Tribute to Sidney Poitier

Goodbye to Sidney Poitier, a trailblazing actor and civil rights activist. This is from his directorial debut, a 1972 Western titled Buck and the Preacher, which costarred Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee. In this scene, he’s speaking with indigenous people to ensure safe passage for Black people through their land.

Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes in Edge of the City, an excellent 1957 drama where they play friends who are dockworkers and fighting their racist foreman (Jack Warden) trying to drive them apart. Ruby Dee costarred as Poitier’s wife.

A fun clip from Sneakers (1992): “"Did I ever tell you why I had to leave the CIA?"

Thoughts on Fishing with John

The musician and actor John Lurie had a brief reality show of sorts in 1992, Fishing with John, that seems like at first a fishing show with celebrity guests, but turns out to have a kind of weird sense of humor, where the narrator overdramatizes mundane moments with big music and jumpy editing (like John Lurie and Jim Jarmusch “catching” a shark and making it look like Jaws), and it gets sillier. There’s an episode where John and Willem Dafoe are ice-fishing in Maine in a makeshift hut, and the story arc makes it seem like as if they were stuck there for a week before dying of malnutrition and starvation, then the next episode (where John is in Thailand with Dennis Hopper), the narrator is like “I was wrong! John is alive!”

It’s a weird and funny show, with behind the scenes facts like Tom Waits hating their fishing trip on this rust bucket of a boat in Jamaica and reportedly not talking to John for two years, or Matt Dillon looking straight off of filming Singles and just looking confused and out of his element, as John Lurie wanted Flea but the producers didn’t think he was enough of a big name to have on the show.

The theme song is very Twin Peaks-esque. John Lurie had a sequel of sorts last year with HBO’s Painting with John, as he shifted his focus to being a painter after being diagnosed with Lyme disease in the 90s.

Thoughts on The Three Faces of Eve

The Three Faces of Eve (1957) directed by Nunnally Johnson. This is a 1950s movie in which Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for playing a woman struggling with dissociative identity disorder (back then called multiple personality disorder), based on a real person, and while I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of this disorder is in the film (as the movie has her “switch” between identities by just looking down and up), I can say that Woodward was fantastic in this, and was really engaging and captivating to watch. I loved how convincing she could be as a scared housewife unable to remember her other identities’ actions like buying expensive clothes and being confused at her abusive husband’s accusations, to acting like a flirty Southern charmer straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, trying to score a date with her psychologist and having an awareness of her “main” identity and struggling to come out. I hadn’t really seen Joanne Woodward in much aside from The Long Hot Summer, Sybil (in which she is the psychologist to Sally Field’s character struggling with the same disorder), and narration in The Age of Innocence. She’s 91 now, and has worked in films and TV well up to her eighties.

I liked how sympathetic her psychologist (Lee J. Cobb) was to her situation. He was compassionate, not condescending, didn’t dismiss her or treat her like she was insane. It was a really nice and humane treatment that he gave her that recognized her as a person, taking her seriously while still wanting to help her live a healthy life. The ending is way too pat in claiming that she’s “cured” from her mental illness based from recounting a long-buried childhood trauma, but I was fine with the therapy depiction for the most part. The film can be seen on Criterion.

Thoughts on Don't Say a Word

Don’t Say a Word (2001) directed by Gary Fleder. This is a pretty decent thriller, where psychologist Michael Douglas’ daughter (played by then 8-year old Skye McCole Bartusiak, who I used to confuse with Dakota Fanning back then, and who sadly died in 2014 at just 21 of an accidental drug overdose) is abducted by Sean Bean and his crew of thieves, and Douglas, on order by Bean, has to interrogate his patient Brittany Murphy to get some number code related to her dad’s murder by Bean’s crew a decade ago.

It’s an average thriller, hitting the usual notes, but Brittany Murphy elevated it. I’m not just saying that because she also tragically died young, but she brings this hidden and weird vibe to her institutionalized patient character that is repressing deep trauma from her dad’s death (she witnessed his murder in NYC, and was found miles later on Hart Island hanging around his coffin), and gives her a lot more depth and sensitivity than this movie deserves. She had this fragile look, being very thin with huge eyes, but was also really captivating to watch, and was fully tapped in. She plays games with Douglas, withholds information when she knows she’s being used, and only gives her trust much later when she wants to help rescue his daughter, especially when Douglas is like “My daughter isn’t strong like you are, she can’t survive on her own like you were able to as a kid,” playing to her childhood trauma of navigating her way around NYC practically in a fugue state right after her father’s death. It was Murphy’s idea to whisper sing the line “I’ll never tell,” which is all the movie got associated by at the time. I generally like the movie as an average early 2000s thriller, but Murphy made it way more memorable. It’s on Hulu.

Thoughts on The Florida Project

The Florida Project (2017), directed by Sean Baker. I finally watched this last week, and I liked it a lot. The basic plot takes place at this purple-painted motel just off of the strip in Orlando, on the outskirts of Disney World, and local businesses like diners and ticket booths and motels get by on tourism. The motel’s residents are a mix of single moms with their kids, where the moms are eking out a living to get by, be it waitressing or hustling, and their kids just run around the motel and across lanes to nearby businesses like it’s their giant playground.

It took me a while to get used to the kids, because I found them annoying, and I wavered between not liking Moonee’s (Brooklynn Prince) mom Halley (Bria Vinaite) for her volatile jerk attitude and having some sympathy for her as a lonely struggling mom, but I liked how it felt like this weird offbeat world just off the strip mall, and Willem Dafoe was great and fit right in as the motel manager, who was frustrated at Halley’s outbursts but couldn’t kick her out because she has nowhere else to go, and he clearly has a soft spot for the kids and their well-being. It’s always nice to see Willem Dafoe play a good guy. I loved this whole long take shot of him distracting and escorting a sexual predator away from the kids, culminating in a great moment with a soda can.

It’s mean of me, but I didn’t feel sorry for random guys who got scammed by Halley because they chose to hand over a lot of cash to just some random chick and her kid in a parking lot of a tourism center based on her claiming she can “get them a good deal” on passes at Disney World.

While the kids as a group could bug, I did like how it showed them being messy and loud and acting like real kids (mostly played by non-professional actors), like when they are trying to get a random woman to give them money for ice cream by making up some sob story, and she’s just like “Kids, here’s $5, I don’t need this whole story.” It was a cool and interesting movie to watch, and deserves its acclaim. It’s on Netflix.

Thoughts on High Art

I rewatched the 1998 indie film High Art (directed by Lisa Cholodenko), I hadn’t seen it since I was a teen. I remembered it being a big deal back then, as a more mainstream LGBTQ indie film, a brief comeback for Ally Sheedy that won her awards, Radha Mitchell’s early notable film role (where I was surprised to see how young and baby-faced she was when seeing it now), and Patricia Clarkson’s breakthrough as a German artist addicted to heroin. I still like it a lot, even if it now very much feels like a movie of its time, it’s very “late 90s indie film,” I don’t know how to better describe it.

I do like that watching it now, I can better see it as a movie about two women using each other in selfish ways. Radha Mitchell’s character Syd is an immature young intern turned editor trying to get a leg up in the art world by connecting with a once-great art photographer, Lucy, played by Ally Sheedy, who is talented but unreliable because she doesn’t want her art world fame anymore. They get into this relationship with each other that seems mutually beneficial but isn’t healthy at the same time. Lucy is trying to leave her toxic relationship with Clarkson’s character Greta because they are both dealing with substance abuse, and Syd is more of the innocent nice girl type that Lucy is using as a way out. I did like how it was messy and how everyone’s an asshole while their actions can be understandable to a degree.

Thoughts on Johnny Suede

I had heard of this 1991 Brad Pitt movie Johnny Suede, but hadn’t ever seen it until it hit Criterion this month. I was mixed on it. The good is that it’s an offbeat indie film where Brad Pitt plays an aspiring musician who wants to be a neo-rockabilly star, with a big pompadour (that Johnny Bravo was modeled after) and some black suede shoes literally drop into his life. He’s trying to get his tape around to make it big, but the bad is that he’s not that interesting. His songs are OK, but Johnny himself is so thick and so dumb that he barely has any personality in the music, he’s basically just imitating Ricky Nelson without bringing anything new.

The other good parts are a semi-cameo by Nick Cave as a local music guy with a high white pompadour who belts out some good a cappella singing, and Catherine Keener was fun, bringing some real world snarky attitude as a normal person amongst a lot of the heightened reality types in this. Samuel L. Jackson appears very briefly as a guy in Johnny’s band.

Brad Pitt ends up talking more like his character in Cool World, in that 1940s/1950s jazz hipster way, and in Johnny Suede, looks like when his character becomes a cartoon at the end of Cool World.

The director Tom DiCillo went on to make a much better movie with the indie movie satire Living in Oblivion, where James LeGros played a pretentious actor that was allegedly a stand-in for Brad Pitt because DiCillo hated his acting and thought he made Johnny Suede more stupid than childlike.

So I liked finally getting to watch it, it’s just not that good aside from some quirks, the Nick Cave cameo, and Catherine Keener’s performance.

Thoughts on Holiday Affair

This month, I watched Holiday Affair, a 1949 Christmas romantic comedy that starred Robert Mitchum and Janet Leigh. I watched it because it seemed weird to see Robert Mitchum in a romantic comedy, and IMDB trivia stated this was a PR move to clean up his image after he got arrested for something, which makes way more sense.

It’s a love triangle story where Robert Mitchum works at a department store (like Gimbel’s or Macy’s) and Janet Leigh works as a spy for a competitor, buying items as “comparative shopping” to return later. Mitchum calls her out on it, but he gets fired when he doesn’t kick her out, and he’s got two weeks left until he starts a new job lined up in California. She’s a WWII widow still mourning her late husband, caring for her talkative young son, and is soon to be engaged to a straightlaced dork lawyer.

Mitchum and Leigh keep running into each other, in part because he overhears that her son wants a train set for Christmas and he buys him one for $80 (which the trivia said is equivalent to $900 today, Jesus), and it gets to be these mixups where the fiancé is jealous and annoyed and Mitchum is blunt about wanting Leigh (who was cast at a very young 22 years old) and she’s just caught in the middle of all this.

It’s a lot of contrived plot conveniences, and the kid can be a little annoying (though the actor grew up to be a respected architecture professor and is 80 years old today), but I enjoyed this as a light comedy and the oddness of seeing Mitchum in a holiday romcom.

Thoughts on Two Friends, Leave No Trace, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Night and the City

I watched a lot of movies this past week on streaming, so I figured I’d write some blurbs about them.

Two Friends (1986), directed by Jane Campion. I liked this, it was a TV movie originally in installments about two teen girl best friends, Louise the straight-laced A student, and Kelly the punk rock girl from a troubled background. The story is told backwards, so the movie starts with them already drifted apart and Louise reading a letter from Kelly, and the events told in reverse show how their friendship fractured but began as very close, with a lot of little moments and tensions that ultimately drove them apart. I thought it was nice, I like hearing NZ accents, and the storytelling was creative, it was cool to see an early film of Campion’s. It’s on Criterion.

Leave No Trace (2018) directed by Debra Granik. I’ve seen this a couple of times, and found it very touching and affecting. Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie play father and daughter, who are unhoused and live in a woodsy park in the Northwest, where Foster is a widowed army veteran who is struggling with PTSD and mental health issues, and his daughter feels safe with him living off the land, until they are discovered and social services puts them into custody and are trying to put them into government housing, but Foster is distrusting of the government and keeps taking him and his daughter on the run. She loves her dad, but is getting worried about his mental health and need to constantly be on the move, at the risk of her own health and safety. I liked how this movie was an intimate character study of a father and daughter who love each other, but have a complicated relationship. And that some people are more comfortable living a rural nomadic life on their own than being forced into general society, though it was coming at the risk of his health as well. It’s just a really great movie, and McKenzie’s star has risen further after this film, being in Jojo Rabbit and Last Night in Soho. It’s on Hulu.

The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995) directed by Maria Maggenti. I hadn’t seen this since I saw it on Bravo way back when I was a teen, and it held up pretty well as a cute story of first love between two teen girls. It’s a romance between Randy (Laurel Holloman), a white working-class tomboyish girl working at her aunt’s gas station and living with her lesbian relatives, and Evie (Nicole Ari Parker) a well-off preppy Black girl with a boyfriend. They develop a cute relationship, but face a lot of homophobia from Evie’s mom and friends, as well as school peers and the husband of a woman cheating on her husband with Randy (the movie doesn’t linger on the fact that the woman is a sex offender by preying on a minor, even if 17 could be the age of consent). I’m glad this got onto streaming, it’s a sweet and funny movie about first love between two queer teen girls. It’s on Criterion.

Night and the City (1950) directed by Jules Dassin. Richard Widmark stars in this noir as a hustler who gets involved in the wrestling scene in London to make fast money in schemes in the underground world, and gets in over his head dealing with shady and crooked types. I couldn’t get into this much, I didn’t find it very compelling. There is an effective scene of two wrestlers fighting to the death, and Widmark’s rat-like self getting double-crossed and his face having a “oh shit” look on it, like he’s marked for death, but otherwise I just couldn’t connect with this. It’s not bad at all, just not for me. It’s on Criterion and Hulu.

Favorite Films of 2021

For best-of end of the year lists, I normally would talk about my favorite new movies that came out, but I didn’t see much new movies this year, I just watch a lot of older stuff on streaming. So this is a much smaller list of my favorite new movies.

The French Dispatch, directed by Wes Anderson. I really enjoyed this a lot. I’m hit or miss with Anderson’s quirky style, but this I liked. It was detailed with rich character performances, an incredible ensemble cast, was a mix of dark humor and emotional moments, and it felt peppered with a lot of small details that I’m sure I’ll catch on a re-viewing.

Together Together, directed by Nikole Beckwith. This was a unique romantic comedy of sorts where Patti Harrison is a twenty something loner who becomes the surrogate for Ed Helms’ single middle-aged guy who wants a kid. They don’t fall in love or anything like that, but it’s an interesting movie about this relationship between these two people that is transactional on the surface, but becomes a much more meaningful friendship, with complicated feelings involved. Harrison’s character was a teen mom who gave her child up for adoption, and is estranged from her family as a result, and Helms’ character didn’t get to have a kid with his ex of eight years and wants the same love of fatherhood that his partnered peers have. It’s a really good movie on Hulu.

Passing, directed by Rebecca Hall. This was both a beautiful and somber film about two old friends (Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga) who are Black women in the 1920s and can both pass for white, which brings on a lot of issues about race and class, as Negga’s husband, a blatantly racist white man (Alexander Skarsgaard) doesn’t know she’s Black. The film’s themes are very deep, and I enjoyed how beautifully shot the film is in black and white, and the loving and warm connection that Thompson and Negga portray as old friends reuniting, they had great chemistry with each other. It’s on Netflix.

Plan B, directed by Natalie Morales. I’ve liked Natalie Morales for years, a funny and sharp actress who has the bad luck of ending up on shows that get cancelled (Santa Clarita Diet, The Middleman, some forgettable Fox sitcom), and deserves a bigger career. She directed this really good teen comedy about two best friends, both nerdy girls, who are on a quest to get the morning-after pill after one of them loses her virginity at a party and is freaking out the next day. They are denied the pill at a pharmacy according to a sexist law where the pharmacist can deny teen girls the pill based on their moral judgment, so they have to drive out of state to get to the nearest Planned Parenthood. It’s a road trip comedy featuring an Indian and Latine best friend pair, they run into weird situations, one of the girls is queer and finds a connection with a cute acquaintance, and the story hammers home how important it is for women and girls to have access for their reproductive health. It’s on Hulu.

Pig, directed by Michael Sarnoski. This is a quiet and meditative drama on grief and loss where Nicolas Cage plays a former chef turned truffle hunter who lives out in the rural wilderness of Oregon with his pet pig, and one night, his home is ambushed and his pig is stolen. He goes on a journey to his former home of Portland to find his pig and get it back, but this isn’t John Wick, it’s not a vengeance killing spree. It’s a slow burn drama, that’s quiet and moody and sad, and I feel like I should watch it again to really get it. Cage is really good in this, it’s always nice to see him show he knows how to act with subtlety when he has a really good script. It’s on Hulu.

The Harder They Fall, directed by Jeymes Samuel. This was a really fun and stylish Western featuring a majority Black cast that is both a revenge drama and a war between two outlaw gangs. The film is just packed with talent like Jonathan Majors, Idris Elba, Regina King, Zazie Beetz, Delroy Lindo, Damon Wayans, Jr., LaKeith Stanfield, and others. I was thrilled to see the singer Alice Smith in a saloon scene, as she’s been making more of a comeback lately after a long music hiatus, and I loved Regina King’s long button-down coats that fit the badass outlaw look that she had. It’s on Netflix.

Thoughts on Magnolia

Last month, I watched Magnolia for the first time, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film and big follow-up to Boogie Nights. It’s a long movie at 3 hours, so it took me some time to get into it, the first hour mostly felt like exposition and setup before it got deeper into the story. There was a lot going on with so many characters, and I did have to remember who were the kids of Jason Robards and who were the kids of Philip Baker Hall. I thought it was generally very good, very epic, even if I didn’t really feel connected to several of the characters or their story arcs.

Melora Walters was my favorite, as a young woman named Claudia using drugs and forms of self-harm because she was sexually abused by her father as a kid, and is scapegoated by the family as the problem daughter because of her addictions. I just found her to be sweet and sensitive, and loved Walters’ portrayal.

In the whole movie, this was one of my favorite scenes, where she is on a date with the awkward cop John C. Reilly (who also was one of my favorites in this movie, next to William H. Macy and Philip Baker Hall), who initially came to her apartment on a noise complaint before they eventually bonded, and she’s embarrassed to tell him that she’s a cocaine addict, was abused, and anything else that she fears he will reject her for. It’s a really sweet date between two nervous people, and I adored their performances in this scene.

Thoughts on Barton Fink

I rewatched Barton Fink on Christmas last year, and I hadn’t seen it in many years. It’s a 1991 film by the Coen Brothers, a dark comedy (though I mistakenly remembered it as horror) where John Turturro plays a 1940s NYC playwright named Barton Fink (who looks like a cross between Jack Fisk in Eraserhead and stereotypical “New York Jewish guy” looks) who strikes it big with a hit play (a serious play about the “common working man”) and gets tapped by Hollywood to be put up in an L.A. hotel to write the script for a B-level wrestling picture.

He’s this guy who seems completely up his own ass, talking about the “common man” in a really patronizing way, as he is far removed from them as an isolated nerdy writer, and is unable to just write a basic script for a B-movie, overthinking it to the point where he has writer’s block. His world gets blown up by his neighbor, played by John Goodman, who completely steals the movie and should have gotten an Oscar nomination for this film instead of Michael Lerner (though Goodman did get recognized by other award ceremonies at the time). Goodman is a talkative and charismatic insurance salesman who finds Barton Fink fascinating as a writer, and they quickly bond, though it’s not without its complications.

