BEFORE: Format problems again tonight - this one used to be on Netflix, but it is no longer - I think maybe I spotted it on Hulu, but it's not there either. No worries, I believe it's on AmazonPrime, only wait, what's a premium subscription? We've got AmazonPrime, but that doesn't get us access to every movie? What are we paying for then? All right, there's always iTunes as a back-up, but this movie better be worth the $3.99 rental price, then.
Got another two-fer today, Ryan Eggold and Amy Seimetz carry over from "Lovesong".
THE PLOT: A rock journalist is assigned to track down her ex-boyfriend.
AFTER: I liked this one, it did turn out to be worth the $3.99, and not just because that keeps my chain alive. It feels really real, somehow, and according to the IMDB trivia section, it's based on the personal experiences of Emily Wachtel in the music and dating arenas. She also appears in the film, and she used "Ellie Klug" as her pseudonym as she wrote columns for the Fairfield Weekly and several other magazines. This was back when there were magazines, and music was on CDs, and also people went to see music concerts in person.
But this leads to an important question, was there a real Matthew Smith? Ellie Klug in the film had a relationship with the fictional Matthew Smith, who disappeared in Washington State and was assumed to have committed suicide - but Ellie knew he was afraid of heights, so she's believed for years that he wasn't dead, only then, where was he? So when she checks the internet message boards and finds people who also claim to have seen him in various locations, she pitches a story idea to her editor at the floundering Stax magazine, and tracks down a man who claims to have footage of Smith performing in a club.
That footage turns out to be a dead-end, but should it have been? My major NITPICK POINT with this film is that Ellie looks at the footage several times, and makes no effort to figure out exactly where it was filmed. There's a very distinctive logo on the stage, which reads "Hart of Steel", I think, and there simply can't be many clubs with that sign on the stage. Why not Google that phrase, or ask around on the club circuit, show that footage to a few other club owners, maybe somebody would recognize that? Any band who played there would also probably be able to identify it, so why not check in with any of the many musicians that Ellie knows, show them the film and say, "Hey, where is THAT?" But nobody in this film thinks to do that, even though several characters claim to be good at investigating things. I mean, I can go on the web and get a list of every club in the Seattle area, or a list of the locations where "Lucky Them" was filmed - why couldn't Ellie think to do the same? Maybe "Hart of Steel" is the band name, and if so, maybe start by finding that band?
But the film is really about Ellie's relationships - she never got closure with Matthew Smith, and as a result we're left to posit that she's had many short-term flings over the years with the exact same kind of man, the talented rock guys who are trying to become famous. I guess they all used her like a stepping stone, then ditched her when they got recording contracts, or maybe even faked their own deaths to get away from her, what does that tell you? Perhaps this is just part of being a musician, or any famous person like an actor. Do famous people just seem to have more relationship problems, and therefore shorter and more frequent hook-ups, or does it just seem this way since they're famous, and the problems that anyone and everyone can have just get more media coverage?
Anyway, Ellie's also juggling a budding relationship with a street musician, who's starting to appear in clubs, and Ellie feels drawn to him, even kissing him during their first interview (very unprofessional!). Lucas even seems really into her, but she's been down this road so many times that she can't bear to go through it again, so she keeps rebuffing him. Jeez, Ellie, it's OK to have a type, even if it's not going to last long it still might be worth exploring... But to find Matthew for her article she enlists the help of Charlie, a man she dated five years ago, who isn't her type but does have a lot of money. He offers to fund her search if he can also shoot a documentary about it at the same time.
Charlie and Ellie have that sort of "When Harry Met Sally" thing going on - they tried to date, it didn't work out, they became friends and over the course of the film they come to rely on each other. They even double-date when Charlie connects with Charlotte, and how that happens and what happens next is too crucial to the movie to talk about here, but most of it is funny, in a dry slice-of-life kind of way. Charlie's sort of removed from it all, but he's driven by the impulse to keep trying, again and again and again. And again.
Charlie happens to also be the complete opposite of Ellie's type, which is probably why they work well together as friends, and are thus able to work together towards a common goal. And they might have accomplished something, too, if Ellie didn't constantly let her personal hang-ups get in the way of meeting her deadline. That's unfortunate, because there was a real chance here to show a professional woman who works for a magazine, and might be, you know, pretty good at doing her job. Sadly, it's a bog blow for feminism today, since the main character is mostly defined by the men she's slept with over the years and her emotions, largely concerning the men she's slept with over the years. Total Bechdel test fail, because even when Ellie is confiding in her lesbian bartender friend, guess what they're always talking about?
Still, it's a mostly-enjoyable mostly-positive film about a woman who's been through some things and is trying to do better in the future, but first she's got to stop and look back before she can move forward, which happens from time to time. A lot of festival films have popped up lately, "Duck Butter" won an award at Tribeca Film Festival, "Results" got a Grand Jury Prize nomination at Sundance in 2015, and "Lovesong" got the same thing a year later. "Lucky Them" was screened as a special presentation at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival (as did "12 Years a Slave", "Dallas Buyers Club", "Enemy", "Don Jon", "Gravity", "Philomena", "Prisoners", "Third Person" and "Only Lovers Left Alive").
So yeah, this film has that festival-film feel to it. Not a Sundance feel, but a general festival feel. I only went to the Toronto Festival once, back in 1997, but I was impressed by the line-up of films - more films used to go there when they already had distribution deals in place, or were ready for release in the fall and didn't want to wait for a possible Sundance screening in January. (I was a producer on one of the few films that played in both Toronto and Sundance, because I read the rules carefully and realized that Sundance only required a U.S. premiere, and playing in Canada didn't disqualify a film.)
As for the true identity of "Matthew Smith", it's a tough nut to crack. Northwest musicians like Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain are good guesses, but neither one really fits with the premise here. (Though Ellie has a fish named Kurt Cobain who dies at the start of the film, which is a nice change from all the "woman with dying dog" films I've seen this year...). Digging through articles on Emily Wachtel, it seems more like the missing musician character is more based on her own father, who traveled a lot for work, and a younger, now-famous musician she once had a relationship with, whom she steadfastly refuses to name.
Also starring Toni Collette (last seen in "Unlocked"), Thomas Haden Church (last seen in "Smart People"), Ahna O'Reilly (last seen in "Elvis & Nixon"), Oliver Platt (last heard in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Lynn Shelton, Nina Arianda (last seen in "Richard Jewell"), Johnny Depp (last seen in "Dead Man"), Louis Hobson (last seen in "Laggies"), Tony Doupe (ditto), Conner Marx, Jake Robards (last seen in "Cadillac Records"), Wally Dalton, Gary Gulman (last seen in "Joker"), Emily Wachtel (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Sean Nelson, Evan Mosher, Linas Phillips, and the voice of Joanne Woodward (last heard in "The Age of Innocence").
RATING: 6 out of 10 cool neon signs in the magazine's office
No comments:
Post a Comment