Review: "Trainwreck"

Director: Judd Apatow
Runtime: 125 minutes

Though by no means as sharp as her sketch show, Amy Schumer's leap to the big screen couldn't have come at a better time. Having finished up a third season of her acclaimed Comedy Central series (which featured an award-worthy 12 Angry Men send up), Schumer is one of the most talked about people on the comedy scene. Rightfully so, as her first feature Trainwreck (which she wrote and stars in), proves. Despite the softening around the edges that was perhaps inevitable in the leap to the big studio system, Schumer's voice has landed into the mainstream remarkably intact and genuine.

Billed as a subversion of the romantic comedy, Trainwreck isn't quite the radical comedy promised by the marketing, but that's not entirely a bad thing. Instead of firmly skewering the rom-com, Schumer and director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) have simply applied the former's voice to a traditional comedy, and made a funny and sweet film in the process. 

In fact, the only truly rebellious aspect of Trainwreck's screenplay is that it does a bit of gender-swapping in its main roles. This time, it's a woman takes on the cinematic responsibilities of being highly promiscuous all while harboring an ingrained fear of intimacy and commitment. That woman is Amy Townsend (Schumer, obviously) a Manhattanite working at a GQ-esque men's magazine who's no stranger to boozy one night stands. Amy has followed in the footsteps of her rakish father (Colin Quinn), whose mantra is, "monogamy isn't realistic" (drilled in during the hilarious opening scene). Amy's feelings are challenged, however, when her boss Dianna (a spray-tanned Tilda Swinton) assigns her an article about a surgeon (Bill Hader) who cares for A-list athletes. 

To be blunt, the rest of the film doesn't exactly contain surprises. Whether judging by Apatow's other films or by rom-coms in general, there's nothing in the structure of Trainwreck that's designed to surprise. Where the film's success comes from is that it remains (relatively speaking) grounded in reality, offering scenes that are either very funny or quite touching (or both). Though Schumer's comedy often blends vulgarity with cutting commentary, Trainwreck demonstrates that she can create genuine moments of drama as well. With Apatow in the director's chair, the shifts in tone are surprisingly smooth. When Schumer and co. take a minute to really get "serious," the end result feels realistic and sincere, without becoming pretentious. This is not the next great American dramedy, but it is a winning mix of sass and heart often missing from studio comedies. 

The second biggest surprise of the film is that, in addition to its sincerity, much of the drama falls on Schumer's shoulders. Backed up by an excellent cast, Schumer does what Jenny Slate did in last year's Obvious Child, and shows off her skills as a comedian and as a convincing dramatic actress. Amy's Amy is, depending on the scene, either the goofball or the straight (wo)man, and she handles both roles effortlessly. Whether making drunken commentary during a movie or tolerating backhanded compliments from Swinton, Schumer is a consistently winning presence whose charm is only magnified on the big screen. 

Likewise, the supporting cast is full of effective performances, starting with Hader's love interest. The SNL alum steps up to the plate as a romantic lead, and delivers convincing and heartfelt performance. His rapport with Schumer is delightful, which only makes the weightier scenes register more deeply as well. Brie Larson, playing a role modeled on Schumer's actual sister, does lovely work too. As different as the two actresses look, Larson and Schumer have a believable chemistry as siblings who are bonded by love but separated by their drastically different outlooks on life. Swinton, meanwhile, is a delight in her too-brief role as Dianna, while a whole host of Schumer's comedian friends (Vanessa Bayer, Jon Glaser, etc...) fill out additional roles, each with solid contributions to their scenes. LeBron James (as himself) and John Cena offer riotously funny performances as well, using their limited screen time to maximum effect. 

So no, Trainwreck isn't the game changing rom-com that Amy Schumer easily could have concocted. And no, it doesn't have the stinging feminist commentary that Schumer's best sketches possess. But that doesn't stop Trainwreck from working as a highly-enjoyable means of pitching Schumer to the mainstream movie-going public. The studio system has a habit of squeezing the life out of distinctive voices. Thankfully, in Schumer's cast, the voice has remained intact. Under Apatow's guidance (or perhaps protection), Schumer has leapt to the big leagues not by compromising her voice, but by adapting to her surroundings. With this first step now out of the way, the door should be wide open for the comedian to really make her mark. And even if that means getting a few more Trainwrecks along the way, well, that's hardly a bad thing. 

