Recent Movies
We’ve been watching quite a few movies lately. First was the amazing Hamnet, which I raved about last week, and which I am already looking forward to watching again. None of the others were quite as good, but I enjoyed them all. While we saw Hamnet at the theater, with popcorn, the rest were viewed at home using various streaming services. There was popcorn for one movie, not the rest.
Lonely Planet
Nicole mentioned that she recently watched Lonely Planet, with Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth, and I thought that sounded like a fun idea, so I popped some popcorn and watched it one day while Ted and Maya had other plans.
Laura Dern plays Katherine, a successful writer who is stuck creatively with her current book, and decides that the answer is to go to a writers retreat in Morocco. There she meets Owen, a (much younger) man who is there with his girlfriend, an author who has recently published her first novel to much success. Katherine and Owen find themselves alone together and start a friendship that turns into something more.
I didn’t love it as much as Nicole did. I didn’t like the cheating aspect of it, or that it felt like Owen and his girlfriend got alone fine until suddenly her character had to be rotten so it would be OK for Owen to run off with someone his mother’s age. I think I would have liked it more if I had recently been in the exact places it was filmed, like Nicole, because that is all kinds of awesome. I do like Laura Dern though. People used to tell me that I resembled her, which I kind of do if I were to lose weight and gain height.
Jay Kelly
Saturday we watched Jay Kelly, in which George Clooney plays an actor between gigs who is realizing that he has sacrificed too much in his personal life in order to rise to his level of success. Jay has just wrapped on a film project, and has a couple of weeks off before starting his next. He is looking forward to spending this time with his younger daughter, who is planning to spend her last summer before college in Europe with some friends. Along with this disappointment, Jay finds out that his friend, the director who gave him his first acting job and started his career, has died. At the funeral, he runs into another actor, Tim (Billy Crudup) his roommate from decades earlier before Jay made it. Tim had auditioned for the now dead director all those years ago, and Jay had gone with him, and ended up getting the role. Tim is resentful and feels that Jay is living the life that should have been his, while he is working as a therapist. These events push Jay into following his daughter to Italy, where he is going to accept an honor that he had previously refused. When Jay goes to Italy, his staff has to go as well. His manager, Ron (Adam Sandler), drops everything to go with him, as is expected, as he always does, which Jay does not really appreciate or acknowledge.
I liked this fine. I like George Clooney, I like Billy Crudup, I like Adam Sandler’s more serious roles. I liked seeing Laura Dern again, this time as Jay’s publicist. The actress who played his older daughter was really good. But really, movies about Hollywood and the egos involved are rarely interesting to me. It was pretty well done but mostly felt shallow. I’m guessing it will win awards it doesn’t really deserve because Hollywood loves self referential movies.
Nouvelle Vague
Speaking of love letters to film, we watched Novelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s film imagining the making of Jean Luc Godard’s French New Wave film, Breathless. It’s in black and white, in French with subtitles, and I didn’t know any of the actors. I loved it. At first I felt like I was supposed to know who all of the characters were, but once I let that go it was a lot of fun. I had zero knowledge of Breathless, and am familiar with the term ‘French New Wave’, but had never seen any movies myself. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Breathless
Breathless starts with Michel Poiccard a.k.a. Laszlo Kovacs stealing a car in Marseilles so he can drive to Paris. There’s a girl there he can’t get out of his head, and a guy who owes him money. The girl is Patricia, a New Yorker who wants to be a journalist, currently selling newspapers on the street. Things go wrong on his way to Paris, and the police are in pursuit.
After watching Nouvelle Vague, there was nothing for it but to watch Breathless, which we found on Kanopy, the library movie app. It was fun to compare it to Nouvelle Vague, and see all of the little artistic decisions that they made during filming. This was a charming film full of pseudo intellectualism, like this quote. A famous author is being interviewed by a group of journalists, who are asking him ridiculous questions, when Patricia asks: “What is your greatest ambition in life?” To which the author answers, “To become immortal, and then die.” Excellent.
How about you? Seen any good movies lately?
24 Comments
StephLove
That last one sounds like someting Noah (our cinephile) would like.
This year so far I’ve watched Wake Up, Dead Man (with the whole family plus Beth’s mom) and Train Dreams (with Beth and Noah). Recommend both, though they are pretty different. No movies in a theater yet– the last one was Wicked For Good Thanksgiving weekend, with the whole family. That one I liked but didn’t love.
J
If Noah is a cinephile, I highly recommend both Breathless and Nouvelle Vague.
Agree on Wicked – I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it.
