Bad Moms – I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time

BAD MOMS
BAD MOMS

I had almost forgotten that a friend had organized a group outing to see Bad Moms at our local theater that has waiters to take food orders (and alcohol!).  The waitress told me there were 150 women and ONE man in the audience.  One poor husband had come along (and he was in line behind us!).  It was a raucous crowd.  I laughed SO HARD partly because I was in an audience full of moms.  (And the dirty martini helped, too!)   I’m not sure the movie will be nearly as funny to wider audiences.  Mila Kunis is the lead and a mom with two middle schoolers (supposedly she got pregnant in the film at 20.)  I know she’s a mom in real life, but she still seemed too young an actress for kids that age.

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Mila discovers her husband masturbating to a woman on the internet and kicks him out.  She’s trying to handle single motherhood of a son and a daughter, while being harrassed by the bully PTA president (Christina Applegate in a delicious turn, with Jada Pinkett Smith as one of her posse.)
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After a blowup at an interminable PTA meeting on a bake sale (boy, have I sat through those!), she becomes friends with moms played by Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn.
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My favorite scene had them going on a drunken rampage through a supermarket.  They mix mudslides in a milk jug, and flip one dollar bills to the teenage boy clerk.  I was practically on the floor laughing at that point.
Of course Mila runs for PTA President, dates the hot widower, and somehow supports her family with a three day a week part time job.  Yep.  It’s a fantasy film.
It was a great girls night out film to see together.  I just don’t know if it would be quite as funny to non-moms.  For me, a mother for 24 years, I was laughing so hard I practically peed my pants.  But my sons would have zero interest in this film.  Still, it’s nice to have a comedy for adults.  All the actresses were great and very funny, and thank you filmmakers for that hot widower sex scene.
Interesting that the film was written and directed by two men.  The end credits showed each actress with their own real mom, talking about embarrassing bad mom moments.
Three and a half stars out of five.

Captain Fantastic – My favorite Movie at Sundance

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Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic may have been my favorite film of Sundance 2016. Viggo Mortenson is a home schooling father with six children in the wilderness forest somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, completely off the grid. The film opens with him teaching his oldest son to hunt a deer by making him kill it with only a knife and wrestling it to the ground.

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(l to r) George MacKay stars as Bo, Charlie Shotwell as Nai, Nicholas Hamilton as Rellian and Samantha Isler as Kielyr in CAPTAIN FANTASTIC

The young actor, Brit George MacKay,  who plays the oldest son, Bo,  was amazing. The family must leave their forest home to attend a funeral, and the children come to realize how isolated they are from the real material world, and how they may have book knowledge, but they don’t know how to interact with other people outside the family. In one of my favorite scenes a young girl flirts with him at a campsite on route.  They kiss, and then he falls to his knees to propose and ask her mother for her permission to marry her daughter.  They both laugh and think he’s just kidding, but he’s acting just as he’s read about in all the classic novels he’s read.   He afterwards confronts his father, “I don’t know anything!”  The oldest son wants to go away to college, but fears his father’s reaction.

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Viggo is the only person I can imagine in this role. He is exceptional, and this may be the finest role of his career.  (And that’s really saying something, after Aragorn, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence) He has the intelligence and the screen presence that makes you believe this is a charismatic father who could raise his children to be philosopher kings.  And that he could take it all too far.  He doesn’t let the kids believe in Christmas, but they celebrate Noam Chomsky Day!

Writer/Director Matt Ross premiered Captain Fantastic at Sundance in January.  He’s known more for his work as an actor in series like HBO’s Big Love and Silicon Valley.   Matt Ross talked at the Q&A about how he grew up in communes himself in California.   He shows us the simple pleasures of this life, singing around the campfire together in the evening — but also how isolating it is.

All the kids are terrific, and have great chemistry together and with Viggo.  You could see the rapport they still have with him at the Q&A.  I was stunned at the performances Matt Ross and Viggo got out of these very young child actors.

Frank Langhella (always excellent) plays Viggo’s father-in-law, and they have a confrontation over the way he is raising the children.  After one of the kids has an accident, Langhella wants to take the children away and sue for custody.  You need someone as powerful and imposing on screen as Langhella to be a worthy antagonist for Viggo Mortenson.

