Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

Meek's Cutoff *

 

In a death march with no plot, faceless pioneers say nothing or mumble incomprehensibly in the indie western Meek’s Cutoff. The film won a Piaget Producers Award at the Spirit Awards.

Life for three emigrant families facing almost certain death on the Oregon Trail in 1845 could make for a fascinating exploration. Instead Director Kelly Reichardt shows off in her “minimalist, radically unfashionable style” (Variety). It’s a movie that viewers will hate or love within the first five minutes.

Michelle Williams stars as Emily Tetherow. Emily and other women gather kindling. They knit. They read books. Oh, and they’re litterbugs too.

Native Americans are cursed as “no better than animals” by the group’s scout Meek (Bruce Greenwood). He is hidden under a beard, long locks and fancy, fringed buckskin. Williams sums up her feelings about him: “it’s all vanity.”

Meek and another man capture a Cayuse Indian, threaten to shoot him and chain him up like an animal each night. The menfolk demand that he lead them to water, or else surely they will die. They don’t speak his language, and he doesn’t speak theirs. He guides them anyway, to where we do not know.

Emily approaches the Indian, repulsed by his “stench” yet strangely attracted. She offers him food and stitches up his moccasin. Deadpan Emily points a rifle at Meek when he’s about to shoot the Indian. Some believe this is a feminist moment.   

The Indian (Rod Rondeaux) sings over a sick man, and later speaks aloud to nature all around him. Here is a radically different worldview, a Native American's direct connection with nature. Yet these moments don’t inform or enrich. Instead the travelers stand wooden, looking catatonic. Conflict is watered down to a gruel in a wasteland of a script.

There are ways to craft characters we care about, facing death and a foreign culture terrifying to them. There are ways to forge quiet, interesting character studies. Reichardt fails to find a way. Williams, Rondeaux and Will Patton manage to register onscreen somehow.

Filmed in Burnes and Hines, Oregon, the vistas are marred by garish, streaky light. Inadequate night lighting renders faces and movements indiscernible. Sound effects cut in and out strangely. Jeff Grace’s strings screech like nails on a chalkboard.  

Poor production values, pitiful acting and scant story earn an “F” for Reichardt. Known for her microbudget efforts, she directed the almost equally boring Wendy and Lucy (2008), where Williams also appears.

“Hell is full of Indians,” says Meek. No, hell is full of movies like this one.

Other films you might enjoy: True Grit; Even the Rain; Crazy Heart.

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Meek’s Cutoff     2010  /  PG /  1 hour, 44 min

Cast Overview:  Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton, Zoe Kazan, Paul Dano, Shirley Henderson, Neil Huff, Tommy Nelson, Rod Rondeaux

Director:  Kelly Reichardt

Genre:  Indie, Western, Period Piece, Drama

Get Low ***1/2

 
 

Felix Bush is throwing a funeral party, and he’s the guest of honor.  Robert Duvall plays a country hermit with a secret in the wry indie drama Get Low.

Duvall’s ornery Felix, based on a real character in 1930’s Tennessee, parallels the actor’s own uncompromising portrayals of faith as he sees it.

Duvall, who turned 80 in January, has created stark portraits for nearly 50 years, from mentally ill Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) to his Oscar-winning role in Tender Mercies (1983). In the latter he played Mac Sledge, an alcoholic country singer whose faith is tested when his daughter is killed.

The actor’s career turning point was his role in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), where he played calm mob consigliere Tom Hagen.

Duvall wrote, directed and starred in The Apostle (1997), playing a Pentecostal preacher who struggles with temptation. Unable to sell the script, he financed the project himself. His character Sonny Dewey loves God with fervor, even after killing his wife’s lover with a baseball bat.

Get Low’s Felix is seeking forgiveness for a crime he once committed.  He’s savored his pain and guilt in a backwoods cabin for 40 years. As the townspeople tell it, he’s a loon known for his tirades and “shoot first” policy towards any trespasser (or visitor) on his land.

The crime is not revealed until late in the movie. The only clues we have are a faded photo of a beautiful woman (who he talks to each night), and Mattie Darrow (lovely Sissy Spacek), another woman from his past. Mattie has just moved back to town and knows Felix better than anyone, or so she thinks.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Duvall said that when he prepared to play the man, he captured “a great sense of solitude” and let it “off-handedly lay there within the character.”

