"The Life of Chuck"

Using the Siskel/Ebert grading system, this movie gets two "thumbs up" from me.  I've embedded the official trailer above, but it is so spare that it doesn't offer much of the sense of the movie, which is perhaps better conveyed by this excerpt, in which Chiwetel Ejiofor's character explains Carl Sagan's "cosmic calendar" to his ex-wife:

But for a full appreciation of the movie, I would recommend this 14-minute longwatch analysis and commentary:

Some will consider that commentary to be full of "spoilers" but in this case I think the reveals are appropriate in order to understand what is happening in the opening sequence when the "world" is coming to an end.

What impressed me was author Stephen King's choice of a glioblastoma multiforme as the cause of Chuck's death.  Had he died in a vehicular accident or from other sudden trauma, the "universe" in his head would have just winked out.  The glioblastoma, by contrast, slowly snakes its way through Chuck's head, and as it destroys or replaces his memories of California for example, the California of the universe slides into the ocean.  The characters in his head can "see" their impending death and have time to react in their personal lives.

When the key monologue in the movie is delivered by Chuck's 6th grade teacher, I was surprised and delighted to see that the actress in that role - Kate Siegel - was the same actress who delivered the most important monologue in the miniseries Midnight Madness ("what happens when you die"), which was also directed by Mike Flanagan.

When the movie was released in 2025 it received mixed reviews from critics, but notably won the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival - a distinction that normally leads to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture - but that did not happen in this case, and I think the movie has been sadly overlooked.

A link for lovers of movies: The Criterion Closet

For much of my adult life I have been a fan of the Criterion Collection.  About fifteen years ago I did subscribe to the Criterion Channel in order to stream their movie collection on demand, but I found the interface clunky, especially for fast-forwarding, seeking etc.  I dropped that subscription after realizing that our local public library has over a thousand Criterion Channel movies available on DVD and Blu-ray.

There is a  physical (and a mobile) Criterion Closet containing all the movies.  This week I realized there is an app to access that closet.  At the link you can view and interact with that closet either in a mockup of the physical setting ("closet view") or in a list view (screencap embedded above).  From that app you can access all the movies via your subscription or purchase them.  But more importantly for the average reader here, you can access trailers for virtually all of those 1,327 movies.

Then I borrow the DVDs from the library.

Ending a movie with a preposition

Last evening while trying to avoid doomscrolling I browsed some movies recorded on my DVR.  I noticed that the dialogue in The Maltese Falcon ends with a preposition.

I found some commentary on the phrase at Blog of the Darned:

To be fair, the quote is based on a quote from Shakespeare:

Prospero:

   ...

   Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

   As dreams are made on; and our little life

   Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 156–158

Also "The stuff that dreams are made of" did not appear in Dashiell Hammett novel. Humphrey Bogart reportedly suggested the line to John Huston, and they went with it. Bogart was a stage actor on Broadway before turning to film, so I presumably he was familiar with The Tempest.

I'm not a rigid prescriptivist regarding usage of the English language, but last night I wondered whether any other major motion pictures end the dialogue on a preposition.  A quick search of "last lines" mentions "And then I woke up" from No Country for Old Men, but in that case it would be an adverb (it's also not a preposition in "I'm ready for my close up."

There are probably many such examples.  If there are movies with Minnesota characters, they might end a scene asking "are you coming with?"

I offer the challenge to the readers here.  Not just any movie sentences ending with prepositions, but final words spoken in a movie.

Medical movie mistakes

Screencap from an otherwise enjoyable movie I watched recently.  This scene has not been recorded at the classic Movie Mistakes website, but I can guarantee that the height of those IV fluids is worthy of mentioning.

Reposted from 2024 to add this howler:

Those are screencaps from a decent program I watched recently (the name of which I can't recall).  Documented because the medical error is so egregiously bad that even non-medical people in the viewing audience must have cringed.  Does nobody fact-check scripts any more??

See also Incorrect masks used in the movie 'Alien'.

A glimpse of the future of AI-produced movies

Absolutely amazing.  Imagine being a human actor viewing this and wondering what your future holds re 

employment.  Imagine what fake celebrity porn must look like now.  Imagine how unsophisticated viewers can now be duped into believing false realities re their political leaders.  Imagine being able to create one of your own using generative AI...

Addendum:  I'm now seeing a "Video Unavailable" message in place of the video.  I'll see if I can find a workaround for the embed.  In the meantime, you can view it at this Reddit thread.  And if that disappears, try Googling "The AI movie Pi Hard shows Neil deGrasse Tyson teaming up with Sam Bankman-Fried to stop an evil Stephen Hawking from destroying the multiverse by dividing by zero. Bill Gates is a robot and Elon Musk is panicking."

