The Last Word

The Last Word (2017)

Starring Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, Thomas Sadoski, Tom Everett Scott, AnnJewel Lee Dixon, and Anne Heche

Directed by Mark Pellington

Written by Stuart Ross Fink

***This film is currently streaming via Amazon Prime***

Summary (in 500 words or less):  Harriet Lauler (Shirley MacLaine), an aging curmudgeonly woman, enlists the help of the young obituary writer of the small local paper, Anne (Amanda Seyfried), to help write her obit while she's still alive.  Along the way, the two different clashing personalities realize that they need one another in order to live their best lives.

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Movie Review - Catfight

Catfight (2016)
Starring Sandra Oh, Anne Heche, Alicia Silverstone, Amy Hill, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Ariel Kavoussi, and Giullian Yao Gioiello
Directed by Onur Tukel
**This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Catfight is almost so bad, it's good.  "Almost" being the operative word there, though.  Sandra Oh and Anne Heche at least hold our attention as rival college students who reunite as adults at a ritzy party where Veronica (Oh) brags about her rich husband to Ashley (Heche), a struggling artist acting as a waitress to make ends meet, but the two actresses can't overcome the rather tacky writing and lukewarm direction brought to the screen by Onur Tukel.

At that aforementioned party, Ashley gets so fed up with the haughty Veronica that she initiates a nasty catfight that ends up putting Veronica into a coma for two years.  Upon waking up, Veronica's life has completely turned upside down.  Needless to say, Veronica finds herself questioning her beliefs prior to the coma while also trying to remember exactly what landed her in the hospital in the first place.  Rather than spoil what comes next, let's just say that the rivalry between Veronica and Ashley hasn't come to a conclusion yet and their distaste for one another rears its ugly head for years to come.

Catfight unfortunately is just poorly pieced together and is perhaps trying to be more politically charged than it has any right to be.  Characters are one-note and oftentimes unbelievable -- the less said about poor Alicia Silverstone as Ashely's lesbian lover the better given the fact that her character never once is given any shred of reality in which to inhabit.  The film ends up being very repetitive by the time its conclusion rolls around and although I was moderately engaged that was really only because it was so laughably corny at times.  I've never seen so many poorly filmed punches in my life in a ninety-minute span as I saw in Catfight -- a decent fight coordinator coupled with a director who knew how to shoot fisticuffs would've helped many a scene here.  Once again, this almost reaches levels of absurdist fun, but in the end, it never gets to that point.

The RyMickey Rating:  C 

Movie Review - Arthur Newman

Arthur Newman (2013)

Starring Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Sterling Beauman, and Anne Heche 

Directed by Dante Ariola

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I don't know if I have a false recollection of the trailer for Arthur Newman or if this is one of those films where the marketing people attempted to try and trick everyone into seeing it, but I thought this flick was supposed to be a comedy.  Needless to say, it wasn't.  Even though I wasn't prepared for the film's more dramatic tone, I'd like to think that were a movie good enough, I'd be able to look past the false advertising and see a silver lining amidst the lies.  This one isn't good enough for that to happen.

Colin Firth is Wallace Avery, a middle aged guy who hates his job at FedEx, doesn't really care much for his girlfriend (Anne Heche), and has become so estranged from his teenage son (Sterling Beauman) that his offspring runs away from him whenever he tries to visit.  With nothing to lose, Wallace decides to end his life.  Well, he decides to end Wallace's life by purchasing a new identity and starting fresh.  After offing his old self by drowning in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast, Wallace transforms into Arthur Newman -- an amateur golfer who did some time playing on the Asian golf circuit.  With this new identity, he hopes to start anew and find more reason to relish life in general.

On his first night as "Arthur Newman," Arthur meets Micheala (Emily Blunt) -- a bit of a loony who was nearly arrested for stealing some guy's car.  Mike (as she likes to be called) is not only a loony, but also a bit of a crook who manages to find an ID card with Arthur's old name on it.  She kinda sorta blackmails him into allowing her to tag along on his cross-country trip and, of course, the two inevitably fall for one another as their journey progresses.

