Tag: Mamie Gummer

The End of the Tour

It’s The End of the Tour as we know it, and I feel fine.

Premiering at Sundance, I can say that I heard a lot about this film, but nothing about what it was actually about. I heard praise and more praise, that it was based on a true story, and even more praise and that is all I heard about it.

Based on the title alone, you would assume they were talking about a musician finishing possibly their final tour, and not a book author. Book authors are beyond un-sexy. Throughout history, the only sexy authors that everyone would agree on would probably just be Jack Kerouac and Homer.

I just wanted to make sure you knew that going into the film I was thinking positive, un-sexy thoughts.

Car
After seeing this image, you can see that my initial reactions were confirmed!

The 90’s sure were a different time. We barely had the internet and we definitely didn’t really have cell phones. David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) is a journalist, writer, and author of fiction! He just wrote a book called The Art Fair that is loosely based on his own life. He thinks it has potential to be the best book of the year!

Then he finds out about Infinite Jest, a book written by David Foster Wallace (Jason Segal) and it is miles away the better book. Everyone loves it, it takes the country by storm and Wallace becomes an overnight sensation. But he is just a normal guy, who writes and teaches at the college level. He lives in a small northern town by himself with his dogs.

Lipsky sees a nice story behind the man though and appeals to the editors of Rolling Stone to let him do an all exclusive interview with Wallace. Sure, they don’t tend to interview authors, because (as we all know) authors aren’t sexy. But he is persuasive. So Lipsky gets to fly to his town, join him on the last stop of his tour, and spend five days talking with a newly famous and successful man, to see what makes him tick and how he is handling life.

Just so you don’t leave thinking there is literally only two people in the film, I can tell you the other characters, although they are all wildly unimportant. Anna Chlumsky plays Lipsky’s girlfriend, Mamie Gummer and Mickey Sumner play two of Wallace’s old friends, Ron Livingston plays an editor at Rolling Stone, and Joan Cusack plays a Minnesotan escort for the last leg of the tour.

Dinner
Basically, the whole thing is like My Dinner With Andre, but several dinners.

I love movies where they focus mostly on the dialogue between a few characters and the other elements such as location, background, (action?), scenery, or other events aren’t at all important. A great script with a captivating dialogue can carry a movie and turn the silliest of ideas into something magnificent. Just look at Clerks!

Basically what I am saying is that I like plays, and this was one of the “play-iest” movies based on a book and not a play that I have ever seen. The dialogue is extremely top notch, and given it is based on a book that is based on a series of tapes that recorded everything they said, I have the highest hopes that these conversations actually happened word for word. Two intellectual writers talking the shit and talking about things that really matter. David Foster Wallace comes across as a very smart dude, the type of dude you just want to hear his opinion on literally anything.

And major props go to Segal, who gave by far his best performance in his career. Segal tends to be one of those actors who doesn’t change much in between roles, but he definitely captured a completely new persona in this film, where by the end I forgot it was Segal even acting, despite those distracting eyes of his. I don’t know if he will win best acting in any category, but I can definitely see some nominations in his future.

If anything, The End of the Tour did an impressive task that no other movie has done before: It has made me want to read TWO different books. The book by Lipsky about his time with Wallace, and of course Infinite Jest, which was apparently the hottest thing since sliced bread.

3 out of 4.

Cake

Yay Cake!

Finally a film to give me what I want, which is cake, cake frosting, really anything cake related. This film will put cake so high up on the map, kind of like what the film did for Butter (and for Jennifer Garner‘s accent).

Hopefully it shows cake in all of its wonderful forms. The Wedding Cake, the Birthday Cake, the Cupcake Cake, the Cheesecake, the “just because we want a cake, fuck you!” Cake. I also hope it covers up some of the dark past for cakes, because this should celebrate the cake, and not focus too much on the negatives.

Cry
“I just love cake so. Damn. Much.”

Claire Bennett (Jennifer Aniston) isn’t actually a cake aficionado, but more of a hurt and depressed lady. She lost a child in a car accident, where she herself got pretty injured. She has a lot of back troubles and even goes to a therapy group for people experiencing lots of pain. The story begins a whole year after the accident and right after Nina Collins (Anna Kendrick), another member of the group had committed suicide.

