Saturday Morning Three-Line Movie Review

If Beale Street Could Talk

Every scene in this gorgeous movie is a work of art, subtle and beautifully lit, suffused with warmth and love, and there are eyes everywhere, eyes that look out at you and eyes that you look into and eyes that look at one another. The movie is heavy, so heavy that you can't get out from under while watching it, the under that is the history of black people in America, the under that is white supremacy, a smothering blanket, and the director, Barry Jenkins, spares nothing in his literal spareness. You can hold your breath while watching it, you can feel the love emanating from the lovers, from the families, from the shadows and darkness, but you just can't get out from under the grief, the loss, the suggestion that love is sometimes just not enough.

More Three-Line Movie Reviews

Green Book

Crazy Rich Asians
BlacKkKlansman
Far From the Tree
Sorry to Bother You
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

Life FEELS Good

I get at least twenty requests a day asking me to promote a book or a product or a service on my blog. I delete nearly all of them. I was just about to press delete on reviewing the movie LIFE FEELS GOOD when the words cerebral palsy jumped out. Then I saw that it's a Polish movie, and I love Polish movies, so I clicked the trailer, and -- well -- I'm happy to review and promote it.

LIFE FEELS GOOD is a film by Maciej Pieprzyca and is described as "heartbreaking and humorous," two adjectives that I highly relate to and find resonant. Dawid Ogrodnik plays Mateusz, a man with cerebral palsy who wants to be understood by his family and friends. It's based on a true story and has been nominated for eight Polish film awards, winning for Best Leading Actor, Best Screenplay and an Audience Award. It's distributed by Under the Milky Way and will be available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, XBox Microsoft and other VOD platforms.

I will be viewing it soon and will post a review, but don't you think it looks amazing? It's going to be released tomorrow, November 6th. Check it out.

Saturday Afternoon Three-Line Movie Review

Crazy Rich Asians

I don't get it. Call me a killjoy, but while I understand how important this movie is with its all-Asian cast, and even though the actors are nearly all charming, the male lead, Henry Golding, is particularly sexy, and the presence of the great Michelle Yeoh works to partly redeem the tiresome superficiality, what is there to say but honestly? I don't get it.














More Three-Line Movie Reviews

BlacKkKlansman
Far From the Tree
Sorry to Bother You
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

Monday Morning Three Line Movie Review

BlacKkKlansman

I hesitated to even write a review for Spike Lee's new movie because I had so many ideas about it, most of those ideas are floating through my brain like guppies waiting to be swallowed whole by a whale and because -- well -- critiquing it is as overwhelming as the feelings provoked by it. I just wasted a sentence, though, on a movie that deserves, probably, an academic treatise, such is its complexity and craft, and while I didn't think it perfect by any stretch, it made me feel uncomfortable and that's exactly what a movie about race in America should do to a white woman. I don't think there's any need to explain why I felt uncomfortable (and it's a good thing to be white and feel uncomfortable today), but when I wasn't feeling uncomfortable, I was lifted up in spirit by Spike Lee's ability to meld so many seemingly disparate things -- the power of image to influence people, the power (and not so subtle warning of the power) of image in cinema, in particular, to even let people off the hook from truly regarding racism, in this country, the power of laughter to both highlight and horrify, the power of the patriarchy, the obeisance to the patriarchy by even those who are being oppressed, police brutality, anti-Semitism, Trumpism, music and culture and fashion -- into a piece of art that left me feeling both exhilarated and drained.











More Three-Line Movie Reviews

Far From the Tree
Sorry to Bother You
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

Saturday Evening Three-Line Movie Review

Far From the Tree*

directed by Rachel Dretzin
based on Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree

It's a given that I'd rush to see this documentary, as I believe Andrew Solomon's book Far From the Tree should be at everyone's bedside and a probable replacement for the Gideon Bible which has been so grossly twisted by its most evangelical adherents. Solomon's book is about humanity for humanity, and in these grotesquely inhumane times when children with brown skin are kidnapped from their parents and put in confinement camps, Solomon's brilliant and compassionate view of difference and Dretzin's visual interpretation of that book, along with a sensitive portrayal of several families' experiences, make for profound viewing. Like the book, the documentary should resonate for everyone because it's about family and love and the gnarly twists and turns of life, for those who might interpret difference as tragedy and for those who know that to hold both tragedy and joy at once is the ultimate expression of grace.








