Begin Again (***1/4)

Filmmaker John Carney seems to be specializing in a genre that may not have a name. Like his best-known film, Once, this is a musical film that is not a break-into-song musical, but that centers around music and performances that are part of the story. Rather than having musicians act in his film, as in Once, Carney has hired well-known actors. One, Keira Knightley, turns out to sing fairly well (she’s sang on a couple of soundtracks); her co-star, Mark Ruffalo, merely has to play a record-company man who hopes the budding singer-songwriter will turn his career around. Actual recording artists Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine do also act and sing in supporting roles, Levine most prominently as the boyfriend of Knightley’s character.

The reason Once worked so well (spawning an Oscar-winning song and a Tony-winning Broadway musical) was that it surrounded the songs with a naturalistic script that provided emotional context for the songs but didn’t overwhelm them. I wasn’t sure that was going to happen here. Ruffalo plays Dan, such a stereotype of a man going downhill — a scruffy-looking, cynical, drinking-too-much, negligent, divorced father driving an old beater on the streets of New York — that Carney seems to acknowledge the possibilities of cliché. “This isn’t Jerry McGuire,” his onetime record-label partner (Yasiin Bey, aka Mos Def) tells the just-fired Dan.

And, in the end, it isn’t. It’s kind of Once redux, but with a different-enough plot that it doesn’t feel like a retread. One thing the two films do have in common is a very romantic storyline anchored by an older man-younger woman pair who are musical — but not romantic — partners, though in each case there is the question of whether the one will turn into the other. And, even more strongly than in the earlier film, Carney makes the case for pop classicism. In the key early scene, after we’ve seen Knightley quietly singing with just her guitar, we see the same scene from Ruffalo’s point of view. Suddenly, the piano begins to play itself, and a violin(!) joins in, turning a passable folk song into a plausible hit song, albeit more plausible in 1974. The imaginary instrumentation borders on being corny, but it’s effective, or nearly so, in persuading the viewer that Dan might after one song be actually dying to sign up the unknown singer.


For reasons explained in the movie, Knightley is not giving her best singing effort in the scene, and she otherwise proves to have a clear, pleasant singing voice that goes along with her fine, expressive acting. While the voice is really hers, the songs attributed to her (and Levine’s character) are actually mostly co-written by Gregg Alexander and Danielle Brisebois, onetime bandmates in the New Radicals. I think at least a few of them, such as the violin-enhanced “Step You Can’t Take Back,” are good enough to catch on in the way that “Falling Slowly,” the Oscar-winning ballad from Once, did. Moreover, Begin Again is charming in the way that Once was, a feel-good film that doesn’t feel like it’s pushing your buttons. It certainly helps if you share Carney’s taste for well-crafted singer-songwriter fare, but the director once again make a compelling case for the emotional power of cinema-enhanced music, or music-enhanced cinema.

IMDb link

viewed 6/26/14 7:30 pm [PFS screening] and posted 7/1/14

Lucky Them (***)

Rock and roll is full of legendary figures who flamed out young, victims of their own success. This is one such (fictional) story, but told from the viewpoint of the girlfriend left behind.  Elly (Toni Collette), left with only a cryptic note, has had ten years to wonder whether Matthew Smith jumped off a bridge (the prevailing theory) or simply disappeared (hers).  She’s stayed at the same job, writing barely read stories about little-known musicians for a Seattle magazine in the Rolling Stone mode. To keep that job, she agrees to try to find Smith and write a story about it.

The resulting film is a mixture of road movie, comedy, romance, and character-driven drama, and most of that works pretty well. The love interest and charm is provided by actor-musician Ryan Eggold (The Blacklist). Thomas Haden Church, playing a wealthy eccentric that Elly once dated, supplies much of the comedy and road-trip repartee. An example of his eccentricities is his habitual drink order, a “clean glass,” a bottle of water, and a whole lime. Another is his broad distaste for music.

Smith, who has left behind one album (curiously, Elly has an LP, not a CD of it) beloved by a large cult, is the empty hole that Elly’s life, and the story, centers around. And we do, more or less, find out what happened to him, but you’ll know way ahead of time that this is one of those journey-not-the-destination kind of stories. It’s a very pleasant journey indeed with Collette and her costars, but the climax is still a bit underwhelming. When a movie is structured like a mystery, it’d be nice if we actually cared more about that mystery and found its solution satisfying.

