Review: "Certain Women"

Director: Kelly Reichardt
Runtime: 107 minutes

A truck runs off of the road. Someone has an affair. A routine legal case escalates into a hostage situation. Characters from disparate stories cross paths. All of these occur in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women, yet they're hardly what lingers after an unhurried hour and 45 minutes. Instead, Reichardt, one of American indie cinema's most reliable poets, draws attention to the breaths that take place in between words and actions. The small gestures take center stage, and what Reichardt pieces together, despite starting slow, builds to a series of gently moving conclusions. 

Arriving two years after the more accessible eco-terrorist thriller Night Moves, Reichardt is back in more familiar territory with her latest. Adapted from the short stories of author Maile Meloy, Certain Women elegantly weaves together the lives of three different women, and those around them, as they do their best to stake their claim in the world.

Despite the vast emptiness of Montana setting, there are any number of obstacles, most of them in some way intangible. For Laura Wells (Laura Dern), it means dealing with men who either won't listen to her, or who only enter her life when they need to use her. Laura's client (Mad Men's Jared Harris) refuses to take her legal advice until he hears it from a male colleague, while the man in her life (James LeGros) only needs her as an escape from the tensions in his marriage. Elsewhere in the Treasure State, Gina (Michelle Williams) scouts for raw materials for a home she hopes to build. And lastly, Native American rancher Jamie (Lily Gladstone) strikes up a friendship (and possibly more) with a night school teacher (Kristen Stewart).

So much of what happens in Certain Women is mundane, but Reichardt manages to stealthily craft a delicate, sensitive tribute to the ordinariness of her character's lives. Aided by beautiful, rough-hewn visuals, the writer, director, and editor paints an understatedly rugged portrait that hits home in surprising ways. Rather than force an "everyone is connected" overarching narrative, Reichardt is content to merely have her various characters brush shoulders at most. Each little reaction and movement counts, even if it seems inconsequential at first.

Even at their most accessible, Reichardt's stories never move with urgency, and she doubles down on the approach here. But patience is rewarded once the Gladstone/Stewart part of the triptych guides the film into its second half and mini-finales. Carol director Todd Haynes is credited as a producer on the film, and that shines through most evidently in the third story. The inciting incident is almost random, but from the moment Stewart wanders into Gladstone's line of sight, an inexplicable sliver of tension slips in. A few conversations later, juxtaposed with Jamie's repetitive duties on the ranch, and the intensity of unrequited affection blossoms into something astoundingly realized. 

The third segment could easily have been its own full feature, yet it never feels shortchanged by being forced to share time with two other stories. Yet by placing the most complete section at the end, Reichardt is able to construct a master arc encompassing three small stories that each have their own starts and finishes. The least developed of the three is Williams' story, which feels more connective and symbolic, but nonetheless is still a worthy addition. Parts 1 and 3 focus on women dealing with situations and emotions they can't completely control, while Williams' Gina is her own boss (and likely the breadwinner of her household). These women are all distinct, yet they're all cut from the same multi-textured cloth.

So much of what drives Certain Women rests on Reichardt and her behind the scenes team, but the women in front of the camera are equally vital. Even though we know precious little about these people, Dern, Williams, Gladstone, and Stewart are all constantly adding shades of depth without interfering with the reserved tone of the film around them. There are deep wells of desire, frustration, and exhaustion coursing through these women, all in ways that feel authentic and lived-in. Even when Reichardt flat out states a Talking Point in dialogue, she does so with elegance and brevity ("...if I were a man, people would listen and say, 'ok.'"). The men aren't too shabby either. LeGros brings gentleness to what could have been a detestable character, and Rene Auberjonois is quietly heartbreaking as an old man sought out by Gina. And, in his final scene, Harris brings unfathomable nuance to his part through only a handful of perfectly chosen words. 

