Writer/director John Sayles has built a career on character driven independents and stories that tell uniquely American tales. His latest, Go for Sisters, is a simply stated effort about the value of hard-won relationships.
LisaGay Hamilton plays Bernice, a no-nonsense parole officer who bends her strident ways when her childhood friend Fontayne (an exceptional Yolanda Ross) becomes her client. Fontayne recently found herself in the company of a felon, which breaks her parole. But where Fontayne lives, felons are just about the only company possible to keep.
Fontayne knows the score, predicting Bernice’s thoughts based on prior experience. “This sorry girl ain’t got her shit together. We gon’ have to lock her up some more.”
To Fontayne’s surprise, Bernice relents. But where Bernice should reassign Fontayne to another parole officer, instead she enlists her help to find her own missing son, an ex-soldier gone missing and likely mixed up in something dodgy.
Though both performances, and that of Edward James Olmos as the retired cop helping them track the missing man, are very strong, Sayles strings together scenes with no panache at all, creating something akin to TV detective show. The plot is so plainly laid out that it becomes an afterthought, no doubt because Sayles’s interest lies with the characters, not their adventure. But the audience has to feel compelled by both.
The adventure contains too many clandestine meetings and coincidences for the investigation to carry the weight of authenticity, and Sayles never mines for real plot-driven tension. It’s far too light a touch given the circumstances of the kidnapping.
Instead, Sayles wonders about the reasons the two women lost each other twenty years ago, and the paths they took to such different lives, and then come back to each other. Theirs is a poignant and probably very familiar kind of struggle, and it deserves our attention. It’s just too bad Sayles had to drag us all across the American Southwest and into Mexico to discover it.
Not so very long ago in Ireland, unwed mothers were deemed unfit to raise their children. The “sinners” and their offspring were relinquished to the charge of the nuns, confined to convents around the country to work off their debt to the church and watch as their babies were given to more “deserving” Catholics. Philomena Lee was one of these beleaguered young mums, and Steve Coogan (of all people!) decided her tale would make a great buddy picture.
I’m sorry, what?
Well, weirdly enough, his instincts were not too far off the mark. Coogan and Jeff Pope adapted the book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, written by Martin Sixsmith. With Stephen Frears at the helm and the great Dame Judi Dench in the lead, Coogan’s cooked up a surprisingly buoyant depiction of what, by all accounts, should be a devastating tale.
Coogan plays Sixsmith, the world-wearied political journalist who stoops to writing Philomena’s human interest story out of desperation. As he and Philomena attempt to track down the child she was forced to give up nearly 50 years before, an odd couple road picture develops.
It’s a strange structure for an enlightening bit of nonfiction about a systemic abuse of power and of faith – one that, through the pair’s sleuthing, uncovers a fascinating parallel with a more modern crisis of shame and secrecy.
Coogan’s script is sharp, funny and layered, and Frears’s direction settles into a decidedly understated presentation of content that would so easily become maudlin or melodramatic. But let’s be honest, Dench is the reason to see Philomena.
As always, she carves out such a unique and real character that the term acting feels too cumbersome to describe her work. Her natural presence and effervescent depiction are a perfect offset for Coogan’s cynical detachment, and the warm chemistry the two share is infectious.
In fact, there are times that the cheery tone feels almost dismissive of the deep injustice uncovered in the story.
In 2002, writer/director Peter Mullan produced the filmThe Magdalene Sisters, an emotional wallop of a movie that told of Ireland’s shameful not-so-distant treatment of unwed mothers and other girls deemed disreputable by their church and families. It’s a powerful film, but compared to Philomena, it’s a bit like being beaten about the head and neck.
Instead, Philomena uses one woman’s resilience to set the tone of a film not about tragedy, but about forgiveness and redemption. It doesn’t always work, but it’s an honorable attempt.
There are countless, fascinating stories surrounding the earliest Beat Generation writers – likely because they were sort of endlessly fascinating themselves. That, plus they kept writing about their adventures, so legends are born.
