Starting Out in the Evening

Great characters prevail in ‘Starting Out’

Roadside Attractions
FRANK LANGELLA and Lauren Ambrose in"Starting Out in the Evening."

Watching "Starting Out in the Evening," it's hard to imagine Frank Langella was once a menacing, handsome "Dracula."

In "Evening," he plays an aging, has-been of an author who wears a suit and tie all of the time, even late at night in his home. He is soft-spoken, intelligent and sad as he wrestles with his fifth novel.

He still pecks away at a typewriter, although this one appears to be electric, so he's only a generation behind.

Into his life comes the cute, perky Heather Wolfe, played by Lauren Ambrose of "Six Feet Under" fame.

She is a huge fan of his first two works. It appears everyone was. But his next two novels lacked the same bite and flair and this fifth offering, after years in the process, is going nowhere.

Heather wants to do her masters thesis on Langella's character, Leonard Schiller. She thinks she can somehow revive his career in his autumn years.

Langella, in his prim and proper way, cautiously lets this girl into his life.

She's smart. She knows her literature. Despite the age difference, they share the same interests when it comes to books. A sort of romance develops.

While most girls her age may be partying, Heather goes to book lectures with Leonard.

These are two deep, complex, fascinating characters. That is often enough for one movie, but there's the interesting subplot involving Leonard's daughter as a bonus. She's played by Lili Taylor. Nearing 40, she's had a difficult relationship with men but yearns for family and child. She thinks she can't have both, so she stops using birth control with her latest boyfriend, hoping to at least have the baby. When he asks her to marry him, she is scared and runs back to a previous relationship, that hadn't worked out.

Taylor's character can't make sense of her own life and wonders what this pretty young girl is doing at all hours with her father. It sort of all gets sorted out when Leonard has a stroke.

This is a marvelous, literate, compelling and enjoyable character study. I have to say they even get Langella's glasses design right. It's what my grandfather wore in the 60s and 70s.

"Starting Out in the Evening" was deserving of Oscar consideration. Why it wasn't, I don't know. Maybe the Academy was afraid a movie about books and thought would get people away from theatres and into the library.

That would turn into a horror picture, wouldn't it?

From WEEKENDER, Sept. 26, 2008.

Dan in Real Life

Dan’s life worth taking a look at in this film

Touchstone Pictures

STEVER CARELL and Alison Pill in “Dan in Real Life.”

Dan is a widower with three daughters, two who are hormonal-raged teen-agers.
He writes an advice columnist, although he seems to be in need of advice himself.
That's the backdrop to “Dan in Real Life,” starring Steve Carell.
Dan must drag his daughters, including Cara, played by Brittany Robertson, to a long weekend get-together. Cara is so in love she can't stand it and she can't stand her father.
And what a family Dan has, with scads and scads of siblings, siblings-in-law and nieces and nephews.
His parents (Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney) have a rustic Rhode Island home with enough room to accommodate them. Dan is stuck sleeping in the laundry room off the kitchen. The first night, mom throws wet clothes in the dryer and turns it on as he readies for a night of sleep. He must drift off to the thump, thump, thump of the dryer.
Dan has a lot on his mind, his rebel daughters, his loneliness over the loss of his wife and his anxiety over possibly getting his column syndicated.
Mom suggests Dan go to his favorite book store to relax. She even gives him a dollar to buy a newspaper.
There Dan meets and falls for a sparkling woman played by Juliette Binoche. (Remember when she was French?)
After a day of pouring out his soul to this woman, he goes home excitedly to tell the great mass of relatives about his newfound friend and new outlook on life.
His euphoria lasts about two minutes, because brother Mitch (Dane Cook) arrives with his new girlfriend. Yep, it's the Binoche character.
Dan fades into the background while the family takes to the newcomer, during their days of eating, crossword puzzle competition, family football and the like.
There's a funny scene in which one daughter, played by Alison Pill, slips into the bathroom to talk to the Binoche character about life's problems. Unfortunately Dan happens to be in there talking to her. He is forced to hide in the running shower . It gets worse.
There's also another great screne with the pair going bowling.
You can't help but feel sorry for Dan. You also get a sense this is a real family, active and funloving and supportive, no matter what.
Also, the film is family-friendly. No nudity, no obscenities, no violence.
So bring “Dan” into your real life.

