A New Leaf

sydney5.0

if i ever read a bad review of this i'll probably set myself on fire

Sally Jane Black

The punchline is that in order for a man to see a woman as a human being deserving of life, she has to grant him immortality. That's a pretty funny understatement.52 project: 42/52

Jake Cole5.0

An absolutely toxic screwball that doesn't so much update the genre for a nihilistic and self-absorbed era as demonstrate that the genre had beaten society to that punch by a good 40 years. Matthau is a collection of faces housed in a shambling figure, a trickster god finally outsmarted after millennia of existence by his own profligacy. The montage of him morosely bidding farewell to the trappings of his life as he slowly drives around town in his collapsing Ferrari is just about as British as American class comedy can get, and Henry's transition into a Bluebeard/Verdoux grotesque only completes the black joke. At the other end is May herself, who manages to play both the leads in Bringing Up Baby at once: the dizzy, chaotic heiress and the bumbling, repressed scientist. In front of and behind the camera, May slows down the speed of screwball to a crawl, drawing out the absolutely agonizing tension between Henrietta's sweet, trusting clumsiness and Henry's murderous glances. The scene of Henry helping her with her nightgown is hilarious for its comedy of errors as well as its protracted stop-start motion that drags entirely too long and becomes all the funnier for it. The absolute loathing that crosses Matthau's face as he calmly helps is so bleakly funny. The ending is damn near the midpoint climax of Sunrise, albeit played as a totally grim commentary on itself.