I see too many movies with time-sequence problems, but I’m going to pick on “The Family Stone” (2005) because it’s not good enough to deserve grace. In most Christmas flicks, 79 hours of activity is packed into one day. Here, we go from “not breakfast yet” to “it’s dark out” in the span of one argument. I know sunset comes early during a New England winter, but come on. Anyway, ensemble film with too many unlikeable characters. I think it was trying to show how love keeps a big, sloppy family together, but it didn’t get me to care enough.
Archives for posts with tag: Diane Keaton
They don’t make ’em like “Town & Country” (2001) anymore. They can’t. If a movie this saturated in white privilege and male libidinaity were made today, the filmmakers would be flogged in the town square (or at least get a lot of dislikes on social media). Nobody would blame Warren Beatty, however. Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful. Anyway, a family (Diane Keaton and Beatty – he’s an architect because of course he is) with homes on Fifth Avenue and in the Hamptons has a bit of a mid-life crisis, as do their friends (Goldie Hawn, Garry Shandling). First-world hijinks ensue.
Hiding behind owly glasses, Julianne Moore pulls off a perfect Diane Keaton impersonation in “Gloria Bell” (2019). Gloria’s a middle-aged divorcee, living a seemingly full life. Yet there’s an emptiness, as if she’s stuffing life with busyness because there’s no single thing that challenges her. Oh boy, she finds it one night while out disco dancing. Brooding Arnold (John Turturro), who says he, too, is divorced, but suffers from needy millennial daughters. Arnold and Gloria are on and off and on again, as the movie’s momentum goes down the drain, like all those years middle-aged divorcees wish they had back.
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