The Screengrab : stanley tucci

Forgotten Films: "The Daytrippers" (1987)

Phil Nugent — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Greg Mottola's low-pressure charmer Adventureland hasn't done the business it deserved, but as a major studio release, it at least stands the chance of an afterlife on DVD. Maybe if the gods are kind, somebody will roll the dice on getting Mottola's debut film, The Daytrippers, back into print on home video. When this comedy first started drifting into theaters in 1997, it stood apart from the indie-film pack for its unflashiness and lack of condescension towards its middle-class characters. Seen today, it may inspire a certain nostalgia for its movie era: here are the indie-film all-stars of the late '90s in the full bloom of youth, before they started lining up to take on Wolverine or competing with each other to see whose new TV series could get cancelled quickest. The Daytrippers begins with Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci as an apparently happily married couple living in Long Island. Tucci works at a Manhattan publishing firm, and after he heads off for work with plans not to be back home for a couple of days, Davis finds what seems to be a love letter that was written to him by someone named Sandy. Confused and nervous, Davis invites her family--including her parents (Anne Meara and Pat McNamara), her sister (Parker Posey), and the sister's boyfriend, Carl (Liev Schreiber)-- to talk her into believing that it's nothing. The upshot is that the whole pack winds up venturing into the city to confront Tucci, piled into a broken-down station wagon with a busted heater on a late-November day that isn't getting any warmer.

The suspense is pretty much kept under control. Any questions about whether or not Davis has good reason to distrust her husband were answered as soon as Tucci nabbed the part. Nor is The Daytrippers what we film blogger types or others with working eyeballs would call "visually distinguished." Its pleasures come from watching so many gifted comedians shoved together and left to chew on each other. The cast also includes Campbell Scott (who co-directed Big Night with Tucci, and who would also co-star with Davis in The Secret Lives of Dentists, Duma, and the TV series Six Degrees) as a novelist, the writer-director Douglas McGrath as Tucci's boss, and Marcia Gay Hardin, who tears it up in a cameo as a woman who's come to a holiday party so she can make an elaborate show of not paying attention to her ex-boyfriend while asking strangers to check to see whether he's paying any attention to her.

As Carl, Liev Schreiber delivers a beautifully full portrait of a sweet, well-meaning intellectual pseud who, unless nothing is done to discourage him, is well on his way to becoming a full-blown asshole of fearsome proportions. "Let me tell you something," he says by way of making small talk as the car crawls past the architectural horrors that dot landscape along the L.I.E., "the Europeans may have been imperialists, but they knew how to make a building." Carl, whose need to declare his superiority to the rabble has inspired him to become Long Island's leading proponent of a return to a system of aristocracy, enlivens the road trip by describing the plotline of his novel, "an allegory about spiritual survival in the contemporary world" about a man born with the head of a dog. "What kind of dog?" asks Dad. It doesn't matter, Parker Posey says, but Carl jumps in happily to stress that it's actually a very important detail. It's a German short-haired pointer.

Good as the men are, The Daytrippers really belongs to its women. Hope Davis, not for the last time, demonstrates a special gift for seeming too depressed to think while simultaneously being funny and likable and even seeming rather lively. (Just standing still, she'd have been thrown out of an Antonioni movie for disturbing the peace.) She keeps you guessing about just how much emotional life there might be behind those heavy lids until the climactic moment when she catches sight of her husband across a crowded room, acting suavely goofy, and her face breaks out into a wide grin that life is about to take a sledgehammer to. Posey does a reverse spin on the same act, acting vivacious and flirty in a way that seems to hint that her character is a total bitch waiting for the moment to attack, only to reveal the defensive little girl (and supportive sister) hidden inside the attitude and layers of make-up and clothing. (With her lips a crimson slash and blue raccoon eyes, and wearing a green scarf and red thigh-highs with a heavy winter jacket, she's the most colorful thing to be seen on this fall day, and when she makes a run for it, she looks like a yard sale in motion.) And the eternally underused Anne Meara probably has the best movie role of her life; she's the essence of every parent whose zealousness to pound their children's lives into the shape they think they should be has turned them into a gorgon. She's Livia Soprano with a human face.

When Good Directors Go Bad: A Life Less Ordinary (1997, Danny Boyle)

Paul Clark — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Since its premiere on the fall festival circuit, Danny Boyle’s new film Slumdog Millionaire has ridden a wave of ecstatic buzz, one which many believe the film will ride to numerous Oscar nominations. With his crowd-pleasing arthouse hit, it seems that Boyle has finally arrived for real in Hollywood, a full dozen years after his breakthrough films, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. However, it wasn’t supposed to take this long. In the wake of Trainspotting’s international success, Boyle was tapped by Fox to bring his directorial sensibility to America with his subsequent project A Life Less Ordinary, which paired Boyle’s favored leading man Ewan McGregor with hot Hollywood starlet Cameron Diaz. Life was the director’s take on the romantic comedy, and Boyle’s goal was to infuse the warm fuzzy genre with a liberal amount of mid-nineties post-Tarantino edge while simultaneously indulging the audience’s romantic urges.

Under the right circumstances, A Life Less Ordinary might have been a zeitgeist-ready hit, particularly at the twentysomethings at whom it was aimed. However, it wasn’t to be. What’s more, the disappointing box office returns for the film were, for once, a reflection of its quality. It’s not uncommon for a filmmaker to blame his intended audience for not “getting” the movie when it flops, but if the movie in question isn’t very good, the filmmaker doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Part of the problem was that the convoluted storyline, in which so much business is happening at once that very little actually makes an impact. The setup: God, disturbed by the lack of love in the world, begins dispatching angels to Earth to bring people together. Two of the angels, O’Reilly (Holly Hunter) and Jackson (Delroy Lindo) are assigned to the case of Robert (McGregor), a down-and-out wannabe writer, and Celine (Diaz), a bitchy heiress. And how do they meet, you ask? Why, when Robert storms into Celine’s father’s (Ian Holm) office and somehow ends up kidnapping her. How else were they supposed to meet? From there, it’s off to the races, as Robert finds himself an inept kidnapper, Celine decides to help him in order to get a cut of the ransom for herself, and the heavenly duo (masquerading as bounty hunters) relentlessly pursue the mismatched couple. With all this going on, it’s a wonder they ever find time to fall in love, then out of love, then finally back in love again, precisely on cue.

But then, most romantic comedies depend on contrivances, just as long as we’re rooting for the romantic leads to turn out OK. However, in order for this to happen we’d actually have to care about them, and these two hardly seem to be worth the effort it takes to bring them together. McGregor is fairly likable as Robert, a pretty nice guy who is easily overwhelmed and somewhat over-eager to apologize for himself. However, Diaz is another matter entirely. On the page, Celine is a tricky character- a rich girl who lets herself be kidnapped in order to escape her life. But while the role might have worked if Diaz had made her a somewhat daffy thrill seeker, instead she plays Celine as a harpy and a nag for most of the movie, until the plot suddenly demands that she fall in love with Robert. As the movie progresses, we’re rooting for Robert all right- rooting for him to get as far away from her as possible.

With a romantic vacuum at its center, the story becomes little more than a parade of quirky characters and situations, flailing about onscreen in search of a reason to exist. Where to begin? There’s a dentist (Stanley Tucci) who Celine shoots in the frontal lobe while playing William Tell, only to return to work mere days later. There’s also the crazy backwoodsman (Maury Chaykin) who encounters Robert and Celine shortly after the kidnapping, and his even crazier friend who barks instead of speaking. And then there’s the ever-dogged O’Reilly and Jackson forever in pursuit, with O’Reilly brandishing a machine gun and hanging off the hood of Robert and Celine’s car- not at the same time, of course. How is all this supposed to make the central duo fall in love? Your guess is as good as mine.

Late in the film, after their funds have been depleted, Robert and Celine decide to rob a bank. When Celine holds up a teller, she asks to make a withdrawal, to which Robert responds, “I thought we agreed there’d be no clichés.” Boyle and writer John Hodge seemed to have used this line as their philosophy when making A Life Less Ordinary. However, it’s not enough to avoid clichés- one must replace them with other, more interesting ideas, and this is the failure of the film. A Life Less Ordinary is a film that tries to liven up its genre, but it never manages to do so, primarily because it fails to be romantic or funny. When Robert and Celine end up together, it feels not so much like a logical conclusion to this story as a cue for the lights to go up and the credits to roll. I suppose A Life Less Ordinary isn’t exactly ordinary, but it’s pretty lifeless.

