Spy: (dir: Paul Feig) As usual with this type of comedy, I fast-forwarded through a lot of it: the shit jokes (of which there are thousands. Are we a toddler-nation at heart?) and most of the self-debasing stuff Melissa McCarthy has to do to set-up the pay-off when she comes out, guns-blazing, at full power. But although about half of it is embarrassing and awful, the other half is so great that it's worth the slog. You could call it kindred to Ghosts of Mars, as all its true powerhouse characters are women. Some of them are bitches, others downtrodden neurotics, but they all grow and balance until nobody's all good or bad. You get fond of a couple of the bitches by the end (Allison Janney as the CIA boss, Rose Byrne as the sleek, nuke-selling villain), the neurotics (McCarthy and Miranda Hart) get to find valid routes to their own powers, and the men are just kind of along for the ride. Speaking of the men, Jason Statham is hilarious, sending up his usual foul-mouthed, cockney bad-ass.
IN SUMMARY: If you can make it through the first half and all its mortifications, the second half is worth it. Point of interest: apparently when the ratings board warns of "graphic nudity", they mean you're going to see a dick. Can they not just say "male nudity" instead? I guess I'm curious why men are graphic and women are... what's the opposite of graphic? Are we 'implicit' in our nakedness? Somehow 'vague'?
Mistress America: (dir: Noah Baumbach) It's glib to say that Baumbach and Greta Gerwig are the new Allen and Keaton, right? Hard not to, since the fruits of their alliance (this and Frances Ha) could be construed as love songs composed for New York City, made out of fast-paced, deadpan comedy from over-educated, chronically-anxious, ever-self-thwarted would-be overachievers. These movies are missing the smooth grace of Annie Hall and Manhattan, or maybe it's more accurate to say they move with a clumsier kind of grace, the same strange, loping anti-grace that Gerwig brings to dancing and walking and, indeed, to every gesture. They're funny, these films, not in laugh-out-loud ways, but in a constant rumble of amusement which hums beneath the action. They're also largely concerned with the vagaries and oddness of girl-crushes between heterosexual women, which, in terms of exploring uncharted territory, is kind of like launching the first Apollo missions.
Baumbach's characters are grating and selfish and difficult at first to like, but, again, as in the old Allen works, the saving grace is the honesty. People spend enough time saying, spontaneously and quickly, exactly what they think and mean, even when it reflects badly on themselves, that it eventually engenders a level of trust with the audience. There's a genuine innocence to these characters, existing in tandem with their cringe-inducing capacities for cruelty and selfish behaviors, so it winds up feeling like the cruelty of children who are desperately trying to grow into adulthood.
IN SUMMARY: A low-key pleasure, and not for everybody. Baumbach is a genius, no question, and Gerwig may very well be, too.
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