Movie Nation

“Starbuck” is a big, fat French-Canadian hug of a movie, a sperm-donations-gone-wrong farce that manages the occasional belly laugh, but also moving takes on parenthood, family and what it means to grow up.

David Wozniak (Patrick Huard) makes one wonder what the French word for “galoot” is. He’s the black sheep in his Montreal family, 30something slacker who can’t do “the easiest job” in the family’s butcher shop right – driving the delivery truck. He’s forever taking the truck for personal errands, forgetting to do this or that and then lying the moment he’s found out.

He’s in hock to loan sharks. His idea for making extra cash is setting up a pot-growing operation in his apartment. And when his girlfriend (Julie LeBreton) tells him that she’s pregnant, that’s her brush-off line. She doesn’t want their baby’s father to be a lout “who doesn’t have a life.”

David promises to mend his ways. But that promise is made before he’s served with legal papers. There was a screwup at the sperm bank he used to frequent for the extra cash. Somehow, 533 babies were born with his genes, and now, 20 odd years later, they’re suing to find out who their “father” is.

He consults his best friend, a harried father and sometime lawyer, played to hilarious effect by Antoine Bertrand, who wants to take on this landmark privacy case.

“I’ll call the bar this afternoon and get my license back!”

David doesn’t tell his girlfriend or his family. And when he’s given the profiles of the people suing to find his identity, he doesn’t tell his offspring, either. But he starts checking them out. One’s a rising soccer star. Great! But the rest?

There’s a junky, a bartender who wants to be an actor, a lifeguard, a bag boy at a supermarket, an impoverished busker playing in subway stations. David reads their profiles, tracks them down, and stumbles into their world under false pretenses. He’s the pizza deliveryman who drags Julie to the hospital after an overdose, the bar customer who offers to step behind the counter so that Etienne can go for an audition.

David thinks he can become “their guardian angel,” and nobly wants “the satisfaction of making a difference in someone’s life.” The genius of this actor turned director Ken Scott’s film is the ways David manages just that, mixed in with David’s manic efforts to hide his identity.

“Yo no soy David,” he bellows – denying who he is, in Spanish, to throw off those tracking him down.

It’s a movie conscious of statistical realities – somebody in this group is going to have birth defects, some will be unhappy, some gay, some talented and some, just like David – struggling to handle life’s simplest demands. Scott scans past the progeny with lovely montages of tattoos and the like. He manages a few perfect poignant moments in between the chuckles.

And the sentiment, that kids “conceived in a little cup” want what those “conceived in love” are born with, is just lovely.

It’s a smidge too cute and a bit too long, but Huard and Scott make this comical journey (in French and “Franglish” with English subtitles), a trip from indifference to kindness, incompetence to responsibility, a most rewarding reinvention of what “family” can mean.

(Roger Moore interviews Patrick Huard and Ken Scott about “Starbuck” here.)
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug material

Cast: Patrick Huard, Julie LeBreton, Antoine Bertrand, Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse

Credits: Directed by Ken Scott, written by Ken Scott and Martin Petit.  An eOne release.

Running time: 1:49

There’s an old maxim in the film biz, which I’ve taken to calling the “Elizabeth Berkeley Rule.” Always have that next project signed up and ready to announce before your current film hits theaters.

It’s a way of immunizing yourself against a flop, something Ms. “Showgirls” and her agent failed to do.

Max Irons was in “Red Riding Hood,” and he’s in “The Host,” which opens at the end of March.

So now is the perfect time to announce that he’s in the next film by Lone “An Education” Scherfig. “Posh” is based on a hit British play about posh twentysomethings who gather in an Oxford/Cambridge pub for a sort of supper club meeting of the minds evening.

For a movie as overtly sexual as “Spring Breakers,” Harmony Korine’s Ode to “Girls Gone Wild” that progresses to “Girl Gone Wrong,” it isn’t exactly sexy.

The women starring in it spend the entire film, pretty much, in bikinis. They simulate sex acts — jokingly — on their college campus. They make out with each other at the drop of a drunken hat (Harmony Korine’s wish fulfillment fantasy?), the character played by Korine’s nubile young wife goes topless and drunk and might be headed for a hook-up.

