Movie Review: Lovely & Amazing (2001)

Genre: Dramedy

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Starring: Brenda Blethyn, Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Dermot Mulroney, Aunjanue Ellis

Running Time: 91 minutes

Synopsis: Jane Marks (Brenda Blethyn) is raising her adopted black pre-teen daughter Annie (Raven Goodwin), and also has two grown daughters: Michelle (Catherine Keener) is unemployed and dabbling in trinkety crafts, while Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) is a struggling actress. All of them have self-esteem issues: Jane opts for liposuction; Michelle accepts a menial job where she meets teenager Jordan (Jake Gyllenhaal); Elizabeth is judged "not sexy enough" and has a fling with a star actor (Dermot Mulroney); while Annie is eating her way to weight issues and awakening to the challenges of being black.

What Works Well: Writer and director Nicole Holofcener conceives an understated slice-of-women's-life drama focusing on insecurities undermining both mental and physical health, as the inability to move past self-criticism and superficial judgements is passed on from Jane to all her daughters. Refreshingly, the smart script is too genuine to seek redemption arcs, leading to well-rounded, flawed, and honest characters.

What Does Not Work As Well: The emotional toiling of a not-necessarily-likable group of non-achievers carries limited lasting relevance.

Conclusion: Pleasingly untidy but borders on inconsequential.



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Movie Review: The Adam Project (2022)

A science fiction time travel adventure, The Adam Project offers lukewarm entertainment with the requisite thrills, humour, and tender moments.

In 2050, time travel is a reality. Air force pilot Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds) steals a fighter jet and travels back to 2022. He reconnects with his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell), a 6th grader frequently bullied at school. Young Adam is mouthy, and his relationship with his mother Ellie (Jennifer Garner) has been strained ever since his father Louis (Mark Ruffalo) died in a car crash. Louis was a physics researcher who developed theories enabling time travel.

The older Adam is on a personal mission to find his wife Laura Shane (Zoe Saldana), a pilot who traveled back in time to prevent the evil Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) from taking control of the time travel industry. With Sorian and her goons in hot pursuit, both Adams travel back to 2018 where they will try to convince Louis to stop the science of time travel before it starts.

Directed by Shawn Levy with four writers collaborating on the script, The Adam Project tries to be all things to all people, and the results are unsurprisingly middling. Ryan Reynolds delivers the expected snide comments, familial poignancy underpins the action, and Catherine Keener offers up the stock villain with evil ambitions to rule the world. For the easily impressed and attention-span challenged, CGI-enabled time travel thrills and bloodless combat action show up about every eight minutes. An invade-and-destroy-the-fort climax is a tired exercise in CGI excess.

None of this makes the film bad, just frustratingly manufactured and beset by whizz-bang flakiness. In the quiet moments between mashups of Star Wars, The Terminator, and Back To The Future, themes of loss, love, care, and absenteeism do break through. The cast is sufficiently talented to thrive away from the green screens, and the human-centred relationships between Adam, his parents, and his wife border on excellent. The older Adam imparting wisdom through a heartfelt chat with his unsuspecting mom represents a fine scene. The sacrifice Adam and his wife Laura are forced to confront adds soul to their adventure, hinting at the undefined yet keenly sensed bond of human familiarity transcending time and space. 

The Adam Project is noticeably numb when it mindlessly races to the next round of digital combat, and appreciably better when it pauses to reflect.

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Movie Review: Trust (2010)

A drama about the devastating impacts of child grooming, Trust is the uncompromising tragedy of a family torn apart by an insidious assault.

In Chicago, Annie Cameron (Liana Liberato) is a 14 year-old high school student and member of the school's volleyball team. She comes from a middle class family, supported by her dad Will (Clive Owen) and mom Lynn (Catherine Keener). 

Through a teen chat on-line portal, Annie is in communication with Charlie, who claims to be a 15 year-old volleyball player at another school. Their contact develops into a friendship then an on-line romance, although Charlie continuously obfuscates about his real age. Through flattery and sexual chat, Annie is increasingly attracted to the now clearly older stranger. She agrees to meet him at the mall, and when Charlie (Chris Henry Coffey) shows up, he appears to be in his mid-30s. He nevertheless sweet-talks her into a sexual encounter. 

Annie's best friend Brittany (Zoe Levin) alerts the school that Annie has been raped. Will and Lynn's lives are shattered. The FBI's Doug Tate (Jason Clarke) starts to investigate, while hospital counselor Gail Freedman (Viola Davis) supports Annie. But although Charlie has broken contact, Annie does not think of herself as a victim, and instead believes her assailant truly loves her.

