It’s been a busy weekend. In addition to our Feed the Queue entry (Meet John Doe, I have a review of one new release (Tangled) and several screeners. However, two of the films have not yet released (Black Swan and Somewhere), so I won’t be able to post my reviews of them at this time.

So, here is what I watched this weekend:

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

When I think of all of the indie-styled flicks that have attempted to be about something, yet ended up being about nothing, there’s something satisfying in picking up a production like The Kids Are All Right. The film manages to tap into a story that sits slightly outside the mainstream, feels like the type of independent feature that used to be made by the boatload and managed to feel like it had something integral to say about human interaction.

Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Bening) are a loving couple raising two children they each conceived using the same donor’s sperm. Joni (Mia Wasikowska) is the eldest child, three years to the senior of Laser (Josh Hutcherson). Despite their seemingly positive home environment, Laser is curious about his sire, the father he never knew. He convinces his sister, who can legally make the request, to attempt to contact their biological father. Enter Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a college dropout who has successfully transitioned into a natural food grower and seller. Without their parents’ knowledge Joni and Laser make an outing to meet the agreeable Paul to determine if there’s a connection and despite a rather awkward initial encounter, they each realize they want to get to know the other a little better.

After the kids reveal their plan, Jules and Nic are apprehensive at first, but agree to further the connections and through several successful events, only Nic remains skeptical of Pual’s motives and firmly believes their home life is perfect without him. Yet, for all the perceived perfection, their family is flawed and while Paul is the catalyst, the foundation had been cracking for years before.

The Kids Are All Right presents five people, each flawed in their own way struggling to live a perfect life and their problems are little removed from those of the people sitting down in the audience to watch the film. That Jules and Nic are lesbians is barely at issue here and although it plays a key role in the plot, the pairing is portrayed honestly and realistically. This is in part due to the wonderful performances in the film. Both Moore and Bening have modestly challenging roles to play, Moore, who has significantly more experience in indie-minded affairs acquits herself better of the wounded woman unable to commit, yet always stuck in the shadow of her more accomplished wife. Bening delivers a solid performance, but American Beauty was a better showcase of her talents than this. And when compared with co-star Moore, she pales. Yet it is neither Moore or Bening that command this film. Nor is it Hutcherson or Wasikowska who are delightful in their own rights.

Mark Ruffalo has been a long underappreciated talent on the big screen. With his work in films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blindness to name just two, there’s little not to like. He allows his characters’ imperfections to drive the performance, not to envelop it. He doesn’t lose his humanity or compassion in an effort to display as many tics and mannerisms as he can. The seeming lack of effort he puts into his roles makes him one of my favorite actors. And when you can show up in a film like The Kids Are All Right and upstage two respected, Oscar-nominated Hollywood actresses, you have to respect that.

Director Lisa Cholodenko burst onto the scene over a decade ago with her critically acclaimed High Art, a film which took Patricia Clarkson and turned her into one of the independent cinema’s great working actresses and brought Ally Sheedy her first major critical attention. A focused artist who gives actors quality roles has delivered a well written and engaging family drama that upends traditional family values while simultaneously supporting them. She shows the flaws in a lesbian relationship, yet presents it as naturally as a straight marriage. Her characters are deeply flawed, but those intricacies make them regular folk, not separate them.

The Kids Are All Right doesn’t linger on antiquated ideas or dwell on unspent possibilities. It exists without remorse and the audience easily embraces that concept. It’s the kind of naturalistic film that is remembered in ten years as being a movie that got it right rather than one that tried to do so and failed.

127 HOURS

It’s not easy to describe a film directed by Danny Boyle. Apart from his mainstream paean to Bollywood, Boyle has crafted an eclectic bunch of films from his celebrated 1996 breakthrough Trainspotting to his groundbreaking zombie survival thriller 28 Days Later… to his sci-fi sleeper Sunshine. When Boyle is breaking the rules of cinematic storytelling, he’s at his best. When it feels like he’s pandering I lose interest. 127 Hours had the potential of doing the latter, but I’m satisfied to say that it amounts more to the former.

Anchored by a fantastic lead performance by James Franco, the film follows the real life story of Aron Ralston, a cocky climber and canyoneer who is more at home in the canyons of Moab, Utah than anywhere else. After showing a couple of hikers a fantastic thrill ride into an underground lake, Ralston tumbles into a crevasse where a large, dislodged boulder has trapped his arm and left him stranded in a remote region where the likelihood of discovery is minimal. When I originally read about this film and it was said to include flashbacks and memories of his life before, I had expected a bit more formulaic and traditional presentation, but his hazy recollections, pain-induced memories and obscure prophetic visions lead the film down a less conventional and more engaging path.

