Monthly Archives: March 2015

The DUFF

Ladies and gentlemen, this is my official entry into grumpy old crony-dom. I watched a teen comedy and hated every moment of it.

I’m 26 in real life!

It hits every hallmark that a teen comedy should have: the neglectful parent, the social hierarchy, the cute boy next door, the mean girl, the dance. She even pretty-in-pinks her own homecoming dress for crying out loud (although substitute flannel for pink). But none of it works. None of it even comes close.

Mae Whitman, playing Bianca, the titular DUFF (designated ugly fat friend) is neither ugly nor fat. She’s actually eminently cute, and even the dowdification she undergoes in the film doesn’t make her unattractive (although those overalls have got to go). You may know her from Arrested Development or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, where she is all kinds of good and several varieties of charming. But in this movie she seems miscast. When Bianca goes through the obligatory musical montage of different outfits, it’s painful. It doesn’t just miss the mark, it misses the point. We don’t fall for it, or her, and neither could anyone else. It’s awkward and obnoxious. The ugly duckling is supposed to be turning into a swan but instead she’s turned into a goose that honks by itself over in the corner.

The film varies wildly from its source material. The book shares a title and some character names, but that’s about it. It’s a little racier and a lot less will-they-or-won’t-they. The movie took its chance to be edgier and more subversive than others in its genre and basically shat all over it. There’s nothing subversive about the happy ending depending on getting the guy.

Anyway, the concept of the DUFF is revolting. The DUFF is adopted by a circle of hot girls to try to make themselves look better by comparison. The DUFF is the approachable one, the one

A caption to prey upon every adolescent’s insecurities

guys can safely chat up to gain the respect of the hot friends, and also intel on them. The movie defines these parameters strictly but then defies them continually. Bianca’s friends never give her any indication that this is true of their friendship – in fact, their little trio seems quite solid until Bianca herself tears it apart. Would I like this movie any better if it was more accurately titled The Curmudgeonly Third Wheel in Unfortunate Outfits? No. First, that’s a horrible acronym, but more importantly, this movie treats the clichés of a teen comedy as something to be ticked off a list. This is no John Hughes send up, it’s just embarrassingly derivative. This movie has no soul. Let’s flush it and forget it.

Imitation of Life

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Two single mothers combine their households to help support each other through difficult times – one, an aspiring actress with a cute blonde daughter, the other a homeless black woman willing to work for her keep, and that of her-light-skinned daughter.

There are two important mother-daughter relationships at play here, but the way those relationships intersect is also pretty astonishing for a movie made in 1959. As Lana Turner as Lora Meredith begins her ascent to fame, Annie (Juanita Moore) becomes relegated to loyal employee. It’s obvious to all the two are friends, and that Miss Meredith depends fiercely on Annie, but this can never be a relationship between equals. The two little girls, raised under the same roof as playmates and friends, are on more even footing, but though young Sarah Jane can pass as white, she isn’t. Point blank. And in 1959, that’s quite an obstacle.

Annie is a maternal presence to both young girls, running the household and being available for physical affection whereas Miss Meredith is more keen on being the provider. She’s not exactly cold, but she is focused on her career and willing to send her daughter away to school for her own convenience. Together these two women manage to fill out each other’s strengths and weaknesses but there’s one sticking point that neither can hope to change. Sarah Jane prefers to deny her mother, her roots, and her own race. Since she can pass as white, she plans to, and does everything she can to reject her mother and keep her secret safe.

Meanwhile, the biggest problem that Lora and daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) eventually face is having fallen in love with the same man. It feels like director Douglas Sirk is actually daring to draw attention away from Lana Turner by giving more screen time, and juicier plot lines, to the film’s two black characters (Susan Kohner, as Sarah-Jane, is actually of Mexican-Jewish descent). The audience never experiences Sarah-Jane’s identity crisis from her own point of view but rather we’re forced to interpret it through a 1950s lens. We do feel it personally, though, through a mother’s heart ache. This earned both Moore and Kohner Academy Award nominations for best actress that year, though of course neither won.

This movie requires some analysis, and there’s a level of hypocrisy that must be navigated. Actually, I think Sirk was a bit of a cynic because there’s a hopelessness to this movie that really got to me. He presents us with racial tensions and materialistic values that both pale in comparison to the underlying vibe that families are being torn apart, their bonds degenerating even in the time it takes to make a film. Lana Turner’s real-life 14 year old daughter Cheryl had just fatally stabbed Turner’s boyfriend (she was let off, justifiable homicide they called it, since the boyfriend was beating her mom up at the time). Nevertheless, this caused a serious rift between mother and daughter, and threatened Turner’s career until Sirk convinced her to channel her pain into a movie about the struggle between mothers and daughters. And here we are.

