Quiet City (2007)

 
 
Quiet City
directed by Aaron Katz
written by Erin Fisher, Aaron Katz, and Cris Lankenau

Benten Films
2007

 
 
Quiet City is another early mumblecore film, about young people not long out of college, struggling to find their way, and looking for an authentic emotional connection. This one is almost like a fable, a serendipitous encounter between two lonely people, who spend time together, and surprise themselves by developing a genuine bond with a stranger. Perhaps it's a bit like The Breakfast Club, or Before Sunrise in that respect.

 

Jamie flies to New York and takes the subway to Brooklyn to meet a friend. The early shots are saturated with the orange of sunset and the tunnel lights. Her friend isn't there, and can't be reached by phone. Jamie asks directions from the only person around, Charlie, who first walks her to the diner that was supposed to be her meeting spot, then waits with her. Then, when it's clear her friend isn't coming, he invites her to come stay on his couch, and she accepts.

 

In Charlie's apartment they talk, have a drink, play a duet on a small keyboard. Jamie cuts his hair, then falls asleep in his bed while he's showering. Charlie sleeps on the couch. The trust and intimacy of this part is breathtaking. Both of them are taking a terrible risk, and both are rewarded for it.

I don't think it's an accident that everyone in this film is White. Jamie and Charlie are both vulnerable and naive, but also safe. They're two people who could easily hurt each other, but don't, who create a little world for themselves, fragile as a soap bubble, where the dangers out in the real world don't even exist as ideas, as possibilities. I don't know if I've seen people of color being depicted in a film being at once so innocent, and so secure that their innocence is rewarded instead of punished.

 

The next day, Charlie and Jamie try to visit her friend, who isn't home, then break in using the fire escape. (Can you imagine!?) They look around, but find no clues. They go play in the park. They visit a friend of Charlie's, then go to the gallery opening of another of Jamie's friends. They go to the after-party together, and learn more about each other, by seeing each other interact with someone else, by asking their friends about each other. Both are alone, both lonely, neither fully fits in with these friends, or feels at home where they live. Each maybe already knows the other better than anyone else does.

 

It seem notable that no one in this film has a smartphone. Of course, it's because they don't exist yet. Jamie is initially preoccupied trying to call her friend, but once she and Charlie are alone together, they have no distractions except the ones they make. No television, no internet. They each get the full force of the other's attention for hours and hours. It's a recipe to cultivate connection, and something that seems hardly possible anymore (I say, by typing these words into an app on my smartphone...)

 

After the after-party, the two ride the subway back to the airport together so Jamie can fly home. The scene of intimacy that ends the film isn't sex, isn't even a kiss - it's Jamie falling asleep resting her head on his shoulder, and Charlie falling asleep resting his head on hers. The final shot is the plane taking off in the orange of another sunrise. We don't know what either will do next, but we can hope their connection will somehow last.
 
 
Originally watched March 2023.

Colossal (2016)

 
 

Colossal

directed by Nacho Vigalondo

written by Nacho Vigalondo

Neon 

2016

 

  

In some of the best literary scifi, the thing (whatever it is) is obviously a metaphor, but also treated as a real thing in its own right. The thing doesn't need to make sense, it doesn't have to be scientifically plausible. What it needs is to resonate emotionally. One of the best examples I can think of is Kevin Brockmeier's short story "The Ceiling", where a literal ceiling appears in the sky and begins lowering to Earth, slowly crushing all of human society beneath it, just at the same time the protagonist finds out his wife is leaving him.

 

Colossal is like that, and it's so much better than you can possibly expect it to be, in part because it spends its first act convincing you it will be dumb, before revealing in the second act that it's so, so smart.

 

Anne Hathaway is unemployed, spends every night going out drinking, and lives in the city with her boyfriend, Dan Stevens. He gets tired of her and throws her out, so she moves back to her parents' old house in a small town, where she reconnects with her childhood friend, Jason Sudeikis. He owns a bar, gives her a job as a waitress, and she hangs out every night getting drunk with him and two buddies. It's obvious he likes her, that he likes her likes her, and maybe she's starting to like him too? This part of the film is pitch perfect romcom, and you think you know where it's going, but you don't.

 

Also, just when Hathaway moves back home, a giant kaiju monster starts appearing in Seoul, Korea, and kind of wrecking up the place. Andy is astonished, then horrified as she slowly realizes that the monster mirrors her movements at a particular time, when she's at a particular place in town. She shares this information with the others, who first don't believe her, then are amazed, but also kind of treat it like a joke, especially when they're drunk, which they always are. Amazingly, Sudeikis can also manifest a giant robot when he's in the same spot.

