St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

We Need to Talk About Kevin

 

The title of this very disturbing movie, "We Need to Talk About Kevin," is about 15 years late. We, or his parents, should have been talking about Kevin at least a decade ago. It's far beyond solution now. The damage has been done and we, or his parents, are not only paying for it, but also will continue to do so for a long time.

A movie of the "Bad Seed" genre, highlighted for all time by Patty McCormack's dazzling portrayal of Rhoda Penmark, way back in 1956, Kevin is her male counterpart, perhaps even more deadly. Practically from his birth, Kevin shows virulent antipathy to his mother, an outstanding performance by Tilda Swinton. Three boys, Rock Duer, Jasper Newell and Ezra Miller are Kevin as an infant, a child and an adolescent, and all are scary. Director Lynne Ramsay has brought exceptional work from them as they quietly challenge and defeat their mother. An earlier Ramsay film, "The Lovely Bones," also showed an exceptional touch with fear and terror.

Swinton, pale, lovely and distraught, has a difficult role and delivers in splendid style. As Eva, a sophisticated, successful travel writer, she has carved out a good place in her life, but she abandons it for home and family. John C. Reilly, always with spot-on depictions, is a kind of bumbling guy who just cannot imagine that a child could cause such mental anguish.

But the infant's screams are louder than a sidewalk drill, and his expression as he defies his parents in terms of toilet training is remarkable. Anyone who has been a parent, or even dealt with younger siblings, will understand Eva's frustration, and maybe Kevin's triumph.

There are a number of loose ends and unanswered questions along the way, but Ramsay's pacing, and the outstanding contributions from composer Jonny Greenwood and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey make Kevin a compelling character and the movie a gripping experience.

We Need to Talk About Kevin opens today.

-- Joe

Friends With Kids

Young people often take an unrealistic, or downright negative, approach to the fact that one always must take responsibility for his/her actions. Avoiding it only moves pay-up day down the road. And not realizing that it will happen, come what may, is a sure sign of arrested development.

Of course, it happens, and "Friends With Kids," while often hoping to become a comedy, provides proof.

Jennifer Westfeldt, who wrote, directed and stars, is Julie, and Adam Scott is Jason. Oh, they are great friends, but they aren't getting married, and they have good times with two married couples, Ben (Jon Hamm) and Missy (Kristen Wiig), and Alex (Chris O'Dowd) and Leslie (Maya Rudolph). Four of the six were in ":Bridesmaids," and these steps must have occurred after the wedding, or something. By the way, Hamm and Westfeld are an off-screen couple but did not want to replicate the relationship in a movie.

Anyway, Julie and Jason decide to have a baby who obviously will have all the fine and wonderful attributes that they themselves obviously possess. And they'll stay friends and date other people and share the responsibilities of rearing children.

So Julie dates Kurt (Edward Burns) and Jason dates Mary Jane (Megan Fox) and the awkward party of six turns into a nonsensical party of eight. Meanwhile, the kids who are a part of the title are left out of the rest of the movie. Westfeldt lacks the directorial experience to make all this run smoothly and, to my taste, she really hit a roadblock at the curtain line when all I could think of was the couplet from "Anything Goes," by Cole Porter, who wrote, "Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose."

Friends with Kids opens today.

--Joe

Corman

Roger Corman, long known as "the king of the B's," for hundreds of shlocky movies that he produced and/or directed, and which filled drive-ins and grind houses for decades, was noted for the many people who got their start with him and went on to fame and fortune. Of course, they were young and eager and willing to work for peanuts, so most of the fortune went to Corman.

"Corman's World," opening today, is a gaudy thank-you card from writer-director Alex Stapleton and lots of big-name Hollywood types. It's an okay thing, too, now, since Corman won an honorary Oscar and has been patted on the head by the Hollywood establishment.

In truth, Corman gave opportunity to dozens of actors, writers and directors, and they remember him fondly. Among the many who express gratitude to Corman are Jack Nicholson, who breaks down at one point, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Pam Grier, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Vincent Price, Peter Fonda, George Hickenlooper and Ron Howard. And a young William Shatner. They are unanimous in their memories of how Corman left them alone to make mistakes, but also to grow.

Corman's early films, many based on poems and stories by Edgar Allen Poe or Edfgar ice Burroughs, used gallons of fake blood, its foamy streams covering the terrible construction flaws and limited believability of his props. Screaming, barely clad, bosomy young women were front and center in almost every shot, and his films show the change in what -- and how much -- skin could be seen on screen. Movies like "Cry Baby Killer," "The Trip" and "Wild Angels," which were box office hits for Corman and his company, AIP (American International Pictures), were remade a few years later by major studios with major stars. They became box office hits for another generation of studios and producers.

