Masterminds (4/5 Stars)

To call “Masterminds” a movie “based on a true story,” streches that line about as far as it can go. Truth may have provided the basic premise: in 1997 a man named David Ghannt, an employee of the Loomis Fargo armored truck company, stole $17 million in cash from the warehouse he worked at. Everything else seems entirely made up for laughs with a blatant disregard as to whether the audience would believe it had actually happened. In fact, the movie plays like they just assumed we wouldn’t care. It was funny so I really didn’t care.

Take one scene foe example: After the robbery, the plan is for David Ghannt (played by Zach Galifinakis) to immediately run away to Mexico. To help his escape, he stuffs $20,000 in cash into his underwear to the point where it noticeably bulges out in all directions. Also he needs a disguise. So he is given a platinum blonde shoulder length wig and yellow contacts with feline pupils. It’s pretty funny but I’m quite certain the real David Ghannt didn’t try to get through airport security in that manner.

The movie was directed by Jared Hess (Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and arrives in theaters a year late due to the bankruptcy of its parent company. Its delay has two main consequences. One is that it represents a too-late starring vehicle for Zach Galifinakis whose star power has ebbed significantly from its peak in the early 2010s. He hasn’t headlined a movie since 2013. On the other hand, it catches on the upswing the growing star of Kaitlyn “Crazy Eyes” McKinnon, who in a supporting part shows off her innate ability to be funny in every frame shes in. A year ago, before Ghostbusters and Hillary Clinton’s endless campaign (McKinnon plays Clinton on “Saturday Night Live”) my reaction may have been “Who is she?” but now it is “Oh it’s her!”

The movie would have you believe David Ghannt did the heist to win the love of Kelly Campbell, a former co-employee, here played by Kristin Wiig. Who knows if that is true, but it certainly makes Ghannt look more pathetic, a good move playing to the talent of Zach Galifinakis. The brain behind the heist is a man named Steve Chambers (played by Owen Wilson). Owen Wilson proves his stock utility as reliably affable. Steve Chambers apparently had the brilliant idea to make Ghannt do all the hard work, send him to Mexico, and then pay a hit man (played by Jason Sudeikis) to kill Ghannt. That sounds like pretty dark stuff. Owen Wilson plays him like you know it’s all really sad, but we got to do this, so let’s just get it over with and remain friends with everyone who is still alive. Playing Chamber’s wife is Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the waitress from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), an actress adept at playing white trash and well suited to her role. She looks and sounds ridiculous. One of the first things Chambers and her do upon receiving their money is to get dental braces.

The only person miscast here is Jason Sudeikis. His hit man is ridiculous. For instance, upon purchasing guns, he decides to go for the 1700s musket that he has to pour gunpowder into. He’s that type of guy. The problem is Sudeikis neither looks nor acts anything like anybody actually tough. It’s too cartoonish and this character would have been better had someone like Liam Neeson or Danny Trejo been cast.

The movie, like many movies, perhaps leans too much on spectacle. Zach Galifinakis’ trip to Mexico is littered with many jokes that could be filed under the ‘funny hat’ category. It’s never not funny but also not particularly memorable either. And the climax of the story is too big to truly ground the comedy. The Chambers family in an act of profound stupidity, that is never truly mined for its great potential, throw a gigantic redneck party entitled “Neptune’s Conch” in their new McMansion. The FBI stake it out in one plotline and Zach Galifinakis in another plotline dresses like James Bond in order to infiltrate and rescue his now kidnapped love. This is one of those times when you wonder what these obviously talented people would have come up with had they not been given such a large budget to spend on gigantic spectacle. “Ghostbusters” earlier this year had the same sort of problem in its climax. The movie slipped into action movie territory upon the greased slide of easy money when it should have been reaching an emotional climax in that higher territory where the best comedy resides. In effect, the ending is weaker than the beginning or middle.

Still it’s a good movie. It tries to deliver laughs a minutes and much more often than not succeeds.

Birdman (5/5 Stars)

Or: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

When Roger Ebert came upon a long shot in a movie he applied the Goodfellas standard to it. This standard referred to Martin Scorsese’s famous shot of Henry Hill taking out his girlfriend to the local nightclub. The shot starts with Hill handing his car keys to the valet and then taking his girl past the long line outside the club into a backdoor through the kitchen (he slips several guys $20 each) and into the main club area where the proprietor brings out a special table just for him and plants it in the front right next to the band. Hill sits down and his friends at the next table buy him a bottle of wine. The shot ends at 3 minutes 13 seconds. Subsequent filmmakers, inspired by Goodfellas, attempted such long shots of their own and Ebert was continually dismayed by what he saw. The copycats got the technicalities correct but missed the point. What made the long shot in Goodfellas great was not that it took a lot of skill and coordination to pull it off (it did), but that it was the correct way to tell the story. Scorsese was relating to the audience how Henry Hill’s position in the mafia opened doors to him that were closed to regular people. The best way to show that would be how quickly he could get a seat in a crowded at the Copacabana in real time. Add on that the song that played over the entire shot, The Crystal’s “Then He Kissed Me,” and the audience also gets a great idea of how his girlfriend felt about the whole thing, i.e. she was super impressed by it. The long shot in Goodfellas is not a showoffy ‘look what I can do with a camera’ conceit. It is the story. That is what makes a long shot great or not great. After all if just making the shooting process as hard as possible were what made it great, then Hitchcock’s “Rope” is the king of long shots (the entire 90 minute movie only has four takes). But it isn’t and you don't really need to see “Rope.” Hitchcock was just playing around with his camera to see if he could do it. There was no reason that movie needed to be told that way.