 

At first, this all seems too silly. It's an absurd premise, and none of the characters take it too seriously. It initially seems like the film won't take it seriously either, and all the fear and destruction is South Korea will just be a joke, a prop, something that happens too far away, to people who are too foreign and too Asian to be treated as though they're as important as whether or not a couple of White people fall in love.

 

Then, two things happen that change everything. First, Hathaway falls, destroying buildings, killing hundreds, and feels devastated by guilt. Second, she sleeps with someone. Not Jason Sudeikis, but his handsome friend she's had her eye on since the first night.

 

And this is when the movie gets smart. After Hathaway bangs his friend, Sudeikis's character shows us what kind of man he really is. His nice guy persona, the one the actor is famous for, makes us think the character is nice too, before revealing just how angry and controlling he is, before revealing that he'll blackmail Hathaway by threatening to destroy Seoul unless she submits to him. To prove his point, he wreaks some havoc, in a poignant scene where we see him stomping in the dirt, but hear monster movie sound effects of giant footfalls and crowds screaming.

 

Initially, it seemed the monsters were just a metaphor for the destruction drunk people can cause without intending to. The trip-and-fall and the deaths it caused perhaps analogous to a drunk driving car crash. And maybe it is, but flashbacks reveal that it's also a specific moment from the two lead characters' shared childhood. A moment when he was bad and hurt her, still replaying after all those years, now grown to colossal proportions as they're adults.

 

Dan Stevens shows up again, briefly, to try to win her back, but Hathaway isn't a prize. They're both bad boyfriends (although Sudeikis is worse!) and picking one of them isn't what she needs to do.

 

Hathaway tries to stop Sudeikis on his terms, and she is a fierce fighter, but he's bigger and stronger than her. And even if she wins, can she really leave town and trust that he'll stay away from the spot that lets him terrorize her by terrorizing Korea? Again, the movie is smart. It takes the rules its taught us about how all this works, and shows us how Hathaway can use those rules to get the upper hand over Sudeikis, and make amends to the people of Seoul.

 

There's no reason why a dumb little movie, a romcom about a drunk girl who accidentally controls Godzilla, and moves back to her small town to learn a lesson about life and love, has any business being as good as this, but Colossal is very, very good.
 

  

Originally watched March 2023.

A Fantastic Woman (2017)

  

A Fantastic Woman

directed by Sebastian Lelio
written by Sebastian Lelio, Gonazlo Maza, and Eliseo Altunaga
Sony Pictures Classics
2017
 

 
In the early 2000s, I read a law review article where my takeaway was that the main reason trans rights varied so much from state to state in the US didn't have much to do with local politics. Instead, it was because trans rights were decided by court cases brought by the other surviving relatives of a dead person, trying to stop the transgender spouse (nearly always a trans woman) from inheriting anything.

 
In one state, the first case like this might be a about a trans woman who was married to another woman, perhaps someone she married before her transition. In that state, trans women will be legally considered women, and because both spouses are women, their marriage will be nullified. In another state, the spouse who died might be a man who married a trans woman after she transitioned. In that state, trans women will legally be counted as men, the marriage will again be classified as being between two people of the same sex, and again, it won't count. The article's claim seemed to be that what decides the rights of trans people in each US state is which family got to the courts first, and set a precedent that affects everyone who comes after, in order to leave their particular widow with nothing.

 

The US legal landscape is completely different by now, partly because of the Supreme Court case legalizing same-sex marriage, and partly because state legislatures have deliberated and passed laws instead of leaving it to probate courts to set policy. But I thought of that article while watching A Fantastic Woman because, while there are no courts involved, it's all about a rich Chilean family trying to box out dead Orlando's new girlfriend Marina, taking back, within days, the car she drove, the apartment she lived in, her dog, all the while never giving her a chance to grieve, and telling her that she's a monster for interfering with their grief.

 

(I recognize that this can happen to cisgender women too, whenever a young woman befriends or cares for an older man, whenever she doesn't have the protection of a legal marriage and a new will, as in Knives Out. But Marina has no Benoit Blanc, nor anyone else to advocate for her. And there's a larger critique of transphobia and homophobia at work here.)

 

A Fantastic Woman is a film of cruel ironies. When Orlando has an aneurysm in the night, Marina drives him to the hospital, but the police treat her first as a suspect, then as a potential victim who might've killed in self defense (though even this seems more like a pretext for the detective to force Marina through a physical examination to look for nonexistent injuries). They can't imagine her as an equal partner in her relationship, rather than as someone hired just for sex. Orlando's family takes everything from Marina, while accusing her of being a thief. She's assaulted by Orlando's son and his friends while they call her gay slurs. When she tries to sneak into the funeral, she's thrown out, and told she's ruining the others' ability to grieve for their loved one.

