​     Paterson walks to work and back and then at night he walks his wife’s jealous bulldog, played brilliantly by Nellie who won at Cannes for her role as Marvin, RIP Nellie, to a local bar and sits there shooting the sh*t with the regulars. Ah, there’s the secret to the happy marriage, moderate your time together.
     For work Paterson drives a bus and for passion he writes poetry. A very prosaic kind of poetry, the kind that actually seems just like any regular narrative, but written and read aloud (told you this movie is slow, both occur simultaneously on screen) into poetry like style of shortened sentences. It has no rhyme and barely a rhythm, but hey, that’s modern poetry for you. I don’t like it, but Paterson loves it, because the dude got soul.
     He’s all man, mind you, he can disarm a gun wilding maniac in a second. He’s just a different kind of man you normally see on screen. Representing a welcomingly different brand of masculinity in American cinema.
      This is something that’s traditionally associated with, say, the energizer bunny named Eastwood, a man who never slows down. The actor turned director for decades now has projected a definitive image of masculinity upon the silver screen, the squinty eyed, shoot first ask questions later, tough guy persona whom men fear and women desire. A quintessential American image, a cowboy. With a very specific sort of machismo to it. The loud kind? How loud, you ask? So loud, his latest movie is literally titled Cry Macho.
      Eastwood has played the same character for essentially the entire duration of his very long indeed career, a while back he had transitioned his cowboy into a grumpy old man with the heat of gold secreted away beneath the denim somewhere, but it’s still a continuation not a transformation. He has carried on much in the same vein in real life too, his track record with women alone…including leaving behind a storied track of kids, some of whom he refused to even acknowledge for ages, despite the fact that they turned out looking just like him, see his baby clone Scott Eastwood.
      I’m not ragging on Eastwood, I respect certain aspects of him, mostly as a director, have watched a bunch of his later in life movies, I even get his appeal as an actor and he’s aged notably well and his undeniably good looks and the twinkle in his eye, remarkably enough, persevered. But…it is nice to have an alternative to that.
      Another ridiculously tall well built man who doesn’t need to snarl, squint or shoot anyone, a man who can go through his day, through his life with a sort of quiet dignity, forbearance and  grace. A man who takes pleasure in small things, who finds beauty in small things. A kind man.
      In popular American mindset, especially of the present day grab ‘em by the p*ssy mentality that by numbers surely offsets any well meant MeToo ideology, most of those attributes would signify weakness and it absolute isn’t it, in fact it’s a strength, a more tensile, more durable sort of strength. Certainly, a more admirable one.
    And that’s just one of the things I enjoyed about Paterson, a movie that manages to offer great comfort despite being so slow and uneventful. Adam Driver is absolutely perfect in it too, he IS Paterson. Watch and revel in the quiet pleasures of life.

​
​    Promising Young Woman starts off so promisingly. A seemingly drunken woman gets picked up at a bar by a seemingly nice guy, only he turns out to be a total creep and she turns out to be totally sober and then…cut to black and you’re left imagining delicious revenge scenarios.
    Well, the sad thing about this movie is that it won’t live up to your expectations or imaginings, because although this is a very well-meaning and psychologically messed up tale of revenge, it’s also very much a product of its time and it’s #s and MeToo and millennials both just don’t have the lethal drive to really stab the message in.
      Instead, what you get is…talk therapy. Of course, you do. Cassie, the titular young woman, who had abandoned all her promising life seven years ago following a terrible thing that happened to her best friend, is a 30 year old college dropout who lives with her parents and works in a coffee shop. Her only passion in life is her extracurricular pursuit of men who take advantage of women, the would-be rapists who think of themselves as nice guys and only consider trying something when a woman is thoroughly intoxicated. She goes out hunting them in clubs and bars, goes home with them and then teaches them a lesson…in talk therapy. Somehow none of these dangerously predatorial men ever snap and do something terrible to her. Presumably, because they are all cowards terrified of women who are clear minded and in possession of all their faculties.
         Which is to say that yes, like most of MeToo brand of feminist ideology so prevalent in modern day the goal is to render all men the same and all men as evil and vile predators. In fact, every single Y chromosome person in this movie, outside of Cassie’s lovely and kind father, fall into that category. Broad strokes. Broad strokes, indeed.
        Ok, so what happened to Cassie’s friend, Nina? Well, tale as old as time, she got wasted at a college party and raped by at least one popular kid while his friends at the very least watched and cheered on. An objectively terrible thing. Nina tried to take legal action, but the system was against her (very heavy moral here and an excellent performance by Connie Britton as the school’s dean), so Nina went ahead of killed herself. All that promise…self-terminated. And in her own way Cassie followed her, albeit on a much slower trajectory. That’s a tragedy upon tragedy. But it also, I can’t help thinking, presents women as so inherently weak that they are completely defined by the worst thing that’s happened to them and have no power, no agency to get past it. Didn’t they say living well is the best revenge? Well, these girls are not having it.
        So, anyway, back to Cassie. Who has been “schooling” in her way random bros and dudes for what seems like years and making notes of it in her notebook. Oddly enough she isn’t punishing people directly responsible for what happened to Nina, she’s on the mission to school the general population. Which makes you wonder just how effective is that? Will these men really be changed? Or will it just be “one crazy b*tch” event in their life that they’ll forget the second they get drunk again? If Cassie really wanted to make a difference, would it not be a more rewarding and practical solution to…oh, I don’t know…actually go out, find these drunken about to be raped women and safely take them home?
