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My 2021 Movie Tally: Rebirth of the Nation

[additional-authors]
March 23, 2022

Editor’s Note: Hyperlinks were carefully added throughout the piece as both silly Easter eggs and points of clarification. You don’t need to click on them, but you’ll certainly have more fun if you do.

449 days. I went 449 days without seeing a movie in the theater. The last time I went this long was easily, without question, not a doubt in my mind, from birth until I was taken to my first movie. And to be totally honest, it’s possible that my mom brought me to a theater as a baby. I’ve never asked her, and if she did, it’s likely I’ve never gone that many days without going to the movies – horrifying! To conceptualize this another way, it’s 1 year, 2 months and 23 days. It’s 64 weeks and a day. If a year is a long time, this was 123.01% of a year, an unforgivably high percentage! It’s 10,776 hours, give or take the time of day each movie was watched. That’s over 5 thousand movies I could have seen in that time, which was wasted at home, in the hospital with patients, and in parks with my family. I mean, priorities, people, AmIRite?!

The last movie I had seen was the cartoonish and okay version of The Call of the Wild, on March 14, 2020. My first movie after all that time needed to be special. I wanted to be surrounded by friends, I wanted to have my mask off and eat snacks, so we made it exceptional. On June 6, 2021, we rented out a private screening at the Cinemark Baldwin Hills theater, and 19 of us watched the really great A Quiet Place Part II. I’m going to be honest, a crappy movie would have been great after 449 days, especially surrounded by friends; but this one happens to also be a really good sequel to a really exciting movie. Just the right amount of good acting, taut suspense, great sound effects that craft excellence out of a silly B-movie premise. This was us on that happy day.

Just before the private screening, from left to right: Back row – Aaron, Josh, Yoni, Chad, Boaz, Julia, Abe, Amanda, Ray. Middle row – Patrick, Nate, Leah, Lindsie, Noah, Harwin. Front row – Keith, Emily, Char. Behind the camera – Adi
Just after the movie at the Baldwin Hills Cinemark. From left to right: Lindsie, Amanda, Ray, Yoni, Leah, Keith, Emily, Josh, Aaron, Char, Noah, Adi, Boaz, Julia, Patrick & Chad (Missing from photo: Harwin, Nate & Abe)

Rather than reiterate the entire, crazy, family-related medical drama, and the start of the pandemic, just recap it yourself by reading the 2020 tally linked here. Caught up? Okay great, let’s move on and discuss 2021.

We started off 2021 by celebrating New Year’s in Tucson, Arizona. It involved tons of cactus-filled beauty, visits to their wonderful desert museum, and we stayed at a beautiful Airbnb ranch filled with animals. But the one photo I’ll include is what you beautiful American consumers will most care about – the gas prices.

To be fair, even Arizona is probably closer to 6 dollars a gallon as of writing this post

A few weeks later I started the beginning of a valuable relationship with Dr. David Agus, when I interviewed him about COVID vaccines as they were newly released, a piece that was shared all over the country and by USC itself! It still holds up.

March 24th was eventful, it was the day we met a little rescue puppy named Gianna, adopted her, and instantly changed her name to Zero, because when we looked at her we just didn’t think she had “mob-girlfriend” vibes. That plus our awesome daughter instantly looked at her and said, “She’s Zero, from The Nightmare Before Christmas“! There wasn’t even a discussion to be had after that.

Zero the day we brought her home from the rescue, while Natalia did insane gymnastics in bed, just because she’s Natalia.

In April, we went on another lovely road trip, this time to Atascadero – a place that my movie-buff friend Mike loves to deliberately mispronounce like he’s a wiseguy straight out of My Cousin Vinny. I could show you photos of the lovely gardens and zoos we visited, or the famous, smelly elephant seals of San Simeon. But this is about movies, so I’ll instead include the pic from when we watched the Oscars from our Airbnb.

Me presenting Regina King as she opened the most boring Oscars I’ve ever watched

I’m aware my good friend Zach Ralston, who writes phenomenal movie reviews, found a way to love this Steven Soderbergh orchestrated ceremony. But apologies to him (and Matt Damon), it was not the awards show I look forward to each year; it was an absolute snoozefest. I recognize that it required a smaller audience during the pandemic, but there was virtually no humor. No sketches. Presenters came, explained the award category, and gave the award. The reason we watch has never merely been to find out the winner. We can Google the results for that. For those of us who don’t watch sports, it is our Super Bowl. A fan does not just look up scores, he or she watches the game when they can, for the experience of getting to that final result. The only memorable thing about this show for me was the stylish, cinematic walk of Regina Hall into Union Station ceremony. And admittedly, as an native Angeleno, and a cinephile, the setting of Union Station was quite cool, given the variety of the movies filmed within its walls over the decades.