 

Spacek's chemistry with Duvall is tender and tentative.  Mattie and Felix were old flames, apparently. His deference to her femininity, burnished by age, is touching.  Mattie tells her friends he was one of the most fascinating men she ever knew back in the day.

Suspicious and grouchy, Felix is a droll joker who wants to take responsibility for his past in his own way.  He asks a preacher (Bill Cobbs) to speak at his funeral party, but rejects the reverend’s idea of how he must atone.

Get Low Director Aaron Schneider won a Spirit Award for Best First Feature.

Felix spars with funeral parlor director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) who is eager to make money in the midst of the Depression.  Wonderfully deadpan Murray keeps us guessing about his true motives. Lucas Black plays Quinn’s assistant Buddy, a young husband and father who captures Felix’s heart.

Despite its twisty misadventures, Get Low never rises from a plain-spoken flatness. It peaks when Felix finally presides over his own funeral party, surrounded by those who fear and despise him. 

If you like Get Low, you might enjoy:  Biutiful; The Company Men; The American.

Get Low   2009  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:   Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Bill Murray, Lucas Black, Gerald McRaney, Bill Cobbs, Scott Cooper, Lorie Beth Edgeman

Director:  Aaron Schneider

Genres:  Indie Drama, Dark Comedy, Drama Based on Real Life

Top 10 Steps to Self-Discovery for Best Actress Natalie Portman in Black Swan

 

In psycho-sexual thriller Black Swan, Best Actress Natalie Portman transforms herself on film and in real life. These 10 steps to self-discovery show her growth as a woman, a dancer, a daughter and a human being:

1. Daughter to Adult. Portman’s character Nina Sayers breaks away from her overprotective mother (Barbara Hershey). She does whatever it takes to secure the Swan Queen role. “Where is my sweet girl?” Hershey asks. “She’s gone!” Portman screams.  Nina becomes her own woman as she dances in her bedroom filled with stuffed animals and dance figurines.
2. Physical Stamina.  Portman reveals a determined dance martyr who cracks her joints, splits toenails and purges to stay thin. Self-mutilation is a disturbing part of her journey. The star performed much of her own dancing in Black Swan. At the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, Portman described dance as “expression through physicality alone.” She had to master every muscle, including “the detail on how the fingertips move, the eyes, the placement of the head.”
3. Mental Endurance.  Nina has practiced for hours a day since childhood, so it is not a stretch to work even harder to win a leading role. Great performers often lose themselves while immersed in their craft. What is troubling is Nina’s complete loss of self.
4.  Sexuality.  Dance master Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) raises the bar. In his new production of Swan Lake, the star must play both the White and Black swans.  Nina can play the virginal White Swan in a heartbeat, Leroy says.  But can she manage the seductive, lascivious Black Swan? Leroy hits on Nina, using sex to bring her out.
5.  Professional Recognition.  Nina finally secures the Swan Queen role, but intense preparation holds psychological perils. Former company star Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) confronts Nina and makes her reel with guilt. Beth is belligerent over her forced retirement, and seems utterly used up and violently crushed.
6.  Sister/Competitor.  Nina allows Lily (Mila Kunis) to befriend her. Lily initiates Nina into the dark side of art and creation as they go out for a night on the town. The two vie for the same role, yet they complement each other. Nina embraces her own dark, hidden desires. Lily is moved ever so slightly by Nina’s genuine innocence.
7.  Genuine Romance.  In real life, Portman fell in love with her co-star and choreographer Benjamin Millepied.  The two are engaged and expecting their first child, a boy, this year.  It’s a fairy tale ending that contrasts with Black Swan’s nightmarish course.
8.  Self-Love: Befriending the Self.  After Black Swan ends, filmgoers are left to consider self-love.  Will Nina ever be able to return to life after her peak experience onstage?
9.  Fame and Success.  Creation. Destruction. Sacrifice.  Black Swan dramatizes the life of a female artist. Society expects much from women. Women may raise that bar even higher. Is success worthwhile when the path demands so much?
10.  Darkness and Light.  Blending nightmare and fairy tale, Director Darren Aronofsky shows a woman who has lost perspective.  The Dance is one part of Nina’s life. She must learn that it is not her whole life. 

