I can’t imagine a single sentient organism that would be in any way remotely satisfied by The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.
We had screening tickets for this that were for a 10am showing on a Saturday morning, so needless to say, we didn’t make it. And now I’m damn glad I didn’t haul my ass out of bed for this nautical nonsense.
Miraculum is one of those movies that knits together different stories and hopes to make a beautiful afghan but sometimes ends up making a bit of a mess. Let’s face it, it’s hard to find, 
say, four different stories that are equally compelling, and in this case, Gabriel Sabourin does a better job with some stories (as screenwriter) than with the one he tells himself as an actor.The city of Montreal has just been home to a terrible plane crash where the lone survivor remains unidentified. Julie (Marilyn Castonguay) a nurse and also a Jehovah’s Witness, becomes quite taken with this unidentified stranger, maybe as a placeholder for her complicated feelings toward her boyfriend (Xavier Dolan), also a Witness, who is dying from leukemia and unwilling to get the treatment that would save his life, as per their religious doctrine.
The Burbs is not one of Tom Hanks’ best, but when he teams up with Bruce Dern as two suburbanites with maybe a little too much time on their hands, it’s still pretty awesome. A new family has moved into the neighbourhood and get this – they don’t mow their lawn! And their 
garbage cans are suspicious! And…do they look a little…foreign to you? Paranoia starts to creep in and suddenly the neighbourhood dads are crossing some pretty serious boundaries to accuse their little-known neighbourhoods of all kinds of mayhem, including murder. Coincidentally, this “neighbourhood” was shot on the Universal backlot, which we’ll be visiting in the next few weeks – it’s the same neighbourhood that was used for Desperate Housewives and Leave It To Beaver.
Words and Pictures has got both Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen, so already I’m sold. They’re both playing hig
h school teachers – she, art (being a talented artist herself, but recently plagued by arthritis) and he, English (being himself a writer, currently stifled by his alcoholism). They’re both a little isolated and angry at home, but shine in their respective classrooms and soon have their students engaged in a “war” – words vs pictures, or is a picture really worth a thousand words? It’s witty and interesting and while not their best work it was a surprising and gratifying Netflix find on a quiet night and I enjoyed it.
I bet nobody like the movie Blackhat, ever. Am I right? The “action” was silly. The “romance” was even sillier. The “thriller” aspect was completely inert. I can’t write anything about this 
movie without using ironic quotations, for goat cheese’s sake! They bust hacker-Thor from prison to help stop an even evil-er hacker and it’s all cyber-crimey and pretty dull, with really loose writing and lazy directing, and you just want it to be over, but why spend TWO HOURS AND FIFTEEN MINUTES anticipating credits when you could just not watch it at all?
While watching San Andreas, I thought to myself, dear god, these shoes will be the death of me. And this thought didn’t disturb me as much as it should have because:
a) I’m not a survivor. I don’t believe in survival. It’s gross. It hurts too much. Better to have a slab of concrete crush you right at the outset than to spend the next hour and a half running for your life and probably getting lots of blisters.
b) If I’m gonna die, please jebus let it not be in flats. I’d rather die like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz – crus
hed, sure, but with a gorgeous pair of heels sticking out.
But watching Carla Gugino do acrobatics atop a blazing, rapidly collapsing building only to stick a pretty landing on a failing helicopter, well, she didn’t do that in Jimmy Choos. You might have thought, like I did, that survival in heels would have been unlikely, even impossible, but this weekend Bryce Dallas Howard showed us: not so.
