(Total: 7 movies, 1 TV show)
A gentle documentary.
Come for the rapping, stay for the plot.
Still holds up.
Canadian. Funny.
Does what it should.
One of the best films I’ve seen this year.
Does what it sets out to do.
Mark Steven Johnson’s When in Rome* is a perfectly competent entry into the second-tier rom-com cannon. It leans heavily on the comedy part of the equation—Dax Shepard, Jon Heder, Will Arnett and Danny DeVito all play enchanted suitors—and the comedy would perhaps be enhanced by having drunk a few adult beverages before watching. This is a movie that isn’t bad, but also is barely holding on to its Good rating.**
Cost: $3.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home
*True story: I was jonesing for some Kristen Bell—I had just read a Vanity Fair article with interviews with the cast of Veronica Mars—and remembered that this movie was the genesis of the Kristen Bell/Dax Shepard relationship. Then, I mistakenly assumed that he was the lead and was initially confused as to why Josh Duhamel was taking up so much screen time.
**Perhaps due to the above confusion, I wasn’t fully rooting for the couple. But Kristen Bell’s friends are fun, it’s an interesting premise, and Rome looks good.
After her return from Rome, Beth receives a phone call from Joan informing her that she is front page news due to her climbing into the Fountain of Love. A cutaway shows a newspaper with the headline “Stupidissima.” This translates not simply as “stupid,” but rather as “the pinnacle of stupidity.”
Nisha Ganatra gives us a rare object in Late Night: the grown up comedy. Aside from a great cast* it’s also an interesting look at how those past-your-bedtime** comedy shows get created. It’s got some laugh-out-loud moments, and many chuckles and I found myself thoroughly charmed.
Cost: $6.00
Where watched: the Laurelhurst Theater
*Emma Thompson of course, and Mindy Kaling. And all those writers in the writers room were fun to watch and I enjoyed seeing Paul Walter Hauser, who was so good as the not-so-smart buddy Shawn in I, Tonya
**It occurs to me that probably no one thinks of these shows this way any longer. I’m asleep by 10, but still see bits from late-night comedy shows because they are available on YouTube
A poster for director Nisha Ganatra’s first feature, Chutney Popcorn, can be seen on the wall of Molly’s room.
Marc Lawrence’s The Rewrite is a movie that seems to have time traveled from the 90s, landing squarely in 2014 and carrying on as if nothing has changed. Hugh Grant is a screenwriter who has slid so far in Hollywood he takes a job teaching screenwriting at a college in upstate New York* where he chooses his students by checking online to see what they look like** and then tries his best to avoid teaching them anything.*** Allison Janney is a frigid Jane Austin scholar who thwarts him at every turn**** until he has a realization and everything comes up roses for him.*****
Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home, (and I now pledge to look up some reviews before putting a five-year-old movie I’ve never heard of into my DVD player)
*It happens to be the same college one of my former roommates attended.
**He ends up with eight very attractive young women and two very nerdy guys. Marisa Tomei argues her way into class, and I found myself wishing we could shuffle Hugh Grant off camera and just have a movie about her character.
***Except for one person. And, to no one’s surprise, that person is not one of the nine attractive women. Grant decides that one of the nerdy guys has a brilliant script and mentors him into a movie deal. Those ladies, though, they are still window dressing. No reason to see if they can write. No reason to mentor them.
****Strangely, we are supposed to see her as the villain here, rather than as a person making some good points.
*****At that point I was hoping for more of a Leaving Las Vegas-style ending.
Portions of the film were shot in and around Binghamton, NY and the nearby Binghamton University. This is because director Marc Lawrence is a graduate of the university, and has expressed a great love for the school and his experience there.
William Bindley captures the Last Summer (the one after high school and before college) in this pleasant ensemble movie that is as breezy as the wind off Lake Michigan.* Maia Mitchell and K.J. Apa** are the main twosome, playing an aspiring filmmaker and musician, but there’s also Sosie Bacon*** as a girl hoping to get into her fourth-choice college, and Halston Sage**** who has a meet-cute with a baseball player during a Cubs game.***** It’s not an earth shattering movie, but that summer after high school is, in some ways, the last gasp before real life starts and I appreciate having a 2019-era chronicle of it.
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*I’ve not actually been to Chicago and so I have no idea if there is wind off of Lake Michigan in the summer, but that sentence needed an ending, so there it is.
**His face is so symmetrical that I have trouble looking away from it.
***I also enjoy Sosie Bacon. I think it has to do partially with her genetic material (mother is Kyra Sedgwick who imprinted on me in Singles, father is Kevin Bacon, of well, every movie, to at least the sixth degree) and partially because she’s got a laid-back frowny vibe which I enjoy.
****So very good in Before I Fall and Paper Towns
*****There are a few other plots involving boys—most memorably two nerdy guys who accidentally pass themselves off as stock traders so they can drink in a bar—but I only have three sentences and we’re already at fifth-level asterisks.
Both K.J. Apa and Maia Mitchell are not orginally from the United States. Apa is from New Zealand and Mitchell from Australia.
