The Drop

*** out of ****

In The Drop, - the latest film to be based on Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) fiction - Belgian film director, Michaël R. Roskam, relishes in the depths of gritty American noir with the excitement of an outsider’s eye. The unkempt blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhood is captured with fascination, as are the players who captivate us with their poker-faced intimidation.

The story focuses on a bar, which holds dirty money for Chechen mobsters who have been in control of the place for years since its owner, Marv, fell into difficult financial circumstances. One night, the place is robbed by armed men in masks leaving Marv under suspicion from the gangsters to have orchestrated an inside job.

Marv is played by the late James Gandolfini in his final screen appearance, which feels like a hybrid of many characters he’s played. This one, however, has a sorry edge to his spirit giving us a somber finale performance for this great actor.

Three members of the principal cast, are European actors. While their Brooklyn accents are questionable, their emotional performances are not. Tom Hardy plays Bob, the film’s lead protagonist, who knows how to stay calm under the tension brought on by Marv’s problems as well as his own. Aside from his astounding range as an actor, this British talent continues to have a fascinating screen presence.

Bob is a quiet bartender whose demeanor is similar to Sylvester Stallone’s lesser-known role from Cop Land. He’s hard to read but he’s humble and would rather avoid trouble. In the days following the suspicious robbery, a local detective, played by John Ortiz, senses decency in Bob and digs for information to no avail.

When walking through his neighborhood one night, Bob finds a beaten pit bull puppy yelping in a garbage can. He alerts the owner of the garbage can, who cautiously lets Bob into her house with the pup where she tends to its wounds and encourages the lonely Bob to take it in.

The woman’s name is Nadia, who is played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace (the original Girl with the Dragon Tatoo). A simple romance blooms between the two, which proves to be troublesome when a neighborhood thug (Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts), who may be connected with Nadia’s past, takes a strange and threatening interest in their puppy.

Lehane’s screenplay, based on his own short story originally titled Animal Rescue, lacks any unnecessary complexities, keeping its characters mysterious and provokes us to regularly second-guess their intentions. While the twists in its conclusion felt a little predictable to me, they also felt rather welcome. Roskam’s direction and composer Marco Beltrami’s score also have the kind of hypnotism necessary to make a slow story like this one so enthralling.

They Came Together

***1/2 out of ****

New on Blu-ray and DVD, They Came Together is a film that stars Paul Rudd as an executive at a heartless conglomerate and Amy Poehler as a small business owner at risk of losing her store to the major competition. The two soon meet one another, where rivalry ensues –and then romance –and then rivalry again. That’s a surface-level description. If it sounds familiar, it’s intentional. This movie is the latest comedy from the hilarious David Wain who borrows from You’ve Got Mail and countless other yuppy-centric movies to do a rather funny lampoon on modern romantic comedies.

Instead of a bookstore, it’s a cute little candy shop and the evil corporation with a high-rise tower is completely devoted to monopolizing the business of candy. In the pursuit of romance, Poehler’s character has a co-worker/best friend who is an unrealistically giving person. Rudd’s character confides in bunch of bros down at the basketball court who play (badly) while offering conflicting advice, based on whichever male archetype they literally claim to be.

Along with Christopher Meloni, Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Max Greenfield, Ed Helmes, Cobie Smulders, Michael Ian Black and way too many people to list, this New York-set rom-com mockery swells with brilliant delivery of absurd exchanges.

I laughed throughout this whole film, but I won’t be quick to give it a broad recommendation. For a guy who sees way too many movies, a flick like this feels like a liberating escape. To someone else, it may come across as obnoxious. There are also people who don’t get this kind of humor, sadly lacking the capability of understanding a movie that refuses to take itself seriously in any way.

There are other movies, which have honorably spoofed a genre using similar tactics. Black Dynamite spoofed blaxpoitation better than any other film that tried. Down with Love was a very clever take on the Doris Day and Rock Hudson sex comedies of the Kennedy era. One of my absolute favorites, however, was David Wain’s first film, Wet Hot American Summer, which was a send-up of summer camp comedies of the 1980s.

Wain’s material, with the help of his longtime co-writer Michael Schowalter has a knack for following the path of formulaic entertainment only to address every cliché as it is met, by either overplaying it or subverting our expectations in an outrageously inappropriate way.

One of the most unforgettable examples of this can be found in Wet Hot where the teen counselors go into town to get away from the campground for a bit. What follows is a joyous montage with happy eighties rock playing as they party a little while engaging in the benefits of being away from their responsibilities. They eat a little McDonalds and then score a pack of beer, some cigs, and a little weed… Before you know it, they steal a purse from an old lady, buy some heroin in an alley and are then seen passed out in shambles while lurking in a crack house. Then it shows them return to camp, all smiles, in perfect health with the implication that only an hour has passed.

Watch that scene here

His comedy trio Stella, with his co-creator Michaels (Ian Black and Showalter), was also an energetic abandonment of logic or any seriousness. In the form of stage show, internet shorts and a short-lived TV show, the three well-dressed men try to fit in with society while their hijinks leave a path of destruction, but will always inexplicably find reward in the end. 

Wain later moved on to do a trio of movies with co-writer/actor, Ken Marino. The first was sketch comedy movie called The Ten, which was a series of short films -all supposedly reflecting each of the Ten Commandments. Their oddball comedy was followed by Role Models and Wanderlust, which were both comparatively grounded with a more standard comic narrative. They both had a good deal of hilarity but I felt as though Wain and his The State alum were falling into a less adventurous format in favor more conventional comedy.

While They Came Together isn’t nearly as funny as Wet Hot, I still felt a good deal of satisfaction watching a film where Wain gets back to the style that best suits him. I’ve always had a weakness for irreverence when it comes to getting a laugh. From The Marx Brothers to Monty Python and the Holy Grail to the Naked Gun movies and even Alex Winter's little-known insane feature, Freaked, I will always favor comedy that has the courage to abandon all reason.

IN RETROSPECT: Ghostbusters (1984)

In honor of its 30^th anniversary, 1984’s Ghostbusters (Originally Ghost Busters)has been playing in movie theaters across the country. It makes me happy that this movie is still an endearing classic that people will gather to see. Like many of its fans, I found it to be a fun movie to grow up with. There was so much in that movie for a kid to love and a lot of comedy to interpret when I got older.

Ghostbusters is a unique example of where dark sci-fi fantasy and goofball comedy find a strange place to coexist. The movie does an excellent balancing act between big laughs and awe-inspiring special effects that thrill and sometimes genuinely scare.

When you look back at the early eighties, the popularity of state-of-the-art big-budget spectacle, spearheaded by Lucas and Spielberg films, was infectious. When you think about it, comic writer/actors from Saturday Night Live, SCTV and National Lampoon bringing their irreverent humor to such sophisticated technical filmmaking was a strange gamble, but it paid off.

The eccentric Dan Aykroyd wrote the script’s original draft, which was set in the future and was to feature himself and John Belushi as a follow-up vehicle to their success in The Blues Brothers. After Belushi’s untimely death, the script was reworked and rewritten with the help of the now-departed Harold Ramis who would eventually star as well. Director Ivan Reitman brought his producer experience to the project, raising the budget above what any of its initial creators were probably expecting.   

The final story wound up being about a group of paranormal investigators (with a charlatan as their spokesperson) who are cutoff from university funding and facilities. With enough research and scientific understanding of ghosts, they go into the business of harnessing supernatural beings using self-made high-tech tools and discover a lot of normally unreported hauntings. They do all of this in the guise of sloppy exterminators.    

The film’s most effective player, Bill Murray, delivers comic understatements in reaction to the marvels he witnesses. Like Murray’s best roles, he’s a reassuring presence to jaded moviegoers who desire a little relief from the pretentiousness of cinema.

If Murray deserves the most credit for the film’s laughs, then just as much credit is due to Sigourney Weaver for bringing a relatable humanity to the love-interest character. Her earnest straight face is complementary to the movie’s silliness –especially in the presence of scene-stealer Rick Moranis as her obliviously rude twerp of a neighbor.

Many movies that followed took inspiration from the entertaining achievements of Ghostbusters. Only a year later, Back to the Future proved to be a similar success of bold jaw-dropping high-tech filmmaking with a carefree attitude - as did Men in Black in 1997 and all the way up to this summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

What’s sad is how telling it was that the makers of Ghostbusters never managed to imitate the quality they got the first time around. Ghostbusters II was fun when I was a kid and had a fair share of funny and scary moments alike - with even better effects work – but it was ultimately a disappointing sequel, dependent on the brand name that the first film created rather than respecting the lucky circumstances that made it work so well. In spite of Ramis's unfortunate passing, the dreadful discussion of a third part or reboot is still out there.

To watch deleted scenes from the first movie’s shoot reveals how much goofier they intended it to be. One of the strangest missing scenes involved Aykroyd and Murray playing homeless oddballs in Central Park as if they intended the movie to take a detour from its engaging narrative into sketch comedy humor. Somehow, in editing, they made decisions that led to a new kind of movie.

I have no idea if they really expected Richard Edlund’s optical effects to be so captivating. It’s hard to imagine the movie working well without those trippy streaks of light hovering over Manhattan. Elmer Bernstein’s grand score was also a major contribution that elevated the supernatural eerie tone of the film and served as an effective contrast to the comedy. Ray Parker Jr.’s theme song was pretty catchy too.

 

There is nothing like a laugh that follows a scare. It’s why so many of us love Halloween. Ghostbusters is a one-of-a-kind movie, which emulates that feeling and when there is a fall-like chill in the air again, I am sure to pop some corn, make some Stay Puft s’mores and enjoy the hell out of this old favorite. 

Bustin' makes me feel good.

Aside from this brief theatrical run, Ghostbusters is currently on Netflix and an Anniversary Re-Mastered Blu-ray set of the two movies will be available on September16th