Movie Nation

The young actor Ansel Elgort has worked with Shailene Woodley in two films, now. And he has a suggestion for anyone meeting her.
“My advice to people, when they’re first meeting Shailene, is to HUG HER BACK,” Elgort says, laughing. “You are going to be hugged, so be ready.”
“I do love a good hug,” admits Woodley, whose work on TV in “The Secret Life of an American Teenager” led to break-out film performances in “The Descendants” and last summer’s “The Spectacular Now.”
Critics and her peers noticed right away her open-eyed, open-hearted transparency, the way any film she takes on instantly feels more real just because she’s in it.
“‘Authentic’ is the right word for her,” says author Veronica Roth. Roth wrote the “Divergent” series, the sci-fi novels that Hollywood is predicting could become the next “Hunger Games” when the first film hits theaters Mar. 21. “Shailene’s not afraid to go places, playing it from the gut. Vulnerable.”
Elgort, who plays Woodley’s character’s brother in “Divergent” and her love interest in this June’s “The Fault in Our Stars,” agrees. “It’s science fiction. You need somebody as real as her to make it real.”
For her part, Woodley doesn’t consider that acting, “not so much a skill as just how I am.” Maybe it’s something she picked up. Maybe she was born with it.
“I’m astrologically a triple water sign (Nov,. 15, a Scorpio), so I’m basically an emotional watery mess,” Woodley jokes. “But I grew up with two psychologist parents, which explains a lot. They established feeling and compassion in me in a very young age. I wonder if that helped me connect, emotionally, with someone really easily.”
“Divergent” depicts a dystopian future where teens choose their lifelong career path, their tribe or “faction”, whether they’ll be warriors or rulers or thinkers or laborers, based on their true natures — nurturing or brave, imaginative or cogs in the agricultural or manufacturing faction that makes this world work. Roth admits to being fans of “The Hunger Games” novels and owns up — a little — to the resemblance between the two series.
But “Divergent,” to be followed by “Insurgent” and “Allegiant” as Woodley’s character, Tris, finds herself and sets herself up in opposition to the rigid social structure she’s born into, has the best “Young Adult” bonafides of any book turned to film series in that genre. It’s not just the stars who are young — Woodley is 22, Elgort just turned 20. Roth, the novelist, is only 26 herself.
“The choices real teenagers have to make at 16, 17 or 18, feel like these life and death decisions,” Roth says. “It’s their emotional reality. I felt that at 16, this pressure to get it right the first time. People change majors, change colleges, change jobs. But when you’re 16, 17, you don’t have that perspective yet.”
Woodley felt that herself as she pondered whether to tackle her first “franchise.” She’s spent a couple of years as a “critic’s darling,” making movies that did not become the sort of life-altering blockbusters that “The Hunger Games” did. That film series changed “Winter’s Bone” starlet Jennifer Lawrence into the hottest acting property in Hollywood, and a tabloid favorite.
“I had to decide if I wanted something this big in my life,” Woodley says. “I’m grateful that I did, because I have no regrets and I know that thinking about it more made it easier to see was the right decision.”
To ease her into “Divergent,” “Spectacular Now” co-star Miles Teller took a supporting role. And after working with Elgort in “Divergent,” Woodley was happy to co-star with him in “The Fault in Our Stars,” a romance about two physically damaged teens who fall in love in a support group for cancer patients.
“It’s very comforting,” Woodley says, “to have friends with you on the set when you’re trying something new or scary. I loved having Miles in Chicago, for ‘Divergent.’ And having a prior relationship with Ansel made playing these really vulnerable characters in ‘Fault in Our Stars’ easier.”
And it’s got to be a help, knowing that when you hug somebody on that first day on the set, they know what to do in response.
“Oh yeah, they know they’d better hug back.”
　

It was a good run. Well, maybe “good” isn’t the right word for Tyler Perry’s decade of making movies for Lionsgate. The studio decided to drop its option to distribute his films earlier this month, nine years and many “Mad Black” women later.

His steadily eroding box office appeal would be the reason for that. You’ve seen the desperation in his recent films, casting a Kardashian here, a Cable Guy there.

Then again, maybe the studio folks had just left a screening of “The Single Moms Club,” Perry’s latest and maybe last picture for them. It’s interminable. It’s excruciating.

