Jules
A little-seen and quite good movie about aging, and it has a nice alien; from a director who's probably a horrible human.

Jules (2023). Grade: B
How bad is this plot? Cranky old man meets an alien whose spaceship crashed in his backyard. They become buddies, and the cranky old man starts being friendlier to everyone.
Yuck, right? Sounds like some straight-to-video 1980s ripoff of Cocoon.
But what if I told you the reason that old man is cranky is because he’s beginning to experience dementia? And he’s upset about it?
Now the movie sounds more interesting.
So then I’m gonna tell you that the director is a billionaire who made a killing on subprime mortgages, cashed out before the crash, and decided to direct movies. For fun! Because when you’re rich, they let you. Normal people have to scratch and claw to direct films — not this chap!
Yeah, you’d hate me even writing about this movie.
And then I tell you the old man facing dementia is Ben Kingsley…
Alright. So Kingsley plays a retired, isolated old coot in a sleepy little Pennsylvania town. Who goes to every Town Council meeting and repeats, mostly, the same comments. (Part of this is a stubborn hope that persistence will pay off; part of it is, he’s having difficulty remembering exactly what he said last time.) His daughter is about the only other person he talks to; she visits regularly to check up on him, and is worried he’s getting worse.
An alien spaceship crashes in his backyard. So he calls 9-1-1. They don’t believe him. So he goes to another Town Council meeting. “We should change the town motto to something clearer. Also, a UFO has crashed in my backyard and has taken out my azaleas and has destroyed my birdbath.”
Kingsley tries to help the wounded alien. Which doesn’t talk, or make any noises at all. It eats apples and watches TV passively, and looks at Kingsley with an odd, blank stare. Is it puzzled? Is it fascinated? Scared? There’s no way to tell.
Eventually, two of Kingsley’s nosy neighbors find out, and they take a liking to the alien. And they’re a treat. One is Jane Curtin — who, you’ll remember, was both in the Coneheads movie and in 3rd Rock From The Sun. (And those were both a lot more tolerable than I expected; so, Jules fits the mold.) The other neighbor is Harriet Sansom Harris, who is wonderful.
I didn’t know who Harris was. She’s had some small roles in movies, some bigger ones on TV shows, and has been busy on stage since at least 1978. (Including a recent role as Eleanor Roosevelt which sounds like it would make a fine movie.) While Curtin’s character is grumpy, Harris’s is overly friendly, and the two are a good balance with Kingsley.
The three of them are wistful about aging without a single maudlin moment. I give full credit to the screenwriter, Gavin Steckler. He was one of the large team of very funny people who wrote the fantastic Review with Andy Daly. (Daly plays a mild-mannered, middle-aged fellow who “reviews” life experiences like Getting A Divorce or Being A Cult Leader; these all go terribly for him, and it’s hilarious.)
The script here does have some cliches (there’s a mysterious government agency that gets involved, the alien needs wacky things to fix its spaceship), but it’s very sharp and sensitive about aging. Kingsley knows he’s mentally slipping. The characters have problems connecting to their children. There’s a sick old pet (it dies with dignity).
And Steckler provides a lot of humor. There’s one joke that can only have come from someone who wrote something like Review. The alien senses one of its friends is in trouble, and reacts spectacularly. It’s a hoot.
So, about that director…
His name’s Marc Turtletaub, and here’s his Wiki page. He sounds like an intolerable person. He made at least $700 million in subprime mortgages. And everything on that Wiki page (except the part about Turtletaub’s subprime business) looks like it was written by his PR people. For example:
“(Turtletaub) only wants to make films he is passionate about and that have redemption, something more than entertainment. He wants to touch and change people and use his money, through film, to do good. He looks for screenplays that have something to say, are one of a kind, touch his heart, have a powerful voice, illuminate the human condition and emotional connections, and are either life-affirming in some way, or life-revealing.”
Barf.
But he does an acceptable job, here. He knows not to get in the actors’ way, and not to pump up the sadder elements of the script.
And he has some kind of moviemaking instincts, because that alien is fantastic. It’s played by Jade Quon, a diminutive stunt performer under a ton of latex. When you see Quon in the DVD feature about creating the alien, you can tell that it was designed to have some of her expressive features. Yet it’s distinctively an alien, and its face is compelling, but inscrutable. (The older characters all project onto the alien whatever they want to believe it’s thinking.) This is completely the right way this alien character should be presented, and a more foolish director would have screwed it up.
In fact, if you find the idea of watching a movie about isolated old people too distressing, you can get the DVD, skip the movie entirely, and just watch that special feature with Quon in it. I promise you’ll be impressed by the work she puts into it.
And that’s another reason DVDs are better than streaming, and library DVDs better still.
The question Claire Dederer asks in Monsters — can we enjoy good art made by rotten people — isn’t easy to answer. I still wrestle with it (and so does Dederer). I know that if I rewatch the copies of Chinatown or Jackie Brown I bought 20 years ago, not a single extra penny is going to Roman Polanski or Miramax. (Not that this is remotely close to the artistry of those films, but you get my point.)
Well, if you get this DVD from the library, you’re not giving Marc Turtletaub a single extra penny. And hey, the writer and actors all deserve that penny. They’ve done good work. But they’ll continue doing good work and getting paid to do it. They will be fine.
Yes, there’s an inherent contradiction in watching a movie about older people who have their regrets, directed by someone who probably regrets absolutely nothing he’s ever done. Hey, maybe aliens can abduct Turtletaub and take him to the Planet Of Penitence.
The film sounds good. I will definitely watch it if it comes my way but I'm not going to seek it out.
As much as I hate bankers, I do admire people who stop doing their money-making jobs and do something they find more edifying. I also like that he doesn't write the films. This is the biggest problem I've found with most independent filmmakers. Most aren't good writers, but more important, they don't have anything interesting to say! Right now, I'm reading a screenplay by a young freelancer who I've worked with. It's excellent! There are a lot of those around. Directors/producers should spend more time reading and less time writing!