Just found this on YouTube.  Don't know if it will stay up...  I gotta go do yard and garden chores.

The tornado in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

The depiction of the tornado in the 1939 film was intense and remarkably well-executed, even by modern standards.  I found a relevant Instagram post (which I don't know how to embed) that describes the basic technology used.  

The tornado isalso discussed at some length in an article at the Oz Museum.  English majors and other wordsmiths will appreciate this aspect:

“Cyclone” is the word L. Frank Baum chose to describe the Kansas storm in his story, although he clearly meant “tornado.” Shortly after THE WIZARD OF OZ book first appeared in 1900, Professor Willis L. Moore, then Chief of the United States Weather Bureau, wrote Baum’s publishers to urge them to correct the inaccurate usage. He received a response from Frank K. Reilly of The George M. Hill Company, offering that the change would be made in the next edition.  This, however, was never done, and any who purchase a copy of THE WIZARD OF OZ reprinting Baum’s original language will find that “cyclone” remains, again and again – as colloquial and as factually incorrect as ever. (MGM got around the issue in the movie by having Bert Lahr exclaim, in idiomatic fright, “It’s a twister! It’s a twister!” Later on, however, the screenwriters were loyal to Baum, and Judy Garland’s Dorothy explains to Toto, “We must be up inside the cyclone!”)

The article goes on to discuss the various static artistic depictions of the tornado in different publications of The Wizard of Oz, including this one -

- in which the tornado is still present in Munchkinland.  The Oz Museum article is nicely illustrated, but for explication of the movie technique, see the Instagram account.

"The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous."

"The war is not meant to be won.  It is meant to be continuous.  The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor... The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

From the dialogue of the movie 1984.  Via for screencap photo.

Reposted from 2011 because it still has relevance.  And repossted again from 2022 because it is still relevant.

"Attention span" problems viewing movies

Excerpts from an interesting essay in The Atlantic:

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word. Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, told me. “But students will not do it.”

I heard similar observations from 20 film-studies professors around the country. They told me that over the past decade, and particularly since the pandemic, students have struggled to pay attention to feature-length films. Malcolm Turvey, the founding director of Tufts University’s Film and Media Studies Program, officially bans electronics during film screenings. Enforcing the ban is another matter: About half the class ends up looking furtively at their phones...

At Indiana University, where Erpelding worked until 2024, professors could track whether students watched films on the campus’s internal streaming platform. Fewer than 50 percent would even start the movies, he said, and only about 20 percent made it to the end. (Recall that these are students who chose to take a film class.) Even when students stream the entire film, it’s not clear how closely they watch it. Some are surely folding laundry or scrolling Instagram, or both, while the movie plays...

In a multiple-choice question on a recent final exam, Jeff Smith, a film professor at UW Madison, asked what happens at the end of the Truffaut film Jules and Jim. More than half of the class picked one of the wrong options, saying that characters hide from the Nazis (the film takes place during World War I) or get drunk with Ernest Hemingway (who does not appear in the movie).

There's more at the link, of course.  I disagree with the suggestion that the inattentiveness is related to "cellphone addiction" or social media withdrawal anxiety.  Another powerful factor is the need to efficiently make use of one's time.

I am a cinema enthusiast, as evidenced by having two subsections of TYWKIWDBI dedicated to "movies" and "video-movies."  But I watch all my movies and streaming series on recordings rather than live.  I want to have the ability to stop the movie, freeze-frame for details, rewind to view for second or third times, and yes to fast-forward through the boring bits.  IMHO life is too short to do otherwise.

The same applies to sports.  A football game with 1 hour of game clock time may require 3 hours of viewing live on television (or at the stadium).  I can view all the content (including highlight repeats) by fast-forwarding a recording.

"The Third Man" theme played on a zither by Anton Karas

""The Third Man Theme"... is an instrumental written and performed by Anton Karas for the soundtrack to the 1949 film The Third Man. Upon release the theme proved popular, spending eleven weeks at number one on Billboard's United States Best Sellers in Stores chart. Multiple versions have been performed and recorded, selling tens of millions of copies, and its success influenced the release strategy of later film singles.

The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir, directed by Carol Reed. One night after a long day of filming The Third Man on location in Vienna, Reed and cast members Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and Orson Welles had dinner and retired to a wine cellar. In the bistro, which retained the atmosphere of the pre-war days, they heard the zither music of Anton Karas, a 40-year-old musician who was playing there just for the tips. Reed immediately realized that this was the music he wanted for his film..."