IMDb link

viewed 6/27/14 6:30 pm at Roxy and posted 6/28/14

Stranger by the Lake (**3/4)

Sex and violence and friendship are the subject of this slow-building suspense drama. Directed by Alain Guiraudie, who also plays a small role, the French film makes a virtue of what must have been a tiny budget by making the sole location, a lakeside beach mostly populated by gay men, into a sort of character. The main human character is Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), who falls hard for a mustachioed man (Christophe Paou) he sees in the woods, then watches the man drown his lover at twilight. He does not call the police, though a police detective eventually comes calling.

On the slow way to a tension-filled, mysterious ending, Guiraudie seems to be at least as interested in depicting a particular kind of cruising scene as in his characters, and much more so than in morality. While some men swim in the lake, or lounge nude (most of them) on the stony shore, others stroll along the path in the nearby woods, where one might find a casual encounter, then look up to find a schlubby voyeur watching with his pants down. With the bright sun reflected off the lake and the overall quietness (the movie has no music), this all comes off as banal more than seedy, although it is worth noting that this probably had the most explicit sex scenes I’ve seen in a movie theater.

We learn only so much about Franck or his murderous lover. Actually, we learn more about the other major character, a pudgy man who claims only to want peace and quiet after breaking up with his girlfriend, and whom Franck befriends. The blandly handsome Franck is kind of a blank slate, his major attribute a boyish inability to see consequences.

IMDb link

viewed 3/27/14 7:15 at Ritz Bourse and posted 3/27/14

Omar (***1/2)

One thing that occurred to me when watching this was that, while I’ve seen plenty of Israeli films that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s hard to imagine a film about Palestinians that is not also, in some aspect, about the Israeli occupation. Omar (Adam Bakri) has to climb the giant separation wall that runs through the West Bank just to visit his girlfriend Nadia (Leem Lubany), a college student. In another scene, he is stopped and beaten by the Israeli security forces. The film certainly is from Palestinian perspective. But it would be a mistake to see it primarily as an anti-occupation film, even if its main characters, Omar and his two best friends, are involved in an anti-Israel plot. Instead, the film is about conflicting loyalties and self-preservation.

It’s better not to know much about what happens, but it involves the Israeli security forces trying to enlist Omar’s aid in capturing his friend. Omar doesn’t want to do this, but if he doesn’t he may never see Nadia again, let alone marry her as he wishes. Omar is the work of Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now), who gets strong perfromances from a cast of newcomers.
Despite the somewhat drab setting, the film is picturesque, with its shots of the giant wall and chase sequences showcasing narrow alleys; some of the most memorable shots in the film are those in which Omar looks in over the fence at the school his girlfriend attends, wondering whether he can trust her. It is such personal questions, not political ones, that dominate this film, right up to the shocker of an ending.

IMDb link

viewed 2/27/14 9:40 pm at Ritz Bourse and posted 3/5/14

The Selfish Giant (***1/4) [screening]

The friendship between two kids, called Arbor (Conner Chapman) and Swifty (Shaun Thomas), in working-class Bradford, in northern England, is at the center of this drama. With a prescription he only sometimes takes and that only somewhat calms him down, Arbor is what could be called a bad influence. As we are introduced to him, he’s a foul-mouthed 13- or 14-year-old who mouths off to his teachers. He’d rather be stealing metal and selling it for scrap. Swifty is his bigger, but gentler friend. The movie starts out all murky and chaotic, Arbor yelling at his brother, the two boys stealing wire for scrap — on a borrowed horse — then dealing with the unfriendly scrapyard boss, Arbor yelling at his mom, Swifty’s father yelling, the boys playing at wrestling each other. The story focuses more around midway, and it then becomes a surprising, almost sweet, tale, though never suggestive of its fairy-tale title, borrowed from an Oscar Wilde fable.

