'Knight of Cups': Escaping in a World Full of Escape
Christian Bale goes from playing one Dark Knight to another, a dark knight of a man weighed down by his own brooding and self-imposed burdens as he meanders and moseys through what one would surmise to be a personal journey of self-discovery, in Terrence Malick’s new film, Knight of Cups, opening limited in theaters today.
Knight of Cups is truly arthouse cinema. This is not a commercial movie, which means there’s a different sort of story unfurling here not typically seen or expected in mainstream movie-going – which, full disclosure, is also to say that there’s barely a whiff of a story here at all, and is rather a montage of aesthetically beautiful visuals and sequences. It’s certainly an example of fine film-making and craftsmanship, though perhaps to most audiences, it will be that, and nothing more.
The journey and story here, in this beautifully shot film (photographed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, hot off of his historic third consecutive win for The Revenant) is one of existential crisis in this most modern of ages. What does it mean to live in a world of such available opulence and opportunity, and what does it mean when all of those things mean nothing in the face of un-satisfaction? How does one escape, when one's entire world is the offering of pleasures and escape?
Written (with no official script) and directed by Terrence Malick, Knight of Cups is able to pose these philosophic questions and stir these high-minded thoughts, as his more recent films (The Tree of Life) feel more like abstract compositions that allow audiences to project and infer meaning themselves. The film tells the story of a Hollywood screenwriter, Rick, (Christian Bale) who, sullen and silent, wanders and moseys and hangs his head through the streets of Los Angeles, all the while evoking something between despair and acceptance with breathy voice-over hovering above every moment. Despair and acceptance of what?, you may ask? We see that Rick’s father (Brian Dennehy) may have neglected, or failed to give something to his sons, the other son being a more manic LA type (Wes Bentley).
Rick floats through endless Hollywood Hills parties and nightclub raves like the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future combined, in a sort of fever dream reality. All this, in chaptered storytelling, gives some semblance of structure to the thing. The tarot card motifs and solar and lunar imagery abound here all serve to show that this knight is fated to seek this treasure, this answer, in a world full of distraction and vapidity. The mystique of the goddesses further serve his noble quest, and the film has incredible talent to play these roles. Cate Blanchett, Teresa Palmer, and Natalie Portman all pop up in chapters of Rick’s life, each revealing a part of his spiritual lacking in different ways. It’s a film constructed through the male gaze and understanding of life as he knows it, which will likely further split audience reactions.
Knight of Cups must be regarded for exactly what is is: a work of art. A work of art, in that it holds no commercial value and is rather the work of a singular artist commenting a singular vision and making a grand statement about the universe at large, even if it’s just his own statement (and even if this statement feels as empty and hollow as the world it's commenting on). Fans of Malick’s previous films will know this – others must be warned beforehand, lest they expect something resembling a comfortable narrative to watch.
It’s a tough thing to make aimless wandering exciting to watch, or even empathic, and Knight of Cups will deter people from enjoying it for that reason. It burns ever-slowly, as we the audience are merely along for the ride, moment-to-moment, in which everything exists in the ultra-present of modern day living. Ultimately, it all feels like this longing dream is too abstract to take any substantial meaning from. This knight will most likely continue to wander for the rest of his days, which makes Knight of Cups feel more like a ceaseless spinning of plates.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bC-3rnv_b3o
Knight of Cups is rated R for some nudity, sexuality, and language. 1 hr 58 min. Playing at The Landmark and ArcLight Hollywood.
Wacky, Wonderful ‘Hail, Caesar!’ is the Coen Brothers’ Valentine to Classic Hollywood
Around the halfway mark of the Coen Brothers’ newest film, Hail, Caesar!, an audience member was heard voicing his thought that, this was the weirdest movie he had ever seen–and this reviewer wouldn’t say his evaluation was all that far off.
Yet it’s exactly this sort of “weird-ness” that defines any Coen Brothers’ movie, where colorful but mentally clouded characters are typically confronted with cosmically coincidental events, leading to a type of larger, dead-pan comedy, that’s dripping in drop-dead seriousness that forces them to question the meaning of life and their place in the universe.
The universe at large in Hail, Caesar! is the 1950s backlot of the fictional Capitol Pictures, an MGM-like Hollywood studio whose theatrical world offers such wonderfully wacky tangents as bumbling cowboy movie stars lassoing with their spaghetti, as well as looming scares of Communism and learning of the first Hydrogen bombs.
At the center of this world, the ringleader of the Circus, is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a Hollywood fixer whose job it is to keep the studio’s stars in line, but whose own personal certainties are less assured. As if trying to quit a light smoking habit wasn’t the biggest hiccup in his day (the film covers a twenty-seven-hour day), Mannix learns of the kidnapping and ransom demand of the studio’s biggest star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), during the shooting of his lead role in the grandly epic big-picture event, titled, ‘Hail, Caesar!’
Mannix proceeds to bop around from one looney tuned character to the next, including the Dixie-whistling cowboy turned bumbling big screen star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), twice-divorced movie star DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), twin sister newspaper journalists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton), and tap-dancing Gene Kelly inspired Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), who all amount to being an embarrassment of riches in Coen-land.
The Hollywood send-up may be much more divisive than the directors’ other films, and likely because it's packaged as a mainstream movie with the likes of George Clooney and Channing Tatum cartooning around as old-timey Hollywood movie stars. But the Coens’ only take the shell of old Hollywood and collapse the facade, exploring stories of kidnapping and hijinks, as well as much larger, universal themes of exploration and questioning, such as Politics, Religion, and other head-scratching questions akin to, What Does It All Mean? This search for meaning in a world so ridiculous, that it allows its audience to see the coded philosophic themes and lessons that its harebrained characters can’t, makes this another winning outing for the Coen’s.
The Coen’s continue to eschew conventions of narrative structure, allowing their incredible style to drive the film here. Audiences expecting a more classic kidnap comedy will most likely be disappointed by the odd tangential storylines, but should know that the minds of this machine are operating on a top-tier level of intelligence that makes a minute long scene, of Hobie Doyle fumbling the phonetics of a sophisticated line like, “Would that it were so simple,” give resonance to the entirety of the story–if only life were so simple.
Hail, Caesar! is now playing in theatres and is rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking.
Review: 'Band of Robbers'
This review initially ran on June 19, 2015
Classic characters from perhaps the greatest literary work of American literature, Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer have hit the big screen, in a re-imagining that takes their mischievously-intentioned, hero-of-the-story selves, keeps a driving plot about finding a mythic treasure, and leaves the rest behind – and to good-spirited, well-earned fun in the new film, Band of Robbers.
This timeless twosome, trouble-making in their never-ending pursuit of adventure and hero-seeking recognition and glory, are leveraged here as modern-day treasure seekers, that unite with their trusted merry men in hatching a plan of finding the first clue to the treasure, which first leads them to hold up a pawn shop in plastic grocery bag masks and the escort of "A Mexican." The fun that is had here is in feeling the familiarity of these good ol' boys that live so canonically in culture, and giving them the slick young people's comedic treatment, working off a fine-tuned script and the work of a stellar cast to make for a worthwhile, enjoyable time.
It should be stated early, there's not a whole lot that Robbers truly, truly, lifts from Mark Twain's classic novel or characters other than using the characters' likeliness and winning charms to drop them into this new culture mash-up. It's really just the story of a version of a Huck Finn (Kyle Gallner) and a Tom Sawyer (Adam Nee), where Huck is a recent prison release looking to make clean and Tom is a wily cop whose adventure-seeking ways leads to his character's charming but still law-skirting flirtations, and through this all, they still remain the best of friends, along with a band of other self-affirmed misfit pirate pals.
With nods and instances of looking to weigh itself within the framework of a more classically told story of timeless fashion (to which the film succeeds in operating in this dually opposing mindset), the film is broken up into chapters, black cards with white hand-written scrawl of chapter titles and subtitles that bookend each section of the film to add the intentional, necessary rooting of seriousness before thrusting into the shenanigan-laden episodes that follow.
