Author: Don Malvasi

Project Nim tells the story of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee subject from the 1970s who was designated to spend his time exclusively with humans bent on teaching him sign language. Early in the film the study’s founder, Columbia University professor Herbert Terrace, complains that the experiment is getting shortchanged by Nim’s first human surrogate Mom, a hippie who gives Nim pot and beer and breast feeds him (we’re saved from any visuals of the latter). Terrace abruptly removes Nim from her graces to ensure his new environ will include some scientific method.

Director James Marsh (the brilliant “Man on Wire”) would have been wiser to inject some outside scientific perspective of his own to further enrich this fascinating, heartfelt story. Sticking strictly to interviews among Nim’s various caretakers and teachers, Marsh provides an empathetic panorama of the roller coaster ride Nim embarks on after being taken away from his mother while only days old.

By the time he dies of a heart attack at 26 years old, you’re wondering what the average lifepan for a chimp is–thanks to Wikipedia (not Marsh) it’s 52. You’re also wondering about the status of medical testing on chimps after Terrace ends the experiment, since Nim spends an unfortunate spell in horrific captivity as the subject of vaccine testing. (Using chimps for research and toxicology testing, while banned in many Western countries, remains active in the U. S., where as of 2009 , 1300 chimps remain in invasive research. You’re welcome)

Nim’s post traumatic stress disorder from his days as a research subject is only made worse when he’s “rescued” to a solo life in “spacious digs” at Cleveland Amory’a reserve for battered equines. Humans don’t make out so well in Project Nim. An early cat fight among competing surrogate Moms serves as a silly distraction. Terrace seems stuck on publicity for publicity’s sake. Almost everyone gets nipped by Nim and when one teacher gets mauled in the face, the signing experiment is pulled. Chimps are inherently violent, much stronger than humans, and have in their nature the instinct to hunt and kill lower order primates and sometimes each other. It’s no wonder the House of Representatives banned their use as household pets in 2009.

Nim was not the first primate tested for sign language capabilities. Washoe was a chimp in the 1960s who learned hundreds of signs and even taught them to other chimps. Nim doesn’t make out so well once Terrace claimed his experiment “proved nothing.” Terrace was wrong. It actually proved a lot about humans and their ability to “project” Nim.

6.5 Apes out of 10

3 Bosses Vs. 3 Employees.

First up is Kevin Spacey, the quintessential boss from hell. Next is Colin Farrell, practically in disguise through the film, is a boss whose nicest of moments can make Spacey look like Mr. Rogers. Lastly you have Jennifer Aniston as the more subtle head honcho, if subtlety includes sexual blackmail with herself as the sex object and poor Charlie Day as the unwilling underling.

Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis do what any disgruntled, conniving employees would do: they head to the hood and seek help from “hit man” Jamie Foxx. Once the actual eradication plan commences we’re on our way to “farce heaven” despite a few bumps of inanity along the road. The silliness is handled by the allstar cast who bring up the proceedings several notches from what must look on paper like a thankless, over-the-top script. Employees seeking to off their bosses? Better have actors who can improvise their way around anything including dumb plot devices and callous references galore. Luckily raunch as funny as this leaves a lot of room for allowance.

None of it would have worked so well if not for Spacey’s ability to scare the wits out of us with the meanest most egotistical horse’s ass in recent screen memory. Nor Farrell’s cocaine-addled heir to a company handed to him by his father (Donald Sutherland). (It’s actually believably in character when his first order to Sudeikis is to “fire all the fat people” since this guys such a lunatic.) Nor Aniston’s sex maniac dentist who keeps trying to compromise recently engaged Day into an operating room tryst. Nor Foxx’s sterotyped “M.F.” Jones character, who’s essentially a spoof on spoof.

Then there’s the three leads whose chemistry with each other is sharp and flows whether they’re victims of their bosses nasty mischief or perpetrators of their own. Day actually commented in an interview that when he first shot a scene with Kevin Spacey he felt, “Wow that’s Kevin Spacey.” This attitude shows in the scene and it’s not a bad thing. Spacey at his best commands a certain cinematic gravitas and here he soars.

Director Seth Gordon not only cast this film perfectly, he ought to be commended for giving his actors free reign. As a result we end up having a rip-roaring time with Horrible Bosses despite the film’s tone deafness to anything that might have lifted it above the merely comic. Its tunnel vision looks for the next outrageous gag and puts welcomed blinders on the actual plight of the poor working guy. Here we’re just forgetting reality and that’s sweet.

