HIT MAN (B) - Every generation gets the Brad Pitt it deserves. Glen Powell is an engaging actor, easy to look at, and he has just enough charisma to carry a movie. Here, the star of last winter's guilty pleasure "Anyone But You" re-teams with indie darling Richard Linklater ("Everybody Wants Some") for this based-on-a-true-story tale of a nerdy college professor moonlighting with the police department as a fake hit man.
Problems arise when Powell's Gary Johnson goes rogue and falls for the sexy divorcee (Adria Arjona) whom he had previously talked out of hiring him to kill her estranged husband. He stays in character as the brawny tough guy while secretly dating her, but then his police colleagues get suspicious after the woman's ex ends up shot to death. It's a clever narrative (Linklater and Powell co-wrote it), and Linklater, settling into middle age, is content to create something that's good enough for Netflix.
It's too long, at just under two hours, but Powell and a strong supporting cast manage to inject this with enough zing to make it to the finish line. Arjona is not just another pretty face; she has a good feel for verbal and physical comedy. Retta is underused as a sassy, sarcastic detective. Austin Amelio is sharp as the grungy detective who has gotten pushed aside by Gary's rising stardom as the hunky fake hit man.
You can't ask for much more from an actiony romantic comedy, even if the final 20 minutes limp to a preposterous ending. Powell takes his shirt off a lot -- what philosophy isn't that ripped? -- and he and Arjona look good simulating R-rated sex. There is surprisingly little violence, which is refreshing. Powell and Linklater had to embellish the real Gary Johnson's story in order to attempt an entertaining twist in the final reel, and that elevates this to a pretty good date-night film.
BURN AFTER READING (2008) (A-minus) -- A wonderful cast sinks its teeth into this mid-career Coen brothers romp about a couple of goofballs from a local gym getting swept into international intrigue after a CD full of classified information falls into their hands. This expertly paced farce might make you nostalgic for the days in which truly talented filmmakers -- Joel and Ethan Coen -- showed a mastery of making a movie, from beginning to end.
Frances McDormand steals the show as Linda Litzke, an average-looking middle-aged woman eager to raise money for enough plastic surgery to make her appear youthful again. Brad Pitt hams it up as Chad, the air-head personal trainer who schemes with Linda to blackmail the spook whose secrets spilled out. That spy -- actually fired by the CIA in the opening scene -- is Osborne Cox, played with juicy style by John Malkovich, whose powerful performance right from the opening scene also reminds you of a meatier era of movies.
What a cast they lead. George Clooney, actually a little flat here as a federal marshal, having an affair with Cox's wife, played by Tilda Swinton, before also falling into bed with Linda. Richard Jenkins as the gym owner who pines for his employee Linda. J.K. Simmons plays a CIA superior, and let's give a shout-out to character actor Jeffrey DeMunn who steals scenes from McDormand as her plastic surgeon.
The Coens weave an airtight plot that continues to fold onto itself, they set off a gun at just the right moment, and they generally get out of the way of their actors. A few of them can be just a little too cartoonish -- Pitt especially, though he's charming as ever -- and those indulgences might bother some viewers. This is a fun diversion sandwiched in the brothers' catalog between their masterpieces "No Country for Old Men" and "A Serious Man."
BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "Burn After Reading," the Fugs with "CIA Man":
DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE (B+) - If I ever live to see the day when we don't have anything resembling "cinema" anymore, I'll think of this head-spinning vulgar gag-fest masquerading in super-hero body suits. That applies to the death of movies either literally or figuratively.
You would be wise to be wary of a third entry in the "Deadpool" series. I farmed out the first one to a fan of Marvel movies, though I did go back to view it myself to prepare for the sequel, in 2018. Choose any excerpt from that 2018 review, and it would apply to this latest one, which teams Ryan Reynolds in the title role with Hugh Jackman's reanimated Wolverine from the X-Men series. For example: "Reynolds besieges the viewer with randy one-liners, fleeting pop-culture references, and obscure Marvel call-backs (and loopy call-backs to call-backs)." Check.
This movie is more self-aware than Deepak Chopra. It doesn't break
the fourth wall so much as bulldoze through it; Reynolds does it so
powerfully you might expect someone to yell out, "Hey, Kool-Aid!" The
references fly by at warp speed. Even if you are not an obsessive Marvel
nerd or a subscriber to the paper edition of Variety, you can still
enjoy the random lines you manage to catch in this blizzard of
pop-culture references. It's easy to succumb to the shotgun approach to
screenwriting. The words pelt you as much as the CGI weapons do. It's an
endearingly funny form of entertainment.
Reynolds and crew up the ante here in two ways. First, the script is riddled with not just puerile humor but hyperactive homo-erotica that devolves into multiple anal-rape jokes. Second, the snarky asides to the camera wink not only at the Marvel universe but also to the movie studios and backroom shenanigans that resulted in Disney gobbling up Fox's studio assets since the last film hoovered up bajillions at the box office. (Someone counted, and there are five such references.) Uncle Walt must be proud. (Seriously, he seemed like one dark dude who would appreciate a good butt-fucking joke.) Also, a lot of guys get gored in the crotch by Wolverine's claws, for good measure.
It's all as bleak as it is relentlessly aiming to be hilarious. Maybe one day we'll look back on 2024 when there was an endless budget for the third film in a super-hero series, you hired five writers (including Reynolds and director Shawn Levy), you snapped your fingers and people like Channing Tatum and Jennifer Garner show up in glorified cameos, you can charge $19 for a ticket to a standard screening, you mock the former studio by half-burying its memorable logo in a scene of post-apocalyptic devastation (CGI, of course), you blow up stuff for fun, you stuff scores of people in Deadpool costumes just for fun (were some CGI?), money is no object when it comes to song rights, and you can mock the whole production process in every other scene with self-referential disdain. What an embarrassment of riches now, and in the future when we fondly look back because we are so desperate to suppress the reality of the mid-century water wars.
But darn it, it's still 2024, and we have the luxury of spending our disposable income on frivolous guilty pleasures. And Ryan Reynolds is a classic movie star. He's so winkingly Canadian that you just want to wag your finger at him and pinch his cheeks. So naughty, this one. Reynolds even pulls double duty as a de-aged Fabio-like alternative-universe nice-guy Deadpool (actually called Nicepool), all young and handsome, fond of French kissing his mop of a little dog and in need of a cult de-programming. Deadpool's geeky alter-ego, Wade Wilson, is a welcome wake-up call, as he cuts a little too sharply with his working-class satire of us wage slaves.
Jackman gives as good as he takes as Wolverine, who gets pulled out of a bar for this latest mission to save the world. Jon Favreau is wonderfully deadpan in a set-up scene that informs the audience that Robert Downey Jr. won't be showing up as Iron Man. His banter with Reynolds is the best of the movie.
The jokes are so plentiful that the writers -- like Major League ballplayers these days -- need only hit about .230 to be considered successful. Reynolds and Leslie Uggams go toe-to-toe rattling off euphemisms for cocaine -- Forrest Bump, White Girl Interrupted -- as if they were actually fighting over the dregs of an eight-ball. Deadpool likes to refer to a lie as "an educated wish." He accuses a sloshed Wolverine of having "whiskey-dick of the claws." He tells Blind Al (Uggams): "If you could hear the look on my face, you'd smell how sad I am." And when Wolverine is tired of Deadpool's verbal diarrhea and, in a menacing tone, dares Deadpool to utter just one more word, the boy wonder pauses and eventually complies: "Gubernatorial."
Yes, it's all such mindless fun. I will say, though, whatever ketamine-fueled algorithm that spat out the final script has a pretty heavy third-act moment of true bonding up its sleeve. There is actually a method to this madness, and Reynolds and Jackman certainly know how to work an audience.
So what's a couple hundred million in service of providing an air-conditioned refuge from the high-desert heat in August? So what if the billion dollars in profit will get plowed back into a four-qel or reduced to powder form and snorted off various parts of bodies lolling around Ibiza. Whatever balm you need to face down our modern existential threats as we peer over the edge into the Void ...
BONUS TRACKS
The meta mania builds to such a frenzy that it comes out the other side, and the use of Madonna's "Like a Prayer" is not only appropriate to the climax but it is somehow emotionally effective:
And what's a bar scene without some pure-grain Patsy Cline sloshing through "You Belong to Me":
The Guild Cinema's annual Festival of Film Noir returned, on schedule, during the dog days of summer, curated by archivist Peter Conheim, who founded the festival 20 years ago and was responsible this year for many of the restored prints projected in 35mm.
GUILTY BYSTANDER (1950) (B+) - Zachary Scott gives a knockout performance as an alcoholic ex-cop recruited by his estranged wife to sober up and hunt for their kidnapped toddler.
