Thoughts on Miss Juneteenth

I really enjoyed watching Miss Juneteenth, a 2020 indie film directed by Channing Godfrey Peoples, about a single mom (Nicole Beharie) raising her teen daughter in Texas and preparing her for a Miss Juneteenth pageant, which the mom won as a teen, so her daughter can get a scholarship to a good school. She also doesn’t want her daughter to fall into the same life she’s had as being a mother too young and getting caught in a poverty cycle or raising a kid alone, so she’s pushing for her to succeed to have better opportunities than she had, particularly to attend an HBCU like Spelman.

I really loved seeing Beharie shine in another great leading role after all of the mess with Sleepy Hollow, and how her character Turquoise was proud of her past glory but also of her current life in working at a bar and making ends meet with applying makeup to bodies at a funeral home. She played the role with a lot of heart and dimension and authenticity, and felt like a real person, she was fantastic in this film.

She had a great rapport with Alexis Chikaeze as her daughter Kai, who isn’t into the whole pageant thing and just wants to audition for the dance team and hang with her boyfriend. They really felt like mother and daughter, with a lot of warmth and closeness, as well as the mom knowing when to set her daughter straight, especially when it came time to focus on her academic studies and using the pageant to win a scholarship. Chikaneze had a sweetness to her, feeling like a kid who is testing the waters of acting grown while still being very innocent, and ends up finding a nice middle ground between being her sweet kid self and acting more like a mature young woman, especially when seeing her mother as a complex person with history and not just her mom.

I liked how warm and lived-in the film felt, based on the director’s own upbringing in a predominantly Black part of Fort Worth, Texas. The community was depicted as tight and small, albeit people knowing about each other’s business too much, but it felt genuine, and it had a side plot about the bar owner not wanting to give his place up for gentrification or white supremacy, and holding onto his place to pass on to his people, which ends up with a nice resolution.

Overall, this was a really good film, that got accolades at Sundance earlier this year, and I’m happy I checked it out.

Thoughts on To the Ends of the Earth

On Metrograph’s virtual cinema page, I really enjoyed watching the 2019 Japanese film To the Ends of the Earth, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse, Tokyo Sonata). It was a really engrossing comedy-drama in which J-pop star Atsuko Maeda plays the host of a travel reality show, shooting an episode in Uzbekistan with a small crew of all men. She has this bubbly personality when hosting, but off-camera, is a lot more withdrawn and introverted. She feels totally out of her element in the country, as well as dealing with everyday sexism from locals, like a fisherman who thinks her presence brings bad luck in catching fish, or an amusement park manager who thinks she’s a child when she goes on a ridiculous ride three times in a row for the show.

I really liked how the movie depicted scenes of her isolation and vulnerability with exploring alone in the country, like feeling nervous at night as a solo woman or racing out of a bazaar when being hassled by merchants, especially when she cannot speak the language and struggles to understand and communicate with locals. And when she would be shooting scenes for the show, one could feel her guilt whenever shoots were unsuccessful for reasons out of her control, but feeling some silent blame pointed her way by men.

I wasn’t as into her musical moments, when she bursts into singing an old Edith Piaf standard in a fantasy sequence, because it felt inserted in and obligatory because Maeda is a famous pop star, and the character truly wanted to be a singer as a hidden desire. It just didn’t really fit as much for me, as these moments were the rare times that she sang, and it felt totally out of left field if I didn’t already read in the plot summary that the actress is a known singer. I got that it was part of her journey of self-discovery, but it still felt a little sudden when it happened.

It was a really rich and interesting film to watch, and I’m happy I checked it out.

Thoughts on The Sunlit Night

I really liked The Sunlit Night, a 2019 indie film directed by David Wnendt and starring Jenny Slate that I watched on Hulu. She plays a struggling artist dealing with a breakup and family drama and takes an apprenticeship far up in Norway with an curmudgeonly older artist to paint a barn, during the late summer season where it’s 24-hour daylight. I liked how quiet and contemplative the film was, and how a lot of it was of her finding peace with herself, slowly bonding with the artist, painting a portrait of a grocery store worker, hanging out by the ocean in sweaters, and having a brief thing with a boyishly dorky-looking guy there to bury his father and reminding me of Harold in Harold and Maude. Jenny Slate has a natural and warm relatability to her, a unique beauty, and a sweet oddball voice. This was just a really lovely little film to watch tonight.

Thoughts on Twenty Bucks

Last month I watched on Tubi a 1993 movie called Twenty Bucks, directed by Keva Rosenfeld, about a $20 bill that passes through various people and their stories. The movie was pretty good, a mix of Hollywood stars (Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue) and indie stars on the rise (Steve Buscemi, William H. Macy). My favorite part was a story with Christopher Lloyd and Buscemi as two thieves who spend a night robbing liquor stores together. Lloyd is like the seasoned career criminal, Buscemi is the dirtbag loser. Lloyd was one of the best actors of the movie, and it was nice seeing him play a serious part and not being hammy. Melora Walters was also one of my favorites as a bachelor party stripper whose day job is working at a mortuary, I found her character varied and interesting. Fraser was the weaker part, he just seemed lost and too clean and boring for an offbeat movie like this.

Thoughts on Sidewalks of New York

Last month, I rewatched Sidewalks of New York, a 2001 romantic comedy directed by Edward Burns. I’m almost watching this in a historical context, because it is representative of the kind of late 1990s indie romantic comedies that are just full of talking and neurotic characters. It’s definitely a thing from Woody Allen movies, which carried over into the indie film boom of the 90s, and is around today in the form of indie movies about millennial hip gentrifiers obsessed with their romantic lives.

