You know, I was downright bored and angry at 'Waking Life' for a good thirty minutes. When it is finally revealed that he is searching for his true self in a place he's not sure is a dream or the afterlife or something he's not thought of, the movie actually begins to work - sort of. There's still that first bit that's less an actual film than a retread of 'Slacker' with even less interesting, less coherent philosophical ramblings falling now from the mouths of painterly acid-laced talking heads. I mean, it was actually kind of interesting to me that Linklater chose to include Levitch, of all people, because his showcase movie (Bennett Miller's 'The Cruise', you remember) was a great deal like 'Waking Life' in structure. There was a certain amount of information, most of it opinionated life codes, and it was dispensed through a filter: this tour bus eccentric and his tour bus following. In 'Waking Life', it seems like a simple mistake: why not mention that this kid is on a quest from moment one and save us from the inkling that we're watching cool, wavy artwork, painstakingly rendered - - - but the thing we have to watch it through is painfully dry. Did Linklater even think this through? Did he think, maybe I should make this movie a touch more accessible. (You know I'm the champion of anything that defies convention, but it has to serve another purpose and first and foremost, it has to serve me - the audience). Yikes. By the end I was able to come to a middle ground, grant it the requisite two and half stars, c plus rating. Can't continue ignoring the nagging voice in my brain that whispers: "'Dazed and Confused' was a fucking fluke, man".

[there's a longer, more involved gripe/yell that I wrote after I saw it, complete with me wondering how the film might play through a haze of drugs and me whining about how it might be person specific and Linklater could only really be reaching half his audience, but I'll spare you that.]

Oh, and the visual gimmick...not enough to take the place of the glaring lack felt in the text of the thing.

On one hand, I'd like to participate in the spirit of Waking Life, after all, it graces existence and is interested in universal human interaction - examples of the themes which it manages to conquer. On the other hand, I truly loathed a good half of the film, which seemed to me to be a collection of rampling philosophical gestures, boring diatribes sometimes told in less than fascinating ways. How dare a film select and create such a masterful visual style and proceed to be lazy in its textual obligation! When the film does finally reveal itself as a dream of sorts and our main character realizes he is on some sort of half baked vision quest, attempting first to understand his surroundings, later to escape them and, eventually, to accept them...when we are finally told this, the focus shifts and the film actually begins to affect us. I wonder how it may have played had this information about the main character's plight been revealed to us earllier. It bothers me that I, myself, have sunk to deconstructing atmospheric, ambiguous art such as this. The film obviously exists on its own, terrifically unique level, and perhaps defies conventional opinionating. On the other hand, when such feelings as painful boredom and affected awe mix in the same container, it could be a film that strikes all differently, a drug trip via the cinema (the kind of perspective-specific experience we don't all get). Tough to come to a conclusion that feels satisfying. The only satisfying conclusion here is to come to no conclusion, to leave the film on a middle ground where I have mixed feelings all over about it.

"He's as bad as we are, all action and no theory - we're all theory and no action."
-line of dialogue

[Instead of writing a review - which I did, but managed to lose in ee-mailing it to myself - I just pasted a bunch of snippets I'd written in discussing the film among my peers. Kind of keeping in the spirit of the film.]

(12/1)

'Fat Girl' was predictably downbeat, a rather ho-hum shockfest. Can't really fault it for that, it was a solid affair - but not an earth-shattering one, I'm afraid. Every moment that seems to become the moment where the film will turn a corner and find the title character's plight both affecting and revolting at the same time is replaced with a head nod to other, less interesting characters and they're far less interesting paths. Note to Breillat: don't end your damn films with a freeze frame, (that is, because it confirms the pretention we suspect all along, you know?).

(12/1)

