The Dilemma

Spoiler alert-o-meter: Beware, all ye who enter.

Vince Vaughn’s acting style channels the easy smarm of mid-career Burt Reynolds, the edgy goofiness of Johnny Knoxville, and a medicine show barker. And occasionally pushing through are the facial expressions and double-takes of John Belushi. Vaughn has fashioned a leading-man career from a certain patter originated in Swingers and honed to effectiveness in Old School and Wedding Crashers. Vaughn incorporates this signature stream-of-consciousness into most of his movies. He usually plays alpha males who don’t know when to shut up, when to back down, and when they’ve crossed the line from ambition to folly. He is best taken in smaller doses.

In The Dilemma, Vaughn’s quick-talk algorithm is used for evil. The movie is a humorless, cringe-inducing, toneless, shape shifting mess. And it’s Vaughn’s movie all the way. He’s in almost every shot. There is only one scene not shown from his perspective. This close first person narrative is a necessity of the story which finds two couples who, due to various motives, are hiding secrets from each other. It’s sit-com material writ large and overblown.

The plot has Vaughn’s Ronny spotting the wife of his best buddy and business partner Nick (Kevin James, looking like the lost grandson of Lou Costello) kissing some random guy. Hence the dilemma: should Ronny tell Nick or not? This sets off a series of miscommunications and threats, and other various situations that aren’t funny and that turn Ronny obsessed and paranoid. It’s an episode of Three’s Company as directed by Roman Polanski.

Upon seeing the trailer for The Dilemma, I wondered why Winona Ryder (playing Nick’s wife, Geneva) and Jennifer Connelly (playing Ronny’s girlfriend, Beth) signed on for what are essentially female sidekick characters. The answer is that as the movie goes along it gets more serious. (Or less funny—hard to tell since there wasn’t a laugh track and the ten viewers in the audience weren’t doing much laughing.) Director Ron Howard cast dramatic actors in the supporting roles to give the movie’s dramatic shifts some gravitas. A smart move, as more comedic actresses either wouldn’t have been able to handle the various tones, or the audience wouldn’t have bought comediennes going serious.

Connelly has the lesser female part as Beth, a cook who is hiding a secret of her own from Ronny. She gamely carries off the role of girlfriend just like she’s done in lots of movies lately (Little Children, Reservation Road, He’s Just Not That Into You) and here her character is boilerplate with no interesting bits for her to dig into.

Ryder has the meatier female part. When Ronny meets Geneva for coffee to tell her that he plans to tell Nick about her indiscretion, Ryder’s dramatic chops get a workout. She tells Ronny that she’ll deny everything and accuse him of hitting on her. This is where the film dabbles in something more along the lines of psychological drama. Call it Ron Howard’s dark materials.

The tone shifts again. The light and dark elements of the story mix when Ronny tracks and confronts Zip, the dude Geneva has been snogging. Played by Channing Tatum, Zip is a drug ingesting, gun toting goof (it’s a thankless part, which Tatum brings some gusto to). Ronny fights Zip, ruining the guy’s apartment. And it turns ugly as Ron Howard lets Vaughn slip into some deep end of anger and compulsion.

Ronny goes from bothersome nudge to psychotic freak, fashioning an aerosol can as a blowtorch to use as a weapon. It’s not one bit funny. And it’s not supposed to be. If anything, it’s a reminder that Vince Vaughn can still act and should try dramatic roles again. But why shunt the story down this dark, dead-end?

By the end, when all is revealed in an incredibly unlikely intervention played (barely) for laughs, I just wasn’t buying any of it. If you’re a Kevin James fan, you will be disappointed to hear that he’s relegated early on to second banana. If you’re a fan of the actresses, rent some of their earlier movies. If you’re a fan of Vince Vaughn, then maybe you know something I don’t.

Skip The Dilemma.



Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Sunday, January 16th, 3:15 matinee. Price $8.25. Viewed solo. Snacks--mixed nuts, Large Diet Pepsi.

Coming Attractions:

African Cat. A nature flick from Disney. Like March of the Penguins, but with lions and tigers.

The Eagle. I forget what all the hubbub was about, so I'll quote IMDB: "In Roman-ruled Britain, a young Roman soldier endeavors to honor his father's memory by finding his lost legion's golden emblem." Like you do. With Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell.

Paul. A couple of UFO-obsessed Brits (Nick Frost, Simon Pegg) tour America hoping to learn more about Area 51, Roswell, etc., when they stumble upon a real alien named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen). It's live action, and the alien looks like an extra from Close Encounters. Could be cute.

Take Me Home Tonight. Topher Grace (where ya been, buddy?) can't quite make it into the current decade, and stops at 1988 for some youthful shenanigans. He's trying  to impress the girl of his dreams, and that's apparently tough to do when you still only work at Suncoast Video. So he lies. Hilarity (as it always does when you lie) ensues.

Your Highness. "When Prince Fabious's bride is kidnapped, he goes on a quest to rescue her... accompanied by his lazy useless brother Thadeous." Natalie Portman plays straight lady to a goofy James Franco and Danny McBride. 

Black Swan

Spoiler alert-o-meter: Some spoilers ahead.  

Natalie Portman was always a precocious actress. Starting out in movies in her early teens, she was a natural in The Professional and Beautiful Girls, commanding attention from just a smile. Then she starred in the Star Wars retreads (or is that pre-treads?) and it was hard to see the actress through epic story and CGI. She played an emo pin-up girl in Garden State, and played teenagers in Anywhere But Here, Where the Heart Is, and Cold Mountain.

