Steve Martin, who studied philosophy at California State University once joked, “If you’re studying Geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but Philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.”
Such is the case with Abe (Joaquin Phoenix) the eponymous “Irrational Man” of Woody Allen’s fiftieth movie. A university professor about to start a new job at a new university, he’s brilliant but has fallen into the kind of existential funk that can only come from a lifetime spent studying philosophy. He’s the kind of guy who uses “As Simone de Beauvoir pointed out…” as a conversation starter and drinks single malt scotch from a flask in public.
He’s lost his zest for life, but not his appeal to women. Within days of the beginning of the semester he’s sleeping with the age appropriate but married Rita (Parker Posey) and is fighting off the advances of a student, Jill (Emma Stone). “He’s a sufferer,” she says with stars in her eyes, “and very conservative in a liberal sort of way.”
When he and Jill overhear a conversation regarding a crooked judge, suddenly his life has meaning. He decides to “make the world a better place” by getting rid of the judge. Planning the perfect murder, a crime he feels will benefit humanity, brings zest back into his life and puts a spring in his step.
From here “Irrational Man” becomes part character study and part romance and while it’s not exactly a whodunnit—more of a whydunnit—there is a procedural element to the last quarter of the film.
Subject wise Allen is in his element here, giving a raft of characters a chance to talk philosophy and the meaning of life but while the story should have forward momentum the farce ever escalates. Instead Allen relies too heavily on narration slowing down the action to a crawl.
Despite appealing performances from all, the story feels like a talky celebration of Abe’s dysfunction—the poor tortured genius—than a true study of a person pushed to extremes in search of happiness. Allen makes a movie a year, and while he often hits pay dirt there are years when it feels like he should have taken some time off, maybe vacationed in the South of France and recharged. This is one of those years.
Early on in “Irrational Man” Abe says, “Much of philosophy is verbal masturbation.” I said the same thing about the movie as the closing credits rolled.
“American Heist” makes off with some screen time but little else of interest in a generic thriller starring Adrien Brody and Hayden Christensen as brothers bonded by a criminal past.
Christensen is James, former bad guy now on the straight and narrow. He has a job, a plan for his own business and has even started to court old flame Emily (Jordana Brewster)—who, unfortunately, as it turns out, works as a police dispatcher—again. He also has a brother, Frankie (Brody), who took the fall for James in a long-ago crime. Now Frankie is out of jail, desperate and hungry, and asks a favour, actually, insists that James help in one last heist with some new partners. Taking part will mean betraying Emily, but blood is thicker than water and James reluctantly signs on.
A case study in damaged souls by way of Central Casting, “American Heist” looks and feels like any number of other 1990s inspired crime dramas that came before it. There’s the loving, troubled and doomed brother, then there’s the soulful conflicted sibling whose world is turned upside down, torn by love for a woman and loyalty to his brother. It is, I suppose, the stuff of great drama, just not here.
There are a few arresting images—a blood splattered bride among them—and Brody brings some likeable intensity to Frankie, but as a whole “American Heist” feels like it belongs on VOD and not the big screen.
“If you had told the ten-year-old me that I would be doing what I’m doing now my head would have exploded,” says Peyton Reed, director of the latest Marvel superhero movie Ant-Man.
The director, best known for making comedies like Yes Man and The Break Up, says he grew up obsessed with comics and movies.
“I read comics and got a Super 8 film camera when I was thirteen and started shooting film from a young age. My after school life was divided up between my jobs. I had a paper route and I mowed lawns to make money to buy comic books and buy Super 8 film to shoot movies.”
Marvel comics played a major part in his comic book consumption.
“The thing I loved about Marvel was Stan Lee’s storytelling techniques and his editorial attitude. Those Marvel comics had a clear sensibility. They were really of the moment and had this attitude that was equal parts cocky and self-effacing. I loved it. They created these heroes who all had real world problems. Spider-Man was Spider-Man, but he could never get the girl in high school and he had to figure out how to make enough money to pay his rent.
“I actually told Stan Lee this when he did his cameo in our movie. I said I grew up reading the comics and my mom was an English teacher and I became an English major and I learned so many vocabulary words form Marvel comics. He wrote in this very flowery style. If someone was disappearing into the microverse he’d write, ‘Slowly and inexorably he disappeared into the ether.’ I’d run to the dictionary. What does inexorably mean? What is ether? It was hugely educational for me.”
