by George Wolf
Top Five
Just a few minutes of Chris Rock’s standup act will tell you he’s one of the funniest people alive. Read one of his interviews and you’ll see he’s also smart and thoughtful. His work on the big screen has delivered uneven results, but with Top Five, his talent and his vision are finally in perfect sync.
It’s Rock’s third feature as writer/director/star, and he finds gold in the old adage “write what you know.”
Stand-up veteran Andre Allen (Rock) has left the clubs behind for success in Hollywood, thanks mainly to the “Hammy the Bear” franchise where he stars as a wisecracking, crime-fighting Grizzly (catch phrase: “it’s Hammy time!”) But Andre has come to a crossroads, in both work and life.
He wants to be taken seriously as an artist, but his new film about a Haitian slave uprising is having trouble finding an audience. Meanwhile, he’s engaged to a reality TV star (Gabrielle Union) who feels anything out of camera range doesn’t matter.
So Andre is in no mood for an interview with the New York Times, a paper that has a long history of trashing his work. Ambitious reporter Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson) softens his stance, and their interaction grounds an insightful look into what’s on Chris Rock’s mind.
It’s a lot: celebrity culture, race relations, sobriety, fame, love, sex, even Angry Birds are in Rock’s crosshairs, as he riffs from one topic to the next and back, not unlike a tightly packed monologue. Rock shows much growth as a director, and his confident, often out-of-sequence approach not only keeps the pace feeling brisk, but it makes sure the cheesy sequences (and there are a couple) don’t get the time to take root.
Chris Rock the actor still suffers some unsteady moments but has never been more appealing. Dawson helps. She has the talent to lead without upstaging, and they create a comfortably sweet rapport.
Even before Adam Sandler show up as himself, you’re reminded that this might be what he and Judd Apatow wanted Funny People to be, until that film dissolved into a self-indulgent overreach.
Top Five is obviously a very personal statement, but it’s also got the heart, and the smarts, to become universal.
Funny and entertaining? That doesn’t hurt, either.
The Babadook
You’re exhausted – just bone-deep tired – and for the umpteenth night in a row your son refuses to sleep. He’s terrified, inconsolable. You check under the bed, you check in the closet, you read a book together – no luck. You let him choose the next book to read, and he hands you a pop-up you don’t recognize: The Babadook. Pretty soon, your son isn’t the only one afraid of what’s in the shadows.
It’s a simple premise, and writer/director Jennifer Kent spins her tale with straightforward efficiency. There is no need for cheap theatrics, camera tricks or convoluted backstories, because Kent is drilling down into something deeply, frighteningly human.
Like a fairy tale or nursery rhyme, simplicity and a child’s logic can be all you need for terror.
Kent’s film is expertly written and beautifully acted, boasting unnerving performances from not only a stellar lead in Essie Davis, but also the alarmingly spot-on young Noah Wiseman. Davis’s lovely, loving Amelia is so recognizably wearied by her only child’s erratic, sometimes violent behavior that you cannot help but pity her, and sometimes fear for her, and other times fear her.
Likewise, Wiseman delivers as a tender, confused, dear little boy you sometimes just want to throttle. Their naturalistic performances genuinely showcase the baggage that can exist between a parent and a child.
Radek Ladczuk’s vivid cinematography gives scenes a properly macabre sense, the exaggerated colors, sizes, angles and shadows evoking the living terror of a child’s imagination.
Much of what catapults The Babadook beyond similar “presence in my house” flicks is the allegorical nature of the story. There’s an almost subversive relevance to the familial tensions because of their naked honesty, and the fight with the shadowy monster as well as the film’s unusual resolution heighten tensions.
The film’s subtext sits so close to the surface that it threatens to burst through. Though that does at times weaken the fantasy, it gives the film a terrifying urgency. In the subtext there is a primal horror, a taboo rarely visited in film and certainly never examined with such sympathy. Indeed, the compassion in the film may be the element that makes it so very unsettling.
Eerily familiar yet peculiar and unique, The Babadook immediately ranks among the freshest and more memorable films the genre has to offer. It also marks a filmmaker to keep an eye on.
Comet
The extent to which you will enjoy Comet will probably depend on whether you are the type of person who thinks the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” is a good song to play at a wedding or not.
Romantic or stalkery?
Comet has a similar feel.
Neurotic Dell (Justin Long, who you might remember as the Mac guy from the commercials),relentlessly pursues Kimberly (Emmy Rossum) over a six year period during which he physically runs her down, declares his probable love for her on their first date, waylays her on a train, and shows up on her doorstep before her wedding.
Long and Rossum deliver stellar performances managing to effortlessly handle repartee of nearly Gilmore Girls proportions. Their chemistry is undeniable. However, it may be my inner cynic talking, but I found myself wanting to shake Kimberly by her slender little shoulders and point out all the red flags she seems unable to see.
Comet is a far more intellectual movie romance than is typical. It takes place in a parallel universe, which allows writer/director Sam Esmail to include some beautiful and trippy imagery. He also presents the story out of sequence, skipping around in the timeline of Dell and Kimberly’s relationship from a meeting during a meteor shower, to a snowy day in Paris, to a heart-to-heart on an LA rooftop at dusk (or is it sunrise?). Comet leaves the interpretation of what actually happens to the couple up to your careful scrutiny and interpretation.
Maybe not the movie to see on a first date, it nevertheless provides excellent fodder for discussion and perhaps a follow up movie marathon featuring 500 Days of Summer and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Got more of my reviews at MaddWolf.com!