Review: “Any Day Now”

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Tags

alan cumming, drama, frances fisher, garret dillahunt, gay, isaac leyva, raising hope

“My Two Dads”
Review: C+ (RENT IT)

D-DAY WILL likely take home the Best Actor Oscar (again) for playing the president on the penny, but don’t count Alan Cumming out. Sure, the Scottish actor’s singing is ghastly in “Any Day Now,” but he gives it all he’s got and “Any Day Now” is better for it. Directed by Travis Fine, the narrative centers on a male couple fighting for custody of a teenage boy with Down Syndrome. Meet Marco (played by first-timer Isaac Leyva); he lives on a steady diet of donuts as his junkie mom turns tricks just out-of-view. He wanders the City of Angels, clutching his doll and gazing up at a metropolis terrifying indifferent to whether he lives or dies.

Thankfully, Alan Cumming steps in as Marco’s guardian angel. As the tough-as-nails Rudy, Cumming is a drag performer and Marco’s neighbor inside a grimy apartment building. Once Marco’s mom is carted off to the slammer, Rudy begins to care for the boy and soon turns to his new boyfriend Paul to help him gain custody. Paul is played by a rather bland Garret Dillahunt (“Raising Hope”); his wig is even worse than Cumming’s, especially in the scene where he shoots hoops with his lawyer boss and it begins to peel off his head like road-kill. Frances Fisher is a somewhat sympathetic judge who upbraids Rudy and Paul for lying to the court and masquerading as “friends” to keep Marco. But that’s where this film’s strength truly lies: it’s a reminder that things haven’t changed all that much since the 1970s in terms of gay parents and their rights. Paul is canned for not staying in the closet; Rudy is routinely harassed by cops and strangers on the street. “That’s discrimination,” Rudy protests. “That’s not discrimination,” says Paul, “that’s reality.”

We’re meant to root for Rudy, Paul, Marco as an island for misfit toys and the director does a fine job at eschewing sentimentality; still, “Any Day Now” feels a bit like a movie-of-the-week with predictable courtroom scenes to play out. Yet Cumming commands your attention and he’s a diamond in an otherwise rough little picture. A smart, activist film still needs to be made about gay adoptive parents and their struggles but this isn’t it. Maybe not “Any Day Now” but it’s coming – one can hope – someday soon.

Review: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”

06 Saturday Oct 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

drama, emma watson, ezra miller, gay, high school, logan lerman, melanie lynskey, paul rudd, stephen chbosky, the perks of being a wallflower, we need to talk about kevin

“Teenagers on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown”

Grade: B- (RENT IT)

SOMETIMES WISE, SOMETIMES FUNNY, always infuriating, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is only a semi-success. The source material is Stephen Chbosky’s eponymous coming-of-age novel, published in 1999 and adapted-directed by the author himself for the screen. The film version of “The Perks” isn’t just a drama of adolescent angst but a retro playlist that, stuffed with Crowded House, The Smiths, and Cracker, alerts us to the film’s setting: Pittsburgh in the early Nineties. Chbosky’s adaptation is a schizophrenic affair, however: admirably, it doesn’t shy away from the messiness of teenage sexuality, love and longing and yet many of its moment are so precious that they practically demand a collective “Aww” from the audience. It’s a relief to not see much of the parents in “The Perks” though the kids, wise beyond their years, are too much like adults for the film to really strike a chord. They’re already looking back.

Our protagonist is Charlie (Logan Lerman), a burgeoning writer and nerdlet who has placed in Advanced English under the tutelage of Paul Rudd as a high school teacher supplying this freshman with Salinger and words of wisdom. Charlie has survived two traumas: the suicide of his best friend and the death of his aunt (Melanie Lynskey), which he may or may not have caused. Flashbacks of that time – a sure sign that a book is being compressed into film – swim in and out of focus. After seeing an outlandish and openly gay upperclassman named Patrick act out in shop class, Charlie develops a fascination with his classmate and even scoots closer to him at a football game to introduce himself. Enter Samantha as the third musketeer; she is played by a pixie-ish Emma Watson who has left Hogwarts behind for her first adult leading role only to be upstaged by Ezra Miller as stepbrother Patrick. (Miller made our blood run cold as the sociopathic Kevin in last year’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” and he proves once again to be a fearless and funny scene-stealer.) Patrick has been carrying on a secret relationship with a closeted quarterback and Sam has a reputation of sorts. They welcome Charlie to what they describe as their “island of misfit toys.”

