Review: "Dream Horse"

 

"Dream Horse" belongs to a very specific and heretofore unlabeled genre that I will now attempt to name: the British Communal Feelgooder. Like "Calendar Girls" and "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain," these are movies about commonfolk Brits in a particular town or group getting together to do something unusual and noteworthy.

The tone is uplifting, though invariably tinged with sad undertones, final acts needing challenges to overcome and all that. Such movies have a few key characters surrounded by a rich ensemble of supporting players and "types" -- the crotchety oldster, the impressionable youngster, the middle-age burnout, the penny-pinching naysayer, and so on.

For some reason, you don't really see equivalent movies from America or other nationalities, it being a peculiarly English thing. Though I should amend that to say United Kingdom to encompass all the islands, as my forefathers would roll in their graves if this (half) Welshman inadvertently lumped the Taffy-folk in with Londoners.

This movie has the benefit of being based on the true story of a bunch of small-town working-class Welsh folk creating a syndicate to breed a racehorse. Their product, Dream Alliance, would go on to gallop beyond their wildest hopes, winning important races and putting the stuffy noblemen who rule the sport in their place.

Truly inspiring stuff -- and no, I'm not giving away anything you didn't already know, because if the horse had turned out to be a plodder they wouldn't have made this movie. It's the same reason they don't make films about William Wallace's fourth cousin, the blacksmith who passed out drunk and drowned in his soup.

(Yes I made that up, but it could've happened, and the point is no one would've remembered if it did.)

The great Toni Collette plays Jan Volkes, a woman of early-middle years whose daily existence is one of toil and unappreciation. She works dawn to dusk, cleaning the floors and working the till at the grocery and helping out her aged parents, and then she works some more tending bar at the local pub well into the night. 

Jan isn't so much unhappy as living life in a limbo without joy or tragedy, one day very much the same as the next. She's an empty-nester who needs something to direct the rest of her life.

Her husband, Brian (Owen Teale), is well-meaning but stuck in a rut, having lost his job long ago due to arthritis and a new one having never turned up. He sits in front of the telly all day watching farming shows, which allows him to recall his youthful endeavors and criticize the TV people for doing it all wrong. Brian resembles a great owl mixed with a bear, missing a lot of hair and teeth, but still has a twinkle behind his spectacles and likely was strapping in his day.

One night Jan overhears a local tax advisor, Howard (Damian Lewis), talking about a horse syndicate he was involved in. It didn't go anywhere but it sounds like fun to her. She spends months doing research, buys a promising mare on the cheap, has Brian fix up their garage into a suitable stable and advertises around town for those who want to join the syndicate, putting in £10 a week apiece to save up for the stud and training fees.

I won't go too much into the background characters, because frankly their job is to each provide a little bit of color and support the main characters, which are Jan and Howard. 

There is an older woman, a young twerp, some business associates of Howard's, the corner baker, and so on. The only one that makes a strong impression, by design, is Kerby (Karl Johnson), the local drunk, hanger-on and designated comic relief. He gets a fun scene where he divides up his spending money into jars, with the two biggest being "beer" and "horse."

Jan's journey is pretty obvious -- she's a mousy, hardworking woman who has buried her dreams, or even the notion of having a dream, to serve others and decides she needs to grasp for a sense of hope again. Howard's is a little harder to see at first, though we eventually meet his wife (Siân Phillip) and learn about some problems he had in the past that suggest maybe horse-racing shouldn't be his passion.

The racing action is well-staged and thrilling, but doesn't eat up a ton of screen time, and Dream Alliance actually disappears for long stretches of a movie that puts its emphasis squarely on the people. It's mostly hurdles tracks, and the moments when the horses leap blindly over contrived fences and then must come down solidly on their hooves again are highly nerve-wracking, for good reason.

Director Euros Lyn and screenwriter Neil McKay deliver a well-paced, entertaining family picture that doesn't break any molds but fits comfortably into the one it has chosen. 

We don't see a lot of these movies, which is probably good because things would feel a bit syrupy if we had British Communal Feelgooders as often as we do robot flicks or romcoms. And I know it's not a particularly great name, but it is the best one anybody's come up with, which is a benefit of being the only pony in the race.

Review: "Stowaway"

 

 

There’s a particular kind of movie, often a science fiction film, that has percolated up. The technological and situational challenges drive the emotional reactions, as astronauts or other extraordinary humans try to prevent catastrophic events with limited resources, time and capabilities.

“Apollo 13” is one of the earliest of this sort, and “Gravity,” “The Martian” and now “Stowaway” are its inheritors. They’re really procedurals in space -- trying to painstakingly assemble the pieces to the answer puzzle while certain mayhem is coming down at them, perhaps not imminently but inexorably.

(In a way, you could even argue the last two Avengers movies were space procedurals, with the focus on finding or hiding Infinity Stones to prevent the existential threat, represented as Thanos.)

Like the others, “Stowaway” is not long on characterization. We learn enough about the people we’re watching to understand where they come from and what motivates them, but not a lot of other background.

