Paddleton (2019)

23 Saturday Feb 2019

Tags

Alex Lehmann, Cancer, Comedy, Drama, Euthanasia, Friendship, Mark Duplass, Ray Romano, Review, Road trip

D: Alex Lehmann / 89m

Cast: Mark Duplass, Ray Romano, Kadeem Hardison, Dendrie Taylor

For Michael (Duplass), the news is very bad indeed: he has terminal cancer. For his neighbour Andy (Romano), the news is also very bad indeed: he will lose his only friend in the world. The two live at the same apartment building, and have developed a close bond, spending their evenings and weekends together, watching kung fu movies and eating pizza, and playing a game of their own invention called Paddleton. When Michael decides that he doesn’t want to reach the stage in his illness where he’ll be connected to tubes and wires and spending more time in hospital than not, he tells Andy that he wants to kill himself before he reaches that point. Having arranged through his oncologist to pick up medication that will allow him to do this, Michael and Andy set off on a road trip to collect it. Along the way, Michael becomes aware of just how much his impending demise is affecting Andy, and encounters with a pharmacist (Hardison) and a motel owner (Taylor) reinforce the sense of loss that Andy is beginning to feel. When they return home, it remains to be seen if Michael will carry out his plan, and if he does, whether Andy will help him…

Made under the banner of the Duplass brothers’ production company, Paddleton rolls out its stall in the very first scene. With Michael calmly receiving the news that he has a mass and it should be checked out by an oncologist, it’s left to Andy to react in the way that you’d expect most people to react: he gets flustered, questions what Michael has been told, and looks for a more positive response from the doctor they’re speaking to. There’s comedy and pathos here alongside the obvious drama of the situation, and these three elements are the mainstay of a movie that takes a subtle, nuanced approach to the idea of euthanasia, while also exploring the strength of a friendship that has never been tested by something so serious – and life changing – before now. It’s a measure of the way in which the script (by Lehmann and Duplass) tackles these issues that the movie remains affecting and emotional all the way through, and without coming across as melodramatic or insincere, or worst of all, patronising. With the friendship between its two central characters having been so carefully plotted and constructed, Paddleton is a bromance that has unexpected depth and honesty.

This is thanks to both the screenplay, and the combined efforts of Duplass and Romano. Duplass is a quiet, solid presence, imbuing Michael with a sombre nobility, and entirely convincing as a man who wants to die on his own terms. Romano is something of a revelation, taking Andy’s many insecurities and inhibitions and making the character a fully rounded individual whose lack of social skills hides a greater capacity for love and affection than even he may be aware of. Romano’s performance is affecting and full of little touches that illustrate just how much he’s already grieving even though Michael hasn’t gone through with his plan yet. And yet there are small moments of hope dotted here and there for both characters, and though the movie has no intention of proving itself untrue to both the characters or the narrative, it’s these small moments that add detail and poignant circumspection to a story that is both heartfelt and intelligently handled. Lehmann builds on the promise shown in Blue Jay and Asperger’s Are Us (both 2016), and ensures that the more dramatic elements don’t overshadow the comedy – which is both bittersweet and meaningful – and vice versa. The end result is a movie that tells its simple story with a great deal of subdued yet effective panache, and without short changing either its characters or its audience.

Rating: 8/10 – low-key but brimming with confidence in the material and the downbeat nature of its themes, Paddleton is the kind of low budget indie movie that comes along every now and again and reminds us that there are still valid stories to be told about the human condition; touching without being sentimental, and bold in not pandering to any unnecessary romanticism about Michael’s decision, this is a well crafted and beautifully acted movie that shows just how complex and rewarding brotherly love can be.

