After 20 years, one ill-advised prequel and several false starts, Harry Dunne and Lloyd Christmas are finally back for more moronic hijinx in Dumb and Dumber To, and while the sequel may be dumber, it’s not at all fumber..funner..er, funnier.
The Farrelly Brothers are back to direct and help write the screenplay, and they set the course for another road trip, as Harry (Jeff Daniels) needs a kidney transplant and Lloyd (Jim Carrey) figures the best candidate for a donor is a brand new family member. It seems that years back, Harry got lucky with the town floozy (Kathleen Turner, agreeing to painful jokes about her current appearance) and now has a grown daughter that was adopted by a rich, famous scientist.
That daughter, named Penny (Rachel Melvin) is a chip off the old blockhead and is en route to a convention so she can accept an award on her ailing adopted father’s behalf. So the boys are off to find her, in hopes that Harry can get a kidney and Lloyd can pursue the crush he’s developed since first seeing Penny’s photo. Eww.
Expect plenty of sight gags, toilet humor, bodily fluids, funny faces and butchered wordplay (“that’s just water under the fridge!”) as well as an abundance of overly contrived situations. Though there are a couple solid laughs (watch out for the fireworks and listen hard for Lloyd’s ringtone), most of D&DT doesn’t rise to the inspired lunacy of the original.
Keep in mind, though, that there wasn’t really a call for a sequel until two decades of cable airings made the original Dumb and Dumber a cult classic. The need for a part 3 might take twice that long.
Ready for a pulpy mess of lust and mystery? Gregg Araki’s White Bird in Blizzard serves it up with mixed results, buoyed by another terrific performance from Shailene Woodley.
Woodley is Kat, a 17 year-old high schooler in LA. It is 1988, and just as Kat is blossoming into womanhood, her mother Eve (Eva Green) is withdrawing into a bitter, vindictive drunk. When Eve suddenly vanishes, Kat appears unconcerned, even while her father Brook (Christopher Meloni) is reporting the disappearance to police and hanging “missing” flyers all over town.
Kat’s boyfriend (Shiloh Fernandez), her two best friends (Gabourey Sidibe, Mark Indelicato) and her therapist (Angela Bassett) all try to comfort her during the stressful time, but Kat insists she is fine. Frequent, vivid dreams about her mother suggest otherwise.
Director Araki, who also wrote the screenplay, adapts Laura Kasische’s novel with wildly shifting tones, anchoring the film with the solid portrayal of a sensitive young woman while surrounding her with surreal dreamscapes and over-hyped dramatics.
We hear a marriage described as “a lone drink of water from a frozen fountain,” and watch a character walk slowly away before turning on heel to proclaim, “I will tell you one thing’!” amid set-pieces bursting with kitsch.
And there’s Green, in manic Mommie Dearest mode, vamping it up in skimpy attire for her daughter’s boyfriend, then leaning back to release a condescending guffaw in her husband’s face. Green’s performance is can’t-look-away hypnotic, even as it crashes headlong into her young co-star’s authenticity.
Woodley continues to show the chops of a future Oscar winner, and she makes Kat’s complex emotions ring true, no matter what noir trash is going on around her. As Kat screams “What is wrong with you? Are you insane?” at her mother’s antics, the outburst cuts deeper than it has a right to.
The erratic flashbacks and anticlimactic ending add to a temptation to the label the entire project as simply amateurish, but Araki’s resume (Mysterious Skin/Kaboom) suggests otherwise. He’s got a vision for White Bird in a Blizzard and he sees it through in so many ways, some of them can’t help but feel right.
Don’t let the Beyond the Lights trailer fool you. What looks like a by-the-numbers melodrama about selling your soul for success does follow a familiar trajectory, but it does a fine job with that journey.
Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) teeters at the edge of superstardom: she’s just won a Billboard award for her rap duet with hip hop giant Kid Culprit (a wonderfully sketchy Richard Colson Baker – better known as Cleveland’s own Machine Gun Kelly – in his screen debut), and her first album, releasing in days, is poised to break records. But the troubled star is buckling under the pressures and compromises.
In comes Kaz (Nate Parker), or “Officer Hero” as Noni’s fans come to call him.
Yes, his grounded do-gooder character wants Noni to respect herself, and the big question is whether the pull of fame will tear them apart, which is a wildly predictable set up. But writer/director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) knows what she’s doing. She certainly cobbles together a familiar frame – part Gypsy, part Glitter, part Mahogany – but somehow the final product feels, if not fresh, at least relevant.
Mbatha-Raw stands out in her second powerful performance this year, after her stunning turn in Belle. She never resorts to clichés. She’s able to craft a character with both an entirely believable public persona as well as a blossoming personality of her own. There’s not a false note in the performance.