But their trip to Tampa Bay, for all its many shots of unidentified women whooping and tearing off their tops and playing beachside/hotel room sex-drinking games with the lads of Spring Break, has no real hooking up. The movie, by design, is something of a tease.

Skateboarder turned filmmaker Korine wrote “Kids,” and wrote and directed “Gummo,” “Julien Donkey-Boy” and “Mister Lonely,” and young, dangerous sex and its consequences is always on his mind. That lends the film an air of danger, or of a big accident waiting to happen. It’s much more commercial than anything else he’s done, but he brings many impressionistic touches to the tale — heavy use of cell-phone camera video, the repetitious, fever-dream nature of the narrative — girls, so hellbent on having fun, so enraptured by the escape of their first no-adult-supervision vacation, chanting their “Spring break, spring break, Spring Break FOREVER” mantra.

No doubt some of those showing up for it will be coming under false pretenses. It’s not a comedy, though James Franco is always funny, even as a possibly dangerous sometimes drawling (He attempts a Southern accent) gangsta and would-be rapper. And there’s shock comedy value in seeing the squeaky clean Selena Gomez, Vanessa Williams and Ashley Bell go as raunchy as any frat boy, enjoying their popsicles just a tad too much, on occasion.

The geography is, as with most movies, suspect. Our hot-to-trot quartet are shown getting to and from St. Petersburg, St. Pete Beach, etc., by crossing the scenic Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which is south of that corner of Florida. Kentucky to St. Pete? You don’t cross that.

Unless, of course, it’s a chartered bus that is dropping off/picking up from Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key, et. al. Which it wouldn’t. Because there isn’t much of a Spring Break there.

Because all the best partying goes on amongst the seniors — college seniors AND senior citizens — of sleepy, aged old St. Pete.

(Roger Moore’s review of “Spring Breakers” is here)

Yeah, a little hand-wringing must be underway this AM at Universal.

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is “an all-star comedy” and a bit of a throwback, a character comedy where none of the characters are Will Ferrell broad.

And it has bombed. $10.5 million opening? For a movie that won’t do much overseas? Steve Carell takes a pretty big hit on this one. Blame it on marketing or the rating or whatever, but audiences avoided this one, even though its middling reviews were on a par with the better-handled “Identity Thief.” Carell’s appeal may be wearing thin, and Jim Carrey’s may have worn out. Adam Sandler lives on, but these guys are in desperate need of a life support hit.

“The Call” has a crowd-pleasing finale that helped its word of mouth. Weak reviews for this one, overall, as well. But that popping first hour got a lot of notice. Over $17 million for this one.

“Oz, the Great and Powerful” steamed its way to another $42 million, which means Disney will find black ink, somewhere down the road, once all the foreign and US box office is counted. It’s closing in on $250 million worldwide. Since it cost $200-215 to make and market, it’ll need to double that to break even — $500 million. It’ll come close.

“Silver Linings Playbook” looks to finish off its run in the $133 million range (It’s at $124 now). “Identity Thief” will pass it by midweek.

“Jack the Giant Slayer” is an epic fail — it won’t hit $65 US. I sat in on a showing while I was waiting for another film to start the other day, I was the only one in the theater. DOA.

And “Safe Haven” sticks around the top ten, now at over $67 million ($75 might be where it peaks).

Again, why do we care about box office, kids? It’s a measurement of how well the movies are doing, in general. And the hits tell us what we’ll see more of in the future — studios abandoning this star, that sort of comedy or that manner of fantasy altogether.

I do believe Danny Boyle and I have chatted before on the cusp of St. Patrick’s Day. But I’ve never asked the great British filmmaker of Irish descent if he, when he’s stateside especially, gets caught up in the day that seems to be a much bigger deal over here than in the U.K. I got Ciaran Hinds to explain “Diddly aye” music to me, once. But never a word from Boyle on the Day.

So Saturday, I did.

