Anyone who has read Bill Carter’s behind-the-scenes-tell-all “The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy” already knows that the happy, smiling faces you see on your television after midnight aren’t always happy or smiling. That premise is the starting point for “Late Night,” a new comedy written by and starring Mindy Kaling.
Emma Thompson is Katherine Newbury, star of the long-running “Tonight with Katherine Newbury,” a once powerful nighttime chat show. Now the cracks are showing. Ratings are falling off, her all male writing staff are out of touch and worse, the show feels old fashioned compared to the competition. While the Jimmy’s—Kimmel and Fallon—are doing stunts Newbury features Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” and signs off with the decidedly unhip, “That’s our show everyone. I hope I earned the privilege of your time.”
Facing cancellation—” The show is a relevant,” says network head honcho Caroline Morton (Amy Ryan). “The ratings reflect that.”—Newbury is pressured into hiring Molly Patel (Kaling), a TV newbie whose only job experience comes from working in Quality Control at a chemical plant. She soon discovers the dangerous chemicals she worked with at the plant have nothing on her new toxic work situation. “You’re hired. If it doesn’t work out, which it probably won’t, you’ll be gone.” The other writers consider her unqualified, a “diversity hire,” and don’t even give her a chair in the writer’s room.
Still, Molly, who honed her comedy chops telling jokes on the loudspeaker at her former job, perseveres. Sitting on an overturned trash can (still no chair) she eagerly suggests ways to make the show better, to make her comedy idol more appealing to a younger audience. “I will not be marginalized by the white fist of oppression that prevails around here,” she says.
Her “never give up” mantra doesn’t play well with the boys’ club, particularly head monologue writer Tom (Reid Scott), but, after a rocky start—”Don’t take this the wrong way,” Newbury says to Molly, “but your earnestness can be very hard to be around.”—the new writer’s spirit gradually wins over the host. “I need you, Molly, to help me change this show.”
Molly may help “shake some dust off the [fictional] show” but “Late Night” doesn’t exactly do a deep clean on its genre. The movie is basically a romcom about platonic female relationships. The plotline may be predictable, never zigging or zagging too far off the straight line starting with Molly’s outsider status and ending with the warm embrace of those who once shunned her, but sharp writing and engaging performances from Kaling, Thompson and John Lithgow as Newbury’s ailing husband, keep it on track.
It is a showcase for Thompson’s ability to elevate any movie she appears in—she puts a nice spin on Newbury’s “The Devil Wears Prada” persona—and for Kaling’s sensibility both as a writer and performer. Together they guarantee “Late Night” is more than a “Working Girl” update.
CHIPs: It’s a remake, a comedy and an action film and yet it doesn’t quite measure up to any of those descriptors. It’s a remake in the sense that writer-director-star Dax Shepard has lifted the title, character names and general situation from the classic TV show but they are simply pegs to hang his crude jokes on.
The Circle: While it is a pleasure to see Bill Paxton in his last big screen performance, “The Circle” often feels like an Exposition-A-Thon, a message in search of a story.
The Fate of the Furious: Preposterous is not a word most filmmakers would like to have applied to their work but in the case of the “Fast and Furious” franchise I think it is what they are going for. Somewhere along the way the down-‘n’-dirty car chase flicks veered from sublimely silly to simply silly. “The Fate of the Furious” is fast, furious but it’s not much fun. It’s an unholy mash-up of James Bond and the Marvel Universe, a movie bogged down by outrageous stunts and too many characters. Someone really should tell Vin Diesel and Company that more is not always more.
Fifty Shades Darker: Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword? “Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
The Mountain Between Us: Mountain survival movies usually end up with someone eating someone else to stay alive. “The Mountain Between Us” features the usual mountain survival tropes—there’s a plane crash, a showdown with a cougar and broken bones—but luckily for fans of stars Idris Elba and Kate Winslet cannibalism is not on the menu. Days pass and then weeks pass and soon they begin their trek to safety. “Where are we going?” she asks. “We’re alive,” he says. “That’s where were going.” There will be no spoilers here but I will say the crash and story of survival changes them in ways that couldn’t imagine… but ways the audience will see coming 100 miles away. It’s all a bit silly—three weeks in and unwashed they still are a fetching couple—but at least there’s no cannibalism and no, they don’t eat the dog.
The Mummy: As a horror film it’s a meh action film. As an action film it’s little more than a formulaic excuse to trot out some brand names in the kind of film Hollywood mistakenly thinks is a crowd pleaser.
The Shack: Bad things in life may be God’s will but I lay the blame for this bad movie directly on the shoulders of director Stuart Hazeldine who infuses this story with all the depth and insight of a “Davey and Goliath” cartoon.
The Snowman: We’ve seen this Nordic Noir before and better. Mix a curious lack of Oslo accents—the real mystery here is why these Norwegians speak as though they just graduated RADA—Val Kilmer in a Razzie worthy performance and you’re left with a movie that left me as cold as the snowman‘s grin.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets: Movies like the high gloss crime thriller “La Femme Nikita,” the assassin mentor flick “Léon: The Professional” and outré sci fi opera “The Fifth Element” have come to define director Luc Besson’s outrageous style. Kinetic blasts of energy, his films are turbo charged fantasies that make eyeballs dance even if they don’t always engage the brain. His latest, “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,” not only has one of the longest titles of the year but is also one of the most over-the-top, retina-frying movies of the year. Your eyes will beg for mercy.
Wonder Wheel: At the beginning of the film Mickey (Justin Timberlake) warns us that what we are about to see will be filtered through his playwright’s point of view. Keeping that promise, writer, director Woody Allen uses every amount of artifice at his disposal—including cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s admittedly sumptuous photography—to create a film that is not only unreal but also unpleasant. “Oh God,” Ginny (Kate Winslet) cries out at one point. “Spare me the bad drama.” Amen to that.
THE UGLY
Song to Song: I think it’s time Terrence Malick and I called it quits. I used to look forward to his infrequent visits. Sure, sometimes he was a little obtuse and over stayed his welcome, but more often than not he was alluringly enigmatic. Then he started coming around more often and, well, maybe the old saying about familiarity breeding contempt is true. In “Song to Song” there’s a quick shot of a tattoo that sums up my feelings toward my relationship with Malick. Written in flowery script, the words “Empty Promises” fill the screen, reminding us of the promise of the director’s early work and amplifying the disappointment we feel today. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back, the Terrence Malick movie that put me off Terrence Malick movies. I’ll be nice though and say, it’s not him, it’s me.
EXTRA! EXTRRA! MOST COUNFOUNDING
mother!: Your interest in seeing “mother!,” the psychological thriller from “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, may be judged on your keenness to watch American sweetheart Jenifer Lawrence flush a beating heart down a toilet. Aronofsky’s story of uninvited guests disrupting the serene lives of a poet and his wife refuses to cater to audience expectations. “mother!” is an uncomfortable watch, an off-kilter experience that revels in its own madness. As the weight of the weirdness and religious symbolism begins to feel crushing, you may wonder what the hell is going on. Are these people guilty of being the worst houseguests ever or is there something bigger, something biblical going on?
Aronofsky is generous with the biblical allusions—the house is a paradise, the stranger’s sons are clearly echoes of Cain and Abel, and there is a long sequence that can only be described as the Home-style Revelation—and builds toward a crescendo of wild action that has to be seen to be believed, but his characters are ciphers. Charismatic and appealing to a member, they feel like puppets in the director’s apocalyptic roadshow rather than characters we care about. Visually and thematically he doesn’t push button so much as he pokes the audience daring them to take the trip with him, it’s just too bad we didn’t have better company for the journey.
“mother!” is a deliberately opaque movie. Like looking into a self-reflective mirror you will take away whatever you put into it. The only thing sure about it is that it is most confounding studio movie of the year.
The last time we saw Anastasia “Ana” Steele (Dakota Johnson) she was done with the whips, chains and all the other trappings of her relationship with slap and tickle devotee Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). Her romantic expectations spoiled, it looked like that was the end of the story. But this weekend, just in advance of Valentine’s Day, the two are back together, this time playing (mostly) by her rules.
Depending on your point of view “Fifty Shades of Grey” either made you want to gag or want to wear a gag. It’s a softcore look at hardcore BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) that spanked the competition on its opening weekend in 2015. Question is, will audiences still care about Grey’s proclivities and Ana’s misgivings or is it time to use our collective safeword?
The nighttime soap opera-esque “Fifty Shades Darker” begins shortly after Ana walks out on Christian but this isn’t “Titanic” where class issues and an iceberg keep the lovers apart or “Brokeback Mountain” where out-dated social mores conspired against the characters. This is “Fifty Shades Darker” and there is no story unless Ana and Christian are in the same frame. So boom, they’re back together. They “meet creepy” at a photo exhibit where Ana’s friend has displayed bigger-than-life portraits of her. Christian buys them all and convinces her to have dinner. “I’ll have dinner with you,” she says, “but only because I’m hungry.”
Over expensive entrees and wine they discuss moving forward. “I want you back,” he says. “I’d like to renegotiate the terms. What happened last time won’t happen again.” That means no collars or flogging. Ana says she wants a “vanilla relationship,” and he agrees but before you can say “ballgag” she’s asking for various kinky acts to be performed upon her naughty bits.
Soon he asks her to move into his ultra-modern bachelor pad. She breathily says yes but unfortunately other women—his sexual mentor Elena Lincoln (Kim Basinger) and Leila Williams (Bella Heathcote), a former submissive—cast a shadow over their relationship. “Do you think you’re the first woman who has tried to save him?” asks Elena.
There’s more, but who really cares about these two? Johnson and Dornan share so little chemistry they couldn’t smoulder if you lit their underwear on fire. To be fair they are cut adrift in a sea of kinky sex, mommy porn, dime store psychology and bad dialogue most of which only serves to move the film along from one spanking montage to the next. Stymied by plotting that makes most Harlequins seem like Dostoyevsky, the actors frequently shed their clothes, most likely in an attempt to distract from the truly awful things that happen when they are clothed.
Johnson is still a charming presence and Dornan slightly less wooden than last time out, but Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart couldn’t bring exchanges like this to life: “Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asks after a big revelation. “I did but you were asleep at the time.” “A big part of a relationship is that both parties have to be conscious.”
“Fifty Shades Darker” is a cold shower of a movie. “It’s all wrong,” Ana says at one point. “All of this is wrong.” Truer words have never been spoken.
So says a character in “Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return,” a new family film that adds a chapter to L. Frank Baum’s “Wizard of Oz” series.
Where there are flying monkeys you can bet there’ll also be a Scarecrow (Dan Aykroyd), the Tin Man (Kelsey Grammer) and a Lion (as played by James Belushi he’s no longer cowardly and now suggests tearing his enemies “limb from limb.”) and, of course, witch killer Dorothy (Lea Michele) and her little dog Toto. All make appearances but this time around they’re up against a different foe—an evil Jester (Martin Short).
The movie begins several Oz years after Dorothy vanquished the Wicked Witch of the West. In her time, however, only hours have passed. When she wakes in her bed in Kansas the tornado from the original story has just laid waste to her town, but before you can say “Well, howdy, Miss Gulch,” the young girl is sucked up by a giant rainbow and transported to the world of Oz. “You guys,” she says, “dragging me into a giant rainbow really scared me!”
Trouble is, things aren’t so wonderful in Oz. The Emerald City is in turmoil at the hands of a power hungry Jester who is turning the citizenry into marionettes. Dorothy, with the help of new friends Wiser the Owl (Oliver Platt), Marshal Mallow (Hugh Dancy), China Princess (Megan Hilty) and Tugg the Tugboat (Patrick Stewart) must stop the Jester and rescue Scarecrow, the Tin Man and Lion before they are turned into puppets.
There are some good messages for kids in “The Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” about working together—as heard in the clumsily rhymed “out it all together until the job is done, it should be easy, it should be fun”—and the importance of friendship. It’s just too bad they are wrapped up in a film so saccharine it would give the Wicked Witch of the West a sugar rush.
The flying monkeys are still kinda scary but the rest of the movie practically redefines the term “family friendly,” and not in all the best ways. It plays it safe to a fault throughout, smoothing over any edge until there is not much left but some poppy tunes (by Bryan Adams among others) and a story that relies on the goodwill of characters created several generations ago.
“The Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” won’t give Pixar a run for their money and might be best saved for a rainy day rental.
“Hysteria” could easily have been called “Desperate Housewives (of 1880).” Set in 19th century London, the story centers around Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) — a young handsome doctor whose carpal tunnel syndrome led directly to the invention of the vibrator.
The year is 1880 and hysteria is “the plague of our times,” according to Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), a doctor whose magic fingers bring relief to London’s upper class ladies. His solution to their dilemma is simple. He offers manual stimulation until his patients achieve “paroxysm.”
In those days hysteria was a catchall phrase used to encompass all manner of female ailments. According to Wikipedia, “women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and ‘a tendency to cause trouble.'”
Enter Granville, an idealistic doctor who keeps losing jobs at old-fashioned hospitals because of his new-fangled ideas about germs. He accepts an apprenticeship with Dalrymple and soon his nimble fingers and good looks have attracted the attention London’s desperate housewives and daughter Emily Dalrymple (Felicity Jones). She’s an English Rose who stands in contrast to her sister Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a live wire suffragette who is passionate about working with the city’s disadvantaged.
Business booms at the doctor’s office until Granville suffers hand and wrist ailments from vigorous overuse. In short order he co-invents the world’s first vibrator with the help of his friend Lord Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett). He also discovers true love and the true nature of hysteria.
