Sweet Home, Alabama

Grade: D+

“You can take the girl out of the honkytonk, but you can’t take the honkytonk out of the girl.” Swear to god that’s a real line in this movie. Honest. Verbatim. You just can’t make a line like that up.

This desperately wants to be a charming, light hearted, touching romantic comedy, but it’s writing is so painfully predictable, its characters such agonized stereotypes, that it produces far more cringes than smiles. Has anyone ever really said “you can have roots and still have wings” to another human being? Is there a soul on the planet who actually talks that way? I can laugh at offensive redneck jokes with the best of them, but this film’s portrayal of the south is just too painful for even this Yankee. Women bringing their babies into bars because “he’s still using my tit so I can bring him anywhere,” fathers ever so proud of their recliner chairs, confederate costumes abounding, beer guzzling filmed from every possible angle in every other scene. If the New Yorkers in this thing are over-the-top trendy and full of there own self-importance, the only thing missing from the southern characters is some good old fashioned ass scratching. I suppose introducing an “accepted” gay character into the mix is meant to make us embrace how truly loving and open these down home characters are (openly gay screenwriter C. Jay Cox using us to work through some of his own “I grew up in a rural town” issues), but even here the movie hits one false note after another – of course, the only two homosexuals within a thousand miles of the place just have to be attracted to one another. Blechhh.

Reese Witherspoon is reasonably irritating throughout, and Candace Bergen is so one note as the controlling, icy cold Mayor of NYC you just want to slap her. Mercifully, there are three (count em, three) highly attractive men in the film, so gay boys and heterosexual women will at least have some eye candy to look at.

This is the kind of film that actually has a scene at a pet cemetery, tears streaming down our protagonist’s face, while she explains to her long demised dog why she just had to leave him and move to another life. Let’s all raise our hands above our heads and say, “Ya Ya.”

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0256415/

Moonlight Mile

Grade: B+

A funeral procession makes its way to the cemetery, passing a wedding, a baseball game, a couple in a heavy make-out session, people doing laundry at a laundry mat….this exquisite scene is the first of many such moments, and a poignant reminder that -- while grief is universal -- it manifests itself in different times and in different ways for us all. Life indeed continues around us.

Jake Gyllenthaal (also terrific in the recent “A Good Girl”) and Susan Sarandon (so bloody awful in the recent “Digby Goes Down”) give two of the year’s finest performances, never striking a false moment even when the screenplay from time to time does. Dustin Hoffman seems to be working a bit too hard here, although he is also saddled with a role filled with far more neurotic moments than are his counterparts. It is odd that a screenplay that manages to hit so many real and poignant notes also strikes so many manufactured chords as well. Although beautifully acted by newcomer Ellen Pompere, an unnecessary romantic relationship between two equally lovelorn and grieving counterparts provide many of the film’s falsest moments, detracting from the honesty of the piece overall. How they meet, meet again, meet again, and connect with one another makes for some contrived movie moments. And for some reason, whenever one enters a local dive of a drinking establishment in a small town, you know the screenplay is about to enter a writing danger zone. Not unlike last year’s “In the Bedroom,” the reality of a family coping with unspeakable grief is marred only when some pat Hollywood screenwriting rears its ugly head.

Still, there is much to admire in this quiet and dignified film. While faulty, much of the screenplay still does a nice job of communicating the very different spectrums of grief, and the acting is at least as good, and often far surpasses the sometimes flawed material. Relationships are never as pat or predictable as they could be, as we learn not only about those on the screen, but those that have been lost as well. The central figure here is a daughter/fiancee murdered before the opening credits, and rarely has a film found such a poignant way of capturing the essence of a person whom we never get the chance to meet. There is also something particularly powerful in the filmmaking at work here, as the story is often conveyed visually rather than verbally. The camera does a stunning job telegraphing a look or a gesture between characters, never failing to lovingly capture some utterly believable moments of loss, acceptance and reconciliation.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0179098/

Igby Goes Down

Grade: C+

This could have been a beautiful and touching film if not for an exceedingly muddled, unfocused, self-important screenplay.

This has a lot going for it in a couple of truly wonderful performances. Kieran Culkin is a marvelous surprise as a tortured, chagrined, desperate youth whose sole emotional connection is to a father who has long since spiraled into manic depression and schizophrenia. Bill Pulman falls into the “where have you been hiding” category, having just given one of the year’s finest performances on Broadway in “The Goat,” and here providing another powerhouse performance albeit in a role that lasts only a few too short minutes on film. There is also much to admire in the family drama here. A mother who believes love is about cold, finite, defined expectations, speaks a similar language with her eldest son leaving her youngest defined as the troubled, problem kid and odd man out. A young man who connects so deeply with his ill father that he questions his own future and stability and is isolated even in rooms surrounded by people. This is the stuff of compelling drama, and there are indeed moments that are so emotionally real we can almost go with the film as a whole.

Sadly, what is essentially a four person family drama is indeed inundated with rooms surrounded by people, almost all of whom are uninteresting caricatures of a certain bohemian lifestyle, from the gorgeous dancer who becomes a track blotched drug addict, to the homosexual performance artist, to the megalomaniac millionaire, to the Jewish nymphomaniac, these characters flood the film yet add little to the screenplay but a heavy dose of pretentiousness, and draw us away from the inner world of this tormented young man. Let’s save the commentary on the evils, corruption, and decay caused by wealth for an Enron documentary, shall we?

Susan Sarandon, one of our finest actresses, still manages to deliver over-the-top, dreadful performances. A couple of years ago, she was literally unbearable (replete with thick Italian accent) in the equally unbearable “The Cradle Will Rock,” and here she is not much better in a surprisingly unsubtle performance as the harsh and judgmental mother. The facial expressions alone would hit the last row of any balcony seat. The rest of the cast is fine as things go, but there are simply too many of them hanging around in the first place. It is to Culkin’s credit that we leave the theater moved at all. Which, admittedly, we do.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0280760/

City By the Sea

Grade: B-

If not for the fact that this is a fairly paint-by-numbers cop story -- replete with the standard downed officer, crackling cell phone conversations, searches without warrants, killer hungry cops ignoring major evidence, drug dealers with gold chains dangling, the noble cop turning in his badge with righteous indignation – this would have been one first rate drama. Robert De Niro is great here as a police office whose father was executed for murder when he was a boy and whose own wife and son (played brilliantly by James Franco) he deserted years earlier. His son’s possible crime is the catalyst for revisiting emotional conflict, and it is honest, pained, simply communicated and utterly believable. Watching De Niro and Franco in scenes together is watching two great actors playing off each other at the top of their games, and it is dynamite to watch.

The cop stuff, however, is standard issue, not terribly interesting and only marginally suspenseful, and if one wants to see a great movie about the drug underworld and its ability to reek havoc on everyone’s life, then the film to see is “Requiem for a Dream.” Here it’s all pretty cliché-ridden. The time has truly come for De Niro to return his cop badge and gun permanently -- he simply doesn’t need them anymore. Let’s put away the crutch, Bobby, and give family drama a try. You clearly have it in you.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0269095/