The film also takes a bit of the mockumentary style, with talking head interview clips with the characters, and it’s never established who the “documentary filmmakers” are, they just show them at random on NYC street corners talking about sex and love and relationships. The film quality is also slightly grainy and always has a bit of a shaky handheld feel to it. It comes off like HBO’s Real Sex when they would have interview segments asking random couples on the street about sex, or the first season of Sex & the City, which resembled more of a 90’s indie film with rough edges before it got more fashionable and polished.

It feels dated in part of the constant walk and talk, how characters date by just asking out random strangers they meet by chance in video stores or cafes, and how the Twin Towers are framed prominently next to Edward Burns’ head in his character’s interview scene.

It has a good cast (Burns, Heather Graham, Brittany Murphy, Stanley Tucci, Rosario Dawson, David Krumholtz) with interconnected stories tying current and former couples with each other, and a lot of talk about infidelity and messy romantic histories and the like. They flow well with each other and make the connections feel believable, like they would cross paths with each other in Manhattan.

Watching this also reminds me of seeing this around age 18 in my hometown art house movie theatre, being an inexperienced kid watching a movie about neurotic NYC adults and their confusing romantic lives. Luckily, this kind of interconnected drama has never figured in my life.

Thoughts on The Happiest Season

I was mixed on The Happiest Season, directed by Clea DuVall. It had a good cast, and I thought Kristen Stewart as Abby was decent and had really good chemistry with Daniel Levy as her best friend and Aubrey Plaza as an ex of Mackenzie Davis’ Harper.

But I wasn’t into the slapstick comedy, and was annoyed by just how Harper blindsides Abby, her girlfriend of a year, by only telling her that she’s not out to her family when they’re in the car on the way to her family’s home for Christmas. I got that Harper should come out on her own time, and why she was nervous to come out to her conservative parents. And nobody should force her to come out or be outed against her wishes.

But I still hated how she brings this up to Abby on really short notice, and lets the family walk all over her and talk down to her, thinking she’s just her platonic straight roommate, and how crappy it was. Abby is stuck there for a week, and it made Harper come off as insensitive to her. That did make it frustrating, especially since the characters are not young kids, but are likely around thirty, and should be more adult in their relationships.

So I thought the movie was OK, like around a B, but was annoyed with Harper being so immature with Abby and their relationship.

Thoughts on Zappa

I really liked Zappa, Alex Winter’s new documentary on Frank Zappa. I only casually knew some things about him, and just knew a couple of songs by him, so this was a really thorough and interesting film tracing his life as an offbeat musician leader who felt like a mix of contrasts, like an eccentric weirdo onstage who was firmly against drugs, hated hippie culture, and led a tight and focused band of veteran sidemen.

Of course, one of the things that bugged me was that he openly cheated on his wife with groupies, who was aware of it and not happy but had to put up with it. He uses being a touring rock star as an excuse, but it felt more like a side effect of the 1960s “free love” culture being more beneficial to men than women.

I really loved the part about a stop motion animator who created early music videos for Zappa and is incredibly talented in matching Zappa’s experimental music with odd claymation figures, that looked like a fantastic mix of artist collaboration. It started out after Zappa was attacked onstage and was injured, and the videos replaced the live performances for awhile and just stuck around as part of his image.

Towards the end, I loved seeing the evolution of his conducting skills, how he went from being the leader of his 1960s jazz rock fusion band at the height of the tune in, drop out era to his last concerts leading orchestras in a mix of jazz, classical, and experimental music in formal circles. It showed a lot of his range and ability to grow as an artist and with life changes and all. I appreciated this film, and seeing the tons of archival footage that Winter’s team organized for the film.

Thoughts on I Married a Witch

On Criterion, I watched the 1942 film I Married a Witch, directed by René Clair, which I heard of from the Critically Acclaimed podcast. I really adored it, it was a charming and weird premise for a romantic comedy. Veronica Lake plays a woman who got burned at the stake in the 1600s, and she and her father’s souls are imprisoned in a tree for centuries (their ashes are buried under the tree). She curses the whole lineage of the Puritan man who burned her, ensuring every marriage in his male descendants to be miserable and loveless failures.

Their souls escape the tree and they vow to continue their curse, this time on Fredric March, who is running for governor and about to marry Susan Hayward the next day. Veronica Lake, whose soul is embodied as a smoke plume that can hide in bottles, uses a fire to materialize as a beautiful woman in order to “bewitch” March and make him marry her so she can ruin his life for fun, but things take some screwball twists.

I found this really delightful, and Lake was just so funny and charming as the witch, just messing around with March as her dumb plaything. I’m happy the podcast recommended this, this was fun and offbeat and cute.

Thoughts on Irma Vep

I got the Criterion Channel over the weekend, feeling like I was long overdue to sign up as a nerdy cinephile. It’s pretty good selections, though way heavy on the classic European arthouse films that feel more like film school studies assignments. I had my fill of that when I was much younger, so I wasn’t as into that, but mostly checking out the indie/artsy films that were more contemporary.

I really enjoyed watching Beatrice Dalle’s screen test for 1986's Betty Blue, where she just tells stories of crazy adventures with her boyfriends and shady photographers, and I couldn’t tell how much was true and how much was her trying to be in character. But she just popped on camera with a lot of wild sexiness and vibrant charisma, she was totally that girl.