For example, star Anna Kendrick plays Zoe Levenson, who we know is 1) a doctor, who 2) went to Yale, and 3) initially applied to the Hyperion space program as a joke, and 4) that’s about it. The plot is what moves things along, with the actors finding little spaces to bring out the humanity. Kendrick gives her a sort of quiet, plucky charm -- geek girl as heroine.

Similarly, Toni Collette plays the commander of this mission to a future Mars colony, though I don’t think we ever even hear her name. (The credits give it as Marina Barnett.) She’s a veteran leading her third and last mission and is focused on tamping down miscues. Daniel Dae Kim is David Kim, a botanist who is married and follows the commander’s lead unquestioningly, until…

Michael Adams (Shamier Anderson) is the “until,” a launch engineer who somehow passed out on the ship before blastoff and was never detected. The problem is they only have enough stuff on board for three people, not four, and the CO2 exchanger thingamajig he was caught behind was damaged, so they’re all going to asphyxiate a few weeks before reaching Mars unless Michael… goes away.

The dilemma: find a way to fix the problem so everyone can live, or present Michael with the option of killing himself to save the crew.

Now, it seems pretty implausible that a NASA-like organization could misplace an entire person, what with their mile-long checklists and tracking devices and so on. But director Joe Penna, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ryan Morrison, focuses on the problem and brushes past how it was created.

There’s even a suggestion that maybe Michael’s stowaway status was not entirely accidental. He’s an aspiring astronaut himself, so is it possible he manipulated events to jump ahead of the line? There’s also the hint of attraction between him and Zoe, or at least a bond, so she pushes back against the commander’s plan to do away with him.

“Stowaway” has lots of potential story threads to pursue. For example, Michael is Black and blue-collar, whereas the crew is white and Asian and Ivy League. I kept waiting for some of the new awokening over racial justice to come to the fore -- after all, why should Michael be the one who has to sacrifice himself? Why is his life instantly assigned as less valuable than the others?

Other options present themselves, but every day that goes by with Michael breathing air leaves less margin of error for a solution to present itself. And that’s the sweet spot where the movie gradually, skillfully builds suspense.

One of the choices the filmmakers made that I really liked is for the audience not to witness any of the usual back-and-forth conversations with mission control. We just hear a little squawking over earpieces, so we have to make sense from just one side of the conversation. This heightens the claustrophobic feeling the crew is utterly alone, and their choices and mettle will decide their fate.

“Stowaway” isn’t an ‘exciting’ movie in the traditional sense. There aren’t a lot of action scenes, explosions, lasers, that kind stuff. Most of it is just people inside a cramped spaceship, dealing with impossible scenarios and agonizing over the consequences of their choices.

What would you do in such circumstances? And that’s why we watch.

 

Video review: "Knives Out"

"Knives Out" is a supremely entertaining movie, though it's not hard to discern what it's all about: poking fun at the conventions of the Agatha Christie-style murder/mystery while wantonly indulging in every single trope inherent to the drama.

It ended up earning writer/director Rian Johnson, late of the much-maligned "The Last Jedi" entry in the Star Wars saga, an Academy Award for his original screenplay. It is indeed an intricate instrument of misdirection and humor, pointing the audience this way and yanking them that way, while forcing us to look here when we should be looking there.

It's a fun movie with a "big twist" that you know is coming, though still devilishly difficult to guess. It's the sort of flick you walk out of theater overhearing somebody loudly proclaim, "I saw it coming all along!", and know he's a dirty liar.

It's the prototypical "mansion with a dead guy and a bunch of suspects" setup. The uber-wealthy Thrombey clan has just encountered the death of patriarch Harlan (Christopher Plummer), a famous mystery novelist, under suspicious circumstances. It appears he took his own life, but is this really true?

 Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is the Southern-fried private investigator on the case. Certainly there is not shortage of people with sufficient motive to see Harlan dead. This includes:

• Walt (Michael Shannon), who oversees his dad's publishing company and has tried for years to get him to sell his work for movies and whatnot
• Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), the hard-bitten daughter who insists she's an independent success but is burdened with a lout husband, Richard (Don Johnson) and a peculiar son with Nazi-ish tendencies.
• Joni (Toni Collette), the New Age-y daughter-in-law who puts off an aura of self-confidence but is always hard up for cash
• Hugh (Chris Evans), the cad playboy grandson who recently had a loud falling out with Harlan, and seems to always be disappearing and reappearing at opportune moments

Other characters floating around the story are the police detective (Lakeith Stanfield) who outsources most of the detecting to Blanc; Katherine Langford as one of the nicer grandchildren; and Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan's caretaker who was much closer to him than any of his own children.

Far be it from me to give anything away. All I will say is that "Knives Out" is that rare movie that seems to dare the audience to guess where it's going, but always manages to stay a few steps ahead.

I wouldn't call this one of the best movies of 2019, as some have. In the end it's a fun, clever movie that exists to be fun and clever. Is that really such a bad thing?

Video extras are quite comprehensive. Johnson provides a feature-length commentary track along with his director of photography, Steve Yedlin, and actor Noah Segan, who has a rather small part. Johnson also provides his own "In-Theatre" commentary and stars in his own featurette, "Planning the Perfect Murder."

