Agostino-1964

Like others made in 2020 during lockdown when movie makers were stuck at home and trying to figure out how to work without being in the same room, this movie uses zoom meeting rooms and video calls as a substitute. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have been able to find a screenwriter.

This movie starts stupid and goes downhill from there. Ice Cube and Eva Longoria shouting nonsense at their computer screens while stock footage runs in the background. And no one involved seems to have any idea how computers work, how communications networks work, or even what data is. I would normally feel bad for everyone involved, but instead I am angry that they were allowed to release this into the world.

I give the filmmakers credit for tracking down and interviewing dozens of former employees and administrators of the hospital. The problem is that they seem to have used everything they recorded, with no discernment whatsoever. There is no evidence of an organizing or editorial principle. It's just a collection of dozens of stories and remembrances of things that happened, or that people heard had happened. No independent verification of anything.

The Crownsville hospital seems to have been exactly like every other state hospital in the country. There may be a story here, but this wasn't it. Interminable.

When FTB came out, I was in High School- moreover, I was in high school in southern Indiana, just a few miles from the setting of "Breaking Away." And to add one more notch, I was just beginning to figure out that I was gay. All that meant that I had a little crush on Dennis Christopher, and open to some of the gay-coded references in Fade to Black. I thought it was a fantastic movie, and Christopher the next Anthony Perkins.

Now it's forty-four years later, and I convinced my husband to watch this on Amazon Prime. To be kind, it doesn't hold up well.

The setup is a mashup, and is completely predictable from the first few minutes. D. C. Gives it his all, but the Zimmerman seems to have told him to turn it up to eleven. Linda Kerridge has a natural charm. Tim Thomerson seems to be in an entirely different movie, or maybe a Mod Squad episode about a hippy-dippy psychologist. In fact, if you pay attention, I don't think Thomerson is ever in the same frame with Christopher, as though perhaps his scenes were all shot in a day (clearly a day when everyone was high).

It also makes me wonder why Dennis Christopher didn't have more of a career. Even though he didn't have traditional leading-man looks, he is a talented actor and should have been better utilized.