Review: "Bombshell"

If “Bombshell” looks like a bunch of Hollywood liberals teaming up for a vicious takedown of Fox News, the hated epitome of right-wing media, that’s because it is.

That doesn’t make it any less delicious or entertaining. And it’s as good a cinematic exploration aw I’ve seen of how sexual harassment is tolerated and even condoned.

Director Jay Roach’s last two films were a hagiography of lefty screenwriting icon Dalton Trumbo and a send-up of Republican congressional candidates. Screenwriter Charles Randolph won (deservedly) an Oscar for writing “The Big Short,” an angry and hilarious look at the housing lending crisis that set off the Great Recession.

They’re core members of the Liberal Hollywood Elite©.

And yet, “Bombshell” possesses layers and subtleties. It treats its characters as living, flesh-and-blood creatures full of complexities and contradictions. You may even be shocked to hear some of the Fox News women come out looking brave, even a little heroic.

You may have seen that freaky trailer where Margot Robbie, playing an ambitious up-and-comer at the network, is riding in an elevator. Then in walk Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson. They warily study each other through sidelong glances, the tension palpable, and you wonder how the hell the studio convinced Kelly and Carlson to portray themselves.

Except they didn’t. Kelly is played by Charlie Theron, and Carlson by Nicole Kidman. I’m not sure what kind of makeup or even possibly CGI effects were employed, but they look so much like the women they portray you’d swear there was some DNA swapping.

The voices are really good, too. Theron sounds so much like Kelly, with her upstate New York accent and odd word emphasis, it’s downright eerie. Kidman is great, too, though Carlson doesn’t have as distinct a speaking style to emulate.

These are showstopper performances that I’m sure will be remembered during the awards season.

The story follows along in 2016 during the last months of the tenure of Roger Ailes, the notorious political fixer-turned-news-mogul who ran Fox News from its inception. He’s played by John Lithgow in a naturalistic fat suit and facial prosthetics. You’d never call it a sympathetic portrait, but Lithgow manages to find the humanity inside the ogreish exterior.

Ailes believed in giving the audience what it wants, or at least what he’s convinced they wanted, which was right-wing opinion segments, short skirts and lots of yelling. He helped create Donald Trump as a viable candidate and then found himself tied to his yoke, as have so many others.

Robbie’s character, Kayla, is an amalgam of women used and abused by Ailes and a corporate culture that openly treated its on-air talent as sex objects. She begs Ailes for advice to launch her career, and they share a scene of pressure and submission that’s just devastating to watch.

Kate McKinnon plays Jess, a producer who befriends Kayla and has a brief romance with her. Jess is a liberal lesbian who hides her identity because she couldn’t get a job anywhere else but Fox News, and now no other network will hire her.

An excellent supporting cast includes Allison Janney, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Rob Delaney, Malcolm McDowell, Stephen Root and Liv Hewson.

The best part of the film is the middle section, where the word is out about Ailes’ disgusting behavior and the lawyers are circling. Rather than the walls closing in, the newsroom breaks down into a cheerleading squad led by Jeanine Pirro and a few others, handing out “Team Roger” T-shirts and insisting people wear them.

The #MeToo movement has sparked a lot of good things and also some predictable overreaching and backlash. This is basically the first mainstream movie to deal with the issue head-on, and it’s both chilling and exhilarating.

Many of us who haven’t been affected sit in our privileged perches and wonder how anyone could commit this kind of behavior, or why anyone puts up with it. “Bombshell” is a bravura portrait of how ambition, fear, lust and hypocrisy can combine in the most awful ways imaginable so that people feel trapped.

Review: "Tully"

Director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody broke out together with the release of “Juno” 11 years ago, establishing themselves as important filmmakers while still in their 20s. Their follow-up together, 2011’s “Young Adult,” starring Charlize Theron as a woman stuck on life’s launching pad, disappointed.

Since then, their careers have fluttered in fading notoriety, with Reitman’s “Labor Day” becoming a cinematic laughing stock -- unfairly, imho -- while Cody has largely moved to television (which isn’t the big step down it used to be).

They’re back for a third time, again with Theron, for “Tully.” I don’t know if it will revive their names as A-list filmmakers, but it’s a smart and sensitive portrait of the trials of motherhood, along with a few developments we don’t see coming.

It’s a brave and unexpected movie, and Theron is magnificent in another career-turning role.

