How to be Single

Posted on February 11, 2016 at 5:40 pm

Drew Barrymore — you know I love you but how does your Flower Films production company produce a film about female friendship and empowerment that barely passes the Bechdel test?

And did we really need a thinly disguised remake of “He’s Just Not That Into You?” I know it’s Valentine’s Day and the time feels right for a girls’ night out movie, but despite its entertaining moments, I’d go for “Star Wars” again over this.

Now, on to the entertaining moments. This is one of those “three girls looking for love” or “three girls looking for love or its close equivalent” stories with cute guys, cute clothes, cute apartments, cute problems, and cute pop songs on the soundtrack. Yes, get ready for “Worth It.” Again. It’s the new “I Feel Good.”

Alice (adorable Dakota Johnson) breaks up with her college boyfriend Josh (Nicholas Braun). She loves him, but they’ve been together four years and she does not know who she really is anymore. She needs to be on her own for a while, she tells him. It’s not a break-up; it’s just a break. Her new friend Robin (Rebel Wilson doing her usual shtick) reminds her that “Hey, Season Three Ross, there’s no such thing as being on a break.” Robin encourages her to drink, dance, and have meaningless sex with a cute bartender named Tom (Anders Holm of “The Intern”) who is the master of the one-night stand.

Alice has an older sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), an obstetrician who wants to have a baby. And then there is Lucy (Alison Brie), who lives above Tom’s bar and goes there to use his wi-fi to scroll through endless dating site profiles and complain about how DIFFICULT it is to find a presentable man who will COMMIT. This entire section is pretty much ripped off from the Justin Long/Ginnifer Goodwin part of “He’s Just Not That Into You” by the same screenwriters.

Johnson and Brie are adorable, and up-and-comer Jake Lacy (“Carol,” “Obvious Child”) is very appealing as one of Alice’s co-workers who likes Meg. But it is disappointing that it claims to be about the importance of taking responsibility for your own life and your own dreams, and apparently it is written by and very loosely based on a novel by women who are capable in jobs they find satisfying. But Alice seems to have no interest in her job as a paralegal and is as clueless about what it takes to be a professional as she is about even the most basic of daily tasks. She literally cannot dress herself. And learning to do so is portrayed as a major life achievement. Her romance with a handsome widower (an underused Damon Wayans, Jr.) makes little sense and her BFF relationship with Robin makes even less. In fact, there isn’t one relationship in the movie that makes us think they could have an actual conversation or even have much fun together.

“How to be Single” is more like a series of skits at a sorority slumber party than a story with characters. If Alice, Robin, Meg, and Lucy went out for a girls’ night at the movies, they’d choose something else.

Parents should know that this film includes very strong sexual content with many casual encounters, explicit sexual humor and sexual situations, and brief nudity, very strong and crude language, drinking and drugs.

Family discussion: What was the most important lesson Alice learned from each of the men she dated? Why did she listen to Robin?

If you like this, try: “He’s Just Not That Into You,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” and “Think Like a Man”

Related Tags:

Comedy Romance

Touched With Fire

Posted on February 11, 2016 at 5:12 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Mental illness, suicide attempt, risky behavior
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 12, 2016

Movies are fascinated with mentally ill people but they usually do not do a very good job of portraying them accurately or compassionately. Too often they are serial killers (“Silence of the Lambs”). Even worse, many times they are adorable wise fools (“Benny & Joon,” “King of Hearts”), somehow tuned in to a finer way of thinking. We very seldom get to see them as people. But “Touched With Fire,” named for the book on bi-polar disorder by a doctor who herself is bi-polar and written and directed by Paul Dalio, who is bi-polar, has a sense of deep understanding of the characters that makes it very compelling.

Dalio takes us inside, literally shifting the color scheme and the walls of the sets so that we not only see the characters experiencing a manic high but get a sense of how thrilling, liberating, and exhilarating it feels. He is also deeply compassionate to the family members. Christine Lahti and Griffin Dunne show us the endless and sometimes exhausting love, fear, and pain for their children.

Dalio and his characters, Marco (Luke Kirby) and Carla (Katie Holmes) feel kinship to the many artists who were bi-polar, from Van Gogh to Hemingway (we see a list in the film’s closing credits). The manic cycles of bi-polar disorder can spark a kaleidoscopic geyser of artistic energy. Marco and Carla are both poets with wild, vivid word choices. They meet in a mental hospital and are immediately drawn to one another, triggering a manic episode that catapults them into ecstatic happiness. But the down cycle and the consequences of their behavior create complications.

Dalio is very good at conveying the subjective experience of mania and the family dynamics and the poetry and speech of the two main characters limns the uncertain line between art and madness. Holmes and Kirby both give performances of enormous sensitivity and insight. But Dalio’s very diligence about fairness to everyone and some didactic discursiveness are better for therapeutic purposes than narrative purposes. In its best moments, it is a thoughtful, compassionate film that shows how art can help to both heal and express thoughts that are otherwise dangerously uncontainable.

Parents should know that this movie includes themes of mental illness and medication, with attempted suicide and risky behavior, strong language, sexual references, and abortion.

Family discussion: What was the best way for Marco’s and Carla’s parents to respond to their news? Why did Carla and Marco make different choices?

If you like this, try: the book by Kay Redfield Jamison and Mark Ruffalo’s performance in “Infinitely Polar Bear”

The Choice

Posted on February 4, 2016 at 5:55 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sexual content and some thematic issues
Profanity:	Some mild language, someone gives the finger
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Social drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Serious car accident, character critically injured
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	February 5, 2016
Date Released to DVD:	May 2, 2016
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01D1JDCB0

Nicholas Sparks is one of the rare authors who has become a brand of his own, bigger than any of his movies. One reason is their predicability; fans know what to expect and they won’t be disappointed. The other reason is his genuine gift for creating characters audiences immediately like and want the best for.

In “The Choice,” with a script by “Demolition” screenwriter Bryan Sipe, we meet easy-going Travis (Benjamin Walker, last seen as the bad captain in “The Heart of the Sea”) as he meets his new neighbor, a peppery med student named Gabby (Teresa Palmer). In the midst of studying, already furious because of his loud music, she discovers that her dog is pregnant and she goes next door to let him know how angry she is. He is captivated by her because she is different from the other girls he has known, who came to him with little effort and left with little fuss. “You bother me,” he tells her, intrigued and a little surprised.

They both discover that their initial conclusions about one another may have been wrong, but the chemistry between them is increasing in intensity, even though Gabby has a serious boyfriend, a handsome doctor (Tom Welling). Gabby likes challenging Travis and he likes having to work to get her affection.

Their side-by-side homes both look out onto the water of North Carolina’s Inner Banks, and the images of sky, water, and coast are exquisite, somewhere between travel brochure and screen saver. Sparks has to be the MVP for the North Carolina tourism bureau. All of his stories are set in this spectacularly beautiful (if plagued by storms) region. And it is certainly easy to believe that the glow from this enchantingly glorious setting makes this a sublime place to fall in love. Director of Photography Alar Kivilo and the setting itself are as important to the film as the storyline, and more important than the dialogue. Some lines are arch or cheesy: “Look who’s sassypants!” “You’re a dork!” “There you go again, bothering me.” We never find Travis or Gabby as appealing as we are asked to believe they find each other.

Sparks seems to have taken in some complaints about the formulaic nature of his stories, or maybe he just wanted to try something different (but thankfully not as different as the awful “twist” in Safe Haven). We still have a body of water, a letter, and someone who has to be taken down a peg or two. The surprises are not as surprising to us as they are to the characters. But there is something gentle about the story that is undeniably captivating.

Parents should know that this film includes a serious auto accident and questions of when someone should be taken off life support, along with some strong language, mild crude references, social drinking.

Family discussion: What small choices in your life have made the biggest difference? Why does Travis like to be bothered?

If you like this, try: other Nicholas Sparks films like “Nights in Rodanthe” and “The Lucky One”

Brooklyn

Posted on November 25, 2015 at 5:22 pm

“Brooklyn,” based on the book by Colm Tóibín, is exquisitely lyrical, the story of a young woman who immigrates from Ireland to New York in 1952. She is sad, homesick, and lonely at first, then just as she begins to feel at home she is called back to Ireland.

Movies can show us monsters and aliens and explosions but none of that will ever have the quiet power of Saoirse Ronan in close-up. The breathtaking intimacy of being so close to her face, her sky-blue eyes, the lift of her chin, is a story in itself. For once, the Irish-raised actress is using her own accent, and the lilt of it is pure and poetic.

She plays Eilis (pronounced EYE-lish), who lives with her mother and sister Rose in a small town. Rose has helped her make arrangements with a priest in New York (Jim Broadbent) for an apartment and a job. Eilis loves her family. But she is stuck in a part-time job working for a shrew in a grocery store. Ireland in the post-WWII years has little to offer her by way of love or work. And so she takes a voyage. The reason she is the only one at dinner the first night out is revealed when she gets very, very sick. But a sympathetic roommate helps her through and advises her about how to pass muster at Ellis Island — to act like an American, which means looking confident.

