FILM REVIEW: BESIDE STILL WATERS

A "Whiskey Slap" scene in Beside Still Waters.

Drunk slap love

By Miranda Inganni

A group of friends gather for a final weekend at Daniel's (Ryan Eggold) recently departed parents' lake house in Chris Lowell's flick, Beside Still Waters. Drunken revelry ensues.

Despite having been close as kids, the clique has not convened since high school, not even for Daniels's parents' funeral. Self-pitying Daniel, who insists that he is fine with his parents' accidental (potentially violent) deaths, reunites the whole (easily categorized) gang: Tom (Beck Bennett), the class clown -- gay, drunk joker recently fired from his dad's law firm; Martin (Will Brill) and Abby (Erin Darke), the high school sweethearts -- unhappily married couple who are not having sex; Charley (Jessy Hodges), the bohemian --  fun-loving, free spirited, "anything goes" hippie chick; James (Brett Dalton), mister popular -- the Porsche-driving star of a crappy "reality" show; and Olivia (Britt Lower), the object of Daniel's unrequited love, and her fiancé, Henry (Reid Scott).

Using Henry as the fall guy (obviously he is a bad person, as he stole Daniel's true love and must be punished and stopped!), the gang gets extremely wasted, playing a terrible sounding and violent "game" called whiskey slaps, capturing the moments on Super 8 film, skinny dipping, etc. How they do not all end up drowned or in the hospital I do not know. Old flames are rekindled and crushes re-explored. Feelings are hurt. Relationships are damaged. But like most mainstream ensemble buddy movies, it all works out in the end.

Look, the acting is fine, the writing (by Lowell and Mohit Narang) is commendable in parts (I admit I chuckled here and there), namely the genuinely cleverly written/edited scene recollecting the previous night's adventures. But there are some oversights too. After Olivia yells at Daniel to stop acting like a child, he goes out and follows in his father's footsteps, or, more accurately, car tracks. Not exactly a mature way to handle his emotions. It would have been nice (and responsible!) if some mention had been made about alcoholism (a disease that, according to the NCAAD, affects over 17 million Americans) and the effects it can have. I am not asking for some preachy conversion conversation, but it goes completely unrecognized.

Read More

FILM REVIEW: NON-STOP

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) in Non-Stop.

Flight fight

By John Esther

Bill Marks (Liam Neeson) is a guy who starts the day with some booze mixed in with his coffee. You can tell he is sad by the way he carries himself, his lack of grooming and just his general disposition toward other people – in person or on the phone. He not the sort of person you want to be around and you certainly would not like him to be in charge of many lives.

However, as a U.S. Marshall who travels the skyways protecting passengers from terrorists, he is just that. Bill can carry a gun on a plane and he can arrest people, too. Apparently, torture is acceptable for Bill as well. The fact Bill is afraid of the ascension of planes from terra firma only lowers ones confidence in him. Fortunately, the woman next to him, Jen (Julianne Moore), is there to comfort Bill on their way to London.

Of course, the comfort is short lived as Bill starts receiving text messages from an anonymous source who says he will kill a passenger on Bill's plane every 20 minutes until a ransom is paid.

As passengers start to die, doubts, as well as suspicions about Bill’s ability to perform his duties rise while the survivor of the passengers on the plane descends. Bill is being framed, but who can or will believe him? All clues point to the safety guy as the actuall terrorist.

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Non-Stop plays itself out in unspectacular fashion. While many of the passengers suspect Bill, we the audience know he is innocent, so we are going to go right on rooting for our protagonist until he redeems himself in front of the rest of the world. Along the way, one must overlook a lot of implausibility before enduring an absurd explanation from the really bad guy in the film.
 

Read More

FILM REVIEW: THE SPECTACULAR NOW

Sutter (Miles Teller) and  Aimee (Shailene Woodley in The Spectacular Now.

Some finer drops

By Don Simpson

Despite its ability to break down the social and class barriers between Aimee (Shailene Woodley) and Sutter (Miles Teller), we can only assume that alcohol — or Sutter’s immaturity — will eventually come between them. Something horrible seems to be lingering on their horizon, but there is no way of knowing exactly what it is. I found myself mentally preparing for something horrible to happen, because it just seems like one of those films; the kind that requires a horrible tragedy in order to redeem and/or save its protagonist(s).

