Movie Nation

Kevin Hart brings his “A” game to “About Last Night…” For those of us despairing that we’d ever see the little man at his antic best, after that lame second concert film and half-speed blockbuster “Ride Along,” that’s good news.

Paired up with Regina Hall, who gives as good as she gets, in the raunchy romantic African-American remake of the 1986 Rob Lowe/Demi Moore romance based on David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” Hart knocks back drinks and blasts out one-liner observations about the opposite sex and relationships.

“Whoever says ‘I love you’ first cares more!”

And Hall, as Joan to Hart’s Bernie, throws it right back at him and anybody else within range.

“You are making a brief cameo in a very tragic porno.”

Their banter is so sharp and so well-timed that in many of their scenes, this ill-matched but perfectly-suited couple are shouting funny stuff at the same time. And they’re so good they do what other versions of this once-cutting edge piece only flirted with. They overwhelm the romantic leads.

That would be the “serious” couple, played by Rob and Demi back in the day, here performed with a minimum of pathos and comic pop by Michael Ealy and Joy Bryant. Theirs is the relationship we track in this story, one so predictable and bland that the movie is waiting on Hart to show up again and Hall to march into the scene and take him down.

Danny (Ealy) meets Debbie (Bryant) in the middle of a drunken, out of control outing with Bernie and Joan. Over the months, as the louder couple feud, break up and drunkenly hook back up, Debbie and Danny get close, closer then domestic.

The boys and girls debrief each other in assorted LA bars (Sexual Perversity in Los Angeles, this time), where it’s always “About Last Night…” — explicit, blow by blow accounts of seductions, pick ups and the wrong moves each thinks the other is making. One commits, the other “knows when to get out.”

One puts on “relationship weight,” the other is looking to adopt a dog with her man.

Break-ups are abrupt and kind of half-hearted in Leslye Headland’s updated script, though girl bonding over Bruno Mars and Nutella straight out of the jar is funny. Career stumbles, taking a stand on principle over a bar owner’s beer bill (the guys are in restaurant supply) seem flimsy in the current economy.

Which is a problem the whole film — funny as it sometimes is — struggles with. How can you break new ground on “rules” and relationship “tells” after “Friends” and “Seinfeld” and “Rules of Engagement” and scores of films and TV Shows have covered that ground and re-covered in the ensuing decade?

The sex scenes are less romantic and generally played more for laughs. And the conclusions are obvious shortly after the opening credits.

But what keeps us around until the closing credits, where Hart and Hall bust each other up, is the electrical charge between those two. They’re the Wimbledon Finals of sexy, sassy, drunken comic banter — two pros, evenly matched enough to put on a great show, even if they make us forget about the rest of the movie around them as they do.

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and brief drug use

Cast: Kevin Hart, Regina King, Michael Ealy, Joy Bryant, Christopher MacDonald

Credits: Directed by Steve Pink, scripted by Leslye Headland, based on the play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.” A Screen Gems release.

