The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (2012) by Julia Wertz: Three pieces make up this comics collection from Julia Wertz.
The first, entitled "Industry," chronicles the jobs she's had over two decades and two coasts, from a lot of waitressing and bartending jobs to her later days as a professional cartoonist who doesn't have to hold down another job.
The second, the eponymous "The Infinite Wait," covers Wertz's move to San Francisco from Napa in 2002 and her subsequent diagnosis of having the auto-immune disease Lupus. The third, "A Strange and Curious Place," is, in Wertz's own words, "basically just a love letter to my hometown library and everything it taught me."
"Industry" probably has the most laughs per panel, even as Wertz starts to lose jobs because of her incessant drinking. The publishing success of her first two books, Fart Party I and II, moves "Industry" to an often hilarious evaluation of how Hollywood tries to adapt work, and specifically autobiographical work.
"The Infinite Wait," Wertz informs the reader, was a title chosen for its pretension and "seriousness" as a joke related to the decidedly unpretentious tale of Wertz vs. Lupus. This is certainly one of the funniest comics stories ever created about an incurable auto-immune disease. Well, any disease, any sickness. It may catch at the heart, but the story never stops presenting situations of high wit and low comedy.
Then there's "A Strange and Curious Place," the shortest piece in the book. It is indeed a paean to Wertz's hometown library, and to the joys of reading for a child. The depiction of Julia and her brother's excitement at the annual library book sale is a gem of humourous, pithily observed sentiment. The book, too, is a gem of autobiographical self-evaluation and often raunchy, sometimes obscene brilliance. Highly recommended.
Get Hard: written by Adam McKay, Jay Martel, Ian Roberts, and Etan Cohen; directed by Etan Cohen; starring Will Ferrell (James King), Kevin Hart (Darnell), Craig T. Nelson (Martin), and Alison Brie (Alissa) (2015): Jolly farce gets a lot of laughs from a Trading Places-type plot thanks to the fact that leads Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart are genuinely funny. It's not a great movie comedy, but this pairing suggests that a better screenplay could yield something amazing from these two comic actors. Though some thoughtfully written female characters would be nice -- how about adding Melissa McCarthy to the mix? Recommended.
61*: written by Hank Steinberg; directed by Billy Crystal; starring Barry Pepper (Roger Maris), Thomas Jane (Mickey Mantle), Anthony Michael Hall (Whitey Ford), Richard Masur (Milt Kahn), Bruce McGill (Ralph Houk), Jennifer Crystal Foley (Pat Maris), Peter Jacobson (Artie Green), and Donald Moffat (Ford Frick) (2001): Excellent HBO movie about the pursuit of Babe Ruth's single-season home-run record of 60 by Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the 1961 New York Yankees. Thomas Jane and Barry Pepper have never been better, while there's a pungent feel to those reporters who are supporting characters -- and who are, with the exception of Richard Masur as Milt Kahn, hostile towards Maris.
Indeed, Maris faced hostility from pretty much everyone. Yankees fans didn't like him because he wasn't a "true" Yankee, as he'd come over in a trade with Kansas City a couple of years earlier. And Yankees fans and reporters loved Mantle. And Maris was a quiet and reserved fellow who didn't like the limelight. Most of the events in the movie are true, though not all occurred in 1961. Bily Crystal's direction seems to get the most out of his actors -- only the occasionally too-bombastic music score is a problem at times. Highly recommended.
Kind Hearts and Coronets: adapted by Robert Hamer and John Dighton from the novel by Roy Horniman; directed by Robert Hamer; starring Dennis Price (Louis), Valerie Hobson (Edith), Joan Greenwood (Sibella), and Alec Guinness (Eight members of the D'Ascoyne Family) (1949): Blistering, oddly charming black comedy from England's Ealing Studios, the standard-bearer for black film comedy from the late 1940's through to the early 1960's.
Alec Guinness doesn't play the protagonist -- instead, he plays the eight surviving members of the noble D'Ascoyne family whom the protagonist intends to murder. The protagonist, whose mother the D'Ascoyne patriarch disinherited because of her marriage to an Italian singer, seeks both revenge and an ascension to the title (and the associated lands and title) for himself.
Guinness is great as an octet of often ridiculous nobles, while Dennis Price plays protagonist Louis with the right mix of snobbishness and gentility. The murders are often quite funny, and it's difficult to feel much sympathy for any of the D'Ascoynes. Louis also finds himself caught between two love interests -- manipulative and scheming Sibella, a friend since childhood, and the prim and proper Edith, widow of one of the more haplessly sympathetic D'Ascoynes. It's all a very funny and sometimes extraordinarily cynical and bleak look at the British class system. Highly recommended.
