Down With Love (Peyton Reed, 2003)

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Ewan McGregor, Sarah Paulson, David Hyde Pierce, Rachel Dratch, Jack Plotnick, Tony Randall, John Aylward, John Munson, Matt Ross, Michael Ensign, Timothy Omundson, Jeri Ryan. Screenplay: Eve Ahlert, Dennis Drake. Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth. Production design: Andrew Laws. Film editing: Larry Bock. Music: Marc Shaiman.

From its retro opening credits to its boy/girl gets girl/boy finale, Down With Love is a spot-on parody of 1960s rom-coms, specifically the Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies epitomized by Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959). Its aim is to spotlight modern attitudes toward sex, romance, and marriage by showing us the way we were only 40 years earlier -- which means, too, that the parody itself looks a little dated 20-some years after its release. Critics liked Down With Love, audiences not so much, perhaps because you had to be steeped in those '60s movies to fully appreciate some of its gags. Like the original films, it's full of double entendres, including the split-screen effect that in Pillow Talk had Doris and Rock on screen in their separate apartment bathtubs, so that at one point it looked like the two of them were playing footsie. Down With Love's verbal and visual double entendres are, naturally, much raunchier than Pillow Talk's, which now seem quaintly innocent. The parody goes on for too long,  so that some fatigue has set in by the time the film reaches its cleverest point, a denouement that consists of an extended speech delivered by Renée Zellweger's character that both recaps and upends everything we've seen. Zellweger and Ewan McGregor don't have the chemistry that Day and Hudson have, but it doesn't matter, because we're not supposed to take their attraction seriously. David Hyde Pierce gets the Tony Randall role in the film, the neurotic sidekick to McGregor's character, but an appearance by Randall himself in a cameo role unfortunately reveals how much better in the part he was. 

Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García, 2022)

 

Raymond & Ray (Rodrigo García, 2022)

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Ethan Hawke, Maribel Verdú, Sophie Okenedo, Todd Louiso, Oscar Nuñez, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Maxim Swinton, Chris Silcox, Chris Grabner, Tom Bower. Screenplay: Rodrigo García. Cinematography: Igor Jadue-Lillo. Production design: David Crank. Film editing: Michael Ruscio. Music: Jeff Beal. 

Ethan Hawke seems to be everywhere these days: playing John Brown on the TV series The Good Lord Bird (2020) and King Aurvandil in The Northman (Robert Eggers, 2022), hiding behind a mask as the Grabber in The Black Phone (Scott Derrickson, 2022), making the double lives of Oscar Isaac’s Marc Spector difficult as Arthur Harrow in Moon Knight (2022), and narrating and directing the well-received documentary series The Last Movie Stars (2022), about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Not that I’m complaining: Hawke has become one of our finest actors, able to more than hold his own in the company of a wizardly performer like Isaac, and it’s good to see his energy hasn’t flagged in the least. It’s worth going back to watch some of his earlier films to see how he has grown as a performer, deepening his voice and gaining confidence. In Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997), for example, there is still something callow and lightweight about him in comparison with his co-star Jude Law. I think he makes Ray a more credible character than Ewan McGregor, no slouch as an actor, does of the half-brother Raymond. The problem with Raymond & Ray is that it’s not a movie that gives either actor much to play. It’s a trifle, a would-be black comedy that isn’t black enough or funny enough, depending mainly on the improbable discoveries that the mismatched half-brothers make as they uncover the secrets of their late father’s life. Hawke and McGregor get good support from Maribel Verdú as the father’s landlady/lover and Sophie Okenedo as the nurse who tended him as he lay dying, women privy to some of the surprise truths about his life. And the movie makes some nice hits at the insincerity behind the pieties of the funeral business. But Raymond & Ray is the kind of throwaway feature that used to be made when there was a demand to fill theater seats. The equivalent today is the film that gets a perfunctory theatrical release before swiftly heading to a streaming service, which is exactly what happened to this amusing but forgettable movie.

Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

Jim Broadbent in Moulin Rouge!

Christian: Ewan McGregor
Satine: Nicole Kidman
Harold Zidler: Jim Broadbent
Toulouse-Lautrec: John Leguizamo
The Duke: Richard Roxburgh
The Doctor: Garry McDonald
The Unconscious Argentinean: Jacek Koman
Satie: Matthew Whittet
Marie: Kerry Walker
Nini Legs in the Air: Caroline O'Connor
Audrey: David Wenham
The Green Fairy: Kylie Minogue
Chocolat: Deobia Oparei

Director: Baz Luhrmann
Screenplay: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce
Cinematography: Donald McAlpine
Production design: Catherine Martin
Film editing: Jill Bilcock
Music: Craig Armstrong
Costume design: Manolo Blahnik, Catherine Martin, Angus Strathie

The newspaper I used to work for had, at its heyday in the late '90s and early '00s, two staff film critics, with the result that at the end of the year, readers were given two 10 best and 10 worst lists of movies. Moulin Rouge! made one critic's 10 best list and the other's 10 worst. Well, it's that kind of movie: It either exhilarates you or exhausts you. I have a bent toward directors who have their own idiosyncratic visions, even if the idiosyncrasies can be annoying. So I will confess to being swept away by the tide of images and sounds that Baz Luhrmann crafts for his film. I wouldn't want every movie to be like it, but for me, Moulin Rouge! is fun to watch -- maybe every 10 years or so. There are those who think that Luhrmann confuses noise with life, and I get that objection, but his pastiche musical, a blend of Bollywood and Busby Berkeley filtered through what MTV used to be, has the kind of energy you don't see very often, and it's a beautiful showcase for Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, not to mention the production design of Catherine Martin, the cinematography of Donald McAlpine, and the film editing of Jill Bilcock that brings their work into a dazzling flurry of images. The objection that the film is all images -- i.e., camera tricks and cutting -- is probably justified, as is the observation that none of the leads is a real singer or dancer -- Ewan McGregor is more a shouter than a singer, and Nicole Kidman's moves are poses strung in sequence by the editor. But there's no market for Freds, Gingers, Judys, and Genes anymore, so finding people with star quality who can also sing and dance is tougher than it used to be.

Nora (Pat Murphy, 2000)

A rather muddled and unsatisfactory account of the domestic life of James Joyce (Ewan McGregor) and Nora Barnacle (Susan Lynch), adapted by Murphy and Gerard Stembridge from Brenda Maddox's excellent biography, Nora. There's not enough narrative drive in this account of their lives up to the publication of Dubliners. Mostly the film deals with the squabblings of the pair, who while mismatched intellectually seemed to have a kind of irresistible attraction to each other. The movie seems aimed at viewers with a ready knowledge of Joyce's life and work, especially the cultural and familial pressures that drove him into a life of exile from Ireland, but anyone who already possesses that knowledge is likely to be left frustrated by what appears on screen. Lynch is excellent in the title role, but McGregor never penetrates to the essence of the brilliant, self-tormenting genius of Joyce.