Riches Get Stiches

Year: 2016

Director: Ben Falcone

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Bell, Peter Dinklage

Run Time: 1 hour 39 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Melissa McCarthy is the most important force in modern cinema. OK, maybe that was a wee bit of “this review needs a hook” exaggeration, but she’s certainly in the Top 10. As a cultural figure, she is proving that a woman can lead and, more importantly, succeed in a vulgar film comedy. This might seem like a trivial thing to attach so much importance to, but it’s far from it. She’s opening up a dialogue about women in cinema, sexual agency, and body image, and the best thing is that she’s a genuinely  funny performer. 2015’s Spy may have been the first film to truly get her as a lead, but her continued success speaks volumes.

Of course, every major cinematic icon has their follies. Marlon Brando had The Island of Dr. Moreau. Al Pacino was in Gigli. Robert De Niro perpetrated Dirty Grandpa upon the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s a reason this discussion is cropping up at the beginning of a review for The Boss. I would scarcely say that the film is as egregious a misstep as the cinematic bile that is Dirty Grandpa, but – you know what? Let’s pick this up in a second. Time to hit the plot.

Let’s crack this puppy open and drink that sweet, sweet story nectar.

In The Boss, Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy) is a grotesquely wealthy woman who doesn’t respect her hardworking assistant Claire (Kristen Bell). Her life gets a bit of the old switcheroo when her ex-lover/business rival Reynault (Peter Dinklage) exposes her for insider trading, sending her to jail and stripping her assets. She is reluctantly taken in by Claire and her daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), but on a visit to Rachel’s to Totally Not Girl Scouts meeting she gets an idea. With Claire’s help she creates Darnell’s Darlings, a troupe of young women who sell brownies. And thus begins the epic journey of a rich lady gettin’ rich again.

But will she be rich with money or… (drumroll) friendship?

The thing about The Boss is that it’s not terrible, especially not to the degree that critics have been implying. It’s merely generic, which can be just as damning. Here, your average Melissa McCarthy profanity is grafted onto the most sundry family comedy plot imaginable the point that it’s pretty much for no one. It’s too vulgar for the kids who can sit through this kind of plot on the regular and it’s too toothless and predictable for the over 17 crowd. Take out all the F-bombs and sex jokes and you’ve got yourself a Hilary Duff vehicle.

However, I do respect The Boss for being the second McCarthy film in a row that doesn’t mock her weight of integrate it into her character. In fact, she’s playing a highly successful and fashionable woman, which is light years ahead of her previous filmography. Although Michelle Darnell has a predilection for turtlenecks so awful they provide strong evidence for the necessity of capitol punishment, she is a character worthy of Melissa McCarthy, though she’s not in a film that can really support her.

If Ghostbusters doesn’t prove to be the best McCarthy film this year, something will have gone terribly wrong.

For what it is, The Boss is totally fine. While the plot plods along the path everybody knew it would set on from the first frame, the comedy – always a subjective affair – does a decent job of keeping audiences occupied. We get a bit of the old fish out of water gambit, mocking the cluelessness of the rich (Occupy Hollywood!), and some classic “let’s dump the hot blonde in a chunky sweater and call her unattractive!” The best material comes from Tyler Labine, the James Corden-esque love interest for Kristen Bell who brings a much-needed dose of warm, earnest comedy in a register that is actually a little unexpected. For once.

The only comedic element that well and truly rankles is the physical comedy, which follows the recent trend of upsettingly punishing slapstick. Good physical comedy, like The Three Stooges, works well because it exists in a heightened cartoon reality here the characters aren’t actually in physical danger. The Boss is not a prime example of good physical comedy. A little girl fight scene almost gets there, because the filmmakers knew they needed to tiptoe around that one, but Ms. Darnell is run through the wringer, slammed into walls and down concrete stairs with deadly force, the sound design doubling down on sickening thuds and crunches. They’re more like UFC fights than gags, which totally undermines any potential laughs whatsoever.

So much of The Boss is a swing and a miss (an aborted Kathy Bates cameo literally has her abruptly exiting a scene on a galloping horse, there’s a full rap performance, and the climax is a hypercolor nightmare of violent nonsense), but the same genericness that keeps it from being truly great likewise prevents it from totally sucking. It’s a buffer of blandness.

While I should pan The Boss for a woeful misrepresentation of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as a gory movie, cutting between two scenes 45 minutes apart like I wouldn’t f**king notice, there’s enough good here to earn a qualified positive score. Labine is excellent and hopefully this film allows him to reach a wider audience, Ella Anderson is one of the better child actors in recent memory, and the easy emotional beats are far from taxing. If you’re looking for an unstressful time at the movies, you’ve come to the right place. Otherwise, maybe don’t bother with this one.

TL;DR: The Boss is a defanged Melissa McCarthy vehicle that doesn’t really have a place with any audience.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 977

The City Of Love

Year: 2011

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard
Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Sergio and I have a sort of deal worked out. Whenever I force him to watch one of my idiosyncratic movies (most recently, the superbly deranged American Gothic) he gets to pick one of his. Call it cinematic karma. It's also a great way for me to catch up on films that I missed that I never might have seen otherwise. This Fourth of July's pick was Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.

Now I'll admit this film isn't catering to my tastes but Sergio, ironically being a better film student than Yours Truly despite studying Econ, does know how to pick 'em. Only the second Woody Allen film I've seen (See? I'm a terrible film student), Midnight in Paris does an excellent job of creating a mood of lush romanticism even if it isn't equally good at anything else it does.

It's hard not to make Paris look stunning. You could literally just point your camera at a trash can for 40 minutes.

Opening with a solid three minutes (About 3% of the total run time) of Parisian scenery, the film exposes its loyalties at the outset. Midnight in Paris is first and foremost a love letter to Paris, France, only reluctantly operating as a narrative out of a sense of duty, being a 90 minute feature film and all.

It tells the tale of one Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a successful Hollywood screenwriter who is visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her bourgie parents. He falls in love with the city and wants to move to Paris while he works on his novel about a man who owns a nostalgia shop (a wafer-thin analogue for himself, a self-professed adorer of Paris in the 1920's).

Inez and her parents object, largely because they view Paris as a tourist destination where one can shop and lord their pseudo-intellectualism over one another, as embodied in the outrageously smarmy Paul (Michael Sheen), a friend who runs into them during their stay and acts as a sort of tour guide / permanent douche installation.

An unfulfilled Gil goes out walking one night and discovers an old fashioned car that comes by every night at midnight, transporting him to the city's heyday in the 1920's where he can cavort with such grand historical figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston - a strange choice but he does a good job of it), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll -all glowering menace), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates - terrific, but hardly reaching), and a rhinocerous-obsessed Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody - who absolutely delivers in what hardly even amounts to a cameo).

I know it's authentic, but is that hair really necessary?

Every night, Gil returns to the Roaring Twenties as he grows increasingly detached from the shrewish Inez, who is such a one-note harpy that it's ridiculously difficult to believe that their relationship could have even sustained itself this long. Don't shoot the messenger, blame the screenwriter. He begins to fall in love with a girlfriend of Picasso's, Adriana (Marion Cotillard) whom he meets when delivering his book to Gertrude Stein to be proofread.

Thus begins a cross-dimensional love triangle with the singular theme that, no matter where or when you are, it's easy to become fixated on the past and romanticize bygone eras out of proportion of their actual merits. This is certainly a valid theme, especially when applied to this narrative structure, but the meandering plot supports no structure but the creation of mood.

Now, a solid mood is a great thing for a film to have, but without much more to back it up, Midnight in Paris won't be ending up on my DVD shelf anytime soon. It's a tremendous accomplishment, but one that doesn't resonate with me personally as much as it would with others. Myself, I prefer a film to provoke more precise responses in the audience rather than a general romantic blanket, as visually represented by the copious yellow filtering thrown over the entire project - a quick peek through my Instagram indicates that the cinematographer was most likely using "Kelvin."

This is the kind of in-depth cinematic insight that keeps you coming back for more.

A brief glimmer of conflict flashes across the screen at the one hour mark, but flits away as quickly as it appears. Because this film isn't about conflict. It's about love. Love for a person, love for a city, love for a bygone age. And in this respect it is tremendously successful.

It is my personal opinion that the screenplay is a tad self-indulgent and messy (Including an excerpt from Gil's book that is supposed to impress us - always a risky move for a screenwriter, trying to come up with something profound and literary. Because Woody Allen is Woody Allen he thinks he can do whatever he wants. It falls short. Turns out, writing books is hard.) and falls apart a little when you stop to think about why Gil's car takes him 90 years in the past, but Adriana's only takes her 30, or how Gil professes to come from the 2000th millenium.

But those are all cruel nitpicks of a film that, overall, isn't about any of those things. It's not about the mechanics of the time travel or the intricacies of the story. It just wants to present gorgeous Paris in all its splendor over as many eras as it can, and at that it is an unparalleled work in this decade.

TL;DR: Midnight in Paris is a solid mood piece and an endearing love letter to Paris.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 947

Women In Horror: Evil Queens

I'm comin' at you again straight from Venus with more of Women In Horror Month! In a genre that has been decried frequently as misogynistic and exploitative (for several very good reasons), it is good to step back and appreciate the positive influence of the many Final Girls and strong female characters that seek to combat the deeply rooted sexism of the film industry.

This kind of change always comes about from fringe movements and what is horror if not fringe?

But power goes both ways. Final Girls are a force for good but evil has strength too. Sure, it's terrible to portray women as villains because of some misogynistic reason like "hysteria" or "periods" but in the interest of equality, it is important to explore the dark sides of all human beings: male, female, or otherwise.