Like Top 10 Lists? You might enjoy: Top 10 Films That Change Us 2010 ©; Top 10 Steps to Healing for Best Actor Colin Firth in The King’s Speech.

A Serious Man ****

 
 
 
The Coen brothers have created their darkest comedy yet in A Serious Man, where hero Larry Gopnik (Golden Globe nominee Michael Stuhlbarg) faces non-stop spiritual desolation.

Drawing on their Jewish roots in a 1967 Minnesota suburb, Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Burn After Reading) cast Stuhlbarg as a physics professor and victim of fate. His life is a farce directly out of the Book of Job.

His wife (Sari Lennick) announces that she's leaving him for the nervy Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed, a dead ringer for beat poet Allen Ginsberg). Larry's tenure seems uncertain. A failing student blackmails him. His brother-in-law (Richard Kind) hogs the family bathroom, and is arrested for risqué behavior. Larry's son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is a stoner owing money to a bully, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) wants a nose job. The two are so indifferent to Larry, they seem like strangers.

Up on the roof one day Larry adjusts the antenna so Danny can watch F Troop. For a precious moment, he's above it all, surveying the neighborhood. Just then he spies neighbor Mrs. Samsky (Amy Landecker) sunbathing topless. Here is the ultimate temptation.

Why all the bad luck? In a foreboding prologue, a Yiddish couple accidentally invites into their home a dybbuk (the wandering soul of a dead man). The resulting curse is meant to explain Larry's present-day misfortunes.

Larry seeks answers. He consults his doctor and two lawyers. But who better to help than his rabbi? Larry meets with two holy men, one young and one mature. They are wonderful philosophers, but have no answer for the seeker.

The senior Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell), seeming like God himself, refuses to meet with Larry. Claudia Wilkens is superb as Marhsak's portly, foreboding secretary. Like the shekinah (female face of God), she's a gatekeeper in the tradition of Kali (goddess of death and transformation).

While A Serious Man sends up Jewish culture with references to goys (non-Jews) and a painfully funny soup slurping scene, its statement is universal. Larry is a good man who must go God-direct to meet Source.

At Danny's Bar Mitzvah, Larry finds solace, even a moment of pride. He takes comfort in the ceremony and ritual of his worship community. To his credit, Larry moves beyond despair.

 
 

Desolation breaks Larry's heart open, makes him even more sweet and forgiving. Oy vey, he even forgives Sy Abelman! As the Dalai Lama says, "If people have compassion, naturally that's something they can count on."

A Serious Man brings to mind the spiritual desolation of the Coens' masterpiece No Country for Old Men. It delves into the anguish of the void to arrive at our very soul. Nominated for numerous prizes including Best Motion Picture, A Serious Man received Spirit Awards for Best Cinematography and the Robert Altman Award.

If you like A Serious Man, you might enjoy: Barney's Version; Greenberg; Win Win; Please Give.

A Serious Man / 2009 / R / 1 hr, 46 min

Cast Overview: Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Peter Breitmayer, Adam Arkin, David Kang

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Genres: Comedy, Dark Comedy

The King's Speech *****

 

The stakes could not be higher as Colin Firth portrays King George VI in The King’s Speech, a historical drama about a remarkable friendship and personal triumph over disability during one of history’s darkest hours. Tom Hooper’s film humanizes British royalty along the lines of The Queen (2006) and The Young Victoria (2009).

The King's Speech won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Writing (Original Screenplay), as well as a Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film. Firth won an Oscar and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.

Firth suffers from a devastating stutter. After his father dies, his profligate brother (Guy Pearce) steps up and soon abdicates the throne amidst scandal. The new king will be required to speak publicly – often to an entire nation. Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall) informs him that England’s declaration of war against Germany is inevitable.

The King's Speech swept many prizes, including a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Film Ensemble, and a Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.  

Firth is nominated for Best Actor. He also won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards for this role.

Firth is called upon to be a leader just as he’s ready to surrender. His wife (Helena Bonham Carter) has accompanied him to every speech therapist imaginable. Nothing has worked. In the excruciating opening scene, Firth is red-faced and furious, attempting to speak with a mouthful of marbles under a doctor’s direction.