I watched Irma Vep, a 1996 film by Olivier Assayas starring Maggie Cheung as a fictional version of herself coming to Paris to film a remake of a silent film called Les Vampyres, dressed in a tight latex suit a la Catwoman and dealing with a messy film shoot, neurotic French crew members, confusing romantic attractions, and a stressed film director. I really liked the mix of it being artsy and modern of the time, mixing meta stuff with Cheung being largely known at the time from Jackie Chan movies like Police Story and her co-starring role in The Heroic Trio, adding Sonic Youth music and music video art etchings to silent film footage, with the casual look of the film crew and Cheung, it was all just an enjoyable hodgepodge of high and low art combined. I could see how this style would predict later Assayas films like Clean (with Cheung as a transplant to Paris but speaking way more French then) Clouds of Sils Maria, and Personal Shopper as commentaries on the French film and showbiz industry and inner workings of behind the scenes players.

Thoughts on Lingua Franca

On Netflix, I watched the 2020 film Lingua Franca, directed by Isabel Sandoval. It was a really moving and quiet indie drama about a Filipina transwoman named Olivia (Sandoval) living as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. She’s caught in a bind between trying to get a green card through a sham marriage, her passport having her deadname on it, and being unable to change it without authorities being alerted to her status. She works as a live-in nurse for an elderly Russian Jewish woman (Lynn Cohen, in one of her last roles) and she and the woman’s grandson (Eamon Farren) slowly develop a romantic relationship together.

I loved how this film spoke in quiet expressions, subtle movements, and how, like the A.V. Club review stated, her story as a transwoman and immigrant has already passed, and it’s just about her trying to get by in the present and keep her head down. As quoted from the review, “Lingua Franca is not a transition story, nor is it a story about migration. For Olivia, both of those events, seismic as they may have been, are in the past. She made it to the place and became the person she needed to be, but lost herself amid all the sacrifices she had to make to get there. Sometimes revolutions are loud, dramatic affairs. For Olivia, just allowing herself to love, to be loved, and to love herself is enough.”

The film uses news clips of 45 making threatening statements about undocumented immigrants as background noise, as well as news reports about violence against transwomen as another creeping threat.

She has a close bond with a childhood friend, Trixie, who is also a transwoman living in NYC, and they have some sweet scenes together sitting in empty church pews, speaking in Tagalog and reminiscing about their Catholic school days, when they identified more with the nuns than any male religious figures.

I’m happy that the A.V. Club recommended this film, it’s truly a hidden gem, and was touching to watch.

Thoughts on Cool Blue

On Hulu I watched an old movie called Cool Blue (made in 1988, released in 1990) starring Woody Harrelson as a starving artist who becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman he had a one night stand with, and while trying to find her, he uses her memory as a muse to fuel his artwork to be successful. I thought this was going to be a fun, quirky After Hours kind of movie, but it mostly felt half-baked and pointless.

Harrelson and a young Hank Azaria are fun to watch as a couple of broke losers bemoaning their poor existences at 27 years old, and it’s cool to see Azaria in a scrappy mode sometimes lapsing into his future cartoon voices, like when they do phone sex work and he talks like Moe the Bartender. But then later he gets this super melodramatic breakdown scene in a bar that felt way too much for this nothing movie, and felt more like an overwrought singular monologue audition scene than something more organic within the movie.

The female lead, Ely Pouget, had an effective distant cool about her, but her character felt empty. She has a jerk husband that she keeps disappearing from, but comes back to, just so he can rub it in her face about how she can’t survive without him. And at the end, she and Harrelson reunite and have this big dramatic argument as if they were a couple with history, when they hardly know each other and hadn’t seen each other in several months, it also felt weird and like the scene belonged in a different movie. The movie just didn’t seem to have any real focus to it, like it was trying to be this quirky L.A. comedy about weird locals and the art scene, but when Azaria asks Harrelson at the end what he learned from all of this and he doesn’t know, I thought, “Yeah, I don’t know either!”

Also, the movie had this random Sean Penn cameo where I could not get a read on what he was doing in this movie. He just pops up in blonde wig in a bar, talks in a German (?) accent before dropping it back to his natural accent, spits out some pearls of wisdom to Harrelson, and just exits the movie. It could have been cut from the movie and wouldn’t have made a difference.

So I wanted to like this, thinking it would be some fun weird obscure movie, but it just felt weak and underwritten, with some decent lead performances salvaging it.

Thoughts on Bill and Ted Face the Music

I liked Bill and Ted Face the Music, I thought it was sweet and funny, split into two time travel plotlines, and being remiscient of the original movies in a respectful way. I liked how the guys, as middle-aged rock has-beens still trying to fulfill their prophecy of uniting the world through one special song, still maintain their kindness and good heart, and have an incredible bond with each other, thanks to the amazing chemistry between Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, who feel like brothers in these movies.

It’s fun seeing William Sadler as Death again, and it’s weird knowing that the awkward dork that Death is was played by the same guy who, during the same era of Bogus Journey, blew up a passenger plane upon landing in Die Hard 2 as a cold-hearted kickboxing terrorist. I also really liked Anthony Carrigan as a sheepishly likable robot from the future and Samara Weaving and Brigitte Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, who do their own Excellent Adventure story.