This girl ran through the jungle in heels. From dinosaurs! They’re modest, mid-height, Kate Middleton-esque nude heels rather than kinky boots, mind you, but still. I’ve heard a lot of people criticizing Jurassic World for this choice, calling it supremely stupid, but hello – when did she have the chance to swap them out? We don’t wake up in the morning thinking, well, maybe the practical shoes today because who knows when a hungry dinosaur may chase me. And just because that particular scenario might be 0.1% more likely for a woman working at a dino park 
doesn’t mean she anticipiated it. I think she probably wore those shoes because they looked cute with her skirt, and made all of her wardrobe choices that day believing subconsciously that today was just a day like any other. Of course, we know this franchise, and we know that security at these parks is never up to snuff. So, poor thing has to run in heels. Crappy, sure, but still preferable than running barefoot. But the truth is, I don’t keep ‘just in case of dinosaurs’ shoes in my car either. When disaster hits, I’ll have to swallow the impractical decisions I’ve made and just deal. I do know, however, that she was likely to sink in the moist jungle dirt. I learned that lesson wearing brand new red satin pumps of course. The heels pierce the dirt. And she likely had to run on the balls of her feet – better to just forget about the heels and keep your centre of gravity in just once place. I learned that one as a bridesmaid when my friend’s grandmother went missing just moments before the ceremony.
But if I was smart, I might instead learn the lesson that Melissa McCarthy learned in Spy: in one 
scene she’s vamped up and looking glamorous but suddenly has to give chase. She’s clearly wearing black high heels, but those are cleverly swapped out by a sympathetic costume lady for a pair of wedge running shoes that are painted to look like high heels. I noticed that little swap when she was on her scooter about to land in the cement. Nice trick if you can hack it. But let’s face it, I’m not wedge girl. I like a pair of sky-high stilettos, and if they’re glittery enough to sparkle long after I’ve bled out, all the better.
It was easy to like this movie, because this movie loves movies just as much as I do.
I asked Sean if he liked the movie, and he said “yeah.”
I asked him if it made him feel any feelings (I tease him about being a robot but it’s not really teasing because he really is a robot) and he said “yeah.”
I asked him which feelings and he said “sad.”
So there you have it. A movie with a dying girl right in the title made Sean feel sad, which he hid well by not crying and eating lots of nachos with the weird runny cheese.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is not really a sad movie, though. It’s a quirky movie that runs in the opposite d
irection of The Fault in Our Stars, which I despised for its manipulation. This one isn’t perfect either, but it allows its teenaged characters to be moody and awkward in sickness and in health.
Greg is surviving high school by keeping superficial ties with everyone while befriending no one – at least that he’ll admit to. Luckily his “co-worker” Earl (actually his best friend) understands his motivations and lets the matter ride. But when the two take on a cancer-ridden third wheel, Greg’s little social experiment starts to get murky as she exposes his insecurities and forces him to deal with people head-on.
You know what? I just realized why I liked this one so much more than The Fault in Our Stars. This one has angst instead of melodrama. There it is: there’s no weird runny cheese. It’s witty, 
sometimes a little much, but I felt so much more forgiving of this one because it felt more real. This movie is not about The Dying Girl. It’s about ‘Me’. It’s a movie full of teenaged self-conscious self-centeredness, and I think that’s kind of a sneaky, brilliant angle to bring to this subject matter.
And all three actors – Me (Thomas Mann), and Earl (R.J. Cyler) and The Dying Girl (Olivia Cooke) deserve to be the Next Big Thing. They’re very good at the calculated, laid-back charm that this movie has going for it. I kind of can’t wait to see it again.
So many movies are prefaced with those five sneaky little words: “based on a true story.” But what exactly do they mean? The answer is: nothing. Unless it’s a documentary, in which case you’re still not getting a complete truth, but at least you’re getting close. But in film we play pretty fast and loose with those words, and it’s up to the audience to decide how much weight we give them.
I got to thinking on the subject this week when I watched Intouchables, which is “based on a true story.” You may remember it’s about a tough young black guy who works for a paralyzed older rich one, as they touch and inspire each other’s lives for the better. In real life, the young 
employee was actually an Algerian named Abdel. Does this change the heart of the story? Maybe not. But it does make me question the screen writer’s motives: did they just love this particular actor, who happened to be black, or did they feel it would resonnate better with us that he was African rather than Algerian, or did they think they’d get more mileage out of a bigger racial disparity? It doesn’t matter, I suppose, if you’re just there for a good story and some entertainment. But why then are directors still insisting those little words preface their fudged facts? We rarely have any of this information at our fingertips when we sit down with popcorn in our laps at the theatre. No one’s telling us what’s true and what’s just a cinematic embellishment.
