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Reviews
The Female Brain (2017)
Too smart for those expecting a rom-com; too rich for those expecting a coma-watch
Clearly some people (including reviewers) thought they would get to turn off their brains and watch men and women do insipid stuff for ninety minutes. If you want to do that, there's plenty of relatively recent rom-com territory for you to explore.
If you want to turn off your brain and have a rollicking good time, go first wave rom-com and watch The Awful Truth (1937).
If you want to use your brain a little, fill your brain up with great classic film imagery, have fun and learn a little in the process, WATCH THIS FILM!!!
I would have been absolutely delighted to encounter this film on the festival circuit, and I imagine others were and would have been as well. You would have gone into the theater expecting indie, and you would have gotten smart, sweet, thinking indie that made you laugh.
If you showed up expecting SJP/other helpless modern rom-com woman to run around like a chicken with its head cut off while MM/HG/other cad acted oafish, I can see why you're disappointed - you didn't expect to have to THINK.
It's very very difficult to tell a good story and teach someone something at the same time, but this film attempts this and does very well in most respects. It's even more difficult to adapt a work of non-fiction into something palatable for the screen in a character-driven story, and they've succeeded very well in that respect.
Long, long ago in the early days of film, filmmakers like Alice Guy (yes, a WOMAN! Gasp!) made films that attempted both education and entertainment. We haven't seen a lot of those films in recent years (because it's really hard to do without beating people over the head with the educational agenda). Whitney succeeds a million times over on those early efforts because she entertains and informs.
I was delighted to find this so much smarter than the title suggested (I love smart films and sometimes I suffer from "smart film scurvy" because there just aren't enough of them in my diet) and I was even more delighted that this film didn't fall into typical rom-com traps (see aforementioned rom-coms). I was even more delighted to see these characters address the kinds of problems women like me face (well, I haven't had to turn down money from my basketballer husband yet, but the "keep your own identity" issues Strong's character faced are way too real).
I hope this is the beginning of a new genre of sorts - a smart genre that takes on the issues of our day, makes us laugh, and sends us home a little smarter.
Now, when the other reviewers say "believable," are they referring to "inside the movie world" or just in real life? Because I've yet to see a superhero movie where reviewers insist that Tony Stark could not exist with a bunch of machinery in his chest. Now if they're referring to "within the movie's world" then that may suggest a set-up issue.
Likewise, it's awesome when our movie fiction can translate real facts to people in a way they can be absorbed. Neurobiology is complex, which is why you generally need those extra semesters at DeVry Guadalajara before anyone lets you go around stuffing people into MRI machines. I wouldn't expect an entire semester of Gendered Neurobiology 101 in 90 minutes of narrative film, but I do appreciate that a retired neurologist confirmed the veracity of the material.
This film was cut by people who love film, y'all! You got to see Edison's Boxing Cats! One of the first-ever films!
Yes, people invented moving pictures in the late 1800s and one of the first things they recorded was BOXING CATS. Edison did. THOMAS FRICKIN' EDISON (patent thief) RECORDED BOXING CATS FOR THE PUBLIC TO CONSUME.
Let that sink in.
Then re-evaluate whether you really have an issue with Whitney's directorial and writing effort here or not. Smart neurobiology in a narrative film versus boxing cats.
This is a smart film, and if you can't see that, go back to school or go see your therapist, because something's blocking all the smart ether from permeating your brain.
More of this, please!!!!! Great job!
Red Rock West (1993)
Filmmakers, this is how you make A MOVIE!
To make good art, you need to know good art - that's the pesky annoyance many would-be artists encounter and deny and that's why we sometimes swim in a morass of insipid and derivative "art." I say "sometimes," but lately y'all... Sigh.
NOT HERE! Woooohooo! THIS IS A MOVIE MADE BY PEOPLE WHO KNOW MOVIES!!!!
The Dalhs definitely know their movie history. You get the idea they might have watched Double Indemnity 35 times, along with the entire noir canon, before attempting their own craft, as anyone hoping to make good film and especially a genre piece should.
Noir is somewhat difficult to do well. The archetypes of this genre dictate characters that make really dumb, id-driven decisions that the audience can usually see coming a mile away, even in the dark. That requires some fun and intricate plotting by writers to keep the audience entertained, and Red Rock West does this brilliantly.
Note: If you don't see noir character choices coming a mile away, you may be acting in your own real-life noir, so when that stranger rolls into your hometown just ignore them...
It's sometimes said that "99% of directing is casting" and the Dahls knocked this adventure out of the park with their choices. JD Walsh makes an awesome villain, Hopper is Hopper, and Cage is the correct vintage of Cage for this role, pre-Liberty Bell shenanigans. Dwight makes his screen time count in a well-written minor role. The writing here creates big movie entrances for our characters - no small feat, and an element of craft frequently missing nowadays.
It's a film that makes every scene count - the cinematography is alternately lush and expansive and the right kind of dark. I wish I'd seen the film in a theater with an excellent projector - this film deserves that, as well as the "Oooohs" and chuckles of other attentive viewers as we wend our way through the story, but not the obnoxious behavior from too many of today's movie-goers (put that effing phone away already! You are in movie church!).
The score elevates this film - it's perfectly tuned to add suspense but not detract, and the songs blaring from classic car radios are just perfect for each scene.
Also, my goodness how happy I am digital would be years into the future arriving! This is a film that deserves the visual texture of real film, and yeah, I appreciate that the director could probably make five digital films a year now on the same budget required to rent equipment and process film back in the early 90s, but that's a backhanded blessing. This movie REQUIRES the texture of real film and revels in it.
This is a good film and a great movie.
I say that from both the perspective of a scholar and creator of film and that of someone who, every time she starts a film, hopes desperately to be transported to magic movie land and way too often is disappointed.
This movie took me there, much to my surprise and delight, as it was initially a 3am antidote to insomnia that turned into a wonderful movie gift.
In the light of day I realized this is the same writer-director that brought us YOU KILL ME, one of the sweetest, most wry, dark comedies of 2007-ish. Go watch it, too, with the confidence that your ticket to movie magic land will be punched and you will be transported to a fantastic place.
Logan Lucky (2017)
Why the Yankee hate? Or city hate? Or can't drive a 5-speed hate?
This was brilliant, y'all, so I really don't understand the vitriol.
Soderbergh's brilliance is subtle sometimes, so I understand that those who might be used to being spoon-fed their jokes would feel frustrated. Seriously, we are in the middle of a multi-year drought for real comedy at the cinema, so if people aren't watching cinema from years beyond their existence, they probably don't know funny when they see it on the silver screen. Edgar Wright is our oasis in this comedy-free desert, and now Soderbergh gives us a quiet little gem to go with Wright's work.
These aren't stereotypes - I grew up among people who could easily jump into the film and not have to act. No moral outrage needed, no haughty assertions that he's making fun of rednecks. Soderbergh microscopes his characters in their milieu - look at how he nailed the Midwestern vibe in THE INFORMANT. He figures out the patois and rhythms of his characters and gets it right.
The jokes are subtle - "Which part of Florida?" You have to have some Southern culture on board to appreciate that one and the others that slide right by if you're not paying attention.
Some have complained about the pace, and I think that goes back to today's spoon-fed cinema. Earlier today I re-watched THE WILD BUNCH for the 10,000th time, and the entire beginning + title sequence takes at least as long as this film takes to arrive at its first explosion.
Since the 90s, movies have become more and more insecure about holding your attention, so they attempt premature movie-gasm instead of sustained film-play that builds to glorious capitulation. People need to put down their phones, pay attention, and learn to enjoy a story that doesn't pop off in the first five minutes. It's actually BETTER if you put some work into earning your movie-gasm.
The acting was spot-on. Dwight as the Warden was sublime. Brits and Australians tend to deliver Southern accents in a way that doesn't induce suicide among Southerners, and Craig does well here as a smart nutcase (yeah, we had a few of those in my neck of the woods growing up, too). Channing very correctly played the boring high school football player I'm so glad I didn't marry back home. That's 100% authentic for range of emotion.
Any studio that dumps a film to theaters in August should probably not be allowed to release films, period. Save it for Labor Day or drop it on the 4th and hope that it has legs to last until Labor Day. An early August release is film manslaughter, but we've enjoyed some really great films that survived that phenomenon - IN BRUGES was way too smart for its Feb release years ago. That's a studio marketing issue - they don't know what to do with films that don't all look and sound the same, so they get the August slot. That couldn't have helped the box office.
The release date, plus the phenomenon of MoviePass (because M-Passers don't necessarily seek specific cinema, they just show up and expect to be Judd-Nelson'd for anything labeled "comedy"), plus the general absence of true comedy in American cinema to educate young film-goers in the arts of comedy have created a backlash against films like this one that are smart and funny and so on the nose about people and human behavior.
And most of all, I have to wonder if those disappointed in the film probably felt the acute absence of being pandered to?
Everything in our media-rich society panders like a geisha, lest your attention be diverted elsewhere. Good grief, even Amazon tried to get me to watch something else before I was done watching credits on this film. Well, guess what, people - not everything is about YOU. Go live in someone else's world for a while, and you will be shocked to discover that you're having as much fun as the rest of us who have put down our phones, waited patiently for a story, and successfully escaped the geisha.
Bread and Butter (2014)
Some bread, some butter, some laughs, some mold
The film was released in 2014, back when HW was still having his "power trips" in private and we hadn't yet established a hashtag to identify those women subject to the unwanted power trips of HW and his ogre brethren in the world (Nobel Prize in Literature, anyone?). In 2014, people weren't immediately thinking toward the creepy, although maybe we should have been, no?
That said, I need to freely admit I laughed out loud at the line "I can see your hymen from here!" right after I was horrified by the very same scene.
There's definitely comic potential here. Kudos to the filmmakers for making and releasing a feature film. That takes a tremendous amount of work, cooperation, and goodwill from many on tiny budget. There are funny moments in this film, and perhaps even more importantly, this is a complete story. Credit should be given.
Now, for some "buts."
Five minutes into this film, the male boss of a 30 year old virgin female urges her to lose her virginity. This is not the sum total of the scene. I hate it when people do that - grab one scene and whip the dead horse until it's glue. That proclivity of the sanctimonious brought us the Production Code many years ago and eventually gave Joseph Breen a well-paying job and a crippling God-complex. Do not rush to join the crowd beating the horse - please keep reading.
The male boss in question in the film is a "life coach" doctor who's treating Bobby Moynihan's character's lack of actualization, which includes earthy passion he has yet to consummate. Does the doc violate Bobby's HIPPA laws? Yes, he does, but this is movie-world, people, so lighten up.
Our heroine, Amelia, works the front desk for Dr. Life Coach, so she's certainly privy to Bobby's virginal file, and there's an established attraction of sorts between Bobby's character and Our Heroine. Likewise, her parents fully support the intrusive nature of her employer, so who's Amelia to object if her own parents won't put her interests first?
Now, had her de-virgin campaigning boss been female, this would have likely felt less creepy.
Or, had the doctor's office been somewhere less rape-y looking, it might have seemed less creepy (which is actually a bit of nice mise en scene at work here - we're not meant to believe this is the most qualified doctor in the world, nor is he overrun with patients, and if he keeps outing all the tricenarian virgins in town, he may need to take up an Uber route for additional income).
Or, had she not been alone in the rape-y building with said boss and her virginal love interest/the doctor's patient, it might not have been so creepy.
But when the boss went all inappropriately sex-coaching on Amelia, his employee, I immediately went all hackles-creepy at the scene.
As previously stated, I also proceeded to laugh out loud at one of the subsequent lines in the scene, which probably makes me a bad feminist. The line was funny. It just would have been SO MUCH funnier coming out of someone else's mouth, like, say RuPaul, or Jane Lynch. The whole premise of this film is that everyone's up in our characters' Cheerios, so the violation of privacy is a given and supposed to be funny and sometimes is.
Likewise, I'm not a prude. This morning I suffered through 109 minutes of vintage silent adult film (The Good Old Naughty Days, 2003) of which at least 4 minutes were actually somewhat entertaining, if not actually enticing, and of which at least 105 minutes were cinematic hack work with a variety of nekked French prostitutes of the Jazz Age tolerating and sometimes acting enthusiastic about intrusive schlong-work from less-attractive "suitors" (seriously, what IS that double-standard in adult film that guys can look like twelve miles of bad road, but the dames must be tarted beyond oblivion?). Prudes don't make it through 105 minutes of that schlock, I promise you.
To be (even more) fair, last night I watched THE LATE BLOOMER, a funny film directed by Kevin Pollack where a 30 y.o. male virgin was encouraged by his mother (Maria Bello as a fab, kooky, New Age mama) to spank his monkey, which is probably more creepy-funny than straight-up creepy, but I laughed all the same.
Is there a double-standard when it comes to which adults get to address which 30 year old's virginity? Yes, there is. Because our society kind of sucks, we are allowed to laugh at emasculating virginal men of consenting age, because 'Murican males oughta be out there micturating on everything that doesn't move and then using their magical powers to prove in other dominating ways just how very male their essence is, at least in non-fluoridated districts (they shouldn't, of course, I'm just paraphrasing the societal norm and/or Kubrick).
Of course, also because our society kind of sucks, for years and years we allowed ogres to paw an obscene number of women, but hey, THAT WHOLE TIME we were ALL allowed to laugh at male virgins in the movies, so why on earth is everyone complaining? Quid pro quo-ta of offenses, y'all! (Before you call NOW and Camille Paglia to announce feminist and general social effrontery, let me clearly state that this is sarcasm, because laughing at emasculation does not equal assault, but it most certainly incites assault. Alas, I'm not sure IMDB displays sarcasti-font.)
My final "to be fair" is that in 2019, so much of what used to be funny just isn't at the moment, but also, we've never needed so desperately to laugh, and laugh together. Likewise, we'll never decide what's OK to laugh about and what's not OK to laugh about unless we have some Lenny Bruce types to test the waters, push the envelope, and find those lines in the sand for us.
For the filmmakers - ALL INDIE FILMMAKERS - dear lord, there is never, never, NEVER a shortage of writers moping about in coffee houses, bars, and soup kitchen lines, so PLEASE go find a few to vet your story before you get everyone together to shoot. I can't help but think that had these filmmakers shoved their script into the hands of any and every semi-literate person around them, someone would have eventually said, ever so politely, "Do you think it might be funnier if a FEMALE doctor told Amelia that she needs to de-virginize?"
Seriously, I know most up-and-coming indie filmmakers are hesitant to make everyone around them suffer through the pain of birthing first films, but I promise you, at the first inkling of success, you will have a line around your house of hanger-on-ers volunteering to read your scripts, pick up your dry cleaning, and basically do anything that puts them in contact with low-D-list stars, so it is 100% fine for you to impose on these same people on your way to the top. Hopefully, they'll find the little omissions and errors that could prevent you from reaching the top, or at least a modicum of success.
Rachel Simon's review on Bustle.com claims "This is a movie made by, for, and about women - what's not to love?"
Well, I reckon I found at least one thing that's not to love among a lot of hard work, some LOL jokes, and an overall honest effort by the filmmakers.
But how does a film made "by, for, and about women" miss such a glaring faux pas as this?
Echoes of War (2015)
This film has something to say, if you have the patience (and you should)
If you are expecting a shoot 'em up western, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a film that examines the aftermath of the Civil War in somewhat brutal terms and offers a "that was then, this is now," perspective to the average, impoverished white Confederate soldier coming home from the war, this is your film.
Editing could have been tighter while keeping the pensive tone. There's some elements of metaphor that should have gone just a little deeper with another draft on the script (who perishes, who survives & manner of disposal). It seems that most apt films about the South are made by foreign directors, starting with Renoir's The Southerner. The Aussie director gets a lot of things right, and for that, I will indulge some of the dialogue and pacing issues.
Ethan Embry disappeared into his role, and the film is worth watching for that.
Could have done without the graphic bedroom scene early on (not that I'm opposed, just that it wasn't necessary to establish the character as evil), but I'm guessing it was supposed to be a metaphor for how the wealthy barons of the South raped it even after it was no longer the Grand South?
If that's the case, then the character is both baron and carpetbagger in one, which is a little odd, but we'll roll with it.