Flick of The Day: Little Miss Sunshine

It is a rare enough thing to come across a film that you see without any preconceptions or expectations. It is rarer still for such a film to be joyously fantastic with every frame from beginning to end. Little Miss Sunshine is such a film and remains a personal favourite some 7 years after I first encountered it. It combines a quirky tale of modern family life with a diverse and vibrant cast of characters. It's funny, sad, and wickedly life affirming throughout.

Sheryl, the divine Toni Collette, is an overburdened mother in Albuquerque, where she lives with her precocious daughter Olive played by the excellent Abigail Breslin, her delightfully huffy and unhappy in the way only teenagers can be son Dwayne, played by Paul Dano and her husband Richard, a self help guru with a clue played by the always watch-able Greg Kinnear. The family is rounded out by Grandpa Edwin, a foul mouthed Alan Arkin who enjoys snorting heroin and speaking his mind. Into this family unit steps Sheryl's brother Frank played by Steve Carell, the nations foremost Proust scholar who has recently attempted suicide and needs a place to stay. Olive has been prepping for her upcoming début as a beauty queen in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Due to a series of complications, the family are forced to set out across the country in a yellow VW bus to reach the pageant in Redondo beach, California.  Despite each having their own problems and goals, they band together to get Olive to her goal. Dwayne has taken a vow of silence until he becomes a test pilot, Richard is trying to sell his self-help programme and Frank is struggling with depression.

 The real strength of the movie is Michael Arndt's script which is just packed with humour and carries and emotional punch not often seen in an ostensibly comic film. He creates a world and a cast of character that are a pleasure to spend time with. The dialogue ebbs and flows with a ring of authenticity, and the stellar cast reflects this quality. As an ensemble, the cast are very well chosen. There are no weak performances but a special mention must go to Alan Arkin who is superb as Edwin. 

From the opening sequence where the various characters are introduced at a family dinner, there is a sense that everyone has a real purpose and motivation in the story and that their actions which may seem random will eventually pay off at the story's denouement. Making this effort to ensure that the audience knows and likes the characters is time well spent before we set off on our road trip across the south-west United States. The various foibles of the cast are ripe for comedy and this is a very  funny film. The humour is carefully balanced with the emotional depth of real human drama. These are real people not comic caricatures.

A superb film, from beginning to end the script is packed with humour and pathos. The ensemble cast are perfectly chosen and play their parts with an obvious love for the role. Even the soundtrack with cuts from Devotchka and Sufjan Stevens is apt. If you haven't seen this film yet, you really should.

Flick of the Day: Argo

The Tehran hostage crisis is one of the darker days of American history, indeed one of many such days in the course of American policy toward Iran before and after the fall of the Shah in 1979. For those unfamiliar, at the height of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, antipathy toward America spilled over as a group of zealous students stormed the embassy taking the staff hostage and threatening to execute them unless the hated Shah was returned to Iran to face trial. The hostage crisis lasted 444 days and directly contributed to the downfall of Jimmy Carter at the 1980 Presidential Election. That's the tale written in the history books however the lesser known story is that on the day the embassy fell six Americans escaped through a back door and sought refuge in the home of the Canadian Ambassador. Today's flick of the day is the story of how those people escaped.

Argo

The film opens with CIA operative Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, being asked to review the State Department's plan for bringing their 6 diplomats out of Tehran under the noses of the Islamic regime as an expert in the area. He is so appalled at the dangerous stupidity and lack of foresight that he offers to come up with a plan at the behest of his boss played by Bryan Cranston. He quickly comes up with the idea of a fake film crew on location to scout for a new movie as a cover story to get the diplomats out. Thankfully the agency already has a contact in Hollywood in the form of John Goodman's make-up artist John Chambers. In an entertaining fashion, Goodman  takes through the ins and outs of the film business. Before long they have hired ageing producer Lester Siegel, played by the great Alan Arkin and are the road to making a film. They buy a low budget sci-fi script called Argo and set up a production company complete with business cards and an office. After a full page spread in Variety and a launch party, Mendez is on on his way to Iran to sneak the diplomats out. The tension begins to build as the full horrors of the revolution are revealed and the subterfuge begins to unravel.

