Review: Romance & Cigarettes (2007)

* *
Director: John Turturro
Starring: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet

Romance & Cigarettes is one of those films that sat on the shelf for years after it was completed, waiting and waiting for release until finally writer/director John Turturro managed to release it himself, distributing it in a limited capacity in 2007. If distributors didn't quite know what to do with this film, that's understandable. It's a strange little concoction with all the marks of a labor of love, and few of the elements that might make it even marginally marketable. If it's not an entirely successful film, there can nevertheless be no doubt that a lot of passion went into it. That comes through in every frame - every crazy, weird frame, which taken all together adds up to a finished film that couldn't be anything less than divisive.

Review: Tammy (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Ben Falcone
Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Susan Sarandon

I like the idea of Tammy more than I liked its execution. This is a film, after all, where the majority of the speaking parts belong to women (that, in and of itself, feels almost revolutionary), which passes the Bechdel test so easily that it makes you give the side-eye to those films that fail it, and which gives voice to various kinds of women normally ignored by pop culture. On top of that, it's a funny movie, albeit not as frequently laugh out loud funny as last summer's McCarthy-starring The Heat. So what's the problem, then? It's in the construction, mainly. Written by McCarthy and director Ben Falcone, Tammy is a bit too loosey goosey for its own good, lacking in the kind of structure that might have given it some narrative momentum, and burdened with a few well-worn tropes and cues which it would have been better off without. It's not a bad film - sometimes it's quite good - it just doesn't always rise to the occasion.

Review: The Big Wedding (2013)

* 1/2
Director: Justin Zackham
Starring: Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro, Susan Sarandon, Amanda Seyfried

Don’t RSVP. That joke probably seems easy, but I assure you that it’s funnier than about half the supposed laugh lines in The Big Wedding, a largely hollow enterprise with gender, sexual, and racial politics that would have seemed quaintly out of date when Stanley Kramer was still at his well-meaning best, and seem utterly alien today. I’m guessing that the cast is the only reason this thing wasn’t relegated to straight-to-DVD purgatory, but agreeing to appear in this clunker doesn’t exactly bode well for the state of any of their careers.

Review: Thelma and Louise (1991)

* * * *
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Brad Pitt

It's weird, isn't it, the way that a movie can be released, make a big impact, fade away, and then come roaring back into the zeitgeist? 2011 marks the 20th anniversary of Thelma and Louise and during the past couple of months the film seems to keep coming up, in magazines (Vanity Fair had an article about it a couple months back), online, and lo and behold, it was on TV over the weekend. 20 years later it still holds up really well - though it's bizarre, from a 2011 standpoint, to see Brad Pitt get seventh billing and behind Stephen Tobolowsky to boot.