Corman began in 1954 with "Monster From the Ocean Floor," which presaged "Jaws," and his version of "Little Shop of Horrors" was a two-day shoot. "Wild Angels" set the stage for "The Wild Bunch." Corman also made movies that tackled sensitive subhjects, like "The Intruder," which dealt with racial segregation in schools.

But Disney and Pixar, Spielberg and Lucas brought forth a new generation of films in which special effects were huge, as were casts. People liked them when Corman was the producer. They liked them better when the big studios, and lots of cash, got behind them.

Stapleton obviously is a fan, but so are lots of other people, and the tribute to Corman is an excellent film, and a fine history lesson, too.

Corman's World plays tonight through Sunday, at 7:30, in the Winifred Moore Auditorium of Webster University as part of the Webster University Film Series

-- Joe

Rampart

The tale of the sadistic, psychotic policeman is not a new one, but Woody Harrelson is fierce and frightening as a rogue in "Rampart," a police district in Los Angeles, its own, real history rabid enough to earn its own movie. Harrelson, his face a series of reddish-tan angles sticking out from behind aviator sunglasses. He refers to himself as a soldier in the people's army, and he is convinced he is the only law west of the La Brea tar pits.

He smokes constantly, drinks between puffs. He's been married twice, to sisters (Cynthia Nixon and Anne Heche) who live next door to one another on a bungalow-lined street. There are daughters (Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky) from the relationships, and he still drops by for occasional sex, or to harshly discipline his children. On other nights he prowls seedy bars in search of women, or visits sex clubs. Obviously, he's a real charmer.

He's smart, too, wriggling out of a variety of disciplinary hearings with a mixture of lies and bravado. Sigourney Weaver works in the district attorney's office; she's on to him, and she's waiting patiently for the inevitable mistake. Ice Cube is waiting, too. Harrelson has one ally, or so he thinks, a crooked former cop, played stylishly by Ned Beatty.

Oren Moverman directs, moving stylishly from one tense moment to the next, helped along by Bobby Bukowki's nervous camera work that ratchets everything tighter from scene to scene. Moverman and Harrelson worked together in 2009 when Harrelson and Ben Foster starred in "The Messenger," a story of two officers who bring bad news to homes where no one expects it. Foster is in "Rampart," too, as an addled, homeless man in a wheelchair who brings tips to Harrelson in exchange for whiskey, cigarettes and pain from his buddy the bully.

For a movie that created little more than a ripple when it was released in 2010 (this is its first St. Louis appearance), it has a surprisingly talented cast including Audra McDonald, Robin Wright and Steve Buscemi in addition to those mentioned above. But it is a powerful, taut, well-made movie. Perhaps people just didn't want to see another tale of a vicious, violent man, no matter which side of the law he lived on.

Rampart opens today at the Tivoli.

-- Joe

Declaration of War

The use of the word "war" may be a touch of hyperbole, but when a mother discovers there's something wrong with her child, she's quick to go into warrior mode against whatever and whoever is keeping him from being the icon of perfection she demands. So it is with Valerie Donzelli, director, co-writer and star of "Declaration of War," a French entry right from any "disease of the week" television series.

Donzelli and Jeremie Elkaim are the parents of Gabriel Elkaim, now 10. All three play themselves in a fictionalized (they say) account of their life and his illness. They were living together when Gabriel was a baby and a brain tumor was discovered. Both are actors and writers, but they made a mistake when they named their own characters Romeo and Juliette; it's too easy to reach silliness from this starting point.

Actually, Donzelli is more in panic mode than in battle regalia as she wages war on a hospital staff, treating doctors and nurses as if they were second-class citizens who should drop whatever they are doing to deal with Gabriel and his mother.

It's nice to know that Gabriel is well again, but it's difficult to understand why the French film industry could not find a better movie to submit for the foreign language Oscar, but showing the kind of wisdom it shows very rarely, the Academy eliminated this one in an early round.

Declaration of War opens today at the Tivoli

-- Joe

Cry-Baby

Were some of the music different, it might have been Mickey and Judy out there -- yep, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland -- singing and dancing, she the nice girl from the right side of the tracks, he the boy who used words like "swell," and sometimes "damn." The good kids and the ruffians were all out there last night as "Cry-Baby," based on a John Waters film, opened as a New Line Theatre production at the Washington University South Campus Theatre. It will run through March 24.

Some of the songs, with music and lyrics by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger, might have found a home in a 1930s M-G-M songbook. They're tuneful, with often-interesting lyrics, occasionally with word plays like rhyming "failure" with "genitalia." But then we reached the musical styles of the 1950's, when the musical is set, with lots of hard-thumping drums and lyrics that were less interesting, more repetitious.

