Sundance Review: MISTRESS AMERICA

January 30, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Greta Gerwig, Lola Kirke, Michael Chernus, Mistress America, Noah Baumbach, Reviews, Sundance 2015

Noah Baumbach again arrives in auspicious fashion, delivering a fast-talking farcical bumblebee of a film whose honey is sweet and sting is bruising. It’s as much a diatribe about the fickle nature of youth as it is a pure slapstick comedy, featuring a humdinger of a hipster prophet in the form of a footloose Greta Gerwig. Baumbach’s latest is also decidedly his lightest, opting for a kind of 21st century update to the surrealist verisimilitude of “I Love Lucy” or a feminist take on “The Three Stooges” – that is, it’s his brand of “But ours goes to 11” absurd. Everything he and his characters touch upon is based in reality – on someone, on something, on somewhere – but is forcefully exaggerated in its screwy presentation. As such, Mistress America has allowed Baumbach and Gerwig to craft modern day archetypes – the awkwardly desirable nerd, the college-bound tabula rasa, the hipster goddess – and mock them to high heavens in pure unapologetically absurdist manner. Read More

Sundance Review: LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT

January 30, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Ciarán Hinds, Emmanuel Lubezki, Ewan McGregor, Last Days in the Desert, Reviews, Rodrigo García, Sundance 2015, Tye Sheridan

Director Rodrigo García claimed two themes interested him most in his articulation of Jesus’ untold 40 day fast in the desert. The first: the primordial idea of how a boy becomes a man, a step that Garcia contents happens “with or without his father’s help of permission.” The second theme surrounds the notion of creationism, both in a spiritual and storyteller’s sense. García himself underwent a creation process in the construction of Last Days in the Desert, weaving a fictitious narrative out of a notable absence in Jesus’ origin story – only mentioned in passing in the Gospels but entirely bereft of detail. This absence of a story drew García to the project, offering him an entrance into a narrative that felt to him inspired, fresh and wildly important.

In Last Days in the Desert, the first theme is tackled with obvious symmetry. On the last leg of his sandy spirit journey, Yeshua (Ewan McGregor) a.k.a. Jesus is heading home to Gaililee, a community that has praised and forsaken him in equal measure. Entering the home stretch and somewhat disappointed that his Dad has gone all hush-hush on him, Jesus feels just the slightest bit forsaken. His food- and spirit-hungry skepticism is only exacerbated by the arrival of the Devil (again, Ewan McGregor) a personified shadow demon whispering doubt at the robes wearing deity.

As his faith is bent but not broken, he comes upon the desolate home of a few essentially human folk, barley living off the arid sterility of this harsh desert land. Soon, his spiritual self-actualization is at odds with his inherently human desire to help these people in needs. Deciding to give himself over to the toil of these hard-working but flawed mortals, Yeshua must remain focused on his own metaphysical well-being while playing mediator to the internal familial strife of these desert clan (problems that include stilted interpersonal relationships and a dying matriarch.)

As Yeshua contents with the difficulty of his own distant, difficult to please father figure, the offspring of this newfound family, a boy known only as Boy (Tye Sheridan), struggles with his own unideal paternal rapport. The boy projects a warm intelligent in his penchant towards self-satisfied riddles and Sheridan ably reflects a brand of hushed acumen. Wanting to travel to Jerusalem to take on an apprenticeship doing anything other than this deserted carpentry, he asks to take up with Yeshua on his travels, offering to abandon his family in the night and pretending to be his son. There’s no WWJD contemplation as the little-big-man-upstairs gives him a brusk “Uh uh.” Sensing his son’s withdrawal, the father (Ciarán Hinds) seeks advice on how to bond with his son, eventually proving that even the best riddle cannot bring together two men clashing over something as fundamental as maturation.

In Christian Scripture, 40 days and 40 nights is the gold standard for spiritual enlightenment – with Moses also forgoing food and company for a 40 day stretch before penning (hacking?) the Ten Commandments – but García’s Last Days in the Desert wrapped in just five weeks. Filmed mostly in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park of Southern California, Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity, Birdman) adds his own signature touch to the visual flourish of García’s gazes into gritty nothingness. Though his product here is a distant cousin to the uninterrupted camerawork of both Birdman and Gravity, Lubezki illuminates the desert into otherworldly effect, predominately only with the use of natural light.

