Month: June 2012

Safety Not Guaranteed arrives like a breath of fresh air. Wearing its low budget like a badge of honor, the directorial debut of former Saturday Night Live intern Colin Trevorrow has heart and wit aplenty. The rare science fiction film that places lavish attention not on special effects but on the special quirks of its characters, it’s gratifyingly amusing one minute, touchingly heartfelt the next.

The set up is a classified ad (based on a real one) inviting a respondent to “go back in time with me. This is not a joke…must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before….safety not guaranteed.” An unlikely trio of young Seattle Magazine writers set out to goof on the story by staking out the post office box of the ad’s author, grocery clerk, Kenneth (Mark Duplass). After the magazine’s staff writer in the group, Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) flubs a visit to Kenneth, intern Darius (Aubrey Plaza, Parks and Recreation) takes over. Instead of approaching Kenneth as if he has two heads, Darius, up to this point in the film a quivering mess of insecurities, puts on an hilarious sheen of tough resolve. Her hyper-aggressiveness is downright cooing to Kenneth. The two hit it off, Darius keeps her cover, and the shenanigans begin. A subplot of slacker Jeff looking up an old high school flame (his real reason for the trip) while goading the other nerdy intern Amau (Kagan Soni), into drinking and picking up girls, is equally engaging.

Winner of the Waldo Salt Sundance screenwriting award (and written by Derek Connolly, also a former SNL intern), Safety Not Guaranteed evolves largely into Plaza’s film. She’s delightful as a character presented with the dual pressures of Kenneth’s distrustful screening and consistent testing of her, and Jeff’s indifferent yet simultaneously bossy mentoring. Her back and forth from tough-girl-ready-to-time-travel, to her vulnerable normal self, is a joy to behold. Duplass (whose directing credits include Jeff, Who Lives at Home and the nifty Cyrus) enhances his character’s own contrast between ham-handed nutjob and earnest loner. Kenneth blows stale air about people following him, urgently sets up stealth hijacks of equipment for the “mission,” then picks up a guitar and reluctantly sings Darius an “unfinished” ditty that blows her away. If his approach as an actor seems almost sketchy, the scatterdness finally resonates as Kenneth’s true nature rather than any unrealized technique. (Indy filmgoers will soon be exposed to near simultaneous releases of Duplass as an actor in Your Sister’s Sister and People Like Us.)

By failing to succumb to normal cliches and by virtue of its genuine dialogue and nuanced acting, Safety Not Guaranteed achieves a simple, infectious elegance. It develops an interest in its characters from the first frame to the last that is all too rare these days.

8. 5 Paeans to Old Fashioned Storytelling With a Modern Edge (Out of 10)

Neither filmdom’s most vibrant actress over 70 nor one of its very brightest young screen presences comes close to saving the clueless and cliched ode to hippie culture, Peace, Love and Misunderstanding.

The ageless Jane Fonda, now 74, and the wondrous Elizabeth Olsen (Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene) burrow through a screenplay fraught with silliness. Fonda, still lovely and a smart comedienne, wisely seems bemused. Catherine Keener’s along for the ride as the conservative daughter of Fonda, a pot-smoking Woodstock resident and protest marcher.

While Keener’s duet with Jeffrey Dean Morgan of The Band’s The Weight may not exactly have recently departed Levon Helm rolling in his grave, it comes close. Also conjured up are Jimi Hendrix, whose live Star Spangled Banner at the original Woodstock Fonda claims was the “soundtrack” while her water broke giving birth to Keener. Olsen and brother Nat Wolff (The Naked Brothers Band) get involved with Woodstock kids after their mom drags them to grandmother’s for a visit. Hers is particularly vexing at first since Olsen’s a vegetarian, animal-rights gal and her new flames’s a stinking butcher.

Fonda not only smokes pot, she deals it, whereas the screenplay merely gradually grows mold. Fonda also sculpts and likes to paint nude men, who drop their drawers without regard for sagging flesh or grandkids in the room. It may be the peace protests that seem the most community-theater-in-the-slow-season, though. They’re both sub-TV movie and sub-TV commercial painful.