Additionally there are two deleted scenes with commentary, a Q&A with director and cast, some marketing photos and "Meet the Thrombeys" viral ads, and "Making a Murder," an eight-part making-of documentary.

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Video review: "Hearts Beat Loud"

“Hearts Beat Loud” is a warm, sad, sweet hug of a movie. It’s got catchy music, genuine adult relationships and a wise heart.

Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons play father and daughter living in in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. He’s a mopey widower who runs a failing record shop and used to be in a band. She’s about to go off to college to become a doctor. They genuinely love each other, but they’re at that stage in life where their gravitational pulls are going in different directions.

Frank (Offerman) does insist that he and Sam (Clemons) still hold their semi-regular “jam sesh” where they punk around with their instruments. One evening it’s especially fruitful, their noodling condenses into an actual song, which Frank records and, on a whim, uploads to Spotify.

He’s astonished when the tune gets a lot of airtime. A record label guy even shows up at the shop talking about a contract and an LP. Soon Frank’s head is buzzing: maybe Sam can take a gap year while they go on the road, deepen their bond and let him live out his rock god dreams?

Ted Danson is Dave, the silver-tongued bartender who dispenses wisdom and spirits to favored friends. Toni Collette plays Leslie, the landlord for their shop, and also a very available lady Frank has his eyes on. Maybe all his hopes and dreams are suddenly coming to fruition?

Directed by Brett Haley (“The Hero”) from a screenplay he wrote along with Marc Basch, “Hearts Beat Loud” is poignant and heartfelt. It’s a movie about having dreams, but also knowing when it’s time to let go of them and form some new ones.

Information on bonus features was not available.

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Review: "Hearts Beat Loud"

“Hearts Beat Loud” is a very different take on the familiar “putting together a band” movie. This band consists of just a middle-aged father and his teen daughter, the latter of whom has such disregard for their musical abilities that she insists, “We’re not a band” -- which becomes the group’s name.

And while there are the usual tantalizing dreams of cutting an album, topping the charts, going on tour, etc., we know pretty much from the get-go that this is not really in the cards.

This is not a film about finding fame, but learning to embrace the life you have.

Director Brett Haley, who co-wrote the script with Marc Basch, made the wonderful and (alas) little-scene drama, “The Hero,” last year. Both that film and this one have sadness and regret at their core, but also a strong sense of love and even a smidgen of hope. And they boast not a little humor, with “Hearts” being closer in form to an overt comedy.

It’s probably the best film role that Nick Offerman has had. A TV comedy king (“Parks and Recreation”), he’s been very busy with small supporting parts in mostly smaller movies (including “The Hero.”) Here he gets a chance to play the lead, in a meaty role as a guy going through life with a smirk on his face, but only to hide his pain and disappointment.

Frank Fisher had it all: he was young and in a hot band with a tremendously talented lead singer, who also became his wife and bore them a daughter, Sam (the absolutely radiant Kiersey Clemons). When his wife was killed in an accident, Frank came off the road and opened up Red Hook Records, a dive-ish shop in Brooklyn catering exclusively in LPs.

Seventeen years later, Sam is about to go off to UCLA to study medicine. The store is foundering, as Frank still loves music but is profoundly indifferent to people who want to buy music.

In the opening scene, be blows off a customer, preferring to listen to Jeff Tweedy on his headphones, refusing to put out his cigarette and generally annoying the guy enough he buys the record he had been looking at on Amazon, then taunts Frank, showing him the phone with the transaction. Frank probably deserved it.

What’s worse, Frank has come to realize that Sam sees him as deeply uncool. In fact, as she confides to Rose (Sasha Lane), a quirky artist’s assistant with whom she begins the bloom of first love, she chose a school in Los Angeles primarily to get away from home.

They’ve always dabbled in playing music together, he on guitar and she on keyboards, though these days Frank has to needle Sam to get her nose out of the books long enough to share their semi-regular “jam sesh.” One night, Sam pulls out a hook she’s been noodling with, Frank lays a guitar track on top of it, she sings a few lines and before you know it, they’ve got a song.

Frank is thrilled at this chance to make music and spend time with his daughter. He puts the song on Spotify and is astonished when it makes an indie playlist and gets lots of airtime. A record label guy stops by the store to chat him up. Soon his head is filled: maybe Sam could take a gap year while they go on tour and become rock gods?

Toni Collette is Leslie, Frank’s landlord, who’s also a friend and, he hopes, maybe something more. She cherishes the friendship but is wary about the more. Ted Danson plays Dave, silver of hair and tongue, who runs the neighborhood bar, dispensing “the good stuff” to favored patrons along with sage counsel. “We don’t always get to do what we love, Frankie, so we’ve got to love what we do.”

The music, by Keegan DeWitt, has a slightly dreamy quality, pulsating beats that build upon themselves as plaintive, almost whispered vocals crescendo into cascading emotional peaks and valleys. Clemons is a gifted singer; Offerman is not, though his vocals in a couple of songs have a genuine, rough poignancy.