"Cry-Baby" is based on a Waters film that starred Johnny Depp, a hot commodity because of his success in "21 Jump Street" (and look out, that movie will be here in a few weeks). Book writers Mark O'Donnell and Thomas Meehan obviously were looking at a long-running success like "Hairspray," which they also wrote, based on a Waters film. But with the exception of "Hairspray" and "Diner," movies set in Baltimore have relatively short lives.

Where O'Donnell and Meehan kept "Hairspray" relatively simple, they tossed everything but the kitchen sink into "Cry-Baby," bringing us Communists, McCarthyism, "duck and cover" atom bomb drills, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Rosenberg spy saga and other odds and ends.

But the evening's entertainment, and it is mostly an entertaining evening, gives us the tale that never gets old -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl and we all leave smiling after a tuneful finale. Ryan Foizey is first-rate as Wade (Cry-Baby) Walker, our hero, complete with ducktail haircut, and New Line regular Taylor Pietz charms as the sweet, virginal Allison, queen of the country club set. Mike Dowdy is Baldwin Blandish, the ultimately square leader of the Squares, whose high point is a song called "Squeaky Clean," which also has a line involving "peachy keen." Cindy Duggan is fine as Allison's grandmother, who has a secret. All sing and act well, and they dance, too, though Duggan does less of that. She does, however, deliver a satiric ballad, "I Did Something Wrong -- Once" in absolutely delightful style. There's also superior work from Terrie Carolan as Lenora Frigid, who is anything but, as a member of the Drapes, the rivals to the Squares (think Sharks and Jets from "West Side Story").

Robin Michelle Berger, whose choreography always is a large part of New Line's success, brings something new and different to "Cry-Baby," and it's splendid. She has designed a dance number for a singing group called the Whiffles (Evan Fornachon, Devon A. A. Norris and Christopher Strawhun) who sing backup to Dowdy. They and Ari Scott do a wild and woolly dance number to "A Little Upset," that uses the stage, the backstage, the wings (or what amounts to backstage and wings in this theater), the audience and possibly part of Clayton Road. It ain't delicate, but it's terrific, and Berger and her dancers sparkle like the opening night sky, where Jupiter and Venus stood tall and bright in the west.

Zachary Allen Farmer is superb in a half-dozen different roles, primarily Judge Igneous Stone, and Marcy Wiegert, Chrissy Young and Sara Porter are delightfully over-made up and bring a rude and effective charm as Foizy's posse, with Carolan a vocal part. Jenifer Sabbert and Alexandra Taylor round out the cast as members of the Squares and the Drapes.

Justin Smolik leads the very good musical sextet from his keyboard. Other members are D. Mike Bauer, lead guitar; Joe Isaacs, rhythm guitar; Robert Vinson, reeds; Dave Hall, bass; and Clancy Newell, percussion.

Scott Miller directs stylishly. He knows the weaknesses of the story and the strengths of the actors, and he exploits one and shields the other in excellent fashion. "Cry-Baby" is a very ordinary piece of theater, but Miller's direction and the cast's talent make it a fine diversion, like something to see if you need a break from preparing your taxes.

Cry-Baby, a production of New Line Theatre, opened last night at the Washington University South Campus Theatre and will run through March 24

-- Joe

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams' famed "memory play" about his days at the International Shoe Company warehouse on 15th Street in downtown St. Louis, "The Glass Menagerie," is a searing look at the playwright's family. It's made even harsher by the fact that while he wrote, looking backward a decade or so, his anger seemed to grow. The powerful drama opened last night as a production of Dramatic License at the theater's space in Chesterfield Mall. It will run through March 18.

Director Bill Whitaker takes a slightly different approach in his staging, and a subdued blue palette by lighting designer Max Parilla plays into this nicely. The stage is very deep, but not wide, and scenic designer Courtney Sanazaro-Sloey gives us a downstage parlor, where the menagerie is located, a midstage dining room and a far upstage kitchen, out of sight but not sound.

Whitaker, perhaps influenced by the technique used in the Oscar-winning film, "The Artist," uses occasional subtitles projected on the upstage wall. Some of them work very well. Some fall flat. Kim Furlow offers a fine performance as Amanda Wingfield (Edwina Williams in real motherly life). It's different from others we've seen, but certainly effective. Furlow's Amanda is less genteel, and one wonders if she really was a southern belle in Mississippi or if she is in her own memory play, where she dreams of magnolia-scented verandas and the days when "17 gentlemen callers" came to bring jonquils and pay homage.

