"When We Were Gone Astray" - Movie Review Essay: The Merry Gentleman (2008)

"When We Were Gone Astray"

by Jen Johans

Hovering on a Chicago rooftop in the darkness looking out, the first time he sees her, she's standing in the light. Arms outstretched like the statue of Jesus she'd just seen — that she tells her co-worker made her want to run into the deity's arms — her pose in the window across the street from where the suicidal hitman is positioned seems to have the same effect on the man. After Frank (Michael Keaton) takes out his target in an office nearby like a sniper, he scans the windows of her building once again. Looking for Kate (Kelly Macdonald), he discovers that she's already gone . . . or at least, that's what he thought.

Standing on the ledge of the building in his second suicide attempt of the day, Frank finds himself distracted from violence yet again by those same arms and that girl. Seeing her under a streetlight this time, she looks up to where he's standing, senses his intent, and screams — causing him to fall backwards onto the rooftop to safety — as the sound pierces through the falling snow into the night sky.

Having fled an abusive husband in a different state in a brave attempt to leave the darkness of her past behind, Kate is the type of person who usually keeps her head down. New to Chicago, she seeks solace in the peaceful little things, like the gentle kiss of winter on her outstretched arms in an evening snow or a Christmas tree she picks up on a whim, to which she can't wait to add decorations and lights.

The only person she encounters who intuits enough about her past not to ask about the remnants of a bruise from her husband's fist still hovering around her eye, after the events of that fateful night where she saved a nondescript man on a ledge, Frank wants nothing more than to meet his guardian angel. Posing as a man visiting friends in her building since there's no way she can place his face from that brief glance in the dark, Frank tries to return the favor in The Merry Gentleman by freeing Kate from her newly purchased Christmas tree that's pinned her to the ground.

"I found a girl under a tree," Frank muses in their first real conversation. Chiding himself that it's dumb, he explains, "you know, you find presents under a tree; I found a girl under a tree." Smiling, getting it — and cutting through the awkwardness like the people pleaser she is, but this time an interested one — Kate tells him with a little laugh, "well, you must've been a very good boy."

Given the way that the man who poses as a gentleman's tailor by day really earns his living, obviously nothing could be further from the truth. But yet, quiet, tender, slow, and protective, something about the way he is with Kate makes it clear that he yearns to be the man reflected in her eyes, especially when she informs him, "so far we've been pretty good for one another," after only seeing him three (okay, really four) times.

Instead of leaving the tree in the dumpster after Christmas, he takes it with them on a long romantic drive at sundown to burn the once majestic tree in a field. While watching this symbolic thing that brought them together die together in a Malick-worthy mercy kill — without even understanding the dark irony about his expertise in the area — Kate tells Frank in earnest, "You just might be the sweetest man I've ever met." And in moments like this, even in spite of everything we've witnessed thus far from the man onscreen, we're inclined to agree.

But like a candle that burns down to the wick, you can only stay in the light for so long before the darkness returns. Bogged down by real world pressures such as a love quadrangle instead of a triangle, in The Merry Gentleman, Kate is pursued not only by the right man on the wrong side of the law but two wrong men — cops — on the right side of the law. Wrong does come in varying degrees, however, in this existential, modern noirish fairy tale. When the first man with a badge in Gentleman — her abusive husband played by Bobby Cannavale — shows up to beg for another chance, the second man with a badge, Dave Murcheson (Tom Bastounes) is there to answer her 911 call.

A would-be romantic suitor that Frank inadvertently brings into her life, Kate meets Dave early into the film when she calls the police about the unidentified man on the ledge and he connects it to the contract killing Frank had carried out just before he almost jumped. Taking her to dinner under the guise of following up on her report, unlike Frank who says only what he means, when that is, he speaks at all, Dave feels the need to fill every second of silence that passes between them. Telling her what she wants to hear, and then belying his words with his actions, it doesn't take long for Kate to realize that she can't believe much of what's coming out of the Chicago police officer's mouth after all.

Layering in spiritual symbolism, The Merry Gentleman knows that while some viewers will respond to the film's undeniably christian iconography with Kate-like adoration, others — like Kate's co-worker who says she isn't a religious person but she is a romantic — will not. And to its immense credit, this dark yet understated love story about good, evil, peace, and trees respects and appeals to both types of film fans.

Sophisticated, subtle, and suitably somber, but with sparks of dry wit, old-fashioned grace, and Kelly Macdonald's incandescent aura suddenly bringing even the most serious of scenes to sparklingly buoyant life, this ensemble drama is far more concerned with people than plot. Adhering to the lyrics of the eponymous Christmas carol, it fixates on those most in need of "comfort and joy" who've "gone astray."

Understanding that behavior is far more interesting than just talking to combat silence, in his bold screenplay for The Merry Gentleman, Ron Lazzeretti takes a cue from his often quiet main character to incorporate dialogue only when he must. Augmented by the chemistry of the couple at the film's core and directed with sensitivity by Michael Keaton in his feature filmmaking debut, Lazzeretti's decision, it seems, was well worth the risk. Although I encountered the film for the first time back when I covered the Phoenix Film Festival in the spring of '09, Keaton's Gentleman has continued to fascinate me on Blu-ray a full decade later.

A highly verbal actor whose skill and speed in delivering paragraphs of comedic dialogue with athletic precision has delighted audiences since the 1980s, it's both incredibly compelling and initially, a little startling to see Michael Keaton dial back his energy and bravado. In a daring turn that's wonderfully out of his comfort zone, he moves down from a Ron Howard or Harold Ramis ten — not to a Tim Burton five — but a mostly silent one.

Emotionally and physically ill at the start of the film, which was shot in just under a month, Keaton's Frank finds himself slowly coming to life for the girl who saves him twice. But still, given the gravity of things that have been left unsaid, most importantly, where Kate really saw Frank for the first time — arms stretched wide, with falling snow between them instead of her meet cute tree — the film's intelligent enough to know that these two people can't just ride off into the sunset.

An arthouse standby with the ability to infuse even minor roles — like the wife in No Country for Old Men — with goodness and warmth, Kelly Macdonald has long been one of my favorite actresses. I'm especially fond of her major turns in Two Family House (which I loved so much that I actually programmed and hosted a screening of it in Scottsdale), as well as the acclaimed yet under seen The Girl in the Cafe, which shares a cinematographer with Merry's DP Chris Seagar. Thematically similar to Gentleman and propelled by two unpredictable, opposites attract fueled narratives, both House and Girl would play very well alongside The Merry Gentleman.

A woman of humanity and good humor who, thankfully, gets to use her own Scottish accent for the film, since to see Kelly Macdonald is to love her, she's the true heart of Michael Keaton's Chicago set tale. Therefore, it's easy to see why she'd be so instantly magnetic to so many men, both right but wrong and wrong but right alike.

Benefiting from an insightful script by Lazzeretti, who was going to direct the movie until a ruptured appendix found Keaton stepping up to the plate, Gentleman also boasts a strong supporting turn by producer-star Tom Bastounes as Dave. Making sure that we never write the Chicago cop off completely, Bastounes fills his scenes with wit and pathos while playing a role that Keaton, in his comedy heyday, might've easily gravitated to in the past.

Perhaps bored by the kind of men he's already played, it's a courageous move for Michael Keaton to branch out and doubly so to step behind the camera to take on the behind-the-scenes lead role he'd been eyeing for quite awhile. And despite a frivolous lawsuit by the film's investors who foolishly tried (and failed) to blame the director for the indie not making a big profit in its 2009 limited run, this eye-opening, critically acclaimed sleeper is so good that it makes you wish that Keaton would return to direct once again.

And while, with that history, you can totally understand why he might not, in a weirdly fitting way, it actually makes sense for the film to be undiscovered. Like the tormented Frank who, in tracking down Kate, is cautiously, tentatively optimistic about a peaceful future with somebody he can be quiet with (at least for a little while), once you manage to pull The Merry Gentleman out of the darkness, you'll find yourself wanting to share it with others and help bring Keaton's labor of love to light.

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Blu-ray Review: Chef (2014)

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Aside from Jon Favreau’s massive success as a studio director who crafted a contemporary Christmas classic with Elf and kickstarted Marvel’s moviemaking domination in the new millennium with Iron Man 1 and 2), he’s always strived to inject his own life into his work.

In fact, he took the age-old adage to write what you know to heart as far back as his groundbreaking script for Swingers, which put not only himself but his friend and former Rudy costar Vince Vaughn as well as future Bourne Identity director Doug Liman on the map.

Celebrating that success but staying true to his roots, while his follow-up feature filmmaking debut Made didn’t score as big of a hit as his first scripted effort, the allusions to his life as a rising artist with the goal of just getting a movie made and fighting to make it his own makes Made perhaps his most personal feature until now.

And as such, Made makes a perfect companion piece to this – his best picture in years – Chef.

On the surface it’s an enjoyable underdog story about a workaholic chef who – once on the cusp of a promising career – has lost some of the love for what it is that he does after years of cooking safe, easily palatable, and highly popular yet ultimately uninspired meals at his otherwise successful L.A. eatery which is run by Dustin Hoffman's micromanaging owner.

When Favreau’s Chef Carl Casper – known affectionately as El Jefe by his loyal staff – has a major meltdown after being unprofessionally eviscerated in an scathingly over-the-top review laden with personal attacks by the prominent food blogger who’d championed his talent ten years earlier, the confrontation between the two men goes viral.

Creatively, emotionally, and professionally at his lowest point after being unceremoniously fired, Carl eventually decides to write a new recipe for success. With his supportive ex-wife (Sofia Vergara) and loving son (Emjay Anthony) by his side, he travels to Miami where he'd originally experienced success a decade earlier.

Soon inspired by the food of the city that first ignited his passion for cooking Cuban cuisine in particular, Carl, his sous chef/best friend (John Leguizamo), and son Percy take the food truck supplied by Vergara’s other ex (Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr.) that’s as rundown on the outside as Carl feels on the inside and fix it up.

Nicknaming the new and improved restaurant on wheels El Jefe, the trio spend the summer traveling from one major gastronomic destination to the next while adding in the flavors of New Orleans and Texas as they gradually make their way back to Los Angeles.

Yet far more than just a culinary journey, Chef chronicles Carl’s own existential crisis and coming-of-middle-age as once he’s on the road, he begins to reevaluate his priorities to define success in a different way.

Realizing a bit too late he’s left his role as a father on the back burner as well as what the idea of “quality time” truly means as – instead of a rollercoaster ride or a trip to a blockbuster Hollywood film his son would much rather have a real live conversation with his dad – the work begins exploring the generation gap in a creative way.

With the young tech savvy Percy going from simply signing Carl up for Twitter to becoming El Jefe’s head of grassroots marketing via Vine and any number of apps the film incorporates, Favreau’s cinematic metaphor about how many hats an artist in any medium must both embrace and wear to make it in today’s society takes even greater shape.

For just like with the idea of getting his first film Made made, Favreau’s latest opus operates as a timely allegory for the industry in which he’s worked for more than two decades.

And as a far cry from play-it-safe tentpole franchise films that try to distract us as near rollercoaster rides into forgetting how great it feels to be genuinely moved by a picture about people we can relate to just having an authentic conversation, Chef lays out this argument in a variety of ways.

Obviously the writer/director address this directly in its screenplay in the scenes between father and son after Carl walks away from the restaurant industry (read: big blockbuster moviemaking) due to pressure from his own version of a studio head in Hoffman.

However, Favreau also acknowledges it indirectly on a meta-level as a talky indie film itself that is just the representation of and antidote to the type of movies his onscreen child is tired of in favor of good old conversation.

And in doing so, the offscreen chef (Favreau) gets reinvigorated by the own medium he loved in the late ‘90s (via Swingers and Made) similar to the way that Carl does by returning to his roots in Miami.

