BOTTOM LINE: Effing funny and freakishly relatable (at first, anyway). This play is a prime example that high-quality downtown theatre does still exist.
If one were to see a play called The Bereaved, written by a playwright named Thomas Bradshaw, one might expect a solemn tale; = perhaps a depressing story about death or coping with loss. One could not be more wrong. The Bereaved is indeed a story about death, a broken family, and coping with tragedy. But it’s also hysterically funny in an “I can’t believe that just happened” kind of way. The audience laughs in spite of itself, and very quickly the humor trumps anything intrinsically sad.
The premise is really quite depressing: Carol (McKenna Kerrigan) is a high-powered Manhattan attorney-slash-wife-and-mother. She suffers a heart attack and spends the subsequent weeks in the hospital. During that time, she makes sure to finalize plans for her family so that when she dies (she’s not optimistic about her recovery) her part-time professor husband Michael (Andrew Garman) and 15-year-old son Teddy (Vincent Madero) will be cared for. As Carol anticipates the end, her family and best friend Katy (KK Moggie) try to cope with the situation. And it’s perhaps in those coping mechanisms that they lose sight of any responsible decision.
The Bereaved is an appreciated theatrical mindfuck that holds the audience’s attention; you think you’re seeing one play and it turns out to be another. As the characters disengage from reality, you wonder if they were always batshit extremists or if their situation is a result of their trauma. The tale Bradshaw weaves builds brilliantly: at the beginning the story is relatable, albeit on an extreme level. But as it unfolds, the characters unhinge and their antics, once quirky, exaggerate to the unpredictable. This provides for tremendously fun storytelling as the absurdity escalates and the audience wonders what could possibly happen next.
The Uninvited has recently come out on DVD, and if you choose to watch it, several other words with an “un-” prefix may wander into your mind. You’ll find the film Uninteresting, and the DVD will quickly become Unwanted and Unwelcome by you or anyone within your household. Viewing it, you’ll find yourself Unwilling to become involved in this very Unwatchable film.
A bastardized remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited stars Australian actress Emily Browning (Ghost Ship, Lemony Snicket’s ASeries of Unfortunate Events) as American teen Anna, recently released from a sanitarium after she attempted suicide following her mother’s death in a tragic boathouse explosion (seriously). She returns home to find her older sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), still angered by Anna’s supposed “abandonment” — while kid sis was away, their dad, Steven (David Strathairn), started banging the hot live-in nanny, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), to help cope with his grief.
At times, the world runs on our differences more than our similarities. Everyone has their favorite directors, and of course there are those who dispute their choices. For every lover of Spielberg, Lucas, Aronofsky or Coppola, there’s someone who can’t stand anything from their bodies of work. The arguments which ensue are part of what keeps life interesting.
Although I’ve liked some of the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, I’ve never been a particular fan of theirs. That said, I loved the entirety of their 2007 Academy Award winner No Country for Old Men…at least, until the last 20 minutes.
No Country for Old Men is about to be re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray this coming Tuesday, both complete with a massive slew of extras and a limited edition digital copy of the film. Although I’ll argue until the end of my days that Gone Baby Gone should have taken the Oscar for ‘07 (based on my own personal belief in the quality of its emotional and dramatic satisfaction), I can’t deny that No Country is one hell of a powerful and disturbing film.
Adapted by the Coens from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, the story tells the tale of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a man who one day happens upon the aftermath of a bloody disagreement between a group of drug dealers and their clients near the U.S.-Mexico border, and finds a satchel of money with no survivors to claim it. However, higher-ups involved in the drug trade send their personal Hand of Vengeance, the remorseless killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) to recover their cash. Chigurh will kill anyone–anyone–who gets in his way, and as Moss goes on the run, the local law enforcer Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) becomes involved in trying to find a way to track down and save Moss, while attempting to figure out how he’ll ever deal with Chigurh…a new type of evil which Bell doesn’t understand, and isn’t sure he’s prepared to face.
No Country for Old Men is a rare breed of film: it’s entirely unpredictable from beginning to end, has a powerful cast underpinning an unusually strong script, takes the bold risk of having virtually no incidental music whatsoever (whereas most drama-thrillers of this ilk tend to use their scores to manipulate the audience’s feelings every step of the way) and is a tense treatise on the inevitability of fate, the unfairness of how people meet their end, and living–or dying–with the consequences of the choices we make. (more…)
As a culture, Americans may not have the most difficulty absorbing death — we don’t have any widows throwing themselves on burning pyres, after all — but we certainly aren’t the most well-adjusted people when it comes to contemplating the end of the end. And although we aren’t the only country to enact laws forbidding assisted suicide — I’m reasonably certain it’s illegal in most countries — we have devoted a substantial amount of public discussion to the subject, and as Jack Kevorkian could tell you, it makes a lot of people awfully uncomfortable.
It’s into this climate that Jack West releases The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides, a memoir of his experiences with the planned deaths of his terminally ill parents. About 10 years ago, in a spectacularly painful convergence of shitty luck, West’s father and mother both discovered they were approaching death — and in a bit of even shittier luck, they both asked West to help them arrange their final exits. It’s an incredible story, but it’s true, and whatever your feelings about helping someone die, The Last Goodnights adds something valuable to the conversation.