Directed by David Schwimmer (from television's Friends) and written by Andy Bellin and Robert Festinger, Trust is often painful to watch. The process of grooming is portrayed with a sense of searing dread, and Annie's trusting descent into the clutches of a predator is a stab into the heart of a supposedly safe, secure, and supportive middle class household.

A well-adjusted 14 year old with typical body image and fitting-in anxieties is still susceptible to a master manipulator. By the time Annie finds herself in a scuzzy motel room in her underwear, she is convinced Charlie not only deeply loves her, but is the only adult who values and understands her. What follow after the assault is, if possible, more disturbing. Multiple fissures crack open the family unit's foundation, Annie now hostile towards adults she perceives as destroying her love life.

Trust is as much about the parents as the child. Annie's father Will is crushed that his supposedly bright daughter ignored all the red flags and did not turn to him for advice, and his anger explodes when he is exposed to her record of sexting with Charlie. Flustered, he haphazardly turns to everything from predator-hunting vigilante groups to gun stores, straining his marriage. 

As a quiet drama, Trust leans heavily on the cast, and Clive Owen and Liana Liberato are both excellent at opposite ends of a fragile father-daughter dynamic. They deliver deeply moving performances conveying tension, passive-aggressiveness, anguish, and distress.

The narrative harnesses impressive dramatic strength, but a few of weaknesses surface. The FBI appears oblivious that Charlie was on full view in a shopping mall supposedly full of surveillance cameras, and their initial post-assault response of pressuring the victim to reconnect with her assailant is markedly under-prepared. Will's macho-man antics at a school volleyball game are unnecessary.

Although Annie's unexpected moment of reckoning arrives courtesy of agent Tate's investigation, repairing all the ruptured familial bonds will be a slow and painful process. Trust makes no attempts to reassemble all the broken pieces, and instead underlines frustration and uncertainty as lingering outcomes of heinous violation.



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Movie Review: Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (2018)

A cross-border thriller, Sicario: Day Of The Soldado introduces and abandons multiple story lines before defaulting to a bland survive-and-bond-in-the-desert narrative.

Middle Eastern suicide bombers target civilians after being smuggled into the US by Mexican human traffickers. The CIA's Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) identifies the Carlos Reyes cartel as responsible for large-scale smuggling operations, and Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) provides Matt and his boss Cynthia Foards (Catherine Keener) a free hand to disrupt the cartel's activities.

Matt recruits private operative/assassin Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro) into the operation, and along with a group of mercenaries they hatch a plan to kidnap Reyes' daughter Isabel (Isabela Merced) and pin the blame on the rival Matamoros cartel. They hope to ignite an inter-cartel war to weaken both gangs, but after abducting Isabel, Matt and Alejandro battle with corrupt Mexican police forces, causing an international incident and compromising the mission.

A sequel to the 2015 original, Day Of The Soldado (also known as Sicario 2: Soldado) arrives without star Emily Blunt and director Denis Villeneuve, and suffers accordingly. Taylor Sheridan returns with a new script, but appears uncertain whether to go bigger or smaller, eventually getting literally caught in no man's land at the border. As a result, and despite the sturdy presence of Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro, director Stefano Sollima does not know which way to target his firepower. 

The introduction is promising enough, connecting human smuggling with terrorist atrocities and the Islamic State menace. But unfocused convolutions quickly seep in with a detour to Somali pirate land accompanied by several logic leaps to pin the blame on Mexican cartel leader Reyes, but this villain will not grace the movie with his presence.

Instead Matt and Alejandro get busy plotting to ignite a war between rival cartels, then proceed to shoot themselves in the foot by transporting Isabel into the United States and announcing the fact to Mexican officials, who are of course utterly incorruptible. Sheridan is either mocking the competence of US-funded intelligence operatives, or writing in a state of desperate distraction.

The war-between-cartels idea is the next one to be discarded, and the film trundles from initially lofty ambitions down to Alejandro and Isabel on the run and tangling with sweaty but nameless and irrelevant goons, complete with the obligatory intervention of sympathetic locals providing refuge. Somewhere in the debris of truncated storylines is a teenager on the US side of the border getting lured into the lucrative life of crime, but his adventure serves mostly to unnecessarily prolong the running time beyond two hours.

A couple of action scenes are well-executed, and the Dariusz Wolski cinematography is full of edgy flair, but this soldado is caught in the open, hobbled by uncertain priorities.



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Movie Review: Into The Wild (2007)

A survival drama, Into The Wild is one young man's journey of self-discovery, existential peril emerging as the price of absolute freedom.

23-year-old Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch) hitchhikes into Alaska, then sets off into the wilderness on foot with minimal supplies, determined to live free and survive off the land. After crossing a river he stumbles upon an abandoned old bus and makes it his base. In various flashbacks, his story is revealed.

Chris is from an upper middle class Virginia family and a graduate of prestigious Emory College. His excellent academic record qualifies him to enter law school. But tension is high between him and his parents Walt and Billie (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), who are cold, materialistic, argumentative, and secretive. In contrast Chris and his sister Carine (Jena Malone) are close.

After graduating Chris donates his remaining college fund to charity, destroys his identification cards, and embarks on a cross-country trip, cutting off contact with his family. He assumes the name Alex Supertramp and sets Alaska as a target. Along the way he meets an aging hippie couple (Catherine Keener and Brian H. Dierker), a combine operator (Vince Vaughn), a young couple from Denmark, a budding folk musician (Kristen Stewart), and a lonely old man (Hal Holbrook). His journey includes a Mexican detour before he makes it to Alaska, where survival will be both exhilarating and difficult.

Based on a true story as documented in the book by Jon Krakauer, Into The Wild recreates an audacious escape from imposed social structures. Writer and director Sean Penn goes big to represent an ambitious vision unconstrained by rules, with grand landscapes filling the screen, nature an often imposing presence dwarfing humans. A running time of 148 minutes underlines the operatic themes of Chris' quest for freedom.

The scale does threaten to overwhelm the content. Stripping away the romanticism and literary quotes, this is also the small story of one young man abandoning his privilege, imposing despair on his family, and chasing an ill-advised definition of freedom in a naive and anti-social interpretation of happiness. Various levels of mystique can be layered upon the cross-country journey, but the uneasy sense that Chris was a troubled young man prevails.

Emile Hirsch's portrayal of a determined traveler combines intensity with swagger, while Hal Holbrook adds lonely poignancy. The individual chapters and various en route encounters break down the journey into manageable morsels, but the collective is stronger than the individual. Despite some attempts to inject profundity, precious little is genuinely memorable or meaningful in Chris' interactions with assorted hippies, tourists, geezers and lost souls.

Carine's narration and childhood flashbacks reveal the home environment despised by Chris. Walt and Billie are professionals providing every opportunity for their children, although their marriage is always one argument away from rupturing. A family revelation could have been perceived as a sordid scandal by a son in his formative years. Frequent family meetings are the worst atrocity imposed upon Chris and Carine, and by most measures the McCandless household as portrayed is typically troubled but far from a hellhole.

Into The Wild is left with impressive grandeur overwhelming foundational issues. The journey is scenic, the survival ordeal harrowing, the ending fateful, but the origins are underdeveloped.



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Movie Review: Capote (2005)

A biographical drama, Capote enjoys a dominant performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman as it traces the author's investigation of the murder case that crowned his writing career.

In 1959, jovial New Yorker writer Truman Capote (Hoffman) reads a newspaper article about the brutal murder of a family of four in rural Kansas. He decides to investigate and write about the case, and travels to Kansas with budding author Harper Lee (Catherine Keener) to visit the scene of the crime and talk to the locals. They bond with lead police investigator Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper) and his wife Marie (Amy Ryan). 

Soon two men are arrested and charged: Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Richard Hickock (Mark Pellegrino). Truman finds the soft-spoken Smith fascinating, and after the two men are convicted and sentenced to death, Capote arranges a better lawyer for the murderers and spends long hours in conversations with Smith.

Capote starts to write In Cold Blood, but the case drags on with a series of appeals. Smith refuses to talk about the night of the murders, and Capote sinks into emotional doldrums and heavy drinking, unable to enjoy life with his book stalled.

Exploring the personal trauma churning behind the celebrated true crime book, Capote is the colourful story of a flamboyant personality meeting his greatest challenge. Dan Futterman wrote the script from Gerald Clarke's book, and director Bennett Miller brings to life an author deliberately diving ever deeper into the mystery of the senseless killings at an isolated Kansas farm house.

While characters like Harper Lee, life partner Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood) and the Deweys orbit this period of Capote's life, the unusual bond between author and murderer Perry Smith emerges as the core of the film. Perry's calm demeanour, his expansive vocabulary and the stillness in his eyes are at odds with a cold blooded killer, and Capote patiently waits for Smith to share the unshareable before he can finish his book.

The fascination is also drawn from too-close-for-comfort similarities between the backgrounds of the two men. As Capote learns more about Smith he traces the parallels in their upbringings, and the thin lines of opportunity resulting in one man becoming a killer and the other a famous and successful author.

Capote: It's as if Perry and I grew up in the same house. And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.

And as much as Capote genuinely wants to help Smith and his crime partner Hickock get a fair shake out of the justice system, ambition clashes with humanity as his frustrations mount the longer the case drags without a final resolution and Smith still refusing to talk about the murders.  

Hoffman disappears into Capote, infusing oodles of confidence and heartfelt passion into the openly gay celebrity author, whether regaling his entourage with endless stories or staring at the bottom of an empty glass while barely enduring the delays as sentence appeals drag all the way to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately none of the other characters or performances come close to competing with Hoffman for attention. The brutal multiple murders are the only counterpoint, and the film skirts the edges of becoming a one-man show.

In Cold Blood was Capote's final completed book. The film salutes the man behind a seminal work, and the tortured process of creating a literary masterpiece out of a heinous crime.



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Movie Review: Being John Malkovich (1999)

A fiercely original drama and comedy, Being John Malkovich explores issues of fulfillment, control and sexual adventurism through a bizarre and unforgettable premise.

In New York City, Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is an unemployed puppeteer, married to pet-lover Lotte (Cameron Diaz). He reluctantly accepts a menial filing job at LesterCorp, located on the low-ceilinged floor 7.5 of a highrise. His boss is the elderly but sex-obsessed Dr. Lester (Orson Bean). Craig falls in love at first sight with co-worker Maxine (Catherine Keener), who remains mostly cold and aloof.

Behind a filing cabinet, Craig uncovers a secret passage leading into the brain of actor John Malkovich (playing himself). The experience of being in someone else's head is physically and emotionally exhilarating. After Lotte has her turn in Malkovich's brain she starts to question her sexuality and also falls in love with Maxine, who reciprocates, inflaming Craig's jealousy. Maxine and Craig launch a business selling 15 minute incursions into Malkovich for $200, while Maxine starts dating the actor, timing sexual encounters for when Lotte is inside his head.

From the creative imagination of writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich offers an absurdist, unhinged story. With an abundance of fresh ideas and unexpected twists at every junction, the film creates its own unique path towards upturning expectations. The film captivates by never settling for anything remotely predictable, and even late into the third act, the novel perspectives keep coming.

Kaufman plays with the intersecting concepts of being in charge and achieving personal gratification. Craig is a failure at being a puppeteer, his elaborate compositions too psychologically anguished for a broad audience. But inside Malkovich he can leverage celebrity status to fulfill an artiste dream, both by finally exerting ultimate control and transforming an actor into a puppeteer. Meanwhile Lotte finds an avenue to explore an alternative sexuality, while Maxine is game for anything that heightens her already elevated kinkiness.

But it's not all serious. As a package Being John Malkovich floats on bubbles of comical superfluity and carries an irreverent charm with just-because humour. Lotte's pet animals mainly serve to clutter Craig's life, and the monkey Elijah is suffering from his own psychological issues (complete with a flashback). The 7.5 floor with its elevator challenge and low ceiling is delightfully irrelevant. The LesterCorp staff members, including receptionist Floris (Mary Kay Place), have issues with basic language comprehension, and Dr. Lester has a succession of tangential yet crucial interventions in Craig's misadventures.

The four principal cast members have rarely been better. John Cusack fully commits to a greasy, tortured but talented artist aesthetic. Catherine Keener finds one of her career-best roles as a woman running mental laps around everyone else while seeking the next thrill. Cameron Diaz is almost unrecognizable, stripping away any hint of glamour to coddle her pets and unleash sexual excitement from unexpected experiences. And finally Malkovich himself pulls off the unique task of being himself and not himself, present as his own body but not necessarily in control.

Looking through the eyes of another as the best exploration of self, Being John Malkovich is a singular bolt of lightning.

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Movie Review: Begin Again (2013)

A musical drama with elements of romance, Begin Again offers enough tender torment to transcend genre conventions.

In New York City, disconsolate Gretta James (Keira Knightley) reluctantly performs one of her songs at an open mic night in a dingy bar. She is spotted by down-on-his-luck ex-record company executive Dan Mulligan (Mark Ruffalo).

In flashback, the events leading up to that night are revealed. Dan is separated from his wife Miriam (Catherine Keener) and losing touch with his teenage daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Drinking heavily, he is fired by his long time business partner Saul (Yasiin Bey, better known as Mos Def).

Meanwhile, Gretta had arrived in New York from England with her up-and-coming boyfriend Dave Kohl (Adam Levine of Maroon 5 fame), who is riding a wave of success after his music featured in a hit movie. Dave is quickly sucked into the celebrity whirlpool and abandons Gretta.

Now Dan promises Gretta he can help her record an album. After Saul turns them away, Dan decides to use the city as a studio, recording Gretta's songs at street level with the urban din as an integral part of the music.

Featuring original music by Gregg Alexander, Begin Again carries enough intelligent freshness to steer clear of most cliches. While the music walks a fine line between genuinely soulful and white-girl-with-a-guitar singer-songwriter banality, most of the songs land on just the right side of evocative. In her first singing role Keira Knightley does enough to convince as a tentative talent, gradually gaining confidence under Dan's tutelage but unsure where she wants her music to take her.

Multiple relationships meld together as Gretta and Dan's lives intersect, and director John Carney, who also wrote the screenplay, deserves credit for keeping personal interactions honest and unpredictable. Gretta is hurt by Dave, Dan and Miriam are surveying the wreckage of their marriage, while Dan and Violet are standing at the edge of a barely functioning father - daughter bond. Professionally Dan's long standing partnership with Saul is in tatters, and Begin Again touches upon the changing fundamentals of the music industry in the digital era.

Lazier scripts would telegraph how all the knots will be untangled, but Carney plays coy throughout, riding the energy of al fresco musical performances in streets, alleyways, subways and roofs to stitch together the various emotional rescues.

Begin Again hums an original tune, only enhanced by the pleasantly intrusive background noise.

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Movie Review: Friends With Money (2006)

A drama and comedy about friendship, Friends With Money introduces four interesting women grappling with life's various challenges, but doesn't quite engage them at the required depth.

Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) is poor, single, and works as a maid. She is also timid, does not stand up for herself and starts dating good-for-nothing fitness instructor Mike (Scott Caan) despite all his obvious faults. Meanwhile her three best friends are all married and wealthy.

Christine (Catherine Keeler) is a script writer but unhappy in her marriage and clashing constantly with aloof husband Dave (Jason Isaacs). The perpetually irritable Jane (Frances McDormand) is a successful fashion designer but having trouble dealing with aging. She lashes out at all around her and refuses to wash her hair, while her fashion-conscious husband Aaron (Simon McBurney) is always mistaken for being gay. Franny (Joan Cusack) is independently wealthy and a happy stay at home mom married to Matt (Greg Germann), who tends to overspend on everything.

Christine's marriage disintegrates, and Jane's rage at the world reaches a literal breaking point. But the four women nevertheless do their best to support each other through their emotional ups and downs.

An understated tour of empathy among women, Friends With Money explores the differences that unite and the superficial veneers of happiness hiding misery underneath. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, the film does focus on first world problems of the white class, and three of the four women enjoy wealth and supportive partners, so their despondency stems at least partially from a fundamental lack of perspective.

Within that context, Olivia is the outsider with her nose glued to the window observing the seemingly perfect life of her rich friends. While it is difficult to swallow Jennifer Aniston as a maid, making every bad decision, unable to launch a career and still stalking an ex-boyfriend, Holofcener's script at least allows Olivia to acknowledge her faults and wear her failures with dignity.

Christine, Jane and Franny are not as well served, and generally remain flat mirrors for Olivia to measure herself. Christine's marriage crumbles into predictable chunks and Jane's inability to deal with being in her forties barely evolves. Franny is most content and endeavors to support her friends, but is also the least defined character. Too much screen time is invested in the ultimately pointless subplot of Aaron fending off perceptions of being gay.

Friends With Money adroitly avoids histrionics as Holofcener stays close to the realms of reality, seeking both humour and pathos within familiar behavior. The Friends With Money ring true, but would have benefitted from a bit more to do.

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Movie Review: Please Give (2010)

A quirky comedy and drama, Please Give offers low key but astute commentary about family relationships, guilt and death.

In New York City, Kate (Catherine Keener) and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) run a mid-century furniture resale business. They buy their stock from the apartments of recently deceased elderly people, taking advantage of grown children during their moment of grief. Kate is wracked by guilt, and hands money to every seemingly homeless person. She is also having trouble communicating with her teenaged daughter Abby (Sarah Steele), who is suffering from a bad skin condition.

