The Tomorrow Man (2019)

Tomorrow’s so bright they’ve gotta wear shades.

(2019) Romance (Bleecker Street) John Lithgow, Blythe Danner, Katie Aselton, Derek Cecil, Sophie Thatcher, Eve Harlow, Wendy Makkena, Isabelle Boni, Tyler Aser, Andrew Gonsalves, Anthony Lafornara, Naveen Havannavar, Jake Harrington, Jeff Moon, Shawn M. Essler, David Chen, Joe Napier, John Sindoni, Gloria J. Dancause, Liz Cameron, Danielle Smith. Directed by Noble Jones

As we get older, we tend to resist change. While the world keeps on turning, it is unsettling to those of us nearing our mortality at a faster clip than, say, Millennials. We want things to stay the way they are, the way we can at least make sense of life, the universe and everything. Sadly, things rarely stay the same for very long, relatively speaking.

Ed Hemsler (Lithgow) is a grumpy old man who thinks Fox News is way too soft. He is certain that our government is going to muck things up and then the end of civilization will occur. He’s been preparing for it, a so-called Doomsday Prepper, stockpiling non-perishables in a hidden bunker in the back of his house that contains a water filtration system and a generation which disposes of exhaust in an ingenious way.

Ed pretty much keeps to himself, hanging out in computer chat rooms with the like-minded, occasionally venturing out to his neighborhood grocery store to pick up supplies, most of which end up in the bunker. Other than those in his chat group, the only human he has any connection with is his son (Cecil) whom he berates for not being properly prepared for the coming End.

One day he spies in his grocery store a mousy woman buying the same sorts of things he does. He recognizes her as a “fellow traveler” as he puts it, not noting the irony; perhaps “kindred spirit” would have been less of a reach. She’s Ronnie (Danner) and after stalking her a bit, discovers she works in a local gift shop. He finally takes initiative by parking his truck next to hers so that she can’t get into her own car. He comes sailing to the rescue as she tries to negotiate the entry into her car, breezily apologizing. Despite the creepy beginning the two hit it off and when Ed asks her out to dinner, she accepts. She’s very private though; she won’t let him set foot in her house but she falls asleep on the couch at his place as they spend the night watching war documentaries, a particular passion of hers.

A romance eventually blooms as he slowly lets her in to his paranoid life and she accepts him for who he is. He even invites her along to Thanksgiving at his son’s house where his long-suffering daughter-in-law (Aselton) tries to make Ronnie feel welcome and Ed’s granddaughter (Thatcher) complains vociferously about her dad. This is a very middle American movie in a whole lot of ways.

Like most movie relationships, Ed and Ronnie have their ups and downs. When Ronnie reveals her own secret, it comes as a shock to both Ed and the rest of us; that part is well done. Sadly, the pacing lags a bit as Jones seems content to belabor point A before getting on to point B which he similarly belabors before moving on to point C. There is also an ending that comes out of nowhere and that you will either love or hate. I must admit I fell into the latter category.

The saving grace here are Danner and Lithgow. Their chemistry is very solid and their relationship after the kind of serial killer start is pretty believable. I don’t understand why Hollywood seems hell-bent on making all their elderly characters to be eccentric and/or demented. Why can’t they just be, y’know, people?

Lithgow has been one of my favorite actors for decades; with a plethora of memorable roles on his resume. He turns in a fine performance here. Ed is crochety, sure, but deep down he is wounded and a little tenderness is just what his heart needs. Danner does Diane Keaton better than anybody since…well, Diane Keaton. She hunches over like a pathologically shy person does, hoping she won’t be noticed. It seems odd that she works in a job in which she is face-to-face with people and she gets along with her fellow clerk Tina (Harlow) who is absolutely tickled that Ronnie has got herself a fella.

The film, which played the Florida Film Festival this past April, has a ton of sweetness but the ending reeks of cynicism and you get the feeling that the writers don’t hang out with people in their 70s much. There’s a message that you can’t focus so much on tomorrow that you forget all about what’s happening right in front of you today, but that you also need to have an eye to the future as well. It’s a balance and most of us learn it early on, at least to an acceptable degree. I would have rather that in making this romance the filmmakers had the courage to make the geriatric leads be believable and relatable instead of objects to be mocked but I suppose that ageism is the last acceptable prejudice (other than fat-shaming) left to Americans.

REASONS TO SEE: Individually, Lithgow and Danner are always entertaining and they have decent chemistry here. Has a very middle American sensibility.
REASONS TO AVOID: The ending is a cop-out. Drags a little bit in places.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some fairly salty but brief profanity as well as some sexual suggestiveness.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although ostensibly set in Mid-America, the film was shot in Rochester, NY and the store windows have area codes for Syracuse.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/7/19: Rotten Tomatoes: 48% positive reviews: Metacritic: 48/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Blast from the Past
FINAL RATING: 6/10
NEXT: Wonders of the Sea

Hello, My Name is Doris

Sally Field has double vision.

