I care a lot: what the actual fuck is this movie?

 

SPOILER ALERT 📢 

Netflix: Are you serious? You can't be serious with this movie! I knew when this movie laden with oscar winners and nominees was released in February, a month that's considered a graveyard of studio stepchildren, that I was in for some shit. But little did I know that I was actually going to feel harrassed and deeply offended by a movie starring some of my favorite actors! I'm not even done watching this movie and I had to stop and express how much I hate it! Maybe it will all come together in the end, you say? Nope. It done fucked up so badly that there is little hope for them to fix this tone-deaf mess.

If you haven't heard of it. Good. Don't watch it. It will seriously piss you off. You will be pissed off during a pandemic about a movie. I shit you not. 

This is what happens. Rosamund Pike subtracts all of the sociopathic satisfaction she aroused in Gone Girl and replaces it with irritating cockiness in her role as Marla Grayson, a con artist who cons old people out of their life savings by convincing a very stupid judge to appoint her as the elder's legal guardian. Her and her network of  illegitimate medical and legal consultants proceed to liquidate the victim's assets and bilk them for all their worth until they die. Ew, right? It's not fun to watch someone do something so icky, I don't care how many off-the-rack designer pant suits they wear. Anyway, Marla learns about a "cherry" from her corrupt doctor partner which propels the events of the film. A "cherry" is 1) a term they use to define an elder who is wealthy with no living dependents or relatives and 2) a gross word to use to refer to an old person, or anyone for that matter. 

This "cherry" is Jennifer Peterson played by freaking treasure Dianne Wiest. With altered records from the doctor, Marla and her associate Fran easily gain a court order to make Marla Jennifer's legal guardian. They steal her house, sell all of her stuff and remand Jennifer to an assisted living facility. The scene where they take her to the facility, shut her in a room and deny her cell phone usage is so frustrating and rage inducing that you'll seriously want to punch Rosamund Pike in those skeletonal cheek bones. But considering how extremely fucked the situation is, we still wait patiently until some kind of justice is done. Well, 2 hours in, I'm still waiting. 

I get it. How can I like Scorsese and not enjoy an anti-hero criminal at the top of their field doing what they do  best and getting away with it? Well, that's because Scorsese films follow a satisfying and well executed story arc. This is not what we have here. We do not have a good storyarc. Why? Because this movie is poorly written, poorly acted, badly directed and clearly suffering from some kind of identity crisis. To make it even worse the movie seems to be angling for some kind of female empowerment message which is laughably unfufilled. 

The beginning of the movie signals a problematic message and  general bull. The film opens with a disheveled man appearing to try to break into a nursing home. The man looks unhinged and we suspect there is something wrong with him. In the court room we learn that Marla is trying to keep the man from seeing his mother, who is one of Marla's charges. Marla with Rosamund Pike's fantastic bob and high fashion looks easily convinces the judge that she is the best possible choice to care for the woman. We would probably be convinced too, but the film employs a running narration of Marla which makes it pretty clear that being good is just something she's not interested in. Actually the narration is kind of fucking irriating too. Marla addresses the audience directly and is all like "you think you're a good person, but you're not. Good is just something normal people do to hide within their weaknesses" or something like that. And you're like, okay, that's annoying af, but you assume its going to connect with something meaninful and intelligent later. I mean, obviously the voice, Marla, is an asshole, but that can't be strictly all she is, right? Well, unload those expectations right now, my friend. Pike's Marla is one dimensional, period. In fact, most of the characters are cartoonish in either their exaggerated ignornance or their exaggerated, unexplained evil. 

Marla, who's identifyer is smart, beautiful lesbian and her partner, who can also be identified with 3 words, beautiful tough...Okay, I can't think of anything else actually, get away with the rouse for a good part of the movie until they learn that Jennifer actually has some powerful friends who begin to threaten Marla to get Jennifer out of the facility. But Marla, who is a stone-faced psycho is never once, not ever, bothered by any threat of physical violence to her person and infact will in any and all situations react with nothing but venom laced quips and a stoic cockiness to these threats. And worse, instead of meeting her challenge, all of the dangerous people she meets falter at her every raised eyebrow.  I guess they just can't handle her because she's a lioness! (she says this several times throughout the movie. It is never not cringy.) She's a lioness, a winner and she never loses. That is why she can get away with all of the unfiltered evil she's been serving. Why is she this way? How did she get into this business? What problems has she surmounted in her life to give her this upfront confidence? These questions that are never answered or addressed even once. 

