But man, I could not for the life of me think of anything that made me want to skip The Fall Guy. And I have never seen the old Lee Majors TV show for what it’s worth.

Stuntman Cole Seavers (Ryan Gosling) has a good life. He’s the go-to stunt guy for major actor Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and a budding romance with camera operator Jody (Emily Blunt). But then an accident on the set essentially knocks him out of the game for over a year with no contact with anyone from his old life. But then he gets a call out of a blue from Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham), the producer for all of Ryder’s movies: she needs a stunt double for Ryder’s latest sci-fi epic, Jody’s directorial debut, and Jody specifically asked for Cole to come back. As he is still nursing feelings for Jody, Cole agrees.

Of course, there were some lies told. Jody is still mad that Cole basically disappeared and did not ask for him or even know he was coming. But then there’s something else: Ryder disappeared at some point, and Gail needs Cole to go find him. Cole theoretically knows how Ryder thinks, and as a stuntman, he’s used to basically not being seen. Could he find Ryder before his absence ruins Jody’s first movie? And can he do it without telling the police since that might also ruin Jody’s movie? He’ll have a little help from his best buddy, the movie’s stunt coordinator Dan (Winston Smith), and a very good dog, but beyond that, he’ll just have to use his stunt skills to do what he needs to do, all without letting Jody know what’s happening.

I had a lot of fun with this movie. Director David Leitch was a stuntman himself before he became a director, and he knows how to frame some really good stunts, all while sometimes showing how the stunts were done both in-universe and during the closing credits. Gosling is his usual charismatic self, and he and Blunt have some good chemistry, with good performances from the entire cast, notably the two leads and Taylor-Johnson as a particularly dumb, self-centered movie star. And for all that the movie is full of great stunts and an action, it’s also a pretty good romantic comedy, the will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will going on between Cole and Jody.

If anything, the one flaw to the movie, and it’s a minor one, is that the movie’s plot is very, shall we say, traditional sort that would not have looked out of place in the 80s. The movie hits the right beats, but none of them were all that surprising. Given the movie is a tribute and even a throwback to an 80s TV series, that makes sense. Like I said, it’s a minor flaw that didn’t affect my enjoyment of the movie all that much, but it was something.

Grade: B+

Yeah, I went for the crazy one again.

A deaf-mute known only as Boy (Bill Skarsgård) has a mission: kill the evil dictator Hilda van der Koy (Famke Janssen), ruler of a nameless city with her various siblings in supporting roles. Years earlier, Hilda was responsible for the deaths of Boy’s mother and younger sister Mina (Quinn Copeland). Something about the attack left Boy in that deaf-mute state since his childhood, and his inner voice (Benjamin) is the voice he used to hear from his favorite arcade game. Trained for years in a very brutal fashion by the Shaman (Yayan Ruhian), Boy feels the need to act before the next television Culling, a moment when Hilda eliminates twelve of her enemies on live television, an annual event.

To get his revenge, Boy will need to get through an endless number of goons as well as Hilda’s family, notably her sister Melanie (Michelle Dockery), who is in charge of the media; her brother Gideon (Brett Gelman), an aspiring writer and head of domestic security, and the badass, masked enforcer June 27 (Jessica Rothe). However, Boy does have some allies, but he also is operating off limited knowledge, like how he can’t always effectively read lips. But in the meantime, well, he sure knows how to dish out a beating.

Boys Kills World is not a great movie, but I don’t think anyone would go to something like this while thinking otherwise. It’s an absurd movie set in an absurd world, and the characters all seem to understand that the world they live in is their idea of normal. Skarsgård has a good, expressive face for a movie like this where the only sounds he makes is the occasional grunt. It’s the sort of movie where the hero will face off against cereal mascots in a Hunger Games sort of thing. The fight choreography is good, and while I can’t say the characters were all that deep, I don’t think this is the sort of movie where they need to be.

Basically, this is a movie where you need to be on its wavelength to really get into it. If you aren’t, it probably won’t work for you much at all. I was, and as a result, I found the movie to be a lot of fun. But it very much is the sort of thing that won’t be for everybody, and I would say if the description above works for you, then check it out. If it sounds too weird, I don’t think the theatrical experience is going to change your mind much since this movie is weird, and that’s basically the point. Quite frankly, I wish there was more weird stuff out there as it is.

