Honey Don't!

 

Director Ethan Coen

Ethan Coen and spouse Tricia Cooke

HONEY DON’T!                   C                                                                                              USA  Great Britain  (89 mi)  2025  ‘Scope  d: Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke (uncredited)

What the world needs now is more lesbian-based private eye thrillers, as the opening sequence is right out of the exploitation evil pleasures of Russ Meyer and the lurid Tura Satana in FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! (1965), where busty working-class women exact revenge with bats and knives, wreaking havoc with their ability to titillate while also providing loads of subversive fun.  Like that film, this should be so much more of a blast than it is, coming from a filmmaker with such an established reputation, where this is the second installment of Ethan Coen and his openly queer wife Tricia Cooke’s planned lesbian B-movie trilogy, with the conclusive third already entitled GO, BEAVERS!, all written together while she edits the films, following the curious yet less than scintillating Drive-Away Dolls (2024), though not as autobiographical, less personal, and not as much trashy fun.  This feels even more laid back and casual, yet much darker in tone with excessively cruel violence, more of a reimagining of the hardboiled detective genre through a lesbian lens, becoming a deliberately sunny, escapist neo-noir thriller.  If Drive-Away Dolls was the lesbian answer to the road trip, this injects the lesbian subculture to the traditionally male detective genre, skewering the hypocrisy of Christian megachurches and the nefarious activities in small town America, yet it already feels out of time, like we’ve somehow missed out on what drew this couple into making this picture, as the fun is already gone.  It shouldn’t be that contentiously controversial, as after all, the very first cinematic kiss was between two women, 1882 - The Kiss - Eadweard Muybridge YouTube (34 seconds).  In the opening credits, the names are etched into faded signs on dilapidated buildings and commercial establishments, where peeling paint hints at faded dreams, inspired apparently by John Huston’s FAT CITY (1972).  While there’s still some subversive fun to be had, most of it falls flat, leaving very little excitement about the final installment.  Premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in a midnight screening, where it was largely panned, you wonder why a film like this would even get an invite, as there’s little to actually like about this film.  Nonetheless, it has the Coen name, makers of some of the best independent films produced in America since the 1980’s, but the infamous brothers broke up as a collaborating team in 2018 and have been on their own ever since, making their own separate films, though expected to reunite at some point in the future with an anticipated horror film.  It would be hard to imagine one of the Dardennes brothers making a film on their own, as these are two of the best brothers duo in cinema history, hugely influential, even going as far back as the Lumière Brothers.  While actually shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the film is set in the Central Valley of Bakersfield, California, of all places, a farm town with plenty of wide open spaces, not exactly known for their cultural notoriety, but the desert is never far away, and everyone here seems to be living on the edge of oblivion and total obscurity.  The opening says it all, easily the best sequence in the entire film, never living up to what it promises, establishing the tone for a darkly humorous exploitation movie as a badass beautiful woman (Lera Abova) does her best Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction imitation in shades, pulling up to the site of a car crash in her Vespa scooter wearing a leopard-print outfit with an exposed bra, as she walks down a steep slope to an upside down car with a dead woman inside, prying the distinctly recognizable ring off her finger before she wanders off to a nearby stream to bathe naked.  Cut to a distinctive copycat cover version of the hugely popular Eric Burdon and the Animals hit song from 1965, We Gotta Get Out of This Place YouTube (3:15).  Now that’s an opening statement.    

