Monthly Archives: February 2015

The Boy Next Door

This is not a good movie. If you want to see a good movie, go to any other movie and there’s a chance it might be good. There’s not a hope in heaven of this one being decent but if you’ve simply come to worship at the altar of Jennifer Lopez, buy your ticket and prepare to feast your eyes.

Ms. Lopez plays a high school teacher with a teenage son and a cheating ex-husband. So right off the bat, you don’t buy it. There’s no school board in the world who’d think it a good idea to let her smoulder in spike heels and a clingy pencil skirt in front of hormonal teenage boys on a daily basis. She inspires lust with every bat of her long lashes and apparently routinely wears sexy lingerie under her clothes, yet her husband’s going to wander? Okay, yeah, it happens. Men cheat for all kinds of stupid reasons. It’s just a weird casting decision to go with an iconic sex goddess as the scorned, middle-aged wife. And it’s nearly as baffling to cast John Corbett as the philandering husband since he’s basically America’s puppy dog. He exudes charm and loyalty and together-foreverness.

So, their marriage is on the rocks. They’re living separately but not quite at the letting-go stage, which is a fine time for a hunky, strapping young man to move in next door (Ryan Guzman). The camera pays close-up attention to his slick muscles to the exclusion of unimportant details like his face. This guy is just a body for hire. A body, meet The Body.

But guess what! Affairs be complicated, especially the May-December ones. Except it’s Jennifer Lopez, and this guy is the same age as most of the guys she dates in real life. But let’s face it, if you were a high schooler who got to bag J-Lo, wouldn’t you do everything you could to keep it going? At least long enough to invite her to prom, right?

Supposedly this film turns into a “thriller” but there aren’t a lot of thrills. But did the screenwriter maybe pick up a big box of clichés for a dime a piece at a garage sale? Yes, those are abundant. In fact, I think she may have just cut up a lot of second-tier scripts, and pasted them back together haphazardly to make something the writers’ room at Days of Our Lives wouldn’t see fit to air. Every time someone opens their mouth, gouda falls out. Oh who am I kidding? It’s more like spray cheez and Guzman just about drenches us with it during his so-called seduction scene. The dialogue is so cheesy I wished I could have just turned the volume off. Because let’s face it. Jenny from the block is down to her black lace panties and we didn’t come here for the talking. Unfortunately, Lopez is trying to turn us on by mewling. I’m certain that in real life she has sex like the bombshell she is, but her “acting” sounds more like a little girl sneezing than a grown woman coming.

The best part about this movie is that I saw it during a weekday matinée in South Keys, just about the only cinema in Ottawa showing daytime movies anymore. Such a shame, because you’ve never seen such a diverse group of characters than those pointed at the screen. A woman seated a few rows behind me tsk’ed the whole way through. You know that clucking sound old women make when they’re disapproving? It’s usually a series of tsks – this particular woman did 5 in a row, and did them at everything. She seemed to be more disapproving of reckless driving than murder so I don’t know what her deal was or why she felt the need to CONSTANTLY share it with the theatre (probably 3-4 dozen times during a 90 minute movie) but boy do I love non-verbal editorializing from strangers. Love! Almost as much as I loved hearing from the woman sitting two seats away from me, who came in late and respected the buffer my coat draped across an empty seat implied but just talked louder to compensate. During a scene involving a very large epi pen I cringed and looked away. She practically fell out of her seat to comfort me. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, arms flapping, no thought to anyone trying to actually watch the movie. “I’ve seen it before” she says “and it turns out okay.” Colour me relieved. Wait- what? You know how bad this movie is and you paid to see it again? Exactly how many times has she seen this? Enough that she now has a rapport with Lopez – she yells to her “It’s your own fault!” and when this fails to elicit a response she turns to me and yells “It’s her own fault!” and when this also fails to elicit a response (other than my shrinking down further in my seat) she turns back to the screen and tries again “It’s your own fault!” Oh that Jennifer Lopez. She never learns.

Tammy

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Melissa McCarthy plays Tammy, an unhappy woman in the middle of the worst day ever when we meet her. On her way to her crappy fast food job, she hits a deer and nearly totals her car. Late to work and bloodied from her accident, her manager fires her on the spot aaaaaand she doesn’t take it well. She makes less than a gracious exit; “burning bridges” comes to mind. She heads home only to find her husband engaged in some very bad behaviour. So naturally she decides to run away with grandmother (Susan Sarandon).

