Memory play
Michael Almereyda's Marjorie Prime (2017) adapts Jordan Harrison's Pulitzer-nominated play to the big screen in a small way and it's marvelous. Eighty-five year old Marjorie (Lois Smith, who played the role in two previous stage productions) suffers the initial symptoms of Alzheimer's; to help her deal with the memory loss her daughter Tess (Geena Davis) and son-in-law Jon (Tim Robbins) have installed a 'Prime'--a hologram-projected artificial intelligence--representing Marjorie's husband Walter (Jon Hamm) when he was a relatively young forty to talk to Marjorie, record her stories, remind her of any memories she might have forgotten, keep her company, give her all-around emotional support.
The impossible dream
(Warning: narrative details and plot twists explicitly discussed)
Fantasy double feature: Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear (1955) and Roberto Rossellini's Europa '51 (1952) both ask the question: how should we deal with the man who holds extreme views on life? Humor him or condemn him? Or--unsettling thought--listen to what he has to say?
Crazy Rich A**hole
If we're talking lighthearted romantic fare involving insanely prosperous Asians I don't see why we need to go all the way to Hollywood when Hong Kong has been doing fine for years.
Bullet in the head
Back in the mid-90s found myself hooked on a particularly intense habit: Johnnie To movies. I'd seen A Hero Never Dies and The Barefoot Kid (his one period martial-arts film) had been digging through various DVDs ever since, hoping to find more.
Found this: Loving You (Mou mei san taam, 1995) what To considers his first real directing job (he'd made his first feature in 1980; by the time he did this he had some sixteen films under his belt). A crime flick with an inordinate focus on a failing marriage, a marriage melodrama with a terrifically tense confrontation thirty minutes in--I mean how would you handle being pinned in an alleyway by a villain on a fire escape, gun pointed down at you? He'd already fired a shot at your head and in the confusion the bullet had somehow missed its mark. Then your nose starts bleeding.
