Silver Linings Playbook

Posted on November 15, 2012 at 6:01 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual content/nudity
Profanity:	Constant very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Assaults and fighting
Diversity Issues:	Respectful treatment of mental illness
Date Released to Theaters:	November 16, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	April 29, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00A81NFAS

When Bradley Cooper appeared on “Inside the Actors Studio,” the first graduate of the program to be featured, they showed a clip from Robert DeNiro’s appearance on the show, with then-student Cooper asking him a question about his performance in “Awakenings.” DeNiro was clearly impressed with the perception and sincerity of his young questioner. It was only a few years later that Cooper was acting opposite DeNiro in “Limitless.” Now they are together again as father and son, Pat Sr. and Pat Jr., in “Silver Linings Playbook,” based on the novel by Matthew Quick.

Pat Jr. has been in a mental hospital being treated for bipolar disorder, the result of a plea bargain following “the incident,” we will only learn the details of later. His mother brings him home though it is not at all clear that he is or will ever be ready. Pat has impulse control problems, especially when he hears a particular Stevie Wonder song or does not like the ending of a Hemingway novel. But he is absolutely determined to get his life back. And his wife back. This involves a lot of physical conditioning and finding away around the restraining order that forbids him from contacting her.

He meets a troubled young widow named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence of “Hunger Games”), the sister-in-law of his best friend. Pat is fighting so hard to be “normal” again that he is disturbed, annoyed, and a little scared by her outspoken, socially inappropriate behavior. But she offers the same directness and shared experience he had with his fellow patients. He struggles with the competing impulses to reject and accept her overtures of friendship. Their exchange about the effects of various mood and anti-psychotic meds is a gem, the mental illness equivalent of Romeo and Juliet speaking to each other in alternate lines of a sonnet on their first meeting. And Lawrence is sublime in her summation-to-the-court-style argument with Pat Sr. about the factors that go into an Eagles win.

They agree to help each other, and this gives Pat purpose, discipline, and direction. And we learn more about “the incident” and about Pat’s relationship with Pat Sr., a professional gambler and bookie whose passion for the Eagles provides some context for his influence on his son.

Director David O. Russell, who adapted the novel, and his cast fill the story with engaging, believable characters, especially Jackie Weaver as Pat’s mother, John Ortiz as his stressed-out best friend, and Anupam Kuhr as his therapist. It is a great pleasure to see Chris Tucker, who is outstanding as a mental patient, though I wish they had found him more to do than the usual “black it up” (that’s a direct quote) pep talk. Pat is so upset by the end of Farewell to Arms (on his wife’s assigned reading list for the high school class she teaches) that he has to wake his parents in the middle of the night to tell them why stories need happy endings. The ending here is abrupt and a bit cheesy. But these damaged and vulnerable and anxious characters love and want to be loved and we want it for them.

Parents should know that this film includes a lot of very strong and profane language, sexual references (some explicit), family dysfunction and mental illness, drinking

Family discussion: How are Pat and his father alike? How do Tiffany, Ronnie, and Cliff help him? What makes Pat change his mind?

If you like this, try: “Inside Moves” and “Garden State”

The Words

Posted on September 7, 2012 at 2:57 pm

This movie about an unsuccessful writer who appropriates an old manuscript and sells it as his own feels like a movie made by a writer who has the same problem.

This is an idea that has already been explored by Woody Allen (“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger“), Frankie Muniz (“Big Fat Liar“), and Ira Levin (“Deathtrap”) and it is of far more interest and appeal to a writer struggling between the passion to tell a story and the self-doubt that blocks the progress from the idea to the page. But this idea should have stayed where it was.

It’s a story within a story within a story. And a long flashback. The movie opens with its first preposterous setting — a distinguished author named Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is on stage in an auditorium with a rapt audience but apparently all he is there to do is read aloud from his book, with an intermission in between for him to chat up and be chatted up by Daniella, a pretty grad student (Olivia Wilde). In real life, with the possible exception of a story hour for preschoolers, authors do more in front of audiences than recite the words in the book, but in the world of this movie, that is what this one does.

Much of the film is the story he reads, and this is the part about the poor but (temporarily) honorable young writer named Rory Jameson (Bradley Cooper — character names are not this movie’s strong point) who is just fine with having his father and his gorgeous and devoted wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) support him while he bangs away at his keyboard, looking intense. “I gotta pay my dues!” he says when asked for yet another loan from his father. “No, I gotta pay your dues,” says his dad, suggesting maybe writing should just be Rory’s hobby.

He finally takes a job pushing the mail cart at a publishing company. After a couple of years, he produces a manuscript, which is rejected by everyone, most painfully by an agent who gives him the most devastating assessment possible: he thinks it is brilliant but unpublishable. At least if it was lousy, Rory could give up.

