I woke up, had an apple, and watched other people have sex - or, in the case of "Good D***," not have it. This is a Sundance movie like crazy. Video store clerk (Jason Ritter) stalks weird antisocial chick (Marianna Palka) who comes in to rent porn. She has some severe intimacy issues, and the object of the movie - it's a comedy - is for the sexually dysfunctional, psychologically damaged woman to succumb to the weirdo who won't leave her alone.
Palka wrote the movie and directed it (as an actor, she does wonderful things with her sad eyes; so does Ritter, who is best here when exasperated), and she supposes some new ideas about the heterosexual power dynamic (one role-playing scene on her kitchen table is great). But the movie is too conventionally cute to be daring. At some point, an old man walks into the video store and tells Ritter and his co-workers to go fall in love. Sweet, but forced.
Still, it was better that the second-hand sex I had for breakfast. The occasion was "A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy," Dennis Dortch's episode foray into the bedrooms of black men and women. We see different couples doing it, and how the particulars of intercourse slightly undo them. The movie's a little bit misogynistic, a little bit banal. But Dortch, who shot the movie on video, has some visual style. One chapter is like something the Dardennes might do if they wanted to make a sex picture (it's a big might, but still). He also has good taste in quiet-storm slow jams (Teena Marie is on the soundtrack). Otherwise, everything the movie tells us either Alexander O'Neal and Cherrelle have already dueted about or R. Kelly has already shown us. Part of "A Good Day" is "Trapped in the Closet," minus the lascivious brilliance.
