About Last NIght (**3/4)

So…David Mamet writes this play back in the 1970s — Sexual Perversity in Chicago — that puts him right on America’s culture radar as a master of dialogue, up-and-coming playwright, etc. It’s about two couples, sexual politics, and the rise and fall of one relationship in nine weeks. In 1986, it becomes the movie About Last Night…. Mamet hates it, but it does well and help establish Demi Moore and Rob Lowe as Brat Pack elite. It keeps some of Mamet’s dialogue but adds a dusting of rom-com, multiplex potpourri and sets the drama over the course of a year.

Cut to 28 years later, and the ellipsis is gone from the title, and it’s set in the age of cell phones, in, unfortunately, Los Angeles, which removes the climatic visual element from the seasonally timed segments. But it mostly follows the earlier film’s template; not only Mamet gets a credit, but so do Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue, authors of the earlier screenplay. The primary couple, still called Dan and Debbie, are played by Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant. (In one scene, they fondly watch the Moore-Lowe version on video.) Kevin Hart and Regina Hall play the best friends/comic foils/cruder pair (Jim Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins in the 1986 movie).

Further removed from the Mamet pedigree, the movie comes across as perfectly ordinary and pleasant. While the play’s men vs. women 1970s sexual politics are probably dated, this only slightly updates the politics while keeping out any edge to the characters and moving further away from Mamet’s dialogue. (Perhaps this isn’t all bad. Having just watched the 1986 movie’s opening dialogue, which does come from Mamet, I thought it sounded exaggerated and artificial; the replacement scene is a slightly more natural, if more generic, mildly comic story of an extra-special blow job.)

Bryant is a joy to watch, pun intended, but her character is so nice that the inevitable tension that crops up in the relationship seems manufactured. Seriously, her vice is insisting that everyone uses coasters so as not to leave a mark on the table. In this iteration, the plot about the man wanting to hang out with the boys and not be tied down or told where to put his glass is both an annoying cliché and not convincing. The fraught-with-sexual tension relationship between the bickering secondary characters provides most of the humor, although it too is entirely predictable.


IMDb link

viewed 2/5/14 8:00 pm at University City Penn 6; posted 2/6/14

Sleepwalk with Me (***)

The comedian Mike Birbiglia is perhaps best known to the several million listeners of public radio’s This American Life (including me), which helped popularize the autobiographical monologues that he had done on stage. The show’s host, Ira Glass, is a producer and cowriter of this film. The particular problem Birbiglia has, in which he sometimes acts out his dreams while still sleeping, has already been a basis for a stage show, a comedy album, and a book. It is one of the three plot pillars of Birbiglia’s film, in which the character he plays is called Matt Pandamiglio. The other two pillars are Matt/Mike’s efforts to transition from a dead-end bartending job to success as a New York-based standup, and his erstwhile eight-years-and-counting relationship with his girlfriend (Lauren Ambrose).

Of the three, the sleep disorder part may be most interesting to those who haven’t already heard about it on the radio or the stage. For those who have, getting to see the La Quinta Inn where a certain episode occurred may be a bonus, but the visuals render it unfortunate, not funny, as it is in story form. Other dreams, shown from Matt’s view as if real, are funny, though. The comic-on-the-road segments are welcome, that being relatively unexplored turf in cinema. I do suspect, however, that where Matt’s breakthrough seems to follow easily once he starts doing more personal material, Mike’s probably involved more stops and starts and hard work than is seen here.

The relationship plotline, with Matt as the commitment-phobic guy (if I can oversimplify), is the most familiar one, and the one that takes up the biggest chunk of the film’s 90 minutes. It’s not a bad portrait of a relationship that’s become merely comfortable. Matt says everyone thinks “the best thing about my life is my girlfriend,” which is a nice line. He feels pressure because his sister is getting married after a much-less-than-eight-year courtship, but still won’t move forward. Carol Kane and James Rebhorn have a few scenes as the parents; Rebhorn is funny as the well-meaning yet mildly irritating father.

Gluing these three themes are connecting segments with Mike/Matt narrating as he drives along, telling the audience to turn off cell phones and, in one case, apologizing for the stupid thing his younger self has just done on screen. “I know,” he says. “I’m in the future, too. ” This way of putting it is as least as good an example of his bewildered-by-his-own-life sensibility as we get in the movie. It’s a line from his stand-up act. If you’re not big on radio programs and podcasts, this warm comedic drama is still worth your while, and goes down as easy as Birbiglia’s puppy-dog voice and mien. But look online for the This American Life episodes that feature Birbiglia for what is still the best introduction to his brand of idiosyncratic, yet easily relatable humor. Look especially for the one about his adolescent desire to make out with a girl, a subject absent from this movie but that might well be the basis for another one.
IMDb link

viewed 9/12/12 at Ritz Bourse [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/12–14/12

He’s Just Not That Into You (**1/2)

It’s a curious thing when plotless dating-advice books get turned into feature films. Woody Allen went for outright silliness in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask, but it would seem that romantic comedy is the more usual approach. Sex and the Single Girl (1964) was an early example, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) a more recent one. This ensemble-cast movie is adapted from the similarly titled bestseller by Sex and the City staffers Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, but might well be called No Sex for the Single Girl.