And then, in an old leather portfolio Dora buys at a Parisian curio shop, Rory finds a manuscript. He types out every word just to feel the sentences go through his fingers. Dora loves it. He submits it to the publisher. The publisher loves it: “It’s so interior! It’s artistic, it’s subtle, it’s a piece of art,” he says, like no person in publishing ever. Then the critics and the readers love it, even though it has the dumb name, “The Window Tears.” (Rain, right?) And then an old man, this one thankfully without a name and even more thankfully played by Jeremy Irons, shows up. He is the author.

Remember, this is all still Dennis Quaid’s book, the one he is reading aloud to the audience. And then we get a flashback within a story within a story as Jeremy Irons tells us how the manuscript was written and how it got lost. It is about this time that the movie gets lost, too, as we go back and forth between Rory’s attempts to put things right and Clay’s strange encounter with Daniella in his apartment filled with unpacked boxes. There are some random parallels between the stories (a guy in an undershirt hugging a woman standing at the kitchen sink, dealing with a loss by getting drunk, and some sophomoric exchanges about truth and art, and then it does not end — it just stops.

Parents should know that there are some sensual but non-explicit sexual situations, a tragic death of an infant, drinking and drunkenness, some strong language, and a lot of smoking. There are also brief not-graphic war images.

Family discussion: What should Rory have done when the publisher told him he loved the manuscript? What should Dora have done when she found out the truth? What does the framing story add to the meaning of the film?

If you like this, try: “The Stone Reader,” a documentary about a real-life search for a mysterious author of a critically acclaimed but forgotten book and learn about the real-life story of a famous author’s lost manuscript

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Hit & Run

Posted on August 22, 2012 at 3:21 pm

Real-life couple Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are as cute as can be on and off camera, but there is nothing in this movie that comes close to the adorableness of their viral sloth video. Bell produced and Shepard wrote, directed, and co-edited this action-comedy-romance about a guy in the witness protection program using the name Charles Bronson (not named after the actor but after the prisoner who named himself after the actor) and his girlfriend, Annie, who has a PhD in non-violent conflict resolution. He told her he was in the program because he witnessed a crime. He didn’t tell her he witnessed it from the driver’s seat in the getaway car. Meanwhile, she has to get to an interview for her dream job, which is a bit tricky when they are being chased by her ex-boyfriend who wants her back and his ex-gang who want him in a lot of pain.

Shepard and Bell said they based the dynamic between their characters on their own relationship and the obvious affection and chemistry is genuinely endearing. But the script is slapdash and haphazard, seemingly thrown together based on whichever of their friends was available for a day of shooting. Kristin Chenoweth has two scenes as Annie’s pill-popping boss (completely wasting the obvious opportunity to cast them as sisters) and Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes show up briefly for two pointless cameos.

They are luckier than Bradley Cooper, who brings all of his goodwill and Actors Studio technique to the role of the dreadlocked, animal-loving bank robber who is looking for payback but can’t make it work, perhaps because his biggest laugh line is supposed to be a funny comment about prison rape. The movie wants us to find naughty words funny just because they are naughty, and that gets tired very fast. There are a couple of mildly funny lines: “I’m not going to teach non-violence at a university and marry Dog the Bounty Hunter.” “It’s not cool to wear those tank tops any more, unless you’re wearing them ironically or something.” It’s nice to see Beau Bridges. The souped up cars are cool and there are some nice stunts. But then we get back to Tom Arnold as a hapless federal marshal who has a premature firing problem and an orgy that is supposed to be funny because all the people are old and saggy and some dumb commentary about racial and homophobic humor and some dumber commentary about the importance of trust and communication — and hedging currencies. Don’t hit, just run.

Parents should know that this movie has constant provocative and outrageous humor including sexual references and racial and homophobic humor, frontal male and female nudity, some graphic violence (guns, battery), drug humor

Family discussion: What should Charlie have told Annie? What do you think of the way they talk about their differences?

If you like this, try: “Smokey and the Bandit” and “Grand Theft Auto”

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Action/Adventure Comedy Romance

The Hangover, Part II

Posted on May 25, 2011 at 11:15 am

What’s it called again when you suffer the morning-after consequences of a wild night of extravagent, if debauched, fun? Oh yes, a hangover.

This second night out with the wolf pack of Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), suffers from sequelitis, that headache-y uncertainty about exactly what it was that worked the last time and inability to make its premise seem fresh. It feels as stale as the air in the squalid hotel room our heroes find themselves in with no idea of how they got there. But it will still do as a taste of the hair of the dog. The laughs may be fewer and the gasps more “ewww” than “wow,” but there is still some pleasure in seeing those guys suffer.

A couple of years have passed and Stu is about to get married, not to the stripper he wed in Las Vegas in the first movie but to a lovely girl named Lauren (Jamie Chung). As a tribute to her heritage, the wedding is going to take place in Thailand. Stu insists that brunch at IHOP with Phil and Doug (Justin Bartha) is all the bachelor party he wants (and he puts a napkin over his orange juice glass just to make sure no one is slipping him a roofy this time). But Doug persuades Stu to invite his brother-in-law Alan, and they are joined by Lauren’s 16-year-old brother, Teddy (Mason Lee), a prodigy who plays cello and is pre-med at Stanford.

Two nights before the wedding, after Lauren’s father insults Stu in a toast, the guys agree to have one drink on the beach before bed. And Stu, Phil, and Alan wake up the next morning, as they did in the first one, with no memory of what happened the night before and a lot of incontrovertible evidence that what did happen was dangerous, probably criminal, and certainly disgusting. Stu’s face bears the Maori tattoo they saw in the last movie on Mike Tyson. There is a severed finger that appears to belong to Teddy, who is missing. In his place is their old nemsis, Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong). And instead of the last film’s tiger, there is a monkey wearing a Rolling Stones jean jacket.

They have somehow found themselves in Bangkok, and their search for Teddy involves an aged mute monk in a wheelchair, an American tattoo artist, a strip club, Russian drug dealers, some panicked phone calls, a Molotov cocktail, and both human and animal gun shot wounds.

The trick in comedies like this one is to find the sweet spot between the familiar and the surprising and between the shocking and the disturbing. It misses. Some in the audience will be happy to see the structure of the original repeated but most will wish for something new. And the key to comedy is the “almost,” the ability to have it both ways by making sure the chaos is disruptive but not conclusively so. Trashy is good. Tawdry, not so much. And aren’t we a couple of decades past finding humor in homosexual panic?

There are some very funny moments, with a hilarious password joke, Stu’s version of “Alan-town,” and some deliciously weird comments from Galifianakis and Jeong. But it misses the sense of genuine connection between the characters we just saw in “Bridesmaids.” The first one ended with a satisfying sense of lessons learned. This one should end with an intervention.

(more…)

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Comedy Series/Sequel

Limitless

Posted on March 17, 2011 at 6:16 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic material involving a drug, violence including disturbing images, sexuality and language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Plot concerns a performance-enhancing superdrug,
Violence/ Scariness:	Some intense and graphic violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	March 18, 2011
Date Released to DVD:	July 18, 2011
Amazon.com ASIN:	B0051MKNV8

Most of us feel that there must be some way for us to unleash the best version of ourselves. Whole sections of bookstores, whole shelves of vitamins, dozens of infomercials, motivational speakers, and guides to personal growth, self-actualization, and personal and professional success are evidence of the powerful human sense that there must be some trick to getting us out of our own way. So, if someone offered you a pill that would do all that for you, you’d probably be tempted to give it a try.

That’s what happens to Eddie (Bradley Cooper) in this stylish thriller. He’s a guy who feels like a loser. He has yet to write a single word of the book he is supposed to be working on. His girlfriend (Abbie Cornish as Lindy) has dumped him. He lives in a dive and he is out of money and out of ideas. He has just about lost touch entirely with any notion of himself as a person in control, a person on track, a person with a sense of possibility. He runs into his former brother-in-law, who says he has moved on from selling street drugs to selling legal pharmaceuticals and offers him something new and special, a small, circular, clear little performance-enhancing pill. Eddie swallows it.

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It hits him like a combination of Ritalin, steroids, speed, and super-powerful ginkgo biloba. It hits him like spinach hits Popeye, if it grew his brain instead of his muscles. Suddenly, everything makes sense. Eddie has focus, confidence, motivation, clarity. The scales drop from his eyes. Everything makes sense to him, information, numbers, people. He can effortlessly access any information he has ever skimmed over, even if he was unaware of it at the time. He finishes writing his book in four days and it is a masterpiece. He can learn new languages almost instantly. He gets a haircut, cleans up his apartment, starts to work out. He gets Lindy back. He starts investing and the money pours in. A billionaire (Robert De Niro) makes him an offer.

But there’s a problem. Eddie becomes dependent on the drug. He keeps upping his dose and he starts to have black-outs. His ex-wife gives him a shattering glimpse of what it means to go cold turkey. The dealer has been murdered. Eddie has a stash, but no way to get more. Other people know about the drug and they desperately want him to get it for them. Can he out-think other out-thinkers?

Cooper has become one of Hollywood’s most appealing leading men and this movie, which he co-produced, plays to his strengths. If he is not exactly convincing as the pony-tailed mess at the beginning, he has all of the genuine movie star gloss to make the newer, better Eddie look, as Dolly used to sing, better than a body has a right to. Director Neil Burger keeps the movie amped up, making us feel a little wired as we watch. It’s fun to get inside the head of someone working at 500 percent capacity, seeing how he thinks through his options, trying to maintain control internally and externally, balancing the swings between extraordinary powers and terrifying dependence and vulnerability.

Even those of average intelligence to spot the problems Eddie overlooks — or the obvious solution it takes him the entire running time to figure out. But it is still a lot of stylish fun to see Bradley Cooper inhabit the fantasy — and deal with the fallout.