Sitting in Bars with Cake: Scrumptious!

Sitting in Bars with Cake (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for profanity, drug use and sexual candor

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang 

You wouldn’t know it from the title, or the needlessly chaotic initial 10-15 minutes, but once director Trish Sie’s modest little film settles down, it becomes one of the warmest, most touching odes to friendship I’ve seen in years.

 

Jane (Yara Shahidi, center) and her posse — from left, Alex (Charlie Morgan Patton),
Nora (Simone Recasner), Corinne (Odessa A'zion) and Liz (Maia Mitchell) — discover
that "cakebarring" is a great way to attract guys. (Note the cake at table center.)

Credit scripter Audrey Shulman, who clearly wrote from the heart; credit also the persuasively authentic performances by stars Yara Shahidi and Odessa A’zion.

This film’s back-story is equally enchanting. Shulman, a Nashville transplant who wound up in Los Angeles as a twentysomething, was celebrating best friend Chrissy Osmulski’s birthday in a bar in the summer of 2012. Shulman, an avid baker, brought along a cherry cake to share with Chrissy and several other friends; the tasty dessert drew the attention of other patrons, and Shulman suddenly realized that this could be a great way to meet guys.

 

Hence the beginning of what she dubbed “cakebarring.” Starting the following January, she vowed to bake a different cake each week, bringing it and her friends to a different venue each week, with the ultimate goal of 50 cakes by the end of the year. She recorded this tasty campaign in what became a popular blog — complete with recipes — which in turn led to an equally well received 2015 book.

 

Now, working alongside Sie, Shulman has adapted her adventures into a charming film. Shahidi’s Jane is Shulman’s alter ego, while A’zion’s Corinne stands in for Chrissy. They’re best friends totally into each other’s groove, despite being polar opposites. 

 

The bookish Jane, whip-smart but introverted, pursues law school studies apparently dictated by her imperious parents; baking becomes a respite during study breaks. By day, she works as an obsessively organized mailroom clerk in an office run by the somewhat grandmotherly Benita (Bette Midler, in a fleeting part that should have been expanded).

 

The wildly extroverted Corinne, in contrast, is a force of nature: an irrepressible free spirit who embraces any occasion at 15 on a 10-point scale, while bouncing from one joyous experience to the next. (“A human sparkler, a flash of color and light,” as Shulman described Chrissy.)

 

We can’t imagine Corinne keeping a job for more than two weeks. She likely regards sleep as a waste of time, and bemoans the fact that her shy roomie doesn’t work harder at “putting herself out there,” particularly when it comes to what she wears.

 

“If it works for Mr. Rogers,” Jane says defensively, at one point, “it works for me.”

 

Corinne groans … and A’zion is just as marvelous at exasperation, as every other emotion.

 

Let it also be said that costume designer Ciara Whaley obviously had a great time with Corinne’s wild outfits.

 

Lucy and Desi: Captivating ode to a talented duo

Lucy and Desi (2022) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for no particular reason

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang

Hollywood folks are reading each other’s mail again.

 

Just a few months after the release of writer/director Aaron Sorkin’s captivating Being the Ricardos, we now have the documentary Lucy and Desi.

 

Lucille  Ball and Desi Arnaz weren't merely co-stars of television's
most popular show in the 1950s; they were equal business partners
in all manner of other activities taking place under the banner of
their production company, Desilu.

I suspect Lucie Arnaz — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s daughter — got wind of Sorkin’s project, likely didn’t approve, and “encouraged” the creation of this equally engaging response.

Lucie Arnaz has been down this road before, having produced and hosted 1993’s Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, just four years after her mother died … which was just three years after Desi Arnaz passed. Sweet as it is, grief and loss palpably hovered over that earlier project; this new film, chaperoned by director Amy Poehler and veteran documentarian Mark Monroe, is more measured and methodical.

 

Ball and Arnaz were a beloved Hollywood family, frequently in the public eye, and constantly the subjects of studio photographs; they also had access to personal film cameras that few people owned in the 1940s and ’50s. We benefit from the impressive abundance of home movie footage — 8mm and even 16mm — and extensive media interviews given by both Ball and Arnaz throughout their lives. 

 

Most notably, Ball spent weeks and months with journalist Betty Hannah Hoffman in the mid-’60s, recounting what turned into a detailed oral history preserved on a couple dozen audio tapes.

