Premieres October 3; pilot currently available at Hulu.
Fine cast, and a workable premise, all let down by mediocre writing.
It's high school graduation day in Los Angeles. At one school, Molly Yoder (Ella Rae Peck) is graduating, to the delight and mild surprise of parents Dan and Caroline (Mike O'Malley and Mary McCormack). Across town, Junior Hernandez (Joseph Haro) is his school's valedictorian, and his parents Miguel and Lisette (Ricardo A. Chavira and Justina Machado) are thrilled that he's off to Stanford. Neither family knows that their kids have been dating, and it's not until the middle of his valedictory address that Molly texts Junior to tell him that she's pregnant. So, we've got a culture clash between two families, the setup for what could be a smart comedy about class and race in a very multicultural city.
But the writing falls short, content to tell jokes about Molly's stupidity -- grumbling about restrictive gender roles, she whines that society is too "patriotic" (and the joke's repeated later on with the word "parochial") -- and the macho rivalry between Dan and Miguel. This being television, the mothers are limited to being the reasonable ones who want to make peace between their families. And there's a horribly ill-advised plot twist in the last thirty seconds of the episode that does not bode well for the show.
The four actors playing the parents are all familiar faces, and they're all more than capable of handling better material than they've been given here. In the younger roles, Haro comes off better than Peck, who is working the ditz thing just a little too hard.
I like these actors enough -- O'Malley and Chavira in particular are working ridiculously hard and doing as much as humanly possible with what they're given -- that I might check back in a few weeks to see if the writing's gotten any better, but this is not an encouraging start.
September 14, 2013
TV: Trophy Wife (Tue 9:30, ABC)
Premieres on Sep 24; pilot currently available at Hulu.
Let the fall festival o'reviews begin!
A year ago, Kate (Malin Akerman) was a single girl who loved to party. But then she fell into the lap (literally) of Pete (Bradley Whitford), and now she's married and part of Pete's extended family. There's ex-wife #1, Diane (Marcia Gay Harden), a hyper-competent surgeon with whom Pete has 15-year-old twins, and ex-wife #2, Jackie (Michaela Watkins), a slightly ditzy New Ager with whom Pete has an adopted 7-year-old son from China. Marriage and stepmotherhood are a big change for Kate, who's trying to learn overnight all of the things that take parents years to master.
The cast here is very strong. Akerman's been on the verge of stardom for a few years now, and this could be the show that finally gets her there. She's good at physical comedy (there's some effective drunk shtick in the pilot), and has an easy, comfortable relationship with Whitford. Harden's doing a nice comic spin on her usual ball-buster roles, and I already sense that the writers are going to be careful not to make her just an overbearing ogre, but to give her some softer edges as well. Watkins' character is the least well developed and the most cliched in the pilot, but it's hard for a comedy pilot to round out all of its characters too much while establishing the premise.
The kids, for instance, are pretty standard issue sitcom kids at this point. Warren (Ryan Lee, who looks more like a goofy teenager than most TV kids, which is refreshing) has a massive crush on his sister's best friend; Hilary (Bailee Madison) is the rebel who's bored by Kate's attempts to connect; Bert (Albert Tsai) isn't asked to do much more than be adorably precocious, but he does that well, and is less cloying than one fears from such a character.
Scheduling seems a bit odd to me. ABC's burying the show on a night with an entirely new lineup, and it airs opposite NCIS: Los Angeles, The Voice, Supernatural, and The Mindy Project. It's a show that would have been a very good fit, I think, with Modern Family on Wednesday night; if Super Fun Night bombs quickly, as the early buzz suggests it may, I wouldn't be surprised to see Trophy Wife moved there.
Promising pilot, and certainly one I'll keep watching for a few weeks to see what develops.
Let the fall festival o'reviews begin!
A year ago, Kate (Malin Akerman) was a single girl who loved to party. But then she fell into the lap (literally) of Pete (Bradley Whitford), and now she's married and part of Pete's extended family. There's ex-wife #1, Diane (Marcia Gay Harden), a hyper-competent surgeon with whom Pete has 15-year-old twins, and ex-wife #2, Jackie (Michaela Watkins), a slightly ditzy New Ager with whom Pete has an adopted 7-year-old son from China. Marriage and stepmotherhood are a big change for Kate, who's trying to learn overnight all of the things that take parents years to master.
The cast here is very strong. Akerman's been on the verge of stardom for a few years now, and this could be the show that finally gets her there. She's good at physical comedy (there's some effective drunk shtick in the pilot), and has an easy, comfortable relationship with Whitford. Harden's doing a nice comic spin on her usual ball-buster roles, and I already sense that the writers are going to be careful not to make her just an overbearing ogre, but to give her some softer edges as well. Watkins' character is the least well developed and the most cliched in the pilot, but it's hard for a comedy pilot to round out all of its characters too much while establishing the premise.
The kids, for instance, are pretty standard issue sitcom kids at this point. Warren (Ryan Lee, who looks more like a goofy teenager than most TV kids, which is refreshing) has a massive crush on his sister's best friend; Hilary (Bailee Madison) is the rebel who's bored by Kate's attempts to connect; Bert (Albert Tsai) isn't asked to do much more than be adorably precocious, but he does that well, and is less cloying than one fears from such a character.
Scheduling seems a bit odd to me. ABC's burying the show on a night with an entirely new lineup, and it airs opposite NCIS: Los Angeles, The Voice, Supernatural, and The Mindy Project. It's a show that would have been a very good fit, I think, with Modern Family on Wednesday night; if Super Fun Night bombs quickly, as the early buzz suggests it may, I wouldn't be surprised to see Trophy Wife moved there.
Promising pilot, and certainly one I'll keep watching for a few weeks to see what develops.
September 06, 2013
BOOKS: The 5th Wave, Rick Yancey (2013)
More than just another in the current flood of dystopian YA novels with tough teenage heroines.This one's got a smart story, interesting characters, strong moral dilemmas, and exciting action that should appeal to adult readers as well as teens.
The alien invasion began with an electromagnetic pulse that wiped out all of our machines. A series of increasingly severe attacks have left only about three percent of humanity alive, and they tend to be isolated, since any one of them could be an alien in disguise.
One of those survivors is Cassie. She's 16, and her goal is to re-unite with her little brother, Sammy, who has been taken (along with the other small children) to a government camp for protection. When she's injured, she's nursed back to health by a stranger, a young man named Evan. She can't be entirely sure that Evan is trustworthy, but she's left with no choice but to team up with him to find her brother.
Most of the book is told from Cassie's point of view, but we get the occasional chapter from someone else -- Sammy; Cassie's old high-school crush, who's being trained as a soldier to fight the invaders; one of those alien invaders in human form -- and each of those characters is crisply and distinctly defined.
As the book's mysteries are slowly resolved -- What do the aliens want? What's really happening to Sammy? What's Evan hiding? -- each answer ratchets the tension up another notch, until the final action sequence brings the book to a rousing climax.
There's certainly room for sequels in Yancey's universe, but The 5th Wave is entirely satisfying on its own, and it's a fine SF thriller.
The alien invasion began with an electromagnetic pulse that wiped out all of our machines. A series of increasingly severe attacks have left only about three percent of humanity alive, and they tend to be isolated, since any one of them could be an alien in disguise.
One of those survivors is Cassie. She's 16, and her goal is to re-unite with her little brother, Sammy, who has been taken (along with the other small children) to a government camp for protection. When she's injured, she's nursed back to health by a stranger, a young man named Evan. She can't be entirely sure that Evan is trustworthy, but she's left with no choice but to team up with him to find her brother.
Most of the book is told from Cassie's point of view, but we get the occasional chapter from someone else -- Sammy; Cassie's old high-school crush, who's being trained as a soldier to fight the invaders; one of those alien invaders in human form -- and each of those characters is crisply and distinctly defined.
As the book's mysteries are slowly resolved -- What do the aliens want? What's really happening to Sammy? What's Evan hiding? -- each answer ratchets the tension up another notch, until the final action sequence brings the book to a rousing climax.
There's certainly room for sequels in Yancey's universe, but The 5th Wave is entirely satisfying on its own, and it's a fine SF thriller.
September 05, 2013
MOVIES: Drinking Buddies (Joe Swanberg, 2013)
Over the last decade, Swanberg has made about a dozen micro-budget movies, generally working with unknown actors (some of whom, most notably Greta Gerwig, have gone on to bigger things). This is his first film with a cast of recognizable actors, and it's the first of his films that I've seen. I'm left a bit baffled as to what all the fuss is about.
Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde are Luke and Kate, co-workers at a micro-brewery who've been attracted to one another for years but have never done anything about it. Jake lives with his girlfriend, Jill (Anna Kendrick), and their relationship is at the point where they have a discussion every few months in which they reassure one another that they do want to get married some day, but they never quite get around to making concrete plans. Kate's dating Chris (Ron Livingston), who doesn't quite fit in with her circle of friends.
They're all likable enough characters, despite their annoying-hipster tendencies, but none of them held my attention, and as Swanberg follows them through a series of social encounters -- a cocktail party at the brewery, a weekend at Chris's lakeside cabin, a weekend in which Luke helps Kate move -- I kept thinking, "OK, surely now is the moment when something interesting is actually going to happen," and it never actually did. The most significant event, a breakup of one of the couples, happens off screen, and we only get one tiny scene dealing with the fallout.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Perhaps if I were a 30-ish guy, clinging desperately to youth and cool-ness, I would find the minor problems of these four more interesting. But as it is, the movie felt like 90 minutes of aimless noodling about people who don't have the self-awareness or the initiative to do any of the things that might actually make them happy.
Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde are Luke and Kate, co-workers at a micro-brewery who've been attracted to one another for years but have never done anything about it. Jake lives with his girlfriend, Jill (Anna Kendrick), and their relationship is at the point where they have a discussion every few months in which they reassure one another that they do want to get married some day, but they never quite get around to making concrete plans. Kate's dating Chris (Ron Livingston), who doesn't quite fit in with her circle of friends.
They're all likable enough characters, despite their annoying-hipster tendencies, but none of them held my attention, and as Swanberg follows them through a series of social encounters -- a cocktail party at the brewery, a weekend at Chris's lakeside cabin, a weekend in which Luke helps Kate move -- I kept thinking, "OK, surely now is the moment when something interesting is actually going to happen," and it never actually did. The most significant event, a breakup of one of the couples, happens off screen, and we only get one tiny scene dealing with the fallout.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Perhaps if I were a 30-ish guy, clinging desperately to youth and cool-ness, I would find the minor problems of these four more interesting. But as it is, the movie felt like 90 minutes of aimless noodling about people who don't have the self-awareness or the initiative to do any of the things that might actually make them happy.
September 04, 2013
MUSIC: 2013-14 LA Philharmonic schedule
So, got my season tickets, did some exchanges, and this is the lineup of 12 concerts for which I have tickets:
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Yefim Bronfman, piano; Pedro Carneiro, percussion
A good season, I think. A lot of Brahms -- they seem to be really keeping it in their repertoire after the Brahms festival a couple of years back -- and I think I'm going to be tired of Ravel after those last few concerts, but a lot of new music, and plenty of concertos outside the piano/violin/cello hierarchy -- percussion, organ, trumpet (Tovey's piece is a trumpet concerto). Composers I don't know enough about (Riley, Nielsen, Bruckner); pieces I will be happy to hear again (Bartok, Britten, Corigliano).
I'll miss at least three of these, of course, as things get in the way and life pops up, but I'm the sort of neurotic who is happy to have the tickets in hand well ahead of time.
Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; Yefim Bronfman, piano; Pedro Carneiro, percussion
- Schubert: Symphony #4
- Lieberson (realized by Knussen): Shing Kham (world premiere -- Lieberson died before quite finishing this percussion concerto; Knussen did the final work to put the piece into a performable condition)
- Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto #1
- Debussy: Nocturnes
- Lindberg: new work for cello and orchestra (world premiere)
- Bartok: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
- Britten: The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra
- Tovey: Songs of the Paradise Saloon
- Shostakovich: Symphony #5
- Bruckner: Symphony #8
- Bjarnason: new work (world premiere)
- Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto #3
- Stravinsky: Petrushka
- Kilar: Krzesany
- Chopin: Piano Concerto #2
- Prokofiev: Symphony #5
- Hillborg: King Tide (US premiere)
- Nielsen: Violin Concerto
- Sibelius: Symphony #2
- Corigliano: Symphony #1
- Brahms: Symphony #2
- Beethoven: Piano Concerto #5 ("Emperor")
- Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe
- Gordon: Sunshine of Your Love (US premiere)
- Riley: Organ Concerto (world premiere)
- Adams: Naive and Sentimental Music
- Brahms: Academic Festival Overture
- Norman: new work for piano and orchestra (world premiere)
- Brahms: Piano Concerto #2
- Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales
- Prokofiev: Piano Concerto #3
- Desenne: Sinfonia Burocratica ed' Amazzonica
- Ravel: La valse
A good season, I think. A lot of Brahms -- they seem to be really keeping it in their repertoire after the Brahms festival a couple of years back -- and I think I'm going to be tired of Ravel after those last few concerts, but a lot of new music, and plenty of concertos outside the piano/violin/cello hierarchy -- percussion, organ, trumpet (Tovey's piece is a trumpet concerto). Composers I don't know enough about (Riley, Nielsen, Bruckner); pieces I will be happy to hear again (Bartok, Britten, Corigliano).
I'll miss at least three of these, of course, as things get in the way and life pops up, but I'm the sort of neurotic who is happy to have the tickets in hand well ahead of time.
