list.co.uk/fi lm Reviews | FILM
COMEDY DRAMA MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN (15) 120min ●●●●● DRAMA STATIONS OF THE CROSS (15) 110min ●●●●●
COMEDY DRAMA ST VINCENT (12A) 102min ●●●●●
Jason Reitman’s state-of-the-nation mosaic starts off with the promise of something Altman-esque but winds up closer in tone to the films of Richard Curtis. Reitman and co-writer Erin Cressida Wilson weave together a set of tales illustrating concerns about an America where adolescents are obsessed with porn, parents have no concept of their children’s hidden lives, and everyone is beguiled by celebrity and dehumanised by technology. We’re swept into the lives of suffocatingly
protective parent Patricia (Jennifer Garner), her daughter Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever) and the object of Brandy’s affection Tim (Ansel Elgort). Then there is suburban dad Don (Adam Sandler) and his wife Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt), so preoccupied by their own marital woes that they fail to see the misery of their porn-addicted teenage son Chris (Travis Tope).
The mixture of soap-opera-style melodrama and cutting comedy is never less than enjoyable but beneath the satirical swipe is a conservative film intent on wagging fingers and teaching lessons. Ultimately, Reitman’s reach exceeds his grasp but at least this is a vast improvement on his schmaltzy romance Labor Day. (Allan Hunter) ■ General release from Fri 5 Dec.
This meaty, provocative drama uses the structure and form of religious art to explore the effects of religious indoctrination. Through 14 sections, each consisting of just one take, shot from a fixed position (with two exceptions), director Dietrich Brüggemann charts several days in the life of Maria, a teenage member of the Priestly Society of St Paul, a strict Vatican II-denying branch of Catholicism. Brüggemann meticulously exploits the potential of these fixed frames in a way that recalls Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. He arranges characters in positions akin to religious frescoes, inviting us to contemplate faces and small movements. But while the scenes are precisely choreographed, they also feel naturalistic.
This is partly due to the writing by Brüggemann and his sister Anna. The dialogue nudges questions about Maria’s worldview and how it has been shaped to the surface. Yet the film’s success is equally due to the performances, particularly Lea van Acken, stunning in her screen debut as Maria. Her face is a gift, pale and troubled like a classically painted martyr. The tensions that the film wrestles with are written on that face. (Paul Gallagher) ■ Limited release from Fri 28 Nov.
Bill Murray is no stranger to misanthropic sad-sacks and his titular Vincent is one such crabby feller, albeit with a slightly coarser edge. Writer-director Theodore Melfi proves a dab hand at comedy but undermines his film’s lively characterisations by careening toward cliché.
Vincent is a former war hero living a squalid and inebriated existence. The desperation of his neighbour Maggie (Melissa McCarthy) leads to Vincent babysitting her son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher) and he schools him in his own inimitable way: teaching him to gamble, and taking him to a dive bar. Murray and Lieberher make an appropriately
inappropriate double-act, while in support, Naomi Watts reminds us of her comedic skills as an Eastern European prostitute / pole-dancer whose pregnancy is having a negative impact on her trade. For the most part St Vincent is sweet and salty in near equal measure; however, the conventionally tear-jerking finale feels out of place in an endearingly scrappy film that puts up its dukes for outsiders and is at its best when showcasing its leftfield, lower-key charms. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 5 Dec.
WESTERN THE HOMESMAN (15) 123min ●●●●●
Since Clint Eastwood hung up his holster, those of us who love westerns thank Tommy Lee Jones for keeping the genre alive. That’s not to say his second directorial effort is any kind of familiar rootin’-tootin’ shoot ’em up, or man-in-need-of- redemption quest. The eponymous character is an irredeemable reprobate, and that’s just the way he likes it. George Briggs (Jones) is a claim jumper whose seizure of
a homestead is about to get him hanged when plainswoman Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) intervenes. She’s in need of a neanderthal to assist her on a long, dangerous journey escorting three madwomen from a relentlessly austere Nebraska to a haven in green and pleasant Iowa. Grudging respect grows between the filthy rascal and the dignified, resourceful spinster. But if this sounds like The African Queen meets Rooster Cogburn, be aware that flashes of sardonic humour and painful poignancy are to be gratefully received in a sombre, frequently horrific depiction of the pioneer experience.
This is a story of courage, true grit and despair, energised by striking visuals, shocking twists and stings in the telling. It’s also enlivened by a string of meaty cameos (Meryl Streep among them) as the party encounter the good but mostly the brutally bad and ugly. Swank is heartbreaking and Jones is masterful as the quixotic, cantankerous ne’er-do-well of unpredictable impulses. The source for this dour western is startling: the late novelist Glendon Swarthout is best known for the daddy of teen- fling tales Where the Boys Are, but he also wrote The Shootist which provided an elegiac farewell for John Wayne. If Jones never makes another western, The Homesman will stand as an offbeat, original, hauntingly memorable piece. (Angie Errigo) ■ General release from Fri 21 Nov.
13 Nov–11 Dec 2014 THE LIST 61