The subjects of the film and the non-romanticized portraits of them are reminiscent of Ken Loach films like Sweet Sixteen, but whereas Loach tends to highlight the desperation of his characters, suggesting implied messages about class and the unfairness of life, writer-director Clio Barnard keeps her characters in a world that seems more self-contained, though no less keenly observed. Presumably the scrapyard owner, presumably the selfish giant, is making good money, but he is of the same class. They live in a pitiless world, and pity was not my reaction to them or the other characters. I was not surprised that the two boys, neither an established actor, were from the same background as the characters. They’re quite convincing, and I had trouble imagining a posh kid from London mastering the unfamiliar accents (English, but very helpfully subtitled) and profanity-laced slang (“divs” was one insult I remember) that peppers the dialogue. Barnard’s previous film, The Arbor was a documentary about a playwright from the area in which this was filmed.  She seems to have absorbed the setting, and the scrub country and council houses and scrapyards provide enough visual imagery so as to be almost as memorable as the human characters.



IMDb link

viewed 10/23/13 7:25 pm at Rtiz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/24/13

La Jaula de Oro (***1/2) [screening]

The title, meaning “the golden cage,” sounds pretty and poetic, but the film itself is an unsentimental look at three teenagers heading north from Guatemala. We never learn why they’ve decided to leave, or what they’re leaving behind. With vague hopes of a better life in the United States, and dreams of snowflakes, they make their way through Mexico, like thousands of others using the tops of trains as free transportation. This route was also portrayed in 2009 fine Sin Nombre, which wove in a story about gang rivalry. This movie is less heavily plotted, and quieter, though many of the same perils are illustrated. A major turn in the plot does occur midway, but this only emphasizes the film’s strong theme, which is the role of luck. Some of the train riders will make it north, some will get sent home and give up, or perhaps try again, and some will meet worse fates. Sara, one of the teens, disguises herself as a boy to avoid some of those risks, but some cannot be controlled.

IMDb link

viewed 10/21/13 6:50 at Ritz East [Philadelphia Film Festival screening] and posted 10/21/13

Wadjda (***1/2)

Purportedly the first feature filmed in Saudi Arabia as well as the first by a female Saudi director (Haifaa Al-Mansour), Wadjda would be an accomplishment even if it sucked. But it doesn’t. Not only that, where you might expect a political drama, it’s kind of a feel-good film. The social commentary is secondary to story-telling.

True, no one will miss the implicit critique of the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Watching this, I had the thought that if I were a female in Saudi Arabia, I might want to remain 10 or 11 forever. I would be too young to worry, like Wadjda’s mother does, about having to rely on a male driver to get to a job, about a husband possibly acquiring a second wife. I could go about without a veil covering my face. I could pal around with a boy.

Wadjda is a girl of such an age. She’s not so good in school, but clever outside of it, earning money by selling bracelets to classmates, cadging discounts from a local storekeeper. The Converse sneakers she wears to school and the T-shirt she wears at home (saying, in English, “I’m a Great Catch”) suggest a rebel. But really, she just wants to do her own thing.  Her only two problems are the disapproval of her school’s headmistress and her inability to afford the bike she wants to ride. That she doesn’t know how to ride a bike, and that everyone tells her girls don’t ride them, is less of concern. Meanwhile, a school contest presents a potential solution to both problems.

Some of the particulars of the story, like the strict religiosity of the headmistress, and the need to avoid being seen by men, are particular to the Saudi context, but mean teachers, coveted objects, and conflicts between one’s parents are universal childhood experiences. The combination of these familiar experiences with the novel context is the most striking aspect of the movie, along with its young lead actress. Possessing a wide smile and camera presence, Waad Mohammed gives the most appealing performance by a child since Onata Aprile in What Maisie Knew. The personality she breathes into the character should make this film irresistibly winsome for anyone old enough to be able to read the subtitles.



