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.

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Movie Review: Life Itself (2018)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Dan Fogelman  

Starring: Oscar Isaac, Annette Bening, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Cooke, Samuel L. Jackson  

Running Time: 117 minutes  

Synopsis: The story is told in multiple ultimately inter-connected chapters across many time periods, all revolving around themes of love, death, and life's inherent unpredictability. 

• In New York, Will (Oscar Isaac) is grieving the loss of his wife Abby (Olivia Wilde), and reveals their love story in sessions with his therapist (Annette Bening).
• Dylan (Olivia Cooke) suffered multiple losses during her childhood and was raised by her grandfather (Mandy Patinkin). Now in her early twenties, she is a rebellious teenager angry at the world.
• In Spain, Javier (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) labours in the olive groves of land owner Saccione (Antonio Banderas). Javier marries Isabel (Laia Costa) and they have a son, but a family trip to New York undermines their happiness.
• Rodrigo (Àlex Monner) is a foreign student in New York, where he has a casual relationship with Shari (Isabel Durant) before meeting the love of his life.

What Works Well: Writer and director Dan Fogelman crafts an intricate multi-generational drama about the quirks of fate and the small moments that make a big difference across decades. A bus accident connects the stories in a split-second of joint inattention, but sorrow and loss are the seeds of birth and renewal as the human spirit carves pathways around tragedy. The fragmented structure creates an engaging puzzle-like milieu, and the impressive ensemble cast members find character depth despite sharing the screen time.

What Does Not Work As Well: The foul-mouthed prologue involving Samuel L. Jackson (as himself) is wholly unnecessary. Once the narrative settles, the intended themes lack subtlety, and the sentimentality reaches extreme levels.

Conclusion: Life's standard trajectory is a series of curves.



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Movie Review: Richard Jewell (2019)

A biographical drama about a simple man thrust into the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons, Richard Jewell examines the perils of over-zealousness.

In 1986, Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser) is a mail delivery clerk at an Atlanta law firm. Attorney Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell) shows some compassion towards Richard, who is overweight and awkwardly over-intrusive, but also respectful of government institutions and planning a law enforcement career.

Ten years later Richard remains positive despite being fired from a campus security job for overstepping boundaries. Still living with his mother Bobi (Kathy Bates), Richard secures an Olympic Games security guard position and is assigned to Centennial Park where crowds gather for nightly concerts. FBI agent Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm) and ambitious Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde) are also covering events at the park.

During a concert Richard spots a suspicious package, raises the alarm, then helps move crowds away. The bomb explodes, causing casualties, but Richard's actions save lives. Initially hailed a hero, the FBI soon suspect Richard is the bomber with a personal glory motive. The suspicions are leaked to Kathy and she splashes the story on the newspaper's front page, turning Richard's life into a living hell. He reaches out to Watson, the only lawyer he knows, for help.

Based on real events, Richard Jewell is the tragedy of a well-meaning ordinary man caught in a maelstrom. Written by Billy Ray and directed by Clint Eastwood, the film maintains focus on Jewel, revealing a kind if slightly tactless personality, always seeking to serve even if his methods veer towards pushy. He achieves a moment of genuine heroism; it's snatched from him by officious incompetence.

Richard displays a life-long streak of over-eagerness. But the damage is caused by the toxic combination of an incompetent investigation adopting underhanded tactics, the unconstrained ambition of a newspaper willing to reveal the name of a suspect with no corroboration, and finally senseless media hordes respecting no boundaries and engaging in character assassination and conviction by innuendo before Jewell is even charged (he never was). 

The FBI's agent Tom Shaw is a composite, and Eastwood skips past the agency's detective work beyond suspecting the wrong man. Kathy Scruggs is the real journalist who ran with the story based on a leak, and here she deploys naked seduction in pursuit of a career-making story.

At 129 minutes, this is a weighty drama, and the pacing falters after the cloud of suspicion settles on Bobi's house. The subsequent defensive actions and fight-backs are orchestrated by lawyer Watson Bryant as Richard takes a back seat, his respect for law and order rubbing against the government-instigated wrath against him. But thanks to an elegant Paul Walter Hauser performance, Richard Jewell enshrines the legacy of a man who did right, only for others to fumble their responsibilities.