Antonio Rodriguez is brilliant and totally believable as Tom (Tennessee) and as what amounts to his inner voice, narrating, setting scenes, discussing the characters and the action, philosophizing here and there. Macia Noorman, as Laura, is so shy as to be practically invisible. She's in pain, and more important, she is terrified by life. A problem with her performance is that her limp is barely perceptible; she should not be totally characterized by it, but it's part of the problem and should show up a little more. Tom Lehmann is solid -- and stolid -- as Jim, the Gentleman Caller. He was a football hero, the star of "Pirates of Penzance," and the captain of the debate team at Soldan High School. Laura has a total crush on him and, a few years later, Tom might be able to confess his own. But for the moment, Jim recognizes that he has done a lot of harm and has no idea of how to reverse it.

Furlow's Amanda is strong, self-centered and desperately frightened over her future, and that of her daughter. But all the characters are afraid, as was Williams when he wrote the play in the early 1940s (it was first produced in 1944). And looking back over 60-plus years, we all know the power of fear and the inaccuracy of memory. Tennessee Williams knew them better than most.

The Glass Menagerie, a production of Dramatic License, opened last night at the Art Space in Chesterfield Mall, to run through March 18

-- Joe

Miss Representation

No wonder women are angry. . . .

They are barred from testifying before Congress on legislation vital to their interests, they still are seen as sex symbols and generally as second-class citizens, as pointed out strongly in "Miss Representation," a documentary that runs tonight as part of the Webster University Film Series.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom writes and directs the movie, which features many prominent women in fields like entertainment and the media, all attacking the American media establishment for giving them less credit than they are due. Women like Rachel Maddow and Katie Couric, media stars in their own right, join entertainers like Geena Davis and Margaret Cho, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, N.J. and Paul Haggis, the director of "Crash," and activist Jane Fonda. The list is very long.

Newsom's well-written, forceful statement, reaching close to diatribe at times, does not mention, however, that she obviously has benefited from financial and political help from her husband, Gavin Newsom, multi-millionaire businessman and former mayor of San Francisco, now lieutenant governor of California. There's a lot of truth in her movie, but it could be brought out just as well with a tone that was less harsh.

Miss Representation plays today at 7:30 p.m. at the Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus

-- Joe

Tim and Eric's Billion-Dollar Movie

There are lots of bad movies out there. Every day, in every way, people make ever-dumber, ever-more absurd, ever-less entertaining movies. The latest ridiculous example, "Tim and Eric's Billion-Dollar Movie" opens here today, as among the worst movies I've ever been privileged to see.

Tim Heidecker and Erkic Wareheim wrote, directed and starred in this rude, truly stupid waste of time and money. How they managed to involve such real actors as Jeff Goldblum, Robert Loggia, John C. Reilly, Will Forte and Will Ferrell is a mystery.

Heidecker and Wareheim convince some people dumber than they to invest in a movie, and the disaster that follows is neither funny nor clever nor worth the wasted time.

Tim and Eric's Billion-Dollar Movie opens today at the Tivoli

-- Joe

The Conquest

Having watched Republican candidates through this never-ending primary campaign was the perfect preparation for looking at "The Conquest," a tale of Nicolas Sarkozy and his lengthy, vicious campaign to become president of France.

All politicians are nuts!

Watching Sarkozy destroy his rivals, ridicule his predecessors and supposed colleagues, leap from bed to bed and totally act as if power were everything, is an exercise in bad manners and worse taste. As I said, there are horrid overtones of the current primary race and the frightening assurance that these awful excesses will get worse during the run-up to the 2012 general election.

Denis Podalycles is amazing in his portrayal of Sarkozy; he looks and moves and talks exactly as I remember seeing the French politician in action, and Samuel Labarthe has the identical approach as the dapper, distinguished-looking Dominique de Villepin. Director Xavier Durringer, who collaborated on the screenplay with Patrick Rotman, has muddied the line between fiction and non-fiction, showing how political infighting in France, as in the U.S., is among the dirtiest of businesses.

Wives are involved, too, and Durringer shows the close-to-the-throne position taken by Bernadette Chirac (Michele Noretti). More peculiar, almost Gingrichy in its approach to fidelity and vows, is the relationship among the candidate and his wives (three for each). Carla Bruni, Sarkozy's current wife, does not appear, nor does his first wife, Marie-Dominique. But the second wife, Cecelia (Florence Pernel), is the brains behind his campaign, which she is running even though she's trying to leave him to run off with her lover. Somehow, Sarkozy keeps her close, though blackmail of some sort is hinted at. Finally, on election night, she's gone, in highly dramatic style.

A campaign that ends with an election in 2007 isn't highly dramatic, of course, but Durringer keeps the non-action moving rapidly. Sarkozy, his movements and expressions on the wild side, is fascinating (another comparison with today's Republicans), and Podalycles is remarkable in his resemblance. The surreal world of politics, in France as in our own nation, continues to be slightly beyond belief. And yet, we're as fixated as we would be on a massive auto crash

The Conquest opens today at the Tivoli