Tully (2018)

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Charlize Theron, Comedy, Diablo Cody, Drama, Family relationships, Jason Reitman, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Motherhood, Night Nanny, Review, Ron Livingston

D: Jason Reitman / 95m

Cast: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Ron Livingston, Mark Duplass, Elaine Tan, Asher Miles Fallica, Lia Frankland, Gameela Wright

Already finding it difficult to deal with having two young children – quiet but impressionable Sarah (Frankland), and Jonah (Fallica), who has an undiagnosed developmental disorder – Marlo (Theron) is pregnant with an unplanned third child. With her husband, Drew (Livingston), working long hours or having to travel a lot, Marlo is often on her own, and finding it increasingly hard to be heavily pregnant and a full-time mother to pre-teens. When the baby, Mia, is born, the pressure becomes too much, and a meltdown at Jonah’s school brings Marlo to the realisation that she needs help. Acting on an offer from her brother, Craig (Duplass), to pay for a night nanny, Marlo is surprised to find a young woman called Tully (Davis) arrive one night and begin to make her life a lot more easier. The two women forge a strong bond, and Marlo finds herself with a new lease of life. But one night, Tully is uncharacteristically miserable, citing an issue with her roommate. At her suggestion, she and Marlo head into the city for a night on the town, a decision that is to have serious consequences…

The fourth collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody – after Juno (2007), Jennifer’s Body (2009), and Young Adult (2011) – Tully is a heartfelt look at the narrow ledge some mothers find themselves traversing when motherhood proves overwhelming. Marlo appears to have been struggling ever since Jonah was born, both with his behavioural problems, and her own expectations of being a mother. With pressure from the outside competing with pressure from within, Marlo’s inability to manage consistently or even occasionally is a given, and Cody’s script has fun piling on heap after heap of setbacks and misfortune, while placing Marlo in the kind of family unit where her getting through the day is a major achievement. Is it anyone’s fault? Perhaps, but Cody and Reitman aren’t about assigning blame, they’re about rescuing Marlo from the mire she’s trapped in. And so we meet Tully, the damsel in shining armour, Marlo’s saviour and nascent best friend. As their friendship grows and becomes overly important in helping Marlo cope – she literally blossoms before our eyes – the bond between mother and daughter slips sideways until it’s about mother and nanny instead. There’s a love affair of sorts here, but it’s refreshingly chaste and wonderfully done.

The movie is blessed by two outstanding performances from Theron and Davis. For most of the movie, Theron – who gained nearly fifty pounds for the role – appears unflatteringly, big and sweaty and looking red-eyed and exhausted. It’s a powerful, nuanced portrayal, with subtle flourishes throughout, but she’s matched by Davis, whose own performance is flecked with delicate little touches, a look here, a twinkle there. Together, the two actresses are mesmerising to watch, and dominate the narrative. Inevitably, with two such strong female roles at the movie’s centre, the male roles fare badly in comparison, with Livingston’s unobservant husband continually out of touch (unless confronted with an impromptu ménage à trois), and Duplass’s self-absorbed, materialistic brother given little to do beyond looking baffled and out of their depth when discussing “women’s issues”. This isn’t necessarily a feminist tract – Marlo makes too many poor choices for that – but it is a celebration of female solidarity, though as the movie unfolds, issues surrounding mental health begin to make themselves more keenly felt. This leads to a last act swerve in the narrative that isn’t completely successful, but at least brings the story to a (by then) predictable conclusion. But Reitman – directing as confidently and intuitively as ever – and Cody, are more focused on Marlo’s journey than her destination, and in that they’re more than successful.

Rating: 8/10 – with Theron and Davis at the top of their game, and in service to a balanced and thoughtful script, Tully is a perceptive look at the perils of motherhood told exclusively from the viewpoint of someone who can’t see those perils for having to deal with them; the kind of indie comedy-drama that rewards viewers in increasingly subtle and unexpected ways, it’s a genuine, ready and willing to please movie that has much to say and which does so very succinctly.

Blue Jay (2016)

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alex Lehmann, Drama, Improvisation, Indie movie, Mark Duplass, Relationships, Review, Role play, Sarah Paulson

D: Alex Lehmann / 80m

Cast: Mark Duplass, Sarah Paulson, Clu Gulager

Having been living and working in Tucson for a while, Jim (Duplass) returns to his childhood home in California following the death of his mother. He’s in the process of going through the house and clearing it when a trip to the local supermarket finds him bumping into Amanda (Paulson), his teenage sweetheart. She’s in town visiting her sister who’s having a baby. At first, their meeting up is awkward and their attempts at conversation are stilted. They part, but outside in the parking lot, Jim asks Amanda if she’d like to go get a coffee. She agrees, and they head for the nearby Blue Jay diner.

