The Special Relationship

Year 15, Day 341 - 12/7/23 - Movie #4,595

BEFORE: It feels so weird, not having watched a movie in five days - I was going to put this one off until the weekend, but then that would be EIGHT days without a movie, and that seems even harder, to go that long.  But I've only got five films left for 2023, and there are still 24 days until the end of the year, so that means there will be LONG spaces somewhere, especially between Christmas and New Years.  That's when I really need the break, to write my year-end wrap-up and also figure out the movie-watching schedule for January.  

I'm picking up as many shifts at the theater as I can, though, before the whole campus shuts down for winter break.  I'm working every day this week at one job or another, but still it feels like one job's about to shut down for two weeks and the other job's about to shut down forever. Maybe.  It's hard to tell, but if you think about it, the life expectancy of every job or company over time is zero, every store or restaurant or film studio WILL close at some point in the future, so maybe the writing's on the wall, but you never really know until some debt ceiling has been reached, it's impossible for that company to continue, and then you have to pack up your personal things from your desk drawer and just head home.  We'll see. 

Hope Davis carries over again from "The Daytrippers". 

THE PLOT: A dramatization that traces former UK prime minister Tony Blair's relationship with Bill Clinton. 

AFTER: Nothing is permanent in life, that's my point, and that includes presidencies.  Eight years is the legal limit - actually it's 10, did you know that?  With the exclusion of FDR, who served for like 14 years, the rules of the Constitution are special for, say, a vice-president who became President after the death of the previous guy, or say, Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned.  If that former VP served for under two years as President, he (or she) would be allowed to serve two full terms AFTER a partial term, so the real limit isn't 8 years, it's 10, somehow I remember that from U.S. history class. This is in the 22nd Amendment - but if the successor serves two years or over, he (or she) could only run for ONE full term after a partial term.  (I wish Biden the best, of course, but if something happened to him tomorrow, VP Harris would take over, and she would be legally allowed to run for President and serve two full terms, because we're under a year away from the next election.)

Of course, this assumes that a President would FOLLOW the rules listed in the U.S. Constitution, and from recent history, that's all a bit doubtful now, isn't it?  Jesus, how did we all get here, does anybody remember?  The last Presidential term was such a blur because I just wanted to put my head down, not make any waves and just get through it - but Trump just won't go away, he's still the front-runner for the GOP next year and still drawing support despite 17 ongoing court cases and visions of his next term that are all apocalyptic and doomsday-oriented at best.  

If you look at the progression of things, we kicked things off with George Washington, who had the reputation of never telling a lie, which might be a lie in itself, it's a bit tough to say.  Still, there's the reputation of honesty, which was important back then, and then you hit President #3, Jefferson, and suddenly there's scandal involved where he's got at least one mistress who was one of his slaves, illegitimate children and such, yet still he ranks as one of our five greatest Presidents, author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of liberty and warrior against tyranny.  So somehow we have to separate the personal life from the professional one?  And then you follow the progression up to World War I & II (Wilson, FDR, Eisenhower, they all had affairs, right?) and through JFK, the biggest horndog of them all, and then you run into Clinton who had several affairs BEFORE becoming President, and at least one (probably more) during.

OK, so it's not a direct linear progression, but there are enough bumps in that road that we feel that these guys were all human and bound by desires for something more outside their marriages.  Do we give them all a pass or do we lump them all together as serial cheaters?  And then we get to Trump, the biggest liar of all, the biggest cheater of all since he cheated on THREE different wives and was faithful to none of them - I'm not sure he even knows HOW to be faithful when his every whim has been catered to since the jump.  And in terms of lying, the Washington Post kept a running total of Trump's false or misleading claims over the years, and came up with 30,573 - and that's JUST during the four years of his administration.  How many before that, and how many after? 

So we got all the way from Washington, who "could not tell a lie", to Trump, with over 30,000.  Well, the good (?) news is that if Trump gets elected again, he wants to be our last President and our first dictator, so there's that.  I saw the quote from the new "Napoleon" movie where Napoleon says, "I am the first to admit when I make a mistake. I simply never do."  Yep, that's a special privilege that dictators have, they get to be "right" all the time, because they kill or imprison anyone who disagrees with them.  OK, so our Democratic country had a good run, I mean, 46 Presidents is a good run, I'll be sorry when it ends, but what can I possibly do about it. 

Anyway, we're looking at Bill Clinton tonight, who's definitely on this spectrum somewhere between JFK and Trump, if you want to judge the President according to their honesty, and yes, that takes into account the personal life as well as the professional.  You can still like and admire JFK and Clinton and overlook their affairs, or you can lump all three together as guys who couldn't keep it in their pants, that's up to you.  But then we also have to discuss whether scandals rightfully followed Clinton around, or if it was all one big right-wing conspiracy.  Then there's the issue over whether Clinton's womanizing was a personal issue, something to be dealt with between him and Hillary, or whether the public had a right to know about it.  Perhaps this was a watershed moment in history, because a decade later we had the "Me too" movement that took down a lot of people in media and broadcasting who were in positions of power, and used that power to gain sexual favors.  Clinton had an affair with an intern, and there could be no greater divide than between the "leader of the free world" and someone who's just trying to break into the scene.  Even if they were both willing participants in an act, you can't ignore the difference in their positions, and that's what makes it wrong according to the new rules. 

After serving as First Lady, Hillary Clinton went on to become a U.S. Senator from New York, and then as Secretary of State for four years during the Obama administration - that's fine, I'm guessing she was glad to get out and accomplish something, building up that resume, serving her state and country in Washington and around the world.  But she was also getting ready for her Presidential run, and I remember talking with someone around 2015, and I predicted she would never get elected as President, because of all the scandals from her husband's administration.  And not just her husband's affairs, remember Whitewater?  More importantly, she didn't connect with women because she was still married to Bill, a serial cheater.  Half the women in the U.S. probably thought she should have divorced him after he cheated, and the other half of the women in the U.S. wouldn't forgive HER if she did.  Why they're still together, I have no idea - how awkward must that be?  Now I'm still waiting for that person I spoke with in 2015, when I said that I liked Hillary Clinton and I would vote for Hillary Clinton, but she would never be President, to tell me that I was spot-on correct.

Then the whole e-mail server thing broke, and the Benghazi thing, and I knew she was done. But still, she WON the popular vote in 2016, but lost the electoral college, and that's happened five times in U.S. history, apparently.  You can't just have the most votes, those votes need to come from the right states, and that's everything, because we had four years of disaster and lies and poor pandemic response and a whole bunch of fail under Trump.  But I digress.  

What about Tony Blair?  I really don't remember much, but this film at least served to remind me that he became friends with Bill Clinton (who was running for his second term when they met) and because of this "special relationship" between the U.S. and the U.K., their fates were sort of tied together for a while.  Then four years passed and Blair had to work with George W. Bush, and that was probably a whole different thing, right there.  Initially this film was going to cover both Presidents, but then chose to narrow the focus to just Blair and Clinton, and W. appears only briefly at the end.  

I remember the Clinton years, and I remember how frustrating it was that Bill's first four years got bogged down in vainly trying to straighten out the American healthcare system, and then this whole thorny issue about gays in the military came along to slow down any progress that got made.  Then, of course, the second term sometimes felt like it was all scandal and impeachment preventing anything from getting done.  Then, of course, came the dreaded Bush v. Gore election, the recounts and the lawsuits and the re-recounts and the hanging chads, the butterfly ballots and then when it was all over it was Bush's brother, conveniently the governor of Florida, who found a way to stop the recount when W. was ahead, and somehow it came down to just ONE county in Florida that decided the election, and Gore was the bigger and better man who stopped fighting for the Presidency, so naturally I think he would have made a better President, according to the wisdom of Solomon.  He loved the country more because he put aside his own ambition to run it, for the sake of the process.  I always say, show me a guy who's smart enough to NOT want to be president, and I'll vote for him, but I seem to be in the minority on this point.

So then we got four years where the U.S. was run by a real idiot who'd failed at countless other jobs before, only come on, that wasn't really the case because it was all a distraction, the real mastermind was Cheney running the country and George W. Bush was just the figurehead, it was all an illusion, like every magic trick.  You're watching the "President" have dinners with other world leaders and read school books to children in photo ops, but the real governing is being done over THERE, where you can't see it, and Cheney's in charge of some real nasty shit that you'll never find out about.  Boy, it's hard to believe it, but that now seems like the "good old days" when compared with four years under the Trump regime, where Donny didn't actually DO anything, especially where the pandemic was concerned, he just golfed every day (more than any other President) and ate fast food and sometimes traveled around the world, or went to throw paper towels at hurricane victims - yeah, that'll fix things. 

Look, a lot can happen between now and November 2024.  Trump could serve time, or lose enough court cases that he'd be discredited as a convicted criminal.  Attitudes could change, the economy could get better, or we could have a recession or a depression. A new Republican front-runner could gain support, or a new Democratic front-runner could gain support.  Trump could die, Biden could die or get sick, VP Harris could take over and immediately become the most electable person in 2024.  Anything is possible, or we could just get a re-do of the 2020 election if nothing else changes from now.  Then either Biden wins or Trump wins - and if Trump wins he either pardons himself and then goes on vacation for four more years, or he becomes a dictator and the U.S. ceases to exist as a democratic entity.  I think that last situation is quite unlikely, but also not impossible - so the question then becomes, if that scenario comes to pass, what is the most appropriate response?  Move to Canada, or stockpiles weapons, fuel and clean water and hide in the basement for another four years?  We'll see. 

Also starring Michael Sheen (last seen in "Kingdom of Heaven"), Dennis Quaid (last heard in "Strange World"), Helen McCrory (last seen in "Their Finest"), Adam Godley (last heard in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), Marc Rioufol, Mark Bazeley (last seen in "The Bourne Ultimatum"), Kerry Shale (last seen in "Final Portrait"), Matthew Marsh (last seen in "The Informer"), Chris Wilson, 

with archive footage of Gerry Adams, Tony Blair (last seen in "Iris"), Barbara Bush (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), George H.W. Bush (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), Dick Cheney (ditto), George W. Bush (last seen in "Respect"), Bill Clinton (ditto), Jimmy Carter (last seen in "Elvis"), Lyndon Johnson (ditto), Winston Churchill (last seen in "The Good German"), Dwight Eisenhower (last seen in "Lucy and Desi"), Al Gore (last seen in "Irresistible"), Edward Heath (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Lady Bird Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy (last seen in "Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"), Monica Lewinsky (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), John Major (last seen in "Pavarotti"), Slobodan Milosevic, Richard Nixon (last seen in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Nancy Reagan (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Franklin Roosevelt (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Harry Truman (ditto), Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Boris Yeltsin. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 press conferences

The Daytrippers

Year 15, Day 336 - 12/2/23 - Movie #4,594

BEFORE: Geez, it's really a difficult time of year, isn't it?  Thanksgiving is over and the Christmas season is upon us, so if there wasn't enough pressure and stress in your life before, just wait, it's coming.  Work is weird because we all know that the holiday shutdown is coming, there's going to be a week or two weeks or a month where just nothing is happening, or you're told that you need to take some time off, and you can't get anything done because, like, what's the point, everything's about to shut down.  

I'm just watching one movie this week, and that also feels weird, to not be watching a movie every day.  Next week I may just watch one more, and the week after that another two, maybe, because that spaces out the six films I have planned for the rest of the year and pushes the Christmas-ey films closer to Christmas.  Yeah, it's been a wild ride this Movie Year, but then when it's over or when I have to space out my films like this, I feel adrift, like there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.  So there's a bleak feeling in the air, like something's about to end, and I don't know if it's my primary job or if I need to make some big life change or stop reading comic books, but the end of one year and the beginning of the next is kind of all about change, and I don't handle change well.  So then there's THAT level of stress and anxiety on top of everything else. 

Hope Davis carries over from "The Myth of Fingerprints". 

THE PLOT: When she discovers a love letter written to her husband by an unknown paramour, the distraught Eliza turns to her tight-knit Long Island family for advice. 

AFTER: This film opens with a couple driving home from Thanksgiving, and really, what could be more appropriate?  My last few films were Thanksgiving-based, and so that places this film right in that tough spot between the holidays I was talking about.  I swear, I did not know that about this film when I programmed it here, in fact I've been second-guessing my choice to put this film here, because it felt so relationship-based, maybe it would have worked in February, but now we'll never know, will we?  I'm proud of myself, I stuck to my plan and I believed in the linking system, which doesn't let me down as much as you might think.  I should just trust my instincts and the system more, although I follow its advice, so isn't that enough?  

While we're on the topic of stress and anxiety, this film is really about nothing BUT that - one stressful situation on top of another as a family tries to deal with all that comes with December, trying to fill the space between the holidays, trying to figure out if your whole life is going to change, trying to deal with the life you created by making the choices that you made that led you to where you are.  Are you in a good place in your life, are you where you should be, is everything OK?  And if not, what changes can you make to improve your situation, or at least improve how you feel about it?  Do you have all the answers, or do you only THINK you have all the answers, and how can you possibly tell the difference?  And then if you find out that things aren't what you thought they are, or you're not where you think you should be, how do you feel about that?  

So there's maybe a lot to unpack here, maybe not.  Eliza finds a note written to her husband, which could be a love letter, however maybe it's just a note from somebody who likes poetry, it's tough to say.  Her husband Louis works in publishing in Manhattan, so he might just know a lot of literary types who know a lot of poems. She asks her family for advice, and sure, the simplest thing to do would be to call him at work and ask him about the note, but then we wouldn't have a movie, would we?  So instead the whole family decides to get in the station wagon and head into the city to confront her husband.  Sure, face to face is better, it's so easy to lie over the phone - plus you need to look into someone's eyes sometimes to tell if they're lying.  Makes sense. 

Wouldn't you know, Louis isn't in his office, his boss gave him the rest of the day off, but there is a book release party later in the day, and he's probably going to be there.  So the family heads down to an apartment on Spring St., where they think his part-time lover might live.  And they do see him leaving that apartment with a woman, and getting into a cab.  But circumstances once again prevent the family from catching up with Louis, and they lose his cab in the Manhattan traffic.  They regroup, but then Eliza's mother faints, and they're forced to seek shelter in a random nearby apartment.  Suddenly this is starting to feel like a 10-minute narrative that got stretched out to almost 90 minutes.  It's delay, delay, delay until the final confrontation.  

