Focus

I just watched Focus on Netflix Watch Instantly. Coincidentally I was having trouble focusing on a few projects that I'm a bit anxious about.

I thought this movie was pretty ridiculous, although it was slightly intriguing. It takes place in Brooklyn during WWII and a modest, nondescript man living in a neighborhood of anti-semitic ignoramuses buys a pair of glasses that make him look Jewish. Because he wants to avoid trouble, he doesn't join in with the rabble rousers and they decide that he is a Jew lover and that his wife must be Jewish. I kept wondering why he didn't buy a new pair of glasses the second he was demoted at work. It seemed like a stubborn streak in his personality rather than a principled one, because he didn't seem to have that much of a problem with "real" Jews being harassed. The other thing that made no sense is why they cast Laura Dern as his Jewish-looking wife. She screamed shiksa. But she was supposed to be so Jewish looking that she couldn't get a job. And, she was the one who felt like if you can't beat them join them and wanted to make Macy fit in more, but she wore these flamboyant over-the-top outfits that also inspired hostility.

Still, there was something to the colorful, surreal, and noir-ish way it was filmed that held my attention. Although it really wasn't scary or creepy or tense even for a second.