Unlike those aforementioned features that were by definition go-go-go, Last Days in the Desert is periodically immobilized by its sense of stagnancy. Through solid performances, dazzling cinematography and an alluringly minimalist narrative, it closely resembles the devil on Jesus’ shoulder in not ever being quite bewitching enough to fully tempt us onto its side. Though it does get tigerishly close.

García delivers some surprisingly compelling, though sleepy, material for a “Jesus in the Desert” art film but his post-screening testaments that this is a tale of unquestionable divinity (he contents that the Yeshua onscreen is most definitely a God, and not just a man. Here, I was thinking he was telling the story of a man, and only a man) only managed to chill my lukewarm reception of this sun-scorched film even more.

C+

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Weekly Review 70: TWO DAYS, BROCKOVICH, STAND, MAD, GLENGARRY

January 29, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Erin Brockovich, Glengarry Glen Ross, Mad Max, Reviews, Stand By Me, Two Days One Night, Weekly Review

(Note: this was written before Sundance coverage but I’ve waiting on posting it because we’ve had more than enough material than needed. Return to normal post.) 2014 is over. It’s done. In the rearview. We’ve officially put the cap on it with our 100 Best Films of 2014 so that means it’s 1000% kaput. That means I can finally return to old movies. And boy what a collection I’ve stumbled into this week. From 1979 to 2000 (…and an overrated newly released Oscar contender), this collection of brilliance is one film away from being one of the most stacked episodes of Weekly Review in a long time.

TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (2014)

I cannot think of an endeavor more French than a depressed woman walking around talking to various peers about a challenging subject. This year’s celebrated French depress-fest stars Marion Cottilard as an recently laid off employee, going door-to-door to co-workers to ask them to jettison their bonuses in order to fund her next year’s salary. It’s endlessly repetitive – a series of A-to-B-to-C conversations that derivative very little from one another – and seems to ape the philosophical stylings of Sidney Lumet‘s genius 12 Angry Men while missing the point of what makes that film so entrancing. Featuring depression, bakeries and suicide attempts, Two Days, One Night is marked by a fine performance from Cottilard even if it’s a bit of an international chore to watch. (C-)

ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)

A stirring, emotionally solid and yet enthusiastically funny drama from a top-of-his-game Steven Soderberg, Erin Brockovich is more than just an adroit starring vehicle for Julia Roberts – it’s a soaring accomplishment in its own right. That’s not to discount Roberts work though, who – as a crass, driven single mother – takes the narrative by the horn and rides it with a brand of leading lady bravura that is all too rare. As much a character study as it is a tale of legal David and Goliath, Brockovich is a delicately told, generously funny tale of a small fish wandering into a big pond. It’s an underdog story with heart and wit that shines from sensitive, exacting direction. (A-)

STAND BY ME (1986)

Dear 1980’s Rob Reiner, you rock. From Princess Bride to This is Spinal Tap!, When Harry Met Sally to Stand By Me, 80’s Reiner knew how to hedge sentimentality in with genuine, challenging emotion and loads of smart, real moments of comedy. The tubby guy who would eventually direct old timer’s flicks The Bucket List and And So It Goes doesn’t understand that division but young Reiner did. And he rocked. Stand By Me features a super-duper 80s cast including Corey Feldman, River Phoenix, Jerry O”Connell, Wil Wheaton and Keifer Sutherland as members of two motley crews hunting down train tracks for the body of a dead boy. The coming-of-age tale is handled with grace and skill, offering timeless one-liners amidst a genuinely empathic examination of youthful friendship and just what we lose when we let those bonds evaporate. (B+)

MAD MAX (1979)

Two things surprised me about Mad Max (a film I’ve long meant to watch and have just never gotten around to): its overall lack of “post-apocalypse” feel – it took a good while before I understood the notion that this was a dangerous society on the brink of collapse – and just how strange it all was. The former caught me off guard because I had always pictured Mel Gibson‘s Aussie breakout franchise to be set in a sandy wasteland filled with skulls and low on fuel. The later – its strangeness – was a pleasant surprise and is really what makes the film pop. Though Gibson reveals some of the rage-filled potency that would go on to make him such an international star, it’s Hugh Keays-Byrne as Toecutter that really steals the scenes. Even when a touch unfocused, Mad Max is a wildly original concept – even by today’s standards – that creates a rich, lived in world occupied by thrashing vehicles and motorcycle scumbags. I’ve heard Road Warrior is the Empire Strikes Back of the franchise and am now eagerly waiting to scarf it up next. (B)

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)