Grade: B

And then I learned Abigail is actually a remake…

Abigail (Alisha Weir) is a young girl, the daughter of a rich father, who after a ballet performance to an otherwise empty auditorium, finds herself kidnapped by a group of criminals. These crooks don’t really know each other, but they’re looking at a $50 million ransom, so they’re all in. Going by nicknames given to them by their contact Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), they are irritable lead guy Frank (Dan Stevens), dumb muscle Peter (Kevin Durand), obnoxious driver Dean (Angus Cloud), hacker Sammy (Kathryn Newton), weapons expert Rickels (Will Catlett), and medic Joey (Melissa Barrera). All they need to do is keep the little girl in the dark on who they really are, and they should have a few million dollars more in 24 hours when Abigail’s father pays up.

Or not. See, Abigail has a secret of her own, one revealed by all of the advertising: Abigail is a vampire. The manor house the criminals are using is a trap, and it won’t be long before they start dying. See, Abigail is not only a lot older than she looks, but she’s also a lot craftier. She’s been playing these guys like a fiddle, and if they’re going to get out of this alive, well…they may need to get away from a predator with a passion for dance when they don’t really know much of anything about what’s going on. Oh, but they’ll find out, and hopefully before Abigail’s crime lord father shows up. That guy, they’re really afraid of.

So, here’s the deal: this is Universal’s attempt to basically do a remake of 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter in much the same light as 2020’s The Invisible Man or maybe last year’s Renfield. I’ve seen Dracula’s Daughter, and it wasn’t all that impressive, a sequel to Bela Lugosi’s Dracula without Lugosi or Dracula himself. That version of the vampire daughter is an adult woman, but here, it’s a seeming child, a dangerous thing played very well by Weir, who seems to be always one step ahead of the kidnappers, and while the order the kidnappers die in is probably not much of a surprise, Abigail herself does, even pulling out a vampire power or two that hasn’t been seen in a movie that I can recall.

Now, to be fair, I didn’t find the movie all that funny despite the fact it was maybe supposed to be. As for the horror, knowing as I did Abigail’s secret, I found it pretty tense up until she revealed herself to her unknowing prey. The cast is mostly doing a good job with what they have, particularly Weir, Barrera, and particularly Stevens as a guy you may want to root for or against depending on the scene. I will say I was mildly unhappy to see that Abigail’s father was not Nicolas Cage’s character from the aforementioned Renfield, but while Abigail isn’t the best vampire movie I have seen in a while or anything along those lines, I will say I thought this was a fun time in a “turn your brain off and enjoy it” sort of way. Basically, I don’t regret my choice for a movie this past weekend.

Grade: B

Now me, I had no such compunctions and have long enjoyed Garland’s work going back to when I read one of his novels in a grad school class. Of course I went.

America is in the middle of a brutal civil war as the country has fragmented into multiple factions. Veteran war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) are looking to travel from New York City to Washington D.C. to conduct an interview with the unnamed American president (Nick Offerman). Along for the ride are the wise sage-like journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) a young woman looking to learn the ropes of war photography from her idol Lee. Lee doesn’t really want to take Jessie along, and it soon becomes clear why: it’s very dangerous out there. For one thing, the quartet can’t drive directly from New York to Washington because the roads are too dangerous and journalists in the capital are apparently shot on sight.

What follows is a story about the importance of journalism. The four run into various scenarios along the way, all of them either disturbing, dangerous, or outright depressing. That could be a refugee camp in West Virginia, a sniper as a golf course, or the seemingly emotionally-dead psychopath that is an unbilled Jesse Plemmons, and quite frankly, Dunst’s husband provides enough menace in his one scene for maybe two or three lesser movies. In the end, they might get that interview, but the real thing here is how much Lee’s world-weariness or Joel’s adrenaline junkie ways or Sammy’s age or Jessie’s inexperience might just cost one or more of them their lives. Is that what the world needs?

The answer to that last question according to the movie would seem to be a resounding “yes.” Garland made a point that this is not a political movie–I mean, California and Texas are in an alliance, and that seems unlikely in the real world–and what little is there to the politics of this world is to basically let it be known the President is something of a dictator without getting too much into the details. There are some tense action scenes on display here, but those are only there because the reporters are there to see it. Half the time, whatever soldiers the four are covering aren’t even identified by what faction they belong to. That’s not the point: the point is to show that war is terrible, and while the photographers and Garland’s direction can sometimes make the destruction look beautiful, that doesn’t change the fact that it is still destruction. Garland supposedly chose to set the movie in America because our national and governmental landmarks are familiar enough for audiences around the world, and I am inclined to believe that.