Time passed, I worked, I wrote articles, I spent time with my wife and daughter, I binge watched international seasons of Survivor with my friend Jared (the Australian version is arguably even better than ours), but like a kid waiting for recess, I just stared at the clock as I awaited June 6th. That would be the day I would gather some close friends to celebrate my 42nd birthday, and end my wretched streak of missing the movies at 449 days! I told you about A Quiet Place Part II, so let’s dig in and see how the second half of my year went…

I was finally ready to enjoy my favorite pastime again, but it seemed the landscape wasn’t quite the same:

1. Some theaters had closed, including the Arclight and Pacific theaters. Some managed to open back up under new management, including the now-AMC theater at the Grove and Americana malls.

2. We restarted our AMC A-List membership, giving us a subscription to see any 3 movies of our choosing each week, but noticed that (for the most part), there were no longer morning showtimes in that theater chain. A day of movies used to start around 10am, but now would have to start closer to 2pm, making an insane 4 or 5 Boaz-movie day a thing of the past.

3. For some reason, Nicole Kidman now harassed us at the start of each movie, telling us that “heartbreak feels good in a place like this”; a commercial that initially got an eyeroll from us, continues to make Adi groan, but I hope that before long entire theaters will be cheering and heckling as it comes on the screen – a preshow Rocky Horror experience as it were.

4. There were also fewer movies being released each week. Many were getting exclusive releases on streaming devices, or small partial windows in the theater. Even jumping ahead to 2022, Disney continues to make the bizarre and highly questionable choice to exclusively release its Pixar movies on Disney Plus, in spite of the many who would pay to watch it on IMAX if given the option.

5. We were also not ready to have our masks off with strangers (a personal choice I’m aware), which meant no more “sneaking our lunches and dinners into the movies with us”, yet another challenge to the classic multi-movie feast.

Nonetheless, even with masks on, and all of the other changes, it continued to be something Adi would really enjoy, and I would actually crave. To her credit, on our anniversary when we hit a delay of traffic, it was my amazing wife who suggested we go see a movie at the Camarillo outlet malls, where we enjoyed the lovely, intimate, and now-Oscar nominated Belfast.

We also managed to find some clothes to buy at the outlet mall, before running to see the highly acclaimed Belfast.

Movie Tally

Too much exposition? Just hungry for the sexy numbers? So was I as a kid, so let’s give the people what they want. As always, I remind you that I catch movies at home only when for one reason or another it’s not possible for me to catch it on the big screen. I’m aware it’s often free on my subscription with: Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/Disney/Apple/Peacock/Paramount/HBO and more…
Well gee, that’s nice, and I get that the rest of the universe sees streaming as the better option as a result; but I’m still a sucker who’s in love with the entire big screen/sound/theatrical experience, and I’ll be damned if I won’t keep choosing that over the years – if given the option. Making it financially more palatable is my aforementioned subscription to AMC theaters; so in truth when I watch the movie that’s “free” at home with my plan, it’s just as “free” at the theater. Either way, it’s a sunk cost.

That being said, I do not count movies that I caught on my television in these write-ups, so here we go…

Movie Tally

My own movie tally for 2021, which didn’t get a start until June 6th? 25. That’s right. A record low for me. The next smallest was obviously 2020 which only gave me the first almost 3 months to watch movies, and even that was 34. Why did I see even fewer with seemingly twice as many months in 2021? Because at least in 2020 life was normal, movies were plentiful, and all of the slew of reasons I gave earlier how things aren’t what they were. But within the 6 plus months I got back to the movies last year, there were months within surges when I again stayed away, or times one of us might be coughing and thus stay away. For all of these reasons, the count was low. But you can assume and count on it that I fully expect to raise the number this year, and so far the main impediment to my journey is my own medical health as I write this while between two major back surgeries. But mark my words, next year will exceed the past 2 abysmal years.

And now to find out who I saw them with, I must warn you that this year will also be a bastardized version of that usual fun.

