Month: November 2013

Judi Dench has had a remarkable career earning her stripes mostly playing intelligent women who possess that extra edge to make themselves the smartest person in the room. Steve Coogan has, with some notable exceptions, staked out a reputation as an outlier comedic actor. In Philomena, directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen), they both go against type. Too bad the film itself, while watchable and at times sharp, finds itself too often stuck in a schematic rut.

Dench does her best to channel Judy Holliday and Lucille Ball as the less than bright common woman with a big heart and unwavering ideals. The talented Coogan plays it totally straight as the far more aristocratic, atheist savvy journalist. Comedic moments demonstrating their significant differences work pretty well when they’re not clashing with the film’s bigger theme of Catholic Church hypocrisy and a woman’s forgiveness.

It all feels a but too pie in the sky at times despite a Coogan co-written screenplay that goes for a nuanced, complex look at a woman, who after 50 years, is looking to find her born out-of-wedlock son, who was sold out from under her by the nuns operating a virtual prison for banished moms. Dench recalls being forced to work the County Tipperary abbey’s laundry while only allowed visiting privileges with her son for one hour a day before he’s eventually sold off to American parents. Adding insult to injury, she’s forced to sign a contract forbidding from tracking her son’s whereabouts.

Although The Sisters of Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary has disavowed the film’s contention that any babies were sold or birth records burned, the practice of thousands of unwed mothers sent off to these institutions was a common practice in Ireland for decades. Philomena, based on a memoir by Martin Sixsmith, the real life Coogan, sheds light on the long-term impact of one incidence of insensitivity and impropriety with an emphasis on the human element. For a more compelling and sweeping look at the same subject without the sidetracking comedic hijinks of Philomena, check out Peter Mullan’s comprehensive look at monastery vulgarities in 2002’s The Magdalene Sisters. You won’t find Judi Dench in that one but your subsequent far greater understanding of the subject will be its own reward.

3 Road Trips With A Leg Up On Going After the Church But Stopping Off At Forgiveness (out of 5 stars)

Frozen, an intelligent, fun film for all ages, is helmed by the first female director (Jennifer Lee) of a Disney animated feature. Combined with its two female leads, Anna (the voice of Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel), the expectation here is that of a film more for girls than boys, a Disney chick flick. That would be a an exaggerated assumption.

With eight accomplished original songs, an adorably playful, hilarious Snowman sidekick, and a plot harvested from Hans Christian Andersen, Frozen scares, jokes, thrills, and delights its way to the heights of animated merriment.

Based on The Snow Queen, Frozen tells the story of estranged sisters with a seemingly impossible mission. Separated since childhood from her sister Elsa and her considerable powers to conjure, redheaded Anna comes to encounter Elsa, now a relative stranger, at her coronation after their parents’ untimely death. Anna meets a Prince Charming, Hans, at the wedding but Elsa forbids their own suddenly planned union. Losing her glove, which protects her from the overreaching powers of her own hands. she accidentally brings on an instant and eternal winter to their kingdom, Arendelle. She retreats to a mountain hideout, and Anna, believing she can compel Elsa to reverse the spell, heads out solo to find her. Failing to become unhinged, she’ll soon encounter Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), an ice-dealer with heightened outdoor skills who guides a reindeer who harbors ideas of his own. Their scenes together click–heightened by their interplay with the wordless but expressive reindeer and the loquacious snowman, Olaf (Josh Gad).

Highlights include Olaf’s musical number, “In Summer,” where the snowman with a carrot for a nose imagines an improbable day at the beach where he experiences a mysterious melt-free protection. Tony winners (for Book of Mormon) Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez also penned the wonderful “Fixer Upper,” where a bunch of cool trolls attempt to sell the dubious charms of Kristoff to an innocent Anna.

Its numerous audio pleasures matched by its visual ones, Frozen hits all the classic marks of animation films that are all too rare these days. Interwoven with its sisterhood-is-powerful message, it creates a contemporary Snow Queen more complex than its original inspiration.

4 This Year’s Best Animated Film Not Directed By Hayao Miyazaki (out of 5 stars)

My normal intolerance for aw-shucks Americana notwithstanding, I had plenty of room for the graciousness and insight of Alexander Payne’s black-and-white gem, Nebraska. Peppered with genuine humor, it achieves a feel for what in sunnier days was called “Middle America,” that is at once affectionate and steely-eyed observational. What ends up entertaining in this slice-of-life study of a particularly sturdy archetype of the unfazed, seen-it-all Midwestern character, is the usual uncanny ear for detail that Payne always makes look so effortless. You may hear the opinion this film isn’t up to the standards of previous Payne works like Sideways and About Schmidt. Nebraska goes for a more subtle subtext but is no less piercing in its commentary on the American condition of stubbornness in the face of despair.

Which brings us to the film’s main character, a notched-up, cranky coot (an excellent 77-year-old Bruce Dern), whose taciturn nature enforces an undercurrent of a lifelong build-up of pissy anger. His passive-agressiveness extends not only to his loved ones but to the world at large–here represented by, of all things, a Sweepstakes notice that he has won a million dollars.

His older, much more straight-laced son (Bob Odenkirk) making rushed visits in between his gig as a TV news anchor, thinks Dern is nuts and ready to be put to pasture. The younger, ostensibly more shiftless son, played by comic and former SNL cast member Will Forte, takes a kinder and gentler approach, deciding to take Dern on a 1,000 mile road trip. Nebraska doesn’t need a lot of dialogue between son and father as they embark to Lincoln to “collect” the bogus money. Their dynamic is captured in incisive vignettes as they play off the various misfits and sycophants they encounter as they stop off in Dern’s hometown. Stacy Keach, all gregarious but really unctuous and glib, wants to reclaim money he claims Dern still owes him. Family members are respectful, yet slip in similar requests like a master slipping his dog a pill inside a piece of baloney. Forte tries to tell them there’s no real money but it’s too late to stem the tide. Only the requisitely harsh June Squibb, as Dern’s wife, is able to put these gold diggers in their place. None of them seem to be bad people. They’re more like irritable and irritating mirror images of Dern himself, who rolls through it all quipping the likes of “None of it matters” and “I don’t care” as a ready-made comeback to whatever gets in the way of his essentially wanting to be left alone. We can’t tell how much of his gullibility about the sweepstakes is due to an altered mental state brought upon by his advanced years and how much of it is simply a venting of pent-up revenge.

Forte attempts to connect by way of his own particular non-connecting with Dern by giving his dad no more than honest feedback but no less than a grand gesture. Dern may be less likeable than most screen heroes but he oozes character from a source as mysterious as it is compelling. Squibb (like Dern, a likely Oscar nominee here) resonates in the memory, a heightened version of that crazy relative we’ve all had who may have been nuts but seemed to know more than everyone else. Payne himself, with Nebraska, is a likewise loose cannon of pure truth in all its sloppy splendor.

4 Folksy “Millionaires” Gone Haywire (out of 5 stars)

Ken Scott’s remake of his own film, Starbuck, has been put together with a nearly scene-for-scene deference to replication. How odd, then, that Delivery Man, the English language version of the French Canadian comedy, is mysteriously missing the humor present in the earlier version while mirthlessly retaining the schmaltz.

Messing up foreign films for American consumption is certainly nothing new, but when the same director casts a wrecking ball on his own work eyebrows are raised.

Delivery Man excises Starbuck’s hilarious first scene, where the hapless lead character is shown, via flashback, in a clinic donating the sperm that will get him into so much trouble. Was this to sanitize the American version? One can’t be sure but what is clear is Delivery Man operates in a gentler mode than its predecessor. Starbuck’s lead actor, Patrick Huard, may realize his character, David Wozniak, is hopelessly bumbling but he maintains a leathery, above-it-all posture throughout it all. He owes a fortune to vengeful debtors, curries little respect from his family, and has just impregnated his girlfriend, who’s subsequently even more eager to reject him. Yet he gives us laughs when we find out his activity at the clinic sired more than 500 offspring, most of who are now looking for him.

Vince Vaughn, on the other hand, seems to be moving in semi-stunned slow motion. He’s not exactly walking on eggshells–more, in a perpetual daze. When he starts to surreptitiously look up his kids and exert a guardian angel whammy, we get all the cornball drama but the comic relief scarcely shows up.

Especially gooey is a scene where Vaughn accidentally walks into a meeting of his kids, organized to discover the identity of their dad, after following one of them. Several of them converge on him since they’ve recently received his good deeds. None of them seems to wonder why this strange altruistic guy who’s old enough to be their dad shows up at a meeting to find their dad. A meat delivery man for his family’s business, he shows up at a picnic and barbecues enough vittles to feed North Philly on Thanksgiving: still no suspicions.

