Underneath the Same Moon

A bridge too far.

 

(2019) Romance (Indie Rights) Sara Ball, Meg Cashel, Anderson Davis, Jose Garza, Justin Guyot, Todd Herrera, Phil Holmer, Lucas Kerr, Ebony Lanet, Hap Lawrence, Douglas William Smith, Mike Wayne, Luciana Vara. Directed by Bob Wasson

 

The nature of love is largely unknown. Is it a chemical reaction stimulated by sexual attraction? Is it a series of right place-right time coincidences? Or is it some sort of mystical bond that guides us to find The One?

Thomas Miller (Davis) is a good man who likes to surf and is getting ready to propose to his best girl Jessica (Vara). As he approaches the bar he’s to meet her in with ring in hand, he sees her embracing another man, whisper “I love you” into his ear and obviously very much in love with him. Disconsolate, Thomas shuffles off.

Flash forward five years. Thomas is now happily married to a beautiful girl named Kelly (Ball) who his quirky sister Holly (Cashel) adores. However, things go terribly wrong when Thomas is involved in a terrible accident and lapses into a coma which lasts 11 months. When he wakes up, all memory of the past five years has disappeared. He o longer recognizes Kelly, remembers that he’s married to her and in fact, thinks he’s still dating Jessica.

On the (incredibly bad) advice of psychiatrist Dr. Butler (Smith) who looks more like a lumberjack than a doctor, the two ladies decide not to tell Thomas about the last five years and let him go on thinking he’s still with Jessica. Kelly painstakingly erases any trace of herself from Thomas’ life, including cutting out her picture from wedding photos.

But the opportunity presents itself for Thomas to venture up to San Francisco and Kelly finds an excuse to tag along, figuring that the long drive from San Diego to San Francisco might jog her husband’s memory back. Unfortunately, things don’t go to plan but can the heart remember what the mind has forgotten?

Generally, I try to give movies the benefit of the doubt but I had some real problems with this one. For one thing, the plot is generally preposterous throughout; it’s like the writer just decided to create a situation in which Thomas lost five years of memories in order to set up the romantic situation of his beloved trying to win him back all over again. I’m not saying this kind of situation never happens in real life – it has – but I sincerely doubt that any competent psychiatrist would urge family members to lie to a patient about his past. That’s just plain lazy writing.

The leads are very attractive. Ex-model Davis is a rugged, handsome guy who oozes appeal, while Ball seems to have been born to play romantic roles. Cashel is one of those actresses who is able to get audiences to like her even as she’s doing the most outlandish things; Holly is somewhat puckish and while for whatever unholy reason the writers decided to make her fart in a key moment early on, she seems to have been a good sport about it.

The moment I knew I was going to give up on this movie was during the obligatory melancholy pop song montage when Kelly is painstakingly moving Thomas’ things out of her home. It is sung badly off-key. Considering the company that produced it has done music videos for some fairly big naes, you’d think they’d have had access to better material.

This is kind of a mess although I must admit that if you can endure the first half hour, things do improve over the remainder of the film but at nearly two hours long, the movie badly overstays its welcome. I really can’t recommend the movie but I think that Ball, Cashel and Davis could have solid careers ahead of them so there is that.

REASONS TO SEE: Ball gives it the old college try.
REASONS TO AVOID: Fart jokes…ugh! Lacks logic throughout.
FAMILY VALUES: There is profanity and rude humor.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The movie was produced by VFXLABS, which has provided special effects for motion pictures, music videos and the aerospace industry for over 35 years and which Wasson owns.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/19/20: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: 50 First Dates
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: Monsters and Men

Bring Me an Avocado

Cookies do make a fine movie snack at home but where are the avocados?

(2019) Dramedy (Self-Released) Bernardo Peña, Molly Ratermann, Candace Roberts, California Poppy Sanchez, Michaela Robles, Sarah Burkhalter, Anthony Harris, David Silva, Adham Aljahmi, Aaron Sarazan, Alicia Villanueva, Natalie Conneely, Santiago Rosas, Jose Lucero, Mikayal Babar, Harold Ny, Mariah Leyba, Gloria Martinez, Chelsea Christer, Daniela Sirkin. Directed by Maria Mealla

The holes that appear in our lives when someone is abruptly taken out of them often take us by surprise, even though we may suspect at the length and breadth of the hole. We might think we can handle it, we might even feel that we have to but sooner or later the toll is taken.

Robin (Burkhalter), her husband George (Peña) who is an aspiring but thus far unsuccessful writer and their two effervescent kids teen Isabel (Sanchez) and youngster Matilda (Robles) have a close-knit, loving family. Sure, money is tight but they manage to get by. Then, when a shocking event takes place at a surprise birthday party for Robin, George is left to pick up the pieces for his kids.

At first, he tries to make things as normal as possible for his kids. Robin’s bestie Jada (Roberts) and her sister Grizelda – known to one and all as Aunt Greece (Ratermann) – help out as best they can but as time goes by George begins to fray around the edges. Relationships grow complicated and Robin’s absence threatens to tear the family apart.

First off, this is a film that has a lot of women behind the camera which is a good thing. Hopefully someday soon that won’t be an occasion for comment by reviewers. For now, the film comes with a truly feminine quality to it even though ostensibly the main character is George (although in many ways Robin is although she’s largely out of the picture for most of the picture).

Burkhalter doesn’t get a ton of screen time but she takes advantage of the time she’s allotted. Roberts and Ratermann also deliver solid performances. The juvenile actors do try but like a lot of kid actors, they try a little too hard and it becomes apparent that they are acting rather than playing a role. Not to knock the kids but it is noticeable.

]The first half of the movie is rather remarkable. What we get is what Gene Siskel used to call a “slice of life” – a movie that simply shows a family going about its business in a realistic and natural way. Had the filmmakers been able to maintain that tone this would have been a terrific film. Unfortunately, the second half of the movie begins to unravel and edges into soap opera territory. The plot points begin to feel contrived and dramatic conflicts seem to be manufactured. As honest as the first half is, the second half is the opposite.

Still there is plenty to like here. Some fine performances, a spotlight on a Hispanic-American family that isn’t the standard Hollywood version of a Latin family and a sense that the day to day life of that family is a good one, even given some of the issues that Robin discusses with Jada early in the movie. Life isn’t perfect but it is beautiful until it isn’t. Getting through the “isn’t” is what the film is all about.

REASONS TO SEE: The film doesn’t seem contrived at first.
REASONS TO AVOID: As the film progresses it becomes a bit soap opera-esque.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and a couple of scenes of brief violence.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The film made its world premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose this year.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/11/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Grace is Gone
FINAL RATING: 5.5/10
NEXT: To Dust

Patient 001

What’s more beautiful than a new mom and her baby?

(2018) Science Fiction (Random Media) Jason Dietz, Gabe Doran, Rosie Fellner, Noah Fleiss, Michel Gill, Michael Hayden, Ezra Knight, Ian O’Malley, Steven Ogg, Alexandra Rhodie, Jenna Stern. Directed by Katie Fleischer

 

I have heard it said that there is nothing more insistent than a woman’s urge to become a mother. It claws and rends from the inside out and never lets go like a puppy with a chew toy. For some women that urge is more irresistible than in others.

Josie Kingman (Fellner) is deep in the grips of the urge. However, she has a problem; she wants to have a child only with her husband Leo (Hayden) and her husband lies in a coma, the victim of a terrible accident. She resorts to having sex with her unconscious husband, much to the bemusement of the hospital staff who watch her gyrate on top of him.

Nothing works and Josie is getting more desperate by the day. In her despair she is approached by Dr. Alec Jameson (Gill) who offers to help but not in the conventional way. Taking some DNA from the sleeping Leo, he essentially creates a clone, inseminating Josie with the cells which will eventually become Leo 2.0. She gives birth and wonder of wonders, Leo wakes up nearly immediately. At first Josie’s joy is without compare but then clouds begin to appear in the bright blue sky of her life. Whenever the baby and Leo get together, he has blinding headaches, terrifying visions and his personality becomes rage-filled. Eventually, Josie is faced with a terrible decision and she makes it but like many life-altering decisions, her choice will come back to haunt her.

We have seen movies about the consequences of cloning before and those consequences are almost always terrible. I don’t know what moviemakers have against clones, but they are almost always evil and have psychic powers. The clone here is no exception and like many movie clones, he is in full possession of the sins of the father – and by extension, his obsessions. Let us just say that the movie is a bit of a nod towards Oedipus and let it go at that.

It’s a low budget film and while there are some fairly artistic images for the most part the film is fairly standard for a movie of its genre in terms of story and production design. In other words, the look and the tale itself are nothing to write home about. Sadly, the acting is not up to par in a lot of cases; most of the performances seem forced and stiff. The exception is Fellner who not only is exquisitely beautiful and super sexy, she also commands a bit more natural charisma than the others. She has a thankless job that at times has her doing things they probably never told her about back in high school drama club but she at least goes at it like a trooper and acquits herself well.

That isn’t to say that this is a bad movie per se but it isn’t a very good one. There are a few good elements here, especially Fellner but not enough for me to recommend this movie unreservedly. If you’re looking for a hidden gem, this really isn’t it. However those who have an obsession with cloning there are worse films on the subject out there.

REASONS TO SEE: Fellner has some potential in the screen presence department.
REASONS TO AVOID: The story isn’t super compelling. The acting is on the stiff side for the most part.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity and violence as well as sexuality.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Phillip Seymour Hoffman was set to executive produce the film until his untimely death.
BEYOND THE THEATERS: Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/13/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Replicas
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: Hunter

Columbus (2017)

Art and architecture don’t always mix necessarily.

(2017) Drama (Superlative) John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Rory Culkin, Michelle Forbes, Rosalyn R. Ross, Erin Allegretti, Jim Dougherty, Lindsey Shope, Shani Salyers Stiles, William Willet, Reen Vogel, Wynn Reichert, Alphaeus Green Jr., Caitlin Ewald. Directed by Kogonada

 

There are times in our lives when we are in a place that we don’t want to be; we are there because we are obligated to be there. Upon reflection however it generally turns out that where we are is exactly where we are supposed to be. Realizing it at the time is pretty much always another matter.

Jin (Cho) finds himself in Columbus, Indiana. Not because he has any great desire to be there but because his father, a scholar on architecture, was to deliver a lecture there but collapsed and went into a coma. Jin and his father have barely spoken for a long time but Jin is the only blood relative his father has, so he goes at the behest of his dad’s protégé Eleanor (Posey) whom not uncoincidentally he had a crush on as a teen.

Casey (Richardson) has lived in Columbus all her life. She’s whip-smart and has a passion for architecture, so living in Columbus is a great thing for her – the town is known for its striking modernist architecture designed by some of the greatest architects in history – I.M. Pei, Eero Saarinen and John Carl Warnecke among them – and while volunteering at the local library also gives tours of the city’s landmarks. She has had offers to go to college (she just graduated high school) but has quietly turned them down, preferring to stay at home and take care of her recovering drug addict mother (Forbes) who is in a fragile emotional state and probably wouldn’t be able to care for herself without Casey.

