Shouting into the Void.
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Judy 2019
Crass rubbernecking of a celebrity car crash not softened with contextual flashbacks to Garland's time spent under Mayer's thumb, covering opposite ends of her career as a means to show cause and effect while leaving out everything in between. A corny ending where the audience lifts her spirit after she fails to finish her most recognized number doesn't quite paint a complete picture, nor does an equally corny bit involving a night on the town with "the gays". Points for eschewing standard biopic structure but this is still pretty hammy, with Zellweger's impression doing its best to support a weak script.
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A Fish in the Bathtub 1998
Lightweight (in a good way) comedy about marriage as a battleground starring real life husband and wife Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara as a bickering couple of 40 plus years. She's passively aggressively controlling, he's typecast in Frank Costanza mode and together they've come so close to a boiling point that a trial separation is necessary. A sub plot involving their married realtor son and a client that's meant to complement his parent's tribulations feels a little forced despite the best efforts of Mark Ruffalo, but otherwise this is a charming look at relationships that are long past the honeymoon period.
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Antichrist 2009
John Waters (bless him) wrote my favorite blurb about this movie:
"If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, Antichrist is the movie he would have made."
Lars von Trier by his own admission wasn't quite sure all the allegory works in this and I tend to agree, although the throughline of feminine subjugation at the hands of men, well-meaning or not, remains my strongest takeaway. Unpacking the rest is probably above my paygrade. Still a gorgeous film - Anthony Dod Mantle got some great shots in this one.
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Touched with Fire 2015
Bipolar drama that borders on caricature, with characters who would be solely defined by their disease if it weren't for liking poetry and "Starry Night". And that's about it. Katie Holmes portrays the ups and downs of the illness better than her co-star (he settles for "movie crazy") but their characters' relationship is well drawn, addressing pitfalls bipolar couples face such as having to choose between their regimens and mania highs. That the film treats this as a cautionary tale is a bit disheartening but at least it calls attention to an aspect of bipolar life that is rarely told.
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