You know that thin line between keeping it real and really pretentious? Apparently, Joe Swanberg decided to cut that line out of the already low budget for his 2009 film, Alexander the Last. It's about an actress and her sister and her husband and the the guy she's doing a play with and, well, I think that's about it. Relationships? I'll let EW's Owen Gleiberman explain: "...an exploration of how the spaces between people can separate them or join them, often at the same moment." That, folks, is a movie critic.
It's pretty clear that for these small films about people just being people, the people will ultimately determine success. The movies that work for me are the ones featuring charismatic leads--Mark Duplass, Greta Gerwig, even non-actress Kate Dollenmayer. Not everyone in real life is interesting. In fact, most people are not, at least not to others. For the viewer to care about mundane subject matter--the whole point here, right--the characters have to be more than that. They have to be interesting. It's like the old line that you would pay to hear Christopher Walken, Al Pacino, etc. read the phone book. No you wouldn't. At least not past Adams. But you do like them, though, and want to spend time with them. The characters in Alexander? I didn't even want to spend the ridiculously short 72 minutes with them. It's more masturbatory artists making films about artists. Forget about the pretentiousness factor. That sounds more like simple laziness.
There are still some mumblecore films on my playlist. I'd like to see Swanberg's Kissing on the Mouth, and not just because it's dirty. His LOL is supposed to be another genre staple. I've also heard good things about Alex Holdridge's In Search of a Midnight Kiss. But of the ones I have watched, here's how I'd stack them:
- Hump Day
- The Puffy Chair
- Cyrus
- Baghead
- Hannah Takes the Stairs
- Funny Ha Ha
- Beeswax
- Nights and Weekends
- Mutual Appreciation
- Alexander the Great
My gut feeling is that Greenberg doesn't really count as mumblecore because 1. a major hollywood star (stiller) is in it and 2. there's a little too much plot and stuff going on for it to be mumblecore
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