It was a relaxing movie to watch last Friday, and I liked how wholesome and innocent it felt, it was a welcome addition in the series.

Yves & Variations

This is a really lovely short documentary by The New Yorker about a Haitian man who plays the violin while working as a building concierge and sells paintings by Haitian artists. He’s very elegant and smooth, with adorable young daughters.

 Yves & Variation

Thoughts on Melancholia

In August, I broke a twenty-year streak of never seeing another Lars von Trier movie again. I watched Melancholia, and thought it was fantastic, and surprisingly not as difficult of a sit as I thought, despite that it’s about depression and the end of the world.

I really related a lot to the depression and melancholy that Kirsten Dunst’s character is going through, that feeling of sadness when you’re supposed to be happy, and others blaming you if they can see your melancholy through your happy front. She really captured that well, and deserved the honors she got for this role.

I liked how this movie was about accepting the inevitable, and coping through depression, and finding a still of peace when others are way more emotional. Like how Charlotte Gainsbourg’s character starts off picking on her sister and treating her like the scapegoat for family problems (like their mother being rude and inappropriate at Dunst’s wedding reception), then, as the end of the world becomes more real, she has to accept her mortality and need her sister for guidance.

I had sworn off watching von Trier films after the ending of Dancer in the Dark, in which the finale was so devastating and awful that I never wanted to see his films again. I also couldn’t finish Breaking the Waves as a teenager, finding it way too sad to get through, though I’m sure I could be fine with it now. So I just avoided seeing his films from then on, but felt like Melancholia would be one I would like and understand, as opposed to probably hating Antichrist or The House That Jack Built. I think he’s a very talented and challenging director, but I don’t feel up to being emotionally devastated by films a lot, I can only take that in small doses.

Thoughts on First Cow

I really liked First Cow, Kelly Reichardt’s new film that I saw in July, quite a lot. It’s a quiet character dramedy about two settlers in the 1820s who meet each other as former gold prospectors in the Northwest, and quickly develop a warm and deep friendship and sell cakes using stolen milk from a rich man’s cow. I liked the slow pace of it, the quiet chemistry of the two men, the warmth of the relationship between one of the settlers and the cow, and how the beginning and ending were bookended together in a fitting way. Next to Wendy and Lucy, it’s now one of my favorites of her films.

Thoughts on Clemency

Thanks to the podcast Switchblade Sisters for recommending the 2019 indie drama Clemency, directed by Chinonye Chukwu. Alfre Woodard plays a prison warden who carries out death penalty sentences, and the job is taking an emotional toll on her between comforting the families of the inmates, listening to anti-death penalty protests outside, going through routine procedures with inmates like last meals or last talks with loved ones, and watching them die.

Woodard is so great at just showing the weight of this job in her expressions and quiet moments, and how she feels lonely, yet, despite that her husband is pushing for her to retire, she sees it as her profession and compartmentalizing it to cope. Special credit also goes to Aldis Hodge as a death row inmate accused of killing a cop nearly 15 years ago, struggling with his emotions and feeling hopeless, and Danielle Brooks as his ex high school girlfriend who visits him and gives a great monologue about the choices she had to make for her own protection when he got arrested.

I saw this on Hulu, and am happy I checked this out, it’s an underseen film that shows another side of Alfre Woodard’s great screen performances.

Thoughts on Terriers

In July, I watched Terriers, Donal Logue’s short-lived crime show from 2010. The basic plot is two unlicensed private detectives (an ex-cop and a petty thief) pair up to solve local crimes, which start with stealing a woman’s dog back from her ex and turns into uncovering a sordid corruption scandal with a rich developer over property rights. I really liked the noir vibe over the seedy parts of its Ocean Beach, San Diego, CA setting, the great chemistry between Logue and Michael Raymond-James, the dark and witty comedy, Logue’s fantastic delivery as a guy who looks like The Dude but with a more cynical look at life, and how thoroughly engrossing the crime storylines were. I liked that it didn’t always take expected paths, and didn’t have easy resolutions, as Logue’s character Hank often took a dirty and underhanded way of investigating crimes and would make things worse or messier at the least.

I had heard of this show years after it was on, and I feel like it got lost among FX programming at the time. I don’t think it was marketed well, as the title and advertising made it seem like it was a show about dogs. There is a bulldog in it, but the title is a loose connection to the plot. Some commenters on AV Club said that a terrier can be described as a small dog who fights hard and doesn’t back down, and that could describe the guys. Still, it’s a stretch.

The show had a lot of talent behind it. Among the episode directors were Rian Johnson and John Dahl, and among the showrunners was one of Joss Whedon’s collaborators from his shows.

I also liked how much heart it had, and how the lead characters Hank and Britt were general losers who still felt human and sympathetic. Like how Britt is devoted to his girlfriend but is still falling into his own B&E past to investigate crimes and openly knows he’s not the brains of the operation. And how Hank is still mourning the loss of his marriage and being kicked off the force, using surveillance to check out her new fiancé, and has a lot of deep sadness behind his charming one-liners. It’s a show that I got into very quickly, and I think had it had a better title and been marketed better as a crime dramedy than ambiguously being about dogs, it would have had a better chance at having another season or two.

