Shared Darkness

Its premise — two twentysomething gals, feeling the economic crunch of the times, partner on a phone-sex-line venture — sounds like a hopelessly broad, gender-flipped cash-grab at some of the raunchy comedy dollars that seem so easy to pry out of teen moviegoers’ wallets, but For a Good Time, Call… transcends the more pat aspects of its story, connecting by sheer force of personality while also indulging in a few unexpected changes in direction. Powered by a fizzy, buzzy energy and slick, funny repartee that channels some of the best female buddy pairings out there, director Jamie Travis’ debut film, co-written by star Lauren Miller, is a genuine treat for gals and guys alike, exploiting for laughs the differences and similarities in male-female sexual attraction and gratification.



A world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, For a Good Time, Call… grounds itself in a classic odd-couple pairing. Lauren Powell (Miller, above right) is smarting from a break-up with her long-time boyfriend Charlie (James Wolk), and needs a place to stay while she waits for her résumé to open up a proper white-collar job. Spunky Katie Steele (Ari Graynor) finds herself in need of a roommate for the Gramercy Park-adjacent apartment she’s inherited from her grandmother. Mutual friend Jesse (Justin Long) re-introduces the pair, who have a prickly past dating back to one unfortunate night in college. Swallowing pride, they shack up and try to tolerate one another.

When the more conservative Lauren learns that Katie is working as a phone sex operator in order to make ends meet, though, she figures her business smarts could earn them both a lot more money. While keeping things from her parents, Lauren grows the business with Katie over the course of a summer. As Katie grapples with feelings for one of her regular callers, Shawn (Mark Webber), and Lauren finally learns of a job opening in her desired field, things get complicated.

Almost all that’s right about For a Good Time, Call… stems from its screenplay, co-written by Miller and her college roommate, Katie Anne Naylon, so it’s hard to hold onto much animosity about the things that it fumbles. Certain story bits (a co-worker introduced and then discarded after being revealed as an impostor) don’t really work, and the script doesn’t fully and convincingly delve into some of the plausible reasons behind or consequences of an amusing character twist it introduces. Still, there’s a somewhat beguiling blend of the prim and lewd here (“Basically, whatever it is, I just tell ’em I’ll lick it,” says Katie of her phone sex technique), and the comedy overall speaks in a forthright manner, in a way few films do, to how so much of our sexual education is absorbed through anecdotes and conversations with friends. No matter that the two leads here are a decade removed from the bloom of adolescence — they each have their own sexual hang-ups and issues, and through their weird and unlikely partnership-turned-friendship, they’re both fumbling toward something approaching self-actualization.

Miller, Seth Rogen’s offscreen significant other, has a natural, girl-next-door beauty, as well as a buoyant charisma that draws almost equally from demure naïveté and a place with more slyness and depth. There’s a nougat center of playful naughtiness under that nice exterior (something to which almost every guy can connect), and the mischievous chemistry Miller shares with Graynor — a gifted comedienne who’s made her mark in supporting roles in movies like Celeste and Jesse Forever, The Sitter, Date Night and Youth in Revolt — is an intoxicating thing. Accept this Call, it’s well worth it. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for some soundboard shenanigans, meanwhile, click here. (Focus, R, 89 minutes)

A superbly acted and psychologically complex drama based on true events, writer-director Craig Zobel’s Compliance examines what can be accomplished with one piece of information and the suggestion of power. Unfolding with a screw-tightening simplicity at once disarming and deeply unnerving, Zobel’s film tells a simple story but one with a tentacled, fragile connection to everything from e-phishing scams and modern identity fraud to more monstrous abuses and scandals of the sort that have impacted Penn State University and the Catholic Church.



Compliance unfolds at a suburban Ohio ChickWich, a fast-food chain restaurant managed by the stressed-out Sandra (Ann Dowd). In the middle of a busy day shift, Sandra receives a phone call from a police officer (Pat Healy) telling her that an employee, Becky (Dreama Walker, above), has been fingered by a customer as having stolen money from her purse. Convinced she’s only doing what’s right, Sandra questions Becky, who denies any such theft. Sandra then follows (and tasks others with doing the same) a series of increasingly invasive step-by-step instructions from the voice on the other end of the line, who seeks her cooperation by way of explaining that he can’t yet spare officers to come to the scene.

Compliance is basically a coiled, cinematic mousetrap version of the famous Milgram Experiment, a series of social psychology tests in which obedience to authority figures was measured by having subjects perform acts otherwise out of step with what would be considered their personal consciences. Its roots lie in a case in Kentucky in April 2004, which later exposed more than 70 similar calls throughout the country over a period of nearly 10 years. What, then, to make of this warped but sizably-scaled attempt at manipulation and sexual abuse by proxy?

With the assistance of the ominous cello-and-glockenspiel rumble of Heather McIntosh’s score, Zobel (Great World of Sound) crafts a movie as taut and gripping as it is spare and streamlined. There are but a couple locations used here, which helps feed a sense of claustrophobia and queasy dread that mounts as the film unwinds, and circumstances become more dire for Becky. The characterizations are all crisp, and performances here are superb. Dowd channels the doubt and confusion of a person who strives to please, and avoid confrontation at all costs. Walker, meanwhile, charts a chilling and sympathetic course from bewilderment to sad resignation, most gut-punchingly registered in a telling line of explanation late in the movie: “I just knew what was going to happen.”

Detractors can harp on small details as somehow either indicative of filmmaking faults or “dumb,” unrealistic and/or overly impressionable characters, but Compliance digs down into the marrow in examining the degree to which people crave authority. Its story is wrapped up in sex, abuse, gender association and even generational power dynamics, it’s true, but the brash manipulation on which it focuses is present in everything from advertising to politics, where the “wrong-but-strong” management style of former president George W. Bush was viewed in many quarters as an asset. Compliance strips bare the fallacy of equivalent free will, and exposes the preference if not outright comfort many have for someone else making decisions and telling them what to do. It gets under one’s skin in a manner few films do, but sticks in one’s head the same way all great ones do. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, R, 90 minutes)

A solidly constructed little character study of dark romantic bloom commingled with slipping-knot mental instability, The Good Doctor finds star-producer Orlando Bloom once again attempting to strike out and proactively define a screen personality separate and apart from the blockbuster pin-up status conferred upon him by the Pirates of the Caribbean and The Lord of the Rings movies. The scale and stakes are much smaller than in something like The Talented Mr. Ripley (and the behavioral urges somewhat different as well), but director Lance Daly (Kisses) capably pull strings in a manner that elicits tension and elucidates the impulses of obsession.



Bloom stars as Dr. Martin Blake, an ambitious but insecure young doctor in the early days of his residency. Already nervous about making a good impression on his supervisor and would-be mentor, Dr. Waylans (an excellent Rob Morrow), and concerned with the impact of a minor slip-up on his chances at an end-of-year fellowship, Martin lives each day with an electrical storm of anxiety and quiet contempt for others raging in his head. He looks down his nose at Jimmy (Michael Peña), an admittedly less-than-professional orderly, and takes disproportionate offense at the slights of Theresa (Taraji P. Henson), a nurse whom he feels doesn’t show him the proper deference and respect.

When a teenage patient, Diane (Riley Keough), is admitted with a relatively minor kidney infection, Martin gains self-esteem from aiding in her recovery, and strikes up a friendship with her. Martin’s interest soon becomes warped, however, and when Diane’s condition improves he begins tampering with her treatment in order to bring her back into his life. When Jimmy later discovers evidence of this, it further compromises Martin’s professional future.

The Good Doctor effectively threads the needle between intimate character study and psychological thriller. Working from a script by John Enbom, Daly delivers a spare portrait of howling neediness that unfolds in a world without a lot of extra flourishes in setting or scope. There’s a compact focus to the movie (even the specific city in which it unfolds is meaningless, apart from a coastal connection) that puts an audience right alongside Martin, and believably in his head, while still allowing for slight modulations in tone. It’s a different animal from something like Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave, but similar in that it is both at home with and achieves intrigue, dark comedy and a slowly escalating tension and uncertainty about how things will play out.

The precision of Daly and cinematographer Yaron Orbach’s wide frames abet the actors, allowing for a rich and subtle interplay of action and reaction. Morrow is superb, Keough is radiant and enchanting, and Peña is amusing as a smarmy, weaselly clock-puncher looking to capitalize on his bit of informational leverage. Bloom’s performance is very occasionally a bit self-conscious (he seems an actor always aware of the camera’s position) but also restrained. He succeeds in tapping into Martin’s vulnerability and self-delusion in equal measure — no small task.

The fairly late introduction of an investigating detective (J.K. Simmons), while meant to ratchet up the stakes, feels a bit like a rushed gambit to bring closure and finality to the narrative. Still, The Good Doctor doesn’t opt for a pat conclusion or render a moral judgment writ large. Its open-endedness is an enchanting conversation-starter — and bound to conjure up speculation about the out-of-office lives of your own care providers during your next doctor’s appointment. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Magnolia, PG-13, 90 minutes)

Finally arriving in American theaters almost two years after its Toronto Film Festival premiere, generational ensemble dramedy Little White Lies, from French filmmaker Guillaume Canet, proves itself a bloated, melodramatic and ultimately emotionally impenetrable affair. Centering around a collection of close-knit Parisian friends whose bonds are tested over the course of a summer holiday when one of their group is involved in a horrible automobile accident, the movie feels a bit like a French-flavored all-star tribute to Lawrence Kasdan, given the roster of notable performers. But its insights are meager, its whimsy too fleeting, and moments both large and small ring false — undone by Canet’s indulgence of overplayed emotion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (MPI Media Group, R, 154 mintes)

An enormously empathetic documentary that highlights the diversity and range of experience within the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, Of Two Minds roots down into the stigma attached to mental illness, in a very human, relatable manner. Co-directors Doug Blush and Lisa Klein put an authentic human face on the disease, elucidating its physical and mental tolls without coming across as overly didactic or reductive. This is a movie swollen with natural feeling, and one in which any viewer of uplifting nonfiction can find welcome catharsis.



More than an estimated five million Americans are living with bipolar disorder, and with it the manic highs and crushing, enervated lows that it brings. While depression and mental health in general still have their own weight of shame attached to them, the boom in psychiatry and relationship counseling has made those topics more conversationally acceptable. Bipolar disorder, on the other hand, because of the unpredictability it often manifests, seems to have a deeper and more stuffed social closet.

Of Two Minds includes some interviews with doctors, but mostly chronicles the disease through those who live with it — including a 67-year-old architect and artist, Carlton Davis, whose illness plunged him into crack use, a cross-dressing alter ego and “trying to get AIDS,” as he puts it. Most symptomology isn’t quite that radical, but thoughts of self-harm and suicide are common at the lowest points. One sufferer, an author who’s written books about her struggle, describes it as “like having a constant flu in your mind.”

The film’s most luminous, emotionally connective strand, though, follows 37-year-old Los Angeles-based make-up artist Cheri Keating, who wasn’t properly diagnosed until she was 31. She enters into a relationship with a new boyfriend, Petey Peterson, only to have him eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder as well. In touchstone fashion, Of Two Minds charts the ups and downs of their off-and-on relationship. “I don’t even go for happy anymore,” says Petey at one point. “I just don’t wanna feel like this.” They’re words that sting, but also hold a connection and moving mini-epiphany for anyone tethered to the pain of a continued interpersonal struggle, whether their own or that of a family member or loved one. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Mad Pix Pictures, unrated, 89 minutes)

A thinly sketched paranormal thriller starring Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan, The Apparition arrives in theaters stripped almost bare of anything that might provide some color, complication or personality. Even aiming for spookiness more than horror, writer-director Todd Lincoln’s feature debut is a desultory misfire. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 82 minutes)

An old-fashioned, squarely sentimental immigrants’ tale that marries a familiar story of generational rebellion to the New York hipster fusion music scene, director David Grubin’s Downtown Express is a wide-eyed if not particularly adroit charmer. If its awkward cycling through various stodgy subplots and general lack of a more starkly defined contrast and stakes mark it as somewhat lazy and functional on a narrative level, its relative freshness of setting — as well as the fact that its music, from Grammy nominee Philippe Quint and Nellie McKay, absolutely sings — makes the movie a marginal recommendation for those with an interest in musically-focused cinema. It doesn’t reach the heights of Once or even the more experimental, exuberant Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, but arthouse boomer fans in particular will respond positively to the movie’s heart and soul. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5, click here. (International Film Circuit, unrated, 90 minutes)

Stories of human connection to the animal kingdom in the modern world are surely not the worst nonfiction film endeavors, but the rather bewildering True Wolf takes what by rights should be the fascinating tale of a Montana couple who raised a wild wolf alongside their dog and turns it into a sincere but hopelessly jumbled mess. Poorly edited, structured and thought through, director Rob Whitehair’s movie is a torturous bore, even at a mere 76 minutes.

True Wolf centers on Bruce Weide and Pat Tucker, a married couple who decide to hang onto wolf pup Koani after a wrapped-up film project leaves him in their custody. Learning by trial and error as much as anything else, they get a dog to provide some quasi-lupine companionship, and pretty much devote their entire lives to raising Koani in a manner that at least accomodates his baser instincts. This means two-hour-plus walks twice a day (tethered by bungee-cord-type tubing), dumpster-diving for some of the more than 1,200 pounds of raw meat their wolf eats every year, and a special “wolf door” that allows free access between outside and a caged-in portion of the inside of their house. For money, they also use Koani as an “ambassador wolf,” taking him around to elementary schools as a teaching tool about wildlife.

Whitehair’s film is ostensibly a didactic tale of the grey area between man and beast, fellow social predators, but it’s also an examination over the debate of the reintroduction of wolf populations into the wild, though one has to mostly suss out that latter part on their own, after a half hour or more of viewing. The film is sketchy about the specifics of how Bruce and Pat came into possession of Koani, and it intercuts footage from lots of different sit-down interviews, so is frequently repetitive. It touches on socialization versus domestication (a crucial difference), but not quite with as much detail as one would ultimately like.

Most inexplicable and impenetrable, however, is a buffet of protest footage — of exactly what, where and when, one is never fully certain — wherein someone actually waves a sign that reads, “Wolf is the Saddam Hussein of the animal world — we don’t want Saddam Hussein!” There’s also an old guy with his arm in a sling who quotes from the Book of Revelation, and a woman who prattles on about Satan wanting to have livestock threatened (presumably by way of reintroduced wolves). Many of these bits are entirely absent any context or set-up (some even seem certain to be re-creations), so it’s hard to grasp what the hell is going on or even what the point is, to be honest.

Weide and Tucker are polite, interesting and well-spoken subjects, but this vehicle is a frustratingly shapeless vessel for their story. Fans of Werner Herzog’s meditative Grizzly Man, as well as other films that examine the difficulties of taking as pets animals meant to be wild, and even wildlife lovers in general may be tempted to take a flyer on this curio. Stick with Teen Wolf instead. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Shadow Distribution, unrated, 76 minutes)

Cinema has always been marked by the push and pull between art, commerce and technology, but perhaps never more so than with the advent of digital filmmaking, which stands poised to sweep aside more than a century of celluloid technique and history. Directed by Chris Kenneally and anchored by interviewer-producer Keanu Reeves, the superlative new documentary Side by Side seeks to explore this revolution through the eyes of some of Hollywood’s biggest and most respected filmmakers. A wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging treatise that benefits from a broad spectrum of interviewees and perspectives, this is “inside-the-Beltway” cinema, yes, but it’s also a film about film that matters — one that ably sums up an art form, where we’ve been and where we’re going.



At this moment in time, digital filmmaking and the world of photochemical 35mm exist in tandem, with master cinematographers and directors having a choice between mediums and sometimes switching back and forth between the pair. But the switch-over to much more inexpensive digital filmmaking technology and the subsequent quiet revolution in digital projection — there were only four digital theaters in 1999, for the premiere of The Phantom Menace, 150 three years later, and we’re now hovering around 50 percent nationally — means that 35mm is on its way to becoming a cinematic programming curio.

There are a couple fantastic anecdotes scattered throughout (David Fincher recalls Robert Downey, Jr. leaving mason jars of urine scattered around the set of Zodiac as form of protest over the continuous shooting and lack of mentally refreshing downtime), but Side by Side is mostly a history of digital filmmaking’s transition from black sheep stepchild to mainstream industry embrace. Using the work and opinions of dozens of filmmakers, Kenneally’s movie details films of various groundbreaking types, like Dogma 95 movement debut The Celebration, Sin City, and Danny Boyle‘s 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire, the latter of which was the first film shot almost entirely digitally to win an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Several directors, meanwhile, posit that celluloid instills a certain level of focus and respect for the filmmaking process, “because you hear money whirring through camera,” as one puts it.

Kenneally has superb instincts about where and how to indulge sidebar historical lessons, but he also goes to significant lengths to chat with many cinematographers and let them voice opinion on how digital filmmaking is impacting the work, relationships and influence. For some, it seems to have eroded their power, since the work of directors of photography can be evaluated more immediately, instead of waiting on dailies. Digital intermediate colorists also have an increased sway over the final look of a movie.

Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, of all people, bemoans the digital revolution and the fact that it opens up new frontiers for would-be storytellers as signifying the loss of a tastemaker, and gatekeeper. Still, with all major manufacturers having stopped developing new photochemical film cameras, the future of cinema over the next generation-plus seems clear. Side by Side provides an amazing snapshot of this transition, at around the halfway point. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information about the movie and its VOD options, meanwhile, click here. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 99 minutes)

Narrated in stentorian tones by Kelsey Grammer, documentary Until They Are Home shines a light on the extraordinary dedication of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a military subset that works to locate and identify the bodies of American service members spanning various conflicts — and specifically their search for the missing remains of U.S. Marines killed in the Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 during World War II. Earnest and well-meaning but a bit sludgy and unfocused, this flag-wrapped documentary offering should find a home on PBS or elsewhere as part of future Memorial Day small screen programming.

The attack on the Japanese stronghold of Tarawa — an island parcel of land one-third the size of New York City’s Central Park, and the first major amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater — was designed to wrest control of an important 4,000-foot airfield landing strip that could then be used as a forward base for future operations. Combined, six thousand U.S. Marines and well dug-in Japanese soldiers lost their lives in the heated, three-day battle. American service members felled on the beach were hurriedly buried in mass trench graves. Decades later, the aforementioned Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command travels to the now-developed Tarawa to try to find human remains and bring closure to American families.

Part of the unresolved tension in Until They Are Home seems to result from its uncertainty of focus, in whether to tell the story of the assault of Tarawa more broadly, as funneled through the specific memories of a small band of Marines, or indeed just the charter mission of the JPAC team in general. Steven Barber, who takes the main directing credit, ping-pongs back and forth between different narrative angles, and picks a weird point of entry for his story to boot, resulting in a choppy narrative that struggles to hold viewers’ interest in a manner that it shouldn’t necessarily have to. Until They Are Home tells a solemn story, but just not very well. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Vanilla Fire Productions, unrated, 66 minutes)

Set against the backdrop of what’s been coined the Olympics of oratory, nonfiction film Speak takes viewers on an intimate and emotional journey, through the paralyzing grip of the fear of public speaking, and into the Toastmasters International Speech Contest finals, which serves as a reminder that in order to connect on a human level one’s tale need not necessarily be sensational, but merely sincere.

Speak recalls movies like Spellbound, Make Believe: The Battle To Become the World’s Best Teen Magician and ventriloquist documentary Dumbstruck, all of which centered around specific subcultural contests, and tracked contestants through their preparations for the big event. For fans of those films, the enormously sympathetic figures in Speak will create a strong emotional pull. Its half dozen main subjects include an out-of-work father of six with an amputated foot; an architect turned actor with an incurable heart disease; a university professor who pulled herself up out of poverty; a single mom living with lupus; and a retiree who reconnected with his high school crush after more than five decades.

There are a couple other interviewees as well — Hardball host Chris Matthews (an ex-Toastmaster member himself), disgraced college TV sportscaster Brian “Boom Goes the Dynamite!” Collins, and Caite Upton, the Miss South Carolina Teen USA pageant participant whose rambling, nonsensical response to a geographical education question achieved an unfortunate national infamy — but these chats are mostly front-loaded, and not particularly well integrated into the movie. Other attempts to explain the Toastmasters organization and its charter come across as at once perfunctory and a bit shaggy and half-considered.

Most of Speak, though, is an uplifting portrait of friendly competition, and it’s when the film identifies this narrative track and embraces as its core mission the illumination of positive thinking and dream pursuit that it really takes off. Co-directors Paul Galichia and Brian Weidling eschew directorial flashiness, and instead double down on the basic human connection of their subjects, almost all of whom have experienced some considerable health problem or other emotional setback.

The competition parameters at this national convention — seven-minute speeches, sans notes, differing from the material that has passed the speakers through various area and regional feeding rounds — are kind of loosely defined, but in the end it doesn’t much matter. Author and would-be professional motivational speaker Rich Hopkins, the aforementioned family man amputee, is an especially relatable figure. In his humble obstinance, one glimpses the heartening strength of American character. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more about the movie, which opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, meanwhile, click here. (Tumbleweed Entertainment, unrated, 89 minutes)

The notion of a kiddie horror film may seem or sound like a weird mix, but any moviegoer of appreciable devotion can surely recall a film from their early adolescence that got under their skin a bit in a good way, providing a cathartic jolt. Mostly funny but also plenty scary for the elementary school set, the new 3-D animated adventure ParaNorman, from the makers of Coraline, fits that bill.



A kind of inventive and visually engaging melange of the aforementioned flick, Monster House and A Nightmare Before Christmas, ParaNorman unfolds in the town of Blithe Hollow, whose locals profit from tourism mining the town’s history as the site of a famous witch hunt 300 years earlier. For 11-year-old Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee), though, ghost lore and other spookiness isn’t just part of some dusty old history book — he still sees his deceased grandmother (voiced by Elaine Stritch), as well as all other manner of dead people.

This flusters his father Perry (voiced by Jeff Garlin) to no end, but when Norman’s black sheep uncle (voiced by John Goodman) unloads on him the responsibility of halting a centuries-old witch’s curse from coming true, the requisite race-against-time unfolds, with a pack of risen zombies unleashed upon the town. Caught up in the mix alongside Norman are amiable and impressionable classmate Neil (voiced by Tucker Albrizzi); thick-headed bully Alvin (voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse); his perpetually exasperated older sister, Courtney (voiced by Anna Kendrick); and Mitch (voiced by Casey Affleck), the school quarterback on whom she nurses a none-too-secret crush.

The film’s exacting stop-motion animation has a fabulous and inviting tactile quality, a bit like The Fantastic Mr. Fox. One wants to reach out and touch the characters, and tumble headlong into their world. Director Sam Fell oversees a funky style, too, with great imagination to the movie’s framing. And with his bacon strip eyebrows, Bart Simpson-esque spiky hair and melancholic, crushed-confidence vocal timbre, Norman cuts a sympathetic figure.

The plot bogs down a bit as the movie shifts gears into its second and third acts — the audience is on the outside looking in on the specifics of Norman’s quest, much like the character himself. A bit more clarity and early revelation here wouldn’t have hurt. And the supporting players — cheerleader, himbo jock, bully and chubby geek — are more functional than deeply sketched, and deployed in a manner that doesn’t really add much, in either assistance or obstacle, to Norman’s journey. But Chris Butler’s script knows how to push the right buttons of squirmy gross-out and slapstick comedy, and features plenty of winning set-ups and jokes.

In its own small way, ParaNorman is also a product of its time, and a salvo against sociocultural nastiness. While it focuses on a misunderstood kid, and again preaches a familiar strain of diversity appreciation and inclusiveness, its parallel moral — indeed, even stated outright by Norman’s mother at one point — is that when people get scared, they’re apt to do terrible and stupid things. It’s not too much of a leap to assign that description to our current political climate. (Focus/Laika, PG, 100 minutes)

Nobody can push buttons of exasperation and pull levers of hair-trigger emotional reaction quite like family — those folks who know all of the faces of the past you’ve tried to shake and shed. That truth is borne out in Julie Delpy‘s witty, winning new comedy of relationships and culture-clash, 2 Days in New York. A nominal follow-up to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris, in which Delpy played the same character with a different love interest, this rather delightful romp eschews complicated plotting to instead luxuriate in and connect via a fresh, fun, wound-up energy all its own.



French-born photographer and artist Marion (Delpy) lives comfortably with her radio talk show host boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock) and their two children from previous relationships. But on the eve of a big show — the centerpiece of which is a conceptual piece in which she’s offering up her soul for sale, for $10,000 — Marion gets plenty of extra stress when her family arrives for a visit. This includes her over-sexed sister Rose (Alexia Landau); her sister’s outrageous, weed-obsessed boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon), also one of Marion’s exes; and her merrily bizarre and gregarious father (Albert Delpy), who thinks showers “deplete the immune system.” Falling back into old patterns, Marion starts spinning out of control, and this new glimpse of craziness puts Mingus further on edge.

Delpy collaborated on the script with Landeau and Nahon — each of whom also reprise their characters from Paris — and it’s clear that their offscreen rapport informs much of the rapid-fire bickering and gussied-up misunderstanding that fuels the movie’s comedy. Yet Delpy’s worldview and tone — neurotic, but knowing — also echo a female Woody Allen by way of Lina Wertmüller, funky and funny without tipping over into tedium or speechifying. Much of this balancing act owes to her directorial style, which is light and playful throughout, incorporating photo montages and a bouncy score of her own composition.

The pairing of Rock and Delpy is also a true delight. It gives Rock a chance to stretch a bit and do something different while also playing to his verbal strengths. Mostly, though, 2 Days in New York simply provides a showcase for the unexpected mash-up of Rock and Delpy’s respective styles and rhythms. It’s the same premise, basically, behind Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell’s casting in Bewitched, except that Delpy’s loose-limbed, lived-in movie is actually funny. A couple days with this brood will put a smile on one’s face. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For a one-on-one Q&A chat with Delpy, meanwhile, click here. (Magnolia, R, 91 minutes)