Movie Review: Love The Coopers (2015)

Also Known As: Christmas With The Coopers  

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Jessie Nelson  

Starring: Diane Keaton, John Goodman, Marisa Tomei, Alan Arkin, Amanda Seyfried, Timothée Chalamet, Ed Helms, Jake Lacy, Anthony Mackie, June Squibb, Olivia Wilde  

Running Time: 107 minutes  

Synopsis: Christmas Eve is approaching, and four generations of the imperfect Cooper family are gathering for dinner. Sam and Charlotte (John Goodman and Diane Keaton) are hosting but also hiding their disintegrating marriage. Their black sheep daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) meets a soldier (Jake Lacy) at the airport. The Cooper's divorced son (Ed Helms) is struggling with unemployment, while his teenaged son (Timothée Chalamet) is pursuing his first crush at the mall. Charlotte's sister (Marisa Tomei) is arrested for shoplifting and has an encounter with a police officer (Anthony Mackie), while Charlotte's father Bucky (Alan Arkin) has an argument with his regular diner server (Amanda Seyfried). 

What Works Well: With notable determination, this Christmas movie seeks a contrarian stance, avoiding feel-good vibes and zooming in on all that is wrong with the lives of the Coopers. Charlotte is doing her best to pretend and get on with the Christmas spirit, but all the family members are flailing as their character faults and life failures are revealed. The simple message of celebrating normal imperfection is straightforward and well-intentioned, and the opening two thirds offer the added enjoyment of guessing all the family connections. The quality cast and numerous mini-plots ensure the movie never dawdles in any one place for too long.

What Does Not Work As Well: After a lot of hard work to represent flawed characters, the resolutions run away from difficult outcomes and just surrender to traditional endings. With so many stories to tell, some of the more interesting secondary characters, notably Amanda Seyfried's diner server and Anthony Mackie's police officer, are shortchanged.

Key Quote:

Bucky: That feeling like you've landed in the wrong life. Everybody feels that way.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Dear John (2010)

A drama and romance, Dear John enjoys picturesque stars and old-fashioned romance-by-letter, but never rises above elemental cliches.

In the spring of 2001, John Tyree (Channing Tatum) of the US army's special forces is enjoying a vacation in Charleston, South Carolina, where his father (Richard Jenkins) lives. At the beach John meets college student Savannah (Amanda Seyfried) on her spring break, along with her friend Tim (Henry Thomas) and his young autistic son. John and Savannah fall in love, although she notices he has a quick temper. Savannah also befriends John's dad, a soft-spoken coin collector on the autism scale.

John reports back to the army to complete his remaining year of service, and the lovers continue their romance by letter. But after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, John is obligated to re-enlist, and the long-distance relationship is severely tested.

An adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, Dear John is a predictable sombre romance. Director Lasse Hallström adds a veneer of quality, Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfriend make for an appealing photogenic couple, and Jamie Linden's script is bearable. But the good components cannot overcome embedded character triteness and contrived mini-crises.

John is sensitive and brooding, but can also be triggered into violence at the slightest provocation. Channing Tatum therefore wears the same expression throughout, his acting consisting of a chiselled physique and hardened presence. Savannah is pure, innocent, and helpful, placing the needs of others ahead of her own. She is so good that Amanda Seyfried is given little to work with, although she does get to jump-hug onto the relatively gigantic Tatum at regular intervals. 

Predictably, both characters make all the necessary poor and incomprehensible decisions at exactly the wrong times to artificially impose as many obstacles as possible in the path of their happiness.

With Tim's son and Mr. Tyree both on the spectrum, the narrative appears to want to say something about autism, but never quite gets there. Richard Jenkins bring poignancy to the role of John's father, and the bond Savannah forges with him is promising, but the sub-plot is all but abandoned. Equally half-hearted are the father-son travails scattered among the coin collection motif.

In long hand and on paper, Dear John finds little new to write about.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Mank (2020)

An inside-Hollywood drama, Mank is the story of the writer behind the legendary Citizen Kane script. The film is visually splendid but carries narrow appeal.

It's 1940, and RKO studios provide wonderkid filmmaker Orson Welles (Tom Burke) with complete artistic freedom to mount his next project. He hires washed-up and unemployed writer Herman "Mank" Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) to pen a screenplay. Mank is recovering from a broken leg suffered in a car crash, and Welles houses him in a secluded ranch, theoretically free of booze and distractions. Mank also agrees that Welles will receive sole writing credit for the completed script.

Under pressure to deliver in 60 days and assisted by secretary Rita Alexander (Lily Collins), Mank writes a script inspired by the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. Flashbacks reveal Mank's history in Hollywood starting in 1930. He encounters powerful moguls Louis B. Meyer (Arliss Howard) and Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), as well as actress Marion Davis (Amanda Seyfried) and her much older husband Hearst (Charles Dance). Mank's principled opposition to Meyer's meddling in politics, plus his excessive drinking, gradually dim his Hollywood status.

As the Citizen Kane script nears completion, Mank recognizes it as his best ever work, and decides he does indeed deserve credit for writing it.

The geeky debate as to whether Welles or Mankiewicz are more responsible for Citizen Kane's greatness is a sub-niche topic for a small group of cineastes. Here director David Fincher, working from a script by his father Jack, attempts to transform the writing process into a flamboyant drama. The production quality is high, but predictably, the material is too thin to sustain the overly-ambitious 131 minutes. 

Mank therefore meanders into a mini history of 1930s Hollywood, throwing in mundane socialist versus capitalist political shenanigans, routine power plays by the rich and influential, and one obscure cinematographer who takes it all too seriously. The flashbacks carry casual interest but dominate what is supposed to be the main plot. In the present-day scenes Mank's writing just flows forth, and beyond a childish game about smuggling alcohol to keep the juices flowing, few genuine insights are offered into the creative process.

Gary Oldman saves the day with a performance full of self-awareness, but even he is weighed down by the incessant wittiness of a writer who has a clever retort or quip for every situation. The period details recreate a booming Hollywood filled with schemers and dreamers, and the black and white cinematography courtesy of Erik Messerschmidt is crisp and grandiose, but the intended salute to Citizen Kane's visual style overwhelms Mank's much smaller story.

Mank is beautiful to look at, but this packaging is mightier than the pen.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: First Reformed (2017)

A personal drama about the ravages of creeping depression, First Reformed is an intense portrait of a man teetering on the edge of the mental abyss.

In Albany, New York, Pastor Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is in charge of the historic but relatively tiny First Reformed church, now serving mostly as a tourist attraction. Nearby is the Abundant Life megachurch run by Pastor Joel Jeffers (Cedric "The Entertainer" Kyles). Toller's health is poor and he is still dealing with the trauma of losing his son in the Iraq War and the subsequent disintegration of his marriage. He tries to avoid Esther (Victoria Hill), the choir director at Abundant Life, ashamed of the affair they had when his marriage was failing.

Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a member of the community, implores Toller to speak to her troubled husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist with a prison record and eco-terrorism tendencies. Michael is growing increasingly depressed about the fate of the world due to climate change, and is pressuring Mary to abort her pregnancy. Toller and Michael have a long debate about the battle between despair and hope, but shocking tragedy strikes before they can meet again. With his health deteriorating and his drinking increasing, Toller sinks into a depression and starts to contemplate the unimaginable.

A potent mixture of personal demons clashing with guilt over human-caused global destruction, First Reformed combines two powerful themes. Written and directed by Paul Schrader, the film is a cerebral and intensely personal character study. But it also carries broader commentary on depression finding amplification in the cause of a world warming towards catastrophic inhospitality.

Schrader uses Toller's daily journal as a sometimes verbose narrative device to reveal a man struggling against his own failings. He desperately wants to do better but is weighed down by insurmountable suffering and the burden of betrayal, and drowning a severe stomach ailment with hard drinking does not help.

The debate with Michael is a trigger event, and Schrader leverages the encounter as a pivot point, superficially a stalemate but sowing dangerous seeds in Toller's heart. Michael's treatise on a burning future globe extinguishes the remaining vestiges of hope.

The film seeks a gloomy yet picturesque northeast aesthetic. The quaint First Reformed church, once a place of refuge along the underground railway, is a throwback to a bygone era. Now it's a perfunctory stop for tourists seeking trinkets, Toller's role as souvenir salesman as important as his function as Pastor. The nearby Abundant Life is comparatively cavernous and soulless, a place where big business can write cheques to earn propaganda points, and Toller recognizes he has no future at either church.

