Movie Review: Listen Up Philip (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


One of my favorite comedies of the year is the gloriously misanthropic Listen Up Philip. Sadly, I missed it while it was playing at this year's New York Film Festival because it screened the day after my flight back home. But it's now playing on VOD and opened here in Atlanta (at the Plaza Theater) this past Friday. Jason Schwartzman plays what might be the douchiest among his repertoire of arrogant, self-absorbed characters. Promising young novelist Philip Lewis Friedman is someone who looks for any way to sabotage the great things he has going for him. He's the kind of jerk that finds it notable that another young, more famous rival killed himself not because of the inherent tragedy but because he turned down a chance to profile the author in what would have been the man's last, and therefore most attention-getting, interview.

Movie Review: Whiplash (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


In recent years, the American independent film has become as much a genre onto itself as it is a label distinguishing it as a work made outside the Hollywood system. The Sundance Festival movie in particular was burdened with all sorts of expectations which over time created a stereotype called the "indie." Featuring a cast of young up and coming actors, peppered with a few veterans working for little pay in the hopes of breaking out of some sort of career rut, the worst kind of indie generally recalls a special moment in a young man or woman's life, weighted with a deep, life altering lesson, all under an acoustic score by some folkie/emo instrumentalist who possesses enough street cred to sell some soundtrack albums. Where "independent" once connoted originality, "indie" now simply means lo-fi. That's why Whiplash is so refreshing. 2014's Sundance U.S. Audience and Grand Jury Prize winner is a vibrant, jazz-inflected drama that's also an anti-indie. As it goes into general release this week, Whiplash is poised to take awards season by storm.

Movie Review: Code Black (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Early in the documentary Code Black there is this graphic and harrowing shot above. More than a dozen emergency medics and nurses work on a shooting victim as the director, narrator and the film's principal subject, Ryan McGarry explains, "If you're an outsider, this looks like total chaos. But I see unity in that chaos. There's a team here coming together to save someone's life." It's a flabbergasting statement to say the least. But as Code Black unfolds we learn that this is no ordinary emergency room. It's C-Booth, a cramped, very public space in LA County Hospital that has the dual distinction of being the nation's very first emergency room and its busiest. McGarry started documenting his time there as a first-year resident, way before he ever decided to turn the footage into a film. What he turned in, though, is polished bordering on slick, a sharp contrast to the frequently catastrophic roughness the doctors at C-Booth encounter daily.

Movie Review: Land Ho! (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

While it hasn't been too hot a summer around most of the U.S., a bracing dose of clean, icy winds might still do you some good. The Icelandic road comedy Land Ho! is just the kind of small indie ready to usher them in. In just about every way, it is the antithesis of the majority of films currently playing in theaters. It stars two relative unknowns, Earl Lynn Nelson and Paul Eenhoorn as Mitch and Colin, two ex-brothers-in-law on a journey through Iceland's beautifully austere countryside. That's it. No explosions. No chase scenes. No sexual situations... save for Mitch's incredibly raunchy jokes.

Movie Review: I Origins (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

There's no way around it. I Origins is one of the worst films I've seen all year and maybe even ever. Worse yet, it isn't even so bad it's good. As nicely acted as it is, the new-agey romance is excruciating to sit through. It's one thing for I Origins to be hokey. That's not often my bag when it comes to romances. But frankly, I expected more from the team of writer-director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling, who last collaborated on the well-received Another Earth. That's one I hadn't yet caught up with and now, I'm not so sure I want to.

Movie Review: Joe (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Anyone who still indulges in the meme that Nicolas Cage overacts should be silenced by one look at his new film, Joe... that is if they get around to seeing it. Small and unassuming, Joe is an indie by David Gordon Green, a director who's at his best when he makes plot subordinate to the study of one or two well-delineated characters. One of those would be Gary (Tye Sheridan), a young drifter with a good work ethic looking to escape the influence of his violent, alcoholic father, Wade (Gary Poulter). Then there's Joe himself, played by Nicolas Cage as an industrious business owner whose stillness belies an explosive temper that has kept him at a remove from all but society's most underprivileged or unjustly ignored.

Movie Review: At Middleton (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Opening today at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre, At Middleton has a whiff of vanity project as it concerns its star, Andy Garcia. The little seen Cuban American actor has long deserved stronger vehicles for his talent than the gangster parts he often plays in movies like those of the Ocean's series. But he's usually had to seek the kind of roles that can afford him a good stretch himself, which can often lead to a bit of blindness to the projects' flaws. At Middleton is just one of those films, an indie produced by Garcia that showcases his rarely seen understated side in a romantic comedy lensed and scored by frequent collaborators Emmanuel Kadosh (The Lost City) and Arturo Sandoval (For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story), respectively.