She started taking more interesting parts with V for Vendetta, The Darjeeling Limited (in the Hotel Chevalier prologue), Closer, and My Blueberry Nights. With Black Swan, Portman confirms that she’s at her best playing characters that have something to hide; that are lying, putting on an act, or are in denial. In Hotel Chevalier, she plays a young woman whom we know little about, except she is the fickle object of Jason Schwartzman’s character’s desire. She meets him in the titular hotel, and seduces him. In Closer she plays a stripper, and in My Blueberry Nights, plays a prostitute. Each is a character good at deception, each played by Portman as if they had something to hide.

Portman follows in the footsteps of other actors like Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange who mesmerize when they play characters who are themselves acting. Nick Nolte was great in Down and Out in Beverly Hills, as a man who becomes all things to a rich, spoiled L.A. family, ending up a reflection of what they want him to be. Jessica Lange shone in Frances, about Frances Farmer, the actress who went nutty.

Actors are supposed to act like they’re not acting. Portman’s never done that for me. I always see a young woman who is natural and beautiful, who may be technically perfect, but a depthless shadow of an actress. And this is why she will never play a role better suited to her, both physically and emotionally, than she does in Black Swan. I cannot imagine this movie with another actress. And that’s a rare and wonderful thing.

Black Swan works on multiple levels, each fascinating. On the plot level, it’s about a ballet dancer, Nina, who is up for the lead in a “new take” on Swan Lake, as conceived by director Thomas Leroy (French smoothie Vincent Cassel). Nina nails the white swan part but to land the lead in the production she must also nail the darker, more emotionally intense black swan part. She’s technically perfect (as is Portman in the part), but has trouble bringing emotional fire to the black swan. Nina rehearses hard to dance well, to dance perfectly. Her drive to be perfect as both white and black swans leads to her undoing.

Black Swan co-stars Winona Ryder, Mila Kunis, and Barbara Hershey. So on another level, Black Swan is about the cutthroat world of actors. It’s the story of an aging beauty queen, Winona Ryder, forced to retire from the business to make room for the next generation of beautiful girls, as represented by Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis (as another dancer). Ryder is only in a few scenes as Beth, the aging dancer who was a star in her day, but like any athlete must eventually, she is forced to retire and make way for the younger generation. Winona Ryder is an excellent actress.

Her few moments on screen, especially her first scene where she wrecks her dressing room after getting fired from the company, work so well that I wanted the cameras to follow her around for a while. She is relegated to a hospital room for half the movie: a literal wreck after getting hit by a car. Barbara Hershey, whose face looks ravaged by time and facial surgery, plays Nina’s mom, who was herself a great dancer but who gave it all up to have Nina. And never lets her forget it.

But it’s not Ryder’s or Hershey’s movie. It’s Portman’s. And she’s riveting for the entire movie. Black Swan is told entirely from Nina’s point of view. So, we closely witness through her eyes her domineering mother, the intense rehearsals, the feeling of persecution that begins to dog her, and we feel keenly her psychosexual dramas unfolding in almost real-time as Nina can’t help but be attracted to both Thomas and the new dancer to the company, Lily—Mila Kunis as a tattooed party girl; the antithesis of Nina. But Nina’s not really attracted to them so much as drawn to them when they show the slightest endearment or attention.  

“You really need to relax,” Lily tells Nina at one point. But relaxing is just not in the cards, for Nina or for the audience. Director Darren Aronofky doesn’t let us off the hook, as the pressure Nina puts on herself to be the perfect black swan manifests itself in various ways. With unflinching composition, we get to watch as Nina worries her skin bloody. She comes to believes Lily is trying to get rid of her to take over her part. Nina lashes out at anyone who gets in her way. 

But toward the end, it’s not really Nina anymore but the black swan trying to fight the white swan for supremacy. For perfection. Ultimately there is only one way for Nina to find perfection in her performance. And this translates into exhilarating moments as Nina finally achieves the state of perfection she has been driving herself toward. 

Portman’s performance is based almost solely on her body and her ability to move within each frame. This is what I mean by her being perfect for the role. I almost felt I was watching Natalie Portman the perfectionist actor in a movie about herself playing a damaged character trying to become the perfect black swan. And, toward the end, during Nina’s debut on stage, Portman and Nina merge. And you see the transformation not just as the character Nina views it in close first-person narration sense, but also how those around her view it, and ultimately how the audience at the ballet (an extension of the movie audience) views it. And within this conceit, Portman, and the movie, nail it.

Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Sunday, January 9th, 11:35 matinee. Price $8.25. Viewed solo. Snacks--Peanut Butter Builder's Bar.

Coming Attractions:

The Adjustment Bureau. Matt Damon stumbles upon an concurrent reality where exists the adjustment bureau, a league of fedora-wearing men who control to the flow of daily events. But Matt met a woman he shouldn't have, and now he and Emily Blunt are running for their lives. Or something like that. Inception lite.

Water For Elephants. A Big McHuge Hollywood adaptation of the bestselling novel about a traveling circus, starring that guy from Twilight, Reese Witherspoon, and that guy who won best actor last year. Magical whooey.

No Strings Attached. Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher play friends who end up sleeping together. And, I'm guessing from the plot twists exposed in the trailer, that he falls for her and she just wants the sex because she has a busy life as a doctor and doesn't have time for more? Could be cute, since the stars are both cute. Not sure Portman's made a rom-com like this.

Cedar Rapids. Ed Helms takes a stab at headlining a Sundance-Cute comedy. "The plot revolves around a small town Wisconsin man (played by Helms) who, when his role model dies, must represent his company at a regional insurance conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his mind is blown by the big-town experience.” Welcome back, Anne Heche! With John C. Riley doing Will Ferrell's role.