Gods, Goddesses & Humans

Here’s an amusing headline from nypost.com: “Norwegian climber first to test positive for COVID on Mount Everest.” Does that qualify him for the Guinness Book of Records?… Here’s a sarcastic one: “Why don’t we let kids knife fight like the good old days?”

Par for the social media course, headline from newsmax.com: “Twitter Banned Trump but Takes No Action Against LeBron James Tweet.”

Friday night’s movie fix, courtesy of Netflix by mail, was odd, offbeat, quirky, puzzling. Kajillionaire (2020) stars Evan Rachel Wood as a dour, repressed 26-year-old under the thumb of low-level grifter parents played by Richard Jenkins and Debra Winger. I did not recognize the latter, a former superstar. It seems the only thing those two characters love is getting over on people. Things change when they welcome a young woman into the fold, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who injects much needed life into the proceedings. Will the daughter break free? Much of the humor is dry, which is ironic because the family’s abode suffers bubbly leaks from the business next door. Although the performances are solid, the narrative did not capture me. This was Miranda July’s third full length feature. Her other seven credits are shorts. She received much praise, including awards at Cannes, for a previous work, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005). Kajillionaire brought in only $1.2 million worldwide at the box office. The title refers to a remark made by the father. 9000+ users at IMDb have rated it, forging to a consensus of 6.5 on a scale of ten. I’ll go with five. It’s appeal tilts heavily toward those who appreciate work far out of the mainstream. There is no violence. Profanity is not overdone. The only aspect that may be offensive to some is a female liplock. Here are Randolph and Wood in character:

It was a perfect day for selling stuff curbside. My thanks to the kind folks who combined to buy six books in Russian, three of them translations of Nora Roberts; and to the woman who purchased five YA novels; and to the young man who jumped on Dictionary of Gods And Goddesses by Michael Jordan (not the basketball god).

My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE

FB: https://www.facebook.com/Vic-Fortezza-Author-118397641564801/?fref=ts

Read Vic’s Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza