s06. when you find me

s06. (01 Dec) when you find me (2012, Bryce Dallas Howard) 26



Even from the way Bryce Dallas Howard stylizes the title, it's clear indulgence runs in the family; Ron Howard executive produced this expensive-looking vanity project. Everything here reeks, namely the too earnest child actors and writing that could easily be from the mind of any underperformer in a high school creative writing class. A brief animated interlude, while unnecessary, at least offers a bit of levity in this otherwise turgid gobbledygook.

The Help

The Help, 2011

Directed by Tate Taylor

Possible Nominations include: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song

Synopsis: Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, Skeeter (Stone) is a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends' lives -- and a Mississippi town -- upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Aibileen (Davis), Skeeter's best friend's housekeeper, is the first to open up -- to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter's life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories -- and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly -- and unwillingly -- caught up in the changing times. (Source: IMDB)

I saw this film a while back, so you'll forgive me if I forget some things.

I remember coming across mentions of this film back in January. I had just watched Emma Stone in a movie, and wondered what else she was coming out in, and read about the Help. Then I read that it could be an Oscar Favourite. Then before it came out, I watched the trailer and was intrigued. So like the bookworm I am, I picked up the book and read it first, before going to see. I loved the book. Not knowing much about racism in the South, besides the little they teach in Canadian schools, I learned so much. Racism didn't make a whole lot of sense. And young Skeeter saw this.

I went to see the film with my mother on a Cheap Tuesday evening in early September. Yeah, 2 months ago, I know. I remember being a little nervous, because the book was so long, with several different story lines and characters that I wasn't sure how true to the book it was going to be. Being a Harry Potter fan, I become weary when a book becomes a movie because more often than not, it's not adapted well. But I must say, this one was.

The film was well done. They handled telling three different women's stories quite well. Skeeter's storyline was interesting, without making her too much the focus. You felt Aibileen's frustration and heartbreak, and you grow to love Minny, hilarious as she is, and also really sympathise everything she is going through- between caring for a "crazy white lady", having an abusive husband, and, well, being black in 1960's Louisiana. 

Additionally, this film was acted quite well. Viola Davis (Aibileen) is almost a lock for Best Actress, as well as Octavia Spencer (Minny) most likely being nominated for Best Supporting. Emma Stone, while her accent occasionally got away from her, held her own, this being (as far as I know) her first very serious role. Bryce Dallas Howard, was fantasticly evil, and brilliant.

Overall, I really liked this film. It's an interesting story, not too predictable, and educational. While it is likely to get nominated for Best Picture in 2012, it is extremely unlikely it shall win. As much as I liked it, I know it's not quite the Academy's sort of film, but we'll see when the show rolls around.

Rating: A-

50/50

Written by Will Reiser

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, 

Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston

Adam: I can’t remember being so calm in a long time.

Katie: Would you describe it as numbness?

Adam: No, I would describe it as fine.

Up and coming director, Jonathan Levine’s latest film, 50/50, is being billed as a cancer comedy, only I cried about five times so I’m not sure the descriptor really fits. 50/50 is writer, Will Reiser’s first hand account of what it was like to get cancer in his 20’s. Clearly, as he is still here to tell the tale, he lives through the ordeal, but knowing this does not take away from the personal journey he shares with us. And fortunately for all involved, that journey is being taken on screen by the always impressive, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who easily makes 50/50 a sure bet.

Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, whom we first meet jogging down the streets of Seattle at dawn. Instantly, while we watch him wait at a red light to cross an intersection despite any trace of traffic approaching, we know that Adam is cautious and self-aware. Even when he is told that he has cancer, he protests on the basis that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he recycles. Adam follows the rules and yet is being inexplicably punished. Adam is not particularly original, as far as characters go, but his emotional path leaves the character so exposed and vulnerable that we are deeply endeared to him. Commendably, Reiser does not make us pity him but instead it feels like a rare and  honest account of his experience. For Gordon-Levitt to be able to open himself up to this kind of candidness only further proves that he is one of the most relatable young actors working today.

I felt I could know Adam, that he could be one of my friends. That one of my friends could go through this is foreign to me and fortunately, not something I’ve ever had to go through. As much as 50/50 is about Adam’s plight, the other half of it is about how the people around him learn to support him. From his best friend (Seth Rogen, playing a role based on himself, as he is also Reiser’s best friend in real life) to his mother (Anjelica Huston, making the most of her little screen time) to love interests both potential (Anna Kendrick) and exiting (Bryce Dallas Howard), everyone in his life stumbles through supporting him as if they were blindly walking into walls. Everyone is trying though, reminding us just how important intention really is, and 50/50 surely has the best of them.