Geoffrey Rush often steals the show with earthy, raucous humor. Lionel Logue is a bold Aussie and failed actor with plenty of experience coaching severe stutterers. In order for the treatments to work, Logue insists that the future king come to his speech studio in a rundown London flat. They must become “equals” and eventually friends. “Call me Lionel,” he insists.

Logue is no doctor. He doesn’t pretend to be. What he does share is ample wisdom and skill as the two men – a commoner and a royal – spar and get acquainted. Bertie, as the king’s family calls him privately, confides in Lionel about early childhood fears and his father’s cruelty.

 

Firth and Rush revel in their weighty roles, playing off each other superbly. Logue is as bold and expressive as the king is restrained and proper. Logue shares a warm and plain spoken relationship with his wife (Jennifer Ehle) and two sons (Dominic Applewhite and Ben Wimsett).

The speech coach brings just the insouciance needed to puncture the fears of the sensitive king. His is the perfect foil to royal stodginess. Bertie must learn to relax his tongue, breathe fully, and even lie down on the floor to loosen his diaphragm.

In one moving scene, Bertie shares a bedtime story with his adoring daughters Elizabeth and Margaret (Freya Wilson and Ramona Marquez). His wife, the future Queen Mum of England, looks on. Elizabeth is destined to succeed her father to the throne one day.

The king’s family and close associates cheer him on during a riveting three minute speech at the BBC. Logue accompanies Bertie into the sound booth, coaching him with silent care as the king urges the nation to stand together at the start of World War II.

Director Hooper is known for his Emmy Award winning miniseries John Adams (2008).

The film received an “R” rating due to a single scene where Firth spouts a string of expletives, desperate to vent his anxiety and express himself at last.

If you like The King's Speech, you might enjoy: The Young Victoria; Another Year; An Education.

The King’s Speech 2010 / R / 1 hour, 58 min

Cast Overview: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter

Director: Tom Hooper

Genres: Drama, History

The Kids Are All Right *****

 

The Kids Are All Right can open your heart and change your mind. Stereotypes melt with natural acting, arch comedic timing and an honest but not overbearing point of view. Here is a form of family – and it’s genuinely all right.

Director Lisa Cholodenko conjures an alchemy of female and male, new and traditional. When a filmmaker gives her characters the freedom to go all out, letting the story tell itself, it shows true maturity and mastery. She provokes thought without a sermon.

The film won two Golden Globe awards, one for Best Comedy Feature  and one for Best Actress in a Comedy (Bening). It also won a Spirit Award for Best Screenplay.

Perfect casting allows Cholodenko to realize her vision. The “momses” Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore) are a couple with two children, wise 18-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and wayward younger brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson). An anonymous sperm donor enabled both moms to give birth.

What Nic and Jules don’t know is that Laser is keen to meet his bio-dad Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Joni (being of age) contacts the donor agency to arrange contact. Ruffalo is perfectly suited as the dude who eventually meets brother and sister at his farm-to-table restaurant. He turns out to be a socially conscious hottie and motorcycle-riding bachelor.

Paul becomes a wild card in Nic and Jules’ marriage, not a member of their family but suddenly an admired mentor to their children. Never married, he is awed and intrigued by his newfound connections. Paul feels at home in this alternative family, so moved by its love and belonging that he’d take a shortcut to having one himself.

Laser’s relationship with an abusive “best friend” is examined as Paul mentors. Seeking answers, Laser finds some affirmation as Paul explains his decision to be a donor. “Hey, I’m glad I did it.”

Joni dares to ride a motorcycle against Nic’s orders, and revisits her own friendships. Both Joni and Laser begin to discern and make decisions newly as they integrate a man into their lives. True and direct, Wasikowska and Hutcherson show they are two actors to watch out for.

 

Bening is hilarious as enigmatic Nic, an uptight, overachieving M.D. with a proclivity for just one more glass of wine. Jules (Moore) is a free spirit, a onetime architect who yearns to launch her own landscape design company. Moore explores many faces of Jules, from wholesome to aggressive. Together Bening and Moore create bona fide screen history.

The emotions and possibilities of “what if” become supercharged. Paul’s presence highlights strengths and vulnerabilities in Nic and Jules’ marriage.

Great direction, acting and writing (by Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg) evoke an appreciation of family relationships and the resiliency of youth. In real life, Cholodenko and her female partner are parents of a donor child.

Love becomes apparent as the family drops Joni off at college. The film’s heartfelt crescendo focuses on marriage as a challenging work in progress.

If you like The Kids Are All Right, you might enjoy: Win Win; Terri; The Art of Getting By.

The Kids Are All Right 2010 / R / 1 hour, 44 min

Cast Overview: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Indie

Black Swan *****

 

Natalie Portman surrenders herself in Darren Aronofsky’s psycho-sexual thriller Black Swan. In a film of many superlatives, it is Portman who catapults it to greatness with her best performance ever.

Ballerina Nina Sayers has sacrificed her childhood, her mind, body and soul to the dance. Of late, she is keenly focused on the coveted Swan Queen role in Swan Lake. Slavishly supporting Nina is her mother, former ballerina Barbara Hershey (stupendous here).

Portman won the Oscar for Best Actress, as well as Golden Globe, Spirit and Screen Actors Guild awards for this role.
 
Black Swan swept the Spirit Awards, winning for Best Feature, Best Cinematography and Best Director.

In his new production, ballet director Thomas Leroy (ever driving Vincent Cassel) has raised the bar. The lead must play both the White and Black swans. Nina can play the virginal White Swan in a heartbeat, Leroy says. Can she manage her seductive, lascivious counterpart? He doubts it.

As The Wrestler (2008) reveres the male sportsman, Black Swan pays bold homage to the female dance artist. Both Aronofsky films show art consummated at the expense of the individual. In order to achieve wholeness, the Dark must roar alongside pure intention and high ideals without destroying them.

It’s striking how little self worth Nina really has. Brainwashed, she believes that being a perfect dancer is all. As little girl/woman, Nina lives sheltered in her mother’s Upper West Side apartment. Her bedroom is filled with stuffed animals and ballerina music boxes. Portman reveals a determined dance martyr who cracks her joints, hobbles on bloody, split toenails and purges regularly to stay thin.

Life, indeed reality, is what we make of it. Nina careens insanely in waves, relentlessly pushed by her own ego, her mother, the demanding Leroy, and wiley understudy Lily (ravishing Mila Kunis). As if this weren’t enough, she reels with guilt over the “retirement” of former company star Beth Macintyre. Winona Ryder wrings the last drop out of Beth, utterly used and violently crushed.

 

Audiences will lose track of what is real and unreal in Nina’s paranoid hallucinations. Portman has honed the self-destructiveness of Lauren in Heat (1995), and sustains it throughout. Action never lulls as Aronofsky depicts Nina’s inner and outer demons. The rousing cadences of Tchaikovsky billow like a sea beneath this adult fairy tale.

Kunis melds Lily’s smoky cattiness with just enough sisterly charm. Nina surrenders to her new friend. Knowing Lily is like walking through a dank museum basement filled with the Female’s dark artifacts: competition, raw hunger, erotic satiation.

Nina’s Black Swan emerges at last. She parties all night prior to morning rehearsal. Sex is her birthright, seduction her innate power. It’s a classic theme elevated by Portman, a revelation of both Hindu goddesses Kali and Lakshmi. Destruction becomes liberation as light and beauty shine. Portman performs most of her own dancing.

Cassel advances upon his prima ballerina to push her onto dangerous new ground. He transcends sexual harassment as he is able to control desire. “That was me seducing you. It needs to be the other way around,” he says.

Hershey’s needy innocence gives way to a mother’s overbearing rage, then morphs into teary adulation.

Several masterstrokes ensure the film’s success. Mark Heyman and John McLaughlin rewrote Andres Heinz’s original script to focus on Nina’s psychology. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique follows Nina and the action closely, making subject larger than life. Digital effects complement cinema verite. Blood flows. Feathers sprout.

Benjamin Millepied of the New York City Ballet choreographs. Clint Mansell created Black Swan’s rousing musical score. Much of the film is set in Lincoln Center.

In real life, Portman fell in love with co-star and choreographer Millepied. The two are engaged and expecting their first child, a boy, this year.

Creation. Destruction. Sacrifice. Black Swan’s ending will leave audiences yearning for Nina to embrace herself wholly.

If you like Black Swan, you might enjoy: I Am Love; The Ghost Writer; The Other Woman.

Black Swan 2010 / R / 1 hour, 48 min

Cast Overview: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Genres: Drama, Thriller

127 Hours *****

 
 

There’s a moment in the must-see drama 127 Hours where Aron Ralston (James Franco) straddles a spectacular rock formation in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. As the sun rises, the meaning of a man’s life is captured, along with the thrill of encountering the Absolute. It compels Ralston to plunge into the wilderness of his own being even as he daredevils over rocks and ravines. It’s a peak experience that flings him directly at life, death and eternity.

Accolades are piling high for Danny Boyle’s thriller based on Ralston’s memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place. The film was nominated for six Oscars and three Golden Globes. 

Franco won a Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, and was nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globe Award.

Franco becomes a force of nature on equal footing with wind, sun, earth and water. Convincingly he plays a cocky 27-year-old who doesn’t tell anyone where he’s biking and climbing that weekend, a lover of metal music and speed, a ladies’ man who is truly at home by himself in the elements.

What Ralston seeks (and Franco so eloquently portrays) is sabi, which can be understood as a longing for the Divine. It is that moment of grace, that discovery of beauty in the strange and mysterious.

Boyle’s film is unique as it focuses so well on both the extreme sports action and inner life of Ralston. The psychological suspense of this true-life adventure is intense even when we know how the story ends.

Franco canyoneers, meditates and hallucinates, recalling his almost fatal mistake of leaving behind a Swiss Army Knife. While trapped, he speaks with Source via his camcorder. It’s here that he dictates his bodily functions, regrets and dreams to his human family past, present and future.

What Franco learns is a core principle of sabi. It’s vital to maintain a healthy connection with those around us. It is in relationship where love can be found, where Source touches us tangibly and grounds us. The thrill of solitary spiritual experience, like anything else, can turn into a lair of self-importance, an addiction to danger.

 
At just over 90 minutes, the length of 127 Hours is just right. It’s a survival tale with more punch than Cast Away (2000) and Touching the Void (2003). This personal tale turns mythic alongside the petroglyphs and pictographs of the canyon. Most harrowing is the amputation scene where Ralston decides to save his own life.

Kudos go to Boyle and Simon Beaufoy for dynamic screenplay, and to Glenn Freemantle for sound design. Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak achieve alluring nature and special effects cinematography. Vast wilderness encompasses intricate detail. Over a hundred camera angles build momentum, intertwined with A.R. Rahman’s stirring music. Boyle assembled much of his Slumdog Millionaire team for this project.

Franco was nominated for Best Actor for this role. His death defying bravado and snarkiness is enhanced by the performances of Kate Mara and Amber Tamblyn, two attractive hikers who join him briefly as he guides them and shows off.

In a recent interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, Franco spoke about desire to become a director. Franco is enrolled in graduate literature studies at Yale and is the author of a collection of short stories, Palo Alto.

Ralston’s book is worth reading for filmgoers who want to delve deeper into this gem of action and self-discovery. It’s reminiscent of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, a lively addition to the nature adventure/inner journey genre. Ralston appears at the conclusion of the film.

If you like 127 Hours, you might enjoy: Winter's Bone; The American; Rabbit Hole.

127 Hours 2010 / R / 1 hour, 34 min

Cast Overview: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Treat Williams, John Lawrence, Kate Burton

Director: Danny Boyle

Genres: Adventure, Biopic, Drama, Drama Based on the Book

 

Winter's Bone ****

 

A glacial chunk in the midst of this summer’s movie choices, Winter’s Bone is an unsettling bad dream, a grim tale that becomes mythic. It features the must see performance of Kentucky-born Jennifer Lawrence (The Burning Plain).

In Ree Dolly, Lawrence reveals a scrappy 17-year-old who shepherds her family on the brink of losing their home.

Winter’s Bone, which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Award, was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor (John Hawkes) and Best Writing (adapted screenplay). It also won Spirit Awards for best supporting male and female actors.

The film reveals “another America”: a land of poverty and ignorance, an Ozark mountain hell. The young adults of Ree’s world can escape this ghetto only by joining the Army, or by setting up a meth lab.

When drug-dealing Jessup jumps bail one day, he leaves the family home as collateral. The sheriff arrives. Unless Jessup can be found, the law wants to repossess the home where Ree lives with her catatonic mother and younger siblings Sonny and Ashlee (Isaiah Stone and Ashlee Thompson).

Ree decides to fight impending disaster. “I’ll find him,” she vows. Along the way, her worst enemies seem to be her father’s violent brother Uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and Merab (Dale Dickey), the wife of local crime boss Thump Milton.

Ree sets out on her odyssey with little emotion. Calmly she repeats to anyone who will listen – she needs to find her father’s whereabouts. Dead or alive, there is no blame. She aims only to save her family’s home.

Ree’s quest becomes her initiation. We reel in shock at what she is expected to do. Even the coldness of the hill folk’s criminal element thaws alongside the girl’s resolute stand.

Local residents served as actors. Director Debra Granik immersed herself in the culture for years before filming began. The film’s lighter moments include authentic Ozark folk singing and playing. Ree also teaches Sonny and Ashlee to count and shoot a rifle.

Lawrence’s next screen role will be in Jodie Foster’s dramedy The Beaver.

If you like Winter's Bone, you might enjoy:  Rabbit Hole; Black Swan; 127 Hours.

Winter’s Bone 2010 / R / 1 hr, 40 min

Cast Overview: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Kevin Breznahan, Dale Dickey, Garret Dillahunt, Shelley Waggener, Lauren Sweetser

Director: Debra Granik

Genre: Drama

An Education *****

 

Carey Mulligan is being hailed as the next big star for her radiant character Jenny, a 16-year-old drawn to a man almost twice her age in An Education. Lone Scherfig directs this delicate romantic drama based on the memoir of British journalist Lynn Barber. The film won a Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.

“If you never do anything, you never become anyone” is Jenny’s philosophy. The controversial An Education will enchant and even thrill many because of Best Actress nominee Mulligan’s vivacious performance, and Peter Sarsgaard’s very sly, charming David.

Jenny is an adventurous spirit in the London suburb of Twickenham in 1961. She studies Latin at a private school and listens to French pop music. Jenny dreams of the day she will go to Oxford and escape her strict parents and the awkward neighborhood boys.

One day David approaches in his sports car as Jenny waits for a bus in the pouring rain. David is handsome, in his thirties and Jewish. He’s like no one she's ever met before.

Expressing concern for her cello, David coaxes Jenny to stop for him.  She accepts a ride. “Have you ever been to a concert?” he asks. “Not a real one,” she replies. Smart, naïve and hungry for life experience, Jenny is hooked.

Amazingly, when David meets Jenny’s parents (Albert Molina and Cara Seymour), they accept the sophisticated man bearing flowers and compliments. He professes to be her cultural mentor.

 

Jenny and David attend an art auction, then a concert and dinner with his friends Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike). Eventually Jenny joins him on a trip to Paris for a weekend. A particularly moving Molina is swayed on David’s assurance that his aunt will chaperone.

Jenny wants to lose her virginity to David, but only on her seventeenth birthday. As word spreads about Jenny’s adventures, her teachers are not amused. Headmistress Emma Thompson threatens to expel her. Olivia Williams as Miss Stubbs implores the brilliant girl not to abandon her university ambitions.

Scherfig took particular care to ensure that the film’s interior sets, wardrobe and hairstyling evoke the early 1960’s. Both Jenny and Helen wear gaily colored print dresses, slinky cocktail wear and fanciful updos that evoke the period just before women’s liberation.

Jenny makes a devil’s bargain with her innocence, using David perhaps as much as he uses her. It is a life lesson she will never forget.

If you like An Education, you might enjoy:  Shopgirl; Mademoiselle Chambon; Wild Grass.

An Education   2008 / PG-13 / 1 hr, 35 min

Cast Overview: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson

Director: Lone Scherfig

Genres: Drama, Romantic Drama