This movie is fun, and sometimes funny, but it’s never as funny as you’d hope. After all this is Melissa McCarthy. Her star shines pretty bright. She and her husband Ben Falcone wrote the script; she stars, he directs. But if they were given carte blanche, they wasted it. For two crazy funny people, they’ve hatched a pretty mediocre comedy here. McCarthy does her loudmouth thing. Sarandon is just not believable as an old granny despite the wig and bifocals meant to blunt her sensuality. It’s still Susan Sarandon, who is effing hot. The two make for an odd pair, and sometimes the relationship hits the right notes but other times it just feels sour. Kathy Bates almost steals the show as the kind of cousin who’s good to have around in a pinch.

I saw this movie and laughed. Lots of people must have – the critics didn’t care for it, but audiences turned it into a 100 million dollar hit. But I’m still not happy about it. First, because I think McCarthy is very smart and this kind of comedy demeans her. Second, because we keep seeing her do this “schtick” over and over: obnoxious fat girl with a dirty mouth. And the thing is, this is not the Melissa McCarthy I know and love. Lots of people came to know and appreciate her with the movie Bridesmaids, where she played another belching, awkward bull. But I know McCarthy from her Gilmore Girls days where she played an adorable chef and businesswoman named Sookie. She was sweet and charming and weird and FUNNY. Funny without it being crass, or referencing her weight, which, to the best of my knowledge, was a non-issue on the show. She was just a funny woman who looked like a lot of women do.

And now Hollywood has turned her into the female Chris Farley. She isn’t just a comic who happens to be fat, she’s a fat comedian. Her characters are fat, the kind of fat that is “gross” and should be laughed at. Do it once and it might be inspired, but make a career out of it and it starts to feel like exploitation. America loves to laugh at fat people. And fat women? Laughing at them is all they’re good for. And it looks like McCarthy is afraid of just that – that if she tried to just be Sandra Bullock’s sweet best friend, audiences wouldn’t buy it. How many times have you seen a fat woman in a movie who is not meant as the comic relief?

Often referred to as “America’s plus-size sweetheart,” Melissa McCarthy responds “It’s like I’m managing to achieve all this success in spite of my affliction.” And the thing is, I feel confident that she’s worth so much salt than she’s showing. We saw a tiny glimpse of her playing straight in St Vincent but that’s exactly the problem: unless they’re prepared to be raunchy cannon balls, a fat woman must be relegated to fat best friend, the one who never has a boyfriend of her own. A sad sack, unless she’s black, and then she’s sassy. But still alone and negligible.

Dear Melissa McCarthy: you are beautiful and talented and mega successful. You are so much better than this. Please stop playing a caricature! Your audience patiently awaits you,

Jay

(add your name in the comments if you agree!)

Beyond The Lights

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I confess I hadn’t heard of this movie, nor would I have likely given it a chance had it not been nominated for an Oscar this year. It’s been nominated for Best Original Song for “Grateful” (music and lyrics by the estimable Diane Warren, who has 7 other deserved nominations under her belt).

It’s not always a delight sitting through a whole movie just to hear a song, and for judging purposes, it’s not usually even necessary since tonnes of the songs only appear over the credits and thus don’t have the benefit of a lot of context. But for once, I’m not even feeling resentful.

The movie opens as Minnie Driver brings her little daughter Noni into a hair salon, hoping the woman can help her do her (black) daughter’s hair before a big talent show. The little girl sings beautifully but mother is furious when she only takes second place. Cut to: present day. Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is on the verge of pop star success with a purple weave and a crotch-grabbing music video. But everything she’s always wanted is not quite what it’s cracked up to be. Why else does she feel like throwing herself off her glamorous hotel balcony? Along comes knight in shining armour (also known as celebrity bodyguard) Kaz (Nate Parker) with a dose of reality and some ambitions of his own.

Is this supposed to be The Bodyguard of 2015? Or just a guard with a damn fine body? It’s not exactly an original story. I bet you can guess right now how it goes! But that didn’t make it unwatchable. I mean, Nate Parker taking his shift off makes it watchable. Gina Prince-Bythewood, the writer-director (Love and Basketball), has all the elements of a classic backstage story, but is just shy of having it feel genuine. Minnie Driver, who easily could have turned out to be a one-dimensional “momager” villain, is credibly handled into a multi-dimensional one. Mbatha-Raw is a shining star, and this movie is just a twinkle in her rising star; I’ve heard she’s just divine in Belle, which I haven’t seen yet but has been is securely at the top of my list.

This is not exactly a great movie, and it does rely on at least one corny montage on the beach that the world could have have done without. But there’s also a gentle exploration of race and gender, so it’s cheesy, but it’s a nice cheese rather than generic.

Love Is Strange

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Ben & George have been together forever but are newly married. Their wedding is small and joyous, and also the catalyst for George’s dismissal from the catholic school where he teaches music. They can’t afford their home on Ben’s pension alone, and the two suddenly find themselves homeless. Friends and family scramble to take them in but this being New York City, where no apartment is bigger than a breadbox, Ben and George are separated. This is a love story that shows us how patient and enduring love must be. With no prospects in sight, people who were happy to toast them at their wedding are less happy to share their homes. There’s chafing on both ends (Ben clashes with his nephew’s wife, played by Marisa Tomei, when they’re both trying to work from a cramped home every day). They feel displaced and disoriented; their hosts feel increasingly put-upon. It’s sad and sweet and melodic – the soundtrack is divinely full of Chopin.

Director Ira Sachs is slow and meandering. It’s painful to watch the tenderness and the intimacy decline into homelessness and despondency. Just when they’ve vowed to share their lives with each other, they can no long afford to share so much as a bed. This is a pretty bittersweet movie, more universal than you may think. The husbands grapple with their emotional health, and aging, and navigating the strange and complicated NY housing market, which is what finally made me realize how mis-titled this movie is. Their love is a lot of things, but it is never strange.

Two Days, One Night

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The brilliant Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a woman who’s returning to work from sick leave only to find herself fired, apparently because her co-workers voted to receive their much-needed yearly bonuses and sacrifice her employment in return. She’s got one measly weekend before they vote again, so she makes the rounds and many humbling appeals.

This is a really interesting movie because while it presents a genuine hurdle, beautifully simple but so timely, it’s also a great hypothetical. Would you give up $1300 in your pocket to save someone else’s job? If she was a friend? If she was a stranger? If she’d do the same for you?

Solidarity: what the fuck does it mean to you? Are you a team player, or are you out for number one? Would you be more comfortable betraying her by secret ballot? Could you look her in the eye and tell the truth? Can you put your desire for a new patio above her need to feed her children?

We know that Sandra’s been away on medical leave. It’s hinted that it may have been mental-health related. And of course the work of convincing people, some she’d consider friends, to not ruin her life just to pad their own, is humiliating. She doesn’t want to beg. She’s riddled with doubt. But the fight also seems to strengthen her somehow; she seems invigorated.

The Dardenne brothers are known for sensitive, brooding work, but this is their first venture with an A-lister. Cotillard, for her part, doesn’t look like a star in this movie. She looks like a harried, anxious woman. Jean-Pierre said of her “Hiring such a famous actress was an additional challenge for us. Marion was able to find a new body and a new face for this film.” Although I’ve always found her to be stupidly talented, watching this movie back to back with Midnight in Paris, where she plays a woman infamously beautiful, it’s clear that part of her talent is in adhering chameleon-like to her characters.

I really liked this movie and am heart-broken to have watched it alone (I’m Oscar-cramming before vacation) because I need to discuss it. Have you seen it? How did you measure up?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

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Maybe my expectations were too high. Which is a bit weird to say because Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a comic book movie, so basically I should have known what I was going to get. And as a comic book movie, it does its job. It gives us lots of really fast and strong heroes who jump out of planes and off buildings, endless bad guys with unlimited bullets who shoot at those heroes for half the movie, and a head bad guy with a mask and metal arm who may not even be the mastermind behind all this mayhem. What it does not give us, and why I was ultimately let down, is any real change to the formula that we have seen from Marvel in its ten (ten!) movies and counting. It’s all the same and it’s getting a little tired.

