Murder by Numbers comes off as a re-imagination of the Leopold and Leob story, crossbred with an episode of Murder She Wrote. Sandra Bullock is Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective paired with Sam (Ben Chaplin) an inexperienced by-the-book cop to investigate the death of a middle aged woman whose mutilated corpse was found in the woods. The cops have little in common, so, of course, they fall into bed from time to time, only to bicker and fight during working hours. So far we’ve seen all this before. The thing that sets this apart from the run-of-the-mill murder mystery is the attention to the police procedural details, and the performances of Ryan Gostling and Michael Pitt as the two intellectual teenaged killers. Gostling’s Richard is a master manipulator, while Pitt’s Justin is the brains of the duo. Like the Leopold and Leob (the true-life inspiration for the Hitchcock movie Rope) the pair concoct the perfect crime, randomly killing someone without leaving any clues behind. Gostling is a charismatic actor who is able to ride the fine line between menacing and sexy, while Pitt (best known as Tommy Gnosis Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has the sensitive tortured-soul act down to a science. Directed by the steady hand of Barbet Schroeder, Murder by Numbers is a morality play about how crime doesn’t pay, no matter how smart you think you are.
This is a charmingly told tale of Toula, a frumpy Greek woman who meets Ian, the man of her dreams. The only problem is, he’s not Greek, a detail that doesn’t go over well with her tightly knit family. Along the way Toula’s family learns to accept Ian; Ian learns to love the lust for life his new extended family possesses and Toula learns about herself. Based on a one-woman play, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is pretty standard stuff, but told with such wit that it is virtually impossible not to get swept along for the ride. Nia Vardalos as Toula anchors the whole film, while a supporting cast of colourful characters swirl around her. Of particular note are Michael Constantine as her father, (a man so proud of his heritage that he can trace any word back to its origins in Greek… even the word kimono!) and Andrea Martin as crazy Aunt Voula, a loveable but overbearing relative who has an opinion about everything. Toronto residents will also enjoy playing “Spot the Locations” as much of the film was shot on The Danforth in the heart of the city’s Greek village.
The characters in The Matador are more interesting than the story itself. Pierce Brosnan plays Julian Noble a jaded hit man, or “facilitator of fatalities” who meets Danny, a family man with a struggling business, played by Greg Kinnear, in a hotel bar. They become an odd couple—Julian needs a confidant while Danny needs distraction from his professional and personal losing streak.
The real revelation here is Brosnan’s performance as Julian, the hit man who develops confidence problems. We have seen Brosnan as the slickly comic private eye Remington Steele on television, the sophisticated James Bond and even as the suave jewel thief in The Thomas Crown Affair but until now we have never seen him in Beatle boots and a Speedo traipsing across a hotel lobby. His Julian is a manic creation—amoral, rude and unlike Bond, the character that has defined his career for the last decade, unshaven. With this one performance Brosnan has entered a new phase in his career, effortlessly leaving the urbane Bond behind.
Remember My Best Friend’s Wedding? Julia Roberts played Julianne, a woman who realizes she is deeply in love with her best friend Michael (Dermot Mulroney) after he announces that he is to be married to another woman. Play switcheroo with the gender, update the wardrobe, add in the Highland Games and you have Made of Honor, the latest film from Grey’s Anatomy actor Patrick Dempsey.
Made of Honor may not have originality on its side but it does provide a few laughs and some beautiful scenery.
In this topsy-turvy reexamination of My Best Friend’s Wedding Dempsey is Tom, the kind of rich playboy who only exists in rom coms. He’s a unrepentant womanizer, wealthy beyond belief and always seems to be able to find a parking spot on the busiest of Manhattan streets. His best friend is Hannah (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang’s Michelle Monaghan) is the Ginger to his Fred, the AC to his DC. They’re able to stay friends because they have no romantic bond.
