Review: "False Positive"

 

The filmmakers of "False Positive" would very much like you to know that "mommy brain," a state of confusion and mental frailty endemic to new mothers, is a real thing, as this phrase is repeated a number of times throughout the psychological thriller. It's about a woman who desperately wants to get pregnant who begins to suspect that her famous fertility doctor and seemingly perfect husband are conspiring to drive her mad.

Come to think of it, "Mommy Brain" would've been a better title for this middling picture.

Are they really lined up against her, or is she just cracking under the strain of hormones and seismic shifts in her life? I'll leave it to you to find out, though the recent cinematic fixation on women undergoing gaslighting ("The Invisible Man") by meanie men should lend a clue.

Ilana Glazer stars, produced and co-wrote the screenplay with director John Lee, so this is a fairly rare example of a horror film -- or at least horror-adjacent -- with a strong female sensibility to it. She plays Lucy, a thirtysomething marketing whiz who has spent the last few years trying to get pregnant with her husband, Adrian (Justin Theroux), a reconstructive surgeon who's supportive and dreamy to boot.

Dr. John Hindle is the best fertility innovator in the biz, and usually women have to wait 18 months or more to get an appointment. Luckily, Adrian studied under Hindle in med school and they're able to get in right away, where Lucy is assured that his cutting-edge techniques can get her preggers lickety-split. This is exactly what comes to pass.

Hindle is played by Pierce Brosnan, who is so good-looking he might as well belong to another species. Perfectly polite and attentive, with silver hair and beard, Dr. Hindle may have airs of being an egomaniac, but he's the kind who can back it up with results. 

His clinic has a Stepford Wives feel, all white and sterile, with nurses (Gretchen Mol is the lead) who seem like they stepped off a supermodel runway rather than nursing school. Everyone talks in calming, pleasant tones and you just feel like everything's going to be peachy.

Lucy is very joyful to become pregnant, and it even looks like she's in line for a big promotion at work. She makes friends through a pregnancy support group with other expecting 1-percenters (Sophia Bush plays one), and they do ladies' luncheons and cute baby showers and so on.

Things start to go awry when Lucy finds out she is pregnant with not one, but three babies -- twin boys and a girl. She really had her heart set on a girl, planning to name her Wendy in honor of her lifelong love of "Peter Pan." But Dr. Hindle and Adrian say she's likely to lose all three unless she agrees to "selective reduction" -- aka abortion -- and they are strongly pushing to keep the boys.

Soon Lucy begins to experience hallucinations, becomes paranoid, starts snooping around on Adrian and find out he's been snooping around on her, etc. She seeks out a feminist midwife (Zainab Jah) who teaches that the medical profession is a male-dominated conspiracy that wants to wrest the natural process of childbirth away from women and control their bodies.

Things go on from there, wandering into familiar horror-movie power dynamics and moist outcomes. Let's just say the doctor's insemination tool gets employed in a way that can't be recommended in the user manual.

Oddly, I found the movie pretty compelling during the first couple of acts, but the last half-hour feels stale and predictable. Lucy will emerge from her confusion cocoon and take up the righteous mantle of wronged mothers everywhere. It's stronger when she, and we, are kept more in the dark.

When it comes to scary movies, it's usually best to expect the expected.

 

Review: "True Story"

A man sits in a dusty tent in a foreign land, taking notes. He's asking some teen boys about awful experiences they've been through via an interpreter. We've seen this movie before: he's obviously a journalist, doing important work, and we know it's just a matter of time before we hear the words "New York Times" or "Washington Post." (It's the Times.)

One of the boys is reluctant to divulge. The man says you can trust me. More hesitation. So the journalist coolly flashes a $100 bill, neatly folded between his fingers. The interview concludes, the money changes hands, a terrific story later appears on the cover of...

...wait, what?!?

I would hope that most people would know that paying sources to talk is a big journalistic no-no. So obviously something's not right with this guy, Michael Finkel, played by Jonah Hill. We're not surprised when, a few minutes later into "True Story," he's fired for fudging the facts. Disgraced, shunned by colleagues, he retreats to his Montana hometown.

The problem is, the filmmakers want us to like this guy. Or, at least, identify with him. "True Story" is supposed to be the tale of a guy who reaches rock bottom and then pulls himself back to the top with the story of a lifetime. Instead, Finkel remains a moon-faced mystery, a guy who never fully confronts the depth of his deceptions.

If Finkel is a puzzle, then Christian Longo is a total enigma. He's the big story Finkel is after: a seemingly normal man who is accused of murdering his wife and three young children. His tale wouldn't even be known if it weren't for one thing: while on the lam, he sometimes used the alias of Mike Finkel of the New York Times.

The real Finkel is intrigued to know why Longo impersonated him, and reaches out to him in prison. "I was wondering if you could tell me what it's like to be me," he writes. The men meet. Longo is cryptic, but offers his story, exclusively. Finkel sees a shot at redemption and a big payday.

Things go on from there, with the two forming a quick bond with deep undercurrents of mistrust. Is Finkel repeating his mistakes, trying to mold the facts to fit the killer story he's pitched to book publishers? Is Longo a manipulative fabulist exploiting the reporter for his own ends?

This sounds more interesting than it actually is. Director Rupert Goold, who co-wrote the script with David Kajganich, wants to give us a mix of "Shattered Glass" and "In Cold Blood," a probing tale about the intersection of crime, truth and justice.

Instead, it turns into a rather dull succession of scenes in which Hill and Franco spar listlessly across a bare table in the prison interview room.

Hill, I think, is a promising young actor whose head has been swelled by a couple of Oscar nominations he clearly didn't deserve. He hasn't developed enough nuance in his screen presence to carry a dramatic picture. His Finkel comes across as a disaffected dope. Franco is better, snaky and sharp, but it sometimes feels like he's smirking at the camera.

Felicity Jones plays Finkel's wife, whom he uses as a financial and emotional reservoir to sponge off of. In lesser hands this sort of role turns into a thankless, dreary distraction -- and these filmmakers' hands are lesser.

There are the bones of a good story in "True Story," but the movie is content to take us to places we've already been to before. For instance, it never satisfactorily answers the question behind the main premise: why did Longo impersonate Finkel? 

The only thing more disappointing than sloppy storytelling is the lazy kind.

Video review: "Laggies"

“Laggies” came and went quickly at theaters -- too quickly. This dramedy doesn’t quite flesh out the promise of an intriguing premise, but the trio of lead actors is tremendously appealing. This is the sort of movie where you just like spending time with these characters.

Keira Knightley plays Megan, drifting through life in her late 20s with a degree in family counseling but who can’t summon the energy to do more than be a sign carrier for her dad’s CPA business. Realizing that she’s become the “sad one” of her social circle and after a surprise marriage proposal she wasn’t prepared for, Megan skips out on everything and ends up hiding out at the home of Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz), a precocious 16-year-old she happens to meet.

Annika’s dad, Craig (Sam Rockwell), is a cynical divorce attorney still bitter about the breakup of his own marriage. He can’t figure out why a grown woman is hanging around with her kid, but goes with the flow after determining she’s not dangerous. Soon, though, both recognize a pull between them.

Director Lynn Shelton and rookie screenwriter Andrea Seigel make the common mistake of introducing an intriguing group of characters and setting, and then not really knowing what to do with them.

The primary relationship would seem to be between the two young women, but then the Megan/Craig romance starts to heat up and Annika sort of disappears into the background. Rockwell’s role is rather underwritten, but he still makes it vibrant and memorable because, well, he’s just that good.

I enjoyed “Laggies” even while recognizing that, like its main character, its lack of a coherent destination prevents it from being entirely successful.

Video features are decent, and are the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions.

Shelton provides a feature-length commentary track. There are also about 10 minutes worth of deleted/expanded scenes, and two featurettes, “Lagging On with Lynn Shelton” and “Shooting Seattle: The Look of Laggies.”

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