmmaking arena - I've never seen this work successfully for a long period of time, maybe five years before the two people are just so sick of working together and living together that they have to separate to regain their sanity.  Like, there's a reason why people used to go to offices to work and deal with one set of people and then commute home and deal with a second set of people, this way their lives weren't just the same thing, all day, every day, and it worked for a good long time.  Both filmmaking married couples I've known well could not sustain this, and had to give up either the co-working or the co-habitating or both.  Just saying.  

(SIDE NOTE: I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Noah Baumbach - big fan - and Greta Gerwig, who recently got interviewed after a "Barbie" screening where I was the house manager.  If anybody can make this marriage-between-two-filmmakers thing work out, I'm hoping it's you two.  Greta was cast in "Bergman Island" as Chris at one point, opposite John Turturro and then Owen Wilson, and all three bowed out due to scheduling conflicts.)

And this makes it a bit difficult to tell the nature of Tony and Chris' relationship in this movie, at first it seems they're either long-time casual friends who vacation together, or people who have been married just a bit too long and can't wait to spread out and work in separate offices and sleep in separate beds for a change of pace. It's the latter, but the two situations seem like they have a lot in common.  In fact they've been together for so long that when Chris gets the opportunity to hang out with a young Swedish film student named Hampus, who offers to take her on a private tour of the island, including the beaches and the isolated spots, she ditches the Bergman safari date with her husband, and later talks to Tony about how "cute" the young man she swam in the ocean with was. Wow, that's honest and open and most marriages might not survive that, but these two either have some kind of open marriage, or an agreement that things won't go that far with other partners, or perhaps they're just past any kind of petty jealousy. 

(SECOND SIDE NOTE: While watching this film, I was also reminded of another famous couple, at least in nerdy circles, and I'm referring to Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, who did have something akin to an open marriage, or at least an understanding that over time they might fall in and out of love, or at least consider other partners while on tour, and man, they sure seemed to have a few things worked out, didn't they?  But then the pandemic hit and they got stuck in New Zealand with their son, and some time during the lockdown they announced their separation, then they reconciled a year later, and then a year after that, they announced their divorce. People learned all the details of their break-up via social media, but still I don't know if it was all due to too much time apart, or perhaps too much time together, or maybe the whole open marriage thing isn't such a great idea either, and even the people who think they have it all figured out maybe don't have it all figured out. I don't know, it's not for me to say. Everybody has to try to do what's best for themselves at any given time.)

Tony and Chris are both big Bergman fans, they love the movies, but Chris has to separate his career from his personal life, since he was married five times and had nine children with six different women, and he never took over any parenting duties when his kids were growing up.  Sure, it was a different time and the rules might be different for internationally renowned acclaimed filmmakers, but still.  Also Sweden is very liberal and recycles better than any other country on the planet, but perhaps they were slow in getting around to equal rights or helping men get in touch with their nurturing sides, even though they were first on the scene in gender-integration in pop groups, with ABBA being 50% male and 50% female. It's not for me to say. 

Anyway, a lot of people go there to visit Ingmar Bergman's grave, where he's buried with his fifth wife, Ingrid (but not the same Ingrid Bergman who was in "Casablanca" and who appeared in "Cries and Whispers" and who was the mother of Isabella Rossellini, this is a different one).  And I guess if you hang around Bergman's studio and offices and barns and windmills the legend has it that this will help you write your screenplay or finish that design project you're stuck on or maybe you'll be so inspired to have an affair that your spouse will be OK with, because maybe there's something in the air that brings all this about.  I mean, the guy wrote and directed over 60 films, and directed over 170 plays, and didn't retire until he was 85.  You can't pick up talent or motivation by osmosis, but you can walk in the path of genius, for whatever that's worth.

While on Faro, Tony screens his film for the Bergman fans, and Chris relates her screenplay ideas to her husband for "The White Dress", and this becomes the film-within-the-film, even though it's not a film yet, just an outline of one.  This is a giant red flag, because it's an admission that the story of Tony and Chris is just not interesting enough to sustain a whole film, so they needed to shoehorn another whole story in there.  In "The White Dress", a young woman named Amy travels to a friend's destination wedding, also on Faro Island.  Another guest at the wedding is Joseph, who she had a relationship with when they were both teens, and then they got back together as adults, only to break up again.  They're both in committed relationships, but that doesn't mean they can't fall back into bed together - people can be in love with more than one person at a time, after all, I think that's the take-away here from both stories. 

