Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

The Descendants: Clooney braves hell in paradise - 5 stars

Crisis breaks George Clooney’s heart open in The Descendants, a family movie where deepening tragedy is touched by gentle humor and grace.

Hawaii’s no paradise for Matt King (Clooney), a real estate lawyer whose wife Liz (Patricia Hastie) lies in a coma after a waterskiing accident. “Hell, I haven’t been on a surfboard for 15 years,” he gripes.

Matt has been busy earning a living. He also serves as trustee of his family’s 25,000 pristine acres on Kauai’s South Shore.

Clooney is intelligent, vulnerable and charming as “the back-up parent, the understudy” who now must step up for his daughters. Alex (Shailene Woodley) is an angry 17-year-old who finds compassion. Scottie (Amara Miller) is a tender, volatile 10-year-old eager to grow up.

Director Alexander Payne weaves the trouble in paradise theme into a personal journey that embraces family and community. With satisfying plot twists, the story shows Matt, Alex and Scottie begin to live more from the heart, and less from the mind.

When Alex tells her dad that Liz was cheating on him, horror and disbelief are accompanied by upbeat ukulele music. He dons his flip-flops and runs to a neighbor’s house to find out “who my wife was … seeing.”

Elizabeth is never going to wake up, Matt learns. He must transform his own pain and sorrow, and guide his daughters through their impending loss. Sometimes falling flat as a parent, he perseveres. He genuinely loves his girls.

Urging extended family and friends to say goodbye to Liz, Matt hatches a plan. He and Alex track down Elizabeth’s lover, realtor Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard). They discover the unexpected. Matt confronts Brian.

Clooney’s fully dimensional character is wounded but spunky. He reveals our own foibles and makes us laugh at them. It’s an impressive progression for the actor, who played a “termination specialist” in Up in the Air; a repentant assassin in The American, and an escaped con in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Matt presides over motley relatives who vote to sell the family land. Hippie cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges) urges him on. Among the bidders are a ritzy condo chain and a Hawaiian developer. A local mother asks Matt not to move forward with the sale.

Hawaii is a land of natives and newcomers, of privilege and struggle. Matt’s ancestors were among the islands’ first white settlers. Surveying the family photos on his office wall, you realize that his actions reflect on all of them, including a Hawaiian princess by marriage.

Woodley (The Secret Life of the American Teenager) is memorable as rebellious Alex. Slowly she begins to accept her dad and take better care of herself. Nick Krause is engaging as Alex’s dude friend Sid. Matt must come to terms with Sid and see him as more than a loser. It’s one way he learns to grow as a father.

The excellent cast includes Judy Greer, heart-tugging as Brian’s wronged wife Julie. Robert Forster plays Elizabeth’s belligerent father.

Payne last directed the film Sideways (2004). He’s also known for Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt. His next project is a father-son drama Nebraska.

Payne, along with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, wrote the first-rate script based on Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel. Cinematography by Phedon Papamichael and editing by Kevin Tent marry drama and comedy. Voiceovers, so easy to overdo, are well executed as Clooney delivers choice observations.

“My family seems exactly like an archipelago, always drifting apart,” Matt observes. By the end of The Descendants, Matt, Alex and Scottie achieve wholeness.

If you like The Descendants, you might enjoy:  Win Win; The American; Up in the Air.

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The Descendants    2011  /  R  /  1 hour, 55 min

Cast Overview:  George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, Rob Huebel, Patricia Hastie 

Director:  Alexander Payne

Genre:  Dramedy, Drama, Family

 

Janie Jones: Abigail Breslin sings, uplifts band drama - 3 stars

Abigail Breslin can sing. In Janie Jones, Breslin’s voice and fresh, unaffected performance add soul to the road indie. David M. Rosenthal writes and directs the semiautobiographical drama.

Breslin (Oscar nominated for her supporting role in Little Miss Sunshine) is remarkable as Janie, the 13-year-old no one wants. She gets dropped off with her rock singer dad Ethan Brand (Alessandro Nivola) while her mom Mary Ann Jones (Elisabeth Shue), a former groupie, begins meth rehab.

Ethan didn’t even know he had a daughter. The sensitive chemistry between Breslin and Nivola (an accomplished musician who starred in Junebug) grows as Ethan’s career declines. He drinks heavily. The group begins to break up.

