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Posts Tagged ‘Susan Sarandon’

“THE MEDDLER”: Mother love

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 19, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne

Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne

“THE MEDDLER” My rating: C+

100 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“The Meddler” is selling itself as one kind of cliche, when actually it’s a cliche of a different kind.

Marnie (Susan Sarandon) is a recent widow who has moved from her lifelong home of NYC to be with her screenwriter daughter
Lori (Rose Byrne) in sunny L.A.

TheBrooklynese-speaking Marnie is the sort of doting/smothering mama who shows up unexpectedly, lets herself into her daughter’s home with the key that is supposed to be used only for emergencies,  and dispenses unwanted advice about how Lori might deal with the breakup of her own long relationship.

Okay, we’ve seen this comedy before. Pushy mom, resisting child.

Except that “The Meddler,”  written and directed by Lorene Scafaria (“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”), isn’t that movie at all.

When Lori leaves Los Angeles for a long location shoot, Marnie is left to her own devices and…and now we’ve got a drama about a widow exploring the options for the rest of her life.

That’s right, a drama. “The Meddler” is only nominally a comedy, if that.

Without Lori to fixate on, Marnie picks other targets. She befriends the Apple Store clerk (Jerrod Carmichael) who trains her to use her new iPhone; before long she’s talked him into enrolling at a local college and is even driving him back and forth to class.

 

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“THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD”: His wicked, wicked ways

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Kevin Kline, Dakota Fanning, and Susan Sarandon

Kevin Kline, Dakota Fanning, and Susan Sarandon

“THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD” My rating: B- (Opens Sept. 5 at the Tivoli )

94 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Like it or loathe it, “The Last of Robin Hood” succeeds in taking a red-flag subject — pedophilia — and forcing us to reconsider our intense feelings about this taboo.

The writing/directing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland get away with this by relating a largely true story involving one of Hollywood’s most charismatic leading men.

Here are the facts:  In the last two years of his life, legendary big-screen swashbuckler Errol Flynn kept as his mistress a girl — a self-described “dancer/singer/actress,” though any one of those labels is debatable — who was only 15 when their relationship began.

Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) had been kicking around the periphery of Hollywood for years. Most recently she had faked her age to get work as a backup dancer in musicals. That’s where she was spotted by the always-on-the-prowl Flynn (Kevin Kline), who was working on a nearby soundstage.

A practiced bullshitter with a charming line of self-deprecation (told by a fan that he had seen one of Flynn’s movies five times, the actor responds: “How extraordinary — I could barely get through it once”), Flynn wooed and seduced Beverly.

But a strange thing happened. The old alcoholic womanizer fell in love. He called Beverly his “little sprite” and “wood nymph.” He dubbed her “Woodsy.”

Not even the late-arriving revelation of Woodsy’s tender years (she had been passing herself off as 18) could cool the ardor of a man who nearly two decades earlier had endured a humiliating trial for statuatory rape and remains a tantalizing target for any prosecutor looking to make a name.

Curiously, “The Last of Robin Hood” is less about Flynn and Beverly (a pretty but vacuous girl with a largely unformed personality) than it is about Flynn and Beverly’s mother, Florence Aadland (Susan Sarandon).

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“JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME”: The signs are everywhere

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Jason Segel and Ed Helms

“JEFF WHO LIVES AT HOME”  My rating: B+ (Opens wide on March 16)

83 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Jeff (Jason Segel) is a thirtysomething slacker who lives in his mom’s basement and obsesses over the M. Night Shyamalan movie “Signs.”

You know…that’s the one where Mel Gibson’s family is besieged in their farmhouse by space aliens? And they discover that little, inconsequential things they almost overlooked were in fact cosmic signs of how to beat the invasion?

Jeff acknowledges that “Signs” can seem meandering and unfocused, but now that he’s watched it a couple dozen times he finds tremendous comfort knowing that in the end it comes together in “one perfect moment.”

Jeff’s opening monologue in “Jeff Who Lives at Home” seems a mere toss-off, the idiotic ramblings of a navel-gazing stoner who hasn’t had a girlfriend since high school.

But remember Jeff’s words. They’ll come back to us in yet another perfect moment.

“Jeff Who Lives at Home” is a pleasantly meandering effort from the writing/directing Duplass Brothers.  It’s funny and goofy.

It also exhibits more genuine soul than any comedy since…well, since Bill Forsythe’s sublime “Local Hero” back in 1983.

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