The problem with Arthur Newman is that the film doesn't quite know what it wants to be.  The film does begin with comedic undertones, but it abandons them after about twenty minutes and ends up becoming something much darker than its musical score, dialog, and general aesthetic make it appear to be.  This dichotomy causes the film to never really gel and it forces its two leads to never really grasp their characters' motivations.  It certainly doesn't help matters that the romantic relationship that transpires between Arthur and Mike as they become a very low grade (and non-violent) Bonnie and Clyde-ish type couple never once felt believable as played by Firth and Blunt -- two actors whom I typically always like, but appear very out-of-place and emotionally awkward here.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - Psycho

Psycho (1998)

Starring Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, and William H. Macy

Directed by Gus Van Sant

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

***Warning -- Spoilers ahead***

Why?  That's the question I've posed for the last fourteen years since I first found out that Gus Van Sant was making a near shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece (and my favorite movie of all time) Psycho.  What's the point?  I still don't get it even after I watched the film -- I guess it was some weird "experiment" -- but I will say that the film was better than I thought it would be.  That being said, I also thought this was going to be one of the worst moviewatching experiences I'd ever have so it wasn't going to take much to prove me wrong on that front.  However, the remake comes nowhere near close to the brilliance of the original.

Admittedly, I was actually quite impressed with Anne Heche's take on Marion Crane.  Janet Leigh is so iconic to me in that role and has an undeniably devious take on the character.  Not that the viewer ever gets a sense that Leigh's Marion "deserves" to die, but there is a slight feeling that she gets her appropriate comeuppance in the end.  Heche, however, plays Marion a bit more innocently and I admired that quality.  Unfortunately, Heche is only in the film for 35 minutes and things fall apart rather quickly at that point.

Vince Vaughn is simply painful as Norman Bates.  His Norman is visibly off his rocker right from the very first time we lay eyes on him -- he nervously laughs at the end of his first line and it felt so forced and "actor-y" that it took me out of his performance immediately.  Anthony Perkins played Norman as an outwardly normal guy who just so happened to be nuts.  Vaughn's Norman is simply nuts.  I despised nearly every line reading by him and when the last two-thirds of the movie shifts its focus towards him, it disappointed.  Similarly, Julianne Moore has been told to play Marion's sister Lila as a seemingly "butch" tough gal which didn't fit for me at all and felt incredibly off-putting.  When Lila gives Norman a take-down kick to debilitate him in the final basement scene at the Bates Motel, I couldn't help but think she should have yelled "Girl Power!" and it nauseated me with the political correctness of the change.  

The film updates the story to 1998 and I can't help but think it proves to be a detriment.  While it takes place in modern times, everything felt incredibly dated.  By replicating nearly everything from the 1960s -- sets, camera shots, music, costuming -- I don't quite understand the point.  Maybe it was done to allow the slight changes that are enacted -- like Norman masturbating when looking through the peephole as Marion prepares to shower or the odd flashes of rolling thunderclouds as Marion meets her demise in the shower -- seem appropriate in tone or something.  Nonetheless, those changes evoked chuckles from me and didn't add a thing to the tale.

The question still remains -- why was this remake needed?  What does it add to the discussion of Hitchcock's Psycho?  The answer seems to be that the story itself still holds up and the camera shots and dialog still work even in a modern-day setting.  However, it's not even remotely comparable in terms of quality and tension to the original.  Do yourself a favor -- if you've never watched Hitchcock's classic, rent it and revel in its awesomeness.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Cedar Rapids

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Starring Ed Helms, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Sigourney Weaver, and John C. Reilly

Directed by Miguel Arteta

Cedar Rapids kind of feels like The Office transplanted to the Mid-West and paired with a bit more raunch and a little less humor (despite its best attempts).  There's a droll, dry sensibility on display that works some of the time.  However, there are simply too many moments in the film's short 86 minutes that fall flat, relying on that indie comedy staple that humor can be derived from poking fun at the small town local yokels who live inside some cocoon and go a little cuckoo once the bubble pops enabling them to escape into the more metropolitan world.

Ed Helms is Tim Lippe, an insurance salesman from the small town of Brown Valley, Wisconsin.  Having never really set foot outside of the confines of the town, when Tim's boss asks him to attend an insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he finds himself a bit on the edge.  With the encouragement of his lover and former elementary school teacher Macy (Sigourney Weaver), Tim gets the courage to head to the "big city," getting on his first plane and sleeping at his first hotel.  With the goal to win his company the coveted Two Diamond Award, Tim finds himself spending time with three conventioneers who have been to the affair before -- the serious and solemn Ronald (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.), the crazy and lewd Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), and the sexy and wry Joan (Anne Heche).  Needless to say, Tim's eyes will be opened to a brand new world unlike his small-town eyes have ever seen before.

The problems with Cedar Rapids certainly don't stem from the actors.  Everyone here is actually quite charming and surprisingly believable.  Based off of his introduction, I figured I'd have been rolling my eyes every time John C. Reilly's oafish Ziegler came on the screen, but he won me over somehow.  Isiah Whitlock (apparently of The Wire) probably struck the best note with me thanks to his dry delivery.  And Anne Heche is goshdarn charming and cute here.  Ed Helms simply seems to be playing his character from The Office and he's the weak link of the quartet, but that's more the fault of "Tim Lippe" than "Ed Helms."

All in all, with the pleasant group of actors, it's a disappointment that the humor just isn't there.  The film veers off into an odd and rather uncomfortable finale which is supposed to serve as some kind of awakening for Helms' Lippe, but it ends up veering into my Movie Pet Peeve which I've mentioned numerous times before -- Old People Doing Drugs for the Purposes of Laughter.  And while that's not the only sticking point -- see my initial paragraph about a common indie comedy staple that applies here as well -- it made the film end on more of a down note than I would have preferred.  Cedar Rapids is pleasant enough thanks to the actors, but it's a shame they weren't given a bit better material.

The RyMickey Rating:  C

Movie Review - Spread (2009)

Starring Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche, and Margarita Levieva
Directed by David Mackenzie

I've seen many movies this year (inching closer to 100) and in the case of the new movie Spread there's something to be said for having both the most sex scenes (showcasing a variety of positions and kinky fetishes...all I'll say is "shaving the papaya"...you imagine what that means...) and the highest boob count of the year. I just wish I could've liked the movie...

Ashton Kutcher is Nikki, a young guy who moved to L.A. and is simply living off of women...moving from woman to woman, sleeping with them, shacking up in their homes, using their credit cards, while, at the same time, sleeping with other women. His latest catch is Samantha (a surprisingly sexy Anne Heche), a lawyer who, despite realizing that Nikki is kind of mooching off of her, can't seem to let go of this boy toy who is paying her loving attention (most of the time). When Nikki's not with Samantha, he's with the younger Heather (Margarita Levieva), a female version of himself.

My biggest problem with the flick is that I felt like it didn't bring anything new to the table. From the voiceover by Nikki at the very beginning, I knew he was going to "change" by the end (sorry, did I ruin it for you?). He was going to fall in love and realize that his whorish ways were wrong. Sure, the ending didn't quite conclude the way I thought it would, but I can't really say I was surprised. I don't know if it's just that I'm so completely the antithesis of pricks like Nikki, but I find it tough to watch movies where ladies fall head over heels for these assholes (Ugly Truth is another example)...why?

Kutcher was okay, but I couldn't help but think of the Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange as Nikki strolled around wearing thin suspenders and rolled-up, cuffed jeans and pants. I just never felt like I wasn't watching him act. Same goes for Margarita Levieva...I actually thought she was fine prior to becoming the female version of Nikki, but once she became the "slutty" girl, I just didn't buy her in the role. The only person I actually enjoyed here was Anne Heche. As I said above, she was refreshingly sexy and definitely drew my attention in every scene she was in. It's a shame she went missing during the final act of the movie.

The RyMickey Rating: D