Jin and Casey meet and one would think initially that they wouldn’t hit it off much; Jin doesn’t care much for architecture, a field which essentially took his workaholic father away from him and Casey is nuts about it but hit it off they do. At first Casey seems content to give her tour guide opinions of the buildings that catch Jin’s eye but as Jin gently digs she begins to open up to him. Pretty sure, he’s opening up to her right back.

That’s really all the plot there is to this movie. Normally I don’t mind a movie that is all middle without a beginning or an end; I love movies that grasp the ebb and flow of life. That’s not really the case here. First time director Kogonada has a brilliant visual sense and a real eye for shot composition, but utilizes it to excess here. I do appreciate his use of water and rain as a motif and his use of geometric shapes amid natural environments but after awhile one becomes dulled to the images. We are made aware at nearly every moment that each scene is an artificial setting, not an organic function of the scene. For example, there’s a scene in a hotel room where Jin and Eleanor are talking about his feelings for her growing up; the entire scene is shot viewing the reflection of two mirrors which act almost as television screens. Don’t get me wrong – It’s a clever shot – but in a highly charged emotional scene we don’t get to see the emotions of the actors. This is the very epitome of a director’s creativity undermining his own film.

And that really is one of the major faults of the film – we never get connected to the characters because we’re constantly aware of the director behind them. He frames them in corridors in which, we can’t fail to notice, the columns on one side are square and on the other side round. We see oblique shots in which forced perspective puts two characters sitting on the steps close together but we also notice that the dialogue is done with one character’s back to the other the entire time. That’s not a natural conversation; people tend to want to turn and face their partner when they are conversing.

One of the other fundamental flaws is that we never really care about any of the characters. Kogonada seems to keep them at arm’s length and even though they are talking about some fairly in depth background, it is all couched in self-absorbed and pretentious terms and after awhile we begin to tune out.

Maybe if the dialogue were scintillating enough I might forgive the film a bit more but it’s comparable to a couple of self-absorbed college students who are a lot less insightful than they think they are having a conversation about something esoteric without really understanding the subject completely. I get that Casey is a college-age character who fits that description (as is the Rory Culkin character whom I’ll get to in a moment) but there are also older characters who have more maturity at least but they still sound like 19-year-olds. Not that there’s anything wrong with 19-year-olds nor is it impossible for a college student to show insight but it is also possible for college students to be arrogant and condescending as well, and one feels talked down to throughout.

There is also a lot of material here that is unnecessary, brief throwaway moments that add nothing to the story or to your understanding of the characters – Casey has a conversation with her mother about not having eggs and needing to go to the grocery store to get some, for example. A good storyteller will use that as a springboard to get Casey to the grocery store so that something germane could occur but she never goes to the store nor is the egg shortage anything more than throwaway conversation – and the movie is full of these sorts of moments. I mentioned Rory Culkin’s character a moment ago and you might notice that he doesn’t appear in the plot synopsis. That’s because he doesn’t need to. His character is completely unnecessary and were his scenes to end up on the cutting room floor it wouldn’t affect the movie in any significant way. Much of this movie appears to be about how much our lives are consumed with things that don’t matter in the long run.

That isn’t to say that the movie is completely devoid of merit – although Da Queen might argue that point. Afterwards she told me she would rather have sucked her own eyeballs out with a straw than watch this movie again. I can understand that – the movie commits the cardinal sin of being boring, although those who love shot composition will look at this movie and be fascinated, but a movie is more than a series of shots or at least it should be. A movie needs momentum, a sense of movement from one place or tone to another and this movie has all the inertia of Mount Rushmore. Columbus requires a great deal of patience to appreciate and these days that’s in very short supply. It’s a movie that I would actually encourage viewers to text and talk during which is completely anathema to the movie experience I expect but then again this isn’t a movie that maybe a traditional environment isn’t suitable for.

REASONS TO GO: Some of the shots here are clever.
REASONS TO STAY: This is a movie that is self-absorbed and pretentious. None of the characters are worth caring about. There’s too much extraneous business and too many unnecessary characters.
FAMILY VALUES: There is some profanity, sexual situations and drug references here.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Vice-President Mike Pence grew up in Columbus.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 10/3/17: Rotten Tomatoes: 97% positive reviews. Metacritic: 89/100.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Frances Ha
FINAL RATING: 4/10
NEXT: Literally, Right Before Aaron

The Priests

There’s never any telling what lurks at the end of an alleyway.

(2015) Horror (CJ Entertainment) Dong-won Kang, Byeong-ok Kim, Eui-sung Kim, Ho-jae Lee, So-dam Park, Soo-Hyang Jo. Directed by Jae-hyun Jang

There are those who will tell you that the things that go bump in the night are real. There are also those who will tell you that there are things that will possess a human body, things that can only be driven out with the help of an exorcist.

Exorcism does exist, although it is no longer the exclusive province of the Catholic Church, movies on the subject notwithstanding. However, we most associate the rituals of exorcism with Catholicism, and it has to be said much of that goes back to a certain 1973 movie that turned out to have some roots in fact. This one, apparently, only has roots in that movie.

Fr. Kim (B.O. Kim) is the go-to guy for exorcisms in South Korea, mainly by virtue that he was the deacon for the go-to guy for exorcisms, who is now too old and too feeble to perform them himself. He is in the midst of performing one now, a grueling affair that has gone on for six months. The victim is Young-shin (Park), a 14-year-old parishioner of his. He is a curmudgeonly man who has gone through Deacons at a terrifying rate – twelve of them thus far. Of course, some of the things they’ve seen during the rituals would be enough to send any sane man flying for the exit.

His latest Deacon is Choi (Wang), who has been coasting his way through the seminary. Not taking his theology terribly seriously, he has made it through life on the back of his delightful grin and his not inconsiderable charm. Now, however, he has been given a new assignment and he reluctantly takes it on, but in fact he’s kind of intrigued. After all, he’s seen the movie too. He just doesn’t really believe in it. It’s just a movie, right?

Meanwhile, back in Seoul, things are going badly for the girl. She’s been compelled to commit suicide by the demon inside her but survives somehow in a coma. The demon is looking for a good man (what woman isn’t?) to take over; apparently men are much better possessions. Kim knows that the spirit of the demon must be moved into the body of a pig which should then be drowned in a river in order to make sure the evil entity doesn’t return to the girl. And the family has sued to turn off the life support so that their daughter can finally be at rest – they believe Fr. Kim has been molesting her, which prompted the suicide attempt. And everything is pointing to this night to be the best possible time to get rid of the possession – and the good father with his reluctant assistant – who has demons of his own to conquer – will move heaven and earth to save this innocent little girl.

Certainly the film takes most of its cues from the classic William Friedkin film The Exorcist (but also from other demonically-inclined films like The Omen) but there are some differences here. It introduces modern horror stories, like intimations of abuse by a priest, and political infighting within the church hierarchy, but curiously stays away from modern horror idioms. This is definitely a man’s movie – the only female character with any substance in the film is the victim herself.

This isn’t as effects-laden or as gory as other exorcism movies, particularly those of recent vintage. Jang relies on atmosphere and an overall feeling of dread that something spectacularly bad is about to happen. He’s so good at building up the tension that the climax, when it comes, is a bit of a disappointment – but only a bit. I don’t think it is possible for any climactic scene to live up to the build-up that this one got.

Park as the possessed girl outdoes even Linda Blair here; she has her moments where the innocent little girl is present but for the most part she is chilling, manipulative, much smarter than either of the priests and in short, a worthy opponent. She scares the living daylights out of you every time she’s on the screen.

Kang is one of Korea’s rising stars and also one of its best looking. He sometimes has to play a bit of the fool and his foolishness is a bit jarring compared to the rest of the film but again, cultural differences. Movies from other places don’t necessarily have to live up to American expectations, no? In any case, he has some moments, particularly near the end of the movie. He does have a good amount of potential in any case.

The special effects are pretty minimal so American teen horror audiences will probably think this lame, but true horror fans are going to recognize the craft here and perhaps flock to it should it get any sort of distribution. Keep an eye out for it on various web horror outlets (like Shudder) and your local film festivals, particularly those that celebrate the realm of the fantastic. This is a solid, entertaining and downright spooky film that ranks among some of the best of the genre.

REASONS TO GO: Some real nice touches of authenticity. Park delivers a show-stopping performance.
REASONS TO STAY: Some of the effects are a little weak by American standards.
FAMILY VALUES: Scenes of terror and disturbing images, as well as some foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Kang is considered to be one of Korea’s biggest heartthrobs.
CRITICAL MASS: As of 6/24/16: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet. Metacritic: No score yet.
COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Exorcist
FINAL RATING: 7.5/10
NEXT: The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

The Past (Le passé)

Berenice Bejo awaits the arrival of her ex.

(2013) Drama (Sony Classics) Berenice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa, Pauline Buret, Elyes Aguis, Jeanne Jestin, Sabrina Ouazani, Babak Karimi, Valeria Cavalli, Aleksandra Klebanska, Jean-Michel Simonet, Pierre Guerder, Anne-Marion de Cayeux, Eleonora Marino, Jonathan Devred, Sylviane Fraval, Yvonne Gradelet. Directed by Asghar Farhadi

Any relationship but particularly a marriage is built on trust. Without it, the relationship withers and dies much as a rose in a glass vase without any water. That trust, once broken, can turn back savagely on the offending party without warning. The things we do in life don’t occur in a vacuum – they affect those around us in addition to ourselves.

Marie (Bejo) waits in de Gaulle airport in Paris for her ex-husband Ahmad (Mosaffa) to arrive from Teheran. Four years previously, he had walked out on her, leaving her with two daughters from an earlier relationship. Now, at last, he’s going to sign their divorce papers leaving her free to marry her current boyfriend.

That boyfriend, Samir (Rahim), comes with baggage of his own. He has a young son Fouad (Aguis) who is working out his own issues and a wife, Celine (Klebanska) who has been in a coma for eight months. Marie insists Ahmad stay with her and the three kids (Samir will stay in his old apartment above his dry cleaning business) and hopefully, have a heart-to-heart with her older daughter Lucie (Burlet) who has been at odds with her essentially since Samir came into her life. She hates Samir with a venom that only a teenage girl watching her mother remarry can possess.

It turns out that the adult Lucie is closest to in the entire world is Ahmad and it’s no wonder; Ahmad is gentle, kindly and compassionate. At first glance it’s hard to reconcile this man with one who would give up on a woman and her two daughters and walk away, but that’s exactly what he did. Clearly there’s more than meets the eye going on here.

Ahmad finds himself in a household that is far more fragile than it appears and it will only take the slightest of touches to knock the whole thing down and of course his presence is the catalyst for that to happen. He tries to reconnect with his family and friends from the Parisian Iranian community but finds himself being sucked into the fall-out of the war between Marie and Lucie. As it turns out, the events that occurred eight months previously have left a pall hanging over the house and those who live in it, one that will have devastating consequences for all of them.

This isn’t always a movie that’s easy to watch. Farhadi excels at portraying people in everyday situations that are turned on their ear by extraordinary mistakes – the sort we are all capable of making in a moment of pique or in a fit of anger. Wisely, Farhadi utilizes very basic storytelling techniques – there are no flashbacks, no flash forwards and curiously, no music on the soundtrack. What you see and hear is unembellished by trickery or point of view – this is the events as they happen as they are perceived by those they happen to.

Bejo, an Oscar nominee for The Artist, is sensational here. Marie is hanging on by her fingernails and although she isn’t a particularly nice person most of the time – she is manipulative and has an explosive temper – she is capable of great tenderness when the mood takes her. Bejo makes Marie complex and in many ways, unknowable but not nearly to the same degree as Ahmad. Ahmad is quite the enigma, rarely betraying his feelings (other than acute annoyance or distinct joy) and we know as much about him when the movie ends as we do when it began. That’s not an easy role to carry, but Mosaffa makes him likable enough that we maintain our identification with him.

The movie at 130 minutes is probably a good half hour too long. The younger daughter is extraneous to the story as is to a great degree Fouad, although he serves as something of a canary in a coalmine letting us know that All Is Not Well In This House. The performances here are raw and at times breath-taking, even from the juveniles.

It’s not the kind of movie that hits you over the head with grand revelations but instead kicks you in the shin with insights that will cause some reflection and eventually take your breath away once you’ve given it some thought. While I can’t really recommend this to everybody – some of it is really intense and for those who have been in a relationship issue similar to the one here it might bring back some really unpleasant feelings. However, this is a solid, well-made film on a subject that is often treated with more titillation than with any consideration to the real life consequences that those kinds of choices often leave behind for those caught in the crossfire.

REASONS TO GO: Intense and gripping. Captures the effects of infidelity on the lives of those not directly involved.

REASONS TO STAY: Runs a bit too long. Youngest daughter was superfluous.  

FAMILY VALUES:  The themes here are pretty mature and at times can be fairly intense. There is also some brief foul language.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Farhadi doesn’t speak French and directed the movie through a translator.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 3/5/14: Rotten Tomatoes: 85% positive reviews. Metacritic: 85/100.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: A Separation

FINAL RATING: 6.5/10

NEXT: Loosies

Accidents Happen

Sometimes all you can do is try to look chic in the face of disaster.

(2009) Drama (Image) Geena Davis, Harrison Gilbertson, Harry Cook, Joel Tobeck, Wendy Playfair, Sebastian Gregory, Sarah Woods, Morgan Griffin, Troy Planet, Erik Thomson, Viva Bianca, Rebecca Massey, Katrina Retalick, Jayden Hall, Damien Garvey, Peter Lamb, Johnny Xenos, Ivy Latimer, Karl Beattie, Tyler Coppin (voice), Rosslyn Powell. Directed by Andrew Lancaster

Some people are just inherently luckier than others. They seem to lead charmed lives and little if anything bad ever happens to them. Conversely, there are those born under a bad sign. Nothing ever seems to go right for them and if it weren’t for bad luck, they’d have no luck at all. They are the kings and queens of bad breaks.

Billy Conway (Gilbertson) is one of those latter sorts. A car accident left one of his brothers dead, another brother in a vegetative coma, a third brother (Cook) constantly at his throat and his parents Ray (Tobeck) and Gloria (Davis) in the process of divorce. Billy starts hanging out with neighborhood friend Doug Post (Gregory), a mischievous sort. However when they are fooling around with a bowling ball, their shenanigans leads to a Rube Goldberg-sort of accident that leaves Doug’s father dead. Their role in the accident has gone unnoticed by the police but Billy’s guilt and feeling of living under a curse begins to prey on his mind, necessitating his own confrontation with his family’s past.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that this is in fact an Australian film written by an American, set in Connecticut (based on the writer’s own childhood recollections) with Australian actors (except for Ms. Davis) playing American accents. I should say, mainly inexperienced Australian actors but more on that below.

I can give the film props for cutting out the twee indie cuteness that is so prevalent in modern independent films. And while this movie is marketed as a comedy, it really isn’t one. It’s not even a dramedy – it’s more of a drama with some comedic overtones. Certainly the idea of a family curse can be thought to be in and of itself funny although if you were in said family I suppose you wouldn’t find it very funny. However, this really isn’t played for laughs.

Davis, one of my favorite actresses of the 80s (see The Fly and Beetlejuice) and the 90s (see Thelma and Louise and A League of Their Own) but since her acclaimed performance in The Long Kiss Goodnight in 1996 she has appeared only in three Stuart Little films and this, having devoted her attentions to activist causes and television roles. Her Gloria is a force of nature, foul of language and quick of wit. She’s fiercely loyal to her children but she’s been given quite a battering from life which has certainly had its effects on her.

The rest of the Australian cast is largely inexperienced and it shows. Accents slip regularly and there is a lot of mugging that goes on in lieu of acting which is awfully choppy at times. The concentration of a family curse which is played for drama is self-defeating; it turns the characters into self-pitying parodies which largely turns the audience off – at least in my case it did.

This isn’t completely without merit although I would have liked to have seen a little more experience in some of the lead roles. While I’m all for giving newcomers a break, there were too many of them and I suspect that Ms. Davis simply didn’t have the bandwidth to mentor all of them. Worthwhile simply for seeing Geena Davis on the big screen, sadly it’s brief theatrical run went largely unnoticed so you’ll have to be content with home video for this one.