Like a great many action or science fiction films, the entire premise can easily be embellished, its components sacrificed in order to get to a staged, mammoth fight sequence as fast as possible. In fact, some times the premise and fight sequence have so much in common, it becomes difficult to differentiate. The following surrounding John Carpenter has never interested me. His films were often entertaining - rather downtrodden, quite B (as in B-Movie) and usually lacking in dramatic structure which would otherwise reccomend the film. John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars however, bears his name with good reason. As almost a summation of the themes explored in previous films, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is the director's best work since Halloween (keeping in mind that I skipped In the Mouth of Madness, Prince of Darkness and Starman). Here, Carpenter gives us the villains who ride in on a quasi-physical, colored wind (The Fog), a battle that takes place on a remote outpost with no chance of escape or rescue (not to mention the human-inhabitating baddies it shares with The Thing), a biological villain treated as a sympathetic virus (oh, and the gleeful mass killing that goes along with it from John Carpenter's Vampires), main characters trapped in a fortress where the evil just keeps coming until we're bloated with claustrophobic suspense (a la Assault on Precinct 13) and the use of a criminal's services, his skillful manipulation of violence as a means to squashing a common, unstoppable enemy (Escape from NY and LA). This is fascinating, logic-driven, well-paced fantasy entertainment that keeps everything taut and light. The characters in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars get where they're going through numerous, genuinely eerie flashbacks and the kind of unconventional thinking we rarely consider to be occupying the same space as a film where, say, a wind would brings the ghosts into human beings, causing them to mutilate themselves and turn on their fellow man. The action setpieces rarely seem engineered to distract from a thin plot. Instead, we applaud and anticipate the scenes in the movie where characters flesh out the wierd, almost imaginative execution of Carpenter's story. And then there is the ending. An ending to a film that could not be mistaken for any other filmmaker's signature. It smacks of a rather ridiculously obvious irony, abruptness and, in its own right, a last grab at well deserved coolness. It feels like a Carpenter ending. I suspect most viewers will use this ending to dismiss the film entirely, an excuse to write off a film that doesn't exactly seem like it should be as smart as it is. Give the ending a chance. It seems the right ending. And the film? Badass.

(12/2)

Easily the most unintentionally hilarious film I've seen so far this year. Every line of melodramatic dialogue rings beautifully false. Timothy Dalton, ending every scene with a big, heavy zinger, sports a Scottish accent and an affinity for his great enemy that is so entirely unbelievable, it almost feels like a spoof. In this film, characters do a number of incredibly dumb and outlandish things. To list all of them would give away (and reveal) a sad, unconscionably incompetent watch. And it would waste your time. And I wish I could waste your time. But that would waste my time. I will tell you this, though: Lines like "My wife ran off with my cousin Jeb" and "The Lord says we could bury them in the backyard, no one would notice" will be quoted in my household for a good long time. Almost wins Battlefield Earth points and a second, more intoxicated viewing. This film is immeasurably godawful.

(12/3)

A number of shocking things happen throughout the duration of Chopper. But the graphic things - and there is some blood in this film that looks really, really real - don't measure up to the attitude of the film, a non-judgemental presentation of a criminal and a violent, evil man. Mark "Chopper" Read possesses the kind of charisma that mixes well with violence on film. We watch him, angry with ourselves for finding him funny or interesting. The visualization doesn't help much. The bleak blues of the film's opening act are stark and often in such sharp contrast with the dark side of things being shown to us, we wish Mark were operating in some sort of vacuum, a place that didn't look so sterile. Dominik and his cinematographers Kevin Hayward and Geoffrey Hall continue to give us no air with shots composed as if fisheyed, the whole film looking at us as if it is banging on our door, begging us to let it into our pscyhe. And it burrows real deep, too. Not only is it hard to shake this often amusing, rather visceral experience, but it stays with us for days. What appears the simple negotiation of a wasted adult life later registers as a cry for help in a world that's more interested in giving the willing party (Chopper) a pedastel to stand on, gaining the infamous recognition for his crimes that we both shudder at and applaud (obviously we applaud it, we're watching the film). The kind of unstable, almost unsettling loneliness that we see befalling Chopper as he scuttles from paranoid fight to paranoid fight (after being released from prison) creates the ultimate confliction, and, eventually, it is what lifts the film above a media comment piece like Natural Born Killers. Chopper never feels like its any fun - but its impossible to look away from. We feel really sorry for Chopper, but we also hate every single moment of his violent rampage. That it is left almost an afterthought that he is a bestselling author makes the film all the more powerful: the final image doesn't judge us and it doesn't judge Chopper. It just presents the facts. Which is what is important and successful about this film.

