Instead of This..... Watch This!

Over the last couple of days, I've seen three movies I would call "pretty good" - but every one of them brought to mind an even better film on the same theme. If you have a limited amount of time to invest in movies this week, here are my suggestions:

Instead of seeing Young Adult.... watch Greenberg



The performances are terrific, Diablo Cody's script is mostly solid and Jason Reitman's direction seamless and assured. But for all that, Young Adult is still a deeply unpleasant film. Much like this year's earlier and equally disturbing Mel Gibson movie, The Beaver, it plays a mentally ill protagonist for dark laughs before allowing her to hit rock bottom in spectacularly humiliating fashion.

Charlize Theron plays the former small-town golden girl who's bottomed out at the ugly intersection of alcoholism and narcissistic personality disorder. Rousing herself from a life of convenience store meals and nightly post-drinking blackouts in her dishevelled Minneapolis apartment, she heads for her hometown intent on reuniting with her high school sweetheart (Patrick Wilson), the happily married father of a baby girl. Theron's disconnection from reality is both chilling and sad, and Patton Oswalt provides a perfect counterpoint as the former classmate who becomes her unlikely drinking buddy. But there is a simmering undercurrent of snarky mean-spiritedness towards the townspeople (and towards Oswalt's bucktoothed sister in particular) which comes rushing to the fore in a disappointing coda. I suppose we could be thankful that Young Adult doesn't succumb to a hackneyed, "everyone learns and grows" kind of story arc. But frankly its cynical conclusion feels every bit as false and forced as a feel-good final act would have.

A much wiser, more compassionate portrait of a damaged, unlikable character is found in Noah Baumbach's underappreciated 2010 film Greenberg. Ben Stiller turns in a remarkably nuanced performance as an angry, unhappy man, newly released from a mental hospital and unable to cope with the world he finds outside, let alone re-establish old friendships that were pretty strained to begin with. Stiller's Greenberg can be viciously cruel and cold - and yet, also oddly touching in his desperate attempts to put a together a normal life. And the film is honest enough to show how some friends and family members can be startlingly insensitive to Greenberg in return. That's he's granted some measure of hard-earned redemption is testament to Baumbach's quiet generosity to the character, an attitude which would have benefitted Young Adult as well.

Instead of seeing My Week with Marilyn..... watch Me and Orson Welles

 

Michelle Williams' performance as the legendary actress is every bit as wonderful as you've heard. She doesn't merely impersonate Marilyn, but gets to her emotional core and sheds new light on the crippling insecurities and wild mood swings that made her such a challenge to work with.   Unfortunately there's little else of consequence here, save for the mild, fleeting pleasures of watching Kenneth Branagh play Laurence Olivier.  Based on the memoir by Colin Clark, a production assistant on The Prince and the Showgirl who was briefly Marilyn's confidante (and possibly lover - the film is quite coy about this), My Week... succumbs to every other cliche of the "young man seduced by showbiz/has brush with greatness/gets heart broken" genre, including Clark's unlikely propensity for lurking in doorways while various famous people have emotionally heated, revelatory conversations.  It put me in a mind of a far better film I'd like to see again....

In Me and Orson Welles, a teenager stumbles into a role in Orson Welles' modern-dress production of Julius Ceasar, and proceeds to fall in love with both the theater and Welles' comely production assistant, played by Claire Danes.  Director Richard Linklater creates a seductively hectic world of make-believe, presided over by the blustering ego and boundless charisma of Welles (brilliantly played by Christian McKay in a performance that, like Williams' performance as Marilyn Monroe, gets the trademark voice absolutely right and transcends mere impersonation.)  And yes, that's Zac Efron as the starry-eyed aspiring actor, but don't be hatin' - he's exactly right, too. Although it's part of a fairly hackneyed genre, Me and Orson Welles resonates more lastingly than its counterparts because the Efron character isn't merely focused on getting the girl or impressing the big shot actor/director - the film is really more about the joys of discovering one's own artistic and creative abilities and figuring out how to make a life using them. 

Instead of The Artist.... watch the movies it references!

