C'mon C'mon (2021)

[StatisticalOutlier]

Sorry--I can't figure out how to post a trailer.  Here's a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mzushAOM88

Man, I loved this movie.  I looked up director Mike Mills's filmography and realized I've seen and very much liked all of his previous feature-length movies, without knowing I was doing a completist thing.  There aren't that many of them, but every one is a winner, and now it's going to be an automatic "yes" whenever one of his films comes around.

I thought Joaquin Phoenix and Gaby Hoffman were excellent but the kid Woody Norman was remarkable.  It's a very good year for young actors, between him, and the kid in Belfast. 

[Browncoat]

I saw this last night, and while I didn't love it, I didn't hate it, either.  I mostly just wanted all of them to go into therapy.  There was way too much "I'm fine." going on -- they were not fine.   

I will say, though, that the three leads were fantastic.  I believed all of them, especially the kid.  

[Simon Boccanegra]

On 12/6/2021 at 10:49 PM, StatisticalOutlier said:

I looked up director Mike Mills's filmography and realized I've seen and very much liked all of his previous feature-length movies, without knowing I was doing a completist thing.  There aren't that many of them, but every one is a winner

Yes, I agree. About every five years now, we get one of his bittersweet "family films for adults," and I look forward to them now. He's done father/son (Beginners), then mother/son (20th Century Women), and now brother/sister and uncle/nephew in a single stroke.  

I didn't like this one quite as much as I had 20th Century Women, but I was very fond of it. It was good to see Joaquin Phoenix in his non-eccentric regular-guy mode again (and at his best). Gaby Hoffman was outstanding as the harried sister, and young Woody Norman more than held his own. I also thought the contributions of the kids being interviewed for the radio program were insightful and at times poignant without sounding like written “lines.”

There was a theme here of still caring for people and being connected to them even when relationships have suffered (Phoenix and Hoffman, Hoffman and her estranged husband), even when life events have put figurative or literal distance in the way. I liked the mercurial quality of the boy, who was like actual bright children I've known. At times they seem older than their years (as when he expressed the realistic worry that he would inherit his father's condition), and then they can be moody little pains who act exactly their age. I felt the Phoenix character's terror when the kid would disappear in public, leprechaun-like, in the blink of an eye or the duration of a short phone call.

Also, it's another recent movie that reminds us how rich and beautiful black-and-white images can be (cf. Belfast, Passing, Tragedy of Macbeth).