WHY RENT THIS: A rare star turn for Davis who is sadly far-too-absent from the screen. Less pretentious than some indies.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Pushes it’s “unlucky family” conceit a bit too much. Most of the rest of the cast is less credible in their roles.

FAMILY VALUES: There is a bit of foul language and at least one disturbing scene. There is also some teen drug and alcohol use.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Originally supposed to be filmed in Connecticut, the producers decided to film in Australia due to costs, but then ran into some local opposition when their shooting schedule in suburban St. Ives was seen to disrupt local traffic and lives with local residents threatening to wave lights and play bagpipes in order to cause disruption to the production. Eventually, they were able to negotiate a truce and filming took place over two days with the critical car crash scene moved elsewhere.

NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $188,160 on a $5.8M production budget; was a box office flop.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: My One and Only

FINAL RATING: 5.5/10

NEXT: The Hangover Part III

The Vow

 

Ghost much?

(2012) Romance (Screen Gems) Channing Tatum, Rachel McAdams, Sam Neill, Jessica Lange, Scott Speedman, Jessica McNamee, Wendy Crewson, Tatiana Maslany, Lucas Bryant, Joey Klein, Joe Cobden, Jeananne Goossen, Dillon Casey, Shannon Barnett. Directed by Michael Sucsy

 

We think we know what path we’re on; we often have our lives mapped out, our expectations firmly in mind. We know where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. Then, life throws us a big-ass curveball.

That’s what happened to Paige (McAdams) and Leo (Tatum), a couple of young Bohemian newlyweds living in Chicago. He owns a recording studio and she is a sculptress. They are blissfully in love – and one winter’s night a truck smashes into their car from behind, propelling her through a windshield (and let that be a lesson to those who don’t wear their seatbelts) and puts her in a medically sustained coma while the swelling of her brain heals.

When she wakes up, she has no memory of the last five years – including the four in which she met and married Leo. In her mind she’s still in Law School at Northwestern and engaged to Jeremy (Speedman). Leo is a complete stranger to her.

What Leo has to tell her is that she left Law School, matriculating at the Chicago School of Art, left Jeremy to go find herself and these decisions had estranged her from her parents, Bill (Neill) – a lawyer himself – and Rita (Lange) as well as her sister Gwen (McNamee) who is to get married herself shortly.

Leo’s task is to hope that her memory returns and to do what he can to jog her memory back but failing that, to get her to fall in love with him a second time. But does Paige really want to – and more importantly, is that really the key to her happiness?

The last question is really the most intriguing one and what lies at the crux of the movie. As Leo tries his darnedest to help Paige find her way back to him, she grows more and more unhappy and frustrated. Leo is eventually forced to face the fact that the woman he loved may well have been killed in the accident, her body filled with a completely new person. It’s a heartrending conundrum.

And the heartbreaking thing is that this is based on something that actually happened – to Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. Although the events of the film were Hollywood-ized somewhat, the basics all happened.  In their case, part of their written marriage vows are what convinced Krickitt to stay with Kim. While Paige sees her vows written on a menu of the Cafe they both frequent, you never get the sense that those vows were a deciding factor. Also, the Carpenters are both devout Christians which never shows up in this film.

All that aside it’s still a decent enough movie. Released in time for Valentine’s Day, it is most definitely Cinema of the Heart. Tatum, not the most expressive of actors, is actually not so bad here; he can definitely do earnest and gets a lot of chance to show off that particular emotion. McAdams is very pretty but hasn’t been challenged much in her film roles; she really isn’t here as her character is mostly befuddled and frustrated. Rarely does Paige really get to express what’s going on inside her head, which the movie might have benefitted from.

Neil who is doing some of the best work of his career in Fox’s “Alcatraz,” has a role that recalls elements of his first major film role as the grown-up anti-Christ in Omen III: The Final Conflict. Bill is ruthless, suspicious of a son-in-law he has no relationship with (as the movie unfolds we discover that Bill and Rita hadn’t met Leo in the flesh until visiting their stricken daughter in the hospital) and very manipulative. He’s a bit of a snake oil salesman and Neil does that kind of thing very well.

Lange is one of the best actresses America has ever produced and she gets a chance to show off her abilities in one very moving monologue that she delivers to McAdams when one of the skeletons in Bill’s closet resurfaces, explaining to both Paige and the audience the real cause behind the estrangement between Paige and her family. It is Oscar-caliber stuff, although the odds of her getting a nomination are virtually nil. I’d happily cast her in any film I was going to make, were I a Hollywood filmmaker.

There is plenty of schmaltz, certainly but the underlying conflict of doing what’s right for the person you love versus doing what’s right for yourself elevates this somewhat above most romantic films. While this isn’t what I’d call a Valentine’s Day classic, it certainly has plenty of heart and more than enough to tug at the heartstrings of women and more sensitive men. Yes, in some ways Leo is too good to be true but I think that when a man loves a woman as strongly as he does, he’ll do anything to make her happy – at his own expense if need be. And that is why love is stronger than anything else in life; because that willingness to sacrifice matters, even in the small things. It speaks highly of humans in a way little else about our existence does.

REASONS TO GO: Inspiring story. Lange magnificent in a supporting role.