  1. Adi “my wife” Hepner – 23 movies. Previous year 21. Amazingly, she only missed 2 of the movies I saw in the theater, that means she was with me 91% of the time. Geez, talk about needing my personal space! No, I’m kidding, if it were up to me, she would never miss a single one I catch. So this is pretty amazing all things considered.
  2. Patrick “my friend” Vukovich – 2 movies. Previous year 4. Are you sensing why this is sad? My #2 movie-watching companion only saw 2 with me. This is why on Passover when the children are asking, “Why is this year different from all other years?”, you should answer them, “Because most years Boaz sees multiple movies with dozens of friends, but on this year Boaz saw multiple movies with only his wife and Patrick”. If you don’t get that joke, you are so far removed from Judaism that you’ve never even watched a Woody Allen film. But thank you to Patrick for not only joining my group birthday movie, but also being my type of crazy, and seeing Red Notice with me, a Netflix movie that only we would still go to see on the big screen; and we enjoyed every dumb second of it. (I mean, is it even possible to not enjoy a Ryan Reynolds movie at this point in his preening career? Even his commercials are gold.)
  3. Yeah, maybe you weren’t paying attention, but there’s no #3 because nobody else saw multiple.
Patrick and Boaz, enjoying being the only ones in the Cinemark Howard Hughes theater, until a handful of others arrived late.

Honorable mentions – I’ve never done this before, but let’s mention the few who saw ONE with me, other than the awesome group who are photographed at my birthday movie.

  • Arnon Shorr joined us while visiting from Massachusetts, and we saw Dune together, a worthy big screen experience. Of note, Arnon has not only created an award-winning live action short called the The Pirate Captain Toledano, available to watch on Amazon; but fun fact: Adi and I are generously listed as producers in the credits, thanks to his Kickstarter campaign years ago. Second fun fact: it has been adapted into a graphic novel for kids, on presale for May 1, but thanks to my plan to review it for the Jewish Journal, I’m enjoying an advanced paperback.

(In yet more publishing news, my very own mother has spent her life teaching, painting, and now spinning stories for her grandchildren. In October she published an incredible children’s book, The Adventures of Goldilocks and Baby Bear: What Happened Next, and shameless plug, it’s damn good and please buy a copy!)

  • My nephew Darius and his friend were visiting in town, and although he’s not much of a movie person, he wanted to see Nobody. What’s that? Seeing nobody could quickly turn into an old fashioned comedy routine? Quick tangent, but did you ever see this updated rendition on that with Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld among others? It’s pretty great. Anyway, people seemed surprised by Bob Odenirk doing drama for this movie, but if you’ve watched Better Call Saul, there’s really no reason to be caught off guard by this. I still don’t expect him to turn into the next middle aged Liam Neeson action hero, but it was a very fun take on that “what I do have are a very particular set of skills” trope. Also, it remains the only movie I’ve caught during the pandemic with zero other people in attendance.
  • Our dear friends Margy & Jeremy love movies. But they didn’t see a single one with us last year. Why do I even mention them? Because their son Nathan has many cool interests, and among them is a love for Pixar movies. So when Adi and I found one of the few showings of Luca at the one-week El Capitan release, we jumped on it and brought him with. A beautiful movie, as are most Pixar instant-classics, and certainly far, far better experienced on the big screen. My personal favorite continues to be the original Toy Story, but I recognize that part of that is a bias of it being the first of the many magical experiences. But I’ve watched it even recently and must say that the dialogue and magic still hold up.
  • My twin nieces Eve & Ada came up for a nice weekend with us, something we missed and needed to get in before they would spend a year studying in Israel. They were 17, and I’m the guy who spent my childhood watching Rated R movies (as recently discussed), so naturally, the movie we took them to was their first theatrical Rated R movie! We saw the instant classic, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a sequel to a movie they hadn’t even seen (something I’d never endorse doing), but we all had a fun time watching the stupid/fun flick. (Didn’t I already make it clear that you’ll have a hard time not cracking a smile during a modern Ryan Reynolds movie? Now you add Samuel L Jackson dropping F-bombs to the mix, and you think it’s not entertaining?!)
We always enjoy the recliner seats of AMC Prime. From left to right: Adi, Ada, Eve & Boaz

My least favorite movie of the year? Apologies again to my friend Zach who loved this, but it was The Green Knight. We get that it was artistic but we were both overwhelmingly…bored.

My favorite? Well removing my obvious bias for A Quiet Place Part II for being the first to see in ages, I think it might be West Side Story. I wanted to sing out loud throughout the joyous experience, and just about any filmmaker has been blown away by this being the first musical ever directed by Spielberg, considering the intricate perfection of his choreographed dancing and cinematography. It was sublime. But I had the greatest time also watching, in no particular order, Free Guy, No Time To Die, Last Night In Soho, and Suicide Squad 2, among others.

As this goes to press, I’m trying to catch the last few Oscar nominated movies before Sunday’s ceremony, sadly these last ones will have to be caught on my television set. Isn’t it ironic, that the nominations and awards are most commonly determined based on screeners sent to people to watch on their TV or computer screen? If you think about it, the people who are making the decisions about the best films of the year, may not even usually be watching them to way they were created to be watched. But let’s leave that essay for another day. Everyone enjoy your 2022, and if you haven’t already, let’s get back to the movies!

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