Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor;Joy and Terrence Stamp reconnect us with a dreamy, then nightmarish vision of London in the Swinging 60s. Stamp actually cut quite a figure on Mod London. This looks dazzling.
Mike Mills (“Beginners,” “Twentieth Century Women”) directed this monochromatic A24 release, using several recognizably romanticized childhood locales — NYC to Venice Beach — a road trip a father takes with his little boy.
Phoenix friends set up a massive grocery store coupon scam, raking in tens of millions and spending like drug lords until they bring down a massive Federal tactical response in “Queenpins,” a caper comedy overflowing with dark farce possibilities.
The script lured former “Veronica Mars” co-stars Kristen Bell and Kirby Howell-Baptiste, as well as Vince Vaughn, Joel McHale, Stephen Root, Bebe Rexha, Jack McBrayer and Paul Walter Hauser of “I, Tonya” and “Richard Jewell.”
It’s got adorable not-dumb but hardly brilliant criminal masterminds, oafish over-eager corporate “loss prevention” and (postal) law enforcement, coupon stealing and money laundering, Lamborghini collecting and arms dealing.
And after all these balls are tossed in the air, writers/directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly (“Beneath the Harvest Sky”) make a nearly complete hash of things. A promising set-up, a bouncy first act, some fun performances, and the whole enterprise goes off the rails.
“Inspired by actual events” (a $40 million bust in 2012), our story is narrated by the perky, obsessive Connie Kaminsky (Bell), a Phoenix housewife and retired Olympic gold medalist race-walker who has thrown herself into couponing.
And of all the things to invent for your fictionalized version of a “pink collar” criminal mastermind, that there is a doozy. Was it to flatter Bell into taking the role?
Connie is couponing buddy with neighbor JoJo (Howell-Baptiste), a bubbly, failed-saleswoman, hard-luck would-be entrepreneur and Youtube “personal brand” builder who does videos about couponing as the SavvySuperSaver, “the savior of saving.”
They both love the thrill of watching a supermarket receipt subtracting price after price until that final total prints out and they can take home what one cashier calls “your trophy.”
They’re both experts at what a “six month stock up price” is for this or that product, and are willing to dumpster dive for proof of purchase boxes to feed their mania.
“Watch the pennies, and the dollars will take care of themselves!”
And yes, both women have their sad reasons for this compulsion.
It isn’t until Connie learns the rewards of writing strong letters of complaint to assorted food and household product empires that they see a bigger score — reselling those “free” coupons such companies send out to maintain customer loyalty among the disgruntled.
And that’s what points them to Chihuahua, Mexico, where the coupons are printed and also processed, the promise of NAFTA at work. When Connie pushes them to figure out how to steal those coupons, smuggle them home and sell them illegally, they have their caper.
“Sounds bad when you say it like that!”
All that’s left is selling them online and stuffing cash into empty Pampers boxes.
They’re going to need help avoiding getting caught. That comes from identity theft queen Tempe Tina (singer/actress Bebe Rexha). And if you’re laundering money, why not spend it on high-end guns, the kind that go up in value when you see them in a film?
“No better commercial for a gun than a John Wick movie!”
Hauser, who is making a career out of playing law-enforcement wannabes, is the “Let’s cut to the Chevy Chase” loss prevention officer who can’t quite piece this all together. Vaughn is the Postal Policeman who gets interested when the FBI (Root) laughs off the crime. And McHale plays Connie’s tightwad, always-on-the-road/never-the-wiser IRS auditor husband.
With so much to work with, the writers/directors have trouble figuring out the tone and who and what to direct our attention to.
Our heroines aren’t heroic, but not enough is made of their desperation and no effort is given to making them identifiable and sympathetic. They’re cute together, but the “Robin Hood” ethos is a hard sell.
Better to have locked-down on the nuts-and-bolts logistics of low rent larceny and made our leading ladies dizzier and luckier — let their mistakes be more obvious, their downfall more comically suspenseful.
