Now on Screen: Familiar Ground, Cowboys & Aliens, Crazy, Stupid, Love.

By John Semley

Because Toronto’s more movie obsessed than a Quentin Tarantino screenplay (yuk yuk), Torontoist brings you Now on Screen, a weekly roundup of new releases.
Hello, friendlies! Well we’re moving into August, and so out of the heart of summer movie season. But not before we see a few major studio releases, like the delightful Crazy, Stupid, Love and the boring genre mishmash Cowboys & Aliens. Thankfully, we’ve got some quality homegrown cinema to leaven the heavyweights this week. Do you want to know more? Well, Torontoist‘s John Semley and Kiva Reardon have got the scoop and are pointing their thumbs in all kinds of directions. Just for you.

Familiar Ground Directed by Stéphane Lafleur

Cowboys & Aliens Directed by Jon Favreau

Crazy, Stupid, Love. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa

Let’s give it to the Quebecois: while it’s not a trait exclusive to their filmmakers, their national cinema is confident enough in its presentation-of-self to permit kitchen-sink melodramas that deal with someone other than the upper-middle class. While the trend in the States—from American Beauty on through Alexander Payne and however many Sundancey indies—has been to probe into mid-life crises of the American suburbs, Quebeckers know that banality and emotional disconnect aren’t properties of the super rich alone. Just think of chilly docu-dramas of Denis Côté, which seem at times like an antidote to the stuffy white-collar academia of Denys Arcand’s canon-forming features.
Or, even better, take Stéphane Lafleur’s sophomore feature, Familiar Ground (En terrain connus). It’s not a film about class or anything. But it’s markers and mise-en-scène suggest a comfort with a world beyond white picket fences, infinity pools, and chewed up cigars left smoldering in ashtrays (looking your way, Barney Panofsky). Familiar Ground is a world cluttered by stacks of corrugated cardboard, busted ski-doos, and snow-blind pigeons; of spaghetti sauce out of the jar and that kind of icy, unyielding permafrost that lays waste to the idea that Canadian winters are something other than brutal and ugly.
The marriage of Maryse (Fanny Mallette) and Alain (Sylvain Marcel) is already showing signs of stress when Maryse witnesses an accident at the box factory, where she works as a disinterested floor supervisor, barely supervising the floor from her elevated office. Unable to talk to her overly chipper husband (who trains for the Tour de France on a stationary bike set up in front of a tape showing open roads moving past), Maryse stews around her own guilt and loneliness. The target of her misplaced anger and confusion becomes a small crane the couple have been trying unsuccessfully to sell (the machine’s one arm, presumably, reminds her of the employee whose arm was maimed on the job). Meanwhile, Maryse’s listless brother, Benoit (Francis La Haye), putts around making egg salad for their ailing father (Michel Daigle) and halfway-courting a kindly school crossing guard (Suzanne Lemoine).
Convinced that his hands are cursed, and that they will turn anything to shit, Benoit is reluctant when his father insists that he and Maryse drive up to the decommissioned family cottage to return a trailer that can successfully move the mini-crane that’s so troubling Maryse. (The decision is made over an awkward family supper, in which Benoit serves a small bird that had flown into his sliding door window, in what may or may not be a nod to the notoriously uncomfortable dinner scene in Eraserhead.) Benoit’s anxiety is worsened when a man claiming to be from the future (Denis Houle) shows up on his driveway, in the film’s single, inspired magic-realist flourish. This stranger (who runs a car-rental lot and is, apparently, from only a few months in the future), forewarns grave consequences if Benoit and Maryse make the trip. Undaunted, Benoit begrudgingly decides to go anyways.
It’s a credit to Lafleur that his characters’ motivations remain largely muddy, left to the inferences of viewers picking up clues along the way. Though it takes a while to find its footing (it belabours the reveal of the rather obvious connection between Benoit and Maryse), Familiar Ground is a first-rate film. By taking its time in examining the relationships between its Benoit, Maryse, and their alienation from other people orbiting their lives, it exhibits a real warmth for characters who seem at first like dour, chilly oddballs. Ripe with memorable moments and images (the crane, Maryse shopping for a cooler at Canadian Tire, Benoit beating up a snowman after bungling a date) and a what-the-fuck ending that reveals a surprising sweetness, Familiar Ground weaves itself together into one the most memorable pictures of the year—Quebecois, Canadian, or otherwise. (John Semley)
Familiar Ground opens Friday, July 29, for a limited run at The Royal (608 College Street). Click here for showtimes.

