Movie Review: The Invisible War

The Invisible War

Directed by: Kirby Dick.

If you’re a woman who joins the United States military, you are far more likely to be raped than if you didn’t sign up. Not only that, but until recently, the person who decided whether or not an investigation was warranted when someone brought up sexual assault allegations was your unit commander, and according to the stats used by The Invisible War, 25% of women who didn’t report that they were raped didn’t do so because the person who they have to report to, is the person who raped them. Another 30% didn’t report it because the person they have to report to is friends with the person they are accusing. A group of military rape survivors recently had their lawsuit against the government thrown out – essentially because the court ruled that being raped was an occupational hazard of being in the military.

Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is full of shocking facts like this – all of them which come from the U.S. government itself, including the fact that it is estimated that 22,000 rapes occurred in the military last year, only 3,000 were reported and only 100 led to convictions with any jail time – most of the time, less than 1 year. Some rapists had their ranks reduced though or had other such disciplinary action taken against them.

Dick flashes this statistics up throughout the movie, but wisely, he concentrates on the survivors, who tell their stories to Dick himself. It cannot be easy for these women – and one man – reliving the worst moment of their lives, but they do it because they want things to change. Many of them have the same basic story – of being patriotic and idealistic upon entering the military, only to be raped once they got there. Almost to a person, they part they feel was even worse was the treatment they received when they reported the rapes – nothing was done, and sometimes they even found themselves court martialed for adultery (even though they weren’t married, their rapist was, although they don’t get court martialed) or filing a false claim. They are told repeatedly that they were “asking for it”. One woman is told that she shouldn’t have gone out drinking with the men – although it was understood to be part of their job. Another is told she was dressed proactively, even though she was wearing her official dress uniform, which includes a skirt. The military has known this is a problem for years, but has merely paid it lip service – including ridiculous videos and posters shown to the recruits, one of which offensively advises men to play it safe – wait until she’s sober. This ad campaign also includes helpful hints like using the buddy system, as if being in the military is akin to walking home from elementary school.

The most heartbreaking story in the movie is Kori Cioca, who was raped when she was in the Coast Guard, and had her jaw broken by her attacker. She needs surgery to get it repaired, but the government is refusing to pay for it – she wasn’t in the Coast Guard long enough (she’s short by two months); although the injuries sustained in the rape were the reason she left. Five years later, she’s still on a soft diet, and battling her way through government bureaucracy.

The movie has already led to some changes, although the military won’t acknowledge it was the film that made it changed, but when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta watches the film, and then two days later decides to take the charging authority away from unit commanders, it’s impossible to deny the two are unrelated. This is not an easy film to watch, but it is an essential film – one that has already inspired some change, but demands that more changes come. This is an important documentary.

Movie Review: We Are Legion

We Are Legion

Directed by: Brian Knappenberger.

Anonymous is an internet collective, with no leadership, that has become a force online. What started out on websites like 4chan, where a bunch of people posted strange, sick, deranged and often hilarious pictures in an attempt to one up each other, has turned into a very real movement – that is responsible for some good and some bad online. Because there is no real leadership, essentially anyone can be part of Anonymous, and they can do anything they want. Some people in the movement are, to put it bluntly, dicks – yet some are idealists, who are doing what they do for the right reasons, even if that means breaking the law.

We Are Legion is a fascinating documentary, perhaps a bit too slanted in favor of Anonymous, but mostly plays fair, that tracks this organization’s development from a group of people just trying to amuse themselves, to a group who sees themselves as a force for good. Whether it’s taking on racist radio talk show host, and essentially ruining his life (but who the hell is going to feel sorry for him), to going to all-out war with Scientology, when they tried to block Tom Cruise’s promotional video from being available online, to attacking Paypal, Visa and Mastercard when they stopped letting you donate to Wikileaks using those methods (although they apparently have no problem with you donating to the KKK that way) to helping those in Egypt during the protests still be able to get online and let the world know what was going on, you may not agree with everything Anonymous does, but for the most part, their hearts are in the right place – and they are willing to stand up for what they believe in. The assholes you thought Anonymous was getting too serious, and so hacked the epilepsy site to make it flash bright lights on and off though are just jerks. And the offshoot group LulzSec, who were not just targeting corporations, but harming innocent bystanders, are also near impossible to defend.