Thus in addition to his audience and his onscreen son, Favreau undoubtedly shares the same appetite for relatable filmmaking on a more personal level, not only returning to the same independent model of filmmaking in which he got his start but also by inviting along nearly a dozen likeminded marquee names he’s since befriended and/or worked with along the way to join him as well.

Bringing their own talent and hunger to the table, the diverse dream cast (boasting a standout performance by the young Emjay Anthony who holds his own with everyone) managed to make a film that says as much about the food industry as it does about the current state of music, literature, and film.

For example, in a brilliantly penned line, Hoffman berates the chef to play (or cook) his hits like Mick Jagger must do at damn near every Rolling Stones show before the filmmaker manages to insert some clever questions and subtle comments about criticism, marketing, self-made media, and the thin line of all three in between.

At one painful food truck gathering early on, we watch a pushy policeman treat the chef like a trained seal – turning into a groupie by forcing Favreau’s chef to pose for multiple selfies, which I’m embarrassed to say I’ve seen occur in person at too many press junkets where clueless “reporters” follow the movie cop's lead.

Particularly inventive is the way that Favreau addresses the good and bad of the social media infotainment age where the twenty-four hour news cycle requires more and more outrageous morsels of interchangeable content for sugar-high ratings spikes or empty calorie click-bait without stopping to ask if the subject is even or should be “news” before they begin.

An entertaining, heartfelt ensemble movie with an awful lot to say, Chef is engaging enough as it is to stand on its own. However, like an expensive, decadent multicourse meal that you just might want to savor, the more you think about the implications of what’s really being said beyond the frame, the more you’ll realize that he made something much more resonant that a mere foodie film.

Wisely understanding that Tinsletown spoofs seldom play as well to those outside the industry, Favreau’s skewered take on franchise filmmaking where the product is packaged like fast food works on a multitude of levels whichever way you watch it.

The director’s best feature since Elf and his strongest piece of screenwriting since Swingers, Chef is certain to satisfy as a word-of-mouth hit that plays even better as the main course to the appetizer of Made and when you go back for more and look at it the second time around.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: Blue Jasmine (2013)

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While most people have a tendency to try and present the best version of themselves – spinning small yarns of white lies to protect feelings or reassure someone you really do like their homemade gift of scratchy wool polka dotted socks – there are those who lie so often and easily that it’s their main conversational approach from one situation to the next.

And in Woody Allen’s twenty-first Writer’s Guild nominated original screenplay Blue Jasmine, he’s created one of his most fascinating (anti)heroines in at least two decades of filmmaking via the eponymous Jasmine brought so unnervingly to life with unparalleled tenacity by Oscar winner Cate Blanchett in yet another remarkable performance that’s poised to garner her a second Academy Award.

Named Jeanette at birth but later changing that handle to the seductive Jasmine to suit the romantic life she dreams for herself as a hopeless fantasist, Blanchett’s Jasmine is the type of individual who’s taken the theory that we’re all the star of our own “movie” quite literally. Living a life of theatricality, Jasmine speaks in soliloquies to nobody in particular and hopes for a new plot twist whenever things don’t go her way.

One of those aforementioned individuals who’s told so many lies, half-truths and slightly altered accounts and likewise been lied to (and played like a record by her dreamy, manipulative older husband Hal) – when we first meet Jasmine it only takes us a moment to realize that she can no longer tell the difference between fact, fiction, reality or fantasy.

And while admittedly for a woman who’s been heartbroken and suffered a nervous breakdown in the past, the title Blue Jasmine fits accordingly, it doubles as a recurring theme in its own right as the start of the tale Jasmine tells to anyone who will listen how Hal met her standing alone at a party while the song “Blue Moon” was playing and swept her off her feet.

Moreover, that pitch-perfect “Blue Moon” lyric of Jasmine standing alone serves a dual purpose in Allen’s film as it also foreshadows Jasmine as a woman who will always be somehow left off center, off to the side, outside looking in at the real world she rejects when it’s judged side-by-side with her own fantasy.

In a telling flashback, Alec Baldwin's Hal confesses that he fell in love with her name which – because it is in itself a lie – reaffirms the fact that he fell in love not with the woman but with the idea or fantasy of her. Therefore, we realize that Hal not only never really knew this woman he called his wife at all but also – considering the way he created his Madoff like Ponzi schemes – preferred a life of magical reality than actual reality and therefore inspired Jasmine’s tendency to do the same before their lies all came crashing down like a house of cards.

A delicate romantic who is having a tough time getting back on her feet after she lost everything and was ostracized from her Park Avenue social circle following the FBI's arrest of her shady, philandering husband for Madoff-like crimes, Jasmine travels to San Francisco to stay with her adopted younger sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins).

Upon first glance, Jasmine seems like she’s wandered in from Tennessee Williams’s Glass Menagerie or Streetcar Named Desire as a Blanche DuBois type dependent upon the kindness of strangers. And it's a reference that fits indeed as further research reveals that Blanchett had recently played that role on Broadway and Allen had actually nixed a scene in Jasmine that took place on a streetcar for fear it would be deemed too much of a dead-on homage.

And while the hint of DuBois is a given, in my eyes however, I see Jasmine as a distinct Woody Allen character with roots in the auteur’s onscreen Annie Hall alter-ego Alvy Singer. In Allen's breakthrough mainstream success, he described himself in a youthful flashback featuring a Marilyn Monroe look alike as a person who always had a hard time telling the difference between imagined and actual reality.

Thus, a Williams/Allen hybrid by way of Blanchett – as the film opens Jasmine arrives in San Francisco and settles in with the hardworking, blue collar, divorced mother of two, Ginger. Revisiting the same complex sisterly sibling dynamic evident in Interiors and Hannah and Her Sisters, as the two women – a complete study in contrasts – try to make the best of the situation, it becomes obvious that Jasmine’s arrival is the equivalent of a powder keg ready to explode in Ginger’s relationship with her loving but hotheaded, fittingly-named boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale).

Nosy and loud, intriguingly Chili is the only one able to see through all of Jasmine’s pretentions and phony heirs to call out the way she’s alternately neglected and taken advantage of Ginger in the past. Adding to this, the film relies on repeated flashback sequences to jump forward and backward in the narrative to offer us a glimpse at the unromantic reality behind the breakup of both sisters’ marriages.

Focusing on the way their relationships started to go downhill when Ginger and her then-husband (Andrew Dice Clay) visited Jasmine in New York and began to see the truth behind Hal’s façade as he two-timed Jasmine – the beginning of the end for all was set in motion when Jasmine foolishly talked her relatives into trusting their hard-earned life savings to Hal to invest.

A multilayered film that’s richly acted and interpersonally complex by way of the number of subplots and characters it’s able to successfully juggle without shortchanging any of them, Blue Jasmine further shows respect for its audience’s intelligence by unveiling the events of two different timelines simultaneously.

And due to its dense structure, a second viewing makes you appreciate the way it cleverly pays off on ideas and lines in one narrative a few acts later on in the second timeline. Yet perhaps Blue Jasmine’s greatest feat is in the way that it never foreshadows its most surprising character driven plot twist that leaves viewers stunned and likewise eager to go back and rewatch certain moments for a second or third time since it makes us rethink everything we thought we knew about a given character.

A daring film in which the whole success of Allen’s emotional rollercoaster hinges on an unreliable narrator that’s forever changing her story, getting lost in the past and altering the facts of any given situation to best deal with the crisis at hand – Blue Jasmine serves as a stunning showcase for Cate Blanchett’s unparalleled talent.

As much an exploration of what happens when the American dream falls apart as it is a portrait of a woman under the influence of fantasy, Blue Jasmine is as topical as it is timeless.

Not just Woody Allen’s strongest film since Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Jasmine is certain to have a much greater impact than Vicky in the future as one of his most rewarding contemporary classics that recalls the existential exploration of life on display in his ‘70s and ‘80s masterpieces. In other words – and much like its main character and leading lady – Blue Jasmine stands alone indeed.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

After his hypoglycemia left him falling asleep just inches away from reaching the finishing line of the New Jersey Police Academy obstacle course, Paul Blart (Kevin James) decided that the next best thing to carrying a badge and gun was carrying a badge and riding a segway as a ten year veteran in the security department at a New Jersey suburban mall.

