Golden Exits

Started by wilder, January 20, 2017, 04:54:40 PM

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wilder



Nick has settled into a safe existence in a small pocket of Brooklyn, where he currently toils on an archival project for his father-in-law. Soon, 20-something Naomi arrives from Australia to assist Nick for the semester. She has no acquaintances in the city beyond a loose family connection to Buddy, a music producer who lives in the same neighborhood. For the few months she spends around Nick, Buddy, and their families, Naomi's presence upsets the unpleasant balance holding these two households together.

Written and Directed by Alex Ross Perry
Starring Emily Browning, Jason Schwartzman, Adam Horovitz, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, and Chloë Sevigny
Release Date - February 16, 2018 (theatrical & VOD)

Alethia

Opens in NYC at The Metrograph on February 9 - along with a run of Perry's other films: Impolex, The Color Wheel, Listen Up Philip, and Queen of Earth...all projected on Perry's own 35mm prints.

For my money, he's the most original and interesting young American filmmaker working (with the exception of our Ghostboy, with whom he appears to be quite tight). Golden Exits feels like another masterpiece.

Anyone else with me?

BB

He's certainly up there, and it's heartening to see him getting more attention and work writing projects other than his own. Much like our rightly beloved Ghostboy, he seems super film literate and to have interest in an extremely broad variety of styles (a defining characteristic of millennial directors even more so than the video store generation). Both feel like they could go anywhere next and work within any budget and that's so exciting.


Something Spanish

All I've seen is Queen of Earth. If his other films are as good as that then I agree.

Alethia

Just saw this on 35 at Metrograph. Incredible. Devastating. Not what I expected. Perry's best by a country mile. I'm going to see this again and again. Hit VOD today I think: SEE IT SEE IT SEE IT





see it.

jenkins

what if devastation isn't your particular interest in the arts, since, to paraphrase, real life is devastating enough? that's not a poisonous question but a question related to my particular interests.

Alethia

Well devastation is certainly not all that's on offer - you may not find it particularly devastating the way I did, or at all, for my reaction in that regard had to do with some very specific things that line up uncannily with my life in its current state. Some simple accolades without spoiling anything: There are solid laughs, very keen insights into relationship dynamics, an unexpectedly expressive Rohmerian visual approach, terrific, theatrical dialogue, a modest, lovely, melancholic score - it's one of the most arresting portraits of the anxiety of aging (among other things) that I've ever seen. A lot different than what I was expecting yet everything I wanted it to be. Gets my highest recommendation.

jenkins

it's not the recommendation i'm curious about it's the philosophical perspective. the anxiety of aging is a universal and timeless theme--which is terribly bleak btw, how super common it is for people to have anxiety about aging--but it's not a place where i've found myself stuck and, no, i'm not curious about its evolution within a person, since of course i wouldn't need the reason for such anxiety explained to me. and yes, insights into relationship dynamics, yes of course those.

it's just not my thing. it doesn't have to be my thing.

Alethia

Okay. Then don't see it.

jenkins

can't imagine i will. don't sweat my personal response or allow it to affect you, and be thankful you're not the artist at least. that's what i do in this situation. it calibrates you into a healthy perspective for when you are the artist.

Alethia

Nothing to sweat, my friend, but thanks for the tip. Everyone else: I loved this movie and maybe you will too!

Alethia

"It isn't the story of a monster, but it's the story of looming monstrosity, of modern people with modern ideas in the grips of unfulfilled urges and inherited assumptions. Its emotional harshness and quasi-confessional acerbity is radically untimely—and therefore enduring."

Richard Brody with some lovely words about this movie that I just can't/won't shake.

     "It's an odd thing to say this about a filmmaker who started working at such a high level so young, but Alex Ross Perry's cinematic learning curve is itself a work of art. His new film, 'Golden Exits,' fuses the crucial themes of his three major previous films ('The Color Wheel,' 'Listen Up Philip,' and 'Queen of Earth') and paints them onto a canvas that has expanded to meet the growing dimensions of his own career. "Golden Exits" is a story of sibling rivalries and family heritage (artistic and material), of fragile marriages and bitter solitude, of solidarity and betrayal, of the possibilities of youth and the limits of encroaching middle age, of work as passion and work as burden, of the intimate relationships that develop through work, that nourish work, and that threaten work. It's also the story of a small business—akin to a low-budget production office—which the tangled web of personal and professional connections turns into a splitting nucleus of emotional fury.

