From the firing of filmmakers Lasse Hallstrom and Frank Oz as well as the lawsuit that resulted from actress Emily Lloyd’s dismissal on the second day of the shoot (all after alleged clashes with Cher), in anyone else’s hands the offscreen turmoil surrounding the Oscar winner's 1990 vehicle Mermaids could've easily overwhelmed the drama that unfolded onscreen.
Yet when you consider that the 1960s period piece based on Patty Dann’s eponymous novel centers around an impulsively free-spirited single mother of two famous for her packing up and leaving men and homes behind as soon as conflicts arise, perhaps any clashes that might’ve happened on set just further anchored Cher in her role.
Featuring an equally excellent Winona Ryder in a pivotal turn which garnered the actress her first Golden Globe nomination and helped usher in her transition into more adult roles, in Mermaids Ryder stars as Cher's socially awkward introverted daughter Charlotte who rebels against her mother’s flirtatious and flighty ways with a fierce commitment to Catholicism.
A frequent sparring partner to her mother whom she refers to as Mrs. Flax throughout the film, Charlotte is long-past finding her mother’s penchant for everything from affairs with married men to her compulsive need to serve most of her meals appetizer-style on sticks charming.
Protective of her younger sister Kate (played by Christina Ricci in her first role), teenage Charlotte –who also serves as the film’s narrator – is soon tempted out of a life of celibacy after she catches sight of Joe (Sixteen Candles star Michael Schoeffling), the handsome caretaker of the women’s newest home on convent property in Massachusetts.
Like an orchestra conductor striving to balance all the highs and lows while keeping everyone in the right key, My Favorite Year and Racing With the Moon helmer Richard Benjamin does his best to meld the at times darkly comedic, almost Gothic edge of Dann's book and script by June Roberts with the picture’s lighter moments.
Though its second act threatens to spin out of control most likely due to missing scenes involving Charlotte that must’ve been left in either an earlier draft of the script or on the cutting room floor, the film’s performers remain consistently authentic.
And this is especially true of brilliant British character actor Bob Hoskins, whose role as a Jewish shoe salesman and amateur painter from the midwest with a heart as big as the sea offers unexpected laugh filled harmony to his scenes with love interest Cher.
But as great as Hoskins is in Mermaids, Benjamin knows that the film's real love story is between the mother and her daughters and he directs the hell out of the title’s bittersweet third act, before a trendy, tacked on ‘80s kitchen dance party scene tries to meander it into Big Chill territory. Fortunately in spite of that, Cher and Ryder ensure that it swims to the surface.
One of many female coming-of-age movies of the era, now that it's been released on Blu-ray by Olive Films in time for Mother’s Day, Mermaids would fit right in as part of an impromptu Girl’s Night Film Festival of underrated titles alongside Man in the Moon, Mystic Pizza, Rich in Love, and Gas Food Lodging, just to name a few.
Last week, Hugh Jackman officially kicked off the summer movie season by clawing his way into the international box office with the number one blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine. To this end, it's probably a good thing that television brainchild turned action director J.J. Abrams didn’t call his take on the science fiction classic Star Trek: Origins. However, as we learn right from the start of this deafening loud but truly entertaining summer popcorn movie, he very well could have.
And sure enough, by cleverly avoiding the trappings of the franchise’s more than forty-year history on screens both big and small—he bravely chose to hit “reset." In doing so, he conceived a work, along with his Mission Impossible III, Lost, and Alias screenwriters Robert Orsi and Alex Kurtzman that started at the very beginning of the Trekkie mythology as conceived by its mastermind and creator, Gene Roddenberry in the 1960s.
While it’s definitely a Paramount Studio classic and not part of the Marvel Studio umbrella (a la Wolverine)-- the film’s incredibly effective opener utilizes two of the strongest elements of last year’s Marvel Robert Downey Jr. double-play in the form of director Jon Favreau's Iron Man and its Marvel companion, The Incredible Hulk from Transporter 2 director Louis Leterrier.
One of the gifts that we've begun to take for granted when it comes to J.J. Abrams that made me an Alias fan right from the start is his truly unique, confident, and powerful ability to draw upon raw human emotion that builds into extraordinarily riveting (yet natural) plot points within the framework of the most complicated action sequences you can imagine.
In the bravura opener of Star Trek that serves as either a literary-like prologue managing to satisfy comic book fans and those who worship at the altar of Russian tragedy, he blends action and drama in a daring pre-credit sequence. Within moments, we witness the birth of the man who will become the notorious James Tiberius Kirk as his father sacrifices his life to save countless others in an escalating war with the monstrous Romulan villain Nero (a nearly unrecognizable turn by otherwise dishy Munich star Eric Bana).
Segueing from dazzling effects work as the battle rages on with scenes of Kirk’s mother in labor—Abrams takes an operatic cue to use simply visuals and a gorgeous score by composer Michael Giacchino as we view the sequence as if it were a modern day silent film until Kirk’s cry as a newborn bursts onto the soundtrack like a crescendo.
Unexpectedly moving and cinematically daring—it takes the opening of Leterrier’s beautiful beginning of Hulk a step further by wordlessly bringing us into the visceral realm of the film. And indeed, this was no accident as Abrams admitted to Bill Goodykoontz in The Arizona Republic that it was “the visceral experience, the feeling, the emotional experience” he “always [found] more critical than the intellectual one” that had made him “more of a Star Wars man growing up.”
And honestly, before I’d even read the article in The Republic, it’s one I referenced in my hastily scribbled screening notes when I wrote that George Lucas should’ve consulted Abrams for the development of his horrific prequels that seem to be a cautionary tale against too much CGI.
Yet, forgetting the sins of the latter day Lucas-- the man's earlier work provides an influence you can spot throughout Abrams’ version of Star Trek. When you couple this with Abrams' dedication to Roddenberry’s source material, it makes a stirring concoction of classic sci fi to reach devotees of both franchises.
And indeed Wars and Trek have become part of this generation's DNA and throughout Trek, Star Wars doesn't seem too far from Abrams' mind as it appeared to influence aspects of the film whether it’s in the way that the young Spock reminded me a bit of Luke Skywalker or Kirk giving off a distinct Han Solo vibe.
However, it’s just one of several post ‘60s works Abrams drew inspiration from as collaborators in Paramount's official production notes cited Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff as another film that lended to Trek's "origin" structure. And it definitely stands out when we catch up with the mischievous ladies man James T. Kirk (Bottle Shock’s Chris Pine), the gorgeous brainiac Uhura (Guess Who star Zoe Saldana), and the paranoid chatterbox scene-stealer Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban) as they train at Starfleet Academy.
However, prior to their training-- the vastly different childhoods of Earth resident Kirk and Vulcan inhabitant Spock are touched upon in another nicely paced storytelling approach by Abrams and his writing team. While things for Spock are quite difficult as he faces intense prejudice and bullying for being the product of a Vulcan father (Chariots of Fire’s Ben Cross) and human mother (Winona Ryder), Kirk gets an Iron Man-like introduction. Yet to switch things up in a delightful futuristic anachronism, Abrams substitutes ACDC’s “Back in Black” used in Favreau’s film for the Beastie Boys' anti-authority classic “Sabotage” as he’s chased by a flying motorcycle cop while careening down a desert road.
Thereafter we're reunited with the adult versions of the two characters and the primary cast at Starfleet. And very quickly we see the makings of the captain Kirk would become, having to leave his tendency for Top Gun Maverick style heroics and bar brawls behind under the guidance of the tough but fair Captain Pine (The Republic of Love’s Bruce Greenwood) and the half-Vulcan, half-human with a chip on his shoulder larger than those memorable ears in the form of Dr. Spock (Heroes’ Zachary Quinto).
Although those familiar with the series recall the dynamic friendship of Spock and Kirk and the way they complemented each other—getting to that point in this film isn’t reached until the end. Typical for the Joseph Campbell-like Hero's Journey (a George Lucas favorite), it occurs as the U.S.S. Enterprise crew members (also consisting of John Cho’s Mr. Sulu and Anton Yelchin’s Chekov before Simon Pegg’s Scotty arrives very late into the picture) find themselves jeopardized when Bana’s über-villain makes a recurrence.
Easily setting the audience up for an inevitable sequel by crafting a new Star Trek mythology that builds from the preexisting one as in-jokes, signature lines and even an extended cameo by Leonard Nimoy abound—it’s a highly satisfying “reintroduction” to the characters.
Despite this, it’s safe to say that die-hard Trekkies may resist change and even those—like myself—who’ve only seen one of the films and a handful of classic episodes definitely missed the intellectual allegories that existed on the small screen. For beneath the cheesy pretext of the Shatner era series-- vintage Star Trek also managed to comment on race, religion, prejudice, politics, war, disease, diversity and more during the Vietnam era by providing an atypical science fiction version of a positive and damn near Utopian—as opposed to doom-ridden and dystopian—view of the future.
And while overall, it’s a blast and a true big screen cinematic experience, I wished that some of the awesome Star Wars like action sequences may have been infused with the same level of Abrams intelligence he imbued into the film’s opening. Moreover, even though he revealed to Goodykoontz that he “thought the original show was too intellectual” and wanted to emphasize the adventure based pleasure of Lucas’ universe that enraptured him as a child—I’m hopeful that, along with his talented screenwriters-- they’ll pack a little more brain crunch into the next delicious bag of popcorn they manage to “beam up” in the future.
Fond of quotations such as dismissing his chosen career with the Henry Miller line, “writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness,” Evan Merck (American Beauty, Ghost Rider, and P2 star Wes Bentley) tells the free-spirited Charlotte (Age of Innocence, Girl Interrupted and Little Women two-time Oscar nominee Winona Ryder) that he likes citing others because it beats having his own thoughts.
It’s this confession that makes his real vocation—which he hides from his prospective and relentless new girlfriend—of penning poetic and poignant suicide notes for strangers seem far more distressing as the young man who admits to a childhood so dysfunctional it was the subject of a Susan Lucci starring TV movie of the week would rather spend his time getting into the mentally unstable heads of his clients than deal with the contents of his own.
Running an L.A. based website that shares the same name as former cameraman turned writer/director Geoff Haley’s debut film which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival—Bentley’s Evan treats his freelance writing position with an odd sense of cool detachment, regularly meeting the clients who contact him via e-mail at a local coffee shop to begin the month long process that involves their keeping a journal of any thoughts they may have before as he says, he’ll take their ideas and make them sing.
Although most writers crave a byline and credit, Evan is all too happy to remain anonymous as one final piece he wrote earned a client a posthumous Whitman Award for Poetry and he’s also seen his writing published in prestigious magazines. Constantly critiquing himself to the point that he clips any obituary notices he does find to lock up in his client files and attend the funeral with a pen and pad to evaluate whether or not his words sounded overly pretentious—it’s at the funeral of a recent client that he first catches the eye of the deceased man’s beautiful, estranged sister Charlotte.
Faster than you can sayHarold and Maude meets Garden State-- the overly eager Charlotte begins actively pursuing Evan, looking up the phone number he assumed was unlisted and proving that she isn’t attracted to him simply out of a sense of loss to her brother (since Evan poses right from the start as an old college friend) by seducing him on a Los Angeles rooftop within easy viewing distance of anyone in a nearby office building.
In a spirited turn that finds Ryder back in her darkly comic early Tim Burton roots with movies like Edward Scissorhands, the cult classic Heathers, and her more recent daring turns in the uneven but amusing film The Ten and the underrated The Darwin Awards that relished in its sense of macabre comedy—she makes the most out of a role that’s a bit hard to get a handle on.