IMDb link

viewed 10/10/13 7:40 pm, at Ritz 5; posted 10/11/13 and updated 10/12/13

Drinking Buddies (***1/4)

Those expecting a wild-and-crazy Hangover retread, based on the title, may be disappointed in this naturalistic indie film that is perhaps 70% drama and 30% comedy. Olivia Wilde (of Fox’s House M.D.) and Jake Johnson (of Fox’s New Girl) play coworkers at a craft brewery (in Chicago, though you can’t tell). Ron Livingston (Office Space) and Anna Kendrick play the love interests, and the story, such as there is, centers around a camping trip the foursome take at a cozy cottage along the shore. Director Joe Swanberg, a movie-making machine withover a dozen little-seen features to his credit in seven years (and even more as an actor), establishes the characters and the style early one, with hand-held camera work and improvised dialogue. The movie looks too carefully shot to be cinéma vérité, but it’s to the credit of the actors that it sometimes sounds like the director simply followed around a group of friends and filmed them. The lack of a score (though there are some songs with a chill vibe) contributes to this sense. The actors also wear noticeably less makeup than in most movies. 

Swanberg has been identified with the “mumblecore” school of moviemaking, and there’s lots of fumbling around in the characters’ speech and a few awkward silences, though I didn’t think the movie was as slow as some other movies shot this way. More significantly, the emphasis is not on plot, but on the relationship that occupies a sometimes-uncomfortable space between platonic and romantic. The low-key ending will not be to all tastes but makes sense in the context of a low-key film.

IMDb link

viewed 7/22/13 7:00 pm at Ritz Bourse [PFS screening] and reviewed 7/23 and 7/24/13

Frances Ha (***)

“Meandering” was the word I wrote down while watching this. It refers both to the plot and to Frances (Greta Gerwig), whose last name is not Ha. As it begins, she is an apprentice dancer living with her Sophie, a best friend with whom she is so close they are “like a lesbian couple who don’t have sex anymore.” Asked to move in by her boyfriend, she breaks up with him instead. But then Sophie, having found a nicer place, moves out. In New York City, good apartments are more coveted than best friends. And so Frances, who cannot afford her own place, becomes figuratively, and then literally, unmoored, finding new friends and new places to sleep.

Frances is the creation of writer-director Noah Baumbach and Gerwig, who gets a co-writing credit. Most of Baumbach’s films feature more combative main characters; that was so in The Squid and the Whale, probably his best film, and in Greenberg, his last one, in which Gerwig played the love interest of the title character. In Damsels in Distress, she proved capable of playing a very different type of character, but her affect here seems a lot like in Greenberg, a bit awkward, gangly even. Her voice has a buttery quality, almost a mumbly undercurrent. She is not combative, but falls between sweet and offbeat. (In a running private joke, a male friend calls her “undateable” when she is at her oddest.) Sometimes, mostly toward the beginning of the movie, she is funny.

And she is in every scene, so your response to her and Frances will be your response to the movie, which is about her attempts to find her way into adulthood — or about losing a best friend. Baumbach’s movies are very talky, and that combined with the New York setting (and white, educated characters), will remind you of Woody Allen movies, but unlike Allen’s movies, the characters are almost all in their 20s and living with roommates. That the film is in black and white may be a tribute to Allen’s Manhattan, but where in that case it gave the city an air of glamour, here it seems to render the city a little drab, perhaps symbolic of a woman whose life has lost a little color.

On the whole, I favor Baumbach’s last few films, with their sharper edges. But, as always, the dialogue here sounds natural, and I liked that Frances was a mixed bag of a character, not always acting wisely or with forethought, but finding ways to get by.

IMDb link

viewed 6/10/13 7:45 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 6/10/13

21 & Over (**)

Had this been titled 18 & Under it might have been an apt tribute to the teen boys for whom this may hold the greatest appeal, and for whom this mixture of drunken revelry, potty-mouthed dialogue (“I‘m gonna fuck you with alcohol”), and sexual titillation may seem transgressive. Of course, some of these teens may need to be accompanied by their parents, who are more likely to see this as old hat.

It comes from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the writing team responsible for The Hangover, which I kind of liked, and can be seen as a very loose rewrite, or rehash. Instead of The Hangover’s Las Vegas, the setting is that other center of collective debauchery, the college campus. Instead of four over-30 guys, there are three 20ish ones. Miles Teller  plays the obnoxious one, kind of a pimplier version of the Bradley Cooper character in The Hangover. His straitlaced counterpart is played by Skylar Astin; he makes noises during the movie about the need to grow up. Their friend Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), rather than disappearing a la The Hangover, merely spends much of his 21st birthday in a drunken stupor, just short of requiring medical attention, presumably. This jury rigs a plotline in which his pals are desperately trying to get him home in time for his morning med-school interview.

