Unlike television actors, movie actors have about two hours to win you over,
to leave a lasting impression. Even in a mediocre film, a fine performance can
stand out. That’s the case with Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino in Union Square, a
mundane story of a ditzy woman crashing at her sister’s apartment in lower
Manhattan. What follows is essentially a stage play with stark characters.
Sorvino’s character Lucy is a scatterbrained party girl apparently having an
affair with a married father, portrayed by Michael Rispoli. Most of the story
involves the evolving relationship between Lucy and her sister Jenny, portrayed
by the likable Tammy Blanchard. The actress has mostly television work on her
résumé, but she’s answered the greater challenge of movie acting with skill. The
two sisters have been estranged for years, and both have had behavioral issues in
their youth. Jenny, however, is planning to marry her live-in boyfriend, with
whom she operates a health food business. Rather than reveal her own sordid
past, she’s told him her family comes from Maine.
Sorvino instantly conveys a woman at a crossroads in life who is probably not
smart enough to realize that. Instead, she lives for the moment, continually calling
old boyfriends, then cursing them and quickly hanging up. At one point, she
even considers suicide. Writer-director Nancy Savoca hasn’t made a movie since
2003, and her return has mixed results at best. More’s the pity, since she directed
the wonderful TV series Mind of the Married Man, which, alas, had but a one-season
run on HBO. But here, the endless banter between the sisters is all one-note; the
grounded one wants the dysfunctional one to leave, and Lucy can’t take a hint.
These gifted actors deserved a more compelling screenplay.
Collaborator doesn’t offer very much on any level. Debut director Martin
Donovan, who also stars, is a veteran actor from The Opposite of Sex, Weeds, and
Boss. He plays a well-known playwright whose most recent production was a flop.
Though still in love with his wife, he’s had a relationship with a well-known
actress, portrayed by Olivia Williams. Eighty-four-year-old Katherine Helmond,
best known for the groundbreaking series Soap, plays his supportive mother,
whom he visits on a return to his old neighborhood. But his sinister childhood
neighbor, played by David Morse, awaits nearby.
Morse usually appears in depressing movies, and this is of the same genre. His
character is an embittered, hard-drinking ex-convict who still lives with his own
mother, and who suddenly takes the playwright hostage in a standoff with the
police. But there’s no tension or interesting banter between hostage and captor,
just mundane chatter.
William Friedkin directed both the scariest movie and the best police drama of
them all: The Exorcist and The French Connection (full disclosure: I played myself in
the latter—rather unconvincingly, in retrospect). His latest is Killer Joe, a bizarre
crime comedy about a dysfunctional trailer park family and a corrupt Dallas detective.
It stars two Texas-born actors: Matthew McConaughey in the title role and
Thomas Haden Church as the father of the family, who’s married to Gina Gershon’s
character. Their children are played by Emile Hirsch—best known for his bravura
work in Into the Wild—and Juno Temple as a precocious girl turning 14.
The black comedy is getting almost as much pre-release publicity for its rare
but well-deserved NC-17 rating as for its content. Hirsch portrays a slacker in debt
to a loan shark who’s planning to kill his mother for her life insurance money. He
hears about a professional killer who turns out to carry a badge. McConaughey,
long derided as a shirtless hunk with a twang, is excellent as the rogue lawman,
the best killer on screen since Javier Bardem’s killer in No Country for Old Men.
This sordid white-trash tale is evocative of Baby Doll and Black Snake Moan.
I did have one strong objection: a gratuitous, stomach-churning moment when
Gershon’s character is punched in the face and severely beaten and humiliated.
Scenes like that are best left to one’s nightmarish imagination, and serve only
prurient interests. What’s more, that scene earned it its restrictive rating, which
is sure to diminish the number of theaters where it will open, and thus its box
office take. This powerful movie is not for the squeamish.
As for The Amazing Spider-Man, beyond the superb special effects, there’s
really nothing amazing about it. It simply retells how a young man, subject to
bullying in high school, became the superhero, just a few years after Toby Maguire
debuted as the web slinger. Andrew Garfield of The Social Network has the title
role, while Emma Stone is his girlfriend and Denis Leary plays her police-detective
father. Beyond that, there’s nothing new here. Rhys Ifans is a half-mad scientist
who morphs into a huge green lizard, evocative of Willem Dafoe’s Green
Goblin. Been there, done that.
And finally Farewell, My Queen is a compelling, passionate French drama about
the last days of Marie Antoinette, portrayed by Diane Kruger. Léa Seydoux, who
plays her loyal lady-in-waiting and who was so enchanting as the bookseller in
Midnight in Paris, is a rising star to watch.
Jeffrey Lyons has been a movie critic for the past 42 years. He's currently heard nationally on Lyons Den radio and locally on WNYM radio. He?s the author of the new book, Stories my Father Told Me, Notes From The Lyons Den about his father's iconic Broadway column.
