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Susan Granger’s review of “Cheri” (Miramax Films)
While 21st century older women who enjoy decadent relationships with younger men are dubbed “cougars,” that cross-generational attraction has been around for many, many years. Indeed, the legendary French writer Colette (1873-1954), who reportedly had a clandestine affair with her stepson, scandalized society with the two novels on which this new Stephen Frears film is based.
Set in turn-of-the-century Paris, radiant Lea de Lonval (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a wealthy, retired, middle-aged courtesan who embarks on what she thinks will be a casual tryst with a callow, foppish 19 year-old playboy, “a graceful demon” called Cheri (Rupert Friend). His bitchy mother, Charlotte Peloux (scene-stealing Kathy Bates), a former courtesan and Lea’s colleague and rival, doesn’t object; in fact, she considers it an educational experience for him to become her sexual protégé. Surprisingly, six years later, the affair is still on. Lea fears growing old while Cheri fears growing up. But then scheming Charlotte announces that handsome Cheri is affianced to the lovely, virginal Edmee (Felicity Jones), an 18 year-old with a significant dowry and the daughter of Marie-Laure (Iben Hjejle), another ex-courtesan. Her lust unabated, beautifully fragile Lea retreats to the French Riviera, staunch in her refusal to give up her “naughty child.”
More than 20 years ago, Stephen Frears (“The Queen”) directed Michelle Pfeiffer in the far-better costume drama “Dangeous Liaisons,” which was also translated and adapted by Christopher Hampton. Now at age 51, Pfeiffer’s still gorgeous, as are Consolata Boyle’s elegant Belle Époque costumes and scenery, sumptuously photographed by Darius Khondji. But there’s a distinct unease about Pfeiffer’s performance that permeates and dilutes this sophisticated yet poignant concept.
As a side note, Frances Tomelty, Sting’s first wife and mother of his two eldest children, plays Pfeiffer’s maid, while Keith Richards’ ex, Anita Pallenberg, has a cameo as a fellow courtesan in a scene shot at Maxim’s in Paris. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Cheri” is a shallow, soufflé-light 6. It’s all about the wicked game of seduction and its aftermath.
Susan Granger’s review of “Bruno” (Universal Pictures)
In “Borat,” Sacha Baron Cohen played an ignorant, anti-Semitic journalist from Kazakhstan who traveled to the U.S. to make a faux documentary. In “Bruno,” he’s a flamboyantly gay Austrian ‘fashionista’ who’s determined to be an American celebrity. In both provocative ventures, Cohen cajoles real, unsuspecting people into awkward situations – with hysterical consequences.
This time, Cohen crassly exploits the attitudinal discomfort known as homophobia that’s created when heterosexuals, particularly men, encounter aggressive homosexuality. In one scene, sex-crazed Bruno inveigles Representative Ron Paul into his hotel room and tries to seduce him on the pretext of interviewing him about economics; after maintaining his dignity as long as possible, the conservative Texas congressman exits the premises in disgust, muttering, “This guy’s a queer. He’s crazy!” In another, Bruno chats with Paula Abdul who’s served hors d’ouvres off a naked Mexican. (A similar sequence with LaToya Jackson was cut after the untimely death of her brother Michael.) Then there’s Bruno’s ‘adoption’ of a baby in Africa, a thwarted kidnapping in Lebanon and various attempts to ‘go straight’ with martial arts instruction and religious conversion.
Perhaps the most scandalous gag is Bruno’s casting session for glamorous ‘baby’ photo-shoot for which ambitious parents recklessly offer up their offspring. “Is your baby comfortable with bees, wasps and hornets?” he inquires. “Oh, yes, he’s comfortable with everything,” one mother assures him. “Dead or dying animals?” “Yes.” In an even more appalling dialogue, another mother assures him that her 30-pound daughter could lose 10 pounds in one week, if necessary, adding “I’d have to do whatever I could.”
