Movies -- A Recap -- Part XII

If you're in the mood for something cute and funny, try Morning Glory.  I liked all the people in this movie, but for some reason I doubted it would be any good.  It's not an Oscar winner, but it was entertaining.  And as much as it seems like it would be easy to hate Rachel McAdams (I don't know why, it just seems like she should be hate-able), I can't hate her.  She's a winner.

Christine was an interesting pick to watch right after Morning Glory.  It's a similar theme (women making it in journalism), but based on a true story and 40 years earlier.  It's set at a Sarasota news station.  All I can tell you is that things in this movie took a very different and very dark turn in the interest of getting a sufficiently bloody and gritty story (because that's what we viewers love to see).  The title character, Christine Chubbuck, goes a bit far ... but I fell asleep, so I actually didn't see the key scene.  If you google the movie or check out this page, you'll quickly find out what it is.

S and I watched a pair of sort of weird, sci-fi, historically-inspired movies: Overlord and The Vast of Night.  Overlord is the story of the unsettling discovery of some Nazi experiments on the townsfolk which is made by some American soldiers dropped behind enemy lines just before the planned D-Day invasion. The Vast of Night is about a couple of radio operators in the 1950s who hear suspicious sounds over the wireless.  What was so weird about this one was that it was on Amazon Prime.  You know how they make suggestions about what to watch next.  The suggestions we got after this movie were basically porn!  First of all, I didn't know they had porn on Amazon Prime.  But second, I have no idea about what this movie about a couple of radio nerd kids in the 1950s indicated to Amazon's algorithm that port would be a good next choice.  Very weird -- and sorry, K, if that messed up your suggestions too!

I don't know how Brawl on Cell Block 99 got on the list.  Maybe it was another weird Amazon recommendation, after it decided porn wasn't appropriate.  Brawl was a bit graphic, so be ready for that.  I found Vince Vaughn's character to be contradictory in a way that was more intriguing than it was annoying. But still, it wasn't very good.

For a change of pace, if you're in the mood for something cute and sort of sweet, and if Community entertained you, try The Tiger Hunter.  It stars Danny Pudi (who played Abed on Community) as a lovelorn Indian gentleman who heads off to the US in the 1970s to make a name for himself and win the love of his life.  It's predictable, and the accents are wildly inconsistent, but it's still Abed, so I loved it.

If Abed's not for you, try This is Martin Bonner instead.  Similar sweet, not-much-happens sentiment, but a very different film.  Martin Bonner is played by Paul Eenhoorn (whose name you probably don't know, but you'd likely recognize his face).  Martin abandons his life out west to move back east for a fresh beginning.  He gets a job working for a program helping released prisoners transition to life on the outside, and befriends one of the participants in his program.  The movie is the story of restarting, and friendship.

I find Adam Driver irritating.  I think this might be because I first got to know him as his character Adam Sackler, the sad-sack boyfriend in Girls.  I didn't like that character, and so I don't like Adam.  But I do think he's a good actor (and probably a nice person -- I acknowledge that my Girls-based character judgment is likely unfair).  I liked him in Marriage Story, and I liked him in Paterson.  He plays a bad poet who has a weird girlfriend.  I actually didn't like the movie at all, but I like how his character makes it seem so appealing just to sit around and think and write.  Especially while we're still waiting for everyone to get vaccinated, it seems quite timely.

The Handmaiden is a film out of South Korea.  It's a bit difficult to categorize.  Is "strange erotic mystery" a standard movie category?  That's where I would put this, I suppose.  This has one of those things I love most: unreliable narration.  This mimics a Rashomon-style retelling of the same story from the perspective of multiple characters.  Love that, as a technique.  As far as the story of the movie, I give it an "eh."