Which brings us to Director Alejandro Innaritu and Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s “Birdman,” which is not unlike Rope. I mention the cinematographer because he happens to be the best in the business. He works with Terrance Malick (Tree of Life and To the Wonder) and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men and Gravity) and this is not the first time he has worked in incredibly long shots. In other movies though the long shots generally concerned action scenes. (The point of long shots in action scenes is to give a more realistic ‘you are there!’ momentum to what is happening on the screen. If you have ever seen ‘Children of Men’ and ‘Gravity’ you will know what I mean.) But ‘Birdman’ is not an action movie. It is a story about Riggan Thompson a washed up movie star who was last culturally relevant a quarter century ago when he played the very popular comic book character ‘Birdman.’ He enjoyed great success as ‘Birdman’ but soon became unable to do anything else. When he refused to do “Birdman 4,” his career went down the tubes. Now he is staging an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” on Broadway. He is desperately trying to become a serious artist again and is fighting against the widespread notion that he is a cartoon character and can’t be anything else.

Now why does this need to be shot in one continuous long shot (It is and it is very technically impressive but nevermind let’s apply the Goodfellas standard). Well, the surprise answer is something I have never seen a long shot in a movie ever accomplish. Surprisingly the way the long shots in this movie are used, they actually take the focus off of what the director is doing and allow the audience to focus much more on the actors. It is really kind of exhilarating. Wactching ‘Birdman,’ a movie about people putting on a play, actually feels like a play. It is even written like a play. By that I mean that characters provide through dialogue much more exposition than usual and at other times go into emotional monologues and speeches at length the way that is generally impossible in movie time. You may have noticed that a three hour play basically feels the same length as a two-hour movie. The whole ‘being there’ aspect of a play elongates the audience’s patience whereas movies generally need to move much faster. But here, because of the extraordinarily skilfull camera of Lubezki, the momentum of the long take gives the actors far more leeway for dramatic performances. And boy, do the cast in the movie rise to the occasion. There is some serious throw down acting in this movie and it occurs all the way through it.

Anchoring the movie as Riggan Thomas is none other than Michael Keaton who if you remember him at all you probably remember him as the Tim Burton era Batman. The role is so perfectly tailored to Keaton’s life (his career did have a downturn after he stopped being Batman) that it provokes the question of whether the movie was inspired by him. Probably not but he is the perfect casting decision on paper and it turns out as well in practice. It is a great performance and should be a cinch for an Oscar nomination. Certainly nobody this year has done “more” acting in a movie. Playing against him as his main antagonist (among many) is Edward Norton as one of those crazy method ‘actors’ that throw fits when they drink water instead of gin in a scene when they are supposed to be drinking f*cking gin. Then there is Zach Galifinakis as Riggan’s best friend, agent, and producer. Zach plays the sane one in this movie, a choice that reminded me of the casting of Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The movie is crazy, so why not cast a crazy comedian as the serious one. It works. I liked it. Rounding out the cast is Naomi Watts (a long time actress and newcomer to Broadway), Emma Stone (who has huge eyes), Andrea Riseborough, and Amy Ryan (divorcee of Riggan). All of them do good jobs even if they don’t get the really big moments like for instance running through Times Square in only underwear with a marching band in the distance. Someone does that, won’t tell you who.

‘Birdman’ is a seamless auditory and visual experience. There is an element of magic in the movie that is not fully explained but after awhile does not really need to be. It feels correct and is fairly understood as an extension of the scene’s emotional tone. There are plenty of details that lend to the overall otherworldliness of the movie. A couple of great ones cherry picked from the movie include the fog machines, the Christmas lights at the liquor store, a Japanese critic, and a certain quote from Shakespeare’s Macbeth at precisely the right time. Birdman is a must see movie. It is one of the best of the year and should at least net Lubezki’s 2^nd Oscar in as many years.

The Campaign (4/5 Stars)

Five-term incumbent congressional candidate for North Carolina, Cam Brady, played by Will Ferrell, has invited his challenger, the local tour guide/novice political contender, Marty Huggins, played by Zach Galifinakis, to a civility brunch. Marty unwittingly attends it. Both candidates step up to the podium and profess their wish to have a civil campaign for Congress devoid of all the negative smear tactics that mar the American political landscape. Then as Marty sits down, Cam comes up and announces that he has a slideshow of his opponent, a helpful introduction he has put together for the press corps. Cam shows several embarrassing photos of Marty, digs in a few passive aggressive slights, and shows a picture of Marty's two pet pug dogs. Pug dogs, Cam explains, are Chinese, just an interesting fact for everyone in the press ought to meditate about. Then Cam sits down and as Marty is confusedly trying to figure out what just happened, Cam whispers with venom, “Welcome to the fucking show.”

Above all, “The Campaign,” is funny. Its best attribute is that it allows two veteran and extremely skilled comedians with vastly different styles to play off each other. Will Ferrell uses his best alpha male aggressive egomaniacal man-boy techniques to play Cam Brady, a politician who will remind you of several of the more alpha male aggressive egomaniacal man-boys of American politics in the recent past. He has the hair of Jon Edwards, the libido of Bill Clinton, the grammar of George W. Bush, and the camera techniques of Anthony Weiner. Marty Huggins, will remind you less of American politicians than of Zach Galifinakis himself, in that he has an out-of-shape physique, an out-of-style facial hairstyle, and an effeminate weirdo aura. This generally plays out with Marty trying to attack in a terribly feeble and ineffective way, while Cam counterattacks with far too much power ending up causing himself as much if not more damage than he inflicts on Marty. See the scene where they trash talk each other in the first debate or the attempt to kiss the same baby afterwards.

The movie also does a great job of setting up a comic technique that let’s just call “Line-o-Rama.” A “Line-o-Rama” is a set-up that allows several punch lines to fit into the same joke. The best instance of this is when Marty tells his family at the dinner table that he is running for Congress and thus they will all be under much media scrutiny. Marty promises his sons that he will not be mad as long as they come clean to him about anything embarrassing before the press does. What follows is a series of confessions about increasingly weird and perverted things, all of which are funny because Marty has promised he would not get mad no matter what they may be. Comedically speaking, “Line-o-Ramas” are great because of the efficiency they entail. For every one setup you can get five-to-ten laughs and “The Campaign” does this several times in the span of the movie.

The movie also does a fine job of playing comedic jujitsu with its marketing trailers. A huge problem with trailers for comedies is that they invariably give away the best jokes. Jokes generally need to be a surprise, so it is always a bad idea to put the best ones in a trailer. But here, either the jokes in the trailer are actually not in the movie, or they are tweaked in such a way that they still work as surprises. The hunting scene in the trailer where Marty shoots Cam in the leg with a crossbow actually works better in the movie because of what they changed. In fact, the trailer may have even made what happened in the movie funnier. How “The Campaign” was marketed is something that should be imitated by other comedies.

The movie’s main weakness is its length. At 97 minutes it sometimes feels like it is skipping scenes. It usually is a good idea to make a comedy as lean as possible in order to keep up a fast pace, but were losing something in terms of character development and targets for satire. There is too much to make fun of with this subject and too little of it gets onto the screen. What is there though works is relevant scathing social satire. 

The satire comes from how either of these candidates could ever reasonably get elected. The movie employs the Motch brothers, a pair of billionaire brothers played by Jon Lithgow and Dan Akroyd to pull this off. They have supported Cam Brady with untold amounts of money in the last five elections and have succeeded getting him elected each time. This time however Cam has drunk-dialed and left a very salacious and adulterous voicemail on the wrong answering machine (Seth Macbreyer’s to be exact). His numbers plummet and the Motch brothers look for someone to replace Cam. They settle on Marty Huggins, as he is the son of a well-known ex-politician (Brian Cox). The Motch brothers hire a campaign manager, played by a snaky Dylan McDermot, to form Marty into less of a weirdo and more of an American. First step is redecorating Marty’s house with lots of rustic wood paneling and replacing Marty’s beloved pugs with a Chocolate Labrador and a Golden Retriever. As the campaign manager explains, focus groups want their politicians to be Authentic. So Marty is completely re-tailored in order to achieve Authenticity. And it works too because I don't know, Americans (or at least the majority of them) tend to view eccentricities of character (i.e. what makes a person an individual) as phony fakery. 

And also notice how little attention is paid to actual issues during the debates. Supposedly Cam Brady is a Democrat and Marty Huggins is a Republican but you wouldn’t hear anything about either party’s platform in this movie. All the attacks and defenses are about personal foibles, suspicious alliances with Communism and Al Qaeda, and which one supports the troops or loves Jesus more. This seems less of the movie actually being ignorant of the issues and more as deliberate satire of actual politics. In one scene an intern brings up the idea of running an advertisement about how multi-national corporations get tax credits for outsourcing American jobs to other countries. Cam Brady yells the intern out of the room and decides to put out a sex-tape instead. Cam Brady is a Democrat keep in mind, but that is beside or may just be the point. The point might be that both parties should logically be against tax breaks for corporations who fire American workers, but neither candidate has any plans to change it or even talk about it because well, they have a better chance of winning the election by focusing on trivial bullshit. As for the Motch brothers, they don’t care at all whether they help elect a Democrat or a Republican just as long as the people they put in power remember who put them there.

