Category Archives: Patton Oswalt

Movie Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

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This basically sums it up.

Don’t get me wrong, Steve Carell is one of the funniest, most likable actors working today. But with his past few features, and his latest, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” he has a created a new film archetype: The Sad Insurance Salesman.

The Sad Insurance Salesman is a male in mid-life crisis. His wife will have cheated and then walked out on him because their marriage has lost all sense of excitement. Basically, the Sad Insurance Salesman might as well say, “I’m really nice, but I’m also boring.”

This, in a way, can also define “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.” It is nice at parts but in the end, it is unsatisfying and lacks chemistry.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” begins at the end. Well, the end of the world, that is. An asteroid is hurdling towards Earth, and death is inevitable. Dodge (Steve Carell), a timid insurance salesman who doesn’t take a lot of risks, is abandoned by his wife (Nancy Carell, Carell’s real life wife), who doesn’t want to spent her last days on Earth with him. Her exit is marked with The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” playing over the radio. No matter how many times that song is used ironically over a dark scene in a movie, it never gets old.

Dodge still shows up to work everyday, despite the fact that most of his co-workers have jumped ship. Here is a man who won’t step out of his comfort zone and enjoy life, even as all life on Earth is about to end. Dodge doesn’t want to face the end alone, but he also doesn’t want to be promiscuous, as per the advice of his friends (Rob Corddry and Patton Oswalt, both criminally underused). Instead, he first seeks solace in a dog that has been abandoned by its owner. The dog might have been the highlight of the movie, even if it felt a little like pandering at times. The dog might have been the best part for me for the sole reason that it is a dog. Dodge names the dog Sorry, because it shows his regrets in life, and blah blah blatant symbolism.

One night, Dodge meets another lonely tenant in his apartment building, Penny (Keira Knightley). Penny is deeply unhappy with her relationship to a penniless musician (Adam Brody). She breaks up with him, and her and Dodge find solace in their loneliness. Unlike Dodge, Penny is spontaneous and positive. She also carries around her baggage from the past: a collection of records, without a record player to play it on. Based on Penny’s collection, which includes Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed, writer-director Lorene Scafaria must be a pretty awesome person.

“Seeking a Friend” becomes a road movie with two separate goals: Dodge wants to spend his last days with his childhood sweetheart, and he promises Penny a plane that will take her to England to see her parents. Unfortunately, one goal seems to be completely forgotten and another becomes completely unnecessary.

As Dodge and Penny, Carell and Knightley are not bad, just underwhelming. Carell is one of the most infinitely likable actors around, but I think he does better as the lovable idiot character role that he perfected in varying degress on “The Office” and in “Anchorman.” Knightley, meanwhile, doesn’t quite settle in well to the comedic potential of her character. Her role would have been much better suited to Gillian Jacobs, the “Community” MVP who shines in a minor role as a waitress who lives too close to the edge. She displays all of the zany energy that would have made Penny as impressionable a character as she was meant to be.

For a movie about a meteor hitting Earth, “Seeking a Friend” ends more with a whimper than with a bang. Without giving much away, there is a fade to white, and the only reaction that immediately came to mind was, “that’s it?” Every conflict plays out in an anti-climatic matter, and not the kind of anti-climatic that skewers your expectations for the best. “Seeking a Friend” would have been better suited as a straight up comedy sprinkled with poignant moments. The movie is supposed to be a look at humanity with typical societal constraints removed. People overlook it, but oftentimes comedy is the most truthful way to examine mankind.

Also, it would mean a lot to me if you could check out this review on The Film Stage. I actually give it a letter grade!

Oscars 2012: For Every Great Nomination, There is a Terrible Snub

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For every one satisfying Oscar nomination, there are endless movies, directors, and actors that could have filled that spot as well. This year, a surprising amount of suspected shoo-ins were snubbed, along with many that may never have had a chance. This year, who will join the ranks of “The Searchers,” “Touch of Evil,” and “Do the Right Thing” for most egregious snubs of all time? It is time to celebrate those who didn’t make the cut.  

Best Picture: 50/50
            Usually, Best Picture is associated with large scale, historical spectacles. What the Oscars really love, however, are stories of triumph in the face of adversity. No other movie could have better fit that label than “50/50,” Will Reiser’s funny and moving autobiographical story of coping with cancer. It deals with both the dire and the mundane in ways that few movies about cancer before this ever have. It might not have caught the Academy’s eye, but the impact of its naturalistic writing and effortless performances will long outlast the February 26 ceremony.


Best Director: Steven Spielberg (War Horse)

            Spielberg is known at times for letting his emotions get the best of his movies. However, his sentimentality toward movies and re-creating history are at their best here. This is perhaps the most detailed depiction of World War I in film, and the ending, evoking John Ford’s most famous westerns, could make even the most hardened movie buff cry.


Best Actor: Ryan Gosling (Drive)

            Gosling pulled a hat trick this year with memorable performances in “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” “The Ides of March,” and “Drive.” His against-type performance in “Drive” was the best of these. Conveying so much with so little dialogue, his transformation from a stellar getaway driver to a psychotic killer in the film’s final act is shocking in its subtle believability. Gosling helps elevate a flawed movie by turning The Driver into one of the most unforgettable movie characters in years.


 


Best Actress: Charlize Theron (Young Adult)

            It may be tough to make the bitchy former high school prom queen likable, but in “Young Adult,” Charlize Theron shows that it is at least possible to make her relatable. Theron so perfectly disappears into Mavis Gary’s self-denial that sometimes, it is hard to even tell whether it is really self-denial. “Young Adult” doesn’t give Mavis the fairy tale redemption ending that a lesser movie would have resorted to. While she doesn’t deserve our sympathy or attention, giving it to her doesn’t seem like such a crime.


Best Supporting Actor: Patton Oswalt (Young Adult)

            Awards season is usually kind to comedians who take a stab at dramatic acting. However, Patton Oswalt, who had not one, but two, fantastic dramatic turns, first in 2009’s “Big Fan,” and this year in “Young Adult,” has yet to be nominated. Oswalt’s performance is much more toned down than anything usually seen from him. He serves as a perfect foil to Theron, wallowing in self-pity, but also displaying a great deal of self-awareness. While his life has fallen apart, he never seems disturbed by it. An actor’s job is to make an unlikable character likable, and Oswalt takes a loser and turns him into something much more unique.


Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley (The Descendants)

            This breakout performance from the 20-year-old Shailene Woodley has been inexplicably left out of the race. Woodley delivers one of the most devastating moments of the year: after hearing that her mother is in a coma, she goes underwater to cry. Making the leap from an ABC Family melodrama to holding your own against George Clooney in an Alexander Payne movie is the mark of a promising movie star in the works.  

Honorable Mentions:
Brendan Gleeson (The Guard): For the ten of you out there who actually saw this movie, you’ll know that Brendan Gleeson is the only person who could make a bumbling and racist Irish cop hilarious and a bit of a sneaky genius. 
David Fincher (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo): Fincher turned a pulpy story into a haunting Swedish noir. Seriously, after this, “The Social Network,” and the various other movies he hasn’t even been nominated for (“Se7en,” “Fight Club”) how has this guy not won an Oscar yet? Perhaps Fincher is the Academy’s new Scorsese. 
And a few more: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (50/50), Ryan Gosling (The Ides of March), Owen Wilson (Midnight in Paris), Diablo Cody (Young Adult)
You can also check this article out at The Daily Orange. It is also available in print. Yes, print still exists. 

Movie Review: Young Adult

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Upon associating the name Diablo Cody and Young Adult Fiction together, the first things that come to mind are words like “yoseph” and phrases like “shut you freakin’ nard, Bard!”. I am not a “Juno” hater like many are, but phrases like these make being hip seem a little bit square. However, upon viewing her latest collaboration with director Jason Reitman, “Young Adult,” I found a writer who is starting to come into her own with her words, and a director who can bring those words to life.  

“Young Adult,” like “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” is a victim of bad marketing. It seems the only way to sell a semi-romantic dramedy nowadays is to make it look bright and predictable. “Young Adult” is two things you’d never expect it to be: ambiguous and unpredictable. 
The anti-hero of “Young Adult,” Mavis Gray (Charlize Theron), is introduced in a position that we find her in during various parts of the movie: sprawled out face down on a bed, hungover, and watching the Kardashians. There is something about watching the miserable lives of people on reality TV shows that makes a people feel better about their own rotten lives. Gray has become a semi-successful writer of a young adult book series. The peak of her book’s popularity has waned. Despite being 37-years-old, she is more like a girl than a woman (if you want to understand the difference watch this).
Mavis comes from the small town of Mercury, Minnesota. She is living the dream of everyone in Mercury, as she has now moved to the big city (Minneapolis that is, or as Mercurians call it, “The Mini Apple”). Maybe it’s because she’s feeling alone, or maybe because she was still a little drunk from the night before, but an email spreading the news about the newborn baby of her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) sends her packing her bags (including her Paris Hilton-sized dog) back to Mercury. On her journey back, Mavis has thoughts of returning back to her glory days, of being queen of high school again, and winning the happily-married Buddy back. 
It turns out that Mavis is now more of a Queen Bitch and Mercury is a cookie cutter of small town USA. The town she once knew now includes a Staples and a Kentucky Fried Taco Hut. This is how the Canadian Reitman likes to portray America: a land of excessive brand name dross.
Mavis is now the late 30s loser who used to be cool in high school. Pity, the loser usually isn’t supposed to be the protagonist. That is what makes this story more challenging and ultimately more rewarding: the audience must get over their inhibitions and realize that they must find a shred of humaness inside of a character who seems to totally lack it. Cheers to “Young Adult” for making us stick with a character who is unlikable from start to finish.
The more time spent in Mercury, the less this feels like the happy conclusion to a teen fantasy and more like a horror movie in which wounds are opened and then repeatedly stabbed at. While at her favorite bar, Mavis forms an unlikely friendship with Matt (Patton Oswalt), the former high school loser who became partially crippled after falling victim to a vicious hate crime. Matt now spends his days holed up in house, making action figures in his bedroom and distilling bourbon in his garage. He is the kind of person who should’ve gone farther in life than he did. Oswalt’s Matt is the perfect foil to Theron’s Mavis. This is the performance that will earn him the Oscar nomination he should’ve received for “Big Fan.” Not that he isn’t equally deserving of it here. Comedians can be great actors because they tend to wear their emotions on their sleeves. 
But was Mavis’s life so bad, or was she just looking for more problems to have? As she says at one point, her looks made people think she was perfect and impervious to problems. Everyone has baggage and what really matters is how we handle it.  This message is simple and old as time. But Theron’s nuanced, sometimes funny, and sometimes heartbreaking performance, adds a new dimension to it. Living in the best moments of the past is simply a device to obscure something painful. It is the most powerful form of denial there is. And when a few truths are revealed during the painful yet ingeniously written baby naming scene, it feels like Mavis is learning everything at the same time that the audience is. 
Earlier this year, I saw “Bad Teacher” and pondered what a better version of that movie would look like. Well, “Young Adult” is what “Bad Teacher” would’ve been if it actually tried. Making a despicable character the protagonist isn’t necessarily about making them likable enough to give them a pass for their wrongdoings, but rather to make them interesting and three dimensional enough for anyone to want to see what they will do next. It is kind of like watching a train wreck. However, this time, I didn’t want to see the train go off the rails. 
Jason Reitman has always made off-kilter films about characters who make questionable decisions. Whether that be sticking up for tobacco companies, getting pregnant as a teenager, or firing people for a living, Reitman’s four-film winning streak ends not with someone who is bad in what they do for a living, but rather the way they act. With “Young Adult” and his previous feature “Up in the Air,” Reitman begins to turn toward more ambiguous territory; and the more ambiguous he gets, the better his movies become. 
“Young Adult” could have gone the cliche way and portrayed a montage of Mavis turning her life around, probably by working out, walking her dog, and going to an AA meeting, but five minutes is not enough time to fully take in somebody turning their life around. The important thing is not how she turns her life around, if she ever does, but that she has learned the lesson she needed to learn. She was a beautiful fish in an ugly pond. That didn’t earn her love, but rather sorrow.
“Young Adult” won’t put anyone in the cheeriest mood this holiday season. However, there is nothing more reassuring in the holiday season than someone realizing what they should be holding dearest in their life. “Young Adult” is a gift of tough love.  

Movie Review: Big Fan

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Here’s a little gem that escaped audiences. “Big Fan” is a film that came and went without much buzz, but it’s a film deserving of praise.

“Big Fan” is a film that’s something of a genre bender. It can be defined as either a solemn drama, or an extremely dark comedy. That’s up to you to decide. Most importantly, it’s an amazingly deep character study of a character you’d usually never want to know. The character in question is Paul Aufiero (Patton Oswalt). Paul is like Rupert Pupkin of the sports world.
Paul has two sides to him: one side is a lonely, unmotivated man who still lives with his mother. The other side is the world’s most passionate fan of the New York Giants.
By day, Paul is nothing but a worker at a parking garage. By night, he’s “Paul from Staten Island,” a frequent caller to a local sports radio station. One day, he stumbles upon Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm), his favorite quarterback. Paul follows him to a strip club, which results in a fight which sends Paul to the hospital. After the attack gets Quantrell arrested, Paul must decide between loyalty, and reality.
“Big Fan” comes from the mind of Robert Siegel. This is Siegel’s directorial debut. However, he did write the brilliant “The Wrestler.” This once again proves Siegel’s talent at making works of art examining what happens in the sports world from the inside out. While “The Wrestler” could be seen as something of a mockumentary following one man’s life inside the ring, “Big Fan” is a mockumentary about the man who always stands at the sidelines.
Siegel explores the twisted life of Paul Aufiero the same way he explored the twisted life of Randy “The Ram”: through an objective, almost apathetic, observer’s eye. Siegel is the rare filmmaker who realizes it’s not his duty to tell the audience how to feel about the character. Instead, he shows you everything the character does and you decide how to feel about them. Whether Paul is a pathetic loser who needs to get a life or just a lonely man who will only reach out in certain ways is up to the beholder.
What helps bring Paul into a three dimensional perspective is none other than the performance by Oswalt. Oswalt is just one of many renowned who have proven they have dramatic acting chops. What launches Oswalt into the ranks of other great comedians in serious roles such as Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting,” Adam Sandler in “Punch Drunk Love,” and Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation” is his ability to take comedic sensibilities and shape them into a fine, serious performance. Even though Paul is the kind of man most people would mock in disgust, Oswalt makes him seem more like a human being than a walking joke.
“Big Fan” feels like a story ripped right out of the headlines. It’s one of those films that feels like it shouldn’t work but in the end, it does. It’s one of those movies that never goes where you’re thinking it will. For example, there’s no montage set to hipster music where the character gets new clothes and finally gets a job. No, it’s much more brutally real than that.
“Big Fan” basically has only plot development and a lot of things don’t change in the end. However, in a film, two things matter most about a story: what is being told, and how it’s being told. The “what” here is interesting, but with the wrong direction, it would’ve been nothing. The “how” here is stronger than ever.
Perhaps what makes the “how” so strong is the fascination the viewer will have with the film’s main character. Paul is a man of incredible complexity. Sometimes, he comes off as a stereotypical fanboy idiot. Other times, he comes off as someone with much intelligence, and a man who lives the way he does simply because he wants to.
If there is one definite thing we could find out about Paul, it’s that he’s extremely lonely. Siegel’s film is one of the better studies I’ve seen of isolation. Paul always has chances to escape his little bubble and be a real member of society. However, he doesn’t want to. Perhaps he sees no other way, he is just another of “God’s lonely men,” as Travis Bickle would say. But the beauty of the film is in its ambiguity, and we’ll never know the answer. “Big Fan” might offer an extremely vivid portrait of Paul Aufiero, but to know Paul, you just have to be Paul.