Tom Hanks’s That Thing You Do is a gentle pleasure of a movie from start to finish, capturing all that was shiny about 1964.* In this breezy movie, Tom Everett Scott (Guy Patterson) is the anchor to the Wonder’s skyrocketing fame, while Johnathon Schaech (Jimmy) is a “serious” musician teed up to have problems with fame.** Liv Tyler’s big speech falls flat, which I’m blaming on the writing and not the performance,*** and there are a few things that cause discomfort in 2020,**** but overall, this movie is a good distraction.
The verdit: Good
Cost: $3.99 via Google Play Where watched: at home (as a palate cleanser after watching Monster. I had no idea I would get to see Charlize Theron twice in one night. She plays a girlfriend.)
*This is a baby boomer nostalgia film for sure. Which doesn’t keep it from still being fun. **More fun than the both of them: Steve Zahn as Lenny the guitarist. ***This is a male-centered film. ****There’s a little bit of Magical Negro going on with Bill Cobbs’s Del Paxton, and Obba Babatundé’s Lamarr would have been nice to have something to do besides be the cheerful servant.
Questions:
How long will that song be stuck in your head?
Which is your favorite time the Wonders (or the Oneders) perform “That Thing You Do”?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Including full versions, alternative versions, live versions and snippets, the song “That Thing You Do” is heard eleven times in the movie.
In Monster, Patty Jenkins directs Charlize Theron to an Oscar-winning performance, but also provides a nuanced portrait of a serial killer. Aside from Theron’s full command of the screen,* Christina Ricci turns in a masterful performance as Selby.** Many things disturbed me about this film,*** but in the good kind of way that means I’m not ignoring depressing things about real life.
The verdict: Recommended
Cost: free via Roku (with ads) Where watched: at home
*I loved her can-do spirit when she was feeling up and the contrasting low points. Theron’s physicality was great too, the way she captured Aileen’s reach out/pull back energy. **The unsure ingenue-type who also was a bit whiny and I never really understood why SHE didn’t go and get a job. What a fun performance! ***The low prices for sex acts, for one. The number of men depicted who are willing to pay for sex. The casual discarding of women who are sex workers.
Questions:
What kind of world would we have to live in so none of the events of this movie would take place?
Did you find Aileen to be a likable character? Why or why not?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Charlize Theron said in an interview that she was confused when Patty Jenkins approached her for the role. “Why me?” she asked the director. “These are usually the [roles] that I have to go out there and sweat blood and kill somebody for.” Jenkins’ reply was “Honestly, I just looked at you, and I looked at everybody else, and I said to myself, ‘I could kick the other actors’ asses. You, I’m not so sure.'”
May 2022. This is a post from the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for more than two years now. I am publishing it without revising, so please excuse its first-draft form.
I know that a lot of people are having a hard time. I know that staying at home is hard for some people and going to work without the proper gear is hard for others. I know that people aren’t receiving unemployment checks and that makes them make terrible choices. I know that a lot of kids aren’t learning a lot of things right now.
But me? I haven’t had this good of a month in ages. Possibly decades.
I get to stay in my home, which I love. I get to structure my own time. There is enough time to do the things I want to do during the day. There is enough time to rest. I can really focus in on building my businesses. I don’t have a lot of (or any) outside demands on my time.
This pandemic has taught me that I don’t think I can go back to the way I was living. Shoving in my W-9 work after a long day of W-2 work. Constantly exhausted. Always feeling like I don’t spend enough time at home.
As with everything there’s a rub. Going to work every day let me keep living in this house, pay my bills and save money. I have to figure out how to do those things without going to work.
That said, I found a job to apply for at Reed college that excites me. If I get it, it will mean jumping back on that treadmill. It’s something to consider if I do get it.
“In other news, I’ve been watching Homeland, and who should show up but your friend, the wee Timothée Chalamet.”
Text from my friend S. North.
He’s the guy who had me memorizing the Unicode for é (Alt+0233), he’s an actor who has up and come, he’s the person you might be pronouncing his name incorrectly. (It’s TEE-MO-TAY SHALL-AH-MAY, though apparently he also answers to TIM-O-THEE.)
Maybe you’ve seen his curly head, lean body, and sharp features in a variety of places, or you’ve heard a variety of people (young girls, older girls, directors, actors) gushing about him.