We Are Legion is hardly a great documentary, but it remains a fascinating and insightful one. Pinning down a group like Anonymous is pretty much impossible – they have no leadership, no official spokesperson, and many of them refuse to show their own faces or reveal their own identity, preferring instead to hide behind Guy Fawkes masks – in part to protect themselves from prosecution, and in part because they feel they are more powerful if they cannot be identified as individuals.

But what We Are Legion does do, better than anything else I’ve seen anyway, is show you how Anonymous became what it is today, and how it continues to evolve, fracture and move forward. With so much of our lives happening online now, cyber activism or hacktivism as they call it will only grow in the coming years. What form that takes is anyone’s guess, but it is important to show how it got this far.

Movie Review: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas

Directed by: Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski.

Written by: Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski & Lana Wachowski based on the novel by David Mitchell.

Starring: Tom Hanks (Dr. Henry Goose / Hotel Manager / Isaac Sachs / Dermot Hoggins / Cavendish Look-a-Like Actor / Zachry), Halle Berry (Native Woman / Jocasta Ayrs / Luisa Rey / Indian Party Guest / Ovid / Meronym), Jim Broadbent (Captain Molyneux / Vyvyan Ayrs / Timothy Cavendish / Korean Musician / Prescient 2), Hugo Weaving (Haskell Moore / Tadeusz Kesselring / Bill Smoke / Nurse Noakes / Boardman Mephi / Old Georgie), Jim Sturgess (Adam Ewing / Poor Hotel Guest / Megan's Dad / Highlander / Hae-Joo Chang / Adam / Zachry Brother-in-Law), Doona Bae (Tilda / Megan's Mom / Mexican Woman / Sonmi-451 / Sonmi-351 / Sonmi Prostitute), Ben Whishaw (Cabin Boy / Robert Frobisher / Store Clerk / Georgette / Tribesman), Keith David (Kupaka / Joe Napier / An-kor Apis / Prescient), James D'Arcy (Young Rufus Sixsmith / Old Rufus Sixsmith / Nurse James / Archivist), Xun Zhou (Talbot / Hotel Manager / Yoona-939 / Rose), Susan Sarandon (Madame Horrox / Older Ursula / Yusouf Suleiman / Abbess), Hugh Grant (Rev. Giles Horrox / Hotel Heavy / Lloyd Hooks / Denholme Cavendish / Seer Rhee / Kona Chief).

No matter what you think of Cloud Atlas, you at least have to admit that this is one of the most daringly ambitious films of the year. I understand the people who think it’s a mess or bordering on incoherent (I’m not sure how I would have fared in piecing everything together had I not recently finished David Mitchell’s novel) or who simply think the film is overlong and flawed and fails to live up to what it sets out to do. I don’t necessarily agree with all of that – some of it, yes – but what I don’t understand is how some are outright mocking the film. The Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer decided to take an enormous risk in bringing this novel to the screen, and have crafted a huge, ambitious and daring film that is full of wonderful moments. Whether or not it all quite adds up (and for me, it mostly does) is almost beside the point – you have to at least admire their daring in even attempting to make Cloud Atlas. American film would be much better off if more filmmakers were as fearless as these three.

In the 1840s, Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) is travelling by boat from the South Pacific back to his native San Francisco – and tries to help a stowaway slave as well as fight off a parasitic worm making his way into his brain with the help of Dr. Goose (Tom Hanks). In 1936, a young British composer Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) writes letters to his lover Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy) from the home of Vyvyan Ayers (Jim Broadbent), an aging composer who needs Frobisher’s help if he’s ever going to write music again. In the 1970s, Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) meets an aging Sixsmith on an elevator, and he gives her the clues to help unlock a nuclear conspiracy. In 2012, a book publisher Timothy Cavendish (Broadbent) has to hide out from some thugs, and finds himself in a Kafka-esque nursing home being held against his will. In 2143 in Neo-Seoul, a Fabricant Somu-451 (Doona Bae) discovers the truth about herself and her position in life, and tells it to an archivist before she is to be executed. And 106 Winters After the Fall, Valleysman Zachary (Hanks) helps the strange, foreign woman Meronym (Berry) find the secrets of the past, which could save both of their people’s futures.

In Mitchell’s novel, these stories were told in ascending order – climaxing with Zachery, and then works their way back down to end with Adam Ewing. That structure worked remarkably well in the book, as Mitchell daringly mixed genres, and links the stories to each other, with a character in each story discovering the story previously told – and thinking it may well be fiction. The book also valued language, and through the course of the novel, we see it devolve, from the prim and proper sentences to Adam Ewing, to the barely coherent ramblings of Zachary, and then back again. As the novel progresses, you start to see how the stories mirror each other – all touching upon the same themes. The novel has many accomplishments, and is truly one of the most original works of fiction of the last decade.

The Wachowskis and Tykwer decide on an even more daring, and cinematic, way of telling these stories however by jumbling them up – jumping back and forth between them for the entire almost three hour running time – linking individual scenes that correspond with each other. Although Tykwer directed three of the segments himself – the Frobisher, Rey and Cavendish stories, and the Wachowskis the other three, Ewing, Sonmi and Zachary – they never feel like the work of different directors, as the come together as seamlessly as is possible given the structure of the movie. Casting the same actors to play roles in each segment was a stroke of genius, as it provides some dramatic continuity between the stories. It is certainly true that not all the roles that all the actors play come together seamlessly to create whole characters, for the most part it works. Particularly for Hanks, who is a man who struggles with doing the right thing throughout – there is a definite progression for his multiple characters. Hugo Weaving is the opposite – an evil, amoral character every time he shows up. The rest is more of a mixed bag – although the two best performances in the movie are by Ben Whishaw, who likely doesn’t leave much of an impression in his small roles, but makes Frobisher into a tragic, romantic, poetic hero and Doona Bae, who as the fabricant Sonmi has the most emotional journey of any one segment – which is saying something as this segment has also been pumped up by the Wachowskis to give the movie some action. Also impressive though was Jim Broadbent, who seems to be having a blast as Timothy Cavendish and Hugh Grant, who shows up as characters who seemingly have more power than they actually do. And Halle Berry does a fine job being a spunky heroine – especially in the 1970s segment.

The film is also an impressive visual achievement – with wonderful special effects, art direction and costume design that gives each segment their own distinct look and feel. I was impressed by the cinematography – by Frank Griebe for the Tykwer segments and John Toll for the Wachowskis, although the entire movie has the free flowing camera style that connects each segment. The editing by Alexander Berner is undeniably the most complex editing job of the year. I was also surprised to learn that the score, which often ties the whole movie together, was also a team effort by Tykwer along with Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek.

To put it bluntly, I was in awe when I watched the movie, marveled by the impressive way this was all put together, and how the directors got the cast of stars to buy into the roles, and dive headlong in which certainly ran the risk of making them look stupid. I was film with admiration for the movie for its entire running length – yes, it is almost three hours long, but for me the time flew by – I wasn’t bored for a second.

And yet, I also have to admit that Cloud Atlas has more than its share of flaws. Like I said, overall I think the casting of same actors in various roles was a stroke of genius – and I see how some of them connect to each other. But other time, I have to admit I’m at a loss. I know why Sturgess is playing both Ewing and Hae-Joo Chang, the “Union” man who Sonmi falls in love with, but I have no idea why he shows up as a Poor Hotel Guest or a Scottish thug in other segments. I get how Luisa Rey and Meronym connect to each other for Berry, but have no clue why she shows up as Jacosta Ayers or some of her other characters. And other than Frobisher, it seems like they’re making poor Whishaw play the most meaningless roles in the other segments for now reason. While I’m not offended, as some are, about actors playing different races – after all, if Koreans are offended because many white and black cast members show up as Koreans in Neo-Seoul, than I suppose whites, Mexicans, blacks and women should be offended as well, since different races play those characters as well. After all, part of the theme of the movie is what makes us who we are is much bigger than race. Having said that, while I admire much of the makeup work in the movie, some of the Korean makeup is a distraction.

