SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE (A) - This assured comic drama takes a fairly trite premise -- two young adults in Paris living in adjoining buildings never noticing each other but suffering from similar ennui -- and injects it with sweetness and insight. Two appealing leads -- Francois Civil as worker-bee Remy and Ana Girardot as research scientist Melanie -- infuse the story with the stuff of life as we watch them navigate parallel tracks.
Cedric Klapisch ("My Piece of the Pie," meh), who co-wrote the screenplay with Santiago Amigorena, fills each scene with charm and wit. His set pieces are meticulously staged, using luscious but muted colors in tight Parisian interiors.
Girardot and Civil come off as fully formed but insecure millennials looking for companionship and contentment while battling their own forms of depression. Their therapists, with wildly divergent styles, provide a sounding board for each and dry comic relief that is the hallmark of the film. Simon Abkarian is wonderful as a know-it-all shopkeeper and an inadvertent would-be cupid. Klapisch juggles it all like a pro, bringing it together in a plump but satisfying 110 minutes, nailing the ending perfectly.
This late 2019 release slipped in under the radar and is now available for streaming here.
RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES STORY (B-minus) - This is kind of an odd documentary about an eccentric person. Marion Stokes, a leftist from the '50s and '60s who co-hosted a local public-affairs show in Philadelphia in the 1970s, dove into the VCR era, an obsessive recluse in a mansion (she married rich), running multiple machines around the clock for decades.
This late 2019 release slipped in under the radar and is now available for streaming here.
RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES STORY (B-minus) - This is kind of an odd documentary about an eccentric person. Marion Stokes, a leftist from the '50s and '60s who co-hosted a local public-affairs show in Philadelphia in the 1970s, dove into the VCR era, an obsessive recluse in a mansion (she married rich), running multiple machines around the clock for decades.
This film is split between curating her truckloads of videotapes and analyzing her life and her behavior. It is not always successful at both. It never really cracks the mystery of Stokes, despite stories from her children and ex. (Stokes may not have been that interesting a person.) The excerpts from her vast archive are sometimes interesting, especially when the screen splits in quadrants and we watch live coverage of the 9/11 attacks as they are first reported, initially just CNN and then finally the other networks breaking into their regular programming. Then again, too much time is spent on the Iran hostage crisis of the Carter era.
This feels like a missed opportunity but an intriguing curiosity at the same time. Stokes seemed to be obsessed with pursuing an ultimate truth. Whether she ever found it, we'll never know.
BONUS TRACK
Our title track, from Wilco:
BONUS TRACK
Our title track, from Wilco:
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