Review: Freeheld (2015)

* *
Director: Peter Sollett
Starring: Julianne Moore, Ellen Page, Michael Shannon

Freeheld, based on the Academy Award winning documentary short film of the same name, is the sort of film that is perhaps most generously described as "well meaning." It takes on an important subject that, despite its events taking place 10 years ago, was still more than relevant at the time of its theatrical release last fall, thanks to the US Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage, and aims to be a rousing and powerful depiction of our continuing march towards equality. At times it is a rousing and powerful film. More often, though, it's a film that doesn't even actually seem all that interested in the two women who were the subject of that original documentary which makes the feature possible, and instead reduces them to being catalysts for the male characters around them to take action and bring about change and/or wrestle with their own personal feelings as they try to decide whether or not they want to be on the right side of history. Julianne Moore and Ellen Page are really good as the two women in question, but the film really gives them short shrift.

Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

* * *
Director: Francis Lawrence
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Donald Sutherland, Josh Hutcherson, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson

There will come a time once The Hunger Games series finishes when I'll revisit all of the films and perhaps at that point I'll have a better appreciation for Mockingjay - Part 1. Right now I'm having a hard time finding an artistic justification for the series having joined the increasingly annoying trend of splitting the final story of a would-be trilogy into two films (the economic justification is, of course, obvious). Don't get me wrong, Mockingjay - Part 1 is a good movie and I liked it well enough, but there's no denying that it feels distinctly... padded. At 123 minutes it's the shortest film of the series by nearly half an hour, yet it lacks the sense of urgency of either of the predecessor films and the amount of table setting for the next film is much more obvious here than it was in either The Hunger Games or Catching Fire. If those films were representative of Katniss being the "girl on fire," Mockingjay - Part 1 is representative of Katniss being the "girl on a slow simmer."

Canadian Film Review: Maps to the Stars (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Julianne Moore, John Cusack

For me, Maps to the Stars is a bit of return to form for David Cronenberg, whose last two films - the decent, but kind of bloodless A Dangerous Method, and the ambitious but dull Cosmopolis - didn't really do much for me. A bit messy, tonally inconsistent, full of "unlikeable" characters, and centering on subject matter that can most generously be described as "uncomfortable," Maps is certain to have its detractors, but I enjoyed it for its dark comedy, its scathing view of celebrity, and its terrific performances. That said, after this film and Interstellar it will be some time before I need to see another film which finds it necessary to have its characters repeat one section of one poem over and over and over again.

Review: Don Jon (2013)

* * *
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore

One of the great misconceptions about feminism is that it's something which solely benefits women, and one of the great deceptions about patriarchy is that it's only harmful to women. Patriarchy creates impossible and restrictive standards for men just as it does for women, entrenching in each gender ideas and expectations regarding the other which are unfair at best, and destructive at worst. This is a long way of saying that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's feature directorial debut Don Jon is an uncommonly intelligent film about the ways men and women relate (or fail to do so) and how the culture of "masculinity" and "femininity" determines the confines of that discourse - even if the film ultimately does not quite live up to its thematic ideals.

Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

* * *
Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Starring: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Emma Stone

Not many movies combine sweetness and cynicism as well or as winningly as Crazy, Stupid, Love. This is a movie that knows the score when it comes to relationships and their complications, that doesn't count on romantic illusions, but still has the audacity to hope for them. With a strong screenplay by Dan Fogelman and a fantastic cast of actors, Crazy, Stupid, Love is one of the rare delights of the post-summer blockbuster, pre-autumn Oscar bait part of the movie season.

Review: The Kids Are All Right (2010)

* * * *
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Starring: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffallo

The kids are, indeed, all right though the adults are kind of messed up. Lisa Cholodenko's latest film has been much hyped (way hyped), but hopefully its early in the year release will allow it complete the "hype/over-hyped/reconsidered" cycle in time to secure some very well-deserved Oscar nominations. This story of a family and a marriage in crisis is thoughtful, extremely well-acted, and alternates easily between being very funny and very moving.