If you are looking for a gentle ensemble comedy with a lot of laughs, look no further than Kim’s Convenience.* The convenience store owned by the Kim Family (parents Appa & Umma,** with their grown children Jung and Janet***) provides a steady series of memorable situations and characters. The Kim family is partially estranged—father and son haven’t talked in years due to Jung’s delinquent adolescent choices—but there are still a lot of laughs to be had as the Kim family goes through life’s ordinary trials.****
Cost: Netflix monthly charge ($8.99)
Where watched: at home with Matt, who heard about it on Feminist Frequency
*It also has the charm of being set in Toronto, which means when characters are issuing apoligies, you get to hear that charming Canadian closed-mouth prounciation: “soory”.
**I know this is Korean for father and mother, but IMDB doesn’t list the parents’ names.
***There’s a great supporting cast too: Jung’s friend Kimchee; Jung’s boss Shannon, who is delightfully awkward in her trying to project that she’s hard-working, while barely hiding her crush on Jung; Janet’s friend Gerald, who is a pushover; the too-familar Mr. Mehta; and the ever suffering Pastor Nina.
****Most of the humor comes from normal situations such as trying to prove who is the better photographer, and a goodly number of complexities arising from situations at church.
The interior set of the titular location is an exact replica of a real downtown Toronto corner store, Mimi Variety.
I hadn’t seen David Fincher’s Fight Club since 1999*, and wasn’t at all certain it would hold up, so I pressed play with some amount of trepidation. My trepidation vanished in the first few minutes and I found myself settling back into the feeling I remember the movie giving me the first time I watched it.** It’s violent, a bit terrifying, hilarious, runs at a breakneck pace, and might be both Edward Norton and Brad Pitt’s best performances*** and if you haven’t seen this film, get thee to a viewing.****
Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home, as part of Filmspotting’s 9 from ’99*****
*Or rather, since the year 2000, as the journal excerpt below proves.
**The feeling in question: This movie is awesome! I also want to be in a Fight Club! And also, no, I can see that it isn’t actually a good thing! But I still am enjoying myself tremendously watching this film.
***This movie also manages the impossible: it’s a movie about men doing men things that exclude women, its plot contains only one woman and she’s more of a plot point than a character, and yet still I find myself charmed. How does this film do that?
****It’s been 20 years since its release, so you probably know the twist. It’s still worth watching if you do.
*****And between this film, the Sixth Sense, and the Matrix the year 1999 was sending a very strong message that all was not as it seemed.
Author Chuck Palahniuk first came up with the idea for the novel after being beaten up on a camping trip when he complained to some nearby campers about the noise of their radio. When he returned to work, he was fascinated to find that nobody would mention or acknowledge his injuries, instead saying such commonplace things as “How was your weekend?” Palahniuk concluded that the reason people reacted this way was because if they asked him what had happened, a degree of personal interaction would be necessary, and his workmates simply didn’t care enough to connect with him on a personal level. It was his fascination with this societal ‘blocking’ which became the foundation for the novel.
Excerpt from my journal the day I watched Fight Club:
Nahnatchka Kahn’s Always Be My Maybe did not charm me from the beginning, but it slowly ramped up, and by the end I found myself satisfied with a very funny, and surprisingly moving, film. While neither Ali Wong nor Randall Park were familiar to me, their awkward chemistry and their characters’ long history provided a couple I could root for.* Add in a series of scenes featuring a major star who chews scenery while playing himself, plus some crackling dialog and a bevy of one-liners and you’ve got a solid rom-com.
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*Though I’m not at all convinced of their long-term prospects.
Ali Wong began performing while at UCLA as a member of the university’s LCC Theatre Company, the largest and longest-running University Asian American theater company, of which Randall Park was a co-founding member during his time at UCLA.
C.J. Wallis’ Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much is gripping, and exists at the intersection of Quirky Fellow Avenue and Super Nice Guy Way. For anyone with more than a few hours of the game show the Price is Right under their belt,* this will be a nostalgic walk back to “Come on down! You’re the next contestant on the Price is Right,” and the showcase showdown, and all those models pointing at things.** Ultimately, Theodore Slauson is a good guy*** and his fascination with, and attempts to get on, the game show make for a surprisingly engaging documentary.****
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home
*Guilty! I watched this show a lot during my pre-teen and early teenage years, especially during the summer.
**Not to mention the inherent sexism intertwined with Barkers Beauties, but this documentary is not about that. (That sounds like it would be an also interesting, yet much less cheery, documentary.)
***The show also interviews Roger Dobkowitz, the longtime producer of the show, and Bob Barker. All interviews look on the bright side of things.
****I found the ending to be slipshod. Is the current situation with the show as Drew Carey has outlined, that there are now just too many prizes to memorize?
(13 movies watched)
Second time. Still funny.
Good dancing
Electric performance
Not the bucket list you think she’s going to make
Life choices
Great outfits
Kids! Who aren’t bratty!
The continuing campaign to make you hold onto your toys forever.
Crackles with disappointment and delight
These women are funny!
The terrible realization
