Archive for category: Reviews

Part 1 is a sharp interpersonal psychodrama as a flirty screenwriter arrives at a lakeside retreat and disrupts the shaky marriage of the couple living there. Part 2 shows the same story, with the female leads reversed, being made as a movie, with a messy but funny cast of a dozen. Is Part 1, then, just a movie that was made by the characters in Part 2? Was Part 1 a real experience that led our screenwriter (Aubrey Plaza) to write the movie then made in Part 2? And what was with the black bear? Enjoying, but not really understanding what I had just seen, I raced to the reviews to discover that the reviewers were just as befuddled. What they liked, and I did too, were the recognizable stresses in the male-female relationships, the sly humor and the way Aubrey Plaza held the screen. Also noted in the reviews: a good (low-budget, single-set) movie to watch on TV.

If you like depressing Irish movies about spousal abuse and a mother with two kids, no money, no home and no prospects, this is your cup o’ tea. Fortunately, through a series of improbable good breaks, our heroine ends up about where she started, but quit of the abusive husband. Clare Dunn, who co-wrote and stars, is wonderful as the hard-luck mother, her kids are good, and Harriet Walter is rock solid, although her character is suspiciously perfect.

The abstinence-only strictures of the Catholic Church take on the rising hormones of a 16-year-old naif in this indie charmer of a movie, and guess who wins? Natalia Dyer is perfect and perfectly believable as a teen. The hypocrisy and absurdity of Catholic sex “education” may be a tad over the top, but it’s a favorite target of mine, hence the mockery was quite enjoyable. The movie looked like it cost about $100,000 to make, but was missing nothing.

An earnest effort at a feel-good romance, which felt like it was made during the era it depicted, 1957-62, not necessarily a good thing, but with the pleasing difference that almost all the characters were Black and discrimination was at most a minor issue. The acting was a bit obvious and the story was predictable, with some major implausibilities. These were nice people to hang with and the music was good, but there was little emotional connection and nothing stuck. (PS: it may have been unfair to watch this alongside Small Axe, a stronger period study of Black life, where the people and their situations feel more real.)

A short story of a movie (unlike, say, Kelly Reichardt’s earlier period Western, Meek’s Cutoff), which tries to absorb us into the gentle friendship between a sweet but slow trail cook and a more ambitious Chinese frontier entrepreneur. Their business of selling dolly-cakes could also be read as a metaphor for American capitalism: the drive for profit fuels ingenuity and responds to consumer demand, but the flip side is greed, which leads to bending the rules and corner-cutting (see, e.g., Boeing and the 737, or Volkswagen and the diesel engine). The film was beautifully photographed and no doubt would be far more stunning on a big screen. On TV, the setting was as small as the story.