Tag Archives: One night stand

Mini-Review: The Boy Next Door (2015)

14 Friday Aug 2015

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Boy Next Door, The

D: Rob Cohen / 91m

Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, Ian Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, Lexi Atkins, Hill Harper, Jack Wallace

Claire Peterson (Lopez) teaches classic literature at her local high school. She’s separated from her husband, Garrett (Corbett), due to his having had an affair, and lives with their son, Kevin (Nelson). When high school senior Noah Sandborn (Guzman) moves in to look after his ailing uncle (Wallace) next door, his good looks and chiseled physique prove distracting to Claire, and she finds herself becoming attracted to him. With Garrett making every effort to win back Claire’s trust, he and Kevin go off fishing for the weekend. Noah creates an excuse for Claire to come and see him, and when she does, he seizes his chance and they have sex.

The next morning, Claire realises she shouldn’t have slept with Noah and tells him it was a mistake. Noah becomes angry, and his behaviour reveals a darker, more sinister side, one that sees Claire at risk of losing her family, her job, and possibly, her life. As she tries desperately to keep their one night stand a secret, Noah insists they should be together, and warns Claire that if she doesn’t agree to be with him, he’ll let Kevin or Garrett watch the video he made of them having sex. But when the brakes on Garrett’s car fail while he and Kevin are in it, Claire realises that Noah will stop at nothing in his attempts to have her, and that she needs to do something to protect both her and her family.

Boy Next Door, The - scene

It’s hard to say which is the worst thing about The Boy Next Door: it’s either Rob Cohen’s tired, uninspired direction, or the unappealing, highly derivative script by Barbara Curry, or even the various below-par performances. There’s nothing here to recommend the movie to an audience, and very, very little that warrants the kind of attention lavished on it by the producers (who include Lopez herself), so amateurish in execution is the final product. This isn’t even a movie-by-the-numbers; instead it’s just an absurd, lazy, painfully bad B-movie given spurious credibility by the involvement of Lopez, and the inclusion of a sex scene that is about as erotic as peeling potatoes.

Why this movie was made will remain a mystery that not even Scooby-Doo could solve, but given the talent involved, it should have had at least a thin veneer of respectability to help make it more palatable, but it’s clear that no one thought that this was relevant or necessary. Lopez looks embarrassed throughout, Guzman is there to get his shirt off as often as possible, while everyone else waits for their scenes to be over so they can go and do something more challenging (it’s a career low point for everyone concerned). If any proper evidence was needed as to the movie’s ridiculous attempts at drama, it would be the aftermath of a scene where Noah beats up a bully, and fractures his skull in the process: the police are never involved, and he further threatens the school’s vice principal without any reprisals there either. Like Noah, the movie is mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

Rating: 2/10 – so bad it’s truly difficult to watch without wondering if something this terrible shouldn’t have a laughter track, The Boy Next Door might be aspiring to trash movie status, but it’s hard to tell thanks to how terrible it is; a daunting prospect even at ninety-one minutes, only Randy Edelman and Nathan Barr’s cliché-lite score makes any real impression, but even then you’ll have forgotten it within a couple of hours.

X/Y (2014)

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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X:Y

D: Ryan Piers Williams / 83m

Cast: America Ferrera, Ryan Piers Williams, Melonie Diaz, Jon Paul Phillips, Amber Tamblyn, Dree Hemingway, David Harbour, Common, Adam Rapp, Maria Dizzia, Danny Deferrari, Sue Jean Kim

Mark (Williams) and Silvia (Ferrera) are unhappy with their relationship, with both of them feeling unappreciated, and with both of them failing to communicate with each other. These issues come to a head when Silvia reveals she’s slept with someone else called Jason (Common). Mark takes some of his stuff and moves in with his friend Jake (Phillips). While he tries to work out what to do next, he also tries to get a movie script he’s written off the ground via his agent, Todd (Harbour).

