And now for some sexy silliness. Director Gregg Araki created the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin, but here he’s just having fun. In the first hour of Kaboom, I lost track of how many characters had sex with each other – it’s just about non-stop and guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, guy-on-girl, guy-and-girl-on-guy, etc. I would characterize the sex as casual, but that would make it seem that the characters were having even a modicum of difficulty in finding partners. Anyway, the chaotic sexathon is very funny. The last twenty minutes takes the film into a campy version of a paranoid apocalypse film, before an abrupt (and I mean abrupt) ending. Did I mention the bad guys in the animal masks? It’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Have two cocktails and then pop in the DVD.
comedy
Midnight in Paris: Woody’s best in a long, long time
With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.
Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s. Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein. He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.
Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue. McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson. She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.
As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast. Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances. Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali. Cotillard is luminous.
It makes my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.
Bridesmaids: Funny but incomplete
Bridesmaids is a funny movie, but one that could have been much better. In a role that she wrote for herself, Kristen Wiig plays a woman whose insecurities keep her from seeing the good and the possible in her life. Instead, she wreaks havoc on her best friend’s wedding planning and is about to sabotage a sweet romance with Chris O’Dowd. So far, so good.
Producer Judd Apatow salted Wiig’s screenplay with some low brow stuff. Now, I like to see gals at an upscale wedding boutique puking on each other and shitting themselves as much as the next guy (and it was the guys in the audience that were laughing the most at that scene). But the Apatow additions didn’t quite mesh with the central story.
Still, we can conclude that Kristen Wiig has what it takes to carry a movie by herself. Hopefully, next time she’ll get her script greenlighted as is.
DVD of the Week: Hail! The Conquering Hero
This brilliantly funny movie is one of Preston Sturges’ less well known great comedies. Eddie Bracken plays a would-be soldier discharged for hay fever – but his hometown mistakenly think that he is sent home a war hero. Hilarity ensues. All the funnier when you realize that this film was made in 1944 amid our nation’s most culturally patriotic period.
Turner Classic Movies broadcasts Hail! The Conquering Hero several times a year, and a new DVD has been released today.
Coming up on TV: An Anti-war Masterpiece
Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting the 1964 The Americanization of Emily on April 7. Set in England just before the D-Day invasion, The Americanization of Emily is a biting satire and one of the great anti-war movies. James Garner plays an admiral’s staff officer charged with locating luxury goods and willing English women for the brass. Julie Andrews plays an English driver who has lost her husband and other male family members in the War. She resists emotional entanglements with other servicemen whose lives may be put at risk, but falls for Garner’s “practicing coward”, a man who is under no illusions about the glory of war and is determined to stay as far from combat as possible.
Unfortunately, Garner’s boss (Melvyn Douglas) has fits of derangement and becomes obsessed with the hope that the first American killed on the beach at D-Day be from the Navy. Accordingly, he orders Garner to lead a suicide mission to land ahead of the D-Day landing, ostensibly to film it. Fellow officer James Coburn must guarantee Garner’s martyrdom.
It’s a brilliant screenplay from Paddy Chayefsky, who won screenwriting Oscars for Marty, The Hospital and Network.
Today, Americanization holds up as least as well as its contemporary Dr. Strangelove and much better than Failsafe.
Reportedly, both Andrews and Garner have tagged this as their favorite film.
One of the “Three Nameless Broads” bedded by the Coburn character is played by Judy Carne, later of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
Potiche: Funny French Farce
This delightful French farce of feminist self-discovery is the funniest movie in over a year, and another showcase for Catherine Deneuve (as if she needs one). DeNeuve plays a 1977 potiche, French for “trophy housewife”, married to a guy who is a male chauvinist pig both by choice and cluelessness. He is also the meanest industrialist in France – Ebenezer Scrooge would be a softie next to this guy – and the workers in his factories are about to explode. He becomes incapacitated, and she must run the factory.
Now, this is a familiar story line for gender comedy – why is it so damn funny? It starts with the screenplay, which is smart and quick like the classic screwball comedy that American filmmakers don’t make anymore. And the cast is filled with proven actors who play each comic situation with complete earnestness, no matter how absurd.
Director Francois Ozon, best known in the US for Swimming Pool and 8 Women, adapted the screenplay from a play and has a blast skewering late-70s gender roles and both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Gerard Depardieu plays the Communist mayor, who is both the husband’s nemesis and the wife’s former fling. Two of the very best French comic players, Fabrice Luchini and Karen Viard, shine in co-starring roles as the husband and his secretary.