REASONS TO STAY: Not as much chemistry between the leads as I would have liked.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some sexual content and partial nudity. There is also an accident scene which isn’t terribly graphic or startling and a few choice words in places.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The cafe in which Paige works (and Leo and Paige frequently visit) is called Cafe Mnemonic; a mnemonic is a means of helping someone remember something by associating it with a word or phrase; it is a foreshadowing of Paige’s memory issues later in the film.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 2/21/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 30% positive reviews. Metacritic: 43/100. The reviews are pretty much poor.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: The Notebook

ART LOVERS: Paige’s sculptures are actually pretty interesting. They were in reality created by Cameron S. Brooke.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

TOMORROW:The Secret World of Arrietty

The Descendants

George Clooney may not get the joke but Shailene Woodley does.

(2011) Dramedy (Fox Searchlight) George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, Rob Huebel, Patricia Hastie, Barbara L. Southern, Celia Kenney, Scott Michael Morgan. Directed by Alexander Payne

 

Most of us aspire to live in paradise. The problem with that is that we still have to live in paradise and living is a messy, complicated business.

Matt King (Clooney) is a wealthy lawyer descended from King Kamehameha I. His family was one of the first non-Hawaiian landowners in the islands, and the family trust, for which Matt is the sole trustee, owns 25,000 acres of virgin land in Kauai. The trust will expire in seven years and the family is eager to sell the land which is worth billions. For some family members who are experiencing financial hardships, the sale of this land will be a windfall that will allow them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

However, Matt’s focus is no longer on the sale. His wife Elizabeth (Hastie) has been in a serious boating accident, leaving her in a coma. Matt has always been more married to his work than to his wife; he is the self-described “back-up parent,” leaving Elizabeth to raise his two daughters – 10-year-old Scottie (Miller) and 17-year-old Alex (Woodley). Scottie has taken to bullying, using profanities and flipping her father the bird when she doesn’t get her way.

Alex is also a mess, having quarreled with her mother shortly before leaving for boarding school and taking to using drugs and alcohol to salve her pain. She’s just getting her life back on track when Matt comes to fetch her to let her know the dire news the doctor has just given him; Elizabeth is not responding to treatment and the coma will be permanent. As per her living will, she will be unhooked from her life support and allowed to die with dignity. Matt chooses to keep Scottie in the dark about this for the time being.

Matt also learns unexpectedly that Elizabeth was having an affair at the time of the accident and was thinking about getting a divorce. The object of her affections was a realtor named Brian Speer (Lillard) who is currently on vacation in Kauai. Matt decides to confront Brian and with his daughters in tow, as well as Alex’s not-quite-boyfriend Sid (Krause) along for the ride, Matt goes about the business of getting closure, and allowing family members – such as Elizabeth’s crotchety dad (Forster) the same.

While there are some comedic elements, there is almost always something darker about them. For example, Matt’s awkward flip-flop run, oft-repeated in the trailer, to his neighbor’s house to confront them about what they know about Elizabeth’s affair – it’s certainly silly to watch out of context but when you know what prompted the ungainly sprint it is a different matter entirely. Sid’s near-epic insensitivity also prompts some guilty laughter, not to mention groans of dismay.

This is very much one of Clooney’s outstanding performances, destined to be one of the defining moments of his career I think. He is most certainly the Oscar frontrunner at this point, giving Matt a good deal of humanity yet never letting us forget that this is a man enduring some incredible pain at the moment – not only living with the knowledge that his wife was about to die, but having his world crumble further in that she no longer loved him and wanted another man. There is also unspoken guilt (which I would have loved to hear spoken) that he felt some kind of guilt in driving her to that place. That aspect of his pain is never explored and I think it might have added something had it been.

Woodley also is terrific as the daughter who has her own issues but as time goes by finally begins to understand her dad and even like him a little bit. That’s a big step for Alex, and Woodley gives the character depth. It doesn’t hurt that the character was written with some to begin with, instead of making her a typical Hollywood screen teen who knows better than her parents. Alex certainly doesn’t; she’s more like the teenagers I met than the ones I’ve seen onscreen.

Forster and Greer, both veteran character actors, have also elicited some supporting actor/actress Oscar buzz; Forster for the dad who is crusty and curmudgeonly, but at the center is deeply wounded and in despair that he is going to outlive his daughter. Greer has a very emotionally complex role that leads to an amazing scene with Clooney in Elizabeth’s hospital room near the end of the movie. It’s devastating and maybe the best single scene you’ll see in a movie this year.

I can’t imagine going through what Matt King goes through here. To be in a situation where one must not only mourn for someone he loves, but to feel acute betrayal as well at the same time – how horrible is that? I loved where the movie took us, and appreciated the journey that got us there. Some are going to look at this from the trailers as a comedy along the lines of the Coen Brothers movies, but this is definitely far from a feel-good kind of film. It has its quirks, but at the end of the day it is a very human film which is going to be making quite a few appearances on Academy ballots when all is said and done.

REASONS TO GO: Oscar-worthy performance by Clooney. A very moving and painful journey.

REASONS TO STAY: May be too painful and intense for some.

FAMILY VALUES: There is quite a bit of swearing and some sexual references.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Woodley is best known for the TV show “The Secret Life of an American Teenager.” This is her first big screen role.

HOME OR THEATER: Although most of the film translates well to more intimate screens, the Hawaiian vistas are another matter and besides, it deserves some box office support.

FINAL RATING: 8.5/10

TOMORROW: The Infidel

Insidious

Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson are skeptical this "breathing in the ear amplifier" will improve their sex lives.

(2011) Supernatural Horror (FilmDistrict) Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, Barbara Hershey, Lyn Shaye, Andrew Astor, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Corbett Tuck, Heather Tocquigny, Ruben Pla, John Henry Binder, Joseph Bishara, Philip Friedman. Directed by James Wan

The things that happen to us when we sleep are mysterious, even with all the technology at our disposal. Nobody really knows what awaits us when we close our eyes.

At first glance things look pretty good for Josh Lambert (Wilson) and his wife Renai (Byrne) – pronounced “Renee” but spelled differently. They have just moved into a pretty spiffy old house. Josh works as a math teacher at the local high school – or is that college? We’re never really sure. I’m betting the latter because it’s a really spiffy house and Renai isn’t working. Well, she’s writing songs…but she’s also unpacking, taking care of two energetic young boys and a baby. Okay, she’s working harder than Josh is.

But there are some odd things going on. Things are being moved around. There are odd sounds that can be heard at night. Things disappear. Of course, some of it might be due to the chaos of moving. The sounds, well, it’s an old house, spiffy as it is.

Then things turn darker. Their eldest son Dalton (Simpkins) takes a tumble in the attic. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to be anything particularly serious; a little bump on the noggin. But he doesn’t wake up the next morning and nothing can rouse him from his slumber.

The doctors can’t explain it. His tumble didn’t produce any brain trauma. There’s no inflammation, no infection, nothing that would explain his coma, but he is most assuredly in one. After a few months of fruitless tests, the boy is sent home to lie in his own bed. A home nurse (Tuck) explains to Renai how to lubricate his feeding tube while Renai muses how the universe must be testing her to see how far she’ll bend before she breaks. It’s an honest moment but the universe isn’t done with her yet.

Things go from bad to worse. The paranormal activity in the house increases. Sinister figures are half-glimpsed and then fully seen. Things don’t just go bump in the night, they go CRASH BANG!!! Security alarms go off without reason, while the security company that installed them doesn’t respond.

So they do what any sensible family would do. They move. Josh’s mom Lorraine (Hershey) welcomes them to the neighborhood. Renai is relieved; at last the nightmare is over. But it’s not – it’s just beginning. The apparitions are showing up in the new place, more menacing and more solid than ever. At last, the couple in desperation calls a psychic that Lorraine recommends – Elise Rainier (Shaye). But before she shows up, she sends a couple of paranormal experts – Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Sampson), who show up with elaborate homemade equipment. The looks on the face of Josh and Renai are pretty easy to read although they’re polite.

Then Elise herself shows up and makes the pronouncement that it isn’t the house that’s haunted, its Dalton. You see, apparently he astral projects at night while he’s asleep and like most young boys, he goes a little farther than he’s supposed to, ending up in a realm she calls The Further (yes, it’s capitalized). That’s where people go when they die. That’s where Dalton is. That’s where dear old dad has to go to fetch him (you see, Dalton inherited his skills). And Josh needs to do it fast; there are some real bad dudes out there who have plans for Dalton’s empty shell of a body.

The movie was written and directed by the team who did the same for the Saw series, and produced by the guy who directed Paranormal Activities, so the pedigree is good. Wan does a good job bringing out the chills and that all-important sense of dread that haunted house movies need to have in order to be successful.

He’s got a decent cast to work with. Wilson is most often cast as a baddie but here he plays a troubled father with a skeleton in his own closet (and yes, that’s pretty literal) who is weak in moments when he should be strong. That makes him a little bit more likable in an odd way – he’s like, normal and not some Hollywood superdad. Byrne’s best scenes come early after which she’s mostly supposed to scream, cry and beg. She can do hysterical as well as anybody can.

For my money, Shaye steals the show as the psychic who is something of a nod to Zelda Rubinstein in Poltergeist. She knows far more about the afterlife than anybody alive, and is able to reach into the other dimension and communicate. Like Rubinstein, she knows trouble when she sees it and is well aware the other side has some things in it that should stay there – not that they’ll stop trying to cross over at any opportunity mind you. Whannell (who wrote the script) and Sampson add much-appreciated comic relief, looking at magnetic fields through View Masters. Priceless, I tell you.

Now, despite the twist (which is given away in the trailer so I don’t have a problem revealing it here) that I thought could have really been a game-changer much the way the twist in The Sixth Sense was, the movie doesn’t really add too much to the genre. What happens is that Elise Rainier goes off to explain the Further in great detail, with a whole lot of paranormal technobabble until all you can do is throw your popcorn at the screen and yell “enough!” The movie would have worked better without the explanation and left the cast to work it out on their own. I also thought the sending of the dad in to fetch his son was a little too reminiscent of JoBeth Williams going into the closet to rescue the late Heather O’Rourke from the light – I half expected Wilson and Byrne to start calling “Carol Ann!” in reference to the character.

Even with all that, this is still a crackerjack of a horror flick. It scares you properly; none of these false scares or red herrings; they come right at you and put the horror right in your face where it’s supposed to be. There’s no overt gore (although there are certainly some disturbing images of dead things) and the movie is the better for it. The humans act like rational people other than a couple of slight miscues but still in all this is as good a horror movie as I’ve seen for awhile.

REASONS TO GO: Some very effective scares and a nice performance for Shaye. Some of the off-beat humor is very welcome.

REASONS TO STAY: Doesn’t really add too much to the haunted house genre and the twist is mostly a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

FAMILY VALUES: There are plenty of creepy images and big time scares, as well as some foul language. The overall theme that involves a child vulnerable to demonic possession might be way too much for small children.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first release from the new distribution company FilmDistrict.

HOME OR THEATER: While the big scary noises do enhance the movie and work best in a theater, the intimate nature of the movie is just fine at home.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

TOMORROW: Cold Souls