Around the turn of the Noughties, Ben Affleck's career was in disarray after a string of poor films like Jersey Girl, Gigli and Paycheck. However over the last few years, he has matured into one of the most talented young actor/directors in Hollywood. Argo is his third effort as a director and builds on his previously strong work with Gone Baby Gone and The Town. From the get go, the film exudes the style and music of the era, that brief period at the end of the 1970's before the dawn of the Reagan 80's. As Tony and Chambers pass through the gates of a Hollywood studio, the Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits segues in. Everything feels of the era and there are some great stylistic flourishes which reinforce this sense of realism. The hardest part of making a period film like this is being true to the era and Affleck accomplishes this with aplomb.

Of course he is aided by a great script by Chris Terrio that is at times very funny and entertaining as it pokes fun at the fakery of the real Hollywood and at other times deadly serious as the tension mounts in Tehran. This tension is the real joy of the movie, it becomes almost unbearable as the film reaches its dramatic conclusion and I found myself on the edge of my seat at times. Affleck has created another triumph of a film.

                     In this regard, special attention must be made of the various fine performances, not least from Affleck himself. He is blessed with a male cast to die for in Arkin, Goodman and Cranston, some of the best actors working in Hollywood today. The most difficult roles are I think played by the 6 hostages to fortune stuck in Tehran as they are given little more than cursory back stories and they have to really work as actors to make us care about them.

Overall then, this is a very fine film and perhaps Affleck's best and most mature picture to date. I await his next move with interest. This is a definite contender for an Oscar in my mind if only for the near perfect rendition of an era that perhaps America would prefer to forget.

Flick of The Day: City Island

Low key comedies about working class families are not the most saleable of commodities at the modern box office. Far too much effort is required on the part of the studio to make a good one that it is far easier to commission another comic book adaptation or an Adam Sandler film. Today's flick of the day, City Island is just such a rarity and all the better for it. A tale of dysfunction in an idyllic area of New York, it is a winner on all counts.

City Island

Andy Garcia is Vince Rizzo, a Bronx family patriarch and  prison guard who harbours dreams of becoming an actor. He hides these dreams and a few other secrets from his equally frustrated wife Joyce played by Julianna Margulies. The film's storyline and its humour are both derived from the various secrets they and the rest of the family hide from each other. Both smoke yet do so in secret. Their academically gifted daughter Vivian secretly moonlights as a stripper while their teenage son hides a fetish for large women. Into this farce steps the biggest secret of the lot. Vince has a son from a previous relationship, Tony who after a fashion finds himself a prisoner in Vince's prison. Eligible for parole if a family member takes him in, Vince brings Tony home to the rambling house on the shoreline of City Island. As the various family secrets work themselves out, the humour flows in a naturalistic manner.

The real joy of this film is the natural warmth between the characters and the well drawn nature of their interactions. Andy Garcia excels as the family man trying to hide his past while also doing the right thing. His character is both believable and compelling and his arguments with his wife are as funny as they are true. Margulies gives as good as she gets in her role as the long suffering mother while the various children make the best of their roles.

Ultimately this is charmingly old school in its approach to rounding out the edges of the various secrets. Everything works out as expected though it is perhaps slightly too smooth how Vince's hopes of an acting career take such a skyward trajectory at such short notice. The only other downside is perhaps the underwritten roles of Alan Arkin as Vince's acting coach and Emily Mortimer as a friend aware of his dream. That said some of the best elements of this farce of misunderstandings come from Joyce's belief that Vince is having an affair.

All in all, an enjoyable small family comedy with enough dark elements to keep the audience entertained. The setting of City Island is idyllic and the cast well chosen for their roles. Andy Garcia is particularly strong as the patriarch caught between his past and doing the right thing. Well worth a look on an otherwise cloudy day.

Flick of The Day: Glengarry Glen Ross

David Mamet was one of the great voices in American theatre in the late 70's and early 80's. As a playwright, he was a founding member of the legendary Atlantic Theatre Company, winning acclaim for his 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross, which he adapted for the screen in this 1992 drama which is today's flick of the day. Mamet's writing is heavy in dialogue which is itself fast paced and peppered with scatological language, and it reeks of the stage. However it is the kind of rich language that draws the best out of actors. Apart from his theatrical work, he has a rich body of film work with particular highlights being his Oscar winning script for The Verdict and The Untouchables.