Elsewhere that morning, one of Silvia’s friends, Jen (Diaz) is waking up in the bed of a stranger she met the night before. She leaves before he wakes up, but leaves a bag behind so she has an excuse to see him again. At a coffee shop she leaves her number for the guy behind the counter, Phil (Deferrer). She meets Silvia and they talk about Mark leaving, but when Jen tells Silvia she “fucked up”, Silvia gets defensive and deliberately upsets Jen to the point where Jen tells her to go. Later, Jen goes back to retrieve her bag only to find the man she met is married.

Mark’s friend, Jake, meanwhile, is trying his best to get over the break up of a five year relationship. He has meaningless sex with a woman in the club where he DJ’s, but can’t connect with a woman, Claudia (Hemingway), he meets at a photo shoot and who is clearly attracted to him. He spies on his ex-girlfriend and uses his emotions to fuel the artwork he paints. Silvia’s separation from Mark means more time to have sex with Jason but her work begins to suffer as a result, and she begins to realise that she and Mark splitting up hasn’t been for the best after all.

X:Y - scene

While not pushing any boundaries at all in its depiction of the lives of four fairly messed up individuals, X/Y does have an honest approach to the material that helps carry it through some of the more dull and unsurprising stretches. It’s another movie that reminds us that people in relationships are notoriously bad at talking to each other, and that they only really confess their feelings to their friends: Mark and Silvia tell Jake and Jen respectively how they feel about each other, but somehow find it too difficult when in the same room together.

While this is standard operating procedure for most romantic dramas, the problem with this type of movie is how much depth the characters’ problems have. Here, Mark and Silvia have been together for six years but seem to have reached a point where they’re making each other unhappy but without understanding why. Unfortunately, over the course of the movie, the audience doesn’t find out either. Mark admits at one point that he doesn’t always know what he wants, and there are times when the multi-character set up means the movie doesn’t either. While Mark and Silvia’s relationship takes up most of the narrative, the time spent with Jen and Jake offers the viewer nothing more than two people who are struggling not to connect. Both characters are adrift, grabbing illusory notions of love and emotional attachment where none is present. Jen’s sadness at being alone prompts her to binge shop despite being unemployed; Jake moves from one pursuit to another in an attempt to outrun his sadness at being alone. But Mark and Silvia have each other, even though they’re apart, and while Jen and Jake’s problems add some range to the material, they’re vignettes that don’t add any depth to the basic storyline.

With Mark and Silvia’s troubles bookending the movie, and its centre proving something of a distraction, it’s left to the performances to rescue things. Real-life couple Ferrera and Williams are entirely credible as a couple too entrenched in their own differences to see how unimportant they are. Ferrera brings a rawness to her scenes with Williams that makes Silvia more sympathetic than she appears, her judgmental attitude giving way as the movie progresses to a more ambivalent awareness of how she’s behaved, and finally to a better understanding. As Mark, Williams brings less to the table, but that’s more to do with the way the character is written: he’s the typical male who thinks everything is okay until he finds out it isn’t… and then he’s completely bewildered. Williams does a good job in getting that across while making Mark’s initial need to keep his distance entirely understandable; he wants his relationship to work but not at the expense of his pride.

As Jen and Jake, Diaz and Phillips acquit themselves equally well, with Diaz proving again why she’s one of the most intuitive actresses working today. As the seemingly vapid (but clued up) Jen she almost steals the movie in terms of performance. When she confronts her one night stand and his wife, it’s a small masterpiece of injured pride and smiling revenge, and the movie benefits from her involvement (and seems somehow less of a piece after her segment is over). Phillips has the most challenging role, keeping Jake’s deep-rooted insecurities and emotional instability from becoming too much for the audience to believe in, but he juggles the various dilemmas Jake has to face with equanimity and quiet inspiration.