“It was a big thing in our thing in our family, especially when we were kids, because relatives from over in Ireland would send us over fresh shamrocks. I remember waiting for them in the post, really vividly. That was an occasion.

“And a few years ago, I spent a St. Patrick’s Day in New York. Which I have NO memory of. None at all. I just know that I woke up, and it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day any more. All I can recall was that it must have been really good. Started off in a bar, and after that, a blank. A glorious blank.

“But yes, it is a big thing here. This year, I’m working and working hard on St. Patrick’s Day, publicizing our film.”

The film is “Trance,” an art heist picture with Danny Boyle touches — head games, hypnotism, humanity, love and loss and betrayal.James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson and Vincent Cassel star.

It goes into limited release in the US in April.

Spring Break – it’s every bit as much fun as you think it is. Until it isn’t.

“Spring Breakers” is Harmony “Gummo” Korine’s fever-dream of something he never experienced – an orgy of sand, sin and snorting that is only recounted in the snippets you remember, in between the topless beer bong blasts and night-long bong hits.

And if his cameras – cell phone video inserts blur through the narrative – focus on pert bikini bottoms and heaving, inviting crotches, on girl-on-girl make-out sessions and on topless, almost faceless masses shouting that drunken coed mating call — “Woohooooooo” — well that’s just him kicking himself for what he missed.

It’s “Girls Gone Wild” meets the female-gangster picture “Set It Off.” Korine has cooked up an impressionistic bacchanal of what spring break has become and those who made it that way – college girls, proving to each other and themselves that they’re as bad and promiscuous as any frat boy hip hop.

Our quartet of Kentucky College coeds are thinly drawn in. Faith (Selena Gomez) is the religious one, and the spiritual seeker, who claims she only wants “to see some place different.”

Britt, Candy and Cotty (Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens and the director’s wife, Rachel Korine) are a little more streetwise. That’s why they take the news that they don’t have the cash necessary to make the Florida trek badly. And they’re not sitting still for it.

They find ski masks, arm themselves, steal a car and knock over a crowded diner. It says something of how shaky Faith’s faith is that she isn’t shocked by this, that she’s as willing as anybody else to get out of school by any means necessary.

In St. Petersburg Beach and environs, they find “where we were meant to be” – a non-stop party where the sexual degradation is so ingrained that they don’t even notice it. They’re young. They’re hot. They’re in control.

And then they’re busted for being in the wrong party and a gangster and would-be rapper named “Alien” (James Franco) bails them out. What might he have in store?

“Spring Breakers” is no “21 and Over” or “Pineapple Express.” The laughs aren’t obvious, and every situation is tinged with a darkness. We’re waiting for a rape, an overdose, an accident. Lines are repeated, endlessly, the way drunken college kids pick up on a phrase and beat it to death – “Spring break. Spring BREAK. Spring break FOREVER,”

The story is easy to follow, harder to justify, as motivations seem as murky as the plot, which is very much a dreamy haze of parties, where the frat boys pour beer down funnels to girls as they yell, “Take it like a stripper.”

Franco affects a Southern drawl and makes Alien a wildman and something of a gangster success. But his motives are hidden.

Gomez has the only real female character to play, narrating the story in the lies she tells her grandmother by phone about what a “spiritual” place this is. The others are under-motivated set dressing, hired for the way they fill a bikini, and the players – Hudgens and Benson especially – treat the movie as some sort of hipster rite of acting passage. Skin will show (Korine’s wife shows the most), bad behavior indulged.

And we’ll have no more “High School Musical,” “Wizards of Waverly Place” or “Pretty Little Liars” offers to our agents, thank you.

(James Franco breaks down “Spring Breakers” for you — right here).

(Read “Spring Breakers,” Don’t get the wrong idea, for more about the movie).

MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, language, nudity, drug use and violence throughout

Cast: Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, Vanessa Hudgens, James Franco, Rachel Korine

Credits: Written and directed written by Harmony Korine. An Annapurna release.

Running time: 1:33

Rare is the artist who drops into the culture, fully formed and utterly self-created. There were influences, nature and nurture, that shaped them.