He rounded up a modest cast — Nia Long, Amy Smart , Wendi McLendon-Covey (“Bridesmaids”), Cocoa Brown and Zulay Henao are the moms, supported by Perry himself and the unconquerable Terry Crews. He found another way of depicting women as put upon victims of selfish, greedy, cruel and no-count men, and reason for empowering them — single motherhood.

But he is flat out of laughs, and his heartfelt Oprah-approved sermonettes about every woman deserving a “good man” and the like feel exhausted and played. Perry has made better movies, and perhaps worse ones. But never one as dull as this.

The women all have their kids in an exclusive Atlanta prep school. One (Smart, of “Crank) is a sheltered housewife going through a divorce. Another (Long, recently of “The Best Man Holiday”) is a working reporter and would-be writer whose little boy’s daddy is a never-ending disappointment. A third (McClendon-Covey) is a publishing exec whose career is hampered by the child she had as if adding an accessory to her wardrobe. The sassy Waffle House waitress (Cocoa Brown of “For Better or Worse”) has a brood of kids, a couple in prison. And the Latina in this stew (Zulay Henao) has a new man in her life but is still controlled by her rich jerk of an ex.

Their kids are going off the rails, so the school hurls them together to plan a dance. So they meet, clash cultures, drink wine and get all girl-bonding friendly.

The shared parenting wisdom is deep — “You can’t think about it. Just do it…You take it one snotty nose and one dirty diaper at a time.”

Indeed.

Perry’s wish fulfillment fantasies are aimed squarely at women, with a little something-something for gay men (shirtless hunks). Here, aside from Crews, a blast of tooth-flashing fun as a suitor to the waitress, the menfolk have even less to do than usual. The women are dressed up and coiffed and made-up to the hilt, with the exception of Smart, whose makeup looks as if a child plastered it on. And none of the ladies ever look as primped as Perry himself — teeth bleached, nary a whisker on his perfectly-trimmed beard out of place.

There’s little tragedy, no drama, no emotions at all to “Single Moms Club.” The culture clash of white professional woman and waitress, pampered “kept” women and working mothers, sets off no sparks.

And without Madea, without any reasonable facsimile of a joke, Lionsgate finally caught up to what audiences have been noticing for a while, and critics have complained about for years. You can’t be a “Mad Black Woman” when you’ve grown too rich and happy to wear the dress.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some sexual material and thematic elements

Cast: Nia Long, Tyler Perry, Amy Smart, Terry Crews, Cocoa Brown, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Zulay Henao

Credits: Written and directed by Tyler Perry. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:50

For anybody tired of digital movie car chases that, while fast and furious, routinely defy the laws of physics, here’s one where the cars and stunts are real (mostly) and spectacular. A cross-country sprint followed by a daredevil dash through rural California by the superest of today’s supercars, “Need for Speed” is a car-lover’s dream, a showcase for everything from Bugatti Veyrons to vintage Camaros.
It’s a “Cannonball Run” throwback, with drivers punching through gears and burning through tires as they dodge the cops in illegal street races. Given state of the art stunts and 3D cinematography, it’s a trip.
But “Need for Speed” also makes the journey from video game to big screen without the curse of logic and without the benefit of a punchy, pithy script for its cliched characters to quote. Dumb? They’ve almost out-dumbed the dumbest “Fast and Furious” movie.
Aaron Paul of “Breaking Bad” is Tobey, a car builder and racer from rural New York whose rivalry with the hometown boy (Dominic Cooper) who made it to the Indy 500 reveals the consequences of tearing it up on public highways. Somebody gets killed, on top of all the innocent bystanders and their SUVs, school buses and Mommyvans that they run off the road.
Tobey gets out of jail, rounds up his team (Scott Mescudi, Rami Malek, Ramon Rodriguez, Harrison Gilbertson) and sets out for revenge.
First, he has to get a car. So he talks a billionaire collector into lending him a Shelby Mustang that he customized. As if that would happen. Tobey’s team includes a pilot (Mescudi) and a chase truck that can refuel that thirsty beast on the road. As if that could happen.
And the car comes with its own “right seater,” a navigator/co-driver who is the owner’s hot blonde car aquisition specialist, played by Imogen Poots.
That almost never happens.
They’re dashing from upstate New York, through New York city to Detroit, then Indiana, Monument Valley, Arizona, Utah’s Bonneville salt flats and into San Francisco, where the REAL race will start. Apparently, their sat-nav sucks.
The real race, The DeLeon, is run by a mysterious, manic and motor-mouthed millionaire (Michael Keaton) who broadcasts the races online. “Nobody knows who he is,” even though his webcasts are on video and we can see him.
But get past those head-slappers, give up on hearing any dialogue snappier that “Looks like a scene out of ‘Speed’ down there; hard left in 3, 2, 1…” and this is a car fanatic’s dream.
Stuntman turned director Scott Waugh (“Act of Valor”) makes this into a stunt team tour de force. No, nobody ever changes tires, no matter how much Tobey drifts that beefy, 900hp Mustang. And some of the bits where cars get airborne are preposterous outside of an auto stunt show. But these throaty machines are put through their paces, with enough of the driving tricks plainly performed by the cast to make this a car culture picture Steve McQueen might approve.
The cast doesn’t have the sassy swagger of the “Fast & Furious” crew. Paul, surrounded by co-stars of the same modest height, isn’t particularly charismatic in this setting. He’s not a natural “quiet tough guy.”
But the actors are second bananas here — to the Koenigsegg Ageras, Saleens and Shelby Mustang that feed America’s “Need for Speed,” on screen and off. And the cars deliver.