When we first see Scott's character, Max Thursday, he's face down sleeping off a drunk in the fleabag flophouse he slums in, run by a hardened old gal named Smitty (Mary Boland). Georgia (Faye Emerson) pleads with him to put down the bottle and look for their disappeared son. Max sobers up the best he can -- he'll still do shots if it lubricates his investigation -- and, as he navigates New York's seedy underworld, he ends up falling for a dame who works in a club. Angel is played with outer-borough bravado by Kay Medford, the veteran comic who would go on to success in TV with "The Dean Martin Show" and a few memorable turns on "Barney Miller." Here, she steals the movie, playing it a little saucy and a little sexy.
Scott handles a little action and physical comedy well, and Joseph Lerner's camera lurks furtively around New York's mob scene, finding particular glee in the underground lair of a somnolent creep named Varkas, played perfectly by J. Edward Bromberg. When the reveal comes at the end, it is smart and well earned.
SPOTTED: A few well-traveled character actors: Dennis Patrick from "Dark Shadows" and dozens of other TV dramas. ... Jesse White, who was the original Maytag Repairman in TV commercials starting in 1967, seen here hitting on Medford's Angel at a bar. ... And Maurice Gosfield, who memorably portrayed Pvt. Doberman on "The Phil Silvers Show" in the '50s, in a five-second cameo as a bridge guard.
THE BLACK VAMPIRE (1953) (A) - The best of the fest was this visual masterpiece about a lonely loser who goes on a spree killing little girls, earning him the nickname the Black Vampire. It was inspired by Fritz Lang's classic "M."
When we first see mild-mannered language professor Dr. Ulber (Nathan Pinzon), we are alerted by the scream of cabaret performer Amalia, aka Rita (Olga Zubarry), who spots his figure stuffing a dead girl's body down a manhole. Ulber is portrayed as a mentally ill psychopath who can't help himself, and his lust for the blood of little girls as he stalks the streets of Buenos Aires earns him the nickname the el vampiro negro.
Director Roman Vinoly Barreto bookends this luscious black-and-white film with courtroom scenes as Ulber's case is about to go to the jury. In between, the director's camera explores the grimier side (and literally the sewer system) of the Argentine capital, roping in the homeless population as a Greek chorus. He also luxuriates in Amalia/Rita's joint, which is populated by willing escorts and run by the sketchy Gaston (Pascual Pelliciota), whose drug running will catch up to him by the final reel.
Plot aside, it is the visuals by Vinoly Barreto, assisted by cinematographer Anibal Gonzalez Paz, that are breathtaking. Shot after shot has the beauty and composition of a painting -- the angles arch, the lighting just so. Watching this on the big screen, in its restored glory, was a sumptuous feast.
SPOTTED: C'mon. It's Argentinian noir. It's not like any of them ended up on "Adam 12" or anything. The final girl featured at the end, playing Rita's daughter, is nicknamed Gogo, and she is the daughter of the director.
THE SLEEPING TIGER (1954) (B) - Joseph Losey directs this lead-footed but interesting suspense film about a common criminal infiltrating the home and marriage of a couple who have long fallen out of love. Dr. Clive Esmond (Alexander Knox) is determined to rehabilitate the petty criminal Frank Clemmons (Dirk Bogarde) by inviting the young thug into his home, to the horror of Dr. Esmond's maid but the secret delight of his wife, Glenda (Alexis Smith).
It doesn't take too many horse-riding jaunts with Frank for Glenda to eventually fall into the bad boy's arms. But Dr. Esmond is seemingly oblivious to the shenanigans, because he believes he can get to the bottom of Frank's sociopathic ways. Here's a hint: It has something to do with his childhood, in particular his mom. (The doctor might as well have a copy of Freud for Dummies on the vaunted bookshelf in his home office.)
But Frank can't give up his thieving ways or his affinity for a racy jazz club populated by all of his shady friends who like to engage in dirty dancing to the sweaty rhythms. Dr. Esmond soon coddles Frank to the point of paying off the police to clear Frank of assault charges against the maid -- which only emboldens Frank.
This all builds to a fevered pitch and an inevitable tragedy. Blacklisted director Joseph Losey ("The Big Night," "The Concrete Jungle"), working in exile in Europe, could have tightened this up by 5 or 10 minutes, but he does a workmanlike job of shepherding the story, which grows on you like a clever potboiler should.
SPOTTED: No surreptitious ringers in this British drama, but I'll note that the North American Alexis Smith was featured as a pin-up during WWII in a GI mag called -- and I'm not making this up -- Yank.
