Always double check your Amazon release years

I was supposed to watch the Survivor finale last night, but I couldn't get that part of the TV to work. By the time I'd rebooted the Fetch box a couple times, it was already about 10:20, so I had to pivot to something quickly. 

My preference would have been to consult my list of 2024 movies I still have to watch in the next month-plus, but that often involves doing an iTunes rental (something I initiate from my computer) and I could not be bothered at this point to go into the other room and do it. So instead I hopped on Amazon Prime, noting that there would likely be a new movie I'd never heard of that immediately struck me as something rank-worthy to watch.

True enough, there was: Joachim Back's Corner Office, an office satire staring John Hamm. It had the 2024 release year and everything to prove it.

Thirty minutes in, I was enjoying this movie so much that I went to check Wikipedia on my phone. I figured, if the release were just in the last week or so, I could actually write up a review -- possibly as soon as tomorrow morning. (Otherwise, this would be a full work week bereft of reviews. I did actually write a review for Better Man, but that's not coming out until December 26th, so I won't post it yet.)

So imagine my disappointment when the first thing I saw on Wikipedia was that Corner Office was listed as a 2022 movie. Not even 2023, but 2022. 

That was when it first appeared at Tribeca, anyway. I quickly checked just to be sure it hadn't had a circuitous route to rear its head for the next time on Amazon Prime, but no, it was released in the U.S. August of last year. 

Just to confirm a second time, I checked my friend Don's 2023 movie list, and there Corner Office was, ranked at #242. (That may sound like a particularly bad rating, but Don ranked 436 movies last year. He didn't like it as much as I did, in any case.)

Darn.

It's always a good experience when you see a movie you like. But in the month of December, I've gone from ahead of my previous pace to -- well, not quite behind it, but struggling to keep up with my ever-growing watchlist, and conscious of the days ticking away. Yesterday was the 12th day of December and yet I have seen only four films in December that qualify for 2024. (And don't forget, I still have to watch that Survivor finale.)

Amazon has gotten me this way before -- or, I should say, nearly gotten me until I avoided calamity at the last moment.

There's a certain subjectivity to their release years. They're not so deranged that they list the release year as the year it first streamed on Amazon Prime, though in the case of Corner Office, those would be one in the same. Really what I think it is is that the release years are at least, to some degree, customized by country, and I believe it's an Australian version of Amazon Prime I'm getting. (Even though rentals I purchase through Prime are charged to me through iTunes, somehow, because that's where my Apple TV is, and I have a U.S. Apple TV. At least I believe that's how it works.) It seems likely that the actual Australian debut of Corner Office was in 2024, and that's the explanation for the year. That doesn't help me in terms of my year-end rankings, though, since I go by U.S. release year.

It does resolve one problem for me, though -- a problem that has been accentuated by Don's middling ranking of the movie. As I was watching, I was having a hard time deciding just how good the movie was, but it was somewhere between really good and great. Because at this time of the year, I'm always willing to give a new movie a chance to blow up my current top ten, I was trying to decide if Corner Office was that good. Now, I don't have to worry about that. 

It is, however, the third movie I've watched this year in which Hamm's history playing Don Draper was somehow invoked. You may recall from this post that back in May, I saw two movies in one weekend in which both Hamm and John Slattery appeared, one not invoking Mad Men in any explicit way other than the pairing, the other featuring a direct riff on their characters from that show. Corner Office was a bit more like the latter, as the premise is that Hamm's character, a socially awkward office drone, discovers an unused room in his dystopian high rise that resembles the best corner office that series might have ever created, with perfectly appointed mid-century furniture and other luxurious details, which helps his character become more focused and get ahead at work. 

It certainly shouldn't surprise us to see someone like Hamm excelling in that environment, given the hours he toiled in such an environment as Don Draper. 

Jon Hamm-John Slattery reunion weekend

Important note to readers: Although I am describing the following two movies as a "reunion weekend," it should be noted that the viewings occurred on a Thursday night and a Friday night. But let's face it: On Thursday night we are allowing ourselves the luxury of entering the weekend mindset.

What are the odds that I would watch two movies on two consecutive days that both featured Jon Hamm and John Slattery?

They were also two movies that would either potentially entice my wife or potentially not entice my wife, as we shall see.

I was already 30 minutes into Confess, Fletch -- which has only just recently landed on Netflix -- on Thursday night, when my wife came into the room and said she would have liked to watch it with me. She says things like that when I'm 30 minutes into lots of movies, but the reality is, we watch about six movies a year together these days. Her choice, not mine. So I can't be blamed if I go ahead with my own viewing priorities rather than waiting for her to be ready to watch something on her schedule. (This one was actually a little worse than usual, as she turned an expression of mild disappointment into an expression of mild accusation: "When you saw this movie, didn't you think it was something that I would like to watch?" It's true, she likes crime shows and podcasts, especially if they are gentle, like Only Murders in the Building. I volunteered to stop watching and continue it another time with her, but she wasn't having any of it.)

