Although it's cringe-worthy in its beginners-level grasp of how to aim a camera at a subject, this movie is a testimony to its makers' loving attentiveness to individual human beings who would go entirely unnoticed by the radar of the Corporate American Filmmaking Machine (in its search for the familiar, the glamorous, the bankable).
Hess has an eye for, and a heart for, the experience of those whom Peter Falk describes (in Wings of Desire) as "extras... extra people." And…
[Forgive me for using this as my rough-draft-review tablet this time. I don't like posting long reviews on Letterboxd.]
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Noah Baumbach's Mistress America isn't as perfectly concentrated and cohesive as Frances Ha. Nor is its colorfully flashy style as vital to its success as its predecessor's black and white was. (Actress Greta Gerwig, the main attraction in both films, seems to flare up in full color when performing in gray-scaled contexts).
Okay, there: I've made the inevitable and obligatory…
A writer who is really feeling deadline pressures moves into a small room far from home and struggles to focus on his work, but there's disruptively carnal noise through the thin wall.
Men wrestle.
The writer's self-absorption causes him to say spectacularly ignorant things and make him, for those around him, a case for pity and charity.
A beautiful woman takes so much pity on him that he falls for her. Turns out she's drawn to sad, suffering men and…
16 THINGS ABOUT GOSFORD PARK
1. Still my favorite Altman film.
2. Still head and shoulders above the entirety of Downton Abbey.
3. Still the most virtuosic choreography of a large ensemble cast I've ever seen.
4. I miss Clive Owen.
5. That scene with Tom Hollander eating jam in the cellar. That scene.
6. I believe that when he goes home from work, Richard E. Grant dresses and behaves just like this.
7. All of the moments with Claudie…
I remember when this was a very popular movie among evangelical Christians — the idea being that it is sinful to compromise your devotion to God by supporting a corrupt leader and to shrug off his womanizing ways in order to gain political advantage. I guess that makes me old, that I can remember those days.