That is until Hannah travels to Scotland on a six week business trip. Absence makes Tom’s heart grow fonder, and he decides to ask her to marry him as soon as she hits the tarmac back in the States. There’s only one problem, she returns from her trip with a fiancée in tow and plans to move to Scotland with her newly found and wealthy mate. Fearing he is about to lose the love of his life, Tom, who has accepted Hannah’s invitation to be her maid of honor, tries to derail the wedding and win Hannah’s hand.
Made of Honor has all the usual romantic comedy ingredients—the prerequisite New York setting, madcap misunderstandings, the big moment of realization that person A can’t possibly live without person B and some beautiful exotic scenery. We’ve seen it all before in countless other movies, but Made of Honor pulls it all together in, not exactly a memorable way, but at least in a frothy enough way to make the audience I saw it with ooh and ah and make the appropriate romantic comedy cooing sounds during the screening.
Much of the success of the film has to do with Patrick Dempsey who seems born to star in these kinds of confections. He’s good looking, has a way with comedy and doesn’t mind doing a pratfall or two. Co-star Monaghan isn’t given much to do other than to react to Dempsey’s antics, but she is a presence and the camera loves her.
Made of Honor is an amiable, but ultimately forgettable rom com that relies just a bit too heavily on the conventions of the genre.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has a lot going for it. An appealing cast headed by Oscar winner Frances McDormand and nominee Amy Adams. Beautiful sets, costumes and an unerring eye for the beauty of prewar WWII England. Unfortunately those virtues are wasted on a story that can’t make up its mind whether it is a farce, a romance or a poignant study of the effects of age in difficult times. As a result it is all those things, but is less than the sum of its parts.
Calling itself a “fairy tale for adults” we join Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day just as the titular character, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), is being fired from yet another job as nanny. She’s a difficult employee who isn’t good with kids, but babysitting is the only job she can get in pre-war London. If only she could hang on to the job long enough to collect a paycheck she’d be in better shape. Destitute, she wrangles her way into the job of “social secretary” for an air headed starlet named Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Delysia isn’t above using her feminine charms to further her career, and when a quick thinking Miss Pettigrew sorts out an inconvenient bottleneck of suitors at Delysia’s door she takes the dowdy nanny on a wild twenty four hour ride in which relationships will form and fall apart, war will start and an era comes to an end.
It’s a fanciful story, well acted—although the leading men are simply bland white knight types and little more—and steadily directed but its unwillingness to settle on a style, whether it is manic comedy or poignant character study. In the end it is neither.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day does have its charms. McDormand has corner on these kind of sad sack frumpy characters and she manages to pull the best out of Miss Pettigrew. Adams, the new Hollywood “it” girl, is all wide eyed effervescence in a performance that, thankfully, deepens as the film enters it final moments.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is an almost instantly forgettable confection—fun for a fleeting moment—but ultimately is a film whose ambitions exceeded its reach.
Mad Money comes with quite a pedigree. Director Callie Khouri wrote Thelma and Louise. Star Diane Keaton is an Oscar winning actress with credits that include The Godfather, Annie Hall and Reds. Co-star Queen Latifah is an Oscar nominee and was the first hip hop artist to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Supporting actor Ted Danson is best known for his role as Sam Malone on Cheers and once won Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series from the American Comedy Awards. So you’d think with all that know-how, all those years of experience, that this team would be able to make a good movie.
You’d be wrong.
Mad Money, is a heist movie in the vein of Ocean’s 11, except the snazzy suits, stylish setting, most of the entertainment value and all the good looking boys are gone. In their place is Diane Keaton as yuppie housewife Bridget Cardigan, a woman used to the finer things in life who must return to the workforce when her executive husband is downsized. Faced with mounting debt she is forced to take a job as a janitor at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
Realizing the Sisyphean task of trying to pay off her debts on her meager salary she teams up with two other employees—Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes—to steal worn-out money (hiding it in their underwear!) that has been taken out of circulation and is about to be destroyed.
