BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY is a cool dark comedy feature from first time writer-directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier. It stars Sam Rockwell as a bored suburban pharmacist married to a hyper competitive wife (Michelle Monaghan).  He falls for a glamourous rich bored housewife (a wonderfully slick Olivia Wilde) and their joint use of drugs gives him the confidence to get petty revenge on the people who've held him down until the drug use spirals out of control and the DEA get on his back.  The whole thing gets unravelled in an elegant manner and despite the overall tone of wry dark humour, perfectly captured in Jane Fonda's voice-over and the ironic sound-track, there's actual deep emotion  in there. The final scene between Rockwell and Wilde subverts the fantasy elements of the film in a genuinely affecting way.  I really want to see what these directors do next.  I also really want to see more of Sam Rockwell. Why isn't he a bigger star? When he can do proper gonzo goofball comedy and proper depth? 

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY has a running time of 91 minutes.  It was released earlier this year in the USA and is currently available on DVD.

WE ARE THE BEST - a touching coming-of-age comedy

WE ARE THE BEST is an absolute joy! A funny, moving, authentic look at life as a young teenage girl rebelling against everything, no-one taking you seriously, and getting your heart broken. Its bittersweet tone and effortless depiction of close female friendship reminded me of GHOST WORLD - also based on a graphic novel - although the tone is less nihilistic than that. In fact, it felt closer to the delightful SON OF RAMBOW, showing just how much can be achieved by young naive kids who just don't know any better.

The story begins with a fight to control noise.  Bobo and Els are two teen punks in early 80s Sweden, constantly trying to block out the sounds of their fighting or partying loving but ultimately lackadaisical parents.  They try to hide out at their local youth club but under sound-attack from a shitty amateur prog-rock band they decide to book out the rehearsal space and, hey!, why not start a punk band!  This is, of course, the perfect idea because the key point of punk is that you didn't have to play, or play well, to participate. It was an inherently amateur concept. That said, when they see geeky Hedwig play classical guitar at a school concert, they realise they need her musical stylings and bring her into their group.  What follows is your classic SCHOOL OF ROCK style young kids form a band, go up against the prejudices of the community, and put on an awesome show.

That all sounds pretty hackneyed but the focus of this film isn't really on practice montages and winning some concert competition, but just on spending time with these friends and seeing how they interact.  I absolutely adored the feisty Klara with her boundless enthusiasm, absolute conviction and hilarious appropriation of adult terms.  Thoughtful introspective Bobo is something of an enigma, but the heart of the film - she's the one who perceives that geeky Hedwig might not want her hair shaved into a Mahican.  

A lot of the hilarity comes from seeing these guys write rebellious songs about hating their PE teacher, or debating whether God is a Fascist in these ponderous earnest tones. But what elevates this movie into something better and more worthwhile is the delicate way in which Lukas Moodysson essays the kids' relationships with their parents and the shifting loyalties between each other.  It's so rare to see childhood friendship depicted on screen with anything like authenticity - instead we just get those awful generic high school movies - and that makes WE ARE THE BEST all the more welcome.

Just one final note, for those of you familiar with Swedish auteur, Lukas Moodysson's previous films - the harrowing, uncompromising  LILYA 4-EVER and the more tedious but earnest MAMMOTH - don't be surprised when you find that WE ARE THE BEST is utterly different in tone and concern, and that the only commonality is the immediacy of the dogma-lite shooting style.

WE ARE THE BEST has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK for very strong language. 

WE ARE THE BEST played Venice, Toronto and London 2013. It was released last year in Sweden, Iceland, Spain, Norway and Finland and it was released earlier this month in the Netherlands and Estonia. It will be released on April 18th in the UK and Ireland. 

