Friends With Benefits

Posted on July 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm

“Shut up, Katherine Heigl,” says our heroine, as she passes by a wall of posters for another fungible romantic comedy that should be sued for deceptive advertising. Jamie (Mila Kunis) is an executive recruiter who wants to believe in love but has had a series of relationships with guys who took her heart and stomped that sucker flat. Dylan (Justin Timberlake) is the hotshot design guy she recruited to move from a web job in California to GQ in New York. While Jamie wants intimacy too much, Dylan wants to avoid it.

And while we all want a good, old-fashioned (but not too old-fashioned) date movie romantic comedy, we don’t want the same old Jennifers and Jessicas getting into the same old situations. The problem is that it is harder and harder to find reasons for keeping the couple that the audience knows is destined to be together from having sex for a whole 100 minutes. And so we get the second movie in seven months that tries to turn the usual story upside down. Let’s let them have sex right away but then learn how much they love each other. It works better here than in No Strings Attached because it has a cleverer script and better chemistry. There’s a terrific beginning as we see Jamie and Dylan on the phone with her waiting in front of a theater and him explaining that he isn’t really late. We think they’re talking to each other when it turns out they’re on opposite sides of the country and both about to be dumped (great cameos by Andy Samberg and Emma Stone). So Dylan is recruited by Jamie for the GQ job and as she sells him on New York, complete with a flash mob in Times Square, they have the rhythms of a couple who are destined to be together. But in the immutable laws of movie romance, both must learn important lessons (and look gorgeous while doing so) before they figure that out. So they decide to have sex as friends without becoming boyfriend and girlfriend.

It’s a movie with a couple of references to “Seinfeld,” but apparently everyone missed the 1991 episode called “The Deal,” in which long-time exes-turned friends Elaine and Jerry decide they can have sex without an emotional attachment or romance. It doesn’t work, and there is something a bit off-putting about characters who think it can. Elaine and Jerry were famously “no learning, no hugging” people who were hilariously superficial and self-involved. But Jamie and Dylan are supposed to get us on their side and talking and behaving like people for whom sex does not mean anything creates a hurdle we have difficulty getting over. While the film avoids some of the pitfalls of the romantic comedy formula, it falls into others, with sketchily-drawn back-stories and distracting detours like an un-funny part for Shaun White and a silly repeated joke about whether pilots are important in landing a plane. Kunis and Timberlake are as great on screen as individuals and as a team and there are some funny and entertaining moments, especially when Dylan explains his childhood affection for Kris Kross. Ultimately, though, it is as formulaic as the movie-within-a-movie they watch together. That one stars Jason Segal and Rashida Jones and has a sly dig to the fake NY locations filmed in LA and some outtakes over the end credits. It — or something just like it — should be in theaters soon.

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Comedy Romance

Easy A

Posted on December 14, 2010 at 8:00 am

Emma Stone finally gets the breakthrough role her fans have been waiting for in “Easy A.” This is the moment that takes her into the front rank of movie stars, sub-category: America’s sweetheart.

Stone has an immediately appealing presence on screen, unpretentious but utterly charming. Here she plays Olive, a girl who doesn’t yet realize that all of the things that make her feel invisible in high school are going to make her wildly beloved for decades after. She is impatient to be “interesting” and so after a thrill-less weekend highlighted by singing along to a greeting card she impulsively tells her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka) that she had sex with her college student boyfriend. Problem #1: the sex and the boyfriend are both imaginary. This is the kind of mistake a teenager would make. Problem #2: this confession occurs in the ladies’ room at the high school, with no checking the stalls. This is not the kind of mistake anyone would make after 7th grade, but we have to kick that plot into gear, now, don’t we?

And so the whole school immediately knows and believes this scandalous news. Which is why Olive’s closeted gay friend tired of getting picked on comes to her with a proposition. Not that kind. He wants her to have noisy public pretend sex with him so that he can be definitively proven manly. And since her reputation is already shot, what can it hurt? And why not do the same favor for some other needy souls? And then, when it seems the whole school is judging her (conveniently, her class is reading The Scarlet Letter), she decides to sew a big red A on a bustier and see what it feels like to go from invisible to un-missable.

Stone is such an effortless charmer that she keeps the story aloft, even when Olive inexplicably turns her little adventure into a for-pay enterprise, insisting on gift cards(!) in exchange for making the reputation of the guys involved at the cost of her own. A side story involving Olive’s favorite teacher (Thomas Hayden Church) and his wife, the school guidance counselor (Lisa Kudrow) is also unnecessarily tawdry. Far better are the encounters with the always delectable (and just about always underused) Amanda Bynes as the school holier-than-thou abstinence proponent and the always ultra-watchable Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s deliciously off-kilter parents. Their scenes are warm, witty, and surprising, and livelier than Olive’s romantic ups and downs. In every way, it is Stone who is the heart of this movie, and she wins our hearts as well.