DAN IN REAL LIFE
• Directed by Peter Hedges, written by Hedges and Pierce Gardner
• Runtime: 98 minutes
• Rated PG-13 for innuendo
• 4 stars out of 5
From WEEKENDER, Sept. 19, 2008

Something the Lord Made

‘Something the Lord Made’ a devine film

HBO
MOS DEF and Alan Rickman in “Something the Lord Made.”

“Something the Lord Made” is an absolutely riveting film about a black man whose vocation was expected to be a carpenter and an eminent doctor and how the pair changed the world.

This film was released for HBO four years ago and recently returned to the premium channel. It is also available on DVD.

Mos Def plays Vivien Thomas, a black man in the Great Depression who yearns to be a doctor. Fat chance, given the era. That's especially true after he loses seven years of savings in a failed bank.

So he does the next best thing, he gets a job sweeping floors and doing other maintenance for surgeon and researcher Alfred Blalock (Alan Rickman.)

Except Thomas is drawn to Blalock's library and is engrossed in books on anatomy. He is a natural in research and fast becomes Blalock's assistant.

Using dogs in their experiments, they try to figure out how to save patients who are in shock because of traumatic injuries. Blood is leaving important parts of the body and people are dying, at least in the 1930s.

The acceptable solution at the time is to constrict blood vessels, forcing blood to needed areas. But Blalock and Thomas discover that supplementing the body with more blood is a better solution.

A dozen years later, Blalock is accepted as chief surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Thomas and his wife (played by Gabrielle Union), tag along. They are forced to live in a bad section of town. Thomas is doing important research, but his job classification is Grade 3 maintenance worker, earning $16 a week. To make ends meet, he does odd jobs for his landlord to get a $7 reduction in rent.

Blalock depends on Thomas, especially when they start researching blue babies, those with blue lips because their hearts are defective and they can't get sufficient blood pumped through their bodies. But when Thomas complains about his pay, Blalock fails to see the importance. They work together each day, but come from other worlds.

The story of discrimination against Thomas is fascinating. He must use the back entrance to the hospital, even when he's with the chief surgeon. We see a doctor throw money at him and tell him to get coffee. There's the look of horror on a staff person's face when Thomas uses the white restroom. You can't help but think of the progress we have made, with a black man a major party contender for president today.

We learn in the 1940s, trying to correct defective hearts was unheard of. God made the babies that way and they were expected to die in a few months. Blalock had a vision that it didn't have to be that way.

There is a wonderful scene in which Blalock is about to do the first surgery on a dying baby, after Thomas has done all of the research. But when it comes time to do the surgery, Blalock runs out of the operating room to get Thomas to assist. The nurse refuses to page Thomas because he isn't a doctor.

Later, when Blalock is honored for his work, Thomas can only watch from the back because he is there as a servant.

This is one of those small films but it is well acted and authentic to its time period. It is compelling as it is educational. You will remember “Something the Lord Made” for a long time.

SOMETHING THE LORD MADE

Directed by Joseph Sargent, written by Peter Silverman

Runtime: 110 minutes

Not rated, but brief periods of foul language

4 stars out of 4

PUBLISHED IN WEEKENDER, Sept. 12, 2008.

Enchanted

AMY ADAMS and Patrick Dempsey in “Enchanted .

‘Enchanted’ can be fun, but gets tiresome

“Enchanted” starts almost like a cliché of an old-fashioned Walt Disney animated feature.

The lovely Giselle is riding through the forest, singing with her forest friends about her.

Her voice catches the attention of the prince and he immediately asks her to marry him, the next day!

I guess you don’t have to rent a hall when you are the prince, but don’t you at least have to give the cater a little notice?

But with help from the woodland creatures, Giselle readies for her big wedding. Ah, a dream come true.

But it wouldn’t be a movie without some conflict. That comes from the mother-in-law, who happens to be the mother-in-law of mother-in-laws. She’s nasty.

She doesn’t want someone replacing her as queen so she arranges for the sweet, lovely Giselle to fall into a massive fountain where she goes hurtling toward impending doom. She is going to a place where “nobody ever lives happily ever after.”

And boom! Giselle finds herself in the sewer system of real-life New York City. She pulls off the manhole cover. She lifts herself onto the street, where, of course, we find loud, honking cars. She is almost hit. People yell for her to get out of the road. Cars crash into each other. You’ve seen it before.

What is funny is this live-action Giselle is wearing such a wide skirt, she could probably sleep on it overnight.

Now played by Amy Adams of “Junebug” fame, she continues to use her sing-song, goody-two-shoes voice while sashaying down the street, looking for a kind soul.

Kindness doesn’t come from the elderly homeless guy. She begs for a few kind words before she goes back to searching for her prince in this strange world. He responds by stealing her tiara.

Her modern-day rescuer is single-dad Robert (played by Patrick Dempsey) who is with his daughter, played by Rachel Covey.

He offers his apartment until she can get herself together, at the urging of his young daughter, who is ‘enchanted’ by this princess.

Meanwhile, the prince takes the same dunk in the pond. He’s played by James Marsden. With him is his manservant, played creepily by Timothy Spall. An even creepier chipmunk follows him. It’s cute in animation world, but not the real world.

The biggest hoot comes from Susan Sarandon, playing the real-life Queen Narissa. (Is that because she is narcissistic?)

The film alternates from being fun, a parody and just plain annoying.

Early on, Giselle decides to clean Robert’s apartment, enlisting the help of dirty seagulls, rats and other assorted animals.

These creatures look cute in animation, but it is downright gross watching them traverse the apartment. Ugh!

And in the park, when Giselle starts singing, Robert asks her to please stop. It’s embarrassing. This is real life, remember?

Unfortunately for him, a group of street musicians hear her song, are taken by it, and begin singing and playing it themselves. Soon the whole park is singing and dancing in perfect choreography.

It’s a cute concept but the plot gets stretched. You just want someone to slap the sweet Giselle after awhile.

Also, the little Covey girl gets lost in the story. At first, you get the idea she is the little girl who believes in the enchanted world of princes and princesses. She is the catalyst to get this strange creature and her lonely father together.

Except her role quickly falls off in the picture. Child labor laws?

“Enchanted” can be interesting, especially when going from the animated to real-life world. It just isn’t enchanting long enough.

I was more enchanted when it was over.

ENCHANTED

• Directed by Kevin Lima and written by Bill Kelly

• Runtime: 107 minutes

Two stars out of five

• Walt Disney Pictures

FROM WEEKENDR, Sept. 5, 2008

Before the Devil Knows Your Dead

‘Devil’ infiltrates cast of this film
TWO BROTHERS (Ethan Hawke, left, and Philip Seymour Hoffman) plan a jewel robbery in “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”

Looking for a good movie to gather the family around with a bowl of popcorn?
Please, don’t pick up “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead.”
Never has there been a cast of nasty, disturbing, overwrought, ill-equipped, frightening, blood-thirsty characters.
Nobody, but nobody, in this film would you want visiting your home. Well maybe one person, but she is shot and on life support early in the film.
Actually, “Before the Devil” uses the multiple flashback technique, showing the same scene from different perspectives.
We all thought Quentin Tarantino was an innovator when he did a similar technique in “Pulp Fiction.”
But even though “Before the Devil” is violent and cruel as well, it doesn’t even approach Tarantino’s epic.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Andy Hanson. Ethan Hawke is his brother, Hank. First, you have to swallow the idea these two are brothers.
Both are in need of more money than their real estate jobs provide. Big brother Andy has a great idea, rob a mom and pop jewelry store. The fact the store is insured makes it “a victimless crime,” he says.
But this isn’t just any mom and pop store. The mom and pop in this store happens to be owned by their own parents.
Now I’m a bit hazy about all the reasoning behind this. The Hoffman character can’t be involved in the robbery because he would be recognized. But baby brother Hawke character can be involved. Huh?
But Hawke is uneasy about the whole situation. Who wouldn’t? So he hires someone else to do the actual robbery, while he sits in the get-away car, wearing a wig and false mustache.
The robbery scene is really well staged, as is much of this film. The robbery doesn’t go well. The mom, played much of the film on life support, is Danielle Hanson.
So the two brothers spend most of the film crying, screaming, shaky, rude and crude, because they botched a robbery at their parents’ store that ended with their mother’s death.
They also reason there’s nothing to trace them to this horrible crime, until the sister of the hired gun gets her boyfriend to blackmail the pair. He is spookily played by Michael Shannon.
How mean are everyone in the cast? Hawke’s character has a daughter by a former wife. The Hawke character, before the robbery, promises he will come up with more than $100 for her to go on a class trip. She’s played by Sarah Livingston.
After the robbery, when he can’t get her the money, she screams and pouts and calls him a loser. Hey kid, your grandmother just died in a cruel, violent, terrible way. Why do you care so much about a crummy class trip?
Albert Finney plays the grieving Charles Hanson and Marisa Tomei is the luscious wife of the Hoffman character, but is having an affair with the Hawke character.
Anyone who you might think will be killed and a few more, are killed, in the most violent manner.
That might not be so bad, but there is no redemption here.
Sidney Lumet, directs. His past efforts include “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon” and “12 Angry Men.”
Maybe he could rename “Before the Devil Knows Your Dead” “A Lot More than 12 Angry Men.”
FROM WEEKENDER, Aug. 29, 2008

BEFORE THE DEVIL
KNOWS YOUR DEAD
• Rated R for strong, graphic sexuality, nudity, violence, drug use and language
• Runtime: 118 minutes
• Directed by Sidney Lumet, written by Kelly Master
• 2 stars out of 5

Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Take plunge: See ‘Diving Bell’
Jean-Dominique Bauby at a magazine photo shoot in a scene from "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."

“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is a gripping, powerful film, without one single gunshot, no car chases, nary a fistfight and not one character jumps from one rooftop to another.
Also known as “Le Scaphandre et le Papillon,” it’s the true story of the swinging editor of the French Elle magazine.
He’s Jean-Dominique Bauby, played by Mathieu Amalric.
Jean picks his son up from his estranged wife one day, must pull off the road because he doesn’t feel well and has a massive stroke.
He wakes up weeks later in a hospital, feeling like he is encased in a deep-sea diving suit, hence the film title.
He can’t speak. Except for one eye, he can’t move anything.
Brooklyn-born director Julian Schnabel must meet the challenge of telling the story of a man confined to a hospital bed most of the time who can do virtually nothing for himself.
But boy, does he do a fabulous job. There are a few flashbacks, but much of it takes place in the present.
Jean’s mouth is deformed. A doctor must sew one eye shut. He communicates with the help of a speech therapist, played by Marie-Josee Croze, who could be my therapist anytime.
She arranges the alphabet from the most-used letter to the least. She starts to recite the alphabet until she gets to the letter of the first word he wants to say, then he blinks. Then she starts over, him blinking at the second letter.
Through this system, Croze helps Jean write a book about his life in complete helplessness.
Part of the film uses a technique used in an old “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” TV episode in which a man is paralyzed after an automobile accident on a rural road and must wait for help.
We see through Jean’s eyes when he wakes up and realizes disgustedly he is in a hospital.
His blurred vision eventually sharpens. We blink when he blinks. (A cameraman actually placed his hands over the camera lens in a blinking motion.)
We hear his thoughts. We are there when he sees his deformed face while riding in a wheelchair down a hallway, his image reflected in the windows.
There are a couple of truly unforgettable scenes. One involves his former wife, Celine, played by Emmanuelle Seigner. She remains loyal to him, bringing their children to see him. She must field questions via the telephone from Jean’s girlfriend, who can’t bring herself to visit him in his condition.
Another memorable scene is a flashback, when Jean shaves his ailing father, played by the remarkable Max von Sydow. Now here’s a guy who has looked 80 for the past 20 years but still does a remarkable job of acting. He does well in Swedish, American and French films. Not bad.
Jean woke himself each morning at 5:30, memorized what he wanted to write that day, then dictated to his therapist, one blinking letter at a time. It became “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
He died weeks after the book was published.
He was a remarkable man chronicled in a remarkable film.