(2015) Comedy (Roadside Attractions) Sally Field, Max Greenfield, Beth Behrs, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Stephen Root, Elizabeth Reaser, Isabella Acres, Kyle Mooney, Natasha Lyonne, Kumail Nanjiani, Caroline Aaron, Tyne Daly, Peter Gallagher, Rebecca Wisocky, Amy Okuda, Don Stark, Nnamdi Asomugha, Anna Akana, Rich Sommer, Emilie Germain. Directed by Michael Showalter

There are a lot of reasons that people fall in love. Sometimes it’s a chemistry thing. Sometimes it’s a sexual thing. Sometimes it’s a shared interests thing. And sometimes, it’s a desperation thing.

Doris Miller (Field) has just buried her mother, whom she has spent much of her adult life taking care of. Doris is a bit eccentric; she dresses like a bag lady being played by the love child of Michelle Pfeiffer and Cher and kind of walks her own path. Her brother (Root) and sister-in-law (McLendon-Covey) urge her to sell the house, which they have ulterior motives for, but she’s not inclined to do so. Doris has lived here all her life and sees no reason to find a new place to live, even though her commute from Staten Island to midtown Manhattan is grueling.

At the firm where she works in the accounting department, she gets on an elevator soon after the funeral with the handsome new art director, John Fremont (Greenfield) – not the general who left his mark on California maps. And wouldn’t you know it, she develops a huge crush on the much younger man.

Doris hasn’t exactly had a whole lot of romantic experience, most of her free time revolving around the care of her mother. So she approaches her best friend Roz (Daly) who steers her to her 13-year-old granddaughter (Acres) who helps Doris set up a fake Facebook account so she can keep tabs on her new beau. Of course, she ends up creating havoc in his life, especially when she gets jealous of his new girlfriend Brooklyn (Behrs). But that isn’t all that’s changing; some of John’s hipster friends are discovering that the quirky Doris is the new kind of cool. She even poses for an album cover; but are her new friends driving Doris away from her old friends? And are her new friends more bent on hanging out with the new flavor of the week rather than genuinely interested in her?

There are a few not-so-subtle undertones here, mainly in how we look at the aged. Field is no spring chicken but she carries herself with a great deal of charm and comes off as so likable that even when she’s engaging in creepy stalker behavior you still end up liking her. But in a lot of ways, her character is kind of a cliché eccentric old woman who is so out there that she fits in with the hip millennial crowd. I found that it was a little bit condescending in that Doris has to dress like a mannequin found in a Mad Max movie and literally throw herself at a younger man to get him to be interested in her. There are plenty of young men who are into older women out there; why does an actress the caliber of Sally Field have to debase herself in order to have a relationship between a younger man and an older woman seem viable?

There are plenty of cliches of the indie variety from the New York location (albeit a lot of it takes place outside of hipster heaven Manhattan and hipster other heaven Brooklyn) to the soundtrack to the pretentions of the mainly artistic people portrayed here. There are a few things that kind of break the mold – the dialogue, for example, is clever but not overly so to the point that it doesn’t sound like real people talking, a very major indie sin.

The film also has something positive that’s a mite rare these days – a delightful ending. Yes, the movie actually ends in a way that is both satisfying and organic. I wish a lot more movies gave the kind of thought to their ending the filmmakers here obviously did with theirs. You think for a moment the movie is going one way and then – it doesn’t. Kudos to the writers for that.

There is definitely a good deal of entertainment value here. Field clearly still is at the top of her game and I hope that with some good roles starting to appear for women in her age range that we’ll see more of her on the big screen in the coming years. I only wish the movie hadn’t treated the romance between the older woman and the younger man as something ridiculous; certainly they wouldn’t have if the relationship had been between a 60-something guy and a 20-something woman. As a society, we seem to be okay with one and not with the other. There’s a good documentary in the exploration of that double standard somewhere.

REASONS TO GO: Field is still intensely likable. A very satisfying ending.
REASONS TO STAY: A little bit condescending and cliché. I think the May-December romance should have not been a source of ridicule.
FAMILY VALUES: There is enough profanity to merit an R rating.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Lyonne and Greenfield both appear in the sitcom New Girl.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/18/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 84% positive reviews. Metacritic: 62/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Harold and Maude
FINAL RATING: 6.5/10
NEXT: Chasing Mavericks

Craigslist Joe

Joseph Garner needs all the help he can get if he’s going to make it through 30 days.

