Author: Benjamin Rosenstock

It’s frustrating to see biopics fall into the same traps over and over, but “Straight Outta Compton” falls into many of them. It’s more enjoyable than many—funnier and more entertaining than the typical template of a genius white British man—and the subjects are more engaging and interesting than most biopic subjects. In general, it’s a good idea for a movie, and that idea makes it uncommonly interesting even when the movie lags.

And I think that’s the biggest problem: the movie lags a lot. It’s 147 minutes, but from the pace of the first half, it seems like it should only be 100, 120 at most. By the end, when ostensibly heartbreaking things are happening, I just wasn’t feeling sad because I’d generally lost interest in the movie at that point. I heard people behind me afterwards talking about how they were crying watching Eazy-E dying from AIDS, so maybe the movie had its intended effect on some people. But even though I thought Eazy-E was interesting, even though Jason Mitchell was one of the standouts of the cast, I just wasn’t invested anymore.

I think it’s also partly because Eazy-E getting AIDS feels like just another superfluous subplot in a movie full of them. There are countless cameos, like Keith Stanfield as Snoop Dogg and Marcc Rose as Tupac. Some of them are neat (I love Stanfield), and there’s always a little kind of thrill to seeing the origin of something great—like when Snoop Dogg and Dre sit down and make “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang.” Still, it’s pretty silly to pretend that that song was completely free-styled. More importantly, these cameos don’t add anything to the movie besides the slight novelty of seeing recognizable rap stars just starting out. There are so many things that the movie tries to deal with, from the death of Dre’s brother to the death of Eazy-E to the conflict with manager Jerry Heller (a great Paul Giamatti, though he’s so likable that his supposed betrayal didn’t even bother me), that it all just feels like too much, especially because it almost totally sidelines DJ Yella and MC Ren, two of the founding members of NWA.

So many biopics fall into this trap of being too cluttered and unfocused, and at this point, I’m honestly just left wondering why it’s so hard. “Selma” did it perfectly, focusing on a small slice of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and building a compelling story out of it that never lagged. “The Imitation Game” mostly did it with the fun thriller-type plot of trying to break the code, and even though that movie isn’t great and falls into a lot of different biopic stereotypes, it made the right call when it came to having a strong central plot. But most of the other bland biopics that come out are just so long and so unfocused.

I think I have a theory for part of the reason why that happens so often: filmmakers feel like creating one central narrative is changing history too much, molding it into a simplistic linear plot format. This is the precise time that changing history for the sake of a movie is necessary, though. Sure, there are times when a movie does it way too much and is insulting to the actual events and people it’s trying to depict, like with “Saving Mr. Banks,” but generally, changing history to make a structurally strong movie is necessary.

So you’d think that the source of the problems with “Straight Outta Compton” is its strict dedication to history, but it’s also clear (even without me knowing much about the real-life subjects) that the facts have been manipulated. For much of the movie, Ice Cube, Dre, and Eazy-E are treated as kind of flawless rap legends, these civil rights heroes who don’t have many issues of their own besides the environment they grow up in. The individual characters’ histories with violence and misogyny aren’t really tackled; when characters do get in a physical fight, it’s either not the main characters’ faults (like when Eazy-E gets the shit beaten out of him by Suge Knight) or they’re doing it to protect the people close to them. The first half, while being a lot more engaging than the second half, still suffers from crafting a too-perfect rise to fame arc, with lots of scenes of crowds just worshipping NWA.

Still, there’s a lot to like in the movie, especially in that first half. The actors are pretty well-chosen; though O’Shea Jackson, Jr. is probably the weakest of the three leads, he’s such a spitting image of his father (the real Ice Cube) that it doesn’t matter. Besides, he’s strong whenever he gets to be angry, like when he destroys Bryan’s office, one of the few scenes that acknowledges the real-life subjects’ violent acts. Corey Hawkins is also pretty great as Dre, conveying a young person’s vulnerability and passion when he’s just starting out and commanding authority once he’s established himself as a star. I have some reservations about his reductive characterization as the ‘nice, good-humored guy’ of the movie early on, especially knowing about Dr. Dre’s assaults, but he still makes for a likable and interesting protagonist.