(12/4)

I must be honest and tell you that I enjoyed a number of aspects of this film, which surprises me as it concerns a teenage girl who suddenly turns into a werewolf. The main characters, Bridget (Perkins) and Ginger (Isabelle) are fifteen and sixteen respectively. The film manages to equate the change from girl into werewolf with the introduction of menstruation. This is a dark, down and dirty coming-of-age flick, in the vein of Heathers - had it been about a girl with furr, claws and a tail. The almost satire-ish tone is traded alternately for B-Horror movie production values which are, surprisingly well masked by snazzy camerawork and great, quirky characters (particularly the girls' mother, an overly concerned free spirit played by Mimi Rogers). The general problem I had with the film - besides the elongated, rather trite conclusion - is the idea that all of this isn't necessarily new territory. In fact, this territory, about teenagers, adults - people - finding that they're now sommething mythical, something from folklore, these ideas are about as old as Adam. Introducing them into a realistic setting - in this case, suburban Canada, the same place The Whole Nine Yards likely took place - doesn't do the film as much good as it could have. It seems less content on examining the effects of the girls' actions and problems on their place in society (or in their specific worlds) than it seems interested in showing how they unravel as sisters. Which would have been fine and good, except the screenwriter takes more time in celebrating her feminist message about the strength of women in a male society (example: Ginger gets rough - in a sexual reversal - with one of the school's many Alpha males, who later limps towards his friends, face bleeding, red stain in his crotch to triumphantly exclaim, "Ginger Fitzgerald rocked my world"). The sisters relationship is sketchy - and remains too undeveloped for any of their scenes to work at full potential. Both actresses are in top form, Isabelle a sexual demon high on ferocity and Perkins a mousy pseudo-goth girl, who spends much of the movie hiding behind her hair and slumping along as if she possessed a hunchback. Not quite the entertainment you might expect from a movie compared to TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Clueless, but, indeed, the purveyor of some good ideas.

(12/8)

At first glance, the immensely rewarding Va Savoir plays like an elongated American screwball comedy populated with Woody Allen characters. The fusion of these distinct and revered strains of comedy are at core related by absurd narratives told with overflowing amounts of romance, slapstick, one-liners and convenience. They are both proven successful and pleasurable. But at just over two and one half hours, can a concoction of comedic styles this potent still hope to sustain an audience's attention (especially after a painfully sluggish start)? What keeps Jacques Rivette's entirely sprawling, yet feather light tale interesting is his knack for distributing charm and reward over a larger canvas than is usual (or even necessary). It reminded me of Edward Yang's film Yi Yi, engineered to reach climax at the two hour mark and give us another full hour of cinematic pleasure. The same goes for Va Savoir. The whole thing is structured as a play, filmed as a play and inter-cut with performances of a play. The editing rhythm recalls the momentum of the stage. Comparable to a theatrical production, Va Savoir requires a uniquely massive build-up of steam to facilitate itself (hence, the listless opening scenes) and to promote maximum clarity. Though whimsical, it contains a bigger payoff than most films like it. Plot is gratuitously intricate, spotlighting a romantically attached actor (brooding) and actress (uncertain), in Paris for the first time in three years, each of them concurrently fending and pursuing fly-by-night lovers (sexually peppy and intellectually monotonous, respectively). Added are plot strands involving a jewel thief, the search for an antiquated manuscript, a fickle ex-conette, a duel to the death, taboo-crushing innuendo and so on and so forth. Eventually, the screwball appeal gets the best of the Woody Allen characters and the film loses the cynicism of the latter. Rivette's film leaves one feeling the kind of carefree joy of existence that the best of films often emanate. Put quite simply: this iss pure diversion from reality that  - thankfully - just happens to last a little bit longer than most of its breed.

(12/9)

In't that fucking wierd - a SNL movie that's just twisted enough, just fluffy enough, just clever enough to actually, you know, work.

And it's not even an SNL movie.

(12/15)