There's a streak of folksy, whimsy appeal here, which, with the feeling of it being a home-grown indie effort of true charm, along with its premise of a tight-knit group of friends on a headstrong crime spree of a less-than-thought-out scheme, most closely resembles Wes Anderson's winning feature debut, Bottle Rocket (1996). The difference is that it's entirely obvious that everyone here is looking to make themselves into a goofball for a good time, and audiences should find themselves laughing at the number of laugh out loud jokes offered here. When Tom wrangles "the band" back together, after Huck's first day out of the clink (for an unspecified, non-violent crime) and reveals a plan to steal the fabled treasure of Injun Joe, right off the bat, his monologuing is met with raised eyebrows and wry confusions, setting up the level of competency of all involved. The pact is legitimized by – you guessed it – a blood oath (though they compromise in not spilling any actual blood, in this secret meeting at Tommy Barnes' poker table in his "man cave").
The faces and talents enlisted here are truly where the comedy shines. It has the taste of 21 Jump Street comic-firing and timing of every-line-a-joke (and mostly bulls eye's at that), uses some familiar faces and some not-so, in playing a winning hand. Kyle Gallner as Huck is a Jeremy Renner and Rick Grimes a la The Walking Dead, where Adam Nee is as much as stand-out in a role that he knows so well. The geek-beloved Matthew Gray Gubler as Joe Harper, along with Hannibal Burress as Ben Rogers add a deep bench to the effort, with Burress (and "Greg...Knife" nailing every one of his scenes). Melissa Benoist and Eric Christian Olsen also star as little-used Becky Thatcher, Tom's new partner on the day of the planned heist (mention heist) and Sid Sawyer, beloved detective who plays it maybe a bit too straight.
Stephen Lang as Injun Joe (don't worry, in case you forgot, "Injun Joe" was written by Twain as a half Native American, half white man) also adds a villain to fear after, with a gray wig and cowhide jacket with tassels. Though a discomforting laugh is had in light of today's events with ex-NAACP chapter leader Rachel Dolezal when Injun Joe says, "How is it racist to want to be more like another race?" Other than that, Robbers addresses racial tension ingrained in the original text by shifting to the plight of the Latino, as Huck finds a heartfelt cause in defending Jorge Jimenez (Daniel Edward Mora) after he gets the gardener involved in a heist that lands him on the brink of deportation.
Written and directed by brother filmmaking team Aaron and Adam Nee, Robbers went through many years of development (including an idea of it being a TV show) before finally having its world premiere at the LA Film Festival. One wonders what following that version of Huck, Tom, and company may have been like, and what many adventures they may have spun in and out of in sit-com fashion. But its final format of a ninety-five-minute feature film feels like the best use of its talent, sparing any over-indulgence in what could have flopped as a gimmick and succeeds as a send-up that breathes fresh life into an American classic.
Correction: This review was edited from a previous version that misstated the ethnicity of 'Injun Joe'.
Band of Robbers had its World Premiere on Saturday, June 13th, at the LA Film Festival. Info here.
Review: 'Lamb'
Despite its innocently named title, Lamb is difficult watching, perhaps even among the more uncomfortable movies I can ever remember seeing, as it struggles to tackle heavy subject matter that's considered more than politically incorrect.
Lamb is the story of David Lamb (Ross Partridge), a forty-seven-year-old divorcee with slicked-back hair but emotionally empty, apathetic to an ending marriage, father of failing health, and life in general in his deadbeat town. Lamb is approached by an eleven-year-old girl, Tommie (Oona Laurence), who Lamb sees and recognizes as a helpless soul, one who needs his help, and proposes a road trip that the two embark on.
While Lamb forces the viewer to confront discomforting, disturbing, social realities between adults and minors, the film feels mostly insufferable in how it can never justify the situation that puts these two people together to attempt to ask any questions except for how unwarranted and inappropriate the relationship is.
This is the complex area that the film never self-assuredly nails–is David Lamb correct in taking an eleven-year-old girl on the road, or is the entire act inappropriate and wrong? The fact that the movie attempts to walk both sides of the line, and seemingly wish to show a justified relationship between them makes the film too difficult a watch to get on board with.