As with The Hangover, the comedic elements include a series of mishaps, recurring characters, crazy revenge-minded persons (sorority girls, a male cheerleader and his posse), a large wild animal, and, of course, the “one-crazy-night” plot. Yet The Hangover seemed, if not exactly clever, at least a little bit fresh, and if not exactly plausible, then inhabiting its own reality. It had some element of mystery, even. Mostly, this appears composed of recycled parts of teen comedies past, possibly grafted onto a discarded old John Hughes script. Jeff Chang (always referred to by both names) is the most appealing character, except for the projectile vomiting scene and the drunk-driving scene, but he doesn’t speak for much of the time. Given the odd bit of quasi-racist humor in the movie, it’s probably worth mentioning the complete absence, as far as I could tell, of black people. Otherwise it’s barely worth mentioning at all.

 

IMDB link

viewed 2/26/2013 7:30 at Ritz 5 [PFS] screening and reviewed 2/27–28/2013

Seven Psychopaths (***)

I am pretty sure of this: Like the alcoholic and aspiring screenwriter played by Colin Farrell, Martin McDonagh, the writer-director of this comedy, came up with the title first. The fictional screenwriter has only a couple of ideas, like one about a Buddhist psychopath, but he also has the advantage of a helpfully nutty friend (Sam Rockwell) and some real-life events to inspire him. Whereas McDonagh, I think, largely made all this stuff up, which shows he has quite an imagination, but also that much of what passes here strains credulity.

As with In Bruges, McDonagh’s previous effort, or even more so, I felt too aware of the attempts at cleverness, though possibly I laughed more anyway. The Ferrell character dreams of creating a movie about psychopaths that’s nonetheless “life-affirming,” and so does McDonagh, I imagine, even though he’s mostly trying to be funny. The story largely revolves around a dognapping ring. Rockwell’s character is caught up in it, and so is another one played by Christopher Walken. Their dognappers’ victims include one of the psychopaths, played by Woody Harrelson. Harrelson’s character doesn’t hestitate to prey on the weak, or to pretend to kill someone just for a gag, but his quest is the return of his beloved dog, Bonnie, for whom his heart melts. So there’s the life-affirming part.

McDonagh does some of the same mixing of creative plotting, oddball characters, and arch dialogue that Quentin Tarantino employs with much less visible patchwork. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to have such colorful actors as Harrelson, Rockwell, and Walken in the same movie and have it be forgettable, or humorless. And, in fact, McDonagh meets his own challenge by coming up with an original conclusion, or a couple of them, actually, that’s dramatically satisfying, though “life-affirming” would be stretching things.

IMDb link

viewed 10/4/12 7:30 at Rave University City and reviewed 10/5-12/12

For a Good Time, Call… (***)

Being the story of women who start a phone-sex service, this has cheesy exploitation flick written all over it, but was a nice surprise. Actually, it resembles nothing so much as a romantic comedy about platonic friends. To be sure, there is actual romance in the story, but the main relationship is between the two women, one of whom is played by Lauren Miller, one of the two women who wrote the screenplay. The other one, Katie Anne Naylon, is the one with actual phone-sex experience, which explains both the attention to detail—the need for a second person to handle billing, for example—and the the reason the plot centers around a now-waning business.

Miller is the nice girl, and Ari Graynor the party girl she’s hated since college, but then their gay pal (Justin Long) sets them up…as roommates, and they need money, this being New York, and the apartment being surprisingly large, and so…. You expect sex jokes here, and there are, but the tone is salacious, not smutty. The callers, a couple of whom may be recognizable from other films, are the subjects of humor, as you might expect, but not the objects of ridicule. In fact, the whole thing has a good-natured sex-positive tone that I liked. An encounter with a disapproving religious conservative is one of the funnier parts of the movie. To be sure, there is no deep meaning here, and the climax, if I may use that word, is a strained parody of a real romantic comedy ending. But real comedy is here, too.

