Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/17/20 -- 'Blackbird' and 'The Nest'

The Nest

Director Sean Durkin returns to the screen after a long hiatus. His last movie was  2011's Martha Marcy May Marlene. With The Nest, Durkin travels back to the 1980s for a look at a marriage struggling to survive the upheaval of a transatlantic move. Jude Law  (as Rory) and Carrie Coon (as Allison) star as a husband and wife who have fallen off the same page even before they move to London. She loves their suburban life in the US. He’s too ambitious to be content. She runs a riding school: He's a commodities trader. Rory and Allison have two kids: a daughter (Oona Roche) from Allison's previous marriage and a son (Charlie Shotwell) from the couple's current marriage. Not only does Rory drag his family across the ocean, he soon runs out of funds. He vastly overestimates his ability to persuade his London boss (Michael Culkin) to merge his company with an American firm, a development that ensures that Rory won't be able to  afford the Surrey estate he impulsively rented for the family. Late in the movie, a taxi driver asks Rory what he does for a living. "I pretend to be rich,'' says Rory, who by this time has entered a state of dejected realization: The rungs on the social ladder he's climbing have begun to collapse. As the horse-loving Allison, Coon embodies the emotional volatility of an '80s woman who doesn't always listen to her better judgment. Initially charming, Rory refuses to acknowledge his limitations and, in Law's hands, reaches a state of hollowed-out desperation. Durkin, who has no interest in feel-good sentiment, courageously brings his movie to a conclusion marked as much by exhaustion and defeat as by anything that might be called reconciliation. 

Blackbird

There are few more familiar dramatic conceits than this:  A family gathers for a special occasion only to have soul-wrenching secrets revealed. Blackbird follows such a traditional map but adds a disturbing twist. Mom (Susan Sarandon) is dying of ALS. In response, Sarandon's Lily has decided to end her life. She wants to see her family one more time before drinking the lethal concoction that will enable her to avoid a nightmarish end to an otherwise fulfilling life. As the story unfolds, director Roger Michell introduces us to Lily's family: daughters played by Kate Winslet and Mia Wasikowska and a husband portrayed by an underutilized Sam Neill. Winslet's Jennifer arrives at Lily’s seaside home with her husband (Rainn Wilson) and teenage son (Anson Boon). Lindsay Duncan turns up as Lily's best friend.  Christian Torpe's screenplay boasts finely wrought moments that are well-executed by a fine cast, tense encounters between the sisters, for example. But the screenplay adds a few reveals too many and even a cast this strong can't always compensate for a lack of dramatic crackle. At the same time, Michell eventually finds the emotional power and the deep sadness that accompanies Lily's decision; just because it's the right choice for her doesn't make its irrevocability any less harrowing.

She tries to rescue her son from a war zone

Susan Sarandon stars in Viper Club, a story about the distraught mother of an independent journalist who has been captured and held for ransom in war-torn Syria. Sarandon plays Helen Sterling, an emergency room nurse who has been fighting to rescue her son Andy (Julian Morris) from kidnappers who have demanded a $20 million ransom, a sum Helen has no way of raising. At work, Helen tries to mentor a new doctor (Amir Malaklou) in the ways of the ER. Adepero Oduye adds credibility as Helen's supervisor. In her free time, Helen gets the bureaucratic runaround from both the State Department and the FBI. Hope seems to be fading when Helen learns about Viper Club, a network that draws attention to the plight of kidnapped journalists and also raises money to pay ransoms. Enter Charlotte (Edie Falco), a rich woman who rescued her son in a similar situation. Charlotte urges Helen to go public. Sarandon and Falco are superb, with Falco getting an opportunity to play an upper-class woman whose life is foreign to Helen's middle-class existence. These scenes and Sarandon's performance throughout elevate the English-language debut of Iranian-American director Maryam Keshavarz(Circumstance). Viper Club doesn't build enough high-voltage tension around political questions connected to a journalist's disappearance, but Sarandon gives the movie plenty of ground-level humanity.

She marches into her daughter's life

Susan Sarandon taps her inner New Jersey in The Meddler.

Marnie Minervini is the kind of person (you probably know at least one) who leaves exceptionally long phone messages. For Marnie leaving a phone message becomes part of a ceaseless monologue in which she expresses her needs and concerns. The major recipient of these lengthy messages is Lori, Marnie's grown daughter.

As a screenwriter trying to recover from a failed romance, the last thing Lori wants is a close and confiding relationship with her widowed mother, who -- by the way -- moved to Los Angeles from New Jersey after her husband died so that she could be closer to her daughter.

