Movie Review: One Fine Morning

One Fine Morning (2022) 

Directed by Mia Hansen Love 

Written by Mia Hansen Love 

Starring Lea Seydoux, Pascal Gregory, Melvil Poupaud, Nicole Garcia 

Release Date December 9th, 2022 

Published December 13th, 2022 

One Fine Morning stars Lea Seydoux as Sandra, a lonely, French, single mom. Sandra's days center on her lovely daughter and visiting her ailing father, Georg. Sandra's father is slowly slipping away following a stroke. He can no longer care for himself and much of the movie is about him being shuffled from one care center to another as Sandra, her sister, and her mother, try to find a place that will take good care of Georg in his final years.

Sandra's story shifts when she runs into an old friend at the park with her daughter. Clement (Melvil Poupaud), was a friend of Sandra's late husband. The two always had chemistry but she was married and so was he. He still is married but that doesn't stop him from openly flirting with Sandra. For her part, Sandra welcomes the flirting and more. Despite some reservations, Sandra welcomes Clement to her bed and the two begin a fraught affair. 

Meanwhile, Sandra is helping to pack up the life of her father. The once great man, a professor of literature, defined by the books he loved, can no longer remember the stories that made him who he was. In a lovely monologue, Sandra explains to her young daughter why her grandfather's books meant so much to him. It's one of the most emotional and lovely moments in any film in 2022. I can't do it justice by trying to repeat it, just see this movies. 

One Fine Morning is not the kind of movie that lingers on scenes, it's a movie that lingers in feeling. Director Mia Hansen Love crafts an emotional world and the movie lives in these feelings, this airy, open, often raw, emotional spaces. The story may appear stagnant to the impatient observer, but Hansen-Love and her cast are slowly carrying you along on an emotional wave, one that doesn't crash so much as it crests lovingly, caressing the beaches of bigger meanings and emotional truth. 

Find my complete review at Geeks.Media. 

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 The Adult Swim Yule Log

The Fireplace (2022) 

Directed by Casper Kelly

Written by Casper Kelly 

Starring Andrea Laing, Justin Miles 

Release Date December 11th, 2022, on Adult Swim, Debut on HBO Max December 12th, 2022 

Published December 12th, 2022 

Cartoon Network's Adult Swim has become a hub of alternative comedy for more than a decade. The Adult Swim brand has brought such weird and ambitious projects as The Greatest Event in Television History, where big stars re-enacted the opening theme songs of 80s TV series, and most famously the viral sensation, Too Many Cooks. That massive hit arrived on Adult Swim seemingly at random late one weekend and by the following day was an internet sensation. 

Now, Adult Swim is set for another viral triumph that seemed to have come out of nowhere. Once again teaming with the man behind Too Many Cooks, writer and director Casper Kelly, Adult Swim debuted their annual Yule Log presentation immediately following the season six finale of the hit cartoon series Rick and Morty. But this was no mere Yule Log. Instead, what starts as a warm and welcoming fire in a lovely fireplace begins to morph into a horror movie. 

After just a few minutes of a typical static shot of Yule Log, a voice can be heard. A cleaning lady has entered the room and her cleaning brings her to walk in front of the Yule Log camera, though she remains mostly out of frame. She's carrying on an animated conversation about her night's work as we remain staring at the fire. Suddenly, as she changes to listening loudly to music on headphones, another figure enters the room, a hulking brute of a man followed by the voice of someone who seems to be this man's mother. 

The hulking brute brutally murders the cleaning lady. We only know this from her screams and the horrific sound design. The camera remains on the fireplace, and it appears the whole movie might stay in this static shot with the sound design and dialogue acting almost like a terrifying radio play. The scene ends with the arrival of a couple who is renting this cottage where the fireplace is located. The murderers quickly retreat, dragging the body of the cleaning lady into a nearby room, just as the couple enters, far too involved in their conversation to see if anything is out of place. Mother was cleaning as her son was committing his heinous murder. 

All of this happens with the camera pointed at the Yule Log. It's accomplished almost completely through sound design and the occasional sight of legs moving past the camera. Director Casper Kelly deftly and ingeniously uses the tools of filmmaking to craft the early horror here and it sets a brilliant tone for the rest of the movie which will capitalize on sound design and camera work throughout to create so much horror fun. 

After the opening sequence we meet our main characters, Andrea Lang and Justin Miles portray a married couple who have rented this cabin for the weekend. The reason the camera has been set up and is capturing the Yule Log is because Justin's job is as a Yule Log YouTuber. He does other stuff as well, but it is a fun reason for him to be capturing the action of the movie. He's filming the Yule Log but also wants film his proposal, he's asking Andrea to marry him. 

They are interrupted by the local sheriff who says there was a murder nearby. Of greater concern to the sheriff, however, is the Yule Log. It seems that Justin took the log from a sacred tree, a former hanging tree, and the tree may be cursed. Where this plot thread goes, I will leave you to discover. Writer-director Casper Kelly makes sure that the Yule Log has a very literal role to play in the brilliantly absurd and often genuinely scary events of this Yule Log presentation. 

Click here for my full length review at Horror.Media