Prime Time: Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World (2012)

The directorial debut from Lorene Scafaria (who recently entertained audiences with the very enjoyable Hustlers), what you get here is a drama with some weighty themes that benefits enormously from a great script (written by Scafaria) and a pair of winning lead performances.

There's not long left. An asteroid is heading to Earth. The end is very much nigh. And things are made worse for Dodge (Steve Carell) when his wife leaves their car and just runs out of his life. So many people are taking the upcoming end of days as an excuse to cut loose and enjoy their time without real consequences, but Dodge just wants to connect with a special someone before it's too late. He ends up working towards this aim with a neighbour, Penny (Keira Knightley), and their journey takes some interesting turns, despite the knowledge that they're not going to have a happy ending.

We've seen films similar to this before. Someone finds out they don't have long to live, which in turn leads to them finally doing things they always wanted to do. The big twist here is that the new lust for wanting to make the most of a very truncated lifespan applies to pretty much everyone in the world. Many people indulge in a fair amount of hedonism, some riot, and some try to take control of their fate in other ways. Dodge actually acts quite normally, considering the circumstances. Although it may seem foolish, or like a missed opportunity, he is determined not to use the upcoming ELE to completely change how he lives his life. The biggest change he makes is being in the company of Penny, which is enough to lead to cause some serious repercussions.

Carell is superb in his role, no surprise to those who have enjoyed his dramatic work for a number of years now (he's as good with the drama as he is with the comedy, and I love his comedy work), and Knightley gives one of her best performances in a non-period film. The two work well together, an unlikely pairing made a lot easier to believe in thanks to the unusual circumstances that have led to them growing closer after a long time of not really taking any notice of one another. Connie Britton and Rob Corddry are a married couple viewing the limited time left as an excuse to be totally free, Adam Brody gets a few minutes of screentime, and you get some nice little turns from Melanie Lynskey, Martin Sheen, T. J. Miller, Gillian Jacobs, and quite a few other familiar faces.

Scafaria certainly doesn't feel like a first-timer here, directing with skill from her excellent script. This could easily have been either too light or too dark, making the casting of Carell in the lead role an extra risk, but she gets the tone perfect throughout. This manages to be bittersweet in the best way, providing a worthwhile journey for the main characters without letting viewers forget that, whatever happens, everything is still set to end when that asteroid hits.

Sweet, touching, different enough from many other movies you may have seen in this mould, Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World is one to prioritise on your viewing list. Definitely watch it before humanity goes extinct.

8/10

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Hustlers (2019)

Based on a magazine article by Jessica Pressler, Hustlers is a slick and engaging tale of a group of women who worked together to make themselves into modern day Robin Hood types. If Robin Hood had been a stripper, and if he'd also kept the money for himself and his friends (because they really deserved it).

Constance Wu is Destiny, a young woman who is just starting her career as a stripper. She isn't doing too well, but things start to look up when she is taken under the wing of the very talented Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). But everyone's fortunes change during the financial crash near the start of the 21st-century. The clubs get different kinds of clients, the women working there start to do a lot more for a lot less money, and that's when Hustlers really begins, with Ramona coming up with a grand plan to find rich men and wring as much out of their credit cards as possible. It seems like a good plan, but as we're viewing the tale while Destiny tells it to a reporter (Julia Stiles), it's clear that all did not continue to go well.

Hustlers is bright, flashy, and makes great use of the cast, especially Lopez in a role that allows her to showcase sex appeal that many actresses half her age would struggle to emulate. She seems to know how great her role is, seizing it with both hands (and it helps that her first moment onscreen is an astonishingly good stage routine).

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria has a small, but enjoyable, filmography (it's also worth checking out her acting credits), but Hustlers is her biggest film yet, in terms of the core cast, the release, and the overwhelmingly positive reception. That's a good result, and deserved. She strikes a good balance here to make it clear how these characters can easily find so many male victims using their obvious charms without having them be semi-naked and gyrating for every minute of their screentime.

Wu is very believable in the role of Destiny, the kind of young woman new to the stripping world but with enough sense to learn from others and prepare to make a decent living at it, Lopez steals the film, Mercedes Ruehl is a warm-hearted presence, playing an older club staff member who tries to look out for the girls, and you get a mix of memorable supporting players, including Cardi B, Lizzo, Madeline Brewer, Steven Boyer, and even a fleeting appearance from Frank Whaley. And Stiles does just fine in her role, helping to frame the main story with a surprisingly sweet payoff.

It's a shame that the main focus of the film, the hustle itself, almost feels like an afterthought. But, then again, I guess it WAS an afterthought, once the financial crash created such a different landscape for many workers in many different sectors. The hustle is fairly simple and crude, when you get right down to it, but worked so effectively because no man wanted to admit to the circumstances. This kind of thing just wouldn't happen if guys weren't so embarrassed about admitting they'd paid to watch an attractive woman dance in front of them. Maybe that's worth bearing in mind.

8/10

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