Films, Some Hit, Some Miss
"Sex, Love, and Therapy (aka: The Missionaries)"
starring: Sophie Marceau, Patrick Bruel, Andre Wilms, Sylvie Vartan, Francois Morel, Claude Perron
written and directed by: Toni Marshall
Here is another rom-com from France about what we Americans consider a touchy, hush-hush topic: sex (and more specifically, sex addiction). Being a rom-com and the French attitude towards sex being way more lax and free, you'd expect this film to have more slapstick and/or humor spliced in it, but that's not really the case. It seems like French filmmaker Toni Marshall was trying too hard to be like the American contemporaries across the pond. What we get instead is a very formulaic film in which the two protagonists argue and don't get along in the beginning, only to set up the predictable ending of their conflict getting resolved, one of them realizing they should be together, and then the predictable "happy" ending.
We quickly meet Judith (Sophie Marceau, looking absolutely stunning for her age), who has just been fired from her sales exec job, after sleeping with all of her male clients while on a business trip in Japan.
Back in the City of Lights and shacked up with her uncle (Andre Willms), Judith lands a job as a psychologist at a couples therapy clinic, partnering up with Lambert (Patrick Bruel), a former Air France pilot and notorious booty hound who’s taken a vow of abstinence as a means to find true happiness. But when he sees Judith, who arrives for work the first day with only one thing on her mind, unable to concentrate on the job while doing all he can to ignore the endless advances of his fellow shrink.
The film devolves into something inexplicable with just a few one-liners, but certainly not enough to save this film. The hardest thing to understand is how two reasonably untrained psychotherapists with their own issues are allowed to see and "treat" clients suffering from martial or coupling troubles.
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"Yosemite"
starring: James Franco, Henry Hopper, Barry Del Sherman, steven Wiig, George Maguire, Carlisle Forrester, Todd Aaron Brotze, Tony Vella, Alec Mansky, Clara Aronvich, Kristin Kueter, Troy Tinnirello, Everett Meckler, Calum John, James Darbyshire
written and directed by: Gabrielle Demeestere
Full disclosure, I seem to enjoy almost everything James Franco does, in all aspects of his many sided-die of a career. Sure, he is overworking and over-extending himself in many places, as he seems to have his hands in almost everything in every medium these days (hell, he's even an adjunct professor at USC, I believe), and so I guess it can be argued that he cannot possibly be putting in 100% of himself into all of his projects. And yes, it is quite visible in some cases.
Admittedly, I read his short story/thesis project titled "Palo Alto" a few years ago, when it first came out, because I wanted to give him a chance as a writer. And the stories and his talent for words surprised and impressed me. Then, "Palo Alto" was turned into a film.
And now, we have this film, "Yosemite," which was taken from two separate stories in the collection and re-imagined by the film's writer/director, since she wanted to make it her own. The first two stories in the film are loose interpretations, the third story and the connection between all three stories is completely the writer/director's imagination.
In the first section, Phil (Franco) takes young sons Chris (Everett Meckler) and Alex (Troy Tinnirello) to the titular national park for a weekend, over which there hovers a certain tentativeness — perhaps tied to the hard-won sobriety Dad mentions when Chris finds his AA medallion. The strained atmosphere is heightened when the trio get lost on a hike, their late return further troubled by the discovery of a mysterious trailside bonfire with a skeleton of unknown origin in it.
The second section shifts attention to Joe (Alec Mansky, also billed in some materials as Alec Wasserman), one of Chris’ classmates in suburban Palo Alto. His parents have split in the wake of tragedy; Joe retreats into comic books, finding common ground there with older loner Henry (Henry Hopper), who enjoys reading aloud and play-acting issues of the “Knight Crimson” comics with this boy less than half his age. There’s a creepy ambivalence to their relationship — is Henry a predator, or just a lonely misfit? — but it nonetheless fills an emotional gap left by Joe’s newly absent father.
