The latest from writer/director Noah Baumbach, which he co-wrote with Emily Mortimer, is a sentimental look at aging movie star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) just entering a reflective period of his life (explored in flashbacks) whose attempts to connect with either of his grown daughters (Riley Keough and Grace Edwards) is hindered by decades of him choosing his career over them.
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Adapted from the novel of the same name, Die My Love is most notable for the standout performance of Jennifer Lawrence whose character Grace falls into postpartum depression following moving into the suburbs with her husband (Robert Pattinson) and delivering their first child. The film often blurs the lines of what’s real and what’s hallucinatory fantasy of Grace including visions of a mysterious man (LaKeith Stanfield) on a motorcycle, conversations with her dead father-in-law (Nick Nolte) who it seems is the only one she ever truly bonded with, a mysterious black stallion, and the film’s fiery conclusion.
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I don’t understand the point of After the Hunt, and, after seeing it, I’m not sure anyone involved in making it knows either. Set at Yale, we get a he said/she said script from the perspective of neither character involved in an alleged assult that happens off-camera.
Instead, our main character is a mostly self-absorbed professor (Julia Roberts) who is the mentor of the a potentially untrustworthy woman (Ayo Edebiri) who we see steal from the professor early on claiming she was sexually assaulted, and at the same time the best friend of notably flirtatious man (Andrew Garfield) who suggests the young woman made up the entire story for attention and to deflect from her largely plagiarized work.
A bit frozen by events, and honestly more concerned about her own illegal drug use and getting tenure, Roberts’ character is given plenty of reason to question what might have happened (although, honestly, I’m not sure she cares).
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Strongly inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, which Paul Thomas Anderson has been attempting to adapt, on and off, for more than two decades, One Battle After Another tackles a litany of themes including revolution, government corruption, interracial couples and racism, and the generational divide between a father and a daughter.
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Eleanor The Great is a story about love, loss, the lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves while struggling through grief and searching for connection and meaning in this crazy ride we call life. We first meet the goodhearted truth-bending Eleanor (June Squibb) in Florida before her return to New York, for the first time in decades, after the death of her longtime friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). Living with the daughter (Jessica Hecht) she doesn’t get along with, and struggling for connection, Eleanor walks into a room which will change her life.
Mistaken for a Holocaust survivor, Eleanor shares Bessie’s story as her own finding a new community and a new friend in a college student (Erin Kellyman) struggling with the recent death of her mother, and the growing distance with her father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who becomes interested in sharing Eleanor’s story unaware of the lie which holds all of it together.
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