Sunday Morning Three-Line Movie Review

I didn't know anything about this movie except that it looked very cool and very funny in the way that young people are very cool and very funny only some of the time, but this movie was very cool and very funny the entire time, not to mention wildly entertaining and perhaps even brilliant. Watching it was like taking a ride or, rather, being taken on a ride before which you've been given some perfect drug that enables colors to be brighter, music to be more rhythmical, and people's eyes to be like portals to their souls, and then it illustrates the world as it is now, in this moment, even more surreal than you might have already thought it to be. Boots Riley has made a movie that's both surrealist capitalist nightmare and comedy, and he does it in a way that makes white people squirm because, in the end, it's about that -- us.










More 3-Line Movie Reviews


RBG
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Learning to Drive
Love and Mercy
Not a Three Line Movie Review
While We're Young
Ida
Force Majeur 
Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

After Carol

LA skies at sunset after storms, baby.

I went to see the movie Carol this morning while The Teenagers spent some time with their father. Most of you know that the movie is based on a novel by the great and creepy Patricia Highsmith, and that it's about the love affair between two women in the 1950s. The movie isn't creepy at all, though -- it's gorgeous, smart and very erotic. I'd write a three-line movie review, but I don't think I could be that economical in my rapture. I felt as if I were in a trance when I left the theater.

I think right now, as I type, the Golden Globes are starting. I don't have cable anymore so I guess I won't be watching, but to tell you the truth I can't bear Ricky Gervais, and he's evidently the host. Several years ago, he made the lazy stand-up comedian's mistake of using the word retard in one of his routines. He was defiant about it and didn't apologize. He continues to use it. Evidently, he's also quite fond of the word mong. Cognizant of the risk of sounding terribly politically correct, I just decided that I'm not going to watch anything that he's in or does. Here's my three-word review of Ricky Gervais: Lazy. Not funny. Now I'll get off my mini soapbox and take a wee nap.

Tell me what you're doing.

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Birdman

Watching this movie was a bit like I imagine riding a roller coaster might be if I rode roller coasters and did so while listening to a pounding drum jazz soundtrack and then climbed off the ride and careened through dingy and claustrophobic Broadway theater hallways, perched on the edge of tall buildings and instead of jumping, decided to fly. Birdman is a wild, crazy ride of a movie that covers just about every cliche you can think of relating to theater, film, art, criticism of art, acting, the internet, mindfulness or the lack of presence, of being present in our insane digital world, yet cliche is somehow brilliantly avoided, and it just works. At the same time, despite the wonderful cast led by Michael Keaton and Edward Norton, and the wondrous editing that blurred reality and dream, I never felt transported out and off the edge of my seat but rather just exhausted from the ride.











More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Saint Vincent

The only reason I'd even mention the movie Gone Girl here is not because I went to see the movie (and I won't because I hated, really hated the book), but because I want to prove that I'm not some kind of reactionary or pretentious contrarian. I really can't get enough of Bill Murray and realize that you probably can't, nor can you or you or you. Bill Murray in Saint Vincent is Saint Vincent, the supporting cast, brilliant little planets to his sun, and me (and you and you and you) bathed in light for having watched the show.








More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three Line Movie Review

The Trip to Italy
dir. Michael Winterbottom


Two handsome in the way that I like middle-aged men go on a culinary tour of Italy, retracing the steps of the Romantic poets, namely Lord Byron, keeping up a steady stream of witty banter and driving along the requisite Italian roads with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean . They do brilliant improvisations of famous actors while bemoaning their own advancing age, receive the exquisite offerings of food brought to them in perfect Italian restaurants, converse with their families back home and people they meet on the road, conveying in a charming and poignant, utterly original way what longing means -- even what it means to be human. I floated out of the movie to strains of Italian opera and am now officially completely smitten by Steve Coogan.











Other Three Line Movie Reviews


Get On Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Get On Up

Before last night, I knew nothing about James Brown other than that he was an entertaining entertainer who screamed a lot, did splits on the stage in outrageous funky outfits, was a bit of a lunatic, had gone on a wild car chase from the cops sometime in 1988 when I was living in Nashville, TN and married to a musicologist (me, not him) and was called The Godfather of Soul. Now I know from the wonderful, rollicking biopic that he was an incredibly complex man whose mother abandoned him to an abusive father who then abandoned him to an aunt who was the kind madam of a whorehouse, where he became greatly influenced by gospel music and morphed into the James Brown that we think we know. It's hard not to smile throughout this movie while you're nodding your head, wiggling your hips and tapping your feet, thankful that a man with so much talent can emerge from so much hardship and sorrow and make his complex mark, for better or worse, on a world that essentially remained oblivious to how he got there.












More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle