Bizarre Love Triangle

RESULTS (B+) -  Andrew Bujalski is maturing into a smart filmmaker. Here the godfather of Mumblecore takes a cast of established stars and turns the romantic comedy inside out and back again, as if shepherding it through a wormhole. The result is a quiet triumph.

In "Results," Guy Pearce is Trevor and Cobie Smulders ("How I Met Your Mother") is Kat, and they are personal trainers at his club, which he hopes to build into one of those all-encompassing life-and-health centers. They also have a past, which seems not so much romantic as physical.

Enter the irresistible Kevin Corrigan as Danny, a freshly minted millionaire looking for a personal trainer to get in shape but probably more for the companionship. Both Trevor and Kat conduct sessions with the pasty 40-something whose marriage has just ended. In one of Corrigan's many effective line readings, Danny tells Trevor he wants to be able to take a punch, a line that will come back to haunt him later in the film when Trevor finds out that Danny made a move on Kat.

Bujalski (whose "Computer Chess" was a pleasant surprise last year) takes his sweet time setting the characters in place and nudging the plot into motion. (He takes a little too much time wrapping things up, and he could have told the story in 95 minutes instead of 105.) The writer/director allows the actors to swim around in their characterizations, finding subtle nuances along the way.

Pearce is just a top-notch actor, and he unravels a fairly vulnerable muscle boy. Corrigan is a delight with his offbeat line readings, a poor man's Christopher Walken but with added depth. Smulders doesn't have much going on behind those eyes, but she expands her sitcom chops and brings aching emotion to the role of a still-young woman getting the runaround from a pair of well-meaning man-children. A scene in which Trevor and Kat dine with another couple nails the banter and dynamics of relationships incredibly well.

This has the smarts of "Annie Hall," but more mature dramatic flourishes and layers that Woody Allen rarely attempted to sew into a screenplay. It's a funny, textured, fully realized film.
 

New to the Queue

Languid days ...

We enjoyed the team of Melissa McCarthy and writer/director Paul Feig in "Bridesmaids" and "The Heat," so we'll give in to the new hit, "Spy."

A highly anticipated documentary about six kids kept as virtual prisoners in a New York apartment by their parents, "The Wolfpack."

Indie favorite Justin Rice and co-star Leo Fitzpatrick play squatters in the Catskills in "Doomsdays."

Mia Hansen-Love ("Goodbye First Love") ventures back to the '90 for a drama about the techno scene in "Eden."

David Gordon Green ("Prince Avalanche") teams up with a grumpy Al Pacino for "Manglehorn."

A documentary about a stand-your-ground shooting, "3-1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets."

A look at the seeds of the hip-hop scene in New York City in the 1970s, "The Rubble Kings."

Two-Part Harmony

     "Either I'm too sensitive, or else I'm gettin' soft."
-- Bob Dylan

LOVE & MERCY (A-minus) - We're not fans of biopics (or melodrama in general), but you can't be in better hands than Oren Moverman when it comes to examining a complicated life.

Moverman penned "I'm Not There," the epic kaleidoscope psycho-biography of Bob Dylan (as played by four actors and spanning two centuries), and here he explores the brain and psyche of Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind the Beach Boys. He and first-time director Bill Pohlad assemble a fearsome foursome of leading actors, only two of which portray Wilson.

Paul Dano is fantastic as Wilson at his mid-1960s peak, unveiling the "Pet Sounds" album and "Good Vibrations" before melting down during his obsessive production of his would-be masterpiece, the shelved "Smile," which would have been his "Sgt. Pepper." The film toggles between that heady era and the 1980s, when Wilson -- now played by a perfectly jangled John Cusack -- fell into the dictatorial clutches of quack psychologist Eugene Landy (a giddy, bewigged Paul Giamatti). Salvation comes in the form of Cadillac saleswoman Melinda Ledbetter (a perfect Elizabeth Banks), who falls in love with him and rescues him from Landy's beachfront prison.

Pohlad -- along with Moverman and co-writer Michael A. Lerner, as well as sound collagist Atticus Ross (Trent Reznor's collaborator on "The Social Network" and "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo") -- starts with the premise of Wilson hearing voices in his head and follows those voices as they drive Wilson to not only musical greatness but also, eventually, a mental breakdown.

The film starts out in darkness and a melange of words and music, and it turns out we are in Wilson's ear. Thanks to Dano, the viewer gets to experience his disorientation as he morphs into a studio maestro. Wilson guides journeymen musicians through his lush, off-kilter arrangements. In fact, this is one of the best movies I've ever seen at portraying the art of creating music. There is pure joy in seeing rough demos get painstakingly workshopped and then flourish into memorable songs. You need not be a fan of the Beach Boys -- just of pop in general -- to fall for this tale.

There is less music in Cusack's scenes, but when he dabbles at the piano, it can be magical. When he plays a snippet for Melinda and tells her it was what he heard in his head the moment he met her -- and that it can't be recorded because it's already gone -- I swooned along with her.

This isn't without its minor flaws. The band conflict and the brutishness of the Wilson brothers' abusive, controlling father bring unwanted Movie of the Week elements here, but Pohlad keeps them at bay. There's also a bit of a sag in the second half as the film huffs a bit toward a full two-hour running time.

But Dano and Cusack, acting along parallel tracks, craft a moving portrait, just a sliver of the mental anguish Brian Wilson was tormented by. Dano's performance is rather broad, while Cusack utilizes subtle tics and sad, imploring eyes to great effect. When we see the real Wilson, now an old man, croon the title track over the credits, we have a new appreciation for his art.

BONUS TRACK
The title song:


 

One-Liners: C-List

Averaging things out ...

WELCOME TO ME (B) -  Our gal Kristen Wiig remains a wonder, this time as a woman with self-diagnosed borderline personality disorder who wins $86 million in the lottery and decides to fund her own self-centered talk show on a time-share station that has fallen on hard times. Like in "Skeleton Twins," she carries a movie farther than it deserves with her comedic range and soulful character study.

Wiig is Alice Klieg, who is either mentally ill or just really weird. (She has sessions with a contentious therapist, played by a New Age-y Tim Robbins.) In Wiig's hands, and as drafted by newcomer Eliot Laurence, the character is a wonder of human engineering. She is hypersexual. She is obsessed with swans (prompted by a trauma at the zoo). She runs her TV nonstop. She's self-treating her anxiety with a high-protein diet, shunning processed sugar, which she compares to child abuse. She doesn't believe in luck but rather in the power of intention. She mispronounces words, like "carbohydrants." She likes to read prepared statements. She organizes her apartment by color. When a man introduces himself by saying "Hi, I'm Rich," she deadpans, "So am I." The TV coverage of her Lotto press conference is cut short when she starts explaining her masturbation therapy.

She has elderly parents. Her mom calls her an "emotional exhibitionist." And that's just what her two-hour TV show is. "Welcome to Me" features a woman with no filter, being indulged by hack producers who are just in it to cash her ridiculously large paychecks. (She pays $15 million upfront for 100 shows, a godsend for the struggling production company.) On one of her first shows she bakes a meatloaf "cake" with mashed-sweet-potato icing, and then sits silently for five minutes eating a piece. She recruits actors (wearing clunky name tags) to play her in slanderous re-enactments of painful episodes from her life (like the time someone pilfered her makeup or when a high school pal betrayed her confidence). It's as if Pee-Wee Herman were a real person with a clinical diagnosis holding forth at the Playhouse. There's barely enough audience to fill the studio's dozen or two seats, but she seems to be developing a cult following on TV and online.

Wiig is countered generationally with Joan Cusack as the show's perpetually galled director. Cusack is as strong here as she was in "School of Rock." The pair elbow each other for Carol Burnett's crown, and the interplay anchors the movie.

Others don't fare as well. James Marsden is off-key as the greedy brother who happily cash Alice's checks. Wes Bentley ("American Beauty") is flat as the sympathetic brother. Jennifer Jason Leigh might as well sport a nametag that says "Conscience" as the sourpuss who can't believe the company is indulging Alice. Linda Cardellini (the "Mad Men" neighbor lady) can't find a consistent tone as Gina, Alice's childhood pal who grows increasingly frustrated by Alice's narcissism.

The narrative falls apart by the second half. Much about Alice's show is quite implausible, and the fallout that leads to the film's climax is laughably simplistic. In the end it makes you think that this isn't a very good movie. But Wiig -- with all that trouble bubbling under the surface of her fascinating face -- argues otherwise. 

AT ANY PRICE (D+) - Did we ever take Dennis Quaid seriously? I can't recall. The '80s are foggy. I remember liking him and Ellen Barkin a lot in "The Big Easy," but that was nearly 30 years ago, and apparently I haven't seen Mr. Quaid since. In this film -- about a cutthroat seed farmer in the heartland, Henry Whipple, who's hunky son Dean (Zac Efron) harbors race-car dreams -- Quaid is the biggest joke in a joke of a movie. He's a cartoon version of the noble farmer.

In fact, this film seems like it was made in the early 1980s and set in the early 1960s, starring Dean Jones and Kurt Russell, with music by John Cougar Mellencamp. Instead, it's a modern tale from the usually reliable Ramin Bahrani, who once had a memorable run with "Man Push Cart," "Chop Shop" and "Goodbye Solo." But that was nearly a decade ago.

The cliches run rampant. Dean competes with a favored brother who is never seen but only heard from via his letters written from his South American adventures. Poor Kim Dickens plays the quietly suffering wife, Irene, who puts up with Henry banging his secretary, Meredith (poor, poor Heather Graham). There's the gruff patriarch (Red West), constantly badgering middle-age Henry to not piss away what his father built. (In case the father-son dynamics aren't dire enough already.) Turns out, some meanies, tipped off by an informant, are looking into whether Henry is converting patented seeds to his own use.

The dialogue is ridiculous. The performances are erratic, but mostly overblown. The dark ending is too little too late.

BONUS TRACK
During "Welcome to Me," director Shira Piven skillfully uses music. When Alice goes down on a guy, we're treated to Donna Fargo's classic "Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A." Here are two moody tunes from the soundtrack.

Lili Rose McKay covers the Mountain Goats' "Love, Love, Love":



 Kitschy psychedelia from Margo Guryan:


 

One-Liners: Docs

DON'T THINK I'VE FORGOTTEN: CAMBODIA'S LOST ROCK AND ROLL (B+) -  "When we were young, we loved being modern." That is the wistful opening line that wafts throughout a film weighted by symbolism and cultural conundrums.

This thoughtful documentary celebrates the Phnom Penh scene, a brief period during the 1960s when Cambodians caught the wave of rock 'n' roll. The tone is bittersweet though, because -- as the filmmakers deftly explain through historical clips -- by the early '70s the music was driven back underground by a military dictatorship and war, and then buried by the unimaginable horrors of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

Veteran cameraman John Pirozzi, here directing his second documentary, has a keen sense of history and the culture of the country. He gathers veterans of that scene, along with a fan or two from the era as they look back with almost as much consternation (did that all really happen) as pride and joy.

One veteran talks about feeling "the echo" of other cultures' popular music. And the Cambodians did borrow heavily. You can hear bands that sound like the Ventures or the Hollies or Cream. We hear cover versions of Santana and James Taylor.

The film is not weighted down by western-style nostalgia. One woman -- a fan not a performer -- is still a bit starry-eyed about that heyday. But no one suggests that it's a shame to have lost their rock 'n' roll swagger forever. These aren't American boomers who would shrivel and die if they didn't still have the opportunity to pay hundreds of dollars to watch the Rolling Stones perform at age 70-plus.

If anything, the '60s rock scene in Phnom Penh was an aberration, a bizarre blip of western decadence. You get the sense that those who lived through it understand that, and that it's not really a tragedy that life (and death) took a different path. That's a Big Idea that Pirozzi plays with here, and he succeeds in leaving the viewer haunted long after the credits. 

HOT GIRLS WANTED (B-minus) - Turns out that the lives of 19-year-old girls aren't very interesting, even if they are pro-am porn stars.

Rashida Jones produced this Netflix streamer about young adults getting churned through the new era of internet pornography. We mainly follow Tressa who, mostly out of boredom, falls for a deceptive Craigslist ad and finds herself on a free flight to Miami, ending up in the home of D-level entrepreneur Levi and his low-rent harem of lost girls. Clips of her porn career are interspersed with her life afterward (average shelf life is measured in months, and the money doesn't go very far), explaining to her mom what she did for a living. She's quite ordinary -- she has an understanding boyfriend, too -- but directors Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus are not crafty enough to turn that into true human drama.

Jones and her directors struggle to find a balance between exploitation and explanation. Other girls are foul-mouthed and boastful. They don't deny that they eventually are forced to perform more and more debasing acts for less and less money. They know that a planeload of 18-year-old girls just landed at the Miami airport that afternoon and that they (and their fake personas) will be soon forgotten.

They frolic in mostly tasteful R-rated nudity, party like poor Kardashians, and struggle to articulate what they are going through. They're called amateurs, though they make decent money. They play-act as sultry virgins satisfying creepy older men. They talk smack about Duke student Belle Knox. They give themselves banal stage names, such as Brooklyn.

The production is slick, and the graphics help move the story along. But Tressa's drama -- Will she tell her father? If so, how will he react? -- is a bust by the end. No other young woman gets enough screen time to become a fully fleshed-out character. Ironically.

BONUS TRACKS
Here's an hour's worth of classic Cambodian rock:


 

So I Don't Have to

 In an occasional feature, we present capsule reviews from correspondents who go see the movies that we don't have an interest in seeing.  Today, veteran filmgoer Phillip Blanchard weighs in on the latest rage, "Mad Max: Fury Road":

This might be the worst movie I've ever seen, and I like "action" movies. Complete chaos. No plot. No character development. Improbable action, even for the genre. Two hours seems like four hours.

My 18-year-old son says he liked it, but I think he's pulling my leg.

Guest Grade: D-minus (instead of "F" because it takes a lot of work to make a movie, even one as bad as this)
  

Gone Girl

ABOUT ELLY (2009) (A-minus) - This early film from Asghar Farhadi (made before "The Separation" and "The Past") is, for the most part, not about Elly, but rather all the people around her. It is a torturous unraveling of a little white lie among old friends.

Elly (Taraneh Alidoosti) is a schoolteacher who is recruited by one of her student's parents to attend a weekend getaway from Tehran to the Caspian Sea, a gathering of three couples (with kids) who know each other from college. Another pal of theirs, Ahmad (Shahab Hosseini), is visiting from Germany, having recently ended a relationship. It turns out that one of the women, Sepideh (Golshifteh Farahani), is trying to set Elly up with Ahmad.

Sepideh has pressured Elly to do this, even though, it turns out, Elly may be engaged (though unhappy and trying to end the relationship). Sepideh hides Elly's bag so she won't be able to leave, and she manipulates the situation in other ways -- the lodging she reserved was available for only one night, so the group ends up in an abandoned guest house, with limited amenities, for the weekend. The friends make do and have fun (they play charades), but there's no denying an underlying tension, some of which derives from the fact that the group told the property's caretaker that Elly and Ahmad are newlyweds in order to win her sympathy and the alternate digs. (Remember, this is Iran, where such behavior is rather scandalous.)

At the end of the first act, crisis hits. A child nearly drowns. Farhadi's handheld camera creates delirium and confusion, resulting in edge-of-the-seat suspense as viewers join the characters in wondering who is where and who is safe. As the crises eases, it turns out that Elly -- last seen on the beach with the children, flying a kite -- has disappeared. Did she drown? Did she run off, like she threatened to do? Was there a time jump? As the group tries to sort out what has happened -- and how Sepideh could have let it happen -- their camaraderie frays. Husbands and wives snap at each other and fight. Police ask questions. The group struggle to come up with a plan and a consistent story.

Sepideh and friends get in touch with a man who may be Elly's brother or fiance. His presence during the film's final act further threatens to tear the group apart. Who exactly is he? Might he know what happened to Elly? Can he be trusted?

Farhadi is a master at creating tension from routine human interactions. Here he is blessed with the striking Farahani ("Chicken With Plums," "Rosewater") who carries the film portraying the gradual breakdown of Sepideh, eaten alive from the inside by guilt. It's a riveting performance.

Farhadi also knows how to present an onion and peel it tantalizingly slowly. So much is in the set-up. He creates a knotty little situation and watches his characters react naturally.

This isn't a perfect film. It's not quite as good as his last two. It doesn't really merit a full two hours of running time. And there's a cultural gap I had trouble crossing; it's awfully quaint to think that, in modern times, a woman in Elly's situation would be so scandalized (especially in absentia) merely because some well-meaning friends tried to set her up on a sort-of date.

But "About Elly" takes a rightful place as the first piece of a mesmerizing trilogy from this Iranian auteur.

BONUS TRACK
The lovely closing music:


  

Farewell, My Lovely

GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE (B-minus) - God bless Godard. I haven't completely understood a movie of his in decades. But I'm still drawn to his technicolor diatribes.

Here we have another script slathered with philosophical -- or pseudo-philosophical -- mutterings while splashed with mind-altering neon primary colors. (The film was released in theaters in 3-D, and it would be worth the zippy 68 minutes to experience it that way.)

The images are spectacular, thanks to ridiculous color correction (or, more accurately, color distortion). I suspect Godard has been trying for decades to re-create the visual fireworks from an acid trip he had in the '60s. Here, verdant fields turn lime green; a burbling sea is a cauldron of shocking cobalt; fields of geraniums bleed all over the screen. Windshield wipers slosh pale blue goop back and forth while a kaleidoscope of blurred lights dance in the background.

The same day I watched "Goodbye to Language," I read a poem about New York in the summer, by Charles Bukowski. Its ending reminded me of the experience of watching late-period Godard:

it’s like a great colorful
and surprising painting
not hanging anywhere
else.

 The "plot"? Not sure. A couple having an affair walk around an apartment naked a lot. She watches him defecate. There's a shooting in public that we hear off-screen in each of its iterations. A dog gets the most screen time, wandering about (including in a forest carpeted with leaves colored like a bowl of skittles, but of course).

As usual, it's a trip.
  

Holy Crap!* "Bug"

Well, Michael Shannon sure burst into the public consciousness in a big way with one of his first marquee roles, delusional Gulf War veteran Peter Evans in the suspenseful psychodrama from 2006, "Bug."

We didn't really notice him till his starring role in "Take Shelter" (a hit at Sundance in 2011) and then "Mud" the following year. But he was nominated for an Academy Award for a supporting role in "Revolutionary Road" in 2008. (He also had a part in the under-appreciated "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" a year earlier.) You may know him from recurring appearances on HBO's "Boardwalk Empire."

In "Bug," Shannon explodes on screen in a role he originated on stage in the mid-'90s in this spooky, claustrophobic story from Tracy Letts that takes place almost entirely inside an Oklahoma motel room between Peter and Agnes (Ashley Judd), who is hiding out from her abusive goofball ex, Jerry (Harry Connick Jr.). Poor Peter is on the lam from the VA with some serious PTSD and paranoia, convinced that the government has planted bugs in him -- actual bugs, like aphids.

A lesbian pal of Agnes brought Peter to the motel room and left him there. Agnes, in a weak moment, goes for him. Soon they are lolling around naked and picking at each other like monkeys.

The legendary William Friedkin ("The French Connection," "The Exorcist" -- back to back) flings a lot in your face, setting it up as if it's a standard metaphor for a drug-addict love story. But as Agnes gets sucked into Peter's world the narrative spirals menacingly into a crazed psychedelia. Soon suspense spins into full-blown horror.

Shannon could convince you that he's actually in need of an exorcist. His convulsions are frightening. Just when one of the other actors threatens to compete with his hysteria, Shannon immediately cranks it up another notch -- until you find yourself exclaiming "Holy crap" over and over.

The rest of the cast are perfect foils. Judd is bold and vulnerable, bringing nuance to what could easily have been a cliched role. Connick is a wonderful blend of physical humor and menace, seamlessly completing the bizarre love triangle.

Friedkin's visuals -- bodily cuts and bruises, cellular-level images of blood -- grow exponentially freakish as this spectacle builds to a stunning climax. It's an exhausting 102 minutes.

It's Shannon's show, and the juicy role of a lifetime. Friedkin knows a demon when he spots one.

GRADE: B

* - Holy Crap is an occasional series about unique films, cutting a wide swath from brilliant to awful. Check out previous entries here and here and here and here and here and here. 

BONUS TRACK
The trailer


  

Krazy Kat

MURDER OF A CAT (A-minus) - This silly whodunit about a manchild investigating the suspicious death of his pet is quirky and hilarious, thanks mainly to the over-the-top performance by its star, Fran Kranz. Some will be put off by the ridiculously broad hijinks; but if you buy into it and go with the craziness, you'll be discover a hidden gem.

Kranz plays Clinton, a rude, snotty know-it-all who has no car, lives with his mom (Blythe Danner), and makes figurines that he sells from his front yard. When his cat is found in the curb with an arrow sticking out of its gut, Clinton vows to track down the killer. He teams with Sheriff Hoyle (J.K. Simmons), dressing up like a detective and going undercover at the local superstore to investigate the mysterious crossbow arrow and to sniff around the store's creepy owner, Ford (Greg Kinnear), and shady employees. (It's a tribute to first-time director Gillian Greene that she gets those three solid character actors to fully commit to this odd little project and turn in winning performances.) Clinton finds that a neighbor, Greta (Nikki Reed, "Thirteen"), also considered the cat to be hers, and so they team up for the investigation and maybe a little flirtation.

It's Kranz whom I couldn't take my eyes off of. He physically brings to mind character actor Dennis Dugan (Captain Freedom on "Hill Street Blues") but with a haircut borrowed from Christopher Guest's Nigel Tufnel in "This Is Spinal Tap." At times he channels the broad nuttiness of Jerrys Lewis and Van Dyke. He is devoted 100 percent to his character and this story, and because he never lets his guard down the film never falters.

Meantime, co-writers Robert Snow and Christian Magalhaes (from TV's "New Girl"), are firing their own crossbow willy-nilly as they spoof various detective genres with a "Get Smart" tone and jokes that repeatedly hit their target. They play it straight and deadpan the whole way. It all builds to a ridiculous, appropriate conclusion, capping off 101 minutes of giddy delight.