That’s what the new film “Leonie” is about. Leonie Gilmour wasn’t a great artist. She took up with a writer and edited him into near-greatness. He then scurried back to Japan and married somebody else.

But the child from that union came sculptor and landscape architect Isamo Noguchi, one of the major figures in late 20^th century art.

“Leonie,” starring Emily Mortimer as Noguchi’s mom, must qualify as the oddest “woman ahead of her time” bio-drama in living memory. Here was an early 20^th century alumnus of Bryn Mawr and the Sorbonne who never had much of a career herself, but whose influence came from a child she had outside of a conventional marriage and outside the racial boundaries of her day.

In 1901, she responds to an “editor needed” ad. A poet, Yone Noguchi, placed it. He needs someone to edit a book, “American Diary of a Japanese Girl.” He’s young, handsome, uncertain of his English, but enthusiastic. And he’s presumptuous. He shows her his press clippings, reviews of his poetry.

“VERY impressive,” he says of himself.

Leonie takes the job, polishes Noguchi’s novel into proper English and helps him pitch it to publishers. Naturally, or rather abruptly, they become lovers, thanks to his scribbling “Leonie Gilmour is my wife” on a piece of paper. The book’s a hit.

In this country,” he purrs, “you are my voice.”

Things go South from there. Their difficult relationship, not helped by the fact that she must stay in the shadows while he is feted by the rich and famous, worsens.

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In a movie review aggregator world dominated by the Warner Brothers owned Rotten Tomatoes, there are only a couple of worthwhile challengers to the “tomatometer” tilt of whether a movie has earned a consensus of good reviews or bad. It’s a flawed set up, and rather capricious and punitive in the ways it uses your content, so having alternatives is a good thing.

IMDb and Fandango and Movie Tickets.com and other places gather a few reviews to sample the opinion that’s out there. But thorough? That field is small.

There’s Metacritic. And sort of midway between the that and Rotten Tomatoes is Movie Review Intelligence, a site that parses reviews more carefully and weeds out fansite critics and comes up with a “rating” that is pretty close to being on the mark as far as taking a movie’s critical temperature.

Very sad to here that Movie Review Intelligence, which a lot of critics have endorsed, never got the traction of the simple “fresh” or “rotten” RT model, is shutting down.

She’s never been box office. But if the audience I saw Halle Berry’s “The Call” with the other night was any indication, she’s got a crowd-pleasing thriller on her hands.

And Friday night’s box office take is backing that up. She’s on track to pull in around $17 million this weekend. And Saturday could pick up, if the word of mouth is good.

It’s a very good, tight thriller — for an hour. The stuff audiences applaud at the end is the very conventional horror movie turn the film takes, which I didn’t care for at all.

“Oz, the Great and Powerful” is on track to win another weekend — as expected. It will probably pull in about $40 million, roughly half what it did its opening weekend.

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” suggests that Steve Carell’s winning streak at the box office is over and done with. Surely it will do more than the middling Friday take suggests (on track to do $11 million this weekend, a bomb if that happens). It’s not a bad movie. Not a great one, or a laugh riot either.

Ed Koch’s timing failed him, on occasion. The New York mayor was very late reacting to the AIDS crisis, tin-eared and overstayed his welcome in city hall.

And he died in February, at age 88, just before Neil Barsky’s entertaining, image-burnishing documentary appreciation for his career, “Koch,” opened.

“How’m I doing?” he asked constituents during his first mayoral campaign, and all through his tenure in office (1978-1989). “Koch” does a pretty good job of answering that question that.

Non-New Yorkers won’t remember that he was a three-term Congressman and a World War II combat vet. And even New Yorkers, with no sense of history, might have forgotten what he did to make the city livable and worth visiting by tourists, two features it had lost by the middle of the ‘70s.

Urban blight, crime, and a Times Square that was only a “Crossroads of the World” for those who liked porn movies, panhandlers and peep shows – oh, and the city was on the verge of bankruptcy – those were the challenges that faced the underdog who upset Mario Cuomo and became mayor in 1978.

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