Review: Men, Women & Children (2014)

*
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Jennifer Garner, Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ansel Elgort, Kaitlyn Dever

Put on your pearls and get ready to clutch them, because apparently there's this new thing called the internet and it is going to destroy the very fabric of society. I am genuinely perplexed as to how a filmmaker as young as Jason Reitman can make a film as wildly out of touch as Men, Women & Children, a bizarre piece of moral panic propaganda that I have a hard time believing could actually speak to anyone, it's so shrill and hysterical. Despite making the wrong choice at basically every turn, Reitman's film actually does manage to eke out a moment or two of genuine emotion, but it can hardly register when it's surrounded by so much absurdity.

Review: Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

* * *
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto, Jennifer Garner

Like its protagonist, Dallas Buyers Club is all skin and bones, a lean piece of work without any fat to trim. Also like its protagonist, it prefers action to pathos, refusing to wallow in the misery of impending death (no matter how justified such wallowing might be, in the circumstances) and instead focus on those things which make life worth living in the first place. Based on the true story of Ron Woodroof, an electrician turned AIDS activist, the film unfolds in a sharp, unsentimental way, finding its groove in some familiar and comfortable tropes and letting the power of its subject speak for itself with a minimum of fussiness. Dallas Buyers Club is a solidly made film, old fashioned in some respects but definitely effective.