Thoughts on The Wild Robot

I liked The Wild Robot (2024). It felt like a mix of The Iron Giant and Wall-E, and it had a different look than more louder DreamWorks movies, though it’s still directed at kids.

I liked that it has a good voice cast where it’s celebrities but nobody easily recognizable besides Matt Berry as a beaver, and the animation was really beautiful, and I liked how it captured the fox’s movements, like how it curled its tail around its body, or let out a slight whine when yawning like how dogs too. (I know that foxes are canines but not dogs, but it was very dog-like)

It’s directed by Chris Sanders, who made Lilo & Stitch, so I felt confident that it would have that same kind of heart mixed in with sci-fi, with the story being about a cyborg helper robot named Roz (Lupita Nyong’o) whose packaging lands on an island after a shipwreck, and she immediately wants to complete tasks for people, and as the island is only inhabited by animals, Roz is just bugging and freaking out all the animals with its requests to help them, being attacked by them instead. Roz learns to communicate with the animals and inadvertently becomes a “mother” to an orphaned gosling, befriending a smartass fox (Pedro Pascal) and slowly bonds with the other animals as she gains more intelligence beyond her initial programming.

It was a really nice movie to watch, and while it could have also worked as a dialogue-free short film about a robot bonding with animals in the wilderness, this was good, too.

Thoughts on My Old Ass

    In New York City, I went to go see My Old Ass, a 2024 film written and directed by Megan Park (The Fallout), co-produced by Margot Robbie, and starring Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza as the 18-year old and 39-year old versions of the same character, Elliott, communicating across time periods.

    18-year old Elliott (Stella) is spending her summer at her family's cranberry farm before she heads off to college at the University of Toronto. She is gay, hooks up with a local girl, and hangs out with her friends, operating a motorboat across the lake. Rather than spend her birthday with her family, she goes camping with her friends, and they take 'shrooms. While one friend is dancing about and other passes out, Elliott is joined by her 39-year old self (Plaza), seemingly conjured up as a hallucination. Stella and Plaza play really well off each other, with Stella as the bright-eyed Gen Z kid in disbelief and Plaza as the elder millennial who has lived life enough to be much wiser. They bond with each other, and when the younger Elliott wants some life-changing advice, aside from being told to value her family more, the older Elliott tells her to stay away from a guy named Chad. 

    She disappears with the end of the drug trip, and the next day, while out skinny-dipping in the lake, the younger Elliott happens to meet a teenage boy who is working a summer job on the farm, and his name is Chad. Elliott quickly swims away, then finds in her cell phone that older Elliott left her phone number under the contact 'My Old Ass." Then, they are able to call and text across time periods, and the movie doesn't bother to explain how this happens outside of the drug trip, to just go with it. Older Elliott is trying not to give her younger self too much information about the future, not wanting to create any weird butterfly effects or time shifts, but despite trying to heed her advice, younger Elliott keeps running into Chad, getting to know him, and being attracted to him despite her better judgement. 

    The movie gets really interesting when it mixes both a coming-of-age story about a young queer girl being confused about being attracted to a boy, as well as wanting to both leave the farm life behind and still hold onto her familial warmth and childhood, a confusing mix of growing up and being 18. And without giving too much away, I related a lot to the older Elliott, being her age, and the mix of wanting to give advice to her younger self, to protect her from pain, while understanding that she needs to take risks and embrace the unknown in order to grow and mature more.

    Despite the silly title, it's a really good movie, anchored by the performances of Stella and Plaza. It has some really touching moments between Elliott and her family, particularly a scene with her and her mother (Maria Dizzia) that is also about change and letting go, and I did nearly tear up at times towards the end. Stella has this chill, yet open expression to her that allows her to take in insights from others, and Plaza's deadpan delivery gives blunt truths about how her life may not go along her expectations, without being cruel about it. They play off of each other really well, and it makes the film very enjoyable to watch.