STARK FEAR (1962) (C) - Even a powerful performance by Beverly Garland can't fully make sense of this dense, sloppy barn-burner that wallows too much in creepy misogyny. Cruel men are portrayed as caricatures in a skewed attempt at dark humor to counteract the intrigue.
Garland, beloved from my childhood as the stepmother in TV's "My Three Sons," brings depth to the character of Ellen Winslow, who yearns to break free from her horrible marriage. Ellen gets caught between her husband, Gerald (Skip Homeier), and Gerald's old business rival, Cliff Kane (Kenneth Tobey), whom Ellen has gone to work for as a secretary. The hubby disappears, and Ellen starts falling for Cliff.
The plot gets twisted in on itself, but this oddity from 1962 has snippets of prescient moments as a pop culture artifact. There is the sassy single galpal (Hannah Stone) and a tacked-on buildup to a rom-com rush to the airport -- beta rumblings of the genre's tropes to come. This all doesn't really add up, and the misogyny actually devolves into sexual assault at one point, but Garland carries it to the finish line with her sheer charisma.
SPOTTED: Tobey, who made a living out of playing sheriffs, wardens and judges, had a long career spanning from "It Came From Beneath the Sea" in 1955 to "Big Top Pee-Wee" in 1988. ... And this was one of the first "composer" credits for the legend John Williams ("Star Wars," "Superman" etal.), credited here as Johnny Williams, creator of the "party music."
BREATHLESS (1983) (B+) - Richard Gere can do no wrong in this cynical remake of the Jean-Luc Godard classic. Valerie Kaprisky pouts like a classic dame, and the two of them sizzle with Cinemax sexuality in this tale of a pretty-boy cop-killer hopelessly on the lam in grimy post-punk Los Angeles.
This re-imagining of the 1960 touchstone reunited L.M. Kit Carson (writer) and Jim McBride (writer-director) from "David Holzman's Diary." This was McBride's mainstream breakthrough -- he would go on to direct "The Big Easy" and "Great Balls of Fire" with Dennis Quaid. Here they craft a jangly script with an improv feel, delivering a well-turned one-liner at every key moment.
Gere's Jesse hunts down Kaprisky's Monica in L.A. hoping to rekindle a recent affair in Las Vegas. Problem is, he shot a highway patrolman while speeding through the western night (with a devil-red sky) in a stolen sports car. Or is that a problem? Monica, darn it, just can't keep herself from getting entangled with Jesse. Their naked interludes tell you all you need to know about why she can't quit the goofy hunk. (I kept imagining her saying at every key turn, "I really shouldn't, but ..."; she doesn't do that, but she does serve as a prime model for Maria de Medeiros' Fabienne in "Pulp Fiction.")
McBride lets Gere riff as Jesse spirals out of control. The soundtrack bangs out of the gate with Jerry Lee Lewis' "Breathless," and it roams from rootsy romps from Link Wray and Joe "King" Carrasco ("Caca de Vaca") to modern hits (as featured below). Kaprisky is a little shaky at first, and her accent is heavy, but she settles in eventually and gamely goes along for the ride (literally, in a series of flashy stolen cars). A cache of solid character actors (like Art Metrano, Henry G. Sanders and John P. Ryan) ground this as a foundational L.A. noir. And its freeze-frame ending is one for the ages.
SPOTTED: Hack comedy writer Bruce Vilanch as "Man With Purse" getting mugged in a bathroom by Jesse.
BONUS TRACKS
After the haunting opening scenes in "The Black Vampire," police sirens fade into the soft wail of a saxophone in this sequence full of arresting images and a gorgeous song:
The serial killer in "Vampire" reflexively whistles a familiar tune throughout the film. It is "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, a sly callback to "M":
"Breathless" rocks Godard's new wave with a new-wave music soundtrack. A climactic chase scene plays out to Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders vamping with "Message of Love":
And the memorable remake of the title track, over the closing credits, from X:
A couple of fairly obscure offerings from the Carter era.
BETWEEN THE LINES (1977) (A) - This is a dream cast that really only works if you wait a few decades and go back in time. Beyond that, it is a compelling ensemble work about a scrappy alt-weekly in Boston fearing a corporate takeover.