Ethan Hawke commits to the dour man drawn to the logic of illogical solutions, his thin facade often cracked by a tortured smile. Schrader offers Toller one glimmer of hope in the form of the appropriately named Mary, hinting at love, devotion and nurturing as the antidotes to anguish, even as one man hurtles towards a singular countdown to extinction.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Red Riding Hood (2011)

A reimagining of the children's folk tale, Red Riding Hood stumbles into a mundane who-is-it guessing game with clumsy execution and limp resolution.

In a small village at the edge of a forest, Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is in love with dashing but penniless woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), although her mother Suzette (Virginia Madsen) has arranged for her to marry blacksmith Henry (Max Irons). The village lives in fear of a murderous werewolf, and despite the villagers offering livestock in a monthly ritual sacrifice, Valerie's sister Lucie, who was in love with Henry, is killed by the beast.

The villagers organize a hunting party, invade the wolf's lair and claim to kill it, while Valerie visits her grandmother (Julie Christie), who lives alone inside the forest. The next day Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) and his guards arrive to proclaim that the werewolf is still alive and hiding in human form inside the village. With Valerie torn between two lovers, the werewolf bursts forth, causing carnage. Valerie is the only resident who can communicate with the beast, arousing suspicions she is a witch.

Squarely targeting the teen market enthralled by the Twilight young adult series, Red Riding Hood offers a barely interesting who-is-the-wolf mystery but otherwise reeks of a low budget theatrical production. It was maybe the intention of writer David Leslie Johnson and director Catherine Hardwicke to create an artificial milieu to channel a child's fairy tale imagination, but on the screen the film appears trapped on essentially a single set not unlike what a group of high school students would conceive.

The narrative development is equally truncated. The characters are introduced in a manic rush, Valerie's lovers and their families thrown together in a blur, two overlapping love triangles and assorted parents and a grandparent thrown onto the screen in disarray, with one character literally dead on arrival.

The scenes with special effects featuring the gigantic werewolf alternate between choppy and effective but are always dark, with the blood and gore levels kept to a minimum. The tween-appropriate breathy romance scenes between Valerie and Peter hint at a nexus between the werewolf and burgeoning sexuality, but the resolution is both more mundane and barely coherent.

With Gary Oldman given free reign to chew the limited scenery, Red Riding Hood at least commits to undisguised commentary about religion's arrival making everything worse. Father Solomon leverages fear to gain control, defines the werewolf as residing within and thereby labeling everyone guilty until proven innocent. He turns neighbour against neighbour, imposing confinement and extracting confessions, instigating witch hunts, then torturing and killing individuals in the name of the public good. The more dangerous wolf, it turns out, is the one hiding beneath clerical robes.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

A musical sequel celebrating more of ABBA's tunes, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again manages to easily outperform the original.

On an idyllic Greek island 10 years after the events of the first film, Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is planning the grand reopening of the hotel Bella Donna, now named in memory of her mother (Meryl Streep) who passed away a year earlier. Sophie's marriage to Sky (Dominic Cooper) has hit a road bump, and her mother's former bandmates Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Waters) arrive to cheer her up. Sam (Pierce Brosnan) is the only one of her three "dads" in attendance, with Harry (Colin Firth) and Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) tied up in prior engagements.

In flashback, the adventures of young Donna (Lily James) after graduating from college are recalled. Eager to escape from her mother, Donna travels the world, meets the young and flustered Harry (Hugh Skinner) in Paris and then adventurous sailor Bill (Josh Dylan) in Greece. Upon arriving at the island, Donna falls for the dishy Sam (Jeremy Irvine). She has quick affairs with all three, but is soon alone on the island, carving out her new life only to discover she is pregnant. Back in the present, Sophie's plans for a celebration are disrupted by the weather and plenty of unexpected party attendees.

While it was admittedly a low bar to step over, Here We Go Again is an effortlessly better movie than its clunky predecessor. Directed and written by Ol Parker, the sequel is freed from the stage musical, and also delves deeper into the ABBA catalogue. This proves to be a blessing: with less emphasis on singalong moments, Here We Go Again not only demonstrates the remarkable breadth of the Swedish group's talent but focuses more on plot, characters and storytelling, and the result is a much more engaging viewing experience.

