CYRUS

Written and Directed by Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass

Starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill, Marisa Tomei and Catherine Keener

John: I know you’re not supposed to say this but I really like you.  Is it crazy for me to say I want it to work out?

Love is tricky to figure out, to piece together so that it actually works out for all parties involved.  Love is particularly tricky when you’re middle-aged, have been single for seven years, you’re not really so impressive on paper or in person and the object of your affections is in something of an unhealthy relationship with her 22-year-old-son.  Yes, this is what makes love tricky in our modern existence but it is also what makes love oh so rewarding if you manage to get through it.  Furthermore, in this particular case, it makes for the perfect comedic setup for the new Duplass brothers comedy, CYRUS, the summer’s first great indie-comedy.

John C. Reilly makes a fine return to the screen in a more complex, character-based role than he has played in recent memory.  John, which is his name in the film and not a casual form of address for the actor, is seven years divorced and still hanging on to that relationship.  As a result, he doesn’t do much outside of the house and dating is about as foreign a concept to him as a single sit-up must be given the state of his physique.  Without wasting any time on showing us scene after scene to prove what a lonely loser John really is, writers/directors, Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass, introduce John to Molly (Marisa Tomei) at a party his soon-to-be-remarried ex-wife (Catherine Keener) drags him to.  They hit it off instantly which begs the question, what’s wrong with this girl?

As it turns out, she is quite lovely and she and John fall for each just like that.  Just because she’s lovely though doesn’t mean she isn’t hiding plenty of ugly behind your back.  The ugly I’m talking about here is Jonah Hill.  I’m kidding; the actual ugly is the unhealthily close relationship she has with her son, Cyrus, played by the also lovely, Hill.  Seriously, I actually think he’s hilarious.  I’m not sure I wanted to see Hill or Reilly in so many high definition close-ups but it does help you see that they are not so dissimilar.  This might be one good explanation why Cyrus makes it his personal mission to ensure John and Molly do not succeed as a couple despite the fact that they are both so much happier now that they’ve met.

The beauty of CYRUS, and there is a lot of it, is the natural way in which the Duplass brothers bring everything together perfectly.  A sharp, subtle script, in which Cyrus and John battle intelligently instead of declaring war on each other in some farcical sense, is embodied seamlessly by a pitch perfect cast.  Safe for a fairly conventional conclusion, the Dulplass brothers prove that real situations can be shown for the difficult messes they are and still be incredibly funny at the same time.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Written by Spike Jonze and David Eggers
Directed by Spike Jonze
Starring Max Records, Catherine Keener and Mark Ruffalo
Voices by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and Lauren Ambrose


Judith: Happiness isn’t always the best way to become happy.

It’s been a fair amount of time since I was a young boy. Fortunately for me, it has not been so long that I have grown past the age where I can get completely lost in the wonderful world of Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Jonze must have had to fight his own wild beasts during his lengthy and tumultuous journey to bring the 1963 Maurice Sendak classic picturebook to such exquisite life. Originally due to be released in the spring of 2008, Jonze had to fight the studio to make the film he wanted and believed in when it was being criticized for being too dark a work to be considered a family film. A year and a half later, Jonze has made a film that both parties are happy with and, while it still may be too dark to play to the littler ones, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is a modern family classic in every possible sense.


In the original Sendak tale, Max (played here by the precocious boy with the power name, Max Records) is sent to bed without supper for being bad. From there, he escapes to another world complete with a monster community that he incorporates himself into quite nicely. When his adventures are over, he returns home to find a plate of food waiting for him by his bed. At under 500 words, it’s pretty sparse but Jonze, alongside AWAY WE GO co-writer and novelist, David Eggers, has transformed WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE into a contemporary exploration of how a child might deal with the changing face of his family and finding a way to fit in it. Max’s Mom (Catherine Keener) still sends him to bed without supper for acting up but his wild outburst now has context and his adventure offers a healing that stretches past the troubled boy to touch the inner child of anyone watching.


