The title character in Dom Hemingway is always in a determined hurry, one of those guys whose brow is always 12 inches in front of his feet. He is played by Jude Law as a force of nature who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. Dom Hemingway is a none-too-smart professional safe-cracker who has taken the rap for his partners and is just getting out after twelve years in the slammer. He’s been fantasizing about what he wants to do when he gets out, and he intends to do it all in as compressed a time period as possible. Unfortunately, as he tells a small boy, “Dom is English for unlucky sonofabitch”. His headlong onslaught into misadventure is ribald, profane and pretty funny.
This movie is not a masterpiece. Think of Dom Hemingway as The Wolf of Wall Street Lite. Still, Jude Law is very watchable and very funny, as is Richard E. Grant as his almost-as-unlucky and almost-as-dim buddy. Director Richard Shepard made a much better movie in 2005, The Matador with Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear. Still, Dom Hemingway works as a pedal-to-the-metal romp.
I saw Dom Hemingway three weeks ago at Cinequest 2014.
Along with The Grand Seduction, the Israeli caper comedy Hunting Elephants has been the audience favorite at Cinequest. Apparently, Israelis see just as little generosity, fair-mindedness and decency in their bankers as we do in ours. When a particularly smarmy banker goes too far, a victimized family unleashes a team of septuagenarians led by a 12-year-old to make things right. The old guys are veterans of Irgun, the Zionist terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective) who forced an end to the British Mandate in Palestine, so they’re a particularly tough set of characters (even ravaged as they are by age). To their – and his – discomfort, they are teamed with an effete and pretentious scoundrel from the British stage (Patrick Stewart).
The genius of Hunting Elephants is that it combines the comic potential of a coming of age story, a geezer liberalization tale, a gang-that-couldn’t-shoot-straight saga and a fish-out-of-water (the Patrick Stewart character) farce. Mixed with the poignancy of the boy and the old men grasping for some dignity, the result is satisfying crowd pleaser.
The Italian comedy Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot is centered around Paolo, a hard-drinking slob who works in a cafe kitchen in the Italian region that borders Slovenia. Boorish as he is, Paolo is mostly marked for his unrestrained selfishness. “You are a bad man,” he is told. When an aunt dies, he is dismayed to learn that, not only has he not inherited anything of value, he is to burdened for a few days by her grandson, his nephew. Having been raised in isolation, the nephew is an odd duck with some tendencies of autism and/or Asberger’s. Paolo wants to dump the kid until he finds out that the nephew is a savant in one area that Paolo just might be able to exploit.
The comedy comes from the outrageousness of Paolo’s bad behavior (a very funny sprinkling of ashes, for example) and his venal attempts to profit from the nephew. Of course, he has an opportunity for redemption at the end. Although I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it, it’s all pretty funny, and Zoran, My Nephew the Idiot is a pretty satisfying little comedy.
What kind of douchebag would fake his own death to see who shows up to his funeral? Indeed, in the comedy Friended to Death, there’s a reason why everyone calls Michael Harris a douchebag. He is a colossal jerk who revels in the misfortunes of others. In his job as a parking enforcement officer, he’s a gleeful Johnny Appleseed of misery. Worse yet, he is a social media addict who narcissistically insists on constantly blasting his escapades on Facebook and Twitter. He’s oblivious that his own social media proves himself to be the asshole everybody says that he is.
You know that Michael is ripe for a comeuppance, and he gets a dose of his own medicine when one of his premature vehicle tows unleashes an unhinged enemy for life. There are plenty of madcap moments as Michael (Ryan Hansen from TV’s Friends with Benefits) and his reluctant co-conspirator Emile (James Immekus) frantically try to conceal their hoax.
Friended to Death writer-director Sarah Smick and co-writer Ian Michaels archly comment on the “social” in social media. Their Michael Harris says “I have 417 friends – you don’t expect me to know ALL of them!” and “I speak in text”. Really smart comedy writing is pretty rare, and Smick and Michaels have the gift. Michaels got the idea after reading about a guy who faked his own death and wrote scathing rebukes to those who missed his faux memorial. By dropping that kernel into our current environment of over-sharing, Smick and Michaels were able to alchemize it into a biting social satire.