Blogging from Cinequest: Here’s the Kicker
The biggest surprise at San Jose’s Cinequest film festival so far is the indie comedy Here’s the Kicker, written by its star, Ian Michaels. The relationship of a prematurely retired football player and his girlfriend is being battered by their dead-end jobs in LA; (she is a make up artist – in porn films). To save their relationship, he agrees to move back to her hometown in Texas where they can open a salon/saloon: a combo beauty parlor and sports bar. Just as they are leaving on the road trip, he is offered his dream job as a football scout. When is he going to get the nerve to tell her? Along the way, they pick up his obnoxious former teammate and, most hilariously, his dad, who does NOT want to return to alcohol rehab. Many guffaws ensue in this all too rare occurrence – a satisfying American film comedy.
It’s hard to write comedy. Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies. So Ian Michaels deserves some recognition, and, above all, to get more screenplays greenlighted.
As the girlfriend, Sarah Smick succeeds in remaining sympathetic despite being continually aggrieved – no easy accomplishment. Luce Rains is great as the drunk dad.
According to Ian Michaels at the screening, Director/Cinematographer/Editor Chris Harris made the key decision to cut some early scenes so the road trip could commence sooner. Obviously, that move worked. Here’s the Kicker deserves a wide release.
Kaboom: A trippy sex comedy
Director Gregg Araki created the brilliant and searing Mysterious Skin, but here he’s just having fun. In the first hour of Kaboom, I lost track of how many characters had sex with each other – it’s just about non-stop and guy-on-guy, girl-on-girl, guy-on-girl, guy-and-girl-on-guy, etc. I would characterize the sex as casual, but that would make it seem that the characters were having even a modicum of difficulty in finding partners. Anyway, the chaotic sexathon is fun and very funny. The last twenty minutes takes the film into a campy version of a paranoid apocalypse film, before an abrupt (and I mean abrupt) ending. Did I mention the bad guys in the animal masks? It’s fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Cedar Rapids
Cedar Rapids is surprisingly winning comedy about a guy (Ed Helm) whose life is so boring that an insurance agent conference in Cedar Rapids is a revelatory experience. Helm plays a character whose sincerity and decency elevate his guileless cluelessness. There are excellent supporting performances by Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and the irrepressible John C. Reilly.
This could have been a much courser and a lesser movie in the wrong hands. It’s directed by Miguel Arteta, who also brought an appealing sense of humanity to the underrated The Good Girl and Youth in Revolt.
2010 in Review: The Year of Lousy Comedies
It’s not that weren’t ANY good comedies in 2010 – just not many. And none made my list of the best films of the year. The funniest movie was Iron Man 2, a comedy masquerading as a super hero movie.
Going the Distance and I Love You, Phillip Morris were good romantic comedies – a particularly meager genre this year. Going the Distance was a rarity – a sweet, smart, funny and successful romantic comedy for adults. Screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe tried a novel approach that respected the audience – creating characters like the ones we know in real life, who talk and act like real people do. Instead of an implausible set-up, the conflict was the real problem of a bi-coastal romance. The offbeat I Love You, Phillip Morris was a gay version of the con man, prison and rom com genres, and the risk paid off.
Once, we get past the three best comedies, there were the passable (but not especially noteworthy) Get Him to the Greek, Morning Glory, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Please Give, Get Low, Love and Other Drugs, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Youth in Revolt, Cyrus and Death at a Funeral.
The Locksmith, a funny little movie which won the low-budget award at Sundance, didn’t even get a theatrical release.
It was disappointing, because even the good 2010 comedies didn’t match up with 2009’s really funny and original movies: (500) Days of Summer, Away We Go, Zombieland, The Hangover, In the Loop, Funny People and I Love You, Man.
This year, we had crappy comedies like Pirate Radio, Date Night and Soul Kitchen. The worst movies that I saw this year were so-called comedies Tooth Fairy and Leap Year – two films that no one thought were good (but that I was stuck with on a long airline flight). Not to mention that the most reviled movies of the year included the alleged comedies Sex in the City 2, Valentine’s Day, The Back-up Plan, Due Date, How Do You Know, Yogi Bear and Little Fockers.
So here’s the trailer for a non-lousy comedy (a romantic comedy, even), the original and funny Going the Distance.