The Grouchy Editor

Greenberg is just a little … off.  You probably know someone like him:  normal on the surface, able to carry on brief conversations with no hint of being a little … askew. But on closer examination, you begin to realize that when God handed out the Facebook pages, Roger Greenberg’s page was the beta version – raw and full of glitches.

Ben Stiller, best known for playing innocuous schlemiels in broad comedies, obviously took this role to enhance his acting chops.  He does well with the part. Greenberg, although neurotic,  is not a caricatured fussbudget, a la Felix Unger, nor is he De Niro’s taxi driver, threatening to snap at the slightest provocation.  No, Greenberg is just a little off-kilter.  He has no real friends and views the world as a hostile place, some of which might be cured by dashing off letters to the editor.

Greenberg, fresh from a stay in a mental hospital, is asked to housesit in L.A. while his brother and family take a vacation trip to Vietnam (yes, Vietnam).  Into his world comes Florence (Greta Gerwig), the brother’s assistant and a woman with issues of her own.  Florence is cute and friendly but goes through life with an invisible “kick me” sign on her back.  Greenberg and the girl have one thing in common:  a remarkable talent for sabotaging their own personal relationships.

Greenberg is a character study with no special effects, car chases, or explosions.  Some critics have commented on the unlikability of Stiller’s character.  To me, Greenberg is not that obnoxious, just mildly irritating and generally intriguing.  When he sits down to pen one of his frequent “consumer complaint” letters – to the cab company, the airline, the newspaper editorial page – he might be anal retentive, but he might also be right.

Gerwig’s downtrodden Florence is also multi-dimensional.  She takes what life hands her and makes the best of it.  What there is of plot in the film hangs on whether or not these two societal fringe-dwellers can find happiness together.  How much you enjoy this movie depends on how much you care about that.   I found that I cared.       Grade:  B

Director:  Noah Baumbach  Cast:  Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Chris Messina, Susan Traylor, Merritt Wever  Release:  2010

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If you live in the city, or near the city, it can be easy to forget that there are multiple Americas.  Hollywood excels at showing us how rich America lives, and that’s where it spends most of its time.  We don’t call our movie capital “Tinseltown” for nothing.  When films do depict the poor, the stories are almost always drug-related, crime-related, and set in the inner city.

Then along comes a film like Winter’s Bone, just to remind us that there are other Americans out there, people sometimes referred to as “poor white trash,” people like 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence).  Ree lives in the Ozark Mountains with her mentally ill mother and two siblings, both of them still children.  When her drug-dealing father abandons the family and puts their ramshackle home up as bail bond, it’s up to Ree to either find him or risk losing the homestead.

Winter’s Bone is worth seeing for atmosphere alone.  Ree’s rural neighbors are all colorful, but flesh-and-blood colorful, not caricatures.  At times, the movie feels less like fictional drama than like an old Charles Kuralt, “On the Road” TV special.  Lawrence, in a breakout performance as the unflinching, tough-as-nails Ree, will probably get Oscar consideration, but she’s matched by sad-eyed John Hawkes, playing her deceptively resourceful uncle.

There is one flaw to this movie, and it affects its overall impact:  The story is slight.   Writer-director Debra Granik builds dramatic tension as Ree hunts for her elusive father, but the payoff is not strong.  That lack of dramatic meat isn’t fatal, but it does prevent a very good movie from becoming a truly great one.       Grade:  B+

Director:  Debra Granik  Cast:  Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Kevin Breznahan, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahunt, Shelley Waggener, Lauren Sweetser, Sheryl Lee  Release:  2010

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Let me propose a little scenario.  You go to the cinema, purchase a ticket, grab some popcorn, and find a seat somewhere in the middle of the theater.  I walk in and sit down right behind you.  You have your buttery popcorn; I have a cattle prod.  Every 10 or 15 minutes, preferably during a quiet scene in the movie, I lean forward and ZAP! you in the ass with my cattle prod.  Then we both resume watching the film, until I decide to ZAP! you again.  When you leave the theater, you tell all of your friends that you went to a scary movie and jumped out of your seat numerous times.

Sound absurd?  To me, my cattle prod and I are just a low-tech version of what filmmakers routinely do to audiences with modern horror flicks.  Case in point: The Crazies.  I counted at least half a dozen moments in which, ZAP!, a hand, face, shadow, or whatever suddenly pops into the frame, accompanied by what sounds like a ton of bricks being dropped onto a piano keyboard, or shrieking violins out of an orchestra pit from hell.  The soundtrack is nothing more than the high-tech equivalent of my cattle prod, a cheap way to make you jump in lieu of genuine fright.

In the case of The Crazies, that’s too bad, because as horror films go, director Breck Eisner’s movie is pretty good.  In fact, it’s much better than most films in the genre. Of course, the bar is set so low for horror movies that you can take that praise for what it’s worth.  But The Crazies is well directed and edited with an eye for tension. Also, the actors actually seem like real people.

I think we are overdue for a horror-movie renaissance.  The last time that occurred was in the 1970s, and the genre seems to rejuvenate itself every 40 years or so, and so the time is ripe.  Great scare films seem to have one thing in common:  We are intrigued by the characters, not just the situation.  Think of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or Linda Blair in The Exorcist.  When I think back on The Crazies, I’ll recall it as a decent horror movie — but mostly I’ll think of cattle prods.         Grade:  B-

Director:  Breck Eisner  Cast:  Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson, Danielle Panabaker, Christie Lynn Smith, Brett Rickaby  Release:  2010

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but if you set out to satirize something, shouldn’t your movie be a bit smarter and wittier than whatever it is you’re satirizing?

I’m old enough to remember the 1980s (vaguely) and its films, and one thing I recall is that comedies back then didn’t rely exclusively on flatulence, bodily fluids, arrested development, and foul-mouthed mean-spiritedness for 99 percent of their humor.  Granted, a lot of the ‘80s movies were garbage — but they didn’t smell as bad as Hot Tub Time Machine.

God knows the ‘80s look awful enough in this film.  From the dreadful sitcoms on background TVs to the stick-your-finger-in-an-electrical-socket hairdos, it’s easy to see why the four characters who get magically transported back to 1986 want so desperately to return to the present.  Not so easy to understand is why John Cusack, an actor I once admired, now seems to be in a race with Robert Downey, Jr. to see who can taint his acting legacy the fastest.  Faring better than Cusack is gentle-giant Craig Robinson, who is featured in the few scenes in Machine that are genuinely funny.

Time-machine comedies can work.  For evidence of that, you need only go back to, well, the 1980s (Back to the Future).  But as I stared, glassy-eyed and foggy-brained, at this mess of a movie on DVD, I was happy that I had my own time machine – the fast-forward button on my remote.      Grade:  D-

Director:  Steve Pink  Cast:  John Cusack, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Sebastian Stan, Lyndsy Fonseca, Crispin Glover, Chevy Chase, Lizzy Caplan, Collette Wolfe, Crystal Lowe, Jessica Pare  Release:  2010

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If you plan to read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, here’s a piece of advice:  Don’t feel bad about skipping certain chapters to get to the good parts.  The novel deserves its reputation as great literature, no question, but you have to be a dedicated military historian – or have the patience of a saint – to suffer through the lengthy passages that Tolstoy devotes to Napoleon’s march through Russia.

Similarly, much of The Last Station, a movie about Tolstoy’s final days in 1910, is an exercise in frustration.  The plot centers on a battle over the old man’s will.  Should Tolstoy’s considerable fortune go to his wife, Sofya (Helen Mirren), or to the Russian people, as advocated by Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) and the idealistic Tolstoyans?

I’m no Russian historian, but if we are to believe events as played in The Last Station, it seems to me that none of them were deserving of an inheritance.  Chertkov is presented as a mustache-twirling blackguard; Sofya, though charming, is not exactly a needy peasant girl.  She lives in the lap of luxury, and her self-serving “suicide” attempt (in front of a crowd of potential rescuers) is not endearing.  She is a materialistic woman, and Tolstoy himself is either naïve or misguided.  In short, there is no one to really root for in this story.

The filmmakers intend that we find James McAvoy and Kerry Condon, as young lovers who parallel old-timers Leo and Sofya, appealing enough to cheer for, but they are an afterthought to the main plot.  The film belongs to Mirren and Plummer.  They were both Oscar-nominated, and it’s amusing to see them joust.  But not amusing enough to overcome a frustrating script.         Grade:  B-

Director:  Michael Hoffman  Cast:  James McAvoy, Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, Paul Giamatti, Kerry Condon, Anne-Marie Duff  Release:  2009

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Pity the poor Baby Boomers.  … OK, OK, so screw the Boomers.  Boomers, as they never tire of reminding us, gave us the civil rights movement and The Beatles.  Of course, they also gave us skyrocketing divorce rates and the breakup of the American family, but hey, let’s not talk about that.

Every generation has its own movie stars, and none is more emblematic of the Boomer than Michael Douglas.  Little Boomers once sprawled on their parents’ living-room floors and watched young Douglas on TV as Steve Keller, solving crime on The Streets of San Francisco.  Later, Boomers moved out of the house and discovered fun and adventure with Douglas in Romancing the Stone.  But the Boomers and Kirk Douglas’s boy also had a serious side.  They took on environmental issues with The China Syndrome and confronted divorce in The War of the Roses.  Alas, in the 1980s, Boomers tired of their endless good deeds, and Douglas’s Gordon Gekko taught everyone that “greed is good” in Wall Street.

So now, as the golden years approach, what does the iconic Douglas have to say in Solitary Man?  Nothing very good.  Apparently, you can “have it all” – just not all at once.  Ben Kalmen (Douglas) is an auto dealer, pushing 60 and finding his life on the skids.  Kalmen’s health is declining, his business is ruined by scandal, and chasing tail isn’t as easy as it once was.  He has managed to alienate his own family in his relentless pursuit of the fountain of youth.  But you’re only as old as you feel, right Ben?

The final shot in Solitary Man is pure gold.  Kalmen must make a choice between something solid and reassuring, or something more in keeping with the Boomer mantras of free love and self-expression.  Which one should he choose?  Don’t ask me.  I’m a Boomer, myself, so how would I know?         Grade:  A-

Directors:  Brian Koppelman, David Levien  Cast:  Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary-Louise Parker, Jenna Fischer, Imogen Poots, Jesse Eisenberg, Olivia Thirlby, Richard Schiff, Anastasia Griffith  Release:  2010

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