REVIEW: Rachel Getting Married (B+)

The similarities between Rachel Getting Married and last year's Margot at the Wedding didn't occur to me until I left the theater, but it was a realization that explained the detached, annoyed feeling I had as I sat through this movie. Turns out I don't really care about the problems of self-absorbed, upper-class, dysfunctional families who have oh-so-hip weddings in the backyards of their picturesque East Coast homes. My inability to access the emotions of these characters doesn't necessarily make Rachel Getting Married a bad movie, but it does, as evidenced in my score below, prevent me from calling it a great one. While highly superior to Margot, it left me with the same bad taste in my mouth, which was made even more sour because I was really hoping to like it.

It may sound a bit ridiculous if you know their respective styles well, but I still confuse the films of Ted Demme with those of his uncle, Jonathan Demme, despite the fact that the former died in 2002 of a drug-induced heart attack. A shame, because he appeared to be the more intriguing talent in the family; in the last 20 years I consider only three of Jonathan Demme's films notable: The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), and The Agronomist (2003). With Rachel Getting Married, Demme returns to the more comedic notes of his 80's films, making it contemporary for today's audience by injecting the comedy into a tragedy. As in Margot at the Wedding, we're meant to laugh at the characters' pain.

Although Anne Hathaway (Get Smart, The Devil Wears Prada) owns Rachel Getting Married, she is in fact Kym, Rachel's younger sister. With permission to leave her drug rehab facility for the weekend of Rachel's wedding, Kym finds herself predictably uncomfortable with her dysfunctional family, the wedding party, and even the wedding guests. In order to mask her insecurities she jokes about her experience in rehab, but nobody finds her attitude funny, especially not her overbearing family. Awkward arguments and even domestic violence lead up to the big wedding day, which we experience, like everything else, in shaky, grainy handheld video. Why? I suppose so we'd think we were watching a home video or documentary about dysfunctional families and not another pretentious indie film about them.

While there wasn't much for me to like about the story and production style of Rachel Getting Married, I can't deny that it was superbly acted and sharply written by first-time screenwriter Jenny Lumet (daughter of Sidney). With unpredictable dialogue and a couple of fresh scenes (the dishwasher loading competition stands out), Lumet almost succeeded in making the movie less of a cliché. Sometimes I felt it was a little overwritten because I couldn't follow the torrid pace of the conversations, but that may have had more to do with Demme's direction than with screenplay.

The acting may be the one area of the film where Demme did not do too much, and it's on fine display here. As sister, mother, and father to our main character, respectively, Rosemarie DeWitt, Debra Winger, and Bill Irwin each provide some memorably emotional moments. I'm puzzled by the casting choice of Tunde Adebimpe of the indie rock group TV on the Radio; it seems like he was just playing himself here. Although he has some limited acting experience, I wonder if his character (the groom-to-be) couldn't have added more emotion to the film in the hands of a different actor. Hathaway, who here looks like Madame Tutli Putli from last year's Academy Award-nominated short, continues to show that her true talent was on display in Brokeback Mountain much more than it was in The Princess Diaries franchise or The Devil Wears Prada. She will almost certainly receive award consideration for a performance in a year that has so far only featured a handful of notable dramatic performances from both men and women.

Another tragic family portrait...

It's been an interesting middle third of the year for me. In the past four months I've been to four weddings in four different cities (San Francisco, Minneapolis, San Diego, Boston). All different cities, all different styles (one officiated in Spanish, one featuring traditional Jewish rituals like the breaking of the glass), and yet none of them resembled anything like the tragedies in Rachel Getting Married. I'm not saying that the characters are unrealistic, but to the extremes that the story was taken here, I just couldn't get into it. There will certainly be people who can relate to the family relations in Rachel Getting Married, but I found myself appreciating only a few of the film's elements, so it ended up being a good movie that I just didn't like. Oh well, at least the music at the wedding was different from the usual playlist.

Grade:
Writing - 9
Acting - 10
Production - 8
Emotional Impact - 6
Music - 5
Social Significance - 5

Total: 44/50= 88% = B+

Short Cuts: "You Got It, Man!"

Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Directed by Sidney Lumet; written by Frank Pierson; starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning, Penelope Allen, and Carol Kane.

REVIEW: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (B-)

Background: At the young age of 33, Sidney Lumet was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for 12 Angry Men, his directorial debut. That was in 1957. Think. 1957. 50 YEARS LATER, Lumet is still hard at work in the director's chair - this time for Kelly Masterson's writing debut, Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, which supposedly takes its title from an Irish toast. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote), Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset), Albert Finney (Big Fish), and Marisa Tomei (Factotum). Lumet (who also directed Network, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon) received an honorary Academy Award several years ago, and he may not make another feature. If for no other reason than to pay respect to a Hollywood legend, you should probably see Before the Devil Knows Your Dead.

Synopsis: (Full disclosure here: I was inexcusably late, but I know the first few scenes didn't make the movie.) Andy (Hoffman) is a successful NYC payroll executive and is unhappily married to Gina (Tomei), who is having an affair with Andy's down-on-his-luck brother Hank (Hawke). Andy hates his job and secretly uses cocaine and heroine; Hank is a deadbeat dad who can never afford to meet his daughter's needs. After returning from a trip to Rio with Gina, Andy makes a proposition to Hank: rob their parent's jewelry store in Westchester County on a Saturday morning. Incredibly, Hank agrees even when Andy tells Hank he's not going to actually be involved. Hank convinces his criminal friend to accompany him, the robbery goes sour, and both Hank's mother - who was unexpectedly working at the time - and Hank's friend are killed by each other's bullets. Hank, who was waiting the car, takes off without a trace. Almost immediately, Hank and Andy's lives unravel. Their father (Finney) is obviously in distress, they've killed their mother, they don't have any money, Hank's friend's wife knows what happened, and Andy is about to go off the deep end. Eventually their father wises to the situation, but by that time things are out of control, and several lives are lost in the disturbing finale.

I Loved:
+ The scenes featuring both Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman, even when just on the phone.
+ The supporting performances by Marisa Tomei and Albert Finney.

I Liked:
+ The musical score, equal parts chilling and comforting.
+ That nobody got away with anything.
+ The long take during Andy's first visit to the drug dealer's apartment.

I Disliked:
- The predictability of the last shootout.
- The time shifting between days and weeks before and after - didn't seem necessary to the story for me since everything was already laid out. A more straightforward approach would have been more powerful.
- Andy's proposition - how exactly is he earning any of the money from the heist if Hank does all the work?

I Hated:
- The unnervingly loud flash frame cutting between story lines.
- The creepy, silk robe-wearing drug dealer.

Grade:
Writing - 8
Acting - 9
Production - 8
Emotional Impact - 8
Music - 5
Significance - 3

Total: 41/50= 82% = B-

Last Word: What should have been a really interesting (albeit disturbing) story about family betrayal was for me weakened by the fact that I just really didn't care about the characters. This is not to say that Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is a bad movie. On the contrary, it's well made (for the most part) and acted - but when the story isn't strong the movie suffers. I didn't know enough about Andy or Hank to really care what happened to them, and frankly, they both just turned me off. Some people may say it's better to leave their inner demons hidden, but in this case they were too surprising. Andy just comes out and starts shooting people in the head? In that case I would also have to assume he has done some pretty dirty deeds in his past, but that's not what we're led to believe. I don't know, it just didn't seem like the most realistic good-person-turned-bad movie. I think Sidney Lumet does an excellent job in extracting believable flip-outs from his actors (e.g., Dog Day Afternoon and Network), but there is character development lacking in that aspect in Before the Devil Knows Your Dead. Add some unnecessary flashbacks and bizarre, momentum-stopping editing, and what's left is a movie that just doesn't reach its full potential.