6 More Quickies With Lisa Marie: Beginners, Hall Pass, Horrible Bosses, Paul, Prom, and Terri

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I swore to myself that I would write a review of every new film I saw in 2011, I failed to take into consideration that 1) I see a lot of films, 2) I have a day job, and 3) I’m like Ms. ADHD. So, as part of my effort to catch up, here’s 6 quickie reviews.

Beginners (directed by Mike Mills)

Beginners opened with a lot of critical hype earlier this year and, though it’s not quite as great as it’s being made out to be, it still deserved the majority of that praise. At the very least, I retain better memories of Beginners than I do this summer’s other similarly hyped film, A Better Life. Ewan McGregor is an artist who struggles to come terms with the death of his gay father (Christopher Plummer) while falling in love with a French actress (Melanie Laurent). The autobiographical film effortlessly shifts from flashbacks to Plummer’s life in-and-out of the closet to McGregor’s relationship with Laurent and the end result is a meditation on love, secrets, and life. Most of the pre-release buzz dealt with Plummer’s performance but, honestly, Plummer is good but you never forget you’re watching Christopher Plummer and Goran Visnjic, who plays Plummer’s boyfriend, overacts. The film really belongs to Ewan McGregor who gives one of his best performances in this film. Seriously, does any actor fall in love as wonderfully as Ewan McGregor?

Hall Pass (directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly)

Best friends Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis are given a “hall pass” (i.e., permission to cheat) by their spouses (Jenna Fischer and Cristina Applegate). The film’s forgettable but seriously, guys, don’t go asking us for a hall pass, okay? One interesting point is that this film was co-written by the guy who won the first season of Project Greenlight. Remember that show?

Horrible Bosses (directed by Set Gordon)

Jason Sudekis also appeared in another comedy this year and if Hall Pass is one of the year’s most forgettable comedies, than Horrible Bosses is one of the best. Basically Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Sudekis are stuck working for horrible bosses (played by Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, and Jennifer Aniston) and they decide that the only way to handle the situation is to commit mass murder. There’s a lot I could say about this film but chances are, you’ve already seen it. Therefore, you already know that this is a rare dark comedy that actually has the guts to be truly dark. You also know that the entire cast brings an almost heroic sincerity to their often bizarre roles with Charlie Day’s misunderstood sex offender as an obvious stand-out. Probably the best advice that I can give in this review is to enjoy and appreciate this film while you can before the inevitable sequel comes out and screws up all these good memories.

Paul (directed by Greg Mottola)

I didn’t see Paul when it was first released in theaters because the trailer really made it look kinda awful. However, I did eventually give it a shot OnDemand and I was pleasantly surprised. Two English sci-fi fanboys (played by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) are taking a road trip to visit all of the major UFO sites in the U.S. This leads to them meeting an alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) who is being pursued by the typical guys in black suits. Anyway, this is a predictable film and the balance between the serious and comedic is often a bit awkward. However, it’s still a likable film and how can’t you enjoy watching Pegg and Frost? They can make even the lamest of jokes hilarious. Kristen Wiig steals the film as a fundamentalist who, upon being enlightened about the nature of the universe by Paul, embraces blasphemy with endearing enthusiasm.

Prom (directed by Joe Nussbaum)

No, I did not force Jeff to take me to see this when it was first released in theaters back in April. I tried, mostly be saying things like, “Wow, Prom looks like it would be a funny movie to see and spend the whole time making mean jokes about and making all the little tweens in the audience cry…” but he saw through my ruse and, if memory serves me correct, I ended up seeing the second worst film of 2011 (a.k.a. The Conspirator) instead. Anyway, I ended up seeing Prom OnDemand last month and it’s not really that bad. It’s not good either. It’s just kinda there. In other words, Prom is incredibly meh and that’s one thing prom night should never be. (I loved my proms, by the way, and, whenever things seem overwhelming, I often think to myself, “If only every night could be Prom Night…”) Prom is forgettable and inoffensive but come on, tweens deserve better films. They are the future, after all.

Terri (directed by Azazel Jacobs)

Terri made me cry and cry and was one of my favorite movies of the summer. It’s a surprisingly poignant film that worked wonders with material that, at first glance, seemed awfully conventional. Terri (played by Jacob Wysocki) is a sensitive, obese teenager who is taken under the wing of an unconventional assistant principal (John C. Reilly). It’s a familiar story but director Azazel Jacobs tells this story with care and sensitivity and Wysocki and Reilly bring their characters to life with such skill that you can’t help but get caught up in their story. Terri’s loving but senile uncle is played by Creed Bratton, who proves here that he’s capable of doing a lot more than just parodying himself on The Office. When I went to this movie, two old women sitting behind me went, “Awwww!” at a scene where Wysocki spontaneously hugs Reilly. The film earns the sentiment.

