I Love You, Man

Posted on March 19, 2009 at 6:00 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for pervasive language, including crude and sexual references
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, smoking, drug humor
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 20, 2009

Paul Rudd is a national treasure. His smaller roles were a highlight of movies like “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up,” and “Anchorman.” He was charming in “Clueless,” heartbreaking in “The Object of My Affection” and “The Shape of Things,” and downright hilarious in a brief cameo as John Lennon in “Walk Hard.” This movie seems to be about the big, loud, dumb, humiliating moments — an unexpected same-sex kiss in public, an embarrassing photo made public, an intimate moment made public — but Rudd is at his best in the small, perfectly timed moments when his character is trying hard to be a “regular guy,” even though in his heart he suspects that whatever it takes, it is beyond him.

Whether it’s a romance or a bromance, movies about couples almost always position them as superego and id. On one side is a responsible, mature, thoughtful person who follows the rules. On the other is someone who is impulsive, outspoken, and a lot of fun but not quite a grown-up. Generally, both discover that they are missing something and it all ends happily ever after.

The romantic couple in this movie are both pretty much in the responsible and rule-following category. In its first moments, Peter (Paul Rudd) proposes to Zooey (Rashida Jones). She accepts. And then she immediately has to share the moment with her nearest and dearest — her friends. On the way home from the proposal she puts them on speakerphone and they do everything but launch into a conference call version of “Going to the Chapel” before inadvertently revealing to Peter that Zooey has kept them privy to the most intimate (and I mean intimate — and privy) aspects of their 8-month relationship.

Peter now has everything, a wonderful fiancee and some great career prospects in real estate (if he can just sell Lou Ferrigno’s house to get the investment capital). But when he has no one to call to share the news of the engagement and he overhears Zooey worrying that he will be too dependent on her, Peter decides he has to find a male best friend. He goes on some “man-dates” but no one is right. And then he meets Sydney (Jason Seigel of “How I Met Your Mother” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), whose unabashed honesty, easy acceptance of Peter’s floundering attempts at guy-talk, and endless time for hanging out make Peter feel at home. Sydney lives in a “man-cave” but he is in essence a boy, a cross between Peter Pan and Lampwick, the kid in “Pinnochio” who turned into a donkey on Pleasure Island.

The film shrewdly salutes and makes fun of the way that the progress toward friendship parallels a romantic relationship, the attraction, the tension in the initial invitations, the thrill of finding what you have in common (they both love Rush!, the sweetness of feeling completely at home with someone. Rudd is terrific as we see him trying hard to interact with Sydney, for whom male friendships come naturally. The expression on his face as he tries to match Sydney’s comfortable conversational rhythms is a gem of comic mingling of anxiety and pleasure. There is some nice understated support from Andy Samberg as Peter’s brother and J.K. Simmons (“Juno”) as his father, but the shrillness of the stereotyped hostile married couple played by Jon Favreau and Jaime Pressly is annoying. Thankfully, the rest of the movie avoids the usual terror of women usually found in man-boy comedies, but it would be nice to let the girls get a laugh once in a while, especially when they are as talented as Pressly and Jones. The script is predictable and the movie falls apart whenever Rudd is off-screen, but as soon as he returns he makes it watchable and even endearing.

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Comedy Movies -- format

Twilight

Posted on March 17, 2009 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some violence and a scene of sensuality
Profanity:	Some teenage language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Adults drink beer
Violence/ Scariness:	Vampire violence, grisly images, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	November 21, 2008

It is in no way disrespectful to this movie to say that I enjoyed the audience reaction as much as I enjoyed what was on the screen. In a theater filled with fans who had patiently waited for over an hour, it was possible to hear some lines softly recited along with the characters, some squeals of joy at seeing favorite moments depicted, and, in a few quiet scenes, some happily sad sniffs.

“Twilight,” the first in the Stephanie Meyer series of books about a high school romance where the boy happens to be a vampire, has become “Twilight” the movie and it has been brought to life with respectful diligence for the source material and a warm understanding of its characters and target audience. Catherine Hardwicke has developed something of a speciality in stories about teenagers with “13,” “The Nativity Story,” and “The Lords of Dogtown,” and one of the pleasures of the film is the way she shows us the rhythms of teenage interaction.

