Life Is Sweet

1990 comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Nope. I don't want to do a plot synopsis for this one.

"You take my word for it--that is an evil spoon."

After what might be the worst title screen I've ever seen--bold letters that look like they were cut out for an elementary school bulletin board--things pick up immediately with a shot of bored dancing children.

From Alison Steadman's relentless laughter after every one of her lines to the saw-and-accordion-heavy score, this movie kept threatening to irritate me, but I ended up liking it a lot. Actually, who am I kidding? I love both the singing saw and the accordion. The characters are easy to embrace, despite their faults that make them unlikable. In fact, you almost like them more because of those flaws. You can at least identify with them more easily. The characters remind me of English-speaking Kaurismaki characters, but that might just be because nobody but the characters really exist in the world of the movie. That might be the reason why nobody comes to Aubrey's restaurant opening. There's an effervescence with these characters that make them, even when they're wallowing in despair, fun to spend the movie time with. The tone is consistently buoyant.

Life Is Sweet has a great cast. Timothy Spall is the funniest as Aubrey, the wannabe restaurateur who, despite failing about as spectacularly as a restaurateur can fail, does seem to almost know what he's doing. It doesn't stop him from decorating his restaurant with frozen fish in a tank, a severed cat head, a bird cage that is supposed to symbolize sparrows, and broken accordions. Stephen Rea plays a family friend, the guy who sells the father the dilapidated food truck, and he's a character who doesn't seem capable of convincing anybody that he's sober. Jim Broadbent and Steadman are great as the parents, both just worn down enough from giving life a moderate effort. And the twin sisters, who look nearly identical even if their personalities are completely different, are played by Claire Skinner and Jane Horrocks. They don't have rapport as much as they clash perfectly, working as foils for each other in a way. David Thewlis also plays a gum-chomping boyfriend, just a few years before his standout performance in Naked.

I need to catch up on Mike Leigh films as I like the cut of his jib.

Days of Being Wild

1990 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: I don't feel like doing a plot synopsis at this time.

With a bachelor-pad music score and a camera capturing all this neon sleaze, this movie almost drips a coolness. It just almost drips it though. It's kind of like the cool has congealed and covers the thing, leaving anybody who handles it to feel pretty sticky afterward. I had trouble connecting to this world and these characters, maybe more because the world that Kar-Wai Wong creates is inhabited only by the characters in his story. And maybe because that story doesn't congeal nearly as much as the cool. The unlikable protagonist's motivations never felt clear to me, probably intentional with all the references to birds with no legs who are sleeping on the wind.

There are lots of references to time in this movie. Lots of clocks and watches and characters having conversations about time. A special minute is brought up early and then recalled later.

I really loved one great tracking shot through a building with this rumba music. I also thought there were some nice poignant moments, especially one shot with a security guard who disappears as he walks away from a phone booth to become a sailor.

Reversal of Fortune

1990 true crime drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lawyer jeopardizes his career as he defends a snooty guy who has been found guilty of trying to kill his rich wife.

Julie Hagerty again. She seems to be haunting me. IMDb has 81 acting credits for her, and it seems I've seen 70 of them in the past month. I guess if one must be haunted, you could be haunted by worse than Julie Hagerty though.

Perhaps Julie Hagerty and the pornographic frog figurine that sits on a desk in this is all a movie really needs, but this has a lot more. One thing I really like is how the movie deals with wealth. The movie starts with this sweeping shot of wealth, all with this Mark Isham opening theme. Later, we get a lot of shots of the von Bulow residence, a big ol' fancypants house, the kind with all kinds of furniture that nobody ever uses. Dershowitz isn't exactly impoverished, but still, von Bulow looks so out of place whenever he's in the Dershowitz residence. He doesn't exactly turn up his nose, but you can sort of tell that he wants to. The characters don't discuss money much, other than an awkward discussion of how much Dershowitz needs to be paid, something that you don't even get the impression that von Bulow cares about. Still, money kind of hovers over this whole thing, and it very likely causes most of the audience for this movie, the ones who are only able to buy furniture that can be used, to have a distrust of Claus von Bulow. This is a movie that shows us that while money can't buy happiness or love, it can help you afford a good defense attorney.

