The Good German

Year 14, Day 322 - 11/18/22 - Movie #4,287

BEFORE: I'm done at the theater for the next two weeks, I won't have to work there until December 1. Just two more shifts at the animation studio and four more movies, and I'm on break for Thanksgiving.  I feel like I just got back from our vacation down south, but the calendar's telling me that was almost a month ago, I guess time really flies when you're busy and/or having fun. 

This film's been on the books for a while, or at least it feels like it - I recorded it off of WNET, the PBS station here in NYC. Most Saturday nights they run movies, one classic film, one short and one "indie", whatever that last term means these days, introduced by a film studies professor from Columbia.  I keep an eye on their programming, because sometimes they'll run a film that I haven't seen, or one that I have which I saw on a streaming service or a channel that doesn't allow me to dub a film to DVD (there's a secret signal some channels run that prevents copying). PBS is the PUBLIC Broadcasting System, so their airwaves belong to all of us, you can copy their programming and add it to your library, free of extra charge, because your tax dollars paid for the programming, you already own it, even if you didn't know it. Pro tip. 

Cate Blanchett carries over from "Don't Look Up". 

THE PLOT: While in post-war Berlin to cover the Potsdam Conference, an American military journalist is drawn into a murder investigation that involves his former mistress and his driver. 

AFTER: This film was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and while I haven't seen THAT many of his films - beyond "Erin Brockovich" and "Out of Sight", just the "Ocean's Eleven" films, "Contagion", "Haywire", "Logan Lucky" and "The Laundromat" - I expect better than this from him. Just me?  I couldn't really get into this film at all, I found it very hard to follow, and yet somehow very thin on plot at the same time.  Plus he insisted on making this film using the same techniques as a filmmaker from the 1940's would use - OK, so he's a big fan of "Casablanca", but do you have to limit yourself to the same technology as that film?  I found this very distracting. 

First off, the film's in black and white.  Not a deal-breaker for me, but I know there are younger people today who simply WILL NOT watch a film if it's not in color.  I know, I know, so much classic film was made before the common use of color film, it's like they're closing off their minds to some of the best work.  But on the other hand, I can kind of see where they're coming from, because we have to keep looking forward, not back, and we not only have color now, but we have digital technology that can be used to make, say, a scene of someone driving a car look very realistic, not that fakey rear-projection stuff that was used in the 40's and 50's to keep actors safe.  Jeez, I watched a bit of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" a few weeks ago and the shots of the cast driving when they weren't really driving drove me a bit mad.  The cuts to the stunt drivers were just so OBVIOUS, how did I not notice them when I was a kid?  Now of course I didn't expect them to send Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney up in a REAL airplane, it's not safe or feasible to do that - so I know that the actors are really in a fake cockpit that's up on gimbels, and some poor studio grunt is shaking the fake plane back and forth to simulate motion.  I hope that guy at least got union benefits. 

So why make a film in 2006 that LOOKS like it was made in 1945?  Well, of course it's set in 1945 so in a way that makes sense.  But it doesn't look like the REAL 1945, it looks like the way movies looked in 1945, and there's a big difference.  They did have COLOR in the real world in 1945, by the way, so if you're going to make "Dunkirk" or "Saving Private Ryan" in modern times and simulate World War II, those films should be in color, and they are. Preserving the mythical 1945 that was seen on film rather than the real 1945 doesn't seem to make much sense, especially when it then ends up looking so fake.

I also fell asleep several times watching this movie, which yeah, may have had something to do with the Imperial pumpkin stout I drank a few hours before - but it's also not a good sign that the plot didn't hold my attention.  The Potsdam Conference was a real thing, in the closing days of World War II the President of the U.S. met with Churchill and Stalin in Potsdam to start drawing up plans for how to divide up Germany's territory and monitor it, following the country's surrender just a few weeks before.  Honestly, this sounds like the absolute most boring part of the whole war, why would anybody want to make a movie with this as the backdrop?  The fighting's OVER.  

But in the midst of this, there's some hubbub that turns out to be about the German rocket scientists, and the fact that both the Americans and the Russians want to get them out of Germany and put them to work.  The main character is there to write about the conference, but his attention keeps getting pulled away by an encounter with his ex-mistress, who's currently working as a prostitute but also is involved with his driver. The driver seems to be mixed up in a bunch of shady stuff, like claiming that his girlfriend's late husband, who was the assistant to one of those rocket scientists, is still alive and needs to be smuggled out of the country.  Why the driver is doing this is anybody's guess, but when he turns up dead in the river then it's a sign that maybe something else is going on here. 

One of the dirty secrets about the German rocket program is that slave laborers from concentration camps were used to dig underground tunnels for storage sites and then those that survived were forced to work in rocket factories.  Those camps had a higher mortality rate than most other concentration camps, and that's really saying something. And then some of the scientists who led the German research were recruited by the U.S. government for what became the lunar expedition projects of NASA. And their pasts working for the Nazis were overlooked - yeah, let that one sink in for a bit.  Other engineers went to work for the Soviets, who remember got a man (and woman!) into space before the U.S. did - Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, while there hasn't even been ONE American woman on the moon yet. 

I think that's the important take-away here, not the murder investigation that goes nowhere or the doomed relationships that Lena has with - well, everybody.  The whole film's really a bummer, and part of that is the setting, taking place in post-war Germany where it seems that every woman is a whore and the only people getting rich are the ones smuggling food and everyone's just getting by pawning the items of dead people.  Yeah, I suppose it's very important that we remember this period in history, but it still seems like stuff that we'd all rather forget about. 

To be fair, I don't remember being all that impressed by "Casablanca" either when I first watched it. 

Also starring George Clooney (last seen in "The Midnight Sky"), Tobey Maguire (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Beau Bridges (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Tony Curran (last seen in "Outlaw King"), Leland Orser (last seen in "The Gambler"), Jack Thompson (last seen in "The Light Betwen Oceans"), Robin Weigert (last seen in "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee"), Ravil Isyanov (last seen in "Defiance"), Dave Power (last seen in "Frailty"), Christian Oliver, Don Pugsley (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Dominic Comperatore, John Roeder, Gian Franco Tordi (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), David Willis (last seen in "There WIll Be Blood"), with archive footage of Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, Harry S. Truman. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 secret journals

Don't Look Up

Year 14, Day 321 - 11/17/22 - Movie #4,286

BEFORE: I'm finally getting around to this one, which was the big hit of awards season, JUST about 12 months ago. Sure, I fast-tracked "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" to the top of my list, and Marvel movies also get to board in Zone 1 around here, but for most other films, if I get to watch it within a year of release, that's an accomplishment.  Yes, this film was nominated for Best Picture of 2021, but ten films were, and after watching this one, I'll only have seen half of them.  I have three more on my DVR: "Belfast", "Licorice Pizza" and "Nightmare Alley". If I can get to those early next year ("Belfast" seems like a shoo-in for St. Patrick's Day) then that will just leave "Drive My Car" and "CODA", the Best Picture winner. Maybe I should start out the year with "CODA", since I started this year with "Nomadland" and the year before with "Parasite", but we'll see.  That would mean pulling the old "Sign up for Apple+ TV, watch the film, quit Apple+ TV" scam, which I've already pulled twice.  

