Welcome To Me, Reviewed

Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases

Welcome To Me
- Directed by Shira Piven

A very sharp, very much with a feminine gaze satire on how the world deals with mental illness, fame, and wealth. Sounds like reality TV? Bingo. Kristen Wiig brings us Alice Kleig, a women filled with anxiety, rage, love and medication. In a familiar plot this very typical modern Oprah obsessed heavily medicated woman wearing her neuroses on her sleeve, wins the lotto. 

She decides to fund her own infomercial style ‘talk show “Welcome To Me.” I really don’t want to give much away of the story, but I will say that it all unfolds with impeccable timing, and is alternately making you laugh, cringe, and cry, maybe all three at the same time. Alice is one of those very hard to love characters, her social awkwardness both charms and wears thin as she goes from catharsis to catharsis, kind of forgetting/taking for granted the people who helped her before she won the lotto, as she wins over most of the tv production company that she has basically purchased. 

She does things throughout that make you cringe and maybe even dislike her, at times, yet in the end she actually grows and changes, and realizes that her own story is the story of her friends and loved ones, and that perhaps wealth and money are bigger roadblocks to humanity and sanity, than ‘borderline personality disorder, or using masturbation as a sedative. Squicked.

As much as this really is Wiig’s vehicle, her supporting cast does a lot with what they are playing through. Wes Bentley was unrecognizable to me, and wonderful in a very low key, early ‘Gyllenhaalish beardo role.The only character I would have liked a smidge more of was Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Deb who is the one person it seems with much guilt over producing this ‘vanity show’ and the exploitation that is happening not just from the infomercial production company, but Alice’s own self exploitation, and blithe diminishment of folks who have “wronged her.” 

Joan Cusack is her usual tower of strength, as is Linda Cardellini as long suffering best friend, Gina. Their friendship and it’s ups and downs are the scenes that really ground this dark dark satire of modern life in America. The great low budget art direction and pacing brought to a tough, touchy script by director, Shira Piven is self assured and she is a director i am now going to be keeping my eye out for.  

Recommended for folks who like female led films like Blue Jasmine, or the TV show Broad City; where the women are very flawed and very human. So, you know, it's not a film for everybody.

8.5 VHS tapes filled with hours and hours of Oprah outta 10




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nerd-Sploitation Weekend continues

Image
Glib Reviews of New Releases NerdFest Day 2 Continuing my Nerd-Sploitation festival with the almost traditional tale of of the out of control Game Master. Earlier examples of this sort of the tiny Nerdsploitation genre includes Gamers, (and it’s sequel) or any of those movies that I don't watch, that involve video games. Zero Charisma - Directed by Katie Graham , Andrew Matthews Is a surprising solid portrayal of the aging Nerd, or Fan. The main character is in many ways a painful reminder of what its like to be so obsessed with a game (or any fantasy) that it ruins the rest of your life.  Scott The GM in question ( Sam Eidson ), may in fact be a triggering presence for many gamers, or ex gamers. Be warned, the interplay of the players and GM struggling through a ridiculously overlong campaign is more realistic than the things the players do ‘in game.’ People being talked over, outside noise causing havoc with the flow of the game, the omnipresence of snack
Read more

Review of Tangerine!

Image
Glib Reviews Of Recent DVD Releases Tangerine - Directed By Sean Baker Tangerine is one of those films that ‘feels like’ it was shot chronologically. The first few scenes are a bit rough, the acting is a bit iffy, but as the characters of Sin-Dee and Alexandra walk endlessly through their drama filled Christmas Eve Day in L.A. The picture gets more gripping, the cinematography, the acting and the script all get better, more polished in a low budget way. The locations give a nice grimy seventies feel to the whole thing. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is especially unlikeable at the beginning of the film, her single mindedness in finding her pimp/boyfriend and the girl he ‘cheated on her’ with while she was doing a month in jail, is not terribly nuanced. The buffer of the her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) trying to keep her from all the drama she is creating, while trying to hustle tickets for a show she is doing that night keeps the whole thing from being one note.
Read more

My middling review of "Night Moves" by Kelly Reichardt

Image
Glib reviews of recent DVD/Blu Ray releases. Night Moves - Directed by Kelly Reichardt This is not your father’s ‘Night Moves,’ that one is an under appreciated Arthur Penn flick with Gene Hackman. Both do crucially involve boats though. I wanted to like this film a bit more than I did. As a big fan of Reichardt’s films in general, I was looking forward to this quite a bit. It may be though my least favourite of the bunch, but that by no means says it’s a bad film, just not quite as good as the previous three films. If you like creepy atmospheric slow paced gorgeously shot in Oregon kind of movies, you will dig this. Jesse Eisenberg is at his broodingest best, here, you barely ever see under his hooded eyes, he only ever really expresses emotions over the things he perceives with horror, like the dead deer he moves from the edge of the highway to save the dead doe the dignity of not getting run over again and again, at least. The basic plot has Jesse (as Josh, commu
Read more