Also working in the film's favour is the split between two stories: Sophie's present-day sorrow at losing her mother and determination to celebrate her memory are made so much more powerful and poignant with the flashback scenes of Donna as a young vivacious woman finding herself and influencing the lives of three men in quick succession. Despite being full of music and telling two stories, Here We Go Again clocks in under two hours, Parker demonstrating admirable restraint and stopping every scene and musical number before excess creeps in.

Despite the flightiness, many creaky moments, acknowledged silliness and prevalent self-awareness, Parker manages to scale some emotional heights. Early on Sophie and Sky sing One Of Us oceans apart but together through some beautifully fluid camera and editing work. Past the halfway mark a small flotilla arrives at the island to the timeless tune of Dancing Queen, injecting the film with a large dose of nostalgic jubilation. And the affecting climax features a genuinely tender reunion of mother and daughter across a generation to the tune of My Love, My Life.

The talented Lily James as the young Donna adds immeasurably to the film, and shares the load with Amanda Seyfried, both actresses knowing their way around delivering a song with conviction but without pretensions. Streep gets just the one song, but absolutely crushes it. Cher appears late on, voice intact but otherwise a walking (barely) advertisement about the perils of Botox and plastic surgery.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is fun, frivolous and silly, all as expected, but unexpectedly also quite decent.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Mamma Mia! (2008)

A musical set to the songs of Swedish group ABBA, Mamma Mia! is a frivolous exercise in threading a non-plot through more than 20 toe-tapping pop hits.

On a Greek island, 20 year old Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) is about to be married to Sky (Dominic Cooper). Sophie's mom is the free spirited Donna (Meryl Streep), a former singer who now runs a bed and breakfast villa. Sophie never knew who her dad was, but secretly delves into Donna's diaries to uncover three candidate men: architect Sam (Pierce Brosnan), adventurer Bill (Stellan Skarsgård) and banker Harry (Colin Firth). Unbeknownst to Donna, she invites them all to the wedding.

Meanwhile, Donna invites her former co-performers and best friends Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters). When everyone arrives ahead of the wedding, the three men are astonished to meet each other, Sophie is surprised that she cannot immediately tell which of the men is her father, and Donna is shocked that three former lovers have appeared at her doorstep.

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd and based on the hit stage musical by Catherine Johnson, Mamma Mia! features Hollywood actors on vacation warbling ABBA songs, often quite badly. While Streep is as usual near perfect in throwing herself into a singing role, the rest of the cast are much less convincing, with Brosnan in particular almost painful.

Almost every well-known ABBA song is lined up and knocked down, including the title track, Money, Money, Money, Dancing Queen, Chiquitita, S.O.S., Take A Chance On Me, The Name Of The Game, The Winner Takes It All, Voulez-Vous and Does Your Mother Know. If nothing else, the film serves as a reminder of the group's superlative ability to conjure up singalong hits set to infectious melodies.

As a film Mamma Mia! fails on all cinematic counts. The non-singing scenes appear scripted on the spot and fail to create anything that resembles a plot. The choreography is amateurish, the acting almost embarrassing, the attempted jokes lame and the emotions utterly manufactured.

The only point of the movie appears to be to sing along to the music; otherwise Mamma Mia! is best left stranded on whichever secluded island will tolerate the noisy antics.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014)

A western comedy, A Million Ways To Die In The West contains plenty of rude and crude laughs, but remains confined to a few repetitive themes.

It's 1882 in the small town of Old Stump, Arizona. Albert Stark (Seth MacFarlane) is a peaceful and meek sheep farmer, constantly worried about the many ways people can die in the west. When he walks away from a gunfight, his girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried) dumps him and immediately starts a relationship with moustache grooming business owner Foy (Neil Patrick Harris). Albert's only friend is Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), who is deeply in love with the town whore Ruth (Sarah Silverman).

Heartbroken after the breakup with Louise, Albert find solace with the newly arrived and mysterious Anna (Charlize Theron), who teaches him to shoot but forgets to tell him that she is married to Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), the meanest outlaw and gunfighter in the territory. Despite his peaceful nature Albert finds himself bracing for showdowns with both Foy and Clinch.

There is undoubted fun to be had in A Million Ways To Die In The West. The humour is sharp, dark sometimes brutal and always vulgar, and more often than not generates the required laughter. MacFarlane co-wrote and directed the film, and does not try to move it too far away from a modern piece of satire that happens to be set in the west. The film plonks self-aware personalities into a western context, and derives most of its charm from the characters commenting on a ridiculous way of life.

