(Starz/VOD) The flip-side to yesterday’s IZZY GETS THE FUCK ACROSS TOWN, THE CLIMB involves a best friend who actively works to undermine his friend’s relationships because he wants him all to himself.
Similarly overworked, it also features inter-titles for each scene, but writer/director/actor Michael Angelo Covino goes the extra mile by insisting that each and every scene be filmed in one long take.
While it’s a perfect companion film to IZZY, and I couldn’t resist suggesting the two back-to-back, two facets rub me the wrong way: 1) While I love watching films about fuckups, that love doesn’t extend to asshole dudes, and these dudes are very blinkered. 2) While I love a proper long take, and I realize they’re utilized here to heighten the feeling of being present within these significant moments, and while they’re often fluidly and adeptly executed, it feels gimmicky, and several scenes would have benefited from a handful of rigid cuts.
Never the less, it’s an intriguing look at male friendship and forgiveness, which is certainly to be applauded.
(hoopla/peacock/tubi/VOD/Vudu) I don’t know how many favors debut writer/director Christian Papierniak asked to nab this amazing cast, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s now indebted to 80% of LA. I’d watch any film that featured just -one- of the following performers:
Mackenzie Davis Carrie Coon Dolly Wells LaKeith Stanfield Kyle Kinane Alia Shawkat Rob Huebel Annie Potts
Somehow he managed to wrangle all of ‘em for this chaotic ‘one fuckup’s last gasp at attaining an old flame’ film. I’ll grant that it’s overworked — did we really need inter-titles for every scene? — and if Mackenzie Davis wasn’t the lead the film probably wouldn’t work, but she is and ultimately it does. Also, Mackenzie and Carrie Coon ‘reunite’ and play a HEAVENS TO BETSY cover that features -many- layers and that scene alone is worth the price of admission. (I’ll save you the search.)
“I’m not going to wish you good luck.” “No, no one in their right mind would.”
(epix/Hulu/Paramount+/VOD) In a year of unnervingly prescient pandemic screenplays, this one stands out. Based on Aaron Starmer’s young adult novel, senior-year high school teens start spontaneously exploding and are quarantined while scientists race to find a cure.
Brian Duffield’s (writer of both UNDERWATER and JANE GOT A GUN) adaptation takes a number of notes from THE LEFTOVERS, such as uniforms similar to the ‘Guilty Remnants’ and referring to the ‘exploded’ as ‘departed’. They even leave the ‘act of departing’ in the visual gutter — you never witness it occur, you only witness the aftermath. It’s a nice touch by Duffield, and it leads to more than a few gleefully shocking moments.
While you will laugh while watching this — especially at the playful insults bandied about by acerbic smartass Mara (Katherine Longford, KNIVES OUT and LOVE, SIMON) with her best friend Hayley Law (RIVERDALE), boyfriend Dylan (Charlie Plummer, LEAN ON PETE), and ‘cool dad and mom (comedy mainstay Rob Huebel and COYOTE UGLY’s Piper Perabo) — it’s a much more downbeat and thoughtful, occasionally distressing, look at teens reckoning with their mortality on the cusp of beginning their adult lives. It’s not exactly the thigh-slapping dark rom-com the trailer pitches, which is a relief because the end result resonates far longer than a more flippant approach to the material would.
(Hulu/kanopy/Prime/VOD) Recently I’ve been waking up with STARSHIP’s -Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now- in my head and I couldn’t quite figure out why. It’s a top-notch slice of 80s pop, but hardly a song in my normal rotation.
Then I remembered the following scene from THE SKELETON TWINS:
Not the worst scene to occasionally wake to.
THE SKELETON TWINS is a charming, human look at two very fucked up fraternal twins who have been estranged for ten years, but re-unite when the sister Maggie (Kristin Wiig) is told that her brother Milo (Bill Hader) has unsuccesfully attempted suicide. Maggie invites Milo to live with her and her husband (Luke Wilson), and together they explore the miseries and coping mechanisms of their lives.
It’s rare for film to get adult brother/sister dynamics right, but writer Mark Heyman (BLACK SWAN) and director Craig Johnson (ALEX STRANGELOVE) do a fantastic job of managing the push-and-pull aging siblings have, without turning either of them into cartoonish monsters. It’s not as cheerless as it may sound — especially when you have interludes like the above Starship one — but also not as maudlin as it could be.
