Short Term 12 (***1/2)

A group home for troubled teens is the primary setting for this unsensationalized drama. It tells the story of the staff members, not many years older than those they supervise, but concentrates most on two, Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), who have a relationship outside of work. And it tells the stories of a few of the teens, but mostly an anti-social girl (Kaitlyn Dever) who’s just arrived.

This is a bit of a tearjerker at times, but is optimistic in its view that difficult childhoods can be overcome. This is the view that Grace, who is senior among the supervisors, takes. She speaks with the compassion of someone who’s been there, as indeed she has. Yet she still struggles to overcome her own difficult past as she also deals with an unplanned pregnancy.

Short Term 12 shares its title and setting with a 2008 short by its writer-director, Destin Cretton. He tells the story like someone who, like Grace, has been there.

IMDb link

viewed 9/25/13 7:15 pm at Ritz 5 and posted 9/25/13

The Hunt (***1/2)

It’s been a few decades since western countries began broad public movements to root out sexual abuse. No doubt this has been to the good and has reduced the number of child victims, but some people may also remember a number of false accusations in the 1980s against child-care providers, and a side effect may be that men who work with children become slightly suspect. I didn’t know what this film was about when I saw it, but this slight suspicion was part of my reaction when I saw Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen), a divorced father working in a small-town kindergarten. And, as it turns out, the plot centers around an accusation that he has abused his neighbor’s little girl.

In fact, he appears to be the victim of a misunderstanding. The first half of the Danish drama shows the steps by which entirely reasonable people could come to believe in the man’s guilt; the second is more about Lucas’s stunned reaction. Annika Wedderkopp sweetly plays the little girl who cannot anticipate, and only slowly comprehends, the impact of ephemeral remarks. The theme of wrongful accusation has been at the center of several classic films, including Twelve Angry Men, North by Northwest, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Atonement. This isn’t a thriller like North by Northwest and doesn’t focus on the legal case like the other three; it’s a smaller kind of film, but powerful in its way. Director Thomas Vinterberg is still probably best known for his 1998 feature The Celebration; this film is its equal.

IMDb link

viewed 8/8/13 at Ritz East and reviewed 8/8/13

Buck (***1/2)

The easiest way to describe this documentary is to say it’s about the guy who helped inspire the main character in the Nicholas Adams novel, and later Robert Redford film, The Horse Whisperer.  Buck Brannaman, who served as a technical advisor to Redford, doesn’t call himself that, which is just as well. It sounds kind of new age-y to me, as if Brannaman is some kind of magician speaking incantations into the ears of wayward horses. In fact, Brannaman makes his specialty—not so much people with horse problems, but, as he says, horse with people problems—seem as down to earth as possible.

He says at one point that he doesn’t so much help people with horse problems as horses with people problems, and it isn’t new age-y because you can see the way he does it, amazing even seasoned horse people. In revealing Brannaman’s own difficult childhood, the film draws an obvious but nonetheless moving parallel between the ways animals and humans alike are mistreated. Brannaman’s gift is not magic either, as his own transformation comes with the help of others. I am not a lover of horses or animal stories, but this human story was unexpectedly captivating.

IMDB link

viewed 6/13/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/24/11 and 8/9/11

Tennessee (**3/4)

Brothers (Adam Rothenberg, Ethan Peck) trek east from New Mexico in this low-key drama. On the way, they meet a waitress in a diner (Mariah Carey) whose husband has become abusive. Although there is also abuse in the background of the brothers—their father is the reason they fled—the movie has nothing new to say on that subject. It’s all about brotherly love. The older of the two, once a protector, has become alcoholic. The younger one is sick, which is, indirectly, why they are returning to Tennessee. What they will find there is what drives the plot. Director Aaron Woodley favors a still camera and subdued lighting to such an extent that it’s monotonous, despite some painterly tableaux. The only music is Carey, humming to herself and, later, warbling a tune she wrote with Willie Nelson in a singer-songwriter style not common on her records. The conclusion is satisfying if you don’t like having every loose knot tied up.

IMDB link

viewed 6/4/09 (screening at Ritz 5); reviewed 6/19/09