I can't help but wonder if I missed the viewing window on this one, though, I haven't heard anybody talk about it in months.  I think nearly everybody watched it that same week on Netflix, and I just couldn't, thanks to my stupid system.  C'est la vie. Sarah Silverman carries over from "The Bob's Burgers Movie"

THE PLOT: Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn humankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth. 

AFTER: Well, the cat's out of the bag, naturally, because by now everybody knows that this film isn't REALLY about a comet headed for Earth - and really, Thank God, because that's been done in "Armageddon", "Deep Impact" and most recently "Greenland" (asteroid, comet, whatever...) and didn't need to be rehashed.  No, the comet here is a giant metaphor for climate change (formerly called global warming, but again, whatever) and they really sort of tipped their hand with the heavy-handed symbolism, because of all the people in this film who refuse to do anything about the comet, because it's a similarly invisible problem that most people would prefer to not have to wrap their brains around.  

But maybe I AM watching this film at the right time, because since this film came out, another group of people have emerged who similarly don't want to acknowledge facts, or science, and have come up with their own methods of dealing-with-by-not-dealing-with, that's right, I'm talking about "election deniers".  Honestly, it's bad enough that there are people out there in the Heartland of America who believe that the 2020 election was stolen, not because they have evidence of this, but just because SOMEONE ELSE told them that it was.  And so they exist in some imaginary alt-universe scenario where Trump is still their president, and JFK Jr. is still alive and just waiting for the right moment to come back and endorse Trump, provided that he chooses Bigfoot as his running mate. Hey, it could happen. Also, liberals are drinking the blood of frightened babies and the economy will get better as soon as more tax cuts for the rich are legislated.  

These groups of people seem to be, to a certain degree, cut from the same cloth.  Climate change deniers, election deniers, and sure, let's throw Flat-earthers in there as well.  They have so much in common, in that no matter how much scientific evidence you show them, they prefer the lie, because it somehow comforts them.  Or they WANT to see the conspiracy that they imagine is all around them, because it, I don't know, gives them a focus or something. These groups of people make compulsive gamblers look really smart, because someone DOES win the lottery almost every time, even though any one person has only a one-in 292 million change of winning Powerball, that's not zero.  Hope springs eternal. 

The destruction of Earth's environment, however, is inevitable, UNLESS we take action.  That's the point here, if we do nothing to improve the situation, like reduce greenhouse gases or stop dumping plastic in the ocean, we're certainly headed for disaster, or at least a world without seafood.  But each individual can't SEE that happening, so it's easy to pretend that it's not.  We have to trust the scientist who are tracking average temperatures and noticing the trends, and realize that the time to fix the roof is BEFORE it starts raining, because once it does, it's too late.  Oh, also, we're all going to die, if not collectively then individually, but absolutely nobody wants to think about that on a daily basis, so I'll admit, we can't spend every day thinking about our own deaths, because then we'd never get out of bed and get stuff done.  It's there at the end, just waiting for you, and while I'm not in favor of dieting and exercise as a rule, I also try to avoid any behaviors that might cut my time short.  If you want to take up jogging or eat a bunch of whole-grain cereals, I'll support your decision, but then you never know if a car will hit you while you're out on a run, or you're going to choke on your granola. Just saying. 

If you're not in the know about the metaphor here, then what's your take on the film?  Can you just watch it as a parody of "Armageddon" and other disaster movies?  Does it just seem like a farce based on current events, like the tech billionaire character who also has a fleet of rockets at his disposal?  I guess he's supposed to be some kind of Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk spoof, but he made his money through smart phones, so throw a little Steve Jobs into the mix?  This guy also has the President's ear, so when he learns that the comet heading toward Earth is composed of rare metals that are worth a few trillion, that's the argument for aborting the mission that would knock the comet off course.  Instead, the new plan is to blow it up much CLOSER to the planet, and then harvest the fragments for their elemental make-up.  Gee, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Of course, some notable things have happened since this film was released - for one thing, NASA sent a missile into space to change the course of an asteroid.  You know, just in case we determine in the future that there's a need to do this exact thing.  And it worked, they managed to move the asteroid that wasn't heading toward Earth at all, AND they managed to NOT ironically set it hurtling toward Earth, which would have been massively counter-productive, and probably kept the agency from getting more funding in the future.  Also, that might have killed us all.  I don't want to undersell this, because getting any kind of rocket out into space and hitting an object, or landing something on the moon or another planet is extremely complex.  The stuff in outer space is always moving around, so you have to aim the rocket at the place where the moon or that planet is going to be, not where it is now.  How do they do that, especially since we humans on Earth are always moving, too, the Earth spins and also revolves around the sun, and the moon is spinning and revolving around the Earth, and together the whole solar system is moving around the galaxy, circling this giant black hole perhaps, and then the whole galaxy is floating around in the universe, so there's no solid point out there, no frame of reference.  How astronomers keep from going mad is beyond my comprehension.  

Also, President Biden made sure that the U.S. rejoined the Paris accords, and so maybe, just maybe, we've got a shot at stopping the rate of climate change, and then maybe we can discuss ways of reversing it.  That's the good news, that we're not all going to die en masse in the next 10 years, we might make it to 2050 or 2070 if we can re-double our efforts.  However, reaching the eight billion mark in population isn't going to make things any easier, so I think any real discussion about combating climate change also needs to include efforts to promote zero population growth.  Umm, pro-lifers, you're not really helping here, so could you please look at the big picture and get with the program? 

The film points out other things that are keeping us from focusing on the planet's problems - like our fascination with celebrities and scandals. It's food for thought, for sure, and we're all guilty of it, myself included.  What am I doing to save the planet on a daily basis, when my main concern each day is just to try and clear my DVR or watch the next movie in line?  I try to be a good person, and I don't own a car, so there's that, but on a concrete level, a day-to-day basis, my actions are probably only slightly less harmful overall than the next person's.  I've got to live with that guilt now, but as I said, I'm trying. I'm not going to quit my job and go tie myself to a tree to save the rainforest, or join a protest against coal and oil companies, that feels like a lot of work and aggravation that I don't need.  But apathy is the silent killer, right?  

But if you take any hot-button issue from over the last few years, climate change or racial injustice, or illegal immigration, and examine our country's lack of progress, that's when I start to lose hope again.  Remember the last administration's immigration issues?  Trump's promise to build a wall?  As a country, we couldn't even determine what TYPE of wall to build, let alone how big or how long or where exactly it needed to be.  And then when they DID build a wall, it was only a very short section of wall, and then they found out that the foundation that was raising money to build the wall was corrupt as hell, and half the money ended up in Steve Bannon's pocket. Yeah, so, if that happened with the wall, I don't really have much faith in the effort to fight climate change, especially if half of the politicians and citizens continue to deny that there's a problem that needs to be solved.  