(kanopy/Prime/VOD)? With the recent handwringing about theaters potentially going out of business due to the pandemic, a lot of folks focus on the communal experience of shared spectacle and of whiplash moments, but few discuss how the darkness of theaters also allow us to nakedly indulge in other emotions with strangers.
Case in point: THE FAREWELL. (Warning, some small spoilers ahead, but really, they aren’t.) I watched it solo on a balmy Friday night, late in July 2019. There was a fairly sizable crowd and, while we laughed and tensed up at every well-crafted moment, it was the end — and I don’t mean the epilogue — that brought the entire room to tears. As the taxi drove away, everyone was audibly sobbing, men and women, myself included. (Although, I admit, I’m a soft touch when it comes to tears.)
Obviously, we were saddened for Billi, for her grandma, for the front that the family felt forced to put up, their regret at not being able to be truthful and have proper closure. However, as the camera revealed the rest of the family inhabiting the cab, it felt like we were also crying for those around us who had lost family, who knew what it was like to experience unreconciled grief. The theater became a shared funereal experience, one that simply wouldn’t have happened in a brightly lit room with a giant LCD screen.
While the film’s epilogue staunched the tears a bit, there remained a somber feeling in the air as we numbly walked towards the exit, barely looking at one another, perhaps a bit embarrassed, perhaps a bit raw. It’s these sort of experiences I’ve missed the most during the pandemic, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
(hoopla/kanopy) I last watched Jim McBride’s (DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, GREAT BALLS OF FIRE) remake of BREATHLESS many moons ago, back when I could walk down the street to my cult video store and rent a VHS copy. Despite not thinking much of it at the time, I have vivid memories of the film’s neon spills, as well as one terrible joke:
“You know Frank Lloyd Wright? This is Frank Lloyd Wrong.”
Watching it recently, after years of scrutinizing adaptations, I realized I was far too tough on it.
Structurally, McBride’s film is the same as Godard’s, he just inverts the locale and the protagonists’ countries of origin; instead of taking place in France with a French cad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and American love interest (Jean Seberg), it’s an American cad (Richard Gere) with a French love interest (Valérie Kaprisky).
McBride, and screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSCRE 2 -and- PARIS, TEXAS) are aware that trying to recreate the verve of 60’s BREATHLESS would be futile, so they ramp matters up a bit. Their BREATHLESS is a sleek, neon-soaked affair that wants nothing to do with jump cuts. Gere’s no longer an admirer of Bogart, but instead idolizes Jerry Lee Lewis. He doesn’t have the cool collected air of Belmondo, but instead is a ball of energy, constantly moving. As opposed to the erotic tête-à-tête between Belmondo & Seberg, they lean into full-blown sex scenes.
Is it a good film? Arguably, yes, it’s a gripping erotic thriller. Is it on par with Godard’s BREATHLESS? Oh, no, please. Godard’s BREATHLESS is a genre masterpiece, stitched together by sheer reactionary inventiveness and the vibrant performances from the leads. McBride’s BREATHLESS is a fascinating flip side, shining a spotlight on American appetites that falters mostly because both Gere and Kaprisky, and American culture in general, lack the enigmatic allure that makes the original film work.
One last note: BREATHLESS (1983) leaves Hulu on February 28th!
(Starz/VOD) A funny and surprisingly sweet quarter-century crisis film/rom-com that’s is well-calibrated for minds hungry for loads of smart quips.
Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan, BLOCKERS, MIRACLE WORKERS), a mid-20s pack rat with the habit of hanging onto keepsakes of her exes, is working towards her dream job as a gallery owner with her attractive and responsible boyfriend Max (Utkarsh Ambudkar, PITCH PERFECT) at a NYC museum run by her idol Eva Woolf (Bernadette Peters, who needs no introduction).
Within the span of one night, she loses both Max and her job and, in a drunk/depressed stupor, gets into what she thinks is her Lyft, but it’s just one dude who forgot to lock his passenger side door. The dude, Nick, takes pity on her and drives her home, and they start orbiting around each other. Lucy discovers that he’s trying to rehab an old YMCA into a hotel, and she takes the opportunity to set up a gallery inspired by her attempts to let go of her exes’ knickknacks, hence the title of the film.
This is writer/director Natalie Krinsky’s debut film, but she’s been writing for TV — including a long run on GOSSIP GIRL — for quite some time, and it shows. The heart of the film is the bluntly smart and rapid comedic patter of the dialogue, as opposed to flashy visuals or convoluted set pieces — although he film’s lighting is vibrantly under-lit, a rarity in rom-coms — and Krinsky couldn’t have hoped for a better lead for her script than Viswanathan. While Viswanathan has always stood out in every work she’s been involved in, her extremely expressive face and ability to turn on a dime pulls off a character that could come across as a bit too intense or creepy.
