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The D Train

Opens Fri., May 8 at Pacific Place, Sundance, and Thornton Place. 
Rated R. 98 minutes.

Centered around a rude surprise, The D Train has some guts, and I like that in a movie. It earns points for trying. The writing/directing team of Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel comes from the trenches of L.A.’s comedy scene, where the improv goal is often to take an outrageous premise and normalize it. Normal is where bored Dan Landsman (Jack Black) begins in the Pittsburgh suburbs, the petty despot of his high-school 20th-reunion committee. He’s got a wife (underused Kathryn Hahn), new baby and awkward teenage son, and a hapless boss (Jeffrey Tambor, exuding decency and hurt) who’s presiding over the slow collapse of their consulting business.

It’s time for a shakeup, which Dan recognizes in the handsome face of a TV-commercial actor: long-lost Oliver Lawless (James Marsden), once the high-school stud, now the possible celebrity draw for the big reunion. Dan, treated like a loser by his peers, will do anything to land this reluctant kahuna. Black’s energy in comic roles both loud (School of Rock) and quiet (Bernie) always comes from a desperate core; it’s as though there’s an interior blast furnace of inadequacy that fuels his characters’ overcompensation and misdeeds. Thus it’s not surprising when Dan begins lying to everyone, defrauding his company, and misleading Oliver (once he flies to L.A.). He’s not being corrupted by the booze, coke, and strippers of Oliver’s Hollywood milieu—he wants it, too. Oliver is his insouciant, fuck-it-all doppelganger, the id to his dad-in-Dockers superego. And Oliver is certainly susceptible, like any insecure actor, to flattery and hero worship.

Back in Pennsylvania, however, Dan finds it hard to share his idol. Everyone loves Oliver—Dan’s wife, son, and committee members. Should we be surprised that Dan, while harboring a Sunset Strip secret, becomes jealous and irrationally possessive? The casting of Chuck and Buck’s Mike White (also a producer) as one of Dan’s pals is a clue to The D Train’s comedy of male intimacy and discomfort. It’s not a broad bromance, but a gnawing infatuation. Why do sports fans clamor at stadium exits to touch their heroes? Why do dudes lie about being BFFs with the BMOC? What musk draws them to the alpha dog? Marsden’s comic-book handsomeness is here covered with scruff, but he colors Oliver’s allure with familiar human foibles. He’s dumb, selfish, and unreliable (though given one solid gag about lawn chairs), yet open-minded and forgiving.

If The D Train never deepens its premise the way Tom Perrotta or Alexander Payne might, if it never quite escalates to the level of, say, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, it offers a new spin on the standard theme of a teenage loser’s midlife vindication. Sometimes it takes total disgrace to earn a fresh start. Brian Miller

Far From the Madding Crowd

Opens Fri., May 8 at Meridian, Sundance, and
Lincoln Square. Rated PG-13. 118 minutes.

Along with a great novelist’s assumed ability to peer into the human soul and all that, Thomas Hardy added two key obsessions: land and time. Hardy knew the soil of his English countryside, knew the trees and animals, and the way a footpath connects farms and destinies. He also knew how the turning of the seasons affected people, and how those same footpaths resonated with the steps of ancestors near and distant.

Thomas Vinterberg’s new version of Far From the Madding Crowd gets just about all of that wrong. And immediately, too: The film throws away the great moment when Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan)—having assured herself that no one could be watching—leans back on her horse in an unladylike manner, a gesture surreptitiously witnessed by salt-of-the-earth farmer Gabriel Oak (Belgian rising star Matthias Schoenaerts). If a movie can’t understand how that gesture shapes the futures of these characters, it won’t get much else right. Even worse is the hurry-up swiftness of David Nicholls’ screenplay, which collapses the action so the movie can trot in at 118 minutes. We’ve just established the impossible relationship between prideful-but-poor Bathsheba and sensible Gabriel when she inherits her uncle’s estate, flirts with neighboring landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), and falls under the spell of caddish soldier Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge). The melodrama that has room to breathe in Hardy’s 1874 novel (and the 170-minute 1967 adaptation of the story) is so rushed here that it looks faintly ridiculous. Maybe that was Vinterberg’s purpose; he was one of the Danish filmmakers whose Dogma credo—as embodied in The Celebration—was supposedly against this kind of old-fashioned material.

That 1967 film may not be a classic, but it contained unforgettable sequences—a storm on the farm and an earthy, gut-piercing remedy to save swollen sheep. And it had a dazzling cast. Mulligan, late of The Great Gatsby, is a brave lass indeed to step into the footsteps of Julie Christie. If she can’t supply the movie-star oomph, she still navigates the movie’s confused conception of her character with professionalism, and her chemistry with hunky Schoenaerts is visible. The movie’s clumsiness is so desperate that Bathsheba is given a one-time-only burst of voiceover at the beginning of the film in order to plead ignorance about her supposedly mystifying name (no one has told her the Biblical reference?), as though preparing a 21st-century audience for something unfamiliar. Even her namesake Katniss Everdeen didn’t have to stoop that low. Robert Horton

5 Flights Up

Opens Fri., May 8 at Sundance Cinemas. Rated PG-13. 92 minutes.

Completely reliant on the warmth and goodwill generated by its stars (rather than, say, its writing), this AARP-oriented dramedy strikes all the familiar chords. Retired schoolteacher Ruth (Diane Keaton) and non-selling painter Alex (Morgan Freeman) are finding it a chore to huff up the stairs of their sprawling, sun-washed corner Brooklyn apartment. Nor can their beloved old dog—the Carvers are childless—easily make the climb. The place could be worth a million after 40 years in a now-gentrified hood (Williamsburg, from the look of it). It’s time for an elevator building; time to ask, as Ruth does, “What about later?” Who will care for them? Can they age in place? Suddenly their dog has a medical crisis, which is both a major plot point and a harbinger of their own future.

With a niece (Cynthia Nixon, from Sex and the City) acting as their broker, they put their place on the market and are present during the open house (!)—indicating how British director Richard Loncraine isn’t unduly concerned with realism here. (The movie’s adapted from Jill Ciment’s novel Heroic Measures, an Oprah Book Club pick.) The pushy-nosy apartment shoppers are predictably ridiculed, unlike the ever-dignified Carvers. However, 5 Flights Up does make the usual ageist jokes at Alex’s expense. (He forgets his hearing aids! He can’t use a computer! He holds Ruth’s iPhone wrong side to his ear! Are you rolling in the aisles yet?) It’s hard to be annoyed by such gentle mediocrity, though I do have to wonder why Alex gets all the wise voiceovers—wasn’t this a marriage of equals?

The sick dog, real-estate haggling, and specious subplot about a fugitive Muslim terrorist—unless he’s not—all turn out to be tremendously mundane. It’s hard to see why we need a feature film about this—but for the welcome chance to enjoy Keaton and Freeman coasting in what’s essentially a TV movie. The only novelty comes from the double casting of young ’70s Ruth and Alex (the likable Claire van der Boom and Korey Jackson), who bring some energy and awareness of the difficulties in what was then called a mixed marriage. Then there’s the shock ending, guaranteed to divide audiences along generational lines. Boomers will be furious at the Carvers’ stubborn irrationality. Those in their 70s and beyond will find reassurance. Realism can wait for the dread later of another day. Brian Miller

PIris

Opens THurs., May 7 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian (and Fri. at Sundance). 
Rated PG-13. 78 minutes.

When Albert Maysles died on March 5, it was the end of a significant phase of the documentary film. His movies, many of them made with his late brother David, helped create a new kind of nonfiction storytelling: Gimme Shelter set the standard for the rock-and-roll picture and defined the end of the ’60s; and Grey Gardens, a portrait of two crackpot relatives of Jackie Kennedy, remains a cult movie to this day. (It’s still a useful conversation piece about the place where observation and exploitation cross paths.)