Their first meeting with “Tempe Tina,” involving blindfolds and a drive into the night for a secret rendezvous could have been tense comic gold, but is so ineptly-handled it should have been cut.
Vaughn and Hauser are co-starring in a crude, cut-rate “We’re not partners” cop-buddy picture with a few lowball laughs tossed around. And they’re the comic standouts in the cast. Bell and Howell-Baptiste never quite come off as comical as their characters seem destined to be.
The “sell guns to Arizona militia nuts” with their Proud Boys’ guts seems a lot more chilling now than when this was filmed, and might have taken me right out of the movie if it hadn’t lost me several scenes earlier.
All these complications make for a cluttered script that staggers towards a long-overdue and anticlimactic finish. And the epilogue is an unnecessary afterthought.
The first act of “Queenpins” makes you giddy at the comic possibilities, but the finale is the final straw in the letdown it too-quickly becomes.
Rating: R for language (profanity) throughout.
Cast: Kristen Bell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Paul Walter Hauser, Bebe Rexha, Joel McHale, Stephen Root and Vince Vaughn
Credits: Scripted and directed by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly. An STX release.
Many have taken a shot at creating a “Zoom” call comedy or drama or dramedy during COVID. But it took actress (“Parks & Rec.”) turned actress-director Natalie Morales and actor and sometime writer-director Mark Duplass (“Jeff, Who Lives at Home,” “Safety Not Guaranteed”) to stick the landing.
“Language Lessons” leaves COVID more or less out of the picture. It’s just an affluent, middle-aged Oaklander unknowingly signed-up for Spanish lessons by his husband, and the utterly charming Spanish speaker on the other end of the video calls.
The unseen Will signed up former-Spanish speaker Adam up for 100 lessons, immersive conversations carried out via video chats which he can do from the comfort of their too-tasteful hillside McMansion.
“Casa GRANDE,” Adam admits, and Cariño, as his teacher is nicknamed, has to agree. She’s taken $1,000 for 100 lessons, so it’s no great shock to learn (a little later) that she’s not down the street or across the state. She’s in another country.
Adam is “muy incómodo,” he confesses. VERY uncomfortable. “It’s bad that I have all the things and that you don’t have them.” Sure, her perfectly-streaked hair and designer glasses suggest “Hollywood,” just a little. But her simple video call background of chalkboard and bulletin board and taking $10 per lesson/conversation is a real liberal “privilege” guilt trip.
Morales and Duplass give us a taste of the effortlessly charming and undemanding movie that “Language Lessons” might have been in the opening scenes. He’s conversational in Spanish, but makes plenty of grammatical stumbles. And Duplass masterfully conveys a man trying to remember what he once knew, and mentally searching for words he might never have mastered as he does. He even makes the classic gringo new-to-Spanish boo-boo.
“Yo soy muy MUY embarazado!” he confesses. And Morales, like every native Spanish speaker in all of recorded history, cackles at yet another American confusing “I am so VERY embarrassed” for the Spanish word for “pregnant.”
We just have time to settle in for a cute movie about learning a new language when “Language Lessons” takes its first turn toward serious. It’s not the last. As these two banter, struggle to schedule this weekly meet-up into routine and slowly let layers of their real lives peel away in the conversations, grief and danger and melodrama Zoom into play.
Our leads have the kind of chemistry rom-com screenwriters dream of, and the fact that Adam is gay and rich and Cariño isn’t only makes it their connection that much more interesting, and great fodder for jokes.
“You’re so poor,” as Adam puts it, “and I’m pregnant.”
They chat or video-mail each other about their lives and movies, mostly in Spanish (with English subtitles), but slipping into Spanglish when the need arises. She catches him in bed, just waking up, in the pool or sweating in the home gym. She gives him a peek at the bamboo garden behind her house, and even has a tipsy musical moment — via Zoom — commemorating his birthday.
When tragedy strikes, they share and reach out to one another, because they’re compassionate human beings. But there’s a lot being avoided here, a lot she isn’t saying or that he isn’t figuring out.
