Ishtar (Elaine May, 1987)

Road to nowhere

Saw Elaine May's Ishtar again after so many decades. In my book still holds up (thank god), an early masterpiece of cringe comedy.

Best of 2016

Terrific films, terrible year

Can't include any horror films because to my mind the entire genre has been rendered not only unfrightening but totally redundant by the world's recent turn into fascism. Can't in good conscience include any film that deals directly with aforementioned recent events because 1) there aren't that many and 2) I suspect we need to digest what's happened for a few years before the proper level of disappointment and anger and artistry can be expressed. 

The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972)

Shoot the moon

(Warning: plot, surprise twists, and finale discussed in detail)

Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972), about Jewish up-and-comer Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) and his schemes to put aside newlywed wife Lila Kolodny (Jeannie Berlin, the director's daughter) in favor of WASP coed Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd), has been compared to Mike Nichols' classic The Graduate (1967) for obvious reasons: both Nichols and May have been longtime comic collaborators; both their pictures (his first, her second) feature societal outsiders trying to wriggle their way inside; both pictures are comedies, instagram photos of the American milieu they are set in--'60s California, '70s New York and Minnesota (with a brief detour through Miami Beach) respectively.