“Strange But True,” a neo-noir thriller on VOD starring Amy Ryan and Margaret Qualley, examines grief in the context of an ordinary family thrown into extraordinary situations.
The action takes place against the backdrop of loss. Five years ago Ronnie Chase (Connor Jessup) and Melissa’s (Margaret Qualley) prom night began as they all do, with a rented tux, a frilly dress and proud parents taking photos. It ended in tragedy, with Ronnie dead in a car crash, an event that sent shock waves through the family. Stricken, his folks Charlene (Amy Ryan) and Richard (Greg Kinnear), split under the weight of their grief. Younger brother Philip (Nick Robinson) hightails it to NYC to pursue his dream of being a photographer and girlfriend Melissa is wracked with guilt, left with only her dreams of her late boyfriend.
Cut to present day. Charlene’s life has fallen apart. Her husband and job are gone, so when Melissa shows up, five years after the fateful night, claiming she is pregnant with Ronnie’s baby, she is not met with hugs and congratulations.
“If you think about it,” says Phillip, home recuperating from a badly broken leg, “there’s a chance what she said is true. If, and it’s a big if, if Ronnie’s sperm was somehow frozen before he died there’s a chance Melissa could have used it and impregnated herself years later.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Charlene snarls. “He was a teenager with his whole life ahead of him. Why would he do that?”
She sets off to find a rational explanation while Phillip grasps at straws, consulting psychics and leaving no possibility off the table. “I might not believe that this is Ronnie’s baby,” he says to Melissa,” but I believe that you believe it and I believe that Ronnie would have too. If that makes me an uncle, so be it.”
That search is the bedrock for a story packed with secrets and intrigue. Adapted from John Searles’s 2004 novel, “Strange But True” is a bit of a nesting doll of mysteries. Everyone has a backstory and a different relationship with the intrigue that forms the plot and the action toggles between past and present. That means there’s a lot to wade through in the film’s tight ninety-minute running time but director Rowan Athale manages it. He weaves psychological drama, a hint of paranormal, suspense and even some gothic horror into the story.
In the end the pregnancy is a McGuffin, simply a device to put all these elements into motion, but the result is a tightly wound thriller that leads to a gripping and satisfying conclusion.
Against all odds “Brigsby Bear,” a new film starring “Saturday Night Live’s” Kyle Mooney, manages to be an inspirational story about child abduction.
Mooney is James, a man-child with a head of curly hair and 173 episodes of his favourite show, “The Adventures of Brigsby Bear” on VHS. Sort of like Paddington in outer space, the adventure series stars a man in a bear mascot suit saving the universe for the evil SunSnatcher and doling out advice like, “Prophecy is meaningless, only trust your familial units.”
“Brigsby” super fan James lives with his parents Ted and April Mitchum (Mark Hamill and Jane Adams) in an underground bunker, shut off from the rest of the world save for a weekly delivery of a new “Brigsby” tape and a dodgy internet connection. His parents have kept him separated from the world, a world, he was told, where the air was toxic. He’s never been off the property or outside without a gas mask.
One night the FBI raids the bunker arresting Ted and April for abducting James when he was a baby before returning James to his real parents Louise and Greg (Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh) and sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). Leaving Ted, April and Brigsby behind is a tough adjustment for the naïve man. “Everybody says they’re trying to help me,” he says, “but nobody can get me the new episode of Brigsby Bear.”
Turns out Ted had been making Brigsby episodes like, “Making Friends with the Wizzels,” for an audience of one, James. Filled with good life lessons the shows taught James about loyalty, fairness and perseverance. With no new episodes to study and learn from James, and his new acquaintances Aubrey, Meredith (Alexa Demie, Spencer (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) and Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear)—comes up with a plan to share his favourite character with the world. “Brigsby never gives up and I won’t either,” he says.
James is a Chance the Gardener type character. Like the famous “Being There” he is sweetly unsophisticated with knowledge derived mostly from television. Mooney could have played James as an alien, a fish out of water for whom everything is new—first party, first time with a girl, first bad drug trip—but, Like Peter Sellers’ Chance, he keeps it real, imbuing the odd character with real humanity. “It’s a different reality than I thought,” he says of world outside the bunker and he has trouble fitting into it but he never falls into caricature.
I kept waiting for “Brigsby Bear” to develop an edge or to get ugly or to collapse under the weight of its quirkiness, but it doesn’t. It’s a sweetheart of a film about loyalty, the power of art as a coping device and a source of inspiration, the line between passion and obsession, but most importantly, it’s about accepting people for who they are.
For many people, especially those who troll around in the more unsavoury corners of the Internet, the first exposure to celebs like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian came from that most modern form of celebrity introduction: the sex tape.
Paris and Kim’s videoed sexcapades weren’t the first tapes to become public — in 1988 Rob Lowe was embarrassed when VHS images of him and two women popped up on the news — and they weren’t the last.
This week in Sex Tape, Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz are Jay and Annie, a married couple who try to spice things up in the bedroom by videotaping themselves. All goes well until Jay forgets to erase the tape and mistakenly stores it on the Internet. “Our sex tape has been synced to several devices,” he says, “all of which are in the possession of friends!”
Given how many actors have appeared in sex tapes it’s not surprising that several movies have used the raunchy videos as a plot point.
In Brüno, the titular Austrian fashion reporter (Sacha Baron Cohen) tries to make a name for himself in America by making a sex tape with another famous American, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul. Trouble was, Paul wasn’t in on the joke. “I was expecting an interview on Austrian economics,” said Paul. “But, by the time he started pulling his pants down, I was like ‘What is going on here?’ I ran out of the room. This interview has ended.”
The 2006 comedy Drop Box has production values not unlike that of an actual sex tape but despite its low budget it offers up the funny and often brutal story about Mindy (Rachel Sehl), a big-time bubblegum pop star (think Britney or Miley), who accidentally returns her homemade sex tape to her local video store instead of Glitter, the movie she rented. Realizing her mistake, she tries to re-rent the tape.
Clocking in at just 80 minutes, it’s a character study about a spoiled pop princess who butts heads with an unmovable force in the form of the uncooperative and inquisitive clerk (David Cormican).
Finally, Auto Focus exposes sex tapes’ dark side. Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane’s (Greg Kinnear) all-American public persona hid a secret obsession. “I’m a normal, red-blooded American man,” he says. “I like to look at naked women.” According to the film, he liked making sex tapes with women, usually without their knowledge. The movie speculates his 1978 murder may have been related to this unlawful pastime.
“Green Zone” starts with a bang. Or more rightly stated, a series of bangs. Set in Bagdad on the first night of the shock and awe campaign, the opening minutes are a harrowing portrait of what it must be like to be under massive fire. It’s a frenetic beginning, shot in a wild cinema verite style, which will leave many in the audience wishing someone would buy director Paul Greengrass a tripod.
Matt Damon, reuniting with Greengrass after two Jason Bourne thrillers, is Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller. He’s a good soldier who allows creeping doubt about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction to force him to go rouge. Breaking ranks from the Pentagon he aligns himself with a CIA Middle East expert Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller to try and ferret out the complicated truth. At odds with Miller is Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), a freshly scrubbed Penatgon appointee who won’t let the soldier’s misgivings get in the way of his mission to bring democracy to Iraq.
Nobody shoots action like Greengrass. He breathed new life into the spy genre with the Bourne films, using handheld camera to put the viewer in the action. Shooting where most action directors fear to tread—in tight, claustrophobic spaces for example—he brings a breathless documentary feel to his films that has redefined how we watch action on screen. That’s mostly a good thing, but for all the excitement that his whiplash camera style creates it occasionally leaves me hungry for an image or two that doesn’t look as though the camera was attached to a yoyo. His gritty style works for the gritty material in “Green Zone” but despite the masterful editing I found Greengrass’s propulsive approach overshadowed the story.
The action scenes are tense, but when the action stops, (which, frankly, isn’t very often) even the dialogue scenes move with the velocity of a bullet shot from a gun. It’s pedal to metal all the way with little regard to the nuances of storytelling.
Inspired by—it takes too many liberties with the text to be called “based on”—Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” it is a straightforward story that dumbs down the story of Bush era Iraq policies to the level of a cut rate James Bond flick. The added political intrigue elevates things a tad but the addition of several characters right out of central casting makes one long for the days before every CIA operative character had a weary smile and a jaded heart.
Damon is comfortable mixing the game faced soldier with an earnest side and acquits himself well, particularly when in the actions scenes. By this time he and Greengrass must have a shorthand on set that allows them to blend character and action, and here it works.
The same can’t be said for Brendan Gleeson as CIA veteran Martin Brown. Gleeson, a fine actor, doesn’t have any action scenes, and seems to be an afterthought to the director who places such hoary old clichés as, “Don’t be so naive,” in his mouth. Ditto Amy Ryan as a Wall Street Journal writer. It seems if the characters aren’t shooting a gun or in constant motion than Greengrass doesn’t know exactly what to do with them.
There is no question that “Green Zone” is an adrenalized action film. Unfortunately it oversteps its reach when it tries to go highbrow with the political intrigue.
Ghost Town, a new comedy starring Brit com sensation Ricky Gervais, Téa Leoni and Greg Kinnear, follows in the footsteps of the ghostly romances of the 1940s. In movies like Here Comes Mr. Jordan and Down to Earth ghostly apparitions had a hand in changing people’s lives and helping romance blossom. It’s an old concept given a shiny new treatment by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull screenwriter, turned director David Koepp.
Kinnear plays Frank, a high powered New York businessman who seems to love his I-Phone more than his wife Gwen (Leoni). When he is killed in a freak accident he discovers that his body can’t make its final journey until all his business is settled on Earth. Enter Bertram Pincus D.D.S. (Gervais) a persnickety dentist with zero people skills. When a simple medical procedure leaves him dead on the operating table for two minutes he awakens with the strange ability to see the newly departed. They’re everywhere. These lost souls wander the streets looking for some way to communicate with their loved ones so they can prepare for the trip to the beyond. Frank latches on to Bertram, initially using him to spy on his widow until he realizes that the dentist is falling in love with Gwen. Frank must learn to give up his controlling ways and let Gwen go before he can rest in peace.
Ghost Town begins as a straight-up comedy and slowly, over its 103 minute running time, turns into a romantic comedy, heavy on the romance, light on the comedy. As the romance angle increases the laugh per minute ratio decreases to the point where, I think, it’s not accurate to call the film a comedy in its final moments.
Gervais is given free reign to flaunt his trademarked misanthropic schitick, but only up to a point. This is his first lead in an American film and it is interesting to see how his acerbic wit is shaped and softened by Hollywood. “[I’m] just what America wants,” he said in a recent interview, “a fat, British, middle-aged comedian trying to be a semi-romantic lead.” If he had been allowed to play up to his strengths—obnoxious and uncomfortable wit—instead of being made palatable for Gladys in Minnesota by smoothing out his patented rough edges Ghost Town might have been a much better movie. Instead of being an effective vehicle for Gervais’s humor, though, the movie made me want to go home and watch his sitcom Extras on DVD.
Ghost Town isn’t a terrible movie, just a misguided and forgettable one.
Invincible could be renamed “Generic Feel Good Sports Movie.” Like Glory Road from earlier this year it is based on a true story about an underdog who goes on to triumph. Inspiring, no? Well, yes and no.
The story does get the blood pumping, particularly in the football scenes, but only in the most predictable ways. Mark Wahlberg plays Vince Papale, a Philadelphia Eagles fan who has just lost his wife and his teaching job. Down on his luck, he goes to an open tryout for his favorite NFL team, only to see his wildest dreams come true. From here on in you don’t need to be a Hollywood screenwriter to figure out the rest of the story and that is the problem with the movie. How many times will audiences sit still for the same old sports clichés? The story would be inspiring if we hadn’t already seen it a dozen times, only with different names and sports in movies like Hoosiers to Bad News Bears to The Rookie to Remember the Titans. The sports and that faces change, it’s just the story that remains the same.
Invincible sees Mark Wahlberg revisiting the era that made him a star. In Boogie Nights he played a fictional 1970s porn star. Here his mullet is back and he hands in a touching portrayal of underdog Papale. He is likable, if not particularly memorable in the role. Greg Kinnear in the inspirational coach role doesn’t fare as well. He is wasted here, displaying none of the charisma that has marked his recent work in The Matador and Little Miss Sunshine. This Oscar nominee is often referred to as the “next Jack Lemmon.” If he keeps handing in forgettable performances like this soon he’ll be known as the “next Karl Dane.” Who’s that you ask? My point exactly.
Invincible is like going to the play off game and knowing the final score before the game even starts.
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.
Auto Focus is basically like a nicely acted, snappily directed episode of E! True Hollywood Story. The account of sitcom star Bob Crane’s rise to fame, first as a DJ, then as the lead in television’s Hogan’s Heroes and fall into the pit of sex addiction and (every actor’s nightmare) dinner theatre has all the elements of great tabloid trash. Top that off with a brutal murder – that may or may not have been a direct result of his years of skirt chasing – and you’re mining pop culture gold. Auto Focus, however, takes itself a little too seriously to be great trashy fun. The movie could have been a wild romp, but director Paul Schrader chose to unfurl the film in a clinical way, which avoids the pitfalls of exploitation, but also sucks some of the fun out of the story. Greg Kinnear plays against his usual good guy type and delivers a vivid portrait of Crane as a superficially smirky shallow man only interested in his hedonistic sex life. Willem Dafoe has the art of playing the villain down to a science and hands in a creepy performance as John Carpenter, the seedy audio/visual salesman who introduced Crane to the world of orgies, swinger’s bars and the naughty possibilities of video tape.
“Strange But True,” a neo-noir thriller on VOD starring Amy Ryan and Margaret Qualley, examines grief in the context of an ordinary family thrown into extraordinary situations.