Or maybe you haven’t?
For more about Timothée Chalamet, including a breakdown of his roles, read on.
Background:
Chalamet grew up in New York City, though the family spent their summers in France. A variety of his family members worked or work in theater, film, and television. (His mother was a Broadway dancer.) He started acting early, and attended the Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music & Art & Performing Arts and landed a few choice movie roles while in high school. After graduation there were more roles that were even choicer; between those roles and his good looks, he’s everywhere.
Chalamet (whose father is French) has also grown into an internet-heartthrob phenomenon. His haircuts are breaking news stories, he’s been hailed as the ‘new Brando’ and more than 61,000 people follow an Instagram account that Photoshops his face onto famous artworks.
Maybe you’ve decided it’s time to watch some Timothée Chalamet movies. But which one?
The movie you can’t watch:
Let’s talk about the film you aren’t going to watch. That would be A Rainy Day in New York which was shelved by Amazon after the combination of Woody Allen and #MeToo became too much. Chalamet and other stars donated their salaries to various charities.
Who knows if this is one of the insufferable Woody Allen films, or one of the magical ones. In the meantime, here’s a photo.
Movies with just a little Chalamet:
Men, Women, & Children
This isn’t a good film and I don’t recommend it. If you are watching it for Mr. Chalemet, you will see him for approximately 15 seconds. He’s a football player.
The cast list tricked me into thinking he had a bigger role because he’s listed seventh, but I see what they did. They put all the adults first, and then alphabetized the teenagers by last name which put him at the top of that list above Olivia Crocicchia, Kaitlyn Dever, Ansel Elgort, Elena Kampouris, and Travis Tope, all of who had plot arcs. And yes, that was already too many plot arcs for one film, but there are even more plot arcs with the five adults in the film.
If you are looking for Mr. Chalamet in this film, he can be found in a bit role in the first 15 minutes as Private Philippe DeJardin. After that, you’d better be in it for Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, and some very deliberate filmmaking.
One of a few “young” roles, here he plays Tom (15 years). Tom is Matthew McConaughey’s son and Casey Afflack portrays him later in the film. You can watch the a clip below. I didn’t rewatch Intersteller for this list, but I suspect there isn’t a ton more of him in this film.
2017 was a big year for Chalamet because he was in four films. This was my introduction to him, playing Kyle Scheible, the boy Saoirse Ronan is into after the thing with Lucas Hedges falls apart.
I recall some bit of press where Timothée Chalamet commented that he hopes that no one thinks he is anything like this character; it’s easy to see why. Kyle Scheible is exactly the type of boy where nothing good can come of being attracted to him, but attracted you are.
Total Chalamet screen time is about 15 minutes or so. But this movie, my favorite of 2017, is so good, it’s worth watching.
I found this quiet little drama on Kanopy earlier this year and I loved it. I was all in on Miss Stevens and her weekend at the state drama competition.
Billy is Chalamet’s character, and we get to see him do a monologue and also make things difficult for Miss Stevens. This is the film where he probably has the most screen time of his not-starring turns.
I would work with Greta on anything. I’m just totally in awe of her. I like working with filmmakers who are ten times smarter than me. Also I get to be the square to the circle of Saoirse Ronan’s affections again.
While I could see that a lot of women might want to grow up to play Jo in Little Women, and a few would love to sink their teeth into Amy, I doubt that many men grow up pining to be Laurie. But they should!
Chalamet’s Laurie is all rolling puppy, which makes him a great twin for Saoirse Ronan’s constant motion. He excels as the younger Laurie, though I think Christian Bale has more gravitas as the older Laurie. T.C. may be 25, but he comes across as younger.
But between the 1995 version and the 2019 version you’ve got a great range of Lauries.
Should you watch this? Of course!
It’s an movie I love, while hating the source material.
Timothée Chalamet and Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper in Mad Men) play siblings with supernatural abilities. While this is a good vehicle for Chalemet (and Shipkin,) it is the most boring film I’ve watched in years.
Should you watch this? Nope.
Maybe if you are a completist, have the flu, and there’s nothing else?
In this film, young Timothée plays young Daniel, who is banished to Cape Cod for the summer. There, he orchestrates a scheme with Emory Cohen (who was so very good in Brooklyn) that gets out of hand.
This is not a good movie, but I watched it because it was set in the 1990s on Cape Cod and because I like to watch Timothée Chalamet fall in love on screen.
Should you watch this? Nope.
It’s not good, especially if you aren’t interested in movies set in the 90s on Cape Cod.
HAL is the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Hal in the King is the man who would be King Henry V.
In this film, adapted from Shakespeare’s Henry V parts I and II by Joel Edgerton and David Michôd, we get to see Chalamet go from disfavored son and drunkard to king with gravitas.
At 2 hours 20 minutes, it’s a little too long, but it’s nearly all Chalamet all the time.
Co-starring with Steve Carell, Beautiful Boy is the twin stories of Nic and David Sheff. Nic is mired in drug addiction and David is doing his best to help his son.
Timothée Chalamet conveys all the drug abuse feelings, though he never slides into that scuzzy, wasted, burnt-out look of chronic abusers.
Should you watch this?
How burnt out are you with drug abuse narratives?
Does knowing two stars of the Office are playing serious roles motivate or hinder your interest?
As someone who grew up in a time when the few men who played gay men onscreen were always asked, “But you’re not gay, right?” I’m glad I live in a time when two guys can play men in love without the details of the personal sexual preferences discussed.
In this film, Timothée Chalamet plays Elio, the only son of wealthy academics who summer in the most gorgeous of places: Northern Italy. Armie Hammer is Oliver, the graduate student who comes to live with the family for the summer.
The boy and the man fall in love. It’s a slow film, but full of so many delightful moments and gorgeous scenery that I don’t mind watching it multiple times.
Should you watch this? Yes!
This is the reigning über Chalamet.
And why wouldn’t you want to spend a summer in Italy watching two guys fall in love?
Plus, I suspect in 10–15 years the age difference will be too creepy (it’s 17 and 24 in the book; the actors were 19 and 31)
Dune. Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Much online chatter about this. We shall see if this turns me from someone who eyerolls at any mention of Dune into a fan.
Questions:
If you haven’t yet seen Chalamet, what’s keeping you?
If you have, what’s your favorite of his performances?
May 2022. This is a post from the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for more than two years now. I am publishing it without revising, so please excuse its first-draft form.
I feel better today, maybe because of the afternoon bike ride, maybe because I only worked 7 hours.
Even with all my structure, time is somewhat amorphous. I went to log on to the 11:30 Zoom workshop on revision and discovered that today is Wednesday, not Tuesday. The workshop had come and gone.
I arranged a 4 pm call this morning with the editor of the journal where I am volunteering and the confusedly looked at my phone at 4 pm wondering who was calling me.
Still, things are well. I’m about to do some homework for the Timothée Chalamet list. Hopefully this movie will be better than the one I watched last night.
Another in the series of postcards that Sara is sending to her students. But unlike them, I got a bunch of “Super Spelling” stickers because she can’t use them with her students. They’re on the back.
She thinks my spelling is super. I know that my spelling is super due to my knowing how to properly use spell check.
While Andrew Droz Palermo’s work as a cinematographer for A Ghost Story should be celebrated, the same cannot be said of the directing skills on display in One and Two which is a movie so boring that I couldn’t even find anything to hate about it.* This is a film that shouldn’t be bothered with as the unexplained stuff is never explained, or even hinted at,** the time period is unclear for much of the film, and the ending doesn’t give any clues about the future. The only possible reason to watch this film is to see what Kiernan Shipka and Timothée Chalamet make of their roles.***
The verdict: Skip
Cost: $3.99 via Google Play Where watched: at home
*I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so bored by a movie. **We know the kids have powers, we know their father fears these powers, we don’t know where the powers come from, what causes the father to fear, how or if the mother’s illness is connected to the powers, or how that massive wall got built. ***Chalamet gets to emote a lot, which I think he enjoys. Shipka brings her ability to puzzle through and push against things. I quite like this vibe, which was present when she played Sally Draper in Mad Men and I’m curious if this is her thing, or if she does other things in other roles. Perhaps I will check out the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.
Questions:
Is it worth it to you to watch the movie just for the performances? Why or why not?
How do you think that wall got built?
How useful do you think the siblings’ powers would be?
