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(04/28/16 9:35pm)
"The Boss" offers hilarious, and often touching, comedy.
It gives a glimpse into the past as well as the inside life of Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy), a self-made millionaire who became a super-powered tycoon and motivational speaker through relentless work.
However, Michelle presents a rather conflicted character offstage. She is incredibly conceited, concerned only for her wealth and her status. But her empire comes to a halt, falling before her feet, as she is caught in an insider-trading scandal. She watches her fortune dwindle and eventually evaporate from behind bars. She is forced to take refuge after her release on the couch of the secretary she often maligned, Claire, played by Kristen Bell.
After taking Claire’s young daughter to a bake-sale meet, Michelle reveals once again her inner tycoon and businesswoman. She transforms once more into the almost heartless, and certainly out of control, dominant leader of the quickly expanding bakery business she has situated herself into.
“The Boss” is not so much about Michelle making an attempt to recreate herself. It would be compelling if it were, but it is not. Rather, it is a riff on a particularly vapid character. Michelle is presented as pitiable through the revelation of her past and how it has driven her to her current difficulties. She has immense qualms about becoming part of a family for fear of rejection and the audience only sees her as a pitiable character.
Overall, Michelle is flat, fails to develop, and is the same person she was at the inchoation as she is at the resolution. The only difference that the viewer may discern in Michelle is that, by the final moments, she is part of a family.
The film itself, though, is not lacking in slapstick and lewd comedy. Many instances appear utterly bizarre and yet are taken in stride by the characters in the film. Many other instances seem to flow directly from one another, posing no challenge to laughter from the audience. It is not a movie about witty comedy, and it certainly is not attempting to be one. But it does provide a nice venue for a relaxing evening. It is funny without the need for analysis, reference or attention. It is almost effortless, on both the part of the viewer as well as the characters.
“The Boss” is ultimately a touching comedy, if surreal. Beneath every chuckle in the film is a silent tug at the heartstrings of the viewers. It is at once sentimental and joyous.
(04/28/16 9:29pm)
The Student Chamber Ensemble Concert, which will take place May 1 at 3:00 p.m., offers Mercer students as well as the surrounding Macon community an opportunity to experience a performance from several of Mercer’s rising musicians. Students from McDuffie Center for Strings will be performing several chamber pieces, which they have been practicing since the beginning of the semester in groups as well on their own.
The chamber groups not only prepare diligently for these performances, but also for others in the community. The groups have performed for hospital patients; Daybreak, a local homeless shelter; and many other groups in the Macon community. Through their community outreach, these students offer the chance to hear classical music to people who often would not have had such an opportunity.
(03/17/16 3:20am)
The Coen Brothers, known for such masterpieces as “Fargo,” “The Big Lebowski” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” have crafted yet another film to go down in their masterful oeuvre.
“Hail, Caesar!” is an enjoyable take on 1950s Hollywood and its many nuances and shifting tides. The film follows a flamboyant cast of characters, such as Baird Whitlock (George Clooney); an amiable but simple screen actor Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who’s a Hollywood fixer responsible for maintaining the image of his studio; and Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a charismatic yet naïve screen actor. The stories, each intermingling with one another, work together to create a dramatically compelling narrative while providing ample comedic farce.
The main story of the film deals with Mannix, who is struggling to deal not only with the loss of passion he once had for his work but also to maintain his honesty with his wife and his pastor. Mannix is an emotionally complex character, and, because of this, the viewer is readily invited to relate with him. He is the emotional center of the film, in stark contrast with the characters of Doyle and Whitlock, who are often vehicles for comedic relief.
These relations within the film allow it to have a natural flow and resonance. The comedic value of Doyle and Whitlock, not to mention Thora and Thessaly Thacker (both played by Tilda Swinton) and Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes), contrasts keenly and brightly with Mannix’s moral and emotional dilemma as well as the politically charged undertones of communism and McCarthyism in the Hollywood of 1950s.
The film seems to be a particularly personal act in historical excavation for the brothers as they make an attempt to reconstruct the Hollywood of the past as they see it now.
The Coen Brothers, both born in the 1950s, have seemingly taken on this filmmaking endeavor to present to the viewer how they perceive the decade of their birth and young childhood. The brothers deliver spectacularly, offering the chance to glimpse just how much their perceptions of the 1950s have influenced their filmmaking. They take into account many diverse subjects and weave them together — calling to mind the fast-paced and often confusing thrillers of Quentin Tarantino — with their playful narratives and vivid sceneries.
The shooting, for instance, lends the movie a patina of age. Each set and scene invites the viewer into this reality that the brothers have constructed. The colors and the props all seem to have been torn directly from the 1950s, and the realism they create is grand in scope.
“Hail, Caesar!” presents the viewer with a vibrant pastiche of narratives and pompous characters. There is no shortage in any way of interesting scenarios and humorous situations.
The Coen Brothers have enjoyed tremendous success. “Hail, Caesar!” continues this tradition and builds upon the brothers’ impressive body of work.