So what makes the movie is the characters’ journey, whether its Sammy’s mentorship to Lee and Jessie or Joel’s smile that comes across when it gets the most dangerous. It’s something of a passing of the torch from Lee to Jessie too, as Jessie goes from a terrified passenger learning the ropes to another photographer just doing what she can to get the best shot at all times. There’s a frequent theme of other characters pushing or pulling Jessie in and out of areas. At first, it’s Joel helping her get the best and safest shots, but by the end, it’s soldiers pushing her out of the way so they can do their jobs. Lee, at one point, muses that she thought by doing what she did in other countries, it would act as a warning to the people back home not to do those sorts of things, but those sorts of things happened anyway. Perhaps Garland’s movie is attempting to do the same. At the very least, it is trying to bring respect back to journalism as a profession, and I’m not sure any movie can do that these days.

Grade: A

Oh, it’s also co-written and directed by Patel, making his debut in the director’s chair for a martial arts movie of all things. I would have probably seen it anyway, but there’s too much promise here just with that set-up.

Patel’s character, billed in the closing credits only as “Kid,” starts the movie as a monkey-masked fighter in an underground fight circuit. He’s also at best a moderately-skilled fighter. Wanting revenge for reasons that are not immediately made clear, the Kid gets a job in the restaurant/high class brothel managed by a woman named Queenie (Ashwini Kalsekar) and starts to work his way up. His target seems to be the chief of police for the city he calls home, a particularly ruthless man named Rana (Sikandar Kher). The Kid is not a fool or anything, but he’s also not quite so equipped to take on his targets just yet.

What follows is a rough and tumble world that shows off not just Patel’s chiseled physique and martial arts skills, but also an India full of corruption both political and spiritual. The movie may not reveal exactly what made the Kid so mad until just past the halfway point, but there’s plenty of evidence of wrongdoing going on around him well before then. The Kid will need some more training, but he’s also a determined man with some smarts of his own before he even gets started. Can he bring down his target?

I said above that it may seem unlikely for Patel’s first directorial effort to be a martial arts movie, but he’s actually quite good in the director’s chair for this movie. The fight sequences are often creative and exciting, and Patel the onscreen fighter is every bit as exciting to watch as Patel the director’s work behind the camera. The movie does make it clear he’s not the best fighter when the story starts, but even as a so-so fighter, he still looks like someone who could kick my ass without too much trouble. He’s just skilled enough to do dangerous stuff without getting killed.

And yet, there’s a lot more going on here than just “one guy wants revenge.” I have only a basic understanding of India’s politics right now–and Patel is British, having to the best of my knowledge never even visiting India until he made Slumdog Millionaire–but the concepts of spiritual and political corruption are sadly somewhat universal. Should I be surprised that the nationally-adored religious leader Baba Shakti (Makarand Deshpande) is not on the up-and-up? Not really. Should I be surprised that the Kid’s best allies are trans people forced out of society? Maybe a bit. It’s not the sort of thing you usually see in a movie like this. Monkey Man works in a good bit of the Hindu religion and what it’s meant to represent, and a viewer will need to be patient to get the full story of what happened, but between some damn good fight choreography and some smart plot twists, Monkey Man makes for a fun and interesting directorial debut for the actor. I may not have seen him before as a martial arts star, but I never saw producer Jordan Peele as a horror movie director either. Life can be pleasantly surprising sometimes.

Grade: B+

As for Taylor Lautner, well, there’s still time. In the meantime, I opted to check out Stewart’s latest, the lesbian crime thriller romance Love Lies Bleeding.

