All Good Things

“All Good Things” proves a tricky film to review. It’s hard to say it’s enjoyable, because it’s not. It’s hard to say it’s bad, because it’s not, “All Good Things” is a fairly predictable story of one man, David Marks, descent into insanity.

All the big moments in this film are marked with a big ole cliché-o-meter. The second we see Kirstin Dunst smile at Ryan Gosling, the entire audience knows she’s dying. If you don’t, you haven’t seen enough movies.

David’s tumble into madness features the usual road stops. He gets violent then apologizes, he takes it out on the adorable dog, we see him sit, disaffected, in his office as the day passes him by, naturally in time lapse. We even get the “ole’ brunette wearing a blonde wig as a disguise trick”. We’ve all been here. I mean, save for the performances, this script could have found its way to Lifetime Movie Network with a catchy title like “Heir to Murder”.

Movies like this need to be about the journey, not the conclusion. Characters need to pop and be interesting and compelling, speak to more than one note, and we only really get that from Ryan Gosling’s character, David, who is pretty messed up, talks to himself, routinely smokes doobie, and, when young, witnessed his mother commit suicide while his father casually watched on. Other than that particular character note, everything else seems like it was written off the cuff.

Take for example the opening scene, we see an SUV park near a bridge in the wee hours of the morning. Throughout the film, we cut to what appears to be a woman taking out a bloody jigsaw and trash bags filled with body parts, and dropping them into the lake. This scene is misleading in about 3 different ways, and when the big twist came 75 percent of the way into the movie, I laughed out loud.

But, here’s the kicker. It’s a true story. It tells us this up front, too, so while all these annoying, awful, been-there-done-that, events happen, they’re tainted with a “Don’t’ blame us, it happened it this way” vibe, that left me itching to get to my computer to fact check reality versus fiction.

And as it turns out the reality is fairly different from the fiction, names and events were changed, and a great deal of the film is entirely speculation, thus allowing me to say with a clear conscience that the clichés such as hair pulling and Oedipus complexes are tired.

See, docudramas have a tricky road to hoe. In a similar fictionalized true story like “The Social Network” where everyone knows what’s going to happen, the movie entertains us by giving us character moments, giving us depth to the proceedings, and battering us with subtext.

“All Good Things” seems content to just throw us a twist or two. I envision the screen writer sitting in the back of a theater on premier night, eagerly rubbing his hands together, excited to exclaim “Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?” every chance he got as the film chugga chuggaed to it’s wholly unsatisfying conclusion that kind of made me wish I had read the wikipedia article instead of seeing the movie.

However, the performances nearly save the film, and it’s wonderfully acted. Kirstin Dunst redeems herself in my eyes from just a wretched performance in Spider-Man 3 a few years back. Frank Langella makes a one note character compelling, and Ryan Gosling follows up “Lars and The Real Girl” with a performance that’s, well…unsettling.

“Unsettling” is this movie’s soon to be forgotten legacy. While the cliché’s and melodrama are scoff worthy, the reality presented in the film nests in your brain because it’s real.

“All Good Things” will force you to ponder the last twenty minutes of the film, while leaving the theater. Then, when walking down the sidewalk, kind of creeped out, afraid to make eye contact with strangers or bus drivers, too busy wondering about the things a diseased mind is capable of, you’ll realize “All Good Things” got under your skin. I’m just not sure you want it there.

Little Fockers Focking Awful.

Hi, my name is Ben Stiller. I’m a wonderfully talented comedian, but I’m also so much more. I directed both “Reality Bites” and the tragically underrated “Tropic Thunder”. I like to play characters blinded by their ego, and have done so wonderfully in films like “Zoolander” and “Starsky and Hutch” and horrified a generation of fat kids in “Heavyweights”, and oh yeah, I’m stuck in the worst comedy of the year, “Little Fockers”.

It’s hard to hate me though, don’t you think? Look at all the talent I’ve surrounded myself with. Robert DeNiro, Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman, Owen Wilson, my goodness, you could film those folks waiting for a bus and be pretty darn entertained! Isn’t that right Tom Cruise?

The movie’s directed by this guy Chris Weitz, who’s actually pretty darn talented. He and his brother, Paul Weitz, wrote and directed “American Pie”, which was possibly the best comedy of the 90’s, and struck such a balance between gross out humor and genuine heart, that those hilarious Apatow folks wouldn’t be around without it. Surely good ole Chris Weitz would be able to find that balance here considering our all-star cast. What? Paul’s the talented one? Stupid IMDB.

