Mike D'Angelo - I Like Movies (2022, Chandler Levack)
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48/100
Man, even the title makes me cringe. I managed to mostly enjoy Cinemania, a documentary about NYC rep-theater addicts (some of whom I knew by sight), despite its grotesque magnification of my own insecurities about pushing "film geek" too far. But everything about I Like Movies' 17-year-old protagonist, Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen)—a wannabe filmmaker working at a video store while he waits to find out whether he'll be accepted to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts—actively repelled me, a wannabe filmmaker who spent all of 1991 working at a video store (and then much of 1992 also working at a fuckin' laserdisc store) while I waited to find out whether I'd be accepted to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. (SPOILER FOR BOTH THIS MOVIE AND MY LIFE: Unlike Lawrence, I was.) Writer-director Chandler Levack (who I was surprised to discover afterward is female, despite her first name and dude protag) reportedly drew from her own experience, and pulls few punches when it comes to Lawrence's character flaws—he's largely insufferable, even when taking "principled" stances I applaud (like not wanting to wear a promotional sash that reads ASK ME ABOUT SHREK). What Levack's attempting here is quite tricky, though, and I don't think Lehtinen pulls off the delicate balance required. Lawrence needs to remain a little sympathetic even at his most obnoxious, the way that you can't quite bring yourself to hate, say, Ferris Bueller or (more pertinently) Max Fischer. He's really meant to be Max-like, I'm pretty sure, though Levack's dialogue is less deliberately affected and her direction in no way stylized. Jason Schwartzman was a miraculous find; Lehtinen is not, which is hardly surprising (how many such remarkable young actors can there be?) but damaging nonetheless. Plus the character's often too much of an asshole—I simply didn't buy the ugly scene in which Lawrence tells his longtime best friend Matt that he (Lawrence) views him (Matt) as a placeholder (actual word used) to be outgrown once they graduate from high school. Even if you thought that, you wouldn't casually say it. And having said it, you would not subsequently be confused about why that guy isn't your best friend anymore. Very contrived, not credible.
Come to think of it, I Like Movies' tone is pitched more like the brief video-store scenes in Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming—not among my favorites from that beloved comedy, I must confess. (I'd argue they're the weakest aspect that doesn't foreground Skippy.) Imagine an entire movie about the clerk not played by Carlos Jacott—about the guy idiotically dreaming of watching his magnum opus on the in-store monitors. ("Do you plan on still working here even after you make a motion picture?") That's at least wry, unlike the painfully "foreboding" moment here that sees Lawrence be told by middle management, "If you play your cards right, I could see you having a career in the video store industry for the next 30 to 40 years," words that I'm confident were never once spoken in the four-decade primary history of video stores. Not that I Like Movies necessarily needed to be realistic, but let's try to avoid ham-handed, if you please. (Another thing that bugged me: Lawrence getting his first paycheck and being shocked to discover that he's not gonna earn $90,000 of NYU tuition by working at a video store for a few months. Nobody's that stupid.) I did appreciate some humor in the margins—a whiteboard visible in the manager's office, never commented upon, includes "SHANNON: DO NOT flirt with the mystery shoppers," underneath which is written "I am a free and sexual being! Shannon"—and very much liked Romina D'Ugo as the store's aggressively "fun" manager, at least until the character's given a grim #MeToo backstory (raped by Harvey Weinstein, more or less, though he's not named). I'm also conscious of the possibility that some of what's being interrogated hits uncomfortably close to home, that I dislike perceiving myself in Lawrence. Buying tickets to Punch-Drunk Love*, Lawrence expresses surprise that Matt was willing to see it. Matt replies that hey he loves Adam Sandler. "This isn't gonna be your typical Sandler affair," Lawrence condescendingly explains. "It's a Paul Thomas Anderson film, so it's gonna be a bit challenging for you." I was never anything like that, fellas.
* Oh, one last complaint. The film's quite explicitly set from around November 2002 to May 2003, and while I'm not someone who's gonna carp about budget-dictated anachronisms (e.g., most cars visible in the background of shots are identifiably much less than 19 years old; I support indie filmmakers just not worrying about that shit rather than striving for weird off-putting sterility in which only period-appropriate cars driven by the characters ever appear onscreen), there was no fucking reason for Levack to stick posters of Childstar (2004) and The Saddest Music in the World (premiered at Venice '03) in a prominent spot during our very first view of the video store. No doubt that was meant to be a big fellow-Canadian smooch to McKellar and Maddin, but just use Last Night and Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary instead. The former (a 1998 release that would have first hit video no later than '99) might be improbable in the extreme, but at least it's not literally impossible.