Unfortunately, that mysterious woman who defiantly commands the screen is barely seen again, as it’s not really about her.  It’s about the dead girl lying at the bottom of a gulch.  Arriving on the scene to investigate is the friendly town cop, homicide detective Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day), who greets the arrival of small-town private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Margaret Qualley) with a smile, both wondering what the other is doing there, as it’s supposedly an accident, but they’re investigating it as a homicide.  Qualley, who starred in the Claire Denis film Stars at Noon (2022) and the earlier installment of Drive-Away Dolls, may be the recurring figure throughout the trilogy, providing a female version of a detached 1940’s film noir detective like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe updated to the modern day era.  A chic dresser in heels, always making quick witted, wise ass remarks (when asked if she drinks, she replies, “Heavily.  It’s a point of pride.”), she exudes a sexy swagger with what sounds like a Texas accent, a woman you don’t want to mess with, as she can dish it out with the best of them, easily having her way with the bad boys who get a tad aggressive, while picking up loose and available women in bars afterwards.  Driving a vintage turquoise 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454 Convertible 4-Speed, just like guys in earlier 50’s movies, her car makes a statement, while still using an old-school rolodex for contact information instead of some new-age gadgetry, she remains emotionally guarded, yet possesses a mysterious allure.  Marty has a soft spot for her and attempts a friendly date, but she just laughs off the offer, reminding him “I like women.”  Befuddled by the thought that could even be possible, refusing the accept the obvious, Marty defies the odds and keeps trying, as it is a small town after all, but she keeps telling him the same thing, becoming a running gag throughout the picture.  Without sharing what drew her to the scene of the crime, the dead driver is Mia Novotny, a prospective client who called Honey earlier that same day, but she was killed before they could meet, where the suspicious circumstances surrounding her death expose a wider web of corruption.  Perhaps the unseemliest aspect of the film is its depiction of a corrupt and sleazy church that is basically a front for its behind-the-scenes drug trafficking operations.  Mia was a member of the Four-Way Temple led by the lecherous Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), who is a real sleazeball (Captain America, no less), a despicable but darkly humorous pastor preaching “active submission,” where we see raunchy sex scenes in the Reverend’s private chambers, taking full advantage of young women members of his flock, often with multiple partners, perhaps an ironic reference to the name of the church, which he runs like a cult, where it’s all about the supreme leader in charge.  The nastiness of how they conduct their business appears to be shockingly connected to Mia’s death, as the ring pulled off her finger had the insignia of the church, and we see how easily Devlin is willing to eliminate anyone who might be deemed a threat to his operations.  This is where the film really bogs down in over-predictability, as they are such an easy target, accumulating more and more corpses without a hint of suspense or tension, using dimwitted stereotypes that only drag this film down.  When Honey’s niece Corinne (Talia Ryder from Eliza Hittman’s painfully underseen 2020 Top Ten List #5 Never Rarely Sometimes Always) returns home battered and bruised, she turns to Honey, fearing her overly judgmental mother would only blame her for even going out with such an abusive local redneck, so Honey pays him a call in his trailer, which turns into an ugly and brutally violent affair, as she turns his aggression back on him, having the last word, even planting a rather humorous bumper sticker over his MAGA license plate that reads “I have a vagina and I vote,” one of the few moments that got a few snickers from the audience. 