It's maybe worth pointing out that this film came out in 1996, it was part of the FIRST edition of the Slamdance Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize.  If you're not familiar with Slamdance, it happens in the same city as Sundance, at the same time, only it's much more indie. I think it started out by showing the films that Sundance rejected, but it's become its own thing over the years, still there's a rule that a film can't be in both festivals, so in some ways it's still showing the films that Sundance rejected.  But it's also managed to carve out its own niche, I think for a long while it was just catering to first or second-time directors, which is kind of cool.  I was just talking on the phone yesterday with somebody from that festival, but I can't say why, not just yet - maybe in a few days.  

But the other thing about 1996 is that it was SO long ago, and things that would be shocking in a movie back then are maybe not so shocking now.  We've come a long way in some aspects, and while it's still not a cool thing to have an affair, I think there's maybe more of an understanding now that these things do happen.  Jeez, just looking at the personal lives of the actors in this film, that's not much help because some of them seem quite messy and complicated.  Let's face it, nearly everybody's personal lives are messy and complicated, can we all just agree on that point?  Sure, once in a while you see somebody who's been married for 20 years or more, but that's become such a rarity.  I think I saw a BuzzFeed post the other day about long-term famous couples and really, there aren't very many left.  It's almost disheartening when you start looking into the personal lives of actors, but perhaps those are more messy and complicated than those of non-famous people.  But then again, maybe not, things are tough all over. 

I guess the point of the film is that if you're going to fight for your relationship, that's going to take effort, and sometimes you have to fall back on your family if you need help dealing with it all, and other times you have to confront your partner and say, "OK, what's really going on here, where do we stand?" especially if you haven't had that sort of check-in conversation in a while.  And then sometimes you have to be in that other mode, where you're just in the car while somebody else's relationship is falling apart, and you help out however you can, even if you just provide some moral support.  

Part of this film is set in Long Island (Deer Park and Huntington, places I've been) and the rest in Manhattan, where I spend about half my time.  I tried to pay attention to the backgrounds, to see if I could tell where in Manhattan it was filmed, but I was only partly successful, because so much of the city has changed since 1996.  I would see a block full of stores and restaurants and I thought, "Geez, I bet ALL of those places are now out of business, either they failed over time or they closed during COVID."  And I really only recognized one block for sure, when the station wagon was coming up 8th Ave. and passed FIT on 27th St.  My office used to be RIGHT near there, and I still walk down that block often, when I have to travel between the animation studio and the theater.  Or if I want to walk up from the theater to get dinner from my favorite deli.  

Also starring Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Pat McNamara (last seen in "Blue Thunder"), Anne Meara (last seen in "The Boys from Brazil"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Scream 3"), Liev Schreiber (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Campbell Scott (last seen in "Jurassic World Dominion"), Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Moxie"), Douglas McGrath (last seen in "Café Society"), Peter Askin, Stephanie Venditto (last seen in "All About Steve"), Marc Grapey (last seen in "Captive State"), Jill Rowe, Andy Brown, Paul Herman (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Amy Stiller (last seen in "Zoolander 2"), Marcia Haufrecht (last seen in "The Night Listener"), Carol Locatell, Adam Davidson, Tracey Barry, Ford Evanson, Rik Walters, Greg Mottola (last seen in "Hollywood Ending"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 cups of herbal tea

The Myth of Fingerprints

Year 15, Day 327 - 11/23/23 - Movie #4,593 - THANKSGIVING FILM #3 (of 3)

BEFORE: OK, I realize I'm a little late, because I watched this one in the evening of Thanksgiving itself, and I meant to knock it out the day before.  Things happened, it rained, I fell asleep, I had to work an extra shift.  Does it really matter?  I got to it just under the wire, and it counts.  Anyway, this whole week in movies has been about the holidays and getting together with family, and then the struggles involved with putting up with that.  The holiday repercussions, let's say. Dealing with your parents, or if you're older, dealing with your children.  Dealing with your siblings, that's a big challenge, too.  You could just spend the holiday alone, but then what's the fun in that?  You'll probably end up depressed that way.

We had a relatively stress-free holiday - no family but us, no being forced to watch the damn parade, no struggle to get a turkey cooked.  We drove out to a mansion on Long Island which is now a hotel, as we found out about a month ago that they serve up a Thanksgiving buffet.  A little pricey maybe, but if we had gone to a restaurant with my parents it would have been about the same for four people to eat a mediocre meal, so why not spend the same amount for two people to have a spectacular meal?  We're coming off of three years where we had to drive up to Massachusetts, buy a boxed turkey dinner from a grocery store that we pre-ordered, and then find a way to heat that up and deliver it to my parents at their assisted living complex.  Well, my parents have moved to North Carolina to live with my sister, so we had free rein to have whatever meal that we wanted to have.

And what a meal it was - salad bar, cold seafood bar (shrimp, clams & oysters), then a pasta station with eggplant florentine, also pasta in vodka sauce mixed in a giant wheel of parmesan (not my thing, but my wife likes parmesan, so she was all into that.).  Then a carving station with ham and shell steak, a fall station with turkey (white or dark, your choice), and stuffing, and a mashed potato bar with all the toppings you could want (bacon, sour cream, chives, mushrooms, etc.). Everything was so elegant that I was surprised there wasn't a gravy fountain.  Then a large selection of desserts, on a big table that had its own ROOM.  Yeah.  Apple pie, pumpkin pie, chocolate mousse cake, tiramisu cake, and more.  I certainly ate until I could not eat any more, and the bonus was that we had a lunch seating instead of a dinner seating, so we were driving back home past all the traffic with people going out to Long Island for dinner with family.  We had the rest of the day to relax and recover and do nothing, I took a nap and then called my parents, so family obligation done with minimal stress, and no arguments.  That's a Thanksgiving win...

Julianne Moore carries over from "The Ladies Man". 

THE PLOT: A few days spent in close proximity to each other around Thanksgiving soon leads to secrets and old resentments being revealed, which threaten to splinter an already dysfunctional family. 

AFTER: Ah, the complexities of going back home to visit your parents for the holidays.  You're reminded of a time when your parents were your world, they provided for you and took care of you, and taught you how to live, and then you went out into the world and started making your own decisions and maybe realized there was a different way to live.  Maybe you figured out at some point that your parents didn't know everything after all, or were too rigid in their thinking about religion or relationships or whatnot, and you couldn't wait to get out of there and take control.  And then when you come back after some time away you're maybe looking at them very differently, you can see through the cracks and see that they are imperfect people (as you also are) and they're messed up in their own way (as you also are).  

The film starts with the four children returning home - two are bringing their spouses/partners with them, and those couples both manage to have sex on the trip, one on the train and the other during a car stop.  This makes sense, because they're about to spend a few days at their parents house, and who wants to have sex there?  I'm reminded of the old George Carlin quip about how nobody gets laid on Thanksgiving, it's just not a sexy holiday.  Plus all the coats are on the bed when guests come over.  He had a point - but then on the first night home, both couples have sex AGAIN, and that doesn't make sense at all.  Didn't they just DO that on the trip over?  Neither couple is married but they're allowed to sleep in the same beds, and for some reason, the parents are OK with that.  They must not have very many guest rooms, or else the parents are pretty progressive.  