Running time: 1:40

Kids, this is not your parents’ “Endless Love.”
Scott Spencer’s novel of romantic obsession so strong that it flirts with
mental illness has had its sharp edges rubbed off, its dramatic weight lifted
and its focus shifted in this adaptation from the director of “Country
Strong.”
There’s nothing dangerous about this teen love on steroids. There’s no
showcase sex scene, the selling point of the infamous 1981 Brooke Shields/Franco
Zeffirelli adaptation. The kids here come off as perfectly reasonable, the
adults are the problem — but even their efforts to separate the lovebirds are
watered down.
Still, even without that tragic Romeo/Juliet edge or the hit theme song by
Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, it does have a stellar cast who keep things real
even if the lighter touches turn this into a far more conventional teen
romance.
Alex Pettyfer is David, the car mechanic’s son who falls — hard — for the
gorgeous Jade, played by the super-model skinny “Carrie” co-star Gabriella
Wilde.  So we get it.
They graduate from high school together, never having spoken. But David, he’s
seen “the possibility of us.” And Jade, shut-off from her peers, smothered by a
family still mourning a brother who died two years before, is simply swept off
her feet.
He rescues her ill-planned graduation party, and when he gets off on the
wrong foot with her stern surgeon dad (Bruce Greenwood, terrific), mechanic boy
David finds an automotive way to make it up to the doctor, fixing up the
family’s ancient MGB.
Jade’s mom (Joely Richardson) is touched. Jade’s brother (Rhys Wakefield of
“The Purge”) is charmed.
Only Dr. Hugh (Greenwood) is seeing red. He’s got his daughter’s future
planned, and those plans start with a summer internship. The boy is
interfering.
“Does he know this is going to end in a couple of weeks?” he snaps to
Jade.
The way this story is supposed to work is that Dad’s threats and efforts to
keep the kids apart works on David’s fragile, lovesick mind and makes him
desperate. Pettyfer (“Magic Mike”) doesn’t suggest that, as this David is
written as all lovesick and moon-eyed. He’s harmless.   Jade is in love for the
first time, but Wilde doesn’t get across the breathless yearning that raises the
stakes of their affair when Daddy pulls more than a few tricks out of his bag to
try and split them up.</P>
Robert Patrick is winning as David’s gruff but indulgent dad, and Dayo
Okeniyi scores as David’s goofy, lovable pal “Mace.”
Director/co-writer Shana Feste concocts what could have been an engaging if
stunningly predictable “Endless Love,” from the pop music montage courtship
sequences to Dad’s drive the boy out on a boat to set him straight about what’s
not going to happen with his daughter.
Greenwood and Richardson make a fine, discordant couple and the young leads
have a certain chemistry. If only Feste had realized she’d stripped almost all
the conflict out of the story, that you can’t flip motivations and turn
everybody into “reasonable” people and have anything like an interesting drama
left over.
Even the Brooke Shields version got that right.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, brief partial nudity, some language
and teen partying
Cast: Alex Pettyer, Gabriella Wilde, Joely Richardson, Robert Patrick, Bruce
Greenwood
Credits: Directed Shana Feste, written by Shana Feste and Joshua Safran,
based on the SCott Spencer novel. A Universal. release. >
Running time: 1:43

These past few years, it’s been pretty hard to get Kevin Costner off his back porch. It’s in Aspen, so we kind of understand. He’s been raising three children under the age of 10, with his second wife, Christine.

“Half my life is driving kids to practice,” he jokes.

There were the business ventures — one of them Ocean Therapy Solutions, an oil spill cleaning system — became famous thanks to the BP oil spill. Another, ArmStar, is a non-lethal weapon he’s selling to the Pentagon that could allow the military and police to pacify violent situations without killing anybody.

“A lotta fascinating $#%& happens on my back porch,” Costner says with a laugh. “And I’ve never been a guy who makes movies back to back to back. I love movies, love acting, love directing. Hell, I even love rehearsing. But I have a more full life than that.”

He still, at age 59, fits that description film scholar David Thomson gave him in 2002’s “Biographical Dictionary of Film” — “He is not like others — he has resolved not to be.”

But 2012’s cable series, “Hatfields & McCoys” reminded us he’s out there. He gave heart to the special effects-burdened “Man of Steel,” and grizzled gravitas to Chris Pine and “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.”

April has the sports movie veteran in another sports movie — “Draft Day.” There’s “McFarland” and a film with his “Upside of Anger” director — Mike Binder — “‘Black and White.'”

“I financed it, and it deals with racism,” he says. “You don’t do it just for the money, because God knows you don’t put your own money up for movies about racism.”

But first, there’s this gonzo action comedy from the writer-producer of “The Transporter” movies, “3 Days to Kill.” Costner plays a C.I.A. contract killer, a “cleaner”, who learns he’s dying of cancer. His new control agent (Amber Heard) bribes him with a serum that might prolong his life, providing he carry out one last series of hits, in Paris, where his estranged wife (Connie Nielsen) and the teen daughter he barely knows (Hailee Steinfeld) live.

“I like Ethan’s directness — in his job, and how discombobulated he becomes trying to deal with the women in his life,” Costner says. “We played those scenes fun, because he’s struggling.”

He likes, he says, the fact that this character hasn’t a clue about women — especially teenage ones.

“Welcome to the human race,” Costner laughs. “If you know a lot about women, please write that book. For the rest of us. Give us a hand.”

Costner shows every wrinkle, every gray hair in “3 Days.” He may be “a national treasure,” as his director, McG (“Charlie’s Angels) declares. But he’s not shy about showing his age, in character and out of it.

