Eschewing shaded characterization and often basic sense, and establishing what should be the high-water mark for most crotch-grabbing in a single film in 2013, Battle of the Year drapes a pro forma narrative over lots of acrobatic hip hop dancing. It’s not a good film, necessarily, but director Benson Lee, drawing inspiration from his 2008 documentary Planet B-Boy, at least crafts a vehicle that establishes a certain sub-cultural milieu and delivers what viewers most predisposed to movies like this are most interested in. Unfortunately, the script is utterly lacking in interesting characters, it awkwardly shoehorns in a bunch of product placement, and it then works its way through choices ranging from misguided to risible — like having dancing cure a character’s homophobia. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony, PG-13, 109 minutes)
Category Archives: Film Reviews
Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
The Federal Reserve is charged with controlling the United States’ monetary supply, regulating banks and setting interest rates. But prior to the financial collapse of 2008 and the quixotic quest of marginalized Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul to alternately audit and/or abolish the Fed, you’d have been hard-pressed to find more than one in 10 Americans who could tell you those facts, let alone articulate a cogent opinion on it. With his new documentary, director Jim Bruce aims to change that. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve throws a light on the most powerful financial institution on Earth, serving as an invaluable civic resource.
Markets around the world pay close attention to every action and utterance of the Fed Chairman, and have even more so ever since the abolishment of the gold standard (meaning paper dollars’ linkage to a fluctuating market price of that precious metal) in 1971, under the Nixon Administration. In a clear-eyed, non-partisan fashion, Money For Nothing (funded in part, ironically or depressingly, by Bruce’s short trades on financial stocks) does a good job of sketching out the history of the Fed, and how too often short-term benefit and/or political considerations get a hearing with the supposedly air-tight and independent body of regional presidents, or governors, that comprise the institution.
It’s a different animal than last year’s The Gatekeepers, director Dror Moreh’s nonfiction examination of the Israeli Shin Bet security agency, but Money For Nothing strikes a similar chord of slack-jawed amazement because it isn’t some clamorous document of outsider rage. That film had interviews with all of the living former agency heads who prosecuted a harsh anti-terror policy against the Palestinian people that many agree crossed a line of human decency. Comparably, Money For Nothing isn’t short on hard-edged self-reflection and insights. In addition to the expected assortment of economists, authors, investors and financial historians, Bruce also secures interviews with a remarkable array of former and current Fed officials, from former Chairman Paul Volcker to current Vice Chair Janet Yellen, whom many believe has the inside track to succeed departing Chairman Benjamin Bernanke.
On the one hand, the human face these interview subjects put on the Federal Reserve is very helpful and important. The Fed isn’t some conspiratorial organization worthy of a Dan Brown novel; it’s made up of real people. On the other hand, learning about some of their attitudes and beliefs, and their decision-making process is… well, often scary and depressing, in equal measure. This is especially true of the tenures of Alan Greenspan and the aforementioned Bernanke, in the decade-and-a-half leading up to the 2008 financial collapse.
The Fed is generally expected to lower interest rates based on problems and bubbles in the real economy, but the Money For Nothing makes clear the dangerous precedent set by Greenspan’s drastic lowering of rates during the Wall Street crash of October 1987. In essence, that meant that the Fed was now beholden to the whims of the stock market as well, and was to serve as its protector. While Greenspan was for a long time deified for his steady stewardship of the economy, the reality was that a mindset which socialized the risks of the rich had taken hold; Wall Street financial firms, merely following the incentive structure very clearly indicated by the Fed, would dream up and indulge in ever more complicated derivatives trading, among other things. Eventually, this would dovetail with an overheated housing market that would then balloon into the greatest credit bubble in world history.
As informative as it is, there’s a gut-punch sadness to Money For Nothing, then — a melancholic dawning. It puts something of a sour spin on capitalism and the undue attention and coddling the United States heaps on a sector of the economy that creates nothing. Bruce, leaning heavily on a score by composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, attempts to negotiate an emotional soft landing of sorts, pointing out various mechanisms of adjustment and consideration.
It only works up to a certain point, though, since meaningful and protective Wall Street banking reforms have not been enacted over the past five years. While fantastically enlightening as it relates specifically to the Federal Reserve, the chief parallel takeaway of Money For Nothing is something that is also evident in other walks of life: money talks, and there’s a well-heeled elite class that has a private line. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements in other cities, Money For Nothing opens in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica 4-Plex, where Bruce will be on hand for an in-person Q&A on opening weekend. For more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Liberty Street Films, unrated, 100 minutes)
Hell Baby
A disappointingly scattershot, sigh-inducing comedy from the creators of Reno 911!, Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon, Hell Baby represents a slog through improvisation run amok. A horror comedy that doesn’t make hay out of lampooning the genre (which is totally fine), Garant and Lennon’s joint feature directorial debut seems downright allergic toward anything that might be construed as a legitimate throughline, lest that somehow be interpreted as “selling out,” and not subversive enough.
The story centers around Jack and Vanessa (Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb), a married couple, expecting their first child, who move into a possibly haunted and certainly rundown house in an unsafe borough in New Orleans. There’s a weird dude, F’resnel (Keegan Michael Key), living in a crawl space in their home who tells them about all the murders committed there; then a grotesque old lady, Mrs. Nussbaum (Alex Berg), appears out of nowhere and sexually assaults a confused Jack, who fights her off, apparently killing her.
While this puts two inept detectives (Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer) in Jack and Vanessa’s orbit, the former also begins to wonder if his wife — who’s taken to spiking his drinks with paint thinner — may have forces other than just prenatal stress acting upon her. Garant and Lennon, meanwhile, portray Vatican exorcists dispatched by Rome to, like, solve a mystery of in-utero evil or something.
Hell Baby is “just” a comedy, sure, but there’s simply not a lot of tension, discipline or consequence to the story, really. It’s just a bunch of lowest-common denominator wankery, without any sort of unifying aesthetic. (Even “dumb” generally coalesces around a couple central ideas.) It doesn’t help that it’s 70-plus minutes before Jack learns that Vanessa is possessed, but even when she slashes his stomach (offscreen, weirdly), there’s no immediate escalation of action. Editorially and structurally, the film is a huge mess, which makes its 94-minute running time often feel interminable.
Garant and Lennon‘s movie is also characterized by a screenplay that embraces digression, and scorns backstory. The latter is fine, but the tangential asides and other comedic indulgences herein don’t have the same warped silliness of something like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore or Andy Samberg’s Hot Rod, which I underestimated upon its theatrical release. When Hell Baby descends into one of its extended superfluous riffs — Po Boy sandwich eating montages, group puke fests or juggling babies — it feels like a stalling technique as much as anything else. (And speaking of gratuitousness, as Vanessa’s Wiccan sister Marjorie, Riki Lindhome pops up to make a run at 2013’s Most Consecutive Seconds of Screen Nudity crown.)
The sad thing is that Hell Baby has some fine, funny folks in it. The array of familiar faces may make one want to take a flyer on this proudly oddball offering, but the curses you’ll be left uttering at the end won’t be of delight. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Millennium Entertainment, R, 94 minutes)
Hawking
The story of the planet’s most famous cosmologist, told for the first time in his own words and by those closest to him, documentary Hawking is an engaging, inspirational portrait of as unlikely an iconic figure as the last half-century has produced. If modern celebrity culture values glamour, sexiness, vitality and youth — or, failing that, healthy dollops of tawdriness and puffed-up confrontation — British-born scientist Stephen Hawking is the antithesis of those qualities. And yet, beginning in the 1970s, he managed to drag physics and related topics into the popular discourse.
Directed by Stephen Finnigan, Hawking chronicles its subject’s incredible journey from childhood to PhD candidate, scientific genius and bestselling author. Though known worldwide in his wheelchair-bound form, Hawking, now 71, actually enjoyed a full and normal childhood with his siblings, and this film sketches out that adolescence in fanciful, winning fashion. Diagnosed in his 20s with a motor neuron disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or ALS), Hawking was given only two or three years to live; though he’s beaten the odds to live a long and full life, his condition is a degenerative one, and it’s robbed him of speech and almost all movement (apart from a few muscles in his cheek) over time.
Among Hawking’s scientific breakthroughs are the idea that black holes emit particles of radiation, and a cosmological singularity that finds union in the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. Hawking, though, scales these monumental breakthroughs in science in a very human way. Part of this has to do with the way that Finnigan cannily interweaves interview segments with a variety of subjects — former students and contemporaries, plus caregivers and Hawking’s first wife, Jane Wilde — along with tastefully staged re-enactments that capture the feeling of moments.
Hawking’s droll sense of humor pokes through often as well. Recounting the onset of his disease, he says, “I felt somewhat of a tragic character. I took to listening to Wagner.” Later, describing the emotions attached to scientific breakthrough, he says, “There is nothing like the ‘eureka’ moment when you discover something no one has known before. I won’t compare it to sex, but it lasts longer.”
The dual spine of the film lies in Hawking’s commitment to crafting a mainstream-accessible tome about physics and the Big Bang Theory — which he did with A Brief History of Time, which would go on to sell over 10 million copies — and his rather easy embrace of celebrity (surprisingly, even Jim Carrey pops up). The latter, for better or worse (it cost Hawking at least one of his two marriages), can be viewed from several perspectives, depending on one’s level of cynicism. But the love that Hawking has outwardly manifested, and indeed radiated, in pursuit of asking the big questions about life and solving the difficulties of the universe’s creation have a broader lesson and application. As Hawking himself says near the film’s end, “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and excel at.” Hawking opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino. (Quad Cinema/Vertigo Films/Film 4, unrated, 94 minutes)
And While We Were Here
Imagine a boring, gender-swapped and totally arty and pretentious version of the travelogue-mini-film-within-a-film that focuses on Kip Pardue’s character from The Rules of Attraction, except strung out on Benadryl instead of methamphetamine, and one has an idea about writer-director Kat Coiro‘s And While We Were Here, starring Kate Bosworth as a married woman who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads while traveling with her husband in Italy. A film of precious construction but precious little insight, this drama of young adult crisis mistakes mere mundanity for a stirring creative statement.
Jane (Bosworth), an American freelance writer, accompanies her British husband Leonard (Iddo Goldberg), a viola player, on a business trip to the island of Ischia, off the Amalfi Coast. She’s working on a vaguely defined book idea informed by tape-recorded conversations about World War II with her now-deceased grandmother (narrated by Claire Bloom) when she stumbles across 19-year-old Caleb (Jamie Blackley) while sightseeing one afternoon. A cautious dance of (mostly unrequited) flirtation ensues, but after introducing Caleb to her husband Jane eventually tumbles into an affair with him.
Bosworth previously collaborated with Coiro on L!fe Happens, a lively, Los Angeles-set comedy. That this film is almost 180 degrees tonally removed from that work is totally fine, but And While We Were Here lacks any sort of specificity that would make it stand out or give it a palpable emotional connection. Coiro was inspired to write the script by a series of audio tapes she made with her own late grandmother, but if Jane is to be her stand-in she gives Bosworth only a series of clichéd poses to play. The actress commits admirably to the material, but it’s neo-realism lite, nothing more.
The film doesn’t have any of the sort of balanced heartbreak and uplift of something like the thematically similar Hello I Must Be Going, forget that movie’s shrewd observation. Coiro oversees a fairly polished technical package, but the film’s picturesque locations and gauzy sentimentality seem like an ill-suited match for the sort of inner turmoil that we’re supposed to believe is ailing Jane. And While We Were Here wants to plumb the diseased silences that plague romantic relationships, but by the time Jane and Leonard finally have it out (halfheartedly, at that), it’s been long evident that this putative snapshot of the aches found in interstices is just another case of the emperor’s new clothes, lacking in real characters or foundational perceptiveness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, And While We Were Here is also presently available across VOD platforms; click here for more information. (Well Go USA, R, 83 minutes)
Informant
A fascinating piece of nonfiction psychological portraiture, Informant tells the story of Brandon Darby, a former radical activist who made his name in the post-Katrina chaos of New Orleans, only to outrage much of the same community by later becoming a FBI informant and, under questionable circumstances, helping seal harsh criminal indictments against two young protestors at the 2008 Republican National Convention.