 

The only thing Marina has left from Orlando is the key to his locker in local sauna. To find his last, accidental gift, she makes a visual descent into hell, entering on the women's side, sneaking through the staff areas, then passing through the men's baths to their lockers. What do you think she finds inside? There's nothing that could make up for everything she suffers leading up to this moment, and the film doesn't pretend there is.

 

Although the story is realistic, the visuals are tinged with expressionism. There are maybe more mirrors and reflective surfaces in this film than in any other I've seen, and they're always used to emotional effect. The lighting is moody. And Orlando reappears many times after his death, like a ghost accompanying Marina, until he finally leads her to privately watch his cremation after the funeral.
 
 

Originally watched February 2023. 

Kissing on the Mouth (2005)

  

Kissing on the Mouth 

directed by Joe Swanberg
written by Kevin Pittman, Kris Rey, and Joe Swanberg
Film1

2005


Kissing on the Mouth is an early mumblecore movie, although it has far more in common with 9 Songs than it does with something like Funny Ha Ha.

 

The plot here is minimal. What's distinctive about the film is its frank portrayal of nudity and 'non-simulated sex acts' and the use of audio recordings of everyday young adults talking about relationships to provide a voiceover soundtrack that runs over most of the movie. The mixture of these non-fictional elements with a naturalistic but fictional narrative and improvised rather than scripted acting is kind of fascinating.

 

Within the film, the recordings are some kind of secret art project of Patrick's, so sometimes the audience hears them because a character in the film is listening to them, sometimes we just hear them as a kind of commentary track. The recordings are about dating, sex, breaking up. They don't directly correspond to anything happening on the screen, although they are generally thematically related to the fictional plot.

 

Ellen and Patrick (played by the director, Joe Swanberg) are roommates, who, as far as I can tell, have never had a sexual relationship. Despite this, Ellen finds herself sneaking around, and Patrick seems weirdly controlling of her relationships. The other two characters are Ellen's ex-boyfriend Chris, who she's recently started hooking up with again, and her friend Laura (played by Swanberg's future wife), who acts as an unreliable confidante, and also seduces Patrick while Ellen is away.

  

We watch Ellen and Chris make out, strip, then fuck, several times. That really is the appropriate verb here. We get two different scenes of Ellen grooming her pubic hair, once on the toilet, once in the shower. Patrick (that is, Swanberg) masturbates to completion in the shower. Laura and Patrick make out in the shower, then fuck.

 

Ellen wants to know about the secret project Patrick is working on. He refuses to tell her. She burns a copy of the recordings to a CD to listen to without his permission. Ellen and Laura talk about sex and desire; Laura gossips about Ellen to Patrick to convince him to have sex with her. Patrick keeps asking Ellen if she's seeing Chris again; she keeps lying and saying no. Eventually he searches her room and finds nude photos Chris took of her.

 

The climax of the film, such as it is, is a fight between Ellen and Patrick where they confront each other over the secrets they've been keeping. Patrick is obviously very jealous. I feel like this scene only makes sense if you think he wants to date Ellen, or maybe that he's been lying to himself and imagining they were a couple, and not just roommates, this entire time. By the end of the film, Ellen has re-established her autonomy. Nothing else is resolved.

  

The graphic content is realistic rather than glamorous. It feels more like we're peeping at people than like they're performing for us, although obviously that's a conceit - everything we see is a performance. The film's editing is interesting, often intercutting two scenes to create an emotional contrast. Most of the action happens without dialogue, leaving space for the voiceovers to fill. The recorded interviews are the most interesting aspect of the movie, and combined with the somewhat experimental visuals, make this probably a bit better than 9 Songs, which uses similarly explicit depictions of sex to track the course of a brief relationship.
 
 

Originally watched February 2023. 

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (2013)

 
 

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears

directed by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani

written by Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet

Strand Releasing

2013

 

 

Although it's only a decade old, The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears looks more like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, with its unsettling blend of blood and sexuality, the uncanny repetitions and re-dos of Celine and Julie Go Boating, or Jan Svankmajer's Alice, with its creepy stop-motion skeletons, than like anything from the last 30 years.

 

The plot, such as it is, is relatively simple, but the story isn't told in a straightforward way, and by the end, I doubt that we're supposed to think that there's anything as solid as a 'real' story amidst the parade of images.

 

A man comes home to his absurdly Art Nouveau apartment to find his wife missing. He questions the neighbors, calls a private investigator, searches the building, and finds a series of secret passages. He also keeps encountering the same enigmatic woman in a number of different guises.

 

As the film continues, the already tenuous distinction between 'reality,' flashback, dream, fantasy, hallucination, and story told by another person recounting one of the above, dissolves completely. We see the same events several times, sometimes identically, sometimes with variations. People, especially the husband, are repeatedly cut with razor blades and knives, only to see their wounds vanish moments later. People die, and then are still alive. The sex is all sadistic. The mysterious woman, Laura, is powerful in a way that all the others are helpless within this surreal world.

