“Going All Kanye On You”: New Year’s Eve (dir by Garry Marshall)

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“New Year’s Eve is the worst, people who don’t drink or party all year suddenly going all Kanye on you.”

That line was delivered by Ashton Kutcher in the 2011 film, New Year’s Eve. Seven years ago, when the film was first released, I thought it was an awkward line, partially because Ashton Kutcher sounded like he was drowning in self-loathing when he said it and partially because the sudden reference to Kanye West felt like something that would be considered clever by 60-something screenwriter who had just spent a few hours scanning twitter to see “what the kids are into nowadays.”

(Of course, hearing the line in 2018 was an even stranger experience. People who don’t drink or party all year suddenly going all Kanye on you? So, they’re putting on red MAGA caps and spending New Year’s Eve tweeting about prison reform? True, that’s the way a lot of people celebrated in my part of the world but I’m not sure how exactly that would play out in Times Square.)

In New Year’s Eve, Kutcher plays a character named Randy. Randy is a comic book artist, which means that he’s snarky and cynical and doesn’t really see the point of celebrating anything. Fortunately, he gets trapped in an elevator with Elise (Lea Michele) and, with her help, he comes to learn that New Year’s Eve is not the worst. Instead, it’s the most important holiday ever created and, if you don’t think so, you’re worse than the devil.

Fortunately, Hillary Swank is present to make sure that we all get the point. Swank plays Claire Morgan, who is in charge of making sure that the ball drops at exactly the right moment at Times Square and who gets a monologue where she explains that the purpose of the ball is to make you think about both the past and the future. As she explains it, the world comes together one night a year, all so everyone can watch that ball drop. Apparently, if the ball doesn’t drop, the new year doesn’t actually start and everyone is trapped in a timeless limbo, kind of like Iron Man at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.

Of course, there’s more going on in New Year’s Eve than just Randy taking Kanye’s name in vain and Claire refusing the accept that Times Square is not the center of the universe. There’s also an old man (Robert De Niro) who wants to time his death so he passes right at the start of the new year. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the mother of frustrated teenager Abigail Breslin and gets to make a “girls gone wild” joke. (A Kanye reference and a girls gone wild joke in the same film? It’s like a pop culture tsunami!) Michelle Pfeiffer tries to accomplish all of her new year’s resolutions with the help of Zac Efron. Halle Berry worries about her husband (Common) , who is serving overseas. Josh Duhamel searches for a woman who once told him that his heart was more important than his business. Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel compete with Til Schweiger and Sarah Paulson to see who can be the family of the first child born in the new year. Jon Bon Jovi thinks about the woman that he nearly married and Katherine Heigl wonders if she’s ever going to have a career again. In other words, New Year’s Eve is an ensemble piece, one in which a bunch of slumming Oscar winners and overachieving TV actors step into small roles. It leads to some odd pairings. De Niro, for instance, shares scenes with Alyssa Milano while Sofia Vergara and Ludacris are both relegated to playing sidekicks. Michael Bloomberg, New York’s then-mayor and general threat to civil liberties everywhere, also shows up, playing himself with the type of smarminess that already has many people dreading the prospect of his 2020 presidential campaign. This is one of those films where everyone has a familiar face but no one makes much of an impression.

New Year’s Eve was directed by the late Garry Marshall and it’s the second film in his so-called holiday trilogy, sitting right between Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. By most accounts, Garry Marshall was a nice guy and popular in the industry, which perhaps explains why so many familiar faces were willing to sign up to appear in New Year’s Eve. Though the film is ruthlessly mediocre, it’s actually the best of the holiday trilogy. For all the schmaltz and forced sentiment, one gets the feeling that the film actually is sincere in its belief in the importance of that ball dropping in Times Square.

I remember that, when New Year’s Eve was first released, a lot of people joked that Marshall was going to make an ensemble romantic comedy about every single holiday, all with the hope that at least one of them would eventually become a television perennial in the style of It’s A Wonderful Life or The Ten Commandments. Interestingly, that’s exactly what happened with New Year’s Eve. Yesterday, E! aired New Year’s Eve three times, back-to-back! For better or worse, this film is probably going to outlive us all, ensuring that, in the far future, viewers will spend New Year’s Eve asking themselves, “What’s a kanye?”

Back to School Part II #50: Paper Towns (dir by Jake Schreier)

Posted on September 18, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(For the past three weeks, Lisa Marie has been in the process of reviewing 56 back to school films! She’s promised the rest of the TSL staff that this project will finally wrap up by the end of Monday, so that she can devote her time to helping to prepare the site for its annual October horror month! Will she make it or will she fail, lose her administrator privileges, and end up writing listicles for Buzzfeed? Keep reading the site to find out!)

