In The Loop

Whoever makes the TV show Veep clearly saw this movie before I did.

Actually, In The Loop kind of feels a bit like a TV show, a more grown-up version of Parks and Recreation, federal rather than local government (British rather than American), shot in a grainy style that gives it that documentary (or mockumentary) feel, though it lacks the assertiveness of the talking-head confessional interviews (and in fact, it turns out to be a spin-off of sorts from the British series In The Thick of It).

To say this is a black comedy, or a satirical one, is selling it short. Sure it’s bleak, but it’s scathingly funny with one-liners from top to bottom, nonstop, biting biting biting. I loved it.

Both the US and the UK seem on the verge of war in the middle east and some poor minister gets trapped into saying war is “unforseeable” on some radio program, and the press goes nuts. The action volleys between the two countries, which allows the likes of James Gandolfini as a general and Mimi Kennedy as the Assistant Secretary General for Diplomacy to shine. But this is not their movie. This movie really belongs to the brits, and Tom Hollander as the hapless Minister for International Development really sells the bumbling politician, and is a great foil to Peter Capaldi, who, as the Prime Minister’s director of communications, gets to lambast him and all others in his path with relentless tongue-lashings I guarantee you won’t find anywhere else.

While the war looms large (some trying to prevent it, others gleefully encouraging it), the bedraggled minister cannot neglect his own constituency, which is brilliantly represented by Steve Coogan and the wall that may or may not crumble into the path of his fervently gardening mother. This makes for a potent contrast to what’s going on at the UN, with leaked documents and fabricated intelligence being bandied about about as quickly as the word FUCK (said a notable 135 times).

My ribs ached from laughing so hard. Political satire may not be everyone’s idea of a good time, but In The Loop’s about as good as example as you’ll ever come across. The acting is spot-on, and though it’s a large ensemble, everyone seems to have their time to shine. The writing is sharp and takes no prisoners. Favourite line: “You are a real boring fuck. Sorry, sorry, I know you disapprove of swearing so I’ll sort that out. You are a boring F, star, star, CUNT!” Okay, I lied My actual favourite line is “In England we have a saying for a situation such as this, which is that it’s difficult difficult lemon difficult” (as opposed to easy peasy lemon squeezy). That one made Diet Pepsi shoot out the wrong hole. You could all go watch this and you’d all be back with your own favourite lines, and there would be hundreds, all different. The script is that good, and also that jam-packed!

To finally come back to that first sentence about the TV show Veep (I’ll get there!): both Anna Chlumsky and Zach Woods have roles in this movie that are near-identical to the ones they play on the show. It made me woozy! I said as much Sean who reminded me that the movie came first, which almost made me feel dumb until I had to explain to him that Chlumsky is My Girl. Who’s dumb now?

Don’t answer that.

A Walk In The Woods

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If you’ve seen any publicity for the movie A Walk in the Woods, you might be thinking it’s a Wild for the older gentleman, and the East coast. And you couldn’t be faulted for thinking that, but there’s a little more (or, a little less) to it than that.

Bill Bryson is a writer I admire and have read widely. This is the story of how he decided to walk the 2000-plus miles of the Appalachian trail and how his wife nearly derailed that trip by demanding that he not get murdered while on it. What a bitch. So Bill Bryson empties out his little black book calling everyone in his Rolodex and then a few more, plus their grandmothers and pool boys, but none of them are as fond of bleeding feet, tin can dinners, and getting eaten by bears as he is, and so he scrapes the bottomest bottom of the barrel by accepting the company of a man he hasn’t been in touch with for decades (and for good reason).

These two men are played by Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.

Robert Redford has been trying to get this movie made for 15 years, and originally imagined it as a vehicle for himself and buddy Paul Newman. Unfortunately that pairing didn’t work out (Newman passed away in 2008) but it’s hard to see him in the role looking half as grizzled and damaged as Nolte does. He’s exceedingly convincing as someone on the constant verge of cardiac arrest.

