“Crossing Over” has been sitting on the shelf so long that, apparently, it lost an entire subplot involving Sean Penn.

This “Crash” wannabe (and “Crash,” after all, was the essence of faux Altmanesque) is too heavy-handed by half in its attempt to say something meaningful about immigration and the American dream. The fact that its dramatic climax comes in the middle of a rendition of the national anthem – at a citizenship ceremony, no less – tells you all you need to know about how badly it pins the needle on the subtlety meter. (More…)

Here’s the best thing I can say about “An American Affair”: that, despite unsavory hints that it’s going in that direction, it refrains from having its 13-year-old protagonist have sex with Gretchen Mol, who plays the sexy next-door neighbor with whom he’s obsessed.

OK, one other good thing: Mol herself is terrific, at once invitingly sexy and tartly out of reach, a free spirit with a sense of her own worth. She plays a character who’s got grit but also a soft side, sensitivity but a mind of her own. What she’s doing in a movie this confused is another question entirely.

“An American Affair,” directed by William Olsson from a script by Alex Metcalf, is an uncomfortable blend of a coming-of-age story badly grafted to a JFK conspiracy theory. Toss in the hard-edged parochialism of a Catholic school and you’ve got a heady stew of mismatched elements. (More…)

We’ve been so conditioned by documentaries like “Capturing the Friedmans” to expect well-timed bombshells that, as you watch “Must Read After My Death,” you keep waiting for at least one shoe to drop.

Director Morgan Dews took a trunkload of old Dictaphone recordings, reel-to-reel tapes, photographs and home movies and has assembled them into a collage that is both more and less than it appears. That the subject happens to be his own family – specifically, his grandparents, Allis and Charley – may make this of more interest to him than to us.

Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Tolstoy added the notion that, while “happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

So here is the unhappy family of Allis and Charley and their four kids. They’re trapped together in a house in Hartford, Ct., through the 1960s, with Charley on the road in Australia four months a year – then coming home to rage at Allis about how messy the house is and how untamed the children are.

The film’s soundtrack initially consists of those Dictaphone tapes, recorded by Allis and Charley as a way of communicating while he’s on the road. They’re full of lovey-dovey “I miss you/I love you” sentiments – but there are also hints of something darker going on.

In those recordings, both Allis and Charley make oblique references that imply extramarital activity – flirtations, at a minimum, if not actual sexual dalliances. There’s a sense that we might be in for a story about swingers who walked among us.

But, no. When Dews shifts over to a tape-recorded diary that Allis made by herself over the years – particularly 1966-69 – all of that disappears. Instead, what we get is the contrast between the upbeat verbal correspondence between husband and wife while separated and the increasingly agonizing reality of daily life when Charley is at home.

Allis shares it all with her tape-recorder: Charley’s fits of rage (fueled by drinking), the pressure he puts on their four children, the way the kids react. Their oldest, a daughter named Ann, chases the wrong kind of boys and winds up married, pregnant and divorced far too young. The oldest son, Chuck, is an undiagnosed dyslexic whose poor school performance triggers his father’s anger. One son winds up institutionalized for his wild outbursts. The whole family winds up in family therapy.

It’s all illustrated by photos and home movies depicting smiling family members and friends. There’s a shocking dissonance in the difference between the face being presented to the world and the emotional torment being suffered in private.

As you listen, you can’t help but anticipate a climactic moment of bloody violence – at least on a level with, say, “The Stepfather” – but it never arrives. And that may be the truly horrifying thing about the movie: that this woman, who sounds extremely self-aware and in touch with her thoughts and feelings, can’t find a way to take control of her life and her family and get out – that she remains a victim of a husband who seems not to see the emotional damage he’s inflicting.

It’s fascinating in a weirdly vicarious way – that you can be a witness to this without having to be part of it. Is it a glimpse of a time past – or a sample of what people go through everyday? Is this family a product of its time or is this a microcosm of normal life for families today?

“Must Read After My Death” makes no brief for these people as remarkable, exceptional or unusual. That may be the most frightening thing of all.

*   *   *

If you’d like a free pass to watch a streaming version of “Must Read After My Death” online, be one of the first 10 people to send your request to me at info@hollywoodandfine.com. Please include your first and last name.

 Print This Post

I don’t want to oversell “Fired Up” – but as horny-teen comedies go, this one is surprisingly and consistently funny, in a guilty-pleasure sort of way.

This sometimes sly, verbally adept outing is directed by Will Gluck, the brains behind Fox’s undeservedly short-lived sitcom, “The Loop.” There was more than a touch of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker stops-out wit to that bizarrely funny series – sort of “Police Squad” minus the surrealist impulses.

“Fired Up” has that same blend of manic energy and hyperarticulate wit, mixing intellect and wordplay with low comedy, shifting speeds rapidly without inducing whiplash or stripping gears.

(Teen girl to teen boy: “Well, you know what John Lennon says about that.” Teen boy to teen girl: “No – because I’m not in my 50s. I can ask my dad, though.”) (More…)

There’s no argument that much of the best work in filmed entertainment these days is being done for television – something that Ross Katz’s film, “Taking Chance,” only confirms.

“Taking Chance,” which had its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was made for HBO and begins airing at 8 p.m. Saturday. There have been many worthy films about the Iraq war – most of them documentaries – but this one dramatizes a true story in a way that will break your heart without ever feeling manipulative or gratuitous. (More…)

The title of Michael Selditch and Rob Tate’s “Eleven Minutes” does not specifically play off Andy Warhol’s prophetic, now-cliched pronouncement about the duration of fame in the future – though it easily could.

Rather, it represents the dizzyingly expensive, dazzling short period of time that the average fashion show actually lasts during Fashion Week – whether in New York, Paris or elsewhere.

“Eleven Minutes” follows Jay McCarroll, the winner of the first season of “Project Runway,” as he designs, manufactures, displays and attempts to sell his first collection. It’s been a couple of years since he won the Bravo reality show – and he has to strike before his shelf life expires.

McCarroll is an entertainingly self-aware individual, made for TV as it were. He’s got obvious talent and flair – and he’s virtually fearless when it comes to speaking his mind. That’s not always a positive trait because not everyone appreciates his brand of honesty. (More…)

Dark and downbeat, “Gomorrah” is another film that critics will champion and average filmgoers will scratch their heads over, while wondering how they let themselves get snookered – yet again – into coughing up the price of a movie ticket (or a video-on-demand fee) for a so-called important film. (More…)

Much is being made of the bad timing in releasing a movie like “Confessions of a Shopaholic” – a comedy about a woman with a shopping addiction being pursued by a collection agency for her thousands in credit-card debt – at this particular moment in our economic history.

As if there’s ever a good time to release a laugh-resistant, brain-dead comedy.

Because, honestly: If this movie was actually funny – instead of a stinker from the word ‘go’ – wouldn’t critics be singing its praises for daring to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and/or good taste?

That’s a moot point. “Shopaholic,” drawn from the novels by Sophie Kinsella, is DOA, not even amusing enough to make the cut as a Lifetime movie. It’s hard to know where to point the finger of blame because there’s so much to be assigned. Let’s just say that were it not for the bad script and dull-witted direction, we’d still have to contend with Isla Fisher’s inept slapstick performance. (More…)

It’s hard to play the kind of troubled sensitive shnook that Joaquin Phoenix does in “Two Lovers,” without making him seem either too precious to live or so mannered that he might as well be played by David Arquette or Jeremy Davies.

Phoenix, however, captures the rage to live and connect that drives the suicidal Leonard in James Gray’s uncharacteristically low-key drama. He’s got demons but he’s fighting them; it’s nice to see a character who battles his own self-pity.

It’s also nice to see Gray making a movie about something other than crime, corruption and the Russian mob. Granted, he hasn’t strayed from his favorite setting – Brighton Beach – but at least he’s expanded his palate. He’s still dealing in moral dilemmas, but nothing here is solved at the point of a gun.

Not that things aren’t life-and-death here. (More…)

Kyle Newman’s “Fanboys” is that weird mix of stupid and smart that shows just how volatile a mix those two highly unstable elements can be.

Unfortunately, the script by Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg is neither stupid nor smart enough to create the kind of ridiculously entertaining mélange of something like “Superbad.” It has its moments but they’re just that: moments in the middle of long minutes when something more entertaining should be happening.

Too often, “Fanboys” inspires smiles of recognition, rather than guffaws of surprise. You’re saying, “Oh, I get it,” not laughing at the unexpected weirdness of the moment. (More…)