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Wedding Bell Blues

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Marry Me

by Hope Madden

Just two short years ago we thought Jennifer Lopez had a good shot at an Oscar nomination for her layered turn as stripper entrepreneur Ramona in Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers. Would she, like Ben Affleck, build on that success with more complex, emotionally satisfying supporting roles? Or would she make Marry Me?

Sigh.

Marry Me is a Jennifer Lopez movie from the word go. Actually, director Kat Coiro’s film is even more of a JLo movie than her other countless rom coms about a wildly beautiful but down-to-earth woman who’s just a romantic at heart.

Marry Me wraps a set of music videos around a peek into the world of a globally successful if under-respected musical diva who gets married a lot. So, it’s about as meta as the latest Scream.

Lopez’s character name is Kat Valdez, and Kat’s new single “Marry Me” is a tribute to her love with fellow musical phenom Bastian (Maluma). They will be wed onstage in front of a sold-out NYC crowd and streamed for tens of millions of people around the globe.

Until she doesn’t. She picks some kid’s dad (Owen Wilson) out of the audience and marries him instead.

Premise Beach!

As idiotic and contrived as that sounds—and as the trailer made it look–Marry Me delivers some charm. That has very little to do with the plot or its obvious trajectory, and it doesn’t really have much to do with the chemistry between Lopez and Wilson (which is lacking, honestly).

Harper Dill and John Rogers’s screenplay, based on Bobby Crosby’s graphic novel, pulls you in by treading on Lopez’s public persona. Well-placed Jimmy Fallon cameos create a sense of what it must be like to live, succeed and fail so very publicly. Compare this to Charlie (Wilson) and his hum-drum life of a math teacher, and the two-different-worlds romance is set.

Lopez’s acting is as superficial as the film requires. Wilson delivers a performance as characteristically quirky and goofy as expected. (Though he never once says wow, and let’s be honest, this character would say wow.)

Supporting turns from Sarah Silverman, Chloe Coleman and John Bradley help overcome a sparsity of laughter.

Is Marry Me an opportunistic music video/hit single/Valentine’s Day date bundle orchestrated by a savvy business mogul? It is. And it’s fine. Plus, if it goes well, maybe she’ll take on another really good character next time.

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Break Up to Make Up

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I Want You Back

by George Wolf

If we’re gonna start talking about I Want You Back, we can’t start at the start, we have to start at the finish. Because no matter what you think about the film’s first 100 minutes, the last five may seriously turn your head.

But before that Linda Blair moment, Emma (Jenny Slate) and Peter (Charlie Day) first meet in the stairwell of their office building. Emma works for an Orthodontist, Peter’s with a retirement home company, and they both just got dumped. Noah (Scott Eastwood, finally doing more acting than posing) left her for Ginny (Clark Backo), Anne (Gina Rodriguez) left him for Logan (Manny Jacinto), and the two new “sadness siblings” are all in their feelings.

So they start hanging out, giving each other enough emotional support to eventually devise a plan. Emma will throw herself at Logan, while Peter (admitting he’s not hot enough to go after Ginny) will make friends with Noah so he can steer him back to Emma. And with that, the Break Up So We Can Make Up game is on!

We all know where this is going, right? If we’ve seen a romantic comedy we do, and once again the trick lies in finding some way to make the characters and their journey to love worth rooting for.

Screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (the writing duo behind the terrific Love, Simon and TV’s This Is Us) pair with director Jason Orley for a solid game plan, but it’s the irresistible chemistry of Slate and Day that keeps this madcap setup consistently engaging.

Slate is such an underrated talent. Once again she’s able to confidently take a character from hi-jinx (like the proposed threesome with Anne and Logan) to humanity (an unexpected friendship with a withdrawn kid) while making us care enough to welcome all of it.

And while Day is basically bringing another variation of his usual schtick, it’s still funny and, when paired with Slate, endearing.

Which brings us back to that ending, one that lands with such a thud I was really hoping it was merely a dream sequence. Any semblance of nuance or modern perspective on romance is suddenly replaced with the easiest, most rushed and shallow wrap up this side of a TV sitcom – with a set design to match.

What happened to that other movie? We had a nice thing going, and then it just ghosted us! Come back, I know it can work!

Hmmm…maybe we should hatch a plan.

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Among the Missing

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Catch the Fair One

by Brandon Thomas

In 2016, a study by the National Crime Information Center found that out of a reported 5,712 cases of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women, only 116 cases were in the databases of the U.S. Department of Justice. The investigations into these missing women are often impeded by the lack of communication between federal, local and tribal law enforcement.

