Published On: Tue, Jun 11th, 2013

Growing Up is Hard to Do in “Frances Ha”

By: Skip Sheffield

“Frances Ha” is a creative collaboration between two people who love and understand each other.

Those people are writer-director Noah Baumbach and wife, writer-actress Greta Gerwig.

Baumbach is a semi-famous filmmaker with such provocative fare as “The Squid and the Whale” and “Greenberg.” He has also done commercial stuff: “Madagascar 3.

Greta Gerwig is 14 years younger than her husband. She has played young babe roles in “No Strings Attached” and “Arthur.” Like Gerwig, her character of Frances (last name Hawthorne, we finally learn) is at a crossroad at age 27. She came to New York City to pursue a career as dancer, even though she is a bit klutzy. She rooms with Sophie (Mickey Sumner, daughter of rock star Sting), her best friend since high school. The girls love each other, but not in a sexual way. When Sophie announces she is moving out to live with her boyfriend, Frances feels saddened and betrayed. When Frances fails to get a part in a big Christmas show she was counting on, her entire career seems in doubt.

“Frances Ha” is about that awkward time after college graduation and before “real life.” Frances has been living a prolonged adolescence, and moving from place to place, comic mishap after comic mishap, she learns ruefully she needs to “grow up-” whatever that means.

“Frances Ha” is by no means a downer. Despite her disappointments, Frances always has a veneer of optimism, consistently radiated by Gerwig. This is a “chick flick’ with important male characters who are neither evil nor nefarious, but agents of change. The film is a kind of 83-minute mood piece on the release of childish pursuits. It is neither sad nor happy, but as performed by this ensemble in just 12 shooting days in luminous high definition digital black-and-white, it is quite lovely.

Three stars

 

“After Earth:” We Have a Problem

There are fundamental problems with “After Earth.” When I first learned of the stars, the writer-director and the premise, I thought uh-oh, is this a vanity project?

No, it is not, but it is a miscalculation by co-writer, producer and star Will Smith and co-writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.

Shyamalan’s career has been “checkered,” to put it charitably since his box office hit “The Sixth Sense.”

Evidently Will Smith admired what Shyamalan did with “The Last Airbender” in 2010, because a month after it opened he contacted the writer-director with his own pitch.

Smith got the idea watching a television show in which a father and son had a car accident and the son heroically rescued his wounded, disabled dad.

“After Earth” is set in the distant future after Earth has been ravaged by cataclysmic events and abandoned as uninhabitable. Earth’s human population has been transplanted to a distant planet outside out solar system called Nova Prime.

Will Smith is Cypher Raige, the hotshot General of a cadre of space cadets known as Rangers. Real-life son Jaden Smith is ranger-in-training Kitai Raige.

Like his dad, Kitai is rebellious and rather reckless, and because of this he has not been advanced to the exalted status of Ranger.

Cypher’s wife Faia (Sophie Okonedo) sees Kitai’s misbehavior as a cry for help and love from his distant, mostly absentee father.

I bet you alert readers can see where this is heading. Yep, on a mission to the forbidden planet Earth with son in tow, Cypher’s spaceship encounters an asteroid storm and is damaged so badly it must crash-land on Earth. Cypher and Kitai are the only survivors. Both Cypher’s legs are badly broken, and he is bleeding internally. Kitai is miraculously fine. Dad tells his son their only hope for survival is to retrieve a beacon in the fractured tail section of ship some 100 kilometers distant. Kitai has only six popper capsules, worth 24 hours each, which enable him to breathe Earth’s oxygen-poor atmosphere. If that weren’t bad enough, Earth is now populated by freaky ferocious animal mutations. Can Kitai triumph against all odds and save the life of dad, who will finally see his true worth?

I will ask alert readers to guess that one.

Asking 14-year-old Jaden Smith to carry the weight of this hugely expensive sci-fi spectacle is quite a tall order. Jaden may have been only 13 when principle shooting was done on location in scenic Costa Rica. Moviefone web site reports Jaden wants the gift of emancipation for his 15th birthday July 8. This movie may supply some cues.

As a science-fiction, futuristic thrill-a-rama, I found “After Earth” less than all that. We have seen it all before, a hundred times, maybe more. It’s gratifying to see a father and son working together, but it doesn’t necessarily add up to great art, gripping entertainment or heartwarming inspiration.

Two stars

 

All is Not What It Seems in “Now You See Me”

“Now You See Me” is the cleverest, smartest film I have seen yet in 2013. This offbeat heist flick is directed by France’s Louis Leterrier (“Transporter,” “Clash of Titans”) and written by Ed Solomon (“Men in Black,” “Bill & Ted’s Adventures”) and Boaz Yakin, who also produces.

The script is essential in a complex story that hinges on magic tricks and illusions, performed by a group known as The Four Horsemen.

“The closer you look, the less you see,” warns Horseman Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), whose specialty is misdirection. Henley Reeves (Isla Fisher) is Atlas’ former assistant, love interest and escape artist. Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson) is a mentalist whose specialty is shaking down victims with embarrassing information.

The four illusionists are called together by a literally shadowy figure to perform four increasingly spectacular tricks involving stealing money from bank vaults and showering the audience with the proceeds, Robin Hood-style.

The first stunt is performed onstage at MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas but the booty is from a bank vault in Paris. How did they do it?

Pondering this same question is comically irritable FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo), calm Interpol agent Alma Dray (Melanie Laurent) and magic debunker Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). Watching the show with detached bemusement is insurance mogul Arthur Tressler (Michael Caine).

“Now You See Me” is a cat and mouse game played from Las Vegas to New Orleans to New York City. Remember the initial admonition “the closer you look the less you see,” because the plot has a giant end twist I wager few will anticipate.

As an alternative to the usual car-chase, big-bang, fly-around summer adventure, “Now You See Me’ is a thinking person’s summer romp. Just don’t think too hard. Just enjoy.

Three and a half stars

 

“Forbidden Hollywood” at LynnUniversity

Jan McArt first brought the parody show “Forbidden Broadway” to Boca Raton 20 years ago at her Upstairs Cabaret. Now she and show creator Gerard Alessandrini bring “Forbidden Hollywood” to the Wold Performing Arts Center of Lynn University. Musical send-ups of everyone’s favorite movies will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, June 1 and 4 p.m. Sunday, June 2. Tickets are $35. Call 561-297-9000.

30 Years of Reggae at Boston’s

Boston’s on the Beach in Delray Beach celebrates the 30th anniversary of Reggae Night this Monday, June 3. Rhythm Nation performs favorite Jamaican and Caribbean tunes as well as some originals. Admission is $5. Call 561-278-3364 or go to www.bostonsonthebeach.com.

 

 

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