Heavy use of three-way split screen techniques lend an otherworldly quality to the film, taking us at once into Ralston’s life and out of the real world. Yet, every time we’re pushed into fantasy, Boyle drags us back to reality where we are viscerally forced to share Ralston’s fate. If you know what happens, it will help prepare you for the inevitable, but if you go in not knowing, your emotions will threaten to get the better of you as you become certain of the outcome.

Franco’s career-defining performance is essential. You cannot tell a story like this without a charismatic, honest, lifelike performance and Franco, who long ago proved he has the skill, was the perfect choice for the role. The audience shares Franco’s pain, frustration, hope and disgust. They react viscerally to the varied disturbing situations and images presented in the film. That Boyle can make you feel this uncomfortable without diverting you from the story is a credit to his ability.

You have to prepare yourself for a film like this. Go in expecting to face emotionally and physically demanding scenes. It’s graphic when necessary, yet meaningful and touching in equal measure. These types of techniques have been used in varied and interesting ways in the past, but Boyle manages to turn twist and mold those methods into a film that could have felt disjointed, impatient or unclear, but works so incredibly well. While I had almost written Boyle off after my disappointment with the frequently forced, erratically pretentious Slumdog Millionaire (and the subsequent undeserved praise), he managed to wrench me back into his corner with 127 Hours. If we could excise Slumdog from his filmography, I’d say he was batting 1.000 for me, but even my favorite directors have disappointments. I just hope he doesn’t backslide in the future.

TANGLED

When I reviewed last year’s Princess and the Frog, I had voiced hope that the future for Walt Disney’s old cell animation department would be renewed under the leadership of John Lasseter and although the cell animation component has been replaced by computer animation, I’m glad to report that Lasseter has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls Disney had succumbed to in the late ’90s with their latest animated musical outing: Tangled.

The story of Rapunzel (voiced here by Mandy Moore), a maiden trapped in a tower where her long golden hair is the only means of entrance of egress, has surprisingly not been mined by Disney’s animation studio before now. With their history of princess sagas, this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Yet here it is, 2010, and we’re finally getting the story. Embellished greatly over the short story, this tale centers around a magical flower with healing powers that is used to save the life of a young queen and her unborn daughter. The cure imbues her hair with a golden color and the ability to heal the sick or wounded. An old hag, who had kept the flower’s existence under wraps for so long is angered by the destruction of the flower for anyone other than her own youthful transformations, steals the child in the night and locks her away in a tower where she convinces the young girl that the outside world is cruel, wicked and filled with those who would do her harm. And only by staying within the tower will she be protected from those evils.

When a handsome thief, escaping both his betrayed partners and the King’s guards all in pursuit of the crown he possesses, seeks asylum in Rapunzel’s tower, she gets the idea to use the crown as a bargaining chip to convince Flynn Ryder (voice of Zachary Levi) to guide her to the strange festival of lights that she is certain are not stars, but which she has little idea that they are merely annual remembrances of her own abduction.

The film follows many of Disney’s classic archetypes, all semi-spoofed in other films (Dreamworks’ Shrek and Disney’s own Enchanted), which were the keys to the success of many of their greatest films, but which, when abused, were also part of their biggest failures. The film opens with the backstory, but the first musical number of the film belongs to Moore as she sings about her life within the tower, the sweet but innocuous “When Will My Life Begin”. We are very soon presented with another song by villainness Mother Gothel (voice of Donna Murphy), an interesting, cautionary tune “Mother Knows Best”. And there are a half dozen other songs in the film, including the gorgeous tune that unleashes her hair’s magical power (referred to on the soundtrack only as “Healing Incantation”, the generic romantic ballad “I See the Light” and the pop closer “Something That I Want”. It’s not Alan Menken’s best work, but it’s better than anything Phil Collins ever wrote for Disney’s Tarzan. And while I’m not as impressed with the music in this film, though the undescore is pretty strong, it’s the film around these numbers that really shines.