All told, X/Y is a valiant effort but somehow it doesn’t quite hit the mark, leaving the viewer with the sense that, not only has this been done before, but it’s probably been done in a better fashion and with more to say. Williams directs with an acceptable, if unremarkable, visual style that improves when he uses close ups to highlight the emotional tension in a scene, and he often lingers on characters’ faces to good effect, their feelings allowed full expression without any chance of doubtful interpretation. The soundtrack features a selection of indie songs that come and go without making much of an impression, and while this isn’t unusual – so many soundtracks nowadays seem like a contractual obligation than a benefit to the movie they’re in – they do distract from the overall feel that Williams is aiming for.

Rating: 5/10 – feeling like a collection of short films stitched together, X/Y lacks the drive and energy needed to make its audience care about its characters and their problems; not without its good moments, but lacking in necessary detail, the movie isn’t as compelling as it needs to be.

Two Night Stand (2014)

16 Friday Jan 2015

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Two Night Stand

D: Max Nichols / 86m

Cast: Analeigh Tipton, Miles Teller, Jessica Szohr, Scott Mescudi, Leven Rambin

Megan (Tipton) is unemployed, single, and getting on her roommate’s nerves. She prevaricates over getting a job, and won’t go out and meet new people, preferring to stay in the flat and waste her time. Pushed to do something different she signs up to a dating website but doesn’t arrange to meet anyone. One night she’s finally convinced by Faiza (Szohr), her roommate, to come out with her and her boyfriend, Cedric (Mescudi). But the evening backfires when she sees her ex-boyfriend with his new partner. Upset and angry, she goes home and decides to “get her own back” by meeting one of the men on the dating website. She chooses Alec (Teller) and goes to his apartment where they have a one night stand.

The next morning, a few wrong words leads to an argument and Megan leaving the apartment – but not the building; overnight a blizzard has deposited three feet of snow against the door of the building, and Megan can’t get out. With little choice but to return to Alec’s apartment they slowly, but with some effort, begin to make the best of a bad situation, and get to know each other a bit better. They discuss their views on relationships, and sex, and decide to be brutally honest with each other about how they were during their one night stand. Over the next day, their relationship improves but stalls when Megan finds a closet full of women’s clothes and learns that Alec has a girlfriend, Daisy (Rambin). Alec explains that Daisy is away but the reason Megan is there is that he found a break-up note Daisy had written but not given him. To get back at her, he joined the dating website. Angry, and with the snow having abated enough, Megan leaves.

When Daisy returns home, she finds a note that Megan had written, while he reveals her note to him, and they split up. Later, on New Year’s Eve, Megan is arrested at a party for breaking and entering; while she and Alec were together they broke into his neighbour’s apartment to find a toilet plunger. Alec has planted Megan’s note there in a bizarre attempt at getting back in touch with her as he can’t stop thinking about her, but when he tries to bail her out she refuses to budge. It’s only when Faiza does that she is released, but Alec isn’t giving up…

Two Night Stand - scene

As an attempt to do something slightly different with the rom-com format, Two Night Stand is an awkward mix of the refreshing and the inevitable, as it plays around with an established formula to sometimes winning, but equally distracting effect. Playing Russian roulette with the concept of honesty in a relationship, the movie tries to show that while it’s a wonderful idea in principle, in practice it’s prone to so many pitfalls you might as well not bother.

In rom-coms we’re used to seeing characters hold back on their feelings, or mistrust their partner’s motives, or skirt uncomfortably around the heart of a particular matter, and Two Night Stand does its best to waive all that aside and focus on two people who try to be open and honest from the start rather than finding out the truth about each other much later on. It’s a neat spin on the traditional idea that new partners set out to impress each other at the beginning and present the best version of themselves (only to relax into their usual personalities when the relationship is established). Of course, that kind of grandstanding is essentially unavoidable, and both Megan and Alec still try to impress each other, fanning that spark of attraction that has brought them together in the first place. They’re a match for each other – not that they realise this so much, though – but they have to endure some trials and tribulations before they work this out (and as usual one of them has to be persuaded by the other). It’s standard fare, pleasingly done, but nothing we haven’t seen a thousand times before.