Smick and Michaels are longtime collaborators who married last October. In 2011, Smick and Michaels brought their equally funny Here’s the Kickerto Cinequest; (Michaels directed that one). Here’s the Kicker is available streaming on YouTube and is also is out on DVD.
In Friended to Death, Smick and Michaels play characters trying to expose the fraud. They are very good in their roles, as is veteran Robert R. Shafer (Bob Vance in The Office) as that boss who just can’t restrain himself from yelling.
In Friended to Death, TMI becomes LOL. Pointedly smart and well-crafted dark comedies don’t come along every day. Don’t miss Friended to Death, playing again at Cinequest tonight and on Friday.
The indie comedy Friended to Death has its US premiere tonight at Cinequest, and it’s not the first time for the filmmakers. Friended to Death writer-director Sarah Smick and co-writer Ian Michaels brought their Here’s the Kickerto Cinequest in 2011 (Michaels directed that one). Smick and Michaels also act in both movies.
In Here’s the Kicker,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.
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 Cinequest screening, Producer/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.
Good news. Here’s the Kicker is available streaming on YouTube. It’s also is now out on DVD. Please go to the movie’s Netflix page and click SAVE – once it gets enough SAVES, it will become available on Netflix.
It’s hard to write comedy. Otherwise, we’d be seeing lots of good comedies. That’s why it’s worth tagging along on the uproarious road trip in Here’s the Kicker.
Actress Lake Bell wrote/directed/stars in In a World…, the story of an underachieving voice coach who still lives in the house of her dad, the king of movie trailer narration. She’s disheartened when he kicks her out to make room for his new and very young squeeze, but she lucks into a voiceover gig herself and is “discovered” as the hot new talent. In fact, she’s up for the most prestigious new payday when she finds out that her dad is not as supportive as one might expect…
Here’s why In a World… is so damn good – Bell has written a very funny comedy about a generational rivalry and woven it together with a Hollywood satire, an insider’s glimpse into the hitherto under-the-radar voiceover industry and a romantic comedy. The romantic comedy thread, in which our heroine is oblivious to the nice guy who really likes her, is better by itself than most romantic comedies. But we also get many LOL moments among the self-absorbed and back-stabbing Hollywood set. Plus there’s a very sweet story of the relationship between the protagonist’s sister and her hubby – that could stand alone and be better than a lot of indies as well..
Bell gets most of the laughs from the foibles of the characters and from really intelligently crafted dialogue. But she know how to pull off a physical gag, too. At one point, our heroine wants to be kissed by a handsome Hollywood bigshot, but when it happens, his technique is to put her entire nose into his mouth – and her surprise and discomfort is very funny.
Fortunately, Bell was able to cast Fred Melamed, a distinguished voiceover artist, as the father. Melamed has been the voice of CBS Sports, the Super Bowl, the Olympics and Mercedes-Benz. He’s also a brilliantly funny actor. I called Melamed’s performance as the hilariously pompous and blatantly manipulative Sy Ableman in A Serious Man “the funniest movie character of the decade”.
Bell’s previous roles have been secondary parts that have taken advantage of her unconventionally severe beauty. You may remember Bell as Alec Baldwin’s new trophy wife in It’s Complicated. Having written it herself, she finally has a role in which she can show her comic chops. I turns out that she’s a gifted comic actress, with screwball timing, a rich take and a knack for physical comedy.
The rest of the cast is uniformly good. I especially enjoyed Rob Corddry (Warm Bodies) as the long suffering husband of the sister.
In a World… is a complete and winning film and the year’s best comedy. In a World… is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, GooglePlay and Xbox Video.
OK, maybe I just shouldn’t keep expecting writer-director Lynn Shelton to make the first mumblecore movie that I will like. Touchy Feely begins with a promising premise – a massage therapist (Rosemarie DeWitt) suddenly develops an aversion to touching the human body, which understandably threatens both her career and her relationship with her boyfriend. Unfortunately, Shelton takes both the premise and the excellent cast and crashes them into a crater of boredom.
