Take This Waltz (**1/4)

This is the second feature from actress/writer/director Sarah Polley, whose Away from Her was an affecting of a man watching his wife’s memory drift away due to Alzheimer’s. Polley brings an equal degree of emotional authenticity to this, the story of a much younger wife (Michelle Williams) and her romantic friendship with another man (Luke Kirby). In fact, I sort of felt embarrassed watching the in which Williams and Seth Rogen, as the unwitting husband, engage in a game in which each describes elaborate ways of killing the other. It was like overhearing a couple using pet names and baby talk to each other, though weirder. So, the marriage is not a bad one, but the other man beckons as a diversion.

Though we wonder whether this new relationship will be consummated (other than through a very erotic, talk-only seduction), the subject is not infidelity as such. It’s more like, is happiness a matter of perception or reality? Do we make ourselves unhappy by imagining the unattainable? It’s a different take on the subject than, say, Unfaithful. However, it’s also painfully stagnant and sometimes redundant. (The imaginary-killing game described above recurs in several scenes.) Sarah Silverman’s perhaps surprising appearance as an alcoholic relative brings, at first, welcome comic relief. Later, she’s featured in a cut-through-the-bullshit scene that quickly sums up what’s played out, very slowly, over the previous 90 minutes. Michelle Williams’s very fine performance is also to be recommended. Nonetheless, as someone who usually has patience for stories that are slow to develop, I found this honest, but honestly dull.

IMDb link

viewed 6/26/12 7:30 pm at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 7/30/12

Anvil: The Story of Anvil (***)

Canadian metal band Anvil graced the Billboard album chart just once, hitting #191 in 1987 with their fifth album, Strength of Steel. Yet 20 years later they—or at least the core duo of singer-guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow and drummer Robb Reiner—plod on.

With limited commercial success, staying together means having day jobs, recording low-budget albums on tiny labels, and traveling on trains, not tour buses. This is the story recorded by longtime fan Sacha Gervasi (a screenwriter on Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal). Notwithstanding his having followed Anvil for so long, the documentary barely covers their history; past members go unmentioned, and the current ones other than Lips and Robb have mere bit parts, aside from the musical segments. There are interviews with family members and a few associates, but no narration.

Mainly what the movie is about is the love-hate bond between these two middle-aged men and the drive than causes them to continue despite the practical difficulties and meager financial rewards. There definitely will seem to be a few Spinal Tap moments for those familiar with that mockumentary, whose director, Rob Reiner, is apparently unrelated to Anvil’s Robb Reiner. Gervasi follows Anvil on a European tour that includes a dismal gig at the hilarious-sounding Monsters of Transylvania show. Robb shows off his paintings, which include one of a toilet. Lips and Robb bicker over who-knows-what.

Although the documentary begins by establishing the band’s bona fides, with such figures as Slash (Guns ’n Roses), Lemmy (Motorhead), and Lars Ulrich (Metallica) testifying to Anvil’s influence and significance, the movie barely touches on the process of making music, and there are no full-length performances. To my ears, a lack of truly memorable melodies might have been as responsible as anything else for the group’s lack of a breakout hit, despite obvious instrumental prowess and power. (In the MTV age, the lack of a telegenic lead singer may have also been a liability.) With a sound that was once modern but doesn’t appear to have changed in the decades since, a significant expansion of their audience seems doubtful. But the movie made me root for them to at least find the means to stay afloat for another decade or two.

IMDB link

viewed 3/18/09 (screening at Ritz Bourse) and reviewed 3/18 and 3/23/09

Breakfast with Scot (***)

You could program an interesting film festival centered around stories of people getting saddled with other people’s unwanted children and learning to love them. They come as arty as Central Station and as mainstream as kid comedy The Game Plan. This movie comes in arty trappings—it’s about two gay guys, and it’s Canadian—but is actually pretty mainstream, and broadly comedic. The star is Tom Cavanaugh, onetime star of TV’s Ed, here playing a onetime Toronto Maple Leafs star who plays down his sexuality. He’s what the personal ads call “straight acting.”