The performances are above average, with Tipton shrugging off her supporting actress mantle and grabbing a lead role with gusto. She’s a gauche, intuitive presence on screen, gangly but with her own peculiar physical grace, and she makes Megan an appealing person to spend time with, insecure, clumsy, self-reliant despite any apparent real experience of life, and despite her reluctance to commit to romance after breaking up with her ex. As she navigates the troubled waters of internet dating, and the Alec’s murkier motives for doing so as well, Tipton maintains an honesty that befits the character and makes her entirely credible. Teller keeps it real as well, investing Alec with a self-protective, evasive veneer that is at first off-putting, but which becomes entirely understandable once Daisy’s note is revealed. He portrays Alec like a man caught between doing what’s right and what’s wrong, and not caring either way. It’s a winning performance, light-hearted when it needs to be, earnest at other times, but always carefully balanced so that Alec’s never too obnoxious or too offhand.

Good as their performances are though, neither Tipton nor Teller can compensate for the narrative version of jumping through hoops that the movie indulges in in its final third. It’s almost as if the script – by Mark Hammer – doesn’t really know what to do with Megan and Alec once she leaves his building, and the manner in which they’re reunited is so contrived as to be incredible. Not even Nichols, making his feature debut, can compensate for the straight up absurdity of the situation, and the result is a movie that goes from mostly entertaining to full-on bizarre in a matter of minutes. Bereft of an organic conclusion, Two Night Stand trusts to the standard emotional outpouring by one of the characters, and the equally standard (blanket) acceptance of same by the recipient. Trust and early love are resumed, and everyone lives happily ever after… probably.

Rating: 6/10 – bright and breezy, with some tellingl insights into modern relationships peppered throughout its first hour, Two Night Stand benefits from two sterling performances and a largely theatrical presentation; heartfelt and amusing for the most part (if not entirely original), the movie runs aground in the final third and never recovers.

Obvious Child (2014)

11 Saturday Oct 2014

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D: Gillian Robespierre / 84m

Cast: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffmann, Gabe Liedman, Richard Kind, Polly Draper, David Cross, Paul Briganti

Donna (Slate) is an aspiring comedienne who uses her own life as the basis for her stand up routines. On stage she’s fearless and bold, inviting audiences to share in her bewilderment at the stains she finds in her underwear, and the equally bewildering state of her sex life with boyfriend Ryan (Briganti). When he splits up with her after a gig, Donna doesn’t know what to do. Matters don’t improve when her boss at the bookstore where she works – the wonderfully named Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books – tells her it’s going to be closing down. She looks to her parents (Kind, Draper) for advice but they both say the same thing: treat the current changes in her life as a challenge.

Donna uses the break up with Ryan as part of a routine but it goes badly. Afterwards she meets Max (Lacy) and they hit it off and end up having a one-night stand. Weeks later, while out on a shopping trip with best friend Nellie (Hoffmann), Donna realises she’s pregnant. Not ready to have a child yet, she decides to have an abortion. It’s at this point that Max reappears in her life, but while they begin to build a relationship together, Donna doesn’t tell him about the pregnancy. It becomes even more difficult to tell him when he reveals he can’t wait to be a grandfather after they see an elderly couple in a restaurant.

When Donna arranges with Max for him to come to her next show, she leaves with old friend Sam (Cross) before he can get there. They have an awkward moment at the kerbside that derails their relationship, leaving Donna feeling guilty and Max feeling confused. She tells her mother who confides that she was in the same position when she was young. From this, Donna decides to tell Max but he doesn’t find out until he goes to another of her shows and hears her discussing the pregnancy (and her plans to abort it) as part of the routine. The next day, and just as she’s leaving for the clinic, Max turns up with flowers…