Over the years, British-born Sacha Baron Cohen has developed this rude if riotous alter-ego (Ali G, Borat, now Bruno) and he’s become a cultural phenomenon, an original comic character, exploring radical and risky events, forcing people to challenge their own preconceptions and stereotypes. And director Larry Charles’ choice of ‘reaction shots’ are priceless. As for the R-rating, vulgar, graphic, full-frontal male nudity abounds. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Bruno” is a raunchy, satirical 7. Whether it’s outrageously offensive or offensively outrageous, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Susan Granger’s review of “Public Enemies” (Universal Pictures)
Over the years, the gangster-movie genre has undergone periodic changes. Sometimes it’s about the cops (“Serpico,” “The French Connection”); other times, it’s about the robbers (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Bugsy”), while Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino upped the ante on sadistic violence. Now Michael Mann delves into the ‘lone outlaw,’ a mythic, unpredictable folk hero operating outside the organized crime underworld.
After breaking out of prison in 1933, notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) launches a crime wave that infuriates crusading J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his fledgling FBI. Hoover appoints agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to track down Dillinger and his gang: Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham), Pretty Boy Floyd (Channing Tatum), Harry Pierpont (David Wenham), Alvin Karpis (Giovanni Ribisi) and Homer van Meter (Stephen Dorff). Meanwhile, in Chicago, Dillinger falls madly in love with a naïve half-French, half-Native American coat-check girl, Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), and convinces her to join him on the lam.
What separates “Public Enemies” from run-of-the-mill cops ‘n’ robbers pictures is how Mann – with screenwriters Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman – develops Dillinger’s fascinating character, based on Bryan Burrough’s “Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34” (2004). Totally self-assured, Dillinger brags, “I can hit any bank I want anywhere,” confident he’ll never be caught because “They ain’t tough enough or fast enough or smart enough.”
There’s ironic humor amid the shoot ‘em-ups. During a heist, Dillinger doesn’t take a financially strapped depositor’s cash, explaining, “I’m not here for your money; I’m here for the bank’s money.” And, on a lark, he strolls, unrecognized, through Purvis’ office as FBI agents listen to a baseball game, nonchalantly inquiring, “What’s the score?”
Drenched in flawlessly atmospheric authenticity, Johnny Depp is a revelation, while Marion Cotillard (Oscar-winner as Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose”) is stunning. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Public Enemies” is an awesome, action-packed, enthralling 8. As of now, it’s a top contender for the Best Picture Oscar, especially since the Academy has decided to expand the number of eligible nominees from five to ten.
Susan Granger’s review of “tick, tick…BOOM!” (Westport Country Playhouse)
When the late Jonathan Larson turned 30 in 1990, he wrote a semi-autobiographical “rock monologue” originally known as “30/90,” a title derived from his age and the year. That became “tick, tick…BOOM!” which played briefly in showcase productions. Larson’s subsequent claim to fame was “Rent,” which won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Awards. After his death in 1996 from a ruptured aortic aneurysm on the night “Rent” was to open, admiring collaborators collated Larson’s original sketches and fragments and director Stephen Shaw expanded the solo concept into a three-person musical.
The story is a familiar, albeit tedious one: an undiscovered, unappreciated, insecure composer/lyricist, Jon (Colin Hanlon) is struggling for recognition in the musical theater in Manhattan. Resisting his best friend’s (Wilson Cruz) offer of a high-paying marketing job and his dancer girl-friend’s (Pearl Sun) plea to move to Massachusetts (either Cape Cod or Northampton), settle down and raise a family, he persists in pursuing his dream which, in this case, is a workshop production of an opus titled “Superbia.”
While Colin Hanlon succeeds in radiating intense angst, the music he wails is a repetitive, unremarkable mix of pop and rock – with various parodies of previous hit musicals, like Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George.” Playing a variety of superficially defined roles, Pearl Sun and Wilson Cruz demonstrate their versatility and Scott Schwartz deserves credit for his inventive direction with a band perched behind and above the proceedings on David Farley’s two-tiered set. Finally, a comparison, both in themes (sacrifice for art/consumerism vs. creativity) and in music, between this minor effort with the far-better “Rent” is inevitable and, not surprisingly, in their program bios, both Hanlon and Cruz have appeared in various productions of “Rent” – with Hanlon’s testifying that he’s played every white guy in the show over the years.
