Review: Wreck-It-Ralph (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Rich More
Starring: John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch

It isn’t easy being bad, doing half the hard work and getting none of the glory. Such is the lot of Wreck-It-Ralph, the villain of the video game Fix-It Felix, Jr., who longs, just once, to get to be the hero, to get a medal, be celebrated, and maybe even have friends. Disney’s Wreck-It-Ralph pretty much has all the bases covered – it’s a nostalgia trip through the gaming world, a clever comedy that can speak on the level of both a child and adult, and an engaging and intelligent story about an outsider trying to find a way in. How this lost Best Animated Feature to Brave (which I liked, but which was definitely “lesser Pixar”), I will never understand.

Review: Carnage (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly

In Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, guests arrive at a home for a dinner party, enter a room, and then find that they cannot leave. Nothing impedes them from leaving the room; they simply find that they cannot step out. Carnage, based on the play God of Carnage is a lot like that, focusing on four characters who, despite their growing need to be away from each other, find that they just can't leave the Brooklyn apartment which belongs to two of them. As politeness gives way to long simmering resentments, the apartment becomes a battleground of upper middleclass problems.

Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly

The obvious question that arises from We Need To Talk About Kevin is "why," though it doesn't get asked until the end and the answer remains vague. The film, which charts the lead up to and aftermath of a school massacre, offers no simple answers or comforting solutions. It's a harsh film in many ways, one in which none of the characters comes out looking particularly good, but it's also a thought-provoking and masterfully acted film that ought to be seen.

Review: Terri (2011)

* * *
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Starring: Jacob Wysocki, John C. Reilly

Azazel Jacobs' Terri is in many ways a quintessential indie movie. It's a little bit weird, more slowly paced than a studio film, and can't be easily classified as either drama or comedy, possessing a delicate mixture of both. This template isn't always successful, of course, but in the hands of a filmmaker who knows what he or she is doing, it can be. Terri is a successful film, one which demonstrates craft on the part of Jacobs and screenwriter Patrick DeWitt.

Review: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

* * *
Director: Jake Kasdan
Starring: John C. Reilly

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is, quite possibly, the most underrated comedy of the last five years. I remember seeing trailers for it when it was out in theatres and thinking that it looked really lame, but it's actually pretty much entirely awesome from beginning to end. Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan (who also directs), this is a sharp and hilarious send up of the musical biography genre.

Review: Cyrus (2010)

* * *
Director: Jay and Mark Duplass
Starring: John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill

Cyrus is a film that builds itself around an incredible sense of awkwardness. Just when you think it can’t get more awkward or, at the very least, that the film will give you some respite by looking away from the awkwardness, it instead proceeds to the next level and just keeps watching things unfold. Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass, two of the founders of the mumblecore film movement, Cyrus unfolds in a simple, unfussy way and is never afraid to get a little bit weird (or, you know, a lot weird).

The Best Picture Countdown #75: Chicago (2002)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: Rob Marshall
Starring: Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly

I know that to a certain contingent Chicago is, like, the worst Best Picture winner of the last 10 years, but I am one of those people who absolutely adores it. It's fun, it's beautiful, and the soundtrack is excellent. I wouldn't say that it's a perfect movie, mind you, but it's never failed to entertain me and I've seen it plenty of times. Plus, it made me understand my dad's affection for Catherine Zeta-Jones, whose charms had been entirely lost on me prior to this film.

Adapted from the enormously successful stage musical of the same name, Chicago is set in the late 1920s and follows the swift rise and even swifter fall of wanna be star Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger). After discovering that the guy she's been sleeping with in order to advance her career only told her he'd help advance her career so she'd sleep with him, she shoots and kills him and is sent to Cook County Jail to await trial. Her idol Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) is already there for having killed her husband and sister and more or less ignores Roxie until she starts getting headlines and the attention of Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), a highly skilled lawyer who puts everything into his cases as long as the publicity lasts.

Roxie becomes what she's always dreamed of being - a star - but achieves it through her notoriety rather than through any discernable talent (we the audience see her perform, but until the very end no live audience has the pleasure). She'd fit in just fine on the cover of any tabloid today. Along the way from crime to either punishment or freedom, she imagines the world as her stage, every scenario as a musical number. In her mind she just keeps getting bigger and bigger and is shocked to discover that when all is said and done, her celebrity is as disposable as yesterday's news. She gains her freedom, but at what price?

The film unfolds in a very tongue-in-cheek way that keeps the tone light and bouncy. It is ostensibly a commentary on our society's unhealthy relationship with scandal, though it is admittedly a fairly shallow commentary. The idea that the public's hunger for sensational headlines can make a hero of a criminal and thereby inspire more audacious crimes is touched on, but Chicago doesn't go very deep into the psychology of the relationship between the notorious figure and the public whose adoration can only ever be temporary and conditional. What the film does do is keep you entertained enough that none of that matters. It moves beautifully and though it doesn't entirely transcend its roots as a stage production, the way that the musical numbers are incorporated works well. The stage is in Roxie's head, these are her fantasies, and bringing us into her head like that creates an intimacy between the audience and the character that ultimately makes her relatable and rootable. There are many reasons why we shouldn't want Roxie to suceed (she did kill a guy), and yet that moment of triumph for her and Velma at the end just feels so right.

The cast is almost uniformly excellent. Zellweger is spunky and enjoyably devious in the Eve Harrington-esque role of Roxie, Zeta-Jones friggin owns every scene she's in, Queen Latifah makes for a great foil to both Zellweger and Zeta-Jones, and John C. Reilly, as Roxie's dim husband Amos, gets the film's only really sad number, "Mr. Cellophane," and sells the hell out of it. The only real problem I have with the movie is Gere who, while appropriately smarmy, sings like he has marbles in his mouth, which I find really distracting. It's not enough to kill my love for the movie but it definitely interrupts my enjoyment of it.