Is this satire relevant? Take our current presidential campaign. Why should I know that Mitt Romney once put his dogs on the roof of his car for a road trip, or that he has a car elevator, or his opinion of the London Olympics, or that he beat up a gay kid in high school? There is no reason to know these things. None of it matters when it comes to actually running a country. Hell, you know how little personal morals matters to being an effective politician. Lyndon Johnson boned every woman he could get his hands on. He also happened to be one of the best senator majority leaders this country ever had. Shit, lots of it, was actually accomplished in Congress when he was in charge. As Cam Brady states during his Capra-esque moment of preposterous humanity at the end of “The Campaign,” being a great politician and being a great congressman are two entirely different things.

"The Campaign," is director Jay Roach's second great political movie of the year. (The first was HBO’s “Game Change,” about the vice presidential pick of Sarah Palin.) One is a fictional comedy and the other is a historical drama but the theme is the same, the idiotic way that we as a people tend to choose our leaders. The brilliant thing about “Game Change” was not that it bashed Sarah Palin. It was brilliant because it explained quite clearly why Sarah Palin was a choice that made sense and for a couple weeks looked like a home run. I figure we got lucky that Obama seems to have a brain, because quite frankly, we elected him because he looked nice and gave great speeches. That seems to be the most important ingredient nowadays and everything else is frosting. 

If I had a suggestion to the American people it would be to ignore national politics and the national media that covers it in general. Local politics are far more important. Those people actually affect the day-to-day lives of citizens. They are the ones that make the zoning decisions, administer the schools, pick up the garbage, and provide police and fire services among many many other things. What’s more, these are people you can actually influence. One, because your vote has much more power on the local level than on the federal level and two, nobody else gives a shit. 

  

The Hangover: Part II (2/5 Stars)

“10: The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.”

- Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses

Comedy happens when somebody gets exactly what they deserve. Tragedy happens when bad things befall good people. If you do not have the ability to grasp this very simple basic difference than you might just be one of the makers of “The Hangover: Part 2,” a movie that discards nearly everything that made Part I a superior comedy and leaves behind a mess of awkwardness, unpleasantness, and a story that, if it took place in the real world, would be really sad.

The original conceit of the first Hangover movie was nothing short of brilliant. Four guys go to Vegas for a bachelor party. The next morning, Alan (played by Zach Galifinakis), Stu (played by Ed Helms), and Phil (played by Bradley Cooper) wake up in a trashed hotel room with disastrous hangovers. The groom is missing and nobody can remember where they lost him. But there are several clues around: a hospital band, a receipt from an ATM, a tiger, a chicken, a baby, and a police car. The rest of the movie concerns the three trying to piece together the mystery and meeting many different comic characters along the way. “The Hangover: Part II” follows this formula but in a vastly inferior way. This time it is Stu getting married. The wedding is taking place in Thailand. A couple of nights before the wedding, the four guys plus the bride’s 16-year-old nephew, Terry, have one beer by a campfire. Stu, Alan, and Phil wake-up the next morning with disastrous hangovers in a vagrant apartment in Bangkok and Terry is missing. But instead of a multitude of clues there is but two, a monkey and a severed finger. Both are dead ends and don’t lead to anything. In fact, whenever a clue or lead is finally brought to light it is usually entirely explored in the very next scene. Thus, there is very little mystery to Part II and that is a huge problem both in terms of the movie’s pace and comedy.

One of the more brilliant things about the first movie’s structure was the way it efficiently set up subplots. A clue was shown at the beginning and this gave the movie an excuse to switch tracks from one comic situation to another via some hilarious shock moments. Some good examples are the cops busting into a room, Mike Tyson waiting for the guys in their hotel room, or an Asian gang purposefully ramming the guys’ car. These moments don't exist in Part II because nothing is ever set up. So instead of quick comical transitions we are left with the guys walking around in depressed moods to locations that seem arbitrarily chosen. This movie isn't nearly as intelligent nor as interesting to watch unfold.