Polytechnique

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I cringed my way through this movie – impossible not to if you know what’s coming, and what Canadian doesn’t?

This movie revisits one of the saddest days in our country’s recent history. On December 6, 1989, a man armed himself with a riffle and showed up to Ecole Polytechnique to hunt women – feminists, he called them. He shot 28 people and killed 14 women, targeting them specifically and even excusing the men from classrooms.

In order to preserve the dignity of the victims of this tragedy, director Denis Villeneuve makes them into fictitious composites, but their truths still ring out. They are students. Their only crime is pursuing education in a field (engineering, mostly) that their shooter deemed “for men.”

Villeneuve shoots his movie in black and white. I discussed this choice before: Villeneuve seemed to want to minimize the impact of the blood, allowing the audience to think about the killing spree in perhaps a slightly more transcendental way. The film rises above the tragedy and is quite cool in its presentation, some might even call it dispassionate.

But is it right to be dispassionate about so sore a subject? Rewatching it, I’m feeling the director’s passivity in the first half, the deaths seeming abstract as they happen off-screen. Later, a pile of bodies is shown out of focus Most of the horror is kept from us, the worst of it coming from the startle of gunfire as it rips through particularly quiet moments in the film. Perhaps we are meant to take it in without tears or judgement, and simply ruminate on what happened, and why. It certainly feels as though Villeneuve has gone to great lengths to give us plenty of room to do just that.

Home (2015)

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Oh is an alien (voiced by Jim Parsons) – they call themselves Boovs. Boovs are really, really good at running away, and their arch-nemesis the Gorg gives them good reason to practice this skill on a regular basis, evacuations led by their esteemed Captain Smeck (Steve Martin). This time, they’re fleeing to Earth, where they simply flip the switch on gravity and relocate all the humans. In the hubbub, a little girl named Tip (Rihanna) is separated from her mother (Jennifer Lopez) and she must reluctantly team up with the ever-unpopular Oh to find “my mom.”

This movie is cute if unoriginal – it reminded me of so many (better) animated films, but didn’t have a defining identity of its own. And I’m not sure if it took a while for the audience to warm up to it, or if the movie took a while to get going, but the laughs didn’t really start for a good 10-15 minutes, which actually felt a lot longer than it sounds. Once the laughs came, they continued. The movie casts a wide net – there’s something for cat lovers, pop culture dwellers, tweens, and younger kids. It’s easy enough to be entertained by this movie, but I doubt it’s going to grab audiences the way the minions did, or the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story.

There are plenty of fun moments: Tip’s house is booby-trapped so cleverly she makes Kevin McCallister (from Home Alone) look like a hack, and Oh learning how to car dance will have the kids waving their arms in the air like they just do not care. Actually, there are enough smart one-liners to earn a laugh from even the most cynical adult in the audience, but it doesn’t play to the adult viewer the way some Pixar movies have managed.

We saw the movie in 3D and wondered why. The movie doesn’t make much use of it, which is understandable since 3D kinda feels played out. Now it feels like a cash-grab, an excuse for the studios to charge twice the price for a ticket.

This movie is a stand-out in one big way though – not only is the protagonist female, not only is she black, she’s animated with realistic proportions. In the era of princesses, this means something. She’s smart and resourceful, and the movie doesn’t rely on stereotypes in her characterization. Her immigrant background is mentioned but not dwelled upon. It’s refreshing to see such a face on the big screen (she’s the first black lead character ever in 3D animation, and the second protagonist of colour for Dreamworks Animation, the first having been way back in 1998 when they did Prince of Egypt).

Bottom line: it’s an enjoyable film for kids, but the ground-breaking diversity doesn’t make it a classic. Diverting but not memorable.

Easy A

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This movie is smart and fun but the very first thing it asks of us as an audience – to believe that Emma Stone is a forgettable, undateable nonentity – is an outright lie. I’m sick and tired of movies asking us to ignore the very thing they’re relying on to sell us tickets: the smokin hotness of its star.

Why are we constantly asked to think of a gorgeous woman as an ugly duckling? How dumb does Hollywood think we are? That we somehow won’t see through the ponytail and glasses, or even some simple clumsiness, to see that it was FHM’s sexiest woman all along? A Hollywood script may occasionally call for plain jane, but no producer has ever hired one. Solution? Take a super model, put her hair in a bun, and dress her in paint-splattered overalls. Done.