Most of the standout sequences of the film are in that first half. There’s the emotional scene when Dre learns that his brother was killed, and his friends comfort him. There’s the single long take of NWA partying in a hotel room that’s perfectly shot by director F. Gary Gray, recalling a “Boogie Nights” or “Goodfellas”-style scene of excess and offering an unexpected reference to “Friday” with “Bye, Felicia.” And, it should be said, the movie works well for its musical elements, because these are some pretty great songs. It’s just fun to watch “Gangsta Gangsta,” “Boyz-n-the-Hood,” “Dopeman,” and “No Vaseline” being performed and recorded.

By far the most effective and impactful scenes of the movie, though, are the ones that detail police brutality. Sure, maybe it’s not exactly nuanced—every single cop we see is unabashedly racist—but there’s something visceral and real about seeing all the black characters being shoved to the ground and handcuffed simply for existing. When NWA is told by the police not to perform “Fuck tha Police” at their Detroit concert and they do it anyway, it’s a genuinely thrilling moment. That whole scene is intense as the cops chase NWA down and arrest them, and the five of them all laughing together in the back of a police truck is a pretty perfect image. I can’t tell you whether NWA deserves to be put among the champions of racial equality, but it was pretty inspiring to watch in the film.

In fact, “Straight Outta Compton” probably would’ve been a lot stronger if it stuck to that: the production of the “Straight Outta Compton” album and the controversy NWA faced for their groundbreaking violent themes. There are isolated sequences of the film that are absolutely gripping, and there are a lot of good ideas here. The problem is that it’s all crammed into one overlong package. By the end, all it inspires is indifference.

Movies don’t really hit me very hard typically, which might sound weird coming from a person who adores movies. It’s not that I don’t feel emotions while watching them; I tear up pretty frequently when I’m in the middle of a movie, or watching an emotional episode of a TV show. But usually, once a movie ends, it drifts from my mind. Even the movies that I love.

It’s only been half an hour since I watched “The Color Wheel,” but the fact that I can’t stop thinking about it is unusual. The last time I experienced it, in fact, was watching “Listen Up Philip,” one of Alex Ross Perry’s other two movies (I’m not counting “Impolex,” which is relatively unseen, the one movie I’m not super interested in watching of his). But as I stood up after “The Color Wheel” ended, I felt like I was leaving my bedroom in a daze. I went downstairs and talked to my roommates, but whenever we were talking, there was this nagging in the back of my mind, this background rumination about the movie.

It’s really hard to ignore what happens at the end of “The Color Wheel.” Really, really hard. Writing this shortly after it ended, it’s pretty much the only thing I can think about. And, I mean, you can’t really blame someone for that. It’s an unusual ending, to say the least. But what’s most brilliant about the ending is that it’s not out of nowhere. The rest of the movie foreshadows it pretty heavily. I knew the twist beforehand, which is maybe why I picked up so much on the weird foreshadowing, but I don’t think that really diminished from the effect (though I do wonder how I would’ve reacted going into this cold).

Let’s start at the beginning, though. Colin (Perry himself) and JR (co-writer Carlen Altman) play a brother and sister in a very stereotypical-sounding indie comedy plot. They don’t get along very well, but Colin is the only one JR has left; she’s failed in her professional life, neglecting to find a job in broadcasting, and she’s failed in her personal life, breaking up with her pretentious professor boyfriend. So they have a fun sibling road trip where they bond and get over their differences.

Summing up the plot (prior to the ‘twist’ at the end, at least) tells next to nothing about the movie, though, because it’s so filtered through Alex Ross Perry’s uniquely strange style. I don’t even know how to describe it. It doesn’t have the same weird narrator as “Listen Up Philip,” but maybe it’s the beautifully grainy black-and-white cinematography. Maybe it’s the acting styles; Perry and Altman have kind of weird and unnatural line readings, and in any mainstream movie (like “Trainwreck” or something) it would come across as extremely stilted, but it just works here. And, like, it’s not genuinely terrible acting; they each have some flat readings, but they’re capable of doing really specific things well, like Altman’s mumbling imitations of Colin that are so perfectly sisterly. And their dynamic is so genuine and recognizable that they’re doing something right. Despite all of that, though, I’m not sure what makes this feel so specifically like an Alex Ross Perry movie (and how I’m able to conclude that after having only seen one of his). All I know is that he makes every other indie auteur seem unimaginative by comparison.

