#119in2019

Honestly? Fucking neither. It’s shot beautifully (how could it not be when Todd Phillips is just trying to do everything Martin Scorsese would do, but a little less well) and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is truly, singularly committed and brilliant. But Phoenix is suffering from the same problem as Rami Malek and his incredible performance as Freddie Mercury last year - the movie each man is at the center of (in spite of their incredible acting) is not nearly as clever or interesting as it wants to be or could have been. 

Some thoughts:

Arthur is certainly a man in pain in a world that doesn’t really care about him. Gotham is a tense, struggling city, and all the people Arthur encounters treat him with disdain or cruelty. To me, this is less an issue of the moral decay or lawless attitudes of the city, and more about the ways in which poverty poisons people’s lives and souls. This movie depicts class warfare in a way that feels garish and cartoonish, which would be appropriate and possibly kind of cool if it weren’t trying to take everything VeRy SeRiOuSlY. 

He’s isolated, depressed, full of rage, and everyone thinks he’s creepy - sure, random coworker, hand him a gun, that checks out.

Also, the movie places us in a weird position almost from the start, because Arthur can’t help that he has brain damage and a disability (his laughter) that makes people uncomfortable. But we’re also supposed to...feel bad for him? understand his frustration? when he gets fired for bringing a gun to a children’s hospital. I don’t think the film necessarily positions us to sympathize with Arthur by the end of the film, but it doesn’t not do that either. 

If a man you don’t know walks outside your gate with a clown nose on, you turn and run.

If a man you don’t know puts his thumbs in your mouth, you DEFINITELY turn and run.

One interesting thing that I did ruminate on for quite awhile - Arthur never harms any people of color. Zazie Beetz and Brian Tyree Henry both have interesting supporting roles and are true highlights of the film, and they manage to escape their encounters with Arthur relatively unscathed (albeit disturbed). Let it be said, Arthur only punches up, not down.

A big part of the reason why I say the movie isn’t as clever as it thinks is the lack of engagement with all of the big, nasty themes running through it. A lot of big thematic punchlines are left unexamined, and I’m sorry, just pointing out LOOK AT THIS THING THAT EXISTS is not the same as engaging with it. This is like the Ready Player One approach to social justice issues, or if that phrase is too triggering how about simple fucking human decency, and it rings hollow. For example, two police officers heavily imply that Arthur’s mother (Frances Conroy) is to blame for the violence she and Arthur suffered at the hands of an abusive boyfriend. Is Phillips’ script trying to comment on victim blaming and rape culture here? Based on Arthur’s reaction to the news, I would say no. Or how about the social worker Arthur goes to for counseling saying her department is being shut down due to budget cuts. Is Phillips trying to interrogate the lack of infrastructure in place for mental health support or any other social safety net meant to enhance the public welfare? Well, considering people who have a mental illness are more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than to perpetrate one, I’d say again, no. 

When this thing gets bloody, it gets REAL BLOODY. I was prepared, kind of, but it still turned my stomach.

I’m unsure how to feel about Arthur’s appearance on the talk show - the southern belle accent, the dancing, the makeup - it all feels very camp, very queer coded villainy in a way that feels regressive rather than a loving homage to theater and film history. 

In fact, describing anything about this movie as loving feels impossible. Even the beautiful cinematography and the effective score - it all feels like it’s born out of spite and ugliness. Like someone dared Todd Phillips to make the most anti of antihero movies, and he wrote the script by fear pissing the words into a snow bank. 

Did I Cry? Um yeah, no. 

From a structural standpoint, the beats are solid and the tension is tight. It builds and builds until Arthur’s face-off against the late night talk show host (Robert De Niro) who was once his hero until he brutally mocked Arthur on his show. It’s the climax of the film, the pot that boils over, the match lighting the gasoline, and I was so tense I thought I was going to cry and then....I wasn’t. The balloon popped too early for me, the scene verged into something so over-the-top that I completely lost any sense of narrative tension for the rest of the movie. 

