Movies

THE SKELETON TWINS: lots of depression and lots of laughs

by
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader in THE SKELETON TWINS
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader in THE SKELETON TWINS

The term “dramedy” has never been more apt – The Skeleton Twins is a serious exploration of two complex and textured characters with depression, and yet most of the movie is very, very funny.  Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig play adult twins who haven’t spoken in ten years; they share a troubled upbringing, bitingly wicked and often morbid humor and serious melancholy.  Their blues manifest in different, but serious ways.  Brought together when the sister invites the brother to move in with her and her husband, past memories are evoked, each calls the other on their bullshit and everyone’s serene routine is overturned.

The two stars are excellent – and this is Hader’s best film work so far.  His monologue about how far he’s come since high school is heart-breaking.

There is lots to like about The Skeleton Twins:

  • perhaps Luke Wilson’s best performance as the ever-decent and upbeat husband, hopelessly out of his depth with his troubled spouse;
  • a hilarious Wilson monologue about “land mines”, which will make everyone who has been either a boyfriend or a husband fall out of his seat laughing;
  • a sparkling turn by Joanna Gleason as the twins’ insufferably self-absorbed New Agey mother;
  • watching Wiig finally outshine Hader in lip-syncing to Starship’s execrable power ballad “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”.  (BTW, on YouTube, you can find Starship’s original video for “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” – Mickey Thomas at his most insincere and Grace Slick in 80s Big Hair – YIKES.)

So the film works overall, but I was left a little short on the mental health aspect (see, if you want, under SPOILER ALERT below).  Nevertheless, I recommend The Skeleton Twins for its intelligence, honesty and humor.

[SPOILER ALERT:  The main characters are both clinically depressed.  I didn’t buy the ending where – without any medication or talk therapy – the two seemed to trending hopefully because they have embraced honesty and the support of each other.  Now The Wife, who is a trained therapist, DID buy the ending, saying that the movie didn’t show them to be OK, just doing well with each other’s support.  The critical consensus seems to be with her.]

Movies to See Right Now

by
Gene Tierney startles Dana Andrews in LAURA
Gene Tierney startles Dana Andrews in LAURA

In theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. Although it’s leaving theaters this weekend, it remains available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi fable The Zero Theorem opens today; it’s visually arresting, but the story becomes tedious.  Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange. I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

Here’s my preview of the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the absorbing French period drama Augustine, about obsession, passion and the birth of a science. Augustine is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and Xbox Video.

On September 24, Turner Classic Movies plays the underrated anti-war masterpiece The Americanization of Emily, the favorite film of both of its stars – James Garner and Julie Andrews. On September 27, TCM offers the classic noir thriller Laura, with an unforgettable performance by Clifton Webb as a megalomaniac with one vulnerability – the dazzling beauty of Gene Tierney. The musical theme is unforgettable, too.

THE ZERO THEOREM: visually arresting sci-fi meh

by
THE ZERO THEOREM
THE ZERO THEOREM

Zero Theorem2
Terry Gilliam directed The Zero Theorem, which tells you that it’s going to be visually arresting and Way Out There.  Former Monty Python member Gilliam wrote and directed Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Von Munchausen and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus – all much better movies than The Zero Theorem (which he did not write).

The Zero Theorem takes place in a dystopian future world where the powers that be completely control everything that they need for the economy (what you do, how continually you work and how little you get paid), but allow individual freedom to consume crappy consumer goods and follow phony religions. Those that are too troubled to be productive are left to fend for themselves on the filthy streets, free of public services.   It’s the realization of Antonin Scalia’s world view.

Christoph Waltz plays a poor workaday Everyman who just wants some time off to look after his deteriorating health.  He’s literally a wage slave to a malevolent character named Management.  A professional numbers cruncher, Waltz is attacking a very fundamental mathematical discovery.  And that’s the whole movie –  as he hacks away on his keyboard, he is battered and abused by The System, cajoled by an obnoxious middle manager (David Thewlis – very funny) and distracted by a sexually available temptress.

For what it’s worth, Waltz is pretty good as the protagonist, a perpetual victim.  Matt Damon and Tilda Swinton show up in brief parts.  Melanie Thierry, a very beautiful actress of limited range (see The Princess of Montpensier), plays the hottie.

All in all, it’s just not Far Out enough and the story – stretched to feature length – is tedious.  You’re better off watching one of Gilliam’s good films, or Lost in La Mancha, the documentary on his snake-bitten attempt to make a movie out of Don Quixote.

The Zero Theorem releases tomorrow in theaters, but is already streaming on Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video, among others, including your cable/satellite On Demand.

