3 Best Movies To Watch After 27 Dresses (2008)
Música
As the director, co-writer (alongside American Vandal’s Dan Lagana), executive producer, and composer of Música, Rudy Mancuso’s filmmaking debut suggests he’s carrying a certain “do it all yourself” energy over from his previous career as a prolific YouTuber. Impressively, it does not feel insular or self-involved despite his hands being in nearly all aspects of the process. That isn’t to say, however, that it all works. Mancuso plays, well, Rudy, a college student barreling towards graduation with little semblance of a plan for what comes next. His dedication to puppetry and music shows great creativity, but it doesn’t seem like a promising moneymaking venture if his occasional busking is any indication. Further complicating matter is his synesthesia, a condition that underlines every aspect of his day with a constant beat. It may be great for his musicality, but it also creates a distance between him and others. Often distracted, sometimes overwhelmed, by the music only he can hear, he frequently misses out on what others are trying to tell him. Rudy Mancuso explains the "What's up Brother" meme to Camila Mendes. (Prime Video) His perceived lack of ambition proves too much for his girlfriend Haley (Francesca Reale), leading to a break-up at the film’s start. This clears the decks for Rudy’s mom (Maria Mancuso, the filmmaker’s real-life mom) to start playing matchmaker with every Brazilian-American girl around his age she can find and for Rudy to fall for Isabella (Camila Mendes), an employee at a local seafood counter. When Haley returns, things fall apart quickly, thanks in no small part to advice from Anwar (J.B. Smoove), a food truck entrepreneur and seemingly Rudy’s only friend. Continue Reading →
Love Lies Bleeding
The word for Rose Glass (Saint Maud) and Weronika Tofilska's Love Lies Bleeding is "precise." From the individual and combined performances of leads Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian (whose turn as a cunning Imperial agent was a bright spot in the often dreary third season of The Mandalorian) to DP Ben Fordesman's chameleonic camera work and hair department lead Megan Daum's wide-ranging design work, everyone on the project knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to get it done. The result is a bracing, clear-eyed noir thriller, and a fraught, swoon-worthy romance. It's my favorite movie of 2024 so far. It's the late 1980s. The reserved and insightful Lou (Stewart) manages a grimy bodybuilding gym in a sunbleached western suburb. She does not talk to her father, the cruel, cunning crime lord Lou Sr. (Ed Harris). She loves her sister, fraying housewife Beth (Jena Malone), and hates that she will not leave her loathsome slimeball husband JJ (Dave Franco). The closest person Lou has to a romantic partner is the aggressively cheerful Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), and their on-off something or other boils down to, in Bart Simpson's words, "geographical convenience, really." Enter Jackie (O'Brian), a drifting bodybuilder aiming for a Las Vegas contest where victory can leap passion into profession. The sparks are immediate. Jackie (Katy O'Brian) strives for bodybuilding stardom. She's doing the work, but the events of Love Lies Bleeding bend the barrier between her reality and her dream. A24. Jackie's drive lights a fire in Lou, and Lou's methodical care grounds Jackie. Simultaneously, Lou's desire to help Jackie achieve her dream and Jackie's desire to make Lou happy lead them to make bad calls—the sort of bad calls that lead to worse calls that lead to blood. And neither JJ's venality nor Lou Sr.'s mercilessness should be discounted. Continue Reading →
Happiness for Beginners
Happiness for Beginners happens when hundreds of hours of labor come together over months to create something so bland and ineffectual it feels years old even on a first watch. Continue Reading →