Jerry & Marge Go Large (2022)

It’s a math problem, really. Evart, Michigan. Jerry (Bryan Cranston) and Marge Selbee (Annette Bening) live a quiet life in their small town home. Jerry, recently retired after forty-two years working in the local factory, spends his days unwillingly tinkering with the new motorboat his kids Dawn (Anna Camp) and Doug (Jake McDorman) bought him. But an accidental crash at the lake turns his attention elsewhere. One day, while at the local gas station, Jerry overhears a conversation about the WinFall lottery’s rolldown weeks. A mathematician at heart, he quickly figures out a statistical loophole. He realises that during rolldowns buying a large number of tickets almost guarantees a win. He does it in secret and hides the money all over the house but Marge wonders what’s going on. Sceptical at first, she soon gets on board with the plan: finally they have something together other than watching Jeopardy. They start small but Marge’s encouragement leads Jerry to go all in. They empty their savings, and the risk pays off – their $8,000 investment turns into $15,000. Excited by their success, they can’t keep it a secret for long. When WinFall closes in Michigan, the Selbees don’t give up. Marge organises a 10-hour road trip to Massachusetts, where the lottery is still active. They spend days at a small liquor store run by Bill (Rainn Wilson), printing ticket after ticket, doubling their money once again. They spend their nights at the Pick and Shovel Motel and eventually get their relationship back on an even keel. Back in Evart, they decide to share their secret. Their widowed accountant Steve (Larry Willmore) is the first one to get on board. They create GS Investment Strategies, allowing their friends and neighbours to invest. Daughter Dawn joins them one week but messes up the ticket checking. The investment reinvigorates the town. Old businesses reopen, and the local Jazz Fest venue is restored, all thanks to the lottery winnings. But their success attracts unwanted attention. Do you really think we’re the only ones who know? A group of Harvard students, led by Tyler Langford (Uly Schlesinger) have also discovered the loophole. They confront Jerry and Marge, arrogantly suggesting they combine forces. The Selbees refuse, standing firm in their methods and morals and Jerry points out Tyler’s shortcoming in relying on binomial distribution alone. As tensions rise, Tyler threatens Jerry, turning up in Evart and demanding he stop playing WinFall. Jerry almost gives in when he believes Tyler could hack all their bank accounts and expose them but the support of his son Doug and the community strengthens his resolve. They won’t be bullied out of their endeavour. Then Maya (Tracie Thoms) a reporter for the Spotlight section of The Boston Globe starts sniffing around when she finds out the lottery game is being gamed … Good luck happens same as bad. We’ve been fangirling over writer/director David Frankel since Miami Rhapsody (1995) so naturally we’ll beat a path to anything he makes. That sweet spot between drama and ironic comedy is where he lives. Here it’s a true story that turns on the issue of a retirement that works for both halves of a married couple. We need something for us. The process by which this is arrived at and how it is solved by becoming a project for the common good is neat and plausible – probably because it really happened. Frankel’s screenplay is adapted from the true story as written by Jason Fagone for HuffPost in 2018. We can’t win if we can’t play. The twist provided by the Harvard betting group as worthy smartass antagonists also gives grit to the otherwise wholesome plot (in a weird way we might infer that the outcome is a retrofitting of what we wish might have happened to Mark Zuckerberg, another alum). Jerry has to resort to figuring out people not math in order to get through the crisis presented when Harvard turns nasty. This may not hit all the heavily ironised story beats we’re accustomed to from this filmmaking source but it has a deal of them that it handles with care and heart. We know Cranston can do the crazy obsessive suburban entrepreneur from Breaking Bad but this plays it safe probably because it’s true albeit he has some moments where you believe he just might lose it. So the major irony is that unlike its protagonists the film doesn’t gamble at all. That aside, isn’t it nice to see a portrait of a married couple who stay together over the decades for the right reasons and end up living the dream. Beautifully performed. He finally got to use his gift to connect to people

A Simple Favour (2018)