The Ladykillers: written by William Rose and Jimmy O'Connor; directed by Alexander Mackendrick; starring Alec Guinness (Professor Marcus), Katie Johnson (Mrs. Wilberforce), Cecil Parker (Claude (a.k.a. 'Major Courtney')), Herbert Lom (Louis (a.k.a. 'Mr. Harvey')), Peter Sellers (Harry (a.k.a. 'Mr. Robinson)), Danny Green (One-Round (a.k.a. 'Mr. Lawson')), and Jack Warner (The Superintendent) (1955): Oddly charming and gentle black comedy from England's Ealing Studios, the standard-bearer for black film comedy from the late 1940's through to the early 1960's. The body count is high, but it's hard to argue with the choice of victims.
Alec Guinness, sporting some pretty crazy fake teeth, plays Professor Marcus, the ringleader and chief planner for a quintet of thieves planning a big heist. Their plan hinges on Marcus taking rooms at the house of a deceptively lovable old lady (Mrs. Wilberforce, played wonderfully by Katie Johnson) for reasons I'll let the movie show you.
Guinness and his fellow actors -- including a young Peter Sellers and his police nemesis from the later Pink Panther films, Herbert Lom -- are terrific as their plan goes increasingly awry. Mrs. Wilberforce's ability to sow chaos wherever she goes without ever being affected by it herself repeatedly screws up the gang's plans. And their own somewhat English politeness makes the whole problem of eliminating Mrs. Wilberforce into an increasingly elaborate series of attempts and apologies.
The Coen Brothers remade The Ladykillers in 2004. It's not as bad a movie as some critics said, though it's also nowhere near the film that the original was. Alec Guinness trumps Tom Hanks. And the Coens didn't have Peter Sellers around to do uncredited work voicing Mrs. Wilberforce's two maddening parrots and a cockatoo. Highly recommended.
Tammy: written by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone; directed by Ben Falcone; starring Melissa McCarthy (Tammy), Susan Sarandon (Pearl), Kathy Bates (Lenore), Alison Janney (Deb), Dan Aykroyd (Don), Mark Duplass (Bobby), and Gary Cole (Earl) (2014): This is the sort of comedy that appeared in John Candy's film career far too frequently -- which is to say, terrible and gormless about how to use an overweight comic actor.
But the punchline is that unlike Candy, Melissa McCarthy co-wrote her film with her husband, who also directs. And it's terrible stuff. The casting is great, especially of all the female parts, though those not wasted by bad writing are wasted by a lack of lines (Toni Collette and Alison Janney in the latter case).
Some moments of slapstick and verbal comedy work, enough to keep one watching, and the second half of the film is a marked improvement on the first half. McCarthy needs better material. What's weird is that apparently she needs to find someone other than herself or her husband to exploit her potential. Not recommended.
Deliver Us from Evil: 'inspired' and adapted from the book by Ralph Sarchie and Lisa Collier Cool by Scott Derrickson and Paul Harris Boardman; directed by Scott Derrickson; starring Eric Bana (Sergeant Sarchie), Edgar Ramirez (Father Mendoza), Olivia Munn (Jen Sarchie), and Joel McHale (Detective Butler) (2014): Real-life person-type Ralph Sarchie is indeed a real former NYPD cop turned paranormal investigator. He comes from the school of the Warrens (remember the 'real' investigators in The Conjuring?), which means that charitably speaking, I don't believe a word of his paranormal adventures.
However, as a quick perusal of the IMDB page for this movie reveals, this film, 'inspired by actual case files,' is pretty much entirely fictional anyway. The case that Sarchie, still a cop, and Father Mendoza find themselves investigating has been invented whole-cloth by the film-makers so as to give Sarchie an exciting origin story. I'm assuming they were hoping for a Conjuring-level hit and a subsequent series of Sarchie-centric horror movies. No such luck. I hope.
As casting decisions go, this is a comedy of errors. Eric Bana struggles mightily to play a New York cop, Olivia Munn seems to have wandered in from another movie, Edgar Martinez lacks all plausibility as a sexy, "undercover" (the character's word, not mine) Roman Catholic priest, and Joel McHale plays Joel McHale playing a wise-cracking cop in what may be a dream sequence from Community. Many major concepts, including the Iraqi origin of the demons, are simply lifted from The Exorcist.
Most hilariously, the film-makers apparently are a-scared of The Doors. Doors music and lyrics show up repeatedly as elements in the various horrors being perpetrated by the demons. Is Satan a Doors fan? Is he sitting on the bus sucking on a humbug? I have no idea. This is dreadful, stupid horror. Not recommended.
