Welcome to another trio-reviews edition on FlixChatter. I’ll be doing this more often as there are so many movies I want to write about, but some days I only have time to write mini-reviews.

You Hurt My Feelings

Written/directed by: Nicole Holofcener

I so wanted to see this before it left theaters and thankfully I made it just in the nick of time (it was gone from my local cinema days after). The film centers on a novelist whose longstanding marriage unravels when she overhears her husband giving his honest reaction to her latest book. The pairing of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Tobias Menzies as a married couple Beth and Don is the main draw for me. I’m not gonna lie, I was especially delighted by Menzies’ casting as a not-so-sensitive therapist.

Admittedly this is a rather low-stakes relationship drama, which I have no problems with if it’s got a strong script. I appreciate its frankness and how a little white lie can greatly affect someone, though the slice-of-life NYC scenes feel emotionally detached and hard to relate to. I struggle to connect or sympathize with any of the characters no matter how hard I try, which is more of the fault of the writing than the acting. Louis-Dreyfuss is a charming and funny performer, but can’t say I like her character much here. Beth’s sister Sarah (Michaela Watkins) and her actor husband (Arian Moayed) feel so much like caricatures, while real-life couple David Cross and Amber Tamblyn as Don’s bickering therapy clients are quite amusing.

Holofcener is an award-winning writer behind Can You Ever Forgive Me? and The Last Duel, but she also wrote the pointless Friends with Money, which also deals with ‘rich white people having rich people problems.’ In the end, there just wasn’t any dramatic intensity up until its anticlimactic finale. I expected so much more but I’m still glad I saw it for Menzies, he’s such a phenomenal actor who should be in more prominent movies.

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The Mother (Netflix)

Written/directed by: Niki Caro

Jennifer Lopez takes a bit of a break from rom-coms to portray a deadly assassin in this humorless thriller. The plot is nothing we’ve never seen before, though there’s a pretty shocking opening sequence with Joseph Fiennes that shows J-Lo’s nameless character’s action-prowess. Basically she’s a female version of Liam Neeson’s brand of assassin with her own special set of skills. Of course, that’s put to good use when she has to come out of hiding to protect the daughter she left behind years earlier.

I have to say that Lopez is more believable as a mother than as a killer mercenary. Don’t get me wrong, she is obviously fit enough to handle the action scenes, but she just can’t sell the ruthlessness of the character like say, Noomi Rapace would. Plus Lopez always looks too glamorous with flawless makeup and silky hair that she looks like she’s doing an outdoor-catalog photoshoot during the Wintry scenes.

Lucy Paez does have good chemistry with Lopez, and her character reminds me of Saoirse Ronan’s Hanna. I’m astonished that it takes no less than three writers to come up with this clichéd drivel. Fiennes is far from being in fine form here, and he looks pretty bored the entire time. It’s just another formulaic actioner from Netflix, hopefully Niki Caro picks better projects to direct next time.

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The Colour Room (Freeve)

Written/directed by: Claire McCarthy

I came across this on Freeve and immediately watched it. It’s based on a true story about British ceramic artist Clarice Cliff (Phoebe Dynevor) who managed to break the glass ceiling and revolutionized the mostly-female workplace in the 20th century. Cliff started out as an enameller before she gained an apprenticeship as a ceramic modeller for a renowned designer (David Morrissey) while supporting her widowed mother and sister.

Ever since she was still at art school, Cliff was always full of ideas, but it was a hurdle to convince the men running the Victorian-style ware company to think outside the box. It wasn’t until a general strike in the mid-1920s that she got a break with her colorful Art-deco style patterns that she called Bizarre. Of course, back then, there was no such thing as a ‘career woman’ so she had to overcome sexism to get her voice heard.

The eccentric factory owner Colley Shorter (Matthew Goode) did take notice of her talents and despite his friends’ protestations, the two started working together. I thought the whole affair storyline was added for dramatic purposes, but after reading more about Cliff’s life, it’s actually what happened. While Cliff’s artwork was innovative and avant-garde, the movie itself is pretty conventional and not the character-driven biopic it could’ve been. I’ve only seen Dynevor from Bridgeton but she proves her versatility here as a tenacious working-class woman. Goode is always, well good in everything he does, but the talented Morrissey is really underutilized here. Overall though, the beautiful production design, costumes, and set pieces should please any fan of period dramas.

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Have you seen any of these movies? I’d love to hear what you think!
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