Scattered laughs in 'Sex Pass'

    

    Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass brings a slapdash quality to a comedy that opts for a glut of gags that bob on a sea of silliness. Director David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) delivers a preposterous story, unremitting goofiness, and a disregard for credibility, driving his movie to zany extremes. 

     There's something refreshing about a movie without pretensions, but the problem with a scattershot approach to  comedy is that the laughs can be scattershot, as well. Wain and his writing partner, Ken Marino, open a mixed bag of jokes and spill them across an uneven 93 minutes.

     Zoey Deutch stars as a small-town Kansas hairdresser who's engaged to her high school sweetheart (Michael Cassidy). Enter the sex pass of the title.

     In a conversation neither seems to take seriously, Deutch’s Gail and Cassidy’s Tom give each other permission to sleep with the celebrity of their choice. No judgments will be made. No one will harbor grudges. Each of them will allow the other an infidelity one-off. 

     When Cassidy's Tom makes an improbable connection with Jennifer Aniston, who arrives in Kansas for a book signing, Gail decides the only way she can save her looming marriage is by having sex with her chosen celebrity, Jon Hamm. Balance matters.

      As luck (or contrivance) would have it, Gail has an opportunity to attend a convention in Los Angeles, but she has more in mind than keeping up with the latest styles. She wants to sleep with Hamm as part of the ridiculous game she has played with her fiancé.

     Most of the movie takes place in Los Angeles, where Gail and her hairdressing colleague (Miles Gutierrez Riley) hook up with a lowly employee at the CAA talent agency (Ben Wang), a down-on-his-luck photographer (Marino), and John Slattery, the actor who worked with Hamm on Mad Men but who -- at least in the movie -- has fallen on hard times.

       A plot of sorts emerges. Thanks to the swap of  lookalike suitcases at LAX, Gail winds up in possession of plans drawn up by a conspiracy to tank the global economy. Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel are the dumber-than-dirt henchmen who work for the plan's mastermind (Sabrina Impecciatore), who wants her documents returned.

        No sense pointing out more. Know, though, that Deutch makes an excellent plucky innocent who smiles her way through a showbiz world that might intimidate others. Some of the dialogue is funny, and Wain even finds a way to take a poke at big-screen violence with a gun-heavy scene set on an abandoned Western movie set.

       Initially appalled by the group, Slattery eventually buys in, and Wang delivers a flurry of amusing high-speed dialogue as an aspiring agent.

       I haven't mentioned that Fred Melamed plays a mailman, who functions as the move's occasional narrator. Off-kilter celebrity cameos are sprinkled throughout. Aided by ample portions of slapstick, a game cast dishes out non-stop silliness that finds a way to introduce a hot-air balloon into its finale.

  And, by the way, if you try this one, forget taste. Wain and his team mount an assault on decorum along with everything else -- and there's a whole lot of everything else. 

Sex, talk, and relationships on view

   I already knew that Penelope Cruz can be a terrific comic actress, but The Invite, a movie about sex and relationships, reminded me how good she can be. I can’t say I’m a huge Seth Rogen fan, but he gives what might be his best performance in this Olivia Wilde-directed movie. Wilde also has a starring role.

   Essentially, The Invite is a four-hander with Edward Norton joining the group as a firefighter who has formed a relationship with a psychotherapist (Cruz), who describes herself as a sexologist. 

   Putting two couples (Wilde, Rogen, and Cruz and Norton) into a San Francisco apartment sounds claustrophobic, but working from a screenplay by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones, Wilde makes her movie both provocative and entertaining. 

   The movie opens with Rogen’s Joe riding his folding bicycle home from his job as a music teacher at a minor San Francisco conservatory. Everything about Joe suggests defeat — from his slouch to his saturnine countenance. In hilly San Francisco, riding a bike can be punishing. Joe shows no signs of being able to escape his fate.

   When he arrives home with a bad back, Joe quickly gets into a tiff with his wife Angela (Wilde). She tells him the upstairs neighbors are coming to dinner. Joe claims that he’s been ambushed by the news. Angela’s upset that he didn’t buy wine for the occasion. We're primed for an evening of familiar bickering.

    But Joe has a specific complaint about the neighbors — Cruz’s Pina and Norton’s Hawk — make wild, noisy love that disrupts Joe’s sleep. Pina’s orgasms evidently have an epic quality. Joe insists he plans to complain. Angela slides into don’t-you-dare mode.

     It’s clear from the start that these two couples aren’t destined to be best friends forever. Norton’s Hawk has a self-possessed arrogance about him, and Pina has a pushy personality, an openness that borders on aggression. She presents herself as a free spirit.

    So where is all this going? The Invite soon turns into a movie about contemporary sexual mores and styles. Hawk and Pina, we learn, are into group sex. The noise Joe has been hearing comes from some of their orgy mates. Hawk upends Joe by bringing the subject up before Joe has a chance to complain. He feels he owes Joe an explanation.

     Wilde’s jittery uneasiness and Rogen’s inbred cynicism play well against two people who pride themselves on their maturity. I won’t describe the results, but the dialogue becomes sharply funny, and the actors are in peak form. 

     Wilde keeps things humming as we learn more about each character. Pina goes beyond her obvious eroticism. Hawk reveals a sobering part of his past, and Angela and Joe begin to see the truth that underlies their constant arguing: Their increasingly stale relationship may be teetering on the edge of extinction

     No fair telling more. The movie can’t quite decide how to end, but Wilde avoids a sentimental resolution and by the time the movie concludes, each character stands more revealed. Emotions, vulnerabilities, and personal truths have been bared. 

     Look, The Invite isn’t Chekov or Albee, but it’s engaging and deftly realized. That’s more than can be said about lots of current movies.

A foodie struggles with bulimia

In Maddie's Secret, director John Early plays the lead character, a woman dealing with a long-standing eating disorder, in this case, bulimia. A comedian, actor, and singer, Early's sex isn't the secret to which the movie's title refers. Early plays a female character. That’s it. The movie’s secret involves Maddie's bulimia, a condition she has been hiding for years. Maddie works in the food industry, beginning the movie as a dishwasher on a cooking show. A vegan who also knows how to cook, Maddie lands her own show and becomes a serious influencer. Up to that point, Maddie's husband Jake (Eric Rahill) had been the main beneficiary of Maddie's culinary talents. Her best friend Deena (Kate Bertlant) also plays a big role in Maddie's life. A lesbian who's crushing on Maddie, Deena is blindly supportive, maybe to the point of obsession. Early's screenplay piles on soap-operatic complications. When Jake discovers Maddie vomiting in the bathroom, he assumes she's pregnant. Claudia O'Doherty plays a co-worker who -- until Maddie's ascendance -- was the cooking network's star attraction. She’s not happy about slipping into second place. Early mostly succeeds in mixing humor and melodrama as he leads the story to Maddie's hospitalization after an eating disorder-induced heart attack. A late-picture scene involving Maddie's mother (Kristen Johnston) offers an explanation for Maddie's disorder that feels like an example of parental abuse played as much for melodramatic effect as for illuminating clarity. Still, Maddie's Secret isn't glib or dismissive, and Early plays Maddie with an undeniable sincerity that acknowledges the character's humanity as well as her disorder.

This 'Minions' is fun -- for a while

— A massive orange blob of a monster tries to devour much of Hollywood. 

— Images of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Dooley Wilson, who played Sam the piano player in Casablanca's Rick's Cafe, flicker by.

—  An animated George Lucas under glass asks to be released from his display at a museum.

—  Georges Milies's A Trip to the Moon crops up.

   All of that and more can be found in Minions & Monsters, the third stand-alone Minions movie since their solo debut in 2015. For the record, the Minions first appeared in 2010's Despicable Me.

  As you may be able to tell from the list above, Minions and Monsters is an eclectic -- sometimes frenzied -- addition to the series that places Henry and James -- two new Minion heroes -- in Hollywood during the silent era. 

   Director Pierre Coffin accelerates the action in ways that may remind older audiences of the smashing mayhem found in many Looney Tunes cartoons.

  As is their way, the Minions will race about looking for a new evil master to serve, but the story is framed by a guide named Olivia (voiced by Allison Janney) who's leading a Hollywood studio tour built around the idea that the minions invented Hollywood, a story that unfolds in flashbacks.

  In that story, Henry and James align themselves with Bright Brothers Studio, headed by two brothers voiced by Jeff Bridges. Bottom-line guys, the brothers prioritize  profits over aesthetics. The Minions are a hit.

  The arrival of sound finishes the Minions Hollywood triumph, but their trademark gibberish keeps them out of the Talkies.

   The story delivers additional commotion when Henry and James attempt to make a monster movie on their own, an effort that has them chanting magic spells to summon suitable monsters. 

  And, yes, that's Jesse Eisenberg's voice you hear as Dort, the alien robot who falls for a human woman.

  Young fans may not appreciate all the movie references because much of Minions & Monsters takes place during the 1920s. Older audiences may get a kick out of the movie's riotous first act, and those with a taste for colorful  clutter may be amused by the rest.

   Me? About three-quarters of the way through this one-hour-and-thirty-minute hunk of Minion maximalism,  the movie's early-picture cleverness began to fade, and I found myself looking forward to the end credits, which -- as it turns out -- include even more jokes.

'Couture' skims the fashion world

  

 Director Alice Winocour takes us to Paris for fashion week in Couture, a movie that tells three loosely related stories, one featuring Angelina Jolie.

 Perhaps you can already sense a problem. By having to switch the movie's focus from one character to another, Winocour loses the opportunity for in-depth looks at any of them, and Couture becomes more of a skim than a revelation.

  Jolie plays Maxine, an American director of an indie  horror film who's been invited to make a short opening film to kick off fashion week. 

   Eighteen-year-old Ada (Anyier Anei), an inexperienced, long-legged model, has been chosen to lead the parade of models that will open the show. Ada arrives in Paris from Kenya, where her family lives having fled wars in Sudan. 

    Finally, we meet Angele (Elle Rumpf), a make-up artist who's writing a book about her experiences in the fashion world. 

    Each of these characters faces different problems and opportunities. Maxine's participation in fashion week may provide her with a major career boost. 

   Ada must overcome shyness and fear as she enters a highly competitive and demanding business. 

   Angele wants to write successfully, to use her experience as a source of reflection.

   A health crisis adds to Maxine's anxieties. Early on, she receives a call from her doctor in the US. He insists that Maxine immediately see a French specialist. It turns out she has breast cancer. The news about her diagnosis worsens throughout the course of the movie.

    Following Ada provides an opportunity for Winocour to sketch the lives of young models, some of whom have already become cynical high-fashion veterans.

     Eventually, parts of Angele's book are heard in a voice over narration. Presumably meant to add arty flavor, they can sound a bit pretentious.

     Couture easily could have focused only on Jolie's character. Maxine’s issues become the movie’s most evocative and also do more to highlight complexities about women and their career paths, one of the movie's interests.

   Strong casting and a potentially rich setting aren't entirely wasted, but the resultant effort shortchanges the movie's major characters without finding enough meaningful ways to mingle their stories.

Wild and crazy? Maybe too much so

     

  Boots Riley directed an impressive and entertaining debut film with 2018's Sorry to Bother You, an eye-popping critique of telemarketing that hit a broad range of satirical targets. Riley boosted his distinctive aesthetic -- bold colors, sight gags, and preposterous turns of plot -- with giddy bursts of energy.

  Riley returns with I Love Boosters, a movie about women who steal clothing from a high-end store and sell it at a discount.

  Diving headlong into a sea of cartoonish chaos, I Love Boosters introduces two partners in crime -- Corvette (Keke Palmer) and Sade (Naomi Ackie). The duo has mastered the art of pilfering from retail outlets, stuffing purloined clothes under the clothes they're wearing. They waddle out of stores looking like parade floats.