Ethan hears Janie playing and singing a folk-y ballad one day. Cautious at first, he warms to fatherhood.

The duo sings well. Irish singer-songwriter Gemma Hayes wrote the songs performed by Breslin. One of the ballads, Fight For Me, has been released. Eef Barzelay of the band Clem Snide wrote Nivola’s tunes.

The two develop camaraderie. “You look like sh-t,” she tells him. “You tell the truth, I like that,” he replies. Ethan decides to go solo. He invites Janie to join him on stage.

As Ethan takes more responsibility for his life, he slowly heals. When he acknowledges Janie as his daughter on stage, it’s a great film moment.

The band drama is a long cliché of swearing, drinking, drugs and one night stands. The first half is especially trite as the action lags. Finesse and originality were needed.

Ethan is arrested one night when he beats up an audience member flirting with Janie. His daughter hocks his guitar to bail him out. Ethan’s manager Sloan (Peter Stormare) remains a trusted friend even after he leaves the singer.

Finally Ethan must visit his mother Lily to ask for a loan. Frances Fisher is great as the Chicago socialite meeting her granddaughter for the first time.

Breslin, now 15, performs with a friend in the pop-rock/retro band CABB. In her next movie, New Year’s Eve, she plays Sarah Jessica Parker’s troubled daughter.

If you like Janie Jones, you might enjoy:  Crazy Heart; Somewhere.

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Janie Jones    2010  /  NR  /  1 hour, 46 min

 

Cast Overview: Abigail Breslin, Elisabeth Shue, Alessandro Nivola, Brittany Snow, Peter Stormare, Frank Whaley, Frances Fisher

Director:  David M. Rosenthal

Genre:  Indie, Drama, Music

 

 

Martha Marcy May Marlene: Elizabeth Olsen flees cult trauma - 4 stars

Elizabeth Olsen bursts into stardom in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Her dynamic and restrained performance marks writer-director Sean Durkin’s astounding feature debut.

This indie psychological thriller disturbed and fascinated me as much as The Exorcist, where evil ensnares a privileged and morally vulnerable victim.

After her daring escape from a creepy cult in upstate New York, Martha (Olsen) is rescued by her sister. She struggles to recover herself and become whole. Her progress is tortuous.

Zombie-like Martha looks serene. Inwardly, she’s falling off a cliff. She hides what happened to her, not asking for help. When confronted she screams, “I’m a teacher and a leader,” parroting the words of a cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) who she can’t forget.

Martha’s confusion deepens as she stays at the Connecticut lake house of her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy). The sisters grew apart after their mother died, and Lucy now feels responsible for Martha.

How could someone disappear for two years without a word? Lucy and Ted are stunned when Martha strips at the public lake. She even creeps into their bed one night while they make love.

Through flashbacks that blur place and time, we glimpse Martha’s life at a ramshackle farmstead. She confuses memory with the present, and so do we. In the cult she befriends Zoe (Louisa Krause) and Watts (Brady Corbet).

Revering their leader, the residents follow bizarre rules. They do chores but eat only once a day, at supper. The men finish eating before the women can begin. Wearing tattered hand-me-downs, they believe they will prosper someday.

Hawkes (Uncle Teardrop in Winter’s Bone) plays Patrick with skeevy menace. Slowly, his deranged beliefs emerge. He rapes the women by turns in the night. New women are dressed, drugged and coached before their first rape.

"You're my favorite," Patrick tells her. Martha struggles, then submits. Later, she coaches newcomer Sarah (Julia Garner) before her “first night.” Patrick plays Marcy’s Song on the guitar for the group. “Well she, she’s just a picture that lives on my wall / Just a picture, that’s all” he croons.

The isolated community must surrender body, mind and spirit. Fatherly and quiet, Patrick suddenly threatens individuals. They must be willing to kill for him.

Jody Lee Lipes’ cinematography and Zac Stuart-Pontier’s editing enhance the introspective drama.

Durkin told Filmmaker Magazine that his early years in a religious school inspired an interest in cults. He won a Directing Award for this film at Sundance 2011.

