In a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter, it was confirmed that Martin Scorsese’s latest film is going to be three hours and twenty-six minutes. For those who screened it in Cannes, I hope they took a long bathroom break and refrained from fluids. Running times have inflated even more than studio budgets of late. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer movie is three hours, which I plan to review next month. The question remains: can we still get smaller films made in the climate of spectacle? Have no fear, those still exist if one is willing to seek them out.
You Hurt My Feelings is the seventh feature from Nicole Holofcener, her first in five years and a hit at this year’s Sundance fest. A New Yorker through and through, her style of writing is what I would call sardonic empathy. Those who have even seen her last work, the script for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, would know what I mean. She imbues her characters with a depth and awkward quirkiness that makes them feel like you have met them on the street or in your local coffee shop before. Her second film starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus (I highly recommend checking out Enough Said), here she plays a struggling writer. Beth penned a decent memoir about her father, but that was ages ago. Her new work of fiction has been slow coming. Her editor is anxious, but her husband Don is encouraging. One day while out with her sister Sarah, they run into their respective husbands. Upon eavesdropping they both hear Don’s impression of Beth’s novel, which sends her into a tailspin. Can she ever trust him again? This is the crux of the plot, but it only escalates from there.
What makes this film unique in the sea of grand adventures and quests are the small things that make up our day to day lives. Holofcener isn’t concerned with big ideas. Moreover, it is that small things can become mountains for which ordinary people need to cross. It is in the writing where the film’s themes of softening hard truths come through. I found that each scene contained small kernels, underlying certain interactions cascading into the greater whole. Things left unsaid stifle any progress in these characters.
Tobias Menzies is an underrated actor. As Don, his job as a therapist makes for a menagerie of unresolved conversations. David Cross and Amber Tamblyn are hilarious as a couple who have been going for two years, not that any sessions have yielded breakthroughs. As talky as it is, I found the dialogue funny and endearing in a way that is lacking in cinema. Check this out in theaters in-between the blockbusters.
At home on MAX, Reality is as simple as they come. Three main characters, two interrogating the other in a room. I was unaware of this 2017 FBI case against Reality Winner, an intelligence analyst with a background in Middle East translation. Upon finding a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, she mailed it to an online news service. This film is, mostly, verbatim the transcript of her interview in her home while it was being searched.
First time filmmaker Tina Satter brings her stage play to life through an impressive performance from Sydney Sweeney in the title role. Her poise and facial expressions give multitudes of conflicting emotions. This could have easily been showy in a bad way. Satter adds these interesting filmic touches, redacted testimony either muted or characters pixelating out of frame. All of this could have been gimmicky if not handled well. A good debut effort; let’s see where this takes her in the future. Hopefully it will lead to some more good viewing.