And then we have to deal with what the movie is actually saying – and I have to admit that the message is jumbled and messy, and I don’t think ever quite comes together the way the Wachowskis and Tykwer were hoping it would. The film is filled with a lot of new age spiritual hokum, that I personally don’t believe in, but then again, I don’t prescribe to the religious beliefs on display in Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life either, and I still think that film is a masterpiece. The difference is that Malick’s message is confidently told, and comes through during the course of the film. While the message here is muddled.

Yet the pros of Cloud Atlas certainly outweigh its flaws. The film is a daring, original, technical marvel – one that takes huge chances, and mainly pulls it off. I don’t want to have a film culture where a movie like Cloud Atlas, which is so hugely ambitious, is mocked. Hate Cloud Atlas all you want – I understand the reasons – and yet I have to say that a film like this deserves respect. To me, it’s one of the must see films of the year for anyone who values ambitious films. You may hate Cloud Atlas, but I don’t think you can easily dismiss it.

Movie Review: The Sessions

The Sessions

Directed by: Ben Lewin.

Written by: Ben Lewin based on the article by Mark O’Brien.

Starring: John Hawkes (Mark O'Brien), Helen Hunt (Cheryl), William H. Macy (Father Brendan), Moon Bloodgood (Vera), Annika Marks (Amanda), Adam Arkin (Josh), Rhea Perlman (Mikvah Lady), W. Earl Brown (Rod), Robin Weigert (Susan), Blake Lindsley (Dr. Laura White), Ming Lo (Clerk), Rusty Schwimmer (Joan).

I am a notoriously soft touch at the movies in that I cry, or at least get to the verge of tears, in many, many movies – sometimes not even very good ones like Marley & Me, or a film like the upcoming The Impossible, in which I knew I was being manipulated but couldn’t stop myself. Hell, for a while there, nearly every Pixar movie (especially Wall-E) had me crying like a little girl. I bring this up at the beginning of the review of The Sessions because this is a movie that is clearly designed to make you cry at the end – and yet I never even got the least bit choked up. Despite my admiration for the performances in the movie, I never really connected with it. It is not a very ambitious movie, and is precisely the film it wants to be, and yet for whatever reason it left me cold.

The film stars John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien, who got polio when he was a child, and has been stuck in an iron lung for most of his life since. He can survive outside the iron lung for a few hours at a time, and can feel his entire body, but he cannot move anything other than his neck. Still, he has managed to live longer than his doctors thought possible, and have a good career as a writer and poet. He is a devout Catholic, but despite this, he has always long for something he has never had – a sex life. He loves women, and while he is charming and funny, they love him too – just “not in that way”. So he’s nearly 40 and a virgin, but while researching a series of articles to be titled “Sex and the Disabled”, he hears about people called “Sex Surrogates”. Yes, these are women who will have sex with you for money, but they are not prostitutes – they work with you to get you over your fears and insecurities so you can move on from them and have a normal sex life with a partner. After consulting his Priest, Father Brendan (William H. Macy), who advises him “I feel pretty strongly he’ll give you a free pass on this one”, Mark hires Cheryl (Helen Hunt) to be his sex surrogate. She lays out the rules quite clearly – yes, the goal is to have sex, no she is not a prostitute, and they can only have six sessions together. This last one is to try and prevent any emotional attachment to form – although it’s not really successful in this case.