This movie doesn’t pack the emotional punch that Wild does, nor does it mean to. It’s an odd-

couple buddy movie, just two old guys cracking wise and getting into elderly shenanigans along the way. And it’s fun. Bryson is a witty guy, and script writers Rick Kerb and Bill Holderman keep the one-liners coming. They’re getting quippy with it.

Emma Thompson as Bryson’s wife, and Nick Offerman as a knowledgeable salesman, are grossly underused. Even more criminally neglected: the scenery, which we know is there, and is beautiful, but the camera forgets to dwell on it. Wild’s cinematography capitalized on the wide open spaces but A Walk in the Woods plays it a little too cool.

I was wary when I heard about this movie. Redford struck me as way too old to play the part (I remembered Bryson as being maybe 40ish in the book) and he is, but the story’s tweaked enough that it becomes a gentle treatise on aging and living a meaningful life and the value old friends. But substantial? Not so much. It’s pretty much exactly what it says it is: a nice little stroll through the woods.

Back to School

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Detachment – Wow, this was a crazy-angry movie. Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher who keeps severing his connection to the students by moving on from one job to the next. This movie shows a one-month period in a high school where the students are apathetic (at best) and the staff (including principle Marcia Gay Harden, counsellor Lucy Lui and teacher Christina Hendricks, all excellent) are all burnt out. It’s tough to watch; director Tony Kaye slaps us over and over in the face with such consant degradation that we too become detached, and the sorrow is less effective. This is an ode to the failures of the public school system, and though I know it has its flaws, it seems downright impossible that there is nary a student nor administrator in all of Queens who has ever experienced even a singular moment of happiness. Nothing here is implausible, it’s just that not every bad thing can possibly happen does happen, and certainly not all before lunch. It’s like Kaye has gleefully scraped together a big pile of dog shit, and he’s intent on rubbing our noses in it for as long as we hold out (which makes me feel dumb for sticking it out).

There’s a lot going on stylistically – the chalkboard occasionally gets animated, and there are sporadic interviews that made me wonder at first if I’d accidentally stumbled onto a documentary. But then the drama kicks in, and we quickly overdose from it. Tony Kaye is notoriously difficult to work with (the only other feature film he was able to bring to screen forced Edward Norton to pull rank and recut American History X himself)., so it’s suprising so many stars returned his calls to get this film done. It would seem, however, that some have sincelearned their lesson. Bryan Cranston has said that he has not seen the film “Because I felt that Carl Lund, the writer of Detachment, wrote a really beautiful, haunting script. And I didn’t feel that it was honored. I was upset with that. I really was. And so I didn’t see the movie. Tony Kaye is a very complicated… interesting fellow. I don’t believe that I’ll be working with him again. I didn’t not get along with him on a personal level. But I just honor the writing. I really think that writing is the most important element there is. It is the springboard. It is where everything starts. And if you don’t honor that – which I didn’t feel it was – then where are you? And I’m not the only actor on that film to feel that way.”

Half Nelson – Ryan Gosling’s character in Half Nelson, Dan, is a lot like Adrien Brody’s in Detachment. They can both get it together in their rough classrooms, but their personal lives are in tatters. An ex-girlfriend rattles Dan to the point of getting high in the school locker room, where he’s discovered by his student, Drey (Shareeka Epps). The friendship that grows out of this encounter is sweet and wary, and Dan feels understandbly uncomfortable being so vulnerable in front of one of his kids. Drey sees his addiction the way Dan sees the bad influence of drug dealer Frank (Anthony Mackie) in her life, but they can’t seem to resist going down their own wrong paths, let alone keep each other from doing the same. Dan is terrific with his students but can’t get through a day without freebasing cocaine. It’s tough to watch, but so much more rewarding than Detachment, because although we see real gritty misery, there are also small veins for hope.

Although I enjoyed the performaces in Detachment, there were almost too many sub-plots to serve any one story well. Bryan Cranston and Blythe Danner and James Caan were pratically throw-aways. In Half Nelson, Gosling, Epps, and Mackie dazzle with performances that are really nuanced and subtle. You get the sense that Kaye wants to knock you over the head with his themes whereas Half Nelson is more comfortable asking you to make your own decisions. There may not be any great heralding sense of triumph, but neither do we bask in self-pity. Gosling earned an Oscar nomination for his work on the film; and it was scored by a talented Canadian band by the name of Broken Social Scene.

So there you have it, two uplifting movies just in time for back to school! Are you ready for a new school year at your house? Did you have a favourite teacher growing up? Were they mostly sober? How about a favourite school movie?

Irrational Man

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Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a burned out, impotent philosophy professor who’s looking for the will to live. A fellow teacher (Parker Posey) throws herself at him and a pretty and 45-Irrational-Man_1 promising student (Emma Stone) engages him mentally, but he’s still, shall we say, unresponsive, until he starts plotting a hypothetical murder.

Joaquin and Emma have an easy rapport that’s eminently watchable, when the dialogue’s not getting in the way. The story is partially inspired by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, about a university student who commits murder to prove that he is morally superior to other people. But both Dostoevsky’s student and Woody Allen’s professor are only pretending that murder would be to help others, or the world in general. In fact, it’s a pretty selfish pursuit, even when purely cerebral. Can thoughts of murder really be a “creative 635725682661364214-11-1600x900-c-default endeavour”, or is that just the typical justification of an unfulfilled philosophy professor?

Woody Allen struggles to sound authentic around some of the philosophical arguments, and Joaquin doesn’t do a much better job conveying them. And Allen’s dialogue surrounding the erection difficulty is as stilted and awkward as only Woody Allen can be – which doesn’t quite sound right coming from Joaquin, even with his 30 pounds of pot belly. Allen’s more adept with the cynicism and the dark humour (not to mention age-inappropriate romance), and when the material’s good, he’s hired actors talented enough to handle it. So this movie is not without merit. It’s also just not very original (even among Allen’s oeuvre) or very necessary, and the unevenness almost drove me batty.

Verdict: quintessential mediocre Allen.

A Little Competition Among Friends

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It started last year on a lark: Matt would be celebrating his birthday, and we needed a theme. It so happened that at the time he was watching a season (possibly Canadian) of The Amazing Race, and since I don’t watch TV, he’d gamely recap and act out the previous night’s episode for me at work the next day. He was so enthusiastic and I was so captivated that we agreed that we’d like to run an Amazing Race, and so we did.

Well, Matt did. And so did a number of our friends. But the thing about an amazing race is that it takes a lot of hard work and organization. A regular race might run itself but an amazing one needs a ringmaster. Last year’s race was so intensely competitive that it literally produced retching, bloodshed, and even – if you can believe it – rampant, desperate cheating.

This weekend we’re heading back to the cottage for a new edition: The Amazing Race: After Dark. Ten people are racing but there’s only one cup. And I’ll be the one in the middle, not just mitigating the chaos, but orchestrating it. All in good fun of course, but if you have the opportunity to make your friends breathe fire (last year’s showstopper, a scotch bonnet pepper, is THIRTY times hotter than a jalapeno), why not take it?

I said before that I don’t watch TV, but for better or worse, I do watch movies, and that brings me to the embarrassing admission that I’ve watched Rat Race more than once.

The premise: a bunch of people are randomly selected to run an absurd from race from Vegas to New Mexico that wealthy people can watch and bet on. There aren’t a lot of rules to this race but there is a $2 million cash prize at stake, so you can bet these people race hard.

Starring: John Cleese, Whoopi Goldberg, Mr. Bean, Cuba Gooding Jr., Jon Lovitz, Kathy Najimy, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer, Dave Thomas, Amy Smart, Dean Cain, Wayne Knight, Kathy Bates. Pretty much the weirdest ensemble you can imagine; no less than 3 Oscar WINNERS in this cast, where the acting mostly consists of running from one sight gag to the other, only some of them actually landing.

It makes you wonder – with $2M on the line, what would you do to get your hands on it? Or, what wouldn’t you do? Because my friends will sell their souls to get their names engraved on a trophy.

Have you ever run an Amazingish Race? Would you eat the scotch bonnet pepper?

We Are Your Friends

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So we checked out the new Zac Efron movie last night.

Settle down, settle down. The only real heat came before the movie even started rolling.