But this wouldn’t be nearly as big a problem if the movie were funny. And this is where “The Hangover Part II” inexplicably fails consistently. For one thing, all the characters have turned into jerks. The most notable transformation is Alan. What was a very funny weird but well-meaning oddball in the first movie has turned into a total asshole. He is mean to his parents, his friends, and most notably to Terry, who hasn’t done anything to deserve all the insults. This isn't funny. It's awkward. Generally speaking, a movie should make the audience like the good people in the story and dislike the bad. That way the movie is enjoyable when good stuff happens to the good people and bad stuff happens to the bad. (You would think that this would go without saying). But here there is no difference between the good and bad. They are all assholes. This goes for all the side characters in the sub-plots as well. Where Part I had some variability in the types of people the guys met (like say sweetheart Mike Tyson, heart of gold hooker Heather Graham, macho cop Rob Riggle, the annoyed doctor, etc.) everyone in Part II seems to be slightly different versions of the same jerk. The tattoo guy is a jerk. The Buddhist Monks are jerks. The drug dealers are jerks. The father-in-law is a jerk. The crime boss, played by Paul Giamatti, is a huge snarling screaming jerk. Nobody seems to be having any fun. Even the flashbacks of the night before don't show anybody having fun. The one exception is Mr. Chow, played once again by Ken Jeong, and he’s dead for half the movie. The story takes place almost entirely in a dank cesspool of inner city Bangkok. Everything is the color of puke. The funniest lines are spoken by Alan and these are mostly non-sequitors. You know a comedy is in trouble when the best jokes are funny precisely because they have nothing to do with the storyline.

The director Todd Phillips has always been very skilled at casting groups of comedians with different comic styles (Road Trip, Old School, Starsky and Hutch). In the first Hangover he hit the motherlode with the oddball Galifinakis, the neurotic Helms, and the laid back Bradley Cooper. The three played off each other very well. This was especially true whenever things would get too crazy. At that point the movie could depend on Cooper to be a relaxing agent. They wake up in a trashed hotel room. “Looks like we had a bit of fun last night,” Cooper wryly remarks, hardly worried. A valet brings around a cop car instead of their Rolls Royce. Cooper volunteers to drive it, not missing a beat. In Part II, this dynamic falls apart completely and the main reason is that Cooper can’t realistically be a relaxing agent without sounding like an uncaring asshole. The situations the guys find themselves in are far too serious. Do you understand the comedic difference between getting tasered as a punishment for stealing a cop car as opposed to getting shot for no reason whatsoever? Do you understand the difference between a very bad sunburn and a permanent face tattoo? Or how about the difference between cheating on an unfaithful shrew of a girlfriend by accidentally marrying Heather Graham as opposed to cheating on your faultless fiancé via sodomy with a transvestite prostitute? If you do, then I would argue you have a much keener understanding of what is funny and what is not than the makers of this movie. There is a very telling scene in this movie as far as the audience’s laughter level in the theater with me was concerned. It dealt with Stu’s father-in-law giving a toast. It starts with a couple of insults at Stu’s expense, which the audience definitely laughed at. It goes on for several more insults, each one drawing less laughter than the one before. And then the toast just keeps on going for much longer than the movie needed to make absolutely clear that the father-in-law isn’t telling jokes at all. Instead, he is expressing outright hatred of his son-in-law and maliciously intends to humiliate him in front of his bride to be, his entire family, and all his friends. By the end of the toast, the audience had stopped laughing. It wasn’t funny. It was just really fucking mean. 

The Hangover Part II has made so much money already that I’m sure there is more than enough financial incentive to make Part III. I am of the belief that Part III could still be very funny if it stayed competently faithful to the formula of the first movie. The first step I would think is to hire back the original writers, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and fire the hacks they hired to write this one.

Dinner for Schmucks (3/5 Stars) September 9, 2010

What a freak show.
Dinner for Schmucks stars Paul Rudd as an up-and-coming midlevel executive at some sort of financial business. He is in line for a promotion. The catch is that he has to take part in a dinner party where the various invitees, all top level executives in the company, compete as to who can bring the biggest idiot along as a guest. Rudd serendipitously happens upon Barry, played by Steve Carell. Barry’s hobby is taxidermy and he specializes in scavenging mice road-kill and inserting them in the place of humans in intricate dioramas of artistic masterpieces, or as he calls them “mousterpieces.” What an idiot, Rudd thinks, and decides to take him to the party. Now you may be thinking: inviting people to dinner party just to make fun of them. Isn’t that a bit mean? Yes it is, and the movie agrees. So there is a strange dichotomy here. We are presented with a freak show and than asked to empathize with the freaks and dislike the people who laugh at them. As a consequence the movie isn’t as funny as it should be because it suggests that we would be assholes if we thought it was. This movie was based on a French film called, “The Dinner Party.” I heard that one was much meaner than this one. It was probably funnier too. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be nice and funny at the same time. May I suggest a way that this movie could have done exactly that? First though I feel I have to discuss what exactly makes us laugh. 



These aren’t my ideas. They are Freud’s and they come from a book aptly titled “Jokes and their Relationship to the Subconscious.” Very good book, I suggest it if you take being funny seriously. I will try to briefly summarize. There are mainly three things that make us laugh. They are Economy, Misdirection, and Aggression. 

I’ll skip the first two. What mainly concerns us here is Aggression, or Schadenfreude, the pleasure we get from other people’s misery. We all have aggressive natural instincts. Your boss may be a nice guy, but his pain is easy to laugh at because deep down you are unhappy that you have to take orders from anybody. To some degree we all want autonomy. There doesn’t even have to be an “actual joke” associated with it. If there is a person you feel routinely bullies you and then one day somebody else stands up to them or simply says, “Fuck that guy” behind his back, you would probably feel visceral pleasure and laugh. It is an outlet for the aggression you would normally act upon on if you weren’t suppressing it to say keep your job. The same goes for sex. When a guy calls a woman a slut (or construction dudes catcall) the words are an outlet for sexual aggression. The problem isn’t necessarily that the woman is being sexually active as much as who she’s not being sexually active with, namely the guy who is insulting her. The holy triumvirate of comedy is Religion, Sex, and Politics. Why? Because God, the Government, and Women (or Men) are the main players in the world who are limiting your natural inclination to do whatever the fuck you want. 

The problem with this movie is that Barry is completely harmless. There’s absolutely no reason why you would feel intimidated by him. He controls nothing. He doesn’t get the women. He’s a fantastic artist but certainly not somebody you would find yourself in competition with. If he’s funny at all in this movie, it’s because Steve Carell has him say funny things along the levels of Economy or Misdirection. He doesn’t even make you feel guilty for existing. (I bring this up because I’m sure we’ve all heard people rant about homeless people or other unpopular but completely powerless groups. I fear sometimes that people are so hostile because the insulter feels that the simple presence of societal decay on the streets impugns all of society and declares us all guilty. Thus the resentment.) Barry is clueless but not pitiable. He likes his art and is very good at it. Normal people may ostracize him but he is happy in his mind. Thus his solitude is blest and makes it almost impossible to make fun of him. Really, you would have to have some sort of grudge against happy harmless people. (i.e. you would have to be a total asshole.) 

Because of this it is perhaps a not so good thing that the movie spends so much time on Barry. It would be better if we spent more time with the odious company executives. They are the type of huge arrogant jerks we all know too well. Two of them are played by Ron Livingstone (Office Space) and Larry Wilmore (The Daily Show). Certainly they are capable of more comedy than what we see here. 

The executives should have at least gotten as much character development as the only truly villainous person in the story. That character is Thermen, played by Zach Galifinakis. Thermen works at the IRS (Booo!), stole Barry’s wife (Boo!! Hiss!!), and controls Barry via mind control (Boo- wait what?) Oh what a jerk. Zach’s presence marks the funniest scenes in the movie. It’s a visceral pleasure watching Barry take him down in the climax. There is no reason why the executives couldn’t have been made as ugly as Thermen. You don’t have to give them weird hobbies. Watch or read “American Psycho.” That’s how you go about making fun of rich, good-looking people. 

Steve Carell is still pretty funny here but most of the jokes seem to come from non-sequitors and throw-away lines. Here is an example of a particularly good exchange he has with Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) who plays a psychotic modern artist as they sit and overlook a goat ranch:

Clement: Have you ever spent five months living with a herd of goats as one of them?
Barry: No
Clement: That surprises me. The thing about a goat is, it never denies itself what it wants.
Barry: A goat eat'll anything. It could probably eat a bike. 
Clement: A goat could eat itself, it was driven to it. I'm just a goat halfway through eating itself.
Barry: Just to be clear, what exactly are we talking about?
Clement: Everything.

Most of the humor in this movie is like that. Paul Rudd essentially plays a straight character. He also has a girlfriend who isn’t funny at all and an assistant, played by very funny Kristen Schall, who is sorely underused. Then there is a psychotic ex-girlfriend who is just too weird to be funny. People need a reason, no matter how tenuous, to be truly crazy. Perhaps they should have made her a religious zeolot on a mission from God, or addicted to LSD, or just a diagnosed schizophrenic. Then she would have made sense and probably would have been funnier. I can’t say I completely recommend this movie, but I am still interested in seeing the French version. So take that for what it’s worth.

p.s. If you go to an AMC movie theater before noon, the movie costs $6. It’s like 1998 student prices all over again!

Up in the Air (5/5 Stars) December 25, 2009

To say that ‘Up in the Air’ is a movie “or our times” is selling it short.

Ivan Reitman directs his third film and George Clooney stars as a habitual loner in “Up in the Air.” More than anything, this movie is about the breakup of human relationships. I mention the word ‘human’ because that is how deep this movie goes. It speaks not to a time period, ethnicity, or type of personality. It is about our species.

