Category Archives: family

Little Miss Sunshine

Posted on August 5, 2007

A surprise ‘major indie’ comedy from last summer, this gem about an extra-quirky six person family is from the pen of Michael Arndt and enabled him to (finally?) quit his long time position as Matthew Broderick’s assistant. Most people pointed to Abigail Breslin’s performance as the title character but I enjoyed Alan Arkin’s grandfather more. He reminded me of a more realistic version of the, er, unrestrained old lady played by Estelle Getty in The Golden Girls, the big payoff coming even after he’s offscreen in the climactic beauty pageant talent performance by Breslin’s Olive.

Plenty of laughs throughout but this one nearly left me choking. Arkin won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor–and Arndt for Best Original Screenplay–so perhaps I wasn’t the only one to recognize his quality. Breslin did get a Best Supporting Actress nomination and the movie one for Best Picture.

Little Miss Sunshine covers a long weekend with the Hoovers, set off by two events: the wife’s brother Frank (Steve Carell) comes to stay with them after a suicide attempt and Olive gets a chance to fill in for a regional pageant winner at the state finals. However its the California finals and the Hoovers live in New Mexico, the tot had entered on a whim while visiting a cousin, and the family is too strapped for cash to fly the 1000 miles, plus neither of the adult males is willing to stay home with Frank who can’t be left alone.

Cash is short because Dad (Greg Kinnear) is trying to get a deal to launch a career as a motivational speaker but, since these guys are all pretty much losers, the promised deal falls through. Bryan Cranston (yeah, the father from Malcolm in the Middle) has a nice hard-edge part as the dealmaker who can’t deliver. Mom (Toni Collette) is near the end of her rope dealing with this, not to mention her teenage son (Paul Dano) not speaking for nine months from a mixed inspiration of German philosopher Nietsche and plans to apply to the Air Force Academy. Not known to the family, Grandpa has a habit of sneaking snorts of heroine in the bathroom.

The only vehicle large enough for all six is a nearly dead decades old yellow VW Bus and, in the Job-like never ending series of problems for the Hoovers, its transmission kicks during the first day’s driving. Not all the way, as long as the car can be pushed so it can be started in third gear, and of course the middle of nowhere garage can’t get a replacement until Thursday. But the family abide, pushing the VW and parking on a downhill where possible.

Directing team Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton make the most of the limited budget; while they didn’t get Oscar nominations they did get one from the Directors Guild, not bad for their feature film debut.

recommended

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The Simpsons Movie

Posted on August 1, 2007

What a great coincidence that my 500th post to this blog is the long-awaited big screen bow of those five funny members of the four fingered family and their pals in Springfield. Matt Groening, James Brooks, Al Jean and their massive creative crew took 18 years to get this flick done and the result is really good though falling just short of greatness from, strangely, focusing too closely on the family but not using the great supporting cast.

In The Simpsons Movie Homer’s appetite is the cause of calamity. Too impatient to wait in line to drop off some toxic waste when free donuts are available across town, he dumps the load in Lake Springfield and its the tipping point to disaster. Lisa, meanwhile, has met the perfect boy, a new character called Colin, and Bart is realizing that uber-wuss Flanders is a better dad than his can ever be.

EPA director/greedy corporate tycoon Russ Cargill (Albert Brooks) gets the okay from President Arnold Schwarzenegger to enclose the town in a huge glass dome to punish their unrepentant polluting ways. Barely escaping the nooses put up by torch and pitchfork branding townsfolk through a sinkhole, Homer takes Marge and the kids to start over in Alaska. When Marge sees on TV that Springfield’s about to be replaced by a brand new Grand Canyon and insists on returning to prevent it, despite Homer’s refusal she packs up and leaves with Bart, Lisa and Maggie.

There are a ton of funny bits, which any longtime viewer of the TV series will expect, but overall the main creative team appeared to decide that at least for the first movie nearly everything needs to be about the Simpsons and so the supporting characters, other than Flanders, are mainly involved for small gags. Colin, Russ Cargill and an Inuit woman who helps Homer find his epiphany after Marge leaves have the biggest secondary parts but one has to wonder if any of the three will turn up on new TV episodes.

Bottom line for me: plenty of laughs, a good single plot throughout (rather than, say, three or four episodes loosely tied together as has been the case with other 30 minutes series gone to the movies) and movie-sized hijinks, 3.5 out of 5 stars, but not the awesome film this might have been.

recommended

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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Posted on June 22, 2007

Will Ferrell was one of the better cast members over the decade he stayed with Saturday Night Live but for me his transition to movies was rocky; the less said about Elf, Zoolander, Old School, Bewitched or Kicking and Screaming the better. But Anchorman, which I saw but apparently forgot to writeup, and especially Stranger than Fiction Ferrell began to show that he was capable of bringing more to the table than just timing and facial expressions. More than, say, fellow cast members like Chris Kattan, Jimmy Fallon or Tracy Morgan and closing in on Adam Sandler (not that difficult) though still far short of Mike Myers, Dana Carvey or Eddie Murphy.

Aside: Has it really been 15 years since Wayne’s World and, other than the Austin Powers flicks and voice work for Shrek, has Myers been asleep all this time? Geez, talk about wasting talent.

Back to the point. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is a movie that could easily have gone down the Elf bin if Ferrell and co-star John C. Reilly had left it in neutral. Good supporting cast too including Jane Lynch as Ricky’s mom, Gary Cole as his estranged dad, Michael Clarke Duncan as the biggest, blackest good old boy you’ll ever see and Ricky’s crew chief and Leslie Bibb and Amy Adams as his two romantic interests.

I still remain unimpressed with Sacha Baron Cohen (best know as Borat and Ali G), who plays a gay French intellectual Formula One driver named Jean Girard come over to NASCAR to challenge Ricky Bobby’s dominance and I think this play on stereotypes, essentially the cardboard anti-Bobby, is the weakest part of the movie. Andy Richter, also using a pitiful accent, has a small bit as Girard’s boyfriend.

Rounding out my list of poor support performances are Greg Germann as the racing team owner and Molly Shannon as his alcoholic wife; Germann, who I thought was better than this, has gotten stuck in playing one role over and over and frankly it’s gotten tiresome and probably its the role rather than Shannon I have a problem with since her character’s drinking problem adds nothing to the story nor does it meaningfully illuminate any more significant character.

The script, written by Ferrell and Adam McKay (who also teamed on Anchorman), is about a boy who idolizes a good for nothing dad who ran off when he was a tot but shared with him the need to go fast. Dad imparts a life philosophy when he shows up for career day out of the blue when Ricky’s ten, which the kid keeps as a gem worthy of the Budda: “If you ain’t first, you’re last!” Ricky and best friend Cal (Reilly) get jobs working on a second tier NASCAR pit crew until one Sunday their driver decides to take a mid-race burger break and Ricky volunteers to finish the race. Talk about getting Lou Gehrig’ed!

He races right to the top, winning races and championships and bringing Cal on as the team’s #2 driver. Decidedly numero dos because, well, if you ain’t first you’re last and Ricky Bobby ain’t gonna be last. When Girard shows up, our good old boy gets into an ego-destroying crash and follows that up by having his wife and team sponsor dump him for Cal. Ricky really hits bottom until Dad shows up and teaches him how to climb back. This is the part where McKay and Ferrell really won me over because, while they never left the comedy too far behind, they didn’t drive to Stupid Town or Melodrama Mall and recognized that basic emotion can deliver more satisfying results.

recommended

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Waitress

Posted on June 18, 2007

There were several TV specials last month celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: A New Hope and one I watched explained how George Lucas employed the hero’s journey trope over the two trilogies, first from the positive side (Luke Skywalker) and then the negative (Anakin Skywalker). The protagonist must start from the small, face an initial challenge that draws him or her out of a comfortable, if drab, existence, gain a mentor (Obi-wan Kenobi in both instances) who provides a key push and then leaves the scene and then the hero must solve a major issue by mature application of that teaching and inner strength.

Waitress is a chick flick version of the hero’s journey though on a much smaller scale. Jenna (Kerry Russell) is a waitress and baker of wonderful, creative pies trapped in abusive marriage to Earl (Jeremy Sisto, showing again how well he plays twisted parts). She works at Joe’s Pie Diner, an odd restaurant where all the dishes are served in the form of pies, alongside Dawn (Adrienne Shelley, who also wrote and directed), Becky (Cheryl Hines in a role as far removed from the wife she plays on Curb Your Enthusiasm as seems possible) and Cal (Lew Temple), the manager and main cook.

The diner is owned by Joe (Andy Griffith), an octogenarian who puts his name on all the businesses he owns: Joe’s Gas Station, Joe’s Supermarket and so on. Everyone else thinks he’s a miserable old coot but other than being a bit impatient and fussy about his orders, we only see Joe as a man who’s probably a bit peeved about being so close to the end of his days. In any case, he is the mentor guiding Jenna.

A night of drinking with Earl, a most unusual event, results in pregnancy and thus she meets Dr. Pomatter (Nathon Fillion, of Firefly/Serenity) who is the new OB/GYN in this small semi-rural Southern town. Despite being married himself the two find themselves unable to resist the spark and, over the course of her pregnancy, combine normal checkups with passionate intimacy. Earl, meanwhile, never uncovers the affair but remains a menace Jenna yearns to escape.

Shelley has Jenna constantly inventing new pies to convey her emotional state; the names are quite expressive, akin to the way Iain Banks names his Culture starships: bad baby pie, I don’t want Earl’s baby pie and so forth. Pomatter even sneaks over to her house one morning after hubby’s gone to work to get a pie baking lesson.

Just as the lovers are about to run off, the water breaks and they have to go to the hospital instead; meeting the doctor’s wife, an intern, is enough to have her break off with him. Joe is there as well for some work on his kidney and he drops off a card for Jenna before she goes to delivery. Sitting forgotten until she’s forced to leave the hospital–Earl has refused to pay the bill because she’s finally told him to get stuffed–inside is a sweet pencil drawing of her by the now-deceased old man and a presumably large but unspecified check. As he urged, Jenna’s journey is complete and she can make a fresh start.

This movie is a chick flick, a term I do not use pejoratively, for obvious reasons but it’s a step above most of these because it treats the characters warmly, with intelligence and humor. The small town setting is used well for rich, natural visuals and not a redneck stereotype.

recommended

Note: As you probably know, Adrienne Shelley was murdered in her Manhattan office six months before Waitress was released; the Adrienne Shelley Foundation has been created in her memory to support aspiring female filmmakers. I’m saddened that we won’t see Shelley’s potential for growth fulfilled in future movies.

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Aurora Borealis

Posted on May 6, 2007

[Disclaimer: Glenn Homes of On Target Media sent me this DVD to review.]

For so many people, family is the dominant factor in life. Aurora Borealis is a movie that explores the beginning and end of family life through Joshua Jackson and Juliette Lewis as the couple coming together and Donald Sutherland and Louise Fletcher as Jackson’s grandparents facing the prospect that their time is over. Complicating the story is that Jackson’s father died ten years before, when the boy was only 15 and the father only 39, sending the youngster into a tailspin from he’s not yet recovered.

Sutherland does an amazing job as Ronald, portraying a man aware that his body has nearly deserted him with his mind not far behind. I never felt that he was slipping over the line into a caricature though that would’ve been very easy to do. Jackson’s Duncan is a bit more of a stereotype but writer Brent Boyd’s dialog and Jackson’s soft touch left me satisfied; one imagines that the former Dawson’s Creek star was happy to have a role that explored realistic emotions intelligently rather than the tweener hype-driven movies he’s mainly been in since that series.

Lewis was nice as the new love, Kate, but at over 30 perhaps a tad old for our boy. Maybe not, maybe reversing the normal Hollywood older man/(much) younger woman relationship was a sign of respect from the producers. Fletcher is still called out for winning the Oscar in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which I think was made the year Lewis was born, but my recent memories of her work is from (the highly underrated) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Nonetheless, the role of Ruth is very different from either and she gives a quality, realistic portrayal that in many ways is the connective tissue for the movie.

Many of the supporting roles are filled by young actors whose faces will be familiar but will have you scratching your head to match the name: Steven Pasquale (you recognize him from Rescue Me, where he’s a squadmate and married Dennis Leary’s sister at the end of last season), Zack Ward (Christopher Titus’s brother on Titus), and Taylor Labine and Timm Sharp (small parts in many TV shows and movies made in Vancouver, where most of this was shot).

Boyd and director James C.E. Burke combine to give us a nicely paced story that doesn’t resort to filler to show off the star or some unrelated idea. They also playing on the setting of Minneapolis and use locale-specific things like the winter weather, Paul Westerberg and, of course, the northern lights that give us the movie title for a non-generic flavor. Too many other small films (and I use the term in the sense of intimacy and budget) could be set in Metropolis for all that we get from the location.

recommended

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Click

Posted on February 25, 2007

This is definitely one of Adam Sandler’s better movies of recent years, keeping his obnoxious antics in check and using them to teach him a lesson. Think of an updated It’s a Wonderful Life where a nowhere near as evil Mr. Potter is the lead character.

Sandler plays Michael Newman (“new man”, get it?), and ambitious young real estate executive who can’t quite balance work and family. Kate Beckinsale plays his unrealistically hot, loving wife and mother to his son and daughter (played by several actors each as the film moves through several decades of Newman’s life). Christopher Walken is the strange staffer in the wa-a-ay beyond department at Bed, Bath & Beyond, David Hasslehoff is Sandler’s obnoxious, piggish boss and Sean Astin is the kids’ swim instructor and, later, Beckinsale’s second husband.

Walken is so good as a snake oil salesman, the essential nature of his character here as in so many great roles he’s done before; his Morty slowly seduces Newman, allowing him to discover the ‘features’ of the special remote at the heart of Click long before its costs surface. As Morty cautioned at the time of purchase, this sale is final, no returns allowed.

Writers Steve Koren (Bruce Almighty, A Night at the Roxbury, many Seinfeld episodes and Saturday Night Live skits) and Mark O’Keefe (co-wrote Bruce Almighty) and director Frank Coraci (The Waterboy, The Wedding Singer) devised a very effective framework, enough funny bits to satisfy core fans (such as the right cross to Hasllehoff’s jaw featured in the ads), dropping in on our man’s life at varying–and increasingly lengthy–intervals before climaxing with a very old, lonely and sad Sandler.

recommended

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Everything is Illuminated

Posted on January 22, 2007

This seemed like the kind of small quirky film that I enjoy so when TiVo grabed it for me a second time I watched. Sadly, this is a bad small quirky film so I hit delete after about 30 minutes. The 2005 movie is the first feature written and directed by actor Liev Schreiber, from Jonathan Safran Foer’s critically acclaimed novel, and he clearly needed a bit more mentoring from his producers.

Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood as a strange little Jewish American man (named Jonathan Safran Foer, though this is post-modern fiction and not autobiographical as far as I know) who travels to the Ukraine after his beloved grandmother’s death to find out about the woman who saved her from the Nazi muderers during World War II and Eugene Hutz and Boris Leskin as a strange grandson/grandfather pair of Ukrainian tour guides who specialize in showing around relatives of dead Jews.

not recommended

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Firewall

Posted on January 21, 2007

Harrison Ford compares well with, say, Tom Cruise when it comes to this kind of movie (or most kinds, probably) even if at about 62 when filming happened he’s getting a little long in the tooth to be a daddy with kids in the single digit age range. Plus, motion and momentum are necessary but not sufficient factors in a thriller–technobabble and handwaving don’t get the job done given the level of awareness of computer security in 2006.

Firewall pits Ford as head of technology for a newly-acquired regional bank against Paul Bettany using the Office Space-ish idea of skimming small enough not to be noticed amounts from many large accounts, except Bettany’s crew have Ford’s wife (Virginia Madsen, a typically Hollywood 18 years younger than hubby) and three kids hostage with Ford monitored at all times through wireless audio/video. Not to mention big guns they aren’t troubled about using, and inside help.

Neither director Richard Loncraine (Wimbledon, the Winston Churchill biopic The Gathering Storm) nor writer Joe Forte (only previously produced film is the well-received indie wedding comedy Say I Do) seem up to the task, leaning too heavily on moody Seattle weather (i.e., buckets of rain), indoor running and easily seen-through misdirection.

not recommended

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Four Brothers

Posted on January 21, 2007

Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin (Andre 3000 of rap supergroup Outkast) and Grant Hedlund play (somewhat) grownup brothers adopted as hellraising kids by neighborhood saint Fionnula Flanagan; the movie opens with Flanagan being gunned down in a grocery store robbery and the four coming together in the nasty Detroit ghetto where she lived for her funeral. And revenge.

Since Four Brothers is directed by John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood, the Tupac/Janet Jackson flick Poetic Justice, the Shaft remake and 2 Fast 2 Furious) you’re probably not surprised that Gibson and Benjamin have grown up marginally more civilized than Wahlberg and Hedlund. But Singleton is not a one dimensional filmmaker and all four of them are at least moderately complex, filled with shades of grey, as is the movie as a whole.

While we may not be the most sophisticated of viewers, I’m always glad when my wife gives a similar positive response to the more gritty kind of films we see together, which she did in this case. Casting Chiwetal Ejiofor(Kinky Boots, Serenity, Love, Actually, Dirty Pretty Things), very good as the nutso mob boss behind most of the family’s troubles,  certainly adds a point to her rating. Terrance Howard (who was better in Crash, though this is the better movie) is perhaps a bit too calm as childhood pal turned determined cop, Josh Charles (Sports Night) is good as a rotten cop and Sofia Vergara (Chasing Papi) has no problem playing Gibson’s, er, erratic girlfriend.
recommended

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Posted on January 21, 2007

Fans of Roald Dahl, who wrote the novel, have generally never been happy with the 1971 Gene Wilder version released as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory because–as happened with so many of Dahl’s stories–the movie manicured off his slightly demented twists and edges.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was worth making because director Tim Burton and his frequent partners in the bizarre Johnny Depp and writer John August (who wrote Burton’s Big Fish and Corpse Bride and his his feature directing debut The Nines premiering tonight at Sundance) share Dahl’s sensibility. Taking into account the far more sophisticated special effects available today, this is very similar to the first in the big picture: the same five kid/parent characters meet the same five ends, Charlie lives in a barely standing shack where his four grandparents remain in a single big bed/dinner table (though Jack Albertson probably gave a better performance than David Kelly as Grandpa Joe) and the Oompah Loompahs sing and dance as they clean up after the greedy, grasping kids.

But Burton uses a smart twist unavailable to Mel Stuart 35 years ago, casting only a single man, the short-statured Deep Roy, as all 165 Oompah Loompahs (male and female) and additionally throws in flashbacks to Wonka’s own childhood that illuminate his brilliant insanity where Wilder seemed meanspirited; how the possessive nut sorting squirrels take care of Veruca Salt et pere was simply a hoot. I have to admit that I’d probably have joined Augustus Gloop in that amazing chocolate river.
recommended

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