Tag: Recommended

3SMReviews: Sleeping with Other People

3SMReviews: Sleeping with Other People

Goddamn, do I love Leslye Headland’s Sleeping with Other People, which is kind of When Harry Met Sally in present day with much more discussion of sex. Alison Brie elevates everything she is in and Jason Sudeikis succeeds with his “Hey, I can really do this acting thing, not just comedy!” It’s a witty and sex-positive and blatant film about coupling and love.*

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching: When Harry Met Sally, Some Kind of Wonderful, Clueless, 13 Going on 30, Friends with Kids, Love and Basketball, What’s Your Number?, What If (I could apparently go on, as this happens to be one of my favorite sub-genres of romantic comedy.)

*I’m still giving the Dirty DJ scene the side-eye though.

3SMReviews: American Honey

3SMReviews: American Honey

In Andrea Arnold’s American Honey we get a meander across America via a white van full of underprivileged, tattooed youth selling magazine subscriptions.* Star’s (Sasha Lane**) good heart shines through, cutting through the layers of poverty, scraping, and fighting to get a handhold up to the place where you can start pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. This long, uncomfortable*** film is worth watching and will stick with me for a very long time.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free via Multnomah County Library’s streaming service Kanopy
Where watched: at home

*All of these kids need a lot of interventions, probably starting with access to any amount of unconditional love.
**Who recently caught my eye in the Miseducation of Cameron Post and was also the love interest in Hearts Beat Loud
***Two hours and forty minutes of me feeling every ounce of my middle-class privilege. Plus the conflicting feelings of Shia LaBeouf’s skeevieness vs. me kind of rooting for him.

A thing my middle-class self and this lot have in common: love of music. This was my favorite scene of the movie. Stuff that advances the plot is happening while the song is playing, and the van sing-along that develops parallels many of my adolescent times with friends in a car.

3SMReviews: Columbus

3SMReviews: Columbus

As someone whose personal blog has been gradually taken over by photos of buildings, I am the prime audience for Director Kogonada’s Columbus.* While Haley Lu Richardson** and John Cho grapple with lives in flux, the modernist buildings of Columbus, Indiana provide a framework for the film’s narrative. It’s a movie full of small moments and stunning architecture, and both the moments and the buildings are beautiful.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free via Kanopy, the Multnomah County Library’s streaming service
Where watched: at home.

Consider also watching: Before We Go, The Station Agent

*I’m also a fan of slice-of-life stories with characters at turning points.
**This is three films in two weeks with Ms. Richardson. She played the friend in Edge of Seventeen, and an enthusiastic waitress in Support the Girls. I will also most likely see her soon in Five Feet Apart, because movies based on YA novels area always a priority.

3SMReviews: The Matrix

3SMReviews: The Matrix

My 1999 self watched the Wachowski’s The Matrix in the theater and what my 2019 self recalls about that movie is the feeling of a massive shrug. Having just re-watched the film as my 2019 self, I can say I’m not quite sure what my 1999 self was thinking* because WOW there is a lot to like about this film. It is still setting the standard for Sci-Fi visuals, Keanu Reeves’ performance isn’t nearly as wooden as I was remembering, and it has a strong female character (Carrie-Anne Moss) who is a great fighter.**

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free from the Multnomah County library
Where watched: at home, in preparation for Filmspotting’s 9 from 99 discussion.

Consider also watching: Looper, Moon

*And really, this goes for all aspects of my 1999 self, not just pertaining to this movie. I thought it was weird I remembered not one thing about the film, so much so that I wondered if maybe I hadn’t actually watched it. But no, there it was listed in the 1999 journal. I watched it on June 23. I wrote nothing about the movie in the entry from that day.
**Though alas, she exists only for the male lead. That “I love you” scene was probably the weakest one of the movie. Also, props for a somewhat diverse cast to support that male lead.