Having a really strong script also helps ameliorate the sketchy acting. I mean, I was laughing almost constantly, and this isn’t the kind of movie that I would expect that from (though I laughed pretty consistently at “Listen Up Philip,” too). The jokes often feel improvised, though the movie was 0% improvised; the dynamic between Perry and Altman is just so strong and the scenes have clearly been meticulously rehearsed, so everything feels natural, despite the unnatural delivery.

I expect the polarizing aspect of the movie comes from that undeniably weird ending. It’s no use hiding it any longer: the movie ends with Colin and JR, the biological brother and sister, having sex.

I honestly didn’t know how to feel while watching it. It was uncomfortable, and shocking, of course, especially the way the kiss/sex itself is shot, with the camera extremely tight on their faces, so that’s all you can see. You’re forced to experience it with them.

But it’s also weirdly natural. There have been so many scenes of strange sexual tension throughout the movie, something that undoubtedly would’ve puzzled me if I went in without knowing where it was all heading. There’s the scene when Colin buttons up JR’s shirt, mimicking “zip up my dress” scenes from countless rom-coms. There’s the fact that the motel owner makes them kiss to prove that they’re not faking being brother and sister. There’s JR walking in on Colin making out with his old childhood crush and freely interrupting it without apologizing or stepping out to leave them be. There’s the overall dynamic of playful antagonism that fits with the brother-sister relationship but which also feels oddly at home in a budding romantic relationship.

Even aside from the apparent sexual tension that has been simmering throughout the movie, though, there’s the emotional weight of it. It feels genuinely cathartic, in a way, because each of them has discovered that the other is the only person who will truly understand them. I doubt that in real life JR would find no one who’d actually be sympathetic to her lack of professional and personal success, but still, in the context of the movie, it’s fair that JR would feel like Colin is the only one who’s there for her.

To be honest, I wasn’t grossed out by Colin and JR having sex. That’s probably at least partly because incest is such an abstract concept for me, something that is so unusual and distanced from my reality that I can’t even imagine it and comprehend the inherent creepiness of it. You know how sometimes the most disgusting, gratuitous violence doesn’t have the most impact because it’s so far from your reality, whereas seeing someone stub their toe or get a paper cut can immediately trigger a visceral reaction? That’s kind of how I feel about incest.

Watching two siblings having sex didn’t gross me out, but that’s also because of how the scene progresses. If, after the party, Colin and JR simply got a hotel room and immediately started kissing and stripping each other’s clothes off, I’d be pretty perplexed, because even though there was sexual tension throughout the film, it would just feel wrong there. The reason it works is because of that glorious single-take shot where they lie down on the couch and just talk. It’s so natural. It’s so well-written. And you can feel it building towards this inevitable conclusion, equal parts horrifying and beautiful. You can feel it when the camera gets closer, zeroing in on their faces, only briefly panning to show her hand resting near his. You can feel it as her story goes on too long—her fantasy about Colin as a professor having a student with a crush on him drags out to almost ridiculous length, and it’s clear there is something else going on here than a woman happily imagining her brother having a successful life. There’s no way to describe the emotional impact of the scene without seeing it for yourself, but as I watched it, my heart started speeding up, then, oddly, it slowed down. The movie made me feel like this was how it was supposed to be.

Alex Ross Perry is the kind of writer-director who I absolutely love to find, because I can unconditionally say that I adore everything I’ve seen from him. I’ve only seen two movies, and he only has three notable movies overall, but just from those two, I think I’ve found an artist whose work embodies all the cinematic traits that I love and challenges me to discover new ones. I’m just glad he’s only 31 years old. I hope I’ll be watching him for years to come.