Terrible name aside, Glengarry Glen Ross is a brilliant actor’s showcase that harkens back to Sidney Lumet‘s golden age. Housing a number of tour de force performances – how Jack Lemmon did not receive a personalized Oscar for this, I have no clue – and intellectually soaring from David Mamet‘s adaptation of his own Tony-winning play, Glengarry Glen Ross turns working class woes into a breed of timeless poetry – both incredibly pertinent upon its release and now. And likely to be just as timely and biting in the future. It’s a film about desperately holding onto what you’ve got and finding the fight in yourself, achieved through dog-toothed tête-à-tête conversations that Aaron Sorkin wished he would have written. Having both my respect and adoration, Glengary Glen Ross is so much more than just a pinnacle of theatrical adaptations – it’s a goddamn masterpiece in its own right. (A+)

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Sundance Review: THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

January 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Reviews Tagged Billy Crudup, Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Reviews, Sundance, Sundance 2015, The Stanford Prison Experiment, Tim Talbott, Tye Sheridan

Things came in twos at this year’s Sundance Film Festival with a pair of Cobie Smulders’ features competing against one another for the Dramatic Competition prize, a set of unexpected pregnancy comedy/dramas, Tye Sheridans (who actually was showcased in three films: Last Days in the Desert, Entertainment and this film we’re in the midst of reviewing) and, most notably, a duo of 1960-70s social psychology experiment films. One of which, The Experimenter told the story of Stanley Milgram, administer of increasing electrical shocks and student of peer pressure. The feature starred Peter Sarsgaard and was met with middling reviews.

The Stanford Prison Experiment featured no such A-list star in its telling of the infamous study of the role of the situation but, from what we’ve gathered, is the superior feature of the two – the Prestige to its Illusionist (2006), the Jurassic Park to its Carnosaur (1993), the John Wick to its Equalizer (2014)- amounting to a chilling, procedural experiment of authority and influence that toys with the variable of structural familiarity. It’s dangerously close to being great – and truly is in some scenes – but it’s true-to-life messiness doesn’t coalesce into the kind of form-fitting narrative perfection that defines stronger films.

You can train a dog to sit, shake and roll over. You should not however force a human to learn the same tricks. What takes place in The Stanford Prison Experiment is very much an exercise in teaching an old dog a new trick by way of unchecked domination. The result is a harrowing, hard-to-watch dissection of the role of power and the all-encompassing effect of the situation on the perception of those inside of it.

In 1971, 24 college-aged students were divided into two groups – prisoner and correctional officers – for a study intended to examine the seemingly unavoidable clash between military guards and their prisoners. If Tim Talbott‘s script can be believe, all participants uniformly preferred to be selected as the “prisoner” in the study. One particular rationale for such preference was: “It will probably be easier.” As The Stanford Prison Experiment unfolds, nothing could have been further off the mark.

Over the course of only the first day, Dr. Phillip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup), the chief psychologist in charge of the study, realizes the data is going to be much more exaggerated than he first hypothesized. From go, those selected as guards assimilate into the role with cowboyish abandon, with one exuberant guard later labeled “John Wayne” going so far as to adopt a southern lawman drawl and persona. Just as Zimbardo smirks and smiles through his mock arrest, the bogus guards find it their simulated duty to wipe that smile off as quickly as possible. Stripped of his clothes and dignity in mere minutes, they achieve their goal with unthinkable menace.

Operating under the presumption that they were selected because of their better standing as students, workers or citizens, the guards take on a hulking superiority complex, one that is exaggerated by director Kyle Patrick Alvarez‘s no-holds-barred grasp on the psychological tension of the situation. Having the consolation of the real Dr. Zimbardo gives the film further credibility, especially in the context of its least humane moments.

Treating the prisons like bonafide wrongdoers and extending so far as to physically beat them (a breach of contractual agreements), each set of guards – morning, day and night – has its own alpha male personality that takes the lead. Not to stoop to obvious parallels but Hitler Youth is written all over these psuedo-sherriffs who’ve tasked themselves with the responsibility of robbing the inmates of their most basic human privileges. The knowledge that they are indeed just peers, unluckily assigned at the flip of a coin, has all but escaped them. The extent of their malicious humiliation is enough to turn blood to ice, creating a hellish arena cloaked in uniforms and aviators well beyond what one would expect your average 18-year-old capable of.

All the authenticity The Stanford Prison Experiment brings to the table establishes an alarming, visceral sense of reality but is also accountable for a skosh of its failures. Because of its strict adherence to factual truths, some of the most intriguing characters disappear before we want them to. A minor complaint in the fact of a lofty accomplishment but one I had none the less.

