Life, Death, Regret and Comedy

Funny People is a film about the kind of friends we all have, the ones who seem compelled to make other people laugh.  The space this film inhabits explores the varying motivations behind such funny people, and what they sacrifice through relationships in order to get to the top.  Writer/director Judd Apatow’s latest film is a comedic heavy-weight hitter.  The kind which puts its audience up against the ropes using highly emotional story arcs, and then knocks us out with cleverly placed jokes when we are at our most vulnerable.  A masterful blend. 

           The film centers around grown up funny man George Simmons (Adam Sandler in arguably his strongest performance to date) who has recently learned that he has a very short time to live.  This is a major problem for the super-star comic, because he lacks the necessary support group that most people need to get through a sickness like this.  He has starred in a dozen movies, but lives in his own kind of solitary confinement high up on the hills overlooking LA.  It’s not hard to say what led George to this place in his life.  His botched marriage George dubs “the one that got away”.  The story implies that there is a certain kind of collateral damage that comes with being close to a comic like George.  Sometimes, his material relies on how he has or will hurt his loved ones.  It’s contrasts like these that make George’s story so compelling.

           George soon meets an aspiring comic named Ira (Seth Rogen).  George senses that there is something about Ira’s writing style that would compliment George’s own voice, so he makes him an offer.  Soon Ira, becomes George’s new right-hand man and the only thing close to resembling a support group that George has.

           This is not merely a film about one comic’s struggle with mortality.  No, it is much more nuanced than that.  Trust me, it’s also much more hilarious than its dark subject matter implies.  As in previous Apatow films, there is a cavalcade of supporting cast members, each of whom deliver mostly fantastic performances. 

 The film is rather lengthy, and by the time four major characters reach the home of Simmons’ ex-wife (Leslie Mann), the story begins to careen down an arc that requires us to quickly believe in the extent of all of this couple’s marital problems.  The pay-off, though rushed, is genuinely satisfying.  It implies, that each character will choose a path that is truly best for themselves, not just what the audience would most like to see. 

 Here Apatow does not stick to formula, he sticks to his guns and creates characters with remarkable depth and extreme vulnerability.  His wonderful insight into what makes a character intriguing, and most importantly, the characters that surround him, make this film what it is. 

 

 

4/5

Moon makes us revisit age old questions...

Although I am not old enough to remember the original 1969 moon landing, my loved ones have often indirectly done their part to help me re-create the scene in my mind.  I remember years ago, trifling through a box of my late grandfather’s old newspaper columns The Casual Comment.  I happened to stumble across an article he had written dated merely days after Neil Armstrong first took those now legendary “small steps”.  In it, my grandfather reflected upon the wonder and mystery of what it was like, to now live in a world in which “man has walked on the moon”.  Now, 40 years later at what some would call the height of our technological prowess,  a film like Duncan Jones’ brilliant Moon questions where we are headed, in an age when sending an ordinary human to the moon does little to satisfy our fancy, or our dollars.

I have to warn you, this week’s movie is one that I can assure you has probably flown under your radar.  No it is not a big budget vehicle like Transformers, therefore it doesn’t have quite the same ad revenue behind it.  I promise you though, your experience will be much more gratifying. So in breaking with the golden rule of most film critics, I am going to tell you why it is worth your time to see a film like Moon

Astronaut Sam Bell (a knock-out performance by Sam Rockwell) has endured quite the long haul.  For three years he has been the lone man on a crew intended to harvest the moon’s resources in order to produce clean burning energy for the entire world.  Sam doesn’t work for the government but for a massive corporation that has hired him out to do this job that painstakingly requires the abilities of human interaction.  Basically, if the machines screw up while he’s up there, it’s Sam’s job to work out the kinks.  In between menial tasks such as these, he waits.  He longs for home, for his wife and daughter.

With just a few weeks to go on his shift,  an accident occurs near the space station.  When Sam wakes up in the infirmary being looked after by the ship’s A.I. Gerty (voiced wonderfully by Kevin Spacey)  he finds a disturbance somewhere outside the space station.  What he finds there is beyond anything he could have possibly imagined.  It is from this point that the rest of the film delves into the struggles Sam faces as he interacts with the other new human he has discovered on the ship, which also happens to be…himself.  I realize full well I may have lost some of you with that last sentence, but I assure to say much more would be spoiling far too much.

There are few scenes you can watch in Moon without thinking of its predecessor 2001: a space odyssey, but the genius of Moon is that it pays homage to its forerunners while still managing to say something current and fresh.  The film is a wonderful sample of a dying genre: hard sci-fi.  The kind that makes us ask questions that I’m sure my Grandfather was asking that summer night 40 years ago:  What is it that makes us human?  Where do we go from here? And what does our future hold?

4/5

 

He Robbed Banks...and We cheered

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies is a sharp and fresh look at a romanticized traditional American genre: The gangster flick. Taking its cues from Bogart and Clark Gable alike, the film’s main character is hopelessly fond of these actors’ on-screen personas. He is a bank robber, an idealistic, maybe even romantic one at that, but he is nothing more nothing less.

Public Enemies focuses sharply on the brief crime-spree of legendary bank-robber John Dillinger, played by Johnny Depp. It is not a traditional bio-pic, or a summer action flick for that matter. What director Michael Mann does instead, he does with great discipline. He portrays Dillinger, during the two weeks or so that the film covers, as a bank robber, and nothing more. “I rob banks” Milliner says to his lover Billie (Marion Cotillard) with enough confidence to bet the house on it. We aren’t sure of his motivation, except that we suspect he might have something against the institution itself seeing as how he never steals from the customers’ pockets. We aren’t sure of his background either, but according to Mann it doesn’t really matter that has one. What matters is that the audience shrugs off its rememberance of the Robin Hood legend that he has become, to view him as he really was. Unabashedly cool, yes. But oh so tragic as well.
The film opens with a jail-breakout sequence that is unfortunately not as engrossing as it needs to be to get the story rolling. From here we are thrust into the crime saga of ambitions for his future. All he seems to take pride in is doing something and doing it extremely well.

Christian Bale co-stars as Melvin Purvis, working for the newly formed FBI. Purvis is obsessed with fighting criminals like Dilinger and his work becomes centered around apprehending him. He has admiration for his boss J. Edgar Hoover, who dreams of an FBI with black-tie officials, and clean-cut accountants. Purvis however, wants men who have actually been in gunfights, and when the feds’ screw-up leads to a Dilinger prison break and dead civilians, Purvis starts to feel the heavy toll of hunting a man like Dilinger

This plot does meander, and doesn’t always earn many of its emotional arcs it tries to implement, but it is a film of mostly crisp story-telling. The film is gorgeous to look at, with the utilization of digital hand-held shots to tell a story set in the 1930’s creating a breath-taking juxtaposition. I suppose that even though I wasn’t always excited at what was around the next corner, or even hugely invested in its characters, the film did what it was supposed to do anyway. It showed me Dilinger, at least Mann’s interpretation. Take it or leave it.

3/5

This one goes right for the tear ducts...

My Sister’s Keeper takes a sharp left turn from the typical summer fun at the box-office and delivers a story laden with emotional baggage and a plot that is unavoidably audience-grabbing. From the film’s opening monologue, we learn that 11-year old Anna was designed at birth with a very specific purpose. She was born through in-vitro fertilization and used as a source for spare parts for her leukemic 16-yr. old sister Kate. So far, Anna and her parents have succeeded in keeping Kate alive who was supposed to be dead at age 5. Anna however, is starting to become fed up with the whole thing. Bright, and endearing Anna (Abigail Breslin) finds a local attorney boasting a 90% success rate (Alec Baldwin) in order to sue her parents for “medical emancipation”. In short Anna wants to be able to make her own decisions with her own body. She wants a shot at having a somewhat normal childhood and a future that won’t be riddled with medical problems brought on by her parents’ decision to use her.

Anna’s mother Sarah (Cameron Diaz) also happens to be an attorney who is not currently practicing. Her desire to move every mountain and win every battle inevitably gets in the way of her dying daughter’s wishes and Anna’s as well. The family seems to be picture-perfect if only somewhat enigmatic being that some of them are rather under-developed characters in the film.

I am afraid that many people will write off this film because they believe it to be contrived, emotionally manipulative, and too close to genre norms. They would perhaps be partially right, but to completely dismiss this film would be equally unfortunate. The script does a great job of giving us scenes that are emotionally jarring without constantly inserting dialogue that tells us what to think as an audience. Each scene is paced in such a way that just as we begin to feel we have pegged a family member down, the screen fades to black and we are given a different dose of the complexities of this family’s struggle through a different person’s perspective. The film’s “pro-life/pro-choice” themes are clear but we are not hit over the head by director Nick Cassavetes and told what to think. The younger actors in this film are the most consistently strong performances throughout. They virtually never step wrong, and carry the weight of the entire story. An incredibly strong supporting performance is offered by Joan Cusack as the judge hearing Anna’s case. Cusack plays the part of a mother who has recently lost her 12 year old daughter, with intense yet restrained emotional gusto.