I really adored this movie, it’s dark and weird and just the hotel itself is like a character in the film, it has this rundown, creepy vibe to it that made it feel more like a dream world removed from reality.

I read that Jon Polito wanted to play the movie studio boss, as it was more natural fit for his style of being loud and blustery and crass, but Frances McDormand encouraged him to take the role of a meeker, quieter studio assistant, more in deference to his boss while trying to guide Fink on how to address him. He did well, but one could definitely feel that it took more work for him to restrain himself like that in the role.

I had forgotten who played the female lead, and mistakenly thought it was Jennifer Jason Leigh as the secretary to a perpetually drunk Faulkner-like writer (John Mahoney), but it was Judy Davis, who was great in this and nailed the 1940s look and Southern accent. But I was very close, as in the IMDB trivia, it said that Leigh did audition for that role, and I assume the Coens kept that audition in their pocket for when they cast her in The Hudsucker Proxy (which is set in 1957 but seemed like it should have been set in the 1940s) as a Rosalind Russell/Katharine Hepburn journalist type.

Thoughts of 12 Days of Actress

This video by Be Kind Rewind collects film recommendations from 11 YouTubers (a few who I watch) who are mostly film essayists and nerds, a mix of women, queer people, and BIPOC, with really great selections for movies featuring stellar actresses to celebrate. I already watched La Ceremonie based on BKR’s recommendation, and I’ll share my thoughts on their other choices.

Movies I’ve Seen: Batman Returns, West Side Story, Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird (known by all three titles), Jackie Brown, Eve’s Bayou, Scream, La Ceremonie.

Movies I Haven’t Seen: What’s Up, Doc?, Suspiria (either version), Summer Interlude, The Lion in Winter, Deathtrap.

As a little kid, I had randomly seen Batman Returns on TV and was struck by Michelle Pfeiffer’s beauty and performance, she was the first female celebrity I could think of as “sexy” (Elias Koteas was the first male one I felt that way about). I just found her so fascinating, and on a couple rewatches as an adult, I found I really didn’t like the movie except when she was onscreen, and kept skipping around to just watch her scenes. It’s not even finding her attractive as Catwoman, I liked her much more as Selina Kyle. I liked that even as a “mousy” secretary prior to her rebirth, she didn’t play her as a pathetic sad sack loser. She was still funny and self-deprecating and charming, and I absolutely love the sequence of her post-rebirth, just wrecking her apartment, looking rough, and getting into a feverish state of creating her costume. Pfeiffer was amazing in that film, full stop.

Strike!/All I Wanna Do/The Hairy Bird is a mid-90s direct to video teen film that I knew of because one of my cousins had a very brief part as a prep school girl, she’s onscreen for a second in a close-up. It’s known by three titles, but it’s an underrated teen girl movie starring a who’s who of 90s teen girl actresses, headlined by Kirsten Dunst, about a 1960s all-girl prep school going co-ed, and Dunst and some of the other girls fighting back with a strike. I don’t recall a lot about it, but I liked it, and felt it should be better known. Besides Dunst, it costarred Gaby Hoffmann, Heather Matatazzo, Rachael Leigh Cook, and Monica Keena.

I heard of Pam Grier through Jackie Brown, reading a long profile on her in SPIN magazine at the time it came out, and thought she was incredible. Not just being cool and stunningly beautiful, but had been through the wringer with rough relationships (Richard Pryor being one of them), and being underrated for years (by mainstream Hollywood, not by Black audiences) before Jackie Brown gave her career a resurgence. I’ve seen the movie twice, and I love how composed and tough and methodical she is throughout the film, yet still showing vulnerability and being frustrated. She plans out complicated cons and heists, while building a quiet slow burn romance with Robert Forster’s character. She just rides through the film with a sense of inner elegance, and it’s a masterpiece for her.

I only just saw Eve’s Bayou last year, having known of it since the 90s but never being able to see it. I loved it. It’s a Southern Gothic tale with incredible actresses ranging from then-child Jurnee Smollett to veteran Diahann Carroll, and the film felt so haunting and eerie, with this undercurrent of tragedy. It really felt unlike a lot of other films I’ve seen, and I’m happy that at that time, Kasi Lemmons got the chance to direct it after playing less memorable friend parts in Hollywood movies, and still has a thriving career directing in films and television. And that while I knew of Jurnee Smollet as a child actress way back from her recurring role on Full House, today she’s way more acclaimed and recognized for her roles in Lovecraft Country and Birds of Prey.

Thoughts on La Cérémonie

 On Criterion last month, I watched La Cérémonie, a 1995 French film directed by Claude Chabrol that is a mix of a dark comedy and a crime film, and I really adored it. It stars Sandrine Bonnaire as this quiet, dry maid hired to work for a rich family out in their remote mansion, led by the matriarch Jacqueline Bisset, who is nice but kind of flighty, and she has a very “whatever” attitude to things, until she meets Isabelle Huppert, a local postal clerk who is seen as the town kook, and brings this eccentric weird energy to the movie that is really funny and bright. Huppert is more of a rebellious influence on Bonnaire, who just starts to ditch her work, take off with Huppert in goofing around and bonding over dark pasts, and take advantage of watching TV in her room (like seeing goofy talk shows and puppet-filled music videos), and the family both doesn’t get it, but also seem unaware in their own world. Basically, if you’ve seen Parasite, you get what kind of family this is, the comments the film is making on class and the bourgeoisie, and the similar endings.

I liked how funny and weird Huppert was in this, she seemed to be having a lot of fun. I liked how Bonnaire just came off as so still and observing her surroundings (including being nosy and listening in on the family’s private conversations to learn secrets), but ultimately coming off as cold inside when she just had it with them. And I was surprised to see a young Virginie Ledoyen as the teen daughter.

This was a lot of fun to watch, I’m happy I checked it out.

Thoughts on Flesh and Bone

Last month, I rewatched Flesh and Bone, this 1993 film noir that I think is one of Meg Ryan’s most underrated films. She was known so much for being a cute romantic comedy heroine, that’s it’s easy to forget how great she is at drama. I had randomly seen this years ago and was blown away by how dark and sad and tragic the story is, and it hit Hulu in November, so I rewatched it.