Lamb is the product of being a novel written by Bonnie Nadzam, and being adapted here by Ross Partridge, who wrote the screenplay, directed, and stars as the titular character. Partridge's attempt at adapting, while courageous in its artistic leap, also feels like a miscalculation of what the movie should be about–or rather, who; Tommie should be our protagonist, but instead we see this film as a means of featuring the fulfilling of David Lamb.
Partridge's Lamb is emotionally unavailable, dealing with whatever difficulties he must take on, and sees a counterpart only in Tommie and her fractured family life. The fact that David sees her as a justified and mature person to satisfy his insecurities and emotional stunting only shows his character's own shortcomings and weaknesses. It's enough to raise interesting questions, but trust me, you'll cringe through it all.
Credit Lamb for not falling on its sword any more than it has by the performance and acting talent of, who should be considered the true lamb of this movie, Oona Laurence. Last seen in Southpaw as well as I Smile Back, Laurence is game and skilled enough to be a strong presence next to her much older captor and self-proclaimed guardian.
While Lamb should be in some part applauded for even attempting to tell such a risky, emotionally vulnerable story, the film still feels like an uncomfortable story that doesn't push boundaries as much as reinforce what makes a story like this wrong for a lot of reasons.
Lamb is now playing at select theaters and iTunes/VOD January 12, 2016.
Ryan's Top 10 Films of 2015
What we consider to be the best of this year represents a combination of the movies that had the greatest emotional impact on us, matched with movies that felt innovative or groundbreaking. Here are the films Ryan considers to be this year’s best:
10. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
The only other documentary on this list is awarded to another HBO-distributed film and made with even greater impress. What makes Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief even greater than the film itself is the fact that it even exists in the first place. Director Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) took the film to Sundance this year, unsure if it would even screen due to its controversial subject matter and the people in high positions it could expose– and worried they should have been. Gibney fearlessly peels back the curtain on the religion that is still largely considered a mystery and misunderstood. But beyond revealing the incredulous story behind religion and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard himself, Gibney goes on to show what deeper and darker moments that affect all associated with it in a shocking way. It's the one film that left me feeling amazed at what real-world injustices are happening behind closed doors.
9. Victoria
Victoria most likely won't be on a lot of readers' radars, which is unfortunate for this small Berlin-set movie. If only more audiences knew that this heist-film was shot in a single, uninterrupted take, then maybe people would have been drawn in. Beyond that, however, is a story that supersedes its camera trickery. Victoria, on one late night out, is herself drawn into an unfamiliar world of new friends when Berliners make her acquaintance, eventually befriending the girl who is in turn involved in a bank robbery. The single take never gives the audience a moment to relax, which makes the whole thing an even greater movie-watching experience. When the sun finally rises in this incredible movie, it leaves the watcher feeling amazed at what all just took place in one real, single night.
8. Room
I first heard about 'Room' when I saw the hardcover book a few years back on my mom's bedside dresser. I was familiar with what the story was, about a mother and son being held hostage in a backyard shed for many years, and was intrigued at what its eventual movie adaptation would portray it as. Director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank), along with the novel's author and screenwriter Emma Donoghue, bring an incredible vision to the big screen, focusing the story of these hostages not on the single aspect of harrowing survival, but rather the shared, singular connection between that of mother and son, played by pitch-perfect Brie Larson and young marvel Jacob Tremblay. Room succeeds as a moving love story by mining the most unique and visceral moments in the place both characters only call "Room," to show a reality that can only exist when love is at the center of it. Incredibly directed and acted, there are more than a few sequences that had me arrested in seeing these new worlds for the first time, making this one of the most successful novel-adaptations of this or any year.
7. Love
Gaspar Noe's (Enter the Void) latest film is certainly not for everyone. In fact, it's probably one of the most singularly divisive films of this or any year, due to its incredibly graphic subject matter. Love, the story of two young art-school students, one American and the other Parisian, is the story of heartbreak. Love alternates between past and future events to show every corner of what feels like one of the most authentic relationships captured on screen. Now, the hook here, of course, is that real-life sex scenes link these scenes together–non-staged, non-faked, real-life intercourse. Admittedly, knowing this before going into the movie, I thought that these scenes were only going to be included for the spectacle of it, but what I soon realized was that Love was in fact, a love-story. It was all held together by moving performances and storytelling, making the scenes feel less pornographic and more artfully composed and honest. This movie is for those that are fearless in finding out that all of these moments together make a story that is beautiful, heartbreaking, and boundary-pushing.
