There was a time when serial killers ruled the movie theatres. Movies like “Kiss the Girls,” “Se7en” and “Silence of the Lambs” were big hits and law enforcement types like Alex Cross and Clarice Starling were big draws. Now those stories have been moved to the small screen and television shows like “CSI” and “Criminal Minds” track down the kinds of killers their big screen counterparts used to stalk.
“The Calling” is a throwback to the type of 90s thrillers that made Ashley Judd a star and kept audiences on the edge of their seats.
Drawn from the pages of Inger Ash Wolfe’s mystery novels, Susan Sarandon plays pill-popping Detective Hazel Micallef, a world weary small town Canadian cop just a drunken whisper away from unemployment. The sleepy little town of Fort Dundas doesn’t offer up much in the way of major cases until a string of grisly murders—slit throats and organ removals—forces Micallef to dust off her detecting skills and track down a killer with driven by fanatical religious fervor.
First time director Jason Stone ratchets the bleak atmosphere up to Creep Factor Five in this eerie character driven mystery. There’s a little bit of “Fargo” in the mix, with some dark humor—“I just found the guy’s stomach!”—and disquieting imagery, but the real draw is watching the characters navigate through the film’s unsettled but strangely familiar world.
Sarandon is terrific as outwardly tough detective with a self-destructive center, while Sutherland brings his patented gravitas to the role of a priest who knows more than he is willing to let on. They, along with Grace, Burstyn (who isn’t given enough to do) and Gil Bellows as a no nonsense detective, temper the story’s more outrageous holistic killer Catholic elements.
“The Calling” could have snapped up the pacing a bit, but the slower tempo gives us more time to sit back and enjoy the performances.
The last time Susan Sarandon went on a cinematic road trip she was teamed with Geena Davis in a film that reinvented the buddy picture and earned praise from critics who called it a “neo-feminist road movie.”
This time out the Sarandon shares the front seat with Melissa McCarthy. Where “Thelma & Louise” learned about loyalty and sisterhood, Tammy and Pearl only pick up tips about drinking and driving, how to rob restaurants and how to destroy a jet ski.
Tammy (McCarthy) is down on her luck. She hit a deer with her car—“Oh man,” she says, “not another one.”—got fired from Topper Jack’s, and discovered her husband (Nat Faxon) is having an affair with the neighbor (Toni Collette). And it’s not even dinnertime.
Like so many before her, Tammy decides to hit the road to clear her head. Trouble is, she doesn’t have a car or any money. Luckily Grandma Pearl (Sarandon) has both and is keen on taking a trip. “You’re not getting the car unless I go,” she says. “At this point you’re the best chance I have to get out of this house.”
The pair head off for Niagara Falls (going the wrong way naturally), stopping along the way just long enough to cause trouble as Pearl picks up a man in a bar (Gary Cole) before hiding out with Pearl’s cousin Lenore (Kathy Bates) and her girlfriend Suzanne (Sandra Oh). After a blow out with grandma at Lenore’s July fourth party Tammy finally has a close, hard look at her life.
Road movies are episodic by nature. Their stories move from place to place, from character to character, all bound by a theme. Unfortunately “Tammy” simply moves slowly from scene to scene, content to rely on McCarthy’s comedic appeal at the sacrifice of anything more than pratfalls and awkward humor.
In other words “Tammy” earns a laugh or two when McCarthy falls down, less so when she is standing upright, which is most of the movie.
McCarthy is a charming performer, but it’s beginning to feel like she doesn’t do anything than play the obnoxious loser with a heart of gold buried beneath a thick shell of one liners and non sequiturs. What worked so well in “Bridesmaids” now feels been-there-done-that.
She isn’t aided by the supporting cast, because despite the cumulative comedy cred of actors like Allison Janney, Dan Aykroyd and Toni Collette are all saddled with thankless roles that give them very little to do. Kathy Bates is more of a live wire, but shame on director Ben Falcone (who is also McCarthy’s husband and the film’s co-writer) for not giving her costar Sandra Oh more to do. She is essentially set dressing, a flesh prop with a nice wardrobe.
By the end of the credits “Tammy” doesn’t feel like a comedy—although there are several giggles sprinkled throughout—as much as it does a waste of talent. Sarandon isn’t a gifted comedian but McCarthy is, but neither is working to their strengths.
