Don Jon (***)

A word that is never used in the movie, and is often regarded as derogatory, will nonetheless, I suspect, quickly come to mind for many people watching this movie. It’s title character (Joseph Gordon-Levitt — macho, fit, masculine, Catholic, Italian American, living in north Jersey — fits every stereotype attached to the word guido, except maybe that he talks a lot about masturbation — at least in the copious, but often funny, narration. And in the confessional booth. Not so much to his pals when they’re trying to score some female companionship. He talks, in voice-over, about porn a lot, and, for example, how annoying it can be when the camera suddenly focuses on the guy when you’re about to…you know.

Truth be told, Jon likes porn better than real women, despite his skills at attracting them. Naturally, he meets the one woman (Scarlett Johannson) who might be the exception. This leads to a wave of shame, and lying, and, for a change, self-reflection. He’s also helped along by an odd, unhappy woman (Julianne Moore) he meets at one of his college courses. She’s what I call a convenient character, one whose appearance in the story seems useful to the plot, in this case to provide a contrast to the other woman. Moore’s terrific, funny and sad, in the part; I’m just not sure I found it believable the way she gloms onto him. I’m also not sure that sex addiction is necessarily a manifestation of some deeper hole in one’s life, as suggested here, but maybe sometimes. I did like the way the story develops, and the family dynamic, worthy of a sitcom. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly plays the parents and there’s a sister (Brie Larson, of the concurrent Short Term 12) character who never takes looks up from her phone, or says anything — until it counts.

The performances are good all around. Gordon-Levitt might have made his mark in the innocuous show 3^rd Rock from the Sun, but has gone for more unusual, sometimes challenging characters as an actor, and here he has additionally made his debut as writer and director. It’s not the serious work one might have expected, but I found it more interesting than 2011’s sex-addiction drama, Shame. (Sex addicts also feature in another 2013 comedy, Thanks for Sharing.

IMDb link

viewed 6/4/13 7:30 pm at Ritz East and posted 9/26/13

Good Dick (***)

A comical romance isn’t necessarily a romantic comedy, and a movie about sex doesn’t have to show any skin, even with a title like Good Dick, even with a female lead (Marianna Palka) whose main leisure activity is watching soft-core porn. That the male lead (Jason Ritter) is a video-store clerk who lives in his car and whose pick-up technique is to follow her home gives you some idea of why the movie doesn’t fit neatly into that genre.

I imagine that the hardest part of writing a movie like this is making the meeting of the two characters seem genuine. Many viewers may feel that stalking is not, in real life, a successful pick-up technique, or at least not one that a screenwriter should countenance by balancing that with other, more flattering traits. Indeed, some will be put off straightaway by these introductory aspects of the story. But then, without having someone nearly force his way into her life, the woman’s story is only her living alone in a Los Angeles apartment. Simultaneously craving human contact and being repelled by it, she pushes and pulls him in ways that are odd, humorous, disturbing, and erotic in a completely non-explicit way.

That screenwriter, incidentally, is director/lead actress Palka, who has written herself a role in which she excels. Made on a $200,000 budget, it is as narrowly focused as you might expect from an 86-minute debut. The guys at the video store comprise most of the other characters, though Tom Arnold has a small, non-comical role near the end. In the manner of any decent indie film, Palka allows the viewer to fill in the more obvious story details, and after a smartly written denouement, exits before allowing things to get trite.

IMDB link

viewed 10/29/08 [screening at Ritz Bourse]; reviewed 10/31/08