Filemaker Josef Kubota Wladyka uses this real-life scenario to deliver a thoughtful – but thrilling – tale of guilt, regret and closure. 

Kaylee (Kali Reis) was once a promising amateur boxer. Her life fell apart though when her younger sister, Weeta (Mainaku Borrero), went missing while walking home one night. Years later, a struggling Kaylee is still searching for her sister. Desperation and guilt lead Kaylee down a dark path – one that she hopes will end with her finding Weeta alive. 

Catch the Fair One focuses on the important issue of missing indigenous women but does so through the guise of a revenge flick. This film is brutal. In the world of the movie, the innocent are prey and the villainous predators are always lurking and usually slinking back to the suburbs.

Wladyka makes his feature debut with stunning confidence. The neatness of the storytelling is as precise as it is dark. The tonal control is extraordinary as the film straddles the line between genre and drama without fully embracing either. Catch the Fair One is heavily reminiscent of Jeremy Saulnier’s terrific Blue Ruin.

The ordinary nature of the villains is chilling. Their nonchalant attitude toward dealing in sex slavery is enough to cause the hair on the back of your neck to stand up.

Wladyka gets extra mileage out of casting Kevin Dunn (Transformers) and Daniel Henshall (The Snowtown Murders and The Babadook) as father and son bad guys. Dunn is especially disarming with the baggage he brings in this type of role. He’s one of the more recognizable “Hey, it’s that guy!” actors working today, and those roles aren’t typically this bloodthirsty. 

The real standout is Kali Reis. Being Reis’s first acting role, it would be easy to sit back and nitpick every acting decision she makes along the way. Fortunately, Reis’s vulnerability mixed with sheer intensity never allows for that kind of surface scrutiny to take place. 

She’s more than capable in the physical scenes, but it’s in those softer moments where Reis shows her quiet determination that feels so in sync with the character’s state of mind and her eventual plan. 

With a thrilling story and a knock-out lead performance, Catch the Fair One announces itself as one of the best movies of the year so far.

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Murder Was Again the Case

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Death on the Nile

by George Wolf

“He accuses everyone of murder!”

“It is a problem, I admit.”

This playful admission by legendary detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) is one of the ways Death on the Nile has some winking fun with the often used, often parodied Agatha Christie formula.

And since Christie’s source novel is one of the works that perfected that formula, it’s smart to acknowledge some inherent campiness while you’re trying to honor the genius of the original construction.

After his successful revival of Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, Branagh is back to again star, direct, and team with screenwriter Michael Green for another star-studded, claustrophobic whodunit.

This time we’re aboard a lavish cruise down the Nile in the late 1930s. Wealthy heiress Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot) has just married the dashing Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), and they’ve invited a group of friends and family (including Annette Bening, Sophie Okonedo, Russell Brand, Jennifer Saunders, Letitia Wright and no-that’s-not-Margot- Robbie-it’s Emma Mackey) to help them celebrate.

Ah, but love and money bring “conflicting lies and jealousies,” and soon Linnet proves wise in putting the world’s greatest detective on the guest list. Murder is again the case!

And when Hercule Poirot is on it – which takes a while – Branagh and Green craft a capable reminder of what makes this formula so sturdy. From the discovery of clues to the requisite red-herring accusations, it’s just fun to feel part of Poirot’s deductive process.

But while Branagh and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos expertly utilize the confines of the ship to their advantage, the surrounding locales smack of outdated CGI and land as a disappointing stand-in for the eye-popping wonder of Orient Express.

Branagh and Green also try valiantly to weave a layer of love through the mystery. Opening with a prologue that introduces a decades-old pining (along with Poirot’s keen eye for detail and a dubious inspiration for that mustache), the film’s ambitions for this added narrative weight are worthy, but ultimately add more running time than substance.

The epilogue that checks in with Poirot six months after the cruise lets us know Branagh may have more Christie mysteries on his itinerary, and that’s not a bad thing. Death on the Nile proves that a trusty return to glamour and intrigue can still overcome some excess baggage.

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Star Crossed

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A Grand Romantic Gesture

by Rachel Willis

After losing her career, Ava (Gina Mckee) seeks fulfillment from a community drama course in writer/director Joan Carr-Wiggin’s film, A Grand Romantic Gesture.

The film opens with a confession, as we quickly learn Ava has fallen for her classmate, Simon (Douglas Hodge). Though both married, their connection grows as the two discover similar dissatisfaction with where life has brought them.