3SMReviews: The Edge of Seventeen

3SMReviews: The Edge of Seventeen

Kelly Fremon Craig’s excellent The Edge of Seventeen has popped up on Netflix and this review is here to convince you to watch the film. Nadine (played by the incredibly talented Hailee Steinfeld) has a life that isn’t hard at all,* and yet it’s very hard.** This film does three things very well: it captures female adolescent angst like few films do; it contains hilarious and (to me at least) familiar depictions of awkward flirting, and oh, my goodness, it is funny.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home. And it was good enough to draw the boyfriend in.

*She lives in a nice house, has a middle-class level of resources, and a best friend.
**She’s the kind of girl who powers through a world that doesn’t operate the way she does, her father died and left her to navigate the world alone, and her best friend just started dating her older brother, whom she cannot stand.

3SMReviews: Support the Girls

3SMReviews: Support the Girls

Andrew Bujalski gives us a great gift in Support the Girls and that gift is Lisa (Regina Hall) as the general manager of a sports bar.* I’m a great fan of slice-of-life stories about people who matter not at all in the global sense, but matter tremendously if you are the person in their orbit and this is that kind of film. All of these women, who could have come off as the worst kind of stereotypes, are complex and interesting and that made for a stellar move experience.

*The kind where the waitresses don’t wear much in the way of clothing.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $3.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home

3SMReviews: Wendy & Lucy

3SMReviews: Wendy & Lucy

I avoided Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy for years because I was a little too worried about the dog.* Having overcome my fear, I found another quality movie focused on a small slice of life. Michelle Williams brings another quality performance to a Reichardt film and the stakes are high for such a small story.

Cost: free from Multnomah County Library (my Kenton Library branch is very close to the Walgreens where this movie was filmed. There’s a lot of North Portland spotting for those in the know.)
Where watched: at home** in preparation for Filmspotting Madness best of the 2000s

*The dog is fine, I needn’t have worried.
**Matt was half watching. “Is this a crime or horror movie?” he asked when the movie started. I assured him it was neither, as even Kelly Reichardt’s film that involved crime was not a crime film. As the movie ended he said, “I kept waiting for her to be raped, or harmed in some way.” Though I did fear for the dog, I knew that the trouble for Wendy was not going to involve physical harm. That’s not Reichardt’s way. (Slight exception, Night Moves, though it makes sense in the context of that film.)

3SMReviews: The Sixth Sense

3SMReviews: The Sixth Sense

The Sixth Sense remains M. Night Shyamalan’s directing triumph twenty years on. It’s still scary, still packed with great performances,* still brings the tears. While I mourned a little that I knew the big secret** I spent my time both looking for things I could now see because I did know the secret and fondly remembering my first viewing.

Cost: Monthly Netflix fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home, as part of Filmspotting’s 9 from 99 series.

*Haley Joel Osment has so much going on with his eyes; this comes from Bruce Willis’ late 90s peak; Toni Collette is, as ever, the actor who is going to do so much with her performance
**As does probably everyone by now, but if you don’t I suggest watching this tout suite, before someone spoils it for you.

3SMReviews: Synecdoche, New York

3SMReviews: Synecdoche, New York

Synecdoce, New York starts as a standard middle-age-white-guy picture, meaning things aren’t going well.* Then it takes an odd turn and I realized with a start that this is a Charlie Kaufman movie!** What followed was a series of delightfully weirder scenes and interesting performances.***

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home, as part of Filmspotting best of the 2000s

Consider also watching: Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa

*In this case, with his marriage.
**It’s been so long! I mean, I watched Anomalisa (2015) last year, but it wasn’t quite the Kaufman whackadoodle weird that was the period from 1999 (Being John Malkovich) to 2008 (this movie).
***I was also quite sleepy when watching this and it paired well that state of being. By the end, it started to feel like a very weird dream.

Also: RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s been four years and I still miss you.

3SMReviews: The Squid and the Whale

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?