A Good Person (2023)

Well done, hard to watch. Loved by audiences, panned by critics, Florence Pugh's Allison wants to be a good person but has to learn how. In the meantime she meets Morgan Freeman's Daniel, Celeste O'Connor's Ryan, and Zoe Lister-Jones's Simone. Allison's mother, played by Molly Shannon, is clueless and no help when Allison spirals

Director/writer Zach Braff was in a relationship with Pugh when the movie was announced but that is over now. A Rolling Stone reviewer called the movie a mash note (love letter) to his paramour, to showcase her scenery-chewing.

There's a movie trope known as the manic pixie dream girl. Definitions always include Natalie Portman's character in Braff's first feature Garden State (2004), though the Urban Dictionary says the term was coined by a movie reviewer to describe Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown (2005). Pugh's Allison takes it way over the edge of mania.

Bryce Dessner (the National)'s score, streamable on Apple Music, is supplemented by nineteen songs.

Pugh was last blogged for Don't Worry Darling, Freeman for acting in Going in Style and Braff for directing it, Lister-Jones for How It Ends (fans might like her explicit mini-series Slip), and Dessner for Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. O'Connor is new to me.

As noted above, Rotten Tomatoes' critics, averaging 58%, and its audiences at 96, can't agree on what is good. We rented it on Apple TV/iTunes June 2.