Photography by Robert Todd Williamson
Styling by Lisa Michelle Boyd
Make Up Shane Paish
Hair Gio Campora

More than a few crummy Catskills comedians have made careers out of little beyond mocking women drivers, but actress Michelle Monaghan belies those stereotypes. And, by God, if need be she will happily parallel park an 18-wheeler just to prove it — a skill she picked up while crash-training for her role in 2009’s gritty indie film Trucker.

Still, perhaps the funniest thing about this anecdote is the blend of adventurousness, savvy, and foresight it illustrates. Monaghan may be open to some degree of risk with her career choices, but she’s no fool. “If you ever get pulled over, it’s like triple the fine,” she says of the Class A commercial driver’s license she honestly earned. “So I just let it expire, I figured I wasn’t going to be driving a truck anymore. But for over a year it was the real deal.”

That same phrase, the real deal, is an apt description of Monaghan herself, who seemingly possesses the winning hand of traits — talent, brains, humor, a personable nature and bombshell-type looks minus any projected narcissism or cloying condescension — that help actresses win fans in gender-equal fashion. In person, over coffee, Monaghan has a hearty, deep-throated laugh that can explode forth in an unfortified manner, and eyes that occasionally flash in a playful style, [“not unlike” rather than like?] like a DSL router. She’s not above a jokey cat’s growl to emphasize a particular point while talking about fashion, or the sort of digressive aside one might expect more from a chitchat with a friend rather than in a formal, structured interview.

Monaghan is a lively conversationalist, and even what might seem on the surface like a foible in a deeper relationship — a penchant for an interjected “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” as a sort of chatty call-and-response — comes across as not irritating, but instead charmingly suggestive of an innate enjoyment over human connections, in grasping a lobbed theory or point, regardless of whether or not she ultimately and entirely agrees with it.

It’s that affinity for intellectual engagement and artistic collaboration that seem to have informed some of Monaghan’s biggest life decisions. In 2000 she made a bold leap, dropping out of Chicago’s Columbia College only 13 credits shy of a journalism degree and moving to New York City to continue modeling, which she had heretofore been dabbling in, for a variety of stable but perhaps unsexy clients such as Target and Montgomery Ward’s. “It just felt like something might happen for me there. I thought New York would be a really inspiring place for me to go,” she says with a reflective smile.

In a couple years, she was acting too. In high school, in her small hometown of Winthrop, Iowa, Monaghan had dabbled in musicals like Annie Get Your Gun, and even experienced a positive reaction, though strangely, no connective occupational synapses fired at the time. “I remember the first time before I went on stage, my whole body heated up to 150 degrees and everything started to ring in my ears,” she says. “I didn’t know if I was on the edge of a panic attack, and then I went out there and we did the play. I came back offstage when it was done and said, ‘What just happened?’ It was the most extraordinary thing – a combination of being exhilarated and profoundly freaked out.”

As she got more and more into acting, Monaghan’s years of modeling work actually helped hone her skill with auditioning. “That background where I was rejected so much on a daily basis [made] auditioning an easy transition. Getting up and being judged was very routine,” she notes. “It was just a different way of expressing myself, it wasn’t something that I felt uncomfortable about. I could walk out of a room and be like, ‘Well, that didn’t go well,’ but I didn’t beat myself up over it either.”

A couple bit film roles and even more TV work, including a recurring guest stint on Boston Public specially created by David E. Kelley, gave Monaghan crucial work experience and confidence to boot, but it was her engaging showcase turn in Shane Black’s woozy and self-referential neo-noir dramedy Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer, that most caught Hollywood’s attention (as well as that of Santa Claus outfit fetishists everywhere). That performance led to a string of successful high profile films, kick-started with a starring role opposite Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III.

If Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was her debutante ball debut, though, James Mottern’s Trucker was a necessary pivot to show that Monaghan was capable of transcending flinty supporting roles (North Country) and frothy/functional leads that traded chiefly on her relateable prettiness (Made of Honor, The Heartbreak Kid, Eagle Eye), and truly anchoring a film on her own. In the unsentimental drama, shot in 19 days, Monaghan plays Diane Ford, a stubborn working woman whose decided lack of maternal instincts get challenged when her estranged 11-year-old son gets dumped back into her life. It’s a role which requires a tightrope-walk blend of disagreeableness and latent hopefulness, and although it didn’t get a fair shake as a theatrical release, Monaghan still clearly has a deep affinity for the movie, and uses it as a sort of touchstone for the plotting of future cinematic opportunities of which Hollywood might not necessarily provide her.

“Trucker, to me, was the role of a lifetime,” she says. “It caught me in the gut so much, because here was a woman who was not very nice, who bucked the system. It scared the living daylights out of me, and I think it was representative of a range that I hadn’t been considered for.”

“I didn’t want to make a political statement or something, but I thought it was fascinating to explore a woman who just loved her job, loved being out on her own,” Monaghan continues. “I compared her to a wild horse or a mustang; you could try to wrangle her, but you could never tame her. And whether it’s big or small I want to be able to throw myself into something like that that rings true to me — a role that is representative of real women, that’s provocative and conflicted. Those are the things about which I’m so passionate.”

Provocative certainly describes Monaghan’s latest film as well. A sci-fi-tinged thriller with intriguing ethical underpinnings, Source Code centers on a soldier (Jake Gyllenhaal) who wakes up in the body of an unknown man on a train outside of Chicago, and finds he’s part of an experimental government program that enables him to continually relive the last eight minutes before a deadly terrorist explosion. After rapidly orienting himself, he must try to find both the bomb and bomber, in an effort to prevent another, even larger attack. Along the way he develops a special bond with Monaghan’s fellow commuter.

Ironically, it was actually another audition close call that first put Monaghan in good stead with costar Gyllenhaal, as she was a serious contender for Anne Hathaway’s role in Brokeback Mountain. As a fan of director Duncan Jones’ previous film, Moon, Monaghan knew he would have a grasp of the necessary special effects and a strong visual sense to boot, but she was understandably concerned with being able to differentiate between its replayed “source code” scenes, and make the film engaging on an emotional level.

“Both Jake and I wanted to make sure we were on the same page, and have [this] story within the story. You’re discovering it through his eyes, so it’s exciting to see these characters’ bond start to develop,” she says. “The wonderful thing we were able to do was [shoot] in sync, so we really knew where we were going with the story at any given time. [Cinematographer] Don Burgess and Duncan shot with different lenses and perspectives, outside the train looking in, trying to keep the story [from] feeling stagnant. And Jake is so bright and supportive, in addition to being a great actor; he’s so clued in creatively. So we would take an hour or more between each source code and just all sit on the train and map it out in our heads — what would make this source code unique to the other source codes, trying to keep the relationship moving along.”

All that tinkering paid off. The end result pops, pulling off the rare feat of offering up a catharsis that raises some questions but doesn’t seem hokey or tacked-on. Monaghan claims non-recollection regarding the original ending in the screenplay she first read, but it’s clear that, as with Trucker, Source Code was a script she reacted positively to early on, and dove into with passion.

After a brief (and unfortunately spoiler-heavy) dissection of some of the weighty thematic undertones of Source Code, the conversation turns to drinking, onscreen and off, and Monaghan soon confesses another winning quality to plenty of guys. “I’m pretty goofy, and a fun drunk,” she admits. “I want to get up and have a boogie, like you just lit a fire under me.” These days, however, her partying, as well as her avocational loves of vintage furniture shopping, hiking, and surfing (which she picked up from her husband Peter, an Australian graphic designer) have given way to family time, and baking with her near-two-year-old daughter Willow. “It makes the house smell so good,” says Monaghan wistfully. “And now my daughter gets on the counter with me and we do it together. I love it, it’s really fun.”

After a decade in New York, Monaghan and her young family relocated to Los Angeles almost a year-and-a-half ago, thinking it would be the ultimate act of settling down for a self-admitted nomadic spirit who still occasionally dreams of living in Europe. “Literally the year that we bought a house, all the movies decided to start shooting in New Orleans and New Mexico, Austin and Detroit,” she says. “It was like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter that we have a house in L.A. now because I’m not there anyway!’” If it sometimes seems just another place to decorate, then, Monaghan at least still has an instinct for how to make it homey. “They have great orchids at Ikea — it’s kind of crazy, they’re really cheap and they last for months. So anytime I go there I get the Swedish meatballs and those orchids. And maybe some tealight candles.”

Next up for Monaghan is Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher, in which she stars opposite Gerard Butler as the wife of a repentant, rural alcoholic and criminal who finds Jesus, builds his own Stateside church and then devotes his life to opening an orphanage in the Sudan. It’s an intense character study based on real events, and “another story that’s not just black-and-white,” the actress says. Independently financed and snapped up by Lionsgate, the film will release this fall.

She’s also headed off to shoot Boot Tracks with Matt Dillon, a dark indie drama from director David Jacobson (Down in the Valley, Dahmer) which Monaghan describes as “a little Buffalo 66-ish movie about two little misfits who find each other, and a day in their lives, basically.” The four-and-a-half-week shoot will put her back on the road, but Monaghan still wouldn’t have it any other way. “I’ve been so blessed to have this job,” she says. “I want to do it for as long as I can, I want to challenge myself, I want to be able to explore. Sometimes it may work and sometimes it may not work, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stick to just one genre. That’s boring. I’ve done that and now I want to do something else.”

Mary Louise Parker

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Shirt by Twenty Cluny

photos by Robert Todd Williamson
styled by Albert Medonca
hair by Gio Campora
make up by Torsten Witte

It is seven o’clock in the morning. The worst hour of any day. Somewhere between hair and make-up, costuming, and shooting another scene, Mary-Louise Parker, who has been at work for a while now, chats me up. I say “chats me up,” because my assignment, an in depth interview, alive with humor, charm, and relevance (my wife in fact thinks of me as the Mexican Jon Stewart), quickly detoured into my own misadventure. Why? Of course —and I blame the hour of day here— I had problems from the get-go.

Problema numero uno: I was not able to record our conversation, and thus was forced to frantically type what was being said as it was happening. Since I am completely incapable of multitasking I was not able to engage Ms. Parker as nimbly and as full of bravado as I would have liked.

Perhaps here I should make a confession… My intention with this interview was simple: I bring myself to the brink of journalistic fame by cracking through the barriers of the most wholesome drug dealer to grace the small screen. My mission — dethrone the Green Queen, Mary-Louise Parker. But typing away like a lowly court reporter, my powers of manipulation were dulled. My attempts to skewer her were foiled. Happily, a terrific side effect of the situation presented itself instantly after the “interview” ended. As I went through my notes, trying to figure out how I would nail Parker with nothing but a shorthand mess of notes on a computer, it dawned on me… None of my quotes were accurate! I could misquote her into oblivion! That would put this celebrity in her place!

This was now where problema numero dos reared its ugly head: I love my mother. Plus my father always said to be good to your mother (and vicariously to other mothers). Added to all of this, my mom once said to never lie about someone else, unless you’re trying to get away from the cops, or to get out of work for something more fun. No, I could not lie about Mary-Louise.

Since she is a real-life mommy, and since I have a soft spot for the mommas, I’ll cut her some slack and not misquote her. I’m sure her evil plots will reveal themselves.

The truth: Mary-Louise has started another season as television-mother and marijuana baroness, Nancy Botwin, in Showtime’s hit series Weeds. The show, in which Parker plays a lovable widowed soccer mom who once sat atop a suburban pot empire, charges into its sixth season. Consequentially, Mary-Louise has a lot of long days ahead. But that’s okay for this single mother. She claims to love her job (I think her exact words were: “I love my job!”), and, more importantly, her two kids have a playroom on set. And a lemonade stand, which I have been led to understand is quite popular.

“My son was eight months old when we shot the pilot for Weeds. For six years, everyone here has been watching him grow up. We’re family,” Parker continues as a member of the costume department offered to help her get her shoes on. They had just painted her nails and she needed to do a costume change soon.