VIJAY AND I

VIJAY AND I is a risible and borderline offensive farce in which a disillusioned actor (Moritz Bleibtrau) exploits the mistaken announcement of his death to see what his family and friends really think about him. With the help of his north Indian friend (Danny Pudi - COMMUNITY), the actor browns-up, gets a beard and a turban and starts to court his apparently grieving wife (Patricia Arquette).  Clearly, it's absurd to think that a woman could sleep with a man and, despite some waxing, not realise it's her husband. But we have to give any kind of farce the benefit of the doubt, as we would with TOOTSIE or MRS DOUBTFIRE. No, where this film fails is in its lack of real laughs and lack of real insight.  Both those films saw genuine emotion in their relationships and proper guilt-ridden conflicts. By contrast, "Vijay" seems petulant and spoiled - quite content to cause distress in order to get more respect, and indeed pussy, as a respected Indian man than as an actor playing a children's cartoon character. The problem is that the tone is ambiguous.  The directors should've gone for zanier farce or real relationship depth or something truly dark and depressing (DEATH TO SMOOCHIE style).  Instead we just have something very very odd, very unfunny and at times simply wince-inducing.   In fact, seeing the wonderful Patricia Arquette trying to play it straight - as though she were in a real drama - was the most painful thing of all. Avoid at all costs.

VIJAY AND I was released last year in Germany and Belgium and earlier this year in Italy and Hungary. It is available to rent and own.

BLENDED

BLENDED is the latest in the series of harmless rom-coms starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore as Jim and Lauren. In this iteration they play a widower and a divorcee respectively who go on a horrible blind date where he takes her to a Hooters and pays her no attention.  Naturally they are opposites. She's a professional closet organiser and so is portrayed as uptight and overly controlling, with her two boys dressed in smart suits. He's a sports-nut with there girls dressed in athletic wear.  Neither parent is coping particularly well with their kids going through puberty. 

The plot kicks off when Lauren's best friend ends her relationship with Jim's boss freeing up a luxury holiday that the boss had booked. They both get to go with their kids, and while they start of hating each other and protesting that they aren't dating - well, you can guess what happens. 

The humour is very very low key indeed. It's not really a laugh-out-loud movie. But I did, in spite of my in-built cynicism, feel that trademark Sandler-Barrymore warm cuddly feeling and I genuinely liked these people and wanted things to work out. There are no surprises, and I knew I was being manipulated by a script that repeated a tried and trusted formula. But I just couldn't help it.  And you know when I knew this movie was really working?  Terry Crews.  When I first saw his cameo as a South African singer I thought, my god, is this borderline racist?  By the end, I just went with it, and even found it funny. So yes, there's nothing original or pioneering here.  But it works.  It really does.

BLENDED is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 117 minutes. BLENDED is on release in the USA, UK, Ireland, Germany, Puerto Rico, Austria and Canada. It opens on May 30th in Thailand, Bulgaria, India and Vietnam.  It opens in June in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Singapore, Uruguay, Colombia, Cyprus, Pakistan, Belgium, Iceland, Kuwait, the Philippines, the UAE, Australia, Lebanon, Peru, Indonesia, Panama, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Greece, Romania, Taiwan, Mexico, Spain, Finland and Sweden. It opens in July in Italy, Denmark, Croatia, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Portugal, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Venezuela, South Africa, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, Brazil and the Netherlands. It opens on August 6th in Egypt, and in Japan on March 11th 2015.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 3D brought to you by proud sponsor, Edward Snowden

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is an utterly satisfying comic-book summer blockbuster but I wonder how certain members of the audience will view its earnest liberal political agenda.  Which is to say that I agree with absolutely everything this movie says about the trade-off between freedom and security, but even I found the messaging rather heavy-handed. So much so that this movie could've been sponsored by Wikileaks or the Edward Snowden defence fund.  That said, it's the most politically engaged, elegantly written Marvel movie, so I'm really not complaining.

As the movie opens we see the formerly cryogenically frozen super soldier Captain America unfrozen and working for SHIELD  As well as catching up on fifty years worth of pop culture, he's also struggling to reconcile his earnest no-nonsense good guy values with his current job enacting secret missions in a world without clear-cut enemies. His boss, Nick Fury, isn't helping by being all paranoid and on the verge of launching three super-fighters capable of taking out terrorist threats before they happen, with the co-operation of World Security Council chief Alexander Pierce.  But soon Fury is the subject of an assassination attempt, Captain America himself is under attack, and Hydra is rearing its many-heads once again.  His only allies are the newly contemplative Natasha Romanoff aka The Black Widow and the similarly earnest Sam Wilson aka The Falcon.