B

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Sundance Review: MISSISSIPPI GRIND

January 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Anna Boden, Ben Mendelsohn, Reviews, Ryan Fleck, Ryan Reynolds, Sundance 2015

There are some people who just can’t help but roll the dice. No matter how far ahead or behind they are, they just need to have one more go at the “big win”. And as any longtime gambler knows, the win is incomparable elation. Though in the long run, this mentality always loses. Statically, a lifetime of gambling is bankrupting. It leads to broken relationships, distrust and disquieting desperation. With some, the influence to bet it all becomes a certifiable addiction the likes of crack or caffeine or Lost. Those able to delude themselves blindly forgo the notion that the odds are never in their favor. The house always wins.

Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) is one of these people. Though affable and a confirmed good time, even Gerry knows he’s not a good guy, and he’s willing to tell you the truth of it. A lifetime of horse tracks, slot machines, poker tables, greyhound races and blackjack has left him penniless, alone and in debt to most he knows. He hasn’t spoken with his daughter in years and his ex-wife wants nothing to do with his devious, sock-drawer-thieving ways. Even while Gerry attempts to portray a glass-is-half-full image, it’s understoof that his cup hath runneth dry.

Enter Curtis (Ryan Reynolds), a shamrock of a drifter with an immeasurable penchant for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. At a small-time Texas Hold ‘Em tourney, the implacable Curtis squares off against Gerry, throwing a crux to Gerry’s audiobook-trained read on rival players. Woodfords are ordered and shared and Curtis’ hard-working mouth extends just enough outsider anecdotes to win over the small-town folk, most especially Gerry. A night of darts cement their favor for one another. A post-Woodford stabbing proves that sans Curtis, Gerry is a man shit out of luck.

In a last ditch effort to reconcile his outstanding debts before the squeeze becomes too much to bear, Gerry teams up with his new good luck charm Curtis on a hunt for a big score in New Orleans. What follows is a Tom Sawyer-nodding tramp down the Mississippi in which we can’t quite place who is Tom and who is Jim. As their odd-couple road trip ambles down the banks of the surging river, they stop off at various intersections – here a upscale whorehouse housing an old flame, there a familiar casino where Curtis once held VIP status.

Each terminal casts glimpses into the perennial migrant that is Curtis, without giving him away before the final card is dealt. As Curtis remains a bit of a mystery throughout – providing a curious counterpart to Gerry’s transparent distress – he becomes a bit of a noble savage of the open road. But Reynolds handles the character better than most, injecting Curtis with just the right amount of playboy charm without trotting into the obnoxious snark that too often characterizes him as an actor.

As the duo near their final destination, Gerry’s unconscionable side sees the light of day and Mendelsohn is able to work the character into empathic though despicable territory. With a losing streak this hot, we pity Gerry rather than cheer him to a win because we know that one win inevitably leads to five losses.

Strong chemistry between Mendelsohn and Reynolds ease the more predictable elements from taking hold and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck‘s ability to slam the occasional magical surrealism into his pragmatic sentiment makes Mississippi Grind a well-played victory, if not a chip-sweeping royal flush.

B-

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Sundance Review: DIGGING FOR FIRE

January 28, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Chris Messina, Digging For Fire, Jake Johnson, Joe Swanberg, Orlando Bloom, Reviews, Rosemarie DeWitt, Sam Rockwell, Sundance 2015

Displaying the kind of laid back candor that sums up the mumblecore founding member, Joe Swanberg revealed that once you have kids, “life is a clusterfuck.” And so is Digging For Fire. Kinda. A lesser effort in the aftermath of two eruptively sweet victories (Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas), Digging for Fire takes on the humps and bumps of marriage and the battle of young parenthood with an enviable cast for any director.

Swanberg has never really made anything bad (though mediocre wouldn’t be a huge stretch with this one) but with all the talent gathered, Swanberg’s narrative wanderlust oses focus, leaving Digging for Fire feeling the strain of Swanberg’s scriptless tendencies. According to the director, Digging for Fire had a more complete, “bigger” script than any of his other projects – mostly because he had so much talent involved and needed to schedule like a really Hollywood dog. In true Swanberg fashion, his final treatment was about ten pages. Famous for crafting just the barebones of a story before shooting, the mumblecore man demands his actors to make choices once the camera are rolling to get from an established Point A to an established Point B. All that middle ground is fair game for improvisation.

At times, his distinctive make of cinematic vagrancy allows for some great unscripted scenes – Jake Johnson‘s hindmost digging moment, Chris Messina‘s unscripted pool nudity, Sam Rockwell doing any and every thing, Swanberg’s adorable baby boy doing any and every thing – but also opens the door for some less compelling episodes – Rosemarie DeWitt‘s beachside interlude with Orlando Bloom, Anna Kendrick and Brie Larson‘s casual disppearance from the action, unsatisfying relationship arcs.

Digging For Fire opens with a familiar Swanberg platitude; stressed out adults talk about stressed out adult problems; strong women trying to gain the reins on their less-than-model husband; secret undertones of dreaming about the highlife of the young freewheeler. Tim (Johnson) and Lee (DeWitt) have just arrived at a client of Lee’s to housesit their upper-decker mansion and get a vacation from their less-than-model home. In between bouts of nagging about preschools and taxes, Tim discovers a rusty gun and a human bone buried in the backyard (a story idea culled straight from an odd incident in Johnson’s life.)

When the couple soon after separate for a weekend, each decide to pursue a side of themselves that has seemed to snuff out in the face of marriage. After dumping their kid with Grandma and PopPop (Sam Elliot), Lee meets up with an old friend (Melanie Lynskey) to air out their marital snafus. Obsessed with the mystery of the gun and the rusty bone, Tim calls together a posse of friends old and new to put shovels to dirt over beers and a few lines of cocaine.

Each half of the couple contents with the ghost of their old selves, opening doors that uncover new demons. Problem is, those doors sometimes seem as random as briefcases on Let’s Make a Deal. Many of Swanberg’s characters work in their own right but don’t add enough to the makeup of the final product to legitimize all their erratic appearances. Although Swanberg seems to be dipping his toes in more mature, less jejune waters, he’s able to maintain his very distinctive voice and worldview. If only he could have equally inserted the tangy sharpness and sweet comedy of his last films in this creation by man at crossroads.

C+

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Sundance Review: SLOW WEST

January 27, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged John McKean, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Reviews, Robbie Ryan, Slow West, Sundance 2015

Michael Fassbender is a welcome addition to any film marque – independent or otherwise. From the jaguar-like way he carries himself to the silky, chop salad baritone of his voice, his dangerous presence is inimitable and essential (even through a paper-machie helmet.) Like the great Western heroes of lore, he saunters on spurs, a meaty cigar never far from his tobacco-stained mouth. He’s a gunslinger even when he’s not armed. In Slow West though, he is. He’s very armed, and deadly cool. Read More

Sundance Review: ADVANTAGEOUS

January 27, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Advantageous, Jacqueline Kim, Jennifer Phang, Ken Jeong, Reviews, Samantha Kim, Sundance, Sundance 2015 70 Comments

Metaphysical bodysnatching from the POV of the snatcher, Advantageous is a soft sci-fi-drama centered around a cool idea but repeatedly undone by shoddy execution, unconvincing performances and dreadful FX. Commendable though Jennifer Phang‘s mother-daughter relationship study might be in the context of Sundance’s overabundance of father-son sagas, Phang is able to capitalize on the maternal bonds between ejector and ejected but has no idea which direction to take it in after it’s been established. Instead, it’s bagged up, zip-tied and casually thrown into an ebb of “does it really matter?”

The future is now in Phang’s minimalist economic fiction and it’s one that’s risibly domineered by white dudes. Though women aren’t technically banned from having jobs, there is an increasingly dominant movement to blast back to the past and re-adopt the Baby Booming mentality of staying at home, making waffles and secretly scarfing cocktails. The commentary isn’t subtle, but neither is the film.

Gwen (Jacqueline Kim) is a single mother, promptly aging out of her cushy position as the face of an appearance engineering firm that’s the modern day evolution of plastic surgery. Faced with the reality that her 40something year old countenance just isn’t paying the bills anymore, she’s forced to make a decision to play guinea pig to a new game-changing procedure that will transfer her consciousness into a younger, more form-fitting body.

This presents obvious mommy issues that extend well beyond the whole “I’m disorientated because Mom’s got a new face” factor and the narrative problems underlying Gwen’s motivation plague the should-be emotionally hefty moments in its later parts. It doesn’t help that the future society in which Gwen and daughter Jules (newcomer Samantha Kim) is populated by half-finished CGI that add nothing to the film aside from a general sense of haphazardness. One is forced to assume that either the money tank ran dry or the effect guys didn’t finish their work. A sadly definitive blanket statement about the film at large.

The appearance of Ken Jeong on the cast list comes as a major red flag though he ends up the least to blame for the frequent failures of Advantageous. The depressing thing is that cinema needs more movies like this: that feature foreign voices, foreign actors and women in the spotlight in front of and behind the camera. But to celebrate the film for its makeup rather than its internal worth is a misstep as well. Ultimately, Advantageous is an unsatisifying, unremarkable, incomplete feeling soft sci-fi that should have been so much more and could have been with a few more coats of paint.

D+

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Sundance Review: 99 HOMES

January 26, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged 99 Homes, Andrew Garfield, Laura Dern, Michael Shannon, Noah Lomax, Ramin Bahrani, Reviews, Sundance 2015

Success and honesty have become diametrically opposed forces in 99 Homes, a one-percenter housing thriller that pits a wolf of real estate in the form of an e-cigarette munching Michael Shannon against a hardworking everyman day laborer (Andrew Garfield). Money though is a powerful drug. Opulence, an even purer form of intoxicant. And as Dennis Nash’s (Garfield) desperate catches the sweet whiff of greenback wafting from the depths of Rick Carver’s (Shannon) pockets, he becomes willing to trade in his common man status for the spade suit of an iniquitous property mogul.

Sundance Review: SLEEPING WITH OTHER PEOPLE

January 26, 2015 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Adam Scott, Alison Brie, Jason Mantzoukas, Jason Sudeikis, Leslye Headland, Reviews, Sleeping With Other People, Sundance 2015

Leslye Headland arrived on the cinematic scene in a roundabout kind of way. Her debut film Bachelorette divided audiences -Reelview’s James Berardinelli gave it zero stars and labeled it “the worst movie of 2012” (we gave it a soaring review) though it’s gone on to achieve a quiet cult status. Originally written as a screenplay then adapted for the stage, her raunchy theatrical production was discovered, altered back into movie form and green lit with an inspired cast (Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson.) The outcome was a lewd female Hangover bursting with genuine laughs. In 2013, Headland got back on the horse for a new project, one that she just described as “When Harry Met Sally with assholes.” And so came Sleeping With Other People, a satirically formulaic though gravely side-splitting whooper.

Those fond of indie-leaning contemporary relationship fare will find Headland malting her sugary goodness in a salty brine. Fans of You’re the Worst will find many parallels to FX’s underrated and desperately sarcastic rom-com. Hence the whole “with assholes” sentiment. Tossing up a 21st century mentality on sexuality, Sleeping With Other People – as its name implies – is about the loose mortality of the modern man as sex predator and the childlike, pissy murkiness of the dating pool. Squaring two flawed-in-a-charming-way rubes against one another, Headland deliberates but decidedly chooses to hem just far enough from the commercially successful star-studded rom coms of box office trumpings. Her vision is much seedier and much more real for it.

Jason Sudeikis stars opposite Alison Brie as a pair of sexually incomplete post-Millennials who lost their virginity to one another 12 years back. The fateful teeth of serendipity strike as they come to head at a sex addicts anonymous meeting. Rather than lunge at each other’s genitals like venereal tigers, they fall into an all-consuming friendship, pledging to stay as Platonic as “Symposium” and totally not bone each other. Complications arise.

As a womanizer of the most severe degree, Jake (Sudeikis) is a conquistador of panties flagging his way through New York like a Minesweeper pro. But his sights are immovably squared on Lainey (Brie), who herself is struggling from a serious case of unwarranted love addition. Her mark: the perennially boring Matthew Sobvechik (Adam Scott.) Jealousy, that fickle mare, rears her head but Headland knows how to tame it into hilarious and heartwarming shapes.

Lines between friendship and relationship become palpably blurred – a fact that circumstantial BFF Xander (Jason Mantzoukas) is happy to point out – as Jake and Lainey fall deeper into their nonphysical courtship. For all the sex that they’re not having though, the film is gooey with sexual situations and genuinely side-splitting carnal talks. Sudeikis performing a “rude DJ” lesson on a Green Tea bottle is the peak of Headland’s sardonic raunch.

Natural chemistry between Brie and Sudeikis makes their jabs and mounting affection land all the more. As the third act runs, Headland proves a storytelling tease; her will-they-or-won’t-they battleground threatens to come to a standstill as she holds her characters back from one another like rabid dogs on chains. It’s a rare occasion that I find myself rooting for an onscreen romantic comedy couple but Headland turned me to putty in her emotionally manipulative, relationship-calloused hands.

B+

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