I was really expecting there to be a revelation of pedophilia and some kind of inappropriate relationship between the older boy taking advantage of the younger boy. Instead, the filmmaker decides to remain ambiguous.
Joe has the kind of best-frenemy bond with third classmate Ted (Calum John) in which each constantly goads each other, leading to fights that ultimately get them barred from sitting or playing together. Though he can seem a bully at school, at home Ted lavishes affection on his cat Charlie. When the latter disappears — quite possibly the latest victim of a mountain lion whose sightings are woven throughout via TV news reports — Ted is distraught, and the fragility of a new, parentally brokered friendship with Chris adds to his uncertainty. The discovery of a home handgun unites the three boys at last in an ill-advised “hunt” for the wildcat, raising viewer expectations of catastrophe. But “Yosemite” obstinately skirts all potential melodrama to the very end.
This film seems to play itself off as wanting to be taken more seriously, like it's more than a film school project. It's slow and subdued a bit too much, though. And being set in 1985, the director really tries to transport us back to that time period and invoke nostalgia in the viewer, but her attempts fall short.
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"7 Chinese Brothers"
starring: Jason Schwartzman, Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis, Alex Karpovsky, Jonathan Togo, John Gatins, Jennifer Prediger, Alex Ross Perry, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Tunde Adebimpe
written and directed by: Bob Byington
The film's story focuses on Ellie (Poots), the daughter of the deceased man whom she left Texas for Los Angeles to escape his hard patriarch hand and alcoholic tendencies, a man she'd hated almost all her life, but yet finds it necessary to come back home to Texas to bury him and in essence close this chapter of her life.
There, she meets her unofficial stepmother, a woman who seems perfectly polite and accommodating, until she is confronted with even the slightest inconvenience to her daily routine of heavy drinking. Her son Jack (Ryan Bingham) tries to keep the family afloat, and it has become more difficult since his mother and Ellie's father moved in with Jack and his son Tommy (Presley Jack Bowen).
starring: Sophie Marceau, Patrick Bruel, Andre Wilms, Sylvie Vartan, Francois Morel, Claude Perron
written and directed by: Toni Marshall
Here is another rom-com from France about what we Americans consider a touchy, hush-hush topic: sex (and more specifically, sex addiction). Being a rom-com and the French attitude towards sex being way more lax and free, you'd expect this film to have more slapstick and/or humor spliced in it, but that's not really the case. It seems like French filmmaker Toni Marshall was trying too hard to be like the American contemporaries across the pond. What we get instead is a very formulaic film in which the two protagonists argue and don't get along in the beginning, only to set up the predictable ending of their conflict getting resolved, one of them realizing they should be together, and then the predictable "happy" ending.
We quickly meet Judith (Sophie Marceau, looking absolutely stunning for her age), who has just been fired from her sales exec job, after sleeping with all of her male clients while on a business trip in Japan.
Back in the City of Lights and shacked up with her uncle (Andre Willms), Judith lands a job as a psychologist at a couples therapy clinic, partnering up with Lambert (Patrick Bruel), a former Air France pilot and notorious booty hound who’s taken a vow of abstinence as a means to find true happiness. But when he sees Judith, who arrives for work the first day with only one thing on her mind, unable to concentrate on the job while doing all he can to ignore the endless advances of his fellow shrink.
The film devolves into something inexplicable with just a few one-liners, but certainly not enough to save this film. The hardest thing to understand is how two reasonably untrained psychotherapists with their own issues are allowed to see and "treat" clients suffering from martial or coupling troubles.
...............................................................................
"Yosemite"
starring: James Franco, Henry Hopper, Barry Del Sherman, steven Wiig, George Maguire, Carlisle Forrester, Todd Aaron Brotze, Tony Vella, Alec Mansky, Clara Aronvich, Kristin Kueter, Troy Tinnirello, Everett Meckler, Calum John, James Darbyshire
written and directed by: Gabrielle Demeestere
Full disclosure, I seem to enjoy almost everything James Franco does, in all aspects of his many sided-die of a career. Sure, he is overworking and over-extending himself in many places, as he seems to have his hands in almost everything in every medium these days (hell, he's even an adjunct professor at USC, I believe), and so I guess it can be argued that he cannot possibly be putting in 100% of himself into all of his projects. And yes, it is quite visible in some cases.
