Romance

dir: Christos Nikou

2023

Fingernails is an anti-rom com which is still somewhat a rom com. It almost acts as a parody of rom coms, while using the tropes of rom coms to further its belief that love is and always should be inexplicable.

This is the least science-fiction-y science fiction based flick that you could ever watch. There’s nothing depicted that looks like anything that you wouldn’t have seen in the 1980s-1990s. But conceptually we are dealing with a world where people can get scientific confirmation as to whether, as a couple, they are truly in love.

So. If “love” becomes measurable and quantifiable, what does that mean for actual relationships?

In this cowardly old world, when a couple have been together for a while, they go to a place, the Love Institute, and have one of their fingernails ripped off. The two fingernails are put into a machine, and then the machine divines whether the two people are perfectly in love with each other.

Most couples who take the test fail. Get zero per cent. Other couples get a 50 per cent result, meaning one person loves the other more, or that one of them is faking it till they make it.

What this means is, I guess, people who don’t pass the test don’t stay together as couples. People who refuse to do the test don’t stay together, because someone will always doubt the other’s commitment.

And even couples who do the test, and get 100 per cent positive results, well, even they have their doubts.

Anna (the great Jessie Buckley, who is mastering the art of being really good in complicated films that don’t always work) is in a relationship with Ryan (Jeremy Allen White, who most people know as the hot chef guy from The Bear). They’ve passed the test. 100 %. What more could anyone want?

dir: Fletcher Moules

2022

Entergalactic is an entirely animated movie, and a Netflix exclusive one at that. This is not one for the kids, definitely. Not because it’s beyond them, because the story is a very simple one, but there are some sex scenes, surprisingly enough.

But, this isn’t a flick that would satisfy weirdos or perverts, because that’s not its purpose(?) It’s probably more like a longform accompaniment to Kid Cudi’s album of the same name that came out this year. And he also voices one of the main characters, being Jabari.

Jabari has recently moved into a loft apartment in Manhattan because he’s started a new job with Cosmic Comics, which I’m guessing is like Marvel or something. To date his claim to fame has been spraypainting a character he calls Mr Rager wherever he can on the walls of New York. The task before him is converting Mr Rager into some kind of comic book character.

This sounds fantastical, but, I assure you, it’s not imaginary within the dreamy context of the animated movie. Jabari is a dreamer, but he’s also drunk and stoned a lot of the time, so I guess there’s a fair bit of overlap between the actual and the imagined.

Jabari is a young African-American man in New York, but, thankfully, within the confines of this story, there’s only a small amount of racism he has to deal with, so he isn’t shot by cops for no reason or excluded from too many aspects of contemporary society. He has no money issues either, so he’s doing better than most of us. Also, with his group of friends, life is a constant drug and booze fueled exciting time for which there are no repercussions other than a mild hangover that one time.

He does sometimes have the Mr Rager character appear and seem like he wants to kill him, but this is less a psychotic break and more an opportunity to let an aspect of Jabari’s personality shine through (which kinda seems like self-doubt, or anger) along with the animation.

As for the animation, well, it’s unfair to the animators to say this, but they do a fairly good job aping / ripping off / homaging / appropriating the animation style from recent masterpiece Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, New York never looked this great in animated form, except, um, for the last time it looked this great.

dir: Clea Duvall

2020

I have a soft spot for these kinds of Christmas-related family comedy-pseudo dramas. I also have a soft spot for grindcore and stoner rock, so I don’t think the former says any more about me than the latter does either.

In case you’re wondering, no, I fucking hate the movie Love, Actually, it’s the absolute worst.

I’m thinking more of flicks like The Family Stone, and other gentle fare, where the “dysfunctional” part of the scenario is that someone likes smoking dope, or someone won’t admit they lost their job, or someone’s upset about something that happened a year ago involving a misplaced thank you note. You know, as opposed to families where the cops have to be called routinely, or there are restraining orders and death threats involved, like the dysfunctional family I grew up in.

Happiest Season doesn’t exactly stick to a certain familiar, untaxing template, but it doesn’t exactly create a new genre out of whole cloth. It’s the kind of film that you feel like you’ve seen a thousand times before even if you’re watching it for the first time, and even if it has a gay couple as the central ones making all the fuss.