Here's the trailer for the movie -

 

"Sinnerman" (Nina Simone)

While watching Hunt for the Wilderpeople a couple nights ago, I heard this song in the soundtrack, and remembered hearing it in The Thomas Crown Affair.  Found more information at Wikipedia:

"Sinner Man" or "Sinnerman" is accepted as an African American traditional spiritual song that has been recorded by a number of performers and has been incorporated in many other of the media and arts. The lyrics describe a sinner attempting to hide from divine justice on Judgement Day. It was recorded in the 1950s by Les Baxter, the Swan Silvertones, the Weavers and others, before Nina Simone recorded an extended version in 1965...

Simone learned the lyrics of this English song in her childhood when it was used at revival meetings by her mother, a Methodist minister, to help people confess their sins. In the early days of her career during the early sixties, when she was heavily involved in the Greenwich Village scene, Simone often used the long piece to end her live performances.

Reposted from 2016 to add the lyrics;

Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All on that day
We got to run to the rock
Please hide me, I run to the rock
Please hide me, run to the rock
Please hide here
All on that day
But the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I can't hide you, the rock cried out
I ain't gonna hide you there
All on that day
I said rock
What's the matter with you rock?
Don't you see I need you, rock?
Good Lord, Lord
All on that day
So I run to the river
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', I run to the sea
It was bleedin', all on that day
So I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day

So I run to the Lord
Please hide me, Lord
Don't you see me prayin'?
Don't you see me down here prayin'?
But the Lord said
Go to the Devil, the Lord said
Go to the Devil
He said go to the Devil
All on that day
So I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', I ran to the Devil
He was waitin', ran to the Devil
He was waitin', all on that day
I cried, power, power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)

Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Oh yeah
Well, I run to the river
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', I run to the sea
It was boilin', all on that day
So I ran to the Lord
I said Lord, hide me
Please hide me
Please help me, all on that day
He said, hide?
Where were you?
When you oughta have been prayin'
I said Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', Lord, Lord
Hear me prayin', all on that day
Sinnerman, you oughta be prayin'
Outghta be prayin', sinnerman
Oughta be prayin', all on that day

Up come power (power, Lord) 

Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
(Power, Lord)
Hold down (power, Lord)
Go down (power, Lord)
Kingdom (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Power (power, Lord)
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na
Na-na-na, na-na-na-na

Woah, ho

Ha-ha-ha-ha
Ha-ha-ha-ha, oh Lord
Nu, nu, nu
No-no-no-no, ma-na-na-na-na, don't you know I need you Lord?
Don't you know that I need you?
Don't you know that I need you?

Oh, Lord
Wait
Oh, Lord
Oh, Lord, Lord

Songwriters: Nina Simone

Sinnerman lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

I couldn't find a good YouTube video of a live performance by her that wasn't mixed with a jumble of unrelated visuals.

Reposted from 2019 to embed a different and more interesting video at the top (the original was a still photo).

A hack that gives you access to the FULL Netflix library

I think everyone knows that when you open Netflix, what you are shown is curated to your interests and viewing history.  So the home page affords you quick access to recent viewings, new releases, similar movies, and so on.  There is a search function for specific titles, but no apparent way to search for all the rom-coms or all the soccer movies.

Netflix has in its deep files about 5,000 movies, and there is a way to access detailed lists of movies by category using a list of codes.  

The codes reveal Netflix's complete organizational system. Instead of broad categories like "Action" or "Comedy," you get hyper-specific genres like "Martial Arts Movies" (code 8985) or "Classic Action & Adventure Films" (code 46576). Some categories contain hundreds of titles, while others might have just a handful of carefully curated selections.

What surprised me most was discovering content that never appeared in my regular browsing. Shows and movies that existed in Netflix's library but were essentially invisible due to the algorithm's assumptions about my preferences. It's like finding a hidden room in your own house.

Here are examples of how the categories are subdivided (links in the image are not clickable):

A complete list of the Netflix codes is here.

Relevant longread.

We should be celebrating the 2nd of July

This Fourth of July, Americans will celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence with picnics, parades and, of course, fireworks. It's a tradition that's been in place for more than 200 years — and for more than 200 years, it's been kind of wrong.

"It is the right day to celebrate the Declaration of Independence," author and historian Ray Raphael tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It is not the right day to celebrate the signing of the declaration or the right day to celebrate independence. The vote for independence was on July 2 — two days before — and the first signing of the declaration ... was not until August 2 — a month later."..