All the unbridled critical acclaim for The Artist has me a bit puzzled.  It's certainly not without its charms, chiefly in the charismatic performances of Jean Dujuardin as a fading silent film star and his loyal Jack Russell terrier, Uggi.   But it amounts to little more than a loving, competently constructed pastiche of Hollywood's Golden Era classics. If there were a cookbook entry for The Artist, it'd read:  "Mix one part Singin' in the Rain with three parts A Star is Born, add a heaping handful of Sunset Boulevard and a dash of Citizen Kane.  Just before serving, sprinkle with Broadway Melody of 1940.")  Which begs the question, why spend $10 to see this at the multiplex when the original, much better films are easily and cheaply available?  You can get all of these at your local library, or see them on Turner Classic Movies several times a year. Do that, and wait for The Artist - a mildly enjoyable diversion at best - to come out on DVD.

Merry Christmas from Doodad Kind of Town!

We'll back after Christmas with new reviews and reflections on 2011.

Season's greetings to all my readers!

On the Home Screen: Friends With Benefits

It probably wasn't a good idea to watch Friends with Benefits just hours after seeing Ken Russell's The Devils, and I'm sure the weirdness of that pairing had something to do with my reduced enjoyment of the former film. Although I tried hard, I could manage little more than an occasional, wan smile in response to it.

It certainly doesn't lack for talent in the areas of acting, writing or directing. And it starts out feeling not just fresh and inspired, but even a little subversive. But ultimately Friends With Benefits falls apart from a sheer lack of nerve, sidestepping anxiously away from its promising beginnings towards the requisite beats of the conventional "feel good" movie, with emotional growing and learning required of all participants.

For its first 30 minutes or so, the film feels like a welcome send-up of 21st century romantic comedy cliches. Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake play young professionals who've grown cynical about dating and romance. Thankfully, they wear their cynicism lightly and likably. (In fact, when Kunis screams at a movie poster,: "Shut up, Katherine Heigl! You're such a liar!" I kind of felt like cheering.) They hang out together on Kunis' couch, drinking beers and making fun of lame-ass rom coms on TV, and it's clear there's not one tired generic convention they haven't figured out and become immune to. And then, like the optimistic cynics they are, they decide to have sex without the trappings of romance. "Like a tennis match. Shake hands after, no involvement required."

In the short term, this leads to some bawdy and very funny sequences of bedroom shenanigans between two attractive, forthright and uninhibited characters, laced with smart, quickfire comic dialogue. And just when you think you might be seeing this generation's reincarnation of the classic screwball comedy, along comes Kunis' self-involved, sexpot mother (Patricia Clarkson), and it's clear we're going right back to Cliche Land.

Because that's the first clue that, gosh darn it, these kids aren't so sophisticated after all. They're just terrified of intimacy because of their experiences with seriously screwed up parents! Clarkson's character is too inappropriate and blissfully irresponsible to get laughs; she's a nightmare, not a lovable screw-up. Later on, we see Timberlake's dad (played by the reliably great Richard Jenkins), a man in the throes of advancing Alzheimer's years after a bitter divorce. It's not that the story isn't handled sensitively, but it's another strange, sobering monkey wrench thrown into what ought to be a farce.

Worse yet, from this point on, Friends with Benefits becomes the very kind of movie it's been gleefully making fun of, hitting every familiar beat of the "boy (almost) gets girl/boy loses girl/boy stages big, last-minute romantic gesture and wins girl back"rom-com story arc. And of course, that's the point telegraphed to us early on when Kunis moans that she wishes life were like a romantic comedy. Myself, I wished that this movie were a bit more like one of its early screwball antecedents, The Awful Truth, in which two people who were obviously meant for each other screw around, get divorced and then spend the rest of the movie undermining each other's wildly inappropriate couplings before reuniting for good - a comedy blissfully free or life lessons or sentiment, but delivering all the satisfaction of seeing two smart, naughty people wind up together. (Did I mention that The Awful Truth was made in 1938? Friends with Benefits, meanwhile, is a fresh reminder that sexual frankness in a movie does not necessarily equal sophistication.)

But if it's reality, not sophistication, that you're after, that's been done much better on television - twenty years ago and in under 30 minutes. Back in the early years of Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine negotiated a "sex with no strings" arrangement that lasted all of about a week and nearly ended their friendship. It played in a single crisp, uncomfortably funny episode and felt a whole lot more honest than this calculated crowd pleaser. And, for me, infinitely preferable to this soggily soft-centered date movie.

