As bad buddy cop comedies go, “Cop Out” is perhaps one of the better ones. Taken as a piece of storytelling, it’s guilty of the capital cinema crime of trashing itself: repeatedly disrespecting its own reality. On the other  hand, taken as a way to kill some time watching fairly skilled comic actors like Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan and Seann William Scott be funny in a loose and genial way, it’s reasonably enjoyable. That, however, does not excuse its numerous sins.

Directed by Kevin Smith but written by the TV scriptwriting brother act of Mark and Robb Cullen, “Cop Out”seeks to convince us that none-too-competent tough guy detective Jimmy Monroe (Willis) and zany neurotic Paul Hodges (Morgan) have been somehow functioning as partners in the NYPD for nine years. After a bit of excess zaniness by Hodges while dressed as a giant cell phone leads to the brazen murder of a hapless informant (Juan Carlos Hernández), neither Monroe nor Hodges is particularly concerned about their clear responsibility for the death. The missing paychecks from their resulting suspension, however, are a big problem.

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Cop Out - Red Band Clip | Movies & TV | SPIKE.com

 ”In the Loop” is a broad and harsh satire in which the feckless and self-serving behavior of political operatives in Britain and the United States threaten to lead inexorably to a completely needless war. To all appearances, the war is not waged for any logical reason, but only to further the personal agendas of a few ego-addled politicos. Farfetched, isn’t it?

Directed by acclaimed British TV comedy veteran Armando Iannucci (”I’m Alan Partridge”), “In the Loop” is largely an extension of the 2005 miniseries, “In the Thick of It,” with its Oscar-nominated screenplay penned by Iannucci and a quartet of writers from the series. And so, “In the Loop” borders stylistically on mock-documentary. However, if it were an actual documentary, it would be in the category of, “I could send you a screener, but then I’d have to kill you.” It’s a real worm’s-eye view of the rush to a war of (poor) choice.

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And now a moment of NSFW….

He was known for using plenty of words, but the pictures told the story, and what stories they told.

More from Glenn Kenny and David Hudson.  Dave Kehr has an obituary which is a pretty good rundown of Rohmer’s career.

And here’s one more. Sorry about the double subtitles, but this is a clip of the great opening sequence of Rohmer’s “Love in the Afternoon” (sometimes called “Chloe in the Afternoon” to avoid confusion with the Billy Wilder romantic comedy). It starts out like classic Rohmer and ends with a bit of sci-fi.

The breathtaking cinematography here is by the late Nestor Almendros. Whatever you do, when you see this one, get the Criterion version.

In 1934’s “Manhattan Melodrama,” Clark Gable’s virtuous gangster literally goes to the gallows for the sake of his friendship with William Powell’s honest but sincerely conflicted politician, now the governor of the state. As Gable nobly refuses Powell’s offer of a reprieve – he deserves his fate – and prepares to meet his end, they shake hands, a bit dewy-eyed. Thirty-four years later, Oscar (Walter Matthau) and Felix (Jack Lemmon) in “The Odd Couple” are pretty clearly in the throes of one hilariously complex love/hate relationship but, when their friendship is healed by the end of the film, even the briefest of hugs is not in the cards for the poker buddies.

Now, of course, we live in a very different male-bonding world. Yet, even as the hug becomes the new handshake for many, the question remains: what is the new hug? No wonder so many of us seem caught between a junior high school level fear of being thought gay and artsy post collegiate embarrassment that we’re not cool enough to actually be, you know, a little bit gay. It’s life in the post-Kinsey, post-ambisexual/glam David Bowie, post “Seinfeld” “not that there’s anything wrong with that” world where, as proven by “Superbad,” the spectacle of straight males being physically affectionate is somehow funnier than ever.

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Also, If you’ve haven’t seen them, you may also want to check out my interviews with Humpday’s two stars, Mark Duplass (of the filmmaking Duplass brothers) and actor-filmmaker Joshua Leonard (”The Blair Witch Project.”)

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I was very sorry to hear earlier this morning of the death at age 79 of a personal favorite of mine, Edward Woodward. Although he may still be best known for his roles in the acclaimed fact-based war drama, “Breaker Morant,” the espionage/crime-vigilante TV series, “The Equalizer,” and by our friends in England as the cynical, super-tough spy “Callan,” his role in what was once a fairly obscure cult film all but buried by its studio, the 1973 “The Wicker Man,” is getting the lion’s share of attention in most of his press obituaries, that’s including the very touching one issued by the BBC this morning.

“The Wicker Man” has been one of my favorite movies since I was teenager and remains so now — not even the worst imaginable remake can touch that film, and that proposition has now been tested. Still, my admiration of the actor Woodward goes well beyond one single role. He was the kind of performer you could rely on to be great in anything and so he was on countless television programs. A master of understatement who knew when and how to go big (the oft-spoiled ending of “The Wicker Man” being a case in point), he was a real virtuoso whose un-showy approach probably doomed him to being underrated to a certain degree. Still, he didn’t seem to mind and judging from the press accounts I’ve been reading, he was a real gentleman and as fun to be around as his best known characters were definitely not. He was also, by the way, an accomplished Shakespearian stage actor and a fair-to-middling pop singer. It’s a shame he rarely got to do either on screen, though his voice can be heard to powerful effect during the final scene of “Breaker Morant.” (If you don’t mind learning the fate of his title character, or already know it from history, you can see the conclusion here.)

