Synopsis
Robert was madly in love with Mary. Mary was madly in love with him. Under the circumstances they did the only thing they could do... they broke up.
A film editor breaks up with his girlfriend, unsure if he is in love.
1981 Directed by Albert Brooks
A film editor breaks up with his girlfriend, unsure if he is in love.
Wanted to re-watch this wonderful film. Hasn't lost any of its charm. Great film. Bought it in HD on iTunes... although i hear the Indicator Blu-ray has great extras.
Noticed that Frederick Elmes did camera operation. You can tell there is a master behind the camera moves... they are tight and precise.
"you've heard of a no-win situation, haven't you? no? really, no? you've never heard of one? vietnam? this? i'm telling you they're around. i think we're in one of them."
94/100
Albert Brooks as an artist burrows so far into scenarios of neurosis that it goes beyond a personal feel and instead takes on a darker, universal image. Robert is a jealous, unstable individual in spite of his delusions of understanding, but he's engrossing and relatable nonetheless. We'd all be lying, or at least, *I'd* be lying, if we said we didn't identify in any way with this man. He is an exaggerated amalgamation of our fears, insecurities, and anxieties, but there's a great deal of truth in his life and in his relationship, and Modern Romance glides through a concentrated section of honest emotional weight while still making you laugh. Comedy and heartbreak go hand in hand, with sly…
90/100
[originally written on my blog]
Switch the Quaaludes to soju and have Robert pursue a different-but-similar woman in the second half and this could be a Hong Sang-soo picture, though its depiction of masculine anxiety is much more overtly comedic. It also uncannily prefigures the Onion's classic story "Romantic-Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested," except that Brooks understands how sheer relentlessness can in fact create a folie à deux that ensnares otherwise sensible women; the movie's greatest triumph is the sheer horror inspired by what would constitute a traditional, clichéd happy ending in a Hollywood romcom. (I do wish he'd omitted the closing title crawl, which is funny enough but detracts from the perverse power of that final "romantic"…
Watched in honor of Bob Einstein, the comedic actor who just passed away - he appears in a memorable scene with his brother Albert (who changed his last name to Brooks for obvious reasons!) Brooks co-wrote the film, and stars as a paranoid man who breaks up with his girlfriend... only to decide to get back together with her the following day. While his actions at times are a little stalkerish, watching this movie made me realize how much I miss these mid-budget comedies - with their simple focus on good writing and interesting characters.
I miss taking a hallucinogenic and saying 1-2 coherent things about Beethoven. Bruno Kirby's lil Christmas sweater and light wash jeans combo </3
so dark and so true, even if Albert Brooks was practically indistinguishable from Steve Guttenberg at that point. but wooooof to those closing title cards, which kiss things off with a cutesy patness that totally deflates the bitter taste of the film's sharp left turn of an ending.
Ten postmodern takeaways from Modern Romance:
1. This film would make a great double feature with Jon Favreau's Swingers.
2. Both films, Swingers & Modern Romance, use answering machines to comedic gold. This film really maximizes the motif of phones to perfection. Long-distance calls, phone booths, and even calling cards make a great cameo. But Swingers ends with perhaps the greatest answering machine message of all time.
3. I almost bought that Albert Brooks's Robert could have courted Kathryn Harrold's Mary until he took of his shirt and revealed the mounds of gorilla-hair on his shoulders, chest, and torso.
4. The athletic-gear shopping scene was too over-the-top. It was funny at first, with the customer sales rep talking him out of…
[100]
A perfect movie. Not because it’s incomparably epic or formally ravishing or even devoid of any perceptible flaws, but for precisely the opposite reason(s): It’s a film outlined entirely by its blemished skin, modest composure, and dramatic intimacy; comely and humble in a way that skirts intimidation and pretention right from the opening diner sequence, immediately causing me to put my guard down and settle into its cozy groove with calibrated expectations, prepared to laugh occasionally, sigh once or twice, and remember it fondly as it wanes in the rearview mirror of my memory. Little did I realize, at the time, that Brooks (and the film) were lulling me into this false sense of predictably safe, rom-com pseudo-security, and…
The truly amazing thing about Albert Brooks's "Modern Romance" is how subtle its depths truly are. At one point, Mary (Kathryn Harrold) offhandedly wonders aloud to Robert (Brooks) whether his conception of romance is based more on movie fantasy than reality—but this rhetorical observation doesn't really resonate until, later on in the film, we see Robert's clingy obsessiveness pitted against Mary's careerist leanings first at that business dinner he interrupts, then in the cabin-in-the-woods finale. Maybe it's not so much that Robert lives in a fantasy world, but that his over-idealized conception of romance simply can't help but seem almost quaint in modern society. But, of course, Brooks's comic intelligence is too sharp to settle for such facile nostalgia; he's…