Mining the desires and dizzying highs of illicit love from Romeo and Juliet, Carr-Wiggin applies the famous love (lust?) story to a man and woman in their 50s.

Though not the first film to explore mature love, A Grand Romantic Gesture might be the first to portray Romeo and Juliet as middle-aged. Though the approach is subtly humorous in how it comments that heady love isn’t just for the young, R&J’s smoldering passion just isn’t there. There’s no doubt these characters care for each other, but when the film tries for something more passionate, even reckless, it doesn’t land. Rather than mirroring the high drama of young, forbidden love, it comes across as silly.

Layered onto the story, are Real World-style confessions. The confession room segments might have worked if they’d stayed with Ava, but the snippets become an unnecessary drag on an otherwise steadily rolling story. The things revealed in the confessionals are more artfully delivered via dialogue and body language.

The movie’s tone never decides where to settle, veering from optimism to cynicism with each changing scene. Is one too old to find love? Or does age bring freedom from the pressure of staying for the sake of children?

There are some funny moments in the story, but the dizzying shifts from rom-com to passionate drama are hard to accept. The film might have benefited from a continued light touch in its references to Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

Though earnest in their roles, McKee and Hodge never successfully convince us of their fervor for each other. Unfortunate for a film with such an ambitious title.

Outtakes

2022 Academy Award Nominations

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by Hope Madden and George Wolf

Not a ton of surprises in this year’s Oscar nominations. Maybe we’re lucky there were so many good films to choose from, given the brief nominating window this year. Because of Covid, last year’s contenders had 14 months to find a release. To make up for that and get us back on track, the eligibility window for 2021 was just 10 months.

Still, the academy decided to go ahead and abandon their unpopular “there could be 10 best picture nominations, but probably not) to the more easily understandable “yep, 10.” And yet, still no blockbusters made the list.

But the really important question is this: what do we think?

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

  • Jessie Buckley, The Lost Daughter
  • Ariana DeBose, West Side Story
  • Judi Dench, Belfast
  • Kirsten Dunst, The Power of the Dog
  • Aunjanue Ellis, King Richard

Surprises and Snubs: The biggest surprise is Caitriona Balfe, who was the front runner (and reasonably so) to get recognized in this category for Belfast. We’d have swapped Balfe in and left Dench off. But for us, Ruth Negga’s turn in Passing is just as big an oversight and as much as we loved Buckley in The Lost Daughter, we’d have given her spot to Negga.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Nominees:

  • Ciarán Hinds, Belfast
  • Troy Kotsur, CODA
  • Jesse Plemons, The Power of the Dog
  • J.K. Simmons, Being the Ricardos
  • Kodi Smit-McPhee, The Power of the Dog

Surprises and Snubs: While this is a solid list, we’d leave out Simmons and Hinds in favor of Mike Faist in West Side Story, Ben Affleck in The Last Duel or Colman Domingo in Zola.

Original Score

Nominees:

  • Don’t Look Up
  • Dune
  • Encanto
  • Parallel Mothers
  • The Power of the Dog

Surprises and Snubs: For us, this is the year Jonny Greenwood should have been nominated twice (maybe three times!). Great to see his deserving nod for The Power of the Dog, but we’d have bumped him in there for Spencer as well, perhaps in leu of Nicholas Britell’s work in Don’t Look Up.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Nominees:

  • CODA
  • Drive My Car
  • Dune
  • The Lost Daughter
  • The Power of the Dog

Surprises and Snubs: We were surprised not to see Tony Kushner’s update of West Side Story get noticed, and we were sad that Rebecca Hall’s insightful reimagining of Ella Larson’s novel Passing was left off the list. Joel Coen’s streamlined The Tragedy of Macbeth also deserved a spot. We would have given them the spots filled by Dune and CODA and maybe The Lost Daughter.

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees:

  • Belfast
  • Don’t Look Up
  • King Richard
  • Licorice Pizza
  • The Worst Person in the World

Surprises and Snubs: We were surprised—delighted, really—to see The Worst Person in the World and Don’t Look Up recognized. We would have left King Richard off in favor of Michael Sarnoski’s Pig or Mike Mills’s C’mon C’mon, but that’s just us.

Best Original Song

Nominees:

  • Be Alive, King Richard
  • Dos Oruguitas, Encanto
  • Down to Joy, Belfast
  • No Time to Die, No Time to Die
  • Somehow You Do, Four Good Days

Surprises and Snubs: Oh, how we wanted Ariana Grande’s Just Look Up to make this list! Man that would have been fun to hear during the broadcast. We’d have given it Reba’s spot with Somehow You Do.

