Body horror with a romantic twist

 

 Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) hardly seem like a match made in heaven. Their decade-long relationship has become as much a matter of familiarity as of passion. Still, Millie wants to cement the relationship with marriage while Tim's commitment wavers. Settling down could put the final nail in the coffin of his adolescent dreams: At 35, he still aspires to be a rock star.

   If this sounds like the foundation for a realistic relationship movie, I should immediately inform you that Together, directed by Michael Shanks, carves out another helping of body horror -- albeit one loaded with metaphoric suggestions.

 The story takes form when Tim and Millie leave the city and move to a rural area where Millie has taken a teaching job. Because Tim doesn’t drive, he feels trapped in a location he doesn't particularly like. 

  He needn't worry about boredom, though. While walking in the woods, the couple falls into a mysterious cave. From the movie's prologue, we know that bad things will follow if one of them drinks some of the water in the cave. 

  After a wretched night, Tim and Millie climb out of the cave. They fuss and fight, and, thanks to a strange icky substance acquired while under ground, they begin to stick to each other whenever they touch.

   As it pays its horror debts, the movie introduces body contortions, accompanied by strange moments in which the couple fuses in inappropriate places. A sex scene in a restroom stands as one of the movie's weirder highlights. 

   Shanks wisely grounds his story in the reality of a relationship gone woozy. Both actors -- married in real life -- work at full throttle and the movie makes room for Damon Herriman, who plays one of Millie's colleagues, a friendly guy whose hospitality immediately makes him suspect. C'mon we've seen horror movies before.

 Some of the movie's effects struck me as more silly than frightening, but Shanks adds splashes of mordant humor that receive an exclamation point in a sardonically witty epilogue.

 No need to make too much out of Together. Not for the squeamish, Shanks's bloody valentine of a movie may not always be clear about what it's trying to say, but it's braced by an unflinching willingness to carry its weirdness to bizarre extremes. 

She tries to woo an old lover

 

Dave Franco directs his wife Alison Brie in Somebody I Used to Know, a comedy about an LA woman (Brie) who hits a career rough patch, retreats to her hometown, and reunites -- sort of -- with a former boyfriend (Jay Ellis). Brie's Ally also visits her mother (Julie Hagerty), a woman whose sexual encounters continually are interrupted by her daughter. Funny? Not really. Ally left her former beau to suffer when she went to Los Angeles hoping to become a serious filmmaker. Instead, she wound up producing a reality TV show, a hit for a while but then canceled. Ellis's Sean seems interested in Ally but instead of a straight-ahead romcom, we get a comedy with a complicating twist that sours a movie that wasn't all that great from the start: Sean is engaged to be married to Cassidy (Kiersey Clemons), a musician who has had relationships with other women but wants to settle down. Transparent in her motives  and off-putting to the point of obnoxiousness, Ally tries to forestall the pending nuptials. Working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Brie, Franco maneuvers his way to an ending in which ruffled feathers are smoothed and everyone gets on with their lives. Good for them but not for a comedy that lacks both perceptive bite and laughs.

Genres collide in ‘Spin Me Round’

 

As the manager of an Italian restaurant that's part of a ubiquitous chain, Alison Brie's Amber thinks she's had a stroke of luck. Dutiful and loyal, Amber learns that she's been selected to attend a corporate retreat in Tuscany. Amber is supposed to stay at a villa owned by the head of the Tuscan Grove chain (Alessandro Nivola) that employs her. As it turns out, Amber and a variety of other managers are housed in a bare-bones hotel near the boss's extravagant villa. Their supposed immersion in Italian culture proves superficial and it soon becomes clear that Spin Me Round wants to shade its comedy with thriller elements. Hidden "romantic" agendas arise, particularly after Nivola's Nick invites Amber to join him on his beautiful yacht. Among the cast. Molly Shannon stands out as a woman with anger-management problems. Aubrey Plaza, always intriguing, plays Nick's no-nonsense assistant, a woman with a libidinous plan of her own. Zach Woods portrays Dana, a guy who buys into the chain's propaganda, at least for a while. Director Jeff Baena, who wrote the screenplay with Brie, tries to blend rom-com and thriller flavors, but the story's mystery seems clear to everyone except the folks in the movie. After generating a few laughs and threatening to ride a pleasant Tuscan vibe, Spin Me Around sounds vaguely ominous notes that don't swell into anything rich or exciting. And, oh yeah, the comedy doesn't always spark, either.