Million Dollar Arm: written by Thomas McCarthy; directed by Craig Gillespie; starring Jon Hamm (JB), Pitobash (Amit), Suraj Sharma (Rinku), Madhur Mittal (Dinesh), Aasif Mandvi (Aash), Lake Bell (Brenda), Alan Arkin (Ray), and Bill Paxton (Tom House) (2014): Slight, enjoyable Disney trifle based on the real-life search for baseball pitchers in India. Jon Hamm plays a failing sports agent who's a jerk with a heart of gold that needs to be excavated by a sharp-tongued doctor (Lake Bell) and three lovable Indians. More culturally sensitive than I expected -- it's the high-money world of big agents and big athletes that's the uncomfortable landscape here, not India. Lightly recommended.
Beetlejuice: written by Michael McDowell, Larry Wilson, and Warren Skaaren; directed by Tim Burton; starring Alec Baldwin (Adam), Geena Davis (Brenda), Michael Keaton (Betelgeuse), Catherine O'Hara (Delia), Jeffrey Jones (Charles), Winona Ryder (Lydia), and Glenn Shadix (Otho) (1988): Beetlejuice stands as testimony to the occasional correctness of the original formulation of Auteur Theory: that the Hollywood system allowed directors to be more stylistically themselves by taking away at least some of the decision-making about the manifest content of a film. Tim Burton certainly adds something to the mix, a very good something, but he's controlled in part by a witty, imaginative (and much rewritten) script. The result is one of the ten great horror-comedies of all time, concise yet packed with amusing detail and amusing performances.
That the afterlife posited by the film is undeniably awful is part of the joke. All the performances sparkle, from Michael Keaton's anarchic Betelgeuse (more Joker than Batman) through skinny Alec Baldwin and young Amazon Geena Davis's bemused recently dead couple all the way to a young, Goth Winona Ryder, her annoying parents (including Catherine O'Hara in a rare film role as her art-world-pretentious mother), and the late, great character actor Glenn Shadix as unctuous hanger-on Otho (!). Cartoony as hell, and spiked throughout with amusingly rubbery stop-motion monsters and real-world monster make-up. The oddball insertion of a whole lot of calypso music just adds to the anarchic weirdness of the enterprise. Highly recommended.
The Grand Seduction: written by Ken Scott and Michael Dowse, adapted from La grande seduction (2003) written by Ken Scott; directed by Don McKellar; starring Brendan Gleeson (Murray French), Taylor Kitsch (Dr. Lewis), Liane Balaban (Kathleen), and Gordon Pinsent (Simon) (2013): Very droll little Canadian film about a small Newfoundland fishing harbour's quest to get a full-time doctor so as to be able to woo a factory to their depressed, mostly jobless shores.
Based on a previous film about the same situation in a French village, The Grand Seduction pretty much bursts at the seams with Newfoundland talent and actors from other parts of Canada, with the exception of lead Brendan Gleeson. Gleeson does a nice enough job with the accent, though it comes and goes. Performances are fine throughout, with Taylor Kitsch underplaying as the somewhat clueless doctor. It's a sort of pleasant, occasionally tart Canadian set-up that seems like a hybrid of Leacock and an infinite number of old CBC movies and TV series. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Recommended.
Fierce Creatures: written by John Cleese, Iain Johnstone, and William Goldman; directed by Fred Schepisi and Robert Young; starring John Cleese (Rollo Lee), Jamie Lee Curtis (Willa Weston), Kevin Kline (Vince McCain/ Rod McCain), Michael Palin (Bugsy Malone), and Carey Lowell (Cub Felines) (1997): Much of the cast and crew of A Fish Called Wanda reunited nearly a decade later to make Fierce Creatures. It's not a sequel -- they play new characters. It's also quite uneven, with several slow stretches and a few too many scenes in which Kevin Kline flails around frenetically to little comic effect. However, things shape up in the final third, becoming quite funny by the time the credits roll. Lightly recommended.
Abraxas and the Earthman: written and illustrated by Rick Veitch (1981-83; collected 2006): Writer-artist Rick Veitch's love letter to Moby Dick and space opera packs quite an illustrative wallop, with dazzling visuals and some pretty peculiar interstellar shenanigans. Also giant space whales, a villainous Alien Ahab named Rottwang, giant astronauts who look like Al Capp's Schmoos, a six-breasted alien catwoman, a talking head, some musings on the bicameral mind, and a lot of other interesting stuff. Really a lot of fun from Veitch's early career. Recommended.
