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Frankly My Dear...

    Frankly My Dear...

    Movie Review: The Descendants

    Posted: 21 Nov 2011 10:10 AM PST

    In the Oscar-buzzed film of “The Descendants,” Alexander Payne turns his “Sideways” eye on Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel about family dysfunction in Hawaii. It’s a lovely, heartfelt character study of common, everyday people trapped on the horns of an uncommon but not unheard-of dilemma.

    George Clooney stars as Matt King, a lawyer and absentee dad living what “my friends on the mainland” assume is a “permanent vacation,” a life in paradise.  But he’s quick to tell us (by voice over narration), that they’re not “immune to life,” living in the land of the never-ending luau.

    First, his wife’s in a coma, so brain-injured in a boating accident that she’s not likely to recover. Then, there’s his family’s landed-gentry status, the thousands of acres of Hawaiian farmland that they own in a collective trust which his many relatives want him to, as trustee, sell for development.

    But about that coma wife. Matt’s been “the back up parent” for years, “the understudy” in that family role. Now he has daughters to communicate with — ten year old Scottie (Amara Miller)  has to be told her mom is going to die, and rebellious boarding school brat Alex (Shailene Woodley) has to be fetched, brought home and convinced to behave herself as dad breaks it to friends and relatives that his life-of-the-party spouse isn’t going to make it.

    Matt, however, is so out of the loop that he’s missed the obvious. The wife (Patricia Hastie), glimpsed only in an unspoken, day-of-the-boating-accident flashback, was cheating on him. Alex knew. Others did, too. Now Matt wants to know who the guy is, wants some sort of closure. And he needs Alex’s help for that.

    Payne stirs all this into a rich, wistful brew. “Descendants” has a wake, sad family get togethers and family confrontations and hopeless moments in which the only thing Matt has to cling to are thoughts of revenge on the guy his wife was cheating with, a man he’s determined to stalk.

    Woodley, of “The Secret Life of An American Teenager,” beautifully gets across the child who has to take on an adult role but is nowhere near up to the task, despite her rude bravado. Nick Krause is agreeably goofy as her tag-along pal Sid, who has a gift for saying the wrong thing, especially in front of Alex’s grumpy grandpa (Robert Forster, terrific).  Also notable are Beau Bridges, as a laid-back floral-shirt wearing cousin whose slouch says “surfer” but who has scary business-face side, And the always wonderful Judy Greer brings a subtle sub-surface hurt to the wife of the “other man” in Matt’s wife’s life.

    Matt King is, for the 50 year old Clooney, his first true-than-middle-aged-man role. Clooney has to play competent but confused, a man whose value system seems sound (he’s frugal, not spending his inherited wealth) until others question those values. It’s a tricky performance, conveying heartbreak and fury, poignancy and pragmatism. It’s some of his best work ever.

    At times, Payne stumbles and takes us out of this engaging but slight tale. Early on, a stranger blurts out all the back story on the land deal, the media attention it has earned and native-born Hawaiians’ attitudes about it, a scene that screams “EXPOSITION.” The stalking of the wife’s lover seems like strained invention and Sid is a simple plot device. We’re all but waiting for this unschooled dolt to utter some profound insight, the way plot devices inevitably do.

    But “The Descendants,” like the Napa Valley-set “Sideways” and the Nebraskan odyssey “About Schmidt,” lets Payne show us the Other America and the Other Americans — little lives caught up in small but epic problems far away from the La La Land of Hollywood hype, sex and violence.  In his hands, Hawaii seems a lot more than sun, surf, hula skirts and umbrella drinks and the people there as universal as anyone who works, loves, loses and struggles, united or not, in these United States.

    MPAA Rating: R for language including some sexual references

    Cast: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Robert Forster, Beau Bridges, Judy Greer.

    Credits: Directed by Alexander Payne, co-written by Payne, Jim Rash and Nat Foxon, based on a Kaui Hart Hemmings novel. A Fox Searchlight release. Running time: 1:55

    Movie Review: Arthur Christmas

    Posted: 21 Nov 2011 09:04 AM PST

    “Arthur Christmas” is a spirited, comically chaotic and adorably anarchic addition to the world’s over-supply of holiday cartoons. It’s very British, in other words — from its producers (Aardman, the folks who gave us “Wallace & Gromit”) to its voice casting to the slang slung by the assorted Santas in this 3D computer-animated farce.

    “Assorted Santas?” Why, yes. Santas in this version of North Pole Inc. serve for about 70 years and pass the job down to a son. The current Santa (voiced by Jim Broadbent) is a bit dotty, long-in-the-tooth, more of a “figurehead” in the intricate time-traveling incarnation of the family business that his red camouflage-suited son (Hugh Laurie, perfect) has turned it into. He has a huge stealth spaceship sleigh in which armies of technocrat elves and Fed Ex elves organize deliveries, which armies of commando elves make, with Santa showing up to provide that “official” touch on Christmas Eve. Steve is waiting for the old man to retire. He even has the Armani Santa suit all custom made, and a Christmas tree shaped goatee.

    But the old man won’t go. Even a disastrous near “wake up” alert (a child wakes up with Santa in her room) isn’t enough to convince him. Even when the organization realizes that out of the billions and billions served, a little girl in Cornwall didn’t get her bike, a resentful Steve only dismisses that as a statistical anomaly, and Santa himself shrugs it off.

    “Don’t worry, children are stupid,” one of the elves offers. They won’t realize they didn’t get a visit from Father Christmas.

    Arthur, Santa’s klutzy younger son, winningly voiced by James McAvoy, is shocked. Arthur won’t hear of it. And in his ancient grandpa, Grandsanta, played with demonic glee by the great Bill Nighy, he finds a sympathetic ear. The old man wants to get his old sleigh out and make the delivery, with real reindeer.

    “They said it’s impossible,” Arthur protests.

    “They used to say it was impossible to teach women how to read,” Grandsanta mutters back. “We’ll be back home in the waddle of a reindeer’s buttocks!”

    That’s when “Arthur Christmas” takes off — literally. With outmoded technology, a 136 year-old Santa with false teeth, a bad temper and no sense of direction, Arthur’s going to get little Gwen her bike. They encounter a gun nut in Idaho, a fierce chihuahua in Mexico and a marauding pride of lions in Africa, all in an effort to make sure no child is left behind on Christmas.

    “It doesn’t matter how Santa’s gift gets there,” Arthur declares, “as long as it does!”

    “Arthur Christmas” has many a madcap moment, many of them provided by the super-efficient gift-wrapping elf Bryony, who believes invisible tape can solve any problem — including that marauding pride of lions.

    The Aardman animators know a thing or three about sight gags and throw-away lines, and they pile up quickly, here. Nighy’s wicked glee in every little bit of slang is hilarious, but the sheer invention is what gets you.

    The movie’s energy flags at about the one hour mark, but we kind of need that break to catch our breath. In a genre — the animated holiday film — already overflowing with the sentimental, the silly “Arthur Christmas” is a most welcome treat to find stuffed into the cinema’s stockings this holiday season.

    MPAA Rating:PG for some mild rude humor

    Cast: The voices of James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Stanton, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy

    Credits: Directed by Sarah Smith, written by Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith, a Sony Animation release. Running time: 1:30