This film is quirky and heartfelt like Little Miss Sunshine.  I got teary eyed, and it has a very satisfying hopeful ending.

Captain Fantastic released today in a limited number of theaters.  It’s playing in downtown Chicago, and I hope it will move out to suburban theaters in the coming weeks.  I’m hoping Viggo gets an Oscar nomination for this role.

Five stars out of five.  Cannot recommend highly enough.

The Academy makes a bold step and invites 683 new members – including Sharmila Tagore!

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After all the lack of diversity at the Oscars this year — not any actors of color and with no nomination for female director Ava Duvernay the year before, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs has taken a very bold step to change the makeup of the Academy membership.  Last year they invited a large number of new members, but this year goes way beyond that with a whopping record 683 new invited members, many of them women and people of color.

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Cheryl Boone Isaacs

The list is really exciting!  There are so many new women directors now in the group, and that may have the most impact.  (Both Wachowski sisters were added.)  I note many new women cinematographers, too.  The total list had 46% women and 41% new members of color according to Variety.

Idris Elba, who won TWO SAG awards, and was shockingly not nominated for an Oscar for Beasts of No Nation was invited.  Other names in the acting category popped out at me like

Nate Parker (for acting, but he’ll be up for directing and best picture next year).

Chadwick Boseman – “Captain America: Civil War,” “Get on Up”
John Boyega – “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Attack the Block”

Michael B. Jordan – “Creed,” “Fruitvale Station”
Daniel Dae Kim – “The Divergent Series: Insurgent,” “Crash”
Regina King – “Ray,” “Jerry Maguire”

Freida Pinto – “IMMORTALS”, “SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE”

and then Sharmila Tagore!

Among the directors, I was excited to see this name

Deepa Mehta – “MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN”,“WATER”

And especially for Marielle Heller who directed the wonderful THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL

AND!  Taika!

Taika Waititi – “HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE”,“WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS”

Taika Waititi is also the director of the upcoming Thor movie.  (Hunt for the Wilderpeople is amazing and is in limited release now in theaters.)

Check out the entire list here.

 

 

 

Swiss Army Man – The craziest weirdest movie I saw at Sundance 2016

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Swiss Army Man was the craziest film we saw at Sundance 2016. (And we saw 22 films, so that’s really, really saying something.)  I saw the trailer before my viewing of The Lobster this weekend, and that reminded me that Swiss Army Man is coming to theaters June 24th.

The film begins with Paul Dano trying to hang himself on a deserted island.  A dead body (Daniel Radcliffe) washes ashore and begins to fart.  Copiously.

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Dano rides Radcliffes’ flatulent body like a jet ski off the island.  This is the first 10 minutes of the film, and it sets the tone of magical realism.  I don’t think I’ve ever been at a Sundance showing at Eccles Theater (the largest venue) with so many walk outs.  I was seated 7 rows from the front, and two groups of 4 people in seats in front of ours walked out only half an hour into the film.  From an article in Variety, they weren’t the only ones.  And this was after there were huge lines of people trying to get in to the showing.

This film was very divisive at the fest.  My husband hated it and found it juvenile.  My 23 year old son loved it, and gave it four stars (out of four).  I think it was his favorite of the whole festival.  I was in the middle.  I laughed quite a bit, but it wasn’t my favorite, by any means.

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The title, Swiss Army Man refers to all the ways that Daniel Radcliffe’s dead body saves Paul Dano’s on their journey back to civilization. Strike a spark, and the farting corpse lights a fire. Dripping rain fills the body with drinkable water (gross!). The body begins to talk, and they have conversations on the meaning of life, and what it means to be alive. It’s philosophical, and crazy weird. The body sees a picture of a girl on Dano’s phone, and his erect penis becomes a compass. Really.

The acting is great, and I have to give kudos to Daniel Radcliffe for his physical work.  He had to hold what looked like extremely uncomfortable poses as a dead corpse with a broken neck.

“The Daniels”, the directing duo of Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, won a special jury prize for directing this film at Sundance. I wasn’t familiar with them before the fest.  Evidently, they “broke the internet” with their music video Turn Down For What.  Daniel Kwan, one of the directing Daniels duo stars in the music video:

 

You, dear reader, have the advantage over all those festival goers at the premiere.  You can watch the trailer below and decide if this is your kind of movie.  It’s certainly one I will never forget.