The year is 1989. Lou Jr. (Stewart) is a lesbian who works in what looks like a low-rent gym. One night, she sees aspiring bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian) working out, and the two hit it off. Jackie has been hitchhiking herself from her home in Oklahoma to compete in a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas, but she just got a job as a waitress at a gun range run by Lou Jr’s father, Lou Sr. (Ed Harris with ridiculous hair). Lou Jr supposedly sticks around to keep an eye on her sister Beth (Jena Malone) who is in an abusive relationship with J.J. (Dave Franco, also with ridiculous hair). J.J. had, in exchange for sex, gotten Jackie that job just before she met Lou Jr. But Jackie doesn’t know what Lou Jr. knows about her father: he’s basically a local crime boss, and the FBI is looking into him.

However, while Lou Jr won’t do anything about J.J., others might. It doesn’t help that Lou Jr introduced Jackie to steroids, with all the expected side effects of those drugs. Meanwhile, Lou Jr. and Jackie are starting to fall in love, but between J.J. and the persistent wannabe lover for Lou, Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov), it may be very difficult for the pair to get what they want without some violence. Sure, they have dreams of moving out of town and finding happiness somewhere, but Lou’s past and Jackie’s future are both pretty big obstacles for the pair of lovers just trying to find a place for themselves in the world.

I wasn’t originally going to see this movie. I saw it on my AMC app and didn’t know what it was. The genre listed was “romance,” not generally my thing, and I figured I’d skip it. Then I learned a bit more about the movie and found out it was probably more of a crime thriller in the vein of Bound or something along those lines. For the most part, the movie is very much that. There are some nice bits of dark humor here and there, and what violence is on display is usually fairly minor. Stewart, O’Brian, and Harris are all in top form, and Dave Franco is about as slimy a human being as it is possible to be. I don’t think there are too many surprising twists, aside from Baryshnikov’s Daisy’s ability to always pop up at the worst possible time. This movie should more or less be my thing.

That said, what reviews I did come across all said the same thing: something happens near the end of the movie, and your ability to roll with that thing will probably determine if you ultimately enjoy the movie. What I heard was this incident is the sort of thing that can knock you right out of the movie. And let me tell you: this moment is completely out of left field, you will know it when you see it, and yes, in my case, it did knock me out of the movie. I can put up with a lot, but this moment killed my suspension of disbelief, and what started off as a fairly promising movie ended up being something else entirely.

Grade: C

Anyway, the nice thing about Spring Break is I can get to a Thursday night screening of the new Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire without having to worry about going to work the next day.

Kong’s life in Hollow Earth is going decently enough, ruling over his territory using a combination of skill and smarts. However, the big guy is a bit lonely. The Great Apes are social creatures, and Kong, as far as he knows, is the last of his kind. He soon learns he isn’t, and this may be of use to Monarch, the organization that monitors Titan activity worldwide, but something else destroyed their monitoring station. Back on the surface, the last survivor of the Skull Island natives, Jia (Kaylee Hottle), is getting these flashes that concern her adopted mother, Monarch researcher Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall). Since Kong popped up on the surface to get a bad tooth fixed, she’ll follow him back to Hollow Earth with Jia, Titan-podcast expert Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), and freewheeling Titan veterinarian Trapper (Dan Stevens). And while all this is going on, Godzilla is wandering the earth, up to, well, something.

It turns out that not only is Kong not the last of his kind, but the others are brutally ruled by an evil red-colored ape called the Skar King. Skar King keeps the other apes in line with an iron fist and a special weapon of his own, and it turns out that these apes have a history with Godzilla and a hatred for the human race. As promised by the trailers, Kong will need to team up with Godzilla to stop Skar King and prevent the destruction of the surface world. Will that be enough, and how much can we expect to have giant monsters fighting each other?

Let’s get some obvious things out of the way first: the human characters here are unlikely to really do much to make you care about them, and Godzilla actually isn’t in this one that much. For the first, Tyree Henry and Stevens seem to be having fun with the (admittedly goofy) material they’ve been given, but Hall is just an exposition machine when she isn’t a concerned mother, and Hottle is not even that. As for Godzilla, to be clear, this is really more of a Kong movie with Godzilla only popping up once in a while to remind you his name is in the title until the two finally meet up again. There are a number of giant monsters fights, but the big finale seems like a “throw everything in a blender” thing, and I am actually wondering why Godzilla had to be in this one at all. This movie might have worked out just fine if it was just a movie about Kong, particularly since the movie had a feel to it like there was too much in it. Taking out Godzilla and one or two of the plot elements related to him alone might have made for a better movie.

