Altman and Aldous

Get Him To the Greek: Unrated Version (2010): based on characters created by Jason Segel; written and directed by Nicholas Stoller; starring Jonah Hill (Aaron Green), Russell Brand (Aldous Snow), Rose Byrne (Jackie Q), Colm Meaney (Jonathan Snow), Dinah Stabb (Lena Snow), Sean Combs (Sergio), and Elisabeth Moss (Daphne Binks): Rapidly becoming an all-timer on my list of film comedies that cheer me up. Jonah Hill has never been funnier. 

Russell Brand has only been used well in one other film -- Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he also played dissipated Brit-rocker Aldous Snow. There's a bizarre, endearing, obscene, profane chemistry between Hill and Brand that makes me wish they'd do another movie with writer-director Nicholas Stoller and Aldous Snow-creator Jason Segel. Even Sean Combs is hilarious. And Aldous Snow's songs are hilariously catchy. Highly recommended.

Altman (2014): written by Len Blum; directed by Ron Mann: Excellent, too-short documentary from Canadian Ron Mann on the life and times of Top Ten All-Time director Robert Altman (1925 –2006). The iconoclastic Altman spent about 20 years in TV and B-movies before his film version of M.A.S.H. made him an 'overnight' success. 

Even when ha had access to major-studio money in the first decade after M.A.S.H., Altman was fiercely iconoclastic and eccentric in his film choices. Losing studio money after 1980 or so didn't finish him -- instead, he directed on the stage, came up with an innovative TV show, and eventually came back 'into the fold' (sort of) with popular and critical hit The Player. His movies are his testament; this documentary does a nice job of looking at the man, and the affection so many actors had for probably the greatest actor's director of all time. Recommended.

Bedfellows of the Strange

Brooklyn (2015): adapted by Nick Hornby from the novel by Colm Toibin; directed by John Crowley; starring Saoirse Ronan (Ellis Lacey), Fiona Glascott (Rose Lacey), Jane Brennan (Mary Lacey), Emory Cohen (Tony), and Domhnall Gleason (Jim Farrell): Pleasant, nicely acted melodrama got a couple of Oscar nominations for Saoirse Ronan (Best Actress) and Nick Hornby (Best Adapted Screenplay). Montreal also does fine work pretending to be a town in Ireland in 1952. This is the sort of immigrant's story that makes me think of Golden Age Hollywood and earnest CBC movies. But the cast is charming and the low-key writing and characterization fine except for a bit involving an eight-year-old boy writing love letters for his writing-challenged older brother that seems to have wandered into the movie from some lame 1970's Disney comedy. Recommended.

The Sitter (2011): written by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka; directed by David Gordon Green; starring Jonah Hill (Noah), Sam Rockwell (Karl), Ari Graynor (Marisa), Max Records (Slater), Landry Bender (Blithe), Kevin Hernandez (Rodrigo), and JB Smoove (Julio): Jonah Hill plays Fat Jonah Hill for the last time (to date) in a movie that's a lot funnier than it should be. One thing that helps is that the movie isn't simply foul-mouthed -- it's intermittently perverse, which is actually rare. It's also short and surprisingly tightly plotted and directed. Recommended.

Date Night (2010): written by Josh Klausner; directed by Shaun Levy; starring Steve Carell (Phil Foster), Tina Fey (Claire Foster), Mark Wahlberg (Holbrooke), and Taraji P. Henson (Detective Arroyo): A bit of a mess into which I assume Tina Fey and Steve Carell were parachuted so as to improvise some laughs. This bullets-and-cops-and-fish-out-of-water comedy seems to have been written in, oh, 1985. It wasn't, but it seems like it. A short, perfectly adequate time-waster that would have been even better with a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack and star turns from Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. Lightly recommended.

The Watch (2012): written by Jared Stern, Seth Rogen, and Evan Goldberg; directed by Akiva Schaffer; starring Ben Stiller (Evan), Vince Vaughn (Bob), Jonah Hill (Franklin), Richard Ayoade (Jamarcus), and Rosemarie DeWitt (Abby): The Trayvon Martin tragedy saw the studio re-title this film (from Neighbourhood Watch). I don't know if some scenes were removed as well. The movie seems to lack a transitional middle section, but that may just be sloppy writing and/or editing. 