Two and a half stars out of five.

 

 

 

I loved The Lobster, every surreal absurdist minute of it

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I adored the absurd surreal film The Lobster.  I missed it at Sundance, where it premiered in January.  This is a love it or hate it kind of movie.  I loved it, but some of the people walking out of my suburban theater HATED it.  They really hated it.  For me, it was just my cup of tea, and a welcome standout after a string of mediocre films I’ve seen this past week.

The film opens with a woman driving in the countryside in the rain.  She stops her car, gets out and shoots a donkey in a field.  Gets back in her car and drives away.  It’s never referred to again, but that sets the tone of how absurd this world is that Greek writer/director Yorges Lanthimos has created.  We then first see David (Colin Farrell).   His wife is breaking up their 12 year marriage for another man.  And that means he has to leave immediately to be taken away to “The Hotel” to be paired up with another woman.  Singles and loners are not allowed in this near future dystopian world.

When David arrives at The Hotel (in County Kerry, Ireland), the manager (the always exceptional Olivia Colman) explains the rules to him.  He has 45 days to find a new mate or he will be turned into an animal.  He chooses a lobster, because they can live for 100 years and he’s always liked the sea.  “Excellent choice.”  He is warned that if he doesn’t find his true mate in time, he cannot couple after he is transformed if she picks another animal. “A wolf and a penguin could not couple because that would be absurd.”

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This film is populated by so many of my favorite character actors.  Olivia Colman of The Night Manager.  John C. Reilly is a man with an unfortunate lisp.  Ben Whishaw has a limp.  Ashley Jenkins of The Extras is known as “Biscuit Woman”.  Couples must come together with the same distinguishing characteristic.  Limping Man (Ben Whishaw) bangs his head against tables to get nosebleeds to pair with a woman with that frequent malady.  All the single residents of the hotel must go out on hunts into the woods with tranquilizer guns to search for “loners”.

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If they catch a loner, they can extend their stay at the hotel.  One unfeeling woman has bagged so many loners that she has an extra 160 days.  David (Farrell) has brought his brother with him, who has been turned into a dog.

Every one of the actors delivers their lines in a quirky deadpan manner.  I think that’s what inspired some of the hate of my fellow viewers at the theater, but I just thought it added to all the absurdity.  These actors commit to the bizarre rules of this film world.  It borders on absurd comedy, and then there are some sudden scenes of violence or drama.  Lisping Man is punished for masturbating in his room, by having his hand forced into a toaster, for instance.

The-Lobster-2016David escapes and becomes part of the Loner band in the forest where he meets Rachel Weisz.  They have to pretend to be a couple to venture into the city for supplies, and David enthusiastically falls into the playacting and kissing.  The young woman leader of the Loners is just as strict in her no fraternizing rules as the manager of The Hotel had been with her coupling rules.  Farrell and Weisz plot together to escape.

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The ending was a fade to black that left you hanging a bit, and was my most unsatisfying moment of the film.  The rest was just fantastic.  Colin Farrell gained 40 pounds for this movie.  He has quite the paunch and “dad bod”.  I think he relished being more of a character actor leading man in this film.  I thought he was so good, as was the always great Rachel Weisz.

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This film is not for everyone.  But if you love absurd surreal “Sundance” kinds of movies, this will be right up your alley.  Four and a half stars out of five.

Learning To Drive – I just loved watching Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley acting together

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Learning To Drive is that rarest of films, one produced, written, edited and directed (Isabel Coixet) by women.  The film opens with Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband Ted (Jake Weber) arguing in the back of a taxi driven by Darwan (Ben Kingsley).  Ted has been cheating on Wendy and is leaving her as she tearfully begs him to stay.  Darwan is very uncomfortable leaving the distraught Wendy at her apartment.  She has left a package in the cab, and he returns the next day to give it back.  This time he’s driving his driving school car, and she asks for his card.

Wendy, a book critic, lives in New York City and has never learned to drive.  She always had Ted to drive her to visit her daughter who lives in Vermont, or her sister (delightfully played by Samantha Bee) who lives in Connecticut.  The inability to drive metaphor for her live is hit a bit over our heads, but still, Patricia Clarkson is such a fantastic actress that she elevates whatever script she’s in.

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Grace Gummer (Meryl Streep’s daughter) plays Wendy’s daughter

When Wendy’s daughter tells her she’s going to be moving to Vermont, far from a train station, that pushes Wendy to call Darwan and start driving lessons.

The film is more focused on Wendy’s life, but does give us background on Darwan.  We learn he is a Sikh immigrant here in the US for political asylum.  The police raid his home and his nephew Preet hides in a cupboard, which I was gathering meant he had overstayed his student visa?  I wanted to know a bit more about the nephew’s story, and not just because the actor was a dreamboat.

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Avi Nash as Preet (Darwan’s nephew)

There were some great cameos in the ninety minute dramedy film.  John Hodgman is a car salesman, and the most delightful surprise is that Samantha Bee plays Wendy’s suburban sister.  She has some great zingers as she urges Wendy to move on from Ted.

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Darwan’s sister arranges for him to marry a woman from his village.  He is disappointed to find that Jasleen is not educated, and is timid in her new urban home.

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Darwan and Jasleen’s wedding

Darwan tells Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury) that she is in America now and they will only speak English to each other.  This leads Jasleen to hardly talk at all.  Jasleen and Darwan are supposed to be Punjabi, and it would have been more natural for them to at least speak some of that language in private.  In reading about the film after watching it, I learned that neither Ben Kingsley or Sarita Choudhury can speak Punjabi.  Still, Sarita Choudhury was great in her scenes as Jasleen conveying much just through her expressions.

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Darwan and Wendy develop a friendship over their driving lessons, and because she rear ends another car during a lesson, she ends up coming to the airport with him to pick up his bride.  He contrasts the intellectual conversations he can have with Wendy to his home life with his new bride, still basically a stranger to him.

I enjoyed this “almost” romantic comedy.  I watched it on Amazon Prime.  It’s free to watch if you have a Prime membership.  Four stars out of five mainly for the wonderful performances.

 

Love & Friendship -A Jane Austen Adaption With Bite and Wit

Love & Friendship is based on the early novella Lady Susan by Jane Austen.  She never submitted the epistolary novel for publication, and the movie is actually titled after another early work of Austen’s.  Whit Stillman’s adaptation stars Kate Beckinsale as the scandalous widow, Lady Susan, and Chloe Sevigny as her American best friend

There are some verbal zingers in this film that are just delicious, especially when Beckinsale and Sevigny share the screen.  The scene stealer, though, is Tom Bennett as the hilariously stupid but incredibly wealthy suitor Sir James Martin.  In a twist, Beckinsale’s Lady Susan is pursuing a younger man (Xavier Samuel), and urging her daughter to marry Sir James Martin.  Stephen Fry has a delightful cameo as Chloe Sevigny’s husband.

I saw the premiere at Sundance, and I think it will play extremely well on your TV like a great PBS series.  But if you’re tiring of superhero fare and are looking for something adult to see in the theater, check out Love & Friendship.  Three and a half stars out of five.

 

 

 

Tom Holland as Spiderman gives Captain America: Civil War a Nice Spot of Levity

How else to spend Mother’s Day but to go see Captain America: Civil War with my family?  My husband was disappointed in the film, and felt it was too dark.  I don’t agree.  I thought it was a very good installment in the Marvel Comicverse.  I loved that it wasn’t yet another alien force threatening the existence of humanity on earth vs. our superheroes movie.  This film was about relationships, and the complexities of the aftermath of those huge battles in the past movies.  Civilians died.  Buildings and cities were destroyed.  Shouldn’t the Avengers be answerable to oversight?  But what are the risks of that?

What Captain America:  Civil War had was some great moments of humor that Batman vs. Superman utterly lacked.  Civil War introduces us to the Tom Holland incarnation of Spiderman.  I’ll be honest.  I groaned when I heard that Marvel was rebooting yet again the Spiderman franchise.  We’ve already had Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.  I felt no urge for yet another telling of Spiderman’s origin story.

