John Michael McDonagh’s “Calvary” has a corker of an opening scene. A kindly village priest (Brendan Gleeson) is in the confession box, and a parishioner tells how he was sexual abused by a priest as a boy. The man then vows to kill the kindly priest in one week as revenge.
If a university built the so-called “ivory tower” today, it would have a climbing wall, plasma TVs on every floor, and penthouse apartments for all the rich out-of-state kids.
That’s the takeaway from documentary filmmaker Andrew Rossi’s strong “Ivory Tower,” which looks at the many complicated and interconnected woes bringing higher education to a crisis point — rising tuition costs, mounting student debt, mounting university debt, and a seeming emphasis on being the most prestigious school in your conference, with the biggest stadium and most lavish student center.
I love the future world that writer-director Jake Paltrow has painstakingly built in his sci-fi Western “Young Ones.” I’m less enamored of who he put in that world, and what he had them do.
I’m guessing the ads for “Infinitely Polar Bear” won’t say “From the writer of ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3: Dog Days’!” But Maya Forbes did write that film, along with “Monsters vs. Aliens” and a bunch of other Hollywood films that one wouldn’t exactly call personal.
But Forbes dug deep into her family history for her debut as a writer-director, and “Polar Bear” is a beautiful story, warm and generous of spirit. Family dramas often ask the audience to pick sides, or conjure up a villain. Here’s a story about a family who loves each other just . . . coping . . . with some difficult circumstances, and it’s wonderful filmmaking.
What was the craziest thing I saw in “The Girl From Nagasaki”? Was it the modern sequences featuring women trussed up and hanging from cocoons in the ceiling, dripping gory red paint? Was it the slow motion 3D mushroom clouds that filled the screen? Or was it when the main character visits the American consulate in Japan, and the consul is played by legendary, leathery ‘70s film producer Robert Evans?
“God’s Pocket” reminded me of a book of interconnected short stories, the kind where each is written is written from the perspective of a different character in the same town, and together their stories weave together into a larger narrative that only the reader sees all the angles of.
Aaron Paul is really growing as an actor. Having played an emotionally anguished young man in “Breaking Bad” and an emotionally anguished young husband in “Smashed,” he now plays an emotionally anguished father in “Hellion.”
I kid, but Paul is actually very good as a blue-collar widower, Hollis Wilson, trying to raise his two young sons in Kat Candler’s familiar but well-acted drama. His blue eyes haunted behind a forest of beard, Paul effectively conveys the confusion and pain of a guy who thought he’d spend his life working all day and drinking beer in front of the TV all night, instead finding himself forced to clean up his act, get past his grief and be a single parent.
But “Hellion” really belongs to young Josh Wiggins, who plays Hollis’ 13-year-old son Jacob. A delinquent who is one more arrest away from juvie, Jacob hides his grief at his mother’s death (and, more subtly, his father’s emotional absence) behind a storm of heavy metal music and the whine of his dirt bike. Jacob often acts as kind of a second father to his sweet-natured younger brother, Wes, although he’s imperfect, as in a rare amusing scene where he makes whipped cream-and-sugar sandwiches for lunch.
The family’s troubles have caught the attention of both social workers and Hollis’ sister-in-law (Juliette Lewis), who gradually starts making moves to take custody of Wes herself. Lewis is good – she could be the villain of the piece, but she effectively projects good intentions, even as she is fulfilling a motherhood need in her own heart with Wes. Her actions force Jacob and Hollis both (each equally deserving of the title “Hellion”) to clean themselves up and start taking responsibility for their actions.
“Hellion” is a little slow-moving at times, moving like those dirt bikes in the same tight circles of despair, rage and tentative hope. But the performances are good, and Chandler definitely captures the feel of life in south Texas. A half-finished beach house in Galveston serves as a promise of a good life that never quite comes.
I like Jenny Slate. The former “Saturday Night Live” cast member is pretty bold about playing larger-than-life, often unlikable characters, such as Jean-Ralphio’s sister on “Parks and Recreation.”
Gillian Robespierre’s “Obvious Child,” which premiered Friday as part of the NEXT program for low-budget indie filmmaking, is a great showcase for Slate’s voice as well as giving her a more down-to-earth and human character to play. The banter is often fast and filthy, but still finds room for an underlying sweet tone. But the film’s fearlessness trips itself up when it moves into hot-button territory — abortion — and tries to maintain the same jokey say-anything spirit.
“Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate and Star Cinemas. 1:45, PG-13, two and a half stars out of four.
Paramount Pictures must have had one overriding fear — that the rights to Jack Ryan, the late Tom Clancy’s two-fisted CIA analyst, had been languishing for over a decade (since 2002’s “The Sum of All Fears”), and with Clancy’s passing, interest might vanish altogether.
“Her” opens Friday at Point, Eastgate, Star Cinema and Sundance. R, 2:00, four stars out of four.
There’s a scene midway through “Her” where we see Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) walking along a curved walkway in an office park. People are passing him, other people are walking behind him. It seems like an ordinary scene-setter, until we start to notice something.
Madison Movie 