Month: April 2013

Mud, a riveting feast of assured acting and meticulous direction, tells the story of the loss of innocence of 14-year-old Ellis (a very good Tye Sheridan) Living on a houseboat on the Mississippi River in dirt-poor Arkansas with bickering parents, Ellis is tough and level-headed. The film is an excellent study of his enthralling openness as he encounters diverse characters with the shared ability to allure him.

Chief among them is Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a fugitive Ellis and his pal Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) encounter after discovering a mysterious boat lodged up in a tree on a remote island. Mud speaks in short, pithy phrases and grabs the vulnerable boys’ attention. Neckbone never knew his parents and lives with his uncle Galen (Michael Shannon, fresh off his exceptional performance in director Jeff Nichols’ previous film, Take Shelter).

Mud gets the boys caught up in an initially innocent scheme that turns progressively darker. Ellis’ parents (Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson) seperate and the boys partially confide only in Mud’s loner, cautious friend (a terrific Sam Shepard), who may or may not be an ex-CIA hitman. An older teenage girl, Mae Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), who Ellis meets after punching an older boy who was bothering her, takes a brief shining to him. Her casual interest is matched by Ellis’ smitten intensity. Completing the trifecta of inspiring characters ready to let Ellis down is the mysterious Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), who is Mud’s off-and-on girlfriend and full-time obsession. (Much will be made of Reese going for an atypical bad girl role. Hey, she was arrested on a disorderly conduct and DUI charge this week. Synchronicity or publicity stunt?)

McConaughey continues his impressive roll of top-notch performance beginning with Lincoln Lawyer and extending in progressively sharper and sharper performances through Bernie, Magic Mike, and the wild and wooly Killed Joe. His penchant for edgy characters continues. As Mud, his role requires projecting a delicate balance of likability and menace. Although Ellis is emotionally primed to be victimized by his wishes for a potentially romantic outcome between Mud and Juniper, he’s no fool. Nor is Neckbone. The subtlety with which Mud engages them is a sight to behold.

Viewers hungry for a great film may decide to overlook the film’s preposterous finale. The effective openendedness of Take Shelter’s climax is replaced here by an arbitrary whopper that it should be assumed was designed to avoid a lack of closure. In so doing Arkansas native Nichols almost sinks the film in the river. The rest of the film is so astute and fresh, though, that this gaffe is almost a mere mosquito bite of a digression. Although a terrific meal with a lousy dessert is still a terrific meal with a lousy dessert.

4 Coming Of Age Classics (out of 5)

Up for a new start, Arthur Newman (Coin Firth) fakes his own death so he can be reborn as a whole new entity with a whole new name and documents. Newman (apparently no relation to Mad Magazine’s immortal Alfred E. Newman) attempts to abandon his old life as easily as he does his old car. Unfortunately, while he replaces the car with a shiny Mercedes convertible, his new life takes on a far duller tone.

Mirroring his self-described “boring” former self, he faces a major challenge on the first night of his freedom with all the aplomb of a robot. He witnesses a young free spirit (Emily Blunt) arrested by police. She’s highly intoxicated and in need of rescue. It helps move the plot when she just shows up at Newman’s motel soon afterward, propped in a chair by the pool. He’s initially reserved and very helping but aloof. Before we know it the two are on a road trip to Newman’s own personal nirvana. It seems he’s a former golf pro who was once given a promise by a Country Club owner in Indiana that he could come up and start working as a golf pro any time he wanted. While it’s not exactly of Of Mice And Men proportions, the pipedream at the end of the rainbow sets up a not unpleasant dark sheen to the film. Blunt is entertainingly slacker/schizo baffling as her bossy character continually prods the buttoned-up Newman to let down his hair a little. Once he gets a whiff of her intentions he begins to gradually yield.

Soon Blunt devours him, leading him into the very unusual practice of stalking happy couples and then breaking into their homes during their absence for a little fornication in locally-sourced costumes. More eerie than humorous, their marauding oddly compels more than repels. Two of our finest screen actors today, Blunt and Firth force an engaging hold on their audience (the British born Blunt seems to get deeper and deeper into American characters with every role of late). It’s as if they’re given a largely blank canvas to paint to their heart’s content. They are fun to watch even when the film is no picnic. Anne Heche is underused as Arthur’s left-behind girlfriend.

Unfortunately, the leanness of Arthur Newman catches up with it before long. Its original almost Twilight Zone vibe stalls after Blunt perilously runs out of tricks. A seemingly last-resort meager subplot involving Firth’s estranged son and Blunt’s institutionalized sister dampens Blunt’s spirit along with the film’s. By then she and Firth have fortunately ratcheted up what could have been a simply dull movie into a unique if stumbling patchwork of a quite different American dream.

3 Fine Brit Actors Pursuing A Dark American Dream (out of 5)

Robert DeNiro, ostensibly “back” as a frontline serious actor after Silver Linings Playbook, slides back into schlock comedy as quickly as you can say The Godfather. Yet, playing a horny, blunt and frisky wiseguy of a different sort, he is the least of Big Wedding’s considerable shortcomings. A climactic scene where the principle actors stand around in their wedding finery confessing hidden truths to each other feels like they’re aiming their lines over each other’s shoulders. Diane Keaton, wise and elegant, often seems to be in a different movie. Together, DeNiro and Keaton prepare for their adopted son, Alejandro’s wedding by pretending to still be married since Alejandro’s Colombian biological mother is both very Catholic and coming to the wedding. Robin Williams as a sneering priest adds to the Catholic nods and winks.

Katherine Heigl, the Charlize Theron look-alike with a fraction of her talent, plays a biological daughter who’s estranged from dad (DeNiro). This setup predicts the inevitable sentimental ending. DeNiro’s other biological child is a physician (Topher Grace) who, although nearly 30 years old, is for reasons unstated still a proud virgin. When Alejandro’s Colombian sister Nuria (Ana Ayora) accompanies her mom to the wedding, Topher is smitten. Since characters in comedies like this make 180-degree temperament turns at the drop of a hat, Topher is–presto!–suddenly just like his Dad. When Nuria surprisingly dives clothes-free into a swimming pond Topher goes after her hard as DeNiro goes after ex-wife Keaton on their first night pretending to be married again. Only Topher comes up short. Keaton, on their first night of pretend marriage, allows herself to give in to DeNiro’s advances (sorry, I only avoid revealing spoilers on films I’m recommending). She then, in classic do-as-I-say-but-not-as-I-do fashion, has a heart-to heart talk with her young Columbian guest on why she should play much harder to get. Since, remember, our participants here turn their entire characters around on a dime, we find young Nuria refusing our virgin doctor as passionately as she came on to him minutes earlier. The power of Keaton, who’s been dishing out sensible advice since Annie Hall.

While these actors are a decade or so removed from doing a Quartet-like retirement home comedy, their crotchetiness is beginning to show already. Sarandon, as the unmarried girlfriend who’s the biggest victim of this little con game, keeps her chin up and decides to stick with her plan to cater the big event anyway. It’s hard to take her steadfast resilience seriously, though, when in the very first scene of the film, we’re treated to an awkward sex scene that catches Sarandon and DeNiro in a rather uncompromising position, witnessed by an accidentally snooping Keaton. While Sarandon has so much screen presence she could make a tissue commercial exciting, her passive-aggressive squirminess ultimately falls as flat as the rest of the proceedings. The film careens back and forth from forced saucy comedy (the low point of which may be a chipper Topher calling his mom “a cockblocker”) to silly sentimentality. Wanna guess whether DeNiro and Sarandon end up reconciled? Whether the Colombian mom discovers the game and has a few secrets of her own to reveal? You’d be right. Plot developments are strictly served on a silver platter at this improbable wedding. When DeNiro slips into his great actor persona and gives a heartfelt talk to Heigl, it’s almost enough to pronounce it as the film’s saving grace. Until the realization sets in that here is yet another character shift so improbable it would induce whiplash if we hadn’t started dozing off by then.

2 Casts From Heaven Stuck In Purgatory (out of 5)

Without Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball in 1947, there can be no Obama getting elected in 2008. Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe followed a year later on the same Brooklyn Dodgers team before the integration floodgates opened fully soon afterward. Just as Robinson’s stealing home 19 times in his career hardly seems real now, so, too, does the baseball establishment’s initial near-total resistance to Robinson seem a bit surreal in retrospect.

The film’s two most memorable scenes spell out both the hard time Robinson received and the sheer will it took to counteract the rebuffs. Manager Leo Durocher (a spectacular Christophet Meloni) calls the team together after catching wind they’ve signed a petition to get rid of Robinson. His tongue-lashing of his mutinous troops is one for the ages….Phillies manager Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk), a good old boy from Mississippi, stands in front of his dugout ripping Robinson with an incessant malice that knows very little bounds. (Philly will again come into play when the Dodgers are prevented from entering a hotel in which they customarily lodged.)

At the helm of the bold move was Dodger owner Branch Rickey (a very good Harrison Ford), who initially downplays any altruistic motive in his quest for what seemed like impossible change. He matter-of-factly attributes his reasons as, hey, pecuniary. Ford’s Rickey comes off all wise and crusty. He’s no-nonsense yet has the wisdom to tell Robinson, “I’m looking for a ballplayer with the guts not to fight back.” As relative newcomer Chadwick Boseman proves with a just-right performance as Robinson, it indeed does take big-time guts to put up with all the vitriol, beanballs, and deliberate spikings spewed in his direction. Director Brian Helgeland (Oscar winner and screenwriter for L.A. Confidential and Mystic River) does a noteworthy job of blending high drama with the baseball stuff. Helgeland took over Engel Stadium in Chattanooga and adapted it to resemble the three ballparks in the film, including Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Concentrating on the single year of ’47, he avoids biting off more than he can chew. Although the lead characters could have benefited from a bit more depth, we get a real good feel for an era that seems a lot more distant than 65 years. Yet how ironic is it that we kept hearing repeatedly of Barak Obama’s campaign advice to stay cool, calm, and collected so as not to be seen as “the angry black man?” Some things never change. Robinson himself was called to testify before the often ludicrous House Un-American Activities Committee that as a black man he would still support America if it went to war against the Soviets.

Some have quibbled about a few details in the film. The 1947 Dodgers actually trained in Havana, not Florida. Durocher obviously probably didn’t utter his famous “nice guys finish last” comment under the circumstances depicted in the film, nor did he get suspended by Commissioner Happy Chandler for cavorting with a woman in an adulterous relationship but was actually suspended for “associating with known gamblers.” Sheesh!…42 is not a documentary and as a baseball biopic there is hardly anything to complain about. (The only previous theatrical movie treatment was The Jackie Robinson Story, a 1950 biopic that uniquely starred Robinson as himself despite also not being a documentary). In 42, inspiration is front and center, and ballplayers (including a very plausible Pee Wee Reese, Ralph Branca, and Eddie Stanky, who stands up to Chapman) seem and play a lot like real ballplayers. Finally, we feel up close this very important chapter in American history that not enough of us previously knew much about.

Now if only modern players would try stealing home these days. Like most of Robinson’s depicted feats, it takes guts.

4 Don’t Blame The Messenger if You Think This Flick’s Anti-Philly (out of 5)

Reminiscent of 2011’s underrated Margaret with its wide-angle thematic structure sprawled over nearly two-and-a-half hours, The Place Behind The Pines falls just short of its ambitious reach. A sketchy looseness undermines the big themes of fatherhood, guilt, despair, and fate to the point of blunting the film’s very powerful segments. Paradoxically, although feeling like three seperate films in one, Derek Cianfrance’s followup to the excellent Blue Valentine contains far more hits than misses.

A hysterically excellent Ryan Gosling continues his alienated bad-guy schtick that wowed viewers in Drive. Here he plays a notorious motorcycle stuntman in a carnival. He goes around and around a spinning cage zipping through other stunt riders at a breakneck pace. Then, all of a sudden, like a mirage, a lovely Eva Mendes shows up. Seems they shared a past and she has a little secret she’s keeping from him. Before we know it Gosling succumbs to a good, fatherly instinct despite Mendes’ having moved on to a new boyfriend. When Gosling basically stalks his way into his son’s and her life, it’s hard not to root for him. Then, while riding one day, he meets up with an entertainingly loony and effective Ben Mendelsohn, who takes him in and gives him a part-time job. Not long after he suggests they rob banks. With Gosling’s nerve and uncanny bike skills, the riveting robberies are adreneline-inducing feats; his getaways, positively exhilarating. When he eventually crosses swords with Bradley Cooper, the movie soars. Cianfrance’s footprint speaks of sharp craftsmanship, including some incredible shots.

The Place Beyond The Pines (the phrase is the Mohawk translation for Schenectady, site of the film) takes chances . Its plot developments are certainly unorthodox. Just like that a Serpico-like movie within-a-movie breaks out. Bradley Cooper, as a cop with a law degree, faces moral dilemma wrapped around moral dilemmas. A damn good Ray Liotta has screen presence galore as a not-so-straight cop. Bruce Greenwood makes his District Attorney character sing with plausibility. Unfortunately, Mendes (who’s very good here) is basically dropped as a character except as a foil for both Gosling’s and Cooper’s guilt and responsibility issues. Then, in an equally tone-shifting third act, we’re introduced to Cooper’s son some 16 years later. He’s about as believable as Cooper’s son as Dennis The Menace would be. Yet as Cianfrance continues to hold our attention, we do so almost reluctantly, stepping around the dashes of stickiness. The crazed, to-the-hilt action movie from nearly a couple of hours ago has now pivoted into a total hybrid. Is this even the same movie?

Picking up the pieces of this shattered yet highly compelling film is more engaging than confounding. It certainly avoids becoming a weepy nostalgia flick. Yet unanswered questions and character-development shortcuts steal away the Big Moment, sending it off into “Huh?”-land no matter how highfaluting its intentions.