There's a lot to love here without the politics. The dialogue is smart, if not as constantly wise-cracking as an IRON MAN movie.  I love the genuine chemistry between Chris Evans' Steve Rogers and Scarlett Johansson's Natasha.  I love the elegant way in which the scriptwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) give us the prequel backstory by way of a museum exhibit.   The plot has a pleasing complexity without seeming wilfully obscure, and it allows minor characters a chance to shine - not least Sebastian Stan in what could've been a thankless cameo role as The Winter Soldier but drips with melancholy.  I even love the behind the scenes stuff - particularly the subtle ageing make-up on Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter, the gorgeous hand to hand combat choreography, and the cinematography from Trent Opaloch (DISTRICT 9) that's less than the motion sickness of Bourne but still engrossing enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. So kudos to the unlikely directors, the Russo brothers, for pulling it all together.

But this movie ultimately stands or falls on how you feel about its politics because, believe you me, this kind of earnest engagement with a highly contemporary issue is bold and brave, not least because of its ramifications for SHIELD within the real-life complex commercial universe that Marvel has established.  I love that beyond all the fighting this is ultimately a thoughtful, provocative and bold film - one that, like Captain America himself, has the courage of its convictions and a kind of audacity that is rare in a summer blockbuster.  That audacity caps itself off in the anti-casting of arch-liberal Robert Redford as a hawk, and the wonderfully subversive final scene involving Jenny Agutter.  We've come a long way from THE RAILWAY CHILDREN!

CAPTAIN AMERICA was a great summer blockbuster.  Its sequel is something more than that.  A great entertaining movie but one that also has the courage to pose serious questions about our world and doesn't patronise the audience with easy answers.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLIDER has a running time of 136 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent moderate violence.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is released this week in the USA, France, the UK, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Spain. It is released on April 3rd in the UAE, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Macedonia, New Zealand, Russia and Thailand; on April 4th in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Estonia, India, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Romania, the USA (wide release) and Vietnam; on April 9th in Serbia; on April 10th in Brazil, Hungary and Cambodia; on April 11th in Turkey; on April 19th in Japan.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT

ABOUT LAST NIGHT is a romantic comedy from director Steve Pink (HOT TUB TIME MACHINE) based on the 1980s David Mamet play "Sexual Perversity In Chicago" and remaking the 1980s movie starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore.  In this iteration we have two contemporary African American couples discussing sex and dating.  Kevin Hart and Regina Hall (THINK LIKE A MAN) play Bernie and Joan who have a one-night stands at the outset of the film and so introduce their friends Danny and Debbie, played by Michael Ealy (BARBERSHOP) and Joy Bryant (Parenthood).   

I started off really hating this movie and maybe that's because it focusses up front on Joan and Bernie, who come off as crass, drunk and trying to be funny. It's the kind of humour that asks you to laugh when a couple try to have sex on a toilet and accidentally hit the flush.  But at least Kevin Hart was sporadically funny whereas the handsomely banal couple Danny and Debbie are just going through the motions of every other relationship drama we've ever seen on screen.  They have an instant chemistry - all is loved up - they move in - he feels cramped - they have a massive argument - they could cheat with ex-es - they don't because they are fundamentally nice people. 

I did eventually mellow forward this film. It's an easy enough watch even though it doesn't surprise AT ALL.  For instance, you just know that when Danny takes Debbie to the old Irish bar he visited as a kid, and sees it fall on hard times, that there's going to be some kind of hipster-ish extreme makeover.  The actors are ok.  Kevin Hart and Regina Hall have their comedic moments. But it's one for DVD night at best.

ABOUT LAST NIGHT has a running time of 100 minutes and is rated R.  The movie is on release in Canada, the USA, Kenya, Nigeria, the UAE, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Ecuador, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, Uruguay, the UK and Ireland.  It opens in April in Philippines, Thailand, India, Chile, Indonesia and New Zealand. It opens in May in Denmark and Taiwan, in June in Hong Kong and Germany.