| The
Knee Jerk: August 11
Okay, so you've all seen The
Descent, so I can let you out of your ankle cuffs long
enough to run out to the multiplexes to see something else. Just
make sure it's not about terrorists, mmkay?
Half
Nelson
First off, Ryan Gosling is a straight-up hottie.
And you know how a hot guy somehow gets even hotter when you see
him interacting with kids? Like, seeing him being all sensitive
and ego-less is just the most endearing thing ever? Well, imagine
Ryan Gosling teaching a class full of 13-year-olds,
and swoon heavy. Of course, Half Nelson isn't all
about ogling Gosling's wiry frame (although there
is a good bit of it to be done, worry not) -- his character is an
idealistic young teacher whose ambitions and happiness are sadly
handicapped by a rather severe drug habit. When one of his students
(the fantastic Shareeka Epps, turning in one of
the most realistic teen performances since
Kerry Washington in the amazing -- and amazingly
underseen -- Our Song) stumbles upon Dan smoking
crack in the locker room, both of their lives are thrown into a
spiral. Drey needs role models: her mom's too busy working to watch
her, and her brother's in jail for dealing. Fortunately, her brother's
business partner Frank (Anthony Mackie) is helping
out -- but does Frank have designs on getting Drey into the business?
Dan does his best to protect Drey from falling in with the wrong
crowd, but really -- as a crack-smoking teacher, who is he to talk?
It's very rare that a movie comes along where you genuinely want
all of the characters involved to be alright, but Half Nelson,
in its study of the ways in which our culture pushes us to compromise,
is one of those films. Although there are drug dealers, drug users,
felons, teachers, families, single parents, and kids involved, there
are no clear-cut heroes or villains - these are all perfectly decent
people who are trying to make the best of their circumstances and
deal best with their own demons. We're encouraged to understand
all of them without judging their actions, and the fact that Nelson
succeeds for the most part in getting us to do so is what makes
it such a unique film.
Little
Miss Sunshine
Easily the best comedy so far this year, and battling admirably
for the best film overall, Little Miss Sunshine
is a throwback to the days when comedies were raucous, touching,
vulgar, delightful, hyperactive, contemplative, wholly inappropriate
and touchingly wise. And that's sometimes all in one scene. The
travels and travails of a beleaguered (and hilariously fractured)
family desperately trying to hold together, Sunshine
has one of the freshest scripts, most brilliantly simple concepts,
and most talented casts I've seen in years. Steve Carell
is officially my future husband (sorry, Ryan) --
as gay uncle Frank (who recently attempted suicide): his humbled,
measured mania and unspoken need to reconnect with sane people is
simply brilliant. And he's hot -- seriously, go see the movie and
tell me I'm making that up. The man is a looker. Greg Kinnear
is back to form as the overpowering, preposterously optimistic father;
Alan Arkin is flat-out hilarious as the loving but perverted
grampa; Paul Dano (L.I.E., The
Ballad of Jack and Rose) adds another impressive performance
to his resume as the voluntarily mute nihilist son; and newcomer
Abigail Breslin is adorably dorky as impressionable
young Olive, whose happiness seems to ride on her long-shot chance
at winning the Miss Sunshine pageant. My only complaint is that
Toni Collette, while fabulous as always, is a bit
underused -- one gets the feeling that there's something missing
with her story. But otherwise, Sunshine is the
tightest, most satisfying, and most organically hilarious script
since 9 to 5 (and I'm not just saying that because
they share a macabre subplot), with an added layer of family pathos.
The image of this family continually getting out to push-start their
dilapidated VW bug is wonderfully simple: these people will keep
pushing along, together, no matter what. And that's a beautiful
thing. Don't miss this one.
World
Trade Center
Oliver Stone's World Trade Center is a tough film
to grade on a standard scale because it is desperately insistent
on being less a film and more a tribute - and as anyone who has
sat through a Lifetime Intimate Portrait can attest,
a fitting tribute is not necessarily good film. Though Stone's film
is surprisingly (and perhaps refreshingly to many) apolitical in
its handling of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, it's also unexpectedly
overwrought in its sentimentality, ultimately tipping into what
feels like made-for-television cliché. What begins as an
awe-inspiring account of the most horrifying day in many of our
lives loses its narrative steam and devolves into a series of wistful
flashbacks and waking dreams that would be better suited to an episode
of Chicago Hope than to a film about the near destruction
of lower Manhattan. As an American, as a New Yorker, and as a film
lover, I was neither moved nor inspired. In fact, I was bored. The
intention here was apparently not to create compelling cinema, but
to create a tribute to two men caught in the horror of the attacks,
and aside from getting a bit schmaltzy (as tributes often do), I
guess that that mission has been accomplished. Unfortunately, the
limited scope of World Trade Center and the narrative
gymnastics that it is forced to execute to tell its story prevent
the film from being much more than that. Unlike the gripping and
emotionally resonant United 93 before it, this
account of the horrors of 9/11 feels counterfeit, compromised, and
flat; sadly, it is an ill-conceived and generally unaffecting tribute
to the thousands of men and women directly affected by the tragedy.
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