Parker’s less effective – in fact, though he’s turned in worthy performances throughout his career, here he’s strangely wooden. Still, the two have some chemistry and Mbatha-Raw is so compelling that you’re hard press to take your eyes off her anyway.
Not that Prince-Bythewood doesn’t offer plenty of reasons to look away. Her camera misses no opportunity to draw attention to Parker’s striking physique.
Minnie Driver impresses as the stage mother, and Prince-Bythewood’s script offers plenty for her sink her teeth into. Threadbare plot aside, the writing is sharp and the direction is incisive. The opening scene confirms that this is not going to be a color by numbers affair, and the filmmaker peppers scenes with strong imagery as she gives her cast room to breathe and create memorable, dimensional characters.
The weakness of the central plot is problematic, and though the filmmaker takes advantage of the trope to draw attention to some gaping holes in our current culture, it still leaves a stale aftertaste. But if the storyline isn’t memorable, Mbatha-Raw is – and she’s worth the ticket price.
Both Whiplash and Rosewater open this weekend at the Drexel and Gateway Film Center respectively. Both are must-see independent films with Oscar buzz aplenty, but they also signal the end of the fall films. Next weekend, things move toward holiday hoopla, and the awards-baiting indies flow alongside giant blockbuster contenders – indeed, the two sometimes even intersect. What are the holiday films to look out for?
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (11/21)
Not every adolescent novel series turns into quite this strong a film franchise. Much credit goes to the boundless talent of Jennifer Lawrence, whose surly heroine goes beyond games and into real revolution in the third of four installments.
Horrible Bosses 2 (11/26)
Will it garner Oscar nominations? No. But early word on the sequel to the surprisingly hilarious Horrible Bosses looks to have upped its game, and I want to play.
The Theory of Everything (11/28)
Get to know Eddie Redmayne. This guy can do no wrong, and he may finally get the notice he deserves in this film. Redmayne plays young Stephen Hawking in the magnificent James Marsh’s dramatization of Hawking’s relationship with his first wife, Jane (Felicity Jones).
The Imitation Game (12/5)
Benedict Cumberbatch is impressing early audiences in his turn as Alan Turing, an Englishman who helped break the Enigma code during WWII. Director Morten Tyldum’s last film Headhunters was too enthralling to miss his follow up.
Wild (12/19)
Reese Witherspoon is already the frontrunner in a an Oscar race not yet underway, but her turn as a woman who walks 1100 miles alone to get her head straight is impressing early audiences that much.
Unbroken (12/25)
Angelina Jolie goes behind the camera again, this time to direct the biopic of Olympian and POW Louis Zamperini. Actor-to-watch Jack O’Connell stars, but what’s more impressive is that Joel and Ethan Coen adapted Laura Hillenbrand’s nonfiction text.
The Interview, (12/25)
This Is the End proved that Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg were solid comedic filmmakers. The two return to their spot behind the camera and pen, with Rogan and BFF James Franco starring as two shoddy journalists who head to North Korea to interview/assassinate Kim Jong-un. No taboo shattering there! It should prove to be uncomfortable, but smart money says it’ll be funny as hell.
Big Eyes (12/25)
Perennial Oscar contenders Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz star in Tim Burton’s biopic of artist Margaret Keane. Early predictors put Adams in the running for best actress, but if this is the film that returns Burton to solid directorial ground, it’s a victory already.
Into the Woods (12/25)
Rob Marshall brings the Sondheim musical to the screen, spinning a yarn that knots Brothers Grimm tales together and sees Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine playing recognizable fairy tale characters. Early word is that the cinematic version boasts inspired performances, particularly from Depp and Streep as The Wolf and The Witch, respectively. We’re in.
Come January we can expect a couple late-running heavy hitters including Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper before the winter blahs hit theaters. Foxcatcher’s been a moving target, but it looks like local audiences will finally get a chance to see that by mid-January. But you know what? As far as we know, the Browns may still be in contention in January, so we may still have something to watch!
You can put that obscenely expensive, insanely large HD TV to good use this week, as How to Train Your Dragon 2 releases for home entertainment. As visually arresting as its predecessor, Dragon reunites viewers with Hiccup and his beloved flying dragon Toothless as they take on dragon-napping pirates led by Drago Bloodfish. That is how you name a villain! Breathtaking visuals and a story rooted in family and frienship make this sequel well worth looking into.
