It is every parents’ worst fear. Look away for just a split second and a child is gone. You have to swallow the terror to create a sense of calm for those around you and help you think through the best way to find the child. But it is impossible to keep away from memories of what you have shared and fears about what might have happened.
That is the simple but moving story of The Way Home, with Dean Cain as Randy Simpkins, a loving but often distracted father of three boys whose two-year-old son, Joe, disappears as the family is getting ready to go on a vacation. The very things Randy loved most about his home — its remote setting, the vast surrounding space of woods and ponds — instantly become sources of dread as the hours went by and twilight approached, Joe still not found.
The police arrived, and the news cameras. But so did the entire community as word went out from one church group to another and 400 people showed up to help.
The film is based on the true story of the real Randy Simpkins and his son, Joe, filmed where it actually took place. As a movie, it is uneven — Cain’s performance is at a far higher level than anyone else in the cast. But it is sincerely done and undeniably touching.
I have copies of the DVD to give away to the first two people to write to me at moviemom@moviemom.com with “The Way Home” in the subject line. Don’t forget to include your address!
Walden has just about mastered the art of turning the very best in children’s literature into very fine family films. It doesn’t get any better than Beverly Cleary’s marvelous series of books about Ramona Quimby and her family, and here director Elizabeth Allen (who showed a gift for stories about young girls with “Aquamarine”) brings them to life in a way that both fans and those new to the characters will enjoy.
Joey King is just right as Ramona, age 9 years and 3 months, a girl with a big imagination and an even bigger heart, both of which get her into trouble when she tries to help out without thinking things through. As in the books, the Quimby family is instantly relatable and utterly irresistible, funny, touching, and completely endearing.
It helps to have first-class talent among the adult performers. John Corbett (“Sex and the City” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) and Bridget Moynahan capture the believably lived-in feeling of experienced parents who are almost always there when needed and are always ready to be captivated by their kids. The always appealing Josh Duhamel as the uncle of the kid next door and Ginnifer Goodwin as Ramona’s beloved Aunt Bea make their love story work while keeping the focus on Ramona and her view of the world.
Ramona’s perspective is expertly handled, and some of the best moments give us the world through her imaginative point of view, whether turning a hole in her house during construction into a portal into adventure or believing that an embarrassing moment on the jungle gym is a humiliation heard around the world. The harshest criticism of Walden’s faithful adaptations of children’s literature classics is to say that they are a little too faithful. They err on the side of literalism rather than taking greater liberties to get the benefit of the full range of cinematic storytelling. That saps some dramatic tension from the movie, making it feel a little too episodic and discursive. But if it re-creates the feeling of the book that way and especially if it inspires young viewers to read it for the incomparable pleasure of Beverly Cleary’s writing, then that is fine with me.
Zac Efron makes an affecting and credible dramatic lead in “Charlie St. Cloud,” the movie Nicholas Sparks wishes he could write, based on the book by Ben Sherwood. Like Sparks’ stories, this has loss, and love, and a setting at the shore. But it has more depth, more bite, more humor, than the popular Sparks stories, and is more touching as well.
Efron has shown himself as an agreeable teen idol in the “High School Musical” series, and he demonstrated comic skills in “17 Again” and an an ability to work well in a dramatic ensemble period piece in the under-seen “Me and Orson Welles.” He has chosen wisely, reportedly walking away from a remake of “Footloose” for this film, which makes the most of his natural charm and gives him an opportunity to show off some acting skill as well.
Efron plays the title character, a good kid, just graduating from high school with a world opening up to him. He has a sailing scholarship at Stanford and a chance to leave behind his responsibilities to his overworked mother (Kim Basinger) and kid brother Sam (likable Charlie Tahan). He is devoted to both of them, but as he swings his sailboat around in the first scene to win a race, we can see that even he is not aware of how impatient he is to get on with his life.
But then he and Sam are in a car accident. Charlie almost dies but is brought back by a devoted EMT (Ray Liotta). Sam is killed. Charlie is devastated, shredded with guilt. Five years later, he still hasn’t left town. He is a full-time care-taker at the cemetery where Sam is buried. He keeps to himself. Except that every day at sunset, for an hour, he goes off into a clearing in the woods, where he throws a baseball with Sam.
Charlie can still see Sam. And he can’t let go of him, and of the promise he made to coach him for an hour every day. He is all but ruined by survivor guilt he cannot begin to acknowledge. He feels alive only when he is with Sam.
And then a girl comes back to town. Her name is Tess (Amanda Crew) and she represents everything that is most threatening to Charlie’s cocoon of grief — adventure, travel, life, and romantic love. She is a sailor preparing to go solo around the world.
Screenwriters Craig Pearce and Lewis Colick have adapted Sherwood’s book with a light touch for visual metaphor, nicely handled by director Burr Steers (“Igby Goes Down”) and the exquisite images from director of photography Enrique Chediak. The vigorous dynamism of the sailing scenes contrast with the quiet, static cemetery (even when invaded by geese). The characters represent a range from the vital engagement of the young woman embarking on a solo voyage to the character preparing for his own death by sharing what he has learned.
Efron is genuinely splendid in the early scenes. Charlie has not had an easy life, but he has a natural ease that makes him seem on top of the world. He is a good kid who wants to do the right thing, but he has the impetuousness and carelessness of someone who thinks his time has come. After Sam’s death, Efron’s perfomance becomes more subtle as he shows us Charlie’s uncertainty and isolation. That natural ease has become a shield to keep everyone away. He is comfortable doing his job and living half in the world of the living, half in the world of the dead. When Tess arrives, we see him struggle with longing and the possibility of hope.
And then, just as on that first sailboat race, he takes a turn we did not expect to cross the finish line, leaving us a little breathless at the way it comes together, moved by both Charlie and by Efron and wanting good things for both of them.
Very strong and explicit language with sexual references, some crude
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:
None
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
October 15, 2010
In the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity — and the Cold War and the blacklist and conformity — a small group of writers found much to terrify and infuriate them. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” one of them wrote, the beginning of a barbaric yawp of a poem of fury and protest called “Howl.” His name was Allen Ginsberg.
This movie is not the story of Ginsberg (smoothly played by James Franco), who would go on to become one of the 20th century’s most acclaimed and influential poets, though he is affecting, even at times electric. It is the story of the poem itself, taking us back and forth between three key moments. First is Ginsberg’s own performance, reading the poem aloud in a small, smoky club. Second is an interview two years later with a now-bearded Ginsberg in his apartment. And third is a courtroom, where the obscenity charges brought not against Ginsberg but against his publisher, fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, were being argued.
“Experts” (Mary-Louise Parker, Alessandro Nivola, Jeff Daniels) debate the literary merit and destructively prurient content of Ginsberg’s work on the witness stand. The prosecution (David Straithairn) argues that the poem is so detrimental to the minds of Americans that it should not even be seen. For the defense, Jake Ehrlich (“Man Men’s” Jon Hamm), with a natty four-cornered pocket square handkerchief, who shows the court that far more important than any expert’s opinion on the value of Howl as a work of art is the freedom for Americans to decide that issue for themselves.
And for me at least, that is where the real poetry is.
A snowstorm at Christmas time makes a busy woman stop and reconsider her priorities when she is stuck in her apartment with two people she has just met: a little girl who does not want to be there and a homeless man who tried to protect her from some muggers.
Catherine Mary Stewart plays Kathleen, a successful restaurant-owner. Ever since she was a little girl, when her father walked out on Christmas, she has hidden her hurt and feelings of abandonment with a brisk and businesslike manner. She is not unkind, but she is brusque and unapproachable.
And then the single father she is dating asks her to take care of his little girl, Lucy (the terrific Cameron Ten Napel). And a homeless man named Sam (Muse Watson) with a quiet, peaceful demeanor is hurt when he tries to protect her from some muggers, so she brings him back to her apartment, just for one night. And then the three of them get snowed in.
Snow has a way of helping us separate the urgent from the important. The weather outside may be frozen, but Katherine begins to thaw. And as communication with the outside world is cut off, communication inside her apartment begins to bloom. When Sam reads aloud his favorite passage from the Bible, Simeon’s words on seeing the infant Jesus, a small place of peace begins to take hold of all three. And without electricity or phone they return to the simpler pleasures of the past including the meaningfully named s’mores and a board game called “Break the Ice.”
But there is still a hard pain in Kathleen that she just can’t let go. Sam has one more lesson for her that will help her understand that the only one who is hurt by a refusal to forgive is the one holding onto the anger. This is a touching story with humor and heart and a little wisdom, too.
by Ben Sherwood. Like Sparks’ stories, this has loss, and love, and a setting at the shore. But it has more depth, more bite, more humor, than the popular Sparks stories, and is more touching as well.
, were being argued.
as a work of art is the freedom for Americans to decide that issue for themselves.