The basic plot is that Dennis Quaid plays a reserved country guy who was forced into being a thief as a child by his corrupt father James Caan, and in the 1960s, him as a kid acts as bait for a farm family to take him in for the night as a lost child, and while he’s stealing their stuff during the night, his dad comes in and commits a family massacre, sparing only the baby, and scarring his son for life for his non consensual role in this tragedy.

Thirty years later, the baby is now Meg Ryan, who has lived a rough life with an alcoholic uncle, thinks her family all died in a car accident, and married an abusive gambling loser, feeling stuck in a crummy life save for her good looks. She and Dennis Quaid meet by chance (she passes out while popping out of a wedding cake at his friend’s bachelor party, he takes her home to sleep and sober up), slowly develop a relationship when her marriage ends, and then he’s racked with guilt when he realizes she was the baby that awful night.

Along with a young and uncharacteristically scrappy Gwyneth Paltrow as a cynical con artist who is now James Caan’s new protégé, Ryan and Quaid delivered masterful performances that were both out of their usual range. Ryan has this frustrated, tired vibe to her of a pretty girl who has been used up by loser men, and has no direction in life, and is just existing at this point. She is so damn good in this movie, and I don’t like that her cutesy stuff defined her career during her peak, she has way more talent than she has been given credited for, and didn’t deserve to have her popular career end over 2000s-era tabloid sexism. And Quaid is largely known for playing sexy, fast-talking charmers with big joker smiles, and he reins that all in to play a guy who is haunted, nervous, reserved, and hardly ever smiles throughout the film. This is another underrated role from him.

James Caan I wasn’t as into, I felt like his character came off as a little hammy, and didn’t feel like an actual person like everyone else did. Even Spence-educated NYC rich girl Paltrow came off as more convincing as a backroad country girl hustler than Caan did as a Southern killer. I think if he didn’t overdo the accent, it could have come off as more menacing and less “actor-ly.”

I loved hearing The Cowboy Junkies’ version of “Blue Moon” play in a scene, it’s a gorgeous song from their 1988 album.

Thoughts on Shadow of a Doubt

Last month, I rewatched Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt on Criterion, I hadn’t seen it in many years. I still found it creepy and effective, I love how chilling and menacing Joseph Cotten is as the serial killer, and his ugly misogynistic rant at the dinner table about wealthy widows (who he targets for murder) was unsettling.

Teresa Wright, at nearly 25, was convincing in playing an innocent teen girl who slowly realizes that her uncle is a monster, and she embodies the fright and helplessness really well. A podcast noted the scene where her father and his friend (the always great Hume Cronyn) have this ongoing game talking about how to get away with the perfect murder, as these light jokes between them, and she’s practically clawing the table in panic, and just blows up at them for joking about murder.

It’s a gorgeous-looking b/w movie, with big panning overhead shots that swell with the music in this one stunning sequence after the girl (both she and her uncle are named Charlie) reads a news article in the library about the “Merry Widow killer,” and it tracks with what two detectives trailing her uncle have been telling her, as well as her own suspicions, and the music and overhead shot is like a big lightbulb moment for her, it’s incredible.

I’m happy I watched it again, it’s still my favorite of Hitchcock’s movies.

Thoughts on Wanda

In October 2021, I watched Barbara Loden’s 1970 film Wanda on Criterion, a long lost movie that got restored in 2010, and I thought it was going to be this introspective indie gem about a lone woman figuring her way through life in tough blue collar worlds, but I found it meandering and boring. I appreciated the cinema verite look of it trying to look like a documentary, or following this woman who is pretty much a passive loser who abandons her family only to take up with lowlife men on the road, but I found it boring, and tuned in and out. I couldn’t really get a grasp on her character. She didn’t have to be some feminist hero, but at least I wanted to know what was going on more with her than just watching her as an observer. It just followed her going from leaving her husband and giving up custody of her kids, getting fired, falling asleep in a movie theater and getting robbed, then just happening to walk in on a bar robbery and taking up with the guy, and end up being an accomplice in a bank robbery, hooking up with other loser men, then at the end just seen in a crowded bar smoking, with not really a definitive end to her story, but the movie just ends there.

I think from the arthouse hype I thought this would be more deeper or groundbreaking, but it felt like it was trying to be this experimental art film, like indie when it was underground, that was written/directed and starred Loden, who was an actress who played Warren Beatty’s sister in Splendor in the Grass, was married to Elia Kazan, and only directed this film and later died of cancer at just 48 in 1980. I liked the intention of it, and that it was trying to look scrappy and rough, but I mostly found tedious.

Thoughts on Clifford

I watched Clifford in October 2021 on Hulu, the 90s movie where a middle-aged Martin Short plays a ten-year-old boy who causes a lot of life wrecking damage for his uncle Charles Grodin, who I felt could have a case of justifiable homicide since Clifford came off like he was guided by the Devil, especially when he frames his uncle for a false bomb plot and nearly ruins his relationships at work and with his fiancée’s family. However, I like the movie a lot more than when I first saw it at 11 and thought it was weird and off-putting. Now I found it really darkly funny, especially Short’s demented expressions to the audience and Grodin’s classic “losing my mind” rants and seething one-liners. I cracked up laughing at Grodin’s deadpan delivery on the doctored voicemail Clifford edits: “Hi, this is Martin Daniels, I'm not home right now but I got a bomb under city hall. Talk to you later.” I played that back a few times.

I could also see how, despite Short being a small man, that the movie did tricks to make him look even shorter around the others, like the other actors were standing on boxes or platforms to look like the “adults,” or Clifford wears a boy’s school uniform to look more childish. I’m also comparing this to seeing present-day Short in Only Murders in the Building, and how he’s not that much shorter than the other cast members to any significant degree.

I had heard that this movie was made earlier than its release, it was filmed around 1990-1991, but Orion Pictures was having issues and eventually declared bankruptcy and shut down, and the movie came out in 1994, with the bookended parts with old Clifford and a young Ben Savage filmed in 1993.

I can see why this bombed, it’s way too dark and weird, and kid me was also confused by it when I watched it as a rental that one of my parents picked. But I also think it works well as both having come out post-Home Alone and Problem Child as a more bizarre version of it, as well as a more stranger comedy that is more accepted in alternative comedies on streaming and Adult Swim.

Thoughts on Racing with the Moon

On Hulu in October 2021, I watched Racing with the Moon, a 1983 coming of age drama in which Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage play teens in 1942 California who are six weeks away from being shipped off as Marines to fight in WWII. A lot of it is about their loss of innocence, not just with figuring out their relationships with their girlfriends, but also being 17 and fearing the unknown in fighting in the war and not knowing if they will come back alive.

I thought it was decent, I liked that it was very character-driven. Sean Penn is the son of a gravedigger who dates Elizabeth McGovern, who he thinks is rich because she lives in a giant gated mansion but her mother is really the maid, and most of the movie focuses on their relationship, a lot with class struggles and her feeling hesitant to tell the truth. I thought they worked well together onscreen in a cute young love kind of way, and the actors did date for real during this time.

The other part focuses on Nicolas Cage as his drunken goofball friend who gets his girlfriend pregnant and is trying to come up with abortion money. I liked how loopy and offbeat Cage was in this early in his career, where he’s supposed to play the dumb friend but I found him more interesting to watch than Penn, who is fine but I just never liked him much as an actor, his real strengths is as a director showcasing character actors.

There are other early roles for big actors in this, like Crispin Glover as a jerk rich boy antagonizing Penn at his bowling alley job where he and Cage set up the pins in the years before they became mechanized, and Michael Madsen as a war amputee who Penn briefly meets while he accompanies McGovern to her volunteer hospital job. I also read that Dana Carvey was in this, but I wouldn’t know where. Carol Kane has a brief cameo where I think it’s hinted she’s a sex worker, and according to IMDB, Michael Schoeffling had an uncredited role as another amputee solider.

A running thing in this movie is that Penn and Cage like to race along trains and jump onto handles alongside them, and it’s their childhood game that they hold onto even as they know they are leaving their innocent lives for the uncertainty of war. Those parts were sweet, and come full circle at the end.

My favorite sequence was likely the pool hustle scene, where they are trying to get money for the abortion and are conning soldiers in a game of pool. Even if I could figure out where this was going, I still thought it was engaging and liked the tension as a couple of soldiers are catching on to their hustle and Cage is desperately trying to cover for himself and Penn as just regular guys playing a game.

So I thought it was decent overall, it was nice to watch.

Thoughts on Unfaithful and Devil in a Blue Dress

In October 2021 I watched Unfaithful on Hulu and Devil in a Blue Dress on Criterion.

I’ve seen Unfaithful a couple of times, and always liked it, but got more into the second half of the movie. I never had liked that part before, because I didn’t like that it turned into a murder cover-up story instead of more confrontation about the affair that led up to it, but now I liked it. The first half of the movie is Diane Lane having her sexytimes affair and jeopardizing her comfortable marriage and feeling conflicted and guilty over it, but still going back to it, and the second half is Richard Gere killing her lover in an act of passion and feeling horrible about it afterwards. This feels more evident when he’s struggling to get rid of the body and he’s trying to lift and carry a limp dead body wrapped in carpet and is clearly in over his head with this.

I didn’t know that the film is a remake of a Claude Chabrol film from the 60s, but it makes sense. Adrian Lyne directed this more like a French domestic drama than an American film, and despite that it’s from 2002, it feels more 1990s for some reason. I like the slow and measured pace of it, how it has sexy scenes that are layered with a lot of mixed emotions of lust, anger, and guilt, and how well and mature that Diane Lane played these scenes, that made her more complex than just wanting to cheat on her husband for cheap thrills. And I like that Richard Gere isn’t made to be an abusive or neglectful jerk to excuse her cheating, he’s a decent ordinary guy who quickly picks up on his wife’s different vibes and has suspicions about it, he’s not a complete fool. And I like how in the end, it is still not really complete, like the audience can fill in what happens next with this story they would feel like a big local true crime story.

Devil in a Blue Dress was an incredible noir film, I had missed it when it was on Hulu, and caught it on Criterion. I had seen Carl Franklin’s One False Move, and liked how even with a bigger budget and Denzel Washington as the star, it still carried over those themes from the previous film of overt racism, uncomfortable violent scenes, handheld camera for action scenes, and having this genuine rawness to it. It’s a story in which Washington plays a guy in 1948 Los Angeles who is struggling for work and is tapped by gangster Tom Sizemore to find a woman (Jennifer Beals) who is dating a mayoral candidate, and it sends Washington on a journey that involves murder, corrupt cops, racism, and a lot of crooked business going on.

Washington was fantastic, and he just easily fit into Franklin’s work, more of a period noir film that felt more like an indie movie than Hollywood, that went a lot darker and further with some really messed-up scenes. I already knew the general story on Beals’ character, so I wasn’t surprised, but I was amazed by how great Don Cheadle was as a relative unknown at the time. He’s a friend of Washington’s who is a trigger-happy, cold-blooded killer, who just kills people on impulse, and he stole the movie and was amazing to watch as a really cold and unsettling character who could seem charming then flip in a second. He was definitely the big highlight of the movie to me.

Thoughts on Coffee and Cigarettes

In October 2021, I watched Coffee and Cigarettes on Criterion, Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 compilation movie of short films from the 1980s to the early 2000s set around pairs or trios having coffee and cigarettes in restaurants. It was pretty good, though I did skip a couple that I got bored by. I didn’t like the first one with Roberto Begnini and Steven Wright, and the White Stripes one just felt too dated in a weird way to me. My favorites were the Tom Waits/Iggy Pop one of them ”quitting” smoking but having a smoke; Alfred Molina and Steve Coogan as heightened versions of themselves talking about fame and industry crap, and the RZA, GZA, and Bill Murray one about the RZA and GZA being off of caffeine and only drinking tea as being health conscious. The ending one with the two quiet old men was a nice closer, and the others were fine but didn’t stand out to me as much.

Thoughts on Bad Influence

In October 2021 I watched on Criterion the 1990 thriller Bad Influence, directed by Curtis Hanson and looking all slick and cold and remote. James Spader is a spineless yuppie working an analyst job in L.A., and Rob Lowe is this charming stranger whose initial goal is to bring out the dark side in Spader, then wreck his life.

It was funny watching it and seeing Spader play the wimpy victim, likely trying to break out of some typecasting because he would most likely would have been cast as the villain. Rob Lowe worked well in this, I usually found him more creepy than charming, so it worked to that effect.

I liked how the film frequently made use of 80s noir shadow effects, particularly having shadows cast from blinds across Lowe’s face to make him look more evil. And I liked the setting of the late 80s S&M industrial clubs as a backdrop into Lowe’s world.

I could see where Ben Stiller got some ideas for The Cable Guy, a sequence involving a sex tape seems directly lifted from this.

