The Leopard<\/strong><\/em>: Burt Lancaster is the patriarch of an aristocratic Sicilian family whose role in society is inevitably being usurped by the rising middle class during the period of Italian unification. Directed in sun-soaked autumnal shade and color by Caravaggio\u2013I mean, Visconti.<\/p>\n Lancaster is so good at these autumnal roles (The Swimmer<\/em>) and everything here is gorgeous to look at. My favorite social or psychological note was the complex role played by the Church\/the family priest. The patriarch is well aware that they are not really playing for the same team: At the end of the day the Church looks to the world to come, not the present social order; and the end of the day is drawing near. There\u2019s a very fun conversation about how the patriarch needs to go to Confession, in which I think the priest is sincere on some level, though also attempting a characteristically clumsy manipulation on a more obvious level.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t really hooked, which is a problem when a movie is three hours long and mostly full of wistful languor, wry resignation, discussions of battles that took place off-screen, and dresses. But that is a statement about me and if you can plunge yourself into this I think you\u2019ll love it.<\/p>\n The family\u2019s Catholicism starts out plangent (and I wish the version we saw translated the Latin, since I think it matters that they\u2019re praying the Sorrowful Mysteries at the start\u2013although I guess if you know what a sorrowful mystery is you probably already know enough Latin to figure out that that\u2019s what that is) and even histrionic, but ends on a hushed and intimate note. I saw it with a stereotypically \u201cpresentist\u201d audience but even they were quiet and, I think, moved by the final act of reverence.<\/p>\n The rest of these films are available on Netflix streaming in the US, in case that\u2019s relevant information to you.<\/p>\n Honeymoon<\/strong><\/em>: A short, sharp horror flick (which I found via this review<\/a> from the Deadly Doll) about a newlywed couple who go to the wife\u2019s childhood summer cabin for their honeymoon. And then the wife starts to change.<\/p>\n What a truly great premise, really. It\u2019s everything there is to fear about the marriage promise. You are yoking yourself not only to the happy present of this person, but to her unknown future self. Not just to the happy memories she\u2019s shared with you, but to the past shames and sorrows she herself may not even remember. What if she changes? What if you\u2019re not prepared? What if you can\u2019t bear what you\u2019ve promised to bear?<\/p>\n Throw in some anxiety around childbearing, and one of the most intense body-horror scenes I have witnessed in a very long time (I can usually watch any horror flick without physical flinching, but I flat-out recoiled and covered my face for this film\u2019s one gory scene), and you\u2019ve got a seriously scary and emotional film.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s something that isn\u2019t about this movie per se, but about the cultural world in which it draws its ragged breaths: I have to say that if you make an \u201cis-she-crazy\u201d horror flick with intense body horror concerning a woman\u2019s reproductive system, I\u2019m gonna side-eye you pretty hard.\u00a0It\u2019s not that nobody should make is-she-crazy or womb\/vagina-horror movies. They touch on powerful fears, of women as well as men. It\u2019s just\u2026 why do we go there so often? And I\u2019m biased, sisters before misters and all that, but I think of something like Promises I Can Keep<\/em><\/a>, where many of the women avoided marriage precisely because they\u2019d seen so many men change dramatically for the worse after rings are on fingers. They had seen so many gentlemen in courtship become tyrants in wedlock. It\u2019s not usually women, is it?, who think the marriage license is a deed of title. So there\u2019s something in this film\u2019s storyline that seems like it obscures a hard truth.<\/p>\n That said\u2013this is a really solid, frightening and wrenching film. And it\u2019s perfect for date night!<\/p>\n Kicking and Screaming<\/strong><\/em>: Endearing light comedy about that liminal year right after graduating from college. The always-charming Chris Eigeman plays Max, the ringleader of a pack of (let\u2019s be real) losers. Noah Baumbach captures a lot of real-life dynamics perfectly here: Several of these guys are transparent in their desire to be taught how to live, how to act, but they don\u2019t yet have the wisdom to choose good models or mentors. The corny rituals, like the buzz-in trivia game they play together, and the way they\u2019re starting to notice the corniness and loudly reject it in the hopes that rejecting it will better their social position within the pack. That in-between stage where you\u2019re quitting smoking\u2013you already have things you\u2019re quitting\u2013but you still wear a retainer.<\/p>\n I also enjoyed the little wigginesses around the edges: the neon signs advertising RODENT SUPPLIES and SNAKE RENTAL among various normal items; the overheard snatches of conversation, \u201cLet me tell you the worst thing about losing a foot!\u201d<\/p>\n Wet Hot American Summer<\/strong><\/em>: It\u2019s the last day of Jewish summer camp, 1981. (Already I am sort of in love with this movie.) A bunch of confusingly-aged campers and counselors endure a series of misadventures in which heterosexuality yanks them around like sticky, slobbery puppets. There\u2019s a delightfully low opinion of human nature on display here. Everyone is very, very, very stupid in pursuit of the opposite sex.<\/p>\n The gay subplot is okay but feels dated, and not because it takes place in 1981. The horrifying refrigerator thing, by contrast, is still quite pungent satire.<\/p>\n Honestly I did feel that this movie was too long\u2013it\u2019s mostly one kind of humor, the exaggeration of human narcissism and stupidity\u2013and the Jewishness wasn\u2019t specific enough. We actually get a lot of it but\u2026 somehow it always feels surface-level. Costuming, not soul, you know? IDK, as a veteran of Camp Shalom and the JCC summer camp I wanted more than the terrific joke about all the Debbies. But if you read the first line of this capsule review and were already giggling I can definitely recommend it.<\/p>\n