Four Movies and a Book

Hello, friends and movie lovers. Is anyone else watching the Oscars this weekend? My whole family is quite excited and we’ve planned a special menu: oysters, deviled eggs, sardines on toast (with fixings), and some kind of veggie + dip situation. I might also make a confetti cake or something similarly festive.

I’m back with some movie recommendations after a bit of a winter break. I’ve also turned paid subscriptions back on and will return to more regular posting. I plan to mix it up a bit more, with both recommendation posts (like the one below) and posts about popular culture, books, and life in Maine. If I take another break, I’ll turn paid subscriptions off again, but as you know, I don’t paywall many of my posts. This is pretty much a free newsletter, and I am very grateful to those of you who subscribe and support my work. 

Weeknight Watch

Dumb Money (2023)
Directed by Craig Gillespie
Written by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo and Ben Mezrich
1 hour 45 minutes; Streaming on Netflix

I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy this movie about the rise and fall of GameStop, a news story that I didn’t really understand at the time and only half-followed. But it’s really fun, really fast paced, and almost joyful in its telling. Based on Ben Mezrich’s book by the same name, Dumb Money does a good job of explaining a fairly abstract series of events, introducing viewers to a motley crew of characters who bought stock using Robinhood, a new phone app. Screenwriters Lauren Blum and Rebecca Angelo juggle multiple story arcs and also manage to include the in jokes and peculiar phrases that arise from very specific online situations. IMDB * INTERVIEW * TRAILER

Fodder for a Long Discussion

Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Directed by Justine Triet
Written by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
2 hours 31 minutes; VOD $5.99

There is one great scene in this movie that occurs in flashback and when it finally arrived, I was like oh, here’s the story. The scene is nested within an extended courtroom trial and legal drama that was interesting but also, a bit chilly. I wasn’t really swept up until that one flashback. Still, this is a long movie that earns its running time and shows the complexity of family law, including how it affects children. I really like the way the main character is written; she’s a woman whose personality is put on trial, and she doesn’t apologize or make excuses for her complicated marriage, or for her literary ambitions. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER 

Overlooked 90s Rom-Com

Only You (1994)
Directed by Norman Jewison
Written by Diane Drake
1 hour 49 minutes; VOD $3.99

Our family watched this after Norman Jewison passed away and spent a delightful evening with Marisa Tomei, Bonnie Hunt, and Robert Downey, Jr. Yes, it’s very silly at times, and sometimes feels like it’s trying really hard to be as charming as Moonstruck, but it was good company and we could watch it with our kids (age 6 and 11), who both enjoyed it. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER 

Anti-Rom-Com

Modern Romance (1981)
Directed by Albert Brooks
Written by Albert Brooks and Monica Mcgowan Johnson
1 hour 33 minutes; VOD $3.99

I recently watched the new Albert Brooks documentary on HBO and learned that Brooks wrote almost all of his movies with Monica Johnson, which adds to my developing theory that movies with both a male and female screenwriter are generally more balanced and interesting. I’ve been a Brooks fan for a long time, but I’d missed this movie (I was three when it came out, go figure) and decided to check it out. It’s a very funny, sharp-edged study of male jealousy and how it can become part of a couple’s relationship dynamic. It reminded me of Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid, which I wrote about in this newsletter  a couple of months ago.  It’s also a fantastic time capsule of L.A. and the early 1980s, in general. IMDB * REVIEW * TRAILER 

+ + + + + READING ROOM + + + + +

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (2023)
By Claire Dederer

You may know Dederer from her memoirs Poser and Love & Trouble. This new memoir is less focused on her personal life, but no less personal as she explores the age old question: can you separate the art from the artist? Her jumping off point is Roman Polanski, a filmmaker whose work she adores but whose actions she abhors. What follows is a really interesting book of criticism that is often about criticism itself. She writes a lot about film because she got her start as a movie reviewer, and one of the struggles she had as a young, female critic was how to take on the mantle of authority that her fellow film critics (mostly older men) easily accepted. After trying out different modes of criticism, she discovers that she doesn’t want to be an arbiter of taste, someone who opines “objectively” from on high. Nor does she believe that it is possible–or desirable–for a critic to put what they know about a filmmaker’s personal life out of their minds and evaluate a film based purely on what they see on screen. She doesn’t argue for fans to take a certain moral position for or against particular artists; instead she writes about what it feels like to know a lot about the artists behind the artworks we love, and how those feelings affect our experience. As with all of Dededer’s writing, this book goes down easy, and covers a lot of territory–not just film, but fine art, literature, and music. But I think it will have a special appeal for anyone who sees a lot of movies and follows film criticism.