I join the masses in their praise of Steven Soderbergh and his dedication to finding both quality and the entertainment in the studio system. But we cannot pretend that his epics of hip and his social consciousness how-to's take the place of personal, stylized masterpieces like Sex, Lies & Videotape, King of the Hill or even 1995's highly underrated The Underneath. It's the kind of downhill climb that looks like an uphill climb. Give him a couple of years. Pass or fail. Anyway. Ocean's Eleven is yet another slick, pleasing Soderbergh gimmee that at once appears to be both a revival - and a dissection of how cool George Clooney can appear channeled through Frank Sinatra. And Soderbergh delivers. Clooney, too. Unshaven at first, he emerges from jail the very picture of façade. Then he shaves, gets suave and becomes a naughty, never unlikable, deeply unflappable badass. The team he puts together (hence, the title) consists of men of various jobs, actors of various stature and comes through with varying degrees of competence. For instance, it serves us that Brad Pitt, a megastar, plays the self-assured Dean Martin character, drunken crutch replaced with excessive snacking. Pitt has that laid-back charisma, the reserved instinct that makes him so cool, such a nice complement to the staged hipness Soderbergh commands. The whole air of a return, of a resurgence of the old blood pumping through these gangsters who operate well alone - but electrify when put in a room togeether - this is what sets apart Ocean's Eleven. In a time where this film feels redundant, when every other film released this year bore the "heist film"; genre marking, Ocean's Eleven has the best heist and, even better, a flawless sense camaraderie. Not to say there aren't some loose ends hanging out here and there. The barrage of celebrity doesn't work as well as it should. Some characters seem too extreme (Don Cheadle's limey), others too weak (Julia Roberts rather patchy ex-wife) and still others, seem like purposefully offbeat choices (Carl Reiner as Saul, the aging con man as an actor type, feels like he was invited to this party in order to raise eyebrows). At first, I thought perhaps the movie was a let down because of how implausible most of it seems. Of course, I know that kind of logic doesn't fly (though the far superior, easily more artistic entertainment Out of Sight worked in part because of how well it sustained itself, balancing barely on the safe side of complete and utter credibility). The film rarely challenges the audience, opting instead to lift the veil with a loud, lengthy, controlled voi-la! Soderbergh made it clear - and we all loved him for it - that this was to be a fluff piece he could have fun making. And it appears to have been a great deal of fun in the making. In the end, however, too many questionables drive the distraction into territory it couldn't possibly make up for by claiming just to be entertaining. My suspicion is that I was nagged not so much by the film itself, but by the fact that, to me, this one seemed to sit on the sidelines, nearly bragging because it didn't have to be remotely believable. Is that arrogant? Call it a bittersweet delight.

(12/16)

It's too late for a film with a surprise ending to sweep an audience off of its feet. Cameron Crowe knows this. In Vanilla Sky, he tries his best to present a solid collection of pop culture infusion, a New York that almost transcends a fantasy world, the kind of material playground where a holograph of a dead jazz man plays at your birthday party. The master of this garden of earthly delights is David Aames, the kind of man we couldn't possibly relate to: rich, powerful, good-looking and, surprisingly happy. Tom Cruise plays him with the natural boyish mischief he's abandoned lo' these many years. It's the Tom Cruise whose cockiness we can forgive almost instantly, and the one's so self-absorbed as to be an exclusive island, the one where the velvet rope only falls for those truly worthy. In this case the merited  turn out to be Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz, equally otherworldly sirens: one venemous and sexual, one charming and beautiful. And truth be told, this is probably the best work I've seen either actress churn out of late. That alone reccomends the movie. (Because I hate Cameron Diaz as an actress, which doesn't even begin to tell you how baffled I am by how beautiful people seem to make her out to be. Also because Penelope Cruz has come to America to find herself halfway smushed into half a dozen films where her sole purpose is to be a sex object, a beautiful girl with an accent whose character is usually as necessary as reading glasses to the blind). And it's really not important that this movie is a remake. The old adage applies: Vanilla Sky is inferior to its predecessor. Probably the reason I most hoped wouldn't apply: Crowe's script is more interested in blasting the audience's minds with surprise and gimmickry than with weaving Aames plight into the folly which befalls him after a vicious car wreck; (and it feels a touch committee driven, if I may be so bold). There is a curiously long period of purposeful incoherence, the kind of American confuse-and-disclose method that has proved profitable - but rarely feels right. Here, it feells like it should go with David: the skill is in pleasure delaying. The script holds everything in until the last moment of anguish we can possibly take and, finally, gives us release (a philosophy David is accused of wielding in his sexual conquests). But even after showcasing complete and utter confusion for thirty minutes, the film is not content. As drawn out as the incomprehensible bit feels, it is nothing compared to the conclusion, which feels more like an impromptu apology for what came before, a section that leaves absolutely no ambiguity for the rifling, a set of scenes meant to ease the insecurity over a very complex narrative.  But, since the film is by Cameron Crowe and because Tom Cruise seems so dedicated to telling this story, the quirky and well-rendered dialogue take over, fitting into a media blitz (tons of cutaways, dream sequences, druggy visuals). The tools outshine the job. What's especially welcome in a cinema-audience exchange wherein one is having one's intelligence insulted, is an amount of music that, under any other filmmaker's thumb, might seem like a crutch, something to rely on when his skills don't measure up. Not Crowe. He has a brilliant ear for blending music into an art form of elevation, the kind of underscore that breathes a very unique life into a film, giving it a Cameron Crowe watermark. We get the sense he believes that life should have a soundtrack and that his films reflect the soundtrack he'd choose, were he the main character in the film. Blending Paul McCartney (who wrote the title track), Bob Dylan, Radiohead and dozens of others into a landscape of poetic repose, Crowe almost seems to be using this coporate-sterile take on 1997's Abre Los Ojos as his ground for intense experimentation, a place to test out what music might play well over scenes he may or may not have complete control over. And though the film has a generous amount of deeply satisfying romance and some unexpectedly honest characters, this doesn't excuse how loose the film feels. There's a great deal to keep us interested, a great deal that drones on endlessly and, stuck in the middle, is a sad and beautiful thing: a filmmaker trading his personal touch for his soul. At least he got to include his beloved music.

