Movie Review Showing Up

Showing Up (2023) 

Directed by Kelly Reichardt 

Written by Jon Raymond, Kelly Reichardt

Starring Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro, Maryann Plunkett, Andre Benjamin, Judd Hirsch 

Release Date April 7th, 2023 

Published December 14th, 2023 

The Great Catch Up of 2023 continues with Kelly Reichardt's festival favorite, Showing Up. Teamed with her muse, Michelle Williams, Reichardt crafts a portrait of loneliness, disconnection, and art that feels a little like Reichardt's take on Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielmann, a languid, observant, sometimes bleak comedy about a disconnected woman longing to be seen and cared for while also nursing a mostly combative relationship with most other human beings. For Williams' Lizzy, other people are mostly a functional element of life that she must navigate while trying not to be bothered. 

Lizzy is an artist who crafts remarkable, fragile statues out of clay and fire and paint. Her work is abstract but painstaking. When she isn't making art in her garage, Lizzy also works as a secretary at an artist commune or art school, depending on how dismissive you want to be regarding art and artists. Lizzy got the job because her mother is in charge of the college and hired Lizzy as her top assistant. Lizzy does a good job while spending most of her time creating new ideas for her art. 

This would normally where I would launch into a thumbnail sketch of the plot, spoiler free, of course. However, Showing Up is not a movie that lends itself to such an easy boiling down. Kelly Reichardt's film is very much a slice of a relatively mundane life. Lizzy has few friends and a troubled family but she spends most of her time alone making art and feeding her cat. The biggest incident of any average day for Lizzy is badgering her fellow artist and landlord, Jo (Hong Chau) to repair her hot water heater which hasn't worked in weeks. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media 

Movie Review IMoredecai

iMordecai (2023) 

Directed by Marvin Samel 

Written by Rudy Gaines, Dahlia Heyman 

Starring Judd Hirsch, Carole Kane, Sean Astin 

Release Date March 10th, 2023 

Published March 9th, 2023 

It seems to happen year after year after the Oscar nominations are announced. One nominee with a chance of winning one of the biggest prizes in acting will have their chances of winning torpedoed by the release of another movie, one terrifically embarrassing and using the Oscar attention for the star as a marketing tool. This year, legendary character actor Judd Hirsch earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Steven Speilberg's The Fabelmans. Whether or not Hirsch could be considered a frontrunner for the award is debatable. What's not debatable is that he must be hoping voters don't notice his other awards season starring role in the embarrassing product placement based comedy, iMordecai. 

Judd Hirsch stars in iMordecai as Mordecai, a wacky holocaust survivor living the retired life in Florida with his longtime, long suffering wife, Fela (Carole Kane). When we meet Mordecai he is taking a sledgehammer to his apartment bathroom with the intent of building a new bathroom. Did I mention that Mordecai is in his late 80s? Perhaps building an entire new bathroom might not be within his capabilities? That's certainly what Mordecai's son, Marvin (Sean Astin) thinks. He's stunned when his mother calls him to try and get Mordecai to not destroy the bathroom. 

Marvin is struggling to keep tabs on his dad, especially because Mordecai is still using a nearly 20 year old flip phone as his main source of communication. Marvin is desperate to get his father a more reliable phone and finally is able to rope dad into a trip to the mall. There, Mordecai is introduced to a young genius named Nina (Azia Dinea Hale) who is teaching a class on how draw using your Iphone. Nina and Mordecai strike up a friendship over their shared love of art, Mordecai was a painter years ago, and Nina offers to teach Mordecai how to use the new Iphone Marvin is buying for him.

There is a major complication in Nina and Mordecai's friendship that lingers through the second act. What we know and Mordecai will come to know, eventually, is that Nina's grandfather was a Nazi officer at a Jewish Extermination Camp in Germany during World War 2. Nina only recently became aware of this and initially keeps this information from her new friend. Naturally, the truth will come out but, strangely, not much will come from this. One of the hallmarks of iMordecai is the introduction of heavy topics that get shuffled aside for more discussion about how great Iphones are. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media