For a few moments, director James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now goes the way of The Christmas Story, as Sutter is able to glimpse a future version of himself. If Sutter continues down his current path, there is an extremely high probability that he will end up a lot like the failure of a man who is sitting across the table from him; but even this experience is not enough to shake some sense into Sutter.

It is the incredibly powerful final act that really puts the “wow!” into The Spectacular Now. This is a story that could go a million different ways, but the conclusion abides by the same surprisingly high level of realism that commands the rest of the film.

The Spectacular Now serves as an impressive treatise on teen alcoholism and the social pressures found in high school. Certainly more effective than any of those horrendous alcohol and drug-related videos that they show in school assemblies, The Spectacular Now might actually make teenagers think before taking too many drinks.

Read More

THEATER REVIEW: END OF THE RAINBOW



Judy Garland (Tracie Bennet) in End of the Rainbow.

 Live at Rainbow's End

By Ed Rampell

The star playing Judy Garland (Tracie Bennett), playwright (Peter Quilter) and director (Terry Johnson) of the Tony Award nominated End of the Rainbow are all Brits, and this Judy Garland bio-play is appropriately set in London.

After a series of show biz and personal setbacks, Garland sought a career reboot there in 1968. The action takes place in Garland’s suite -- which, the diva repeatedly gripes, is too munchkin sized -- at the Ritz Hotel and the Talk of the Town nightclub, with the sets convincingly designed by William Dudley. Although this is the sizzling sixties at the swinging London town of Sgt. Peppers and the Rolling Stones, Garland -- who’d become a movie star 30 years earlier in Love Finds Andy Hardy and The Wizard of Oz -- still commands a loyal following.

But offstage -- and sometimes on- -- the oft-married Garland is beset by personal demons, bedeviled by financial problems and relationship woes. Worst of all, Garland is in the grips of alcoholism and an addiction to amphetamines and barbiturates that greatly heighten her torment, whether performing in public before a nightclub or radio audience or in the privacy of her quarters.

The gay icon’s fifth husband to be, Mickey Deans (Erik Heiger), is a former club owner and jazz pianist who seeks to control Judy’s substance abuse -- and possibly the out-of-control Garland herself. It’s interesting that toward the end of her life Garland hooked up with a beau who bore the same first name as Mickey Rooney, her co-star in nine Andy Hardy movies. Was this handsome lounge singer a dozen years younger than Garland really in love with her or using Judy as his meal ticket?

The star’s gay pianist, Anthony (Michael Cumpsty), thinks so, and there is even an allusion to Mickey’s writing a book about Garland in order to cash in (indeed, Deans' co-authored 1972’s Weep No More, My Lady). As Anthony and Mickey duel over Garland’s well-being, performances and affections, there’s an exchange about Judy’s gay fans that’s brief but intriguing.

The self-absorbed Garland is alternately touching, lusty, witty, desperate and pathetic during the offstage scenes at the Ritz. While trodding the boards at the Talk of the Town, accompanied (when they can follow her!) by a live five piece band, the onetime superstar alternates between the commanding stage presence of a truly immense talent and a drug addled performer one step away from becoming a has been, as the years and decades of substance abuse catch up with her, along with an unfulfilled private life.

Bennett’s Garland is often salty; she slings some humorous zingers about her sex life (or lack of) with husband Vincent Minnelli, and more. (In the play there’s little if any mention of Liza Minnelli, the daughter she had with this director.) In the interests of full disclosure this reviewer/film historian should reveal he is no expert in all things Judy, but having said that it seems that Bennett does a superb job incarnating -- rather than merely “impersonating” -- a 46-ish year old Garland. Bennett, who’s the right age for the role, seems to capture and express Judy’s mannerisms and movements, minus any trace of Tracie’s English accent. The actress also looks remarkably like Garland, who in her post-Dorothy years was no conventional beauty. Most importantly, Bennett can belt out a tune worthy of the character she is inhabiting and depicting. Bennett’s portrayal is nothing short of uncanny.

