"If you put your trust out there, people will rise to the occasion" is the optimistic but rather innocent philosophy of Ned (Paul Rudd), a latter-day hippie with a Jesus beard. Ned's sunny outlook has led to a series of disastrous personal consequences, the latest of which is selling pot to a uniformed policeman.
Once released from prison Ned discovers that life has quickly moved on in his absence; he eventually finds himself living, separately, with each of his self-involved sisters. They make no bones about referring to him as a "retard" and their derisive definition of their sibling provides the title for director Jesse Peretz's charming and sometimes hilarious film, Our Idiot Brother.
Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer play the three modern-day Gorgons. Banks is Miranda, who is desperately trying to break into the upper leagues of journalism via a gossipy tell-all article for Vanity Fair; Deschanel is Natalie, a bisexual standup comic who cheats on her lawyer girlfriend Cindy (Rashida Jones) with Christian (Hugh Dancy); and Mortimer is Liz, the housewife who frets over her kids and insufferable husband (a particularly venal Steve Coogan) to the point of distraction.
None of the sisters wants Ned living with them but after a stint with mom (played with good-humored daffiness by Shirley Knight), each begrudgingly allows Ned into her respective world. Once ensconced, however, Ned the chirpy simpleton wreaks unintended havoc on all of them while in the process showing them up with his cheery optimism and unabashed emotional honesty.
He keeps putting his foot in his mouth at just the wrong moment, leaving his sisters mortified. No matter how dire the circumstances, though, nothing seems to dim Ned's hopeful outlook and tender approach to life. (One particularly funny sequence finds Ned about to embark in a three-way with a male-female couple but gracefully walking away when he realizes that he simply isn't physically attracted to men. "Just 'cause you're straight doesn't make you homophobic," he gently explains to the male half of the couple.)
The movieconceived by Peretz and his sister, Evgenia (which she scripted with her husband, David Schisgall)was put together with Rudd in mind for Ned (and his performance is pitch-perfect). We get to alternately pity, scorn and laugh at Ned for his quaint hippie idealism, and then swing around to Ned's point of view as each of the self-absorbed sisters gets her particular "comeuppance." It's a whisper-thin conceit, stocked with characters and hipster situations just this side of stereotype, but there are enough knowing laughs, heart (including a dog with the saddest eyes since Marley & Me) and quirky performances to make Our Idiot Brother a no-brainer for film audiences.
Graham Green's tough, noir-like novel Brighton Rock, published in England in 1938, made an overnight star of Richard Attenborough in its 1947 film adaptation. Attenborough played the handsome but dangerously disturbed sociopath Pinkie Brown, who stops at nothing to further his rise to power as an up-and-coming gangster in England's Brighton underworld. In the novel, Pinkie is a teenager who loathes women and the idea of sex, and there are strong implications that he is a closeted gay; however, these traits were erased from both the 1947 movie and a new version from director Roland Joffe, who has also scripted a new adaptation of the novel.
Joffe's casting of the darkly handsome Sam Riley (who memorably played the doomed goth rock singer Ian Curtis in Control) must have looked good on paperand when Riley plays up to the dim-witted, love-starved Rose (Andrea Riseborough), the luckless waitress who has become the unlikely key element in a murder that Riley has committed, you fall as hard as she does. However, the amorality of the character is unevenly defined at the outsetboth in the script and by Rileyand Pinkie's sudden ruthlessness seems to come out of left field.
Joffe's decision to move the action to 1964 (at the height of the Mods and Rockers craze in England) gives the movie a stylish panache; however, it adds nothing to the sometimes convoluted plot that sometimes left me feeling as out of the loop as poor Rose. Helping out the proceedings (as always) is Helen Mirren, who convincingly plays an aging, wised-up prostitute trying to warn Rose off Pinkie (to no avail). John Hurt, Andy Serkis and a host of other actors with thick Brightonesque brogues populate the movie, giving this seamy little but entertaining B picture some welcome acting gravitas.
Film notes:
White Lightning Cinema will screen the rarely seen short film Ode by indie director Kelly Reichardt (Meek's Cutoff, Wendy & Lucy) Thursday, Aug. 28, at the Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee, at 7 p.m. Ode, which has LGBT themes, was based on Herman Raucher's novel and screenplay, which, in turn, was inspired by the Bobbie Gentry classic country song "Ode to Billy Joe." Elena Gorfinkel, assistant professor of art history & film studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, will introduce the film. www.whitelightningcinema.com
Support your local queer filmmaker: Out writer-director Nathan Adloff has finished shooting his narrative LGBT-themed dramedy Nate & Margaret and has created a Kickstarter campaign in order to raise completion funds to finish post production. The campaign goes through Sept. 4 and will only be funded if the $6,000 goal is met. http://kck.st/oeXdS7
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitymediagroup.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.