Not the Best Timing

Yesterday, I glanced up from my plate of Pâté aux pommes de terre avec Salade Aveyronaise to my smartphone to discover there was only a limited slate of Premier League football matches scheduled for the weekend. After I got over the shock of that (I nearly spilled crème fraîche all over my intérieur de la cuisse), I also noticed, to my horror, that the Academy Awards₁ are tonight.

Usually, the Oscars are saved for late February, but apparently the organizers of the program this year wanted to time the show so that it would be a huge party celebrating the successful impeachment of President Trump.

Anyway, as is my tradition - not unlike Sisyphus, here are this year's nominees for Best Picture award.

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Ford v Ferrari

This riveting legal drama is an Italian version of Kramer vs. Kramer. No, it's not the Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep picture, but rather the lost episode of Seinfeld where Kramer sued himself in order to collect damages from himself. (It was very meta.)

Ford (Michele Richardsaroni) discovers one day that he has been left an enormous sum of money by Neumann (Waynio Cavaliere) but can only collect it under the legal surname of Ferrari, a pseudonym he used in the episode where he and Neumann try to sell an old man's records (Season 4, Episode 18: Il Vecchio).

Rather than legally change his name to Ferrari, Ford decides to sue "Ferrari" in court, in the hope that the judge will have pity on a miserable wretch. While Ford waits for the decision, Jerry, Giorgio, and Elaine wait interminably for dinner at an Italian Restaurant in what was is ostensibly a reference to Season 2, Episode 11: Il Ristorante Cinese, but is in fact a film within a film remake of Luis Buñuel's Il Fascino Discreto del Borghese.

The film ends as Kramer... I mean Ford walks out of the courtroom, thoroughly defeated by the logic of Ferrari's attorney (a vibrant, and weirdly young Al Pacino). A solitary Vought Corsair soars overhead, disappearing onto the horizon like Cosmo's dreams. (It's symbolic!)

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The Irishman

The surreal story of a collection of Italian mobsters who, Benjamin Button-like, suddenly begin to grow young again, only in a weird, CGI, Polar Express sort of way.

Directed by Martin O' Scorcese, the film opens with the solitary figure of Seamus Yeats (Robert McNiro) aimlessly wandering the New York City docks with his chicken, looking for opportunities to stage illegal cock-fights. Sean Heaney (Albert O'Pacin) catches up to him, trying to entice him with bigger, more lucrative jobs and also bitterly reminding him that his chicken is actually a frozen Butterball turkey.

Suddenly, a Vought Corsair passes over, emitting an eerie green light that washes over the docks like seagulls over a picnic. Our protagonists are at first concerned, but, after feeling no ill effects aside from the desire to binge-watch Netflix shows, they forget about the incident.

However, the next day, both of them find that they now look mysteriously younger, like Joan Collins, after a double face lift. Their newfound vitality inspires them to pull dozens of risky, exciting, and expletive-laden jobs that result in lots of "guys gettin' wacked and gals gettin' slapped around for bein' too mouthy" (from the Leonard Maltin review).

It all fails to last though, as they are revisited by the Vought Corsair (actually a benevolent alien entity named Krinkles), who explains that the gift of their newfound youth was meant to help them turn over new leaf and find redemption outside of the usual crime films. Disgusted with their corruption, and creeped out by their oddly robust hairlines, Krinkles absorbs their youth, eventually transplanting it into a grateful Mickey Rourke.

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Jojo Rabbit

The tragic story of a rabbit who is hit on the head by a falling rivet from a passing Vought Corsair and comes to believe he is Adolf Hitler.

One day, Jojo is bouncing around a meadow, doing what all rabbits love to do best: eating grass, procreating, and annoying the hell out of gardeners. While in the middle of a particularly good salad of fescue, Dandelion, and bluegrass, a metal object falls from the sky, dinging Jojo smack dab in the mullet. When he wakes up, he feels the irresistible urge to organize his fellow rabbits into a marauding horde of vicious killers, persecute Jews and other minorities, and invade Poland (Farmer Poland's cabbage patch). He quickly builds a munitions factory in the burrow behind the pond, and begins churning out the instruments of death. He harangues his fellow rabbits with racist speeches about how low the squirrels and chipmunks are, despite the fact they are watching him from the treetops, and incites them to attack pretty much everything that isn't a rabbit.

