January Movies Part 3: Blue Moon & The Rip

This week I've watched one Oscar-nominated film and one movie that will definitely not be nominated for any Oscars. We call that range!

Blue Moon: Written by Robert Kaplow and directed by Richard Linklater, this is one of those delightful films that you already know has Oscar written all over it once you're ten minutes in. Ethan Hawke stars as Lorenz Hart, half of the famous songwriting duo Rodgers & Hart. However, the action picks up in 1943 when Rodgers has paired up with Oscar Hammerstein to write Oklahoma! instead, tired of working with the alcoholic and temperamental Hart. The entire movie takes place in Sardi's restaurant, during the party to celebrate Oklahoma!'s opening night, and it mostly consists of watching Hart talk to various people like the bartender, Eddie (Bobby Canavale), E.B. White (Patrick Kennedy) who also happens to be at Sardi's, Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), who wants to resume their working relationship but only if Hart can promise to be sober and dependable and stop mocking the Americana naivete of Oklahoma!, and Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a 20-year-old college student that Hart claims to be in love with, despite everyone thinking his tendencies lie elsewhere. And there's the sergeant piano player, Morty (Jonah Lees), constantly in the background, tickling those ivories and treating us to all the incredible standards that Rodgers & Hart brought into our lives.

The most apt comparison I can come up with is the Before Sunrise trilogy, also directed by Linklater and starring Hawke, that all take place in one day and where you learn all about your protagonists from the art of conversation. In this film, Hawke delivers a tour-de-force performance as the funny, sarcastic, bitter, yet hopeful Hart, who is annoyed that Rodgers has moved on to a new partner, but confident they can team up together again for more greatness. And Kaplow's screenplay has so many pithy one-liners that my husband and I kept quoting at each other that it's no wonder he and Hawke are both nominated for Oscars this year. As audience members, we know that Hart is going to die less than a year after this night, but this movie is only concerned with this one night, making it both melancholy and captivating in equal measure. Like one of the songs Hart wrote, as you watch this movie, you may find yourself bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.

The Rip: There's a reason this movie is on Netflix. Written and directed by Joe Carnahan, this is a police thriller about a team of cops on the Tactical Narcotics Team of the Miami-Dade Police Department and what happens when their captain, Jackie Velez, is shot and killed and no one knows who did it. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck star as Dane and JD, members of the team who are determined to figure out who killed Jackie. Right before she died, she texted Dane with the address of a stash house with a huge amount of money. So Dane decides to raid the house, but also use this raid as an opportunity to flush out a potential cop killer. What could possibly go wrong?

Teyana Taylor, Steven Yuen, Catalina Sandino Morena, and Sasha Calle round out the cast, so you can't complain about the acting, but boy is this script weak. If you're the sort of person who likes to yell out what they think is going to happen next, this is precisely the movie for you, because that's what I found myself doing for much of this film. It's very twisty, but very predictable, with one piece of casting that immediately told me who the bad guy would be. The final act also features a lot of unnecessary action that could have done with some judicious editing - if this movie had been a tight 90 minutes, I probably wouldn't have minded as much, but it is slightly too bloated to just be a fun action romp. If you want to laze on the couch and watch Ben and Matt reunite, go for it, but if you're expecting quality filmmaking, you're out of luck.

January Movies Part 2: No Other Choice, Sentimental Value, People We Meet on Vacation

As awards season heats up, I've been trying to catch up on the foreign film contenders. But I'm still keeping up with some light Netflix romance. All work but no play makes Jill a dull girl after all!

No Other Choice: Directed by celebrated Korean filmmaker, Park Chan-wook, who also adapted the screenplay with Lee Kyoung-mi, Don McKellar, and Lee Ja-hye from a novel by Donald Westlake, this is a glorious movie about the evils of capitalism and the lengths to which one man will go after he loses his job. Lee Byung-hun plays Man-su, a loyal employee of Solar Paper, who worked there for several years and slowly rose up the ranks to management, only to get fired once an American company buys out the firm. After more than a year of unemployment, Man-su is getting desperate, and his wife, Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin) has taken on a part-time job, is whittling away at all other non-essentials, and has finally suggested they may need to sell their house and move into an apartment. This is a bridge too far for Man-su - this was his childhood home, and after years of moving around, he bought it in the hopes that he would be able to give his children the stability he never had. Thus, he is forced to come up with a devious plan. He keeps losing jobs because there are other men who have slightly more experience in the paper industry. So the only possible solution? Eliminate the competition.