   Don't mistake I Love Boosters for a caper movie. Riley has bigger aims. The movie's thieves target Christie Smith (Demi Moore), a big-name clothes designer who steals designs, one of them from aspiring designer Corvette.

   Thus begins a battle between working-class rogues and a corporate power broker who covers her thievery with elitism and arrogance.

  The rest of the cast includes Taylour Paige, Robin Thede, and LaKeith Stanfield. Stanfield turns up as a charming character with demonic abilities. Don't ask me why. Whatever the reason, he's part of what may be the year's most surreal sex scene. 

   Moving outward from the Bay Area, Riley adds an international twist. Poppy Liu appears as a rebellious worker at the Chinese factory where Smith's company makes its clothes, endangering workers' health by sandblasting jeans to make them look fashionably worn.

   That's a lot of movie, but as low-rent TV commercials used to say, "Wait. There's more."

    About three-quarters of the way through, Riley adds a teleportation device, which becomes a sci-fi goof and a source of silly sight gags.

   I Love Boosters gets off to a strong start, but three quarters of the way through, visual and plot overload begin to kick in, leaving us with sporadic giggles and lingering admiration for Riley's willingness to pull out every stop. 

   Riley's films have been taken as assaults on capitalist exploitation. If so, they're playful attacks from someone who, at his best, turns his films into  cornucopias of mischief. Some may even want to  categorize Riley's work as a form of cinematic performance art.

   In this second outing, though, Riley floods the screen with so many ideas and so much invention that not enough of it sticks. Perhaps it's a case of too much of a good thing.

Not enough kick in this 'Supergirl'

   

     Here we go again.

     DC Comics has added a new name to what feels like an infinite number of comic-book villains. It almost seems as if there are as many villains as there are drug commercials on TV. Some of these fiends even have names that sound like missed opportunities for drug companies.

     I’m sure, for example, that you can imagine being encouraged to ask your doctor about Krem, complete with quickly delivered warnings about side effects. 

     But back off, Big Pharma. Krem has been taken. The name belongs to the principal villain in the new Supergirl movie. Krem, by the way, leads the Brigands, male-dominated plunderers who capture young women for breeding purposes.

     Played by Mathias Schoenaerts, Krem's face is dotted with metal studs. He delivers his threats with underplayed menace. He's not from Earth, but he'd fit right in had he arrived in Metropolis in the heyday of late '70s punk.

       But what of Supergirl? Supergirl, a.k.a. Kara Zor-El, is Superman’s cousin. Played by Milly Alcock, Supergirl begins the movie as a hard-drinking party animal whose only companion is her rambunctious dog, Krypto.  

       Those who see the movie may be struck by the fact that most of Supergirl takes place far from Earth.  The action unfolds on planets that director Craig Gillespie and his team populate with creatures that look ready to audition for jobs as extras in Star Wars cantina scenes.

      A low-tech emphasis prevails. So, when Supergirl’s small spacecraft is stolen, she’s forced to wait at a forlorn bus stop until public transportation arrives.

       Working from a screenplay by Ana Nogueira, Gillespie abruptly drops in backstories, one involving  Kara’s escape from the planet Krypton, which pretty much mirrors what happened to Superman. 

      For most of the movie, Kara resembles a badly groomed teenager. Her disheveled mop of blonde locks leaves us wondering whether her father forgot to include a comb in the capsule that catapulted her to Earth just before the catastrophic end of Krypton.

      Early on, a reluctant Kara picks up a sidekick, young Ruthye (Eve Ridley), an embittered young woman whose parents were murdered by Krem. Ruthye doggedly tries to enlist Kara in her quest for vengeance.

       Then there’s Lobo (Jason Momoa), an intergalactic, cigar-chomping mercenarie who enters the picture as a biker who predictably will side with Kara, who -- by the way -- doesn’t don her Supergirl uniform until the movie's third act.

       Fights and action mark a movie in which production designer Neil Lamont creates a retro-comic-book environment that eschews futuristic sleekness. At times, Supergirl looks like a thrift-store version of a superhero movie, not necessarily a bad thing, and possibly a welcome reference to a time when comic books weren't considered high art.

       Superman (David Corenswet) makes an appearance. It’s not exactly a cameo, but Corenswet mostly serves to underscore the contrast between Superman’s Eagle Scout personality and that of his rebellious cousin. Kara insists on calling the Man of Steel by his mild-mannered first name, “Clark.”

         All of this unfolds against a ticking clock. Supergirl has three days to recover the antidote that will save her dog Krypto. Krem fired a weapon that poisoned Krypto, depositing the pooch at death's door. Krypto began his life on Krypton, which means that he can fly, thus saving Kara from having to walk him for exercise.

       A scene in a space bus with a pint-sized (literally) alien conductor proves amusing, but Supergirl seldom soars. When Kara puts on her uniform, battles against evil, and ascends into the sky for a celestial bow, the moment -- like too much of the movie -- feels more like a dutiful acknowledgement of Kara's identity than an exhilarating triumph.

       There are three suns in this universe. On planets with red suns, Supergirl loses her powers. Green-sun planets are even more devastating for her. Kara  operates fully as Supergirl on yellow-sun planets.  

       Should Supergirl become the central figure in future stories, I hope they take place under Earth’s yellow sun, where DC Comics tend to work best.*

*Thanks to the reader who pointed out an initial error I made about the suns in Supergirl. 

    

No hero worship in this 'Robin Hood'

 There's revisionism, and then there's revisionism writ so large that its undermining of expectation becomes a distraction. 

  That's how I felt about director Michael Sarnoski's The Death of Robin Hood, a movie that shreds the Robin Hood myth while asking us to acknowledge the gulf between reality and the stories we tell to mask its brutalities. Five minutes into the unrelieved grimness Sarnoski creates, and you may  find yourself hoping for a bit of illusion.

    Sarnoski, who directed Nicolas Cage as an isolated former chef in Pig, again takes us to a place where possibilities for redemption seem remote, perhaps impossible. This Robin Hood, played by a bearded, grizzled Hugh Jackman, insists that all the stories told about him are fabrications. He sees himself as a thief who terrorized people and killed for the fun of it, more criminal than lovable rogue.

    Sarnoski and cinematographer Pat Scola keep the movie's palette dark and grim, so much so that when sunlight appears, we realize we've lost touch with any form of warmth. Also missing is the verdant foliage of Sherwood Forest. Robin and the other characters are consigned to mud-caked struggles staged on rocky, forbidding landscapes. 

    A tone of brutal realism paves the way for a slender story that introduces us to Little John (Bill Skarsgard). A man devoted to Robin, John has been thwarted in his attempt to lead a normal life with a wife and kids. Margaret (Faith Delaney), one of John's children will figure in the plot when, late in the picture, she looks to Robin for help.

     To hide themselves from foes, Robin and Little John assume aliases. Robin becomes Randolph. Little John tried to lead a straight life as Edward.

    As it turns out, Robin's rampant carnage has left him with a string of revenge seekers, most of them relatives of those he viciously dispatched. In an early battle to recover John's home from invading outlaws,  Robin is badly wounded. 

    After the mayhem, Little John deposits Robin at an island priory and pretty much disappears from the movie.  Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer), a woman with healing powers, presides over the priory where displaced folks seem to have gathered. 

    The spiritual glow of Comer's character reinforces the notion that there's more at stake for Robin than flesh wounds.  He has so damaged his soul that cruelty no longer makes an impression on him. A damaged leg has left him a dead man limping.

      At the priory, Robin also meets a leper (Murray Bartlett), who seems to have a preternatural understanding of Robin's struggle. Struggle may be too strong a word because Jackman makes it seem as if Robin already knows that he's doomed himself. He has slaughtered his own humanity.

      Sarnoski, who also wrote the screenplay, can't embed all his themes in a dramatically evolving way. They sometimes protrude in dialogue like arrows fired by Robin into his victims' heads.  