Which brings us to the ending, that shit-eating-grin-ain’t-i-a-stinker ending. If it undermines everything that came before it, I feel like well what was the point? And if it doesn’t, I feel like well what was the point? You can only play with ambiguity so much before the audience either gets bored or gets mad. Also, I’m gonna have a real hard fucking time if this movie that ends like an episode of Scooby Doo wins a Best Picture Oscar.

The performances are all top notch, but I found this a deeply unpleasant movie watching experience that feels like a very expensive meal at a fancy restaurant. The ingredients are all there, but throwing them all together in very small quantities and dressing them up with pretty garnishes doesn’t necessarily leave anyone feeling satisfied or full of anything but the potential for what could have been. 

For one, because Gerwig’s script takes all the classic character archetypes and removes their sanctimonious preaching to replace it with nuance and care. She keeps all the same story beats from the original but there’s something magical about the way she imbues each sister with life and their own dreams. I was never a huge Little Women fan as a girl growing up, but if I had this version to latch onto, I think I would have been.

Some thoughts:

Our tone is set immediately by the publisher telling Jo that if the main character is a girl, she needs to be either married or dead by the end of the story - either one is fine, it’s all the same. 

At first I was a little off-put by the framing narrative and the jumping around in time, but as the film went on it became a more and more powerful tool. 

I think the reason I appreciate Gerwig’s care and distinct voice within this adaptation so much is because this is the first adaptation of Little Women that actually makes sense to me. Each of the March sisters have their own distinct personality and that really shines through here - even Beth gets to be a little bit more than just “the sick one.”

That being said, Emma Watson does not give off maternal vibes to me AT ALL as Meg. 

I think Jo and Laurie are the ultimate ship that never was. The combination of Saorsie Ronan and Timothee Chalamet and Greta Gerwig is so magical as to be intoxicating. I can rarely think of two people onscreen who have better chemistry than these two. 

The costumes are just INCREDIBLE. So rich and detailed and every single outfit is perfectly made for the character. I would kill to wear like 90% of these dresses.

There is one Very Good fluffy white dog that belongs to Aunt March (Meryl Streep). 

Speaking of, Meryl is obviously fantastic in this role,  but like you needed me to tell you that. Breaking News: Meryl Streep is good at acting! But she does inject some real pathos into what could otherwise just be a crotchety old woman. Frankly, I hate that Aunt March gets so much crap because she’s right, marriage is an economic proposition, and that message is not lost on Amy (Florence Pugh, who is having a HELL of a great year), who gives a big speech about it to Laurie. They’re not wrong, y’all, and I don’t think Aunt March should be so demonized because of it.

And in regards to Amy - the longest love letter I could write to this adaptation is on behalf of Amy. Normally it’s easy to hate Amy, but I honestly love her here? A big part of that is Florence Pugh just being a likeable performer, but her annoying little sister behavior feels real and not artificially annoying. Plus, this is the only time I’ve ever actually understood how she could possibly have ended up with Laurie. Basically, Amy really shines in this version and might be my favorite March sister....except for burning Jo’s manuscript. That’s literally unforgivable.

Timothee Chalamet is a surprisingly great physical comedian - he’s got a Buster Keaton kind of thing going on here. Damn that kid is talented, it just hardly seems fair that he’s so so good while he’s still this young. 

I don’t know why, but Wife and I both burst out laughing when we saw that Bob Odenkirk was playing their dad. Don’t get me wrong, I love Bob Odenkirk! But that casting felt very off to me.

Did I Cry? You know it, but you know what’s absolutely bonkers? I didn’t cry when Beth died! Not even a little! But the aftereffects that ripple outward from that really got me. Jo’s big speech from the trailer about women having minds and souls as well as just hearts was incredibly affecting, and once the crying started there it didn’t really stop. 

More than anything, I loved the ending and its ambiguous nature. This screenplay makes me want to kiss Greta Gerwig on the mouth and I’m not ashamed to say it. 

Eh, somewhere in the middle. There are certainly glimmers of brilliance that I appreciated and didn’t feel pandering, but felt more like moments that only happen in movies or television when someone new gets a seat at the table and is allowed to share their perspective. But this is no feminist war cry, a la Mad Max: Fury Road, and will go down in history as a fairly forgettable rehash of a story we’ve seen before.