In the course of her investigation, Honey runs into MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza), a policewoman who works in the evidence room, quickly meeting her at a bar frequented by police afterwards, discovering she’s a like-minded butch queer woman, where their flirtatiousness is one for the ages, with MG brazenly fingering her in public, commenting, “I love first date stuff.”  Taking their business back to Honey’s place, the lesbian sex is relatively tame, where the mildly amusing kicker is the following morning Honey is seen casually washing an array of sex toys in her kitchen sink with the look of a domestic housewife.  That’s something we don’t typically see.  There’s so little sex in movies today, what little we do see is perhaps a reflection of the regressively backwards culture that is becoming more puritanical, so even a glimpse is a throwback to more liberal times when sex was commonplace.  MG is friendly enough, but hides a dark and mysterious side, like many of the characters in this film.  Honey questions Devlin, as murder and criminal activity seems to lead to his door, quickly establishing a clever repartee, as Devlin acknowledges, “You’re fascinating,” with Honey quipping, “And you haven’t even seen the riddle tattooed on my ass.”  He predictably defends using his position to prey on vulnerable young women, suggesting we’re all a little lost in need of some spiritual guidance, and unlike other churches that only deal with saving souls, his guidance encompasses the total package.  When Corrine goes missing, Honey returns to the church, only to find it locked, but she hears a gunshot inside, with a woman on a scooter seen fleeing from the scene.  That’s the last we see of the crooked pastor, who apparently got his comeuppance by being too big for his britches.  Sex and violence are intertwined in this movie, with a series of strange deaths tied to this mysterious church, but the police are completely baffled and fail to make the connection, as Marty remains unconvinced there is a reason to search the Temple.  Audiences have a behind-the-scenes window into their criminal and sexual depravity, but the question is where does it all lead?  The mystery woman appears to have ended any speculation on where this is heading.  Having no other leads, Honey visits MG at her home, and what appears to be innocent banter suddenly turns ugly, with MG growing increasingly paranoid and unstable, turning into a ferocious, knockdown battle between two women, arguably the catfight men seem to fantasize about, as we suddenly learn the grotesque truth behind her repressive family secrets, where MG has no intention of letting Honey just walk out of there.  But Honey is no patsy, capable of getting down and dirty, which she needs to do in order to survive.  In the end, we learn the mystery woman on a scooter is named Chėre, speaks with a French accent, where it might be better to construct an entire film around her character.  Stay tuned.  It’s all a little peculiar, as outside of Honey, who is uniquely compelling, none of the other characters have any depth or are even remotely developed, remaining cardboard caricatures, which makes it difficult to relate with this movie, as it feels so lazily written and realized.  A better version of what this film may have been attempting to accomplish is Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding (2024), which similarly flaunts its comic B-movie neo-noir mentality from a lesbian perspective, and before that was the Wachowski’s Bound (1996).  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the generic female-centric soundtrack, sounding amateurish rather than ironic, including a few songs sung by Qualley, with the titular song, a 1956 Carl Perkins rockabilly classic, which probably should have been the movie theme song, only heard over the end credits, and even then it’s an inept cover version compared to the original.  While they may not have had money for musical rights, these are some really poor choices.  Overall, it’s a lame experience, with no real standout jokes or scenes, except the opening sequence, where the normally reliable Coen humor just falls flat, making this a real slog to sit through.  Films feel more generic nowadays, and this may be a classic example, as a generally reliable creative team seems to have fumbled the ball and simply run out of ideas and inspiration.  There’s a lackadaisical emptiness here that feels like a bad parody gone wrong, making it hard to imagine there will be another.  

Materialists

 

Writer/director Celine Song

director on the set with Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans

director with Dakota Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MATERIALISTS       C+                                                                                                           USA  Finland  (117 mi)  2025  d: Celine Song

Marriage is a business deal and it always has been.                                                                    —Lucy (Dakota Johnson)