Amy and Joseph have their whirlwind romance together on Faro, but then reality sets back in and Joseph leaves for the mainland without saying goodbye, and Amy is heartbroken once again.  Perhaps the genesis of this story is that Chris is imagining, through her characters, what it would be like to cheat on Tony, who is frequently inattentive and critical of her work, it's just his nature.  But she knows deep down that while it would feel great to have an affair, if that ended she'd probably feel even worse than before, and she'd have jeopardized her marriage for nothing.  You can't have high highs without risking even lower lows, it seems, that's just reality, but then again, on the other hand, isn't it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?  Or was Shakespeare also full of crap? At least Bergman walked the walk, he didn't just talk the talk. 

The big problem here is that neither story really has an ending or any kind of resolution, instead reality blurs and in the final part, it's impossible to tell reality apart from fiction - Chris wakes up, suggesting that the last section of the film might be her dream, or perhaps that everything that occurred before that was a dream.  The actor who played Joseph in the film-within-the-film is now going by his name in real life, and is angry with Chris because during the film shoot he never got to appear in a scene inside Bergman's house.  This is weird, because there really was no film shoot, Chris merely described her screenplay to Tony and it wasn't finished yet - unless he's talking about the film shoot that produced "Bergman Island" instead of "The White Dress", but that would mean that this film is even more META than we thought it was.  Yep, that seems to be where we're headed, because Chris then has dinner with Anders and with Mia, who played Joseph and Amy, and then Mia leaves to catch the ferry and leave the island, which is opposite of what happened in "The White Dress", when Joseph left on the ferry and Amy stuck around. 

It's very confusing, to say the least, and this confirms my hunch that the director didn't quite know how to end either story, either "Bergman Island" or "The White Dress" so she just decided to throw all the board game pieces up in the air and hope they would land in a way that made some sense, only it didn't work and we're all more confused than ever.  You can say this maybe is a Bergman reference to a film like "Persona" or "Hour of the Wolf", but I think instead it's a giant cop-out.  The final character that gets introduced is Tony and Chris' daughter, June, but the IMDB listing for her makes it seem like she's part of the film-within-the-film, and well, umm, that doesn't make any sense either. 

Also Hampus, that cute (?) nerdy film student, is somehow part of both films, and that's hella confusing too.  I think finally, at long last, I gained some understanding by reading the trivia section on this film's IMDB listing.  DIrector Mia Hansen-Love based the film on her own 15-year relationship with another filmmaker, Olivier Assayas, and she visited the real Faro Island once a year for several years while writing this screenplay, so the Chris character is therefore based on herself and her own writer's block, and during her visits to Faro she met the real Hampus Nordenson, and he was so knowledgable about the island and so connected to how it all functions that she just had to include him in the film.  So there you go. 

Directed by Mia Hansen-Love

Also starring Vicky Krieps (last seen in "Beckett"), Tim Roth (last seen in "The Misfits"), Mia Wasikowska (last seen in "The Devil All the Time"), Hampus Nordenson, Anki Larsson (last seen in "Midsommar"), Kerstin Brunnberg, Melinda Kinnaman, Stig Björkman, Magnus Almqvist, Lily Taleb (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Wouter Hendrickx, Joel Spira, Clara Strauch, Matthew Lessner, Gabe Klinger, Grace Delrue with a cameo from Ingmar Bergman Jr.

RATING: 4 out of 10 unhelpful local residents

The Worst Person in the World

Year 16, Day 1 - 1/1/24 - Movie #4,601

BEFORE: Happy New Year 2024, and Happy New Movie Year 16!  

I suppose I'll have to explain why I'm coming back from break with a Norwegian dramedy that was Oscar-nominated two years ago for Best International Feature Film - did I lose my mind? Or am I just a glutton for punishment, setting myself up for a nearly impossible linking challenge?  Did I put this film on my list as a whim, or was I influenced by the HEAVY publicity campaign for this film around Oscar time in 2022?  I'm not sure...