There they begin to catch up properly. Jim reveals that he’s been doing dry wall work with his uncle in Tucson, and is thinking of doing up his mother’s house and selling it, while Amanda speaks of her marriage to Chris, and finding herself a mother to his two kids when they got married. Both tell each other their lives are good, but it’s clear that Jim isn’t as happy as Amanda appears to be. From the diner they go to a store they used to frequent as teenagers, and where the owner, Waynie (Gulager), still remembers them after twenty-two years. From there they venture to a spot near the river where they used to go. There, Jim reveals that he doesn’t have a job at the moment due to a falling out with his uncle, and that he doesn’t have a clue what he’s going to do next.

Amanda tells him she wants to see his mother’s house. When they get there, Amanda is astonished by the amount of stuff that’s still there from the time they were together: from mixtapes to photos to notebooks and letters, and one unopened letter in particular that’s addressed to her, and which she hides in her coat pocket. Jim digs out an old cassette player and they listen to recordings they made, and one where they were pretending to be an old married couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary. They reminisce further, and decide to recreate that fictitious anniversary through having a meal together. As the evening wears on, both Jim and Amanda begin to grow closer, until it seems that their past will overshadow the present…

Although there are several moments in Blue Jay where Mark Duplass’s “script” seems hellbent on striking a pose for lost love, and its reclamation, it’s thanks to said “script” being an outline around which both Duplass and Paulson have improvised their dialogue, that it avoids this likely pitfall, and in doing so makes Jim and Amanda’s predicament all the more credible. Make no mistake, the relationship and the conversations that occur in the movie, could only happen in a movie, and though this level of artifice has all the potential of feeling flat and awkward to watch, it’s a mark of the commitment and the intelligence of its two stars that Blue Jay never once feels forced or uncomfortably set up.

However, this is an ex-couple who have secrets to reveal, and it’s the way in which these secrets are held at bay until the last ten minutes that is worrisome in terms of what goes before. At first, and despite their initial awkwardness with each other, Jim and Amanda appear to pick up from where they have left off over twenty years ago, and even though we don’t know the reason they split up, there aren’t any signs that it was contentious on either side, or that it’s left them embittered with each other. They’re open and (mostly) honest with each other, and they’re clearly enjoying being together again after such a long time. As well, both Duplass and Paulson seem at ease with each other as actors, and they have a confidence in each other’s abilities that helps the story and their characters along.

Back at Jim’s mother’s house – or his boyhood home, though it’s interesting that it’s rarely referred to as that – further reminders of the past spark what can only be described as an unsettling game of role playing. Watching these two ex-lovers play at being a couple celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, is an odd, worrisome turn of events that prompts the question, why would they do that? Or, why would they feel the need to revisit the games of their youth in that particular way? Are they that unhappy with their lives now? The answers to those questions remain unanswered for the most part, with only hints and clues dropped at random in the conversations that follow, but what is clear is that there’s a longing for some kind of connection that they don’t have with anyone else. Maybe the role playing facilitates that, and brings them back to the people, the couple, they once were. Maybe that period was their relationship peak.

You can interpret their actions in many different ways, and the likelihood would be that no one interpretation would be completely wrong or completely right. Duplass and Lehmann (making his feature debut), don’t appear to want the movie to be that black and white (and despite it being shot in that format), but once the reason for their split is revealed it has such a jarring effect that it’s a bit like being slapped in the face. And it has the unfortunate effect of calling into question everything that’s gone before, and the ease with which these two have reconnected. Would their running into each other really have led to coffee and jelly beans and dinner and head rubs? Wouldn’t the wedge that drove them apart still be there, and as it happens, especially on Jim’s side?

In the real world, absolutely (it’s a very big wedge). But again this is a movie, and though we can allow some suspension of disbelief, and admire the consistency of tone and purpose that’s been achieved, the movie is derailed by its revelation; and by the scene that follows, which aims for some degree of closure, but ends up looking and sounding incomplete, the one time in the movie where Duplass, Paulson and Lehmann have decided that what they’ve got is just enough (or perhaps worse still, will have to do). In the end, it upsets the rhythms established earlier in the movie, and leaves the viewer feeling that they’ve been tricked into having to accept an ending that doesn’t match what’s gone before.

