I’d bet when they first started filming this project that they thought the meat of the movie would be Will & Harper interacting with other people, particularly their famous friends; there are a lot of cameos from SNL alumni. But those appearances are cut to almost nothing. The meat of this movie is Harper and Will breaking down how “regular” people react to Harper, and how she is learning to be herself in the real world after decades of trying to fit in by suppressing who she really is. Well worth watching.
If you have to start your movie by announcing you shot it on 35mm film, you aren’t putting any faith in the method you’ve chosen to record your film.
If you have a non-linear story line and you number the chapters in the order they appear in the linear timeline of the story instead of in the non-linear order they appear in the film, you aren’t putting any faith in your audience’s understanding of the film.
This one’s for the advertising department: If your marketing explicitly states “nothing is as it seems,” your audience is going to figure out a lot of the twists early, especially when the twists aren’t as twisty as you imply.
You might have read that and thought I didn’t like the film, but I mostly liked it. It’s worth seeing, if only for the breakfast scene (to say more about that would spoil the magic).
You have to love a movie that gives each band and song opening title credits that are as large as the ones for the actors. It make sense, since the music is more important than the plot. Also: the movie started with a card informing the viewer that the British version of the MPA gave it an X rating, which it earns with a single disconnected scene that features still images of very graphic sex.
Oh, and Sting has a couple scenes as a gas station attendant who likes the music of Gene Vincent.
There have been multiple attempts to make a Beetlejuice sequel, and the final result seems to have come from throwing all the different scripts into a blender. Tons of disconnected stories that go nowhere, and lots of lazy writing. Example: when explaining why Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin’s characters aren’t in the movie, Lydia (Winona Ryder) says “we found a loophole that let them move on.” They never explain the loophole or reference it again. Also: Jeffery Jones, convicted as a sex offender for soliciting pictures from kids, wasn’t invited back for the sequel, but an animated character that’s clearly based on him has a major scene, and his photo is prominently featured in several major scenes, including one where altar boys sing “Day-O” at his grave. Creepy.
It’s fun to watch the cast play off each other, but it would be a lot more fun if the story didn’t feel like it was written in one draft by a second year improv team.
Fun side note: I teach at Luther Burbank Middle School. Tim Burton went here. He was not a fan.
Lover of Men: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln
The idea that Lincoln was gay is hardly new (as the Log Cabin Republicans would tell you), and the subject is a compelling idea for a documentary, but this film just doesn’t work. It meanders all over the place. The music is distractingly syrupy. There are far too many long, slow tracking shots and soft focus, slow motion shots. A short, focused look at the sexuality of Lincoln would be much more compelling.
And a side note: Just because David Bowie had a gender fluid life doesn’t mean it makes sense for this movie’s poster to feature Lincoln’s face with the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt.
I love a movie that tells you exactly what’s going to happen, but you have no idea they did it until it actually happens, and apparently Edgar Wright does as well.
It was also amusing to see Martin Freeman with a one word cameo as Declan (AKA Bizarro Liz).
Golly, I enjoy this movie. It’s a little rough picturing Emilio Estevez as punk, and there’s a big chunk toward the end that is for the most part incoherent, but the rest of it works well enough to hold the thing together.
It was… okay. Sort of a more Jewish Harold and Maude. I struggled to figure out why anyone would be interested in dating Jason Schwartzman’s sad sack cantor, but multiple women seem really excited to hang out with this mopey, lost guy. Carol Kane is unsurprisingly wonderful.
Side note: The NoHo Laemmle is a nice low-key change after the surface flashiness of AMC and the “we’re so cool” attitude of Alamo Drafthouse, but the Chipotle next door is a little rough.
Lots of fun, as long as you don’t think about any of the actions taken by most of the characters. Massive plot holes effectively spackled over by a crack team of scenery chewers.
Also: one of those movies that gives away waaaay to much in the trailer. Not everything, and not the end of the film, but still very spoilery. There should be a law that anything used in a trail from anywhere after the first act must be meaningless without context.
Exactly as depressing as you’d expect a documentary about kids living on the street in Seattle to be. From the opening with a 14 year old talking about how much she makes on “dates” and discussing her sexually transmitted infections with a doctor at a teen clinic, to the ending where some kids are in jail and one is dead from suicide, the film is endlessly bleak. The closest thing to a happy ending in the film for any of the kids is when one of them hops a train and leaves.
I loved this movie. It’s funny, and it has a great spin on vampire mythology that I’m fighting very hard to keep from spoiling. By the middle of the movie it’s pretty clear how the story will end, but it’s charming enough that I didn’t care. It’s in French, so be ready to read subtitles.
Also: it wasn’t playing at AMC or Alamo, so I actually had to pay for a ticket. The good news: tickets were only eight bucks! The bad news: parking was ten!