This cast and these writers should have managed something at least mildly great. They don't, but the movie improves noticeably about 45 minutes in as it finally gains some traction and leaves the sad-nebbish comedy behind for loopier stuff involving an alien invasion of suburbia centered on the local Costco, of which Ben Stiller is the manager. Richard Ayoade (Maurice Moss on The IT Crowd) is mostly wasted, though he manages to put an amusing spin on some of his lines. Stiller and the newly thinnish Jonah Hill are also fine. Vince Vaughn is a comedy-killing machine, as is mostly always the case. He's the place where jokes go to die. Lightly recommended.

Starring the Breasts of Jamie Lee Curtis

Cyrus:  written and directed by Jay and Mark Duplass; starring John C. Reilly (John), Jonah Hill (Cyrus), Marisa Tomei (Molly), and Catherine Keener (Jamie) (2010): Sad-sack John starts dating sad-sack Molly, only to encounter problems with her 22-year-old live-at-home son Cyrus. An enjoyable mumblecore comedy-drama got pitched for its brief theatrical run as a wacky comedy, which it assuredly is not. Indeed, the rhythms of many of the scenes featuring a fish-eyed Jonah Hill are those of horror and not comedy. Marisa Tomei is a lot more striking now that she's aged out of cuteness -- she projects an occasional tiredness of adulthood that's extremely affecting. John C. Reilly is also good as a guy with his own dependency issues, while Jonah Hill exudes menace and hostility hidden behind platitudes and false bonhomie right up to the final scenes. Recommended.

Kill Bill 1 and 2: written by Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman; directed by Quentin Tarantino; starring Uma Thurman (The Bride), David Carradine (Bill), Vivica Fox (Vernita Green), Lucy Liu (O-Ren Ishii), Michael Madsen (Budd), Daryl Hannah (Elle Driver), Sonny Chiba (Hattori Hanzo), and Gordon Liu (Johnny/ Pai Mei) (2003-2004): Quentin Tarantino was forced by Miramax to split Kill Bill into two movies, primarily because it was impossible to sell a 4-hour movie of any genre to theatre chains. This looked for a time like it would be Tarantino's Heaven's Gate -- filming went on forever, the budget kept rising, and Tarantino was forced because of budget issues to come up with a different final confrontation between the Bride and Bill than he originally intended. But the two movies ended up making a lot of money.

It's a fascinating movie (s). It's a triumph of synthetic style over substance; so many different film styles, so many different homages, so little substance. It's a piece of film entertainment that's ultimately about nothing but the indiscriminate love of movies and the cool things that happen in them, the cool way they can look and move. The cast is almost uniformly perfect, with Uma Thurman as the vengeful Bride (we only learn her real name towards the end of Volume 2) and David Carradine as the malign, soft-voiced Bill the stand-outs. It's a love letter to Kung Fu movies, spaghetti Westerns, different film stocks, and pulp of all types from a half-dozen countries. Highly recommended.

Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers: inspired by the non-fiction book by Donald Keyhoe and written for the screen by Curt Siodmak, George Worthing Yates, and Bernard Gordon; directed by Fred F. Sears; starring Hugh Marlowe (Dr. Marvin) and Joan Taylor (Carol Marvin) (1956): The looming inspiration for Tim Burton's Mars Attacks in both UFO design and anti-UFO weaponry (sound waves, albeit not those generated by the golden throat of Mr. Slim Whitman). The writing, direction and acting are competent, but the star is stop-motion guru Ray Harryhausen, whose UFOs look great and are generally very well integrated into the rest of the footage. Joan Taylor gets a much larger than normal role for a woman in this sort of movie. Recommended.