“Hearts Beat Loud” is a portrait of a father and daughter coming together while at cross ends. Frank knows what he loves, but it’s remained elusive his whole life. Sam is smart enough to know she can’t live her dad’s dream for him, yet isn’t ready to walk out of his life just yet. Together, the music they make isn’t the means to stardom, but the ends of fortifying their bond.

Review: "Unlocked"

“Unlocked” wears the clothes of a B-movie spy flick but has A-list talent both in front of and behind the camera. The result is a taut, well-paced thriller high in both entertainment value and uncomfortable musings about how international intelligence agencies have reacted to radical Islamic terrorism.

Noomi Rapace stars as CIA agent Alice Racine -- foreign-born, to explain the accent -- who’s taken a low-level assignment in London. Her cover is an advocate for immigrants, passing along any suspicious cases to her British MI6 counterpart, Emily Knowles (Toni Collette). It’s tedious, unrewarding work, but Alice failed to stop a terrorist attack in Paris two years earlier, and her confidence has eroded.

Her specialty is “unlocking” hostile witnesses, aka getting them to spill the beans on imminent activity. Alice is not an “enhanced interrogation” sort, tending to use her wiles and relationship-building with suspects who are usually not the bombers and shooters, but (relatively) docile bagmen and such who make the connections between terrorist cells.

She’s brought in by the European CIA chief, Bob Hunter, played by expert-in-squirrelly John Malkovich. It seems their current “unlocker” has died of a heart attack, and there’s word of a mass chemical attack being financed by a “trust fund jihadist” of English birth (Raffaello Degruttola).

They’ve caught a young courier carrying a message from an imam (Makram Khoury) suspected of radical affiliations, so it’s up to Alice to save the day. Michael Douglas pops up as Eric Lasch, a retired spook and mentor to Alice who’s ready to lend a hand.

The screenplay is by Peter O’Brien, a promising rookie who blends high-octane action scenes with plenty of plot twists and paranoia in between. Without giving away too much, Alice finds herself caught in a no man’s land between the American and British spy services, whose integrity has been compromised, and the jihadis.

Popping up to help, sort of, is Orlando Bloom as Jack, a scruffy thief who’s unlucky enough to pick Alice’s safe house to rob. They throw in together out of grudging happenstance. Tosin Cole impresses as a (legit) client of Alice’s day job who also gets recruited out of pressing needs, and is appropriately awed by all the spycraft and gadgets.

The film is directed by British filmmaking legend Michael Apted, who has to go down as one of the most important director never to receive an Academy Award nomination. (Though he has plenty of recognition from the U.K. equivalent BAFTAs, not to mention the Director’s Guild of America.) He’s perhaps best known for his “Up” documentary series documenting the lives of ordinary Brits from childhood to middle age.

But Apted also directed a Bond movie back in the day, and clearly hasn’t lost his touch for action sequences. Despite her small frame, Rapace is entirely convincing as a hand-to-hand badass. There aren’t any big-money antics, highway crashes and boat chases and such. But these constraints actually make the film feel lower to the ground and ruggedly authentic.

“Unlocked” shows you don’t need Bourne and Bond budgets to craft a top-notch spy movie.

Video review: "The Boxtrolls"

“The Boxtrolls” was easily my favorite animated film of last year – partly because the stop-motion gem is so visually alive and imaginative, but also because there really wasn’t much in the way of competition. Let’s face it, once we got past this movie and one or two others, 2014 was something of a cartoon wasteland.

This picture, based on a book by Alan Snow, simply oozes with British culture and appeal, from the Cockney accents and damp cobblestone streets down to the diaspora of wonky teeth. Set in the late 19th or early 20th century, the story concerns a secret society of gentle pointy-headed critters who live underground and wear castoff cardboard boxes instead of clothes.

They don’t have a discernible language or even names; they each go by whatever picture is on their boxes, which they pilfer – along with many other things – from the humans above. The exception is Eggs (voice of Isaac Hempstead-Wright), a human boy who was kidnapped (sort of) by the boxtrolls as a baby and raised as one of their own.

Their adventures take them above ground, where the terrifying Archibald Snatcher (a delightful Ben Kingsley) has appointed himself chief boxtroll catcher. Soon most of the troll population has been grabbed up and tossed into his dungeons. The daughter of a local lord (Elle Fanning) provides reluctant help, mostly out of resentment toward her absentee father.

It seems Snatcher dreams of joining the cadre of “White Hats” – genteel gentlemen who run the town, ostensibly -- though they don’t seem to do more than sit around sampling exotic cheeses. By portraying the boxtrolls as a scourge, Snatcher hopes to stoke public fear and use it to springboard himself into their good graces.

Visually arresting and impishly funny, “The Boxtrolls” is a family-friendly treat.

Fortunately, the film is being released on video with a host of excellent extra features. There’s a feature-length commentary track by directors Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable, and a raft of featurettes touching on all aspects of production, from casting the voice actors to creating a fancy ballroom dance scene with stop-motion puppets.