Pieces of April

Posted on November 23, 2010 at 8:00 am

One of my favorite Thanksgiving films is this touching story of a young woman, estranged from her family, who invites them to Thanksgiving dinner at her apartment.
I love movies that don’t feel like they have to tell you everything.

“Pieces of April” is a movie that does more than trust its audience; it invites the audience to participate by bringing their own ideas and experiences to fill in the story.

It takes place on that most terrifying of holidays, Thanksgiving. April (Katie Holmes) and Bobby (Derek Luke) wake up very early in their apartment on the Lower East Side of New York. He is looking forward to hosting the family and she is not. This is because it is her family that is coming.

April and Bobby start to get things ready, and then he leaves because he has “that thing” he has to do. As soon as he goes, April discovers that her oven does not work. She has to wander through her apartment building, her turkey dressed and stuffed but still raw, trying to find someone who will allow her to borrow an oven.

Meanwhile, her family is on its all-but-inexorable way from the Pennsylvania suburbs, no happier about it than she is. Joy (Patricia Clarkson), April’s mother, has cancer. This will probably be her last Thanksgiving. She and April have never been comfortable with each other and both are overwhelmed by the fear that they will not be able to find a way to make it work this time. One desperately needs a good memory to die with and one desperately needs a good memory to live with.

The family drives to New York: daughter Beth (Alison Pill) trying to be perfect, son Timmy (John Gallagher, Jr.) trying to remove himself by taking pictures of everything, dad Jim (Oliver Platt) trying to keep everyone happy, and Joy’s mother (Alice Drummond), trying to hold on to her own memories, and Joy, angry and bitter and trying not to try anymore.

The film is shot on digital video, which gives it intimacy and a little messiness. It’s easy to believe that it is a home movie. The performances are fresh and unaffected. The look on Pill’s face as she tries to maintain her cheerful demeanor after her feelings are hurt; Jim’s eyes as he looks over at Joy, not sure whether she is sleeping or dead; Bobby’s description of being in love, the neighbors’ cooking advice, April’s explanation of Thanksgiving to a Chinese family, and especially the lovely last scene are moments that are real and touching and meaningful.

Parents should know that the movie has some strong language and some off-screen violence. A character uses medicinal marijuana. There are some brief graphic images. The themes of the film may be difficult for some viewers. One of the movie’s great strengths is its non-stereotyped portrayals of minorities, including one of the most often stereotyped minorities portrayed in movies, terminally ill people. African American and Asian characters are vivid and complete individuals. The movie cleverly (and sweetly) confounds the audiences’ expectations for one African American character.

Families who see this movie should talk about its theme of memories. What are some of your favorite memories and what memories do you most want to make? They should also talk about how each member of the family reacted to Joy’s illness (including Joy) and what it says about them and their relationship to the family.

Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy other Thanksgiving movies about family stress like Hannah and Her Sisters, Avalon, Home for the Holidays, and especially What’s Cooking, by the writer/director of Bend it Like Beckham.

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Drama Family Issues Holidays

Thanksgiving Movie: ‘Pieces of April’

Posted on November 23, 2009 at 1:12 pm

A girl makes a Thanksgiving meal for her estranged family in this bittersweet indie film filled with unforgettable characters. It is available this week only at no charge on Hulu.

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After the kids go to bed Holidays

Interview with Ira Sachs of “Married Life”

Posted on March 17, 2008 at 8:00 am

Ira Sachs is the writer/director of “Married Life,” a story set in 1949 about a married man (Chris Cooper) who falls in love with a young widow (Rachel McAdams). He believes that it would be kinder to kill his wife (Patricia Clarkson) than to leave her. Pierce Brosnan plays his best friend, who finds himself learning secrets from all three of the other characters.

This is your first film set in another time. What does that bring to the story?

Every time you make a fim you create a world. You make decisons about sets and costumes and you create a universe connected to reality but not reality itself. The year 1949 was a choice that we made and we were authentic to that choice. But as William Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” Our parents, our grandparents, are like ourselves; they were full-bloofed full-bodied people who had sex and fights and relationships and and were not different from us. So even though it is set in another time, it is about us.

Elements of this film are very stylized and yet it straddles more than one genre.

Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling. The animated title sequence gives the audience the understanding that they should not take what follows too literally. It is an entertainment that speaks about things that are very true. Mildred Pierce is not the Maysles brothers . Movies are romantic fantasies. As i’ve gotten less righteous, less pedagogic, I have become more loving of the artificiality, the art form, the imitation of life in film. That is the way I hope people approach this film, directly. Enjoy its roller coaster ride of twists and turns, not to have to think about it while you watch but it will give you food for thought. I am trying to take advantage of entertainment as not being a negative word. One of the things that is different is that it does not stick to any one genre, like a good cocktail, a mix. It is something original, something new. It uses all those genres beause they are all part of our collective understanding of how to tell a story.

There was a feeling on the set that we all had a chance to do something adventurous emotionally, a genre film on some levels, but with something bubbling up underneath.

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Interview