Wilson and Sudeikis play a couple of over-40 pals who are so unhappy with their sex lives that their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) grant them the title pass, basically a week off from marriage during which the guys are free to have sex with other women.

To appease the teen boys and college guys, the brothers throw in plenty of the kind of gross-out moments they’re known for–male and female nudity, a woman spraying diarrhea on a shower wall, Sudeikis getting caught by cops doing something he shouldn’t in a minivan–plus plenty of explicit talk about sex and such.

But they balance out the outrageous stuff with surprisingly meaningful writing and by having situations play out a little differently than you might expect. This goes mainly for the relationships that develop between Wilson and a hot Australian girl (Nicky Whelan) and Fischer and an older man (Bruce Thomas), as well as Applegate’s flirtation with a college-age baseball player (Tyler Hoechlin).

As well the brothers make sure all the characters are interesting, even the supporting ones, like Whelan’s coffeehouse co-worker (Derek Waters), Wilson and Fischer’s twenty-something babysitter (Alexandra Daddario), and the forty-something woman (Kristin Carey) who seduces Sudeikis. Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) plays what is easily the funniest character, a fifty-something playa who gives the guys advice on how to pick up women.

The main cast is what makes the movie really work, though. Wilson is unexpectedly affecting as the practical pal with middle-age worries, and his speech about the spot on his chest where his wife and kids have all fallen asleep is the film’s emotional highlight. Sudeikis deftly delivers laughs with his perpetual potty mouth and desperate attempts to get lucky, while Applegate is adequate and Fischer simply shines, especially during the nicely-handled scenes in which she’s charmed by said older guy.

If you just want laughs, there are plenty of them, including Wilson imagining the consequences of buying said babysitter some beer; a pompous guy boasting about his Prius, which is parked next to a Hummer; Wilson and Sudeikis being oblivious to the security cameras as they walk around said guy’s new house; the use of the “Law & Order” chime as each hall-pass day starts; Sudeikis wearing a strange mask to help him sleep; the guys going to Chili’s to find women; and pal Stephen Merchant’s hilarious envisioning of what would happen if he had a hall pass. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

The Concert

This kind of comedy is actually more typical of Britain than of France these days, resembling the likes of The Full Monty, Kinky Boots, and Pirate Radio. It’s still very much a French film, despite the predominantly Russian cast. The top billed performer in the film is Mélanie Laurent, best known Stateside as the charmingly vengeful Shosanna Dreyfus from Tarantino‘s Inglourious Basterds. As Anne-Marie Jacquet, the star violinist headlining the Paris concert, she is, at face value, more of a supporting player. Yet she all but steals the film in its final act, which packed a considerably heftier emotional punch than I expected after all the silliness in the first half.

I think most people will enjoy The Concert–it’s an earnest if fanciful crowd-pleaser. Fans of classical music, particularly Tchaikovsky lovers, will appreciate the main event. Those of you who, like me, were smitten with Ms. Laurent in Basterds will find her just as bewitching here. For a film that begins as such a wacky farce, it has a surprisingly potent and satisfying emotional climax. As rickety and clumsy as its construction may be, it reaches its destination in the end. – [DVD]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

It features Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo as a trio of people who, along with a young boy (Jacob Latimore), struggle to survive a freaky end-of-the-world scenario in which shadows seemingly come alive and cause people to vanish into thin air, leaving behind their clothes. As long as the group is bathed in some kind of illumination, the shadows can’t get them.

As he did in Session 9 and The Machinist, Anderson eschews gore in favor of mood, effectively creating a surreal sense of dread, from Christensen discovering empty city streets and watching a passenger jet crash to the ground, to the way the shadows whisper as they slither about or close in on a survivor. Not to mention the anxiety you feel every time the lights flicker, which is a lot. The only instance of actual gore is when Newton happens upon a man who was in the middle of being operated on.

It helps that the characters aren’t as irritating as they usually are in apocalyptic thrillers, though they’re also not that well-defined. They each have their traits–Christensen’s selfish but has a heart; Leguizamo’s a shy conspiracy nut–and I suppose that’s enough to make us root for their survival. Newton makes the best impression, I think, as a woman who lost her baby to the writhing darkness.

I imagine it will irk some that we never get a real explanation as to what’s going on, just various theories (one emphasized a little more than the others) bandied about by the characters, as well as Christensen’s ominous observation that each day the sun rises a little later and sets a little earlier. I myself didn’t quite understand the part where Leguizamo walks down an underground tunnel. Nonetheless, if you’re not already afraid of the dark, you probably will be after watching this. – [DVD]

Horror/Mystery/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/17/11

Blue Valentine

So that brings us to Blue Valentine. This movie was widely acclaimed as one of the best of 2010. The story is simple. It’s about the breakdown of a marriage. I’m told that it’s a little depressing, but I am never depressed by a well-made, provocative, and artful film. Cindy (Michelle Williams), is bright, pretty, and has dreams of going to medical school. Dean (Ryan Gosling) is a high school dropout whose mother split when he was young, and who now works for a moving company. You’re beginning to get the picture? They’re kind of mismatched, but they meet, have a romantic interlude, she dances and he plays the ukulele, and through pregnancy and destiny, they end up together. We get glimpses of the couple during various phases of their relationship – the film is edited with cross cutting over time periods, and in this way, the viewer understands their back story without the typical chronological order of most narratives. Credit Jim Helton, along with the other editor, Ron Patane, for not only making this style work, but for also enhancing how the story unfolds.

Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams got multiple award nominations, and Michelle got the Oscar nod. I really think that Ryan’s contribution to this film was equal to that of Michelle. His Dean is a familiar character – he’s playful, loyal, very boyish, and he drinks and smokes too much. A very telling line in the movie comes when Cindy, frustrated with what she perceives as Dean’s lack of ambition, asks him if he doesn’t ever think about having a job where he doesn’t have to drink at 8 am. Dean retorts that the fact that he can drink at 8 am is actually a great “benefit” of his painting job. He is hugely devoted to their daughter, Frankie, and he’s the kind of guy that cries over the loss of a dog, and bonds immediately with the other guys at work. Ryan totally inhabits this character. It’s a pleasure to watch him. He’s an actor with great range, and we have seen that he was as effective in Lars and the Real Girl as he was in Half Nelson. He imbues Dean with a soft vulnerability that is somehow and magically melded seamlessly with his blue-collar sensibility. We’re not given a tremendous amount of detail about how their love devolves. This is really my one gripe with the movie: not quite enough linkage of how the couple went from spark to lights out. I could have used more proof about why Cindy was over Dean, because in spite of his flaws, I romanticized him and was rooting for him. Of course, I didn’t have to live with him. But instead, Michelle delivers an achingly delicate, subtly breathtaking performance, totally complex in its simplicity and not readily definable. Her turn as Wendy in Wendy and Lucy could draw a comparison, but here, in Blue Valentine, she’s even more like a painting that invites interpretation.

Add great music (you’ll know Grizzly Bear after this film) and some great sets – bridges, buses, store entrances, and the best one: the Future Room in a cheapo motel where Dean hopes to reach back to the love and the sex that attracted them at first. And speaking of sex, there are a couple of somewhat graphic scenes—graphic enough to warrant the threat of an NC-17 rating, which was eventually and thankfully overturned in favor of an R rating.

There’s so much more. We see the portrayal of family relationships, a chance encounter between Cindy and her old boyfriend, the smarmy doctor offering Cindy a new “position”, and the initial meeting point of Cindy and Dean—Cindy visiting her grandma in a retirement home while Dean is moving in an elderly gentleman. This is one of the most poignant scenes of the film. I could go on and on, but before a spoiler occurs here, I’ll just say a big “See it”, and think of Derek behind the counter years ago at Video Station. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/10/11

I don’t like him. Can you really blame me?

I did, however, end up liking No Strings Attached. The story of “friends with benefits” and how it never actually works, with Natalie Portman as a medical intern, and Ashton Kutcher as a Hollywood production assistant/fledgling writer. After Kutcher ends up at Portman’s house after a debaucherous night, they make their no-love-just-sex arrangement.

It is at this point you stop caring about the main characters for a bit, because you know it’s going to get “complicated.” Kevin Kline as the hard-partying-fomer-tv-star dad was the point where I warmed up a little bit to the movie. Then when you first meet Natalie Portman’s doctor roommates, Mindy Kaling from The Office and Greta Gerwig from Greenberg, they are funny and interesting. After meeting all the secondary characters, you warm back up to the “stars” because they’re friends with these interesting people.

It’s largely predictable, and occasionally rude, but in the end, I didn’t turn it off. If you’re looking for light laughs with no commitment (sorry, had to be done) then check out No Strings Attached.

As a disclaimer, I should let you know I was the only person I know who liked this. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/10/11

Jolene

Taken as a whole, Jolene is not without a sense of ironic reversals. Though she ends up being mistreated worst by the handsome, Christian charmer (Michael Vartan), she is happiest, safest and most fulfilled during her time with a Vegas mobster sugar-daddy (Chazz Palminteri). I suppose it’s all meant to be a parable of girl-power (stylistically I thought it echoed Thelma and Louise), but it really felt more to me like a rambling account of unrelenting misfortune. Still, Chastain turns in a fine performance, and her supporting players, even when they’re behaving monstrously, are fun to watch too. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/26/11

After all, there’s something especially stirring about the great leaders who overcome profound handicaps and quell their doubters as they rise to the throne. It goes back at least as far as bow-legged Spartan king Agesilaus and limping Roman emperor Claudius, the latter being played memorably by Derek Jacobi, who in a nice reversal here gets to play skeptic to Colin Firth‘s monarch. And certainly there are few handicaps more prickly and relatable than stuttering. It is a battle my own father has fought all his life–in his younger years he too had a speech therapist (who, as he wistfully recalls, resembled Marisa Tomei).

Colin Firth certainly earned his Oscar (though I think he deserved it more for last year’s A Single Man)–his stammers are impressively authentic. Geoffrey Rush, as Logue, hits just the right notes of professional compassion and humble wit. I’m particularly impressed with Helena Bonham Carter‘s performance as Firth’s wife (a.k.a. The Queen Mother), having learned that she was simultaneously filming Harry Potter as Bellatrix Lestrange–a role more or less the polar opposite. Equally strong is the writing and direction. David Seidler‘s script is warm, clever and sharp. Director Tom Hooper, with his cinematographer Danny Cohen, shot the film in a strangely appealing palette, contrasting pale wintry light with the diffuse orange glow of electric light. The score, by Alexandre Desplat, is nicely understated in its own right, also dovetailing nicely with the extensive use of Beethoven throughout.

The prominence of good ol’ Ludwig Van in the film was actually something I found especially potent, particularly in later scenes involving the onset of World War II. Beyond the music’s intrinsic power, it subtly reflects the fact that, during the war, the Allies appropriated the German composer as their own. In fact, the 5th Symphony (which is not featured in the film) was repurposed, almost literally, as the drumbeat of Allied victory (the letter “V” in Morse code is da-da-da-daaah). You might think I’m making a connection where none exists, but I keenly feel that The King’s Speech was intended in part to remind us that while Hitler monstrously and foolishly strove to exterminate the handicapped (Seidler’s own grandparents were lost in the Holocaust), he was finally overcome by leaders who themselves were handicapped. In a particularly nice moment between Firth’s George and Churchill (Timothy Spall), Winston informs his King that though he struggled with his own speech impediment, he eventually learned to “make an asset of it.” Wise words indeed. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Biography/Drama/History

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

With a title and premise like this, the expectations could be of a film with romance and the waters of the Mediterranean washing away grief, or of a borderline Hallmark channel film with sobbing breakdowns and declarations of seeing mommy in heaven.

Fortunately Michael Winterbottom is a better director than that, a journeyman artist with a sure hand.

A ghost story that allows the sweet and sour tangle of relationships past and present to unfold, A Summer In Genoa may seem slim at first and you may not desire it to be what it is, a quiet melodrama that works with a skillful naturalism of both surface and subtext, some failings in place but with so many right notes rung.

What’s on the screen is a family, prickly at times with each other and exploring from a home base of mourning, that’s moved to a foreign place.

Colin Firth, as the father Joe, is at his earthy, casual best, remembering but breathing new air. His daughters, Willa Holland as the older Kelly and Perla Haney-Jardine as the younger Mary, seem so sisterly, both coping and exploring and touching mutual raw nerves. Perla as Mary, the more lost of the two sisters, has a heartbreaking sincerity, and bonds with Barbara (Catherine Keener), a friend who helps them settle in. Willa portrays Kelly very much as a young woman in a European city. Boys abound and while not completely irresponsible, she wants time for herself which doesn’t mean she loves her family any less.

Of course Genoa itself is a character. Winterbottom chooses to show it in small doses. We’re not supposed to fall in love with the city in some touristy fashion, but as the family does we get familiar with its streets, people, fissures and faults. Intimate and warm one moment, claustrophobic and strange the next. Not alien, just a city like any other.

So you can’t want this film to be a “good-year-in-the-tuscan-sun-by-the-Mediterranean” vacation.

As the people in this film do, let go a little, move on a little, remember a little. – [DVD]

Drama/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/12/11

I mention this so my next line makes a little more sense.

I Love You Phillip Morris is kind of like a small child doing the conga all the way downstairs holding a DVD box. Sure, at first you’re interested; you say to yourself, what in the heck is the story here?

Much like Jim Carrey‘s Steven Russell, a married cop who becomes a gay con man. In prison Steve meets the love of his life, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), a naive southern man with a good heart who might be a little too trusting. You see the analogy working, this is kind of a new thing, not something you see every day.

Once you put together that the kid is dancing the conga, and really just doing it because it strikes his fancy, it becomes cute, kind of sweet really. Kind of like Steve and Phil’s time in prison: they pass each other notes, go on strange dates, and eventually Steve cons his way into Phil’s cell and let’s just say sparks fly. It’s a sweet courtship, albeit an unconventional one.

So anyhow this kid, he’s still doing the conga, and you begin to wonder if there is something wrong with him, you know, in the head. The tiny person doing the Gloria Estefan impersonation goes from cute to cloying at the drop of a hat, and soon, you just want his mom to take him somewhere else to briefly entertain then upset others. Such is the case with I Love You Phillip Morris. About two thirds in, just as the third act begins, the magic gone, you begin to wish it would end sooner. The mildly-frenetic-pseudo-Raising Arizona energy has gone from refreshing to bitter, and you just wait for the end.

Oh dancing child, oh Phillip Morris, you both had the best intentions. I know you wanted to entertain me, but you pushed too far, flew too close to the sun. I appreciate the effort, but you’ve let me down just a bit. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Drama/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 4/5/11