Thoughts on The Truth

The Truth, a new French movie from Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters, After Life, Nobody Knows) that came out in July, was pretty good, a decent mother-daughter dramedy starring Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Deneuve plays a very self-aware role as a French movie star who is an acting legend, with decades of history of roles and lovers and scandals and awards, and is simultaneously promoting her memoir The Truth (albeit a rose-colored, self-serving kind of truth for her audience of fans) and filming a movie in which her role is a glorified cameo. Binoche arrives with her husband (Ethan Hawke) and their young daughter to her mother’s opulent house. Much of the film is about the mother and daughter’s conflicts between the mother being a neglectful parent to prioritize being a great actress (which she fully admits to and has no shame about it), and her daughter being treated as inferior in being upset over past grievances. It was fun to watch two French movie legends together, even if I’ve never been a fan of Deneuve (I was more of a Jeanne Moreau fan), as I’ve always liked how Juliette Binoche has a very understated look to her and a lot of strength in character roles and emotional complexity. I mostly thought the movie was decent, I just watched it for the stars and liking the director’s previous work.

Thoughts on House of Hummingbird

I really liked House of Hummingbird a lot, a film I watched in July. It’s a Korean coming of age drama from last year, directed by Bora Kim, about a 14-year old girl in 1994 Seoul struggling with feeling like a nobody at school, and having a crappy family in which her parents ignore her and her brother beats her. It’s a very quiet and engaging drama that felt complex, and I liked how it was just about her working to cope with awful crap in her life, without much escape, and that the only positive influence in her life is a nice teacher who takes her abuse seriously. The sequence in which she gets caught shoplifting some petty items and the conflict that arises from it was one of the standout scenes of the movie, like a total crossroads between frustrations with herself, her best friend, her family, and the shopkeeper. The movie also weaves in a real-life tragedy of a bridge collapse that happened back then, and it’s pretty heartbreaking in how it impacts her life. I heard of this movie from a film podcast, and am glad I checked it out.

Thoughts on Party Girl

I rewatched Party Girl in June. I adore this movie. I love that it’s a snapshot of mid-90s house dance culture, especially with Guillermo Diaz’ sweet performance as a shy DJ, and Parker Posey’s bright outfits pieced together from thrift store finds. I like that it’s about a young woman who becomes a library clerk and wants to prove to people that she’s not stupid or flighty, and wants to be a serious librarian to have more of a purpose in life beyond just being a charming party presence.

It’s especially cool to see a depiction of a budding librarian who doesn’t have the typical nerd look, as I and many other librarians/archivists just happen to fall into that appearance naturally. She’s trying to defy assumptions and fighting the patronizing attitude of the head librarian, and I really respected that about her character, like memorizing the Dewey Decimal System or organizing her friend’s record collection. Posey just owned this whole movie, and I love that this was her breakout starring role that made her a major indie movie star of the 1990s.

Thoughts on The Hudsucker Proxy

I watched The Hudsucker Proxy for the first time in June. I really liked it a lot, as a weird movie that blended the dark comedy of the Coen Brothers with the cartoony visuals of Sam Raimi. I went into the movie cold, only knowing that it was a period piece and partially took place at a newspaper. Jennifer Jason Leigh totally stole the movie with her spot-on imitations of the fast-talking Transatlantic accent of screwball heroines like Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn. Though I don’t think the movie should have been set in 1958, it felt way too late for the kind of screwball comedy/everyman pictures they were paying homage to, it should have been set around 1940 or so. Nevertheless, it was a fun and oddball movie for a big studio film, and I’m not surprised it bombed when it came out.

Also, I was watching some old TV interviews Leigh did around this time, and when Letterman is introducing her and says the movie title, the audience laughed at the title, more in a “what the hell does that mean?” way. So not a good sign for the movie’s chances then.

Thoughts on The Surrogate

I really liked The Surrogate, an indie film I watched in June through the Museum of the Moving Image’s virtual cinema, directed by Jeremy Hersh. It’s about a young woman (a vibrant Jasmine Batchelor) who is a surrogate carrying a baby for her gay male friends, and they deal with moral conflicts when they find out the fetus will be born with Down’s Syndrome. She’s all into having the baby and researching what it’s like to raise a kid with DS, while her friends, the ones who would be the parents, are hesitant about having a child with special needs. I thought it was a really interesting movie, and liked how it dealt with complex emotions about raising kids with special needs, especially when finding out the child will have disabilities while they are in the womb. It felt like a more unique story for a movie, and it didn’t have a clean happy ending, which I appreciated.

Thoughts on Someone Somewhere, Shirley, and Tommaso

 I rented some movies on streaming in June, to support some arthouse movie theaters and check their stuff out, here’s my thoughts:

Someone Somewhere: a new French romantic comedy from Cédric Klapisch. I liked this one a lot, it was sweet and cute and not contrived. A young man and woman are neighbors in Paris apartments who don’t meet until the very end, but live parallel lives as single people dealing with their own anxiety and therapy issues. I liked how the movie was largely about their individual lives and figuring out their own issues and self-defeating problems and being more confident and comfortable with themselves by the time they finally meet and are both ready for a relationship. It felt more unique, and it fell in line with me liking Klapisch’s movies for years for being sweet and funny and relatable. Plus, his movies usually show a more racially diverse depiction of Paris, so I like the realism there.