The only film with interview access to Darby since his public confession, Informant connects and succeeds as both a sociopolitical potboiler and a case study in unreliable narration. The film starts a bit slowly, but charts Texas native Darby’s intense reaction to the government’s bungled Katrina response, during which he headed to the Big Easy and co-founded the progressive grassroots relief organization Common Ground. While possessing a strong anti-authoritarian streak, Darby also had problems with the horizontal leadership hierarchies of activist groups; he seemed to want to make all the decisions himself.
The particulars that put him on a path toward government mole are a bit muddled and, in the grand scheme of things, not terribly important, but the portrait that emerges of Darby is of a lonely guy who’d survived an abusive childhood, and was driven by a desperate desire to be known for something big. When he was given even small doses of validation and emotional support by FBI handlers, it helped exponentially fertilize a sense of self-importance already within him, which in turn created a series of circumstances whereby he likely goaded younger activists who looked up to him into crossing an already blurry line of criminality. The fallout of the case is bizarre, with Darby now a Tea Party hero and active speaker on the right-wing political circuit, for having foiled an “anarchist plot” he helped foment.
Director Jamie Meltzer makes the unusual but engaging choice of introducing a couple atypical elements into his production, playing Darby portions of interviews that contradict his version of events, and also staging tense but at times subjective recreations starring his subject. The result doesn’t always provide the clearest picture of events from a chronological perspective, but interviewees across the political spectrum help lend credence to a reading of Darby that is, oxymoronically, sympathetic and judgmental: that of a big-hearted but big-headed guy whose ability to read right and wrong is enormously persuadable.
Some of the questions Informant raises — including that of a paranoid government security state driven to create crimes to solve — are expansive and scary, but Meltzer’s film has an all-too-human heart, which is what ultimately makes it compelling. Informant opens this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle NoHo 7. For more information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (Music Box/Lucky Hat Entertainment/Filament Productions, unrated, 81 minutes)
A Teacher
A deeply invested lead performance in service of an acutely flawed screenplay most characterizes A Teacher, a Sundance-minted tale of an illicit affair, between a lonely high school instructor and one of her students, that eventually unwinds into a tangle of chaotic consequences. The feature film debut of writer-director Hannah Fidell, this artfully posed but willfully removed snapshot of emotional foundering feels like an exercise in lazy minimalism.
Unfolding in small town Texas, A Teacher follows Diana Watts (Lindsay Burdge), a teacher who gloms onto one of her teenage charges. There’s a hint of familial tension surrounding her mother in a brief get-together with her brother, but the movie is mostly about the exercising of Diana’s poor judgment with Eric Tull (Will Brittain), and the psychological duress that ensues when he attempts to break things off.
Fidell, folding in a score from first-time composer Brian McOmber that in its low buzz communicates a haze of both emotional discontent and discombobulation, delivers a movie that is more or less accurate and realistic in a lot of ways. A Teacher isn’t about plotting, but it captures both the “Hey, it’s me” phase of a relationship, where there’s a certain level of familiarity if not commitment, and then later how that slides into something more woozy and imbalanced.
A Teacher is even artful, in a representational sense. Its sex scenes are charged, without being salacious. And Fidell knows how to stage things in a way that flirts with the notion that the film is going to turn into something more interesting. The problem is that A Teacher‘s script is so very interior that it forces viewers’ attention inwards, in a subjective fashion, and onto a character that is not particularly fleshed out or knowable, and is in fact in many ways just a cipher or symbol.
Burdge and Brittain have a nice chemistry, but it’s the former whose aggrieved instability gives A Teacher its sense of pull. That’s not enough, though. Even given its brevity, Fidell’s movie readily gives off vapors of phoniness — of not avoiding conclusivity in the name of ambiguity, but of merely not having a strong sense of purpose or mission statement. This Teacher is often pretty to look at, but is lacking in the lessons it can impart. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Oscilloscope, R, 75 minutes)
Insidious: Chapter 2
A follow-up to 2011’s rather imaginative chiller Insidious, which grossed almost $100 million worldwide on a budget of under $2 million, Insidious: Chapter 2 returns all of its major players in service of a story that feels at once convoluted and undernourished. Director James Wan fashions the film as more of a domestic thriller with a supernatural edge, but a lot of potential tension dissipates in a soupy fog of twisted timelines and free-floating motivations. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (FilmDistrict, PG-13, 106 minutes)
TV Man: The Search for the Last Independent Dealer
Even the sympathetic listening abilities of a Quaker reared at the knees of his grandparents might be overtaxed by TV Man: The Search for the Last Independent Dealer, an amiable documentary that mistakes merely malingering around old people for evocative, homespun nostalgia. An inoffensive but hardly fetching borderline vanity project that follows around director Steve Kosareff as he traces the lineage of mom-and-pop American television retailers while also trying to find someone to fix his beloved 1965 Zenith Jetlite, this film — aimed squarely at an over-60 rural/suburban demographic who could never be bothered to drive to a theater to see it, and wouldn’t know how to ever track it down online — delivers more yawns than laughs, intrigue or identification. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (TV Man Productions, unrated, 82 minutes)
American Made Movie
A nonfiction film about the slow bleed of American manufacturing jobs over the past five to six decades, American Made Movie is engaging enough for armchair politicos, but generally more successful as a diagnostic statement of basic socioeconomic condition than a groundbreaking work in and of itself.
Directed by Nathaniel Thomas McGill and Vincent Vittorio, American Made Movie includes interviews with the owners, CEOs and workers from companies both small and large, as well as the heads of a number of manufacturing think tank and lobbyist groups that push their agenda to lawmakers at both the county, state and federal levels. In this respect, it certainly gathers some good/outrageous anecdotes — including the story of Merrie Buchsbaum, a jewelry maker who started her own business, developed a homemade line of stars-and-stripes earrings and necklaces called Americana, landed a lucrative contract at the Smithsonian Museum, and then saw her idea undercut by a Chinese manufacturer of plastic trinkets.
American Made Movie has a lot of these types of authentic, sympathetic voices — hardworking folks who, as someone notes, can compete against anyone in the world, but not foreign governments, which have enormously subsidized and underwritten the catch-up in manufacturing in many countries. The movie also throws a patriotic light on companies like New Balance — the last athletic shoe manufacturer to still make their sneakers in the United States.
Unfortunately, American Made Movie feels disjointed in sketching out correlative relationships, from past to the present and into the future. It touches on the #OccupyWallStreet protests of 2011, but seems uncertain of how to fold that event — along with a tripling in the national income gap over the past three decades-plus — into a narrative that breaks down along free trade versus protectionist lines.
To its credit, American Made Movie doesn’t merely sound the gong of xenophobic alarm. It possesses an even, rational tone throughout. But neither does it feel like builds to a point of particular climax or catharsis. The film is saddled with a sing-songy, frequently dopey voiceover narration, and the solutions McGill and Vittorio ascribe to the predicament range from simplistic to politically dubious. American Made Movie is mostly an audio-visual book report of plot synopsis; it leaves one wanting for just a little more — a little more clarity, a little more fire, a little more investigation, and a little more righteousness. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more general information, visit the movie’s eponymous website or Facebook page. (Variance Films/Life is My Movie Entertainment, G, 85 minutes)
Best Kept Secret
An open-hearted, engaging documentary that follows the lives of a group of young autistic kids for the 18 months leading up to them placing out of a special needs school at age 21, Best Kept Secret is a movie that flirts with heartbreak and despair while also showcasing — in the form of both struggling yet involved parents as well as its strong, crusading teacher protagonist — the better angels of human nature. In telling a more compact, focused story than recent, similarly themed nonfiction feature The United States of Autism, the film packs an undeniable emotional punch, throwing a spotlight on characters one won’t soon forget. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, which opens today in New York City at the IFC Center and in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Playhouse 7, click here to visit its website. (Argot Pictures, unrated, 85 minutes)
I Declare War
If war is hell, then adolescence is too, in its own differentiated, downscale way. I Declare War, a brilliant, terrifically imaginative comedy of commingled nostalgia and allegory, gets this, on a gut level. Co-directed by Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson, the film unfolds as a surreal, seriocomic riff on Lord of the Flies, exposing the hidden seams of psychological depth present in war-as-playtime, wherein kids (mostly boys) first start trying on some of the absolutes and certitude of adulthood.
Unfolding entirely in a sprawling woods, I Declare War tells the story of an especially spirited game of Capture the Flag, wherein a bunch of 12-year-olds act out fantasy aggressions that bleed over into the rivalries and burgeoning crushes of unglimpsed “normal” lives. This is their playtime, but it’s deadly serious. With the help of his best friend Paul (Siam Yu), P.K. (Gage Munroe, above) has never lost a war. His side is matched up against Quinn (Aiden Gouveia), who’s similarly invested in strategy, but when Quinn is overthrown by his impulsive, angry lieutenant, Skinner (Michael Friend), it upsets the normal rhythms of war.
Since there’s nothing explicitly against it in the rules (which dictate things like remaining motionless and counting to 10 after being shot), Skinner keeps Paul hostage rather than “killing” him (via a paint-filled grenade, which sends the deceased home), figuring P.K. will have to mount a rescue operation that can be easily defeated. Skinner’s leadership — loud, but lacking in any specifics, forget nuance — makes things difficult for Jessica (Mackenzie Munro), as well as Frost (Alex Cardillo) and Trevor (Dyson Fyke), who sort of serve as the film’s Abbott and Costello.
One of the things that’s most immediately arresting about I Declare War is the forcefulness and glee with which it blurs lines of entertainment and quasi-uncomfortable exploitation. “This is war, man — not fucking hopscotch!” exclaims P.K. Most importantly, though, the sticks the kids use for guns manifest as real weapons, and so firefights unfold with all the decibel-appropriate, shoot-’em-up intensity of a straightforward action flick. (Blood-letting is still kept mostly representative, but the movie does touch on torture and bullying in a forthright manner that evidences a clear erosion of innocence).
A good comparative leaping-off point for I Declare War is perhaps something like Garth Jennings’ Son of Rambow, which has an inventive hook, is likewise caught up in adolescent preoccupations with brawny combat, and displays a somewhat similar exploding sugar-rush imagination. I Declare War, though, is much darker, albeit in a way that realistically digs into both the wild creativity and warped value system of youth. (Whether that ethical compass is under-developed or in the process of being corrupted by adult fallibilities is left somewhat open for debate.)
Working from a script by Lapeyre, the film mixes play-acted violence with a few bursts of the real thing, but is threaded throughout with hearty ribbons of humor both dark (would-you-rather questioning, and foul offered bets involving dog crap) and light (“No, I’m not quitting, I’ll be back later — I just want some juice,” says one participant, opting for a break). It all rings true, and the characters are extraordinarily well sketched — believable as kids, but also touching on well-worn war film archetypes, for comedic effect.
Ray Dumas’ evocative cinematography highlights a remarkable technical package, and a uniformly excellent adolescent cast speaks to the exacting nature of the superb direction. (Friend especially, in all his awkward bluster, captures — whether by skill or managed happy-accident — the essence of that kid with whom everyone else in the neighborhood hates to play.) Original, engaging and thought-provoking, I Declare War eschews sentimentality or (potentially far worse) wink-wink satire to deliver a series of rather remarkably hard-hitting adult truths, wrapped up in the guise of a film about kids. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, I Declare War is also currently available across VOD platforms; for more general information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (Drafthouse Films/Samaritan Entertainment, unrated, 94 minutes)
The Lifeguard
The seriocomic feature film debut of television director Liz W. Garcia, The Lifeguard offers up a contrived series of precious posed moments in telling the story of a young career woman who moves back home in an effort to shake off a low-lying cloud of personal and professional ambivalence. In her starring role, Kristen Bell delivers a charming, engaging performance, but the much sharper take on this same sort of female thirtysomething ennui (even though Bell’s character is quick to point out that she’s still 29 years old) is found in last year’s Hello I Must Be Going, starring Melanie Lynskey.
Leigh London (Bell) is an AP reporter in New York City who, after her romance with her engaged boss sputters out, moves back home to Connecticut with her parents. Her dad Hans (Adam Lefevre) is sympathetic, but Leigh’s tightly wound mother Justine (Amy Madigan) is going through issues of her own, and is chafed a bit by her daughter’s sudden presence. Leigh re-connects with a pair of old friends — Todd (Martin Starr) and Mel (a wonderful Mamie Gummer), the latter now an associate principal at the high school where they matriculated — and in short order decides to reclaim her old teenage job, as the lifeguard at a condominium complex.
It’s there that Leigh meets a group of outsider/skater types, including Matt (Alex Shaffer) and Little Jason (David Lambert, above right). They’re high school students, but on the precipice of dropping out, in order to… move to Vermont? Yep, that’s their plan. Beer is bought, marijuana is smoked, and inappropriate relationships ensue, along with a requisite side of soul-searching.
Garcia has a nice touch for pithy dialogue (“Is this parking lot passed down in the DNA of skaters, like a geese migratory pattern?” Leigh wonders aloud), and also makes quite nice use of music; her debut, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, feels surprisingly well stitched together from a technical standpoint. But the backstories for her characters are threadbare, and so their motivations are often bewildering. Certain scenes just start in strange places (Little Jason randomly enters Leigh’s car in a rainstorm), and a couple of the supporting characters can’t overcome the limitations of the screenplay. (Particularly under-sketched is Mel’s sad-sack husband, played to annoying effect by Joshua Harto: he exists only to play “the rooted adult,” hectoring Mel and generally moralizing.)
Bell, looking beautiful with hardly a trace of make-up, exudes a warm watchability. And she has a fantastic rapport with both Starr and Gummer; their scenes are a treat. The torrid affair between Leigh and Little Jason, though, while evocatively captured, never digs much past the surface of Leigh’s distractible libidinal impulses. What ultimately tips The Lifeguard over from marginal recommendation to marginal pan is a cheap plot device at around the 75-minute mark that attempts to suddenly wring high-stakes drama from the narrative, followed by a cloying finale. With apologies to Thomas Wolfe, you can go home again; The Lifeguard just proves that sometimes it’s not the best course of action. For the complete, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more general information, click here to visit the movie’s website. (Screen Media Films/Focus World, R, 98 minutes)
Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers
A delightful documentary that dances along the edge between intellectual think-piece and ring-a-ding, Ocean’s-style criminal lifestyle celebration, director Havana Marking’s Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers is remarkable in how it sketches, connects and contextualizes the work and rising success of an international criminal syndicate, humanizing its players without absolving them from blame.
A shadowy and inventive group of jewel thieves who started snatching massive amounts of diamonds from European jewelry stores early in the new millennium, and then moved onto Asia and even Dubai, this mysterious collective has been dubbed the Pink Panthers — and not because they install Corning Fiberglass. In a decade-plus, they’ve committed an estimated 180 robberies, maybe more, with “earnings” of close to $300 million.
Smash & Grab takes a tripartite approach in telling their story — looking at some of the Pink Panthers themselves, the men trying to catch them, and the conditions that fostered their creation, the latter as seen through the eyes of a couple journalists who have tracked their story. One of the most interesting things about the Panthers is their compartmentalized, quasi-vertical power structure (a page borrowed from Al Qaeda, perhaps?), which lets thieves rise through the ranks to take part in bigger and more complicated jobs but also helps protect anonymity since there is no clear boss.
Marking’s film, then, fascinatingly connects the group’s formation to a basic lack of economic opportunity — in this case rising from the ashes of the failed Yugoslavian state, following the death of Josip Broz Tito in 1980 and the country’s bloody sectarian and ethnic clashes a decade later. In a jaw-dropping passage, Marking secures an interview with a former high-level government intelligence operative who admits that they helped forge passports for known criminals, embracing a policy whereby they could leave to commit robberies across Europe but return and be afforded some measure of safe harbor in their native land.
The interviews with Panthers themselves — rendered in stylish animation, to protect their anonymity — are just as engaging. Women are afforded an equal and important place at the table, since their ability to scout locations with less suspicion is crucial to the group’s modus operandi, summed up in the film’s title. The details of some of their plots are gripping, lending Smash & Grab the energy of a proper crime thriller, but there’s also a vulnerability and sadness to some of their more confessional musings. Slick and cleverly constructed, Marking’s film tells the Panthers’ backstory in a way that honors the intricacies and infallibility of human nature. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Music Box Films, unrated, 89 minutes)
The Patience Stone
Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone is a unique, intimately scaled and enormously affecting dissection of patriarchal culture. The French-Afghan filmmaker’s drama, which debuted at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and was Afghanistan’s Best Foreign Language Academy Award submission, serves as a wonderful showcase for star Golshifteh Farahani, and if there’s any justice will deliver even more success her way.
The film’s story is extraordinarily plain, yet still gripping. In contemporary, war-torn Afghanistan, a young wife (Farahani) and mother of two children, after around a decade of marriage, tends to her wounded husband (Hamid Djavadan), who’s been rendered comatose by a bullet to the neck. Abandoned by his family and facing mortal uncertainty with the encroachment of resistance fighters, this unnamed woman, frustrated and largely alone, she begins to pour out her heart. The very act of confessing harsh, long-secreted-away truths to her husband — of her lack of sexual pleasure in their marriage, of her utter disconnection from him given his lack of even basic kindness — delivers her from a burden, transforming her on an almost religious level.
Rahimi, adapting his own award-winning novel with Jean-Claude Carrière, offers up a script that is sometimes a bit schematic. But he also provides economical and eloquent glimpses into the pathology of women raised and abused in this social system. Farahani (Body of Lies, Just Like a Woman), meanwhile, has an engaging presence — conveying both woundedness and the blooming of an intelligence suppressed too long. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, R, 102 minutes)
The Frozen Ground
A true crime period piece that interestingly eschews a lot of investigatory grind in favor of moral certitude and throwback, cat-and-mouse tension, The Frozen Ground stars John Cusack as Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen and Nicholas Cage as the state trooper who doggedly brings him to justice. Winding its way to justice in thorny fashion, this black-and-white genre tale doesn’t reinvent the wheel but, courtesy of some intriguing casting and its unique setting, it more than adequately checks off base-level boxes of entertainment.
Getting a bit of a theatrical release in advance of its home video bow, The Frozen Ground unfolds in 1980s Alaska, where the aforementioned Hansen would eventually confess to 17 murders and more than a dozen other kidnappings and rape. The film opens with a 17-year-old runaway and prostitute, Cindy Paulson (Vanessa Hudgens), escaping from her captor, and trying to tell the local police in Anchorage about her ordeal. They don’t much believe her, but when a string of unsolved homicides lands on the desk of Sergeant Jack Halcombe (Cage), he immediately puts the dots together, hones in on Hansen as a suspect, and undertakes a massive effort to first locate Cindy and then bring her in as a cooperating witness.
Like Zodiac, part of what makes The Frozen Ground interesting, or at least different from a lot of its cops-and-killer brethren, is the fact that it unfolds absent the advances in criminal forensics and other technology that we see even on the small screen now every week. Walker’s film is nowhere near as dense and intricately crafted as David Fincher’s opus, of course, but it does track emotionally along somewhat the same lines, summoning forth moments of flabbergasted viewer frustration over some detail ignored, piece of key evidence unexamined or alibi unchecked.
In Cage and Cusack, Walker has a pair of invested leads who deliver grounded and in some instances subtle work; they’re the movie’s pillars. Other actors fare a bit less well. Hudgens, on the heels of Sucker Punch and Spring Breakers, continues to noisily throw off the make-believe shackles of Disney-dom, and seemingly work through some sort of off-screen personal issues; as Cindy, she has a lot of the outwardly manifested traits and behaviors of trauma down pat, but struggles with a skating alley monologue which is meant to color her character’s tragic backstory. She opts to bring the emotion to the fore, but offhanded and flippant would be the more heartrendingly believable choice, as a self-destructive coping mechanism on Cindy’s part.
Air-quote intense camerawork, from Walker and cinematographer Patrick Murguia, often substitute for deeper characterizations. And while the story necessarily condenses an insurance fraud strand that helps reel in Hansen, along with other choice tidbits, Walker, as a screenwriter, sometimes struggles with dialogue and other details. (Radha Mitchell plays a shell of a character, obliging Halcombe a home life that would have been best excised, along with a terrifyingly awkward throwaway line about his “last two weeks” on the job.)
What works about The Frozen Ground stems from the relative uniqueness of its setting. The location shoot takes advantage of the dull greys of winter skies, and everything about the production design feels appropriately second-hand or just slightly out-of-fashion — new two autumns ago. There isn’t much mystery here — we know who did it, and this isn’t the movie for sympathetic psychological examination — but when Hansen goes to the ground, hops in his commuter plane and starts trying to squirrel away evidence, damn if The Frozen Ground doesn’t un-thaw a pessimist’s heart and catch them up in this tale. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical engagements, The Frozen Ground also premieres today on VOD platforms. (Lionsgate, R, 104 minutes)
Scenic Route
A spare, streamlined, desert-set psychological thriller that doubles as a study in masculine relationship drift, Scenic Route, scripted by Kyle Killen (The Beaver) and directed by brothers Kevin and Michael Goetz, is a reminder that smart writing and solid execution can lend wings to any concept that on the surface seems trite and familiar.
The film opens with a jolt that tells viewers, yes, there will be blood. What will the cause and exact nature of that bloodletting be, however? Longtime friends who’ve drifted apart, Mitchell (Josh Duhamel) and Carter (Dan Fogler) are on a road trip through the dusty American southwest when their truck breaks down. Carter is a scruffy, failing writer who lives on the societal fringe. Mitchell is family man, albeit one with a presently busted-up knee, who in the wake of a painful break-up put a ring on the finger of his hectoring rebound relationship and promptly abandoned his dream of music; Carter resents him for seemingly both of those decisions. Needling and questioning ensues while the pair wait for help. Rather quickly, Carter confesses that he actually staged the breakdown to try to actually manufacture some conversation time with his old pal. Needless to say, this revelation doesn’t please Mitchell.
Scenic Route is shot through with the same sort of wounded, howling masculinity that director Mark Pellington‘s I Melt With You, starring Rob Lowe, Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven and Christian McKay, was aiming at. One big difference, though, is that Scenic Route lacks any of that fratty film’s druggy, bleary-eyed excess and sexual acting out — polarizing elements that effectively threw a blanket over more substantive or sincere discussions of its thematic explorations. It’s a movie which probes mid-life dissatisfaction in frank and sometimes uncomfortable ways, as when Mitchell confesses a marital infidelity to his friend, and despairs over the condition of his wife’s post-pregnancy body.
Killen’s script elevates things, and gives Duhamel and Fogler a nice range of material with which to play. Killen exhibits keen instincts for the sort of pinpoint emotional attacks that really get under a friend’s skin, and he has a smart sense of where and how to escalate arguments and even physical attacks and yet then pull back, which gives Scenic Route an intriguing, yo-yo-like sensibility. After much time and respective individual soul-searching in the desert, Scenic Route resolves its main situation, but not without a pleasant twist and some corresponding ambiguity. In going to such extremes, Killen again proves he can juggle disparate tones and deliver movies lined with a certain bruised grace. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. Scenic Route opens this week in Los Angeles at the Chinese 6 Theatres; in addition to its theatrical release in top regional markets, the film is also available across various VOD platforms. (Vertical Entertainment, R, 86 minutes)
Spark: A Burning Man Story
Burning Man, an annual week-long event held in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, would seem to be a great subject for a documentary. After all, the festival — which was originally envisioned as a utopian getaway and rebuke to the constrictive nature of modern life’s duties and norms — now draws in more than 50,000 participants, nominally known as “Burners,” each year. It’s become an alternative pop culture touchstone in and of itself, in the process spawning more than 50 regional festivals around the globe — all based on the same 10 operating principles, which include radical inclusion, participation, decommodification and self-reliance.
Spark: A Burning Man Story wants to be that definitive nonfiction offering, trying to impart the event’s origin story and history. Co-directed by Steve Brown and Jessie Deeter, the film paints in vivid colors, undeniably, but comes up short in delivering a coherent vision statement.
First, what Spark gets right: it captures the amazing can-do spirit and energy of almost all of its participants, from its San Francisco-based planners (yep, sorting out the infrastructure is a year-round thing) to its artistic-minded attendees. Spotlighting everything from drag costumes and huge projects (a five-building, #Occupy-style wooden mock-up of Wall Street excess overseen by an ex-Marine who goes by the name Otto von Danger) to the burning of a 35-foot tall titular sculpture that closes each festival, Spark lights up the imagination.
Other parts of the film are wildly interesting, too, because they dig into the organizational minutiae of trying to tame and shape this developing beast. Interviewees honor Brown and Deeter’s effort by engaging in some honest, big-picture, philosophically rooted arguments regarding issues like condoning “curated” or packaged tour experiences seemingly at odds with its participatory ethos and roots.
