#lindsay burdge

[genevieveetguy]

Between the Temples, Nathan Silver (2024)

[dare-g]

Lace Crater (2015)

[laserpinksteam]

Film after film: The Invitation (dir. Karyn Kusama, 2015)

This pleasantly slow-boiling though mostly predictable horror film displays what I have just come to identify as typically problematic of Kusama's almost-great films: there's a boring aesthetic glibness to what the film sounds and looks like, which unfortunately translates into the acting. No one is particularly interesting here, no one gives a bad or flat performance. There's simply not much registering beyond the impressive twisty reveal that sets off the speedy and bloody final act.

[popentertainment-moviereviews]

BETWEEN THE TEMPLES (2024)

Starring Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel, Madeline Weinstein, Matthew Shear, Dolly de Leon, Lindsay Burdge, Jason Grisell, Cindy Silver, John Magary, Annie Hamilton, Julia Walsh, Brittany Walsh, Diane Lanyi, Keith Poulson, Jason Grisell, Jaden Waldman, Simona Sickler, Pauline Chalamet, Stephen Lack and Jacob Morrell.

Screenplay by Nathan Silver & C. Mason Wells.

Directed by Nathan Silver.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 111 minutes. Rated R.

Between the Temples is both wonderfully human and terribly uncomfortable all at the same time, which I guess is like life. I can’t quite decide if I liked it or was a bit freaked out by it, but that is like life, too.

The basic idea of Between the Temples is reminiscent of the classic 1970s black comedy Harold and Maude – although this film never quite reaches the dark depths that one takes on. Between the Temples in general has a lighter, slightly goofier vibe, although there are still several scenes which can still make the skin crawl, just a bit.

Jason Schwartzman is Ben, a cantor at a synagogue in upstate New York. However, his wife died in a sudden accident a year earlier and Ben has completely become unglued. He has moved back home with his two mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly De Leon). He has lost his voice, and his will to work, and even perhaps his faith and his will to live.

Early on, he lays down in the middle of a darkened road, willing a vehicle to come and run him down. When a truck stops in time not to crush him, the driver drops him off at a local bar. Ben is not a drinker, but he has a few chocolate mudslides until he gets wasted and picks a fight with one of the other guests.

After being flattened, he is helped up by Carla (Carol Kane), an older woman who Ben realizes had been his music teacher when he was a boy. Carla doesn’t recognize him, but she feels responsible for getting him home safely, not realizing the address on his license is his former home which he shared with his late wife.

As they get to know each other a bit, they recognize a kindred spirit in each other. Beyond the simple fact that both is getting over the death of a spouse, they both feel like outsiders, in their communities, in their families, even in their religion. (Carla was born Jewish but converted from the faith for her husband and family.) They also have a shared history – Carla does eventually remember young Ben when she sees a picture of him as a child – from a time when both had more hope in life.

Having been separated from her Jewish roots for so long, she decides that she wants to have a bat mitzvah – a ceremony which was withheld from her at 13 by her Russian communist parents. She feels that the ceremony will reconnect her with her religious roots. Cantor Ben is the tutor for students getting their bar/bat mitzvah, and Carla joins his class, although she is the only student there over 12 years old.

As they get to know each other, they become fast friends. And Ben, whose emotions have been tangled up in knots for most of a year, starts to develop feelings for her. But are those feelings romantic or simply misplaced companionship?

Things get even more complicated when his mothers – who are constantly attempting to set him up with a nice Jewish girl – connect him with the Rabbi’s daughter Gabby (Madeleine Weinstein), a sweet-if-slightly-neurotic woman who just happens to be the perfect likeness of Ben’s late wife. (Weinstein also plays the ex in periodic short flashbacks.)

This all leads to two of the most awkward scenes in recent cinema – a flirtation between Ben and Gabby at the local cemetery and perhaps the most passive-aggressive, antagonistic dinner party ever. Literally, the scenes do make you laugh, but only partially because they are funny, also partially from discomfort.

Schwartzman is terrific as the deadened and introverted Ben, but this film is really Kane’s triumph. She breezes in with her unmistakable voice and her practiced eccentricity and Between the Temples comes fully alive when she is on screen. It is rare that Kane gets such a significant role at this point in her career and that is a sin – she is a truly unique screen presence who should be used as often as possible.

