The Spiritual Foundation of ‘The Company Men’

Posted on February 3, 2011 at 8:00 am

Be sure to take a look at this excellent interview by Dann Gire with John Wells, writer-director of “The Company Men,” about the lessons he learned from his clergyman father and how they influenced the film.

When you grow up as I did in a very socially progressive, Episcopalian household, there’s a great deal of importance placed on the teachings, the parables and the notions of Christianity, teaching a certain generosity and kindness and understanding and empathy for others.
I think that colors all of my work. It would be impossible for me to separate that out from what I write, what I think, and how I hear things. Everything I hear is filtered through that moral framework I grew up with.

Conviction

Posted on February 1, 2011 at 8:00 am

Sam Rockwell gives one of the best performances of the year as Kenny Waters, a man wrongly convicted of murder for eighteen years until his sister was able to prove that he was innocent and get him released. Betty Ann (Hillary Swank) and Kenny were two of nine children from seven fathers raised in a succession of foster homes. She was a high school dropout and new mother when he went to prison. She went back to school, graduated from college and law school, passed the bar, and with the help of Cardozo Law School’s Innocence Project, was able to prove through DNA evidence that the blood found at the crime scene was not his.

Rockwell is mesmerizing as a man whose kind heart and family loyalty sometimes suffer from his impulsively confrontational behavior. He conveys at every stage the weight of his experience in prison as we see him over the 18-year period. His frustration, longing, despair, his fear of hoping too much mingled with his unquenchable pride in his sister are all heartbreakingly evident. He shows us why he was one of the local police department’s favorite “usual suspects” but he also shows us why someone would spend her life working on his behalf, even after everyone tells her to move on.

Director Tony Goldwyn and screenwriter Pamela Gray do a fine job of shaping the material, giving us a sense of the characters’ past experiences, the strength of their connection, and the press of time. The cast includes the reliable support of Minnie Driver as Betty Ann’s law school classmate and loyal friend and Juliette Lewis, outstanding as a recanting witness.

Swank, who co-produced, is sincere and dedicated if not ideal casting for this role. She has gravitated lately to a series of heroic characters, though her best work has been in more damaged or fragile roles. A high school dropout in real life, she is drawn to characters who exemplify education and achievement. But she gives us no sense of school as anything but an obstacle course. Her learning is not tied in any way to expanded understanding; she seems to have no curiosity about the law and no passion for anything but freeing her brother. We see the impact of her single-mindedness on her husband and sons but not how their reactions affect her. The story is one of triumph that cannot help but move us, but as a real-life character who gives everything, Swank does not give us enough.

Alice in Wonderland

Posted on January 31, 2011 at 8:00 am

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	N/A
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	During the psychedelic 1960s, the scene with the caterpiller puffing on a hookah was popularly considered to be a reference to opium or hashish, possibly because the movie, like the book, has such a surreal and dream-like quality, but there is nothing in
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1951

Almost 150 years ago Oxford mathematician Charles Dodgson published his wildly imaginative story about Alice’s adventures down a rabbit hole. And now the wildly imaginative director Tim Burton has brought Wonderland to the 3D movie screen. It is less faithful to the original story than many of the previous dozen or so movie versions, but I think Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, would approve of Burton’s bringing his own take to the classic characters.

He brings his own story as well. Carroll’s Alice is a little girl bored by her sister’s dull book, and her journey is episodic and filled with wordplay and references to Victorian society that fill the annotated edition of the book with witty footnotes.

To make the story more cinematic, Burton tells us that all of that has already happened in what young Alice thought was a dream. This is her return visit. Alice is 18 years old and has just been proposed to by a dull but wealthy lord with no chin and bad digestion. As she meets up with the Cheshire Cat, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter, she is not the only one who is confused. Characters seem puzzled and unsure about whether she is the real Alice. The Mad Hatter peers at her perplexedly. She may be Alice, and yet not quite completely the Alice they are looking for. “You were once muchier,” he tells her. “You’ve lost your muchiness.” In Burton’s version, Alice’s adventures are about her finding her “muchiness.” Her visit to Wonderland is a chance for her to understand what she is capable of and how much she will lose if she makes her decisions based on what people expect from her. As in the Carroll story, she is constantly changing size, and Burton shows us that she is really finding her place. She believes she is once again in a dream but increasingly learns that it is one she can control. By the time she faces the Jabberwock, she knows that she is in control — and that her courage and determination can create the opportunity she needs to follow her heart.

Johnny Depp brings a depth, even a poignance to the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter is utterly delicious as the peppery red queen, hilariously furious over her stolen tarts. There’s a thrilling battle, the visuals are dazzling, with references to classic book illustrations by Maxfield Parrish, and the 3D effects will have you feeling as though you are falling down the rabbit hole yourself. The frame story bookending the Wonderland/Underland adventure is tedious and, oddly, less believable than the disappearing cat and frog footmen. But Burton’s re-interpretation of the classic story is filled with muchiness and the result is pretty darn frabjuous.

Willow Smith to Play ‘Annie’

Posted on January 28, 2011 at 8:00 am

“Whip my Hair’s” Willow Smith, the daughter of mega-stars Will and Jada Pinkett Smith and sister of “Karate Kid’s” Jaden Smith is going to have a big-screen remake of her own. She will play Little Orphan Annie in the third version of the musical based on the plucky Depression-era girl with the red hair and the indomitable spirit.

Aileen Quinn starred in the musical film Annie, along with Carol Burnett as the wicked Miss Hannigan and Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks, the Wall Street financier who learns from Annie the importance of family. A somewhat livelier version of Annie was remade for television with Oscar-winner Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan and an all-star cast of Broadway veterans including Victor Garber, Audra McDonald, and Kristin Chenoweth.

Before she sang about the hard knock life and the sun coming out tomorrow, Annie was the star of a comic strip created by Harold Grayin 1924, appearing in newspapers through June of last year. After Gray’s death, the strip was drawn and written by other artists, most notably the brilliantly talented Leonard Starr.

Annie was also a long-running radio series (you can hear it in “A Christmas Story”) and, an early example of multi-platform marketing, she appeared in books, comics, and as a doll, a game, and many, many other collectibles. A bittersweet documentary, Life After Tomorrow, is the story of the high-pressure atmosphere behind the scenes for the little girls who played Annie and the orphans in the musical show.

Who should co-star with Willow? And should they try to make it contemporary?

The Rite

Posted on January 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Actors! They just can’t help themselves when a juicy part comes along. And that is why Oscar-winner Sir Anthony Hopkins finds himself in “The Rite,” an “inspired by a true story” thriller about an exorcist who struggles with his own demons.

Actors who go over the top are often described as “chewing the scenery.” Sir Anthony here doesn’t just chew the scenery; he grinds it into dust.

The movie begins with Michael (“The Tudors'” Colin O’Donoghue), preparing a body for burial, the artifice of stuffing the inside of the mouth and sewing it shut to make it look comfortingly “real.” Michael and his father are undertakers, working out of their home. “We serve the dead but we don’t talk about them,” Michael’s taciturn father (Rutger Hauer) responds when Michael asks about her. Michael is not at all sure he is a believer, but in his family the only options are mortician and priest, so he enters seminary.

Four years later, he plans to leave. He is still not sure of his faith. One of his teachers persuades him (in part by threatening to turn his scholarship into a six-figure loan) to take a class at the Vatican in exorcism.

In Rome, he meets a Welsh priest named Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins) who lets him watch as he tries to exorcise a demon from a pregnant teenager. Michael acts as the representative of the audience by expressing his skepticism — how do the priests know that it is not just mental illness? Can we believe, in an era of science and empiricism, in demonic possession?

Director Mikael HÃ¥fstrÃ¶m has a good eye and a deft touch. He films the settings beautifully. And he knows when to lighten the mood with a little comic relief, though it is a bit much when someone comes to the door and Trevant says, archly, “Speak of the devil!” O’Donoghue has an appealing screen presence and holds his own on screen with Hopkins.

But the movie falls about the same time Hopkins’ character does. Up to that point, it does a pretty good job of balancing the spooky-horror gotcha schocks with some sincerity about the validity of demonic possession. But once Hopkins starts unraveling, the movie — and the interest of the audience — does, too. (more…)