Carrie Pilby

Movies to See Right Now

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Jim Broadbent in THE SENSE OF AN ENDING
Jim Broadbent in THE SENSE OF AN ENDING

I’m getting ready to cover the San Francisco International Film Festival, which opens this coming Wednesday, April 5 and running through April 19.  I expect to publish my festival preview on Sunday.  In the mean time:

    • The little British drama The Sense of an Ending, with Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter and Charlotte Rampling, is my current top choice.
    • Bev Powley is very good in the agreeable comedy Carrie Pilby.
    • If you’re looking for an unchallenging comedy, then The Last Word, with the force of nature named Shirley MacLaine, is for you.
    • Kristen Stewart is excellent in Personal Shopper, a murky mess of a movie; don’t bother.
    • By all means, avoid the epically bad epic The Ottoman Lieutenant, so bad that it provokes unintended audience giggles and guffaws.

My DVD/Stream pick of the past two weeks has been the emotionally devastating Manchester by the Sea, which won Oscars for Casey Affleck (Best Actor) and by Kenneth Lonergan (Best Original Screenplay).  Manchester by the Sea is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

On April 2 on Turner Classic Movies:  The Blue Gardenia presents a 1953 view of date rape, with lecherous Raymond Burr getting Anne Baxter likkered up into a blackout drunk with Polynesian Pearl Divers. There’s a very nice twist on the whodunit: when she wakes up, she doesn’t remember killing him, but he sure is dead. There’s even a cameo performance by Nat King Cole.   Also on April 2, TCM brings us The 400 Blows, François Truffaut’s 1959 explosion into leadership of the French New Wave.  The main character is modeled after Truffaut’s own teenage years.  It’s a great film, and the final freeze-frame is iconic.

THE BLUE GARDENIA
THE BLUE GARDENIA

CARRIE PILBY: genius misfit afoot in Manhattan

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CARRIE PILBY
CARRIE PILBY

The title character in the agreeable misfit comedy Carrie Pilby (Bel Powley) is literally a genius, a girl with such high intelligence that she enrolled at Harvard at age 14. That experience proved to be better for her intellectual development than for her emotional development. Now she’s 19, a year out of college and holed up in her Manhattan apartment pretending that she’s anti-social because no one is smart enough to engage with her. She emerges only to see her therapist (Nathan Lane), who assigns her some tasks to draw her out, and comic adventures ensue.

Carrie sequentially encounters three dreamy-looking guys and all of the male characters except one are very sensitive. But Carrie Pilby isn’t one of those Chick Flicks that men won’t enjoy.

Powley is very good at making the audience relate to someone by definition very unlike us. She has mastered the comic take and has excellent timing.

I watched Carrie Pilby at a Cinequest screening with director Susan Johnson. Johnson says that the source material, a popular novel, “was about not judging a book by its cover”. She continued, “Think about your own journey and not judging others – that’s kind of deep for a comedy”. Johnson, who shot the film in only 20 days, said that her favorite scene was the prayer scene.

Carrie Pilby is an enjoyable comedy. It opens theatrically on March 31, on VOD on April 4 and will be on Netflix in September.

Cinequest: CARRIE PILBY

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CARRIE PILBY
CARRIE PILBY

The title character in the agreeable misfit comedy Carrie Pilby (Bel Powley) is literally a genius, a girl with such high intelligence that she enrolled at Harvard at age 14. That experience proved to be better for her intellectual development than for her emotional development. Now she’s 19, a year out of college and holed up in her Manhattan apartment pretending that she’s anti-social because no one is smart enough to engage with her. She emerges only to see her therapist (Nathan Lane), who assigns her some tasks to draw her out, and comic adventures ensue.

Carrie sequentially encounters three dreamy-looking guys and all of the male characters except one are very sensitive. But Carrie Pilby isn’t a Chick Flick that men won’t enjoy.

Powley is very good at making the audience relate to someone by definition very unlike us. She has mastered the comic take and has excellent timing.

I watched Carrie Pilby at Cinequest; at a screening with director Susan Johnson. Johnson says that the source material, a popular novel, “was about not judging a book by its cover”.  She continued, “Think about your own journey and not judging others – that’s kind of deep for a comedy”. Johnson, who shot the film in only 20 days, said that her favorite scene was the prayer scene.

Carrie Pilby is an enjoyable comedy. It opens theatrically on March 31, on VOD on April 4 and will be on Netflix in September.