Ride

Posted on May 7, 2015 at 5:05 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some drug use
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drugs
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 8, 2015
Date Released to DVD:	August 17, 2015
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00Y250GE4

A surf bum named Ian (Luke Wilson) is explaining the physics of the interaction between surfboard and wave: it’s an inanimate object in an ever-changing environment. One doesn’t move. One never stops moving in powerful and highly unpredictable ways. And that is also the story of the woman who is not quite listening to Ian’s explanation.

Oscar-winner Helen Hunt writes, directs, and stars in “Ride,” the story of Jackie, an overprotective Manhattan mother whose son, Angelo (Brenton Thwaites) flees for California to surf. Her plan was for him to start college just 85 steps away from the apartment that they share, constantly calling back and forth to each other rapid-fire as they work on their laptops. He feels claustrophobic and over-managed, so when he visits his father in California he decides to stay. Jackie finds out when she visits his dorm to make his room more homey.

She follows him out to California and when he does not want to talk to her, the only way she can think of to stay close to him is to learn to surf. And so we will see her lose or relinquish everything she thought was essential to who she was: her black Manhattan editor wardrobe, her constantly buzzing phone, her willingness to be perpetually available to handle crises at the office, her reluctance to meet her ex-husband’s new family, the intensity of her connection to her son, and the equal intensity of her refusal to rely on anyone but herself. She has been an inanimate object in an ever-changing environment. Can she adapt?

Hunt’s script is clever and warm-hearted. As with her previous film, Then She Found Me, loosely adapted from novel by Elinor Lipman, the film explores the challenge of being a loving and supportive mother to an adult or almost-adult child while being a person at the same time — and letting the child be a person, too.

After a short introduction, where we see her sitting on the other side of her then-preschool son’s bedroom door all night, tiptoeing out of the way so he won’t see her when he gets up to go to the bathroom, we see them just before he is supposed to start college. He repeatedly asks her for help with his story, but she is an experienced editor who has worked with nervous authors for many years and she knows better than to do the work for him. “It just has to be surprising and inevitable,” she tells him. And clearly, that is advice that Hunt the screenwriter has taken to heart as well.

She has a great sense for writing say-able dialog that sounds smart and believably witty while letting us know who the characters are through what they say and how they say it.

Parents should know that this film includes strong language, sexual references and situations, drinking, and drug use.

Family discussion: Did the end of this story feel both inevitable and surprising? What will happen next?

If you like this, try: “Then She Found Me”

Interview: Brenton Thwaites of “Ride”

Posted on May 7, 2015 at 3:55 pm

Australian actor Brenton Thwaites (“Maleficent,” “The Giver”) stars in “Ride,” a new film written, directed, and starring Oscar-winner Helen Hunt. She plays Jackie, an overprotective mother whose son Angelo (Thwaites) is about to start college and move into a dorm a short walk from their apartment. When he decides to drop out of college and escape to California, where he can spend his days surfing, she follows him out and ends up taking surfing lessons herself, from a handsome surfer played by Luke Wilson. Thwaites, who is currently filming the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, told me that while he did not consider himself an expert surfer, he is better than the character he played, so he had to “down my game because the character actually is not an experienced surfer. He is a New Yorker gone to LA to kind of start the process of surfing so knowing how to surf wasn’t really key in the role but it was an advantage, I guess.”

The early scenes in the film convey a very close connection between mother and son. I asked him how he and Hunt developed a rhythm that seemed to show years of spending a lot of time together. “A lot of it was in the writing, I have to be honest with you. She wrote these very unique characters that are on the same wavelength and only on that wavelength. It’s hard for other people to really connect with and understand what they’re talking about a lot of the time. And the way we kind of got to do that was just talking to each other, was just rehearsing, talking the lines through. I had to audition a couple of times to understand her flow, her style. But once we are in there, there is no going back. It’s quite fun to relish it.

He told me that it was not easy to be tough on Hunt, who was not only his co-star, but his director. “That was one of my challenges; to find the right level of frustration and anger towards her without seeming like I, Brenton, really didn’t like her. I didn’t want to annoy her or piss her off but at the same time that was my job. I had to do it.”

He did not think his first audition went well. “I went to her house and auditioned with her and we worked a couple of scenes and I went away feeling like I just destroyed my tiny chance of getting the role. And so I was called back for second audition with some notes to take on. And in the second one we kind of worked it and I was a little more relaxed. I understood the character a little more and the cadence and the text. I guess he found our flow. I guess she learned to see Angelo through me I guess. I know she had written someone in her mind very physically opposite to me. I am the furthest thing from inner-city New York. Probably not right for the role but I guess I convinced her somehow.” He really appreciated her “understanding of actors because she is an actor. A lot of actors don’t like this but I personally love the fact that she would be in the scene with me directing me on either side of “action” and “cut.” It just created a sense of rhythm throughout the whole movie that I loved. It was quick, it was effective, she knew exactly how to step on my triggers and she know how to pull me back, how to change my thought. And I guess slowly I learned to push her buttons and I guess I had to figure out how to play with her but at the same time preserve her to direct the film. I was trying to affect her in a way that only actors can affect each other. There was nothing to hide. So if she says were not going to get this shot or we don’t have time for this close-up then you know that. It is not hidden behind the camera behind a screen somewhere. She was very open with everything that was going on set and guess in that I learned to trust her and believe in her.