The film travels from light and frothy to abruptly and less-convincingly sad, and for my money, that happens too early on in the narrative. Give us more of the giggly stumbling through Spanglish bonding before turning dark.
But even in the film’s third act lurch into sheer melodrama, with brittle conversations carried out on eggshells, Morales and Duplass are wholly immersed in character. The twists are believable because they’re totally credible in their roles.
They make “Language Lessons” a most engaging human connection, and a seriously entertaining way to brush up on your own rusty Spanish in the bargain.
Rating: unrated, profanity
Cast: Mark Duplass, Natalie Morales
Credits: Directed by Natalie Morales, scripted by Mark Duplass and Natalie Morales. A Shout! Factory release.
This mid-Oct release from IFC is about an American filmmaking couple (Roth and Krieps) who vacation in the Faroe Islands, where Ingmar Bergman made his most famous films, and rediscover the memories and connections that made them a couple in the first place in this evocative fall romance.
Whatever new ground the Philippine cinema is breaking in dramas and thrillers, the romances and rom-coms rolling out of there and onto Netflix aren’t making any impression.
Even taking into account cultural differences as we travel Around the World with Netflix, “Here and There (Dito at Doon)” is a sleep-inducing nothing of a romance, every bit as warm and/or titillating as that photo of its star, above, sitting there swapping stories, insults and (tepid) flirtations via computer during COVID lockdown.
This reuniting of co-stars from “The Woman and the Gun” doesn’t do much for either Janine Gutierrez or JC Santos, or for anybody hoping for something — anything — to motivate you to stick with it.
Len (Gutierrez) is at home, alone and bored with her nurse-mom (Shyr Valdez) at work and overwhelmed by the spreading pandemic. Len socializes via Facenook (tee hee), where she grumps that this lockdown isn’t a big deal with her friends, all of whom are of the “just drink at home” (in Filipino with English subtitles) instead of going out mind.
Save for this one commenter who gets under her skin. “Caloy” takes her and her pals’ “just stay at home, what’s so hard about that, mother-f—–r?” slaps personally.
They exchange a few shots, and that’s that. Until Len convenes her girlfriend/boyfriend pals Jo (Yesh Burce) and Mark (Victor Anastasio) for a group guzzle and gab — online.
Wouldn’t you know it? Mark invites his buddy “Cabs” into the mix. And before too long, as Len vents about her annoying exchanges earlier that day, Cabs figures out, and then Len is clued in, that he was the guy who got on her nerves.
Hanging up only means, their “meet cute” (note remotely) will require an apology or two to really come off.
It does, and she figures out he’s from Cebu, runs a street vending coffee cart for his livelihood, and the shutdown is basically putting him out of business.
They chat and chat and call and what not, and whatever will be, will be.
The film’s most modestly clever conceit is the way Len imagines these conversations playing out. The group is gathered in her living room, or later Caloy is talking to her in a more intimate way at the foot of her bed.
That sounds even less racy than it is. This film’s chastity rivals the coy extremes of Bollywood in terms of “romance.” At least in Bollywood they make eyes at each other and sing and dance with one another as they court and flirt.
“Here and There” can’t even manage that.
Comedies and dramas made under COVID conditions either strain to not seem claustrophobic, mimicking the solitude and isolation we all feel, or lean into it. This one does both, to zero effect.
It’s a polished production, as handsomely mounted as any Hollywood, Bollywood or British soundstage romance. It’s just not romantic. And unlike the dramas and thrillers exported from the islands, it ventures little in the way of commentary on the state of the nation under the autocratic goon Duterte.
Anybody hoping to see a Filipino version of Tom and Meg or Miss Bennett and Mister Darcy in this new “couple” will be sorely disappointed. It’s dull and pretty much charmless.
Rating: TV-14, beer drinking, profanity
Cast: Janine Gutierrez, JC Santos, Yesh Burce and Victor Anatasio
Credits: Directed by Jaime Habac Jr., scripted by Kristin Parreño Barrameda, Alex Gonzales A Netflix release.
Running time: 1:38
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