BOOKS: But He Doesn't Know the Territory, Meredith Willson (1959)
Willson's memoir of creating The Music Man, from first inspiration to Broadway opening night. By the standards of today's tell-alls, this is tepid stuff; there are no scandalous revelations and no villains to be found. But Willson's writing is filled with the same gentle charm and humor that he brought to The Music Man itself, and it's a sweet little book.
MOVIES: Short Term 12 (Destin Daniel Cretton, 2013)
You hear the premise for this movie, and you might understandably fear some sort of dreary exercise in sentimental manipulation: Two young 20-somethings, each carrying a significant load of emotional baggage, struggle to make their relationship work while working at a group home for teens who are waiting to be placed in a foster home. But writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton makes his characters so vivid and specific, and finds enough humor in their lives, to raise the movie far above the Afterschool Special level. It's one of the best movies of the year.
Much of the credit goes to Brie Larson, who stars as Grace, the staff supervisor at the group home. She's good with the kids, and has a genuine gift for being supportive without coming across as smug or condescending. She's less good at asking for help than she is at giving it, though; in the delightful and useful phrase of TV critic Daniel Feinberg, this is a Vocational Irony Narrative.
That tendency to close herself off causes difficulty for her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), who is a character we see far too rarely in movies; he's a genuinely decent guy without being an idiot or a wimp. He accepts her reluctance to share certain things, but isn't willing to let himself be shut out entirely.
Grace and Mason both have personal reasons for going into this line of work, and those revelations felt a bit too pat and obvious. I think it more likely, in fact, that someone with Grace's background would have chosen any career but this one. Cretton's screenplay allows those revelations to play out in reasonbly convincing fashion, though, and they are dramatically effective.
There are fine performances from the actors playing the home's resident kids, too. Making particularly strong impressions are Kaitlyn Dever as Jaden, the newest resident, whose personal struggles hit very close to home for Grace; and Keith Stanfield as Marcus, who is about to turn 18 and has very mixed feelings about leaving the foster care system.
The writing and acting create characters and a background that feel utterly real; the emotion is sincerely and honestly earned. The fact that the actors are relatively unknown -- Larson, Gallagher, and Dever are best known for TV or theater work; and this is Stanfield's first feature film -- helps, I think, to create that reality, because we're not being distracted by familiar faces and big-name stars. This is a very special movie, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Much of the credit goes to Brie Larson, who stars as Grace, the staff supervisor at the group home. She's good with the kids, and has a genuine gift for being supportive without coming across as smug or condescending. She's less good at asking for help than she is at giving it, though; in the delightful and useful phrase of TV critic Daniel Feinberg, this is a Vocational Irony Narrative.
That tendency to close herself off causes difficulty for her boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), who is a character we see far too rarely in movies; he's a genuinely decent guy without being an idiot or a wimp. He accepts her reluctance to share certain things, but isn't willing to let himself be shut out entirely.
Grace and Mason both have personal reasons for going into this line of work, and those revelations felt a bit too pat and obvious. I think it more likely, in fact, that someone with Grace's background would have chosen any career but this one. Cretton's screenplay allows those revelations to play out in reasonbly convincing fashion, though, and they are dramatically effective.
There are fine performances from the actors playing the home's resident kids, too. Making particularly strong impressions are Kaitlyn Dever as Jaden, the newest resident, whose personal struggles hit very close to home for Grace; and Keith Stanfield as Marcus, who is about to turn 18 and has very mixed feelings about leaving the foster care system.
The writing and acting create characters and a background that feel utterly real; the emotion is sincerely and honestly earned. The fact that the actors are relatively unknown -- Larson, Gallagher, and Dever are best known for TV or theater work; and this is Stanfield's first feature film -- helps, I think, to create that reality, because we're not being distracted by familiar faces and big-name stars. This is a very special movie, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
September 03, 2013
BOOKS: The Human Division, John Scalzi (2013)
First, congratulations to Scalzi for winning this year's Hugo Award for his novel Redshirts, which I thought was absolutely terrific.
The Human Division returns Scalzi to the universe of his Old Men's War and its sequels, and it's an interesting experiment in story structure. The residents of Earth and of its many colony planets make up the Colonial Union, a political and military organization which protects humanity from the universe's many hostile alien races. But Earth is beginning to realize that the vast majority of the Union's resources, money, and soldiers are coming from Earth, and Earth's politicans have begun to resent that they are being asked to defend everyone else. So when Earth is invited to join The Conclave, a powerful alliance of alien cultures and planets, the diplomats and soldiers of the Colonial Union find themselves struggling to keep Earth in the fold, because without Earth, the Union will collapse.
Against that background, Scalzi tells his story in thirteen "episodes," which were originally released as separate e-publications, and each of which is designed to stand on its own as a short story while coming together to tell a complete story. So rather than a strong plot or narrative throughline, the book plays out as a series of vignettes set against the backdrop of the Union's fight to hang onto Earth. There are recurring characters, a second-tier diplomatic crew whose missions always seem to play into the larger story in unexpected ways, but about half of the episodes feature their own characters who don't reappear elsewhere.
Styles and tones vary widely, from "The B Team," a classic bit of space opera in which our diplomatic crew has a dangerous alien contact problem to resolve; to "A Voice in the Wilderness," a look at a Limbaugh-style rabble-rouser for whom ratings are the most important goal, which reminded me somehow of Shirley Jackson.
For those readers who've already purchased the individual stories in e-format, Scalzi includes a pair of bonus stories set in roughly the same period of his future history. "Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today" is a sweet little charmer of a story that brings the book to a delightful end.
I'm not convinced that the stories work together to tell a single novel-length story. The reader is left to assemble that larger story for himself by putting together the background details of each individual piece, and by filling in the gaps between stories. And even after doing that assembling, the story never quite reaches resolution; there's at least one more novel's worth of story waiting to unfold. But I appreciate Scalzi's continuing willingness to experiment with how stories can be told (Redshirts ended with three short-story "codas"), and the individual stories are all delightfully entertaining. Even if The Human Division is less a novel than a story collection, I'm certainly happy to have read it.
The Human Division returns Scalzi to the universe of his Old Men's War and its sequels, and it's an interesting experiment in story structure. The residents of Earth and of its many colony planets make up the Colonial Union, a political and military organization which protects humanity from the universe's many hostile alien races. But Earth is beginning to realize that the vast majority of the Union's resources, money, and soldiers are coming from Earth, and Earth's politicans have begun to resent that they are being asked to defend everyone else. So when Earth is invited to join The Conclave, a powerful alliance of alien cultures and planets, the diplomats and soldiers of the Colonial Union find themselves struggling to keep Earth in the fold, because without Earth, the Union will collapse.