There are also preliminary animatic sequences and much more.

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Review: "The Boxtrolls"

I thought last year a slow one for quality animated films, but if anything 2014 has been even duller. “Frozen” finally came along at year’s end to brighten things up, and this time September has delivered its own wondrous surprise: “The Boxtrolls.”

This stop-motion gem is one of the best of its ilk since “Coraline.” It’s a whiz-bang collection of fun action, Dickensian backdrop, cute critters and one really nasty, yet pleasing, villain.

Based on a novel by Alan Snow, the story centers on the titular trolls, who live underground and wear old cardboard boxes instead of clothes. Though they tend to pilfer things left unattended, they’re more tinkerers who love to build junk than malicious marauders. They go by the names of whatever’s on their box: Fish, Shoe, etc.

I just love the trolls’ look, with pasty skin, pointy ears, tufts of random hair and big liquid eyes surrounded by dark patches like a domino mask, which makes them look like vintage cartoon burglars. They don’t really speak, using a collection of croaks, clicks and squeaks to communicate.

The boxtrolls have gotten a bad rap from the humans after they allegedly pilfered a baby years ago. Archibald Snatcher, a lowlife climber who yearns to wear one of the “White Hats” signifying town leaders, appoints himself chief boxtroll catcher, and sets about exterminating the population.

Snatcher is voiced heroically by Ben Kingsley, in one of the best vocal performances in recent memory. Snatcher chews and growls his words as if they are poison to his mouth – not unlike the fine cheeses favored by the White Hats, which he craves to share despite the fact they make him swell up like a landed jellyfish. And he’s got a buxom alter ego.

He has a trio of henchmen who range in malevolence from reluctant to gleeful – Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade and Tracy Morgan do the voices. The nicer pair proclaim themselves the good guys, but worry they’re really evil stooges.

Isaac Hepstead-Wright provides the voice of Eggs, a human boy who was the baby kidnapped by the boxtrolls, though there’s more to it than that. He’s grown up with them and is convinced he is a boxtroll, despite evidence to the contrary. (He insists his ability to use English is a “speech impediment.”)

Eggs finds himself stranded on the city streets topside, where he encounters Winnie Portley-Rind (Elle Fanning), daughter of the local lord (Jared Harris). Willful and obstinate, Winnie is infuriated by her parents’ continual ignoring of what she has to say, particularly with regard to the truth about the boxtrolls.

Directors Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi are animation veterans without a lot of experience in the top seat, but prove to be top-notch visualists and storytellers. Irena Brignull and Adam Pava wrote the screenplay.

My guess is the stop-motion work has been augmented with some computer-generated effects, since there some things – like smoke dissipating from Snatcher’s various steamworks contraptions – that couldn’t be achieved otherwise.

I’m no purist myself – whatever works onscreen, works. This is a movie of dense layers, from the grimy cobblestone streets and buildings to extreme close-ups of the characters, which are incredibly detailed and facially expressive. (And those wonky teeth – so British!)

“The Boxtrolls” is the sort of delightfully inventive family picture that parents might be tempted to indulge in a second viewing – on their own, with the kiddies tucked in at home.

Film review: "Tammy"

McCarthy Does Mumblecore.

That's my three-word review of Melissa McCarthy's new comedy "Tammy," an oft-turgid wallow in sentiment and icky embarrassing humor. It's still got some genuine laughs, and is buoyed by McCarthy's winning screen presence. It's not a long movie at 96 minutes, yet you could easily chop a half-hour out of it and have a winner.

Mumblecore, for those not into zero-budget indie films, is epitomized by rambling dialogue that has the appearance of being ad-libbed. Its influence on mainstream comedy is clear to see, though usually it's punky young guys -- think Jonah Hill or Michael Cera -- with the verbal diarrhea.

After an impressive string of hits including "The Heat" and "Identity Thief," McCarthy is currently sitting in the unlikely catbird's seat as Hollywood's most consistently bankable star over the last few years. She's running the show on her projects, and has decided to team up with her husband Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay with her and makes his directing debut.

He frequently turns up in her movies as her beau, though here he just has a bit part as the jerk boss at the Topper Jack's burger joint where she works.

The result of their collaboration is a raunchy road trip comedy starring McCarthy and Susan Sarandon as her grandmother. They have some fairly predictable misadventures, some romantic hook-ups, binge drinking and petty larceny.

In the end, we all Learn Something -- in this case, that McCarthy had better find some new material if she wants to keep her streak alive.

The story starts off with an epic bad day for Tammy. Living in tiny Murphysboro, Ill., she crashes her ancient Corolla into a deer on the way to work, then gets fired for being late. Arriving home unexpectedly early, she's surprised to find her husband (Nat Faxon) serving an elegant dinner to his mistress (Toni Collette). Tammy promptly packs her stuff and decamps to her parents' place, two doors down.

"You never cooked me dinner!" she shrieks. "And it smells good, too!"

But her mom, played by Allison Janney, is something of a pill. Tammy's grandmother Pearl (Sarandon) lives with her but has had enough, so the pair take off for an impromptu jaunt for parts unknown with $6,700 of grandma's cash as their stake.

