I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With
(directed by Jeff Garlin)
While there's quite a few new releases coming out that are worth checking out this weekend (like the western and the spacemen documentary), we wanted to reserve our pick for a charming little movie you might have otherwise ignored. Written, directed and starring comedian Jeff Garlin (who we interviewed earlier this week), it's the kind of modest, looking-for-love-in-all-the-wrong-places story you don't often see these days on the big screen.
Garlin plays our unlikely hero James, a quasi working actor living in Chicago who's overweight and lives at home with his kugel-enabling mother. Not a lot happens to James during the movie, like an episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm where Garlin also appears, he mostly wanders around talking to people about his personality quirks. But all of the secondary characters he encounters are great comedic character actors in their own right and it's a blast to watch Garlin riffing with the likes of Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind, Amy Sedaris and Dan Castellaneta. In particular his romantic interlude with the shockingly straightforward Sarah Silverman is like a scene from Annie Hall gone painfully awry, as if Annie thought good flirtatious chat involved dick and boob jokes. Also in the end, the movie doesn't fall back on the cliché of tidy romantic pairings which is refreshing. Besides if you don't have the inclination to actually leave the house to see a movie, you can watch this one on your home TV as IFC will be simultaneously releasing it on Video On Demand.
Other movies coming to theaters this weekend include the much buzzed about Western with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe 3:10 to Yuma, a new action flick starring Clive Owen Shoot Em Up, the NASA documentary In The Shadow of the Moon, a drama directed by Gwyneth Paltrow's brother Jake The Good Night, a new Richard Gere film The Hunting Party, and a comedy starring two very funny Wills (Arnett and Forte) The Brothers Solomon as well as two other films that had a difficult time making it into theaters: Romance and Cigarettes and Fierce People. (Director John Turturro will be on hand for a Q&A at Film Forum following the screening of Romance on Friday at 7:45 pm. Hopefully he'll have some cranky comments to make about Hollywood's distribution practices.)