Rating: 8/10 – despite it’s unsatisfactory denouement, Blue Jay has much to recommend it, and Duplass and Paulson should be congratulated for maintaining the truth of their characters through improvisation and intuition; Lehmann’s shiny black and white photography enhances the sense of nostalgia the movie revels in, and its quiet, brooding nature is a perfect fit for the way in which the characters move around each other.

The Lazarus Effect (2015)

05 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

David Gelb, Donald Glover, Drama, Evan Peters, Horror, Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Reanimation, Review, Sarah Bolger, Science, Thriller

D: David Gelb / 83m

Cast: Mark Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Evan Peters, Sarah Bolger, Donald Glover, Amy Aquino, Ray Wise

10 Reasons Why The Lazarus Effect Will Disappoint You:

1) It’s a Frankenstein variation that swaps injected chemicals for lightning bolts (not nearly as visually exciting).

2) Mark Duplass’ character, Frank, is supposed to be driven but instead comes across as petulant – Duplass is good at petulant but not at being a scientist.

3) Ray Wise pops in for a cameo as a corporate douchebag and takes all their research notes and computer drives – but it doesn’t stop them replicating their experiment.

4) They first revive a dog who turns out to have an aggression problem, but they don’t do anything about it, and still keep him around the lab.

5) Olivia Wilde is a fine actress with a great filmography, but she does herself no favours here with a performance that wishes it could be merely inadequate.

6) Aside from Frankenstein, it also borrows heavily from Carrie (1976) and Lucy (2014) but not in a good way, and not with any fresh ideas grafted on.

7) The reason for Zoe coming back with one hell of a mean streak is never explained, and no one even attempts to explain it.

8) What few “scares” there are in the movie are repetitively set up around the lights going out and then coming on again (boo!).

9) The script – by Luke Dawson and Jeremy Slater – wants the viewer to believe that Frank et al can work undetected in a lab overnight until it becomes convenient for the script to say that, actually, they have been watched the whole time… and Ray Wise’s corporate douchebag doesn’t show up.

10) You don’t care when Zoe starts killing off her colleagues; in fact, you feel a little bit envious that they’re out of the movie, but you’re still watching it.

And lastly, a message to studio executives everywhere: if a screenwriter can’t plug the many holes in his or her plot or storyline, then send them away until they can. And if they’re touting a horror script, don’t believe that any kind of weird shit will be scary when it’s translated to the big screen. It isn’t. And one last thing: don’t ever green light a sequel to this movie – ever.

Rating: 3/10 – once again an example of how worryingly bad some studio backed horror movies can be; The Lazarus Effect is silly, stupid, a waste of a good cast, and directed by Gelb in a way that screams “coincidence” given that his first (short) movie was called Lethargy (2002).

Tammy (2014)

26 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Allison Janney, Bail, Comedy, Louisville, Mark Duplass, Melissa McCarthy, Niagara Falls, Review, Road trip, Susan Sarandon, Topper Jack's

D: Ben Falcone / 97m

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon, Allison Janney, Mark Duplass, Gary Cole, Kathy Bates, Sandra Oh, Nat Faxon, Toni Collette, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Falcone

Tammy (McCarthy) is having a bad day: first her car is hit and totalled by a deer, then she’s fired from her job at Topper Jack’s for being late. To make matters worse, when she gets home she finds her husband, Greg (Faxon) having a romantic meal with their neighbour, Missi (Collette). With no car, no job, and her marriage over, Tammy does what she always does when things go wrong: she plans to leave town. However, her mother (Janney) refuses to lend Tammy her car. Enter Tammy’s grandmother, Pearl, who’ll let Tammy use her car, but under one condition: that she can come along for the ride. Tammy has her misgivings but when Pearl says she can pay for the trip as well, Tammy agrees she can come along.