And while Dern, Williams, and Stewart all have the most name value, but it's Gladstone who ends up shining brightest among the women. Her low key kindness seamlessly transitions into deeply felt moments of longing without missing beat. It's star-making turn, only without all of the flashy theatrics that usually come with such a "moment" for a performer. Like the film around her, Gladstone's performance is founded on introspection and empathy. While it may not jump off of the page as traditionally exciting or entertaining, those traits are what make Gladstone's work, and Certain Women as a whole, such a tender triumph. And all without a single car crash or shootout in sight.


Grade: A-

Review: "Still Alice"

Director(s): Wash Westmoreland & Richard Glatzer
Runtime: 101 minutes

The cruel irony of Still Alice, a sensitive and efficient drama about Alzheimer's, is that it's largely forgettable. This fourth collaboration between directors Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer benefits from a handful of beautiful performances and a restrained approach to the subject matter. However, by the time it's over, Still Alice has barely had a chance to address the dynamics of the story that could have distinguished the film from similar narratives. 

The most interesting part of Still Alice comes quite early, when linguistics professor Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) learns that she has Alzheimer's. The diagnosis is frightening on its own, but there's more: Alice's Alzheimer's is a rare type that is passed down genetically, thus putting her three children at risk. This angle is skillfully introduced, especially in the scene where Alice and her husband John (Alec Baldwin) break the news to the kids. But it doesn't take long for this side of the story to evaporate. Westmoreland and Glatzer seemingly stumble upon a land mine of an issue (the guilt and grief of passing down something that's out of your control) and then run away from it. 

Whether it's Alzheimer's or cancer, illness narratives always walk a fine line when it comes to how they deal with the situation. To their credit, the directors avoid cheap sentimentality or emotional manipulation. Unfortunately, they do this by acting timid, rather than economical. Still Alice is a tasteful movie, but that refinement isn't enough to mask the weaknesses of the writing.

The actual portrayal of the disease is far better, in no small part thanks to Moore's lovely work. The script carefully introduces and accelerates Alice's failing memory, giving the aggressive disease a natural progression rather than confining it to dramatically convenient bursts. Moore does her best to add extra heft to a screenplay that is often too safe for its own good. She is often heartbreaking in the role without begging for one's sympathy. Really, the only reason this isn't one of her absolute best performances is due to the limitations of the writing, which relies more on basic details than identifiable character traits to earn sympathy (she has Alzheimer's...doesn't that suck?).

Even though the writing leaves quite a bit to be desired, Still Alice avoids falling flat on its face. The performances are all quite good, with Kristen Stewart turning in the best work of the supporting cast as Lydia, Alice's daughter and a struggling actress. The pacing is quite taut, never leaving one in a fog the way Alice often wanders through the movie. 

Unfortunately, nothing captures Still Alice better than its final scene. The moment is quite moving, but then the film simply ends. Still Alice appears to exist in a cinematic vacuum which doesn't serve it well from any angle. As a study of Alzheimer's, it brings nothing new to its story, and as a character piece it never pushes beyond the fundamentals required to make us feel sad for a little bit. In telling the story of a woman losing touch with her life, Westmoreland and Glatzer have forgotten to give Still Alice any personality or greater point. It's impossible to have an identity crisis when there's no identity to begin with.

Grade: C+

AFI Fest 2014: "Clouds of Sils Maria"

Director: Olivier Assayas
Runtime: 124 minutes

The political revolutionaries at the center of Olivier Assayas' last film, the excellent Something in the Air, would probably hate to watch their creator's follow-up. Moving from social and political upheaval to the world of show business, Assayas' latest is a flashier exercise filled with star power and picturesque imagery. It's also one of the director's most purely enjoyable films, even though it outstays its welcome by treading through too much familiar ground. Snappy writing, sleek camera work, and strong lead performances will be enough for some, while others will look at the subject matter and themes and wonder why they spent two hours with testy celebrities. Or, who knows, you might even find yourself somewhere in the middle, as I did walking out of the Egyptian theater last night.

