Sorry to run to you

Sorry to Bother You got a very late release in Australia – just last Thursday. At least that puts it ahead of Eighth Grade and First Reformed, which are still awaiting release dates as far as I can tell.

In fact, the release was so late that I considered just renting it on American iTunes in order to review it, rather than going to the theater. That would mean I could do it any night, while saving my trips to the theater for movies I couldn’t see elsewhere.

But it’s also been one of my most anticipated movies of the year since, I don’t know, March? Meaning it also carried some of the greatest potential to end up near the top of my year-end rankings. If I were indeed to like it that much, I should also do it the honor of watching it on the big screen, to give it that extra boost enjoyed by most of its competitors. (Not since 2012 has my #1 movie been a movie I’ve seen for the first time on video.)

Unfortunately, then I undid all my good intentions by running to the movie.

I wasn’t late; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m saying it was time for my weekly run, and I ran to the movie theater.

See, I’m training to run a marathon. Not soon, but when I turn 50. That will be in 2023. Have to start now or I’ll never get there.

Right now and since about May, I’ve been running one night a week for 30-35 minutes. I plan to increase that to two nights a week in 2019, as well as increasing the duration of each run. I’ll step it up from there over the course of the next four years, and hopefully be able to tackle the thing by my stated deadline, which I’m advertising to everybody as a means of making myself stick to it.

I really don’t like to skip a week. I’ve skipped only two so far. One was when I pulled a hamstring while playing baseball, though not badly enough to hamper me for more than a week, and one was the week after I returned from the whirlwind trip to the U.S., when jet lag was getting the best of me. Every other week, I’ve run.

Last week was in danger, though. Given how I knew my schedule was going to play out, I really needed to get my run in on Thursday. However, I also needed to see Sorry to Bother You on Thursday night, the night of its release, in order to get the review up on our site as soon as possible. (Joke was on me; I didn’t finish it until Monday, and it went up on Tuesday, which means I could have just as easily gone either Sunday or Monday night.)

So, I did both.

Running to the theater only gets me about half of the amount of time I’d like to run each week, so I was planning to run home as well. But by then it was 11:45 and it felt ridiculous at that point. So it was only a half run, but that was something.

I thought it would work out fine. I ran with a small backpack in order to carry a Coke and some chocolates to give me an energy boost when I needed it. And I’ve been running enough this year that the physical exertion alone does not put me to sleep. It’s rare that I go to bed before midnight, even and perhaps especially on nights I go running.

But as much as I love them, movies have a tranquilizing effect on me. It’s why I always load myself up with caffeine and sweets when I go to the theater. I view those things as my only savior from slumber if my body becomes overwhelmed with the desire to sleep, whether there’s any truth to that or not. (With the Coke, some truth; with the chocolates, very little beyond a psychosomatic effect, and sometimes it’s only the benefit of being engaged in a repetitive motion activity, which in itself is enough to keep you from sleeping.) At home, I could pause it, but not at the theater.

If I’m really enjoying the movie, I won’t worry about eating and drinking up the snacks and drinks near the start. If I have two of one or both, I’m usually in good shape, as gobbling up one early still leaves an emergency supply in reserve. But I don’t really want to eat two separate bags of sweet treats. You know, to avoid turning into a blimp.

If I have only one of one or both, and I’m loving the movie, I just eat them as I feel like. Which usually ends up being in the first 45 minutes.

And I was really loving Sorry to Bother You. At the start, anyway. I was laughing and grooving on it. I thought there was very little chance exhaustion would overpower me.

So I ate my chocolates at about the half-hour mark, and drank the Coke (No Sugar Coke, I should say) around maybe an hour.

And then Sorry to Bother You started to lose me.

And then the run started to catch up with me.

I wouldn’t say that I actually slept for any portion of the second half of the movie, though I was definitely fading in and out in the last 20 minutes, as the movie became increasingly chaotic. It may have been that there was less need to grasp the specifics of the plot at that point anyway. I don’t think there were any holes in my viewing experience, though I can’t say for sure.

But when I left the theater, I was a tad disappointed with Sorry to Bother You. When pondering the grade I planned to give it on my review, I considered only a 6/10. I’d decided on a 7/10 after a little additional consideration, and by the time I wrote about it (you can read the review here), I knew my thoughts were more in line with a 7/10. But I’d expected it to be either an 8 or a 9, so it still qualified as a disappointment.

And then there was the nagging element of how much of my appreciation was lost as I struggled against my body’s impulses in the second half. Where this movie goes in the second half requires you to be on your toes a bit more, I’d say. Let’s just say I was not.

I considered the matter sort of settled. Regrettably settled, but settled nonetheless. Then I listened to them discuss it on The Next Picture Show, one of my handful of film podcasts. I’d been holding this episode since July or whenever, eager not to listen to it before I’d seen the movie. And good that I didn’t, as they had no concerns about spoiling the strange turn the movie takes in its second half.

And though I’ve been a bit down on this podcast lately, finding myself inclined to pick numerous nits with it, their discussion got me retroactively enthused about what I had seen.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten the interesting parts of the movie, but their mentions of them brought them swimming back up from some part of my subconscious. “Oh yeah, that happens in this movie. And that. And that. Wow!” Their discussion reminded me of how many interesting, daring, and batshit crazy things Boots Riley does in this movie. The fact that not every single one of them works is less important than the fact that he did them, and boy isn’t that great, and boy isn’t that refreshing.

That discussion will almost certainly push the movie higher in my rankings, but that’s not enough for me. And given that long delay between the U.S. and Australian release of the film, I may actually have a chance to watch it again before my ranking deadline. I mean, I definitely will, since it’s already available for rental via iTunes, as stated earlier. But they may even make it the 99 cent rental in one of the coming weeks, and that’s probably the excuse I’ll need to prioritize a second viewing.

At home, where I can pause, with a refrigerator full of gastronomic stimulants just a few feet away, and no run, partial or otherwise, on the same night.