Letterboxing: Silver Bullets

[This review originally appeared on my Letterboxd page as part of an ongoing effort to watch 365 new movies in 2015. Yeah, I know.]

Joe Swanberg & Kate Lyn Sheil in Silver Bullets [via]

Maybe my favourite Swanberg picture yet, though perhaps that’s why the star rating is so high. None of his films have blown me away, but Silver Bullets (along with, say, Hannah Takes the Stairs) feels like the writer-director’s articulating exactly what he wants to say with both economy and honesty.

Or, in the case of Silver Bullets‘ characters, dishonesty. No-one wants to hurt anyone else, but they’re not going to purposefully avoid hurting them, either, and the core relationship (between Swanberg’s filmmaker and Kate Lyn Sheil’s rising star) is punctuated by long silences after which discussion of the tensions between them are tossed aside in favour of spontaneous lovemaking.

I admire Swanberg’s commitment to these moments, scored by skittish strings that aptly reflect the high anxiety clearly playing out in both characters’ minds, along with his willingness to play with formats and let the filmmaking speak as much as his characters. The subtext in this movie isn’t very deeply hidden, but it’s still rooted in enough human drama (and ironic conversations about ‘art’) that it’s still effective.

All of the director’s films feel intensely autobiographical (often uncomfortably so), but Silver Bullets feels like the most authentic reflection of his opinion of himself. Which is not to say that he’s playing himself but the version of himself he sees, which is far more interesting. Not to mention rather unflattering. This movie’s Swanberg is someone who can only truly experience life through a lens, a screen or a pre-fabricated conflict, often remaining perfectly still as he witnesses (more than participates in) these moments. This contrasts wonderfully with Sheil’s constantly shifting actor who takes on different personas based on the whims of the person she’s with. When she finally does decide to act upon her own impulses, she’s rejected, which is something of a pessimistic metaphor when applied to film actors as a whole.

But Swanberg’s always going for some kind of melancholy, and in Silver Bullets he keeps that from overwhelming the narrative with sentimentality more than other outings. We’re left feeling the same way as the characters in a brief epilogue: wondering who was really to blame, whether there was anything they could have done to fix things and, most importantly, if these failed relationships are doomed to repeat themselves.

Which, now that I think about it, is really the meta-narrative of all Joe Swanberg films.

Letterboxing: Trainwreck

[This review originally appeared on my Letterboxd page as part of an ongoing effort to watch 365 new movies in 2015. Yeah, I know.]

[via Collider]

I really expected more. Trainwreck is a conventional rom-com dressed up in the edgy honesty of Amy Schumer’s humour and the obscuring improv of Judd Apatow, and neither of them does either of those as well as they should.

Any film over two hours long needs to fight for your attention more than others, but Apatow (directing from Schumer’s first feature script) lets most scenes run far longer than they should and the result is often tedious. If you’re going to have a scene in which tertiary characters are the only ones speaking, at least make it semi-relevant to the story, maybe?

Schumer is fine in her first leading role (and it is incredibly refreshing to see a woman of her body type as the romantic lead. She’s not particularly strange or different, other than the fact that she looks like a real friggin’ woman) but brings little her stand-up material doesn’t already exhibit.

For the record, I think she’s a great comedian, but her script is a real sheep in wolf’s clothing. She starts out a confident, independent character (albeit an alcoholic one) and finishes up compromising pretty much her entire way of life for one man. The film takes the archaic stance that ONLY MONOGAMY CAN WORK and anyone who takes multiple partners must be either morally bankrupt or have serious character flaws based largely in daddy issues.

I love Brie Larson – she’s steadily becoming one of my favourite working actresses – but in this she’s simply reduced to an oasis of morality: get a husband! Have a kid! Paint your next kid’s room pink BECAUSE THAT’S HOW WE KNOW SHE’S A GIRL! (That particular piece of heteronormativity was eye-rollingly outdated.) She does well with the material as does her husband played by Mike Birbiglia, who gets to perform some of the rare moments of genuine discomfort in the film. These are what makes it worth watching; moments when characters butt heads about what is and isn’t socially acceptable.

Unfortunately this makes up very little of Trainwreck as Schumer’s character (conveniently also named Amy) lets most everyone force their morality upon her. It’s not about what Amy will do with her life; it’s about when she’ll fall in line with everyone else’s.

Yes, I did laugh a few times, because, well – have you seen the cast? – but I grimaced a hell of a lot more.