Uncertainty has plagued us these past 11 months, but we are making some progress. "Minari," which many think is exactly the movie we need right now, opens this week, and "Nomadland," which a lot of people think is the signal movie of 2020, opens next.
That both are actually opening in 2021 speaks to the confusion the pandemic has wreaked -- the Southeastern Film Critics Association will finally vote on its 2020 awards next weekend; the Academy Awards are scheduled for April 25.
Most of the last year has felt like being trapped in one of those inexplicable highway traffic jams. We seem to be inching forward, but there are times when we come to a complete stop before lurching ahead for the next 20 yards or so.
Now we're at the point where we can see the truck jackknifed in the road a half-mile ahead of us, and if everyone would do the right thing we could probably be past it in around 20 minutes or so. But of course people won't do the right thing; they're going to drive on the shoulder and try to squeeze in and cut other cars off and generally engender as much rage and anxiety as possible, because America is this Stanley Milgram experiment where we all have permission to pursue what we perceive as our own self-interest, no matter what damage it does to the community.
So, we'll be past it, back up to 78 miles an hour, in maybe 45 minutes. Just relax and try not to get sideswiped or shot. There will be another James Bond movie.
But if it feels like we've been waiting a long time for "Minari" and "Nomadland," consider that it's been nearly a decade since "Bridesmaids" was released, and we're just now getting a follow-up from the Oscar-nominated writers of the film, Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo.
"Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" isn't a sequel per se, and the capsule plot description mightn't sound that promising -- best friends Barb and Star leave their sleepy Midwestern home town to vacation in Florida and find themselves ensnared in a plot to murder everyone in the resort -- but I've learned to trust Wiig.
Her participation in "Wonder Woman 1984" did shake my faith, but she's still got a great batting average and is usually worth the price of admission all by herself.
"Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" has been in development for years, finally filmed in 2019, and was originally scheduled to hit theaters last summer. Now it's apparently getting a small theatrical release as well as showing up for purchase and rental on all on all the usual streaming venues. I can't say it's been high anticipated around our house, but now it's finally here.
Which means that time is actually moving after all.
My big regret this week is not paying enough attention to the release date of "French Exit," the Michelle Pfeiffer/Lucas Hedges dark comedy that premiered at the New York Film Festival in October. While the reviews have been middling to bad -- Metacritic scores it as a 56 out of 100, which indicates mixed reviews; Rotten Tomatoes has the reviews running 71% favorable -- it sounds enjoyable enough. It's got New York, Paris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges and a talking cat.
That last bit might be problematic, except that the cat happens to be the reincarnated husband of Pfeiffer's character and is voiced by Tracy Letts, who has an almost Kristen Wiig-like record of improving the movies he shows up in.
But we don't have a review of "French Exit" in the newspaper this week because I just found out it was opening, and we have already over-budgeted this section. There's at least one story we'll have to push to next week, when we anticipate having interviews with Arkansas-reared Isaac Lee Chung, the writer-director of the Arkansas-set "Minari," and Shaka King, co-writer and director of "Judas and the Black Messiah."
Those eventualities are why this column -- and the video version of OnFilm -- exists, to give us flexibility. I would have liked to have seen "French Exit" in advance to review it, and the folks at its distributor, Sony Pictures Classics, have always been accommodating when we've made timely requests for screeners. (Piers Marchant saw the film in October, but he's loaded down with assignments this week.)
But there's still a finite amount of space into which we must wedge our content. Like my wife, Karen, tells me, you can't see everything. But I will see "French Exit."
And it feels like the logjam is about to break up. Let's just be patient.
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