Think back to that Will Smith vehicle The Pursuit of Happyness, based on the true story of Chris Gardner, who in the movie solves a rubik’s cube to get a shot at being a stock broker, and spends the trainer caring for his son in various subway bathrooms and homeless shelters so
they can turn their lives around. In actuality, there was no rubik’s cube. Shocking, I know. Also, there was no kid. I mean, he had a kid, he conceived him while cheating on his first wife. But he dumped the kid with the mother and didn’t know where either of them were during his training. So, you know, not exactly the father of the year material that the movie pushes down your throat. Oh, and you know that big arrest (for unpaid parking tickets) that almost derailed his interview? Yeah, that was actually on a charge of domestic violence. That rosy little detail was left the fuck out.
In the movie 21, a professor recruits star students, teaches them how to count cards, and takes them to Las Vegas to win lotsa money. Did this really happen? Apparently so. Only the MIT Blackjack team was almost entirely Asian. The movie? Completely whitewashed. Does Kevin Spacey look like a cross-dressing Asian to you? I mean, he’s phoning in his performance, but no, he doesn’t. There are a couple of throwaway Asians somewhere in the pack, but you’ll have to squint pretty hard past all the handsome white dudes to find them.
To make up for this sad racial bias, Hollywood presents to you: the “true” story of Rubin Hurrican Carter, an about-to-make-it-big boxer who is wrongly accused and convicted of a triple homicide thanks to an oppressive white system and spends 22 years in jail before some random Canadians turn up a piece of evidence that finally vindicates him. Great story, none of it true. First, the big match where Hurricane beats his (white) opponent soundly only the mean (white)
judges give the win to the other guy? Yeah, didn’t happen. Well, I mean, it’s a historical fact: the fight did happen. But that other guy won fair and square – and by quite a long mile. A mile so long and so definitive that he sued the producers of the movie and won. Oh, and the part about him being wrongly convicted? Well, I hate to break it to you, but…I cannot attest to his guilt or innocence. All I can say is that he did have a colourful criminal past. Heavy on assault and battery. He was court-marshalled four times before being booted out of the army. He failed his lie detector test with flying colours and was convicted not once of these murders, but twice. The first verdict was overturned on a technicality. During his second trial a bunch of witnesses were now confessing that they’d lied for him about his alibi. He’s convicted again – but what about that vindicating piece of evidence? No such thing. Again, technicality. But it had been so long that no one was interested enough to put up a third trial, and so they all went home. But that doesn’t make for a rousing movie, now does it?
Fargo is one of my favourite movies, opens with a card that tells us that this too is based on a 
true story. Exact words: The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred. But the true truth is that it’s a bunch of baloney. Yeah, there have been crimes in the world, sometimes even husbands killing wives. For money. But this story, friends, is a work of fiction. At the end of the Coen brothers’ screenplay, there is a note: “[the film] aims to be both homey and exotic, and pretends to be true.” The “true story” moniker has become a stylistic device.
A homesman is the man in charge of taking immigrants back home. And after a really harsh winter filled with loss, three women in a small midwestern community lose their minds and somebody’s got to bring them all the way to a church caring for the mentally ill in Iowa. None of their husbands is up to the task, so Hilary Swank, spinster extraordinaire, steps up to the plate.
She’s a former New York school teacher who now farms her plot as well as any man – better, I’d say, because she seems to be the most prosperous person in this small village. This, of course, has made her seem “bossy”, and none of the hasty marriage proposals she inflicts on any breathing man within a 50 mile radius are accepted. She’s a lonely, desperate woman.
Which is the only explanation for her taking on Tommy Lee Jones, who she saves from being hanged when he’s discovered using someone else’s land. Yup, these are super harsh conditions out in the west. She suggests that he join her on her months-long journey, and he agrees reluctantly when money is offered.
The journey is awful enough to make someone return to dead kids and repeated rape, if only those poor women were still verbal or lucid enough to choose. But they press on, determined to reunite Meryl Streep with her daughter (Meryl plays the minister’s wife at the church; her daughter plays one of the afflicted women).