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Movie Review: Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

A wild blend of western and science fiction, Cowboys And Aliens successfully pays homage to both genres with an engrossing story and plenty of spirited characters.

A man later identified to be outlaw Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of the desert, wounded, with total memory loss and a strange metal gauntlet affixed to his wrist. He makes his way to the town of Absolution, where he meets the preacher Meacham (Clancy Brown), Doc (Sam Rockwell) and his wife Maria (Ana de la Reguera).

Jake also tangles with the no-good Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), attracting the attention of Sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine) and Percy's father Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), a powerful cattleman who control the town. Also hanging around Absolution is the mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde), who seems to take a special interest in Jake and his gauntlet.

Just as Taggart is bundling off Jake and Percy into a prisoner wagon, Absolution is attacked by alien spacecraft that bomb the town and snaggle victims, with Taggart, Maria and Percy among those abducted. Jake's gauntlet turns into an energy weapon and he is able to shoot down one of the jets. The alien pilot escapes on foot, prompting Jake, Woodrow, Doc and Ella to set off in pursuit. Meanwhile Jake starts to have flashbacks to his story, involving stolen gold, the love of his life Alice (Abigail Spencer), and being tortured by the aliens.

An adaptation of the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg directed by Jon Favreau, Cowboys And Aliens delivers exactly what the title promises: a raucous adventure featuring all the traditional elements of both old-school westerns and invaders-from-space sci-fi movies. Mushing the two genres was never going to be easy, and with the premise defined and limited by the title and an army of five screenwriters involved in conjuring up a script, the potential for a disaster was high.

But Favreau gets most things right. While the plot is creaky in some areas, particularly in confining the aliens to pure evil and barely explaining their motives, there is more than enough story depth to maintain interest. The film plays with some eternal western themes including greed, atonement, new starts and the individual search for salvation, and starting with the loner-on-a-mission ethos, builds up momentum towards a stronger-together human stand against the invaders.

The film is rich with characters, and a blend of stars and characters actors (many with western pedigrees) help bring the story to life. Daniel Craig effortlessly slips into the mysterious and dangerous quiet stranger persona, and holds the centre of the film together. Harrison Ford is surprisingly effective as the morally suspect cattle baron with a lot to learn. Olivia Wilde's Ella is initially out of place until she proves to exceptionally out of place, stitching the story together.

Favreau captures traditional western vistas in gorgeous colours, and the alien effects are generally good and seamlessly integrated, despite some choppiness creeping in during the more frantic action scenes. The tone is straight-faced and largely serious. For all the temptations to play Cowboys And Aliens as an irony-infused self-aware semi-comedy, the film offers only the slightest undercurrent of humour, mainly derived from the strength of the characters. The respectful attitude is on target: Cowboys And Aliens is a surprisingly straight shooter.

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Movie Review: Third Person (2013)

A multi-story drama and romance, Third Person explores themes of loss and trust. While enjoying a spectacular cast in fine form, the pacing is lackadaisical and the narrative commonalities emerge too late.

The film presents three seemingly unrelated stories set in three different cities. At a Paris hotel, Michael (Liam Neeson) is a Pulitzer Award winning writer working on his latest book. He is separated from his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) as they both deal with a family tragedy. Michael is joined in Paris by his lover Anna (Olivia Wilde), a vivacious aspiring writer. The relationship between Michael and Anna is passionate and tumultuous as she deals with a secret of her own.

In Rome, Scott (Adrien Brody) is an underhanded garment businessman, specializing in stealing and copying haute couture designs. Scott is still grieving a personal loss, and at bar he meets single mom Monika (Moran Atias). She needs money to rescue her daughter from human smugglers, and Scott finds himself irresistibly drawn to her plight.

In New York, Julia (Mila Kunis) is a perpetually late mother desperately working with her lawyer Theresa (Maria Bello) to win back the right to visit her young son. Julia was accused of harming her child, a charge she denies, but her artist husband Richard (James Franco) now has sole custody. Julia accepts a job as a hotel maid to make ends meet and to prove to a court psychologist that she deserves a chance to spend time with her son.

Written and directed by Paul Haggis, Third Person is tantalizingly close to being a good film, but unfortunately lands on the wrong side of emotionally static. The exploration of loss, yearning and the search for healing is worthwhile and handled with sensitivity. But all three stories start saddled with the heavy baggage of guilt, misfortune and grief, and that is where they stay. A few revelations work their way into the narratives, but the overarching cloud of gloom settles in early and never yields.

Given the prevailing lack of forward progression, at 137 minutes the film is too long. Haggis labours towards a final twist knotting the three stories together, but this is a case of genuinely bad timing. The final revelations tumble forth a few minutes before the end credits, and while the resolution is decent, it arrives well past the point of rescue.

Michael's fierce relationship with Anna is the central story, and works its way to the film's one startling moment. Scott's descent into Monika's world is more of a slow burn and a protracted case of who is playing who, and suffers from too much repetition. With more dedicated exposition, both chapters could be imagined as the basis for fine stand-alone films. In contrast Julia's struggle to prove herself worthy of visiting her son is remarkably slight and a relative mismatch in depth and quality.

The cast almost rescues the film, and the one benefit of the long running time is that many of the stars get to sink their teeth into the characters. Neeson and Wilde are most prominent, but Brody, Atias and Kunis all grab the substantive opportunities to shine.

Third Person looks for balms to help heal open wounds of guilt and regain lost trust. Regrettably, the long-winded routes to salvation prove to be tortuously dour.

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Movie Review: Butter (2011)

A political satire, Butter delivers some laughs in a compact package.

In rural Johnson County, Iowa, Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) is the reigning champion of the annual butter sculpting competition, a title he has won for 15 consecutive years. His ambitious wife Laura (Jennifer Garner) takes enormous pride in this achievement. When Bob meekly agrees to step aside and allow others a chance to win, Laura is furious, and decides to enter the competition herself.

Ten-year-old black child Destiny (Yara Shahidi) is finally placed in a stable home with loving foster parents Ethan (Rob Corddry) and Jill Emmet (Alicia Silverstone). She discovers a hidden talent for butter sculpting, and enters the competition as Laura's only serious competition. Meanwhile, a despondent Bob enjoys the services of stripper/hooker Brooke (Olivia Wilde), but they are interrupted before Brooke is paid. She sets out to get what is rightfully hers, resulting in an unusual relationship with Laura and Bob's daughter Kaitlin (Ashley Greene).

A satire directed by Jim Field Smith, Butter may or may not be a reimagining of the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, where an upstart black candidate rose from nowhere to challenge a high-strung entitled woman. Butter also may or may not be more broadly about the obsessive battle between haves and haves-nots for supremacy over something that does not matter very much.

Either way, this is an entertaining little film, clocking in at 90 minutes, poking away at the cultural divide in the United States. Laura and Bob represent tradition and the elite, and their art work recreates moments of religion and culture (The Last Supper, the Kennedy assassination) that matter to the old definition of the middle class. Destiny, now nurtured by a liberal white family, is much more instinctive and visceral, her sculptures speaking to the black experience and the suffering of the disadvantaged.

The irony of Laura, who has everything, feeling threatened to her core by Destiny, who has nothing, is an apt reflection of the politics of fear.

The script by Jason Micallef throws enough wacky moments and characters at the screen to diffuse any singular focus, and the sub-story involving Brooke (a sex partner for the straying husband of the candidate sounds familiar) and Kaitlin is irreverent enough to just about work.

Jennifer Garner (who co-produced) plays the highly strung Laura with full naked ambition and no irony whatsoever, a woman blinded by a love of power, willing to do anything to retain her status, and utterly oblivious to her privilege. Olivia Wilde powers through the film like a buzzsaw, the fantasy smart and resourceful prostitute more than willing to jump over the tracks to be acknowledged for her services to society. Hugh Jackman has a small role as Laura's old flame, a man she summarily uses to keep her campaign on track.

By pretending that a small town butter sculpting competition actually matters, Butter never takes itself seriously. At the end of the day, it all melts away for another year.

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Movie Review: The Words (2012)

A drama about the thin line between truth and fiction, The Words is a finely crafted story of success, guilt and self-justification.

Celebrated author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is delivering a reading of his latest bestselling novel The Words in front of a live audience. The book is about young New York-based author Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), who achieves overnight success when his short novel becomes an unexpected literary hit.

For many years Rory and his wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) had struggled on meagre incomes, waiting for his career to take off, but Rory experienced nothing but rejections. After they honeymoon in Paris, Rory stumbles upon an old typewritten manuscript in an old satchel bag. Dora mistakes it for his work, he claims it as his own, and it turns into his big break. But the appearance of an old man (Jeremy Irons) threatens Rory's success, while at the reading event, young literary student Daniella (Olivia Wilde) tries to seduce Clay into revealing the true meaning behind The Words.

Co-directed and co-written by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, The Words is a clever story within a story within a story, with the multiple layers revolving around the creative process of putting words onto paper. The fictional Rory is the film's fulcrum, the manuscript he finds hides an old and deeply personal Parisian family tragedy of love found and lost, and the author Clay is the creator of both Rory's dilemma and the discovery that makes him famous.

Klugman and Sternthal jump around in time and alternate between the fictional world of Rory, the old man's haunting background and Clay's here-and-now reality, and easily manage to keep all three interlaced stories coherent. With one established author, one emerging author and one writer who never was, the film tackles several worthwhile themes, and poses some piercing questions about what constitutes success, the value of owning an experience, and the various guises of inspiration.

Rory feels he did not earn his fame and is undeserving of the accolades, and guilt will haunt him as he strides to the forefront of the literary world. The words he wrote are not his own, but they did fall into his laptop, unclaimed. The old man has to contend with his bittersweet experiences, hitherto only living within him, gaining widespread and unexpected exposure. And Clay conceives of this story perhaps as a mechanism to cleanse his soul, Daniella representing his interrogator as she probes the secrets underpinning the famous author's success.

Understandably, not all parts of The Words work equally well. The scenes in Paris are bathed in sepia tones and are a touch too emotionally utopian, while the interaction between Clay and Daniella is marginally forced. With Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons all in fine form, the central story of Rory, Dora and the old man is the most powerful, and fortunately this is where the film invests most of its time.

Thought-provoking, nuanced and delicate, The Words shimmer off the page and onto an enjoyable screen experience.

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The Movies Of Olivia Wilde

All movies starring Olivia Wilde and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Next Three Days (2010)

Cowboys And Aliens (2011)

The Change-Up (2011)

Butter (2011)

The Words (2012)

Rush (2013)

Third Person (2013)

Her (2013)

Love The Coopers (2015)

Life Itself (2018)

Richard Jewell (2019)

Don't Worry Darling (2022, also Director)

Babylon (2022)

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

Movie Review: The Change-Up (2011)

A body-switch bromedy, The Change-Up finds some good laughs but also too frequently wades into vulgarity.

In Atlanta, Dave (Jason Bateman) is climbing the corporate ladder at his law firm, reasonably happily married to Jamie (Leslie Mann) and raising three kids, include newly born twins. His best friend from college days is Mitch (Ryan Reynolds), a weed-smoking generally unemployed actor drifting backwards through life while enjoying wild sexual encounters. Dave wonders if he has missed out on the fun part of being a grown-up by settling down too early, and finds Sabrina (Olivia Wilde), his paralegal at the office, extremely attractive.

One night after drinks Dave and Mitch pee into a park statue as they express mutual wishes to experience each other's lives, and they wake up the next morning with their bodies switched. They try to explain the situation to Jamie but she thinks it's a prank. With the fountain in the process of being moved and misplaced by the city, Mitch has to deal with a high stakes deal at the law firm and learning to be a domesticated dad and husband, while Dave has to adjust to having all the time in the world to catch up on all he has missed.

Directed by David Dobkin, The Change-Up applies the tried and tested formula of opposite characters experiencing life from the other side. The grass always looks greener over the fence, and here a family-and-career man changes places with a carefree live-for-the-moment guy, and the results are funny if predictable.