Warren hasn't been home for three years, not since breaking up with his girlfriend, Daphne.  He arrives a day early, which bothers his father for some reason, there go all his hopes about maybe refinishing the dining room table.  Wait, what?  But there's more to this story, because Warren learns that Daphne is back in town, too - and they get together and discuss maybe giving things another go.  But Daphne reveals that Warren's father once kissed her, and well, that's a family no-no, making a pass at your son's girlfriend.  We start to get clues that maybe Dad didn't know what he was doing, so it's possible he has dementia, but still, that's no excuse.  Dad also goes out to shoot a wild turkey for Thanksgiving, but who the hell did that in 1997?  Is that a Maine thing, or do some people just like to hunt their own food?  We have supermarkets now, there's no need to do that.  Anyway, he apparently fails to find a wild turkey so he buys one from the store and then shoots it so his family will think that he's still a good hunter.  Umm, sure, but then who plucked it and butchered it?  There's got to be a NITPICK POINT here somewhere.

Meanwhile, older daughter Mia starts questioning her relationship when she goes into town to find a bookstore (Dad apparently used the last chapter of a book for kindling) and bumps into a man who recognizes her from kindergarten.  Cezanne (not his real name, he changed it) had a crush on her then, and somehow 30 years later he still has feelings for her AND he's a nice guy AND he somehow knows the ending to that book, so there's some potential there, enough for Mia to spend a few afternoons with him and thus also avoid the family touch football game.  

Also meanwhile, the family celebrates Thanksgiving, but the rest of the characters are quite maddeningly not very fleshed out, or really given much to do, for that matter.  What's the deal with the youngest daughter, Leigh, who still lives at home?  What about Jake and Margaret, the film kind of forgets about them after a while, also.  In order to be a true ensemble piece, all of the characters need to be developed, and if not, then why are they even there?  The family dynamic wouldn't have been that much different with, say, three siblings instead of four, so if you're going to have four, why not give all of them a decent storyline, instead of just half of them?

Maybe there's a reason why this film isn't streaming anywhere at the moment - which I thought was a bit odd, I mean, I've HEARD of the film, why isn't it on Netflix or Roku or Tubi or even iTunes, for that matter?  I would have been happy to pay $2.99 to watch this on iTunes, but it just wasn't there, forcing me to track it down on a torrent site, and I really hate to break copyright rules if I don't have to.  I feel like every film should be available SOMEWHERE at all times, without me having to access dark web sites.  But it seems this film just isn't in demand, perhaps it's not very popular because it feels like somebody forgot to finish it.  What happens to Warren and Daphne, do they drive off together, leave Maine and never look back?  I have no idea, because the movie couldn't be bothered to tell me.  And why should I care about what happens to the characters if the writer clearly didn't?

Julianne Moore married the director of this film, and they have two children.  See, now that's a development in somebody's life, but why couldn't we see anything like that within the film?  Instead we get a lot of flashes of things happening in this house, but they're all like disconnected incidents and they don't come together, and so therefore the movie never really gets to any kind of point.  I'm feeling a bunch of day-after holiday letdown for sure.  And now I said I'd take some time off from movies, like the rest of November, so I'll be back here December 1 or so, with seven more movies, only how am I going to fill the time between now and then?

Also starring Roy Scheider (last seen in "Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind"), Blythe Danner (last seen in "Hello I Must Be Going"), Noah Wyle (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), Arija Bareikis (last seen in "The Purge"), Hope Davis (last seen in "Asteroid City"), Laurel Holloman, Michael Vartan (last seen in "Monster-in-Law"), Brian Kerwin (last seen in "27 Dresses"), James Le Gros (last seen in "Lovely & Amazing"), Chris Bauer (last seen in "The Little Things"), Justin Barreto, Nicholas Bourgeois, Christopher Duva (last seen in "The Out-of-Towners" (1999)), Kelsey Gunn, Polly Pelletier, Pam Jack, Michael Rupert.

RATING: 4 out of 10 home movies

The Ladies Man

Year 15, Day 324 - 11/22/23 - Movie #4,592

BEFORE: Well, the goal was to get my Thanksgiving movies all watched BEFORE the big day, but then I got sidetracked by the weather, and my sleeping schedule got even worse than normal, which is saying something.  Having a second job on weeknight evenings and weekends has screwed things up a bit over the last two years, but when I get a week off from that job, like this holiday week, things seem to just go ka-blooey. (I had little sense of purpose when the theater was closed for two months this summer, but that's another story...). I stayed up late on Monday, intending to sleep late on Tuesday, which I did - but then when I finally woke up at lunchtime, my wife told me we were expecting bad rain later that day, so I had to get out in the backyard and sweep up all the leaves so they wouldn't clog the backyard drain, which would lead to us having a basement full of water. 

OK, I'd been meaning to get out there anyway and cut down the weeds one more time before winter, so I did that and swept up as many leaves as I could, but then I was exhausted, so two hours after waking up, doing yard work and eating lunch, I was having a nap.  This was followed by staying up late on Tuesday night to check that back drain during the rainstorm, however the worst rain wasn't due until about 4 am on Wednesday morning, so I got to bed at 5 am today, after the rain finally slowed up, and then had to go to work on just a few hours sleep.  Came home tired again, of course, and had another nap this evening from about 5 to 7 pm.  Geez, when is a guy supposed to get his movie reviews written?

Watching the film wasn't a problem, I got that in before the rain really started to come down.  Anyway, thanks to the ripple effect I've got one more Thanksgiving movie to watch - this one's really just a connector of Thanksgiving movies, so tune in tomorrow for Turkey Day movie #3 - but now I've got to watch that movie ON Thanksgiving, and late in the day at that.  We're going out for a buffet lunch, so I'll have to watch my movie in the evening tomorrow, and then probably post on Friday.  

Tim Meadows carries over from "Jack and Jill".

THE PLOT: Late-night radio advice host Leon Phelps is fired from his Chicago gig, but then gets a letter from a wealthy former lover who offers to take care of him. 

AFTER: Well, I hope that when I'm finally done with my time here on Earth that I am the holder of several world records, either official or unofficial.  I'd love to be the oldest man who ever lived, but I realize the chances of that are slim.  I'm certainly going to hold the record for working for my boss the longest, because it's 30 years and counting and nobody's even trying to come in second.  Maybe I can hold the record for the world's largest Star Wars autograph collection, that would be nice, but I've only got 120 or so, and I can't say for sure, but somebody out there might have more than I do.  

Here's another one that's easily attainable - I think now I've watched every single movie ever made that was based on a Saturday Night Live sketch or character.  Can anybody else out there claim this, or even come in a close second?  No way, because again, who else would want to do that, or even if they did, who would be willing to admit that?  OK, let's count them down, I've now seen "The Blues Brothers", "Coneheads", "Wayne's World", "MacGruber", "Superstar", "A Night at the Roxbury", and even "Stuart Saves His Family".  Huh, I kind of thought there would be more - "Wayne's World 2", of course, and by extension "Blues Brothers 2000", but come on, is that it?   The only one I seem to be missing is "It's Pat", and that one's not available, probably for good reason.  

There's a new one, from the writing team known as "Please Don't Destroy", but I guess that's not based on a specific sketch, it just has the three guys from the show playing versions of themselves as they look for a lost treasure or something.  "Hot Rod" doesn't count?  Then why the hell did I watch it?  This sketch comedy show has been on for like 48 years, had a couple hundred notable comedians in the cast, and they've only made 11 feature films?  What a bunch of slackers - come on, they only make like 30 shows a year, which means they're in repeats almost half the year.  Well, anyway, tonight's film puts me within ONE movie of having seen all of the movie spin-offs, I guess that's almost something? 

