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! |
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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 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 Beware the Slenderman is a very intense new documentary from HBO. It was was shot over the course of 18 months after a 12 year old girl was stabbed 19 times by her two classmates who were trying to please Slenderman. This film is terrifying. Not because "Slenderman" is scary, he's really just your average modern day boogie man; he's basic folklore. He's the Pied Piper... This film is terrifying because 1- teenage girls are just about the scariest creatures out there and 2- mental illness. This film gets 'real' very quickly. Beware the Slenderman follows the year long court case in which in would be determined if the two accused 12 year olds would be tried as adults or children. So, watching this as the mother of a teen girl I was simultaneously reminded I'm already somewhat living in a horror movie and that I would hate to see anything bad happen to my daughter or worse, because of her. Terror, indeed. Secondly, as a person with mental illness this documentary terrified me because of how we treat and deal with mental illness and criminality. This film sorta punched me in the guts in a way I was not expecting...at all. 5/5 The Lady in the Van is quite remarkable. This film is adapted from the play by British playwright Alan Bennett. It's weird and delightful, surprising and curious, and fascinating, and it's mostly true. Oh, and it's meta in all the right places. This is the story of an odd-couple relationship between Bennett and an eccentric homeless elderly woman, Margaret Shepard, who lives for 15 years squatting in a van parked in Bennett's driveway. Maggie Smith is incredible, of course. Smith previously portrayed Margaret in the stage play in 1999 and the radio play in 2009. Alex Jennings is terrific pulling double duty as two Bennetts. 5/5 Touched with Fire is the newest entry in one of my favorite niche genres, the Mental Patient movie. Touched with Fire is about two bipolar people who meet and fall in love in the psychiatric hospital. It stars Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby. This is a sort-of romantic drama. It's quite purposely uneven and excessive. The film acts as a metaphor for the addictive manic state and its antithesis, crippling depression. While I appreciated the film, I found the pro-med anti-having kids stance was a bit heavy-handed. Or maybe I'm just a bit sensitive to this kind of preachy feeling statement on mental health. The film form forces the viewers to reckon with the disorienting manic state. At times it works, at other times, as I mentioned, it's a tad excessive...but then, mania is all about excess. 3.5/5 If you read my reviews you may have come to recognize that I gravitate towards what I describe as "quiet little films". Here's a lesser known fact about my tastes: I love Richard Gere. Gere is rarely in a quiet movie, he's often cast as bombastic upper-middle class, white-collar douchebags. [That said: Days of Heaven. Do it. 5/5] Time Out of Mind is another stellar, quiet, little film and Gere, going rather against type, is excellent. This is an American drama about an aging homeless man trying to pull his life back together. It follows Gere as he goes about his day trying to stay warm, get fed, find shelter, sleep without bothering anyone, and generally navigate the system. In no way does Time Out of Mind romanticize homelessness. However, at the end of the day, what we have here is another white, hetero, male perspective. As much as I love Gere, and he's wonderful here, this film could reveal so much more about homelessness if the protagonist was a trans youth, a teenage mother, or a veteran... you get the point. I'm in no way knocking the film. Not at all. It really works. 4/5 There is so much right with Birdman. First off, the triumphant return to leading role status, I couldn't have been more excited to see Michael Keaton in Birdman. The meta-textual connections to Keaton's real-life career and to his Batman legacy were completely delicious and satisfying. Secondly, I love films with long takes. Give me a Bela Tarr film any time. LOVE films with long slow moving camera shots so about 25 minutes into Birdman, when I realized what Innaritu was doing with the film's form, my brain melted in the best way possible. No visible cuts?! The film one long seamless take?! Yes please!! This film is completely enjoyable and wacky. 4/5 Mommy made me scream and shout out loud because I was so excited and it was so exhilarating! Mommy is the most recent film from Xavier Dolan--Quebec's wunderkind. I highly recommend his other films, particularly Les amours imaginaires and J'ai tué ma mère. Mommy is a film about mothers (and I really dig movies about mothers). It's quite an unusual film, in theme, narrative, and aesthetic. It was shot and is presented in 1x1 aspect ratio--that is a square that appears to be a vertical rectangle when projected on-screen. I was worried this would be gimmicky and hard to watch, rather it was used expertly and hugely effectively. The aspect ratio helps convey a heavy sense of claustrophobia that is suffocating and oppressive, underscoring the tumultuous, violent, and chaotic relationship between mother and son. Anne Dorval, Suzanne Clement, and Antoine-Olivier Pilon are perfection here. 5/5 A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes, US, 1974) This is a most exceptional example of stellar Independent American cinema--it was made with no studio money and Cassavetes mortgaged his home to make the picture. Mabel is the mother of three school aged children and wife of construction worker Nick. Mabel clearly lives with some kind of mental health issues--the specifics of which are irrelevant. After a breakdown Mabel voluntarily goes for in-patient treatment at a psychiatric hospital while Nick stays home with the kids. This film is remarkable for so many reasons not in the least the stellar performances all around. It's a raw, volatile, chaotic portrait of motherhood and of mental illness. Gena Rowlands was nominated for the Oscar and won the Golden Globe amongst others. The film was a critical success and won many awards. It is protected on the National Film Registry in the USA. 5/5 |
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