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Freeheld: Mini-review

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Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore has another fatal disease in Freeheld

BFormer Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill noted that “all politics is local,” an observation that is at the heart of Freeheld. A dying woman wants to ensure that her pension benefits go to the love of her life, but because that lover is also female, a seemingly simple request becomes a focus of the Gay Rights movement.

Freeheld, based on an Oscar-winning 2007 documentary of the same name, is the story of longtime Ocean County, NJ, detective Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore), who kept her sexuality secret from her co-workers even after entering into a domestic partnership with a younger woman, Stacie Andrade (Ellen Page). When Laurel develops terminal cancer, she discovers that Stacie can’t receive the same pension benefits a married spouse could. So, with the help of outside activists, she and Stacie try to persuade the county Board of Freeholders to change their minds.

There is a deeply personal, tragic love story at the heart of Freeheld, featuring an excellent, understated performance by Ellen Page. The movie’s emphasis, however, is not on that love story or on the morality or legality of gay marriage in general, but rather on the political process involved in the decision whether or not to grant Stacie Laurel’s pension. So, as Laurel’s conditions worsens, she and Stacie fade into the background, and the film spends most of its time showing Laurel’s straight partner (Michael Shannon) and a gay activist (Steve Carell) trying to lobby the Freeholders, most notably a conscience-stricken Josh Charles, to change their minds. Director Peter Sollett is never able to make the political story in Freeheld as compelling as the emotional one except at the very end, where, a wheelchair-bound Laurel, just days from death, pleads her case in person. Further, Carell’s in-your-face performance, even if it’s historically accurate, is badly out of step with the rest of the movie. Still, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision of gay marriage, Freehold illustrates the often fascinating story of one of the hundreds of individual local ordinances and court decisions that created the political and moral climate in which the Supreme Court found itself.      
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Learning to Drive: Mini-review

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Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Clarkson sparkles in a rare lead role

BMovies starring actresses with a trace of gray in their hair who aren’t named Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore are quite rare today. So are movies about serious platonic relationships between heterosexual couples. So, Learning to Drive provides some seldom-seen delights for viewers interested in more serious, well-written fare.

The movie’s platonic couple are Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) and Darwan (Ben Kingsley). She’s a writer and literary critic in New York whose husband of some 20 years (Jake Weber) has just left her for a younger woman. He’s a Sikh driving instructor and taxi driver, granted political asylum in the U.S. so he can’t return to his native India, even for a visit. What starts as an effort to get some order in her life and simply a part of his job winds up blossoming into a real friendship.

Learning to Drive is a small, rather brief movie that is content to have its characters take small steps rather than solve all their life problems in less than 90 minutes. Clarkson is particularly radiant here, but the film makes it clear that radiance wasn’t always on display during her marriage. Kingsley has mastered this dignified sage role, but his Darwan too has a dark side, a temper and imperiousness that shows in his relation with his new wife (Sarita Choudhury), the product of a marriage arranged by his mother. For a movie this short, Learning to Drive never seems rushed. Instead, the script lets the relationship between Wendy and Darwan develop naturally. In part that’s because the script requires them to spend considerable time two feet apart in the confines of a car, a situation that encourages eventually revealing confidences to one another. Also, director Isabel Coixet wisely decides not to waste time with lame attempts at supposedly funny, bad driving set pieces. Even so, by the end of Learning to Drive, viewers feel they want to see more of Wendy and Darwan than the film allows. But Learning to Drive is a movie about minor accomplishments, and a successful film of that nature is actually a major accomplishment nowadays. 
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The Norbit Factor

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Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore is still the odds on favorite for the Best Actress Oscar for Still Alice

Eddie Redmayne

Eddie Redmayne is in a tight battle for the Best Actor Oscar.

According to conventional wisdom, Julianne Moore has this year’s Best Actress Oscar sewed up for her riveting performance in Still Alice, while Eddie Redmayne is the favorite for his role in The Theory of Everything. Before you try to cash in on this year’s office Oscar pool however, you might want to remember back to 2007 when a dreadful stinker of a film named Norbit just might have derailed Eddie Murphy‘s chances at winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Going into the Oscars that year, Murphy was on a roll. His performance in Dreamgirls was hailed as a career best (probably an accurate statement) and a sign that he had matured as an actor after a decade or more of cash grabs in various dreadful films. He had already won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award that year. Yet, when Rachel Weisz announced the winner, it was Alan Arkin (for Little Miss Sunshine) who wound up with the prize:
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Still Alice: Mini-Review

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Julianne Moore

Julianne Moore is still the odds on favorite for the Best Actress Oscar for Still Alice

BIn recent years, the Best Actress Oscar competition has been decidedly one-sided, with one actress blowing away the competition with a stunning performance. That trend is almost certainly going to continue this year. Julianne Moore is simply so good in Still Alice that her fellow nominees’ performances pale in comparison.

Still Alice provides Moore with the type of role that often leads to an Oscar nomination, the person with a disability. She plays Alice Howland, a professor of linguistics who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s shortly after she turns 50. The movie flows her inevitable downward spiral, from the first indications of forgetfulness through the various coping mechanisms she develops to deal with he increasing disability leading, eventually, to the final stages of near complete helplessness.

Despite a talented supporting case including Alec Baldwin as Alice’s husband, John,  and Kristen Stewart as her younger daughter, Still Alice focuses almost exclusively on Alice’s struggles. Scenes such as one in which she tries to deliver a speech become moments of high drama, but nothing in Moore’s performance seems overplayed. Instead, her actions are generally understated, as she often forgets as simply as others remember. However, Alice’s tragedy isn’t hers alone; it’s a family tragedy. The movie touches on her husband’s and children’s emotions but spends too little time with them. So, audiences see John as a man who is pretty much aloof rather than a man who’s undoubtedly deeply conflicted between a desire to care for his wife and the realization that he can’t destroy his own life as well. Thanks to Moore’s performance, Still Alice gives viewers rare insight into the mechanics and progression of Alzheimer’s disease, but, in essence, it’s just a well-acted disease movie of the week rather than an insightful drama about a family in crisis. 
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Seventh Son: Mini-Review

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Julianne Moore Jeff Bridges

Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges can’t possibly be talking about Seventh Son here.

D+Between them, Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore have ten Oscar nominations and one Oscar (a total that’s likely to grow before the end of the month). I think it’s a safe bet that that’s ten more nominations than everyone associated with the dismal mess known as Seventh Son is likely to receive. 

Seventh Son is the latest attempt to cash in on the YA science fiction/fantasy market in search of a viable franchise. It’s the story of Master Gregory (Bridges), an elderly knight who’s more of a witch hunter than a traditional knight, and his latest apprentice Tom (Ben Barnes), who are on the trail of Mother Malkin (Moore), a powerful witch thirsting for revenge against Gregory, her former lover. Complicating matters is the fact that Tom also has the hots for a witch, Alice (Alicia Vikander), who happens to be Malkin’s niece and has somewhat conflicted loyalties.

The storyline of Seventh Son is similar to that of the TV show Grimm, except that Grimm has a lot more energy and is much more fun to watch. The role of Gregory should be a natural for Bridges, but he looks and moves like Don Quixote’s grandfather and talks like Rooster Cogburn with a lobotomy. It’s also distractingly obvious that he’s been replaced by a stunt double in his poorly staged fight scenes. Barnes is extremely bland, and his scenes with Bridges lack any real tension or humor. In fact, the only real humor or energy in the movie is supplied by Moore, who is enjoyably over-the-top. Still, her relatively brief performance can’t disguise the facts that the movie’s special effects are routine, and the action sequences are dull.  For a film about magic, Seventh Son entirely lacks any magic of its own.
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