The eleven-year-old orphan he ends up with (a creditable Noah Bernett), on the other hand, is more the get-beat-up-on the schoolyard sort of gay. He likes make-up and clothes, not so much hockey. He’s so gay that you wonder exactly why he hasn’t already learned to tone it down just for self-preservation. Even in liberal Toronto, trying to kiss your male classmate doesn’t fly. The sexuality of Cavanaugh’s character, on the other hand, is so toned down that you can hardly believe he actually, you know, sleeps with men. (Costar Ben Shenkman doesn’t have much to do, since there’s no focus on their relationship.) Still, his niche in the gay world—out, but as quietly as possible—is common enough. He is actually a perfect stand-in for straight people watching the movie, and much of the humor comes from this. The reaction to his new ward is exactly what I’d expect from most straight parents—embarrassment followed by attempts at reform (of the boy, not the parent).

The drama is about when the boy’s ne’er-do-well guardian will come to get him, and what will happen then, and everything there’s what you’d expect. If the subject matter (handled extremely chastely) and overly earnest ending aren’t deterrents, this actually makes a decent family film.

IMDB link

viewed 7/18/08 at at Prince Music Theater (Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival) and reviewed 7/19/08

The Love Guru (*3/4)

This represents the inauspicious return of Mike Myers, who, except for his voice roles in the last two Shrek movies, hasn’t appeared on screen since 2003. It would be nice to report that his semi-parody is a return to form for the star of the Wayne’s World and Austin Powers movies, but it isn’t so.

Myers’s character, the Guru Pitka, comes out of his association with Deepak Chopra, the Indian-born self-help author whom Myers credits for his own spiritual renewal. Thanks to Chopra, Pitka is only the second-biggest Indian self-help guru. (He grew up in an ashram after a being orphaned there.) Myers penned the intro to Chopra’s latest book, and Chopra shows up in the film, so I wouldn’t have expected a piercing satire of the self-help movement. Still, even a gentle parody can be funny, but to use one of the mnemonic devices the guru favors, this is all DRAMA, no comedy. DRAMA of course, stands for “Distraction, Regression, Adjustment, Maturity and Action,” which, if seen as a metaphor for Myers’s career, finds the writer-actor still working on the third stage.

The early scenes establishes Pitka as guru to the stars and has a couple of bits that aren’t awful. In one of several pseudo-Hindi coinages, the guru’s standard greeting to his followers is “Marisha Hargitay,” which may be amusing if you’re familiar with the Law and Order: SVU actress of that name, but definitely won’t be after you hear it a dozen times in the movie. Repetition also drains the humor from the other (very) few decent gags in the movie, which very lightly spoofs celebrity culture. But Hollywood is not the main setting, Toronto is. Pitka has been called into service to by the Maple Leafs hockey team, whose Stanley Cup chances are threatened by the poor play of its slumping, emotionally addled star.

As much as I appreciated Myers’s nod to his Canadian roots, it is at this point, barely 15 minutes into the movie, that it truly misfires. Hereon, the plot is silly and the gags juvenile or puerile, smutty single-entrendres that make Austin Powers—well, at least the first two films—look sophisticated. Along for the ride is Jessica Alba as the team owner, who is not a great actress but can hardly be blamed for the unbelievability of her character’s supposed romance with the guru. The team captain is played by Verne Troyer, Mini-Me from Austin Powers, apparently just so Pitka can throw a gaggle of short jokes in his direction. There is also the “gag” that has now become a signpost for uninspired comedy, the one where a randomly propelled object like, say, a hockey puck hits a character on the head. Myers also has a tendency to mug for the camera, and so he/Pitka laughs more at his own jokes than the audience did.

Via the laugh-challenged trifecta of Austin Powers in Goldmember, View from the Top, and The Cat in the Hat, Myers had arguably eclipsed Chevy Chase’s ex-Saturday Night Live star speed record for going from hip to hopeless, and this only confirms it. In the spirit of the movie itself, I must coin my own memory aid:

Movies
You’ll
End up
Regretting
Seeing™

Sorry, Mike.

IMDB link

viewed 6/21/08