Day three of my trip to MIFF was Monday, July 13 and was the longest day of the festival for me. I ended up seeing three movies at the festival, and threw in a showing of Minions & Monsters at the nearby Flagship Cinemas because I had four and a half hours in between my 2nd and 3rd movies of the festival.
Late Fame (dir. Kent Jones)
Willem Dafoe stars in this film about a postal worker living in New York City who once wrote a book of poetry nearly 50 years ago and a small group of aspiring young intellectuals “rediscover” him and bring him into their group in this Kent Jones drama that also co-stars Greta Lee.
Dafoe gives some incredible work here as Ed Saxberger. Ed is initially flattered by the completely unexpected attention, then starts to crave it to the point that it has an effect on his existing relationships with his friends at a local dive bar.
The longer Ed spends with this young hopeful talents, it becomes increasingly apparent that they maybe be more faux intellectuals than aspiring intellectuals. I particularly loved Lee’s performance as the Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the group, which ultimately ends up being subverted as the group’s collective mask slips off more and more.
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (dir. David Wain)
For some reason, I didn’t clock that this was a riff on The Wizard of Oz until John Slattery gets punched in the nose and asks, “Whadcha do that for?” For a movie that was already making me laugh, it made me laugh even more.
Gail Daughtry (Dorothy Gale), portrayed by Zoey Deutch, heads to Hollywood to have sex with her celebrity sex pass, Jon Hamm, after her fiancé had sex in their small Kansas town with his sex pass, Jennifer Aniston. Gail brings her hair stylist BFF Otto (Toto rearranged) and picks up a brainless agent (Ben Wang), a heartless paparazzi photographer, and the cowardly Slattery in her quest to bed Hamm.
This movie had the theater I was in roaring with laughter. A lot of funny scenes, but a few drag on a bit too long. Nevertheless, a highly entertaining movie. Was a little weird that it was playing at the festival on the same weekend it was getting a wide release.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
She Keeps Me Young (dir. Doron Max Hagay)
Michelle (Blair Beeken), a woman in her 30s, develops a friendship with a high schooler in her weeknight dance class, which disrupts her relationship with her best friend.
Darkly comic (and low key horror?) and ok with being uncomfortable. There’s a crucial conversation the main character has with a friend about toxic friendships, something she is able to recognize for others, but realizes a little too late about the toxic relationship in her own life.
Explores themes of how some people can be controlling and other can be too accommodating for their own good and allow themselves to be pushed in directions they may not want to go; even if it’s a good direction it doesn’t necessarily mean it is the right direction.
Also liked how the film portrayed the teenage kid and how sometimes the relationships we have with people can be temporary and may mean more to one side than the other, but that doesn’t make the time shared and invested any less significant.
After the film, director Doron Max Hagay held a Q&A and I asked him about this film being adapted from an earlier short film of the same name. He said it was a fight to get it made and that the studios wanted to recast the movie and move off of the two leads of Blair Beeken and Katy Fullan, who both starred in the original short film; when he refused it kept causing the budget to get lowered. I’m glad he stuck to his guns and fought to keep Beeken and Fullan as the leads because they truly felt right for the roles.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
JONESING FOR FILMS 
Leave a comment