Role Models

Role Models will make you laugh with glee at its secretly sentimental treatment of male bonding. Finally a comedy that works without gross-out jokes (for the most part anyway) or having been produced or written by Judd Apatow. Although considering a couple of the cast members, Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks and Jane Lynch and Superbad dork Christopher Mintz-Plasse, are synonymous with Apatow it's not that much of a stretch to compare it to what has come out in the last year. For my money Role Models was not quite as funny as Superbad but much funnier than any of this year's yuckfests excluding Tropic Thunder. Specifically I mean films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Promotion, Pineapple Express, anything Will Ferrellish.
Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott work for an energy drink company essentially pushing Minotaur enzymes to school kids. Scott is the stud and Rudd is the spud of the duo. Bad behavior results in community service to avoid jail, which brings the by now bickering pair to a Big Brother type org. Scott's kid is a hellion while Rudd has to deal with a medieval game playing lad. When the film was over I heard people in the audience talking about going to the Renaissance Fair after all the role playing that goes on in Role Models. There's also a running gag involving the group KISS that actually pays off quite nicely.
Role Models was directed by David Wain who also appears briefly as the guy who can't play the guitar. Wain has helmed cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer as well as The Ten, which was awful. Role Models works because the R-rated dialogue suits the characters and the story sends up PG-13 type conventions (like kids resolving issues with their parents). Rudd also contributed to the script.

A Girl Cut in Two

With an incredible cast and a salacious storyline A Girl Cut in Two, a.k.a. La Fille coupée en deux, proves that vet filmmakers can still pack a punch. In this case the vet is Claude Chabrol sometimes called Hitchcockian, and of the French directors who made name films during the 60s resurgence the one still actively distributed in America. That said, Girl Cut in Two is not on par with Chabrol's best work and will work best for Francophiles and completists of the films of Ludivine Sagnier.
Sagnier plays a television weather girl (Gabrielle Aurore Deneige, her TV nom de plume is Gabrielle Snow) who becomes involved with an older and famous author (Benoît Magimel recently seen in Tell No One). With her career on the rise after a promotion to talk show host Gabrielle instead chooses to brood after getting dumped. Her author made her prove her love by taking her to his posh men's club where the other members debauched her while he watched.
An obnoxious heir (François Berléand as the dandy Charles Saint-Denis) has designs on Gabrielle and persuades her to marry even though by this time she's damaged goods. Eventually Charles breaks under the strain of having married a woman who doesn't love him, in addition to his being a weak vessel himself, and seeks vengeance against the writer. If you know the story of Evelyn Nesbit you know where this story leads. Everyone Chabrol presents acts selfish. There are no characters you want to root for and the falling action dwells on the moral consequences to all involved. There's a strange resolution which explains the title in a way one doesn't expect.
A Girl Cut in Two has style to spare and builds suspense up to its pivotal moment. It was hard to connect with the various cold characters and the intimacy of the plot left no room for compassion.

Synecdoche, New York

It was just ten years ago that Philip Seymour Hoffman was making his face known as a capable supporting actor in films like Boogie Nights and The Big Lebowski. Now he's charting a path as an award winning thesp headlining movies with audacious acting choices like a neo-Dustin Hoffman. But wait, Charlie Kaufman wasn't even a blip on the radar screen until 1999 and Being John Malkovich (unless you paid attention to the writers of obscure television shows like The Dana Carvey Show) demonstrated his uncanny grasp on the thin veneer of absurdity that coats modern existence. Synecdoche, New York is a film you need to see before you die. Not before you die die. But like in the last couple of hours of your life.
Synecdoche, New York is a downer make no mistake. Also Synecdoche, New York is one of the most original films you will ever see. A divisive film that will win acolytes and harsh critics in one swoop. Intelligent literate types will find it pretentious and pleonastic, but movie mavens will ravish this celluloid candy for its mastery of the medium.
What debut director Kaufman, whose other writing credits include Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has accomplished is no less than the Death of a Salesman of cinema, a one of a kind excursion into the realm of Charliethink that charts a setting to a land where movie dreams are turned on their head. Actually the style resembles Thorton Wilder's Our Town more than Arthur Miller. You get the feeling that as a kid Kaufman was bullied a lot, although compared to Todd Solondz he got off easy.
Synecdoche, New York (if you can say it, you can't necessarily spell it) follows the career path of dramatist Caden Cotard (Hoffman) as he simultaneously wins a MacArthur Grant and loses his wife (Catherine Keener as Adele Lack) herself an artist on the rise whose miniature paintings have become a sensation in Berlin. Cotard decides to use his winnings to produce a play where he recreates New York City in a giant warehouse.
Reality merges with surrealism as we meet a woman, Hazel (Samantha Morton), whose house is always on fire. Cotard has the hots for her but shifts his attention to his lead actress Claire Keen (Michelle Williams), even marrying her but not before she subserviently dyes her hair the color of Hazel's and bears a child just like Adele.
Have we even gotten to the stalker (Tom Noonan) that Cotard casts as himself in his play or his weird therapist (Hope Davis) who wears shoes so tight they cause her feet to swell? Is this a good time to mention the three colors of shit (green, black, grey) that Synecdoche, New York displays like the colors of a flag? Eventually the play has been in rehearsal for over 15 years and Cotard has substituted Emily Watson for Morton, and Dianne Wiest has replaced Noonan and we haven't even gotten to Cotard's first daughter and her mentor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who are more German than New York.
As bizarre as it may sound, it's only more so on screen yet Kaufman keeps the proceedings going at full speed, with most scenes lasting less than a minute and the following scene seemingly years afterwards.
Synecdoche, New York will be embraced by critics and effete movie snobs and shunned by your average Joes. Somehow you get the feeling that that's just the way Kaufman planned the whole thing.

