Tag: Reese Witherspoon

A Wrinkle In Time

Ava DuVernay’s “A Wrinkle in Time” wants to be the most glorious, inspiring movie you’ve ever seen. It’s also ridiculous.

A Wrinkle In Time PosterAva DuVernay truly wants “A Wrinkle In Time” to be the most glorious, inspiring movie you’ve ever seen. She wants you – yes you, little black girl who has never seen herself represented on screen before – to believe in yourself so you can bring light into the world and be a force for positive change. DuVernay believes this so strongly that she’s even dressed Oprah in space age chain mail, glued-on diamonds and a glittery lip gloss that looks like it cost half of the movie’s $100 million budget so that Oprah can do what Oprah does best and make it seem like she’s speaking directly to you.

DuVernay certainly can’t be faulted for ambition, and at times, “A Wrinkle In Time” really does reach that high standard. It has color and beauty and a humanistic touch that another director, even one more suited to a franchise, tentpole budget, could not bring to the film.

But “A Wrinkle in Time” has no room for cynicism and snark, and it’s near impossible to avoid them for a movie with as many garish costumes, laughable set pieces, nonsensical plot threads and inflated sense of importance as this film. For as much as “A Wrinkle In Time” wants you in awe, it’s a frustrating, bizarre mess of a movie that gets harder and harder to love. Continue reading “A Wrinkle In Time”

Wild

Jean-Marc Vallee’s follow up to “Dallas Buyers Club” features a great performance by Reese Witherspoon and makes a strong feminist statement.

The beginning of Jean-Marc Vallee’s “Wild” shows Cheryl Strayed at the top of the world yet screaming at the top of her lungs. She’s made it an impressive, remarkable distance on her own and overcome pain so unbearable she can’t even remove her socks. And yet she’s knocked her boot off the edge of this cliff she’s conquered, and she may as well be stuck in a hole.

Vallee’s film grapples with the inspiring nature of Strayed’s mission and the more harrowing, cynical nature of her mental adventure. Reese Witherspoon plays Strayed as a negative, bitter and sharp-tongued woman ready to quit at any moment, but her sheer resolve and toughness on the trail make her feel real, not just some strong female movie character conquering impossible odds.

Based on Strayed’s own personal memoir and adapted by novelist Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”), “Wild” tells the story of a woman who hiked 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail through California, Oregon and Washington. The journey itself is not spectacular or unusual for many who have tackled the trail before, but Strayed took it upon herself to make this journey after a series of personal hardships that left her far down the road in the wrong direction. This hike is a spiritual journey above all. Continue reading “Wild”

Side by Side: Happiness and Election

Todd Solondz and Alexander Payne’s breakout films have a lot in common in depicting suburban life.

Of all the depressing, pitiable people in “Happiness,” Todd Solondz’s absolutely disturbed black comedy of suburbia, sex, sickness and sadness, the one I feel the worst for is Trish Maplewood.

Wait, which one is Trish (Cynthia Stevenson)? Is she the sister caught in arrested development, the smug, narcissistic poet who secretly suspects she’s talentless or the woman who described a case of rape and murder over an ice cream sundae?

No, Trish is perhaps the only one in “Happiness” without a crippling sex addiction, perversion, loneliness or self-destructive tendency. Her fatal flaw seems to be that she’s too normal, and worse yet that she managed to fall in love with a monstrous creep.

Trish is like the control group in Solondz’s examination of twisted individuals, the least interesting and noticeable figure of the bunch. We arguably identify with her the least because there’s the least to latch onto. Part of what makes “Happiness” so affecting though is that there’s a little bit of something we can relate to in each of the other dark characters because each has a little bit of normalcy.

She’s not unlike Jim McAllister’s wife Diane (Molly Hagan) in Alexander Payne’s “Election,” a simple house wife who exists in the background. We learn some about her, her desires, her sex drive and what she loves about her fairly awful husband. But for all intensive purposes, she’s nobody.

Released a year apart in 1998 and 1999, “Happiness” and “Election” are both complex satires of those nobodies, simple people in ordinary middle American neighborhoods, people who in their own strange ways feel universally relatable. For those who have levied claims that Payne is mocking and trivializing the simpleton schmucks in his films, that’s absolutely accurate, and it feels no less honest.

Continue reading “Side by Side: Happiness and Election”

Mud

Jeff Nichols’s Mud is a true Americana movie that, like a wise elder, has true secrets and wisdom to impart.

Jeff Nichols, along with Ramin Bahrani, is the best director today capturing the spirit of down-south Americana values. His third feature “Mud” follows this tradition by showing just how deeply rooted all his characters are, each with their own deep-seeded histories that guide the film through otherwise rough waters.

Deep in the rivers of Arkansas, two boys named Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan of “The Tree of Life” and debut performer Jacob Lofland) come across an island, a boat stuck in a tree and a drifter named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) calling it his home. These kids have hard faces and journey out into the open fully aware, yet still wary, of the danger. So when Mud appears and asks for their help, they act on instinct and ingrained country wisdom.

Mud’s a murderer on the lam with only a shirt and a pistol to his name. He explains to the boys that he killed a man trying to defend the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). The two plan to escape together, but Juniper is aimless, uncertain and faced with her own danger.

It’s a thriller in this way, one that turns a bit too Hollywood near the end for its own good, but the intricate subtext surrounding the livelihood of Ellis is what makes “Mud” feel so at home. Continue reading “Mud”

Water for Elephants

“Water for Elephants” is a classically good romance with a period-piece vibe. The film’s title, which it takes from a book of the same name, is symbolic of the falsity in the main character’s life. But there’s nothing fake about the actual circus of a film director Francis Lawrence creates.

That tangible quality of ‘Water for Elephants” is part of its appeal. Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz all interact with physical, flesh and blood animals including the aforementioned elephant, and their personal interactions are real and simple enough to reach out and touch them.

In a day and age when modern romances can seem so stretched, this one is smart enough to convince us otherwise. Continue reading “Water for Elephants”