Drama

Young Adult

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Young Adult
  • IMDB: link

young-adult-posterReuniting with writer Diablo Cody, director Jason Reitman‘s latest is a darkly humorous character study of a woman who has never grown up. In fact, she may be incapable of doing so. We’ve seen stories like this before where a shallow lead character gets his/her comeuppance and has a last minute change of heart. Thankfully, Young Adult is not that movie.

Cody and Reitman are for more interested in showcasing how people don’t change over time than how a singular reality-smashing awakening can transform a character and cause real change. Mavis is a pretty reprehensible self-entitled bitch at the beginning of the film, and a couple of days spent in her hometown doesn’t do much to change that fact. Even if she is a bit humbled by events, she’s still the same person she’s always been.

On learning that her high school boyfriend (Patrick Wilson) and his wife (Elizabeth Reaser) have just had a baby boy, Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) leaves Minneapolis and travels home to the small suburb of her birth. Sadly, she doesn’t make the trip for the purpose she was invited, to attend the family’s baby shower.

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My Week with Marilyn

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: My Week with Marilyn
  • IMDB: link

my-week-with-marilyn-posterIt’s almost as shame Michelle Williams is so good as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn because her performance could easily overshadow what is one of the year’s best films.

There have been plenty of films I’ve enjoyed and appreciated in 2011, but I’ve waited a 11-and-a-half months to walk out of a theater and say I love a film. That streak is now over.

My Week with Marilyn based on Colin Clark’s memoir, recounts the young man’s first experience working on a film as the third assistant director of The Prince and the Showgirl directed and starring renown British actor Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) and American sensation Marilyn Monroe (Williams).

My Week with Marilyn isn’t only a love story to the troubled actress, but also this age of filmmaking and celebrity when one of England’s greatest actors took a chance on an increasingly hard to work with actress who the camera loved. The experiment went so well Olivier would essentially give up directing and return to the stage.

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Melancholia

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Melancholia
  • IMDB: link

melancholia-posterIt begins, and ends, with the end of the world. The latest from writer/director Lars von Trier is a bleak examination at the lives of two sisters in the days before the arrival of a mysterious planet on a collision course with the Earth.

We begin with Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) who are late to their own wedding reception. At first this cute occurrence of a limbo driver not being able to navigate the narrow drive to where the event is held seems nothing more than a mildly diverting challenge for the new couple to navigate. We soon learn, however, that the newlyweds have all kinds of problems they will struggle through on this night.

Over the course of the evening Justine, already stressed by the wedding, is pressured by her husband sister to act normal, her boss Stellan Skarsgård) wants a slogan for a new campaign, her sister’s husband (Kiefer Sutherland) wants her gratitude for the gala he’s paid for, and her mother (Charlotte Rampling) is complaining constantly at the absurdity of marriage.

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Hugo

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Hugo
  • IMDB: link

hugo-posterFor the first half-hour or so of Hugo you’re wondering to yourself why is Martin Scorcese directing a children’s story about an orphan who lives in a train station with a broken robot?

Don’t get me wrong, the characters are engaging and the look of the film (especially in 3D where the effects bring to mind a child’s pop-up book) are terrific, but the question still remains. And then this film about an orphan and his automaton becomes a story about a famous filmmaker and the celebration and preservation of old films, and you know exactly what struck the director’s fancy.

When we first meet Hugo Cabaret (Asa Butterfield) he’s living in the walls of the Paris train station. The son of clockmaker (Jude Law), Hugo was orphaned when his father died in a museum fire. Now all Hugo has to remember him is a notebook and a broken automaton his father was attempting to fix before his death.

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The Descendants

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: The Decendants
  • IMDB: link

the-descendants-posterOn the beautiful islands of Hawaii, Matt King’s (George Clooney) world crashes down when the real estate lawyer is hit with two bombshells at once. First, he learns that his wife (Patricia Hastie), who suffered a boating accident and has languished in a coma for weeks, isn’t going to get better. Her living will makes it obvious what will happen next, even if Matt and his two daughters aren’t ready for inevitable.

Things only get more complicated when breaking the news to his oldest daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) Matt learns his wife has been having an affair and it’s this, not the daughter’s recently troubling behavior, which was the cause of the friction between mother and daughter in recent months.

Through his anger and grief Matt tries to keep his dysfunctional family together, deal with the outbursts of his younger daughter (Amara Miller) in school, and put up with Alexandra’s moron of a boyfriend Sid (Nick Krause), all while managing a complicated land sale that means millions of dollars for his extended family.

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