It's sort of a Thelma & Louise thing, with a cross-generational twist.

The ages of the actresses don't exactly sync up, with less than a quarter-century dividing them all -- McCarthy is only 11 years younger than Janney, who in turn is only 13 years Sarandon's junior. It is rather strange to see Sarandon, whose potent sexual presence has lit up screens for four decades, doing the cranky oldster routine complete with puffy feet from diabetes.

The running joke is that Tammy is the hard-partying cutup of the family, but Granny Pearl is at least her equal despite her prim outward appearance. She's a nasty drunk, supplies teenagers with beer and boasts of having been an Allman Brothers groupie.

Kathy Bates and Sandra Oh turn up late in the game as wealthy lesbian friends of Pearl's, who help them out when they're on the lam from the law. Bates lights up her scenes, feisty yet down-to-earth, and has one emotional crescendo that feels like it belongs in another movie.

Actually, most of "Tammy" feels like it belongs in another flick. McCarthy may be all that as a screen comedienne, but she and her hubby needed to run their screenplay through the spin cycle a few more times.

Video review: "Enough Said"

James Gandolfini may have not been most people's notion for a romantic lead, with looks like an ex-jock gone to pot and wallowing in anger. But the late actor showed just how much charisma he harbored in his balding, paunchy body in "Enough Said," an affecting romantic-drama from writer/director Nicole Holofcener.

The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Eva, a 50-ish masseuse who's divorced, single and has a teen daughter about to leave for college. At a party she meets Albert (Gandolfini), who's in a very similar life situation. They have a date that turns into a tenuous relationship, which seems to be going fine until a strange coincidence throws them off.

Eva learns that her new friend (Catherine Keener), who constantly bad-mouths her ex-husband, used to be married to Albert. So the horrible guy she's been hearing about is actually her new beau.

Logic says that shouldn't really make a difference, but in Holofcener's carefully observant story, it most certainly does. The film understands how lonely, damaged people react when letting their guard down for a new relationship.

The actors acquit themselves wonderfully, including the textured supporting performances by Toni Collette, Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson and Tavi Gevinson. One of the nice things about Holofcener's movies is that she populates them with fleshy, believable characters.

Easily of the year's best indie films, "Enough Said" falls into the "don't-miss" category.

Alas, video extras are sorely lacking. The DVD comes with only the theatrical trailer and a few promotional featurettes. Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition and you get a "Second Takes" feature.

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Review: "Enough Said"

Love is rarely like it is in the movies, except for “Enough Said,” an observant new comedy-drama from writer/director Nicole Holofcener. It stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini as middle-aged divorced parents who enter into a tentative little romantic dance. Their relationship is both awkward and magical, and very authentically adult in its ups-and-downs, and side-to-sides.

No incongruous meet-cute, no breathless protestations of affection or other tropes of cinematic romance. Just a funny, faithful look at the real ways in which older, damaged people struggle with being single.

Holofcener has made a career exploring the inner lives of women, while navigating between hefty topics like the way women are afflicted by insecurity (“Lovely & Amazing”) and economic envy/superiority (“Friends with Money,” “Please Give”). I’ve always enjoyed the fact that her female characters are full-blooded and complicated, and her films deal with all their relationships – friends, parents, co-workers – rather than being obsessed with just the romantic ones.

Louis-Dreyfus plays Eva, a massage therapist with a precocious daughter who’s about to go off to college, which is freaking out the parent way more than the child. While at a dinner party she’s introduced to Albert (Gandolfini), an acerbic-but-warm guy. They hardly hit it off, each joking there’s no one at the party they’re attracted to, but nonetheless they go out on a first date that goes well enough.

Albert isn’t really Eva’s idea of a hottie – bald, a step past paunchy, grizzled and gray. The fact that Eva gives him a chance says something about Eva, and the fact Holofcener would cast the late Gandolfini as a romantic lead says something about her. Eva is willing to embrace a man who is a far throw from her ideal, which is a tacit recognition of her own imperfections.

Their courtship is a portrait of defensiveness that gradually gives way to a deepening bond. Too old to be coy, more wary than hopeful, they slowly let their guards done enough to fall in love.

Then Holofcener throws us a clever twist. The same night she met Albert, she also picked up a new client: Marianne (Catherine Keener), a successful poet. After a few massages they start to bond as friends, talking about their children, dating and divorces. Marianne repeatedly dumps on her ex-husband as an unambitious loser who’s too fat, and lousy in bed to boot.

Then Eva realizes that Albert is Marianne’s ex-husband. So this awful guy she’s been hearing about is actually her new boyfriend.

This sets off a strange love/hate triangle. Eva adores Marianne and Albert, but the fact they despise each other ends up poisoning the way she treats her new boyfriend. She starts making little quips about his undisciplined eating habits and inability to whisper. “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?” Albert asks after one acrimonious night out.

Gandolfini, Keener and Louis-Dreyfus both give layered, terrific performances. Ditto for Toni Collette as Eva’s friend, a married woman vexed by her husband and her maid. I also adored the three young actresses playing the daughters and a best friend -- Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson and Tavi Gevinson.