George Clooney (perhaps the perfect choice as in “real life” he has famously never married) plays a man devoid of most human relationships. His job is to fire other humans from their jobs because their employers are too chicken-shit. This takes him around the country for most of the year. He is on track to become the 7th person ever to achieve 10,000,000 frequent flier miles. On the side, he gives lectures about how ones connections in life are weights upon the soul like a backpack one has to carry around. Up until where this movie starts, I would assume he talked to very little people. The few he would speak to (i.e. the ones he fires) he never gets to see again.

But now! There is some restructuring in the very corporation he works for. His boss (played by Jason Bateman) is impressed by a girl fresh out of college (played by Anna Kendrick) who wants to take the technology of today and revolutionize the business. Instead of firing them face to face like old man Clooney, she wants to do it over the Internet. It will save the company 85% of its travel costs. 

Clooney is forced to take her on the road and show her the ropes. They both see and learn a lot. So do we. I personally love movies that teach me things. Here, I learn all about the perks of being a frequent flier. Clooney has all the high-flying elite cards those people that get around way too often. We get to see inside all the admiral clubs, we get to cut in front of all the lines, we hear all the Airworld terminology, we get to travel first class. 

And while we are at it, we see the faces of people who have just lost their jobs. Ivan Reitman apparently hired real people who lost their jobs in this Great Recession. They get to speak their minds about how they feel. Clooney and Kendrick attempt to give their preconceived condolences. Most of the time it doesn’t work. 

If the movie were only about seeing people getting fired, it would be “about our times.” But it isn’t about just that. It also contains some great stuff about the break up of human relations. Some really thought out scenarios, some profound conversations, and some incredible situations. There’s a girl who follows a boy to Nebraska after college. There’s a groom who gets cold feet before his marriage. And Clooney’s character for maybe a very rare time in his life falls for a woman (Vera Farmiga from The Departed). It ends just the way it should. It is very much the title of the movie.

George Clooney plays a role that perhaps only he can play. He should get a Nomination for his work. Also Anna Kendrick will probably get a nomination for her supporting work. It should be said though that the power of her performance comes mainly from the script. Great parts for women are unfortunately scarce and any very well written part is usually a lock for a nomination. This is one of those. Vera also strikes the perfect notes as well. This is one of those movies where you simply can’t think of anything that could have been done better. 

Are humans relational or not? Do people, partners, and family weigh us down? Or are we more at home flying up in the air? What does it mean to live life to the fullest? Does it involve keeping in motion or settling down? Questions, questions, questions. I will say at least this much, this movie is not realistic in at least one aspect: The truly alienated and completely free people (like Mr. Clooney in this movie is supposed to represent) never get to espouse their views upon other people. They do not give lectures to audiences about the greatness of being alone; instead they talk to themselves and murmur in their sleep. They speak to imaginary people in screenplays. In other words, nobody ever hears about the wonders of being alone. Nobody is there to listen. To wish to be alone is to wish to be forgotten. The ironic thing about this movie is that Clooney has so many people to talk to about being alone. But hey, you wouldn’t have a movie if that weren’t the case. 

I hope not to rant too much about the way our society has crumbled in the last half century. I can only point to statistics (See the book Bowling Alone). In that book it showed that the new baby boomers and subsequent generations were more interested in money and careers as opposed to families and community. This story is perhaps the end result of such priorities. If there is a silver lining to the Great Recession it is that maybe people will realize that corporations are not as worthwhile and welcoming as families and communities. Corporations (and the free market) will throw you out and fire your ass the second it becomes less profitable. Families stick with you through thick and thin. In hard times at least family ties are more valuable than corporate ties. 

This movie should also be nominated for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Director. I have written reviews for all of Ivan Reitman’s movies. He is the only director I can say that about. He has progressed substantially (see my reviews of Thank You for Smoking and Juno) as I hope I have. I look forward to his next one. 

