Every once in a while something really astonishing and fresh comes along and Thunder Road is both astonishing and fresh. It blew my mind! Jim Cummings deserves every accolade and more for this wonderful little micro-budget indie film. I'm a sucker for a good movie about mental illness. If you add in an element about parent/child bonds, family, or parenting alone then you've got me and I'll watch that movie. Thunder Road tackles loss, addiction, mental illness, masculinity, family bonds, and the stress of being a single-working parent, and yet somehow is a hilarious comedy. And it does all this without ever laughing at Officer Jim's mental breakdown. This film is filled with earnest love and pain and it balances all the feels and tackles tricky issues effortlessly. This is not a cringe comedy, it's all heart and soul. 5/5 MUST SEE! |
0 Comments
Maggie's Plan is pretty bad. Greta Gerwig is a really tough sell...Netflix sold me on Julianne Moore and Bill Hader. Maggie, wants to have a baby so right when she's about to artificially inseminate herself with a pickle man's sperm Ethan Hawke decides he loves Maggie and not his wife Julianne Moore, who is a German anthropologist with whom he has 2 children. Maggie and Ethan Hawke have a baby and the movie skips ahead 3 years. Maggie, caught with the reality of being married to a selfish man who thinks nothing of leaving his family for a someone new willy-nilly, tries to make herself feel better after growing tired of her marriage/affair and conspires with Julianne Moore to get the original family back together. Meanwhile, the pickle man has the worst accent ever and I feel really bad for the aussie actor stuck with more than he can handle. Bill Hader is the only one who calls Maggie on her bull shit in this whole movie. All in all, this is an annoying movie. At no time did I care about anyone in this atrocious mess. I had much higher hopes for a Rebecca Miller film...but this is a movie about a bunch of pretentious, bourgeoisie, hipster intellectual assholes. 1/5 Mad is about a recently divorced bipolar woman who has a breakdown and ends up in the hospital. Meanwhile, her two daughters are rather selfish and self-centered and unsure of what to do with the mother they are kinda ashamed of, mad at, and a little scared of. This is one of the better psychward movies I've seen. Mad does a really good job at representing mental illness as something people live and deal with everyday, but that it can be a real struggle no matter how "weird" you think a person is. The performances are understated and lovely. I appreciated the care taken with this little gem. Maryann Plunkett is wonderful as mom, Mel. 4/5 Toni Erdmann is a miracle. I went to see Toni Erdmann because I didn't feel like going to a sobfest, I wanted to laugh. I thought "a 3-hour German comedy? How could this possibly work?!" Let me just say, it worked. It really really worked. I can say with confidence that not only was Toni Erdmann 900 million times better than anything I could have imagined. I have also never laughed so hard at a German-anything before. This is a bizarre story about a goofy aging dad who goes to visit his daughter who lives and works in Romania. He creates a goofy character, Toni Erdmann, complete with nutty wig and silly teeth. And so, the daughter plays along halfway mortified. This film could have easily veered into cringe comedy territory. I loathe cringe comedy. I don't think humiliation is funny. Somehow, Toni Erdmann avoids meanness and sticks with silly fun. Without saying too much, Toni Erdmann is reminiscent of a Mike Leigh anti-farce. 5/5 Bright Lights is a documentary from Fisher Stevens about the incredible mother-daughter relationship between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. This doc provides unprecedented access to the behind the scenes lives of the two screen legends as Debbie battles some health issues in her old age. Carrie Fisher is my idol -- for her books and being a brave face of Bipolar disorder and less for Star Wars, though Leia is a legendary badass -- so this was very exciting for me to see Carrie in action after reading all of her books. One aspect that I knew very little about was Carrie as a singer and part of her mothers nightclub act. Fascinating, entertaining, touching, fun, and funny! 5/5 If I could rename Wakefield, I'd call it A Selfish Man. It's been a month and I still do not know what to think of Wakefield. I was very tired, which didn't help. I admittedly watched a portion of this film through one barely open eye. That said, this was the world premiere of the film and I don't think anyone knew quite what to do with it. No one really laughed, and I feel like this is one of those films where experience hinges on audience reaction. It was adapted for the screen by Robin Swicord, who also directed the film, from a short story of the same name by E.L. Doctorow. The film was largely produced and financed by women, and this makes it a curious beast. The film's premise is that a married business man lives out a midlife crisis turned psychotic break, festering in resentment, when he suddenly decides that instead of returning home one night he'd spy on his family from the attic of the adjacent garage. The film has little dialog and is, instead, comprised mainly of voiceover narration. The result is disturbing, problematic, and bizarre. 3/5 |
LindseyHere is where I post new reviews as I see films throughout the year. Archives
June 2023
Categories
All
|