Eilis moves into an all-Irish boarding house, owned by the formidable Mrs. Keough (Julie Walters), a sharp-eyed but not unkind woman who can tell the difference between the simpering giggles of the other girls and the shy but steady Eilis. Soon Eilis is working at a department store, where the complexities of the transactions (payment sent to a central location via vacuum tube) and inventory are not as challenging as learning to chat pleasantly with the customers. It is an amusing change from the store in Ireland, where the owner barked at someone for wanting shoe polish on a Sunday, and “Mad Men’s” Jessica Paré is excellent as the manager.

Eilis slowly begins to feel at home. Ronan’s performance is precise and sensitive. She shows, not tells us how Eilis begins to bloom through taking some bookkeeping classes and meeting a nice guy, an Italian boy named Tony (the piercingly sweet Emory Cohen). There is believable magic in their sweetly developing relationship.

And then, there is a tragedy at home and Eilis has to go back to Ireland. But is that her home anymore? Can she fit into her old place? Does she want to?

Director John Crowley is a careful observer, and every moment rewards careful observation from us. A yawn in church. The faces of the people at the dock saying goodbye to their emigrating family members. The look on Eilis’ face as she struggles to tell Tony how she feels — it is a wonder, and one of the year’s best films.

Parents should know that this film includes a non-explicit sexual situation, sexual references, some strong language, and a sad death.

Family discussion: Did Eilis make the right choice? Why or why not? Who was most helpful to her?

If you like this, try: “In America,” another story of Irish immigrants in New York

Carol

Posted on November 24, 2015 at 5:54 pm

The most romantic movie of the year is “Carol,” based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, the author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. But Carol, her second novel, was originally published under another title and under another name. It was semi-autobiographical, it was the story of a lesbian relationship, and, unlike the rest of the very limited literature about lesbians at the time, it was not a tragic story. It was almost four decades before Highsmith acknowledged that she was the author.

There is some irony, then, in the idea that this film, depicting a story that was so controversial in the repressed “love that dare not speak its name” mid-century time when it was written is for that very reason ideally suited to depict a romance that is so rich and resonant. Now, when writers complain about how difficult it is to come up with believable ways to keep their characters from having sex in the first act (Stephenie Meyer had to make her male character a vampire for that reason in the Twilight series), making this love affair doubly forbidden by making the couple both women in the conformist 1950’s is the ultimate depiction of the anxious giddiness of being on the brink of falling in love.

The longing. The hesitation. The ecstasy of feeling seen. The harrowing insecurity of feeling seen. The exquisite torture of it all.

This is all gorgeously portrayed in every detail on the screen. Director Todd Haynes, working with an outstanding team of designers and director of photography Edward Lachman tells the story with each setting and camera angle and the flawless performances of the two lead actors, Cate Blanchett in the title role as a wealthy woman in the midst of a divorce and Rooney Mara as Therese, a young shopgirl and would-be photographer.

The intricacy, the precision, and the delicacy of the storytelling allows us to experience the relationship along with the two women. It wisely avoids the usual lazy shortcuts to indicate attraction: the “You love this obscure thing? I love the same obscure thing!” conversation or the montage over a pop song. Instead, the conversational topics are mundane and the responses are not especially witty or incisive. But what we see is that they are good enough for Therese and Carol, and that pulls us in.

Haynes skillfully makes sure that the relationship never seems predatory, even though Carol is older, sophisticated, and wealthy and Therese is young, inexperienced, and vulnerable. Therese herself admits she is so unsure of herself she can hardly figure out what to order for lunch. Haynes and his stars never allow the relationship to seem anything but equally chosen. Even a scene where Carol tries out some make-up on Therese avoids the usual “makeover” trope. When she tells Therese to touch the perfume to her pulse points, we can feel both sets of pulses flutter. The dialogue is often oblique, but its meaning is always true-hearted.

Parents should know that this film includes sexual references and an explicit situation, nudity, some strong language, drinking, smoking, and discussions of divorce, adultery, and custody.

Family discussion: What do we learn from the questions Therese asked Richard? How does this movie illustrate what one character calls the difference between what people say and what they really feel?

If you like this, try: “Far from Heaven” and “Strangers on a Train”