Look, I hope we go down swinging, I really do. But any action taking requires a concerted effort, and getting everybody on the same page, and really, that's the difficult part, especially when there's not ONE issue on the books that everybody agrees with. As Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand", and essentially that's what the U.S. is, a divided house, a 50-50 split on every single issue, and that's what keeps anything from getting done.  The midterm elections figure prominently in this film, and though I didn't plan it this way, the news of the last week, the results of the 2022 midterms, only highlight my point here.  So maybe I watched the film at the perfect moment, after all.  Who's to say?  

Also starring Leonardo DiCaprio (last seen in "Spielberg"), Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "Like Crazy"), Meryl Streep (last seen in "Becoming Mike Nichols"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain"), Rob Morgan (last seen in "The Unforgivable"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke"), Mark Rylance (last seen in "The Gunman"), Tyler Perry (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Timothée Chalamet (last seen in "A Rainy Day in New York"), Ron Perlman (last seen in "Monster Hunter"), Ariana Grande, Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Himesh Patel (last seen in "Yesterday"), Melanie Lynskey (last seen in "Shattered Glass"), Michael Chiklis (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Tomer Sisley (last seen in "We're the Millers"), Paul Guilfoyle (last seen in "Spotlight"), Robert Joy (last seen in "The Goldfinch"), Jack Alberts, Ting, Lance A. Williams (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Tamara Hickey (ditto), Shimali de Silva, Hettienne Park (last seen in "Private Life"), Erik Parillo, Robert Radochia, Conor Sweeney, Ross Partridge (last seen in "The High Note"), Staci Roberts-Steele (also last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Chris Everett (last seen in "I Care a Lot") Annette Miller (last seen in "The Company Men"), Allyn Burrows (ditto), Stephen Thorne, Georgia Lyman (last seen in "Infinitely Polar Bear"), Patricia Dehaney, Ben Sidell, Omar Moustafa Ghonim, Meghan Leathers, Ashleigh Banfield (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Richard Snee, Jon Glaser (last heard in "Wine Country"), Odis Spencer, Alvin Keith, Kevin Craig West (last seen in "The Place Beyond the Pines"), Alison Weller, Rob Levesque (last seen in "Ava"), Dee Nelson, Beau Allen, Tori Davis Lawlor, Jonathan Kobs (last seen in "Instant Family"), Ishaan Khattar, Brian Anastasio (also last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Billy Concha (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), Edward Fletcher (last seen in "The Trial of the Chicago 7"), with a cameo from Chris Evans (last heard in "Lightyear") and the voice of Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Human Capital")

RATING: 6 out of 10 Xanax tablets

The Bob's Burgers Movie

Year 14, Day 319 - 11/15/22 - Movie #4,285

BEFORE: I won a court case today, which is kind of an odd feeling, but it's all based on a big misunderstanding.  Back in late July it looked like the theater where I work part-time was going to shut down for a few weeks, for roof repairs.  No screenings for a month, so no shifts, no pay for me, in my mind I was being temporarily laid off, so I looked into collecting partial unemployment, which was very helpful to me during the pandemic.  I knew if I kept my hours at my main job under a certain amount, I'd qualify for a small payment each week, to get me through the summer. BUT, there was some kind of glitch in the system that prevented me from filing against my CURRENT theater employer, and my claim was then filed against my PREVIOUS theater employer. Whether this happened because I clicked the wrong button on the web-site, or the system just doesn't allow a person to file against a current employer, I'm not really sure.  

I ended up not collecting any money this summer, because after I filed, New York State has a two-week waiting period before anyone collects any payments, and after those two weeks the roof repairs were done, and I was back on the job. So I got zero dollars for my claim, plus two weeks off during which I started to go a little batty from inactivity all over again.  BUT my ex-employer decided to challenge the claim against them, on the grounds that I left voluntarily, I quit and wasn't fired.  That's 100% accurate, which meant they were right to deny the claim I accidentally filed against them.  So I was given a hearing date of today, and all I had to do was be available by phone at 1 pm - I was all set to throw myself on the mercy of the court, admit I (or the Dept. of Labor's web-site) messed up, and fold like a cheap suit. 

BUT, the hearing came around, I got the phone call from the Dept. of Labor, and the other party didn't answer their phone.  So the plaintiff was deemed absent, and I won by default.  Again, this carried no monetary victory for me, and no loss for the plaintiff, just a slightly higher percentage on their unemployment taxes in the future - and I probably can't show my face at that other movie theater for a while.  I have to wonder if justice was really served here, probably not, and I say this as the winning (?) party.  How much of life, as the saying goes, is just showing up?  You can't speak for yourself or plead your case in any situation if you don't.  

I feel good about this only because that's how I see myself, as the guy who shows up.  For the past few months I've taken every shift that the theater has offered me, and some co-workers have moved on or taken other jobs or made themselves unavailable for weeks at a time, while with the exception of one vacation week in October, I've been the guy who shows up.  Morning, afternoon, even locking up the building after midnight, I'm on it. And it's starting to show in the paychecks, which is nice - the check I'll get in December for my November shifts is going to help me get through the holiday season, for sure.  No money came from unemployment, but I think that's probably for the best - since I misfiled and didn't deserve it, I probably would have felt like I needed to give it back. But still, in the eyes of the law, I'm a winner today. 

Kevin Kline carries over from "Here Today". This makes four appearances for Mr. Kline this year, I wanted to make sure he'll get name-checked in my year-end wrap-up, and three is usually the cut-off. There might be a couple more people on the bubble who will benefit from another appearance tonight, and with just five films to go until Thanksgiving and only 15 films left in this Movie Year, it's kind of now or never. 

THE PLOT: The Belchers try to save their restaurant from closing as a sinkhole forms in front of it, while the kids try to solve a mystery that could help save their family's restaurant. 

AFTER: For me this is one of those "MUST SEE" movies that I had to get in before the end of the year - "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" and tomorrow's film are the two others. After that, I"m basically coasting until it's time to watch a couple Christmas movies. My blog will probably go dark for the rest of November and I'll watch the last ten movies for the year in December, at least that's one way to do it.  I need some more time to watch TV and clear my DVR, I made a dent this past weekend but it's filling up yet again. Is November still sweeps month or something? 

(I was ALMOST unable to watch this movie - I recorded it on my DVR, but about 20 minutes in, the picture started freezing up and only advancing about every 10 seconds, making it impossible to watch. I stopped the film and switched over to HBO on Demand, only to encounter the same problem at the same point in the film. WTF?  OK, fine, I know the film's on Hulu, too, so I'll just turn on the PlayStation and watch it on Hulu through the gaming system....  I got an error message that Hulu is NO LONGER compatible with our PS3, so even that was impossible.  I gave up and fell asleep, and I had to finish the movie this morning on Hulu on my PHONE.  Not my preferred way of watching any film, but damn it, I got it done.)

Anyway, I make sure to catch the animation block every Sunday on FOX, I still watch "The Simpsons", "Family Guy" and "Bob's Burgers", and I picked up the new show "The Great North", which is made by the same production company as "Bob's Burgers", it's just focused on an unusual family in Alaska that runs a fishing boat rather than one in New Jersey (?) that runs a burger restaurant. (I had to look it up, the fictional town of Wagstaff is most likely a riff on Ocean City, NJ, according to the interwebs.). But the TV show "Bob's Burgers" is really a play on "The Simpsons", it for sure never would have existed if the show about Homer, Marge and their kids hadn't been running for 25 years (it's now 37, of course, but when "Bob's Burgers" started 11 years ago, it was more like 25.)

The adventures of the Belchers, like the Simpsons, are evergreen - the kids never get any older or advance to the next grade at school, meanwhile there's a Halloween and/or Thanksgiving episode every year which suggests that they SHOULD be aging, but they're not. Maybe in the final episode of "The Simpsons" in the year 2075 the characters will realize that they've been stuck in a time loop for almost a century, and they'll step out of it and all crumble to dust due to their advanced ages. Probably not. The weekly adventures of the Belchers have to similarly "reset" them at the end of every episode, the narrative pieces have to go back into the box so that all of the episodes can be syndicated and broadcast in any order, so no long linear storylines that change the characters in any permanent way are allowed.  So it's refreshing that this movie actually takes a couple baby steps to inch that narrative forward, it's the last day of school before summer, and Tina wants to make things official with her prospective partner, Jimmy Jr., so she can have a hot boyfriend summer, whatever that entails. 

But the financial problems of the struggling burger restaurant owners are also evergreen, here Bob and Linda have to make a quarterly payment on their loan, and their request for an extension is turned down, which means they have to sell a lot of burgers in the next week, and this suddenly becomes impossible when a sinkhole opens in their street, and customers are unable to enter the front door.  Nobody seems willing to walk through the alley to the side entrance, because the alley of course smells like trash and pee. But if they could convince their landlord, Calvin Fischoeder, to let them slide on the rent, then maybe they could pay the bank instead.  But Mr. Fischoeder also owns the amusement park at the neighboring wharf, and since the body of the missing carnival worker, Cotton Candy Dan, was found in the sinkhole, their landlord gets arrested for murder, so that's more bad news for the Belchers. Their landlord is going to need bail money, so he's less likely to let them slide on the rent.  

Here's where the "Bob's Burgers" show starts to differentiate itself from "The Simpsons".  "The Simpsons" has a set voice-cast of about 7 or 8 people who perform most of the voices (Hank Azaria no longer does the ethnic voices, that became problematic, so the cast grew a little bit when they found new voices for Apu and Lenny.). Beyond that, there's usually 1 or 2 mega-stars in any given episode, every A-Lister from Helen Mirren to Paul McCartney has put in an appearance.  "Bob's Burgers", on the other hand, has a steady group of 6 or 7 regular voices, and then the rest of the cast is usually a bunch of stand-up comics, plus an occasional semi-regular like Megan Mullally or Zach Galifianakis. PLUS, the great Kevin Kline as Calvin Fischoeder - I don't know how they landed him, but if you can get an Oscar-WINNER to voice the show's landlord, then that's what you do.  And he's great in the role, whatever they're paying him, I'm sure it's not enough. 

The plot for the movie is very Fischoeder-centric, which is great.  Calvin and his brother Felix are the entitled rich people in a world of struggling store owners and constantly-closing businesses, plus all the little people who work at the school and run stands at the carnival. And for good measure, there's a THIRD Fischoeder in the mix here, Grover Fischoeder, the cousin (?) of the two brothers, and he's also their lawyer and sycophantic hanger-on.  Great, I'm there for it. I don't want to give too much away here, but while Bob relucantly agrees to sell burgers from a makeshift food cart inside Wonder Wharf, the three kids set out to solve the murder of Cotton Candy Dan, because if they can prove their landlord's innocence, then maybe they can save the restaurant. 

The initial release date for the film was in July 2020, and then it was re-scheduled for April 2021.  But then it was decided to pull the film from release AGAIN, and wait until audiences felt safe coming back to theaters in person.  So that meant sitting on the shelf for nearly two years, the film was made after production ended on the show's eleventh season, and now the show's airing season 13. (I just read that if you watch season 12's episodes closely, you can see the sidewalk outside the restaurant slowly deteriorating, which foreshadows the sinkhole.). But that's all OK, any episode takes place during "story time", which is whatever time makes the most sense at the moment. Much like "The Simpsons", the show made a decision to recast the black characters with black voice actors, and one actor was fired from the series because he participated in the January 6 Capitol Insurrection, apparently. 

Other notable notes: the film includes the first appearance of Bob's mother in a flashback, Paul Rudd voices Tina's imaginary horse, Jericho, and Jordan Peele has a cameo as Felix's girlfriend, Fanny.  Jordan Peele also directed "Us", which I watched a few weeks ago, and which also features a secret underworld beneath a seaside carnival. That's an odd coincidence. 

Anyway, if you enjoy the TV show then you simply HAVE to watch the movie.  And even if you don't, give it a try because knowing the characters from the show isn't required, you could just drop into the Belcher's lives here and the film will give you everything you need to know.  The show has acquired a very strong fan base, I always see people at Comic-Con dressed as members of the Belcher family, girls dressed like Louise and guys dressed like Tina, men wearing aprons like Bob and women wearing the infamous "spice rack" that Linda sported in one episode.  It's all good, like Comic-Con the show accepts fans from all genders, preferences and identifications. 

Still, part of me wonders, if they came after white voice actors for playing ethnic roles, at some point is cancel culture going to go after men who voice female characters?  After all, those men are taking jobs away from capable female voice actors.  Just saying. 

Also starring the voices of H. Jon Benjamin (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), John Roberts, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), David Wain (last seen in "Thanks for Sharing"), Zach Galifianakis (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Larry Murphy, Gary Cole (last seen in "The Gift" (2000)), Paul F. Tompkins (last seen in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story"), John Q. Kubin, Nick Kroll (last heard in "The Addams Family 2'), Craig Anton, David Herman, Jaime Moyer, Brian Huskey (last seen in "Father Figures"), Bobby Tisdale (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Stephanie Beatriz (last seen in "In The Heights"), Jordan Peele (last heard in "Us"), Rob Huebel (last seen in "How It Ends"), Parvesh Cheena (last seen in "The High Note"), Nicole Byer (last heard in "Vivo"), Robert Ben Garant (last heard in "Mr. Peabody & Sherman"), Laura Silverman (last heard in "Nerdland"), Aziz Ansari (last heard in "What's Your Number?"), Sam Seder, Paul Rudd (last seen in "Adrienne"), Ron Lynch, Jenny Slate (last seen in "On the Rocks"), Andy Kindler, Sarah Silverman (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), Ashley Nicole Black, Brooke Dillman. 