May 2022. This is a post from the beginning of the pandemic. It’s been sitting in my draft folder for more than two years now. I am publishing it without revising, so please excuse its first-draft form.
When I had my full-time job, I sat down at my desk at eight a.m., had a half hour lunch around noon, and then closed everything down at 4:30. There was a half hour commute each way, I ate dinner, and most nights sat back down at my desk at home at 6:30 and worked on my W-9 work for two hours.
Right now I have no commute, I sit down at eight am, have been gardening for 30 minutes at 10:00, sit down for an hour lunch at noon or 12:30, and work until five pm. That’s not even eight hours!
So why am I so tired?
I’ve given this a good twenty minutes worth of thought and here’s what I’ve come up with. I’m totally focused for the hours I work at home, in a way that I wasn’t at work.
At work there were people to talk to, mindless meeting to attend, errands to run. Plus, most of my work was stuff I didn’t have to think much about for long periods of time. Writing the weekly checks? Took focus, but not much brain power. Number checking an annotated document? Took focus, but not brain power. Copyediting did take brain power, but that was a smaller segment of my week.
Right now I’m creating all sorts of new neural pathways around everything. Even 3SMReviews, where I have a good routine down for making posts, I am also spending my time writing content for fun lists, and learning how to up my newsletter game which takes reading, taking notes, and thinking.
There’s not really anyone to chat with at home though Matt and I do exchange words throughout the day.
I’m immersed in this new world I am creating and that, I think, is taking a lot out of me.
What to do?
I think first of all, I will rotate around what starts the day. I’ve been shortchanging the writing part of my day (the writing part that is not writing movie reviews, or writing a new copyediting service I’m providing) and I think whatever ended the day the previous day will start the day the next day.
Today I ran out of steam before I could work on the current novel. That means tomorrow my 8 am task will be that.
I also might start going for a bike ride around 3pm. That’s always been a low energy point to my day and I’d like to get out and get some sun on my face. I also miss biking. Though not the same commute up and down Interstate.
So a rotation of job duties, gardening at 10, an hour lunch and a 3pm bike outing.
Men, Women & Children continues to prove that I love Jason Reitman when paired with Diablo Cody’s writing, and not so much any other time.* Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy watching this film; I spent my time trying to figure out why this was such a bad movie.** This movie is populated with actors I adore*** yet it was a terrible, terrible film.
The verdict: Skip
Cost: free via Hoopla, the library’s lesser streaming service. 13 Going on 30 is on there now. Watch that instead. Where watched: at home
Boogie Nights (Porn stars! But through Paul Thomas Anderson’s lens)
Further sentences:
*JunoI love. Young AdultI love. Tully I adore (and why haven’t you watched it yet?) Up in the Air left me cold. Granted, I still need to see Thank You for Smoking, Labor Day, and The Front Runner to have a clear picture, but so far non-Cody-written films aren’t winning. **My verdict: it might be a book-to-movie problem. It’s certainly a too-many-characters problem. With about ten character arcs, people get flattened to one personality point. Because the movie is about sex and the internet, every single character interaction save one couple has to do with sex. Ansel Elgort and Kaitlyn Dever were my two favorite characters because their interactions had nuance. (And they had nothing to do with sex.) As someone who is interested in depictions of sex in film and books, this was fascinating. Update! I read the first section of the book on which the film was based to see if the characters were more well rounded. They were not and the dialogue was wooden. This was not a book-to-movie-problem, the story wins in no formats. (Though maybe interpretive dance?) ***Rosemarie DeWitt! Judy Greer! Emma Thompson! Jennifer Garner! Kaitlyn Dever! Serious Adam Sandler!
Questions:
Have you seen this? Did you find anything redeeming?
What do you think the key to a good ensemble cast movie is?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Writer, producer, and director Jason Reitman felt so much of the acting in this movie was based on reactions to texts, chats, and photos that using dummy screens with no text would not suffice. The production team had to create very realistic-looking versions of popular websites, all on their own tightly controlled software, with which the actors and actresses could interact in real time. According to Reitman, they spent “the same amount of budget on creating the digital world as we did creating the physical one. People know what Facebook looks like better than they do a hotel lobby, you stare at it all day, so it had to be convincing.”
I did think this was one aspect that the movie did well.