But things aren’t going good for Claire. Her kid gone, her marriage to Jason (Chris Messina) in ruin, her back all sorts of messed up. Her back hurts so much, she can’t drive, and her housekeeper Silvana (Adriana Barraza) puts up with constant complaining and pessimism to drive her too.

Basically, Claire hates everything and maybe she hates things enough to do what Nina did. She ended it all and is probably better for it. Can’t Claire just do the same? Before she decides, she should investigate by hanging out with Nina’s old lover (Sam Worthington) and her son. That sounds like a perfect idea!

Also featuring a bunch of other women and one dude: Mamie Gummer, Felicity Huffman, Lucy Punch, and William H. Macy.

Jesus
“Two rules, man: Stay away from my fuckin’ percocets and do you have any fucking percocets, man?”

Yeah, I know, it sucks that this film had so little to do with actual cakes. But to be fair, there are a couple cakes in it! I am pretty sure I saw too, but part of me also thinks I might have made up one of the cakes to fill my cake void.

The story we did get with Cake can really only be described as okay. The main issue with it was that it didn’t tell the narrative in the easiest of ways to follow. We had to watch Claire wallow for so long without knowing the details behind things. It is hard for one to emotionally connect with a character without getting better information on why they are so repugnant, angry, and basically given up the will to live.

That being said, Aniston does some mighty fine acting here, probably the best of her career. She is raw, emotional and full of flaws, but again without that connection, I didn’t care about her journey. The only other character given a lot to work with is Barraza as the housekeeper, who also does a fantastic job and is definitely someone the viewer can relate to and pseudo cheer for throughout the film. At the same time, her character makes so many aggravating choices given how Claire acts, it is still not one to save the film.

The other men and women involved with the project don’t matter as much in the film, so they can only help it so little.

If you want a well acted Drama from a famous A-lister, this could be a good bet. But if you want something that will really tickle your emotions and take you on a journey, this one will just leave you in the parking lot.

2 out of 4.

The Lifeguard

Oh Kristen Bell. You are a big star. Why are you in this movie, The Lifeguard, something I have never heard about and went straight to DVD?

Is it Dax Shepard‘s fault? I bet it is Dax’s fault. He is a jerk. Don’t let him put you in bad movies. You are lucky you avoided Brother’s Justice. I swear, if Hit and Run had been horrible, those two movies would have killed his career.

Just saying. Watch out Kristen.

Bello
“No, you watch out! No one talks bad about MY MAN!” – Kristen, if she were a proud black woman.

Leigh (Kristen Bell) is going through a midlife crisis. She went to college, was valedictorian, but ended up quitting her New York job and moving back to Connecticut, her home, where she last felt happy. By mid life crisis, I should note she is less than 30, so this is just some other weird event in her life. Or she is not going to live past 60. Shit.

Either way. Sad times, so she goes to live with her parents again, and rekindle with her old friends (Mamie Gummer, Martin Starr, Joshua Harto).

Heck, she even gets a job as a lifeguard. Her old high school job. Making over 9 bucks an hour. Hooray!

But then something strange happens. During her identity crisis, she finds comfort in another individual. Someone who goes by the name of Little Jason (David Lambert), son of Big Jason, the pool owner. They start a fling unexpectedly, and have copious amounts of sexual intercourse. And he is only sixteen.

Love love
Yep. Sixteen! True love, yo.

Sometimes it is a good idea to do that gender reversal thing for romance movies. Does it still work if an older man was the lifeguard and it was a sixteen year old girl? No, heck no. That’s bad. Very bad. Kristen has a really creepy character it turns out, and no one around them realizes it until one individual does by the end. Good ole society, being programmed into thinking that is at least a bit okay. She just represents someone in society.

The movie took awhile to get to the love interest between her and the kid, slowly building up, as she just wandered around her home trying to find stuff to do. And guys to do, I guess.

Too slow. This movie dragged on, for a story that ended up being pretty simple. The thing that gets me is that none of the characters really feel believable. They try to explain why she quit her job and moved home, but it just didn’t seem correct. I couldn’t believe it. It is like they had the idea of someone move back home, but not a great reason why and it was an after thought.

The later scenes between her and David Lambert were pretty steamy, I will give it that, but at the same time, it felt incredibly weird. Damn gender reversal analysis. It ruined a potentially good thing.

No, I am not saying the movie would have been good without it. Too slow, too much meh acting, too much nothing over all. An easy one to skip over and really I’d rather pretend it didn’t exist.

1 out of 4.