Tribeca: Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Taika Waititi.

1449603737890 If you don’t know that name yet, stay right here while I get a nice wooden baseball bat to beat you over the head with. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.

Seriously, I talk obsessively about Waititi and his movies because I just adore them. He’s remained mostly under the radar with offbeat, cult hits like Boy and Eagle Vs Shark, which have made him famous in his native New Zealand but all but undiscovered over here in North America. WHICH IS A FRICKIN CRIME. ai_28310_aimedium

Last year his vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows was a modest breakthrough that earned him some well-deserved and super duper overdue attention. It will also help that he’s had a hand in writing Disney’s upcoming animated film Moana and will direct Thor: Ragnarok, which will be his first budget exceeding $12.

But back to Hunt for the Wilderpeople, perhaps the best thing I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival and maybe the best thing Waititi’s done to date. He adapted it for the screen himself and as the film opens up, you immediately get the sense that it is a labour of love. The beautiful, lush New Zeala ai_28434_aimedium nd bush is on proud display in soaring shots that will give you serious travel envy. Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is a boy who’s had a run of bad luck with foster homes, and his child welfare worker is quick to give a laundry list of his transgressions. This doesn’t deter his determined newest foster mum Aunt Bella (Rima Te Wiata) but Uncle Hec (Sam Neill) is a lot more reticent and gruff. Their primitive way of life is a bit of a shock to gangster-wannabe Ricky, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg because soon events will have him and Uncle Hec running from the law and hiding out in the bush as an intensive manhunt for them is underway.

The movie becomes an odd-couple adventure with Waititi’s niche sensibility and loads of mass appeal. Seriously – who on this green earth could fail to be charmed by this movie? 506332228 For such an endearingly quirky comedy, it has no right being even half as beautifully shot as it is. There’s a gloss to the film thanks to some real cinematography that’s been missing from his previous work. A lot of care has gone into this film and the casting is just one easy example of how diligently the thing is put together. Sam Neill is an interesting choice and brings the right mix of gravelly loner bluntness and a secret longing for connection. But it’s Julian Dennison who will leave the largest impression. A kid actor can make or break your movie when he’s in a central role, but Dennison is a professional, easy and natural in front 1453595660563 of the camera. There’s pain behind his farcical behaviour, and in allowing us to see both, there’s real depth and emotional investment in the characters. Waititi, Rachel House, and Rhys Darby provide excellent supporting roles that’ll leave you cramped from laughter. Positively bruised from chuckling. It’s a new personal best for Waititi and a new sentimental favourite for me, but one that deserves its place among the very best movies of the year, period.

Tribeca: Dean

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Demetri Martin is one of my all-time favourite comedians so when I saw his directorial debut, Dean, was premiering at Tribeca, of course I snatched up a couple of tickets, and it was only when that initial adrenaline rush had dissipated a bit that I started to wonder how the hell his comedy would possibly translate into film.

Demetri Martin is a comedic genius, but his stand-up is mostly one-liners, funny drawings, and some jokes set to an acoustic guitar, and sometimes his harmonica for good measure. Not remotely narrative. And this movie didn’t look much like a comedy anyway – the blurb mentioned death, grief, and existential angst. dean-original-1

Dean (Demetri Martin, of course) has recently lost his mother. He and his father (Kevin Kline) are grieving very differently, and growing slightly apart because of it. His dad is ready to sell the family home but Dean can’t imagine the loss of the place where his mother was last alive, and happy; it’s full of good memories for Dean, but sad memories for his dad. Naturally, instead of sticking around to help with the transition, Dean flees to L.A. ostensibly for business, but we know differently. And he finds lots of distractions in California but starts to learn that he’s not the only walking wounded.

Does Demetri Martin pull it off? Yes, he does. Surprisingly well, as both actor and director. Dean is an illustrator, so not only do Martin’s drawings fit in, they illuminate his inner thoughts. His trademark one-liners are there too but they never feel slotted in. They either feel organic or they’ve been left on the cutting room floor – if you know his stand-up at all, you can’t help but feel that Martin has wisely shown restraint here. And there are visual gags, very subtle, but they add a layer that knock down the seriousness just a tad (like you never doubt how genuinely bereft Kevin Kline is, but you keep a half-smile for his terrible dad jeans). For a movie primarily about loss, you’ll laugh out loud an awful lot.

The first and maybe only misstep I felt was when he arrives in L.A. and meets his love interest, played by Gillian Jacobs. Gillian Jacobs is not really a problem, except that I know her through the Judd Apatow-produced Netflix series, Love (in which she co-stars with Paul Rust, the dude who cowrote the new Pee-wee Herman movie). Sean and I watched the whole sea 8244bc3f1c65436 son even though we detested both leads. Not the actors, per se, but the characters are just awful human beings and it’s hard to forgive the actors for that. So I’m carrying around this chip on my shoulder for Gillian Jacobs and was not super happy to bump into her in this movie. But clever Demetri Martin won me over by writing a love interest for Dean who did not exist solely for his pursuit. She had back story. She had depth. She was a person. This sounds weird, I’ll grant you that, but so often in movies the love interest exists solely to be adored and consumed and nothing else. She has no job or apartment or opinions. Gillian Jacobs had scenes without Demetri Martin. She was independent of his lust. It was refreshing even if it did make me confront my hostility toward the bitch from Love.

Eventually Dean returns to New York, to his widowed (widowered?) father and the ghost of his mother. Demetri Martin lost his own father 20 years ago, so he knows grief, but he didn’t quite know how to approach the father-son relationship between two grown men. If he struggled with the relationship on paper, it doesn’t show on screen. The moments of quiet reflection between them are some of the film’s most satisfying.

I enjoyed this film very much and it turns out I wasn’t the only one – it won Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca from a jury including Tangerine’s Mya Taylor and funny lady Jennifer Westfeldt, who commented: “We have had the great privilege of seeing ten accomplished and ambitious films over the last seven days here at Tribeca. But we all fell in love with this film. It manages the near impossible task of breathing new life into a well-worn genre, balancing humor and pathos with an incredibly deft touch, and offering a unique perspective on the way we process loss.” Even more excitingly, it was bought! CBS films picked it up, which means this little indie will soon be making its way to a theatre near you.

Tom Hanks & John Oliver at Tribeca

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The line to see Tom Hanks and John Oliver in conversation together wrapped well around the venue on Friday night. Sean and I had just seen High-Rise over in Chelsea and had 3374991A00000578-3555220-image-a-136_1461420263964 braved a crowded rush-hour subway to get back down to Tribeca and run right past the Ghostbusters building to arrive breathless at the Borough of Manhattan Community College only to be redirected to another entrance that meant dragging my swollen, sprained ankle several more blocks with the remnants of my back surgery burst open and freely bleeding just so that we could stand in line for 40 minutes and then be denied a seat. Denied a seat? But we had tickets in hand – tickets we’d paid for three weeks prior! But us, and the two people in front of us, and the hundred or hundreds behind us (hard to tell) were denied entrance because they’d way, way, way oversold the event and we were shit out of luck. We were also really, really pissed.

We weren’t yet yelling at the security guys because lots of other people were beating us to it. But when someone came out to the velvet ropes to say that one single seat had been found and was there a single person in the crowd, most of us just looked at our partners and shrugged. Except Sean. What Sean did was slap a ticket in my hand and shove me large_large_tom-hanks-2 toward the guy with the clipboard. He unclipped the rope and I was being ushered alone up a sad, empty red carpet, the very one we’d just watched John Oliver and Tom Hanks ascend, me still lumping my sore and swollen ankle along. I wasn’t happy to be going in alone and it was only the element of surprise that made me do it. I felt awful that Sean would sit outside with his $50 ticket to nothing, after having driven all the way from another bloody country, while I would be tickled fairly pink. Maybe even almost red. But the guy with the clipboard was so impressed with Sean’s self-sacrifice he basically invented another seat for him and got him in, even though he had to stand. I felt a little guilty because the couple in front of us rightly deserved those seats but hadn’t thought to split up (and actually, we’d already seen a few other singles be plucked from the line behind us) and a little guilty about the dozens and dozens behind us who hadn’t gotten in either, and super mad at the fuckfaces at Tribeca who oversold the event and didn’t tell anyone. But mostly I just felt elation the minute those two men took the stage, and fuck everyone else.

Some highlights of the evening:

-Tom said that without Oliver, our lives would be “void of outrage”

-He then made a reference to the Merv Griffin show so random and outdated that Oliver claimed that the lady holding the “Kiss Me” sign had slowly lowered it.

-Hanks cautioned us against asking “lazy journalistic questions”, basically anything starting with “What was it like…” and claimed that he was often accosted on red carpets

Tribeca Talks Storytellers: Tom Hanks With John Oliver

with “Just one question from Argentina!” and that one question invariably being something incredibly insipid. Oliver agreed that really Argentina should be asking for advice on their desperate economic situation.

-Hanks said that his distaste for social media was because he’d “peaked in the 90s” and Oliver ribbed him about using Twitter as a lost and found (you can Google it- Tom often posts pictures of wallets or lost gloves and tries to reunite them with their owners).

-Hanks and Oliver spar over the American Revolution, and we all find out that Hanks does an atrocious British accent.

-Hanks discusses the first movie he remembers going to the theatre to see – 101 Dalmations – and how it scarred him ever so deeply. Oliver then asks “So how the fuck did you become an actor?”

-Oliver claims E.T. as the first movie he saw in theatres, and his ensuing heartache over Elliott not joining E.T. in the end, which prompts Hanks to ask “How old are you???” (he’s 38).

-Oliver asked what kind of people Hanks prefers to work with, other than them “not being a giant asshole” to which Hanks replied “Sometimes that works.”

-Hanks did an awesome impression of Ron Howard, and confessed to learning about camera angles from Kevin Bacon on the set of Apollo 13. Bacon would suggest Howard use a “BFCU” of KB, which, for those of you not in the know, is a big fucking close up of Kevin Bacon. “God bless Kevin Bacon,” said Hanks.

-To see him do an impression of Robert Zemeckis (director of Forrest Gump, who he calls “Bob”), listen to what he learns from his failures.

-The work Tom’s most proud of? That Thing You Do, which featured his whole family, and was basically one giant love-in to make. He is particularly proud of the scene where the band hears their single on the radio for the first time because – name drop! – Bruce Springstein once told him that he’d experienced it himself exactly like that.

-Hanks told us that the genius of Invictus was that Clint Eastwood never taught us a single thing about rugby.

-The most obscure thing a fan ever yelled at him? “Little boat!” – a line from the movie Splash which Tom himself had a very hard time placing, and almost had to IMDB himself just to scratch the itch.

-Which of his characters would he most like to have a beer with? Charlie Wilson, hands down.

-On the Disneyfication of characters:

-Hanks said “Movies that celebrate their own nostalgia are a waste of time” and I hope to god he meant Everybody Wants Some!!

-His most exhausting role? Woody, from Toy Story. “It’s hideous making those movies” he claimed.

Anecdote after anecdote, Tom Hanks proved himself worthy of storyteller status. To those of you who didn’t make it in, I wish I could tell you you didn’t miss much, but the truth is, it was an unforgettable evening.

Tribeca Gets it Right by Axing Vaxxed

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In 1998, then-doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study that suggested a link between autism and the mumps-measles-rubella vaccine. Conspiracy theorists have been losing their shit ever since. Wakefield is no longer a doctor because in conducting and publishing that study, he acted in a dishonest, misleading and irresponsible manner, as determined by the General Medical Council (the UK’s licencing body for doctors).

Despite, or maybe because of, that determination Wakefield has doubled down on his study, and by all rational accounts is now using film to advance his anti-vaccine agenda. The end result is a “documentary” written, directed and produced by Wakefield alleging that in 2004 the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention had covered up and/or destroyed evidence of a link between autism and vaccinations.

Wakefield’s film was originally on the Tribeca Film Festival’s 2016 schedule. It was subsequently pulled, raising a whole new set of conspiracy theories. But there is a far simpler explanation for why the film was pulled: it is not art, it is propaganda. Wakefield has a demonstrated bias and a vested interest in advancing one viewpoint, his viewpoint, to the exclusion of all others. He is using his film for that purpose. Even worse, his viewpoint is not only demonstrably wrong, it is dangerous. Death is the inevitable result of its acceptance.

One and a half million children died in 2008 from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccination. ONE AND A HALF MILLION. On a brighter note, two to three million deaths are averted each year by vaccinations for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), and measles. Wakefield, for the sake of furthering his personal agenda, is advocating for a course of action that if followed to its logical conclusion will cause two to three million more deaths each year.

At least Wakefield was not allowed to use the Tribeca Film Festival as a vehicle to disseminate his dangerous message. One can only hope that the Festival’s rejection of Wakefield’s movie will inspire some critical thought about Wakefield’s dubious motivations and clear conflict of interest. Because any “trust no one” mantra should apply not just to the government, but also to the disgraced scientist who has a history of dishonest and misleading conduct.

Tribeca: A Hologram for the King

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I have been on the Dave Eggers train since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (it’s exactly that – you should read it) but over the years he’s proven he writes fiction just as well as non, a 13722902 nd so of course this book was immediately on my nightstand and then devoured into my brain and then shelved politely to await its fate. Little did it, or I, know that just a few years later it would be turned into a movie, prompting Sean to finally give it a read as well (don’t judge him too harshly, he’s mostly literate).

A Hologram for the King tells the story of Alan, a washed-up American businessman in Saudi Arabia trying to make a pitch to the king. This contract will save him from untold embarrassment; back home he has debt everywhere, a resume full of failures, and an oblivious daughter in an expensive college, with tuition due. But the king’s not biting. In fact, the king’s not even around, and this supercity he’s building is languishing in the desert. And poor Alan has nothing better to do, and no choice really, but to sit around and wait.

When Sean was done reading it, I decided to give it a re-read myself, because we both maxresdefault struggled to picture Hanks as Alan Clay. Alan is a loser. He’s beaten down by life, but not in Hanks’s usual sad-sack way. He was too pathetic. But Tom Hanks is not only starring, he’s producing, which means he really likes this project, and he knew what he was getting into.

Tom Tykwer wrote the screenplay and directed the movie, and he made some disappointing choices (he’s also responsible for both Cloud Atlas and Run Lola Run, so you decide whether the man’s a genius or a sadist). I’m too fond of the source material, and every time the film swerved away from it, I grimaced. And some of those edits were undoubtedly good. I just couldn’t give it a fair shake. Would I have enjoyed the movie more had I not read the book?

Tom Hanks is lovely here. This is maybe not as complex a character as his best work usually involves, and that’s kind of true of the movie as a whole: it’s just a little superficial. He plays an everyman – except Alan is actually supposed to be more of a tragic hero a la Death of a Salesman; this version of Alan feels watered down. And he’s supposed A-Hologram-for-the-King-6-600x422 to be a fish out of water – not just the cliched culture clash crap of an American abroad, but of an aging salesman with an old bag of tricks in a newfangled world of young, tech-minded colleagues. The world is shrinking, and moving quickly, and Alan is getting left behind. Movie Alan has more verve than Book Alan, which sounds like a strange thing to complain about, but the truth is, the world already had enough of these Alans. For a movie that could have been refreshingly unHollywood, it sure made some safe choices and went for the audience-friendly ending that smacks of missed opportunity.

Verdict: See it for Hanks, eventually, but you can probably skip the cinema.

Tribeca: Elvis & Nixon

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True Story: in December 1970, Elvis’s dad and his wife, Priscilla, were mad that he’d spent $100K on guns and Mercedes-Benzes for Christmas gifts, so he threw a fit worthy of a teenage girl, stormed out, and caught the next plane going anywhere. Anywhere turned out to be Washington. Elvis had a large collection of police badges, but his Moby Dick, the Indelible-Nixon-Elvis-631.jpg__800x600_q85_crop one he coveted the most but could never land was a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (he believed having one would mean he could travel to any country with drugs and guns). Unable to convince the bureau, Elvis being Elvis went over their heads and straight to the top – to President Nixon. He showed up at the White House in a purple velvet suit with a huge gold belt buckle and his trademark gold sunglasses, and a white-house-warming gift—a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case, which was of course confiscated at the gate. Elvis got his badge though, and asked that the meeting be kept secret. But once he died, the Archives made a fortune selling the official photo, the most-requested Archive photo in the history of the world.

It’s a pretty fucking crazy story, so of course someone had the bright idea to turn it into a movie. Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes share writing credits – yes, that Cary Elwes, who thought he might direct the thing, with Eric Bana as Elvis. That version fell elvis-nixon-michael-shannon-kevin-spacey apart but Michael Shannon was soon onboard, maybe not the most obvious choice to play The King, but he waved his magic wand of executive productionship, and convinced Liza Johnson who’d previously directed him in Return to helm the whole damn thing. With Shannon filling the King’s rhinestoned shoes, it just made sense that Kevin Spacey would slide into the President’s shiny loafers.

Although there’s no official transcript of what happened inside the Oval Office, Johnson somehow captures the moment perfectly, both in tone and within the context of the times. It’s a trifle of a film, its only point to get these two towering and seemingly opposite figures in the room together. But with powerhouses like Spacey and Shannon, that’s more than enough. I took a lot of pleasure from the lack of prosthetics or makeup tricks on hand – neither of these men particularly look like the figures they are playing, and neither lower themselves to impressions. The script even pokes fun at how much taller Shannon is than Elvis. The script is generally pretty breezy, a little satirical, and heaps of fun. The director is quick to point out there aren’t any real jokes in the film, but the absurdist tone earns consistent laughs from the audience.

Let’s be real: Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey are legitimately among the most talented working actors today. The film is worth if for their two names above the marquee. The fact that this offers up a bizarre little footnote in American history is just a bonus, and Elvis and Nixon – who is more fascinating or notorious than these two? Spacey and Shannon clearly delight in tackling these roles, and it’s beyond satisfying to watch them engage in a real battle of egos. Within the confines of the Oval Office, Shannon as Elvis has never been a more physical presence on screen, his every movement keeping the president on his toes but always one step behind. Shannon dominates the screen and keeps Nixon chasing after Elvis, and it’s a marvel to watch.

During the Q&A after the screening, director Liza Johnson said she was drawn to the Elvis-Nixon-Movie-Trailer-Billboard-650 “tonally eccentric” script and wanted the film to match and “embrace the absurdism of the situation. Michael Shannon, describing Elvis as “mysterious”, relied on interviews with Elvis from right around that time to inform his performance, but the film also benefited from Elvis’s good friend (played by Alex Pettyfer in the movie) Jerry Schilling and a White House staffer (portrayed in the movie by Colin Hanks) Egil Krogh to give invaluable insight. Johnson said that “Any day working with Michael Shannon is better than a day not working with Michael Shannon” and that Spacey was a natural fit being an equal in acting, and having previously worked on a Nixon portrayal when he screen-tested for Frost\Nixon.

Bottom line: I enjoyed this very much. There was real spirit, it was a cracking good time, and I found myself making those little smirky-snorty noises, those half laughs that you make unintentionally when you just can’t believe when you’re seeing. It’s unbelievable, but you’d better believe it.

Elvis & Nixon will be out in theatres this Friday, April 22nd – 22 years to the day of Nixon’s death.

Canadian Film Day

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FacebookAvatar_EN It’s National Canadian Film Day! I’m sadly spending it watching American movies in New York City, but not to worry, I celebrated a bit early before I left, and I’ve got just the thing for this fantastic day in cinema (which for some reason is commemorated on 4\20…stupid Canada.)

Canadian cinema will never compete with Hollywood, in part because we don’t have the people or the resources, but also largely because L.A. is already 80% Canadian. Even Matt’s brother lives there! (Hi, Mark). Well, okay, that figure’s a bit high, but all the talented ones are Canadian. Deadpool is Canadian. Seth Rogan. Ryan Gosling. Rachel McAdams. CZgTE5PWwAAfFcE Shatner. Michael Cera. Ellen Page. Jay Baruchel. Catherine O’Hara. Eugene Levy. The Sutherlands. Will Arnett. Victor Garber. Michael J. Fox. All the funny people from SNL. There are talented Canadians in the director’s chair as well: Cronenberg. Cameron. Atom Egoyan. Norman Jewison. The Reitmans. Sarah Polley. Patricia Rozema.

To celebrate more specifically, here are some little gems of Canadian cinema that I think you’ll enjoy no matter what nationality you are.

Xavier Dolan’s Mommy: Before Dolan was directing Adele, Jessica Chastain, Kathy Bates, and Susan Sarandon, he was just a young Quebec boy with a lot of ambition. His movies have been increasingly polished and mature, culminating with Mommy, a disturbing movie about a complex mother-son relationship.

Denys Arcand’s Jésus de Montréal: Although best known for his Oscar-nominated Les invasion barbares (The Barbarian Invasions), an older work in his catalogue, Jesus of Montreal, is quite a trip. A group of actors are hired to put on the passion of the Christ in Montreal. Jesus is interpreted a little differently than usual and the church is not happy. The movie works on its literal level and also as a biblical allegory, so you can watch and rewatch this one and always come away with something new.

Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies: He’s now known for Prisoners and Sicario (and the upcoming Blade Runner sequel) but shortly after Polytechnique, he directed one of Canada’s best films of this millennium. The story follows twins as they follow they unwind the mystery of their immigrant mother’s life after her sudden death. The film is haunting, sharp, and will make you put your head down and weep.

Jean-Marc Vallée’s C.R.A.Z.Y.: You may know Vallée from Dallas Buyer’s Club or Demolition, but Canadians got to know the filmmaker long ago, with solid movies like C.R.A.Z.Y, the story of a young gay man growing up in his conservative father’s household along with 4 brothers in Quebec during the 1960s and 70s. The soundtrack’s spot on, the writing is honest, and the acting is top-notch.

Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg: Described by Maddin as a “docu-fantasia” and by perplexed critics as a surrealist mockumentary, nobody knows exactly what the hell this is, but it IS both an experiment and an experience in cinema. Maddin casts someone else as Maddin and then paints a mythologized, metafictional tribute to his beloved town of Winnipeg. If you love movies, you have to check this out. You’ll feel it in your toes.

Being fairly well-versed in national cinema, Matt, Sean and I also watched a movie by a local filmmaker by the name of Vincent Valentino. We met him briefly at the Monster Pool Horror Anthology and have wanted to see more of his work since. He just happened to have a little ditty about washed up porn stars that starred lots of familiar-to-Ottawa faces, plus the always-arousing presence of Ron Jeremy. And how better to celebrate Canadian Film Day by having a laugh with your friends.

Jenny’s Wedding

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This movie is awful in its way, trite and plodding. It’s a piece of antiquity, not in any charming retro way, but in a flat-out has no reason being in 2016 kind of way.

Jenny (Katharine Heigl) has been hiding a secret from her family, and it’s kind of a biggie. She’s gay. They might stop setting up with guys if only she’d tell them, but while they’re gently prodding her to settle down, she’s surreptitiously planning a wedding with her “roommate” Kitty (Alexis Bledel).

And it turns out she was right to keep this part of herself hidden because when the truth does come out, it doesn’t go well. I’ve never been so disappointed in Tom Wilkinson in my life. That’s not as out of the blue as it sounds – he plays her dad in the movie. And upon reflection, I have indeed been more disappointed in him. Remember that train wreck Unfinished Business? That was a pretty dark period in our relationship.

Anyhow, back to the movie, which is already 20 years out of date before you even drive it off the Netflix lot. But the embarrassing truth is that this movie still made me cry. Twice. Because even though we should have moved on from this story by now, the reality is that not everyone is as cool with these kinds of revelations as they should be. It’s 2016 people: get with the program!

And there’s never an excuse for such a reductionist, trite piece of work. The lesson in tolerance is a little tone deaf. The script sounds like it came from a faded pamphlet shoved through the mail slot by one of their conservative church friends. It’s gross. It’s a washed out version of a movie that came and went at the turn of the century. This one is entirely missable.

One More Time

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960 Christopher Walken in the role he was born to play: a lady-killing crooner. Paul’s on his fifth, maybe sixth, maybe seventh wife. He’s one of (maybe even THE, depending who’s version of his Wikipedia page you believe) most romantic singers of all time, but his star’s been fading of late. It’s not quite the kind of album kids are buying these days, and when he’s asked to open for The Flaming Lips, it’s ironically. He’s living in the slums of The Hamptons for crumb’s sake!

But this is not (just) a movie about an aging artist. Paul is also a failed family man. He has hqdefault two daughters – the dependable Corinne and the mess Jude (Amber Heard), who actually kind of takes after him. So of course they hate each other. He can’t resist giving her advice about her fledgling musical career, and she can’t help reminding him of the many ways he’s disappointed her. And the other sister mopes about hoping any of her soaring, impressing achievements will be noticed by someone, anyone.

giphy Christopher Walken is genius in this. You know you want to watch him sing and swing his little hips, so stop resisting. You must see him do this. The surprise is that Amber Heard is not awful. And believe me, I’d written her off as a floozy. And maybe this was just a fortuitous role for her, but she really seemed to have some substance. You know it pains me to admit that. Plus, her Walken impression is SNL-jeopardy-worthy, and I do mean that from the bottom of my heart.

p.s. To avoid confusion, Paul Giamatti was busy, so the role of agent\manager\lawyer will be played by Oliver Platt, who was perfectly serviceable in the role.

Everybody Wants Some !!

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I was totally fucking bored by this movie. Nothing happened. To call it meandering is to try to put a positive spin on something that was downright pointless. I didn’t crack a smile once, and my only reaction to the film was to cringe at the various combinations of knee socks and wispy mustaches.

Maybe I was just watching this with my vagina, ie: Richard Linklater has made yet another testament to boyhood, with only gross caricatures of women adorning the periphery of his movie. No, not women. The boys aren’t chasing women. They’re chasing pussy. The woman is incidental to the hole she can provide for a moment’s worth of pleasure. Is this something to glorify? Be nostalgic about?

And I’m not just offended on behalf of women. I’m offended on behalf of men, the many men in my life who are not gross or one-dimensional. Who manage to like sex AND treat women with respect. Who think beyond the tips of their penises. They deserve better than this.

And mostly I’m offended on behalf of my $12 and 2 hours. Those I will never get back. I thanks-but-no-thx-300x192 could have spent those on a dime bag and a make-out sesh in the backseat of my car to a rockin 80s soundtrack and had a much better time.