Against that background, Scalzi tells his story in thirteen "episodes," which were originally released as separate e-publications, and each of which is designed to stand on its own as a short story while coming together to tell a complete story. So rather than a strong plot or narrative throughline, the book plays out as a series of vignettes set against the backdrop of the Union's fight to hang onto Earth. There are recurring characters, a second-tier diplomatic crew whose missions always seem to play into the larger story in unexpected ways, but about half of the episodes feature their own characters who don't reappear elsewhere.
Styles and tones vary widely, from "The B Team," a classic bit of space opera in which our diplomatic crew has a dangerous alien contact problem to resolve; to "A Voice in the Wilderness," a look at a Limbaugh-style rabble-rouser for whom ratings are the most important goal, which reminded me somehow of Shirley Jackson.
For those readers who've already purchased the individual stories in e-format, Scalzi includes a pair of bonus stories set in roughly the same period of his future history. "Hafte Sorvalh Eats a Churro and Speaks to the Youth of Today" is a sweet little charmer of a story that brings the book to a delightful end.
I'm not convinced that the stories work together to tell a single novel-length story. The reader is left to assemble that larger story for himself by putting together the background details of each individual piece, and by filling in the gaps between stories. And even after doing that assembling, the story never quite reaches resolution; there's at least one more novel's worth of story waiting to unfold. But I appreciate Scalzi's continuing willingness to experiment with how stories can be told (Redshirts ended with three short-story "codas"), and the individual stories are all delightfully entertaining. Even if The Human Division is less a novel than a story collection, I'm certainly happy to have read it.
MOVIES: Now You See Me (Louis Leterrier, 2013)
Four second-tier magicians (appropriately enough, played by four second-tier movie stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco) are brought together to form "the Four Horsemen," a Vegas-caliber team who take to ending their shows with enormous thefts of money that they give away to their audience, Robin Hood style. Mark Ruffalo's the FBI agent on the case, Melanie Laurent's his Interpol partner, Michael Caine's the wealthy impresario who backs the Horsemen, and Morgan Freeman's the Amazing Randi-esque debunker.
The problem is that with today's digital trickery and effects, it's nearly impossible to make a good movie about magic; when you can do anything imaginable with movie magic, the audience has no reason to believe that it's seeing real magic, or to be impressed by what it sees.
You can get around that if magic is just the backdrop for a good story about magicians, if character outweighs flashy tricks, but that's not the case here. The characters are standard action-movie thin, and while the movie's moderately entertaining in the moment, it's entirely disposable, and the plot twists that seem clever as they're happening fall apart the second you have time to think about them.
The problem is that with today's digital trickery and effects, it's nearly impossible to make a good movie about magic; when you can do anything imaginable with movie magic, the audience has no reason to believe that it's seeing real magic, or to be impressed by what it sees.
You can get around that if magic is just the backdrop for a good story about magicians, if character outweighs flashy tricks, but that's not the case here. The characters are standard action-movie thin, and while the movie's moderately entertaining in the moment, it's entirely disposable, and the plot twists that seem clever as they're happening fall apart the second you have time to think about them.
August 27, 2013
MOVIES: Lee Daniels' The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013)
A wildly uneven hodgepodge of a movie, with some performances and scenes that work extraordinarily well, and some that are total disasters.
The story, based loosely on the life of Eugene Allen, is that of a butler -- here named Cecil Gaines, and played by Forest Whitaker -- who works in the White House from the Eisenhower administration through the Reagan years. There is a brief prologue, in which we see Cecil as a child, living in something not too far removed from slavery, taken from the field to the house by Southern matriarch Vanessa Redgrave (because apparently there were no elderly Southern actresses available that day), whose offer to teach Cecil to be "a house nigger" is, by 1912 standards, an act of kindness.
The movie splits its time between Cecil's work at the White House and his family life. The White House half of the movie is marred by a series of celebrity cameos as Presidents and First Ladies, most of which are so badly miscast -- Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Schreiber as LBJ -- that they feel like an endless series of Saturday Night Live sketches. James Marsden at least makes a reasonably good attempt to get the voice right as JFK, which is more than most of the presidential actors do. (By far the best of these cameos is that of Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.)
The central story of Cecil's home life is his estrangement from son Louis (David Oyelowo) over David's involvement in the civil rights movement. And by "involvement," I mean that Louis is the Forrest Gump of civil rights, present at every major event -- a Woolworth sit-in, the Freedom Rides, Selma, jail with MLK in Birmingham, Memphis for the MLK assassination, Oakland with the Black Panthers. (Somehow, he misses the March on Washington, but that's about it.)
As Cecil ages, Whitaker chooses to reflect that age by making Cecil's speaking voice increasingly hushed and mumbly, and for the last half-hour of the movie, it's very hard to understand much of what he says. Far better (much to my surprise) is Oprah Winfrey as his wife, Gloria. It's a role that plays into Winfrey's public persona in some ways; Gloria is the grande dame of her household, used to being the center of attention (and loving it), and knowing exactly how to play to whoever else is in the room. Her relationship with Cecil is the strongest thing in the movie, a bond that remains sexual even when the two are no longer young; even in an embarrassingly awful black-and-white disco-era jumpsuit, Winfrey is sexy.
The Gump-iness of the civil rights story works against it, and makes it hard to take seriously. There is one spectacular scene, though, in which after a few years of estrangement, Louis and his girlfriend (Yaya Alafia), who is even more radical than Louis, come to dinner with Cecil and Gloria. In the argument between Louis and Cecil, we get a real sense of why some older African-Americans were scared by the intensity and the radicalism of some activists. I would have loved to have seen that idea explored more deeply (and there's a great movie there waiting to be made).
The good stuff in The Butler is very good; the bad stuff is ghastly. The whole is uneven enough that I can't recommend it with any enthusiasm, but I wouldn't argue too strongly against it if you're interested, either.
The story, based loosely on the life of Eugene Allen, is that of a butler -- here named Cecil Gaines, and played by Forest Whitaker -- who works in the White House from the Eisenhower administration through the Reagan years. There is a brief prologue, in which we see Cecil as a child, living in something not too far removed from slavery, taken from the field to the house by Southern matriarch Vanessa Redgrave (because apparently there were no elderly Southern actresses available that day), whose offer to teach Cecil to be "a house nigger" is, by 1912 standards, an act of kindness.
The movie splits its time between Cecil's work at the White House and his family life. The White House half of the movie is marred by a series of celebrity cameos as Presidents and First Ladies, most of which are so badly miscast -- Robin Williams as Eisenhower, John Cusack as Nixon, Liev Schreiber as LBJ -- that they feel like an endless series of Saturday Night Live sketches. James Marsden at least makes a reasonably good attempt to get the voice right as JFK, which is more than most of the presidential actors do. (By far the best of these cameos is that of Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.)
