July Movies Part 2: The Friend & Friendship

Obviously, I could not resist a post about two movies I recently caught up with on streaming that are similarly named but bear no similarities to each other otherwise. One is a gentle drama about dealing with grief, and the other is an examination of one man's insane spiral as he tries to make new friends. Neither is a film I would have wanted to go to the theater to see, but they were certainly intriguing enough for a couch watch.

The Friend: Written and directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel based on the novel by Sigrid Nunze, this is a movie about what happens when Iris's (Naomi Watts) best friend, Walter (Bill Murray), dies and leaves his giant Great Dane, named Apollo, to her to take care of. Of course, she lives in Manhattan in a rent-controlled apartment with a very strict no-pets policy, so this is going to be problematic. 

Iris and Apollo have a somewhat testy relationship at first, particularly as he seems to be a rather unbiddable creature who won't let her sleep on her own bed, won't take the elevator, and won't eat anything. But both of them are grieving the loss of Walter, and as you can imagine, they bond over their shared loss and find comfort in each other. There's isn't much more to this film - it's a rather vibey movie about New York intellectuals and their general aesthetic, but dog lovers will probably really enjoy watching Apollo, as he's a rather magnificent beast. There's a lot of side plot about Walter and the womanizing and somewhat disappointing human being he was, but none of that seems particularly relevant and I'd be hard-pressed to say I paid much attention to any of it. Overall, this film makes for a perfectly adequate streaming experience on a slow afternoon.

Friendship: Written and directed by Andrew DeYoung, there is a LOT that happens in this movie, most of which I can't quite claim to understand. Tim Robinson stars as Craig, an awkward man with a wife and teenage son, who have a weirdly Oedipal relationship and don't seem to care much about Craig. He is too weird at work to have any friends and is mostly a lonely man seeking connection. A casualty of the male loneliness epidemic, if you will.

But then Austin (the charismatic Paul Rudd) moves into the neighborhood, and unusually, Craig strikes up a friendship with him. The two of them become really close and go off on strange adventures together, sometimes late at night, or sometimes in the middle of the workday, and everything seems rosy. But when Craig goes over to Austin's house for a party with some of Austin's other friends, his oddness becomes too much for the group to handle and he finds himself ostracized. Which of course, means that this man completely loses his mind and spirals out of control in increasingly frightening fashion for the rest of this film. This movie is kind of a comedy, kind of a horror, kind of a mess? I'm not a Robinson person, but I imagine that if you are a fan of his work, this movie would be right up your alley. It's weird and genre-defying and while I didn't much care for it, I'm sure there are many lonely middle-aged men who would. So, give it a shot, I guess?