There were multiple times throughout “Welcome to Me” where I saw a glimmer of potential. It’s a film about Alice (Kristen Wiig), a woman with borderline personality disorder, and due to stigmatization, accurate portrayals of mental illness (especially for women) are few and far between in Hollywood. These are stories that should be told, not just as melodrama, not just as horror, not just as comedy, but as all of those genres and more. So the attempted comedy-drama blending of the movie is admirable in its intentions.

The idea could be great if it was executed by a great screenwriter and a great director with a unified, purposeful vision. The movie is going for a kind of tragicomic vibe that allows the audience to laugh at Alice while still leaving room to take her illness and her challenges seriously. I can think of multiple movies that have done this pretty well: “Silver Linings Playbook,” “The Skeleton Twins,” “Frank,” “Lars and the Real Girl,” hell, even “American Psycho.” I’m sure all of those have gotten flack for simplifying mental illness and for fitting it into a neat Hollywood-friendly bundle, and I’m sure some people would even say that “Welcome to Me” is a more daring movie than those because it’s willing to be weird as hell, to go to dark and unexpected places.

So yes, I commend director Shira Piven and writer Eliot Laurence’s willingness to just take risks and be weird. That said, for a comedy to work about mental illness, it has to be funny. This is where I’ll probably differ with lots of people who have seen the movie, because humor is subjective, but I wasn’t laughing much while watching. I did giggle a little at the sheer outrageousness of some parts, like when I realized that Alice was legitimately going to neuter dogs during her talk show. Unfortunately, though, most of Alice’s characterization makes her seem just like one of Kristen Wiig’s SNL characters with weird quirks. I admittedly don’t know much about BPD, but I kind of doubt it’s like this, and besides, most of these quirks aren’t as funny as Wiig’s usual quirks.

Back to my original point, though: “Welcome to Me” really struggles to figure out this strange tone. We’re supposed to gently laugh at Alice despite deeply caring for her, but many of the scenes seem to beg us just to tease her. How much of the movie is supposed to be genuine and how much ironic? For example, are we supposed to be deeply invested in her romance with Gabe (Wes Bentley)? Is her having sex with Gabe supposed to be sweet, or is it some sort of joke? Is the romance in general genuine, or a punchline? The movie tries to have it both ways, and I think people who like it would simply say “it is what it is.” We can laugh at it while still being invested in it. My answer to that is the same as the question of the film’s sense of humor in general, though: we can’t have it both ways, because the romance works as neither a funny punchline nor a heartfelt emotional connection. For me, anyway.

I saw another big glimmer of potential during the climax, when Alice’s family and best friend Gina (Linda Cardellini) show up for the final broadcast of her show. I can imagine a movie where this was a genuinely touching ending, especially because I was wrapped up in the sheer lunacy of it all, with all the characters gathered at the final live taping of this weird sensory assault of a talk show. But the emotional crux of the climax involves Alice apologizing to Gina for ignoring her when she really needed it, for being so selfish and worrying about her own problems and her own show.

Tell me, Eliot Laurence and Shira Piven, WHY WASN’T THIS THE MAIN ARC OF THE STORY? This movie could’ve been so good if it explored the potential for selfishness on the part of victims of mental illness—obviously Alice’s egotism is a result of her disorder and Gina should cut her some more slack than she would most friends, but Gina’s still right to be angry at Alice, and if this had been emphasized throughout the movie, it could’ve had such a powerful impact. In fact, this movie could’ve been fascinating if it focused on Gina instead, following her as she struggles with life and can’t reach out to her own best friend because her best friend is obsessed with her newfound wealth and trying to use it to fix herself. One of the opening scenes, with Gina telling someone on the phone that Alice needs her, even raises this possibility. But no, the wonderful Linda Cardellini is in only a few scenes, and her character (and friendship with Alice) is woefully underdeveloped as a result.

“Welcome to Me” is a movie that I admire for what it’s trying to do. But what “Frank” has that this movie doesn’t have is 1. a lot of good jokes, 2. a genuinely moving conclusion, 3. a serious critique of society’s perceptions of mental illness, and, generally, 4. a lot better writing. It’s interesting to see these filmmakers grapple with these ideas and try to produce something strange and new, but I’m more intrigued to see what Piven and Laurence do next.

Last Friday, the Michigan Daily hosted a ‘Story Slam.’ Students, both Daily writers and non-Daily students, submitted their poems, stories, and essays beforehand, and a dozen were able to share their pieces in front of a newsroom full of people. It was the first ever Daily Story Slam, but it was a definite success.

I’ve always loved hearing the random stories of people I barely know. There’s something fascinating about hearing a brief anecdote from a stranger that you’ll probably never really become friends with. It’s the same kind of fascination I get from reading the short ‘Humans of New York’ posts. Every stranger has a rich life of their own that I’ll never know about, but sometimes hearing just a little can make them feel real.

Most of my favorite stories at the Story Slam had a similar tone: wistful and light, with some laughs along the way, but with a strong emotional center. Sam, a guy I remembered from middle school, shared his story about not being traditionally masculine and sucking at sports, but it ended on a note of simple joy as his friend taught him to throw a football. Michael, a very short guy from the Daily, read an essay about how he’d never minded being short despite society’s insistence that it was a shameful thing. And Will shared a story about his late grandfather, who he’d always felt bad about never being close with. He eventually came to realize, though, that since he was close with his own father, he had more than enough paternal love in his life.

Also surprisingly heartwarming was the story of a girl who found out that her frequent friend with benefits, Alex, was gay. She’d brought Alex to the Story Slam, and as she read about him, it was hilarious to see him laughing and blushing. At the story’s conclusion, she walked back to their spot and hugged him tightly. It was so sweet.

There were serious stories. One girl, an editor of the Daily’s great Michigan in Color, shared some of the societal disadvantages being a black woman, and one guy shared a poem about the young black male’s fear of the police. These were strong, too, and in many ways, they’re the stories that are most important for society to hear. In fact, the story that won the prize at the end of the night was about a girl whose friend was killed in a car accident right after high school graduation.

My friend Matt leaned over to me and commented that it’d been his least favorite story of the night, and I agreed. There was something pretentious about how she began; she prefaced her story with a long intro explaining that it wasn’t going to make us laugh or teach us anything. It was real, and it happened to her, and it sucked, and she would never get over it. It was like the girl wanted to convey this image of herself as the blunt, honest girl who took no shit and didn’t try to milk simplistic lessons out of her own experiences. But really, as personal as the story was, what made it inherently ‘more honest’ than Derek’s rambling tale of accidentally being stabbed with an EpiPen?

I think that I might’ve still liked the story the least even if it hadn’t contained those off-putting elements, though. For me personally, no racially charged tirade, no tragic story of loss (as important as it may be) will carry the same simple power as the wistful anecdote, the story that lures you in with self-deprecating jokes and surprises you with its emotional candor. That’s what I came to Story Slam for, and I left more than satisfied.

There are too many interesting things about “Palo Alto” to write it off completely, but not enough coherence or real substance to ever really fall in love with it.

To start off, the performances are pretty great. I’m used to seeing Emma Roberts as the gloriously bitchy characters of Ryan Murphy’s shows (“American Horror Story” and “Scream Queens”), but it turns out Roberts is surprisingly good at playing the shy introvert. As her character, April, awkwardly says goodbye to her love interest Teddy (Jack Kilmer) and says she’ll call him, she follows up the promise with a funny expression of self-loathing and embarrassment that instantly makes her endearing. Nat Wolff, in the supporting role of Fred, is given way more emotions to play than his bland soft-spoken protagonist in “Paper Towns.” Both as a figure of hilariously obnoxious comic relief and as one of the film’s antagonists, Wolff is a standout.

Coppola has clearly inherited the directorial prowess of her famous filmmaking family; the whole movie is shot so well, especially with Autumn Durald’s cinematography. With the help of Devonté Hynes’s strong score, Coppola imbues every scene with feeling. The movie is great at crafting images and creating a feeling in the viewer. There are some scenes towards the end, especially an encounter between Fred and a drug dealer, that are surprisingly tense, and there are several sex scenes that are disturbing to watch. When April loses her virginity to Mr. B (James Franco), her soccer coach, the scene is shot evocatively, with surreal close-ups of April’s face repeatedly being swept over with black. It’s one of the most horrifying sex scenes I’ve seen in recent memory.