(12/16)

How did this chaotic, aimless little Haunted house movie get made? Was there a focused spoof anytime from start to finish? Best moments include a grumpy, cocky parapeligic played by Mr. Show's David Cross. Now there's a movie I'll watch. The Jerk in the Chair or Pissed Off Legless Guy, they could call it. And it wouldn't include a guilty pleasure of an Exorcist parody. My gripe with both films is still the half-assed, almost painfully obvious nature of their creativity devoid spoofs.

(12/17)

The masses harped with a well-deserved glee over Rushmore, but to the table, I submit that The Royal Tenenbaums, a surprisingly emotional, utterly hilarious love letter to New York, is, in fact, a matured, absolutely pristine creation. Anderson expands his use of cut-aways to give the film a whimsy, but all the while, he's tugging at us, goading us into an emotional response. His characters are so well developed and so pitch perfect (and his cast is so well-parked and chosen), he can play around with his story. He appears to be having the time of his life. The nearly color-coded, eighties-inferred New York he lets his characters play in whilst he frames everything with an obsessive compulsive symetry is worth the price of admission alone. That I was able to laugh out loud in the same ironic, quirky way I was able to laugh at his other films (Bottle Rocket and the aforementioned Rushmore) made the whole affair smell just that much sweeter. There isn't a bad card among the lot - even Ben Stiller, who I feared would wield his usual spotlight stealing obnoxiousness. He tones it down to the Ben Stiller that started out, the one that doesn't have a career and is simply acting among his siblings (a brooding, attractive Paltrow and a brooding, attractive Luke Wilson), his parents (Hackman and Huston) and the drug-crazed author that used to live next door to the Tenenbaums, Eli Cash (Owen C. Wilson, who also co-wrote the script). Anderson remains the current trendy independent filmmaker who seems at the head of his craft - and deserves the recognition he's recceiving. His unique sense of humor drives the piece. The moments of realism give it an edge that makes it something special. All that, and I think he's the only American filmmaker who knows how to use slow motion correctly.

(12/22)

Alright - this is an impressive, masterfully crafted epic. The sets, the locations, the costumes, the scope of the whole thing are something to behold. The thing holding it back from a bestowed "masterwork" honor is that I can feel the three hours. Fantasy epics are supposed to make you forget you exist, erase the running time and transport you. I was more than happy to watch, even lend my imagination to the experience - but I was never transported and, unfoortunately, just one time, I consulted my watch to see how the plot was progressing. All that aside, there isn't much I couldn't rave about. The actors are all spot on (particularly Ian McKellan, who should secure an Oscar nomination for his Gandolf, the most exciting character in this film). Moment to moment, the film is a more episodic venture than you might expect: a film structured around how well many, many awesome sequences will jive when crunched together. The film needs an editor, but most of the transitional work from one scene to the next is seamless. I've not read the books, so I can't start complaining about what's left out and what's supposed to be this color and yadda-yadda-yadda. I watched it in utter awe - but there were moments when I wondered if it was just a movie about a group of people going from place to place and getting into adventures. It's just barely too aimless to be perfect. But there's no way it isn't reccomendable.