Movie Review: A.C.O.D. (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Stuart Zicherman's directorial debut, A.C.O.D., is a pleasant enough, undemanding film that has the whiff of the autobiographical. When I turned to my wife after we were done watching it, I asked, "So what'd you think?" "It was alright," she said. "I thought it was okay for an indie," I said. "Oh, it was an indie? Yeah, it was pretty good for an indie." And then we went to bed. It's kind of sad, actually, when a movie with such a powerhouse comedic cast that includes the likes of Adam Scott and Amy Poehler (both from Parks and Recreation), the great Richard Jenkins, and the singular Catherine O'Hara can only muster a wordier version of "Meh!" from a film critic and his wife.

Movie Review: Enough Said (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

A sweet, sensitive romantic comedy, Enough Said seems like the perfect vehicle for Julia Louis-Dreyfus to finally get a shot at big-screen stardom. The untimely death of James Gandolfini, whose range was often underutilized, is heartbreaking given how director Nicole Holofcener manages to position this story of two divorcées finding love as a could-have-been potential breakout hit for both TV actors. Because of Gandolfini's passing, a bittersweet pall hangs over Enough Said that sometimes threatens to obscure the inherent gentleness of the film. Ultimately, though, both stars' engaging performances allow the movie to transcend whatever preconceived notions, real-world or otherwise, we attach to them.

Movie Review: Short Term 12

by Tony Dayoub

Such is the power of Brie Larson's performance that it is, I assure you, what people will remember Short Term 12 for, both at the end of the year and perhaps far into the future. Larson has had some memorable turns before. She played Scott Pilgrim's bleached blond ex-grrlfriend Envy in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World; Molly, the popular high-schooler mixed up with a small-time dealer in last year's 21 Jump Street; and Cassidy, the level-headed ex-girlfriend of slick alcoholic Sutter in this year's The Spectacular Now. Get the picture? Larson is a talented actor who keeps getting stuck with pivotal, but still second-tier, supporting parts in some fairly good films. In Short Term 12, an astonishingly unpretentious indie about a foster-care facility for wayward teens, Larson gets to take center stage as Grace, an astute but conflicted counselor. And it is the viewer who gets to reap the rewards.

Movie Review: The Spectacular Now (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

"Have you turned her into a lush yet?" That's the pertinent question Cassidy (Brie Larson) asks her ex-boyfriend, Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) in James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now. Cassidy's concern belies the fact that she's referring to Sutter's new girlfriend, Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley). Is she trying to protect the naïve Aimee from the perhaps alcoholic Sutter's charming sort of peer pressure? Is Cassidy warning Sutter not to lose his new love the way he lost her, by refusing to look past the present? Or is she mindful of her own unresolved post-breakup feelings over Sutter's inability to simply subsist without an oversized plastic cup full of spiked soft drink in hand to sweeten the day? This unpretentious but loaded line of dialogue is representative of the kind of complexity that makes The Spectacular Now feel like a teen romance with an old soul.

Movie Review: The Canyons (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Paul Schrader gets no respect. After considerable trouble mounting his newest film, The Canyons, detractors seem to be delighting in pointing out how shallow the film is, taking particular aim at his casting of porn star James Deen and troubled actress Lindsay Lohan as the leads. It's another instance, a la The Lone Ranger, of critics taking part in a bit of schadenfreude. Months before its release, a journalist examines a movie's troubled production history ad nauseam and the zeitgeist signals rough times ahead for said film. But those looking only for evidence to support their pre-conceptions are missing or willfully ignoring the underlying tension Schrader explores in The Canyons, an elegy for traditional cinema and its filmmakers in the advent of fractured world of digital moviemaking.

NYFF50 Review: Frances Ha

by Tony Dayoub

You'd have to dig through Noah Baumbach's filmography, all the way back to Highball (pseudonymously credited to Ernie Fusco) in order to find as fluffy a trifle as Frances Ha. Not that there's anything wrong with that. At first glance, a slight, delicate character piece that is equal parts Brooklyn mumblecore, love poem and ode to New York, Frances Ha revolves around the not untalented Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the film with Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). Not entirely by coincidence, Gerwig is also Baumbach's current main squeeze. The way Sam Levy's black-and-white cinematography showcases not just Gerwig but New York City recalls Woody Allen's Manhattan. And for a while I worried whether this was a sort of tribute to the latest incarnation of the "manic pixie girl" character actress that many younger film lovers, and at least some notable directors, often become infatuated with. The way Baumbach approaches Frances Ha, though, makes it much more than that.