In the included scene, there’s a blink and you miss it appearance by David Duchovny at :46, I hadn’t noticed him in the movie and only saw his name in the ending credits.

Thoughts on The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

On Criterion in September 2021, I watched the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. I had seen some of it before, but not in its entirety. It’s a really great thriller, and it’s amazing to see how influential it was later to other movies, I could see Speed, Reservoir Dogs, and Die Hard sharing its DNA. I like how rough the movie looks, having that 70s New York City grime, and how everyone looked like a regular person, not a movie star, everyone was very average-looking that felt accurate to New York.

I think the remake is ok, but couldn’t stand John Travolta as the villain. Whereas Robert Shaw had more of a quiet psychopath vibe who could pass as a regular person, Travolta just struts into the movie with exaggerated villain facial hair and overacts in his scenes and was awful. Though Walter Matthau and Denzel Washington were both good in playing run-down looking everymen just doing their transit jobs. And in the original film, I thought Martin Balsalm’s character was being played by Burt Young, and didn’t recognize Hector Elizondo or Earl Hindman (Wilson from Home Improvement) at all.

I did like Jerry Stiller a lot, as well as the transit cop hiding in the subway, and how the film gave individual characters to the train hostages, whereas the remake seemed to just treat them as a blob of nobodies. I liked the reveal of which one of the hostages was an undercover cop, the transit team references it but the camera doesn’t linger on anyone enough to give it away.

So I just really enjoyed this tight thriller a lot.

Thoughts on Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.

 On Criterion in September 2021, I watched Just Another Girl on the I.R.T., a 1992 film directed by Leslie Harris, one of the few indie films at the time focusing on a Black teen girl’s experience. I had seen a little of it ages ago on Bravo, and was glad to see it in its entirety. It’s pretty good, it focuses on a Brooklyn teen girl named Chantel (Ariyan A. Johnson) who is a outspoken, funny, smart and charismatic heroine, and focused on going to college and med school, but life circumstances get in the way.

I liked how this movie has her break the fourth wall a lot to talk to the audience, and how she calls out her white high school teacher for focusing too much on Eurocentric history and ignoring and dismissing the histories and cultures of his Black students. The movie has a really good early 90s soundtrack of hip-hop and dance music, especially a lot of New Jack Swing style and female-focused hip-hop. I liked how she was a heroine who was often confused and scared and made mistakes in an understandable way as a teenage girl. I’m glad Criterion added this film, it’s part of their New York Stories streaming collection for the next month or so.

Thoughts on Bagdad Cafe

 On Hulu in August 2021, I watched Bagdad Cafe, a 1988 movie starring CCH Pounder and Marianne Sagebrecht, in which Sagebrecht plays a Bavarian woman who gets abandoned by her husband in the Nevada desert, and she ends up at a roadside motel/diner/gas station, run by CCH Pounder, and ends up befriending Pounder’s family as this quiet oddball woman who has an endearing charm, and Pounder is more assertive and stressed and trying to keep her family from mucking up her business, as well as being skeptical of this random woman who just seems weird and off-putting to her. They eventually become friends, and I liked how they had this unusual chemistry together with each other, especially since both got abandoned by their husbands very recently and are largely fending for themselves.

I had seen it once before, but didn’t remember it too well. I still really liked it, though Jack Palance really creeped me out. He’s supposed to play a local who is an artist and takes a romantic shine to Sagebrecht, but I just found him gross and unsettling, and wanted him out of the movie. IMDB trivia stated that he refused to do a romantic scene with her because he found her unattractive, likely because she was a middle-aged heavyset woman, so their romantic scene (he paints her while she chooses to disrobe slowly) was shot with them separately and not in the same shots together. Again, Palance was creepy and Sagebrecht was cute.

I liked that Pounder just owned this movie, as a woman just trying to keep her family together and being frustrated a lot, but still having heart and having more relatable quieter moments. I liked her family dynamics and their chemistry together. The desert setting also made me think of Tremors, and I could easily see this movie taking a weird turn into Tremors in the second half.

I’m not surprised this movie also led to being a short-lived sitcom with Whoopi Goldberg and Jean Stapleton, I could see someone thinking it would be a good sitcom idea then petering out of ideas within the first season.

Thoughts on Garbo Talks

 On Hulu, I watched Garbo Talks, a 1984 drama by Sidney Lumet in which Anne Bancroft plays a woman dying of cancer whose last wish is to meet her idol Greta Garbo, and her son Ron Silver sacrifices his job and his marriage to search for the elusive star to make his mother happy.

It’s an 80s film that feels more like a 1970s film, the music has these Bacharach-like horns that feel very much like a 1970s TV show, and this style of drama and comedy feels out of place, it’s a little outdated even for its time. But I liked it a lot. It was a nice difference to see Ron Silver play a decent and nice person, even if he would go on to further excel in playing jerks and villains in movies like Blue Steel and Timecop.

Anne Brancroft is only in parts of the film, as most of the film is about her son on his quest and she’s in the hospital. It’s also a film of its time in which a doctor wouldn’t directly tell a woman she has cancer, but would tell her closest male relative, like a husband or son, instead, in a show of benevolent sexism. But she more than makes up for her limited screen time with this incredible monologue scene in which, after months of searching and getting blocked by gatekeepers, Silver finally meets Garbo (played by Tony-winning composer Betty Comden as a silent stand-in), brings her in to meet his mother, and Bancroft delivers this amazing scene in which she tells anecdotes of her life in which Garbo films just happened to be a part of. This excerpt from an IMDB review sums it up perfectly: “It is only then, in her emotional epiphany, that Ms. Bancroft reveals the delicate yet powerful theme of the film. It was never about Garbo. She was merely a symbol of the quest to find a unifying thread that gives meaning to a life remembered. The buildup may be tauntingly slow, but the payoff is astounding.”

Harvey Fierstein has a nice part in the film as a random guy that Silver meets while he goes to Fire Island to search for Garbo, it’s an endearing and sweet role in which he talks about his own connection to Garbo films as a charming and friendly stranger.

Thoughts on Bram Stoker's Dracula

On Hulu in August 2021 I watched Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I hadn’t seen it in ages. It still holds up as a gorgeous-looking ornate film using a lot of practical effects that look like CGI but aren’t, just use of miniatures and camera angles.

People get on Keanu Reeves for his bad British accent, but I felt like Billy Campbell’s Southern accent was terrible and he felt like such a useless character in the movie. Maybe he’s more important in the novel, but in the film he felt unnecessary.

