2014 Movies: #42-40

Sorry for the hiatus, y'all.

#42 Happy Christmas

Anna Kendrick can do a lot of things. She can sing, she can display white-hot social media wit, she can play a set of cups. One thing she can't do, though, is play a convincing screw-up. Much of the success of Happy Christmas relies heavily on the audience being able to believe that she could convey this character, and she doesn't quite stick the landing. This is Joe "Prince of Mumblecore" Swanberg's second movie in as many years that featured Anna Kendrick (last year's Drinking Buddies), and even though she was, to a degree, screwed up in that one as well, she wasn't expected to carry the movie.

I always like and don't love Swanberg's stuff. The thesis statement of the mumblecore movement is realistic and, well, mumbled dialogue, and he never fails to deliver situations and scripts that feel true-to-life. In Happy Christmas, Jenny (Kendrick) returns to Chicago for Christmas after a rough break-up to stay with her brother Jeff (Swanberg) and his wife Kelly (Melanie Lynskey) for a while. She comes home and falls back into her old self-destructive patterns, going hard at a party and making out with randoms until she passes out in the host's bed, pissing off her pal who brought her there (Lena Dunham) in the process. She starts hooking up with fellow teetotaler Kevin (Mark Webber) and the self-shame spiral begins, hitting it's apex when she comes home hammered, puts a pizza in the oven and passes out, infuriating new parent Jeff. From that point, the movie focuses on Jenny's relationship with Kelly, whose zero-effs-given attitude begins to rub off on her and cause her to rethink her career and direction. With the situations that Swanberg poses, his Happy Christmas script has an opportunity to hit some home runs in the humor department, but mostly it just takes walks and occasionally strokes a single to short left. Lena Dunham probably could have worked a little better in Jenny's role. It's refreshing to see Kendrick at least try to be a degenerate-I guess I'm just not buying it.

#41 Love is Strange

If another film critic or human tries to tell me that this movie is "simply about a marriage" and "has nothing to do with the fact that the two leads are men", I'm going to lose it. I am ALL FOR gay marriage. Look at where I grew up if you have any doubts where I stand on that. What I'm not about is people trying to say "oh, well that has nothing to do with it's success on the independent circuit." Really? Would anyone have given a shit about this movie if the old couple going through a rough patch were say, John Lithgow and Diane Keaton? Please.

There are exactly two good things about Love is Strange, and their names are John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. Everything that has been said about their performances is true, and their years of talent and experience show up to play as Ben (Lithgow) and George (Molina), a couple who finally get to watch their wedding bells legally ring right before George loses his job as a music teacher at a conservative school as a result of their nuptials. As a one-income family, they're forced to vacate their Manhattan apartment and live separate for a bit. George moves in downstairs in the same building with cops (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez) and Ben with his nephew, niece-in-law and their son (Darren Burrows/Marisa Tomei/Charlie Tahan), the latter of whom he has to share a bunk bed with. They struggle with their surroundings--Ben with the generational gaps and George with the late night cop parties spilling over onto his couch--while trying to stay connected. The scenes between the two of them are very well done. Unfortunately there are far too few of them, and the movie gets bogged down in its self-importance and orchestra music and lousy supporting performances in the process. The talent is not wasted by any means, but it's definitely, like the couple themselves, obstructed from fully forming. Didn't Pete Caroll just get done teaching us to always run Marshawn Lynch from the 1-yard line?

#40 Into the Woods

In my formative years, my mom and I would take car trips from Madison to Chicago at least 4 or 5 times a year to visit family and friends. There were many cassette tapes that became staples of our bimonthly travels: XTC's "Oranges and Lemons", They Might Be Giants "Apollo 18", PM Dawn's "Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross", Steely Dan's "The Royal Scam", and, obviously, the original broadway recording of "Into the Woods". By the time we got around to seeing the traveling company at Madison's Civic Center, I could have been the sign language interpreter near the front of the orchestra pit, I knew the damn thing so well.

I was initially kind of excited when it was announced that there would be a theatrical version of the Sondheim classic, and I figured I would need to wait until I went home for the holidays to see it so that I could see it with my mom and belt the tunes along as if it were 1991 and we were side by side in our red Chevy Nova. As it turned out, we both saw it independent of one another, and we both said "...meh."

The chosen cast, headed by the always excellent Meryl Streep as the witch, felt like the right one: Anna Kendrick glides along as Cinderella, much more so in her element here than on Mumblecore Island; James Corden and Emily Blunt brought humanity to the baker and baker's wife; Jack of Beanstalk fame and Little Red Riding Hood are anchored by good performances by Daniel Huttlestone and Lilla Crawford, respectively; Chris Pine and Billy Magnusson charm the hell out of some potential princesses. That's about as far as the quality of Into the Woods goes--the musical performances are in the hands of professionals. As for the movie itself? The first half cruises through the classic numbers with ease. Then it's almost like a switch is flipped and it becomes a different film altogether, one that's long, sluggish, dark and at times disjointed. Scenes that would work well on stage felt forced and out of place on the big screen. Some musicals translate seamlessly to the screen. Not this time, Mr. Sondheim.