      But here’s the thing, the hashtag generation doesn’t care for practicality, they only care to make a statement and statement wise Cassie’s approach looks like it’s something more than it is. And then she finally sets off on a proper revenge mission, going after the parties responsible, after she realizes that Nina’s rapist is alive, thriving and about to wed an underwear model. And Cassie finally gets creative as far as punitive mindf*ckery goes.
     But life isn’t all no fun and weird games…love comes knocking. Love takes shape of a former collegemate, an extraordinary tall and quirkily charming young man, played very nicely by Bo Burnham, a ridiculously clever and funny comedian who’s been branching out in all directions lately. If you haven’t seen his stand-up specials, do yourself a favor and watch them. They are awesome.
      So, anyway…Cassie, after some initial reservations, mellows out into Bo’s impossibly long arms and it’s almost like a romcom happy ending sort of thing, until in her quest for justice she finds some evidence that throw a wrench into all of the works.
     So now it’s time for grand revenge scheme, it’ll be devastating. But it’s also, practically, a suicide mission. Meaning Cassie is so dedicated to her cause she’s willing to die on that hill. How many hashtag devotees can say that?
      But also what a waste. What a tragic waste of potential. To watch this smart person who could have done so much with her life throw it all away on an obsession. Mind you, even Nina’s own mother has moved on and asked Cassie to do the same. Cassie gets every chance to do the same and exact her revenge remotely and forgoes it. This movie is so tragic in the end, it makes it seem like it’s about the deadly power of obsession and not about revamping and rethinking gender roles.
     And the thing is, this movie is obviously very much intended to be the latter. The latest, in fact, in genderpolitik, the MeToo cinematic darling. Well, maybe it should have picked a stronger lead.
     Lisbeth Salander would have laughed at Cassie’s ineffectuality. What a generational difference there. One was indeed an avenger of women, a woman who took on the unfair society and made a difference. You can’t ignore the parallels here, right down to Cassie’s final revenge attempting a special sort of body art. They key word is attempting. Where Salander succeeds, Cassie fails. In every possible way. That’s the real failure of the movie and the real failure of Cassie as a promising young woman.
      Imagine that. A character written and directed by men years and years ago is more effective at getting revenge on men who wrong women that a character written and directed by a woman in present day.
      And this is frustrating, because the movie is so well done. The always excellent Carrey Mulligan shines in career making performance. All the acting is terrific, in fact. The dialogue’s great. It’s all so clever, so brimming with potential. It’s so fun to watch until you start thinking about it, thinking about its message, what it wants to say and what it actually does. Women are weak and men are predatorial. That’s it? That can’t be enough. And it’s about as subtle as a freight train.
       Not even going to go into the boyfriend thing, but…just a few words…can people not change? Can people not mature and acquire morals and become productive members of society…way more so, one might argue, than an angry barista? Or is it just that Bo Burnham is just so freaking likeable?
       Bottom line (and I apologize it took me so long to get here) is that Promising Young Woman is a cleverly (Academy Award winningly so) written and slickly done movie with a one note reductive message behind it and, while it’s supposed to be the latest word on feminism, it actually does nothing to further the cause, quite the opposite, by making its protagonist a weak, obsessive, suicidal failure.
      So anyway, yet another movie so busy trying to be clever in that perfectly PC way of the hashtag era that it ends up disappointing. Good going, but doesn’t hold up to retrospect. Promises, promises…

      The last time Wolverine stood adoringly looking at Rebecca Fergusson belting out a song, it was in The Greatest Showman, an infinitely superior movie in every possible way. But alas, we can’t all enjoy the highly fictionalized account of P.T. Barnum’s life over and over again, we must consume new media.
      Reminiscence is new. It’s a lovechild of a single mother Lisa Joy, famous from Westword, which I still haven’t watched so there will be no comparisons. In a comparison free world, Reminiscence is just ok and nothing more.
       I don’t think anyone’s going to love this movie as much as its creator, who is so onanistically passionate about it, she actually recycles her own dialogue. Over and over again. Entire sections of it. One twice and one three times. Seriously.
       But ok, let’s get back to basics. Reminiscence is a science fiction noir romance. Got this? It’s a lot. Lisa Joy just throws it all in there, sprinkles a heavy amount of climate change narrative on top and hopes it works.
       And it does…to an extent. But there isn’t much here. The plot is fairly thin, the acting is fine considering, but there isn’t much here for anyone to do. Joy seems to be more of a visual director, a halfsunken Miami looks gorgeous. The actors look gorgeous.
      Huge Ackman (this is a surprisingly funny joke from a James Corden skit that somehow stuck with me) cannot stay dressed to save his life and thus ends up taking off his shirt with a delightful regularity. Admittedly, the man is now in his 50s and still looks spectacular with his shirt off, but after a while it just seems kinda fetishistic on Joy’s behalf. I mean, both Ferguson and Thandie Newtown (Jackman’s righthand woman in his memory business) manage to mostly stay dressed.
       And so from the perfectly noir moment Fergusson sashays into Jackman’s place of business and life, he loves her, she seems to reciprocate, but then vanishes and he has to find her, solve some barely interesting mystery and figure out if she meant all her kisses or just used him like a no good dame with legs for days.
       Blah, blah, blah. Glossy, underwhelming. Pretty, but superficial. Heavy on style and light on substance with clunky and overwritten dialogue and not a single song from Mr. Jackman. Whaaa…
        It stands to mention that Fergusson actually does her own singing here, unlike in The Greatest Showman. Turns out the lady got the pipes, but it would have never been enough(pun it, baby) for The Greatest Showman’s showstopper.
        So yeah, pretty as a picture. But a proper picture should strive to offer more. Overall, too forgettable to reminisce about. Oh, the irony.