Nonwallflower Emma Stone plays a virginal Olive, a high school student with an altruistic streak – to help certain male students out, she pretends to slut it up with them, dinging her own spotless reputation, in exchange for mere gift cards. For some reason, though she’s lovely and sassy and genuine, only the audience seems to know this. Even her best friend deserts her as here little scheme begins to snowball. Although modernly narrated in the form of a webcast, this movie constantly references great(er) teenage movies of the past. Though less angsty, there is a great debt to John Hughes here. And I don’t doubt that despite the high school setting, this movie in many ways is marketed towards the 30-somethings who will get those references. Olive, after all, wise beyond her years – precocious in every way but sexually.

Actually, the most interesting people in Olive’s world are the adults. On the rewatch, I’ve realized that my favourite bits of this movie are her parents, played by the absolutely brilliant Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson. It’s almost shocking, amid all the seediness, to see Olive have such happy, healthy parents who clearly cherish and adore her. Her family life looms large, a real tribute to Olive’s generational tendency to have parents who are also friends. Especially convincing is the mother-daughter relationship where Clarkson sparkles as the honest, post-hippie parent. Every moment they are on-screen is preposterous and tongue-in-cheekily indulgent. It’s easy to see where Olive gets her cleverness and self-assuredness. If all high schoolers were as grounded as Olive seems, movies like this wouldn’t have an audience to go see it.

Liebster Award

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Jay here, to accept an award and to thank the giver Mark for thinking of us for the Liebster Award – an award that seems to not be based on merit but I suspect is basically just a chain letter with the intention of highlighting and promoting other blogs, via a generous amount of linking back and forth. Not that that’s a bad thing – since we’re a relatively new blog that’s come across a great number of other great blogs recently, we’re all too happy to share the love.

Mark’s questions to me:

1. What’s the first thing you usually read each day? The news. First local, then national, then international. Unless I have a lazy morning, in which case I always bring a novel into the bath. Usually I leave the reading for at night, before bed. As an insomniac, that sometimes means I go through a book per night which means that I too am a vast consumer at the public library, just like Mark.

2. What’s your favorite food? Don’t know that I have one. My favourite thing about food is not the eating of but the making of – especially cooking big, impressive, multi-course meals for friends.

3. What’s your favorite beverage? In a very particular order: 1. water 2. Diet Pepsi 3. martinis

4. Where’s the best place you’ve ever lived? I suppose it’s right where I am now, but I am a firm believer that home is where the heart is.

5. Who’s your best friend, and why? Although I’m very close to all my fellow Assholes (and to a few select others of the non-ass variety), my best friend is my husband. We’re alike in a lot of important ways, and unlike in the even importanter ones.

6. Who’s your worst enemy, and why? I hope I don’t have any enemies. None on my side anyway. I learned a long time ago that hatred is a kind of poison. You don’t have to forgive, but letting go is a beautiful thing.

7. You have one day to do anything you’d like. It would be … Well, that depends. If this is my last day on Earth, then I just want to spend it in bed, with Sean, talking, and touching his skin with my skin. If we’re talking a random day with unlimited wishes and resources, then I’m choosing to take my friends and family on a Disney cruise – we proudly have 10 very young nieces and nephews, and I think that 24 hours is just about the very maximum that a sane adult can spend on a Disney cruise, which is basically just a Chuck-E-Cheese on water.

8. What’s your favorite movie? Oh my god. As if I have one! Here’s the thing about me. I have passion, too much passion. My top 5 always has at least 6. My top 10 would be endless. Pick just one? I don’t think so. I’d be interested to know if Matt, Luc, or Sean have a favourite movie.

9. What’s your favorite book? Same predicament. My heart belongs to many.

10. What’s your favorite subject to talk about at a party? Myself! I wrote that as a joke, but it might actually be the truth. Awkward!

11. What’s your favorite subject to walk away from at a party? I’m not afraid of subjects, only of the ignorant people who might broach them.

Random facts about myself:

1. I’ve been blogging for over a decade. You can check out my personal blog at Saint Vodka of the Martini. I don’t post there very often anymore but once upon a time I detailed my love and my life, all rather smugly (I was young, I’m embarrassed) and learned to eat crow when what I now generously refer to as my “first marriage” came crumbling down around me.

2. Blogging sure has changed since 2004. The Like button, for example, I hate. Back in the day, we used to leave comments. But now I see that blogging has been Facebookized, and not for the better.