The three actors have terrific chemistry together despite the fact that their get-togethers and traditions are completely implausible. Since when do high schoolers host Christmas parties only to exchange presents like antique typewriters and men’s suits? Sam and Patrick say things like “It’s rock and roll!” and, taking over the school dance to bust a move to “Come on Eileen,” Patrick reels: “This is what fun looks like!” The line lands with a thud only because American teenagers haven’t said such things without irony since they wore poodle-skirts and tuned in for “My Three Sons.” The Nineties were never this nice. Chbosky smartly undercuts such phony sentimentality at key moments, like when Charlie abruptly tells Sam that his friend shot himself or when he discovers Patrick and the quarterback kissing in an upstairs room, but like any act of nostalgia, “The Perks” is closer to how one might want to remember high school rather than the actual experience. The Eucharist melts into a hit of LSD; Charlie is given pot brownies and admits he’s “baked like a cake.” This is the stuff of real adolescence rather than the stuff that dreams are made of. Less floweriness, more ferocity.

Review: “Beginners”

17 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

beginners, christopher plummer, closet, comedy, ewan mcgregor, family, freud, gay, goran visnjic, gospel, jack russell terrier, mary page keller, me and you and everyone we know, melanie laurent, miranda july, no one belongs here more than you, the future, the sound of music, thumbsucker, walter kirn

“In Bloom”

Movie Review: “Beginners”

Grade: A- (SEE IT)

IN THE BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God had a Son, and God said: “Son, I’m gay.” This is the gospel according to Mike Mills’ new film, “Beginners,” inspired in part by the director’s own relationship with his father, Paul, who died of cancer in 2004 shortly after coming out of the closet. Paul (or “Hal” as he’s known in Mills’ film) is played sensitively and memorably – Oscar voters take note! – by 81-year-old veteran actor Christopher Plummer. That’s right, Christopher Plummer as in Captain Georg von Trapp in 1965’s “The Sound of Music” and pretty much every film since then. What lends “Beginners” its charm is the smiling spryness Plummer brings to the role of a septuagenarian essentially reborn as the gay man he never got to be. We see him, shirt unbuttoned, strolling a dance floor packed with younger men, and later, calling his son for some social cues. “Oliver, they had some wonderfully loud music in the club tonight,” he informs him over the phone, “What kind of music is that?” His son, in bed, replies reticently: “Probably house music.” “Okay,” says Plummer, chuckling to himself as he writes this down in case he forgets, “House music.”

As Mills’ fictional stand-in, Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor) is a kind-hearted Los Angelino who inherits his father’s Jack Russell terrier named Arthur (played by Cosmo) after his dad dies at age 75. Since the film is told nonchronologically, we’re sometimes given endings before beginnings, which keeps the memories of Oliver’s deceased parents alive and, well, amusing from start of finish. In one flashback, a young Oliver is taken to an art museum by his eccentric mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller). She’s asked to leave after imitating the geometric designs on display. “What?” she asks her young son, “I’m not allowed to interact with the art?” Now flash forward to the modern day where Oliver meets Anna (the ravishing Mélanie Laurent) at a costume party where Oliver, with Arthur in tow, is dressed as the good Viennese doctor, Sigmund Freud. A mute Anna has laryngitis and communicates only through pen and paper. Playing the analysand, she sprawls out on the sofa before him. “I guess we should begin with your mother,” Oliver jokes. A relationship soon blossoms to parallel the love story of Hal and his young boyfriend Andy (a shockingly plain Goran Visnjic in a pageboy haircut).

The first frame of “Beginners” features a white flower in full bloom followed closely by the grim imagery of death: Oliver cleaning out his father’s house in the Hollywood Hills, dragging garbage bags to the curb, and flushing his dad’s cancer meds down the drain. There’s a love of whimsy and unpredictability in Mills’ “Beginners,” as well as in his 2005 adaptation of Walter Kirn’s coming-of-age story, “Thumbsucker.” Mills is probably better known, however, as Mister Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know” and the oddball short story collection, “No One Belongs Here More Than You”). Director of “The Future,” July shares Mills’ love of social weirdness, and since we’re getting Freudian, Oliver’s mother sports a curly haircut uncannily similar to the real-life July’s.

From the outset of “Beginners,” Hal’s Jack Russell is so preternaturally smart that he speaks in subtitles, a clever but gimmicky touch that kept the audience members around me giggling to no end. Giving Arthur a tour of his apartment, Oliver sits him down, man-to-man, and tells him: “Look, it’s lonely out here, so you better learn how to talk with me.” An alert-looking Arthur stares back, his subtitle reading: “While I understand up to 150 words – I don’t talk.” What the bittersweet “Beginners” explores is that desire to talk, and to be heard, which seemingly spans age groups, generations, even species.