Paid in Puke S4E10: Beatriz at Dinner

On today’s episode, we’re (mostly) delighting in Miguel Arteta’s 2017 dramedy, Beatriz at Dinner, starring Salma Hayek, Connie Britton, Chloë Sevigny, and Amy Landecker. Beatriz (Hayek) is a holistic massage therapist and Mexican immigrant circumstantially trapped in a palatial estate with her wealthy client and her husband’s business partners.

In Hot Probs, we discuss how normally, a Mike White script doesn’t mess around, but this one does a little bit. Still, White does a commendable job depicting racist/classist micro-aggressions through the natural conversational flow of a Boomer dinner party.

On the Lunchtime Poll, we reveal the bridge-too-far in dinner conversation that would prompt us to take a stand and ruin the night for everyone else.

This is the last episode of Series 4, but we’ll be back next week with a late holiday special!

Advertisement

December 29, 2020
Categories: Filmpinions, Pod People . Tags: , , , , , , , , , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Film Review: Prospect

prospect-sxsw-e1525697994308
The universe is vast and mysterious. But the fact remains that even if humans manage to dwell beyond the confines of Earth, we will still be humans. We’ll likely always be slaves to some sort of currency and thrive on a class divide, even in a far-flung future galaxy. Writer/director team Zeek Earl and Christopher Caldwell work off of this concept in their debut feature space western, Prospect. The alien world they’ve miraculously created on a shoestring budget is rife with implications of an expansive human-populated universe that is inaccessible to their financially-strapped protagonist.

Cee (Sophie Thatcher) is a teenager living with her widower father, Damon (Jay Duplass), on a space freighter. They are prospectors in orbit around a green moon rich with precious gems called aurelacs. Extracting them from their fleshy spermatozoidal sacs is a risky and complicated process. But Damon is uniquely skilled and also desperate to make ends meet, which is why he decides to risk their lives for the chance at one big score that would cure their financial ills for good. Of course, they aren’t the only ones after the motherlode. Damon’s get-rich-quick scheme soon turns into a fight for survival for him and his daughter…

Read the rest at Hammer to Nail!

July 18, 2018
Categories: Filmpinions . Tags: , , , , , , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment

Seattle International Film Festival 2018 Wrap-Up

ef87bb37d9eeb0f90349e88ae209cf63562e9e06The 2018 Seattle International Film Festival ran from May 17th to June 10th. That’s 25 solid days of movie madness. It kicked off with the premiere of Isabel Coixet’s The Bookshop, starring Emily Mortimer as a widow who uses her “bibliophilia” to open the hearts and minds of the conservative residents of a small English town.

SIFF’s juicy centerpiece was a movie that will undoubtedly take America by storm in the coming months: Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. Riley was on hand to introduce his surreal social justice comedy to a sold-out crowd.

Gus Van Sant closed out the fest with Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. The latest offering from the veteran indie director stars Joaquin Phoenix as John Callahan, a celebrated Portland cartoonist who struggles with substance abuse and being confined to a wheelchair.

Melanie Lynskey spent an afternoon talking to fans about her impressive career and promoting Megan Griffiths’ latest outing, Sadie. Lynskey stars as a working-class single mother who underestimates her angry teenage daughter (Sophia Mitri Schloss).

HIGHLIGHTS:
People often ask me for recommendations from the festival, and I’ll have 1 or 2 titles to tout. But there were so many standouts this year, that my answer is, “How much time to do you have?” I try to focus on female-centric films and this year’s lineup made it easy…

Read the rest at Hammer to Nail!

July 18, 2018
Categories: Filmpinions . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Comments Off on Seattle International Film Festival 2018 Wrap-Up

H2N Review: Beatriz at Dinner

1bea

Donald Trump isn’t the first appalling billionaire, and he certainly won’t be the last. But what would you do if you found yourself at a dinner party honoring a man who has an awful lot in common with the hotel mogul (and some other title I can’t think of right now)? In Beatriz at Dinner, Mike White and Miguel Arteta’s latest collaboration, Beatriz (Selma Hayek) finds herself in this very position. She elects to not keep her worldview under wraps when faced with a man who is the very antithesis of all she holds dear.

Following in the footsteps of Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, Selma Hayek de-glams herself for the two Mikes in order to embody the character of a simple, earthy, Mexican immigrant who wants nothing more than to do her part to heal the world. She wakes up fresh-faced, empathetic eyes peering out from beneath woefully cropped bangs. She pulls on mom jeans and starts her day caring for the bevy of animals, including a goat, that she keeps as roommates. After a quick meditation session in front of an alter dedicated to family and a different goat, she loads her massage table into her relic of a Volkswagen, and heads off to a holistic cancer center where she pulls out all the naturopathic stops for struggling patients. This is the routine of a person who wants to help others, possibly at the expense of her own self-care…

Read the rest at Hammer to Nail!

This film was part of the 2017 Seattle International Film Festival.

July 2, 2017
Categories: Filmpinions . Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment