Month: June 2011

Bad Teacher squarely belongs to Lucy Punch. The pluck British actress portrays Amy Squirrel, a righteous Suzy Creamcheese, Miss-Prim-and-Proper foil to Cameron Diaz’ badass, conniving central character, Elizabeth Halsey. Buffeted time and again by the aloof yet shrewd Halsey, Squirrel reacts with irrepressible determination to hold her place as John Adams High School’s champion boot licker. Read more →

You don’t need to be a fan of “dry British humor” to appreciate The Trip. Filmgoers eager to witness the very best in improvisational comedy with an edge of pathos need look no further.

Failing to snag his foodie American girlfriend for a car trip around northern England reviewing restaurants, Steve Coogan, playing himself (or is he?), has a not so good idea. He’ll invite actor/impressionist Rob Braydon along to co-pilot. We wonder why Steve’s initially reluctant to bring in Rob, figuring it must have to do with Steve’s sadness about his girlfriend, who also may be leaving him. Turns out Rob has an obsessive need to do impressions (albeit really good ones) practically 24/7. Scenes of Steve and Rob trying to outdo each other with competing impressions of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and Woody Allen are priceless.

The Trip is Coogan’s and director Michael Winterbottom’s third feature together (see the remarkable 24 Hour Party People). Coogan, best known in England for his portrayal of spoof talk-show host Alan Partridge, seems very self-revealing on the week-long road trip. He’s also not above exploiting his celebrity for the sake of exploring the good graces of various female hotel hostesses and media members, although he never seems too caught up in it. Coogan’s aloofness is offset by Braydon’s directness, his knowledge of food debonair by comparison with his pal’s. In between the clowning, we get a good feel for Coogan’s vulnerability, reagarding his girlfriend, a distant son, and various agents. Of course how-much-of-it-is-autobiographical is the elephant in the room, but does it really matter?

Winterbottom’s impressive film catalog brags an unparallelled variety of styles and themes, from the excellent documentary The Road To Guantanamo to the nefarious X-rated 9 Songs. Here he’s managed to make a film about two guys visiting a different high end restaurant every night, sharing a camaraderie yet squabbling every chance they get, affectionately bickering while managing to critique each other earnestly along the way.

The Trip was originally a much longer British TV series. Let’s see those outtakes.

8 Black Puddings (out of 10)

Early in the Welsh comedy Submarine it’s a delight to find 15-year-old Oliver Tate gauging the movement of the dimmer switch in his parents’ bedroom to determine whether they are still sexually active. One half expects the assured yet determinedly serious teen to burst in one night proclaiming his discovery directly to his parents. Not quite. Instead Oliver (an excellent Craig Roberts) has up his sleeve a plan to thwart Mom’s increasingly ominous overtures to back-in-town former boyfriend Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine), a painful mystic. Graham also has a mullet, a large van, and a phoniness veiled by his showmanship ability to fool audiences with nonsense like sticking martial arts moves into his talks at the oddest times.

Oliver is not above cooking up suggestive love letters pretending to be from his dour scientist Dad (Noah Taylor) to his attention-seeking Mom (a usually reliable Sally Hawkins), who’s often hip to his ways. Oliver also pleas to his Dad to stand up to Mom once her apparent tomfoolery with Graham steps up a notch. Oliver makes no bones about delivering the admonition to Dad while in earshot of Mom. This scene (and many others) could have been merely ridiculous in the wrong hands, but director Richard Ayoade pulls it off with a refreshingly whimsical elan. Submarine pays tribute to the eternal adolescent who never quite fits in.

An equally strong parallel plot pits Oliver’s wits against those of newly found, equally tortured girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin Paige), who hates anything romantic. Their scenes together have a texture of realness. Determined to lose his virginity to her, our clever, deadpan Oliver is provided a mix tape by Dad. It offers musical interludes in tandem with relationshp changing events and it’s pretty good stuff by Alex Turner (Arctic Monkeys). A fair amount of sudden zooms, freeze frams, split screens, and the acting out of “What-If” scenes keep things lively amidst the general downbeat mood.

All in all Submarine is an often funny, memorable treatment of an offbeat coming-of-age offered in the stylized vein of Rushmore. First-time director British standup comic Ayoade, is known for his performance as the nerdiest character in the BBC comedy, The IT crowd. Here he not only gets nerd right with Oliver, he surrounds him with other main characters equally dorkish, including all the adults.

8.8 Welshes out of 10

You could say in Beginners’ favor that it executes an admirable pastiche on memory, loss, and the frightful uncertainties of newly found romantic love. You could also add that the end result, fraught with disparate, scattershot ingredients, too often resembles a jumble.

Let’s get the dog out of the way. A Jack Russell terrier whose “thoughts” are flashed on the screen as subtitles is an overwrought, superfluous contrivance that belongs in a much less ambitious film. Were it not for Beginners’ occasional keen insights this kind of preciousness would have drowned it.

With very fine performances from Christopher Plummer and Melanie Laurent (Inglorious Basterds) Beginners traces the announcement of 75-year-old Hal (Plummer) to son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) that Dad is indeed gay. Only occasionally using Hal as a device for social commentary, director Mike Mills is most interested in the effect Hal’s coming out (after his wife’s death) has on his psyche and on his son’s emotional composure. Mills’ sem-autobiographical plot crisscrosses flashbacks of Hal’s brief time of delayed happiness before and after discovering he has a fatal illness, with Oliver’s development (not long after Hal’s death) of a relationship with the kooky yet serene Anna (Laurent). A third strain throws in flashbacks of Oliver’s childhood memories of his eccentric Mom (a sharp Mary Page Keller).

Hal bravely towers over the urgency of his cancer, during which he has get togethers with a large group of gay friends. While we’re not given scenes from his marriage to compare, his new life clearly enriches him. Plummer, 81, a true treasure as a screen and stage actor, conveys pure contentment until the end. He makes the pain of his disease seem more of a nuisance than a cause for sorrow while presenting a caring Dad to Oliver in ways not shown during his marriage. Hal’s much younger lover (Goran Visnjic), while not as annoying as the terrier, seems either miscast or overacting or both.

Wish it were true that Oliver were anywhere near as compelling as Hal. A mere sketch of a man, were it not for the wonderful Laurent sharing his scenes, we’d notice even more his oversimplified dullness. Yet even with Laurent’s skills, their relationship, while often entertaining, seems more gimmicky than genuine. McGregor, so good in Ghostwriter, fails to add another dimension to Oliver.

A word about Melanie Laurent: she’s fascinating. During a pleasant costume party scene when they meet, she decides to lay on a couch to receive therapy from McGregor, (who’s playing Dr. Freud). Using pantomine and occasional written notes due to laryngitis, she introduces a quirky hobo character who intrigues and equally frustrates Oliver. Removing their disguises does little to change her effect on Oliver, who of course runs away from love because his parents had a less than close relationship. Credit Mills with defining Anna’s unorthodox character. Anyone who’s seen Mills’ wife onscreen (check out the brilliant Me and You and Everyone We Know, which she wrote, directed and starred in) has a pretty good idea where Anna’s commendably peculiar side may have originated.

While Beginners has a reputation it doesn’t deserve, Plummer and Laurent vindicate what is almost a dog-and-phony show.

6 hobos out of 10

A perceived superior era for the support of creativity, Paris in the legendary Roaring 20’s is the perfect arena for director Woody Allen’s light as a feather yet profoundly eternal comic explorations in the pitch-perfect Midnight in Paris. While concluding the cultural spotlight of a bygone era can unnerve current sensibilities, Allen both celebrates and exposes droll, charming nostalgia as muse in his most effective fantasy since Purple Rose of Cairo.

Present-day successful screenwriter and wannabe novelist Owen Wilson, while on holiday in the enchanting City Of Light with his culturally clueless wife Rachel McAdams, reflects on the days Hemingway and Fitzgerald strolled the very same streets and manages to find himself, to his surprise, magically immersed in the golden time itself. As usual in his best work, Allen says a lot with seemingly effortless simplicity. As he acquits with a sage-link wink his career-long fascination with themes of love and death, he renders a sophisticated, tender tribute to both Paris and the endurance of cultural literacy.

Ever the uber-casting director, Allen supporting cast mixes Oscar winners Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, and Adrien Brody with first lady of France Carla Bruni and Michael Sheen. Relative newcomer Corey Stoll plays an Ernest Hemingway you’re likely to remember. The cast, clad in exceptional costumes, romps through dialogue so engaging you can’t wait for what’s next. Here’s Cole Porter, there’s Luis Bunuel (one of the film’s funniest moments is Wilson pitching the plot for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeois to a befuddled, unreceptive Bunuel). Sheen represents smug academia, McAdams and her family the crass and guillible Ugly Americans, Cotillard the unattainable ideal, Wilson the always striving artist looking for but also afraid of the fantasy becoming real.

Neither simple nor incredulous, Midnight in Paris achieves through its sheer yet deceptive lightness the cinematic equivalent of a Marc Vetri crespelle. Woody Allen fans will debate where this film stands in his oeuvre. For this viewer, it rivals the best of his heyday.

9 bon bons (out of 10)