The wild things themselves are mostly giant, furry monsters and precisely where Max stumbles upon them is never pinpointed but, once he gets there, he declares himself king and rightfully so. After all, this place is essentially inside his head and even with the wild things running, well, wild in there, he is still aware enough to know that he is in charge of all these extensions of his own personality. Max’s family issues are mirrored in Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), a monster with his own difficulties keeping his rage in check. Whether the monsters and Max are trying to build a perfect living space or whether they are just pouncing on top of each other in one big giant pile, they are doing things together and the conversations that take place in between are simple musings, not unlike those that Max might have with himself in his mind. Never do Max’s two worlds resolve each other perfectly but nor could one live without the other.


WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is simply unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The screenplay is elegant and uncomplicated; its ferocious beauty is matched only by the magnificence of its aesthetic. With the help of two-time collaborator and handheld guru, Lance Acord, Jonze creates a world that is at times tender and warm while at others, frightening and fragile. Who would ever expect a family film to be so visceral, let alone so disarming? Learning to accept your family, or even life, as it is can be difficult at any age but leaning into it brings security and tames the wildness of the mind. Perhaps we all could stand to learn a lesson from Max and get a little wild when needed instead of always quieting what needs to get out. While WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE may be lost on the truly young, it will not be lost on the young at heart.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

Written and Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis and Catherine Keener


Caden Cotard: We’re all hurdling towards death and yet, here we are, each of us knowing that we’ll die and each of us hoping that we won’t.

It doesn’t take a genius to acknowledge Charlie Kaufman as a genius or something awful close to it. Genius can move the world forward and illuminate the darkest of spaces. Genius can also go right over the heads of all those who are not as fortunate to be counted among the world’s smartest. I don’t mean to imply that Kaufman intentionally speaks over the heads of his audience in his directorial debut, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, but rather that he simply didn’t communicate his insight as succinctly as he could have. Kaufman was smart to surround himself with a cast of actors talented enough to pull off the enormously ambitious scope of his project, but despite raising many an intriguing question, he provides very few answers.


Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a Schenectady, New York, resident and theatre director. We meet Caden on what could be pretty much be any morning, it would seem. He is reading random headlines from the paper; his wife, Adele (Catherine Keener) is staring blankly out the window, and their daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein) is contentedly eating her cereal, watching cartoons and asking if she should be concerned about the colour of her poop. It is on this morning, the morning like all the others, that Caden’s life takes that last step over the edge and begins falling to its inevitable demise. His body betrays him with inexplicable afflictions; his wife betrays him shortly after and runs off to Europe with their daughter; and it isn’t long before he is crying in the middle of sex. Anyone in Caden’s position would probably question their reason for living but once Caden gets started on this slippery slope, he realizes just how hard it is to get back up and out.


Caden and Kaufman are not so far from each other. They are both men stuck in their own heads who cannot fully function in society with all its rules and expectations. Caden proceeds to begin mounting his masterpiece when his life falls apart in order to climb out of his own hole. The concept, if you can call it that, is essentially a recreation of everything that is happening in Caden’s life. Seeing it in front of him is supposed to make it all make sense. All it does though is encourage is obsessive self-thinking, to say nothing of the self-loathing. Meanwhile, Kaufman, the man who concocted this complex web, gets tangled up in how intricate it all is. Caden hires an actor to play himself, an assistant and an actress to play that assistant. Before you know it, there is another actor who has stepped in to play Caden and he is bumped to the role of a cleaning lady. It’s art imitating life trying desperately to make sense of what the art really means. Kaufman throws so many concepts up on the screen and alone, some of them are calming while others are chaotic, but never do all of them come together to say anything clearly.


Watching SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is like being trapped in Kaufman’s mind for a couple of hours. There is beauty everywhere around you; there is insight to be imparted at every turn. There is also too much to process in just one sitting. That being said, sitting with it too long only leads to many more unanswered questions and Kaufman has been sitting with it non-stop for years now. He fell deep into the dark caves of his mind and gave us what he could to make sense of it but it wasn’t enough. And if Kaufman can’t make sense of his own genius mind, I’m not sure how he expected us to do it.