The central story of Cecil's home life is his estrangement from son Louis (David Oyelowo) over David's involvement in the civil rights movement. And by "involvement," I mean that Louis is the Forrest Gump of civil rights, present at every major event -- a Woolworth sit-in, the Freedom Rides, Selma, jail with MLK in Birmingham, Memphis for the MLK assassination, Oakland with the Black Panthers. (Somehow, he misses the March on Washington, but that's about it.)
As Cecil ages, Whitaker chooses to reflect that age by making Cecil's speaking voice increasingly hushed and mumbly, and for the last half-hour of the movie, it's very hard to understand much of what he says. Far better (much to my surprise) is Oprah Winfrey as his wife, Gloria. It's a role that plays into Winfrey's public persona in some ways; Gloria is the grande dame of her household, used to being the center of attention (and loving it), and knowing exactly how to play to whoever else is in the room. Her relationship with Cecil is the strongest thing in the movie, a bond that remains sexual even when the two are no longer young; even in an embarrassingly awful black-and-white disco-era jumpsuit, Winfrey is sexy.
The Gump-iness of the civil rights story works against it, and makes it hard to take seriously. There is one spectacular scene, though, in which after a few years of estrangement, Louis and his girlfriend (Yaya Alafia), who is even more radical than Louis, come to dinner with Cecil and Gloria. In the argument between Louis and Cecil, we get a real sense of why some older African-Americans were scared by the intensity and the radicalism of some activists. I would have loved to have seen that idea explored more deeply (and there's a great movie there waiting to be made).
The good stuff in The Butler is very good; the bad stuff is ghastly. The whole is uneven enough that I can't recommend it with any enthusiasm, but I wouldn't argue too strongly against it if you're interested, either.
August 25, 2013
BOOKS: The View From Penthouse B, Elinor Lipman (2013)
The thing that always strikes me about Lipman, and the reason I so enjoy her books, is that she is kind to her characters; she likes them all, and is willing to see the good in them, even when they've done bad things.
Our central characters here are sisters Gwen-Laura and Margot, each unexpectedly single. Gwen's husband died a year ago, and Margot's marriage ended in divorce after the scandalous trial of her husband, a fertility doctor who sometimes saw to his patients' inseminations a bit more personally than was appropriate. Margot got the penthouse in the divorce, but neither sister has a job, so Gwen is happy to accept Margot's invitation to move in. That doesn't help to pay the bills, of course, so they take in a third boarder, the dashing young Anthony.
The novel isn't plot-heavy in the traditional sense. A lot happens, but it doesn't feel particularly organized towards reaching a climactic moment; it's a more casual narrative of the ordinary things that happen to the sisters and the group of friends and family that forms around them. Gwen takes her first steps into dating; Margot tries to cope when her husband is paroled; Anthony's assorted boyfriends pop in and out.
It's all told with great charm and wit, and even the paroled ex-husband is allowed to be more than just a cartoon villain. It's a novel about the courage to continue after a crushing blow; the strength to support your loved ones (and to accept their support); and the importance of family, whether it's born or chosen. It is both deeply human and intensely humane, and I enjoyed it immensely.
Our central characters here are sisters Gwen-Laura and Margot, each unexpectedly single. Gwen's husband died a year ago, and Margot's marriage ended in divorce after the scandalous trial of her husband, a fertility doctor who sometimes saw to his patients' inseminations a bit more personally than was appropriate. Margot got the penthouse in the divorce, but neither sister has a job, so Gwen is happy to accept Margot's invitation to move in. That doesn't help to pay the bills, of course, so they take in a third boarder, the dashing young Anthony.
The novel isn't plot-heavy in the traditional sense. A lot happens, but it doesn't feel particularly organized towards reaching a climactic moment; it's a more casual narrative of the ordinary things that happen to the sisters and the group of friends and family that forms around them. Gwen takes her first steps into dating; Margot tries to cope when her husband is paroled; Anthony's assorted boyfriends pop in and out.
It's all told with great charm and wit, and even the paroled ex-husband is allowed to be more than just a cartoon villain. It's a novel about the courage to continue after a crushing blow; the strength to support your loved ones (and to accept their support); and the importance of family, whether it's born or chosen. It is both deeply human and intensely humane, and I enjoyed it immensely.
MOVIES: Elysium (Neill Blomkamp, 2013)
What a horrid mess this is.
It's 2154, and Earth is so badly polluted and unpleasant that the rich folks have fled to Elysium, a space station orbiting the planet. On Elysium, there are manicured lawns and swimming pools; most important, there are medical pods, high-tech gizmos capable of diagnosing and curing any illness or injury in about a minute.
Down on Earth, meanwhile, the poor live in slums and scrape out a living doing hard labor in factories. One such worker, Max (Matt Damon), gets zapped by a heavy dose of radiation that will kill him in days if he can't find a way to get to Elysium and into a med pod.
The planet is guarded by Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster), whose hard line stance on illegal immigrants -- she believes in shooting their shuttles out of the sky -- puts her in conflict with the more moderate President Patel (Faran Tahir).
So Max needs to get to Elysium, Delacourt wants to depose Patel (with the help of William Fichtner's Carlyle, a man so evil he literally orders people not to breathe in his direction), and the two are inevitably headed for conflict.
Alyssa Rosenberg has already done a fine job of tearing apart the confusion of the movie's health care dichotomy, but even if you toss that issue aside, Elysium just isn't very interesting. None of the characters have enough depth to be convincing, even by summer blockbuster standards, and Foster has chosen a bizarre accent that seems to be an indecipherable mix of French, South African, and Upper-Class Snob. The action sequences aren't exciting; Damon and the obligatory love interest (Alice Braga) have no chemistry; and the use of a sick child to generate pathos is the cheapest sort of emotional manipulation.
Entirely skippable.
It's 2154, and Earth is so badly polluted and unpleasant that the rich folks have fled to Elysium, a space station orbiting the planet. On Elysium, there are manicured lawns and swimming pools; most important, there are medical pods, high-tech gizmos capable of diagnosing and curing any illness or injury in about a minute.
Down on Earth, meanwhile, the poor live in slums and scrape out a living doing hard labor in factories. One such worker, Max (Matt Damon), gets zapped by a heavy dose of radiation that will kill him in days if he can't find a way to get to Elysium and into a med pod.
The planet is guarded by Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster), whose hard line stance on illegal immigrants -- she believes in shooting their shuttles out of the sky -- puts her in conflict with the more moderate President Patel (Faran Tahir).
So Max needs to get to Elysium, Delacourt wants to depose Patel (with the help of William Fichtner's Carlyle, a man so evil he literally orders people not to breathe in his direction), and the two are inevitably headed for conflict.
Alyssa Rosenberg has already done a fine job of tearing apart the confusion of the movie's health care dichotomy, but even if you toss that issue aside, Elysium just isn't very interesting. None of the characters have enough depth to be convincing, even by summer blockbuster standards, and Foster has chosen a bizarre accent that seems to be an indecipherable mix of French, South African, and Upper-Class Snob. The action sequences aren't exciting; Damon and the obligatory love interest (Alice Braga) have no chemistry; and the use of a sick child to generate pathos is the cheapest sort of emotional manipulation.