Shelton made last year’s Your Sister’s Sister (also with DeWitt), which was really good for about 58 minutes, until it petered out in a senseless musical interlude and a montage of rainy bike riding. In Touchy Feely, the massage therapist addresses her affliction by moping and yakking and encountering Ron Livingston and moping and yakking some more. There’s a fun thread about her quirky uncle’s dental practice, but that’s entirely disconnected from the protagonist’s story.
DeWitt was exceptional in Your Sister’s Sister and uniformly excellent in Rachel Getting Married, Promised Land and Margaret – and Touchy Feely is not DeWitt’s fault. The fine actors Ellen Page, Scoot McNairy (Argo), Alison Janney and Josh Pais are similarly wasted.
Now I tend to like character-driven, talky movies. But I don’t like to watch self-involved twits obsess over their own avoidable, First World problems. That pretty much describes the mumblecore genre, especially when the male characters have bedhead. (This movie could have been even worse – the Gigli, Ishtar or Moment by Moment of mumblecore – had Greta Gerwig played Alison Janney’s role.)
There’s one really funny scene in Touchy Feely – where Alison Janney introduces the painfully awkward Josh Pais to Reiki. Other than that, just watch the trailer – it’s much better than the movie and it will cost you less than three minutes of your remaining lifetime.
Touchy Feely is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play and XBOX Video.
In Inside Llewyn Davis, the Coen Brothers take us back to the Greenwich Village folk scene just before the emergence of Bob Dylan. Oscar Isaac plays a talented folk singer who is always a day late and a dollar short – and it’s all his own fault. His self-absorption sabotages his career and his relationships. Unfortunately, to paraphrase The Wife leaving the theater, we don’t care enough about the protagonist to root for him, and he’s not hateful enough to make us root against him. And that’s why Inside Llewyn Davis isn’t a great movie. (In contrast, Sideways is a great movie about another guy who is making his own bad luck – but we care about THAT guy.)
What Inside Llewyn Davis does right is to take us back to the Village in 1961 – the music is great and so are all the period details, Oscar Isaacs is quite good, and there are some stellar turns by Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham and character actor Stan Carp as Llewyn’s senile dad. And Inside Llewyn Davis is often very, very funny.
Inside Llewyn Davis was perhaps the most critically praised film at this year’s Cannes International Film Festival and is on the Best of 2013 lists of most critics – but not mine. It’s watchable for the period and the humor, but the main character just doesn’t engage us enough.
Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Director Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) takes a break from pop with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It’s set in current times (with iPods and cupcakes) and filmed in black and white at Whedon’s Santa Monica home. It worked for me.
Whedon told NPR “Some people won’t see Shakespeare because they don’t believe there’s characters in them, they think it’s, you know, homework.” Whedon’s version brings out the screwball comedy sensibility of the tale. Indeed, there’s really nothing uniquely 16th century about the plot: one couple is perfectly matched but they think that they despise each other, another couple is head over heels in love and a mean, unhappy villain wants to break up the romance. As the primary couple who wage “a merry war” of wit, Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker keep up with the quick-paced barbed patter and show a gift for flopping-on-the-floor physical humor. Nathan Fillion hilariously deadpans the malapropisms of Dogberry, here the dimmest supervising rent-a-cop in English literature.
[Note: There’s also some serious home and party decorating/staging porn for the HGTV set.]
It’s all good fun, and there’s no need to review the play before enjoying it. In fact, I’m adding it to my list of Best Shakespeare Movies. Much Ado About Nothing is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and other VOD outlets.
We’ve all seen cop buddy comedies before (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and scores of copycats). In the The Heat, the odd couple is Sandra Bullock (as the arrogant and fastidious FBI agent) and Melissa McCarthy (as the earthy and streetwise Boston cop). There are some especially well-written bits in The Heat, especially when Bullock’s prig finally explodes into a completely inept torrent of profanity and when McCarthy’s cop belittles her commander’s manhood for what must be the zillionth time.
But here’s why you will enjoy The Heat. Melissa McCarthy’s line readings are brilliantly hilarious. Her gift for dialogue makes everything and everyone in this movie much funnier. Her performance elevates the entire movie. In fact, every person who has talked to me about The Heat has laughed when describing it. It may not be that original, but it’s sufficiently well made and McCarthy is sublime.
The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