RATING: 7 out of 10 second-shift carnies

Here Today

Year 14, Day 318 - 11/14/22 - Movie #4,284

BEFORE: I spent the whole day yesterday working at a documentary festival, I don't mind these long 14-hour shifts, especially when the money comes in to my account.  But they are draining, and physically I may be too old for the job. I think maybe it's only a matter of time before something gives out, either my legs, knees or shoulders.  I'm getting exercise, which is important at any age, but especially important for someone in their 50's - but I just wonder if I'm getting too much exercise.

There was extra security at some of the shows, because one documentary was about Ukraine and another was about school shootings, so jeez, anything could happen at one of those screenings. Later there was a doc about Julian Assange's father trying to free him, which I didn't realize was also a controversial issue - but the protestors disrupted the screening of the film about Ukraine.  Actually they disrupted the panel after the film, which means the protestors PAID for tickets, sat through the whole film, then caused a ruckus during the panel after the film.  Jeez, I would like to believe in the power of documentary filmmaking to think that maybe their views could have been changed while watching the film, but apparently not.  Thankfully there was no violence at the theater, the two protestors were just escorted out, and honestly that's the best outcome we could have hoped for. I can think of several ways it could have been worse. 

Kevin Kline carries over from "The Starling". 

THE PLOT: When veteran comedy writer Charlie Burnz meets New York street singer Emma Payge, they form an unlikely yet hilarious and touching friendship that kicks the generation gap aside and redefines the meaning of love and trust. 

AFTER: Well, this film keeps the theme from last week going, it's another film where a person has their life unexpectedly transformed by a chance encounter with a stranger.  Pretty much every film last week used that as a plot point or a jumping-off point, from "Kajillionaire" to "The Starling", and here it is again.  An older comedy writer with some form of dementia has lunch with a younger woman who gives him a new outlook on life.  It's extremely contrived, Charlie participated in some form of charity auction where people bid to have lunch with him, and thus are two strangers thrown together.  Emma Payge doesn't know who Charlie is, but her boyfriend bid at the auction, and she's recently broken up with the boyfriend, but kept his prize somehow.  

So these two people have nothing, NOTHING in common, except they're both performers in a way, she's a singer for an amateur jazz band or something, they play on the streets mostly, but they're looking to go out on tour in the near future.  Sure, that happens, right?  Street performers go out on tour like big-time music acts with album deals?  I'm just kidding, that never happens. This film doesn't really worry too much about reflecting reality, so it's probably best not to focus too much on the details, or I'll be here all night listing NITPICK POINTS.  Charlie Burnz is a comedy writer for a show called "This Just In" which seems very much like "SNL" in many ways, which makes sense because Billy Crystal spent time on that NBC skit show, and one presumes he was a writer there as well as a performer.  So I trust him on depicting what goes on behind the scenes of a show like "SNL", except for the fact that there ARE no other shows like "SNL", they've all given up over the years, so how does "This Just In" fit into reality?  It can't. 

Crystal co-wrote this screenplay with Alan Zweibel, and I've got a bunch of questions about the parts of the film that are NOT related to the sketch comedy show within the movie.  How much of this film is grounded in reality?  Crystal plays a widower here, one with dementia, and I don't think those elements come from his personal life, so then where do they come from?  What was the inspiration here?  Does it matter? Should it matter? Well, yes, I suppose, if someone's going to write a film about an aging comedy writer with dementia, then I want to know if that's based on anyone in particular.  But also, on another level, it's really none of my business. 

That lunch meeting goes terribly wrong, as Emma orders a big seafood platter and then has a terrible allergic reaction to it.  It's physical comedy, sure, I get it, but does it make sense?  Why would she order shellfish if she's allergic to it?  Maybe she didn't KNOW that she had a shellfish allergy, but that would mean that she's never eaten it before, and if she's never eaten it before, why would she order it, because then she wouldn't know if she liked it or not. And I've already thought about this much more than the writers did, haven't I?  Is this more lazy writing, as just a quicker way to throw them together, to give them one more thing to endure together?  Or just a plothole in the road?  

After these two very different characters become friends - and I'll admit it, who becomes friends with who is a somewhat inexplicable process, but in the real world it's a safe bet that people with things in common are more likely to form friendships - the movie doesn't seem to know which direction it wants to go with their story.  Are they dating?  Potential lovers?  Is Emma scamming Charlie for his money?  Nah, she pays him back in installments for those medical bills.  So they're just friends, then, so why the scene where she sleeps over?  And when Emma comes with Charlie to his granddaughter's Bat Mitzvah, and Charlie's adult kids assume that he's sleeping with the younger Emma, why can't Charlie just TALK to his kids and correct them on this point?  It's a simple enough thing to have him do.  I assume the movie didn't want to take their relationship too far in any one direction, but then what we're left with is a muddle - they tried not to alienate anyone who thought maybe Charlie and Emma COULD or SHOULD get together, but at the same time, maybe somebody in the audience wouldn't approve of this interracial romance with a large age difference, so they couldn't piss off those people either?  

It's very confusing, this relationship, but whatever it is, the movie's got other things to deal with, like getting to the bottom of what happened to Charlie's wife.  She was in an accident, and it happened shortly after she and Charlie had a fight, one that was never resolved.  So this explains a lot of things, like why Charlie is trying to write a book about their relationship before he manages to forget it all, and why Charlie is alienated from his kids, but still, there are so many lingering questions, like why does Charlie have an Asian granddaughter?  It doesn't need to be explained, perhaps, so she was adopted, big deal, but NOT mentioning that is a bit of an odd choice.

Meanwhile, Charlie's mental state is slowly deteriorating.  He functions by memorizing his walk to work, and something as simple as a street blocked by construction can throw a monkey wrench into his routine.  And thoughts of the summer house and trying to explain to his granddaughter why her grandmother is no longer alive cause him to run off into the woods. And during a panel interview, he forgets the name of Sharon Stone, who plays a version of herself here. But perhaps this new friendship can give Charlie the courage to tell his kids that he's sick and mentally deteriorating.  

Also starring Billy Crystal (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Tiffany Haddish (last seen in "The Oath"), Penn Badgley (last seen in "Easy A"), Laura Benanti (last seen in "Tick, Tick...Boom!"), Joanna Adler (ditto),  Louisa Krause (last seen in "The Phenom"), Anna Deavere Smith (last seen in "Rent"), Matthew Broussard, Alex Brightman, Andrew Durand, Max Gordon Moore, Audrey Hsieh, Nyambi Nyambi, Brandon Uranowitz (last seen in "The Kitchen"), Dierdre Friel, Susan Pourfar (last seen in "In the Heights"), Gianmarco Soresi (last seen in "Hustlers"), Sarah Stiles, Justin Linville, Andy Grotelueschen, Josh Lamon, Drew Levy, Shiloh Verrico, Chayim Frenkel, Steven Castillo, Peter Grosz (last seen in "The Weather Man"), Charlie Pollock, Clay Singer, Alan Zweibelwith cameos from Sharon Stone (last seen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story"), Barry Levinson (last seen in "Dean Martin: King of Cool"), Bob Costas, Itzhak Perlman.