As great as Coppola is at conveying desperation, horror, and shame, I couldn’t help but get the suspicion that all this great camerawork was covering up a lack of substance. Now, I’m a believer that just because a feeling is achieved through aesthetics doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine—there are plenty of stories with average screenplays that enter the cinematic canon because of their directorial work—so the knowledge that the visual and auditory elements of the film were covering up some spotty writing didn’t make the emotional impact feel illusory to me. That said, it did make it easy for my mind to drift away from the narrative now and then.

The main reason for that, I think, is that there isn’t really a central narrative. The movie is ostensibly about the relationship between April and Mr. B, and there’s certainly a great movie buried somewhere in there about a deeply problematic teacher-student relationship. But surprisingly few scenes are devoted to this central plot because the movie makes the mistake of toggling constantly between April’s narrative, Teddy’s narrative, Fred’s, and supporting character Emily’s (Zoe Levin). Right when I became really wrapped up in the creepy April-Mr. B dynamic, the movie backed off April and returned to Teddy. Teddy’s story is the most unimaginative—he has to do community service after drunkenly getting into a car accident, but he mostly just sulks around, smokes weed, and navel-gazes—but I still got into his story after watching him for a few consecutive scenes…and then, right when I became interested, the movie skipped over to Fred and Emily. All of these stories have such strong potential, especially because Fred and Emily have a horrifying history; at some unspecified party, Fred undressed her and guided groups of guys into the room to, effectively, rape her. But skipping around meant I never had the chance to really focus on any story and become invested. And since each got equal screen time, they were all a bit shallower than they could’ve been. “Palo Alto” is adapted from James Franco’s book of short stories, so maybe this explains it—Coppola probably should’ve focused either on April or Emily exclusively as protagonists, but she tries to cram too much into one movie.

In fact, the movie has to keep creating party sequences to find excuses for all the main characters to be in the same place at the same time. Maybe this would’ve been more effective if Coppola had focused exclusively on one night, like “Dazed and Confused,” but instead it seems like each party scene is designed to finally bring the disparate narratives together. In those scenes, the movies floats the inevitable idea of a romantic relationship between April and Teddy; he’s clearly supposed to be the ‘right guy’ who she ends up with once she realizes how creepy Mr. B is. There’s something rote about the idea of a romance between them, though, so I’m glad that the movie ended by leaving it mildly ambiguous, at least. Also, I can’t complain too much about the party scenes, because they do a great job of putting you in the setting of a realistic high school party. I particularly like the shot of Teddy throwing up outside and Emily rubbing his back, asking him if he’s okay and only getting an embarrassed “shut up” in response. Same goes for the shot of Emily staring at herself in the mirror, post-blowjob, with the muffled sounds of the party in the background.

Gia Coppola clearly has a lot of talent, especially as a director. She has a keen understanding of how to elicit emotions through images and sounds, so it’d be wrong to dismiss the movie entirely because of some structural messiness. Still, there were too many moments throughout the movie when I wondered, Where is this all going? What’s the central story here? Last week’s “Funny Ha Ha” proved that I’m okay with plotlessness, but don’t tease me with four central narratives and only half-commit to each of them.

My first introduction to the ‘mumblecore’ movement, popularized by filmmakers like the Duplass brothers and Joe Swanberg, was Swanberg’s “Drinking Buddies.” Wikipedia calls mumblecore “a subgenre of independent film characterized by low budget production values and amateur actors, heavily focused on naturalistic dialogue.” I’ve always been intrigued by the genre, so I was excited to kick off the weekend by sitting back and watching “Funny Ha Ha,” the debut of writer-director Andrew Bujalski, the so-called “Godfather of Mumblecore.”

I’m very susceptible to the charms of mumblecore; based on the two Swanberg movies I’ve seen, the other one being “Happy Christmas,” I’m always instantly enchanted by the improvised dialogue and striking realness of the style, so much so that I’m able to easily overlook the movies’ flaws. Comments I read online about “Happy Christmas” criticized Anna Kendrick’s overly improvised dialogue, the way she constantly stammered “um” as if the actress genuinely didn’t know what to say, and others criticized the thinness of the plot. For me, these things worked fine. What can I say? The style just doesn’t work for some people, and I can totally understand why. But these movies seem to be tailor-made for my tastes.

Still, I wasn’t prepared for quite how low-budget, how awkward, how mumble-y “Funny Ha Ha” was. The film has been called the first mumblecore movie, and after only a couple minutes, I could see that that was true. The movie takes the ‘rough around the edges’ style of the genre and really abides by it. The sound design is, frankly, terrible; when characters off-camera speak to characters on-camera, their voices are very visibly coming from different directions, and dialogue during crowded scenes is difficult to make out. The camerawork, too, is so shoddy. The movie is shot on 16mm, and it benefits from the lush texture of film, but the whole thing looks like a student film. I was expecting low-budget indie movie, but I wasn’t used to this low-budget.

The first few minutes, I thought, Oh god, this might actually be a terrible movie. The technical shoddiness was hard to get past, and the acting was pretty bad in some spots. I mean, a lot of the awkwardness of the movie is intentional, but especially at the beginning, some of the line readings and expressions just looked too unnatural to even be real. One character in particular, a friend named Rachel, is just so uncomfortable to watch, especially because the camera hovers on her for a strangely long time. All her jokes are lame, and she kind of laughs as she tells them as if they should be funny, but I had no idea if I was supposed to laugh at her or if the actress was just really bad at delivering the jokes.

After I sank in and got used to the style of the movie, though, I was able to go along with it. After half an hour or so, I thought, Okay, I like this movie. It’s clearly very early in the evolution of the movement, so it makes sense that it’d be like this. But it has something to offer. And then, by the time I reached the end, I adored it.

To begin with, the lead actress, Kate Dollenmayer, is really great as Marnie. Aside from a very minor role in one other Bujalski movie, this is her only credit as an actress, and she knocks it out of the park. There’s nothing showy about it, nothing extremely dramatic. Everything is subtle, like the way her face changes when she’s annoyed that her friend Mitchell (played by Bujalski himself) wants her to be so perky all the time. Even her physical look, though, is perfect for the part. Though she is thin and white, she doesn’t have the conventional Hollywood beauty that people expect from a character like her. Still, you’re inclined to believe Mitchell anyway when he assumes that 90% of the men she knows are in love with Marnie, because there’s something so endearing about her. She’s not babbly and ‘adorkable’ in the Anna Kendrick/Jennifer Lawrence sense, or even in the Greta Gerwig sense (Frances Ha is one of the many movies that, technically speaking, has basically the same plot as this one). She’s just kind of quiet, and when she gets angry she almost immediately feels bad for being angry and takes it back. She’s so averse to confrontation because she just doesn’t want to cause any trouble, and you can see her frustration when Alex confronts her on the phone about her feelings for him.

There are so many minor characters that are great. Mitchell is one of the most awkward characters I’ve ever seen in a movie, and you both feel bad for him and want him to just leave Marnie alone sometimes. Marnie’s friend Dave has a funny bit about how people love sitting on his lap. And awkward, aloof Alex can be a pretty big asshole, but it’s easy to get a sense for his chemistry with Marnie. The movie ends on a perfect note, with them as friends, but with Marnie refusing to play his games and fall for his charm anymore.

When it comes down to it, though, what made this movie so special to me, what made me sit there in silence for a few seconds afterward, is the sheer realness of it all. Anger is rendered as passive-aggression and quiet irritation rather than explosive rage. Sadness is silent observation and quiet utterances of “fuck.” Happiness is small smiles and wistful gazes and short little laughs. What interests me about these movies—and what will keep me coming back to them, both in these Weekend Watches and long into the future—is how it feels like I’m sitting in on an intimate gathering of characters who are real people I could easily meet tomorrow. Sometimes, being able to recognize the humanity in a film is enough.