That said, Kong does work as a character here. Given the giant ape doesn’t talk or get subtitles when he isn’t using sign language with Jia, the movie manages to give Kong something of a personality using just his body language and interaction with other apes, particularly a juvenile one referred to as “mini-Kong”. I don’t expect anything like Godzilla Minus One with a Monsterverse movie, so basically, I want a good popcorn flick. That said, this one has a very deliberate pace. Skar King doesn’t even appear until about halfway through the movie, and as I said above, Godzilla isn’t even in this one very much. As something of a character study for a giant ape, Godzilla x Kong is decent enough. As a popcorn flick, it has too much happening, and the final act fight felt too crowded. It’s not what I would call a bad movie, and Kaiju movie fans will probably enjoy this one, but it’s also not something I expect to watch again any time soon if ever.

Grade: C+

Besides, this movie is the basis that Christopher Moltisanti wanted to recruit actor Ben Kingsley for the crime movie he was making in that one episode of The Sopranos. Kingsley isn’t my first choice to play a gangster, but if the movie is as good as I heard it was, he may be a big reason why.

Gary “Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone) is enjoying retirement in Spain. He’s got a nice villa with his wife, former porn star DeeDee (Amanda Redman), and he’s left his own life as a criminal behind him. He just wants to soak up the sun by the pool and enjoy time with DeeDee, his best friend Aitch (Cavan Kendall) and Aitch’s wife Jackie (Julianne White). But something is setting Gal on edge, and it isn’t just that a boulder just barely missed him as he was standing poolside. No, he gets word that his former associate Don Logan (Kingsley) is coming to see him. Gal has done everything he could to avoid the guy, but Don found him anyway.

See, Don is recruiting for a job, robbing a bank that most people don’t even know exists because of how exclusive the clientele are, at the behest of London crime lord Teddy Bass (Ian McShane). There’s already a plan in place. Bass just wants people he can rely on to pull it off. For Don, that’s Gal. Gal doesn’t want to go. Don won’t take “no” for an answer, and Don is not even remotely a pleasant person, a hard-swearing man with a penchant for violence. He doesn’t commit a lot of violence in the course of the movie. He just gives off that aura like he might at any second. Gal may just have to go back to London whether he wants to or not. It’s that, or maybe Don will kill him or something.

First off, yeah, Kingsley is great in this movie. He has this tough guy, don’t give a snowball’s chance in Hell attitude, but he still has a bit of charm to his performance. Lots of characters that seem dangerous can give off those auras. No one would really want to associate with a character like that in the real world, but at the same time, they can make for compelling characters in a work of fiction. And while Gal dreams of some sort of demon rabbit thing, Don is the one thing he and his wife and friends can all fear. The guy just won’t go away, and the longer he stays, the more unhinged he grows.

That wouldn’t be enough if the rest of the movie around it didn’t rise to the occasion, and Sexy Beast does. The dialogue is like a British version of Quentin Tarantino’s sort of work: edgy with a touch of dark humor. Glazer’s direction does some interesting things with simultaneous storytelling, for example having Don tell how Bass learned about the bank where the story cuts from Don to the person who told him to Bass and then back again, lines getting repeated all the while as Gal listens in. As for Winstone, Gal is arguably a thankless role compared to Don and Bass–I think everyone more or less knows by now that McShane can play a good psycho himself–but as a guy who really doesn’t want to get involved and just wants to live a quiet life, he’s fine. But really, this movie essentially boils down to Kingsley’s performance and Glazer’s direction. Between those two, this one is really worth a watch.

Grade: B+

Basically, it was a horror movie right up my alley.

Single mom Amelia (Essie Davis) is at her wits end. Her husband died in a car accident as they were driving her to the hospital to give birth to their son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), and she’s been in mourning ever since, getting very little sleep thanks her demanding six-year-old son. One day, Samuel finds a pop-up book of unknown origins that tells the very creepy story of Mr. Babadook, a tall, shadowy creature in a top hat and long coat. What does Mr. Babadook do? Well, he shows up and won’t leave. Samuel is sure he’s there before Amelia sees any sign that the creature exists, but it wouldn’t be much of a horror movie if the Babadook never showed up.

Show up he does, around the halfway point. He’s quick, sticks to the shadows, and looks like something out of a silent horror movie. He doesn’t talk aside from saying his own name as creepily as possible. What the Babadook seems to want is for Amelia to kill her son. Will she? And what exactly can the Babadook do?

