I should’ve mentioned in my Stand Up and Cheer! review when I said “it’s a lot more than just a Shirley Temple movie” that I pointed that out because that was probably the one thing I could pinpoint which made the movie so much better than I feared. Despite being crazy about young actresses, I’ve really never been too interested in Miss Temple; but it’s always been based on fairly limited experience of her work, being the reason why I’m beginning to make an attempt to catch up on the evidence. I watched this, Stand Up and Now and Forever in one sitting – I’m not sure if this was wise, but they’re short movies and it made sense at the time. They were also all released in 1934, Shirley’s first year of feature acting.

The “marker” of the title here refers to the fact that we meet Shirley this time around as her father uses her for collateral on a gambling ticket. Shortly thereafter she’s the center of another wager over her weight – old men gather round as they determine the winner on a set of scales. There’s a weird bedtime scene – and when I find such things weird you’ve gotta wonder – where she has one of these men help her with her underwear …

It sounds so innocuous and it should be, but honestly I’m with Graham Greene on this so far. On the one hand, Shirley Temple was a lot more like a “real little girl” than any of the starlets we’ve seen since – she didn’t have a hint of precocity about her and all she really ever did was laugh, cry, and sing. But there’s something about certain moments of her – it really comes over as deliberately sensual, and like I said, when I’m finding things like this unsettling … I think it’s the contrast or something. Precocious and sexual never phases me – but this gawkish, squeaky thing barely an ex-toddler gasps and says, “they button up the back!” out of the blue … it gives me the heeby-jeebies or something. I’ve probably said too much. But like I said: Graham Greene … I’m in good company. I’m assuming I can’t be sued as he was for speaking my mind.

Anyway now you’ll know why it’s taken me a day since the Stand Up review to post this even though they were watched side-by-side … I kept wanting to include this paragraph but I couldn’t believe that I’d written such a thing just days after finding this article so risible. I guess we all have our funny lines.

I just found it odd in general. I find it odder that I can’t find a single review out there that questions the whole set-up, lol. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

Part of me sat depressed through this thinking I couldn’t have picked a worse movie to end 2007 with (of movies actually released in ‘07, at least). But maybe it’s actually the perfect choice. Curtis Hanson knows how to put a movie together, and like so many movies this year, too many by my reckoning, this is on the technical side perfectly acceptable. To make a card game of any kind even watchable is some achievement in itself. Here they even throw some golf in for good measure.

But to stretch this over a two hour period, with only a threadbare “man is logic, woman is emotion,” romantical conflict thing in the way of story? And then to cast Drew Barrymore and criminally underuse her? And then, in its last half hour, its entire last half hour, I swear … it switches to pretty much exactly what you’ll find if you accidentally switch to Channel 5 in the early hours of any given morning – a televised poker game, literally nothing more except Eric Bana has a hand and Drew Barrymore’s watching. It’s worse than the end of International Velvet, lol. It’s just incredible.

One is duty bound to use any pun available when dealing with movies like this, I’m afraid – Unlucky you if you made the same choice as I did in ending the year on this losing hand. This is the most depressing movie I’ve seen all year, exemplified perhaps best by the moment long after the final poker game is over when I found myself nearly screaming at the TV, “Oh my f**king god! They’re still talking!” Thank God for Music and Lyrics, or I’d be really questioning my love for Drew. It’s still a real letdown though.