Movie Nation

“The Human Race” is one of those “don’t get too attached to anybody” horror pictures, a lower-than-low budget variation of every race/chase/pick’em off, one-by-one horror tale since Edgar Allan Poe invented the genre and Agatha Christie perfected it.
But for a no-budget splatter film, it has ambition and wit, and writer-director Paul Hough shows promise.
We meet a broad assortment of people — the girl diagnosed with cancer (Brianna Lauren Jackson), the two combat vets from the Afghan War (Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Eddie McGee), the deaf couple (Trista Robinson, T. Arthur Cottam) — just random folks having sometimes random, sometimes exceptional days. Eddie (McGee), for instance, returned from the war with just one leg, and he crawls out of the bed of his latest sexual conquest at the behest of his Army buddy, Justin (McCarthy-Boyington). Justin Eddie as an inspirational speaker at the disabled kids’ school where Justin teaches.
Then a flash of light. Everybody — even the deaf folks, hears a voice.
“The House, the School and The Prison are ‘safe.’ Stay on the path, or you die. Follow the arrows, or you die… Race, or die.”
Next thing they all know, they’re gathered on a sidewalk that connects a house, a school and a prison. And they’re off, some sprinting, some elbowing others aside, some stumbling into the grass whereupon their heads promptly explode.
“The Human Race” follows this assembly of 80 or so people, all hearing a voice that calls out their shrinking ranks as some die a careless death and others are ruthlessly dispatched in this win-or-die footrace — “44, 43, 42…”
It’s not fair. Eddie has one leg, and crutches. An aged ex-Marine has a walker. One woman is pregnant, and two small children are caught up in the field, too. One runners figures to go all out to spring and lap the other competitors, killing them all. And there are murderous thugs and snickering sociopaths in their midst, who have the rest of the runners at a disadvantage.
So the priest (B. Anthony Cohen) who has an explanation for “What is HAPPENING to us?” only THINKS he has the answer.
“It’s Purgatory.” Since these deaths are undeserving and the righteous don’t have a prayer, that doesn’t wash, Padre. Take care that your own head doesn’t explode.
Deconstructing this, one would guess that Hough had access to some specific sets and a few actor friends with sign language skills or a single leg (McGee doesn’t have to fake that). Hough built a movie out of those ingredients.
There are nicely-staged one-legged-man fight scenes and sign language debates.
“The only thing I hear is DEATH!”
And there are effects that hint at this version of the “fight to the death” scenario’s origins. Think William Shatner, shirtless.
It’s not art. But “The Human Race” does manage to take a worn out formula and nonsense story and finds a few novel touches, a little humor and hints of pathos in between the exploding heads.
　
　
MPAA Rating: unrated, with bloody assaults, sexual violence, profanity
Cast: Paul McCarthy-Boyington, Eddie McGee, Trista Robinson, Brianna Lauren Jackson
Credits: Written and directed Paul Hough. An XLRator Media release.
Running time: 1:27

“Unsustainable” has become our watchword for a bubble about to burst, a system — financial, climatological or health care — on the brink of collapse.
The experts in “Ivory Tower” use it, with varying degrees of alarm, to describe the state of college education in America.
Andrew Rossi’s documentary is a bit scatter shot in its approach. It broadly laments the collapse of America’s contract with kids — to educate them, get them into a college and into a career or careers and a life that college helps prepare them for — and narrowly zeroes in on a myriad of causes for this.
It’s built around an interview with educational theorist Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University, who uses words like “apocalyptic” and “time bomb” to describe the threats that the very idea of higher learning faces. There’s student debt, a system with misplaced priorities, students unprepared for college, and growth-obsessed colleges dealing with kids as sources of income, commodities to be lured with amenities, “perks” and lifestyle upgrades.
The film drops in on Arizona State University and lays bare the costs of getting a reputation as a “party school.” Schools like ASU, experts suggest, depend on out of state students who are “less academically inclined,” paying a premium to attend a college with big time athletics teams, pool parties and a lively pub crawl nearby.
“Just give them beer and circuses,” one of the authors of a book about that, “Paying for the Party”, complains.
We meet dedicated kids who have made it into Harvard, or who attend classes at the rigorous, desert-set Deep Springs College and meet the activists at Cooper Union, a legendary “free” admissions New York college which has made financial and real estate blunders that forced it to start charging students tuition for the first time in 150 years.
The film also finds students buried under debt and suggests many push for degrees simply as a way of “putting off thinking about the future.”
The larger worry in play here is that colleges, battling their way to the bottom to maintain enrollment, have dumbed down their degrees, that a legacy of the Reagan Revolution may be that colleges, which used to be subsidized because the nation as a whole valued higher education, is returning to something only a rich elite can afford. Governor Jerry Brown talks about what happened to California’s iconic state college system was and how deep in the hole it is today.
And somehow, in it’s 90 brisk minutes, “Ivory Tower” finds the time to look at and, on occasion, shoot down solutions to the myriad problems suggested by overbuilt, over-enrolled degree factories with athletic teams. MOOC — Massive Open Online Courses? “Hacking” college through Uncollege.org? A return to what community colleges used to be charged with doing?
Those many subjects mean that most of what is addressed here is only touched on. “Ivory Tower” plays like a prospectus for a series of films, a “Cosmos” on higher education that could explain what we used to expect out of colleges, how that worked and how far society, government, the institutions and those chasing degrees in them have drifted from that. As it is, this film doesn’t dwell on any problem or solution long enough to get us outraged or inspired to insist on a change for the better.
　
　
MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some suggestive and partying images
Cast: Andrew Delbanco, Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Jerry Brown, Peter Schiff, Richard Arum, Drew Faust, David Boone
Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Rossi. A Samuel Goldwyn/CNN Films release.
Running time: 1:31

