For better and for worse, there is nothing quite like a Wes Anderson film. The director’s unique production design is all over his new sci fi comedy “Asteroid City,” but with this film it is clear that whimsy has finally replaced storytelling on his to do list.
This is a twisty-turny one. Like a set of nesting dolls, it’s a film, within a play, within a show hosted by a Rod Sterling-esque talking head (Bryan Cranston), within a teleplay written by playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).
The bulk of the “action” takes place in Asteroid City, a remote New Mexico desert town—population 87—where Steve Carell’s motel manager hosts a Junior Stargazer convention. Gifted kids and their parents from all over the state convene to showcase their incredible, and often outlandish, inventions.
It’s an interesting group that includes recently widowed war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), father to “brainiac” Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and son-in-law to Stanley (Tom Hanks), movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and the rough-n-tumble J.J. Kellogg (Liev Schreiber). Along for the ride are singing cowboy Montana (Rupert Friend), teacher June (Maya Hawke), Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton) a scientist from the local observatory and the fast-talking Junior Stargazer awards judge, General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright).
When the convention is interrupted by a visiting alien, the whole thing is locked down for a mandatory government quarantine.
Despite the quirky tone and Anderson’s trademarked stylistic choices, “Asteroid City” is a serious film, albeit one laced with a healthy dose of absurdism. A study in how people deal with grief, and the true nature of love, Anderson’s characters experience existential dilemmas, angst born of loss and dissatisfaction. Threats are posed by nuclear bombs and life from other planets unexpectedly dropping by to say hello and children wonder aloud what happens when we die. A shroud of melancholic anxiety hangs over the film, like a shroud, but Anderson’s staging of the film, the meta story within a story structure, obscures the movie’s deeper meanings under layers of style.
The cast, particularly Johansson and Hanks, bring focus to Anderson’s unfocussed story, and Carell, Cranston and briefly Goldblum are having fun, but it sometimes feels the surfeit of characters are there more to decorate the screen than to forward the story.
“Asteroid City” may delight long-time fans, but casual moviegoers or newcomers to the director’s oeuvre may find the film’s mannered obtuseness off kilter and off putting.
“Going in Style” is a blistering social commentary disguised as an old coot caper comedy. Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin play factory workers who did all the right things only to have the system give them the middle finger in old age.
A remake from the 1979 George Burns, Art Carney, and Lee Strasberg adventure “Going in Style,” the movie begins with Joe (Caine) confronting his condescending bank manager (John Pais). The older man’s mortgage has tripled and he will soon be evicted from his home. As they argue, outside the manager’s office armed masked men invade the bank, scooping handfuls of cash from the tellers. Joe is unharmed in the heist—one of the thieves tells him, “It is a culture’s duty to take care of the elderly.”—and later excitedly tells his family and friends Willie (Freeman) and Al (Arkin) about the robbery.
The afternoon’s excitement aside, Joe’s financial situation is still dire. His old company, now in the midst of a takeover, has frozen all pension cheques. He needs to come up with a way to get his hands on some cash. Ditto for Willie, who needs a new kidney and Al who can barely afford to feed himself.
When their favourite waitress gives them a free piece of pie with the truism, “Everybody deserves pie,” it dawns on Joe that she’s right. “We should be having our pie and eating it too,” he says, hatching a plan to steal back their pensions. “These banks practically destroyed this country and nothing ever happened to them,” he says. “If we get caught we get a bed, three meals a day and free healthcare.”
“Going in Style” then drops the social commentary and becomes a heist flick. Think “The Italian Job” with electric wheelchairs and you’ll get the idea.
Much of the charm of “Going in Style” comes from watching Caine, Freeman and Arkin glide—OK, it’s more like shuffle—through this material. There’s nothing particularly new here, we’ve seen loads of elderly men take back their lives on film in recent years, but subtext and actor goodwill elevate this slight story.
Caine, Freeman and Arkin are formidable actors but expertly portray the invisibility that can come with old age. As eighty-somethings they are unseen—banks take advantage of them, the police ignore them—until they take their future into their own hands. The story is implausible but by the time the heist happens you want the best for these grandpas, no matter how silly the story gets.
“Going in Style” is part knockabout comedy, part rage against the machine. Director Zach Braff adds in just enough sentimentality and slapstick to frame the film’s message of “having a pie of pie whenever the hell I want to!”
“Girl Most Likely,” a dysfunctional family comedy starring Kristen Wiig, Annette Bening and Matt Dillon, proves that you can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you can’t take the New Jersey out of the girl.
Wiig stars as Imogene, a wannabe New York playwright. Years before she won a prestigious award but the promise of a distinguished career in the theatre evaporated, leaving her with a cheating boyfriend, some high society friends who sneer at her behind her back and an inferiority complex.
Hitting rock bottom she’s forced to move back home, to Ocean City, New Jersey with her eccentric mother (Bening), younger brother (Christopher Fitzgerald) and assorted boyfriends (Dillon) and roomers (Darren Criss).
Living with mom stirs up some old memories, reveals some new truths and makes her more determined than ever to get back to the bright lights of NYC… if she can find a way to break free of her roots.
“Girl Most Likely” is a frustrating movie because it comes so close to being a home run, but doesn’t quite make it to home base. Co-directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini have assembled a great, charismatic cast but given them a script that relies on quirk rather than depth to make its point.