Plot summary (not that you really need one) - Jane (Ella Balinska) and Sabina (Kristen Stewart) are both agents working for the Townsend Agency, a private group of lady spies who have all been brought together by the mysterious Charlie and who have handlers designated Bosley. One of the Bosleys, Patrick Stewart, is retiring, but is pulled back into the fold when a mole in the operation tries to sabotage the latest mission - protecting Elena (Naomi Scott), a whistleblower at a prominent energy company whose latest invention has the potential to be weaponized. Jane and Sabina are tasked with stealing the invention, protecting Elena, and figuring out who the mole is before it’s too late!  This is all basically an excuse for them to travel to exotic locales, wear lots of fabulous clothes and less fabulous wigs, and for queer women to lust after KStew being a winking club girl, a jockey, a tennis instructor, and an all-around disaster gay. 

Some thoughts:

I never saw the early 2000s movies (part 1 or 2) but they were very formative for me because I did a school presentation in 8th grade that was a song about the rock cycle set to the tune of Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women Part 1″ so. That’s about as deep as my relationship to Charlie’s Angels goes. 

Maybe this is extremely petty of me, but Elena’s shitty boss, Peter Fleming, (Nat Faxon) has some of the worst teeth I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie. And I’m not saying that to be mean, just - I took a look at his IMDB, and he’s a character actor who’s done a lot of TV work, lots of comedy, lots of voice stuff. It looks like he’s been working steadily since 2002 at least, and I just...fix your teeth dude! I cannot even IMAGINE a world in which a woman in Hollywood could hope to get consistent, steady work with teeth like that. And that’s how you know the patriarchy is real, y’all.

Elena is so brave to be a whistleblower. The world needs more whistleblowers.

Everything KStew wears is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I think watching this movie might be the gayest 2 hours of my life, and I’m including the day I literally got married to a woman.

I can honestly say it made me emotional to see international deals being brokered not for guns or money, but for birth control pills and tampons. Just showing the importance of access to reproductive health care for women (and trans men and nb folks) is a detail I would never expect in a big budget action movie, and it was one of those moments that would never have occurred onscreen if this movie wasn’t written, produced, directed, and all around made by and for women. 

Jane having an emotional breakdown is so important. So frequently, women of color, especially black women, are portrayed as hard, unfeeling, and incapable of feeling pain in order to be perceived as Strong Female CharactersTM. But that feeds into a long and racist history of minimizing black people’s pain in order to excuse abusing and oppressing them. It’s not often that you get to see a black female character like Jane who is competent, smart, physically strong and intimidating, who is also allowed to be emotionally vulnerable and show real sadness and fear and intimacy. This moment honestly shocked me in the best way and was one of the biggest highlights of the film (and it’s another one I’m not sure would have existed without being a film created and executed by women). 

One of the highlights of the movie is the villains - each of them that get revealed are having a great deal of fun and brining a lot of life to their characters in different, unique ways. I have to say this is the most fun I’ve had watching bad guys be bad guys in recent memory.

In spite of the catastrophic Macguffin at the center of all the action, the final act feels underwhelming and like the stakes are very small. The script does everything it can to make the conflict feel personal, but I dunno, the entire final showdown just left me feeling a bit cold and distracted. 

Did I Cry? No, there’s not quite enough heart at the core of this to really tug on my easily activated cry reflex.

Overall, I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. The characters are fun and distinct, and the three main Angels are certainly having a rollicking good time, so that’s always fun to watch. But the script is kinda weak, and the jet-setting all feels rather ho-hum. If you prefer your badass lady spies WITHOUT a heaping helping of gross male gaze, this is certainly the right film for you! But when it comes to actually destroying the patriarchy, it all feels a little bubblegum to me. 

I’m not sure. In many ways, this feels like a blander, less introspective version of the documentary. But in terms of narrative, it’s a striking one about the power of empathy and compassion in a cynical world.