Take Five: Romero Alive!

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

George Romero's Diary of the Dead opens this Friday, and it's the fifth in his legendary zombie film series. We thought about dedicating this week's Take Five to an overview of each installment, but not only could we not swing a screening of Diary (dammit!), but we figured, what better time to look at some of Romero's other films? Yes, it's true: the man who invented the modern conception of the zombie, who's responsible for one of the most durable and appealing of the Famous Monsters of Filmland, has actually made a couple of movies that do not feature the living dead! We're the first to admit that we're suckers for the low-budget, foul-mouthed, expatriate Pittsburgher, though, and while he seems to save his best stuff for the zombie pictures, that's not all there is to the man. True, he sticks with bloodshed and horror — we aren't expecting a Shakespeare adaptation or a minor-key family drama from him anytime soon — but at least a few of his non-zombie pictures are worth checking out for various reasons. So if you're in one of the many cities where Diary of the Dead won't open for a while, head to your local grindhouse video emporium or fire up your rent-by-mail queue and have a Romero-fest in which the dead don't walk: they just die.

THE CRAZIES (1973)

Romero's fourth film overall, and his best to immediately follow the original Night of the Living Dead, this is similar to his original zombie masterpiece in many ways: the Pittsburgh-area filming locations, the largely amateur cast and the ultra-low budget, and the dreadful atmosphere of paranoia and nameless fear. It concerns the government's attempt to control a bizarre outbreak of a strange virus that causes instant, violent insanity in all who contract it; but the government, as it often is, isn't telling all that it knows, and the faceless federal agents in stark white biochemical hazard suits quickly become as menacing as the maddened townsfolk. A fascinating, underseen movie that creates a terrific mood of terror and insanity, with some of Romero's pointed social commentary; he's currently working on a big-budget remake.

MARTIN (1977)

Perhaps George Romero's most underrated film is this suspenseful, character-driven horror film made just before the release of Dawn of the Dead (and financed by Romero's direction of a TV movie about O.J. Simpson called Juice on the Loose, which would only take on horrific dimensions much later on). Martin Madahas — played compellingly by the young unknown John Amplas — is a drifter of Eastern European descent who has come to believe that he's a vampire, and for everyone who's determined to talk him out of it before he wields the straight razors that compensate for his lack of fangs, there's someone else who's trying to convince him he's right. The ambiguity over Martin's true nature, and his own feelings towards the urges he can't deny, are what make this such an interesting movie. Definitely worthwhile.

CREEPSHOW (1982)

We've discussed this one before, in our Stephen King Take Five, but it's a longtime favorite of ours and one of the gems of Romero's catalogue — not to mention the only time he really seems to relax and have fun. It's his first truly big-budget picture, and while the effects and film quality are much improved, the most he gets out of the money he's given to play with is populating the cast of this campy good time with tons of appealing character actors, from Fritz Weaver and Ed Harris to Leslie Nielsen and E.G. Marshall to King himself and an uncredited Tom Atkins. This isn't high art by any means, but it perfectly captures the atmosphere of giddy vileness in the old EC Comics it emulates, and it's a highly enjoyable romp if, like King and Romero, you surrender completely to the pulp tone of the thing.

MONKEY SHINES (1988)

Monkeys share one thing in common with zombies: they are awesome. As single-word punchlines, only robots can rival them. But with Monkey Shines, a film about a homicidal helper chimpanzee, Romero manages to prove that monkeys are only as successful as the stars of horror movies if they are a hundred feet tall. Monkey Shines isn't nearly as bad as its reputation or its horrible name (it's hootily subtitled An Experiment in Fear); it has a compelling psychological angle, an interesting undertone of moral ambiguity, and a light touch with the social satire. Then again, it ain't all that good, either, and it's largely sunk by dud after dud in the supporting cast, from charmless Jason Beghe in the lead to completely baffled pros like Stanley Tucci and Janine Turner. Still, it's got a monkey, plus Stephen Root, so you'll laugh at least once.