(12/23)

If I were to say anything definitive about the implied message of Series 7: The Contenders, it would be that its director, Daniel Minahan, speaks in fragments rather than complete sentences. The film appears to warn against the inherent danger of worshipping reality shows by exercising the ultimate premise: the characters are chosen against their will and forced to kill five strangers (before being offed themselves, of course). It sounds like a very promising idea and Minahan has concocted a film that looks extremely real. The whole thing is shot on video, his actors are all amateurs (and accidentally lend an authenticity through their mediocre, melodramatic turns) and his CG inserts touting the fictionalized title show all echo episodes of any one of the current, top rated reality shows. The problem with this self-sufficient, rather well-etched world which Minahan has constructed is that it is so utterly implausible and feels like such a stretch that, by the end of the first thirty minutes, it is no longer so much shocking as it is boring. And that it becomes stale only serves to unmask Minahan's fairly shallow observations about desensitization to violence, (and the sad fact is that these projections outweigh a much more valuable criticism, namely our obsession with other people's lives as edited by corporate bloodsuckers). The conflicting messages of anti-violence and life as fiction, neither of which is particularly well developed anyway, eventually cripple the film. We watch as Minahan pours on the soap opera music and hits us with flashbacks and flash forwards. We watch almost at an angle. The whole thing appears to be happening just out of reach. Towards the end, when one of The Contenders' producers is included in the film, it is much too late to give context to Minahan's twin gripes. (And by that time, other non contender characters have been included, giving truth to our hunch that he is a rather unskilled director of actors). What I kept hoping was that Minahan had either wrangled a few smaller, riskier companies into advertising or had concocted his own, phony commercials to insert between the carefully crafted bookends, which reiterate events in the show. What he fails to realize is that reality shows are only partly about the audience's weakness. He's done half his homework and rendered a fragmented, satirical vision. When he starts to pick on the networks that air this junk as well as the sponsors that shell out the ducats to air their propaganda between the laughter, the tears and the pain - - - then the film might be of greater interest to me. As is, Minahan seems almost curiously fascinated by his self-contained, vicious phenomenon. The romanticism in his voice is the only clue that the show itself is popular. All else is left to our imagination. (See a better version of this film in Michael Haneke's Funny Games).

(12/28)

The most satisfying thing about In the Bedroom is watching all the strings tighten with such confidence, such authenticity; such unabashed, non-manipulative poignancy. The film doesn't just present a potent, distressing emotional center, it spins it in a fundamental, yet original fashion. It reminds me of great family dramas like Ordinary People and The Ice Storm, but more intimately structured, more reminiscent of how things in the real world unfold - and why. It takes its time developing relationships which have decayed and lay dormant: a husband and wife whose communication skills have become a polite amity, a son who means well but acts selfishly and a very realistic divorced couple: one who acknowledges the legal separation, one who doesn't.
 That the film contains such uncannily real characters, such bitter and beautiful associations and such sharply drawn moments makes it all the more rewarding when it is able to concoct a plausible situation and hypothesize about the different means of dealing with it (I call special attention to this, the conclusion - which I'll not spoil - as I believe there are probably many who found its details to be too much to swallow). Consider, for me, the pivotal moment in the film when Tom Wilkinson unwraps a band-aid on his finger to reveal that a cut has healed. This is a telling, misleading frame that says mountains more in context but, put quite simply (on its own): things heal with time. In the Bedroom argues more clearly that things don't necessarily heal on their own and certain things (as argued in The Sweet Hereafter) don't heal as we expect them to. Just as death is certain, healing seems certain, too - even by enormously unpredictable means. The performances in the film are volcanic. Nick Stahl and Marisa Tomei come off better than ever before. William Mapother as Tomei's ex-husband is suitably desperate, cowardly, brutish - all the things a realistic, violent ex-husband could be. Though hype would lead one to believe that Sissy Spacek's absolutely stunning turn is the reason to the see the film, I beg you, see it for Tom Wilkinson, who is better than he's ever been, perhaps better than any actor in a film this year. Spacek is angry, she's bruised and beaten inside by grief, racked with guilt and aching to forgive herself and everyone around her. You can practically feel these abstract emotions trying to claw their way out of her soul. In Wilkinson, the film finds a quieter, more distantly affected father. He worries for his wife, but can't seem to find the hutzpah to look worried. These are actors who give terrific performances without looking as if they've studied how to look when tragedy strikes. As we expect from great performers in great roles, Spacek and Wilkinson project from the interior. The result is a naturalism via the ambiance of quiet. In the smoke from a cigarette. An acknowledged motion without verbal confirmation. A look of loss and loneliness that registers as a blank stare. Todd Field has found the definition of quiet in this story and he uses this silence in the way other directors might use an elaborate soundscape. What isn't said is often more interesting, more powerful and more vivid than dialogue. The final product, a charged, absolutely riveting, deeply moving piece of cinema, is the kind of film that is destined for a critical pedestal. It belongs there.

(12/30)

I'm telling you, no lie, the movie ends with a girl who turns into a hawk. And the rest is laughable.

(12/30)