The movie is based on a true story, stemming from Tom Junod’s 1998 profile of Fred Rogers published in Esquire magazine when print journalism still did things like pay people to write 10,000 word profiles of important figures. The original article is worth a read, but for the purposes of the movie, a lot of narrative has been invented or maybe extrapolated (I don’t know Tom Junod’s life). The film  is framed as an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood about Mister Rogers’ new friend, Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys). Lloyd is a journalist writing a profile about Mister Rogers. He’s a new father, and he has immense daddy issues with his own alcoholic father (Chris Cooper). Gradually, he and Mister Rogers become friends. That’s it - that’s the whole movie. 

Some thoughts:

Obviously, the first thing everyone is thinking about regarding this movie is Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. Is it even possible for someone so iconic in his own right to play a fellow icon? I can report that T-Hanks never disappeared into the role for me - it was always incredibly obvious that I was not watching Mister Rogers, but Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers. He is speaking purposefully and gently and kindly, but it just sounds like Tom Hanks being purposeful, gentle, and kind. That may be distracting to some folks. However, for me and Wife, it works perfectly because Tom Hanks is the only person in the world who I react to in a similar way to the way I react to Mister Rogers. No one else could have played the role, in my opinion.

The 1998 setting is executed pretty perfectly, particularly in some 1998 wedding fashion that really took my breath away. The little lace arm warmer things! Wowie wow.

Also you know it’s 1998 because a print journalist can support a wife and a kid as the sole breadwinner and afford a primo NYC apartment. So good job really building the setting, guys!

It’s fascinating (and a little disheartening) to see the way in which other adults have such a hard time dealing with Mister Rogers. He’s like an alien because he is so slow and kind and patient, and grown-ups don’t know what to do with that. It’s fundamentally incompatible with capitalism, the world of business, and particularly show business. 

My favorite line comes from Fred Rogers’ wife, Joanne (Maryann Plunkett) who says that she doesn’t like to use the world “saint” to describe Fred because that implies what he does is unattainable, when in fact he works incredibly hard to attain it - to just be Mister Rogers - every single day.

Maybe it’s just me and my debilitating fear of puppets (King Friday especially) but the dream sequences Lloyd has in which he’s trapped in the middle of a taping of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood are frankly terrifying.

Because the movie is framed as an episode of the show, there are lots of transition scenes involving miniatures of New York City and Pittsburgh, PA. The miniature work is so nostalgic and charming, and lends a nice sense of childlike wonder.

Fun facts: Fred Rogers’ widow, Joanne, appears as an extra during the Chinese restaurant scene. So does the actor who played Mr. McFeely (David Newell). Also Joanne acted as an extensive consultant on the film and stated that Tom Hanks was the only person who could have played her late husband. She even gave him a number of Mister Rogers’ neckties to wear in the film. 

Did I Cry? Literally every single time Tom Hanks was onscreen playing Mr. Rogers, I cried. It was Pavlovian. There is a scene of intense fourth-wall breaking that made me blubber like a tiny baby. 

When people are treated with unrelenting compassion, empathy, and grace, the effects are profound. Lloyd’s slow transformation over the course of the film is easy to understand in the face of such consistent, purposeful goodness. This film makes it look effortless (even while acknowledging that it IS work), but with Marielle Heller’s incredible direction and Tom Hanks’ earnest performance, it feels like a butterfly creating a hurricane. The smallest actions can have the most radical effects - imagine the radical change you could enact, we could all enact, if we were as empathetic and patient as Mister Rogers with everyone, including ourselves. 

It’s a proficiently told tale and I was certainly entertained. There’s enough Top Gear to keep the gearheads happy and enough emotional investment to keep anyone looking for much story or character development happy. Your dad will be more than amenable to spending an afternoon digesting Thanksgiving leftovers with this one.

Some thoughts:

Man, it’s a real sausage fest in the theater I’m in, which is unsurprising considering the movie is a sausage fest too. 

The one female role goes to Caitriona Balfe as Mollie, Ken Miles’ wife. She’s got very Cate Blanchett vibes and I love her from her first moment onscreen - plus, I appreciate that these spouses actually seem to like and support each other! When the family encounters some huge money problems, she urges Ken not to quit racing entirely even though it doesn’t pay the bills, because he’d be insufferable without it. When Ken starts sneaking around with Carroll Shelby, she is furious not because he’s working on a race car with Shelby and Ford but because he was keeping it a secret from her. They have a supportive, love-filled marriage but it also sucks that Mollie doesn’t really get to have her own hopes and dreams on display in the film (what is her job? She mentions having one, but we have no idea what she does. She likes and understands cars and racing, and that’s about the extent of her character development). I’m glad she wasn’t relegated to a nag or a shrew, but she’s got a cool enough personality that I was left wanting a lot more personhood from her. 

First and foremost, it’s a goddamn delight to hear Christian Bale using his actual accent for once. As per usual, he is the best part of the movie in every way, disappearing into the role of Ken Miles and his search for the one perfect lap. He’s got the mind of an engineer and the heart of a racer, Hermione Granger in a helmet, and he is so so fantastic in every second of this. I know we celebrate him every awards season but every new film I see him in makes me realize he is probably the greatest living actor of his generation, and he almost single-handedly injects the heart and soul into this film, which could have just been a mindless maelstrom of machines.

Did anyone actually call British people limeys in the 60s? What are you, dude, a pirate?

Everything going on at Ford feels very Mad Men - it’s just dudes in suits making deals and drinking whiskey and criticizing their rivals and back-biting. 

Wow I sure didn’t love when Ford used a racial slur to describe Ferrari and the audience in my theater LAUGHED. 

Does affability count as acting? Matt Damon is doing his best Tommy Lee Jones impersonation if TLJ were ever in a good mood, and it’s certainly winning and charismatic, but is he actually doing anything? I still don’t know. Even when he and Christian Bale are throwing punches at each other, I expect him to throw out another used car salesman grin and an “aw shucks” neck rub and everything will be right as rain. Carroll Shelby is a man of great passion and vision, and yet all I’ll remember of him is that cheshire cat smile pasted over something empty, invisible. Charisma might end up winning car races, but I don’t think it’s gonna win Oscars. 

Josh Lucas is suitably stuffed shirt slimy as the de facto villain of the piece. Nothing to write home about, but you do want to see him get punched in the face.

The actual racing scenes are pretty thrilling. Racing in the rain gives me heart palpitations to even think about, and the entire sequence where the door wouldn’t close made me so anxious I thought I might hurl. But I appreciate that, unless you’re well versed in the history of this specific race, that it ends in a way I didn’t expect and which felt both narratively huge and also surprising, yet fitting. Truth is stranger than fiction, and in this case it leads to a damn good twist in the story. 

I sure do hate that repeated voice over from Matt Damon though. Did we really need that? Does anybody need that voice over? And what a weird and off-kilter way to end the film. Life goes on, I guess, but based purely on the performances in this movie, Ken Miles deserved better than that tacked-on weirdo ending scene.

Did I Cry? As in all sports movies, of course I fucking did. I cried when a 12-year-old boy was asking about how to prevent his father from being at risk for burning to death if his car crashed. I cried during Ken’s last lap at Le Mans. And I cried buckets during Ken’s last lap on the test track. 

You could do a lot worse for a family outing this holiday season, and Ford v Ferrari has enough going for it that it will probably be a solid crowd pleaser with a little something for everyone. While Matt Damon may not be acting, Christian Bale sure as hell is, and his portrayal of Ken Miles helps you believe in the magic of the relationship between human and machine just a little bit more. Did I drive just a little bit faster on my way home from the theater after seeing this movie? Yes I did - maybe that’s all the review you need.

This is one of the rare cases this year where my expectations were this high and were still exceeded. Johnson’s script is tight, the actors are all having the time of their lives, and the mystery is clever and even manages to retain a sense of real human emotion and tragedy at its core. Do not miss out on the chance to see this one in theaters with a live audience that gasps and laughs and, like my theater, even applauds when it’s all over. 