 

The most notable thing about the look of this movie is the editing. I don't think there's a single shot that's held for more than a couple seconds. The editing deliberately creates dis-continuity rather than the usual illusion of seamless movement. Actions start and restart, repeat partway through. Scenes are interlaced with each other and with brief flashes of imagery. Parts of the movie are shown in low-frame-rate stop-motion, like we're flipping through a stack of photographs.

 

It's a unique visual experience. It don't think I'd describe how I felt about this one as 'liking it,' but I am glad I watched it. I'm always interested to see movies that experiment, that try something new, show me something I haven't seen before.

 

 

Originally watched January 2023.

Mute (2018)

 

  
Mute
directed by Duncan Jones

written by Michael Robert Johnson and Duncan Jones

Netflix

2018
 

 
Mute is a neon-drench noir investigation set in a cyberpunk near future. It starts well, but as a 'missing girl' story, suffers from the early loss of its most engaging character, and goes wildly off the rails by the end. It's disappointing, because you could easily imagine a better script resulting in a top-notch experience.

 

Leo is an Amish man living in Berlin. He can't speak because of a childhood injury and his mother's opposition to medical technology. He swims underwater, draws, and works as a bartender at a mob-owned speakeasy. He's clearly a man out of place, and seemingly out of time. His girlfriend Naadirah is a waitress at the same place, and has a secret she wants to tell Leo soon. Then mysteriously - after Leo gets fired for beating up a sexually-harrassing patron - she vanishes.

 

The first act, the one good act, sets all this up. The second act is Leo's search, which is mostly good, but involves an implausible, manual reverse phone number search through paper phone books Leo checks out from the Berlin public library in order to find Naadirah's mother and the final clue. (The scene of a stolen luxury ground car tailing a flying-car taxi was pretty good.) The third act is garbage as all the clues are resolved and Leo seeks two-fisted justice in a city where apparently no one has a gun, so no one can do the easy thing and just shoot him already.

 

Also wandering around Berlin are Paul Rudd in a giant mustache and Justin Theroux playing an even creepier doctor than he did in Maniac. Rudd is AWOL from the US Army, and the pair work for the mobster who owns the bar while Rudd waits for forged papers that will let him get himself and his daughter out of the country before the MPs catch him. One of the dawning realizations of the film is that despite his demeanor, Rudd is not playing one of his usual nice-guy characters, but it's interesting how long he can keep you on his side before you start to hate him. This plotline initially seems almost entirely disconnected from Leo and his search, but they merge disastrously in the final act.

 

I will applaud Mute for being willing to show us what the bleakest possible ending might look like before allowing Leo to very slightly save the day. I don't mind that we don't get a fully nihilistic ending, but I do mind the implausible and heavy-handed machinations needed to bring us to this point.

 

Rudd and Theroux salvage what ought to be embarrassingly bad dialogue with the strength of their commitment to their roles, and as Leo, Alexander Skarsgard is incredibly expressive despite never making a sound. The quality of the acting saves the film from total ruin, but I still wouldn't recommend it unless you're a noir completist.

 

  

Originally watched in January 2023.

The Worst Person in the World (2021)

 
  

The Worst Person in the World

directed by Jocahim Trier

written by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier

MK2 Films

2021

 
 
Do other people ever experience their lives as settled? Do they ever know what they want, get it, and then just enjoy having it? I think one reason I like coming of age stories is because I have experienced my own life as a continuous 'becoming' with no arrival, as though what emerges from each cocoon is just another chrysalis, with no butterfly in sight. But sometimes I wonder if maybe that's just life, and though I worry that I'm alone in feeling that way, maybe everyone else has the same feeling, the same worry, and maybe they can't see the doubt in me any more than I can see it in them.

 

One reason I liked The Worst Person in the World is that it really spoke to my sense of unsettledness and indecision. Julie starts the film as a blonde medical student. She quits that, dumps her boyfriend, dyes her hair purple, enrolls in psychology, and immediately begins dating one of her professors. The she drops out, takes up photography, has a fling with a model, meets underground comix artist Aksel at a party, sleeps with him, falls in love, moves in, gets a job in a bookstore, and returns to her natural brunette. And my sisters in Christ, this is only the prologue. There are 12 chapters and an epilogue to go!

 

This is a movie about Julie wondering who she wants to be, what kind of person she wants to be, thinking she's decided, then changing her mind and trying again. I admire her courage and energy. She won't settle, even if that means she leads a restless life.

