Snark, Critic and Pop!

Editor’s Note: With the 2010 Charlotte Film Festival nearly upon us, we’re re-posting this “classic” review from the 2009 CFF (originally posted on our previous Site Film Is Pwn last year):Walking into the theatre, press pass dangling around my neck and garnering stares and questioning glances, New York Lately was exactly the type of movie I hoped for and expected. Don’t take that to mean that it was good. This is a Film Festival, having never been to one, I sat in anticipation imagining what it would be like. I pondered my lack of skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts; both of which would no doubt be uniform for the event. Then I imagined the type of movie a person wearing skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt would make.

I’m not making fun of this as much as it might seem. I wish I was cool enough to wear skinny jeans and clever enough to have ironic t-shirts, but instead I just wear normal jeans and a button down shirt. I wished I had shaved to have cool facial hair of some sort, but alas I had to just be me. Then as we arrived and looked around, I didn’t see a single pair of skinny jeans, and since most everyone was in a uniform for the festival the ironic t-shirts had been left in the closet. I was acceptable.

Interestingly New York Lately was still much the type of movie I imagined those non-existent stereotypes would produce. It was along the vein of movies like Babel and Magnolia. It’s the story of several people whose lives intertwine in some intricate way to produce a story that paints the picture of modern life with its connections and isolation. The problem is that few of these characters seemed real and the stories didn’t really intertwine at all. So it was more like the make-believe stories of disjointed people.
The film played on some very tired clichés, like the soullessness of the office and the favors a young and budding actress is often expected to make. The movie had the chance a few times to take some old stories and breathe fresh life into them with a simple shift in direction when as the viewer we don’t expect it. But instead it just wandered down familiar territory.

Daniel and I discussed this movie quite a lot because we had some time for food afterward and had been given some insight by a short Q&A period with the director and a couple of the actors. We both tended to agree that the film wasn’t without merit but rather that it probably tried to do a lot of things when it should have kept the story smaller and to just a few. The subplot of a man who was blustery and all talk, slept with hookers and treated his friends poorly was misguided I think. The man was generally unlikable, but not in the way some characters you dislike engages you. Rather you just wished he would get off the screen.

The best story in the film was about a shy Asian man who works in HR. He’s helping a friend deal with his recent breakup. He’s struggling to maintain his sanity while he assists with the layoff of hundreds of people, one of them being a personal friend. He meets a cute, honest, budding musician who works at a local coffee shop. Their exchanges are sweet and personal. She all but begs him to ask her out but he’s quiet and reserved and just can’t work up the courage.

This was the real story in the movie, the one I wanted to see finished. But in a film like this it’s just another subplot, another piece to a web that’s destined to fall from its own weight. They tried to get a little overboard with a few interesting ideas, pound them in too hard. The friend who was dealing with a recent breakup kept seeing her in any female with whom he conversed. It was interesting the first time, really confusing as the movie continued. Maybe we were supposed to feel confused like the character, but in the end it just became annoying.

Gary King, the writer/director, has talent and I’d like to see more from him. But first I’d like him to not be trendy and tell the story to which he’s really connected. In the Q&A we found that he worked in HR laying people off. That’s why this part of the movie worked so well I suspect. It was something he really knew.

I guess when everything is said and done my biggest issue with this movie was that I felt like I had seen all of it before, only in pieces in different movies. In fact in closing I’ll quote some of the notes I made during the film:

“How many times do I have to see this same story?”

“groan…”

“Really, this again?”