Amy Schumer’s hell for leather
Love Season 2 Available from Friday
THE first thing to understand about Love is that you’ve got to stick with it. Of course Judd Apatow wouldn’t put his name to any old rom-com, and the story of how writer Gus (Paul Rust) and radio producer Mickey (Lesley Arfin) weave in and out of each other’s lives does get very good. But it takes its sweet old time getting there via a few formless episodes. Slowly it builds dramatic momentum and everything is heightened by the knowledge that Rust and Arfin are a couple in real life. While her character is an addict, Arfin also struggled with a heroin addiction, which she has written extensively about, and throughout the first season she brilliantly portrays the selfish nature of addiction and her character’s thirst for validation. It was never overly funny or overly dramatic but it had a way of quietly drawing you in. Now we’re back for a second season, and the action starts back up after Gus and Mickey’s sobering parting conversation in a parking lot at the end of season one. Mickey and Gus may be in with a chance this time around, except for the fact that Mickey’s ex-boyfriend pops up and Gus gets held up by the FBI.
Amy Schumer: The Leather Special
Available from Wednesday IT’S going to be another big year for the “rich, famous and humble” Amy Schumer. Her much anticipated film Snatched — co-starring none other than Goldie Hawn — is coming out in May and in the meantime there is this to tide you over. Filmed in Denver last year it’s pretty much the stuff she did on her last tour (during which she came to Dublin), which itself contained a lot of bits from her book, but we forgive her because she’s always funny. The leather of the title is very literal — she’s poured into some (and, to borrow from PG Wodehouse, they may have forgotten to say ‘when’) and she’s now saying she regrets it already. But, then, even doubts about a look can make for a great bit, which is apparent when she discusses being photographed nude by Annie Liebowitz: “I tweeted out a photo of myself wearing just underwear, and that’s when I learned the word you don’t want people to use when a nude photo of you goes viral: ‘brave’,” she says. Other than that she talks about her vagina a lot, fills us in on some hilariously bad dates and channels a sort of post modern Miss Piggy (one of her heroines). And as anyone who saw her in Dublin will attest, she owns that stage, Definitely the funniest woman in comedy at the moment.
A Hologram For The King (2016) Available now
THIS adaptation of Dave Eggers’s excellent 2012 novel won warm reviews when it was released last year. It follows a past-his-prime American businessman (Tom Hanks) as he fumbles his way into Saudi Arabia seeking an audience with the king to pitch his company’s hologram-based communications software for the king’s dream metropolis. But he arrives to the King Abdullah Economic City to find mostly sand and little hope of ending his personal losing streak since he peddled away the fortunes of his previous company. He needs a win badly: his daughter is unable to afford a return to college and his ex-wife is still whittling away at his self-confidence. “What is he doing in the desert, when all problems are here?” she asks in a dream sequence. We never quite learn the answer to that but this is an engrossing drama, anchored by a typically great performance from Tom Hanks. Director Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) makes great use of the sweeping vistas of stand-ins Morocco and Egypt where the film was shot. And his ethereal style plays well with fantasy sequences that briefly tap the quirky, internalised humour of Eggers’s book.
The Big Short (2015) Available now
THERE was always going to be the question of how writers and filmmakers would make the financial crisis of the last decade entertaining. Bad accounting and silly loans aren’t by themselves very dramatic but with a big name cast — including Brad Pitt, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling — and an ambiguous viewpoint and tone (it seems to shuttle between comedy and condemnation) this is a film worth investing in. It distils a remarkably knotty subject into a briskly entertaining tale and features one of the all-time great moments of fourth wall breaking, as Margot Robbie in a bathtub explains complex financial instruments.