I don't think I was supposed to like Claus, but I couldn't help myself. Part of that might be his sense of humor. Irons plays this character about as coldly as a character can possibly be played, but there are times when this very dry and very dark humor emerges. I like how his jokes at lunch--the one where he didn't even get his prawns--make Dershowitz's staff a little uncomfortable. And initially, I thought that Glenn Close was going to get the last words in this, something that I thought was poignantly appropriate. But when Irons gets to make one final joke and then give this spectacular wink, I was happy that he got to lead us into the closing credits instead.

Ron Silver is just as good as Irons while playing a character who is the complete opposite--the most likable lawyer you might ever meet. In his first appearance on screen, we see the character playing basketball, erratically, before getting a phone call and busting his phone on the concrete. It's a great introduction to the character, and later scenes where he discusses the von Bulow case over Chinese food with his son, assembles his legal team in a montage, convinces one member of that team that the morality/immorality of the case isn't the black and white issue she thinks it is, meets with the "least impressive witness [he's] ever seen," and has one final interaction with his client where he gets to dish out his own brand of coldness are all scenes that create this memorable character.

The movie almost plays out like it was directed by a defense attorney, someone charged with taking these completely unlikable character and creating reasonable doubt about his guilt. There's an ambiguity to the whole thing, and sometimes there's an ambiguity with individual characters. Flashbacks clash--von Bulow's and the testimonies of others--which further muddy the waters. In the end, I didn't care much at all about the guilt or innocence of Irons' character. I just appreciated the journey to get to that verdict and that final Irons' wink.

Pump Up the Volume

1990 comedic drama

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A young Jack Nicholson impersonator stirs up some trouble in a community with a pirate radio program.

"He sounds like a chronic masturbator."
"He prides himself in it!"

Allan Moyle, who directed this inconsistent attempt to feed into teenage angst, did that VH1 original movie Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story which might be one of the worst things ever created. I watched that as part of my "man movie" streak, one of the 137 movies I watched in a row one summer that had "man" in the title. I'm going to keep mentioning this until somebody notices how impressive a feat this was.

This is better than Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story. In fact, I was really enjoying the first half of the movie, kind of right before a plot or two kicked in. I believe I saw this back when I was supposed to. It came out when I was in high school, but I don't have any memories of it other than two or three scenes that I could have just caught elsewhere. So this didn't have any effect on me as a teenager even though I probably would have liked some of the film's messages about freedom, the importance of having a voice, and adults sucking. And I would have been at just the right age to not realize how silly the messages were coming across. I would have flipped off the screen whenever the principal or the guidance counselors or Teen Wolf's dad were on there, and I would have felt really cool doing it because the movie was telling me how cool that would have been.

As an adult, this doesn't really work. That first half, with the early scenes of Slater doing his radio shtick and the goings-on at the kind of high school that could only exist in an 80's movie, is probably not as dangerous as anybody involved thinks it is, but it does manage to entertain. As it progresses, its ideas are revealed to be too broad, the romantic subplot is contrived, and you really question the lengths the characters are going to get what they want. The movie's cacophony of voices start to sound like white noise.

Christian Slater, playing a character who is "as horny as a ten-peckered owl," gives half of a good performance. The dynamic and confident radio personality with the fluent gift of gab feels natural. He's doing his Jack Nicholson thing, and he's engaging even if it's hard to imagine a kid like this actually existing at any time in the history of adolescents. That contrasted with his other persona, this ultra-shy wallflower who seems like he's almost unable to communicate, was too jarring. They even give Slater some Clark Kent glasses to wear when he's not on the radio. The contrast never felt authentic.

Part of my personal problems with this movie is that I never liked people my own age while growing up. I probably don't like them now either actually, but I definitely didn't like them as teenagers. These are inflated movie versions of those kids--a bunch of dicks--and that made it hard to root for them. Maybe I'm a square. I also thought a shot of boobs in this was tacky, something else that probably makes me a square. And it's just impossible for me to be against Teen Wolf's dad.

I did like the music although I'm not sure how many high school kids appreciated Leonard Cohen's music. Beastie Boys, The Pixies, Richard Hell (a possibly-clever use of "Love Comes in Spurts" during one of Slater's two masturbating-on-the-radio sequences), Sonic Youth. Good stuff.

No Michael Jackson though. This actually had the exact same amount of Michael Jackson songs as Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story--zero.

The Assassin

2015 action drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: An assassin is given a task that her past and her emotions will not let her carry out.

