If you haven't seen LONG SHOT, you're missing one of the best rom-coms of recent years

Further, if you imagine that you won't or can't buy the purported chemistry between leads Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, forget it. From the very first scene of LONG SHOT, that chemistry clicks -- thanks to the actors and the work of director, Jonathan Levine (below) and writers Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah (of The Post) -- and it's soon going into overdrive.

The script is cogent, funny and timely, and the movie's full-drive feminism is bracing, as well.

That Mr. Rogen commits so thoroughly to his role and what it means is particularly commendable (the film's closing scene is wonderful), and both his and Ms Theron's performance go a long way toward covering the minor credibility quibbles you might have.

Mr. Levine (at left, of The Wackness and Warm Bodies) does a fine job of pacing (with the help of his editors Melissa Bretherton and Evan Henke), while drawing neat performances from the entire supporting ensemble, which includes the likes of June Diane Raphael and Bob Odenkirk.

The funny and quite politically savvy plot has to do with a U.S. Secretary of State (Theron) considering a run for President when the sitting Prez (Odenkirk, above, left) decides to abdicate for a hoped-for movie career (his was formerly only a TV star,  you see). Theron then hires Rogen (below, left), playing a noted left-wing journalist, to do her speech writing.

The pair are so very good together you'll want them to make more movies (like we once did Myrna Loy and William Powell in that Thin Man series), but for now, this one ought to suffice our longing for smart, funny rom-coms that might help bring America back into intelligence and, hell, even caring.

Sure, the movie's nowhere near as satiric, nasty and funny as Veep, whose characters are consistently self-involved, putting themselves above all else, including everyone around them and their country itself. Yes, Long Shot might be a fairy tale about what might happen if a few people stuck to their guns. But if so, this is one fucking fairy tale we desperately need.

A word must be mentioned about Alexander Skarsgård (above, left), playing the goofy Canadian Prime Minister, while showing another side of his enormous versatility (see Netflix's bizarre Mute for yet another side of that versatility).  There is finally so much in this movie to delight and entertain, while cleverly reminding you of a lot of things that need fixing in our current state of political and man/woman affairs. Don't let Long Shot get past you, either now, in its theatrical release, or when it finally hits home video.

From Lionsgate and running a full two hours and five minutes that never seems at all lengthy, the movie is playing now at a theater near you. Click here to find one (or more) of those.

Daley/Goldstein/Perez's GAME NIGHT: smart, fast, witty, laugh-out-loud Hollywood comedy

TrustMovies has not laughed this much or this consistently throughout a mainstream comedy in a very long time. GAME NIGHT, written by Mark Perez and co-directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein (shown below, with Daley on the left), is such fast, smart and clever fun that the only reason it will not be a blockbuster hit is that it's just too fast, smart and clever for our current dumbed-down audiences that seem to prefer those Hangover guys or Bad Mom gals.

The directors and writer have concocted a simply delightful mix of oddball characters, laughs, thrills and surprises that just keep coming and coming. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that you never get sated, because so much of this is so witty and genuinely clever. Comedies most often tend to be hit and miss affairs, but if enough of the humor is on-target, the film will pass muster. Praise be, Game Night is almost entirely hit and hit. The humor is one with the surprise and thrills, and there are plenty of all three.

The film's premise is a group of friends -- two couples and their single friend (the very funny Billy Magnussen) who always has a new pretty-girl on his arm -- all of whom love to play games and are extremely competitive. The lead couple and the film's main protagonists are played by Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams (above), and both are, as expected, first-rate. Bateman's glamorous brother (Kyle Chandler, below) is even more competitive, bringing to the plot a twist that sets everything in motion.

Once that plot kicks in (almost immediately), the movie moves so fast that you'll be panting to keep abreast of its twists and turns. The hook here is that you (as well as the characters) can never be sure when an event is part of the game or instead real and therefore maybe life-threatening.

Fortunately the supporting cast is filled with smart and funny actors who juice up the proceedings quite merrily. The sweetly goofy Magnussen (above, left) and curtly acid-tongued Sharon Horgan (above, right, of that great Amazon series, Catastrophe) make a fine pairing, as do the other game night couple, Kylie Bunbury (below, left) and Lamorne Morris (below, right), who unveil their own what-celebrity-did-you-sleep-with? problem as the evening continues.