3. I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. I hate how seriously some people take it. I hate how others use it as a giant poster for all of the worst clichés and inspirational quotes in the world. I still use it for its potential – having moved around quite a bit, most of our friends and family are long-distance and there’s nothing that makes my day like seeing how my friend’s baby looks just a tiny bit different, or that my little sister’s toilet is on the fritz again. The big stuff I still like to know about or see in person, when I can, but the little every day stuff helps keep the homesickness at bay.

4. I’m totally guilty of clogging my own Facebook account with pictures of my dogs. I have a lot of dogs. 4 at last count. I’d probably have more, except for a city ordinance that says anything more than 4 needs to be classified as a farm.

5. The dogs are called Herbie, Gertie, Fudgie, and Bronx, and they should have their own blog. Their lives are far more interesting than mine.

6. Sean wasn’t a dog lover when I met him. He was the worst kind of person – a cat owner. Well, okay, not exactly a cat owner. But he grew up with cats. And rats. He was almost not worth loving at all, except he met Herbie (my only dog at the time, the little black and white angry-looking one in the red puffy vest) and decided immediately to convert.

7. Matt has declared 2015 “year of the dog.” Or maybe I did, come to think of it. But the point is for Matt to get a dog. Ours have always had a soft spot for him, and he’s in need of a furry companion, but Matt’s always been a bit of a foot-dragger, so if you have the chance, be sure to nag him a bit. Get a dog, Matt!

8. Luc has a Boxer named Eddy. Eddy is still technically a puppy but is already bigger than all four of my dogs and Matt’s hypothetical one combined, but if he comes for a doggy play date, he’s very intimidated by 6-pounder Fudgie (the squinty one in the cardigan in my arms).

9. Aside from dogs, the Assholes have bonded over plenty of other things, including but not limited to movies of course! We’ll be celebrating 7 years of assholery this summer, and over those 7 years together we’ve witnessed 2 births, 2 marriages, and 2 divorces – and ALL SIX of those things were very happy occasions indeed.

10. We also love to travel together – to Toronto and Montreal for concerts, to Lac Simon for camping, to Minden for weekend debauchery, to New York City to see some greats on stage, to Cuba for Luc & Mel’s wedding…I’ve probably left some out because my memory is bad, but I do know that we’re not done yet. We’ve got lots of adventure in us yet.

11. How many movies have we watched together? Fought over? Slept through (well, that’s just Luc)? I’m not sure. Hundreds, surely. And there are always plenty more of those too, so please, share with us. You don’t have to be an asshole, but we always like to hear from you.

Our nominations: I don’t really believe in any one blog being better than another, so instead I’m passing this along to our most frequent commenters – please don’t feel obligated. It’s all just in fun, so do let us know if you’d like to play along!

Sweet Archive

Film Munch

Ruth

I have only one question, for all of you: What is the most fun you’ve ever had in a movie theatre? What movie were you watching?

Now, Voyager

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Bette Davis stars as a frumpy old-maid type, possibly in the midst of a nervous break down because her domineering mother has orchestrated every moment of her paltry life up until now, and has created a culture where the whole family feels entitled to pick on her. One day her sister brings home a renowned psychologist who believes that if only Charlotte could escape her mother’s clutches, she could regain her sanity through independence. He convinces her to come be treated at his sanitorium and when she eventually leaves there, she is suddenly the more sophisticated image of Bette Davis we all know and love. She embarks on a cruise where she has a brief love affair with a married man, Jerry (played by Paul Henreid).

When she finally returns home, the mother is horrified by Charlotte’s assuredness and immediately starts to break it down. They argue, and the mother dies of a heart attack. Charlotte’s grief and guilt send her fleeing back to the sanitorium, but a fellow patient whom she takes under her wing keeps her from yet another breakdown.

A weird movie filled with “mommy issues” but gives real insight into not just the Vale family but the world in which this wealthy family lives, the kind of repression and sheltering done to a certain kind of woman, the ugly fate of those unmarried, and the strange salvation that only a nervous breakdown can bring. It really highlights the importance of a mother’s nurturing to her child’s self-worth. The iciness between these two is legendary and the mother-daughter melodrama is juicy AND neurotic. So classic.

Although the movie hints at adultery, it does not reward the behaviour. Everyone must ultimately stay in his or her miserable marriage, and this kind of self-sacrifice is deemed heroic, even romantic. No wonder nervous breakdowns were so popular! Defining line: “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.” Slay me.