What follows is a very dark comedy about a man who is going to kill all his rivals and gain a job by any means necessary. As you can imagine, when you're not some cold-blooded trained assassin, that's a pretty difficult thing to do, and hijinks ensue. His wife and children are thoroughly perplexed as to what is going on with him, as he keeps showing up very sweaty from his purported "job interviews," and it's all very chaotic and hysterical.

This is an entertaining film, and it fully captures that sense of dread and loss that accompanies sudden unemployment when you thought your life was going so well. It certainly captures the economic mood of our times and is a wild ride. But would I necessarily give it an Oscar? Like most Korean cinema, it is sumptuously well-shot, the actors are fantastic, and all of the production design is remarkable. But at the end of the day, this is a good story, not a great one.

Sentimental Value: Director Joachim Trier is back with another Norwegian movie that he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt, starring Renate Reinsve. I hated their last movie, The Worst Person in the World, so I suppose it's an improvement to say that I merely didn't like this movie? Reinsve stars as Nora, an actress whose father is a famous director named Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgard). Nora also has a sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, turning in a wonderful performance), who works as a historian and chose a "normal" life with a husband and child. Much like Jay Kelly, their father was very absent; their parents divorced when they were quite young, and they didn't see much of Gustav after that. However, now their mother has died, and Gustav shows up to the funeral with a proposal for Nora. He has written a script, he wants her to star in it, and he wants to shoot it in their childhood home.

Much like No Other Choice, there's a lot of work being done by the production designers to imbue the childhood home with a lot of...sentimental value. But when Nora turns down the role, having no desire to work with her father, he turns to an American actress, Rachel (Dakota Fanning, in a charmingly bewildered role), to take over the part instead. What follows is a lot of psychological exploration and generational trauma and daddy issues that all do get resolved in a rather neat way by the end of this film.

My biggest problem with The Worst Person in the World was that Reinsve's character had no female support system. In this film, the relationship between the sisters is a real ode to healthy sibling relationships in the face of chaotic family trauma. But overall, can I say this movie charmed me? No. It still felt a little too navel-gazing and self-serious, and I'm starting to wonder if any people of color exist in Oslo at all. Because watching Trier's movies about the travails of privileged white people is starting to wear a little thin.

People We Meet on Vacation: Speaking of privileged white people, here is a delightful little romance based on Emily Henry's bestselling 2021 novel. Film adaptations of books seem to be making the journey from page to screen in very rapid fashion these days, but given the popularity of this book, it's not surprising, and the film is also unsurprisingly charming and effervescent. 

The story follows Poppy (Emily Bader) and Alex (Tom Blyth), two people who met as college students, and then, for reasons, decided to have a tradition where they go on an annual vacation with each other. They are platonic best friends, but when the movie opens, something has torn their relationship apart, and they haven't spoken to each other in a long while. So we slowly start to piece together what happened through their interactions in the present, alongside flashbacks to their past nine years' worth of trips together. It's an intriguing narrative device that worked well in the novel and works just as well on film, and with these two charismatic leads, you cannot help but be swept along for the ride. The supporting cast is also stellar, and you will be treated to many globe-trotting destinations along the way.

Is this movie high art? No. But is it filling the hole in my soul that used to be filled by light, fun romcoms that Hollywood simply doesn't release in theaters anymore? Yes. I love reading romance novels, but I do appreciate that Netflix is now bringing those novels to life on film and helping us discover great new acting talent along the way. I do wish we had more romcoms that were based on  original scripts. But I'll take whatever I can get - in this age of AI slop, needs must.

January Movies Part 1: Marty Supreme, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Mrs.

I'll be honest, I saw two of these movies in December. But hey, it's hard to blog over New Year's. If you're interested in an awards contender, a blockbuster, and a quiet Hindi movie, this blog post will satisfy all your desires.

Marty Supreme: Directed by Josh Safdie, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ronald Bronstein, this movie stars Timothee Chalamet as Marty Mauser, loosely based on the real-life Marty Reisman, who was a US table tennis champion. Set in 1952, we follow Marty's utterly chaotic life in New York City, as a man who doesn't have anyone believing in him, but that's OK, because he sure does believe in himself. The man is a hustler, figuring out any angle he can use to scrape up some cash so he can fly around the world to participate in table tennis tournaments and make a name for himself.