 

This essentially allows Ball and Arnaz to narrate their own stories, as this documentary proceeds. Poehler wisely keeps contemporary talking heads to a minimum, cutting only occasionally to commentary from Lucie Arnaz, Carol Burnett and Bette Midler. The latter two are an apt choice, as both were mentored by Ball; their warmhearted gratitude is obvious.

 

Ball was a slowly rising film star when she and Arnaz met in Hollywood, during 1940’s big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Too Many Girls. It was love at first sight, and they eloped not quite two months after the film debuted.

 

Ironically, as Ball explains via voice-over, they saw very little of each other during the next decade.

 

She became the “Queen of the B’s,” appearing constantly in a string of lesser-budget dramas, musicals, tear-jerkers and even film noir thrillers. She starred or co-starred in 20 (!) films between 1941 and ’49 … not one of which allowed her to display the comic talent for which she’d later become famous.

 

Even so, the hard work paid off. The pleasure is evident in Ball’s voice when she remembers how, one day, she overheard a studio head telling somebody to find him “a Lucille Ball type.” 

 

Arnaz wasn’t nearly as successful in Hollywood; after a few unremarkable supporting roles, he was drafted and spent his WWII years directing USO programs. Post-service, he formed what became an enormously popular band, and spent several years touring.

 

These years are covered via a captivating collection of publicity photos, studio stills, movie posters and archival film clips; it’ll likely be an eye-opening surprise to learn that Arnaz is credited with introducing conga line dancing to the States.

The Addams Family 2: Insufficiently ookie

The Addams Family 2 (2021) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for macabre and rude humor

Available via: Movie theaters and streaming services

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.01.21

I sometimes wonder what Charles Addams would think, about how his macabre characters have been re-invented in the 21st century.

 

Morticia and Gomez, center, are horrified by what their son Pugsley has done to one
of our nation's natural wonders; daughter Wednesday is simply bored.

According to his official biographer, Linda H. Davis, he was “up and down” about the 1960s TV sitcom; he “enjoyed what it did for his earning power, but said the characters were ‘half as evil.’ ”

Bearing that in mind, regardless of his reaction to this New Age-style animation, he’d likely be unhappy over the way parents Gomez and Morticia — in particular — have been softened in this sequel. There’s scarcely an evil glance between them, let alone any sort of malevolent behavior. Indeed, Gomez (voiced by Oscar Isaac) spends the entire film fretting over the fact that daughter Wednesday (Chloë Grace Moretz) has adopted the aloofness of teenagehood, and prefers to be left alone.

 

Morticia (Charlize Theron) insists this is just a phase, but Gomez feels that desperate measures must be taken. His solution: a road trip across the United States, so the family can wreak all manner of havoc at — in sequence — Niagara Falls, Sleepy Hollow (an apt choice), Miami, San Antonio, the Alamo, the Grand Canyon, Death Valley and — of all places — Sausalito.

 

Ergo, poor Lurch (Conrad Vernon) must haul a mountain of luggage into the family’s haunted camper, and — with Uncle Fester (Nick Kroll) also crammed inside — they take off to see the country.

 

Wednesday’s younger brother Pugsley (Javon Walton) still loves to blow up stuff, and his expression — at least — often radiates wicked glee. And, yes; Wednesday’s arcane experiments, stylized weapons and booby traps often are at poor Pugsley’s expense; she loves to torture him, and (of course) he enjoys it.

 

Wednesday’s stoic somberness, in both animated expression and Moretz’s voice, is the film’s best running gag; she remains impassive no matter what manner of mayhem erupts around her (which she often generates).

The Glorias: A glorious life, inventively told

The Glorias (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for profanity

By Derrick Bang

We’ve long been intrigued by the notion of our Older Self being able to step back in time, and personally reassure our Younger Self that everything will turn out just fine.

 

Gloria Steinem (Julianne Moore, left) and Bella Abzug (Bette Midler) chortle over some
of the reactions to a recent issue of Ms. Magazine.

(Or, alternatively, of Younger Self confronting Older Self with a narrow gaze, and demanding to know what the heck went wrong.)

 

Director/co-scripter Julie Taymor cleverly exploits this beguiling premise in The Glorias, her adaptation — alongside co-writer Sarah Ruhl — of Gloria Steinem’s 2015 memoir, My Life on the Road.

