Asteroid City (2023)

So fun, as expected, and so many layers. We have a TV special about a playwright and his trials and tribulations, and, mostly, the play about teenagers competing in a 1955 astronomy contest in a place called Asteroid City.

Over 150 actors are listed, including Bryan Cranston as the narrator, Edward Norton as the playwright, Adrien Brody as the director, and, in the play within the special within the movie, Jake Ryan as the main teenager, Jason Schwartzman as his dad, Tom Hanks as his grandfather, Scarlett Johansson as a movie star, in a role written for her. So many more, such as Hope Davis, Steve Carell, Tilda Swinton, and cameos by Rita Wilson and Margot Robbie. The six-year-old Faris triplets (no relation to Anna) are particularly adorable.

Auteur Wes Anderson directs from his own script with the story written by himself and Roman Coppola (Schwartzman's cousin). 

Six tracks by Alexandre Desplat are available as a soundtrack on Apple Music and are also part of this album of many songs on Apple Music,

Director of Photography Robert Yeoman, a regular Anderson collaborator, provides color-saturated earth tones from locations in Spain and Arizona. The distinct layers are shown in different aspect ratios, i.e.  some are letterboxed on the sides, some are letterboxed on the top and bottom.

Interesting trivia: Bill Murray was cast as the motel manager but tested positive for COVID-19 before shooting, so the role went to Carell. Murray did shoot some promotional videos later. Anderson's first feature was Bottle Rocket (1996), which is the only other Murray-less one he has made. This is Anderson's eleventh (I've seen every one). More trivia can be found here and, no doubt, elsewhere.

Cranston was last blogged for Jerry & Marge Go Large, Norton for Isle of Dogs, Brody for Blonde, Hanks for A Man Called Otto, Johansson for Marriage Story, Davis for Disconnect, Carell for Irresistible, Swinton for Three Thousand Years of Longing, Hanks' wife Wilson for Larry Crowne, Robbie for Babylon (skip it and see Amsterdam or something else), and Schwartzman, Anderson, Desplat, and Yoeman for The French Dispatch. Ryan, who is now 19 years old, has many credits, though I haven't written about him before, including Inside Llewyn Davis, Eighth Grade, Uncut Gems, and Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom and Isle of Dogs. Ella and Gracie Faris, who are identical, and Willan Faris, who is their triplet but looks a little different, have been working since they were babies (Ella and Grace have been in 29 episodes of Grey's Anatomy as Meredith's daughter Ellis) and are now six.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are less than starry-eyed, averaging 73 and 61%, respectively. Jack and I are big Anderson fans and loved it.

As those who read these posts know, we have turned entirely to streaming, so were thrilled that this one became available to rent so soon after its theatrical release. We saw it on Apple TV/iTunes on July 12. And we did not turn it off as the credits rolled, so were treated to a roadrunner dancing at the end.

Perfumes (Les parfums - 2019)

Deb and I really liked this French dramedy about a down-on-his luck chauffeur and a prickly woman who creates fragrances. Grégory Montel's Guillaume is a multi-layered divorcé with an adorable tween daughter and Emmanuelle Devos portrays Anne as on the spectrum (all the blurbs refer to her as a "diva" but I think not). Sergi López makes an appearance in the third act and I won't say his character's name because it's a bit of a spoiler. 

Director/writer Grégory Magne keeps the pace going accompanied by Gaëtan Roussel's score. It's not available online but I did find a clip on YouTube. Cinematographer Thomas Rames provides pretty scenes of various locations in the country.

Devos was last blogged for Wild Grass and Lopez for Potiche. Magne has one other feature to his credit and Roussel and Rames each have four

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are smelling oh-so-sweet with averages of 100 and 90%, respectively. We watched it July 9 on Amazon Prime Video with a subscription.

You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

Director/writer Nicole Holofcener is a master of cringe and we loved her story of an insecure writer/professor who accidentally discovers her struggling therapist husband has been hiding his opinion of her work. The sharp dialogue is interpreted by the spectacular cast headed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies as Beth and Don, with Michaela Watkins as Beth's sister Sarah, Arian Moayed (his character of Sarah's husband is also splendidly insecure), Owen Teague as Beth and Don's son, and Jeannie Berlin as Beth and Sarah's mother. Amber Tamblyn and David Cross, married in real life, are among the cameos playing Don's patients and their marital bickering is predictably hilarious.