This is the film debut of John Heard, who stars as bad-boy reporter Harry Lucas, who has an on-again, off-again thing with photographer colleague Abbie (Lindsay Crouse, coming off "Slap Shot"). Heard carries the movie like an old pro, and he is surrounded by a lot of young actors, many in their first substantive role -- Jeff Goldblum (below) as trippy-dippy Max; Jill Eikenberry (below) (TV's "L.A. Law") as mousy office receptionist Lynn; Bruno Kirby ("Godfather II," "When Harry Met Sally") as the eager cub reporter David; Gwen Welles ("Nashville") as Laura, the neglected girlfriend of arrogant writer Michael (Stephen Collins from TV's "7th Heaven"); quirky Michael J. Pollard ("Bonnie and Clyde") as the street vendor; and a tart Marilu Henner as a stripper who gets interviewed by David and Abbie.
Joan Micklin Silver, who mixed TV movies of that era with films such as "Hester Street" and "Crossing Delancey," mother-hens this bright-eyed group of fantastic actors, doing justice to a smart script by newsroom veteran Fred Barron (with an assist from David Helpern), who would go on to work on such varied projects as "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts." Barron and Micklin Silver get just right the loosey-goosey feel of an upstart publication in the post-Watergate era, often populated with young, stoned, horny idealists who want to be the next ones to bring down the system. They get so many of the details of a news operation just right.
Little did they and the filmmakers know that they were actually on the brink of the great '80s heyday of the bulky ad-stuffed alt-weekly. But getting bought out by a rich asshole is never fun for a journalist, and the ensemble cast here plays off each other effortlessly, tossing around sharp banter, even in the scenes when they are not trying to get into each others' pants.
Micklin Silver shows an almost Altman-like command of the chaos at work here. And it's just pure joy to see hungry young actors -- led by Goldblum, Heard and Crouse -- riffing with each other, on the brink of, what seems in retrospect, the darkness before the dawn of a new era of cinema coming out of the American New Wave.
OLD BOYFRIENDS (1979) (C) - The only big-screen feature film directed by noted screenwriter Joan Tewksbury ("Nashville") stars Talia Shire as a psychiatrist who, "Broken Flowers"-style, hunts down her ex-lovers in order to analyze those failed relationships. Unfortunately it plays like a series of missed opportunities. And surprisingly, it's a limp script from Paul Schrader (and his brother Leonard) during his pulp heyday, in between "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull."
Shire is perfectly fine doing her usual mousy mope routine, but she just doesn't have the charisma to carry a movie. She plays Dianne Cruise, who had a painful break with her husband, and now delves into the past, with unexceptional results. She first tracks down the one who got away, college beau Jeff (Richard Jordan), a documentary filmmaker. She re-seduces Jeff and leads him to believe that there is a long-term possibility, only to dump him (and his adolescent daughter) abruptly and head back to Minnesota, where she pretty much does the same to the guy who humiliated her in high school, Eric (John Belushi), who sells formal wear and fronts a cheesy pop group. Belushi has totally the wrong tone for a movie like this, and you have to wonder if he would have had much of a career had he lived.
Dianne then goes further back in time to seek out her first boyfriend but only finds his lookalike brother, Wayne (Keith Carradine), who tells her that his brother died in Vietnam. That doesn't stop Dianne from toying with emotionally traumatized Wayne, to the point that she gets a lecture from his psychiatrist, played by a hammy John Houseman. Meantime, Jeff, the first guy, is intent on tracking Dianne down (employing a private eye played with deadpan amusement by Buck Henry).
There's definitely something going on here, but it's probably the episodic nature of the film that kills the momentum every 30 minutes. And while Dianne is an unlikable vigilante, it would be easier to identify with such an anti-hero if her motivations made more sense. Tewksbury's direction is uninspired -- she's fond of obtuse mirror reflections -- and this all limps to a rather bland Hallmark ending.
Roger Ebert used to write about the "idiot plot." Leave it to the Swedes to perfect it to the point of having every scene be an idiot scene. Movies don't come more frustrating than "Mother, Couch," which we really tried to hang in there with, but just could not make it to the end. (And probably a good thing, too. This review -- in an idiot move -- essentially gives away the ending. I would not have liked it.)
"Mother, Couch" clangs at the wrong tone from the start, as David (Ewan McGregor) is stress-walking across the parking lot of a furniture emporium, in which his mother (Ellen Burstyn) has parked herself on a couch, determined not to budge, for some unknown reason. The rest of the film involves the ridiculous idea that it's impossible to get David's mother to end her encampment. The viewer is also hard-pressed to care about why she's there and why David is beside himself over this development.