I’m not sure how to describe “Jeff, Who Lives at Home.” It’s sort of a comedy, kind of a drama and a bit of a character study and yet it isn’t completely any of those things. The directing duo, the Duplass Brothers, best known for the indie films, have mixed and matched tones and come up with something that is likeable despite the strange premise and characters.
Thirty-something unemployed man-child Jeff (Jason Segel) still lives in his mother’s (Susan Sarandon) basement. His worldview is formed by the enormous amount of drugs he smokes and the M. Night Shyamalan movie “Signs.” To him nothing is random. Everything is a sign. When his mom sends him on an errand a series of “omens” find him chasing after a stranger named Kevin and becoming involved in his break up of his brother’s (Ed Helms) marriage.
“Jeff, Who Lives At Home” exists at the intersection where indie and mainstream film meet, nicely blending the rough-and-ready sensibility of the directors with the appeal of the a-list-y cast. It is deeply connected to its characters and the relationships that bind them and for me that bought a great deal of good will.
I could have done without the quick zoom the Duplass Brothers use to accentuate their visual punch lines, and the soundtrack was a bit twee for my taste, but the film’s strengths overshadow the precious elements.
While the characters may be edgy and / or unlikeable—except for Susan Sarandon’s world-weary single mom and her free spirited co-worker played by Rae Dawn Chong—or hard to relate to—like the title character—because there’s no cynicism here they become real people that you care about. Quite a feat in 85 minutes.
The cast is uniformly strong, but this is Segal’s movie. What a balancing act of a career e has. He’s a mainstream sitcom star, a stoner star, a friend of Muppets and has appeared full frontal on the big screen. He’s fearless, and here he is unafraid to underplay a character who might have been given a more grandiose treatment by another actor.
He has all the movie’s funniest l;ines, and delivers them well, but when he says to his brother, “You and mom will never understand me, and you’re all I have left,” in one line, which might have been a throw away in any other movie, he reveals a sad, broken side.
“Jeff, Who Lives at Home” won’t be for everyone. Some will find its unusual tone hard to embrace, but for those willing to connect with the material there is much to enjoy here.
If the latest film from “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson is to be believed the afterlife looks a lot like a Pink Floyd album cover from the late 1970s. In “The Lovely Bones,” a loose adaptation of the bestselling book by Alice Sebold, he goes heavy on the computer generated imagery to create a slick looking world, which despite the best efforts of the cast, is almost bereft of emotion.
In case you’re not a member of Oprah’s book club, who chose “The Lovely Bones” and propelled it up the best seller charts like a rocket, it is the story of Susie Salmon (“like the fish”) a 14 year old girl murdered in suburban Pennsylvania in 1973. Susie, however, didn’t go quietly into the long goodnight. From a place somewhere between Heaven and Earth she watches over her distraught family and tries to guide them through their time of despair.
Some of the now controversial CGI—early trade reviews called the film indulgent and “evocative of “The Sound of Music” or “The Wizard of Oz” one moment, “The Little Prince” or “Teletubbies” the next”—is quite beautiful and some of it is overkill. When Susie is making her arrival in “her heaven” it is a beautiful representation of a spirit floating away. Hugh shots of her never-to-be boyfriend Ray, reflected in a body of water that separates them and Ray again on a gazebo, surrounded by an undulating landscape, are a bit heavy handed. Jackson is the real deal, a skilled filmmaker and visualist, but he has to learn to trust the story and not let the technology do the talking.
Performance wise Jackson has cast well and gets good, solid work from his actors, particularly Rachel Weisz as the grieving mother, Susan Sarandon as the boozy grandmother and Rose McIver as the spunky sister Lindsey but it is the two central roles that the whole movie hinges on.
As the murderous Mr. Harvey Stanley Tucci is creepy; all twitchy movements and squeaky voiced. He’s Norman Bates without the overbearing Mom and wonderfully cast. Tucci, it appears can do anything. Earlier this year he played Julia Child’s loving diplomat husband in “Julie & Julia” and held his own opposite Meryl Streep. Now he’s the creepiest bad guy this year since Hans Landa drank a glass of milk with a French farmer in “Inglourious Basterds.”
At the heart of the film, however, is an arresting central performance by Saoirse Ronan as Susie, the little girl who never got to kiss a boy or see her fifteenth birthday. Her luminous presence gives the film whatever soul it has and her generous screen presence is a good tonic for the effects heavy scenes she plays in the “in between,” the blue horizon between heaven and earth.