But MacFarlane also traps himself into a limited number of themes, and tumble dries the jokes to a stiff standstill. Yes, there are many ways to die in the west, yes Albert is sheep farmer, yes women married young, and yes Foy is insufferably full of himself. The humour don't stray far from these topics, and MacFarlane cannot climb down from a juvenile rate of one bodily fluid joke per minute. The romance elements never come close to clicking, and the many gunfight showdown set pieces don't try even try to generate tension.

The actors go through the film with various shades of smiles. None take their roles seriously, and given a prevailing tone that stops just short of openly winking at the audience, that's just fine.

At almost two hours the film is about 20 minutes too long. There may be A Million Way To Die In The West, but the point is made well before the end credits.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Big Wedding (2013)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Movie Review: While We're Young (2014)

A dramatic comedy about generational gaps, While We're Young starts with strong ideas but meanders into mundane territory in search of bogus conflict.

Josh and Cornelia (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) are a childless couple drifting into middle age, and losing touch with their lifelong friends who are now all preoccupied with children. Josh is a documentary filmmaker with a bright future behind him, and his latest project is an incomprehensible sociological treatise 10 years in the making and still unfinished. Cornelia is getting tired of her husband's ineptitude and carries guilt feelings about her inability to conceive. Her dad Leslie (Charles Grodin) helped Josh early in his career, but now believes his son-in-law has failed to fulfill his potential.

Josh and Cornelia meet the much younger hipster couple Jamie and Darby (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried). Jamie is also an aspiring documentarian and full of admiration for Josh's early work. The two couples start to socialize, and Josh and Cornelia get a boost of energy from their new younger friends. Jamie launches a new film project to record in-person meetings with social media friends, and Josh is happy to collaborate. But a hallucinogenic episode between Cornelia and Jamie causes stress, and all relationships begin to unravel when Leslie secures financial support for Jamie's project while dismissing Josh's appeals for help.

Directed and written by Noah Baumbach, While We're Young works well as a sly commentary on the differences between Generation X and the Millennials. The first half of the film benefits from the sense of discovery experienced by Josh and Cornelia as their creativity, fitness and sex drives are all kick started after interacting with the younger, cooler and seemingly less complicated Jamie and Darby.

And there is plenty of true irony and opportunities for humour sprinkled into the dynamic between the couples, the hipsters full of admiration for the music (vinyl), technology (turntables), fitness classes and achievements (Josh's first documentary) somehow left behind by the previous generation.

But Baumbach hits a creative wall heading into the second half of his film, and the narrative stalls. The story of competing documentarians is simply not that interesting, with the subject matter of both projects particularly dreary. Jamie is revealed to be potentially less than pure in his intentions and just as capable as any other young man to bend artistic rules in favour of his career. This sets Josh off on a Quixotic quest for vindication, an overreaction that serves to prove his stunted stature. All the pokey back and forth is sophomoric and empties the charm out of the film.

The four central performers enjoy themselves, Stiller playing mostly within himself, Watts emerging with the most credit, while Driver and Seyfried capture the friendly but detached cool of hipsterdom.

While We're Young is fun for a while, but grows old quickly.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Lovelace (2013)

The sad story of the porn industry's first celebrity, Lovelace is cautionary tale of exploitation and abuse. The film is cleverly constructed but lacks any emotional breakthroughs.

It's 1970 in Florida, and 20 year old Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is living with her oppressive parents Dorothy and John (Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick). Her rebellion is enabled by the sleazy and much older Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), who claims to maybe own a strip joint. Soon they get married, Chuck teaches Linda all about oral sex, and she is remarkably good at it. Claiming money pressure, Chuck pressures Linda into the pornography industry and Lovelace is created.

They connect with producers Anthony Romano (Chris Noth) and "Butchie" Peraino (Bobby Canavale), director Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria) and co-star Harry Reems (Adam Brody). Over a matter of six days in 1972, Damiano films Deep Throat, a relatively artistic porn film capitalizing on Linda's abilities. The film becomes an unexpected breakout hit among mainstream audiences and helps to kick-off the porno chic trend. Linda becomes a household name and travels in celebrity circles, including a meeting with Playboy's Hugh Hefner (James Franco). But behind the surface glamour there is a very dark side to Linda's life involving rampant abuse by the domineering Chuck.