Bella (a perfectly cast Kristen Stewart) has left sunny Phoenix for the rainiest town in America, Forks, Washington, to live with her father. The students at her new school welcome her warmly but the boy who dazzles her is handsome Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). At first, he seems to dislike her, but it turns out that he has just been trying to hide from her and from himself how much he is attracted to her.

These days, it is increasingly difficult to find a reason for a couple not to get together so fast there is no time for a story to happen and Meyer specifically created Edward and Bella with a permanent dilemma to give her characters and her readers some breathing room to explore the relationship. Part of the appeal of the story is an almost-Victorian sense of repression, sacrifice, and longing, all so sincerely depicted it just might single-handedly bring back the swoon. Young girls can enjoy this story because of Bella’s sense of power — loving her so devotedly all but un-mans a creature designed to be “the world’s most dangerous predator.” Edward has the attributes of the adolescent ideal for romance since before the days of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Wuthering Heights” and “Titanic” — unconditional love, parental disapproval, and ultimate impossibility.

The film falters a little in the portrayal of the vampires, who seem, even by fantasy standards, unnaturally pasty-faced, and some of the special effects are a little cheesy. It’s hard to make someone super-fast without looking cartoony. But it benefits from some deft and easy humor and sly twists on both vampire lore (let’s just say that mirrors and sunlight are different for these vampires than for the traditional Bram Stoker variety, with subtle hints to crosses and garlic) and high school (giving it up on prom night takes on a new meaning). Hardwicke, originally a production designer, also lets the settings help tell the story, from the lush greens of the opening shots to the Cullen’s sun-filled home. But the movie belongs to Bella and Edward and Stewart and Pattinson show us a tenderness and devotion that makes them one of this year’s most romantic couples.

Miss March

Posted on March 12, 2009 at 9:31 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, pervasive language and some drug use
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking including drinking to deal with stress, smoking, drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic violence, some graphic images
Diversity Issues:	Offensive to every possible group
Date Released to Theaters:	March 13, 2009

A smarmy premise becomes an unspeakably offensive movie in a mess that is not just disgusting but dull. I don’t feel I need a bath after seeing it; I feel I need an exorcism.
Remember the song “Centerfold?” That’s pretty much the idea, but much coarser. On prom night, abstinence lecturers Eugene (Zach Cregger) and his girlfriend Cindi (Raquel Alessi) are about to have sex when he opens the wrong door and falls down the basement stairs. Four years later, he awakes from a coma when his lifetime best friend, the smarmy, juvenile Tucker (Trevor Moore) smacks him on the head with a baseball bat. He tells Eugene that not only did he miss having sex with Cindi and four years of his life but Cindi is now a centerfold in Playboy, Miss March. They decide to to to a party at the Playboy Mansion so Eugene can be reunited with Cindi despite Eugene’s muscular atrophy and a complete lack of money, much less an invitation, plus being on the other side of the country. This plan has the added advantage of getting Tucker out of town and away from his revenge-seeking epileptic girlfriend, whose fire fighter brother has alerted firehouses across the country that Tucker must be killed. She is angry because he repeatedly stabbed her face with a fork when she had a seizure during a sex act. No kidding.
This film has been inflicted on audiences by director/writer/stars the guys behind the television show The Whitest Kids U’Know. The term “triple threat” has never been so meaningful. They are also all about 10-15 years too old for their characters. Unfunny, offensive jokes are repeated as though that might make them hilarious. Over and over we get to experience Eugene’s post-coma lack of bowel control and a rapper whose name describes an animal’s body part. That sets the tone for the rest of the film. Offensive portrayals of women, Hispanics, African-Americans, lesbians, fire fighters(!), the disabled, and pretty much the entire human race are brain-numbingly off-key, never audacious or clever, just thuggish and sluggish. The only impressive aspect of the movie is how many ways it manages to be insulting and how few ways it manages to be entertaining.

(more…)

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Comedy Movies -- format

Rachel Getting Married

Posted on March 10, 2009 at 8:01 am

Fiction is usually very linear, just because of the limits of time. The longest epic and the thickest novel don’t have enough scope to encompass extraneous detail. In real life people can’t find parking spots and fumble for correct change, but in movies everything usually moves with aerodynamic directness except for the elements of the particular muddle the characters are facing and we are attuned to expect that when a character says he has never done something that by the end of the film he will and that when a character gets a nosebleed by the end of the film he will probably be gone. Movie stories happen in the center of the frame, but real life happens around the edges. Move stories lay things out for the audience but real life is messy. Jonathan Demme’s brilliant new film is messy the way life is messy. Its power sneaks up on you. But by the time it is over, you will find that its characters and story have become real to you in a way that a crisper style of story-telling could not convey.

