Friendsgiving

Year 14, Day 326 - 11/22/22 - Movie #4,290

BEFORE: Ryan Hansen carries over from "The Turkey Bowl", naturally when I saw that one actor appeared in TWO of the Thanksgiving movies on my list, I just had to program them. That's a done deal, an easy link, like it was meant to be or something. 

This is going to wrap up November, just 15 films watched this month but that's so I can save 10 slots for December, otherwise I'll be going stir crazy at home with nothing to watch.  After this just 10 films to go, and here are the links that will get me to Christmas: Fortune Feimster, Andy Garcia, Rob Riggle, Jane Seymour, Bob Hoskins, Richard E. Grant, Helen Mirren and Amit Shah.  Since Fortune Feimster's also in the next movie in my chain, after this film I'm going to watch her new comedy special on Netflix, because that will right into the chain, but will not count.

THE PLOT: Molly and Abby, along with their crew of close friends and acquaintances, host a dysfunctional, comical and chaotic Thanksgiving. 

AFTER: If you watch TV this month, you're going to see a lot of holiday commercials, and I'm not talking about the ones for Reese's Tree-Shaped Peanut Butter Cups or the Hess toy truck or the ones where Santa Clause drives a Mercedes instead of a sleigh.  I mean your basic retail store ads, for Best Buy or Wal-Mart or Amazon - I pay attention because I spent 15 years watching ads as part of my job, specifically looking for accounts that used animation, but really, tracking almost everything.  The two biggest trends I see in the make-up of the pretend families seen in those ads are the inter-racial families, and the token gay couples.  It's hard to find a spot these days that DOESN'T feature one or both of these.  On one level, it's great, it's an acknowledgement that those families and couples are there, they exist, and they also enjoy holidays and buying material things.  On the other hand, it also feels like pandering, like, "Hey, liberals, we see you, we targeted our ads at you, so please buy our stuff?"  Naturally I'm split on the issue - and I should just fast forward and not think about it, but I can't. 

This film "Friendsgiving" sort of feels the same way - the writers gathered together this extremely varied group of people in L.A., with a wide range of ages, ethnic groups and sexual orientations, which is similarly great, because those groups are being represented, those couples and families exist, they all enjoy Thanksgiving, too.  But also similarly, it feels like pandering of the highest order at the same time. "Hey, lesbians, we see you, we put several lesbian characters in our movie, so please watch it?"  Well, come on, who doesn't like lesbians?  Sure, I'll watch. 

I suppose ultimately it's a step forward because 10 or 20 years ago, if you had a lesbian character in a movie, then THAT'S ALL that the film would be about. Like "Go Fish" or "Blue Is the Warmest Color" or "Bound" or "The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love" - the very fact that those movies had lesbians in them, that was enough, that was the selling point.  How many guys (and gals) rented "Wild Things" just to see THAT scene?  Now fast forward to the 2020's, and the lesbian character is just one messed-up person who's having a hard time finding romance, in a whole house full of people who are JUST as messed-up and having JUST as hard a time finding romance. You don't suppose...there's a whole city full of those people, isn't there?  And it's called Los Angeles?

So I want to say it's "old hat" now, as a society we're so past the shock of it all, and we're ready to just move on and treat gay and lesbian people as, you know, people.  But we're not, are we?  Not when some groups are targeting drag shows for violence and shooting up gay clubs out West.  Not when there are Arabic countries that paid billions to host a soccer tournament and they think they have the right to tell attendees to not act gay in public.  Not when China can ban an entire movie just becase of a same-sex kiss between two characters.  Maybe that last one's not such a big deal, because if people in China don't get to watch "The Eternals", that only affects Disney's bottom line, but in those other instances, people are still in danger because of who they are and who they love.  There are the people who want big government to stay out of everyone's lives, except when it comes to policing things they don't personally approve of.

I'm getting off the track, because I'm here to talk about Thanksgiving, and Friendsgiving, which has become a celebration over the past few years for people who either can't go home for the holidays, or just don't want to.  Perhaps there's a political or moral divide involved in some of those cases, but for others, it's just distance, and the fact that everyone ELSE is also trying to travel somewhere on the same day, so it's just a nightmare.  You know, there's no rule that says you HAVE to celebrate Thanksgiving on the same day as everyone else - you could get together with your family the week before, or the week after, and in doing that, you've made the holiday about 50% easier for everyone involved, with regards to travel, getting the feast together, or making restaurant reservations. My wife and I haven't been out to a restaurant ON Valentine's Day in years, for that same reason, everyone else is trying to do the same thing at the same time.

Anyway, Molly's an actress who's newly divorced, or about to be.  She's getting over her ex by seeing a new man, who ticks all the boxes, helps her with her baby son, seems very into her, only he doesn't seem to have a job, other than "philanthropy", which means he's got five bogus charities that probably all filter money into his pockets.  Molly's set to spend Thanksgiving with her best friend Abby, who's that lesbian who broke up with her partner a year ago, and can't seem to start dating again, after learning her ex just got engaged. Abby's upset at first that she can't just spend the holiday with Molly, because Jeff is there, too.  She eventually comes around on this point, but then wait, there are more friends coming over...

Molly's mother arrives from Sweden, unexpectedly.  Her mother invites Gunnar, Molly's ex-boyfriend (she didn't know about Jeff, apparently).  Then there's Rick, Molly's agent (?) and his new wife, Brianne, who's had so much Botox that she can't talk. Then there's mutual friend Lauren, who brings her husband Dan and their two children.  And Lauren invites three more lesbians for good measure, in case one of them could be a match for Abby.  Then there's Claire the sha-woman, and Gus, the token gay guy with the missing brother, and by then the small anti-family Friendsgiving celebration is up to at least fifteen people.  Well, at least most everyone brought a side dish and/or a bottle of premium alcohol. 

The party (and the movie) starts to go downhill fast once the 'shrooms come out - Abby fantasizes a visit from her three Fairy Gay Mothers, but it's very unclear how this dream sequence helps her in any way.  She already knows her preference/orientation so what advice does she even need at this point?  Molly's revelation, that her current boyfriend is nothing more than a rebound guy, seems a bit more significant.  Perhaps she needs someone who can keep his shirt on at a party and can pick up a restaurant check once in a while.  But in addition to trying much too hard to appeal to all the target groups watching, the film also tried much too hard to be wacky.  I'm sure L.A. is a crazy place full of crazy people, but I don't necessarily need to see all of them being crazy in one movie.  

You know what, instead of Friendsgiving just stay at home and eat a frozen turkey dinner.  That's OK too.  I'm off to Massachusetts tomorrow, we have to pick up a turkey dinner box that I ordered from a grocery store and get ready to visit my parents on Thursday and deliver it. The holiday is kind of a meals-on-wheels mission for us now.  Sure, I COULD get the whole fresh turkey and cook it with all the sides, but this will be much easier.  I'll be back with another post on December 1 to start the countdown to Christmas.

Also starring Malin Akerman (last seen in "I'll See You in My Dreams"), Kat Dennings (last seen in "Thor; Love and Thunder"), Jane Seymour (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Aisha Tyler (last seen in "Bedtime Stories"), Chelsea Peretti (last heard in "Sing 2"), Christine Taylor (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Deon Cole (last seen in "The Harder They Fall"), Wanda Sykes (last seen in "The One and Only Dick Gregory"), Margaret Cho (last seen in "Conan O'Brien Can't Stop"), Fortune Feimster (last heard in "Soul"), Jack Donnelly, River Butcher, Andrew Santino (last seen in "Dean"), Dana DeLorenzo (last seen in "A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas"), Rose Abdoo (last seen in "Other People"), Carla Jimenez (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Scout Durwood, Brianna Baker, Joe Lando, Serenity Reign Brown, Mike Rose, Karen Y. McClain, Nadya Ginsburg, Johnny Williams (last seen in "Green Book"), Kenneth Sims, Vladimir Perez, Melissa Graver. 

RATING: 3 out of 10 props for the photo booth

The Turkey Bowl

Year 14, Day 325 - 11/21/22 - Movie #4,289

BEFORE: Headed into Thanksgiving Week, and this is right where I wanted to be - I've got just enough time to watch both Thanksgiving-themed movies before we have to get in the car on Wednesday morning and drive to Massachusetts.  But before that, let's get into some Monday Night Football, OK?

Ryan Hansen carries over from "Hit and Run". And if you're saying "Who the heck is Ryan Hansen?", well you're not really wrong.  According to my records I've seen him in seven movies now and I just can't remember him in any of them.  OK, I kind of remember him from "Bad Santa 2", but there's something just very forgettable about him - is it just me?  You may know him from "Fantasy Island" or "Like a Boss" or "CHIPS" or any of a dozen TV shows, or maybe you don't.  His character's name in "Hit and Run" changed halfway through the movie and NOBODY NOTICED - or they did and they just didn't care.  He was kind of just along for the ride last night.  More on this in a bit. 

THE PLOT: A 30-something urbanite is pulled back to his rural hometown by his high school buddies on Thanksgiving to finish the Turkey Bowl, an epic football game against their crosstown rivals that was snowed out 15 years before. 

AFTER: I'm trying to be nice here, and respect actors and the work they do - but you maybe will recognize Matt Jones here, who's in the "second banana" role, more than you would Ryan Hansen.  Jones has been in a bunch of CBS sitcoms, like "Mom" and "Bob Hearts Abishola", and while he may not have as many movie roles as Ryan Hansen, he's at least got a distinctive look.  Hansen is just kind of THERE, he's like vanilla ice cream or wood paneling, you may not even notice him, which is bad when he's cast in the lead role in a film.  I wanted to like his character, but there's nothing about him that stands out.  His character was once a high-school quarterback, and those are like the top dogs in high school, they're power players, typically handsome, super athletic, all the girls want to date them (maybe even some of the guys, too, you know what I'm saying) and I'm just not getting that vibe from Hansen.  Maybe it's all the moping around he does in this film, he's never sure of himself, never takes the reins and tries to command the situations he's in, instead he just sort of ducks out of everything and avoids everyone whenever possible, and it's like he's not really living his own life, like his character in "Hit and Run", he's just along for the ride.  

This film needed somebody like Vince Vaughn in "Dodgeball", remember that movie?  He was the leader of the team, but not in an overpowering way, since it was an ensemble comedy Vaughn let the other actors have their moments and he didn't dominate, but still you knew at every moment that he had top billing in the film.  Just like a football team, a film's cast needs a leader that the other players can support.  I'm just saying I didn't get that from Hansen, not even at the end during the big game.  Hell, the villain character was more dynamic than him, but maybe that's because I recognized the actor as the guy who plays Hawk on "Titans". 

But the story required that Patrick Hodges, the guy climbing the corporate ladder, the guy about to get engaged to his girlfriend, the guy whose future father-in-law is about to run for President, somehow has to find his way back to his Oklahoma hometown, when he's been avoiding doing that for the last 10 years or so.  Without a quarterback there's no game, and the town's high school's going to forever feel like they've been cursed, because they haven't won a Turkey Bowl since 1992 EXCEPT there's that game from 1999 (?) that was never finished because of a freak snowstorm - and so the players and pretty much everyone in town's been in some kind of cursed limbo, always wondering if that would have been the year that they got revenge on the Noble Knights, who went on to win the State Championship or something.  Look, I wasn't into high school sports back in the day, and I'm still not really a football guy - but how can the Badgers and the Knights be "crosstown rivals", were the schools in the same town, or different towns, or what?  This is pretty unclear - is there a rich side of Putnam with a private high school and a poorer side with a public one?  My hometown had a situation like that, but then why would the Knights walk around saying "We hate Putnam" when they're all Putnam residents?  They should clarify that and say "We hate Putnam High", right?  

One thing's for sure, the Noble Knights are heavily favored, even if Hodges can come back and be the QB once again.  The Badgers are all out of shape, out of practice, and out of their minds - they're a ragtag bunch of has-beens and never-weres, but if you think that they can't put aside their differences, come together, buckle down and maybe pull out a few trick plays to have a chance of winning the game, then you just haven't seen a lot of movies.  Films favor the underdogs to an unbelievable degree, after all - we love "Rocky" and "The Bad News Bears" and "The Mighty Ducks" and "Major League" and probably a dozen other sports movies where the statistics favor one opponent, but the screenwriters have other plans.  

Hodges has to be tricked into coming back to Oklahoma, instead of spending Thanksgiving with his girlfriend's family in Vail - and then once he's there, his former teammate who's now the town sheriff has to arrest him (and only him) after the big fight outside the bar, so the judge can offer him a reduced sentence of "community service" - namely, playing in the Turkey Bowl. And then he has to keep lying to his girlfriend about needing to stay in town a few more days - meanwhile he's got at least two ex-girlfriends coming on to him, but wouldn't you know it, one's the sister of the rival quarterback, and the other one is DATING the rival quarterback.  So this is a complicated situation, beyond all credulity, but hey, at least he gets to re-connect with his parents, who don't seem to understand his new vegetarian lifestyle.  

Look, it's a formula, OK?  You just KNOW what's going to happen, even though it's going to take a whole two hours to play out.  Returning to his hometown is going to make Hodges realize that he's not really the person he's been pretending to be, he's a small-town guy who's got nothing in common with his big-city girlfriend, and maybe he belongs back home, dating a local girl, and being a big fish in a small pond.  There's nothing wrong with that, except admitting that you couldn't hack it in the big city.  But there are thousands of small towns out there, maybe the secret to happiness is finding the one you belong in, getting off that hamster wheel and just living your life and loving somebody with no pretense.  Who can say?  

FINALLY, after a whole three days (?) of practice and parades and fist-pumping, it's time for the Big Game.  OK, the little game, but it means something to somebody, at least.  Again, this is something of a foregone conclusion, because we didn't show up and put up with all this back-and-forth just to see the team we like lose to the team we hate.  What if we watched the whole "Karate Kid" movie only to see Daniel-san get his ass kicked?  That would be a bummer, right?  Or if "Rocky" didn't go the distance?  (That's right, kids, Rocky Balboa did NOT beat his opponent in his first movie...he won by losing, or something like that...).  Even if the Badgers were to lose here, hey, at least they tried, they came together and they did a thing.  We all get so caught up in wins and losses in sports that it's sometimes easy to forget that everybody's trying really hard, and at least they're still getting paid, right?  

So it's not the best movie, or even the best football movie - somebody still made this movie, and that's an accomplishment.  It got released and it aired on cable despite not having any well-known name actors in it. (Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg and Adam Sandler were all attached to it at one point, and all dropped out.) Take it from me, someone who's been working on independent films for almost 30 years - that's still a WIN for somebody.  And it's a win for me because this is a film all about going back to your hometown during Thanksgiving week, seeing your old friends, catching up with your parents and using all that to figure out who you want to be going forward.  

The music, however, is just horrible - most of it is period appropriate, songs from the late 1990's like "All Star" by Smash Mouth and "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind - OK maybe "No Rain" by Blind Melon is a good song, but it's all so passé now.  And don't we all hate Smash Mouth now?  Were they playing this song ironically or just trying to piss everybody off?

Also starring Matt Jones (last seen in "Brightburn"), Alan Ritchson (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire") Kristen Hager (last seen in "Life" (2015)), Da'Vone McDonald (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Tanner Anderson, Travis Nicholson (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Chris Reed, Barry Switzer (last seen in "Any Given Sunday"), Brett Cullen (last seen in "Reminiscence"), John Beasley (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Leah McKendrick, Blair Bomar, Kevin M. Brennan (last seen in "The To Do List"), Ashley Fink (last seen in "You Again"), Renee Gauthier, Sean McGraw (last seen in "Born of the Fourth of July"), Michelle Little, Burns Burns, Laurie Cummings (last seen in "Wildlife"), with a cameo from Harland Williams (last seen in "Employee of the Month"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 yearbook photos

Hit and Run

Year 14, Day 323 - 11/19/22 - Movie #4,288

BEFORE: Getting really close to the end of the current Movie Year now, just 12 films to go after today.  But there are 42 days left in the year, so I'm looking at about a month of down time, during which I'll feel like I'm making no progress.  The holidays take some of the sting out of that, plus I'll have a lot of time to review my lists, search the streaming sites for films I haven't seen yet, update my cast lists, and start planning a chain for next February so that I can then reverse-engineer something for January.  It's a process.

If I stick to my 300 films per year, once you factor in about 40 or 50 slots for romance, maybe another 30 or 40 for documentaries, and then 20 or 30 for horror films in October, that only leaves me about 180 to 210 "open" slots, ones that aren't bound by format.  Call them the "freestyle" months if you want, but when I look at it that way, it's easy to see why films of the other genres seem to keep slipping through the cracks.  Even after watching movies all year long, there's still a list about a mile-long of films that I just can't get to this year.  Like "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" is off the table at this point, so is "Ghostbusters: Afterlife", and "Project Almanac" has been put on hold yet again.  What about the recent movies like "Elvis", "Moonfall", "The Last Duel", and "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"?  Or "Nobody", "Licorice Pizza", "Nightmare Alley", and "The Green Knight"?  "See How they Run", "Blood Father", "Dragged Across Concrete" and "Ambulance"?  "Nope", "Blonde", "The Gray Man", "Bullet Train" and "The Protege". You see the problem, right?  Hollywood keeps cranking movies out faster than I, or anyone, can possibly watch them.  But it's a process. 

Beau Bridges carries over from "The Good German". Anyway, soon the counter's going to reset and I can try to work in some of those films listed above.  Just going to clear a few older films off the list and then think about the best way to move forward. That's a process too. 

THE PLOT: A former getaway driver jeopardizes his Witness Protection Plan identity in order to help his girlfriend get to Los Angeles. The feds and his former gang chase them on the road. 

AFTER: One last action movie before we start talking about the holidays.  Damn, but this one was a lot of fun.  What a difference a day makes, because I kept falling asleep during the last film, "The Good German", because there just wasn't enough happening to keep my attention.  This one had me riveted, I wasn't even tempted to play games on my phone because there was always something going on - and I'm not even a car guy!  If you ARE a car person, you'll probably like this one even more than I did.  The star here is a 1967 Lincoln Continental, which the main character has modded with a 700 horsepower engine, and damn, that thing moves.  This movie sort of makes me rethink my ban on the "Fast & Furious" movies, but I think I'll keep it in place, because at the end of the day, those films aren't comedies.  Not intentional ones, anyway, and I think if I dived into that franchise I'd never stop making fun of it. 

(Another character drives a Pontiac Solstice, or so I'm told, and the villain drives a BMW sports wagon, if you can believe that.  And then late in the film, there's a Tatum, which is a really cool off-road racer, the kind that goes on those desert rally races, I think.  Again, not a car guy, but now I kind of wish that I was.)

Yul lives in the middle of nowhere, under the assumed name Charles Bronson. Yep. But his girlfriend Annie teaches at a local college and her boss wants her to take a position at a better university in Los Angeles, which puts her in a difficult position.  Take the dream job and move away from her boyfriend, or pass on the opportunity and then live with regrets.  Yul can't leave the town he's hiding in, but then he decides he has to, to get her to the job interview in time by pulling his really fast car out of storage.  What could POSSIBLY go wrong?  

Annie's ex still hasn't gotten over her, and he's convinced Yul is a criminal, so he contacts the leader of Yul's old gang and blows his cover.  Before long Yul and Annie are being chased by violent criminals and the Marshall that oversees him in the Witness Protection program, and also Annie's ex-boyfriend. An intimate knowledge of the California highway system may also be required here to really understand what's going on. This was filmed in towns like Tustin, Fillmore, Cornell and Santa Clarita in California, though Yul lives in Milton, which is 343 miles from L.A.  That's a 5 or 6 hour drive, so I'm not sure why they have to leave the day before, especially with such a fast car.  Maybe they're accounting for L.A. traffic, I don't know. 

But I get it, California is really really big, yet somehow the people in these four cars still manage to keep finding each other, which maybe shouldn't be so easy.  Yet the story demands it, so we have to accept it.  But again tonight I'm reminded of the film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", where four or five carloads of people are racing through California to get to a buried treasure.  If you mixed that film with a Steve McQueen movie you might get something like "Hit and Run", or maybe not, this is kind of its own thing and shouldn't really be compared to other films.  Maybe "Smokey and the Bandit" is a better comparison anyway.  

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell seem like a really together couple - hey, if you can live together and work together and make movies together and those movies are as fun as this one is, then more power to them. Maybe it's too late, but I would love to see a sequel to this film.  Or a prequel - "Hit and Run 2" could go back and show us the story of those 13 bank heists, and Yul could be engaged to Neve and she could plan the heists with Alex and we could see what went wrong on that last one.  Or it could detail what happened to Yul to initiate the change of conscience, what turned him around and put him on the path of self-awareness or redemption.  What do you say, Hollywood?  

Also starring Dax Shepard (last seen in "Let's Go to Prison"), Kristen Bell (last seen in "You Again"), Tom Arnold (last seen in "Happy Endings"), Kristin Chenoweth (last heard in "The Witches"), Michael Rosenbaum (last heard in "Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker"), Bradley Cooper (last heard in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Jess Rowland (last seen in "CHIPS"), Ryan Hansen (ditto), Carly Hatter (ditto), John Duff (ditto), Joy Bryant (last seen in "Bobby"), David Koechner (last seen in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny"), Steve Agee (last seen in "Brightburn"), Kal Bennett, Nate Tuck, with cameos from Jason Bateman (last seen in "Thunder Force"), Sean Hayes (last seen in "Jerry Lewis: The Man Behind the Clown"). 

RATING: 7 out of 10 seniors at the lemon party

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