'Rental' can't quite subvert genre limits

   

      Two brothers and the women in their lives decide it would be great to spend a weekend in a beautiful home perched on the edge of an oceanside cliff in the Pacific Northwest.

     This foursome spends a delightful weekend escaping from daily worries, enjoying one another’s company, and having the kind of stimulating conversations that would turn anyone into an eager eavesdropper.

     By now, you probably know that I’m not talking about a movie because in movies when people head to an isolated coastal house — no matter how scenic the setting — trouble awaits. 

     So you won’t be surprised by The Rental when the couples under consideration encounter the home's weird, slightly hostile caretaker (Toby Huss). You’ll also be prepped for danger by the alternately creepy and ominous score.

     In his first directorial effort, Dave Franco tries to upset the genre apple cart but only partially succeeds. 
    Franco plays on friction between the brothers based on personal history, an ill-advised sexual encounter, and a hidden video camera that records it — although it’s not clear what purpose such video might serve. Blackmail? Turning these weekenders against one another? Providing kinky kicks for the person who put the camera there in the first place?

     Dan Stevens plays Charlie, a successful guy who’s married to Michelle (Alison Brie). Charlie’s brother Josh (Jeremy Allen White) expresses massive insecurity about his relationship with Charlie’s business partner (Shiela Vand). 

      Josh plays the group’s outlier, a college dropout who served time in jail for beating up a guy outside his frat house. Josh seems more addled than violent, but appearances can be deceiving. 
     Vand’s Mina, a woman of Middle Eastern descent, raises objections to the property manger’s apparent racism. The others seem to want to focus on fun, having planned to hike, down some Ecstasy and party. 
     As the story advances, secrets must be protected amid what we take to be a growing threat that eventually dips into mayhem at the hands of a figure who seems to have wandered into the proceedings from a Wes Craven movie.

     Your tolerance for The Rental depends a lot on how intriguing you find the movie’s four main characters, who might be refugees from any number of indie films. Mumblecore veteran Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies) co-scripted the movie with Franco.
      The screenplay flirts with issues about the tendency of the privileged to evade consequences, but these turn out be glancing blows.          
      Personally, I didn’t find this millennial foursome all that captivating and I certainly could have done without the movie’s horror elements, which arrive … well … because all that ominous music says they must.

A ribald sex farce set in a nunnery

Inspired by Boccaccio's The Decameron, The Little Hours is an unapologetic sex farce built around a 14th Century nunnery where the sisters are anything but pious. In the hands of director Jeff Baena, Little Hours attempts to banish the shame that often surrounds repressed desire, particularly in a convent to which many of the women have been sent because their families don't know what else to do with them. Three nuns (Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza and Kate Micucci) connive under the supervision of a mother superior (Molly Shannon), who's no saint, either. The plot kicks into a higher gear when the resident priest (John C. Reilly) introduces a hunky runaway (Dave Franco) into the mix. Franco's Massetto has taken flight because a nobleman (Nick Offerman) caught him dallying with the lady of the household (Lauren Weedman). Reilly's father Tommasso deceives the nuns, telling them that Massetto is deaf and mute, a complication that adds to the movie's cleverly calculated misunderstandings. Fred Armisen plays a bishop who shows up late in the proceedings to condemn everyone's behavior. Baena makes his intentions clear from the outset with ample use of the "F" word as he pushes (perhaps too hard) toward irreverence. Avoiding period language, the movie genially embraces the all-too-human pursuit of pleasure. Put another way, Little Hours seems to be saying that, despite admonitions to the contrary, bawdy isn't necessarily bad. Amusing when it's working, which (alas) isn't all of the time.