Entirely skippable.
August 24, 2013
MOVIES: In a World... (Lake Bell, 2013)
Writer-director Lake Bell also stars as Carol, a voice actress who ekes out a living giving accent lessons and doing the occasional commercial; her dream is to break into the world of movie trailers, where women are very rarely hired. Among her chief rivals is her father, Sam (Fred Melamed), a legend in the business.
This is an entertaining look into an obscure corner of show business, and Bell's screenplay is charming and funny. She's also a very likable and charismatic leading lady, and she's done a fine job of surrounding herself with talented actors. Chief among them is Melamed, who is (as he demonstrated in the Coens' A Serious Man) a master of using serenity and calm as a form of passive-aggression attack. There's also fine work from Ken Marino as another voice actor, Demetri Martin as the co-worker with a longstanding crush on Carol, and Michaela Watkins and Rob Corddry as Carol's sister and brother-in-law. (And Eva Longoria displays a nice sense of humor in a cameo appearance as herself.)
The romantic subplots for Bell and Martin, and Watkins and Corddry, do drag a bit, and are far less involving than the stuff set in the voice industry, but that central story is so involving and fascinating that the romance doesn't get in the way too badly.
I hesitate to say this, for fear that it will make the movie sound like a political polemic, but this is a seriously feminist movie about the importance, both literal and figurative, of women finding their voices. But rather than the angry screed that might suggest, In a World... is a lively movie that skillfully makes its political points in a delightful way.
This is an entertaining look into an obscure corner of show business, and Bell's screenplay is charming and funny. She's also a very likable and charismatic leading lady, and she's done a fine job of surrounding herself with talented actors. Chief among them is Melamed, who is (as he demonstrated in the Coens' A Serious Man) a master of using serenity and calm as a form of passive-aggression attack. There's also fine work from Ken Marino as another voice actor, Demetri Martin as the co-worker with a longstanding crush on Carol, and Michaela Watkins and Rob Corddry as Carol's sister and brother-in-law. (And Eva Longoria displays a nice sense of humor in a cameo appearance as herself.)
The romantic subplots for Bell and Martin, and Watkins and Corddry, do drag a bit, and are far less involving than the stuff set in the voice industry, but that central story is so involving and fascinating that the romance doesn't get in the way too badly.
I hesitate to say this, for fear that it will make the movie sound like a political polemic, but this is a seriously feminist movie about the importance, both literal and figurative, of women finding their voices. But rather than the angry screed that might suggest, In a World... is a lively movie that skillfully makes its political points in a delightful way.
MOVIES: The Spectacular Now (James Ponsoldt, 2013)
A surprisingly fresh take on the last-year-of-high-school romance that deftly avoids virtually all of the cliches of the genre.
Sutter (Miles Teller) is a cocky boy who lacks ambition and is well on his way to a life of dissolute alcoholism; you can already see the puffiness settling on his face. Aimee (Shailene Woodley) is a smart girl has everything going for her except for self-confidence. (And both are far more interesting and complicated than those rather reductive summaries would suggest.) The relationship between them will, of course, change them both, but not necessarily in the ways or to the degree that you expect.
Both Teller and Woodley are terrific here; it's a particular joy to watch Woodley blossom once she gets some positive attention and encouragement. There are also fine small performances from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyle Chandler as Sutter's parents; Chandler gets to play a less noble father figure than we're used to from him, and he handles it nicely.
Absolutely delightful movie, and proof that there's always a new and interesting way to handle familiar material.
Sutter (Miles Teller) is a cocky boy who lacks ambition and is well on his way to a life of dissolute alcoholism; you can already see the puffiness settling on his face. Aimee (Shailene Woodley) is a smart girl has everything going for her except for self-confidence. (And both are far more interesting and complicated than those rather reductive summaries would suggest.) The relationship between them will, of course, change them both, but not necessarily in the ways or to the degree that you expect.
Both Teller and Woodley are terrific here; it's a particular joy to watch Woodley blossom once she gets some positive attention and encouragement. There are also fine small performances from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyle Chandler as Sutter's parents; Chandler gets to play a less noble father figure than we're used to from him, and he handles it nicely.
Absolutely delightful movie, and proof that there's always a new and interesting way to handle familiar material.
August 07, 2013
MOVIES: the catching up concludes
And to finish getting caught up, quick thoughts on a couple of titles:
Morgan Neville's 20 Feet From Stardom is a delightful documentary about backup singers, focusing primarily on four women who have spent most of their lives in the background. Some of them have taken shots at stardom themselves, but fate and circumstance never gave them the big break they needed. I could have done without a few moments where some of the other talking heads in the movie stretch a little hard in trying to tie their fates to broader issues of racism and sexism, and the movie isn't terribly innovative in style, being mostly a series of talking-head interviews.
But the music is spectacular, and there's a scene late in the movie where Lisa Fischer, singing in 4-part harmony with herself, does a slightly popped-up version of Samuel Barber's "Sure on This Shining Night" that had my jaw on the floor.
And Despicable Me 2 is a very entertaining sequel that manages to give the popular minions more to do without letting them entirely take over the show. I might have hoped for a bit more vocal energy from Benjamin Bratt, whose villain falls a bit flat, but aside from that, I liked the movie a lot.
Morgan Neville's 20 Feet From Stardom is a delightful documentary about backup singers, focusing primarily on four women who have spent most of their lives in the background. Some of them have taken shots at stardom themselves, but fate and circumstance never gave them the big break they needed. I could have done without a few moments where some of the other talking heads in the movie stretch a little hard in trying to tie their fates to broader issues of racism and sexism, and the movie isn't terribly innovative in style, being mostly a series of talking-head interviews.
But the music is spectacular, and there's a scene late in the movie where Lisa Fischer, singing in 4-part harmony with herself, does a slightly popped-up version of Samuel Barber's "Sure on This Shining Night" that had my jaw on the floor.
And Despicable Me 2 is a very entertaining sequel that manages to give the popular minions more to do without letting them entirely take over the show. I might have hoped for a bit more vocal energy from Benjamin Bratt, whose villain falls a bit flat, but aside from that, I liked the movie a lot.
August 06, 2013
MOVIES: Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013)
Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), having lost everything in the downfall of her Bernie Madoff-esque husband (Alec Baldwin), arrives in San Francisco to stay with her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins), and put her life back together.
Among other things, this is Allen riffing on A Streetcar Named Desire -- fragile woman arrives to stay with working class sister, and clashes with her tough-guy boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) -- but Woody Allen may be the director least suited to a study of American class differences. His attitude towards his working class characters is painfully condescending; poor Cannavale, who I normally like very much, is stuck dese-dem-dose-ing his way through the movie because the accent is a stronger character trait than anything Allen's script provides.