Some thoughts:

So often the victim at the center of a murder mystery is just a means to an end, or an asshole that you don’t really feel that sad about. But one of the best decisions made in this script is to make Harlan feel like a real person with real relationships. His friendship with Marta is sweet and feels like it’s built on genuine respect and love. In spite of their age difference, you feel a true kinship between them - the rest of the family goes on and on about how they consider Marta family and will “take care of her” with Harlan’s money, but Harlan is the only one who treats her like a real person. You feel his loss acutely at the center of the film, and it makes solving the mystery feel all the more urgent.

That being said, Harlan’s sense of decor in the house is fucking terrifying, all these dolls and figurines are made of straight up nightmares.

Ana de Armas is really the center of the whole film, and her performance here is off-the-charts. She’s vulnerable, earnest, conniving, put-upon, terrified, and resolute in equal measure, and just a real delight to watch onscreen. And her character’s incredible plot device of never being able to tell a lie without puking is inspired. 

Keep that in mind - if you are sensitive to vomit, please be warned there is quite a bit of it in the film and it can get REALLY gross in places.

Marta’s other main purpose is to act as a counterpoint to all the WASPy awfulness of this rich, entitled family. If you have to spend any time around racist relatives this holiday weekend (and I specifically mean the casual microaggression type of racism) you’ll definitely empathize with Marta as each member of the Thrombey family says some variation of “You’re from ___, right?” and lists a different country.

The film’s greatest asset is the cast - you don’t get better ensembles than this. Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Riki Lindhome, and Toni Collette are the adult generation, squabbling over their pieces of the Thrombey publishing empire and shit-talking each other’s kids. Then there’s Chris Evans, Jaeden Martell, and Katherine Langford as the younger generation, each their own brand of insufferable - one’s a trust fund layabout in a Beemer, one’s an alt-right prep school punk, and one’s a bra-burning Sarah Lawrence peak white feminist. Each and every one of these actors is given a distinct, interesting piece of the mystery to sink their teeth into, and each character brings something new and different to the table. The first sequence of questioning from Blanc feels like a ballet, with each character lying and flashbacks revealing the truth in an elegant, twisting dance. The sum is so much greater than the parts, and it helps that everyone looks like they’re really having fun. 

None more so than Chris Evans though, who doesn’t show up until about 45 minutes in, but when he does, things really kick into high gear. His delivery of scathing sarcastic retorts is downright gleeful, and I would like to petition the universe to always ensure that he is wearing this kind of New England chic with thick wooly sweaters and camel driving coats and intricately patterned scarves. That’s one Boston boy who can wear the HELL out of a cable knit, and it’s a joy (for many reasons) to watch.

Even with a cast this great, the movie only works because the script is tight and the mystery is interesting. There are lots of fun little call-backs and payoffs to earlier lines - this is one of the few movies this year I actually want to go see twice in the theaters just to catch things that I may have missed the first time. 

Did I Cry? I did not, but I felt a definite sadness every time Marta looked at the large portrait of Harlan, because I could feel her missing him. 

This movie is seriously a goddamn delight. Go see it immediately and just let yourself be taken on the ride - there are few films this year I’ve flat-out enjoyed more.

Basically, yeah. Although I wouldn’t really classify the film as weird. There are no bizarre cult classic choices going on here. Instead, it feels...literary. It feels like these characters don’t exist in any version of reality that you or I would recognize unless you were also a character in a book that takes place in a New York with no tourists or gentrification or $1 pizza slices. The plot is pretty convoluted, but basically Theo (Ansel Elgort) is a young boy when he goes to the Met and a bomb goes off, killing his mother. In the aftermath of the explosion, he meets a man who convinces him to 1) steal a painting and 2) take his ring as a sign to show the man’s business partner. Everything from there dictates the rest of Theo’s life as he bounces around from adoptive family on the Upper East Side to shitty real family on the outskirts of Las Vegas back to New York again. There’s a large and wacky cast of characters and a lot of twists and turns that really don’t make much sense. Also, it gets pretty gay.

Some thoughts:

The casting is all pretty spectacular, as the young Theo (Oakes Fegley) really does look like Ansel Elgort.

Do they really give kids morphine lollipops? That seems irresponsible. 