Movie Review: Beginners (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a lonely graphic artist whose father has just died from cancer. He catalogues biographical events in still images, using references to history and popular culture as signposts demarcating one phase of his life from another. While he narrates Beginners, montages of these stills flash onscreen from time to time. It’s quite telling, though, that the catalytic event in the film — a conversation between Oliver and his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), in which dad comes out of the closet — is presented as an unreliable flashback in which Hal wears a purple sweater. Oliver admits his dad probably wore a robe instead.

Movie Review: Gun Hill Road

by Tony Dayoub

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Gun Hill Road is a drama set in the Bronx's Puerto Rican community. It stars Esai Morales (La Bamba) as Enrique "Quique" Rodriguez, a recently released parolee finding difficulty reassimilating into life outside prison. His wife Angie (Judy Reyes) has mixed feelings about his return and is tentative in her one-on-one dealings with him. And Quique's friends on the street, still in the thick of criminal activities, represent an easy emotional refuge from his haunting experience in jail, an emasculation personified in the form of his gay son, Michael (Harmony Santana).

Underrated: John Hawkes in Winter's Bone

by Tony Dayoub

Embodying the danger, mistrust, sadness, hopelessness, provincial territoriality, and concern with kin found amongst all of the criminal colluders in Debra Granik's bleak Winter's Bone is Teardrop, the bitter crank dealer played by John Hawkes. That Hawkes steals every scene he is in despite playing every one of them opposite young Jennifer Lawrence (who has been rightly getting all of the notices a budding star-in the-making gets) is not necessarily such a big surprise. Hawkes has been a working character actor for just over twenty years now. It is how little mention is made of his work here which prompts me to address it.

Movie Review: The Killer Inside Me (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

Filmed once before in the seventies with the more imposing Stacy Keach in the role, Michael Winterbottom's new version of Jim Thompson's novel, The Killer Inside Me, feels creepier because of the casting of the relatively slight and soft-spoken Casey Affleck as the sociopathic Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford. True, the vacant-eyed Affleck played a murderer pretty effectively before as Robert Ford (no relation) in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007). That film's killer, a weak-willed worm with a serious case of hero envy, is driven by emotional problems which are quite easy to quantify. What distinguishes Lou Ford is the lack of emotion behind his congenial nature. This is the coldest nice guy in cinema since Martin Sheen's skinny Kit in Badlands (1973).

Movie Review: Uncertainty

by Tony Dayoub



Something of a dilemma exists between Kate Montero (Lynn Collins) and Bobby Thompson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Standing on the Brooklyn Bridge on the morning of July 4th, they resolve to decide what to do about their predicament by flipping a coin. From that moment on, Uncertainty splits into a film with dual narratives. As Kate—wearing a yellow sundress—runs to one end of the bridge, Bobby—in a green shirt—runs to the other end. Each end up in a parallel reality: Kate in a sulfur-tinged thriller concerning a lost cell phone that she and Bobby find in a cab in Manhattan; Bobby in an emerald-hued drama in which he and Kate attend a party at her family's Brooklyn home.

DVD Review: Monsoon Wedding (2001)

by Tony Dayoub



This week, Criterion releases Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, an intimate look at the group dynamics of a family that gathers from all around the world in Delhi for a traditional Punjabi wedding. This edition, available on both DVD and Blu-ray, is a significant improvement on previous releases of the film. Though the screener received was only a DVD, even in this version its picture is sharper, cleaner, and more saturated with brilliant color than any previous version. One could go on rhapsodizing about how the film looks, but it is becoming a bit predictable when it comes to Criterion reviews (and that's a good thing). Here's the real reason why this is the definitive version to own.

NYFF09 Movie Review: Life During Wartime

by Tony Dayoub



Director Todd Solondz revisits the characters of his most (in)famous movie, Happiness (1998), in the sort-of sequel, Life During Wartime. In Happiness, the gag was how Solondz could mask the sickening acts perpetrated by a child molester/psychologist and an obscene caller—and how those acts affected their friends and family—with a defiant Leave it to Beaver vibe that made one's skin crawl even more. Life During Wartime is decidedly less repulsive, exploring the impact the events of the first film had on those characters more than a decade later, and whether forgiveness or redemption are even possible given the heinousness of such acts.