Same Difference.

The poll over at IMDB today confirmed something I said the other day:



Denzel Washington has been making the exact same movie all decade long.
Did that undeserved Oscar win in '01 make him stop challenging himself as an actor?
Are these movies making Julia Roberts' life any better?

Crush of the Week.

So. Damn. Sexy.

Mother and Child **

Director: Rodrigo García
Cast: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington
Samuel L. Jackson, David Morse, Shareeka Epps, Amy Brenneman
Marc Blucas, Jimmy Smits, Cherry Jones, Elpidia Carrillo
S. Epatha Merkerson, David Ramsey

There is something about Rodrigo García's vision of women that feels both spot-on and terribly, terribly cliché.
At times his characters achieve an intense melancholy and feel so lived-in that it's completely annoying how seconds later he forces them to deliver elaborate dialogues that make them sound like they've just arrived from Peyton Place.
In this case his screenplay centers on the relationships between mothers and children. We have Karen (Bening) a middle aged woman whose life was marked by the fact she gave up her daughter for adoption almost forty years before. This has made her cold and so afraid of people that she doesn't know how to respond to the attentions she receives from a new coworker (Smits).
Elizabeth (Watts), the daughter, is a successful attorney who uses sex as an asset and the fact that she was abandoned as an excuse to have no attachments. "I don't have expectations to fulfill" she tells her new boss (Jackson) before she begins an affair with him.
Then there's Lucy (Washington) a woman contemplating adoption given she can't have children of her own. This complicates her marriage since her husband (Ramsey) is reluctant to raising a stranger.
The film unfolds like something González Iñárritu would've made as we see how the three parallel stories eventually converge into one massive, tear-your-heart-out conclusion.
What fails in Mother and Child is that because of García's need to be poetic (usually highlighted by his elaborate camera moves and unrealistic dialogues) we never really think there's an emotional peak coming our way.
We are usually left wondering what will be the climax and this doesn't mean there's some sort of mystery going on, it's just that the director sometimes even forgets some of the stories he's telling.
There's a massive disconnect in Lucy's story especially as we see the other two women move forward in time and she's stuck in the same episode (that or either a freakishly long pregnancy from a mother to be played with charming confidence by Epps).
The movie is saved because of the performers. Bening provides beautifully nuanced work and it's a wonder to see her because the plot first tries to turn her into Charlotte Vale from Now, Voyager yet the actress finds a way to move past this extremely melodramatic mood and by the movie's end she has bloomed into a full blown human being.
Bening is stuck with some preposterous scenes where she writes letters to the daughter she has never met, any other actress would've turned these moments into exaggerated postcard moments, Bening though seems to know there's an awful amount of silliness to them and performs them like a duty, which gives her character a natural quality impossible to judge.
Watts is good but the film under uses her and turns her too much into a femme fatale (Elizabeth would've been played by Glenn Close in the 80's).
The film's revelation is actually Washington who is able to do so much with so little. Her character disappears for rather long amounts of time and we find ourselves wondering what is happening to her, more than anyone else in the film.
The manner in which she completely gives into Lucy is remarkable. She is able to embody sexuality, despair and intense warmth without recurring to cheap dramatic tricks. In a particular scene as she wonders how to deal with a baby's needs she screams "who the fuck does she think she is?" and this is perhaps the only moment in the entire film where we fully grasp what it's like to be a mother.
The pain, confusion and relentless patience that comes with motherhood isn't really easy to convey or to understand and Washington does this with effortless grace.
Mother and Child often feels rushed, despite García's languorous directing and it's fair to think that it might've worked better in serial form where we could've gotten to know these women more and understand some of their rash decisions.
Cinematic form turns it into an obnoxious condensed soap opera that never does justice to the larger themes it wants to study.