Eventually things come to a head, but they don’t go down in a predictable, sitcom-y sort of way. Albert’s reaction in particular is notable for its understated, genuine feel.

“Enough Said” is a funny, sad and heart-warming experience – much like actual, messy family lives. It’s a great catch.

Review: "The Way, Way Back"

Is there anything tougher than being a socially awkward 14-year-old? How about having your parents recently divorced, too? And being dragged off to an unwanted summer vacation with your mom’s vaguely hostile new boyfriend?

That’s the premise of “The Way, Way Back,” the insightful and charming new comedy-drama in the mode of “Little Miss Sunshine,” which also reunites two of its key stars, Steve Carell and Toni Collette.

That’s where the similarities end. Here Carell plays the jerk, Trent -- has there ever been a redeeming movie character named Trent? – who’s dating Pam (Collette), mother of Duncan (Liam James).

Trent is a real piece of work. A car salesman, he drives a beautifully refurbished 1970 Buick Estate Wagon, which as someone points out shows really poor taste in cars. Who puts their energy and money into restoring a vehicle that was considered uncool even when it was brand new?

Trent rides Duncan like a cruel jockey whipping a tired quarter horse. When we first meet them, Trent is demanding that Duncan rate himself on a scale of one to 10. After browbeating a “6” out of the hapless lad, Trent offers his own rating of “3,” saying he doesn’t see much effort from the introverted teen.
“Let’s try to get that score up, huh?” Trent concludes, thinking this is encouragement.

Pam is kind-hearted and loving, but is stuck between her excitement at new romance and wanting to protect her son. She soon gets lost in the whirlwind of drinking, dancing and clam bakes that consumes the adults on the unnamed coastal town where they spend the summer.

Other attendees in the ongoing party include Betty (Allison Janney), Trent’s boozy next-door divorcee, and married pals Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet). As Betty’s smart, winsome daughter Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb) points out, these summer vacations are like “spring break for adults.”

(No attempt is ever made to explain how these people don’t have to work for weeks and months at a time.)

Trend has his own kid, a snobby girl named Steph (Zoe Levin) who’s a few years older than Duncan and wants nothing to do with him, taking him with her when forced to and ditching him as soon as possible. Susanna is also part of that crowd, though she seems none too thrilled about it, reads books instead of gossiping and appears to have an inner life. Perhaps inevitably, Duncan develops a crush on her.

Just when things look like they couldn’t possibly get worse for Duncan, he stumbles across the Water Wizz, a dilapidated water theme park run by a motley crew of fun-loving adults.

(From my childhood memories, water parks are exactly like regular amusement parks in that people will wait in line for 45 minutes for a two-minute ride, with the notable difference being that you’re standing there mostly naked while the sun broils your skin to a nice medium-well.)

Duncan gets recruited by the loquacious manager Owen, who actually lives above the Water Wizz central office like a debauched fallen demi-god. He’s got a co-manager he’s sweet on (Maya Rudolph), though his lack of responsibility is a constant roadblock.

Something unexpected happens and Duncan finds the mentor/protector he needs in Owen, who teaches him to loosen up, and stand up to Trent. Sam Rockwell is terrific as Owen, who’s all shtick on the outside but harbors dark recesses. One of the loveliest things about their relationship is Owen being utterly astonished that someone would look up to him.

Soon Duncan is ditching his seaside retreat to go fold towels and stack chairs every day, which escalates tensions with Trent. Here’s a hint if you’re dating someone with a teenage kid: if they’d rather go work a menial job than hang out with you during the summer, things aren’t going so well.

“The Way, Way Back” was written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, Oscar-winning screenwriters for “The Descendants” taking their first step behind the camera. They both also have key supporting roles as burnt-out Wizz workers.

It’s a knockout directorial debut, a feel-good picture about a kid who learns not to feel so bad about himself.

Review: "Hitchcock"

If Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t been a bona fide figure, Hollywood would’ve invented him. With his inverted-light-bulb physique and that pained slur of a monotone drawl, the great film director stood out both for his exemplary craftsmanship and his oddball image. In some ways his personal iconography has endured every bit as much as his movies.

“Hitchcock,” which puts the filmmaker under the microscope during the making of his landmark film “Psycho,” features a spot-on impersonation by Anthony Hopkins. Wearing an impressive body suit and extensive facial prosthetics to mimic the droopy mien of “Hitch” (as he preferred to be called), Hopkins evokes the spirit and personality of the man behind masterpieces like “Rear Window,” “North by Northwest” and “Vertigo.”

In this portrait, Hitchcock is both supremely self-confident and filled with obsessive fears about being a washed-up failure. At age 60, Hitch frets that his best days were behind him, that he is tainted by his association with television, and that he will never receive the accolades (i.e., an Academy Award) he feels are surely deserved.

But the movie, directed by Sacha Gervasi from John J. McLaughlin’s screenplay (based on a book by Stephen Rebello), goes further by exploring the relationship between Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville. And it’s in this journey that the film rises from amusing bauble to a full-throated and satisfying depiction of a great man and the unheralded woman who helped make him so.