 

Love her or loathe her, one must acknowledge that Steinem carved out an impressively ambitious career, despite humble and disorientingly peripatetic origins. Taymor — an eclectic filmmaker known for her boldly unique approaches to varied projects such as Frida, Across the Universe and her gender-switching version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest — employs different actresses to depict four primary “pivot points” in Steinem’s life.

 

As her defiantly non-linear narrative bounces back and forth in time, these four selves occasionally meet and discuss what has transpired, or will transpire. Such encounters are filmed in dreamlike, soft-focus monochrome, always while traveling, and usually on a Greyhound bus whose windows look out upon a different time and place: an easy metaphor for the notion that life is a journey, with each stop far more important than the eventual destination.

 

Youngest Gloria (doe-eyed Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is enchanted by her irrepressible, irresponsible but flamboyantly theatrical father, Leo (Timothy Hutton), a huckster and charlatan forever keeping his family one step ahead of the previous town’s creditors. Despite the profoundly negative affect this has on his wife, Ruth (Enid Graham), Leo nonetheless inspires Gloria to recognize that travel is the best possible education.

 

Hutton is excellent: totally persuasive as a silver-tongued con artist who nonetheless knows, in his heart, that he’s destined to disappoint all the people he loves.

 

Twelve-year-old Gloria (Lulu Wilson), solemn beyond her years, is faced with the challenge of caring for her mentally fragile mother, after Leo abandons his family. With Ruth sliding ever deeper into chronic despair, Gloria soon understands how important it is for a woman to be able to make her own way in the world, without being beholden to a husband. We see the resolve in Wilson’s gaze.

 

There’s also a telling conversation, when Gloria discovers that her mother had once been a writer and reporter … forced to work behind a male byline. And we realize, from our contemporary remove, that Gloria would grow up to live her mother’s unlived life. (And how often, I wonder, does a child honor a parent in such an unspoken fashion?)

 

The Addams Family: Appropriately ookie and spooky

The Addams Family (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for macabre and suggestive humor
By Derrick Bang

This new Addams Family film definitely catches the vibe that cartoonist Charles Addams established so well, during a run that lasted from 1938 to his death in ’88.

Then again … not entirely.

Newly arrived in the postcard-perfect community that has been built in the lowland beneath
their dilapidated hilltop mansion, the Addams Family — from left, Morticia, Wednesday,
Gomez, Pugsley and Uncle Fester — prepare to greet their neighbors in their own
inimitable fashion.

These animated Addamses certainlylookright; directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon have faithfully followed the character template established within so many magazine covers and single-panel New Yorker cartoons. The resulting film moves along at a brisk, gag-laden clip; Tiernan, Vernon and editors Kevin Pavlovic and David Ian Salter pack their 87-minute romp with plenty of entertainment. I’ve no doubt today’s audiences will find it gleeful good fun.

And yet … scripters Matt Lieberman, Pamela Pettler and Erica Rivinoja have made a major change that would have prompted a frown from dear ol’ Charles, were he still with us. His cartoons always derived their humor from what dire deed was about to take place, generally executed by the gleefully macabre children, Wednesday and Pugsley; our imaginations filled in what would happen in the next few seconds, thereby making us collaborators in the punch line.

This film, in great contrast, too frequently completes the gag: often at the expense of poor Uncle Fester. Wednesday’s casually aimed arrows repeatedly penetrate his flesh, in a manner more reminiscent of Kenny’s recurring deaths, in television’s South Park. Many would excuse this as the dictates of modern humor, but I lament the absence of subtlety … particularly because subtlety — even if gruesome — was Charles Addams’ forté.

But times change, and it’s not really fair to judge this film by standards dated by more than half a century. Particularly because Lieberman, Pettler and Rivinoja have concocted a story quite decidedly Addams-esque, while taking a few cheeky digs at contemporary real-world behavior. 

It’s impossible to make too much fun of the narcissistic social media generation. On top of which, this film takes some perceptive shots at the gullibility of small-minded adults too easily swayed by libelous tweets and emails (a message likely overlooked by guilty parties who’d never, for a moment, think they behaved like that).

A brief prologue follows the nuptials that unite Gomez (voiced by Oscar Isaac) and Morticia (Charlize Theron) in unholy matrimony, after which they and all their bizarre friends and relations are driven away by angry/terrified “normal” townsfolk. Gomez and Morticia wind up at a mansion-esque, long-deserted asylum that comes with a vengeful resident ghost and hulking, shambling lunatic; the latter becomes their butler, Lurch (Vernon), when they turn this “perfect” estate into a happy home.