Best Cinematography

Nominees:

  • Dune
  • Nightmare Alley
  • The Power of the Dog
  • The Tragedy of Macbeth
  • West Side Story

Surprises and Snubs: This had to have been the toughest category. There were so many unbelievable feats of cinematography this year. Belfast and Passing were both utterly glorious, but even we are not sure who we’d bump to fit them in.

Best International Feature

Nominees:

  • Drive My Car, Japan
  • Flee, Denmark
  • Hand of God, Italy
  • Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom, Bhutan
  • The Worst Person in the World, Norway

Surprises and Snubs: Here is the other stacked category for 2022. The fact that three of these films —Worst Person in the World, Flee and Drive My Car—are all nominated in other categories makes predicting a winner here very tough. But the surprise has to be Bhutan’s Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. Since we haven’t seen it, we wouldn’t suggest that it is not deserving. The surprise is that Parallel Mothers from Pedro Almodovar is missing.

Best Documentary Feature

Nominees:

  • Ascension
  • Attica
  • Flee
  • Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
  • Writing with Fire

Surprises and Snubs: Really surprised not the see The Rescue here, probably in place of Writing With Fire.

Best Animated Feature

Nominees:

  • Encanto
  • Flee
  • Luca
  • The Mitchells vs. The Machines
  • Raya and the Last Dragon

Surprises and Snubs: It would’ve been great to see Crytozoo, The Summit of the Gods or even Vivo sneak in, but this list will do.

Best Actor

Nominees:

  • Javier Bardem, Being the Ricardos
  • Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog
  • Andrew Garfield, Tick…Tick…Boom!
  • Will Smith, King Richard
  • Denzel Washington, The Tragedy of Macbeth

Surprises and Snubs: No surprises here. We would have given Smith’s spot to Nicolas Cage for his crushing performance in Pig.

Best Actress

Nominees:

  • Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye
  • Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter
  • Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers
  • Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos
  • Kristen Stewart, Spencer

Surprises and Snubs: When Caitriona Balfe did not get a supporting actress nomination, we figured the Academy has deemed her role the lead. When she didn’t get a spot here—which we’d have given her over Kidman—we were saddened. But at least KStew made it. We were worried.

Best Director

Nominees:

  • Kenneth Branagh, Belfast
  • Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car
  • Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza
  • Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog
  • Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

Surprises and Snubs: There are always reasons to complain, especially in this category. We have chosen not to this year. Well done.

Best Picture

Nominees:

  • Belfast
  • CODA
  • Don’t Look Up
  • Drive My Car
  • Dune
  • King Richard
  • Licorice Pizza
  • Nightmare Alley
  • The Power of the Dog
  • West Side Story

Surprises and Snubs: They went the full 10, even in a year with fewer candidates, and still, not one moneymaker? No Spider-Man: No Way Home. No No Time to Die. More importantly, though, where is The Tragedy of Macbeth? That’s the one we’d have made room for, probably in place of Dune or King Richard.

See who takes home the hardware on Sunday, March 27 at the 94th Academy Awards on ABC and Hulu.

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Real Family Ties

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The Fabulous Filipino Brothers

by Tori Hanes

The Fabulous Filipino Brothers— by writer, director, and star Dante Basco—follows the separate journeys and (sometimes misguided) decisions of four first-generation Filipino American siblings leading up to a major family wedding.

Through the use of dedicated vignettes, each brother (played by Basco’s real siblings Dionysio, Derek and Darion) showcases deep-rooted differences while shedding light on the uniformity of the first-generation immigrant experience. 

Where the film succeeds, it flourishes. It finds power in sincerity, primarily thanks to Basco’s decision to use his family as actors to mirror their real-life identities. The lack of professional acting stamina is easily forgiven when the realism contributes so heavily to the overall charm of the film.

Basco’s themes of generational identity and cultural disconnect are best explored where he least forces it. The time dedicated to the warmth and humor in the family’s interpersonal relationships is where the film finds its footing. The best example is oldest brother Dayo’s (Derek Basco) vignette. In it, Dayo dabbles in illegal activities to help finance the wedding—with his geriatric grandmother riding shotgun. The comedy from the setup is enjoyable, but pairing familial responsibilities with Dayo’s individual journey hits the tonal stride that makes this piece unique. 