Rare is the end-of-life melodrama that doesn’t traffic in “Disease of the Week/Weeper of the Week” cliches. “Lullaby” certainly does.

But this terminal illness tale rises above the form, mainly thanks to a stellar cast and a refusal to drift into maudlin, a film that saves its big emotions for a wrenching finale that it earns.

Garrett Hedlund plays Jonathan, a young musician used to getting his by on his looks and charm. Sparkle those eyes a little and stewardesses won’t arrest him for smoking in the lavatory of the plane that is taking him to the side of his dying father.

The first sign that baby blues won’t deliver, this time, is when a too-sassy nurse (Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson) berates the chain smoker for “bringing that into MY hospital.” She doesn’t care what crutches he needs to face his father’s death. Dad (Richard Jenkins) has accepted it.

“I’m done. My body is ruined.” All he wants is to “look at you all with clear eyes one last time,” but his son isn’t having it. And neither is Jonathan’s sister, Karen (Jessica Brown Findlay), a lawyer who isn’t keen on dad’s plan to turn off life support and end his life with some dignity, an effort his wife/their mother (Anne Archer) supports, with tears. So does his doctor (Terrence Howard), also with tears.

Did I mention Dad’s battle has been going on for over twenty years? Disease fatigue, the trauma of living under the cloud of death that has been hanging over the old man, may be in play. So might the realization that Dad, a pillar of the New York business community, may have a fortune to pass on. That isn’t why Karen has her legal briefs in a bunch, but it could be.

Enter the sick teenager in a different ward. Jessica Barden plays Meredith, 17, bald and doomed, bumming a cigarette off Jonathan and dumping a little wisdom on him the way such wise children do in such movies.

“If you think he wants to die, you’re wrong,” she counsels. “If he says he’s not in pain, he’s lying.”

Things come to a head as all must rally to organize one last Passover Seder for Dad (they’re Jewish). Distant relations and friends flood the hospital, further confusing the kids. Who ARE these people?

“They watched you get circumcised.”

Can Meredith take part?

“Are you Jewish? I’ll pour some Manischewitz…”

Writer-director Andrew Levitas put the burden of keeping the tone light but grim on Jenkins and Barden, and it pays off as both players manage a fine balance between amusing and pitiful. Hudson’s nurse may be using her “Oh no you DIDN’T” sass to cope with the death all around her. And Hedlund, using some of his “Country Strong” musical chops and his headstrong “Tron” youthful blundering, makes Jonathan a compelling surrogate for the audience, a man dealing, uncertainly, with death for the first time in his privileged life.

Thanks to them, “Lullaby” works. They don’t so much add new words to this familiar song as manage to not botch this interpretation of it.