That is, until I saw Tom Holland in Civil War.  He actually looks like a young high school kid.  He has that youthful exuberance about him.  And Marissa Tomei is Aunt May!  Tony Stark decides to become Peter Parker’s patron, and visits him at his home, to ask for help with the capture of Captain America and the Winter Soldier.  This was one of my favorite sequences of the whole movie.   Peter has been dumpster diving and has an ancient iMac and other spare old computer parts on his bedroom desk.  He looks and acts like a kid.  And when he joins into the battle at the airport (that we’ve all seen in the trailer), he can’t help but be a fan boy meeting all the heroes.  He tells Captain America he’s a big fan as he snatches the shield.  He exclaims over how cool Winter Soldier’s metal arm is.  In a big throwing parts of airplanes kind of huge battle, Spiderman adds some welcome levity.

I like Slate’s Josh Brogan’s take:

In fact, he’s kind of a comics nerd: Mid-fight, he pauses to geek out over the composition of Falcon’s wings and the makeup of the Winter Soldier’s mechanical arm. That he does so while everyone around him is trying to beat each other into submission neither takes anything away from the proceedings nor slows down the action. Batman v Superman fixated on feats of ponderous badassery when its protagonists finally smashed into one another. Civil War rejects that dour attitude, starting from the premise that it’s fun to be a superhero—and fun to hang out with them too, even if they happen to be tossing each other into walls.

Now, I can’t wait to see the new Spiderman.  Tom Holland totally won me over.

I also was lukewarm about Black Panther until I saw Chadwick Boseman ooze amazing cool as the character in Civil War.  In a film filled with superstar actors, Chadwick Boseman stole the entire movie, in my opinion.  It was just enough of a taste to make me super curious about his character, his origin story and where that very cool headquarter place he has in the jungle might be!  Chadwick Boseman has been consistently excellent in biopics like 42 and Get On Up.  I’m excited to see him get his own superhero franchise.

Captain America: Civil War does not really advance the overarching Avengers narrative.  It sets the stage, dividing the Avengers into opposing factions, presumably leaving them vulnerable for the next antagonist.

It was an enjoyable Superhero flick.  Four stars out of five.

Green Room – A Taut Relentless Thriller

I would highly recommend Green Room if you love intense thrillers.  Anton Yelchin and Alia Shawkat are members of a punk rock band.  They get a last minute gig at a club out in the boonies, and realize the owners are Neo-Nazi Skinheads when they arrive.  They just want to play the show and get the hell out of there.

One band member forgets their phone charging in the green room, and when they go back to get it, they discover a girl murdered on the floor.  They are then trapped in the Green Room while the people running the club figure out what to do with them.  And who owns the club?  Patrick Stewart in an absolutely chilling performance.

I saw this film at Sundance in January and I was not prepared for how relentless this film would be.  I was on the edge of my seat nearly the entire hour and a half of the film.

To give you a sense, this is what Patrick Stewart tweeted about reading the script the first time:

 

Four stars out of five.  The film is at times very gruesome, but it is a tense taut thriller.  Green Room is writer/director Jeremy Saulnier‘s third feature film.  I can’t wait to see what he does next!

Southside With You Trailer – Barack and Michelle’s First Date

 

I saw the premiere of Southside With You at Sundance, and the trailer has just come out.  This is a really sweet movie about one day — the first date of Barack (then Barry) Obama and Michelle Robinson. Michelle was Barack’s mentor advisor at this summer associate law firm, Sidley Austin, in Chicago. Barack had been trying to ask her out for a month, but she resists as she doesn’t feel it is appropriate as she is his mentor. He asks her to attend a community meeting, and throughout she says “This is not a date” until it becomes one.

I think both actors, Parker Sawyer as Barack and Tika Sumpter as Michelle, do a fantastic job of NOT doing an impression of these two. During the Q&A, Parker Sawyer told the story of sending in a horrible first audition tape, that was an impression of Commander in Chief Barack, and having to do it over again as a young man just trying to get the girl.

Barack has a horrible bucket of bolts car, complete with a rusted out hole in the floor. He chain smokes. He’s human.

It thought it was all very well done, but my only quibble is that if it was filmed all in Chicago, it didn’t always look it. There’s only one establishing shot on the lake shore. Most of the street scenes could have been Toronto, for all I could tell.  This film, produced by John Legend, has an August 19 release date.