In his book Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, Raphael explores the truth behind the stories of the making of our nation — like how America ended up lighting fireworks on the 4th and not the 2nd.

Raphael says that even the writers of the declaration expected July 2 to be the day that went down in history.

"Adams wrote a letter to his wife, Abigail, on the 3rd of July, the day after they voted for independence, saying the 2nd of July will always be remembered and will be celebrated with parades and illuminations and patriotic speeches," Raphael says. "He described the Fourth of July to the tee, but he called it the 2nd."

America ended up with the 4th because that's the day the Declaration of Independence was sent out to the states to be read. The document was dated July 4, so that's the day they celebrated.

Image from Old Hollywood.

Reposted from 2014 because this is still a "thing you wouldn't know."

Addendum:  I found this info in the National Archives:

The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It was engrossed on parchment and on August 2, 1776, delegates began signing it.

Although the section of the Lee Resolution dealing with independence was not adopted until July 2, Congress appointed on June 10 a committee of five to draft a statement of independence for the colonies. The committee included Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, with the actual writing delegated to Jefferson.

Jefferson drafted the statement between June 11 and 28, submitted drafts to Adams and Franklin who made some changes, and then presented the draft to the Congress following the July 2nd adoption of the independence section of the Lee Resolution. The congressional revision process took all of July 3rd and most of July 4th. Finally, in the afternoon of July 4th, the Declaration was adopted.

Perhaps my previous source was inaccurate?  I presume Adams was celebrating the addition of the Lee Resolution, which allowed completion of the declaration.

"My Old Ass"

Suppose you could meet and talk with your teenage self - the self that is finishing high school, leaving home and starting a new life.  Suppose you want to give your younger self advice that might improve your (joint) lives.  You can't tell your young self to invest all your money with Warren Buffett because that might change your life too much, and your adult life is o.k. so you don't want to take a chance on messing it up with some big intervention.  But maybe you could give your younger self some advice regarding a relationship.  Perhaps that would make your joint lives better... but perhaps not.

I thought My Old Ass was a real gem.  The premise of meeting your younger self has been done in books and movies before, but I did enjoy this take on it.  The mechanism of the meeting isn't sci-fi but rather just your basic magical realism; the meeting and conversations happen and you don't need to know or understand why - you just accept it.  In terms of genre I would agree with the publicity calling it a coming-of-age movie, but it blends in a touch of rom-com - a category I turn to in times of stress.

The acting is spot on.  This is the first movie role ever for the lead actress, Maisy Stella; she won multiple awards for her performance.  The older self, the parents, the siblings, the boyfriend are all equally well executed.  But my real award goes to the scriptwriters for crafting a series of dialogues that sound true to real life.

An additional plus is that the movie was filmed in the lake district of Ontario north of Toronto, where the landscape features look ever so much like northern Minnesota.  Excellent.  

Addendum: Note to my future self.  The storyline skillfully addresses my favorite quotation from Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend (which I can't cite here because it might serve as a spoiler for those who haven't yet seen the movie).

Harry Potter reimagined as a redneck using AI

One can't help but be amazed by the capabilities of modern artificial intelligence in creating photorealistic humans and landscapes.  See also these examples based on Star Wars and Breaking Bad. If these videos are representative of what is going on with pop culture, imagine the potential for politics and pornography.

Embed and the two links via Neatorama.

Seeking advice on "Orphan Black"

I've just finished watching season 1 of the 2013 Orphan Black "sci-fi thriller" series, and I enjoyed it.  The concept was somewhat novel, but mostly I was impressed by the multiple-award-winning acting skills of Tatiana Maslany, who portrays six (?) clones and imparts to each one a separate character.

My question for the group is whether I should dive into four more seasons of episodes.  My experience with other long-running series is that they tend to become derivative and predictable.  Mad Men was best in its first couple seasons IMHO; same for House of Cards and Westworld.

I'll start season 2 when the DVDs arrive from the library.  Will I be disappointed?

Addendum:  Done with season 2 and delighted with all the surprises and plot twists.  Well written and superbly acted.  Starting season 3.  Season 3 was excellent; starting to really love Helena.  Season 4 got a bit dark, but was still outstanding.  Starting season 5 tomorrow.

Reconsidering Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I have not previously blogged the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but decided to do so today after I encountered lengthly reviews of it at both The Guardian and The New York Times.

For the past 18 years I've been keeping a log of movies seen with my personal ratings of them.  In 2007 I rated Eternal Sunshine 2+, indicating a general dissatisfaction.  In retrospect I suppose I was confused at that time as to whether this was perhaps a time-travel alternate reality story, and I found the humor surrounding the lab technicians distracting.  But in 2021 on a rewatch after some reading about it, I rated it 4+ (top rating, equivalent to "worth a rewatch"), understanding that this was all "real time" and that the subplots with the techs was relevant to the storyline.

