Rolled out of bed and started in with films, fresh off the stack, in whatever order they were piled in there. And in order, I watched “Wild” with Reese Witherspoon, Jenny Slate in “Obvious Child,” the emotional bulldozer that is “Still Alice,” with Julianne Moore, and finally the new Tommy Lee Jones Western that he co-stars in with Hillary Swank, “The Homesman.”
Four very powerfully female movies all four very good, all four giving these women room to swing for the fences and better for it. It turned out to be a great overall day of films, and tomorrow's the final stretch, where I'm going to see one or two final movies, then re-watch two favorites to see how they stack up at the end of it all. I'm glad the last day was spent watching such radically different pictures. “Wild” is not what I expected at all, while “Still Alice” is exactly what I expected, but very good at it. Jenny Slate is so appealing it's stupid in “Obvious Child.” She's funny and hot and open and confident. It's a romantic comedy where you not only see the very real chemistry between the leads, but you also see why they start to like each other and it all rings true.
Julianne Moore's just amazing in “Still Alice,” and Swank is as good as she's ever been in “Homesman,” which is strong and unsentimental filmmaking overall. And these are films where the endings pack pretty heavy wallops, so one after another was quite an emotional rollercoaster, and one of my favorite overall catch-up days so far.
None of the films really share any common aesthetic or thematic ground, but it made for a very particular day of films, for sure. Looks like tomorrow starts with the Russian film “Leviathan,” a whole different direction.