Shenanigans

GAME NIGHT (B-minus) - If you find Jason Bateman as funny as I do, then this will be worth it. He rescues scene after scene of this average suburban caper movie with his classic comedic timing. The premise revolves around a group of dorky adult couple friends who geek out playing party games.

Bateman's Max bristles whenever his wife, Annie (Rachel McAdams), compares him to his brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), even more so when Brooks insists on crashing Game Night with what he considers the ultimate stumper of a premise. Things get wacky, and it's hard to tell what's real and what's not, when it appears that thugs have hijacked the game.

There's a creepy neighbor, Gary (TV actor Jesse Plemons), who has been disinvited from Game Night because his wife left him, leaving him the odd man out and forcing the others to come up with elaborate ways to sneak around to avoid him. Gary is a dorky law enforcement officer, and if you think he'll figure out a way to play the hero, you're only halfway to the series of plot twists.

But too often the comedy feels forced and the gags obvious. A running joke involving one couple's squabble over which celebrity the wife once slept with grates and fails to pay off. The other couple involves a randy bachelor, notorious for bringing very young, dim-witted dates to Game Night, instead pairing with an age-appropriate woman with a brain. That plot string goes nowhere, either. But there's Bateman, crushing it in the clutch just when you think it's time to bail on this lightweight effort.

THE APARTMENT (A) - Billy Wilder's masterpiece (at least one of them) coasts on Jack Lemmon's energy and charm as a insurance company nebbish, C.C. Baxter, who lets the higher-ups use his apartments for their extramarital dalliances, with the promise of a corner office near the morally bankrupt boss, played by Fred MacMurray (from Wilder's early noir "Double Indemnity").

And Shirley MacLaine, in her debut, is adorable and incorrigible as Baxter's love interest, Miss Kubelik. There's the classic Wilder snap to the dialogue (written here with partner I.A.L. Diamond), including the patented adoption of the slang of the day -- here the overused suffix -wise, as in my favorite line, "That's the way it crumbles -- cookie-wise."

The plot thickens, as Baxter is more and more put out by the shenanigans, and his landlady and neighbors are more and more appalled by his misbegotten reputation as a playboy. A complicated love triangle ensues, but while the pathos builds, the comedy keeps an even keel. There's not a false move here.
 

New to the Queue

Coasting ...

A documentary about about the bad-boy behind the Sex Pistols and PIL, "The Public Image is Rotten."

Nicole Holofcener ("Enough Said," "Lovely & Amazing") makes a welcome return with another slice-of-life drama, "The Land of Steady Habits."

A debut documentary walks in the footsteps of photographer Walker Evans in small-town Alabama, "Hale County This Morning, This Evening."

Watching a Michael Moore film has felt redundant the past decade or two, but, with fond memories of hustling to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" on opening day, we're game for the bookend, "Fahrenheit 11/9."

Talented French Director Jacques Audiard ("A Prophet," "Dheepan," "Rust and Bone") teams John C. Reilly with Joaquin Phoenix and a few other ringers for the comic western "The Sisters Brothers."
 

This Modern World

WHAT LIES UPSTREAM (B+) - Cullen Hoback, who calls himself an investigative filmmaker, broke bread with me more than a decade ago at the Santa Fe Film Festival when he was still in the feature-film biz, pitching a wonderful little hourlong romp called "Freedom State," about a group of mental patients navigating life after the apocalypse. He was a friendly guy and an earnest filmmaker. He has since embraced the documentary format and went on to solid success with "Terms and Conditions May Apply" in 2013, and now this thorough examination of the horrors that have befallen our nation's water supply.

Hoback focuses on a chemical spill in West Virginia in 2015 that nearly went unnoticed. He is meticulous in following the science and in holding public officials to account, in particular a local director of Public Health who later graduates to the same position with the state and starts to back off his straight talk, giving in to the system. Hoback befriends a rather clueless director of the state's environment department, a frat-boy type in the mold of "Heckuva job, Brownie." Hoback walks in on a back-room legislative meeting where the manufacturers' association -- water suppliers, chemical companies -- are literally drafting an industry-friendly bill to hand to a dim-witted and mean state legislator for him to put his name to.

This is compelling and diligently reported. Hoback connects this one incident to the lead-pipe catastrophe in Flint, Mich., and to the dangers lurking in the water lines from coast to coast.

IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE (B) - A languorous examination of the noise in society that inundates us constantly and the ways in which silence can calm the mind. There are zen acolytes and other experts in silence who use their indoor voices for the crisp 81-minute running time, as well as a young cross-country traveler who has taken a vow of silence. Peaceful nature shots abound, rudely interrupted by buzzsaws and subway trains. Another reminder to slow down and shut up. Try to sit still for it in its entirety.
  

Street Punks

SKATE KITCHEN (B+) - Crystal Moselle, who embedded herself with unnaturally sheltered siblings for her breakthrough documentary "The Wolfpack," cozies up to some real-life New York skate punks, fictionalizing their lives for this hybrid film about teen girls getting by. Bespectacled Camille (Rachelle Vinberg) is a lonely 18-year-old who escapes a nagging mother on Long Island and falls in with a ragtag gang of girls in Manhattan. 

Camille slowly falls for a co-worker (played by Jaden Smith) who has a history with one of the other girls in the group. Some of the drama feels a little forced, but Moselle has a way of humanizing these teens, not unlike Eliza Hitzman's intimate portrayal of teen hookup culture, "It Felt Like Love." And the hand-held camerawork around New York feels fresh and urgent.

The interaction between the diverse group of girls seems relaxed and natural, and they are fun to be around. Little of it seems forced.

BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits, Khalid with "Young Dumb & Broke":


 

New to the Queue

Real life intervenes ...

A documentary about New York City cops fighting the injustices of the policing system, "Crime + Punishment."

Robert Greene ("Actress," "Kate Plays Christine") looks to be back on his game with the story of labor and immigration unrest during World War I, "Bisbee '17."

A documentary about one of the great filmmakers of the 1970s, Hal Ashby ("Harold and Maude," "Shampoo," "Being There"), "Hal."

Another doc, this one about the postwar New York street photographer, "Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable."

And a loving look back a the sweetheart of the original "Saturday Night Live," "Love, Gilda."