RATING: 6 out of 10 post-it notes

The Starling

Year 14, Day 316 - 11/12/22 - Movie #4,283

BEFORE: I'm sorry if you're disappointed that my next film isn't "Ambulance", with Jake Gyllenhaal carrying over.  I considered it, but then I didn't see from there how to get to my Thanksgiving films, which are going to link to my Christmas films, eventually.  I can only follow one link a day, so that means there are often three or ten links that I DON'T follow, and tonight the link to "Ambulance" is one.  I have to look at the big picture right now, which films are going to get me to where I need to be in a week or so?  This one fits the bill.  (I just realized that "Ambulance" links to tonight's film, so I COULD have squeezed it in, but then again, I don't have any spare slots for the year, after I added "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", they're all spoken for.)

Edi Patterson carries over from "The Guilty". 

THE PLOT: After Lilly suffers a loss, a combative starling takes nest beside her quiet home. The feisty bird taunts and attacks the grief-stricken Lilly. On her journey to expel the bird, she rediscovers her will to live and capacity for love. 

AFTER: Well, I've got my loose theme for the week, this week's films are about redemption, and getting over things and chance encounters sparking those things, perhaps. This was seen in "Kajillionaire" when a family's chance encounter on an airplane with a young woman who had an interest in con games led to a confrontation between the daughter and her parents over the way she was raised without love or emotion, but it also led to the daughter getting over that, maturing and finding a relationship.  And in "The Guilty", a chance encounter with a woman who called 911 led to the main character, a demoted policeman, coming to terms with his misdeed and finding a form of redemption in admitting to his guilt.  And in "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story", Al's chance encounter with a traveling accordion salesman put him on the road to fame and fortune.  I'm not joking here, that happened in the film, and in real life, too.  

In this film, after a brief intro with a couple, Lilly and Jack, painting a bedroom for their newborn child, the story flashes forward to some future time, when the husband is in a mental institution, having had a tough time dealing with the death of their child.  Lilly's grieving too, but in a different way, and she's trying to hide it, but not doing a good job of that. While her husband is recovering (we later find out exactly why he was institutionalized, but it's not hard to guess why) she's also dealing with the loss of him, in a way.  Her husband's doctors also suggest that Lilly should see some kind of therapist, and they recommend someone close to her home, who turns out to be a veterinarian and former shrink.  At first this seems like a big mistake, like how could the doctor who recommended him not check to see if he was still practicing?  Wouldn't they check that sort of thing before giving out his number?  

It seems like I should call a super-huge NITPICK POINT on this little wrinkle in the story.  Like, so how could this recommendation error happen in the first place?  The doctor who recommended him claims to be an old friend, but then, why isn't she aware that he became a veterinarian?  It doesn't make any sense, she either knows him or she doesn't, and if she knows him she should know this very important detail about him.  Also, in real life aren't psychology and animal medicine two very, very different medical specialties?  I mean, sure, people quit being lawyers sometimes just so they can open a BBQ restaurant, or they stop being police officers and buy a bar.  Times change, people change, but still, somehow this seems like a very weird leap, from shrink to vet.  I'm not really buying it, because it seems like some screenwriter just threw it in there because Lilly needs therapy at the start of the film, and an animal expert near the end of the film, so sure, let's just give one character expertise in both fields and hope that nobody notices. 

By meeting with Dr. Fine - Larry Fine, but there's only one "Three Stooges" reference in the whole film (NITPICK POINT: Hey, writer, why give him the same name as one of the Stooges if you're not going to DO anything with that?). Dr. Fine is a great name for a therapist, though, he could have really marketed himself with that. "Need peace of mind? Come see Doctor Fine!"  or "I'm Fine, but how are YOU?" - these slogans write themselves, but the movie just doesn't go there. So I'm treating this as somebody's writing short-cut, a cheap way to get the story to go where it needs to go.  Lazy writing, though. 

By meeting with Dr. Fine, Lilly forms a friendship but also engages in a form of therapy - at least she's talking to SOMEONE, even if it's just a veterinarian.  So she learns about the stages of grief, and she finds the strength to clear the baby furniture out of the house, and she starts to do some odd jobs like gardening, only to be constantly attacked by an aggressive songbird, the starling of the title.  After being attacked by the bird several times in her yard, she takes to wearing a football helmet as she works on the garden.  I'm not quite sure what the bird stands for here, but at least the gardening is a great metaphor for recovery from grief, plus it's a worthwhile hobby that produced nutrition, food for the soul, the feeling of accomplishment.  The gardening as metaphor at least works, but I still don't know what the damn bird represents.  

After a few months of non-therapy therapy, Lilly is frustrated with the fact that her husband took the easy route, not just trying to kill himself but also dropping out of society, and then when he doesn't allow her to see him for a while, that's the sign that Lilly's got to work even harder to convince him to eventually get well and come home, because at some point in the grieving process, you've got to move on and get back to some kind of normal life.  Sure, take some time, by all means, but you can't just stay inside forever, as we all learned during the lockdowns.  OK, so maybe we missed two Halloweens and one Christmas, isn't it time for us all to get back to our normal lives, or our new normal lives? 

NITPICK POINT: Lilly is so bothered by the bird that she puts out poisoned bird seed.  This doesn't kill her tormentor, but it does kill a different bird, and she feels terrible.  But then a little later in the film, she's back to trying to kill the starling.  Huh?  Didn't she learn anything from the terrible feeling she had when she killed that other bird?  Also, at one point we learn that the starling is just trying to protect its nest, which has three baby birds in it.  But then we never see those baby birds again, what happened to them?  More to the point, why would Lilly try AGAIN to kill the starling after she saw the babies in the nest?  Wouldn't those baby birds starve if she killed their parent?  I understand she may not be acting rationally, but still it's a problem that I can't really follow her logic here. 

I think there's the germ of a good story here, but it needed some more work before being released to the world.  Somebody really needed to look at the script and say, "Wait, is this really what we want to say, and how we want to say it?"  Is it OK for a wife to be MAD at her husband for trying to kill himself?  If he's mentally ill, then he's not really responsible, and he needs to be cared for, not berated for his actions.  Do we want to make a film where everyone's just drowning in grief, is that really what people want to see when they go out to the theater?  Are we suggesting that people shouldn't spend thousands of dollars on therapists, but instead they should just go have a talk with their veterinarian?  It's just a bunch of oddly mixed messages in the end - I kind of see where they were trying to go here, but it's just not the best way to get there. 

