Changeling

Riveting and classic, Changeling, is a well above average mystery, political muckraker, court room procedural, and family drama all in one. It stands proudly beside Clint Eastwood's recent canon of masterpiece material, most notably Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, albeit shedding some of those film's prestige for what is a solid, though not Best Picture worthy feature.

Angelina Jolie is front and center in this tear duct exercising missing child saga. Her brave, soon to be feminist studies material, Christine Collins, not only defends herself against a pressing 1920s LAPD, but also inspires city wide policy reform. Collins waged a public war against the LAPD when they returned the wrong child to her and insisted it to be her missing son. The distraught mother fought back in the press, telling everyone who would listen that the publicity nervous LAPD were neglecting the search for her child to protect their egos. The result was a traumatic and unlawful stay in a psychiatric hospital enforced on her to keep her silent and away from the press.

John Malkovich and Jeffrey Donovan are the two polar opposite men in Christine's life. Malkovich is the soft-spoken preacher who wants to help her bring down her adversaries and find her real son. Donovan is the tough-talking police officer that berates her for cruelly abandoning her child in his hour of need, a claim she denies in light of the fact that she has not yet been reunited with her actual child. Kudos also go to Amy Ryan, ever tenacious and spellbinding, in a very affecting, game-changing cameo role that puts Christine on the path to annihilating the system that persecuted her.

Where the film suffers (though it should be said, most negligibly) is in its dour, bitterly dark demeanor. The material is bleak to be sure, and it travels down roads far darker than one would imagine based solely on its description. The tone, though, travels from murky and tragic to pitch-black terror so quickly and so often, that at times truly terrible moments feel almost minimal to the viewer's jaded, already twice-too-often pulverized eyes. Jolie gives a commanding, shout to the rafters performance that deserves to be praised. But at times, we find her so often broken into hysterical fits of rage that her devastation registers as typical. Her greatest moments as a character come in her silent moments of victory and in acts of unsulking bravery. Saying "fuck you" to the head doctor of the psych ward comes to mind. In these moments, we can sense her personal triumph and her struggle, however futile.

Entertaining yet challenging, Changeling, works as both high art and popcorn material for those with strong stomachs. It can be moody and grim but it ultimately builds a fire within the audience that demands justice be sought against those who abused the innocent Christine. In its later scenes, that justice comes to pass and the feeling is nothing less than a rush of satisfaction.

Eastwood's work is as visually arresting as ever, casting his lovely leading lady in obscuring, garish shadows that convey the anguish of her circumstance and the ensnaring evil of the system around her. No faults can be leveled at the great director or his star. Screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski also does well by this true story, turning it into a chameleonic tale of outrage that leaps from genre to genre nimbly and with entertaining determination. Shamefully, history did not write him the bravura denouement a fictional script would have so readily reached for. Or maybe, that's just something to make this piece stand out further.

Grade: B+

Synecdoche, New York

With his directorial debut, Academy Award winning writer Charlie Kaufman unleashes what is bound to be his most divisive piece of cinema yet. Already a part of the pop culture lexicon with a signature style that leads many to describe films in his wake as Kaufman-esque, the first time director has much to prove and much to lose in stepping behind the camera. Long considered one of Hollywood's few true celebrity screenwriters (a household name to many, and a film's reference away to most -- "the guy who wrote Being John Malkovich is all it would take), Kaufman takes his career even further by transitioning from unique writer into full-fledged cinema auteur whose originality of vision no longer depends on an outside director to come to life.

Maybe it is this reason that leads the dreamy and sometimes maddening Synecdoche, New York to be such a troubled gem. Without a director to filter Kaufman's screwball dialogue and complex metaphorical images, the screen becomes literally engulfed by the mad genius' ideas run wild. This is perhaps Kaufman at his purest, and therefore his craziest yet.

It is safe to say that Synecdoche, New York does not make for an easy, pleasurable viewing experience. No film has ever been less suitable for a lazy Sunday afternoon. However, no film in recent memory may be more deserving of numerous, intense viewings either. Often more satisfying as a thematic vehicle driven by a self-consciousness of film's own devices than anything approaching a coherent and compelling narrative work, Synecdoche flies off the screen and slowly descends the viewer into a false world of art and cinema in which time and space, our essential principles of comfort, cease to exist. Watching the film is an experience for the senses and dismissing it early for its eccentricity or obvious ambitiousness would be a mistake. Nonetheless, I can't say I'd be entirely stunned if many people feel compelled to do so. It's a surreal and vacant pace-setter for a good 30 minutes or so. Only when the film's real drives kick in, does the Kaufman magic really begin. And even then there's so little realistic plot to hold onto that many viewers will be understandably driven to feel they are being led down a meandering path to nowhere.

in What clear plot there is goes something like this: Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is an ailing, regional theater director living a discontented life with a wife who ignores him (Catherine Keener). When she takes off for Berlin with her mysterious girlfriend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and the couple's young daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein), the terribly lonely and increasingly ill Caden uses his art to fill the void in his life. After winning a mysteriously massive grant that has no apparent financial limitations, he undertakes the transformation of an old warehouse into an interactive performance piece containing hundreds of actors playing roles modeled after real people living real lives. Eventually, he takes a new wife, Claire, (Michelle Williams) and has another daughter. They too become characters in his life-size play. Claire, an actress, plays the part of herself. Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger named Sammy (Tom Noonan), who claims to have been stalking Caden for the past 20 years, is cast as Caden in Caden's play. Not too long after, another actor is cast to play Sammy playing Caden in Caden's play. And not too long after that, a second warehouse is built inside the original warehouse and this warehouse contains another life-size world replica and so on until Caden's mad, never-finished art piece becomes a world within a world within a world. And still he goes unsatisfied. He always craves his next idea for artistic development and bounces vulnerably between women, pursuing a sense of satisfaction that is sometimes present but always nothing more than fleeting. At some point, he even takes on a role within the play, that of Ellen, his first wife's cleaning woman whom we never meet in the real world. As Ellen, he shares a moment of comfort and solace with the actress playing Ellen's mother, but even then, the moment is temporary and leads only to more desires to create and self-sooth with artistic designs that he thinks might finally satisfy him but never will.

And so Synecdoche, New York unfurls. It does not grow to a boil and then settle neatly. It dawdles and shuffles its feet, carrying on in "a day in the life" mode, but this time the meaning of a "day" and exact identity of one's "life" are not clearly defined. Kaufman is fascinated by the ease with which actor's slip into other lives, attempting to create a reality by which to express reality, which already naturally expresses itself. He lets the film be unreal and reflexive, driving the audience to question its celluloid reflection as something not all too different than the world within a world Caden hopes to find peace in. Characters sometimes age but look no older (Williams, for example). Years sometimes pass in what we presume are only hours. Typical film cues for time jumps are suspended and much of the film seeks to stress the artifice of film itself as a storytelling device. One character (Samantha Morton's Hazel) lives in a house that is constantly on fire but yet never devoured by flames. Caden himself is always dying yet not dead.

There is no truth to this fiction. At least not in any rational sense. It is a tome of atmosphere and reflection that utilizes film and all its devices rather than playing by classical Hollywood rules. At times it feels stifled by its own rambling insanity, but in the clutter there is such brilliant, unparalleled imagination that it is hard not to forgive the oddity and embrace it for its unique candor. Synecdoche does not try to fool audience members into believing that what they are seeing portrays real lives with which they should sympathize. It wants you to recognize that it is false and think about what that means for you, seating in your seat, and watching the unreal, hoping it will feel real, before departing back into reality. In a medium designed to create illusory reality, the film stands apart as an illusion about illusion, which mournfully suggests that art is nothing but one of many pleasures all humanity, equal by each part and together one singular whole, seeks to slow the terror they feel on the slow and painful journey to one's own death.

Grade: A

W.

Measured to a fault and lacking in cinema magic, Oliver Stone's textbook W. delivers none of the mudslinging panache most viewers might expect. Instead Stone's biopic of the still in office controversial president creates a relatively sedate, modestly sympathetic portrayal of George W. Bush that dramatizes some of the more historic behind closed door moments in the president's life (a war room sequence debating the invasion of Iraq) and carnivalizes certain iconic oddities in the president's history (the famous pretzel incident). The result is an uneven picture that's often entertaining but never as revolutionary in its thinking or telling as you'd like.