What was this documentary giant working on at the end? He has at least one more film yet to be released, but among his final projects was the somewhat unexpected but very entertaining Iris. It’s a profile of Iris Apfel, a nonagenarian fashion legend and colorful collector (and wearer) of baubles, bangles, and beads. (The soundtrack of the movie is accompanied by the clacking of Iris’ Bundt-cake-sized bracelets.) If this seems a fluffy subject for Maysles, perhaps the comparison with Grey Gardens is useful: zany ladies, full of opinions, dressed to kill. And yet the subjects of the two films don’t compare; where the Beale women of GG had long since parted ways with common sense, the outrageous-looking Iris is resplendent with it. She goes to thrift stores and haggles over already-inexpensive merchandise; she shrugs at the idea of criticizing the fashion choices of others. (“Who am I to tell them how to look?”) She’s had a happy marriage—hubby Carl turns 100 during filming—and the Apfels ran a successful business for decades, manufacturing classic textile designs for clients including the White House.

Some people love Grey Gardens because the Beales remain defiantly themselves, despite their creepy existence in a decaying mansion. Iris takes up the same theme, but with a happier outcome. Yes, Iris and Carl are eccentric—their Palm Beach home is so crammed with toys and doo-dads that one expects them to start feeding the raccoons in the attic—but brimming with self-possession. We watch Iris travel, pose for magazine layouts, and then honestly describe the toll these activities take on someone in her early 90s. Despite the gaudy accessories, this isn’t fantasy-land. Robert Horton

Lambert & Stamp

Opens Fri., May 8 at Sundance Cinemas. Rated R. 117 minutes.

You could be forgiven for assuming that Lambert and Stamp are some forgotten folk-rock duo of the Peter & Gordon variety. Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were part of London’s ’60s rock scene, though not as performers but as managers, promoters, producers, and mentors. They helped transform a mod-favorite club band called The High Numbers into The Who, nurtured the songwriting talents of Pete Townsend, and supported the band until its breakthrough.

They are a colorful pair with an interesting story. Lambert, the posh, Oxford-educated son of a classical-music conductor, and Stamp, a working-class bloke and younger brother of Terence Stamp, were aspiring filmmakers when they met as assistants at Shepperton Studios. They bonded over their shared passion during the age of the French nouvelle vague and hatched a plan to break into the movies: They’d mold a raw, young rock-’n’-roll act into a success, chronicling the odyssey on film. The Who was merely a means to an end, an irony that gets lost in the familiar showbiz arc here: early enthusiasm and creative energy, breakthrough success with Tommy, and the inevitable falling-out over success, money, and control.

The best of these showbiz docs provide a window into an era or a cultural moment, and director James D. Cooper delivers at first. He works the mod style, swinging London attitude, and jump-cut editing to capture both the period and the passion of this odd couple as they bluff their way through the music industry on instinct and impulse. Then that social backdrop is lost as the film dives into the finer points of creative conflicts and lawsuits. For committed Who-ologists, Lambert & Stamp mostly sidesteps the disagreement as to how much influence the duo really had on the band’s music in general and Tommy in particular.

Kit Lambert died in 1981, the second band casualty (after Keith Moon) of excess and addiction. Stamp, who died in 2012, lived long enough to tell Cooper his story and repair relations with Townsend and Roger Daltrey (who are also interviewed). I fear this doc is just a little too inside-baseball for anyone but fans of The Who and British music of the ’60s. It’s a good story, though not strong enough to frame the entire decade. SEAN AXMAKER

Tangerines

Runs Fri., May 8–Wed., May 13 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. Not rated. 89 minutes.

Small in scale and antiwar in subject, Tangerines is the kind of story that almost always gets called a fable. Most such projects can get gooey about how we’re really all brothers under the skin, and this one is no exception—it was one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Film, after all. But even if this theme is low-hanging fruit, the movie is so well made and acted that it quietly wins the day.

Tangerines officially represented Estonia at the Oscars, but it is set in another part of the world: Abkhazia, a fragment of the old Soviet Union. In 1992, civil war has broken out between Georgians seeking to keep the autonomous region under Georgia’s control and Russian-backed separatists. (It’s an old and complicated dispute.) The area’s long-abiding Estonian population has mostly been driven out, save for Ivo (the dignified Lembit Ulfsak), a carpenter. He lives in the countryside and makes crates for his neighbor Margus (Elmo Nuganen), a tangerine grower. A shootout in front of their houses leaves two wounded fighters to care for. Ahmed (Giorgi Nakhashidze), a Chechen mercenary, and Niko (Mikheil Meskhi), a Georgian soldier, are both taken in to Ivo’s house to recuperate. They’re seriously wounded, but Ahmed is insistent that he will kill Niko the first chance he gets. Out of respect for his courtly host, Ahmed promises not to murder Niko within the walls of the house. (It’s a measure of the movie’s civilized attitude that the smoldering Ahmed can later joke about this vow, even if he still means it.) As the four men hang around together—there are no women here—they begin to get along.

Director Zaza Urushadze follows a standard humanist line, and most of Tangerines is easy to predict. The final 15 minutes come together in a potent way, however, and the performers are grounded in their roles. Ulfsak is excellent as the Gregory Peck figure, carrying the kind of easy authority that comes after a long career (the man’s got a lot of credits, most of which have been unseen by U.S. viewers). Nakhashidze is splendid as the malcontent; he carries a life story in his world-weary facial expressions. Casting directors, take heed: This guy is a character star waiting to be noticed. Robert Horton

Welcome to Me

Opens Fri., May 8 at Varsity. 
Rated R. 87 minutes.

Beyond the valley of black comedy is a place where laughter and horror mingle freely. Here roams the original British version of The Office and the amazing Scorsese/De Niro King of Comedy (still one of Scorsese’s best, despite its low profile). It clicks only intermittently, but Welcome to Me is an attempt to inhabit this territory. I didn’t actually laugh much during this cringe-inducing film, but I was often impressed by its willingness to be awkward.

That it succeeds as often as it does is largely due to Kristen Wiig, whose ability to slip from broad humor to quietly devastating insight is already well documented. She plays an unfortunate soul named Alice Klieg, whose borderline-personality disorder has cast her into the margins of society—until, that is, she wins the lottery, which means she can bankroll her own cable-TV talk show. The show gives her a chance to air her grievances—she has many—prepare recipes, and sing. It’s a trainwreck, but she keeps throwing money at the production company and they keep pocketing it. The show’s demoralized staff includes James Marsden, Joan Cusack, and Jennifer Jason Leigh; Alice’s backstage fling is played by Wes Bentley, as an infomercial pitchman who might be as unstable as she is.

Alice’s frequent belly-flops aren’t exactly funny, in part because the movie’s too grown-up to laugh at a mentally ill person. Director Shira Piven (a longtime theater director and sister of Jeremy) is going for the crazy-Americana vibe, so the movie has novelty songs, addled characters, and campy set design. (On the latter point, Alice demands her home be arranged in color-coordinated areas.) Piven’s got a great cast and she handles it well, although it would be nice to find out more about Alice’s best friend and ex-husband, especially with ready-to-roll Linda Cardellini and Alan Tudyk playing the roles. The idea of Alice as an avatar for a collective fantasy about getting rich and famous keeps the movie interesting, but there’s something a bit off about the delivery.

When Alice, who once worked in a veterinary clinic, decides to neuter dogs on her show, the act is sure to repel not just her TV audience, but the Welcome to Me viewer as well. The result might be squirmier than anyone intended. 
Robert Horton

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