48/100
Man, even the title makes me cringe. I managed to mostly enjoy Cinemania, a documentary about NYC rep-theater addicts (some of whom I knew by sight), despite its grotesque magnification of my own insecurities about pushing "film geek" too far. But everything about I Like Movies' 17-year-old protagonist, Lawrence (Isaiah Lehtinen)—a wannabe filmmaker working at a video store while he waits to find out whether he'll be accepted to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts—actively repelled me, a wannabe filmmaker who spent all of 1991 working at a video store (and then much of 1992 also working at a fuckin' laserdisc store) while I waited to find out whether I'd be accepted to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. (SPOILER FOR BOTH THIS MOVIE AND MY LIFE: Unlike Lawrence, I was.) Writer-director Chandler Levack (who I was surprised to discover afterward is female, despite her first name and dude protag) reportedly drew from her own experience, and pulls few punches when it comes to Lawrence's character flaws—he's largely insufferable, even when taking "principled" stances I applaud (like not wanting to wear a promotional sash that reads ASK ME ABOUT SHREK). What Levack's attempting here is quite tricky, though, and I don't think Lehtinen pulls off the delicate balance required. Lawrence needs to remain a little sympathetic even at his most obnoxious, the way that you can't quite bring yourself to hate, say, Ferris Bueller or (more pertinently) Max Fischer. He's really meant to be Max-like, I'm pretty sure, though Levack's dialogue is less deliberately affected and her direction in no way stylized. Jason Schwartzman was a miraculous find; Lehtinen is not, which is hardly surprising (how many such remarkable young actors can there be?) but damaging nonetheless. Plus the character's often too much of an asshole—I simply didn't buy the ugly scene in which Lawrence tells his longtime best friend Matt that he (Lawrence) views him (Matt) as a placeholder (actual word used) to be outgrown once they graduate from high school. Even if you thought that, you wouldn't casually say it. And having said it, you would not subsequently be confused about why that guy isn't your best friend anymore. Very contrived, not credible.
Come to think of it, I Like Movies' tone is pitched more like the brief video-store scenes in Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming—not among my favorites from that beloved comedy, I must confess. (I'd argue they're the weakest aspect that doesn't foreground Skippy.) Imagine an entire movie about the clerk not played by Carlos Jacott—about the guy idiotically dreaming of watching his magnum opus on the in-store monitors. ("Do you plan on still working here even after you make a motion picture?") That's at least wry, unlike the painfully "foreboding" moment here that sees Lawrence be told by middle management, "If you play your cards right, I could see you having a career in the video store industry for the next 30 to 40 years," words that I'm confident were never once spoken in the four-decade primary history of video stores. Not that I Like Movies necessarily needed to be realistic, but let's try to avoid ham-handed, if you please. (Another thing that bugged me: Lawrence getting his first paycheck and being shocked to discover that he's not gonna earn $90,000 of NYU tuition by working at a video store for a few months. Nobody's that stupid.) I did appreciate some humor in the margins—a whiteboard visible in the manager's office, never commented upon, includes "SHANNON: DO NOT flirt with the mystery shoppers," underneath which is written "I am a free and sexual being! Shannon"—and very much liked Romina D'Ugo as the store's aggressively "fun" manager, at least until the character's given a grim #MeToo backstory (raped by Harvey Weinstein, more or less, though he's not named). I'm also conscious of the possibility that some of what's being interrogated hits uncomfortably close to home, that I dislike perceiving myself in Lawrence. Buying tickets to Punch-Drunk Love*, Lawrence expresses surprise that Matt was willing to see it. Matt replies that hey he loves Adam Sandler. "This isn't gonna be your typical Sandler affair," Lawrence condescendingly explains. "It's a Paul Thomas Anderson film, so it's gonna be a bit challenging for you." I was never anything like that, fellas.
* Oh, one last complaint. The film's quite explicitly set from around November 2002 to May 2003, and while I'm not someone who's gonna carp about budget-dictated anachronisms (e.g., most cars visible in the background of shots are identifiably much less than 19 years old; I support indie filmmakers just not worrying about that shit rather than striving for weird off-putting sterility in which only period-appropriate cars driven by the characters ever appear onscreen), there was no fucking reason for Levack to stick posters of Childstar (2004) and The Saddest Music in the World (premiered at Venice '03) in a prominent spot during our very first view of the video store. No doubt that was meant to be a big fellow-Canadian smooch to McKellar and Maddin, but just use Last Night and Dracula: Pages From a Virgin's Diary instead. The former (a 1998 release that would have first hit video no later than '99) might be improbable in the extreme, but at least it's not literally impossible.
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