Josh Brolin is charismatic and accurate in the title role, assuming enough of the president's mannerisms and vocal intonations to make him instantly recognizable but not a soulless, mirror impersonation. Not every cast member is as successful balancing impersonation with authentic acting, though. Elizabeth Banks, for example, makes no effort to resemble Laura Bush, but gives a very likable and tender performance nonetheless. Thandie Newton makes every effort to look and sound like Condoleezza Rice and in the process loses hold of the character's motivation, allowing only for iffy imitation.

By the time the film establishes pace, the authenticity of each actor matter's less and the quality of the material more. It's a decently stacked script that mixes the farcically comic and the darkly tragic. Each scene, though, seems to have its own contained momentum. When pieced together, they feel somehow stagnant. Nothing seems put together in a way that sheds light or creates a feeling of deeper understanding. Stone's stylistic flourishes, including a bookending baseball fantasy, seem specifically designed to draw connections where connections are thin. Ultimately, the film still feels like a laundry list of scenes and not a complete work of singular power.

The film's conclusion does no favors to what comes before. It's true dramatic climax is nothing but a dream and it leaves the audience not knowing more, but simply wondering why, with all the moments of world importance to stress, Stone chose to make the crux of this story imaginary. There's also a hole where the ending should be. As Bush's story continues to unfold in the public eye, there's no real end to be had in this fictional account. The send off is minor and unsatisfying, a further note of incongruity in a feature that feels well-made yet somehow vacant where its passion should be.

Grade: B-

Happy Go Lucky

Writer/director Mike Leigh is a talent best known for realistic, intimate dramas of a mostly heartrending nature (Vera Drake, Secrets & Lies), but with the winning and non-tragic Happy Go Lucky he proves that positivity need not be less interesting. To call Happy Go Lucky a comedy would overstate its lighter charms and understate it subtlety of craft. It is not built around punchlines or slapstick and more often than not does not openly fish for audience laughter. Its comic nature, if it should be called that, stems from the effortless warmth of its story and characters.

Primary school teacher Poppy (a compulsively watchable Sally Hawkins) purposefully bucks the modern trend of doom and gloom. She goes about her humble life with laughter and reassurance, trying always to see a silver lining and put a smile on the face of a stranger or two. At the very start of the film her bike is stolen, and her response is not outrage or anger but instead sheer disappointment. "I didn't even get to say goodbye," she says aloud to herself. The result is that Poppy learns to drive, a decision that sets up the principal dilemma of the film (if there is one in this free-flowing gem). Poppy's driving instructor, Scott (Eddie Marsan), is Poppy's polar opposite. He sees ruin and conspiracy at every turn and very easily grows to a rageful boil at the slightest hint of conflict. Poppy's sessions in the car with him turn into a negotiation between the rational, clear-minded free spirit and the loose-cannon instructor. He wants her to wear flat shoes, "appropriate footwear" he calls it. She thinks she looks cute in her high heel boots and doesn't want to make the switch. With every maneuver she finds a bit of whimsy and humor and he conversely squashes it with his joyless frustration.

The climax of the film is rightfully ambiguous and much more intense than something so cheerful seems to have the right to be. It's a credit to the feature that Poppy is both abnormally joyful and realistically grounded and self-doubting. When she makes a turn down a dark corner early in the film to see to a disoriented, potentially mentally ill homeless man, she wonders aloud at one point "What am I doing here?" She makes every effort but she is no flutter brain. Her decision to be good is truly self-less and not a natural condition as has been typical of a certain number of carefree pixies who turn up in indie cinema as mentor's to dour male protagonists. Poppy takes the film all to herself, navigating with great sensitivity and intellect, the modern world in all its complexity. She is a fascinating, playful narrator and a unique pair of eyes. Even the simplest things such as a chiropractor appointment become fodder for her to spread cheer and tickle the audience with her unique and very sympathetic charm.

Grade: A

Rachel Getting Married

To say that Rachel Getting Married is Jonathan Demme's best film in years isn't really saying much at all. What's worth something, is the assertion that it truly is one of the most vibrant and intoxicatingly alive films of the year thus far. Following a phenomenal stretch in the 90s, which included Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia, the acclaimed Demme fell victim to poor career choices, stumbling most notably on a recent back-to-back pair of asinine remakes: a modernization of the classic John Frankenheimer political thriller The Manchurian Candidate and The Truth About Charlie, a reworking of the well-liked Charade with Mark Wahlberg in the Cary Grant role. Seriously. Following the downward spiral, Demme rebounded with several acclaimed documentary works (Neil Young: Heart of Gold, Jimmy Carter A Man from the Plains). It's no surprise then that Rachel Getting Married bears a closer resemblance to documentary style than Demme's classical Hollywood past. The photography is all grain and shaky cam with gently lit, natural frames. At times the film feels more like culled footage from a particularly moving wedding video than a narrative work, which is as much a compliment to the performers' subtle acting and Jenny Lumet's emotionally honest script as it is to Demme's very unglamorious shooting style.