We were out at Silver City and there was a scuffle between 4 men and 2 women (and 6 heavy french accents) in our row. The theatre had had to be emptied because security hadn’t had a chance to do proper bag checks and wanding but of course people dragged their heels, hesitant to leave their precious seats. When we eventually got back in, the clever draping they’d done with those flimsy free magazines wasn’t quite enough to make clear their “reservations” and – scandalous! – a couple of women were sitting right where the men had wanted to be sitting! And even though there were plenty of other spots the men could have moved to, or the women for that matter, both groups were equal parts obstinate and hard-headed, and a good old-fashioned stand-off ensued. Security was called but even they couldn’t convince either group to budge, at which time I said pointedly to Sean “Want to move? Let’s move.” Yes, it was a means to an end, but I’d also decided that no matter who won, they were losers, and I didn’t really want to spend the next two hours sitting beside them. So Sean and I moved down toward the front while the rest of the theatre applauded and security thanked us profusely.

We Are Your Friends is about a group of young, 20-something friends who are still trying to figure out who they are and what they want to be when they group up (and yet are still more mature than the feuding 40-somethings in our theatre). Zac Efron plays an aspiring DJ who believes that all he needs to be successful is “a laptop, some talent, and 1 track”. So he’s always working on that one track, and veteran\famous DJ James Reed (Wes Bentley) sort of takes him under his wing and shows him a slightly more authentic approach to creating music from computers.

This movie is not very interesting or realistic but it did succeed at making me feel awfully old (and I think I’m maybe 5 year older than Zac). But the truth is, “kids today” are learning to DJ with their iphones and their macbooks. I used to date a DJ, back when a DJ booth was tricked out with gear, decks and controllers and motherfucking turntables. Sounds were mixed from vinyl, not Apple. Some things appear to have stayed the same: the obsessive recording, the ubiquitous headphones, and the lifestyle of drinks and drugs and all-night parties. But the culture is different. Efron and friends believe they can be rich and famous doing these gigs. DJs used to live in obscurity. They got paid for their work, but they were background players unless they managed to hook up with a Fresh Prince. Today they have whole festivals devoted to EDM; 20 000 people watching 1 guy slightly adjusting levers on a box hooked up to his laptop. Calvin Harris was 2014’s highest-paid DJ, raking in $66 million dollars, but even making half that like Avicii and Steve Aoki is pretty decent scratch for kids who started with your basic bass sample and have evolved into beat scientists.

The movie manages to be pretty clichéd about a subject matter we’ve rarely seen on-screen (and no, Anna Kendrick’s turn as an “alternative” masher-upper of pop songs in Pitch Perfect doesn’t count); it’s vapid, but stylish as hell (so trendy it’ll probably look dated 10 minutes from now). It strikes me as Entourage-Lite: the millennial take on ambition and aimlessness. Take that for what you will.

To The Wonder

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Oh, they’re in love. Terribly, terribly in love. They’re that gross couple you roll your eyes at because they think they’re the first ones to be so over the moon with each other. Ugh.

The movie opens with obligatory montage of just how very happy Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and Neil (Ben Affleck) are. It reminds me a bit of a french, pretentious (redundant?) version of how Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind begins, which immediately makes me feel like this won’t end well. Marina and her daughter move from Paris to Oklahoma and for some reason nobody suspects that this will be a jarring downgrade. I visited both within 2 months ago and yeah, not comparable no matter how much Affleck peen you’re getting. The only thing worse than her syrupy narration is his whispery one. Careful you don’t strain your eyes from rolling them deep backward into the dark recesses of your brain.

And then she burns the dinner! Oh, should I have said: spoiler aleart! Spoiler alert, the reality of every day life together starts to cool their ardour a bit. And the further apart they drift, the more she turns toward fellow exile and Catholic priest (Javier Bardem) and he gravitates toward an old flame (Rachel McAdams).

Is now a good time to mention that this is a Terrence Malick film? It was released just a year after Tree of Life (only his 6th feature in 40 years) and is also semi-autobiographical, the first of his films to be set entirely in modern day. There was no script, just pages and pages of thoughts. The actors were simply told to play the emotions without speaking and while there’s plenty of voice over, there is hardly any dialogue.