Shirley: Elisabeth Moss plays a fictionalized version of the writer Shirley Jackson, directed by Josephine Decker, in which she and her husband take in a newlywed couple as boarders in 1950 (this is from a novel adaptation). It’s a psychothriller mostly focusing on Jackson’s antagonistic relationship with the young wife, who resents that her husband gets to have a teaching assistant job at the local college while she’s stuck doing household chores so that Jackson can write her next book off of the success of “The Lottery.” I couldn’t get into this one much, because aside from liking Moss’ tightly wound performance (in which her inner mental breaks are always seen behind her eyes), I didn’t find the story or dynamic interesting, and just couldn’t care much. It was fine to watch, just more of a C level for me.

Tommaso: Abel Ferrara’s new movie, starring Willem Dafoe as an ex-pat director living in Rome with his wife and daughter, teaching acting classes, going to AA, and having marital issues with his much younger wife. It was pretty good, the protagonist being a blend of Ferrara and Dafoe (Ferrara as the director who has issues with women; Dafoe as the actor married to an Italian artist and who lives partly in Rome), with really beautiful cinematography of their spacious apartment and everyday street life in Rome. I did get annoyed whenever the protagonist would reprimand his wife like she was a child (29 to his sixty-something year old self), and both thought he was a good father and a selfish husband, so I was mixed on him. The ending was also a little confusing to me, as to whether it was fantasy or reality. But overall I thought it was a good film and liked its rich texture.

Thoughts on Devs

I watched Devs in April, an FX show streamed on Hulu that Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) created.

If you like those movies, this show is like that combined. Long, slow scenes where everyone talks in a monotone about science, backdrops of shady science tech corporations full of secrets, being way out in nature and far from general civilization, heavy synth scores, bright green trees, and neon use of color.

I was mixed on it. I wasn’t into the monotone delivery and slow scenes, but once it got more into a detective plot (the plot is that a engineer’s boyfriend died shortly after he was promoted to work on a secret development project, and his death was ruled a suicide, but she suspects it was murder) and the backstory of the development project (a prediction software where people can see the past and future on a giant grainy screen), it picked up a lot more for me. I started to care more once it got into the moral ethics of the software and how it affects people’s choices in life, and whether everything is predetermined or can be changed.

I thought it was decent, with some really good acting from Nick Offerman, Alison Pill, and Jin Ha. The lead, Sonoya Mizuno, was a rough watch. She has a background as a dancer, so she’s a good physical actress to watch in her silent reactions to people or in the slow, mannered way she moves, but her delivery was often flat in comparison to the more veteran actors, and since she was the heroine, it was a long sit to watch the star being outshone by the supporting cast.

It feels like a one-shot miniseries, I wouldn’t expect a second season of it. I watched it on recommendation from the sci-fi podcast Our Opinions Are Correct, in which they also recommended a lot of older Canadian sci-fi TV shows I’d like to check out.

Thoughts on Little Woods

 I really enjoyed watching Little Woods a lot. It’s an indie drama from last year starring Tessa Thompson as a young woman in rural North Dakota on the last days of her probation for running prescription pills over the border, trying to get a better job elsewhere, and she gets stuck back into the cycle due to her mother’s death, her home being up for foreclosure, and her sister dealing with domestic drama.

I really liked this tight intimate drama, directed by Nia DaCosta, and how high the stakes were for this one ordinary person. Thompson was really great in this movie in playing a struggling person trying to balance between finishing out her probation and trying to save her family, and I like how she has this combination of deep eyes and a soft voice while under a lot of pressure. It was just a small film that really touched me a lot.

Thoughts on The Watcher

In March, I watched on Netflix a 2000 crime thriller called The Watcher, where James Spader is a cop trying to catch a serial killer (Keanu Reeves) who murdered women in L.A., then followed Spader to Chicago to taunt him and kill more women. He keeps messing with him by sending him a picture of a random young woman he’s stalking, and giving him 12 hours to try to find her and save her before Reeves kills her in her home. Spader is also reeling from Reeves having killed his girlfriend and being addicted to pills and off the force.

I watched this mainly for the cast. Spader is great at playing weird tortured loner types, and while I didn’t really buy Reeves as a serial killer, as it didn’t feel convincing, he was still charismatic to watch. There was some bad early 2000s editing choices, like random slow-mo of Reeves as a shitty remix of “Dragula” plays, or a lot of white flashes as scene transitions. I also thought Marisa Tomei was totally wasted as Spader’s therapist, who eventually is held captive as one of Reeves’ victims. It really seemed beneath her caliber as an actress to be cast as a bound and gagged damsel in distress victim.

I did like the cat and mouse chase feel of the film, like when the cops would have about 12 hours to put out an APB on an unknown woman targeted for murder and spend the whole day on foot with fliers and asking people about her and trying to get minor clues from the photo of her. It was somewhat original and different to see in a cop movie, and gave it some good suspense.

So this was largely just a low-rent thriller, but still engaging to watch for the actors’ performances and somewhat creative storytelling.

Thoughts on Hysterical Blindness

Episode 44: Debbie Does Bayonne 

I was thrilled to listen to this episode on the 2002 HBO movie Hysterical Blindness, where Uma Thurman played an 80’s Jersey woman struggling with her mental health and abandonment issues through seeking love in dive bars. Her character is sad and desperate, having delusional expectations of a one-night-stand with a local guy, and keeps snapping at her mother (Gena Rowlands), who is trying to have love and happiness with a new boyfriend (Ben Gazarra) late in life. This was a film that changed my opinion on Thurman, from thinking she was just a pretty face to being stunned by her uncomfortable vulnerability in this role. Kill Bill more solidified my opinion that she was a much better and more commanding actress than I previously thought.