You don't need to be a genius to know that The Meddler, a comedy from director Lorene Scafaria, drips with denial, specifically about the death of the most important man in both mother and daughter's lives.

Scafaria takes a mostly mellow approach to a difficult emotional issue by turning Marnie into a woman who can't resist becoming involved in other people's lives. Marnie's method of avoidance involves helping anyone and everyone -- with pretty much anything.

Adopting a near parodic New Jersey accent, Susan Sarandon plays Marnie as a human intrusion. Rose Byrne -- in a nice small performance -- portrays Lori, the daughter who says she wants to escape her mother's suffocating attentions.

Marnie means well. When she goes to an Apple store to buy an iPhone, she can't help but come to the aid of a sales person (Jerrod Carmichael) who wants to attend college, but can't get to classes because he doesn't own a car. Marnie happily becomes his chauffeur and advisor.

And when she meets a young mother (Cecily Strong) who feels deprived because she and her gay spouse never had a "real" wedding, Marnie insists on planning and paying for a big celebration.

Marnie's husband, we learn, left her lots of money, and she doesn't seem reluctant to part with some of it -- so long as it keeps her connected to others.

Marnie also volunteers at a hospital, where she engages in conversation with an elderly woman who may be suffering from dementia, and doesn't seem to understand a word Marnie says. Whoever plays this woman fares better than Michael McKean, as a man who Marnie rebuffs in one of the movie's least believable scenes.

Most of the movie takes place when Lori takes off for New York to work on a pilot for an upcoming show. Marnie must fend for herself, which mostly involves making friends with her daughter's friends. She even starts seeing her daughter's therapist (Amy Landecker)

Sarandon gives a committed and sometimes touching comic performance as a woman whose good intentions are inseparable from her desire to involve herself in the lives of others.

Slowly but inevitably, Marnie begins to stake out her own turf. She opens herself to a relationship with a man, a retired cop played by J.K. Simmons, who has grown a mustache for the role. Maybe Sam Elliott, who usually plays these kinds of attractive older men, was otherwise engaged.

Supposedly a semi-autobiographical work by Scafaria, The Meddler offers intermittent and often sunny amusements as it allows Marnie's incessant chatter to march through the movie like an invading army that's immune to all resistance.

Eroll Flynn's last affair

A strong cast can't quite overcome the emotionally undernourished quality of The Last of Robin Hood, a look at the scandalous final days of iconic Hollywood hero Errol Flynn. A notorious womanizer and drinker, Flynn's final fling involved a 15-year-old girl.

Kevin Kline, an actor we don't seem to see enough of, makes a convincing Flynn, a fading star who readily concedes that he suffers from an irredeemably inflated ego. This Flynn seems to think that his powerful attraction to a teen-ager somehow justifies his behavior. How could he do other than be himself?

Dakota Fanning, who's now 20, plays Beverly Aadland, a teen-age show business wannabe who's seduced by Flynn, who still knows how work his roguish charm.

Writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland also make room for Beverly's mother Florence, portrayed by a fine Susan Sarandon.

Although inconsistently used, the directors employ a device in which Florence -- who was pilloried in the tabloids after Flynn's death in 1959 at the age of 50 -- tells a sympathetic reporter (Jason Davis) the "real" story behind her daughter's affair with a big-screen legend.

Florence's own show-business aspirations as a dancer were thwarted after she lost a leg in an automobile accident.

Hardly an irresistible Lolita, Fanning's greatest achievement is to convince us that her character neither can act nor sing, not an easy achievement for the palpably talented Fanning.

For those unfamiliar with Flynn's story, this by-the-numbers tale should prove interesting enough, but an overly modest approach keeps The Last of Robin Hood from really getting under our skins.

There aren't many movies to which the following statement applies, but The Last of Robin Hood could have used a dash or two of tabloid fury.

Melissa McCarthy's summer stumble

Tammy's as crude as you'd expect, but not as funny as you might have hoped.

Few things are more painful than being stuck in a moving vehicle with people who you find annoying. That's exactly how I felt watching Tammy, a movie that puts Melissa McCarthy and Susan Sarandon on the road.

Painfully misguided, Tammy is the result of a collaboration between McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, who co-wrote the screenplay with McCarthy and who also handled the directing chores.

Tammy finds McCarthy playing the title character, the wayward granddaughter of an aging alcoholic (Sarandon).

After being fired from her job at a fast-food franchise, McCarthy's Tammy sets out on a road trip with her grandmother, who supplies the car -- an aging Cadillac -- and the money that supports a journey toward Niagara Falls, a stop on grandma's bucket list.