Well, my process is the same as before, if you look at the films that kicked off my last few chains, which were all successful - in 2020 I started the year with "Whale Rider", which linked to just ONE other film on my list, via Cliff Curtis, to "Sunshine".  In 2021 I started the year with "Parasite", a Korean film that linked to just ONE other film on my list, which was "Okja", from the same director, Bong Joon Ho.  2022 began with "Nomadland", which linked via Frances McDormand to just ONE other film on my list, "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day", and my first film in 2023 was "Narrowsburg", a documentary that linked to, you guessed it, just ONE other film on my list, via Paul Borghese and archive footage of Robert De Niro, to "The Family". 

So, I went looking for other films that might fit the bill, something prominent but also perhaps obscure that linked to just ONE other film I'm tracking.  I made a list of about 10 possible "one-linkables", the most famous was "CODA", the Best Picture winner, and I do want to see that, but it only linked to a horror movie, "Slender Man", so that didn't seem right for January.  On to this film, which I had on my romance sub-list, however since it only links to, well, tomorrow's film, I would probably NEVER be able to work it into a month-long February romance chain - what would possibly be on the other side?  It would be a dead-end.  So it's off the romance list and it got moved into the lead-off position, the tricky thing then was coming up with a 28 to 30- long chain that would get me where I need to be on February 1.  The fact that I moved forward with THIS film should tell you that yes, I was able to work one out - and with a couple additions I padded it out to 30.  

Now, my annual (really) long-distance dedication, a lot of prominent actors and musicians passed away in 2023, so there's for sure TOO MANY to choose from.  There are people who I watched documentaries about, like Tina Turner and Sinead O'Connor and Tony Bennett (he was in that Carl Reiner doc about people active in their 90's) and Robbie Robertson from The Band.  Ray Liotta, who I just watched in "Cocaine Bear", Tom Wilkinson and Michael Gambon, Raquel Welch and Jane Birkin from classic 60's films, Richard Roundtree from the "Shaft" films and Alan Arkin from, well, everything. Piper Laurie from "Carrie" and "Twin Peaks" and Burt Young from the "Rocky" movies. Harry freakin' Belafonte and Melinda Dillon (the only person who could star in both "Close Encounters" and "A Christmas Story") and character actors like Lance Reddick and Andre Braugher. 

But I have to dedicate the next year to Paul Reubens, who will be most missed here at the Movie Year. I kicked off 2018 with his film "Pee-Wee's Big Holiday" (Movie #2,801) and I was a big fan of his Saturday morning Playhouse show, and I even got to see him live on Broadway not TOO long ago.  So it's been five years since he kicked off a Movie Year, then carried over to the next film, which was "Matilda".  Sad to see you go, Pee-Wee, the playhouse won't be the same without you.  Globey and Chairy and Magic Screen all miss you, too. 

THE PLOT: The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

AFTER: Oh, it was SUCH a good call to watch this one after the ball dropped on New Year's Eve.  The turning over of the calendar page is symbolic of starting over, the new year is full of possibilities and untapped potential, like literally ANYTHING can happen in 2024.  Plus it's a time when people pass resolutions about ways they're planning to improve their lives, from spending more time at the gym to spending less time on their phone, or vowing that THIS is going to be the year they get that dream job or find new love or even just to come up with a new life plan or learn to be content with the path they're already on.  Whatever happens or doesn't happen, the space between the years has come to be a time for reflection, if nothing else. 

Julie is a medical student in Oslo who's become disenchanted with med school and transfers to psychology, and then a few months later decides that she'd rather be a photographer.  Sure, it could happen, I know a lot of people maybe find medical school to be too tough, so many drop out.  But photography?  Her mother doesn't say it out loud, but clearly she thinks it's an odd left turn for her daughter.  She also does some writing, and gets a job in a book store, you know, the one near the university, until she can figure out the photography career.  

Her relationships sort of follow the same pattern over these four years - she starts a relationship with Aksel, a comic book artist who's 15 years older, and they move in together, but soon they start to clash over the idea of having a child.  He's for it, but she's against it, as there are things she wants to do in life first, the problem is, she's not exactly sure what those things are.  One night Julie crashes a wedding reception and hangs out with Elvind, a barista.  They hit if off, but since they're both in relationships that seem to be working they engage in intimacy exercises (like smelling each other's sweat, or inhaling each other's cigarette smoke) but NOT sex.  Because that would be weird, they only just met. 

