Lola Versus (Saturday, June 16, 2012) (57)

I am a big fan of the 2009 film Breaking Upwards, directed by Daryl Wein and co-written by Wein, Zoe Lister-Jones and Peter Duchan. It's a very mature story of the end of young love and the coming to terms with who we are as grown-ups. Now in their second movie, Wein and ZLJ, come back with Lola Versus, which feels at times like a pseudo-sequel to the first film and at other times like a fresher indie romcom.

Lola, played by the magnificent Greta Gerwig (again, Greta, I always say this, but you never do it: call me! I'll make you happy!), is a twenty-something New Yorker who lives with her boyfriend-cum-fiance, Luke (Joel Kannamen). Just before they're gonna get married, he dumps her unexpectedly. She runs to the the arms of her best friends Alice and Henry (ZLJ and Hamish Linklater) who support her through the initial shock of the event. (I say pseudo-sequel, because Upwards really is about the breakup and not so much about the afterwards.)

She starts sleeping with Henry and continues to get questionable advice from Alice. She goes on a few dates with creeps (one of whom is played by Wein in two hilarious sequences) and learns that being alone is not the worst thing in the world, despite her constant feeling that it is. Luke comes back a few times, but she feels betrayed by him and can't reconnect to his new life without her. 

This is a very sweet and funny movie, with clever writing and some good insight into singledom (in New York, at least). It does get a bit sappy and trite at times (particularly in the last scene), but generally is good and entertaining. All the young characters seem to be friendly and people we want to hang out with (that is, aside from deeply wanting to be naked with GG). 

There is really nothing totally magical about this movie, but it is a good romcom that doesn't slip too much in to banal stereotypes about manhattaniana. I like what Wein and ZLJ do - they make these nice, small movies that feel unpretentious, honest and sometimes very funny. This is not as serious and sad as the first film (which I do like a bit more than this one), but it is a good movie.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Friends with Kids (Saturday, March 10, 2012) (26)

The fundamental flaw with Jennifer Westfeldt's Friends with Kids is that it serves no audience, or, rather, it serves an audience who doesn't totally get the jokes its making. In her directoral debut (after writing the 2001 indie comedy Kissing Jessica Stein), Westfeldt presents a film that is really meant for an audience of single, middle-30s, cosmopolitan white people who don't have kids and hate people who do -- those people are known as New Yorkers (everywhere else people get married by 28).

The problem is that the film gets New York so incredibly wrong and is so banal in its judgments that it would only appeal to people who don't live here... or who pay rent here and think 59th Street is waaaaay too far south for them. Westfeldt (who also wrote the script) adds to this a lot of foul-mouthed dialogue to show that this is a young-hearted movie that might upset your parents, about which you can talk with your girlfriends (Carrie, Miranda, Samantha) at brunch... because all young people talk about how they like "tight pussies" (how scandalous!).

Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are best friends who are both serial daters. They love playing around with the hot people they meet and like the freedom of being able to live in the same Riverside Drive rental building (on different floors). They're close with two couples, Ben (Jon Hamm, Westfeldt's own life partner) and Missy (Kristen Wiig, who is barely in the movie) and Leslie (Maya Rudolph, who's working way too much these days) and Alex (Chris O'Dowd, thankfully playing an American). Both couples have babies (or will be having them soon) and are totally boring and square and live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (which is a $77 cab ride away from somewhere in Manhattan... which is impossible and stupid).

Julie and Jason decide to have a baby together as friends and raise the kid together, but not get married and continue to date other people... because, well, it's never really clear. They have a baby and all is great. Jason meets a Broadway chorus girl (played by Megan Fox, one of our greatest actresses) and Julie meets a contractor and divorced dad (played by Edward Burns, who will always just be a contractor in our eyes). Things get a bit dicey, however, when Julie starts to fall for Jason (didn't see that coming!) and he doesn't see her in the same way.

It's all so boring and stupid, so banal and recycled. There's never any chance that they'll do something unexpected. They break up, they get back together... big whoop! I've seen it all before (in When Harry Met Sally, if not in It Happened One Night or any number of screwball comedies from the pre-war era). Westfeldt trades originality and surprise for style... but that style is predicated on the false idea that just saying "fuck" makes something edgy and "realistic". It doesn't -- it makes it garbage that I could have read about on dozens of mommy blogs and Glamour Magazine ("Hello, Vagina, Are You Alive Down There?").

