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mwittier
Reviews
Falling Water (2016)
Monotonous and mildly embarrassing.
This series has all the emotional heft of 80's music videos. No cliché goes unmined while the cast sleepwalks, stares, mouths open, and goes slow motion-running out of rooms while low-key synthesizers moan in the background, incessantly.
A lot of spectacularly uncharismatic actors stare at each other, ominously mouthing portentous dialogue, hoping they're doing something Lynch-like and eerie, but it's got about the same dramatic resonance as "Under the Dome."
It's just mousy, drab, bland; at times it's mildly embarrassing. The main characters are only consistent in their dour, mildly miserable affect. None behaves with anything approaching realism, which would be fine if there was a dreamlike vibe other than reverberating footfalls, blowing curtains, or echoing ball-bouncing.
Michael O'Keefe , Jessica Hecht, Mary McCormack, Lou Taylor Pucci ; what are you doing in this mess? Did you think it was Wild Palms, or Mullholland Drive? It struggles to be a third season episode of La Femme Nikita.
If this was produced in Canada in the mid 1990s, it'd probably seem swell.
Toon in with Me (2021)
Just cringeworthy.
The cartoons are great, assuming there are enough in the library to avoid incessant repeats.
But the live action elements that bookend (interrupt, really) the cartoons are as visually ugly as they are unfunny. There's just no point to enduring the minimal effort put forth. It's self-indulgent and embarrassing.
The "comedy" is inoffensive, it's just pointless. There's just a complete lack of charisma and imagination.
It's unfortunate, because the cartoons themselves have historic significance. I'd rather see newsreel or Movietone clips from the period, then the live action nonsense.
Just hugely disappointing, a discredit to the real content.
Working Girls (1986)
Bongo wants to take a show.
Working Girls (not to be confused with the singular and singularly awful Mike Nichols movie that features Melanie Griffith vacuuming a carpet, nakedly) is an easily underestimated accomplishment, and despite the rampant nudity and unblinking depictions of adult sexuality, a guaranteed sex-deterrent.
It's hilarious, embarrassing, grim, deeply disturbing, cynical, touching, clinical and creepily locker-room-intimate, all at the same time.
There will be those people who can't make it past the low budget vibe that (admittedly) permeates the whole movie, but anyone who criticizes its occasionally stilted acting (and it's an easy target) misses the point: it's PROSTITUTION. Which is to say that paid sex is possibly the root source of all bad acting. Even having said that, the performances are deceptively understated in their squirmy, quasi-nude ease.
The characters of Lucy and Dawn especially, are horrifically too-true. I walked around mimicking Lucy's idiotic "What's new and different?" for weeks. Dawn's gum-snapping hostility, and her impromptu James Brown imitation ("Good God, Mollie- you're a whoooore!") are as grating as they are winning. Singling these two actresses out is unfair though; their characters are especially dynamic, given that they're essentially opposing ends of the same spectrum of self absorption.
Even the least likely supporting roles are realized with unexpected complexity. Witness Lucy, the house's madam, reprimanding Mary, a mousy new 'girl' for her unappealing wardrobe choice on her first night on the job. When Lucy reminds her condescendingly that she is to dress as though she "just came from lunch with her mother, and is on her way to meet her boyfriend for drinks", Mary replies in a small voice, with a discomfiting mixture of stubborness and shame, "This is what I wore."
Possibly the most remarkable aspect of this movie is the realization that prostitution, at least at this elevated level (the 'girls' work in a clean, modern apartment, and schedule 'appointments' through phone ads listed mostly in upscale skin magazines) is just another daily grind, a job, plain and simple. Ellen McElduff's Lucy is every thoughtless, self-absorbed boss you've ever wanted to throttle; the difference is that she's seen you naked, and can talk about your sex life with no legal repercussions.
That's glib, of course; each of the 'girls' is seen to struggle with the work, and what it means in a larger sense, politically and personally. Finally though, just as it seems uncompromisingly grim, the film sneaks in a remarkable twist. It's essential to watch to the very end of the closing credits though, or you might miss a moment that offers a lovely moment of reassurance, and tender domesticity.