     Of course, we know where the movie is headed. Sarnoski stages Robin's death scene with poetic gravity and hints of grace. No spoiler here. It would have been the ultimate cheat if Robin didn't die in a movie entitled The Death of Robin Hood.

     Late-picture attempts to show a growing attachment between Robin and Margaret arrive in a low-key fashion that dims optimism for any huge turnaround. As much as possible, Robin responds, helping to make a bow for the child and teaching her how to skin small animals. 

    He also makes an unexpected choice with regard to a  young man (Noah Jupe) who turns up at the priori, looking to avenge the killings inflicted by Robin and Little John on his family during another display of unholy wrath.

    The movie treats its cutthroat Robin with a bit of ambiguity at the end, but for most of the movie, a resigned Robin twists impassively on the spit on which his soul roasts.

    Robin's self-awareness precludes the kind of inner struggle that might have given the movie more spark.  Robin knows he's doomed from the start, a man consumed by a life without conscience, constraint, or compassion. 

     So rather than a drama about a man reckoning with his history, the movie becomes a lugubrious dirge for a man who never was a hero, as well as for the myths that we consume to dull the edges of our own troubling encounters with reality.

    That's a potentially rich idea, but there's monotony in Sarnoski's unrelenting bleakness. Sarnoski tries so hard to give the movie thematic depth that his characters are imprisoned by the concepts the movie considers. This Robin Hood is so defeated by the weight of his past, he might as well be wrapped in a shroud.

      

    

      

A renewed 'Toy Story 5' pleases

 

  Toy Story 5 manages to keep Pixar's animated franchise from slipping into irrelevance, no small feat considering the first Toy Story movie appeared 31 years ago. 

  This edition renews the franchise by expanding the role of cowgirl heroine Jessie (Joan Cusack) and also presenting her with a love interest, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen). It’s not too early to think about wedding gifts.

  A comforting story arc again underscores the assertion that beloved toys provide kids with much-needed emotional support. Shy girl Bonnie (Scarlett Spears), a veteran of films three and four, doesn’t know how to make friends, partly because she's stuck in the stage where Jessie remains a big part of her world.

  To make the movie more topical, Pixar's latest pits toys against tablets, old-school playthings vs. electronic devices that dominate kids' attention and encourage solitary play. 

   Directors McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton, the duo that also wrote the screenplay, argue that toys can become the building blocks of world-creating experiences that kids can share.

   The time,Woody (Tom Hanks) does supporting duty while Greta Lee gives voice to a pivotal new character,  Lilypad, a frog-shaped device that's supposed to open the gateway for Bonnie to become more attuned to present trends. 

    To further up the ante, the screenplay adds a brigade of Buzz Lightyears and a variety of new characters, notably Smarty Pants (Conan O'Brien), a tablet whose name defines him. 

     Now, this being Pixar, don't expect all-out war; it hardly qualifies as a spoiler to tell you that the tech toys eventually learn to play nice with their retro predecessors. Detente looms.

     Before that can happen, the push to bring Bonnie into a new high-tech world forces Jessie again to deal with abandonment issues, another franchise favorite.

     Her first owner ditched her. But Jessie has enough spunk and agency — not to mention the help of a few plot twists — to arrive at the home of Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a girl who appreciates toys and shares Jessie's love of imagination. 

      Blaze also collects toy horses, a lucky break because the horses gallop into the third act, and Jessie's devoted steed, Bullseye, accompanies her on her adventures. Blaze’s friendship with Bonnie will bring like-minded kids together.

   Much is made of the way toys, even favorites, often wind up in storage as children age. Higher-tech toys fare no better as they hurtle toward their own fast-approaching expiration dates.

    The moral:  Kids change as they grow, and toys of all kinds meet them at just the right moment.

   I'm not sure there's a right moment for more Toy Story sequels, but the aim here might have something to do with hooking a new generation of viewers. This helping of Toy Story feels pitched toward younger audiences. If I were to guess, I'd say 12 might be the upper limit.

    But there's nothing that will pain the adults who accompany kids, and Toy Story 5 earns its place as a surprisingly pleasing addition to the franchise.