Despite its racy premise “Hysteria” is rather tame. As social commentary it’s lightweight, shedding little light on the repressive Victorian attitude toward women and sexuality. Sure, the female patients know exactly what the cause of their so-called hysteria is and Gyllenhaal speechifies on women’s rights, but a movie about the invention of the tool that revolutionized sexuality should focus on that and not the predictable rom-com love triangle.
As a comedy it misses the opportunity for big laughs by under-using Everett, whose hammy performance breaks through the stodgy Englishness repressiveness of the setting. The slapstick and masturbation hat make up much of the movie and wears out their welcome early on.
Still, there is something inoffensive about the movie. It’s a sweet attempt to tell an unusual story, but feels like a missed opportunity — which is why “Hysteria” didn’t work for me as well as it might have. I expected more than a comedy of manners with an off-colour edge from the story. This is a rental, not a night out.
Hugh Dancy, right, plays Mortimer Granville, a handsome doctor in 1880s England who cures women of ‘hysteria.’
Actor Hugh Dancy says the pitch for his new movie, Hysteria, was remarkably simple.
“All I got was essentially the tagline,” he says, “The Invention of the Vibrator.”
“I had some awareness of the premise,” he says, “so it wasn’t a complete revelation to me, but what I liked was the tone the movie struck between broad comedy and something much sweeter.”
He plays Mortimer Granville, a young, handsome doctor in 1880’s England, whose specialty is treating women with a medical condition known as hysteria.
Called the “plague of our times,” the now-discredited condition was a catchall to encompass all manner of female infirmities, including insomnia, nervousness, sexual desire, shortness of breath and even “a tendency to cause trouble.”
The condition was treated with… ahem… manual stimulation performed by doctors like Granville, until patients achieved “paroxysm.” “They thought they were shifting the uterus,” he says.
“That basic fact, which is the source of all the comedy and the fun thing in the movie,” Dancy says, “is the one thing that was absolutely accurate.”
Dancy, who has been married to actress Claire Danes since 2009, downplays the shooting of the awkward scenes, even though the doctor’s ‘magic-finger’ treatments provide some of the movie’s most memorable moments.
“We had some very accomplished and very game actresses come in and hoist themselves up onto an operating table and then we shot what you see in the movie.”
But the story doesn’t completely centre around the unorthodox medical treatment. As the actor says, it’s a “witches’ brew” of ideas, including romantic comedy, some social commentary on women’s rights and a history on the tool that revolutionized sexuality. “Any one of them on their own would make for a far less interesting movie,” says the actor, who will next be heard in the animated Dorothy of Oz, co-starring Lea Michele and Patrick Stewart.
“Obviously there are plenty of interesting movies to be made around the subject of women’s rights, but if the bits of this movie that address that had been extrapolated into a whole movie, I don’t think it would have added up to much.”
Near the end of Adam the titular character (Hugh Dancy) says, “I’m not Forrest Gump you know.” True enough. Adam may have Asperger’s Syndrome, but director / screenwriter Max Mayer has avoided most of the sentimental pitfalls that make the Tom Hanks movie an exercise in how not to make a movie about someone who is not “neurotypical.” Most, but not all.
The story begins just as Adam’s father has passed away. His lonely life of routine—he eats the same thing everyday and has a phobia of change—is shaken when a pretty young woman named Beth (Rose Byrne) becomes his upstairs neighbor. The two begin a romance, even though Adam, because of his Asperger’s Syndrome, is unable to express his feelings. Nonetheless they create a connection; a fragile bond that stressed by her family and his job woes.
Adam had the potential to be a maudlin movie about a doomed romance but instead is a smart story about obstacles that get in the way of fulfilling relationships. To convincingly drive the story home Mayer has cast two very appealing actors in the lead roles.
Dancy has the showier part, but where he could have played Adam as simply deadpan he instead manages to bring the character to life, taking a role that could have been a collection of obsessions and awkward social interactions and molding it into a real character the audience cares about.
Dancy may have the flashier role, but Byrne brings heart to the film. Her take on Beth is simple and sweet. In a raw, but understated performance she plays a woman who is searching for truth in her life. After a complicated romantic relationship and difficulties with her father she finds Adam’s honesty—it’s a trait of his Asperger’s—refreshing. His bluntness can be difficult at times, but one of the pleasures of the movie is watching the way she learns to communicate with Adam, becoming skilled at saying exactly what she means with no room for interpretation. It’s a complicated dance between the two, but one that is played for real and with little sentimentality.
Little sentiment, that is, until the end. Mayer breaks some of the rules of the usual made in Manhattan romantic film, but chooses to close with a sequence that undermines the tone established in the rest of the film. It’s not a deal breaker, the rest of the movie is too good to be ruined by a schmaltzy ending, but I would have preferred a coda that was more in line with the film’s first ninety minutes.
