Stoker

Please say you didn't get Joaquin Phoenix 
to kill this husband, too.

Grade: B

Director: Park Chan-wook

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode and Jacki Weaver

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Of all the films to share an ending similar to Spring Breakers, an atmospheric psychological thriller from a South Korean director wouldn’t seem the most likely candidate. But it’s the final act of Stoker that saves this studied fable of familial dysfunction and teen angst.

Director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) layers K-horror tropes onto a premise drawn from Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.” In the wake of her father’s death, 18-year-old India (Mia Wasikowska) and her emotionally distant mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) are visited by long lost Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode, adopting the same character name as Joseph Cotten in Hitchcock’s film). The appearance of this tall, dark stranger triggers mysterious dread from everyone—including the family’s housekeeper and great Auntie Gin (Jacki Weaver)—except the flirtatious Evelyn and already moody India.

Making his English-language debut, Park struggles to modulate the cadence of the dialogue and produce realistic caricatures—India’s male high school classmates look like extras from a European stage production of West Side Story. And Park’s hyper-stylized direction nearly sucks any spontaneity from the film during its establishing stages—at one point, a close-up of Kidman’s reddish hair dissolves into an overhead shot of wild reeds. But, once the aesthetics start servicing the storyline—and Charlie literally loosens his belt a bit—the bloody, psychosexual mysteries of this neo-Southern Gothic tale (filmed in and around Nashville, Tenn.) gradually come into tantalizing focus. This includes the open question—stoked by Park—of how much of this story reveals the truth about Charlie and how much are figments of India’s imagination.

*Originally published at INDYweek.com

Silver Linings Playbook

Well, it ain't Ozzie and Harriet

Grade: A
Director: David O. Russell
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver and Chris Tucker
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hr. 2 min.

A Hollywood romantic-comedy reflected in a fun house mirror, Silver Linings Playbook ends with a guy literally chasing after a girl, but only after the girl spends much of the film literally chasing him down. Such is the symmetry and idiosyncrasy of writer-director David O. Russell’s blessed return to his screwball comedy origins of Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster after trawling for Oscars with an overrated The Fighter.

After an eight-month stint in a Baltimore mental institution, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) returns to the Philadelphia home of his eccentric mom Dolores (Jacki Weaver) and dad Jack Sr. (Robert De Niro). Pat, an ex-high school teacher, landed in the loony bin after nearly beating his wife Nikki’s lover to death. Now out of the hospital, Pat embarks on a quixotic quest to win back his bygone spouse, in violation of both common sense and several active restraining orders.

During an otherwise disastrous dinner party with friends, Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a shapely widow whose own bipolar battles prompted promiscuity, losing her job and moving into the guest quarters behind her parents’ house. Tiffany takes an uneven liking to Pat even though he continues to foolhardily pine after Nikki. Pat also struggles to reconcile with his dad, an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive, gambling addict and long-suffering Eagles fan now launching a misguided second career as a bookmaker. Pat Sr.’s desire to spend time with his son is partly a desire to connect and partly a superstitious belief that Pat’s presence on the family couch brings his beloved “Birds” good luck and Pat Sr. good fortune.

Silver Linings Playbook is a delightful, virtuoso marriage of humor, poignancy, fluid camerawork, lighting and music ranging from The White Stripes to Ella Fitzgerald to Led Zeppelin. There’s a Dylan and Johnny Cash duet of “Girl From The North Country,” along with Frank Sinatra’s plaintive rendition of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” And the film nearly does for Stevie Wonder’s “My Cherie Amour” what “Sea of Love” did for Phil Phillips’ 1959 recording.

It’s an eclectic stew that navigates its darker and lighter moments with equal aplomb, including, of all things, an amateur dance competition. But it all works thanks to Russell’s sure hand and a terrific cast, led by awards-worth performances from Lawrence and Cooper, the latter appearing in virtually every scene and managing Russell’s distinctive prose through varying gears of mania. Much is said throughout this verbose film, but the imagery is also revealing: even a simple shot of Pat’s portrait propped against the wall, dismounted from its perch alongside his brother’s, speaks volumes about the dysfunctional Solitano family dynamic.

The film’s tidy ending is incongruous with the rest of its inspired untidiness. Still, while Silver Linings Playbook is a romance, it’s also a movie about the obsessions and anxieties of ordinary peoples, whether over a long lost love or a favorite football team.

Animal Kingdom

Grade: B

Director: David Michôd

Starring: James Frecheville, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton, and Jacki Weaver

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hour, 53 minutes

There is little honor among thieves – or police, for that matter – in the oh-so aptly named Animal Kingdom.

Audiences have long been primed to expect a contrasting balance of loyalty and pitiless expediency when it comes to pop-cultural portrayals of felonious families, whether the Corleones or the Sopranos. David Michôd’s Australian crime drama – his feature debut and the World Cinema dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner at this year’s Sundance film festival – presents a milieu in which the cruelest survive and devotion is a fungible commodity.

The lack of moral equilibrium hits you from the opening scene, in which 17-year-old Joshua (James Frecheville) – J for short – impassively watches a game show as paramedics futilely attempt to revive his smack-addict mother. As a virtual cipher, J is taken in by the rest of the Cody clan, an extended family led by the affectionately named Grandma Smurf (Jacki Weaver) and J’s three uncles – Darren (Luke Ford); Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), and Barry (Joel Edgerton) – bank robbers whose exploits are only shown over the opening credits via haunting black-and-white surveillance camera stills.

Duplicitous cops – some more interested in summary retribution than evidence gathering – are hot on the Codys’ trail, particularly after eldest brother and ringleader Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) resurfaces. The police’s Star Chamber tactics prompt a violent reprisal in the form of ambushing and gunning down two young police officers – the screenplay is loosely inspired by the real events surrounding the Walsh Street police shootings that took place in Melbourne in 1988.

One honest investigator, Leckie (Guy Pearce), zeroes in on J as the family’s weakest link and his best chance at turning someone state’s evidence. What follows is a sometimes subtle, often brutal battle for the J’s allegiance between Leckie, insane Pope, and a grandmother not afraid to flash her wizened talons when necessary.

A sociopathic vibe permeates Animal Kingdom, as the (threat of) violence that dictates every twist and turn feels not so much shocking as eerily inevitable. Degrees of depravity are the only way to assign relative villainy, and there are no heroes but rather those who don’t deserve to die as much as others. In this regard, Animal Kingdom reminded me of another Australian genre retooling, John Hillcoat’s neo-western The Proposition.

Michôd’s minimalist staging ratchets up the tension – a dead girl’s nearby ringing cell phone evokes more dread than her actual murder. A game cast – especially Frecheville and Mendelsohn – completes this crime family portrait that jumps past any glorification of their misadventures and instead wallows in their deconstruction. It’s Goodfellas without the wise-guy farce. And, while J’s ultimate character arc may loosely parallel Michael Corleone in The Godfather, the moral to Animal Kingdom is not “blood is thicker than water.” Instead, J quickly learns a different Corleone directive: Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/animal-kingdom-is-a-tough-aussie-crime-drama/Content?oid=1684380