Maps to the Stars

Maps to the Stars - Dir. David Cronenberg (2015)

David Cronenberg always held a fascination with body horror and psychosexual themes. Although his latest films lack the grotesqueries of early works such as Videodrome and The Fly, they still maintain the same thematic through lines. Maps to the Stars is no different with a screenplay by Bruce Wagner. Cronenberg finally turns his eye on Hollywood with this searing critique of celebrity culture that plays out like a modern day Greek tragedy.

Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) is a fading actress who was emotionally and physically abused by her late mother, screen legend Clarice Taggart (Sarah Gadon). Havana attempts to jumpstart her career by portraying her mother in a remake of her most celebrated picture, Stolen Waters. Havana is also haunted by hallucinations of Clarice in her youthful prime.

Benjie Weiss (Evan Bird) is a bad boy of Bieber proportions. At only 13 years of age, he’s been in and out of rehab. He’s not above lighting into his assistant with an anti-Semitic tirade for an embarrassing mistake. Benjie’s parents are no prizes either. His mother, Cristina (Olivia Williams), is a shark when it comes to managing her son’s career. His father, Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), is a celebrity psychologist with more interest in scoring talk show appearances than fixing his crumbling family.

Into their lives comes Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), fresh off the bus from Florida with long black gloves covering the scars from a childhood fire. Thanks to a connection from Carrie Fisher (in a cameo as herself), Agatha becomes Havana’s new personal assistant.

The usual sticking points about life in Los Angeles are all present. Young actors engaging in excessive drug use and inane conversations. Others opine about meeting the Dalai Lama, not as a spiritual awakening, but as a hip trend. One character talks about becoming a Scientologist as a “career move.”

Cronenberg has a tough time balancing the multiple storylines and characters. Robert Pattinson takes a supporting role as Jerome, a limo driver who aspires to be an actor and screenwriter. In a change of pace from Cosmopolis, Pattinson spends most of his time in the front of the limo instead of the back. However, his brief dalliance with Agatha could have easily been excised from the movie. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, which may be a problem for those who want their films about likeable people.

Maps to the Stars succeeds due to Cronenberg’s interests into the macabre and a stellar cast. Julianne Moore won the Oscar for Still Alice, but it’s clear she didn’t get enough recognition for her less audience friendly role as Havana. Moore is absolutely fearless in portraying Havana as a flaming hot mess in yoga pants. During one scene, she runs down an ornate shopping list for Agatha while sitting on the toilet. Another scene sees Havana doing a celebratory dance when she learns she’s won a role because the previous actress’s son drowned.

It makes complete sense for David Cronenberg to turn his eye on Hollywood. The land of cosmetic surgery and Botox injections is a perfect fit for his brand of body horror. Shining the light on the dark side of Tinseltown isn’t anything new and the subject matter has been done better. You can take a look at Barton Fink, The Player or go all the way back to Sunset Boulevard. Maps to the Stars doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but Cronenberg’s unique vision makes for compelling drama.

Rating: *** (*****)

Grand Piano

Grand Piano - Dir. Eugenio Mira (2014)

Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) was a brilliant piano prodigy until he had a nervous breakdown while attempting to play a daunting piece composed by his mentor. Five years later, Selznick is set for his comeback performance with a piano custom made for his now-deceased teacher, who unfortunately went all Howard Hughes in his twilight years. The concert itself would be stressful enough without smarmy radio interviewers (voiced by Dee Wallace), snide comments from backstage workers, and Selznick being overshadowed by his gorgeous movie star wife Emma (Kerry Bishé). Then, the real bombshell drops when Selznick sees a warning in his music sheets written in bold, red letters. If he misses one note, he will die. If he attempts to warn anyone, his wife will die. Selznick finds out the hard way that there’s a sniper (John Cusack) in the box seats and he means business. Much of the story unfolds afterwards in real time.

That’s the premise for Grand Piano, which may remind you of Phone Booth or Speed on a stage. Yes, the concept is ludicrous and there are plenty of plot points that don’t make sense if you stick down to truly think about them. However, none of that matters because Grand Piano is just so damn fun. Damien Chazelle, who has recently earned acclaim for film festival darling Whiplash, wrote the script with direction by Eugenio Mira, who has clearly been studying his Hitchcock and DePalma. Grand Piano is the type of thriller Hitchcock plied his trade in and the concert hall setting is reminiscent of the climax to The Man Who Knew Too Much. Mira pays homage to DePalma, another Hitchcockian disciple, with split screens and several dazzling tracking shots, including one that follows Selznick through the backstage hallways and another that spins around him on stage. Mira stylishly pans from the orchestra pit and up into the catwalks. Everything is so impeccably blocked so that the audience is never confused about the geography.

Elijah Wood is perfect as Selznick and his doe-eyed expressions are exactly what is needed to convey fear and panic. There’s a great joy in seeing John Cusack cast against type as the obsessed sniper, imagine if his charming hitman from Grosse Pointe Blank went bad. Cusack doesn't appear on screen until the final act, before then he's just a menacing voice speaking through an earpiece Selznick is forced to grab in between movement breaks. Rounding out the cast are character actor Don McManus as the conductor, Downton Abbey's Allen Leech as one of Emma's friends, and Alex Winter of Bill & Ted fame as an all-too friendly security guard.

Grand Piano shouldn't be taken too seriously and the filmmakers luckily realize that too. This is an enjoyable B-movie stylishly made and perfect for midnight madness screenings.

Rating: *** (*****)

Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine - Dir. Steve Pink (2010)


Not since Snakes on a Plane has there been such a high-concept premise for a film than Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s this year’s The Hangover, a comedy with low-brow laughs about overgrown man-children and male bonding.

The quartet of protagonists in Hot Tub Time Machine are Adam (John Cusack), the most successful of the bunch who has just been dumped by his girlfriend; Jacob (Clark Duke), Adam’s nerdy nephew who lives in his uncle’s basement playing internet video games; Nick (Craig Robinson), a former singer now working as a dog groomer; and the obnoxious Lou (Rob Corddry). Lou may be an asshole, but he’s their asshole.

After a drunken night of debauchery, Lou parks his car in the garage and rocks out to Motley Crue. He doesn’t notice the garage door has shut and is hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning. Lou’s pals believe he tried to commit suicide and decide to cheer him up. The gang goes on a trip to the Kodiak Valley Ski Resort where they partied as teenagers. However, the poor economy has struck and the popular hotspot has become a dilapidated mess of abandoned shop fronts. That doesn’t stop the boys from getting totally and utterly shitfaced in their hot tub. One dizzying montage later, they find themselves back in their younger bodies in 1986.

At first, they attempt to do everything exactly the way it happened so as not to disrupt the timestream. It’s Lou who decides to do all the things you aren’t supposed to do in a time travel movie. He wants to use his knowledge of the future to make himself rich while righting a few old wrongs, including a beating at the hands of a douchebag ski patrolman with the classic 80’s villain name of Blaine (Sebastian Stan). The others begin questioning their paths. Adam is conflicted between the girl (Lyndsy Fonseca) he regrets breaking up with and a free-spirited journalist (Lizzy Caplan) he bumps into.

Steve Pink, the co-writer of two other Cusack films, Grosse Pointe Blank and High Fidelity, directs from a script by Josh Heald, Sean Anders, and John Morris. The latter two also penned She’s Out of My League and you can see their stamp on every scatological joke. They also make several nods to Back to the Future such as making time travel a secondary plotline. The real story lies with the relationships between the main characters. In another nod to those classic Michael J. Fox flicks, Jacob flickers in and out because he may or may not be conceived.

There are plenty of other 80’s references to be had in Hot Tub, including cameos by icons of the decade like Chevy Chase as the mystical hot tub repairman and William Zabka (you know, ”Put ‘em in a bodybag, Johnny” from Karate Kid). But, the best is reserved for Crispin Glover who is absolutely hilarious as a surly, one-armed bellhop. The running gag is you keep waiting for the moment when he lost that other arm. Not to be outshined is Craig Robinson whose mastery of the deadpan one-liners has made him one of today’s funniest character actors.

Sadly, most of the jokes are the easy ones about Michael Jackson’s skin color and legwarmers. You would think that putting John Cusack back in the 80’s at a ski lodge would have yielded some great meta-textual gags. Alas, nary a reference to Better Off Dead is made aside from a fleeting line about “two dollars” at the beginning.

Hot Tub Time Machine is loaded with vulgarities and sophomoric humor which will likely be a put-off to most. If you’re able to get past all that, you’ll find a raunchy, yet touching, comedy with a quartet of strong characters.

Rating: ** ½

2012

2012 - Dir. Roland Emmerich (2009)


Truly the most important things destroyed during 2012 are your brain cells.

Emmerich is the modern day Irwin Allen, the producer/director of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, released during the 1970’s, the golden era for the disaster film. Allen’s name was synonymous with the genre which featured all-star casts and multiple storylines revolving around catastrophe. Emmerich has certainly topped Allen’s excess using the latest in special effects. He’s destroyed the world with aliens, giant lizards, and ice. Now, he’s done away with any kind of pretense at all. The world will end in 2012 and there’s no need to explain any further than that.

The film begins with geologist Dr. Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovering solar flares are causing the planet’s core to overheat which will lead to a series of unbelievable natural disasters. Usually, nobody listens to the scientist. Not this time. White House Chief of Staff Carl Anheuser (Oliver Platt) takes Helmsley’s reports seriously. Along with President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover), they begin secretly constructing massive arks to safely house the world’s leaders as well as the most wealthy and influential people of the world. The average Joe? He’s pretty much screwed.

The everyman point of view here is from the perspective of Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a former sci-fi writer now working as a limo driver. His boss is obnoxious Russian millionaire Yuri Karpov (Zlatko Buric) who just happens to be one of the few to buy a ticket to salvation. Curtis is divorced from wife Kate (Amanda Peet) who now lives with plastic surgeon Dr. Gordon Silberman (Thomas McCarthy). Dr. Silberman just happens to have worked on Karpov’s mistress Tamara (Beatrice Rosen). Yes, this is one of those movies where out of billions upon billions of people, a select few run into each other over and over again.

On a chance camping trip, Curtis runs into Dr. Helmsley as well as Charlie Frost, a nutty conspiracy theorist played by the equally nutty Woody Harrelson. Frost informs Curtis of the Mayan’s predictions about the end of the world in 2012. Clued in, Curtis quickly gets to his family to miraculously escape just as L.A. crumbles into the Pacific.

2012 is disaster porn at its finest. Emmerich leaves no stone unturned. He blew up the White House in Independence Day, Upping the ante, he destroys the White House again along with all of D.C., Vatican City, Yellowstone, and the Eiffel Tower. Two cute kids and a dog are tossed in to really tug at your heartstrings. Don’t bother to inject any type of logic or deeper thought into the proceedings. 2012 is pure, dumb shlock, jam packed with cheap thrills. Well, not so cheap for Sony who coughed up over $200 million for the budget. 2012’s overinflated budget and excessive 2 and a half hour runtime are indicative of the bloated blockbusters being churned out by Hollywood.

Rating: *