Simpering rivalry The Skeleton Twins Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader take their respective careers to the next level in The Skeleton Twins, with both of them spreading their dramatic wings and proving their talents go way beyond things that are just funny. Craig Johnson’s second directorial effort has some intermittent laughs, but it gets a lot darker than one might expect for the Target by Lady and Stefon. The movie should do a lot Bob Grimm for both Hader and Wiig’s careers, and stands as one of the year’s better, and more complibgrimm@ newsreview.c om cated, family dramas. The duo play brother and sister twins, long estranged, who wind up back in each other’s lives. Milo (Hader) tries to commit suicide in L.A. after breaking up with his boyfriend. His twin sister, Maggie (Wiig), had been
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"We're not impressed by you, Bob."
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2 Fair
3 Good
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5 excellent
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trying to do the very same thing back in New York when the call comes in that Milo is in the hospital. After an awkward reunion in a hospital room, Milo heads to New York with his twin sis to lay low for a while. The two, both very depressed, try to rekindle their sibling relationship while coping with their own self-destructive impulses. Maggie has taken to cheating on her affable husband (Luke Wilson) while Milo tries to reenter the life of the former high school teacher (Ty Burrell) who slept with him when he was underage. Yes, the time Hader and Burrell spend on screen together is mighty awkward. Wiig and Hader make for a convincing onscreen brother and sister. Their characters clearly love one another, but are capable of severely hurting one another. We find out late in the game that some stuff that went down in high school resulted in wounds that haven’t fully healed, and the resultant fiery scenes are very well played. Hader and Wiig have natural sibling chemistry, no doubt something that developed over their years together at Saturday Night Live. OCTOBER 2, 2014
Johnson provides the duo with a couple of funny scenes for them to really cut up, including a lip synch of Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” and a sequence involving laughing gas. The scenes help balance the movie out, giving some contrast to the heavier stuff. I can’t say that this film contains the best Hader performance ever because he did play that pot-smoking guy in the beginning of Pineapple Express, and I’m not sure anything will ever top those five minutes. That said, Milo is a great character, sensitive and sweet in moments but also a bit nasty, sarcastic and vindictive when backed into a corner or simply in a bad mood. Hader shows that he has the potential for a long, dramatic career ahead of him, following in SNL brother Will Forte’s footsteps. Now that I’ve said that, I want to see a movie where they play brothers. Wiig, without a doubt, is the best dramatic actress to emerge from Saturday Night Live. Her work in Bridesmaids may’ve garnered big laughs, but there was an edge to that performance that showed she could handle the emotionally richer material. Her Maggie is a bit despicable, but always sympathetic, and Wiig hits not one false note. If she keeps this up, she’s going to start pulling down Oscar nominations in the future. Wilson helps fuel some great scenes with his always optimistic and somewhat simplistic character. He’s a likeable dummy who believes he’s married to the greatest girl in the world. So that, in turn, makes his performance kind of heartbreaking because, as sweet and innocent as he is, you always know he has a rude awakening coming. Burrell basically plays a creep with no redemptive qualities, and he does it well. By the way, all of you folks who used to complain about the Wiig years on SNL—saying she was in too many sketches and was getting on your nerves—did you see the latest SNL season premiere? Are you missing her yet? Holy Hell! I know this is off the subject, but I had to get a dig in. Lorne Michaels—you and your crew are slumming! We are heading into that time of the year where movies will hopefully bring many wonderful, brilliant surprises. Hader and Wiig will surprise you with this one. Ω
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A Walk Among the Tombstones
Liam Neeson plays a former policeman and recovering alcoholic in director Scott Frank’s sometimes interesting and always unpleasant serial killer drama. Neeson’s Matt Scudder, after accidentally killing a civilian during a shootout, has gone rogue since his days on the force. Eight years have passed, and while he’s quit drinking, he’s doing some pretty unsavory jobs as a private investigator. He gets pulled into the world of a drug dealer after his wife has been kidnapped, and a lot of bad, bad things start happening. Neeson is very good in the film, but the script, written by Frank and based on the novel by Lawrence Block, has too many cardboard characters. Worst of all is a homeless kid sidekick (played by Astro). There’s also the strung-out heroin addict, the whispery-voiced abductor of women, and the creepy guy who tends the cemetery and keeps pigeons on the roof … and he knows something. I liked Neeson here, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the character again. Hopefully, the next film with this character— if there is one—trims the fat.
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Dolphin Tale 2
Call this one The Empire Strikes Back of Dolphin Tale movies, in that it is slightly better than the original (not much—just slightly) and it has Tauntauns (actually, that’s not true). The likes of Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr. rejoin annoying child actors Nathan Gamble and Cozi Zuehlsdorff (yes, the Cozi Zuehlsdorff) for another round of gooey sentimentality involving dolphins. This time out, and probably due to all of those current issues involving whales and dolphins in captivity, the story spends a lot of time on rehabbing and releasing animals rather than confining them for human amusement. In addition to Winter, the dolphin with the prosthetic tail, there’s a pretty awesome sea turtle and a kooky pelican that kids will love. The movie kind of works as educational fare, but when it drifts away from the aquarium tanks it’s a real hell ride. It must be said that Harry Connick Jr. can’t act for beans, Ashley Judd’s career has really hit the skids, and Morgan Freeman just has no business being within a million miles of this film. Gamble and Zuehlsdorff (yes, the Cozi Zuehlsdorff) are, I’m sure, a couple of exquisite human beings, but watching them in a movie is an annoying, tedious task. I love the dolphins and aquatic life in this film. It’s the humans who drive me crazy.