Kate and Alex have purchased the next-door apartment occupied by crusty ninety-two year old Andra (Ann Guilbert), with plans to expand into her unit when the old woman dies. Andra is cared for by her kind granddaughter Rebecca (Rebecca Hall), a mammogram technician who lives with her more contemptuous sister Mary (Amanda Peet), a skin care therapist. The lives of Alex, Kate and Abby start to intertwine with Rebecca and Mary in unexpected ways.

Death as an avenue for profit is always a queasy topic rich with possibilities. Writer and director Nicole Holofcener finds the damp patches of guilt in this well-constructed and character-rich story, and Please Give is filled with calibrated moments of pleasure along with honest, funny, awkward and sometimes painful human contact.

To assuage her guilt Kate is a one-woman charity, distributing bills to New York's homeless population and then some. Except Kate is much less generous with her daughter Abby, who is desperate for a new pair of jeans, and Holofcener elegantly folds in the unintended consequences of charity that begins outside the home.

Abby's teenage traumas are relatively typical for a white privileged child of wealthy parents, but her angst is also the spark that forges connections with the sister pair of Rebecca and Mary. Her skin condition brings the opportunistic Mary into focus, while the considerate Rebecca offers Abby a comforting bond over dog walking.

Meanwhile the husband and wife team of Kate and Alex appear to be friends and business partners, but perhaps they lost the passion in the gap between his dismissive iciness and her remorseful fretting. Suddenly Alex is flirting with Mary, who is happy to embark on another ill-considered adventure. Meanwhile, Kate's exploration of volunteer opportunities at charity organizations is all kinds of wrong funny.

Please Give demands strong performances to work, and the cast delivers. Rebecca emerges as the pure heart of the film, and Rebecca Hall shines in a role full of selfless commitment. Catherine Keener is also excellent in conveying an exterior of polished professionalism barely concealing gobs of self-loathing.

With the elderly Andra and the grandmother (Lois Smith) of Rebecca's new boyfriend also meddling in the lives of their offspring, Please Give is a candid and clever probe of dynamics between four generations of women.

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Movie Review: The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag (1992)

A comedy thriller, The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag has ambitions as an all-out madcap farce, but is only partially successful.

In a small Missouri town, Betty Lou Perkins (Penelope-Ann Miller) is a mousy and meek librarian, ignored by her co-workers and neglected by her police detective husband Alex (Eric Thal). When a mobster-turned-informant is shot dead in a local motel room, Alex is further immersed in his investigative work. While out walking the dog, Betty Lou stumbles upon the gun used for the murder, picks it up and is soon arrested.

Instead of explaining the circumstances Betty Lou decides this is her moment to be at the centre of attention, and falsely hints that she is guilty of committing the murder, shocking Alex and the whole community. Dropped into a jail cell to await a trial hearing, Betty Lou meets prostitute Reba (Cathy Moriarty), who is full of assertiveness advice. Inexperienced lawyer Ann Orkin (Alfre Woodard) offers to represent Betty Lou, while violent mobster boss Beaudeen (William Forsyth) arrives in town, believing that Betty Lou now holds incriminating tapes.

Directed by Allan Moyle, The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag boasts a terrific cast brimming with talented actresses. Penelope-Ann Miller, Alfre Woodard and Cathy Moriarty are joined by Julianne Moore and Catherine Keener in smallish early career roles. And the acting talent is a good fit for the primary theme of a woman finally deciding to stand up for herself.

Of course Betty Lou chooses the wrong time and the worst possible incident to decide that enough is enough and disrupt the prevailing order of her life. Her actions create the ideal conditions for a high energy screwball comedy, but Moyle's directing and the Grace Cary Bickley script are only partially capable of delivering on the premise. The comedy elements are average, and the violence, courtesy of Beaddeen, veers towards unnecessary extremes of psychotic behaviour.

The film is also hampered by lacklustre talent in the male acting department, Eric Thal an unfortunately bland presence and unable to generate neither chemistry nor authentic intensity. The sparse 89 minutes of running time suggest limitations somewhere in the concept development stage, and overall the film contains the whiff of a glorified made-for-television effort.

But Penelope-Ann Miller is a spark in the middle of Betty Lou's wacky exploits, and her quest for meaningful recognition resonates beyond the film's narrow confines. With or without a gun in her handbag, Betty Lou will demand that her voice be heard.

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Movie Review: Get Out (2017)

A psychological horror film with some elements of humour, Get Out builds some fine tension but then surrenders to a rushed and bloody climax.