I won’t deny that many of these scenes do seem to have been manufactured in a lab long before they ever got on-screen for the sole purpose of hitting us right in the tear ducts. Yes, I’m warning you, the room will get very dusty during this one, so make sure you have your Kleenex box handy. In the end, this film is meditative enough that audiences will not feel as if they are being completely spoon-fed source material to crank up their emotions. The filmmakers manage to take highly thematic material and show remarkable restraint in displaying it.

3.5/5

The Proposal is perfect formula for romantic comedy disaster

I’ve heard it said that the 18-35 year old male is the key demographic for summer movies. I’ll admit I happen to fall under that same age-group expected to shell out their much coveted cash in order to get lost in two hours of on-screen explosions and high-flying car crashes. I would like to think that my disdain for the latest romantic comedy The Proposal however has much more to do with my love for cinema than what the statistics say I should be drawn to. Having said that, you must know that, yes I am a male, I am married, and as a matter of fact I have enjoyed some romantic comedies in the past. I tried, oh how I tried to like The Proposal. There comes a point though, when as the saying goes, familiarity does breed something much closer to contempt than a good time at the movies.

The basics of the plot are as follows. Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) plays a high profile book editor for an influential New-York based publishing company. She has rightfully earned her secret nickname around the office “the witch”, firing employees as if it were a bodily function. Ms. Tate also happens to be a Canadian whose work visa has been recently denied. This poses a problem for Margaret because unless she thinks of a quick plan she will be deported. Enter Margaret’s unsuspecting office assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) whom Margaret unwittingly blackmails into becoming her fiancé in order to retain her citizenship. The whole scheme takes a romantic-comedy turn for the worse when the couple visits Andrew’s family in Alaska for a weekend birthday celebration of Andrew’s 90 year-old grandmother (Betty White).

Really the first 20 minutes of this film are just a quick way to get to the scenes on the island in which the age-old romantic comedy themes are inserted into the plot one by one. Believe me this film has them all. It’s not that there’s a lot wrong with this movie, it’s just that there’s not a lot it does right either. Reynolds and Bullock display great on-screen chemistry together that is wasted with several pro-longed scenes some of which can only best be described as “geriatric” slapstick. (I’m talking to you Betty White). There’s also that curious scene with the little dog that no one is supposed to let outside because “the eagles might snatch him up” . I bet you can already guess fido’s fate, and which out-of-towner is the first to let him outside. Scenes like these are unfortunate even though some of them were amusing and seem to be the film’s biggest problem. It relies so heavily on formula, that the characters and their performances are drowned out about half way through. By that time I didn’t much les care whether or not Andrew caught Margaret at the airport (yes add the airport chase to the list of clichés this movie holds) because I honestly wasn’t that invested.

There is a demographic out there for The Proposal even if Hollywood says I’m not it. So if you’re dying for some formulaic light-heartedness with your date, rush to the theater to see this one. As for me, my quest for another good romantic comedy continues. My wife tells me I should try How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days tonight. It’s going to be a long day.

2.5/5

It’s quite possible you might be taken by Pelham 123

The Taking of Pelham 123 is an action-crime movie about a crazed lunatic who hi-jacks a subway train in order to make a financial gain from an economic downturn. To believe that people go to great lengths during desperate times is not hard to ask. It is the means by which the villain in this film barters with a down-trodden New York economy that stretches the imagination.
John Travolta stars as the mastermind responsible for taking over a New York city subway car one afternoon in order to hold the passengers aboard hostage for a hefty ransom. The film never quite answers whether his axe to grind is a political or personal one, though the plot hints at both. I’m not sure that it matters anyways because director Tony Scott is putting his money on the fact that audiences won’t be asking such questions, or much less care by the time the first hostage is threatened to be offed.

The film co-stars Denzel Washington who plays Walter Garber, an ordinary city subway dispatcher whose day is thrown into disarray by a man calling himself Ryder (Travolta). Ryder’s demands are simple enough for a plot such as this: Get the mayor to deliver him $ 10,000,000 in one hour or hostages will be killed for every minute past. Garber must use his vast knowledge of the underground subway system to devise a plan to negotiate with the lunatic and remove the hostages safely.

