I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Starlet,Uber Naturalism:Recently, I watched the film, STARLET, staring Drew Hemingway, the grand-daughter of Earnest. In the film she is a porno star! a beautiful porno star. Midway through the film, she performs with another "sex worker". It is much too explicit.Guided by principles of Naturalism, there is no modesty, no privacy-- just raw sex, which is not sexy at all. Sex is simply considered Work, routine work! At the end, they shake hands and say: "It was good working with you. Have a nice day...." Her macho grandfather would be shocked out of his mind!

This movie is about relationships. Everything else is a framework to color in the lives of two lonely people who are a mere 60 years apart in age. The "deus ex machina" of finding a small fortune stuffed in an old thermos at a garage sale is just a device to bring these two people together. The San Fernando Valley is a very curious place where nothing seems nailed down and appearances can be more than deceiving. Porn stars live next door to orthodox Jews and octogenarians, all isolated in their own worlds and oblivious to their neighbors just feet away. Hemingway is isolated by her profession (porn star) unable to have a meaningful relationship and Johnson is isolated by her age and past losses that have caused her to withdraw to her quaint bungalow. Slowly and fitfully, a relationship between the two grows.The movie is well paced and well directed. The porn theme is handled creatively and tastefully. It is a full half way through the film that Hemingway's profession is revealed. I do have a problem with the every scene being overexposed by about 2/3 stops and seriously desaturated. It is a cinematographic technique that has its limits. There are a few continuity issues that should have been resolved in the editing process, but overall, this film is a poignant and sensitive view of life in L.A. in the 21st Century.

Twenty-one year old Jane (Dree Hemingway) is a porn actress simply trying to make ends meet in a cruel world, living with her two deadbeat roommates, one of them a fellow actress. After purchasing a vase from an older woman and finding over $10,000 inside, she decides that the least she could do is try and befriend the woman to provide some resemblance of joy and happiness in her life. I suppose friendship is the least you can offer someone after taking the money they didn't know they had.The woman is eighty-five year old Sadie (Besedka Johnson), who spends her days calmly and in a true state of loneliness, tending her garden and quietly playing bingo at a senior's center. Meeting each other is a generational shock for the both of them in a way that doesn't revolve around the expected political/social norm changes. Instead, the details are shown just by the way they communicate and adapt to their own lifestyles accordingly. Jane would much rather go out of her way to get something more than textbook happiness, while Sadie feels disturbing consistent flow is a personal sin she can not commit.Sean S. Baker's Starlet is a sweet, tender little story detailing a generation gap that I love to see explored. It's a film, too, that boldly shows a lifestyle in a way that isn't comical or condescending. While the adult film industry only makes up a small part of Starlet's overall focus, it nonetheless makes its view on the industry respectable and mature. The maturity of director Baker, even as he treads dangerously close to smug depiction, remains visible throughout making this a truly sentimental work.The film is carried by the gifted performances of Hemingway and Johnson, who strike up a valuable, potent chemistry when they're on-screen together. Hemingway's brash qualities and aware attitude contrast boldly with Johnson's reclusive, control-freak persona, making for a relationship that is erected from more than smiles and good-feelings.Baker adopts the style of filmmaking known simply as "cinéma vérité," a style that heavily emphasizes the brutally honest, naturalistic side of life in filmmaking. I mention it here because the texture and look of the film plays a big role in its likability. Visuals are often mild and possess a sunny disposition, the filmic atmosphere is accentuated beautifully through the use of lens flare and flushed-out colors, and the warmness comes off as not a put-on, but a comforting feature.There are moments in Starlet that hold deep, uncompromising emotional drama, mainly in the scenes at bingo, where a coldly detached Sadie is left staring at her bingo card as if she really cares what the odds are. There's emotional honesty in the scene because we can see she is not really happy and Jane knows it as well as the audience does at that point. The scene is beautifully captured and scored perfectly so as not to be too mawkish or too downplayed.Ultimately, Starlet ends the way we kind of expected and its presence is more significant than a footnote but not so much as a genre-piece or a game-changing masterwork. It's short, simple, but above all, an effective illustration of emotion and tone as a coming of age story and a slight meditation on age and its downsides. It provides warmth and heart in its material, but most importantly, an unmissable soul as it shows both generations in full bloom and the naive impulses they give off that often prevent entire personal connection.Starring: Dree Hemingway and Besedka Johnson. Directed by Sean S. Baker.

A good movie about a young, energetic, friendly woman who, as a result of various circumstances, befriends a lovely, somewhat grumpy old lady. Not very original, as you've probably already surmised, there have been tons of movies, and TV shows covering the same relationship dynamic, and quite possibly the same basic outline. Some of those good, others bad, still others horribly bad and cliché, this however is 1 of the good 1s. The acting, directing and story-line were all good, resulting in a mellow, slow paced film with tiny peeks of highs and lows. It's shot in suburban L.A. and has a distinct L.A. feel to it, at least it did to me, in the neighborhoods, the mountainous backdrops and perhaps too in the characters. I suppose that might not be really important, but I like to get engrossed in he cities and countries I see in movies. The 1 bad thing I'd have to say about this movie though would be the ending, it seemed really abrupt, I assume the director/writer wanted us to mull over the last scene as we finished he movie but really it just left you wanting to see that scene/conversation played out and wanting the words that were implied to actually be spoken.Overall a good movie, not great but good.