Nights and Weekends

Nights and Weekends - I was surprised by how much I liked this one. in fact it may be one of the better mumblecore movies I've seen. That doesn't mean it's anything 'great' but as far as slice of life films go it really makes a valiant and honest attempt to just show a couple as they are. The whole long-distance relationship angle makes the story kind of doomed from the get-go, or at least once one sees Mattie (Gerwig) get bitchy at James (Swanberg) over how much effort has to be put in to going from NY to Chicago and back again just to have a relationship. But what I liked this time, unlike, say, Swanberg's previous film Hannah Takes the Stairs is that there is also effort to tell a story, if only evidenced by the whole 'cutting ahead to one-year-later', and showing some set-up and payoff with a couple of things and items like a lion.

The two actors are natural, and why not? I have to think they were close enough to bare themselves to themselves (physically and mentally, mostly physically), and it works for the benefit of the naturalism. A few scenes get bogged down so much in minutae that you want things to move on, but what I liked here was that, for me at least, the stripping to the little moments made their relationship palpable, and cute, and kind of sad all at the same time. When we see Gerwig cry, we know the tears are genuine, as is Swanberg's awkwardness at keeping the relationship going, such as when he has a photo shoot and asks her to come.

Why to watch it? Simply put, it's a romantic dramedy for those looking for a solid alternative to pap and crap from Hollywood. It's so decidedly un-Hollywood it does come close to the other direction of being too precious. But only close, not all the way. It's got two actors completely at ease and open to taking their characters totally where they need to go without any BS, and as directors they keep things moving so it's never *too* boring. Some may disagree, and that's well and good, since it is still firmly in the 'mumblecore' vein. At the right moment in time, Nights and Weekends connected with me, and hopefully it may with a few others.

Though Swanberg's previous film "LOL", was not the most visually stunning, it was creative, and I found it quite interesting simply because it had something to say about how we relate to one another in this day and age. This film seems to want to say something as well, but the immature, whiny, uninteresting way the characters say it, has started to become a staple of the Mumblecore movement (to see the most blatant example of this, see "The Puffy Chair"...actually, don't).

The majority of these films been festival darlings and been fairly well-received by critics. This is mostly due to the fact that many of the films have been able to strip away the traditional Hollywood artifice from their characters and allow them to exhibit some honest behavior, no matter how awkward. However, you get the sense that these middle-class, white, 20-somethings need something to fill their time besides thoughts of their own neuroses and navel-gazing.

The allure of these films for many viewers is that the people on screen are "just like me", and the situations are "just like what happened to me yesterday". This could be interesting if only there were actually something at stake.

The NY Times review summed it up better than I can, when it stated, "The problem with the movie is that James and Mattie exhibit little but shallow, infantile neurosis, with next to no hint of a complex — or even legible — inner life."

Some time ago I gave up on Swanberg. He can do a 20 minutes story well. When it comes to 90 minutes, it's the same 20 minutes and a lot of air.

Gerwig is nice. She acts well. But there is not much of a story she can work on. In fact, there is no story, only a chronological succession of snapshots that start nowhere and end up somewhere.

I will try not to be overly critical here because I have been somewhat harsh on the mumblecore movement and while this movie is not something I enjoyed I did not find it as sloppy as some of the previous mumblecore work.

This film was showing at south by southwest in austin, after it showed some people were really into it while others hated it. I was impartial, having seen the previous mumblecore work I knew what to anticipate. Rambling scenes, mumbling, nudity for the sake of shock and attention, whiney pathetic lead characters.

I hate to tell people what to think, and I can say a few people seemed to find it interesting. I can say what I thought though, their was basically no plot, the whole story revolves around two characters, and if you find whiney pathetic characters annoying then you are in trouble.

I have a theory that after seeing so much garbage that looked the same at SXSW people were merely impressed because they saw a different looking piece of garbage, and they said, well is that still garbage, it looks different. The thing is, garbage comes in all shapes and sizes.

This is first mumblecore I've seen and I must say that I don't know why some people are so excited about it. Swanberg's movie is just a compilation of less or more boring scenes in which director and his star, Great Gerwig are talking, laying in bed, trying to make love and so on, so on. It's not that the whole thing is bad - it just leads to nowhere. There is no plot, there is no hidden message. The acting is quite good, especially Gerwig is doing nice job in here - she's very natural and has her own charm. Also photography and editing are better than I expected, being aware of that the film is practically non-budget. So - technically work is made unobjectionable, but the rest - the plot, tension, action - it just doesn't exist in this one. Maybe for few viewers it's kind of art. Not for me.