“Tick, Tick…Boom!” is at the Westport Country Playhouse through July 18.
Susan Granger’s review of “My Sister’s Keeper” (Warner Bros.)
Back in 2004, Jodi Picoult wrote a provocative novel based on a news story about a real-life couple (Mary and Abe Ayala) who decided to conceive a baby specifically to be a compatible bone marrow donor for Anissa, their older, leukemia-stricken daughter. An ethical debate erupted and that’s the genesis of this misguided concept.
Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) plays Anna, the narrator, who explains, “I was made in a Petri dish to be spare parts” for her beloved sister, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who has leukemia. Their determined mother, Sara (Cameron Diaz), quit her career as an attorney to provide full-time care for Kate, dominating her hapless husband, Brian (Jason Patric) and ignoring the needs of Sara and her dyslexic brother, Jesse (Evan Ellingson). But now, after 11 years of enduring painful medical procedures, spunky Sara enlists the aid of a flamboyant lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for “medical emancipation,” seeking ownership of her own body. That’s the quandary facing Judge De Salvo (Joan Cusack) who presides at the unconventional trial.
Dwelling on long, drawn-out scenes of Kate’s pitiful suffering, neither screenwriter Jeremy Leven nor tear-jerking director Nick Cassavetes (who collaborated on “The Notebook”) waste a moment on common sense in dealing with her inevitable death and the chaotic chronology is beyond confusing. In one scene, Sofia Vassilieva is bald; in another, she has a mane of long, blonde hair; then she’s bald again. No explanation given. And Cameron Diaz, who was supposedly dedicated to achieving ‘reality,’ obviously fakes a maternally sympathetic head-shaving gesture.
Lest you ponder this moral dilemma this too long, what the Ayalas did many years ago probably wouldn’t happen today. A huge national marrow donor program exists and fewer leukemia patients require marrow transplants. And, as a sidebar, Anissa Ayala is cancer-free and working as a development director for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “My Sister’s Keeper” is an agonizing 4.What a maudlin mess!
Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, July 3rd:
“Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience” is a peppy performance from their 2008 arena spectaculars, supplemented with behind-the-scenes glimpses of the brothers romping and riding Segways. Deeply religious, they warble about teenage angst, emphasizing chase love and heartbreak and touching on the temptations of sex and drugs.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix propel “Two Lovers,” an adult drama about the nature of love and recognizing that, perhaps, following a fantasy is not the best path to happiness. Set in insular, working-class Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a bi-polar hero, it’s ultimately touching despite its bleak tone and self-indulgence.
Comedienne Isla Fisher plays a ditsy, bumbling Manhattan journalist battling her free-spending habits in “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” learning life-lessons about thrift and frivolity as she scores a rich guy (Hugh Dancy); the packaging is appealing but the “Sex and the City”/”Devil Wears Prada”-like concept is not only badly timed but also inept.
Wrestling star John Cena is the dead weight that drags down Renny Harlin’s “12 Rounds” in which a New Orleans cop (Cena) arrests an Irish arms dealer (Aiden Gillen) wanted by the FBI. A year later, the clever culprit breaks out of jail and wreaks revenge. Heavy on stunts but light on humor or plausibility, it’s quite wretched.
With “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li,” another video game crashes and burns when translated to film, as Kristin Kreuk plays the titular heroine with martial arts skills. And the horror thriller “Razortooth” finds something alive deep in the Florida Everglades that should have died a long time ago, something that’s feeding when it should be full.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Richard Hankin’s powerful documentary “Home Front” explores what happens when those tens of thousands of American troops who have been severely wounded in Iraq come home. Focusing on the patriotic Feldbusch family of western Pennsylvania and their 23 year-old son, Jeremy, it offers intimate insight into coping with events that forever change one’s life. And a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each Blu-ray disc will be donated to programs benefiting wounded veterans.
