Steven Rubio's Online Life

hard eight (paul thomas anderson, 1996)

This is the fifth film I have watched in "My Letterboxd Season Challenge 2024-25", a "33-week-long community challenge" where "you must watch one previously unseen film that fits the criteria of the theme for the week." This is the 10th annual challenge, and my sixth time participating (previous years can be found at "2019-20", "2020-21", "2021-22", "2022-23", and 2023-24). Week 5 is called "Anders(s)on Week":

If I were in charge of Oscar nominations for 2014 films, my best director lineup would have included Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotel), Paul Thomas Anderson (Inherent Vice), and Roy Andersson (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence). Continuing our recurring theme of similarly named movie people, this year we honor the Anders(s)ons. In addition to the three mentioned above, there's also Brad Anderson and cult favorite Paul W.S. Anderson. There should be plenty of films to choose from with those five, but if there are other Anderson directors out there we'll allow it.

This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film by Roy Andersson or Paul, Wes, Paul W.S., or Brad Anderson.

The only thing I was sure of was that I wasn't going to watch a Wes Anderson movie. I opted for PT. I've seen most of his features and liked them ... I liked Magnolia more than a little, didn't like There Will Be Blood, but in general, I consistently found his movies worthwhile. Hard Eight was Anderson's first feature, and it took a while to get it released, although he is said to be happy with the final result. The cast is strong ... it seems even more so in retrospect, names like Gwyneth Paltrow (her Oscar was a few years away, to say nothing of Pepper Potts) and Philip Seymour Hoffman weren't as well known at the time. Samuel L. Jackson had already been in a billion movies, of course. John C. Reilly is probably better known today, although he wasn't a nonentity in 1996. Meanwhile, Philip Baker Hall, who plays the main character, Sydney, was never properly recognized for his excellence.

Hall inhabits his character, a somewhat mysterious gambler, keeping his thoughts to himself, and the film spends much of its time as a character study. Near the end, we learn some of Sydney's past, and some mysteries are exposed, but the film plays better in that character mode than it does as a kind of neo-noir. Throughout, Anderson works with confidence, and there's no sign this is his debut.

Everything is low-key, and Hard Eight rarely knocks you out, but on its own level, it's engrossing. Philip Seymour Hoffman only has one scene, which he apparently improvised ... he is not low-key:

music friday: 2001

The Gossip, "Hott Date". Song came out in 2000, but I saw them in February of 2001:

Coldplay, "Yellow". Another cheat from 2000, this one turned up on Now That's What I Call Music! 6, released in 2001. Video is yet another cheat, but a delightful one. In 2019, actress Jodie Whittaker recorded the song for a charity album. She chose it because she loved Coldplay since she was young. There was a surprise waiting for her:

Missy Elliott, "Get Ur Freak On". No cheat here:

geezer cinema/film fatales #216: my old ass (megan park, 2024)

Megan Park's feature debut as a writer-director was 2021's The Fallout, a very good film about which I wrote:

Park's directing debut is confident ... there are no signs of first-timers disease. She tells the story as she wants, gets the performances she wants, creates a believable world of high-schoolers, and even makes the adults seem true-to-life, neither ogres nor saints.... Park doesn't reach too far, which just adds to the powerful nature of what we see.

I could say the same about My Old Ass, which features actors portraying believable teenagers and reasonable adults. But the tone of My Old Ass is different from its predecessor. The Fallout was about trauma, and while that topic sneaks in the backdoor at the end, My Old Ass is a more standard coming-of-age story. And where The Fallout was realistic enough to require a trigger warning at the beginning, My Old Ass drops a fantasy element into what is otherwise a straightforward account of the blossoming of a young woman. In My Old Ass, Elliott (a delightful Maisy Stella) does mushrooms and encounters her own self from 20 years into the future. That the older Elliott is played by Aubrey Plaza only adds to the enjoyment, although Plaza fans should note she is only a supporting actor here.

The time-travel angle doesn't always make sense, but Park explains it in such a way that we go along with it anyway. The obvious questions arise, as the previews make clear: if you could talk to yourself from a different age, what would you want to know, and what if you could change everything? What's nice is that, once again, Park doesn't reach too far ... the questions arise, but in the middle of a feel-good movie about youth. It's not too smarmy and it's not too serious until the end.

Park's background is interesting ... she's been a musician and an actor, and now she has two solid feature films to her credit. She is definitely someone to keep an eye on.