Co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace is a worthwhile companion piece to Boogie Nights. While the Paul Thomas Anderson film rides the breezy waves of pornography's golden era, Lovelace dives beneath the surface to poke at the visible bruises. Lovelace is too emotionally detached and conflicted in its messaging to be the better film, but it nevertheless places on record the horrific price paid by the performers exploited to serve a sordid industry.

As for the film, Epstein and Friedman do try something different. The first half breezes through Lovelace's rapid transition from rebellious young woman to porn celebrity. There are hints suggesting the hell created by Traynor, but without details. The second half retraces some of the same steps and fills in the blanks, exposing the oppressive brutality of his treatment and the degradation she faced. It's a thought provoking structure forcing a comparison between public image and private agony, but Lovelace also emerges as an unbalanced film, hitting discordant notes and mainly moving sideways.

The denouement shifts focus to Linda years after her brief foray into the industry, fighting to reclaim her dignity and identity by publishing a book. It's another shift in cinematic gears, and while the loop is closed, the film is tonally fragmented.

Lovelace delivers one devastating scene, in the least expected context. At her lowest point Linda flees back to her childhood home, and her encounter with her mother is a study of the void exposed by mutually unmet expectations.

Amanda Seyfried displays excellent breadth to convey first adventurous naiveté and then a gradual awakening to abuse. Peter Sarsgaard is fully committed to the role of Chuck Traynor, and sustains the required menace.

Lovelace tells an important story with competence but at the expense of dramatic flair.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Amanda Seyfried

All movies starring Amanda Seyfried and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Mean Girls (2004)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Chloe (2009)

Dear John (2010)

Letters To Juliet (2010)

Red Riding Hood (2011)

Les Misérables (2012)

Lovelace (2013)

The Big Wedding (2013)

A Million Ways To Die In The West (2014)

While We're Young (2014)

Love The Coopers (2015)

First Reformed (2017)

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)

Mank (2020)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Mean Girls (2004)

A high-school comedy about girls fitting in, Mean Girls brings plenty of edgy attitude and delivers a funny, uncompromised story about the perils of the pack.

Sixteen year old Cady (Lindsay Lohan) has been home-schooled all her life, Now her parents have relocated from Africa to Evanston, Illinois, and Cady has to face the wilderness that is her local high school. She meets two happy independent-minded students in semi-Gothic Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and openly gay Damian (Daniel Franzese), but Cady is soon exposed to the most envied girl trio in the school: the pretty, fashionable, cool and snooty Plastics. Their queen bee is Regina (Rachel McAdams), and her clique consists of the submissive Gretchen (Lacey Chabert) and the quite dense Karen (Amanda Seyfried).

Regina sizes up Cady and gives her a chance to join the troop. Janis seizes the opportunity to use Cady as an informant to reveal the secrets of the Plastics. Cady starts to develop a crush on classmate Aaron (Jonathan Bennett), but learns that he's off limits because he was Regina's former boyfriend. It does not take long for Cady to be both horrified and seduced by the mean-spirited behaviour of the Plastics, and to learn that belonging means making difficult choices.

Directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey (who gives herself a small but shiny role as a teacher with problems of her own), Mean Girls pulls no punches. Life in suburbia is portrayed as a hazardous jungle with the animals barely concealed beneath a veneer of civility, and Cady's challenge is to adapt to her new environment or be eaten alive. Waters keeps the laughs coming in a compact 97 minute package, and the humour is continuously juiced with the poison spewed by teenagers defining their turf and individuality to scare away the perceived competition.

Without fully escaping the limitations of the high school comedy genre, Mean Girls manages to stretch. Cady makes every mistake in the book, attempting to be nice, having a foot in a couple of camps, and trying to join the Plastics while simultaneously spying on them. She is of course doomed to fail in the most spectacular way, and Mean Girls gets the environment right: the long-established rules of place will dominate the individual, redefining social norms is bound to fail, and belonging to competing herds is not smart: it is treason.

Cady flirts with the dark side and demonstrates to herself how easy it is to transition from eager wannabe to a broadly despised pretender. To regain her balance she will need to learn to carve out her own niche, rather than try to change the evolutionary order. Fey does struggle a bit with the final chapter, as Cady's attempts at atonement are clumsily (and literally) run over by a bus.