Obvious Child - scene

Expanded from a short made in 2009, Obvious Child is an indie movie that mixes traditional romantic comedy fare with more considered dramatic elements and fuses them together to make a curious mix that is both beguiling and intriguing to watch. It all hinges on whether or not you buy into the character of Donna as a confident artist on stage, but an insecure, diffident person off stage. Thanks to Slate and writer/director Robespierre, Donna is someone we can all relate to, her lack of self-confidence away from the mic no different from the way in which any project or hobby or interest can elevate our faith in ourselves, if only for a short while, and allow us to put aside the more humdrum or mundane aspects of our daily lives. Donna’s also in her early twenties, still unsure about a lot of things, and like most of us at that age, still trying to find a place in the world around us. Her stand up routines are the way in which she works things out and puts some perspective on her life.

With Donna so cleverly and concisely drawn as a character, it leaves plenty of room for Slate to develop the role into something with a much greater depth than you’d normally expect from a comedy with such dramatic overtones. Donna is a mass of insecurities, flaws, uncertainties and self-doubts, but once she becomes pregnant she undergoes a sea change. It’s gradual but it’s there, a growing capacity for clear decision making, as the demands of Donna’s life become easier to deal with and her perception of herself becomes less debilitating. In short, deciding to have an abortion proves the making of her.

Abortion as a means to self-empowerment may not be the angle the filmmakers were aiming for, but it’s there nevertheless, and whether by design or not, it makes Donna all the more credible as a character. Cliché or not, adversity often brings out the best in people, and here, despite a couple of wobbles early on, Donna’s decision is one that proves to be a turning point, allowing her to grow and improve as a person. Slate is flawless in the role; she’s funny, poignant, touching, and she doesn’t strike a false note in the entire movie (and it’s helpful that’s she’s reprising her role from the short). It’s a star turn, able and arresting.

The rest of the cast provide more than capable support, with Lacy making Max the kind of amiable, dependable boyfriend material that all mothers would like to see their daughters hook up with, and Hoffmann providing an often acerbic turn as Donna’s best friend. Robespierre provides everyone with great dialogue – the exchange between Donna and her father at the dining table; Nellie’s admonishment, “You’re dizzy because you played Russian roulette with your vagina” – and directs loosely but with a judicious use of close ups. Donna’s stand up routines are darkly hilarious, and it’s great to see a female comic speaking as candidly as she does about such otherwise “hush hush” topics.

The subject of abortion may not be to everyone’s taste, and pro-Lifers may feel angered by the approach the movie takes, but this is one woman’s considered, positive reaction to an event she’s unprepared for, and on that level it works tremendously well. Robespierre and Slate et al should be congratulated for making a movie that doesn’t shy away from its contentious topic and doesn’t seek to complicate matters by referring to all the other agendas out there that relate to the issue.

Rating: 8/10 – an indie movie that is honest, emotive and rewarding, Obvious Child crams a lot into its short running time, and has much to recommend it; a breath of fresh air and seriously funny.

Locke (2013)

20 Sunday Apr 2014

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Locke

D: Steven Knight / 85m

Cast: Tom Hardy, Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, Tom Holland, Bill Milner

Movies where there is only one central character are notoriously difficult to pull off, and there are very few movies where there is only a single character for the audience to connect with, without anyone else impinging on the set up, either through a telephone call, or a flashback, or an imagined exchange.  There’s also the difficulty connected with keeping that one character in a single location – e.g. Colin Farrell in Phone Booth (2002), Ryan Reynolds in Buried (2010) – and Locke is no different.  When we first meet Ivan Locke (Hardy), he’s leaving work and getting into his car.  Once he’s behind the wheel we learn that he’s on his way to London (from where isn’t fully disclosed) where a woman, Bethan (Colman), he had a one night stand with is having his child.

Ivan is a man who needs to be in control.  He has a list of phone calls he has to make while he heads for London.  The people on the list includes his wife, Katrina (Wilson), his boss Gareth (Daniels), a colleague, Donal (Scott), and of course, Bethan.  In making these calls he’s looking to make sure a variety of things are taken care of: his marriage, the pouring of a major load of concrete the next morning at the building project he’s been working on, and that Bethan – who he regards as “fragile” – follows the doctors and nurses’ advice during her labour.