But this film didn't really age well - it's about Leon Phelps, a late-night radio talk-show host who has no filter, and often just ends up talking about sex and what a great lover he is.  And for once the character might just be who he says he is, because we also learn that there's a support group of men who have all had their wives cheat on them by sleeping with the same mysterious stranger with a smiley-face tattoo on his butt, and they're getting closer to figuring out his identity.  But then Leon has the bad fortune of getting fired, along with his female producer, so by the time the support group of husbands learns his identity and shows up at the radio station, he's no longer employed there.  

So in essence the film becomes something of a chase scene, as Phelps bounces from station to station, either not landing the job due to blowing the interview, or then getting the job and being unable to control his sex-related talk, getting fired and then moving on, with the mob always one or two stations behind.  What ends up bringing the group in contact with their prey is Leon getting an anonymous letter from one of his old flames, and she offers to take care of him financially if he'll be her constant companion.  But she fails to mention that she's still married to the head of the support group that's trying to kill him.  

Really, the only redeeming thing here is that Leon goes and re-visits so many of his old girlfriends and is therefore forced to confront his "love 'em and leave 'em" habits and learns that they were non-productive.  Also, getting back together with them turns out to be a bad idea, especially the one who wants to make love while dressed as a circus clown - yeah, run away as fast as you can.  And he learns that maybe true love was not meant to be found in one-night stands, but he'd have a better chance with his longtime producer, since they started off as friends.  

It's a throwback character, since he dressed in 1970's fashions and seems to have outdated attitudes about relationships and feminism, but at least this got addressed and Phelps was forced to change his thinking in order to have a real lasting relationship.  But notice there was never a sequel, and Tim Meadows never headlined another movie after that, so I'm guessing this one just didn't really catch on with most audiences. Also note there wasn't another movie made based on an SNL character for 10 years after this one came out. 

OK, at least I'm all set up for Thanksgiving, after our lunch tomorrow I'll watch the last film for November, and then I'll have just SEVEN movies to watch in December, leading up to Christmas.  This Movie Year is going to be over before you know it. 

Also starring Karyn Parsons, Billy Dee Williams (last seen in "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker"), Tiffani Thiessen (last seen in "Hollywood Ending"), Lee Evans (last seen in "The Fifth Element"), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Val"), Sofia Milos, Jill Talley (last seen in "World's Greatest Dad"), John Witherspoon (last seen in "Vampire in Brooklyn"), Ken Hudson Campbell (last seen in "Breakfast of Champions"), Rocky Carroll (last seen in "Prelude to a Kiss"), Tamala Jones (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Kevin McDonald (last seen in "Sky High"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Dear Evan Hansen"), Eugene Levy (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), David Huband (last seen in "The Lookout"), Brett Heard, Arnold Pinnock (last seen in "Carrie" (2013)), Shaun Majumder (last seen in "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle"), Diego Fuentes, Sean Thibodeau, Mark McKinney (last seen in "Superstar"), Chris Parnell (last seen in "Slice"), Susan Aceron, Robin Ward, Joan Massiah (last seen in "The Calling"), Hadley Sandiford (last seen in "Bulletproof Monk"), Barbara Barnes-Hopkins (last seen in "Lucky Number Slevin"), Boyd Banks (also last seen in "Superstar"), Jim Codrington, Aaron Berg (last seen in "The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day"), Reginald Hudlin.

RATING: 4 out of 10 radio station program directors

Jack and Jill

Year 15, Day 322 - 11/20/23 - Movie #4,591 - THANKSGIVING FILM #2 (of 3)

BEFORE: I know, I know, I've heard a lot of terrible things about this movie over the years - and I was content to avoid it completely for a very long time, but then I kind of came back to Adam Sandler through "Uncut Gems" and "Hustle", and then I watched "Blended" earlier this year, and it wasn't THAT bad.  I mean, yeah, it was bad but it was at least watchable.  Then this one popped up on Netflix - I think Netflix is now contractually obligated to run every Adam Sandler film, even the older and crappier ones.  

Then I found that I was watching a lot of movies with twins in them - or, rather, one actor playing twins, as in "Breathe" and "Dead Ringers".  Combine this with "Glass Onion", "The Lady in the Van", "The Green Knight" and "The Devil's Double", all of which had one actor or actress playing two roles, and then on top of that the multiverse movies like "The Flash" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once", and suddenly I realized there have been at least FIFTEEN movies I watched this year where an actor took on multiple roles, and that includes cloning, time travel and multiversal counterparts, umm, encountering each other. 

Then I read the tagline and learned it's not just a twins movie, it's a Thanksgiving-themed movie. God damn it, and it links to another Thanksgiving movie at that.  So it makes the list, and I'll probably hate it, but then I'll never, EVER have to watch it again.  So there's that. 

Katie Holmes carries over again from "Pieces of April", that's three in a row for her in November, but I also used her as a link in February, so she should finish the year with five films. But that's a bit behind Adam Sandler, who turned up in a few documentaries, and then appeared in a couple of films around Father's Day, so he'll have a total of 8 appearances this year after tonight.  That's a lot, but still not enough to finish in first place. 

THE PLOT: Family man Jack Saperstein prepare for the annual event he always dreads - the Thanksgiving visit from his fraternal twin sister - the needy and passive-aggressive Jill, who then refuses to leave. 

AFTER: OK, it's a bad movie, but it's not THAT bad.  OK, well, it is THAT bad, but it was bearable, I got through it.  It's terrible and also unfortunate that they just couldn't think of enough things to DO with these two characters.  It feels so thrown together, just a bunch of bad ideas strung together to resemble a (very) loose and incoherent plot.  It starts out OK, with the same premise as "Pieces of April" - family members who are at odds with each other and don't see eye to eye gather together to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Jill Saperstein flies from NYC to visit her twin brother in L.A. and have the holiday dinner with his family.  It's all fine until Jack then remembers WHY he moved to L.A. in the first place, because his sister is annoying, crude, loud, needy and passive-aggressive.  PLUS she brought 80 bags of luggage with her (how much did she pay in extra baggage fees?) and an equally annoying bird that talks, and also sounds like Adam Sandler doing a voice.  (You can take your bird with you on the airplane?  I doubt it.)

Jill also doesn't understand the time difference when you fly, and therefore changes her flight to get in at 4 am for some reason, forcing Jack to wake up in the middle of the night to come get her.  Yeah, nobody does this, plus nobody is so dumb they wouldn't understand the arrival time on their ticket and therefore change it to the most inconvenient arrival time possible.  Yes, technically there are red-eye flights, but very few people take them - though perhaps they are cheaper? From what I've seen, the bulk of people just don't travel overnight, airports are busier during the day and most almost completely shut down at 4 am.  Maybe more people travel in the wee hours of the night during busy travel periods like Thanksgiving week if the daytime flights are booked up?  Now I've thought about this more than the screenwriter here ever did.

Jack is an advertising executive, or commercial director or something, and works on ads with everyone from Regis Philbin to Jared from Subway (OK, that one didn't age well...) and he's planning to take his family on a cruise right after New Year's.  But then he yells at his sister on Thanksgiving and to make it up to her, he lets her stay with them through Hannukah.  Then of course another disaster means she has to stay through New Year's, and now she's in danger of spoiling their vacation, too.  Meanwhile Jack wants to try to get actor Al Pacino to appear in a Dunkin Donuts commercial to promote their "Dunkaccinos".  (NOTE: A dunkaccino used to be the nickname for a mix of half coffee and hot cocoa at Dunkin', but nobody who works at Dunkin now even remembers how to make this item.  Another thing that did not age well.)