Grade: B

Review: "Inside Out"

Director(s): Pete Docter & Ronaldo Del Carmen
Runtime: 94 minutes

Pixar has a long history of finding unique ways to hit our emotions. This is, after all, the studio that got us to care about plastic toys, fish, and robots. Yet the studio has never confronted the very nature of emotion until now. With Inside Out, directors Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen have turned Pixar's power to the trickiest of concepts to visualize: human memory, emotion, and imagination. These three parts of thought have such a conceptual limitless to them that pinning them down with concrete imagery can be daunting. One risks creating a world that feels too slipshod to work as a setting for sincere drama. Thankfully, after a few years of divisive offerings, Pixar has made a remarkable turn around with its latest. Docter, Del Carmen, and the whole Pixar think tank have creating a vibrant, resonant, and emotionally mature tribute to the vastness of human feeling. 

As portrayed here, each human mind is dominated by five key players: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), and Anger (Lewis Black). The emotions are in charge of handling responses as well as the formulation and storing of memories, which take the form of colored orbs. 

We first meet these five inside the head of Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), an eleven year old girl whose parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) have just relocated from Minnesota to San Francisco. Without giving away too many details, things go awry when the emotions try to adjust with the move to California, and Riley's emotions are thrown into chaos. In the upheaval, spritely leader Joy and downer Sadness are knocked out of central command and stranded in Long Term Memory. 

Following in classic Pixar fashion, Inside Out is built around a quest to find something/one important after being separated by larger forces. Joy and Sadness' journey back to HQ is mirrored in Riley's own desire to go back to Minnesota, the source of all of her best memories. The internal journey, however, proves to be far more imposing than the external one. Riley's brain is filled with an array of brilliantly designed locales that allow Docter and Del Carmen to have a great deal of visual fun along the way. Some ideas are more literal (a train of thought is just that), while others rely more on invention (dreams are created on sound stages like movies).

Yet with so much room for dazzlement, Inside Out never strays from its main story for the sake of spectacle. Poehler and Smith are smartly cast in their respective emotions, and the focus on such polar opposites creates an unconventionally winning buddy adventure. Poehler brings that Leslie Knope optimism to Joy, creating a well-intentioned, yet occasionally narrow-sighted go getter. Smith, a regular on The Office, brings an authenticity to Sadness, without dragging down the film's overall mood. 

In fact, at the end of the day, Sadness might actually be the true hero of Inside Out. Sadness, as an emotion, is so often discouraged that it's often viewed as a negative. No one wants to feel sad, of course, but it's an emotion that fares better when it's faced head on, rather than repressed. The magic of Inside Out is that it refuses to turn Sadness into a Debbie Downer-esque punchline. She's valid, and in some cases, the one best equipped to handle what's going on. 

At 94 minutes, Inside Out feels extra brisk, so it's a testament to those involved that the deeper moments hit as hard as they do. More than any of Pixar's previous films, Inside Out is the sort of kids' movie that will resonate far deeper with older audiences. The kids can come for the zippy adventure, colorful vistas, and slapstick comedy, while everyone else can come to laugh through the tears. To label Inside Out as a "kids' movie" feels condescending, given that it's all so rich with ideas and emotional honesty. This one really is for all ages. 

Grade: A-

Review: "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him/Her"

Director: Ned Benson
Runtime: 189 minutes

Usually, when producers and filmmakers have different ideas on how to edit a film, the victorious side tends to be taken as gospel among the movie-going public. The losing version is either relegated to a special edition DVD, or is never seen again. However, for first time director Ned Benson, the journey has been more rewarding. After premiere his two-film drama The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby - two back to back films that cover the events and perspectives of different characters - he was forced to created a combined version, subtitled "Them." Luckily, just over a month after Them arrived in theaters, Benson's original design, subtitled Him and Her, has been given a life of its own outside of the festival circuit. Even though Benson's admirable passion project isn't without faults in its original form, Eleanor Rigby: Him/Her is still a striking character piece that resonates in in unexpected ways as it traverses well-worn terrain.

One has to wonder if there wasn't some plot to start Him/Her's release on the same weekend that Showtime's promising new drama The Affair premieres. Benson's film and the cable channel's TV show operate on similar levels, despite some differences in tone and execution. Him/Her and The Affair (more true of the latter), utilize the Rashomon method of storytelling, with events being replayed multiple times from different perspectives, with key details changed or omitted. 

Yet when it comes to replaying scenes versus filling in the gaps of opposing points of view, the two take radically different approaches. Benson's film(s?) does its best to avoid dramatic redundancy, instead crafting two films that intersect at a select few moments, but otherwise tell very different stories. 

Him opens with a memory of the early, carefree days in the life of Conor Ludlow (James McAvoy) and Eleanor Rigby (Jessica Chastain). The young couple spend the delightful opening sequence in a near constant state of newfound romantic joy. They run down dark streets, make out in the park, and watch as lightning bugs put on an impromptu show before their eyes. And then the present day arrives, and those moments of ecstatic happiness are wiped away like steam from a mirror.

Long before definitively revealing the tragedy at the center of Him/Her, Benson - working on a meager budget - handles the shift from jumpy past to solemn present with what can only be called elegant bluntness. The change in mood is instantaneous, and even though we don't know the ins and outs of what's happened in the interim, Him/Her still gets the point across that Conor and Eleanor aren't quite who they used to be. In the first 10 minutes, we see Conor and Eleanor in drastically different emotional places, and McAvoy and Chastain's restrained work conveys the months, even years, of hardship in a manner that speaks volumes. 

Though stray lines of dialogue feel a bit baroque for the gritty style, Benson's writing is largely effective at capturing what makes his leads click, even if the answers are a little on the broad side. Conor is more determined to keep moving forward, pouring his energy into his flailing bar. Eleanor, on the other hand, can't shake her recent trauma, and comes to the conclusion that the only way out is to tear her self down and start from scratch. Both exemplify different parts of a fascinating spectrum of human behavior that occurs in the face of truly shattering heartbreak. To tap further into this, Benson utilizes silence in a way that is absolutely crushing. Scenes - mostly for the better - seem to take place in a vacuum, even though much of the film takes place in Manhattan.

Combine this with Christopher Blauvelt's murky visuals, and Him rather quickly develops an all-consuming gloom, despite the flashes of humor. Though consistently well-acted by McAvoy, Chastain, and the rest of the ensemble, Him ultimately emerges as the weaker of the two-part puzzle. There is no mystery to Conor's actions, and therefore almost no sense of discovery in anything that happens in his side of the narrative. Conor's interactions with his semi-estranged father (Ciaran Hinds) are repetitive, adding little of value to the psychological dimension of the film. We wait for Eleanor to make her brief appearance in Him solely because they bring us just a little closer to what most of Conor's story dances around. Despite running 11 minutes shorter than Her, Him often stagnates thanks to Benson's commitment to an unwavering, funereal sense of pace.

Once Him goes through its final fade to black and Her begins, Eleanor Rigby really starts to come to life. The weighty silence is still there, but it's countered by Eleanor's livelier encounters with her sister Katie (Jess Weixler) and her wealthy, withdrawn parents (Isabelle Huppert and William Hurt). Real life friends Chastain and Weixler, despite their very different looks, are ideally cast as sisters. Watching them comfort each other or share a laugh over a stupid joke is the sort of thing that compels one to stick with Her. Then, of course, there's Chastain's performance, which is as complete and acutely observed as any of her other recent performances. After blasting out of the gate in 2011, the actress continues to impress, able to draw one in without manipulatively tugging at heartstrings.  

Put simply, Him is the question and Her is the answer. The former exists mostly to allow for the latter to fill in the blanks, and expand on what we thought we knew. Conor, like the audience, is left trying to piece things together and see through Eleanor's opaque new persona. By contrast, in Eleanor's scenes with her family or her new professor (Viola Davis), the films make actual, observable headway in terms of realizing the scars on its characters' collective psyches. Mr. McAvoy is excellent, but the ordering of the films ultimately leaves him with less to do. A climactic scene in Him belongs to Chastain's painful confession. When Her revisits the same scene, Eleanor's confession only hits harder, while Conor's reaction achieves no greater impact. 

This issue extends to the dual narratives as well. By the time Her finishes, Him is left fighting a losing battle for relevance in the grand scheme of the story. It makes for a solid set up and secondary story, but the balance ought to have been tipped much more heavily in Her's favor. Benson has insisted that the two parts should be able to exist separately or be played in any order, but to do so seems unwise. 