7 pink slips out of 10

When Tom Hanks gets fired for not having a college degree in the beginning of Larry Crowne, he’s fired by a bunch of pricks including one who shows up later in the film as a pizza delivery man.
(Which means jerks get their due)

When Hanks decides to go to Community College after leaving his sure-looks-like-Walmart gig, he falls into a speech class taught by Julia Roberts.
(Which means good guys get all the luck.)

When Roberts’ blustery, do-nothing husband runs around drunk and looking at soft porn all day while not quite blogging (“you write comments on others’ blogs,” Roberts berates), you know he’s soon history…..
(Which means beautiful women have no tolerance for crass assholes)

When Hanks befriends Talia (28-year-old British actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw) it’s only to lull us into mild amusement over her suggestively teasing him. All the while Svengali-ing him into making over his wardrobe, haircut, and apartment. To have him ride his newly-bought used scooter Tailia and her Scooter gang all over L.A.
(Which means the film is not guilty of having a middle-aged guy hooking up with a college girl because here Hanks is only kidding us. (Her jealous boyfriend would disagree.))

When Hank takes an intro Economics lecture class with a likeable Asian professor who keeps taking his cellphone away and reciting Star Trek quotes.
(Which means Hanks, who grew fond of in-class texting-back-and-forth with Talia, is now on the same cool level of his classmates)

When Cedric the Entertainer, Hanks’ neighbor who has a permanent yard sale on his lawn, is shown bargaining ludicrously for the umpteenth time, we’re reminded the film was co-written by Nia Vardalos, who the made the sophomoric blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Hanks co-wrote and directed Larry Crowne (his first since 1996’s That Thing You Do). While he and Roberts demonstrated sharp chemistry in 2007’s Charlie Wilson’s War, here they’re cute to the point of foolishness in a movie that’s more purposeless than amusing.

(Which means I’m happy Tom Hanks is always so cheerful. But it is our funnybones he needs to assuage, our concern for his characters he needs to engage. After all, the highest grossing film actor of all time is no slouch.)

3.5 scooters out of 10

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)

It’s easy to picture the disgraced-in-real-life Mel Gibson as Walter Black, a wacky-as-a-dodo toy executive who devises an obsessive practice of speaking through a hand puppet beaver in order to keep his demons at bay. What’s harder to stomach is this fitful, often unctuous execution of a not half bad idea. Read more →

A movie the likes of Incendies serves as an utter example of film’s occasional power to give the viewer goosebumps of bittersweet joy on the way out of the theater. French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has crafted a brilliant saga about a Middle Eastern-born woman’s heroic response to privation and adversity, amidst a civil war reminiscent of Lebanon’s in the 1980s. As draining as it is perceptive, the film’s stunning finale is operatic on a scale rarely experienced.

Nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, Incendies (translation: Scorched) leans on the devastating performance of Lubna Azabal as Nawal, who in the film’s opening has died and left her Canadian twin daughter and son two mysterious letters. They instruct Jeanne and Simon to find both the father they have never met, and a half-brother they didn’t know existed. Simon balks and wishes no part of going back to their Arab homeland to sort things out. Jeanne embarks on a captivating journey she, and this movie’s audience, will never forget.

Via flashbacks we learn Nawal was born Christian and fell in love with a Muslim with whom, to disastrous consequences, she had a baby son, a child she was regrettably forced to give up. She spends many years in a courageous quest to reunite herself with the child while growing tensions between the Muslims and Christians create a seemingly impossible barrier for her. As cool as a Navy Seal, this remarkable woman repeatedly outstares unsurmountable risk after unsurmountable risk. Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, Villeneuve’s film allows the audience to stay a step ahead of Jeanne and Simon’s discoveries while maintainng a tight-as-a-knot sense of suspense.

Nawal’s valor is demonstrated in the Middle East with stirring visual imagery (a scene of Christian soldiers attacking a bus she’s a passenger on is one of the most mind-blowing scenes in many a year). It then extends beyond the grave when she lovingly hands her children knowledge that, while disturbingly overpowering, gives them the peace of spirit only the truth can provide. Tragedies fueled by hatred and war, while truly and sorrowfully limitless in ways often unimaginable, can only be overcome by love and a relentless resistance to resignation.

Not a casual 10 out of 10. A Classic.