I didn’t really get into this during its wide release a couple weeks back, because it was readily apparent from the outset that You Again was an inconsequential thing that was going to sink like a stone (especially once people figured out that Betty White’s screen time was minimal), but the movie exhibited one of those big, stupid, boneheaded lapses happens every once in a while in a Hollywood film, and makes you realize that even when (maybe especially because) unions put a couple hundred people on a set, no one wants to take ownership of what they sense is a turd.
Passably bad movies — those that elicit sighs of exasperation at their mediocrity and lack of imagination — chart into choppier waters when they start getting even little details wrong. Because those are actually a big deal. It’s a sign that the creative team quit on the project, really — the cinematic equivalent of loafing it up the first baseline on a grounder to third. You Again notably fails in this regard when it has Kristen Bell’s character dig up an unearthed high school time capsule with interviews from 2002 — crucial to the plot, in that it helps her humiliate her rival — and reveals it to be stored on… a VHS tape. In 2002? No. Wrong. Idiots!
Nowhere Boy exists for the same reason that Googling “celebrity high school photos” will yield over 35 million results — there is, in modern society, a deep and abiding obsession with famous people, and so one of the correlative expectations floating about out there is that there surely must have been some fascinating signs of greatness in their adolescence.
Or maybe not. Set in Liverpool in 1955, coming-of-age tale Nowhere
Boy centers around 15-year-old John Lennon (Aaron Johnson, of Kick-Ass), and his differently strained relationships with his stuffy aunt and guardian, Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), and party-girl mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), with whom he has only recently reconnected. Amidst the syrup-thick accents, there’s teenage fisticuffs, a burgeoning awareness of girls, the discovery of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and other music, the formation of a band and, eventually, an encounter with a young Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie Sangster).
The acting here is fine. In particular, Johnson wears well the mantle of young legend, capturing the hidden effort that so often goes into affecting an air of teenage insouciance, while also slyly spotlighting unspoken feelings of jealousy and competition awakened by Paul — feelings that he himself doesn’t even yet fully understand, but will eventually spur him on to great artistic heights. When the movie is just charting John’s knockabout adventures, and letting Johnson’s lingering silent glances fill in the spaces of quiet heartache and confusion he feels at learning his biological mother has lived virtually around the corner his entire life, it’s in good hands — something trusting, unhurried and subtle.
The problem is that Nowhere
Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, wants to hurry and get John together with Paul, and poke us in the ribs and show us how important music is to John. And, dramatically speaking, this material is a non-starter. (Damaged kids escape into what they can; for John it was eventually music, though it could have been something else.) Ergo, the second half of the movie just kind of unfolds, without much in the way of surprise, save a late jolt related to familial tragedy. It’s a serviceable snapshot of the developing mind that eventually created some great music — some of the pain and disconnect that found an escapist home in rock ‘n’ roll — but unless one impresses upon the movie some sort of sweeping scope and emotionalism born of a grander investment in the Beatles mythology, Nowhere Boy is at its core a rather unexceptional story, told in conventional fashion. For more information on the movie, click here. (Weinstein Company, R, 98 minutes)
Italian filmmaker Tinto Brass remains perhaps best known Stateside for working up 1979’s Caligula with Bob Guccione. He’s been a busy peddler of erotica both before and since, though, working up easily more than a dozen titles in the decades since his infamous, scandalous telling of imperial Roman debauchery. One of his more recent works, 2003’s Fallo!, released here as Private, finally sees the light of day in an affectionate new DVD treatment from Cult Epics.
Chapter-partitioned into six discrete segments, Private unspools somewhere between softcore and hardcore, as a lighthearted morality play about sexual disenchantment and the gulf between men and women. The cheeky first segment, “Alibi,” centers on Cinzia (Sara Cosmi) and Gianni (Massimiliano Caroletti), a vacationing married couple who look to stave off a seven-year itch by introducing into the bedroom a studly Moroccan bartender, Ali (William De Vito). Other stories concern the power dynamics in a relationship where the boyfriend is obsessed with the notion of backdoor action (which he isn’t getting), a honeymooning couple who locates a certain thrill in a peeping Tom, and a beach-set, flashback-heavy story of cuckolded shame. The strongest entry is probably “Double Trouble,” in which two couples sort of knowingly wink at one another’s dalliances with the other’s spouse, which may or may not be tied up in careerism.
Brass doesn’t shy away from delivering naked titillation, but the explicit content here is fairly minimal, and tame. While, narratively speaking, Brass gets into fetishism and philandering, all of Private‘s stories also have a hearty comedic component, and might as well have a goosing, slap-happy jazz score laid underneath them — with characters rolling around wildly in the grass or on a bed, for instance. The performances are of the hit-and-miss variety, but the work of cinematographer Federico Del Zoppo and composer Francesco Santucci help further give the film a buoyant sense of liveliness and jocularity. It helps, too, that there’s no awkward stab at a “wraparound” narrative here, though the concluding tale, “Call Me Pig… I Like It” (yes, seriously), ends with an amusing cameo — or reveal, let’s say — that serves as a perfectly amusing sort of bird’s-eye exclamation point to the movie.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Private comes to DVD presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, with an Italian language stereo audio track subtitled in English. Its chief supplemental feature is a 18-minute making-of featurette which shows Brass, now in his late 70s, to be, um, a very hands-on director. Brief chats with many of the on-screen players are included, though they’re hardly in depth enough to glean much of substance about the production, save the fact that one actress confirms she encounters the only real phallus in the movie. Much more engaging and amusing is the subtitled portion of an interview with Brass, in which he says this of his film: “First and foremost it is about the more pushy affirmations of the jaunty, even barefaced feminine eroticism. I could dedicate it to people of importance, like Hillary Clinton or Monica Lewinsky.” (Err… what?) The release’s other special features consist of the trailer for Private as well as five other Brass films, in addition to two separate photo galleries that completely blur the risible distinction between “regular” and “adult,” or NSFW. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)
With films like Remember the Titans, The Rookie, Miracle, Invincible and The Greatest Game Ever Played, Disney has not just revitalized but almost entirely owned the truth-based inspirational sports drama subgenre in recent years, with smash hit The Blind Side being a notable exception. Secretariat, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich, follows in these well-worn grooves, detailing in earnest and narratively conventional fashion the story of the same-named 1973 Triple Crown-winning racehorse. If the drama of its last hour-plus seems predetermined, the film consistently and pleasantly holds one’s attention, albeit more lightly than grippingly. Director Randall Wallace pulls all the emotive levers rather effectively, aided by a slick technical team. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG, 123 minutes)
Over the past 15 years, Sam Rockwell has steadily proven himself to be one of the most versatile and dynamic actors working in American independent and studio cinema. He gets a nice spotlight this weekend in the form of a mini-retrospective: George Clooney’s underrated directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, screens paired with Moon at the Aero Theatre on Friday, October 8, and on Saturday, October 9, at the Egyptian Theatre, Box of Moonlight precedes a special 8 p.m. sneak preview of Tony Goldwyn’s Conviction (Fox Searchlight, October 15), in which Rockwell plays a man imprisoned for murder whose sister (Hilary Swank) puts herself through law school in order to try to free him. A special in-person discussion with Rockwell will follow after the second film. For tickets, click here; for more information, click here.
