Sunshine Cleaning [Jeffs, 2009]

Sunshine Cleaning

directed by Christine Jeffs

starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt & Alan Arkin

Sundance '08 U.S. Theatrical '09

Not as bad as its detractors infer, nor good enough to be considered a success, Sunshine Cleaning works (somewhat) as a drama about two sisters' search for their identities, but is hindered by poorly written subplots including Alan Arkin phoning in a delusional grandpa (is that really acting..?) and an emotional climax using a set piece that would possibly work in a cute children's film...but this movie opens with a suicide and deals with far too mature subject matter to deserve such a stale a culmination.

Focusing on the good, Amy Adams is quite superb in a role that allows her to break free from the quixotic goodie-two-shoe that she's played in Enchanted and Doubt--she even gets nekkid (sort of)! It's as good a performance she's given since Junebug, and it's essential to the film's engagement of viewers. Clifton Collins Jr. adds a solid performance as a one-armed clerk who is probably the most believable character of all. Emily Blunt gets dealth a considerably weaker hand, and her storyline and climax are less momentous. She's at her best when on screen with Adams, which isn't often enough. The film is a relief in some sense because it's not as quirky as I was expecting, though the child character is by far the most irritating part of the picture, and I don't see any good reason he was given so much plot besides to arrive at the contrived emotional climax I mentioned earlier. 

Jeffs' direction isn't exactly daring, and she seems to aestheticize certain shots as if she's been studying Wes Anderson films. It's not as manipulative of color or as memorable as Little Miss Sunshine, but it's not completely forgettable either. That the film rises above other indie dramedy fare is owed mostly to Adams' fine performance and the script's refusal to shy away from darker subject matter (such as adultery and suicide).

6.0

Observe & Report [Jody Hill, 2009]

Observe & Report

directed by Jody Hill

starring Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta & Michael Pena

2009

How this film gained the supportive backing of a number of reputable critics, I'll never understand. Maybe it's because this is just about the most awkward, fucking strange film to get a wide release that I can think of? I described the direction of I Love You, Man to be awkward, containing plenty of dialogue that neither moves the plot forward nor garners laughter, but is kind of just there...as the camera lingers awkwardly. Observe & Report takes this kind of direction to the max, except it's rarely funny and seems to be dark for no better reason than to push the limits of mainstream dark comedy.

Glenn Kenny pretty much stole my review of the film (save for the fact that his is more insightful and better written than anything I'd have done), but I'll reiterate that this is a comedy that turns into a character study that turns into an aimless observation of a truly psychotic human being doing a lot of really stupid things. It rips a number of basic plot elements from Taxi Driver (one of my ten favorite films, ever, I might add), e.g. obsessive longing for a girl, a  disillusioned self-important protagonist, but doesn't have anything to say. Anna Faris isn't used to her potential as usual, and the wonderful man behind the camera, Tim Orr, is reduced to making (on-location) shots of the mall look as claustrophobic as possible. 

There's something going around along the lines of "just wait til the last 10 minutes!," but even the moderately shocking/well-shot ending is merely a minor highlight. This is audacious mainstream cinema, too bad its risks are for risks' sake.

4.0

Lovely & Amazing [Holofcener, 2001]

Lovely & Amazing

directed by Nicole Holofcener

starring Catherine Keener, Emily Mortimer and Brenda Blethyn

2001

Going into it with considerable optimism considering my general enjoyment of Holofcener's Friends With Money, I came out entirely disappointed. While the screenplay offers plenty of good moments for its strong female cast, it is as a whole contrived and confused about what it's attempting to portray. The picture follows three daughters (two grown white women and an adopted black pre-adolescent) as they cope with different insecurities, a trait apparently inherited from their mother, who spends most of the film in a hospital due to plastic surgery.

If Lars von Trier has to hear a lot of shit for the humiliations he puts his heroines through, it'd be unfair not to put Holofcener under the same examination. Whereas von Trier creates his female characters as sympathetic, if only out of naivety , Holofcener's characters are hard to connect with because they are either obnoxious, ignorant, or contrived. I liked all of the women in Friends With Money, despite their flaws, but even the best actress here don't come out unscathed. When an actress as witty as Catherine Keener becomes (unintentionally) downright detestable, something's wrong. She's a brat in a woman's body, and offers no connective entrance to the viewer. While Emily Mortimer's improved in recent years (Lars and the Real Girl especially), her performance here is cold. Brenda Blethyn is sporadically excellent but disappears in the second half. No doubt it could be said that we are not meant to like all imperfect characters (see: Buffalo '66), but the film hinges on it, as there are many emotional cues throughout.

While this indie women's drama is better than similar standard fare, it's full of clever moments and short on direction, both narratively and visually. I laughed more than a couple times, especially because of some of Keener's one liners, but by the last half hour, I'd lost both interest and any emotional link to the characters.

5.5

Beijing Bicycle [Xiaoshuai, 2001]

Beijing Bicycle

directed by Wang Xiaoshuai

starring Lin Cui and Bin Li

Obviously created with great awareness of Vittorio de Sica's The Bicycle Thieves, Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle attempts to tell a near identical story, but from two thieves' perspectives. It's something like a Ramin Bahrani film (especially Chop Shop), but with less nuance and more drama. In doing so he juxtaposes country and city life, and considers stealing out of necessity v. stealing out of want. 

Unfortunately, neither is entirely well represented, as its protagonists (both 17) , a migrant worker from the country and a city boy from a working class Step family, are written as blunt extremes. Guo, moving from the country to become a delivery boy, is reserved, honest, and incredibly naive. Jian, on the other hand, is wholly unlikeable, as he almost always seems to make the stupidest decision possible, no matter the situation. That being said, the time spent with Guo is a lot more engaging than that with Jian, as we can at least feel for his mini-struggles and triumphs in the first 30 or 40 minutes (the best section of the film, not by coincidence). It's when Jian gets involved that the film becomes muddled and undeservedly cruel to its characters, an only partly believable excuse to comment on the bleakness of Guo's situation.

Despite these major scripting failures, the story is actually quite engaging, and Xiaoshuai's quietly observing camera captures the Beijing streets with great familiarity. de Sica's film is especially powerful because of its morally neutral illustration of its protagonist, and our emotional involvement with his situation through his relationship with his son--something Beijing might've been the better to consider.

4.5

I Love You, Man [Hamburg, 2009]

I Love You, Man

directed by John Hamburg

starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones

Colloquialisms like "bromance" and "mancrush" have become increasingly popular in the last year or two, as America slowly breaks down taboos of what's considered "gay" between male friends and what's simply heterosexually intimate. I Now Pronounced You Chuck & Larry explored  the line between homosexual and heterosexual male behavior, albeit offensively (or so they say), whereas John Hamburg's film simply skirts the line without really  attempting to comment on the underlying subject (Andy Samberg has a small role as Rudd's gay brother, but really only exists to show him how easy it is to meet men). 

Working off a script co-written by Larry Levin (Dr. Dolittle 1 & 2) and Hamburg (Zoolander, Meet the Parents), Rudd and Segel are both at their best. While the script is expectedly average (Judd Apatow is not involved), what's surprising is how quiet much of the humor is. It's fascinatingly awkward for a bit, and then just odd after an hour. It's difficult to tell whether Hamburg is simply confused in his direction of these scenes or not, but some "jokes" are presented as a strange comic realism (when the film begins to betray this relative realism, though, as in a ridiculous vomit projectile scene, its disappointing). 

The funny jokes are funny, though, and the film is unmistakably at its best when Rudd and Segel are together. Rudd is endless watchable as an awkward real estate agent (like James McAvoy's character in Wanted, consciously spewing Diablo Cody dialogue), and Jason Segel plays the confident alpha male with ease, shedding the desperation of his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Although the two have much better exchanged in this film than Sarah Marshall, the weak scripting and Hamburg's bland direction (the most ambitious thing he does with the mise-en-scene is associate Jones' character with the color yellow rather incessantly) make it much less rewarding. It's a film that's certainly worth seeing (if you are generally a fan of Rudd/Segel), but won't lose much when its shown on cable in a few years. 

6.5

Must Read After My Death (Dews, 2009)

Must Read After My Death

directed by Morgan Dews

2009 U.S. theatrical release [2007 festival debut]

Playing like something of a devilish mash-up between Capturing the Friedmans and Revolutionary Road, Morgan Dews' feature debut strips itself of any talking heads or excessive text because, thanks to his grandmother, he doesn't need any of it. Leaving behind hundreds of hours of recordings and home video, Allis clearly wanted someone to know her family's troubled story.

What could have made for a cathartic self-exploration of the director's identity is instead presented as a detached string of Dictaphone recordings against home video that is at times symbolic (several key shots of puppies feeding off their mother) and narrative. Dews also adds a musical score that sometimes irritatingly drowns out the recordings. While the trouble revealed within is intriguing, if not shocking, Dews perhaps fails in one respect at providing context for the family, giving very little exposition about any of its subjects. It seems when doc directors place themselves in their works, critics are quick to call them vain, but what's missing here is the individualization--precisely what made Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary the triumph that it was. It's like watching a Douglas Sirk film stripped of the close-ups, the Technicolor and, by effect, the emotional wallop. 

Dews restricts the film to a very modest 70 minutes and reveals (obvious by that point) that he's the son of Allis' only daughter Anne, and gives a brief description of where each of the children are now.

5.5

The Class [Laurent Cantet, 2008]

• Laurent Cantet is a smart fellow. Taking cues from the brothers who've won two Palme d'Ors in the last decade alone, he translated their hand-held, cinema verite style to an uncompromising observation of a French class at a middle school in Paris. This is not to say he "stole" their style by any means--the Dardennes certainly were not the first to keep their camera obsessively close to their characters' faces, or attempt objective realism. In fact, Cantet beat out the Dardennes' The Silence of Lorna for the Palme d'Or, so there's obviously no mimicry going on.
• If The Class seems curiously real, even for those familiar with naturalism, it's probably because it is, somewhat. Like Abbas Kiarostami, another Palme d'Or winner, Cantet blurs the line between fiction and documentary with his casting of Francois Begaudeau, who essentially adapted his own semi-autobiographical novel for the screen, and stars as his semi-self in it. Meanwhile, the students are all obviously real students, and almost all go by their real names. 
• If Ryan Fleck's Half Nelson and Mike Akel's Chalk proved that there was still nuanced or painfully comic narratives to be had from the classroom drama subgenre, Cantet's movie is out to deconstruct the narrative and instead observe the failure of a school system to its students, and remind us that the teachers are often as frustrated and confused as their pupils. The film takes place neatly over the course of exactly one school year, following Francois only while at work, and never resorting to any scenes of students outside of school to achieve sympathy for their conditions or "explain" why they act how they do. There's probably never been such a good cast of students in a film of this subgenre, likely because the actors "workshopped" their characters in Mike Leigh fashion, giving them a lot of time to get a feel for their characters and ultimately become them (if I were told every character was told simply to act as themselves, I would have believed that). The film resonates so well because these characters are so memorable, and portrayed so objectively that it's hard not to embrace them if only for their imperfectly human nature.
• While Cantet can't, and henceforth doesn't try to characterize every student in the classroom, he does a damn good job of presenting the ten or eleven of those who are the most involved, and thus the most important (in this film of course). Although it doesn't take two seconds to notice that the class is almost completely made up of low-income emigres, the movie never makes the mistake of stereotyping its characters, nor portraying the white Francois as a stereotype-giver (except in a subtle connection of Chinese with mathematics, only noticeable for the comically deadpan look given by the boy's mother). 
• It's original title, Entre les murs, translates as Between the Walls, and is indeed the motif of the film. When the last shots of the film are shown, it becomes increasingly apparent what(/who) the title is referring to.

9/wonderfully objective observation of a middle school class, furnished with memorable characters and performances