Viswanathan doesn’t have to solely carry the film on her shoulders either, as the supporting cast is ridiculously talented and fill out the film’s flavor: Lucy’s extremely supportive, but gloriously unique, roommates are HAMILTON’s Phillipa Soo (not a role I expected to see her in) and Molly Gordon (TNT’s ANIMAL KINGDOM and Hulu’s RAMY), and Arturo Castro (BROAD CITY, NARCOS) has a great rapport with Lucy as Nick’s friend. Even Nathan Dales (LETTERKENNY) pops up in a slightly gimmicky role!
While the breathless jokes, earnestness, and conventional story beats may turn some folks off, I couldn’t help but embrace it. In a genre full of paint-by-numbers comfort food mediocrity, it’s nice to see a rom-com add some verve and push the boundaries a bit, while remaining supremely entertaining.
(HBO MAX/VOD) This is perhaps one of the strangest films in Altman’s already eclectic oeuvre: a live-action children’s musical adaptation of the comic strip adventures of Popeye, penned solely for the screen, directed by Robert Altman, with Robin Williams as Popeye. Yes, this happened, all because Paramount lost the bidding war for the film rights to ANNIE.
Turns out, this mixture of incongruent ingredients actually worked. The shantytown feels like Altman’s returned to MCCABE & MRS. MILLER, and his trademark overlapping dialogue finds a home in over-crowded comedic numbers. The songs, while extraordinarily basic, are sweetly catchy and are always in-tune with the characters, while also managing to mine the past of the comics and animated reels.
Altman also managed to luck out with a rather subdued Williams, who perfectly encapsulates Popeye’s mutters and utterances, while also being able to turn on the physical bravado when necessary. Also, there’s Shelley Duvall, in the role she was born to play: Olive Oyl. Altman gives her more to work with than you’d expect of Oyl and Duvall runs with it, while still echoing the familiar in-peril shrieks but buttoning it with a defiant barb.
If there’s one fault of the film, it’s the camerawork, which approaches physical comedy with Altman’s standard approach to his improv-centric filming style: a hodge podge of clumsy master shots. Sadly, that doesn’t play well with the slapstick scenes here, so several of the big physical numbers feel slipshod.
Otherwise, this feels like a template for future musicals adapted from ill-fitting sources. While it wasn’t nearly as successful as ANNIE, it’s a far more interesting work.
(Netflix) You may have heard of LA bookstore -Circus of Books- recently as there were a number of articles about their closure after operating for roughly 40 years. If not, while they were a proper bookstore, they were known for producing and selling gay adult material. The capper was that the store was run by conventional-looking couple Karen and Barry Mason, neither of whom you’d suspect as prolific quality smut peddlers.
In order to preserve the bookstore’s history, daughter Rachel Mason decided to interview her parents, take them down memory lane, research the full history of the store, and question her siblings about their memories growing up with -Circus of Books-.
It’s not only a fascinating profile of a culturally important store, but also of a family that kept their eyes low to the ground, and the repercussions of doing so.
(Prime/VOD) A high-concept slow burn about a couple (Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg) who, in the process of looking for a house, find themselves trapped in an empty suburban development with no exit.
VIVARIUM recalls the hour-long episodes near the end of the first THE TWILIGHT ZONE run, the ones that still had a kernel of an interesting concept, but struggled to draw it out over the 50+ minutes allotted to them and, ultimately, left you feeling listless and frustrated, perhaps sighing loudly. Like those episodes, VIVARIUM has an intriguing concept, and there are a few interesting reveals peppered in, but watching Eisenberg and Poots — despite both injecting some much needed pathos into characters — try to crack the mystery of their situation while they waste away is a frustrating endeavor, especially as the film nears the end.
However! I still watched each and every one of those hour-long TWILIGHT ZONE episodes and never felt it was wasted time, and I feel similarly about VIVARIUM. Director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley — both of whom previously shared the same roles on WITHOUT NAME (2016) — make the film’s peculiarities feel fresh which, for a piece so focused on domestic roles and suburbia, is no small feat. Would I have preferred it to have focused on how three different sets of people would react when placed in this situation? Certainly, especially given the title of the movie, but this is the film we received, and it’s a film I’ll be chewing over for a while.
As usual, the trailer gives away too much, but here it is anyway: