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Review: Mads Mikkelsen in “Men & Chicken”

April 12, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Men & ChickenI was ecstatic when the narrative jury of the Sarasota Film Festival – New York Academy Director of Programs and Membership Patrick Harrison, Masters of Sex actress Caitlin FitzGerald and me – picked the Danish comedy “Men & Chicken” as our Best Feature. Not every jury is fortunate enough to have so many quality films to choose from, but we opted for Anders Thomas Jensen’s comedy because, frankly, it was so strange and entertaining it blew our minds. We had to come up with a rationale, so we said: “For its balls-out surreal and comic portrayal of men – and chickens (and bulls, too).”

We also gave a shout-out to the star of the ensemble, Mads Mikkelsen and his equally mad perm. This was not the suave and menacing, psychologically astute and devilishly handsome cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter of the addictive CBS show Hannibal that was meant for the edgier HBO. Nor was it the continental casino villain Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. Both characters have an excess of smug. Not here, where the Danish actor plays an onanistic sad-sack named Elias, his hare-lip half-hidden beneath a porn star mustache. On his father’s death that he and his professor brother Gabriel (David Dencik) actually had a different biological father – and did not share a mother.

Their late father’s ridiculously mis-shot (he’s visible from his naked knobby knees down) final video sends the two mismatched yet inextricably linked siblings on a road trip to the distant island of Ork in search of their biological father – and, for the sterile Gabriel, answers to the mystery of why his life is so massively messed up. Once there, the duo discover three additional hare-lipped half-brothers, holed up in their father’s rambling chateau surrounded by chickens, ducks, pigs, sheep – and a sole virile bull.

So much for plot, because like a modern oedipal Three Stooges, these men continually devolve into flights of pee-in-your-pants slapstick beatings using anything from rolling pins to stuffed swans to establish dominance and submission. What is truly beautiful ugly about the film is that at no point does the audience know where it’s going. Like the brothers, we embark on a journey into the freakishly unknown. While their acts seem random and chaotic, and the connections and disconnections between the reunited siblings are absolutely absurd, yet there is a nimble plan that organizes all the mayhem into a coherent and even touching whole.

“Men & Chicken,” which Denmark submitted for last year’s Academy Awards to no avail, is both funny ha-ha and funny peculiar. And what made me absolutely crazy was there was Mikkelsen, absolutely committed to this hulking brother, petulant, petty, loyal, eternally horny and frustrated. Forget Leo (haven’t we already?). Mads Mikkelsen is the greatest actor on the globe with the power to dive into his roles and return to the surface with the rare pearl of humanity that exists with in every man, good or evil or some bizarre and twisted place in between.

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: Caitlin FitzGerald, comedy, Hannibal, Mads Mikkelsen, Men & Chicken, Sarasota Film Festival, the three stooges

Berlinale Review: Comedy is Hell, War is Easy in ‘War on Everyone’

February 20, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

War on EveryoneImagine if Quentin Tarantino directed Starsky and Hutch and didn’t mess it up with his whole malignant misanthropic, misogynistic look-at-me thing. The result would be John Michael McDonagh’s snort-milk-out-your-nose-funny buddy cop comedy War on Everyone, premiering at the 66th Berlin Film Festival. Michael Peña and Alexander Skarsgard play Bob and Terry, co-dependent corrupt Albuquerque pigs snorting and shooting their way to tumble a supercilious English Lord (Divergent’s posh Theo James) into horseracing, heists, and kiddy porn.

McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary), like his brother Martin (In Bruges), has a virtuosic way with dialogue, interlacing philosophical musings with ridiculous questions like “if you hit a mime does he make a sound?” One of the movie’s greatest pleasures is that it gives Peña, an actor often forced by Hollywood to play roles beneath his skill set (exception: his cop bromance End of Watch, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal), long riffs of dialogue that he spins out like a Howard Hawks cockeyed hero. Finally, he gets to play the smartest guy in the room, not the Hispanic sidekick.