Also starring Melissa McCarthy (last seen in "The Nines"), Chris O'Dowd (last seen in "How to Build a Girl"), Kevin Kline (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Catch and Release"), Daveed Diggs (last heard in "Soul"), Skyler Gisondo (last seen in "Time Freak"), Laura Harrier (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Rosalind Chao (last seen in "Mulan" (2020)), Kim Quinn (last seen in "Hidden Figures"), Loretta Devine (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2010)), Jesse Garcia, Emily Tremaine (last seen in "Otherhood"), Dickson Obahor, Ravi Kapoor (last seen in "Ad Astra"), Owen Atlas, Gustavo Gomez (last seen in "Triple Frontier"), Carla Gallo (last seen in "A Futile and Stupid Gesture"), Yvette Freeman (last seen in "The Last Word"), Dan Bakkedahl (last seen in "Killing Hasselhoff"), Scott MacArthur, Joshua Funk, Lauri Johnson (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Don McManus (last seen in "For a Good Time, Call..."), Cynthy Wu (last seen in "The Happytime Murders"), Tom Everett (last seen in "xXx"), Jenica Bergere (last seen in "Safety Not Guaranteed"), Veronica Falcon (last seen in "Voyagers"), Brock Brenner (last seen in "The Laundromat"), Isla Sellers (last seen in "Palm Springs"), Nancy De Mayo (last seen in "Love, Simon"), Jeanne Carr, Elisabeth Röhm (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 mispriced items at the grocery store

The Guilty

Year 14, Day 314 - 11/10/22 - Movie #4,282

BEFORE: Well, I don't know if there could be a clearer sign that the pandemic is essentially over - beyond me not needing to wear a mask the whole time I was down South last month.  I was on the subway today at about 3:30 pm, and it was PACKED, and this was a train going into Manhattan, not coming out.  So people aren't just back to work, they're working afternoon or evening shifts, or late night events - this was on a Thursday, so who knows, maybe Thursday's back to being a night where people want to go out and have fun again. (Remember FUN?). Or maybe there's another reason why everyone was going into the city, I don't know - but six months ago on a Thursday in the afternoon, I would have almost had the train to myself.  Plus, the theater where I worked just dropped the vaccine checks for external events, but they're going to keep it in place for school events, and the mask mandate is still in effect, but change is definitely in the air. Let's just hope that six new COVID variants aren't. 

Da'Vine Joy Randolph carries over from "Kajillionaire". 

THE PLOT: A demoted police officer assigned to a call dispatch is conflicted when he receives an ermergency 

AFTER: This is the kind of film that I expected to see a lot of, made during the pandemic, in that a lot of this film features just one actor in one room, who needs to be on the phone a lot.  Look, the pandemic was rough on Hollywood, I get it, and there are SAG members who need to WORK just to keep their memberships active, and thus films still need to be made, people still need to be hired, or else they could lose their spot in the union, and then good luck getting back in.  Once you're out, if you can't get hired for jobs, because you're no longer in the union, then how are you going to get your required jobs to get back in?  The film industry might be a lot like the construction industry in some ways, there are probably people on the payroll for every movie who didn't DO anything, but they're on the roster and the payroll and then they get to keep their union membership, provided they're current on their dues.  It's a weird system, for sure. 

There's a famous actor who rented out the theater I work at, just to show his friends a film he directed during the pandemic, and it was along these same lines, it's about a helpline volunteer who fields calls from people who are depressed and lonely - I won't mention the name of the film or the actor, because the film may not get released or go anywhere, but it's the same kind of project, something that could be filmed in one location with most of the actors LITERALLY phoning in their performances. If you don't have the cast list handy, you can play "Name That Voice" or some kind of identification game similar to "The Masked Singer" or the game I play where I try to identify the actor doing the voice-over in every commercial, usually it's Jon Hamm or Donald Sutherland, but sometimes it's Jeff Bridges or John Goodman.

Anyway, this film follows a night in the life of a police officer who's had some kind of incident a few months prior, and it's the day before his court appearance in that case.  He's working at a 911 call center, which I guess is some form of punishment or rehab or work-your-way-back kind of position, which only seems weird because don't they HAVE 911 operators already, and don't THEY have some kind of union?  Or shouldn't there be some kind of special training involved in becoming a 911 operator? That seems like it might take an entirely different skill set than the one needed to be a police officer - I mean, a 911 officer very rarely needs to shoot a gun or disarm an assailant, but they do need to be attentive and compassionate and be able to think quickly and respond by asking the right questions.  Cops also need to be attentive and responsive, but in a different way, know what I mean? I'm just saying that I'd like to see the paperwork that proves that some research was done here, that a police officer might be put to work as a 911 operator, like maybe if they were short-staffed or something?  Otherwise I'm not really buying it. 

What the film wants us to believe is that one incoming emergency call, and the way that the (former?) police officer responds to it somehow transforms him, he really focuses on this one call from a woman who seems to have been taken hostage, and sets out to "solve" the crime, which really isn't something that a 911 operator usually does.  Most of the time the operator will get the caller in touch with the fire department, or arrange for an ambulance or cop car to be sent to their location, and that's it.  Most 911 operators aren't trained to "solve" or stop crimes, they're just the go-between. Usually, unless somebody needs to make a film about a person in one location who needs to make a lot of phone calls to solve a problem.  But then isn't this like cheating, in a way?  People used to make this kind of film to save money on production costs, now they make this kind of film to get around pandemic filming hindrances. 

Well, hey, at least the case turns out to be much, much more complicated than it first appears, so there's that, and the police officer gets a new outlook on life out of the deal, even though that may come at great cost in the end.  But I'm still not sure that I'm buying into any of this. 

Also starring Jake Gyllenhaal (last seen in "End of Watch"), Christina Vidal (last seen in "I Think I Love My Wife"), Eli Goree (last seen in "One Night in Miami...", Adrian Martinez (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Oscar Balderrama, Becky Wu, Bret Eric Porter, Maurice Webster, and the voices of Riley Keough (last seen in "The Runaways"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "The Lost Daughter"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "The Purge"), Christiana Montoya, David Castañeda (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Beau Knapp (last seen in "Death Wish"), Edi Patterson (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Paul Dano (last seen in "The Batman"), Gillian Zinser (last seen in "Savages"), Terence J. Rotolo, Bill Burr (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Dillon Lane (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Marlene Forte (last seen in "The Way Back"), Jaime FitzSimons (also last seen in "End of Watch"), Aileen Burdock (last seen in "Bright"), Jonathan Hunt. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 recurring headaches

Kajillionaire

Year 14, Day 313 - 11/9/22 - Movie #4,281

BEFORE: Well, two things are filling up, my schedule and my DVR.  The DVR for TV shows, not the one for movies, the movie one I'm actually making progress on.  I'm behind on half of my TV shows, like "The Amazing Race" and "CSI: Vegas" and "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", and about two years behind on "Chopped", still.  And I don't have any free nights to make progress on TV shows, because most of my co-workers at the theatre are unavailable this month, on vacation or working other jobs, so a lot of shifts have come my way.  Which is great, I can't wait to collect more hours over the next few pay periods, and since I think the whole place will slow down around the holidays, I need to work the hours now, because I can't work them then.  So, I'll say YES to any shift that comes my way, and my movie-watching schedule for November is drastically reduced anyway, just 15 films to watch in 24 days.  