(2012) Documentary (CLJ) Joseph Garner, Gina Keatley, Fran McGee, Kristos Andrews, 357 Magnumm, Craig Newmark. Directed by Joseph Garner

 

For better or for worse, our lives have become dominated by the Internet, most prevalently in young people; say under 30 for now, although those on the north side of 30 are also plenty engaged by social networking, online auctions, web surfing and of course porn perusing. Much of our purchasing is done through websites rather than through traditional brick and mortar retail stores and sevices.

One of the more useful websites that has emerged from the dot com explosion is Craigslist. It has become the equivalent of the village marketplace. Not only are goods exchanged, but services as well. People meet on Craigslist and develop meaningful relationships. It’s like a classified ad section, bulletin board and social networking site all in one. There are many people who spend a good part of their days scanning the simply designed pages of Craigslist looking for things to do, places to go, apartments to rent, people to meet and well, just about everything.

Joseph Garner, a young 20-something filmmaker from Los Angeles noticed just how important Craigslist had become in our lives. With that in mind, he decided to film an experiment. He would leave his home with no money, a backpack full of clothes, no job, no transportation and only a laptop and a cell phone with a new number that he didn’t give to his friends or family, as well as a new e-mail account that he also didn’t give to friends or family. Thus armed, he set out.

For 30 days in December 2008, he meant to live off of whatever he could find on Craigslist. He’d exchange work and volunteering in exchange for food, transportation and shelter. He would travel wherever he could find rides to. In essence, he’d be living off the charity of others. When times are hard, often generosity shrivels up as people go into self-survival mode. In that kind of environment, can a young white man possibly find kindness?

Well, yes. I’ve always believed that people are inherently good and will help someone in need when they can. In Garner’s case, he was experiencing it directly and there are times that he is genuinely moved by it. While critics have brought up with some legitimacy that the presence of a cameraman might have urged some to be more generous than they might have been otherwise, a lot of kindnesses are volunteered over the phone with people unaware that they are going to be part of a documentary at the time.

Garner travels from L.A. to Seattle, from Seattle to Chicago, Chicago to New York, New York to Tallahassee, Tallahassee to New Orleans, New Orleans to Houston (with a stop in Juarez, Mexico) and Houston to San Francisco to meet Craigslist founder Craig Newmark who has long espoused the principal that people are generally kind and willing to help out their fellow man, which has come a long way from a mailing list for Bay Area computer professionals with events, seminars, and job opportunities.

Garner is a sweet-natured young man with a naive veneer that puts one at ease; certainly his attitude promoted kindness. One wonders though if he had been a young African-American male with a rapper vocabulary if he would have had the same success. Maybe Spike Lee could act as producer for a young filmmaker from the African-American community to try the same experiment (comedian Zach Galifianakis was a producer for Craigslist Joe).

There are some moments that will get to you; one that I’ll remember vividly for a long time to come is an encounter in New York with a former actress who appeared in such films as Home Alone 2 and now lives as a hoarder with emotional and possibly mental issues. She offered Garner a place to stay and he helped organize her apartment so that she could move around it more easily. She hadn’t requested that he do it but the act so moved her that she broke down and opened up about her fears and her life to Garner; it was obvious he was moved as well.

Near the end of the film, when Garner returns home from the experience much thinner, wiser and a little humbled by his experience, he tried to tell his mother what he learned and chokes up when he talks about how he found generosity of spirit still alive in this country. I found myself getting misty as well.

It is an election year and the vitriol is flowing like it is coming from Niagra Falls. As the Democrats rant against the Republicans, the Republicans rage against the Democrats and the independents remonstrate against everybody, it’s easy to believe that the milk of human kindness is in short supply. Craigslist Joe on the surface is not an important film; it’s a tale of a single journey among many and the lives that it touched. It would be a mistake to underestimate it though; to my way of thinking, it is very important to remember that people are not always douchebags and that we are still capable of making the world a better place – one act of random kindness at a time.

REASONS TO GO: Uplifting and inspirational in places. Garner is an engaging personality.

REASONS TO STAY: Presence of cameraman probably skewed the humanity quotient more than a little.

FAMILY VALUES: There are a few bad words, some drinking and smoking and some adult themes.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the second documentary film in which Craigslist played a significant part; the first was 24 Hours on Craigslist (2005).

CRITICAL MASS: As of 8/20/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 25% positive reviews (officially no score as there aren’t enough reviews in on the film yet). Metacritic: 45/100. The reviews are not good.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Into the Wild

ROAD TRIP LOVERS: Joe’s travels take him from L.A to Seattle to Chicago to New York to New Orleans to Houston and back to L.A, essentially touching on nearly every region in the country.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

NEXT: The Dry Land