Friday's Old Fashioned: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

This 1960 UK production features a young, charismatic, ornery, self-righteous, clueless Albert Finney as Arthur, a machinist at a British factory who works hard during the week, takes that hard-earned money home to where he lives with his checked-out mother and father and then does himself up real nice in suits and ties to head downtown to the pub for a pint. Eh, make that several pints. And then several more. An early shot shows him in the midst of a deliriously drunken stumble falling down a flight of stairs, landing hard, rolling over and then......smiling. As if falling down those stairs was his aim the entire time.

He's seeing a girl. Well, make that a woman. A slightly older woman. That's Brenda (Rachel Roberts). Plus, uh, she's, like, married. Yeah. Married. To his co-worker, his co-worker who has a young kid with Brenda. Not that Arthur gives much of, shall we say, a damn. One of the film's original posters shows Finney standing at the center with his dukes up, like a young Jack Dempsey, and brings to mind Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" being asked just what the heck he's rebelling against and Brando replying "Whaddya got?" Arthur is rebelling against the dreary, settled lives of the old men he sees at the factory and of his parents who get along simply because they never speak and let the TV speak for them. But the twist, it seems, is not that Arthur has any "big dream", he just plans to LIVE HIS LIFE. That's his act of rebellion.

He meets a younger gal name Doreen (Shirley Anne Field, fetching to the hilt), who, as she musn't be, isn't like all the other girls. She's more polite, more refined, and has a strict mother. Arthur courts her anyway, even as he continues the affair with Brenda. But reality, as it must, interferes. Brenda reveals she is pregnant......with Arthur's baby.

Hold it, hold it, hold it. I know what you're thinking. Married woman pregnant with another guy's baby. Enter: melodrama. "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning", though, was among the first of the British "kitchen-sink dramas" and this pregnancy revelation isn't built to and is presented so matter-of-factly you don't groan at its development, you merely want to reach into the screen, grab Arthur, shake him, and repeatedly call him an idiot. He and Brenda barely even entertain a single thought of keeping the child at first and immediately turn to - without actually employing the word - an abortion. It is for this reason, and perhaps others, that the film in 1960 received an "X" rating from the British Board of Film Classification. As with any older film deemed shocking in its day it feels, in one way, tame to a modern audience. Yet, at the same time, its characters' casual disregard for the enormity of the situation into which they have gotten themselves is still brutal.

The film's conclusion, however, is mighty curious. It puts Arthur through the deserved ringer with the intention of having him emerge on the other end much more the wise, but still with that rebellious spirit intact as the last shot and line illustrate. Except this isn't necessarily how it plays. "You're gettin' off light, aren't you?" This is what Brenda says to Arthur late in the film. And, most shocking of all, this is how the movie ends. I don't mind a film - not at all - that concludes with its main character failing to learn from his gross misdeeds, because those movies can be powerful and resonate in their own way, as the long as the movie is aware of its intention.

I do mind a film, though, that seems to presume its main character hasn't gotten off light when it's fairly clear that he has.

The Legend Of The Zellweger Facial Expression

"I don't know who told you pouty was an option right now, but all you're making me feel is hatred of Renee Zellweger." - Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), "Community"

The legend goes that in 1930 Josh Gibson of baseball's Negro Leagues became the first and last man to actually belt a home run out of fabled Yankee Stadium - so far, it's said, that it bounced off a distant subway train. Is this really true? No one knows. Probably not. No evidence exists, but it exists in the mind and, thus, this most beautiful legend only gained that much more romantic traction.

The legend goes that in 1996 in the Cameron Crowe rom com "Jerry Maguire" Renee Zellweger gave an Oscar nominated turn so rife "with comedic yet in-character facial expressions that the expansiveness of these tics were matched in breathlessness only by George C. Scott's ingenious achievement in 'Dr. Strangelove.'" Okay. You got me. I just made that quote up. But if I'd been blogging in 1996 I would have written it and I would have stood up to the onslaught of commenters furious with me for deigning to compare a legend like Mr. Scott with a then mostly unknown native of Katy, Texas.

I was attempting to explain the recently the majesty of Renee's non-verbal communication in Cameron Crowe's box office smash and was met only by confusion and slight derision. "Renee Zellweger?" they exclaimed, as if her name conjured memories of a wretched vacation to Aruba. "Facial expressions? She hasn't moved her face in, like, 10 years! She just pouts! Even if the line she's saying sounds happy she STILL looks like she's pouting!" "So she had some work done in the ensuing years," I countered. "Don't hold that against Dorothy Boyd." "Sorry," they said. "But I'm not buying it.

Look at this face. The raised eyebrow denotes bewilderment, as is typical, but with less indignation than envy, joy and sadness all tossed together into a cinematic cocktail shaker with no one ingredient emerging victorious. The eyes are almost lovingly glazed and the lips twist upward in harmony with the eyebrow. And the frazzled bangs provide the perfect frame for the portrait. "They were so naked onscreen." This is an oft-utilized phrase, but what does it mean? It doesn't mean literally naked, of course, but naked emotionally to the camera. It means: this face of Renee Zellweger. Of course, to look at this face now is the equivalent of looking at an old baseball card. You see it, but you can't feel it.

The DVD still exists. It's available on Netflix. It's on my holy DVD shelf. I could lend it to you. Heck, you can get the thing in Blu Ray now which just ups the ante on the Zellweger facial expressions. Even so, there remains something missing when you put it on or catch bits and pieces of it on a late night TV rerun. It makes me think of Marlon Brando, whose biography I'm currently reading, and how so many people recite a version of the same refrain: You had to be there. That is, you can't truly grasp the effect and power the Young Marlon Brando had if you weren't there because then your view is tainted and influenced by Old Marlon Brando.

It's weird to think that in the space of 15, 16 years, Renee Zellweger could have morphed so much, but she has. That's the way of world now. It's faster, harsher, more judgmental. It's a young woman's game and perhaps Ms. Zellweger over-reacted around that scary dividing line referred to in some parts of the country as 30. And a woman who from scene-to-scene, moment-to-moment in "Jerry Maguire" could change expressions as if on a celestial whim now possesses a face that just pouts.

Years from now when people hear the line "You complete me" they will know its origin. But they won't know that what REALLY sold the scene that made those words famous was the varying and wordless reaction shots of Renee Zellweger while Tom Cruise spoke. I will try to tell them of the miraculous sequence involving the drunk Jerry in Dorothy's living room and the way Zellweger's face lights up with all manner of emotion like a dance of the spirits just for the silver screen. I will attempt to explain the shot when Jerry lower's Dorothy's sunglasses so he and we can see her reaction so he and we will know her answer to the marriage proposal he has just made and how it's her FACE that gives us the answer before the line. I will expound at length. I will shout and pound my hands on the table and perhaps even offer photographic evidence. People will scoff and shake their heads. They won't believe me. They weren't there. They won't know. They will only know of Pouty Renee Zellweger.

I may as well be telling them of a baseball soaring out of Yankee Stadium and careening off a faraway subway train.

The Big Year

In last year's ostensible comedy centering around a mammoth event entitled A Big Year in which birders race from one end of the United States to the other to glimpse sightings of rare birds and add them all up to see who has seen the most, the father of one our three protagonists suffers a heart attack and for the rest of the movie is forced to carry an oxygen tank. I have an Uncle who lives in Oregon and who is an avid birder. He, too, on account of a health issue is forced to carry an oxygen tank. Yet once my Dad relayed a story in which my Uncle had gone out birding anyway with his oxygen tank in tow. And that, like many, many things, makes me so effing proud to be a Prigge. Even when I'm carrying my own oxygen tank, by God, I'm carrying it to the latest Kylie Minogue show and busting a wobbly, pathetic move (never mind that Kylie is actually 9 years older than me and will probably have her own oxygen tank). A Prigge's passion will not be deterred!!!