Aspiring photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is black, his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) is white, and they are about to embark on a weekend trip to visit her parent for the first time as a couple. Dean and Missy Armitage (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) live out in the suburbs and espouse liberal views, but Chris notices the strange, subdued behaviour of their black groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and black maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel).

Missy is a hypnotist and offers to help Chris quit smoking. He reveals his childhood trauma surrounding his mother's death in a hit and run accident and Missy tricks Chris into an an unsettling experience in the hypnosis chair. Dean and Missy host a weekend gathering for their friends, who all appear to be elderly white people with health problems, including blind arts supporter Jim Hudson (Stephen Root). The one black guest at the party is Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield), whose strange demeanor adds to Chris' anxiety that something is very wrong in this idyllic suburb.

Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Get Out is a compact exercise in peeling away superficial layers of civility to expose evil at play. Riffing on themes from The Stepford Wives but with the extra specter of insidious racism, Get Out enjoys a strong ramp-up, Peele focussing on building cerebral and creepy tension as Chris stumbles onto a not-quite-right world of large homes, white owners and creepy black people. Once the conspiracy takes flight, the film flips to a more gory mode, and the final third is more routine and less interesting.

Get Out works as a metaphor for the dangers of liberal views disconnected from actions, where the soothing spoken words are a cover for dangerous intentions. The film also fits as a summary of the black experience in America, Chris journeying from his supposedly wild urban habitat to the seemingly more cultured suburbs, only to find unimaginable mistreatment hidden within the pretense of advanced civility.

Aesthetically Peele makes frequent and unsettling use of some extreme close-ups, both Catherine Keener as Missy and especially Betty Gabriel as Georgina enjoying some mammoth zoom-ins to loom large over Chris' psyche. Caleb Landry Jones as Rose's slightly unhinged brother Jeremy contributes to the sense of dread.

Daniel Kaluuya is sturdy as Chris, and the horror unfolds through his eyes, expanding from eerie encounters with Georgina to more shocking episodes of mind control and unwanted surgery. The rest of the cast does not stray from the conventional, and Peele flicks a switch rather suddenly to turn the environment and characters from scheming to outright demonic.

Chris' adventure ends with bloody violence and plenty of corpses. The black man did not start this mess, but doubtless he will be held accountable for the resulting carnage.

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Movie Review: Enough Said (2013)

A smart romantic comedy for adults, Enough Said is a prescient journey through the complications of emotional relationships during middle age.

In Los Angeles, Eva (Julia Louis Dreyfus) is a divorced masseuse, close to giving up on finding another fulfilling relationship. Her daughter Ellen (Tracey Fairaway) is about to fly the nest to go to college. Eva accompanies her married friends Sarah and Will (Toni Collette and Ben Falcone) to a party, where she meets poet Marianne (Catherine Keener) and burly television library curator Albert (James Gandolfini). Marianne becomes Eva's new client and then a good friend. Meanwhile Albert and Eva go out on a date and a romance blossoms.

Albert shares custody of his daughter Tess (Eve Hewson), who is also college bound. Albert and Eva share many other scars of middle age, and their relationship becomes serious, while Eva becomes Marianne's confidant. Meanwhile, with Ellen distancing herself from her mother in anticipation of leaving the house, Ellen's friend Chloe (Tavi Gevinson) surprisingly starts to spend more time with Eva. Just when Eva is adjusting to the new dynamics in her life, she is shocked to learn that Albert is Marianne's ex-husband, and Eva can't resist prodding Marianne to talk about all of Albert's faults.

Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said thrives on a sly streak of authenticity. A preponderance of richly drawn characters allows the film to explore multiple perspectives, creating a rich tapestry of connections grounded in reality. The movie features its fair share of coincidences and dramatic foibles to juice the comic moments. But within the context of the romantic comedy genre, Holofcener succeeds in creating a refreshingly original narrative, filled with real people muddling through life while tending to the scars created by past mistakes. The film is always funny, sometimes sorrowful, and consistently emotionally honest.

Themes of lingering pain and resentment, the awkwardness of dealing with ex-partners, and the fear that stalls a second commitment permeate through the story. The three central characters are dealing with the same post-relationship issues, but using different methods. Albert has retreated into an I-am-who-I-am mode unwilling to bend to what a woman may want to imagine him as. The excessively cultivated Marianne is not through sticking and twisting knives into her ex-husband's back, and needs a friend who listens. Eva is generally at the resigned stage, almost over her ex-husband and still willing to give romance a chance, but her emotional quest may be more about filling the void about to be created by her daughter Ellen's departure.