DVD/Stream of the Week: AUGUSTINE: obsession, passion and the birth of a science

by

The absorbing French drama Augustine is based on the real work of 19th century medical research pioneer Jean-Martin Charcot, known as the father of neurology. A young kitchen maid begins suffering wild seizures and is brought to Charcot’s research hospital. He ascertains the triggers for the seizures, and begins to close in on cure. Needing funding for his research, he triggers her seizures before groups of his peers; he is showing off his research, but it’s clear that his affluent male audience is titillated by the comely girl’s orgasmic thrashes.

She is drawn to this man whose kindness to her belies their class difference and whose brilliance is the key to her recovery. The good doctor intends to cure her – but not until she has performed for his potential funders. She is unexpectedly cured just before Charcot’s most important demonstration, and she gets to decide whether to continue her exploitation. In the stunning conclusion, she gets the upper hand and her simmering feelings erupt.

The fine French actor Vincent Lindon (Mademoiselle Chambon) excels at playing very contained and reserved characters, and here he nails Charcot’s clash of decency and professional ambition. The French pop singer Soko is captivating as his patient.

It’s an auspicious first feature film for writer-director Alice Winocour. She has constructed a story that about two sympathetic characters whose interests converge, then diverge and then…

Augustine is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Netflix Instant, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and Xbox Video.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY

In theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie. It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
  • Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far, and Alive Inside and Calvary also make the list.

Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred Molina and John Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange. I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

Here’s my preview of the upcoming Mill Valley Film Festival.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures.

On September 16, Turner Classic Movies plays the unforgettable Bogart and Bacall thriller Key Largo.  And the next day, TCM will air the overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin, a taut 71 minutes of tension.  Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train.  Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target.

Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

Mill Valley Film Festival: see it here first

by
Timothy Spall in MR. TURNER
Timothy Spall in MR. TURNER

The Mill Valley Film Festival always showcases many of the most promising prestige films that are scheduled for release during Award Season.  It’s the best opportunity for Bay Area film goers to catch an early look at the Big Movies. This year, the film fest is especially rich with Oscar bait:

  • Mr. Turner: A period biopic by Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year).  Lots of Oscar buzz for lead actor Timothy Spall.  Most of us won’t be able to see this in theaters until January.
  • Foxcatcher: Ripped from the headlines psychological drama with possible acting Oscar nods for Steve Carell AND Channing Tatum AND Mark Ruffalo.
  • The Homesman: Writer/director/star Tommy Lee Jones takes Hilary Swank on a pioneer road trip.
  • Whiplash:  J.K. Simmons (Juno) plays the tough love music instructor for drummer Miles Teller (The Spectacular Now).  Huge hit at Sundance promises to be one of the Fall’s top audience-pleasers.
  • Wild:  Reese Witherspoon backpacks solo across the Pacific coast for emotional closure.
  • Force Majeure: This Swedish satirical disaster thriller won the Un Certain Regard jury prize at Cannes.
  • The Imitation Game:  Lots of buzz for Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance as gay WWII code-breaking genius Kenneth Turing.
  • St. Vincent:  Big crowd pleaser here:  Single mom (Melissa McCarthy) leave young son with boozy, lecherous babysitter (Bill Murray).  The kid actor is getting raves, too.
  • Two Days, One Night: The latest urgent drama from the Dardennes brothers (The Kid with a Bike, The Son).  Their movies always make my annual top ten list – and this one features Marion Cotillard.
  • The Judge: Mixed reviews so far at Toronto for courtroom drama with Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall.

Those are the Big Movies, but there’s also a promising assortment of the indies, foreign flicks and documentaries that I usually cover.  Here’s the schedule.

The fest runs October 2-11 in Mill Valley, San Rafael and Corte Madera. Tickets are now available to members and will go on sale to the public on September 14.

Steve Carell (yes - that's really him) and Channing Tatum in FOXCATCHER
Steve Carell (yes – that’s really him) and Channing Tatum in FOXCATCHER

DVD/Stream of the Week: WORDS AND PICTURES: an unusually thoughtful romantic comedy

by

words picturesIn the unusually thoughtful romantic comedy Words and Pictures, Clive Owen and the ever-radiant Juliette Binoche star as sparring teachers. The two play world-class artists – Owen a writer and Binoche a painter – who find themselves in teaching jobs at an elite prep school. As they spiritedly disagree over whether words or pictures are the most powerful medium of expression, they each admire and are drawn to the other’s talent and passion.

