The new movie “Spy” has all the stuff you expect from a secret agent flick. There’s exotic locations, shoot-outs, beautiful women, handsome tuxedoed men and plenty of action. That Melissa McCarthy has better action scenes than co-star Jason Statham is just one clue that it’s also a comedy. The next clue is the constant stream of laughs coming from the ensemble cast.
McCarthy is Susan Cooper, a CIA computer analyst who guides the field agents through their missions. She’s in love with Bradley Fine (Jude Law), a James Bond type—think Daniel Craig without the menace—who rhetorically asks, “Who’s the finest of them all?” after taking down his enemies. As accomplished as Susan is behind-the-scenes, Fine and her boss Agent Crocker (Allison Janney) treat her like a lap dog. When Fine disappears during a dangerous mission Crocker decides they need an unknown agent to complete his assignment and locate a Bulgarian arms dealer named Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne). Cooper, thirsty to avenge Fine’s death volunteers and despite the protests of senior agent Richard Ford (Jason Statham), is sent to Paris to track Boyanov and stop Sergio De Luca (Bobby Cannavale) from selling a nuke to a terrorist organization.
In “Spy” McCarthy leaves behind the aggressive but damaged comedic persona of “Identity Thief,” “The Heat” and “Tammy” and is likeable, funny and most importantly, reigned in. “Spy” is funny, but feels so much more disciplined than any of McCarthy’s last handful of films. Director Paul Feig knows when to let McCarthy off the leash—there are some wild slapstick scenes here but he also knows when to pull her back and let the script do the work. She’s appeared in a string of weakly written comedies that required her to pull out all the stops to wring a laugh or two from poor scripts. Here she has the best of both worlds—a funny, smart script and a director who knows how to maximize her talent.
The supporting cast who knows when to work and when to get out of the way ably assists. It’s fun to see Statham have fun with his tough guy persona—“This arm was ripped off,” he says indicating his right arm, “and reattached with this one,” raising his left.—and Byrne’s mastery of one liners gives McCarthy a run for her money in the laughs department.
McCarthy Ferrelled it in several films, replacing humor with manic energy, but she’s in top form in “Spy,” generating genuine laughs and excitement for the upcoming “Ghostbusters” sequel she’s planning with Feig.
Perhaps the overriding lesson learned from “Hungry Hearts,” a new thriller starring Adam Driver and Alba Rohrwacher, is that it may not be a great idea to marry a person you meet in a public washroom. From that opening scene—the “meet cute”—that brings these two twenty-somethings together, director Saverio Costanzo takes the audience on a ride that is part “She’s Having a Baby,” part “Rosemary’s Baby.”
It’s a whirlwind romance for Jude (Driver) and Mina (Rohrwacher) after their initial lavatory love-in. They marry, move to New York and soon enough are expecting their first child. After giving birth Mina starts to exhibit strange, controlling behaviour. Concerned about pollution she refuses to take the child outside and her attitude toward doctors and vaccinations makes Jenny McCarthy seem tolerant. When the baby’s health is compromised Jude knows he must take steps, but how do you tell someone they are killing their child with too much care?
“Hungry Hearts” isn’t a traditional horror film, it’s a slow burn look at the fragile nature of the love of an over protective mother. Director Costanzo gradually builds the tension, visualizing Mina’s claustrophobic world with subtle visual tricks that create a sense of unease. The stale air of the apartment becomes palpable as the story of Mina’s suffocating love continues.
What sets “Hungry Hearts” apart from typical horror is Costanzo’s refusal to treat Mona like a monster. She is killing her child, but Jude still loves her, so Mina’s actions can be interpreted as a whirlwind of desperation and hysteria rather than evil. Rohrwacher’s mix of fragility and steely resolve brings Mina’s neurosis to vivid life. Driver’s Jude is all controlled anger and frustration, often seen up-close-and-personal through Costanzo’s super tight close-ups. Both give remarkable performances in a film that reverberates with themes first explored by Roman Polanski and Alfred Hitchcock but given a new surreal twist here.