We really see the entire spectrum of white people here, from the brittle WASP-y Upper East Side of Nicole Kidman and family to the white trash foreclosed desert developments where Sarah Paulson totters in stripper heels outside Las Vegas, Nevada. And across that entire spectrum, their only solution for this kid who’s experienced this huge trauma is to keep giving him drugs, so at least that’s consistent.

I don’t understand what it is about literary fiction that has such a hard time translating to film - I’m sure all these characters feel more real in the book, but in the movie, everything just feels like so much unreality? Every new character that’s introduced feels like we’re walking into a new, weird SNL skit. 

Sarah Paulson is having a hell of a good time, though, which I always appreciate seeing. 

Dennis O’Hare is truly excellent at being oily and threatening. 

Finn Wolfhard is magnetic to watch, but his accent verges on cartoonish. Like all of his little “Ha!”s sound fake. However, the entire section of the film with Young Boris and Young Theo is the most captivating and feels like it’s the most emotionally honest. Like, they’re just throwing chips at each other and punching each other and it doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be anything more than deepening this relationship between these two boys, which is kind of nice in a movie where everything feels like it’s supposed to be a metaphor.

NYC is also hot in the summer - why the fuck did Theo only bring with him this one grey sweater when he’s packing to go to Las Vegas? Are you telling me he doesn’t own ANYTHING with short sleeves?

Did everyone smoke this much indoors in 2004? I don’t remember that at all, but then I wasn’t living with anyone named Xandra at the time either.

There is a Very Good Dog named Popper who goes through a lot tbh but doesn’t really get any sort of resolution? He ends up with a safe place to stay but then we hear nothing more of him so like, I just hope he had a really good life because Popper did nothing wrong and deserves everything for being such an intrepid lil traveler eating potato chips on the bus.

You know how I know this was based on a Pulitzer-prize-winning novel and not like, reality? Because everyone in the film says “blah blah blah as long as you like” instead of “as long as you want” like normal ass human beings. Take note. It happens at least 7 times, and each subsequent time made me feel more and more like I was in an MFA fiction workshop and some dude was explaining to the class how taking acid is a metaphor for expanding consciousness and bridging the gap between childhood and adulthood while all I wanted to do was get to the student union before they ran out of chicken tenders.

I know I ragged on Theo’s sweaters, but I do appreciate Pippa’s (Ashleigh Cummings) very strong sweater game. To be fair, she lives in London and we see her only in New York during rainy and cold times so like her sweaters make sense. I’m a big fan of Pippa and her wardrobe and her hair and I feel like she’s probably someone who has a much more interesting and rich interior life in the novel and she kind of gets shortchanged here as one of Theo’s almost love interests. 

Speaking of, I thought this movie was going to be a lot gayer than it ended up being - Boris kissing Theo in the trailer was like “okay okay alright i see u gay boys i see u” but then it all ended up as so much subtext on the cutting room floor. Theo has more chemistry with Boris than any other person in the film, and Boris’s appearance in adult Theo’s life is essentially the device that moves everything forward again, but everything stays closeted and bottled up. There’s no emotional catharsis between them, no acknowledgement of what they mean to each other. I was left wanting so much more from the one bright spot of the entire narrative.

Also maybe I’m just too stupid (I don’t think I am) but ultimately, what was the point of it all? Why did Welty encourage Theo to take the painting in the first place?? I get why Theo did it independently of Welty, based on the film’s last line. And why he kept the painting for so long. But why did he actually take it? I feel like I should know the answer to that question and I really really don’t. 

Did I Cry? I didn’t, and I feel like I should have.

Here’s the problem. I’m honestly not sure what I would suggest to improve this film. The performances are all GOOD and the pacing is steady (read: slow) but I’m not sure what to cut? I think the biggest problem is that none of it feels real. It all feels, in the words of Ferris Bueller, like a museum: it’s very beautiful, and very cold, and you’re not allowed to (emotionally) touch anything. It leads to an experience that I think could hold a lot more meaning than it actually does - in this case, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that you could get the experience that you actually want by reading the novel.