Kym (Anne Hathaway) is a substance abuser who has been in and out of rehab many times. As the movie opens, she is waiting to be picked up by her father, Paul (Bill Irwin), so she can go to the wedding of her sister Rachel (“Mad Men’s” Rosemarie DeWitt).

Filmed in an intimate, documentary style with a hand-held digital camera, the weekend unfolds like a home movie. The only music we hear is the music of the wedding, as musicians rehearse and perform throughout the weekend. When Paul jokingly tells one of the groom’s cousins, a young serviceman, to stop filming everything all the time it is possible to imagine that what we are watching is the footage he has been taking. Demme takes some audacious risks, letting scenes run on much longer than we are used to. It seems out of control, even self-indulgent until it becomes clear that Demme is utterly in charge and there is not a wasted frame.

Kym is defensive, hypersensitive, contrite, and very needy. She is a master of attention judo. Even in the midst of her sister’s wedding, she manages to turn the subject to herself. At the rehearsal dinner, after loving toast after toast, filled with affectionate jokes, Kym stands up and goes into a long, embarrassing speech about her need to make amends. She has impulsive sex with the best man. She displaces the maid of honor. And nothing is ever enough.

This is not another in the long series of awards-bait movies about substance abusers, going back to “The Lost Weekend” and “Come Fill the Cup,” through “28 Days” and “Clean and Sober.” Although at times it seems she is trying to grab our attention, too, Kym is not the focus of the story though at times she seems to be the manifestation of all of the rest of the family’s repressed feelings, while Paul keeps offering everyone food and pleading with them not to fight and the girls’ mother Abby (Debra Winger in a performance of controlled ferocity), superficially benign but always just out of reach. We see the scars before we hear the stories of the wounds as we meet the second spouses of Paul and Deborah and see how the family talks around certain areas.

But there is enormous generosity of spirit in this family. It is wonderfully diverse, with both Rachel and Paul married to African-Americans and a wide assortment of friends and family. The music that surrounds them is nourishing and inspiring. But there is also enormous pain as we only come to understand so gradually that we feel it before we think it. This masterful film is a quiet treasure, profoundly enriching.

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Drama Family Issues

Milk

Posted on March 10, 2009 at 8:00 am

“My name is Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you!”

This disarming introduction became the trademark of the man who would become the first out gay man to hold major elective office in the United States. With this greeting, Milk let his audience know that he understood their fears of homosexuality and could not only make a little gentle fun of them but could make fun of himself, too. He did want to recruit his audiences, not to being gay but to fighting for justice.

As the movie begins, Milk (Oscar-winner Sean Penn) is about to turn 40 and feels that he has never done anything important. So he and his boyfriend Scott Smith (James Franco) move to San Francisco, open a camera store, and begin to get involved in the community and to become active in opposing a system that perpetuated bigotry and abuse of the gay community. After running unsuccessfully, he makes an important change in his approach — instead of running against something, he starts to run for something, to talk about hope. He becomes a respected leader. He forges some unexpected alliances — with the Teamsters and with people who want pooper-scooper laws. He is elected to San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors. But he has enemies. There are threats. And finally, he is killed, along with the city’s mayor, by one of his former colleagues, Dan White (Josh Brolin).

This film has some of the elements of the traditional biopic, but Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black spares us the shorthand formative childhood experiences and minimizes the internal struggles. From the first moment we see Milk, picking up a stranger coming out of the subway on the eve of his 40th birthday we see a man who is already completely comfortable with who he is, a man of great sweetness and humor (both as in good humor and as in wit).

Every performance is impeccable, especially Penn, Franco, and Brolin. But what makes the movie so vibrant is the exquisitely evoked setting, not just the meticulously re-created Castro neighborhood of the 1970’s but the era, the moment, when so much seemed against what they were trying to achieve (the archival footage shows a casual homophobia that is a powerful reminder of how far we have come, even in an era of state initiatives to ban gay marriage. The sweetness and thrill of a heady new sense of possibilities in the pre-AIDS era is almost unbearably poignant. It is a tragic story but it is also a story of hope. It was hope, after all, that Milk learned to bring to his community. That community grew to include the entire city, and now, thanks to this film, to all of us.

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Based on a true story Drama