Quite possibly the slowest action movie ever made, Hsiao-Hsien Hou's drama was very pretty but a little hard to digest. Actually, I can't say I understood what was going on at all. About fifteen minutes in, I consulted Wikipedia, but that didn't help me much. Another fifteen or so minutes later, I stopped the movie and read a blog that outlined the characters, their political relationships, and the legend this is based on. Honestly, that didn't really help all that much either. I gave up, too stupid for this movie's narrative, and just appreciated the visuals.

And there are some knock-out visuals here. They all slowly unfold, kind of like watching somebody sculpt or work on a painting. There's one scene with a developing fog that is as beautiful as anything you're going to see in a movie, and there are all kinds of other scenes where colors, light, and especially the wind are used to create some stunning pictures. There's a depth to the cinematography, the foregrounds and backgrounds separated by flowing curtains and nature, and it all fills the screen so nicely. Clearly, Hou knows what he's doing with a camera.

That storytelling, however, is difficult. I might have appreciated this more when the characters didn't speak at all, when the visuals told the story. They wouldn't have succeeded in telling a coherent story, but it's not like I got a coherent story anyway. Instead, there are times when this gets very talky, when one character will just fill us in on what is going on by describing something that could have been in a flashback or sharing a fable. It didn't seem natural at all.

I wanted to like Qi Shu's character, but I thought she was a little flat. Hou and she are working to create this emotionless assassin who is forced to deal with emotions, but the stoicism feels a little forced and it was a little too hard to connect with the titular character. Clever editing convinced me that she could be an assassin with deadly efficiency, but the dramatic parts of her character really didn't work for me.

If you're in the mood for a very slow-moving action drama with very little action, this is worth watching for the imagery alone. But I'd read a plot synopsis before diving in.

Action Point

2018 comedy

Rating: 5/20

Plot: When a real amusement park moves in next door, a low-budget and highly dangerous amusement park is threatened. Johnny Knoxville, the assortment of oddballs he employs, and his visiting daughter have to try to fight off big business.

What am I doing with my life?

That's the question I asked myself a few times while watching Action Point in an empty theater, one where I was free to fart liberally and pick at my toenails.

Here's the story, something nobody would ever ask for. In the town I live in, there's a big current stink surrounding the high school and an orchestra teacher who had to resign because he didn't want to call transgender students by their preferred names. I went to the 2 1/2 hour school board meeting, got in a shouting match with somebody outside the school board meeting, and felt pretty depressed about the whole thing afterward. I needed something stupid to get my mind off of all that, and I thought a trip to the theater to see this movie would at least provide a few laughs.

It didn't.

I like the Jackass movies fine, but I don't think I've liked anything else Johnny Knoxville has been associated with. This has Jackassian moments where the movie's narrative kind of pauses so that Knoxville can be launched into something or launched off something or be knocked over by something or knock over something. I did laugh once, at a person in a mascot smiling bear costume getting kicked in the crotch. That was impossible not to laugh at. In fact, all points I'm giving to this movie is because of the bear mascot. It's nothing to do with Knoxville. He can still take a violent pratfall at an age when he probably needs to think about whether that's still a good idea. That's what my mind was on each time I saw one of the stunts. Those stunts were also really set up in an annoying way. It's like they said, "Ok, let's put the narrative aside for a bit because we all know it doesn't work at all and let Johnny catapult himself into the side of a barn." And then that would happen and movie let the empty theater absorb the whole thing before moving on.

Near the end, there's a wild montage that involves an ostrich, a guy holding a corn dog to his head because apparently it's some sort of injury, a guy on fire, puking, and that bear mascot having sexual relations. For about thirty seconds, I almost enjoyed myself. The rest of this--with the weak father/daughter relationship subplot, the bad Johnny Knoxville acting, the conflict with big business that really made it hard to root for either side--was a real chore.

And no, I have no clear answer to the "What am I doing with my life?" question. That remains unanswered.

The Double Life of Veronique

1991 poetic riddle

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A woman in Paris named Veronique runs into her doppelganger in Poland, falls in love with a puppeteer, and touches a tree.

Have you ever been hypnotized by a poet? Have you ever had one sneak into your dreams when your subconscious isn't paying attention and bludgeon you with a feather? Have you ever had one tickle your taint or replace all your utensils with exact duplicates when you're at your cousin's funeral?

