LOOK BOTH WAYS (2006) - This gloomy but hopeful Australian drama earned an honorable mention on our list of the best films of 2000-09. It holds up well as a poor man's "Magnolia," featuring characters whose lives intertwine and who are at a crossroads, meditating on their station in life and specter of death.
Meryl Lee (Justine Clark) and Nick (William McInnes), who has just gotten a cancer diagnosis that he mostly keeps to himself, are brought together at the scene of a train-pedestrian fatality that was either an accident or a suicide. She witnessed it, and Nick covered it as a newspaper photographer along with reporter/columnist Andy (Anthony Hayes), who suspects more of these accidents than you think are really suicide by train. Andy, divorced with two kids, has just found out that his doctor girlfriend is pregnant, so he's in a foul mood. Meryl Lee and Nick bond over the recent loss of their fathers.
Writer-director Sarah Watt, who would die five years later of cancer at age 53, weaves the multiple storylines masterfully, and leavens the heavy theme of death with charming dry humor. Clark is a complex single woman, an artist who enters into this budding relationship gingerly, and McInnes and Hayes are at ease, whether moping or bantering. Everything unfolds over the course of a long, brutal weekend in which even the most tangential characters (like Nick's editor and the victim's widow) can break your heart. Extra points for pretty accurate depictions of the newspaper process.
AMERICAN PICKLE (C-minus) - Well, it's never a truly lost cause when Seth Rogen is involved in a project. He's reliable for a clever idea and a few good laughs. This riff on Jewish culture, though, truly comes across as a comedy skit expanded to excrutiating length (88 minutes), droning on until it loses all sense of humor. (In fact, it's based on a short story by Simon Rich, who adapted the screenplay -- and stretched the soup.)
Rogen plays dual roles -- schlubby app developer Ben Greenbaum and Ben's great-grandfather from the old country, Herschel, who died 100 years earlier in a vat of pickles, but who was miraculously preserved by the brine and who comes back to life when hipsters revive the old factory. Sounds silly, and it is, but the film gets credit for wringing one of its best laughs from just glossing over the ridiculous science that explain such a miracle.
The initial interplay between the two Rogens -- tough, sensible old-world immigrant vs. slacker vidiotic millennial -- is fun for about 20 minutes. But then Rogen and Rich try to get deep and sentimental, and they barely manage to achieve mawkish. By the end you might be wondering if this is the same movie and why you are bothering. The ridiculousness turns from funny to forgettable. It's a concept in search of a story. Many of the best laughs (including Herschel assuming various pictures on a David Bowie poster are Ben's parents) are in the trailer. Start there, and maybe end there.
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