Quote of the Day - Throw Mama From the Train - There's Always Time For Candy

Chat amongst ruthless killers:

Owen: "Where are you going?"
Larry: "I'm gonna kill the bitch. You want anything?"
Owen: "Could you get me a Chunky?"

Suburbicon - George Clooney (2017)

You can easily laugh through some dark comedies. George Clooney's "Suburbicon," (based on a screenplay by the Coen Brothers, Clooney, and Grant Heslov) is a comedy in which, the fun and humor are juxtaposed with a backdrop of suffering that isn't funny at all.

Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon) is an ordinary man, as far as we can see, whose luck spirals downward to an alarming level of rot. Damon is the box office draw, but the Protagonist, the leading man if you will, is actually Nicky (Noah Jupe), Gardner's son.

Nicky is the single innocent in this story. He's the only character who's not an amoral wretch. At the start of the film, the kid is put through a traumatic experience. The sequence is excessively grim, the kind of content that even the darkest of most dark comedies wouldn't touch.

The boy is woken in the middle of the night and dragged down to the dining room. He is tied down by a couple of brutes. He sees his mother Rose, and aunt Margaret (both played by Julianne Moore) are tied down as well.

After a few minutes of intimidating threats, the brutes chloroform all of them.

When Nicky wakes up, he learns that his mother did not survive the attack. His father and aunt are fairly blasé about the incident.

Aunt Margaret moves in to help Nicky and Gardner get used to living without Rose. There may be something sinister behind that.

Rose's death starts a chain of unfortunate events that could very well toss the family right on its head. Nicky and Gardner are threatened throughout the film by nosey cops, gangsters and a corrupt insurance investigator looking to take the Lodges for everything they've got.

Watching Gardner and his sister-in-law Margaret's lives fall apart is hilarious. "Suburbicon" creates so many characters whose demise we gladly cheer for.

There is a secondary plot is focused on a black family, the Mayers, who move into the neighborhood. Nicky strikes up a friendship with Andy Mayer, the new black kid in town.

But the neighborhood doesn't just object to the family's arrival, it rages. As the Lodge family's safety is on the decline, the Mayers face a hostility from the town that simmers through the story and explodes at just the worst time.

It's wonderful how Clooney manages to slowly transform the normal people we were introduced to at the beginning into the sociopaths they really are. "Suburbicon" mirrors the place where the center of the morality of our country is right now, without sounding too self-righteous.

"Suburbicon" is about "Some very fine people," and how they devolve into monsters most wouldn't have recognized before.

The film is screamingly funny all the way through until the end, but it is decidedly disturbing at the same time. You've been warned.

Ingrid Goes West - Matt Spicer (2017)

Stalkers. Admit it, America, you're just as obsessed with them as they are about their targets. They're just fascinating. We wonder what exactly is wrong with them? But everybody is obsessed with celebrities, aren't they?  The difference is that we have the privilege of watching everything happen on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Live Journal and so many more. Whereas the Stalker has not only to know about their target, they must become friends with them in person.

From the start of "Ingrid Goes West," Ingrid's (Aubrey Plaza) insanity is established. We're shown what happens at the ending of a stalker/stalkee friendship.

She crashes a wedding, starts screaming at the bride and then throws acid onto her face. So I guess that makes Ingrid an anti-hero. 

After Ingrid is released from a mental health facility, she doesn't waste any time. She has a new crush. A celebrity on the internet, Taylor (Elizabeth Olsen).

Ingrid cashes out her late mother's life insurance and takes a trip all the way to California. She just has to be this girl's best friend, whatever obstacles come in her way.

When she gets there, she rents a room from Dan Pinto, (O'Shea Jackson Jr.), who can smell her instability right away. Nevertheless, he lets her have the room, lets her borrow his truck and sleeps with her.

Ingrid knows a lot about Taylor already through her online persona. She knows what she likes, where she lives and who she loves. She uses all this knowledge to squeeze into Taylor's life.

When Taylor's dog goes missing, Ingrid shows up on her doorstep, her beloved dog in Ingrid's arms. From there, Ingrid and Taylor's friendship takes off and then just glows.



They become very close very fast, share intimacy, party together. Taylor even introduces Ingrid to the delights cocaine has to offer.


When some secrets threaten to doom their friendship, things spiral downward very quickly and very hilariously. But we understand both of these characters throughout the film. We root for both of them and feel sorry for both in equal measure. 


Generally, there's only room for one dark comedy celebrated throughout awards season such as The Coen Brothers' "Fargo" in 1996 or Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Birdman. in 2014." In 2017, out of all the dark comedies like George Clooney's "Suburbicon" and Armando Iannucci's "Death of Stalin," that honor went to Craig Gillespie's "I, Tonya."