An obvious double bill is the gorgeous, moving and thorougly entertaining original How to Train Your Dragon, but we hate to be so obvious. Instead we’re recommending another film about a boy, his unusual best friend and their adventures: The Iron Giant (1999). Director Brad Bird’s first feature roots itself in 1950s Cold War hysteria but tells a story brimming with immediacy. It’s also one of the more deeply touching animated adventures you will ever find.
In a digital age that often renders letter delivery nearly irrelevant, there exists a group of people who use “snail mail” to express themselves artistically and establish deeply personal connections across the miles.
Making Mail, a Kickstarter-funded documentary from Columbus-based filmmaker Michael Polk, does a good job of doing what good documentaries do: uncovering a world you probably know little, if anything about. Through interviews with mail artists and numerous examples of their work, we’re introduced to a thriving community anchored in the intimacy of letter writing.
As one artist explains, “It costs 46 cents and really brightens someone’s day,” a sentiment which seems to be shared by most everyone involved in mail art. The common thread appears to be rising above social awkwardness by imaging the positive response the mail art gets from the person it is sent to, even if the artist is not there to see it first hand.
Polk is also effective at showcasing the paradox that the internet presents for ambitious mail artists. Their craft may be steeped in traditional modes of communication, but the most efficient way to make themselves widely known is posting their work online.
Though Polk grabs your attention to his interesting subject immediately, a repetitive vibe creeps in around the 60 minute mark, suggesting a bit of editing and a reclassification as a “documentary short” might benefit the film long-term. The sound editing could use some work as well, as the volume of the background music rises and falls, and then sometimes vanishes completely mid-segment.
But credit Polk with shining an interesting light on a little-known segment of the art world.
For a Belgian film, The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears sure feels Italian.
Married writing/directing team Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani appear to be fans of Italian horror – the gaillo style of Mario Bava and Dario Argento, in particular. Their more memorable films had a dreamlike quality, and often boasted vivid colors and superb cinematography. Almost invariably their storylines were mysteries wherein an unknown marauder in black leather gloves picked off beautiful women in particularly bloody fashion.
Or, for Cattet and Forzani: check, check, check and check.
Bava and especially Argento have often been criticized for the overt sexuality and misogyny of their work, but Cattet and Forzani are not among the critics. Indeed, their film takes all those elements Bava and Argento are known for, amps them up, then basically drops the idea of any coherent narrative. The result is a visually arresting fantasy of blood and sexuality.
A man returns from a business trip abroad to find that his wife is missing, but the chain was on the door, so how is that even possible? He promptly drinks himself into a stupor, harasses his neighbors, then begins collecting weird clues. There ends any sense of narrative structure.
From there expect a lot of heavy breathing, ornately decorated bedrooms, hidden passageways, and characters with suspicious backgrounds and nefarious motives. Plus a lot of nudity and plenty of blood.
Cattet and Forzani display an imaginative and commanding directorial style. The film’s serpentine structure suits the almost unconnected scenes, saturated with color and surreal imagery. They’ve created a truly dreamlike quality with a film rich with bizarre and provocative ideas. And had their film been a short, or even a sixty minute exercise, it would have been quite a product. Unfortunately, it runs for 102 minutes.
Long before the film is over the novelty may wear off, as well as the astonishment with the directorial mastery. It begins to feel like a bad dream that is no longer very scary, just tiresome in that it won’t end. Maybe a few additional themes or ideas would help, as the film circles back so often to the same cycles of images that it grows wearying. The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears is a fine cinematic experiment, just not an entirely successful one.
A couple guys involved in some of the more average animated films of the last few years are at the helm for Big Hero 6 and the result is about what you’d expect.
Co-directors Don Hall (who also helped with the story) and Chris Williams have resumes full of movie credits such as Bolt, The Emperor’s New Groove, Home on the Range and Brother Bear. Their new film, though, borrows heavily from a few more well-known animated projects to tell the story of a boy and his ‘bot.
14 year-old Hiro (voiced by Ryan Potter) is a robotics wunderkind, and his creations enjoy surprising success at local “‘bot fighting” competitions. His older brother Tadashi is no engineering slouch either, and Hiro soon learns all about his bro’s longtime project: Baymax.
Baymax (Scott Adsit) is a large, Michelin-meets-Marshmellow-Man that serves as a personal healthcare unit. It senses when you are in distress, and will not stand down until you tell it you are “satisfied with your care.”
And it isn’t long before Hiro is in distress, as he, Baymax and other young geniuses are on a mission to find out just who has stolen Hiro’s new invention, and is putting that technology to nefarious use.
Based on a somewhat obscure comic, Big Hero 6 is a perfectly fine adventure, but assembled from the spare parts of How to Train Your Dragon and The Incredibles, with a big dose of The Iron Giant as the film winds down. Will the youngsters care? I doubt it. The emphasis on computing alone will probably keep them engaged, if not exactly enthralled, and it gives the smaller ones their own group of avengers to root for.
Be sure to be in your seat early enough to catch Feast, a charming short film opener about a puppy and his changing attitude toward mealtime.
Big Hero 6 is often amusing but never outright funny, and a bit lacking on originality and real excitement. Parents will approve of the film’s tender nods to compassion and humanity, but may not be quite ready to greet the “get ready for the sequels” ending with a hearty round of applause.
As we head into the holiday season, do you worry that your family and friends are just too delightful? Do you long for awkward stories to share with co-workers in the break room about the rude kids with eyes glued to their smart phones, cousin Stan’s narcissistic monologues about how much money he makes, and repressed childhood rage erupting over Pillsbury Crescent Rolls?
If so, Listen Up Philip might fill the void.
Dive into the life of notable author Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) as he prepares to usher his second novel into publication. He’s got everything he wants: a New York apartment, a successful photographer girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss), and placement in a top 35 under 35 list.
But he is incapable of experiencing happiness, crippled with anxiety and dread.
When established-author Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce) offers him craft advice and a place to crash, Philip flees upstate to the country. With misanthropic Zimmerman as a model, Philip fully begins to explore the dark and musty corners of his asshattery. And this after he has made two separate social engagements to berate an unsupportive ex and his less successful college roommate (“This could have been us! Instead, I’m all alone.”) and thrown a tantrum, refusing to promote his novel.
With Schwartzman playing a novelist you might think you’re in for the wacky hijinks of HBOs Bored to Death. With the delightful faux vintage book covers and narrator, you might think you stumbled on a Wes Anderson knockoff.
Nope.
Instead writer/director Alex Ross Perry, treats us to character studies of entitled, white males who operate like emotional vampires, sucking their intimate relationships (and the women recovering from them) dry to fuel their work. Don’t expect any reformed curmudgeons in this one.
Listen Up Philip is faultlessly acted and often darkly funny, tickling a malignant funny bone when Ike and Philip brazen past the social niceties. (At one point, when a student in his creative writing class asks Philip for a recommendation, he scolds her while shuffling around on his desk, then shoves a blank piece of paper at her, saying, “Here’s a piece of paper with staples in it.”)
You may recognize this kind of guy from your humanities classes. Maybe you had the misfortune to have one sidle up to you at a party. Or perhaps one is waiting for you to pass him the turkey.
Christopher Nolan is nothing if not ambitious. He first wowed audiences with Memento, putting us in the shoes of our protagonist by telling his story backwards. Later he singlehandedly revolutionized the super hero film, then did it again, and then again. He also told the headiest tale imaginable about dreamshare technology, and pulled it off like some sort of magician. (He crafted a lovely tale about a magician somewhere in there, too.)
Well, Nolan is out to top all of that with an intergalactic drama that sees Matthew McConaughey heading into a wormhole to save the world.
In the unspecified future, the earth is seeing its last generation. But Michael Caine (regular Nolan go-to) has concocted a plan to save humanity, and it involves sending McConaughey and a crew in search of a suitable replacement planet.
As perfunctorily SciFi as that all sounds, Nolan (scripting again with his brother Jonathan) can be trusted to spare no expense, establishing the earth’s plight realistically, outlining the likely-doomed mission with little hyperbole, and basically connecting his story to science so it never feels like Armageddon II.
Properly grounded, Nolan then sends us to the heavens.
The balls on this guy!
Wormholes, black holes, relativity, 5th dimensions, the time/space continuum – all of it handled with just enough layman’s terminology to make it palatable but not entirely understandable. It’s a trick he picked up with Inception, one of the cleverest SciFi adventures of modern cinema.
Like all galactic exercises worth their mettle, Interstellar borrows from and celebrates Kubrick, although Nolan’s film certainly never feels stale or derivative – more like the next logical step in SciFi.
The sounds and silence, the mind-bending imagery, the danger and loneliness – all of it impeccably, almost overwhelmingly captured.
It’s hard to watch the film without thinking of Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 galactic masterpiece Gravity. One of that picture’s greatest strengths was its utter simplicity.
Nolan is not one for simplicity, and that need to complicate has a negative impact on his effort. Earthbound entanglements lose their draw in the face of the travelers’ peril, and Nolan and his terrestrial cast can’t compel attention or interest.
At home and in space, characters sometimes make unlikely yet convenient choices to further the story, which is a disappointment in a film otherwise so well crafted.
It’s also quite long and it feels long, but whatever its faults, you can credit Nolan for creating a genuine epic, and an experience filled with terrified wonder.