From the maker of the highly celebrated Past Lives (2023), a smaller, indie-styled film that brought intelligence and a melancholic intimacy to the immigrant experience, yet this is a complete turnaround from that, where you wonder what this director had in mind, opting for a lightweight, mainstream romance comedy that veers from sheer fantasy to darker realities, never really distinguishing itself in any way, with no real likeable characters except a rather unremarkable down-and-out actor whose career is stalled, with the world seemingly passing him by, yet he’s at least identifiable.  The way the film plays out, it’s his very ordinariness that stands out, offering a distinctive appeal that no other character has, as he’s relatable and more openly human.  The other characters, not so much, feeling like they exist in some fantasy world, like an extension of the artificiality of Greta Gerwig’s BARBIE (2023), where love is callously viewed as a business transaction.  The film invests a lot of energy developing that theme, luring us into a world where money makes everything better, where the luxuries of life are equated with success and the American Dream, making the subjects feel like they are finally worthy of love, which is all a rather pretentiously ridiculous entry into the world of romance, like it’s part of a capitalist realization, holding up a mirror to just how shallow we are as a society, with the explosion of social media becoming increasingly calculating and crudely insensitive, extending a social class prejudice that without money love doesn’t exist.  This, of course, only exists in the world of movies, which is notoriously described as a dream machine.  So right from the outset it’s hard to get behind this movie, which isn’t that different from Sean Baker’s Academy Award-winning Anora (2024), which also equated love with money and success.  Once money is removed from the situation, love dies like a house of cards, sending characters into a tailspin of emotional turmoil.  So apparently this is the current fascination of Hollywood, (The Rise of the Anti-Cinderella Story).  What message this conveys about real life is hard to measure, as these feel like exaggerated circumstances that bear no resemblance to the lives we are actually living, unlike the satirical comedies of Roy Andersson, for instance, whose SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000) and YOU, THE LIVING (2007) bring a Kafkaesque absurdity to the forefront of the living, accentuating the absurd and comical elements of simple everyday situations.  But that’s not what this is, as it feels wrapped in a consumerist paradise on display, where monetary value is equated with human value, which is ethically problematic.  But in this case, the title says it all, as it means what it says.  As a playwright, Song has an ear for dialogue, but the relatively bland characters continually utter what sounds like scripted dialogue that feels superficially one-dimensional, where you wonder what really drew the filmmaker to this insipid material, though one should never underestimate the importance of romance.  In a different era any film posing the question whether to marry for love or for money would have been relegated to a Chick flick, a notoriously derogatory term, played for a healthy mix of laughs and sex appeal in Howard Hawks’ star-driven cinematic spectacle of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), or any Judy Holliday movie from the same time period.  While there are some interesting musical choices, like Baby Rose singing a soulful classic at a wedding that has been covered by many jazz and blues artists since the 50’s, That's All YouTube (3:26), Marc Webb’s much more inventive and better acted (500) Days of Summer (2009) blows this out of the water.  Watching people fall in love is a lost art in contemporary movies, as they began to disappear from theaters as soon as people started calling them rom-coms, (Where Have Rom-Coms Gone? (And Our Nostalgic ...), now lost in the rush to produce huge blockbusters, often premiering on streaming platforms. 

Opening in a strange prelude sequence that makes us feel that we’re in another movie, it’s a story of first love in an era of cavemen during the Stone Age, something of a stretch in conceiving an Adam and Eve scenario of the first humans to fall in love, but we’re quickly rushed back into the present as we’re introduced to Lucy (Dakota Johnson, daughter of actor Don Johnson and actress Melanie Griffith), an extremely successful matchmaker for a high-end dating service whose latest couples pairing success is her 9th marriage, receiving applause and adulation from her coworkers at Adore Matchmaking, a Manhattan-based company that strives to bring couples together, suggesting they will find the right partner – for a price.  Dating apps, or in this case matchmaking services, lead to people buying and trading themselves like merchandise, ostensibly designed to make things easier, but the reality is much darker and more complicated.  Shot on 35mm by Shabier Kirchner, who also shot her earlier film, this bears some resemblance to Elizabeth Lo’s Chinese documentary Mistress Dispeller (2024), as the director draws from personal experience working for 6 months as a professional matchmaker a decade ago for exclusively affluent people in order to fund her writing career, but this feels more fantasy based, as everything revolves around money, suggesting love can be bought and customized, with clients making ridiculously precise, superficial specifications of exactly what they are looking for, like picking out a house or a piece of furniture.  At the wedding of her latest success story, she repeats the mantra, “Who our partner is determines our whole life,” before meeting the brother of the groom, Harry (Pedro Pascal), an extravagantly wealthy financial capitalist who represents the pinnacle of success, the ultimate “catch,” described in the business as a unicorn, supposedly everything any woman could dream of, intelligent, tall, handsome, and filthy rich, checking all the boxes, as they say.  While he overhears her sales pitch while passing out business cards, he expresses a genuine interest in meeting her, but she defers, suggesting he pursue romantic prospects through Adore, hoping he will find the perfect match.  While they are flirting, however, in something of a comical surprise, Lucy runs into her more disheveled ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), working as a server at the wedding, bringing her drink of choice, where it’s clear they have a history together.  A struggling actor, he’s looking for extra income, as we quickly learn that their relationship fizzled due to money concerns when both were struggling actors, a dream he has continued to pursue, though he still doesn’t have a manager, won’t take commercial jobs, yet is upset with the way his life has turned out.   In stark contrast is another one of Lucy’s long-time clients, Sophie (Zoë Winters), who has repeatedly struck out in the dating game, becoming a seemingly hopeless case, with Adore, supposedly experts in achieving that perfect match, discovering it’s very difficult to find the man of her dreams, privately asserting “There’s no place in the market for her.”  When Lucy sets her up with that perfect date, he ends up sexually assaulting her in what amounts to date rape, a disastrous turn of events that precipitates a lawsuit against the company, where it’s clear these are lives that are being toyed with.  Despite the background checks and aligning all the perfect algorithms, occasionally a dark and sinister character slips through, inflicting enormous damage, as Sophie’s self-esteem plummets, leaving her emotionally and psychologically devastated, feeling permanently scarred, yet the company doesn’t like to talk about failures, as it’s all about conveying success to a public that needs to believe in dreams.  What’s clear at the outset is how the company views relationships as assets and liabilities, suggesting dating is a calculated risk, like a financial investment, so what this film really lacks is the personal intimacy created in Song’s earlier film.  

