3+1 Short Paragraphs: A Simple Favor

2018, Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) -- download

So yes, I am that guy who constantly questions why the fuck he is doing with this page. Is it a review site? Is it a personal blog? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? I occasionally Google "how to write a movie review" to see if there are any snippets of wisdom or gems of insight that will magically lift my writing from struggles of apathy and mundanity into crystal clarity views of my soul, and its connection to film. Alas most of those hits are so mundane, they make me read like Tolstoy. At least I know what I am not as bad as, despite how clumsy this sentence is. One article I came across claimed I should never write about any movie I don't have great passion for, positive or negative notwithstanding. But if I did that, I would never end up writing at all, as passion from my stress addled brain (and strained heart) is a rare beast.

For example, Paul Feig (who to be honest, I enjoy more as a supporting cast member of Joel McHale's Netflix-d The Soup) releases an enjoyable little movie that didn't inspire any passion in me, but definitely entertained me. Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is a crafty v-blogger, single and rather introverted. She bumps into fellow mom Emily (Blake Lively), who is pretty much the polar opposite. But a play-date and many martinis later, the two are ... friends? No, not quite. But they have... something.

Their relationship flows quickly as Emily's vodka & gin (tee hee! Aviation Gin) and is never easily defined, especially after Emily disappears. The revelation of what happened to Emily goes from weird & quirky to the realm of murder-mystery which actually stymied my guess-the-Hollywood-formula game. It's not exactly Shakespeare going on here, but honestly I would (and do) watch Anna Kendrick update her Twitter account, so I was enjoying myself.

So, not passionate but entertained. And I am recording that. I am relating what I am watching, because if I don't relate it to someone, then it will be lost, right? Someone has to validate all this time I am wasting on dross. So, if you leave Like or a comment (hint hint) or Kent returns from his idyllic Letterbox'd to leave a contrasting review, then my life will be complete. No, not really, but ... moved along.

P.S. Not from Kent, but from a review from a Kent ?

P.S.S. This poster is wonderful ! Take a gander at IMP Awards for a bunch of wonderful posters. So, OK a bit of passion for the poster!

3 Short Paragraphs: Kin

2018, Jonathan & Josh Baker (the original Bag Man) -- download

I am fan of those scifi shorts that are all over YouTube and Vimeo. Young directors/writers/special effects teams cut their teeth on something self-contained, something fully thought out without the need to put in the filler material to round out the three acts of a feature film. Typically on limited budgets, they contain the story to a few sets, and round out the rest with CGI. And they can explore ideas that would never generally see the light of day on the big screen.

Kin started as the short Bag Man by twins Jonathan & Josh Baker, about a kid who travels from an urban setting, to the countryside and along the way we find out what he has in the bag, which I cannot do this post, without revealing its a futuristic / alien rifle. The short is just absolutely lovely, so lovingly shot, well lit and tightly acted.

Kin is that expansion into feature film and, well, its not all that successful. It suffers the expected failings of having plot & characterization inflated to meet a full movie, and meet with the typical expectations of the scifi movie audience money backers. We take the black city kid, this time with adoptive father (requisite recognizable face; Dennis Quaid) and ex-con adoptive brother, who gets the kid mixed up in his ex-con trouble. But he has a laser gun, found on the body of some unknown battle-suited soldier in an abandoned warehouse, and with it he & his brother lead the bad guys on a merry chase across the US. Add in a stripper with a heart of gold (Zoë Kravitz) and a cameo by Michael B Jordan, and we have a run of the mill action-er, that barely remembers the quality directing of the short.

Russian Doll

2019, Leslye Headland, Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler -- Netflix

I don't generally binge. Well, TV.  Cookies for sure. I bet you thought I was going to say beer. Fuck you, for that.

You see, nothing generally captures me enough to watch more than a couple of, maybe three, episodes in a single sitting.  And I usually spread it out. But this one? We completed the series in a night & the next day. And I wanted more. No, not another season, but just more -- more to this world, more to this story, more of these characters.

Russian Doll is a time loop story. So, its no qwinky-dink that Netflix release this on Groundhog Day.  Is that the first movie to present the idea? I know Picard was stuck in an ever exploding USS Enterprise before the movie, but I cannot think of any other movie that so succinctly captured the idea, before Bill Murray's. And as the latest example, this one was one of the best.

Natasha Lyonne (Slums of Beverly Hills) is Nadia Vulvokov, self-described daughter of Andrew Dice Clay and the girl from Brave. Not really, but damn it's apt. She's smart, abrasive, loud, and turning 36. And more than a little self-destructive. She wades through her birthday party, both greeting all the familiar faces and simultaneously dismissing them all. She doesn't need anyone, rejects her ex when he shows up, but then fucks the next guy who shows some interest -- a self-absorbed literature professor who we are meant to hate. He fucks all his grad students, and has no shame. And then, not long after, she is hit by a taxi and killed.

For a brief moment, I wondered if I was in one of those shows where I wouldn't like anyone. Sure its nice to see a lifestyle where people are not tied down by age-ism, where 20sumthins and people older than me are all fast friends & acquaintances, but really, you are not expected to like anyone the show introduces you to. Vacant, self-obsessed, narcissistic, etc. The typical NYC art scene? But then loops began looping me in.

For one, Nadia is a brilliant software engineer, gaming programmer in the current boyz-club coder culture. Its not a heavy plot point, but they do toss it in our face, when she attends a code review meeting, only to be accused of bad code, while all the others (men) are lauded for their fine work. She instantly points out errors in one guy's code, fixes it on the spot, and just moves on. She doesn't give a fuck about their attitudes, as she knows how brilliant she is. I warmed to her there and then. Oh, and in every single subsequent loop she never returns to work. Why bother, right ?

Nadia is both brilliant and incredibly messed up. Once she is in the loop, she needs to find out why. Is it the building, and possible Jewish mysticism? It has to be some external force, right? Because it couldn't be directly related to her. And as she explores the possible reasons how & why, you keep on marveling at her (bad) attitude, her astounding sense of impropriety and her bad choices. And that is sort of the point. She eventually finds out how tied it really is to her and her reasons for her bad choices. And who she is.

About midway, we are introduced to someone else who is in the loop with her. That is when the real exploration of what is going on begins to happen, and that is when we start seeing transformations. Not only of her, but of the world around her. Things and people disappear. And, did you catch that? Mold is growing on the fruit in the background. But nobody notices. I began to think that Nadia was trapped in software, a bug in her own code. But this is not Edge of Tomorrow or Source Code where we get a strong scifi explanation for what is going on, but we get definite nuances of something. And we are enthralled.

At the end, mid-afternoon Sunday, when we were done, I just said, "That was utterly wonderful."  I had thoroughly enjoyed that. I ended up really liking Nadia. I liked her friends. I liked her life. And I just liked the way the universe gave her a strong and tangible way for her life to become better. Please, sir, can I have some?