The film tries to be much more of a visceral experience then a mental one. With frenetic directing, fast-paced cutting, and a pulsating soundtrack, Tony Scott’s trick is to get you to sweat without paying too much attention to the plot. For the most part, the trick works. The tension is indeed raised but unfortunately not nearly as much by performances, which is what a movie like this needs. Travolta seems to be behaving more like a bad-guy than rooting his performance in real character. The script demands him to swear so he does it. He is asked to wave his gun in the face of helpless pedestrians, so he complies.

The film works better on the city-side of the story. John Turturro gives a fine supporting performance as chief negotiator for the NYPD. Denzel Washington’s character although somewhat familiar by now, is genuinely intriguing. He seems to be the classic wrong man, caught in a situation that he has little or no control over.
The best indicator of how much I enjoyed this movie is probably the fact that at times my hands were gripping the chair. Yes those minutes were few and far between, and yes the action is mostly preposterous, but Pelham 123 has its moments.

3/5

Oh the places we'll go..in Disney's UP

Disney Pixar’s Up is a fairly wonderful film with relatable characters, a life affirming story-line, and a dazzling palette of colorful visuals. In short, Pixar has done it again. Let me go on the record and say, Pixar animation studios is hands-down the best production company in the film industry. I’m not talking merely about animated movies, I’m talking about all of film. Period. If you need any proof of this (if you actually do, then I guess you really haven’t been to the movies in about 10 years), then look no further than this year’s Cannes film festival. Last week Pixar’s Up opened the festival, marking the first time in Cannes history that an animated feature hallmarked the event. Now just imagine a bunch of European art snobs and critics staring at a brightly animated silver screen, 3D glasses donned and all. Need I offer another argument to prove that Pixar blends art and candy like it’s as natural as Mel Gibson films and bloodlust?

Taking their cue’s from the silent era greatness of Charlie Chaplin, their creative teams manage to say an infinite amount by stringing together not series of jokey dialouge, but frame after frame of pictures. Seriously, I wish story-tellers would take notice at these guys’ craft because they’ve got it down. Remember last year in the triumphant WALL*E when we received the entire back-story of planet Earth’s demise in one sweep of the camera? That’s the kind of “nothing-more-nothing-less” approach to story-telling Pixar boasts. Up is no exception to the brilliant understanding of narrative that this creative team possesses. If only live-action films could be as poetic, heart-warming, and yes, as true as these films, then every movie-going experience would be an adventure.

Up focuses on the life of Carl Fredrickson (Ed Asner), who is grieving the death of his bride Ellie. We learn that Carl and Ellie were life-long companions who as children found friendship through their common desire for adventure. The two aspired their whole lives to up and leave for an exotic South American location where their adventurous hearts could roam freely. Pinching and saving every penny, the two set out to one day retire far away from the ebb and flow of life. Of course life, as it often does, got in the way of their plans and the two found themselves nursing broken bones, blown tires, and medical bills to pay their way out of their vacation fund. All of this back-story is set up seamlessly within the first few minutes of the film. Since Ellie’s death, Carl has had trouble letting go. His house has become a monument to her, standing in the same place for years, even as the incessant string of retail stores pop up around it.

When Carl meets a chubby, well-intentioned young boy scout named Russell one day, both of their lives begin to change. Russell endearingly approaches Carl’s front door in hopes that the gruff little man will help Russell earn his last of a long line of coveted boy scout badges. “Is there anything I can help you cross?” Russell asks. Although Carl is defiant with the boy at first, we get the idea that Russell will most likely help Carl cross some chasm in his life even though it may not be across the street or across his yard.

When Carl hatches a plan to skip town and head for South America, the boy is accidentally brought along with him. Carl, who spent years as a balloon salesman, attaches several thousand balloons to his house in order to float away from all that reminds him of failure and heartbreak in his own neighborhood. When the duo reaches their destination these very adult targeted themes are carried along in the plot with the help of robotically talking dogs, an exotic bird named Kevin, and a house of balloons that keeps going and going.

If the film has any shortcomings, it’s that the story eventually falls on familiar Pixar formulas of the past. But oh how that formula shines. The film is visually extraordinary, accentuating the tiniest of details within its landscapes. What makes Up so endearing though is the remarkable humanness of its characters. Quite an impossible feat when considering they are cascading over the horizon in a makeshift hot-air balloon house, with a talking dog. Pixar has not merely ruled the market in Animated films, they have redefined the terms of the market itself, continuing to make us laugh and cry over and over again.

Up may not be in the top tier of Pixar films. I’m sure that will be debated for months to come. In the end I don’t think it matters though either. They don’t have to outdo themselves with each subsequent picture. What Up does instead is add to an ever-expanding canon of classic films, not merely cartoons.

4/5