CRITIC'S CHOICE
CRIME
Ben Affleck, all is forgiven. All those big, dumb action flicks you zombie-walked through with your chest puffed out to here, and the publicity machine's blare back in your Bennifer days, none of that matters anymore. Based on Gone Baby Gone—your impressive first shot at directing—buried beneath all that Hollywood hype was a serious, reflective guy who was paying attention to how smart movies are made and to what really matters in life.
Gone, cowritten by Affleck from a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), is a moving, character-driven drama about a private investigator (Casey Affleck, Ben's younger brother) looking for a little girl snatched from his gritty Boston neighborhood. As he helps police with the case, he uncovers dark secrets about neighbors and the cops that reveal just how tragically messy life can sometimes be.
Casey Affleck couldn't be better. His baby-faced character grows up before our eyes, eventually coming to understand that the world is filled with moral ambiguity. Good people do bad things for the right reasons while doing the right thing can sometimes turn out sadly wrong. Gone's storytelling becomes noticeably cluttered and clunky for a patch partway through, but director Affleck gets his story back on track in time to serve up a haunting finish. I look forward to his next film.
Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard | R |
DRAMA
This topical drama feels like a watered-down Babel—with preachier babble. Employing a talented ensemble cast and overlapping story lines, Rendition follows a pregnant American (Witherspoon) whose Egyptian-born scientist husband (Omar Metwally) is, with covert U.S. government help, jailed overseas. There he is brutally interrogated about possible terrorist connections, a process overseen by a young CIA official (Gyllenhaal). The movie's issues—under the practice of "rendition," terror suspects are surreptitiously turned over by the U.S. to foreign allies who may use abusive methods to gain information—are real, but the characters illustrating them rarely rise above walking headlines.
Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro | R |
DRAMA
No way around it, moping is a downer. Poor Berry spends nearly all of Things We Lost in the Fire stuck in a deep blue funk. Her character has good reason to be unhappy: Her loving husband (David Duchovny) has been killed in a senseless shooting, leaving her alone in a big house in Seattle with two young kids. She invites her husband's oldest friend (Del Toro), a recovering junkie, to move into her empty garage. Slowly, these two hurting souls help each other to mend. Danish director Susanne Bier (After the Wedding) keeps Things admirably focused on the emotional journey of the characters, but there's too little story for a fully satisfying trip. Del Toro gives the film what life it has, doing the unexpected—whether in a line reading or a look—in scene after scene.
Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Connelly, Mira Sorvino | R |
DRAMA
Starts strongly, pulls up short well before the finish. That's the call on Reservation Road, a dramatic thriller about the intertwined lives of two men and their differing reactions to the death of a boy in a hit-and-run accident. Ethan (Phoenix), a college professor, is the dead boy's father, who lets his grief turn to obsessive rage. Lawyer Dwight (Ruffalo) was the man behind the wheel, and he battles his conscience about whether to turn himself in. When their paths unwittingly cross, the film becomes hopelessly contrived. And when one of them purchases a gun, well, you know it'll make an appearance sooner rather than later. The four lead actors—Connelly is Phoenix's wife, Sorvino plays Ruffalo's ex—all work hard, but they're toiling in vain once Road takes an ill-advised sharp turn toward melodrama.
Josh Hartnett, Melissa George | R |
HORROR
Grizzly bears have just lost their monopoly on chomping away at humans in Alaska. In 30 Days of Night, ravenous vampires invade the 49th state, heading for tiny Barrow, Alaska's northernmost settlement. The lure: 30 days sans sunlight—Eden for a vampire—and warm-blooded humans on whom to munch. After escaping an initial massacre, the local sheriff (Hartnett) and a small band of brave survivors do their best to elude and outwit the hungry visitors. The plotting here is conventional, with no more character development than necessary, but there are a couple scenes that will make you shiver. And Danny Huston, as the vampire leader, has the chilling gaze of a true fanatic.
• The Australian actress, 31, bravely battles the undead in 30 Days of Night. It's aliens and zombies that creep her out.
WAS FILMING AS COLD AS IT LOOKED? Inside the studio it was boiling, which was terrible because I had that big fur jacket. But outside in New Zealand was freezing. I needed to have hot tea before "Action!" because my lips were frozen.
IT MUST HAVE BEEN NICE GAZING AT JOSH HARTNETT INSTEAD OF THOSE UGLY VAMPIRES. Fantastic! My list of leading men is so good: Josh Hartnett, Clive Owen, John Cusack. It's lovely.
WHAT MOVIES FREAK YOU OUT? 28 Days Later. I was a mess. And remember when Mel Gibson put his hand under the door in Signs and that thing was there? [Stuff] like that could happen to me. There could be somebody in my laundry when I get home, or under my bed ... Oh, God, I don't want to go home now!
WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY
MY NEXT PROJECT: JENNA FISCHER
• The actress, who plays buttoned-up Pam on The Office, had to rethink her breakfast options while filming Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (opening Dec. 21). Starring John C. Reilly as a fictional music legend, it's a spoof of musician biopics like Walk the Line. "When I'm Pam, if I eat a donut, we could hide that," says Fischer, 33, who donned skimpy outfits and five-inch heels to play Walk's innocent-yet-raunchy Darlene. "With this movie, it's like, 'There's the donut, right there! Can't get that dress on anymore.'"
YOU'RE IN THE NEW SPORTS FILM PARODY THE COMEBACKS. ARE YOU A BIG SPORTS FAN? I'm not. The only exposure I got was my grandfather watching big football games on Thanksgiving. Isn't that ridiculous?
DO YOU PLAY FOOTBALL IN THE MOVIE? No, I get tackled.
OUCH. THE COMEBACKS IS ABOUT UNDERDOGS. EVER BEEN ONE? Certainly. At school, all the kids dressed in Lacoste and I was like a Laura Ashley granola girl. Yeah, I really wasn't cool.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