Olsen will appear in several films in 2012, including Peace, Love and Misunderstanding with Jane Fonda and Catherine Keener; Silent House with Adam Trese; Red Lights with Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver; and Liberal Arts with Josh Radnor. Olsen studies theater full time at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

A Silkwood-like ending is deeply unsettling. Oscar nominations are likely for Olsen and this film.

If you like Martha Marcy May Marlene, you might enjoy:  Take Shelter; Somewhere; Winter’s Bone.

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Martha Marcy May Marlene    2011  /  R  /  1 hour, 41 min

Cast Overview: Elizabeth Olsen, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, Hugh Dancy, Maria Dizzia, Julia Garner, John Hawkes, Louisa Krause, Sarah Paulson

Director:  Sean Durkin

Genre:  Indie, Drama, Psychological Thriller

 

Sarah's Key: Kristen Scott Thomas stars in Holocaust drama ****

 
 

An American journalist living in Paris (Kristen Scott Thomas) is obsessed with a Holocaust story. Sarah's Key is a thrilling search for truth about France’s role in the Holocaust seen through the eyes of 10-year-old Sarah (Melusine Mayance). The film is based on Tatiana de Rosnay’s novel.

French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s film exposes the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup during World War II. Many moviegoers will learn about the incident for the first time here.

In the roundup, thousands of Jews living in Paris’ Marais neighborhood were forced into a sports stadium, torn away from family members, and shipped to concentration camps. Julia Jarmond (Thomas) convinces her editor to let her write a 10-page article documenting the 60^th anniversary of the roundup.

Two parallel stories unfold. Julia pursues leads and interviews witnesses. She discovers that she is personally connected to the Starzinski family, Polish Jews living in Paris during the German occupation.

 

Sarah Starzinski’s story is told in flashbacks. Police arrive one day. Sarah dashes to protect her young brother Michel. She locks him in a closet for safekeeping, sure that she will return soon. Days pass in the crowded stadium. Panic and disease spread. Desperate to return and rescue Michel, Sarah falls ill.

Under Nazi order, French police arrested 13,000 Jews in July 1942. The prisoners were forced into the Velodrome d’Hiver, an indoor bicycle racing track. With no access to running water or toilets, they slept in their seats or on concrete floors. Families were separated and herded into trains bound for French internment camps.

Thomas (The English Patient; I’ve Loved You So Long) and Mayance play off each other beautifully with moving character studies. Past and present feel immediate and urgent. Thomas is intent and driven as she speaks both French and American English. Her brilliance shines despite a script that often emphasizes the obvious. Mayance is a talent to watch, lively and convincing here.

Julia learns that Sarah escaped from the Beaune-la-Rolande camp in Loiret. She tracks down a farm couple (Niels Arestrup and Dominique Frot) who sheltered the girl from Nazi soldiers. The mystery of Sarah’s life deepens as Julia locates her surviving relatives, including William (Aidan Quinn).

Julia travels abroad to pursue the story. She argues with her French husband Bertrand (Frederic Pierrot) and reassures her teenage daughter Zoe (Karina Hin). In one of the film’s contrived moments, Julia learns that the Starzinski’s apartment was acquired by Bertrand’s family in 1942.

The director relates a powerful chapter of history. Tellingly, it is a French soldier who helps Sarah escape from the camp.

In real life (and beyond the scope of Sarah’s Key), other roundups followed. Prisoners were eventually deported to Auschwitz. In 1959, fire destroyed much of the Vel’ d’Hiver. Apartments and a Ministry of the Interior building stand on the site today.

Julia’s part was over-written and weighs down the narrative. Emphasis on Julia’s pregnancy and failing marriage is distracting. The epilogue feels too neat and becomes trite. Yet Sarah’s Key brings history to life with personal revelation. Paquet-Brenner has made a daring, important film.

If you like Sarah’s Key, you might enjoy:  Winter in Wartime; Of Gods and Men; The King’s Speech.

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Sarah’s Key     2010  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 45 min

Cast Overview:  Kristin Scott Thomas, Melusine Mayance, Niels Arestrup, Frederic Pierrot, Michel Duchaussoy, Dominique Frot, Gisele Casadesus, Aidan Quinn

Director:  Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Genre:  Drama, History, Books on Film

Languages:  English, French and German with English subtitles

 

Another Earth: Brit Marling seeks cosmic redo in Sundance award winner ****1/2

 

What if we could start over, erase our most painful mistakes and move forward? Another Earth explores guilt and grace as its signature image, a blue-green planet, hovers above. The sci-fi indie won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize (for films with a science or technology theme) and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2011.

Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), who has just won a scholarship to MIT’s astrophysics program, parties herself into a stupor and decides to drive home. Speeding along, she gapes at a turquoise disc in the night sky, a newly discovered duplicate planet earth. With sickening inevitability, she crashes head on into another car, killing a mother and son and leaving a father comatose. Dazed, she wanders the scene.

Another Earth blends science fiction, art and emotional truth. Mike Cahill’s feature debut is stark and understated, a contemplation of regret and human possibility. Cahill co-wrote the mesmerizing, imaginative script with Marling, drawing upon the theoretical physics of parallel worlds.

Released from prison four years later, Rhoda is a shell of herself. She moves back in with her upbeat parents and wisecracking brother. In an attic room, she gazes lovingly at a poster of the Horsehead nebula. Rhoda ponders distant Earth 2. She is that far from forgiving herself.

Newcomer Marling is a talent to watch. She embodies desolation with other-worldly poise and willowy beauty. A felon, Rhoda takes a school janitorial job because she doesn’t want to talk to people. She trudges to and from work, hunched, her face hidden under a hood. Eventually she befriends an elderly janitor Purdeep (Kumar Pallana).

 
                            

William Mapother (In the Bedroom and TV’s Lost) plays John Burroughs, a Yale professor and composer who is the other survivor of the tragedy. Rhoda rehearses her confession and knocks on his door one day. When he answers, she loses her nerve. She pretends to be a maid, asking if he would like a free trial house cleaning. Drunk and depressed, he accepts.

The characters of Another Earth don’t interact so much as they revolve slowly through each other’s orbits. There’s a sense of vast eternity, a lonely hum. Mapother and Marling are remarkable alone and together. Dazed and tentative, they become animated, then withdrawn. In time, they grow more fluent with each other.

John confronts Rhoda. He knows she is lying. She has never cashed his checks. The Maid in Haven cleaning service has never heard of her. Still he’s drawn to her. Their romantic pull, while unlikely, is mysterious and certain as a law of physics.

Purdeep acts as a kind of shaman for Rhoda. He’s the first one who is able to evoke real feeling from her. In an exquisite scene, he coaxes her back to life from what may be his deathbed.

Cahill’s cinematography is observant and reverent. His use of a hand-held camera helps build delicious anticipation. John and Rhoda emerge as she clears the clutter of his rural farmhouse. Dust motes float like disembodied souls.

Contact is made with Earth 2. Rhoda enters an essay contest to win a space shuttle trip to the planet. John fears for her safety, but she has nothing to lose. Throughout the film, an astrophysicist muses reassuringly over the radio. “There’s another you out there. . . . Therein lies the opportunity and the mystery.”

The film’s startling end could be seen as inspiring and hopeful. It all depends on how we look at it.

If you like Another Earth, you might enjoy:  Hereafter; The Ledge.

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Another Earth     2011  /  PG-13 /  1 hour, 32 min

Cast Overview:  William Mapother, Brit Marling, Kumar Pallana, DJ Flava

Director:  Mike Cahill

Genre:  Sci-Fi, Indie, Drama

 

Terri: John C. Reilly feeds teen's big, hungry heart ****

 

Terri stands apart from The Art of Getting By and Submarine for one reason: John C. Reilly. The coming-of-age dramedy hinges on Reilly’s Mr. Fitzgerald, a vice principal who cares about kids in trouble. Jacob Wysocki stars as Terri, a huge oddball with a confused, hungry heart.

Reilly’s straightforward, unforgettable character walks his talk. He owns his own disappointments and shortcomings. Mr. Fitzgerald doesn’t pretend to have it all together, but he knows enough to share his homespun philosophy. When obese Terri lands in his office for daily tardiness, he sets up a weekly meeting to mentor the pajama-clad, good-hearted teen.

Terri’s inner monster is big, odd and misunderstood. He lives in a messy old house with Uncle James (The Office’s Creed Bratton, very good here) who’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Terri takes care of his uncle tenderly.