Words and Pictures contains the wittiest movie dialogue in many moons and reminds us that real wit is more than some clever put downs. Owen’s English teacher worships the use of language to evoke original imagery and also revels in pedantic wordplay – the more syllables the better. When his boss asks him, “Why are you always late?”, he retorts “Why are you always dressed monochromatically?”.

The reason that he IS always late is that he’s an alcoholic hellbent on squandering his talent and alienating his friends and family. This is a realistic depiction of alcoholism and of its byproducts – unreliability, broken relationships and fundamental dishonesty. In an especially raw scene, he expresses his self-loathing by using a tennis racquet and tennis balls to demolish his own living space. Top notch stuff.

Binoche plays a woman of great inner strength and confidence who has been shaken by the advances of a chronic illness. According to the credits, Binoche herself created her character’s paintings.

Words and Pictures sparkles until near the end. When the students make the debate over words vs pictures explicit in the school assembly, the intellectual argument loses its force and the tension peters out. So it may not be a great movie, but Words and Pictures is still plenty entertaining and a damn sight smarter than the average romantic comedy.

I saw Words and Pictures earlier this year at Cinequest. It’s available now on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Vudu and Xbox Video.

The first Orange Is the New Black – coming up on TV

by
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED
Hope Emerson and Eleanor Parker in CAGED

Want to see the prototype for Orange Is the New Black? On September 6, Turner Classic Movies airs the 1950 Caged. Eleanor Parker (who died last year) played the naive young woman plunged into a harsh women’s prison filled with hard-bitten fellow prisoners and compassion-free guards. Parker was nominated for an acting Oscar, but her performance pales next to that of Hope Emerson, whose electric portrayal of a hulking guard also got an Oscar nod. Caged also features the fine character actresses Thelma Moorhead, Jane Darwell (Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and Ellen Corby (Grandma Walton here as a young woman). Sixty-four years later, Caged might still be the best women’s prison movie ever.

Movies to See Right Now

by
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE
Elisabeth Moss and Mark Duplass in THE ONE I LOVE

Plenty of good choices in theaters:

  • The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.
  • Alive Inside: The profoundly moving documentary showing Alzheimer patients being pulled out of isolation by music.
  • Feedback from my readers is almost unanimous – Richard Linklater’s family drama Boyhood is a special movie experience – and possibly the best film of the decade.
  • The mesmerizing drama Calvary, starring Brendan Gleeson.  Gleeson again teams with John Michael McDonagh, the writer-director of The Guard.
  • I really liked The One I Love – a relationship romance, a dark comedy and a modern day episode of The Twilight Zone rolled into one successful movie.  It’s also available streaming from Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.
  • Don’t miss Philip Seymour Hoffman’s explosive final performance in the John le Carré espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man.

Boyhood tops my list of Best Movies of 2014 – So Far, and Alive Inside and Calvary also make the list.

Poor writing and directing sabotage the delightful performances of Alfred molina and john Lithgow in the romantic drama Love Is Strange.  I was also disappointed by the tiresome Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.  I nodded off during Woody Allen’s disappointing romantic comedy of manners Magic in the Moonlight.

My DVD/Stream of the Week is Go For Sisters , a border thriller with three more great movie characters from master indie writer-director John Sayles. Go for Sisters is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming on Netflix Instant, Amazon and Vudu.

As I wrote yesterday, Turner Classic Movies is airing the prototype for Orange Is the New Black – Caged from 1950 – set your DVR tonight..

On September 7, TCM plays The Battle of Algiers (1966), the story of 1950s French colonialists struggling to suppress the guerrilla uprising of Algerian independence fighters.  Although it looks like a documentary, it is not.  Instead, filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo recreated the actual events so realistically that we believe that we are watching strategy councils of each side.  Urban insurgency and counter-insurgency are nasty, brutal and not very short – and we see some horrifically inhumane butchering by both sides. Among the great war films, it may be the best film on counter-insurgency.  In 2003, the Pentagon screened the film for its special operations commanders. Re-released to theaters in 2004, The Battle of Algiers made many critics’ top ten lists the second time around.

THE TRIP TO ITALY: wit, more wit and amazing food

by
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in THE TRIP TO ITALY

The smart and hilarious The Trip to Italy showcases the improvisational wit of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, along with some serious tourism/foodie porn.   As in The Trip, the two British comics are sent off on a hedonistic road trip to review spectacular restaurants – this time in Italy’s most stunningly beautiful destinations.  Along the way, they needle each other and virtually any occurrence can trigger a very funny riff.  As in The Trip, they compete for the funniest Michael Caine impression; but this time, their funniest impression is of a harried Assistant Director trying to give notes to the mask-wearing Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.

And – if you enjoy travel and fine dining – the restaurant scenes are unsurpassed.