The problem is, I’m a comic book guy and an action movie guy. I should have enjoyed this movie a lot more than I did. I’m still excited to see Avengers 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy 2. But now I’m a lot less excited. I wonder, am I just going to get a rehash of what I’ve seen before like I did in Captain America 2, a story that really begins at the same place it started without advancing the greater plot I thought was underlying these movies in the Marvel Universe? Before watching this movie I had felt that maybe I should go back and watch the Captain America movies as well as the two Thor movies, but now I feel confident I don’t need to and certainly don’t have any desire to since this movie was so forgettable and so self-contained.

shield punch

Is this just a middling installment in the Marvel movie juggernaut? Or is it a sign that we’ve used up all the good ideas for now and it’s time to wait for the inevitable reboots of all these characters, since their origins are the only stories from which Hollywood can consistently make decent movies? I guess we’ll have a better idea in just a few months because Avengers: Age of Ultron opens May 1 and Ant-Man follows shortly after. My gut says making a movie about Ant-Man is overkill at this point, and then I look and see that there are 16 more Marvel-related movies (including Fox and Sony ones) scheduled to come out between now and 2019. That’s way too many. One a year might be too many. The worst part is, I know there are better movies to be made that have been passed over in favour of these big-budget, low-risk, no-art movies. I would like to have seen those and 18 more Marvel movies, plus whatever DC is doing, is a poor trade and a loss for all of us.

Big picture aside, I’m still not satisfied with what I was given here. This movie is a tolerable distraction but leaves you with nothing memorable. It gets five indestructible shields out of ten.

Virunga

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I cried.

Virunga is a national conservation park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which houses the world’s last mountain gorillas. The rangers who work there risk their lives to protect the park and its primates from poachers, war, and Big Oil.

Director Orlando von Einsiedel first travelled to the Congo in order to document the park’s positive impact on development and tourism, but within 3 weeks of arriving, M23 rebels were pushing into the area.

Within the park is a “gorilla orphanage”, two words I’d never put together before in my life, and which struck a really emotional core in me. One of the orphaned gorillas has only one hand; his stump is a reminder of the conflict in the region of which he has been victim. Am I so inured by images of war-wounded children that it now takes a maimed gorilla to give me pause?

One of the rangers talks about “une grand tristesse” – a great tragedy – of finding a pack of gorillas slaughtered in the jungle. It was thought that if there were no more gorillas, there’d be no more need for the park. But with so many threats to the park, who was the culprit? Soco International, a British oil company, certainly seems like a guilty party. But the rangers and villagers put aside the investigation to mourn the majestic creatures. If you’ve ever wondered how many pallbearers it takes to carry the corpse of a slain gorilla, this film has the answer.

Meanwhile, it’s not just gorillas who are dying. 130 rangers have given their lives in the service of this park. To many, Virunga is a symbol of hope, a way to heal their “pays cassé”, their broken country, a positive contribution to a country’s questionable legacy. The four gorillas who live in the orphanage are given love, and a surrogate family. But when the rebel army moves closer and bombing can be heard, a gorilla curled up in the fetal position is such a pathetic sight, one that stands in for so many other images of tragedy, that you can’t help but be moved.

The film plays out urgently – the rebellion taking human lives as the Congolese army flees; Soco bribing rangers to exploit a protected World Heritage Site, stealing yet more resources from an area that has nothing to spare. There is drama and tenderness in equal measure. I guess what got to me is that it shows quite starkly the best and worst of human nature, and it leaves it in our hands as to which side will ultimately win.

You can stream this Oscar-nominated documentary on Netflix. If you’d like to learn more about what you can do to help the park, please visit www.virungamovie.com.

Obvious Child

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I hated the first 3 minutes of this film, and then loved the next 81.

Donna (Jenny Slate) is a confessional comic; she spills the dirty details of her life to a small audience in the back room of a dingy place. Not everyone in her life can handle being the subject of her standup, and the truth is, I could barely tolerate it myself. It was the usual stuff: I have a vagina, I’m Jewish, etc etc. But. But when she leaves the stage, she’s enormously funny. You get the sense that her stand-up will in fact take off one day, maybe even one day soon.

But not today. Because today she’s been “dumped up with” and she’s drinking and she’s oversharing, which is the only kind of sharing she knows how to do. With a microphone and a whine. And like, 17 shots. Cut to: drunken one-night stand, which leads to pregnancy, which leads to an abortion.