At one point Marla is tied to a chair in a secluded location in the middle of the night and is threatened by the film's "baddie" Roman played by Peter Dinklage.  Roman is apparently high in the leadership of the Russian Mafia and Jennifer is his mother. We really think that this confrontation will drag some vulnerability out of Pike, you know like normal human reactions to this situation, but no, instead we get quips. You want to murder her mother? "Go ahead. I hate that fucking sociopath." That is about all we get of Marla's backstory and it's pretty unfilling information at explains nothing. 

Given that Marla is in this situation and is only answering the very reasonable calls to simply release Jennifer with endless jokes and hubris, you expect her to die. Unfortunately, she does not. That is Roman's intention, but even though she is put in a pretty much guaranteed die situation, she manages to survive. As irritating as that is, the actual scene is fucking infuriating. Marla is made unconscious, put in a running vehicle with a bottle of vodka between her legs then sent off a cliff. The scene is almost a shot for shot remake of a similar scene in the 1992 melodrama "Death Becomes Her." All it was missing was Bruce Willis and Goldie Hawn kissing triumphantly behind the car as it careens towards the edge. Why would this movie, which is trying to be a smart, biopic thriller, sample a scene from a famous trash comedy? This is a prime example of this movie's entirely confusing tone. Peter Dinklage does angry, violent boss guy so over the top in some scenes that you're not thinking of Tyrion Lannister, you're thinking about the character Dinklage played in the movie Elf. That's how little range he exhibits here. Continuing with this cartoony, Tim Burton movie merged with a scorsese film we have Danny from The Mindy Project who isJennifer and Roman's legal represenative. His acting is OK in this, but the fact that he literally dresses like Colonel Sanders and is described as "dressing expensive" makes me want to laugh during all of his scenes. Am I supposed to laugh? I dunno. I prefer it to the frustration and rage I feel throughout the rest of the film. 

And then we have Dianne Wiest. One of my favorite actresses. She, in this shit cyclone, is the calm center of the film. Her performance in this jumped up Lifetime movie, is good and believable. Her confusion and drugged frustation all appear to be genuine and it's unfortunate that she's in this movie at all or that the director didn't point at her when the other actors asked for guidance. Instead, he told Rosamund Pike to "do Gone Girl without the writing or complexity", Told Peter Dinklage "do Sunny Corleone without the range" and told the writers to "Write the kind of movie where they say the title a lot, unironically."  

At the end of the movie she gets shot by the random due who we met in the beginning. It's supposed to make us feel better and drive home an ulitmate morality message. Instead the last minute comeuppance is insulting and the movie is all the worse for it. If you're going to let your herione be this top notch infallible bitch at least drive home the message to the end. Don't water it down with some half-assssed attempt at justice. Fuck this movie. 

Malcom and Marie: I don't like this movie

       I don't like this movie. It is painful to watch, but probably not in the piercing introspective way that the filmmakers want. Instead it's painful in the exhaustively irritating way that a fly buzzes in your home from an unknown spot, keeping itself cleverly hidden so you don't know where to squash it. The buzzing is interminable and unyielding, with a predictable rhythm that you have a strong instinct to end as soon as possible. It starts out as something you think you can live with and ignore, move past to focus on the things that really matter in life. However, as the buzzing becomes stronger, louder, demanding more and more of your attention, you realize that the monotony of it and it's loud obnoxious insistence on itself cannot be bared. But enough with this metaphor. This is why Malcolm & Marie sends me in search of my fly swatter.

First of all, shut up. Just shut up. Second of all, fuck already. Just fuck already. Or actually don't because he's way too old and you are way too young. It's upsetting. But let's put some details in this shit.

Malcolm & Marie is about a couple who are really wealthy, but apparently have a lot of problems. They may look like a beautiful It couple living lavishly in probably the Hollywood Hills, but actually, they are a fractured, co-dependent sado-masichistic man and woman with exceptional diction and lung capacity. After credits in a style that signal that this is an "art film," we dive in. We learn that following director Malcolm's successful film premiere, former actress/model Marie is mad and the high on life Malcolm doesn't know why. Actually for a good portion of the beginning, he doesn't even notice her attitude. This, for us, the viewers who can feel and see her silent anger, sets Malcolm up as the self-centered asshole who doesn't recognize his beautiful arm candy's feelings. But Marie's feelings don't go unrecognized for long. In the first of one of the films many eloquently delivered, impassioned soliloquies, Marie expresses her disappointment that Malcolm didn't thank her at the premiere. He should have thanked her because she is the former drug addict that Malcolm based his film on. She is the woman "Emony" the damaged protagonist of his masterpiece. And he didn't thank her. So she's mad. 

Marie lets all of this out and we're thanking "you're right, he should have thanked you." Then Malcolm volleys back with "I apologized for not thanking you. You said it was fine at the time." And she's like "I changed my mind." And I'm thinking, you know what, that's fine, you can change your mind and be angry and pick an argument about something that is long past been relevant. The problem I have with the film isn't Marie's insistence that Malcolm doesn't value her and her artisitc and personal contribution to this film and his personal success. This is a problem in many relationships and kudos to the film for examining it. My problem is the relentless way the film keeps hammering home this point over and over again. The film begins a pattern of fight, conclude, attempt carnal reconciliation, and repeat. The pattern becomes so predictable that all of the relevations that are dug out from these interactions become powerless and unfulfilled. The filmmakers, possibly do this intentionally to mimic and reflect the frustrating waltz of "fight, fuck, repeat" that couples fall into sometimes (although no couple, anywhere, fights this eloqently outside of a Shakespeare play), but since the film is so hell bent on showing this elevated, exceptionalized couple fighting and that it's artistic and special, that I get annoyed and it becomes one-note really. 

The power of the performances, the writing which are exceptional. They are, weakens and flattens until you find yourself searching for that fly swatter, as exhausted as the characters must be and in search of your fly swatter to end it. I think after the 3rd of 4th round, we really do want Malcolm or Marie to end the relationship, not for their benefit, but for ours. Release us from this interminable pattern! Only when the film breaks this pattern and shows a fight that does not include "heartbreaking relevations" does it attain any true merit. Malcolm's enraged frustration leveled at the "white lady from LA times" who criticizes his film includes some delightful vitrole directed at "Woke" filmmaking and includes an education in classic film that this reviewer can't help but enjoy. However, just when we think the film is done playing that note, it returns and strangles it until that neck bone chokes to dust. The ending speech by Zendaya is too long. It loses it's affect and is just annoying. I don't feel anything from it. And judging by the way Michael David Whatever struggles to eek out a tear in the face of it, he doesn't either. It's highly indulgent emotional filmmaking and really pretty pretentious in how you just know the filmmaker expects us to eat all of this up and revel in all of the brilliance. I'm sorry, but I don't think this film is brilliant. I think it desperately wants to be and in that relentless search for it, loses any and all hope for it.

 Despite the strong performance by marvel Zendaya. But she's a problem too. She's all of 22 years old. And looks it. How long has she known Malcolm? How could she have known him so long as to have so much history with him? He's 35, and she's 22. When did he meet her, help her through her overdose, write a film with her influence, spend years trying to get it filmed and finally live through that acheivement together. If this relationship is as old and weathered as the fights would have you believe, where is the evidence of that in Zendaya's casting? It felt like the words of someone older, but in a younger package. Which is so Hollywood. But that's another problem. This movie feels like it was conceived, written and made in a Hollywood vaccum. The characters, the setting, their voices are those of an elite group who view their problems, their fights as the stuff of art and you can tell that these are fights that people in the film industry write to elevate and glorify how they are better people because of their passion and how it erupts as eloquent solioquies, not the ignorant stutterings of the masses. But that's what a real fight is. It isn't polished and currated, it's visceral and ineloquent and more interesting than these arguments by far. Just look at a film that this film is obviously referencing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in that film the protagonists played by Burton and Taylor are smart, witty and cutting, but there words are also random and unfiltered. That's what makes the film a gut punch: there's restraint and authenticity. Even though the word authenticity is repeated an annoying amount throughout this movie, it has very little. 

This film is highly filtered and it's from SnapChat. And it appears not to even realize the ways that it is contributing to the kind of troupes it attacks. There's this whole part where Marie attacks Malcolm's male-gaze film making...while she wears nothing but a tight wife beater and panties! Malcolm comments on this so we're not supposed to notice that low hanging fruit, but it's still true! She's practically naked or sexualized throughout the whole movie. And she's 22, not 32 which would be more realistic. It just doesn't work. I will admit, I wasn't excited to see this movie. I didn't recognize the actors and the style didn't excite me. But that's why I was so excited to be proven wrong. In some ways i was, the performances are stellar and some of the writing too, but the cliches and general lack of restaint in the filmaking, really kills it. It doesn't make it a horrible movie, but it doesn't make it approach good either. Bare with me for a moment with another metaphor: it's like a tennis match that everyone's excited for, and in the beginning it is good. The masterful players are lobbing one shot after another at each other. But then they keep doing it. And keep answering each volley with another slam, and keep going and going and going. The match becomes monotonous. I am no longer excited, I just want to leave. It goes on like this until, when the last spike (i don't know tennis) goes down in the pavement, the player may cheer but we're just like, I don't even care, I'm ready to go. That's Malcolm & Marie.