Costner wanted to play a man “wed to his job,” who has paid the price for that. He wanted to play a dying man who does what guys sometimes do in that situation — “He wants to earn a lot of money, doing these last few jobs, so he can leave his family something. If he can’t leave them memories, he’ll leave them money.”

Not that this explains Costner’s own suddenly full movie dance card. He’ll admit he’s in “the second half of my career,” but don’t go measuring him for a coffin just yet. And don’t write off “3 Days” as a morose thriller. No, it’s got laughs. Ethan Renner is so out of his depth with his daughter that he interrupts “enhanced interrogations” to question family men from the terrorist underworld for child-rearing advice.

“I try to get my hammer without winking,” Costner says. “I try to get the laugh with my physical movement, in those scenes with Mitat (The Driver) or The Accountant. By making it quiet, you make it work. And asking parenting questions of those guys? It’s already funny.”

McG, who has a “Terminator” movie and the emotional sports film “We Are Marshall” in his credits, wanted “a partner” on this venture in writer-producer Luc Besson’s Paris, with Besson’s French crew, French stunt drivers and French sensibilities.

“Costner’s got an Oscar (for directing ‘Dances With Wolves’), so he’s a pretty good director himself,” McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol) says. “So I wanted a collaborator, somebody I could listen to. We’re two American filmmakers, standing on Montmartre with an all French crew, trying to find our way in a French-style action film — two fish-out-of-water making a fish-out-of-water story.”

The director and his star rewrote some scenes, giving a more tolerant American sensibility to Besson’s bemused shots at French immigration policy (African squatters have taken over Ethan’s apartment, and French law and the French cops give them more rights than the property owner), turning would-be torture scenes into low comedy. Again, these scenes don’t play out the way you expect.

Costner’s love for the unconventional continues with his next film, a dramedy about a general manager trying to get through NFL “Draft Day.”

“If somebody said,’Make a movie about a single day in the NFL draft,’ you’d laugh,” he says. “But it’s the same thing as saying ‘These guys are walking out of a cornfield and onto a diamond wanting to play baseball. And they’re dead. Make a movie about THAT.'”

In a career that has had as many near classics as misses, the man who will be remembered for “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham,” “No Way Out” and “The Untouchables” is not about to stop gambling. Nobody saw “Swing Vote”? Maybe you should have. Missed his earthy working man turn in “The Company Men”? Netflix it.

“Movies are supposed to make you glad you made them” Costner says, “because they’re not what anybody expects.”

Mark Helprin’s thirty year old fantasy novel “Winter’s Tale” saunters onto
the screen as a lovely but slow and emotionally austere experience, a romantic
weeper that shortchanges the romance and the tears.<
They threw Oscar winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind”) and
a cast including three Oscar winners at this exercise in magical realism, and
yet Helprin’s bulky, honored book leaves them pinned to the mat, its big themes
seemingly diminished by the time the credits roll.
Colin Farrell stars as Peter, an orphan and a thief who grows up to be a
second story man, which is how he meets the beautiful but sickly Beverly
(Jessica Brown Findlay, of “Downton Abbey”). She’s dying of consumption, he’s
smitten. And since he’s ridden this magical horse who has thrown Beverly into
his path in 1916 New York, Peter figures he can save her.
The horse can fly, which is startling even to Peter, who knows the universe
is a magical place and that each person has magic in them, and that the horse
has already saved him from his demon mentor, Pearly (Russell Crowe).
Pearly — who loves oysters — is a bloody lieutenant of no less than
Lucifer, whose identity I won’t spoil. Ever so often, Pearly’s scarred,
unforgiving face splits into a Satanic scowl, all teeth and rage, and the blood
will flow.
Peter may be just as doomed as his seemingly doomed new lady friend. Then
again, in the opening scene, we’ve seen this early 20th century man walking the
streets, confused and bearded, in 2014 Manhattan. Sometimes, “the universe
reaches down and helps us find our destiny,” and so it is with Peter. Perhaps
Jennifer Connelly, a modern day single-mom newspaper food editor, can help him
puzzle it out.
Goldsman was going to have to condense, trim and flip this novel back and
forth to make a film out of it, and he ended up inventing characters, expanding
some and shrinking others, to concoct a filmable version.
But he’s rendered “Winter’s” into a tale of fine scenes with decent
performances, but a story that probably won’t please fans of the book and will
leave those who don’t know the book scratching their heads.
Young Ms. Findlay is one of those Hollywood Healthy consumptives, in the pink
and playing a character whose constant fever means she goes barefoot in the snow
and sleeps in tents even on the coldest nights.
“I’m 21, and I’ve never been kissed on the mouth,” she complains, which the
thief she’s just met sets out to rectify.
William Hurt is Beverly’s newspaper editor father, and he and Farrell click
in a sparkling and funny “What are your intentions?” scene that hinges on the
confusing pronunciations of “claret,” “fillet” and “wallet.”
Crowe is plenty menacing as the Devil’s Disciple, but all the rules of this
universe conspire to keep him from tracking his quarry to the ends of the wintry
Earth.
Goldsman, who also counts the adaptation of “I Am Legend” among his credits,
never lets the film lean on its effects, but the tone of the fantasy and the
romance of it all evades him. “Winter’s Tale” has no narrative drive and too
little heart to come off.
Rather than solving the mystery of whether it is “possible to love someone so
completely they cannot die,” it founders and bleeds out, a fairy tale too slow
to “die the one truth death.”

MPAA Rating:  PG-13 for violence and some sensuality
Cast: Colin Farrell, Jessica Brown Findlay, Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly,
William Hurt
Credits: Written and directed by Akiva Goldsman, based on the Mark Helprin
book. A Warner Bros. release.
Running time: 1:58

Oscar winning screenwriter, producer and director Akiva Goldsman fell in love with Mark Helprin’s 1983 novel “Winter’s Tale” decades ago. And despite the book’s themes, texture, density and sheer bulk — it is 740 pages long — he could never quite give up the idea that it should be a movie.

In “Winter’s Tale,” in turn-of-the-20th century America, an immigrant baby is set adrift in a model ship by parents denied entrance to America so that he might grow up to have the opportunities denied him. “Peter” Lake” grows up to become a thief, only to fall for Beverly, spirited but sickly, doomed beauty, the daughter of a newspaper editor. Can he somehow save her with his “gift”?

Peter is pursued by a gang led by his former mentor, the murderous Pearly. And he is saved, time and again, by a magical, winged white horse, which makes it easier to accept Peter’s sudden arrival 100 years in the future where his fate and his past actions meet their destiny.

The New York Times Book Review was among those publications praising this “large souled” novels as one of the best American novels of its era. But that alone wasn’t enough to keep Goldsman, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters, interested.

“It’s about redefining hope and triumph in the search for meaning after we’ve lost someone,” he says. He took versions of a script to studios six times over the years, “And I was right in the middle of that sixth try when my wife suddenly died.”

Rebecca Goldsman died of a heart attack in July of 2010. She was just 42. Goldsman stayed with his labor of love project “as a way of surviving that.”

“In a funny way, I made it for people like me, who have gone through that, losing someone who was too young,” Goldsman says.”Finally, everybody becomes like me. We all face the death of loved ones.”

Hollywood is full of determined writer-directors pushing scripts that they describe as “a labor of love.” Goldsman‘s track record meant that he’d be taken seriously consideration — with strings attached.

“Warner Brothers graciously said ‘Yes.’ We budgeted the movie at $80, and they gave us $40 ($46 million is the reported budget).”

Goldsman could get around that shortfall in ways only a screenwriter who has an Oscar, a best picture win, a lot of hits under his belt and loyal actor friends he’s made over the course of a thirty year career in film.

“Akiva calls, of course I’m doing the movie,” says Jennifer Connelly, who won her best supporting actress Oscar for “A Beautiful Mind.” “I’ve been hearing about this project for many years. It’s flattering and I was honored, too, to be asked to be a part of something that’s so close to his heart.”

Basically, Goldsman says, “The movie’s an accumulation of 20 years of Hollywood favors.”

Connelly would play Virginia, a modern-day reporter who becomes entangled in Peter Lake’s story.

Russell Crowe, her “Beautiful Mind” co-star, took the role of the demonic villain Pearly. In tinkering with, streamlining and trying to make the story “more cohesive, with rules to this universe that everyone could understand,” Goldsman created a boss for Pearly — Lucifer himself. To play him? Another favor called in — Will Smith, who starred in films based on Goldsman‘s scripts for “I Am Legend” and “I, Robot.” Colin Farrell plays Peter Lake and Jessica Brown Findlay is Beverly.

