Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses
THE ROSES
If you're a fan of the 1989 marital slapstick The War of the Roses, which has to rank among the nastiest and funniest black comedies ever released by a major Hollywood studio, the opening minutes of director Jay Roach's and screenwriter Tony McNamara's re-imagining The Roses are both enormously satisfying and preemptively disappointing. You may as well get used to that feeling, because the entire movie seems to toggle between greatness, particularly in the performances, and blandness, right up until the final frame.
From the start, the most evident difference between the two films lies in their titles, and during the first half of The Roses' 105 minutes, you may wonder whether the War of the 1989 version (as well as the 1981 Warren Adler novel that inspired both adaptations) will ever get underway. Yes, Roach's and McNamara's rendition opens with a therapy session in which many verbal harpoons are launched by the unhappily wed Theo and Ivy Rose, roles played to the hilt by Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman. Tasked by their increasingly aghast therapist (Belinda Bromilow) to compose lists of “10 things you like about one another,” Theo begrudgingly recites a few questionable compliments of the “Her head has a nice shape in a certain light” variety. Ivy's 10-best places “He has arms” at the top, her other nine a series of increasingly biting insults that ends with her calling Theo a name that's unprintable even in the Reader. (You can guess what it is; the Roses, after all, are British.)
Yet by the time their mortified therapist sends the pair out, convinced as she is that they'll never mend their differences, Theo and Ivy are already deep into giggling at the woman's distress, at which point we hear Ivy, in voice-over, saying “I can't believe how close we came to losing each other that day,” with Theo wistfully agreeing. Then a fade to white, and the movie's title, in pretty cursive lettering, appears on-screen along with the addendum: “ … a love story.” If you know your War of the Roses, this chain of events immediately begs a few questions, beginning with “What the hell?! Are we being forewarned that, given how collectively squeamish audiences have become since the late-'80s, this dark comedy will never get that dark? Are we actually gonna get a happy ending?” This seems inconceivable given McNamara's recent track record: The Favourite, Poor Things, even Disney's Cruella to a certain extent. But Roach is a different animal. His Austin Powers and Meet the Parents flicks may have boasted occasionally naughty gags, yet they were still effectively benign, and his dramas Trumbo and Bombshell appeared to instinctively steer away from the gutter ugliness their subjects frequently demanded. Even at their roughest, Roach films – and this extends to his fantastic, Emmy-winning HBO projects Recount and Game Change – are safe in ways that McNamara scripts simply aren't.
Given the mismatch of their cinematic sensibilities, it's frankly surprising that The Roses works as well as it does, especially considering the relative cheeriness of the first almost-hour. Before things go deeply south, it's all blue skies for Theo and Ivy, who falls instantly in love, abandon England for California, and, a decade later, are happily settled with twins. (Delaney Quinn and Ollie Robinson play the kids at 10, Hala Finley and Wells Rappaport take over when they're 13, and all four youths prove to be instinctive, naturalistic comedians.) Theo is enjoying wild success as an architect, and Ivy, a fiercely imaginative and gifted chef, takes care of the children while operating a seafood restaurant – We've Got Crabs! – that's open three days a week. It's after a hideous, storm-related disaster that Theo finds his career essentially over, requiring Ivy to become the sole breadwinner and Theo to handle the child rearing. Both spouses, it turns out, succeed at their new assignments beyond their wildest dreams. Yet the status change also opens the door to politely tense conversations about finances and parental responsibility, which in turn lead to simmering resentments and withering asides, which finally result in all-out loathing, physical and emotional violence, and the dirtiest of dirty tricks. In other words, for moviegoers, it's Heaven – or would be if a creeping blandness didn't keep inserting itself into the mix.
The movie is on solid ground, exceptional ground, whenever Theo and Lily are at each other's throats. Cumberbatch and Colman are two of the wittiest actors alive, and they perform miracles with the caustic put-downs McNamara gives them, delivering every devastating bon mot with sandpaper-dry inflections and snidely self-confident smiles that hurt almost more than their words do. Every so often, the actors are forced to scream at one another, but Cumberbatch and Colman are such subtle monsters here that they don't need the added volume – their pin pricks draw more blood than the bludgeoning. Yet throughout the film, we're also made continually aware of the sadness behind the Roses' anger, and while the emotional dichotomy makes sense, it tends to neuter the fun. Theo and Ivy both have several scenes of awareness and reflection in which they quietly weep, sometimes in front of one another, and Cumberbatch and Colman unquestionably sell their characters' misery. Trouble is, after witnessing these honestly moving moments, it becomes difficult to enjoy the couple's more outrageous methods of retaliation, and they do grow increasingly outrageous. By focusing on the love that went sour rather than the sourness itself, Roach and McNamara sorely undercut the movie's slapstick aspirations, and by the film's climax, even though I'm pretty convinced we should've been, I don't recall anyone in my auditorium laughing.