Most of these films are available via OnDemand or are currently available on DVD. Horrible Bosses and Terri are scheduled to be released in October while Beginners will come out in November.

Lisa Marie Finally Gets Around To Reviewing Cedar Rapids (dir. by Miguel Arteta)

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, in my review of The Beaver, I talked about the annual Hollywood Black List and how the movies that are always listed at the top of the black list usually turn out to be vaguely disappointing. Well, in that review, I failed to mention that The Beaver was not the only Black List film that I’ve seen (so far) in 2011. A few months ago, I saw the film that topped last year’s list, Cedar Rapids. (The Cedar Rapids screenplay, by the way, was written by Phil Johnston.)

Now, Cedar Rapids (which is scheduled to be released on DVD in June) actually had a pretty good run down in here in Dallas. Unlike Austin, Dallas is not a film-crazed city and — with only four theaters currently specializing in indie and art films — it’s usually a case of “you snooze, you lose” when it comes to seeing anything out of the mainstream. We’ll have a few hundred theaters all showing something like Avatar for half a year but a film like James Gunn’s Super will usually sneak in, play in one theater for two weeks, and then just as quickly vanish.

Cedar Rapids, however, stuck around for about a month and a half, playing exclusively at the Dallas Angelika. It took me a while to actually find the time to go see it (and, perhaps because of the whole Black List thing, I just didn’t feel much enthusiasm for seeing it) and, in fact, I ended up seeing it the last day it played at the Angelika.

As for why I wanted to see it — well, it had gotten some very positive reviews from critics who traditionally don’t give comedies good reviews so that piqued my interest. I knew that the film featured three of my favorite character actors — John C. Reilly, Stephen Root, and Thomas Lennon. The film was also being touted as a comeback for Anne Heche whose autobiography Call Me Crazy was a favorite book of a former roommate of mine. Finally, I wanted to see the film because it starred Ed Helms, who, at the time, I thought seriously might end up as the new boss on The Office.

Helms, in case you don’t know for some reason, plays Cornell graduate Andy Bernard on The Office. When he first appeared during the show’s third season, he was portrayed as an incredibly obnoxious preppy with an anger management problem and I loved how Helms so thoroughly threw himself into making Andy just the most annoying human being ever. Andy was eventually sent to anger management classes and, upon returning, the character has become less obnoxious and just more buffoonish and, in my opinion, a lot less entertaining. As well, with Jim and Pam now safely married, Andy ended up as the focus of some of the Office’s weakest episodes. In fact, Andy was the center of so many episodes earlier this season that I found myself wondering if the show’s producers weren’t perhaps trying to see how the audience would react to Ed Helms becoming the new star of the show. Since I had mixed feelings about that prospect, I felt that maybe Cedar Rapids would provide me with an answer.

In Cedar Rapids, Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, an almost impossibly innocent insurance agent who is sent by his boss (Stephen Root, who appears to be the go-to guy when you need someone to play a friendly but vaguely threatening manager) to a regional conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Tim is ordered to conduct himself well, to go out of his way to impress the conference president (Kurtwood Smith), and to win the prestigious “Two Diamonds” Award. (The award has been won for the company in the past by Helms’ rival at the company who, at the beginning of the film, accidentally kills himself while practicing autoerotic asphyxiation. The rival is played by Thomas Lennon and I’m kinda sorry that Lennon didn’t have more scenes because seriously, he always makes me smile.)

After saying goodbye to his much older girlfriend (Sigourney Weaver, who is wasted in her cameo), Helms heads off for Cedar Rapids. This is a big deal for him because he’s the type of movie innocent who has never even been on a plane before. Helms arrives at Cedar Rapids determined to do the right thing but he soon discovers that he is rooming with Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), a loud, crude, and cynical agent who indulges in every vice that Helms has been ordered to avoid. Needless to say, Helms initially tries to resist being drawn into Reilly’s orbit but soon, he finds himself being corrupted and enjoying it. Through Reilly, he meets yet another insurance agent (played by Anne Heche) that he soon finds himself falling in lust with. All this happens, of course, under the disapproving eye of Kurtwood Smith and Helms soon learns just how far he is expected to go to win that Two Diamonds Award…

As it might be obvious from the above description, Cedar Rapids is one of those films that attempts to be both a wild comedy and a poignant coming-of-age drama. And it succeeds very well at being a comedy and it does pretty good job of being a drama but it never manages to do both at the same time. The end result is an entertaining but wildly uneven film that never feels like it’s quite as good as it should be.

The film is at it’s best when it’s just Helms, Reilly, Heche, and Isiah Whitlock, Jr. (playing another insurance agent) hanging out and BSing. Those scenes ring well and all four of these actors have a real ensemble chemistry together. You really do end up believing that Reilly, Heche, and Whitlock truly do care about their new friend and you just as strongly believe that Helms really is falling in love with Heche. These are the best scenes in the movie.

The film is less effective when it tries to be something more than just an ensemble comedy. It’s in these scenes — with Kurtwood Smith quoting bible verses and the Two Diamonds Award becoming a metaphor for all sorts of things — that the film gets heavy-handed and a bit boring. I also have a feeling that these scenes are probably the reason why so many Hollywood readers went nuts of the Cedar Rapids screenplay because these scenes are the least challenging in the film. These are the scenes that pat you on the back for watching the movie. Anyone who has ever seen a movie knows that Kurtwood Smith’s character is going to turn out to be a hypocrite because when was the last time that you see a movie in which the guy who talked about Jesus didn’t turn out to be a hypocrite? Therefore, it’s kinda hard to buy into Helms’s shock when he discovers that Smith isn’t all that he’s cracked up to be. I mean, I can force myself to buy that the Helms character has never been on a plane before but my God, has he never seen a movie or an episode of Law and Order before either? Seriously, the character isn’t a Mennonite. He’s just from the midwest.

In the lead role, Ed Helms is a lot like the movie. He’s great when he’s just a member of the ensemble but sometimes seems to struggle a bit in the more dramatic scenes. To a large extent, the problem is that the film goes so out of it’s way to present Helms as being some sort of man-child that it’s hard to take him seriously once he suddenly starts to think for himself. As I previously stated, the supporting cast is uniformly strong. Reilly is a drunken, foul-mouthed force of nature while Heche steals every scene that she’s in and, in the end, proves herself to really be the heart and soul of the film.

So, in the end, I guess I would say that Cedar Rapids, as uneven and as frustrating as it occasionally turned out to be, is worth seeing once it comes out on DVD in June.

Film Review: Cyrus (dir. by Mark and Jay Duplass)

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last Tuesday night, as we watched the end credits of Cyrus rolling across the screen at the Plano Angelika, a very dear and close friend of mine leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That was a really odd fucking movie.”

(Actually, it was two weeks ago. Sorry, I started this review a while ago and only recently returned to finish it.)

And he’s right. Though the film is worth seeing (though I’d honestly suggest waiting until it comes out on DVD unless you’re just the world’s biggest John C. Reilly or Jonah Hill fan), Cyrus really is an odd fucking movie.

Cyrus is the latest film from Jay and Mark Duplass, the two brothers responsible for 2008’s Baghead, one of the unacknowledged great films of the last decade. In Cyrus , John C. Reilly plays a character named — appropriately enough — John. John is a likable loser, a less musical version of the character Reilly played in Chicago. When the movie opens, John is depressed over the fact that his ex-wife, Jamie (Catherine Keener), is getting married again. At Jamie’s suggestion, he goes to a party where he proceeds to have too much to drink, flirts awkwardly with every woman he sees, and somehow manages to charm Molly (Marisa Tomei). Molly is soon sleeping over at John’s house but every morning, John wakes up to discover that she’s either already left or is in the process of sneaking out. John asks her if she’s married. Molly replies that she’s not but is still vague about why she never stays the entire night. Finally, one morning, John follows Molly after she leaves. He sits out in front of her house and, after she’s left for work, John proceeds to creep around outside the house.

And, of course, its while he’s doing all of this creepy stalker stuff that he first meets Cyrus (played, of course, by Jonah Hill). Cyrus is Molly’s 22 year-old son and from the minute he first appears, its obvious that there’s something off about him. He’s far too friendly and speaks in the oddly stilted cadence of someone who is obviously making an effort to act “normal.” He spends all of his time composing New Agey synthesizer music in an elaborate home recording studio. Of course, the main sign that there’s something odd about Cyrus is that he’s played by Jonah Hill.

However, the main thing that distinguishes Cyrus is just how close he is to his mother. From the first moment that we see him and Molly interact (he’s playing his music and Molly enters the house and immediately starts dancing to it), its obvious that Cyrus is Oedipus, Norman Bates, and Yanni all wrapped up into one package. And, obviously, he views John as being competition…

Cyrus is an uneven film, one that starts out strong but — once the title character is actually introduced — suddenly seems to get hit by an identity crisis. Is it a realistic portrait of sad, lonely people trying to find love in uncertain times or is it an Apatowish mix of stoner sentiment and over-the-top comedy? Is Cyrus meant to be the emotionally wounded, painfully insecure outsider that he appears to be the movie’s more contemplative moments or is he just a sociopathic comedic device that Reilly has to overcome in order to pursue his relationship with Tomei? That’s the question that is at the heart of Cyrus and discovering the answer is the film’s entire excuse for existing. Unfortunately, the Duplass Brothers don’t seem to know the answer themselves and as a result, the entire film feels directionless and we’re left with too many unanswered questions.

For instance, where is Cyrus’s father? It’s mentioned by both Cyrus and Molly that the father is no longer in their lives but why? Though its never explicitly stated, its obvious that both Cyrus and Molly have suffered abuse in the past, probably at his hands. However, the issue itself is never directly confronted and its hard to believe that John wouldn’t have asked about it at some point. For that matter, beyond her role as Cyrus’s mother and John’s girlfriend, Molly isn’t given any back story whatsoever. Considering the fact that the entire movie is about how Cyrus and John feel towards her, it’s interesting that she’s never given a scene where she really gets to explain how she truly feels towards either of them. A good deal of the film’s attitude towards Molly can be seen in the fact that, while a major plot point hinges on her being at her job as opposed to at home, we never find out just what exactly it is that she does for a living.

That’s unfortunate because, in many ways, Cyrus shows a good deal of promise and psychological insight. One of the subtle pleasures of the film is seeing how all of the various relationships (John and Molly, John and Cyrus, Molly and John, John and his ex-wife, Cyrus and Molly) actually run parallel with each other. When Molly first flirts with John, John replies, “Are you hitting on me? I’m Shrek.” And it seems like he’s got a point until you see Cyrus and Molly together. It’s at that point that you realize that John probably once looked just like Cyrus and that Cyrus is eventually going to grow up to be John. It’s hard not to wonder if Cyrus’s father looked like John or if Molly is attracted to John because he reminds her of her son. On the other hand, much as Cyrus is totally dependent on Molly, John is similarly dependent on his ex-wife (who, as played by Catherine Keener, looks strikingly similar to Marisa Tomei). In a nice touch, his ex-wife’s new husband seems to have the same opinion of John that John has of Cyrus.

The Duplass Brothers also get a quartet of excellent performances from the film’s leads. This is all the more exceptional considering that three of them are playing characters that are either underwritten (Tomei and Keener) or else totally inconsistent (Hill). The film really belongs to John C. Reilly who is such a sympathetic, likable presence as John that he convinces the audience to forgive a lot of the film’s unevenness. His best moments are to be found in the film’s opening party scene where he essentially acts like a total drunk jackass yet you still feel oddly sorry for him. He’s just such a nice guy.

As previously stated, Cyrus is an odd film, an uneasy mix of independent and mainstream sensibilities. Watching it, I found myself wondering if the Duplass Brothers were really sure what type of movie they wanted to make, if they wanted to emulate the cold, detached dry wit of the Coen Brothers or if they were indulging in a little Judd Apatow-style schmaltz. Both styles attempt to co-exist in Cyrus and the end result is a movie that seems to be struggling to establish its own identity. Still, Cyrus is worth seeing if just for the performances. As flawed as the film is, it confirms what Baghead indicated, that the Duplass Brothers as intriguing filmmakers to watch out for in the future.

2010: The Year In Film So Far

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Everyone views history in their own individual way. Some people remember past years by what they saw on the evening news (hence, 2004 becomes “the year Bush was reelected”) but I define them by what was playing at the nearest movie theater. Ask me when I was born and I won’t tell you, “1985.” Instead, I’ll tell you that I was born the same year that Terry Gilliam’s Brazil was butchered by Sid Shienberg. For me, the quality of a year is determined by the quality of the movies that were released during those twelve months. You may have hated 2009 because of the economy. I hated it because it was the year of the overrated movie, the year in which otherwise sensible people ignored great films like An Education, A Serious Man, District 9, and Inglorious Basterds (which, praised as it was, deserved considerably more) in favor of Avatar and The Hurt Locker.

2010, however, is shaping up to be a far better year. Though a final judgment can’t be passed on 2010 until 2011, here’s a few thoughts on the year so far.

Best Film (so far): Exit Through The Gift Shop, a quasi-documentary that might just be one of the most perfectly executed mindfucks in modern history. Runners-up: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Fish Tank, Please Give, Winter’s Bone, A Prophet, Toy Story 3, and Inception.

Best Male Performance of the year so far: John Hawkes, in Winter’s Bone. Hawkes has been overshadowed by Jennifer Lawrence but he dominates every scene that he appears in. Just consider the scene where he “talks” his way out of a traffic stop. Runners-ups: John C. Reilly in Cyrus, Ben Stiller in Greenberg, Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception and Shutter Island, and Sam Rockwell in Iron Man 2.

Best Female Performance of the year so far: Noomi Rapace as the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire. Rapace is my new role model, a Ms. 45 for the 21st century. Runners-up: Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, Katie Jarvis for Fish Tank, Rebecca Hall in Please Give, Greta Gerwig in Greenberg, and Chloe Grace Moretz in Kick-Ass.

Best Ending: The final shot of Inception.

Best Horror Film: The Wolf Man, which should have been oh so bad but instead turned out to be oh so good with Anthony Hopkins and Hugo Weaving both giving brilliant supporting performances.

Best Bad Movie: Sex and the City 2. Yes, if I’m going to be honest, it was a horrible movie. But it was fun. the clothes were to die for, and the film managed to bring new depths of shallowness to the examination of the oppression of women in the Middle East.

Worst Film Of The Year (so far): Chloe. Oh, Atom Egoyan, poor baby, what have you done, sweetheart? You made a trashy, campy softcore movie and then you forgot that these things are supposed to be fun! Runner-up: Robin Hood, because the entire freaking movie was a lie. However, it did feature Oscar Isaac screaming, “Outlawwwwww!” and that saves it from being named the worst.

Worst Horror Film So Far: The Black Waters On Echo’s Pond. So. Fucking. Bad.

The Get-Over-It-Award For The First Half Of 2010: The makers of Prince of Persia, who just had to try to turn an otherwise entertainingly mindless action film into yet another half-assed cinematic allegory for the Invasion of Iraq. Ben Kingsley will probably be playing thinly disguised versions of Dick Cheney for the rest of his life. I was against the Invasion of Iraq from the start but seriously, I’m so bored with every movie released using it as a way to try to fool the audience into thinking that they’re seeing something more worthwhile than they are.

The Read-The-Freaking-Book-Instead Award: The Killer Inside Me. A lot of viewers are disturbed by the violent way that the main character deals with the women in his life. I’m more disturbed by the fact that all the women in his life are presented as being simpering idiots. The original novel is by Jim Thompson and it is a classic.

The worst ending of 2010 so far: Splice with the Killer Inside Me as a strong runner-up.

Future Film I’m Not Looking Forward To: Roland Emmerich’s Gusher, an ecological thriller based on the BP oil spill, starring Will Smith as the President, Dev Patel as the governor of Louisiana, Paul Bettany as the head of the evil oil company, and Ben Kingsley as Dick Cheney who will be seen cackling as oil-drenched doves wash up on the shores of California. (How did the oil get to California? Emmerich magic.) Of course, the nominal star of the movie will be Jake Gyllenhaal as the young engineer who says stuff like, “This well is going to blow!” and who is trying to reconcile with his estranged wife (played by — does it really matter? Let’s just say Emily Blunt gets the role this time around). And let’s not forget Robert Duvall, who will play a grizzled old-timer who says a lot of grizzled old-timer stuff. Look for it in 2012.

My prediction for which film will be the most overrated of 2010: The Social Network, which has not opened yet but Sasha Stone at awardsdaily.com seems to think that it’s a slam dunk for greatness which is usually a pretty good indication that the end result is going to be a predictable, bourgeois crapfest.

So, that’s 2010 so far. It’s shaping up to be a good year. I’m still looking forward to the release of Blue Valentine, Animal Kingdom, Get Low, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, The Last Exorcism, Wall Street, and the rerelease of Godard’s classic Breathless, which is one of my favorite movies and now I’m going to get a chance to see it in a theater! Life is good.