Wilson (2016)

Despite its vilification by critics Jack and I liked this cringe-fest with Woody Harrelson as the title character, a misanthrope with no filter who decides to find his daughter, given up for adoption by his ex 17 years ago. Harrelson (last blogged for The Edge of Seventeen, in which his character was sane) is brilliant as insane. Laura Dern (after writing about her in The Founder I've been enjoying her in the mini-series Big Little Lies) is also wonderful as the ex. Isabella Amara (played the teenage Melissa McCarthy in The Boss) is good as the angry, goth, biological daughter. Judy Greer (most recently in Grandma) provides warmth as the empathetic and totally sane dog sitter. Margo Martindale (last in these pages for The Hollars) and David Warshofsky (always a co-star, in dozens of projects, including Personal velocity (2002), The Future, Now You See Me, and its sequel) each have a noteworthy scene with Harrelson. We're never told whether Wilson is his first name or last.

Director Craig Johnson's The Skeleton Twins, his second feature of three, was so good that we were lured to see this, as well as by its being an adaptation of a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, who wrote the original graphic novels for the fine Ghost World (2001) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and Art School Confidential (2006), and this time Clowes' wrote the screenplay himself--his first.

I love the music by Jon Brion (mentioned in Trainwreck, linked in This Is 40) and, after streaming the clips from its amazon page several times while writing this, I decided to invest 99¢ in the track Titles, which was my favorite while watching the movie, too. I counted nine songs in the credits but none are listed anywhere nor are whole tracks available for streaming.

Shot entirely in the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul, it was welcomed by the locals, as discussed in this article.

We're glad we ignored Rotten Tomatoes' 37% from critics and 47 from audiences for this memorable movie.