Are you going to Diabolique me?  Perky smalltown single mom and vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) is swept away by her new friendship with the glorious Emily (Blake Lively) PR director to obnoxious NYC fashion maven Dennis Nylon (Rupert Friend), too busy in her professional life to do anything but show up occasionally to collect her little son from school. While fellow moms inform Stephanie that she’s just a free babysitter she’s convinced she and Emily are best friends because they bond over a daily martini at Emily’s fabulous glass modernist house until one day she gets a call from Emily to look after her kid and Emily doesn’t return. Stephanie’s daily vlogs get increasingly desperate as the days wear on. After five days she can’t take it any more. She gets embroiled in a search along with Emily’s husband, the blocked author Sean Townsend (Henry Golding) for whom she has a bit of a thing until she decides to dress up and play Nancy Drew when she discovers Emily had a very good life insurance policy… She’s an enigma my wife. You can get close to her, but you never quite reach her. She’s like a beautiful ghost.  While the world gets its knickers in a twist about female representation along comes Paul Feig once again with an astonishing showcase for two of the least understood actresses in American cinema and lets them rip in complex roles that are wildly funny, smart and pretty damned vicious.  This adaptation by Jessica Sharzer of Darcey Bell’s novel has more twists and turns than a corkscrew and from the incredible jangly French pop soundtrack – which includes everyone from Bardot & Gainsbourg and Dutronc to Zaz – to the cataclysmic meeting between these two pathological liars this is bound to end up in … murder! Deceit! Treachery! Nutty betrayals! Incredible clothes! Lady parts! Revelations of incest! Everything works here – from jibes about competitive parenting and volunteering, to the fashion business, family, film noir, Gone Girl (a variant of which is tucked in as a sub-plot), heavy drinking, wonderful food, electric cars.  And again, the clothes! Kudos to designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus who understands how to convey personality and story. Never wear a vintage Hermès scarf with a Gap T-shirt. If you were truly Emily’s friend, you would know that It’s wonderfully lensed by John Schwartzman, one of my favourite cinematographers and the production design and juxtapositions sing. This is an amazing tour of genres which comes together in two performances that are totally persuasive – in another kind of film Kendrick and Lively might have to tell each other You complete me:  the shocking flashbacks to their pasts (which are both truthful and deceitful) illuminate their true characters. This is that utter rarity – a brilliantly complicated, nasty and humorous tale of female friendship that doesn’t fear to tread where few films venture. It’s an epic battle of the moms. Film of the year? I’ll say! I am so glad that this is the basis of my 2,000th post. Brotherfucker!  MM#2000

 

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

You save that jiggle for your husband.  Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler (James Stewart) takes the case of Army Lt. Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), who murdered local innkeeper Barney Quill after his wife Laura (Lee Remick) claimed that he raped and beat her.  However a police surgeon finds no evidence of rape.  Over the course of a big trial, Biegler is the smalltown lawyer (and recently deposed District Attorney) who must parry with the new DA Lodwick (Brooks West) and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer (George C. Scott) to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim’s mysterious business partner Mary Pilant (Kathryn Grant), who’s hiding a dark secret.  Biegler has to prove Manion was suffering temporary insanity but will the jury buy it after Biegler discovers he’s a violent and jealous husband and he knows in his heart he’s got a very weak defence? … Producer/director Otto Preminger spent most of the 1950s baiting the censor with material for adults and this long engrossing account of a true crime is no different. Wendell Mayes adapted Robert Traver’s (aka John D. Voelker) novel based on his own experiences on a 1952 case in the state of Michigan.The matter of fact handling of the explicit physical details in the courtroom confirms that this is a film that has no cinematic tricks. It’s shot wide and flat in black and white with the only camouflage or disguise in the personalities presenting themselves. That applies to the legal team too:  Parnell Emmett McCarthy (Arthur O’Connell) has to swear off the booze for the duration to assist Biegler;  Laura must drop the tight pedal pushers, don skirts and hide her wonderful hair;  Biegler’s bonhomie hides a finagling mind that doesn’t express great surprise at anything anyone says or conceals.   There’s a strand of humour running through both dialogue and characterisation that raises the game: the lightness of Remick as the bruised flirtatious beauty, with her wonderful companion dog Muff (Snuffy) who gets to provide his own witness statement in court, alongside Stewart’s jolly and wryly witty performance, makes this more pleasurable than the subject matter suggests. In fact the whole film avoids melodramatic excess and has a devious sinuousness that leads from Stewart. His banter with Joseph N. Welch [chief counsel for the US Army when it was being investigated for UnAmerican Activities in the McCarthy Hearings] about fishing provides a lot of enjoyment; Eve Arden as the reliable and seen-it-all secretary Maida Rutledge offers her typical scepticism in a film constructed from the cynic’s playbook. There are no histrionics or crazy closing arguments, just practice, rationale  and evidence (of witness-coaching). Now, Mr  Dancer, get off the panties – you’ve done enough damage.  Duke Ellington provides the film’s notable score and he appears uncredited as pianist Pie Eye and enjoys an exchange with Stewart. The great titles are by Saul Bass. This is elegant filmmaking, wonderfully crafted, telling a difficult story in the procedural vernacular very stylishly.  How can a jury disregard what it’s already heard?

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel about a family of five sisters who kill themselves was original, nuanced and heartfelt. Sofia Coppola chose it for her writing and directing debut and on the face of it, and what she’s done since, she makes us know what it feels like for a girl. The portrait of the middle class neighbourhood is nicely satirical and hints at her interest in making the later milieu film, The Bling Ring;  the woozy Seventies summertime impressions are just right; that eye for detail (all the stuff on their dressing tables!) totally accurate. In retrospect, this is slighter than it appeared at the time, with a certain vacuum at the centre where emotional rationale might have been, a large question mark regarding the parenting skills of James Woods and Kathleen Turner, a chip missing where we try to gauge the sisters’ motivations. Perhaps that’s the point. The romance between the most beautiful and elusive of the sisters, Lux (Kirsten Dunst) and high school heart throb Trip (Josh Hartnett) is well done and it’s his narration in rehab 25 years later that anchors this in something resembling real life, even if it’s a tangle of memories seen through a narcotic haze. Meanwhile, a bunch of teenage boys gaze in awe at this beauteous timebomb about to implode across the street. There’s (obv) an amazing soundtrack, with a score by Air.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

This is the one where the hitman developing a conscience goes home to give romance a second shot. In fact, it’s one of the best films of the 90s. It’s a very black comedy about high school, life, killing, babies, music and all that kinda good stuff. John Cusack is Martin Blank, the troubled contract killer who’s persuaded by his assistant (played by sister Joan Cusack) to attend his 10-year high school reunion in Grosse Pointe. She says of her own, “it was as if everyone had swelled.” When he discusses it with his traumatised psychiatrist (Alan Arkin), he asks what he’s supposed to say to people there: “I killed the President of Paraguay with a fork, how have you been?” He has a job in Detroit so he can kill two birds with one stone as it were –  so decides to go home for the first time in a decade. Mom is on lithium in a home for the bewildered. His house has been taken over by a supermarket and a killer on his tail blows it up. The girl he stood up at prom (Minnie Driver) is now the local DJ and has a killer soundtrack (courtesy of Joe Strummer) but insists on bitch slapping him live on air before they can get together. And there’s another hitman, Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) who has a bone to pick with him over crossing his path and wants him to join a union. Tom Jankiewicz wrote the story and did the screenplay with additions by Cusack, D.V. DeVincentis (currently on producing duty on the compelling TV drama The People Vs. OJ Simpson) and Steve Pink. There is fun to be had with the supporting cast, including Jeremy Piven, Hank Azaria and in a tiny role, Jenna Elfman (where is she now?); This is one great curveball of a movie and it’s directed by George Armitage who you might recall did the terrific Miami Blues. And if there’s a message, it’s probably a bit Thomas Wolfe: yes, you can go home again, but you probably shouldn’t.