Susan Granger’s review of “Year One” (Columbia Pictures/Sony)
Producer/writer/director Harold Ramis’ supposed satire on Hollywood’s staple of Old Testament adaptations turns out to be more of an Abbott-and-Costello-like buddy movie that wallows in tasteless, crude, vulgar humor revolving around bodily functions.
Back when the Neanderthals ruled the huts and caves, the accident-prone hunter Zed (Jack Black) violates tribal law by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and the geeky gatherer Oh (Michael Cera) gets enveloped by a deadly snake. Having proven themselves inept at even the most rudimentary survival skills, they’re banished from their village. After crossing the mountains and wandering in the desert, these bickering, blithering idiots witness Cain (David Cross) quarreling with and killing his brother Abel (Paul Rudd), not once but several times, and prevent circumcision-obsessed Abraham (Hank Azaria) from sacrificing his son Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse a.k.a. McLovin from “Superbad”). Eventually, they make their way to the sin city of Sodom “What transpires within the confines of Sodom stays within the confines of Sodom” where they must rescue two of their tribe’s most nubile nymphs, Maya (June Raphael) and Eema (Juno Temple), from a vengeful king (Xander Berkeley).
“When do you think the smiting’s gonna go down?” one asks. Not soon enough.
Written – probably in papyrus – by the pagan Ramis along with the TV-trained team of Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (”The Office”), the script tastelessly mocks both superstition and organized religion with irreverent skits involving the reading of entrails and a hairy Sodomite high priest (Oliver Platt) with a penchant for hot oil massages. Moving at a glacially ponderous pace, it’s inexcusably gross, culminating with the usual closing-credit ?outtakes.’ While Jack Black’s overt comedy works well in certain circumstances, he’s not a good foil for Michael Cera’s fey facade of insecurity. Perhaps the greatest conundrum is how this offensively raunchy mess got a PG-13 rating from the MPAA. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Year One” is an unfunny, repulsive 1. Thou shalt avoid it like the plague at least until the dvd is released.
Susan Granger’s review of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” (Paramount Pictures)
This is a movie about Hasbro toys robots, specifically. They surfaced first as an animated TV miniseries about a war between Optimus Prime with his Autobots and the evil Megatron with his Decepticons. In Michael Bay’s 2007 “Transformers,” a geeky teen, Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), was transfixed by the Spark cube that turns a machine into a Transformer. Now, with the Spark shattered, Sam is off to college, leaving behind his sexy girlfriend, Mikaela (Megan Fox).
But first, there’s the revelation that Transformers have been on Earth since 17,000 BC “Our worlds have met before” a visit to their home in Cybertron – and a battle in Shanghai, where Capt. Lennox (Josh Duhamel) and Sgt. Epps (Tyrese Gibson) discover the Decepticons are back, searching for Spark shards to free Megatron. So when Sam accidentally touches a Spark shard and visualizes strange symbols that look like hieroglyphics, he’s pursued by nymphomaniac co-ed (Isabel Lucas) who’s a Decepticon-in-disguise. Eventually, Sam and Mikaela get to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, where an ancient Transformer (Tony Todd), known as The Fallen (referring to Lucifer), diabolically whisks them to Egypt and Jordan on an archeological hunt for the source of Energon which only the Matrix of Leadership can unlock.
Confused? A coherent plot is not the strong suit here. Instead, a trio of screenwriters and director Michael Bay propel the noisy, action-filled, mind-numbing two-and-a-half-hour CGI adventure – with visual references to “10,000 B.C,” “Terminator,” “The Mummy,” “King Kong,” “Alien vs. Predator,” “Indiana Jones” and “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” along with Bay’s own “Pearl Harbor” and “Bad Boys II” – building to an earsplitting cataclysmic climax in the desert as plasma-wielding humans and metallic Autobots endeavor to save the planet again.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a smashing, super-frenetic 5. As the saying goes, “The difference between men and boys is the size of their toys”
and the epic length and cacophony of their thrill-rides.