Dobkin and screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore manage to squeeze plenty of laughs along the way. Mitch (in Dave's body) having to deal with the duties of a father with young twin babies gives rise to excellent comic moments. Mitch also wades into the corridors of power at the law firm with a cluelessness that invites farce. Dave (in Mitch's body) has less to do in experiencing life as a jovial bachelor. His encounters with a sex-crazed woman (hiding a secret) and the sleazy underbelly of the acting industry quickly cross over into crude rather than fun territory.

The Change-Up eventually reaches the expected moments of reckoning and self-reflection, both men finding out about themselves by standing outside and experiencing what their social circle sees. But on the way to resolution, the prevailing obsession with crude humour is grinding. Dave and Mitch, in any combination of body residencies, often appear unable to converse about anything other than crass sex, intercourse and genitalia.

Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds have a blast in their respective roles, slipping into opposing personas and playing off each other with ease. Leslie Mann holds the domestic fort as the wife running out of patience with an inattentive husband, then having to navigate around the bewildering behaviour of Mitch in Dave's body. Alan Arkin gets a small role as Mitch's frequently re-marrying dad.

The Change-Up inhabits familiar territory, with the hearty laughs and tiresome juvenile antics co-existing in equal doses.

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Movie Review: Her (2013)

A dazzling commentary on the ever more complex human dependence on computers, Her projects into the near future and finds the emotional lines between people and machines blurring into new realities.

In Los Angeles, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), a creative writer of love letters on behalf of customers who can't be bothered to express their own feelings, is ironically introverted, lonely, and suffering through the final stages of a painful divorce from Catherine (Rooney Mara), his lifelong sweetheart. Theodore's neighbour and aspiring documentary film-maker Amy (Amy Adams) is one of the few people he is comfortable talking to. When he installs a new, interactive and intuitive computer operating system who calls herself Samantha (voice of Scarlett Johansson), she becomes his constant companion, organizing his life, responding to his emotions, and helping him talk through his issues.

After Theodore's evening with a blind date (Olivia Wilde) goes sideways, Samantha starts to gain self-awareness and human-like passion, and the relationship between her and Theodore evolves into love. Amy also goes through a relationship break-up, and befriends her new operating system. As Theodore works through finalizing his divorce, complications in the relationship between man and operating system introduce a new layer of unexpected challenges.

Her is a subtle but brilliant extrapolation of the human-machine interface. Director and writer Spike Jonze takes a Siri-like presence and infuses her with the next level of emotional intelligence, able to read and interpret emotions, and react to them with empathy. Samantha becomes a companion, then a friend, then a lover, engaging in spectacular VOIP sex that Jonze turns into a masterpiece of visual simplicity to emphasize the rich vocal connection.

Samantha's self awareness creates a presence that allows Theodore to invest genuine emotions into a machine, Jonze tracing the human affinity for attachment to its logical next evolutionary step. Her opens up the question of what is love's true nature, and explores the potential for love to thrive in the absence of physical presence, although Samantha does not stop trying to find innovative ways to manifest herself as a physical, human presence in Theodore's life.

The film moves towards a reawakening hidden inside a relationship breakdown, Samantha proving to be much more astute than even Theodore could imagine. The operating system's mandate is to help, and Samantha not only uncovers Theodore's need to feel again but provides his emotional rescue, reigniting his passion for life.

Joaquin Phoenix is the singular visual focus of the film, most scenes consisting of Theodore conversing with Samantha, many in close-up with minimal movement. Phoenix conveys the sadness of a life at an ebb, stiff in his motions, uncomfortable in his skin, desperately pining for Catherine, his better half and lifelong companion. Jonze makes the most of Phoenix's craggy face, embellished with a robust moustache. Scarlett Johansson provides a voice to get lost in, her performance a rare example of an actress leaving a lasting impression without her character ever appearing on the screen. Amy Adams gets a small but crucial role, providing the parallel clues that other operating systems are busy helping their owners recover from loss in a variety of intricate ways.

With the quirkiness of the near future replacing Japan's cultural uniqueness Her achieves the tender, wistful feel of Lost In Translation, Johansson again playing one part of the essential, soul-saving relationship that can never be. Unconventional and thought-provoking, Her is a love story with byte.

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