Supporting characters in Delivery Man also pale in comparison to the original. Wozniak’s girlfriend had much subtlety in Starbucks. Here she’s one-dimensional pedestrian. Wozniak’s attorney, a key supporting role as a self-mocking and self-doubting underachiever, just isn’t funny enough here. Like the rest of Delivery Man, he leads us to the sensation ghat we’ve just walked into a Broadway play on an understudy day.

2 – Its’ Own Director Still Can’t Save An American Remake (out of 5 stars)

Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a combined 80 pounds for the compelling Dallas Buyers Club. There’s an 80 – 1 chance they don’t both secure Oscar nominations. They could both win.

Although you’ll need to see David France’s excellent 2012 documentary, How To Survive A Plague to get a fuller picture of the scope of the AIDS crisis, Dallas Buyers Club zooms in on an unlikely crusader. Part hilarious scumbag, part tireless responder to medical and governmental foot-dragging, Ron Woodroof (McConaughey) was a straight, womanizing, swaggering Texas cracker who in 1985 discovered he had 30 days to live. When diagnosed, Woodroof swiftly goes from complete denial to a take-charge frame of mind. Not liking his chances in a drug trial where half the patients are given a placebo, he makes a deal with a hospital orderly to buy AZT. An electrician and part-time rodeo aspirant who hardly seems accustomed to book learning, he soon researches his medical options. After hooking up with an expatriate American doctor (Griffin Dunne) in Mexico, he’s bringing back drugs and vitamins that lack FDA approval. Donning a priest’s outfit, he poses as a cancer-stricken man of the cloth when interviewed at the American border. Thus begins several years of struggling with federal authorities. Not permitted to sell the unauthorized medications, he sets up a “buyers club” in adjoining motel rooms. For $400 a month, drugs are free, and it’s completely legal. Lines of the stricken and hopeful soon extend outside the door to the club.

Business booms only after Woodroof takes on a transgender accomplice, Rayon (a stunning performance by Leto), who’s savvy at recruiting the local HIV-infected. The odd-couple fellowship between Woodroof and Rayon is a marvel to behold. Leto injects Rayon with a knowing, heroic wit but never loses sight of keeping Ron’s excesses in check. Woodroof loses little of his rooster-like machismo as he begins a transformation, taking on a social consciousness and concern for the marginalized that seems almost accidental in nature. His turn toward compassion may arise out of a rigid sense of self-preservation, but when push comes to shove he’s a changed man in spite of himself.

McConaughey, on a roll of now a half dozen progressively daring roles that even before this one have ascended him to the tiptop of film actors, is simply amazing here. In total command of his character, he portrays the nuances of a steely, take-no-shit cowboy turned pariah. From homophobe to antihero, he is not without vulnerabilities or mood swings bordering on the sorrowful. Yet he never seems to feel sorry for himself.

Despite some oversimplifications, pacing shortcuts and the presence of a bland Jennifer Garner, the film is an eye-opening introduction to a sad time in our history. I won’t criticize the film for not addressing the larger picture of a crisis that was only turned around after a vociferous grass- roots response from those affected by the cold shoulder of governmental bureaucracy. I’ll just make one more plea that you view How To Survive A Plague. Meanwhile, enjoy the microcosm of one man’s battle to survive, and in the process, make himself not only an unlikely caregiver, but a lot more human.

4 Homophobic Narcissist Gone Courageous, Unlikely Hero (out of 5 stars)

One might pass over Blue Is The Warmest Color since when a film is this hyped and controversial, some have the tendency to run the other way. That would be a big mistake.

Unprecedented was the film winning the prestigious Palme D’or at Cannes not only for its director, Abdellatif Kechiche but also its two lead actresses, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. The Cannes jury, headed by Steven Spielberg, was not engaging in an overreach of veneration: the performances are indeed that remarkable.

The film’s emotional wallop is undeniable. Its portrayal of sexual awakening, physical desire and attraction, attachment and dependency, and the heartbreak of loss, feels to be taking place on an almost cellular level. Its candid revelations of subtle and not so subtle class and intellectual differences, come from an organic perch far removed from preachy dogma. Then there are what feel like interminable scenes of the teacher Adele (the actress has the same first name in the film) interacting with her kindergarten and first grade students. The idea is to give the sense of her everyday life: mainly its solitude compared to her wondrous relationship with Emma (Seydoux), and also to reveal her more pedestrian lifestyle compared to Emma’s existence as a painter and graphic artist. It’s very tempting to say the film would have worked much better if it were far shorter than its three-hour running time.

As is, though, Blue is The Warmest Color has a permeating effect of bringing across the indelible feelings of its two main characters in no-holds-barred, in-your-face, torrid vignettes of what seem like an emotional roller coaster ride. The little moments of life and love take on a new immediacy. Interactions between the two women are playful and real, then non-verbally redolent of an understood mutual affection, then passionately but always tenderly adversarial as things evolve to another stage. Adele goes from the 15-year-old who opens the film to a woman several years older, possibly wiser, infinitely sadder. The then-18-year-old Exarchopoulos puts on a symphony of visual acting that won’t be soon forgotten. Matching her every step of the way is Seydoux (2012’s very good Sister, Midnight In Paris, Mission: Impossible–Ghost Protocol), whose casual/aloof yet feeling/loving character is essential to all this working.

Oh yeah, there are two rather long sex scenes between the two women in case you haven’t heard. They are very much an essential part of the thread of the film. You may have also heard a criticism voiced that Kechiche was in it for the voyeuristic thrill. You be the judge. To my way of thinking, if that we’re the case we wouldn’t be talking about Exarchopoulos in the same breath as French actress Sandrine Bonnaire, whose legendary performances in A Nos Amours and Vagabond 30 years ago defined the exasperated young woman in search of meaning. Accusing the film of pandering to a prurient interest likely means you missed its not inconsiderable essence.

4.5 Great Performances, Including Sex (out of 5 stars)

A re-imagining of The Hangover for the geriatric set? Sure, but much like Stand Up Guys, this is another movie whose entire reason for existence is to showcase formerly heavyweight actors condescending to, wink in their eye, settle for a lesser script. DeNiro, Douglas, Freeman, and Kline set out to demonstrate that no matter how stereotypical and trite the proceedings, they are surefire pros enough to overcome the pap with their established brand of charm. The worse the story gets, the bigger the challenge to rescue it.

In Last Vegas, it works only intermittently, and sparingly. Robert DeNiro, who seems to be trying to break a personal record for films released in a year and has now made four forgettable followups to his quality turn in Silver Linings Playbook, plays a grumpy widower shut-in. He’s the last of a set of old Brooklyn childhood pals to consent to a Hangover-type bachelor party trip to Vegas with pals Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline. Seems he has this problem with lifelong bachelor and groom-to-be Michael Douglas since lifelong friend Douglas neglected to attend DeNiro’s wife’s funeral. Douglas is ready to marry a 30-ish woman who remains on the margins of the film, even though they’re in Vegas not just for the bachelor party but for the wedding.

In between various incontinence, hearing loss, and Viagra jokes, there’s a schmaltzy quasi-dramatic subplot involving bored but vivacious lounge singer Mary Steenburgen. She takes to the guys as soon as she lays eyes on them and wants to hang out. If you can figure out why she finds them so damn compelling and your answer is anything but plot facilitating, try again. Before we know it, there’s a triangle going on with Douglas and DeNiro competing for her. This eventually brings us around to the real reason Douglas didn’t attend the funeral.

Maybe these actors all need sufficient breathers in between more quality projects. After all Douglas, competent but absolutely familiar here, came right out of Stage Four cancer treatment with his excellent performance as Liberace in Behind The Candelabra. Before you go plunking down your cash on this or any other downtime projects these four guys release, however, here are a few suggestions. DeNiro? If you haven’t seen Mean Streets, do it now. Likewise for Douglas and the underrated Solitary Man, Kline: Grand Canyon, and Freeman: Seven.

Typical of the grating humor in Last Vegas is Kline’s continual reference to his wife having given him a free pass (along with a condom and a Viagra pill wrapped inside a greeting card) for some extracurricular activity while in Vegas. Despite Kline’s rather good comic timing, it all heads to an annoying redundancy topped off by a play-it-as-safe-as-possible result once Kline gets his prey behind closed doors. What are unconventional jokes along the way turn inside out to a pat moral seriousness once it’s time to marry the young girl, or in Kline’s case, make good on his wife’s offer. It’s back to the conventional, hey-we’re-only-kidding-here.

And four great actors have the last laugh all the way to the bank.

2.5 What Happens in Vegas Gets Mired In Cliche-land (out of 5 stars)