The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her. Ned Benson. 2013.

So this is the second (or perhaps the other) movie in this diptych.

This is a very different movie than Colon Him. It’s got, like, better actors. I mean, Isabelle Huppert, Viola Davis, William Hurt… It’s also got a different look, with more reds instead of blues, and… basically a storyline that would be somewhat incomprehensible if you hadn’t seen Colon Him first.

I like it!

Anyway! This movie reminded me of one of the saddest thing about small budget movies: They can’t afford to use real music, so when they have a key scene that requires music, they use a track from Now That’s Kinda Something That Sounds Like An 80s Hit But Totally Isn’t, So It’s Cheap vol 97. But I love that they found the money to do the Cat Powers cover song at least. It was a perfect moment.

I think this movie started off really strong. We don’t quite know what’s going on and it’s all very fresh and it’s all orange instead of blue as in the Colon Him movie and I kinda liked this more than that movie.

But then it flounders. It’s like they don’t quite know what to do with it. I can totally see why Weinstein wanted to cut together the interesting bits (and the better performances) from this movie with the more straightforward storyline from Colon Him.

The Rashomon scenes are fun but aren’t really that interesting.

WTF!? Shoes on… IN BED!?

Such set design.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him. Ned Benson. 2013.

Well, this is an odd movie… movies… I bought the BluRay of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, and there’s three movies on this disc. The first one is The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them, which is an edited-together version of the movies called colon Him and colon Her, insisted upon by Harvey Weinstein.

So I’m watching the two other movies.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I definitely wasn’t expecting a movie where Bill Hader plays a chef.

But it’s mostly about Professor X (or is it Cyclops? I can never remember who plays what in the X-Men movies now) and his wife who leaves him. I’m guessing the next movie is going to be like the opposite (i.e., Jessica Chastain leaving Professor X).

It’s a good movie! There’s nothing here that annoys me. I like the silence of the scenes and the cold colour scheme. Chastain is great, of course, and the rest of the actors are OK, even Bill Hader.

I think you could kinda object to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl thing that Chastain could be seen to embody… but it doesn’t quite follow the typical blueprint for that. It’s much weirder and more interesting.

I really liked this movie. Love all the shots of Manhattan streets. Let’s see what the next one’s like.

Let the Sunshine In. Claire Denis. 2017.

Hey! Denis! It’s a movie by my favourite living director! Sort of. I mean, I really liked Beau Travail and… the other movies, but I’ve been really disappointed by a couple of her most recent movies, like that gruesome vampire/cannibal movie she did er probably ten years ago.

After watching about ten minutes of this, I’m starting to wish this was about a vampire, because it seems to be about a woman with the shittiest boyfriend ever and I wish she’d just kill him? And I’m shocked (SHOCKED!) that Denis is doing the stunning woman/dumpy guy thing. I thought that was like over. There are good-looking men. They exist. Some of them are actors.

But let’s continue watching! Less typing! Denis!

[time passes]

OK, I WAS WRONG.

The movie is nothing like I wrote, annoyed, after the first five minutes. It’s brilliant.

It’s a kinda free-flowing, not very plot-heavy, associative movie. It’s mostly about… Binoche being amazing on the screen, and the cinematography being riveting. I mean, that’s it. It’s a magnetic viewing experience.

Some of the conversations seem aimless, but you feel that it all kinda makes sense. It does, however, start flagging about sixty minutes in, when it gets obvious that there’s no structure here, and nothing is really going to change in any way.

But then there’s the last scene, which I am unreasonably exited about! OK, I have to do something that I hate to do: Actually mention plot! Eww!

Binoche visits a… sooth sayer or something… played by Gérard Depardieu, for his only bit in the movie… and he says stuff… AND THEN THE TITLES START RUNNING! WHILE HE”S TALKING!

I know it’s not reasonable to be excited about something like that, but while watching it, it just felt so right. The entire Depardieu/Binoche scene seems totally improvised, and Binoche looks like she wants to crack up but then keeps it together, and it’s magic. With the titles.

I know, I can’t explain, but that little thing kinda echoes the best scene in movie history, that last scene in Beau Travail. It just seems like the inexplicably correct thing to end the movie with.

This is not a perfect movie, but it’s brilliant.