We have boner jokes. Yep! I even stick DeNiro in the wang with a needle! Please laugh. Oh! Owen Wilson makes out with Babs for a second! I mean, that’s *awesome* right? There’s Jessica Alba being all bubbly then suddenly being some sort of drug addicted sex-crazed psychopath. Helllllo shocking plot twist.

I mean, it’s not like “Meet The Fockers” was the greatest thing since Yentl soup (Pun!) or anything, but at least it had some great laugh out loud moments involving a foul mouthed baby, and my character’s foreskin getting lost in fondue! And DeNiro wearing a boob is worth the price of admission alone!

And we tried with this one. We really did. There’s a little bit of everything for you. There’s some vomiting, blood splatter, penis jokes, heck, we even dumped an entire truck full of sand on Robert DeNiro! Crazy! Sand! DeNiro! The guy from “The GodFather part II”! In case you forgot that, we remind you via musical cues, and in-jokes every 2-3 minutes.

Heck, the flick is even about how my character, Gaylord Focker (haha, Gay Focker), is selected to become the family’s “GodFocker” by DeNiro. Get it? Because it DeNiro was in “The Godfather (part 2)” and Focker sounds like…nevermind.

The “plot” centers on how everyone from the past 218 focking minutes of this franchise comes into town for my kids’ birthday party. That’s right, no awkward meeting or culture clash this time! Instead we replace it with family friendly gross out humor. Well, not really family friendly because of all the boners, anal probing and “Oh Shitting” going on. And not really humor because no one in the theater was laughing.

So, that said, I’m as baffled as you are at the waste of talent and celluloid that is “Little Fockers”. Get it? Cause Fockers kind of sounds kind of like…nevermind.

Tangled

Disney has had some hits and misses with animated films in recent memory. Sure, the mighty house of mouse made “Beauty and The Beast” “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” but “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was sad, “Pocahontas” was oddly animated, “Hercules” was grotesque, and “Mulan” was lacking in song quality. The less said about “Home on The Range” the better.

So Disney went to CGI animated films and tried to play catch up to Pixar. The results thus far have been mixed. “Meet the Robinsons” was cute, “Bolt” was adorable, “Chicken Little” was middling, and nothing really captured the 90's magic.

Last year, Disney went back to the well and released “The Princess and The Frog,” which was bad. The songs were awkward, the movie boring, and it seemed like Disney was marketing the movie on it's southern setting and minority characters instead of the story of songs. Baffling.

So here is Tangled opening November 24th, a delightful reimagineering of Rapunzel. Starting with a curious bit of narration which leads us to believe a main character will bite the dust, the movie really kicks off with a whimsical song by Mandy Moore who lends her voice and mannerisms to Rapunzel. Rapunzel yearns to leave the tower on her 18th birthday and witness the floating lanterns that light up the sky every year. Her mother refuses. Eventually, a thief, Flinn, stumbles upon the tower and they embark on a journey to see the lights.

For me the sign of a good animated Disney film are the songs. If a song underwhelms you in a musical, odds are the talking bits will too. Though the audio in my theater was a little low, the songs were charming and the rousing. The “We Have Dreams” production number is up there with “Be Our Guest” and “Friend Like Me” in terms of awesome toe tapping, fist pumping dance numbers with a universal message to boot. Inexplicably, Looking at the promotional materials for the film I had no idea it was a musical.

I loved it. I was enthralled. It brought old school to the new school. I loved the singing vikings. I loved the action set pieces. I loved the chameleon that is destined to be a color changing bath toy. I loved the horse that acted like a dog. I loved the love story. I loved the songs. I loved that Rapunzel used her hair in a way that evoked the coolest parts of Spider-man. I loved that the movie wasn't set in freakin' New Orleans. I loved it was more buddy comedy than love story. This movie is Temple of Doom meets Laura Croft meets Prince of Persia meets Spider-man. Which is to say it is at once familiar, and wholly originally at the same time. See this movie, bring your kids, your grandparents your second cousin, and that neighbor that smells funny. The songs are good, the villains are scary, and the jokes are funny. What more could you ask for? It's lacking the emotional punch of a film like Toy Story 3 or Wall-E, but it's a darn good time, and the magic is back.