An old hand at converting popular books into movies, Goldsman took liberties with this “Tale” and hopes fans of the book will let him get away with it.

“You hope that you’re consolidating those salient elements that are meaningful to the novel, and that other people will agree those are the main points. We all like things for different reasons, so it’s a real game of roulette, in terms of popular acceptance.”

His biggest aim — to not compromise in the most important ways, “make a movie for grownups,” to not water down the magical realism, the romance or the tragedy of an acclaimed novel just to make an easier sell.

‘Endless Love’ opens opposite us. A friend of mine joked, this is ‘Ended Love.’

More than a few friends have asked, “So, is Kevin Costner in like every movie coming out this year?”

No. But there was “Jack Ryan,” and there is in April “Draft Day.”

And “3 Days to Kill” comes in a couple of weeks.

So I’ll be checking in with the Oscar winner, finding out if this is a particularly busy time. Has his quote changed, the sort of role he’s reaching out for moved into a different place as he closes in on 60?

What about you? Questions for Kevin Costner? Post them as comments, and thanks for the help.

A huge February opening for “The Lego Movie,” which rode enthusiastic reviews and the eagerness of millions of Lego-loving kids to an epic $69 million opening this past weekend.

Yeah. Wow.

Witty script by the “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” team, cute music and a clever tune by Mark Mothersbaugh and a generally subversive vibe may be what adults pick up on. Kids? Who knows? Will Arnett as Batman scores laughs, Morgan Freeman doing a Gandalf/Obi Wan thing worked, Will Ferrell as the villain — the biggest opening weekend for most of those guys.

“The Monuments Men” wasn’t good enough to roll out during the run-up to Oscar nominations. Reviews — weak — reflected that. But it still drew $22 million worth of grown up film fans, not bad considering.

“Vampire Academy” played like a clever riff on the whole Buffy/Potter/Twilight thing — teens coping with and enjoying the fruits of being supernatural. Problem 1) They didn’t spend the money to get a better cast. Problem 2) They failed to promote it, treated it like damaged goods and critics responded accordingly. I’ve seen worse, but The Weinstein Co. botched this rollout entirely. Nobody went. Just over $4 million. Sequels? Maybe. They don’t cost anything.

“Ride Along” cleared $100 million, “Lego” didn’t kick “Frozen” or “Nut Job” out of the top ten.

“Girl on a Bicycle” is a feather-weight Paris romance that’s like that old
Euro-joke about who runs heaven and hell.</P>
Heaven, it goes, is “where the police are British, the cooks French, the
mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized and run by the
Swiss.”

Hell has German police, British cooks, Swiss lovers, French mechanics and is organized and run by
Italians.

The Paris of “Girl on a Bicycle” has an Italian tour guide (and lover), a
German stewardess (and lover), a ditzy French model (and mother) and an Irish
tour guide, cynic and sometime lover, all variations on the theme of that joke.
They’re all thrown together for a romantic farce that only rarely measures up
to its lighter-than-air premise. Passions collide, feelings are hurt, wrong
conclusions are leaped to and arguments are had — in the multiple languages of
this cosmopolitan city. Fortunately, the Lingua Franca of this Paris is English,
the only language they all speak and understand well enough to fall back on.
Unfortunately, the lack of a language barrier doesn’t help.
Paolo (Vincenzo Amato) is an Romano-centric tour bus driver who regales
tourists with his take on the Arc de Triomphe, among other attractions.
Of course, “If you want to see a REALLY beautiful arch, you must go to
Italy.”
Greta (Nora Tschirner) is his longtime German stewardess girlfriend, the
woman he proposes to after three years. She’s even willing to indulge his kinky
side, sexually.
“TALK to me in German,” he purrs.
“You can’t make love in German. You can only…organize.”
Paddy Considine plays Paolo’s tour bus driving pal, Derek. He’s the guy Paolo
confesses his sudden infatuation with this beauty he keeps seeing, on a bicycle,
on his bus route. Cecile is a clumsy but gorgeous and uninhibited model. And
Derek’s advice to Paolo — “Just talk to her,” to get her out of his system, is
nothing but trouble.
Next thing we know, Paolo’s run over her with his bus and finds himself
caring for the injured Cecile and her two bambinos, little kids who mistake him
for their father. Next thing after that, Greta is confiding her suspicions to
the seductive pilot Francoise, who explains men to her.</P>
“Italian men think that ‘Fidelity’ is the name of the woman who lives across
the hall.”
Screenwriter (“The Legend of Bagger Vance”) and sometime writer-director
(“Don Juan DeMarco’) Jeremy Leven trots out national cliches like this by the
bushel basketful. The Irishman sings in bars in his off hours, the martinet
running Cecile’s bath soap photo shoot is a Brit, and so on.
The comic irony in Paolo having to be the organized one, getting the kids off
to school, or in the German Greta being a true romantic, is all that passes for
depth here. Cecile is more a lovely plot device than a character, as is the
ever-explaining, always unshaven Francoise (Stephane Debac).
“I just wanted to make a memory,” Paolo says at one point, a goal most film
romances share. But with this “Girl” and her bicycle, the cute bits, rare laugh
out loud moments, occasionally zippy lines and limply obvious farcical
predicaments are never more than instantly forgettable. 