Still opting for the same cop stereotypes of the tough guy retro '80s mustache and chewing way too much gum at any given moment-- to say that Blart takes his job seriously would be an understatement. If there's a scuffle in a Victoria's Secret--although he refuses to hit a woman-- he'll jump right in the mix, threatening to make a citizen's arrest which isn't exactly effective as technically a citizen has the exact same right.

When he isn't writing reports about how to best ease the shopper foot traffic from Macy's to the specialty stores by circumnavigating people away from the busy food court, he's trying his hardest to flirt with a beautiful kiosk employee named Amy (Jayma Mays) who senses his sweet side despite a rather bizarre early impression when he crashed his segway directly into a van while scoping her out.

Of course, given that his competition is a pen-selling creep who's overly fond of man-jewelry, we realize that anyone else, especially the earnest Blart would be a vast improvement. And despite his battles with his hefty weight, fondness for comfort foods along with never encountering a nacho eating contest he didn't want to enter in jest with his favorite coworker, James is essentially playing an Ernest Borgnine styled Marty character who, having been dumped by his previous illegal immigrant wife who'd married him for citizenship, remains a devoted son (to Shirley Knight) and father (to Raini Rodriguez).

However, following a hectic day of record breaking Black Friday sales, the mall is held up Bad Santa style by a group of criminals all eager to secure the credit card codes from various stores. Although he usually avoids the same type of time-suckage favored by his cohorts, when locking up the arcade that even, James lets out with a wailing version of "Detroit Rock City" on Rock Band, before he begins trying to use a friend's daughter's cell phone whose decidedly non-Blart ring-tone Rasheeda's "My Bubblegum" provides the most cell phone laughs since McConaughey's was set to "Sometimes When We Touch" when his character was called by Stiller in Tropic Thunder.

But I digress and back to Blart-- when the mall is cleared out save for a few hostages in the bank, including Amy and later James's own daughter, Blart gets his opportunity to become the mall cop version of Die Hard's John McClaine and Stallone's Rambo by trying to outmaneuver the athletic and acrobatic team of villains, played by extreme sports icons.

While James is surprisingly good at his pratfalls as he slides, dives, flips and maneuvers into a variety of slapstick friendly situations (making the reliance for comedy in the film ultimately upon physical instead of verbal jokes), the group he's up against are all pros including some renowned record holders and award winners such as skateboarders Mike Valley (aka Mike V) and Jason Ellis, BMX gikers Mike Escamilla (aka Rooftop) and Rick Thorne and free runners Victor Lopez and Natascha Hopkins.

While James makes a likable hero and believable everyman-- the success of which was proven on his long-running CBS sitcom The King of Queens-- and producer Adam Sandler's Happy Madison productions decided to invest in that quality following their collaboration in I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, mostly Blart works as a mildly amusing roughly ninety minute diversion.

A nice change of pace to experience a genuinely PG rated comedy which appealed to Daddy Day Care director Steve Carr who appreciated the fact that the film "was family accessible but not aimed specifically at a kids audience," while ultimately it seems like it would've played better during the holiday season of '08 to tie the events in with its release, the gentle small screen approach of the film keeps you entertained. Even though, admittedly you realize that it could've used a few more rewrites to step up the comedic mine-field that was waiting just based on the title alone.

The Promotion

Director: Steve Conrad

On the surface, “the customer is always right” may seem like the ultimate corporate management dictum but as my favorite boss once told me, the real strategy is to never let the customers make a scene. Strange advice from a former heavy metal drummer with plenty of stories of things getting out of control but realizing I’ve never been fond of public scenes of any kind, I took Dave’s advice to heart and despite a few unavoidable hiccups with those who seem to delight in perpetuating misery, it made my employment run infinitely smoother. Unfortunately, for the audience, this advice has never made it to the ear of The Promotion’s main character Doug (Seann William Scott). Slaving away as the hapless assistant manager, Doug fights against impromptu slaps by a gibberish speaking Teddy Graham coveting rebel and trying to broker peace between himself and his two apathetic fourteen year old security guards who—unsurprisingly-- seem more devoted to their cell phones than trying to deal with an intimidating young gang that terrorizes the shoppers and employees of the film’s supersized fictitious Donaldson’s Chicago grocery store. Of course, if Doug had been informed of this tactic, Pursuit of Happyness and Weather Man writer Steve Conrad wouldn’t have had a film with which to make his directorial debut. Although, dubbed “one of the unfunniest comedies ever,” by The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt who also wrote that “watching The Promotion” should be added “to the Geneva Conventions’ list of humanitarian abuses,” possibly that would’ve been the best thing all around… if only-- much like our sad-sack Doug-- for filmgoers to avoid scenes as unpleasant as the ones found in The Promotion.

In a film that makes the similarly themed Dane Cook, Dax Shepard, and Jessica Simpson vehicle Employee of the Month look downright Shakespearean, our struggling thirty-three year old Doug assumes that his years of serving time in Donaldson’s under a boss who escapes to daytime matinees and car washes while he contends with an overabundance of customer complaint cards will be coming to a deserved end when he learns the chain is building a brand new store nearby. Convinced he’s a “shoo-in” for a promotion to manager at the new location, Doug and his hardworking wife Jen (The Office’s Jenna Fischer) purchase a home they can’t afford to escape their amorous gay banjo playing neighbors. Predictably, a wrench is thrown into Doug’s path in the form of John C. Reilly’s Richard, an aggressively friendly Canadian from Quebec who transfers down to Doug’s store with the intention of going after the same position and cushy benefits package for his new baby and Scottish wife Laurie (Lili Taylor using a hilarious Scottish Canadian hybrid accent) that he’d met while on a Christian mission. Initially unable to get a handle on the new “wild-card” Richard whom we later learn is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Doug and the newbie sidle up to one another, forming a strange professional bond that seems borderline friendly and competitive but grows increasingly acrimonious when Doug is relegated to near permanent parking lot duty in favor of self-actualization, self-help book-on-tape obsessed Richard.

All one has to do to anticipate the squirm-inducing, awkward and frankly painful stabs at humor in what I felt seemed like a manic-depressive screenplay is to reread the aforementioned descriptions one more time—a man who may lose his house; a recovering addict—not exactly the most surefire ways to garner laughs. While I applaud Conrad’s ingenuity and willingness to go against standard movie clichés, as Roger Ebert noted, the film is never quite sure of its tone, similar to the writer’s woefully uncomfortable Weather Man. In addition, I still can't get over the troubling realization that I found circulating throughout my screening notes that an overwhelming majority of the humor seemed to stem from cheap shots involving minorities (whether homosexual, ethnic, or mentally disabled). While I can’t imagine this was the film or Conrad’s intention, I couldn't help questioning just how and why so many talented cast members including Bobby Cannavale and Jason Bateman (who turn in nice cameos) even bothered to get involved. Mercifully, it will most likely be buried in the wake of the Edward Norton starrer The Hulk this weekend here in Phoenix, again reminding us that in addition to not wanting to witness such a disastrous scene, when it comes to mean-spirited and dissatisfying drivel like this-- by staying away in droves, in the end the customer is always right.

Romance & Cigarettes

Director: John Turturro

“There’s a lot of things in this pothole of a life that don’t make sense,” Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) tells his youngest daughter Baby (Mandy Moore) in writer/director John Turturro’s self-described “down and dirty musical love story,” produced by Joel and Ethan Coen, Romance & Cigarettes. Turturro originally had the first inklings of an idea for the film in the 1980’s before beginning to write it when portraying a struggling screenwriter himself in the 90’s in the Coens' Barton Fink and, after directing his two earliest pictures Mac and Illuminata, Turturro finally got the chance to bring this startlingly sexual, overwhelmingly crude, yet undeniably original musical to life.

Despite the production being postponed for nearly two years due to James Gandolfini’s commitment to the HBO series The Sopranos, Turturro spent those years securing the rights to the songs he’d chosen (IMDb) for his trashy firecracker salute to musicals that told the story of blue collar ironworker Nick Murder whose dressmaking wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon) discovers he’s been betraying her as well as bailing on his duty to his three daughters (Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, and Aida Turturro) by having an affair with the sultry, British, lingerie-selling redheaded harlot Tula (Kate Winslet).

Now dubbed a “whoremaster” by his betrayed wife who runs to church to take her frustration out with a stirring rendition of “Piece of My Heart” along with Eddie Izzard and the rest of the choir, Nick is relegated to the fact that according to him “marriage is combat” and he must fend for himself opposite his wife’s army (the three daughters) even if it means that Kitty will no longer be preparing his dinner. Nick ends up going to extremes to satisfy his "mistress in heat" Tula who we’re introduced to in a laughably over-the-top fire sequence and as Winslet plays the part (visibly having a ball), Tula is a woman whose dialogue is completely made up of foul lines that get even more shocking as she continues on and soon we realize that the relationship isn’t going to last even before she confesses that she “loses interest in a man as soon as he begins to care" about her. However, Turturro’s film busily occupies itself as a musical comedy of “remarriage” as Nick fights to try and win back his wife, who, meanwhile has been fantasizing about her first love Aidan Quinn and seeking revenge on the cheating Nick by conducting her own investigation along with her dangerous cousin Bo (Christopher Walken).

Despite a four star review from Roger Ebert, this Golden Lion nominee from the 2005 Venice Film Festival was labeled “loud and pointlessly crude,” by The Hollywood Reporter’s Ray Bennett (9/7/05) who cleverly summed up Romance & Cigarettes with the observation that “it looks more like something that might have been made by Jesus Quintana, the wild man of the bowling alley he [Turturro] played in The Big Lewbowski.” Definitely film fodder for an acquired taste, I found myself mostly disgusted by the cinematic train-wreck created by the indisputably talented writer/director and cast, even though admittedly it was oddly compelling at times. Ultimately, Romance & Cigarettes is an unnecessarily lewd offering that never failed to inspire genuine interest in the characters who populate each frame other than the initial involuntary shock that forced viewers to pay attention similar to the way that we can’t help but stare at a fire or traffic accident, terrified and drawn in by the twisted beauty but all the while hoping that everyone gets out in one piece.

The Ten

Director:
David Wain

Although it’s comprised of ten vignettes that use the biblical Ten Commandments as a jumping-off point, those who are overly devout or easily offended may want to skip director David Wain’s irreverent, unbalanced, yet undeniably hilarious The Ten. Hosted by Paul Rudd whose character finds himself breaking one of the commandments himself by being torn between his beautiful, loyal wife Famke Janssen or the young, sexy film buff Jessica Alba, the offbeat comedy The Ten which begins with a cautionary tale of a young man (Adam Brody) who jumps out of a plane without a parachute, only to find himself stuck in the ground where he’s worshipped as a false God but still finds time to party and star in his own television show, gets progressively more outrageous with each successive story.

Featuring a relative who’s who of comedians and actors, we soon encounter Gretchen Mol as a buttoned up thirty-something virgin librarian who has a summer fling while vacationing in Mexico with a carpenter named Jesus, a surgeon who leaves a pair or scissors inside a patient as “a goof,” Oliver Platt as an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator who becomes a surrogate father to teen black twins, Liev Schreiber as a jealous father who tries to out buy his neighbor in the cat scan machine market, a man who covets a prison wife and of course, Winona Ryder who steals a ventriloquist’s dummy with whom she falls in love while on her honeymoon. Also featuring Justin Theroux, Bobby Cannavale, and others, despite its uneven nature as some of the more ridiculous plots and characters do detract from the overall success, The Ten is compulsively watchable and sure to interest devotees of sketch comedy.