What can I say about Terrence Malick other than he’s a polarizing film maker. He’s certainly a visionary but critics can’t seem to agree if he’s a genius or a bit of a dullard. When it played at the Venice Film Festival, it was met with both boos and cheers.

Malick must commit tonnes of footage to film. In post-production he creates and hacks in equal measure, sometimes losing entire characters (Kurylenko made him promise that Marina would remail in the film, but supporting roles featuring Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain, Michael Sheen, Amanda Peet, Barry Pepper and Michael Shannon all ended up on the editing room floor). His imagery is beautiful, and this particular cake is frosted with generous dollops of religion. He’s exploring love in different ways and settings. This isn’t a narrative, it isn’t a story, it’s more a philosophical treatise on love. If you know Malick, then you’re used to the stylistic montages, though this one feels more fragmentary than most.

Just between you and me, I think Malick’s movies are getting increasingly masturbatory as we go along. He loves his long, meandering shots, and who cares whether they’re actually pertinent to the “plot”? Plot? Hahaha. Plot. Is this meditation or pretension? There’s a lot here that can be only experienced intuitively, which makes it quite demanding of its viewer.

This was the very last movie review that Roger Ebert submitted before his death; it was published posthumously 2 days later. Ebert was in his last days and must have known it (have you seen Life Itself?). His reading of the film is a rather spiritual one:

“A more conventional film would have assigned a plot to these characters and made their motivations more clear. Malick, who is surely one of the most romantic and spiritual of filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not able to conceal the depth of his vision.

“Well,” I asked myself, “why not?” Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren’t many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren’t many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn’t that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?

There will be many who find “To the Wonder” elusive and too effervescent. They’ll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need.”

A little light incest

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I just watched Hyde Park on Hudson, in which the fabulous Bill Murray plays president Franklin Roosevelt, who engaged in an affair with his cousin Daisy (Laura Linney), among many others (women, not cousins. as far as I know).

FDR was a powerful man and president and Bill Murray manages to show his loneliness and sadness without giving up his strength. Linney and Murray embrace the occasional absurdity of their situation, Daisy realizing, while giving ole FDR a handie in the car, that they are not just 5th cousins “but also really good friends.” Ahem.

During this time period, FDR is visited at his vacation estate not just by the many women he’s fucking, but also by King George and his wife. A “social” rather than official visit, the royals hope the USA will commit to helping them in the war against Germany. In turn, the Roosevelts feed them hotdogs, and created a scandal with bigger headlines than Hitler was currently enjoying.

Although rooted in fact, this isn’t Lincoln. It’s a comedy. Murray shows a lot of range and gives us a very interesting portrait of a man who is historically significant but also just a man. The performances are good but I’m not sure the movie really conveys anything fair or enlightening about the events. But who cares, it’s Bill Murray!

What’s your absolute favourite Bill Murray movie?

Escapism (Or Why I’m Not At Work Right Now)

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There’s a heat wave in Ottawa, folks. The humidex says 40 bloody degrees. Is it hot where you are too? Our local art house theatre, the estimable Bytowne on Rideau street, helpfully suggests that their cinema is in fact air-conditioned, and even better, they sell ice cream at their concession stand. So there’s always that.

But today Sean and I are playing heat wave hookie. There’s a water park down the road so we’re slathering on the sunscreen (Sean says: smells like vacation sex!) and hitting the (fake) waves.

Now, one thing to consider when you’re off to the local water park is all those news stories you’ve read about it recently, and in particular, its “dismal safety record.” The good news is: it was only found guilty on 6 of 11 charges, and the 9 others were withdrawn. So that’s not bad, right? I feel like I can beat the 50\50 odds at least half the time.

