Proof positive that the end of the world may be just the welcome change we need,This Is The End releases to DVD today.
Wouldn’t you know it? Just when there’s a rockin’ party at James Franco’s house, the darned apocalypse has to go and ruin everything!
And by “ruin everything,” I mean turn it into the funniest film of the year. Franco, Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride and an ensemble of their famous friends all play themselves, lampooning each other and the folly of celebrity culture.
It’s crude, it’s wrong, it somehow manages to work in a positive message, and it’s damn funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j463qtCRlxk
Last year’s party apocalypse movieIt’s a Disaster! is the obvious choice for a rapturous double bill. Writer/director Todd Berger sends us to a couples brunch with Tracy (Julia Stiles) and her new beau Glen (David Cross, who could not be better). Simultaneously, the world ends. The bitingly clever, surprisingly enjoyable comedy of manners boasts a spot-on ensemble and the best gallows humor of 2012.
Look past the ton of weak imitations, the awful sequels and the jokes about the Shatner mask, and remember that the original Halloween was pretty effective. No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.
Sure, you’ve seen it, but from the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Agreed, there are several terribly flat lines, and P.J. Soles as a giggling, dead-eyed airhead irritates the shit out of you, but Carpenter develops anxiety well, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.
Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. For the coup de grace, John Carpenter’s minimalistic score is always there to ratchet up the anxiety. Nice.
The writer/director/Frenchman’s fondness for violence and organized crime in film is well documented. He’s written and/or directed dozens of films on the topic, including La Femme Nikita, The Professional, and Transporter. Rather than follow a single assassin or bag man, this time around Besson wades through more familiar cinematic waters with a full-fledged mafia picture.
De Niro plays Giovanni Manzoni, known to his new neighbors in Normandy, France as Fred Blake. He ratted out his wise guy connections back in Brooklyn, and now the Witness Protection Program shuffles his family around France trying to avoid a retaliatory hit. But the “Blakes” don’t make it easy.
Besson’s screenplay is based on a novel by Tonino Benacquista, who’s penned some great, gritty flicks (The Beat that My Heart Skipped, Read My Lips). The Family is a lighter affair, depicting good natured psychopaths who fail to fit in as another set of psychos descend on a sleepy French town.
The film lacks the action choreography Besson’s audience has come to expect. Instead, its charm lies in the director’s joyous fondness for American gangster flicks in general and De Niro’s work in particular. His odes grow evermore obvious, with callbacks to most of the actor’s greats: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Godfather: Part II, even Cape Fear. Besson’s having some fun, and DeNiro seems to enjoy the affection.
De Niro’s chemistry with Michelle Pfeiffer, playing his wife, gives the film a little heart. It’s great to see these two seasoned veterans share the screen, and Pfeiffer’s displaced and disgruntled Italian American is fun to watch.
The storyline for the couple’s two teens is weaker, and Besson seems almost disinterested in the involvement of the WPP agents, including saggy faced sourpuss Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones).
It’s an action comedy that’s a little short on action. The comedy is pleasant and fun, but never truly funny. What keeps this light but violent romp entertaining is its own sense of joy and its love of Robert De Niro. Which may not be the best reason to make a film, but there are worse.
The screen fills with the sepia image of a bygone Texas. Sinewy lovers quarrel and forgive, then wait in a pick-up, planning a future with their unborn baby, until the third robber arrives. There’s a chase, a lonesome shack, a shoot out, and a compromise that sends the boy away to prison and the girl home to pine.
There’s good reason writer/director David Lowery’s romantic tragedy Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feels so confident. The breathtaking cinematography, the fittingly artistic framing, the poetry of the language and image, the heartbreaking authority of the performances – each element fits together beautifully and benefits from the artistic coordination of a maestro. It’s because the relatively unknown Lowery has honed his craft, spending time as a casting director, crewman, writer, director, sound editor, actor, producer, and cinematographer before tackling this, the culminating effort of a lifetime spent in film.
He’s blessed with a cast that embraces his understated drama. Casey Affleck animates a career full of characters with vulnerability and confused nobility, and he impresses again here as the outlaw who breaks out of prison, just like he promised, to reunite with his girl and the daughter he’s never met.
Rooney Mara’s quiet ferocity offsets Affleck’s tenderness, and the love story they create offers a poignant center to the film. Orbiting the couple is Ben Foster’s humble police officer, torn by his affection for one and duty to the other. Each actor embodies an image of lonesomeness that makes the film ache. What’s beautiful about this triangle is that neither the characters nor the filmmaker judges anyone. Lowery and his characters accept, however sadly, the motivations and actions of all involved.
The young mother also attracts the protective nature of a retired gangster/father figure played by Keith Carradine, whose presence reinforces the film’s bluesy connection to the other great, doomed Western romance, McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
The film’s one shortcoming is that it does not tell a larger tale. This beautifully told story of loneliness, devotion, love and tragedy never manages to transcend its own intimacy to speak to something universal.
But it’s a hell of an effort, and one that establishes Lowery as one of the most exciting new filmmakers to come along in decades.
In Stories We Tell, director Sarah Polley lets the secrets in her own family history speak to all families, eloquently questioning truths in which we often take comfort.
She already had an extensive list of acting credits when 2006’s Away From Her established Polley’s additional skills as a writer and director. Her instincts are just as true in the documentary genre, perhaps more so, as a story that has intensely private beginnings becomes universal, entertaining and genuinely moving.
Normally, we include a film’s trailer when posting a review, but not in this case. Avoid it if you can, as knowing absolutely nothing about Polley’s family dynamics before seeing Stories We Tell adds a wonderful element of discovery.
In much the same manner Bart Layton structured his incredible documentary The Imposterlast year, Polley moves the story along with the best possible pace, releasing new bits of information at the exact moment they will have the most impact. This holds true even halfway through the end credits, when she drops a bombshell that gives the entire saga a new perspective.
Though some of the family members involved are not shy about wanting the film anchored from their perspective, Polley is having none of it. Her film, personal as it may be, is crafted so well that a reexamination of your own family is almost inevitable. And yet, it unfolds in such an engrossing fashion, you may forget it’s not an adaptation of the latest best-selling novel.
It is a testament to Polley’s own storytelling skill that she can turn the focus inward, and still prompt you to look at your own world in a different way.
Stories We Tell is, so far, the best film of the year.
