Movie Review: Killer Joe (2011)

A raw crime drama, Killer Joe takes pleasure wallowing in humanity's sewer. The twisted plot offers plenty of perversions before unravelling.

In Dallas, Chris Smith (Emile Hirsch) owes money to drug dealers. He conspires with his dimwitted father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church) to hire police detective "Killer" Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), who moonlights as an assassin-for-hire, to kill Ansel's ex-wife. Her insurance policy pays out $50,000 to her daughter Dottie (Juno Temple), a naive young woman and victim of child abuse. After paying Killer, the plan is for Chris, Ansel and Dottie to share the money, but then Ansel insists his current wife Sharla (Gina Gershon) also gets a cut.

Joe takes a liking to Dottie, and in lieu of receiving his $25,000 fee up-front, he demands Dottie as a "retainer". With his sister now a sex slave and Joe making himself comfortable in the home of Ansel and Sharla, Chris starts to have doubts about the whole plot, but much worse is to come.

Luxuriating in the grime of immoral behaviour, Killer Joe aims for Coen brothers shadings. Tracy Letts wrote the script based on his own play, and William Friedkin directs with one eye towards sly humour and the other firmly fixed on extremes of depravity. With the slime glistening under the Texas skies, Killer Joe promises much and at least for a while delivers fine moments of white trash artistry

The Smith family are mired in poverty, stupidity and the pursuit of lost causes. Ansel at least knows he is dim and is therefore one step ahead of Chris, who is still awakening to his limitations. Sharla is just looking for a meal ticket and a roof over her head, and for now, Ansel will do. Which leaves Dottie as the only character worth caring for, a naive, pitiful young woman, essentially sold into sexual slavery by her brother and father. By the time Chris decides he ought to maybe rescue his sister, the damage is done.

Killer Joe struts into this family sniffing easy opportunities first for money then for free sexual favours. He is much smarter than Chris and Ansel, but also much more nefarious. And when his worst tendencies surface in the third act, Killer Joe unfortunately stumbles and falls. Letts and Friedkin settle for a stagebound single-set climax, then go looking for extremes of behaviour (involving fried chicken) for maximum shock value. The gambit misfires, the search for cheap notoriety sacrificing the drama's sharp edges.

Matthew McConaughey cruises through the film in icy arrogance mode, Emile Hirsch compensating with frantic desperation. Thomas Haden Church finds the necessary open-mouthed imbecility. Gina Gershon and Juno Temple are asked to do most of the heavy lifting, both actresses displaying courage in physically humiliating roles.

Killer Joe earns head-shaking stares, but when the drama is overrun by theatrics, it's time to look away.



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Movie Review: Sideways (2004)

A tender yet funny drama about middle-aged men dealing with life's disappointments, Sideways excels as a quest for joy when all options for happiness appear exhausted.

Failed writer Miles (Paul Giamatti) and his friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a has-been actor, head out for a week-long trip to California's wine country to celebrate Jack's upcoming wedding to Christine. Miles is broke, lonely, and deeply depressed due to his divorce two years prior, and his lack of success in getting his book published. Meanwhile, Jack is not really sure he wants to get married, and is more interested in having sexual flings than tasting wine.

Miles and Jack settle at a motel amidst all the wineries. At the Hitching Post restaurant, they connect with waitress Maya (Virginia Madsen), who vaguely knows Miles from his previous trips and is herself nursing scars from a recent divorce. At a local winery, they also connect with server Stephanie (Sandra Oh), and Jack is immediately attracted to her. Miles and Maya start a tentative courtship based on their mutual love of wine, while Jack and Stephanie engage in a passionate affair. But with plenty of deception and half-truths generated by Jack's selective interpretation of the truth, trouble lies ahead for both men.

Written and directed by Alexander Payne, Sideways finds humour in the ordinariness of middle age pathos. The film honours the achievement of nothing where many men wallow, as both Miles and Jack have little to show for lives half lived except failed attempts at happiness and false expectations of a better future. The film stays focused on the men, their fading hopes and divergent attitudes towards the future, as Miles is weighed down by the past while Jack is intent on living for today.

Despite the odds they find suitable mates in wine country. Maya is just as emotionally scarred as Miles but is handling it better, while Stephanie is enjoying a life of carefree adventure. The relationships take on the colours of the men, as Miles and Maya proceed slowly and carefully, Jack and Stephanie rush into physical intimacy with wild abandon, and the outcomes carry echoes from the past into the future.