As the conversation goes on, in fact, there is a growing sense that others are becoming concerned she won’t be ready in time for the scene an entire crew is working hard to set up. But Parker, like a good mommy, is never frazzled; gracious to anyone who approaches her. She has already said the crew was like family, and now here she is, acting like it. What is she trying to cover up by doing crap like this?

“I like to work, I like to be at work. I don’t understand when actors complain about [this or that]–you’re getting paid to act. How many people get to do that?” Parker particularly likes working in television, noting “there’s something about the regularity of working [on a show], getting to improve on it.” She claims to have made lots of mistakes during the run of Weeds as she worked to bring Nancy to life, saying that too much of herself would bleed through on occasions.

I suppose she’s made an interesting point. The following I am making up, and I may be completely wrong about it, but I would venture to guess that those mistakes are bound to happen more often in television, whereas in the theater, an actor works the same dialogue for months honing that perfect performance. A feat, by the way, for which Parker has received much critical acclaim, including winning a Tony Award for her performance in “Proof”. With television however, you get to set at five in the morning, grab a bagel, rehearse, costume, then shoot and move on. It’s fast-paced. The character is bound to become a
reflection of the performer.

Perhaps this was it! The point I could use to expose Ms. Parker for the celebrity nightmare she must be: How much of Mary-Louise comes through in Nancy, the equivocating mother whose very actions seem to contradict her stated desire to take care of her family?

So I asked.

“How much of you is in Nancy, or comes out in Nancy?”

“[Nancy’s] an extremist. She lives in a grayer area than I do. She’s always trying to achieve harmony, so she’s often not honest with herself. I don’t feel a kinship with her intellectually, she’s not a wildly self-examined person and doesn’t suffer from a lot of guilt…which I suppose might be nice,” says Parker, adding, “I’ve been able to fix moments that I was unhappy with by getting to re-shoot things, scenes. Everyone here is very supportive, the writers are great. Everyone wants the best.”

Touché, Parker. Tou. Ché.

Her supposed enjoyment of both the acting process and her Weeds family shows in how she treats others, saying at one point, “That I get to do what I love is amazing. I truly feel lucky that I get to do this. I don’t lose sight of that.” I still think it’s a ruse—she must be power hungry, being a good mother notwithstanding.

At a certain point, looking at the clock and getting a sense of people waiting (plus, I’m still searching for an equivocating evil celebrity that must lurking under her well-constructed front-—and my own powers of mental superiority are being taxed by my frantic typing), I offer to say ‘thanks’ and get out of her hair. To which she warmly says, “Tell you what, I’ll do this costume change so I’m ready, go shoot this shot, and get right back to you.”

Right! Sure, sure. You do that! That’s the oldest trick in the book! Oh, Ms. Parker, you just gave me the card I needed to prove to the world you’re insincere and self-centered! Your TV show job is obviously more important than a lowly Mexican writer and new father trying to make it in the world and to support his young family. (To be clear, I am speaking of myself.)

Check. Mate.

But she did! She returned! F! Okay, so, she’s not a flake. There must be some horrible reason she’s doing this and though it wasn’t particularly clear, in hindsight, the opportunity allowed me to over-caffeinate. Which, of course, made me very paranoid that the interview was going horribly, that I was the worst interviewer of all time, I was failing, and my brain started to misfire as I desperately tried to focus and seem cool and super-smart. Was this her strategy
the whole time?

Interestingly, the TV star was not allowed to watch television as a kid. Perhaps this is why she so desperately seeks fame and celebrity power! We shall see.

“I wanted to watch Sonny & Cher, but it was on really late. So I would sneak from my bed into the hallway and watch it,” says Parker, who adds that her favorite childhood show was probably Lidsville, a crazy Saturday morning children’s show from the early ‘70s, in which a boy falls into a magical hat and ends up in Lidsville, a world populated by giant living (and uber-characaturized) hat-people. I mention here what the show was about because Mary-Louise joked that I am too young to know what she was talking about. I guess I showed her!

“I love Flight Of The Conchords. But I wasn’t introduced to it until it was over, it’s really good,” she says, adding “I don’t really watch TV now. I know that sounds like a cliche, an actor saying they don’t watch TV, but it’s true. We never really have the TV on in the house, not as background noise during the day.”

A Southern girl, Mary-Louise is ever polite, if not a bit reserved, or outright shy. In this may lie her secrets, so I press. Reflecting a bit on growing up, she says “I’ve always been a darker person, a little Wednesday Addams girl. I wanted to be a pom-pom girl, but I could never pull it off. I think I was embarrassed by it.” Here we go! Fresh off the sofa from which I marathoned five seasons of Weeds in one sitting (this is actually something I recommend to anybody who likes television–buy a frozen pizza, turn off your phone and enjoy the ride), I have seen the dark side Nancy tries to cover up or suppress. Parker taught her that! I’ve seen her photo shoots and read her interviews. She has never come across as shy. In fact when I ask her about this she says,“I’m not self-conscious in front of the camera— I look on it
as a performance.”

“I was not a good communicator, this is the way I communicate. I was shy, [acting] is how I can express myself.” Well, Ms. Parker, is the shyness the act, or the acting the act? I’ll get to the bottom of this.

Mary-Louise would have us believe that somewhere in

the shyness a wonderful humility lives. That it is probably this shyness which has created her confidence by channeling her expressiveness and talents through performance. That her success is the unexpected result of hard work and solid values, and a commitment to providing for her beloved children. I say, perhaps. It might be looking like that, but I’m not done yet.

A few bios on Mary-Louise floating out there state that she prefers quality to quantity. To which she says, “I was never really career-driven. I still don’t have specific goals and never expected fame. Some actors just have an appealing vibe and that seduces the world. But I wanted to hide behind other people, to step into someone else’s brain and heart and psyche. I wanted a break from being me,” then quoting something that had stuck with her,“I never worried about going out of style, because I never felt as if I were in style.”

Hoping to blow her out of the water with her own words, I press her on one of the first films responsible for the respect people have for her craft. The movie is Longtime Companion, in which Parker plays a woman who experiences through her homosexual friends the destruction caused by the outbreak of AIDS in the 1980s, as directed by Norman Rene and written by Craig Lucas. “Can you talk about it?” I ask. “Yeah!” she says, with obvious fervor. “The guy who directed it was my mentor. I can’t watch it without crying.” Here I learn that the director has since passed away and it’s obvious how much this impacts Ms. Parker. I am now slightly embarrassed by what is looking more and more like a ridiculous effort to find fault in this performer. Is she actually genuine?

“I accepted that job (Longtime Companion) without even reading the script,” she says. “I worked with the writer, Craig, and Norman, the director, before. We had done a play together (“Prelude to a Kiss”). They called me and said, ‘We have a project with a role for you, we’d like to send you the script,’ and I said you can send it to me,
but I’ll do it anyway.”

Parker did another film with the same writer/director duo a few years later called Reckless. Both films are terrific.

Parker has two new films coming out. Howl, a film about the poet Allen Ginsberg’s obscenity trial, which also stars James Franco, Jeff Daniels, and David Strathairn to name a few; and RED (an acronym for Retired and Extremely Dangerous), a very fun looking action/comedy about retired CIA agents getting the ‘ol gang back together for funsies. The latter carries an additionally heavy-hitting cast, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Karl Urban, and Richard Dreyfuss.

It’s time for a subject change. “What have you learned from doing Weeds? How has it affected your life?” I ask Ms. Parker. “Wow,” she says. Then, after a moment, “that you can make marijuana into cupcakes and lollipops!” She laughs. I also laugh. She’s obviously wearing me down. “I think to work [so many hours] and to have kids is hard to negotiate. My instinct is to want to be home with [my kids]. It’s tricky,” she continues. Again with the good mom stuff. Could I have been way wrong about Mary-Louise Parker?

I don’t imagine anybody out there believes that fame makes being a parent easier in any way. How much time Parker connects success and concern and work and play with her children makes very clear what her priorities are. She is a mother—from the sound of it, a damn good one. She

is grateful for the career that allows her to provide, but nonetheless, I was curious if she would enjoy living a life off the grid. Could she say goodbye to the career and go far away to live a private life? Surely this question would expose her true desires: to maintain her celebrity status.“Yes, for sure!” she says very enthusiastically, hardly skipping a beat. “I would go to Calgary. Calgary has a weird vibe, I really like it. I
don’t really know why.”

Dang.

But Parker is a New Yorker. “It would be tough to lose New York. I would lose a lot if I had to leave New York,” she adds. I suppose I can understand this sentiment. New Yorkers have an
amazing town. Kudos.

There was a lot to be said about the various reasons she readily entertains the idea of falling off the grid, finding a private life. Her willingness to share some very personal feelings on celebrity and the romanticization of that kind of life was rather unexpected and incredibly honest. “There is a perception about celebrities. It has just gotten more and more mean spirited and voyeuristic,” she reveals.  “It’s interesting to look at people’s willingness to humiliate themselves publicly, like on reality TV, you can see how people are seduced by public exposure and it seems to be something a lot of people want. I think there are a lot of people who think it’s so desirable, they will do anything to achieve some level of fame or notoriety that there is a bizarre resentment that people have to celebrity. Joe Walsh’s song, ‘Life’s Been Good’ is a great song. But people really do treat you differently. And it’s usually the people you thought you knew best.”

I hate to let you down, dear readers, but I am not famous. I have met a lot of famous people, am even friends with some of them. I have lived in Hollywood for nearly a decade. This part of the conversation is personally the most honest anyone who understands that life and the stresses on such a life has ever been with me. Mary-Louise engaged me from our introduction and did not treat me like a vulture hoping to further my career by latching myself somehow to her (which, sadly, happens to be the case; I’m a latcher). In fact, when I let her know my wife and I had recently had our first son, she turned the tables on me, started asking me questions. When my son grows up, I can tell him, “You see that actress there? She said you had a powerful name! Nice, eh?”

After our interview, I reflected on the experience. There seemed to be none of the front or pretense that I had desperately hoped to expose for my own purposes. This brings me to…

Problema Numero Tres: I was completely wrong about Ms. Parker. She’s cool. In fact, one word comes to mind when I think now of Mary-Louise Parker: Genuine. Ms. Parker is Genuine.

Oh, crap! I almost forgot! Mary-Louise told me that we’ll be seeing the legendary Richard Dreyfuss in the upcoming season of Weeds. “It’s such an honor to work with him, he’s awesome! I saw Postcards From The Edge a month ago, he’s so good in it. He’s so good.” I told her I caught Mr. Holland’s Opus recently on cable. She had not seen it, but is going to rush it onto her Netflix lineup. I suggested she buy the soundtrack and blast the “Opus” theme at his trailer.

She laughed half-heartedly, but after a moment it seemed as if she didn’t understand what I was saying. I got embarrassed and dropped it. Our conversation came to an end. Mary-Louise Parker had won without even knowing she was in a fight. Hot.

I was fortunate to get the first episode of Weeds, season six– and it was awesome! Stay tuned for the premiere; August 16 on Showtime.

Having spent time on the set of A Nightmare on Elm Street speaking with producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form, the guys at Platinum Dunes who successfully spearheaded relaunches of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror and Friday the 13th franchises, I respect and even agree with the logic that these characters are merely more contemporary versions of Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein, and therefore equally susceptible to being reinvented or revived for new audiences. I also believe that short of a producer or studio obliterating every known copy or representation of an existing character, the new version of him or it needn’t be considered a replacement for a previous one.

But that’s also logic that producers should themselves heed when contemplating a remake of one of these iconic figures, because their efforts may indeed never earn a legitimate place among the existing mythology of a series or character. In which case they should probably go in with the best of intentions and out with the least of expectations, because A Nightmare on Elm Street is no blasphemous reinvention of either Freddy or the film series. Rather, it’s a relatively pedestrian remake of the original movie that adds precisely the wrong elements to make Freddy a more fearsome monster, but in so doing offers little intrigue – much less satisfaction – to fans old or new that might otherwise drive them to demand more installments in the future.

