Nights and Weekends (2008)

That was an excellent one.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

If I could have one relationship with a woman in my life be akin to the one Joe Swanberg's character possesses with Greta Gerwig's in Nights and Weekends, I'd die with a large sense of accomplishment. This relationship, rather romantic or very personal, is the kind everyone should experience one in their life, especially with someone of the opposite sex. The relationship with someone not related to you, whom you could talk openly with, share secrets, and feel downright in-place when you talk to them. That feeling of connection may have ironically been dwindled down to a stunning rarity with the popularity of smartphones and the internet, but its significance remains imperative to ones' life and well-being.Nights and Weekends - Joe Swanberg's fourth directorial effort and Greta Gerwig's first - is, in short, a small masterpiece; a satisfying, deeply personal mumblecore movie that exercises its right to be both meaningful and significant in the world of relationships and long-distance dating because of its realistic portrayal of characters in that current situation. It centers around the lives of James and Mattie (Swanberg and Gerwig, respectively), a couple who has desperately tried to make their relationship work despite their long-distances from each other. He lives in Chicago, while she lives in New York.The first half of the picture is devoted to them hanging out in James' town of Chicago, hanging around the city, but mostly engaging conversations during cuddle-time. These scenes allow for a wonderful, full-flesh intimacy session to take place amongst the characters. These are the kind of conversations I live for, in film and in real life. The honesty, poignancy, and often realism that comes out in these sessions will likely resonate with married couples, particularly those who have had to go the extra mile to make it work, whether it be locational, racial, or ideological boundaries.The second half takes place in Mattie's town of New York City, one year later. Production of the film was also halted for a year to give the actors the feeling of jumping into the characters one year later; a wise directorial move if you ask me. This is where we, and the characters, begin to question the viability of their relationship. They're not really meeting new people, or attempting to cheat on one another. They are just exhausted at their efforts of trying to make things work and perhaps it's time to shift from being in a committed relationship to being friends; the kind of people who talk about their relationships and are not in one together.But how do you go about doing that when you've been in a relationship for so long? How do you realistically say 'enough is enough' and you want to experiment with other priorities? When James and Mattie are awkwardly taking pictures at a photography place - perhaps out of predictable relationship convention as they both seem equally unmoved about the process - you can see they just don't seem to care how they look or behave around one another. It's a soul-crushing scene that makes the warmest heart turn cold.Joe Swanberg has made and been involved with almost twenty films over the course of seven years. Because of his stunning, prolific filmmaking behavior, you wouldn't think he allows himself much time to mature, look over what he did well and what he tripped up on in his previous films. However, Swanberg is one of the youngest, most mature directors I've yet to see in film. His sense of awareness on human cultures, as far as dating, relationships, and communications go are mostly accurate and believable. The ways he depicts online conversation and sex are rooted in believability and awkwardness, kind of like they are in real life. Of course he will make missteps in his career; it comes with the territory of being prolific and not going long-periods of time putting the camera down. At this point, especially after Nights and Weekends, I don't want Swanberg to break; his touching, naturalistic look on society and relationships through the lens of independent filmmaking is something we need in cinema, and the zealous way he films and releases his movies is something of a breakneck achievement in the field.Nights and Weekends contains brutal honesty about marriage, dating, and the hardships that come with the feel. It needs to be viewed by young adolescents who are either rushing into relationships, are desperate to be in one, or simply want to see the glimpse inside the world of a practical relationship. Swanberg and Gerwig conduct the film maturely, and their acting makes the relationship only more viable for the entire picture. The film, yet again, proves that when examining a relationship, keeping it simple, concise, and honest is the best and most meaningful approach.Starring and directed by: Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig.

This is first mumblecore I've seen and I must say that I don't know why some people are so excited about it. Swanberg's movie is just a compilation of less or more boring scenes in which director and his star, Great Gerwig are talking, laying in bed, trying to make love and so on, so on. It's not that the whole thing is bad - it just leads to nowhere. There is no plot, there is no hidden message. The acting is quite good, especially Gerwig is doing nice job in here - she's very natural and has her own charm. Also photography and editing are better than I expected, being aware of that the film is practically non-budget. So - technically work is made unobjectionable, but the rest - the plot, tension, action - it just doesn't exist in this one. Maybe for few viewers it's kind of art. Not for me.

The founding fathers divided government into three branches with checks and balances. This is where Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg made their big mistake. They thought they could do it all on their own -- writing, directing, and acting -- with no significant input from others. Maybe that works for a home movie, but this is something they expected people to pay for! With no outsider in a position to say, "Wait, hold on, do you think we could try this another way?" this megalomaniacal couple have produced an embarrassingly vapid flight into unrestrained narcissism. Ellen DeGeneris-lookalike Mattie is depressed. Her giggling boyfriend James is shallow. One tolerates this slice-of-life film out of morbid curiosity: Just how is this insipid couple going to fill a whole hour and a half of screen time? We see them doing nothing of any significance together, except perhaps visiting James's brother and his young family. Otherwise James and Mattie have sex on a clothes-strewn floor, then eat on a floor, and go not once but twice to get their pictures taken. (Who the hell cares?) For a change of pace, we get to join Mattie as she sits on the john and gives her butt a swipe. So much for imaginative plotting. Nor is the characterization any good. Mattie seems severely depressed, with no mature outlet for expressing her rage. James ignores this elephant in the room and often seems to force his laughter, as if perhaps to convince himself he's having fun in this relationship. And forget the script quality -- there is no memorable dialogue here.This supremely bored couple actually talks of having a child together. God help us if they think an innocent baby will inject some meaning into their drivel-filled universe. This couple weeps when it is time to part, but the audience may experience tears of joy.

I will try not to be overly critical here because I have been somewhat harsh on the mumblecore movement and while this movie is not something I enjoyed I did not find it as sloppy as some of the previous mumblecore work.This film was showing at south by southwest in austin, after it showed some people were really into it while others hated it. I was impartial, having seen the previous mumblecore work I knew what to anticipate. Rambling scenes, mumbling, nudity for the sake of shock and attention, whiney pathetic lead characters.I hate to tell people what to think, and I can say a few people seemed to find it interesting. I can say what I thought though, their was basically no plot, the whole story revolves around two characters, and if you find whiney pathetic characters annoying then you are in trouble.I have a theory that after seeing so much garbage that looked the same at SXSW people were merely impressed because they saw a different looking piece of garbage, and they said, well is that still garbage, it looks different. The thing is, garbage comes in all shapes and sizes.