All of this takes place over the objections of Tammy's mother (Allison Janney), who understands that grandma is both a diabetic and a drunk, and shouldn't be let loose on an unsuspecting world.

Sarandon may be game for anything, but she's given scenes that struck me as embarrassing: carrying on in the backseat of a car with a guy (Cary Cole) she meets in a bar or having a drunken outburst at a Fourth of July party thrown by her lesbian cousin (Kathy Bates).

McCarthy's luckier: Her previous comic roles have immunized her against embarrassment. Here, she plays a foul-mouthed woman whose husband (Nat Faxon) is having an affair with a neighbor (Toni Collette).

As is the case with many crude comedies, Tammy feels the need to sentimentalize its main character before it's done, something like an boisterous drunk who ends the evening crying in his beer.

Tammy 's told -- via lame dialogue Bates delivers with unnecessary conviction -- that she needs to take control of her life and stop wallowing in self-pity.

She's supposed to do this even though her drunken aunt has grabbed a microphone and told the partying lesbians that Tammy's a fat loser worthy of the nickname "cheeseburger."

Sarandon has been made to look as old as possible, even to the point of donning artificially swollen ankles, but she's never convincingly dissolute.

In what may have been intended as a comic high point, Tammy puts a paper bag on her head and robs a fast-food outlet after fashioning another paper bag into a pretend revolver. She needs money to bail grandma out of jail.

If this was intended as the movie's comic high point, it's not much of one.

Mark Duplass plays the son of the man who picked up grandma in a bar and a potential love interest for Tammy, the movie's lone representative of normalcy.

Tammy tries to get by making lame jokes about old folks, dishing out crude humor and toying with the image McCarthy has created in previous comedies such as Identity Thief, The Heat and, of course, in Bridesmaids, the movie that provided her with a breakthrough role.

Maybe because it's summer, Tammy even finds an excuse to blow up grandma's car. If only that had happened before grandma and Tammy had had a chance to get into it.

Two from the indie side

FAMILY LIFE UNDER EXTREME DURESS

A widowed working-class father tries to raise two boys while coping (or failing to do so) with the death of his wife in Hellion, a drama set in Galveston, Texas. Dad (Aaron Paul) clearly lacks the skills to handle his sons, and the older boy (Josh Wiggins) is in the midst of a prolonged rebellion that lands him in trouble with the law. Director Kat Candler has hold of a strong subject, but her movie tends to dawdle as it searches for a way to bring its many issues to a dramatic boil. Wiggins' Jacob is a motocross enthusiast, but Hellion isn't really about a kid's fascination with motocross: It's a look at the impact of a father with lmiited parenting skills on his two sons, the younger of them played by Deke Garner. At one point, Garner's Wes is sent to live with his aunt (Juliette Lewis), a woman who believes that her brother-in-law is obviously deficient when it comes to assuming responsibility. Paul does a nice job portraying a man who as trouble admitting that he doesn't know how to control his sons, but who wants to keep custody of them. Wiggins, who provides the movie with its center, does a fine job portraying a basically decent kid whose future is uncertain. Eventually, atmosphere and situation must give way to drama. Unfortunately, Candler's high-powered finale doesn't quite ring true.

A LOW-STAKES TEEN MOVIE

In Ping Pong Summer, director Michael Tully makes a return trip to youth. Ping Pong Summer tells the story of Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte), a teen-ager who goes on a seashore vacation with his mother (Lea Thompson), father (John Hannah) and sneering sister (Helena May Seabrook). Early on, Rad encounters the local bully (Joseph McCaughtry), who also happens to be an ace at Ping Pong. That gvies the movie the opportunity to build toward a final face-off at the Ping Pong table between McCaughtry's Lyle and Rad. Although Rad's beginning to take an interest in girls, he can't bring himself to express his fondness a local beauty (Emmi Shockley), even though she seems to like him. Set during the 1980s, the mildly diverting Ping Pong Summer proceeds as if we all might share a fondess for the Maryland shore where the Miracle family takes its vacation. Predictably, the film introduces an oddball woman (Susan Sarandon) who lives next door to the Miracles and who we know from the start will play a role in Rad's inevitable march toward self-confidence.

A tense, well-acted 'Arbitrage'

Robert Miller has a lovely wife and two grown children who work for him at his wildly successful hedge fund. As befits a man of great wealth, Miller and his wife give major money to charity, and he's regarded as a Wall Street wizard, a guy who hits way more than he misses.

But Robert -- Richard Gere in a performance that's smart and icy -- may not be anyone's idea of a role model. He has a mistress (Laetitia Casta), and he's in the midst of carrying out a fraud, a $412-million scheme designed to fool auditors who are evaluating his company for a possible merger.

Robert desperately wants the merger to succeed, which means he's walking a financial tightrope. He hopes he can close the deal before he faces exposure and ruin.

Despite the movie's initial appearance, writer/director Nicholas Jarecki isn't necessarily out to make a major statement about financial corruption, something, say, on the order of last year's Margin Call.

First and foremost, Jarekci cranks up a thriller that has Robert trying to cover up another crime, a task that involves him with a young black man (Nate Parker) who owes him a favor and helps carry out the deception.

This part of the movie introduces a determined cop (Tim Roth) who spends most of the movie trying to prove Robert's guilt. If things threaten to get dull, an amusing Roth's around to pose questions that seem to annoy everyone with whom he talks.

Adding a second criminal element to the financial deception has a dual effect: It keeps the movie from bogging down in complex wheeling and dealing (good), but it also prevents Jarecki from making a strong enough statement about a financial system in which unethical and illegal behavior seems to be tolerated -- so long as no one gets caught.

Jarecki has a lot on his plate, but he mostly weaves the movie's many threads into a brisk and coherent thriller that features a variety of strong performances. Among them: Susan Sarandon portrays Robert's wife, a woman who may know more than she lets on. Brit Marling plays the daughter who works for and idolizes her father, and who provides the movie with a character who experiences morally based doubt.

About three-quarters of the way through, I began to wonder how Jarecki would join the movie's many plot lines, and I can't say I found his resolution entirely satisfying, but there's enough crackle, intrigue and pleasure (smart guys trying to outsmart one another) in Arbitrage to keep it percolating nicely.

Adrift and waiting for a sign

To date, the best film from the Duplass brothers (Jay and Mark) remains 2010's Cyrus, a comedy starring John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei. Cyrus began a movement by the brothers toward movies that retain the offbeat mumblecore edge of previous work (The Puffy Chair and Baghead), but also incorporate mainstream elements, particularly when it came to casting. Jeff Who Lives at Home, the latest from the Duplass brothers, continues the brothers' mash-up approach, this time putting Jason Segel and Ed Helms at the center of a comedy about two very different brothers, each weird in his own way.

Segel's 30-year-old Jeff -- the title character -- lives with his widowed mother (Susan Sarandon), and seems to be stuck in life's mud. Jeff smokes a lot of dope, and appears to have been unduly influenced by M. Night Shyamalan's movie, Signs. Jeff's waiting for his prolonged state of limbo to be shattered by something semi-miraculous. He can't get on with his life until he receives a message from the universe, a sign that will help him chart a course out of his mother's basement. To the rest of the world, this may look like emotional paralysis, but Jeff has confidence that his destiny will be revealed to him.

Brother Pat (Helms) isn't housebound; he has a job working in a paint store and a wife (Judy Greer). Avid and ambitious, Pat longs to climb the ladder of success. He buys things he can't afford (a Porsche) and neglects his wife, who was planning to use the Porsche money to put a down payment on a house. Using household money to indulge a male fantasy is never a good idea, and Pat's purchase leads to trouble. So does his overly aggressive personality.

Not surprisingly, Jeff eventually receives his sign -- or what the takes to be his sign. It arrives in the form of a phone call that introduces him to the name Kevin. Jeff's new mission: find Kevin, a search that produces laughs -- albeit in a low-key register. In keeping with the brothers' scaled-down approach, the story unfolds during the course of one day in Jeff's life.

At a fleet 82 minutes, Jeff Who Lives at Home makes room for some well-executed comic scenes. When Pat and Jeff spy on Pat's wife Linda in hopes of catching her in the midst of an affair, the movie flirts with classic farce.

Meanwhile, Sarandon's Sharon tells a workmate (Rae Dawn Chong) that she's been receiving messages from a secret admirer. Sharon's wary, but the messages quicken her pulse. Could romance be lurking? Will a long-smouldering fire suddenly be re-lit? Can she ever get Jeff to complete a chore?

The Duplass brothers are good at finding absurd humor in moments of fallibility. Jeff Who Lives at Home isn't nearly as sharp or distinctive as Cyrus, but it has enough offbeat humor to get by, and Segal makes Jeff seem like a decent enough slacker, a good-hearted fellow who's mired in a world where cosmic jolts are a definite rarity.