IMDb link

viewed 8/29/12 7:30 pm at Rave University 6 and reviewed 9/6/12

Robot & Frank (***1/4)

Frank is Frank Langella, and the voice of the robot is Peter Sarsgaard in this comedy-drama about family, friendship, thievery, and Alzheimer’s. Also, it’s set in the near future, when cars can drive themselves, libraries are getting rid of books, and all phones are videophones, which 2001: A Space Odessey said would happen in 2001 and Back to The Future Part II said would happen around now. But a dutiful son (James Marsden) and a flaky daughter (Liv Tyler) are still the same. Dad’s having trouble taking care of himself, so dutiful son brings the latest technology. It looks boxy, not too human, and Sarsgaard sounds like a less-sinister version of 2001’s Hal.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” says the machine. “How do you know?” Frank answers, but like most people eventually adapts to the idea of having a machine do things for him. Things like theft, his old career. The notion of a buddy comedy with a friendly robot suggests the potential of being a little too cute, like that 1980s movie Short Circuit, but this is just the right amount of cute. It made me think about artificial intelligence, but at the same time it’s a mostly fun movie for those who aren’t into sci-fi. The ending is a reminder that, at bottom, all stories told by humans are human stories.

IMDb link

viewed 8/13/12 7:30 pm at World Cafe Live and reviewed 8/24/12 and 8/27/12

Magic Mike (***)

Steven Soderbergh has made dull movies, but never cheesy ones, and his drama about male strippers isn’t either. His star, Channing Tatum, may have gotten his big break in a dance movie, but this is a step up from Step Up, whose story was mostly a prelude to a big dance off. In fact, for those looking for something entirely fluffy with some male eye candy, this may not be not even be cheesy enough.

The eye candy is there, of course. Besides Tatum, the major characters include the head cheese and master of ceremonies at the Tampa establishment, Matthew McConaughey, in a showy, tailor-made role, and “the Kid” (Alex Pettyfer), a new recruit that Tatum’s character takes under his wing. The Kid has a sister (Cody Horn). You can tell she’ll be a love interest because she wears a scowl, is smart, and doesn’t have casual sex like the other characters. The stripping scenes are there, too—no full monty, though—and they’re kind of funny, with different themes.

Soderbergh depicts Mike’s world as not really glamorous (odd, dark lighting effects contribute), perhaps a bit sleazy (with casual sex and drug use), but in most ways just another workplace in post-recession Florida. Mike (Tatum) has a couple of jobs and is saving his money. He’s kind of a stripper with a heart of gold, facing the usual fork in the road. He’s a believable character, maybe too realistic for those seeking fantasy. The crucial scenes that establish the rapport between Mike and the Kid’s sister really work, though, and the stripping stuff seems realistic enough, other than the absence of any gay men either among the strippers or in the audience. (No black folks either.) The realism might be explained by the fact that Tatum’s real-life experiences in the business were a basis for the screenplay (credited to Reid Carolin, whose prior credit was a documentary about the Rwandan genocide). In any case, the premise alone might draw a certain crowd, but the actual product is a little better than it needs to be.
 

IMDb link

viewed 7/12/12 7:30 at Roxy and reviewed 7/13/12 and 7/17/12 and 7/18/12

Ted (**3/4)

Someone described this to be as perfectly geared to the sense of humor of a 14-year-old boy, although any such boy might have trouble seeing it without a parent or guardian. This person, neither 14 nor male, wasn’t meaning that as a compliment, yet couldn’t keep from recounting a few of the funny parts. It’s that kind of movie, about what you’d expect with a plot about a man living with a foul-mouthed teddy bear that came to life when he was a boy, especially if it’s directed by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane. I've always found that Fox show more outrageous than actually funny, and some of the humor here, like the mildly homophobic gay jokes and ethnic humor, falls into that category. And some of the humor is basically watching a two-foot stuffed bear smoke pot and talk with a potty mouth…which can be funny, for a little bit. The bear, incidentally, has pretty much the same voice as McFarlane uses for Family Guy’s Peter Griffin.