Black Sheep Previews: HAMLET 2

HAMLET 2. The concept is hilarious. Didn't everyone die at the end of Shakespeare's timeless classic, you might ask. Well, yes, they did. It was a tragedy, after all. No matter though as this is not exactly a sequel to the bard's work. Nor is it a sequel to the Mel Gibson or Ethan Hawke film versions from recent years. In fact, it is not a sequel at all. The name, HAMLET 2, refers to a musical that is to be performed, and from the looks of the previews, performed very badly, by the hopeful high school students of a Tucson drama club.

HAMLET 2 stars British actor/comedian, Steve Coogan, as a washed up actor who has decided to turn lemons into lemonade by teaching the young about the craft. While this is all very noble, the underlying problem is that he is just as good at teaching as he was at acting, which is to say not at all. Coogan strives to be the kind of teacher that makes students stand up on desks and salute him or rip out pages from great literary classics to follow in his protest but he is far too deep into his own delusions to see that he is a complete mess. His swan song is to be this great musical but all he musters is controversy. I suppose he should have seen it coming with numbers like, "Rock Me Sexy Jesus."

The cast is rounded out by Catherine Keener, David Arquette and Elizabeth Shue (in a hilariously self-referential turn as herself in present day, having left the craziness of Hollywood and started a new life as a nurse at this Tucson school). The potential is in place and with Pam Brady, co-writer of TEAM AMERICA and the SOUTH PARK movie assisting writer/director, Andrew Fleming, the possibility for laugh out loud hilarity is even greater. Who knows? If it does real well, we could be seeing HAMLET 3 before you know it.

HAMLET 2 is in theatres August 22.

Click here or any of the links above to see "Rock Me Sexy, Jesus" and the HAMLET 2 trailer.

BLACK SHEEP @ THE 32ND ANNUAL TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL III

3:10 TO YUMA and INTO THE WILD


My third and final day at the Toronto International Film Festival was considerably less rushed than the previous two. In fact, I only had one film scheduled. During my manic search for tickets, I contacted a colleague at the National Post. Craig couldn’t help me with tickets but wanted to know if I would participate in the upcoming Popcorn Panel film discussion on 3:10 TO YUMA. As I love these opportunities, I said I would and found myself buying a ticket to a movie for a reasonable price and without any serious stress over whether it would be possible to get in or not for the first time all weekend. It was liberating. And so my final day in Toronto became all about casual shopping on Queen Street, a first-run movie with the regular film-going folk and a world premiere of Sean Penn’s INTO THE WILD.

Before I take a look at the films I saw that day, I want to talk a bit about what I found to be most inspiring about the entire festival. It is one thing to be surrounded by celebrities and premieres; this alone is extremely surreal. What was even more baffling to me was the number of volunteers in and around every venue at the festival and how these volunteers seemed appreciative of their place in the system. They were always courteous and smiling. They were apologetic if the wait was too long as if they cared that you might not be having the best time ever. It was near moving to see so many motivated, energized people who only got to keep their T-shirts and sneak into movies if there was any space left as payment for their time. Before each screening, several sponsors screened tags announcing their support. NBC/Universal was the official sponsor of the volunteer program and each time their tag played and announced their pride in supporting the volunteers, the crowd would erupt in genuine warmth and applause. Maybe that appreciation, plus the T-shirt, made it all worthwhile. Thank you volunteers; you were all helpful and lovely.


3:10 TO YUMA was one of those films that truly surprised me. You know the kind of movie I’m talking about; it’s that movie that you don’t really want to see but you somehow end up seeing it and go in with zero expectations of quality or what will unfold. Seeing a movie under those circumstances can either go one of two ways. Either your suspicions that it was not a movie for you are confirmed and you leave knowing you should trust your judgment next time or you leave impressed and thinking you should probably be a little more open-minded in the future. My experience was clearly the latter. 3:10 TO YUMA has an energy driving it forward that stems from its originality. This might seem a stretch to say given it is a remake of a 1957 film so I’ll elaborate. It is original much like AMERICAN BEAUTY breathed new life into the existing suburban exposition drama or the way THE DEPARTED showed us Scorcese awake for the first time in years. There is something new being brought to the table. Here, director James Mangold (WALK THE LINE) combines a quiet, introspective script (like modern Western, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN) with a classic, straightforward story (like the Western classic, STAGECOACH) to create something visually lush that has both exhilarating action and gunfight as well as depth of character. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are both excellent as men at different ends of the moral code. They learn from each other but have strong enough characters to begin with to not falter from their true nature without just cause. With 3:10 TO YUMA, Mangold is forcefully establishing himself as one of the best in the West.


