Quick recap: Everyone has daddy issues- a deputy, the owner of an historic bar, an officer in the Army. Practically the whole town could use some counseling.

daddy issues, both of them.

Fun (?) fact: The movie playing when young Sam and Pilar are making out is Black Mama White Mama, a nod to Pilar’s secret heritage.

It’s Bailey from Grey’s Anatomy! She probably has daddy issues as well, although it’s never stated outright

My thoughts: SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. 

I watched this movie almost a week ago and, except for the DVD skipping at the end, had a pretty uneventful time. I started writing my review the next night, as I am wont to do and as I looked up trivia, I noticed people discussing the ending and debating what happened. It was very obvious to me that the two main characters ended up together and everything was nicely tied up so what’s the controversy? That’s when I realized that the DVD skipped at the exact moment Sam revealed that he and his lover Pilar were Luke and Leia-ing it up as half brother and sister. And in the end decided ‘screw it!’ and stayed together. The lesson of this tale is that maybe it’s time for the DVD to die out. It makes me wonder how many critical scenes I have missed in the past due to a scratched disc.

So, weird French Film twist ending aside the movie was just ‘meh’ for me. The bulk of Lone Star is about Sam coming to terms with who his father, a police officer, really was. The town saw him as a saint but Sam only knew him as a person he clashed with in his teenage years and didn’t feel close to. There is one scene when young Sam and Pilar are at a drive-in and the police break into the car and separate the two of them. Grownup Sam uses this scene as a way to show how strict his father was, but knowing the ending that they are actually siblings, totally makes sense why he wouldn’t want them together. And then there’s this mystery about an evil, racist deputy that goes missing and Sam thinks his father may have killed him, which would prove he wasn’t such a good guy after all. But really, that proves nothing because the deputy in question murdered a lot of innocent people and needed to be stopped.

There were all these other characters in the town that had their own issues with family and everyone is of course connected somehow in the end. Most of the time I felt like I was watching a television season than a movie. Maybe that would’ve been a better format for this story because it just dragged on and on at times. There were a few revelations that I would label shocking, but I could see them rolled out as a season finale or something, not all thrown into one heap.

Final review: 2/5

Up next: The Graduate

Quick recap: Real estate agents race to close on deals anyway they can. First prize is a car, second prize is a set of steak knives and third prize is you’re fired.

Y’all got anymore of those good leads?

Fun (?) fact: From IMDb, ‘Every since its release, this film has been used to train real life salesmen how to sell and how not to sell.’

I have a new appreciation for Gil now

My thoughts: From the millions of career choices out there, I think sales sounds like the absolute worst. You may say, ‘But, Mary, what about the person who has to clean out septic tanks?’ Yes, that job is gross, but it wouldn’t send me into a panic like sales. I worked at an H-E-B back in college and just offering the sale item as people checked out was enough for me to have a panic attack. And before that,I worked at a pizza place where I was always encouraged to ‘upsell’ by offering a large for just a few cents more. Did I do even that most simple task? Nope. Sales is the worst. Case closed.

That’s why I loved watching a movie about salespeople because they are so drastically different than my life. Every character in Glengarry Glen Ross is the worst. There is literally no one to root for by the end of the movie. They spend the entire film out-slimeballing each other and it is so fascinating to watch. It also helps that the cast is phenomenal- Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris and my favorite-Alec Baldwin, who I thought would be the villain, but who turned out to be a perfect motivational speaker. I’ve sat through sales pitches before and as frustrating as they are, now I can imagine the hoops they must be jumping through to get me to commit and what glorious prizes await if I just say yes (coffee’s for closers, you know).

I think what I loved most about the movie was that I kept thinking someone would snap and it just never happened. ‘Surely this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,’ I said over and over again, but the race to the bottom continued. And the best part is knowing that this was just one slice of a day for these real estate salespeople. How many times have they had these arguments? How many times have they conspired to steal leads? How many cars have been given away as incentives? It’s this perspective on the American Dream I can’t stop thinking about. It seems such a miserable existence and yet these guys live on it, thrive on it. And I’m so grateful I don’t have to do that for a living.

Final review: 5/5

Up next: Lone Star