TIFF Review: 50/50

Written by Will Reiser

Directed by Jonathan Levine

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, 

Bryce Dallas Howard and Anjelica Huston

Adam: I can’t remember being so calm in a long time.

Katie: Would you describe it as numbness?

Adam: No, I would describe it as fine.

Up and coming director, Jonathan Levine’s latest film, 50/50, is being billed as a cancer comedy, only I cried about five times so I’m not sure the descriptor really fits. 50/50 is writer, Will Reiser’s first hand account of what it was like to get cancer in his 20’s. Clearly, as he is still here to tell the tale, he lives through the ordeal, but knowing this does not take away from the personal journey he shares with us. And fortunately for all involved, that journey is being taken on screen by the always impressive, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who easily makes 50/50 a sure bet.

Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, whom we first meet jogging down the streets of Seattle at dawn. Instantly, while we watch him wait at a red light to cross an intersection despite any trace of traffic approaching, we know that Adam is cautious and self-aware. Even when he is told that he has cancer, he protests on the basis that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he recycles. Adam follows the rules and yet is being inexplicably punished. Adam is not particularly original, as far as characters go, but his emotional path leaves the character so exposed and vulnerable that we are deeply endeared to him. Commendably, Reiser does not make us pity him but instead it feels like a rare and  honest account of his experience. For Gordon-Levitt to be able to open himself up to this kind of candidness only further proves that he is one of the most relatable young actors working today.

I felt I could know Adam, that he could be one of my friends. That one of my friends could go through this is foreign to me and fortunately, not something I’ve ever had to go through. As much as 50/50 is about Adam’s plight, the other half of it is about how the people around him learn to support him. From his best friend (Seth Rogen, playing a role based on himself, as he is also Reiser’s best friend in real life) to his mother (Anjelica Huston, making the most of her little screen time) to love interests both potential (Anna Kendrick) and exiting (Bryce Dallas Howard), everyone in his life stumbles through supporting him as if they were blindly walking into walls. Everyone is trying though, reminding us just how important intention really is, and 50/50 surely has the best of them.

408. The Help

408. (03 Sep) The Help (2011, Tate Taylor)* 54



The Help is so cloying and manipulative, it's almost implausible a performance like Viola Davis' can exist within it. The film simply doesn't deserve her, as Davis gives a performance with such grace and nuance the rest of the cast looks amateurish in her wake. The bug-eyed Octavia Spencer, for instance, is positively exhausting to watch, playing broad comedy as if she wandered out of a TBS sitcom. I'm unclear how both of these ladies can be considered on par in Oscar buzz.

The film itself is so shamelessly tear-jerking, sentimental, and crowd-pleasing, it seems destined for a Best Picture nomination. That's an excessive honor, to be sure, for a film that overplays a poopy pie joke and derails in its unrelentingly upbeat finale. (A senile Sissy Spacek saying she can only remember that she was put in a nursing home by Bryce Dallas Howard and that her daughter ate poop is where the gag has clearly been beaten to death.) The lengthy run-time is felt in the last hour when an out of nowhere argument erupts between Emma Stone and Chris Lowell. For the most part, The Help is well-structured enough to maintain interest, but the need to tie up loose ends with the last few scenes is the film's undoing.

Sharen Davis' costumes would be a worthy awards competitor. A plaid jacket Lowell wears in his second scene with Stone is an outstanding costumes and all of the work here easily outshines her forgettable garbs from Ray and Dreamgirls. She rivals Anna B. Sheppard as one of those costume designers with no range, but she's in her wheelhouse with The Help.

THE HELP

Written and Directed by Tate Taylor

Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard and Octavia Spencer

Aibileen: What if you don't like what I got to say 'bout white people?

Jackson, Mississippi has a rich history but it certainly also has its fair share of shame. Great turmoil does however make for great drama in novice filmmaker, Tate Taylor’s THE HELP, based on the wildly popular novel of the same name, written by Kathryn Stockett, one of Tate’s oldest friends. They grew up together in the South and their combined familiarity with the subject gives them the distinct perspective necessary to explore the complicated dynamics between white families and the black maids that kept them together. While it is perfectly acceptable for the maids to handle the dinner and the children, it is somehow unthinkable to have them use the same toilet. That's the way it was in Jackson in 1962 and even though some practices were just a step or two away from slavery still, everybody kept to their roles with big smiles on their faces. That's just the way it was done, the way it had always been done … until someone finally started asking why.

