Tag: John C. Reilly


Terri

July 21st, 2011 — 7:36am

**

Terri-rm-  Terri (Jacob Wysocki)is a very obese 15 year old who lives with his demented uncle( Creed Bratton)and is bullied inschool. He develops a relationship with the empathic Assistant Principal Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly) who is trying to help him. There are two misfit friends, an attractive blond Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) and Chad (Bridger Zadina). The movie starts off very slowly and frequently drags on. We don’t know very much about the background of the teenagers and view them as your generic troubled high schoolers. Similarly, it is suggested that Mr. Fitzgerald has some problems but we only vaguely know about him. There are a number of potential comedic moments between him and Terri as well as a suggestion of some good chemistry but it never gets to the point where we are moved to laughter or anything close to tears. Reilly is the kind of actor who will grab your attention especially when he is going some place with his character which wasn’t the case here. Wysocki appears to be a talented actor who knows how to convey his feelings with few words. I am sure we are going to see him again in future efforts, hopefully in a more healthy size, and in a better movie . (2011)

Comment » | 2 Stars, Drama

Cyrus

September 8th, 2010 — 5:38am

* *
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– sp – Brothers Jay and Mark Duplass are the screenwriters/directors of this movie which is their first relatively big budget independent film and it has been picked up by Fox for distribution. This skillful duo has a knack for providing interesting characters with very realistic dialog. They discourage rehearsal and let their actors work using the script but improvising to bring out their interpretation of the their characters. In this case they had John C. Reilly and Marisa Tomei playing two somewhat awkward people in their mid 40s who seem to be falling in love shortly after meeting and hopping into bed. Tomei’s character has a 22 year old son, Cyrus well captured by Jonah Hill who appears to be a regressed mama’s boy who is joined at the hip with his mom but yet has a cold calculating almost evil side who will do whatever he can to prevent John played by Reilly from taking her away. This is essentially the plot . As John gradually becomes aware of the intense relationship between his new girl friend and her son he seeks the advise of his ex-wife played by Catherine Keener . He ultimately tries to confront Cyrus which leads to some intense and comedic moments. The Duplass brothers acknowledge that they do not provide much back story so we see these weird but appealing characters as they are, without knowing how they got to be this way or why they undergo some change. Therefore the result is a “Johnny one note” film with a simple story. Despite the talented expressions and sensitivity of the actors, we are not greatly moved or enlightened. There were a few somewhat disorienting brief scenes in the movie where the characters were talking without moving their lips but yet it did not appear to be a representation of internal thinking. When we asked the directors about this, they acknowledged that in one case they were trying to correct and shift the dialog which they were doing in the editing room. They then decided to use this motif in a few other scenes. While we did not feel the net result of this film merited our recommendation, we will look forward to future work by these talented brothers. (2010)

Comment » | 2 Stars, Comedy, Drama, Romance

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