Anna (Charlize Theron) struts her stuff in Seth MacFarlane’s low-down, dirty Western farce, A MILLION WAYS TO DIE
A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST (Seth MacFarlane, 2014)
Opens Friday, May 30
www.amillionways.com
Seth MacFarlane stars as an anachronistic twenty-first-century wimp in 1882 Arizona in the raunchy, rowdy, lewd, and crude spoof A Million Ways to Die in the West. MacFarlane, who wrote the script — which never met a fart joke it didn’t like — with Family Guy writers and producers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, stars as Albert Stark, a meek, clueless sheep farmer who gets dumped by his girlfriend, Louise (Amanda Seyfried), after he chickens out of a duel in their bare bones town of Old Stump. Determined to win her back, especially after she takes up with mustachioed mustache maven Foy (a villainous Neil Patrick Harris), Albert, who hates just about everything about the West and is constantly complaining about it, is befriended by Anna (Charlize Theron), a stranger who decides to help him win back Louise. But little does Albert know that Anna is actually the wife of vicious killer Clinch Leatherwood (Liam Neeson), who is on his way to Old Stump, violent jealousy at the ready. Meanwhile, Albert’s virgin bestie, the even meeker and milder milquetoast Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), is planning on marrying his girlfriend, Ruth (Sarah Silverman), a Christian prostitute who does dirty deeds with just about every other guy around. MacFarlane, who did such an outstanding job with his feature directorial debut, Ted, bites off way more than he can chew in A Million Ways to Die in the West, but his innate charm and genuine goodwill manage to shine through, even as the poop jokes turn grosser and grosser. (There’s a whole lotta “Oh, no he won’t,” followed by “Oh, yes he did.”) He and Theron have a warm chemistry that not even sheep piss can wash away. The movie is plenty stupid, with tons of overheated, repetitive jokes (mostly about farts), one-offs that go nowhere, and various scenes that are about as flat as Neeson’s ass, which does indeed make a flowery appearance. The film is also chock-full of cameos from celebrities both big and small, some that work great, and others that are just plain head-scratchingly weird, but at least MacFarlane saves the best for last (the very last, at the end of the credits). Now, A Million Ways to Die in the West is certainly no Blazing Saddles (everybody, bow silently, then release) — much of it is more like an extended, expanded version of the beans scene — but at its very center, it has a great big heart, allowing you to forgive MacFarlane his myriad overindulgences and just have a rootin’, tootin’, dirty good time.
Brazilian actress and filmmaker Petra Costa searches for her older sister, as well as herself, in the beautifully poetic, hypnotic and intimate Elena. “Today I walked through the city, listening to your voice, and I identify so much with your words that I start losing myself in you,” Petra says over footage of her walking through modern-day New York. In the 1980s, Elena, seven years older than Elena, moved to New York to study to become an actress. Things didn’t go quite as planned as she became overwhelmed by severe depression. Using home movies, video footage, and audiotapes, Petra follows in her sister’s footsteps, both figuratively and literally, as she tries to understand what Elena was going through. Carrying a pair of cameras — a Super 8 and a Canon 5D — Petra travels to New York City with her mother, visiting the apartment building where they briefly lived and meeting with some of Elena’s old acquaintances. Petra adds captivating dreamlike imagery that equates her sister with Shakespeare’s Ophelia, along with a wide-ranging soundtrack of Brazilian music in addition to Maggie Hastings Clifford’s mesmerizing “I Turn to Water” (cowritten by Petra) and “Sister of the Sea” and the Mamas and the Papas’ “Dedicated to the One I Love.” Reminiscent of C. Scott Willis’s 2010 documentary 