Narcissistic characters can be fascinating on screen—think “American Psycho’s” Patrick Bateman or Gregory Anton from “Gaslight” or even “The Princess Bride’s” Vizzini—but the psychological issues that drive them have to resonate, or at least be apparent and that’s where “Girl Most Likely” fails.
It’s a narcissistic cesspool played for laughs without ever really giving us the dark background that feeds the self-absorbed behavior on display. There are hints along the way but they are over shadowed by a plot that relies on idiosyncratic twists, like a brother who specializes in mollusk protection methods and a mysterious stranger who may, or may not, be an international spy.
Paring down the eccentricity and upping the realistic elements of the story would have allowed the performances to shine brighter and made “Girl Most Likely” a more satisfying movie.
Occasionally there is one thing that makes it worth a trip to the movies.
For me “The Art of the Steal” has a few things to recommend it but the thing that would make me reach into my wallet and pay for a second viewing is something that has nothing to do with the twisty-turny plot or the presence of Terence Stamp, one of my favorite actors.
It’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment, but I’d sprung for a ticket just to see Kurt Russell reprise his impersonation of Elvis Presley. Wearing a Vegas era jumpsuit, he mimics one of the King’s famous dance / karate movies he perfected for the 1979 television movie Elvis. It ups the general cool level of the movie and reaffirms my belief that everything is 10% better with Elvis in it.
In this heist flick Crunch and Nicky Calhoun (Russell and Matt Dillon) are brothers and art thieves, who haven’t worked together since Nicky snitched on Crunch and sent him to prison.
Years later they team up to steal The Gospel According to James, one of the world’s oldest and rarest books, but will the job lead to more double-crossing? Or a taste of revenge?
Along for the ride is Crunch’s apprentice (Jay Baruchel) and a variety of law-and-order types, including a former-art-thief-turned-FBI-informant (Terence Stamp) and an FBI fumbler played by “The Daily Show’s” Jason Jones.
The mechanics of the heist aspect don’t entirely add up—what border crossing storage unit doesn’t have closed circuit cameras?—and the twists threaten to overshadow the whole thing but the chemistry of the cast goes a long way toward smoothing over any plot rough spots.
It simply works better as a comedy than a heist film. Dillon and Stamp are in good form, Russell can cut through this material like a hot knife through butter, but it is Baruchel who shines in a supporting role. He provides the film’s funniest moment although it’s one that may make it harder for him to cross the border in future.
“The Art of the Steal” is an entertaining movie that mixes laughs with intrigue, crime with revenge in an offbeat heist flick.
Anyone over the age of thirty will remember the Herbie: The Love Bug movies—there were five of them, plus a 1997 TV movie—about a spunky little car with a mind of its own. Fully Loaded is an attempt to rev up the engine of this franchise and run it around the track at least one more time.
This Lindsay Lohan vehicle—pardon the pun, but there are more to come—sees her playing Maggie Peyton, the only girl in a family of NASCAR drivers. As a graduation gift her father (Michael Keaton) buys her an emotive Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie from a local junkshop. Luckily Herbie is a positive influence in Maggie’s life—this is the opposite of that other car-come-to-life movie John Carpenter’s Christine—and Lohan and Herbie bond—is it an auto-erotic relationship?—while she rekindles her love of racing after a near-fatal accident forced her father to ban her from the track. Before you can say Dude, Where’s My Car? she finds herself going wheel to wheel with NASCAR champ Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon).
Herbie: Fully Loaded is a simple, but likeable underdog story of two unlikely racers—there aren’t many female NASCAR racers and a Volkswagen on the track is the kind of thing that could only happen in the movies—that, while predictable, is a long way from the junkyard.
He is an Oscar nominee, a multiple Independent Spirit Award winner and the star of more than 40 movies.
He can leapfrog comfortably from comedy to drama — in this weekend’s Takers he plays a cop hot on the trail of some bank robbers, next he’ll be seen yukking it up in Rio Sex Comedy. He can do it all, and on top of that he has at least one IMDB message board titled “Hottest Man Alive.”
So why is Matt Dillon the forgotten movie star?
With credits like his he should be on the A-list, hobnobbing with the Toms — Hanks and Cruise — and Will Smith, and yet his brother Kevin, who plays a wannabe celebrity on Entourage, probably has a higher Q score. Here’s a look back at why Matt Dillon should be on Hollywood’s hot list.
Troubled Youth
Dillon first got noticed playing troubled teens in Over the Edge, My Bodyguard, Little Darlings and Liar’s Moon, but it was the screen adaptations of three S.E. Hinton novels that made him a star. Tex, The Outsiders (where he shared the screen with Cruise, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze) and Rumble Fish made him a teen idol, but also earned him some serious fans as well. Roger Ebert wrote that Dillon has “the kind of clarity, the uncluttered relationship with the camera that you see in only a handful of actors.”
He’s Really Blossomed
He was typecast as a brooding teen early on but breakout roles in several comedies proved he could more than just a gloomy Gus. In There’s Something About Mary, he used one of the most all time politically incorrect (but hilarious) pick-up lines to woo Cameron Diaz. Even better is Randy, his character in One Night at McCool’s. When nice guy Randy’s one-night stand lets it slip that her boyfriend is a killer who might come after them, he doesn’t run but in a beautiful bit of understatement says, “It’s just the sex and the violence all in one night is a little much.”
Wild Things
On the dramatic side he is an Oscar nominee for his work as the racist cop in Crash, an award winner for his realistic portrayal of a drug addict in Drugstore Cowboy and he steamed up the screen as the high school counsellor in the campy Wild Things.
