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Posts Tagged ‘Luke Wilson’

“FINGERNAILS”: Getting to the roots of love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 5, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Riz Ahmed, Jessie Buckley

“FINGERNAILS” My rating: C+ (Apple+)

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

From the INTRIGUING IDEA GOES NOWHERE DEPARTMENT:

“Fingernails” unfolds in an alternate reality that looks a lot like America in the 1980s.  No ubiquitous cell phones or laptops. Most of the cars are sedans, not SUVs. The TV sets are modestly proportioned.

Except that in this reality the films “Titanic” (1997)  and “Notting Hill” (1999) are already classics (the latter a key title in the Hugh Grant Romance film festival).

And a special feature of this alternate universe is a process (allegedly scientific) that allows couples to test for romantic compatability. Ideally you want a score of 50%, indicating that a couple love each other equally.  More often though, those tested discover that they’ve  absolutely no future with their current squeeze.

And what do you have to sacrifice for this life-changing information? Well, in addition to paying a steep fee you must have one of your fingernails pulled out with pliers (sans anesthesia) so that it can be microwaved along with one yanked from your significant other.  Apparently fingernails are terrific indicators of one’s emotional state.

Anna (Jessie Buckley) is the latest employee of the Love Institute, which not only conducts the fingernail tests but holds seminars and workshops and issues reports on what its researchers have discovered about romance.

Anna and her beau Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) did the fingernail test several years earlier and were told that they were a perfect match.  Except that Anna is starting to get bored with the relationship (possibly Ryan is too nice and predictable).  Anna hopes that by working as a counselor at the Institute she can gain insights into her own romantic sensibilities.

Her work partner is Amir (Riz Ahmed), and it doesn’t take a fingernail test to determine that Anna’s affections soon will be directed his way.

As written by Christos Nikou, Sam Steiner and Davros Raptis and directed by Nikou, “Fingernails” scores more points for quirkiness than for emotional heft.

And even the quirkiness is of the low-caliber variety.  There are a couple of amusing moments but the film never quite jells as either comedy or romance.  I was ready for it to wrap things up a good half hour before the end.

That said, I’m a big fan of Buckley (even with a ‘do that looks like it was styled with a weed whacker).  Ahmed and White are solid as Anna’s romantic options, and Luke Wilson very nearly steals the film as the science-nerd chief of the Love Institute.

Forget about the fingernail test.  When it comes to human emotions there are no absolutes.

|Robert W. Butler

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“THE SKELETON TWINS”: Hanging on

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 23, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader

Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader

“THE SKELETON TWINS”  My rating: B (Opening Sept. 26 at the Tivoli and Leawood)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The old adage about a tragedian lurking inside every comedian is perfectly illustrated by “The Skeleton Twins,” an achingly sad yet hugely amusing study of self-destructive siblings — played by “SNL” alums Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig — who can find comfort only in their shared misery.

In an early scene of Craig Johnson’s dramedy, Maggie (Wiig) is preparing to gulp a handful of sleeping pills when her grim ritual is interrupted by a phone call.  Across the country in LA, her twin brother Milo (Hader) has beaten her to the punch, slitting his wrists while sitting in the tub.  He’s in the hospital.  Can Maggie — who hasn’t seen her bro in a decade — come and fetch him?

Granted, this doesn’t sound like a laugh riot. Wiig and Hader — who a few years backed played husband and wife in the coming-of-age comedy “Adventureland” — initially approach their roles with dead-on seriousness, their performances imbued with a sense of weariness that makes simply rising from a chair a monumental effort.

But after Milo returns with Maggie to her home in upstate New York, the film (co-written by Mark Heyman) gently begins working its magic.

The twins have been cursed with self-awareness. They realize they are unhappy, they see themselves almost as psychological caricatures, and if they’re not actually going to kill themselves they need to make fun of themselves to get through it all.

Why do they gravitate toward self-destruction? The film offers no easy answers. In brief flashbacks we see their beloved father — himself an early suicide — giving life lessons and presenting the children with colorful plastic skeletons (the message: Get used to death, come to an accomodation with it.)  About halfway through the film they are visited by their absentee mother (Joanna Gleeson), a New Age groupie so bent on spiritual self-improvement that she’s never had time for her progeny.

With no pat psychological explanation of Maggie and Milo’s dilemma we’re left with the conclusion that maybe some people are just born miserable.

(more…)

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