After getting lean and spare to play a one-armed warrior in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Theron reportedly gained 50 pounds to portray Marlo, a woman of about age 40 who is giving birth to her third (unplanned) child. At first I thought it was very convincing prosthetics, but the former model went all the way to personify a very convincing postpartum body.

At one point, a completely frazzled Marlo has a drink spilled on her while eating dinner with the children, as her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), returns from another of many business trips. Completely at the end of her rope, she nonchalantly strips off the sopping shirt to reveal a mammoth maternity bra and mottled belly.

“Mommy, what’s wrong with your body?” her oldest, Sarah (Lia Frankland), asks in the sweetest tone.

In addition to the baby, Marlo also struggles with her kindergartner, Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who has serious anxiety issues that cause him to be a disruption at school, and everywhere. The fact he’s undiagnosed, but universally described as “quirky,” only heightens the challenge.

Marlo and Drew have a typical three-kids relationship: someone’s always coming or going, they’re always running late and marital intimacy has been moved to the back burner, and then off the burner to the counter, and then put away in the fridge. Drew seems like a decent guy, but he works all the time, and when he’s home he’s helping with the kids or playing video games.

The primary relationship in the story is between Marlo and Tully, the young “night nanny” who has been hired by Marlo’s wealthy brother (Mark Duplass) as a baby shower gift. This is a person who takes care of the baby so mom and dad can sleep.

(Well, let’s face it, dads: so mom can sleep.)

Tully, played by Mackenzie Davis, is energetic and earnest, endlessly helpful and supportive. She not only watches the baby, she cleans up the house and bakes cupcakes, too. And she initiates a friendship with Marlo that allows the mom to perk up out of her litany of exhaustion and underappreciation.

There’s a lot of bright humor in the film, courtesy of Cody. I loved this exchange in which the two women discuss Marlo’s pre-marriage sex life:

“I rode every horse on the merry-go-round.”
“So which horse is Drew?”
“Drew is… the bench.”

I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice it to say the new friendship proceeds in surprising ways. Marlo struggles with the monotony of parenthood, but Tully advises her that kids need their moms to be “dull and constant.”

I have a number of married friends who have chosen not to have children. “Tully” is the sort of movie that would only validate their decisions, as it depicts parenthood in all its horrible, depressing, exhilarating glory. The truth is Furioso may have been tougher than Mad Max, but someone like Marlo is more than their match.
 

Review: "Table 19"

Screenwriters Jay and Mark Duplass more or less established the mumblecore genre, known for its rambling, naturalistic dialogue punctuated with sly jokes. "Table 19" is familiar territory, but also not. It's got more emotional resonance than we're used to seeing from these movies, though plenty of laughs, too.

Anna Kendrick is first-among-equals as Eloise, one of six guests at the titular table of losers at the wedding of her oldest friend. El was actually the bridesmaid and helped plan the wedding, so her voice has authority when she tells the other guests how each table was organized: the grandparents, the cousins, eligible singles, shaky singles, the kids' table, etc.

The literal last, table 19, consists of people who should've known to check "declines with regrets" rather than attend, El says. They're the back of the room, shunted off and forgotten. El herself has self-demoted because she used to date Teddy (Wyatt Russell), the bride's brother and also the best man. They just broke up a couple of months ago, and it's obvious to all that El has come because she's looking to have it out with him.

It's essentially one long freewheeling conversation, that starts out with the table-mates denying that they've been assigned to the worst table, then sussing out why they got disrespected, and finally moving on to more substantial exploration.

I'm not giving anything away by revealing that halfway through the movie, they decamp en masse. More than anything it reminded me of "The Breakfast Club," where hijinks give way to somber, probing moments.

It's definitely a motley crew. Lisa Kudrow and Craig Robinson are Bina and Jerry Kepp, a long-married couple who own a diner in Columbus, Ohio. Either the bride or groom's family (I forget) is also in the business, so the invitation seems like more a courtesy than a call to come. She wanted to attend, he didn't, so it's already tense between them. Their marriage has reached the point where they're more snarky best friends than lovers.

One of the things they like to do is argue a bit, then flip each other off simultaneously after turning their backs. When that's your "cute thing," you know you're in trouble.

Tony Revolori plays Renzo, a nervous high school kid here to represent his family, which also has business ties. Renzo is a desperate virgin who's hoping a wedding is a great way to change that. Interestingly, his (heard-not-seen) mother is actually the one pushing him to do this. She tells him his manhood -- not the concept; his actual parts -- is a gift from God, and the wedding holds better odds for him scoring than the junior prom, which is the same weekend.

Like all teens Renzo is fervently annoyed by his mother, without realizing she's actually the best mom in the world.

Stephen Merchant is Walter, cousin to the bride. Very tall and very shy, Walter likes to disappear into the background drapes and avoid conversations. You'll find out why. 

One running gag is about Bina's maroon coat, which matches those of the servers at the wedding. Bina is continually annoyed when they mistake her for one of them, so she gives it to Walter. It tells you everything you need to know about him that when a worker instructs him to go bring drinks to table or whatnot, Walter doesn't object but tranquilly shambles off to comply.

Nanny Jo (June Squibb) -- everyone calls her that, even though she's retired -- was the first caretaker to the bride's family. Jo is operating under the delusion that she's a beloved figure invited to watch her former charges become full-fledged adults, but really they hardly remember her. She's plucky, plainspoken and has that strange sort of maternal strength that some childless women gain over the years.

Where things go, I won't tell you, though you can probably guess. El and Teddy have their face-off, and we learn more about them that we'd guess. Kendrick's a master at showing us normal women with strains of grace and neuroticism they struggle to conceal. I also really liked Russell, who acts like a cad but maybe has reason to. He was also a soulful presence in the great, virtually unseen "Everybody Wants Some!!".

There's a fun departure with a dreamy fellow played by Thomas Cocquere, who sidles up to El at the start of the wedding and starts tossing off witticisms and flirtations. She later enlists him for a scorching dance together to make Teddy jealous. We think we know where this is going, though maybe that his name is Huck provides a cautionary note. 

As multiple people point out, no one is named Huck anymore.

Directed by Jeffrey Blitz, whose background is mostly in television, "Table 19" is a fun and smart little film celebrating the screw-ups and the outcasts. The thing is, everybody screws up and everybody gets cast out, at least at some point in their life, though some of us maybe more than others. 

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: "Safety Not Guaranteed"

In addition to being one of my favorite films 2012, "Safety Not Guaranteed" also nabs the title of Best Movie Nobody's Seen. This tiny indie came and went from theaters quickly, but inspired plenty of passion among the few who bought tickets.

This quirky black comedy/drama is about a trio of journalists sent to check out a cryptic help-wanted ad for a companion to travel through time. "Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before," it concludes.

Aubrey Plaza, best known for TV's "Parks and Recreation," plays Darius, a cynical intern looking not so much for her big break as something to break the monotony. She finds it in Kenneth (Mark Duplass), the odd but oddly charming fellow behind the ad. Paranoid and defensive, he slowly starts to let his guard down, and a nascent romance begins to take form.

Along for the ride are Jeff, a 40ish reporter who's using the story as a ruse to get a free trip to his hometown, and Arnau, a shy Indian-American nerd who yearns to lose his virginity.

Everyone assumes Kenneth is a kook, but he doesn't seem like a very dangerous one. When strangers in sunglasses and black SUVs start following him around, it starts everyone to wondering if there's more to his bizarre plan than meets the eye.

Do people in this story really travel through time? I won't tell you, not only to save the surprise but also because it's not really germane to the success of this film. "Safety Not Guaranteed" does not dazzle us with sci-fi hocus-pocus, but studies what effect the possibility of its existence has on a small group of sharply-drawn characters.

What a daffy, dark, joyous ride.

Alas, extra features -- the same for DVD and Blu-ray versions -- are somewhat lackluster. There is no commentary track or anything to spend hours with. There are two brief featurettes: "A Movie Making Mission" and "The Ad Behind the Movie." You can also hunt around for a hidden time capsule Easter Egg.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Review: "People Like Us"

"People Like Us" is a tearjerker, and is pretty straightforward about it. I don't have an issue with movies that don't pretend to be something other than what they are. Where I do have a problem is when they aren't successful at it.

To wit: no tears of mine were jerked by this movie.

Speaking of jerks: "People Like Us" is filled with them. At some point during the film I kept thinking, "Wow, I really hope there aren't a lot of people like them in the real world." If there are, this is one sad, bitter little globe we're riding as it hurtles through space.

This wannabe-weepy drama is about a young jerk who is the son of an old jerk who up and dies, leaving young jerk with only bitter memories of old jerk. That, plus a shaving bag filled with $150,000 in cash and a terse note instructing him to deliver it to a single mother who turns out to be the sister he never knew he had.

Young jerk, whose actual name is Sam, is in a tough spot because he could really use the money himself. His gig is "corporate bartering," which means buying up overstock of various goods and sundries and trading it for something else. Except Sam bartered a little too fast and loose, and now the feds are breathing down his neck about some rotten tomatoes, or something.

(Quick aside: the federal inquiry is instigated by an unhappy client -- the one with the tomatoes -- and the investigator starts calling Sam and his boss the very same day it's reported to tell them they're being investigated. That's a pretty responsive bureaucracy.)

Anyway, rather than telling the woman, whose name is Frankie, the whole deal and plopping the money down, Sam start following her around, and also her 11-year-old son Josh. He does said stalking while driving his father's fire engine red 1972 Mercury Marquis convertible, a great flaming beast of a car, which somehow does not attract anyone's attention.

Soon Sam has ingratiated himself into their lives, becoming a father figure to young Josh and a support system for Frankie, who's a recovering alcoholic working as a bartender (a Hollywood fabrication, if ever there was one).

The problem with this plot is that it's one of those stories that pivots entirely on the fulcrum of the One Big Lie. An untruth is told -- or as in this case the truth is withheld -- and the rest of the movie turns into an exercise in waiting around until the moment when everything is revealed. So the only real surprise is in seeing how extreme the reaction to the truth will be. (In this case, it's over the top.)

The screenplay is by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert, who inform us this was "inspired by true life." Kurtzman, a TV veteran, directs with little sense of rhythm. The movie turns into a push-pull of characters coming together, then pushing each other away, then back again. It feels like a collection of encounters rather than a knitted whole.

The cast seems a little too perfect for their own good. Chris Pine as Sam brings little to the table that we haven't seen from other rogue-with-good-intentions characters. Elizabeth Banks plays Frankie with more success, as a tough woman putting up a good front over her nagging fears that she's a terrible person and a worse mother. Both are made-up to look scruffy and well-worn, but in a gorgeous Hollywood sort of way.

Michael Hall D'Addario is convincing as Josh, using spot-on facial expressions to show how he reacts to the adults around him with disdain or enthusiasm, depending on what mood strikes. Kids that age are like a combination safe, and few parents get it right more than once in a while.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Olivia Wilde have underwritten roles as, respectively, Sam's mom and girlfriend. They're composed less as flesh-and-blood people than as tools to facilitate Sam's emotional journey -- even if they have to behave illogically to do so.

"People Like Us" is the sort of story that would have worked better as a tiny-budget indie film with actors you never heard of. It feels like a meal that's been jazzed up with too much flimflam and unnecessary seasoning, instead of concentrating on blending a few key ingredients well.

Rather than making the audience sad, it makes us feel sad for it.

2 stars out of four

Review: "Safety Not Guaranteed"

"Safety Not Guaranteed" is a movie that involves time travel, but it's not science fiction. Instead it's a funny/sad piece about a bunch of people whose lives are brought together by the prospect of going into the past, and what effect that possibility has on them.

Do people really travel through time? I won't tell you, not only because I don't want to give too much away, but as I said this question is really not critical to the movie's considerable success.

This oft-delightful indie acts as a counterpoint to "Moonrise Kingdom," the recent Wes Anderson film that I have criticized as being relentlessly quirky just for the sake of self-indulgence. The characters in "Safety" are also off-kilter and even weird, but watching them one senses their strange behavior occurs because of who they are, not because they're putting on a performance.

In a sense, the people in "Safety" appear odd because that's our outward perception of their inner core, whereas the folks in "Moonrise" behave strangely because they construct and maintain an identity based on others' reactions to their oddness.

Aubrey Plaza is probably known to most people as the super-acerbic girl on television's "Parks and Recreation." I've enjoyed her immensely on that show, but I've often watched her on it or the tiny supporting parts she's had in movies and thought, "I'd love to see what she could do with a bigger canvas."

Here's my answer, and what a joy it is. There are notes of her character on "Parks" -- a cynical young woman sullenly navigating a post-college landscape without much success or enthusiasm. But Darius is a much fuller, fleshier portrait with subtle layers. Here's hoping Plaza has more roles like this on the horizon.

Her counterpart is Mark Duplass as Kenneth, who places an ad in the paper seeking a partner for time travel. "This is not a joke," the ad insists. "You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before."

Darius, who interns at the fictional Seattle Magazine, is sent along with a veteran reporter and another intern to check out this odd announcement and write a story about the person behind it. Everyone expects it to be a big joke, but then Darius meets Kenneth and finds him, if not convincing, then utterly serious.