(Aaron Paul talks about the movie, Paul Walker and “Top Gear” with film critic Roger Moore HERE).
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of reckless street racing, disturbing crash scenes, nudity and crude language.
Cast: Aaron Paul, Imogen Poots, Dominic Cooper and Michael Keaton.
Credits: Directed by Scott Waugh, written by George and John Gatins. A Touchstone/Dreamworks release.
Running time: 2:10

All those years of packing his resume with “long suffering” reasonable guys forced to do the slow burn when confronted by irrational family, bosses or identity thieves must have gotten to Jason Bateman.
He unloads that past with his directing debut, a film about an uncensored, unfiltered, eternally angry 40 year-old who is more no burn than slow burn. In “Bad Words” he is a “Bad Santa” on his own quixotic “Little Miss Sunshine” quest, a man with issues who refuses to explain those issues to those he insults every step of the way.
Guy Trilby proof-reads product warranties for a living. But he’s taken time off to take a shot at winning The Golden Quill National Spelling Bee and its $50,000 first prize.
Yeah, it’s a contest for kids. But he’s found a loophole. And no amount of abuse from contest organizers or the mercenary parents of his fellow spellers can dissuade him. Every meeting with such folks becomes a debate, then a shouting match.
“Are we past the rules and into the INSULTS, now?”
You don’t want to insult him. Because not only is Guy an orthographic whiz, he is seriously misanthropic. He gets personal in a flash, a rude and crude man operating with a short, profane fuse.
He won’t discuss his reasons for pursuing this embarrassing fool’s errand, not even with the journalist (Kathryn Hahn, hilarious) whose website is sponsoring his entry.
And then this adorable Indian-American boy of ten (Rohan Chand), a fellow contestant, forces his way into Trilby’s field of view.
“What’s your favorite word?”
“Point that curry-hole that way, kid.”
He insults the child at every turn, calling young Chaitanya “swami” and “Slumdog,” trash-talking him before contests.
“I’m gonna slaughter you like a sacred cow.”
Bateman, working from an Andrew Dodge script, fills this short, corrosive comedy with “Oh no he didn’t” moments. Guy is poker-faced as he plays evil mind-games with the poor kids unlucky enough to sit next to him on the spelling bee stage. Guy is shameless, even as he seems to warm just a little to the boy who insists on being his friend — taking him for reckless rental-car rides, teaching him to cuss, to drink, when to tip or not tip a hooker.
Allison Janney is the Queen Bee who vows to stop Trilby from ruining this hallowed event, and Philip Baker Hall is well-cast as the elderly wordsmith who long ruled the roost at the Golden Quill, now a spelling bee PBS commentator.
“Losers lose, Mr. Trilby.”
The best moments let Bateman and veteran funnywoman Hahn (TV’s “Parks & Recreation”) go toe to toe and blow for blow in scenes that take their relationship from testy co-dependency to sexual, without missing a malevolent beat.
The film is full of sharp observations about academic contests today, with Tiger Moms and tough-love Dads browbeating the kids from the wings. The ending is kind of a tap-out, but Bateman keeps this clipping along, maintaining the mean streak and potty mouth that makes “Bad Words” the dirtiest and funniest comedy of the new year.