Wolff, constantly filming on a camcorder throughout, sums up the proceedings with a climactic public showing of his film (a much better one than throne he’s in) but not before Peace, Love and Misunderstanding meticulously manages to trash the legacy of a culture once known for its life-giving energy and artistic highs. Here the music even stinks, and if it’s supposed to be moving that grandmom has plenty of free-spirit to spread around to uptight children and grandchildren, at least give us something besides Fonda and Rosanna Arquette sitting around a campfire with a gang of women ostensibly doing some kind of female energy rite, while actually merely evoking the likes of Fonda’s, “I once had a threesome with Leonard Cohen.” Though it’s tempting to wonder how the still’alive Cohen feels about that, I merely cringed. First time screenwriters Christina Mengert and Joseph Muszynski at least have a semblance of an excuse. For veteran director Bruce Beresford, I can only say, watching this film (despite a glowing Fonda and Olsen) made me feel, to quote Helm, “about half past dead.”

4 Remembrances of Things Ghast(ly) (Out of 10)

Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding is open now at the Ritz Bourse in Philadelphia

Early in the brisk and endearing Moonrise Kingdom, when attempting to summon her four kids to dinner, Frances McDormand whips out a bullhorn. (No matter everyone’s inside the house.) Her husband (an aptly grumpy Bill Murray), gets the same treatment. They’re both lawyers, call each other nothing but “counselor” and sleep in separate beds. Their failure to communicate in any meaningful way contrasts sharply with their precocious and disturbed 12-year-old daughter Suzy (Kara Hayward), who decides to run away, pet cat in hand, with Sam (Jared Gilman), a young whippersnapper of equally unsteady emotional heft. The kind of outsiders instantly familiar to only another outsider, Suzy and Sam relate in eye-popping and exhilaratingly self-conscious fits and starts. Even his piercing her ear with a fishhook once they get to their runaway campsite seems sweetly appropriate.

The kids are alright, director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Royal Tenenbaums) seems to be declaring. Even town cop Captain Sharp (a mellow Bruce Willis) admits Sam’s a lot smarter than he as Willis pours the kid a beer, obviously Dan’s first since he fails to rinse out a residue of milk still in his glass. The lone hot dog Willis serves Sam vies with the trailor park kitchen he serves it in as microcosms of Sharp’s solitary existence. Set in the fictitious town of New Penzance, Moonrise Kingdom is replete with director Wes Anderson’s penchant for period (1965) detail and craftsmanship galore. Whether you venerate Anderson’s distinct vision and trademark irony, or view his deliberate quirkiness as sometimes weary affectation, it’s impossible to consider him anything less than a magician of tone and color, a master of the moving camera, and most of all, a creator of a unique world with its own internal logic.

The shots and performances (also Tilda Swindon with a wild hairdo as “Social Services” and Edward Norton as Scout Master Ward) are so letter perfect you’re likely to put aside any concern that this can all be a somewhat airy plating for a meal of fairly ordinary ingredients. Deeper flavors come through given the just right accents and juxtapositions. Style this vivid and charming elevates Anderson’s world so well he dares the viewer not to be enmeshed in his characters. You not only care about Sam and Suzy, you can’t wait to see what they do next. He’s an orphan, she always wished she was one. After he’s “flown the coop” of his scouting group at Camp Ivanhoe, he brings flowers to meet a 45-rpm-record-player toting Suzy, who wears blue mascara. They go off to be by themselves, and utilizing all of Sam’s survival skills, they eventually dance and frolick to Francoise Hardy on a desolate beach. While the self-enclosed community awaits a landmark storm, the adults all chase after the stray, scrappy kids, and both sides learn a little from each other in the quaint old days of the 60’s.

8.5 Andersonvilles (out of 10)

Sure it’s corny but The Intouchables is more than saved by an outsize performance of a main character who oozes charisma. Omar Sy acts himself silly as Driss, a brazen, just-out-of-jail caregiver for a rich, fuddyduddy quadriplegic, Philippe (Francois Cluzet). The odd couple couldn’t be more different. Philppe is refined, cultured, cautious, while Driss is direct, streetwise, and ever ready to go into a tizzy. Philippe chooses the inexperienced black man over a roomful of more qualified, stuck-in-the-mud healthcare aides because he senses something in the wild man that he can’t quite pinpoint at first. He also challenges the startled Driss, who never expected to be hired and was merely fulfilling an unemployment insurance quota in seeking the job in the first place.