Two of his more devoted fans appear to have been Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who were smart enough to cast Woodward in “Hot Fuzz,” and you can read their thoughts at Wright’s blog and via a message board post by Pegg. (Big h/t to Beaks.) Wright’s piece is really lovely and I strongly recommend you read all of if . However, here’s one line that tickled me, in the spirit of “it’s funny because it’s true.”

I also remember telling him that Quentin [Tarantino] was a huge fan of his film ‘Sitting Target’ (another great soundtrack – btw) and he looked shocked. I’m not sure anyone had ever complimented him on it. He replied “Well, you must tell your friend he is very strange indeed”.

And so it goes, another great lost. I do want to echo Edgar Wright’s entreaty that, especially you’ve never seen it, you watch the 1973 “The Wicker Man” as fast as possible and avoid any place where spoilers about the ending might be found, which seems to be about 99% of what’s been posted about it recently. (I tried to avoid giving too much away in my 2000 review linked to above.) Woodward’s portrayal of a repressed, bitter, humorless, but also decent, principled, and compassionate man is, to me, very much what acting is all about. So, why are we surprised to hear about what a funny and regular guy he was in real life? He was acting — extraordinarily well.

Greg of Cinema Styles has more. Highly recommended.

Originally posted at Premium Hollywood.

And also the Beatles reissue and, what the heck, Rosh Hoshannah (Jewish New Year), too.

An important chunk of entertainment history left us yesterday with the death of Larry Gelbart at 81. Gelbart was gifted both working alone and as a collaborator with other writers. It probably helped that relatively early in his career he labored alongside Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon on comedian Sid Caesar’s classic early variety shows. In the sixties he graduated to Broadway and the movies. With Burt Shevelove, he cowrote the book for the Broadway musical/Zero Mostel vehicle, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (later filmed by Richard Lester) and the hard to find all-star cult British comedy, “The Wrong Box.” A Chicago-born graduate of L.A.’s Fairfax High (right across the street from Cantor’s Deli), he lived in England for a time, working with another nice Jewish boy named Marty Feldman at the height of his English television fame.

He became much better known in the seventies as the primary writer during the early, funnier and more politically pointed days on the television version of “M*A*S*H.” I get to write about him because he made a mark in movies that’s too important to ignore, writing several good ones, and some not so good. He’ll probably be most commonly remembered for his work on “Oh, God” with George Burns in the title role, and what is probably Dustin Hoffman’s best performance in “Tootsie,” which is something of a comedy classic. He also co-wrote with Sheldon Keller the vastly underrated and all but impossible to see spoof of early Hollywood (specifically Warner Brothers) films, “Movie, Movie,” directed by Stanley Donen and starring George C. Scott, Eli Wallach, Trish van Devere, and Barry Bostwick. (A likely model for “Grindhouse,” in that it was also a double-feature complete with fake trailers.) It more than made up for the regrettable but profitable “Blame it On Rio,” written by Gelbart and also directed by Donen, which starred Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna and an extremely young Demi Moore.

In the nineties, he divided his time between Broadway plays like “City of Angels,” a musical spoof of classic hard-boiled detective novels, and pointed TV movies like “Barbarians at the Gate” — a tongue in cheek version of a nonfiction book about the buyout of Nabisco — and 1992’s “Mastergate,” an unbelievably witty parody of the hearings that invariably follow major Washington scandals.

Mr. Gelbart never stopped writing until almost the end, and was easily one of the most respected and beloved writers in all of show business. 81 isn’t exactly young, but we could’ve used a few more years of his presence. It’s a sad weekend for the world of funny.

Below, a great moment from “Tootsie.”

[This posted appeared originally at “Premium Hollywood.”]

Even as someone who has a soft spot for offbeat indie comedies, I would nevertheless seriously consider instituting a perpetual moratorium on the use of the word “quirky” to describe that kind of movie. The only problem is then we’d have no other word to use in reference to something like “Gigantic.”

This is the story of the emotional life of Brian (Paul Dano of “There Will Be Blood” and “Little Miss Sunshine”), a low-key salesman of very expensive beds whose only real ambition is to adopt a Chinese baby. It’s a laudable but unusual goal for a young man, and he’d seem like a pretty stable guy were it not for the occasional apparently random violent attacks waged by an angry homeless man (the suddenly omnipresent Zach Galifianakis). It’s tempting to think that the encounters are imaginary, but the injuries seem real enough.

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For more information on fighting hard drugs among our nation’s preschoolers and first graders, see the FSITO website.

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Now, before you decide to come after me for giving free publicity to really sketchy charities, be aware that this is a nice bit of viral marketing for the upcoming seventies blaxsploitation spoof, “Black Dynamite,” which I was fortunate to see at the Los Angeles Film Festival two months back. From cowriter/director Scott Sanders and cowriter star Michael Jai White (”Spawn”), it’s easily the funniest and best made comedy genre homage in a very long time, and its marketing isn’t bad either. The movie’s official site is worth a look, too.

(Also posted at Premium Hollywood.)

More here. And here.