Of the many ideas screenwriters Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer throw kitchen-sink style into this utterly conventional remake, the only relatively new one is the concept of “micronaps,” the supposed term for a person’s inability to differentiate between dreams and reality, thereby making them especially susceptible to extremely loud jump scares. My concerns that the filmmakers would use this “scientific” explanation to justify the movie’s narrative cop-outs were well-founded: no sooner are they defined than the characters immediately shuffle through random “real” scenarios only to find themselves at Freddy’s mercy, then waking up to discover, it was all a dream! Or was it?

Meanwhile, it’s that line between reality and fantasy where director Samuel Bayer clearly focused his considerable talents as a visual stylist. Best known for helming Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video, he’s a virtuoso with imagery, and maximizes even the familiar rhythms of kills he recreates from the ’84 Nightmare that have since become horror staples: Kris’ death echoes Tina’s ceiling crawl, but adds a juicy shot of invisible claws carving up her chest; and later, when Nancy races through multiple worlds in order to get back to the waking one, her body explodes, immaculate and pristine, from a tidepool of blood that’s gurgling upside down. It’s these flourishes which occasionally rouse the film from being otherwise methodical and generic, and show that with time and maturity, Bayer could possibly craft something more substantive.

But, of course, in the meantime, Bayer is decidedly not capable of elevating the emotional content of the film along with the visual, and fails to present any of its ideas interestingly. The most promising story change from the original is that Freddy may or may not be a child molester rather than a child killer, and it’s that may or may not uncertainty that gives the film a dramatic urgency as these kids race to figure out how their parents, or even they themselves, may have invoked Freddy’s rage and exposed themselves to his (forgive the pun) nightmarish reign of terror.

But the way the film answers that, and moreover, the very fact that it does, eliminates what could have been a fascinating and potentially promising (meaning sequels, of course) new beginning for the character. One you tell people who somebody is and what he did, there’s not a lot of room for exploration – unless, as the directors and screenwriters of the sequels already did, Bayer and co. reboot or redefine Freddy’s mythology over and over again.

Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy

Then there’s Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy, who does his best but is stymied by make-up that feels more accurate for a burn victim but scarcely works at conveying the character’s casual malevolence. (It certainly doesn’t help that his upper lip seems entirely immobile, and although there are holes and gashes and all sorts of authentic little details, the majority of the face is almost completely inexpressive.)

Ultimately, this film’s worst offense is that it makes Freddy too dark and yet somehow too uninteresting to warrant further exploration of his universe, which literally is bound only by the limits of what its creators can dream up. That said, I’m not sure I have the energy to get too angry at the film, because it’s mostly mediocre rather than outright “bad,” and I never cared much for the series to begin with. But compared to Friday the 13th, which satisfyingly fulfilled the demands of the series’ mythology by placing attractive, scantily-clad teens in harm’s way and letting nature take its course, A Nightmare on Elm Street exploits the stylistic hallmarks of its predecessors but woefully neglects the narrative ones.

This film perfunctorily provides a scary story about a burned-up guy in a red and green sweater who kills people in their dreams, but can’t decide whether it’s paying homage to the series’ mythology, reimagining it, or simply adding another chapter to it. In short, it’s a Nightmare just like the ones we’ve seen before, which is probably why it feels more tiresome than terrifying.

The film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) as Clay, the leader of a group of government operatives who already call themselves the Losers even before they are betrayed by a CIA superior named Max (Jason Patric) and forced to destroy their real identities. Roque (Idris Elba) and Cougar (Oscar Jaenada) are reasonably happy living on the lam, but Jensen (Chris Evans) and Pooch (Columbus Short)left family behind, so when a mysterious woman named Aisha (Zoe Saldana) offers them a chance to get revenge on Max and reclaim their lives, the group jumps at the chance. Unfortunately, the group soon discovers that Aisha has plans of her own, and has recruited them to help her in addition to themselves, ultimately pitting the Losers against relentless government forces – potentially turning them against each other – as the authorities close in on them.

The truth is that ensemble movies usually seem to really be about one or two stars surrounded by a bunch of supporting players. Not so in The Losers, where Evans and Short steal virtually every scene in which either of them appears, and Elba proves to be a formidable counterpart to both Morgan’s perceived leadership and Saldana’s commanding intelligence, not to mention sensuality. What’s more remarkable is that the film doesn’t simply give each character a scene of their own – a single-serving showcase of a particular actor’s talent; rather, the script by Jamie Vanderbilt gives all of them something to do at once, and then director Sylvain White effortlessly combines the various personalities on screen in order to create the most effective – be it dramatic or purely entertaining – combination of fun and suspense.

Meanwhile, as Max, Jason Patric has never been this loose, fun, or commanding as he is her, channeling Warren Beatty as he turns an empty stare into a terrifying showcase for his character’s jet-black heart. And again, it’s Vanderbilt’s script which provides so much of the raw material, and the actors’ individual contributions which strengthen the impact of everyone’s performances. But Sylvain White’s direction is what really brings these different elements together and creates something truly enjoyable. The director’s previous film was the criminally-underrated dance movie Stomp the Yard, and like with that film, he finds the visual and thematic flourishes that are often buried in such conventional storytelling formulas and fleshes them out into substantive explorations of, well, if not necessarily political or intellectual ideas, then at the very least more emotionally meaningful conflicts.

Ultimately, to say that The Losers succeeds at being entertaining without necessarily trying to be more isn’t damning the film with faint praise, it’s a statement of fact. As White continues to find his footing directorially, this is the perfect vehicle for him to expand the distinctive visual style he’s brought to his previous work, while introducing different elements of storytelling and character development that he hasn’t tackled before. For audiences, meanwhile, it’s not a frivolous, but it is featherweight, and a hell of a lot of fun. In which case, The Losers may or not become one of the few films that you remember when recalling your favorite action films, but if any of the above sounds like the type of movie you would typically enjoy, it’s worth running down at least once.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

There are certain movies that demand discussion and analysis, and others that simply are what they are. Date Night falls into the latter category: a lighthearted comedy about a New Jersey married couple whose night on the town turns into a race for their lives, there’s precious little that needs to be deconstructed once you know director Shawn Levy (A Night at the Museum, Cheaper By the Dozen) is behind the cameras, and Steve Carell and Tina Fey are in front of them. Thankfully, however, that absence of conversation also means that you’re likely to embrace the film if you like even two out of three of those component parts, and it’s why Date Night is a competent and engaging little comedy that delivers on its premise without demanding more from the audience than their enjoyment.

Not just ideally cast but magically compatible as man and wife, Carell and Fey bring real humor to the roles of Phil and Clare Foster, a couple desperately trying to maintain romance in their relationship despite the demands of work and family. After a neighboring couple announces their divorce, Phil and Clare decide to add a little spice to date night and steal the reservation of absentee diners at a posh new Manhattan restaurant. Unfortunately, they take the names of some folks who apparently are in possession of some contraband materials, and soon find themselves on the run from corrupt cops (Jimmi Simpson and Common) who were sent to retrieve them at the behest of a cutthroat mobster (Ray Liotta).

Tina Fey, Steve Carell and Mark Wahlberg in "Date Night"

With few options available and the cops closing in, Phil and Clare look for help from one of Clare’s clients, a charming, capable and shirt-deficient security expert (Mark Wahlberg), who not only offers them some unexpected assistance but helps them rekindle the excitement and romance of their marriage.

At a svelte 88 minutes, the film has not an ounce of fat on it, although an extended car chase threatens to test the tensile strength of the film’s otherwise tautly-rendered action. But otherwise Carell and Fey make the most of the material: both are obviously comfortable in the kind of observational, off-the-cuff humor that has come to define comedy in the era of Judd Apatow’s ensemble films, but even without a particularly expansive group of personalities off of which to react, Fey and Carell manage to provide terrific punch lines without indulging in scenery-chewing stardom. That Levy also keep the scenes cut down to their simplest and most effective only further helps the brevity and brilliance of their wit, elevating what could have been a tedious action-comedy into something slightly more enchanting.

Needless to say there are good date movies and bad date movies, and this one happens to be a good one because it’s frivolous and fun and but actually offers a few deeper truths about relationships. Meanwhile, Fey continues to emerge as a performer with more talents than even she seems to recognize, which may be part of her charm, while Carell offers a grounded, sincere turn that also allows him to play big without losing believability. Overall, Date Night is an undemanding movie, but it’s a perfectly good undemanding movie, which is why when you don’t discuss it, you won’t mind: when people talk about turning off their brains and just being entertained for a few hours, unlike so many stupid or insubstantial others, this is the sort of film they truly hope to see.

Although I steadfastly don’t believe in writing reviews as some sort of consumer service, the most important thing I have to say about Clash of the Titans is do not see the film in 3-D. Part of the motivation for my plea, admittedly, is to save you the extra money 3-D presentation costs; but mainly it’s because the film was not originally shot in 3-D, and it looks absolutely terrible retrofitted after the fact in 3-D. All of which is why plain-old two dimensions is more than satisfying presentation format if you’re at all interested in Clash of the Titans’ otherwise perfectly uninspiring, generic-blockbuster thrills.

Sam Worthington, a serviceable actor who still hasn’t carried any movie distinctively enough to deserve A-list stardom, plays Perseus, the bastard son of Zeus (Liam Neeson) who is raised by a hardscrabble mortal fisherman named Spyros (Pete Posthlewaite). When Hades (Ralph Fiennes) more or less inadvertently murders Spyros, Perseus vows revenge, and is granted an unexpected opportunity to carry it out when he is recruited to kill the Kraken, a monstrous beast that threatens to destroy Argos, the epicenter of mortal civilization.

Embarking on a perilous voyage that pits him against giant scorpions, supernatural gorgons, and the deformed minions of deranged gods, Perseus comes into conflict with mankind’s creators, in the process discovering what it truly means to be human.

As a former fan of the original (I loved the ’81 Clash as a kid but was bored by it as an adult), I don’t have much loyalty to the source material, but director Louis Leterrier updates it in only the most perfunctory, unsurprising ways: double the special effects, quadruple the action and half the story. Other than Perseus’ occasional rancor about being born from the loins of a God, the new Clash is a remarkably dispassionate affair, jogging uninspired from one set piece to the next, and culminating in a climactic battle that unfolds exactly as you might expect.

Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans

That the poster and TV ads spoil the excitement of discovering his (literal) biggest foe, the Kraken, is a testament to the film’s play-it-down-the-middle appeal, but there’s not one hair out of place on this hero’s journey from start to finish, and that quickly becomes tiresome even if you just want something to accompany your latest purchase of overpriced popcorn.

But then again, there are those who will duly be satisfied by such averageness, such pedestrian obviousness, which is why everything has been sanded smooth and welded together into such a seamlessly conventional whole. (Still doesn’t explain why an actor as good as Ralph Fiennes appears to be playing his character as if he’s doing an impression of Rob Zombie re-enacting Richard Harris’ performance from Gladiator, though.)

Regardless whether your hopes were for a riveting, fantasy-filled two hours at the theater or just something to superficially pass the time until the frivolity of summer, however, there is no doubt that Clash of the Titans was originally a film made in 2-D, and it looks best in 2-D. Because if the filmmakers aren’t going to bother with creating three-dimensional characters on the page, there’s no point in watching them try to fake it on screen – especially since the ones in Clash of the Titans have all of the depth of a pop-up book.

A few years ago I would have described Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland as a perfect pairing of director and material; even without intimate familiarity with the source material, his pedigree as a purveyor of mainstream fantasy is largely unrivaled, and there’s no doubt his visual sense could reinvigorate (if not fully reimagine) Lewis Carroll’s book for contemporary audiences. But Burton, champion of the outsider and documentarian of the underdog, somehow became a Hollywood fixture – a hit-making machine, except when he seemed to follow his heart, as he did with the beautiful box office failure Big Fish.