Sure it’s predictable and once or twice preposterous, but this Cesar award winning, French box office record setting film practically dares you to not to be swept away by the hilarious hijinks that ensue. So before you make a reference to the infamous French passion for the films of Jerry Lewis or are tempted to relegate this film to the sophomoric sphere, duly note Cluzet’s ability, acting from only the neck up, to counterpoint every wake-up verbal jab and hook Driss throws his way with the most elegant aplomb. Driss is the kind of character who comes along all too rarely. His joie de vivre rubs off on the grim Philippe and Philippe returns the favor by giving a poor tortured soul with a messed up family and no future a chance to get on a right track, however fleeting it may seem at first.

Sure it’s potentially dangerous turf if a film features a black man serving the needs of a white man, whether it’s a comedy or drama, real or imagined (The Intouchables is inspired by a true story). But jumping on The Intouchables as insensitive or exploitative seems tantamount to setting a flamethrower to low-hanging fruit. The screenplay may veer into expediency and silliness but it never crosses into serious areas with disregard for its subject. If its depiction of race seems painted in broad strokes, it’s done so in a carefree, politically incorrect vein reminiscent more of Fred Sanford than any blaxploitation revival. Ultimately, it’s all about craft, and how high this film’s highs get. The Intouchables doesn’t so much provide a false comfort as get you to a warm and fuzzy place despite yourself. To my way of thinking the humor and crowd-pleasing elements here don’t come around very often. Grinch them at your own risk.

8 Wildly Funny If Sentimental Poor-Guy-Gives-the-Rich-Guy-Life-Lessons (out of 10)

Set against a Victorian era backdrop where bleeding by leeches was still a medical orthodoxy and the bandaging of wounds considered experimental, the British film Hysteria explores the “disorder” of the same name. That is if looking in a funhouse mirror is somehow analogous to exploring. For Hysteria takes matters of scores of women with an “overactive uterus” and how they were impassively treated to “vulgar massage” until achieving a satisfactory “paroxysm” and manages to do so without a hint of sexuality while playing the cutie angle to the hilt. Any talk of sexuality was also politely left out of the doctor-patient discourse during these hush-hush times.

Earnestness here is saved for the two main characters. Dr. Mortimer Granville (Hugh Fancy) unsuccessfully tries to enlighten his resistant superiors on the newly scientific discovery of germs. Equally sincere is Maggie Gyllenhaal as Charlotte Dalrymple, incipient feminist and social rebel, who is the daughter of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), who built up a handsome practice with this hysteria business. After Hugh takes up with Pryce and assists him in the massages, Hugh and Maggie fight a lot–a surefire sign they’ll probably be together by movie’s end even though Hugh is designated as a husband-to-be for Pryce’s other prim and proper daughter (Felicity Jones). Pryce tries to block every move Maggie makes toward helping the poor while Dancy and Jones stand around gazing at each other while uttering fluffery. Everyone except Maggie is overdressed.

Oh, there’s also the little matter of Granville “inventing” the vibrator to supplant all this silly massage stuff (both doctors suffer from carpal tunnel–seriously) although it’s actually his roommate (the always droll Rupert Everett) who gives him the idea, which started out as a feather-duster.

Gyllenhaal shines, Dancy and Jones do their dopey inhibited-as-churchmice thing, and Everett looks like he’s in disguise, sporting a very uncharacteristic beard. Director Tanya Wexler might have thought of hiding, too, for all the play-it-safe twaddling she puts the audience through on her way to abruptly jumping to a forced conclusion that strives to throw in the serious plight of the Victorian woman in a changing society like a dash of afterthought.

Finally, in the faltering hands of Doctors Pryce and Dancy, sex was never so mishandled–either their patient’s or the film’s. You know it to be so after one of Dancy’s patients screams “Tally-Ho” after an especially good paroxysm, and another, upon trying the newfangled vibrator, bellows into a full blown aria.

5.5 Tally-Ho’s (Out of 10)