Despite the routinely crude language and frequently uproarious dialogue, the film boasts a strange hedging-our-bets quality, as if Roach and McNamara (though more likely just Roach … and perhaps higher-ups at distributor Searchlight Pictures) were afraid of losing the audience's interest and investment if The Roses' leads were too gleefully unlikable. But they are gleefully unlikable – entitled and egocentric at the start, smug and blithely unaware of each other's concerns in the middle, vengeful and, let's face it, criminally lunatic by the end. Why hide it with forced assertions of how madly in love these psychopaths are? You can imagine what McNamara's Favourite and Poor Things collaborator Yorgos Lanthimos would've done with this material, which would likely have involved making the Roses' declarations of adoration the truly phony elements of their relationship, demonstrating the verbal, physical, and emotional cruelty as Theo and Ivy at their most real. But it's fruitless to ask for a different movie than the one we have, and the one we have is oftentimes a kick.
If you were worried that the meanest, juiciest encounters in the film were all given away in the red-band trailers, you're not altogether wrong, and it takes well over an hour for most of them to land. Yet there's still plenty to savor with Kate McKinnon, as a family friend who's eager to sleep with either of the Roses, and Andy Samberg, who plays the woman's chipper yet potentially suicidally depressed husband. (In deference to the movie's occasionally heartfelt leanings, McKinnon is granted a lovely bit in which she explains her rationale for staying with Samberg's well-meaning goober.) Allison Janney is given one scene of blatant, stone-cold professional hostility that climaxes with incongruous cheer, and there are solid comic roles for Ncuti Gatwa, Zoë Chao, and Jamie Demetriou, the latter of whom, thanks to Fleabag, I'm eternally unused to seeing with non-nightmarish teeth. And even when the sentiment reaches saccharin levels, Cumberbatch and Colman are a consistent pleasure to spend time with, and appear to relish spending time with one another – at least as actors. The Roses may ostensibly be about the lowest depths at which romantic partners can sink. Its stars, though, ensure that it's also a film about joy – performance joy – and bring to mind a lyric from Rent's “La Vie Bohème”: “The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.”
CAUGHT STEALING
Eventually, I'd imagine, someone will get around to remaking Bernard Malamud's 1952 baseball classic The Natural, giving us the novella's touchingly unhappy ending that went missing from the 1984 movie version. If and when they do, and if the actor is still in the right age range, I'd like to nominate Austin Butler for the role of Roy Hobbs. He already exudes Redford-level charisma, albeit without the inherent emotional reticence, and he's a better actor, besides. Plus, as director Darren Aronofsky's Caught Stealing demonstrates, Butler can believably swing a bat. Playing the comedy thriller's beleaguered protagonist Hank Thompson, he can also pitch (woo) and field (questions from cops), and his sliding skills are remarkable, particularly when you consider that Hank performs most of his athletic feats days, if not mere hours, after having a kidney removed. Butler is excellent in Aronofsky's latest. I just wish Hank's miraculous powers of recovery weren't the funniest things about the film.
Speaking of remakes, and with screenwriter Charlie Huston adapting his 2004 novel, Caught Stealing is largely an homage to Martin Scorsese's 1985 After Hours, and has the run-down NYC boroughs, absence of cell phones, and coterie of distinctive eccentrics to prove it. In the movie's most conspicuous touch, it also has Griffin Dunne again playing a character named Paul, and you may recall that Dunne's Paul, in '85, just wanted to get home. Butler's Hank, in the 1998 world of Huston's narrative, just wants to be left at home. While performing a cat-sitting favor for his mohawked neighbor Russ (Matt Smith), the charming alcoholic Hank, a former baseball tyro whose career ended with a tragic accident, is sucked into an urban nightmare when violent thugs come to Russ' apartment demanding an undefined item, and don't believe that Hank is ignorant of its whereabouts. One vicious beating and removed kidney later, Hank is forced to find an unknown thing so unknown assailants will stop sending him to the ER (or worse), and it's a pleasure to report that an Aronofsky outing is sleek and exciting again – a major relief after the filmmaker's bitter, fraudulent career low of 2022's The Whale.
With Butler running, leaping, and stealing imaginary bases at top speed, cinematographer Matthew Libatique's camera is frequently in vibrant motion, and Andrew Weisblum's editing keeps you in a state of enjoyable anxiousness. Yet Aronofsky also knows when to slow things down for moments of deserved reprieve, and happily, he has at his disposal actors gifted at the art of quietly holding your attention and letting the movie come to them. I'm thinking of Regina King, as her detective contemplates a move and leaving behind her favorite bakery, and Zoë Kravitz, languidly heating up an already-hot apartment as Hank's lover. And then there's Butler, whose accidental-action-hero confusion would be perfectly satisfying on its own, yet whose deep soulfulness keeps trickling out, particularly whenever Hank is doing his level best to hold things together. It's an unexpectedly beautiful performance in a genre that doesn't often supply such things, and Aronofsky and Huston save their biggest surprise involving Hank for the film's final five minutes, when it turns out that this coulda-been pro-ball player is also adept at scoring laughs.
Would that I could say the same for the rest of the movie. Anyone familiar with Aronofsky's filmography knows that it ain't exactly a barrel o' monkeys, and despite the nervous giggles inspired by Black Swan and mother! (and the unintentional giggles of Noah), Caught Stealing is the only work on the helmer's résumé that could remotely qualify as a comedy. With the exception, however, of that late-in-the-day burst of Hank nuttiness and a few random lines, it isn't a terribly amusing one. You can see where the humor is probably meant to come from: Smith's middle-aged Cockney ruffian; Liev Schreiber's and Vincent D'Onofrio's murderous Orthodox Jews and Carol Kane's solicitous, Yiddish-speaking bubbe; the adorable kitty who unwittingly got Hank into this whole mess. But the film's overall tone is too aggressive, brutal, and ugly for mirth to easily flow, and even sitcom scenes such as the one that finds Hank staring vacantly at a bowl of soup housing the world's largest matzo ball tend to wither and die. Still, the movie mostly works despite its rather pronounced unfunny bone, and I do appreciate Aronofsky for trying something new. Not to belabor the point, but anything that's not The Whale is a step back in the right direction.
THE TOXIC AVENGER
Peter Dinklage gets shot in the head, falls into a drum of chemical goo, and emerges as a vengeance-minded, mop-wielding superhero in writer/director Macon Blair's The Toxic Avenger, and it's been weeks since I've had such a good time at the movies. Though I'm certain I saw the film during my college years, I have no memory of watching the original, Troma Entertainment title from 1984, probably because I viewed that low-budget cult classic as we were no doubt meant to – surrounded by friends in a haze of pot smoke while unspeakable, hilarious carnage poured from the VHS. Blair's version, though, is not only a better movie (I presume), which was relatively preordained, but a legitimately impressive one, its deliberately cheesy effects and broad gags so uniformly winning that you're completely unprepared for how surreptitiously touching it is. At heart, this is an Underdog v. The System entertainment in extremis. Yet despite the gory viscera that resulted in Balir's outing being released unrated (and, in fact, unreleased since its 2023 Fantastic Fest debut), this tacky, juvenile, profane effort is … I dunno … really sweet.
That's mostly due to Dinklage, who floods his downtrodden loser Winston Gooze with so much hangdog melancholy that you're on his side long before the chemical-waste disaster. An unappreciated, underpaid janitor for the literally noxious BTH corporation housed in the sleepy burg of St. Roma – cleverly, the “S” and period tend not to be visible on signs – poor Winston is dealing with a lot: a troubled teen stepson (Jacob Tremblay) who, following his mother's death, won't give him the time of day; healthcare bills he can't pay; a recently diagnosed brain disease whose potential cure will cost many more thousands of dollars. It's almost a relief, then, when Winston gets in a path of a psycho's bullet and emerges from that vat of chemical crud grosser but stronger, newly empowered with the ability to do right through non-gentle swings of his radioactive mop. Debate, if you must, whether Winston's first murderous rampage against a crew of misguided protesters – they're pissed because a beloved fast-food joint's historically male mascot is now female – is an anti-woke declaration, or simply retaliation against kidnapping scumbags of all stripes. Whatever it is, it's obscenely funny, and lead to Winston's christened Toxic Avenger, a.k.a. “Toxie,” becoming a champion to the seekers of justice, the underprivileged, the unfairly maligned, and maybe the simply bored. He's not the hero St. Roma asked for, but he's clearly the hero they need!
Admittedly, it took a while to get on Blair's so-dumb-it's-kinda-brilliant wavelength. Although I smiled at the gags referencing clichéd locations via subtitles (they're of the “a random shithole on the outskirts of town” variety), there were also too many of them, and early on, it felt like the stock figures – Kevin Bacon's power-mad CEO, Elijah Wood's Renfield-like henchman, the group of murderous punk rockers known as the Killer Nutz – would solely be one-joke conceits. They are. They're also hysterical conceits, and before long, the obviousness and throw-anything-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks approach makes sense; this is Terrifier by way of Naked Gun. (And far more the latter than the former.) Blair's Toxic Avenger is full to bursting with riotously gruesome executions, but also surprisingly smart aural jokes; the running gag of Winston's diagnosis being explained while sledgehammers roar outside the doctor's office could've been, and pretty much was, employed on 30 Rock. And while certain scenes, such as the one that finds Toxie using his acidic piss to free himself from shackles, are true gut busters, Blair also accentuates the savvy comic deadpan of co-star Taylour Paige, who shares a tragic fact involving a Zamboni that I can't believe she got through with a straight face. (She's also bound in chains alongside Toxie, and when he's freed and assures her that “my aim will be better next time,” Paige takes a peerless mini-pause before realizing what he's planning. “Next time?”)
It's all disgusting and degenerate and delightful as could be, and unlike with the Terrifiers, the unrated violence isn't traumatizing, or even terribly upsetting; the entrails tend to be unleashed like candy from a piñata, where you grin and laugh at the explosion and then gobble up the remains. It's Dinklage's profound humanity, though, that makes this Toxic Avenger so satisfying (even if “suit performer” Luisa Guerreiro, lip-syncing Dinklage's vocals, acts the part post-submersion). Watching Toxie intoxicated with pride as his stepson performs, and gets mad acclaim for, his indefinable talent-show act, we suddenly aren't watching a low-rent Troma remake anymore. We're watching The Phantom of the Opera. There's no pipe organ or falling chandelier, but it's glorious nonetheless.
THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB
Because I took this Labor Day weekend literally and was occupied with a number of family- and work-related obligations, my traditional Monday reviews are instead landing on a Tuesday. The schedule change also allows for coverage of Netflix's newly released The Thursday Murder Club, which I began watching two nights ago and didn't complete until yesterday evening. I could attribute my mid-film stop to a number of factors: a busy Sunday with, for me, an unusual amount of physical activity; starting the movie at 9 p.m.; more food than I'm used to consuming over a three-day period. (Thanks, Ma!) But I also have to blame the movie, at least in part, given that director Chris Columbus' mystery comedy is not the sort of thing you should watch if you're already feeling a little drowsy – unless your ultimate goal is to fall asleep, in which case it'll handily serve its purpose. Unwaveringly pleasant, docile, and harmless, and with its trustworthy cast of British and Irish elders not outclassing their material so much as succumbing to it, this is ideal viewing for those who helped keep Murder, She Wrote on the air for 12 seasons, and who wish that movies, in general, were more like CBS' prime-time lineup. You know who you are. I do love some of you. I'm very much not one of you.
Adapted from the first novel in author Richard Osman's series – that 2020 publication having already produced three sequels with a fourth on the way – Columbus' film concerns the amateur sleuths of a senior-living residence that's more accurately a senior-living mansion and estate: Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), a retired M16 agent; Ron (Pierce Brosnan), a retired union leader; Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a retired psychiatrist; and new recruit Joyce (Celia Imrie), a retired nurse. Employing their specific skill sets, they investigate unsolved fatalities on a weekly basis when the residence's sewing circle isn't occupying their room, and why and how this conceit hasn't already been purloined for a lighthearted CBS procedural I'll never know. Expect one any minute.
The club's latest self-imposed assignment concerns a long-ignored homicide and some dastardly business involving their very own retirement home, and involves a charming Naomi Ackie as an eager-to-please investigator, an overripe David Tennant as a loathsome developer, and the blessedly ubiquitous Richard E. Grant as a shady operator with a green thumb. Because The Thursday Murder Club is directed by Columbus, whose collection of unworthy hits includes Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the first two (and most boring) Harry Potters, I doubt I'll recall any of the film's particulars in a week's time. I might, however, remember who took part in them. Because with Katy Brand's and Suzanne Heathcote's screenplay providing a fair number of clever lines, if also daffy slapstick situations that border on the eye-rollingly ridiculous, the actors tend to make up for most of what Columbus' deathly stagnant staging and pacing removes, beginning with wit, sharpness, and enthusiasm.
Chiefly, we're treated to Mirren, who has delivered so many variants on this sensibly gruff, hard-as-nails-until-she-isn't type – most recognizable in the RED movies and those myriad Prime Suspects – that the role of Elizabeth is one she could've easily played in her sleep. But along with her familiar stridency and bone-dry curtness, Mirren brings to the character a lovely fallibility, the understanding that Elizabeth is maybe only a few years from slipping away herself, to her encounters with Ackie's cop and Henry Lloyd-Hughes' kindly gardener, and especially Jonathan Pryce as Elizabeth's cherished husband who's suffering from dementia. I'm not currently in a place in which I can enjoy the imposed adorability of the disease the way Osman and the screenwriters seem to intend; Pryce's Stephen tends to slip in and out of awareness, and moments of comedic oneupmanship, depending on the needs of any given scene. But Mirren appears genuinely, admirably invested in her Thursday Murder Club duties, and while her cohorts are terrific sports and provide some amusement, they don't redeem Columbus' irksomely generic, timid project the way she does. Even in a work this vaporous, the star manages to steal a scene simply by walking into a room, in costumed disguise, as the sort of frumpy senior matron in a housecoat that Helen Mirren herself will never be. “My God!” exclaims Stephen upon seeing her. “You look like the Queen!” Doesn't she, though?