Fortunately, because he's just a rabbit, and unable to effectively wield automatic weapons, Farmer Poland blows his scum-sucking little Nazi face off with a shotgun in mid-rant. The End.₂

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Joker

The grim tale of the most forgotten card in the deck, this creepy little horror show opens around a table of poker players in a smoke-filled casino room. The dense clouds of cigarette and cigar fumes drift over the gathering, as the players eye one another, looking for some tell or weakness that might give them the vital edge they need.


It's at this point, through some mysterious quirk of fate that only the plotters at DC Studios (or possibly Marvel) could explain, that the Joker of the deck, sitting unnoticed and unloved on the edge of the table, suddenly becomes sentient... murderously, malevolently sentient.

Swiftly, the card throws itself around the room through the necks of the players, like a Ricky Jay deck through a watermelon, it's sharp, unworn edges easily severing the jugular veins of the players. Finally coming to rest, like a Vought Corsair after a long and turbulent sortie, it sits, blood-soaked, perched against a half-empty stein of Michelob Ultra.

The rest of the film details the grisly reign of terror of the card, it's superficially comical exterior hiding the relentless homicidal energy beneath. The body count of the monstrous game piece only comes to an end at the hands of the Caped Crusader, as he trounces the Boy Wonder in an exciting, death-defying game of Go Fish.

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Little Women

The 750th adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel, this version is significantly more upbeat and traditional than the last one (Thelma and Louise).

Meg and Jo March (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis) are the elder two of four sisters, all of whom were raised by martial arts master Black Mamba (Betty White). Feeling the need to support the family (Colin Hanks), Meg and Jo enter a martial arts tournament sponsored by the Cobra Kai school (Ralph Macchio), under the belief that the grand prize of a year's worth of Domino's Pizza will see their family through another hard winter (Roseanne Barr).

The younger sisters, Beth and Amy (Meryl Streep and Daryl Hannah), spend much of their time avoiding Harvey Weinstein (Kevin Spacey) at parties and knitting black belts for the family to wear during formal competitions. Beth contracts scarlet fever (later called "Mexican beer virus" by all of the characters, without explanation). Her hallucinations are so vivid, she claims to see a squadron of Vought Corsairs (Jane Fonda and Keanu Reeves), decades before the invention of powered human flight.

Meg and Jo easily win the martial arts competition after becoming enraged by the Cobra Kai sensei's dismissal of them as "little women." They sweep both his hobbled legs (Randy Quaid and Jack, the Wonder Spaniel), apologizing profusely after he explains he was simply reading the title of the script.

Faced with a complex and hostile world through which women martial artists must roundhouse kick their way, the sisters retreat to their cottage of karate boards and pizza crusts, hoping that change will come for the better (so they will have some cash with which to tip the fetching delivery boy[Regis Philbin]).

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Marriage Story

Marriage Story is the story of, well, a divorce. I suppose you have to have a marriage to get to the divorce, but the producers seem to have left this part out, preferring to zoom straight to infidelity, court trials, custody battles, and make up sex (the last of which takes up 90% of the film).

Husband Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and his wife Rey (Scarlett Johannson, taking all the roles again, as usual) are reaching the end of their New York City-based marriage, as there is only so much time the light and dark sides of the Force can share one bathroom, if you know what I mean.

Rey leaves town for Los Angeles in a Vought Corsair F4U prop job (despite John Denver's song Leavin' on a Jet Plane blaring in the background), and the two begin new, separate lives. This proves confusing for their son Henry (Dean Winters) who is stranded at a bus stop in Burning Mattress, Arkansas and wondering why the breakdown of his parents' relationship caused them to be so inept at parenting, child safety, and planning coach excursions.