Alma, played by Helen Mirren, dutifully performs the role of the loyal wife in public, but quietly seethes with resentment underneath. A talented editor and writer in her own right, she married a promising young director and made his career her own. Reville rewrote scripts, played the part of Hitch’s main sounding board and even (if this film’s depiction is to be believed) stood in for him behind the camera when his health failed.

As the story opens, Hitch is coming off the resounding success of "North by Northwest," but hasn't a clue as to what to make for his next picture. Some, including Alma, are quietly suggesting he retire with grace. Those calls become increasing urgent as he lights upon the gruesome story of Ed Gein, a serial murderer who chopped up his victims.

When the Hollywood press is repulsed by the topic, Hitchcock digs deeper. When Alma dismisses the story as cheap horror show, he is intrigued by the challenge: "What if someone really good made a horror picture?" he asks.

Realizing that his dream female star, Grace Kelly, is now unavailable due to having married into royalty, Hitch settles on Janet Leigh. As played by Scarlett Johansson, Leigh is a paragon of niceness and professionalism in a cutthroat business. At first she's ambivalent about Hitchcock, especially how he will handle the famous shower scene. But she eventually finds herself in his corner.

"Compared to Orson Welles, he's a sweetheart," she muses.

Her counterpoint is Vera Miles (Jessica Biel), whom Hitch had hoped to make a big star, but she rejected him to play the real-life role of wife and mother. It was part of his long fixation on "these blonde women of mystery" who regularly populated his films.

Hitchcock can't get the studio to finance "Psycho," so he ends up writing a check for $800,000 out of his own pocket. It threatens to bankrupt them, and Alma responds to being shut out of the creative process by collaborating with an old friend (Danny Huston) who's a little bit too familiar with the married "Mrs. Hitchcock."

Director Gervasi's only other film was the documentary "Anvil: The Story of Anvil," which looked at a washed-up heavy metal band. His switch to narrative storytelling is a seamless one, as he expertly plucks the audience's strings, much like composer Bernard Hermann's screeching violin strings in "Psycho."

At a crisp 98 minutes, "Hitchcock" is as taut as one of Hitch's own mystery thrillers.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Fright Night"

I may risk getting smacked around by my fellow Gen Xers, but let's face it -- the original "Fright Night" was just not a very good movie.

Somehow over the last quarter-century it's gained nostalgic cachet as a modern horror classic. But it's just not very scary, or very funny, or particularly distinctive in any way.

Maybe the one takeaway from writer/director Tom Holland's film was this idea of vampires not as mythical monsters, but real killers who could literally be living next door. The evolution of the vampire ethos has shuffled along down this same route to the glut of current incarnations, as blood-suckers not just preying on us but living among us while doing it.

The remake has a few things going for it. One is the casting of Colin Farrell as Jerry, the cool dude who moves in next door to teen hero Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin -- who seems to be everywhere lately). With his dark, brooding good looks (assisted via computer-generated imagery), Farrell makes for a convincing nosferatu in the smoldering way audiences seem to prefer their vampires these days.

But the script by Marti Noxon just doesn't give Farrell very much to do other than pose and strut. With his strange mannerisms and cool-uncle shtick -- always addressing Charley as "Hey, guy..." -- Jerry seems more like a third-rate male model on depressants than a horrifying night killer.

The idea of transporting the action to Las Vegas, where homes in the suburban desert are being foreclosed or simply abandoned at a prodigious rate, reflects our downbeat national mood, as well as helping explain why locals aren't so curious about people suddenly showing up missing.

Toni Collette plays Charley's mom, a real estate agent who keeps so busy her garage is filled with For Sale signs. Her job is to be clueless, just like the rest of the adults Charley encounters, disbelieving his increasingly fantastic tales about Jerry. What a shame to see an actress of Collette's talents in a generic, lackluster role.

Imogen Poots plays Amy, Charley's new girlfriend, a pretty, popular member of the school's trend-setters. A recurring theme is that dweeby Charley is taking pains to conceal his formerly nerdy ways from Amy -- including disavowing his best friend, the equally geeky Ed. Ed is played by Christopher Mintze-Plasse, who's found a niche in Hollywood playing nerds with an inordinate amount of ego.

Roddy McDowall had one of his signature roles in the original, playing Peter Vincent, a scaredy-cat host of a low-rent cable TV creature feature show, who turns out to have some genuine expertise in the dark arts. That character is transformed, unimaginatively, into a Criss Angel-type magician played by David Tennant.

Instead of tremulous and pathetic, Peter Vincent is a soul-blasted wastrel who holes up in his Vegas penthouse with all sorts of occult items and weapons -- which we just know will be put to good use in the movie's final, unavoidable showdown.

Director Craig Gillespie, who's made offbeat films like "Mr. Woodcock" and "Lars and the Real Girl," has a nice eye and gives "Fright Night" some menacing visual flair. But this is a remake of a movie made without much care, and it shows.

1.5 stars out of four