Review: The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

* * *
Director: Noah Baumbach
Starring: Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman

The last week and a half has been a pretty horrifying one in terms of the barrage of sexual harassment (and assault and rape) stories that have come out of Hollywood. It's been so depressing that on Friday I was very much looking forward to watching Noah Baumbach's new comedy, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), just for a bit of escapism and to have a few good laughs. I did, in fact, have several good laughs while watching it, but then mid-way through the movie one of the female characters tells a story about how when she was a teenager she went swimming and then afterwards was rinsing herself off in an outdoor shower only to turn around and discover one of her father's friends watching her while masturbating and it was like, "Is there no escape from these stories?" This isn't in any way to suggest that we shouldn't be paying attention to these stories and demanding better behavior from those who are privileged to wield power; it's just that it would have been nice to experience 2 solid hours without being confronted with a story about a dude luxuriating in garbage behavior towards a woman just because he feels that his penis entitles him to it. The Meyerwotiz Stories is a good movie, by the way, but God.

Review: Men, Women & Children (2014)

*
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ansel Elgort, Kaitlyn Dever

Put on your pearls and get ready to clutch them, because apparently there's this new thing called the internet and it is going to destroy the very fabric of society. I am genuinely perplexed as to how a filmmaker as young as Jason Reitman can make a film as wildly out of touch as Men, Women & Children, a bizarre piece of moral panic propaganda that I have a hard time believing could actually speak to anyone, it's so shrill and hysterical. Despite making the wrong choice at basically every turn, Reitman's film actually does manage to eke out a moment or two of genuine emotion, but it can hardly register when it's surrounded by so much absurdity.

Review: Punch Drunk Love (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson

Punch Drunk Love is an anomaly in writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's career. For one thing, it's about half the length of his other films (with the exception of Hard Eight). For another, it's imbued with the kind of quirky sensibility that feels more at home in the work of an Anderson contemporary like Spike Jonze. It's a fascinating little palate cleanser coming between the flashy, sprawling cast productions of Boogie Nights and Magnolia, and the more reserved and singularly focused There Will Be Blood and The Master. It's also an interesting take on star Adam Sandler's "angry man" persona.