A Troubled Brie Larson Takes Care Of Troubled Teens In SHORT TERM 12

SHORT TERM 12 (Dir. Destin Daniel Cretton, 2013)

Brie Larson isn’t a household name yet, but she’s getting closer bit by bit with roles in recent buzzed about films like THE SPECTACULAR NOW and DON JON, in which she plays Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s always texting sister.

Larson’s strong work in Destin Daniel Cretton’s feature length debut as writer/director, SHORT TERM 12, based on his 2008 short film of the same name, definitely deserves recognition as a breakthrough performance on the scale of Elizabeth Olsen’s performance in MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE and Jennifer Lawrence in WINTER’S BONE.

Larson plays Grace, a supervisor at the foster-care facility for at-risk teenagers of the title, who’s in a serious relationship with her co-worker Mason (The Newsroom’s John Gallagher Jr.), but can’t bring herself to open up to him about her troubled history, especially now that she finds out that she’s pregnant.

Between having to chase down runaways, the couple deal with the arrival of Kaitlyn Dever as a jaded 15-year old girl (aptly named Jayden) whose bad attitude is justified by what he learn about her abusive father, and the upcoming departure of Keith Stanfield (the only cast member reprising his role from the short) as a long term resident, and aspiring rapper who’s about to turn 18.

The intimate nature of the acting aided by straight forward thoughtful tone of Cretton’s screenplay drew me into this slice of these people’s lives in that “oh, I’ve known people just like these” kind of way. At various times throughout my younger years, I had both been somebody who was scared of opening up to others, and somebody who was desperately trying to get somebody else to open up. I was genuinely feeling Larson working both ends of this - we see without any heavy handiness that she’s great at her job, but lousy at life.

Dever’s situation affects Larson deeply, both having been labeled “cutters,” and they have a standout scene where they bond over bashing in the windows of Dever’s father’s car with a baseball bat.

Meanwhile Gallagher attempts some closeness with Stanfield before he leaves. Their bond comes in the form of Gallagher plays bongos to Stanfield’s rapping of some original, and very personal, lyrics he jotted in a notebook, the sentiment of which should be appreciated by even non-hip hop fans.

There are a few threads that are tied up a little too neatly – the film is best when it’s about how messy life can be – and the shaky cam may get a bit too shaky, but the overall picture Cretton paints is one of low budget beauty.

Despite winning awards at SXSW, and various other film festivals this year, SHORT TERM 12 has been pretty poorly attended at my local art house theater, the Colony in Raleigh, N.C., where it’s only playing for one week. That’s a shame, because it’s a well worth seeking out indie with what should be a star-making turn by an actress that if you don’t know now, you surely will soon.

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GRAVITY: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening today at nearly every multiplex in the Solar System:

GRAVITY (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2013)

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are our astronaut audience surrogates in Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, the first great movie of the fall season.

After so many overblown sci-fi epics, it’s so refreshing to find a film set in the heavens, on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to be exact, that doesn’t need attacking aliens or big ass asteroids to be scary - the prospect of being stranded, untethered in outer space is terrifying all by itself.

Bullock and Clooney find themselves in this predicament after debris from a destructed Russian satellite hits their space shuttle during their space walk on a Hubble Telescope repair mission. All other crew members were killed, and contact with Houston, represented by the voice of Ed Harris as Mission Control (nice shout-out to Harris’s roles in THE RIGHT STUFF and APOLLO 13) is lost, so there’s just the two Oscar winning A-listers lost in space.

Clooney, cocky and confident as usual, retrieves Bullock after she spins out of control away from the devastation of the accident, and, with the help of thruster packs, they make their way back to the shuttle. Finding that the shuttle’s been totaled and therefore not their ride back home, they then head towards the International Space Station.

Along the way we get a bit of insight into the characters, though less about why Clooney is driven to break the world record for longest spacewalk, and more about why Bullock prefers the quiet of space to life on Earth, i.e. she’s mourning the death of her four year old daughter.

When it comes to 3D, GRAVITY joins Martin Scorsese’s HUGO and Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI in the small club of films that make spectacular use of the format. Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (who also shot Cuarón’s Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN and CHILDREN OF MEN) glide through the spectacularly imagery with an electric energy that will make you feel as weightless as its leads. It's definitely worth the price of admission for the IMAX 3D Experience.