6. It Follows
Personally, I don't much prefer watching scary movies. I'll specify this by caveating, that I don't much prefer to watch this new brand of today's scary movies, which are all either entirely built on empty silence/loud-noise moments or of the tasteless torture porn variety. So leave it to It Follows to shake me out of my scary-movie snootiness, and scare me to the core, with it's incredible take on what makes scary movies scary: suspense. With its dry yet direct title, this throwback to 80s-style scary movies punches up suspense more than anything I saw this year, as uninterrupted long takes, seeing out-of-focus characters slowly walk into the foreground, and other great moments, make this simple set-up, about a curse passed on from teen to teen, one that had me breathless and amazed. This is what scary is supposed to feel like.
5. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
It seems like a new movie genre is forming entirely anew at the moment–that being the YA book-turned-movie, about high schoolers dealing with life-altering events. Where The Spectacular Now and The Fault in Our Stars both made their marks as being both of those things, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl did that and more this year. I loved everything about this movie, mostly because it had an undying energy, spirit, and vision, that made this story feel completely new to me. The Sundance movie offered more amazing camerawork and cutting to make this movie unique and different than so many of the same ilk. Do yourself a favor–make sure you catch this deserving movie at your next opportunity.
4. The Revenant
The most immersive and unbelievable movie of the year just needs to be seen to be believed.
3. Inside Out
Cracking the top three for me this year was what we've all come to expect from Pixar: that we should never be able to expect anything as good as Pixar has made until the next one comes out (Unfortunately, that doesn't quite hold true for The Good Dinosaur). As a film, Inside Out is perhaps the most far-out Pixar film in terms of concept alone. To create, from scratch, a movie about the mind of a human, is an unbelievable feat. To do it with such humor, introspection, thoughtfulness, and honesty is to push the cinematic envelope entirely. The journey here, voiced in part by Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith as "Joy" and "Sadness" to a young girl, was one that made me feel like a kid again.
2. Ex Machina
Ex Machina shines for a number of reasons, of which I'm positive will be the reasons why the film will grow in popularity as a cult and fringe film. It's a sci-fi movie that ditches the cold, unpenetrable, feeling that excludes wider audiences, and it's because it chooses to focus on a more universal element than just science. It would seem that we are now at a point with our technology that filmmakers have begun to ask themselves the question, beyond what my reliance is on technology and artificially intelligent beings, what is my relationship with them on a human and loving scale? Her, the story about a man falling in love with an operating system, preceded Ex Machina in terms of making a movie about the new question this generation is starting to face and it does so with style, intelligence, and incredible foresight. Plus, the winning combination of Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander, make this the film to watch simply as the one that had all three of them in this film alone. All three absolutely shine, and the experience of understanding AI beings is made even more real, harrowing, and philosophically poignant than any other like it.
1. Anomalisa
My favorite film of the year is one I'm still in some big ways, puzzled by. Beyond the spectacular blockbuster film-making of the year that Star Wars and The Revenant had, beyond the intense human dramas such as Room and Sicario, my favorite film of the year is a stop-motion movie about a middle-aged customer service salesman. Anomalisa had me laughing, thinking, pondering, heartbroken, and philosophically perplexed, and wrapped in a package of inspired filmmaking. I shouldn't be too surprised, however, as I've grown to be something of a reluctant Charlie Kaufman fan (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)–who makes his mark by telling the stories of the lonely. It's here, however, in Anomalisa, that I found the most human connections of the year in terms of studied human behavior. It's one of the most peculiar films I've ever seen, and it speaks to where we are in this fragmented world more than ever before. It's something that isn't a typical number one pic, but hey–that's what anomalies are.