The biggest challenge for him was the first scene filmed, which comes late in the story, “the resolve of the movie. That was quite difficult just because it was my first scene and I was nervous and I didn’t really know what the set was like and how she was is a director/actor but it worked out really well. I think my most challenging scene was the most rewarding so I think that was the case for this one.”

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Actors Interview

Trailer: Ride with Helen Hunt and Luke Wilson

Posted on March 16, 2015 at 8:00 am

It kind of looks like a reverse “Gidget,” but with Helen Hunt writing and directing as well as starring, there’s reason to hope that it will be pretty good.

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Trailers, Previews, and Clips

Decoding Annie Parker

Posted on May 1, 2014 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some sexual content
Profanity:	Very strong language, sexual references
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Serious illness with disturbing scenes of symptoms and treatment, very sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 2, 2014

Rashida Jones and Samantha Morton in Decoding Annie Parker (courtesy of Dorado Media)

This is the true story of two women who share a goal but meet just once, for a few moments. Oscar winner Helen Hunt plays scientist Dr. Mary-Claire King, whose pioneering research led to one of the most significant medical discoveries of the 2oth century, the BRCA1 genetic marker for early onset breast cancer. And Samantha Morton plays Annie Parker, a young woman who lost her mother and sister to breast cancer and then, when she was diagnosed with it herself, became dedicated to learning everything she could about the disease. An outstanding cast, a likeable narrator, and a thoughtful script co-authored by director Steven Bernstein take this out of the easy tears of the disease-of-the-week TV movie category. It is an absorbing drama with a lot of respect for its characters and a welcome sense of humor. “My life was a comedy,” a quote from the real Annie says as the movie begins. “I just had to learn to laugh.”

Annie’s mother died of breast cancer when she was a child, and Annie and her sister (Marley Shelton as an adult) superstitiously believe — or pretend to believe — that Death sleeps in a locked room on the top floor of their house, and that their mother make the mistake of awakening it. Their father dies when Annie is still in her teens, and we see her at the first of three funerals in the film, with fatuous remarks from the people attending and a skeezy funeral home employee hitting on her. “A lot of women can’t be cool and in mourning at the same time, but you pull it off.”

A little lost, and overcome with ardor for her musician/pool cleaner boyfriend Paul (“Breaking Bad’s” Aaron Paul in a series of 70’s and 80’s hairdos that are both horribly ugly and fake-looking), Annie gets married. They live in the house she grew up in and very soon they have a baby. And then, the last member of her family, her sister Joan, gets breast cancer and dies, funeral number two, same fatuous remarks and skeezy guy.

And then Annie gets a lump in her breast. It is cancer. She has a radical mastectomy and removal of most of her lymph nodes under one arm, followed by chemotherapy. She becomes determined to learn as much as she can about the disease, even building models of cancer and DNA. And she becomes a warrior against cancer, checking her breasts and insisting everyone else check, too. She even offers to check her husband for testicular cancer during an intimate moment.

Meanwhile, Dr. King is insisting that there is a genetic link and working to find it, despite a lack of support. She is told it will take ten years for the computers available to her to analyze the data she is collecting from women who are in families with multiple cases of breast cancer. But Bernstein wisely makes Annie Parker, rather than Dr. King, the focus of the film. This adds warmth and drama to a story that would otherwise be a lot of people in lab coats getting turned down for grants and crunching data. Parker makes an engaging guide to the years of struggle faced by both women, with a wry sense of humor and a steeliness of resolve that, endearingly, is as much a surprise to her as it is to everyone around her. She is very funny quacking (really!) to get the attention of a bored doctor’s office receptionist (Rashida Jones), who later becomes her close friend and ally. Morton is superb, showing us Parker’s vulnerability as well as her courage, and making us understand the scope and the human dimension of Dr. King’s work. When they finally meet we see how in an important way they kept each other going.

Parent should know that this film has themes of cancer, illness, and loss, with sad deaths and some disturbing scenes of symptoms and treatment, sexual references and brief explicit situations, adultery, some very strong language, and drinking.

Family discussion: Why did Paul and Annie have such different reactions to illness? How did humor help Annie stay courageous? Read up on Dr. King and her opposition to patenting gene sequences.

If you like this, try: “50/50,” “Wit,” and “God Said Ha!”

Trailer: Decoding Annie Parker

Posted on April 10, 2014 at 11:21 am

Helen Hunt, Samantha Morton, Aaron Paul, Rashida Jones, and Corey Stoll star in this fact-based story of two women, one with breast cancer and one trying to solve the genetic link in families with high incidence, research that led to the discovery of the kind of diagnostics that made it possible for people like Angelina Jolie to take preventative measures that can save their lives.

And here’s the real Annie Parker.