Julie then turns 30, and perhaps that's a trigger, because she finds herself dreaming about Elvind and falling out of love with Aksel, who's always complaining that his comic strip character "Bobcat" got turned into a movie and they sanitized it for kids. The American equivalent would maybe be the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which was a cool, gritty comic book back in the day before becoming a very safe cartoon. Elvind happens to come into the bookstore, and that's another trigger, because soon Julie's breaking up with Aksel and Elvind ditches his overly liberal girlfriend Sunniva who's all about vegetarianism, combating climate change and fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples.  Yeah, good luck with all that.  Julie doesn't want kids, Elvind doesn't want kids, everything seems to be back on track, it's just that the break-ups make Aksel and Elvind describe themselves as feeling like "The worst person in the world."  I get that, break-ups are tough, whether you're the breaker or the breakee, when there's another person your girlfriend is seeing or even worse, when there's not.  That means she just wants to break up with you because she can't stand you. 

Oh, there's more heartbreak and anguish to come, because Julie learns she's pregnant, just before she finds out from Aksel's brother that he has incurable cancer.  She goes to see him, but man, how awkward is it to go visit the man who wanted to have kids with her, and tell him that she's unexpectedly expecting?  But this all feels REAL somehow, like this all maybe happened to someone the writers knew, from the inadvertent drug trip to the dream about running through town to get to the coffee shop.  Renate Reinsve reminded me of some kind of Norwegian Rose Byrne, and I wonder why someone hasn't made an English-language version of this yet.  Or is this already the Norwegian version of the "Bridget Jones' Diary" films? 

A lot about this film spoke directly to me - like Aksel being older and realizing that the things he enjoyed when he was younger, like comic books, no longer held much appeal for him, but he still bought and read them out of habit. Yeah, I feel that. Plus my career's been stuck in neutral for some time, 30 years running the same animation studio, and even though I started a new second job two years ago in a college movie theater, there's not much room for advancement there, not unless I'm willing to wait a few years for someone to quit so I can move up. I'm actually doing well financially, when the theater is very busy I can work a lot of shifts and so my bank balance is back to pre-pandemic levels, but the animation director I work for is so far in debt after making a new feature that I'm convinced he's going to have to shut down the studio any day now. Looking for a new primary job after 30 years seems very stressful, and I wish I could just work part-time but I can't afford it.  I'm too young to retire and too old to start something new, it seems. 

But it seems the valid message here is that not all career paths are linear, same goes for relationships if you practice serial monogamy. There are times in life where you find yourself right back where you started, or in the same place but with a different person, or in the same place at a different company.  Wait, didn't I just leave this scene?  I guess wherever you go, well, there you are.  So I'm trying to look on the bright side, I'm sure I wasn't the only person who lost a job because of the pandemic and had to scramble to find something else to do, and I'm damn sure I wasn't the only person to get divorced and had to put my life back together in a new way.  There's something to be said for treating parts of your life like a farm field that has to lay fallow for a season or two so things can grow again - or treating your career like a forest, you might have to burn down part of it so the rest of it can thrive and grow back someday. 

And if you DON'T know where you're going, as George Harrison once sang, then any road will take you there.  But you'd better start soon, because you just don't know how long the journey will be. Look, when I was a kid I loved animals, and I thought I'd grow up to be a veterinarian, then I realized that meant operating on them, cutting in to them, and I realized that was not for me.  Then I thought I'd be a pilot, but realized how tough THAT was - so OK, my Mom said I was good at impressions and I'd be the next Rich Little, which clearly the world didn't need.  Music, singing a capella, I tried it for a while, and it's fun but not a solid career.  Ah, but when filmmaking came into my head, I figured I'd cracked the case. Guidance counselors warned me against it because I wasn't the most social kid in high school, and filmmaking is all about being social and networking and getting along with people.  Well, OK, they were right, I'm still not good at that, but I've had a career in independent filmmaking for 33 years, so who was more right in the end, them or me?  I can stand on my record and if the ride ends tomorrow, I can still be proud of what I've done, but then I'll have to start something else, that's all. 

Directed by Joachim Trier

Also starring Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum, Hans Olav Brenner, Helene Bjorneby, Vidar Sandem, Maria Grazia Di Meo, Lasse Gretland, Karen Roise Kielland, Marianne Krogh, Thea Stabell, Deniz Kaya, Eia Skjonsberg

RATING: 6 out of 10 signed graphic novels