The Boomtown Rap

New York’s the location for this ‘slice of life’ movie, although it could be any urban setting. There’s nothing particularly Noo Yawk about the characters, and unusually for films shot in the Big Apple, the city itself does not feature heavily.

A mistake, perhaps, for this movie needs something more than it delivers – a lot more. Slice-of-life comedy/dramas are a dime a dozen, and the problem with most of them, or at least the majority of the ones I’ve seen in recent years, is that the slices they offer, while ‘realistic’, are not very interesting. Such is the case with Please Give.

The story centres on Kate (Catherine Keener), who lives in a tasteful apartment with husband Alex (Oliver Platt) and teenage daughter Abby (Sarah Steele). The couple make a good living buying up furniture on the cheap from deceased estates, which they then sell at vastly marked up prices from their upmarket Manhattan second-hand furniture store. Kate is burdened by guilt, partly because of the predatory nature of their business, and partly because she is struggling to reconcile her comfortable lifestyle with the poverty she encounters on the street.

It further weighs on her conscience that she and Alex own the apartment next door and are planning on knocking down walls to incorporate it with their own as soon as the resident tenant, the elderly and cranky Andra (Ann Guilbert), dies. The old girl lives with her granddaughters, the reserved and dutiful Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), and self-centred, coarsely spoken but brutally honest Mary (Amanda Peet). When a tentative social relationship develops between the trio and their landlords next door, complications arise – not very compelling or dramatically purposeful ones, unfortunately.

Kate’s niggling guilt sets her on a mission of redemption. She routinely doles out cash to down-and-outs (and in one of the few comedic moments of the movie that really hits the spot, to a black guy in a restaurant queue whom she mistakes for a down-and-outer). She volunteers to work with the disabled, but is shown the door when she is overwhelmed with sympathy for their plight and ends up upsetting her intended beneficiaries, as well as herself. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Some of this stuff is mildly amusing, but Kate is not an endearing character. Her middle-class angst should be something with which we readily identify, but seems trivial, somehow, and her stumbling efforts to assuage it through her Good Samaritan acts inspire eye-rolling rather than admiration, and are not humorous enough to get us laughing with her, at her, or at all!

Catherine Keener is not at fault in her playing of Kate – she does a terrific job with some rather ordinary material. In fact, all the acting performances are excellent.

Some insight into where this movie fails may be gained by considering its opening – an extended montage of mammograms. Quirky, yes, the footage is ‘real’, and it transpires that one of the characters works at the mammogram clinic, but otherwise… the point is? You’d expect there to be a pretty major one – something to do with breast cancer, perhaps? Well, on consulting the production notes, I came across the following explanation from writer/director Nicole Holofcener:

Mammograms are like life: potentially tragic but really funny looking. You’re stripped semi-naked, divested of dignity, shivering with cold and filled with dread. It’s ridiculous but very necessary. With ‘Please Give’ I wanted to illustrate these kind of contradictory moments that make us human.

Well OK, but how is the audience supposed to pick this up from the film? Here lies a fundamental problem with Holofcener’s movie – she knows what she’s on about, but her deeper meanings are not well communicated, so the work comes across as slight. Unless we are given some signposts, we have no access to the poetic musings that inform the script. Instead, we are left with some pretty dull dialogue coming from mostly unengaging characters living out unremarkable lives. Realistically depicted, sure, but please Ms, I want more.

Other reviews by Rolan Stein:

2010

2009

Pre-2009

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This low-budget Brit thriller opens ominously, with two blokes we come to know as Danny (Martin Compston) and Vic (Eddie Marsan) wordlessly soundproofing the back of a van and a room in an abandoned apartment block, and fitting both out with confinement gear. They operate with a sense of purpose and efficiency. Whatever they’re up to, you know it’s no good.

Of course, it can be safely assumed from the title of the movie that Alice Creed (Gemma Arterton) – whoever she is – will be their prey, but at this point you’re not sure why. Are they politically motivated, perhaps? Involved in some sort of espionage? Planning on incarcerating some hapless victim as a sex slave? Or just crims after a ransom?

Well, I ain’t giving nuthin’ away. The most enjoyable aspect of a movie like this is the gradual unpeeling of the narrative onion.

That doesn’t leave me with much to build a review on!

I can say that the first half of the movie is full of tension and intrigue, as the relationships between the characters are slowly revealed and it becomes apparent that all is not as it initially seems.

Alas, cracks appear as plausibility issues emerge. For example, Danny tries to dispense of a bullet casing by flushing it down the toilet. Of course, it sits at the bottom of the bowl, and still he persists in trying to flush it away. That’s just dumb – and he is not a stupid character. More thought required, writer!

Further, early in the movie, Danny and Vic carry Alice kicking and screaming into the apartment in which she is to be held captive; when they move her to an isolated warehouse as the story approaches its climax, they inject her with a sedative that renders her unconscious. So why didn’t they sedate her on capture? Woulda made things a whole lot easier, surely?

Logic flaws like this are forgivable, providing tension is maintained and the narrative remains on track. Unfortunately, three quarters of the way through, things begin to unravel. As the story progresses towards its conclusion it runs out of imaginative juice. The plot twists clunk, and there are a couple too many of them, which lays bare the game the writer is playing with the audience. The best thrillers maintain intrigue without obvious contrivance.

The three actors do a fine job, but director/writer J Blakeson’s screenplay ultimately derails the movie. A pity. This is his first feature film. With more work on the script, it could have been an auspicious debut, instead of merely promising.

Other reviews by Rolan Stein:

2010

2009

Pre-2009

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Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a married lesbian couple bringing up their teenage kids, 18 year old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) (named after Joni Mitchell) and 15 year old Laser (Josh Hutcherson), in a trendy LA neighbourhood. Unconventional though the family may be on the face of it, they’re going through all the usual stuff.

The ‘Momses’, as the kids refer to them, have evidently dosed themselves up on pop psychology and self-development hoo-hah and are dutifully applying modern parenting strategies – the kids are rolling their eyes. As well they might. This is an area crying out for satirical treatment, and in director/writer Lisa Cholodenko and co-scribe Stuart Blumberg the best of practitioners are in da house! Dippy self-development lingo and New Age tripe provide the material for many a wry chuckle as the Momses attempt to plot their kids’ futures and manipulate them away from perceived present dangers.

Compacting their parenting dramas, the Momses are dealing with ‘couples issues’. There’s a power imbalance in the relationship: Nic’s a gynaecologist and the breadwinner, and Jules is still trying to work out what she wants to do when she grows up. Her latest venture is landscape design, which Nic doesn’t take seriously. Then there is the matter of their sexual relationship, which is on the wane. Even watching gay male porn just doesn’t seem to do it for them any more.

Prompted by Laser, Joni makes contact with their sperm-donor father Paul (Mark Ruffalo), and the fun really begins.

Paul is a cool dude extraordinaire. Approaching 50, he is a motorbike ridin’ locovore who owns a restaurant specialising in fine Californian wines and organic food that he grows himself. He has a spunky young lover, darkly exotic, with a cool retro afro, who works at his restaurant. It’s a strictly casual affair, naturally. Peter Pan can’t fly all trussed down with adult commitments!

Joni is taken with her new-found dad, but younger bro Laser is less impressed, observing astutely that he is ‘a bit into himself.’ Dismissing Laser’s criticism, Joni decides she wants to see more of her father – much to the Momses’ alarm. They are naturally wary of Paul; although his only contribution to the family has been thus far genetic, they realise that he suddenly has the power to profoundly change the dynamics within the household. Turns out the Momses’ trepidation is well-founded. And how!

Like Paul, this movie could have been too hip for its own good: Californian boomer lesbians spouting New Age claptrap, indigenous-plant-orientated landscape gardening, heirloom tomatoes, fine New World wines… Rest assured, it’s not. There’s no empty posturing going on here.

This is contemporary family life held up to a mirror of gentle but uncompromising satire. The dialogue sparkles with wit and intelligence and the actors take full advantage of the brilliant and psychologically finely-tuned screenplay. Made for a paltry $4 million, in this era of empty blockbuster CGI extravaganzas The Kids Are All Right is a timely reminder of the importance of getting the dramatic fundamentals right.

Funny, moving, wise, gripping from beginning to end, with characters that all develop along arc-like trajectories as a natural consequence of who they are and how they react to their situations rather than in deference to formulaic dictates…well, what more do ya want?

As a modern-day comedy of manners this is about as good as it gets. The most enjoyable movie I’ve seen all year.

Other reviews by Rolan Stein:

2010

2009

Pre-2009

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I abhor real violence, but I generally like it on screen. Who doesn’t enjoy seeing the bad bastard cop it? It’s cathartic. Where else but in the movies do we have moral license to thrill to the grisly kill of some evil mother who had it comin’? Poetic justice sure as hell ain’t nowhere to be seen in life; it’s a comfort to see it enacted in fiction.

There doesn’t have to be a moral justification for screen violence, though. In horror movies and splatter flicks, for example, you expect slaughter of the innocents, and it’s delivered in full – but the gore is so over the top, so obviously gratuitous, it’s cartoon-like. Easily handled, easily dismissed.

Then you get a sort of inversion of morality where villains are celebrated as violent anti-heroes: Hannibal Lecter, Freddie Krueger, Dexter. Monsters with permission to scare and shock with ghastly acts. That’s their function. We like ‘em like that.

And of course, there are obvious instances where graphic and shocking violence is simply intrinsic to the realism of a film – war, crime and gangster movies, for example. I don’t have a problem with that.

Where I do have a problem is with extreme violence that does not serve any function but to turn your guts, to repulse, to traumatise. I’ve encountered very few movies that cross the line like this. In fact, only two come readily to mind: Michael Haneke’s abomination Funny Games and this latest effort from Michael Winterbottom, The Killer Inside Me.

Both films feature psychopath characters who subject their victims to horrifying sadistic acts culminating in gruesome murders. Neither make any real attempt to get inside the killers. Neither spare the audience. The interesting part – the why – is neglected, while the how is focused upon in merciless pornographic detail.

In The Killer Inside Me, Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a psycho Deputy Sheriff in a small Texan town, murders a local prostitute (Jessica Alba) by smashing her repeatedly in the face with his gloved fist. It’s not a frenzied attack. Rather, she – and we – are subjected to blow after coldly and carefully aimed blow, each delivered with horrendous force, and calculated to reduce the victim by degrees to an unrecognisable mess of bloody pulp, shattered bone and broken teeth. There is no motivation for the attack. It is sickening, gruelling to watch, and ultimately, unjustifiable artistically.

Earlier, our man Lou treats the same woman to a savage pre-coital thrashing with his belt that leaves her arse black and blue and bleeding through the welts. Then he says sorry! THEN – get this – she tells him not to apologise and initiates sex, evidently real turned on by his brand (sorry) of foreplay. But that’s not all!

It transpires that she somehow survives Lou’s attempt to murder her. Horribly disfigured by his beating, just out of hospital, she staggers into his arms and whispers that she loves him! To which he responds by shoving a knife into her guts. The ultimate penetration, I suppose.

There’s more. More gore, more killings, another woman beaten to death – this time, Lou does in his fiancée (Kate Hudson) – and none of it serves any purpose other than to demonstrate that we’re dealing with a sick fuck here. As if that point hadn’t been bludgeoned home already. The closest we get to a why is some photos Lou discovers tucked away in a Bible of his mother naked and bound, with welts on her arse. Oh, so there you go – her boy’s ‘issues’ are genetic! Fuck me.

Why would a talented director like Winterbottom shit in the face of his audience like this? Is this movie an outlet for his own raging misogyny? Whatever, I don’t get it. And I resent sitting through it. Save your crap for your therapist, matey.

I was talking along these lines to a friend over coffee on Saturday. He brought up Funny Games. Like me, he hated it. He went so far as to claim it left him feeling violated. I know exactly what he meant.

Other reviews by Rolan Stein:

2010

2009

Pre-2009

Other movie-related posts

It is the 80s, and Michael Jackson’s Thriller album has infiltrated every corner of the globe, it seems, including the backwaters of New Zealand’s North Island. Boy (James Rolleston) is a Maori kid in early adolescence who idolises Jackson, inexpertly demonstrating his dance moves to underwhelmed peers at any opportunity. He lives in a dilapidated shack on a derelict farm with his gran, little brother Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu), a clutch of cousins, and his pet goat and trusty confidante, Leif.