"Ingrid Goes West" isn't one of the best Dark Comedies of the year - nor is "I, Tonya" for all that matters, but it's dark as hell and hilarious, while somehow managing to treat its characters with kindness. You can count on this film to entertain you amply for a couple of hours.

I, Tonya - Craig Gillespie (2017)

Some people are deserving of a celebration of their life. Whether revolutionary (Spike Lee's "Malcolm X"), controversial (Oliver Hirschbiegel's "Downfall"), or bizarre ("Milos Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt"), biographical films don't always work.

There are three such films: educational, boring as hell and the odd ducks. (And when I say "odd duck," I do so with loving affection. People who think "odd" is wrong are fascists.)

Craig Gillespie's film "I, Tonya," which follows Figure Skater Tonya Harding, from her abusive childhood right through her boxing career is among the oddest of the odd ducks.

From the start of her earliest years, Harding (Margot Robbie), has never had anything or any companion save ice-skating. It's the standard life of a young figure skater. Practicing eight hours a day, having been forbade from eating anything delicious and stuck with her mother (Allison Janney).

In this film, Harding's upraising with her terrifying mother is given priority over her skating career, her troubled relationship with Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), or even "the incident."

Harding's mom is definitely one of the mothers who decided to raise an athlete instead of a daughter. Janney plays the role of a controlling mother openly, controlling to the point of abuse, I felt like picking up the phone and calling social services. You can actually feel the venom spitting from her lips anytime she's anywhere near Tonya. She is brought to vivid life by Janney who makes her performance. Allison Janney is really the revelation of this film. She has popped up in my nightmares these past few days.

Aside from the way Tonya is, and isn't, nurtured, the film takes us through her relationship with Jeff Gillooly. We can see she falls back on funicular, when Gillooly starts beating her just like her mother has always done.

She struggles, with more than her figure skating. She also has to a great deal of energy with her mother's derision and Gillooly's twisted distortion of what support looks like.

"I, Tonya" has earned all of the accolades it's getting right now. It's gritty and honest. It stands among some of the darkest comedies I've seen.

Lady Bird - Greta Gerwig (2017)

Do you like coming-of-age movies where a self-conscious teenage girl is surrounded by high school malevolence and simple and thick sleazebags finds her "inner-cool?" Well, you are in luck, my friend.

When you take a casual look at "Lady Bird", it seems formulaic, but it feels more natural than your typical cookie-cutter film. But the film has a voice that can't be dismissed as an element of any genre. 

"Lady Bird" is the story of Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan), a young wallflower who feels like at the age of seventeen, she is already stuck in a never-ending rut. And she craves adventure. More than anything, she wants to get the hell out of Sacramento.

Of course, her best chance is college. She's set on New York and is willing to almost anything to get there.

Standing in her way is her mother (Laurie Metcalf), who, no matter what, is determined to make her daughter go to a Catholic school. 

Watching the bittersweet relationship Lady Bird has with her mother is compelling. The two of them have excessively strong wills and fight constantly. And they turn on a dime, from the gentle way she holds a crying Lady Bird to punishing her by refusing to talk to her.

The unconditional love between Lady Bird and her father, Larry (Tracey Letts) makes the family dynamic so fascinating to watch. He serves as the one constant in her life.

Aside from her home life, the tension between Lady Bird and her two romantic interests make for some of the very best dry and ironic comedy I've seen in a while.

Gerwig's spirit and tone is quickly becoming an important voice to be reckoned with.  She has matured since her collaboration with Noah Baumbach on his masterpiece, "Francis Ha." I'm not discounting "Frances Ha", in fact it's one of my favorite film of the decade. "Lady Bird" shows a fresh, new voice we haven't heard before.

Greta Gerwig's directorial debut stands on the shoulders of the work she has done with Baumbach, but she has a striking, raw authentic voice that's rare in modern cinema.

And Saoirse Ronan is so endearing, she could easily become this generation's Molly Ringwald.

I've seen the film twice now and it still feels crisp.

On its face, "Lady Bird's" story should feel ordinary. What makes it great is the characters Gerwig has created and their quirks and dialogue that is freshly built for each one differently. 

And Saoirse Ronan is so endearing, she could easily become this generation's Molly Ringwald.

I can see Gerwig with a career as a kind of indie John Hughes. But I don't see her sticking to any kind of mold. Her writing is too fresh to fall into that trap.

Since 2012's "Frances Ha", which she co-wrote with Baumbach, I've been curious to see what we can expect from Gerwig and if "Lady Bird" is an indicator of things to come, the future of indie comedy is bright indeed.