The Big Year is a real thing and it was chronicled in a book by Mark Obmascik, although as the film's opening title card explains "This Is A True Story - Only The Facts Have Been Changed." The film revolves around the Big Year of three men played by three dependables: Kenny Bostick (Owen Wilson), Brad Harris (Jack Black) and Stu Prescott (Steve Martin). Kenny is the reigning Big Year champion having gotten a look at 732 birds, a record thought to be unapproachable though both Brad and Stu think very much that they can approach it. And, hey! Guess what! They do!

All three men are portrayed as being hell-bent on seeing as many birds as possible, of course, but bubbling just below the surface in each one of them - in ways occasionally cultivated by the screenplay, but mostly by the actors themselves - is a devout appreciation for the act itself. Other characters make the mistake of referring to birding as a "hobby", but our trio, for better or worse, knows different. Just because you don't do it for a "living" doesn't merely mean it's a "hobby". Kenny, in fact, says "it's my calling." It's the best line in the whole film and should have been taken by director (David Frankel) and writer (Howard Franklin) as "The Big Year's" mantra. It is not.

Kenny has a mandatory wife (Rosamund Pike) at home who exists to continually ask Kenny why he must fly away to see so many birds in flight. She, of course, must also be pregnant so that when the time comes when Kenny needs to be at the hospital with his wife he is making a mad dash and she is waiting and he will have the Crisis Moment when a report of a rare bird is relayed to him at the exact moment he is about to enter the hospital. Oops! I meant spoiler alert! (In fairness to Pike, she actually does a marvelous job of playing this creaky part. Her line reading of "Why?" at a crucial moment is the best line reading in the whole hour-and-forty-minute affair.)

Stu is a self-made millionaire (billionaire? zillionaire?) with a loving wife and family who has long dreamt of striking out on his own Big Year. He does, and he makes a friend and ally in Brad Harris (Jack Black), 36 years old, divorced, stuck in a job he hates, living at home with his folks, including his father (Brian Dennehy) who scoffs, as he must, at his son's love of birding. Nevertheless, Brad takes aim at Kenny's record, bands with Stu, and Meets Cute with Rashida Jones (that beautiful tropical fish) who is one of many, many notable names in the cast with little more to do than act as a Plot Pawn. (Angelica Huston really should have had a bigger role. If you see the movie, you will know what I'm talking about.)

Brad is forced into any number of pratfalls, of course, because he is played by Jack Black, but look past that and you will notice actual nuance and grace emanating from his performance. He has a knack for capturing the obsessed, like Barry the music snob in "High Fidelity", and here he brings to life an affable man who knows his "calling" and finally chooses to see it through, maxed out credit cards be damned. The structure of the entire story, though, is so conventional and brought forth with so little pizazz it hampers Black and everyone around him.

There is a moment when the film slows down to chart two bald eagles mating but it chooses to present this by having Black explain it away in voiceover, undercutting the beauty of what we are seeing. Why not have Black say this earlier, setting it up, and then coming back around to the moment? The film is supposed to be about birding and birders and what drives them toward their passion, but it's not about that at all. It's "Cannonball Run" with birds. It's as if the two plain blaine dunderheaded second-in-commands to Stu who can't understand their boss's true "calling" ("those freaking birds") produced this film.

It's disappointing because there was a potentially interesting idea buried beneath the routine domestic squabbles and goofy antics crying out for exploration. Characters whose dreams and desires are often at odds with real life. But is it really a real life if you're forced to cast aside your dreams and desires? How do you balance the two? Where was that movie?

If "The Big Year" was based on a true story, perhaps it would have been smarter to not change the facts.

The Myth of the American Sleepover

Whereas Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" was about the first night after the last day of school and, thus, contained a raucous vibe, David Robert Mitchell's "The Myth of the American Sleepover" (just released to DVD) is about the last night before the first day of school and, thus, contains a languid vibe. It's been many moons since I've felt that harsh pit in my stomach when opening day of a new school year approaches, yet it's a sensation I can vividly recall. When a character says "I just want to enjoy tonight because it's going to be the last night of my life", he's not being melodramatic. That's how the last night before the first day of school feels. And that's what "The Myth of the American Sleepover" evokes for most of its 90 minute run time.

Set in an unnamed small Michigan town, the film essentially follows four separate story lines that from time to time overlap and intermingle. Character names are revealed, certainly, but are difficult to remember, not because the characters are unmemorable but because despite having differences they all come across not necessarily universal but synonymous in their thoughts and desires. Kids want to hold hands and kids want to make out and kids want to have sex and even if kids do want to have something approaching intelligent conversation, well, when you see a scorching blonde teen ingenue roaming the aisles of the local grocery store, talking seems pretty meaningless to a high school sophomore. No?

This is what happens to one of the movie's males, spotting a scorching blonde teen ingenue roaming the aisles of the local grocery store and then spending the remainder of the film trying to track her down amidst the various girl-only sleepovers taking place across town. One of these sleepovers involves a new girl who has begun dating a guy whose history aligns with the girl who is hosting the sleepover and whose boyfriend might just become the target of the new girl, not from love but from adolescent vengeance. An about-to-be female freshman with a lovely lip ring and her inseparable pal who ride their bikes everywhere find themselves at a skinny dipping party and faced with the prospects of a couple boys who may or may not be nice. And the obligatory non high-schooler, back home from college and dead-set on dropping out after a failed relationship, strikes out on a quest to find the two twin girls with whom he used to pal around and whom he used to sort of like......not that he ever did anything about it.

So let's stop right there. That's crucial. A guy on a quest to find TWO TWIN GIRLS. That's the sort of line you read in the synopsis leading you to immediately assume you've got the film all figured out......but you don't. While Mitchell's film is not tougher, per se, it's gentler. It's a decidedly quiet movie that possesses almost no rah-rah moments (one song & dance routine that initially seemed like a dream sequence - was it? - is terribly out of place, however) and while it is filled with general and necessary teenage stupidity it is not presented in that irritating manner so typical to the genre. They're not stupid to satisfy plot points, they're stupid because, you know, they're stupid.

Almost none of the cast members had previous acting experience and, rest assured, it shows. The acting here ranges from really stilted to just slightly stilted, but it's okay. (I would venture that Amanda Bauer gives the "best" performance.) If want to give yourself over to it (and you should), the inexpressiveness of the acting lends itself to the idea of how difficult it is to express yourself at that age and how knowing what you want doesn't mean you know what you want.

A parade coda also comes across like a mis-step - like miniature cookies for dessert at the request of the studio - but set that aside and notice how our many characters don't end up exactly the way they intended. Teenage films so often follow those pre-packaged beats note for note. "The Myth of the American Sleepover" doesn't. So tell me which one's more authentic.

Friday's Old Fashioned: The Professionals

If you're looking for a quick back of the DVD cover description you could say "The Professionals" is a 1966 version of "The Expendables." Except you couldn't say that at all. Well, on second thought, maybe you could a little, but it would be a hearty disservice. I'll explain. In "The Expendables" a group of macho, macho men rescue a damsel from the clutches of a ruthless dictator named Garza. In "The Professionals" a group of macho, macho men rescue a damsel from the clutches of a ruthless revolutionary named Garza.

See, uber-rich rancher Ralph Bellamy's wife, Maria (Claudia Cardinale), has been kidnapped by Jesus Garza (Jack Palance), Mexican revolutionary turned bandit, who demands an excessive ransom. So Bellamy hires Rico (Lee Marvin), Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), and Sharp (Woody Strode) to infiltrate Garza's hideout and return his winsome bride to safety. For an hour the film follows the well worn trail of so many films before it. We learn about the men. Dolworth is has immense skills with dynamite. Sharp, on account of being played by the black Strode and the film being made only a few years after the time period of the setting of "The Help", is reduced to having barely any lines and using his bow and arrow to function as character "depth". The gang encounters vile Mexican bandits who, as they must, all wear bullet belts and sombreros. Eventually the gang makes it through to Garza's lair, hatches a plan, plants dynamite, and gets to within a few feet of where Maria waits only to find - uh oh - Garza stripping down and about to have his way with Maria. Except......Maria reciprocates. Lovingly. Dolworth says to Rico: "We've been had." And so, too, has the audience. Thank God!

Mad props to writer/director Richard Brooks for trusting his audience to stick with the routine - if well done - hour-long set-up before revealing all the fantastic cards in his hand. Whereas Stallone's ultra-crappy "Expendables" explicitly sticks to that well-worn trail throughout, right down to the explosion-laden finale, "The Professionals" doesn't take a detour so much as the alternate gravel road up the mountain that the highway department has effectively hidden because they fear it's not the sort of road "the people want" even though it offers gorgeous vistas rarely seen.

Maria, see, supports La Revolución and attempts – unsuccessfully – to thwart her own rescue. In that sense she’s like a south-of-the-border Pvt. James Francis Ryan – you remember him, right? The title character of Spielberg’s WWII epic “Saving Private Ryan” wherein an army company dispatched to find Pvt. Ryan and bring him home is stood up to by Pvt. Ryan himself. He won’t leave. He was ordered to defend a bridge in a small French town and, by God, he will. Thus, the company debates and winds up ignoring the mission at hand to stay and assist in the bridge defense. It is an illustration of nobility and idealism. “The Professionals”, on the other hand, are like a bunch of dudes called in by the office to fix the copier that has jammed every hour of every day for the last 7 years. This isn’t noble. This isn’t their ideal. This is their job. And they will fix that printer, come hell or paper jams. They are called Professionals for a reason. La Revolución can suck it. They were specifically paid to get Maria back to her husband and so get her back to her husband they will, regardless of her complaints and political, humanistic rhetoric.

Yet, as the movie progresses it is revealed Rico and Dolworth themselves were once on the side of Garza and La Revolución, but those allegiances faded away. Meanwhile Garza, as stated, isn’t really even a true revolutionary anymore – technically, he’s a bandit. And he has a grave but poignant speech near the end that summarizes, beginning: “La Revolución is like a great love affair. In the beginning, she is a goddess. A holy cause. But every love affair has a terrible enemy: time.”

Brooks’ film reveals there is such a muddy line between Professional and Revolutionary.

Go See Turn Me On Dammit!

A few of you are already aware of this and while centering a post around it will no doubt come across like shameless braggadocio, well, I swear that's not my intention. (Uh, not completely.) The Norwegian film "Turn Me On, Dammit!" which was my #4 Film Of 2011 and which also earned Cinema Romantico's prestigious annual I'll-Buy-You-A-Stella-Artois Award, presented annually to my favorite screenplay of the year which the Academy annually fails to nominate which annually leads to me offering to buy the writer a Stella Artois as reward, is set for an (excessively) limited release in the States beginning at the end of this month and they recently released a trailer into American theaters which so just happened to bear a raving quote from yours truly.



I cannot tell a lie. It was pretty cool. Not just to see my name and to see the name of my man Castor's Anomalous Material which has provided me with such an awesome opportunity and platform, but because my name was being associated with a teensy foreign indie flick that I absolutely adore. Look, I can't not help but worry that people across the country who are fortunate enough to catch this trailer will see my name and think, "Wait, Nick Prigge? That sounds totally made up. Is this another one of those fake names they put with fake review quotes?" And I can't not help but worry that even if they do buy my existence they will merely dismiss me as a so-called quote whore. More subtle, thoughtful and genuine than just about any teen sex comedy that I've come across? Seriously, guy? Stop with the hype. Thus, I feel the need to clarify and/or reinforce.

I wrote those words. I meant them. I still mean them. I meant every damn word of that review and I'll mean every word of it until the day I die or until the day Tom Hanks offers me $150 million to make my five hour Benedict Arnold biopic so long as I retract all those words.

We whine about the sorry state of podunk Hollywood but there are so many wonderful movies out there, and "Turn Me On, Dammit!" is one of them. Movies like this are why I'm so passionate about them in the first place and why I devote so much of my life to them. And that's why it's such a thrill to know that I have actually become a public ally of this righteous piece of cinema.

As stated, the film will be moving into a few art house theaters at the end of this month (March 30 at The Angelika, New Yorkers!!!) and on into April in a few select cities. So keep your eyes open. If you want to give your hard earned money to just one movie then I implore you not to give it to the Movie of the Week and to give it to "Turn Me On, Dammit!"instead. Thank you for your time.

Chalet Girl

You might be asking yourself, "Why did Nick watch a movie called 'Chalet Girl?' A movie billed on Netflix thusly: 'Ex-skateboarder Kim Matthews is transplanted to the world of alpine sports, an environment she finds foreign ... until she tries snowboarding.'" The answer could be one of two things, or perhaps a mixture of the two. 1.) He needed a movie post basketball & drinking and pre-more basketball and drinking and "Black Narcissus" on DVR just wasn't going to do. 2.) He wants to live in a world where Bill Nighy and Brooke Shields are married.

Felicity Jones, resembling an Ellen Page from Essex with a fetching overbite, is the aforementioned and 19 year old Kim. Tapped with caring for her comedically forgetful father she forsakes her crummy burger-slinging job for a 4 month stint as an, ahem Chalet Girl in the Austrian alps. Her fellow Chalet Girl, who initially exists as her enemy and calls everyone "babes" (before the screenplay completely forgets she was calling everyone "babes") before - REVERSAL!!! - becoming Kim's ally is totally posh Georgie (Tasmin Egerton), a Gisele Bunchden-ish Katherine Heigl from Kensington (?). The chalet to which they tend is owned by Richard (Nighy, who appears to have allowed his twin brother Jim Nighy do all the acting for him) and Caroline (Shields) and their son Jonny (Ed Westwick) who is engaged to Chloe (Sophia Bush). They guffaw about subprime mortgages while sipping Dom on scenic mountain peaks which they have reached via helicopter.

Meanwhile, Kim puts her ex-skateboarding skills to good use, although she does occasionally suffer from Ted Striker-like flashbacks from Something Bad That Happened In Her Past, on the slopes, taking up snowboarding and meeting Mikki (Ken Duken) who becomes her hillside mentor. Within the space of, oh, about the time it takes to boil a hot dog, "A Chalet Girl that doesn't ski" to snowboarding off ramps and onto picnic tables, making like an English Tara Dakides, who plays herself as the righteous American snowboarder she is.

And so Kim will juggle courting Jonny despite his engagement with training for the Roxy Slopestyle Pro which will bring her and her comedically forgetful father the riches of which they dare not dream. She juggles it primarily via an unrelenting inundation of montages all set to crappy pappy pop songs that seem more suited to Chloe than to Kim. Is it predictable? Well, of course it's predicable. After all, as a character helpfully explains: "This isn't Jane Austen."