MPAA Rating: R for crude and sexual content, language and brief nudity
Cast: Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Rohan Chand, Allison Janney, Philip Baker Hall
Credits: Directed by Jason Bateman, written by Andrew Dodge. A Focus Features release.
Running time: 1:28

Too many marriages end over that one blunt accusation hurled on the way to
court  — “You never listen.”

And if every couple was as sharp, biting and witty as Meg and Nick in “Le
Week-End,” there would be no excuse for that. Two aging
Brits on a last-ditch weekend trek to Paris to save their marriage, they may be
the most quotable feuding couple this side of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia
Woolf.”

“People don’t change.”
“They do. They can get worse.”
He (Oscar winner Jim Broadbent) is desperate to make one last
throw of the dice to save them as a couple. Nick is wrapped up “in the physical
dread of desertion.” And she (Lindsay Duncan of “About Time” and “Alice in
Wonderland”) is the bored wife, the one desperate to do the deserting.

“It’s ME I want more of!”
They’re in the City of Light, but he’s fretting over the cost of everything.
And she’s willing to bail out of a budget hotel room over the fact that there’s
no view and the walls are beige. No sense budgeting for dinner, either.
“It’s the end of the world. I want to go down gulping oysters!”
The writer and director of Peter O’Toole’s
last good film, “Venus,” re-team here for a smart, snappy and deeply sad survey
of a doomed marriage, a needy, clinging man and a wife who is by turns cruel,
playful, dismissive — and needy herself.
“What gorgeous hell is this?” she asks at one point.
“They’re French. I’m sure their lives are awful, too.”
Nick and Meg are not new to Paris. They know which museums to hit, which
meals have delighted them, which walks will restore their souls. And nothing is
working. Meg wants thrills, novelty, adventure.
“You like being steady — too steady.”
“I love you, Meg. Take that seriously.”
Director Roger Michell and screenwriter films this as a spirited, compact two-hander,
basically a stage play with Paris scenery as its setting. Their insights on a
marriage that cannot hit its reset button, the yearning escapism of vacation
magnified by what this weekend will mean to their couple’s future, is amusing
and on the money.Nick and Meg cannot live in the past, cannot escape their present (phone
calls from a mooch of a son interrupt some moments), cannot reconcile the fact
that she’s made her mind up to move on unless they can find that one memory, or
create one new one, to save them.
And then Nick’s old college chum shows up, and since he’s played by the
bubbly, gregarious and all-embracing Jeff Goldblum, he’s sure to either re-ignite the sparks of their love or set off the bomb that
tears them apart once and for all.
“Aren’t you enjoying the party?”

“I’m not sure enjoyment’s my thing.”
“Le Week-End” features another helping of reliably brittle and vulnerable
work from Broadbent (“Iris,” “The Iron Lady”) and gives
Duncan the chance to show a mercurial side in what must be her best big screen
role ever. And sure, Goldblum is always best at being Jeff Goldblum, and his
oily/silky charm tends to unbalance the neat, brittle little tragedy we’re
watching.
But “Le Week-End” needs that and benefits from his breezy third act
appearance. If ever a troubled couple needed a whirlwind distraction from all
their domestic woes, it is Meg and Nick.

(Go here Roger Moore’s interview with Jeff Goldblum)

MPAA Rating:R for language and some sexual content

Cast: Jim Broadbent, Lindsay Duncan, Jeff Goldblum
Credits: Directed by Roger Michell, written by Hanif Kureishi.
A Music Box release.
Running time: 1:33