Admittedly, I read his short story/thesis project titled "Palo Alto" a few years ago, when it first came out, because I wanted to give him a chance as a writer. And the stories and his talent for words surprised and impressed me. Then, "Palo Alto" was turned into a film.
And now, we have this film, "Yosemite," which was taken from two separate stories in the collection and re-imagined by the film's writer/director, since she wanted to make it her own. The first two stories in the film are loose interpretations, the third story and the connection between all three stories is completely the writer/director's imagination.
In the first section, Phil (Franco) takes young sons Chris (Everett Meckler) and Alex (Troy Tinnirello) to the titular national park for a weekend, over which there hovers a certain tentativeness — perhaps tied to the hard-won sobriety Dad mentions when Chris finds his AA medallion. The strained atmosphere is heightened when the trio get lost on a hike, their late return further troubled by the discovery of a mysterious trailside bonfire with a skeleton of unknown origin in it.
The second section shifts attention to Joe (Alec Mansky, also billed in some materials as Alec Wasserman), one of Chris’ classmates in suburban Palo Alto. His parents have split in the wake of tragedy; Joe retreats into comic books, finding common ground there with older loner Henry (Henry Hopper), who enjoys reading aloud and play-acting issues of the “Knight Crimson” comics with this boy less than half his age. There’s a creepy ambivalence to their relationship — is Henry a predator, or just a lonely misfit? — but it nonetheless fills an emotional gap left by Joe’s newly absent father.
I was really expecting there to be a revelation of pedophilia and some kind of inappropriate relationship between the older boy taking advantage of the younger boy. Instead, the filmmaker decides to remain ambiguous.
Joe has the kind of best-frenemy bond with third classmate Ted (Calum John) in which each constantly goads each other, leading to fights that ultimately get them barred from sitting or playing together. Though he can seem a bully at school, at home Ted lavishes affection on his cat Charlie. When the latter disappears — quite possibly the latest victim of a mountain lion whose sightings are woven throughout via TV news reports — Ted is distraught, and the fragility of a new, parentally brokered friendship with Chris adds to his uncertainty. The discovery of a home handgun unites the three boys at last in an ill-advised “hunt” for the wildcat, raising viewer expectations of catastrophe. But “Yosemite” obstinately skirts all potential melodrama to the very end.
This film seems to play itself off as wanting to be taken more seriously, like it's more than a film school project. It's slow and subdued a bit too much, though. And being set in 1985, the director really tries to transport us back to that time period and invoke nostalgia in the viewer, but her attempts fall short.
.................................................................................
"7 Chinese Brothers"
starring: Jason Schwartzman, Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis, Alex Karpovsky, Jonathan Togo, John Gatins, Jennifer Prediger, Alex Ross Perry, Anna Margaret Hollyman, Tunde Adebimpe
written and directed by: Bob Byington
Here is another Jason Schwartzman film that focuses on the slacker-aspect that could be found in all of us, if we let our lack of ambition to succeed and do something with our lives while battling some internal existential crisis overtake us. This, also, could very well be a "what happened a few years after 'Rushmore'" type of follow-up film, if not just because both films star Schwartzman, but because both characters seem to be very similar in their approach to life. The difference here is that Schwartzman's character is driving by the love for his grandmother.
There really isn't much to the story/plot and it's clearly a film driven by the performances of each actor, individually and amongst each other. And it all works really well. Oh, and I happen to know thanks to watching an interview with Schwartzman that his dog Arrow is the dog in the film.
There really isn't much to the story/plot and it's clearly a film driven by the performances of each actor, individually and amongst each other. And it all works really well. Oh, and I happen to know thanks to watching an interview with Schwartzman that his dog Arrow is the dog in the film.