I genuinely wanted this to just be a table tennis movie. There are two sequences in this film, one towards the middle, another towards the end, when you get to watch Marty play table tennis against some of the best players in the world, and those sequences brought me so much joy. But the sport is secondary. This is Chalamet's Oscar vehicle, and he is going to do some Acting! This character is frenetic, whiny, always on the move, and always trying to scam someone out of something. He also gets an assist from the great Odessa A'zion who plays his childhood friend and eventual baby mama, Rachel, a woman who seems very sympathetic at the beginning, but then you realize she might be Marty's equal. Gwyneth Paltrow also stars as an actress who has an affair with Marty for her pleasure and his gain. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Of course not. 

I didn't love or hate this film. Chalamet is a powerhouse, but the story felt overwrought and never managed to win me over. It often felt like we were getting a bunch of hyper-intense set pieces that Safdie was struggling to string together into a coherent narrative. Also, 150 minutes tends to breach my tolerance for watching a man who is full of himself. It's a good movie, but in my opinion, certainly not a great one.

Avatar: Fire and Ash: Speaking of men who are full of themselves, writer-director James Cameron is back with yet another installment of the Avatar franchise. Do I remember anything that happened in the previous movies? No. Do I remember anything that happened in this movie despite having seen it just a few weeks ago? Barely.

At 3 hours and 15 minutes, this is yet another bloated extravaganza, that increasingly feels like I'm watching a video game, rather than a movie. This time we are introduced to the Mangkwan, an aggressive Na'vi tribe that live in a volcano and want to partner with humans to dominate the rest of the Na'vi. They are led by Varang (played by Oona Chaplin), and it's just more of the same with the Na'vi tribes having to battle the exploitative humans, environmentalism vs. ruthless capitalism, and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) having to manage his wife and children and save all the Na'vi all over again.

These movies feel like they could just be AI-generated at this point, and obviously I do not care for them. Are they visually spectacular? Of course. But is that enough to sustain that runtime with clunky dialogue and actors who feel like they're just phoning in a performance so they can make bank? Nope.

Mrs.: Every Christmas, I meet a bunch of my relatives on Long Island. And this year, they were all shocked to discover I had never watched the Hindi movie, Mrs. (that is a remake of a 2021 Malayalam film called The Great Indian Kitchen). Naturally I had to go home immediately and watch this film. 

Written by Harman Baweja and Anu Singh Choudhary and directed by Arati Kadav (shoutout to female directors!), the movie stars Sanya Malhotra as Richa, a vivacious woman who enters into an arranged marriage with a seemingly nice and attentive doctor named Diwakar (Nishant Dahiya). As is custom, she moves into his house to live with his parents, and quickly discovers that the daughter-in-law is expected to spend all her time either helping her mother-in-law prepare mountains of food for the men of the house, or cleaning the house and ensuring it is clean enough to meet her father-in-law's exacting standards.

Richa starts out happy and excited about her new married life, but as the daily routine grinds her down, she realizes that her husband expects her to be nothing better than a housemaid and cook. Oh and of course, to have his babies, which turns sex into an increasingly dreaded activity. There's nothing particularly novel about this film, as it comments on the usual patriarchal bullshit that women wade through in traditional Indian households. But what is refreshing is Malhotra's commanding performance as a woman who is slowly driven to despair. You can see the light dimming from her eyes over the course of this movie: but don't worry. She does eventually fight for herself and reclaim her autonomy. It's a sad movie with a happy ending and packs an emotional wallop. Seek it out if you can.

December Binges Part 2: I Love LA, Pluribus, Heated Rivalry

So much TV! We really do love to see (binge) it. Last week, a bunch of shows I have been watching week-to-week had their finales, and every single one was a doozy. So now I can recommend them all to you!

I Love LA: I've been in the tank for Rachel Sennot ever since I first saw her in Shiva Baby, so how could I not love this ridiculous show that she has created and stars in? Sennot plays Maia, an anxious woman who moved from New York to LA to build her career as a manager of social media influencers and is finding it very difficult to figure out exactly how things work in this city. When her best friend Tallulah (Odessa A'zion) also moves to LA, Maia returns to becoming her manager, and the two of them wreak absolute chaos across the town while Maia's hapless, normie boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) has no idea what is going on. True Whitaker and Jordan Firstman round out the cast as Maia's friends Alani and Charlie, who each have their own classic LA journeys as a nepo baby and a stylist.