Films that poke at the behind the scenes activities of the entertainment world are often in a precarious position when it comes to the background details. Throw in too many references to real actors and celebrities, and you risk becoming glib and going after easy targets. Throw out too few, and the world of stardom, no matter how far removed from Hollywood, and the story seems too removed from reality to be fully convincing. On this level, Assayas has thankfully hit the bull's eye. The name-dropping is carefully placed, some of it timed for the film's bursts of humor.

Without replacing the actual development, those references go a long way in informing the mindset of Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche). A big star who's won over both Hollywood and the international scene, Maria is busy trying to find her next project, hopefully one that won't involve her hanging from wires in front of a green screen. On her way to a tribute in Zurich - to Wilhelm Melchior who gave her career its start 20 years ago - Maria and her sarcastic assistant Val (Kristen Stewart) learn that Wilhelm has died. Though distraught, Maria, with Val's coaching, makes it to the tribute, dressed to the nines and receiving thunderous applause.

Maria is all set to get out of Switzerland when she's approached by rising director Klaus Diesterweg (Lars Eidinger), who has an ambitious proposition in mind. He wants to restage Melchior's play Maloja Snake, in which Maria originally played the dangerous young ingenue, but with Maria in the role of the older woman. Though Maria eventually agrees, digging into the role of the desperate Helena, seduced and destroyed by young Sigrid, proves far more difficult than anticipated. Secluded in Melchior's mountain home at the behest of his widow, Maria and Val run lines and debate interpretations of the play in the run up to meeting the future Sigrid: Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz), a classically trained actress with Hollywood bad girl tendencies.

Sils Maria's first two parts are never less than a blast to sit through. Part one, which ends with Maria and Val preparing to head into the mountains, is lusciously shot, accentuating the high fashion, fancy galas, and luxury cars. Several dynamic, overhead camera shots make Maria's travels feel like the arrival at the red carpet of the Oscars. Assayas can be a fluid and engaging storyteller - Something in the Air had its share of thrilling photography - but here he's clearly having quite a bit of fun dipping his toes in the lives of the rich and famous. Though not as showy, the film's second part, confined to the mountains, is just as visually arresting.

That same sense of liberated style also applies to Binoche's just-shy-of-fading star. An expert at playing charming, sensitive characters, it's great fun to see the actress tear into such a haughty, self-involved role. Her face, which grows exponentially more expressive with each passing year, is a joy to watch as Maria's fear, disdain, and spite burrow into her eyes and the lines around her eyes and mouth. Even when Maria sheds the fancy gowns and chops off most of her beautiful black hair to prepare for rehearsals, she remains as nervy and high maintenance, a cactus draped in Chanel. For longtime followers of the Church of Binoche (converting was one of the best decisions I've ever made), her success with the role likely won't be a surprise. Just as Assayas' world knows what Maria Enders is capable of, international audiences have long been aware of Binoche's talents.

So even though it's fun to see Binoche play such a different role, the film's understated surprise is none other than Stewart. An easy target after the Twilight series, the actress has made the leap to "respectable" world cinema without stumbling. If anything, she's proven that she's much better suited to material like what Assayas has given her than blockbuster extravaganzas. Stewart, low-key, sarcastic, and determined, is an inspired foil for Binoche's high-pitched hysterics. Initially just a sounding board with two phones, Val inches out of her shell once the film moves to the mountains. Never at full-on odds with Maria, Val's relationship with her jet-setting boss is what keeps some of the film's repetitive rehearsal scenes afloat. Maria and Val's opposing interpretations of the play nicely run alongside the film's ideas about aging and clinging onto youth in the face of middle age.

And even though some of Assayas' writing is rather on-the-nose, he keeps Sils Maria buoyant with a boisterous sense of humor. Without leaning too heavily on his Hollywood references, Assayas' script gets great mileage out of its characters' reactions to their compromised situations and idealogical confrontations. Even with the beautiful landscape photography, there's nothing more striking in Sils Maria than the small moments when Maria and Val go toe-to-toe, either at each other's throats or in laughing in each other's faces.