Glengarry Glen Ross

A simple tale of the goings on behind the scenes at a real estate office in Chicago, this film has an ensemble cast of some of the best acting talent in recent memory. Al Pacino is cocky top salesman Ricky Roma, Jack Lemmon is the ageing salesman living on past glories, Alan Arkin and Ed Harris are disgruntled and desperate while Kevin Spacey is the much put upon office manager. In a role created for the film, Alec Baldwin steals the film as a hard nosed motivational speaker. Times are hard at Premiere Properties with the pressure on the salesmen to deliver land sales in a downturn. They bitch and moan about the leads they are given and generally fail to sell apart from the big swinging dick Ricky Roma. The plot centres around a theft at the office but ultimately this is a character study of men under pressure, with a tense atmosphere reminiscent of something like 12 Angry Men.

Perhaps the strength of James Foley's direction is to keep the camera moving around the theatre like sets, to make this feel less like a play. It is not fully successful however as you can't really escape the origins of the tale. Mamet's dialogue is his greatest strength but it often feel over the top and almost unrealistic here. That said, it is terribly enjoyable to see greats like Pacino and Lemmon and Spacey chew through the scenery in capital lettered verbiage. 

Blake: You got leads. Mitch & Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them. You can't close the leads you're given, you can't close shit, *you are* shit, hit the bricks pal, and beat it, 'cause you are going *out*. 

Shelley Levene: The leads are weak. 

Blake: "The leads are weak." The fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business fifteen years... 

Dave Moss: What's your name? 

Blake: Fuck you. That's my name. 

[Moss laughs] 

Blake: You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an eighty thousand dollar BMW. *That's* my name.

A tour de force then, but also a dark look at the harsh realities of the working world and the lengths people will go to, to survive. Lemmon's salesman is a loser but at heart a good family man while Pacino's Roma is a slimy charlatan yet one is a failure and the other prospers. There is a morality tale in there somewhere. 

Very much a character study, this is worth seeing if only for Mamet's dialogue and the excellent performances from the ensemble cast. It couldn't be called a compelling drama for very little happens but for sharp dialogue and tense well acted scenes, this is hard to beat. 

Flick of The Day: Grosse Pointe Blank

Comedy is a matter of taste. What one person finds funny may seem pointlessly banal to another. Believe it or not there are people who don't find Airplane! or The Big Lebowski funny. Black comedy is even more of an acquired taste, mocking and seeking humour in taboo subjects, often to do with death. Today's film, Grosse Pointe Blank is a fine example of this. 

Grosse Pointe Blank

Martin Blank, played by the ever watchable John Cusack, is a professional assassin who needs to get out of town for a few days and conveniently receives an invitation to his 10 year high school reunion and chooses to head home for the weekend for the first time since prom night. Meeting his old friends and family and the girlfriend who he stood up all those years ago, Martin finds the home fires are not still burning with his family home now a mini mall but that he still has feelings for the girl, Debi Newberry ably played by the unusually good Minnie Driver. Of course Martin's work intrudes into the suburban setting with often hilarious consequences as the reunion weekend progresses.

Despite the subject matter, the film is quite warm and light hearted throughout with a lot of fun to be had in meeting all of the old characters from school, something that has universal appeal. We can all relate to the assholes that we never wanted to see again after leaving school. Cusack gives a fine and very likeable performance as Blank. I would doubt there are many if any assassins with as much charm as Martin Blank. You can empathise with his position, coming home to find everything changed utterly and reaching out for the only thing that's still there, his old girlfriend.

The film has an excellent script with some great quotable lines with John Cusack getting the best of it. The team that put the script together would go on to work on Cusack's American adaptatio of Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.

Debi: I should have worn a skirt. 

Marty: I should have brought my gun. 

Debi: What was that? 

Martin: Should be fun!

The other are deserving of praise is the music, composed of a a fantastic collection of Indie music from the late '80s and early '90s which really helps to build the atmosphere and sets the background of the piece. Joe Strummer contributed a score which blends nicely with all of the classic '80's Indie pop and punk. It is rare for a film such as this for the music to play such an important role but it is in effect another character.

 With a fine supporting cast, including Dan Ackroyd as a rival assassin and Cusack film regulars Joan Cusack and Jeremy Piven, this is a dine addition to the genre and has many great comedic moments and while the ending isn't really up to scratch, there is enough to keep you involved. A fun diversion on an otherwise uneventful day, worth a look and a cut above similar fare.