Mid90s: Middling Fun

It's 1994 and 13-year-old Stevie (Sunny Suljic) is living in L.A. with his bully of a brother and clueless mother. His life sucks until he meets a group of older teens into skateboarding. He hangs around until they welcome him into their slacker lifestyle.

The Movie Slut was hoping for lots of cool 90s music and nifty skateboarding. Alas she was disappointed on both accounts. And the banal, sophomoric conversations were quite a bore, particularly when the character nicknamed Fuck Shit opened his mind.

Still, there were scenes that elevated the film, including Stevie's Rocky-like attempts to master the skateboard, and an early morning scene in which the ragtag group skateboard along the median of a roadway as the day awakens.

The Movie Slut was not impressed by this flick written and directed by actor Jonah Hill. Perhaps she's not its target audience.

The Hate u Give: A groundbreaking flick

Gun violence. Police brutality. We've seen it, heard about it, lamented over it. What's new about this excellent heart-wrenching movie is that it takes us into the life of someone who suffers first-hand because of it.

Her name is Starr Carter (an amazing Amandla Stenberg). She's sixteen when her oldest, dearest friend is shot to death in her presence by a jittery young policeman. Starr has grown up knowing the danger of such injustice, but nothing has prepared her for its impact.

The movie follows her ambivalence about going public with her information and her transformation from frightened teen to a brave, determined activist, who reminded the Movie Slut of the Marjory  Stoneman Douglas students who survived the mass school shooting and are devoted to ending this outrage.

The movie, based on a bestselling YA novel by Angie Thomas, is all the richer for painting a realistic portrait of the community, people, and issues involved. It's real. So real it hurts. But it should be seen. This is no Hallmark movie of the week.

The Sisters Brothers: It's Golden

French director Jacques Audiard brings us the best Western since...forever. The brothers (John C. Reilly & Joaquin Phoenix) are hit men during the California gold rush and unwitting employees of a creep known as The Commodore. It's 1851 and they're in pursuit of a guy with a so-called foolproof formula for finding the shiny stuff.

A detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) is also on this gold diggers trail.

The beauty of this flick is in the vast green expanses and jutting mountain ridges of the West and within the hearts and souls of the four men who come together on this fool's errand.

Sure there's violence. But never gratuitous.

Merci, Jacques for giving the Movie Slut this cinematic gem.

Bad Times At The El Royal

Jon Hamm, Lewis Pullman & Cynthia Erivo

The Movie Slut had a love/hate/love relationship with this Coen Brothers-meet-Quentin Tarantino movie.

She loved the first and last thirds of the flick. In the middle, she contemplated walking out.

The story revolves around seven strangers who arrive at a run-down hotel on the California/Nevada border. They share one thing in common. They all have dark pasts. Except maybe John Hamm, who's a federal agent investigating who knows what? Hamm is the only actor with a comic edge in the movie and MS thinks it would have benefited if others were equally quirky.

Still in the end, it all comes together quite beautifully, and is greatly enriched by the soulful performance of Cynthia Erivo, a British singer, actress, and Tony Award winner. Also in the excellent cast: Jeff Bridges, Dakota Johnson, and Chris Hemsworth.

The Old Man And The Gun: No Bang

Here's one reason to see this based-on-a-true-story flick: Robert Redford in a fedora.

The story is okay: A guy who committed 17 robberies, went to jail 17 times, and smiled throughout. In this movie, he meets a gal (Sissy Spacek) who, despite her law-abiding ways, falls for him.  But then, he is Robert Redford in a fedora.

In real life, it seems the guy became a bit of a folk hero, but the movie doesn't make much of that. It focuses instead on the detective (Casey Affleck) who can't get a grip on the slippery character.

The Movie Slut wishes this movie about a guy with a gun had more bang.

But then, it does have Robert Redford in a fedora. 

A Star is Born: Take four

The long-awaited and much ballyhooed fourth remake of the 1937 David O. Selznick film is rich with talent. (*Can you name the other three female leads? Check below.)

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga just might be the best duo in their roles. Still, while the Movie Slut was prepared for a cinematic swoon, it didn't happen.

Gripe No. 1: At 2 hours and 17 minutes it was 20 to 30 minutes too long.
Gripe No. 2: The MS didn't leave the theater humming. Where were the catchy tunes?
Gripe No. 3: While she should have broken down when the sad part happened (no spoiler here), MS was relieved that the flick had mercifully ended.

Many, especially critics, are raving about the movie, but not the MS's companion or two young women seated to her right. She could tell they were bored by the way they yawned and checked their cells.

* Janet Gaynor (1937); Judy Garland (1954); Barbra Streisand (1976).

Colette: The right to write

We meet Colette (Keira Knightley), the girl who would become the foremost French female writer, in 1892. She lives with her parents in the French countryside. We first meet Uncle Willy (Domonic West) when he comes to dinner. We first realize they're lovers when they hook up in the hayloft after dessert.

The couple soon marry. He's a writer/publisher who can't write. She's a writer who doesn't know it. Soon he's publishing her stories under his name. Until she rebels and strikes out on her own.

While the movie could be considered just another story of a man stealing from his talented wife and hogging the accolades, we have to step back and remember that readers of the time were not clamoring to read female writers. We also see how Willy shaped her early stories, published them, and promoted them.

In many ways, Colette was a woman whose lifestyle didn't catch on until the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Her escapades spice up this film about a gal who spends hours behind a desk with a fountain pen in her hands. 

Lizzie: Revisiting an infamous murderess

Kristen Stewart & Chloe Sevigny

She gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

We all know the poem more than 120 years after Lizzie Borden offed her parents and got away with it. In this flick, there's no doubt that she did it.

The question is why.

The answers are many, and yet, they don't add up. Lizzie, with Sevigny in the title role, and Stewart as her maid and lover, is a beautiful period piece that doesn't rise to the darkness of the plot. We still don't know what made Lizzie tick. Maybe that's for the best.