In the film’s opening scene, lackadaisical Larry is fired from his job at a Buca di Beppo restaurant for pocketing tips and booze. Larry is perpetually seen swilling tequila from a large Styrofoam cup. He sometimes visits his wealthy grandmother (Dukakis) in a nursing home, where he also purchases discarded pills from his orderly pal Major Norwood (TV on the Radio’s Adebimpe). When Larry brings his old beater of a car to a Quick Lube, he picks up a job vacuuming cars after crushing on the manager, Lupe (Pienta). There are some interactions with other characters, but the primary thing that comes through is Larry’s near-apathetic attitude and sharp wit, which he unleashes whether or not anyone is listening.
The film is short of one hour and twenty minutes, and never overstays its welcome. This is a great, entertaining film.
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"Meadowland"
starring: Olivia Wilde, Owen Wilson, Juno Temple, John Leguizamo, Giovanni Ribisi, Elisabeth Moss, Merritt Weaver, Ty Simpkins, Nick Sandow, Mark Fuerstein, Kevin Corrigan, Scott Mescudi
written by: Chris Rossi
directed by: Reed Morano
Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson play a married couple grieving the loss of their young son, who goes missing within the first few minutes of the film, and then it jumps to over a year passing and so you know the film will not be in the same vein as "Mystic River" but rather much more like "Rabbit Hole" in that, it is a film about two characters, a mom and a dad/ a wife and a husband grappling and dealing with their grief in separate ways and what that does to the individuals as well as the marriage. Sarah (Wilde) and Phil (Wilson) deliver two different perspectives on self-destruction following the unimaginable loss of their child.
Both actors resist the histrionics that often crop up in stories of grief, as they both understand the greatest pain of loss to be rooted in its searing inexpressibility. Director Reed Morano is right there with her stars, sharing their discipline, copacetic with their restraint, steering the narrative away from most of its potentials for platitude or pop uplift, looking to find that emotional tempo that exists between ruin and functional resignation.
Both actors resist the histrionics that often crop up in stories of grief, as they both understand the greatest pain of loss to be rooted in its searing inexpressibility. Director Reed Morano is right there with her stars, sharing their discipline, copacetic with their restraint, steering the narrative away from most of its potentials for platitude or pop uplift, looking to find that emotional tempo that exists between ruin and functional resignation.
The film's specific scenes where Sarah and Phil are coping with the loss and remembering their son's memory are what really attach you to the film and and characters, making the viewer yearn for a catharsis, not just to make the characters feel better, but for you yourself to feel better about it all, too, because you want their downward spiral to stop at some time. You want them to receive the closure they deserve.
"Meadowland" is a nearly perfect, ethereal collection of moments that coalesce into one another before disappearing as beautifully as they came. There is no "happy" ending or closure, just a beautiful ending scene between Sarah and the autistic boy she's attempting to kidnap (before thinking better of it).
You'd be hard-pressed not to cry at the end of the film, but not because you're sad, more out of relief.
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"Meadowland" is a nearly perfect, ethereal collection of moments that coalesce into one another before disappearing as beautifully as they came. There is no "happy" ending or closure, just a beautiful ending scene between Sarah and the autistic boy she's attempting to kidnap (before thinking better of it).
You'd be hard-pressed not to cry at the end of the film, but not because you're sad, more out of relief.
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"A Country Called Home"
starring: Imogen Poots, Mackenzie Davis, Mary McCormack, Ryan Bingham, June Squibb, Shea Whigham, Joe Stevens, Josh Helman, Melanie Haynes, John Merriman, Peggy Schott
written by: Anna Axster and Jim Beggarly
directed by: Anna Axster
This is a film about coming-to-terms.
There are lot of characters coming to terms with things in "A Country Called Home." There's a single father whose ex-wife is an alcoholic and drug addict. The two married and had a child just out of high school, and now he's working long hours to provide for his son and his mother, who is also an alcoholic. The mother just lost her common-law husband—if one even can call their relationship that, considering that she's still married to another man—after he suffered a stroke as a result of decades of heavy drinking.
