Tully,
directed by Jason Reitman and written by Diablo Cody
(R, 1 hour, 35 minutes)
Although this realistic, sometimes contrived, yet clever comedy hasn't risen to the level of its hype (which includes letting everybody know that Charlize Theron gained nearly 50 pounds in order to play the lead role), Tully has plenty of fine moments.
Theron is Marlo, exhausted mother of three including a newborn, who isn't handling the new addition to her family very well. Postpartum depression means she can barely function at a decent level, let alone take care of the kids and the household. Maybe motherhood isn't all it's cracked up to be.
So her brother (Mark Duplass) gives Marlo the gift of a night nanny named Tully (Mackenzie Davis). At first, Tully's help is pretty much of the domestic variety. Then the two women come to form a fascinating, thoughtful, and surprising bond.
And Theron said that losing that weight, which she said was packed on within three months thanks to lots of potato chips, "was really brutal." With Ron Livingston, Emily Haine.
Overboard (PG-13, 1 hour, 52 minutes) This role-reversal remake of the 1987 romantic comedy of the same name (with Goldie Hawn as an ill-tempered heiress and Kurt Russell as a carpenter barely scraping by with four children) can't quite get it together, despite the always entertaining presence of Anna Faris in the scraping-by-character role (it would help if some degree of chemistry existed between the leads, as it most definitely did with Hawn and Russell). Here we have Leonardo, a spoiled playboy from Mexico's richest family (Eugenio Derbez), who -- after firing and refusing to pay Kate (Faris), a working-class single mom of three hired to clean his yacht -- falls overboard when partying and wakes up with amnesia. To get back at him for treating her badly, Kate convinces Leonardo he is her husband and puts him to work doing exhaustive physical labor on a construction project. With Eva Longoria, John Hannah, Mel Rodriguez. Blu-ray bonuses include three featurettes and audio commentary with writer-director Rob Greenberg.
Dark Crimes (R, 1 hour, 32 minutes) A true story, rendered into mediocrity by a pedestrian not-quite-noir script and an unsettling quantity of violence, Dark Crimes concerns police officer Tadek (Jim Carrey, trying mightily to make it all work) who becomes obsessed with a famous writer named Krystov Kozlov when he finds similarities between an unsolved murder and a scrim outline in one of Kozlov's books. With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Marton Csokas, Agata Kulesza; directed by Alexandros Avranas.
Anything (R, 1 hour, 34 minutes) Good-hearted but too contrived for its own good, this romantic drama focuses on middle-aged Earl Landry (John Carroll Lynch) who, devastated over the death of his wife, leaves Mississippi for Los Angeles, moves into a shabby Hollywood apartment complex inhabited by an array of colorful characters, and finds an unlikely friend in his transgender neighbor Freda Von Rhenburg (Matt Bomer). With Maura Tierney; directed by Timothy McNeil.
Kings (R, 1 hour, 32 minutes) An ambitious effort to combine themes of civil rights, historical significance, humor, romance, and absurdity fails to succeed in this tale of a foster mother of 12 in 1992 Los Angeles who, struggling to hold her family together in the midst of the Rodney King trial riots, seeks help from her eccentric neighbor. With Halle Berry, Daniel Craig, Lamar Johnson; directed by Deniz Gamze Erguven.
MovieStyle on 08/03/2018