In the 1960's, America was in the throes of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. led a quarter million people in prayer at the March on Washington and progress seemed achievable. Meanwhile, in the South, black men and women were being beaten senseless, or worse yet killed, for any attempt to push the civil rights movement forward. It was most certainly not a good time for a black maid to sit down and recount what working for white people was really like. It would seem even more ludicrous to share these potentially damaging stories with an actual white woman. Regardless, this is what Aibileen (Viola Davis) does when Eugenia (Emma Stone) asks her, not because she's always done what white women have asked of her, but because it was time. The stories she tells are both heartbreaking and heart warming, revealing just how complex these relationships truly are. There is love between some of these women, of that there is no question. And yet there is also superiority and ownership and perhaps most importantly, there is tradition. This is what all these women know. Change is not easy; making change is even harder.

There is so much unrest in these situations but you would never know. The trick is to never let on, a perfect glow must shine on the surface at all times. Of course, it is all terribly ironic that these maids are the ones to polish these particular surfaces. That said, there is plenty of shine in THE HELP. Taylor’s lack of experience behind the camera shows when certain delicate moments feel a tad rushed, but that hardly matters when the entire cast is this delightful and endearing. While it is refreshing to see Stone play something other than sarcastic for a change, and naturally Davis anchors the picture with great weight, it is Bryce Dallas Howard as queen of the white ladies, Hilly Holbrook, and lesser know, Octavia Spencer, as the feistiest of maids, Minny, who truly give THE HELP the punch it requires to become as memorable and enjoyable as it is. Collectively, the entire cast, rounded out by touching performances from Sissy Spacek and Alison Janney, maintain an air of ease, which is even more so commendable considering how they all know somewhere in the back of their minds that everything they know is about to change forever. The best part is that you can also see that some of these women know this change is for the best.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "50/50"

Try not to love him.  I dare you.  Just try.  Women love him and guys think he's awesome, and I'll always remember him as the best part of 3rd Rock From the Sun.  Is there a person alive who can look as dapper wearing skinny ties and vests.



I'm foreseeing the possibility of this snagging an Original Screenplay nomination for scribe Will Reiser, given the indie dramedy feel from the trailer.  This type of film typically registers well with the writing branch, and if not the Oscars most certainly the WGA.

I loved Levitt's work in (500) Days of Summer, so he's proven he's capable of leading man work.  His character is going down a different journey in 50/50, but this could be a big showcase for this constantly almost-next-big thing actor.  The supporting cast looks fun, with greats thesps like Anjelica Huston, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Philip Baker Hall offering reefer snacks.  The only slight concern I have with the trailer is Seth Rogen and the way-too-obvious-and-too-numerous alone shots of Levitt.  But, this could be a fun movie.

Oh.  And how about that Anna Kendrick?  She looks great in it.


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HEREAFTER

HEREAFTER

Written by Peter Morgan

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Bryce Dallas Howard and George McLaren

Billy: A life that is all about death is no life at all.

It’s no secret that Clint Eastwood is getting up there in years. He has been churning out films on an almost yearly basis in the last decade as if he is trying to cram as much work as possible into his legacy before he can no longer do so. It seems then a natural choice for Eastwood to take on the afterlife in his adaptation of Peter Morgan’s screenplay, HEREAFTER. In many ways, it is one of his most organic works but aside from acknowledging that an afterlife exists, Eastwood is nowhere closer to any insight on the subject.

It is also no secret that I am not a big fan of Eastwood’s work as a director. I find he often oversimplifies the problem and renders complicated scenarios into clichéd lessons about what it means to him to be a good human being. The idea of him tackling something as complicated as the passage between life and death was frightening at first, even if the writing was in Morgan's hands, THE QUEEN and FROST/NIXON scribe (click the titles for full reviews). In HEREAFTER, Morgan tells three separate stories about three different people around the world who are dealing with death in different ways. A French reporter (Cecile de France) is recovering from her brush with death; a young twin boy in England (George McLaren) has just lost his brother; and Matt Damon plays a genuine psychic in San Francisco who has retired in hopes of finding a normal life. While all reasonably compelling separately, their plights never come together, which leaves the film feeling cold and detached.

There are moments in HEREAFTER that are genuinely engrossing and memorable, including an opening so intense, I felt I might soon know my own afterlife. Eastwood lets go of his ordinarily tight grasp on the picture to allow its characters to speak for themselves and its often-haunting imagery to be just that. At first, I was pleasantly surprised but then I realized that without Eastwood playing God that there was really no direction in HEREAFTER at all. Subsequently, I wasn’t able to connect with a film about an experience that connects us all.