Dream House Not Included

Film: Barbie
Format: Phoenix Theaters, Dubuque, Iowa

I finally got a chance to go to the theater and see Barbie, the first half of the Barbenheimer double feature that was popular a number of weeks ago. Of course, I went into this knowing some things about the film, but I was surprisingly cold on the actual plot and many of the people involved. I was surprised, for instance, at the presence of Will Ferrell in the film, as I didn’t know he was attached to the project. Barbie became a cultural phenomenon, one that also got a lot of blowback from the political right because, as a film written by and directed by a clearly pro-feminist filmmaker, it’s going to ruffle a lot of conservative feathers.

We start with a 2001: A Space Odyssey parody that was the first point of anger I heard from the right—the little girls playing the parts of the pre-humans destroy their dolls much like the pre-humans smash bones in Kubrick’s film. From here we jump to Barbieland where, with a few exceptions, everyone is named either Barbie or Ken. That makes identifying some people here difficult, as different characters named Barbie are played by dozens of actors, and ditto for Ken.

Third Time's a Charm?

Film: Little Women (2019)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on various players.

I still have a few movies to watch from last year’s Oscars, but, based on what I still have to see, I don’t think there will be a movie I am more disappointed in than Little Women. I mean, I don’t love this story. I disliked the 1930s version a great deal and just liked the one from the mid-‘90s, but I had such hopes for this one. I love Greta Gerwig’s work, and I love so many of the people in this cast, that I really wanted this to be so much more than it turned out to be.

I’m not kidding about the cast, though—there’s something about this story that attracts a great deal of serious talent. This version includes Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Emma Watson, Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts, Bob Odenkirk, and Timothee Chalamet. It has Meryl Goddam Streep in a minor role. This should have been the best film of its year, especially with Greta Gerwig at the helm. And yet, here we are.

Fly Away (from) Home

Film: Lady Bird
Format: Blu-Ray from DeKalb Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

One of this blog’s pet peeves along with romances between men and women half their age is coming-of-age movies. My contention has long been that when the main character is a boy, the story will be about coming to terms with death. Coming-of-age from the male perspective (at least in Hollywood) means coming to terms with mortality. For girls, coming-of-age films tend to be about sex, and in many cases, about sex with someone completely inappropriate (and often twice the girl’s age). So, while girls aren’t forced to deal with their impending deaths, they are forced to deal with their ability to create life. So how would Lady Bird fit into this? I was keen to find out.

Make no mistake; Lady Bird is a coming-of-age story. Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is a senior at a Catholic high school. It’s the early 2000s and the McPherson family lives in Sacramento, a place Lady Bird (she gave herself the nickname) is desperate to leave. She’d like to go to college somewhere on the East Coast where she believes culture exists, but the family is struggling financially and her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf) tells her that the family can’t afford it and that she doesn’t really warrant it.