My
Super Ex-Girlfriend:
Amusing and lightweight. It could have
been better thought out, but at
least it’s a clever idea – amiable Luke Wilson finds out that the woman
he’s
been dating (Uma Thurman) is actually a superhero, and when he breaks
up with
her, she does not take it well.
Missing: Very good,
gripping story – Jack Lemmon is very affecting as the father of an
American
activist missing in Peru, who initially suspects his son’s wife (Sissy
Spacek) of
ginning up hysterical claims against the regime but gradually comes to
believe
her.
For
Your Consideration:
Dreadfully unfunny. It’s almost
inconceivable that Christopher
Guest could be responsible for something so shrill, labored, and
laugh-free. Where his previous films
showed affection for the characters, however deluded they were, there’s
only
contempt for the actors who start to believe the buzz that they might
get Oscar
nominations for their painfully stagy and trite Home for
Purim. The most
vivid characters are Fred Willard and Jane Lynch as the hosts of an Entertainment Tonight-type show, and
their humor comes at the expense of the actors.
The only other bright spot is Jennifer Coolidge, doing her vapid
bombshell shtick. You know things are
dire when even Ricky Gervais can’t raise a chuckle.
One
From the Heart:
Stagy and dull “rediscovered” Francis Ford
Coppola film. The candy-colored sets,
improbably clean Las Vegas, and songs by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle
that
shadow the action would all be more acceptable if the couple at the
center of
the story (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) were at all likable.
The
Ex:
Surprisingly mean-spirited comedy about an unfocused
dolt (Zach Braff) who fears he’ll lose his way-too-good-for-him wife
(Amanda
Peet) to her former classmate, a petulant lout (Jason Bateman). The competition between the two guys gets
tedious fast, mostly because neither is worth rooting for (as you may
be able
to tell). Peet’s too perfect, especially
for the utterly self-obsessed Braff, and Bateman’s character is so
poorly
conceived that, if you watch the alternate ending, you’ll see they
couldn’t
even decide whether he should be faking his disability – sort of an
integral
part of the character.
Match Point: Thankfully, Match Point doesn’t feel like a Woody Allen movie; rather, it feels like a small British movie, something from the Stephen Frears catalog, perhaps. Cool and sleek, it hits its mark in a way Allen hasn’t done in years. It’s not unlike An American Tragedy/A Place in the Sun, with a touch of The Talented Mr. Ripley. An ambitious young man (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) from a poor background gets accepted into high society – and does what he feels he must to stay there. Scarlett Johansson makes a terrific femme fatale, slinky and seductive, but with surprising vulnerability and, in a way, a purer, less single-minded version of Rhys Meyers’ desire to move out of his class.
I would say it’s liberating for Allen to go to a new city – except that he revisited the same milieu in Scoop, trying for a comedic twist and failing miserably, I think largely because he’s in it and he tries to make Johansson a female version of himself, which should be banned by the Geneva Conventions or something.
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