West’s father, a prominent psychiatrist and UCLA faculty member who has his own Wikipedia entry and whose death made the obituary papers in the Los Angeles and New York Times, was a larger-than-life figure — he sparred with Scientologists, marched with Martin Luther King, examined Patty Hearst, and was one of the first American doctors to bring attention to the treatment of South African prisoners under apartheid — and from West’s loving-yet-unvarnished description of “Jolly’s” life, it isn’t hard to understand why he’d want to end it on his own terms, especially after being diagnosed with late-stage cancer.
Not long after agreeing to help his father end his own life, West learns that his mother has similar plans; she’s suffering from emphysema, mid-stage Alzheimer’s, and other ailments, and makes it known that she wants to make this decision while she’s still capable of making any at all. (more…)
Gran Torino finally opened to wide release this weekend, and rapidly earned the number one spot at the box office.
It deserves every single dollar it’s made.
Many have been calling it a type of Dirty Harry film, harking back to the old days when director/star Clint Eastwood (Million Dollar Baby, Changeling) ran around as Callahan, asking punks if they felt lucky before blowing a hole in them with his .44 Magnum. Indeed, the trailers make it seem as if Gran Torino is a last hurrah action film for Eastwood, before he takes his final bow somewhere down the line.
The truth is, Gran Torino is not an action film by any true meaning of the word. Yes, there is action in it, but it’s action not just for the sake of showing some blood and violence; it’s organically grown from the storyline, from the result of consequences brought about by the acts and doings of the characters within the film. In short, Gran Torino is a character piece about an irascible Korean War vet who also happens to be an unrepentant bigot, who doesn’t exactly learn the error of his ways, but learns that some people he hates are better than others, and chooses–just as he did in the war–to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.
It’s an impressive and important thing that Gran Torino is an Eastwood starrer. In many ways, it has to be: the thought of a 78 year-old man going head-on against youthful gang members would be laughable had any other actor played the lead…but because it’s Eastwood, the man who virtually invented scowling, whose fed-up cop Callahan beat the path for all other “loose cannon” cops to follow in his footsteps… the suspension of disbelief necessary to invest in the film not only clicks on automatically, it’s maintained throughout the film without one instance of being lost. Eastwood’s steely gaze, the simmering quiver in his jaw and a patented growl that might very well have belonged to Wolverine’s father, provides much of the dramatic forewarning and humor–yes, there is well-placed humor to be found–for the majority of the picture. (more…)
Before we begin, allow me to state for the record that I hate remakes. With very rare exceptions, they tend to be lifeless, pale imitations of the classics which came before them.
The remake of the 1951 classic The Day The Earth StoodStill does nothing to change my perceptions of Hollywood’s latest runaway trend.
Set in New York instead of Washington D.C., the film focuses on the arrival of Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), an alien who comes to Earth with an ultimatum for mankind. Before he can even finish assembling his true form in front of an astonished gathered military force, a soldier shoots him, nearly killing him. He’s taken to a military academy for study, where one of the scientists allowed to observe him as he is operated upon and allowed to heal is astrobiologist Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly). When Regina Jackson (Kathy Bates), the Secretary of Defense, arrives with agents in tow and declares that Klaatu is a prisoner of the government and is to be interrogated, Benson finds a measure of empathy for him and rather than dope him up, gives him a harmless saline injection which allows him to retain enough of his faculties to escape. Once he does–eventually reuniting with both Helen and her estranged stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith)–it’s up to Helen to keep him from being recaptured and, once Klaatu’s dire intentions are known to her, prove to him that humans deserve the chance to evolve, rather than be destroyed.
Aside from some minor character changes, so far it seems that The Day The Earth StoodStill follows closely in the footsteps of its predecessor (that original film inspired by the short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates…no relation to Kathy). As with all remakes, however, the proof is in the execution… and as executed by director Scott Derrickson (Love in the Ruins, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and writer David Scarpa (only previous credit: The LastCastle), this retelling of the tale is slow-paced, bland, boring as hell, nonsensical in many parts, and is, in many ways, an outright insult to the original. (more…)
The premise is really quite depressing: Carol (McKenna Kerrigan) is a high-powered Manhattan attorney-slash-wife-and-mother. She suffers a heart attack and spends the subsequent weeks in the hospital. During that time, she makes sure to finalize plans for her family so that when she dies (she’s not optimistic about her recovery) her part-time professor husband Michael (Andrew Garman) and 15-year-old son Teddy (Vincent Madero) will be cared for. As Carol anticipates the end, her family and best friend Katy (KK Moggie) try to cope with the situation. And it’s perhaps in those coping mechanisms that they lose sight of any responsible decision.
A bastardized remake of the Korean film A Tale of Two Sisters, The Uninvited stars Australian actress Emily Browning (Ghost Ship, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events) as American teen Anna, recently released from a sanitarium after she attempted suicide following her mother’s death in a tragic boathouse explosion (seriously). She returns home to find her older sister, Alex (Arielle Kebbel), still angered by Anna’s supposed “abandonment” — while kid sis was away, their dad, Steven (David Strathairn), started banging the hot live-in nanny, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), to help cope with his grief.
At times, the world runs on our differences more than our similarities. Everyone has their favorite directors, and of course there are those who dispute their choices. For every lover of Spielberg, Lucas, Aronofsky or Coppola, there’s someone who can’t stand anything from their bodies of work. The arguments which ensue are part of what keeps life interesting.
John West – The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents with Their Suicides (2009, Counterpoint)
Gran Torino finally opened to wide release this weekend, and rapidly earned the number one spot at the box office.
Before we begin, allow me to state for the record that I hate remakes. With very rare exceptions, they tend to be lifeless, pale imitations of the classics which came before them.