6 Best Movies To Watch After Happiest Season (2020)
The Holdovers
After stumbling with Downsizing, Alexander Payne bounces back with a gentle & witty comedy-drama. The artist Dmitry Samarov one said to me that the ratio of good to bad late periods in an artist's life was depressing to consider. For every Sir Edward William Elgar there was an Eric Clapton (my example, not his), and that it was rare to see someone sharpen as they aged. Now, I like Dmitry and certainly respect his opinion, but I can’t help but feel that when film overtook painting as the dominant artwork that people engage with, the ratio shifted towards bizarre experimentation and welcome self-reflection as much as dull self reflection. Take for instance 62 year old Alexander Payne, who, after the biggest disaster of his career (2017’s confused parable Downsizing), has started his fourth decade as a director by leaning hard back into what he knew (and what the royal “we” enjoyed) and rediscovered himself with The Holdovers, a movie no one can seem to stop comparing to Hal Ashby. No mean feat, of course, but even that sells its virtues short. This is no mere homage, no mere return to form, this is the movie that Payne’s been hoping to make since his 90s heyday, a film that earns both its jaundiced gaze and its catharsis. Continue Reading →
Dicks: The Musical
The audaciously titled Dicks: The Musical comes with an equally eye-catching tagline, boasting the honor of being “A24’s first musical.” That’s bound to intrigue cinephiles everywhere. After all, not every movie studio is trendy enough to regularly sell out of logo festooned merchandise. Or even make hipster merch in the first place. Continue Reading →
Totally Killer
The low-budget confines of Blumhouse movies mean that any idea can become a movie, including bold original visions like Whiplash or Get Out. Unfortunately, it also means a lot of subpar stuff can easily get the green light. The latest example is the new Amazon/Blumhouse collaboration, Totally Killer. Hailing from director Nahnatchka Khan, Totally Killer dares to ask a question no reasonable soul was pondering. “What if Happy Death Day and Hot Tub Time Machine had a tedious baby?” Buckle up, horror devotees. Here comes yet another dose of 1980s nostalgia and some frighteningly lousy editing. Continue Reading →
Happiness for Beginners
Happiness for Beginners happens when hundreds of hours of labor come together over months to create something so bland and ineffectual it feels years old even on a first watch. Continue Reading →
The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star
The temperatures are dropping and the stores are getting crowded, which can only mean one thing...it’s time for another installment of Netflix’s holiday cavity-maker...no, not that one. Noth that one either. That’s right, we’re talking Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star, so grab your peppermint martinis and your fuzziest slippers as we delve into the film that begs the question “Is Vanessa Hudgens using Netflix as a vehicle to kiss cute boys?” Fair warning, there are some spoilers ahead. Continue Reading →
Married to the Mob
Every month, we at The Spool select a filmmaker to explore in greater depth — their themes, their deeper concerns, how their works chart the history of cinema and the filmmaker’s own biography. For February, we’re celebrating acclaimed genre-bender Jonathan Demme. Read the rest of our coverage here. So there’s this girl, okay? And she was bad for a long time and now she’s trying to be good. And there’s this boy, and he’s good too. Like, an officer of the law, good. He’s a real straight shooter and she’s a lady with a past but they meet and they spark and soon they’re in love. But there’s a problem - he needs her to go back to her old life and pretend she’s still bad to help catch some of the bad guys she used to run with; and if she doesn’t, she might get busted herself. That’s the plot to Jonathan Demme’s 1988 Married to the Mob. It’s also the plot to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 Notorious, but told from the woman’s perspective, and a comedy. The result is a sweet, oddball movie that works more than it doesn’t, but is a little at odds with itself. Demme’s desire to make a charming, screwball comedy about a bunch of wacky larger-than-life characters doesn’t always mix with his desire to subvert a cinema classic and show a woman trying to survive in a man’s world. Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Angela de Marco, a dissatisfied mob wife who uses the death of her husband Frank (Alec Baldwin, maximum greasy) to leave the insular world of organized crime to start fresh. Her pampered life may have been suffocating but it was also very comfortable, and when the movie focuses on her struggle as a single mom in Manhattan it is funny and well observed. Her one room studio apartment with a toilet in the kitchen doesn’t impress her son and there’s not much work available for a former mob-wife with no employment history. But Angie is scrappy and doesn’t take any shit; so when she applies for a job at a chicken joint and catches the manager spying on her as she’s changing into her uniform, she storms out. Eventually, she’s hired at a local salon, run by a Jamaican immigrant named Rita (played by reggae singer and actress Sister Carol East). Continue Reading →