Tag: Meredith Hagner

Alright, alright, alright.

I mean. I thought of the candy bar. And the baseball player. Ruth and Ruby are pretty similar. That has to have been involved in the thought process to name this movie Baby Ruby. Give it some sense of familiarity.

This is a film that came to me suddenly and without warning, so I knew nothing about it, but hey, I recognized one of the actors at least.

I knew nothing like one of those literary characters. Can’t remember his name.

Jo (Noémie Merlant) is an influencer/vlogger, who has a pretty big following amongst the world. She does the nice photos, nice home set up, nice marriage, all of that. People know a lot about her! And then she also got pregnant.

Her husband (Kit Harrington) just has a regular job, but supports her. And the film opens with them returning home with their baby, ready to start their life as parents. But then this baby, Ruby, cries a lot. All the time. Constantly. It seems to hate Jo almost. When they go to stores. When they go on walks. Over night. It is like Jo cannot do anything to please this kid.

So she doesn’t feel great about this whole being a mom thing. She hasn’t even posted pictures of her kid online yet! Wow. What about her fans? Speaking of fans, she keeps running into the same people, like Shelly (Meredith Hagner), who is also a new mom, and hangs out with a lot of new moms. And they all seem so perfect. Why is their life so much better than hers? And is there something sinister about this group? About her nanny?

Jo’s visions start getting worse and worse. It’s almost like they want to steal her baby from her…

Just guess how many babies are actually in this photo!

Recently I watched a different psychological horror, about a woman in bed rest during a big amount of time before giving birth. And then there was also ghosts. But it was maybe a metaphor, maybe not. Everything spooked her. It was pretty poorly done.

Thankfully, Baby Ruby was not poorly done!

In terms of movies that are metaphors for postpartum depression, this seems to be a really good one. It doesn’t go hard into a supernatural aspect for the thriller. But it does go through a lot of situations and conversations and amplifies them up to really make it more obvious for those who have never experienced ppd. One of the biggest moments I recall was an argument between the couple, where the husband said some very obvious shitty things. The type of lines that can get normalized in society, but based on everything up that point it really punches hard.

The beginning got to be a little weird, but in reflection, I do think it stands well. I hate it when they do too much cross over between reality and supernatural, when they are going for a metaphor overall. But in this case, it is a nice metaphor, if not super realistic.

Well acted, and well thought out, and well experienced.

When Palm Springs hit Hulu, I will admit, I hadn’t heard of it. I knew nothing going into it either, outside of a few key members of the cast.

I’d like to say that the cast was enough to get me to watch it, but that isn’t true. I literally only watched it because I heard good tidings from others about the story and the acting behind it.

This looked like a very skippable movie. Some sort of Rom Com? Let’s just say that I think going in totally blind is definitely a worthwhile endeavor for this one. I do describe what the movie is about and why it is unique in the plot description below, so feel free to ignore that if you’d rather just run in. This is a good time to just check my rating and decide on those merits alone!

Trust? In swim trunks like these? 

Nyles (Andy Samberg) is at a wedding in Palm Springs, California. His life is aloof, he seems weird, he is wearing non fancy clothes to the wedding His girlfriend (Meredith Hagner) is freaking out about his strange behavior, but he doesn’t care. Nyles has his eyes on on Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the maid of honor. And before he can seal the deal, he gets shot with an arrow by Roy (J.K. Simmons) and that is pretty damn annoying.

After the arrow incident, Nyles crawls towards a mysterious glowing cave with Sarah following, despite his best attempt to get her to leave, and then the next morning, Nyles wakes up to relive the day over again. But this time, so does Sarah.

You see, Nyles has been living this time loop of this wedding he barely cares about for a very, very, long time. Every death, every sleep, no matter what, he goes back to waking up the same bed with his same girlfriend. But now, Sarah is stuck in the loop with him (and so is Roy, which is why he is pissed at Nyles). Well, now at least there are two of them to try and figure out how to get out. Two people who can make the day feel less meaningless. And maybe they can figure out a way out eventually.

Also starring Jena Friedman, Jacqueline Obradors, Dale Dickey, Tongayi Chirisa, June Squibb, Chris Pang, Tyler Hoechlin, Camila Mendes, and Peter Gallagher.

It took them 400 days of shooting to get the beer spray lined up so perfectly. 

So given the genre and type of film it is, why is this one worth the 4 out of 4?