So this year I did the rewatch, and it's still a 4+ movie for me.  Here are some blurbs from today's reviews:

The screenwriter Charlie Kaufman — who was fresh off the critical double-hitters “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation” — wrote Clementine and Joel’s love affair as a claustrophobic, unspooling maze that earned the movie an Oscar for best screenplay. Kirsten Dunst and Mark Ruffalo were knocking on stardom’s door when they gave delightful supporting performances as haphazard assistants of the memory-erasing company Lacuna Inc.

Along the way, Joel realizes he’d rather have all of Clementine, heartbreak included, than none of her. He desperately tries to salvage the memories as they’re deleted, trapping himself in a maze of his own psyche. The film spins out of control, traversing realities and timelines, until we are left with a teary-eyed Clementine and Joel, who acknowledge the futility of their relationship. “I’ll get bored with you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me,” asserts Clementine. “OK,” Joel says with a smirk and then agrees to try again, despite knowing the inevitable disaster of their attraction.

“I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you,” Joel says pleadingly to Clementine to get her to stay. “But you will,” she roars knowingly.

One of the reasons why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, now 20 years old, ranks among the best love stories of the 21st century is that it makes the unique argument that failure is an essential, precious part of romantic experience. It’s only human to want that pain to go away, but the film suggests that literally making it so would be a wish on a monkey’s paw, offering some short-term relief, perhaps, but with unanticipated long-term consequences.

Eternal Sunshine begins at the end, creating a structural loop that Kaufman pointedly opts not to close completely. On his way to work on a cold February morning, Joel Barish, played by dramatically toned down Jim Carrey, impulsively decides to take a commuter train to Montauk and winds up hitting it off with a vivacious stranger, Clementine (Kate Winslet), he meets on the platform. What neither of them realize is that not only have they met before, but they had a long-term relationship that ended in a painful breakup. They just don’t remember anything about it, at least nothing beyond a few tremors of deja vu.

"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti."

The title is Hannibal Lecter's famous line from Silence of the Lambs.  I learned at the movies subreddit that there is a subtle implication:

Lecter could be treated with drugs called monoamine oxidase inhibitors - MAOIs. As a psychiatrist, Lecter knows this.

The three things you can't eat with MAOIs? Liver, beans, wine.

Lecter is a) cracking a joke for his own amusement, and b) saying he's not taking his meds.

Reposted from 2015 because I ran across this post while browsing the back entries in the movies subcategory of the blog. 

Another type of chess "problem"

Broadcast media (movies, television) have persistent difficulties incorporating chess into their storylines without introducing errors:

“There are a ton of chess mistakes in TV and in film,” says Mike Klein, a writer and videographer for Chess.com. While different experts cite different error ratios, from “20 percent” to “much more often than not,” all agree: Hollywood is terrible at chess, even though they really don’t have to be. “There are so many [errors], it’s hard to keep track,” says Grandmaster Ilja Zaragatski, of chess24. “And there are constantly [new ones] coming out.”

Chess errors come in a few different flavors, these experts say. The most common is what we’ll call the Bad Setup. When you set up a chessboard, you’re supposed to orient it so that the square nearest to each player’s right side is light-colored. (There’s even a mnemonic for this—“right is light.”) Next, when you array the pieces, the white queen goes on white, and the black queen goes on black. “When I teach six-year-old girls, I say ‘the queen’s shoes have to match her dress!’” says Klein.

Six-year-olds may get this, but filmmakers often do not. Along with The Seventh Seal, movies that suffer from Bad Setups include Blade Runner, Austin Powers, From Russia with Love, The Shawshank Redemption, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Shaft and What’s New Pussycat may not have much in common, but they do both feature backwards chessboards.

Further discussion (re dramatic checkmates and tipped-over kings) at Atlas Obscura via Neatorama.

Reposted from 2017 because I ran across it while browsing the back entries in the movies subcategory of the blog.

Revisiting the second season of Fargo

I was so impressed by this recent fifth season of Fargo that I decided to binge-watch season 2, which was previously my favorite.  I spent three delightful evenings enjoying the remarkable characters, the various twists and turns of the plot, and literally laughing-out-loud at some points.  Later this year I may redo 1&3, but not 4.

An ode to Dot (Dorothy)

What an absolutely superb character the Fargo team created for this fifth season.  And an absolutely faultless portrayal by Juno Temple.