Possession

Grade: B+

Some films are perfect for a gray, rainy afternoon, where the desire to be warmly embraced and transported to another time and place is simply irresistible. While imperfect, this is still a lovely and poetic film.

It is to Writer/Director Neil LaBute’s great credit that, for a filmmaker so widely known for biting, harsh, often mean spirited works, here he has crafted a tender, moving, often lyrical film centered around the passion for literature and the sense of discovery it hides within. This is a highly romantic movie, both in terms of the story it tells and the style through which the story is told. Two relationships told in flashback and flash forward, there are of course comparisons to be made with “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” But this film casts its own unique spell, and does a sumptuous job of taking A.S. Byatt’s stylish novel and translating it to the screen.

A mostly first rate cast, Aaron Eckhart is especially wonderful as a soulful and intensely passionate (not to mention very sexy) student of literature. Not for a moment does one even recall his initial claim to fame was playing a twisted, manipulative, sexist pig in LaBute’s “In the Company of Men.” If Gwyneth Platrow doesn’t quite prove the right chemistry match, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle (looking frighteningly like a young Meryl Streep) most certainly do. While the film needed to be a bit longer to avoid feeling overstuffed and rushed in the final reel (LaBute should have edited out an unnecessary academic treachery subplot which would have provided some much needed additional screen time) the film nonetheless weaves a subtle web that is entrancing, often surprising, and very deeply felt.

This film nicely captures the sort of British mood and pacing Merchant Ivory aficionados have come to love, and is especially poignant for those who have studied literature intensely and know the rapture of turning the page and uncovering something as though for the very first time.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0256276/

The Good Girl

Grade: B+

Jennifer Aniston finally chooses wisely. After some uninteresting roles in some truly dreadful movies ("Rock Star"), this is a heartfelt, tender and honest portrayal in a nicely odd Indy film with a style and mood uniquely it's own. A woman living an unhappy life in a small small small town, married too young to a childhood sweetheart, Aniston provides the film with a subtle sense of sadness, longing, and expectation, nicely juxtaposed against the film's wildly quirky sense of humor. The central action takes place in a five & dime convenience store, and the people are so appallingly real (from the bible-thumping security guard to the makeup artist who makes her customer's look like clowns to the love interest who plans clandestine rendezvous outside of "Chucky Cheese") and the situations so believably hick town, one can't help but laugh out loud while never ignoring the very real despair of our central character. Decisions made are surprisingly true to character, and the screenplay does a nice job of avoiding obvious Hollywood clichés. A sweet, small, engaging movie.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0279113/

Signs

Grade: C+/B-

This is a very close call.

On “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Steven Spielberg was asked about his favorite scene from all of his movies. He described a scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where, after a mother spends several terrifying minutes trying to protect her child from aliens, her little boy opens the front door and is flooded with an overwhelming light. Director M. Night Shyamalan has attempted to extrapolate this one scene into an entire film, and is only partially successful.

Anyone expecting “Independence Day” will be sorely disappointed. There are few special effects here, with only passing glimpses at aliens and not a laser blast in sight. This is less a film about invasion from outer space than about one man’s faith, and it is here that the film is at its strongest and most interesting. A much more apt comparison would be the 1983 movie, “Testament,” about a mother struggling to protect and provide for her nuclear family after a nuclear war, sans mushroom clouds and devastating explosions (anyone who hasn’t seen this wonderful film should rent it immediately). Here, Mel Gibson plays a patriarch who has lost his belief system while trying to protect and care for his family, and any beings from another world are merely the catalyst through which he may or may not find his way again.

While this is a thoughtful and intriguing concept filled with some nice moments and solid performances, the film comes across like a morality play rather than a living, breathing story of flesh and blood people struggling in the midst of overwhelming terror. Shyamalan’s characters are never terribly well developed, and his filmmaking style is so dreamlike we never really connect with the tale being told. All of us must only remember a year ago, where we all sat mesmerized with fear and disbelief in front of television sets day after day, to know that “Signs” simply doesn’t capture the feeling such an experience evokes. It only mimics it. There is also scene after scene of falling flashlights and shots taken from all sorts of slanted angles, which may be an attempt to keep us on the edge of our seats, but instead only leaves us feeling somewhat cheated and all the more distanced us from the action taking place. Spielberg may have been able to keep us in his grips without showing a lot of the shark in “Jaws,” but utilizing a similar technique simply doesn’t work here. Herein lies the major problem with the movie – much of it feels like we’ve been here before, and seen it done better. Even the ending feels taken directly from “War of the Worlds,” where people flock to religious centers and pray to God for an answer, that has been with us all along…

Director Shyamalan has already established a career for himself making films that stun us with revelations in the final reel (“The Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable”). The time has now come for him to tell full stories about real people that don’t depend on the final three minutes. He is talented enough to stop depending on such gimmicks, and simply tell us a story.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0286106/