‘Irrational Man’ and Woody’s Workaholism
Could it be that Woody Allen just needs a vacation? Every year, he writes and directs a new film, and every year it brings less to the table than its predecessor. Some believe these projects vary in quality — that, say, a “Blue Jasmine” (2013) is superior to last year’s “Magic in the Moonlight” — but to me his body of work has become a study in diminishing returns. A few decades ago, his worst crime (as a filmmaker, anyway) was an “ecstasy of influence” — an unabashed, one-man immersion program in whichever artist held his fancy (usually Ingmar Bergman). These days the Woodman has taken to plagiarizing himself, which is akin to making a carbon copy of a carbon copy. Instead of making his newest, “Irrational Man” — an unfortunate echo of “Crimes and Misdemeanors” — perhaps he should have stopped to smell the roses, if for no other reason than to garner real-life experience for later plundering.
Abe is a hotshot philosophy professor (Jouquin Phoenix) who, drunken and depressive, can’t seem to will himself into caring about anything or anybody — not even the two beauties vying for his attention at the fictional (and highly unrealistic) Newport, Rhode Island university where he’s taken a teaching position. Manic science professor Rita, played by a Parker Posey hilariously unmoored in loose-fitting blouses and darting eyes, seems just what the doctor ordered but Abe is immune to her advances. Ostensibly it’s because he’s too much of a sadsack but we should know by now that couplings between contemporaries over age thirty is like a crime against nature in an Allen film. Abe is tempted by student Jill (Emma Stone), but not even her bright, bi-Cyclops gaze can penetrate his ennui. What works are his plans to kill a corrupt judge. Just strategizing about it gets his blood pumping again, which gets Jill’s blood pumping — at least until she begins to suspect what’s caused his change of heart. It’s too bad our blood doesn’t start pumping, too. Continue Reading →
Heart Talk (New Moon Agenda)
Today’s the first day of the new moon in cancer. With all her divine feminine energy, we lady-identified persons have some real wind on our backs to launch our sweetest and most secret of plans.
If you are in pain, be in pain. But don’t be a pain. Sit with your raw emotions and be a grownup. Hold your own heart.—Chani Nicholas
Having a soft heart in a hard world is courage, not weakness.—Holley Gerth (via Virginia Bell)
The way forward is with a broken heart.–Alice Walker
The Uneasy Marriage of ‘Trainwreck’
Without a doubt, this is the Summer of Amy Schumer. Her Comedy Central show lights up social media feeds like a Christmas tree every week, her speeches are the stuff of which female empowerment dreams are made, and her tweets are analyzed as if they were the National Debt. Now, with “Trainwreck,” she’s starring in a Judd Apatow-directed feature film that she also wrote, at least partly based on her own experiences.
Case in point: thirtysomething New Yorker Amy stars as thirtysomething New Yorker Amy, though she is a writer for a Maxim-style magazine rather than a stand-up comic. The film begins as her father, played by the perpetually indignant Colin Quinn, is explaining to his tweens Amy and Kim why he’s divorcing their mother: “Repeat after me, girls: Monogamy is unrealistic.” Cut to a present-day montage in which obedient daughter Amy behaves promiscuously, gets wasted, and wakes up in a stranger’s bed in Staten Island. On her ferry ride of shame, clad in a gold micro-mini, she splays her arms at the bow of the ship in the wannest of homages to “The Titanic.” Roll the opening credits!
It’s a brilliant beginning – everything we’d hope for in Schumer’s first feature – and if the rest of this film followed suit, she’d be king of the world. But while “Trainwreck” is hardly true to its title, it suffers from an identity crisis that dulls the acuity that makes the comedian the toast of water coolers everywhere. Chalk it up to an uneasy marriage between Schumer’s glass-ceiling-shattering riffs, which may be best suited to stand-up and short skits, and the “Apatow Agenda” – that is, family values delivered via boot shoot. Continue Reading →