Aaron Paul took home two Emmys when TV’s “Breaking Bad” made him a star.
But his favorite trophy from that series was something he could purchase with his “Jesse Pinkman” money. Paul bought himself a “weekend car,” a classic 1965 Shelby Cobra.
“It’s been my dream car, ever since I had a little model of it when I was a kid,” he says.
Now, he’s following up his work on the meth labs-on-the-move series with a genuine car movie. “Need for Speed,” inspired by a video game, put the 34 year-old behind the wheel of assorted souped-up cars and supercars. And as Siobhan Synnot notes in “The Scotsman” newspaper, “Aaron Paul gives it gears and glower.”
We caught up with the Emmett, Idaho native — born Aaron Paul Sturtevant — in Miami Beach.
Question: You’ve been telling folks, such as Jeremy Clarkson on the BBC’s “Top Gear,” that “Everything you see in this movie actually happened.” As in, “no digital cars, no digital car crashes.” How important is that to you?
Aaron Paul: “What they can do with green screens and CGI (computer generated imagery) is incredible. But you also know when you’re being LIED to. You just kind of accept the fact that ‘There’s no WAY that happened.’ But this? This is real and you can feel it in your spine, your gut. That just adds to the fun. And it was pretty brave of the studio to make it this way. For us, as performers, it made things easier. We didn’t have to imagine high speeds and crashes. They were happening right in front of our face.
Question: What prep work did you have to do?
Aaron Paul: I’ve been a car guy ever since I was a little kid. But our director said, ‘We need you to be in the driver’s seat. We need the audience to know that you’re behind the wheel.’ So I hit the track off and on for months, this place called Willow Springs an hour north of Los Angeles. Long days, sunrise to sunset. Seat time. I got it.
Question: You can tell, any number of times in the movie, that’s you driving as you power slide to a stop right into the camera.
AP: Steve McQueen made it that much more exciting to watch him by doing his own driving in “Bullitt.” You knew, as a fan, he was in the driver’s seat. He was a racer before he was an actor. I just love Steve so much, the classic American badass.
Question: Favorite car?
AP: Every car was so different to drive. Supercars (Saleen, Lamborghini, McLaren, Bugotti and Koenigsegg are represented) are very touchy. I’m more of a fan of the old muscle cars. Dreamworks was kind enough to give me the ’68 Gran Torino that I drove in the movie, as a gift. It was my favorite car to drive and favorite car aesthetically. They modified it to turn it into a race car, this special ‘E-brake’ lets you slide it through the corners.
Question: (But after (“Fast & Furious” star) Paul Walker’s death, you folks made sure there was a “Don’t try this at home” disclaimer on the movie.
AP: Obviously, we don’t encourage or endorse illegal street racing. Our characters pay for their actions, one way or another. The fact that it’s all real, that everything was caught-in-camera, makes it seem even more dangerous than if we’d just had computers fake it.
What happened with Paul is so sad. We lost an incredible person that day. I had the privilege of meeting him a few times. His death is just a sad reminder that a movie’s a movie, that cars are dangerous and you should be safe when you’re driving. We drove incredibly fast and did some amazing stunts, but it was all prepared by professionals.
If you want to drive fast, there are racetracks all over the country. And most of them have ‘track days’ where you can rent a lap. Drive as fast as you want.

(Roger Moore’s review of “Need for Speed” is here).

SPOILER ALERT — I also asked AP about his appearance on BBC TV’s “Top Gear,” an appearance that hasn’t shown up in this country. He did QUITE well, in the whole “Star in a reasonably priced car” lap time contest.

It’s an iconic show, and no American wants to go on the British car show and come in last. I mean, I’m out promoting a CAR movie, and doing all this talking bout doing most of the driving.

It was pretty cool to show the colors, man. Those ‘reasonably priced cars’ don’t give you much to work with.

Fan-demanded and fan-financed, “Veronica Mars” represents some sort of new movie making paradigm. If you love something so much that you’d “pay to see that,” you can now turn that dream project into a big screen reality by ponying up a piece of the production financing yourself.
From a fan’s standpoint, that’s kind of cool. This movie caters to them.
But as another in the rich tradition of private detective thrillers, the big screen “Veronica” isn’t just for fans only. Almost, though.
A generic murder mystery with the private eye narrating the investigation in voice over, this class reunion dramedy chugs along on the good will the cast built up over the show’s 2004-2007 run. Co-writer/director Rob Thomas tailored this to run on the familiar set-up/joke rhythms of a TV sitcom, custom fit for the vulnerable, hesitant sass of Kristen Bell, his star.
It’s self-conscious to a fault. It plays as melodramatic, and a little dated. And when it comes to laughs, it tries too hard, like a 30 year-old straining to get her senior year skinny jeans to fit.
A threat — “You know what happens when you mess with the bull, right?”
“You get the cliches?”
Ordering a drink — “Old Grand-Dad! (pause) The bourbon! Not some old guy.”
As Veronica, fresh out of law school, living in New York and about to marry Piz (Chris Lowell), says, “Old habits die hard.”
So when her one-time nemesis turned lover Logan (Jason Dohring), now in the Navy, is accused of killing his pop star girlfriend, Veronica answers the call. She’ll fly cross country to Neptune Beach, where the dead pop star was also a classmate back when they were all in school. And since that was ten years ago, Veronica is sniffing around this case that she SWEARS to dad (Enrico Colantoni) she won’t get caught up in just as her dreaded tenth high school reunion is happening.
The underpinnings of the TV show are exposed in a compact opening montage and assorted snarky or sweet “You haven’t changed a bit” reunion moments. Early scenes are heavy on the incessant Veronica-narration and exposition, references to incidents and accidents from years ago, from a sex tape to a drowning death.
But a filmgoer is constantly reminded that this was TV show, after all, as most of the players are TV bland — emoting only from the neck up. And even at that, it takes them a while for them to get their feet back under themselves as they fall back into this world and the roles they played in it.
“Wow. Two beers. THAT’S what it takes to get you surly.”

Halfway in, however, something clicks and the magic that fans fell in love with splashes up on even the casual Veronica viewer. The one-liners land and the pop culture references pile up . Cracks about “The Accused” and “Yahtzee!” pepper the picture — in between TMZ riffs and cameos by the likes of James Franco, Justin Long, Ira Glass and Dax Shepard (Ms. Bell’s husband).
As Mr. C. (Duane Daniels), the school principal notes, the years since Veronica left have been “ten years of peace and quiet.”
Yeah, she shrugs. “If you like that sort of thing.”
Which goes for “Veronica Mars,” the movie, too. For all its fun flourishes and tepid over familiarity, fans are going to dig this. It is, after all, the movie they paid for. They’re the folks who “like this sort of thing.” The rest of us can be forgiven for waiting for it to show up on Netflix — on TV.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sexuality including references, drug content, violence and some strong language
Cast: Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Enrico Colantoni, Krysten Ritter, Jerry O’Connell
Credits: Directed by Rob Thomas, written by Rob Thomas and Diane Ruggiero. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:47

He’s one of the most distinct character actor presences in movies, which is why we see that doggoned Jeff Goldblum in so many of them — two at once, as of this weekend.

He’s the solicitor whose will-reading runs afoul of nefariously-inclined heirs in “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Wes Anderson’s latest. And he’s the published author and former college classmate of Jim Broadbent in the corrosive marriage-going-wrong-in-Paris drama “Le Week-End,” a burst of bubbly, Goldblummy fresh air in the film’s third act.

And then there’s the TV. Oh yes, the TV. Sorry, you write about Goldblum you start imitating his cadences, the distinctive rhythms of his speech. He’s the bespectacled, whimsical counterpart of Christopher Walken. Impressionists love him.

Questions for JG? Please post them in the comments below, and thanks for the help.