With that in mind, Lucy starts dating Harry on her own, where, exactly like Anora, she’s quickly won over by the massive scale of his financial success, living in a $12 million dollar Tribeca penthouse while leading an immensely privileged lifestyle, showing impeccable taste, regularly taking her to all the upscale expensive restaurants that most people can only afford on special occasions, becoming a whirlwind affair of glamor and indulgence, just like the man of her dreams.  While everything points to that perfect Prince Charming Hollywood scenario playing out before our eyes, the director suddenly subverts those expectations, pulling the rug out from under us and chooses to go in a different direction, with the film getting messier and more complicated, as it turns out she doesn’t really love her perfect match, while he himself may be incapable of love, refusing to allow himself to be exposed to that degree of emotional vulnerability.  It’s all about success, pressing the right buttons, making all the right decisions to maintain his quality of life, which he values more than anything else, even her.  While this may come as something as a surprise, the real surprise was seeing walkouts when viewers were disappointed to discover this was not a happily-ever-after storybook ending, suggesting viewer expectation plays a large role in this film, as it doesn’t follow the script, veering off on an unexpected tangent, as she breaks up with Harry, only to find herself evaluating her own life, spending more time with John, who lives that typical working class life where daily frustrations play into what he’s constantly forced to deal with, yet he’s maintained a certain trust with Lucy even after their breakup, never actually falling out of love with her, offering a sympathetic ear whenever she needs it.  As fate would have it, she sublets her apartment for a week as she was planning to be whisked off to Iceland with Harry before they amicably broke things off, leaving her stranded, without a place to stay, but John’s multiple roommates live in apartment squalor, so that’s not really an option, instead they head on an upstate road excursion together in his beat-up Volvo, where they spontaneously crash a wedding staged at an outdoor countryside barn, suddenly taking themselves more seriously, finally asking those existential questions, like are they really back together again.  In the end, not sure it actually matters, as the soulless characters display no actual chemistry onscreen and are simply not compelling enough for us to care, where it all seems to play out in a land of make believe, where the materialistic view of life is just as much of a scam as the Prince Charming view of romance, with marriage viewed as a means to climb the social ladder, exactly as it was back in the days of Jane Austen novels.  On the day before the film release, the director provided a “movie syllabus” list of films that influenced the making of the film, many of which go back to the 80’s and 90’s, most likely films the director grew up watching, Materialists movie syllabus via Celine - A24 - X, but this feels more like the escapist television series Sex and the City than any of those referenced films, which conspicuously leaves out Susan Sandler’s play turned into her own film adaptation in Joan Micklin Silver’s CROSSING DELANCEY (1988), where it would be easy to imagine Kate Hudson, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, or Rachel McAdams inhabiting this role with similar results, though it does attempt to get under the surface.  Arguably the best scene is the closing credits sequence, a long, well-choreographed final shot that exudes personality and diversity, topped off by a wonderfully quirky John Prine song, originally written for Billy Bob Thornton’s DADDY AND THEM (2001), but featuring a superb rendition with Iris DeMent, John Prine and Iris DeMent - In Spite of Ourselves (Live From ... YouTube (5:04).