The main human character is played by Mark Wahlberg. An overgrown child, he disappoints his employer and his girlfriend (Mila Kunis), though he has a good thing going in each case. Basically, he’s Seth Rogen in Knocked Up, but with an animated bear in place of the three roommates and a non-pregnant girlfriend. Adult-male roommates don’t complain about not having a penis, but some of the funnier moments are non-toy related. In one, Wahlberg rattles off about four dozen “white-trash names” in half a minute trying to guess who his best friend is dating. (Thus the complaint about the missing appendage.) Since there needs to be a story arc, eventually Ted finds himself in jeopardy. I suppose McFarlane is trying to pull off the same trick as in Lars and the Real Girl in which the absurd premise — dating a blow-up doll — becomes kinda sorta heartwarming. He doesn’t quite manage that, although it’s kind of sad to see even a non-talking stuffed bear lose a limb. On the other hand, notwithstanding that Lars had a sex doll as a main character, Ted has way more dick jokes. Beats it easily, in fact. If that sounds like a recommendation, you’ll enjoy this.

IMDb link

viewed 7/14/12 8:20 at Riverview and reviewed 7/21/12 and 7/24/12

Damsels in Distress (***1/2)

Watch this for five minutes and you’ll probably know if you’ll like its alternate-reality take on college life, as seen by a quartet of female roommates at the fictional Seven Oaks. Greta Gerwig, Ben Stiller’s mumbling love interest in Greenberg, plays the much perkier, talkier Violet, leader of the quartet, who in the space of the film’s first five minutes nearly faints from “acrid” B.O., discusses “the problem with contemporary social life,” laments that an “atmosphere of male barbarism prevails” at her institution, extols the virtues of dating “sad sacks” and plain-looking and/or unintellient men, and thwarts a potential suicide. Violet and her stylized dialogue are the creation of director Whit Stillman, who with just four films (in 22 years) is easily one of the more stylistically distinctive filmmakers around. All of his films feature what might be called the intellectually aspirational class, twentysomethings who might in ten years be Woody Allen characters, but here it’s in a playful way.

As the title may suggest, the movie has the flavor of a period piece, but one in which a 1990s song* is a “golden oldie” and anal sex is (obliquely) referred to. Violet dreams of initiating a “dance craze,” and a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers-inspired musical number caps the film. At the same time, it doesn’t really seem like any actual old movies, although it slightly made me think of the recent French musical 8 Women. Of Violet’s friends, the one played by Megalyn Echikunwoke made me laugh the most by repeatedly issuing Anglo-Nigerian accented-warnings about “playboy-operator type” guys. Much of what amused me about the movie is hard to convey, but comes down to its unique brand of whimsy. For example, at Seven Oaks, there are no Greek-letter frats, only Roman letter ones, where the inhabitants are so dumb that they try to commit suicide by jumping from a second-story window.

The plot has something to do with Violet and her friends’ crusade to purge the campus of its coarser aspects, and some romantic mismatches, but, really, you won’t care about how any of that resolves itself. I’m not sure if Stillman intends to say anything about college, romantic attraction, suicide, the value of intelligence, lying, or any of the other things these damsels discuss, but that in no way distressed me.

* “Another Night” by Real McCoy

IMDb link

viewed 4/25/12 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 4/25/12 and 4/26/12

Friends with Kids (***1/4)

IMDb link

viewed 3/28/2012 7:35 at Ritz 5

The Secret World of Arriety (***1/2)

In the beginning of this charming tale, Arriety, now turning 14, bravely ventures outside in daylight, returning with a huge bay leaf that her mother says will last a year. But she has also been seen by a boy, though he is around her own age. This will mean trouble, because the boy is a “being” while Arriety, living with her parents in a small corner of a basement, is a borrower. Borrowers, as introduced in the Mary Norton novel of the same name, are tiny people who subsist on what full-size people don’t need, or won’t miss. This is one of at least five adaptations of Norton’s novel, including a 2011 BBC version, but it’s the first to use another title and, perhaps surprisingly, the first to be animated. In this way, the story becomes as natural as a fantasy, one that is also a coming-of-age story, can be.