And then there’s Skarsgard, pausing in that career moment before he goes full on studio Tarzan. No one can fault a critic for pausing to salivate over the True Blood star, as he rolls out of bed with his new squeeze (the alluring Tessa Thompson), sweat slicked and gorgeous, in nothing more than a tiny pair of mustard-colored briefs. Here is an actor who recently made a horny boy-man sleeping with an under-aged teen in The Diary of a Teenage Girl oddly appealing if not quite sympathetic. In War on Everyone, Skarsgard plays a bruised beauty with a tarnished badge. Terry’s life plays out to a soundtrack of Glen Campbell songs, underscoring the achy twangy yearning white boy at his core. Terry’s hard-drinking, hard-punching policeman is a Rhinestone Cowboy, a Wichita Lineman. It’s a rueful comedic performance that he pounds out like pavement into something deeper and darker and more touching than your average buddy cop.

The opening sequences of War on Everyone are so furiously fast and funny it’s nearly unimaginable that McDonagh can sustain the pace. And yet he does. When the script eases up on the rapid-fire quips, seguing into hilarious music cues (all that Campbell!) and slapstick violence, it brings its best game. Because these flawed but funny characters have dimension, depth, deep desires and, damn it, cry out for a franchise.

{This review originally appeared on VanityFair.com]

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Alexander Skarsgard, Berlinale, Buddy Movies, comedy, Glen Campbell, John Michael McDonaugh, Michael Pena, Quentin Tarantino, Starsky and Hutch

Critic’s Pick: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’

February 17, 2014 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Grand Budapest HotelBill Murray whisked onto the stage wearing a small black hat and funeral formal wear to introduce Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” at the opening night of the Berlin International Film Festival. Murray proclaimed that this was Anderson’s best movie. “It will blow the hair right off your head,” he told the overflow crowd at the Friedrichstadt-Palast with the kind of hyperbole audiences get accustomed to at premieres.

Right, Bill. We’ll be the judge of that!

But here’s the surprise: Murray was absolutely right!

The “Moonrise Kingdom” director has conquered scale and story, and found a perfect balance between humor and deep emotion. His antic period piece about a “liberally perfumed” concierge of a once-grand Eastern European resort, Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), and his lobby boy protégé, Zero Moustafa (newcomer Tony Revolori), is charming, wondrous, nostalgic and dazzlingly original.

[Related: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Clip: The Concierge Did it?]

At the center of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is a radiant character study, illuminated by a brilliant yet soulful performance from Fiennes. In his best comic turn to date, Fiennes inhabits a man dedicated to his profession and a fading social order beautifully described in voiceover: “His world had vanished long before he entered it.”

Fiennes gives color and depth to his preening gallant with a penchant for elderly women. Sure, he is blond, vain, and needy, but he also has an abundance of old-world charm. And he demonstrates a genuine affection as he services the elderly widows that regularly visit his hotel. So, if they leave him lavish gifts, does that really diminish their passion?

The plot thickens, as it must, when one of these tottering grande dames (played by Tilda Swinton in aging make-up that would have made Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar Hoover swoon) dies under dodgy circumstances. Her will names Gustave as a beneficiary, setting into motion her avaricious son (Adrien Brody) and his vicious henchman (Willem Dafoe). The pair pursues Gustave to The Grand to squash him like an unwanted codicil.

All of this is fun and fluid, fueled by marvelous set pieces: a slalom chase down a snowy mountain with sled and skis, a Rube Goldberg of a jail break, a reading of the will straight out of a cockeyed live version of “Clue.” The supporting characters curtsy in and out: Swinton and Murray, F. Murray Abraham and Edward Norton and Bob Balaban and Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan as the Lobby Boy’s beloved baker.

[Related: ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ Clip: The Police are Here]

Anderson has mastered a hipster Barbie Dream-house style of set and costume design in movies like 2012’s “Moonrise Kingdom.” Bolstered by a dry wit, with an irony allergy and an ensemble cast of regulars, his movies can come perilously close to being “twee.” The danger is that they glitter like groovy snow globes, but never achieve the kind of emotional resonance toward which Anderson is reaching.