The kids are Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), two perfectly average suburban teenagers save for the fact that they’re being raised by two mothers. Joni has just graduated from high school and since she’s 18, Laser encourages her to contact the sperm bank their mothers used in order to find out the identity of their donor. Though reluctant, Joni ultimately agrees to do it since it means so much to her brother, and after a somewhat awkward phone call the siblings meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo). When their mothers, Nik (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), find out about the meeting it opens the floodgates for a lot of anxieties, putting pressure on a relationship that’s already at a shaky stage.

When Paul hires Jules to do some landscaping work at his house, things go from bad to worse. With Jules and Paul growing closer (much too close) and him exercising a degree of influence on the kids that she finds troubling, Nik increasingly feels like her family is in jeopardy or, rather, like her place in the family is slipping away. When she discovers that Jules and Paul have been having an affair, the family’s delicate balance is irrevocably changed and all the film's relationships are thrown into a tailspin.

The Kids Are All Right occupies a somewhat odd position pop culture-wise in that it centers on a gay relationship and works to legitimize it in part by highlighting all the ways that gay relationships aren't really so different from straight ones, while at the same time having a plot that hinges on a trope seen in a lot of mainstream films and TV shows and that often serves to reassure male viewers that lesbians aren't threatening because, ultimately, they're just waiting for the right man - a line of thinking which obviously undercuts the idea that a lesbian relationship is legitimate or real. The film thus finds itself in the strange position of being criticized by both the Christian right for being too gay, and by the gay community for being too straight.

In terms of the gay community's response, I do think that the displeasure incited by Jules' affair with Paul is valid given the dearth of positive portrayals of same sex relationships within the mainstream, but I also think this criticism is somewhat misplaced with regards to this particular film. For one thing, the development makes sense in the context of the rest of the story: after two decades together Nik and Jules have grown apart, Jules feels like there’s a power imbalance in the relationship, and she feels like her children are growing up and away from her. Paul reminds her of her kids, he makes her feel useful, and he doesn’t criticize her. Their affair isn’t about a lesbian who discovers that she wants sex with a man, but about a lonely woman reaching out for something familiar and comforting. For another thing, the development really isn’t surprising within the context Cholodenko’s work as a whole. Sexual fluidity and infidelity (and its effects) are consistent themes for her, the only difference is that in High Art and Laurel Canyon women in relationships with men have affairs with women. All Cholodenko has done is flip the script that she typically works with.

Laying all that aside, beneath whatever controversies the film has inspired it is, ultimately, a very good movie. Cholodenko, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg, gives the characters plenty of room to breathe and allows them to be more than two dimentional drones at the mercy of the plot. There is a richness to the characters, the way they interact with each other, and the way the film approaches them (not to mention the masterful way in which each is played) that makes the film worth multiple viewings. I've really only scratched the surface of what makes The Kids Are All Right worth talking about; there is a lot to this movie and I really don't think I could recommend it more.

Canadian Film Review: Chloe (2010)

* * *
Director: Atom Egoyan
Starring: Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson

Uh... the hell?

From its first moments Atom Egoyan’s Chloe foregrounds the theme of masquerade. In a voice over the title character, played with aplomb by Amanda Seyfried, informs us that she’s capable of becoming anyone, of becoming exactly the person that a given situation requires. In hindsight the end of the film is spelled out in the beginning, but I have to admit that while watching it, it threw me for a loop. I guess there’s a degree to which that’s to the film’s credit, even though I think the ending is ultimately the weakest part of this whole endeavour.

From Chloe the film then moves to Catherine (Julianne Moore), a Toronto gynaecologist experiencing midlife anxieties. When her husband, David (Liam Neeson), misses his flight home and she later finds a photograph that may be innocuous but may also be incriminating on his phone, she becomes convinced that he’s sleeping around. After a brief run-in with Chloe in a restaurant, Catherine pursues her, wanting to hire her to test David’s fidelity. All she wants, she insists, is to know what David would do if approached by Chloe, but when she meets with Chloe later to find out how it went, she decides that the situation needs further testing. And then further testing. And then...