3.5 Above Average Film With Some Great Parts (out of 5)

Swamped by rampant, insidious technology, Disconnect’s characters share a void of connectedness with other human beings–especially loved ones. Emotional compensation makes its uncertain, fateful presence in their emotionally empty lives by way of the same virtual sources that can intensify the problem as easily as alleviate it. In Disconnect, a cautionary and vivid yarn by director Henry-Alex Rubin (Murderball) many of the cliches meant to diss films with parallel, converging stories (Crash, Babel, Magnolia) will be thrown around with the usual scorn. Pay them no heed.

A cruel, internet prank on a high school kid; identity theft adding insult to the injury of a grieving couple; an internet porn actor asked by a reporter to expose his underage-exploiting ringleader. Fathers distant from their sons and a husband and wife who don’t really know each other complete the setup. Throw in an ex-cop who specializes in internet crime only to have his own technology-induced surprise awaiting and you’ve got a tsunami of broken dreams and frustrated victims on a collision course to 21st century hell. If it all sounds like it’s teetering on the edge of melodrama, its proximity to total disaster keeps it real.

The ensemble of fine acting starts with a fine Jason Bateman in a rare dramatic role and the always sharp Alexander Skarsgard as a quiet veteran ready to seek revenge on whoever digitally robbed him and his lonely wife (Paula Patton) of all their money. The talented Hope Davis, with sadly not enough to do here, plays Bateman’s wife, who doesn’t understand his obsessive need to investigate once a family tragedy befalls them. Max Theriot is very good as the young guy who calls the older, inquiring reporter a “puma”–the stage just before cougar, he tells her. His own surprise awaits.b

Internet hoaxes require cruel, young perpetrators, and Rubin and screenwriter Andrew Stern have that covered, too. The film’s details hold firm on a gripping realism with hardly a false note. Rubin uniquely shoots the action in a peek-a-boo style that further dramatizes the despair. As one would expect, things converge into a blistering, all-roads-lead-to-convergence climax that may surprise you. The moral of the story? Not that technology is bad, but the next time you reach for a device in a weak moment, treat it as gjngerly as you would a gun and you’ll be better off.

4 Like This If You Think Technology Can Bite You In The Ass (out of 5)

Ever wonder what it’s like to have more than 500 biological offspring out there? How about a mere 142 kids chasing you down with a wish to out your identity?

Welcome to probably the first sperm-donor comedy. It won’t be the last since the inevitable American- remake knockoff with Vince Vaughan gets released later this year. If it shares the fate of most American remakes, you’d do well to see this film while you can.

David Wozniak’s a modest delivery guy for a French Canadian (by way of Polish) family butcher shop. He gets hit with a ton of bricks when a lawyer for a class action suit shows up in his apartment. Seems all the sperm-donating Wozniak let loose a couple of decades back has now come to a head. While it’s strictly deus ex machina that all these disparate souls miraculously organized off-camera to find common ground, Starbucks camouflages much of its weak plausibility in a cloak of biting humor and humane sentiment. Patrick Huard charms and mugs his way to a fine performance, and the utter strangeness of this film wears itself well. The lawyer with the bad news is another in a succession of strangers who manage to gain entry to Wozniak’s apartment to threaten him. The first batch were unhappy creditors who sort of semi-waterboard him into a royal fright. We never learn why he owes them $80,000 but his plight lingers through the film like a low-hanging plot facilitator.

So Wozniak then decides to pull a Guardian Angel-act on all these young souls seeking out their sperm dad. A folder emerges containing their photos and profiles. Shy to identify the nature of his interest in their well-being, he does a solid for each of the plaintiffs he manages to track down. A couple of his deeds border on heroic.

Antoine Bertrand provides a perfect foil to Huard as his friend/attorney who admits as much to pretending to be a lawyer as to actually being one. He also thinks Wozniak is totally bats. The comedy stays on the rails for the most part due to a wily screenplay (director Ken Scott co-wrote) and sharp comedic timing by Huard and Bertrand. The counterpoint pathos doesn’t make out quite as well, yet we’re largely spared from schmaltz overload. Wozniak has a girlfriend, Valerie (Julie LeBreton), from whom he conceals the truth while simultaneously trying to make amends for his reputation as unreliable. This at a time when his own fatherhood ironically looms. Valerie’s winsome and clever enough to counter his guile with a spunk of her own.

The crafty, often very funny Starbuck ultimately forces the viewer to identify with Wozniak and accept the inevitable outcome that his heart is in the right place enough to avoid the film from turning dark….Although that would have been an equally compelling movie for sure. Just imagine the first sperm-donor horror film. The mind boggles.

3.5 Be Careful With Your Sperm Donations (out of 5)