The Kids Are All Right ***

Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Cast: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo
Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson

The Kids Are All Right is a sweet little movie about the power of family; each of its quirky twists and turns are precisely studied to deliver an old fashioned adult tale with the spirit of an indie.
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore star as Nic and Jules, a lesbian couple who have been together for years and have two children: Joni (Wasikowska) and Laser (Hutcherson).
When Joni turns eighteen she decides it's time to meet their biological father and without much effort finds sperm donor Paul (Ruffalo) who's also Laser's father.
From here the movie follows a summer where Joni prepares to leave for college and Paul becomes an important part of their family.
The film could've easily been about Joni's search and concentrated on her misadventures trying to find this man; however, director Lisa Cholodenko (who co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg) is more interested in studying what happens to these people when someone from the outside comes and disrupts their structure.
Structured in a series of situations and events in which we see them together, the film flows smoothly. We see the kids having lunch with Paul, Paul meeting the moms, the kids hanging out with their friends etc. At first the film seems aimless but soon we realize that Cholodenko never really meant to tell a self-contained story. This is a slice of life. These characters' lives are supposed to continue after we leave the theater.
Truth be told this wouldn't be as easy to achieve without the film's terrific cast. Bening gives a beautifully layered performance as the controlling Nic. She's the breadwinner, trying to provide for her family and the actress taps into a restrained melancholy that makes her performance haunting.
The best thing about watching her (and this also goes for the rest of the cast) is how liberated she seems. There is not a single moment in her performance where we catch her acting, Cholodenko seems to have a thing for closeups and Bening's face makes a perfect canvas to deliver all kinds of emotions. Her performance feels truly naked because of the way the actress allows us to get so close that we can count her wrinkles but still she puts resistance for us to get into her soul.
Moore is absolutely brilliant as the free spirited Jules. Watching her with Bening is witnessing pure chemistry. The film sometimes tries too hard to portray them as a perfect equation of opposites attracting and in one of the film's funniest scenes Nic says that while she wants her kids to send out thank you cards, Jules probably would be OK with them sending out good vibes.
In the hands of lesser actresses this sort of relationship would catch fire or just freeze, with Bening and Moore it feels almost familiar.
Some of the best scenes in the film are where we see them at their most intimate, sharing their pet names for each other or just watching TV, they make you feel at home.
This perfectly embodies what the movie usually gets so right and it's the way in which it moves past silly preconceptions about "gay cinema" or groundbreaking territory. Cholodenko usually avoids this feeling of "message movie" and we are left wondering how does she capture the awkwardness of being in a family?
Ruffalo is also great, if he had been trying to become the male sex symbol during the past decade, this movie should get him there. His Paul is a manchild of sorts trying to keep up his business and realizing that it might just be time for him to settle down.
The way in which he tries to be both father and friend to the children is funny and also achy. There are glimpses of regret and sorrow in his performance that we're able to catch when he's not being cool or having sex with women.
Ironically, despite his great work, the film doesn't really feel comfortable when he's around. The Kids Are All Right might've been a flawless movie if it had concentrated more on just the family. This rupture feels too much like a cute episode concocted just for the sake of getting some indie cred (making it fit into the "alternative" families subgenre) but as we learn in the end all that really mattered was what was home all along.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

This week featuring two marvelous actresses everyone loves to hate (and they shouldn't because they're just such magnificent thespians! And also two of my favorite actresses...)


First up is John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole which comes up with an interesting poster that could've been simply genius if it wasn't for the fact that they stuck Kidman's face in it.
I've nothing against her gorgeous silhouette but it really takes away from the creepy tire swing and the vast emptiness of the sky.
Perhaps in a way the poster does sum up the way the movie is perceived by some: an artsy drama getting attention mostly because it was produced and stars a true superstar.


There are so many bad things going on in the one sheet for Country Strong that I won't even begin to list them.
Would it have been too hard for the marketing department to come up with a cool faux concert poster for a movie about a singer? (Think Walk the Line)
Even so, why not just use Gwyneth Paltrow like they did with Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart?
Sigh, this thing looks like a collage made by someone with no regards for lighting, human sizes and Photoshop.

Why do you think people dislike Gwyn and Nic so much these days? Every time I bring Paltrow up I'm attacked by people saying terrible things about her. The other day I told a friend she was my favorite actress and he told me I couldn't be throwing statements like that around too lightly...
Would you have reacted the same way?

It's Raining Gwyn!