A large part of me admires this movie. John Hawkes, who because of his weasel-like appearance, especially when he grows the scraggily facial hair he normally has, is most often cast as bad guys in movies – the type of part that Steve Buscemi plays. Since he broke through with his Oscar nominated turn in Winter’s Bone, Hawkes has made the most of his raised profile – delivering an even better performance last year as a Charles Manson-like cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene. In The Sessions, he gets to play a nice, normal guy – a sympathetic character who quite understandably just wants to have as normal a life as is possible given his circumstances – and that includes having sex. Yes, this is the type of role that seems to be designed to be an Oscar player (like Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot), and Hawkes will probably be nominated for Best Actor for his role here, but it is also a genuinely good performance. Helen Hunt has arguably an even more difficult role, as she has to overcome some audience members pre-conceived notions of her character – no matter how the movie presents it, some will see her as little more than a prostitute – and also has to bare all multiple times in the movie, which is nerve wracking for many actresses, especially ones at Hunt’s age (I must say, she looks good). But this is a very good performance by Hunt, a sympathetic, complicated role, as although she doesn’t fall in love with Mark – she never stops loving her husband – her journey with him is certainly more emotional than she is used to. And finally, there is William H. Macy who is effortlessly funny and charming – essentially the kind of Priest I think must Catholics wish they had.

I also admire the movie’s willingness to direct address sex. American movies seem to be very puritanical about sex, and I cannot think of another movie that even attempts to address sex and the handicapped, let along be honest about it. The highlight of The Sessions is appropriately enough the sessions themselves between these two, which are embarrassing, funny and honest.

But all this admiration for the movie never really led me to become involved in it. Curiously, I felt emotionally detached from the proceedings. I think it’s because despite how good the performances in the film are, they cannot overcome the fact that none of the characters have any real complexity – everyone in the movie is just so damn nice and likable and sensitive and kind, that I had trouble believing that anyone, anywhere could possibly be like this. Sex and love are messy in real life, and The Sessions wants everything to be so neat and tidy.

The Sessions is certainly not a bad movie, and yet I don’t think it’s a very good one either. I admire and liked Mark O’Brien as played by John Hawkes in this movie, but overall it felt like the movie painted him as too saintly. Disabled people are people – with all the messy emotions, hurt, pain and contradictions that everyone else has. I wish there was more of that in The Sessions. There certainly was in Jim Sheridan’s My Left Foot, which is why it remains perhaps the best film in this genre ever made – and why The Sessions left me cold.

Movie Review: Smashed

Smashed

Directed by: James Ponsoldt.

Written by: Susan Burke & James Ponsoldt.

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Kate Hannah), Aaron Paul (Charlie Hannah), Octavia Spencer (Jenny), Nick Offerman (Dave Davies), Megan Mullally (Principal Barnes), Mary Kay Place (Rochelle), Kyle Gallner (Owen Hannah), Bree Turner (Freda).

Mary Elizabeth Winstead has a great face. I don’t just mean a beautiful face, although that is undeniably true, but an open and honest face. It’s something in her eyes, which just scream out for sympathy and understanding. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, without every knowing precisely why – since beside her performance in Tarantino’s Death Proof, I cannot say she’s been great in anything (and even there, it could be because she spends the entirety of her performance in a cheerleading outfit). But finally in Smashed, she has been given a great role. The movie itself is a fairly typical story of a recovering alcoholic, although a well-made and honest one, with a little bit of a twist. But the reason to see the movie is Winstead, who is great.

Winstead plays Kate Hannah, a first grade teacher who has been an alcoholic for years. We first meet her stumbling out a bar and meeting a girl sobbing in the parking lot – who invites herself along for a ride home. Although Kate is just an alcoholic, and not a drug addict, she ends up smoking crack with this woman, and waking up the next day not knowing where she is. She decides it’s time to slow down a little bit – cut back on the drinking, and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul) says sure, why not? He’s an alcoholic as well, but doesn’t view it as a problem. The slowing down doesn’t work, and soon Kate is just as drunk as ever, ends up peeing on the floor of a convenience store when the clerk won’t sell her the alcohol she wants, and then puking in front of her first graders the next day. When one of them innocently asks if she’s pregnant – because her mommy puked when she was pregnant with their little brother – Kate decides it’s better than admitting the truth and says she is. This gets back to the principal (Megan Mullally), who is happy for her. The only person who sees through Kate’s lies is VP Dave Davies (Nick Offerman), a recovering alcoholic himself, who invites her along to a meeting. She goes – and soon has decided to stop drinking altogether. From this point, the movie becomes a fairly standard recovering alcoholic movie – complete with relapses – but one with a little twist- everything was fine with Kate when she was a drunk – it’s when she gets sober that her life crumbles around her.

