The Town

2010 // USA // Ben Affleck // September 29, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Hi-Pointe Theater)

B- - Compared to the narrative eccentricity and mournful pose of his striking directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck's sophomore effort adheres strictly to cops-and-robbers boilerplate, albeit with generous sprinklings of "Bah-stahn" Irish grit. Less arresting and ambitious than its predecessor, The Town spins a cheerless and familiar tale: a golden-hearted bank robber is beset with a loose cannon partner who stymies his efforts to go straight. In this case, the roles are filled by Affleck as a tender, teetotaling lunk and Jeremy Renner as his live-wire, bloody-minded childhood friend. Naturally, there's also a crusading FBI agent (John Hamm) and a gorgeously blank love interest (Rebecca Hall) on hand. The snag is that Affleck's romantic pursuit of the latter occurs after her stint as his blindfolded hostage. The schematic character of the story doesn't seem to register for Affleck, but he nonetheless keeps the class and cultural lines therein gratifyingly stark. The Town grinds down the Beantown romanticism of the director's past projects, with the marvelously unstudied production design conveying an unflattering urban grubbiness without resorting to the grotesque. The look of the thing—and Affleck's facility for tense getaway sequences—are enough to render The Town a worthwhile macho melodrama.

Life During Wartime

2009 // USA // Todd Solondz // August 29, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

B- - Memory, culpability, and above all forgiveness snake with python-scale brazenness through Todd Solondz's Life During Wartime, a sequel (of sorts) to Happiness, his 1998 pitch-black slice of middle-class disillusionment (and, memorably, pedophilia). Recasting all of the characters from that film, Solondz revisits the frayed, stymied lives of middle-aged sisters Joy, Trish, and Helen Jordan (here played by Shirley Henderson, Allison Janney, and Ally Sheedy) as they attempt to forget, move on, and start over. Building upon its predecessor's single-minded theme—You Hardly Ever Get What You Want—Life During Wartime gazes on the tangled, habitually dysfunctional lives of the Jordan clan and pointedly asks who we should blame for our miseries, and whether our offenders should (or can be) forgiven. Solondz's approach is his customary swirl of jarring frankness and comical anguish. The forthrightness of the film's aims lend it the aura of a morality play, as does its curious structure, which forgoes conventional narrative for a succession of linked set pieces, each one amusing and aching in its way, and each something of a self-contained short film. Solondz's despairing yet earnest sensibility remains an acquired taste. Yet while Life During Wartime is unmistakably slighter and less bracing than its forebears, it also reveals a more disciplined and adroit filmmaker.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinksy

2009 // France // Jan Kounen // April 14, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac)

B - Jan Kounen's speculative (and frequently downright fictional) film about an affair between two artistic titans sumptuously affirms that not every tale of erotic craving need address romantic love. Years after witnessing the notorious 1913 premiere of The Rite of Spring, Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) invites a hard-luck Igor Stravinksy (Mads Mikkelsen) to her chalet, with his wife and kids in tow. The designer desires to give the composer the freedom to create, but before you can say "kindred spirits," the pair are engaged in a sweaty, desperate, but oddly chilly affair. British writer Chris Greenhalgh adapted his own novel for the film, and both he and Kounen emphasize the white-hot obsessive knots—and inevitable implosion—that can occur when two like-minded souls collide. Both the Rite, which serves as a recurring musical motif, and the dramatization of Chanel No. 5's creation underline the film's fascination with mystery, whether that of the artistic mind itself or the process of inspiration. These themes prove far more compelling than a flimsy notion of fumbled True Love. In Kounen's expressive hands, what might have been a slight (albeit sexy) slice of biopic achieves something finer, a more cerebral cousin to Jane Campion's poetic ruminations on emotional states.

The Kids Are All Right

2010 // USA // Lisa Cholodenko // August 11, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

B - It's too much to assert that Nic (Annette Benning) and Jules' (Julianne Moore) lesbianism is incidental to the emotional vigor of The Kids Are All Right, given that sexual and gender anxiety undergird many of the story's conflicts, not to mention that the plot depends on it. However, writer-director Cholodenko uses the upheaval generated when Nice and Jules' teenaged kids seek out their biological father Paul (Mark Ruffalo) for the purposes of highlighting the universal qualities of middle-class, middle-aged families. The message seems to be, contra Anna Karenina (which the film alludes to), unhappy families all share the same gremlins: resentment, frustration, shame, jealousy, and emotional befuddlement. There's nothing especially cinematic about Cholodenko's approach here, aside from one long, devastating close-up of Benning during a moment of traumatic revelation. Fortunately, the nuanced performances carry the film, elevating dialogue that sometime strays into clumsy satire. It is Cholodenko's talent for finding the wry humor in the strangest places that is most endearing, particularly when it comes to human sexuality, which the film acknowledges is rarely explicable or neat. It's enough to make one forgive the faintly schematic character to the film's narrative arc, or its mean-spirited racial digs and hippie-bashing.

Sherlock Holmes

2009 // USA // Guy Ritchie // July 11, 2010 // Blu-ray - Warner Brothers (2010)

C+ - Guy Ritchie purges the Victorian starch (and elegance) from Doyle's sleuth, while preserving Holmes' spooky powers of deduction and highlighting forgotten character details, such as the Great Detective's talent for bare-knuckle boxing and his penchant for narcotics. Purists will doubtlessly blanch at the director's approach, which paints Holmes as a superhero for a steampunk-tinged nineteenth century London. However, Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal possesses sufficient odd-duck touches to render this Sherlock a credible (if multiplex-friendly) variation on the iconic character. Witty and rollicking, the film focuses on a Holmesian mainstay—banal evil dressed up in mystical garb—and generally succeeds, despite a story stuffed with baffling plot holes. The gaggle of writers (surprise!) are too eager to sacrifice consistency for the sake of action, and leave far too much unexplained, despite a coda where Holmes sweeps away a plethora of seemingly supernatural events with his vaunted reason. Still, there's plenty of glint to admire on this bauble, whether in Ritchie's flamboyant style, Hans Zimmer's lively score (his most flat-out stimulating in years), or the consistently rich art direction, which relies heavily on conspicuous computer effects, but still manages to delight. Sherlock Holmes suggests that anachronistic Victorian adventure can be guilty good fun, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen be damned.

Winter's Bone

2010 // USA // Debra Granik // June 28, 2010 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac)

B+ - The chilly Ozark landscape of Winter's Bone is a skuzzy nightmare version of backwoods Middle America, where every family is linked through tangled blood relations and everyone cooks crystal meth. This city boy can't attest to the authenticity of the rural Missouri portrayed in Debra Granik's film, but the tone of her direction is such that realism takes a back seat to the mythic resonance of seventeen-year-old Ree's (Jennifer Lawrence) journey. The film's depiction of Ree's materially urgent yet emotionally ambivalent search for her bail-bond-skipping father owes much to noir conventions and the chthonic forays of Greek legend. In this tale, however, the Hero wanders in despairing circles, and her dragons are an empty fridge, a corrupt sheriff, and rotten-toothed relations who value secrecy more than kinship. Lawrence shines, and the estimable John Hawkes' turn as Ree's reckless uncle provides jolts of wiry menace and righteous wrath. The script is both frank and admirably subtle, and Granick's bracingly confident hand relies on expressive touches that lend this regional melodrama the feel of real cinema. Certainly, the ending is garish and absurdly tidy, but there is also unease there, as well as a quiet lamentation for a fallen world.