The Cue Card

This movie is sheer crazy and pretty outrageous most of the time (ding ding: “crude warning”!). Which isn’t to say it’s not enjoyable to sit through another zany wedding movie. Kristen Wiig sort of saves the whole kit and caboodle (just wanted to use that phase) as a maid of honor whose life has hit rock bottom but tries to pull off all the rituals that go with the territory; along the way she battles another of the bridesmaids for maid of honor status. Wiig’s face during the movie and the tennis scene alone are probably worth the price of admission. It could have done without the whole food-poison-gross-out stuff, hello?! you kiddin’ me. Some scenes fall a bit flat, like on the airplane, or the strange roommates (?!), but others find their mark: gotta go with the tennis scene (AC/DC!), and the Wilson Phillips singalong is a schmaltzy crackup.

Wiig is pretty hilarious. If you like her on “Saturday Night Live,” you’ll like her here. Her character, Annie, is a mess: broke, left by her boyfriend and living with wacko roommates. She’s on the precipice of a breakdown. It’s safe to say: the wedding duties send her over the edge. Good to see another “SNL” alum, Maya Rudolph, as the bride. (Her “Bronx Beat” skits on SNL still make me laugh just thinking of them. Oh god the one with Jake Gyllenhaal?!) Anyways it’s a bit sad to see Jill Clayburgh in her final role here. Here’s to you, Jill.

It sort of reminds me, which are the funniest wedding flicks in memory? If you had to pick for a desert island, they might include: “The Hangover” “Wedding Crashers,” “Four Weddings & a Funeral,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “The Wedding Singer” … and perhaps a light sprinkling of “Bridesmaids.”

This is a gem of a little film, which I thought was going to be solely about a wrestling coach and team, but it turns out to dwell more on family issues. The wrestling sort of comes in later. It’s about a small-time lawyer and high school wrestling coach (played by Paul Giamatti) who makes the dubious decision for financial reasons of taking on the guardianship of a elderly client whose grandson, an excellent wrestler, he stumbles upon after the kid winds up at his grandfather’s. But with his grandfather in a nursing home and his mother in drug rehab, the kid ends up living with the coach’s family and joining the wrestling team. All seem to be winning in this arrangement, until the mother shows up out of rehab and things begin to unravel.

Giamatti, of course is wonderful just as he was in “Barney’s Version,” and makes a good team with Amy Ryan as his wife, who recently played Michael Scott’s love on “The Office.” It is an endearing film that sneaks up on you and gets under your skin. It’s funny at times and also a drama about the family and what will happen to the boy on and off the mat.

This movie is a weepy and whiny affair about a popular country singer (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) who tries to overcome her alcoholic demons. I thought it would be a good chick flick so I rented it, but the script’s considerably weak and cliched, though I wasn’t asking for all that much. The dialogue’s not that great either.

Gwyneth’s character Kelly Cantor is indeed a crying mess; she’s lost a baby, she’s drinking despite rehab, she’s having affairs, notably with a rising country star, played by Garrett Hedlund. Her husband, played by Tim McGraw, has hurried her out of rehab and put her on a short tour to reestablish her reputation, but she’s far from ready! She can’t get through these shows! She’s too messed up and has to cancel the first two, but then she gives it her all at the last concert, only to end it all in dramatic fashion after.

Despite its flaws, “Country Strong” has some good music, and Leighton Meester and Garrett Hedlund seem believable as opening acts. It’s a bit hard to see Gwyneth as anything other than Gwyneth. I plan to check out the soundtrack for the hell of it and see if it’s not too sugary.

“Country Strong” comes on the heels of “Crazy Heart,” which was also about an alcoholic singer/songwriter, but that script and movie were a bit “stronger.”

Okay so it’s not exactly “Water for Elephants,” but the usually good Werner Herzog was listed as director, and apparently Roger Ebert said it was one of the best movies of 2009, which I had missed. So I rented it, though it’s not really on a subject matter that has many redeeming qualities. It’s a pretty dark movie about a detective on the take of drugs and other favors on the streets of New Orleans while trying to solve the murder of an immigrant family. This is one crooked cop (played by Nicolas Cage); you name it, he’s done it, which makes it a pretty uneasy watching experience.

It’s quite a change to see Cage, who’s done a slew of Disney films recently, playing this corrupt a character. Even his Ben in “Leaving Las Vegas” knew more right from wrong. Yet, Cage’s bad lieutenant is still good at solving the case at hand despite all his illegal activities.

I sort of forgot Harvey Keitel had played the “Bad Lieutenant” in a different movie set in New York in 1992. No wonder it sounded familiar. The filmmakers say it isn’t a remake, but it sure seems quite alike. In the end, there wasn’t a really good reason that I needed to sit through the same themes again. There’s some good suspense and acting in it, but during the process you wade through considerable sleeze. Keitel’s lieutenant pays for it, but Cage’s lieutenant comes through clean.

I can’t remember which review or comment steered me away from this film at first, but I actually thought it turned out to be quite entertaining and suspenseful. It comes from a crime novel by Michael Connelly, whose books are usually quite good, about a lawyer in L.A. (played by Matthew McConaughey) who is working low-level cases out of his Lincoln town car when he happens upon a high-profile case and client.

It’s been a long time since Matthew McConaughey has had a decent role like this … not since “A Time to Kill” (1996) and perhaps “Contact” (1997). Kudos to him for getting back on the radar screen and away from all the rom-com fluff. It’s also good to see Marisa Tomei and William H. Macy in supporting roles in this.

The movie rolls with pace and has some good plot twists along the way with suspenseful court-room drama. It portrays the seedier side of the justice system and the deals that are cut long before the verdict. For a snowy afternoon, it held my attention from beginning to end.

Judging from the movie’s trailer, I didn’t really intend to see “Barney’s Version,” about a hard-drinking, cigar-smoking slouch of a television producer who marries three times in life, but since it’s set in Montreal (O Canada!) and stars Paul Giamatti, I wound up going to check it out. I wasn’t disappointed; it’s a small gem of a film and one of Giamatti’s best performances. Some say it doesn’t live up to the 1997 novel it’s based on by Mordecai Richler, but I haven’t read the novel just yet, so I can’t compare the different “versions,” other than to say “Barney’s” an entertaining and moving movie.

Beware though it has more drinking and smoking in it than I’ve seen in a flick in a long, long time. Giamatti’s character, the tubby Barney Panofsky, is rarely without either; he is as unhealthy as he is blunt-speaking but amusing, too. The movie spans his adult life with his clan of artist friends then as he marries crazy wife #1, then obnoxious wife #2, only to fall in love with perfect wife #3 at the previous wedding.

He’s a messy, at times jerky character but not without redeeming qualities. The movie grows poignant especially in the second half as Barney settles down with wife #3, his true love (played by the up-and-coming British actress Rosamund Pike) and has a family. It’s no wonder Giamatti received a Golden Globe for the film, he is amazing in the role. It’s a movie that sort of sneaks up on you (with Dustin Hoffman, too, as the endearing father). By the end, I found it quite touching what happens to Barney, and on the whole enjoyed the Montreal, Canada, aspect of it. The movie’s a pleasing thumbs up.

ps. See Paul Giamatti’s acceptance speech for the award he won for it at the Golden Globes here.

I won’t kid you. I was disappointed in spending two hours watching “Another Year.” I know many critics just loved this character study (I thought I would, too, judging from other reviews), but instead I found it rather dull. I think people in the theater kept politely waiting for something of note to happen but in fact nothing ever did. There was one person who stood up in the theater not too long into it and I heard say I can’t take it anymore and walked out. I’m not sure if there was something in particular the person was talking about or just the entire thing. Little did I know at that early stage they were quite right. At times it felt like grass growing.

But perhaps I’m just not the right person for Mike Leigh films as others seem to be. I plan not to sit through another. Yet I do very much like small indie films but just didn’t find a lot in this film, which is about the year in the life of a middle-aged British married couple. The married couple seem quite happy with each other but are surrounded by friends and family who are unhappy in their love lives or singledom. One of their friends in particular, Mary, who seems to be a sad sort of train wreck, garners a lot of focus of the movie. We see her desperately latch onto the happy couple in a pathetic kind of way to try to ease her misery, but she grows quite annoying to them and to us.

All the actors are quite excellent in their roles. I have no quibbles with them. They paint an intimate portrait of this couple and the people close to them. It’s just that the movie doesn’t seem to go anywhere, nothing really seems to happen. It’s too slow. The married couple at the center are happy, and the single folks around them are sort of sad sacks, a viewpoint that gets a bit tiresome after awhile. For once at the end, I couldn’t wait for all the credits to roll, I didn’t want to spend another moment on “Another Year.”