This is far more apparent considering initially the admittedly flawed premise that begs the question of wondering how clients would even think to find the website and why a reporter or the authorities hadn’t gotten involved. However, pushing that aside to suspend our disbelief enough anyway because of our talented filmmaker’s confidence in his material that hooks us, honestly we’re never quite sure why Charlotte would find Evan so intriguing.
Of course,Bentley is an undeniably gifted performer whose work in American Beauty I naturally assumed would springboard him onto a Jake Gyllenhaal or Tobey Maguire like career and it’s intriguing to learn that with Haley, he’s reunited with a crew member from that breakout performance (since Haley was a camera operator on Sam Mendes’ film). Yet unfortunately as far as Evan is concerned, it’s an under-written role that makes everyone else immediately stand out in comparison with the man’s blandness as Evan mostly gives off a contemplative but (understandably given how he pays the bills) joyless and near-zombie like existence.
And while Evan doesn’t have enough of a natural spark or obvious personality that seems to authentically generate the interest of Charlotte unless she’s just turned on by the challenge--we're far more intrigued by his immediate bond with his newest client, Abel.
In a movie-star making comeback role, Ray Romano's work as Abel is easily the strongest and most fascinating turn in the film as you’ll never look at the sitcom star of Everybody Loves Raymond the same way again. A blunt, bitter, angry composer of Silicon Valley “hold music” cribbed from Mozart in the hopes that by the time consumers have listened to the classical compositions they’ve gotten smart enough to solve their own technical support questions-- Romano's Abel completely reinvigorates the movie as soon as he becomes just as intrigued as Charlotte is by Evan's introverted, quiet, near-recluse.
Bonding over odd activities and conversations as Abel struggles to journal or give Evan much of an idea of the kind of note he’d like constructed for his demise—soon the two become unexpectedly tight, helping further the filmmaker’s goal to tell a story “about people desperate to make a connection in the most bizarre of ways,” as he told indieWIRE.
Thus, despite the easily winning charms and inevitable complexity that Ryder brings to her unusual role that evolves as the film predictably must reconcile the facts wherein she discovers just who Evan really is and what he does for a living—in the end, the one major revelation about the film is ultimately Ray Romano. For, similar to other comedians like Robin Williams, we realize that he has a curious capacity to play extremely dark at the drop of a hat.
Whether it’s in gleefully getting a psychological release in scaring babies into tears by making horrifying faces when their mothers’ backs are turned or wistfully proclaiming he’d love to buy a cliff for people to throw off the unreliable, broken "shit" that’s annoying them in order to give them closure (whether it’s a fax machine or printer)—essentially, Abel’s story is the most original and compelling one in the impressive, brave, but ultimately uneven work from gifted newcomer Haley.
Sharing with indieWIRE that his earliest loves as a child “were music and film,” we're quick to ascertain that he's deftly woven them together beautifully in this-- his first feature—fittingly conceived in script form “between camera set-ups,” while working on HBO’s Six Feet Under created by American Beauty’s screenwriter Alan Ball.
And while admittedly, it’s not the type of “romantic comedy” one normally sees at the multiplex and the proclamation that it is one on the date-movie friendly box may mislead couples into thinking it’s a light and airy work, despite the fact that we’re not entirely sure we understand or even care that much for our main character, Evan—there’s an awful lot to admire in the surprisingly life-affirming film about the importance of friendship.
Moreover, it’s one that treats viewers to a well-earned and incredibly satisfying conclusion for all the parties involved, further illustrating Haley’s respect for the story he wants to tell and the characters of whom he’s grown incredibly fond.
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.
Walking Movie Encyclopedia at Film Intuition; 3-Time National Award Winning Scribe; Film Reviewer; "Watch With Jen" Podcast Host; Screenwriter; Movie Discussion Host; BA in Film Studies & Communication.
