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)