 

Aksel is in his mid 40s and ready to have kids. His career is beginning to blossom, with book signings for his newest releases, and a movie deal for an animated version of his most famous comic. (He's ambivalent about his illustrated alter-ego getting tamed for a kid's movie, but presumably the money is good.) Julie doesn't want kids yet, maybe not ever, still works at the bookstore, and abandons photography is favor of writing occasional opinion essays for online publications.

 

One night, Julie leaves one of Aksel's book signings early, crashes a wedding, and meets Eivind, who's her own age, and there alone. They're both determined not to cheat, but spend an incredibly intimate evening flirting. Among their not technically cheating activities - biting each other's arms, smelling their armpits, watching each other pee, and sharing secrets. Julie tells Eivind something she later puts in an article, but they otherwise leave knowing only their first names, with no way to find each other.

 

Aksel and Julie keep struggling. Eivind and his increasingly-environmentalist girlfriend struggle. Eivind and Julie meet again, and both decide to try again together. But this is still only about the halfway point, not a fairytale ending.

 

The narration and editing of this film reminded me lot of Amelie, although Worst Person is much more naturalistic, not nearly so stylized or whimsical. But when the narrator tells us what Julie's mother, grandmother, great-gran, great-great, etc were doing on their 30th birthdays, or when time stops as Julie runs across the city to kiss Eivind, or when Julie trips on mushrooms, the pace and style of the cuts as a storytelling device seemed quite similar, even if their content is different.

 

 

Originally watched January 2023. 

Author: The JT LeRoy Story (2016)

 
 

  

Author: The JT LeRoy Story

directed by Jeff Feuerzeig

written by Jeff Feuerzeig

A&E Indie Films 

2016

 

 
Author tells the JT Leroy story entirely from the perspective of Laura Albert, the woman responsible for the hoax. In addition to casting Albert as the sole narrator and allowing her to tell the story as she sees fit (despite, by her own admission, her history of telling self-serving lies, Albert's version of events goes unchallenged), the film also incorporates Albert's recordings of seemingly every phone call she made or received throughout the affair (including her very first call to a youth suicide prevention line), and scenes from a film Albert made in college where she put animated text and voice-over atop her family's home movies.

 

Author is almost physically painful at times, because of the discomfort you feel watching Albert casually admit to (perhaps even brag about) things where you feel like she should feel some kind of shame or embarrassment. I preferred the approach taken by The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, where at least the interviewer pushes back on her justifications. Riefenstahl isn't sorry in that either, but at least she's put on the defensive, and is practically just ranting by the end.

 

In brief, the early 2000s, aspiring author Laura Albert was calling various crisis help lines, pretending to be a suicidal teenage boy, (and, I feel the need to emphasize again, recording these calls) supposedly as a way to deal with her own childhood trauma from a safe distance. Albert picks one therapist she likes, and uses the persona she adopted for that call to start writing short stories.

 

She begins calling various authors using the name 'JT LeRoy' to ask for advice. Eventually one helps her get a publishing contract. She publishes a bestselling novel, a book of short stories, and another novel. The first book is optioned to be made into a movie. All this fiction tells the story of an abused little boy with AIDS whose highest aspiration is to be a desirable adult woman prostitute, and is intended to be read as thinly veiled autobiography.

 

Along the way, Albert develops both a cult following and a circle of celebrities who are fans of LeRoy. Needing a way to get 'JT LeRoy' to make public appearances, Albert recruits her boyfriend's little sister to play the part in public. This wasn't the first time she'ddone something like this, Albert casually explains - when she was a teen, she dressed her own little sister up as a punk, cut her hair and styled her outfits, and sent her out to participate in the local punk scene with instructions about who to talk to and what to say. I believe Albert when she says that she is an abuse victim; I also think she might be a sociopath.

 

Eventually the lie collapses, not because the teenage girl pretending to be JT LeRoy (even as Albert still handled all the phone calls) made any kind of public mistake, but solely because Albert was jealous of her own creation. She couldn't stand only being the puppetmaster behind the scenes, she wanted people to see her, pay attention to her, and praise her too. She first told Billy Corrigan, who kept quiet, and then grew increasingly indiscreet until reporters caught on.

 

Albert's two key complaints at the end are (1) she is furious that people call JT LeRoy a 'hoax,' because you see, she never intended to deceive anyone, the persona was to help herself heal, she wrote the novel by accident, she wasn't trying to get famous, etc. And (2) she's mad that anyone felt deceived or angry, and that she wasn't permitted to slip into the life of fame she built for JT LeRoy. She can't believe that all her celebrity friends turned on her just because everything they thought they knew was a lie! (Except Courtney Love, who gets repaid for her loyalty with Albert sharing an audio recording of Love doing a line of coke and offering to get Albert on an apology / rehabilitation tour starting with Oprah.)

 

One of the frustrating things about this film is that Albert consistently talks about JT LeRoy in the third person as a separate entity who acts independently of her. Sometimes it's clear when she says 'JT said this' that she means she said it while playing the role. But once the sister-in-law begins portraying LeRoy in public, it's sometimes impossible to tell. Does 'JT did that' mean Albert did it, the sister did it following Albert's instructions, or the sister did it of her own initiative? Albert doesn't say, and no one asks her to clarify.

 

So, Author is a thorough, nearly 2 hour account of the JT LeRoy farrago, and the filmmakers give Laura Albert enough rope to publicly hang herself, but it also suffers from being such an exercise in self-indulgence.

 

 

Originally watched December 2022.

Funny Ha Ha (2002)

 
 

Funny Ha Ha

directed by Andrew Bujalksi

written by Andrew Bujalski

Goodbye Cruel Releasing 

2002 

 

 
Funny Ha Ha is probably the first mumblecore movie (especially if you think of it as a movement rather than a genre). My introduction to mumblecore came via a New York Times article. Ever since, I've had a soft spot in my heart for these rough-around-the-edges movies about young people trying to figure out who they want to be.

 

We follow Marnie across a single summer sometime after college. As the film opens, her life is destabilized in a couple ways - she just lost her job, and Alex (who she has a crush on) has been dumped by his girlfriend. She also seems very open to influence - early on, a couple friends spot her out walking while they're driving by; they invite her to join them for dinner, and she does. Many of her other interactions have a similar chance quality.

 

Marnie's friends all push her to try to date Alex, who beats her to the punch by calling her to preemptively tell her he's not interested. But then later he also asks her out for coffee. Alex clearly has feelings for Marnie, but wants to keep stringing her along instead of dating her. Every time Marnie starts to get over him, he contacts her to build her up and then reject her again. The one part of Marnie's life she figures out by the end is realizing what he's doing and deciding to stop going along with it.

 

Outside of Alex, Marnie tries to kiss a cute guy who she's chatting with at a party, and he rejects her. Her friend Dave (who's dating her friend Rachel) kisses her, but she's really not interested. And Marnie wants to be friends with former coworker Mitchell (played by director Andrew Bujalski), but he keeps asking her out, even after she's said no, until she gets mad and throws him out of her apartment. Every crush in this movie is unrequited.

 

After losing her first off-screen job, Marnie tries temping at the same company as Mitchell, then gets a job as a research assistant for Alex's professor uncle. She tries to quit drinking, tries basketball and chess, and maybe makes a couple new women friends by the end.

 

I like Marnie as a character, but overall I think I want to like this movie more than I actually like it. The sound is rough, much too loud in parts and quiet in others, depending on where the mic was. Some of the actors are not so great at improvising dialogue. And all the guys seem kind of sexist and unlikable, none more so than Alex. It feels authentic, but also painful.

 

I was in college when Funny Ha Ha came out, and the friend-group Marnie is sort-of a part of looks and sounds like friend-groups I saw back then because I knew one member and attended the occasional group event. I think the film captures that time and social position very well.

 

One kind of fun thing about re-watching it now is the technology. Marnie has an answering machine, and at one point uses a pay phone. Only one character in the whole thing has a cell.

 

 

Originally watched December 2022. 

Glass Onion (2022)

 
 

Glass Onion

directed by Rian Johnson

written by Rian Johnson

Netflix

2022

 

Glass Onion opens in the midst of early 2020 pandemic doldrums, and almost immediately travels to an isolated dreamland on an island of the ultra-rich. The transition is a little rocky, but I applaud anyone willing to acknowledge the existence of the Covid pandemic in fiction. It seems most writers prefer to pretend that it never happened.

 

The first half of Glass Onion is just okay, but the real fun begins in the second half, when Janelle Monae emerges as a force of nature in flashbacks that recontextualize everything we've seen so far. There's something amusingly meta-textual about an actual murder happening at one of those murder mystery dinner parties, although that premise doesn't mesh very neatly with all the characters being easy-to-hate right-wing celebrity grifters.

 

The solution to the mystery is an enjoyable expansion on the old Purloined Letter idea of truth hiding in plain sight, and the conclusion to the film is a satisfying explosion of unleashed resentments, plus one of the best Chekov's Gun payoffs I've ever seen. If the actual Mona Lisa, on loan from the Louvre, is introduced in the first act...

 

Overall though, I liked Knives Out better. I thought the way it played with time and the tropes of cozy mystery were more interesting. And I found the conceit - that all the characters in this one had been friends since the old days when only one of them was rich, and none were yet famous - implausible based on what I think I know about celebrity friendships.