It’s a credit to how fine a James Bond Daniel Craig is that it’s getting hard to take him seriously doing anything else. Granted, he can’t really sell his dusty American accent here as a mysterious stranger leading a group of ranchers in a fight against a cadre of intergalactic gold prospectors, but all his tough-guy fisticuffs land with the bloody thuds we’ve come to expect seeing him play an especially rough ‘n’ tumble 007. And, really, that’s how most of the high-concept Cowboys & Aliens lands: with a thud. Based on a 2006 comic book (a medium more forgiving, if only slightly, of this kind of genre-crossover pap), Cowboys & Aliens sags with a self-seriousness found nowhere in its to-the-point title.
After waking up in a field with only scattered memories of who he is, Craig ambles into a small frontier town of Absolution, which is soon invaded by a fleet of otherwordly spacecraft. Sons, wives, and other key townsfolk are captured, and Craig’s outlaw Jake Lonergan joins up with a posse led by cattle tycoon and Civil War vet Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). It’s another “I just want my kid back” turn for Ford, who phones in gruff and grizzled as he sets out to rescue his trouble-making son (Paul Dano). A mysterious woman with some kind of secret of her own (Olivia Wilde) tags along. So does a dorky bartender/doctor played by Sam Rockwell.
As the rag-tag crew (what other kind of crew would they be, really?) rides into battle, Jake starts to put together some pieces of his past, and they team up with a group of Apaches who have also been befouled by these destiny-manifesting aliens (who, again, are harvesting gold for some reason). A bunch of questions are left unanswered: like why they’re abducting people (aside from the fact it’s just what aliens do)? And why are they harvesting gold at all? (Ford’s character poses this point-blank, and we never get a response.) Favreau, who proved himself a deft action director as recently as the first Iron Man film, strings things together competently enough, but it lacks the slack-jawed awe of his better efforts. But worse than this, the tone is deathly earnest, especially for a movie that is Cowboys & Aliens. How can there be drama in a film called Cowboys & Aliens? How can we be expected to care about anyone or anything? At least Snakes on a Plane never bothered dabbling in sympathy. There’s fun to be had (maybe) with a movie in which hard-ass vigilantes hang some ETs high. But you won’t find it here. (John Semley)
Cowboys & Aliens opens Friday, July 29, in wide release. Click here for showtimes.

The thing with romcoms is that they are dealt a tough hand: romance and comedy. They’re like the kid in middle school with curly hair and glasses. It’s a lot to handle. But with a little maturity those kids learn to work with what they’ve got and suddenly come out looking like Seth Rogan at the 2009 Oscars. This is the case with Crazy, Stupid, Love. Though it’s a by-the-book tale of love gone awry and the inevitable public decree that saves it, what easily could have been a frizzy mess turned out to be a sleek and charming flick.
After 25 years of marriage, Emily (Julianne Moore) asks Cal (Steve Carell) for a
divorce. This seems to be immediately caused by his love of New Balances, but we’re to assume that it’s indicative of a larger problem (the classic “he stopped trying”). Enter Jacob (Ryan Gosling), the modern-day libertine, wise in the ways of turning bar chat into pillow talk. He takes Cal under his wing (and on a man makeover) ready to teach him the ways of fancy scotch-based cocktails and meaningless sex with models. But, of course, what’s a love story without multi-generational layers?
Rounding out our merry crew of lovebirds are Hannah (Emma Stone), as the woman
whose goofy facial expressions melt Jacob’s chiseled exterior, and Robbie (Jonah Bobo), Cal’s son who is wise beyond his 13 years. Kevin Bacon and Marisa Tomei supply laughs as the romantic roadblocks as does Liza Lapira, Hannah’s wise-cracking BFF. Despite being over-scored and a tad long, we’re all reminded that love is indeed crazy and stupid, but man, can it be fun. (Kiva Reardon)
Crazy, Stupid, Love opens Friday, July 29, in wide release. Click here for showtimes.