Any film about the Beats is a dream and a nightmare for writers and cast alike. What writer wouldn’t want to take a shot at a conversation between Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs? And yet, what writer would dare?
The same can be said for any actor hoping to capture these literary characters we know so well from their own pages. But Kill Your Darlings aims to do justice to all of it – the movement, the participants, the socio-political climate, and the true crime story few recall.
Kill Your Darlings revisits that burgeoning circle of geniuses to spin a more somber origins story than those we usually hear. Rather than emphasizing the madcap, mind-altering, conformity-be-damned journeys of Ginsburg, Burroughs or Kerouac we’ve grown accustomed to, the film is based on the murder that splintered the group.
It’s Columbia University of the mid 1940s. As World War II rages, young New Jerseyan Allen Ginsburg (Daniel Radcliffe) begins his life as a college freshman. He quickly falls in with the wrong sort. Thank God!
The film shadows Ginsburg along his journey toward self-expression by way of an infatuation with schoolmate Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan).
Carr introduces him to elder statesman/criminal element William H. Burroughs (Ben Foster), and later, to football playing senior and part time merchant marine Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston – of thoseHustons). Together they alter their minds and begin a framework for a new world order for writers.
Carr also introduces Ginsburg to David Kammerer (Michael C. Hall), whom Carr would later murder.
Though first time feature director John Krokidas has trouble deciding whether his is a coming of age tale or a murder mystery, and though he’s never able to clearly define the events’ connection to the actual writing that would eventually flood from these poets and scoundrels, he pulls together a competently crafted tale buoyed by well defined and tenderly animated characters.
Radcliffe’s growth as an actor continues to impress, as does his somewhat fearless choice of projects, but it’s DeHaan who steals the film. Damaged, vulnerable and seductive, he’s exactly the cauldron of conflict that inspires an artistic revolution.
Hall, Huston and Foster also impress as Krokidas throws light on some fascinating (if one-sided, fairly fictionalized, perfectly lurid) details of the spark that burst into the Beat Generation. They can’t quite transcend the limitations of a novice director and an under-focused screenplay, but they will compel your attention while they have you.
One film opening this weekend guarantees to make you laugh and cry, or kill you trying. It’s Best Man Holiday, the most exuberantly emotionally manipulative film, perhaps ever.
The entire cast of 1999’s Best Man returns, gathering to celebrate the holidays at the home of the old bride and groom, Mia (Monica Calhoun) and Lance Sullivan (Morris Chestnut). It appears that the Sullivans are doing well for themselves, living in a New York mansion with four well behaved and impossibly well groomed children.
And what about Harper (Taye Diggs) and Robyn (Sanaa Lathan)? Happily ever after? New book?
This is a film that knows its audience. If you fell in love with this crew back in 1999, Best Man Holiday is looking at you. Don’t you want to check back in, see how the fellas are faring 14 years later? Maybe, like you, they’ve moved on to family, career. How do they look mid-life without their shirts?
Pretty damn good.
If you are not this very specific target audience, you don’t mean much to Best Man Holiday. It’s a movie that is out to please, but not to please everyone. The target audience is like a woman who wants bacon and eggs for breakfast, so her man makes her bacon and eggs. If you prefer pancakes, who cares? This breakfast is not for you.
With its one, very specific goal, there is no denying that BMH succeeds. As a real movie, though, it has more than a few problems.
The cast generates a charming chemistry, and their sense of fun and tenderness buoys the otherwise cliché riddled, wildly heavy-handed script by director Malcolm D. Lee. No serving of side dishes with this holiday ham is light, whether it’s the raucous sex, the silly comedy, the sermonizing, or the tear jerking.
You will foresee every single plot point 40 minutes before it happens, as this film is bound and determine to surprise no one. But Terrence Howard gets off some very funny lines and Morris Chestnut looks good, and if you’re not paying close attention, it might not even occur to you to wonder where they found matching boy band outfits for their talent show.
On the whole, you won’t want to pay very close attention to this one.
Earlier this year the indie gem Frances Ha was released, not that the world noticed. Well, world, here’s your opportunity to make amends, because this loosely articulated but deftly crafted character study of a New York dork could come home with you today on DVD.
The creative pairing of unrepentant misanthrope, writer/director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) and unabashedly likeable writer/star Greta Gerwig, the film gives Baumbach the opportunity to explore the lives of damaged neurotics, as usual, but gifts us with a protagonist we cannot help but love. As Frances tumbles, limbs akimbo, out of her arrested adolescence and into her long-dormant adulthood, a delightful journey emerges.
For something as impressive, if not quite so effervescent, you must see Baumbach’s masterpiece of awkward family dysfunction, The Squid and the Whale. This dark, semi-autobiographical comedy follows a self-absorbed adolescent, his divorcing narcissist parents, and his perhaps irrevocably weird little brother. Baumbach’s wicked writing created endless opportunities for the film’s dream cast, boasting, among other triumphs, the most brilliant performance of Jeff Daniels’s career.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQEnAtMxVXw
We were impressed enough by the Thor sequel to begin pondering … which are the best superhero movies ever made?
10. Iron Man
Among the most inspired pieces of casting in cinematic history, indie film’s bad boy Robert Downey Jr. shoulders a blockbuster superhero flick and becomes the highest paid actor in history. He may even deserve it. Wry humor, believable bouts of self loathing and narcissism, and the intelligence to pull off the character of Tony Stark, he redefined superhero and caused a ripple effect still being felt in the genre.
9. The Incredibles
Pixar takes on the superhero with heart, humor and the kind of spot-on insight that made their image of toy life, robot romance, and elderly adventure so magnificent. Consistently fun and full of surprises and wisdom, The Incredibles rocks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZbzbC9285I
8. Batman
Back in the Eighties, goth-god Tim Burton breathed new life into the superhero concept with this dark, stylish, almost campy classic. It would be nearly 20 years before Jack Nicholson’s then-iconic version of The Joker was outdone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlsM2_8u_mk
7. X-Men: First Class
Michael Fassbender keeps his pants on for this inspired origins story. Writer Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn, who’d done the genre proud with Kick-Ass just one year earlier, re-team to collect mutants in time to thwart the Cuban Missile Crisis. A killer cast and really clever writing mark this as easily the best X-Men movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ccSiH4olo
6. Kick-Ass
Hey, speaking of Kick-Ass – how great was that?! In a sea of mock superhero movies, this one turned out to be fresh, a bit twisted and incredibly funny. It also delivered on action. Endearing, relentlessly entertaining, fearlessly violent yet well-meaning, the film hits on all fronts. Plus, Nicolas Cage, with his Adam West impersonation, is utterly priceless.
5. Batman Begins
Talk about a game changer. When Memento director Christopher Nolan turned his attention to the genre, well, the genre was never the same. Any hint of camp is abandoned. Dark and brooding, the film is as interested in story and character as it is in action and bat-gizmos. For the first time, an outright brilliant actor is cast in the hero’s role, and the weight of the decisions made by a vigilante crime fighter is finally felt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zdFsoUF-Fg
4. Spider-Man 2
Like Superman 2 back in ’80, the second of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man flicks ponders the ramifications of true love on superherodom. Tobey Maguire’s inherent tenderness helps the most moving scenes stick with you, in a movie that celebrates humanity in a way few films – superhero or no – have managed to do.
3. The Dark Knight Rises
Finally, someone gets Cat Woman right! Nolan’s trilogy capper is a wildly satisfying, emotionally resonant, dramatically impeccable ride. Every choice is as fitting as it is surprising. He’s responsible to the source material without giving an inch of his own creative control, plumbing cultural currency and comic ethos to create a movie that leaves a mark.
2. The Avengers
Joss Whedon, everybody! He’s every fanboy’s dream. If there any nerdy thing this man cannot do? Buffy, Serenity, The Cabin in the Woods – hell, he even made Shakespeare hip! Plus, he wrote Toy Story – how awesome is that? And while it looked like the Avengers franchise would amount to the gathering of multiple barely interesting individual heroes, plus another Hulk debacle, it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable, well crafted, character driven and fun superhero flicks of all time. And someone finally did the Hulk justice! Well played, Mr. Whedon.
1. The Dark Knight
For the first – and likely last – time in history, the villain from a superhero flick earned the actor an Oscar. And it was flat out obvious, because Heath Ledger’s hauntingly perfect performance as The Joker left a blood chilling impression. And though he is the best reason to watch The Dark Knight, he’s hardly the only exceptional element the film has going for it. The emotional weight to some of the scenes will leave you breathless, and though Nolan has established a very dark view in this series, there is a single, blistering scene in this film that emphasizes the deep optimism the filmmaker and his franchise have for humanity.
Emile Hirsch is a talented actor most effective when playing against that cherubic mug. As drifters, outsiders and struggling lowlifes (Into the Wild, Killer Joe, Prince Avalanche), he animates the hope inside the hopeless like few others. His open tenderness is half the reason The Motel Life is such a stingingly lovely portrait of American poverty.
Hirsch plays Frank, storyteller and brother’s keeper. That brother, forever getting the two into serious trouble, is played with heartbreaking frailty by Stephen Dorff – the second half of the film’s one-two punch.
Dorff’s Jerry Lee has gotten the rawer end of a pretty raw deal. His brother and his own ability with a pencil and drawing pad are all he has to show for his time on this planet. Missing part of his leg and drawn to trouble, Jerry Lee has given Frank a lifetime of clean-up work.
The film is at its most entertaining during story time. To keep his brother’s mind at east, Frank spins outlandish yarns where Jerry Lee can be a hero with two good legs and a voluptuous babe on his arm. Directors Alan and Gabe Polsky set these to great illustrations that bespeak the brothers’ arrested adolescence.
Based on Willy Vlautin’s acclaimed novel, the film offers an off-kilter, smoky image of hope, and the choices that kick triumph – sometimes even survival – in the teeth.
The Motel Life exists in the same basic universe as Killer Joe (but with far less insanity or humor). It’s a world belonging to the broken and haunted, where a would-be mentor has to remind you, “Don’t make decisions thinking you’re a lowlife. Make decisions thinking you’re a great man. Or at least a good man.”
Who offers such advice? Kris Kristofferson – duh. Oh, one more thing he says. “And don’t be a pussy.”
The pace the Polskys set is deliberate, sometimes frustratingly so, and Hirsch is far too pretty to have led this life. (It doesn’t help that the brother who appears to be maybe 2 years his senior in flashbacks is played as an adult by an actor 12 years older than Hirsch.) But there’s an offhanded authenticity to the story of underdogs who might break free in one beautiful instant, only to fall back to what holds them in chains, whether it’s gambling, strippers, or a brother with a head full of bad wiring.
A gawky adolescent plays video games and saves the world. It’s easy to see why Orson Scott Card’s novel Ender’s Game is so popular with young boys. But the truth is that this SciFi thriller is more than just a simple adolescent male fantasy. It’s an intricately written coming of age story that pulls readers in, not just with the video game storyline, but a video game structure, as the hero defeats certain challenges before moving on to the next level, so to speak.
Though his screenplay is often inelegant in its adaptation, clunking through sections that must have been quite impressive in novel form, writer/director Gavin Hood’s affection for the source material is evident. So, too, is his skill with FX as well as casting.
Asa Butterfield (Hugo) leads the cast as Ender Wiggin, the pinch-shouldered spindle hoping to make it through the ranks of the military academy to help defend earth against an impending alien invasion. Butterfield’s vulnerability – physical and emotional – and obvious intelligence provide the character the compelling internal conflict the role requires.
SciFi legend Harrison Ford shows some effort as Ender’s commanding officer, while the always wonderful Viola Davis gives the film its emotional core, and allows Hood an opportunity to mine this story for some social commentary. “It used to be a war crime to recruit soldiers younger than 15,” she scolds Ford’s Colonel Graff.
Though visually impressive, the film’s cosmic FX pale in comparison to the entirely superior Gravity. Still, Hood knows how to put a crowd in the middle of a video game without giving off the immediately dated feel of Tron.
Though sometimes derivative, (Act 2 feels a bit too much like Top Gun, if you substitute teenaged video game nerds for hot, ambiguously gay volleyball players), the film eventually packs an emotional wallop. The climax is effective, but the resolution is rushed. These issues are symptomatic of the effort as a whole – fitfully entertaining, absorbing and gorgeous, and yet tonally challenged and poorly paced.
Hood’s greatest failing is that he settles for a thrill ride when he was handed a beloved, epic coming of age tragedy. Oddly enjoyable and intermittently wonderful, the film still feels like a mild letdown.
A Troma alum with writing credits ranging from Scooby-Do movies to the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Gunn possessed all the raw materials to pull it off. The film is equal parts silly and smart, grotesque and endearing, original and homage. More importantly, it’s just plain awesome.
Cutie pie Starla (Elizabeth Banks) is having some marital problems. Her husband Grant (the great horror actor Michael Rooker) is at the epicenter of an alien invasion. Smalltown sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) tries to set things straight as a giant mucous ball, a balloonlike womb-woman, a squid monster, projectile vomit, zombies, and loads and loads of slugs keep the action really hopping.
The cast is superb, especially Gregg Henry as foul mouthed Mayor MacReady. It helps that he gets all the best lines. Like, “If this shit’s contagious and I turn into a fucking mollusk, I’m going to sue those bastards!”
Gunn lifts certain scenes – the best scenes – directly from both the Cronenberg and the lesser Creeps effort, but never steals. His film brims with affectionate nods, including the great early scene where white trash Margaret sits on her couch with her toddler watching Troma’s classic Toxic Avenger. Classy, mom!
Consistently funny, cleverly written, well paced, tense and scary and gross – Slither has it all. Watch it. Do it!
Out today on DVD, BluRay and streaming is the scariest movie of 2013: The Conjuring.
Welcome to 1971, the year the Perron family took one step inside their new home and screamed with horror, “My God, this wallpaper is hideous!”
Seriously, it often surprises me that civilization made it through the Seventies. Must every surface and ream of fabric be patterned? Still, the Perrons found survival tougher than most.
The farmhouse’s previous residents may be dead, but they haven’t left, and they are testy! So the Perrons have no choice but to look up paranormal investigators Lorraine and Ed Warren – the real life couple linked to many famous American hauntings, including one in Amityville, NY. The Conjuring is allegedly based on one of the couple’s cases.
Yes, this is an old fashioned ghost story, built from the ground up to push buttons of childhood terror. But don’t expect a long, slow burn. Director James Wan expertly balances suspense with quick, satisfying bursts of visual terror.
Wan cut his teeth – and Cary Elwes’s bones – with 2004’s corporeal horror Saw. He’s since turned his attention to something more spectral, and his skill with supernatural cinema only strengthens with each film.
Ghost stories are hard to pull off, though, especially in the age of instant gratification. Few modern moviegoers have the patience for atmospheric dread, so filmmakers now turn to CGI to ramp up thrills. The results range from the visceral fun of The Woman in Black to the needless disappointment of Mama.
But Wan understands the power of a flesh and blood villain in a way that other directors don’t seem to. He proved this with the creepy fun of Insidious, and surpasses those scares with his newest effort.
A game cast helps. Joining five believably terrified girls in solid performances are Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, and the surprisingly well-suited Ron Livingston as the helpless patriarch. The usually sublime Lili Taylor is uncharacteristically flat as the clan’s loving mother, unfortunately, but there’s more than enough to distract you from that.
Wan’s expert timing and clear joy when wielding spectral menace help him and his impressive cast overcome the handful of weaknesses in the script by brothers Chad and Carey Hayes. Claustrophobic when it needs to be and full of fun house moments, The Conjuring will scare you while you’re in the theater and stick with you after. At the very least, you’ll keep your feet tucked safely under the covers.