MPAA Rating:R for language and brief drug use

Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Jessica Barden, Richard Jenkins, Jennifer Hudson, Jessica Brown Findlay, Anne Archer, Amy Adams, Terrence Howard

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Levitas. An Arc Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:57

Something about the label “Hellion” implies a sense of impish fun and
mischief. But 13 year-old Jacob Wilson (Josh Wiggins) sets fires, trashes
vehicles in the parking lot while his fellow Texans enjoy a high school football
game and has so much rage in him that he’s already a familiar figure to the
cops.
Jacob is the unlikely anti-hero of “Hellion,” a messed-up kid taking out his
hurt and resentment on most of those around him, especially his dad (Aaron Paul
of “Need for Speed” and “Breaking Bad”), Hollis.
Something bad happened in this family. Hollis, a carpenter, crawls into a
beer can, even on those weekends when he’s hammering away at the family’s dream
house, a vacation getaway in nearby Galveston that represents a last link to the
absent mother in this household of males.
Jacob’s run-ins with the law are not solo, but he’s got a code — “I don’t
rat out my crew.”
And lectures from Hollis don’t carry any weight — “Take responsibility,
Jacob.” Dad doesn’t seem to be very good at that, either.
The real tragedy here is ten-year-old Wes (Deke Garner), who idolizes Jacob
and wants to run with his self-destructive/property-destroying “crew.” Jacob is
young enough and delusional enough that he means it when he tells the kid
brother, “I swear I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Hellion” is an accident waiting to happen, a tragedy unfolding. Latchkey
kids, hyped up on sugary sodas, junk food and speed metal, bored when dad takes
Jacob’s motorbike away, are headed for trouble.
Juliette Lewis is the kindly aunt — sister of their dead mom — who figures
in the story when Jacob’s many run-ins with the law bring the cops and child
welfare down on the family.
I like the way writer-director Kat Candler, expanding a short film she made a
few years back, doesn’t give away the whole back-story — what killed the
mother, who might have been to blame. I don’t like the film’s contrived,
melodramatic climax, or this whole story thread where hotshot motocross rider
Jacob figures he can solve all their problems by winning “the Big Race.”
But “Hellion” is involving, sobering and very well-acted, with nice turns by
young Wiggins and especially by Aaron Paul — playing a broken man who has just
enough of a grasp of what he’s supposed to be doing to realize the life-scarring
mistakes he’s making with these boys.
As coming-of-age melodramas go, “Hellion” offers a rare and engrossing
glimpse into a working class nightmare, a lifestyle of indulged biker-kids,
guns, violence and beer that is every bit the trap we consider our inner cities
to be.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with teen violence, smoking
Cast: Josh Wiggins, Aaron Paul, Juliette Lewis, Deke Garner
Credits: Written and directed by Kat Candler. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:39

Imagine a Pedro Almodovar horror comedy.
There’d be violence and cross-dressing, graphic discussion of exotic sexual practices and homo-eroticism. Gender politics would take center stage.
It would have witches, naturally. And Carmen Maura would play their queen.
“Witching and Bitching” is a madcap Spanish farce by Alex de la Iglesia. It’s the best Almodovar movie Almodovar never made, a riotous, gory farce that might be the funniest movie of the summer, and surely is the coolest.
It begins with a sell-your-gold shop robbery on Madrid’s popular square, the Puerto del Sol, with robbers dressed as street mimes staging a heist that goes comically, bloodily wrong.
Jose (Hugo Silva) is the leader, painted up as silver-coated Jesus, pulling a shotgun out of the cross he totes on his back. Tony (Mario Casas) is painted up like a plastic green toy soldier. Only his machine gun is real. There’s an Uzi-packing Sponge Bob, an Invisible Man.
But a little boy (Gabriel Delgado) is their lookout.
“You brought the boy?” Tony fumes.
“I get him Tuesdays and alternate weekends,” Jose, whom Tony keeps calling “Jesus,” explains.
That leads to a rant about alimony and custody and judges prejudiced against fathers and next thing you know, security guards and customers — all hostages in the store — are bickering, taking sides and generally wigging out.
That happens a lot in “Witching and Bitching,” that second half of the title.
There are heated debates in the taxi they hijack as a getaway car, with the cabbie, Manuel (Jaime Ordóñez) throwing in his lot with the surviving members of the gang. Their haul? A sack full of pawned wedding bands.
“Thousands of broken promises…broken dreams…lies..cheating…”
Symbolic? You bet.
Sergio is tickled at all the shooting and screeching tires, especially when Manual takes off through the woods.
“Again! AGAIN!”
And then they stumble into Zugarramurdi, an infamous village on the French border. Manuel’s heard of it, but the rest soon catch on to what it is. The freaks that surround them, the cauldron, the bizarre dishes on the menu at the diner — the troll that seems to live in the toilet. This is home to Spain’s witches. These guys want to gripe about how awful their womenfolk are, what “brujas” (witches) they can be? They’re confronted with the real thing, a matriarchal culture which might have use for what those wedding bands represent and have a taste for “pure” little boys.
De la Iglesia (“The Oxford Murders”) keeps the patter manic and testy and adds just enough lulls in the action to make his big special effects/action set pieces stand out. Carolina Bang plays a ravenous and sexy daughter witch with an eye for Jose. Maura, a veteran of many an Almodovar comedy, is her mother, the queen.
Silva, star of Almodovar’s “I’m So Excited!” is an agreeably scruffy, nonchalant leading man. He gives Jose a sexy, irresponsible, making-it-up-as-he-goes edge, traits that rear their head whenever Jose’s incompetent parenting skills are questioned.
“Do you have a kid? No? Then SHUT up!”
“Witching” is a trifle on the long side, but de la Iglesias builds the action to a fine climax, and then tops it with his epic finale, which seems to employ every extra in Spain and every special effects artist, too.
But whatever the film’s horror chops, cinematic battles of the sexes are rarely this much fun.
　
MPAA Rating: Unrated, with graphic violence, nudity and profanity
Cast: Hugo Silva, Mario Casas, Carolina Bang, Macarena Gómez, Carmen Maura
Credits: Directed by Álex de la Iglesia, written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría and Álex de la Iglesia. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:53