The central premise of the movie is simple enough: Rachel (a radiant Rosemarie DeWitt) is getting married and has invited her delinquent post-rehab little sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) for the wedding. Her reassimilation into the family and ongoing personal journey toward recovery make for the film's core drama. Meanwhile, in the background, the wedding plans continually roll along. Often the most dramatic moments are the most simply structured. A toasting scene that goes one by one around a long dinner table to nearly every major character (and then some) should be dull but each actor brings such believable charm and complexity that every speech is a miniature revelation. Not the least of which is Hathaway's bravura turn at the mike in which she puts the audience at disease, then charms with dark wit, and ultimately sandbags with saving grace gravitas. It's the first truly dynamite scene for her in a film full of many. The most explosive of these occurs late in the film when a torn up Kym confronts her detached mother (Debra Winger, superb in a small role) about her dark past and a physical altercation results. Thankfully, the film has as many simple charms as it does dramatic overtures. Watching Kym and Rachel's father, Paul (a beautifully human Bill Irwin) fuss over his daughters with loving devotion is a reward in its own right. So too is the budding romance between Kym and wedding attendee Kieran (a Clooney-ish charming Mather Zickel). That Kym can find time to both brood and flirt in a single film put her ahead of many other one-note indie heroines capable of only one function per film. The final wedding scene, boiled down to mostly a montage of what looked to be quite a party, also has a simple, unaffected resonance. It is as exciting as any third act spectacle but substitutes dire melodrama or epic misadventure for a simple, satisfying human celebration.

The film is not perfect, but I don't think it aspires to be. In the spaces between the tearful moments of joy and sorrow there exist several meandering downbeats. But when the goal is for art to mimic life without censorship, how can their never be moments you wish to take back? The film unfurls delicately and in the end there isn't really any completeness of closure. A feeling of improvement is undeniable but certain issues still hang in the air, dampening DeWitt's beautifully quiet send off. Rachel is sure to have an upcoming baby shower, and then maybe an anniversary party. These same elements will gather again and continue to gather, colliding in both comic and heartrending ways on and on throughout these characters' lives.

Grade: A-

Choke

In the pitch-black comedy Choke, Sam Rockwell stars as Victor Mancini, a sex addict with an ailing mother who gets by on the generosity of strangers who "save" him from asphyxiation. What his marks don't know is that Victor purposefully lodges food into his own throat and then scams them into feeling a sense of heroism and affection by letting them save his life. The dark choke joke runs throughout the film and experiences several different incarnations, ultimately culminating in a childhood revelation that helps click into place much of Victor's warped psychology.

Writer/director/actor Clark Gregg adapted the story from Chuck Palahniuk's novel of the same name. The result is a sweet and sour mix of comic and dramatic elements that occassionally grates but most typically flows along smoothly and entertainingly. Victor even encounters the challenge of a potentially serious romantic relationship with his mother's doctor, Page (Kelly McDonald), but ultimately finds himself desperate for less savory sexual activity with more complicated, meaningless females. The result is a hilarious film-stealing "fake rape" orchestrated by an internet pickup played marvelously by Heather Burns. At the same time though, Victor's mother (Anjelica Huston both in the present and in flashbacks) is slowly dying and stricken with debilitating dementia. And so we travel from sex farce to family melodrama. It's to the film's credit that the transition hardly ever feels strained. Somehow both the dark comedy of Victor's outside life and the melancholy sadness felt within his mother's hospital both go hand in hand.

If there's a flaw to this playfully obscene and dark-hearted dramedy, it's that when the credits roll, you're left trying to keep the fragments of story alive in your head. It's a film so slight and simple in its charms (however elaborately dark and strange the comic structure may be) that you don't want to forget it, but you just might. Nonetheless, there is certainly a satisfying movie experience to be had watching this little gem. It's twisted, funny, and occasionally so grimly tragic that you hope and wait for the funny to return.

Grade: B