Cineast Movie Previews: 'Are You Here,' 'Expedition...' 'Love Is Strange,' 'One I Love'
This week, Cineast officers previews of the new movies Are You Here, Expedition to the End of the World, Love Is Strange and The One I Love.
Are You Here
Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis play an odd couple in Are You Here, a buddy movie from Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. Making his feature-film directorial debut, Weiner has chosen actors usually associated with broad comedy to portray the twists and turns of friendship—especially friendship that is tested by mental instability. Besides Wilson and Galifianakis, the film features Amy Poehler, also playing against type, as Galifianakis’s embittered sister. Naturally, there are still a lot of laughs here, but don’t get the idea that this is Starsky and Hutch II or The Hangover IV. Look for legendary film director Peter Bogdanovich making a cameo appearance as a judge.
Expedition to the End of the World
Climb aboard a three-masted schooner with a group of weather-beaten Danes for a trip to one of the last unexplored regions of the world. Expedition to the End of the World follows along as this group of scientists and artists chart and evaluate a portion of Greenland that is experiencing a rapid melting of its ice cover. In fact, the “end of the world” mentioned in the title could refer to the remote region that the expedition is exploring, or it could be implying that Greenland’s melting is a more ominous sign of the earth’s changing climate than we care to admit. In Danish and English with English subtitles.
Love Is Strange
In Love Is Strange, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play Ben and George, a long-term committed gay couple living in New York City who decide to finally get married. In what must regrettably be called a believable twist, George loses his job soon after the wedding (he had been a music teacher at a Catholic school) and the two are forced, for financial reasons, to relinquish their apartment. What follows is an undesired separation—after 40 years of cohabitation—as the two shack up with relatives while trying to find a new place to live. Also starring Marisa Tomei.
The One I Love
Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss star in The One I Love as a husband and wife on the verge of a split. A marriage counselor, played with an air of mystery by Ted Danson, seems to have an answer. Saying that he has succeeded in “refreshing” many marriages, he sends the couple to a strange and supernatural retreat, a house with strange, magical powers. The husband, who had imagined a weekend of horseback riding with breaks for wine and sex, is not pleased. The wife, on the other hand, likes it so much that she wants to stay. This difference of opinion would appear to be the opposite of what couples therapy is supposed to accomplish, but maybe that
was the point?