Le Week-end (***)

At its best, this drama is a bit like Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon,” the lovely tune that plays over the closing credits. It’s kind of quiet, but kind of light, buoyant where its simplicity might elsewhere seem somber. Jim Broadbent, star of every third English movie, and Lindsay Duncan, best known for her UK TV roles, play Nick and Meg, teachers celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary in Paris. Coming from the director-writer team, Roger Michell and Hanif Kureishi, who did Venus, the 2006 Peter O’Toole charmer, it might almost be the next installment in Richard Linklater’s Before series (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight) for its emphasis on talk over plot, and for the fact that the couple in question have reached the empty-nester stage of life. But where, at least in Before Midnight, the Julie Delpy-Ethan Hawke couple have loud arguments that can boil over, the characters here simmer. What for another couple might lead to an hour of not speaking, or a ruined evening, these two let roll by, though without forgetting. Only Jeff Goldblum, as Nick’s admiring American friend, supplies a lot of volume. (I actually missed some of Nick and Meg’s dialogue for the lack of same.)

Besides Drake’s contribution, a Jeremy Sams’s piano score supplies a light jazz background that seems appropriate for a film that is too serious to be called fun, but that has enough amusing moments not to be ponderous.

IMDb link

viewed 4/2/14 at Ritz 5 and posted 4/2/14

Before Midnight (***1/4)

Among 2004’s least likely sequels was Before Sunset, a nine-years-later reuniting of Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke), the couple who shared one intense night together in Vienna in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise. The ending of that movie — spoiler! — left it ambiguous as to whether the couple would stay together. Right on schedule, nine more years having passed, this movie tells us that what we wanted to happen did. (Incidentally, having seen the other two is not a prerequisite to this film, which deftly fills in the relevant details. The screenplay is credited to Linklater as well as the two leads)

There are, more or less, four acts. First is the car ride, after Jesse, a writer, leaves his son at the airport. We quickly learn that that the son lives in Chicago with his mother, that Jesse and his ex have a bad relationship, and that the airport is in Greece, where Jesse and Celine continue vacationing with their twin daughters, who are conveniently sleeping for most of part one, leaving their parents to chat.  Just like the other installments, the movie is all talk, little action, so they chat a lot. They live in Paris, so Jesse laments that he can only see his son in summer. Is he  just feeling guilty, or guilt tripping Celine?

The difference between the first two movies is that, even when Jesse and Celine disagreed, the discussion was hypothetical, philosophical. Act two, in which they discuss love and sex with the literary types they’re staying with, is much in this mode. Act three finds the couple exploring (so, some nice scenery of ancient ruins and architecture), but mostly talking, including the light-yet-heavy subject of whether they would be attracted to each other if they’d just met.

The minor spat of the beginning becomes the seed of the more intense final act, which is most different from anything in the other two movies, just as the idealization of a brief encounter is different from a relationship.  I didn’t mind that, and in fact liked the last part best, having been a little anxious for the discussion to get where it was going before that. However, I did think that I might have preferred that the couple’s disagreement be of the sort that could be blamed equally on either party. In fact, I think most people will think one is more at fault.

In any case. this installment lacks the fairy tale quality of the other films. But it has the same verisimilitude that makes these people seem like a real couple, though Hawke’s edgy vibe is different from Delpy’s cool one. So, I’m marking my calendar for 2022, in case Linklater and his two leads decide that Celine and Jesse aren’t done talking.

IMDb link

Paul (***1/4)

What if all of our clichéd notions about aliens—elongated bodies, flying saucers, government cover-ups, anal probes—well, not anal probes—are all based in reality? That’s one premise of this genial comedy from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who were behind the parodies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The British duo wrote the film (with Greg Mottola directing) and star as nerdy pals vacationing in America, attending Comic-Con and hitting the road in an RV.

This doesn’t some much parody sci-fi films themselves as our notions of aliens, nerds, and possibly British people. The alien, Paul, with whom they have a close encounter seems a lot like a regular guy, or like Seth Rogen, anyway, who provides the voice. (He looks a lot like E.T., but there’s a reason for that.)

IMDB link

viewed 2/24/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/22/11

Mid-August Lunch (**1/4)

The title suggests a nice, relaxed meal in pleasant company, and moreover a pleasant, light drama or comedy with no heavy themes, and that is what this aspires to be. Very Italian, with lots of casual wine sipping and a sprinkling of parmesan, it takes place when much of Rome seems to be on vacation. Meanwhile, middle-aged Gianni, who lives with his elderly mother, winds up being overnight host to multiple elderly women. They are all nice enough, though collectively a mild handful with their dietary restrictions, medications, and need for beds. Gianni is played by the director, Gianni Di Gregorio, who looks a lot like the late Jerry Orbach. Di Gregorio wrote the recent crime drama Gomorrah, among others, but apparently was looking for something less challenging for his directing debut.

I have no problem enjoying this sort of lightly plotted trifle, and this is certainly not unpleasant. But it’s so mild that it fails to make much of an impression. If this were actually something that happened to someone, it would make an amusing yarn, but a feature film seems a bit too much. Even if that movie takes merely the length of a leisurely lunch (75 minutes), viewers may be thinking that they’d prefer to spend that time eating the meal than watching it.

IMDB link

viewed 4/21/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/22/10

Why Did I Get Married? (***)

Four and a half couples head for a remote Colorado lodge for a winter retreat in writer-director-actor Tyler Perry’s latest, adapted from his play. The half represents the “friend” one husband’s brought along on the flight, leaving his wife (Jill Scott) to drive there alone. (She’s obese, and the airline was going to charge her for two seats.) With this movie, Perry further establishes himself as the most mainstream chronicler of the black professional (or at least aspirational) class in America. He’s getting better at it too. Madea’s Family Reunion, his last film to date to feature his female title character, relied on borderline stereotyped outrageousness, and Perry’s cross dressing, for a comedy that seemed to exist side-by-side with a soapy melodrama. Daddy’s Little Girls, the one between that and this, leaned more to the latter. But here, the comic and the dramatic seem to ebb and flow naturally.

Naturally, given the title, all of the marriages here need work, and one seems a lost cause. That would be the one involving Scott’s philandered-upon character, whose future is pretty much telegraphed when she winds up lost (metaphorically and actually) in the office of the town sheriff, who lo and behold happens to be black. R&B star Scott brings as much emotionality to her performance as to her singing (which, surprisingly, is absent from the neo-soul-oriented soundtrack). Perry himself plays one of the husbands, a doctor married to a lawyer who’s too busy with her career. Even though he hasn’t had sex for months, he admonishes one of the other men about having cheated. I could sympathize with the other man, though, since his wife is the obvious shrew among the group, bickering with, berating, and embarrassing him (and others) for most of the movie, while providing the film with many of the laughs. One couple seems most idyllic (Janet Jackson plays the wife, a successful author), but a problem lies beneath the surface.

And so, the men talk about the women, the women talk about the men, the women talk to the men, and then everyone talks at once as all of the domestic issues come out in the open. It’s like a Dr. Phil episode dramatized, although, thankfully, without the doctor on hand. There’s not much subtlety here, unless you count the euphemism one of the cheaters uses for the venereal disease he caught. Perry’s tendency to want to wrap everything up cleanly results in pat, forced resolutions to most of the stories. It’s a wishful thinking sort of movie; maybe Perry wants to counteract the prevalent images of black people in cinema as, among other things, in dysfunctional relationships. Although for the most part Perry isn’t didactic, family values are on conscious display here. The couples are all married, of course, and more than one person makes casual references to God and Jesus in conversation. Notably, the women here are strong and independent, even, in a couple of cases, more successful, career-wise, than their men. Still, the men let them do all of the cooking.

While Perry still has room for improvement, he knows how to entertain, and it’s a credit to him that I didn’t have trouble keeping all of these characters straight. Maybe next time he won’t be afraid to screen his movie for critics.

IMDB link

reviewed 10/15/07

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (*3/4)

Less annoying but duller than the 2003 Cheaper, this sequel has Steve Martin again acting like an ass when his clan vacations near a filthy-rich childhood rival (Eugene Levy).

Eagerly awaited by Steve Martin’s accountants, this sequel to a remake finds Martin and Bonnie Hunt summering at a lake with their clan. According to Hunt’s voiceover, the theme is “learning to let go.” However, the actual theme is, Dad’s being a jackass (again) trying to compete with his filthy-rich childhood rival (Eugene Levy) and his overachieving kids. The kids (all 20) pretty much get along, so things are not quite as noisy and frenetic as the 2003 Cheaper. Fine by me, but this movie was about as dull as watching a neighbor’s vacation slides for 90 minutes. I imagine anyone who liked the first one will like this too, but slightly less. Exactly one line made me laugh, when one kid says, “Cool, we’re following poo!” I imagine if anyone makes a third in the series (perhaps subtitled Still Not Cheap Enough), they’ll be saying the same thing.

IMDb link

circulated via email 12/29/05 and posted online 9/19/13

Cote d'Azur (***)

This is a frivolous French sex comedy about a family whose summer holiday reveals some sexual secrets. The family's staying at a seaside villa for the summer. The daughter’s gone off with her boyfriend, while the teenage son’s having his best friend over. Mom and Dad speculate about exactly what kind of friend this boy is, and what, if anything to say. Meanwhile they've got lusty secrets of their own. Comical twists follow. There’s even, apropos of nothing, a couple of kooky musical numbers featuring most of the cast. Worth watching to see a light approach to sexuality (and nudity) that's pretty rare in American cinema.

IMDB link

viewed 7/15/05 at Prince Music Theater [PGLFF] and reviewed 12/05/05

Christmas in the Clouds (***1/2)

A hilarious family comedy of misunderstandings and quirky characters set an American Indian-run ski lodge.

This is a movie I saw three and a half years ago at the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, which was a year after its premiere at Sundance. (It got the third highest audience rating, 4.56 out of 5, of any non-documentary at the Philly festival. One of the two films that beat it is the Korean My Sassy Girl, one of my favorites.) It’s a comedy about the characters at an American Indian-run ski lodge. (It was filmed at Robert Redford’s Sundance resort in Utah.) The story revolves around a series of misunderstandings, but the humor stems from the various personalities working at the place. There’s a romantic-comedy element as well. I happened to look this up on IMDb a few weeks ago and saw that it had never been released on video*; nor had its writer-director, Kate Montgomery, made a film before or since. I have no idea why it’s getting a theatrical release at this late date, but it’s one of the flat-out funniest films I’ve seen. I assume the fact that its biggest star is the character actor M. Emmet Walsh has something to do with its relative obscurity and its relatively limited release. Despite this and its film festival pedigree, it’s not at all highbrow. Too frivolous to be a critics’ darling, too little publicized to be a mainstream hit, it’s likely to have a rather short run, I suspect, but I think it’s a safe bet that a better family film won’t be playing this holiday season.

* It has since the writing of this review; Montgomery only post-credit is as executive producer of a 2010 documentary.

IMDb link

circulated 12/1/05 via email and posted/slightly revised 9/21/13