Get to Know Lisa Rosman Through Her Various Works

The Unguilty Pleasure of ‘Magic Mike XXL’

It may have been Independence Day but the opening weekend of “Magic Mike XXL” didn’t exactly generate box office fireworks. It’s no surprise, really – few straight men seemed likely to attend a male stripper sequel over a holiday – but it is a shame. Against all odds, “Magic Mike XXL” is one of the most unguilty pleasures of Summer 2015. Consider it the “Godfather II” of dicks-for-chicks sequels. (An as-of-now miniscule film genre, admittedly.)

This film picks up a few years after “Magic Mike” ends. Former stripper Mike (Channing Tatum) is now running his own furniture business but is convinced to go on one final “strip trip” (road trip to a stripping convention) with his former colleagues, including Joe Manganiello and Matt Bomer. Not included: Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer, who apparently weren’t up for getting the band back together. Along the way, Mike, who is nursing a broken heart (his “Magic Mike” romantic interest, Cody Horn, also is missing in action), entices former girlfriend Rome (Jada Pinkett Smith) to join up as their MC and former stripper Amber Heard to ogle him from the audience. Honest to goodness, that’s about the extent of the plot but it feels appropriate here. After all, it’s about the cute boys, stupid. Continue Reading →

One Way to Go: ‘Jimmy’s Hall’

Leave it to Ken Loach to find the pink-o heart of a “Footloose”-style story. In his documentaries and narrative features, the activist director has been a champion of the working class since 1967. Now, in his twenty-fourth and possibly final film (rumors are swirling about his retirement), he has fashioned a fictionalized portrayal of the real-life Jimmy Gralton, a working-class hero who launched a dance hall in a 1930s rural Ireland town against the wishes of local Church officials. A sort of thematic sequel to the 2006 Cannes winner “The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” this arcane chapter in twentieth-century history touches upon all the classic Loach themes – individual liberty, institutional oppression, and, oh yes, collective organizing – while still taking time to smell the Irish roses.

The film begins as Jimmy (Barry Ward, channeling a grizzled glamor that’s all too rare in American male stars) returns to “his two Mas”: Ireland and his mom, who is played by the stalwart Aileen Henry. A decade before, he’d fled to New York when his dance hall had been shut down during the Civil War of 1922-23; while there, he’d developed a passion for jazz that is summoned here in swoony archival footage. Now back, Jimmy claims he just wants to help out on the family farm, but bored teens soon enough lure him into resuscitating his hall as an education center for dance, music, art, sport, and talk – the Celtic basics, in other words. Not surprisingly, the “masters and pastors” (as one character calls resident bigwigs) are not amused. Though the war is technically over, this nation is still stratified by politics and religion, and the Catholic Church considers all matters of education to be under its jurisdiction. Its disapproval, as spearheaded by the glowering Father Sheridan (Jim Norton, an impressive John Lithgow stand-in), gains momentum as Jimmy and his center gains popularity. Complicating matters is Oonagh (Simone Kirby), Jimmy’s former love who’s now married with children. The two were forced to part ways when family matters prevented her from accompanying him to the United States but they still carry torches for each other. Continue Reading →

Party in the U.S.A.

I’m not always one for the Fourth of July but this year I’m really feeling it. We’re a messed-up country but we’re still young. Lately–in the last few weeks, even– the strides we’ve made have been amazing. So today I’m flying that USA flag high, the same way I insist on using the word “God” to refer to what some call “divine intelligence,” “the universe,” or “higher spirit.” Why do the frothing-at-the-mouth zealots get to corner the market on the language of faith and patriotism? God and country, all the way.

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy