tully

With Young Adult, Director Jason Reitman, screenwriter Diablo Cody and actress Charlize Theron proved a powerful trio in enacting a sharply comic, delicately constructed, and deeply conflicted character study. Their Tully reunion proves just as brazen and intimate. Marlo (Theron in another raw, lived-in turn) has just delivered her third child, and is grappling with the sleepless energies of taking care of her and the needs of her other two. She has minimal support from husband Drew (Jay Livingston) who's off working most days and playing video games with a headset on. It's somewhat disarming to see the relationship itself not be the central conflict; the picture is more interested in Marlo's inner turmoil. When her new "night nanny" Tully (effectively portrayed by Mackenzie Davis) appears on her front doorstep, the film seems to be moving toward Marlo's rebirth with the help of Tully and Marlo's own state of mind. "What's wrong with your body?" Marlo's young daughter probes. The movie doesn't fall for the cutesy pratfalls of most mommy comedies.

Cody's vivid dialogue, peppered with details and slyly spun metaphors, and the structure of the movie itself, wrestles more with how motherhood can inflict a physical and emotional toll on the mother. The movie goes deep into this, so deep, we feel as if we are sinking within the drab, darkly-lit settings and the dreamy water imagery. The soundwork and Stefan Grube's impressive editing create the jagged rhythms of Marlo's life and also enhance the details of Reitman and Cody such as in punctuating the surreal absurdness of both children's television and trashy adult reality shows like "Gigolos." When we watch Marlo and Tully drive back to Marlo's early twentysomething Bushwick party days, with a chopped-up blitz of Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual setting the scenes, I felt a sense of Scorsese's dreamworld logic in After Hours, where what should be a satisfying release, becomes instead a frustrating, unfulfilling night-out. In the haze, the film ultimately finds its satisfying, tender, full-circle note between mother and son. ***

-Jeffery Berg

some 2013 leftovers

Too soft and contrived to be a starkly realistic drama and too natural and slowly paced to be a giddy fantasy film, there isn't much of a market in this era for a movie like Labor Day. I embraced it as an old fashioned weepie. Based upon a novel by Joyce Maynard, it's a story of 13-year old Henry (Gattlin Griffith) and his depressed, agoraphobic mother Adele (Kate Winslet) who take in convicted murderer on the lam (Josh Brolin) into their shambling house.

This is a departure from director Jason Reitman's snappier, caustic previous efforts (Juno, Up in the Air, and my favorite: Young Adult).  The result didn't pay off with audiences or critics, but still shows Reitman's ador for taking his time with both character development and distinct visuals as the film glows with sweaty skin and sun dappled trees and an acute attention to 1987 details (yay to those magazines and 80s stepmom glasses!).  For some reason, perhaps because it's sort of a "woman's movie" (though not really a feminist one), critics seem to bash flicks like this for its contrivances but gladly accept all the shape-shifting nonsense of today's superhero sagas.  Can't we allow our contemporary dramas a little room for artificiality too without all the hand-wringing?  Because the three excellent actors are so within their roles and we stick around their house so much, I couldn't help but feel a kinship with their characters as the movie slowly baked, even when it swerves into pie-making schmaltz. ***

Philomena was another pleasant surprise. Far more intricate and complex than I expected, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope's snappy script follows the story of burned-out reporter Martin Sixsmith and a woman who was forced to give up her child as a young girl in a strict nunnery. Elevating some of the cringey lines (old people saying sexual things! hardy har har), Judi Dench is quite commanding and delightful in the lead in a beautifully detailed performance. Her end scene in particular is a smoldering tearjerker. The movie is enhanced by a really stunning, delicate score by Alexandre Desplat (one of his best in a slew of solid works he's composed this past decade) featuring a haunting carousel motif reminiscing the night Philomena lost her virginity and an enchanting main theme fashioned in minor and major keys.  A moving, sometimes funny picture, deftly executed by director Stephen Frears, whose nimble work is often much more than what meets the eye. The movie is also better than Harvey Weinstein's marketing campaign (and its garish yellow poster!) which controversially led the real Philomena to meet the Pope. The movie indeed seems like perfect bait for an older generation who may finally be moving past their twentieth century hangups. ***1/2

Despite its interesting story of a Charles Dickens' (Ralph Fiennes) secret love affair with 18-year old Nelly Turnan (Felicity Jones), The Invisible Woman is drab with pittery dialogue and thinly sketched characters. Under weak sunlight, Jones does a lot of staring out longingly and strolling about in sumptuous costumes (the work of Oscar-nominated Michael O'Connor); though she tries her teary-eyed best to assemble an emotional pull in the film's final scenes, Fiennes' hazy film-making doesn't make much happen.  The movie's a slog but so over-edited, with distracting constant cuts of shaky shots and sudden bursts of a frenetic string score (by Ilan Eshkeri) both of which reveal little.  This is the second directorial effort of Fiennes and like his dreary Coriolanus, this movie never sparks much life, and wallows in a sort of watery gray bog. **


-Jeffery Berg

all dressed up with nowhere to go

Young Adult essentially riffs off of an old, familiar story line (young woman goes to messy, stalkerish lengths to win back old flame a la My Best Friend's Wedding), but screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman's film is the freshest comedy of the year.  Cody has observed, "I don't think coolness used to be such a commodity among adults. And now it is.  When I was growing up, the moms on the playground had pants pulled up to their boobs and curlers in their hair. And now, when I take my son to the playground, there is this weird clique mentality; you still have to be hot. And you still have to be 'with it.' I think everybody's in this state of sustained adolescence."  In Young Adult, Charlize Theron, who disappeared into serial killer Aileen Wuornos in her Oscar-winning turn in Monster, disappears here too, with mesmerizing intensity as divorced Mavis Gary, who lives in a nondescript highrise in Minneapolis with her neglected, skittery little dog, ghostwriting Sweet Valley High-esque teenybopper romances (something that's already becoming dated), swilling Diet Coke (like a baby to a formula bottle), watching bad Kardashian reality TV, and obsessively listening to the tunes of her past (90s pop litters her iTunes, and she drudges up a mix tape, that the film cleverly and movingly shows the inwards of in the dazzling opening credits).  In many ways, I found myself relating to her more than any character I could think of from this year, and perhaps Mavis will be a refreshing icon for lost thirtysomethings, but her selfishness, utter disdain for others (she squints ruefully at her manicurists who strip off her cuticles and lacquer her whittled-down nails... "fresh starts," whatever they may be, is one of Cody's main themes) will potentially offend.  When Gary receives news of a new baby from her old boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), she returns to her laconic suburban town named Mercury (which conjures 'poison') and attempts to win him back or at least, connect with him emotionally and sexually again.  Slade (a riff, I wonder, is off of the word 'slayed' since 'slaying the dragon' is a popular young adult adventure story trope and basically could be metaphorical of the film's journey), who seems like a genuine, lowkey guy, is married to a special needs teacher named Beth (Elizabeth Reaser).  Much of the film depends upon its ride, so I won't give too many details away, but there's a key scene when Mavis learns of Beth's profession and shoots a look that's both incredulous and envious; her insecurity is palatable (it's a pitch perfect moment of many by Theron).  Patton Oswalt plays a former classmate who runs into Mavis at an old bar hangout.  He's been scarred and left permanently handicapped from an incident in high school.  Hobbling on a crutch (symbolically so, as Oswalt and Theron point out in a later, bitterly funny scene), he shares advice and moonshine with Mavis, while simultaneously pining and pitying her.  Oswalt, painting the muscled figurines of superheroes he can never physically be (but on an emotional level, he, in a way, becomes) is the film's most sympathetic character and he helps soften some of the film's (and Mavis's) callow edge.       

Reitman and Cody teamed up for the big hit Juno: a smart, observant comedy about an adolescent who accidentally gets pregnant and mulls over keeping or giving her baby away.  Young Adult is essentially an extension of that movie, and a richer and darker (less crowdpleasery) tale.  It lacks the sweep of Reitman's Up in the Air but is perhaps a deeper and more acute character study.  He knows how to strip gloss and expose flawed characters and American embarrassments.  Mavis travels to Mercury's quiet shopping mall, which appears as desolate as they all do these days (a ghostly reminder of the throne of bustling 90s teen culture) and flinches at all the newly constructed strip malls and 'Kentaco Hut.'  It's the first film I can think of since, perhaps, Ghost World that actually shows an authentic American suburban environment!  Young Adult's cinematography may be overlooked for showier affairs but it's filmed with a distinct look by Eric Steelberg and edited with flair by Dana E. Glauberman.  As mentioned before, the opening credits, backed by Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept" (the opening track to their album Bandwagonesque which beat out Nirvana's Nevermind in a 1991 Spin year-end album fan poll) are a stunner.

Young Adult is the caustic, sadder sister to Kristen Wiig's Bridesmaids.  Spilled punch isn't slapstick here, it's a devastating moment, and an emotional trigger for Mavis's public breakdown, written and performed with sadness, wit, particularity and ambivalence that the film as a whole beautifully orchestrates.  Mavis may be a hard one to cheer on, but she's a veritable embodiment of the difficulty of shaking off the past and starting anew. ****

-Jeffery Berg