 

The fact that this is a sequel also robs it of some of its dramatic tension. Knives Out is structured as much like a monster movie as it is like a mystery, and Benoit Blanc is the monster stalking poor Marta. Most of the suspense and a lot of the humor in that film comes from the open question of what kind of detective Blanc really is. Is he actually good at solving mysteries, or is he a bumbling incompetent? Is he a letter-of-the-law sort of man, or does he work toward some larger vision of justice? But the nature of a sequel is that those questions are already resolved before Glass Onion even starts. It's entertaining to watch Blanc do what he does, but half the fun of the original was wondering what does he do?

 

I'll also applaud Rian Johnson for anticipating the real Elon Musk's declining public reputation. Iron Man 2 and Star Trek: Discovery both reference Musk positively, even fawningly. Rian Johnson bet (correctly) that he's no longer as beloved as he once was, and fortunately for Johnson, the actual Musk has spent the last few months before the premier proving correct the film's thesis about what kind of man 'Miles Bron' is, and making his character even more unsympathetic and enjoyable to watch suffer.

 

 

Originally watched December 2022.

Don't Worry Darling (2022)

 
 

Don't Worry Darling

directed by Olivia Wilde

written by Katie Silberman

Warner Bros

2022

 

 

Don't Worry Darling feels like maybe someone optioned the script during the 90s, paid extra for some kind of insane 25 year exclusivity deal, then forgot all about it, and then, when time was almost about to run out, tried to recoup their investment with a rushed production and a maximal amount of behind-the-scenes cast drama doubling as a marketing blitz.

 

Darling is very much like one of the 'what is reality?' movies that were popular in the 90s until The Matrix came along and did the whole concept so well it basically put a nail in the subgenre. For about a decade between the rise of personal computing and the start of the new millennium, movie characters wandered through philosophical thought experiments come to life, wondering whether they're living in a simulation and whether any such thing as 'the real world' even exists. In terms of quality, these films ranged from Vanilla Sky at the low end to like, The Truman Show near the top. Don't Worry Darling wouldn't have been at the bottom of this particular barrel back then, but it definitely would've been bottom half, even if it were released when it was still trendy. Today it just seems like a total mess.

 

On the off chance you're planning to watch Darling, I don't want to strip it of one of its very few viewing pleasures by giving too much away, but it's clear almost immediately that Something Is Going On in this perfectly manicured suburb, full of immaculate stay-at-home wives and husbands who drive sports cars off-road through the desert to go work on some secret (military?) project they're not allowed to talk about. This obviously isn't the real 1950s or 60s, which makes the ubiquitous mimicry of that era's style a source of mystery. The total isolation from the outside world, and the sinister undertone to the men's work also draw you in.

 

Florence Pugh plays a character who starts off just like every other woman in this little community. She spends her days gossiping with the neighbors, taking bizarrely choreographed exercise classes, methodically cleaning every surface in her house, and preparing elaborate home-cooked dinners that get ruined when her husband Harry Styles decides to ravish her on the dining table. But Pugh's housewife was friends with another woman who recently disappeared from the neighborhood - and while everyone else obeys a tacit directive to never speak of this woman again, Pugh misses her friend and keeps asking awkward questions about what really happened. And as she pulls on that thread, the whole sweater quickly unravels.

 

One day, once her mind is open to questions and new possibilities, Pugh witnesses a plane crash in the desert. She does what no one is supposed to, and leaves town. She heads into the desert to investigate the crash and check for survivors who might need help. And then ... Something Happens in the desert ... and she wakes up in bed, back in her perfect home.

 

Once you know the ending of the film, and understand the secrets Pugh's character is trying to discover, you may ask yourself - what was that plane? where did it come from? why did it crash? And you will not for the life of you know the answer. It's like foreshadowing left over from an earlier draft when Darling had a completely different secret and different ending, that now points to nothing, and by all rights shouldn't happen at all.

 

After that, Pugh experiences a series of nightmarish dislocations. She wonders if they're hallucinations, if they're related to the plane crash, if they're connected to her missing friend, if she's going crazy, if she's going to disappear too.

 

These incidents are cryptic, maybe intentionally misleading. They're not tonally consistent, and only seem to indicate what's really going on one single time, perhaps by accident. I think director Olivia Wilde was just trying to capture as much strange imagery as she could on camera, apparently without worrying if it ever made sense. The bizarre synchronized dance classes seem to be in the film for the same reason. The most memorable of these strange incidents is when Pugh is cleaning the floor-to-ceiling windows in her hallway, and the hall suddenly narrows, crushing her against the windows, before suddenly returning to normal. The one actually-revealing scene is when Pugh is in the bath next to a mirror, and she slides her head underwater, but her reflection remains visible in the mirror and appears to be watching her. I wish they'd all been well-crafted.