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter

As a result, his efforts to stay outside of the industry’s comfort zone have felt like they’re as provocative or peculiar as the sale rack as Hot Topic; he’s tackled one conventional “weird” project after another, and with few exceptions, they’ve all failed to surpass their source material, or even show why he’s a good choice to adapt or reinvent them, except for the automatic opening-weekend returns. Sadly, Alice follows in this disappointing trend, revealing Burton at his most automatically, reliably counterculture, creating a new story out of Carroll’s mythmaking that fails to inspire interest, perhaps except as a rote exercise in mainstream weirdness.

Mia Wasikowska in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Luminous newcomer Mia Wasikowska plays Alice, who gets stuck in an unrecognizable Wonderland after tumbling down a rabbit hole while escaping a would-be suitor and a life of boredom and complacency. Soon enough, she happens upon Carroll’s cavalcade of weirdos, including the March Hare (Michael Sheen), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Tweedles Dee and Dum (Matt Lucas), and of course, the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp), who is shellshocked from a combination of personal trauma and sniffing too much hat glue. But when she discovers she’s a key player in a turf war between the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), Alice muscles up to help her new comrades, in the process discovering a sense of direction for her life as well.

Admittedly I’m not familiar with either of the Carroll books (Alice and Through the Looking Glass) from which Burton took his inspiration, but screenwriter Linda Woolverton effectively turned them into a sort of condensed Lord of the Rings-style travelogue odyssey, a quest where Alice learns life lessons after slaying foes both physical and metaphorical. While this certainly isn’t an inherently bad thing, Burton fails to provide any reason why we should care about what happens, since Alice reminds us at every turn that it’s a dream, and there don’t seem to be any real stakes even if it wasn’t.

Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen

Furthermore, there’s a leaden sort of melodrama that accompanies much of the character development (the Mad Hatter’s past, etc.) and eliminates the fun and excitement of just being goofy and weird and having a frothy adventure. That said, such exuberance is at least hinted at in the performance of Carter as the Red Queen, who’s introduced to us interrogating her (literal) toadies and then turns to mouth-frothing grandstanding as she tries to keep her head while chopping of virtually everyone else’s. But Depp’s turn as the Hatter falls into scenery-chewing territory early and never returns, and with the exception of Fry’s seductively charming Cheshire Cat and Hathaway’s prissy, exasperatedly serene White Queen, the cast adds little new to the existing landscape of these characters on screen.

But this is Burton’s show, and even though he appears to be indulging every impulse he knows to create a compelling Wonderland, there’s just nothing in it to truly inspire or arouse interest. Even the film’s 3-D feels flat and dim, lending what should be a breathtaking fantasy world a melancholy, joyless air. And that’s really the difference between Burton the purveyor of spectacle and the former filmmaker who toiled meticulously making heroes out of oddballs: there’s no exuberance, either on screen or seemingly behind the camera, in rendering a universe where the least likely person in it becomes its biggest hero. As such, Alice isn’t truly terrible, but spectacularly underwhelming, and may ultimately leave you questioning where the ‘wonder’ is in Wonderland.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars  1 1/2 out of 5 Stars

The thing about zombie movies is that I really don’t care at all why people become zombies. That is the least important and, at a certain point, least interesting part of the plot of any movie featuring undead, deeply sick, ravenous, violent monsters. However, the fact that The Crazies tries to come up with that explanation – half-assed as it is – seems to be a concession to the non-horror audiences that director Breck Eisner hopes he will be drawing into theaters when the film opens this weekend. (Although technically speaking, the assailants in The Crazies are not full-fledged zombies but insane living persons, many audiences will be hard-pressed to tell the difference once they start oozing unhealthy looking fluids and shrieking with homicidal rage.)

A definite mainstream thriller that masquerades as a remake of a cult classic, The Crazies is remarkably effective as scary populist entertainment but may not make an impact with genre fanboys and girls.

Joe Anderson, Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell and Danielle Panabaker

Timothy Olyphant (The Perfect Getaway) plays David Dutton, an Iowa sheriff who stumbles across a military cover-up after townspeople start to act unpredictable and violent towards one another. Enlisting his wife Judy (Radha Mitchell), a deputy named Russell (Joe Anderson) and Judy’s receptionist Becca (Danielle Panabaker), David escapes a military camp for the infected and heads out of town, hoping to get away from trigger-happy soldiers and ravenous, homicidal monsters alike, encountering both en route to supposed freedom.

Although Eisner claims to be a real genre fan, his first film was the more generously-budgeted Sahara, and it’s the crowd-pleaser in him that seems to steer this material away from its truly dark impulses towards something scary but more conventionally suspenseful. That actually isn’t a bad thing: set pieces play out more entertainingly by focusing on the characters’ emotions rather than their entrails, and the movie as a whole moves with an efficiency and fluidity that makes you enjoy even its most clichéd moments. Eisner’s ability to hone in on the immediate on screen threat and distract viewers from the real one is a gift, and even if all of the material isn’t up to the same level of sophistication, he makes most of it work, with a craftsman’s sense of style.

Unfortunately, Mitchell mismanages her character’s terror, and later, trauma, focusing the audience’s ire on her bad decisions (seriously? It doesn’t occur to her not to drink water after she determines it’s dangerous to do so?). But movies always need a good bad guy, that character we love to hate, and the movie is chock-full of ones that we can genuinely get behind, and get into being scared by their bad behavior, that her transgressions are relatively forgivable. Ultimately, The Crazies isn’t a masterpiece, but it seems bound for crossover success because it maintains a level of intensity and gore without grossing audiences out. All of which means that much like zombies themselves, it works better with less analysis or explanation, since all you want in a movie like this is to be scared, and in that capacity it does that just fine.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

After spending almost two decades giving Kevin Smith the benefit of the doubt, it’s hard to refute the seemingly obvious truth that he just isn’t a good director. Not only is he not much of a visual stylist, he doesn’t have any flair for storytelling, and almost none of his films have any real dramatic momentum. That said, he occasionally has a gift for good dialogue, when he isn’t making mud pies out of poop jokes and pop culture references.