Eventually, they become reconciled to the notion of being apart forever, which, of course, means they are not actually reconciled, meaning they become reconciled to not becoming reconciled, which further confuses Henry, along with the audience, who were hoping for them to resolve their differences with a really good light saber battle.

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1917

The story of the year 1917 opens on December 31st, 1916. As the big, electric ball thingy₃ drops down to the sound of cheering throngs of pre-Prohibition, inebriated revelers, the spirit of 1916 departs, leaving the newborn 1917 with these sage words of advice: "You're on your own, you creepy little bastard."

1917 quickly matures, soaring through the winter like a Vought Corsair through barn doors... in other words, leaving its wings and tail fin behind in a cow stall. It careens into spring, stopping to smell the roses, only to realize the roses are dead, because they were all killed by the Kaiser's mustard gas deployments.

Things get even grimmer for our plucky little year, as it waddles, Chaplin-like, into the summer, sweating like Tom Arnold surrounded by a pack of drug-sniffing dogs. The mayhem of the war, combined with the lack of proper air-conditioning and the insistence that everyone wear at least three layers of wool clothing, leaves the year perspiration-sodden and as wrinkled as Robert DeNiro wasn't in The Irishman.

Autumn arrives, which is the name of its plucky housemaid, but fall soon follows, and 1917 is quickly covered in leaves and Sears-Roebuck catalogs. The pangs of age rapidly begin to creep in, and the year knew that, as with the World Series champion Chicago White Sox, corruption and disgrace could not be far away.

Finally, the year limps back to Times Square, facing the giant, shiny ball and the unbearably smug and cherubic face of 1918. As the new year faces the old one with hushed expectation, 1917 departs, leaving the only advice it can think of: "Fiddlesticks!"

As it turns out, fiddlesticks stocks went through the roof the following summer, and 1918 retired a very wealthy year.

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

An adaptation of the most little known of the Grimm Brothers' tales, this film opens with Little Red Riding Hood (Scarlett Johannson, natch) walking through the woods on the way to her grandmother's house. Red is interrupted by the Big Bad Wolf (Tom Waits) who explains that he is down on his luck,
having sworn off grandmother meat since becoming a vegan, and could Red spare him a few bucks for some tofu or edamame.


Meanwhile, Hansel and Gretel (Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson), upon reaching their 21st birthdays, are told that they are in fact not brother and sister. When asked the reason for this ruse, their step-parents (Billy Crystal and Carol Kane) respond, "To keep youse from getting it mit the jiggy," after which Hansel and Gretel get quite jiggy indeed (in the film's only 3-D segment).

Meanwhile, Sleeping Beauty (Saoirse Ronan) and Snow White (Beyonce) go prince shopping in Beverly Hills, not realizing that there is only one Prince, that he is deceased, and that he lived in Minneapolis. After purchasing a variety of handbags and platform shoes, the two decide to form a punk band called 40 Winks.

Meanwhile, Rapunzel (Gal Gadot, with hair extensions) decides she's had it up to here (holds finger halfway up her hair) with life outside the tower, and decides to free climb her way back in. However, Prince Charming (real name: Howard Farnkle - see above) talks her out of it, convincing her that her tresses would be invaluable as a giant wind sock for passing Vought Corsairs (like I would forget those).

Meanwhile, I'm out of space for this segment.

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Parasite

Parasite is the feature-length dramatization of the Big Brother television series, and consequently is too horrific (rating "Incredibly NC-17") to be discussed on a PG blog like this one.

Listen, all I can say is that they were finally blasted to kingdom come by Lupita Nyong'o (flying a Vought Corsair LTV A-7) while trying to decide who got to eat the last package of Tim Tams. There were crumbs everywhere!

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1. Motto: "We put the 'scar' in Oscar."
2. Actually, the film ends with Farmer Poland's wife announcing that she's pregnant by saying, "The rabbit died," to which Farmer Poland responds, "What a coincidence!"
3. I told you I was writing this at the last minute. There aren't a lot of Thesaurus entries for "ball thingy," at least not ones I can use here.