This show captures the crazy world of influencers (how is this an actual job?), the difficulty of catching a break in this insanely fickle city, and the constant Gen Z hustle for things that don't matter that much but feel extremely important and vital in the moment. It probably shouldn't have been my cup of tea at all, but again, I have this fascination for anything that Sennot does, and A'zion is also a revelation. Frankly, my mouth was just agape every episode when I saw what Tallulah was wearing, so the bizarre costume design is worth the price of admission all on its own. I do not relate to these characters at all, but boy are they fun to watch. Won't you join me?!

Pluribus: Created by Vince Gilligan and starring Rhea Seehorn, we all knew from the jump that this show was going to be excellent, right? Well, the high expectations were perfectly matched. The plot is wonderfully fantastical - all of humanity has been infected by an alien virus resulting in the "Joining." Every human being is now connected as one big hive mind and can access each other's memories and experiences across the globe. They all act as one and are supposedly benevolent and non-violent, unable to even pluck an apple from a tree because they cannot kill any living thing. But for some unknown reason, thirteen human beings were immune to this event and have retained their individuality, one of whom is Carol (Seehorn), a misanthropic romance novelist, who doesn't trust the Others one bit and is desperate to figure out how she could undo the Joining. 

It's twisty, it's complex, it's full of long dialogue-less sequences where you're trying to figure out what Carol is up to until her ultimate plan is finally revealed. It's all very Gilligan-esque and glorious. The first season has a lot of scene-setting and information doled out in constant drips as Carol builds up a picture of what the Others can and cannot do, but in the final episodes, she may have found a partner-in-crime to help her on this supposedly futile quest to save humanity/herself. It's a race against time as the Others are also trying to figure out a way to infect Carol and the remaining immune humans. So who will succeed? And how?! These are the questions that will keep you coming back to this show week to week, or in this case, for one big satisfying binge. I cannot wait for Season 2.

Heated Rivalry: If your social media hasn't been blowing up in the past month with people raving about Heated Rivalry, then congratulations, we are being serviced by very different algorithms. Created by Jacob Tierney, who adapted the show from Rachel Reid's Game Changers book series about a bunch of closeted gay hockey players, this small little Canadian show has become an absolute sensation. I was sick a few weekends ago and decided to get caught up on the first five episodes that were out. I'll confess, I was unimpressed after the first two episodes, as the show just came off as soft gay porn and didn't seem to have much emotion behind it. But my god. Things took a turn in Episode 3, and when I finished Episode 5, I too, like half the nation, was desperately awaiting the finale on Boxing Day. And boy did that finale not disappoint. It was a celebration of queer love, and was so deeply charming and moving and wonderful. Sigh. I couldn't get enough.

The show stars Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as Shane and Ilya, Canadian and Russian hockey players who start having illicit (and very explicit) encounters during their rookie season and proceed to spend several years quietly hooking up while never telling anyone else what they're doing and not really acknowledging to each other if this is just one very long booty call. The time jumps are disorienting and the lack of any real communication between the two of them is frustrating, but don't worry, because that will all get beautifully resolved at the end. My social media timeline is currently full of charming interviews with these two actors, and they full deserve this sudden stardom when just a few months ago they were waiting tables and struggling with their careers. It's going to be a long wait for the next season, but get caught up on the hype now - you'll thank me later. Happy New Year!

December Movies Part 3: Zootopia 2, Wake Up Dead Man, The Housemaid

Looking for something to watch over Christmas break? Well, I've got an animated romp, a twisty whodunit, and a sexy thriller to please all demographics!

Zootopia 2: What's not to love about this movie? The original was a great ride and this one, written by Jared Bush, who also co-directed with Byron Howard, continues the fun, with a pro-immigration, pro-diversity stance that the current US administration is sure to hate. What could be better! Our dynamic duo of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, a bunny and a fox voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman, are now officially rookie cops in the Zootopia Police Department and they are desperately trying to prove they aren't more than one-hit wonders. But of course, they are overeager and keep messing up big cases. The plot revolves around a snake who sabotages a gala event, except...is the snake actually the bad guy? Turns out maybe there has been some misinformation circulating in Zootopia.

I thoroughly enjoyed the plot, I loved all the fun little sight gags and puns (like the state of Gnu Jersey making an appearance), and the animation continues to be beautiful, with every shot of Judy Hopps making me want to reach out and pet that soft l'il bunny. It's high-quality entertainment for all ages, and this adult did not feel remotely bored during this purported kids movie, so give it a shot! It's Christmas, be merry!

Wake Up Dead Man: Fine, you don't want to be merry? Well then prepare to feel like you've fallen into the pages of a new Agatha Christie novel because writer-director Rian Johnson's latest installment in his Knives Out series is a devious little locked room mystery that is perfectly plotted and executed. Josh O'Connor plays Jud Duplenticy, the new priest at a rural church in upstate New York. When the old priest, Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), dies in the middle of a service, Jud seems like the only possible suspect. But of course, our friend Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) aka Foghorn Leghorn, is helping the police and he thinks Jud is far too earnest to have committed this crime. 

This is a movie that involves many heated discussions of religion, with the young priest going toe-to-toe with the deeply atheist Blanc, and it also involves many examples of what it means to be morally good while having no faith and then morally bankrupt while professing to be the most faithful person of all. The supporting cast is a murderer's row (pun intended) including Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack, and they all put in excellent work, with red herrings and misdirects galore to throw you off the scent or lead you tantalizingly close to the solution. My husband and I had a grand ol' time pausing this movie at intervals while we theorized over motives and opportunity, and we almost got it right, but not quite. Which is the genius of this film - there are more than enough clues to help you solve the puzzle, but at the end of the day, you just can't be as smart as Benoit Blanc. Bah humbug.

The Housemaid: I loved the 2022 novel by Freida McFadden, so when I saw director Paul Feig was adapting this movie from a screenplay by Rebecca Sonnenshine, I was all for it. Starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried (excellent casting since they look very similar, which becomes increasingly important as the movie goes on), I was expecting A Simple Favor vibes and it certainly did not disappoint. There's no point in giving away any of the plot because it is very twisty and fun and Seyfried in particular seems to be having a fantastic time as a psychotic rich woman who seems determined to make her maid's life very, very difficult, while her patient husband (played by Brandon Sklenar) attends to her every whim and tries to keep the peace at home.

I imagine this movie would go down well with anyone who has no idea of the plot - reading the novel was a very satisfying experience, and watching the movie will be too. Since I already knew everything that was going to happen, I found myself focusing more on the filmmaking, and while I enjoyed Seyfried's performance, I found Sweeney to be a little lackluster. You will get to see a lot of her in this movie though, if that's something that floats your boat. I also appreciated all the shots of Sklenar's hands. Feig captures his physicality excellently in this movie which makes for good thrills as we get to the finale. This movie does get unexpectedly gory at times in a way I didn't totally appreciate, so be warned if you can't stand any body horror. But otherwise, this is a solid, fun thriller that is a good adaptation of a solid, fun book.

December Binges Part 1: All Her Fault, Mr. Scorsese, Down Cemetery Road

I have binged many shows this month, and the last two weeks of the year are prime couch potato season, so here are some recommendations. Plop down with the remote and get ready!

All Her Fault: What a terrifically weird show. Created by Megan Gallagher, based on the novel by Andrea Mara, the show stars Sarah Snook as Marissa, a woman who shows up to a strange woman's house one day, assuming that this is where her son went for a play date. Turns out, the boy is not there, and what follows is her worst nightmare as the police have to treat this as a kidnapping case and have no idea where her son might be. Dakota Fanning plays Jenny, a mom whose son attends the same school as Marissa's son, and when she discovers her nanny might be involved in the kidnapping, she is overcome with guilt and wants to help Marissa in any way she can. Meanwhile, Marissa's husband, Peter (Jake Lacy), is the typical straight husband, a man who thinks parenting has been Marissa's responsibility all along, and therefore everything that is now going wrong is...all her fault.

This show makes for a great drinking game. Just drink anytime a woman is annoyed at a man. Shots when someone literally goes "this is all my/your fault!" No spoilers, but my absolute favorite part of watching this show was in the final episode when a character literally screamed, "It was not my fault...it was YOUR fault!" This is not a good show, and yet I was genuinely surprised by twists and turns in the final episodes that finally brought every character's motivation to light. If you want a soapy, silly drama to while away the day, this is absolutely the show for you. But expect to be giggling a lot while you watch.

Mr. Scorsese: Are you a fan of Martin Scorsese? Then director Rebecca Miller has put together a 5-part documentary miniseries just for you. Chronicling the man's asthmatic childhood that led to him playing indoors a lot and thereby becoming enamored of filmmaking, to his exposure to the Italian mobsters in NYC that led to his many movies about them, as well as a certain bravery when it came to negotiating with studio heads. Watching this miniseries made me realize that I have no knowledge of early Scorsese movies - it was only in the fifth and final episode, when we get into his long collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio, that I started nodding my head along. Of course, I've heard of all those early films, but gangster movies have never been my genre. And yet, I was fascinated all the same.

The series is an incisive portrait of a celebrated filmmaker, and it has a lot of access to people who knew him well and could speak candidly about all of his struggles as well as his incredible successes. His three daughters get to chime in about the extremely different fathers they had when growing up - his older daughters were used to never seeing him as he was too busy on set, while by the time he got around to having his youngest as an older man, he certainly made much more of an effort to be a family man. Miller is also keen to interrogate if Scorsese has a woman problem - Sharon Stone speaks about her experience struggling to get time with him in Casino, while Margot Robbie seems to have had a very collaborative time with him in The Wolf of Wall Street. This is a great series for any cinephile but also if you're just curious to go behind the scenes of some iconic and memorable movies and understand all the drama that was brewing beneath the surface. Merry Christmas!

Down Cemetery Road: Created by Morwenna Banks and based on the novel by Mick Herron, this show stars Emma Thompson as Zoe Boehm, a woman who teams up with Sarah Trafford (Ruth Wilson), after an unexpected gas explosion in Sarah's neighborhood kills a family and leads to a missing child. I won't give away more details than that, because this is one of those twisty mysteries where every single episode ends in a frantic cliffhanger where you suddenly suspect all the lead actors have died and you might have been following the wrong story all along. There's a very elaborate government conspiracy that starts coming apart at the seams, and it's all very British and dry.

Fans of Slow Horses (another Mick Herron series) would probably eat this show up with a spoon, but much like that show, I found myself unable to sustain my interest. The trouble is that the show is rather densely plotted, and in this day and age, unless I can binge it, I find myself flummoxed by watching week to week and completely forgetting everything by the time the next seven days roll around. There's also something about Herron's plots, where everything is always a little bit shadowy and high-stakes. I prefer an Agatha Christie-esque plot where humans have personal motivations for their evil deeds, as opposed to whole government agencies getting involved in criminal activity. But again, you do get to watch Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson be a kick-ass duo, so that's worth the effort. Right?

December Movies Part 2: Jay Kelly, If I had Legs I'd Kick You, Fackham Hall, Ella McCay

Time for another round of rapid-fire movie reviews as I scramble to catch up on everything flooding the theaters and Netflix for the winter. We're gonna cover a slew of genres and a slew of opinions, so get ready!

Jay Kelly: Directed by Noah Baumbach, who co-wrote the screenplay with Emily Mortimer (who has a small role in the movie as well), this is a movie about an actor named Jay Kelly (played with classic Cary Grant charisma by George Clooney) who has had an enormously successful career but burned many bridges along the way with friends, family, and colleagues. He decides to go on an impromptu trip to Europe, ostensibly to receive a lifetime achievement-style tribute in Italy, but really to see if he can spend more time with his daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), who is travelling with her friends and has no interest in spending time with her absentee father. On this trip, he takes his entourage, including long-suffering manager Ron (Adam Sandler), who is constantly juggling his demanding clients with his demanding family, and publicist, Liz (Laura Dern), who is entirely too stressed out to be dealing with her client.

