Her Smell (2019) was really good despite its awful and meaningless title.
Elisabeth Moss convincingly plays a Courtney Love-style 90s grunge trainwreck rock star. It begins rather average but it becomes more powerful as it progresses. It’s structured like Steve Jobs (2015) as five long scenes set years apart. So in scene four we get the film Last Days (2005, a film I’ve not seen) condensed into circa 30 minutes. I recently watched a doc called Hits So Hard (2011, streamed for ‘free’ on UK Amazon Prime) about the drummer in Hole and you can tell that film was a reference point for this.
I’m not a fan of long meandering movies but this is a rare example were the 135 minute running time is probably for the better.* It allows it to stretch out and be indulgent in a good way. I’m not sure if a tighter edit would have made the movie significantly better. The bumpy tight close ups (more wide shots please) and the constant ‘atmospheric’ oppressive noisy soundscape is cliched and obvious in its effect but they are annoyances that didn’t annoy too much.
I strongly recommend it if you own a CD collection.
UK Amazon: 99p to rent in HD or £1.99 to buy in digital HD. I rented it and now I’ve bought it since I don’t think a DVD is going to turn up in the UK.
* The Irishman could lose 30-60 minutes IMO.
PS Cheap digital magazine subscriptions here, such as Prog and Classic Rock for £5 for a year:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/browse/?ie=UTF8&node=5401390031&lo=digital-text&pf_rd_p=886beca1-9718-491f-a095-f29134b3aff3&pf_rd_s=mags-dp-msg1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B0079JCJRM&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1P8KWKYQ549J1T6335KP&pf_rd_r=1P8KWKYQ549J1T6335KP&pf_rd_p=886beca1-9718-491f-a095-f29134b3aff3
@rich – @loudspeaker have you been hacked as this has an ad at the bottom of your post or is it a public service announcement.
I thought some people would like to buy 13 digital issues of Prog for £5 instead of paying circa £8 for each paper issue. I am not worth hacking.
Also I would recommend a 6 part doc on Netflix called I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry about a manufactured pop-rock ‘punk’ band put together by a pop star using her extensive industry connections.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/15/im-with-the-band-nasty-cherry-review-netflix
Ah ok, sorry to bother you!
This sounds interesting.
(I also fully agree The Irishman could be improved by a huge amount of editing. Cut 30-60 minutes you say? I say cut two hours! It could have been a snappy little 90 minute film and a lot more enjoyable for it).
But… I don’t get why you say someone with “a CD collection” should enjoy it? Eh? Do you mean music fans in general? Sorry, that bit went over my head!
‘But… I don’t get why you say someone with “a CD collection” should enjoy it? Eh? Do you mean music fans in general? Sorry, that bit went over my head!’
If you’re old enough (i.e. you lived through the 90s) and you like music enough to own a CD collection (i.e. you lived through the 90s) then this film should interest you.
Ah! Gotcha.
I don’t understand this review. But I have a cold. Maybe my brain has packed up.
Summed up: It’s a good and interesting movie and it’s very cheap to see via Amazon streaming since there is no physical release.
PS Prog and Classic Rock are now back to proper prices.
Here’s a question for you? Why is the popular saying ‘trainwreck’ not recognised as a proper word? It looks weird split into two words.
Missing-hyphenation-perhaps?
I’ve never knowingly seen it written with a hyphen. The 2015 Amy Schumer movie is called Trainwreck, and presumably someone spellchecked it before spending $X million advertising it.
They probably used a spell-checker set to US English.
Bought the HD version, stopped it after 35 minutes, won’t be watching the rest. Sorry, not for me and I have a CD collection, maybe because I have also have an LP collection.
It takes a bit of effort to get passed the oppressive noise, the constant bumpy close ups and the meandering going nowhere dialogue but IMO there is substance behind the off-putting quirks. It does get better and richer as it goes on.