A Simple Favor: Sipping Martinis with a Twist. Lots of Twists.

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in "A Simple Favor"

Anna Kendrick looks nice. I don’t mean that she’s attractive (though of course she is); I mean that, with her soft-blue eyes and small build and delicate features, she presents as a decent, wholesome person. That innate tenderness has served her well in films like 50/50, End of Watch, and The Accountant, where she’s quietly elevated the material around her with unassuming grace. A Simple Favor, the gleefully absurd, indecently entertaining new comedy-mystery from Paul Feig, efficiently exploits Kendrick’s inherent geniality while also cannily subverting it. Her character, a single mom and moderately popular suburban vlogger named Stephanie, is sugary-sweet and aggressively eager—she’s always volunteering for multiple PTA assignments (her surname is literally Smothers)—but her helping hand has an iron grip. Her dainty exterior camouflages a mettle of steel, arousing your suspicion that she has something to hide.

But really, who doesn’t? One of the many pleasures of A Simple Favor, which is as much an amateur detective yarn as a pointed comedy of manners, lies in teasing us with misdirection and insinuation, encouraging us to anticipate its inevitable twists and turns. It’s being marketed as coming from Feig’s “darker side”, which is misleading on a few counts. To begin with, the former Freaks and Geeks showrunner is no stranger to troubling themes; even his more straightforward comedies, like Bridesmaids and Spy, carry undercurrents of sadness and pain. But more centrally, labeling this movie dark is false advertising. A Simple Favor may traffic in deception, seduction, and murder, but none of that changes the fact that, at its core, it’s a total fucking hoot. Read More

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Searching: Tumbling Down the Internet Rabbit Hole

Jeremy BeckReviews
John Cho is frantic online in "Searching"

Did you know that technology is, like, A Thing? Were you aware that people regularly communicate via the internet, often in the guise of false personas? Have you ever grappled with the reality that innovations in hardware and software have, in both positive and negative ways, forever changed the contours of human interaction? If your answer to these questions is no, then you are sure to be electrified by Searching, a clever and gimmicky little thriller directed by Aneesh Chaganty. But if you have even the faintest familiarity with online culture—if you have a Gmail account or an iPhone or a web browser—you may find this film’s purported insights to be stale and preachy. Who knew the kids these days were so darned secretive?

I dare say most of us. But just as we shouldn’t judge an online account based on its avatar (whoops, spoiler alert!), we shouldn’t judge a movie for its tiresome themes alone. And Searching, despite its occasional shrillness, is a taut and engaging potboiler, as well as an audacious formal exercise. It may not have anything meaningful to say about technology, but it does use that technology in new and interesting ways. Read More

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Juliet, Naked: London Calling, Washed-Up Rock Star Emailing

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke in "Juliet, Naked"

If High Fidelity was a lovingly critical look at the maniacal behaviors of fandom—the all-consuming need to know as much as possible about popular artists, and to lord your superior tastes and knowledge over other worshippers of your ilk—Juliet, Naked is about the crippling consequences of artistry itself. Adapted, like High Fidelity, from a novel by Nick Hornby, it stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a has-been musician who a quarter-century ago released a beloved alt-rock album and then suddenly vanished from the public eye. Now he lives in his ex-wife’s garage in Upstate New York, barely knows four of the five children he fathered via four different women, and shuffles through grocery stores looking for cereal and gardening supplies. He’s like the ghost of Jeff Buckley crossed with the Dude from The Big Lebowski, if the Dude still collected royalty checks.

If that sounds like the recipe for a punishing study of squandered talent, never fear. Directed by TV veteran Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, Girls) from a script by Evgenia Peretz (the director’s sister), Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins, Juliet, Naked is a spry and largely delightful romantic comedy, a welcome summer breeze of warm humor and enveloping gentleness. It’s more of a curio than a landmark, which means it’s unlikely to be pored over for decades by the collectors and fanatics who populate Hornby’s works. But its disarming lightness should not be mistaken for insubstantiality. There’s craft in telling a story that’s decidedly pleasurable but doesn’t churn its sweetness into froth. Read More

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Puzzle: Falling to Pieces, and Putting Them Together

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kelly Macdonald searches for meaning in "Puzzle"

In one of the few lyrical stretches of Puzzle, Marc Turtletaub’s sensitive and sad new drama, Agnes (the perpetually unappreciated Kelly Macdonald) rides a New York subway car while a blind man stands in the center and sings “Ave Maria” in a plaintive falsetto. Not long after, Agnes is served tea by a woman named Maria, and she points out the oddity that the namesake of Schubert’s piece is now providing her with a beverage. Her tea-drinking companion is unmoved, dismissing the parallel as an act of mere randomness that carries no cosmic significance. Agnes remains unconvinced: “It has to mean something.”

Does it, though? Given the sheer size of the universe, I’m inclined to agree with her partner and hesitate to ascribe any meaning to such an apparent coincidence. But it’s hard to blame Agnes, seeing as her own, private search for meaning is the animating force behind Puzzle, a movie about a seemingly stock figure who suddenly resolves to discover more of herself, and of the world. It’s also hard not to turn the question around and aim it at Puzzle itself. This is an unusually gentle and well-observed film, with a peculiar attention to its central characters and their rhythmic dynamics, but what does it really mean? Read More

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Crazy Rich Asians: Headed East with Prince Charming, But the Queen’s Got Claws

Jeremy BeckReviews
Awkwafina, Nico Santos, and Constance Wu in "Crazy Rich Asians"

There are no princesses with skin as white as snow in Crazy Rich Asians, but it’s a modern fairy tale all the same. Thoroughly clichéd yet undeniably crowd-pleasing, this cheery adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel by no means rewrites the rom-com playbook, but it does flesh out its pages with vivacity and color. Just as there can be wisdom in convention, there can be pleasure in familiarity, and there’s something strangely satisfying about seeing this movie hit all of the requisite beats—the quirky friends, the manufactured crises, the playful montages, the happily-ever-after resolution (oops!)—with energy and enthusiasm. It’s fun to watch, even if you’ve seen it all before.

Except, of course, that you haven’t, not quite. That’s because Crazy Rich Asians is the rarest of Hollywood studio releases: a movie made of Asians, by Asians, and for (though by no means exclusively for) Asians. This long-overdue development may inspire consternation as well as celebration—to quote a different (and of course whiter) member of the genre, “What took you so long?”—but in the spirit of the film’s plucky optimism, I’ll choose to see the good, and to hope that its commercial success may at long last portend increased diversity in American cinemas, both in front of and behind the camera. But while I’m very happy that Crazy Rich Asians exists, I can’t entirely ignore its flaws or exalt it as a model of the form. In other words, it is great that this movie was made; that it was made does not make it a great movie. Read More

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