OK, I’ve seen the commentary. I know the Babadook is supposed to represent the grief Amelia feels for her dead husband. It’s not subtle, but it’s still effective. Samuel is a pretty obnoxious child for most of the movie. It’s not that surprising that Amelia, thinking he’s imagining the whole Babadook thing, would want to give the child some sleeping pills so she can get a good night’s rest for once. She’s not so much a bad mother as a stressed out one. And for all that Samuel is an obnoxious kid, he’s not really disobedient. He just wants attention, and the other children in the movie don’t seem a whole lot better. There’s something to be said for the fact Samuel can use some cobbled together Home Alone style traps to slow the Babadook down says it’s maybe not much of a threat.

That’s true in and of itself, but the thing is the Babadook is really just an expression for the grief at the center of the family. He can’t be made to go away. He can only be tended to in a manner that allows Amelia and Samuel to have a happy family. That says something deeper than just “scary monster attacks a mother and son,” and it does come down to how being a parent is stressful, sometimes parents want their kids to maybe shut up and go away, and grief isn’t something you can just kill. It’s something that you just have to live with, and The Babadook does an excellent job showing how that works metaphorically.

Grade: A-

It’s also not the sort of movie I think I will ever watch a second time, and the story behind how it got made is impressive all by itself.

Writer/director Cassavestes was apparently inspired when his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, said she wanted to be in a play about how rough life was for contemporary women. Cassavestes then wrote the script for this movie as a play, but Rowlands thought it would be too emotionally rough to play that eight performances a week. Cassavestes then rewrote it as a film script, but he needed money to make it. No big studio was interested, so he asked people he knew, with friend Peter Falk personally donating $50,000. Falk would go on to take the male lead opposite Rowlands. From there, Cassavestes had to film his movie in an actual house, he cast Rowlands’s mother as her character’s mother and his own mother as Falk’s. When the movie was finished, Cassavestes couldn’t get distribution for it and had to personally call up movie theaters to run his movie. The movie would go on to achieve great critical acclaim, though not without its detractors, and earn Oscar nominations for Rowlands’s performance and Cassavestes’s direction. Oh, and on a side note, unlike many Hollywood couples, Rowlands and Cassavestes stayed married until his death, and those sorts of things always surprise me.

As for the plot, it’s actually pretty simple: housewife and mother of three Mabel Longhetti (Rowlands) has a life that is essentially falling apart due to the stresses of what she goes through on a daily basis. She seems to be turning to alcohol, but she may also be bipolar. The movie didn’t seem to say, but she’s falling apart. Her husband Nick (Falk) loves her, but his job as the foreman for a small construction crew means his hours are irregular as it is. He can see she’s falling apart, and for the most part, doesn’t quite know what to do. About the only thing I can say for certain is he loves her and his children, and she does love them back. They’re just both in a stressful situation where neither of them knows quite what to do, and all Nick really wants is what’s best for Mabel.

First off, anyone who only knows Falk as Lt. Columbo will probably be in for a shock here. This is the sort of movie where the only thing I really knew for certain was he loved his wife, but he was at his wits’ end. It’s probably the less flashy performance from the lead couple, but it really works. Rowlands is likewise fantastic. Her more manic episodes may not always work as well as they could, but the quieter moments when she just silently shows anxiety when she’s thrust into having to deal with people, even her own kids, sells the turmoil her character is going through. The two leads here really make this one, and if there’s a genre for this beyond “drama,” I’d say it was “slice of life.”

It’s worth noting the movie doesn’t make the central couple out to be perfect or anything. Mabel while drunk brings a man home while Nick is pulling a nightshift at one point, and Nick slaps her across the face two or three times at different points in the movie to try to get her calm down. The slaps bothered me, possibly because these were seen as more socially acceptable in 1974 than they are today. I do still think Nick loves Mabel and is mostly just uncertain what a loving husband should do, but those moments were a bit jarring. I suspect they were supposed to be, but that doesn’t change that these moments happened. Still, A Woman Under the Influence is that look at a couple pulling at the threads of their marriage, both suffering in their own way, one due to what looks like mental illness, and the other just through trying to hold everything together. I thought the movie was excellent. I still plan to never watch it again.

Grade: A