MPAA Rating: R for some sexuality, nudity and language
Cast: Vincenzo Amato,  Nora Tschirner, Louise Monot, Paddy Considine
Credits: Written and directed by Jeremy Leven. A Monterey Media release.
Running time: 1:40

Any worries we had that John Cusack was going to have trouble finding roles
as he circled the day he gets that AARP card in the mail are mollified by “Adult
World.” Indie cinema will always have a place for an aging hipster, and his
standoffish poet Rat Billings is proof.
The film is an Emma Roberts vehicle, a coming-of-age comedy about an aspiring
poet, fresh out of college, whose parents “can’t afford to subsidize” this
indulgence, forcing her to enter the “Adult World.” Amy (Roberts) takes that
literally. Her first job is in the Adult World dirty books and porno appliances
store in the grimy corner of “the city” (Syracuse, N.Y.).
Amy is convinced of her greatness, keeps posters of Sylvia Plath within easy
reach and, when we meet her, is sticking her head in the oven, just like her
idol.
But that’s just the frame of the film, which flashes back to a year earlier,
when the gullible and delusional Amy struggles with the mockery of college
classmates and makes her klutzy debut in the mom and pop porno shop run by
characters played by Cloris Leachman and John Cullum.
“Salinger worked in a meat processing plant,” she recalls. “I will SUFFER
through this.”
What she needs is a mentor. Enter Rat Billings, a struggling poet whose
greatest hit is “practically ancient” — 1989. She stalks the guy, who teaches a
little does a few readings and lives a semi-down and out existence just across
town.
 “I’m FEELING a lot,” Amy gushes. I’m writing a lot. I’m inspired!”
And all the veteran poet can do is not remember her correct name, avoid eye
contact and make sure there’s a closed door between himself and this obvious
crackpot.
“You WOULD be the sort of muse I’d get,” he growls.

Your muse?
“I was being sarcastic!”
Thus begins a lopsided relationship that involves her worshiping at his
feet, cleaning his house and trying to get him to read her poetry. She’s not his
type, so “muse” and anything romantic is out of the question. She’s a virgin,
after all — a virgin working in a porn shop, with inflatable this and vibrating
that, where videos cost extra is you return them sticky.
Shot over a winter, “Adult World” has a poetic gloom about it. When Rubia
(Armando Riesco), a transvestite “diva” who takes Amy in tries to help her chase
down the elusive Rat, they do it — a cross-dresser and a red-nosed virgin — on
a bicycle built for two through the snowy streets of Syracuse.
There’s nothing deep in this script, and the delayed romance, between
real-life lovers Roberts and Evan Peters (of “American Horror Story”) sets off
no sparks. The characters are sort of a grab bag of “types.”  But
actor-turned-director Scott Coffey lets the laugh-out-loud moments in Andy
Cochran’s script zing. Roberts has a plucky, put upon pout that works well
enough in the part.
And Cusack, his hair still Reagan-blacked despite his advancing years, makes
a fine, nuanced crank, a cynic with secrets and a wisdom about the craft that
even Roberts, out of character, can take to heart.
“How do you feel about failure, as a concept? The artist’s job is to fail
better.”

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and some drug use
Cast: Emma Roberts, John Cusack, Evan Peters, Armando Riesco, Cloris
Leachman, John Cullum
Credits: Directed by Scott Coffey, written by Andy Cochran. An IFC release.
Running time: 1:37