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BOFCA INTERVIEW: 6/21

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Screenwriter Lorene Scafaria has toiled in the Hollywood trenches for over a decade, penning eight screenplays before her ninth (a lovely adaptation of NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST) was finally produced in 2008. Her directorial debut SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD takes an even more sideways glance at romantic comedy tropes. Starring Steve Carell and Kiera Knightley, the movie daringly tackles conventional genre expectations while a giant asteroid just so happens to be hurtling towards Earth.

Scafaria recently sat down with Boston Online Film Critics Association members Monica Castillo, Sean Burns, Jake Mulligan and Greg Vellante.  Here are some highlights from their conversation:

Q: Is it hard trying to end the world on such a small budget?

A:  For sure! When writing it I wanted the scope to stay pretty small, and I never wanted to see the asteroid or the sky or anything like that. At the time I was also thinking:  you can make a movie for what they give you. I just had to sort it out.

Q: So after MELANCHOLIA, TAKE SHELTER and 4:44: LAST DAY ON EARTH, the world seems to be ending in an awful lot of movies lately…

A: Yeah, there have been a lot of end-of-the-world films.  But I saw it more as a backdrop for a romantic comedy… or at least as a relationship movie.  I remember so many from the late 90’s, when like DEEP IMPACT and ARMAGEDDON came out at the exact same time. The one thing in DEEP IMPACT that got me was Tea Leoni and her father standing on the beach when the big wave is coming, and I cared about them.  I cared about this relationship that was happening. And those movies continued to come out, but during THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW I cared more about Jake Gyellenhaall having a crush on a girl more than his father in the tundra. So I really wanted to explore more what people’s behavior would be like, and how that would be changed.

I moved from New York to LA a week before 9/11. So I was stranded out there knowing nobody and desperate for human contact. I found myself calling up old friends I hadn’t talked to in a long time. It was that feeling of this cataclysmic event, and it changes your own individual behavior and your relationships with people. New York was actually a really friendly place for a while afterwards.  It didn’t last!  But for a little while it felt like a community again. People were looking each other in the eyes. Everybody was equalized by this horrible thing, and we were all in the same boat.  Or the same sinking ship?  Still, there’s something beautiful about humanity coming together like that.

Q: When you were writing was it always Steve Carell in your head? He’s kind of got a monopoly right now on the melancholic goofy guy.

A: There aren’t many comedic actors who can garner that much sympathy. There’s something about Steve that is tragic. On THE OFFICE Michael Scott is this amazing anti-hero who goes from zero to sixty, and yet you can see this pain behind his smile. When I write I never really picture any actor until after the fact, but this character I had always been trying to get out there felt so much like Steve.  I had been wanting to work with him for a really long time, I just never imagined we’d get him.

Q: You’re right. Everyone else now seems to be busy playing stunted man-children.

A: They really are! There are many great comedians, but only so many guys who can fill out a suit. He really is a particular person, and I do think of him as like Jack Lemmon or Peter Sellers – those old comedians who did so much with a look or a word. I suppose he’s been playing a sad-sack for a while, but this character felt more guarded and more internal, so I was happy to see him push that even further. With Steve, I root for his happiness.  And who do you want to see face the end of the world? You want somebody that you want to be happy.

Q: You want him to be happy, but you still killed him?

A: Yeah, I still killed him. The end had to be.

 

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD opens Friday, 6/22 at Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

 

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 6/19

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Whether it be a student with an essay assignment, a screenwriter, an author, or a film critic trying to throw together 500 words by deadline on the latest summer dud—writer’s block is a familiar sensation for most of us. Some of us pace. Some of us procrastinate. Some of us sit in front of our computers or typewriters and rip our hair out from the roots.
 
Charlie Kaufman did all of this. And then, he made a movie about it.
 
ADAPTATION, which plays tonight at the Brattle as part of their phenomenal ‘Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor’ repertory series, is an ingenious film that stirs, teases, and explores the elements of creative development and human candidness via Kaufman boldly/neurotically placing himself into what began as an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s novel, “The Orchid Thief.”
 
This was back in the early-to-mid 90s, back when Kaufman was tapped to adapt the novel with Jonathan Demme on board to direct. But as Kaufman spiraled into a serious case of writer’s block, he found “The Orchid Thief” impossible to turn into an adapted narrative screenplay.
 
So he eventually wrote a film about his troubles. ADAPTATION has a grand, immersive quality to it, filled with actual quirkiness (before JUNO came around and ruined that word for everyone). Getting lost in these characters’ minds is something that Kaufman masters effortlessly in his script, and director Spike Jonze brings this scrutiny to the screen with an absolute craft for visual emotion.
 
And it all comes to life through a collection of brilliant performances—topped, of course, by Cage, who offers two performances for the price of one ticket with this particular film.
Playing both Kaufman and Kaufman’s fictional twin brother Donald, Nicholas Cage has the ability to bounce back and forth with Nicholas Cage while also lending individual gravities to each of these characters—with all their respective idiosyncrasies and psychological hiccups. It is arguably one of the best performances of his career.
 
The character of Donald, I suspect, is mainly a personification of everything Charlie Kaufman loathes about formula, Hollywood screenwriting. Charlie is shown in the movie speaking into tape recorders and fixatedly pacing around his room, while Donald attends screenwriting seminars held by Robert McKee (played by Brian Cox) and gets signed for his spec script for a hackneyed psychological thriller called “THE 3”
 
Kaufman throws these countless fictional plot points in with true stories and real characters. Donald isn’t real, but “The Orchid Thief” author Susan Orlean is—played here in a great performance by Meryl Streep. Kaufman layers his own troubles with adaptation and mirrors it with a fictional subplot involving Orlean’s relationship with John Laroche, the subject of her book and a character played with infectious tenacity by Chris Cooper.
 
Adaptation, relationships, the creative process but more importantly the human process—Kaufman has mastered the emotional and intellectual properties of his little meta-fueled mind to craft a truly individual screenplay with ADAPTATION which he humorously submitted officially as being penned by himself and his fictional brother.
 
Needless to say, ADAPTATION just might be the most daring, entertaining, and cerebrally unmatched thing to ever result from a case of writer’s block. – Greg Vellante and Donald Vellante
 
ADAPTATION screens tonight, 6/19, at 4:30, 7:00 and 9:30 PM. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA. 02138
 
 

BOFCA REVIEW ROUNDUP: 6/15

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ROCK OF AGES

“Pulverizing, excruciating, incompetent—the pejoratives finally fail me. An hour into this thing, I turned to a colleague and groaned aloud: ‘I want to murder myself.’” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly

“A train wreck. But it sure is fun to watch.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide

“Cruise literally does everything to look, sound, and move like a rock star, except for showing any genuine conviction. It’s like someone programmed a robot to play the character, but left out the emotion chip.” – Evan Crean, Starpulse

“Terrible. A bad story told badly through a series of corny on-the-nose song choices and bad comedy.” – Bob Chipman, The Escapist

“Singers should sing, actors should act, and 9 times out of 10 the two should never mix.” – Monica Castillo, DigBoston

“One long evening of 1980’s Rock and Roll karaoke. Manages to evoke both a wince and a smile.”- Tim Estiloz, Boston Latino TV

“Oh, the choreography!” – Steve Head, The Post-Movie Podcast

 


SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

“Plaza does indeed give a great performance, carrying a movie that for the most part isn’t worth her efforts.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune

“The Duplass brothers seem to specialize in half-written movies with garbage cinematography, and I would happily donate $10 to buy them a tripod.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
 
“It reminded me of a movie from the 70’s in the worst way possible. It’s all quirky and cutesy but then has that cop-out indie ending.” – John Black, The Post-Movie Podcast
 
“Everything comes together a bit hastily, but happily the ending doesn’t disappoint.” – Evan Crean, Starpulse
 
 
 
THAT’S MY BOY
 
“If the bar had been set any lower for this film’s vulgar humor only flatworms and slugs could crawl underneath it.” – Tim Estiloz, Boston Movie Examiner
 
“Easily Sandler’s best movie in a long, long time.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide
 
“It’s a vile, puerile, lowbrow, totally disposable junk movie, but I can’t deny that it works as one.” – Bob Chipman, The Escapist
 
“This may be the most loathsome film of the year.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, NorthShoreMovies.net.
 
“This is the perfect movie to take your dad to on Father’s Day if you hate him.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune
 
“This is a shitty movie on every level. The shittiest.” – Steve Head, The Post-Movie Podcast
 
“Director Sean Anders does nothing to mop up this gross-out comedy mess.” – Monica Castillo, The Boston Phoenix
 
 
 
LOLA VERSUS
 
“Lola battles against many problems in this ridiculously titled film. What’s unfortunate is that none of them are interesting.” – Jake Mulligan, The Suffolk Voice

 

 

CAPE SPIN! AN AMERICAN POWER STRUGGLE

“There’s an awful lot of spin going on in Robbie Gemmel and John Kirby’s playful documentary.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Herald

 

BOFCA REPERTORY PICK: 6/13

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The Brattle’s ‘Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor’ series is a great opportunity for audiences to re-assess the wrongly reviled performer, and to see him as what he truly is: a man daring enough to separate acting and realism. His over-the-top performances, so often dismissed as camp, feel more like an actor trying to achieve an unforeseen future of acting – one where emotional honesty and expressionism is key, and reality means nothing. His performances skew abstract and absurdist in a culture where everything, even superheroes, need to be gritty. And never before has Cage been as absurd as in his masterpiece of unrestrained “mega-acting,” VAMPIRE’S KISS.

Most of the films in the Brattle’s series see Cage as filtered through the mind of great auteurs. RAISING ARIZONA sees him reborn in the eyes of the insane Coen Brothers, who split the difference between philosophical inquiry and Looney Tunes lunacy in their character. FACE/OFF sees him playing a classic John Woo bad guy, diving in all directions with two handguns cocked and loaded. WILD AT HEART strands him in a Lynchian nightmare of sex, violence, and Americana. But VAMPIRE’S (which was forever immortalized by its inclusion in the ‘Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit’ viral video) sees Cage let loose in a way he never has before. Swinging madly from accent-to-accent, he allows no boundaries of character or reality to limit the depraved insanity of his performance as Peter Loew, a womanizing yuppie whose misogyny starts to externalize itself in bloodsucking ways. And director Robert Bierman seems delighted with the choice; allowing his mainly static frames to merely sit in awe of Cage’s alien presence.

But the great mistake audiences made is in assuming this is a sub-TROLL 2 work of so-bad-it’s-good camp. But the truth is that this tale of false masculinity and creeping insanity is closer to AGUIRRE, WRATH OF GOD than to MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER. It follows Cage down the rabbit-hole of self loathing, at first creating a psychological link between his bedtime troubles and a bat-bite, then following that conceit until Cage is slogging through clubs, trying to pick up women with plastic fangs enshrouded in his teeth. It’s a slow descent into madness, and Bierman follows through with a masters dedication: he allows both Cage’s hallucinations and his mental illness to follow through to their most extreme endgames, until he’s wondering around the street begging bystanders to stake him the death (all the while, he imagines that his romantic savior is just around the corner.)

Many have compared this film and its themes to AMERICAN PSYCHO, but that film has nothing on Cage’s one-of-a-kind take on the psychologically demolished yuppie character. Yes, he’s awash in false gravitas and retarded sexuality, but the film is about so much more than just the sleaziness of the playboy lifestyle. I’m not being facetious with the AGUIRRE comparison: Bierman’s willingness to watch Cage’s confidence and demeanor slowly unravel itself to the point of self-destruction is downright Herzogian, and Cage’s hunchback limps and pained howls evoke the one of the cinema’s greatest madmen, Klaus Kinski. In fact, I almost wish this had been double featured with BAD LIEUTENANT – VAMPIRE’S KISS feels like a lost hallucinatory comedy Herzog made twenty years prior. – Jake Mulligan

VAMPIRE’S KISS plays tonight, 6/13, at 5:15, 7:30, and 9:45. The Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge MA, 02138.

BOFCA INTERVIEW: 6/12

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Rockin’ good news.

The Brattle Theatre is about to be overwhelmed by eleven of the wildest and weirdest performances of the past twenty-odd years. Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor showcases this singular performer at his most boffo bizarre. While researching a recent article in The Improper Bostonian, our own Sean Burns spoke with The Brattle’s Creative Director Ned Hinkle about the series. Here are some highlights from their conversation:

Q: Why Nicolas Cage? Why now?

A: Do you really have to ask? He’s not only a cultural icon, a legit movie star, and a talented actor, but he’s also a magnet for the crazy, the weird, and the wonderful of cinema. ­And he has a sense of humor about it!

He’s basically a very famous, very handsome super-nerd; which I think is just awesome. It also helps that he’s in two of my favorite films of all time (WILD AT HEART and RAISING ARIZONA) and one of the all-time best guilty pleasures (CON AIR.)  While it’s admittedly facetious to subtitle the series “Greatest American Actor,” I mean it when I say Cage’s range is something to behold and his ability to leave it all on the screen is just amazing. I personally think that his talent is overlooked far too often and that he gets written off as a goofball in some silly movies because he needs a paycheck.

Hell, I like Nicolas Cage so much that I can even forgive him for appearing in that remake of WINGS OF DESIRE…. but only just barely.

Q: Interesting that you have programmed so many of Cage’s iconic 1990’s roles, and yet not his brief, Oscar-winning window of respectability, LEAVING LAS VEGAS?

A: I’ll put it out there: I am not a fan of LEAVING LAS VEGAS. I’ve never liked it. Probably because I appreciate Cage the best when his roles have a bit of humor to them, and that movie is just so joyless. Aside from that, I wanted to focus mostly on the Cage films that weren’t taken seriously. Or, as I have affectionately dubbed them: “The Crazy Cage Films.”

Q: So is the goal to send audiences home with a deeper, more un-ironic appreciation of this (ahem) National Treasure?

A: I do think that if people can see past the joke that Cage is in danger of permanently becoming they will truly, un-ironically appreciate him as an actor. I mean, the chances he takes are just phenomenal. And no, sometimes they don’t work out. Hello, WICKER MAN! But often they do. In VAMPIRE’S KISS he eats a live cockroach for Chrissakes! It’s easy to say that Cage’s best days are behind him and that he’s his own punch line now, but look at BAD LIEUTENANT. That movie is brilliant, and his performance is what makes it. He’s goofy but scary, unhinged but in control, and not afraid to look ugly.

 

Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor. Runs June 11th through June 21st at The Brattle Theatre. 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. For a full schedule, visit http://brattlefilm.org