But a funny abortion! Okay, it’s not so funny. It’s actually dealt with pretty realistically, but with the kind of wit and truth that bathes the subject in a new light. Refreshingly unapologetic. And oddly becomes something of a romantic comedy, because who doesn’t take a date to the abortion clinic on Valentine’s Day? And P.S. – if you do, do you bring flowers?

I really like Slate on the Kroll Show, and director Gillian Robespierre knew she had the chops to handle a title role. Donna is a sometimes exasperating character but Slate pulls it off and is magnetic in every scene, whether petulant, snarky, or earnest.

I jotted down so many brilliant lines, all worth quoting, but I’m refraining for your sake, so that you may enjoy them from the right voice. But there are also fart jokes, which have no business even existing. So this is not a perfect film, but I was really won over by it. I’ll take the lows with the highs. I was charmed by Obvious Child, even if there was very little obvious about it. And I expect big and bigger things from both Robespierre and Slate in the future.

Brick

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Back in December, I reviewed Mysterious Skin, Looper, and Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and made no secret of my Joseph Gordon-Levitt bias. It all started with Brick. I exited the theater when I first saw it back in 2006 certain that this was an actor to watch out for and refusing to listen to my friend’s allegations that this was in fact the same kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Watching it again nearly a decade later, Brick feels a bit like a feature length high school video project- complete with an extremely low budget and a high school serving as the unlikely setting for a Maltese Falcon-style detective story. JGL plays a loner named Brendan who must navigate the seedy underworld of his school to solve his ex-girlfriend’s murder. The dialogue, music, and twists seem to come from a bizarre 40s noir. Instead of a meddling cop, we get a nagging vice-principal.

Just like in the Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet, first time writer-director Rian Johnson (who JGL later worked with again on Looper) relies on the anachronisms in the discourse to make an old story feel new. This gives him an excuse to tell a pretty straightforward detective story without it feeling like just another detective story. I’ll admit his style takes some getting used to and I was completely thrown off at first back in 2006. But once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to get caught up in Johnson’s surreal picture of a modern high school. Sure, they don’t talk like real teenagers but they never do in the movies anyway. At least Brick is fun to listen to.

Brick runs just a little bit longer than the novelty of Johnson’s gimmick and there are a couple of times too many where he uses self-parody as a bit of a crutch. The film really works best when it’s reminding us that the darkest of secrets can be hidden within the walls of our publc schools. You’ll either love the film’s style or you’ll hate it but JGL sold it for me. He always strikes just the right note and, like the movie itself, has one foot in the past and the other in the present. He has the look of a modern troubled teenager with the soul of Sam Spade. Nearly a decade later, I am still always looking forward to his next project.

Railway Man

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Meet Colin Firth. Actually, for the next 108 minutes, you can call him Eric Lomax. He likes trains. He uses his vast train knowledge to woo women. On trains. He’s a man after Matt’s own heart. Matt likes trains. But wait! Just when you think you know where this movie is going, it turns from a movie about a guy who loves trains “a train enthusiast” he calls himself, into Unbroken, with slightly more trains.

Like Unbroken, Railway Man is based on a true story. Unlike it, this guy turns out to be pretty broken (although if we’re being honest, so did the guy in Unbroken…yes, they’re very brave during the war, but they go home really sick and deal with their crap for the rest of their lives). During the rest of Lomax’s life, he failed to really deal with the flashbacks and the PTSD symptoms so when he meets Nicole Kidman (call her Patti) and marries her in quick succession, she’s pretty surprised by his violent dreams and his sobs and his emotional distance. He won’t talk about what’s happened to him, but whatever it is, it’s killing him. Patti goes to his friend and fellow vet to hear the story – how they were captured and lived in a Japanese camp as slaves, building their railway under horrid conditions. Lomax was singled out for all kinds of abuse, and it turns out that all these years later, his captor and abuser is still alive.

The abuse we witness through flashbacks is disturbing and disgusting, but it’s also presented to us in a rather understated fashion. Because the movie is halved by into two time periods, “during the war” and “after”, we don’t get much (or enough) of either. It turns out be so similar to Unbroken (which I saw first, though this one preceded it in theatres) that it’s basically just the British version – with trains (sorry, couldn’t resist).