Movie Nation

He’s got one of the most famous voices in showbiz — a low, whispered growl that can be played for menace, or laughs. But as anybody who has caught Alec Baldwin on “30 Rock,” “Saturday Night Live” or even “Inside the Actor’s Studio” can attest, he’s more than happy to hide that. A gifted mimic, he’s taken down everybody from Richard Nixon to his “30 Rock” co-star Tracy Morgan with his killer impressions.

Continue reading →

“I’ve been playing moms since ‘Training Day,’ and I was 25 when I made that,” Eva Mendes says. “Being a bad mom should come easily, by now.”

So don’t read too much into her role in “Girl in Progress,” Mendes’ latest film. The veteran spokesmodel, queen of men’s magazine covers, a woman who, onscreen, is adept at “keying into both male and female fantasies of womanhood” (Interview Magazine), may have just turned 38. That doesn’t mean she’s quite ready to transition into “mom” roles. Even if her character, “Grace,” a self-absorbed and immature mother of a teen (Cierra Ramirez) who needs her, is what Susan Sarandon likes to call “a mom…with legs.”

“‘A mom with legs,'” Mendes purrs. “I can work with that.”

“Girl in Progress,” from the director of “Under the Same Moon (La misma Luna)”, checks in the trainwreck of a life that Grace (Mendes) is leading, a struggling waitress and maid having an affair with a married man, and the trainwreck about to happen that is her daughter, whom Grace thoughtlessly named Ansiedad (Anxiety). Grace has made mistakes, and seems helpless to intervene when her very smart daughter sets out to pass several teen “rites of passage” that could put her on the same dead-end life course that mom followed.

“Grace is so human, so incredibly flawed. She seems like a real person, and did, even on the page. She’s trying her best, and failing. Miserably. She’s failing to be a ‘present’ mom, failing to be a stable influence on her daughter’s life.”

A favorite scene illustrating this? Mendes lit up for that one.

“I’m smoking in the car with the girls, my daughter and her friend, riding with me,” she says. “I’m smoking a real cigarette, and I’m kind of blowing smoke in their faces. That’s like the ultimate sign of a bad mom, kind of our ultimate taboo. When I was growing up, my family had its smokers. My parents had friends who smoked. And it wasn’t nearly the taboo it is now. That scene encapsulates Grace, and the movie. She’s not considerate, not necessarily smart, and not a mom who thinks things through. That’s her.”

But Mendes found redeeming qualities in her character, as actors are wont to do. She points out the sacrifices Grace makes to give Ansiedad a chance, and took her inspiration from a key movie of her own youth — “Stella,” the 1990 Bette Midler remake of that classic mother-daughter weeper, “Stella Dallas.”

“I’ve not seen that movie since i came out, but I remember it made a huge impression on me. HUGE. It reminded me of my relationship with my mother, the things she does that drive you crazy, the things you feel guilty about in the way you treat her.”

Mendes still isn’t letting on much about her own thoughts on motherhood (She’s been in a relationship with Ryan Gosling since last fall). And she’s still getting plenty of offers to play women who aren’t moms — she’s very high on the upcoming “The Place Beyond the Pines,” in which she co-stars with Gosling, a film by his “Blue Valentine” director, and the Cannes competition sci-fi fantasy “Holy Motors,” by Leos Carax, “a movie where I have a big role, and not one single line of dialogue! I love that. I’m trying to make all my movies more like that.”

But if there are mothers in her Hollywood future, Mendes is down with that. “Stella,” which she saw when she was 16, sticks with her.

“I’m a sucker for a good mother-daughter story.”

(Roger Moore’s review of “Girl in Progress:)

(Roger Moore’s review of the weird not-quite-wonderful “Holy Motors”)

A chilly play comes to chilly life in David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method,” a 100-minute peek into the complex relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the birth of psychoanalysis and the schism between these two giants that impacts psychotherapy to this day.

Continue reading →

Daft, dazzling in design but straining ever so hard to be hip, “Mirror Mirror” isn’t your Uncle Walt’s “Snow White.”

Continue reading →

Josh Brolin impersonating the young Tommy Lee Jones is worth the price of admission to “Men in Black 3.”  Dry, drawling, deadpan — he nails the flinty Texan in this sentimental sequel to the sci-fi comedies about secret agents in black suits who save the world from aliens.

Continue reading →

 Watch any surfing documentary, from “Whipped!” to “Riding Giants,” and you’ll hear the dudes speak — in hushed tones — about the treacherous and epic waves that show up, off the coast of Santa Cruz, when the conditions are just right. The “Mavericks” break is legendary, and for years, was considering some sort of myth by those who surfed and had never seen it.

Continue reading →

Bob Marley remains, as his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame biography attests, “reggae’s foremost practitioner and emissary.” Thirty years after his death, at 36, his estate still earns millions from sales of his music — his “Legend” greatest hits disc has sold over 20 million copies, and counting — and the omnipresent T-shirt that bears his image.”People love to listen to him at the beach, to hear ‘Three Little Birds’ or ‘One Love’ in parties,” says filmmaker Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland,” “State of Play”). “‘Stir It Up’ plays in elevators, supermarkets. He’s become background music, background noise actually.”

Continue reading →

Bob Marley packed a lot of living into his 36 years. Hit records, international concert success, eleven kids by seven different women, a face stenciled on more t-shirts than Che Guevara, it was as if he knew he didn’t have much time so he got an early start and lived at a sprint, despite the laid back image his music and lifestyle portrayed.

He’s been dead over 30 years, but the founding father of reggae music remains an icon whose fame transcended music just as Marley transcended the odd confluence of geography, religion, patois and poverty that created him.

The who, where and how of Bob Marley shines through in Kevin MacDonald’s thorough (almost overly so) documentary about Marley, a Jamaican who introduced reggae and his religion, Rastafarianism, to the world, a guy for whom the phrase “world music” was pretty much invented.

(My interview with KevinMacdonald is here.)

Continue reading →

“Do not go gently into that good night,” the poet urged us. And that goes for actors as well as anybody else.

A cast of great Brits of old age pensioner vintage light up John “Shakespeare in Love” Madden’s film of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” an adorable comedy about elderly pioneers tackling life’s last great adventure.

Continue reading →

The great thing about social observer-documentarian Morgan Spurlock is that he works — a lot. He’s constantly got films or TV shows in pre-production, post-production or in theaters, films that have a take on this or that corner of the American zeitgeist. He’s done “Super Size Me” and “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” and “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden.” So it doesn’t mater when he misses the mark. There’s always something else coming right after it that could connect.

Spurlock follows his amusing and perceptive “Comic Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope,” with “Mansome,” a weak , myopic and generally unamusing look at a legitimate social phenomenon — the rise of the metrosexuals, aka men “who think too much about their appearance.”

It’s a mockumentary, of sorts, about American manhood and the growing obsession with grooming and preening male self-image. Assorted guys — and Spurlock samples a tiny pool of “experts,” and comic actors who have either worked with Judd Apatow, or should work with him — talk about facial hair, narcissism and the changing image of manliness.

Not so much about the last one, which may be where this film should live. Spurlock, who started his career making a movie about himself and his health after taking on an all-
McDonald’s diet, hijacks his own movie in the first ten minutes. A balding fortysomething who has sported a Fu Manchu moustache for years, he wanders into the land of facial hair and wonders whether or not he should shave it. Since he opens the film with over ten indulgent minutes of this, with John Waters discussing his pencil-thin moustache and others identifying the various shapes, from the “chevron” to the “toothbrush” to everybody’s favorite, the “porn-stache,” “Mansome” struggles to finds its tone, its voice and its message.

Funnymen Jason Bateman and Will Arnett provide the connecting tissue, followed as they have a day-long chat about manliness and being “mansome” as they get every spa treatment under the sun. The Old Spice Guy (actor Isaiah Mustafa) weighs in on the broader subjects, and the bearded Zach Galifianakis declares “Real men don’t hang out with models, and don’t tweet.”

You get a feeling of haste from this film, as if Spurlock, as usual, is onto something, but maybe doesn’t have the time or patience to stick with it to widen his approach and find sharper people to sharpen his material. Yes, it’s ironic that Galifianakis, who has built his career or lumpy, fey characters, should be lecturing American men on manliness. Not that funny, though. And posing comic Adam Carolla in a garage in front of a couple of vintage Ford Mustangs while he makes his points about the narrowing differences between men and women in career terms (bartenders, pilots, plumbers) seemed like a better idea than it turns out to be.

When one expert suggests that “women today want men to man up,” we’ve gotten to the heart of the argument. Showing us another 45 minutes of men getting fitted for wigs (“systems”) and kvetching over removing four stray hairs in their eyebrows doesn’t settle it.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and some crude material

Cast: Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Paul Rudd, Judd Apatow, Morgan Spurlock

Credits: Directed by Morgan Spurlock. A Paladin release.

Running time: 1:24