BRUISER (2000)

We were quite excited when we heard about the impending release of Bruiser back around the turn of the century: not only was Romero back, but he appeared to be directing a movie that was more psychological thriller than gorefest. Unfortunately, despite tight direction and some swell performances (especially by Peter Stormare), the story of a repressed, simpering executive who explodes into rage and revenge gives the game away too soon and drifts aimlessly in its latter half into a fog of serial-killer cliches. This is a movie that could have benefited hugely from dwelling on the psychological state of its lead character and leaving open a degree of ambiguity and uncertainty about his actions, the way Martin did, but instead, it's a statement of the kind of potential Romero always has but doesn't always deliver on.

That Guy!: Ving Rhames

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:00:00 GMT

That Guy!'s salute to Black History Month continues with a look at one of our favorite contemporary African-American character actors, Ving Rhames. A powerfully built six-footer with an intimidating mein and a penchant for playing bruisers and bad-asses, Rhames is in fact one of Hollywood's most notorious nice guys, a deeply spiritual and profoundly humanitarian person with a reputation in America's most backstabbing town for always being the touch for someone in need. Born with the substantially less intimidating Christian name of "Irving" in 1959, Rhames picked up his stage name not from the mean streets of his native Harlem, but from the decidedly non-superfly Stanley Tucci, a classmate of his at SUNY-Purchase. After formative experiences at the High School of Performing Arts and on Broadway, he launched a successful film career in the mid-1990s and has gone on to become something of a go-to guy for casting directors looking for a deft blend of intimidation and intelligence. (Which is not to say that his film career is nothing but bluster: he not only played a drag queen in a TV movie entitled Holiday Heart, but recently appeared in the excrable I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry, singing "I'm Every Woman" while naked in a locker room full of men.)

In addition to his cinematic accomplishments, Rhames was the subject of a bizarre coincidence that itself could form the basis of a too-strange-to-be-true docudrama: while filming The Saint of Fort Washington, he encountered a homeless veteran on the streets of New York who, it would later become clear, was his own older brother, estranged from the family since his return from Vietnam almost twenty years before. Ving's basso profundo voice, distinctive look, fearsome demeanor and and muscular frame have made him a natural for portraying boxers, and his next major project, due to release later this year, is Phantom Punch, in which he plays the inimitable Sonny Liston. But his most memorable boxing role to date was when he brilliantly assayed Don King in the HBO movie Only in America. He won a Golden Globe for the performance, which he immediately turned over to his acting idol, Jack Lemmon — a lovely gesture that nonetheless inspired a few wags (notably The Boondocks' Aaron McGruder) to note that blacks so rarely win major acting awards that they can scarcely afford to give them away so cavalierly.

Where to see Ving Rhames at his best:

PATTY HEARST (1988)

Made before he hit it big in Hollywood, Patty Hearst is nonetheless one of Ving Rhames' most electrifying performances. Working from an underappreciated Paul Schrader script, Rhames takes on the thorny role of Symbionese Liberation Army leader Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze, and plays it so close to over-the-top that it almost slides into hysteria — but at critical moments, he pulls back and controls his performance into a convincing portrayal of self-involved madness. The movie itself is also a quite worthwhile project that too few people have bothered to see, but Rhames' acting is a particular standout, and a sign of things to come.

PULP FICTION (1994)

Quentin Tarantino's stylized, pop-obsessive, achronological masterpiece seemed to come out of nowhere and nearly singlehandedly invent a whole new language of filmmaking. It created a directorial legend, rescued a handful of careers and started a few more — among them, that of Ving Rhames, who plays the role of the enigmatic gang boss Marsellus Wallace. It's a terrific performance, and best of all, it's in service of a character that develops in unexpected ways and shows surprising depths. It didn't make Rhames a household name, but it did make him an instantly recognizable property in ever-fickle Hollywood, and he made the most of it.

OUT OF SIGHT (1998)

His appearances in the Mission: Impossible movies got him more money and more attention, but Ving Rhames' best role at the tail end of the 1990s was in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight. One of the director's best (and least-appreciated) films, its Elmore Leonard script relies on moments of character and telling dialogue to carry it rather than big plot twists, and Rhames understands that perfectly in the understated role of Buddy Bragg. Cast against type (most people would have predicted him to get the role that eventually went to Don Cheadle), Rhames handles his quiet, solid role to near-perfection, surrounded by a top-notch cast of outstanding actors.