Movie Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World *** ½
Directed By: Edgar Wright.
Written By: Edgar Wright & Michael Bacall based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley.
Starring: Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona Flowers), Alison Pill (Kim Pine), Mark Webber (Stephen Stills), Johnny Simmons (Young Neil), Ellen Wong (Knives Chau), Kieran Culkin (Wallace Wells), Anna Kendrick (Stacey Pilgrim), Aubrey Plaza (Julie Powers), Brie Larson (Envy Adams), Satya Bhabha (Matthew Patel), Chris Evans (Lucas Lee), Mae Whitman (Roxy Richter), Brandon Routh (Todd Ingram), Jason Schwartzman (Gideon Gordon Graves), Keita Saitou (Kyle Katayanagi), Shota Saito (Ken Katayanagi).

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the perfect example of a movie that is style over substance. The film is pretty much all style from beginning to end – this is a movie that doesn’t slow down for a second. But the style somehow works for this movie, which is also consistently funny and clever all the way through. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a cult movie in the making – you are either going to get on its wavelength and love it, or absolutely despise it.

The title character is played by Michael Cera – and is yet another of his now trademarked characters. He is a hipster, living in Toronto, in a rundown, one room apartment with his gay roommate Wallace (Kiernan Culkin). He plays in a band, and does pretty much nothing else except impress girls with his cool, shy, awkwardness. He is still getting over his breakup from last year, and has started dating a high school student – Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). But then he meets Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) – and falls instantly in love. She is a little more hesitant, but cannot resist his awkward charm for long. The problem is this – she has seven evil exs that Scott has to fight and defeat in a series of videogame inspired madness.

And that’s pretty much the story, but doesn’t for a second describe what it is like to watch the film. Directed by Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz) and based on the popular graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a tour de force of style – and not just in the fight sequences, where Wright really does take things to the next level. Even in the most seemingly quiet scenes, there are strange shots and pans, rapid fire editing and strange moments. Realism this ain’t, but neither is it boring. Unlike most of the movies that treat style with more reverence that substance, this movie worked for me. Most times, like in the films of Tony Scott or Michael Bay, I end up with a headache. But Scott Pilgrim vs. the World kept me involved and entertained. Perhaps it’s because as the film progressed, I really did get involved with the story and the characters, or perhaps because it moved so quickly that it didn’t give me the time to think. Whatever the reason, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was nonstop entertainment for me.

A key to a movie like this to work are the performances. You have to have a cast that is committed, and willing to go to all the strange places you want them to – and Wright found a great one. Yes, Michael Cera’s routine is getting a little stale now, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work in this movie. It still does. I am wondering when, or if, we are ever going to see him try something different (he should, and soon), but for now it works. Winstead is gorgeous with her multicolored hair and penetrating eyes, and she seems to except all this madness going on around her. The supporting players all hit the right notes – Culkin as the wise cracking sidekick, Anna Kendrick as Pilgrim’s little sister constantly bitching at him, Wong as the overly excitable teenage fan, Mark Weber and Alison Pill as Pilgrim’s bandmates – and all seven of Winstead’s exs. They take chances with their roles and mainly they work and pull it off.

A movie like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is different from most movies because it takes those chances. If this movie had failed, it would have been awful – but for me it succeeded. Yes at times, I did wish the movie would slow down just a bit, but that speed is part of its charm. The movie takes risk, and for the most part, it succeeds.

Movie Review: The Other Guys

The Other Guys ***
Directed By: Adam McKay.
Written By: Adam McKay & Chris Henchy.
Starring: Will Ferrell (Allen Gamble), Mark Wahlberg (Terry Hoitz), Michael Keaton (Captain Gene Mauch), Steve Coogan (David Ershon), Eva Mendes (Dr. Sheila Gamble), Samuel L. Jackson (P.K. Highsmith), Dwayne Johnson (Christopher Danson), Rob Riggle (Martin), Damon Wayans Jr. (Fosse), Bobby Cannavale (Jimmy), Ray Stevenson (Roger Wesley), Andy Buckley (Don Beaman).

Will Ferrell can be one of the funniest actors on the planet given the right material to work with. Unfortunately, in the wrong role, he can also be one of the least funny people - his manic style can either make me laugh continuously, or leave me completely flat. His most frequent collaborator has been director Adam McKay - in four movies together they have only missed once - Step Brothers - while Anchorman and Talladega Nights rank among the funniest movies of the last decade - both are what I would call “smart stupid” comedies, in that there are as ridiculous as anything that someone like Adam Sandler would make, and yet they are a lot smarter than the appear. The Other Guys isn’t quite up to the level of those other two movies - but it’s damn close.

Ferrell stars as Allen Gamble, an accountant turned police detective who doesn’t like to do much of what most of us consider police work - no car chases or gun battles for him, he prefers to sit at his desk and do paper work. His partner is Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) who wants to get on the street and get some action - but is held back by Allen - but also because of a dark secret in his own past (which I will not reveal because it is one of the funniest moments in the movie). The stars of the department are Highsmith and Danson (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson, hilarious is cameos that hit all the action movie cliché buttons hard, right up to their unexpected finale), and that is who Hoitz wants to be. Gamble may have an idea on who to pursue - David Ershon (Steve Coogan) - who may be running a Ponzi scam. It may not be glamorous work, but it could be important.

I won’t reveal any more of the plot because, honestly, the plot of the movie isn’t really the point of the movie. The movie is really about the interaction between Ferrell and Wahlberg - and I have to say I was surprised by how well they worked together. Ferrell is a little more restrained than normal - more repressed than normal, like he’s scared of himself. This works well for Ferrell who doesn’t give into his more manic nature for most of the movie. This character is not a million miles away from his other accountant character - in Marc Forster’s Stranger Than Fiction, but this movie is not a serious movie like that one was. He delivers his one liners as good anyone out there. Wahlberg is also full of repressed rage in the movie - but he’s more in touch with his id, and prone to yelling. Wahlberg has always been a gifted comedic actor - he was hilarious in I Heart Huckabees and The Departed - but this is his first real comedy, and he delivers a great comedic performance. While Ferrell and Wahlberg carry the movie, they are ably supported by the entire cast - Michael Keaton is wonderful as the TLC quoting captain, Jackson and Johnson are great as the egomanical cops, Steve Coogan is once again hilarious as the “bad guy”, and Eva Mendes is great as Ferrell’s almost impossibly hot wife. They don’t get the opportunities that Ferrell and Wahlberg do to let loose, but they allow them to be good.
Co-writer/director Adam McKay is still a more talented writer than he is a director. As a writer, he gives his actors some of the best one liners of any movie this year. As a director perhaps his best attribute is that he stays out of the actors way. He certainly isn’t the best visual director out there. But when a movie is this well written, this funny pretty much from start to finish, can you really complain? The Other Guys is one of the most enjoyable comedies this summer - Kevin Smith should take note. He got all bent out of shape when critics trashed his similarly plotted Cop Out earlier this year - The Other Guys proves that critics can enjoy goofy comedies - but only when they are funny, and Smith’s movie was anything but.

Movie Review: Dinner for Schmucks

Dinner for Schmucks **
Directed By: Jay Roach.
Written By: David Guion & Michael Handelman based on the screenplay by Francis Veber.
Starring: Steve Carell (Barry), Paul Rudd (Tim), Zach Galifianakis (Therman), Jemaine Clement (Kieran), Stephanie Szostak (Julie), Lucy Punch (Darla), Bruce Greenwood (Lance Fender), David Walliams (Müeller), Ron Livingston (Caldwell), Larry Wilmore (Williams).

Dinner for Schmucks is an oddly disjointed movie. I cannot deny that I laughed quite a bit during the movie, because I did, but the film never really builds any comic momentum. There are isolated lines that are hilarious, but from one scene to the next, the movie fails to keep things moving along. I laughed a lot, but I also sat there stone faced quite a bit of the time, and I kept wondering why the movie didn’t quite feel like it gelled together.

The premise of the movie is simple, and should have worked wonderfully. Tim (Paul Rudd) works for a big financial firm, and wants to get a promotion. He has finally caught the eye of the head of the company, Fender (Bruce Greenwood), and he seems to be in line for it. But to get the job, he has to do something he is uncomfortable with. Every month, Fender holds a dinner for all his top people – and each one is expected to invite and idiot to it so that they can all feel superior. He doesn’t really want to do this, and when he tells his fiancée Julie (Stephanie Szostak) she cannot believe he is even considering it – causing them to argue. But then someone falls into his lap that couldn’t be more perfect. This is Barry (Steve Carell), who works for the IRS, but whose real passion is finding dead mice and posing them in elaborate tableaus. Barry is completely clueless to any and all social normality’s, and Tim ends up inviting him. But when Barry shows up a day early, all hell breaks loose, and he just makes things more difficult between Tim and Julie. Eventually, of course, they will get to the dinner but before then there are many side trips – most involving either Therman (Zach Galifianakis), Barry’s nemesis at the IRS, or Kieran (Jemaine Clement), an artist who works with Julie, and who’s raw, animal magnetism worries him.

There are moments and one liners in this film as funny as anything I have seen this year. Particularly brilliant is Clement, who continues to prove (as he does on Flight of the Concords and in the horrible Gentleman Broncos, where he was utterly brilliant despite the crap movie surrounding him) that he is one of the best comedic actors out there right now. Rudd is fine as Tim – much as he always is the straight man in his films, he fills that role better than just about anyone else out there right now. And Carell has his moments as well. Week in, week out he plays the utterly clueless Michael Scott so brilliantly on The Office, that Barry must have seemed like an easy role for him – he just has to ratchet up that cluelessness a little bit more to get Barry. Yet, Carell makes you like Barry. For all his cluelessness, he seems perfectly at ease with himself, and is rather happy. No, I wouldn’t spend my spare time making dead mice into Jesus, George Washington or other people, but if it brings him joy, who I am to tell him otherwise? This is the slowly dawning realization that Tim has as well – Barry is just Barry, and he doesn’t need to mock others to make himself feel better. And Tim would rather be in the company of Barry, than with the others who do feel that need.

Dinner for Schmucks should have worked brilliantly. The cast is in place, the premise simple yet has huge potential for comedy, and yet the movie never really settles into itself. It is too busy throwing out one liners to every really build to anything beyond them. I haven’t seen the original French film, The Dinner Game, which was the basis for this film so I really cannot compare this to that one, but I suspect the French was better. After all, if the French film was as scattershot as this film is, they never would have remade it in the first place.

Movie Review: Life During Wartime

Life During Wartime ****
Directed By: Todd Solondz.
Written By: Todd Solondz
Starring: Shirley Henderson (Joy), Allison Janney (Trish), Ciarán Hinds (Bill), Paul Reubens (Andy), Michael K. Williams (Allen), Michael Lerner (Harvey), Dylan Riley Snyder (Timmy Maplewood), Ally Sheedy (Helen), Rich Pecci (Mark), Chris Marquette (Billy), Renée Taylor (Mona), Charlotte Rampling (Jacqueline).

Todd Solondz is one of the most original filmmakers working anywhere in the world today. His films all take place in a universe seemingly unto itself, with characters appearing in one movie after they were introduced in another. His films are mainly about extremely dysfunctional families, and often involve taboo bust conversations, and children placed in situations that we can barely believe we are seeing. The children in his films are not wide eyed innocents, but have been warped by their cluelessly cruel parents, and are in effect on their way to becoming monsters. In Solondz’s films, the sins of the parents are almost always visited upon they children. Oh, and all of his films are comedies – demented and dark comedies to be sure, but comedies nonetheless.

Life During Wartime takes place in the same universe as Solondz’s biggest hit – 1998’s Happiness. All of the major characters from that movie are back in this one (with a couple thrown in from his Welcome to the Dollhouse for good measure), but they are played by different actors. It doesn’t matter though. Like his previous film Palindromes – where he used 8 different actors to play a 13 year old girl who wants to become pregnant – these characters cannot change who they are no matter how different they look.

Like Happiness, Life During Wartime opens in a restaurant where Joy (here played by Shirley Henderson, taking over from Jane Adams) is eating with the sad sack man in her life, who tries to give her an ashtray with her name engraved on it. In Happiness, this was Andy (Jon Lovitz), who reacts harshly when Joy dumps him, and ends up committing suicide. (Andy returns several times in this movie as well as a ghost, and is played with scary skill by Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens). This time though, the man who tries to give her the ashtray is Allen (Michael K. Williams taking over for Philip Seymour Hoffman), the phone sex freak in Happiness. The two have been married, and Allen says he has left all his addictions behind. But the waitress says differently, prompting Joy to leave Allen and travel from her hometown in New Jersey to Florida, where her mother and sister Trish (Allison Janney, taking over for Cynthia Stevenson) have relocated.

Trish has been able to put her life back together after her husband Bill (Ciaran Hinds taking over for Dylan Baker) was put in jail at the end of Happiness for pedophilia. She has told her young son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) that his father is dead. Trish has fallen for Harvey Wiener (Michael Lerner, who is playing the role that originated in Welcome to the Dollhouse), a devoted Jew who wants to be buried in Israel, despite never having been there before. In one of the films funniest, yet most shocking, scenes Trish confides in her young son that all Harvey has to do is touch her elbow and she becomes wet. Harvey is not especially attractive or rich, or young for that matter, but she is what Trish craves in a man – normal.

Meanwhile, Bill has been released from prison, and stalks through the movie almost silently. He visits the family’s new home in Florida – but only when they are not home. He picks up a woman (Charlotte Rampling) is a bar and takes her back to her hotel room. She catches him raiding her purse after they are done, and is offended and throws him out. He is not so much interested in sex with her, but he does need money. He then travels across country to Oregon to see his son Billy (Chris Marquette), now in university. In Happiness, perhaps the most memorable scene in the film comes when Bill confessed to Billy what he did to his friends at the sleepover. Perhaps the best scene in this movie is when the two of them talk – the conversation once again is not what we expect it to be.

Poor Joy. Along with Dawn Wiener from Welcome to the Dollhouse, she is the most sympathetic character in Solondz’s films. She is a nice person, unlike her sisters who are either obsessed with being normal (Trish) or else so self involved and egocentric – Helen (Ally Sheedy, brilliant in her one scene taking over for Lara Flynn Boyle), yet all she gets is dumped on by everyone. Her family considers her a failure, and then men in her life blame her for all of their failings. Andy comes back from the dead to haunt her, first seemingly being sweet, until she rejects him all over again, which makes him mean. Now Allen is blaming her for his own problems as well. It is no wonder that she is as meek as she is. In this film, Shirley Henderson plays Joy as a woman who is pretty much afraid to open her mouth – every time she does, all that happens is that she gets insulted. Already low on confidence in the first film, but this point she is almost destroyed.

In fact, we feel sorry for a lot of the characters in this movie. Poor Harvey, who does seem like a nice, normal guy in the film, but not as much. It is a testament to the strength of the film that perhaps the funniest scene in the movie is when Timmy mistakes Harvey for a pedophile. Only in a Solondz film would this even be attempted, let alone pulled off as brilliantly as it is. Harvey’s son Mark is back – even further gone done the road of misanthropy then he was in his one scene at the end of Palindromes. Even Bill the pedophile is portrayed with more complexity than most pedophiles get in the movies. Hinds plays him without judgment as a broken man, who knows he has made mistakes, and is still wondering about their consequences. He is much more sympathetic than his shallow, superficial ex-wife. Solondz even seems to hold his own profession up for ridicule when Helen arrives, having given up the glamorous world of poetry to become a Hollywood screenwriter, who is currently dating Keanu Reeves (who sadly, does not make a cameo). It is so hard to write a good screenplay that Joy could not possibly understand the stress and strain that Helen is under.

Solondz does not make it easy, either on his characters or his audience members. His films are often difficult to watch, so he is never really going to have a mainstream hit on his hands. In fact, many of the ardent supporters of his first two films – Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness – seem to have abandoned him on his two films after that (Storytelling and Palindromes). But for me, Solondz remains one of the most distinctive voices in American movies. His films challenge you to see things in a different way. His films may shock you, but they are always honest. Life During Wartime is one of the year’s best films, because Solondz takes risks, and pulls them brilliantly.

Movie Review: The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right *** ½
Directed by: Lisa Cholodenko.
Written By: Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg.
Starring: Julianne Moore (Jules), Annette Bening (Nic), Mark Ruffalo (Paul), Mia Wasikowska (Joni), Josh Hutcherson (Laser), Yaya DaCosta (Tanya), Kunal Sharma (Jai), Eddie Hassell (Clay).

The Kids Are All Right is a comedy about a 20 year marriage that has fallen into a little bit of a lull. They have two kids, one about to go off to college, and the other a teenage boy who they worry is hanging out with the wrong crowd. The couple has been taking each other for granted for a while now, and fallen into a bit of a rut. That the couple are lesbians doesn’t really matter much – marriages of any sort deal with the same problems – it has to do with two people living together day in and day out for years on end.

The couple is played by Julianne Moore and Annette Bening. Moore is Jules, who is a little bit of a flake, who drifts aimlessly from one career to another and is a little more of a free spirit. She has decided now that she wants to be a landscape architect, and impulsively has bought a truck for that purpose, although she has no clients. Bening is Nic, more responsible and reliable – she is a doctor who works long hours, and supports the family by herself when Jules is between jobs. She is tired more often than not, and has started to get like we see many husbands in the movies get – drinking a little too much, and not willing to turn off their phone even while they are at home. This couple love each other, but are drifting apart a little bit.

Their kids are Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). They were conceived with donor sperm – the same donor, although there is three years age difference between them. Nic gave birth to Joni, and Jules to Laser, but they call both of them mom (or when referring to both of them – moms). Laser is curious about their biological father, and since Joni has just turned 18, she can no legally request information on him. She calls the cyrobank, who contacts the sperm donor – Paul (Mark Ruffalo), who is curious about his two kids and agrees to meet them. Paul is no approaching 40, has never married or had any other kids, and has kind of drifted in his life – although he now seems to make a good living running a restaurant and an organic garden, You could call him an aging hippie, but since he was probably born after the ‘60s, that wouldn’t really be accurate. But he still talks like one.

The Kids Are All Right is an amusing comedy because it observes these five characters – and a few others that drift into the world – with honesty. This is certainly not a heavy drama, but rather a movie that makes us smile throughout, even when serious things do happen. The main relationship in the movie is between the two women – Jules and Nic – who have always done everything together, especially raising their kids. Initially, they are hurt that Joni and Laser have contacted their biological father behind their backs – but they understand. They are curious, and they try to be good, liberal parents and support their children and their choices (perhaps the funniest scene in the film is when they think Laser is gay, and they sit him down to talk with him about it). The entrance of Paul into their lives, and their family, brings to light the problems in their marriage. They were always there, but he makes them clearer to everyone involved. They love each other, but sometimes love isn’t enough.

The performances in the movie are really what make it so great. I love Julianne Moore, and it has been a few years she has been given a role this good. She is flaky, but in a lovable way. She is also vulnerable and sympathetic – so sympathetic that we even forgive her her trespasses. Bening’s Nic is a little more distant – we like her too, but we understand how living with her may get on your nerves after a while. In a family gathering, everyone seems to watch her to see what she is going to do. Wasikowska proves, after her stint in Alice in Wonderland, that there really is a talented little actress under all that hair. And Hutcherson plays a teenage boy that I think almost any guy can relate to. The key performance in the movie though is probably Ruffalo’s. He comes into this already set family, its set dynamic and changes everything – and he doesn’t quite seem to realize it. He’s a go with the flow type of guy, who everyone initially likes, but when you get to know him a little better, you can see how dense he can be. Did he really expect to be able to come into the family, do what he does, and get away with it? How about that almost painful to watch scene where he dumps his current girlfriend because he wants a family and wants to be with someone willing to go there with him – never realizing that she already is. At the beginning of the movie, I think he was lost and didn’t know it – by the end, he is even more lost, but at the very least, I think he realizes it.

The movie was written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko, who previous film include High Art – which gave Ally Sheedy her best role ever, and Laurel Canyon, which gave Frances McDormand a wonderful role as well. Both of those movies also dealt with sexuality in the same honest, gently humorous way The Kids Are All Right does. But this time, I think she has made an even better movie – one that is even more tuned into her characters, and brings them to life. The Kids Are All Right is pretty much a perfect antidote to all the big, loud explosions and obnoxious comedies of the summer months.

Movie Review: Cyrus

Cyrus *** ½
Directed by: Jay Duplass & Mark Duplass.
Written By: Mark Duplass & Jay Duplass.
Starring: John C. Reilly (John), Jonah Hill (Cyrus), Marisa Tomei (Molly), Catherine Keener (Jamie), Matt Walsh (Tim).

Cyrus is one of those independent comedies that is so painfully true at times that you cannot help but laugh. If you didn’t, you would probably end up crying. The movie is about John (John C. Reilly) who has been divorced from Jamie (Catherine Keener) for seven years, although they still work together, and has never really gotten over it. When she comes over to tell her she is engaged, he tells her it still stings. She invites him to come to a party with them the following night, and John cannot say no to her. He goes, get drunk, makes an ass of himself, but somehow attracts the attention of Molly (Marisa Tomei). They laugh, the flirt – even do so impromptu singing – before ending up back at his place. Amazingly, the next day when he calls her she agrees to see him again, and once again they end up in bed together. But both times, part way through the night Molly gets up to go home. John, curious to what is taking her away, follows her the second night and ends up in front of her house. And that is how John meets Cyrus (Jonah Hill) – Molly’s 21 year old son, still living at home.

We sense that there is something wrong with Cyrus pretty much immediately. He stares a little too intently at John, for a little too long. He says he has no problem with them dating, but he seems to be putting on a little bit of an act. He apparently got his GED 5 years ago, and has spent all of his time since working on his “music” – which to me kind of sounded like a cross between techno music and whale noises. But most of all, there is something in his eyes that just seems off. The first night John stays over at their house, he wakes up to find his shoes missing – and he has no doubt who is responsible for it.

You could see a Hollywood movie made of this same concept – hell even starring the same cast, where John C. Reilly would slip into his Step Brothers/Talladega Nights mode, and Jonah Hill would be, well, the Jonah Hill we have pretty much come to expect. Both of them would act like children, playing on trick after another on each other (and you know at least one would involve bodily fluids), while the ever patient Tomei would be the typical Apatow woman – the hot girl who waits for her men to grow up.

But this film was written and directed by the Duplass brothers – veterans of the mumblecore movement (with films like The Puffy Chair and Baghead under their belts), so the film, and its comedy, is more based on observation than a series of mindless jokes. You get the sense that if something like this really happened, this is pretty much how it would play out.

The Duplass’ depend on their cast to bring the movie to life, and they have cast pretty much perfectly. John C. Reilly is pretty much the perfect everyman – a guy well into middle age who still needs to grow up a little, and leave the past behind, but basically a good guy. He has a idealized view of his ex-wife, and comes to have an idealized view of Molly as well – until Cyrus enters the picture. For his part, Hill has never been better – more grounded then he is here. He basically is still a kid, acting like a spoiled brat who doesn’t want to lose his mommy. He is scary in some scenes, but most of the time he comes across as an overgrown, overweight child. And for once in a movie like this, the woman in the film is not just some perfect woman, but a real one with flaws all her own. In most movies, you might question why someone who looks like Tomei would fall for someone who looks like Reilly – but here you don’t. He is a nice guy, who treats her well and seems to care about her son as well. You get the impression that most guys would head for the hills when they meet Cyrus, but John sticks around. She has clung too tightly on Cyrus herself, feeding into his obsession, and allowing him to remain a child for far too long. Perfect she isn’t, and that’s what is so wonderful about her.

If I have a problem with the movie, it is the ending. I think that had the Duplass’ pushed their idea a little further, they could have made a brilliant, pitch black comedy. Instead, they settle for life lessons learned and a happily ever after ending – which works to a certain extent. Yet, I think they could have pushed this concept further, have Cyrus really go over the edge, and taken the film to a darker, but more honest place. That’s just me though, and it is a small complaint. Overall, Cyrus is a wonderful movie – honest, funny, intelligent and brilliantly well acted. What more could you want?

Movie Review: Wild Grass

Wild Grass *** ½
Directed By: Alain Resnais.
Written By: Alex Réval & Laurent Herbiet, based on the novel L'Incident by Christian Gailly
Starring: André Dussollier (Georges Palet), Sabine Azéma (Marguerite Muir), Anne Consigny (Suzanne), Mathieu Amalric (Bernard de Bordeaux), Emmanuelle Devos (Josepha), Edouard Baer (Narrator).

Alain Resnais is one of the most daring filmmakers in history. For his films Night and Fog, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad and Muriel in the 1950s and 60s, he established himself as one of the masters of the French New Wave. He has never stopped working in the years since, even if his films have become somewhat more obscure, and less highly touted. Now at 87, he has made Wild Grass that many critics believe is his best film in years. And while I quite liked the film, I must admit that I do not see the masterpiece that others see – but that doesn’t mean that Resnais is not back in fine form.

The film is about the strange connection between two strangers, and how their relationship progresses when one character finds the others wallet. Sabine Azema plays a woman who goes shopping one day and has her purse snatched by an unknown assailant. Andre Dussollier finds her wallet in the parking lot of a local mall. After some debate as to what to do, he decides to turn the wallet over to the police, here represented by Mathieu Amalric. When Azema picks up the wallet, she asks about the man who found it. She calls him up to thank him, but Dussollier is not satisfied with a simple thank you. He wants more. He starts writing Azema long winded letters about himself, and making phone calls to her. At first she is annoyed - she even goes back to Amalric to report him, who goes to see Dussolier to tell him to back off. But then Azema has a change of heart, and starts wanting to connect with him. By then, he has lost interest though. He is married to a much younger woman (Anne Consigny), with two grown children, and has decided to stick with his normal life.

The movie is a very strange comedy, based on the irrationality of the characters. Why do these characters behave the way they do, and make the decisions that they do? Honestly, I have to admit that I have no idea. To some this may seem charming, and it was for me for the first two thirds of the movie. But in the last act, I grew frustrated. It can be thrilling in a movie, even a seemingly lightweight comedy like this one, when you have no idea what is going to happen next - but when it’s based on the completely irrational behavior of the characters, it started to grate on my nerves a little bit.

Yet, having said all of that, it is impossible to deny the skill that is involved in making this film. Eric Gautier’s cinematography favors wonderful, swooping crane shots and the use of color in the movie is mesmerizing. And while I do not think I ever fully comprehended the characters, it is clear that the actors all do, as their performances are all wonderful. Dussolier has the central role, and his face is one of the most fascinating I can recall seeing on an actor. He seems to always be thinking about something, and mulling over his options as each new development happens. Azema is more of a free spirit, and she is equally wonderful. Consigny is quite good as the wife who has no idea what is going on, and Emmanuelle Devos is fun as Azema’s best friend who find herself drawn into the events without ever quite understanding them. Best of all may just be Amalric as the increasingly put upon cop, who is just trying to stay sane. And while I’m not sure if every scene leads effectively into the next one, taken by themselves they all work wonderfully well.

I cannot help but admire Resnais, who at an age when most filmmakers, are well, dead, is still taking chances, and still pulling off much of what he attempts. There are not many directors of any age, who would attempt something like Wild Grass, and even fewer who could make something this good out of it. Perhaps I just need to see the film again to fully appreciate it. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival, and sometimes in the midst of seeing fives films a day, and going on little sleep, the more complex movies sometimes seem overly so. Whatever the answer, Wild Grass is certainly one of the more interesting films of the year, even if I do not think it is necessarily a great one.

Note: After writing this in review in full – I did not change a word – I went read the rather lengthy review of the film in the September/October issue of Film Comment. What I came away with from that reading, was that I did not really miss the point of the movie. It is about the irrationality of its characters in the depths of “mad love”, and the confusion is all part of the fun. This makes me feel good. I still admire Resnais’s film – the camera work, the colors, the performances, the brilliant Vertigo homage at the center of it all – but I still don’t quite love it. Strangely though, I think I want to see the film a second time now more than I wanted to see the film the first time.

Movie Review: Year of the Carnivore

Year of the Carnivore *
Directed By: Sook-Yin Lee.
Written By: Sook-Yin Lee
Starring: Cristin Milioti (Sammy Smalls), Mark Rendall (Eugene), Kevin McDonald (Mr. Smalls), Sheila McCarthy (Mrs. Smalls), Will Sasso (Dirk), Ali Liebert (Sylvia), Patrick Gilmore (Todd).

Year of the Carnivore is a romantic comedy that spends so much time trying to be hip, that it forgets to be either romantic or comedic. The movie is so relentlessly quirky that I never really got involved in the movie, I just sat there and watched in horror as I was subjected to one stupid scene play out after another.

Sammy Smalls (Cristin Milioti) is a 21 year old cancer survivor with one gimpy leg, who works as a store detective at a grocery store. Essentially, her job is to catch old people trying to steal meat, or teenagers trying to steal porn, and then turn them over to Dirk (Will Sasso) who then takes them out back and beats them up, then takes their picture. She is a little to into her job, as everyday she shows up in a more elaborate disguise to try and fool potential shoplifters. Her parents (Kevin McDonald and Sheila McCarthy) are a little too over protective, and still want her to move back home. Their marriage does not seem to function unless Sammy is there to act as a buffer.

What keeps Sammy going from one day to the next is her crush on Eugene, a local musician who spends his days playing his quirky and personal songs on the street, and his nights playing in a loud, incoherent rock band, that for some reason seems to be on the verge of making it big. The two of them like each other, and after a long night o drinking, they fall into bed together, and things do horribly wrong when he tries to touch her and she starts laughing. She’s ticklish. So what does Eugene do? Tells Sammy to go out and learn how to have sex properly if she wants to be with him.

Now, most self respecting women I know would at this point, kick Eugene in the balls, call him an asshole and storm out. But not Sammy. She takes him seriously, and really does go on a journey of sexual self discovery. But she really does not know what to do. Attempts to use a vibrator, pick up guys at the bar, and have a threesome do not go well. She ends up taking guys she catches stealing out to the woods to practice sex with them. If she was a man, we’d call that rape. But she’s a woman so we call it quirky.

The movie, written and directed by Sook Yin Lee spends so much time trying to be cool - with its hip attitude towards sex, its soundtrack full of “indie” bands, and its constant need to be “clever”, that it never really just settles down and tells its story. All of the characters are so of full of idiosyncrasy, even the tiny role of Ali Liebert as a porn star, turned sausage girl, turned university student turned philosopher, that I never really got invested in the characters. When all of the people in a movie belong in a mental hospital, it’s hard to truly care about them. The movie tries so hard to be funny, that it never really is, just painful and embarrassing. Sammy’s sexual quest is not enlightening or enjoyable for her, just embarrassing. The scene where she has a threesome with a married couple - with the mother lactating no less - is just down right difficult to watch.

The only thing that really makes the movie at all watchable is the performance by Milioti in the lead role. True, she has to deliver some truly inane dialogue, and has more quirks than the rest of the characters combined, she somehow remains lovable throughout. She reminded me of Brittany Murphy at her best, and the scene where she dances around her room trying to make herself feel sexy, is quite endearing in its way. When she is not stuck delivering terrible dialogue, she is quite the charmer. I look forward to seeing her in a real role. Rendell is no where near as charming as Eugene. He is incredibly awkward, yet he somehow gets beautiful women to fall into bed with him at the drop of a hat. He never has a moment of genuine emotion in the film.
Year of the Carnivore is insufferable because the movie never really settles down and tells its story. If the film would just relax and tell its story. It needed to let Milioti play a real character. Because it didn’t, Year of the Carnivore is just plain painful to watch.

Movie Review: Grown Ups

Grown Ups **
Directed by: Dennis Dugan.
Written By: Adam Sandler & Fred Wolf.
Starring: Adam Sandler (Lenny Feder), Kevin James (Eric Lamonsoff), Chris Rock (Kurt McKenzie), David Spade (Marcus Higgins), Rob Schneider (Rob Hilliard), Salma Hayek (Roxanne Chase-Feder), Maria Bello (Sally Lamonsoff), Maya Rudolph (Deanne McKenzie), Joyce Van Patten (Gloria), Ebony Jo-Ann (Mama Ronzoni), Di Quon (Rita), Steve Buscemi (Wiley), Colin Quinn (Dickie Bailey), Tim Meadows (Malcolm), Madison Riley (Jasmine Hilliard), Jamie Chung (Amber Hilliard), Ashley Loren (Bridget Hilliard), Jake Goldberg (Greg Feder), Cameron Boyce (Keithie Feder), Alexys Nycole Sanchez (Becky Feder), Ada-nicole Sanger (Donna Lamonsoff).

It seems to me that some movies get made because the cast simply wants to hang around together goofing off for a couple of months. Sometimes – like with two of the three Ocean’s movies directed by Steven Soderbergh – movies like that can be fun and charming. And sometimes, like with Grown Ups, the result doesn’t add up to very much. Watching the film you get the feeling that everyone had fun making the movie – but aside for a few moments in the film, I didn’t have all that much fun watching the result.

The movie is about five friends who in 1978 were best friends and the starting line-up of a champion basketball team. Now 30 years later, they get together because their coach has died, and they have to come together for the funeral. You get the feeling that while they have all remained friends, they have certainly drifted apart in the intervening years – yet when they get back together, they still act like teenagers.

Lenny (Adam Sandler) has become a powerful Hollywood agent, married to a beautiful fashion designer (Salma Hayek) and had three kids – who have become spoiled and lazy. Eric (Kevin James) has a more blue collar life, but is also married (to Maria Bello, and no one seems to ask how James nabbed Bello, but whatever), and had a couple of kids of his own. Kurt (Chris Rock) has become a stay at home husband and father to his powerful wife (Maya Rudolph) and complains that his efforts (at making pumpkin risotto among other things) are going unnoticed. Marcus (David Spade) acts like a teenager all the time – no wife, no kids and that’s the way he likes it. Rob (Rob Schneider) is on his third marriage (to the much older Joyce Van Patten), and is worried that he has no connection with the kids from the previous marriages, and has become a health food nut. It would seem like these five guys, no matter how close they were in high school, would have nothing in common now – but they find that common ground, mostly by ignoring their differences and acting like idiots. They spend a week together at a lake house in their old home town, and everyone learns some valuable life lessons.

I can see how a movie like this could have worked – even one with the same cast. Everyone seems to have chemistry together, and you really do get the sense that they are all friends in real life and like hanging out with each other. Grown Ups is at its best in those lazy scenes where its just the guys, or just the girls for that matter, hanging around, talking, laughing and hanging out. Whether these scenes were tightly scripted or not, I don’t know – but they certainly have an improvised feel to them that works. Most of the best one liners come out of these scenes as well.

Unfortunately more often than not, Grown Ups tries to force these characters into some assemblance of a plot. There is a lot of talk about that winning basketball game, and the guys even meet the team they beat – and they still have not gotten over the loss and demand a rematch. There are also too many scenes of the various couples and families working through their own problems, and learning valuable lessons as a result. And strangely, I think the movie is least funny when it tries the hardest to be funny – the one liners that feel scripted all fall flat.

None of this is to say that Grown Ups is a painful movie – it isn’t. The cast is too talented for that. Adam Sandler has grown and matured somewhat since he was Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore – more comfortable in his own skin and acting normally. When he is given a great role – as he was in Punch-Drunk Love, Funny People or Reign Over Me – he can play it well. But he seems to want to make these family comedies more often than not, and while they aren’t really my thing, I have to admit he does them better than a lot of people (Eddie Murphy for instance). But I like Sandler in many of his more recent roles. Kevin James is also a talented comedic actor – although I don’t think any of his film work can match the work he did for years on The King of Queens. Chris Rock will always be a better stand up comedian than an actor, but he is likable enough in most of his roles. And hell, this time even David Spade and Rob Schneider (two actors I have never liked) are pretty good as well.

What I wish when I see a movie like Grown Ups is that the writers (in this case including Sandler himself) weren’t quite so lazy – that they would in fact push these actors a little bit further. But Grown Ups takes the easy way out practically every time. Yes, there are a few laughs scattered throughout the movie, which is probably all the film was going for. But had Sandler pushed himself and his friends a little bit harder, they could have had a much better movie. Instead they took the easy way out – and while Grown Ups will almost assuredly make a lot of money, it is a movie that almost everyone will forget by the time they reach the parking lot.

Movie Review: Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek *** ½
Directed By: Nicholas Stoller.

Written By: Nicholas Stoller based on characters created by Jason Segal.

Starring: Russell Brand (Aldous Snow), Jonah Hill (Aaron Green), Elisabeth Moss (Daphne Binks), Rose Byrne (Jackie Q.), Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs (Sergio Roma), Colm Meaney (Jonathan Snow), Lino Facioli (Naples), Lars Ulrich (Himself).

Get Him to the Greek is one of the most pleasant surprises of the year. The previews made this film look horribly unfunny and strained – so much so that I wondered why Jonah Hill and Russell Brand had agreed to reprise their supporting roles in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and become the leads this time. But the film itself is nothing like the preview – which made the film look like a never ending stream of shit and dick jokes. Yes, they have those in the final film as well, but there is also a lot more in Get Him to the Greek. The two leads are wonderful together, and more than that, they are actually playing real characters. There is something going on beneath the surface of the film.

The film stars Brand as Aldous Snow, Britain’s most infamous rock star whose career is in freefall. His ex-wife, Jackie Q. (Rose Bryne), has become a pop sensation, while his last album, African Child, was described as the worst thing to happen to Africa since Apartheid. He is so far gone on drugs and alcohol that he doesn’t care about anything else in his life. Jonah Hill is Aaron Green, a low level employee at a record label run by Sergio Roma (Sean “P. Diddy” Combs), who has an idea. The following month will be the 10 year anniversary of Snow’s legendary performance at the Greek theater in L.A. – which inspired one of the best selling live albums of all time. His idea is to put on a show there again. Sergio agrees, and sends Aaron off to London to collector Snow, bring him to New York for an appearance on the Today Show, and then out to L.A. for the concert. What should be simple turns out to be horribly complicated.

The film has the Apatow stamp of approval on it, but somewhat refreshingly, this is not another story of an overgrown man child, who is saved by the love of a beautiful woman, who is reality, would never look at him. True, Aaron has a girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss), who is training to be a doctor, but her in no way saves Aaron. They are already in a committed, normal relationship when the movie opens – but of course a fight right before he is to go away puts their relationship in doubt. On Aldous’ part, he still thinks he is in love with Jackie, but in reality, he is so far gone on drugs that he doesn’t love anything except drugs. But in a strange way, these two save each other.

The movie stars off with a bang – an Entertainment Tonight segment on the set of Snow’s African Child video, which struck me, and apparently everyone in the movie as well, as horribly offensive and racist – but is also hilarious. The key to this song, as with all the other songs in the movie, is that they sound close enough to reality that we can accept them as real songs, by real artists, but they are made ridiculous by the lyrics, which are over the top and hilarious. The film then details Snow’s break up with his wife, and his years of hard living through a series of magazine covers and video clips (in which people as varied as Pink and Christina Aguilera poke fun of themselves wonderfully). I loved this opening segment, and the fun never really stopped from then on. The wonderfully awkward first meeting between Snow and Aaron, the wild night of partying in London, which doesn’t seem all that fun. The horrible appearance on the Today Show. In these early scenes, the jokes come fast and furious (there is actually a great 2 Fast 2 Furious joke when they get to Vegas now that I think about it), but writer/director Nicholas Stoller is actually doing something a little more complex here. He is building the characters through these early scenes, so that as the movie progresses, you actually grow to care about these two guys and their problems. Yes, the movie is littered with ridiculous situations, but Snow is a rock star, who to steal a line from the upcoming The A-Team, specializes in the ridiculous. You believe that these two would actually be everywhere they are.

The key to the movie is the performances. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Brand proved that he could be hilarious in a supporting role. There was no depth to Snow in that film – he was a caricature of the over the top rock star, and Brand played it remarkably well. Here, asked to take that caricature and make a real person out of him, Brand succeeds marvelously. I have no doubt now that if they do actually go ahead with the planned Arthur remake with him in the lead role, that he can match Dudley Moore. Not to be outdone, Jonah Hill is given what is easily the best role of his career so far. In films like Superbad, Hill has proven that he can be funny, and belt out one liners with the best of them. But here, like Brand, his character is deeper and more mature. He acts very much like a guy who thinks his girlfriend just dumped him would act. He idolizes Snow, but soon begins to see the reality of his situation as well. Along with the one liners, and the puke jokes, there is some real self loathing going on in this movie.

Director Nicholas Stoller is still developing. This is his second film after Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and he still doesn’t quite have the chops of Apatow himself, or the best of the directors associated with him. But he’s getting better, and there are fewer missed opportunities here than there were in the first film. Get Him to the Greek is perhaps the funniest movie of the year so far.

Movie Review: Sex and the City 2

Sex and the City 2 *
Directed by: Michael Patrick King.
Written By: Michael Patrick King based on the book by Candace Bushnell & television show by Darren Star.
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Chris Noth (Mr. Big), David Eigenberg (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry Goldenblatt), Mario Cantone (Anthony Marantino), Willie Garson (Stanford Blatch), Liza Minnelli (Herself), Alice Eve (Erin), Lynn Cohen (Magda), Penélope Cruz (Carmen Garcia Carrion), Omid Djalili (Mr. Safir), Raza Jaffrey (Butler Guarau), John Corbett (Aidan Shaw), Max Ryan (Rikard Spirit).

I was never a big fan of the show, and thought that the first movie was merely average and way too long. But I have seen enough Sex and the City to know that at its best, it is capable of being both smart and funny. It started out as a show about four financially and sexually independent women in New York who had a lot of money, and enjoyed spending it on the finer things in life, but also dealt with issues that women – no matter what their economic background – could relate to. The show was daring in showing women who were happy being by themselves, even as they searched for a husband. You got the impression that if they never did find anyone, they would be okay with that. Of course, over the course of the series run, they felt the need to match all the women – except for Kim Cattrall’s Samantha – up with someone, but still, again at its best, the show dealt with things intelligently.

Unfortunately Sex and the City 2 is nowhere near the best that the show that the show is capable of. Instead, it gives into the shows worst tendencies – and simply shows four whiny women complaining about their lives, which are so much better than most peoples, then heading off to Abu Dhabi to try and offend the Muslim world. I know some people have complained that the film is anti-Muslim, but I think that’s giving the movie far too much credit. In order to be truly offensive, some thought would have had to go into the movie, and there is no evidence that any did.

The movie starts out with a huge gay wedding – between Carrie’s best gay friend and Charlotte’s best gay friend – perhaps because they felt they didn’t want to add in any other characters. The wedding is a huge production, with Liza Minelli performing the ceremony, and then getting up with two back up Liza’s to sing Beyonce’s Single Ladies (which as horrific as it sounds, is actually one of the comic highlights of the film).

From there the movie starts out kind of promising – as it brings up issues for each of the four women which, if dealt with intelligently, could be both comic and insightful. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) is going into menopause, and is trying to trick her body with creams, vitamins and hormones. Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is having trouble with her new boss – a sexist, and feels that she has hit the glass ceiling which is still all too real for many women. Charlotte (Kristen Davis) is struggling with being a mother, and all the stress that comes along with it, and worries that her Irish nanny (Alice Eve) maybe too attractive, and too braless, for her husband to resist. And finally Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is struggling in her marriage to Mr. Big (Chris Noth), who wants to stay at home in their brand new apartment and watch old movies on TV, instead of taking her out to a fancy restaurant every night. The horror of being her.

The problem with the movie is that as soon as these issues are introduced, they are jettisoned until the finale of the movie where we are assured that everything worked out fine. Instead, we get the four ladies heading to Abu Dhabi, to stay in a $22,000 a night suit courtesy of the hotel owner who wants Samantha to represent the hotel from a PR stand point to convince Americans that Abu Dhabi is even better than Dubai. What we get for the rest of the movie is lame jokes about falling off camels, women in Burkas and the restrictions on sexuality that are part of being in a Muslim country. Oh yeah, and Carrie just happens to run into Aidan (John Corbett) in the marketplace over there, and old feelings start to creep back in.

I suppose I cannot really blame the movie for not getting serious into the real lives of these people. Although Mr. Big is some Wall Street hotshot, the recession is never mentioned, and everyone still seems to have a hell of a lot of money. The filmmakers obviously decided to try and make some sort of escapist comic fantasy of a movie for people to forget their problems (for 2 hours and 24 minutes by the way – at least 45 minutes too long for this type of thing).

But the movie doesn’t even work on that level for a simple reason. None of it is funny. There is not a line of dialogue that causes a genuine laugh (although a few are so horribly bad that you laugh because you cannot believe anyone wrote them, and the actress did refuse to utter it). The situations are not funny, and the actors all seem bored. They have spent so long playing these characters that I have a feeling that they simply want to move on.

Worse yet, you don’t even like the characters any more. Especially Carrie who comes across as such a spoiled whiner that you cannot imagine why even Big (who has always been a bore) would want to put up with her any longer let alone anyone else. I wanted to grab her and scream that not everyone eats out every night, or gets hugely expensive jewelry all the time, when they already have more than enough. Big wasn’t even asking her to cook – he either did it himself, or brought back take out – and not Pizza and burgers, but stuff from Sabu! Get over yourself damn it! Charlotte is almost as bad complaining about how hard it is to be a mother of two, when she has a full time nanny. Most mothers have to put up with a hell of a lot more than she does, and do so without so much whining. And if you’re stupid enough to wear designer clothing to make cupcakes with a five year old, you deserve what’s coming to you.

I believe it’s time to retire Sex and the City. It will be remembered as a groundbreaking television show, beloved by women the world over. But I cannot believe there are too many women out there right now who would enjoy this movie. It represents the worst the series was capable of and then some. It is one of the very worst films of the year so far.

Movie Review: MacGruber

MacGruber **
Directed by: Jorma Taccone.
Written By: Will Forte & John Solomon & Jorma Taccone.
Starring: Will Forte (MacGruber), Kristen Wiig (Vicki St. Elmo), Ryan Phillippe (Lt. Dixon Piper), Val Kilmer (Dieter Von Cunth), Powers Boothe (Col. James Faith), Maya Rudolph (Casey), Rhys Coiro (Yerik Novikov), Andy Mackenzie (Hoss Bender), Jasper Cole (Zeke Pleshette), Timothy V. Murphy (Constantine), Kevin Skousen (Senator Garver).

If you have seen the previews of MacGruber, or at least the recurring sketches on Saturday Night Live, then you don’t need me to tell you that the movie is stupid. But I don’t necessarily think that being stupid is a bad thing for a movie comedy. There is a difference between smart stupid comedy, and just plain stupid. At its best, MacGruber is the former - an occasionally hilarious satire and spoof on the cheesy MacGyver TV series, and action movies of the 1980s in general. The film has its share of inspired moments, but more often than not, it resorts to the just plain stupid. So while I wouldn’t say I hated MacGruber, I cannot really say I liked it either.

MacGruber (Will Forte) is a former military special ops officer who has spent the last decade hiding out in Peru after the evil Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) murdered his wife on their wedding day. But now Von Cunth is back - having acquired a nuclear weapon from the former Soviet Union and smuggled it into America in some sort of evil, diabolical scheme for world domination. It is up to MacGruber to stop him. He assembles a team that quickly gets killed, and ends up being stuck with his old friend Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and young military man Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe). MacGruber makes ever mistake possible in the investigation, but still somehow gets closer and closer to Von Cunth.

Forte is good at playing MacGruber as a completely delusional alpha male. He delivers his lines completely seriously, and it’s only because they are just slightly more ridiculous than normal than they seem funny. Wiig is good as MacGruber’s old friend who is actually in love with him, and two play the game of flirting without committing until later. Phillippe is essentially the straight man setting these two veteran comedians up well. And Kilmer is having a hell of a lot of fun as Von Cunth.

As I mentioned, there are several inspired moments in the movie. In fact, there are hardly any extended segments in the movie that where I didn’t at least smile. But too often, the movie resorts to cheap humor. Dick jokes, sex jokes, scenes where put celery up their ass and moments that just don’t work. Too many jokes simply fall flat.

Like most SNL movies, MacGruber ultimately fails because what works in a five minute sketch (and in the case of MacGruber, five minutes is longer than any one sketch) doesn’t work when extended into feature length. As such, the filmmakers have to put in a lot of filler to make the film work. MacGruber isn’t a horrible movie. There are laughs in it. But there just doesn’t seem to be any real reason for the movie to exist.

Movie Review: Perrier's Bounty

Perrier’s Bounty ***
Directed By: Ian Fitzgibbon.
Written By: Mark O'Rowe
Starring: Cillian Murphy (Michael McCrea), Jodie Whittaker (Brenda), Jim Broadbent (Jim), Brendan Gleeson (Darren Perrier), Liam Cunningahm (The Mutt).

British Crime dramas seem to have more a sense of humor about themselves than American ones do. American films take themselves all too seriously and are much darker. But the British like to see the absurdity of it all. The new film, Perrier’s Bounty which is actually Irish, is a movie which is all about life and death, is still fun throughout.

Cillian Murphy plays Michael McCrea, a lowlife living in Dublin. He owes Perrier (Brendan Gleeson) 1,000 Euro, but it might as well be 1,000,000, as he has no way of getting the money. Perrier sends two of his henchman to collect the money, or break two of Michael’s bones -it’s his choice. They give him until the end of the night. So Michael heads out on the town - after stopping by to see Brenda (Jodie Whitaker), his neighbor who he is love with, but is hung up on a jerk. He tries to borrow money from another gangster, The Mutt (Liam Cunningham), but instead gets roped into a house burglary. Complicating matters is that Michael’s estranged father Jim (Jim Broadbent) has chosen tonight to try and reconnect with his son. He believes that the Grim Reaper has come to him in a dream and told him that the next time he sleeps, he will die. When Michael, Brenda, Jim and Perrier’s henchmen all show up at Michael’s apartment, one of the henchmen wind up dead, and Brenda, Jim and Michael go on the run. Perrier wants revenge, and he wants it quickly, and so he sends his men out on their trail.

The screenplay by Mark O’Rowe, and the direction by Ian Fitzgibbon keeps the movie running at a wickedly fast pace. The performances help as well. Murphy is wonderful as a man who gets increasingly exasperated as the movie progresses, as just one thing after another comes at him, and it gets to the point where he can no longer breathe. Whitaker is just the right mixture of confused, naïve and sexy to play Brenda, the woman who cannot see that she is meant to be with Michael, and that her boyfriend is a douche. Broadbent is hilarious as Jim. I normally think of Broadbent as an almost lovable grandpa type, and while he certainly is a loyal father in this film, it is also a very witty, profane performance. Brendan Gleeson is also quite good as the ruthless Perrier. Yes, he chews the scenery, but sometimes scenery chewing is what is required, and he does it brilliantly in this film. From his introductory scene - where at first we assume he is all ruthless violence, and then he reveals his softer side when he finds out that the henchman who was killed was the gay lover of another of his henchman, he is surprisingly sympathetic. He wants to get revenge of his behalf - because after all, love is love.

Perrier’s Bounty is not a great film. It does not really have any bigger purpose other than to be an entertaining B-movie, and it succeeds in doing that brilliantly. While Guy Ritchie has become a little too obsessed with style over substance, here is a film that harkens back to his best work. While Ian Fitzgibbon may have a ways to go before he is a truly great filmmaker, here he proves is a filmmaker of genuine talent and wit. I look forward to see what he does next.

Movie Review: The Trotsky

The Trotsky ***
Directed by: Jacob Tierney.
Written By: Jacob Tierney.
Starring: Jay Baruchel (Leon), Emily Hampshire (Alexandra Leith), Geneviève Bujold (Denise Archambault), Colm Feore (Principal Berkhoff), Saul Rubinek (David Bronstein), Michael Murphy (Frank McGovern), Jessica Paré (Laura).

This weekend, I was dragged to speech by a religious leader that turned into a two hour sermon. Two of the speakers, via video, were twin teenagers who wrote a book challenging their generation to do better. While I disagreed with their message – that they should be merging politics and religion – I couldn’t help but agree with them are some things. Mainly that teenagers are not as lazy, apathetic or dumb as many adults seem to think they are – and the reason that they are not doing more is because nothing is expected from them.

The Trotsky, the new film by Canadian Jacob Tierny, seems to share the same message. I’m not sure I agree any more with the main characters ideology than I did with the twins (the main character here believes he is the reincarnation of famed Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky and has modeled his life after his), but I agree with the sentiment just the same. My wife is a teacher, and she tells stories about how the curriculum is constantly being dumbed down, about how students are barely even expected to hand in assignments on time, and how students, despite what the teacher thinks sometimes, are simply passed onto the next grade no matter what work they did. Are kids today stupider then they used to be? Or do we simply expect so little from them that they can barely summon the urge to try anymore?

Leon Bronstein (Jay Baruchel) is a 17 year old from Montreal. During the summer, he interns at his father’s (Saul Rubinek), and within three days has his workers on a hunger strike to protest the fascist ways of management – mainly that the lunch hour seems to have only been 56 minutes instead of a full hour. The workers go along with the strike, but seem confused on the hunger aspect of it.

Leon’s father is angry, so he decides to pull him out of his boarding school for the last year of high school – and send him instead to public school. Leon doesn’t much mind this. On his first day, he joins the Student Union – not realizing that all they do is plan dances – and starts to fight against the fascists who rule the school – notably Principal Berkhoff (Colm Feore) – and fighting for the downtrodden – like the poor guy who gets a detention for having mud on his shoes.

But this is just one of Leon’s plans. He also meets Alexandra (Emily Hampshire), a newly graduated lawyer 10 years his senior and falls in love. It starts because Leon Trotsky married a woman named Alexandra 10 years his senior, but blooms into a real love. Alexandra of course hates him at the start – but then so did the first Mrs. Trotsky. Leon also tracks down old communist Frank McGovern (Michael Murphy) to get some advice. Ironically, McGovern’s ex-wife is the head of the school board (Genevieve Bujold), who of course, also makes Leon’s list of fascists. All of these characters are initially put off by Leon – he comes on too strong, he’s too weird, possibly insane, but they are worn down by him. He cannot help by admire his moxie.

I don’t really believe that much of what happens in The Trotsky could actually happen at any high school. I don’t believe that Alexandra would eventually fall for Leon, or given what Leon does at the climax of the film that he would get away scot free. But none of that is really the point of the movie – and neither is Leon’s obsession with Trotsky, which is generally played for laughs.

No, what the movie is really about is teenagers taking responsibility for their own destiny. They are constantly told what to do, what to wear, where to go and how to act. Adults are infuriated that they act like children, but then they treat them like children, so how do you expect them to act? The movie makes this point in an entertaining manner. Yes, Jay Baruchel is too old to be playing a 17 year old, but he has a baby face, and he is such a likable actor, and is so committed to this role, that we forgive him. The other characters are more one dimensional, but are still believable. So no, The Trotsky is not in any real way believable. But the movie still has a point to make – and the point is a good one.

Movie Review: Please Give

Please Give *** ½
Directed by: Nicole Holofcener.
Written By: Nicole Holofcener.
Starring: Catherine Keener (Kate), Rebecca Hall (Rebecca), Oliver Platt (Alex), Amanda Peet (Mary), Ann Guilbert (Andra), Sarah Steele (Abby), Lois Smith (Mrs. Portman), Thomas Ian Nicholas (Eugene).

The films of Nicole Holofcener are surprisingly, daringly honest. In a movie environment that often paints women either as little more than wives, mothers and pictures of perfection for idiot man children, or else empty, shallow nitwits (cough, Sex and the city, cough), Holofcener’s films are like a breath of fresh air. The people in her movies – most of them women, although she doesn’t spare men either – are confused, funny, messed up, smart, kind and sometimes downright cruel. They are, in short, much like women in real life.

Please Give is Holofcener’s latest, and perhaps best, film. The movie characters include Kate (Catherine Keener), who along with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) operates one of those trendy stores in New York which sells “antique” furniture at high prices. They are constantly asked by their customers where they get their things, but they brush off the question. In reality, they buy it off of the next of kin of the recently deceased, who do not know the value of their loved ones possessions. But that would sound bad, so they don’t say it. Kate is starting to feel guilty – not just because of what they do, but because they are very good at it. They are rich beyond what they thought, and she tries to get rid of this guilt by giving more than normal to homeless people. When that doesn’t help anymore, she tries to find different places to volunteer – but just ends up making everyone feel worse, not better. All this infuriates her teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), who has bad skin, and wants expensive jeans, and feels ignored by her mother.

Kate and Alex are also waiting for their neighbor Andra (Ann Guilbert) to die. They have purchased her apartment, right next to theirs, and when she kicks the bucket, they are tearing down the wall and expanding. This doesn’t seem to bother Andra any – who is a thoroughly unpleasant old lady who bitches about everyone and everything. She has two granddaughters, and Mary (Amanda Peet) doesn’t care either. She is a bitch, knows it, hates her grandmother and sees nothing wrong with what Kate and Alex are doing. The other granddaughter, Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), loves her grandmother, but that may only be because she has no one else to love. She is lonely, and works gives women mammograms all day.

In the past few years, I have grown tired of all the “liberal guilt” movies out there – the ones that congratulate the viewer for believing the right things, and mindlessly insult conservatives for being heartless monsters (which is odd, because I am very liberal). The movies seem so one dimensional to me. But Please Give is different because it sees how often giving to charity, or homeless people, or doing volunteer work isn’t always about being selfless and kindhearted and helping others – it is often about helping yourself. Keener doesn’t do what she does out of great humanitarian concern, but does it to make herself feel better. She feels bad because she has things so good, while others have them so bad. Her two attempts at volunteer work go horribly wrong because she starts to feel sorry for people (seniors and the mentally challenged) who do not feel sorry for themselves. In all her concern for others, she doesn’t see what’s right in front of her face with her own husband and daughter, both of whom turn to Amanda Peet’s Mary –albeit for different reasons.

It takes someone as self involved, bitchy and immature (she constantly watches her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, and then insults her to Rebecca) as Mary to understand what Abby is going through in terms of her own body image. Mary works at a high end spa giving facials, and she immediately picks up on Abby’s self consciousness in a way her mother, who simply dismisses it as frivolous, never does. You can almost understand Abby’s most selfish moment in the film – when she grabs a $20 bill from her mother that she was about to give to a homeless person – she has to do something to get her mother’s attention. As for Platt’s Alex, he sleeps with Mary, I think, because he knows that she is a bitch – and so there will be no actual feelings involved when it ends. He loves his wife, but is being worn down by her guilt trips. Alex is always trying to say the right things – be polite and proper, even though he is in private more self involved than even Kate.

The one person in the movie that I think is really quite good is Rebecca Hall’s Rebecca. She goes over to help her grandmother every day because she wants, not because she has to. But Rebecca is letting herself be taken advantage of. Mary is a bitch who hates her grandmother – and her grandmother hates her right back. She sees too much of herself in Mary, and Andra is just as self involved as Mary is, and Mary is the only one who will call her on it. But Rebecca is most likely more like their mother – who is not in the movie – and Andra can taken advantage of that. Mary does similar things, as Rebecca somehow needs these to take care of these people, even if they don’t deserve it. When she meets a nice guy (Thomas Ian Nicholas), Andra insults her – saying he’s too short, but that’s okay because if he was taller, he never would have gone for her anyway. We feel that Rebecca may just have a chance to escape this cycle by the end of the movie, while the other characters maybe doomed to repeat theirs.

I grow tired of movies where the characters are either one dimensional or feel like they are just pawns in a screen writer’s game. That’s why I admire the films of Holofcener so much – the people in them, whether they are good, bad or ugly – and they are often all three – feel real. She presents them, flaws and all, for the world to see. And that is so much more satisfying that watching a bunch of shallow, empty characters bitch about their sex lives and shoes.

Movie Review: Kick Ass

Kick Ass *** ½
Directed by: Matthew Vaughn
Written By: Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn based on the comic book by Mark Millar & John Romita Jr.
Starring: Aaron Johnson (Dave Lizewski / Kick-Ass), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Chris D'Amico / Red Mist), Mark Strong (Frank D'Amico), Lyndsy Fonseca (Katie Deauxma), Chloe Moretz (Mindy Macready / Hit-Girl), Nicolas Cage (Damon Macready / Big Daddy), Clark Duke (Marty), Evan Peters (Todd), Garrett M. Brown (Mr. Lizewski), Michael Rispoli (Big Joe), Xander Berkeley (Detective Gigante), Omari Hardwick (Sergeant Marcus Williams).

Kick Ass is an interesting movie. On one hand, it is a spectacularly entertaining film about a group of “real life superheroes”, who have no powers, but decide to dress up and fight crime anyway. The film is violent in the extreme, contains as many “fucks” as a Scorsese movie and doesn’t pull any punches as it mocks its geeky target audience, while giving them precisely what they want. It is also a movie where a 12 year old girl says many of those swear words, and is involved in some of the most brutally violent scenes, and ignores the psychological impact that being raised they way she is, by a demented man who has lost all contact with reality, would really have on her. It is a troubling movie, but it’s also an very good one.

The movie stars Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski, a 17 year old comic book nerd in what appears to be New York City. He has a dead mother (like all good superheroes), is ignored by girls and hangs out with two fellow comic book nerds. Then he gets an idea – he can be a superhero. He orders a scuba suit online, spends a few days practicing, and then heads out on the streets. The first time he tries to intercede, he gets the crap kicked out of him and is stabbed. After recovering in the hospital, he decides to give it another go. After saving one guy from getting beaten to a pulp, he becomes an internet sensation because of an amateur video. But when Kick Ass, his superhero name, decides to try and help out the girl he has a crush on (the beautiful Lyndsy Fonseca), he realizes just how over his head he is. If it wasn’t for the intervention of Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz) and Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage), who brutally kill a bunch of people to help him, he probably would have wound up dead. It turns out that he isn’t the first superhero out there. When the killings to come to light, it angers mob boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong), who wants to catch Kick Ass, and whoever is helping him. Frank’s own nerdy son, Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) decides he wants to help out his father to try and catch Kick Ass, Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Then things get really out of control.

I liked Kick Ass because of its combining real life elements with the standard superhero plot. This is not some fantasy movie where someone dresses up as a superhero and becomes a super strong, but a more realistic version of the story. What would really happen if some comic book nerd decided to try and fight crime? And what kind of warped minds what not only do that, but also involve his 12 year old daughter in it as well?

To me the most fascinating character in the film is not Kick Ass, but Big Daddy. Nicolas Cage is a well known comic book nerd, so he obviously cherished his role as Big Daddy, who was a normal guy who has simply snapped and decides to get revenge on Frank because of what he did to him. He has lost contact with anything resembling reality, and more disturbingly, he has drawn his daughter into his deluded fantasy as well. Most likely, many audience members are going be disturbed by an early scene where Big Daddy teaches Hit Girl how to take a bullet with a vest on. The scene is darkly comic, but also disturbing – which is how I would describe almost all of the scenes between Cage and Mortez. Cage is excellent in the role – I particularly love him when he dressed as Big Daddy and tries to put on his tough guy voice, which comes out sounding ridiculous. But this is also a great performance about a disturbed individual. For her part, Chloe Morentz does an excellent job as Hit Girl, a little girl who thinks that what she is doing is perfectly natural. This is the way she has been raising, so she sees no problem with killing a bunch of people, whether it be with knives, guns or her bare hands. These scenes are troubling, and yet they are also the heart of what makes Kick Ass as good of a film as it is – there is psychological depth to these people.

The rest of the performances are fine as well. Johnson is good as a naïve kid who doesn’t know what he is getting himself into, but loves the attention too much to stop when he does realize it. After all, had he never turned into Kick Ass, Fonseca would not have looked at him twice – now, he is a geek getting laid by the school hottie. Fonseca is quite good as his love interest – his Lois Lane or Mary Jane if you will. Mark Strong plays the villain role, as he often does, and does it with great comic book style. And Christopher Mintz-Plasse is excellent as the son just trying to get his father’s attention.

Kick Ass is a disturbing movie – perhaps more disturbing than the filmmakers realized when they made it. The presence of Hit Girl makes the movie much more disturbing than it otherwise would have been. I mentioned off the top that the film ignores the psychological impact that being raised by a delusional madman would have on Hit Girl, but now I’m wondering if it actually does. True, the movie does to give the film a “happy” ending, while still setting it up for a sequel, and yet the entire movie is not an objective story, but rather one told from the point of view of Kick Ass himself – and he has proven throughout the movie that he is a little delusional himself – meaning he may not realize how damaged Hit Girl is himself. But having said all of that, I have to say what Kick Ass does, it does very well. It is a movie that at turns darkly hilarious, a disturbing, and contains action sequences that doesn’t diminish the impact of violence, but puts it right in the audience faces. My reservations about the film are really a testament to how well it does what it sets out to do. Kick Ass is a one of a kind movie.