It is with that in mind that I bring you the

TOP TEN FEMALE HORROR VILLAINS

#10 Katie (Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity 2, Paranormal Activity 3, Paranormal Activity 4, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones)

Played By: Katie Featherston

What began as a cheap found footage shocker quickly became a genre mainstay on the strength of its ridiculous budget multiplying powers. Katie Featherston, though the protagonist of the original film, has been the only returning cast member to appear in all four sequels (because let's face it, The Marked Ones was a sequel). Her parts are usually in the final ten minutes, aka the scariest and most ridiculous parts. And hence, she ends up on the list! I love dumb horror franchises! Thank you Katie for being compelling enough the first time around!

#9 Kayako Saeki (Ju-On, Ju-On 2, The Grudge, The Grudge 2)

Played By: Takako Fuji

If I had no restraint, this entire list would just be J-Horror ghosts. It's some scary crap, man. And although the Ju-On/Grudge series was frequently haphazard and repetitive, the scare scenes always pack a punch thanks to Kayako, the ghost of a murdered wife who seeks revenge on all who enter her house. I always end up thinking about the final scene in Ju-On at the most inopportune times, like when I'm walking to my car at midnight or climbing up the dark stairs to my apartment.

#8 The Flesh Eating Mothers (Flesh Eating Mothers)

Played By: The Director's Neighbors, Probably

I just had to. Flesh Eating Mothers is one of those terrific bad movies that nobody seems to have heard of, but I think its definitely worth a look for any connoisseur of the form. Mothers are infected with a virus that makes them eat their children in the most hilarious way possible. Check it out. Nobody likes kids anyway.

Maybe they're the heroes.... Something to think about.

#7 Mary Lou Maloney (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II)

Played By: Lisa Schrage

Burnt up prom queen? Reminds me of something, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

The one place you'd never expect that plot element is in the Prom Night series, which set off to be a totally run-of-the-mill slasher franchise. However, it was quickly derailed by the gorgeously evil majesty that is the ghost of Mary Lou. She sent the franchise shooting off in a wildly different direction that makes it one of my favorite minor slasher series to this day.

#6 Mrs. Voorhees (Friday the 13th)

Played By: Betsy Palmer

Played to the nines by a woman who only agreed to be in a movie she thought was a piece of crap so she could afford a new car, Mrs. Voorhees is the woman who is responsible for the entirety of Jason Voorhees' career. The original villain of Friday the 13th, she breathed life into a dull third act with her soap opera caliber histrionics and her utterly terrifying schizophrenic taunts and wails.

#5 Angela Baker (Sleepaway Camp, Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers, Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland)

Played By: Felissa Rose, Pamela Springsteen

Psssh. Sleepaway Camp. Obviously a rip-off of my beloved Friday the 13th, right? That's what I thought at least. But it's so much more. I'm not really a fan of anything but the ending of the first one, but the sequels mine some really solid and delirious slasher territory and are fairly unique in that there is never even a shred of doubt about who the killer is. The tension is always about what the hell she's going to do next. And how poorly she will be acted. Good times.

#4 Annie Wilkes (Misery)

Played By: Kathy Bates

You knew this was coming. Kathy Bates has nailed a wide variety of roles, but one of her best is Annie Wilkes, the obsessive recluse who traps her favorite author in her secluded home and forces him to write another sequel. So, basically, what any of my peers would gladly do to J. K. Rowling.

#3 Sadako Yamamura (Ringu, Ringu 2)

Played By: Rie Ino'o

The ghost of a young woman with telekinetic powers who was drowned in a well, Sadako does super cool and exciting things like terrorize people who watch her magic tape and crawl out of TVs. I love J-Horror, you guys. I have yet to see it, but I'm very excited to watch Sadako 3D, where she haunts YouTube. Sounds like a good time for the whole family.

#2 La Niña Medeiros ([REC], [REC] 2)

Played By: Javier Botet

Unfortunately, this terrifying vision was played by a man so she doesn't quite deserve the top spot despite being the single most terrifying thing I've ever seen in the most terrifying scene of my favorite horror movie in the entire universe. But she couldn't not be here, as anyone to whom I have shown [REC] (which is everyone) could attest.

#1 Drusilla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel)

Played By: Juliet Landau

The Medeiros girl had to be bumped, but there's nobody in the world who could take her place but the magnificent Drusilla. Played to the ends of the Earth by Juliet Landau, Drusilla is an utterly sympathetic character driven to insanity by Angelus, the dark side of Buffy's hunky vampire boyfriend. And despite being lovably addled, Drusilla is made of white hot evil, even more pure than her punk boyfriend Spike. She ends up dominating every episode she stars in, so much so that they had to get rid of her lest the show solely revolve around her exploits.
Word Count: 1065