Trading Places: written by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod; directed by John Landis; starring Eddie Murphy (Billy Ray Valentine), Dan Aykroyd (Louis Winthorpe III), Denholm Elliott (Coleman), Ralph Bellamy (Randolph Duke), Don Ameche (Mortimer Duke), Jamie Lee Curtis (Ophelia), Paul Gleason (Clarence Beeks), and Jim Belushi (Harvey) (1983): Eddie Murphy's second movie was a comedy hit in 1983. It still shines today, though certain routines will make a person cringe. Originally intended to be a Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor vehicle, Trading Places is the only comedy I can think of that hinges on the commodities trading of frozen orange juice concentrate on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Murphy is young, thin, hilarious, and charismatic. Aykroyd is very good as an upper-class twit. The supporting cast is also good and fairly well-served. Jamie Lee Curtis, trying to change her image as the virginal good girl in slasher movies, does a couple of brief topless scenes. They appear to be real, and they're spectacular. Recommended.

Adaptations and Lamentations

The Blues Brothers: written by Dan Aykroyd and John Landis; directed by John Landis; starring John Belushi (Jake Blues), Dan Aykroyd (Elwood Blues), and a cast of thousands including Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway, James Brown, Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, Carrie Fisher, Twiggy, Steven Spielberg, Frank Oz, Joe Walsh, Mr. T. and Paul Ruebens (1980): It's hard to imagine a vanity project this counter-intuitive being made today. The Blues Brothers is a musical in which the titular heroes (first performed by Aykroyd and Belushi on Saturday Night Live)  stand to the side and bounce around every ten minutes while a legend of rhythm and blues performs. And Cab Calloway. Even in 1980, Cab Calloway must have seemed like a reach.

But it all works surprisingly well, maybe better now that we've endured 34 years of much less agile-afoot action-comedies, none of which feature Aretha Franklin singing in a diner or a performance of the theme from Rawhide at a Country-and-Western bucket of blood. John Landis wasn't a stylistically sophisticated director -- the action scenes are funny or not depending on how much crap he throws into the frame. And boy, does he throw a lot of expensive crap into the frame.

The widespread destruction of property (and especially police cars) becomes funnier as we go along and the level of destruction increases. Belushi and Aykroyd hold it all together with performances as twin, deadpan Bugs Bunny types, nigh-indestructible and apparently completely unaware of that indestructibility. They're loveable because they don't try to be loveable. And they know when to get off stage. Highly recommended.

 

22 Jump Street: based on the TV series 21 Jump Street created by Stephen J. Cannell and Patrick Hasburgh; written by Michael Bacall, Jonah Hill, Oren Uziel, and Rodney Rothman; directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; starring Jonah Hill (Schmidt), Channing Tatum (Jenko), Peter Stormare (The Ghost), Wyatt Russell (Zook), Amber Stevens (Maya), Jillian Bell (Mercedes), and Ice Cube (Captain Dickson) (2014): So metafictional, self-mocking, and self-referential that it feels like the longest SNL skit ever. 22 Jump Street is a hoot, though a little of the meta goes a long way.

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum charm again as off-beat cops Schmidt and Jenko. Peter Stormare doesn't have a lot to do as the main villain, but Jillian Bell steals pretty much every scene she's in as a snarky college room-mate who keeps commenting on Schmidt's incongruous age whenever she sees him. A little draggy in the middle; a lot hilarious during the sequel-happy end credits. Recommended.

Winchester '73: written by Robert L. Richards, Borden Chase, and Stuart N. Lake; directed by Anthony Mann; starring James Stewart (Lin), Shelley Winters (Lola), Dan Duryea (Waco Johnny Dean), Stephen McNally (Dutch Henry Brown) and Millard Mitchell (High Spade) (1950): Hugely successful at the box office, Winchester '73 revitalized the movie Western for several more years, and Jimmy Stewart's Western career with it. To call the movie episodic is to state the obvious -- it almost plays like six short episodes of a TV series strung together. And it really feels like the sole sponsor of that TV series was the Winchester rifle company.

Solid location work and direction adds to the charms of Stewart, the young and pretty Shelley Winters, and a Who's Who of solid character actors. Oh, and Tony Curtis plays a Cavalry officer with about two lines. More weirdly, a young Rock Hudson plays a Native American. Recommended.