Between the very specific and Jewish niche storyline and the general enhanced quirkiness and awkwardness of the action, I can’t see Between the Temples reaching any kind of mass audience. Still, it is the kind of movie that could probably inspire a rabid cult following. I hope it gets that chance.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2024 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: August 23, 2024.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Midnight Swim

When their marine biologist mother disappears while diving, three somewhat estranged sisters return to their lakefront childhood home to settle her affairs while one films everything for a documentary on the situation and strange things start happening, but not nearly enough of them. Sarah Adina Smith’s THE MIDNIGHT SWIM (2014, Shudder, Tubi, Plex, Roku, YouTube) has been praised for its atmosphere of dread and the strong relationships among the three leading actresses — Lindsay Burdge, Jennifer Lefleur, Aleksa Palladino. One critic even said the found-footage format was integral to the film’s psychology. Them’s pretty high-fallutin’ words for a poorly structured film that leaves out transitions and uses the found footage format with no sense of logic. And the atmosphere is basically Chekhov without the jokes.

There are two scenes that rise above the overall tone of dourness. In one, the three sisters lip synch a music video to “Free to Be…You and Me.” In the other, they dress in their mother’s clothes and play out their memories of them, which takes a decidedly contentious tone. In both cases, Smith quashes any joy or drama in the situation. There’s also one very funny performance from Michelle Hutchinson as a local realtor caught in a tight closeup as she discovers the three sisters haven’t agreed on whether or not to sell the house. Then she leaves, never to brighten the screen again. But after one of the sister's vehemently opposes keeping the house, she suddenly agrees to help turn it into an artist's colony. Then all three decide to sell with little sense of what changed their minds. As for the structure, it takes two thirds of the film to discover the videographer (Burdge) isn’t just an eccentric who can’t eat in front of other people and films everything. No, she has serious mental issues the family has tried to deal with in the past but haven’t bothered mentioning even as strange things (but not nearly enough of them) start happening. Guess finding dead birds on the back porch every night and having footage nobody shot turn up on her camera wasn’t strange enough to make them wonder about any effect on her mental state.

Then there’s the camera work. Most found footage films have a rawness about them. They look like something shot on the fly. Smith establishes that Burdge has a very high-quality camera. But can it automatically link scenes by having dialog overlap? At one point, there’s a shot that could only have been achieved by Burdge’s sitting on the bow of a speeding motorboat. This suggests a level of bravado not previously established. And when she’s alone and leaves the camera at the edge of a pier before walking out to go in the water, who picks it up to move it in for a closeup? At the end, it follows her into the water again and into a finale whose filming makes no sense. One convention of found footage is that there’s some explanation of where the footage came from and why we’re looking at it. But there’s no sense of who put this material together. I’m not even sure Smith knows.

[tctmp]

6 Years: Directed by Hannah Fidell. With Taissa Farmiga, Ben Rosenfield, Lindsay Burdge, Joshua Leonard. A young couple, bound by a seemingly ideal love, begin to unravel as unexpected opportunities spin them down a volatile and violent path and threaten the future they had always imagined.

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

[moviesteve]

Materna https://bit.ly/3nlPCCh   Not so much a film as four shorts held together by a framing device, Materna looks at women through the prism of the family – the mother, the daughter, the sister, the neice. All four stories and women are united for the briefest of moments on one of those New York subway journeys made … Read More »

[watchingalotofmovies]

Black Bear

Black Bear    [trailer]

A filmmaker at a creative impasse seeks solace from her tumultuous past at a rural retreat, only to find that the woods summon her inner demons in intense and surprising ways.

The amount of aggression in the first half is insane. I almost expected that they would (attempt to) murder each other. The close-up shaky cam in the second half made me feel a bit nauseous.

Aubrey Plaza's performance is intense and the best reason to see the film.

While this approach is clearly more ambitious, for watching a film about the difficulties of making an indie movie, I think I prefer the lighter Living in Oblivion.

[lisentrailer]

The Dark End of the Street Official Trailer (2020) , Drama Series

[angelstills]

XX: The Birthday Party (2017)

[whatsnextmovies]

Her Smell

April 12, 2019

[lonesomedreamereccentriclover]

Lindsay Burdge

[literarysiren]

Want some really, really weird queer horror? Sling, Hulu, Showtime, and Paramount+ have you covered with this tonally unusual possibly cannibalistic love story. tw for animal death.

[jayfinch]

Duck Butter