Last night I watched one and a quarter movies. Starting with The Lost Daughter starring Olivia Colman, whom I have liked only once in a film - as Queen Anne in The Favourite. It is billed as a psychological thriller but in the half hour before I gave up there were no thrills and many long sequences of Colman practising her range of facial expressions. I like my films to have either a narrative or a point - where is this movie going and why has it been made? For me it was dreary in the extreme and, to the extent there was any dramatic motivation, a disturbing and discombobulating focus on unhappy childhood scenes and memories. A thinking person's film. Not for me.
In contrast, Don't Look Up is a riotous, crazy, satirical film about a comet going to crash into the earth. And inept politicians. And greedy capitalists. A non-thinking person's film. A cast of Hollywood A listers led by Meryl Streep, Leonardo di Caprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill and Cate Blanchett seem to all have been told by the Director "here's your role; just over-act as if your life depends on it" - i.e. the comet is going to kill you all - is backed by impressive cameos by in particular Mark Rylance and Ariana Grande. And a Muppet. Streep is a (way OTT) President, Hill her son and Chief of Staff who calls Lawrence's grad student "dragon tattoo boy", Leo the Professor Nerd who goes bonkers with Blanchett's chat show host (you'll have to check it out to get my meanings). Grande provides some musical class; Rylance is the world domination tech guy with more than a touch of Dr. Strangelove.
It's pantomime. Not to mention the most glorious, Laugh Out Loud post credit moment you will ever see (I've learned my lesson). Oh, and once you've seen that, there's an endless (well five minutes' worth) list of boom operators, set decorators, casting directors' second assistants, matte artists, dolly grip thingies and whatnot - and finally ... another post credit scene (not such a good one though). Enjoy!