This movie is really successful at showing us just how fucking cruel life was for women on the western front. They could be taken far from home, submitted to anything at the will of their husbands, who could then abandon them if and when they chose. Even Hilary Swank, who seems like an accomplished, secure catch, is constantly rejected because who needs a hard-
working woman with an independent spirit when you can just go carry off an immigrant woman who can’t even say no in your language? I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a feminist western, but it sure does show the depressingly bleak terms for women of the time. They were damned either way.
Tommy Lee directs and he paints a brutal picture – opening scenes of the women suffering loss after loss interspersed with Swank’s back-breaking work convince us that there is nothing appealing about this life. Tommy Lee is initially a comic figure, and I was glad that we saw a little character growth because I couldn’t have tolerated his snivelling for an entire movie. The contrast between his character and Swank’s – the sinner and the saint – is what makes this watchable. Jones is wise enough to sit back a little and let her shine. He keeps things looking tidy but the cinematography at times is pretty striking. The land can be barren, but they play around with different perspectives that gives the vast emptiness different meanings.
This movie is a little off-kilter, a little conventional. The ending didn’t provide anything near the resolution I felt I deserved after sitting through such persistent abasement, but I was still satisfied on the whole, and a little surprised at that, having feared and assumed much worse.
I can’t tell if this movie is Cinderella or Driving Miss Daisy or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I suppose it’s most accurate to call it some fairy tale hybrid of all three.
It’s about a black dude from “the street” who goes to work for a stuffy white one, who happens to be paralyzed from the neck down. A super tough situation for even a trained personal support worker, which of course he isn’t. But Driss and Philippe form the obligatory bridging-the
-race-gap friendship, and white guy comes back to life, as it were, thanks to, you know, watching the black guy dance to Earth, Wind & Fire and stuff.
I actually like this movie. I should have said that first, because reading the above has probably given you the wrong impression. Everyone will like this movie because you’re supposed to. It’s feel-good, dammit. I dare you NOT to have your goods felt after this. I’m all felt up.
Basically, the two actors are pretty great. Omar Sy as Driss and Francois Cluzet as Philippe are an excellent pair. They play off each other well and have great on-screen chemistry that makes their friendship seem real. Their “unlikely” friendship, I should say, because I have a feeling that’s what the blurb on the back of the DVD would say if I had it here in front of me. It’s probably a little insulting that in 2015 we still think of an interracial friendship as unlikely. Even thinking of it as interracial is unnatural. But the film keeps reminding us that it is, because all of Philippe’s uptight (white) friends keep stage-whispering it to him, as if quadriplegia has also affected his eyes.
In fact, Philippe hired the likes of Driss because he’s tired of being pitied. Driss doesn’t have a pitying bone in his body, but apparently he’s got a lot of tender ones because very quickly he’s 
the best little nursemaid in town. Never has looking after a severely disabled individual for money seemed so fun! Plus, there’s the Pretty Woman aspect – he gets exposed to (white) culture – you know, museums, expensive cars, classical music. And yes, Philippe even buys him a new suit so he can look pretty at a party. But don’t you worry. Driss contributes too. He buys the weed.
Okay, now this review is making ME think I didn’t like the movie. And I did! It’s just a little facile, I suppose, compared to the Diving Bell. It’s sugary and sweet and avoids the sticky spots by a wide margin. It’s really just a buddy movie with pretensions. The acting saves it from slipping into maudlin and the two make an irresistible (interracial) pair.
We had a busy weekend out-of-town but slid back just in time to make it to the drive-in and give this one the eyeball.
You know what I liked about this movie? A lot, actually. First, it’s not a spoof. Don’t call it a spoof. It’s a legit action movie that happens to also be funny. Second, it’s not funny because Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) is bad at her job. She’s a top agent, extremely competent if 
somewhat reluctant. It’s funny because she’s not quite got that James Bond suaveness down pat – she still gets a kick out globe-trotting and being upgraded to premium economy. She hasn’t let the whole spy thing go to her head. Third, it’s not just the hero who’s a female – so is her sidekick (Miranda Hart) and her adversary (Rose Byrne), and they’re all great.