At one point Jack decides to help his sister try online dating, and his kids set her up with a profile on a matchmaking site, but after she gets no responses Jack posts for her on CraigsList personals - what could POSSIBLY go wrong?  She goes on a terrible date and then feels even more terrible, and then Jack remembers that Al Pacino saw her at the Lakers game, and seemed very interested in her.  So yeah, it's all leading up to Jack pimping his own sister out to Al Pacino in exchange for him agreeing to star in a commercial.  This is a terrible, low-down turn of events.  And then when it doesn't work, you can see what's inevitable coming next, Jack dresses up like his own twin sister and ends up at Al Pacino's house with him.  Another terrible turn of events, and now we're finding humor in a man dressed in drag to seduce another man, and really, this sort of thing went out of vogue back when Bugs Bunny put on a dress to seduce Elmer Fudd.  It's not cool and very insensitive to the trans community in some way, I'm sure. 

The movie can't even seem to decide if Jack likes his sister - first he hates her, then he feels sorry for her, then he tries to pimp her out - there's no consistency there, either.  Can we just pick one emotion and stick with it?  Sure, twins are weird, there's no denying that but they should be understandable and relatable to each other in some way at some point.  Why is that so difficult to portray here? Instead we get some goofball "secret language" that they invented as kids and wacko theories like that twins can feel each other's pain (they can't.). I'd say it's all done in the name of comedy, only none of it is funny at all, so what gives? 

Making fun of the homeless on Thanksgiving - also not cool.  Making fun of lonely single women - also not cool.  Making fun of the perverts who date them online, OK, you can do that.  Making fun of puppeteers, OK, they're weird so go right ahead.  But don't you DARE make fun of the contestants on "The Price Is Right", those are decent Americans, if a little bit odd.  This country is a great big melting pot of comedic ideas, but you've got to choose them more carefully, I think.  Why, for example, did someone try to find humor in Jack's adopted Indian son who has a compulsion to cover himself with Scotch tape and tape random things to himself?  Is this even a thing that a kid would do?  Any kid?  Again, I kind of doubt it, so why is this even here?  It adds nothing to the story and like everything else, just isn't funny.

NITPICK POINT: Didn't we all know by 2011 that you shouldn't talk on a cel phone in a movie theater?  Or during a Broadway play?  Come on, now....

"Jack and Jill" ended up setting a record for the most Razzie nominations ever - 12 noms in 2011, and then it WON (umm, lost?) all 10 categories, everything from Worst Picture, Worst Actor (Adam Sandler) and Worst Actress (also Adam Sandler, seems fair) to Worst Screenplay, Worst Couple and even Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel - even though it is none of those things.  Yep, it was a clean sweep that year for "Jack and Jill", so congratulations?

OK, so maybe that proves this film IS that bad...but it made money, Sandler got paid $20 million and his real-life family got to go on a cruise, so who came out on top?

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Al Pacino (last seen in "De Palma"), Eugenio Derbez (last seen in "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms"), Tim Meadows (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Nick Swardson (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Allen Covert (last seen in "Blended"), Rohan Chand (last seen in "The Hundred-Foot Journey"), Elodie Tougne, Geoff Pierson (last seen in "Something Borrowed"), Valerie Mahaffey (last seen in "French Exit"), Gad Elmaleh (last seen in "The Dictator"), Gary Valentine (last seen in "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2"), Kristin Davis (last seen in "Couples Retreat"), Norm Macdonald (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), David Spade (last seen in "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag"), Jackie Seiden (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Sadie Sandler (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Sunny Sandler (ditto), Peter Dante (ditto), Dennis Dugan (ditto), Georgia Hatzis, Jonathan Loughran (last seen in "Blended"), J.D. Donaruma, Tyler Spindel, John Farley (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Robert C. Lopez, Jalen Testerman, Simrin C. Player, Gerardo Hernandez Beltran, Virginia Louise Smith, Joseph Balderrama (last seen in "Uncharted"), Robert Harvey (last seen in "Arsenal"), Santiago Segura (last seen in "Pacific Rim"), 

with cameos from Billy Blanks (last seen in "The Clapper"), Christie Brinkley (last seen in "Vegas Vacation"), Drew Carey (last seen in "Gilbert"), Dana Carvey (last seen in "Listening to Kenny G"), Johnny Depp (last seen in "The Rum Diary"), Jared Fogle, George Gray, Michael Irvin (last seen in "The Longest Yard" (2005)), Caitlyn Jenner (last seen in "Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time"), Richard Kline (last seen in "Love, Weddings & Other Disasters"), John McEnroe (last seen in "McEnroe"), Vince Offer (also last seen in "The Clapper"), Shaquille O'Neal (last seen in "Blended"), Dan Patrick (ditto), Bill Romanowski (ditto), Regis Philbin (last seen in "Val"), and archive footage of Kobe Bryant (last seen in "Citizen Ashe")

RATING: 2 out of 10 Cayenne peppers

Pieces of April

Year 15, Day 321 - 11/19/23 - Movie #4,590 - THANKSGIVING FILM #1 (of 3)

BEFORE: Thanksgiving Week is here, and sure, I could wait until Thursday to start all the films with people cooking big turkey dinners and (I'm guessing) serving up a side of family dysfunction as well, but I'm anxious to get to the end of the November chain, then take a week or two off and then start up that last chain that will get me to Christmas. 

Katie Holmes carries over from "The Giver".  Both she and Derek Luke were in "Alone Together" back in February, which is just another odd coincidence, unless I'm missing something. 

THE PLOT: A wayward daughter invites her dying mother and the rest of her estranged family to her apartment for Thanksgiving dinner. 

AFTER: Well, it's been many years since I've eaten Thanksgiving in Manhattan - come to think of it, it's possible that I've NEVER eaten Thanksgiving in Manhattan, despite living in NYC for 38 years now.  Queens, sure, I think maybe two or three times.  Long Island, Connecticut, and even upstate New York in Rockland County but I've probably never in Manhattan on Thanksgiving Day.  I can't think of a better day to NOT be in Manhattan, what with that damn Macy's parade and all - maybe New Year's Eve in Times Square is another definite no-no. What I'm perhaps most used to, however, is about getting OUT of town on Thanksgiving Day.  For many years this meant going to my aunt and uncle's house, but my wife and I got tired of all the family drama there, and the annual screaming over the best way to prepare the holiday meal, so one year we went on a cruise and missed the family Thanksgiving, and we experienced the peace and beauty of a dinner provided by Holland America Cruise Lines, and then after that I never went back to my aunt and uncle's house.  

This film details the reverse, though - a family in upstate New York that drives down on Thanksgiving morning to have dinner with the eldest daughter, who's apparently been at odds with her parents for several years after moving out, and now the family is seeking some kind of reconciliation, or at least a day of good will and bountiful food.  It takes most of the movie for the family to get there, first they stop at Krispy Kreme for donuts (a smart move) and then after that they have to make frequent stops at rest areas because April's mother is very sick and needs to throw up a lot.  She's dying from breast cancer, so there's some added pressure to have a good holiday meal, you know, because it might be her last, also this is perhaps the reason for attempting to reconcile.  

