Drama – Page 22 – Out & About

3SMReviews: On the Basis of Sex

We welcome Mimi Leder back to the directing fold with On the Basis of Sex, a movie that attempts to illuminate another step on the path to seeing women as people, in this case, via a tax law case adjudicated by the Tenth Circuit Court. Felicity Jones does a great job masking her anger and dismay at the many slights Ruth Bader Ginsberg endures as a “lady lawyer” ahead of her time. I particularly appreciated Cailee Spaney as Jane Ginsberg, who spends a lot of the film not being impressed at all by her mother’s achievements instead issuing multiple cutting remarks.* The movie is a little draggy during the court scene, with much too many reaction shots of the judges, but other than that was a good use of movie-watching time.**

Verdict: good

Consider also watching: Hidden Figures, Bend it Like Beckham, The Runaways

Cost: $5.55 (though free due to gift card)
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12

*According to an article in Vanity Fair, she was exiled to TV directing because of Pay it Forward. This is her first movie since 2000. I liked Pay it Forward.
*Something masochistic in me really enjoys that hyper critical stage of adolescence depicted on screen. Also, Armie Hammer also was quite good at Marty Ginsburg’s supportive husband role.
**Also, that last suit Felicity Jones wears as she walks up the steps of the Supreme Court? Amazing! The very last shot of the movie? Perhaps a bit pandering. Discuss.

3SMReviews: The Squid and the Whale

Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale is very successful at creating trapped, uncomfortable, angry feelings which made this movie not fun to watch. Which it is not to say it wasn’t a very good movie because it’s packed with spot-on performances* and succeeded at creating the above range of feelings. While Noah Baumbach films of late tend to be populated with people I don’t want to spend time with in real life, but enjoy tremendously seeing on screen, the Berkman family were a bunch of people I didn’t enjoy all around.

Verdict: Recommended

Consider also watching: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), The Royal Tenenbaums

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

*Including a 22-year-old Jesse Eisenberg playing a high school student. My goodness, what must he have looked like when he was an actual high school student?

3SMReviews: Mid90s

Mid90s, Jonah Hill’s directorial debut, is not a great movie, but it’s got so many good scenes strung together that it transforms into a good movie, despite not really having an ending. How much you like this movie will depend on your tolerance for 90s male skater culture—one of the character’s nicknames is FuckShit—and all the baggage that comes with that.* I’m always interested in depictions of how boys are socialized by their friends into being whatever their version of a man is; this movie provides plenty of examples of this, both good and bad.**

Verdict: good

Consider also watching: Boyhood, Stand by Me

Cost: $1.50 (the new Redbox price is $1.75, but I got a discount for renting two movies.)
Where watched: at home

*I have a soft spot for skater culture, which makes it easier for me to overlook a lot of the questionable things that happen in this movie. Further thoughts: Jonah Hill’s liberal use of the N-word in his script. Okay because correct for the characters? Or not okay due to Hill being white? There was a lot of “faggot” too, but having been a teenager/young adult in the 90s I can report that the liberal use of that word was historically accurate. Unfortunately.
**Na-kel Smith’s Ray is headed in the right direction, Gio Galicia’s Ruben, not so much.

Picture via IMDB found on this page.

3SMReviews: The Disaster Artist

In The Disaster Artist, James Franco is creepily, hilariously effective as Tommy Wiseau, the passionate director of a terrible movie; Dave Franco carries the role of Greg, Wiseau’s friend. I was looking to laugh, and there are some very funny parts to this film, but it also delves into the difficult situation of supporting a friend who is doing a very bad job at something. What could have been an exercise in James Franco getting to go deep on a weird character* is instead elevated to an interesting examination of art, incompetence, and friendship.**

Verdict: Recommended

Consider also watching: Ed Wood, Bullets Over Broadway, and Honest Trailers—The Room

Cost: free via Kanopy
Where watched: at home with Matt

*I’m not sure why I am still continually surprised at Franco’s success at things. He is uncannily talented in a variety of ways.
**And you need not actually watch Tommy Wiseau’s movie The Room to enjoy this film. (Win!)

3SMReviews: If Beale Street Could Talk

Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk is gorgeous to look at, expertly acted and also just a tad slow. Tish and Fonny’s story is a weighty one, and I especially enjoyed Regina King’s performance as Tish’s mother Sharon. The pure love story dominates through the complications and injustices.

Verdict: Good

Consider also watching: Jenkins’ Medicine for Melancholy, which was his first movie. And he also did a little film called Moonlight.

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: at the Laurelhurst Theater with S. North.

3SMReviews: Gossip Girl Season 1

Gossip Girl Season 1 provides many things: a quality overwrought drama full of (mostly) bad people making bad decisions; an insight into cutting-edge technology of 2006; performances that range from very good,* to adequate,** to subpar.*** This is not a good show, and it can’t be mistaken for quality television, but it is very, very good bad television. I’m not confident that it will be able to sustain it’s very good badness through another season, much less five more seasons, but this season was a great gift.

Verdict: Good

Cost: Monthly Netflix subscription
Where watched: at home

*Alas, only Kristen Bell as the unseen Gossip Girl, but maybe possibly Kelly Rutherford as Lily van der Woodsen. I can’t tell if she’s great at playing an ice queen, or is actually an ice queen.
**Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen, Taylor Momsen as Jenny Humpry
***To varying degrees, everyone else.

3SMReviews: Hearts Beat Loud

In director Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud we get the story of a daughter and father in transition.* They write a song during a family jam session, and it gets some play on Spotify, which catapults one-half of the duo into fantasies of this band being the one makes it. This is one of those making music movies and it’s also a family transition movie and I’m a sucker for both of kinds of films.**

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free via Kanopy Streaming Service (Multnomah County Library for the win!)
Where watched: at home

*The father, played by Nick Offerman, is closing his Brooklyn record store after 17 years, the daughter, Kiersey Clemons (so good in Dope and Neighbors 2,) is headed off to UCLA to start her pre-med journey to become a doctor.
**Plus, there’s a very sweet beginning of a romance with Sasha Lane (who I just really liked in The Miseducation of Cameron Post). Plus, Toni Collette is in it, and all movies are made better by Ms. Collette’s presence.

3SMReviews: Mulholland Drive

Never do I ever feel more like I’m living in an Emperor has No Clothes world than when I watch David Lynch movies including this one, Mulholland Drive. Everyone speaks very slowly, there are stylized sets, everything is so very mysterious–or is it just a really crappy film?* Actual quote by me when the two actresses started the scene that I knew was going to happen from the first frame of this film: And in hour six, we get some girl-on-girl action.

Verdict: Skip, unless you are into pretentious, nonsensical misogyny

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home with Matt, as part of preparation for Filmspotting Madness

*When a movie needs a director’s cut, or a website, or published articles or a book to explain what the hell happened, that movie has failed. This is a boring, pretentious movie that can’t be bothered to have a coherent plot, plus it’s creepy to watch, and David Lynch hates women.

3SMReviews: Boy Erased

Unlike Joel Edgerton’s The Gift, a taut thriller that just keeps ratcheting up the stakes, the energy and momentum in Boy Erased is constantly being depleted by the movie’s flashbacks. There are a lot of heartfelt performances in this movie, but they cannot overcome the movie’s structure. Which is too bad, because there’s good stuff in examining what it’s like to want to be something you aren’t because you can’t be something you are.

Verdict: Skip

Cost: $4.00
Where watched: Academy Theater with S. North
Based on the book Boy Erased by Garrad Conley

3SMReviews: Anne with an “E” seasons 1 and 2

Anne with an “E” takes the Anne of Green Gables story and characters, grounds it in a trauma-informed viewpoint and steers the series in a different direction than the books.* Amybeth McNulty as Anne carefully balances the tightrope that is Anne’s enthusiasm and (potentially annoying) unbridled joy. The rest of the supporting players are very good, especially Geraldine James and R.H. Thomson as Marilla and Matthew;** plus they have cast the excellent Lucas Jade Zumann*** as Gilbert Blythe.

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home
Adapted from the book: Anne of Green Gables

*I’ve talked to two people who say that the 1985 Megan Follows Anne of Green Gables was THE Anne of Green Gables and there is no reason to ever make another version. One was rather vehement in her statement. I disagree with this view. After all, I watched four versions of the same movie this year. All were made in different decades and brought different things to their recycled plot. Just like this version’s focus on how Anne’s time as an orphan would reverberate even after she was adopted.
**Also quite good: the belt Geraldine James wears throughout the series.
***Who was so amazing in 20th Century Women

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31