You're damn right, it's not! It's "Chalet Girl"! It's "Blue Crush" Meets "License To Drive"! It's as harmless as a bunny hill at Fun Mountain in Montezuma, Iowa! You're going to watch this 84th Montage in 54 minutes and like it! Stop whining, Nick! Do you hear me?! You chose to watch this! Skateboard Spice is gonna win the Big Competition, make friends with Georgie, get The Guy even though he "withheld the truth", and get hit with a flirtatious snowball in the final frame and if they choose to freeze the final frame, well, that's because freezing the final frame is still really, really trendy. Right? Isn't it?

Basically that mandatory hot tub they all hop into at one point really needed to be a time machine that took everyone back to the Cortina d'Ampezzo in 1963. Or they needed more Gretchen Bleiler. Which is to say they needed any Gretchen Bleiler.

"Here's the pitch: it's 'Chalet Girl' meets 'Hot Tub Time Machine' starring Gretchen Bleiler."

The Rebound

In “The Rebound”, released in 2009 though only just available on Netflix a couple weeks ago, Sandy (Catherine Zeta Jones) conveniently – uh, I mean, inauspiciously – catches her idiotic husband cheating on her via videotape. Now, this guy is clearly an idiot but there must have been something that drew fair Sandy to him in the first place. Perhaps for their first date he scored courtside seats for the Knicks (she’s a sports fan) and then an after-game martini at the Algonquin (because I just assume all ladies swoon over martinis at the Algonquin)? And so it seemed so perfect, so storybook, only to gradually unravel into a morass of pain in spite of which Sandy still didn’t have the courage (good sense?) to break free.

Bart Freundlich’s debut film was “The Myth of Fingerprints” (1997). It is my third favorite movie of all time. It is nowhere near universally adored and it doesn’t need to be because if everyone has a specific film that seems to be engineered just for them and no one else this one was mine. It was the equivalent of a sassy English woman taking me backstage to a Springsteen show at Madison Square Garden and then for a post-show scotch at the Algonquin. It was so perfect, so storybook, only to gradually unravel into a morass of pain in spite of which I don’t seem to have the courage (good sense?) to break free.

Freundlich’s follow-up was “World Traveler” which was barely redeemed by the incomparable Billy Crudup who consistently refused to let his asswipe of a character off the hook even though Freundlich was determined to let his asswipe of a character off the hook. “Trust The Man” felt like “Sex and the City 2” (with more males) if the characters had stayed at home rather than travel to Abu Dhabi. So why? Why after seeing those two films and why after knowing “The Rebound” had gone direct to DVD and why after knowing it sat in my unavailable queue of Netflix for over a year did I still choose to watch it? Because as Marcus Tullius Cicero once observed, “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.”

So Sandy packs up her two kids, Frank Jr. (Andrew Cherry) and Sadie (Kelly Gould) and they move into the City, New York. She gets a job as a sports column fact-checker but, of course, within roughly 17 days she’s writing a column. (Life is so hard!) She gets an apartment above a coffee shop which is helpful because the coffee shop doubles as the crappy job of Aram Finklestein (even Woody Allen wouldn’t name a character Aram Finkelstein!), played by Justin Barth, who has recently been dumped by his French wife who used him for a green card which leads him to ponder “the meaning of life” (oy vey!). Oddly, Sandy and Aram don’t experience their mandatory Meet Cute at the coffee shop but at a self defense class where Aram has been hired to wear a sumo suit and get the crap kicked out of him which Sandy – twist! – does when she desires to unload her frustrations on someone, anyone, in regards to her ex-husband. She asks Aram to babysit. And then become her nanny. She goes on bad dates, like with John Schneider who chooses to conduct a conversation with her from inside a kybo and then afterwards put his unwashed hands to her face (eeeeeeeew!). Eventually, as they must, Mom & Nanny start dating, and despite finding themselves in age-inappropriate situations, something potentially real possibly develops.

Quick! We need a reversal, Freundlich! Just don’t choose to go with......no, no, no, no! You wouldn’t dare you, would you?! You would?! Where’s your Reversal Cheat Sheet?! You could pick anything! ANYTHING!!! SEE THE BOX, BART!!! THINK OUTSIDE OF IT!!! WHY WON’T YOU THINK OUTSIDE OF IT???!!!!......an unplanned pregnancy. And so they break apart.

This film, of course, is firmly in rom com territory but with an underlying message that says sometimes you have to be by yourself to find yourself which, as an introvert, I can kinda dig. The problem: the characters "find themselves" via an abominable third act montage. A montage! And that's when it hit me. "World Traveler" was stuffed with montages. "Trust the Man" was stuffed with montages. "The Rebound" resolves itself with a montage. "The Myth of Fingerprints"? It had no montages. Did Freundlich not know what a montage was then? Was he so unsure of his skills he chose not to use one? Did his not having skills assist him? Did he......

Dear Bart, 

"The Myth of Fingerprints" will always have a special place in my heart more special than a great many of the special places in my heart, and that will never change. When I needed that movie, it was there. Every Tuesday before Thanksgiving, it's there. It's 15 years burning down the road and it still feels urgent and immediate. But, we're different people now. We've both moved in different directions. You want to be the male Nora Ephron. I like Sofia Coppola. I hope you continue to make movies that please your artistic vision. I hope there are people out there who respond to them. I just know I won't.

Regards,
Nick

The Luck Of The Irish

The Luck Of The Irish: If you're an honest cop in New York City named Tom O'Meara and allow a houseguest you have never met to stay with you, the houseguest will double as a member of the IRA trying to purchase guided missiles.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Prizzi's Honor

The second to last film of the epic Hollywood maverick John Huston was based on a novel by Richard Condon and set in the world of the Brooklyn mafia but, when you really stop and consider it, was "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" 20 years before "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" - just with blacker humor and much more poignancy. But it's also a reminder of just how formidable an actor Jack Nicholson was back before he became "Jack", the guy who mugs on camera as slight variations of his sunglasses-all-the-time, courtside-Lakers-seat persona.

The film opens at a wedding of the uber-powerful Prizzi family, governed by Don Corrado (William Hickey, an amazingly strange, affecting, and understatedly frightening performance), "Ave Maria" wonderfully coloring it in, and eventually the camera will find our protagonist, Charley Partanna (Nicholson), who will eventually see a Polish vixen, Irene (Kathleen Turner), in the upper balcony, angelical, and seek her out at the reception where they dance and he provides his name and she is about to provide her name until she is summoned for a phone call. Charley, however, does not find her at the phone when he goes looking and comes to learn she has returned to L.A. and so he flies out (the jet going west and then east and then west and then east, throughout, is a subtle, slow-burning sight gag) and professes his love and she professes hers and then he decide to get married and wow, you think, this movie is 40 minutes in and this is all that's happened and yet it feels like so much has happened.

More plot kicks in. Someone was offed during the wedding which was cleverly employed as an alibi for any and all affiliated with the Prizzi family. Hmmmmm. So who did the offing? Turns out it was...Irene. She's a hit-woman, a hit-woman who also happens to be involved in a scheme of scamming money from a Vegas casino run by the Prizzis and so when Charley is sent back to west who "take out" the scammers he finds himself face to face with Irene at her home with her husband she had told Charley was just missing in whom Charlie has just planted a couple slugs.

But, dang-nabbit, Charley can't bring himself to rub her out. He can't! And he can't because he loves her. So he spins a few fibs to the Don, marries Irene, which angers Maerose (Anjelica Huston, in a performance deserving of the Oscar it won), shunned by her father, who wants to be the woman who brings Charley into the family he may be destined to one day run, and, before long, Charley finds himself involved in a hit in which Irene involves herself in which Irene ends up popping a cap in a police captain's wife (wrong place, wrong time) which turns the police against the Prizzis which means the Prizzis might have to give up Irene to the police. But will Charley let this happen?

Filmed in his classical, un-ornamental style (consider the way in which the hit of Irene's husband is framed - a set shot outside the garage where it takes place), Huston pits the Blood Oath against the Wedding Vow. Which supersedes which? That's the question.

And Nicholson makes that choice worthwhile. Taking on a Brooklyn accent he creates a character who comes across vaguely dim in his mannerisms but is strikingly effective at what he does - at least, until love enters the fold, at which he begins asking himself questions for which his superiors will provide answers. Sometimes knowing where you belong is really quite depressing.

He Got Game (A Scene For March Madness)

(This post was partially inspired by Alex's fantastic post on his favorite scene in "He Got Game.")

Two items that are quite clearly of immense importance to Spike Lee are Uncompromising Films and Great Basketball. Thus, if there was anyone capable of creating a film that simultaneously captured the icky world of such a beautiful game, it was Lee. "He Got Game" (1998) is about the ceaseless and sordid efforts of every college (read: college basketball factory) in the country to land the nation's #1 recruit, Jesus Shuttlesworth (real-life basketball player Ray Allen). But Jesus's troubles reach, as they must, beyond the court. His father, Jake (Denzel Washington, rather brilliant), is in jail for accidentally killing his wife and Jesus's mother. However, the state governor is an alum of Big State and yearns for Jesus to attend his alma mater. Thus, he concocts a scheme to release Jake from prison temporarily with the promise of early release......should he be able to convince his son to sign with Big State.

Because this is Spike Lee nothing can be simple, and I don't necessarily mean it won't be simple on account of dramatic conflict (though there is plenty of that) but I mean it won't be simple on account of loads of stock footage and Milla Jovovich as a hooker who, ahem, Jesus redeems and the rambling Roger Guenevere Smith monologue because, of course, in the nineties Roger Guenevere Smith was contractually obligated to be in every Spike Lee movie. But more often than not this movie feels right, brutal and brutally believable, and at certain moments its auteur calms down and allows the romance of the hard court to seep in, such as in the pickup game he magnificently chooses to score with Aaron Copland’s “Rodeo” which underscores how five-on-five in an NYC playground is an opera.

Best of all, though, is a walking and talking sequence late in the film between father and son on the Coney Island boardwalk. It doesn’t simply reveal the root of Jesus’s name, but it encompasses the entire sensation of a sports fan torn between the false purity and the willingness to still want to believe. Let’s break it down. It begins......

Jake: "My all-time favorite ballplayer was Earl Monroe. Earl the Pearl. Yeah, he was nice. See, everybody remembers him from the Knicks, you know, when he helped 'em win that second championship. I'm talking about when he was with the Bullets down at Winston-Salem Stadium.. Forty-two points a game the whole season. Forty-one point six. The whole season. But the Knicks, they put the shackles on him, man, you know, on his whole game. They locked him up, like in a straitjacket or something. When he was in the streets of Philly, on the playgrounds, he was like-"

At this point Jake mimics an Earl the Pearl move and as he does so he laughs. It's a wonderful, cockamamie, punch drunk love laugh. It's a laugh only a sports fan - whether that's basketball, football, baseball, hockey, football (soccer), curling, table tennis, etc. - knows. It's like the punch drunk laugh I still get 11 years after this. Jake's laugh makes me think of that classic exchange of that other great purveyor of New York City emotion Woody Allen with his first ex-wife in "Annie Hall."

-"What is so fascinating about a group of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball through a hoop?"
-"What's fascinating is that it's physical. It's one thing about intellectuals, they prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on. But on the other hand, the body doesn't lie. As we now know."

But I digress. The scene in "He Got Game" continues.

Jake: "You know what they called him?"
Jesus: "What?"
Jake: "Jesus. That's what they called him. Jesus. 'Cause he was the truth. Then the white media got a hold of it. Then they gotta call him Black Jesus. He can't just be Jesus. He's gotta to be Black Jesus. But still... he was the truth.”

At that point Denzel pauses and gets this almost mystical look in his eye and as he does you realize the moniker Black Jesus is perfect not necessarily because he should have just been called Jesus or because it always appears ridiculous to lump athletes in with biblical figures but because, in a way, whether people realize it or not, sports are so often colorblind. Even more than colorblind, they are beyond barriers of any kind. I was talking (read: drunkenly blathering) about this just last week with my friends Dave and Jessica but watching Kobe Bryant play basketball - regardless of his color, his upbringing, his off the court misdeeds, so on - is to watch an artist. Truly. Inarguably. You can discount sports because you don't like sports in the same way a film scholar can discount German Expressionism because he/she doesn't like German Expressionism, that's just fine, but I personally won't abide anyone saying Kobe Bryant isn't an artist just because what he does involves a ball and a hoop.

Jake: "So that's the real reason why you got your name."
Jesus: "You named me Jesus after Earl Monroe, not Jesus in the Bible?"
Jake: "Not Jesus of the Bible. Jesus of North Philadelphia. Jesus of the playgrounds. That's the truth, son. The way he dished, the way he..... you know, he spinned. You know how he do, coming off and all that."

I LOVE the clip Spike chooses to show at this point. It's not a thunderous dunk, it's not a feathery three, it's just Earl Monroe spinning and then making a layup. Exquisiteness in the basics. Poetry in sports comes anytime, anywhere, and not just in a ready-made ESPN highlight package.

Jake: "I want you to go to Big State, son. That's the real reason why I'm out here. That's the reason they let me out. You find it in your heart to go to Big State and they may let me out on an early parole."
Jesus: "So that's what this is all about, huh?"
Jake: "That's a part of it."
Jesus: "Jake, you just like everybody else."
Jake: "I ain't like everybody else.”

Oh, but he is. He’s like everyone else. And the scene switches from such a loveliness to hard truth, from Jesus of the playgrounds to the way in which so, so many of us make athletes out to be messiahs. A father angling for his own son to use his status to bail him out.

Jake: “I ain't like everybody else. Everybody else ain't your father. Everybody else ain't bring you in this world. Everybody else don't care about you, son. Like that girl you running with. You know her…..Layla?”
Jesus: “Lala!”
Jake: “Lala. You know her?”
Jesus: “Yeah, I know her.”
Jake: “Yeah, she know you like a book too. Many a great man, son, their downfall was 'cause of a woman.”
Jesus: “You talking about Samson and Delilah.”
Jake: “Yeah, that's right. Him too. Him too. You see I don't cut my hair, right? So you do know your Bible, huh? Look, son, just be careful. That's all I'm saying to you, all right?”

And this is where as sports fans we ALWAYS know better. We know better than anyone else, than the players, than the coaches, than the announcers, than our fellow fans, everyone, LISTEN TO US! WE KNOW! WHY DIDN'T YOU PLAY ROY HELU MORE IN THE 2010 BIG 12 CHAMPIONSHIP GAME???!!!

Jake: “Do you know if you're gonna go to Big State? I mean, is that like a finalist, or the final four for you?”
Jesus: “They’re in my top ten.”
Jake: “In your top ten? All right. That's good. One out of ten. I can live with them odds.”

Of course, in the end, more than anything else, with so much bad (on and off the field/court) mixed in with the good, we as sports fans rationalize. We have to rationalize or how we could enjoy it?

Do you remember "Hoop Dreams", the unflinching and masterful documentary that chronicles two high school basketball players from inner city Chicago? There is a brief sequence at a high profile basketball camp featuring none other than Spike Lee lecturing the young attendees. He says: "The only reason you're here - you can make their team. If their team wins, these schools get a lot of money. This whole thing is revolving around money." This is harsh but not inaccurate. But last weekend at the historic Big East Basketball Tournament at Madison Square Garden the ESPN cameras kept capturing the image of a certain individual sitting behind the Syracuse bench, hanging on every play. Who was it? Why, it was none other than Spike Lee.

Even someone who speaks the truth can't help but give in to the allure of The Truth.

(Watch the scene here.)

Honest to Blog?

While the majority of American moviegoers prime themselves for Jonah Hill taking the torch from Johnny Deep (did I really just write that?) in “21 Jump Street” followed by some “Games” involving “Hunger”, Cinema Romantico was priming itself for "Butter" - featuring Jennifer Garner as an Iowan seeking glory at the State Fair’s annual butter carving contest. As someone born and raised along the banks of the Des Moines River (which, of course, in German means A Lion Who Refrains From Roaring To Be Polite) I was beyond excited for Jim Field Smith’s slice of Iowa life. Alas, the film’s distributor, The Weinstein Company, recently pushed its release date from this Friday, March 16, all the way to October 5. October 5?! I’ll be 35 when I finally get to see this movie! (Insert sound of Nick’s sobs.)

You know, Harvey, I was the only film writer on the whole continent who named “Butter” his most anticipated movie of 2012. Yeah. That’s right. Find me someone else who said that! I dare you! You can’t! And THIS is the thanks I get?!

You know, Harvey, I’m the only person on the whole continent not related to the Paltrows and not employed by you or Miramax who continues to argue that “Shakespeare In Love” deserved Best Picture more than “Saving Private Ryan.” And THIS is the thanks I get?!

Now what I am supposed to do? Go see the stupid “Hunger Games”? I don’t want to see Jennifer Lawrence with a bow and arrow. I want to see Jennifer Garner with a butter carver.

As always, I hate everything.

The Power of the Movies

The last shot of "The Descendants" (out on DVD today and hopefully waiting for me at my doorstep this evening) is striking (and strikingly simple) in so many ways but rather than looking at it in the context of the film as a whole today let's look at it simply from the angle of what our trio - Matt, Alex and Scottie - are doing. That is, watching a movie.

They have just deposited their wife/mother's ashes into the Pacific and they gather together beneath a blanket, load up on ice creamed calories and watch "March of the Penguins."

That's all.

But isn't that everything?

London Boulevard

-"I was thinking about something else."
-"What were you thinking about when you were thinking about something else?"
-"Whatever it was, I wasn't thinking about it clearly enough."

This 2011 drama/thriller doubling as Oscar winning screenwriter William Monahan's directorial debut often feels scene-to-scene, moment-to-moment as if it's thinking about something else except whatever else it's thinking about it isn't thinking about it clearly enough. Though, oddly, it also is rarely thinking about what it is thinking about clearly enough. Monahan won his Oscar for “The Departed” and clearly wants to emulate Scorsese, only to instead evoke Madonna-era Guy Ritchie.

Mitchell (Colin Farrell) has just been released from prison for a three year stint on account of a vicious assault to rejoin the wilds of South London. It doesn't take him long to fall into step with a gaggle of colorful side characters who can all orbit in their own inane ways around his laid-back, well-meaning menace. A numbskull ne'er-do-well longtime pal trying to pull him back toward a life of petty crime? Check. A brutal but stylish crime boss? Check. A crooked cop? Check. An alcoholic wackadoo sister? Check. A homeless guy the protagonist looks upon like a father? Check. An agoraphobic weed addict? Check. A beautiful but reclusive actress? Check.

The last one is the key. Well, at least the ad campaign would lead you to believe it's the key. The beautiful but reclusive actress is Charlotte and she is played by Keira Knightley who is featured with Farrell on the poster. She and her agoraphobic weed addict business manager (David Thewlis) hire this Mitchell as a bodyguard/handyman - mostly bodyguard - to keep away the paparazzi. He accepts. They bond. Attraction flickers. L.A. beckons.

Meanwhile the obligatory idiotic antics of Mitchell's age-old pal Billy (Ben Chaplin) drag him into contact with the utterly remorseless Rob Gant (Ray Winstone) who wants Mitchell to take up a critical position in his organization only to be rebuffed again and again which leads him, as it must, to deciding that Mitchell needs to be offed because if Gant can't have him, no one can. Why doesn't Gant just move along to the next enterprising ex-criminal? Such pointless questions, dear reader.

Oh yeah. There's also the homeless guy (Alan Williams) for whom Mitchell cares. And Mitchell's alcoholic wackadoo sister (Anna Friel, crush level: broiling) for whom he also cares. They both factor into the story in their own blabbity blah way.

"London Boulevard" was based on a novel by Ken Bruen and feels as such since there is essentially too much plot and too much character for Monahan to control. No relationships and no motivations convince. I don’t mind a movie that conjures a love affair over the course of only two scenes but if that’s how you choose to play it then spruce up the hot & heavy. Farrell, though, is just too gruff for such Harlequin antics and Knightley takes the reclusive part of her role too close to heart, as if she’s sleepwalking in a Jane Austen story. The gangster side-story, meanwhile, threatens to usurp the romantic angle, despite Knightley’s likeness on the poster, but just paints by numbers. There’s no charge, no intensity, no threat level midnight.

This is a chalk outline of a real movie.

10 Reasons Why You Should Watch Ghosts Of Mars Instead Of John Carter

The much hyped (for good or bad) "John Carter", the sci-fi epic about a Civil War soldier on Mars (please don't ask) opened this weekend to general scorn from critics. My esteemed colleague Andy Buckle, for example, suggests you substitute a screening of Andrew Stanton's 3D supposed extravaganza for sleeping pills. Yikes. Thus, as always, Cinema Romantico is here to help, and suggests you skip shelling out $34.50 for a ticket to "John Carter" and nestle up on your couch for a showing of "Ghosts of Mars" (2001) instead.

Don't misunderstand, I'm not claiming "Ghosts of Mars" is a good movie. Heavens, no! I'm suggesting "Ghosts of Mars" will be a far more entertaining option than the unnecessary bloat of "John Carter." In fact, here's 10 reasons why you should watch "Ghosts of Mars" this weekend instead of "John Carter."

1. "John Carter" stars Taylor Kitsch. "Ghosts of Mars" stars Natasha Henstridge.

2. The Natasha Henstridge I'm Not Going To Do Anything With My Face To Make It Appear Like A Conscious Acting Choice Face is far superior to the Taylor Kitsch I'm Going To Prove I'm Acting By Squinting Face.

3. Natasha Henstridge's sidekick is a convict named Desolation Williams. John Carter was the name of Noah Wyle on "ER."

4. Desolation Williams is played by Ice Cube, who, needless to say, is a crazy motherf---er from around the way. My extensive research has indicated there are no crazy motherf---ers from anywhere - let alone from around the way - in "John Carter."

5. "John Carter" cost $250 million. "Ghosts of Mars" cost $28 million, $23 million of which went to Natasha Henstridge's wardrobe and hair and makeup and the gloss to keep the machine guns shiny (which, of course, legitimatizes the expense).

6. It's not merely "Ghosts of Mars." It's "John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars." Because of course it is.

7. John Carpenter waits until nearly the final frame to offer the obligatory shot of Ms. Henstridge in a tank top and her underwear. Like the old saying in Hollywood goes: don't give the audience what they want until the movie is almost over and they can't ask for their money back.

8. The Laugher. Explanation required, but to remain unprovided.

9. "Maybe I'll sleep with you if you're the last man on Earth. But we're not on Earth." If there's a line as good as that in "John Carter" then tell it to me. Tell it to me right now!

10. The last shot of "Ghosts of Mars" doubles as Ice Cube looking right into the camera. Because he's a crazy motherf---er from around the way. But I repeat myself.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Melvin and Howard

Films often hinge on some sort of dramatic precipice which must be scaled. Luke Skywalker and cronies needed to blow up the Death Star. Rocky Balboa needed to go toe-to-toe with Apollo Creed and win the heart of Adrian. Will Kane needed to stand up to Frank Miller and his gang. Then there is "Melvin and Howard" (1980), Jonathan Demme's lovable based-on-a-true-story fable, in which the precipice is an ultra-cheesy game show called Easy Street, hosted by a debonair sleazebucket (Jack Kehoe), where Lynda Dummar (Mary Steenburgen) will offer up an amateurish if spirited tap-dance routine to "Satisfaction" in the hopes that it will bring riches to the lives of she, her husband Melvin (Paul Le Mat) and their two young children.

Did you know Mary Steenburgen won an Oscar for this role? I'll admit I had no idea. In doing research for a recent article I stumbled upon this nugget of info. I'm a Steenburgen fan, from her work as herself on "Curb Your Enthusiam" to her fine supporting turn in the underrated, underseen minor masterpiece "Sunshine State." Yet the fact she had earned an Academy Award somehow eluded me. And while she offers fine supporting work, resembling an airhead with a brain, the title of the film, after all, includes Melvin's name, not hers, and that's because it's about him. Yes, even more than Howard.

That's Howard Hughes. Yes, the Howard Hughes, played by Jason Robards with shaggy hair, a grizzled face, and both mild annoyance and indomitable spirit. The facets of the true story go that the real life Melvin Dummar picked up Howard Hughes one night on a desert highway, drove him to Vegas, dropped him off at the Desert Inn, dismissed the notion that he really was who he said he was, and then forgot all about the encounter until several years later upon the famed but reclusive aviator's death he discovered he was supposedly left 1/16th of the Hughes fortune in a supposed will. It was referred to as The Mormon Will on account of it being discovered at the Church of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City where Dummar claimed he was instructed to leave it after it had originally been left to him by a mysterious if stylish man at his flailing gas station. Demme's film addresses The Mormon Will in it's third act but this is much less a film specifically about the will than it is about the life of Melvin.

He may be a bit chuckleheaded but he's also quite gracious, as evidenced both by his picking up and subsequent transportation of ol' Mr. Hughes and then forcing Mr. Hughes to sing along to his extraordinarily lame self-composed Christmas jingle about "Santa's souped up sleigh." We first meet Lynda, in fact, when she decides to up and vanish from their trailer with their daughter in tow on account of her husband's chuckleheadedness. Not that she isn't a bit of a chucklehead, too, because he tracks her down at a strip joint and brings her home. They get married a second time and then strike it sort of rich with $10,000 and a furniture set on Easy Street. But Melvin promptly does what any chucklehead would do in such a situation and buys a sleek car and a boat. And so Lynda packs up herself and her daughter and their newborn son and vanishes again. Melvin winds up re-marrying with Bonnie (Pamela Reed) and moving on to Utah where they assume her family's gas station, an enterprise not destined for any great success......until that mysterious and stylish man drops off the Mormon Will.

"Melvin and Howard" is a film about the dirt poor. It is about trailers and cars being repossessed and rundown juke joints and thrift store costuming. It is about how being named Milkman Of The Month is the equivalent of setting a world air-speed record. It is about a man doomed to repeat the same mistakes of good willed desperation. Until, of course, he finds himself face to face with a judge (Dabney Coleman) convinced he has forged the Mormon Will to have at a fortune that will finally square him for life.

In real life where there numerous court battles to follow and Dummar, though having no criminal charges filed against him, never saw a single cent of the Hughes' Estate. But "Melvin and Howard", gratefully, isn't about the numerous court battles. It's about the sad realization from the very first court battle that this money, whether he's telling the truth and has it or not, won't square him for life. That's probably a lesson Howard learned a little too late.

The President's Pitch

"The King's Speech", of course, was the true life tale of King George VI (Colin Firth), his ascension to the throne and, ultimately, overcoming a severe speaking impediment, delivering a speech to his nation upon declaration of war with Nazi Germany in 1939.

Recently I was listening to President Barack Obama's podcast with Grantland.com's Bill Simmons, focusing on our Commander & Chief's love of sports (which I love), and there was an exchange discussing the "completely stressful" (Obama's words) situation of having to throw out the first pitch at baseball games. He went on:

"...you’ve got to wear this bulky vest, and what happens is, they just hand you the ball. [Laughter.] They say, 'Here,' and you walk up. If you had three tries, you’d be fine. You’d throw a fast strike somewhere in there. But if it’s that first ball, each time I go up there my thinking is, All right, I’m just going to blaze this thing in. And then I’m thinking, Man, if I throw a grounder that’s going to be a problem. So then I end up kind of lofting it up a little bit and —"

President Obama and Simmons then go on to discuss President George W. Bush's first post-9/11 pitch that went - to quote them both - "right down the middle." And of all this, as it must, got me to thinking about a possible go for Oscar glory with an Americanized spin on "The King's Speech."

Here's the pitch (pun possibly intended): Bertrand Golden is an ex major league pitching prospect who flamed out in Pawtucket, one step short of reaching the mound at Fenway Park for the Red Sox, when his confidence so erodes that he can't even get a simple pitch all the way over the plate. He retires in shame, but decides to follow his second love: politics, and he eventually unseats a seemingly un-unseatable incumbent Ohio senator. After serving four successful terms he makes a run for President of the United States and wins.

Alas, his term is marked by the eruption of war between the U.S. and Venezuela and, miraculously, the declaration of war occurs a mere two weeks before baseball's Opening Day. Thus, the nation turns its eyes to President Golden's First Pitch as an opportunity to comfort a country on the brink of potential nuclear annihilation.

Meanwhile, the First Lady, Nanette, is in the midst of organizing the annual Rose Garden Tee Ball Game which finds ex-Texas Rangers pitcher Carter Mahaffey, a red blooded Republican, entering a Democrat controlled White House on account of his presidency of the Tee Ball Association of America. And when President Golden reports his First Pitch dilemma, Mahaffey sets aside his political differences to re-train Golden in getting one pitch - just one!!! - across the plate. "Politics divide us," says Mahaffey. "Baseball unites us."

And so President Golden finds himself face-to-face with the glove, the ball, the mound, and a catcher behind home plate 60 feet away at the Washington Nationals' home opener as an entire nation waits breathlessly to see whether or not he bounces his one pitch in the dirt.

"The President's Pitch."

Tenets of Cinema Romanticoism

"And all our little victories and glories / Have turned into parking lots." - Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball

"It was this constant conversion of my fanciful ambition into practical money-making ventures." - Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise

Thin Ice

Do you remember "The Ice Harvest?" Harold Ramis's comedic thriller from 2005 involving John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton in a twisting and turning dash for $2 million set amidst a vicious ice storm? Do you remember how at the end images of scenes from earlier in which the audience does not know precisely what happened are shown to fill in every possible blank, to ensure no one is confused and everything is settled in the viewer's mind before he or she exits the theater? This kind of lack of faith in the viewer's intelligence is insulting and, even worse, makes for boring cinema. It's not unlike the very end of Hitchcock's Psycho, an end which everyone seems to hate only to go ahead and copy anyway.

Do you remember "Fargo"? That's the one that earned Frances McDormand an Oscar for playing a pregnant Minnesota police chief who is tasked to solve a pitifully assembled crime by the clueless and desperate Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy). The film is likely remembered for its accents, its droll Midwestern humor and the wood chipper. But what makes the movie so fantastic and long-lasting, I suspect, is the way The Coen Brothers boldly decide to make their screenplay not hinge on some sort of Reveal (!!!), redefining all that we have seen, and rather settling on a conclusion that is born of character and situations into which those characters have put themselves. The end is bleak before the closing shot that defiantly throws a nice warm blanket over that bleakness.

"Thin Ice", the new film from the Sisters Sprecher (Jill and Karen), is a little bit "Ice Harvest", a little bit "Fargo", not as good as the former (which wasn't even all that good, really), not even in the same league as the latter. Such is life. Greg Kinnear is Mickey Prohaska, an absolutely unctuous insurance agent, who, in a fit of jealously at a work convention, hires Bob (David Harbour) away from his chief rival. Bob, as nice as pie, leads Mickey to an old fart living out on the edge of nowhere (Alan Arkin) who in his dementia has determined he needs some property insurance. Turns out too that he is in possession of a rare German violin that a Chicago dealer (Bob Balaban) states is worth $25,000. Hmmmmmm. See, Mickey is recently separated from his wife (Lea Thompson), his business is stalling and he needs a cash influx. And so, quietly, he goes about scheming a way to get at this violin for his own gain. Enter: The Security System Installer (Billy Crudup), who in no time has wormed his way right into Mickey's existence, for worse and for much worse, and begins trying to con the man who is trying to con the other man.

For most of its run time, the film's vibe - aside from Crudup - is very low key, evocative of the film's wintry Wisconsin landscape, where glasses fog up (nice touch), people blow on their hands for warmth even when their hands are gloved and lakes are thick with ice. The actors are all perfectly cast, from Harbour being so nice - to quote Ron Swanson - "to the point that it's annoying" to Arkin's forgetfulness to Crudup's unstable methhead to Mickey's dutiful, unappreciated secretary (Michelle Arthur) who watches her boss's meltdown with a knowing eye to Balaban who just looks like a violin dealer to, of course, Kinnear himself who in movies just generally has this dismissively arrogant way about him that is used to mostly fine effect here.

The joy in these sorts of films is watching the protagonist's scheme unravel, the walls close in, and the realization dawn on him that he has no way out. Instead, all of a sudden, as if M. Night Shymalan up and moved his latest production from Pennsylvania to Cheese Country, the film reverses with a terrible screech and a monstrosity of a seemingly endless montage complete with voiceover over-explains and re-defines everything we have seen in the most schlocky way imaginable. Even worse, it lets this dude, this Mickey Prohaska, off the hook when he has done nothing to deserve it. If this is satire, fine, but the tone of the entire film has never even hinted at that possibility.

However, here is a rare movie whose most jaw-dropping twist isn't part of the movie itself! After purchasing the film at Sundance 2011, ATO Pictures and production company Werc Werk Works ordered the Sprechers to completely change the film. The Sprechers refused. Thus, ATO and Werc Werk Works brought on a new editor and a new composer and made vast revisions to the already finished film. The Sprechers actually attempted to remove their names from the film but the contract they had already signed prevented it. How much do you wanna bet those slumming ATO/WWW shitheads added the horrendous shit at the end of this film that totally undermines it?

People often say there is too much finger-pointing at studio interference. Sometimes they're right. But sometimes they're not. If only the Sprechers could have pulled a fast one of their own on those editing room robbers and released their film to the world.

Wanderlust

One of the movies’ most ancient tropes is the Big City Man/Woman who through a fortuitous circumstance finds him or herself in Small Town America where his or her enthusiasm for life is resurrected. "Wanderlust", the new film from director David Wain, provides a miniscule twist on the concept. The careers of George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) are magically ruined on the exact same day leading them to abandon their brand new New York City “microloft” for George’s brother’s McMansion in sprawling Atlanta. On the way there, tired and desperate for a place to crash, our wedded duo winds up in Elysium Cove, not so much a Bed & Breakfast as a hippie commune, governed by the good-willed if slightly amnesiac Carvin (Alan Alda) but run by Seth (Justin Theroux) who is like a more whimsical John Hawkes in "Martha Marcy May Marlene."

Maybe it’s the commune’s disregard for the bourgesoie of normal life, or maybe it’s the pot, but George and Linda seem taken with this north Georgia haven, but not so much that they stop from pressing onward to Atlanta. Alas, George’s brother (Jordan Peele) turns out to be more obnoxious than Danny McBride, causing his wife Marissa (Michaela Watkins) to institute a rule that stipulates a 4:30 Happy Hour as opposed to the traditional 5:00 and in no time George has convinced Linda to flee back to Elysium Cove and give it a 2 week trial run.

From this point, Wain and his co-writer Ken Marino essentially follow the play-by-play of these sorts of Urbanites Out Of The City manuscripts down to the letter, just with a bit of new age wackadooness and organic farming thrown into the mix. At first George is urging them forward and Linda is reluctant so what do you suppose? A reversal? Do you suppose Seth, who has instituted a policy of free love between he and his ultra-beguiling lady friend Eva (ultra-beguiling Malin Akerman), will eventually have eyes for Linda? Do you suppose there will be a greedy businessman who wants to buy the land to open up an evil casino? Do you suppose if there is a nudist (Joe Lo Truglio) there will be lots of penis jokes? Do you suppose if there is a pregnant woman she will…… The greatest irony is that the nudist doubles as an aspiring mystery writer and is currently composing a novel with a brilliant twist that leaves every reader spellbound. Alas, Wain and Marino’s writing cannot match their own nudist.

So when the screenplay becomes a basic trail guide it must then hope its actors can become tour guides who spice up the proceedings. And they do all admiringly apply their game faces and get on with it, though Aniston still seems just a bit too anal retentive even when she’s supposed to be all loosey and all goosey. Seriously, you’ve never seen such a tightly wound woman re-enact Russell Hammond’s “I am a golden god!” sequence. Rudd is Rudd, ab-libbing lines on top of lines on top lines, so much to the point that I’m beginning to suspect in the very near future he’s going to make a movie where all he does is ad lib. For two hours. Theroux (an actor I’ve always liked) is really just a caricature but also at least makes it believable that his vibes would attract the peace, love and understanding eccentrics as opposed to the extremist eccentrics. And Ms. Akerman, plagued as always by so little to do (no arc whatsoever), still re-asserts her underrated and understated comedic chops. Few people can make such absurd lines sound so sincere.

"Wanderlust", though, has a secret weapon, and her name is Michaela Watkins. Essentially appearing in but two scenes, she is no doubt meant to skewer the persona of so many Real Housewives Of Atlanta. And while in that first instant or two you might suspect her lone trait will be Annoyance, she mines for something funnier and, ultimately, surprisingly, truer. Her line readings evoke a Female Walken clouded by a tequila and lime haze, the words and punchlines never quite arriving at the expected time and place. And while "Wanderlust" is, of course, partly just meant to be a “fun-filled comedy!” it also can’t hide the fact it wants to comment on society’s alienation, where we fit in and how we reach an understanding of our deeper selves. The film, however, chooses to wrap this all up with a pitiful news station montage. It is difficult to believe anyone has reached a higher plain, save for Marissa because, as it turns out, she was the only one with any sense of herself all along.

A glorious scene that’s meant to function as George’s wake-up call (because, of course, he can’t wake himself up) instead shows that Marissa’s stasis was a slow-burning trap that she springs at just right the moment, allowing her to utter that which bursts out of the gate to take the lead in the Line Of The Year Sweepstakes. “Reality shift.”