Paper Man (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Kieran Mulroney, Michele Mulroney. Starring Jeff Daniels, Emma Stone, Lisa Kudrow.
Ultimately charming comedy/drama about crazy people.
Unsuccessful novelist Richard Dunn (Jeff Daniels) moves to a beach house to work on his new book. Removed physically from the wife he has already grown emotionally distant from (Lisa Kudrow), he reaches out to a local high school girl (Emma Stone) for friendship.
Richard, by the way, regularly hallucinates an imaginary superhero who gives him advice. But don't worry: in the movies, this means you're quirky, not psychotic.
At first, Paper Man seems to be trying much too hard to be an offbeat indie film. It's a reversal of the old sitcom/romantic comedy formula that was annoying enough in its original form; here, the man is the neurotic free spirit and the woman is the down-to-earth anchor cramping his style.
I disliked Daniels' flaky, useless character immediately, and occasional scenes with Kudrow as the common-sense-blessed wife were the film's only saving grace for its first quarter. But Richard grows more likable as we learn more about him.
What seems like an awkward, inappropriate relationship between him and Emma Stone's character becomes kind of touching in the end. And the saga of Richard's absurd marriage unfolds in a surprisingly mature way. When you least expect them, there are moments of odd poignancy.
Emma Stone's rebellious-teenager-with-a-heart-of-gold role is nothing new, but her broad-ranging performance makes it memorable.
Rated R for childish fantasies4 out of 5
Stone (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. John Curran. Starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Milla Jovovich.
Thriller and character drama that falls short as both.
Close to retirement, one of the final cases assigned to parole officer Jack (Robert De Niro) is Stone (Edward Norton), a glib arsonist hoping to end his 10-15 year stay in prison. Seeing that the meetings aren't going well for him, Stone sends his beautiful wife (Milla Jovovich) to intervene with Jack.
Performances are about as good as you would expect with these male leads, even if Norton's weaselly "convict" voice sounds a bit put-on. A more pleasant surprise is Milla Jovovich - it's easy to forget she can act after seeing one too many Resident Evil movies.
Both Stone and Jack are not nice people. Jack psychologically torments his wife and turns downright nasty when he's out of his element. And Stone, well, there's the whole thing with him setting his grandparents' house on fire.
But they're not monsters, either, and both of them go through unconvincing and conveniently-timed spiritual crises over the course of the movie. Most of this comes through in their interviews, which are strangely confused and unfocused for something so central to the film's mission. The movie attempts to make its characters complex and nuanced, but they come out practically schizophrenic.How much of Stone and his wife's behaviour is to manipulate Jack, and how much is genuine? It's one of several questions to which we're not meant to have answers, but without them the plot isn't much more than a bunch of stuff that happens. There isn't enough weight remaining to these roles, Stone in particular, to give them a place to land once all the haphazard personality shifts are factored out.
It's nice to have characters who can't be summed up in one breath, but it's another matter when we can hardly pin down a single certain thing to say about them. Rated R for dramatic title3 out of 5