Honorable Mention
Cobain: Montage of Heck- What more is there to say about Kurt Cobain, almighty rock god and most credited for the birth of the grunge music scene in Seattle, Washington in MTV-era America? As evidenced by Cobain: Montage of Heck, there is an entire world left to say, as director Brett Morgen's HBO documentary showcases new, never-before-seen footage and music to not just fill in the gaps of Cobain's short-lived life, but to tell entirely new chapters of it. The reason that Cobain: Montage of Heck works so well is that this is the only documentary that has been made with the approval and help of the Cobain camp, which includes not only interviews with his mother, father, family members, and Courtney Love herself, but through which all of the new video and music has been provided, coloring in the entire picture of Cobain, the artist, musician, father, poet, and human being.
Review: 'The Big Short'
The economic collapse of the twenty-first century destroyed many family's futures and devastated markets across this country and many others–so why does a movie about just that feel like so much fun? Leave it to the director of Anchorman and Step Brothers to spin the real-life story behind Wall Street's deceptive and unethical trading that led to the global financial crisis into a comical and entertaining watch in the new movie The Big Short.
Based on the 2010 novel, “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by author Michael Lewis, director Adam McKay puts his spin on telling the real-life story of four guys who foresaw the growing housing bubble years before it burst, and who decided to risk it big by betting against (or, "shorting") those seemingly safe assets to stand up to big banking's greed.
The Big Short enlists a star-studded cast to play such fun, caricatured characters that make learning about banking terms fun, including Christian Bale as Michael Burry, the genius-level trader who first noticed the unsustainable trends. The film's partial narrator, Ryan Gosling, plays Jared Vennett, a young fiery trader who also bets against the housing crisis, and looks directly into the camera to explain real instances from time to time. Steve Carell plays Mark Baum, a high-strung trader whose early paranoia leads him to take the advice of Vennett and jump into shorting, and who also serves as the movie's most outright moral compass. Brad Pitt also co-stars as a somewhat reclusive trader Ben Rickert.
'The Big Short' is more of a Trojan Horse of a movie intent on explaining just what all exactly led to the financial meltdown–it’s informative and educational, putting Lehman Brothers in layman's terms, if you will.
The inevitable hurdle that a film like this must overcome in order to connect with the audience is to explain to the audience the banking terms and financial practices that led to the collapse in the easiest way possible. Part screwball comedy, The Big Short is more of a Trojan Horse of a movie intent on explaining just what all exactly led to the financial meltdown–it’s informative and educational, putting Lehman Brothers in layman's terms, if you will. The film breaks the fourth wall early and often and unashamedly, regularly pausing the narrative to define or explain some banking terminology or otherwise. This leads to unexpectedly funny moments like Selena Gomez (as herself) explaining to the audience what a credit default swap is.
Stylish and fun, The Big Short plays fast and loose throughout its 130-minute-long run time, necessary for the largely all-over-the-place structure of the story. But this same effect also can't help but rattle around the idea that, besides learning that Wall Street might have been up to shady dealings, that it exposes weak or nonexistent parts of the story that don't add on top of previous learnings.
The better and the worst part of the movie is that we already saw a financial mad-cap set up recently, and with enough pizzaz from Scorsese that it still casts its shadow over this one. In fact, a few instances recall The Wolf of Wall Street enough–the irresponsibility of alpha-dog traders, the talking directly into the camera bit, heck, even Margot Robbie doing so in a bath tub, that it can't help but be compared to the raucous Leo DiCaprio starrer.
For what it's worth, The Big Short is a solid, funny effort that wants to have its fun by peeling away each layer of the corrupt onion. But it also feels like it might just be peeling the same layer back over and over again, doing the same thing many times, which is pretty much like the traders of this movie.
The Big Short is now playing in theaters. Rated R for pervasive language and some sexuality/nudity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgqG3ITMv1Q
Review: 'Uncle Nick'
Depending on your taste for, or general apathy towards, raunchy, tasteless, lazily written and acted humor, Uncle Nick may or may not be your treat this holiday season.
Brian Posehn, known for his bald, nerdy, and overly-large presence in frequent sit-com and sketch comedy pop-ups, is singularly recognizable for his droll and monotonous man-child characters, one of which he lends here as the titular character in this somewhat amusing, mostly groan-worthy movie.