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
• Directed by Julian Schnabel, screenplay by Ronald Harwood
• Rated PG-13 for nudity, sexual content, some language
• Runtime: 112 minutes
• Spoken in French
• 3 1/2 stars out of 4

August Rush

Warner Bros.
JAMIA SIMONE Nash and Freddie Highmore in “August Rush.”

'August Rush' a stretched fairy tale
'August Rush' is a beautifully filmed, sensitive picture that's set in fairy-tale mode.
Unfortunately, with its Dickensesque gritty qualities, the two factions just don't mix.
The story involves Lyla Novacek, played by Keri Russell. She's a brilliant cellist who is finding success in New York City.
After a concert and party, she meets Louis Connelly, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Louis is Irish and plays bass in an Irish rock band. His voice is a melody itself and the two fall in love forever, even if they don't see each other for years.
They agree to meet later, but fate and the necessary plotline makes that impossible.
But their night together on a rooftop produces a child.
Fate is a big part of this film and as a result, Lyla is hit by a car and dad (William Sadler) tells her the baby is lost.
She learns 11 years later, as dad lies dying, the child isn't really dead. He forged her signature on papers giving the child up for adoption. (it was that easy.) But in this 19th-century London tale transposed to modern New York, the baby ends up in an orphanage where he is picked on because he hears music wherever he goes.
Freddie Highmore plays Evan Taylor, who is enamored with sounds and translates them in his head to music. It is in these scenes the film shines. Something magical happens.
But of course, the orphanage does nothing to encourage the boy's interests, so he runs away.
It is there Evan meets a young street musician and is enthralled by his guitar. He wants to reach out and touch it. The musician takes Evan back to where he and plenty of other homeless kids live at a condemned theater.
If you can believe this, all homeless kids are musical prodigies. The Fagan of the group, played by red-haired Robin Williams, sees something special in Evan, whom he renams August Rush after the words on a truck that drives by.
Evan, er, August, runs away and ends up at a church where the pastor gets him into Julliard. August writes a classical piece and the instructors decide to play it at the end of a concert in Central Park. And who is also playing at the event? Would you believe his mother who is now searching the streets for him?
And guess who also happens to be around? Do I have to tell you?
But can it end that neatly? Not quite, 'Red' Williams must return to snatch August away. But somehow, it all works out and young August magically arrives to conduct his piece in a tuxedo! Wow! Maybe his fairy godmother made it out of mice!
The love of music comes through in this movie, even if the notes he plays don't always correspond to what you hear. But young Freddie seems to be sleeping through part of this film and the storyline will have your rolling your eyes. At least mine did.

AUGUST RUSH
* Written by Nick Castley and James V. Hart
* Directed by Kirsten Sheridan
* Rated PG for thematic elements, mild violence
* Runtime: 114 minutes
* 2 stars out of 4