It’s heartening to see that even at 70, Catherine Deneuve still warrants tailor-made star vehicles in the French cinema. It’s even more amazing that this striking actress can still command the screen in a film comprised mostly of close-ups of her gorgeous face.
“On My Way” is a breezy little romance, an overlong “French Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” that has Deneuve playing a one-time beauty queen on the run from her troubles on the lovely back roads criss-crossing rural Brittany.
Bettie is a widow who has a small restaurant in the town where she grew up. She fusses over customers and keeps her staff on its toes. But when she goes home, we see she lives with her aged mother. We learn that her longtime paramour, a married man, has finally left his wife — but for another woman, not her. She’s being hassled by the Miss France beauty pageant organizers to come to a reunion, forced to revisit her better looking past.
And it’s all just a bit too much. If nothing else, she needs a cigarette. But in this corner of convenience-store-free France, on a Sunday, that’s a problem. Bettie takes off in her aged Mercedes station wagon on a cross-France odyssey, looking for smokes, stumbling into bars (and a drunken one-night stand who exclaims, “You must’ve been stunning!”), dodging some failures and finally facing up to others.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” a singer croons from the radio, in English. “I don’t know where I’m going.” If Bettie speaks English (the film is in French,with English subtitles), she knows just what he means.
The rambling trek picks up a passenger when her highly strung daughter (Camille) fobs Bettie’s grandson on her to deliver to the boy’s paternal grandfather. Charly (Nemo Schiffman) is as mercurial as his mom (and maybe grandmom). He is alternately charming and rude, comforting and manic. He’s just the lad to have along when you’re out of cash, your cell phone keeps dying as you call and call the man who left you in the lurch, and you keep taking wrong turns on the way from here to there.
The script fills us in on Bettie’s romantic background as she tells bits of her back-story (interwoven affairs, going back decades) to random strangers, her troubled relationship with her daughter is touched on and her credit card is maxed out.
Deneuve suggests the self-absorption of the beautiful, coping with the petty insults of age, making Bettie a bundle of nerves wrestling with a complicated past and an increasingly frazzled present.
See it for her performance, and a lovely slice of French scenery, on the backgrounds of a French summer, when the flowers are in bloom and no one but no one will sell you a cigarette.
　
MPAA Rating: unrated, with adult situations, sensuality, smoking
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Nemo Schiffman, Gérard Garouste
Credits: Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, written by Emmanuelle Bercot and Jérôme Tonnerre. A Cohen Media release.
Running time: 1:54

Dissolute, strung-out and in revolt against adulthood — those screen traits are right in Sam Rockwell’s comic character actor wheelhouse. Yes, he can play it straight and yes he has range. But muss his hair, redden his eyes and hide his razor and you’ve got a poster boy for wasted days and wasted nights.
“Better Living Through Chemistry” has Rockwell playing a pharmacist lured into “getting high on his own supply” by the unhappy trophy wife of a customer played by OIivia Wilde. Since Wilde has made her reputation as temptation incarnate, we get it.
But Doug (Rockwell) has reasons far beyond the Wilde Child’s goodies. He’s in an unhappy marriage with an exercise-aholic harpy (Michelle Monaghan), raising an insolent 12 year-old son (Harrison Holzer) and fending off an overbearing father-in-law (Ken Howard) who just sold him the pharmacy where Doug has put in his time, but who refuses to let Doug change the name of the place from the old man’s name to his.
“Doug had gotten very good at hiding disappointment over the years,” Jane Fonda, as Jane Fonda, narrates.
And that’s where “Better Living” starts to go wrong. Put-upon Doug may revolt, may start a torrid affair with rich, spoiled Elizabeth (Wilde) and start raiding the “candy store” that is his pharmacy, mixing up his chemicals in aid to his virility, his stamina and his efforts to have the life he wants. But this edgy comedy utterly abandons its edge, time and again, through a cloying, self-aware narration written for Fonda, sort of a part-time resident/observer and narrator of Doug’s sad story.
“Anyone can take a pill,” Fonda purrs, “but only a pharmacist knows how to make one.”
Fair enough, but when Jane as Jane starts to comment on Doug’s wife Kara and her mania for cycling and exercise classes, watch out.
“I know a thing or two about working out,” Fonda cracks, and the winking script becomes a painful facial tic.
Every emasculating moment with Kara is balanced with a heated romp with Elizabeth, so that before long Doug and his paramour are talking about solving their mutual “problems” through chemistry. Might Elizabeth’s absentee husband (Ray Liotta) just…go away?
First-time co-writer/directors Geoff Moore and David Posamentier deliver several laugh out loud moments and the odd delicious twist — vandalism as a way of father-son bonding, and performance enhancing drugs played for athletic laughs.

Casting the towering/hulking Ken Howard opposite Rockwell makes the younger actor seem to shrink into a shrimp in their scenes together.
But the cloying narration and the inclusion of Fonda are just warnings for that moment, 70 minutes in, when this comic chemical train goes completely off the rails. Rockwell, Wilde, Monaghan are worth the price of admission, but “Better Living” would have been better off with more chemistry and less cutesy.
　
MPAA Rating: Unrated, with drug and alcohol abuse, sex, vandalism and profanity worthy of an R.
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, Michelle Monaghan, Ken Howard, Ray Liotta
Credits: Written and directed by Geoff Moore and David Posamentier. A Samuel Goldwyn release.
Running time: 1:31