The two brothers are dreamers, but where Boy has created a comforting inner world populated by Thriller, escapist fantasies and an idealised vision of his father (who, in fact, is doing a lengthy stretch for armed robbery), Rocky’s is disturbed. Haunted by the knowledge that his mother died giving birth to him, he believes he has ‘powers’, which are cleverly depicted in animated drawings (and mostly destructive and vengeful in application). Read the rest…

A friend once declared that the basis of Pommy humour is “putting on a silly hat and pulling faces.” I objected to this as reductive – he left out the ‘funny’ voice.

OK, not fair. The Brits gave us Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones and The Office, for which I will be ever grateful. But really, there IS a lot of slapstick and clowny stuff in their comedies – even the good ones.

I’m not immune to silly hat/face/voice humour. Black Adder was often chuckleworthy. Little Britain worked for me for a while. Ditto Ali G. But I have to confess to not getting the Goons. I found Monty Python less hit than miss and consider it vastly overrated. And to fast forward to the 21st Century and change tack from TV and radio to film, I found last year’s widely acclaimed political satire In The Loop profoundly unfunny and tedious. I haven’t been that unamused or bored in a movie since…that is, until Four Lions. Read the rest…

You know, don’t you, you mostly taciturn hordes of Boomtown Rap faithfuls, that my default position is to support the little guy in any stoush with management? Oh believe it. My experience of managers is almost entirely negative. They seem to me a loathsome breed in general: small on EQ, big on arrogance and self-regard, prone to blame-shifting, defensiveness and rationalisation while projecting these same flaws on to subordinate adversaries (and, by contrast, licking the arses of their superiors regardless of the shit that comes out of them)… I could go on, but you get the idea. Read the rest…

Skimming over the promo material, I have to admit to being less than enthused about this number. A coming-of-age period piece with Zac Efron as the romantic lead? I consoled myself with the hope that the Orson Welles character would add some interest…

Indeed, it all starts off pretty lame. Boy with thespian aspirations meets girl who dreams of being a writer… Okaaay. Warning lights a-flashin’: formulaic development surely ahead. Well, no. No, glorious no! The love tale that is set up in the opening scenes is not picked up again until the very end of the movie.

Instead, we are taken on an excursion into the bohemian heart of late 30s New York experimental theatre, and ne’er a dull moment there is. Read the rest…

South Solitary trailer and interview with writer-director Shirley Barrett

South Solitary is a tiny, remote island in the Southern Ocean pounded by the Roaring Forties, with a lighthouse plonked on its clifftops for the benefit of occasional sea traffic. It’s 1928. The population of the island has recently declined from 7 to 6, with the death of the head lighthouse keeper. Enter the deceased’s irascible and pedantic replacement, George Wadsworth (Barry Otto) and his niece, Meredith (Miranda Otto).

Meredith is an overgrown Orphan Annie; her disagreeable uncle is the only family she has – the only anyone she has, actually, after losing her fiancee in WW1. Rather Dickensian setup, if she wasn’t in her 30s. Thing is, she has a bright, bubbly personality and is physically attractive. It doesn’t make sense that she’s tagging along with her uncle to a lonely post on a godforsaken rock in the middle of the scowling sea.

The plausibility issues do not stop there. Read the rest…

Is it devaluing this movie to call it a dark-hued off-beat rom-com, I asked myself as I sat down and prepared to bang out this quick review. I decided I didn’t care enough to ponder the question at any length. And I mean any length. So let’s start again…

Ahem…

Roger Greenberg (Ben Stiller) is a 40ish misfit who has a few balloons floating loose in the cranial sky. At least he did have – he’s recovering from a nervous breakdown, which necessitated his institutionalization. Rog has left his home and carpenting job in New York to look after his older and more successful bro’s home in L.A. while he and his family are away on holidays in Vietnam. The house-sitting opportunity has come at a good time. Greenberg is at a crossroads in his life, and is taking time out to ‘do nothing’ and hopefully find some direction. (Sound familiar?) Read the rest…