Looking at the film poster above, you could be forgiven for immediately thinking of The Fault In Our Stars. Of course, some of that is because it says, “From the author of The Fault In Our Stars” and because it features half of Nat Wolff’s face. (Wolff had a key supporting role in Fault.) Beyond that, though, the poster feels as if it could have just as easily been used for The Fault In Our Stars. Check out the intensity of the stares. Though we may only see half of their faces, both of the pictured characters appear to be daring the viewer to dismiss their concerns as being mere “teen drama.”

When Paper Towns was released in 2015, it was repeatedly advertised as being the next Fault In Our Stars. Paper Towns does share Fault‘s unapologetic earnestness and, in a few scenes, its sense of inescapable melancholy. (As people get older, they tend to sentimentalize the years that came before and, as a result, they often forget how coming-of-age and intense regret often go hand-in-hand.) But ultimately, though they’re both based on novels by John Green and feature Nat Wolff, Paper Towns tells a very different story from The Fault In Our Stars.

Nat Wolff stars as Quintin, who is better known as Q. Quintin is a student at Jefferson Park High School in Orlando. He’s the epitome of a good kid. He’s shy, he’s polite, and, somewhat inevitably when you consider what is currently valued in American society, he’s not particularly popular at school. He spends most of his time hanging out with his friends, Ben (Austin Abrams) and Radar (Justice Smith). And when he’s not hanging out with them, he’s pining for the most popular girl in school, Margo (Cara Delivingne).

Margo and Quintin have been neighbors since they were children. When Margo’s family first moved in, she and Quintin became close friends but that friendship ended after they came across the body of a man who had committed suicide. Traumatized, Margo drifted away from Quintin. Now, nine years later, they are both seniors in high school. Quintin silently loves Margo. Margo rarely acknowledges his existence…

Or, that is, she doesn’t until the night that she suddenly climbs through Quintin’s bedroom window. She explains that her boyfriend has been cheating on her. She wants revenge on him and all of her friends, none of whom bothered to tell her what was going on. A night of gleeful vandalism follows, ending with a romantic dance.

The next morning, Margo is gone. She’s vanished and no one knows where she has gone. However, Quintin is determined to find her and he is also convinced that she has left him a trail of clues that will lead him to her. When he concludes that she’s gone to upstate New York, he recruits his friends (and one of Margo’s former friends) to go on a road trip with him. Quintin is convinced that Margo will be waiting for him but, as always, the truth is a bit more complex…

While the plot description might make Paper Towns sound like a YA version of Gone Girl, it’s actually an achingly sincere and incredibly likable little film. The entire cast has a good chemistry and their dialogue is clever without sounding artificial. The best thing about Paper Towns is that it serves as a wonderful showcase for Nat Wolff, who is one of the best and most underrated young actors working today. If you watch this film directly after watching Wolff convincingly play a self-destructive sociopath in Palo Alto, you’ll get a hint of Wolff’s range.

Paper Towns won’t make you cry like The Fault In Our Stars did but it’s still a pretty decent film.

Film Review: Ashby (dir by Tony McNamara)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At first glance, Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) seems like your typical nerdy high school student. An introvert who has a hard time making friends, Ed is a talented writer but what he really wants to do is play for his school’s legendary football team. One thing that sets Ed apart from cinematic nerds of the past is that he is not lacking in confidence. He’s shy but he understands what he’s capable of accomplishing. He knows he’s a good writer. He also know that he has the potential to be a good football player. When he crashes the team’s practice and manages to talk Coach Burton (Kevin Dunn) into giving him a shot, Ed proves that he’s the faster than anyone else on the team. And when one of the other players starts to bully him, Ed has no trouble convincing the quarterback to stand up for him. After all, as Ed explains it, if Ed’s not in a good mood than he’s not going to catch anything that the quarterback throws. And if Ed doesn’t make those catches, the quarterback won’t have a good game and, if he doesn’t have a good game, he won’t get any scholarship offers.