It takes place in Baltimore, in an alternate universe in which pixie-cute Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) can’t even get a guy to call her. Her coworker (Jennifer Aniston) can’t get her boyfriend (Ben Affleck) to marry her. And her other coworker (Jennifer Connelly) can’t get her husband to fuck her (or admit he’s sneaking smokes). Drew Barrymore’s Mary somehow fits into the movie, and she can’t seem to find a date either. As Jay Leno joked, if these women can’t find a man, what hope is there for anyone else? (“Anyone else”—the plain, the old, the chubby, even the nonwhite—gets relegated to brief, modestly funny interview segments that occassionally punctuate the main yuppie storyline.)

Gigi’s plot is the one that most direct ties into the book, whose pithy Q&A format has the authors answering fake letters under such headings as “The ‘Maybe He Doesn’t Want to Ruin the Friendship’ Excuse.” Gigi uses that one and others to explain why her soul mate (who seems to be any guy she talks to in a bar) won’t come calling. I suppose this is the sort of film that is meant to attract women, yet if they take the movie at all seriously—not a wise course, perhaps—how can it not leave them feeling depressed? The single ones pine for unavailable men, and the married one blithely remodels while her husband’s eyes wander to a flirtatious blonde (Scarlett Johanssen). Johanssen, perhaps because she’s the only cast member under 30, plays the only one of these women not made to seem desperate. On the other hand, she’s also the one who thinks her dream guy is already married. Maybe.

Well, it is hard to adapt these sorts of self-help books without pandering to reductive stereotypes about both sexes. But the book at least reminds women that men don’t hold all of the cards in the world of romance. Its message seems to be, you can do better. The movie’s is more like, all you can do is hope. In crafting their loosely constructed story, screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (Never Been Kissed) might have at least provided a contrasting female character. Someone like Samantha in Sex and the City, not necessarily a sexual predator, but someone self-confident and wise enough not to need a self-help book.

Of course, the men fare only slightly better; they’re mostly seen as players who can only be made to commit via ultimatum. The exception is metrosexual real-estate agent Conor, whose character is probably better developed than any of the female ones. Deftly played by Kevin Connolly, he also has some of the funnier bits as he works to both appeal to his gay clientele and win back his ex.

And there are other funny moments (despite the complaints above), like when one of the women intentionally breaks a vase in a rage, then immediately brings out the broom and dustpan. Only occasionally does it get too cute. The trio of obviously gay men who serve as substitute girlfriends with tart, slangy advice (“MySpace is the new booty call!”) for Mary are recent, but still tired, clichés. But at least there’s not a clothes-changing montage.

I’m still not sure what the point of making an advice book into a romantic comedy is. At least two of the endings of this one seem to directly contradict the book’s thesis. But it’s a catchy title, and that’s important.

IMDB link

viewed 1/29/09 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 1/30/09 and 2/6/09

Elegy (***)

There’s perhaps something unsavory about the May-December romance. While it may occasionally happen otherwise, the typical situation is that the older partner, a man, is in a position whereby he can use his higher status to attract the younger one, a woman with whom he would not likely befriend were it not for sexual attraction. The professor played here by Ben Kinsley is certainly conscious of this implicit trade as he tries to pick up attractive student Consuela (Penélope Cruz) at a post-semester party. (He’s conscious of ethics, too, having waited until then.) It’s when the conquest becomes a relationship that things become less clear. Implicitly, the power has shifted to her, even though she doesn’t use it, as he becomes increasingly worried she will no longer want a boyfriend thirty years her senior. The first half plays out the romance as it develops, along with a jealousy and insecurity the professor struggles with. Adapted from a Philip Roth novel, the story thus far is as one expects. (The screenplay is by Nicholas Meyer, who adapted another Roth novel for The Human Stain.)

Director Isabel Coixet and Penélope Cruz bring out a great deal of Consuela’s personality, but the story is from the professor’s viewpoint. (I was especially impressed with Cruz after watching her the next night playing a very different character in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) Still, things pick up as the stories of the other characters—the best friend (Dennis Hopper), the cheated-on girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson), the estranged son (Peter Sarsgaard), and Consuela herself—impinge upon the professor. I slightly preferred Steve Martin’s wry, less sentimentalized take on the same kind of relationship in Shopgirl.

IMDB link

viewed 8/18/08 at Ritz Bourse (screening); reviewed 8/22/08