Rabbit Hole
(Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller)
The first ten minutes of this achingly beautiful film are slow and confusing, loaded with blurry images and painful subtext. That’s on purpose, because this is how life is after a devastating tragedy rips your heart out.
Kidman and Eckhart are a couple trying to piece their lives back together eight months after losing their 4-year-old boy. Grief counseling doesn’t work, with its childish platitudes about “God needing another angel.” Family doesn’t comfort; sister Blanchard is a delinquent, and Mom (the dowdy and brilliant Wiest) keeps comparing her daughter’s loss to her own. Kidman finds no solace, not even in bonding with a local teen involved in the accident (wonderfully underplayed by Teller). In fact, nothing fits—no guide, no rule, no map—because Rabbit Hole knows that everyone’s grieving is unique.
First-time screenwriter David Lyndsay-Abaire creates an astounding adaptation of his own gently humorous and touching play. Director John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) leads with delicacy and insight. In fact, Rabbit Hole benefits from understated performances all around.
The Tourist
(Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Betthany)
The Tourist isn’t a rollicking action adventure a la Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as the ads would have you believe. It’s actually more of an ambling romantic caper trying to be a Cary Grant or Kim Novac comedy.
Jolie is a woman obsessed with her husband, a man who’s stolen billions from an English gangster. He’s gone hiding for over a year. She seeks him out, knowing he has drastically changed his looks through plastic surgery. Secretly, he asks her to find a decoy to fool the police and the gangsters, so she picks Depp, a math teacher from Wisconsin. This trick throws everyone off, including Interpol detective Betthany.
The camera loves Jolie, who smolders but never quite sizzles. Depp’s performance is so sneaky, it seems dull. The plot is riddled with tiny holes and clichés. Scenes drift from London to Paris to Venice, and it’s all pretty, preposterous, and about as deep as a teacup. The experience is lush, but it cries for more personality and humor and, honestly, a few more explosions.
How Do You Know
(Starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson)
Writer/director James L. Brooks (Broadcast News, Will & Grace) turns out another character-based charmer. It’s a solid, heart-warming but not overwhelming experience.
Witherspoon is perfect as a one-time pro baseball player cut from the US team. Seeking solace, she starts to date narcissistic major leaguer Wilson. However, her path keeps crossing Rudd, an innocent CFO who may be going to Federal prison to save daddy Nicholson’s company.
The younger actors do a lovely job creating and working through Brooks’ subtle and witty comedy. Weirdly, Nicholson (of Brooks’ As Good as it Gets) seems less present, hamming his part up, sticking out like a sore thumb. One minor character—Rudd’s pregnant secretary Kathryn Hahn—almost steals the film, while all the other bit parts seem to get the short shrift.
In fact, upon deeper reflection, this movie lacks the modern punch that Brooks’ other socially-based comedies possess. There is no sly comment about corporate greed or national sports. However, it’s still a witty, romantic way to waste a couple hours.
Tron: Legacy
(Starring Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Bruce Boxleitner, Olivia Wilde)
Many movies become legendary because they represent leaps forward in technology. Tron: Legacy may be such a film—over two hours of cutting edge effects blurring out the story’s logical glitches and lack of emotional depth.
Twenty years after inventor daddy Bridges disappears, hacker daredevil Hedlund finds out where Pops may have gone. Bridges invented an alternate reality within a computer that can suck real, biological beings in. Hedlund accidentally gets trapped in his dad’s creation, and now he must fight his way out, searching for answers and playing for his life.
This overlong movie that doesn’t even try to make scientific sense, but it could’ve had a nice emotional core. First of all, the son is attempting to escape the dad’s mistakes and lead the company Bridges left behind. Also, we all know that humans can get metaphorically sucked into computer realms, as they do their careers. There was probably a way to marry these themes together. However, Tron: Legacy is more obsessed with earth-shattering visuals, imprisoning us in a stunning but shallow realm no more consequential than an aimless video game.