Smashed is not a particularly original look at alcoholism – it doesn’t transcend the genre like a film such as Leaving Las Vegas does. But it is an honest examination about what it means to be an alcoholic, and how tough it is to get sober. When you’re drunk all the time, you don’t consider the consequences of your actions – you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how you’re drinking effects yourself or those around you. When you’re sober though, those questions become more important. So as Kate gets sober, and sees her husband still nearly constantly drunk, she starts to question the strength of their relationship. Are they simply together because both of them like to drink, and marrying your drinking buddy essentially means you never have to drink alone. It’s no fun to be the only sober person at a party, and that is essentially what Kate’s life becomes. No wonder she throws herself into those AA meetings and the friends she meets there – she knows no one else, not even her mother, who isn’t constantly drinking.

Winstead is great in the scenes where she is drunk. She is the type of drunk who thinks she is the life of the party – that she is funny, charming and everyone loves her. In reality, she is loud, incoherent and kind of a bitch when she’s drunk – she’s just too drunk to notice it. Her performance goes beyond the slurred speech and the stumbling of many movie drunks – she is the type of drunk I used to see during my limited trips to the bar in my college days. Once she gets sober, she starts to see the people around her how people must have viewed her – and she doesn’t like it. For his part, I also quite liked Aaron Paul, from Breaking Bad. Yes, Charlie is a drunk. But he’s not a mean or abusive drunk – just a thoughtless one. He is, in fact, a nice guy. The last scene in the movie implies that maybe this entire movie, with a different protagonist, is about to start again.

Smashed is a fine movie that is elevated by Winstead’s great performance. There have been a lot of movie drunks over the years – next to making a movie about the Holocaust or playing a handicapped person, playing a drunk is the best way to get yourself an Oscar nomination. But Winstead’s performance is genuinely great in this movie. You feel sympathy for her, you root for her to succeed and at times just want to give her hug. She looks like she needs one.

Movie Review: The Paperboy

The Paperboy

Directed by: Lee Daniels.

Written by: Lee Daniels & Peter Dexter based on the novel by Dexter.

Starring: Zac Efron (Jack Jansen), Matthew McConaughey (Ward Jansen), Nicole Kidman (Charlotte Bless), John Cusack (Hillary Van Wetter), David Oyelowo (Yardley Acheman), Scott Glenn (W.W. Jansen), Ned Bellamy (Tyree Van Wetter), Nealla Gordon (Ellen Guthrie), Macy Gray (Anita Chester).

A larger part of me than I would care to admit admires The Paperboy. This is the most lurid, ridiculous, violent, disgusting, over the top pulp melodrama to come along in I don’t know how long. But co-writer and director Lee Daniels full embraces this ridiculous story, and fills the movie with the type of visual flourishes that would normally look ridiculous, but somehow completely fits this particular movie. Not only that, but Daniels gets his entire cast of movie stars to completely abandon any pretext of vanity and has them dive headlong into the crazy movie that he is making. He’s going for broke behind the camera, and gets the entire cast to go for broke in front of it. The movie is so filled with logic flaws, with characters doing things that no sane person would even think of doing, let alone going right ahead and doing it, but somehow the actors make you think what they’re doing makes sense at the time. This is the type of guilty pleasure you either roll along with, or else you rip it to shreds. My only real problem with the movie – the one that kept me from enjoying this trash – is that two of the characters frustratingly insist on having real, relatable human emotions that make you feel bad for them. How the hell am I supposed to enjoy this movie when these two keep getting in the way?