Given the number of articles about the film I’ve read in the last couple of days in which the word “lesbian” is part of the headline, I suppose it’s no secret that Catherine herself becomes sexually involved with Chloe. The scene itself is rather explicit but in no way exploitative; the way that it comes about is natural to the psychosexual themes that Egoyan is exploring. The story is all about Catherine’s feelings of being disconnected from her own sexuality and Chloe – who tells us at the beginning that she’s more symbol than person – represents both her current feelings of being sexually obsolete and her memory of her own once powerful sensuality. Her relationship with Chloe is less about any kind of sexual attraction to Chloe specifically than to the feeling of revitalization she gets from living vicariously through her. The stories that Chloe tells her, which seem to give her a particularly strong charge, serve to illuminate a connection to David that she herself has lost sight of; when she initiates sex with Chloe, she does so by asking for a demonstration of how David touches her. To her this isn't her having sex with Chloe, but her playing the role of David having sex with Catherine, played by Chloe. The film’s treatment of these murky waters is fascinating and makes it worth seeing even if it does (and I honestly can’t emphasize this enough) fly totally off the rails in its final ten or fifteen minutes.

Whatever weaknesses Chloe might have, no blame can be laid on the actors. Moore renders an effectively contained performance as a woman who sees sex in purely clinical terms and only reluctantly (and perhaps never fully) opens herself up to the possibilities of sensuality. She's a very cold character in terms of how she deals with others and quite possibly the most brutal figure in the whole the story (I'm still undecided about how I feel about the final shot: is it a tribute inspired by guilt, or is it a callous expression of triumph?). It's interesting to watch her play this very closed off character opposite Seyfried, whose Chloe is open to the point that her entire personality is dependent on the person with whom she's interacting. Seyfried has a tough job in this movie because the closer the story gets to the end, the more unbelievable her character should become, yet she makes you believe in Chloe. In her first interactions with Catherine, she hints at the things to come but manages to pull back just enough that she's never overplaying her hand and giving everything away. By the end of the film you should probably hate Chloe, but I actually found her to be the most sympathetic character, which I think is a testament to what Seyfried is able to accomplish with the role.

Many of the themes explored in Chloe are familiar from Egoyan's previous films. He's a filmmaker preoccupied with the psychology of sexuality and here focuses on voyeurism and what I suppose you could term sexual surrogacy. Much of what he does with this film is very interesting, though it must be conceded that when it comes to visually expressing the story's themes, he sometimes uses a mallet when a hammer would be sufficient. Nevertheless, what works in Chloe works very well. What doesn't work may leave you a bit baffled and results in a film that is uneven at best, but still one that I would recommend, albeit by a narrow margin.

Review: A Single Man (2009)

* * * 1/2
Director: Tom Ford
Starring: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode

A Single Man is perhaps the most elegant film to come out of 2009. Beautifully photographed (I honestly can't emphasize that enough) and sensitively told, it follows a day in the life of George Falconer (Colin Firth), an English professor mourning the loss of his partner of 16 years as the rest of the world panics over the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the help of solid performances from Colin Firth and Julianne Moore, Tom Ford's directorial debut demonstrates a lot of promise.

George's goal is simple: just make it to the end of the day. Eight months ago he lost Jim (Matthew Goode) in a car accident and now his life is reduced to a series of empty rituals. It is his intention to make this his final day on earth and he spends it tying up loose ends by emptying out his safe deposit box, cleaning out his office, and spending one final evening with his friend Charley (Julianne Moore), a boozy divorcée who, like him, is a British transplant. He writes notes to the people he'll be leaving behind, he lays out the suit he wishes to be buried in, and he tries to find the best way to stage the scene to leave behind the least amount of mess, resulting in a darkly funny scene with a sleeping bag.