With Maria and Val's dynamic being such an integral part of the film's energy, it's no surprise that Stewart's exit from the story lets a lot of wind out of the story's sails. Even though the third segment of the film is labeled as the epilogue, it's far too long and touches on too many of the same ideas as before. The finale, set during a dress rehearsal, has a great moment between Binoche and Moretz, but just about everything leading up to that point could be left on the cutting room floor without any losses. Assayas touches on Jo-Ann's status as a paparazzi target early on with some hilarious footage of her bad behavior, so the reintroduction of the paparazzi at the end is redundant. Jo-Ann's scenes before the epilogue are more than sufficient, and the reprisal of the paparazzi angle detracts from the better established issue of aging and faded glory. For a film so confidently assembled, the epilogue is an odd misstep that gets in the way of Sils Maria keeping up its streak of winning dramatic and comedic moments.

Grade: B

Review: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

Arriving three months after Mirror Mirror, the other big studio Snow White film, Snow White and the Huntsman is drastically different in style and tone. Looking more like HBO's Game of Thrones, in comparison to Mirror's super bright, campy, family-friendly design, Huntsman is aimed at a slightly older demographic, one willing to take its fairy tales with a little more gravity. Yet despite individual pieces that are ultimately more successful, Huntsman isn't really an improvement over Mirror Mirror as it is, well, just different.


For the most part, the basic elements of the story are expected: a king makes a seriously bad choice in his second wife, who kills him and imprisons his daughter, only to determine that she needs to consume said daughter's heart to live forever. Thankfully, director Rupert Sanders and company help everything feel fresh with the rugged, lived-in medieval look. This is a lush world, one that feels more like it lives, breathes, and dies than the hyper-artifice of Tarsem Singh's film. And for a good half hour or so, everything comes together - despite fleeting blips - to create something rich, dark, and compelling.


Magnetic from her arrival on screen, Charlize Theron is wickedly entertaining as Ravenna, the evil queen holding Snow White (Kristen Stewart) as a prisoner, all while sucking the youth and beauty out of other captive maidens. Dressed in Colleen Atwood's sumptuous costumes, Theron embodies Ravenna with the icy heartlessness of a woman taught from birth that the key to a woman's success was her beauty, and nothing more. It's Ravenna's reign of terror that is the most enjoyable to watch, and the further the film gets from that, in the wildly uneven middle, the more it suffers. First-time director Sanders knows how to create some effective imagery and atmosphere, and when it all comes together, it can be quite compelling. Aside from Ravenna's scenes in the opening, the director also nails Snow White's nightmarish hallucinations as she stumbles through the Dark Forest during her escape from the Queen's forces. It's appropriately dark and unpleasant, and helps reinforce the idea of a more grown up world. Many fairy tales, were, after all, filled with extreme darkness, with everything from murder to suppressed sexual anxiety running amok, and Sanders' film reaches its high points when it taps into this. 


Unfortunately, the trifecta of writers don't keep up the momentum. Once Snow and the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) escape the Forest together, the movie becomes simultaneously rushed and sluggish. There's an entire plot thread involving Price William (Sam Claflin) and his desire to find Snow White, not having seen her since they were separated during Ravenna's brutal take over of the kingdom. It's not terribly interesting, and it distracts from the relationship between Snow and the Huntsman, who comes across as much more engaging. It feels like the film wanted to build some sort of love triangle, but then got tired of it and simply gave up without seeing through on any of it (yup, even in the end). The film also rushes into its climax, complete with an uneven war speech with lots of obligatory SHOUTING, and then next thing we know, Snow is all ready to go into battle (apparently it just doesn't take that long to learn how to wield a sword...in full battle armor...which was just lying around in her size...).