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The Drop
This film features the final performance by James Gandolfini, and it’s a beauty. Luckily for the viewer, it’s not even the best thing about the movie. That would be the central performance delivered by Tom Hardy as Bob, a seemingly meek bartender of questionable intelligence who works for Cousin Marv (Gandolfini). Hardy disappears into this role, and will have you in awe that this is actually the guy who played Bane in The Dark Night Rises. The bar that Cousin Marv and Bob occupy is a drop bar, where many of the gambling winnings in a seedier part of Brooklyn wind up in a safe. One night, the bar is held up, and Cousin Marv has to hand over five grand. This puts Marv in debt to scary Chechen mobsters, now proprietors of the bar Marv once owned. Bob and Marv must devise a plan to pay the mobsters back, and when they do, they find themselves in an even deeper dilemma. Gandolfini’s Marv owes plenty to his Tony Soprano. He comes off like Tony after his power has been taken away, and his wife has abandoned him. The screenplay even gives him a nagging sister and a father in a rest home. Hardy delivers a character that’s always sympathetic, even when he reveals himself to be a bit more complicated than he first seems. It’s just another great performance in what is starting to become a rather impressive list of achievements.
3
The Equalizer
Based on a TV show from the ’80s that I never once watched, Denzel Washington plays Robert McCall, a quiet employee at a Home Depot-type store. Robert likes to go drink tea at a local diner and read his book, and it appears that there is very little to him. When a young prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) gets into trouble with Russian
mobsters, Robert springs into action, and major details of his past are slowly revealed. Washington is pretty damn great in the role, playing a sweet, gentle man who can tear your face off in an instant without blinking an eye. The film is directed by Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), and while Fuqua resorts to a lot of visual clichés (slow motion, rain) he totally owns those clichés. Marton Csokas is good and scary as Teddy, the film’s main bad guy. His confrontations with Robert are quite memorable. The movie doesn’t offer much when it comes to new things, but it does provide solid entertainment through and through. I’m hoping Washington gets a franchise out of this one, because I’d like to see more about the story of Robert McCall.
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The Maze Runner
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The One I Love
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Tusk
The maze in the title is a fun spectacle full of shifting walls and weird spider robots. When the movie is in the maze it is good. When it’s out of the maze, it kind of stinks. Dylan O’Brien plays Thomas, a teenager transported to a camp surrounded by a large, constantly shifting maze. The camp is inhabited by other teens, including Alby (Aml Ameen), Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Gally (Will Poulter). They are all clueless about why they have been put there and how to escape, but they do send a squad of “runners” into the maze to map it out and search its outer reaches. The searches are fruitless until the mysterious Thomas takes charge. The mystery of the maze is intriguing, but the payoff is blah. The Lord of the Flies drama between the leads is typical, boring stuff. I liked the design of the maze, and the maze turns out to be the film’s most interesting character. Second place goes to Poulter, who is a long way from the comic territory he staked out in We’re the Millers. Too bad the rest of the movie feels like a patchwork of many movies before.
A husband and wife (Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss) struggling in their relationship visit a retreat on the advice of their therapist (Ted Danson), and they make a startling discovery in one of the guest houses. That discovery results in something that is beautifully clever in addressing the problems that plague many relationships, while also playing like a really cool Twilight Zone episode. The big twist results in one of the better romantic comedies in years. Calling this a romantic comedy is almost an insult, but it has romance, and it is funny, so I suppose it falls into that genre. I do think it’s a movie that many therapists will hate, because it could save some couples a bunch of money. Duplass is making a name for himself as an understated, offbeat romantic comedy lead. He’s actually the star of another of the more recent great romantic comedies, Safety Not Guaranteed. Moss, star of TV’s Mad Men, has a movie career spanning over two decades, but The One I Love makes it feel like she’s just arriving. (Available on VOD, Amazon.com and iTunes during a limited theatrical run.)
When Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) goes to Canada seeking interviews for his strange podcast, he eventually winds up in the company of Howard Howe (Michael Parks). Howard appears to be a meek, lonely man who just wants to share stories, but after a poisoned cup of tea, Wallace finds out Howard has some nefarious intentions. Slowly, Howard works to transform Wallace into a Walrus, amputating his legs, fashioning tusks from his bones, and putting him in a permanent walrus suit. Writerdirector Kevin Smith birthed the idea for this movie while doing a podcast in 2013, and it’s surprising that it ever got made. The film is as weird as anything you are likely to see in a movie theater, and is even more of a departure for Smith than his horror film, Red State. Parks is wonderfully creepy as the old man who really, really likes walruses, and while Long plays a complete dickhead, he’s a dickhead we ultimately care about because Long is a talented actor who brings major depth to the part. The movie is gross and crazy, but not so much that the average moviegoer can’t handle it. Haley Joel Osment and Genesis Rodriguez are good in supporting roles, as is a mystery guest that I won’t give away.