Payne's writing is stellar, and the film stands on the shoulders of the sturdy yet complex friendship Payne creates between Miles and Jack. Although a study in contrasts, the foundations of the relationship are clear: Miles is downbeat but smart, Jack is a dense optimist. They complement each other, and both are at crossroads in life where they need each other, warts and all. Miles needs Jack's encouragement to have any chance to move past his depression, and Jack needs Miles as a logic check against his impending marriage. Miles can't always trust himself because of his depression, and he wonders how much he can trust Jack, who is, after all, an actor, albeit a fading one.

The film uses wine as shorthand for depth of sophistication, if not exactly intellect. Wine is portrayed as a tragic ending worth celebrating, the more convoluted the plight of the fragile grape, the more worthwhile the taste. Wine and whine are also companions, Miles' endless laments about his failure in love, life and publishing matched only by his eloquent descriptions of all things related to wine and winemaking.

In the two lead role, Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church create an enduring pair of friends. Giamatti has never been better, and in Miles finds the perfect role to suit his persona: cerebral but flawed and weighed down by luggage of his own making. Church is the perfect foil, and gives Jack a bounciness stemming from an inability to admit that with fading looks and creeping age, Jack's bright future as an actor is firmly behind him. Virginia Madsen turns Maya into a rich, complex red, while Sandra Oh mimics an in-your-face blast of popping champagne.

Sideways finds the sorrow and the laughs that come when forward momentum is well and truly lost, life starts drifting sideways, and it is suddenly apparent that for now, sideways is better than backwards.

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Movie Review: Easy A (2010)

A high school comedy that cleverly tones down the raunchiness in favour of wit, Easy A has a lot going for it: a bright premise, a likable Emma Stone, an astute commentary on promiscuity, and lots of laughs.

Olive Penderghast  (Stone) is a generally anonymous high school student. Trying to impress her flashier friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka), Olive lies and pretends that she has slept with a college student. Immediately the news spreads throughout the school and she gains an unwanted reputation as a tramp. Among the horrified classmates is Marianne (Amanda Bynes), the leader of a small group of strictly religious students. Marianne condemns Olive's behaviour but takes on the mission of leading her back to the right path.

Instead of listening to anything that Marianne has to say, Olive decides to put her fake reputation to good use: at a house party she pretends to have energetic sex with the gay Brandon (Dan Byrd), to put a stop to the bullying directed his way. Her notoriety as a slut enhanced, Olive finds herself branded as an adulteress, and finds her life mimicking the classic novel The Scarlett Letter, that she happens to be studying in the English class of Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church). Olive starts to dress the part, and to cash in: loser boys start paying her to spread rumours that she slept with them, to help overcome their geeky images.

Despite not actually having had sex with anyone, Olive's high school life spirals totally out of control, and she finds herself embroiled in a marital sex scandal between Mr. Griffith and his wife (Lisa Kudrow). She needs to find a way to put a stop to all the rumours and regain some normalcy.

Easy A has fun asking all sorts of questions: what's the difference between reputation and reality? Is a promiscuous reputation worth maintaining? How long can a chain of lies hold together, and what happens when one lie too many overwhelms the entire structure?

Director Will Gluck brings the script by Bert V. Royal to life with a light touch and an emphasis on humour rather than the more common over-the-top bawdiness that has come to define the genre. Easy A avoids the cliches and tones down the jokes about body fluids, and instead achieves an irreverent, self-dismissive and breezy vibe perfectly suited to the emotional chaos that often accompanies the high school experience. At times, the film tilts into choreographed operetta territory, with repeated shots of exaggerated emotions sweeping through the school and all the students stopping to stare at Olive. It's flashy technique, but not always necessary.

Emma Stone emerges from the turmoil of high school travails with a burgeoning reputation as an emerging star with a deft comic touch, capable of carrying a film through a winning combination of natural appeal and self-depreciation. With the secondary cast filled out by the likes of Malcolm McDowell as the school principal, Stanley Tucci as Olive's dad and Patricia Clarkson as her mom, Easy A has quirky performances hiding behind every corner.

By delivering a fresh and engaging course on navigating the sexual waters of high school life, Easy A is a solid B+.

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