Before Lindsay Lohan embarked on her career-destroying lifestyle, she was one of Hollywood's most promising young actresses, and here she proves why. Lohan finds the space for Cady to be both the smart outsider and the eager wannabe, grounded by a stable family-oriented upbringing but not immune to the seductive forces of cheap popularity. In contrast Rachel McAdams did use early roles like Regina as fuel for a successful career, and here she goes all-in as the embodiment of haughty entitlement. Regina has the perfect role model in her mom (Amy Poehler), a woman with all the money she needs to not care about what it means to be a parent.

Mean Girls is smart, sassy, real, rude, and often, a riot of laughs.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Les Misérables (2012)

The adaptation to the screen of a most enduring stage musical is a resounding triumph. Director Tom Hooper succeeds in adding the necessary intimacy that a film demands without losing the grandeur of the production. Les Misérables on screen is a ravishingly refreshed, yet comfortably familiar, experience.

It's the early 1800s in a France wracked by widespread poverty and misery, and convict Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) has just finished serving 19 years of hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread. Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) believes in the supreme rule of law, and is intent on keeping an eye on Valjean, who possesses enormous physical strength but is now on probation for life. With a record as an ex-convict, Valjean has trouble supporting himself with any means of employment. In desperation he steals silverware from a Bishop and is promptly caught. When the Bishop forgives Valjean and allows him to keep the silver, Valjean commits to changing his life for the better.

Eight years layer, Valjean has become a kind and respected factory owner, employer of hundreds, and a local town mayor. With Javert once again pursuing him for breaking probation, Valjean takes pity on Fantine (Anne Hathaway), a desperate and dying prostitute, and commits to looking after her young daughter Cosette. He buys Cosette's freedom from despicable innkeepers the Thénardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) and brings her up as his own daughter.

Nine years later, the grown Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) falls in love with revolutionary student Marius (Eddie Redmayne), a romance facilitated by Eponine (Samantha Barks), the daughter of the Thénardiers and herself harbouring an unrequited crush on Marius. With Javert still hoping to capture Valjean, a violent but short-lived student revolt erupts on the streets of Paris, with Valjean an unwilling participant trying to save Marius' life for the sake of Cosette's future happiness.

The film is a faithful adaptation of the stage musical, a generous 160 minutes on a steep emotional roller coaster. The Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg show is based on Victor Hugo's classic novel and designed to expertly tug at the most tender of heart strings. With powerful source material, Hooper's challenge was to expand the visuals of Les Misérables without losing its impassioned strength. The inspired decision to have the actors perform the songs live while filming, rather than relying on dubbing, results in a raw, almost devastatingly emotional experience.

Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway in particular make the most of the immediacy of the material, and deliver heartbreaking performances. Valjean's Soliloquy, after his reprieve by the Bishop, is one man questioning all he knows about life, and reorienting his future in a new direction. Hathaway's overwhelming I Dreamed A Dream is delivered in one exceptional take, a woman in close-up plundered by life and left with nothing but despair and a memory of long-lost hope. It's a career-defining highlight for Hathaway, and a rare moment when an actress radiates by tenderly baring her soul.

Seyfried, Baron Cohen, Bonham Carter, and Barks deliver their songs with plenty of heart if not as much conviction, and it is Eddie Redmayne who emerges as the third powerful voice in Les Misérables, providing Marius with a romantic vitality that resonates with a struggle for a better future. Aaron Tveit as the student leader Enjolras, makes an enthusiastic impression with a small but committed role. Russell Crowe noticeably struggles with the singing in the key role of Javert, although his imposing physical presence helps to compensate. His singing does improve as the movie progresses, either as a function of improved delivery or reduced expectations.

The set-design and visual style of Les Misérables recreate a Paris darkened by grime, oppression, and anguish. There is no middle-class, no in-between the rich and the poor, the oppressed and oppressors. Cinematographer Danny Cohen translates Hooper's vision into an extraordinarily dynamic environment, bringing to life the streets, the taverns, and the dingiest corners of a city wallowing in damp and aphotic misery.  More so than the stage could ever do, the film is a reminder of how Hugo came up with his title. And when necessary, Cohen's cameras move in to capture the intimate gestures, expressions and details of the destitute, a reminder that misery only exists through the reflection of its victims.

Despite the pervasive gloom, Les Misérables is ultimately a story of love, hope and redemption. The screen version is a celebration of the human spirit's unrelenting resolve to rise above the mire and into a better future.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.