Trapping mice in the attic is necessary and gives Terri something to do. Glum and bored, he loiters in the woods each morning, watching his offering of dead mice on a log. When a raptor arrives, Terri yelps with excitement. It’s the first revelation of the big boy’s spirit.

An encounter with the bird of prey also sets this movie apart. The raptor is said to symbolize vision, power and guardianship. Connecting with nature is another way the boy heals. Mr. Fitzgerald suggests a new life perspective: “I like this person. I look forward to these days.”

Wysocki is extraordinary, an actor of imagination and warmth. Terri makes slow and painful progress. He aches, stumbles and has wise insights. He wants to fit in as he struggles to be himself. Patrick Dewitt’s understated dialogue rings perfectly. “The feeling is no feeling,” Terri tells his mentor.

 

Terri hangs out with two other outcasts, publicly shamed Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) and hair-pulling misanthrope Chad (Bridger Zadina). The trio reveals risky delight, a weird foray into friendship and experimentation. All three succeed with plain-spoken honesty. Director Azazel Jacobs captures odd beauty in this and other scenes.

Mr. Fitzgerald talks about life and possibilities from his heart and his gut. Reilly makes the character unique as a caring, competent man who admits his own shortcomings. The unapologetically odd vice principal grows on us throughout the film.

Terri finds Mr. Fitzgerald passed out in his car one Sunday morning in the school parking lot. He’s had another fight with his wife. The two share quality time, raiding aspirin from the nurse’s office and shooting hoops. The school’s motto towers above them in the gym: Pride. Tradition. Excellence.

In The Art of Getting By and Submarine, mentors are marginal and never fully developed. Here youth and age are both honored. Mr. Fitzgerald throws Terri a lifeline, and the teen gives him the opportunity to practice his life’s calling. There’s a boy within the man, and a man within the boy.

When Fitzgerald betrays the boy’s trust it’s devastating. He transforms the moment by apologizing. “Life’s a mess, dude, but we’re all just doing the best we can.”

In an imperfect world, Terri ends with a quiet, transcendent moment. This is not a feel-good movie, but one that celebrates flawed humanity and hope.

If you like Terri, you might enjoy:  The Art of Getting By; Submarine; Cedar Rapids.

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Terri     2011  /  R  /  1 hour, 27 min

Cast Overview:  Jacob Wysocki, Creed Bratton, Olivia Crocicchia, Bridger Zadina, John C. Reilly

Director:  Azazel Jacobs

Genre:  Drama, Dramedy

 

Submarine **

 

Passion is dead for his parents, but Oliver Tate sets his sights on Jordana Bevan. He schemes. He worries. He never gives up.

Set in a perpetually grey Wales, life is torment for confused 15-year-old Oliver (Craig Roberts). He concocts any drama he can to spice up his glum home situation and pointless school days. Imagination is his best friend, providing the only way to survive the unrelenting pessimism around him.

“In many ways I prefer my own company,” he narrates. “It gives me time to think.” His word of the day is “flagitious” which means “shamefully wicked.”

Oliver lurches forward on a frenzied quest to lose his virginity with droll, matter-of-fact Jordana (Yasmin Paige). He flees school bullies and endures social mishaps. Even when he entices Jordana to his house for a romantic dinner while his parents are out, quiet desolation persists.

Two actors to watch are Roberts (Jane Eyre) and Paige (I Could Never Be Your Woman). Surely they’ll enjoy better professional days ahead.

 

Submarine relives the worst of adolescent angst. First-time director Richard Ayoade (a comedian on the Britcom The IT Crowd) assembles interesting actors and directs them through a zombie-like trance for 97 long minutes. The result is cynical and pointless. Adapted from Joe Dunthrone’s novel of the same name, Submarine sinks in despair. Even its witty dialogue can’t lift the tedium.

Impassioned New Age life coach Graham Purvis (Paddy Considine) provides Submarine’s only bright spot. Graham, who’s just moved in next door, happens to be the former love interest of Oliver’s mom Jill (Sally Hawkins). He represents her road not taken and provides the film with a fleeting, higher vision.

Jill avidly hangs onto Graham’s every word at his seminars. Even the spiritually inclined will wince at his light show mumbo jumbo (“I am a prism. . . . I am exciting and delicious.”) Graham does provide a vital glimmer of hope to his motley audiences as he sells his books and tapes.

