Tag: Recommended

3SMReviews: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

3SMReviews: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon knows how cancer movies can go and he pushes Me and Earl and the Dying Girl in a different direction. I love how the screenplay retains the book’s focus on Greg’s self-loathing* something I was sure would be toned down. I also appreciate a cancer film where the patient isn’t chipper about her fate and a movie that manages to combine hilarity and tears in a completely organic fashion.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: free from library
Where watched: at home

*Possibly due to the fact that Jessie Andrews wrote both the book and the screenplay.

3SMReviews: Can You Ever Forgive Me

3SMReviews: Can You Ever Forgive Me

Marielle Heller achieves the ultimate in Can You Ever Forgive Me. She gives us a movie about an unlikable character* and provides us with enough details so we can feel sympathy and like that character. Part of the credit goes to the marvelous Melissa McCarthy, who excels in a person who can’t let anyone in, and feels love only for her cat.**

Verdict: Recommended
Consider also watching: Heller’s excellent The Diary of a Teenage Girl

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

*A post-40, lesbian, fat woman to be precise.
**I also love that this movie was not about a total transformation of this very flawed character.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2018/can_you_ever_forgive_me.html

3SMReviews: Widows

3SMReviews: Widows
Poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2018/widows.html

In Steve McQueen’s Widows, I knew Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez were going to be good, and I was very happy to find out how good Elizabeth Debicki* and Cynthia Erivo were. I really liked how the movie was assembled, and how the jumps the narrative took kept me confused and trying to solve a puzzle.** The stakes felt very real and Daniel Kaluuya’s performance was also a treat.

Verdict: Recommended

Cost: $6.00
Where watched: Laurelhurst Theater with a ton of people over the age of 50.

*Debicki first caught my eye as Jordan Baker in the Great Gatsby, however, they did not play up her incredible height in that movie. I see she was also the very Golden Ayesha in Guardians II. Cynthia Erivo is new to me, and I hope to see more of her.
**This worked for me, though I can see how it might put some viewers off.

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2

3SMR: The Good Place Season 2
http://www.impawards.com/tv/good_place_ver2.html

While this is a movie review site, I’m happy to feature good TV, and The Good Place is very good TV. In season two, we get to see all of our characters grow, which isn’t always a thing in American Television. This show is funny,* visually interesting, and has Janet.**

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home with Matt.

*We knew Kristen Bell had good comedic timing from the funny parts of Veronica Mars, and it’s good to see her skills at work in this show.
**Janet is the best!

3SMReviews: The Hate U Give

3SMReviews: The Hate U Give
http://www.impawards.com/2018/hate_u_give.html

George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give is full of love: between family members, between people, between friends. It’s also grounded by incredible performances by Amandla Stenberg as Starr Carter and Russell Hornsby as Maverick, Starr’s father. Based on the book I picked as last year’s zeitgeist read, this is a worthy adaptation and worth watching for the performances, for the loss, and for the love.*

Cost: $5.55 (though actually $11.90 because I watched it twice, though actually actually free due to a gift card.)
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12, by myself, and then with Matt. Because when a movie is this good, you come back with someone else.

*It’s also funny in parts.

3SMReviews: Boy

3SMR: Boy

Taika Waititi is a fabulous director of children* and his talent is on full display in Boy, the story of a Alamein, a boy living in New Zealand in 1984.  Alamein tells his friends a lot of stories about the adventures his father is having, and then must reckon with the reality of who his father is, once he appears. Boy contains 80s touchstones, abounds with the earnest/slacker New Zealand accent, includes really great fantasy sequences, and is a movie that is a  masterpiece of the wonder and fantasy of childhood, while also doesn’t spare childhood’s dark places.

Cost: free via the Multnomah County Library’s Kanopy service (first movie watched via that platform!)
Where watched: at home with Matt when we were both feeling under the weather.

*As seen in the delightful The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

3SMReviews: Private Life

3SMR: Private Life

Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life is a sad and funny tale of a couple trying everything to become parents, specifically through fertility treatments. I cannot say enough about how good Kathryn Hahn is in this movie–she’s unrecognizable from the comedic roles I have loved her in, and incredibly real. Aside from being a movie worth watching, this sheds light on the high hopes sold by the fertility industry, something probably foreign to women who don’t want children, or who can easily conceive.

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

3SMReviews: A Star is Born (2018)

Three sentence movie review of A Star is Born (2018) directed by Bradley Cooper with and written by Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper. Stars Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, and Sam Elliott.

I can finally exhale, because A Star is Born (2018) ignores the travesty that was the 1976 version and restores what made the 1937 and 1954 versions magical: a story of gentle love and nurturing talent through kindness and adoration. The plot has always focused on how a woman must transform herself to become famous, but for some reason seeing those transformations in the current day really annoyed me.* This movie is also a meditation on the power of performance and provides many examples of the magic of a live audience.**

Cost: $5.55
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12

*What a man needs to be famous: a guitar and a microphone. What a woman needs to be famous: specific looks, particular hair color, ability to dance, the right clothing, etc. etc. etc.
**Despite what people say about the last song not quite being up to the emotional heft that is necessary Lady Gaga gives it her best and nails the final shot.

3SMR: Community Season One

3SMR: Community Season One

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Back when I discovered Gillian Jacobs, everyone always referenced her work on Community, which I had never heard of. Having now watched the first season, I can say that not only is her work delightful, so is everyone else’s in this hilarious community-college-set comedy. While I have to sit through the will-they-or-won’t-they between Jacobs and McHale, (which got old waaaay back in the Sam and Diane days) it’s worth it for the antics of Glover and Pudi.

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

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