However, End of the Rainbow shares a problem with other biopics/bioplays that portray the later years of actual historical personages, such as the 2000 film Pollock starring Ed Harris as action painter Jackson Pollock. The playwright does not provide enough back story for viewers unfamiliar with the subjects being depicted to explain their self destructive behavior. In Quilter’s script there is only a very brief allusion to Judy’s youth that explains where her drug habit began, but there needs to be a bit more info for the uninitiated and younger auds. After all, Garland became a star back in the 1930s and died more than 40 years ago.

Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics of Judy’s signature tune, “Over the Rainbow” and other songs in the beloved 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz (a blockbuster spin off was just released), was a socialist who was later blacklisted. In that spirit, it would have been interesting to pursue the angle of Louis B. Mayer, MGM and even Judy’s mom mercilessly exploiting the labor of this phenomenal child artist, using uppers and downers to squeeze every drop of talent and sweat out of her during her waking moments. Indeed, this lifelong drug addiction enabled the studio powers that be to control the singer-actress part of her life, and arguably to ruin the rest. Although this aspect of exploitation is raised vis-à-vis the Mickey Deans character, and how he comes to cope with her addictions to love and substances, the playwright could have more fully explored this theme in End of the Rainbow.

I mean, how is a star of screen, clubs, live concerts, television and recordings reduced to avoiding a hotel manager in order to beat bills? As great as Bennett’s live numbers performed during the nightclub scenes are -- and her singing and hoofing is worthy of Garland in all her glory -- End of the Rainbow is a cautionary tale. Fame is no substitute for a rewarding personal life offstage and offscreen, with loving family, friends, lovers/spouses. For Garland, celebrity and adulation proved to be empty intoxicants: There was no man behind the curtain for troubled Judy. Like amphetamines, renown may give one a temporary perk and high, but being a legend cannot replace the need for flesh and blood true love.

Why is it that the happiness some artists give to so many eludes them? You’d have to be a Tin Man with no heart to not be moved by this dramatization of the last days of the late, not-so-great Judy Garland.


End of the Rainbow runs through April 21 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90012. For more info: www.centertheatregroup.org/; 213/972-4400.

 

    

Read More

FILM REVIEW: ROADIE

Roadie (Ron Eldard) in Roadie.

White lined fervor

By Don Simpson

Jimmy Testagross (Ron Eldard) — the eponymous protagonist of Michael Cuesta’s Roadie — is a 40-something guy from Queens with an unfortunate last name (that earned him the childhood nickname of “Jimmy Testicles”) who has tirelessly schlepped Blue Öyster Cult’s gear for 26 years, a thankless career if ever there was one. While on the subject of thankless, BOC is leaving for a tour of South America soon, and Jimmy is getting the runaround from the band’s manager. It seems the washed-up band is leaving their washed-up roadie behind.

After dedicating over half of his life to BOC, Jimmy has no friends to speak of and nowhere to go. As Jimmy drifts hopelessly towards destitute poverty, he is drawn closer and closer to his childhood home. But Queens is not a happy place for Jimmy; he “escaped” it for good reason. His high school buddies — the same Neanderthal numskulls such as Bobby (Bobby Canavale) who christened him “Jimmy Testicles” — who stayed behind seem uneducated, adventureless and ambitionless to Jimmy. Bobby is exactly who Jimmy has rebelled against; guys like him are the exact reason he abandoned Queens many years ago. What makes matters worse is that Jimmy’s high school sweetheart, Nikki (Jill Hennessy), married Bobby. How could she settle for someone like him?

As is often the case for those of us who purposefully moved away from his or her childhood neighborhoods and dread any return visits, Jimmy’s first means of escape from this harsh reality is alcohol — and lots of it. Reconnecting with Nikki and Bobby further escalates Jimmy’s self-destructive behavior by adding cocaine to his dangerous recipe of escapism.

Roadie accurately represents the conflict between those who have “escaped” their childhood homes and those who chose to stay behind. Cuesta’s dedication to the gritty authenticity of his subject is quite impressive and his casting of Eldard as Jimmy turns out to be divinely inspired.

Read More