Reed admits his small-but-mighty superhero, Ant-Man, played by Paul Rudd, has “really absurd powers.” His ability to shrink and control ants don’t seem as impressive as Thor’s Hammer or Hulk’s rage but, Reed says, “there is an inherent comedic component to the idea of Ant-Man which we also really embraced.
“I think one of the biggest things that helped was having Paul Rudd at the center of it because Paul manages to do something in this movie that I think is really interesting. He really does relate to these weird situations in the same way you or I would. He definitely acknowledges the absurdity of the situation but then goes ahead and fully commits to that situation.”
In Trainwreck, a new comedy directed by Judd Apatow, Amy Schumer plays a promiscuous New Yorker who finds love.
It’s a side-splitting movie that will be Schumer’s big-screen breakout, but the film is also populated by a very funny supporting cast, many of whom are Schumer’s Manhattan comedy peers.
“I got to give my friends work,” Schumer, who also wrote the script, says, “and they did great in it.”
Colin Quinn and Dave Attell are two standups and friends who make big impressions in the film.
“I consider Colin to be like, in vampire terms, the maker,” says Attell.
Quinn, a legendary comedian and former SNL Weekend Update anchor, co-stars as Amy’s father, a cranky old man with an attitude and a possible drug problem.
“With actors, it’s not about the lines, it’s about the behaviour,” says Quinn. “With us, it’s just about the words. We love it, so if you come up with something funny and it’s quiet behind the camera and they yell ‘Cut’ and everybody starts laughing, that’s the best.
“In so many things it’s not about the words, but in stand-up, it’s all about the words, the order of the words. I feel more than any other art form, the audience matters so much. You have this contentious relationship with them, but they are so much a part of it. I feel like musicians get together and they jam with one each other. We need the crowd to jam. To rehearse.”
Attell is a club veteran, best known for his TV show Insomniac with Dave Attell and dark-edged lines like, “You know, men and women are a lot alike in certain situations. Like when they’re both on fire — they’re exactly alike.”
In the movie, he plays a homeless man who talks to Amy everyday.
“This is the character, of the four characters that I’ve ever played in movies, that is most like me,” he says. “That’s me in five years. That’s me after the last season of Last Comic Standing, physically and emotionally.
“I’ve been in like, three other movies, and this movie was the most fun. You show up and they want you to riff around and you go for the jokes and you keep going until you feel you got it. I love that, especially for people who aren’t classically trained actors.”
You get the feeling that as much as these guys enjoyed making Trainwreck, they are more comfortable on a stage in front of a crowd than they are on a movie set. Both agree that hostile audiences fuel them creatively.
“When it’s not going well, you still have to do the job and that’s what makes it a job,” says Attell. “That’s also often when you come up with the most enlightening stuff, in the tough crowd moment.”
Quinn may prefer live venues but according to Jimmy Fallon he may have more movie work coming his way. The Tonight Show host predicts an Oscar nomination for the comic’s work in the film.
“Why not?” Quinn deadpans. “I wasn’t expecting one but an Academy Award would not affect me now, because after I didn’t get nominated for Grown Ups 2 I feel like it’s a rigged game.”
Richard’s column “Big Screen/Small Screen” in the August issue of “Movie Entertainment”!
This month while friends and family sing Happy Birthday to August babies Def Leppard singer Joe Elliot, jazz icon Tony Bennett, rapper Kurtis Blow and Baby Spice, cinemas are celebrating music history with a spate of tuneful movies.
In Ricki and the Flash Meryl Streep plays a mother trying to make amends after choosing rock and roll over her family. The Oscar-winning actress, who sings Tom Petty’s American Girl and Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance in the film, practised guitar for six months in preparation for the shoot. Director Jonathan Demme reports that after one take, “Meryl had shred so fiercely, a little blood had spattered on her baby blue dress.”
Straight Outta Compton is the legendary album by gangsta rap group N.W.A, released August 8, 1988 and now it’s also the title of a biopic that documents the group’s beginnings and turbulent history. TO READ THE WHOLE THING CHECK OUT THE MAGAZINE ON STANDS NOW!
At the end of the year don’t be surprised to see ”Ant-Man,” the latest Marvel superhero franchise starter, take the top spot on the Canadian Entomologist Magazine’s Top Films of the Year but numbers 2 through 10 as well. It not only features a man who can shrink to the size of an insect, but a supporting cast featuring colony after colony of ants. Bugheads are going to love it, and I suspect, so will fans of the Marvel Universe.
The origin story of “Ant-Man” begins with Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). He’s not a mad scientist, but he’s certainly angry. At the height of the Cold War his creation, the Pym Particle, was a breakthrough but he refused to allow its miniaturization properties to be used as a weapon. “As long as I am alive,” he says, “nobody will ever get the formula!”
Cut to present day. Pym’s Particle is still a secret from everyone, including his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) and former protégé Darren Cross (“The Strain’s” Corey Stoll). Cross is now in charge of Pym’s company and has worked to develop the technology with an eye toward selling it to the highest bidder, a.k.a., HYDRA.
In the hopes of stopping Cross, Pym and his daughter recruit cat burglar Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) to don the incredible shrinking ant suit and use his particular set of skills to break into Cross’s laboratory and destroy the miniaturization technology. If he is successful he can save the world, if he isn’t, he will be crushed like a bug underfoot.
Surely the silliest, and most definitely the smallest of all Marvel superheroes “Ant-Man” nonetheless has the same sort of swagger as the first “Iron Man” movie. It’s an origin story that uses humour to smooth over some of the rough bits of exposition. For instance, it’s self aware enough to follow a revelation of Pym’s complicated plan with a throwaway line from Rudd. “That sounds like a job for the Avengers.” It gets a laugh and stops the film from taking itself far too seriously.
As Lang Rudd has the same off-the-cuff charm that Downey brought to Tony Stark and the movie is the better for it. To pull off the story of a man who flies on the back of winged ants and is small enough to get sucked up by a vacuum cleaner you need someone with a spring in his step and a permanent wink and Rudd has both, finding just the right tone in scene after scene to make this work.
Michael Peña brings full on comic relief as Lang’s motor-mouthed friend, Lily adds strength to a character who could be spun off to her own franchise and Douglas has old school gravitas to burn, but make no mistake, this is Rudd’s movie, whether he is running through the grass with a herd of ants or slyly trying to seduce Hope.
Entomophobics may have nightmares following the film, with memories of a dog-sized ant scurrying around their dreams, but for the rest of us, “Ant-Man” is a fun, larger than life summer diversion.
“Trainwreck,” the new film from director Judd Apatow, is a romantic comedy with a pure heart and a dirty mouth.
In descending order of importance Amy (Amy Schumer, who also wrote the script) is a party girl, drinker and journalist. Her serial womanizing father’s mantra, “Monogamy isn’t realistic,” made an impression and she has grown into a promiscuous woman whose main relationship rule is “never stay over.” She inappropriate, sometimes cruel—“You are not nice,” says one ex—and occasionally clueless but nonetheless is handed a plum assignment by her editor (Tilda Swinton) to write an article on hotshot sports doctor Aaron Connors (Bill Hader).
Breaking both her personal rule and the first law of journalism, she gets involved with her subject. She leaves a toothbrush at his house, introduces him to her family and for once stays monogamous. Their relationship blooms until she allows self doubt—Why would this guy want to go out with me?—to get in the way of enjoying a happy, functional relationship.
There’s more to the story. Subplots about Amy’s ailing father (Colin Quinn), her sister’s (Brie Larson) suburban life and LeBron James’s cheapness—“I don’t want to end up like MC Hammer!”—are woven into the fabric, but the heart of the tale is about Amy and Aaron. Their roles are flipped—she plays the traditionally male commitment-phobe role, while Aaron wants to settle down—but it is their chemistry that keeps us interested.
Like most Apatow films “Trainwreck” is frontloaded with outrageous laughs that slowly give way to a funny but more restrained resolution. Schumer delivers most of the raunchy stuff but is never less than likeable, even when her character is reckless and immature. It’s a fine line that she treads in her stand-up comedy and it translates to the screen. Perhaps it’s because of the deep core of truth that props up even the more outrageous moments or perhaps it’s her way with a line. Either way her charm in the comedic and dramatic is the stuff of movie stars.
Hader is an unlikely romantic lead, but for many of the same reasons Schumer succeeds he scores a home run as Aaron. His scenes with Schumer have a comic ease about them, but his funniest work is reserved for his back-and-forth with LeBron James. The basketball superstar is the film’s unexpected secret weapon, delivering lines like, “Do you see his face when you look into clouds?” with the ease of a seasoned comic.
“Trainwreck” is complex and laugh out loud funny—you’ll likely miss some of the best lines because you’ll be laughing so hard—not a mix you get in many rom coms. Featuring edgy, interesting performances from its leads and supporting cast—especially Colin Quinn and Tilda Swinton—it is an auspicious big screen debut for Schumer and is Apatow’s most focused and interesting film to date.
Steve Martin, who studied philosophy at California State University once joked, “If you’re studying Geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but Philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life.”