For Ivan, making the journey to be with Bethan is both an inconvenience and an obligation, but an obligation that he’s determined to go through with.  Bethan is in her early forties and all alone, and to an extent, Ivan feels sorry for her, but the main reason he’s determined to be at her side is due to the mistakes his father made when Ivan was born.  At odd times during the journey, Ivan talks to his father as if he were travelling with him, and he’s nothing less than vitriolic in his scorn for the man.  However, even with this, his commitment to Bethan – the crux of the movie – seems forced and doesn’t really convince.

His relationship with his wife is problematical as well.  For such a pragmatic, practical man, Ivan is sure that Katrina will forgive him as it’s “the only time” he’s ever slept with someone else, and there was a lot of booze involved.  Katrina is understandably horrified by her husband’s revelation, and while his two sons watch a football match he was expected home for downstairs, she shuts herself away upstairs trying to make sense of what Ivan’s saying, and what she should do next.  Ivan’s naiveté is at odds with his confidence in other aspects of his life, though whether he knows Katrina might leave him is open to question, and even when he speaks to his sons (Holland, Milner) he maintains a positive outlook that he can’t be sure of.

But Ivan’s personal issues take a back seat to his determination to ensure that the pour planned for the next morning goes ahead as arranged.  Unable to be there in person he entrusts the details – including checking rebars, the mix, road closures – to subordinate Donal.  At first, Donal is petrified of the responsibility but through a mix of cajolement and bullying Ivan persuades him to see things through.  At the same time he fields calls from his boss, Gareth (called Bastard in his phone’s contact list), who has been forced by Ivan’s unexpected absence to inform their bosses in Chicago.  Ivan expects to be fired, but he has decided to ensure the pour goes ahead without a hitch irrespective of his bosses’ decision, and as a matter of personal pride.  He keeps in touch with Donal throughout the journey, and as problems arise, coaxes Donal through each one until they’re dealt with.

Locke - scene

Locke is a difficult movie to categorise.  Ostensibly it’s a drama about one man’s attempts to deal with a crisis of conscience, and there are certain thriller elements, but it’s also an emotional roller coaster ride as each time Ivan’s phone rings the audience is on tenterhooks as to what’s coming next.  It’s this involvement that helps the movie tremendously.  As conceived by writer/director Steven Knight, Ivan Locke is a hard man to empathise with, and spending almost an hour and a half with him isn’t easy.  His insistence on being with Bethan makes no real sense, and the justification for it – not repeating the sins of his father – feels arch and ill-conceived.  His devotion to the pour shows him at his most animated and motivated, while his handling of the calls to and from Katrina are conducted as if he were dealing with someone he doesn’t know (or maybe even care about).  He’s also unable to reassure Bethan on anything but a superficial level, and is dismissive of her with the hospital staff.

As portrayed by Hardy, Ivan’s dour exterior and closed-off emotions are effectively portrayed.  Adopting a soft Welsh accent, Hardy is hypnotic, and while he’s not on screen the entire time – Knight intersperses shots of the motorways Ivan travels along with interior shots looking out as well as Ivan shot from different angles – his performance is a bravura one, with not a false note throughout.  Colman and Wilson offer solid support, but it’s Scott who wins the vocal plaudits, Donal being a memorable creation all by himself (look out for the conversation about cider).  In the director’s chair, Knight adds a kineticism to the journey that grabs the audience and never lets go, but can’t quite make up visually for the contradictions and anomalies in Ivan’s character.

Rating: 7/10 – at times gripping, but with a worrying tendency to underplay its main character’s reluctance to engage emotionally, Locke is often tense and nerve-wracking; a shame then that Ivan Locke is not someone you’d any more time with than necessary.