Meanwhile, April tries to cook a Thanksgiving turkey dinner for the first time, and everything keeps going wrong.  The oven in her tiny NYC apartment is broken, or perhaps the gas is off or perhaps the pilot light is out and she doesn't know how to light it.  I had that problem in my first apartment in Brooklyn, it's a learning experience.  But let's assume she's not stupid and her oven is indeed broken - she has to knock on her neighbor's doors in her building to try to find someone who can help her cook a turkey.  The couple Eugene and Evette offer to help but only until the point they need to cook their own dinner, so that still leaves her about two hours short on the cooking time.  But the rumor is that the guy on the fifth floor has a brand new oven, however he's a bit particular about who uses it and when, and eventually he feels that April hasn't properly thanked him, so he holds the turkey hostage for a while.  

Also meanwhile, April's boyfriend Bobby is on a quest across town, to get a nice suit so he can look presentable when he meets April's parents.  And his friend Latrell does hook him up, but on the way back downtown he gets called to meet a drug dealer named Tyrone, who used to be April's boyfriend and he's not jealous at all, he just wants to wish Bobby a Happy Thanksgiving while his goons rough him up.  So naturally a beaten and bloody Bobby makes it back JUST as April's family arrives, and this scares them off.  Right, they leave because Bobby was all beat up, not because he was black, because that would be racist, even for a film made 20 years ago.  

So April's quest to make a great holiday dinner for her family would seem to be a bust - her family drove all the way down to her apartment from upstate, and then chose to drive off before ringing her bell.  Well, who's to say that wasn't the right call?  Hey, if you don't feel comfortable in New York City, you're free to leave at any time, in fact we kind of would prefer that you do, rather than stick around and talk about how unsafe you feel.  So maybe not much has changed here since 2003 after all.  April, of course, is heartbroken, she dealt with three sets of diverse neighbors to get the turkey cooked - the African American couple Eugene and Evette, the gay guy on the fifth floor who held her turkey hostage, and the Chinese-American family who finished cooking the turkey and also fixed its deformity with dough, somehow.  

I've never had this exact situation happen to me, but last year when we visited my parents for Thanksgiving, I pre-ordered the "turkey dinner in a box" from the local grocery store, it came with everything we needed - a 2 lb. turkey breast, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls, and cranberry sauce. (I just needed to add on green bean casserole and a CAN of jellied cranberry sauce, because my family doesn't like the natural stuff where you can see the berries, we prefer the jellied stuff that retains the shape of the can, it's important.). Anyway, the plan was to just heat everything up in our hotel suite's microwave and then drive it over to my parents, as we did during the pandemic - only we got the only suite at the hotel with a microwave that didn't work.  So, a quick conversation with the front desk, and they loaned me the other microwave that gets used during the hotel's daily breakfast service, and I just had to promise to return it before 7 am the next morning.  Yeah, we got my parents their turkey dinner.  

I should point out that I am capable of cooking a whole turkey dinner from scratch - my mother taught me over the course of 10 years.  Christmas dinner, really, but her Christmas dinner was always a turkey, same elements as the Thanksgiving meal.  I learned all her secrets by helping her, and those last few pre-pandemic years, I would say I did 99% of the cooking chores while she supervised.  So I CAN do it, but the last two years it was easier and faster to just buy the "dinner in a box" and heat it up.  But this leads me to my biggest NITPICK POINT tonight, namely that April didn't ease into the process, she didn't do a practice turkey or test out the mashed potato recipe or figure out the best way to cook brussels sprouts, she just memorized a bunch of her mother's recipes and went for it.  God help her, but this is just not the proper way to do things, this would be a recipe for disaster.  Practice, practice, practice, that's the only way to really nail Thanksgiving if you're going to cook everything from scratch.   Again, it took me 10 years to get it down, and now that I haven't done it in a while, it would be tough, but I think I could do it.  (Basting technique is very important, and being strong enough to lift that 18-pound turkey out of the oven many times on the big day kind of meant the job fell to me - plus my sister had two kids to wrangle, being childless meant I could devote all of my Thanksgiving morning to the proper attention needed for a well-cooked turkey and all those side dishes.)

Anyway, April's family regroups at a diner somewhere outside of NYC (looks like Long Island, but could easily be in New Jersey somewhere...) and I also approve this message, I've had great Thanksgiving dinners at diners, too - you don't HAVE to get turkey if the place also offers prime rib, just saying.  And who's to say you can't celebrate Thanksgiving with a hot turkey sandwich, or even a pastrami reuben?  It's up to you - the NYC area diners are food wonderlands with gigantic menus.  Get some cream of turkey soup if you need to celebrate the holiday in some small fashion.  But April's mother eventually feels bad about ditching April's Thanksgiving feast, so she and her son Timmy hitch a ride back with some bikers.  Eventually the rest of the family also turns up at April's tiny apartment, and the holiday is saved.  But how did the rest of the family know Mom and Timmy were headed back to April's?  Nobody in this film seems to have a cell phone - well, it was 2003, they may not have had smart phones yet but they might have had those old flip phones.  

BUT, here comes NITPICK POINT #2, we know that April has a tiny NYC apartment - there are four apartments on each floor, and it's a small building on Suffolk St.  So how the hell did they fit April, Bobby, five members of April's family, the Chinese-Americans AND two bikers into that small railroad apartment?  That's impossible, or some kind of Thanksgiving miracle.  

Speaking of small, this film had a tiny production budget, just $300,000 (in 2003 money, that is) and that's not a lot, no matter how you slice it.  It's got an "Indie" feel for sure, and the stars probably had to sign a waiver that acknowledged they weren't going to make union scale, and that they believed in the project enough that they were willing to waive the SAG minimum daily rate and work for less money upfront.  This was called the SAG low-budget agreement, and I produced a film around the same time that qualified - I believe it was the only animated feature to ever qualify as "low-budget" according to SAG rules.  I remember I had to have every union actor in the film sign a similar waiver, and then we paid them each $500 or $1,000 anyway, which was more than we were obligated to.  "Pieces of April" went on to play at the 2003 Sundance Festival, and then it made over $3.2 million, not bad for a film with a budget of $300,000.  And Patricia Clarkson got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

OK, so we've learned that cooking a Thanksgiving turkey dinner is very difficult, that NYC is a large city full of diverse and very helpful people, and that you should put effort into the holiday if if there's a chance that you can reconcile with your family over a nice meal.  Really, I should call it there, because that really seems like all there is to learn BUT I have two more films set at Thanksgiving to watch, and three more films total this week (one is honestly just filler to connect the others...).

Wait, I just realized NITPICK POINT #3 - Thanksgiving is simply one of the biggest travel days of the entire year, but this family driving INTO New York City never encounters one bit of traffic.  How is that possible?  Remember that damn Macy's parade, and the thousands of people who drive in to the city that morning to see it?  But they get RIGHT on the bridge, no problems apparently, and then somehow also drive ALL THE WAY down to the lower East Side and still don't encounter any traffic at all. This is simply impossible, except for in a movie, I guess.  Sure, we've driven upstate or out to Long Island on Thanksgiving morning, but then sat in traffic for HOURS on the way home. 