Murder, My Sweet: adapted by John Paxton from the novel Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler; directed by Edward Dmytryk; starring Dick Powell (Philip Marlowe), Claire Trevor (Helen Grayle), Anne Shirley (Ann Grayle), Otto Kruger (Jules Amthor) and Mike Mazurki (Moose Malloy) (1944): Poor casting hamstrings a mediocre adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely from the get-go. The title was changed from Farewell, My Lovely after release because audiences stayed away in droves, believing it was another musical starring Powell rather than his first dramatic leading role. The movie might not have been great with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but it would have been better.

As is, Dick Powell is bland and serviceable as P.I. Philip Marlowe (whom Bogie would play two years later in The Big Sleep to universal and enduring acclaim). Claire Trevor, so good as the prostitute with a heart of gold in 1939's Stagecoach, is completely baffled by her role. A somewhat surreal dream sequence seems to nod knowingly at Hitchcock's forays into similar sequences. An adequate time-waster, but nothing more. Lightly recommended.

Ender's Game: based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, written and directed by Gavin Hood; starring Asa Butterfield (Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin), Harrison Ford (Colonel Graff), Hailee Steinfeld (Petra Arkanian), Abagail Breslin (Valentine Wiggin), Ben Kingsley (Mazer Rackham) and Viola Davis (Major Anderson) (2013): Not so much a bad movie as a peculiarly undercooked one, with a need for more character development before the apocalyptic climax. Asa Butterfield is fine as tween-aged Messiah Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, whose strategic skills may be the only hope humanity has against an alien race known as the Formics. Harrison Ford and Ben Kingsley glower and growl quite effectively as the military geniuses who see in Ender humanity's last hope, and the rest of the cast is mostly fine.

That child-messiah thing that permeates science fiction and fantasy at least comes with some reservations on the part of Ender in this version of Orson Scott Card's popular novel. And the battle sequences are fine, though we're never given the equivalent of an establishing shot for the Earth fleet (or, for that matter, much idea of the scale of the ships), two mistakes that cut against any feeling of the epic. Lightly recommended.

Left Behind with James Franco

This is the End: written and directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, adapted from a short film by Jason Stone; starring James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Emma Watson, and Michael Cera as themselves (2013): For an astonishingly raunchy comedy from the wags who brought us Superbad and Pineapple Express, This is the End is amazingly fastidious in its use of the Book of Revelation. It's certainly more "accurate" than end-times thrillers like The Seventh Sign, End of Days, or even the whole Left Behind franchise.

All the actors come together to play versions of themselves, attending a Beverly Hills house-warming party at James Franco's when The Rapture occurs. But only Montreal's own Jay Baruchel, visiting from Canada and disdainful of Hollywood, is initially aware that the Rapture has occurred. He and best-pal Seth Rogen were out buying cigarettes.

Rogen missed seeing the Rapture because he was lying on the floor of a convenience store after an apparent earthquake. Baruchel saw it, though. Then chaos erupted and they fled back to Franco's house, where no one noticed anything amiss because nobody at the party got Raptured up...

Well, it's literally One Hell of a Buddy Comedy, though who the buddies and who the damned will be is in question until the final minutes. The various actors riff, often hilariously, on their personae. Michael Cera shows up early to play against perceived type -- he's a coke-snorting, bathroom-threesome, ass-slapping monster. Jonah Hill is a schmoozing hypocrite who secretly hates Jay Baruchel because he wants Seth Rogen to be his own best buddy. Franco is, well, Franco. Craig Robinson is loveable but befuddled at first. Danny McBride is a complete jerk.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles burns. Pits that lead to Hell open up across the globe to suck up the damned. Demons and spectres roam the Earth. Under siege, the guys barricade themselves inside Franco's house. But they're running out of food and water, and nerves are frayed. Luckily, they do have a lot of booze and recreational drugs.

As with many Rogen/Goldberg movies, improvisation and a certain aversion to tight editing lead to scattershot scenes and lines. If the two ever got really rigorous about being funny, they might be able to make a real comedy classic.

Still, this is a lot of fun. And it has a moral. And very funny exchanges about, among other things, what gluten is, and what particular Deadly Sin dooms one of the characters ("What was that, Vanity?" "Wrath?"). And a great exorcism sequence featuring a crucifix made out of kitchen utensils and the worst use of a blanket to put out a fire ever recorded on film. Recommended.

