The Kind of Lesson You Can't Get From Any Text Book 

Little  Missy Goes to the Movies!

Infamous Professor of Philosophy Joaquin Phoenix Seeks New Meaning To Life with Beautiful Undergraduate Emma Stone

An Irrational Man

Woody Allen's Summer 2015 Movie!

At a sleepy, Rhode Island idyllic college called something that sounds like "Brainland", Joaquin Phoenix rolls onto campus for a summer teaching stint.  You can tell he's a bohemian because wherever he goes, so goes the tune "I'm With the In Crowd" ( a great pop song by Dobie Gray from the mid sixties) and and a flask of Scotch.  As Little Missy's readers know, I was married to a Stanford philosophy professor for over thirty years and saw it all. Spoiler alert:  Joaquin is a psychopath who rationalises his way to murder in order to find meaning to his life.  His wife has either died or left him and his best friend was either beheaded or blown up in the middle east in front of Joaquin and that's the stated reason why he is so disturbed and turbulent.  Also, he has a reputation as a ladies' man, and the campus adulteress faculty wife, played by the magnificent Parker Posey can't wait to get her hands on him.  So much for that part.  Names like Kant and Heidegger  and terms like randomness and rationality are thrown around in Professor Joaquin's class and the students are otherwise busy riding their horses, having parties at  the house of a fellow student whose academic parents collect de Kooning paintings (must be family money), and playing ping pong. Professor Joaquin is also trying to finish his book on Heidegger which he started years ago.  What a loser!

Psychotic behaviour on idyllic campuses is nothing new to Little Missy. The first week I first moved to Stanford University a long time ago, a grad student killed his statistics professor in the professor's office with a hammer! My husband was like "Welcome to Stanford, Chrissy!  This doesn't usually happen!"  A famous psychologist beat up his secretary in his office.  A student murdered his wife in Memorial Church and got away with it (but was asked to leave)!  It goes on and on.  No big deal for an academic environment.  But it's funny to see Woody Allen's interpretation of it.  There is a lot of brick, ivy, good art and columned buildings.  There is the breathtaking seaside at twilight.  There is absolutely no philosophy (as usual in Woody Allen's movies) but a lot of "OMG he's so right about that"!  As usual, Woody gets it!  If for no other reason, see this movie for Parker Posey's tipsy spin as a bored faculty wife who wants to run off to Spain with Joaquin and doesn't care who knows!

Parker is so bored at Brainland College that she doesn't care if she gets out with a murderer or not!

And one more reason to see this movie:  you get to see Joaquin, with his great big beer belly explain to Emma the reason he murdered and I quote Joaquin, "This is the kind of lesson you can't get from any text book"!  Bravo, Joaquin, Brava Parker and Bravissmo Woody Allen!