I haven't either, but I've watched this Krzysztof Kieslowski movie which is close to either some of those or none of those. But it's not really a movie as much as it is somebody slipping into the folds of your mind and doodling, pictures as rudimentary and beautiful as cave paintings. You know that feeling you sometimes get when you're just drifting off to sleep and start dreaming way too early? Somebody in your semi-dream state is stabbing at you with a fork, and both your dream arm and your real arm jerks up to defend yourself against the attack? The experience of watching this movie is a lot like that except you're in somebody else's dream--or maybe it's two people's dreams--and Kieslowski, instead of stabbing at you with a fork, is tantalizing you with memories you've never had. It's more like a spork. All those sporky memories.

I couldn't begin to tell you what this movie is about. Even a plot synopsis is difficult because the connections Kieslowski is asking me to make between these characters just don't connect in any logical or expected way. The character's motivations aren't always clear. The narrative structure only whispers that it's leading to something--it totally swears that it will--and then never does. You keep waiting for something supernatural to come along and explain the whole thing, some banshee with a hacksaw to reshape some of the puzzle pieces so they'll fit together a little better, but that never happens. So you're left with jerking your arms, metaphorically, and accepting that this is something that can only be understood with your entrails and not your head. It's a movie you feel, and it feels so fucking good.

When I first learned the word "doppelganger" as an elementary school kid, the urban legend was that seeing yours was a harbinger of death. So I didn't leave my room for fourteen months, several important formative months, stunting my social (and likely intellectual) growth. I'm blaming that for the reason I wasn't able to have sex until I was in my thirties. But I digress.

Or do I? I don't even know anymore.

Evocative colors, stunning cinematography from Slawomir Idziak, loads of visual tricks. This movie might be easier on the eyes than anything I've ever seen, so no matter how frustrated a person might be with trying to figure out a riddle that might not have an earthly answer or--even worse--might have seventeen different answers, it's impossible to focus on that frustration because you just want to soak it all in, make it a part of you. Visual wonders abound throughout--the topsy-turvy landscape seen through a magical rubber ball, a shower of ceiling dust on a smiling face, that same face upturned and singing through a rain storm as all the other singers scurry away, parallel scenes of old women struggling to get from Points A to Points B, soul-cam sailing over the heads of an audience, the most beautiful of breasts, delicate marionette artistry, a woman who might be a reflection herself falling in love with a reflection, a backwards cigarette, a mysterious shoelace, a burial, tree fondling. They're the imagery of a sleepy but vibrant poet, and they create a whole that is as wonderfully mysterious as anything I've ever seen.

Irene Jacob, playing either two characters with similar name or one character or one puppet and one human character or no characters at all, is outstanding. Kieslowski's camera often ogles, studies her as if its trying to figure her out at the same time we are. I think she's outstanding here, sometimes silently doing her own hypnotic tricks on the viewer. Anyway, I've fallen in love with both of her.

One morning, after I've gotten a rare eight hours of sleep, I'm going to wake up with a complete understanding of The Double Life of Veronique. Then, I'll fade away like ceiling dust, and my doppelganger will wonder what happened to me. He'll have to talk to my little person lawyer about that.

Holy hell! I just realized that both Veronique and Weronika have scenes involving strings in this movie. They are marionettes! See--I'm already starting to wake up.

Ocean's 8

2018 sequel/reboot

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Danny Ocean's sister gets out of jail and immediately assembles an all-female crew to pull off a jewel heist at a museum gala. Some of her partners wonder if she's got other ideas up her sleeve.

Generic and mindless popcorn flicks are fine if they're fun enough, but this one bored me. As every single piece of Denise Ocean (or whatever the hell her name was) and her crew's plan comes together a little too perfectly, director Gary Ross's screenplay written with Olivia Milch also just kind of fits together exactly like it's supposed to. It makes something that should be sharp and witty and stylish and snappy winds up halfheartedly trudging through heist story cliches, slogging from one expected point to the next one as if it's being dragged against its will by the percussively jazzy score.

It's got to start with the bland, single-note characters. Bullock doesn't have the personality to carry a movie like this, and I've never really thought she was a great actress anyway. She brings zero charisma to this role, making it hard to believe that she can possibly be the sibling of George Clooney, the most charming man in the history of motion pictures. The more time we spend with her character, the less likable she becomes. The other actresses might bring some talent, but there's almost nothing for them to do with it as they're just around to help the film's writers show off how cleverly they can scheme. It's never clear what Blanchett's character brings to the table unless it's moral support or riding a motorcycle around. This is the second Mindy Kaling movie I've seen this year where she just kind of seems lost in the world of the movie. I believe Helena Bonham Carter is supposed to be playing quirky here, but her heart just doesn't seem in it. Awkwafina throws out a little bit of energy, but her character seems like she was supposed to be in another movie and somehow got lost in this one. I can't even remember what Sarah Paulsen's character's skill set would have been unless it's "looking a little like Kristen Wiig." Best of the lot might be Rihanna as Nine Ball. But none of the characters really get a chance to shine, and there aren't many instances where they can show off any chemistry between them either. Soon after the "building the team" part of this--not much into the "forming a plan" part--I had decided that I didn't really want to spend any more time with this group of characters. The lone character trait each brought to the table wasn't enough to sustain interest, and they were clearly just running on cool chick fumes and nothing else.

The lack of interesting characters might be forgivable if the heist itself was engrossing. It wasn't. A person walking out of this movie could have just told me exactly how everything ends up, maybe giving me a sketchy CliffNotes version of the big plan, and I would have had just as much satisfaction. There are revelations, at least a couple, but I'm not sure if the can really be called revelations if nothing really matters. There are all kinds of instances where you have to suspend your disbelief, really believe that these criminals can be as lucky as they repeatedly are. Loose ends are tied up clumsily. A heist has happened exactly like it's supposed to happen, with sputtering lackadaisical flash, and none of it is nearly as much fun as it was watching Sandra Bullock's character pull off petty crimes in a mall right after her release from prison at the very beginning of the movie.

I can't remember if I saw all three of the original Oceans movies or not. I know I liked the first one fine, and I know I hated one that I watched on a plane. I think I might have seen both sequels. This is probably no worse than either of the sequels, but it is completely devoid of any spark or energy that justifies its existence. It's a cinematic blah.

I went to see this because it's one of the movies I drafted in a fantasy summer movie league that I'm in. You know, because my twelve dollars might wind up being the difference between winning and losing.

Hereditary

2018 horror movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Following the death of grandma, strange things start happening with a family of four.

It's best to avoid knowing anything about this before going in, and I'd also recommend seeing it with a crowd. A lady sitting in front of me kept saying, "Oh, hell no!" at certain points in the movie, probably loudly enough for the entire theater to hear. So maybe you don't want to see it with her. But it is a movie you want to see with a crowd. There was a palpable sense of dread in the theater.

This is Ari Aster's film debut, and I can't wait to see what he does next. Here, he succeeds because he keeps the audience on their toes for the duration of a movie, and he does it by making it absolutely impossible to know what to expect, almost to the point where it's ludicrous or incoherent. It's such an assured control of chaos, and Aster isn't afraid to reach for crescendos in his story, especially in movie's final act, all these rhapsodic and cinematic moments. It's batshit crazy, but it never splashes all over the place.

Horror movies scare me as much as the next fellow, but it's usually the jump-scares that get me the most. This doesn't depend on those kinds of frights at all. There are unexpected figures to be seen, inexplicable mysteries, and a couple few of those types of jump-scares, but this is mostly a slow-burning strangeness that gets under your skin and makes you feel uneasy. It's got a lot in common with supernatural horror movies from the 70s, the kind that build an uneasiness piece by piece before unleashing something that will make you piss yourself. I'm usually ok with those, appreciating the artful creation of a scary story more than actually being scared by it. Hereditary, however, gave me literal goose pimples, and that's not something I can remember happening before.

Aster borrows elements from other horror movies, sure, but he puts it all together in a way that really creates a unique voice. The opening shot, with the atonal score, is an absurdly slow panning shot that shows us a tree house, some miniatures the mother creates, and finally one miniature room that becomes the real room with the real characters as it finishes its zoom. I can't remember a movie that so effectively sets the mood right off the bat like that. The film isn't all dread. There is some humor thrown in. The audience I saw this with laughed quite a bit actually, although some of that might have been to break up this building tension. The real star of this movie is the camera. It doesn't show us these characters as much as it watches these characters. Lots of extended shots trap you into these scenes with these characters. It's very effective, maybe too effective if you ask the "Oh, hell no!" woman.