What do you do when you write yourself into a corner after just one successful sequel? If you are Leigh Whannell, the screenwriter of the first two “Insidious” frightfests, you look backwards and pen a prequel.
The poor haunted Lambert family (Rose Byrne, Patrick Wilson, Ty Simpkins, Andrew Astor and Barbara Hershey) of the first two films are nowhere to be seen in “Insidious: Chapter 3.” In their place are the Brenners, widower Sean (Dermot Mulroney) and teenage daughter Quinn (Stefanie Scott), the kind of teenager who wears a Pixies t-shirt even though their best material was recorded years before she was born. They’re first family to encounter the spooky demons of the netherworld known as The Further that spooked the Lamberts.
Seeking to make contact with her late mother the youngster gets in touch with psychic Elise Rainier (Lin “The Godmother of Horror” Shaye). The mystic warns her about the dangers of dabbling in the great beyond—“You have to be very careful. If you call out to one of the dead all of them can hear you.”—and soon Quinn is attacked by malevolent entity (is there any other kind?) who steals half her soul. To rescue the girl Elise does battle with a demon hungry for human souls.
“Insidious: Chapter 3” is the first of the series not to be directed by James Wan who is apparently too busy making movies like “Furious 7” to return to the lo-fi scares of “Insidious.” In his place is Whannell, who did double duty as screenwriter. He understands the inner workings of these movies better than anyone, but where Wan ensured the first two movies were thrill rides that played on primal fears, Whannell‘s is the stuff of carnival haunted houses. It’s a quiet movie peppered with nightmarish images of creatures with no eyes and giant clawed feet embellished by old school effects created with make-up, sound and lighting. Some are quite effective and there are a couple of scary, inventive thrills late in the game, but far too much of the film is devoted to set up. The first hour and a quarter is a prologue of sorts for the handful of shocks that comprise the climax.
Shaye comes up with several ways to battle demons not even Dr. Peter Venkman had thought of but most of “Insidious: Chapter 3” isn’t scary enough to warrant any ghostbusting at all.
For eight years on television Adrian Grenier, Kevin Dillon, Kevin Connolly, Jerry Ferrara and Jeremy Piven provided a glamourized behind-the-scenes look at how Hollywood works.
In a scene at the end of the new “Entourage” film someone has the idea of turning the exploits of actor Vincent Chase, his best friend and manager Eric Murphy, half brother Johnny Drama and pal Turtle into a movie. “Sounds more like a TV show,” cracks Ari, the hotshot agent who made Vincent a superstar.
You know what? He’s right. It worked better as a TV show than it does as a movie.
The movie picks up just after the TV show ended. Chase (Grenier) is newly divorced and looking for a new film project. His former agent Ari (Piven) is now a studio head and has the perfect project for him, an updated version of the “Jekyll and Hyde” story. There’s a twist though. Chase has developed the Hollywood disease known as “Directoromyelitis Syndrome.” He’ll only agree to star in the film if he can also direct. A deal is struck, but when Chase lets the budget get away from him Ari must try and wrangle $15 million more from the film’s conservative Texan finaciers, billionaire Larsen McCredle (Billy Bob Thornton) and his son Travis (Haley Joel Osment). If they can’t get the money to finish the film it could be the end of the line for Vinnie, Ari and the guys.
“Entourage” the movie feels like binge watching three or four episodes of the television show. No attempt has been made to make the movie more cinematic than the show or to deepen the characters or situations. Chase is still the carefree superstar who thinks he can start all over again by moving back to his old neighbourhood in Queens if everything goes sour. Turtle remains a romantic wannabe while Johnny Drama is wracked by insecurity and E quietly tries to keep everything from spinning out of control.
If the name “Arrested Development” hadn’t already been taken by another show it would have been the perfect title for this bunch, who are more interested in meeting women and when they’re not meeting women, then talking about women than they are in behaving like actual living, breathing people. Perhaps their insipid behaviour is a comment on the vapid Hollywood lifestyle or maybe it is just vapid. I think suggesting a movie that uses a line like, “when one vagina closes, another one opens,” of any grand, high-minded purpose is overstating things by a mile.
All the glitz and glam in the world—the movie is a tribute to lifestyle porn—can cover the emptiness of the story, and even filling up screen time with an extensive array of cameos—everyone from Kelsey Grammer and Pharrell Williams to Liam Neeson and Andrew Dice Clay pop up for one line gags—does little more than turn the film into a celebrity “Where’s Waldo” exercise.
There is a sense of familiarity that comes along with watching the “Entourage” movie, like seeing old friends you haven’t hung out with for a while, but you can’t help but think that the film-within-the-film is more interesting than the movie you’re actually watching.
When I mention to Blythe Danner there is Academy Award buzz around her work as Carol, a widow taking tentative steps into the world of dating in the new film I’ll See You in My Dreams she says, “That, I find idiotic.” Long pause. “But thank you.”
Danner made her film debut in 1972, two years after she won a Best Supporting Actress Tony Award for Butterflies Are Free on Broadway. Since then she has amassed over one hundred film and television credits, including all three Meet the Parents movies and Sylvia, where she played the mother of Sylvia Plath as portrayed by her real life daughter Gwyneth Paltrow.
Remarkably I’ll See You in My Dreams is her first lead role on the big screen. She plays Carol, a widowed woman whose carefully constructed world is rattled when she starts dating Bill (Sam Elliott).
“I think it is a very underplayed role,” she says. “Yes, she runs the gamut of emotions but there is nothing that is very extreme in my playing of this role. It is heartening that people are touched by the whole film and if they are by my performance that is very flattering but I don’t see it as an Oscar worthy performance. I just don’t see it. The possibility seems absurd to me.”
The veteran actress admits to feeling uncomfortable accepting praise
“I do think there is something wrong with me. I really do. I’m very perverse. It may be the fact that I went to Quaker schools growing up. I grew up in a household where we were always told not to get a big head about being received positively. It’s the work that is important. My favourite thing when I played Nina in The Seagull was her speech at the end when she says, ‘I know now that it is not the fame and the glory that is important, but how to endure.’”
Danner’s wonderfully rendered portrayal of Carol is being called “quietly touching” by the New York Times and “deeply felt” by Variety but she credits writer, director Brett Haley with writing a script that was, “clear and accessible and simple.”
“It was all on the page,” she says. “I felt so grateful. I found it effortless. I feel a little guilty about saying that because it should have been harder. From the beginning to the end it was a gift.”
Carla Gugino was living in New York in September 2001. Every day she would look at the Twin Towers from her window, and then, one morning they were gone. The rush of emotions she felt on 9/11 stayed with her as she filmed her new movie, the earthquake disaster flick San Andreas.
“I thought about it a lot in the way Dwayne Johnson’s character and my character reconnect in this movie,” she says.
In the film she plays Johnson’s estranged wife who teams with him to rescue their daughter from a devastating earthquake that rips California in half.
“What I found so smart and well done is that they connect not in a cliché way or in a sentimental way; they reconnect because they may not be alive the next day. In those moments, which was very much the case with 9/11 and what happened that morning, you realize you want to go help people. You want to be with the people you love and you want to not sweat the small stuff. It contextualizes life in such a radical way.”
Warner Bros chose not to change the release date of San Andreas in light of the recent deadly earthquakes in Nepal. Instead they’ve used the film’s trailers and ads to raise awareness about relief efforts and have vowed to match donations made by their employees. “There were always going to be public service announcements after the trailer and the film,” Gugino adds, “but then they were specifically geared toward Nepal.”
“This is a movie that does not take Mother Nature or her tics lightly,” says Gugino, “and I think it’s about the triumph of the human spirit, which is what always amazes me. At 9/11 and seeing this terrible situation in Nepal the thing you are reminded of is the resilience of the human spirit.”
The actress, best known for her roles in Spy Kids and Sin City, lives in New York but spent twenty years living in Los Angeles on top of the shaky San Andreas fault line.
“I’ve been in a couple of big ones in LA and they are intense,” she says. “The first one I ran outside which is exactly what you are not supposed to do. That is a good thing about San Andreas, you actually learn some stuff too—the whole under a doorway, or under a desk ting. Or under Dwayne Johnson. That is one of the advantages of his size.”
Big Bird is, arguably, one of the best-known characters on the planet but how much do we really know about him? We know he’s yellow, 8′ 2″ and lives in a large nest behind 123 Sesame Street but the rest is murky. A new documentary, I Am Big Bird, exposes Caroll Spinney, the man who has spent forty-five years beneath the Muppet’s felt and feathers and knows the bird better than anyone. Spinney is Big Bird and Big Bird is Spinney. Here are five things you might not know about Big Bird and the man behind the mask.
Muppet mastermind Jim Henson created Big Bird, but Spinney says, “I was given a lot of freedom to create the kind of guy he is. He’s a person like I was as a kid, except he doesn’t get pushed around as much. I was the smallest boy in my class so there is a lot of satisfaction playing the largest character who’s ever been on television. To be loved like a little child but be eight-feet-two, what a strange accomplishment.”
Caroll’s relationship with Big Bird lasted longer than his first marriage, which blew up because his then wife was “embarrassed” by his career choice but Spinney calls his job “a dream come true. From the moment I first became aware of television I knew I wanted to be on TV regularly for children. So many of the things that have happened for me have been things I dreamed of doing.” As for retiring? “I can’t imagine it,” he says. “It keeps me young.”
Underneath Big Bird’s feathers is a device called “an electric bra” strapped to Spinney’s chest so he can see what’s happening outside the feathers. “We call it that just as a joke,” says Spinney. “It’s really a TV monitor, a tiny little television set. We have a new one now, an LED monitor and it is too big. It takes up room and it is robbing me of space for the scripts inside.”
Caroll is President Obama’s ninth cousin, but Big Bird isn’t dogmatic in the least. “Big Bird, I’m told by the owners of him, does not have political opinions. I thought of an idea that would get around that problem if someone [ever asked about it]. ‘I don’t know who that is,’ he says in Big’s voice. ‘I thought we had a king.’ In most fairy tales lands are run by kings or queens.”
NASA invited Big Bird’s to be a passenger on the doomed Space Shuttle Challenger to get kids interested in the space program. “I said, ‘Yes, I’d love to go.’ About a month later they found out there was no place on the craft to put Big Bird. I realized it would be dangerous, but who could picture what actually happened?”
For years Cameron Crowe could do no wrong. As the screenwriter of Fast Times at Ridgemont High (based on his book of the same name) and director of Say Anything and Singles, he became what The New York Times called, “a cinematic spokesman for the post-baby boom generation.”
His biggest hit, Jerry Maguire was a romantic comedy that gave Renée Zellweger a career, Cuba Gooding Jr an Oscar and us the catchphrase, “Show me the money!”
Then came his acknowledged masterpiece Almost Famous. The semi-autobiographical story of a young music journalist on the road with a band at an age when most kids still had a curfew.
He was a critical darling with box office clout but then came a string of films that failed to connect with audiences.
This weekend he’s back with Aloha, an “action romance” starring Bradley Cooper as a military contractor stationed with the US Space program in Honolulu who reconnects with a past love (Rachel McAdams) while developing feelings for a stern Air Force watchdog (Emma Stone).
Pre-release the film may be best known as the subject of a brutal Amy Pascal e-mail. In the Sony hack leaked correspondence from the former SPE co-chairman suggested she was not happy with the movie. “I don’t care how much I love the director and the actors,” she said, “it never, not even once, ever works.”
Variety recently reported that the film has been recut since Pascal’s scathing review and quotes a current Sony executive as saying, “Is it Say Anything or Jerry Maguire? Probably not, but is it a really entertaining movie for an audience? Yes, it is.”
Moviegoers will decide the fate of Aloha, but its release begs for a reassessment of Crowe’s recent, less successful films.
A remake of the Spanish film Open Your Eyes, 2001’s Vanilla Sky starred three of Hollywood’s hottest stars of the moment, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz in a dark thriller about a self-obsessed playboy whose life is turned upside down after reconstructive surgery on his face. The surreal blend of romance and sci fi threw critics off but a another viewing a decade after its release reveals a daring movie that examines regret, desire and mortality.
An enjoyable darkly comic romance, Elizabethtown got trounced by critics (it currently sits at 28% on Rotten Tomatoes) but is a great showcase for star Kirsten Dunst. She is frequently good in films, but here she really steals this movie as the cute and kooky stewardess who has several unforgettable moments—when she tells Bloom (Orlando Bloom) to stop trying to break up with her and her giggly reaction when Bloom asks her a personal question on the telephone. Without her performance the trip to Elizabethtown wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.
Finally, We Bought a Zoo, the story of a widower who swallows his grief by buying a zoo and finding love, shouldn’t work. It’s too sentimental and manipulative by half but luckily Matt Damon is there to ground the flighty story. Even a postscript (and no, I’m not going to tell you what it is), that even Steven Spielberg would find schmaltzy, works because star Damon hits all the right notes and Crowe’s dialogue sings. A father and son argument is a showstopper and you’ll likely never use the word “whatever” again without thinking of this movie.
Where’s Irwin Allen when you need him? He was the Master of Disaster, a director and producer who gave us misery masterpieces like “The Poseidon Adventure” and “The Towering Inferno,” films that gave cinematic calamity a good name. Allen’s mastery of the form is sorely missing from a new earthquake movie that rumbles but fails to shake up the audience.
In “San Andreas” Dwayne Johnson, the actor formerly known as The Rock, goes head to head with his biggest foe ever—the tectonic fault line that runs through most of California.
He plays Ray, a Los Angeles Fire Department rescue-helicopter pilot who tries to save his wife (Carla Gugino) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario) in the wake of a devastating earthquake in San Francisco. How big is the quake? “Even though it is happening in California,” says a seismologist (Paul Giamatti), “you will feel it on the East Coast.”
Cue the wild action, crumbling buildings and Johnson’s trademarked strained neck muscles.
Come to see The Rock! Stay for the collapsing digital buildings! “San Andreas” is an orgy of CGI with pixel dust billowing out of hundreds of buildings made of bits and bytes. There is much computer artistry on display, but sadly little artistry of any other kind.
Johnson is tailor made for big action movies, but here he is done in by a script that uses lines like, “I know this sounds crazy but…” as a crutch to push the action forward. Unfortunately the big set pieces actually get duller as they get bigger. Not enough variation—Look everyone! There’s yet ANOTHER building falling apart!—and lackluster 3D make “San Andreas” on of the most visually uninteresting action flicks to come along in some time.
The only thing less interesting than the look is the dialogue, which consists mostly of the actors mouthing, “Are you hurt?” or “Oh, this is not good,” or my favourite, “It’s an earthquake!” The only cast member given more to do is Giamatti, who, as Mr. Exposition, must explain, ad nauseam, why earthquakes happen. “Lost” screenwriter Carlton Cuse, appears to have used only half his keyboard to peck out the script.
“San Andreas” is a natural disaster picture but it didn’t have to be a cinematic disaster. Johnson is charismatic and funny, so why not give him a chance to flex those muscles here? The movie is too earnest by half, from the schmaltzy score that swells underneath the scenes of chaos to the heartfelt reconciliation scenes between Johnson and Gugino—Ahhh… don’t you have something better to do, like rescue your kid, than discuss what went wrong in your marriage right now? Instead, why not have some fun with the over-the-top action? Perhaps it would have been funny to see the snooty woman Gugino is lunching with when the first quake hits get eaten up by the splitting ground. Alas there is no such campy pleasure to be had in “San Andreas.” As it is I hoped the ground would open up and gobble up whole the movie. What a disaster.