Kristen Stewart plays Abby and Mackenzie Davis plays Harper. They’re a couple. It’s Christmas, or at least Christmas is coming up. Harper loves Christmas and loves spending it with her big family. Abby lost her parents when she was a teen, and doesn’t really care to celebrate this most dismal time of the year. But she loves Harper.

For some reason. Abby plans on asking Harper to marry her. Harper doesn’t know this. But she doesn’t want Abby to be alone this Christmas, so she invites her up to whatever snow-covered one pub town her parents live in, in rural Pennsylvania.

Does hilarity ensue? Well, not entirely. All these kinds of flicks depend on a central lie at the beginning, sort of, and this one’s is that Harper is not out to her family, so Abby is just going to be introduced as her housemate. They’re just friends, and Harper encourages her family to take pity on Abby because she’s an orphan.

dir: Michael Showalter

2020

I like me some Netflix romantic comedies. Honestly, the best, or should that be “best” Netflix produced or Netflix exclusive (this one more so because the plague interrupted its intended cinematic release) flicks that come out tend to be of the romantic comedy persuasion. Stakes are so low, budgets don’t need to be that high, it’s mostly (if we’re lucky) two or more charming people being charming for 90 or so minutes until it ends with a joke and a kiss and the implication that there’s a happily ever for at least the next few years after ending

The Lovebirds isn’t threatening to break any new ground. It’s not too dissimilar to a bunch of other flicks that has a bored or estranged couple go on a night of adventure that rekindles their love for each other and life in general. Date Night with Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, and the more recent Game Night with Justin Bateman were examples of this, and not only united by having “Night” in their titles.

The exotic twist, at least from an American perspective, is that the leads are an African-American and a Pakistani-American, in a flick that plays out exactly the same way as those kinds of flicks where two people who don’t like each other eventually do after adventures ensue.

But, c’mon. Kumail Nanjiani is generally pretty funny in everything he’s in and Issa Rae is glorious (best known for her tv series Insecure) in everything she does, so surely forcing them together towards a path that threatens mutually assured destruction is a recipe for success?

Well, kinda. They are individually great. I don’t know that I bought them as a couple, but that isn’t the only criteria. I never bought Harry and Sally as a couple in that classic whose name escapes me about when they meet each other, because Billy Crystal (ew) with Meg Ryan (ah) shouldn’t work in this or any other parallel universe, but that was part of the fun.

This doesn’t have those same obstacles, but it does have its own unique obstacles. When the flick starts we’re seeing these people after their first night together, so, The Day After, which is kinda sweet and kinda awkward, and we see them fumble towards some kind of happy amazement. They really go all out to convince us that these people are amazed / fuckstruck by each other after one night. All this happens just over the opening credits.

Then it cuts to four years later, where they are sick to fucking death of each other.

I guess to some people four years would seem like a lot, and to others it seems awfully brief. All we can see with this couple is that either tedium has accumulated over the years, or maybe that they weren’t really compatible in the first place. The man in the couple, Jibran, seems persnickety, fussy and whiny. Leilani (Issa Rae) seems exasperated with his persnickety fussiness and irritated by his constant criticisms and corrections, like he’s so fucking great. They’re about to go to some dinner party, but they’re fighting about a) their relationship or their individual perceived limitations (or each others), b) reality television in general, and whether they’d be a couple with a chance on The Amazing Race and c), whether Jibran is a shitty documentary maker, or whether Leilani’s co-workers are shitty.

Really, they’re fighting like people who have no affection left for each other. In the middle of driving to a dinner party, they ask each other if maybe they should separate. And they both agree.

That’s when, as is without doubt the most perfect moment, Jibran hits a guy on his bike with their car.

At first you’re thinking “wait, are they fucking with the conventions of a romantic comedy by making us somehow still care about a couple who commits a hit-and-run but doesn’t seem too fazed by it?” but when a cop forces his way in to their car and urges them to pursue the escaping guy on the bike, you might feel relieved for a second.