Throughout the day George is haunted by memories of Jim, both good and bad. The worst comes in the form of a scene in which George finds out, over the phone, that Jim has been killed and that he's not welcome at the funeral. "It's for family only," Jim's cousin explains after revealing that Jim's parents didn't even want to inform George of the loss. The undercurrent of this conversation will be revisited later in a conversation with Charley who, despite her affection for George and her knowledge of how much Jim meant to him, tacitly states that the relationship wasn't "real." The film is never heavy handed in the way that it deals with the repulsive unfairness of society's treatment of gays and lesbians, which makes the story all the more effective. More devastating than Jim's family's treatment of George is George's quiet acceptance of it and, similarly, Charley's statement is all the more cutting because she actually knew George and Jim as a couple and knows how deeply George was and continues to be affected by the loss, but still acts as if it was some passing phase, a minor interruption on his way to resuming a "normal" life, perhaps with her. This isn't just a matter of him not being accepted; it's that they don't take him seriously as a thinking, feeling human being because of his sexuality.

Visually, A Single Man is stunning - it should come as no surprise that Ford has an eye for composing beautiful shots. Sometimes, perhaps, the film over-emphasizes the visual aspect and starts to drift dangerously towards seeming more like a perfume ad than a film, but it still never looks less than exquisite. My favourite visual trope here is the way a scene will begin with kind of a washed out look and then flush suddenly with color at a key moment. I really hope that the Oscars recognize Eduard Grau's work as cinematographer come nomination day because he demonstrates a great deal of versatility in just this one film.

Come Oscar nomination day I also hope (and at this point fully expect) to see Firth's beautiful, subtle performance recognized. It is, by necessity, a performance of great restraint. George is hiding in plain sight, putting on a mask so that he can meet the world without encountering harassment or violence in return. Consider the way that Ford shows George putting on his suit in the morning, piece by piece as if he's putting on armour and preparing for battle. What we're seeing is George preparing to play the role of "George." Firth's performance - in addition to Moore's, which is also quite good - gives the film that extra push to make it more than an exercise in putting together a series of pretty shots. Truth be told, as much as I liked A Single Man and as confident as Ford's direction is, he ultimately isn't really skilled enough as a director to get very deep below the surface of the story (and the story itself is sometimes a bit lacking - the ending, especially, left me cold) and a lot of heavy lifting is left to the actors. Still, it's a strong effort and a truly gorgeous piece of work.

Review: Far From Heaven (2002)

* * * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Julianne Moore, Dennis Haysbert, Dennis Quaid

Todd Haynes is a filmmaker I’ve been aware of for a while now but until recently I’d never actually seen any of his films. I’d been meaning to see Far From Heaven for years but for some reason or another never got around to it. Recently seeing I’m Not There inspired me to seek out Haynes’ previous effort and I’m so glad I did, otherwise I’d have really missed out.

Inspired by the Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s, the film stars Julianne Moore as Cathy Whitaker, a housewife whose life seems picture perfect from the outside. She and her husband, Frank (Dennis Quaid), appear to be the model couple but even before Cathy discovers that Frank is leading a secret life, she knows that there’s something a little off about their relationship. When she and her girlfriends sit around the kitchen table discussing the frequency of their sex lives, she knows that her marriage is very different from those of other women, women whose husbands aren’t always working late and always too tired. She has no idea what, exactly, is wrong in her marriage until she sees Frank with another man and he confesses to having “a problem.” While he’s seeking therapy, Cathy develops a friendship with Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert), which quickly becomes the talk of the town due to the fact of Raymond being black.

The way that the film deals with issues of race is very compelling, especially when combined with its treatment of homosexuality. Both Cathy and Frank are horrified by Frank’s secret life, but his homosexuality is seen as something that he can “recover” from and is further seen as something which can be kept a secret – if people saw Frank and another man together on the street, they wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the two were lovers. Cathy’s relationship with Raymond, however, is something that people can see and Cathy being seen with Raymond is something that people talk about, something which has consequences for Cathy and her family in a social sense. The story may take place in the “progressive North,” but that doesn’t mean that racism isn’t any less socialized into people than it is in any other place.

The film gets a lot of things really right. The color pallet of the costumes, especially, is very evocative of films made in Hollywood in the 1950s with their rich, bright colors. Anyone familiar with 50s melodrama, particularly the films of Douglas Sirk, will recognize many of the themes and tropes of the genre in this film, as well as the more subtle language of coding. For example, while Frank is openly acknowledged by the film as being gay, there’s another character who appears briefly in one scene who is openly coded as being gay through his dress, mannerisms and speech patterns (you’ll know him the second you see him).

In its dealings with issues of race, Far From Heaven made me think of another relatively recent film: Pleasantville. While Pleasantville is heavy with irony, emphasizing the ways that the protagonists and the film itself are aware of and acknowledging the ways that values have changed since the 1950s, Far From Heaven approaches the subject in a way that is entirely sincere, reflecting the values and mores of the 1950s as if it was actually made in 1957, and not just set in 1957. This makes for really effective storytelling because it keeps the film from being preachy or winky and forces one to reflect on the ways that subtle and more overt forms of racism are still socialized into us today.

This is an incredibly thoughtful and well-made movie. The performance rendered by Julianne Moore, playing a woman who seems destined by her time and place to always be somehow unfulfilled, is excellent, perhaps one of the most unsung performances of the last decade. I’m only sorry it took me so long to finally see it.

LAMB Movie of the Month: The Big Lebowski (1998)

* * *
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

A kidnapping gone awry, a bungled ransom drop, a cast of peculiar characters, and appearances by Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi – sound familiar? Not quite. The Big Lebowski is the polar opposite of Fargo, as light as the other is dark, as funny as the other is tragic. With a keen eye for absurdity, writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen deliver a film that is truly one of a kind.

The Big Lebowski begins with Jeff Lebowski, known to all as The Dude (Jeff Bridges) being mistaken for a millionaire also named Lebowski, whose wife is in debt to a pornographer. Two guys show up at Lebowski’s abode, rough him up, and ruin a rug before realizing that they’ve got the wrong guy. After relating his tale to his friend, Walt (John Goodman), The Dude is convinced to go to the Big Lebowski and ask for compensation for the rug, which he receives by simply taking one of the rugs in Lebowski’s mansion. Shortly after their meeting, Mrs. Lebowski (Tara Reid) is kidnapped (or perhaps not) and The Dude is recruited to act as a courier to deliver the ransom. The money is lost when The Dude’s car is stolen, a toe is sent to Lebowski as a means of encouraging him to deliver the money, and people keep showing up at The Dude’s demanding answers. The plot of the film is kind of nonsensical and a little meandering, which would bother me were it not for the fact that I think the story is being told this way intentionally. I mean, if a stoner was trying to relate this story to you, including the subplots involving him getting Lebowski’s daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore) pregnant, and his bowling team’s quest to win the championship, you wouldn’t expect it to be entirely cohesive nor would you expect all the threads to tie up nicely.

There are a lot of quirky characters in the film – as there tend to be in all the Coens’ comedies – and a lot of truly bizarre moments (and I mean that in the best possible way). Walt is a Vietnam vet with anger issues who constantly steps in to help The Dude, but only manages to make things much, much worse each and every time; Maude is an artist with a penchant for flying over her canvas, flicking her brushes Jackson Pollack-style; the alleged kidnappers are a trio of German nihilists who don’t quite seem to understand why they shouldn’t get the ransom even if they don’t have Mrs. Lebowski – The Dude, himself, is actually the most normal of the bunch.

As The Dude, Bridges delivers a really well-realized characterization of a guy who always seems like he’s this close to expressing some great thought, but fails because his brain and his mouth are out of step with each other and because his ideas, once thought, drift away and can never again be recovered. Bridges isn’t an actor I’ve ever gone out of my way to see, but I’ve always found that movies he’s in are better for the fact that he’s in them. He’s a very naturalistic actor and slips so completely and easily into his roles, which is maybe why he’s never really been given as much credit as he deserves. The presence of Bridges, more than anything else, really grounds the film and keeps it from going too far over the top.