At first, Ed’s determination to play football horrifies both his mother, June (Sarah Silverman), and his best (and only) friend, Eloise (Emma Roberts). June is a single mother who terrifies Ed by openly discussing her sex life with him. Eloise, meanwhile, is a self-styled misfit who is nicknamed “weird girl” by Ed’s fellow jocks. It’s only after they see Ed playing on the field (and, not coincidentally, making the winning catch), that June and Eloise start to support Ed’s athletic dreams…

Meanwhile, Ed is getting to know his neighbor, Ashby (Mickey Rourke). Ashby is a former CIA agent who has just been informed that he has only a few months to live. Ed needs to talk to an old person for a class assignment. Ashby needs someone to drive him around town. At first, Ashby refuses to open up to Ed but slowly, Ashby starts to lower his defenses. Ashby is soon coming to Ed’s football games, flirting with June, and serving as a substitute father figure.

Of course, Asby is also murdering people. Though Ed doesn’t know it, the reason that Ashby keeps asking him for a ride is because Ashby is determined to track down and kill three men who he feels betrayed him. Ashby does this with the full knowledge that eventually, the CIA is going to send somebody to take him out…

Ashby is a mix of genres that don’t really go together. It’s a gentle coming-of-age comedy that’s also a violent revenge thriller. The end result is an extremely messy film that never finds a consistent tone. And yet, at the same time, that inconsistency is a part of the film’s strange charm. The film is so determined to make its oddball mix of genres work that you actually do find yourself rooting for it, even if it doesn’t quite succeed. Ashby is one of those films that shouldn’t work and yet, somehow, it does.

Some credit for that has to go to director Tony McNamara. He directs with a good eyes for detail (the satiric portrayal of both high school and suburbia feels totally authentic) and he keeps the action moving at such a quick pace that you really don’t have time to obsess over the film’s mishmash of themes and tones.

Even more credit, however, I think has to be given to the cast, all of whom show an admirable commitment to bringing their eccentric characters to life. Mickey Rourke’s plays Ashby as if he might be a distant relation to his character from The Wrestler while Sarah Silverman is so perfectly cast as June that you occasionally find yourself wishing that the entire film could be just about her. I’ve lost track of how many times Emma Roberts has been cast as a quirky high school girlfriend but she still brings as much depth as she can to her underwritten character.

Ultimately, though, the film belongs to Nat Wolff, who was so good (as was Emma Roberts) in last year’s Palo Alto. Wolff’s character in Ashby may not have much in common with the sociopath that he played in Palo Alto or the blind friend he played in The Fault In Our Stars, but Wolff brings a sly charm to all three roles and that charm convince the audience to not only accept but even embrace some of the film’s inconsistencies. Nat Wolff truly holds Asbhy together, helping the film to survive some of its more uneven moments.

Ashby has been given a limited theatrical release and is available through VOD. It’s definitely an uneven film but it’s worth seeing.

Film Review: Palo Alto (dir by Gia Coppola)

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Palo Alto came out in May of last year and it never quite got as much attention as it deserved. A lot of that is because the film is based on a collection of short stories by James Franco and a lot of critics apparently decided ahead of time that Palo Alto was some sort of vanity project.

Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Palo Alto is actually one of the better films of 2014, a minor masterpiece of ennui that also serves as a promising directorial debut for Gia Coppola. (Of course, Gia’s aunt Sofia made her directorial debut with an ennui-centric literary adaptation of her own, The Virgin Suicides.)

Palo Alto follows several teenagers over the course of one school year. (It’s no coincidence that, at one point, Fast Times At Ridgemont High shows up on a TV screen.) The film itself is deceptively plotless, with its occasionally drifting narrative mirroring the lives of protagonists who literally have no direction. April (Emma Roberts), who is too intelligent to really fit in with either her shallow friends or her flakey family, plays soccer and has a crush on both Teddy (Jack Kilmer) and her coach, Mr. B (James Franco, playing an unapologetically sleazy character). Teddy is a talented artist who, after a drunk driving accident, finds himself on probation and sentenced to do community service. Making it difficult for Teddy to stay out of trouble is his best friend, Fred (Nat Wolff), who hides his sociopathic nature behind a constant stream of jokes. And then there’s Emily (Zoe Levin), who hides her insecurities behind a wall of blow jobs and demeaning sexual encounters.

As for the adults of Palo Alto, they’re for the most part a collection of grim but ineffective authority figures and parents who don’t want to grow up. Mr. B hides his predatory nature behind a kind smile and a paternal nature. April’s stepfather (Val Kilmer) is permanently stoned. Teddy’s mother is unconcerned with her son’s drinking. Meanwhile, Fred’s father (Chris Messina) offers weed to and hits on his son’s friends.

And it may all sound a bit familiar. Every year, it seems like there is a countless number of indie films about directionless teenagers and irresponsible parents. But Palo Alto is distinguished by Gia Coppola’s confident and frequently surreal direction. Coppola has a good eye for detail and, as a result of the gorgeous cinematography of Autumn Durald, the film is always interesting to watch regardless of how familiar the story may seem. The entire cast does a good job as well, with Emma Roberts and Nat Wolff as clear stand-outs.

And, I have to admit, that on a personal level, there was a lot of Palo Alto to which I related. Whether it was the awkward conversations between April and Teddy or the sad look on Emily’s face as she stared at her reflection, there were so many small moments that just felt true. As I watched Palo Alto, it was impossible for me not to think about my own time in high school. I knew quite a few Teddys. I even knew a few Freds. And sometimes, I was April and then other times, I could have been any of the other characters who wander throughout Palo Alto.

Don’t listen to the haters. Palo Alto is more than worth your time.

Back to School #77: The Fault In Our Stars (dir by Josh Boone)

Posted on September 27, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, we’re wrapping things up as far as Back to School is concerned. A little over a month ago, I set out with a mission. I said that I would review 80 of the best, worst, most memorable, and most forgettable high school and teen films ever made. I said it would be able to do it all in one week. Needless to say I was wrong. It’s actually taken me five weeks but the end is in sight and, as much as I’ve enjoyed doing this series, that’s probably for the best. After all, the back to school sales are over. The kids have already settled back into the school routine. Everyone’s looking forward to the winter break.

Add to that, it’s nearly October and that means that it’s nearly time for this site to start devoting itself to horror!

So, we have four more Back to School reviews to go and, keeping with the chronological nature of this series, they are all for films that were released in 2014!

Speaking of which, 2014 has been the year of Shailene Woodley. Much as how Jennifer Lawrence dominated 2012 by starring in The Hunger Games and winning an Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook, Woodley has proven herself to be both capable of carrying a franchise and starring in a serious film. Also, much like Jennifer Lawrence in 2012, Shailene has been the subject of several condescending posts over at AwardsDaily.com. And, as we all know, you haven’t arrived in this business until Sasha Stone talks down to you.

Shailene’s serious film of 2014 was The Fault In Our Stars, which is based on the excellent and heart-breaking novel by John Green. The book made me cry and cry. In fact, it made me cry so much that I wasn’t sure whether I would have any tears left over for the film. Don’t get me wrong. I knew the film would probably be good. Just on the basis of her excellent performances in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now, I knew that Shailene Woodley was an ideal pick for the role of the Hazel, a sarcastic 16 year-old who has thyroid cancer and can’t go anywhere without her oxygen tank. But I wondered, knowing already what was going to happen, would the film still have as strong an effect on me as it would if I was going in with no knowledge as to what was waiting for me.

I really shouldn’t have even wondered. For that matter, I probably should not have worn mascara on the night that I saw the movie because, seriously, by the end of it, my face was a mess! The Fault In Our Stars is one of those films that has been specifically made to make you cry. And yes, it’s undeniably manipulative and I’ll even agree with those critics who have used the dreaded “schmaltz” label while describing the film but so what? In the end, the tears are earned. In the end, the film works.

And that’s largely due to Shailene Woodley’s performance as Hazel. While Ansel Elgort gives an okay performance as Augustus, the boy who has lost a leg to cancer and who Hazel loves, the film really does belong to Shailene. She gives a fierce performance, capturing both Hazel’s dark humor and, even more importantly, her independence and her inner strength. It’s the type of performance that more than justifies 2014 being the year of Shailene Woodley.

Probably one of the more critically divisive scenes in the film comes when Hazel and Augustus are taking a tour of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. (They’re in Amsterdam because they’re looking for Hazel’s favorite writer, a drunken recluse who is well-played by Willem DaFoe.) Over the course of the tour, Hazel has to climb several staircases and ladders and it’s not easy for her. However, Hazel never gives up and, at the end of the tour, she and Augustus share as kiss. And, of course, everyone else who was on the tour breaks out into applause. For many, I think this is the scene where the film says, “You can either take me as I am or you can leave the theater.” Yes, it is incredibly manipulative and yes, I do think it would have been just as effective without everyone else breaking out into applause. But, dammit, the scene works! You have grown to so much care about Hazel that the scene works. It also helps that, up until this point, the film has been so unsentimental about the horrible reality of cancer that the fact that you’re happy to finally see Hazel get that over-the-top moment of happiness. Hazel has earned it, the film has earned it, and so has Shailene Woodley.