Frankly, I expected more from writer-director Will Gluck, whose previous film Easy A (which he, significantly, did not write), was unflaggingly sharp, clever and original. At the very least, if Gluck had to stage flash mobs in Grand Central Station at two crucial points in the story, he could have at least made them fun, not to mention coherent. Sadly, most flash mob clips on YouTube are infinitely easier to follow and enjoy than the visually garbled sequences here.

Academy of the Underrated: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

(This post is one of a recurring series in which I attempt to make a case for undervalued films. )

An Open Letter to Woody Allen:

Dear Woody,

Happy Birthday! On this December 1, you have reached the age of 76. Hard to believe that you've surpassed the three-quarters-of-a-century mark, and yet remain one of the most prolific filmmakers at work today, cranking out a new film and a new screenplay every year. As Robert Weide's recent PBS documentary clearly showed us, you're anything but a doddering septuagenarian. Your energy and self-deprecating wit are still very much intact.

Although we've never met, I feel almost as if I've known you my whole life. I've been a fan since 1972 when, as a movie-crazy 12-year-old, I first encountered you in "Play it Again, Sam." Since then, I've followed your career with great enthusiasm (for almost 40 years! I guess that means both of us are getting old.) I never miss one of your annual releases. (Even the name of this recurring series plays off a line from Manhattan, where Diane Keaton and Michael Murphy tell you about their "Academy of the Overrated" which inlcudes F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gustav Mahler.)

So, be assured, what I'm about to say .... I say with love.

Perhaps having total creative control is not really in your best interest anymore. Over the last decade or so, your films have come to be marred with jarring inconsistencies, loose ends and niggling little anachronisms that would never have survived the final cuts of your earlier work. I'm thinking another pair of eyes looking over your screenplay - a collaborator even (what's Marshall Brickman up to these days, anyway?) - might benefit you greatly.

Take for example, last year's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. You start out with a narrator who tells us that "Shakespeare wrote that life was filled sound and fury, and in the end, signified nothing." Well, Woody, that's not exactly right. What Shakespeare actually wrote was a soliloquy for a despairing Macbeth to deliver after learning of his wife's death, culminating in the memorably nihilistic observation that life was "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Yes, it's a subtle difference, but it belies a certain sloppiness that's been creeping into a lot of your recent films. (Maybe that "tale told by an idiot" part was a bitter pill for a screenwriter to swallow?)

And what are we to make of a character (played by Gemma Jones) who tells her friends, without a trace of irony, that she has a flair for fashion and gave up a very promising career as a theatrical costumer ... yet consistently dresses herself in dowdy, colorless dresses and cardigans that look they've gone through the wash a few too many times?


A little irony or nuance would have also been welcomed in an early scene between Josh Brolin and Frida Pinto. He's a married writer, she's the mysterious beauty who's given to wearing a red silk chemise while strumming a classical guitar by the open window opposite Brolin's. He flirts wildly with her, while she giggles bashfully, yet appreciatively. Through it all, Brolin gesticulates wildly with his left hand - his wedding band plainly and obviously on view. Pinto doesn't seem to take note of it at all; there's no indication that it either entices her or gives her pause. Is she blind, or just an idiot?

Here's where the love comes in.

These things bother me mostly because they detract from an otherwise very fine film, one of your most engrossing meditations on mortality and the way we foolish mortals try to outrun it. We all eventually meet, as Brolin's character bitterly points out, the "tall dark stranger" of death. But, God help us (or not), we all look for ways to opt out of the Grim Reaper's visit, or at least, delay it. And the results are sometimes catastrophic.

The characters you've created in You Will Meet... are a fascinating little group of fools. Take Helena, the character played by Jones. She's both heartbreaking and insufferable, sometimes at the same moment. You let us feel for her after she's abandoned by her husband, while subtly showing us that she never quite gets as strong as she thinks she does. (Her ladylike requests for "something to sip on" - always something considerably stronger than tea - is a nice, gentle nod to her hazy mental state.) I love that you don't make easy fun of her, or of the obviously bogus psychic she repeatedly visits for hope and guidance. Casting Pauline Collins as the shady fortune teller was a particular stroke of genius - she has a warm, beneficent, almost luminous screen presence that dispels any cynicism we might have about her charlatan-like tactics. We can see right away why Helena so quickly comes to trust and depend on her. Hell, I even wanted to pull up a chair and tell her all my problems, just to bask in that sweet maternal glow.