Poor old Lloyd Tate (Australian actor Noah Taylor) is a depressed marine biologist who calmly observes Jill’s flirtation with the colorful huckster. He knows she’ll return to him. When he spies Graham having midnight bumper sex with a follower, he sees right through him.    

Graham threatens Oliver’s sad, safe world.  Alarmed, he sneaks into the guru’s seminar room to steal a videotape. Later, Jill and Lloyd watch Graham on the telly. “He’s really working that third eye, isn’t he?” Lloyd quips. An odd lack of feeling weighs down the scene.

The Tates care. They guide Oliver even as he calls them out on their own rote marriage. Jill utters calm words. “Passion rarely lasts,” his father advises. Survive, don’t thrive, they seem to say.

A recent American film about teen angst, The Art of Getting By, seems like a laugh fest compared to Submarine. Dry and one note, this movie never comes to life. Oliver and Jordana might as well walk into an ocean of grief.

If you like Submarine, you might enjoy:  The Art of Getting By; Super 8.

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Submarine     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 37 min

Cast Overview:  Craig Roberts, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins, Paddy Considine, Noah Taylor

Director:  Richard Ayoade

Genre:  Indie Dramedy, Movie Based on the Book

The Tree of Life *****

 

A family drama interpreted spiritually and artistically, The Tree of Life is a sweeping tale from the beginning to the end of time. Terrence Malick’s epic masterpiece won the Palme d’Or, top prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. To fully appreciate Malick’s fifth feature, we must experience it with the heart.

A mother asks why her son is dead, who God is, and why we are here at all. Set in 1950's Texas, the film is all yearning, exploring, imploring. It’s a stark contrast to the loud, violent fare filling modern multiplexes.

After Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) receives news of her 19-year-old son’s death, Malick returns us to our cosmic origins. Galaxies form. Earth develops. A couple meets. A child is born. Hundreds of beautifully composed images shape a quiet, elegant whole. Upheavals, universal and personal, take on a stately grace. The soundscape is lyrical. Even protozoa and dinosaurs demonstrate gentle intelligence.

Malick's sparse dialogue and interior monologues accompany these scenes like poetry. Lush cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and the orchestral score by Alexandre Desplat are a revelation.

 

Mrs. O’Brien teaches her sons two ways through life. The way of grace accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked, insulted or injured. The way of nature (i.e., the way of the ego) dominates others, pleases itself and dwells in unhappiness. “Love is smiling through all things,” she says.

The Tree of Life shows the relationship of young Jack (Hunter McCracken in a stirring debut) and his strict, sometimes unhinged father (Brad Pitt in an Oscar-worthy dramatic performance). 

Pitt reveals a complex go-getter in the aerospace industry, a stern father who is an avid fan of Brahms. Yet O’Brien can’t reconcile the strains of a concerto with his family assembled around the dinner table. His sons never show him enough respect or measure up to his machismo.

Young Jack has begun breaking windows, stealing and tormenting small animals. “I’m as bad as you are,” Jack tells his father. Grace touches him one day and he experiences a change of heart. Jack apologizes to the brother (Laramie Eppler) he has hurt. He is kind to a neighborhood boy scarred in a house fire.

“The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by.” As Jack’s mother, Chastain is grace personified. She evokes a woman so gentle that a butterfly lands on her outstretched hand. When she disinfects a child’s cut and blows on it, we can feel her cool breath.  

 

Childhood innocence is gradually worn by the rules of society. “It takes fierce will to get ahead in this world,” Jack’s father tells him. The boy is forbidden to cross the invisible property line of a neighbor’s yard.

Sean Penn plays Jack as an angry, disillusioned man still grappling with his difficult father. Every year he lights a candle to commemorate his “true, kind” brother. Best Actor Penn delivers strong supporting work as he looks to the celestial skyscrapers of Houston for solace. They are a kind of postmodern church for Jack.

An asteroid strikes, causing massive tsunamis. Jack wanders a beach afterwards, filled with awe and wonder. It is a new beginning.

If we are open to it, The Tree of Life imparts a direct, mystical encounter between God and humans. Malick uses Christian references as the family attends church in Waco, Texas. The tree of life is an ancient symbol of heaven and earth in many religions.