This is a weird pastiche of romantic comedy, screwball comedy and gross-out comedy, but is not really all that romantic, screwball or gross. It's so incredibly safe that it's totally uninteresting. ("Oh! There's that scene when they're all at a ski lodge and Scott and Fox are fucking really loudly -- that's just like when I went skiing with all my friends and there was that couple who fucked so loudly! It's funny because it's true!" Vomit.)

To be unfairly picky, I have to also say that Westfeldt's characterization of New York City living (Manhattan and South Brooklyn) is so completely off it's embarrassing. One unfunny set-up requires Julie to buzz a date into her building... but she lives in a doorman building that wouldn't have a buzzer... because it has doormen. In another scene, Fox talks about how she does eight performances a week in her Broadway show, "and has to be ready to go out of town for other work at a moment's notice." But why? You're on Broadway! Might you have to go out of town to perform in a road company in St. Louis? I'm not sure when the last time Westfeldt lived in New York was, but all the detail feels very stupid, fake and forced.

This desperate movie has the gauzy characteristics of an old-timey comedy, but made in this very contemporary, cynical voice that relies mostly on dirty words to convey naturalism. That style doesn't really change the fact that it's a dull movie with a bunch of painful jokes that are only funny if don't really know why you're laughing. This has a terrible script and is directed equally hamhandedly. There is no subtlety to this film. That wouldn't sell well on the check-out aisle and you might miss the joke or not know exactly when to laugh. How dumb.

Stars: .5 of 4

Blank City (2011) (Wednesday, March 8, 2012) (158)

There are few subjects I like more for documentaries than New York in earlier eras. In Blank City, French director Celine Danhier, looks at the downtown art scene, particularly the culture of filmmakers, in the East Village in the late 1970s and early 1980s -- one of the worst eras in the recent history of New York City.

Following on the heels of the experimental art filmmakers such as Andy Warhol, Jonas Meekas, Jack Smith, Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow, a large group of drug- and alcohol-addled kids started shooting small movies with Super-8 cameras they borrowed, rented or stole. This is the same era and the same group of people who brought you bands like the Talking Heads, Blondie and the Ramones -- a very CBGB-based set who lived somewhere from Avenue C to Bowery and from Houston to 14th Street. The city was broke and dangerous and their films were weird and terrible and amazing.

Dozens of artists, actors and filmmakers from the era are interviewed with clips from many of their movies. Probably the most famous of those people are Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi and Deborah Harry. We see how the movement went from the so-called "No Wave" films, which were rather chaotic and improvised, frequently sexual and about the desolation that surrounded the filmmakers, to the "Cinema of Transgression" of Nick Zedd, Richard Kern and Lydia Lunch (don't worry - I don't know most of these people either), that was more hyper-political and in-your-face. We see how the movement died when the neighborhood started getting nicer again in the late '80s and some of the (better) directors (like Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman) moved on to bigger projects.

This is a really fun and interesting documentary about the very recent past that seems to have been buried as if it took place a century ago. There's a constant sense throughout that despite the fact that New York City was terrible in that era, it was also wonderful. As much as hipsters bitch about how nice and yuppified the city is now, even East Williamsburg is nicer than Alphabet City was then. We probably won't ever see another time when groups of artists could rent lofts to live in for $50 a month... and, sadly, we won't ever again see such an enormous and weird output of art

Stars: 3 of 4

Roadie (Sunday, January, 29, 2012) (4)

Michael Cuesta's last major film, L.I.E. is a very interesting look at suburbia and teen sexuality. His newest film, Roadie, has almost none of the same subtlety and interest. This is a bit unfair, though, as this film also has almost none of the same expectations going in (like I'm kicking a handicapped kid when he's down). It's not a bad movie, but it just doesn't live up to the filmmaker's previous work.

Jimmy (Ron Eldard) is a 40-something guy who has worked for 20-some years as a roadie for the Blue Oyster Cult on their various international tours. He returns to his mother's house in Queens one day after getting fired (finally) and has to face the reality of the total end of his musical dream. He will not become a rock star and will never be discovered. This is the end of the road for him. When he goes into the local bar, he meets Randy (Bobby Cannavale), a bully from his high school days, who is now married to Nikki (Jill Hennessey), his former flame. Life has come to a similar halt for these two, but they seem happy in their mediocrity. Jimmy begins to lie about the direction of his life and reconnect to Nikki, though his true life might come back to bite him.

