A spectacular Rose Byrne falls deeper and deeper down a rabbit hole of personal calamity until there’s no way out and director Mary Bronstein turns the ending over to deus ex machina so we won’t go home totally depressed. As an intensely focused one-person drama, although Conan O’Brien and ASAP Rocky are good in supporting roles, this is a worthy companion film to Blue Moon.
A smart and entertaining romp with something fun every two minutes, smartly employing a cast of 80. Writer-director Noah Baumbach is a star. George Clooney is the meta lead, playing a handsome movie star (Jay Kelly even sounds like George Clooney), which meant I always saw him as George Clooney, acting, which made me less concerned by his personal troubles. (Interestingly, the clips of his Jay Kelly movies made him appear to be a terrible actor, emphasizing his role as “movie star,” not a person.) Adam Sandler was another figure recognizable only to Hollywood. Billy Crudup, by contrast, grabbed me as a person, not an actor. Key plot points fell apart upon examination, but I loved the ride.
Two hours of Jessie Buckley is a treat–what an actress!–but the movie is a bit of an unmodulated slog, careening from dramatic incident to dramatic incident. None of it would matter, of course, if it wasn’t William Shakespeare we were watching (and if you hadn’t read the book you might not realize who “Will” is until 90 minutes in). The point of it all shows up in the final ten minutes, at which time the film dispenses with its realism for a bit of “manipulation” (to quote director Chloe Zhao) that feels overdue and welcome.
I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t feel sorry for Bruce, which seemed to be the point of this film. Six years after appearing on the cover of Time and Newsweek, after three Top-5 albums, including the anthemic Born to Run and record-setting concert tours, we’re supposed to think of him as a struggling loner, getting little or no respect from his record label, finding a girlfriend on the sidewalk after a gig, walking the streets like you or me, living by himself in a small house in the country. Maybe this was true–the movie is based on a book and met with the Boss’s approval–but when the truth is stranger than fiction it’s hard to accept. Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong are exceptional, the other three leads excellent, and everyone else not so much; it’s the story that is wanting. I mean, we all knew he was going to get Nebraska released just as he wanted, and it wasn’t that great an album anyway.
PS: After seeing director Scott Cooper’s interview I am sorry I wasn’t more sympathetic to Bruce’s apparently very real depression. Still, I don’t think it worked as a movie.
What distinguishes America, according to a character in this movie, is “imagination,” which might be another word for greed. Director Tony Tost gives us an array of mid- to low-lifes, the kind you might find at a remote Badlands diner, in a smart, funny take on American dreams, in the language of Quentin Tarantino, which probably accounts for the title’s punctuation. Sydney Sweeney in the Shelly Duvall role and Halsey as Joan Jett are superb. This was my kind of Tuesday afternoon movie.
Very indie. Writer/director/star Eva Victor is charmingly quirky (or quirkily charming?) as an English professor (really?), her inexplicable bff (Naomie Ackie) not so much. The random chapters reminded me of a collection of ’60s-era New Yorker short stories. Once I got over the seeming aimlessness and screechy sound I settled in and felt proud to be enjoying myself.
This six-chapter horror film had me alternately cringing in my seat and laughing out loud. Writer/director Zach Cregger adroitly handled the mashup of quotidian and supernatural with a style that was engaging and captivating and kept you from questioning the absurdity of it all, right up to the explosive ending. Josh Brolin and Julia Garner made their characters real, while Amy Madigan handled the other.
Silly. Not a lot of laughs (one chuckle) and the rest was ridiculous.
A stunningly well made biopic that not only captures Billy Joel, it explains. The filmmakers weave together archival footage, contemporary interviews, talking heads, studio sessions, concert performances and critical comments, all with the nonpareil soundtrack of Joel’s first six albums. His first wife Elizabeth emerges as the hero of his career amid struggles that were never evident to the fan. Best is the revelation, to me at least, of how directly Joel’s songs related to his life experiences. Part 2 is also watchable (6.8), but lacks the novelty of watching Part 1 and, “Uptown Girl” aside, covers drearier material and music.
The first film I’ve seen to baldly tackle the political dysfunction/divide/disaster that is the American fringe today, hitting bang-bang-bang on Covid masks, Black Lives Matter, gun culture, cults, indigenous rights, political distortion–what have I left out? Perhaps in trying to do too much, the plot is full of unresolved red herrings and relies on mysterious forces to reach its conclusion. It also would have helped if we could have understood anything Joaquin Phoenix’s lead character was mumbling.
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