A Couple Of Indies: WORDS AND PICTURES & THE ROVER

A couple of indies currently playing at an arthouse near me...

WORDS AND PICTURES

(Dir. Fred Schepisi, 2013)

Fred Schepisi's WORDS AND PICTURES, written by Gerald Di Pego, pulls off a mean feat - it manages to be cloyingly cutesy and numbingly pretentious at the same time.

Taking place at a fictional posh prep school in New England (filmed in Canada), Clive Owen portrays a scruffy, douchey English teacher who's way into words, while Juliette Binoche plays a newly arrived art teacher, who, you guessed it, is all about pictures.

The couple clash, and Owen comes up with some kind of school-wide competition in which words and pictures will fight it out via the students work.Owen's job is on the line because he hasn't produced anything of substance in years, and he has a drinking problem (a "hobby," he calls it).

Binoche suffers from rheumatoid arthritis which limits her ability to paint - she does manage though with the help of crutches, and braces to do some Jackson Pollack-type splatter art.

Owen's character - the former literary sensation going to seed - is one we've seen many times (replace the booze with pot and you've got Michael Douglas in WONDER BOYS), and his pseudo inspirational teaching scenes, are insufferable especially when he tells his students that a haiku is an “early tweet.”

Binoche and Owen, of course, get together which has the film seemingly say that the battle of words against pictures inevitably ends in a tie with sex.

Director Schepisi (ROXANNE, SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION) has made some drecky rom dramedies in his time but this saccharine and preachy exercise is the worst I've seen of his.

The famous quote, oft repeated in this film, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” may be true, but this motion picture sure isn't worth anywhere close to that. Which is why I'm stopping here.

THE ROVER (Dir. David Michôd, 2014)

Set in Australia “ten years after the collapse,” as an opening title tells us, there’s definitely a MAD MAX vibe going on in this new thriller from ANIMAL KINGDOM writer/director David Michôd.

But don’t go looking for the action, or commentary on modern society, that the soon to be rebooted MAD MAX franchise has as its calling cards, as this is a spare, single-minded narrative, that never really gets going.

The bare bones of the premise posit a grizzled Guy Pearce, only identifying himself as a former farmer, trying to track down his car, which we see getting stolen at the film’s beginning by a roving gang of skuzzy criminals led by Scoot McNairy (KILLING THEM SOFTLY, ARGO, MONSTERS).

Pearce enlists Robert Pattinson (TWILIGHT, COSMOPOLIS), as the brother of one of the thieves, to go on a trek across the infinite Australian desert to find them and retrieve his vehicle. The slowly paced adventure across the outback that Pearce and Pattinson go on mostly involves going to desolate locations, whether they be an abandoned town, an opium den, a seedy motel, or an army base, and shooting creepy characters in them in the head.

I won’t spoil the mystery of why Pearce is so driven to get his car back, but I’ll just say that the film is too dreary and drawn out for the conclusion to have the emotional impact it's trying for.

As intense and invested as Pearce is, his character is impenetrable, much like the rest of the movie, but Pattinson actually contributes some of his finest acting so far in his career. The on the cusp of manhood theme that James Frecheville embodied in ANIMAL KINGDOM bleeds through Pattinson’s edgy acting as the unhinged, possibly brain-damaged youngster caught up in a messy mission.

Apart from Pearce and Pattinson’s on point performances, and a smattering of blinding visuals courtesy of cinematographer Natasha Braier, THE ROVER is a dull slog through tired terrain. I bet it could be cut down into a killer 20 minute short though.

More later…

OBVIOUS CHILD: A Plucky Abortion Rom Com

Opening today at the Carolina Theatre in Durham, the Chelsea Theatre in Chapel Hill, and the Rialto Theater in Raleigh:

OBVIOUS CHILD (Dir. Gillian Robespierre, 2014)

With its small comedy club scenes, and shabby New York apartment settings, it sometimes seems throughout this film like comedienne Jenny Slate has hi-jacked an episode of Louie.

Gilliam Robespierre’s writing/directing debut also has got a Girls thing going on too, with its navel gazing mindset, and that Slate and Gaby Hoffmann, who plays her roommate, have both appeared on the popular HBO program.

But the Sundance comedy OBVIOUS CHILD, aka “that rom com about abortion,” mixes its own affable, very amusing sensibility in with these familiar elements, largely due to Slate’s neurotically nerdy performance as a Brooklyn comic who gets knocked up.

The film begins with Slate getting dumped (“dumped up with” as she puts it) after delivering what could be considered a way too personal stand-up routine. Adding to her self-aware sad sack existence is that she will soon lose her day job as a clerk because the bookstore she works at is closing (the Greenwich Village store - Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Books, which actually exists and isn’t closing).

A drunken one-night stand with a nice guy stranger (Jake Lacy, from the last season of The Office U.S.) leaves our heroine with a bun in the oven, but being young, messed up, and way in over her head, Slate decides to have an abortion, scheduled for Valentine’s Day.

Going through the motions, and emotions of ending a pregnancy, the film never makes pro or anti-abortion statements. Nobody tries to talk her out of it, there aren’t sign wielding protesters at the clinic, nothing like that. Slate’s mother, Polly Draper of Thirtysomething fame, even makes a relieved joke when she’s told: “I thought you were going to tell me you were moving to California!”

I, like many, was first introduced to Slate on Saturday Night Live. She was a cast member for one year (2009-2010), and will go down in SNL history for dropping the “F-bomb” (in her debut sketch called “Biker Chick Chat” no less). After that she’s had memorable turns on the aforementioned Girls, Parks and Recreation (as Aziz Ansari’s crazy on again/off again girlfriend Mona-Lisa Saperstein), and the Showtime series House of Lies.

This movie most likely won’t make Slate a household name, but it’s a solid first starring vehicle for her. If you can get through all her fart jokes, you’ll find a winning funny personality especially in touching scenes with Richard Kind as her schlubby father.

Also standing out is a hilariously profane drunk dialing sequence in which Slate repeatedly leaves messages with her ex as she goes further and further off the deep end. Her convincingly over-the-top acting is combined with some deft editing (by Casey Brooks and Jacob Craycroft).

The up and coming actress also holds her own with David Cross as a somewhat sleazy fellow comedian, Gabe Liedman as a much nicer fellow comic, and certainly Lacy, who has a quick-witted sense of humor that appealingly fits with Slate’s. There’s undeniable chemistry between the couple when they come together on what Lacy calls “the best worst Valentine's Day I've ever had.”

Robespierre refashioned her 2009 short film of the same name, which also starred Slate, into this full length feature, but at just 83 minutes it feels like an extended short. I chuckled a lot and loved its crude, goofy energy, but it is a tad slight on the narrative side. Some characters and tangents could’ve stood a little more fleshing out.

So it’s a tad under-cooked, but OBVIOUS CHILD, named after the 1991 Paul Simon song, has heart and humor a plenty. It may be a hard sell to some folks because of its abortion theme and possible unfamiliarity with Slate, but I bet most art house film goers will come out of Robespierre’s plucky little comedy smiling.

More later...

Clint Eastwood's JERSEY BOYS Has More Clichés Than It Does Classic Songs

Opening today at a multiplex near you...

JERSEY BOYS (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 2014)

Jake Kasdan's 2007 spoof WALK HARD was supposed to have killed off all those cheesy music biopic tropes, but, dammit, here there all are again in full force in Clint Eastwood's new Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons film, JERSEY BOYS, based on the hit Tony winning Broadway musical.

There's also that tale of how Frankie Valli, Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio, and Nick Massi came together from humble beginnings to become one of the biggest selling bands of the 20th century is told to us by each of the quartet, one by one, directly to the camera, in a manner that recalls Scorsese (from GOODFELLAS to WOLF OF WALL STREET), just nowhere as stylish.

John Lloyd Young, who won a Tony for the part on Broadway, portrays front man Frankie Valli, a singer whose falsetto can make a mafioso cry. Christopher Walken is that friendly made man that cries when hearing Young sing, and is here to lend the film its only instance of big name star power.

Vincent Piazza (Boardwalk Empire) plays slick fast-talking lead guitarist Tommy DeVito, who gets the band in heavy debt to the mob, while the other members, Bob Gaudio, and Nick Massi (Erich Bergen and Michael Lomenda, who played the roles on the original show's first national tour) barely register, even when it's their turns to narrate.

The screenplay by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (based on their Broadway book) does a poor job of putting the Four Seasons into the context of the times. The narrative starts in the mid-'50s, but by the time the band has a bunch of hits to its name, we're not sure when many scenes are supposed to take place. 

There's nothing to tell us that Valli's solo hit “Can't Take My Eyes Off You,” which they, of course, make a big production number out of, was recorded and released in 1967, the Summer of Love. No mention of the Beatles, or hippies, or Vietnam, or who the President was, or whatever.

The fashions simply go from Mad Men-era duds into '70s Disco-era threads, with no reference to anything else going in the world outside of the Four Seasons bubble.

The well stocked soundtrack, chocked full of the band's hit songs such as “Big Girls Don't Cry,” “Sherry,” and “Rag Doll” (very convincingly sung by Young) keep the film bopping along, but the overwhelming amount of clichés in this by-the-numbers biopic outnumbers even the wealth of classic tracks that are crammed into its bloated 134 minute running time.

And for a film that comes on like a modeled mixture of THAT THING YOU DO and GOODFELLAS, it sure has a clunky flow.

But beyond all the thick Italian-American accents, depictions of street crime, and fourth wall breakage, JERSEY BOYS has a legit connection to Scorsese's 1990 gangster classic. Joe Pesci was a friend to the guys, especially DeVito, and is played here by Joey Russo, who does a passable impersonation. They really didn't have to have him say “Funny, how?” as if to show us the origin of his classic scene in GOODFELLAS though. They really didn't.

This just calls attention to the fact that, try as he might, Eastwood just doesn't have the Scorsesean swagger needed to make this material anything special above the music biopic average.

Eastwood's bland approach here - it's like he's never seen WALK THE LINE, RAY, THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, LA BAMBA, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!, THE DOORS, et al (Hell, it's like he's never even watched his own Charlie Parker biopic BIRD!) - just renders this into another TV movie that will be forever rerun on VH1 Classic.

Eastwood is far from one of my favorite directors, but he's shown a solid sense of storytelling in many of his directorial efforts. But JERSEY BOYS is a story that's been told so many times before that it would take something more inspired than just a close approximation of the music, and a rote run-through of the artists' rise and fall, to make it really sing.

Whether its the recycled chart toppers, or the regurgitated plot points, there's not a single original note that this mediocre musical plays.

More later...