Tag Archives: a24

You Hurt My Feelings (2023)

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June 28, 2024

Julia Louis-Dreyfus starred in today’s June Swoon 3, a film called You Hurt My Feelings, an A24 film that follows her life as writer.

Louis-Dreyfus played Beth, a writer who overheard her husband Don (Tobias Menzies) telling his friend that he really did not like the new book that she was writing. This bit of honesty sent Beth on a spiral, doubting everything in her life and putting her marriage under a scrutiny that she had never had before.

The film was fine. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is funny and she delivered her performance in the slow, real life tone. The film builds a series of events together, showing a full picture of her and her family’s life.

Some could consider the pace of this film to drag on, but I liked the simplicity of the presentation. The film takes its time it spends with each character to really reveal what they were like. Nothing major would happen to any of them, but these seemingly unimportant moments all had a powerful impact on each person.

The film does take time with Don as well, looking at his job as a therapist, a job that the film seems to be implying that he is not very good at. He has several clients that come in to air their problems with Don, to little success. Amber Tamblyn, David Cross, and Zach Cherry are standouts among the therapy sessions.

This had a definite independent movie feel to it. It is not flashy but it was an entertaining film with some thoughts on the little white lies and their effects.

Dream Scenario

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We got a new Nic Cage movie released this weekend focusing on celebrity and the potential toxicity that comes along with that. It was called Dream Scenario.

Nic Cage played a college professor named Paul Matthews, a hapless man who is just going through an unremarkable life. Then, one day, he discovered that people were all dreaming about him, people that he did not know. Paul would just walk through the dream like an observer, doing nothing to help the person. It got to the point where real life Paul was feeling guilt over not helping despite the fact that he had zero control over it.

As this phenomenon went viral, Paul started to become well known and in demand. This is, until the dreams he was appearing in began to turn dark and nightmarish. The people who were fascinated by Paul before turned on him quickly, forcing Paul into trying to get through his life.

Nicolas Cage was sensational as Paul, playing completely against his typical character. Paul was frumpy and depressed, unable to understand why things were happening and why people were turning on him considering he had done nothing wrong. You can’t help be feel sorry for Paul considering things were happening that were totally out of his own control.

I really enjoyed this film, but I will say that the ending did not strike as well as I would have liked it. Unfortunately, I can’t talk about that without diving into spoilers. Suffice it to say that I did not love the way the film concluded.

There were some funny scenes of the film, which is listed by A24 as a comedy/horror film. I’m not sure that is an accurate classification, but there are several funny moments. Nicolas Cage does great job bringing this schulb to life, and seeing what happens to him is a warning about the fickleness of pop culture as well as a commentary on cancel culture.

3.8 stars