Everything is Fake

Everything we see and hear is fake. I was touting this viral video of a stunt pilot whose plane loses its right wing (see video below) and another person heard me talking about it today at a screening. "That video's fake," he told me. "Everyone at the station was passing it around but it turns out to be a promotion for a German apparel company."
A couple of weeks ago in my Max Payne review I stated that Olga Kurylenko, who dies early on in that film, would also meet her demise in the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace. I stated that because I read it in a British newspaper. Well, can you forgive your humble scribe for being duped by the internet? Kurylenko does not die in the Bond film, rather it's the character Strawberry Fields (Gemma Arterton, also currently in RocknRolla) who meets a sticky fate.
The just finished Presidential election was touted as being down to the wire by news networks. A glance at the final electoral college count shows that the news orgs were more concerned about boosting ratings that reporting the truth. Obama won with a count of 349 compared to McCain with 162. Hardly neck and neck, and verily a landslide of historic importance. Other elections in this century were actually hard to call with totals like 286 to 252 in 2004, and 271 to 266 in the fateful 2000 election.
But back to those planes. It looks so real, but maybe that's because I want to believe that I too would be in a life or death situation and could survive with stupendous bravado. These days you can't trust anything, even if you see it with your own eyes.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

If Kevin Smith didn't exist American cinema would have to invent him. Whatever you think of Clerks it stands as a shining example of 90s indie spirit, rugged tough-love filmmaking, and has influenced everything that came afterwards from the Farrelly Brothers to the latest comic kid on the block Judd Apatow. What Smith dishes is foul mouthed to the max, however Smith can't hide his sweetness and his singular version of religious devotion (Dogma could only have been made by a believer.) and that makes his message one of forgiveness rather than raunch.
As nasty as Zack and Miri Make A Porno tries to be it still resembles a formulaic old school romancer where the guy who has been in love with the girl for years hesitates to tell her. Financially struggling roommates Zack and Miri (Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, the new It Girl of the moment) decide to make some quick cash by making a stag film. Naturally they have no trouble finding volunteers. Perhaps the funniest sequence involves two peripheral players (Brandon Routh and Justin Long) that Zack and Miri meet at their 10th year high school reunion. In fact the film should have been about Routh and Long judging from the laugh count in this scene and some B-roll footage in the closing credit roll.
The cast mixes real adult film personalities with name actors and even a couple of Smith regulars like Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes. The film's funnier in the beginning but doesn't lose steam in the final lap. Smith even tosses in some prime Star Wars gags. Smith must be a devotee of Yoda because where other filmmakers try to be funny, Smith just is funny. Smith's in your face juvenile sense of humor provides the laugh of recognition. I'd take his mocking view of the world over the Get Smarts and Love Gurus that Hollywood deems funny any day.

