"Paddleton"

 ☆☆☆☆☆ 

In Paddleton's first 30 seconds, Michael (Jay Duplass) learns he is dying of cancer. He lives a quiet, small life, working at a copy store. His best friend Andy (Ray Romano) lives in the apartment just upstairs.

Michael and Jay spend almost every waking moment together. They are men who got through the first part of their lives, found it didn't work and started over with nothing and no one to show for it, then found each other. Michael learns his cancer will kill him quickly. Andy wants to help, even when Michael chooses physician-assisted suicide. No nearby pharmacy will fill the prescription, so they take a road trip.

Paddleton has moments of small, funny human observation, of honest friendship, and quiet devastation, but it never hurries itself along. Michael and Andy they have a friendship unlike most people, and when the hotel owner in Solvang mistakes them for a gay couple, they seem hardly offended.

They are there for each other -- to to the bitter end. And in its commitment to see its story to the best and most beautiful conclusion, Paddleton is willing to explore how far a true friend will take his love. You've rarely seen a screen couple (straight or gay) that love each other as honestly as Andy and Michael, but you've rarely seen a movie that works as deeply and authentically as Paddleton, or that can move you as fiercely, boldly and wisely. So far, it's the best movie of 2019.


Viewed February 23, 2019 -- Netflix

"The Wandering Earth"

 ☆☆½ 

This is some seriously bonkers stuff. The sun is exploding, and Earth is going to perish, but mankind puts aside its geopolitical battles to build 10,000 propulsion engines that will first stop the planet from spinning and then send it careening light years to a new home in the solar system.

This massively scaled Chinese epic proves one thing: Hollywood no longer has the lock on overblown CGI-driven storytelling. The Wandering Earth careens so loudly and rapidly from one moment to the next that Michael Bay would love it.  It never pauses for a breath, or for logic. At one point, I think, a ragtag team of Earth savers drives in a few hours across frozen oceans from Shanghai to Manila, then to Sulawesi in Indonesia, where they are to deliver a -- okay, sorry, I don't know.  The Wandering Earth couldn't prevent a wandering mind.

The American version of the film in no way benefits from unintentionally hilarious subtitles, especially when heroic astronauts call each other "Bro" and a truck's guidance system warns of "tears for families" if it's driven unsafely.

But subtitles aside, much of what happens is incomprehensible, and the extended finale takes place in so many different locations simultaneously that keeping track becomes and exercise in futility. The point of The Wandering Earth is mostly to watch things blow up, which they do, frequently and, as far as these things go, well.



Viewed February 23, 2019 -- AMC Sunset 5

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"Isn't It Romantic"

 ☆☆☆½ 

Here's a happy Rorschach test of a movie, which will reflect exactly what you already feel about romantic comedies. Do you instinctively smile at the far-fetched nonsense  of Notting Hill or My Best Friend's Wedding? Or do pop-song montage sequences set your skin crawling? Isn't It Romantic will support your view, either way.

It pretends to have a sort of superior, snobbish disdain for rom-com contrivances, which gives Isn't It Romantic a slight case of schizophrenia -- but its sunny disposition makes it, well, adorable.

Rebel Wilson stars as Natalie, who grows up with a boozy mother (Jennifer Saunders) and a crisis of self-worth. She designs parking structures at the world's glummest  architectural firm,  and frets over the way her size and disposition make her invisible. Thwacking herself on the head, she wakes up in a New York that has transformed into the picture-perfect romantic comedy she disdains, wooed by an impossibly handsome billionaire (Liam Hemsworth).

Wilson's affable grouchiness is counter-balanced by the endlessly sunny nature of her co-worker Josh (Adam Devine) and a delightful production design. For a while, Isn't It Romantic is like the Airplane! of rom-coms, throwing out every joke it can think of and landing most of the punchlines. Inevitably, it settles into a plot that is precisely the movie it appears to mock -- but there's a tiny joy in realizing that the characters and situations work just as well here (or, if you're of that mind, as poorly, I guess) as they ever have.



Viewed February 22, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks

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"Free Solo"

 ☆☆☆☆☆ 

In one of the most interesting (and indoor) sections of the documentary Free Solo, mountain climber Alex Honnold agrees to undergo an MRI to explore what may be happening in his brain. Could peering inside his mind help understand why Alex takes unthinkable risks that go way beyond extreme? Alex climbs mountains without ropes, without equipment -- "free solo" -- and he has his sights set on El Capitan, a sheer slice of granite that juts 3,000 feet up from the valley floor.  No one in his right mind would do this, but the MRI suggests that, indeed, Alex is not in his right mind. His amygdala, the area of the brain that helps control fear and risk-taking, appears to have no activity.

And yet when a romantic interest enters Alex's life, and he realizes how much danger he is putting his film crew into by having them follow his bare-handed ascent, something unexpected happens: He starts to care. He starts to grow ... which may doom his rock climbing.

As jaw-dropping, gripping and dizzying as the film's stunning photography is, what really makes Free Solo so fascinating is watching a man make an even more dangerous transition: from individual to couple, from "me" to "us."

Walk in knowing absolutely nothing about the subject or the sport, and you'll walk out with both an education and some profound insight into two undeniable human conditions: the bliss of success, and the burden of mortality.

Viewed AMC Universal City -- 2005

February 16, 2019