Clooney is his regular charming self, but Bullock acts her ass off. It’s such an impressive and emotionally invested performance that I wouldn’t be surprised if it garnered her another Oscar nomination.

From the point-of-view visor shots from inside of Bullock’s helmet, to the expansive CGI-ed shiny space station surroundings, there’s a lot of immersive imagery in GRAVITY, a lot of technical beauty, but the film’s most amazing feat is how satisfyingly stressful it is.

One fake-out fever dream scene aside that I won’t spoil, the film is heavily grounded in reality with only existing technology available which adds greatly to the film’s frightening grip.

Although it begins with text telling us how unlivable outer space is, recalling Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci fi classic ALIEN’s tagline: “In space nobody can hear you scream,” GRAVITY is not sci-fi. It’s a thriller in which the cold darkness of the great beyond is more terrifying than any made up monster. 

Seeing it will make you feel as if you’re really starring into the void, and when it’s over you’ll be happy to be safe back on Earth. That’s just a few of this bold, amazing, and breath taking movie’s many sensations.

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James Gandolfini Dates Julia Louis-Dreyfus In His Fine Final Film ENOUGH SAID

Now playing at an indie art house theater near you:

ENOUGH SAID (Dir. Nicole Holofcener, 2013)

It’s a testament to the talents of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late great James Gandolfini that I forgot about Elaine Bendis and Tony Soprano, i.e. their iconic characters from Seinfeld and The Sopranos, while watching Nicole Holofcener’s newest indie rom com ENOUGH SAID.

Sure, Louis-Dreyfus has some of Elaine’s neurotic neediness, and Gandolfini shares some of Tony’s unhealthy appetites, but the people they portray here are grounded in a more stable sensibility. A sensibility that will be recognizable to those who’ve seen Holofcener’s previous movies that have largely dealt with modern women coming to terms with, well, being modern women, and always have Catherine Keener in them (see: WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY & AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH WOMEN, PLEASE GIVE).

Here Keener plays Gandolfini’s ex-wife, a successful poet (successful enough to know Joni Mitchell) who hires Louis-Dreyfus to be her masseuse after befriending her at a party. Unknown to Keener, Louis-Dreyfus has begun dating Gandolfini, who she met at the same party.

So when Keener complains at length about her ex-husband during their sessions, Louis-Dreyfus is making all kinds of mental notes about her new beau’s faults. Louis-Dreyfus wants a playbook to guide her through the emotional minefield of when dating somebody gets serious, and for a time Keener unknowingly serves that purpose.

This hilariously comes to a head when Louis-Dreyfus can’t help picking on him about such things as the calories in guacamole at a dinner party with Toni Collette and Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy’s husband that you may remember as the Air Marshall in BRIDESMAIDS). On the uneasy drive home, Gandolfini remarks: “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?”

Despite its rom com-style plotting – i.e. one half of a couple is keeping something from the other until they get way in over their head – ENOUGH SAID doesn’t strain for laughs, or go for cheap one-liners. Holofcener, who wrote the screenplay, simply wants to spend some time with some flawed folks who are making their way through a transitional period.

There’s somewhat of a misshapen subplot concerning Louis-Dreyfus’s daughter (Tracey Fairaway) leaving home for college, with the mother over compensating by becoming way too close to her daughter’s best friend (Tracey Fairaway), but it doesn’t clutter up the main storyline.

Although Holofcener definitely has her own thing going on, in tone and relationship perspective, I was reminded of Jay and Mark Duplass’s 2010 comedy CYRUS, which also dealt with a couple who met at a party and have an obstacle or two to overcome, and also had Catherine Keener as the ex-wife. In that and in ENOUGH SAID, both very likable low key indies, I rooted strongly for the leads to stick it out.

The chemistry Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus have together is pleasing yet fleeting as we can’t help but be aware that the man is no longer with us. We can at least take a little comfort in the fact that Gandolfini has two more films in the can (small parts in NICKY DUECE and ANIMAL RESCUE set for next year), but that this is his last lead performance is very sad indeed.

ENOUGH SAID will perhaps be remembered more for that than its content, but however people come to it, most will find that it’s a thoughtful and witty take on the insecurities involved with taking a second chance at love. It really shows how good Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were together working with Holofcener's moody material that that’s the real takeaway.

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