In the Irish horror comedy Grabbers, an isolated Irish island is attacked by tentacled, bloodsucking alien space monsters. Here’s the inventive device that could have resulted in a cult classic – it turns out that alcohol is toxic to the monsters, so the residents can survive as long as they keep a high enough level of alcohol in their bloodstreams. Pretty funny, right? I could imagine the colorful villagers in Waking Ned Devine helping each other to stay drunk, but not too drunk.
Unfortunately, the bit about the effects of alcohol doesn’t appear until halfway through, and the real focus in on the romantic conflict between the pretty and highly professional cop from Dublin and the drunken local Garda – an obvious story that we’ve seen in every bad romantic comedy. What we’re left with is a low-budget horror flick with a trite “Will they get together?” thread. Too bad.
Grabbers is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, GooglePlay and other VOD sources.
Peter Skarsgaard and Cate Blanchett in BLUE JASMINE
Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is a remarkably profound portrait of a woman seemingly ruined by circumstance and trying desperately to cling to who she thought she was. In a stunning performance, Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a New York socialite whose billionaire swindler of a hubby has lost his freedom and his fortune to the FBI. Jasmine’s identity has been based on the privilege derived from her money, her marriage and her social station – and all of that is suddenly gone. Flat broke and reeling from the shock of it all, she seeks refuge with her working class San Francisco sister.
Despite her desperate situation, Jasmine arrives still brimming with deluded entitlement, Woody having calculated an undeniable resemblance to Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. But Blue Jasmine is more accessible than the great play Streetcar because it’s so damn funny. Jasmine’s pretensions are as pathetic as Blanche’s, but it’s very, very funny when her top shelf expectations collide with her current reality.
Cate Blanchett will certainly be nominated for an Oscar for this role. Blanchett is able to play a woman who is suffering a real and fundamental breakdown through a series of comic episodes. She flawlessly reveals Jasmine’s personality cocktail of charm, denial, shock, desperation and sense of authority.
I know that a lot of folks are put off by the creepiness of Woody’s real life marriage, but he has written a great female lead role for Blanchett, and he’s directed actresses to four Oscars in the past, as outlined in this recent New York Times article.
In my favorite scene, Jasmine faces her young nephews across a diner’s booth in a diner. They ask her questions with childish directness and inappropriateness. Her answers are candid from her point of view, but nonetheless astoundingly deluded – and just as inappropriate. The scene is deeply insightful and hilarious.
Who and what has brought Jasmine to her knees? Certainly she has been victimized by her amoral sleazeball of a husband, but she vigorously refuses to consider taking any responsibility herself. Can she be forced to look within? And is she strong enough to face what she would see?
Sally Hawkins is equally perfect as Jasmine’s good-hearted sister Ginger, a woman who doesn’t expect much from life and still gets disappointed. Andrew Dice Clay, of all people, is excellent as Ginger’s ex, a lug who rises to a moment of epic truth-telling. Louis C.K. brings just the right awkward earnestness to the apparently decent guy who takes a hankering to the long-suffering Ginger. Alec Baldwin nails the role of Jasmine’s husband, a man whose continual superficial charm almost masks his cold predatory eyes, and it’s a tribute to Baldwin’s skill that he makes such a natural performance seem so effortless.
Playing a primarily comic character, Bobby Cannavale delivers a lot of sweaty energy, but with too much scenery chewing. The great actors Peter Skarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg do what they can with far less textured characters.
The Wife thought Blue Jasmine dragged in places, and she was distracted by some components that didn’t ring true about the San Francisco setting – two key working class characters with Tri-State Guido accents and a Sunday afternoon cocktail party where the men wear neckties; she’s dead right on both points, but they didn’t bother me.
Blue Jasmine may not rise to the level of Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters and Husbands and Wives, but it’s a pretty good film with a superlative, unforgettable performance.
In the appealing coming of age story The Way, Way Back, a betrodden teen (Liam James) gains confidence when mentored at his summer job by a lowlife (Sam Rockwell). The kid’s mom (Toni Collette) has been rocked by a divorce (hubby found a young thing), and has rediscovered some self esteem in the attentions of a creep (Steve Carrell). Now the kid, his mom, her insufferable boyfriend and the boyfriend’s bratty daughter are off to his summer home on the Atlantic shore. The kid finds a job at a cheesy local water park, and funny stuff happens.
In depicting the ways that parents make their teen kids miserable, The Way, Way Back is spot on. I’m not talking about the uncool cluelessness that makes all teens embarrassed about the even most perfect parents. The Way, Way Back focuses on children from broken marriages who are made to feel unvalued or whose weaknesses are picked at or whose parents become too involved with their own issues. Indeed all the kids in The Way, Way Back come from divorced families. Even one childless marriage (Rob Corddry from Warm Bodies and Amanda Peet) is very imperfect.
Collette’s performance nails the desperation of a woman, once abandoned, for a relationship that will meet at least some of her needs. Alison Janney is hilarious as the neighboring divorcee who is embracing her alcoholism. The rest of the cast, including Maya Rudolph, is good, too. Give credit to Carrell for taking on a very unsympathetic role, something not every bankable star will do.