Thankfully the finale redeems some of this, although it doesn't carry the intrigue of the opening act. The grittiness comes through in both the real, actual battles and in the fantastical elements. The darkness and menace are always present as well, even when the film stumbles in execution. Even the film's one moment where it could potentially go into an overload of fantasy schmaltz, set against a magical forest populated with sprites and other creatures, ends with a moment of violence.


Snow White and the Huntsman ends up being a mixed bag, but it deserves credit for when it works. Some films are complete disappointments, but Sanders' film does come together with strong results. Had the middle built on the momentum of the first act, instead of squandering it, this could have truly built into a stellar big budget fantasy. As it  is, though, it's a mixed bag with a wide range of highs and lows that keep it from being the majestic, gritty epic it very likely has the potential to be.


Grade: B-/C+

Theatrical Trailer: "Snow White and the Huntsman"

To offset the dreary early spring season (at the cinemas at least), Hollywood has really been doling out the goods when it comes to promotional material for the summer's major aspiring blockbusters. The latest, and one of the best (though not quite as great as yesterday's masterful Prometheus trailer) is the theatrical trailer for Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman. One of two Snow White projects being released this year (the other being this month's iffy-looking Mirror Mirror), Huntsman may lack a notable director at its helm (Mirror has Tarsem Singh), but it looks like it will be a vastly superior film. Tarsem Singh is known for having such stunning visuals in his films, so it's slightly awkward to see that Sanders' film, a grittier, more Game of Thrones-like take on the story, creates much more of an impression with its images. The richer, dark look looks extremely convincing, and gives the sense that this film has the stuff to launch a small franchise (which is Universal's hope). Throw in a wonderfully cast Charlize Theron, and all in all this looks like a winner.

My only reservation is that the story ultimately rests on Kristen Stewart's shoulders, despite the fact that the marketing has leaned so heavily on Theron. She's a capable actress, but her work in the Twilight series seems to have somewhat stunted her abilities. Let's just hope that Sanders (making his debut) and Stewart's cast mates can help bring out the best in her. To an extent, the movie really depends on that happening. Otherwise, this looks like a grand slice of big-budget fantasy filmmaking, with enough of its own look to not feel derivative (although that hulking creature with the horns does feel like it belongs in a Guillero Del Toro film; kudos for taking inspiration from a master, though). Also, that crazy sequence with Charlize flying around the room in the form of a million little knives (glass shards?) is outstanding. Consider my ticket bought.

Side Note: Kudos to Charlize Theron, who has this opening 1 week before Prometheus, in which she also stars.

Trailer Grade: B+/A-

Trailer: "On the Road"

I don't remember whether or not Walter Salles' On the Road, an adaptation of the classic Jack Kerouac novel, was stuck in development hell, or was simply announced long before it even began casting. Regardless, the long-gestating (?) project has been completed for a while now, and at last we have our first look at some footage. I have to confess, I've been meaning to read Kerouac's novel for the past few years, but have yet to get around to it, so I can't really comment on whether or not the casting choices seem appropriate. What I can say, however, is that the talented that Walles enlisted gives me a lot of hope. First is Walles himself, who directed the wonderful The Motorcycle Diaries (2004). That too was something of a self-discovery road-trip film, so On the Road should be right up the director's alley.

The cast isn't too shabby either. Garrett Hedlund is an appealing, charismatic actor, and Sam Riley has already proven that he's capable of top flight work (2007's excellent Control). The supporting cast is filled with excellent actors, including Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Kirsten Dunst, and Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss. There's also Kristen Stewart, in what appears to be the third major role. Stewart is certainly capable of delivering a solid performance (Adventureland), but unlike a great deal of the cast, she has yet to develop a consistency to her work. This makes her the film's wild card, which could prove to help the film a lot...or hinder it. On the Road, though slated for 2012, doesn't have a specific release date set for US theaters, so it will likely be a while before we get an answer. Maybe they'll even take long enough so that I can get my act together and actually read the damn book.