Toni Collette, who plays the mother, really keeps you guessing in this thing. Her performance almost reaches Nic Cagian heights at times in this.

This makes sense as a surface-level supernatural story about possession and some other things that I won't get into because I wouldn't want to spoil anything. At the same time, there are clear references to mental health, problems that really seem to be hereditary. A second viewing would maybe help unfold what Aster is trying to say about that.

I hope this is the most terrifying movie I see in a theater this year. I'm not sure I can handle one that tops it.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

1990 comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Two fringe characters from Hamlet try to figure out their place in the universe.

Poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Not only are they so insignificant that they can't tell each other apart, but they have absolutely no control over their own insignificant lives. This movie, Tom Stoppard's only directing effort based on his own play, is a brilliant and funny look at fatalism. If Hamlet is about a guy with the fatal flaw of not being able to take action, Stoppard's play is about a couple of nobodies who have no imagination, no fear, and no doubt. Their lives are predetermined by an unseen author they can't begin to comprehend, they're actors in a play they didn't ask to be in, and they have about as much of a chance at living happily ever after as that coin has at coming up tails.

Actually, it's hard for me to see these characters as two distinct guys. I know they're played by two people--Tim Roth and Gary Oldman, both like characters in a Monty Python movie that those guys wrote when they were really sleepy. But it feels natural to take them as two sides of one coin, one representing logic and control while the other representing a more childlike willingness to explore. It might be tempting to say there's a dumb one and a smart one, but I'm not sure that's the case at all. Oldman's "dumb one" spends a lot of time accidentally making scientific discoveries after all while Roth's Guildenstern (or is it Rosencrantz?) and his logic never get the characters anywhere.

I don't really know what I'm talking about here. I should probably develop ideas before I write about them.

This might be the only movie I've ever seen that has a puppet show within a play within a play within a movie. It's comical as you're seeing it, but later, when you realize that we're all living lives as puppets within a play within a play within a movie, it's enough to drive you to suicide.

Who would have guessed Richard Dreyfuss had this kind of character in him? This is one fun performance as he brings the hamminess hard, just unrelenting hamminess. He and his mostly-silent (when not on the stage anyway) theater troupe, or tragedians, where they perform productions with "rapiers or rape or both" bring some chaos to this backstage world. With all of their scenes, I found myself wondering what Terry Gilliam could have done with these characters. I enjoyed watching them duel with imaginary swords, all while actors create the sound effects off stage with real swords, or skulls that leap into actor's hands with springy sounds.

Oldman and Roth have great chemistry as they engage in wordplay. Their question-tennis match, some great dialogue ("What's the first hing you remember?" "Nah, it's no good. It's too long ago."). They're good together. I even laughed a couple of times at their antics, the time I remember being after Oldman's dicking around with some hanging pots and says "Watch closely" before showing his partner something.

I really hated the music for this, a really generic synth score mostly. There was some guitar noodling that I liked, including some over the opening credits where the guitar was joined by a dog.

Postcards from the Edge

1990 dramatic comedy

Rating: 14/20 (Jen: 17/20)

Plot: Based on Carrie Fisher's memoirs, this is about an actress dealing with a drug problem and an overbearing mother.

This would make a nice pairing with last year's Lady Bird. That may be why I had trouble connecting with it. So much of it is about that mother-daughter relationship, and as a person who has been neither a mother nor a daughter, it's almost like I'm not the audience. I'm also not sure what this had to say about mother-daughter relationships or even what Carrie Fisher wanted to say about her own.

I also wonder what the message about drug and alcohol use is here. Both are treated a little flippantly, and I realize that's part of the point because it's part of what makes these two women flawed human beings. This isn't exactly a morality tale as much as it's a story of the growth of one woman and one mother-daughter relationship.

Meryl Streep plays this damaged and self-damaging character well enough. She gets a few big moments where she can do her Meryl Streep thing, and she shows off her vocal chops with the Oscar-nominated "I'm Checkin' Out," a song penned by Shel Silverstein of all people. She also gets far too many lines that are variations of the line "Well, we weren't doing much sleeping, wink, wink." But it's really Shirley MacLaine who knocked me out here. It seems like every time I see her, I'm amazed at just how good she is. She also gets a great musical number that calls for her character to overdo things, and she overdoes things so naturally. Streep and MacLaine have a lot of fun talking over each other here, and all the scenes they're in together are electric, even the quieter ones.

Dennis Quaid's pretty good here, and Gene Hackman is his usual dependable self even though I don't really understand his character. Don't talk to me about Gene Hackman anyway.

My favorite moments in this are the ones on movie sets, the neat little visual tricks that Mike Nichols throws at us. The desert backdrop door, a hang from the building. Those are cute.

L'Argent

1983 drama

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Counterfeit money wreaks havoc for characters in France.

A series of cause-and-effects that blossom from the misdeeds of a kid with a menacing unibrow, Bresson's final movie is a bleak and unforgiving look at the effects of money on human beings. As with all the Bresson movies I've seen, he leaves you with plenty of space to reflect on his characters and their decisions, and here, you reflect on how they're trapped by not only their decisions but the decisions of others. The combo of poetry and philosophy in this human drama, developing in a swift 80-some minutes, was a bummer of a nightcap for me as I couldn't get these unfortunate souls out of my mind when trying to sleep. Something about the way they almost somnambulistically moved about in this bleak little series of boxes that Bresson had trapped them in bummed me out. The kid with the unibrow, tempted by pornography glimpses; the unscrupulous camera store owner; his employee with a "fondness for fancy suits;" the unfortunate truck driver who feels compelled to make bad decisions after he's the victim of cruel fate. This is a movie where money, or maybe the more abstract emotions and desires that money creates, is the true villain.

Next time I watch this, I'm going to count the amount of doors. Bresson's camera lingers on doors throughout this thing. Characters enter through doorways, doors are seen being closed, characters close doors on other characters. It's a ludicrous amount of doors! There actually might be a door in every single scene of this movie. Unfortunately for these characters, they don't really lead anywhere.

One False Move

1992 crime movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Three criminals rob some people of money and drugs and then head to a small town where a sheriff waits for his time to shine.

Nice ponytail, Billy Bob.

This is as likable as Bill Paxton ever was, but it was hard to like any of the other characters in this movie. I definitely didn't like the trio of criminals, odd since they're the types of characters I might enjoy most in a movie like this, a Coen-esque oddball crime caper. But their first scenes right at the beginning are so nasty, and the characters never really let up. If that nastiness wasn't as realistically portrayed, I might have liked them a bit more.

The random harmonica guy at the bait shop makes up for that whippoorwill foreshadowing, something that had me rolling my eyes. 

A bit of humor mixed in with all this no-nonsense violence and a surprising emotional punch or two make this one worth seeing. But really, it's all about Billy Bob Thornton's ponytail.

Hotel Artemis

2018 action movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: A nurse at a members-only hospital for criminals has a bad night.

What is Jodie Foster doing in this movie? Is writer/director Drew Pearce her nephew or something? Watching her shuffle her way through the hallways of the titular hotel and deliver every single one of her lines in the same exact way--in this tone of exhausted knowing--made me feel sorry for her. It's not that she's doing a bad job here. Other than the handful of interior shots of the setting that we get, she might be the best thing about this movie. But for this to be her first feature film role in five years doesn't make sense to me. She needed a better movie to shuffle through while listening to classic pop 'n' roll on her futuristic music-playing device.

I almost wanted to like her character, but I couldn't latch onto any of the others. Sofia Boutella, as this sexy ruthless assassin, might as well have been sleepwalking through all her scenes. Dave Bautista could have easily been a CGI character, showing off the range of lumber. Sterling K. Brown brings stoicism and little else to his criminal character. Charlie Day's character is irritating, probably intentionally so. And then there's Jeff Goldblum. After I was bored out of my mind once the initial novelty of this futuristic locale wore off, I at least knew that I was getting some Goldblum at some point. He does show up and Goldblums things up a bit, but this character doesn't really fit him. He's got better movies to be in, I think, although I did like one moment that I can't talk about at all for fear of spoiling a movie that you probably don't want to waste your time with anyway.

The hotel itself looks like it might have some character to make up for the characters not having any, but the setting has about the same amount of range as the characters. The almost anachronistic look of this hotel is only something that can be enjoyed for a brief time. With character development that is either pointless--Foster's nurse's past is brought up, it seems, only because Pearce realized while writing a final draft that a movie is supposed to have character development--or missing altogether and a story that feels like an insignificant blip in this near-apocalyptic world where water shortages lead to riots, the whole thing seems like it just doesn't matter at all. In fact, I'm having a tough time even remember what happened to two of the characters by the end of this. I'm not even sure I cared what happened to any of them, and that might be even worse.

This seems like the product of somebody having a good idea and thinking that was all that was needed to make a movie.

At least there's a Father John Misty song over the closing credits. That's something.

The Young Girls of Rochefort

1967 French musical

Rating: 17/20

Plot: People spontaneously burst into song and dance as they experience missed connections after a carnival rolls into the small town of Rochefort.

Why does the title of this movie only include the twin characters played by Catherine Deneuve and her actual sibling (but not twin) Francoise Dorleac? The beautiful thing about this movie is the way the stories of all these characters converge. It's not just about the sisters and their desire to experience a world beyond this small seaside town. It's about all of these characters, all these missed connections and reconnections. It's a Jacques Demy juggling act, and it's fucking magical!

My biggest regret in life right now is that I didn't become fluent in French so that I could absorb the visuals without having to move my eyes to the bottom of the screen and read everything.

I love how unabashedly artificial this whole thing is. With the exception of one actress, these people aren't even doing the singing for these musical numbers that spontaneously erupt, and the dancing sequences, though wonderful, aren't the smoothest I've seen in musicals. There are color combinations that don't seem likely to actually exist, and even the carnival that rolls into town gives the whole movie this artificial blue-collar fairy tale sheen. And there are all these times when characters break the fourth wall, look into the eyes of the audience, and sing directly to us. I can't remember another recent movie experience where it seemed like the director was making it this clear that it's only a movie and nothing like real life at all.

Still, it's easy to connect with the characters, their dreams and infatuations, and their relationships because they are capable of reminding anybody of something in his or her real life. Everybody has these sorts of missed connections or opportunities, these moments in time where if something would have happened a little differently or if something else had been said, there would have been a good chance of getting laid. So even though the two carnie/poets are dressed like flamboyant Mormons, we can still identify with those characters. Even if the choreography of background dancers is a little too cinematic, we can still recognize this world as one that we belong in.

Speaking of backgrounds, that might be my favorite thing about Young Girls. There's a depth to these scenes that would make a second viewing rewarding, maybe one where you don't even bother reading any of the dialogue or lyrics to these songs. There's always something going on in the background--the assembling of the carnival stages, an old guy perpetually constructing model airplanes, customers or pedestrians obliviously dancing along with whatever's going on with the main characters, perfectly timed cars.

The songs themselves are all good and bouncy, keeping this entire production a completely breezy affair. My favorite was one where the two carnies and two sisters pick up a variety of instruments and pretend to play them. In that same song, every character in the movie gets a few lines that catch us up on what they're feeling. Legrand, who also did the music for Demy's Umbrellas lyrics, even manages to slip in a reference to himself in that one. It's a great centerpiece for this musical. I liked all the energetic songs, most of them with lyrics that--again artificially--fill us in on where these characters are and what they want. The dance choreography always surprises, and with a few exceptions, the camera never lingers on one or two characters for very long. Gene Kelly, after meeting Dorleac for the first time, gets an extended dance sequence where it's him and a bunch of people who can't really dance moving along the street. There's a long and very touching romantic dance with those two characters later as well. There's some charming choreography in a scene where Catherine Deneuve is walking a block. And the whole thing opens with a sequence on this moving bridge thing where the carnival workers suddenly get out of their cars and have their stretching transform into dancing, and that whole scene reminded me a lot of the opening of La La Land. There's also this great impossible overhead shot during that opening.

This movie just made me so happy.

Demy doesn't just paint with idyllic colors, however. We're reminded that this is a town "crawling with soldiers, sadists, and unknown painters" on more than one occasion, and one subplot concerns the discovery of a dismembered corpse. Of course, since this is a Demy/Legrand collaboration, the characters are cheerily singing about that news story. I just love that contrast, almost like somebody triple-dog-dared the writers to compose a happy song about the discovery of body hacked up by a sadist.

There's also a boner joke in there somewhere, Honda product placement, and the gayest version of basketball I have ever seen.

You probably have to love musicals, artificial movie romance, beautiful people, and colors in order for this to work, but if French musicals are your thing, I don't see how you wouldn't love this cleverly-crafted explosion of song and dance.