Bruce Willis and Director Kevin Smith

His new film, Cop Out, is not well made. It’s not well directed or written. It does, however, star Tracy Morgan, an actor whose on screen persona and off screen personality seem uncomfortably similar, which makes his manic, unpredictable behavior seem weird, and occasionally wonderful. Also, it features Bruce Willis, who’s done both good and bad cop roles so many times he could sleepwalk through another one, much like it looks like he’s doing here. But Smith’s latest is in fact his best in a while, because it abandons the pretense of personal vision in favor of superficial fun, paying homage to ‘80s buddy cop movies and every other kind of movie without being much of one itself. Which is fine, but the biggest point is to not look too closely, because what works about it is so much simpler than what people seem
to think doesn’t.

First of all, I have colleagues who actively hate this movie. Fair enough. But there are others who were confused by it, and that just confused me. After a recent press screening, they asked in earnest if Smith meant to make the score sound like a “bad ‘80s cop movie score” (their words, not mine). Okay, maybe they don’t know that Harold Faltermeyer is the guy who did the music for Fletch, Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun among many other ‘80s movies. But honestly, has any movie Smith made before been deserving of any level of deeper introspection? Rife with subtext? No. We’re not talking about Paul Thomas Anderson here, whose Magnolia was lampooned in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. It should be safe to assume that Smith did indeed mean to make the film sound like an ‘80s cop movie. In my opinion, a good one.

Tracy Morgan and Bruce Willis in Cop Out

As for what it’s actually about, it has something to do with two doofus cops played by Morgan and Willis on the trail of a Mexican gang leader who got his hands on Willis’ character’s prized baseball card. Amazingly, the film wasn’t actually written by Smith, although you can bet that its myriad movie references were funneled into the scenes by the director’s indefatigable film knowledge. What wasn’t funneled into any part of the film, however, was energy. Even the slightest momentum to carry viewers from one scene to the next would have sufficed. Admittedly, I was in complete stitches during the scene where Tracy Morgan’s character discusses his bowel movements in minute detail while he and Willis are staking out a house, but part of what was funny was the fact that it just kept going – no breaks, no purpose, just pure Morgan madness.

Seann William Scott and Tracy Morgan

Although the very idea of Morgan repeatedly mispronouncing a character’s name manages to evoke laughter, not the least of which because it seems as likely that he actually couldn’t pronounce it as him doing so on purpose, he’s not the only bright spot in the film. Seann William Scott, a real charmer with a career that hasn’t done him a lot of favors since his Stifler days (although The Rundown is classic), manages to steal every scene in which he appears, and not just because he plays a thief. But Smith doesn’t seem to know what to do with the character, which is why when something weird happens to him towards the end of the movie, we’re not sure whether or not to laugh.

But then again, that’s Smith’s problem in general: he comes up with good characters, and occasionally, interesting scenarios, but doesn’t know what to do with them, and especially can’t tie them together. All of which makes Cop Out a successful movie, even if it isn’t a good one: because it’s superficial, it satisfies the demands of being entertaining, and doesn’t bother with the business of emotional depth or even particularly effective storytelling. Plus, he picked Harold Faltermeyer for his score, and anyone who can convince a studio to let them hire a guy whose last recognizable credit was Tango & Cash deserves the benefit of the doubt for at least a little bit longer.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

“Forget about it, Jake, it’s the CIA.” Perhaps needless to say, this isn’t actually a line from The Ghost Writer, but Roman Polanski’s latest film shares much in common with his 1974 masterpiece Chinatown, not the least of which being a resignation to the larger, impenetrable machinations of a system that was in place long before its main character tried to pull back the curtain on it. A grown-up mystery that reminds audiences why Polanksi is a filmmaker whose professional profile deserves to stay in the spotlight, The Ghost Writer is a creepy, captivating thriller and the year’s first great movie.

Roman Ploanski and Pierce Brosnan film Ghost Writer

Ewan McGregor plays a ghost writer who discovers some disturbing secrets when he’s hired to rework the memoirs of disgraced former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). Despite professing zero interest in politics, The Ghost begins to question this faustian pact, first when Lang gets indicted by the World Court for alleged crimes against humanity, and then when a relationship develops between himself and Lang’s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams). As Lang attempts to protect his public image, The Ghost continues to investigate his personal background, eventually uncovering information that not only makes him part of the story he’s supposed to be telling, but puts his very life at risk.

There are a number of parallels in Lang’s story that any follower of Polanski’s personal life will probably recognize, not the least of which being the deterioration of his public image, and his hand-wringing over whether or not to face trial or flee to neutral territory. But suffice it to say that the director isn’t deconstructing his own life, but crafting a thoughtful, mature thriller that examines all of the real-world implications of its subject matter even as it chronicles the made-up (if likely equally real) mysteries of behind-closed-doors deals between governing bodies and the organizations that broker them. Meanwhile, Robert Harris’ adaptation of his own novel both exploits and subverts expectations that come with an exploration of this world, showing how even a seasoned purveyor of narrative conventions succumbs to obvious storytelling twists and turns despite appearing to be fully aware of them.

Ewan McGregor in Ghost Writer

Further, Polanski shoots the film with glorious, clear-eyed style, thanks to classical set-ups and the dexterous cinematography of Pawel Edelman (The Pianist), updating the style but preserving the substance of his earlier movies, not to mention those of ‘70s compatriots like Alan J. Pakula or Sydney Pollack. The Ghost Writer feels like a classic even though it’s thoroughly modern; a plot point even revolves around an automobile’s turn-by-turn GPS, for goodness’ sake. But it’s Polanski’s mastery of form and technique, along with his sophistication as a storyteller, and especially, his respect for the audience, that makes his latest so memorable, even if his ultimate point is a sad one – namely, that sometimes forgetting the truth is the best way to stay safe.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars 4 Stars out of 5