Its highest gear isn’t quite comparable to what Daniel Craig is doing over at Spectre, but there’s a kitchen knife fight that’s pretty intense and you can tell that a lot of work went into its choreography. McCarthy gets to stretch some muscles she hasn’t used in a while with a versatile performance rather than a crude caricature. But the greatest treat is that she’s isn’t funny alone; Feig has this great trickle-down effect where he expects everyone to get laughs, and they do, even the cutaway character reaction shots. The best laughs, though, probably come at the expense of Jason Statham, who welcomes them. Nobody else 
could have played it so well because the jokes don’t just hit back at the manly superagent type, but also specifically at Statham’s career, and he’s game. Obscenely game! And while McCarthy is undoubtedly the star, Feig gives everyone a chance to shine, because if funny is good, then very funny is very good.
Big applause to Paul Feig for being the only one who can truly write for Melissa McCarthy – and that includes McCarthy herself. In anyone else’s hands she turns into a clown. A big, crass joke who’s too obnoxious to appreciate. Feig doesn’t need to humiliate her. He elevates her with the right element, the right foil, and with good writing and the right context, she makes the movie sparkle, and she led this one right to the top of the box office this weekend, smoked right by those Entourage boys like the badass she is.
You may have heard that one of your favourite Assholes is about to celebrate his 20th high school reunion – I recently lamented the fact that he expected me to accompany him in my Grosse Pointe Blank review\rant.
Romy & Michele is the second high school reunion movie to come out of apparently nostalgia-crazy 1997, and I’m starting to see an alarming trend here. These reunionites are dressed like 
it’s the second coming of the prom. I’m picturing Sean’s classmates as more the cutoffs kind, maybe denim accessories, vests without shirts.
Also super duper alarming: how EVERYONE goes back to track down their lost loves. Can you really be lusting after your high school crush a decade later?
This movie is so incredibly dumb, but it does prey on my worst fears about high school reunions.
“What’s the point of going if not to impress people?” they ask. Cue a goddamned helicopter. I mean, who, Sean, out of your graduating class, will arrive and\or depart by helicopter?
“All I ever wanted was for people to think we are better than we were in high school” they say. Um, right. Is this whole thing going to be one big circle jerk where they all compliment each other’s middling jobs and average offspring, or are they all just measuring each other’s metaphorical penises to see who wins most successful?
Speaking of which. Romy & Michele manages to get right down to the obvious with an award: Most Changed for the Better Since High School. Everyone is there to compete. Everyone hopes it’s them. But only one can win!
Does this sound super fun or what?
We all know how the story ends, and given that, I should have been more prepared for how fucking gloomy this shit is.
Of course it’s gloomy. If you can recall the lyrics of any one of Nirvana’s songs, literally pick any 
one at random, and I guarantee you, it ain’t happy. The inside of Kurt Cobain’s head was not all picnics and pantaloons. He was raw pain at times, and the brilliance of this documentary is sheer access to pretty rare footage – home videos, private diaries and notebooks, childhood photos. It doesn’t have the guts to stab at answers but it does ask a lot of questions and highlight a lot of recurrent themes – the search for meaning, wanting to belong, extreme sensitivity to rejection and humiliation. Not great character traits for someone who would achieve absurd stardom.
But there’s also the ease he seems to feel with is daughter, and even Courtney, and his transcendent love of playing music live. This last seems to have come at a great cost to him personally, and his suicide begins to feel inevitable.
Interviews with his family members, former band mate, and even Courtney, help to flesh out the story. Kurt himself addresses us through notebooks and old videos. Notably absent: Frances Bean, and Dave Grohl.
The documentary sort of blurs between his creative genius and his personal pain, which I suppose is a pretty accurate representation of what Nirvana was at the time. Director Brett Morgen uses some interesting techniques to bring Cobain back to life for a couple of hours. It made me think of who Kurt would be today if he was still here. Oh the melancholy.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES 