Month: September 2014

Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, playing estranged twins with depression issues, discordantly slip into Saturday Night Live mode once too often during The Skeleton Twins. At the film’s outset Maggie (Wiig) shows up in the hospital room of Milo (Hader) after he unsuccessfully tried to kill himself. The call to inform her of this event, incidentally, interrupted her own suicide attempt. He tells her to go back home. They haven’t conversed in ten years and he’s in no mood to rekindle things now. By the middle of the film the two are huffing nitrous oxide in her dental office (she’s a hygienist) and laughing themselves silly. If you think this scene goes on too long, wait’ll you catch Milo’s pantomime of Jefferson Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” Maggie, a lot more uptight than her brother, eventually joins in while the film’s editor evidentially too a long break when it was time to cut off this scene.

There are moments of resonance in The Skeleton Twins but they are too few and far between to warrant serious praise. Wiig and Hader, who both prove they can be effective dramatic actors, do their best to liven things up but the film relies far too heavily on Luke Wilson as Lance, a stereotypical nice-guy husband. Where Maggie and Milo’s sensibilities seem decidedly urban and wise, Lance projects cornball All-American decent sincerity. And projects it and projects it.

Lance takes Milo, who’s gay, under his wing and gets him a job clearing brush for some sort of dam project Lance is running. When they both need to get away for “man time” he takes Hader out for wall climbing. Meanwhile, Maggie contemplates a dalliance with her young scuba instructor. At one point self-absorbed, blowy mom-from-hell (Joanna Gleason) briefly shows up before Maggie essentially insults her out of the house. We are reminded that Dad (who called them the “gruesome twosome”) offed himself when they were both 14. And just to show that not two but three comedians can do good drama, modern Family’s Ty Burrell plays Milo’s former English teacher, who, essentially, molested him while Milo was 15.

Before one of the least plausible finishes in recent memory, the film’s climactic scene takes place with Milo in full drag for Halloween. Despite this scene of the two siblings battling it out standing out as the film’s best, it manages to be emblematic of writer/director Craig Johnson striving too hard for irony. Nearly lost in the shuffle are the issues of trust and rapprochement between two lost, hurting, self-destructive souls who have each other as the last resort when things get bleak. Blood is finally thicker than desperation but Johnson’s message, contained inside so much unnerving folly and tone shifts, is a blunted one.

Two Outstanding Comedians Show Serious Dramatic Chops In A Less Than Stellar Film… 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is a distillation of two separate movies subtitled “Him” and “Her.” Viewers will get a chance to see the original two films in October. After watching “Them” a disturbing paradox presents itself. Admittedly, what seems like a half-baked, occasionally dull synthesis might have been caused by too harsh a pruning. The problem is “Them” hardly leaves you wanting more and hankering to watch the other two films.

Writer/director Ned Benson manages to strike an emotional chord at various stages of the film, largely due to the presence of Jessica Chastain as Eleanor Rigby, a woman struggling with the death of her child. After a quick opening scene where she and her husband Conor (James McAvoy) relate with a loving, charged-with-fun energy, Chastain’s character, Eleanor Rigby, withdraws to her parents home in Westport, Conn. Conor (James McAvoy) tries to figure out why she just jumped off the Manhattan Bridge and then after surviving, went incognito without a word to him. He sulks in his Village bar/restaurant with his bud and chef Stuart (Bill Hader), moves back in with his successful restauranteur dad (Ciaran Hinds), who’s emotionally distant, and eventually decides to basically stalk Eleanor once he gets a lead from Stuart on her whereabouts in New York. Throw in a subplot where Eleanor binds with a cynical but caring professor played by Viola Davis and you’ve got a framework that would be more promising if its fleshing out didn’t seem so much like watching our pained couple from far too great a distance. The two rarely appear onscreen together and when they do what is probably meant as an organically uncertain tenuousness on how to proceed with a reconciliation comes off more like an irresoluteness of the screenplay.

It sure is never a waste of time to watch Chastain in action, however. She displays a marvelous ability to say so much with her eyes and her body language, and the striking difference between her character before her attempted suicide and afterward is testimony to her singular talent. No slouch in the supporting role of her mom is fellow redhead and stellar thespian Isabelle Huppert.
Always an enticing performer, Huppert injects a wine-swilling, witty but ostensibly slight maternal figure with a sneaky depth. On the other side of the coin, Eleanor’s dad (William Hurt) is a shrink who speaks with such a deliberateness that this idiosyncrasy manages to disrupt whatever scene he’s in.

Incidentally, his last name is Rigby and he couldn’t resist naming his daughter after the Beatles song from Revolver. That novelty is merely lost in the shuffle of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them–she may as well have been named Penny Lane or Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds for all it matters. Unfortunately expectations that the two forthcoming films will satisfactorily expound on the themes presented here seem remote. When “Them” itself contains more than a little flab and is in need of further editing, it’s hard to get jazzed about two more hours of this, Chastain’s wondrousness notwithstanding.

Painstaking Rapprochement/Partially Obtuse Style….3 out of 5 stars

Veteran screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, the underrated Out of Sight) directs revenge movie honcho Liam Neeson in this at once ugly and grim suspense-cum-horror tale. Based on the novel by Lawrence Block, Neeson portrays Matthew Scudder, an unlicensed private investigator and former NYPD cop. The film contains plenty of familiar crime movie fodder: Scudder’s a recovering alcoholic who attends A.A. meetings, and he’s got a ghost in his closet that is slowly revealed in the film. Along the way to solving a series of murder/kidnappings, he’s at first a reluctant participant in helping a drug dealer (Dan Stevens, Downton Abbey) who can’t go to the police. The goal is to get back at the kidnappers, who enjoy extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars in ransom money and then returning the chopped up female victim in pieces.

Once Scudder commits, he bumps into a wiseass young teenager, T. J. (rapper Brian “Astro” Bradley), in a library while going through microfiche–yea, microfiche. This is 1999 and our hero Matt doesn’t get along well with things like cell phones. We’ll be reminded of his Luddite tendencies a few times in the film (along with his deliberate voiceover rendering of The A.A. 12 steps while Scudder contemplates his payback.) The kid, too, feels familiar but at least he provides a little excitement with his banter and older-than-his-years bravado, even if his knowledge of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe annoys more than it amuses.

T. J. throws out a lot more energy than any of the other supporting characters provide. While Neeson, now 62, is his usual charismatic force–he’s especially great in barking orders over the phone to two kidnapping suspects–the villains and the drug dealers who surround him are disappointingly drab. A cemetery groundskeeper (Olafur Darri Olafsson) seems so cuckoo he creates an expectation that he might provide some fun, as do a pair of kidnappers whose brutality is uncommonly vicious. Yet, they, too, come off more lackluster than scary. They mutilate their victims, then bore the viewers.

The film’s depiction of sadism can be downright discomforting, yet most of the nastiest stuff is alluded to rather than depicted. For no good reason, the pair of killers also appear to be gay. Frank gets the atmosphere right as he captures the seedy interiors and street scenes of Brooklyn’s Red Hook. For a better crime movie also with a run-down Brooklyn setting, check out The Drop, which received an almost simultaneous release as this film. That is, unless you’re hooked on Neeson–I can think of a lot worse guilty pleasures. In A Walk Among The Tombstones, it’s refreshing to watch him move so effortlessly from quiet and guilt-ridden to forcefully concise and powerful.

Neeson’s At It Again, This Time With Floating Body Parts…2.5 out of 5 stars

A viewing of The Drop prompted a repeat examination of Tom Hardy’s “one man” film from earlier this year: the unique and compelling Locke. Taken in tandem, it’s hard to think of two recent performances that have displayed such a stunning array of acting chops. In The Drop, Hardy plays Bob Saginowski, a skittish, deliberate, and perhaps slow-witted bartender who seems out of place working for his cousin Marv (James Gandolfino in his last film role), a small-time hood who manages a bar he once owned but forfeited to some nasty Chechen mobsters. Bob is a character that is polar opposite in temperament from the confident lead in Locke who goes through that film impressively dealing with a series of stressful phone calls while driving in his car. What they have in common is an admirable earnestness, an at times painful honesty. With this film, Locke, and Lawless, where he played the unforgettable Forrest Bondurant, you get the idea Hardy’s versatility knows no bounds.

Scripted by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone) and based on his story Animal Rescue, The Drop won’t remind you of Martin Scorsese’s ludicrous misfire of Lehane’s Shutter Island, but it’s far from flawless. An air of artifice occasionally besets the film but it builds a nice head of steam as it works its way toward a finish that jells almost perfectly. What’s fun along the way is watching the British Hardy not only take on a character from working class Brooklyn, but define him in such a way that his dead serious eccentricity both amuses and gets under our skin. His scenes with Gandolfino, the consummate pro, impart The Drop with an edgy, mostly plausible impetus. Noomi Rapace, from the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, portrays Bob’s equally demure counterpart, Nadia. They meet when Bob rescues an injured dog from her trash bin. He names the dog Rocco, and upon meeting Bob after noticing him going through her trash, she demands his drivers license so she can protectively send copies of it to several of her friends. What could have been a dangerously ill-begotten start to a film manages to get saved by Hardy’s presence. He repeatedly dodges cliches from the screenplay with an agile finesse. As does Gandolfini, who died in 2013 at 51. It’s a little eerie that one of his last lines in his last film he utters the phrase, “I’m not feeling well.”

Redolent of many other crime dramas, The Drop never fully rises above its many predecessors. However, it contains more than enough interesting and surprising touches to satisfy even viewers who feel jaded with the genre. The two leads, especially Hardy, are largely responsible for squeezing every last drop of suspense out of the screenplay. Also not shabby are strong supporting performances by John Ortiz as a smily and sarcastic investigating detective, Matthias Schoenaerts as a psycho who tries to reclaim Bob’s newfound dog, and Ann Dowd (see her in Compliance) as Marv’s sister, who sadly, seems to be the only one in Marv’s world who is not a hood of some sort. Marv casts her off emotionally like so many empty beer bottles from his bar. Incidentally, The Drop refers to the hidden nature of Marv’s shot-and-beer joint: it’s a destination for dirty money to be delivered and store for future pick-up. Throughout the film it’s apparent this ostensibly dim-witted bartender is going to transform in some perverse way. Have fun trying to guess what’s coming.

3.5 Creepy, Well-Acted Shocker (out of 5 stars)

When it comes to an intensely raw portrayal of prison life, it would seem hard for any film to top Steven McQueen’s Hunger (2008). Startlingly, Starred Up submerges itself into even deeper territory. Weaving a father/son (they’re new prison mates) plot with starkly observed, uncanny realism, David Mackenzie’s film also includes three of the year’s best performances. Jack O’Donnell, soon to make his presence felt in the film adaptation of Unbroken, absolutely stuns with his gritty yet nuanced portrait of Eric, a take-no-shit new inmate deemed dangerous enough upon admittance that he’s placed in an individual cell. A transfer from a juvenile jail, he fends off what seems like an insurmountable response from prison guards after he accidentally injures a prison mate. A calm yet intense psychotherapist, Oliver (Rupert Friend), saves him from more severe payback from the wardens and introduces him to a possible way out of further turmoil via group therapy sessions.

Eric is recalcitrant on all fronts. His explosive fury often comes as such a shock that its accompanying violence elicits a laugh as often as a shudder. O’Donnell, often nonverbally, allows us to feel his anguish and his defenses. His rejection of both Oliver and his dad, Neville (Ben Mendelsohn) seem natural given who we know him to be. Reforming him will be one rough road for either of these guys, even though they’re polar opposites in temperament. Oliver zones in to the feelings of his subjects like a samurai, immune to even the most violent of exchanges among the group. Oliver’s empathy is all-encompassing, while Neville feels the best he can give his son is to impart the hardness necessary to survive prison life. He often implores Oliver to “teach him a lesson” in behavior. When Neville attempts to enter Oliver’s group as a participant, we’re suspicious of his having undergone an emotional change; rather, he seems to be utilizing a last-resort effort at spying on his son. Father-and-son scenes are painfully vacant of any connection.

Full of hush-hush corruption, bureaucratic indifference in this prison is certainly given its full measure here. With grotesque displays of inmate power struggles, the film’s plot advancement is ripe for melodrama of the highest order. Yet Jonathan Asser’s screenplay, buoyed by the three amazing performances, avoids pitfalls of the overly straightforward. Asser himself volunteered as a therapist at HM Prison Wandsworth in London and it shows. In Starred Up, redemption and connection come in unexpected ways, and with each success comes a flip-side of sadness and desperation. Oddly the most inhumane of hellholes provides the perfect backdrop for its characters’ deep-rooted inner demons to transform, like suddenly blooming flowers in a dump heap, into a grounded expression of the boundless human spirit.

A Brutal Yet Beautiful Prison Drama…4.5 stars (out of 5)