Best of all, perhaps is that terrifically versatile actor (for starters, compare his work in Other People, The Post, American Made and the USS Callister episode of Black Mirror's fourth season), Jesse Plemons, below, who creates here one of his most indelible and oddly adorable characters as the cop-next-door.

And that's hardly all. No less than Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall and an uncredited Jeffrey Wright pop up in smaller but significant roles. Aside from this crack cast, though, what makes the movie work best is its extraordinarily smart script, in which situations, characters, humor and thrills keep bubbling up and bouncing over each other with consummate agility and ease. "Is it as good as Game Night?" will likely be the new touchstone question asked by intelligent audiences from last week onward.

Arriving one week ago via Warner Brothers and marketed with all the usual non-flair this crass company has for anything that proves a bit different or a cut above, the movie is now playing all around the country and may still be in a theater near you in this, its second week of wide release. Click here to find out.

SCN: Santiago Segura's TORRENTE 4 -- a dose of in-your-face, Spanish mainstream

Yup, there were a number of walkouts, particularly during the long and generally lifeless "prison" segment that makes up the middle of TORRENTE 4: LETHAL CRISIS, the latest addition to the most successful movie franchise in Spain's history and certainly the most unlikely film choice for many of the folk who frequent the FSLC's Walter Reade Theater. Fortunately, the movie comes to life again for the finale with a set of -- yes! -- car crashes and explosions (and humor) that manage to outdo a lot of what we've already seen. What may keep you in your seat, however, is the long, hilarious and possibly most tasteless opening sequence that yours truly has ever viewed.

The creator of all of this -- he wrote, directed and stars in the film: eat your heart out, Clint Eastwood -- is a fellow named Santiago Segura (shown left), whom many of us will remember from last year's SCN in the also very funny but much more interesting films El Gran Vasquez and The Last Circus. Señor Segura is a Spanish treasure of sorts, another actor (like Javier Merino from yesterday's post) who doesn't mind showing himself off in sometimes the most grotesque and unflat-tering poses. Well, he's a comedian (and a fine one), and grotesque is part of the game these days. As the title character, José Luis Torrente, Segura (below, in character) plays a crappy ex-cop, now an equally bad private investigator, who finds himself working as part of a security force at a wedding involving one of Spain's richest and most powerful families.

The wedding reception scene that opens the film is one for the books: a maybe 15-minute, can't-believe-your-eyes-and-ears gross-out during which one thing tops the next until you know this movie can't go any farther. And then it does. Granted, this scene would be hard to top, or even keep up with, but Segura doesn't even seem to try during that long middle section in which we all go to prison. (Even here, however, he manages a whopper of a visual involving, yes, a shower, a bar of soap, and, oh, my....)

What Segura does, and does very well, is give us his reprobate Torrente as a man without a single redeeming quality (except that he's so damn funny). A Fascistic, Communist-hating, queer-baiting, no-manners pig in every way, Segura (and his satire) goes after everyone and, when it works, leaves the injured parties barely gasping for breath. (Much as he hates gays, of course, Torrente is still more than willing to engage in a little mutual masturbation.)

In prison this aging slacker gets involved with a priest (above) and a cute martial arts kid (below), and there's a soccer game between prisoners and guards and of course the de rigueur prison break. But because most of this is already old-hat and because, as writer and director, Segura doesn't bring much new or interesting about it to the table, this probably accounts, as much as anything, for those walk-outs during the screening. While mainstream audiences can live with (hell, they delight in) oft-told jokes, oft-seen situations, and general repetition, Walter Reade audiences usually demand a bit more. Hence the film's huge success on the home front and less at Lincoln Center. (That said, there were a lot of loud guffaws from those of us who remained in our seats.)

It's no coincidence, I think, that the Warner Brothers logo (with As Time Goes By on the soundtrack) leads us into the film. The studio that brought the world The Hangover and its sequel seems determined to prove that, in its national and international search for an entryway into our pocketbooks, funny, taste-free films will always do the trick.