Rich people on the skids have been the subject of a lot of movies and Mad Money greedily looks to them for inspiration. It is a caper film like Fun with Dick and Jane, but without the Dick. Or the fun. It’s aspires to the social comment of How to Beat the High Co$t of Living without actually seriously—comedies can have serious undertones too!— exploring any social issues. “Don’t get greedy” is about as deep as it gets here.
Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t take social context in order for me to get the joke, but this movie could use some perspective to deepen the humor. Why can’t Bridget get a job? Why is her husband unemployable? Let us get to know the characters and set up a real reason for us to care about them and the movie’s humor will have much more resonance. As it is Bridget and her husband are just formerly rich people who’ll do anything to keep up with the Jones and as a result, not very interesting.
But then again, there’s nothing much interesting about this movie. The story, although based on true events, is slight and the attempts to pump it up by introducing romance feel manipulative and sentimental, not sexy or interesting. It doesn’t feel worthy of a big screen treatment, and it comes as no surprise that it is based on a British made-for-television movie called Hot Money.
The title says it all—you’ll be mad if you spend your money on this film.
If you’ve watched old Roger Corman movies like Attack of the Crab Monsters and thought, ‘I wonder what Corman would have done with a few extra dollars in the budget?’ well, wonder no more. The Mist, the latest Stephen King literary adaptation to hit the big screen is Roger Corman on steroids. Gone are the papier-mâché creatures—they’ve been replaced by expensive high tech computer generated giant bugs—but make no mistake, despite the tarted-up effects and big budget, The Mist is a good old-fashioned grindhouse film.
The set-up is simple. The day after a violent thunderstorm a mysterious a pea-soup fog envelopes the small east coast town of Bridgton, Maine trapping a couple of dozen people in the local supermarket. Outside they hear the screams of people not lucky enough to be indoors when the mist settled. Soon the grocery store takes on a Lord of the Flies vibe as the survivors start to splinter off into different sects, each with a plan for survival. When giant bugs materialize out of the mist and attack it’s everyone for themselves.
Based on a 1980 short story by Stephen King first published in the horror anthology Dark Forces, The Mist, like all good exploitation films, is remarkably timely. In his third adaptation of a Stephen King work director / screenwriter Frank Darabont plays up a storyline involving a fundamentalist Christian woman (Marcia Gay Harden) whose extreme ideas push the desperate group into uncharted and dangerous territory. While watching her twisted logic push the mist’s hostages to violence, one can’t help but equate her rants to the kind of fundamentalism that has poisoned the minds and actions of so many people around the world today.
Political statements aside, Darabont clearly loves the horror genre and knows how to slowly build tension until the audience is white-knuckling it waiting for the payoff. Once inside the supermarket he not only creates interesting dynamics between the trapped townsfolk, but also allows a feeling a dread to settle over the proceedings, punctuated only by bursts of breathless action.
Like the great grindhouse flicks of yore The Mist is a crowd-pleaser. Well defined characters—particularly the heroic Thomas Jane and over-the-top Marcia Gay Harden—and energetic direction had the audience I saw it with hooting and hollering at the screen. It’s entertaining and the best horror film of the year. Roger Corman would approve.
The decision to go see Margot at the Wedding shouldn’t be based on the caliber of the performances, the direction or the script, they’re all first rate. No, the decision to see this movie must be based on one factor: Do you want to spend 90 minutes of your life with some of the most disagreeable, despicable characters ever created for the screen? This crowd makes the people in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe look like Theodore Tugboat.
The second film from Squid and the Whale director Noah Baumbach is a study in neurosis. Pauline (Baumbach’s wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh) is estranged from her sister Margot (Nicole Kidman), a successful New York based author. The pair put their differences aside when Margot and son come to celebrate Pauline’s wedding at her remote country house. Margot, an outspoken raw nerve of a woman takes an instant dislike to Pauline’s intended, an out of work artist played by Jack Black. For the next ninety-minutes or so Margot plays mind games with the fiancée, her husband, her lover, her sister, the hillbilly neighbors and even her own son.
