August: Osage County (***1/2)

This is one of those stories about dysfunctional families coming together that usually take place over a Thanksgiving weekend or at Christmas. In this case, it’s a disappearance, but the elements are the same. Start with the mother, whose pain-pill dependence and freewheeling tongue provide another scenery-chewing role for Meryl Streep. Her husband (Sam Shepard) is a onetime poet who, oddly provides the opening narration, quoting T. S. Eliot, then goes missing. Soon after, the daughters show up. Ivy (Julianne Nicholson), the caretaker, has never left Oklahoma. Flighty Karen, the youngest, chattiest, and cheeriest, comes from Florida with her fiancé (Dermot Mulroney). Barbara (Julia Roberts), the eldest, is the one most resentful of, but most like, her mother. She brings her estranged husband (Ewan McGregor) and her daughter (Abigail Breslin). If we knew the future, she tells the 14-year-old , “we’d never want get up in the morning.”

The rich dialogue is among the pleasures of this adaptation of the Tracy Letts play; Letts himself provides the script, and it retains a certain play-like quality and structure, although a few scenes are set outdoors. This means lots of dialogue, well-crafted characters, and a lot of confrontational scenes, any of which, in some other movie, might be the centerpiece scene. Many of these are funny, which means the heavy themes — addiction, alcoholism, adultery, to take just the letter A — never seem ponderous. Instead, they provide just the right mixture of pathos and juicy revelation.

IMDb link

viewed 1/19/14 1:00 pm at AMC Marple; posted 1/22/14

Our Idiot Brother (***)

If you can’t tell from the title—well, if you can’t tell from the title, you’re an idiot—this is another one in the epidemic of man-child comedies. One of the characters even calls Paul Rudd’s character, Ned, a man-child. That’d be after he’s gotten himself busted for offering pot to a cop. Not an undercover cop, either. There’s been so many of these that Rudd’s been in one at least three years running, only he was one of the grown-up types in Dinner for Schmucks and I Love You Man. (In 2007, however, he was another idiot in Role Models.)

What’s different about this one? For one thing, the sibling focus. Ned’s sisters are played by Zooey Deschanel (the ambisexual comedian, partnered with Rashida Jones, who was Rudd’s fiancé in I Love You Man), Elizabeth Banks (the go-getter/aspiring journalist, whose dark hair reminding me of Parker Posey), and Emily Mortimer (the frumpy/sweet mom, partnered with Steve Coogan). Besides that, instead of being about the need to grow-up, the movie makes kind of a defense of the child within. Unlike so many of his boyish movie brethren, Ned’s not a self-absorbed slacker, but a people pleaser. His lack of guile makes him an unwitting catalyst for chaos. But he means well, so even when his sisters get angry with him, they can’t sustain it.

The same tone carries over to the movie itself. Some foul language and a few scenes with “adult sexual themes” earn the R rating, but really the comedy is much sweeter than its cousins in the Judd Apatow school, and a world away from those in the silly/sappy Adam Sandler school. (Appropriately for a story of family, the writers are a husband and wife, David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz, and the director is Evgenia’s brother Jesse Peretz.) The laughs are small and medium size. Here’s one: Ned’s dog is called Willie Nelson. And, after a plot point involving the dog, Willie Nelson, the singer, comes on the soundtrack. Cute. It’s not a movie with big gags, but then again nothing falls flat. It’s actually a decent story of family dynamics that would be good to see with yours. Even the grown-ups.

IMDB link 

viewed at Ritz East and reviewed 8/31/2011 

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (***1/2)

 The first feature-film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s children’s book beautifully transports the viewer into a magical, frozen kingdom and delivers an emotional experience while keeping the fantasy intact. Georgie Henley, as the youngest of four siblings, and Tilda Swinton, as a wicked queen, are respectively adorable and imperious.

Although generations of schoolchildren have read C.S. Lewis’s 1950 book, the first-written of his Narnia series, this is the first feature-film adaptation. (A couple of TV adaptations, one animated, preceded it.) The idea of being transported into a magical world is a staple of fantasy and of children’s literature, and in fact this movie very much reminded me of The Wizard of Oz. Although there are four children, not one, it’s the youngest girl, Lucy, who discovers the frozen kingdom of Narnia, and there is a wicked White Witch (Tilda Swinton), who frightens the populace, in this case mostly (talking) animals. Those who prefer literary adaptations to hew close to their sources will be fairly pleased. A chase sequence is reimagined, and a battle elaborated (pushing the PG boundary), but in all important respects Lewis’s template is followed. (Brought to life, some parts will frighten younger children.)

Lewis (who died in 1963) is said to have objected to a non-animated version of the movie because it would emphasize the unnaturalness of the talking animals. I’ve usually not cared much for this myself, but the digitized ones here seem as natural as possible. (The director, Andrew Adamson, has some experience with computer animals, having helmed the two Shrek movies.) The human actors are also well-chosen, particularly the imperious Swinton and Georgie Henley, who debuts as Lucy. As for the Christian aspect of the story, while the lion Aslan (voiced by Liam Neeson) is clearly enough a Jesus figure, the movie can be enjoyed with or without thinking of it that way. Lucy and Aslan are characters that are more touching on screen than on the page. They give the movie a greater emotional force than the book, I think, while keeping the fantasy aspect intact. Beautiful to look at, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is likely to be watched by generations to come.

IMDb link

circulated via email 12/15/05 and posted 9/20/13