Well, despite it being a famous type of a movie with a really famous and cherished example of the plot line in movie history, it isn’t that overdone yet. I bet you can’t think of more than five examples of that plot line being used (although there are more than five, but not too much more). People just feel it had peaked early. Well, by having two characters go through this plot, it allows a lot more room for growth and potential, because we have more people who are in on the secret.

It is a brilliant idea, and one that I am surprised (as far as I know) not been done before. It lets us get to know our leads as co-stars and not just one person surrounded by the supporting actors. Samberg is his usual self, but maybe a bit more darker with his tone, because he has been at this for awhile and has practically given up. Milioti was a delight, and watching her journey at the beginning all the way through the end, as a strong independent person, to get things fixed, was great. And it featured a cameo from a professor at Rice University who I know, so that was cool too.

Palm Springs is a unique concept on an old plot, and a refreshing take on it all. Add in two fantastic leads and a great moment from Simmons, this is a top tier film for 2020 (given how awkward this year is) and one that should be experienced.

Way back a long time ago, when I saw the movie Colossal, I had just learned about Neon Films, a distribution company run by Alamo Drafthouse. Colossal was amazing and everyone should see it. I believe Colossal was their first big release.

They had trailers for two other films specifically from them as well, Buster’s Mal Heart, and Ingrid Goes West. Both trailers were really well done, and I knew I wanted to see both of this films. I thought Neon was starting off really strong.

Well, Buster’s Mal Heart was indeed weird, but not something I could get behind. And Ingrid Goes West I decided to wait until it could be rented, because my wife was also really interested in it, especially since we were watching Parks and Rec at the time. Again, another delay, but that is okay, still hit it in 2017.

Did they both just conquer some natievs? Whats with the victory signs?

Ingrid Thorburn (Aubrey Plaza) just loves her friends, like, a lot. I mean, mostly she stays in her room, eating junk food, but thanks to social media she can keep up with their posts and going ons. She is one like away from joining in on the fun. But fun time is over, because Charlotte (Meredith Hagner) had the gall to get married, not invite Ingrid, and also imply all of her friends were with her on that special night. That bitch. So Ingrid heads over to the wedding to crash it and give her a piece of her name, putting her in a mental institution for awhile and giving her a restraining order.

Once Ingrid gets better, she heads home to an empty home, her mom now dead and gone. With Charlotte’s Instagram now set to private, Ingrid has to find a new BFF. And that is how she found Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen). A social media pseudo celebrity, the type with a ton of followers so she can make money by posting images of products. She lived a perfect life, one that Ingrid would like to become.

And since she has all this inheritance money, she upends her life, flies to California and hopes to find Taylor to become real life BFFs with her, not just internet pals. She can become popular and awesome too. She rents a small apartment owned by the neighbor, Dan Pinto (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) and sets off to be friends with Taylor at any cost. At. Any. Cost.

Also featuring Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen, and Pom Klementieff.

Ice Cube’s son gets real warm with Aubrey Plaza.

Films that are about mental illnesses have a lot of weight to them. For example, a few years ago I watched the movie Young Adult, when my reviews were still poorly written but frequent. I used words like crazy to describe her and eventually realized that what I was doing was not okay to do. I didn’t get that movie.

Now, old (and as an intellectual~~), I understand more the right way and wrong way to speak about certain things, and other times I still don’t fucking care (hooray swearing in reviews). I just also know that if you are going to make a film about someone with a mental illness and their illness shouldn’t be the brunt of the jokes. Jokes can happen, but if you are just making fun of illnesses, that is bad. And honestly, at this point, I really can’t tell if it goes too far in Ingrid Goes West.

Ingrid is a tragic character, who gets obsessed with what she feels is perfection, until things go to ruin. We get to see her in an institution, and who knows why she is like that, or when her mom died and if it is related. Characters getting pissed off at Ingrid over her actions? Totally justifiable in the movie. But the movie makers made a choice and chose to not make their movie in a way that seems to understand that they can’t just call a character mentally unstable and run with it. There needs to be justification, a reason, some sort of closure, and not just a gag.

And again, since it seems like it is hard to tell if they really treated it with the appropriate gloves, it probably means they didn’t. I can see elements there, just not enough.

The film on its own wasn’t really that funny though. It took awhile to really get going, maybe they were going for realism. Jackson Jr. was hilarious though, every time he was on screen I ended up laughing, which is maybe the only reason this made it to a 2.