The Skeleton Twins, North Country, The Secret of Kells, Obvious Child

Busy week, busy month, and I’m watching movies like it’s my job (hint hint, anyone want to hire me?).  Every week my list of must-see movies grows faster than I can go to the theaters.  So, for your reading pleasure, the good and the bad of everything I watched last week:

Image c/o WOUB

 

Some girlfriends and I took in The Skeleton Twins downtown on Saturday afternoon; the general consensus was that it was dark but good.  The sibling relationship movie stars Kristen Wiig (goddess) and Bill Hader, both longtime cast members of Saturday Night Live with great platonic chemistry.  Luke Wilson makes an appearance as Wiig’s hapless husband, while Hader stands out with his nuanced portrayal of the cynical “gay cliché”, as he calls it.  No one was disappointed we saw it, but it wasn’t particularly memorable… we had planned to talk about the movie over dinner, but we ran out of things to say about it by the time we made it to the Italian restaurant.

 

Image c/o movpins

 

H and I spent a good portion of the rest of the weekend in full fall cleaning mode, resulting in a 75 percent perfect apartment and 25 percent my own clutter to sort.  I incentivize my sorting by doing it in front of a movie. Henry put North Country at the top of our Netflix queue after a recent law school lecture on workplace sexual harassment, which suited my sorting needs perfectly.  I vaguely recalled Charlize Theron receiving a Best Actress nomination for this film in the wake of winning for Monster, but I couldn’t name a single person who had seen North Country.  It seemed bleak (it is), slow (it isn’t), but I changed my tune.  North Country dramatizes the true story of the first class-action lawsuit for sexual harassment, brought by a group of women working for a mine in late 1980s Minnesota (H astutely pointed out that North Country brings Theron’s roles as a Minessotan to at least two, alongside the fabulous and forgotten Young Adult).  I can’t sugar coat it: it explores sad, tough lives with few options for survival, but somehow retains a mainstream Hollywood glow that keeps it from bringing you down too far.  Part of this may be the myriad of now-famous actors in the film: Bridget Moynahan (“True Detective,” Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Trucker), Corey Stoll (“House of Cards,” “Strain”), Jeremy Renner (The Avengers, The Hurt Locker), Sissy Spacek (Carrie, Coal Miner’s Daughter), Richard Jenkins (Stepbrothers, The Visitor), Frances McDormand (Fargo, Burn After Reading), Sean Bean (The Fellowship of the Ring, “Game of Thrones”), Woody Harrelson (everything), etc.  When you’re exclaiming, “Hey it’s that guy!  From that thing!” every few minutes, it’s hard to stay mad about gender inequality and sexual violence (just kidding, it’ll still make you mad).

 

Image c/o Ghibli World

 

In finally doing the cleaning I had been putting off, I attempted some of the baking I had been putting off too.  H and I and Martha Stewart’s Earl Grey shortbread cookies sat down together, just the three of us, to The Secret of Kells.  After browsing aimlessly and commenting extensively on the kids’ section of Netflix streaming, and very nearly going with Muppets: Treasure Island again, we decided to watch one of our “we know we’re going to watch it someday just not today” movies (sidenote: I think about this sketch LITERALLY every time I sit down to browse Netflix streaming.  Sometimes, I’m pretty close to inadvertently reenacting it.  H endures, somehow).  The Secret of Kells is a fictional story about the writing of the Book of Kells, which, for those uneducated folks (including myself until 15 minutes into this movie), is an elaborately decorated book of the New Testament of the Bible.  H has seen it.  I have never been to Ireland.  The plot follows Brendan, a tiny orphaned monk at the Abbey of Kells, who befriends a fairy in his attempts to help Brother Aiden compose the Book.  The animation is simpler than computer generated films today, but it is beautifully and artfully composed with a style inspired by illustrations in the actual Book of Kells.  There is a sense of Ireland’s unique, localized culture in the animation, not to mention the visceral portrayals of terrorizing Vikings, exciting wood nymphs, and a masterful sequence where Brendan confronts evil in a metaphysical space (think Tron or The Matrix, but with Irish folk tales).  The care and attention to detail made this quick, hour and 15 minute movie into a rich, aesthetically gorgeous, very Irish film.

 

Image c/o Sundance

 

Lastly, long lost college friend AT invited me to a screening of Obvious Child, Jenny Slate’s short film-turned-feature length story about an aimless, devastated stand-up comedian who finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand.  For a movie banned from middle America and most public advertising for being “a movie about abortion,” the film was charmingly funny and, dare I say it, conventional (in a good way).  After Slate’s character Donna becomes pregnant, she has a series of meet-cutes (or re-meet cutes) with the guy she slept with.  In battling her awkwardness over the situation, she bonds with him but gets scared, pushes him away then regrets it.  And yet, fate keeps bringing them back together, despite their uncomfortable beginning as a couple.  This is the plot of every romantic comedy ever made: two people meet, something comes between them, there’s the “will they or won’t they” period, they work past it, they get together.  This one just happens to have an unplanned pregnancy as the main cause of conflict.