I’m in a semi-depressive funk on my birthday, so I’m going to force my way through by thinking of The Year of Spectacular Men, a delightful gem of a film where the Deutch family – Madelyn, Zoey, and Lea* – assemble like the Avengers and make us cackle at rom-com done well.
2018 is Zoey’s year: This is her third movie released in theaters or via streaming (the first being Flower and the third being Set It Up), and she has a fourth (Richard Says Goodbye) theoretically on the way**. If you’ve seen, say, Everybody Wants Some!!, or The Disaster Artist, you know she’s great, and The Year of Spectacular Men merely confirms as much. But The Year of Spectacular Men is Madelyn’s film; she’s terrific at the whole “awkward and aimless but charming and lovely” shtick that so many actresses try and fail at balancing. Think of her as an improvement on actresses like Zooey Deschanel and Lena Dunham (and Ellen Page, though Page occupies her own space and has grown astronomically as a performer over her career).
Anyways. Check the movie out if you can! And also read this thing I wrote for Paste Magazine. That’s always nice.
*Okay, her last name isn’t Deutch, it’s Thompson, but she’s their mom, so there.
**Assuming anyone wants to release a Johnny Depp movie these days.
A Constant Visual Feast 