Winona Ryder was perfectly cast and looked gorgeous in turn of the century clothing, despite being shaky with a British accent. She and Gary Oldman had great chemistry onscreen despite reportedly despising each other during filming, though in a later quote she said they became friends years later.

I loved how Sadie Frost just totally threw herself into playing Lucy, with full on horniness and vampiric possession and all, and that she was so convincing as a monster that the little girl who she has as a potential victim in a scene was terrified of her in real life and she and Coppola had to console her in order to do another take of their scene.

I liked Anthony Hopkins’ humor as Van Helsing, his matter of fact comments about cutting off Lucy’s head delivered in an unaffected business-like manner. Like this exchange:

Mina Harker: How did Lucy die? Was she in great pain?

Professor Abraham Van Helsing: Yeah, she was in great pain! Then we cut off her head, and drove a stake through her heart, and burned it, and then she found peace.

I remember this movie being a big deal when I was a kid. I loved the haunting Gothic movie poster, as well as The Simpsons parody with Burns as Dracula (which did take away some of the horror for me in this). As much as I like this film, I like its sister movie Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein even more, as a more bonkers movie with a really good quiet performance by Robert DeNiro contrasted with a hilariously overacting performance by Kenneth Branaugh.

Thoughts on Cutter's Way

In July 2021 on Criterion, I watched Cutter’s Way, a 1981 noir film starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard and directed by Ivan Passer. The basic plot is that Bridges is this random guy in L.A. who sees someone dumping a body, which turns out to be a murdered teen girl, and he and his alcoholic Vietnam vet friend (Heard), plus the victim’s sister, are playing detective and trying to uncover this murder mystery.

It’s a bit of a rough watch, as Heard’s character, Alex Cutter, is a racist and ugly person who starts off the movie completely unlikable, but is given more complexity and depth in his lucid moments when sober, and is more understandable, if not forgiven for his asshole moments, like his character introduction or his abuse towards his tired, put-upon wife (Lisa Eichhorn). John Heard was very good, even if it was unusual to see him do this whole character with a rough voice, eyepatch, limp, cane, and angry alcoholic attitude, and be better known within a decade later for yuppie douchebag characters in Big and Home Alone. Though he was good in his run on The Sopranos. And I agree with an old review a friend wrote that Gary Sinise did this kind of character better in Forrest Gump.

I forgot how hot Jeff Bridges was back in his youth, he was all lean and cut. Though I think his peak hotness was in the early 90s, with long hair in The Fisher King and Fearless. His character was fine, someone who seemed more like a layabout and with nothing really going on in his life, like not much better than his loser friend outside of his good looks and laid-back attitude.

I liked the early 80s hazy look of this noir film, and how the story’s resolution felt hopeless, like no real winners or sense of vengeance.

Thoughts on Paprika

On Criterion in July 2021, I watched Paprika, a 2006 anime film by Satoshi Kon. I heard of his name from Perfect Blue, but hadn’t seen any of his movies. This one was pretty trippy, about a psychiatrist named Atsuko using a machine to enter her patients’ dreams to study them, while also entering as an alter ego detective named Paprika to further investigate on their real thoughts. When the machine gets stolen, Atsuko and her staff race to find it to prevent it being used for nefarious purposes, while also fighting their own psychological issues in their dreams.

I generally liked it, liking the strange dream imagery and the duality of the female lead character. I really wasn’t into the frequent fat-shaming of her colleague, a guy who is drawn to be very obese in a unattractive light, and who Atsuko treats with contempt. That whole part felt really gross and unnecessary.

I was getting shades of The Cell and In Dreams from this, and wasn’t surprised that Inception was partially inspired by this film. Overall, I thought it was pretty good, but since I’m not a big anime fan, I just liked it casually.

Thoughts on In the Cut

In July 2021, on Hulu I watched In The Cut, Jane Campion’s 2003 film in which Meg Ryan plays a teacher who gets entangled with a serial killer investigation and has a twisted relationship with a corrupt cop abusing his power over her. I had read the book ages ago and had seen the movie before. I don’t think it is as bad as it’s made out to be, as the book was a good dark thriller, and Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Jason Leigh give performances that feel above this movie’s level. The issues I had was that the cinematography is way too murky and shadowy, and not in that moody noir kind of way, but more like poor lighting that makes it hard to see what’s going on. I didn’t think it worked well for this film, it made it frustrating to watch.

Meg Ryan got a lot of grief for this role, and I’m mixed on her. She’s not terrible, and I’ve seen her be really good in drama before, like in Flesh and Bone and When a Man Loves a Woman. But she just felt out of her element in this movie, like she didn’t really know what she was doing, and didn’t really connect with the story as much. I know that all sounds vague, and I’m not sure how to articulate it better, but while her acting was competent, she didn’t seem to have the right ability to tackle this kind of noir/erotic thriller kind of movie.

I know that Nicole Kidman was Jane Campion’s original choice for the lead, and that she was busy at the time due to her personal life (divorce from Tom Cruise), but she really would have been much better. It did seem like a step down to go from considering Kidman to picking Ryan, whose career was unfairly in jeopardy after her affair with Russell Crowe, which she didn’t deserve to have fallout from, or getting picked on by the media for unflattering face work in her forties. I could think that a more cerebral kind of actress could have taken this on, or someone who was believable as a reserved teacher with a hidden darkly erotic side could do it.

It’s weird seeing Mark Ruffalo in these old roles where he played brusque asshole cops, because even if he is a great actor, his real self comes off as so shy and dorky that it’s kind of funny seeing him try on these roles to play tough alpha male types that seem so far from his nerdy personality. From interviews with him, it feels like Bruce Banner is more closer to his real personality than any of his cop roles.

Jennifer Jason Leigh did a lot with a role that felt like it had more potential, like finding the dark humor in playing Meg Ryan’s sister as a woman having an affair with a married doctor and wanting real love, not just sex with no-name guys. Like when she’s called to court by the doctor’s wife for a possible restraining order, she jokes about how when the doctor sees her, he’ll just fall in love with her right there and realize she’s the woman for him, as her wishful thinking. She’s great in this, and while I’m happy to see her appear in more recent work, it’s usually small roles or side parts, outside of The Hateful Eight, Anomalisa, and Atypical.

I generally like Jane Campion’s work, and felt like this could have been better with the right lead actress and more moody cinematography, but I don’t think it’s awful, it’s still watchable.