Of course, Hamm stars in Confess, Fletch as Irwin M. Fletcher, the role originally made famous by Chevy Chase. I was never a huge fan of Fletch -- I think I've seen it only once -- but I did understand its charms and why people would quote it. I don't think I ever saw Fletch Lives. (My movie list tells me I have, but I could not tell you a single thing that happened in that movie, and if I am ranking it on Flickchart, I'm probably rating it based on how I assumed it must have been.)

As an Easter egg of sorts to their Mad Men fans, director Greg Mottola (actually casting director Ellen Chenoweth) throws in a bearded Slattery as a frenemy? friendly rival? of the former investigative reporter. (Most likely just friends who like to give each other shit.) The two have some good banter, though Slattery's role does not need to eclipse more than about five minutes of screen time and is essentially a cameo.

I enjoyed Confess, Fletch a lot more than I thought I would, considering that a love for this character is not baked into my DNA. Hamm does a credible facsimile of Chase's verbal dexterity and above-the-fray manner, and overall I found it a pretty delightful if ultimately pretty slight diversion. Yes, my wife would have enjoyed it. 

Knowing the way I'd missed on including her on Confess, Fletch, I tried to get my wife interested in Jerry Seinfeld's new movie, which he wrote, directed and stars in, on Friday night. Now, I do know enough about her not to hold her to watching something on the same night I first mention it (even though I did that for her on Tuesday night with a movie where her friend wrote the music. No, I'm not keeping score, why would you say that). So this was just to gauge her interest in seeing it at some point, though she probably knew, because she knows me too, that this weekend would be ideal, because it's the sort of thing I would like to review. Knowing the stakes this time, she ultimately passed.

Well, maybe we will get to watch it this weekend after all. I enjoyed it so much that I would probably watch it again tonight.

If you thought the now 70-year-old Seinfeld was past his comedic prime, you'll be surprised to note how he a) can still perform in a manner that recalls the groove he eventually found on Seinfeld, and b) he can direct! I was noting clever choices that a director would make throughout this movie. You won't be surprised that he can still write, as that was always least in doubt.

Anyway, I was laughing throughout and there was one bit that made me laugh harder than I've laughed at anything in a movie in a couple years. 

As you may have gleaned, this is an apocryphal retelling of the invention of the pop tart at Kellogg's, and it's a hilarious one -- similar in approach to something like Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but funnier I thought.

At one point, the Kellogg's team, which includes Seinfeld's character as well as very funny turns by Jim Gaffigan and Melissa McCarthy -- yes, sometimes Melissa McCarthy just needs to be directed smartly -- calls in a pair of hot shot New York advertising execs to help get just the right ad campaign for their new product. You guessed it, because this is the 1960s, the ad executives are the actual Don Draper (Hamm) and Roger Sterling (Slattery), though they are credited as "Man #1" and "Man #2." (Would that be a "mad" Man #1 and #2?) I don't believe Man #2 ever calls Man #1 "Don," but I believe Man #1 does call Man #2 "Roger." 

This scene, like everything else in the movie, is funny. I won't spoil their proposed advertising campaign for the breakfast treat but it's a good one.

Sometimes coincidences are just too much for me to comprehend, though I suppose both of these movies recently coming to Netflix means that viewings on consecutive nights was slightly more likely to happen. However, in order for that to happen, it meant I had to have not seen Fletch when it came out two years ago, something I usually would have done in my attempts for completism in a given movie year, and also that my wife would not have held up the Unfrosted viewing for a night when it was convenient for her to watch it.

I had a coincidence this week with another Jon that adds further profundity to the whole concept of coincidences. It was either Wednesday or Thursday that my wife was talking about an Israeli she was working with named Shlomi, which put me in mind of Shlomo, the name of one of Hanukkah Harry's reindeer on Saturday Night Live. Hanukkah Harry was of course played by Jon Lovitz. Not an hour later, after finishing one YouTube video, I was fed another where Bill Burr was watching people do impersonations of him. One of those impersonations was by Jon Lovitz.

I might go a whole year without ever thinking of Jon Lovitz, and then twice in one day. (You could say that me having spoken the name Jon Lovitz earlier was picked up by my phone and led to a later YouTube video involving Lovitz. I don't think I'm quite paranoid enough to go there.)

Burr plays yet another John -- John F. Kennedy -- in Unfrosted, where he is also doing an impersonation, so it all comes full circle.