How hard can it be to get “A Coffee in Berlin”? Damned near impossible, it turns out.
Niko (Tom Schilling) is a baby-faced lad of about 20, has no luck finding a
cup. And in this winning, dry and hip character comedy, he’s a bit lost.oiding
commitment to his cute girlfriend.
Thanks to multiple drunk driving incidents, he can’t drive, though that’s not
a huge problem. He lives in Berlin. Maybe that’s why the court-appointed
counselor gives him “the Idiot Test,” and insults his height, his sexuality and
assorted other physical attributes. It’s probably the only real punishment he’ll
face.

Yeah, interrogations like this ALWAYS sound rough in the original German
(with English subtitles).

Niko has no job, dropped out of law school, something he didn’t tell his
father, who supports him.
He gives his last change to a homeless guy, only to have the ATM eat his
card. No, there is no graceful way to get that change back.
“A Coffee in Berlin” follows Niko through a long day and night in the city,
catching up with his actor-too-cool-to-ever-take-a-role pal, visiting a friend of
on the set of a World War II drama. It’s not really a compliment, telling Phillip (“That suit looks good on
you,” when he’s dressed as a Nazi.
Niko stumbles into a girl who had a crush on him in high school.
“I even tried to kill myself,” Julika (Friederike Kempter) burbles. She was
fat, then, and he didn’t know she existed. So, out of guilt, he and Matze check out her performance art theater piece.
The first running gag in Jan Ole Gerster’s austere, black and white comedy is
that Niko cannot find a cup of coffee to save his life — the espresso machine
is broken at the cafe where he goes, the movie set coffee thermos has just emptied, the
bartender has “just cleaned the machine” for the night, his dad insists he have
a drink instead of coffee when Niko shows up, at the country club, to bum more
cash.

Another gag, Niko seemingly inspires arguments almost everywhere he goes. He
is a provocation — to his dad, his girlfriend, to the subway cops who accuse
him of riding without a ticket, to the performance art director, to the once-fat
“I don’t understand people” is his mantra, but he keeps making these
connections — however clumsy.
Aside from those running gags and themes, “A Coffee in Berlin” has a
wonderful romance about it. Blame the black and white photography, write it off
to the underside of a beautiful foreign city that the movie shows us, but this
2012 film, just now clearing the festival circuit and making into American
theaters, is an engaging take on a drifting character at an age when we’re all
adrift. Speaking German, photographed in black and white and wandering Berlin,
smoking and hunting for coffee, Niko is the very definition of hipster/slacker. And
Schilling, with Gerster tossing a wide
variety of characters in a sea of uncomfortable situations at him, just owns it.

MPAA Rating: Unrated, with adult
situations, smoking, drinking, profanity
Cast: Tom Schilling
Credits: Written and directed by Jan Ole Gerster. A Music Box release.
Running time: 1:25

Small, remote town pulls every trick in the book to land itself a much-needed town doctor. The locals are always colorful and quirky, the new doc, a Big Medicine cynic.

Maybe he’s a New Yorker, as he was on TV’s “Northern Exposure. Maybe he’s a would-be plastic surgeon, as he was in “Doc Hollywood.”

Or maybe he’s French Canadian, as he was in 2003’s “Seducing Doctor Lewis,” and it’s new remake, “The Grand Seduction.” It’s a formula comedy in which the formula works as well as it ever has, thanks largely to a winning cast and a heightened sexual twist to its “We need a doc to survive as a town” message.

Tickle Cove used to be an island fishing town where men had work and provided for their families, where men felt like men, cutely illustrated by a town wide sex scene in an opening flashback.

“Life was a thing of beauty,” narrates Murray French (Brendan Gleeson).

But now, the cod have gone, as have most of the young — off to “town,” nearby St. John’s. The men left behind collect unemployment checks, and drink. There may be sex in the city, but not in Tickle Cove.

When the mayor skips town in the dark of night, Murray frets. When his wife takes a job in St. John’s, he is finally shaken from his lethargy. Insults from his pal, grizzled old Simon (Gordon Pinsent, sort of a Canadian Brendan Gleeson), are the final straw.

“You’ll become the new little Missus,” Simon teases. “Oh God, you’ll LOVE Yoga Ball!”

Murray takes the village by the horns to make one last ditch attempt to land a dubious “petrochemical byproduct reprocessing plant” (“What do they make? They make JOBS!”) that Big Oil needs to park somewhere — somewhere with enough people to work it, somewhere with a doctor.

Fortune smiles on them when fast-talking, newly-licensed plastic surgeon Dr. Lewis (Taylor Kitsch) passes through the airport in St. John’s fresh from a Caribbean cricket match — he’s an enthusiast — with a baggie of cocaine — “just this ONCE.” Security screening is what the old mayor of Tickle Cove is now doing for a living in St. John’s. A sneaky deal is struck — the doc will spend a month in Tickle Cove to avoid an arrest.

Ken Scott, who wrote “Seducing Doctor Lewis,” and “Starbuck” (remade as “Delivery Man,” with Vince Vaughn), co-wrote this remake with Michael Douse, and they flesh out the earlier French Canadian comedy with some edge — the whole sexual inadequacy of unemployment thing, and the cocaine gimmick.

But where they really lucked out was with this cast. Gleeson was born for mischief, and is a natural at leading a Cove-wide con job to trick the doctor into staying. They dress the town up — uprighting the toppled tombstones, fixing fences, painting. How do you explain hat dilapidated house at the village entrance? A “World Heritage Site” sign in front will do.

Pinsent, best known for the Alzheimer’s drama “Away From Her” and TV’s “Republic of Doyle,” is a goofy delight. And Kitsch, playing a gullible city slicker, has never been more charming.

The NSA has nothing on Tickle Cove, as they research the doctor, spy on him and listen in on his phone calls.

He loves cricket? They’ll fake a cricket match and pretend to be enthusiasts. He likes cocaine?

“We’re DOWN with it,” Murray brags. The townsfolk show off their scars from “the substitute” doctor to play on his guilt. And even though Lewis is engaged, Murray tries to enlist the pretty postmistress (Liane Balaban).

“Adopt a flirtatious attitude toward the doctor,” he cajoles. She’s not having it, or “him.”

It’s all more twee than madcap, kind of a Canadian “Waking Ned Devine.” Not that it’s as funny as that, or as brisk. Don McKellar (“Last Night”) has directed a 90 minute movie buried inside a nearly two-hour-long one.

So “The Grand Seduction” is, like Tickle Cove itself, a bit of an oversell. But Gleeson, Pinsent and Kitsch make this a diverting comic travelogue for anybody who misses “Northern Exposure” but has no intention of moving to Alaska, or in this case, Newfoundland.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some suggestive material and drug references

Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Taylor Kitsch, Liane Balaban, Gordon Pinsent

Credits: Directed by Don McKellar, written by Ken Scott and Michael Douse, based on the French Canadian comedy, “Seducing Dr. Lewis.” An eOne release

Running time: 1:53

What George Lucas once said about girls — something along the lines of “If you figure out what 12 year old girls will like, you’re set for life” — is true in spades this weekend. It’s an estrogen-owned box office, with last week’s leader, “Maleficent” holding onto over $30 million in audience.