The multitude of characters worth caring about is startling. Holofcener works hard to surround Eva with people who ring true even in small roles. In relatively brief appearances, Eva's daughter's friend Chloe and Albert's daughter Tess emerge as intriguing young adults with enough personality and background to deserve their own films. The tension between Tess and Ellen is also tantalizing, raising questions about the roles of daughters, mothers and friends as children push through boundaries to become young adults. Meanwhile Eva's friends Sarah and Will may be the last married couple in Los Angeles, and the cracks in their union propagate outwards in real time.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus rises above her television quirkiness and succeeds in transforming her slightly- ditzy-but-trying-hard persona to the big screen. In his penultimate screen role before his untimely death, James Gandolfini combines pathos, sensitivity and burly masculine pride to create a most unusual romantic lead.

Prior entanglements can potentially torpedo future happiness opportunities. Enough Said is about the search for a delicate balance where the past is neither ignored nor allowed to dictate.

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Movie Review: The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

An uproarious sex comedy, The 40 Year-Old Virgin hits all its targets by mixing wild humour with the gentle awkwardness of a man struggling to make the jump into full adulthood.

Andy (Steve Carell) is a lonely 40 year old, living on his own and working in the stockroom of a technology superstore. Andy is into comic books and toy collectibles, and has no social life to speak of. His work colleagues include David (Paul Rudd), still not over a failed relationship, Jay (Romany Malco), a loud and fast-talking ladies man, and Cal (Seth Rogen) who is smarter than he looks and in search of kinkier experiences. When Andy's co-workers find out that he is still a virgin and has almost given up looking for a meaningful relationship, they set about trying to help him.

Andy is hesitant but starts to take the advice of his new friends. Predictably, most of the experiences end in disaster. However, he does slowly gain some confidence to interact with women, and local business owner Trish (Catherine Keener) catches his eye. Bookstore clerk Beth (Elizabeth Banks) is also a potential partner, while Andy's boss and store manager Paula (Jane Lynch) graciously offers her services to help him with his predicament. But Andy gathers up his courage and embarks on a relationship with Trish without revealing to her that he is a virgin, and also gets to know her teenaged daughter Marla (Kat Dennings), herself grappling with upcoming initial sexual experience issues.

Directed by Judd Apatow, who co-wrote with Carell, The 40-Year Old Virgin is a laugh-fest driven both by characters and situations. Andy and his friends are just on the right side of believable as underachieving men searching for new ways to remain irresponsible, keeping the film away from farce. The comic set-pieces also maintain a toehold in the realm of the possible, from Andy receiving a chest waxing to joining Marla at a pregnancy prevention clinic.

The wilder moments are more hit and miss. A highlight is Andy, whose driving skills are limited to a bicycle, getting trapped into a car ride from hell with a very drunk driver in the form of club girl Nicky (Leslie Mann, Mrs. Apatow in a memorable and nonchalantly oblivious turn). Not as funny is a truncated and unnecessary encounter with a transvestite prostitute.

Amidst the mayhem, the film manages to explore the role of sex in a relationship from the male perspective. An annoying hindrance, an absolute necessity, a dangerous distraction, and the ultimate expression of commitment, sex proves to be important in all the ways that Andy feared and craved. Meanwhile, David, Jay and Cal also get their own dose of sexual education, and not in any way that they expected.

Steve Carell is crucial to the film's success, and his performance as Andy nails the essentially likable man drifting into a life of loneliness due more to inertia than any actual hang-up. Catherine Keener emerges as the perfect counterpart, a woman who has had perhaps too much life happen to her too soon, and is happy to go slow with a man who clearly needs to.

The supporting cast is rich in comic talent, with Apatow frequently deploying them in an undercurrent of dangerous mischievousness rather than brazen madcappery.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin is prodded out of his comfort zone and onto the path of responsibility in an adult world. And it's a laugh-out-loud transition, worth the years of waiting in unintended abstinence.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Catherine Keener

All movies starring Catherine Keener and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

About Last Night...(1986)

The Gun In Betty Lou's Handbag (1992)

Out Of Sight (1998)

8mm (1999)

Being John Malkovich (1999)

Lovely & Amazing (2001)

Simone (2002)

Adaptation (2002, cameo)

The Interpreter (2005)

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Capote (2005)

Friends With Money (2006)

Into The Wild (2007)

Please Give (2010)

Trust (2010)

Begin Again (2013)

Enough Said (2013)

Captain Phillips (2013)

Get Out (2017)

Sicario: Day Of The Soldado (2018)

The Adam Project (2022)

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