And can we take a moment to discuss the beautiful woman disguised as an ugly duckling later revealed to be – gasp! – a beautiful woman all along! Why does this continue to happen in movies all the time? It’s ridiculous, and insulting, and degrading. Bette Davis is given thicker eyebrows, glasses, and a less defined waist and is called an ugly spinster. But was there a single moment she stopped being Bette Goddamned Davis? Of course not! This reminds me of so many nerd makeover movies where all you need to do is remove the glasses to discover she was a hottie all along. It’s gross. Anne Hathaway gets contact lenses and a hair straightener in the Princess Diaries. Olivia Newton-John gets some leather and spike heels in Grease. Sandra Bullock only needed some shorter hemlines in Miss Congeniality. Brittany Murphy just needed to spend money on designer swag in Clueless. All of these women clearly gorgeous in the before and the after, inducing agonizing eye-rolling and discrediting the movie’s intentions. But Bette Davis? Bette Goddamned Davis? There’s no unibrow in the world that can unmake such a goddess.

Home

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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“Why die here when I can die there?” – a dubious tagline is ever there was one.

I can’t pretend that even the first one was a complete pleasure for me, but I am ever so charmed by the golden oldies in the cast and that was excuse enough, more than enough, to give it a watch.

The second one has mostly the same cast of Britain’s finest senior citizens. Bill Nighy, a particular favourite of mine, does his brilliant little grimace right off the bat, and I am gratified: almost worth the price of admission. Maggie Smith and Penelope Wilton are at their cattiest, delightfully. Judi Dench is as strong and charismatic as ever. But this movie tries so hard to recreate the first one’s magic by basically just regurgitating it when in fact what it needed most was some fresh blood. Richard Gere, you say? Yes, he makes an appearance, but it stinks. He makes his grand entrance, grey hair flopping boyishly away, bringing with him the ugly whiff of American romcom. He’s like a virus, infecting what was already a perfect cast, a full complement of the world’s best that didn’t need or want improving upon. And Gere doesn’t – no fault of his. He just stuck out like a sore thumb.

The elderly each have their own romantic subplots, but the story’s meat is that Sonny (Dev Patel) is looking to take on a second property to expand his hotel “empire” while neglecting his wedding plans. Actually, the wedding bits were probably the most dazzling – the colours, the flowers, the brightly lit lanterns, the beautiful saris. But I didn’t remember Dev Patel being such an awkward, borderline racist caricature. A bit of a buffoon maybe, but now he’s a downright fool. His florid, over the top communications wore me out quickly. And the constant “jokes” about death – (I hesitate to call them that though I do believe that’s the spirit in which they were intended) – painful. Not a single one landed with the audience, most of them there on a discounted senior’s ticket. Crickets.

Even the title tells us this will be the second best, but it doesn’t suggest just how far from the first it has fallen. Second rate is more like it.

The Trip to Italy

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This is really neither movie nor documentary. It’s just two guys, two friends, obviously, who happen to be a little bit famous, taking a road trip, eating some food, and cracking some jokes.

The first one, The Trip, features the pair (Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) driving all over England and chatting about their excellent dinners while trying to one-up each other with impersonations (the Michael Caine is a personal favourite). In The Trip to Italy, the same is attempted, but this time the food is completely forgotten. Some of the film takes places incidentally in restaurants, and there are a couple of obligatory kitchen shots, but not a single dish is named, and none are commented upon other than perhaps a raised eyebrow if something is particularly good. So if you’re looking for recommendations, look elsewhere.

I love Steve Coogan. I could listen to him carry on literally all day long. I don’t know his parter in crime as well; I think Brydon is primarily known on the other side of the pond. However, it is important to note that they are playing “lightly fictionalized” versions of themselves. I don’t know why, and I don’t care for the device. If you don’t want to incorporate your genuine personal lives, then don’t. Brydon’s Hugh Grant impression is much better than his I’m-having-an-affair impresion. Coogan pretends to bring along his fake son (same fake son for the first one, so at least the continuity’s there) but I’m not sure to what end. These two are comedic talents of the first-rate. They can sit and improvise and entertain each other (and us) like nobody’s business. They riff off each other enormously well, and it reminds me so much of great dinners with my own friends, the whole thing just dissolving into something absurd. Coogan pretends to be an egoist with a superiority complex, and Brydon this time is less the stool and more ambitious for his own self.

There are some prepared bits as well (though there’s no credit for a script) – Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill is apparently the only CD in their Mini convertible, and when they’re not singing along in earnest, they’re coming up with new, improved lyrics for her most famous songs.

I don’t think it’s likely to be just anyone’s cuppa, but I like these films. The Trip to Italy doesn’t quite manage to recapture the magic (but don’t worry, there’s more MIchael Caine) and I did miss actual commentary on the food – because wasn’t that the “fictionalized” point? At any rate, they make with the funny, and they make funny well. And maybe that’s point enough.