“The Lovely Bones” should have been a better movie. It’s not terrible, mind you; it just doesn’t push the emotional buttons that a story about the murder of a young person should. Jackson is still in epic “LOTR” mode, taking a small, intimate movie and needlessly cluttering it up with bigger than life images that get in the way of the feeling of the piece.
“The Big Wedding” is is the kind of movie that you only buy a ticket for when everything else is sold out. You arrive at the theatre at 7:30, hungry for popcorn because you missed lunch, only to discover that “42,” the movie you really wanted to see, is packed. Ditto for “The Croods,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” and even “Jurassic Park 3D.”
Then you see a poster for “The Big Wedding” and notice it stars Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton and that nice boy from “That 70s Show.”
“How bad can it be?” you think.
I’m here to tell you how bad it can be.
In a bit of farce that, no doubt, has Molière spinning in his grave, the movie has at its wizened dark heart an elaborate ruse. Alejandro (Ben Barnes) is the adopted son of a long divorced couple, Don (Robert De Niro) and Elle (Diane Keaton). Don is now happily living with Elle’s former best friend Bebe (Susan Sarandon). Al’s planned wedding to Missy (Amanda Seyfried) is going to be a big affair, but there’s a hitch. His devoutly Catholic mother is coming over from Columbia for the visit, and Al fears she won’t give her blessing to the marriage if finds out that Don and Elle are divorced, so he asks them to masquerade as a married couple for the weekend.
There’s more. Lots more. Topher Grace is the twenty-nine-year-old virgin doctor son who falls for Alejandro’s sister. Katherine Heigl is a sour-faced lawyer and Robin Williams plays a priest.
The supporting characters sound like the set-up to an old joke—A doctor, a lawyer and a priest walk into a bar!—except that there’s nothing remotely funny about any of them.
It’s frustrating not because it isn’t funny but because it wastes the talents of almost everyone involved. Forevermore when anyone tells me that De Niro is the greatest actor of his generation, my mind will flash back to his most painful scene, a bit of slapstick on a diving board. Maybe I’m in denial, but I chose to remember the good times.
The set-up sounds family friendly—everybody loves a wedding, especially grandma!—but the movie is far from it. Language and nudity make it inappropriate for kids, and the general lack of anything else makes it a no go for everybody else.
With a story as imaginative as the title and “jokes” telegraphed so far in advance you need binoculars to see them coming, “The Big Wedding” is as appealing as a cash bar at the reception. It’s bad even for a Katherine Heigl movie.
On the surface New York hedge-fund king Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is the model of success. At sixty years old and married to Ellen (Susan Sarandon) he’s preparing to hand over his empire to his Chief Investment Manager, who also happens to be his daughter Brooke (Brit Marling). He’s so rich he doesn’t even know what an Applebees is. Cracks appear in the façade, however, when an accident involving his mistress, French art-dealer Julie Côte (Laetitia Casta), threatens to uncover the dark side of his life, including a $400 million fraud.
“Arbitrage” has already earned Richard Gere a Golden Globe nomination and may be the role that finally lands him an Oscar nod. He’s terrific as the morally ambiguous banker (is there any other kind in the movies?), a cold—so chilly you want to put a scarf on when he’s in the room—calculating but charismatic wheeler-dealer whose motives are not always immediately clear. It’s a complex performance that shows the balance Miller has over his lives as a business-person versus family man.
His two powerhouse scenes are intimate ones, there’s nothing flashy about them, they simply moments of reckoning for a man between his wife and father with daughter. They are quiet, powerful passages in a sophisticated movie about deceit and flawed characters.
It’s a twisty, turny plot kept interesting by the uniformly strong performances. Tim Roth’s Det. Michael Bryer, the street-savvy cop trying to get to the bottom of Miller’s complex web of lies, is Columbo-esque, but he manages to make it his own.
Sarandon and Marling (who has a bachelor’s in economics in real life and becomes the movie’s conscious) shine, but it is Nate Parker as the Jimmy Grant, the son of one of Miller’s friends, who almost steals the show from Gere. He’s the only character with a developed sense of right and wrong, and it almost lands him in trouble.
“Arbitrage” is an intricate, gripping crime drama populated by relatable, although not very likable, characters.
There was a time when serial killers ruled the movie theatres. Movies like “Kiss the Girls,” “Se7en” and “Silence of the Lambs” were big hits and law enforcement types like Alex Cross and Clarice Starling were big draws. Now those stories have been moved to the small screen and television shows like “CSI” and “Criminal Minds” track down the kinds of killers their big screen counterparts used to stalk.
