A line that keeps bouncing through my skull like a radio jingle first pops up in Woody Allen's 1978 Best Picture Oscar turn Annie Hall, when a hedonist director (Tony Roberts) tries to seduce a morose writer (Allen) into moving to La-La Land. "Twins, Max. Think of the possibilities!"
First-time feature writer/director Jenee LaMarque gives us The Pretty One, a dark comedy/tragedy that takes these possibilities a lot further than I ever imagined. Twin sisters Laurel and Audrey (twin frisky turns from Ruby Sparks creator Zoe Kazan) are living separate lives as The Pretty One begins in the Ventura County burbs. Laurel is helping her portrait-painter dad, Frank (John Carroll Lynch), turn out "copies" of famous paintings. You can see that Laurel hasn't quite got the knack for this fiddle when her Mona Lisa features lips that betray a lust for the good life.
Flash-forward, and we witness the home-return visit of Laurel's city-mouse twin, Audrey. Through a series of contrivances and coincidences, Audrey convinces Laurel to leave Dad, get a beauty-shop makeover, move to the city, and start life anew. These best-laid plans are overturned in a sudden car wreck that leaves Laurel in traction and Audrey burned to a crisp. Only, hold the presses, the family insists that the surviving twin is actually Audrey, and weak sister Laurel goes along with the gag to the tune of attending her own funeral, then going off to the big city to take over Audrey's life as a condo owner/real estate agent.
The plot thickens and turns increasingly improbable as Laurel/Audrey falls for the handsome tenant the real Audrey had been about to evict from the condo's other unit. Then Laurel/Audrey ditches Audrey's obnoxious, high-pressure boyfriend. The only thing that redeems this Joan Crawford-worthy soap opera is a focused, disarming performance by Kazan. Spending the first act in technically adroit conversations with herself, Kazan manages to make sense of the proceedings before a third-act happy ending. Pass on this one for another viewing of Ruby Sparks, where writer/actor Kazan shines opposite real-life live-in boyfriend Paul Dano. (Opens Friday at the AMC Metreon.)
Coming to the Castro Theatre, Feb. 20-28:
On the Waterfront Zoe Kazan's granddad Elia cleaned up with a waterfront-corruption drama powered by Marlon Brando's most blisteringly charismatic loner. This 1954 eight-Oscar masterpiece features the screen debut of Eva Marie Saint, and offers an opportunity to compare the acting styles of Broadway vets Lee J. Cobb and Karl Malden with one of the screen's most dynamic forces of nature. Features the frequently parodied Brando monologue "I could have been a contender" �" see Robert De Niro's Oscar-turn version in Raging Bull. (Plays with the lesser-known Brando vehicle The Night of the Following Day, 2/20)
Crimes and Misdemeanors Possibly only Woody Allen could pull off these dueling story-lines: Jewish eye-doctor (Oscar nomination for Martin Landau) solves mid-life crisis by having his mistress rubbed out in a contract killing, while a schlemiel doc-maker (Allen) compares his pompous subject (Alan Alda) to Benito Mussolini. This 1989 gem, alternately poignant and hilarious, is one of the most seriously addictive entries in Woody's wildly eclectic canon. (On double bill with Clue, 2/21)
Sing-Along Mary Poppins Classic Disney multiplied by the pleasures of this uniquely Castro-style karaoke experience. Veteran Disney live-action director Robert Stevenson conducts a jewel of an ensemble �" Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, Ed Wynn �" in one of Hollywood's greatest fun-for-all-the-family coups. (2/22-23)
Saving Mr. Banks The inside-baseball account of how Uncle Walt seduced a prim, proper and very severe lady, Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers, into surrendering her darlings to the Magic Kingdom is beamed down through the star power of Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson. (2/23, 6 & 8:30 p.m.)
No Country for Old Men This Best Picture Oscar drama finds the Coen Brothers reveling in the details of how a man (Josh Brolin) flees an inescapable fate. Our hearts race as simple, ordinary sounds �" the unscrewing of a light bulb, the deadly beep of a transponder �" signal impending doom. The Coens' doggedly faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy finds us riveted by the grotesque ends for characters who swore they deserved better fates. Oscars also for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor (Javier Bardem). (2/26)
A Serious Man In possibly the funniest yet commandingly philosophical entry in the Coens' wacky oeuvre, the mischief kicks off in the head of a 13-year-old Jewish pothead (Aaron Wolff) as his slapstick journey towards his Bar Mitzvah parallels the bizarre, trials-of-Job mishaps of his college physics teacher dad (an extraordinarily nimble Michael Stuhlbarg). Newcomer Wolff gets high marks for inhabiting a shrewd little troublemaker who finds precisely the wrong moment to deadpan, "What's sodomy, Dad?" (2/26)
Mulholland Drive Right up there with Blue Velvet in the David Lynch pantheon of dark comedies inspired by pitiless dream logic, a Hollywood ingenue (Naomi Watts) succumbs to the temptation to explore the fate of an amnesia victim. (2/27)
Star 80 Hollywood/Broadway legend Bob Fosse's final film is a gripping if unsettling account of the death of onetime Playboy centerfold model Dorothy Stratten (Muriel Hemingway) at the hands of a jealous boyfriend (Eric Roberts). (2/27)