Changeling

A woman's son is missing, presumed kidnapped. When he's returned months later the mother insists he's not the same, as in the old switcheroonie. The police captain in charge of the case has the woman institutionalized as hysterical. Eventually another police officer while investigating a serial killer makes the grim determination that the two cases are related. An evangelical type with a radio program advocates the woman's innocence and seeks prosecution for the corruption inside the police department. Indeed the police told the lost boy to pretend he was her son, and meanwhile when the killer is brought to justice, in Changeling's most intense scene, he's hung execution style as the mother looks on.
Changeling asks the audience to dwell in the atmosphere of 1920s Los Angeles and provides a wonderful evocation of that era via wardrobe and in particular the transportation of the time, smart red street cars that crisscrossed the city. You feel and almost breathe the reality of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) as she goes from grieving mother to police brutality victim. As directed by Clint Eastwood Changeling feels profoundly accomplished even as it unreels in way too long a manner and without a sense of tension or mystery. Changeling provides enough serious entertainment so it's easy to cut it slack when it takes an extra reel to wrap up events. Eastwood is good at orchestrating all the technical elements including the two-faced tactics the cops use, the film looks sleek from beginning to end, only one wishes he used his directorial touch to give the story some kind of momentum. As it plays Changeling is tepid and predictable and with the exception of Jolie's moving performance a mid-level entry from Eastwood.

What Just Happened

What Just Happened heaves a harpoon at the whale that is Hollywood bloat. What Just Happened is more like What Price Hollywood? than The Player, which is to say that this take-off on the ins and outs of working in the film industry owes more to straight ahead drama than ironic satire. Directed by Barry Levinson and using Art Linson's book of a similar title the story follows a once successful producer as he tiptoes through a minefield of bad test screenings, diva movie stars with their egos and demands, suicidal agents, immovable studio execs, not to mention ex-wives.
At the beginning Ben (Robert De Niro) stands in the alpha position at the Vanity Fair photo shoot but after a disappointing Cannes Film Festival premiere he's regulated to the edge of the photograph. Lending credence to the milieu are Michael Wincott as an uncompromising director, Ben's partner whose vision includes killing the dog at the end of his Sean Penn movie, and Robin Wright Penn as Ben's second ex who won't tolerate Ben's insistence on taking cell phone calls in the middle of their talk time. "But honey, he's a movie star."
Kristen Stewart, Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Willis and John Turturro along with a bevy of no-name actors who look like name actors, all fit perfectly in the scheme of things. The acting is good, sure, it's just that the story doesn't stand out from anything previous exploring this subject matter. Even more it begs the question of when will Hollywood actually get around to filming the book What Makes Sammy Run?

RocknRolla

RocknRolla is a full-on Guy Richie film with his unique space and time branded editing style to the British underbelly of society the characters inhabit, with crime situations bringing all these different blokes together. The characters have useful names to tell them apart like Mumbles, One Two (Gerald Butler of 300 fame), Councillor, and even the eponymous title character a.k.a. Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbel). For good measure we have a billionaire Russian named Uri, his partner who could be his nemesis Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson sporting a shaved head), Uri and Lenny's various thugs including a scene stealing Mark Strong as Archie (Strong also stole scenes in Body of Lies.), and devious femme accountant Thandie Newton as Stella (Newton has only to look stunning and behave badly, moments which she knocks out of the arena.) A couple of periphery players like Jeremy Piven and Chris Bridges (He lost the Ludacris moniker, and shows some thesp chops by quietly acting, something that's missing from his other film roles.) pop up as club promoters just to make sure the momentum never wavers.
Uri has made a deal with Lenny to push through the immediate construction of a stadium through the usual bribes with politicians. Lenny has used the same connections to insure that One Two and his buddies default on a loan so they owe Lenny two very large. Meanwhile Uri's accountant surreptitiously passes on information that results in his men, who're carrying Lenny's bribe money, being robbed. Quid is Lenny's black sheep son, a rock star in his own right who's just faked his own death. A lucky painting that we only see from the back (one of the film's many visual teases) plays into the story as it's loaned, stolen, sold, and given back and forth between members of the cast.
A rocknrolla is a bloke who wants it all, sex and money and fame and at first we wonder who the real rocker could be. Goodness knows Richie uses his fair share of cool song cues. If there's a sequel, and the last shot tempts us to believe that, it would have to wait until Richie finishes the Sherlock Holmes movie he's currently shooting with Robert Downey, Jr as the titular detective. Not oddly the actor playing Archie, Mark Strong, strongly resembles Basil Rathbone and it appears his scene stealing will carry on in the Holmes film too as he plays what one can only hope is the villain.