Susan Granger’s review of “Whatever Works” (Sony Pictures Classics)
After fleeing to London and Barcelona for film financing, Woody Allen’s back in Manhattan where he belongs, reviving a screenplay he first wrote more than 30 years ago for Zero Mostel. After Mostel’s death, Allen shelved the script but decided to retool it specifically to fit the talents of Larry David (”Curb Your Enthusiasm”). “I’m not a likeable guy and this is not a feel-good movie,” misanthropic Boris Yellnikoff (David) confesses directly into the camera as the story begins. He’s a recently divorced, former physics professor who was once “almost nominated” for the Nobel Prize for Quantum Mechanics. Having miraculously survived a suicide leap from the luxurious uptown apartment belonging to his now-ex-wife (Carolyn McCormick), slovenly Boris lives in despair in a hovel near Chinatown, grudgingly teaching chess to “imbecilic” children and hanging out with his cronies (Michael McKean, Conleth Hill) who put up with his cantankerous pontifications. One night, a hungry, rain-drenched, teenage runaway, Melody St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood), seeks shelter in his dingy apartment. She’s escaping from Mississippi and the repressiveness of the Deep South. Admittedly dim-witted, this cheerful, dewy-eyed innocent insinuates herself into Boris’ life, calming his panic attacks by watching old Fred Astaire movies on television with him and cooking crawfish dinners. But when it becomes obvious that lonely Melody has a crush on Boris, he urges her to find someone her own age, only to realize he really loves her. So they get married and live contentedly until her mother (Patricia Clarkson) and then her father (Ed Begley Jr.) unexpectedly show up. Capricious complications occur as partners change and form amusingly unanticipated, far-fetched alliances. Larry David makes a terrific alter-ego for Woody Allen, complete with his uniquely skewed, hypochondriac’s view of the universe, love for classical music and disdain for rock ?n’ roll, and Evan Rachel Wood is a charmingly credible foil. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Whatever Works” is a familiarly farcical 8, advocating a non-judgmental attitude about the diverse choices people make to find happiness.
Susan Granger’s dvd/video update for week of Friday, June 26:
Based on Cornelia Funke’s children’s fantasy adventure, “Inkheart” introduces Silvertongues who, when they read aloud from a book, magically bring its characters to life but then a person from the real world is sucked into the realm of fiction. So when 12 year-old Maggie (Eliza Hope Bennett) and her book-collector father (Brendan Fraser) find a rare volume of a mystical medieval tale in Switzerland, it becomes clear what happened to Maggie’s missing mother (Sienna Guillory), particularly when they land at the mansion of eccentric Great-Aunt Elinor (Helen Mirren).
There’s also “Phoebe in Wonderland,” the whimsical tale of an obsessive-compulsive young girl (Elle Fanning) who seeks enlightenment from her drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson), creating conflict with her mother (Felicity Hoffman).
Steve Martin’s piffling “Pink Panther 2″ continues his impersonation of Gallic detective Jacques Clouseau who is after a thief who is brazenly swiping priceless artifacts like the Magna Carta, the Shroud of Turin and, eventually, the Pink Panther diamond.
“What Goes Up” is Jonathan Glatzer’s pointless, pretentious drama starring Steve Coogan as a reporter sent to New Hampshire to cover Christa McAuliffe’s space journey that gets sidetracked by teenagers Hilary Duff, Olivia Thirlby and Josh Peck.
Collectible animation is the focus of “Tom and Jerry: Chuck Jones Collection” and fur flies in “Garfield’s Pet Force” in an interstellar battle between the characters of Cartoon World and the evil alien Vetvix who’s determined to control the universe.
PICK OF THE WEEK: Set in Southern California, “Crossing Over” combines elements of “Crash” with “Babel,” as a myriad of characters and storylines converge. There’s an Immigration agent (Harrison Ford) trying to reunite an illegal Mexican (Alice Braga) with her son, his Iranian partner whose sister who has become too assimilated, a Korean teen robbing a convenience store, and a Bangladeshi Muslim teen who faces F.B.I. deportation after writing a provocative school essay. Plus a crusading defense attorney (Ashley Judd) who wants to adopt an African orphan despite the objections of her husband (Ray Liotta) who’s sexually exploiting an Australian starlet (Alice Eve).
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