You were born to be the unanxious presence in the room.

Joy

(2015)

(SPOILERS) The one where the magical formula that was working so well for David O Russell, since he stopped making distinctive movies and instead ploughed a furrow of awards-friendly ones (which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy most of them to a degree, but pushing any kind of envelope apart from the one containing his big fat fee they were not), ran dry. Joy’s a compendium of everything Russell assumed was right with his picture going wrong, from eager stars on tap, to air-punching emotionally-uplifting plot twists, to blindingly obvious soundtrack choices.

This very loose account of Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano (so much so, her surname isn’t referenced) charters a divergent course in order that Russell can wing it with his medley of favourite moves. But the result is an unwieldy mess. His unbeatable run with Jennifer Lawrence (as Joy) runs aground fairly decisively. She’s decent, strong even, on a scene-by-scene basis, but utterly fails to convey a believable character. In part this is because Russell utterly fails to convey a believable world around her, but it’s also because, more unforgivingly than in their previous collaborations, she’s just too damn young for the part. There’s a point here where, no matter how talented she is (and I do think she’s talented), she’s just plain unconvincing as a thirtysomething mother and all-round family can-do-er, standing up to umpteen obstacles in her path. That’s just the most glaring of numerous problems, though.

Such as, you wonder just what Russell is trying to achieve, because if it’s in the service of the rewards garlanded for (female) aspiration, dedication and persistence in the face of the odds, reducing that achievement to an ill-formed final five minutes seems straight-up peculiar. Everything Joy does involves a rebound of pain and anguish, all of it crudely signposted in advance, and it feels almost as if this Russell’s token gesture towards the non-mainstream filmmaker he once was, wrapped in a sugar-coated bow; it’s that cynical.

The picture kicks off as an annoying two-dimensional character tour de force, going for the heightened and cartoonish in a way the writer-director can’t pull off (he isn’t a Burton or a Jeunet). And so, the parades of motley family members, their quirks and obsessions, is merely irritating. The blending of fantasy and reality (Joy imagines herself in the soap opera her mother obsesses over) flat out stinks (yet this is the guy who played with reality so deliriously in I Heart Huckabees).

Admittedly, it’s interesting to see Virginia Madsen playing something different (although Russell can only offer her clichéd subplots, such as an attraction to a Haitian plumber), and Elisabeth Rohm is absolutely full-on as Joy’s bitchy half-sister. But Robert De Niro crashes and burns so badly in an “Is he even awake?” half-embalmed performance, you can only assume Russell keeps using him because of some presumed kudos still attached to the name.

This is what you get when a director thinks he can do no wrong. And it’s pretty difficult to root for said filmmaker when he’s still up to the kind of bastardly behaviour he subjected Lilly Tomlin to a decade ago (only this time with Amy Adams). Joy’s punctured balloon feels like hubris well met. The picture does, momentarily, begin to find a foothold when Bradley Cooper enters the scene as a QVC director who becomes Joy’s salvation (even he has to be a stinker to her to get to that point, though; the whole thing is so calculated, at a certain point the tribulations no longer have any weight; oh look, grandma – ghostly narrator Diane Ladd, who instilled in her that achiever-ethos, the angel – is dead, cue some grieving).

After that, the plot dissembles into further family traumas for Joy; even the payoff of her putting paid to her fraudulent manufacturer lacks the oomph it should. She loves her family unconditionally, but the picture never really shows her standing up to them the way she should; indeed, the coda suggests that, far from being an aspirational figure, she’s a pushover, funding their failed schemes and getting sued by her malignant father (De Niro now even more ridiculous in old age make up than his earlier computer-assisted de-aging) for ownership of the mop.

It’s almost as if Russell thinks he can fashion a hit by selecting a true life story from any magazine article he’s handed, simply by pasting in vague platitudes about perseverance and self-belief (perhaps we could all achieve the American Dream if it weren’t so plagued by ne’er do wells?) Accordingly, he appears to have stuffed as much emotional banality into Joy as possible, hoping it would leaven into some kind of sense in the edit. Instead, the tonal and thematic mishmash merely results in exasperation.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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