“You Hurt My Feelings”

“You Hurt My Feelings” is a movie that was released in 2023 and directed by Nicole Holofcener. It starts off right away with a couple sitting on a couch, and we’re pretty much dropped right in the middle of the argument. Right away, I was able to sense the turmoil between the couple. It was a little jarring to me that there was no buildup or proper introduction to the scene. My reaction right away was, “Ok, a passive aggressive couple in marriage counseling, I think.” I feel like if there was a quick scene like “It’s time for our appointment, you’re never prepared for these things” or something like “Do we even have to go to this? It’s not like we’ll benefit from it”, I would’ve been able to better prepare myself.

With each session that Don has, it seems to me like he’s regretting his life a little more. It is a look that says “I’m not in the right place” and it makes me wonder if he’s regretting his degree or just his current situation.

I wanted to talk about the relationships between characters in this movie. In “You Hurt My Feelings” , Beth and her sister are talking to their mom, and their reactions and responses are very confused or “short-fused”. Often times, when they asked her about something, like “Beetlejuice” or “not putting the potato salad in tin foil”, their mom reacted in a lost or oblivious manner. When they continued staring at her in concern, she was quick to explode and lash out. I feel like the director properly portrayed how people have shorter fuses when they’re with family.

In the following scene, Don is walking with Mark, and they’re discussing the current state of their life or where they’re at. Mark claims that he feels behind because everyone else is an “established theater actor”. I feel like he’s asking for validation or comfort, but doesn’t really receive it from Don, because right after, Mark asks him about his life, and he just responds in an unenthusiastic manner. As Don was about to explain “the crazies” in his life, he was quickly cut off by Mark and didn’t mind much. I feel like in this scene, it shows how with friends, we’re ok with being brushed off. Their conversation is also uncomfortable, and there are awkward gaps in between the dialogue. It makes you feel out of place during the scene.

The next transition, which didn’t really feel like a transition, goes into a conversation between Beth and her sister. You can see right away, the ease between the characters and how smoothly the conversation flows. Even though they were just talking about sock shopping, the mood was lighter and the characters were smiling more. Just from this short scene, you can tell how conversations between your siblings can lack matter, but also contain emotion. You can say “You don’t throw away your underwear? EVER!?” and the other person isn’t immediately offended.

Poor Beth…In both screenshots, you can see Beth in full frame, while Sarah is out of focus and partly in the frame. Beth is upset about Don lying to her about her book, and feels like her life is a lie because he didn’t tell her that he didn’t like it.

Personally, I found this scene very funny. When this couple comes on the screen, you know that they’re about to make a lot of back handed and passive aggressive comments. I really enjoyed the moment he said, “I like women…just not you.”

In this scene, Sarah’s client says “Sorry” and that’s all she says to portray that she doesn’t like the piece. The third time, Sarah looks at her annoyed, which made me laugh because she’s basically like, “You’ve got to be kidding me right now.” For both characters, neither can freely express themselves because they don’t want to hurt the other’s feelings. Since they’re strangers, they don’t have that comfortability to give the other their true thoughts.

I found this scene cute because Sarah is comforting Mark about him being a bad actor. He had repeatedly expressed that he should just quit, and she tells him he shouldn’t because he’s good. With this couple and Beth and Don, they lie to their partners to make them feel better about themselves.

Beth runs out during Mark’s birthday dinner and her and Don are fighting on the sidewalk. I found it funny when she expressed to him that she cared about his opinion, and after he said, “I love you”, she said “Oh, well. Never mind.” I feel like it signified that “I love you” doesn’t fix everything.

Elliot had talked to his parents about his mom made him feel good about himself even though he wasn’t “good”. After he left the room, Beth and Don started arguing, but I really admired how that argument shifted into a pleasant conversation between the two. They started explaining to the other why they didn’t like their gifts, and the scene ended with them laughing about it.

This was the very last scene, which I thought was so cute. Both parents are in bed, and they both open up the play that their son had written. Even though “it’s just a first draft”, they are reading it to support him. Elliot knows it sucks, but his parents are still willing to see what he produced.

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After Hours

“After Hours” is a movie that was released in 1985, directed by Martin Scorsese. Where do I start talking about this movie? Right at first, I was a little off put about watching this movie, and it wasn’t easy to get absorbed into it because the video quality seemed old. The plotline throughout the film was so unpredictable and inconsistent, that it was the only reason I was absorbed into it. I kept watching because I wanted to see what else would happen before Paul was finally able to “go home”, except he never did.

The movie starts with Paul at work, showing a new employee how to do certain codes in the computer. Then that night he’s reading a book in a restaurant and meets Marcy. She gives him the location of her apartment, and goes there and meets her roommate, Kiki. Somehow, he ended up massaging her shoulders, and then she fell asleep.

When Marcy returns, she takes a shower, and he finds “burn victim cream” among her things. They go out to dinner, and Paul asks her who “Franklin” is, and she explains that he’s her husband. She goes on a tangent about how he loves “The Wizard of Oz,” and while they were having sex, he would say “surrender, Dorothy” repeatedly. It was very random, and that was how the actress portrayed it, too.

Paul flees her apartment, desperate to go home, but when he discovers that the train fare had raised, he comes back. He starts explaining to Marcy why he left and that he just wanted to go home. He explained that their relationship was going too fast, but when he notices that she’s not responding, he finds out that she’s dead. She overdosed on pills. This point in the movie is where everything takes a turn.

In this scene, Paul returned to the bar after asking Tom if he could use his bathroom. Tom gets a phone call and discovers that his girlfriend just died. He repeatedly shouts, “Marcy!”, and that’s when he learns that Tom’s girlfriend and the girl he went to dinner with is the SAME PERSON.

In this screenshot, Paul is still determined to go home, and the women at the other restaurant/bar had just clocked out. She says, “Let’s celebrate!” and Paul is trying to do everything but that.

Next, he meets a woman named Gail, and asks her if he could use the phone, and while he’s dialing a number, she keeps messing around and distracting him, which enrages him.

I found this part funny because Paul is on the run from a vigilante mob, lead by Gail, and he sees a woman shoot a man multiple times, and his immediate reaction is “Oh, they blame that on me too?”. His night is progressively getting worse, and at this point, he’s just accepted it.

Paul meets with a man, who takes him to his apartment, and Paul calls the police to tell them that there’s a mob after him. After he hangs up, the man just tells him to go home, but Paul goes off on him, explaining all the details of his night. Starting from meeting a cute girl at a bar to being on the run from a vigilante mob because they think he’s a robber who’s breaking into people’s apartments.

He ends up back at the restaurant, and someone hands him an invitation to the club he was unable to attend earlier. When she shows up and enters the club, he sees that it’s mostly empty, except for a woman named June. They dance for a little bit, then she takes him downstairs. He starts panicking because the mob found him, and after he pulls a rope that splatters plaster on him, June improvises by pretending to work on a paper mache project. BUT she refuses to let him out when the group leaves, and so he’s trapped inside.

I audibly exclaimed “OH SHIT” and laughed when the robbers dropped into the place where Paul was, kidnapping him instead of a statue. They drove off, and in their haste, the back door of the van opened and he slipped out, dropping HIM OFF RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS OFFICE. Poor guy didn’t get any sleep overnight and had to walk into work with dust all over him. This whole movie was a whirlwind of events, and with it ending this way, I found it very funny.