After a first night where they both end up drinking too much, Tammy wants to go home, but Pearl persuades her to stick with the trip, and they head for Niagara Falls. On the way Tammy stops off to go jet skiing but she wrecks the jet ski and Pearl is forced to pay for it. Next they go to Louisville where they visit a bar that serves the best barbecue around; there they meet Earl (Cole) and his son, Bobby (Duplass). Pearl and Earl quickly hit it off – so much so that they end up having sex in the back of Pearl’s car – while Tammy and Bobby make a more restrained connection.

The next morning, Tammy discovers Pearl in a liquor store mixing whiskey in a Slurpee and trying to buy alcohol for some minors. The police are called and both Tammy and Pearl are arrested. Pearl pays for Tammy’s bail, but doesn’t have enough for herself. Tammy robs a local Topper Jack’s to get her released but she’s beaten to it by Earl. The robbery makes the news, and Pearl persuades Tammy to return the money. From there they travel to meet Pearl’s old friend Lenore (Bates) and her partner Susanne (Oh) and be a part of their annual Fourth of July party. Earl and Bobby turn up as well, and although Tammy and Bobby’s relationship deepens, Pearl’s drunken behaviour on the night causes a rift between grandmother and granddaughter that leads Tammy to rethink her life and what she wants from it.

Co-written by McCarthy with her husband (and director) Falcone, Tammy is ostensibly a comedy, but by the movie’s end it’s morphed into a somewhat sombre drama that abandons laughs in order to get across its message: that you can be whoever you want to be as long as put in the effort. This shift in tone does two things: it adds some much needed depth to proceedings, and makes the viewer wonder how much better the movie could have been, played as a straight drama. For this is the strange problem with Tammy: the more serious aspects are handled far more effectively than the comedic ones.

Part of the problem here is that, thanks to The Heat (2013) and Identity Thief (2013), McCarthy’s particular brand of comedy is fast becoming “old hat”, with her childish prolonging of bad behaviour and infantile arguments having lost their ability to amuse already. It’s not so much that McCarthy is a one-trick pony, more that she plays the same character in each movie and with little variation. But here, thanks to the way in which the script has been developed, McCarthy shows how adept she can be when giving a more balanced performance (perhaps it’s because she’s acting alongside the estimable Susan Sarandon; she certainly ups her game in their scenes together).

With the storyline proving more and more lacklustre as matters progress, and with Tammy herself made more considerate and less “dumb” as she interacts with Bobby and Lenore, the humour fades in service to the demands of an increasingly serious chain of events. It’s almost as if McCarthy and Falcone ran out of funny ideas and decided to make more of an issue of Pearl’s alcoholism, while at the same time bringing Tammy up short and make her more responsible. It’s like watching a character being made to grow up at the same time as the movie she’s in.

So, are the opening scenes funny? Absolutely, but at the expense of Tammy’s likeability, and while the script wisely allows her to leave behind her childish attitude, it’s clear that her behaviour is so closely tied to the movie’s humorous set pieces that without them it struggles to reassert its identity. Sarandon acts like she’s taking some time out from acting more sensibly and with greater purpose, while supporting turns from Janney, Cole, Collette and Aykroyd are little better than cameos. Bates is fun to watch as a lesbian with a fetish for blowing things up, and Duplass brings his indie sensibility to a role that is largely there to help Tammy regain her self-esteem (as if she can’t do it for herself).

Falcone directs with confidence even if he doesn’t quite have an entirely sure hand on the material, and gives his cast the room to spark off each other. It leads to mixed results throughout, and some scenes are less effective than others, particularly those where Tammy’s challenging of authority is more a scripted necessity than a clearly defined character trait. But as noted before, the sobering final half hour – in a weird way – rescues the movie and the director is on firmer ground. And there’s one last comedic flourish courtesy of a clutch of outtakes, and the revealing of McCarthy’s “secret” – now that’s funny.

Rating: 5/10 – disappointing in its approach and execution but still largely watchable, Tammy provides evidence that McCarthy needs to find herself a serious role to play, and soon; not as warm-hearted as it would like to be, and short on belly laughs, the movie gets by on McCarthy’s easy-going charm and Sarandon’s devil-may-care approach to the material.