Rowlands also brings so much heart to her role as a woman whose husband abandoned her, and she’s just been keeping on as a diner waitress and struggling in her relationship with her immature daughter, who doesn’t want her mom to get hurt by a man again. Rowlands has this lived-in quality with her roles that makes her characters feel like real people, and I feel like she’s truly underrated in the popular landscape, despite her critical acclaim.

Combined with a really great performance by Juliette Lewis as a single mom who had her kid as a teen and still wants to keep up her party life, it’s a really touching character drama (directed by Mira Nair) that I connected to so much. This used to play on HBO a lot in the early 2000s, but isn’t as well-remembered now. It’s not in HBO’s library, I just rewatched it on a YouTube upload.

Thoughts on Birds of Prey

I thought it was a decent movie. I liked how bright and colorful it was, and how charismatic Margot Robbie is in filling up a scene with her childlike energy and mad glee. And I really wanted to see more of Mary Elizabeth Ellis as Huntress, I felt like they teased the audience with a cool character who only got more screen time in the finale as a killer with awkward social skills. It’s also nice to see Rosie Perez back on the big screen in a substantial role as Renée Montoya.

I agree with criticisms that it could have had a tighter storyline, as much of the plot is about people chasing a MacGuffin (a diamond in this case), and that the Birds of Prey should have formed as a team in the middle of the film rather than the climactic finale, so it could be a movie about all of them, not mostly centered on Harley Quinn.

Admittedly, I’m only really familiar with Birds of Prey through the short-lived TV show of the early 2000s, which got a lot of hype then quickly died. Last year I listened to a podcast episode that reviewed the series, and it was a promising show with flaws.

The fight choreography is solid, and I like how it came from the people who did John Wick, so there’s a lot of full unbroken shots of fighting, including some really creative maneuvers that I was impressed by. The finale also made great use of props in an unusual location, and looked like a lot of fun to do.

So even though the script could have been better, and it should have felt more like an ensemble piece, I still liked the film, and would give it a B.

Day 31 of Best Films of the 2010s: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

Directed by Angela Robinson, the film was a sexy, funny, and emotionally rich film about an unconventional poly relationship between three people, and the inspiration that led to the creation of Wonder Woman. I was very touched by this film, and believe it was one of the underrated gems of the decade.

Day 30 of Best Films of the 2010s: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Just a stunningly beautifully animated film, I loved the sharp angles and dynamic colors. I loved how much heart was put into the film’s art and performances and story, and it felt very rich.

Day 29 of Best Films of the 2010s: Disobedience (2018)

An intimate drama about grief and complicated love relationships among the tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community of London, with standout performances by Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, and Alessandro Nivola.

Day 28 of Best Films of the 2010s: The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019)

I put these together because they are by the same director (Robert Eggers), and are both period films about isolation and insanity. They are both incredibly immersive and weird to watch, and I felt more wrapped up in the horror of The Witch because of the family’s isolation from society and their religious fervor destroying them, as well as rooting for the teen girl to get out and find freedom. In The Lighthouse, I just liked how it was gross and funny and bizarre, and how time didn’t seem to exist in their world, as it could be a few weeks or a year for all the audience would know.

Both films are just fantastic in their isolated horror, and I totally see them as a double feature.

Day 27 of Best Films of the 2010s: Annihilation (2018)

It is a gorgeous-looking movie with a lot of slow, creeping dread, and centers women in the STEM field as the core characters of the film. I did like how trippy the last third got, plus the heavy synth score that was reminiscent of the director Alex Garland’s previous film Ex Machina.

Natalie Portman was fantastic in this. She is very much into feminism and advocacy for films about complex women, so I could see how she fit well for this cerebral film that felt like a mix of hard sci-fi with horror.

Day 26 of Best Films of the 2010s: The Bookshop (2017)

A quiet little British drama, directed by Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me) about a 1950s widow (Emily Mortimer), who opens a bookshop in a seaside village, and faces a lot of unnecessary pushback by residents who are resistant to change. I adored this little film, and especially loved her pen-pal friendship with the town recluse (Bill Nighy), a solitary old man who adores Ray Bradbury novels and specifically requests them from the bookshop.

Day 25 of Best Films of the 2010s You Were Never Really Here (2018)

A stark indie film, directed by Lynne Ramsay (Movern Callar) in which the hero (Joaquin Phoenix) carries out solo rescue missions as a mercenary through brute violence while struggling with PTSD. A fantastic film that says so much more through dialogue-free scenes thanks to its blunt editing style.

Day 24 of Best Films of the 2010s: Sorry to Bother You (2018)

A darkly satirical look at race relations, assimilation, big business, labor unions, and corporations in a sci-fi world of heightened reality a la Michel Gondry, but directed by Boots Riley.

Day 23 of Best Films of the 2010: Life Partners (2014)

(Reprint of my film review from 2015)

Life Partners is a romantic comedy directed by Susanna Fogel and written by Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz. It stars Gillian Jacobs, Leighton Meester, Adam Brody, and Abby Elliott. It is a very good and likable comedy about two best friends dealing with crossroads in their friendship and their personal romantic relationships.The film has a bright and sunshine-y look to it, partially because it is set in a hip area of Los Angeles, and because many of the characters wear bright colors and have animated and talkative personalities.