It's been two busy weeks since we saw it so I can't remember much about the score by Michael Andrews and it's not available to stream. I did find this Spotify playlist of the songs.

Holofcener was last blogged for The Land of Steady Habits, Louis-Dreyfus for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Watkins for The Way Back, Teague for To Leslie, Berlin for The Fabelmans, Tamblyn for Nostalgia, Cross for Sorry to Bother You, and Andrews for The King of Staten Island. I haven't seen most of Menzies' many projects but did appreciate his work in five episodes of Catastrophe, ten of This Way Up, and twenty of The Crown as Prince Philip to Olivia Colman's Elizabeth. Moayed has been in, among many, eleven episodes of Madam Secretary, all nine of Inventing Anna, and twenty-five of Succession as Stewy.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are feeling thrilled with an average of 94%, while its audiences are a bit miffed at 64. We rented it June 27 on Apple TV/iTunes.

BlackBerry (2023)

Jack and I enjoyed this based-on-truth story of the rise and fall of the groundbreaking smartphone with Jay Baruchel and Matt Johnson as tech innovators Mike Lazaridis and Doug Fregin and Glenn Howerton as businessman Jim Balsillie.

Johnson directs and co-wrote the script with Matthew Miller, based on the 2015 book Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff.

The soundtrack by Jay McCarrol is good, as I recall, but all I could find online is this 4:47 clip on YouTube. Twelve songs are listed on imdb (here are eleven), including Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks––appropriate because Lazaridis and Fregin are from Waterloo, Canada.

Baruchel was last blogged for the How to Train Your Dragon movies (one, two). Johnson, Miller, and McCarrol have worked together on several projects, none of which I've seen. Howerton is best known for 164 episodes of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and 42 of A.P. Bio, albeit looking very different in those series than as the buttoned-down Jim in this movie.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics are sweet on this one, averaging 98 and 92%, respectively. We rented it on Apple TV/iTunes on June 14.

The People We Hate at the Wedding (2022)

Jack and I shared a number of belly laughs with actors whom we like, acting up, which we like, in beautiful settings, which we like, in this movie with serious pacing problems. How can you go wrong with Kristen Bell and Allison Janney, backed up by Ben Platt and Isaach de Bankolé, the latter in a pivotal role? Well, I guess you can, but we did enjoy some of it.

Usually I begin the post with a line about the plot, but the title says it all. Claire Scanlon directs from a script by Lizzie Molyneux-Logelin and Wendy Molyneux, based on the 2017 novel by Grant Ginder.

Tom Howe's 26 minute score can be streamed on Apple Music music and plenty of good songs are listed here.

Janney was last blogged for To Leslie, de Bankolé for Black Panther, and Howe for Polite Society. After I wrote about Bell for Bad Moms, she starred in fifty episodes of The Good Place and eight of The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, among many. Platt is best known to me for starring in Dear Evan Hansen on stage and and the 2021 movie (we saw it on Broadway but missed the movie), as well as the title role in fifteen episodes of The Politician. He was apparently in Ricki and the Flash as well as Pitch Perfect and its sequel.

This is Scanlon's second feature after dozens of TV series directing gigs, including many of our/my favorites, including The Office, The Last Man on Earth, Fresh Off the Boat, Black-ish, GLOW, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and one of The Good Place, and it's the feature screenwriting debut of the Molyneux sisters.

Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences are hating, too, averaging 32 and 40%, respectively. Told ya. We watched it on Amazon Prime Video with our subscription June 20.

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

We couldn't finish this but not because we hated this story of writer and a genie. Apparently, if one turns on closed captions in English (Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba's accents are but one reason we did so), the foreign languages, containing much exposition, are NOT captioned. The movie is interesting, with spectacular visuals, but not worth pausing to turn the captions off and on every time they switch languages (which turns out to be the remedy--that's right, watch with English closed captions, then when they speak another language, pause the movie, turn captions off, then pause again when they return to English, and turn on closed captions again). No thanks! I was yelling at the TV and we finally gave up after almost an hour.

Directed by George Miller, its music by Tom Holkenborg is pleasant, and can be found on Apple Music.

Swinton was last blogged for The Eternal Daughter, Elba for Avengers: Infinity War, and Miller and Holkenborg for Mad Max: Fury Road.

Rotten Tomatoes critics and audiences aren't longing to see it either, averaging 71 and 73%, respectively. It's on Prime with a subscription. Amazon has not fixed the caption problem, according to dozens of people on Reddit and elsewhere. Our attempt was July 6.