The Hangover (5/5 Stars) June 18, 2009

To watch The Hangover is to witness the manifestation of a perfectly conceived comedic idea brought to full flower in a perfect comedy and also, perhaps, a couple of breakout performances that may turn some of these dudes, particularly Ed Helms and Zach Gallifinakas, into legitimate stars.
The writers of The Hangover, Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, probably uncorked a bottle of champagne and lit up a couple of cigars the moment they thought up just the concept of this movie. The must have known they had just hit the mother lode. Four buddies head to Vegas for a bachelor’s party two days before one of them gets hitched. Fast-forward to the next morning when three of them wake up in their trash-strewn suite and Doug, the one getting married, is nowhere to be found. Not one of them remembers a thing after they took Jaeger shots on the roof of the hotel the night before, although the tall handsome one (Bradley Cooper picking up a hefty load as the straight man) remarks that the place looks like they had a great time. They find clues that include a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, a hospital wristband, and an enraged Japanese gang among several other things that are too funny to give away. As Ed Helms says, “What is Going On!??!?!!” and yes that is correctly punctuated. 
The genius of this story is that it provides so much opportunity for jokes. From the beginning, the clever idea that anything can happen when one is wasted gives the writers the ability to insert crazy side characters and incredibly wacky subplots at all points of the story with very little needed context. There’s a buck-naked Japanese gang lord in the trunk of the car and he’s pissed off and wielding a crowbar. Sure I believe that, as Mike Tyson wisely intones, “People do weird shit when they’re fucked up.” On top of all this the characters themselves are well written. Phil, played by Bradley Cooper, is perhaps the leader. He rolls with the punches, doesn’t freak out too much, and keeps their course straight unless he’s personally getting them into more trouble, like say, driving on the sidewalk. Stu, played by Ed Helms, is a neurotic dentist with a girlfriend who’s a bitch (She thinks he’s in Napa, because she wouldn’t allow him to go to Vegas). He is certainly the most articulate about how horrible everything is (He is paying for everything himself). This is Ed Helms first major film role and here he is given free rein to go all out. He spends most of the movie in a state of frenzied delirium. Rounding out the trio of misfits is Alan, played by Zach Gallifinakis aka ‘Fat Jesus,’ the brother of the Doug’s fiance. He’s tagging along because he’s the type of person that “social interaction would be good for.” He doesn’t need booze to say weird shit. As far as I can tell he's some sort of Rain Man Retarded, but in a hilarious way. It’s probably helped the movie a lot that none of these guys are stars, because the level playing field between them gives each the ability to support each other’s shine through moments in the script. And there are a lot of shine through moments.
This idea is so good, the structure is so accommodating, the characters so well-developed, and the actors so perfectly cast that as soon as the story is setup in the 1st fifteen minutes before they take those jaeger shots the rest of the movie is an hour and a half of punch line followed by punch line followed by punch line followed by punch line. Every scene is funny, every joke works, not one scene falls flat. The Hangover is the best film I have seen so far this year.
Comedy isn’t easy. Making people laugh for over two hours is a hard thing to do. A good comedy is hard to come by. A great comedy (and by that I mean a movie that succeeds at making people laugh at least every thirty seconds while providing an original and meaningful storyline) is something special to behold. If Comedy got any respect this movie would be seeing nominations come awards time. I suggest one for Best Original Screenplay and perhaps another for Ed Helms for Best Supporting Actor. 
The Director Todd Phillips (Old School, Road Trip, Starsky and Hutch) isn’t the most technically proficient guy but he does have some of the best cameos. Remember that curly haired guy with the glasses who gets caught giving head in the elevator. Yeah, that’s him.

Into the Wild 10/26/07

Into the Wild ventures to places that no other movies dare to go. Frank discussions about life, love, truth, honesty, independence, and beauty. It embraces these subjects and takes no prisoners. What a relief it is to find a film that will go so deep. Truly we laugh sometimes, we find the sight of Alexander Supertramp dragging his kayak through the Grand Canyon absurd. We giggle at the scraggly scruffy man walking the streets of Los Angelos. But underneath it is clear that he knows something that we don't and that there is something inside of him that allows him to do things we would never do, or are sure we cannot. This is one of the years best films.

This was adapted from a very good book by John Krakauer, who also wrote Into Thin Air. The book is a short easy read and it is told in a very uncinematic way. It is a testament to the filmmakers how they made the film work, and how every expansion and addition to the story was correct and appropriate. I love especially the swimming in the ocean, the conversations with Wayne (Vince Vaughn), and the love story (break my heart that God=love place they found and I'm sure actually exists.)
One scene made the movie for me. Alexander Supertramp (Christopher McCandless played by Emile Hirsch in a fantastic peformance) is kayaking down the Grand Canyon when he meets a random Scandinavian couple. They offer him hot dogs and talk excited German. Most people might think this is ridiculous but anyone who has been travelling will not. I travelled the world once upon a time, and I have had such encounters. Whether its a Brit in Chile, Canadians in Greece, an American professor in Krakow, a young married couple on a night train to Copenhagen, A Brazilian in Vienna. I once got lost in Italy, slept on a deserted walkway, and ended up talking to a drunk Spaniard named Lucas for a half hour at 1am. Good times. When watching this movie, I realized a certain nostalgia creep in. The movie felt like all those times I hiked alone in woods or up mountains, those endless walks in deserted cities. Pompeii, Kilimanjaro, Grand Canyon, Tuscany, Jungfraujoch, windmills in Amsterdam in a rain storm. The exhiliration one feels when witnessing a sight that is truly awesome. It is true that this happens only when one is alone. All the senses are heightened and everything is more intense and exciting. This movie knows that feeling inside and out. At two and a half hours it is short.
If anything this movie will get some recognition for Cinematography. There are so many incredible shots in this picture. birds in a sunset, alaskan mountains, the grand canyon, everything. For every hiker, biker, or people who like walking outside once in a while, I wholeheartedly recommend this movie.