Apparently Glee heard how much it annoyed me and wanted to win me back. So they want and got Gwyneth Paltrow to guest star!
She'll be in an ep in two weeks and wait for this, she's doing Umbrella! But wait there's more! She's doing a mash-up of Umbrella and Singin' in the Rain!
That's like three of my favorite things of all time rolled up into one big package! It was about time Ryan Murphy gave me something to be gleeful about! (Hardy har har)

Are you excited to see Gwyn on the small screen? I for one, thought she hated TV sets, like her BFF Madonna she seems to be against things us mortals couldn't do without. This month she actually seems to LOVE TV, she'll also appear in the CMA's performing the song from her new movie! I do hope we have a Gwyn invasion for the rest of the year! Don't you?

Paranormal Activity 2 *½

Director: Tod Williams
Cast: Sprague Grayden, Brian Boland, Molly Ephraim
Vivis Cortez, Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

Keeping with the tradition of having our food digested and savored for us that Hollywood seems to be so fond of, here comes Paranormal Activity 2, a movie so unnecessary and just plain dull that it'll be no wonder if it becomes a huge box office hit.
Done in the documentary style of its prequel (which we learn is actually a sequel) the plot concentrates on telling us how an evil demon ended up in the house of Katie (Featherston) and Micah (Sloat).
For this purpose we watch footage from Kristi's (Grayden), Katie's sister, house as she brings home her newborn baby and strange things begin to happen.
Her husband (Boland) thinks she's exaggerating and her stepdaughter (Ephraim) is so terrified by the strange events that she's drawn to carry her handicam everywhere to document the bizarre occurrences. Why a teenage girl is carrying around a video cam and not a hi-tech phone is never explained or reasoned with and this is one of the many flaws you have to forgive the movie for...if you're dying to get into the experience.
If not what you'll see are two things: an over-the-top disposable horror flick which tends to think that more is more and forgoes the silly simplicity of its predecessor in order to show that the filmmakers made enough money to come up with more expensive, but still cheap-looking, effects and if you're willing to cut them so slack you actually can admire the fact that in recurring to Blair Witch like gimmicks the creators of Paranormal Activity seemed to have tapped into the latest, endless, moneymaking cow. They have created a formula that can last them forever as they explore in further sequels or prequels how the demon got to Kristi's house for example.
This realization that such mediocre filmmaking can be perpetuated, while real art and clever entertainment vanish, is the one truly terrifying thing about this movie.

Red **½

Director: Robert Schwentke
Cast: Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren
Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox, Ernest Borgnine, Karl Urban
Richard Dreyfuss, James Remar

Red has got to be one of the most fortunately cast unfortunate movies ever made. When you got the likes of Bruce Willis, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren starring in a graphic novel adaptation you expect it to be brilliant or at least guilty pleasure.
The truth is that Red is none, it's more of a by-the-numbers thriller that under-uses its fascinating cast.
Willis stars as Frank Moses, a former black-ops CIA agent who's pulled out of retirement when agency members begin hunting him for a mysterious reason.
All he knows is that whatever's going on has to do with a secret list compiled by a reporter and that he has to keep an eye out to save Sarah (Parker) the phone operator he's developed a crush on.
Trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together he visits old friends including his mentor Joe (Freeman having more fun than he seems to have had in years), paranoid Marvin (a scene stealing Malkovich) and former wetwork agent Victoria (a sexy, luscious Mirren).
The movie then uses them in an assortment of situations that never achieve the kind of twisted lunacy you could get from having Helen Mirren and John Malkovich shoot machine guns together.
For all of its call to insanity and rebellion the film actually plays it very safe. It's always a delight to watch actors at the top of their game and when the veterans surprise you, it's also great to see Urban get some time in the spotlight, his turn as obsessive agent William Cooper is all kinds of wonderful. The one missing link in the cast is Parker who is totally miscast here, her part called for someone who played the part fully and gave herself to the insanity of it all, in the vein of Madeline Kahn in What's Up Doc? while Parker here seems selfconscious.
There's really not much to elaborate on Red without making it sound like it's a movie that should've delivered brilliance and without taking away the few merits it does have.

While Watching "Vampires Suck"...

...I was actually surprised when I found myself giggling a few times. It was sorta refreshing to think that a movie could squeeze one or two jokes out of something that's already as unintentionally funny as the Twilight series.
Still skip this movie at all costs! Not that you didn't know that before...

Crush of the Week.

Reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I can not imagine someone other than Noomi playing this part. She's magnificent!