Baumbach, who seems to specialize in “families in crisis” films, has created an emotionally brutal movie brimming with keen observations on insecurity, neurosis and the deep vein of dysfunction that runs throughout this family. While occasionally cringe-inducing and painful to watch, it is never less than compelling. Watching these fine actors—even Jack Black shines here—explore the darker side of life is fascinating. Even the cinematography reflects the character’s state of mind—it’s gritty, unfocused and dark. Of the performances Kidman is particularly strong, unapologetically delving deep into the ugly side of Margot’s personality.
To break the tension Baumbach peppers the story with unexpected laughs as he cranks up the dysfunctional heat. The result is a startlingly original film that may not be for everyone, but will delight therapists and those with strong enough stomachs everywhere.
In a world where wonder is in short supply, Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is an oasis of amazement. Located in an unnamed city (one that looks an awful lot like Toronto) it’s a Rube Goldbergesque kind of toy store where sock monkeys come to life, giant basketballs dwarf the kid customers and a mobile made of real fish hangs from the ceiling. In short, it’s FAO Schwartz on steroids and such an astonishing place even Kermit the Frog shop there!
The shop is run by Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) a 243 year-old “wonder aficionado” who sleeps upside down, wears too-tight Mr. Dress-Up suits and once played Jumping Jacks with Abe Lincoln. Years ago he bought enough shoes in a store in Tuscany to last his whole life. He’s now on the last pair and wants to get his affairs in order before he leaves the world.
He plans on leaving the store to his manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), a young piano prodigy who lacks confidence in herself. His first step is to bring in an accountant (Jason Bateman) to audit the store—no records have been kept since the 1770s—and take care of all the paperwork. The accountant, or Mutant as Magorium calls him, is a workaholic with a distinct lack of wonder in his life. As Margorium’s last day approaches Molly must come to grips with the loss of her mentor, a magical store that is literally throwing a temper tantrum, a young misfit who doesn’t have any friends and the skeptical Mutant. In the end Molly learns that anything is possible—even magic—if you believe in yourself.
Mr. Margorium’s Wonder Emporium is a rarity—a kid’s movie that doesn’t try and cater to an adult audience by slipping in jokes that the little ones won’t understand. It is a gentle fantasy with corny jokes, some magical images, but none of the mean-spirited edge that crept into the similarly themed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The tone is sweet throughout, and while Hoffman’s performance borders on annoying—think Uncle Bobby on helium—the film’s sense of wonder and G-rated sensibility should have great appeal to kids.
Murder by Numbers comes off as a re-imagination of the Leopold and Leob story, crossbred with an episode of Murder She Wrote. Sandra Bullock is Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective paired with Sam (Ben Chaplin) an inexperienced by-the-book cop to investigate the death of a middle aged woman whose mutilated corpse was found in the woods. The cops have little in common, so, of course, they fall into bed from time to time, only to bicker and fight during working hours. So far we’ve seen all this before. The thing that sets this apart from the run-of-the-mill murder mystery is the attention to the police procedural details, and the performances of Ryan Gostling and Michael Pitt as the two intellectual teenaged killers. Gostling’s Richard is a master manipulator, while Pitt’s Justin is the brains of the duo. Like the Leopold and Leob (the true-life inspiration for the Hitchcock movie Rope) the pair concoct the perfect crime, randomly killing someone without leaving any clues behind. Gostling is a charismatic actor who is able to ride the fine line between menacing and sexy, while Pitt (best known as Tommy Gnosis Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has the sensitive tortured-soul act down to a science. Directed by the steady hand of Barbet Schroeder, Murder by Numbers is a morality play about how crime doesn’t pay, no matter how smart you think you are.