What follows is a lot of nostalgia and flashbacks to pivotal moments in young Jay's career, the important people who came in and out of his life, and the various ways in which he always chose his work over anything else. There's some pretty scenery, and Clooney does some lovely movie-star acting, managing to convey his sadness and resignation over his choices. But overall, the movie just feels like a big ball of nothing, a rumination on stardom that has nothing particularly revelatory to convey. I suppose it's a perfectly adequate "stream on the couch" movie, but there's not much else going on here.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You: Written and directed by Mary Bronstein, this is a weird and trippy movie about a therapist named Linda (played magnificently by Rose Byrne) who is really struggling. She has a very sick daughter who must be fed through a feeding tube and needs constant care and supervision; her husband is a ship captain and away on an eight-week work trip; the ceiling in her apartment has collapsed so she and her daughter need to move to a shabby motel while repairs take place; she has increasingly needy and difficult patients to deal with at work; and her sessions with her own therapist (played wonderfully by Conan O'Brien) are getting increasingly adversarial.

As you can imagine, this is a very tense movie, and the psychological discomfort keeps ratcheting up as Linda's life continues to spiral out of control. It's essentially a horror film about being a woman who has to do it all with very little support, and who is being challenged in every possible sphere of her life. Byrne's performance is nail-bitingly excellent, but this is not a movie that I would ever want to watch again. Give it one essential viewing and then tune into a sitcom to cleanse the palate.

Fackham Hall: Directed by Jim O'Hanlon and written by the Dawson Bros., Jimmy Carr, and Patrick Carr, this is an extremely silly and very British movie. It is a satire of self-serious prestige British dramas like Downton Abbey or Gosford Park, so get ready for a lot of puns and absurdity in the style of The Naked Gun movies. Set in 1930s England, the film follows the Davenport family who live in the grand estate of Fackham Hall but do not have a male heir who could inherit it. The eldest daughter, Poppy (Emma Laird), is all set to marry her cousin Archibald (Tom Felton), as incest is a core family tenet to keep the bloodlines pure, but when that wedding is thwarted, hopes are set on the dreamy and idealistic younger daughter, Rose (Thomasin McKenzie) to save the family. Of course, Rose has fallen in love with a young servant named Eric Noone (Ben Radcliffe), so that's going to complicate matters.

Further complicating matters is the murder of her father (played by Damian Lewis), so then we get a classic murder mystery spoof, with Tom Goodman-Hill playing Inspector Watt (yes, we get a whole sequence of people being very confused as to WHAT his name is...Watt?). This movie is dumb but diverting, a perfectly pleasant way to while away 90 minutes when you have some time to kill or you just want to let your brain relax for a bit. If you love silly British comedy, this is exactly what you seek, but if you've never watched a British show in your life, this is not the movie for you.

Ella McCay: Written and directed by James L. Brooks, this is a deeply strange movie that features an all-star cast delivering amazing performances in service of a terrible script. Emma Mackey stars as the titular Ella, a 34-year-old woman who unexpectedly becomes the Governor of her state and is a passionate and principled politician. Unfortunately, she has a lot of challenging men in her life. Her estranged father (Woody Harrelson) is back in town and demanding forgiveness, she is increasingly worried about her anxious and agoraphobic brother (Spike Fearn) who isn't answering her messages, her husband (Jack Lowden) wants a bigger role at her side in government, and her old boss (Albert Brooks) is constantly nagging her about how she needs to be more charismatic and less idealistic if she wants to succeed as a politician. The only supportive people in her life are her bodyguard and driver (Kumail Nanjiani), her protective secretary (Julie Kavner, who is also the narrator of the movie, probably just because she has the most distinctive voice known to mankind?), and her Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is the only functional family member she has had in her life, and who fiercely loves and champions her.

This movie is a hot mess - there are a lot of storylines, and it proceeds like a bunch of vignettes (perhaps hearkening to Brooks' success in writing and directing sitcoms), and the dialogue is astonishingly clunky. The actors are fantastic, particularly Mackey and Curtis who work beautifully off each other, and I can't wait to see Mackey be a superstar in other movies, but this movie is not it. Honestly, I would not have minded this movie as much if it wasn't for one particular storyline involving Ella's brother and his ex-girlfriend, played by Ayo Edebiri. As the only Black character in this film, it was particularly galling to see what this movie made her go through, and I was NOT here for it. I agreed with almost all of the moral values of this film, and the good people got to have a happy ending while the bad people got their just desserts. But boy oh boy does it get it very wrong with the brother. Don't bother suffering through this movie in a theater, but please do watch it on streaming and let me know what you thought. I still can't quite understand what point it was ever hoping to make.