That’s absolutely not the case here. The whole is larger than the set pieces, although those work, too. And Anderson has scaled new heights at the corner of storytelling and emotion. The love he clearly feels for his characters — flawed though they are, petty, vindictive, with an array of sexual peccadilloes and peculiar hairstyles — flows from the screen and seduces the audience.

And, while the elements reflect the merits of “Moonrise Kingdom,” or my favorite, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” Anderson paces it perfectly. He gets the balance right between the big and small characters, reveling in the set decoration and costumes but not tripping over the furniture or becoming tangled in the wigs.

The danger here — like Murray’s superlative pronouncement at the premiere’s start that this is Anderson’s best — is to raise expectations too high. This is delicate fluffy stuff, a glorious pastel macaroon of a movie. And it should be savored, not over-thought or overcooked.

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Berlinale, Bill Murray, comedy, Fox Searchlight, Movies, Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson

Trailer: ‘Last Vegas’

July 18, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

It’s all about the cast: “Last Vegas: Even More Grown Up”

Filed Under: Movies & TV Tagged With: bromance, comedy, Kevin Kline, Last Vegas, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Robert DeNiro, Trailer

Critic’s Pick: ‘I’m So Excited’

July 9, 2013 By Thelma Leave a Comment

I'm So Excited

Must-See Movies Beyond the Blockbusters

“I’m so Excited” shows Pedro Almodovar at his frothiest: shaking sex and death into a humorous cocktail aboard a plane in peril. Trust me, Almodovar takes Denzel Washington’s Oscar-bait “Flight” and does a loop-di-loop. A sober pilot? Please! It’s a job that would drive anyone to drink!

Adding a dash of star power, Almodovar discovery Antonio Banderas and muse Penelope Cruz make an early slapstick appearance as bumbling ground-crew members, who set things in motion when Leon – Banderas’ character – accidentally leaves the wheel chocks to be sucked into the landing gear.

Whoops!

Leon’s mistake creates a life-or-death situation on a Spanish flight bound for Mexico City. The entire movie unfolds while the crippled jetliner circles Toledo awaiting a safe runway for an emergency landing.

[RELATED: 5 Non-Mainstream Movies John Waters is Dying to See]

The comedy’s real stars are the flight-crew members, particularly the gossipy, hard-drinking gay stewards of first class (Carlos Areces, Raul Arevalo and Javier Camara).
While the coach crew and passengers snore through the danger, involuntarily drugged on muscle relaxants, the folks in first class live out a melodrama of life and death while high on booze and mescaline. Think “Lifeboat” on LSD.

With death just a runway away, the crew, passengers, pilot and co-pilot contemplate a very short future with the antic intensity of a Friday soap opera episode. A virgin takes the opportunity to have sex before she dies. The married pilot copes with his boyfriend, a flamboyant singing steward who can’t help but tell the truth with a little liquor inside him. A high-end Madame stops complaining about the service long enough to enjoy herself with a mysterious stranger.

[RELATED: Critic’s Pick: A Hijacking]

Almodovar exploits the potentially fatal situation to explore sex and death and the hysteria of the human condition. When faced with death you can spend your last minutes screaming and banging your head or….you can dance, dance, dance!

When, in an effort to distract the passengers, the stewards perform The Pointer Sisters’ ecstatic classic “I’m So Excited” the movie becomes so buoyant it could pop. At that moment, the fearless Spanish director may have taken the biggest risk of his career by returning to flat-out comedy that’s campy and carnal but profound.

One of the globe’s greatest living directors, Almodovar never fails to entertain. He knows how to cruise the human heart while constructing a plot incapable of crashing. Watching his movies is like following the lead of an excellent dancer. Whether the music is the complicated rhythms of “Volver,” or a disco hit, Almodovar knows how to make cinema dance.

Bottom Line: Almodovar soars in the territory between “Flight” and “Airplane.”

Filed Under: Criticism, Movies & TV Tagged With: Antonio Banderas, comedy, Critic's Pick, Pedro Almodovar, Penelope Cruz, Yahoo! Movies

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