I haven’t heard of the others you mentioned, will have to look them up.
Nicole MacPherson
Oh, boo, I hoped you would love it!
J
Me too! The acting was good, so at least there’s that!
Margaret
I don’t watch enough movies; it’s hard to commit my time to one for some reason. I like going to the movie theater but my home is full of too many distractions. One of the big things I miss about teaching is that I showed French films and loved them. I had to find the PG rated ones though which could be difficult!
J
We sometimes go ages without watching a movie, but we’ve been without a lot of TV lately, so have started watching films instead. I’ll admit to enjoying it!
Jacquie
Recently watched Sinners and One Battle After Another. Both high energy, entertaining, thoughtful films. I loved Train Dreams, on Netflix and Vermiglio, an Italian film set during WWII that I saw on Kanopy. Both of these films are engaging stories with incredible cinematography. Slow paced which I don’t mind.
J
Oh, I LOVED both Sinners and One Battle After Another! I’ve never heard of Train Dreams, but now both you and Steph said it’s good, so likely we will watch it. I haven’t heard of Vermiglio either, but we do have Kanopy set up on our TV, so adding that to my list as well.
Lisa’s Yarns
I am terrible at watching movies! We watch about 30 minutes of something every night so it takes a long time to get through a movie! Right now we are watching The Sopranos but we might take a break when we finish watching season 3 to watch a movie to switch things up, maybe the new Knives Out movie. I am interested in the Morocco movie but I so sensitive to infidelity that it is probably not for me.
J
It might be hard to watch a movie in 30 minute increments. TV might be better, right? I liked the Morocco movie OK, but the infidelity bothered me.
DB Stewart
My favourite movie this year (thus far) was Train Dreams. I read Hamnet and can’t wait to see it.
J
Another vote for Train Dreams!
Alexandra
I’ve watched Lonely Planet and liked it for what it was, something to watch on a wet Sunday afternoon. I tried watching the Clooney flick but didn’t get more than about 10 minutes in and went looking for something else.
To be honest me and mine had more fun watching TROLL a ridiculously silly popcorn fantasy of a Troll coming to life in modern day Norway. And yes, we plan on watching Troll II.
J
I’ve never seen Troll, but love a good silly popcorn movie sometimes!
Ernie
I agree- Hamnet was outstanding. I have not heard of the other movies you mentioned and I do like Laura Dern but the cheating with a younger guy thing- blah. Probably not for me. I have watched a few movies with the kids- Weapons. Wow. Good but freaky and it makes one wonder how someone’s mind comes up with it. Curly and Reg and I watched something like Bloodlines-? It was good and scary in such a way that it was sort of comedic. Hard to explain.
J
I’ve heard good things about Weapons…I know nothing about it though.
Gina
We watched Jay Kelly and I wasn’t a huge fan, but my husband really liked it. Maybe it was a guy thing about working too much or something that he identified with. I do enjoy George Clooney as an actor, though. I have always found him very handsome.
I want to watch more movies, and the last movie we saw in the theater was One Battle After Another, which I adored and my husband was so-so on. LOL, we apparently cannot agree on movies!
We were supposed to see the second Wicked but never got there because of all the moving prep.
J
George Clooney is ridiculously handsome. Oh, One Battle After Another was amazing, wasn’t it? I guess my taste is more like yours than your husband’s.
Allison McCaskill
I saw Lonely Planet a while ago and liked it well enough. I have become more conservative-minded about relationships with big age differences – I don’t ‘disapprove’ of them and of course people can do what they want as long as there’s no abuse of power, but it just seems like it will become very difficult as both people get older. All restrictions are lifted when it’s Chris Hemsworth, though , lol. I don’t have any desire to watch Jay Kelly either, for the reasons you stated.
We watched Wake Up Dead Man as a family and really liked it. Matt and I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Angus and also really liked that. The last movie I saw in the theatre was Anaconda and it was okay, but even dumber than I expected. Still really want to see Hamnet, loved the book.
J
Oh, I remember seeing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy back when it came out. It made me feel kind of dumb, because I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on. Espionage films usually go over my head. My husband loved it though.
Sarah
Thanks for the inspo! I want to watch Jay Kelly!
J
I hope you enjoy it!
Tobia | craftaliciousme
well I have not seen any of these.
I have to admit that lately I feel like watching movies is a chore. We always watch someting when eating and I wish it wasn’t like that but the husband like it and it relaxes him. So guess we do it.
J
We watch TV every night with dinner. We didn’t used to, it started during the pandemic, but we never stopped.