It may not be a Must See, but The Way, Way Back is sweet, perceptive and pretty funny.
Now out on VOD, Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship is an odd couple comedy with the promising premise that the two main characters become entangled when one has an affair with the other’s wife. The good news is that the comedy is driven by the characters, one an abrasive womanizer and the other a pretentious and self-involved minor novelist. The bad news is that the broad characters are neither textured or interesting or sympathetic enough to sustain a movie of longer than 49 minutes (which is when I stopped watching). And worse, Bert and Arnie wastes a supporting performance by the delightful Anna Chlumsky.
Bert and Arnie’s Guide to Friendship is available streaming from Amazon and iTunes.
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.
As gross-out comedies go, This Is the End is adequately entertaining. Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco and other movie comedy stars play themselves – all partying at Franco’s over-the-top Hollywood mansion when the Apocalypse and The Rapture intrude.
The cast does a good job with the very broad material. Franco, Hill, Harry Potter’s Emma Watson and especially Michael Cera all poke fun at their own images. And, just when you think you’re watching a low brow comedy, Danny McBride arrives and takes that brow even further into the gutter.
It’s co-written and co-directed by best friends Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who co-wrote Superbad as teenagers. Jay Baruchel plays a character based on Goldberg, down from Canada to visit his boyhood chum and distrusting Rogen’s Hollywood posse. It’s a solid send-up of the apocalyptic movie genre, with a nice little homage to The Exorcist. The guys will enjoy This Is the End more than will the gals.
Pixar movies feature both excellent animation and outstanding storytelling., and such is the case with Monsters University, the welcome prequel to Monsters, Inc. This is the story of how Monsters Inc.’s Mike and Sully met at college, with Billy Crystal and John Goodman returning to voice the roles. When I saw Monsters University, the kids in the audience laughed plenty, but the adults were picking up on most of the college jokes; for example, Mike and Sully are relegated to the loser fraternity – so nerdy that the guys are living with one frat brother’s mom (a very funny Julia Sweeney).
Monsters University is preceded by an even better movie, the imaginative Pixar shortThe Blue Umbrella. The Blue Umbrella is a simple and sentimental story set at foot level, amid manhole covers, storm drains and the feet of city-dwellers – and there’s no dialogue. The animation is remarkable; in fact, I had to keep telling myself that it was animated, although it helped when the mailbox and the rain spout moved expressively. I’m sure that The Blue Umbrella will be nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar.
In the dark comedy Nancy, Please, a neurotic and feckless Yale grad student has just moved in with his new girlfriend and realizes that he has left his copy of Little Dorrit at his old digs. His former female roommate is both hostile and passive aggressive, and she won’t return it. It’s a big deal, because he is up against a thesis deadline and his notes are annotated in the book.
But the central joke in the movie is that losing the book shouldn’t be THAT big a deal. Sure, she’s being a jerk, but it’s pretty hard to imagine that he can’t reconstruct his notes, as he is advised by everyone else in his life except one friend who has the excuse of being drunk. The grad student can’t let it go, making this molehill into a mountain that obstructs his progress on any and all fronts. As he becomes more and more emotionally paralyzed, his academic career, his new relationship and even the walls of his new apartment disintegrate. And a dose of maturity would solve the whole thing.
I did chuckle when his girlfriend, alarmed by his escalating obsession, announces “I can’t support this any more. I withdraw my support.” Still, we’re talking about a $3.99 rental and 84 minutes of your life, and Nancy, Please just is not THAT funny. Nancy, Please is available on VOD from Amazon, Vudu and Google Play.
Quartet, an ensemble geezer comedy, is really an excuse for four brilliant actors (Maggie Smith, Billy Connolly, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins) to show their chops. It’s set in a retirement home for retired musicians. The residents are preparing for an annual benefit performance, and the long-estranged ex-wife of a resident is moving in.
The most interesting character is the one played by Pauline Collins – a vivacious woman who may have always been ditzy and now has very little short-term memory. In 1996, Collins won a Tony and was nominated for an Oscar for the title role in Shirley Valentine.
Tom Courtenay plays a man still devastated by a bad breakup decades before. There’s a wonderful scene in which he explains opera to a class of working class teens by comparing it to rap. Courtenay is best known for The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965), The Dresser (1983), but was excellent more recently in the overlooked Last Orders (2001).
Maggie Smith and Billy Connolly are very good in familiar roles. The irrepressible Connolly is very funny as a particularly randy old gentleman. Smith’s character is in her sweet spot – not unlike the sharp-edged but increasingly vulnerable gals she played in Gosford Park, Downton Abbey and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The actors playing the other residents are delightful, including a passel of opera stars from the 70s and 80s, Sinatra’s European trumpet player and more.
This is the first movie directed by Dustin Hoffman, and he did an able job. He takes advantage of the beautiful pastoral location, paces the film well and, as one would expect, enables the actors to turn in very fine performances. Quartet is just a lark, but not a bad way to spend an hour and a half.
Quartet is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Vudu, YouTube and other VOD outlets.
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 quickpaced 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.
Pixar’s
