Jena Malone Page 2

Part documentary and part film essay, this movie mixes fact and fiction to explore the concept of the teenager, which didn't exist before World War II. It's fascinating to learn how the idea emerged, and how understanding it has fundamentally changed society. But the film remains resolutely superficial in its approach to history, only briefly dipping beneath the surface right at the very end.

Up until the early 20th century, Western society was made up of adults and children, with nothing in between. But child labour laws changed that, giving young people a taste of freedom and responsibility that became even more important during two world wars and the Great Depression. Rebellious attitudes surged in swing music, and even though adults balked at the idea of giving teens any real independence, the New York Times made it official in 1945 with the publication of a Teen-age Bill of Rights.

All of this is informative and interesting, but filmmaker Wolf interweaves the archival movies with footage he has created in a vintage style. And we can tell something isn't quite right: the character profiles are clearly fictionalised, which makes us wonder how much of the movie we can believe. It certainly doesn't help that these fake young people are token figures: a partying British socialite, a young black American, a member of the Hitler Youth. No matter how much they tell us about the times and places, they remain purely artificial creations.

Continue reading: Teenage Review

After 2012's The Hunger Games caught us off-guard with its subtle themes, this sequel more than lives up to the hype, dramatically expanding the scale of the action while letting the actors deepen their characters. It's a full-on action epic that cleverly retains author Suzanne Collins' narrative trick of telling the story through a flawed perspective. And it provides the needed push to give the whole saga real momentum.

We join our heroes not long after the last film ended: Katniss and Peeta (Lawrence and Hutcherson) are in trouble for challenging the authority of President Snow (Sutherland) and sowing the seeds of rebellion in the districts. Now they have to travel around the nation with their team - drunken mentor Haymitch (Harrelson), preening manager Effie (Banks), quietly subversive designer Cinna (Kravitz) - soothing ruffled feathers. But of course they only make things worse. So new Gamesmaker Plutarch (Hoffman) plots a way to force them back into the games with all of the past victors, so they can be wiped out for good. And Katniss is so busy worrying about protecting Peeta that she fails to remember who the true enemy is.

Screenwriters Beaufoy and deBruyn (aka Oscar-winner Michael Arndt) inventively maintain Katniss' narrow, inaccurate point-of-view right through the film, which keeps the audience wrong-footed all the way to the end. It's an exhilarating trick that makes the tour of the districts painfully dull and the return to the games utterly horrifying. It also gives Lawrence the chance to flex her own Oscar-winning chops, further tormenting us with her inability to choose between two good men: Peeta and Gale (Hemsworth), her pal back home. She certainly doesn't trust newcomers like the mouthy Johanna (Malone) or the too-hunky Finnick (Claflin).

Continue reading: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review

One of those mopey independent dramas that drifts through a mere hint of a plot, this film is worth a look for its unusual setting and a superb central performance from Paul Dano (last seen in Looper). Filmmaker Kim focusses so closely on him that everything else on screen kind of fades into the background, turning the movie into a deeply personal odyssey. Although there isn't much more to it than that.

Dano plays an aimless rocker named Joby, who travels to a snowy town to settle his divorce from Claire (Levieva). She's so angry with him that she won't even see him for the sake of their young daughter Ellen (Mandigo), preferring to talk through lawyers. And since she knows Joby is deeply in debt, she makes a cruel offer: he can have half the value of their marital home if he signs over sole custody of Ellen, whom he barely knows anyway. But this isn't an easy decision, and Joby can only get so much help from his inexperienced lawyer (Heder). As part of the negotiations, Joby gets to spend two hours with his daughter. And then he has to make up his mind.

Dano is superb as the hapless Joby, who finds it so difficult to concentrate on his life that he's about to be thrown out of his own band. As a result, his life seems to be one mess after another, leading to this key moment when he needs to snap to attention. So it's especially intriguing that we can feel the internal pull toward his daughter: he wants to be a good dad, but is terrified of doing something wrong. And the film finds a lively counterpoint in Heder's comically clueless lawyer, another grown man who is painfully ill-equipped to face the real world.

Continue reading: For Ellen Review

But much of Life as a House is completely watchable. Mark Andrus's script (he's written As Good As It Gets and the underrated, rarely seen Late For Dinner) appears cookie-cutter: he gives us the lazy, lonely, eccentric nobody (Kevin Kline); his estranged family, including beautiful ex-wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) and alienated teen (Hayden Christensen); and his predictably uptight neighbors, pissed off that his ramshackle of a house has stood in their beautiful oceanside neighborhood for twenty years.

Continue reading: Life As A House Review

Maybe I've seen too many Gyllenhaal movies, but Leland's slightly hunched posture and quizzical facial expression, indicative of a familiar detached dreaminess, recalls indie prince Jake constantly, right down to the casting of go-to indie girlfriend Jena Malone as Becky (who acted alongside Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko). To be fair, I wasn't thinking of Gyllenhaal for every second Gosling was on screen. Sometimes I was musing over his unfortunate resemblance to Screech from TV's Saved by the Bell.

Continue reading: The United States Of Leland Review

Set in 1988, Donnie Darko is a John Hughes teen movie tinged with David Lynch-ian gloom and perversity. It begins innocently enough around the Darko's dining room table, where we find out the older sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is rebelliously voting for Dukakis and Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal, Bubble Boy) is off his meds. From here, the film churns forward at a hypnotic pace, revealing facts about its disturbed but endearing title character.

Continue reading: Donnie Darko Review

It's hard not to admire Kevin Costner for his stanch dedication to making old-fashioned movies that defy our acidic modern world.

Unapologetically sentimental, he insists through films like "Field of Dreams," "The Postman," "Message in a Bottle" and now "For Love of the Game," that melodrama is not outdated, and the man has an aptitude for jerking tears from even the most reluctant ducts.

Sometimes he tries too hard, and frequently he tries too long (it's been 10 years since he made a movie under two hours), but chick flick or cautionary futurist yarn, he almost always succeeds in taking hold of the viewer's heart, even as some of us wince at his methods.

Continue reading: For Love Of The Game Review