Movie Review Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert (2022) 

Directed by Michael Showalter 

Written by Michael Showalter

Starring Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Sally Field, Bill Irwin 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 12th, 2022 

Spoiler Alert stars former Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons as television critic Michael Ausiello. Michael lives for TV having grown up in a broken home and watching daytime soap operas with his mother. As we join Michael's story, it's 2004, and Michael is deeply neurotic, laden with anxiety and insecurities, and generally working endless hours to avoid life. Then, a friend drags him out to a bar for a night out. As Michael very unnaturally wears a Yankees cap, it's jock night at the bar, he manages to lock eyes with Kit (Ben Aldridge), and sparks fly. 

Initially, it's just a hook up, Kit claims to prefer the occasional fling. However, both men start to catch feelings rather quickly and a romance begins to bloom. The only thing standing in their way are their equally formidable emotional hurdles. For Michael, this includes a host of things he must talk to a therapist about. As for Kit, he has not told his parents, Marilyn and Bob (Sally Field and Bill Irwin), that he's gay. Michael's mom is... a lot, and telling her could be an ordeal. 

Another obstacle is Michael's crippling addiction to the cartoon The Smurfs. In a very funny early subplot, Michael comes up with absurd reasons to keep from having Kit over to his apartment. This is because Michael has one of the foremost collections of Smurfs memorabilia on the East Coast and he's rightfully concerned that Kit might find this fetish for little blue people off-putting. It's actually a kind of perfect test for their relationship. If Kit can accept Michael at his most Smurf-y, he can accept him for anything. 

The lovely romantic comedy portion of Spoiler Alert lasts longer than you might expect. That's because anyone who has read Michael Ausiello's best seller, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies at the End, knows that Kit develops cancer and the rest of the story is about Michael and Kit repairing their troubled romance just as Kit is dealing with stage four rectal cancer. So many movies don't know what do when the outcome is already so well known, there is a tendency for movies like this to spin their wheels. Spoiler Alert, thankfully, is carried by a wonderful cast and a quirky sense of romance and humor. 

Jim Parsons is working hard to escape the shadow of his beloved TV persona, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory. Roles such as this are a very strong step in the right direction. Though similar to Sheldon in that Michael is a big bag of tics and untended neuroses, it's a much less mannered and far more human performance in Spoiler Alert. Parsons is working a lot of actorly muscles that he never trained on his hit sitcom, reaching moments of genuine romance, sexuality, and humor that his television persona was built without. 

That Parsons never misses a beat in Spoiler Alert is a testament to the actorly range we are only now experiencing following his twelve seasons on a hit TV series. His romance with Ben Aldridge's Kit is wonderfully realized. The two men have a strong romantic chemistry that is true to both of their hang ups and anxieties while fostering their connection wit honesty, romance and intimacy. I adored this couple and the ups and downs of their too short romance, cut short by tragedy, are deeply endearing. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review Rachel Getting Married

Rachel Getting Married (2008) 

Directed by Jonathan Demme

Written by Jenny Lumet 

Starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie Dewitt, Bill Irwin, Anna Deveare Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Debra Winger

Release Date October 3rd, 2008 

October 15th, 2008 

I was not prepared for the emotional experience of Rachel Getting Married. After watching it for the first time in November of 2008 I was left raw and vulnerable and incapable of capturing the experience in words. The film worked me over and the experience is one of the most exhilarating and exciting moments I've ever had at the movies.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married tells the story of a New England family in the midst of a storm of emotions. On the one hand, eldest daughter Rachel (Rosemarie Dewitt) is getting married in the family's long-time home and a guest list of family and friends is pouring out the windows.

On the other hand, youngest daughter Kym is leaving rehab after an extended stay, recovering from an addiction to pills and alcohol. Kym and Rachel have always had a complicated relationship, the kind that only sisters can have. They have competed, unwittingly, for their parents' attention their entire lives. Kym through drugs and antisocial behavior, Rachel by trying desperately to be the good daughter.

Mom and Dad are divorced. Mom, Abby (Debra Winger) has retreated from her daughters. Dad, Paul (Bill Irwin) has lived and died for every moment of his daughters lives to an uncomfortable degree. He's remarried to Carol (Anna Deavere Smith) who balances his doting with calm presence.

The action unfolds over three days and nothing you might expect to happen happens. Rachel Getting Married never takes the easy way out. It doesn't have major set piece moments that can tie up a good trailer or marketing campaign. What it has in abundance is truth. Truth in how families interact. Truth how small slights can escalate into lacerating arguments.

Truth in how tragedies never really leave us. This family in Rachel Getting Married has had a tragedy and when the film is over that tragedy lingers over each of them. That is not to say that the film is filled with doom and gloom. Far from it. In fact, for as much sadness and heartache as there is, there is also joy, much of it found in music.

In a wonderfully passive way we learn that much of both families blending in this marriage are musically inclined. There is someone playing an instrument somewhere in the background of most scenes and it's all rather incidental and not a greek chorus to underscore drama or meant to distract. It just sort of is there. Music is just part of the lives of these people.

Movies shot with a digital handheld camera can be distracting and disjointed for us in the audience. We were all raised on film and the mostly crisp clean images that film provides. DV can tend to be sloppy and in the wrong hands invite a queasy feeling in the audience as if the camera would stop moving around so much.

However, the DV really works here. It feels as if we are a member of this troubled but loving family. We are more than mere witnesses to their sadness and joy, we are made a part of it by this handheld style, as if we were running the camera.

It's a phenomenally underappreciated achievement, one that should have earned Jonathan Demme an Oscar nomination for Best Director. On the bright side, Jenny Lumet who wrote the absorbing, exhausting and cathartic screenplay was nominated and will likely win the award for Best Original Screenplay.

Lumet learned so much from her father, the legendary Sydney Lumet, that it really is no wonder she can write something as brilliant as this. She has an ear for dialogue, an ear for the way families speak to one another that few writers can match.

Listen to the way Rose Dewitt and Anne Hathaway talk to each other. The rhythm, the patter, the bracing insight and the quick painful insult. It's remarkable. Listen to the way Hathaway bites off her words, her inflections, the wounded animal way she has of speaking when offended or hurt. Much of it is Hathaway, some of it is Lumet, all of it is brilliant.

I could go on for days about why Rachel Getting Married is one of the best movies I have ever seen, but I think I need to stop gushing now. I will just say that no other movie in the past 12 months has impacted me more and stayed with me longer than Rachel Getting Married and I think if you give it a chance you will feel the same way.