Uncle Nick attempts to ride both sides of the vulgarity fence, by being at one time so unabashedly offensive in its sex-ridden jokes, and yet performing these jokes with such little commitment (much like, Uncle Nick himself), that this hour and thirty-three minute long movie can't make a case for itself for being anything more than just a movie with comedians in it, rather than a funny movie.
Uncle Nick will fill your cup if you're looking for a lewd and lazy Christmas movie – and for ten cents a cup more, will happily join you in getting mindlessly wasted on it.
Credit part of the indifference in this review to the movie's all-too familiar setup that Uncle Nick shamelessly leans on, expecting the freshness of its main character to merit entertainment. While familiar movies of family screw-ups that earn redemption have been made before (the 1989 John Candy-starring and John Hughes-directed classic Uncle Buck comes to mind), the piece that makes their empty-headed antics so lovable is the earnest aloofness at the heart of it. Posehn as Nick, a sweaty and unapologetic alcoholic intent on criticizing younger brother Cody (Beau Ballinger) for both a lifetime of having it all and recent engagement to type-A fun-sucker Sophie (Paget Brewster), as well as set on hooking up with Sophie's daughter Valerie (Melia Renee), is mostly a creepy asshole who doesn't deflate the hypocrisy of others, but rather showboats his own selfish self off.
Tracking alongside the alcohol-fueled and irreverent humor that Uncle Nick sets out to make is the use of a real-life alcohol-fueled riot of American sports legend and. Setting the stage for the film is the real-life story, as told by Nick, of the infamous Ten Cent Beer Night, where, in 1974, the Cleveland Indians sold beer for a dime a cup at a Major League sports game, as many as you could buy or drink. The movie tracks with this story by telling the movie in chapters – "innings," as the movie shows, which parallels re-created black and white and slow mo'd footage of beer slamming baseball fans, a growing friction that ends on this single Christmas Eve night with the rising unrest of history's own beer-slamming drunkards. It's a device that adds an added level of interest
While Uncle Nick is boozy and brash and offers somewhat fun times, its mostly a jerky and un-jolly movie that will probably be shuffled to the bottom of the cue of your next movies to watch. Director Chris Kasick and writer Mike Demski might have fared better if putting more set pieces in the movie instead of just a list of insufferable characters showing different attitudes and one-liners, or at least in preceding with a little more caution before throwing all of the movie's laughs behind Posehn's unlikeable Uncle Nick. Whatever the case, Uncle Nick will fill your cup if you're looking for a lewd and lazy Christmas movie – and for ten cents a cup more, will happily join you in getting mindlessly wasted on it.
Uncle Nick is now playing at the Arena Cinema Hollywood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G445k45KGr8
AFI Fest Review: 'James White'
One of the most incredibly acted films to play in the “American Independents” section of the festival was the altogether arresting James White, which also astonishingly counts as the first feature film from Josh Mond (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Producer). Told in month-long chapters during one New York winter, White is the story of a son (Christopher Abbott) whose estranged father’s death and mother’s (Cynthia Nixon) cancer diagnosis forces him to confront his personal demons through self-destructive and reckless behavior, which risks his own demise.
As the titular character and lead role, Abbott is given a wonderful opportunity to showcase his talent in a movie vehicle unlike any before (fans will remember Abbott as controversially leaving the HBO critical darling Girls, for reasons unclear), and that he does.
Abbott...gives an incredible performance not soon to be forgotten.
Abbott, whose unhinged and drunkenly erratic behaviors – evocative of a Streetcar-era Brando – match the reflective and quietly powerful moments as a heartbroken young son, gives an incredible performance not soon to be forgotten. Cynthia Nixon also stuns in delivering some of the best work of her career as a single mother battling cancer in its ugliest and heart-wrenching forms.
Josh Mond’s highly personal story (while not a direct autobiography, the story is lifted from very similar personal experiences) reveals in incredible fashion hardship and the human spirit, and should serve to boost the filmmaker and his actor’s profiles with even more recognition to come.
James White opens in LA on November 20th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdw828U3KMY