Tag Archives: Tribeca Film Festival

Film Review of “Blue Night,” with Sarah Jessica Parker

 by HelenHighly

Ugh. I have an ailing and excruciatingly painful knee, so yesterday I skipped my planned schedule of Tribeca Film Festival press screenings, but I forced myself to schlep out to see the “can’t-miss” screening of Blue Night, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, and featuring Common, Jacqueline Bisset, and Renee Zellweger. It is literally the only movie I have walked out of since watching going-on-80 Tribeca2018 films. And I have a slew of excellent films to write about, which merit my coverage, and which I should be writing about right now, but sometimes it is easier to write about the bad movies than the good ones. This is a bad one. Save your money. Actually, forget the money; save your time. I am writing about Blue Night now because I am so annoyed that it wasted my precious time (and further inflamed my painful knee) during this festival full of truly extraordinary films. Sheesh. I feel scammed, and I didn’t even pay.

“Most gratuitous shot in this gratuitous movie: the close-up of the shopping bag as Vivienne sits in the back seat of the car – major foreshadowing!”

This movie helps to prove my cynical rule of thumb about film festivals: Skip the movies with the big names attached. They are there either because they paid to be part of the prestigious festival, as advertising, or because festival management chose them for their crowd-drawing potential. For the festival, they are there to pay for all the small movies that won’t make money or draw crowds. The small movies are there because they earned their way through the intensely competitive juried film-selection process. If you’ve made a film about an unappealing subject (war refugees, or ivory poaching, or human trafficking and prostitution), and you haven’t even managed to cast James Franco in it, you must be an extremely talented filmmaker to get into this Festival. So, movie watchers out there: Go see the movies you think you don’t want to see; that is where you will find the surprise greats.

But for the record, I feel the need to state that this year, O.G., starring Jeffery Wright, absolutely broke that rule; as my Tribeca Curtain-Raiser article declared, O.G. is actually Best of Fest – an impressive work of filmmaking and storytelling and top-notch acting. Never say never; sometimes the big films are worth watching. Although, still, you will get a chance to see that when it gets a national release into movie theaters (which it certainly will), so better to spend your time at Tribeca seeing the small films that may disappear after the Festival.

But back to Blue Night: It’s hard to choose which was worse – the acting or the script or the directing. Sarah Jessica Parker, as Vivienne the lounge singer with a life in which no one truly cares about her, tries way too hard to show us without telling us how distraught she is over her very-bad-news medical diagnosis. I kept thinking, “Please give her a line to say, so she stops desperately gesticulating in order to make us believe she believes she really might die.” And she is told that she might lose her singing voice due to the surgery, which would be horrible because her music is her life (cliché intended). Again, it would have been preferable to just be told this information, but instead we are forced to listen to her sing an entire Rufus Wainwright song, after which the audience might feel as if they are going to die before Vivienne does. (Question for Vivienne’s doctor: Might the surgery change her voice for the better? That could be the upside for the entire problem. Just a thought.)

Sarah Jessica Parker, in Sex and the CIty
Sarah Jessica Parker, in Sex and the CIty

Maybe director Fabien Constant thought that casting Jacqueline Bisset in his movie, and having her speak French, would be enough to make it an “art film,” rather than the tiresome melodrama that it is. Sarah Jessica Parker was pleasant enough to watch in the Sex and the City series, when she was wearing amusing outfits and beautiful shoes, and narrating the story with well-written essays that her character supposedly would publish in her weekly newspaper column. Those essays were the main reason I sometimes watched the show; they were often clever and usually well worded at least. This movie, however, has nothing well-worded, or well-acted. Okay, I will say “nearly nothing,” giving it the benefit of the doubt that something brilliant happened in the last half hour that I missed.

Common is in it, playing himself named someone else. Common also makes an appearance in another Tribeca2018 film, All About Nina, in which he also plays himself not playing himself, but in that case he seems more successful in his endeavor, maybe just because he is surrounded by a much better movie. And then there is Renee Zellweger. Oy. This is what has become of Renee Zellweger?! She is playing second fiddle to SJP? As our President likes to say – Sad. Not that I ever thought of her as an A-list actress, but still, seeing her play one of Carrie Bradshaw’s girlfriends – and throw herself into the role as if this were her last chance to prove she can act – was perhaps more upsetting than Vivienne’s medical situation.

Helen playing her violin for Vivienne
Helen playing her tiny violin for Vivienne

And hey, I also live a selfish, lonely New York existence and have no one to list as my emergency contact on my medical forms, but still I felt no sympathy for this character. And I don’t even get to travel the world with my band and fuck my drummer. And she also must endure an overbearing mother? Quelle horreur!

Then, Vivienne leaves her new dress in a Lyft car. Most gratuitous shot in this gratuitous movie: the close-up of the shopping bag as Vivienne sits in the back seat of the car – major foreshadowing! I also have left an article of clothing in an Uber car (a mere glove, not a zillion dollar dress), but when the driver was kind enough to drive back and return it to me, I tipped him (even when he said it wasn’t necessary), as any decent person and real New Yorker would do. And don’t tell me that Vivienne is excused for this oversight because she has just learned that she may have a fatal medical condition; if she is calm enough to go dress shopping, she is calm enough to tip her driver.

Ain't nobody got time for that, SJP!
Ain’t nobody got time for that, SJP!

I highly suspect that this Lyft driver is going to re-enter the story, as way too much screen time was given to him otherwise, but that would only make matters worse, and more hackneyed. Vivienne has no one but a rude Lyft driver will whom to share her anguish? Poor poor Vivienne. Are they going to help each other discover the true meaning of life? Save it for Hallmark. Time to go home and ice my knee.


p.s. I wrote an article titled Top Ten TFF2018 Mother-Daughter Movies, and in it I expressed amazement at how each film managed to depict a distinct and thoughtful and non-obvious portrayal of that archetypal relationship. Blue Night breaks that winning streak. This mother-daughter duo is the ultimate cliché.

"My Blind Brother," an unusual romantic comedy

Sophie Goodhart’s “My Blind Brother” Review: A Shrewd Romantic Comedy

Helen Highly Recommends Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother as One of the Best of Tribeca 2016

Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate in "My Blind Brother
Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate in My Blind Brother

Droll My Blind Brother Premiered at SXSW and Cracks Up Tribeca 2016

“I’m a superficial narcissist”
“I’m lazy and judgmental.”

This is how the two romantic leads in My Blind Brother introduce themselves to each other, and I fell in love with them both immediately.

HelenHighly also wants to watch TV all day.
HelenHighly also wants to lay in bed and watch TV all day.

Then, when they both reveal that they perversely wish they could be invalids so they’d have an excuse to lay in bed all day and watch TV, I fell in love with screenwriter Sophie Goodhart. Add in a blind guy, jaded and bored with his own infirmity, who is smoking weed unabashedly in public, even with the police nearby, who says, “I could shoot up in front of cops and they wouldn’t do anything,” and I love this movie in full. It manages to be morbidly dark, joyfully funny and unsentimentally touching all at the same time. 

The storyline itself is genuinely fresh; unlike so many other films at this festival, I can’t think of another previous movie to compare it to. Robbie (Adam Scott) is a champion blind athlete and local philanthropic hero doted on by the community (and his parents) and seemingly incapable of wrongdoing. His apparently well-earned egotism is fed by his frequent, televised crusades to rise above his “disability” while also raising money for charity, where after each successful feat, he is surrounded by gushing reporters who never seem to notice that he tells the same, lame joke every time: “You look beautiful today,” Robbie the blind guy tells every female member of the press.

Robbie’s hapless, unassuming brother Bill (Nick Kroll) knows the real Robbie to be arrogant, selfish and rude, but he still guide-dog-faithfully runs every marathon by Robbie’s side and never makes a peep when he doesn’t receive any accolades, or when even his own parents continually criticize him. One night, Bill escapes the relentless Robbie-worship by hitting up the local bar, where despite his best efforts to present himself as unworthy and unappealing, he gets lucky with an attractive and like-hearted woman named Rose (Jenny Slate). Bill is guilt-ridden because Robbie’s blindness was the result of a childhood accident in which he was involved. Rose is guilt-ridden because immediately after she told her fiancé she wanted to break up with him, he distractedly crossed the street and was hit and killed by a bus.

After one pitiful, anti-romantic (yet soul-soaring) night together, Rose flees without leaving her phone number. Nonetheless, Bill thinks his karma might finally be coming around and that he’s found his sad-sack love-match. But his fantasy is soon squashed when his brother introduces him to his own new paramour – the very same Rose, who (without knowing he is Bill’s brother) has started dating blind Robbie in an attempt to make herself a better person. Now Bill must decide if he will put himself second again or finally stand up to his blind brother.

"My Blind Brother" gives a new twist to the Love Triangle
My Blind Brother gives a new twist to the Love Triangle

Kudos to writer/director Sophie Goodhart for opting against a “when bad things happen to good people” script and instead going with “when good things happen to bad people.” Goodhart’s two, guilty, self-loathing characters are amazingly charming and lovable. Robbie makes a wonderfully heroic antagonist, whose capability and determination we slowly come to dislike more and more as the story unfolds. (The fact that actor Adam Scott looks quite a bit like a smugly smiling Tom Cruise doesn’t hurt.) And Goodhart’s ingenious twist on the conventional love-triangle takes the sentimental weight out of the usual wet blanket that hangs over traditional romantic comedies. This movie is bright and buoyant and makes us laugh at ourselves more than at mere jokes.

Goodhart’s head-on attacks of our socially-correct attitudes toward both the physically handicapped and noble self-sacrifice are deftly executed dark humor that captures what’s funny about resentment, bitterness, and condescension. Her sharp jabs at “those less fortunate” never feel like bullying and never fall into rude buffoonery. Even as the movie escalates into full-blown wackiness, it still maintains its shrewd edge.

Another strength to this film are the secondary characters. Rose’s prissy, eye-rolling, sarcastically unsympathetic roommate (Zoe Kazan) ends up with the stoner blind guy. Ha! It’s just another delightful quirk in this defiant film where apathy and under-achievement are treated as virtues and perfection is the problem to be overcome. Finally: a romantic comedy with mutually flawed lovers, where no sacrifice or self-improvement is necessary for them to win happiness and each other.

HelenHighly Votes Yes
HelenHighly Votes Yes

Just to be fair, I will say that there are a few small spots where the script veers into impossible interactions – stupid things that could or would never actually be said. These mini-moments wouldn’t stand out so much if all the other moments in the script were not so true and all the other lines were not so witty. I am not usually a great lover of comedies, and the fact that I am calling this film One of the Best of Tribeca 2016 means it is truly something special. Unfortunately, my opinion doesn’t count for much, and this film may not get a broad theatrical release, so keep an eye out at your local art theater and on television.


News Update: Starz is nearing a deal to pick up Sophie Goodhart’s SXSW premiere My Blind BrotherVariety reports. The outlet shares that the acquisition “will likely be the biggest sale out of this year’s South by Southwest” and is estimated to be in the low seven-figure range. The comedy was reportedly the subject of a bidding war among distributors like Netflix, The Orchard, Sony and Gravitas Ventures.