The Scenester: Couples Weekend

 Couples Retreat — C-


First we have our dysfunctional couples … : Couples Retreat didn’t screen in time for publication, but I did you a favor and saw it anyway. Here’s what I said:
Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau go way back, first starring together in 1996’s Swingers, as young bucks ready to take Los Angeles by storm. Thirteen years later, the two have reached middle age, now at the top of their Hollywood game. But where Swingers thrived on freshness and energy, Couples Retreat is complacent. Jason Bateman and Faizon Love join Vaughn and Favreau as the XY contingent of a group of couples persuaded to go to Eden, a therapy retreat, by Bateman and onscreen wife Cynthia (Kristen Bell) — two uptight PowerPoint lovers who convince their buddies that they won’t have to take part in planned healing activities. Except when they arrive, as it turns out, it’s all mandatory. They’re faced with a choice: Stay in paradise and listen to some touchy-feely quack, or bail and head back to kids and responsibility? The couples stick to Eden and spend the next couple of hours doing everything you’d expect them to. I don’t know what’s more disconcerting: the fact that four genuinely funny men willngly play into their own typecasting (Vaughn as the fast-talking wiseguy, Bateman as a less-hilarious Michael Bluth), or that Vaughn and Bateman’s onscreen wives look a fraction of their age and they think no one will notice.


Paranormal Activity — B

 
Then we have our haunted couples: You may remember how we demanded Paranormal Activity in Philly … and then we got it! We sent Drew Lazor to a midnight screening and this is what he came back with:
It took first-time director Oren Peli just seven days to shoot Paranormal Activity in his own house, with a hand-held camera, two unknown actors and a measly $15,000 budget. Plenty of people are saying what he came up with is one of the most terrifying horror films of all time. That’s an unfortunate overstatement in that it’s created unrealistic expectations for this little movie that could, but it’s unabashedly scary — and it’s worth seeing for multiple reasons, some of which aren’t hair-raising at all. Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston, playing a couple named Micah and Katie, are embarking on an experiment: She’s been deeply disturbed by a insidious presence her whole life, so her cocky day trader boyfriend leaves a high-end video cam rolling while they sleep to sate his curiosity. “Things” start happening — and it’s not long before the incidents begin increasing in volatility with each passing night. That’s all you need to know to embrace that aspect of the movie, but Paranormal’s biggest gifts come in the form of Sloat and Featherston’s performances — both do a superb job of fleshing out the throes of a couple in duress, scrambling from argument to make-up and back again with such gentle chemistry that you might mistake them for your actual friends.

The Boys are Back — B-

 


Coco Before Chanel — B-

 


Crude — B

 

Meet Crude producer Michael Bonfiglio.
And don’t forget to check the Repertory Film listings for your movie goodness!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Movies, Scenester. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.