     "The movie is centered on a forty-ish archivist in Brooklyn named Nick (Adam Horovitz, the former Beastie Boy) who's working on an uneasy project: organizing the papers of the late publisher of a "little magazine" of literary renown. What makes the project uneasy is that Nick's wife, Alyssa (Chloë Sevigny), a therapist in private practice, is the publisher's daughter. His new job is, so to speak, a family affair, and another member of the family—Alyssa's sister, Gwen (Mary-Louise Parker), a hard-driving businesswoman—is making it tough on Nick. Nick has been something less than a faithful husband, and Alyssa suspects that he has ulterior motives for hiring his new assistant, Naomi (Emily Browning), a twenty-five-year-old Australian woman. Naomi arrives in Brooklyn with one contact, a family friend whom she hasn't seen since childhood—Buddy (Jason Schwartzman), who runs a small recording studio with his wife, Jess (Analeigh Tipton). Nick and Buddy both find themselves implicated in Naomi's private life; Naomi becomes involved in the lives of the two sisters, Alyssa and Gwen; Jess's sister, Sam (Lily Rabe), turns out to have a surprising connection to the sisters as well; and the complications of long-festering resentments and long-unsatisfied desires resound silently throughout the film.

    "'Golden Exits' is Brooklyn Bergman, a drama of death pushing from behind and despair looming ahead. Working with the cinematographer Sean Price Williams, Perry responds vitally to his own emotional impulses in the presence of the actors; the dialogue that they send spinning aloft is pugnaciously lyrical, gracefully deceptive, awkwardly tender. With images of a bold simplicity, Perry parses the overlapping lines of interpersonal conflict as if in cinematic X-rays, and pushes uneasily close to the performers to fuse their flickers and tremors with those of their characters. The movie is also Bergmanesque in its geographical specificity, with the brownstones and storefronts of gentrified Brooklyn, its vestigial and picturesque touches of grunginess, coming to life with an ironically hermetic charm.

     "Perry's a cinephilic director; his very centering of the movie on an archivist invests it with the weight of artistic tradition. "Golden Exits" is a filmmaker's story of inseparable personal and professional relationships. The theme of the fusion of romance and work is a venerable one, central to the films of Howard Hawks; Jean-Luc Godard once remarked that, if it weren't for work, many men would have trouble getting sexually aroused. 'Golden Exits' recognizes that much of this overlap is actually sexual harassment, a threat to women's careers, livelihoods, and dignity, resulting from such undue encroachment. It isn't the story of a monster, but it's the story of looming monstrosity, of modern people with modern ideas in the grips of unfulfilled urges and inherited assumptions. Its emotional harshness and quasi-confessional acerbity is radically untimely—and therefore enduring."


samsong

this was very good.  the character work, both literally by the cast and figuratively by perry, is astonishing, the prismatic (someone else's apt adjective) way the ensemble narrative is implemented here is a thing of beauty.  excellent score, lensed with a gorgeous, painterly eye that's so perfectly at odds with the emotional timbre, those dissolves!  if i'm not completely blown away by this, it may be because the ending felt premature, but i also don't know how much more i could've taken or where else it could've gone.  would like to revisit. 

paddington 2 reigns supreme.

Something Spanish

it was a little tough to swallow the coincidental interrelations of the characters, especially in a setting like NYC, thankfully those threads did not commingle too closely. that minor gripe aside, i liked this too...very fluffy, a sharp turn from Queen of Earth. it's funny how the trailer leads you to believe Browning is going to insert chaos on these spoken for dudes by sleeping with them, yet thankfully the movie makes mature decisions that benefit its viewable purpose. also, that's a helluva cast. Ad-roc was surprisingly convincing.