Whatever its faults, when Eleanor Rigby works, it tends to soar. The oppressive mood can be numbing, but when Benson zeroes in on a particular moment and unpacks his characters' emotions, the film becomes more than just a gritty-looking downer. It can be a difficult watch (though it's nowhere near as searing as something like Blue Valentine), but deep down there's a glimmer of realistic, measured optimism at the film's core. Like Rabbit Hole, Eleanor Rigby wants nothing to do with easy answers and notions of getting back to an idealized sense of "how things used to be." It's about confronting the past, so that we may move forward. The shadows of trauma always linger, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to shrink them by letting in a little light. 

Grade: B/B+

Review: "The Skeleton Twins"

Director: Craig Johnson
Runtime: 93 minutes

In their tenure on Saturday Night Live, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig were two of the show's most consistently exciting, vibrant performers, even when they fell back on reliable characters to generate a laugh. Yet, beyond SNL, the two have also proven themselves capable of finding consistent work on the big screen, although in Hader's case it's mostly meant supporting roles in ensemble comedies. And, ever since Bridesmaids, Wiig has struggled to find a comic or dramatic (or tragicomic) vehicle with a strong enough script to show off some potential hidden range. For those who have been following the two actors since their respective departures from late night, the wait is now over. In Craig Johnson's debut film The Skeleton Twins, Hader and Wiig have finally found roles that play perfectly to their strengths as comedians, while simultaneously allowing them to flex their heretofore unseen dramatic muscles. 

Though pushed mostly as a dark comedy, Twins' opening gets off to a particularly heavy start. In Los Angeles, failed actor Milo (Hader) attempts suicide. Back in New York, dental associate Maggie (Wiig) is just about to swallow a handful of pills, only to be interrupted by a phone call informing her of Milo's near brush with death. Going from coast to coast, Maggie comes to take Milo back home with her for the time being, even though the pair haven't seen or spoken to each other in a decade. 

Once the basic relationships and plot mechanisms are in place, Johnson and co-writer Mark Heyman (Black Swan, of all things) let the rest of Twins unfold in tightly controlled emotional swings. Maggie and Milo's is left to go through long-delayed growing pains on its own, without any overly complicated story elements to get in the way. From a structural point of view, this can leave the shifts in tone feeling a bit abrupt. A truly joyous scene involving lip syncing is followed almost immediately by a setback in the relationship. While the back and forth does a solid job of capturing the touch and go relationship between the siblings, it can make for a somewhat jarring viewing experience (one that makes the slim runtime feel a bit longer than it is). 

At worst, however, all that The Skeleton Twins really needed was a little bit of restructuring. Otherwise, Johnson and Heyman's writing creates an authentic and compelling sibling bond. Their work, highlighted by Johnson's deft, unfussy directing, touches on myriad emotional issues, and never goes too deep or too light in execution. For a film that nearly begins with both protagonists offing themselves, The Skeleton Twins is often quite buoyant, even in its most unpleasant moments. 

The main attraction here, however, is to see Wiig and Hader do something genuinely new as performers, even as they engage in some purely goofy behavior. Their years as SNL co-stars serves them well when it comes to chemistry, as the two are instantly believable as siblings. They joke, tease, bicker, and even explode at each other, and every bit of it rings true. Both faces are so recognizable as those belonging to comedians, yet both are equally capable of communicating frustration, guilt, and sorrow. Wiig is especially impressive as the conflicted Maggie, juggling Milo's arrival along with her goodie two shoes husband Lance (Luke Wilson, charming and low key), with a quiet effortlessness. 

Even at its most grim, The Skeleton Twins retains a vague sense of hope (albeit without an ounce of gooey sentimentality). Johnson isn't afraid to get to some uncomfortable issues, as well as conflicts that don't come to an easy or pleasant resolution. Much like Boyhood (on a much, much smaller scale), Twins is a study of life's messiness at all ages. Its scope may not be as broad, nor its impact as profound, yet it's still a rewarding (and hugely promising) debut with a beating - albeit acid-tinged - heart at its core.

Grade: B/B+

Next Year's Best Picture Front Runner

Last night's episode of SNL, with host Russell Brand, had one of the show's best mock trailers in quite some time. The sketch took aim at consonant-deprived British accents with hilarious results. But the most inspired part (aside from the title) was the voice over, which made reference to, of all British crime films, the woefully under-seen Red Riding Trilogy. I realize that I part of a very smaaaaall group of people (Stateside, at least) who know what the RRT is, but it was fun to have a little movie-geek inside joke to add another layer of funny to this well-executed sketch.