The director continues his fascination with nature and the manmade world. The fields and forests of Jack’s childhood are a respite from searing inner conflicts. A universal perspective helps Jack heal years later. 

Douglas Trumbull’s special effects are natural and imaginative, resonant with the film’s ordered harmony. Superb editing is accomplished by Hank Corwin, Jay Rabinowitz, Daniel Rezende, Billy Weber and Mark Yoshikawa. 

Malick makes films with great care and thought. After studying philosophy at Harvard, he directed four films over four decades, The New World, The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven and Badlands.

"He is working within a Hollywood system, but in a unique and personal way, much the same as Kubrick did," according to Hannah Patterson, author of The Cinema of Terrence Malick: Poetic Visions of America. "There is that level of mystery that comes from not doing interviews and not being in the public eye,” she said. Malick allows his films to speak for themselves.

Three years in the making, The Tree of Life is the director’s most epic and spiritual film to date. It reveals civilization as an experiment, a tiny shard of all that is.

Malick’s newest project stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and Rachel Weisz. It is scheduled for release in 2012.

 If you like The Tree of Life, you might enjoy: Of Gods and Men; I Am; 127 Hours.

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The Tree of Life     2011  /  PG-13  /  2 hours, 18 min

Cast Overview:  Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Fiona Shaw, Irene Bedard, Jessica Fuselier, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan 

Director:  Terrence Malick

Genre:  Drama, Indie, Period Piece

 
 

Hesher **1/2

 
 

Just when we start to like Hesher, he talks about his balls at a funeral or trashes someone’s backyard for fun. Natalie Portman appears in and co-produces the indie mashup Hesher.

Hesher is an enigmatic drifter played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception; 3rd Rock from the Sun). Long-haired and dirty with a middle finger tattooed along his spine, Hesher is a juvie survivor, homeless wanderer and self-styled avenger. He drives a battered pickup truck that blares death metal music. An anti-hero who loves to blow things up, Hesher spouts filth, eats like a caveman, bangs chicks and watches porn.

Of course 12-year-old T.J. Forney (Devin Brochu) is fascinated. Hesher follows him home one day after T.J. throws a rock through a window at a construction site, accidentally dislocating the squatter. Hesher arrives at T.J.'s dysfunctional household not long after the boy's mom dies in a car accident.

Hesher's reluctant hosts are zombie-like. T.J.’s dad (Rainn Wilson of The Office) is whacked-out on anti-depressants. His grandmother (Piper Laurie, creepy, sly and sweet) is not all there, but manages to cook meals. “Life is like walking in the rain,” she says. “You can hide and take cover, or just get wet.” They let T.J.'s "friend" stay, not knowing he has threatened the horrified, spellbound pre-teen.

Wounded T.J. pilfers his dad’s money via an ATM, hoping to escape to somewhere better. The boy tries to buy back his family’s totaled car from an auto wrecking yard. The owner (John Carroll Lynch, consistently great) warns him to stay away. T.J. falls asleep in the wreck one night, desperate to feel his mom’s loving presence. Brochu is the saving grace of the film, a young actor to watch out for.

Set pieces, especially the pool scene, are original and memorable. The premise of Hesher is good. Yet the misfit’s bizarre behavior overpowers and detracts from the story.

 

When T.J. develops a crush on a plain, sweet convenience store clerk Nicole (a lovely role for Portman), Hesher offers unwanted man advice. Nicole struggles in her dead-end job and life. When she rear-ends another car while giving T.J. a ride home, Hesher comes to the rescue. “Some days a day is bad and you discover whole new ways it could get way worse,” Nicole laments.

When times get tough, is screaming and violence the key to recovery? Hesher blows up a bully’s car in the name of justice. When T.J. tells him never to do that again, the dude is temporarily nonplussed.

Hesher is a primal scream in a world where bad things happen to the good. His footfalls thunder like a herd of rhino. Anger guides him. We get it, but does he have to be so repulsive?

There’s principled disobedience, and then there’s Hesher. His venting doesn’t have a point. Any good that comes out of his visit to the Forneys is pure accident. Bad Santa he’s not.

Writer-director Spencer Susser has created an incoherent film with some fresh moments. Hesher’s heart may be in the right place, but he leads T.J. in immature and dangerous ways. The rebel's exercise of power is wrong-headed and pathetic. Everyone except grandma has forgotten his original self-worth and sacredness. They believe they are powerless, and so they are.

What were the producers thinking in making this film? A line of Portman’s dialogue could be her answer: “I really just did it for myself ‘cause I’m selfish. Sorry.”

If you like Hesher, you might enjoy:  I’m Still Here; Greenberg; Please Give.

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Hesher     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie, Natalie Portman, John Carroll Lynch

Director:  Spencer Susser

Genre:  Indie Drama, Indie Dramedy

 

Jane Eyre *****

 

Mia Wasikowska updates classic heroine Jane Eyre with passion and aplomb in Cary Fukunaga’s remake of the Charlotte Bronte novel. 

This is Wasikowska’s breakout role. Her talent and screen presence have attracted notice lately in The Kids Are All Right, In Treatment and Alice in Wonderland.

The Australian-born actor lends intelligent yearning to “poor, obscure” Jane. Gazing out a window at horizons she may never cross, she conveys inner strength and a vast spirit despite her humble circumstances as a governess.

Delightfully sassy with impertinent wit, Jane speaks out to her cruel aunt Mrs. Reed (Sally Hawkins) and to heartless headmaster Mr. Brocklehurst (Simon McBurney).  Amelia Clarkson plays young Jane.

Wasikowska does Bronte proud, revealing an advocate for women’s rights before such ideas had a name. This Jane stands in time alongside the heroine rendered by Samantha Morton (1997), Charlotte Gainsbourg (1996) and Joan Fontaine (1944).

Michael Fassbender embodies pain and sarcasm as Edward Rochester. What comes through is the character’s loneliness. One senses the isolation of Jane, Mr. Rochester and Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench), each turning to the other to meet their needs in some way.

Rochester’s stealthy handling of the madwoman in the attic bristles even while Fassbender reveals a sympathetic, conflicted man.

Jamie Bell plays pious and ultimately domineering St. John Rivers. Holliday Grainger and Tamzin Merchant shine as the supportive, nurturing Rivers sisters.

Jane Eyre fans will enjoy this film while remembering the over-the-top frenzy of Rochesters past (Orson Welles in 1944; Ciaran Hinds in 1997). They might miss more screen time for the violent madwoman (played briefly by Valentina Cervia), and a more dramatized fire scene in the master’s bedroom.

Chronology is confused with early cross-cutting. In the stirring opening, Jane flees Thornfield and is rescued by St. John Rivers. Next we see a brief review of her orphan days at the family’s Gateshead estate, and later at the Lowood Institution. 

Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) finally settles the tale into its natural dramatic arc with Jane’s arrival at Thornfield and her tutelage of Mr. Rochester’s charge Adele (Romy Settbon Moore).

Spare, powerful writing by Moira Buffini and impassioned delivery give Jane Eyre its ringing, memorable lines. “Children, I exhort you to with hold the hand of friendship to Jane Eyre.” “Mr. Rochester’s visits are always unexpected.” “You transfix me, quite.”

Cinematographer Adriano Goldman captures action in beautiful shades of pewter, contrasted with bright outdoor vistas.

 

Judi Dench is masterful as Mrs. Fairfax, opinionated, warm and manipulative. As head housekeeper, she rivals her master (and distant relative) Mr. Rochester even while pooh-poohing her status.

We see less merrymaking by elite Blanche Ingram (Imogen Poots) and her entourage. Poots adds interest with a Blanche who is more threatened by Jane from the start.

The heroine receives an inheritance, adding more power late in the drama.  A return to Edward would not be Jane’s only option. 

The final reunion scene lacks the outward fire of previous Jane Eyre films, yet it leaves much to the imagination in quiet beauty.

If you like Jane Eyre, you might enjoy: The Young Victoria; The Kids Are All Right; Red Riding Hood.

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Jane Eyre     2011  /  PG-13  /  2 hours, 1 min

Cast Overview: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Amelia Clarkson, Sally Hawkins, Freya Parks, Holliday Grainger, Tamzin Merchant, Imogen Poots, Valentina Cervi, Judi Dench

Director:  Cary Joji Fukunaga

Genre:  Drama, Romance, Period Piece, Drama Based on the Book