May movie reviews

 

BRIDESMAIDS. Annie (Kristin Wiig) isn’t doing well. She has lost her bakery and boyfriend, and is reduced to working as a jewelry store sales clerk and having booty calls with a selfish sleazeball (Jon Hamm). When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) announces that she is engaged, Annie steps up to be maid of honor. But when Annie meets one of Lillian’s wealthy new friends (Rose Byrne), a very funny game of one-upmanship ensues over bridal showers, bachelorette parties, etc. Lots of crude and lewd laugh-out-loud moments, with some pretty gross stuff. There’s also a great performance by Melissa McCarthy as another of the bridesmaids. It’s not the funniest movie ever, but it’s a very good comedy (produced by Judd Apatow). Despite the title, not just a chick flick. Just funny.

 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) are an engaged couple visiting Paris with her parents. He is a big-time screenwriter in Hollywood, but is writing a novel with a protagonist who lives and breathes nostalgia. Gil loves Paris, and regrets he didn’t move there when he was younger. Inez is a shallow harpy that can’t understand why he doesn’t want to live in Malibu and keep writing movies and making money. They are really not very compatible. When she meets old friends that he can’t stand, she goes out with them and he ends up walking the streets of Paris at night. And when the clock strikes midnight, he gets in a cab that takes him to 1920’s Paris, when Hemingway and Picasso and so many others were making art. Every night he goes back, meeting more and more people of the time that he idolizes. This is a lovely movie, quite funny, charming, and thoughtful about the value of nostalgia vs. people needing to live the lives they have, not fantasize about whatever. One of Woody Allen’s recent best.

 

13 ASSASSINS. As the movie opens, a samurai commits harakiri. It’s the late Shogun era in Japan, and the half-brother of the current Shogun is a murderous psychopath. The half-brother is on his way to being in line for leadership, which will be a disaster for the country. (The dead samurai was protesting against his growing power.) The current Shogun’s advisor finds a wise older samurai to carry out the secret mission of killing the half-brother. The samurai recruits other samurai and the gang makes plans to assassinate the half-brother by ambushing him in a small village. The last half of the movie is one gigantic battle of the few good guys fighting against overwhelming odds, typical of these movies (the Magnificent Seven was based on a samurai movie). I am not a huge fan of this genre (a little bloody sword fighting goes a long way with me), but this is very well done and kept me interested.

 

FAST FIVE. I haven’t seen any of the “fast” movies, but this one is getting some favorable reviews, so I thought I’d give it a try. In this one, the guys are on the run down in Brazil, and come up with an idea to do one last big score, stealing from the drug kingpin. Now, I am game for action movies, even ones that are a little ridiculous, but this one – oh my – is flat-out preposterous. For me, there has to be some character that makes sense or some kernel of truth or at least some wit in an action movie to make me want to go along for the ride. Despite attractive leads (Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Dwayne Johnson), this was just so over the top  that I just could not buy into it. Throw in some phony sentiment, and it really lost me.  (Maybe I should have seen THOR instead.)  That said, if you want a movie full of car crashes and car chases, this is definitely your movie.

 

EVERYTHING MUST GO. In this drama (not a comedy!), Nick (Will Farrell) is fired from his job, only to go home and find that his wife has changed the locks and thrown all his belongings onto the front lawn. Nick is an alcoholic, and he is in a downward spiral. Not wanting to lose his stuff, but not having any money to move it, he camps out on his front lawn to keep an eye on his things. He meets a neighborhood teenager, and they start working together to protect (and eventually sell) his stuff. He also meets a new neighbor (Rebecca Hall), and they become friendly. Interesting movie about a man coming to grips with the wreck that his life has become. Will Farrell does a really good job, too.

 

BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. Documentary. Bill Cunningham works for the New York Times as a photographer. He does the photography for both the street fashion and the society pages. At 80 years old, he is still riding his bicycle around the city, keeping his eye out for interesting subjects. He lives like a monk, spends all of his time doing his job (and loves what he does) and no one really knows much else about him. But this documentary shows him to be a worthy subject, because he is just a fascinating character. Although this may sound like kind of a niche film, you don’t have to have any interest in fashion to find the movie interesting because it is more about the man than his job.

 

INCENDIES. Two grown twins gather at an attorney’s office to hear the reading of their mother’s will. To their surprise, her last wishes are for her children to go back to the old country (not named, but much like Lebanon) and find the father they thought was dead and a half-brother they didn’t know existed. The son refuses, but the daughter travels to the Middle East and starts putting the pieces of her mother’s life together. The movie flashes back and forth from the daughter’s search for the truth to the mother’s experiences as a young woman. Set during a civil war and sectarian violence, the mother’s experiences were grim. Although the story is really disturbing, and the movie is at times slow, the mystery of the mother’s past did keep my interest the whole time, so I guess I would have to say it’s worth seeing. French Canadian movie, mostly subtitled.