Mostly, though, this is a study of a woman in full-on nervous and emotional collapse. Jasmine has never had to work in life -- she dropped out of college without a degree to get married -- and is utterly at sea when left stranded in the world with no money. She and Ginger aren't close enough for her to get any real emotional support there, and Jasmine, as Allen's surrogate, looks down on Ginger from such a snooty height that it would never occur to her to seek it.
Blanchett's performance has been much praised here, and is an early contender for an Oscar nomination, but it didn't work well for me. It is, to be sure, a performance that displays great technique and precision, but in this case that's a big part of the problem. It's a performance in which you can see the acting as it happens; Blanchett's every choice and character tic are visible. Blanchett is so perfectly and visibly in control that I never found it possible to believe that Jasmine was out of control. It's a performance that desperately needs some sloppiness, some chaos, some sense of unpredictability and surprise, and never has any of those things.
As for the rest of the cast, only Baldwin comes off well, and he's working in very familiar territory for him. Hawkins, who I've always though much overrated, struggles to maintain a consistent accent, and none of those she attempts sound particularly American. Cannavale, Louis CK, and Andrew Dice Clay are buried under so many layers of Allen's contempt that they can't possibly do any decent acting; and Peter Sarsgaard, as Jasmine's potential new beau, is noticably uncomfortable with the tempo and rhythms of Allen's dialogue.
Among other things, this is Allen riffing on A Streetcar Named Desire -- fragile woman arrives to stay with working class sister, and clashes with her tough-guy boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) -- but Woody Allen may be the director least suited to a study of American class differences. His attitude towards his working class characters is painfully condescending; poor Cannavale, who I normally like very much, is stuck dese-dem-dose-ing his way through the movie because the accent is a stronger character trait than anything Allen's script provides.
Mostly, though, this is a study of a woman in full-on nervous and emotional collapse. Jasmine has never had to work in life -- she dropped out of college without a degree to get married -- and is utterly at sea when left stranded in the world with no money. She and Ginger aren't close enough for her to get any real emotional support there, and Jasmine, as Allen's surrogate, looks down on Ginger from such a snooty height that it would never occur to her to seek it.
Blanchett's performance has been much praised here, and is an early contender for an Oscar nomination, but it didn't work well for me. It is, to be sure, a performance that displays great technique and precision, but in this case that's a big part of the problem. It's a performance in which you can see the acting as it happens; Blanchett's every choice and character tic are visible. Blanchett is so perfectly and visibly in control that I never found it possible to believe that Jasmine was out of control. It's a performance that desperately needs some sloppiness, some chaos, some sense of unpredictability and surprise, and never has any of those things.
As for the rest of the cast, only Baldwin comes off well, and he's working in very familiar territory for him. Hawkins, who I've always though much overrated, struggles to maintain a consistent accent, and none of those she attempts sound particularly American. Cannavale, Louis CK, and Andrew Dice Clay are buried under so many layers of Allen's contempt that they can't possibly do any decent acting; and Peter Sarsgaard, as Jasmine's potential new beau, is noticably uncomfortable with the tempo and rhythms of Allen's dialogue.
August 05, 2013
MOVIES: Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013)
A remarkably strong first film, based on the true story of Oscar Grant, who was killed by an Oakland transit cop at a train station early on New Year's Day 2009.
Coogler follows Oscar (played by Michael B. Jordan) through his final day, and it's a very ordinary day. Wake up, squabble with girlfriend (Melonie Diaz), take daughter to pre-school, shop for groceries, flirt with pretty girl at the fish counter, go to Mom's birthday party, drop kid off with her aunt so that you and girlfriend can go out for New Year's Eve. About the only thing that won't feel run-of-the-mill for most viewers is the scene in which Oscar arranges to sell some pot to a friend, and Coogler makes sure to emphasize that Oscar is trying to get out of that part of his life.
And through no fault of Coogler, the very ordinariness of that day makes the movie's first hour a little dull. There's nothing terribly interesting or dramatic to hold our attention; all we have to keep us going is a building sense of dread. (The movie begins with some of the actual cellphone footage shot by other people on the platform, so we know exactly what we're building to.)
Something that is Coogler's fault, though, is the way in which Oscar's daughter is used; her scenes with Oscar are laden with foreboding, and their dialogue often comes across as ironically prophetic. ("Daddy, I'm scared." "Don't worry, baby. I'm gonna be fine" and so on.) There are also a few too many ominous shots of trains entering and leaving stations.
Once the shooting happens, though, the final act of the movie is riveting, largely due to the performance of Octavia Spencer as Oscar's mother; Spencer's grief and pain, and her struggle to maintain her composure while her son is dying in the hospital, are searing.
Not a perfect movie, certainly, but some of the flaws are inherent to the material, and Coogler has done as much as possible to mitigate them. Certainly worth seeing for Jordan's and Spencer's performances, and as a strong debut from Coogler, whose next project will be worth looking for.
Coogler follows Oscar (played by Michael B. Jordan) through his final day, and it's a very ordinary day. Wake up, squabble with girlfriend (Melonie Diaz), take daughter to pre-school, shop for groceries, flirt with pretty girl at the fish counter, go to Mom's birthday party, drop kid off with her aunt so that you and girlfriend can go out for New Year's Eve. About the only thing that won't feel run-of-the-mill for most viewers is the scene in which Oscar arranges to sell some pot to a friend, and Coogler makes sure to emphasize that Oscar is trying to get out of that part of his life.
And through no fault of Coogler, the very ordinariness of that day makes the movie's first hour a little dull. There's nothing terribly interesting or dramatic to hold our attention; all we have to keep us going is a building sense of dread. (The movie begins with some of the actual cellphone footage shot by other people on the platform, so we know exactly what we're building to.)
Something that is Coogler's fault, though, is the way in which Oscar's daughter is used; her scenes with Oscar are laden with foreboding, and their dialogue often comes across as ironically prophetic. ("Daddy, I'm scared." "Don't worry, baby. I'm gonna be fine" and so on.) There are also a few too many ominous shots of trains entering and leaving stations.
Once the shooting happens, though, the final act of the movie is riveting, largely due to the performance of Octavia Spencer as Oscar's mother; Spencer's grief and pain, and her struggle to maintain her composure while her son is dying in the hospital, are searing.
Not a perfect movie, certainly, but some of the flaws are inherent to the material, and Coogler has done as much as possible to mitigate them. Certainly worth seeing for Jordan's and Spencer's performances, and as a strong debut from Coogler, whose next project will be worth looking for.
August 04, 2013
MOVIES: White House Down (Roland Emmerich, 2013)
White House Down is a dumb popcorn movie, and there's nothing remotely surprising about it -- it is essentially Die Hard in the White House -- but as such things go, it's mostly fun. The supporting cast is better than a movie like this needs (Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Richard Jenkins, Jason Clarke), and Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx play the leads -- respectively, a would-be Secret Service agent and the US President -- with their usual charisma. The movie finds moderately creative ways to get all of the action movie cliches into a movie set almost entirely on the grounds of the White House; we even get a fairly good car chase.
I was bothered by the way the movie uses the character of Tatum's daughter; I get that we need to put someone sympathetic in jeopardy to give Tatum his motivation, but even in that context, watching a kid being beaten and manhandled by grown men yanks me out of the escapist mood. And there was no reason the character needed to be a kid; it just needed to be someone Tatum cared about enough to fight for, and whose respect he needed to earn -- a parent, a wife, a sibling. Make it, for instance, the younger college-educated brother who Tatum thinks has never respected him, and you've got the same story dynamic in a way that doesn't make you cringe when you watch.
I was bothered by the way the movie uses the character of Tatum's daughter; I get that we need to put someone sympathetic in jeopardy to give Tatum his motivation, but even in that context, watching a kid being beaten and manhandled by grown men yanks me out of the escapist mood. And there was no reason the character needed to be a kid; it just needed to be someone Tatum cared about enough to fight for, and whose respect he needed to earn -- a parent, a wife, a sibling. Make it, for instance, the younger college-educated brother who Tatum thinks has never respected him, and you've got the same story dynamic in a way that doesn't make you cringe when you watch.
MOVIES: Monsters University (Dan Scanlon, 2013)
In which Pixar wastes considerable effort on a remake of Revenge of the Nerds.
Mike and Sully meet as college students (a blatant contradiction of their backstory as estalished in Monsters Inc.), and wind up stuck in the nerdiest frat on campus, with whom they must win a campus competition in order to remain in school.
Monsters University is a pleasant enough movie, but it's not nearly as good as Monsters Inc., and by Pixar standards, it's a disappointment. There was one really terrific sequence, in which Mike and Sully find themselves stranded in the human world; those five minutes could have been the inspiration for a really interesting movie. The punchlines fall flat, and aside from John Goodman and Billy Crystal in the leads, there's not much of interest in the voice acting. Nathan Fillion is probably best of the supporting players, doing a variation on Captain Hammer, his arrogant blowhard from Dr. Horrible.
The short that played before the movie, "The Blue Umbrella," was a bit of goopy sentiment not nearly at the usual level of Pixar shorts. Very meh.
Mike and Sully meet as college students (a blatant contradiction of their backstory as estalished in Monsters Inc.), and wind up stuck in the nerdiest frat on campus, with whom they must win a campus competition in order to remain in school.
Monsters University is a pleasant enough movie, but it's not nearly as good as Monsters Inc., and by Pixar standards, it's a disappointment. There was one really terrific sequence, in which Mike and Sully find themselves stranded in the human world; those five minutes could have been the inspiration for a really interesting movie. The punchlines fall flat, and aside from John Goodman and Billy Crystal in the leads, there's not much of interest in the voice acting. Nathan Fillion is probably best of the supporting players, doing a variation on Captain Hammer, his arrogant blowhard from Dr. Horrible.
The short that played before the movie, "The Blue Umbrella," was a bit of goopy sentiment not nearly at the usual level of Pixar shorts. Very meh.
MOVIES: The Way, Way Back (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2013)
Very well acted, albeit formulaic, coming-of-age tale.
Our hero is 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) who is being schlepped out to spend the summer with his mom (Toni Collette) and her new boyfriend (Steve Carell) at his beach house. The would-be stopdad is an obnoxious schmuck, and Duncan is already dreading the summer. Meeting the summer neighbors doesn't much help -- there's the perpetually tipsy couple (Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet) who are there for dinner almost every night, and the loud, brassy floozy (Alison Janney) who lives next door with her pretty young daughter (AnnaSophia Robb).
And so Duncan flees to the local rundown water park, where manager Owen (Sam Rockwell), who has never quite grown up himself, takes Duncan under his wing, and the relationship between them -- surprise, surprise -- helps both to grow up a little.
Performances are excellent, and Sam Rockwell is the standout. He's been doing remarkable work for years now -- if you haven't seen Moon, go watch it, for heaven's sake -- without ever getting the recognition he deserves, in part because he's too quirky and eccentric a presence to easily fit into any of the usual leading man molds; and while the role he's given to play here is a fairly standard lovably goofy manchild, he brings more nuance and subtlety to it than the script provides.
And the rest of the cast is also strong; everyone gets a moment or two to shine. Liam James, in the lead role, more than holds his own in this group of fine actors; Toni Collette has some particularly fine moments in a campfire scene where she realizes that Carell may not be everything she'd hoped he was.
But all of that fine acting is put to the service of an awfully familiar story -- misfit kid begins to find himself when he becomes the protege of just the right misfit grownup. The movie is written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who wrote The Descendants; based on that movie and this one, they don't bring a lot of originality to the table, but they can tell a formulaic story better than most. (They also play small roles as members of the Water Wizz staff.)
Entertaining, and worth seeing for the strength of the cast, but familiar enough that you could easily wait to see it at home rather than rushing out to the theater.
Our hero is 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James) who is being schlepped out to spend the summer with his mom (Toni Collette) and her new boyfriend (Steve Carell) at his beach house. The would-be stopdad is an obnoxious schmuck, and Duncan is already dreading the summer. Meeting the summer neighbors doesn't much help -- there's the perpetually tipsy couple (Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet) who are there for dinner almost every night, and the loud, brassy floozy (Alison Janney) who lives next door with her pretty young daughter (AnnaSophia Robb).
And so Duncan flees to the local rundown water park, where manager Owen (Sam Rockwell), who has never quite grown up himself, takes Duncan under his wing, and the relationship between them -- surprise, surprise -- helps both to grow up a little.
Performances are excellent, and Sam Rockwell is the standout. He's been doing remarkable work for years now -- if you haven't seen Moon, go watch it, for heaven's sake -- without ever getting the recognition he deserves, in part because he's too quirky and eccentric a presence to easily fit into any of the usual leading man molds; and while the role he's given to play here is a fairly standard lovably goofy manchild, he brings more nuance and subtlety to it than the script provides.
And the rest of the cast is also strong; everyone gets a moment or two to shine. Liam James, in the lead role, more than holds his own in this group of fine actors; Toni Collette has some particularly fine moments in a campfire scene where she realizes that Carell may not be everything she'd hoped he was.
But all of that fine acting is put to the service of an awfully familiar story -- misfit kid begins to find himself when he becomes the protege of just the right misfit grownup. The movie is written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who wrote The Descendants; based on that movie and this one, they don't bring a lot of originality to the table, but they can tell a formulaic story better than most. (They also play small roles as members of the Water Wizz staff.)
Entertaining, and worth seeing for the strength of the cast, but familiar enough that you could easily wait to see it at home rather than rushing out to the theater.
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