You Should Have Left (2/5 Stars)

“You Should Have Left” is one of those ninety-minute movies that are about sixty minutes too long. Given the information that is conveyed on the screen, the movie could have efficiently structured as an episode of the Twilight Zone, which run about thirty minutes long. It stars Kevin Bacon as an ex-banker, Amanda Seyfried, his young wife and actress, and a daughter. I could not figure whether the daughter was Kevin Bacon’s child from a previous marriage, Amanda Seyfried’s daughter from a previous marriage, or their own child from the present marriage. It is very hard to tell, but it also does not matter.

In the first twenty minutes of the movie, the plot hints at a secret from Kevin Bacon’s past. I do not know why it hints at this secret, because the movie does not do anything else with its time except make lame off-plot attempts at humor. So, the audience kind of just waits around for the movie to come out and tell the secret for no reason. The movie could have started at the twenty-minute mark and no one would have been the wiser.

This is a haunted house horror movie. The family Bacon go on vacation at a mansion in the Welsh countryside. After a day, the house starts presenting weird omens and doing horrific things. However, how the house works is never explained. It just does what it wants when it wants to do it. The movie bordered on interesting for a moment when Kevin and his daughter measured a room in the house as twenty-five feet and then went outside the house and measured the same room as twenty feet. Why is there an extra five feet? The movie does not say. It is a magic house.

It is easy to be manipulated by a magic house because there are no rules. Any defeats or victories are completely arbitrary. Thus, Kevin Bacon never stands a chance and there is no suspense. Is it a metaphor? I think such an analysis would be giving this movie too much credit. Why should I put more thought into this than the creator?

The creator is Writer/Director David Koepp. Looking at this guy’s resume, I was kind of blown away. He has worked at a high profile in this industry for decades. Koepp is the screenwriter of Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man, and War of the Worlds. He also wrote for and directed Kevin Bacon in “Stir of Echoes”, a much better psychological thriller. What he felt he needed to make this movie is anybody’s guess. It does explain how the movie got made in the first place. If any new movie director had pitched this to a producer, there would have been no way it would have been picked up. No one is asking for a horror movie that is solely concerned with the conscience of an aging white male ex-banker. No other character in this movie, the few characters that there are, is developed in any appreciable manner. I think they got that Welsh guy from the store to do the movie’s ending voiceover which helpfully explained the moral of the story in case you were an idiot and/or fallen asleep half way through.

Why is this movie $19.99 to rent? It is a new feature but it is not playing in a movie theater, which would, at the most, charge $17.50. Plenty of smaller movie theaters charge less. There is no theater to pay upkeep for and no theater employees to pay. Why is it more expensive than a movie theater ticket? The experience is less in many obvious ways. My TV screen is smaller, I have more distractions in the room, I don’t have the ability to purchase a wide range of concessions, drinks, and food as I do at Nitehawk, Alamo Drafthouse, or Syndicated. I feel like I got ripped off by this Bacon banker guy.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (3/5 Stars)

I had fun watching “Portrait of a Lady of Fire”. Perhaps that they may not have been the desired effect of Writer-Director Celine Sciamma and I do not mean to insinuate that the movie is so bad it is good. It is a good movie, well made, poetically composed, and filled with good performances. It just is too serious for a plot that has so little at stake and it moves so slowly and relies so heavily on looks and gazes e to move itself forward that the impatient among us are provoked to add their own comments to fill in the space. If you want to see this movie, you should not see it with me. I talked a lot during it.

The plot can be briefly summarized. A young woman, played by Noemie Merlant, is hired to paint the portrait of another young woman, Adele Haenel. They are both French and the entire movie takes place in a scenic isolated villa on the coast of France. There is lots of wind that blows through their hair, brunette for Noemie, blonde for Adele. Adele has endured a recent tragedy. She has a very French reaction. in full ennui she does nothing every day but walk through gorgeous cinematography looking striking and miserable.

There is a clear subtext in all the gazes between Noemie and Adele. The movie does not outright say it for the first hour of the movie, but they are totally lesbians. There is no one else in this villa but the maid, and every other scene is them looking at each other without talking. These types of pauses that generally lead to sex in most movies seem to happen every five or ten minutes or so. I incorrectly predicted that Noemie and Adele would start making out several times. I’m not going to spoil whether they ever do it…Not! They totally do!

There is a lot of painting in this movie and Celine Sciamma probably did a good job of portraying the process. I don’t know, I don’t know much about painting. However, I do know however when a woman is correctly framed and lit in cinematography. In this regard, Sciamma clearly knows what she is doing. It’s hot. I especially like the scene where the lady was on fire.