The tone map for this film would go something like, "sad, pitiful, very sad, sad." I actually like that this never gets very happy and that everything is generally beige and ugly (it's Queens, after all). This is a pretty true picture of life, really, and I like that it's not made prettier than it should be. But still, it's a bit strange to see a movie that really doesn't show much development of the characters nor change in emotions. This is a very thematic and psychologically monotone story and never really develops well. Not that it's bad, but that it's frustrating to experience. I like its realism, but it's not a world I want to spend much time in (real life is hard enough, amaright?!).

Stars: 2.5 of 4

HappyThankYouMorePlease (2011) (Thursday, January 26, 2012) (146)

It's an old story. A guy on a subway train, who is late for a meeting, finds a lost little boy and takes him in, learning more about himself as he teaches the boy things about life and the city. No, this isn't Chaplin's The Kid, nor is it Adam Sandler in Big Daddy. It's HappyThankYouMorePlease, Josh Radnor's pet project that he wrote, directed and stars in.

This is a nice little ensemble comedy about Sam (Radnor), a New York writer who is rather stuck in his life. He meets Rasheen (Michael Algieri) on the subway and all of his friends think he's nuts for not going to the cops to find his family. It seems that Rasheen is a foster kid and is just as happy with Sam as with his foster people. Sam's cousin, Mary Catherine (Zoe Kazan), is an artist and in a rather rocky relationship with her boyfriend and his best friend, Annie (Malin Akerman), has alopecia and works in a law firm where she's hit on by all the nerdy lawyers, despite not having any hair on her head. With Rasheen as the catalyst everyone finds their own happy way.

There's nothing particularly wonderful about this film, but nothing really terrible about it either. It's a movie I've seen a few times already and nothing really fresh at all. The best thing in the film is the discovery of young Algieri, who seems to really have something... but he's a kid and those things are designed to be cute.

I give Radnor credit for writing a movie and casting the beautiful Kate Mara as the romantic love interest. That's a great idea, bro. I'd have done the same, I'm sure!

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Margaret (Friday, December 23, 2011) (124)

I first heard of Margaret when it was playing in a theater in New York in September, I read a scathing review of it and spoke to a friend who told me it was terrible, so I avoided it. Then it appeared on a handful of Best of 2011 lists, so I felt like maybe it was the sort of unusual or difficult movie that I frequently like and that it was only rejected because it didn't fit some prescribed genre specifications. When it was briefly re-released in New York I jumped at the chance to see it. Sadly, it is unusual and doesn't fit any genre specifications... and is pretty terrible.

Some quick back story: Kenneth Lonergan, who wrote and directed You Can Count on Me, which I think is great, wrote this film in 2003 and shot it in 2005 (so says Karina Longworth in her rave review of it from the Village Voice). He then took 6 years to cut the film down to under 150 minutes (it's now 149!!). Apparently he just couldn't do it for a long time. Then there were a few law suits about it (he broke a contract, I imagine the producers wanted out or their money back...). Now it's released. And it's really long.

The idea of the film is that it's about a girl, Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin), who lives on the Upper West Side with her actress mother. Her father lives in LA with his new, younger wife, and she is a bit of a typical, smart, Jewish teenager. She's glib and talks back to adults, she's interested in sex, though generally apprehensive about it, she's precocious because she lives in New York City. At some point she flirts with a bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) who then gets distracted and his and kills a pedestrian.

Feeling guilty about the death, she sets her mind to sue the bus company for the driver's negligence and get money for the pedestrian's family. In the meantime, she flirts constantly with her youngish high school teacher (Matt Damon), has sex with some kid (Kieran Culkin) (I hope they can date sometime so they can be called "Culquin" by the paparazzi!) and becomes friends with a fucking annoying Upper West Side woman who is the friend of the dead lady. There's also a story about her mother who starts dating Jean Reno (who is Colombian in this... whatever) until he dies unexpectedly. The movie is about the lies that surround us on a daily basis and how we have to create stories to manage our lives.

The problem is that there's really no structure to the narrative, it's just a lot of Lisa going around talking to people and making bad decisions. There's no reason huge chunks of this film couldn't have been cut to make it closer to 100 minutes. It's like an abstract painting - sure, sometimes the size and scale of the work is what it's about, but generally a corner of the canvas covered in an abstract design means as much as any other corner, doesn't it? If this film is unbalanced and long and is about how life has no internal logic, then why not make it a shorter version of that? Isn't that what watching movies is about - a director telling you a very specific story?

I found Paquin to be annoying and overdone, mostly struggling through her Paquinese that sounds more southern than New Yawk (and this was made before True Blood was a faint speckle in her Triple-D brassiere). The supporting cast is so chopped up into random half-fragments of scenes that nobody really gets much time to develop or expand on screen. Ruffalo and Damon are pretty good - though they're generally good actors, so that's no surprise.

Mostly this feels like a project that Lonergan started honestly and got too tied up in details, forgetting the basic story he was trying to tell (I'm not sure what that seed was, really). He really just needs a good story/script editor to begin to make it a watchable film. It feels like if he had been asked to start from scratch and rewrite the whole thing, some things would have stayed and some things would have fallen away and we would have been left with a better final film. Instead we have all sorts of random secondary and tertiary stories that really don't mean much, are redundant or confusing.

Stars: 1 of 4

Bill Cunningham New York (Monday, July 11, 2011) (53)

There is a moment in the middle of Richard Press' documentary Bill Cunningham New York, where the eponymous New York Times fashion photographer is at a gala dinner for the New York City Ballet where the organization is honoring billionaire, philanthropists and arch-conservative political stalwart David Koch (a big friend of Lincoln Center). Cunningham is introduced to Koch, shakes his hand and chuckles as he does with most people. For me, this instant gave me a strange feeling, as Koch has in recent months become the most visible money backer of the Tea Party movement and the most significant supporter of tax cutting and government spending cutting in the country (he's one of the most significant backers of the move in Wisconsin to deny teachers their ability to organize). Koch stands for his own wealth and, ultimately, killing the poor (who needs 'em?!). It reminded me of a comment in a Wallace Shawn essay where he says that artists live in mansions that are paid for by their rich neighbors who also live in mansions nearby - and how those neighbors who support their art get rich by paying their employees badly.

But this biodoc is the absolute opposite of anything political or polemical. It is light and fun and floats above the reality of the people on the ground who we see. In it we learn about the life and work of Bill Cunningham, the On The Street photographer for the New York Times Sunday Styles section, a passionate lover of stylish clothes, expensive and inexpensive, worn not just by models on the runway, but by everyday people. He is known by those in the elite society circles who go to black-tie events and by fashion wonks who see his work as the forward-facing reality of what they do (which frequently is backwards- or upwards-facing). (Of course, the people in the film who know Bill are also the people who specifically read the Sunday Styles section, and are also the same people who go to independent documentaries in New York City. This is photographing to the choir, or preaching in the darkroom, or something.)

Cunningham, himself is a wonderful anomaly. He is in early 80s, lives in a tiny studio in Carnegie Hall (well, he's kicked out at the end of the film along with the other 6 permanent residents, all older than dirt), rides a bike around Manhattan taking pictures of street style as he sees it developing. He studies Fashion (with a capital F) at the Paris and New York fashion weeks, and then sees how these designs spill down to the ground and are picked up by normal, non-model people who don't have perfect bodies (or tons of money). He doesn't seem to have any close friends, has no specific sexuality (though when asked, his demurral suggests he's gay... not that it matters much, because he's so asexual), apparently goes to mass on Sundays and almost never eats much. He has almost no "style" in his clothes, doesn't seem to own much of a sport jacket or suit, and mostly just wears one of those blue French street sweeper jackets (that he's buys at the BHV when in Paris every 6 months).

One of the many luminaries who speaks about him (a list that includes Anna Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Iris Apfel, Patrick McDonald and other famous and fashionable New Yorkers... or New Yorkers famous for their fashion) says that he's really just a documentarian of fashion and style. This is a very true thing. We see how what he does is much closer to a sociologist cataloguing the mores and trends of people over time than it is what you would find in Vogue or Elle.

When you see a montage of some of his layouts from over the years, you see that he was able to document that at some point (1985) off-the-shoulder was a popular look, and that at another (1993) black kids wore low-hanging jeans (not to say either of these styles are over today). The whole, "if-aliens-came-to-earth-what-would-they-think" question is very clear. If they saw one of his layouts, they would really have an idea of what clothes New Yorkers (and Parisians) wore during our era.

This is a very fun and sweet documentary and one that makes you laugh and smile a lot. I love movies about New York and this is exactly that. This is not particularly deep, but it is enjoyable. Cunningham is a lovable, weird guy. This is mostly fashion navel-gazing, but it's a fun show.

Stars: 3 of 4