Then there is this other Western director, whom I’m sure believes himself to be one of the best. When Sean Penn was brought on stage before the world premiere of his film interpretation of the life of Christopher McCandless, a university graduate who abandons his possessions, family and attachments in pursuit of life’s greater truths, the crowd was happy to receive him. People clapped, many cheered. However, the next audience response, for a surprise appearance by Eddie Vedder, who contributes four songs to the film, was so much more spontaneous and sincere that it made Penn’s seem almost automatic. Most of the cast, from William Hurt to Catherine Keener to Jena Malone to star, Emile Hirsch, proceeded to fill the stage. This was clearly an event. The moment quickly faded though as it became apparent within the film’s first scenes that INTO THE WILD was going to live up to its name. As McCandless rejects society and conformity, so does Penn with his style. While this does make for many beautiful shots, some entirely scenic, some involving dangerous wildlife in peaceful surroundings, the manner in which it is all strung together is ultimately pretentious. There is so much beauty but so little purpose. The numerous supporting roles come in and out throughout the film, much like the people would have on the adventures McCandless would have experienced. Only this isn’t that experience, this is a film. Consequently, many performances come across as overly dramatic and the adverse affect on the film itself is a disdain for the lead character carrying you everywhere. As McCandless, Hirsch is strong and mature but his character, as noble as he is for pursuing greater meanings in life, is not likable for the emotional pain he caused, especially when it is apparent that he is only running away from his own truths. It’s hard to respect someone who is running away while pretending to be a pioneer. Many people left before the screening had ended and when it finally did, the applause slowly but surely transitioned into a standing ovation. When I saw this, I bolted. My stomach turned seeing all these people paying lip service when a respectful applause would have been sufficient.


This was a bit of a sour note to end my festival experience on. This is the gamble though. You’re not going to like all the movies and we shouldn"t base the entire experience on its final moments. I hope to have the opportunity again next year to go, maybe for longer. For all its industry-centric catering, the Toronto International Film Festival still gave me the chance to see so many movies I was excited to see. I’ll just make sure to have a Visa gold card by this time next year so I can cut to the front of the line.

FRIENDS WITH MONEY

Written and Directed by Nicole Holofcener

Centering stories around the lives of four very different women who happen to be friends for no particular reason other than because the screenwriters say so is a common television practice. From “Sex and the City” to “Desperate Housewives” to even “The Golden Girls”, four women grow as archetype characters as the years roll on and the series develops. No specific story drives the characters’ progressions, just one scenario after the next that showcases how each personality type handles different circumstances. The formula succeeds as a long running series because the characters go through highs and lows, learn some lessons, struggle with some others. When applied to a feature film, the formula is boxed into a limited frame that ultimately highlights one focus. In the case of Nicole Holofcener’s FRIENDS WITH MONEY, Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand and Joan Cusack make up a foursome of women who struggle with success, remodeling, finding their calling or finding a worthy cause to donate the extra millions they have lying around. Everything in their lives is difficult and often uncomfortable. Everyone in their lives, including themselves, has issues and problems handling those issues. So when Aniston’s character, Olivia, claims “I’ve got problems,” in the last moments of the films, that’s really all the film amounts to, leaving out some of the causes and not bothering with any solutions.

It seems that every movie released these days starring Jennifer Aniston has the added pressure of successfully establishing her as a movie star. FRIENDS WITH MONEY takes the backdoor approach on this one as it is an indie film. If it doesn’t make a ton of money at the box office, no one ever expected it to. A high profile star does an indie film for credibility. She has done it before with fare like THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION and THE GOOD GIRL but if the indie film doesn’t strike exactly the right chord with the critics then all that hard work is wasted. FRIENDS WITH MONEY will not be the film that gives Aniston the firm ground she seems to be chasing after so intensely. In fact, I’m not even clear why she agreed to do it in the first place. She has clearly proven she has a limited acting range with last year’s DERAILED (Horrid!) and RUMOR HAS IT (Aggravating!) but yet decided to star opposite women who are known for their strong presence and versatility. Cusack exhibits a calm, restrained quality not ordinarily seen in her work while McDormand and Keener play women with internalized anger that is coming out of them in different fashions without their comprehension. Aniston plays the most lost of the four women and that is only further reinforced when she looks lost acting opposite such experience. She plays a stoner house-cleaner who just looks vacant at all times instead of a paralyzed soul which is what her character calls for.

Very little is resolved at the end of FRIENDS WITH MONEY and having friends with money hardly seems to play a significant function in the film. Aniston’s Olivia is the only one without and the film focuses on so much more that does not derive from that particular dilemma. On the one hand, it would have been trite to make tired statements like the single girl has it more figured out than all her married friends or the girl with little to no cash is the happiest. On the other hand though, drawing at least one conclusion might have saved this movie from mediocrity.

CAPOTE

Written by Dan Futterman
Directed by Bennett Miller

Admittedly, I am not the most literate fella. Consequently, the name Truman Capote means something to me but simply for its notoriety and not for his work or anything else of worth that should continue to give his name meaning years after his death. I expected Bennett Miller’s film to be something of a crash course on Capote’s life. I would leave there with the half-sense of being educated on the man – an expectation so many of us put on the movies. Dan Futterman’s script takes a different approach though as he chooses to focus on the six years Capote spent writing his last novel, “In Cold Blood”. The editorial decision sways our judgment and forces us to view the man’s entire life in this one blip in the grander scheme. Despite the narrow scope on Capote’s life this presents, there is still a rich sense of character, encompassing history and heritage as well as a conflict in the present that hints at an imminent unraveling.

This challenging feat comes to fruition thanks to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s metamorphic portrayal of Capote. Again, not being familiar with the actual Truman Capote, it’s hard to say that Hoffman embodied him but I can say that he was definitely not himself. His round frame is draped in understated style; his thick, dark-rimmed glasses fit perfectly with his slicked, blonde hair. We first meet Truman at an upper-class party. He is the epicenter of the conversation and all are transfixed on his stories of gossip and innuendo. We can see on his face how much he enjoys the audience and hear it in his high-pitched squeak of a voice how much he revels in his successful life as anyone with that mousy and effeminate a voice must have been the one gossiped about previously and not the one doing the gossiping. As Capote, Hoffman enters rooms with gusto and presence but there is a hint of hesitation as he is aware of the reaction his demeanor and clearly identifiable homosexuality incites from people, be they in New York City where he lives or Kansas, where he is researching his novel. He is completely oblivious to nearly everyone else’s existence and this ultimately commands the attention he deserves but there is a small boy’s fear that causes him to overcompensate by playing it up to see how far he can go as well as protect his fragile nature.

Hoffman balances two distinct sides of Capote so well that by the close of the film, even he appears to not understand how his life ended up where it did. These two sides are sincerity and artifice. In order to gain the trust of Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), one of the murderers who will serve as the inspiration for his novel, he must pretend to care about Smith as he waits to die on death row. After their initial meeting, Smith behind bars and Capote offering him medication like a banana to a monkey at the zoo, Capote continues to see him as just that, an animal, a paycheck. As their relationship persists and they spend more time together, a bond inevitably forms and the lines between despondency and compassion blur. As Smith’s time on death row nears its end, Capote seems overtaken with something he cannot process, an emotional attachment to another human being.

Watching Capote’s descent from confidence and control is both painful and uplifting. It may not be a pretty picture but realizing that you have a lot in common with a cold-blooded murderer is definitely humbling.