* Andrew Solomon and several of the cast of the documentary attended the screening and answered questions afterward. Here are a couple of pictures that Carl took:

More Three-Line Movie Reviews:


Sorry to Bother You
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

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

How beautiful is this shot?

Learning to Drive

It's been a long time since I've seen a quiet, sincere movie with fine actors and a deep and resonant script. Learning to Drive is about a friendship between two people, a driven New York book critic played by the always wonderful Patricia Clarkson, and a Sikh driving instructor played by the formidable Ben Kingsley . The movie has obvious metaphors, is about culture and marriage and divorce, but it's so finely wrought that nothing is obvious, and I left the theater deeply satisfied (not to mention wowed by Kingsley's pink turban and Clarkson's red hair) and -- dare I say it -- thrilled that movies like this are still made with quotes from Wordsworth, Tantric sex, Samantha Bee, one of Meryl Streep's daughters and one of J.D. Salinger's sons (another story that I'll tell you about some other time).














More 3-Line Movie Reviews

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

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Ida

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, this Polish film set in the early 1960s and the Stalin dictatorship, is so staggeringly beautiful that I am hard put to even attach words to it. The title character is a young woman who has grown up in an orphanage run by nuns, and before becoming one herself, she is told by the Mother Superior that she must seek the truth of her heritage, a journey that leads to her aunt, an embittered yet valiant and beautiful woman, a state judge and loyal member of the Communist Party. Shot in black and white with an extraordinary number of still moments that defy all your expectations of what film -- moving pictures -- can do to your mind and heart, Ida made me gasp, mesmerized me and is my favorite movie of 2014.







More 3-Line Movie Reviews

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

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Force Majeure

This very dry and very smart black comedy tells the story of a Swedish family on vacation in the French alps, all middle-classy, struggling with the usual weight of children, marriage and middle age until something happens that literally shakes them all up. I don't want to give away the plot, but if you like really smart movies about the constraints of marriage, about wondering what the hell we're all doing, about what we might do during an incipient disaster, about what we're actually made of and the often absurd shackles of bourgeois lifestyles, you will be as entertained and admiring as I. Why do Americans make movies that cost gazillions of dollars yet are never this good?










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

Gone Girl

I confess that I'm one of the few people in the universe that didn't unequivocally love the book (but rather thought it was one of the more hateful things I'd read in years) and had no intention of seeing the movie, but I was persuaded to do so when the alternatives were to attend a high school football game, hang out in the Valley or watch Dracula: The Truth Untold, so you can imagine my desperation and low expectations. Despite the visual candy that is Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, I maintain that just like the novel, the movie is a slick and soul-less creation with no sympathetic characters that made me long for the halycon days of real thrillers and intimate portraits of marriage and lust, not to mention a hot shower. When my children texted me about two hours in that the football game had ended, I gratefully clambered over the rapt audience and left the theater, missing not only Ben Affleck's supposedly glorious netherparts, but also, evidently, and as usual for me, the depressing cultural zeitgeist in this, the two thousand and fifteenth year of our lord.










More 3-Line Movie Reviews

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

The Immigrant

The reason why I was particularly happy watching this movie was not because it told the sad story of an immigrant from Poland whose luck ran out the moment she hit Ellis Island, but rather because I sipped a fruity draft beer while doing so, having literally run out of the house in the late afternoon to a 21+ theater after punishing both of my sons for -- well -- that has nothing to do with the movie. I love Marion Cotillard's face, and she appears in nearly every single frame of this poignant film, as does her co-star, Joaquin Phoenix who I grew to love after his performance in Her, but that has nothing to do with this movie either. I think the only thing I have left to say is that The Immigrant was beautifully crafted and well-acted but entirely predictable (the sacrifices of our forefathers! the dismal outlook for women! the promise of America dashed!) except for the fuzzy yet brilliant opening shot of the back of Lady Liberty which should have told me right then how it would all turn out.







More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Chef
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Cesar Chavez

I literally fled to the movies this morning, anxious and exhausted after a day of interviews and people clamoring about medical marijuana and the weight of nineteen years of dealing with shit and was promptly knocked flat on my face by Diego Luna's film Cesar Chavez, about a man who fought an infinitely harder battle for others. If you're an Angeleno, you know his story (and this past Monday was Cesar Chavez day with a holiday from school), but I didn't really know his story until the moment I began watching this very moving, almost cinema verite-style movie. The suffering rained down on the people who farmed our food, the obduracy of the powers-that-be (the almighty Governor Ronald Reagan comes out very poorly in this, presaging his breaking another union many years later as President), and the gentle, yet powerfully dignified actions of this simple man moved me to tears, so much so that I hope every single American man, woman and child goes to see this movie and learns a bit more about his incredible life.







Other 3-Line Movie Reviews:

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Display at the Arclight, Los Angeles, CA

***

Watching Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel was like listening to a bedtime story told by a group of men I adore while tripping on mushrooms (the only drug I can honestly say that the two times I tried it were about as good as it gets) without a hangover and a tray full of beautiful pastries right beside my bed. The movie was as visually beautiful as you could possibly imagine (the pinks! the blues!) and as zany as a Wes Anderson movie can be, and while there were moments where I wondered what the hell, everything worked with a near-Felliniesque aplomb. Oh, and Ralph Fiennes -- Rafe, Rafe, Rafe, je t'adore.






***The photo is of a display in the theater's lobby and is the original model created by the art team. One of the many reasons that I love this nutball city is that we get to see things like this at 11:30 on a Friday morning.





Other 3-Line Movie Reviews:

Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

I could probably write a three word review of Jason Reitman's saccharine peach pie (significant scene!) of a movie Labor Day, and those three words would be Really?, Really?, and Really? Neither Kate Winslet's acting chops nor Josh Brolin's manly biceps could possibly save this Damsel-in-Distress-Saved-By-Ex-Convict-Prison-Escapee-and-Creepy-Adolescent-Nerd-Son melodrama that ranks up there with Autumn in New York as a movie where I both squirmed in my seat because of the lack of explicit sex (which might have saved it) and felt embarrassed for the filmmaker. Really.





Other 3-line movie reviews:

Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Stephen Frears' beautiful movie Philomena has great open spaces where more is unsaid than said, and the story of the quiet determination and strength of Philomena, an Irish woman looking for the son that was stolen from her as a girl, is at once a testament to living with faith and grappling with overwhelming tragedy. The story is a true one, and it's a harrowing depiction of the cruelness of the Catholic Church, without being a diatribe against it, of the centuries-old suppression of sexuality and of the conflict between dogma and faith. The movie is also hilarious and perfectly charming, beautifully shot, and Dame Judi Dench is a goddess with Steve Coogan her unlikely yet perfect foil.

Other 3-line movie reviews:

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review***

photo from Life Magazine

American Hustle

Bale's comb-over, Adams' breasts, Cooper's curls and Lawrence's nail-sniffing sustain the two and a half hours of fast talking. It's superficial, slick and soul-less entertainment, easy. Robert de Niro's cameo cements my position that he's a whore.







***When I left the movie yesterday afternoon, I climbed the stairs to the roof-top parking with my friend D. We talked about the movie. We heard a giant crash and peered over the balcony of the lot to see the immediate aftermath of a motorcycle crash. A body lay next to the overturned cycle. Where? I said, I don't see it! My heart raced in that adrenaline rush of metal on metal. There, said D and pointed to something sprawled. We watched for a bit as rescue vehicles came, SUVs honked and swerved around. What a bunch of assholes, we said from our bird perch. My heartbeat slowed down as I drove down and around and down and around. I thought that I needed to write a three-sentence review every time I saw a movie, so here it is.