REVIEW: Wit & Remembering Mike Nichols

Mike Nichol's is a filmmaker who will go down in history as one of the greats. His work as a film director has been beyond inspiring to me. For 50 years his work in the industry has been pushing boundaries and telling unique stories with some of the most memorable characters of all time. Many know him as the man who brought The Graduate to life. An utterly iconic film that brought Nichols an Academy Award for Best Director. He also won several Tony's over the years for his theatre work on Broadway, winning Best Director 6 times over. He's one of 12 people known to have an EGOT, an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, an illustration of his outstanding achievements in media over the years.

What I truly find remarkable are the films that prominently feature women in film. Over the years Nichols has developed a body of work that reflects strong women, through complex and engaging characters. From Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Working Girls, to Silkwood, to Closer, to Heartburn. Nichols showed that shattering stereotypes can create remarkable characters that persist in our cultural memory.

With the passing of the legendary Mick Nichols I wanted to explore a film in his repertoire that I had not before seen. Wit is one of only two writing credits on Nichol's IMDb page, for an HBO film he co-wrote with the wonderful Emma Thompson. It's the adaptation of a play by the same title by Margaret Edson.

9/10 - If you cry at the opening of Disney's Up then NEVER watch this. I cried a river. 

In it's most simple form, Wit follows the diagnosis and treatment of a philosophy professor's ovarian cancer.

The majority of the film is composed of monologues by Dr. Vivian Bearing as she reflects upon her treatment, and her life. She shares her love of the English language, and the poetry she spent her life dedicated to teaching. As her treatment progresses her dignity is diminished and the philosophy she recollects learning and teaching takes on new meaning.

Make no mistake, Wit is not a nice film. It's not funny, or sweet, or warm. It's brutally honest and never wavers or offers relief. It's sharply intelligent with a precise and concentrated use of language. It's utterly emotionally draining. And yet this film is also beautiful, inspiring, and touching.

As heart wrenching as it is to watch, Wit is a tremendously honest movie experience. Mike Nichols reigns in the audience with a focused and unflinching view of the raw emotions Vivian feels. I was utterly enraptured by the film. With the lyrical poetry that Vivian spoke, and the way the events were presented as experiences, I simply could not break away from this film. Without question, Emma Thompson does some of the best work of her career. The whole film relies on her ability to convey the exact emotions of the present moment and she does so brilliantly.

Here is a fantastic review by Roger Ebert.

IMDb - Wit (8.2)
Wikipedia - Wit
Rotten Tomatoes - Wit (80%)

REVIEW: Chef

6/10 - Are you hungry? You will be...

Chef is part passion project and part paint by numbers. Writer and director and star Jon Favreau created this film about how leaving his job as head chef in a well respected restaurant brought his family together to help him launch a food truck.

It's actually quite a good film. There's plenty of heart with a touching relationship between father and son, and lots of support from the friends and family in the supporting cast. It's beautifully shot with exquisite scenes of cooking that will certainly leave any audience drooling, I also like the integration of technology in this film. Often movies that try to utilize social media come across like an advertisement. In this case, the web is part of the universe we all live in, with both real implications and the ability to walk away from it. The focus stays on what's important, without getting too involved in tricky explanations.

I cannot say I particularly loved this movie. There's something bizarre about the plot that frustrated me as a viewer. This is meant to be a story about bottoming out, and finding what's really important. He embarks in a much smaller venture, cooking out of a food truck with his family. My problem is how he got to that point. Jon Favreau doesn't seem to like conflict. Scene after scene, characters are trying to lift up Carl, characters that shouldn't help him are going out of their way to help him.

There's a point halfway through the film where Favreau's Iron Man buddy makes a one scene appearance as the eccentric ex-husband of Carl's ex-wife. After some circular discussion, Chef Carl Casper walks out with a food truck. Seriously. Someone is going to have to explain that to me. It's like a bizzaro-world version of the Ex-Wives Club formed in the middle of this movie and through the magic of cinema, Carl got to move forward with his dream.

That's exactly the sort of thing I hate seeing in a movie. An entertaining scene is still not good if it's pushing forward an illogical plot. What's the message being presented here? Carl didn't have to work to get what he wanted. Was it meant to illustrate that buttering up to the first husband of his ex-wife is the same as relying on family? It's just so disjointed and improbable to me that it makes me out of the movie.

For a film written by, directed by, and starring the same person, it's surprisingly well paced. There's a lot of charm and chemistry between the cast which bails it out of some of the more improbably exposition scenes. It's a movie universe you want to live in, for more reasons then just the food.

IMDb - Chef (7.3)
Wikipedia - Chef
Rotten Tomatoes - Chef (88%)
Amazon.ca - Chef

REVIEW: Let's Be Cops

4/10 - Near unwatchable. 

You know what I hate? A film that has a good premise but doesn't know how to get to that setup in a realistic way.

In this case, the concept is the guys from New Girl run around as cops. Great. How do we get there? A pretty piss poor series of events. It's the plot a 8th grader would write - One is a video game developer who has cop uniforms because... he wants to make a cop video game? And the cops just hand over uniforms for that sort of thing. Then they make their own cop car. For real. They just get a car and make it into a cop car. That's a thing, I guess. Deadbeats who can't get their lives together decide to realistically fool the cops with little to no motivation.

The best thing I can say about this movie is it puts some scenes of fun things to good music.

There are some delightful cameos that I won't spoil. Natasha Leggero is on of my favorites, she's a gem. The casting in general is quite well done. Jake Johnson and Damon Waynes Jr. are really fun together.

But for real, don't see this movie. I can't imagine what kind of train-wreck this would be if it didn't have such a great set of leads. The plot is virtually non-existent. There's nothing original about the scenarios they find themselves in. Everyone plays their lines mildly funny but there really is nothing inherently funny about the story.

What's actually a little worrisome about this film is how similar the story is to the 2013 buddy real-cop movie The Heat. If the intention is to write a movie about idiots pretending to be cops, it's should't culminate with them actually being great cops. Even 21 Jump Street didn't have any moments of them being great cops. This movie is just a mess. No intention, no story, no great moments, no great laughs.

IMDb - Lets Be Cops (6.7)
Wikipedia - Lets Be Cops
Rotten Tomatoes - Lets Be Cops (19%)
Amazon.ca - Lets Be Cops