The movie is set in the Florida swamps of 1969. Four years earlier, Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) was convicted of murdering the violent, racist local sheriff and sentenced to death row. No one is going to argue that Van Wetter is a good person – being trailer trash would be an unattainable goal for him – or that he isn’t a violent, horrible person. But, there are serious questions regarding his case – and the fairness of his trial. Two reporters from the Miami Star – Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), a black man from London and Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey) come to this small town to try and get to the bottom of it. Ward grew up in this town, and left his newspaper running father (Scott Glenn) and his little brother Jack (Zac Efron) behind. Jack is really the main character of the story – recently thrown out of school, and lounging around the house, Ward hires him to be their driver while they’re around investigating. Two other characters need to be mentioned – the Jansen’s maid Anita (Macy Gray), who narrates the story, and has really been a sort of surrogate mother/older sister to Jack and Ward since their mama ran off. And then there’s Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), one of those women who writes to convicts on death row and fall in love with them. Her latest pen pal is Hillary, and according to her, they two of them share a deep and powerful connection – emotional and sexual – even though they have never been in the same room together. Even though Jack knows this, he still falls hopelessly in love with Charlotte. This is a kid with serious mommy issues.

The Paperboy is full of violent, disgusting and lurid scenes. The one where Jack gets stung by a jellyfish, and Charlotte chases off a group of high school girls yelling “If anyone gonna piss on him, it’s gonna be me”, and then yes, proceeds to piss all over Zac Efron, has already become the stuff of legend – and for good reason. It’s the most ridiculous scene in a movie I’ve seen this year, but damn it, if it isn’t fun to watch it at the same time. But the most outlandish scene in the movie isn’t this, but happens earlier – the first time Charlotte and Hillary are in the same room together, although it’s a prison visiting room and Jack, Ward and Yardley are also there, and the two “lovers” cannot come within 10 feet of each other, and yet still manage to have simultaneous orgasms. How they accomplish this has to be seen to be believed. They movie is full of sex scenes – some that are graphic and violent to boot – and lots of blood and guts (the scene when Hillary’s even bigger redneck guts a gator will haunt by dreams forever), yet still nothing quite compares to that scene for its sheer outlandishness.

What kept me from just rolling with the movie, was that Zac Efron, in the lead role, is kind of dull. I don’t think this is really his fault – and admire this teen heart throb for having the guts to do this kind of movie. I don’t even mind his horrible Southern accent – it simply adds to the outlandishness of the movie. But the character himself doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of this motley crew. He’s really just a sweet kid with abandonment issues that gets in over his head. And then there’s Macy Gray’s Anita. I loved Gray in this movie- she uses her one of kind voice  to make Anita into a sympathetic, funny character. But it almost seems like she’s been shipped in from another movie – maybe a better version of The Help – and neither she or Jack belongs with the rest of these people. The movie keeps coming back to them, and ruining the guilty pleasure the rest of the movie was giving me.

The rest of the cast though is pretty fantastic, and obviously having fun with their roles. John Cusack never quite convinced me that he was a gator killing redneck, but he tries really hard. Matthew McConaughey continues his streak of interesting performances in smaller movie – combine his work here with that in Bernie, Magic Mike and Killer Joe, and he is having far and away the best year of his career. All this from an actor I previously thought had little to no talent. David Oyelowo is hilarious and amoral as Yardley (I love the scene where Efron visits him in Miami). Best of all is Nicole Kidman, who I kid you not deserves Oscar consideration for her role as Charlotte. I cannot imagine a person like Charlotte existing in the real world, but Kidman goes completely for broke in the role – wildly over the top, sexy, slutty, sympathetic, hilarious and kind of gross all at the same time. Kidman often doesn’t get credit for all the risks she takes in her career – Charlotte Bless is one of her biggest risks, and she pulls it off.

I cannot say that The Paperboy is a good movie. The movie has way too many flaws in terms of logic for that to be true, including perhaps the most ridiculous finale of any movie this year. When you add in all these logic flaws with the fact that the main character just isn’t very interesting, and in fact distracts from the madness going on around him, The Paperboy is a movie that simply collapses under its own weight. And yet, I cannot say I am sorry I saw the film – or that I am not looking forward to seeing what Daniels does next. He has only directed three films in his career – the god-awful Shadowboxer, the quite good Precious and now The Paperboy. He does nothing halfway – there is nothing subtle about his movies, and he gets his cast to dive headlong into whatever he is doing. This time, despite all the things I admire about the movie, it didn’t quite work. Hopefully next time it will.

Movie Review: Stories We Tell

Stories We Tell

Directed by: Sarah Polley.

Written by: Sarah Polley.