The truth is, you have to remember that these parks are staffed by the same kids in Adventureland. I mean, would you literally trust Jesse Eisenberg or Kristen Stewart with your life? Those two asshats, plus a gang of their ne’ever do well friends, run the games section of a run down amusement park while dreaming of being ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD and having these deep and meaningful conversations while completely ignoring their customers. Have you seen this movie? Did it remind you of any of your own after school jobs? It’s pretty scary when teenagers run the world,

In The Way, Way Back, a kid named Duncan gets hired to work at a water park called Water Wizz, which is an awful name for a park. It reminds you too much of what you’re floating in. I mean, realistically, we know it’s 40% urine. Those kids over there haven’t gone to the washroom ONCE since arriving but they’re throwing back juice boxes like it’s happy hour. Water parks probably don’t even HAVE bathroom facilities for kids. Why waste the space? (This reminds of a scene in Grown Ups where Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider are all floating around at a water park, not coincidentally also called Water Wizz since it was filmed in the same park, and suddenly the water around them all turns dark blue – apparently there’s a chemical that can notify us that someone has peed, and I can’t decide if that’s brilliant or just tmi. The point being: I guess grown ups (if you can really call David Spade a grown up) do it too.) Anyway, back to the movie I meant to be talking about. Duncan seeks refuge at this pissy water park because his mom (Toni Colette) is neglecting him on their summer vacation, and her boyfriend (Steve Carrell) is emotionally abusive toward him. So a pool full of pee starts to seem not so bad.

Me? I happen to like my Mom’s boyfriend, despite his constant cracking of sex jokes, which – hello – are about my Mom. So I’m not fleeing step-parent abuse. But I am avoiding work. And the weird thing about work is, I (and likely lots of you too) have this weird thing about skipping work just to laze around watching Netflix. I mean, that’s what Sundays are for. If you miss work, you need a Reason. See what I did there? Capital R Reason. A good one. Like going out-of-town with my hunny to get an irresponsible sunburn and possibly also athlete’s foot.

Anyway, this was a good movie review, wasn’t it? To recap:

Adventureland: high on nostalgia; has some great supporting characters.

Grown Ups: funny to people who like pee jokes.

The Way, Way Back: quietly charming and sweet and funny.

What’s your favourite summer movie? How are you staying cool? What do you skip work to do?

American Ultra

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We got to check out the Ottawa screening of American Ultra last night. I wasn’t excited to see it but hey, it’s a free movie! Why wasn’t I excited? Two reasons:

I haven’t cared for Jesse Eisenberg since Zombieland. I have never been able to get over his one whiny character he always plays (at least I hope it’s a character). And now he’s going to undoubtedly be whiny Lex Luthor in Batman vs. Superman which worries me a lot. Even worse, I’m not sure I’ve ever liked a movie starring Kristen Stewart, because she seems to be exclusively in bad tween movies and also she never smiles or changes expressions as far as I can tell.

So those were two big strikes against American Ultra. And I have to say, my worries in that regard were largely unwarranted. Which is not to say either of these actors surprised me with their performances. They were really the same as they ever are. It just worked in this movie for some reason, maybe because Topher Grace was more annoying than the two of them put together, so I had to cheer for the good guys as the lesser of two evils.

It also helped that American Ultra was surprisingly decent as a popcorn movie. Looking back, there are some parallels between this and Kingsman: The Secret Service. Kingsman is hands-down better, don’t get me wrong, but American Ultra has the same kind of feel and, like Kingsman did with Colin Firth, American Ultra made me believe that Jesse Eisenberg could take down a whole army of government-sponsored assassins (or “assets” because apparently the government owns them). Which was essential when the plot of American Ultra consists of Jesse Eisenberg killing lots and lots of people with whatever items are close at hand.

The difference between this and Kingsman is the subtext (or lack thereof). Kingsman knows exactly what it wants to be and the message it wants to convey. American Ultra, not so much. If there is a message here, I totally didn’t get it, as the message I thought was being delivered for most of the movie disappeared and then was completely contradicted by the ending as American Ultra tried to wrap itself up. And without a message, this movie is just violence. Well-done, over-the-top, spectacular violence, but still just violence. And that means American Ultra will be quickly forgotten by me and probably everyone else who sees it. It is a time waster, a missed opportunity, and nothing more.

Apollo Ape and Chip the Brick, on the other hand? Now there’s a team! I would much rather have seen that movie.