Duets

21 Jump Street: based on the television series created by Stephen J. Cannell and Patrick Hasburgh, written by Michael Bacall and Jonah Hill; directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller; starring Jonah Hill (Schmidt), Channing Tatum (Jenko), Brie Larson (Mollie), Dave Franco (Eric), Rob Riggle (Mr. Walters) and Ice Cube (Captain Dickson) (2012): Hilarious comedy reboot of the not-so-good 1980's TV series that introduced Johnny Depp and Richard Grieco to the world. Cops pretend to be teenagers and bust crimes at a high school. What could go wrong?

Almost obsessively filthy-mouthed, the movie makes good use of Jonah Hill's weirdly earnest nebbish personality by setting it off against Channing Tatum's seemingly dumb but well-meaning jock. They weren't friends in high school, but they become so in police academy. And now they're assigned to take down the suppliers of a dangerous new super-drug at a local high school. Will they also purge the demons that have haunted them since senior year?

Ice Cube swears and fulminates as the captain. Dave Franco stirs up echoes of the early, burn-out charm of his older brother James. Actors from the TV series make surprise cameos. Hill again shows his gift for slapstick, but Tatum also demonstrates comic timing and physical prowess. Who knew he was funny? Oh, and a guy gets his dick shot off. Also, Korean Jesus. Recommended.

The Raven: written by Richard Matheson, based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe; directed by Roger Corman; starring Vincent Price (Craven), Peter Lorre (Bedlo), Boris Karloff (Scarabus), Jack Nicholson (Rexford Bedlo), Hazel Court (Lenore) and Olive Sturgess (Estelle Craven) (1963): Screenwriter Richard Matheson is an American treasure for his short stories, novels, and screenplay work, pretty much all in the thriller, horror, and fantasy genres. You can look him up.

Here, he takes Edgar Allan Poe's poem and turns it into a horror-comedy about dueling wizards (Karloff and Price), a snivelling second banana (Lorre), and a shockingly young Jack NIcholson as a young romantic lead. The wizard's duel is witty and surprisingly good-looking given the technical and budgetary limitations the film faced. Roger Corman's direction is relatively sharp. The acting is pretty much all first-rate, with Karloff uncharcteristically loose and funny as the nefarious Scarabus.

Price is great as he usually was. Holy crap, though, The Raven really highlights his height -- Price, an uncharacteristic-for-Hollywood 6'4" towers over 5'11" Karloff and dwarfs the 5'5" Lorre. Everyone seems to be having a good time, and Matheson even sneaks in a reference to The Day the Earth Stood Still, a movie he had nothing to do with. The only creepy moments involve the really nice make-up design on a couple of corpses. And by 'nice', I mean 'grotesque.' Recommended.

Get Him to the Greek

Get Him to the Greek, written and directed by Nicholas Stoller, starring Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, Elizabeth Moss, Rose Byrne and Sean Combs (2010): Even movies that have only been produced by Judd Apatow have that odd (for today's comedies) gentleness about them, like a bassline behind the surface dramatics.

Russell Brand reprises his Aldous Snow character from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, a wonky rock star given to non sequitirs and epic drug and alcohol abuse. Jonah Hill is the low-level record company employee who suggests having Snow stage a 10-year anniversary show at the Greek theatre in Los Angeles. Sean Combs, straining and heaving mightily in an apparent attempt to replicate Tom Cruise's bizarro-hilarious performance as a studio exec in Tropic Thunder, is the executive who approves Hill's plan -- and sends him off to pick up Snow in London, England to get him first to New York for the Today Show and then to L.A.

All Hell breaks loose, of course, of course.

There are a lot of laughs here. Hill is gradually perfecting a somewhat unusual comic character -- the neurotic fat guy -- and he has some killer moments here, including a ridiculous bit in a limosine as he tries to stop Snow from getting stoned and drunk before the Today Show...by smoking all the pot and drinking all the booze in the car. Russell Brand possesses a weird, oily likeability, and he and Hill play pretty nicely off each other. They're not Laurel and Hardy, but they're also not Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, thank God. Rose Byrne and Colm Meaney have nice supporting bits as Snow's estranged WAG and father, respectively. Recommended.