And “The Fault in Our Stars,” a tragic teen romance starring new “It” girl for for under 20s, Shailene “Divergent” Woodley,” is opening so big she could just about bail out of “Divergent” sequels.

The low end, based on a big Thursday night and theaters crowded with teen girls off for the summer on Friday, is $48 million by midnight Sunday. The high end could be low $50s.

Word of mouth won’t hurt it. While my review was one of the more negative ones, the things that will grate on adults won’t be an issue to teenagers. And as I’m a big Shailene Woodley fan (interviewed her too many times — including for “Divergent” — to do another one for this film), Vaya con suerte, sister. Cash those checks. Glad to see her hit it big.

“Edge of Tomorrow” is giving Tom Cruise the best reviews he’s had for a new film outside of a “Mission: Impossible” picture. The jokey tone of a sci-fi time travel piece in which he is killed — dozens of times — works. Not a performance that stands out, but the picture works. And it’ll do $30 million. Tops. Half of what the “chick picture” will do.

“Million Ways to Die in the West” will end up with “Blended” bucks — maybe slightly more — $36 million total after this weekend, maybe $45 or so when it finishes its run.

“Chef” continues to hang around the Top Ten, and clears the $10 million mark by Sunday night, Deadline.com predicts. It is this summer’s “Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” a feel-good picture that grownups and seniors can embrace. VERY slow going for this one, though, I must say. I would have figured, with the added theaters, this thing would be doing $7-10 million a weekend. No, not yet. It may not have the oomph to do $40-50, the way movies hitting this demographic have performed in the past.

Favreau ought to keep doing press for it, helping it build.

MIAMI BEACH — Canadians are easy to spot in Florida. Guys like Jay Baruchel don’t have to open their mouths and drop an “a-boat” or “I’ve never BEAN here before” to give away the game. They’re pink.
“I’m like a Jane Austen character,” the skinny, big screen funnyman admits. “I need a parisol when I’m down here.”
The 32 year-old Ottawa native has made his mark in indie films (“Fanboys”,” “I’m Reed Fish”) and as a part of the ensemble of some of the biggest comedy hits in recent film history — “Tropic Thunder,” “Knocked Up”, “This is the End.”
But the one part he truly owns is Hiccup, the hero of the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies, an animated character who is “the Jay Baruchel of the Viking World,” Christine Champ noted at Film.com. The character has Baruchel’s “angsty sarcasm”, his distinct, high-pitched voice, and his speaking style, which Time Out/London compared to “the beguiling delivery of a young Christian Slater.”
In “How to Train Your Dragon 2,” Hiccup becomes downright — Dare we say it? — Canadian.
“He’s a peacemaker,” Baruchel says of Hiccup, based on the hero of Cressida Cowell’s “How to Train Your Dragon” books. “He wants reconciliation, across the board. He IS Canadian. In a way. He’s a great moderator. He wants cooler heads to prevail and he knows we’re better off if we can all find a way to get along.”
Baruchel revels in talking about the “Dragon” movies — “Dragon 2” opens June 13, and “Dragon 3” is already in the planning stages. He bought into the franchise right away because of the character, who “represents people who are earnest in their beliefs, and who refuse to accept things the way they are. Just because this is how things have been doesn’t mean this is how they have to be or will be forever and ever.”
He connects Hiccup, a quirky tinkerer, blacksmith’s apprentice and dragon-loving dreamer amongst the pillager Vikings of his family and village, to his own life.
“Hiccup is a great emblem for anyone who is wired differently. He’s still all Viking, even though he’s the least Viking of them all. So he’s loyal. But I had a dad whose sole ambition for me was that I play hockey and live exactly the same life that he did. And that was never going to be an option…
“There’s a lot of kids out there who face that…Hiccup tells these kids that the things you’ve been told are failings can actually be virtues, and will be, if you give them time.”
A Canadian child actor summoned to Hollywood by Cameron Crowe for a role in “Almost Famous,” Baruchel picked up on how he sounded — slightly nasal-voiced — and looked different from the standard issue movie stars or even character actors of his generation.
“They’d say ‘You’ve got such a distinct voice!’ And I was never sure how to take that. Maybe because they’d IMITATE me when they said it. But it’s just another thing I’d have thought was a failing that has become a virtue.”
And the beanpole appearance might make him a great foil for his beefier Canadian pal Seth Rogen, and a natural to star in a movie titled “She’s Out of My League.” But it can be limiting.
“I know. I KNOW. I’ve tried. I am working enough to eat. I swear. At some point, I’ll just say ‘tapeworm’ and leave it at that. I weighed myself two days ago. I got up to 157. I was so proud, a new record!”
His preferred manner of working is diving into a new project with his extended family of funnyman friends — Rogen, Dan Fogler (for whom he just made “Don Peyote,” another stoner comedy), Judd Apatow and director Cameron Crowe, “who wrote me a small part, playing Bradley Cooper’s step-brother, in his next movie. Who WOULDN’T want a job where you get to hang out with your friends all day? Movie days are like 14 hours long, so having friends on the set, that’s an important consideration when I’m looking for work.”
Guys from that extended community — Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse — flesh out the voice cast to the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies. But that’s not why Barcuchel does these and will continue to do so, as long as Dreamworks keeps making them.
“I have stumbled to my ‘Star Wars.’ Most actors can spend an entire career and never have even a chance of being in something as impactful and positive as ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’ I am on board these until they’re sick of me, until they fire me.”

By day, Donna Stern works in Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books sin Brooklyn. By night, the cute 28 year-old has a few drinks — and a few more — and gets up on stage at her favorite dive and does stand-up.
It’s not the observational, “Didya ever notice” comedy of the Seinfeld generation, but the over-sharing personal narrative of the narcissistic, lay-it-all-out-there and hope some of it is funny of the no-privacy era. She talks about her sex life, her sex parts, her boyfriend — the works.
Think Sarah Silverman, and just as Jewish.
It’s no great shock when the boyfriend ditches her. Donna is plainly not an adult. She’s a Paul Simon song we hear later in her story — an “Obvious Child.” But the beau has been cheating — with a friend of hers. He dumps her in the club’s unisex bathroom. And like a lot of people his age, he’s an addict.
“Looking at your PHONE while you’re dumping me?”
“Obvious Child” is a quirky, funny and quite gutsy comedy that “goes there” — in the vernacular of five minutes ago. It’s the funniest unplanned pregnancy romantic comedy since “Knocked Up,” and FAR more daring.
Jenny Slate is Donna, and she plays a couple of drunk scenes for the ages in the early scenes of this indie-budgeted romp. Watch her plead, tease, insult and binge-share as she drunk-dials the guy who left her. Sympathize as she crawls into a box as she packs up inventory, because the book store is closing and she’s losing her job, too. See her drown her sorrows and turn decidedly unfunny on stage as she talks about how crushing this was to her, how betrayed this boyfriend and her friend who cheated with him made her feel.
“I would love to just murder/suicide them,” she jokes. We hope. “Murder-sui them.” Pause. “A lot of people say I look like Anne Frank.”
And see her be charmed by the preppy computer game interface designer, Max (Jake Lacy), an uber-Gentile who looks like James Marsden and sounds just like Ben Affleck. She mocks his Docksiders.
“Welcome to Brooklyn,” he cracks back, “where they judge you by your SHOES.”
Their boozy one-night stand produces a pregnancy, one Donna is in no place to handle.
“I would like an abortion, please. Sorry, that sounded like I was ordering in a drive-through!”
Donna has the obligatory gay friend (Gabe Liedman), a supportive best friend (Gaby Hoffman, who could pass for her sister), a no-nonsense business professor mom (Polly Draper), an adoring TV puppeteer dad (Richard Kind). She should be able to handle that coming Planned Parenthood appointment, right?
Sure, but then things get more complicated.
Abortion has been so cast out of the entertainment sphere that it is a jolt to hear it joked about or even discussed frankly in a movie (TV is scared to death of it). But when Donna’s mom let’s slip the funniest Alzheimer’s zinger ever, you know nothing is off limits and whatever else this obvious child with the potential child is going to do, it will be her first adult decision — maybe ever.
That makes this Gillian Robespierre film and its bright new star a comic slap in the face — a turn-off for some, but a refreshing new point of view and new way of looking at that point of view, something only the rarest comedies ever pull off.

MPAA Rating: R for language and sexual content
Cast: Jenny Slate, Gaby Hoffman, Polly Draper, Richard Kind, Jake Lacy
Credits: Directed by Gillian Robespierre, written by Karen Maine and Gillian Robespierre, based on a short film by Anna Bean. An A24 release.
Running time: 1:23