Allowing vignettes to anchor the script leads to unbalance. Two of the four vignettes get lost in clunky sincerity—caused, in part, by the disproportionate amount of time they’re given. Second oldest brother Duke (Dante Basco) returns to the Philippines to explore his roots and connect to a disjunct part of his cultural identity. Here Basco concentrates too hard on overarching themes without investing in the narrative to fully connect the audience.

During brother David’s (Dionysio Basco) time, an uninteresting love story unfolds. This segment also feels overlong and again attempts too literally to represent the figurative. The concentration on ideas without narrative execution ultimately knocks the plot off track.

The film’s valleys don’t entirely diminish its peaks. When Basco is able to let the story breathe organically, the overall piece is heightened. Where The Fabulous Filipino Brothers missteps, it counterbalances with charm and warmth only family can provide.

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With or Without You

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Alone with You

by Hope Madden

A surreal meditation on emotionally abusive relationships, Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks’s Alone with You brings eerie new meaning to lockdown.

Co-writer/co-director Bennett also stars as Charlie, a woman eagerly waiting for her lover Simone (Emma Myles) to return from a trip. It’s their first anniversary and Charlie would like it to be special.

What transpires never has two people in the same room, is set almost exclusively in one apartment, utilizes multiple device screens, and somehow pulls it off as not a Covid necessity but an effective way to create tension.

As Simone is later and later, Charlie finds herself stuck in the apartment. Literally stuck – the door is jammed. And though she’s able to raise her mother (Barbara Crampton) and her best friend (Dora Madison), neither will really follow the conversation and help her out.

Bizarre noises, missing objects, and creepy goings on all build a potent sense of foreboding. The allure of the film is this tension and the way Brooks and Bennett weave in surreal flourishes to give the piece a macabre quality.

But the reason it works as well as it does is because Alone with You becomes a cagey allegory. The film taps the horror of unhealthy relationships, but it also works that nerve of being trapped in the damn house—as we all have been.

In much the same way Sean King O’Grady’s We Need to Do Something picked that Covid scab with a family stuck in a bathroom together, Alone with You recalls the almost desperate desire to get out.

Each actor on screen does a credible job of interacting with tech. This can be a tough sell, but Bennett and the small cast all make it work. Crampton is a particular joy as Charlie’s judgy mom. She veers from nitpicky to loving to critical to nightmarish in the span of a single, beautifully crafted scene.

Even at a slight 83 minutes, though, Alone with You feels a little bloated. But the mystery at work binds with a horrifying sense of familiarity to manufacture enough scares to keep you guessing.

The Screening Room

Screening Room: Jackass Forever, Sundown, Last Looks & More

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Jackass Forever, Last Looks, Sundown, Slapface, Air Doll, The Long Night, Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliche, The Wolf and the Lion, The Other Me

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The Desert of the Surreal

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The Other Me

by Matt Weiner

It’s understandable that The Other Me leans heavily on its David Lynch connections. Lynch receives top billing as executive producer, and writer-director Giga Agladze also chairs the Caucasus arm of the David Lynch Foundation. It’s unfortunate, then, that the movie’s allegory on identity and gender ends up being more ponderous than meditative.

It starts with a promising enough mystery. An architect (played by Jim Sturgess and credited as Irakli, although most of the characters go nameless in the film in suitably allegorical fashion) is slowly losing his sight. As his condition in the regular world deteriorates, he begins to sense a deeper reality to the people and things in his life in a series of visions that range from illuminating to terrifying.

So far, so Lynchian enough. The Other Me unfolds as part fairytale, part metaphorical odyssey, so the stilted dialogue can get a pass. But Irakli’s visions and flashbacks never rise to match the sense of awe we’re supposed to be taking away from them.

Irakli finds himself drawn to a mysterious woman in the woods (Andreja Pejic), while drifting more and more apart from his wife (Antonia Campbell-Hughes). These women are given the thankless tasks of trying to convey a lot of emotional angst in short, inane conversational bursts.

Buried somewhere deep down in the film’s philosophical journey is the germ of a mystery that might have worked. A romcom setup that turns into a nightmare when seeing the nonstop revelations of people’s souls takes an untenable psychic toll instead of getting you laid? Now that’s a surreal thriller.

But that isn’t this film. Agladze opts for a more redemptive tone—and far more muted visuals. As far as allegories for sexual identity go, this one lacks the coherence and conviction to deliver anything more provocative than that. Inscrutability by itself is a poor substitute for depth.

Hope Madden and George Wolf … get it?