Momma's Man

"Momma's Man" is a realist "slice of life" film that I could not seem to care about or even want to. Celebrated for its very realistic portrait of family life, I found it overlong, underwritten, and it moves at a plodding and maddeningly slow pace. It features a lead performance by Matt Boren, who is on the screen for ninety five percent of the five, often times not even speaking a word. But if his Mikey was an interesting character, or had a look on his face aside from the rather clueless and lazy one that he has for the entire movie, I might have been able to find something interesting in the work. 

"Momma's Man" is the new film by Azazel Jacobs, who has two films prior to this one but is new to me. Jacobs casts his own two parents Ken and Flo Jacobs as the parents in the movie, which some will say is a bold and interesting move. I just have the feeling that he did it so that many will claim it was a bold and interesting move, in the similar way many celebrated Andrew Wagner for casting his own family in the rather awful "The Talent Given Us." In both cases we do a realistic feel, but are forced to watch some terrible acting and awkwardness from two sets of non-actors who act as if the camera is right in front of them.

The film has a very loose plot, where Mikey is visiting his parents (unnamed aside from Dad and Mom in the credits) while in town for work. When he has problems with his plane he decides to stay for an extra night, but then he just decides not to leave. He goes to visit a friend of his from his childhood. He sets up a meeting with an ex-girlfriend who he wrote a song about when she sent him a hate letter. (where "Fuck You" is said a lot). He goes through boxes from high school and finds notebooks filled with poems that he once wrote. He calls up his wife, Laura, who is at home with their little daughter. As the weeks pass she gets more and more worried, wondering if her husband is ever going to come home. And his parents get worried to, trying to figure out what is wrong with Mikey and if he is ever going to leave.

There really is not much going on in "Momma's Man" despite Jacobs trying to tell us there is. Mikey is simply not an interesting character, and I felt no intensity at all about if he was going to leave or not. I was reminded of another realist film of this summer "Take Out," which came out in June. That film spent nearly an hour having our Chinese delivery man lead character going from deliver to delivery collecting money so that he could pay his smuggling debt. That film barely had a script, but it was the intensity of the situation, and the constantly engaging lead performance that made it realistic and made it interesting. Matt Boren's dull interpretation of Mikey is frustrating, and not in the way that Jacobs would want it to be. His parents are not actors, which was probably the point, but after a while Flo Jacobs constantly asking Mikey if he wanted food or tea was just grating and the result of a poorly conceived script. After a while the script focuses on Laura at home, getting help from a neighbor. Instead of having those scenes feel intense by having us want Mikey to go back home before his wife leaves him, it just feels like filler, to spread out this plotless film to some kind of feature length (and at only ninety minutes this film feels much much longer.)

Perhaps I am in the minority here (and based on other reviews I've read for this film I feel like I am), but "Momma's Man" is a grating and terribly paced "slice of life" movie. It fails on all accounts, and while some have been moved by the material here, I just found it irritating and painfully slow. For a similar "portrait" feel, I still have to recommend "Take Out," which was also underwritten, but had enough talent involved inside the direction and acting (and its barely acting in that case) to make up for the lack of script. "Momma's Man" is just a slow and bothersome piece of work.

*1/2 of ****

Henry Poole Is Here

In order to get something out of "Henry Poole Is Here," one would be forced to have a certain suspension of belief. After all, this is a film all about the power to belief-to belief in faith, miracles, and even God. Unlike other "faith" based films-such as last year's awful "The Ultimate Gift"-"Henry Poole Is Here" does not try to jam down a message of God down the audiences throat, which makes it possible for people of all different beliefs to be touched by it. That choice by the screenwriter, as well as the very humanistic performances by the entire cast, made this film extremely touching, and a very rewarding experience for me. 

The first time we meet Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) he is clearly in bad shape. Unshaven and sporting worn out and untucked button down shirts, Henry buys a rather beat up house in the neighborhood he grew up in, and decides to spend his days wallowing and drinking bottle after bottle of vodka. Henry was recently informed by his doctor that he has a terminal illness, and all he wants is to be left alone. However, he is instantly bothered by his neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barraza), who believes that the face of God is on Henry's wall. Henry just thinks that it is a watermark left over by a bad stucco job. However Esperanza spreads the news and soon enough there is a line of people gathered outside of Henry's house trying to get a look at the face of Christ. Meanwhile, Henry gets involved with Dawn (Radha Mitchell), the single mother next door whose daughter Millie is mostly silent. Its with Dawn's help that Henry is able to believe in life again.

RIght off the bat, Luke Wilson is excellent here. After a large bunch of silly and lazy roles like in "My Super Ex-Girlfriend," "Mini's First Time," and "You Kill Me," he is finally given a real depth filled character to sink his teeth into. Clearly depressed, Wilson is able to do quite a bit with his appearance, and his eyes are so filled with hurt, pain, and fear throughout. He is aided by Adriana Barraza, who is given a nice balance of emotion and comedy much different from her riveting role in "Babel." Radha Mitchell's performance as Dawn was also quite satisfying, despite the fact that her love story subject with Henry was an easy route for the screenplay to go. 

I am also somewhat crazy about several of director Mark Pellington's choices behind the camera, especially in the films first half. Pellington does something with sound and atmosphere in these opening scenes that I have a hard time explaining. I felt the same way about moments in Ridley Scott's masterpiece "Matchstick Men," where there is some trance like moments involving background sounds-such as a train whistle, or a wind chime. They really come together to form a look into Henry's very damaged and angry mind. The music score by John Frizzell is quite wonderful to, with a very nice mixture of quirky and beautiful, reminding me a little bit of something Thomas Newman would do.

However some choices in the second half of the film I must admit I was not crazy about. I suppose it was the love story between Henry and Dawn which, while sweet, just seemed a bit obvious and not the way I wanted the story to go. It leads to a somewhat over long movie, where Pellington has several music video type montages with Henry running, or Henry watching the sunset, or Henry playing with Millie, which padded the running time. However Wilson is able to stand firm and in character, and all of the actors really continued to bring me back to reality.

As I said, it is important to suspend belief in the movie, which ends up being quite easy as all these actors make it very easy to believe what is happening here. The screenplay really handles belief and faith in a very gentle way, never having the viewer feel superior to those that fall for the face in Henry's wall. And I found it very clever having the image on the wall seem stronger and stronger as the film moved forward-during its first appearance it barely resembles a face compared to what it looks like in the films climatic moments. This a film that does have the power to move, and I think it can move even the strictest atheist. Simply because it does not focus on a belief in God, but just a belief in life and love, and in not giving up whenever things seem rough. It's quite uplifting in a month of somewhat cynical and mean spirited films.

*** of ****

Bottle Shock

"Bottle Shock" is the new film by Randall Miller, a director whose work I've admired over the last two years. With three films under his belt, I first noticed him in 2006 with "Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School," a sometimes overly sapping romantic comedy, but one directed quite well and with some beautifully dark cinematography. The same went for his second film "Nobel Son," which I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival last year and is being released in October. Done with a very different tone and feel from his first film, it was still quite noticeable what talent that Miller had. Shot around the same time as "Nobel Son" and gathering quite a number of actors from that film, Miller made "Bottle Shock," a unsurprisingly entertaining historical piece with Alan Rickman giving a terrific lead performance as wine snob Steven Spurrier, who in 1976 shattered the myth that the French have the most superior wine in all the world. Not since the 2004 masterpiece "Sideways" have I seen such an wonderful film about wine. While "Bottle Shock" may not be as perfect as "Sideways," it certainly does have more information about the craze of wine, and the passion behind blind wine tastings. 

In '76 Spurrier was living in France, owning his own little empty wine shop, trading snobbish stories with his American friend Maurice (Dennis Farina). Steven decides to go to California to find some competition in a contest where he collides French wine and American. His visit to California has him getting involved with a various group of people. At the head is Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman), whose opinions on the snobby Steven are instantly formed when he helps him change a flat tire. Jim quit his job a while back to open the winery, and he tries to perfect his white wine. However he doesn't get much help from his somewhat slacker son Bo Barrett, who is consistently late and comes to work drunk or on the cusp of a one night stand. There is also Gustavo, a Mexican worker who is secretly creating his own brand of wine on the side. And lastly is the new intern Sam whose good looks cause a jealous strife between the two male friends. And alongside all of this is Steven, collecting wine from the various villages to bring back to France to destroy this myth once and for all.

As with all 'based on a true story' films, there is probably much fiction actually being conveyed to us. The primary one would be the love triangle between Bo, Gustavo, and Sam, which was an added subplot that I had the most problems with. It burdens the film down with this slow and contrived love story, which does not even offer a tied up conclusion with the man that she does not end up with. It was a love triangle created simply for dramatic purposes, and it weighs the movie down. The film really succeeds mostly when Alan Rickman is on the screen, and as Steve Spurrier he commands the audience to watch him. Rickman is terrific at delivering long and drooling speeches, and he does it here in both English and French. And him and Bill Pullman, who have an odd buddy relationship here, play off well and have great chemistry together. Pullman's performance does deserve more script than he gets, and he should have gotten a more solid arc and some back story. I would have liked to see more with these two characters instead of the convenient love story that we are stuck with, and more screenplay could have been written to give us back stories involving the Pullman and Rickman characters, who are the ones that are the most palatable to spend time with. 

Despite that bit that bogs the movie down, "Bottle Shock" is a crowd pleaser tried and true. It may be obvious how the film will end once the main characters present themselves, but its the journey that makes it worthwhile. It's the intensity of making it to that final revelation-during the wine tasting contest itself-that makes Miller such an enjoyable storyteller. And his direction is really quite unique, offering us some rather contrived story lines and genres, but never giving us any conventional camera angles or directorial approaches. Take a shot of Rickman driving-instead of giving us a typical close up of him driving, we get a rather obscure camera angle, as if you camera was by the break pedal. Or a shot of him trying to change a tire is giving more energy by making it a high angle, giving us a beautiful view of the blue sky and green trees of California. 

Miller really has a knack for the moving image, and I really do get quite enjoyment out of his movies. They are never perfect, and at times feel bogged down by contrived plots, but at the same time there is an undeniable charm about them. Perhaps its their look, or their performances, or just characters that are such a perfect blend of the real and the fantastic, that make me want to see what Miller will direct next. "Bottle Shock" is not a perfect film, not at all, but its warm and even oddly magical. By its end it gave me good vibes. To compare it to another wine film, "Sideways," I will admit it does not come close to even touching the masterful film making of that film, but its a nice smaller companion piece to the love people have of wine and how life consuming the cultivation of the grape could be to some folks. And if Randall Miller could make a film that I am able to compare to another which had a strong impact on me, he's on the right track.

*** of ****