There are lot of characters coming to terms with things in "A Country Called Home." There's a single father whose ex-wife is an alcoholic and drug addict. The two married and had a child just out of high school, and now he's working long hours to provide for his son and his mother, who is also an alcoholic. The mother just lost her common-law husband—if one even can call their relationship that, considering that she's still married to another man—after he suffered a stroke as a result of decades of heavy drinking.
The film's story focuses on Ellie (Poots), the daughter of the deceased man whom she left Texas for Los Angeles to escape his hard patriarch hand and alcoholic tendencies, a man she'd hated almost all her life, but yet finds it necessary to come back home to Texas to bury him and in essence close this chapter of her life.
There, she meets her unofficial stepmother, a woman who seems perfectly polite and accommodating, until she is confronted with even the slightest inconvenience to her daily routine of heavy drinking. Her son Jack (Ryan Bingham) tries to keep the family afloat, and it has become more difficult since his mother and Ellie's father moved in with Jack and his son Tommy (Presley Jack Bowen).
There are a lot of characters here in this story, which is the film's downfall, because having so many characters does not allow the filmmaker to give each one the demanded, necessary and deserved attention to detail. But, it's also clear the connection that is between the characters, but again there is not enough time to develop and explore their connections.
That brings us to Reno (Mackenzie Davis), the transgender singer. He and Ellie become fast friends, and while the character's presence here doesn't seem to fit at first, the reasoning becomes apparent. He's yet another character held back from his potential by the self-destructive nature of a loved one. Reno is the most fascinating character of the bunch, partially because he seems relatively out of place and also because he is the one character who appears to have the desire and the capacity to escape his circumstances.
And it's these two characters that collide and really become the centerpiece of the film's story. They share in their misery, you know, like the old adage says, "misery loves company." And there's a clear path to resolution, making it all seem so simple, but the truth of the matter is that these familial and cultural issues are far from easy to resolve, which makes the film fall short on itself and cheats the audience. For an independent film, I wanted more of the feeling and sense of "life sucks and it doesn't clean up as nicely as we want it to."
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That brings us to Reno (Mackenzie Davis), the transgender singer. He and Ellie become fast friends, and while the character's presence here doesn't seem to fit at first, the reasoning becomes apparent. He's yet another character held back from his potential by the self-destructive nature of a loved one. Reno is the most fascinating character of the bunch, partially because he seems relatively out of place and also because he is the one character who appears to have the desire and the capacity to escape his circumstances.
And it's these two characters that collide and really become the centerpiece of the film's story. They share in their misery, you know, like the old adage says, "misery loves company." And there's a clear path to resolution, making it all seem so simple, but the truth of the matter is that these familial and cultural issues are far from easy to resolve, which makes the film fall short on itself and cheats the audience. For an independent film, I wanted more of the feeling and sense of "life sucks and it doesn't clean up as nicely as we want it to."
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"Contracted: Phase II"
starring: Matt Mercer, Marianna Palka, Morgan Peter Brown, Anna Lore, Laurel Vail, Peter Cilella, John Ennis, Najarra Townsend, Richard Riehle, Suzanne Voss
written by: Craig Walendziak
directed by: Josh Forbes
This sequel falls victim to the "sequel plague" known as trying to outdo its predecessor in body count and gore and blood.
If the first Contracted was a dark and disturbing character study, then Contracted: Phase II seems intent on working as sort of a procedural. Most of Riley’s friends and family members fall prey to the disease — and in rather unsavory fashion — but the stuff involving the detective (Marianna Palka) and the lunatic (Morgan Peter Brown) who invented the biohazard in the first place prevent this sequel from coming off more like a remake. In other words, Contracted: Phase IIstarts out a bit redundant but gradually gets a bit more unpredictable (and therefore entertaining) the longer it rolls on.
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