 

Eventually, of course, Pugh will figure out the truth, though not before declaring war on Chris Pine, who runs the place, and not before wondering if she can trust her husband Styles. She can't, of course. In the 90s, Don't Worry Darling's tepid feminism might've seemed revelatory in a film of its (intended, hoped for) stature. Today it seems like the thinnest veneer, mostly there to provide a semblance of motivation to the characters who are eventually revealed to be villains.

 

Again, once you know the truth, all these scenes of conflict make even less sense than they seemed to when you still thought they were clues to help you solve the mystery. They're not. They're just more spaghetti thrown at the wall in the hope that anything will stick. What sticks with me is Pine cackling 'look at that boy dance!' like a crazed impresario as Styles does a little jig on stage for his boss's amusement. That's like, memorable, but it doesn't mean anything.

 

The best way to enjoy this film is probably while drinking with friends, letting the weirdness wash over you, and laughing at the absurdity - there's a lot of it! - along the way.

 

The one high point I want to give credit to is the soundtrack. Throughout Darling, there's nearly always a pop song from the 50s or 60s playing, audible to both the characters and the audience. At first this seems to be just one more piece of set dressing, only meant to help build up the faux mid-century pastiche. And it is that, too. But also, it's clear that the songs were all chosen with intention, for a reason. They're all thematically consistent, and in retrospect, almost comically on-the-nose in terms of their foreshadowing. But good! The music the only part of the film that's actually pulling its own weight in that department, the only aspect of the production that seemingly knows what it's doing, what its goal is and how to accomplish it. I'd much rather have that, than a soundtrack that really is just there because of the years the songs were written.

 

 

Originally watched December 2022.

The Automat (2021)

 
 

The Automat

directed by Lisa Hurwitz

written by Michael Levine 

A Slice of Pie Productions

2021

 

 

The Automat isn't technically a Mel Brookes movie, but he is director Lisa Hurwitz's first interviewee, and seemingly her directorial mentor. Brookes was clearly invested in the success of the film - he helps connect Hurwitz to her other famous interviewees, and he both wrote and sang some outro music for the end credits. Hurwitz definitely got some pretty famous faces for her documentary debut. In addition to the usual academics and historians, she scored Brookes, Carl Reiner, the CEO of Starbucks, Colin Powell, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She also makes really good use of archival footage, especially from golden age Hollywood movies and Looney Tunes that used the restaurant as a set for romance and comedy.

 

Hurwitz uses all this firepower in service of telling the history of one of the most visually iconic restaurants that's ever existed - the Horn & Hardart automat. Famous for its wall of widows, like little PO boxes for your food. Customers could take their tray up to the wall, put in a nickel, open the window, and retrieve a single serving of cafeteria food.

 

Vending machine restaurants were originally developed in Europe, and in the US, mostly only existed in New York City. Its heyday was from about 1900 until mid-century. But because of New York's cultural dominance, the restaurant's many locations in NYC, its striking appearance, and its popularity with writers and other creative types, the automat had an outsized impact on the popular imagination.

 

The interviewees' get nostalgic about the food, the coffee, the decor, (which, unlike most mid-century cafeterias, still looks appealing today!), and especially the benefits of the long hours and low prices. Nearly everyone Hurwitz talked to had a story about a time in their life when they were poor, but at least they could afford the automat, and the chance to sit inside. The place also seems to have had an egalitarian effect on its customers; unlike at restaurants with more personalized service, everyone ate the same food, sat at the same tables, and got treated alike by the automated systems. They found dignity in that.

 

(It's not mentioned in the film, but that's a lot of what I like about the experience of going to Pret a Manger whenever I'm in a city big enough to have one.)

 

Ultimately, the automat was done in by economic changes. Inflation is an obvious culprit - their machines could only accept nickels, making price increases difficult to implement. The rise of McDonald's and other fast food chains offered a form of competition that automats had never really faced before - the same thing, I believe, that happened to Howard Johnson's.

 

And most importantly, I think, middle class and White people became less and less willing to eat at the same restaurants as the poor and Black. We might blame some of that on the worsening conditions of urban poverty, but also perhaps on a hardening of race-based and classist intolerance. And without those customers, the automat could no longer take advantage of the economies of scale that allowed it to function.

 

Hurwitz has assembled a very good documentary about a somewhat niche, but very interesting topic. She's also put the film together in a way that sort of deliberately 'shows the seams,' if you know what I mean. Rather than making a totally polished finished product, she's embedded evidence of the filmmaking process (and Mel Brookes's avuncular mentorship) in the footage the audience gets to see. It's a really enjoyable watch.

 

 

Note: I'm trying something new by starting to include film reviews here. Unlike with books, I'm not reviewing everything I watch, and I'm publishing them on a considerable time delay. For example, I originally watched The Automat in December 2022.