(Might you be developing a soft spot for psychics, Woody? I mean you let Larry David's Boris fall for a lovely one in the final scenes of Whatever Works, and now this....)

Then there's the whole subplot with Helena's daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts). The first time I saw it, I wondered why you were repeating yourself. I mean, Sally has a crush on her boss (Antonio Banderas) who - get this! - has a mentally ill wife and season tickets to the opera. He takes Sally to see Lucia Di Lammermoor, which only makes her fall deeper... but then he gets involved with her friend (Anna Friel), to Sally's great despair. Where I have heard this story before? Oh, I remember - it was a subplot in Hannah and Her Sisters!

My first reaction was to roll in my eyes in disgust - why would you recycle a minor storyline from a movie you made 25 years ago? But then, I watched that PBS documentary and heard you admit that you had really intended Hannah... to be a melancholy kind of film and how you felt disappointed in yourself for ultimately producing an optimistic, upbeat story. Well, Woody you nailed it this time. Just as Match Point was essentially a bleak, laugh-free retread of Crimes and Misdemeanors, this plot point in YMATDS was a honestly painful reworking of the Hannah love triangle.

And let me stress, I mean 'painful' in the artistically successful sense of the word. I know that you are an aspiring tragedian with the inability to pass up a good punchline. You've said as much yourself. I don't begrudge you the need to do 'serious' work, but it's not always been your strong suit. (May I be really, really blunt? My personal idea of hell is to spend eternity trapped in a screening room with Interiors, Another Woman and Cassandra's Dream playing on a endlessly repeating loop.) But here, you tap into the authentic pain of a woman trapped in a bad marriage whose last chance for happiness has just evaporated. After finding out about Banderas and Friel, Watts storms home and just rips into Brolin in a raw, real, unravelling-end-of-her-rope way. Both Watts and Brolin are electrifying in that scene, and when Jones enters, prattling on and on with her psychic's reassurance that they all will live again in another lifetime - well, she's a brilliantly tin-eared counterpoint to their marital despair.


And that's what I love about YWMATDS, that unflinching honesty about the consequences of the characters' behavior. Take, for example, Brolin's conquest of Pinto. She's actually engaged, and she keeps Brolin at arm's length for awhile. But when she finally breaks off her engagement, it doesn't happen offscreen; instead, you throw us right into the confrontation between her family and her fiance's, and it's ugly.

You sure are hard on your male characters in this one. Brolin's bid for immortality (in the form of a successful second novel that he can't quite write himself) is especially desperate. This being an open letter, I won't give away the details to those who have yet to see the film, but I really like that his story ends on ambiguous note, with the full weight of the consequences yet to come. But poor old Alfie, Helena's wayward ex-husband - could you have doomed him to anything more pathetic than marrying a call girl who blatantly cuckolds him? He's a bit of a male midlife crisis caricature, isn't he? I mean, come on now. At least your gave us the modest pleasures of Lucy Punch as his avaricious dingbat wife. The airheaded bimbo has long been one of your stock characters, and Punch's Charmaine is really nothing new, just reliably - if familiarly - funny. Before seeing her here, I'd always found Punch to be rather gawky and plain; that she pulls off a sexpot role like this is as much a tribute to the efficacy of voluminzing hair products and heavy black eyeliner as it is to her comic skills.

What really kills me though, is that in YMATDS, the characters who are the most foolishly deluded (i.e. the ones whose fear of death has been supplanted with a passionate belief in reincarnation) are the happiest and, in many ways, the most sympathetic, while the realists wind up bitter and in desperate straits. That's quite a change in perspective from the days of Hannah and Her Sisters - or even Whatever Works. (These occult believers, after all, aren't too many steps away from the Catholics, Hare Krishnas or Southern Baptists of those earlier films in their all-encompassing belief in unseen entities) It shows that, even at this late stage of your career, you are a flexible, thoughtful artist who can approach a story from a new and fresh perspective. Not too shabby, Mr. Allen. Even if you can't keep your Shakespeare quotes straight.