Also on hand are Rhys Ifans as David's blase brother Gruffud and their chain-smoking sister Linda (Lara Flynn Boyle, looking mummified), who is never told to stop lighting up in the store by the owner's daughter, Bella (Taylor Russell) or the eccentric owner and his twin (both played by F. Murray Abraham, in an embarrassing performance). Bella, young and cute, exists solely to flirt with middle-aged David, who is also harried because of the strains of his crumbling marriage to Anne (Lake Bell), who, in several idiot scenes, calls David on the store's landline instead of his cell, just so Russell has something to do besides stand their and look pretty.
The absurdism is tuned to 11, but the plot development never makes it out of the low single digits. This is the type of infuriating movie in which characters cannot give simple, straightforward answers to questions like normal people would, else the obvious would burst this artificial bubble. I walked out when David calls 911, and when asked to state his emergency, he keeps stammering. Try just saying, "I dropped my mom; here's the address; please come tend to her."
This is supposed to be a thinker about how our parents create obstacles and hold us down, even as we stumble into middle age. Instead, it's about annoying jerks -- Burstyn's pissy mother especially -- who don't have the sense to either let the old lady rot on the couch or simply each take an arm and a leg and not drop the old crank. I really wanted something interesting to happen and was kind of curious how it would turn out. Good thing I didn't stick around for the magical realism.
Title: MOTHER, COUCH
Running Time: 96 MIN
Elapsed Time at Plug Pull: 70 MIN
Portion Watched: 73%
My Age at Time of Viewing: 61 YRS, 9 MOS.
Average Male American Lifespan: 77.3 YRS.
Watched/Did Instead: Went home and started this review.
MUBI had some short films that were going to leave the platform by the end of July, so we lined up a few, all of them, coincidentally, focused on children.
LICK THE STAR (1998) (B) - This is a trifle with training wheels from a young Sofia Coppola, who embeds among junior-high girls in all their hormonal cattiness.
She would put it all together quickly the following year with her feature debut, "The Virgin Suicides." Here she mixes in some ringers with actual students to tell the story of the rise and fall of an alpha female who leads a group of girls intent on poisoning the boys at their school. The code name "lick the star" is roughly a reverse of "kill the rats," and rat poison is the tool the girls plan to use.
Coppola creates that lethargic mood that she would make her calling card, a Southern California ennui that is still milked effectively to this day by the likes of Lana Del Rey. Daddy springs for the rights to some cool alternative chick music (like the Go-Go's, Free Kitten and Kim Deal's the Amps. In a mere 14 minutes, Coppola creates a neat story arc and a thoughtful rumination on adolescence.
THE NEST (B+) - The intense Hlynur Palmason ("A White White Day," "Godland") spins a spare tale of siblings building a clubhouse over the course of a year. While respect is given to the harsh change of seasons, Plamason retains a sense of frivolity.
He sets his camera firmly in one place, as if he were planning to show us a time-lapse video from beginning to end. But he chops it up, with few scenes lasting more than 30 seconds in this 22-minute short. There is hardly any dialogue, much of it incidental. We see the structure grow from a simple pole out in the middle of nowhere into a sophisticated elevated play area.
The kids are mischievous, at one point showing how fun it is to let a big heavy disc, like a manhole cover, drop down and wedge sideways into the soil. Tragedy hits when one of the kids -- they usually are irresponsibly unsupervised, like the old days -- plummets to the ground like that disc. The subsequent scenes are reduced to two of the children, and Palmason makes you wonder if the third survived or will ever return. In the end, this is a spirited peek into the innocence of childhood and the joy of invention and play.
TUESDAY (2016) (B-minus) - Not to be confused with the recent dud starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, this short spends 11 minutes with a 16-year-old girl coping with a loss. It's from Charlotte Wells, who splashed magnificently in 2022 with her full-length debut "Aftersun."
It's difficult to talk about the plot without divulging too much. The first half of the film involves Allie (xx) going about the mundane tasks of her day, nagged and annoyed by family and friends. She is eager to get to her father's house, where she is scheduled to spend the night. What we find out when she gets there is quite moving, in part because the heaviness of the situation is referred to only obliquely. It's really not more than a germ of an idea, though, more of a film exercise than a fully realized film. It serves to set the table nicely for "Aftersun," sharing with it the nuances, happy and sad, found in the father-daughter relationship.
BONUS TRACKS
It's Tammy & the Ampersands with Tipp City, the kickoff song in "Lick the Star":