While watching Sarah Polley’s extremely personal documentary Stories We Tell, I got the feeling that Polley made the film to figure out why she was making the film. In the film, Polley documents her own family – focusing on her parents from the time they met and fell in love, until her mother died of cancer, when she was in her pre-teens. She was the youngest child – an accident to be sure, one that according to her father, her mother almost decided to abort. If that sounds to you like one of those things that most parents would never tell their children, you’d be right. But this family is different. We see it when Polley interviews her brothers and sisters, who are funny, charming and honest. And you see it when Polley’s father Michael reads aloud the letter he wrote to Sarah after discovering that he wasn’t her biological father – a letter than helps this documentary find its narrative through line – and brought me, at more than one point, to the brink of tears. This is a family that doesn’t keep secrets from each other.

And that simple fact, that seems so obvious in the film, is what makes its central story so fascinating. Because a secret has been kept – for decades. I mentioned in the opening paragraph that the letter Michael Polley reads to his daughter Sarah was written after he discovered he wasn’t her biological father. What I didn’t mention was that he – and Sarah – did not find that out until Sarah was almost 30. Her mother, Diane, had an affair with movie producer Harry Gulkin when she went to do a play in Montreal in 1978, and came home pregnant. Because she had also been with Michael during this time, she never knew for sure who the father was, but never let on to anyone that it may not be Michael. Although she did send pictures of young Sarah to Harry in Montreal. He knew he may be Sarah’ father – in fact, in his heart, he knew he was. And this was not just a fling for Harry – he truly, madly, deeply loved Diane – wanted her to leave Michael and bring her kids to live with him in Montreal. But she wouldn’t, and he figured if that’s the way she wanted it, and he could not persuade her, it was better to just leave well enough along. When she died, shortly after Sarah’s 11^th birthday, he still decided to do nothing. But there was always rumors in the family that Sarah wasn’t Michael’s biological daughter – she looked nothing like him. These rumors were merely a family joke, until Polley decided to do some digging herself – and then met Harry on an unrelated matter and quickly discovered the truth. What does this knowledge do to a person who is almost 30? Especially when they cannot confront the person they most want to, because sadly she has died? Perhaps more importantly, what does it do to the family? Is there a reason why all three sisters got divorced shortly after learning Sarah’s real paternity? What does it do to the perception they all had of their mother?

Stories We Tell is an exceptional documentary, in part because it doesn’t seek to answer these questions, but simply to ponder them. This is a movie more about family narratives- yes the stories we tell to each other about our shared history. Polley recreates home movies – extremely convincingly I might add – that shows Diane in different lights, depending on who exactly is telling the story. There seems to be as many different Diane’s as there are people talking about and that I think is precisely the point. Our perceptions of who each other are is what we really remember, perhaps not who the person really is. At one point, late in the film, Harry warns Polley that she will never find the truth – she will never touch bottom here, because there are really only two people who know the story of him and Diane, and one of them is dead. That is true, but sometimes searching for the truth is more important than truth. I recently finished reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which is an endless searching for IT that the main character never really find. It’s the journey, not the destination that counts.

All of this probably sounds rather pretentious, heavy handed and perhaps like a vanity project for Polley. But it isn’t – not really anyway. It’s a deeply personal film to be sure, but it’s also a deeply felt film – Polley doesn’t place herself in the middle, doesn’t make herself the sole arbiter of the truth (although, as her father points out, that by editing the film, she is deciding on the truth, which is also true, and also a great reason to include Michael saying it). It also puts into perspective Polley’s other two films as a director – her stunning debut film, Away From Her, about a long married couple being torn apart when one of them gets Alzheimer’s, and the sacrifices the other makes for them, and this year’s Take This Waltz, which also looked at a bored housewife and an affair – which is as honest and unflinching as Stories We Tell, in that it both feels sympathy and scorn towards its central character. Polley made that film when she felt she needed to get away from this one for a while. The two films certainly enrich each other.

With just three films under her belt as a director, Sarah Polley has become one of the best Canadian directors working right now. Her films are intelligent, well made and honest. Polley was once a wonderful actress – but she’s an even better director.