The plan is to drive up two weeks from today and visit my parents for Thanksgiving, but drive back on Saturday before the big traffic rush on Sunday, so I should have some time that last week of the month to really focus on TV shows, because I won't be watching movies then.  I just have to cram in ENOUGH TV each week to keep the DVR from filling up, because then I will miss shows.  And then I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead, so until then I'll just continue burning the candle at both ends and the middle. 

Evan Rachel Wood carries over from "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story". 

THE PLOT: A woman's life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they're planning. 

AFTER: Wow, what a difference a day makes - just yesterday (OK, two days ago) I was watching "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" and thinking I was watching a contender for Best Film of the Year.  For me, obviously, all things regarding "best" and "good" are subjective, and one man's trash is another man's treasure, and all that.  But now my next film wasn't to my tastes at all, and I can't even figure out where exactly it's coming from or what it's trying to say, and so it may be a contender for "Weirdest Film of the Year", and there have been some WEIRD films watched this year. "Boss Level" and "Cosmic Sin" were weird films, "Dune" was a weird film. But I mean the films that are just, like oddly weird - I don't want to say BAD, but they come at you from an odd angle, like "Romance & Cigarettes" or "House of Gucci". Not like "Willy's Wonderland", more like "Prisoners of the Ghostland", know what I mean? You just have to scratch your head and think, "Huh, this must have meant something to somebody at some time, but I'm just not picking up on what they're laying down here. 

I've watched indie films, don't get me wrong - I've been to Sundance three times and mostly enjoyed myself, even though I watched some head-scratchers there. I haven't seen any other films by Miranda July, though, and now I don't think I'll be seeking any others out, because this was just so beyond odd that I couldn't even understand it. There's this family of con artists, father, mother and teen daughter, and the teen's really the brains of the outfit, she keeps coming up with these schemes to raise large sums of money, when her parents are happy just winning small prizes in local raffles and flipping them to other people for cash.  The family lives in a converted office building or something, they don't sleep in decent beds but sort of crash in cubicles on the floor, and they're constantly avoiding the landlord so they don't have to pay their rent.  And then every day at certain times pink suds seep through the walls from the soap factory next door, and they have to gather the suds in buckets and wipe down the walls.  Good god, why, WHY to any and all of this?

Nobody really lives this way, do they?  What purpose does all this serve, what can we as the audience learn from their situation?  Nothing, as far as I can tell. The relationship between parents and daughter is strained because they're all incapable of expressing complex emotions like love, or they've made a conscious decision to NOT feel those things, because reasons?  Are they too afraid how much it will hurt if the family breaks up?  That's a terrible reason to not express love for your family members.  

The family flies to New York, using tickets they won in a contest, just so they can run a scam at the airport where the daughter pretends to lose her luggage, but the parents have already walked out of the airport with her bags, and she then files a claim to collect the insurance policy she had on the luggage.  Look, I've noticed that people at the airport used to give a shit and check the tickets of people claiming bags of the conveyor belt, but they stopped doing this at some point, and I haven't seen security at bag check in years.  You can land at an airport and claim your bag AND someone else's, which is weird because security is so tight when you BOARD the plane, and then it's completely lax when you get your luggage.  But you didn't hear it from me.  

Anyway, the daughter, whose name is Old Dolio for some other reason that makes no sense. at all, then earns over $1,500 from the airline for them "losing" her luggage.  (If an airline exec watches this film, then you'd better believe they'll have officers stationed at baggage claim in the future...). This money was supposed to pay the family's back rent, but somewhere on the flight back the parents meet a young woman who they enjoy speaking with, and they convince her to help them find a new scam, since she works for an optician that makes deliveries to elderly patients, and somehow this leads to them all stealing stuff from the apartments of those senior citizens.  First, though, there's an awkward attempt at a threesome between the parents and the new girl, and this is another terrible idea, so the less said about that, the better. 

The new girl, Melanie, notices the emotional rift between the parents and their daughter and sort of inserts herself into the middle of it, I couldn't really tell what was going on here, either, except that Old Dolio is in some kind of arrested state, she's not properly emotionally developed because of the way her parents raised her, so she's vulnerable to the first person who comes along to cater to those emotional needs, I guess?  And then I can't tell if this was another manipulation, or some twisted form of love, or just another business transaction in the end.  Old Dolio's parents vow to change their ways, and shower their daughter with all the birthday presents they never gave her, in an attempt to win her back, but knowing them, this is probably all just part of a bigger scam to get that airline money back.

Does anybody really live like this?  Do people fly from Los Angeles to New York City to do a little dumpster diving and then fly back home?  Are there people who look at a dying elderly person and try to accelerate the timetable on their inevitable demise just because they've got a lot of stuff they can steal and sell to Goodwill?  Am I supposed to hate this family, or feel sorry for them, or see myself in them?  I just can't figure it out. And even if Old Dolio finally gets engages in some emotional growth or learning and determines that she needs to get away from her toxic parents, find an adult relationship and grow the hell up, so freakin' what?  What does it all mean in the end?  Nothing?

Look, I had my life upended by the pandemic, as many people did.  I was forced to change careers, and ultimately it was sort of a wake-up call that I couldn't keep living the life I had, and I had to start something new.  Among other things, I became more keenly aware of the conversion of my time into salaried hours, and since I'm in my fifties, I'm worried about that, because there may be more days behind me now than ahead. I kind of maybe agree that we're all just slaves working for the almighty dollar, and there's no way off the hamster wheel that feels right, so we just keep going around it, hoping that the scenery will change one day.  But even those depressing notions seem more positive than the vibe of this film, which really harshed my mellow, man. I mean, thanks for being a link in my chain and all, but I can't move away from this whole story quickly enough. 

Also starring Richard Jenkins (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Debra Winger (last seen in "Shadowlands"), Gina Rodriguez (last heard in "Scoob!"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Eye for an Eye"), Kim Estes, Da'Vine Joy Randolph (last seen in "The Lost City"), Rachel Redleaf (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"), Randy Ryan (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Mark Ivanir (last heard in "The Adventures of Tintin"), Diana-Maria Riva (last seen in "What Women Want"), Betsy Baker (last seen in "Oz the Great and Powerful"), Michelle Gillette, Susan Berger, Adam Bartley (last seen in "Vice" (2018)), Michael Twaine, Andrew Hawkes, David Ury (last seen in "Birds of Prey"), Matthew Downs (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Samantha Cardona, Zachary Barton, Jeffrey Nicholas Brown, Ben Konigsberg (last seen in "Lady Bird"). 

RATING: 3 out of 10 small earthquakes (were these meant to be symbolic of something, or just a typical L.A. occurence?  Another baffling question with no answer...)