Paige (Jacobs) and Sasha (Meester) have been best friends for years, and have great chemistry together despite their personality differences. Paige is a lawyer who has a type-A personality and has a controlling attitude when she wants her way, which includes trying to control Sasha’s life. Sasha is a slacker musician who has abandoned her passion to work dead-end receptionist jobs, and doesn’t know what to do with her life, feeling anxious about being nearly 30 and having a lack of direction in her life. Despite this, the two are very witty and relaxed with each other, often teasing one another. There is a fun running joke where they heckle each other while driving in their cars, pretending to be angry motorists and cursing at each other, calling each other “bitch” and “slut” with love. They complement one another, and each need the other in their life because Sasha needs structure in her life, and Paige needs relaxation in her life.

Their relationship is tested when each of them get involved in romantic relationships. Paige, who is straight, begins to date Tim (Brody), an affable young doctor and cinephile who is much more laid-back than Paige. Sasha, who is a lesbian, dates women who are younger and more immature and flighty, a reflection of Sasha not being ready to grow up. Sasha dates Vanessa (Elliott), who is a wannabe writer that is pretentious and selfish. Both of these romantic relationships threaten the core dynamic of Paige and Sasha’s friendship,because their romantic partners inadvertently take them away from each other.Paige become engaged to Tim, and spends much more time with him than with Sasha, leaving Sasha feeling like she has been ditched and not seen as “adult”as they are. While Paige doesn’t like Vanessa because she is a bad influence on Sasha, and keeping Sasha from maturing more as an adult. The best friends struggle with each other over accepting their differences and learning to work together as friends instead of trying to change the other to what they want.

The film shines because of the great chemistry between Jacobs and Meester. They bring a realness to their portrayals that makes them seem like real best friends, with warmth, in-jokes, light teasing, vulnerable confessional moments,and a deep love and care for one another. Particularly, Meester shines in this movie, as she is a rising young actress who hasn’t been given enough of the credit that she deserves for being a charming, talented, and likable actor and personality. Sasha is very relatable because she is a young woman hitting 30 who doesn’t know what she wants in life, and is tired of working soulless jobs, yet has given up her musical passion out of boredom or depression. Her slow realization that she needs to change her life herself and to break her pattern of working boring jobs and dating immature women is very true to many women’s decisions to grow up more past their youthful post-adolescent years. Meester brings vulnerability and understanding to this role that made a true standout in this film.

The script by Fogel and Lefkowitz is based on their own friendship, and feels honest in what a friendship between young women is like. The film passes the Bechdel Test for the most part, excepting scenes where Paige and Sasha are talking about Tim. The friends often talk about their jobs, Sasha’s relationships, their friendship, junk T.V., and their life aspirations. It’s a wonderful movie about female friendship, and was an enjoyable independent film.

Day 22 of Best Films of the 2010s Raw (2016)

I really enjoyed Raw a lot. It is a Belgian horror comedy and was delightfully macabre with a great use of color a la Italian giallo films. The story is about a young and nervous veterinary student who is forced to eat raw meat during a hazing ritual, and she changes from a reserved vegetarian to craving the bloodiest forms of flesh. I loved how the lead actress, Garance Marillier, had this remarkable ability to convey both an average, everyday appearance with a disturbingly beautiful quality as she becomes more ravenous with hunger for flesh. It was a film I was meaning to watch for a long time, and I am happy I saw it.

Bonus for Best Films of the 2010s: Our Idiot Brother (2011)

This is a comedy I’ve watched a couple of times that I’ve just always liked, mostly due to how bright and likable Paul Rudd is as a naive and sweet guy who keeps telling the truth, much to the frustrations of his family. He plays a laid-back organic farmer named Ned who does a stint in prison for selling weed to a uniformed cop (he’s incredibly trusting to his own fault), and after he gets back and his girlfriend has a new guy and kicks him out, he moves around crashing at his sisters’ homes while they deal with their own domestic and personal issues.

What’s funny about the movie is that while Ned is the titular idiot, he’s actually the wisest and nicest character, as his sisters are often small-minded, self-centered, or just unpleasant. The most sympathetic is Emily Mortimer’s character, a caring mom whose filmmaker husband is cheating on her, and who is sweet but naïve. This is in contrast to Elizabeth Banks’ journalist character, who is trying to dig dirt on a celebrity to make for a big paydirt profile, as well as being condescending to her friend who is her obvious romantic interest, or Zooey Deschanel’s artsy character, who is in a relationship with her girlfriend but has confused commitment issues.

The best relationship in this movie is with Ned and his golden retriever Willie Nelson, who he adores and is trying to get back since his ex-girlfriend insists on keeping him out of spite. Rudd’s happy face and higher voice whenever he’s with his dog is so sweet and endearing to watch, and there is a cute payoff at the end as to why his dog was named Willie Nelson.

This movie just came and went, and isn’t as remembered as Rudd’s other comedies, but it’s one of my favorites by him, and I thought I’d include it as a little bonus among the more critically acclaimed films on my list.

Day 21 of Best Films of the 2010s: Shoplifters (2018)

A bittersweet Japanese family drama about a family of thieves and con artists supporting one another while living under deceptions and running various schemes. It’s a warm and touching character drama about likable and complicated people, and a thoroughly engaging story.

Day 20 of Best Films of the 2010s; Logan (2017)

This is a stunning film, an epic Western with supernatural elements, and I practically exhaled deeply when it was over. It’s powerful and has a lot of emotional heaviness between the characters of Logan, Laura, and Professor Xavier, and I really felt the weight of the film. I definitely need to watch this again.