There are two kinds of weirdoes: those who are doing it for attention and those who think they're passing themselves off as normal but aren't. Kenneth belongs to the latter group. He works at a big-box store, wears an unattractive mullet, tools around in an ancient yellow Datsun 280Z and has weird conversations with his co-workers about our fixed perception of time.

After some hesitation, Kenneth agrees to take on Darius as his partner-in-training. Despite the fact that they practice shooting guns and his ramshackle house is filled with strange gadgets and drawings, Kenneth does not seem all that frightening.

He talks a lot of bluster about his smarts and skills, but it comes across as the innocent boasts of a 12-year-old who never grew up. When Darius asks about a rather strange feature of his anatomy, he goes into a sort of mental fetal position, and that's when she realizes how vulnerable he really is.

Her ostensible boss is also undergoing a form of time travel, though with very different motivations and results. Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) is 40ish and takes the assignment purely so he can reconnect with a hot girl (Jenica Bergere) he had a fling with back when. Along for the only partially willing ride is Arnau (Karan Soni), a timid, virginal nerd.

Just as Darius is realizing how much of a connection she has to Kenneth, things start to get serious when they break into a laser company, and men in black suits and sunglasses begin following them around.

"Safety Not Guaranteed" is a hard movie to pigeonhole. Director Colin Trevorrow and screenwriter Derek Connolly, both feature film rookies, have concocted an offbeat treat that keeps on surprising.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Cyrus"

I don't really know what to call "Cyrus." From the presence of Jonah Hill as the title character, most people will probably take it as a comedy. But the humor is so dark and the mood so frequently unnerving that you don't much feel like laughing.

What I did feel was fully engaged, and enjoyment at drinking in some wonderful performances by Hill, Marisa Tomei and especially John C. Reilly. It's a movie that's not trying to provoke a reaction from the audience, but simply observes a small set of characters with sharp focus and a wry wit.

Reilly plays John, a sad sack who's finally pulled out of the tailspin since his divorce by starting a relationship with Molly (Tomei), a single mother to 21-year-old Cyrus (Hill), who's still living at home and doesn't show any inclinations about changing this fact. Cyrus sabotages their relationship, subtly at first but with increasing venom.

One scene sums up my reaction to this film. John has begun sleeping over at Molly's, which Cyrus accepts with a veneer of friendliness but clearly doesn't like. In the middle of the night, John gets up to find Cyrus standing in the kitchen nude from the waist down and holding a butcher knife. "C'mere," he says with a glazed stare, motioning with the huge knife.

I'll save you the trouble by letting you know "Cyrus" does not veer into slasher flick territory. But the sensation one gets in that moment -- nervous laughter that morphs quickly into fear and then melts into a profound discomfort -- is strangely enjoyable.

"Cyrus" is written and directed by sibling duo Jay and Mark Duplass ("Baghead"), part of the "mumblecore" indie movement. The dialogue has an ungroomed, improvisational feel, and the trio of stars give naturalistic performances without an ounce of ego.

Reilly, who's done a lot of lunkhead comedies lately but has shown serious acting chops in the past, certainly doesn't seem to have any vanity in his role. When we first see John, his ex-wife (Catherine Kenner) catches him masturbating in his slovenly wreck of a home.

She reveals that she and her boyfriend (Matt Walsh) are going to get married, which crushes him despite the seven years since they parted. To cheer him up, they invite John to a party where he gets stupendously drunk, and even the homely girl sitting alone on the couch blows him off.

Molly, however, overhears his moment of total vulnerability and is touched. Soon they're an item, but John quickly senses something wrong about her relationship with her son. Cyrus calls her Molly instead of mother, and they spend hours every day together wrapped in a cocoon of co-dependency.

Cyrus deeply resents any division of Molly's affections with another -- she tellingly reveals she hasn't had a serious relationship since Cyrus was born -- and sets about to use himself as a wedge between them.

In essence, John has walked into the middle of an Oedipal complex, with him taking on the role of the guy about to get whacked.

Hill is terrific, and what's most striking about it is that it isn't all that different from what he does in his comedic roles. He's become a master of the deadpan stare where he says seemingly benevolent things, but in a cutting way. His Cyrus is a sweet-faced emotional terrorist.

I really liked Reilly in this. He starts out as such a pathetic figure, we practically cringe for him. But he slowly gets his baggage together, and has enough self-respect to fight back against Cyrus' manipulations.

Tomei's role is a bit under-realized -- Molly acts as a vessel into which these two flawed men pour their emotions, good and bad. I kept wishing she would take a proactive role, and kick both of them out.

3 stars out of four