La Cage aux Folles (1978)
Renato owns a nightclub featuring his longtime lover, and accomplished drag performer, Albin. This creates complications when Laurent, Renato’s son from a previous relationship, brings his fiancée and her conservative parents home.
After watching Robin Williams and Nathan Lane enthusiastically two-step their way through an energetic love affair alongside the perfectly cast Gene Hackman in the American remake, this was a major disappointment.
Scenes from a Marriage (1973)
Originally aired as a television miniseries, this film by Ingmar Bergman dramatizes six events in the disintegration of the marriage of Marianne (Liv Ulmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson).
The first is their tenth wedding anniversary.
In the second, Marianne attempts to get out of a dinner with her parents, while Johann flirts with another woman.
In the third, Johan informs Marianne he wants a separation.
In the fourth, Johan, bored with his new lover, visits Marianne hoping to have a romantic encounter, but she rebuffs his advances.
In the fifth, the couple have an ugly fight while meeting to sign their divorce papers.
In the six and final incident, they’re each married to someone else, but are having an affair. On what would have been their twentieth anniversary, they plan a romantic weekend.
The actual stormy relationship between Bergman and Ullmann creates a heightened sense of realism and intensity in this tough film which approximates the life cycle of most relationships, extremely close one day and distant the next.
Any random six moments from a marriage might look very similar to these: messy, vital, unpredictable and alive.
We pretend our choice of romantic partner is determined by fate or kismet or other mysterious forces, but it’s often random and meaningless. This movie argues the bond forged by our shared memories is more sturdy, less finicky, and ultimately more beautiful than anything forged by our imaginary notions of love.
The Theory of Everything (2014)
Defying the odds following a diagnosis with ALS as a young man, Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayme) has lived into his 70s. This film fails to do justice to his amazing life story.
For a movie about one of the most famous scientists in the world, there’s an astounding lack of science. The film fails to explore Hawking’s public and outspoken battles with faith or the book which made him a household name.
Instead we’re given a look at the pitfalls of his relationship with Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), who steadfastly stays by his side despite the diagnosis, supporting and encouraging his work. But after thirty years of marriage, she’s cast aside in favor of his younger nurse.
The movie unfairly emphasizes Jane’s platonic relationship with Jonathan (Charlie Cox), implying her sexual frustration lead to the disintegration of their marriage.
Eddie Redmayne was fine, but I’m not a fan of the Academy’s tradition of rewarding impressions over the creation of original characters, and I’m a little bitter he was rewarded with an Oscar instead of Michael Keaton for his work in Birdman.
I wish the film had given us more of Felicity Jones’s Jane. I’d love to see more of how she handled the strain of marriage to the world’s most famous scientist, the difficulty of being the forgotten wife, and the humiliation of being divorced by a quadriplegic for a younger woman.
By slavishly following the inspirational biopic blueprint, this safe and boring film wasted an opportunity to shed genuine light on the life of one the twentieth century’s most fascinating minds.
Gone Girl (2014)
When Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, all evidence points to her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) as the culprit; he’s charged with murder and hires prominent defense attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry).
However, Nick is innocent of any wrongdoing; a disgruntled Amy framed him, but after seeing him on television has a change of heart. She contacts an old boyfriend, Desi Collings (Neil Patrick Harris), seduces him, then kills him and makes it look like he was the kidnapper.
The erstwhile couple reunites and Amy blackmails Nick to stay married by revealing she’s pregnant.
Maturing into an auteur as he approaches middle age, Affleck’s work here is understated and compelling. Kim Dickens and Carrie Coon are very good, imbuing stock characters with personality.
It was pleasantly surprising to learn Tyler Perry is capable of behaving normally and equally as surprising to discover Emily Ratajkowski is capable of keeping her clothes on for extended periods of time.
I admire David Fincher, and I admired this film for about one hundred minutes. The first two-thirds are a brilliant expose of our collective tendency towards a rush to judgment and a damning indictment of the conflation of news and entertainment.
But once Amy slit the throat of her ex-boyfriend, it became little more than a tawdry soap opera. Under what misguided notion of fatherhood can Nick justify staying with this unrepentant psychopath? We’re supposed to believe Nick, Bolt, lead detective, Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens), and Nick’s sister Margo (Carrie Coon) know the truth of Amy’s complicity, but agree to keep quiet for the sake of her unborn child?
There’s plenty of physical evidence linking her to the crime. Any one of them could easily expose her and send her to prison where the child would be protected.
Gillian Flynn’s novel has a vocal following, and maybe it works in another medium, but as a movie it stinks. After boxing itself into a narrative corner, it takes the most outrageous path possible hoping the shock will compensate for the lack of narrative coherency.
Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups (2012)
After the Santa Pups stow away with Mrs. Claus on a trip to town, they use their magic powers to grant wishes, because nothing says Christmas like cute, magical, talking puppies. But when one boy wishes for the spirit of Christmas to die, it creates a catastrophe at the North Pole.
Since 2006, Robert Vince has made a living helming the Air Buds franchise, with nine films released between 2006 and 2013.
That’s almost twenty hours of material covering the Buddies, an offshoot of the original five Air Bud films. To reiterate: a film about a basketball playing dog has spawned thirteen sequels. Not to begrudge Robert Vince a living, but surely the time, energy, and money it has taken to produce these films could have been better spent elsewhere.