The look of the film should seem familiar to those familiar with the work of Hayao Miyazaki (Sprited Away, Ponyo), who adapted the novel but left the directing chores to Hiromasa Yonebayashi, one of his animators. It’s less frenzied and has few of the grotesque touches common to Miyazaki’s other work, but the colors are just as gorgeous, and there’s a warmth to it. (The dialogue of the adults, at least in the dubbed U.S. version, is similarly stilted at times.) Incidentally, while the larger humans appear to be Japanese, the borrowers do not. (Arriety’s dad, voiced by Will Arnett, seriously reminded me of a young Harrison Ford. Amy Poehler is the voice of her mom.) They are in a foreign land. Compared to mainstream American animation, this is not necessarily slower, but it’s much quieter, content to carry the story forward visually at times. The plot is simpler than other versions of the story; the tone is sincere, not comedic. (A mildly villainous human, voiced by Carol Burnett, does seem a little goofy, though.) Although it gently raises the subject of death, it should be enjoyable to beings of most ages.

IMDb link

viewed 3/8/12 8:30 pm at Riverview and reviewed 3/8/12 (updated 3/18/12)

Tomboy (***1/4)

Céline Sciamma’s second film as writer-director follows Water Lilies, an intriguing drama about the vagaries of teenage female sexuality. Moving from sexual identity to gender identity, this one focuses on Laure, a girl of ten or so who moves into a new apartment complex and becomes, at least to the new friends she meets that summer, Mikael. The story is very simple; what stands out is Sciamma’s very neutral way of telling it. By that I mean that one never gets the feeling that there is a message, despite the potentially fraught subject matter. Despite the presence of Laure’s parents, almost the entire film is from her point of view, which is that of a child.

I realized also, in watching this, how few films, even films about children, primarily show them interacting with other children rather than responding to adults. Both Laure’s interactions with her six-year-old sister (Malonn Lévana, who is both adorable and incredibly natural) and Mikael’s play with the new boys (and one girl) are likely to remind you of the sorts of things that mattered when you were a child.

If you have one of your own (well, one who knows French or will read subtitles), the story is so gently told that you could watch this together and have a very unusual conversation afterward.


IMDB link

viewed 12/21/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 12/21/11

The Future (**3/4)

I have seen The Future, Miranda July’s second film as writer/director/star…and it begins with a talking cat. Well, a narrating cat. (July is married to Mike Mills, whose concurrently released Beginners features a dog whose thoughts are subtitles. Kismet, I guess.) The cat, never quite seen, narrates in a voice—July’s mousy voice, but imitating the scratchy, child-like voice you would give to a stuffed animal—that one is bound to find adorable or, more likely, be really irritated by. The cat isn’t in the movie enough to make or break the film, but its presence is some guide to July’s sensibility.

Or, try this: First scene (after the cat), July and her costar, Hamish Linklater, playing a couple with their laptops on a couch. Not wishing to get up to get herself a drink or water, she wishes she had a crane to reach the sink. He points out that she’d need to turn on the water. She replies that she could do that with her mind, and he says it’s a shame her only power is something one could do with one’s hand in any case. His power, he tells her, is to be able to stop time. And he does. Or pretends to. So it’s that kind of movie, whatever that is. Not really comical, but playful, or precious if you prefer, the sort of movie you’d expect a performance artist, which July was, to make. The stopping-time bit shows up later.

The plot, such as there is, revolves around the couple’s realization that they are 35, the age in which one’s life becomes set, particularly if you’ve agreed to adopt a cat, which they have, in a month. (This makes slightly more sense in the context of the movie, but I think it is true that 35 is an age in which most people realize that they have more or less taken whatever path they were going to take in life.) So, with a month to go, they set out to change course, and that goes about as well as it does for most people, although each of them makes a new friend. The need to connect is a definite theme.

July’s other film was called Me and You and Everyone We Know, of which I only remember that it was also teetering between quirky and precious and original, and July played another character somewhere in the space between odd-but-believable and too-weird-even-for-Los Angeles. Also, the person I saw it with hated it. I think this may also be a love-or-hate-it affair. I know this because I was right on the fence, as I tend to be with that kind of thing. I liked several scenes, including the quasi-magical realist stuff, although I think The Science of Sleep, to which I can very roughly compare this, did it better. If done right, a film can be quirky in a way that leads to a lot of feeling. This approaches that place, but kind of blows it with an ending that seemed slight to me.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 8/18/11