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.