Also starring Derek Luke (last seen in "Alone Together"), Oliver Platt (last seen in "Gun Shy"), Patricia Clarkson (last seen in "De Palma"), Alison Pill (last seen in "Miss Sloane"), John Gallagher Jr. (last seen in "Underwater"), Alice Drummond (last seen in "Tales from the Darkside: The Movie"), Sean Hayes (last seen in "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!"), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (last seen in "Cocaine Bear"), Lillias White, Leila Danette, Adrian Martinez (last seen in "The Guilty"), Sisqo (last seen in "Get Over It"), Armando Riesco (last seen in "25th Hour"), Vitali Baganov (last seen in "Salt"), Susan Bruce (last seen in "The Other Woman"), Stephen Chen (last seen in "Vampire's Kiss"), Sally Leung Bayer (last seen in "The Pink Panther"), Jack Chen, Jacqueline Dai, Rosa Luo. 

RATING: 5 out of 10 types of salad dressing at the diner

The Giver

Year 15, Day 318 - 11/16/23 - Movie #4,589

BEFORE: Meryl Streep carries over from "The Homesman".  It's a bit of an odd year if I haven't seen Streep in two movies already - it's an easy link tonight but I don't think she'll make the year-end wrap-up with only two films.  But hey, it looks like Taylor Swift is going to make the cut for the first time ever.  Is Taylor Swift the new Meryl Streep?

THE PLOT: In a seemingly perfect community without war, pain, suffering, differences, or choices, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world. 

AFTER: It's far in the future (maybe? how far?) in a country that might have once been America (only, how can you tell?) and everyone lives in the ultimate gated communities, with the Chief Elder keeping an eye on things via hologram.  This is a society where Meryl Streep has somehow become the equivalent of President, and of course I approve that sort of society, however there's a bit of a bait-and-switch here, we're told that this is a utopian future, however be prepared to maybe find out that it's anything but, and might even be a dystopian one. 

Oh, sure, everything seems fine, at first, but everything's in black and white!  There was some kind of event called "The Ruin", which reorganized society - it's unclear if this was a war or a famine or a pandemic, but somehow during The Ruin society lost its color.  Sure, I figured this was just symbolic, and that color represented joy or the emotions that have become forbidden, but now that I read the plot summary on Wikipedia, it appears that this is meant to be taken literally, nobody in this society can see color?  Huh?  OK, I'll give you that we can maybe do away with war in the future, that would be great, and suffering, sure, get rid of suffering.  But CHOICE?  That sounds awful close to giving up freedom, but it appears that's gone the way of the dinosaur also, since nobody can leave their gated community, for safety's sake, apparently.  Now, please, explain to me how eliminating war, suffering, and choice also made colors go away.  I'm waiting...

You can see what I mean, right?  This works on a symbolic level, if we don't have choices or emotions than our lives become drab and emotionless, and therefore SYMBOLIZED by black and white.  To explain joy and emotions to someone who can't experience them would be similar to explaining color to someone who can't see colors, or music to a deaf person, or how something tastes to someone with no taste buds.  It can't be done, or if it can, it would be extremely difficult.  What's worse is that whatever took away all these other things took away all the stock footage - I mean, memories, or for whatever reason nobody remembers the way that things used to be in the past.  Except one person, the Reciever of Memory. 

Look, I get where they were going with this, but it just can't work. Even if everyone willingly forgot about history or was made to forget about what came before, we'd still have books, right?  People could read about the way things were in the past and live vicariously through fictional characters or biographies of real people, right?  Or maybe that's where things started, they banned books and nobody remembered the "Fahrenheit 451" system of preserving them, so with no books then MAYBE somebody had a shot at getting rid of memory, and then with no romance novels love went away, and without scary stories nobody was afraid any more and without MAD Magazine nobody laughed at anything any more.  OK, lesson for the day, banning books is BAD, even if your school library has books about queer people that you don't want your kids to read, tough, deal with it because once you start banning books then we end up in a future where there is no love and also nobody can see color.  Apparently. 

Also, there is no unemployment, because when the 18-year olds graduate, they are assigned jobs like drone pilot or nurturer and then that's their gig until they retire.  Umm, sure, I can see how the elders might be able to figure out who should do what based on their skills, only how can they possibly know that there will be a job opening for them?  Ah, they've got that one sorted out, too, because when people reach a certain age and they retire, they are sent to go live "Elsewhere".  Likewise, only a certain number of babies are allowed to be raised by families, and the babies who don't make the cut are also sent to go live "Elsewhere".  And if you start to think that this "Elsewhere" is really a euphemism for something, well, you're on the right track.  If you've seen "Logan's Run" you might figure out how this future society works.  It's kind of like when your dog or cat goes to live on a farm upstate, only there's not really a farm. 

Jonas is the last person from his class to be assigned a job, and his job is to become the new Receiver of Memory, which makes the old Receiver of Memory into the Giver of Memory.  The new Giver is able to transmit memories of the past society into Jonas' brain, and so Jonas becomes the new only person who knows how the world really works.  So he gets to learn about war and love and all the good things and bad things that no longer exists, also he gets to tell lies, which nobody else is allowed to do, and sure, this system sure seems like it's working just fine, no adjustment needed, hey, we made it this far, so why not just stay the course.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?  Only I guess it's pretty broke - nobody knows how to have fun any more, nobody apparently has sex, all the babies are made in a lab, and there are no movies or TV.  Yeah, some utopia.

What's worse is that most people don't even realize there's a problem, Jonas' father kills babies in the lab because they're not perfect, and then there's the community's retirement plan, where the benefits aren't great.  There are no Social Security checks in the future, either.  Jonas, instead of becoming a millionaire and re-inventing television, chooses to grab his baby brother and drive off on a motorcycle, to make it to the towers that surround the community and hope that somehow this will restore stock footage to the community.  Wait, I mean memories.  

I don't know, this whole story is problematic at best.  It feels like this was all meant to be some kind of metaphor for something, but I'm not sure for what.  Is someone really saying that society can never eliminate war, not without losing everything else that makes us human, like free will?  So, does this mean that it's pointless to even TRY to eliminate war?  I can't believe that could possibly be the case.  And if we got rid of hate, we'd lose love in the process?  Again, I'm not really following that logic, it would be like saying you wouldn't know that winter is cold unless you also understood that summer is hot.  But we're intelligent people (well, some of us...) and we can reason things out and say that these things are good and those things are bad, but somehow we can't just try to get rid of the bad things?  Like the only way to cut down crime and murder would be to take away all of people's freedom and free will?  Have you tried ALL of the other ways?

NITPICK POINT: How come in the future there are bicycles, but not, sleds, or even skateboards?  Even if people forgot what those items are, what would there be that would prevent somebody from inventing them again?  They seem like very simple concepts that people could reason out again, even if everyone was somehow made to forget about them.  Same goes for dancing or singing.

That's all for this week, but my Thanksgiving-themed mini-chain starts on Sunday.  And I just realized that my lead-in to Thanksgiving is titled "The Giver", somehow that ended up being very appropriate. 

Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Fearless"), Brenton Thwaites (last seen in "Son of a Gun"), Alexander Skarsgard (last seen in "The Northman"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Touched With Fire"), Odeya Rush (last seen in "Dumplin'"), Cameron Monaghan (last seen in "The Year of Spectacular Men"), Taylor Swift (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Emma Tremblay (last seen in "Wonder"), Alexander Jillings, James Jillings, Renate Stuurman, Thabo Rametsi.

RATING: 5 out of 10 daily injections