Thoughts on His Three Daughters

  

   On Netflix, there is a 2023 movie written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, called His Three Daughters, starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as three estranged sisters who come together because their father, Vincent, is in hospice, soon to die any day, and they gather at his rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Rachel (Lyonne) has been living with their father, and the sisters aren't close, are wildly different from each other, and come at their anticipatory grief with varying ways of coping with it. They try to keep a polite front when the hospice staff members visit, but otherwise fight with each other, with a lot of high tension in the air.

    Katie (Coon) quickly takes charge, ordering around Rachel and seeing her as a freeloading pot-smoking gambler who is only using their father to be on the lease for his cheap apartment. She is passive-aggressive, snarking at the hospice staff member being named Angel because of his work, and starts off the movie setting down ground rules for everyone to get along, before quickly treating Rachel like she is an insolent teenager in her own home. Katie has her stresses at home with her husband and children, having one-sided phone conversations, and is clearly trying to find some control in her life, but going way too far with it. She is also trying to get a DNR (do not resuscitate) order signed by her father with his sound mind, and is frustrated with Rachel with not having it done earlier.

    Rachel shrinks in Katie's presence, is just trying to bear her presence to keep the peace, and often tries to stay out of her way, watching games in her room and doing bets, and smoking pot out on the bench in the co-op courtyard, often chatting with the security guard who comes around to say hi and gently remind her not to smoke on the premises. She has been taking care of her father all of this time, cutting up his apples because it's all he can eat at that point, and handling things, but because she isn't his biological daughter, as her father died when she was four, her half-sisters don't see him as her "real" father, and distance themselves from her, which adds to the family divide.

    Christina (Olsen) is more of a hippie space cadet type, who is the youngest, is the mother of a young child named Mirabella (and is amazed when one of the hospice staff workers has the same name), and tries to keep the peace between Katie and Rachel, not wanting them to argue and cause more stress. She tries to decompress by doing yoga in the living room, zoning out to take a break, and talks about how she found her community as a Deadhead when she was younger.

    This is a really great movie, featuring three outstanding actresses, acting more like they are in a play than a film, and I deeply connected to this film, with the sister stresses and arguments, especially with the strained relationship between Katie and Rachel. Without getting too personal, there were scenes between them that hit very close to home, especially when the camera focuses on Rachel sitting at a lower level, being chewed out by Katie, with Katie's face out of frame, that felt very real in feeling smaller in someone else's presence.

    I saw this film at the Angelika Film Center in Manhattan, and it's currently streaming on Netflix, and I highly recommend it.

Thoughts on Bed of Roses

   On Criterion, I watched Bed of Roses, a 1933 Pre-Code romantic comedy directed by My Man Godfrey director Gregory La Cava, and co-written by Wanda Tuchock (one of the few women directors to be credited on 1930s Hollywood movies), starring Constance Bennett and Pert Kelton as Lorry and Minnie, a pair of convicts just out of prison in Louisiana who steal and turn tricks to get ahead, often getting men drunk to pick their pockets. The movie is really blatant about their sex work, like Lorry turning down a ride from a priest so that she can drive a delivery truck while Minnie has sex with the driver in back as an exchange of favors. They make it onto a steamboat, without enough money to make it to New Orleans, and Lorry gets caught stealing $60 from a man she manipulated, and she jumps off the boat and swims to a barge led by Dan (a very young Joel McCrea, looking rougher than he would in his more clean-cut Preston Sturges era later), where they banter and fight, and she slowly falls in love with him.

    But she makes it to New Orleans, cons a rich publisher (John Halliday) she had passed by on the steamboat, and after some manipulation and blackmailing him, she gets him to rent her a fancy apartment, and he is essentially her sugar daddy. But Dan comes back into her life, and she has to choose between love or money, including the publisher threatening her back with blackmail about her own sordid past.

    Notably, Mildred Washington, who played Lorry's maid Genevieve, sadly passed away at just 28 the year the movie came out, of complications from appendicitis. She was an actress and dancer, performing in many California clubs, and was one of the stars of Hearts in Dixie, a 1929 movie musical featuring a predominantly Black cast.

    It's a short movie, at just 67 minutes long, and I had thought it started out fun, with two women friends using conning and sex work to get ahead, but it got less interesting when it turned into a story about a woman having to choose between two men, I wasn't as into the romance parts. And I really liked Pert Kelton, she was the typical snappy wise-cracking best friend, and I wanted this to be more of a girl buddy movie. Her as Minnie also gets married, marrying a rich guy out of convenience, though that also felt more like a sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship than being husband and wife.

    It's a decent movie, nice to watch for the pairing of Constance Bennett and Pert Kelton as friends, and seeing a Pre-Code movie that is just barely over an hour long.

Thoughts on Finishing School

    On Criterion, I watched the 1934 Pre-Code Hollywood film Finishing School, co-directed by George Nichols, Jr. and Wanda Tuchock, the latter who was one of the few women directors working in Hollywood in the 1930s. The film starred Frances Dee as Virginia Radcliff, a sheltered rich girl who is sent to a New York City finishing school by her parents (John Halliday and Billie Burke), and gets an education in rebelling as a regular teen girl, with Ginger Rogers as a "bad girl" type named Pony who opens up her world. Virginia also falls in love with a medical intern (Bruce Cabot), Mac, who works as a waiter for a living, and the school and her mother oppose the relationship.

    It's a really interesting movie, and it feels more modern as a "teens rebelling against authority" kind of movie, as well as being a movie about how older women can force younger women to conform to society, suppressing and policing them, shaming them for indulging in sex and alcohol, and are more interested in keeping up appearances than caring about the girls' well-being.

    Dee, who married Joel McCrea around this time and retired from her Hollywood career in the 1950s, is really good as an innocent girl who starts off seeming like a square, refusing to drink alcohol and throwing her roommates' bottle of liquor against the mantel, but earns the respect of the "bad" girls for not snitching on them when caught passing notes in class, who frequently writes letters back and forth with her beau whenever she gets in trouble for seeing him, and is rightfully angry and terrified when the headmistress tries to have her physically examined without her consent by the school nurse. (I was unsure if she was being checked to see if she was a "virgin," but the violation was clear). I love when she is defiant about being proud of having sex with the man she loves, regardless of it being premarital sex, and standing up to the headmistress. 

    Ginger Rogers was fun and charming as Pony, a girl from the same rich background, but who refuses to be held back by the rules on vices. She tells Virginia that the school doesn't really care about what the girls do, only that they don't get caught. So the school is harder on Virginia not because she went out with a man, but because he dropped her off at school, being seen with him. Rogers was on her way up as a star, and I like that the film depicts a caring friendship between the girls that is more sympathetic, and not demonizing Pony as a bad influence that would get punished in a Hayes Code-era movie.

    I recognized Theresa Harris, a Black actress of the 1930s who had an uncredited role as Mrs. Radcliff's servant, because I had also seen her in 1933's Baby Face, another Pre-Code movie, where she played a close friend of Barbara Stanwyck's character, and is treated as an equal friend and not as a servant in the film. Due to Hollywood racism of the era, she wasn't given the right roles to shine in, but she was a lovely actress who stood out as a charismatic beauty.

    One of my favorite actors in the movie was Anne Shirley as this dorky, enthusiastic girl named Billie, who keeps trying to be Pony's friend, only for Pony to see her as an annoying nuisance and shutting her out. She was just this adorable kid, and looking her up, I realize that I had seen her in 1932's Three on a Match, as the younger version of Ann Dvorak's character. Shirley was credited as Dawn O'Day back then, with her real name being Dawn Paris. She was best-known for starring in Anne of Green Gables in 1934, and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Stella Dallas in 1937, before she left the industry at age 26 in 1944.

    Wanda Tuchock wrote for over 30 films, directed three, and produced one. She was one of the few women to be credited as a director on a Hollywood film, next to Dorothy Arzner and Dorothy Davenport. She also co-wrote Hallelujah (1929), directed by King Vidor, and being one of the first Hollywood films with an all-Black cast, including Nina Mae McKinney and Daniel L. Haynes.

    I really enjoyed watching this movie. It's short at just 73 minutes, and packs a lot of story in, and is fun to watch.

Thoughts on High Spirits

    I wanted to like 1988's High Spirits more than I did. It had a fun high concept, of ghosts haunting an Irish castle and the owner (Peter O'Toole), the descendant of the ghosts, trying to save the castle from foreclosure by bringing in American tourists to stay in the hotel and have the Irish staff pose as ghosts to create fun hauntings.

    But then the movie decides to focus more on "romances" between an American couple (Steve Guttenberg, Beverly D'Angelo) and the 200-year old ill-fated ghost couple that ended in murder-suicide on their wedding night (Daryl Hannah, Liam Neeson), and the ghosts quickly are in lust for the people, with obvious green-screen effects every time the ghosts do something ghostly, and it gets icky to watch.

    Liam Neeson's character was a smelly, farting brute who murdered his wife, and he immediately pervs on Beverly D'Angelo's character, and after she's initially scared, she starts to like it. Similarly, Daryl Hannah's ghost immediately falls for Steve Guttenberg's character (typically playing his bland 80s self). The ghosts fall for them because the couple accidentally interrupts the loop of their murder-suicide, playing out every day for 200 years, and start thinking more independently and wanting forever love with the couple, which plays out in an ending that I found off-putting and gross, especially with emotional manipulation and using sexual assault to get what they want.

    Meanwhile, the side characters get wasted, with a pre-fame Jennifer Tilly being underused as one of the tourists, and the Irish staff mostly seen as comic relief instead of focusing more on them trying to do ghost antics to save the castle. And there is a fun part where a kid gets pulled into a painting by an octopus and turns into a painted figure himself, reminding me of The Witches, where a little girl gets trapped in a painting by a witch and slowly ages there until she disappears.

    I did like the set of the castle, it looked lived-in and had a fun historical, ancient feeling to it. And I did like how O'Toole's mother was still in contact with her husband's ghost, continuing to live a happy life with him in the castle.

    I felt like this movie wasted its potential, and could have been more fun, but it spent way too much time on the romances with the couple and the ghosts, and it turned sour for me.

Thoughts on Between the Temples

    On Monday on Labor Day, I went to see Between the Temples, a 2024 indie film directed by Nathan Silver, co-written by Silver and C. Mason Wells, and starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. I really liked it a lot, even if I felt it could have been 90 minutes instead of two hours. It’s a comedy that’s very steeped in Jewish culture and customs, and even though I work at a Jewish nonprofit, I grew up Catholic, so I know I’m not going to get all the nuances of life in the synagogue and preparing for a bat mitzvah.

    Schwartzman plays Ben, a cantor in a synagogue who is struggling to sing again because he is grieving the death of his wife from a year ago, and moved back in with his mom (Caroline Aaron) and stepmom (Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness) in Sedgwick, NY. At a bar, he happens to meet his childhood music teacher, Carla Kessler (Carol Kane), who drives him home after he gets punched in a bar fight while drunk on mudslides. They are both widowed, and she comes to one of his classes where he is preparing kids for their rites of passage. She explains how she never got her bat mitzvah because her parents were Communists and wouldn’t allow it, so Ben agrees to teach her to prepare for her bat mitzvah in her 70s.

 

   From then on, it becomes this quirky, funny movie, that feels like a mix of Harold & Maude with Ben developing feelings for Carla, and with Ben feeling pressured by his family and his rabbi to date the rabbi’s daughter (Madeline Weinstein) to move past his grief, as well as Carla’s adult son, who is Ben’s age, weirded out by their seemingly platonic relationship and seeing his mother getting into being Jewish after living a Catholic life with her late husband.

    I really liked this movie, especially watching the fun and warm chemistry between Schwartzman and Kane, and seeing de Leon in a very different role from Triangle of Sadness and watching her be more relaxed and funny. The climax of the movie set at a dinner scene was hilarious, and I liked how the movie ended on a hopeful, sweet note.