Still, as beautiful as a lot of the captured spectacle is, Spark could also benefit from cleaner through lines, and certainly a more rigid and structured chronological telling of the festival’s development. All of the co-founders are interviewed, but Brown and Deeter assemble the movie in jumbled fashion. Spark seems torn between behind-the-scenes perspective and a more experiential document — something 2009’s Dust & Illusions delved deeper into, chronicling the event from attendees’ perspectives. As such, it loses steam and its hold. There’s a spark here, but Brown and Deeter’s film doesn’t truly catch fire for the layperson. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. To view the film’s trailer, click here; for more information on the film, which is also available across VOD platforms, click here to visit its website. (FilmBuff/Paladin, unrated, 90 minutes)
The United States of Autism
A unique road trip documentary that attempts to throw a spotlight on the broad range of autistic spectrum disorder, The United States of Autism finds director Richard Everts traveling across the country for 40 days, visiting 20 families affected by the aforementioned condition. Everts’ film came into being as part of the Pepsi Refresh Project, which after two months of online voting awarded a $50,000 production grant. Everts also has a personal connection to autism, though — through his own childhood issues and, most immediately, his son now being impacted by the disorder. It’s that latter fact that most colors this tender, earnest offering, which broadens horizons in an invaluable way by letting viewers bear witness to some amazing stories. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the movie, click here to visit its website. (Tommy Foundations, unrated, 93 minutes)
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
A bewildering mixture of painfully familiar tropes and dishearteningly under-sketched characters gets the blender treatment in this latest big screen adaptation of young adult adventure fiction, based on a series of five novels by Cassandra Clare. Vampires, werewolves, warlocks, demons, portals to other dimensions and enough symbology to make even Dan Brown giggle all feature prominently in The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, a sci-fi/fantasy quest of awakened destiny that starts out strongly but loses steam after a half-hour, cycling through a catalogue of tween-stamped CGI mayhem en route to a conclusion less thrilling than shrug-inducing. For the full, original review, from Screen Daily, click here. (Sony/Screen Gems, PG-13, 130 minutes)
Standing Up
A nicely captured if fairly straightforward coming-of-age film about transcending adolescent summer camp bullying, the family-friendly Standing Up represents a rather curious filmography entry for director DJ Caruso, whose other movies (among them Disturbia, Eagle Eye and I Am Number Four) have almost all all showed a penchant for slick, pop-minded entertainment. Vacuumed free of darkened peril or any of the idiosyncratic pop of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, which charts a somewhat broadly similar story of two pre-teens on the lam, this slight but well intentioned effort seems a better fit for small screen viewing. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Arc Entertainment, PG, 93 minutes)
We the Parents
A healthy roster of social-activist documentaries have tackled America’s public education crisis, most notably Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting For Superman. Director James Takata’s We the Parents, though, is refracted through a decidedly different prism.
A briskly paced piece of moment-in-time cinema, it’s a fascinating look at the new frontier of so-called parent trigger laws, which allow, via petition signatures, 51 percent of parents to basically form a union with control to either shut down their children’s place of learning or transform it into a charter school. The first law was passed by the California State Legislature in January, 2010; six additional states, including Texas, Indiana, Ohio and Connecticut, have followed suit, with another 20 states considering similar regulations.
We the Parents throws a warm, loving sunbeam of advocacy on Parent Revolution, a non-profit organization which, eschewing what it deems the outmoded “PTA model” of parental involvement, aggressively touts parents as the largest stakeholder group in the entire education system, and thus seeks to leverage that majority share into political power, through means that involve as much cudgeling as cajoling. A good portion of We the Parents charts the grassroots, community organizing efforts of the group as they first recruit and then help support parents for the law’s debut test case, involving failing McKinley Middle School in Compton.
While it’s definitely a movie which sides with this somewhat radical upending of conventional power structure and command, Parent Revolution’s Ben Austin and many others — including parents themselves, most of whom, existing on the socioeconomic margins, have been cowed too long by the political process — speak movingly as to the goals and larger possibilities of the parent trigger law. Also, Takata does include interviews with figures from McKinley’s administration, who obviously stood in dissent to the reform efforts.
In this most immediate sense, there’s a gripping, social-legal thriller aspect to the film, as one wants to see how things pan out for these families. (Spoiler alert: signature verification technicalities and other legal pushback ensues, putting matters back in the courts, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.) More robust dissent and a research-oriented point-of-view may likely have given We the Parents greater depth and dimensionality, but with the first schools transformed under this new law opening their doors this very week in California, Takata’s film represents a timely, relevant snapshot of a cause in active motion. Following its local engagement at the Laemmle Music Hall, We the Parents opens in New York City at the Quad Cinema on September 6. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Go For Broke Pictures, unrated, 60 minutes)
Cutie and the Boxer
Winner of the director’s prize in the U.S. documentary competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer is an engaging, playful and ultimately uplifting study of art and painting as refracted through the decades-long marriage of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, Japanese-born artists living in New York City. In spotlighting the sweet-natured give-and-take of this relationship, the movie sidesteps doctrinaire concepts of nonfiction art films and expands its core audience, imparting glancing lessons about the uncertainty of love and the almost necessary dance of responsibility and care-taking involved. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here; for more information on the film, meanwhile, click here to visit its website. (Radius/TWC, unrated, 82 minutes)
Jobs
If the background extras staring on in worshipful awe and/or cowed silence didn’t clue one in on Steve Jobs‘ anointed brilliance in director Joshua Michael Stern’s film about the influential Apple founder, then cinematographer Russell Carpenter’s reverential framing or, especially, John Debney’s cloying, heavy-handed score surely achieve the same effect. A biopic whose overly literal and demonstrative telling is at frequent odds with a slightly more rangy, full-bodied screenplay, Jobs, starring Ashton Kutcher, doesn’t attain the same dizzying, high-drama heights as Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network, but instead trades readily on the tremendous native interest that attaches itself to and drives this story, given the significant role Apple products play in so many modern lives. It’s a serviceable little amuse-bouche, but doesn’t feel like a definitive rendering of its subject’s life.
A headstrong, adopted kid from a working-class Northern California suburb, Jobs drops out of college, dabbles in hallucinogens and travels to India searching for enlightenment with friend Daniel Kottke (Lukas Haas) before taking employment with videogame maker Atari in 1976. Frustrated with not only the daily grind of an office gig (and the accompanying social necessity of showers) but also what he views as the limited imaginations of lesser intellects, Jobs coaxes childhood pal Steve Wozniak (Josh Gad) out of a similarly stable job to start a company manufacturing and marketing the latter’s computer board invention, at a time when a home market for computers didn’t even exist. They hire a couple friends to meet the order of 100 units from a local electronics store owner, set up shop in the garage of Jobs’ parents, and christen their corporation Apple Computers.
An early investor, Mike Markkula (Dermot Mulroney), helps provide the framework for the company, and Jobs’ restless, relentless ambition does much of the rest, launching Apple into the stratosphere and leaving much bigger tech companies struggling to play catch-up. Eventually, though, Jobs’ thirst for innovation and his in-the-bones contempt for the status quo — as manifested by his insistence on pouring massive amounts of company resources into research and development — alienate Apple’s board members, leading to encroachments on his power and an eventual ouster from the company he co-founded.
Jobs has a good bit going for it. If his instincts for dialogue and interpersonal conflict are often woefully on the nose, debut screenwriter Matt Whiteley does a good job (pun more embraced than intended) of covering lots of ground in Jobs’ story. He doesn’t whitewash or pull punches about his protagonist’s legendary obstinacy, detachment and dickishness — even spotlighting (if rather awkwardly) scenes where Jobs informs his pregnant girlfriend (Ahna O’Reilly) that her condition isn’t his problem, and then later disavows paternity of said child. Focusing on a period of roughly two decades, from 1971 into the early ’90s, Jobs is also smartly structured, insofar as the movie builds to a natural, mid-level-type climax that occurs before Apple’s greatest tech age heights, when the rest of Jobs’ story, absent his cancer, arguably becomes just more of a string of successes.
Director Stern (Swing Vote, Neverwas) keeps the action moving at an appropriately brisk pace that ably showcases the tension and fissures in friendship — or, perhaps more accurately, professional alliance — that almost predictably develop once Apple becomes beholden to stockholders. He doesn’t always have the courage to linger on the roughest patches, though; there’s a low, ever-present hum of hero-worship that runs through Jobs, which is a bit disheartening. The film needn’t be dark, but the manner in which it dutifully cycles through and shruggingly resolves some of its more pronounced conflicts puts bows on disputes and contradiction not meant to be easily resolved.
Still, the film’s general story and performances are involving enough. Kutcher’s lead turn is one of solid investment. Some may quibble, but his physical similarity to Jobs — the reedy body type and thin face — help go a long way toward establishing an audience rapport, and the actor additionally makes a mostly admirable pass at his trademark ungainly gait and terse, clipped speech patterns. Gad, meanwhile, delivers a centered, sympathetic turn as “Woz,” the closest thing to a reliable or lasting friend in this snapshot of Jobs’ world.
In the end, it may not be the authoritative cinematic telling of one of the undeniable luminaries of our new-tech age — the aforementioned Sorkin is working on an adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography — but Jobs is a credible resume entry for almost everyone involved. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Open Road Films, PG-13, 127 minutes)
In a World…
For years, in movies like Over Her Dead Body and No Strings Attached, Lake Bell has played the best friend or colorful third lead, exhibiting a nice instinct for comic timing. With her superb directorial debut, Bell has finally blossomed, creating her own showcase for her true voice.
And what a voice it is, too. Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, In a World… is a sharply sketched, wonderfully cast ensemble set against the intriguing backdrop of the cutthroat movie-trailer voiceover world. (The title is a tip of the hat to the late Don LaFontaine, and the baritone phrase he used to kick off many trailers.) Funny, fresh and populated with engaging and relatable characters that behave in recognizably human ways, it’s a true indie treat — easily one of the year’s best comedies.
Chocolate velour track suit-clad Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed) is nearing the end of a long and successful career as a voiceover artist. That doesn’t mean he’s any less egotistical, however. When he casts his underachieving, emotionally wayward adult daughter, Carol Solomon (Bell), out of his house to make room for his 30-year-old fiancée, Jamie (Alexandra Holden), Sam paints it as just another gesture of his largesse (“I’m helping her by not helping her”).
Carol is a part-time vocal coach looking to stamp out the spreading virus of affected “sexy baby” voices in women, but she also needs a place to live. While crashing for a bit with her sister Dani (Michaela Watkins) and brother-in-law Moe (Rob Corddry), Carol books her first voiceover gig with the assistance of an awkward but charming sound engineer, Louis Parker (Demetri Martin). Soon, she has the inside track on her father’s mentee and the industry’s rising star, Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), to do the voiceover for the adaptation of the hot Amazon Games franchise, the next big young-adult novel property. Sam, however, may not be ready to go quietly into the night.
In a World… does something few films do, let alone few directorial debuts — it takes a completely unique setting and story, and then executes on that winning plot without really ringing a false note. Plot-wise, the film is actually kind of overstuffed, with bisecting love triangles and churned-up family issues and comedic misunderstandings that would play in an old vaudevillian routine. But it all rather works, because each ingredient is fresh and the casserole is so well tended to.
Bell takes notions of arrested development and breathes them into various characters, but in a manner that makes sense specifically for them. She also doesn’t sandbag or sell short her characters. It’s not surprising that Carol is well-written, since Bell is playing the lead. But even a supporting character like Jamie is given a great, honest character arc; she’s no mere empty-headed trophy wife, despite appearances. Bell proves equally as at home writing character-based comedy — there’s a sisterly discussion of “just the tip,” awkward posturing by Moe when a neighbor has to use his shower, and plenty moments of quirky workplace recording humor — as she is tossing out The Great Gatsby and Cranberries references, or one-liners about Life Savers.
Most of all, Bell is abetted by a great cast. Melamed is fantastic, as is Martin. Bell and Watkins have a wonderful rapport, and there’s even a surprising tenderness and emotional connection to a romantic rekindling Dani and Moe share. In a World… may be a bit roughhewn for some tastes, but it’s so alive, identifiably clumsy and deliciously complicated — so of the real world — as to put a smile on viewers’ faces. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Roadside Attractions, R, 93 minutes)