Of the three essential stars of the film, Murphy is simply the standout. While not the evil magnificence of Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, or the moralistically flawed Judge Claude Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame, Murphy has made Gothel one of Disney’s most dynamic and believable villains to date. In her scenes with Rapunzel, even though we know her to be selfish and a thief, there are moments where a genuine motherly bond starts to peak out. Even though it’s quickly snatched back as she digs her claws into the impressionable girl, there is still a spark of humanity. Below her a bit is TV’s Chuck star Zachary Levi who is one of Disney’s more multi-faceted “princes”. On par with Princess and the Frog‘s Prince Naveen, they are two of the best male love interests since Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Flawed, but lovable, they make it easier for the audience to understand the romantic entanglements that develop and unlike the sudden leap-to-love between Naveen and Tiana in Frog, this relationship feels more organic and naturally progressive. But that has little to do with Mandy Moore’s performance.

Not the worst one could have imagined, but her high pitched voice grates on the nerves quickly and gives the audience very little emotional resonance when necessary. Perhaps an actress like Amy Adams from Enchanted could have given her some pointers, but a far cry she is from the pinnacles of Disney princesses like Belle and Tiana, strong women who don’t feel forced into the position. Of course, there’s something to be said for the sweet naifs like Ariel from The Little Mermaid or Snow White. They feel like little girls growing big, which make for good role models for young girls. And since these characters generally aren’t adult women (well, Snow White was, but that’s more a byproduct of the more repressed era of the 1930s than any lack of character), it makes a bit of sense that they are forced to grow up fast and learn quickly that the world is a terrible place, but there are good things in it.

You can pretty much guess every step of the story, yet there are small gems of scenes within the whole that elevate the surrounding elements: most of the scenes with the part-bloodhound horse Maximus or Rapunzel’s emotive chameleon Pascal; the animation used for Rapunzel’s glowing hair (the main reason computer animation was the right animated medium for this film); the boat ride for the launch of the lanterns; and of course the film’s final scene. The animation really does make the film more magnificent, the humor isn’t too childish and I love that the animals don’t actually talk but convey their emotions with facial gestures or noises.

When compared to the underviewed Princess and the Frog, Tangled is clearly inferior, but with two solid to excellent efforts in the span of two years, it’s clear that Disney’s extra-Pixar animation house is finally building itself back up again. And if John Lasseter isn’t to thank, I don’t know who else is.

MEET JOHN DOE

In a typical Frank Capra film, ordinary men stand up for other ordinary men. It’s how many of his films have come to be regarded as classics. Not because they were groundbreaking examples of style or grand exercises in innovation, but because they spoke to the regular filmgoer of the time. Meet John Doe can’t hold a candle to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It’s a Wonderful Life, but it’s still successful in its own right.

In the midst of financial crisis and high unemployment, a powerful newspaper is bought out and its employees are cut, including talented journalist Ann Mitchell, played by the lovely, if underused Barbara Stanwyck. Ann decides to finish out her duties by typing up a scathing critique of the government and the ignominy invited upon the common folk in the form of an anonymous letter from a man who plays to fling himself from the highest point in the city in protest. When the newspaper’s readership responds favorably to the letter, Ann is re-hired and the search begins for a man to impersonate this fake letter writer in an effort to string the story along for the success of the newspaper and to strengthen her career.

A washed up baseball pro, John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), is one of several homeless men who claim to have written the letter, and whose good looks prompt Ann to pick him as their fictitious John Doe. As Willoughby becomes accustomed to the life of fame and comes to realize the power he wields during a live radio broadcast, he gets the idea that he can really be of help to his fellow man and begins working hard to encourage his admirers to embrace their friendliness and become better neighbors to one another. Unfortunately, the newspaper’s owner, D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold) has other plans. In hopes of becoming president, D.B. goes to great lengths and spends vast sums of money to encourage the little John Doe Clubs around the country in hopes that he can use John’s celebrity as a springboard for a new political party and for his own ambitions.

As this is Cooper’s story, it’s little surprise that he carries the film with little effort. He pulls us into his depressing story and then carries us forward with his big ideas and hopes for the future. And when we’re finally left atop that building watching him decide whether to fulfill his fake letter’s promise, we are of little doubt that he’s about to do the right thing even if we hope that it won’t come to pass.

The first half of the film moves rather slowly for a Capra film. It lingers on examining very little, though is supposedly an attempt to convey the forthright nature of our anonymous hero and set up most of the events that will transpire as the film progresses. Yet, most of what we are given is mostly unnecessary. A lengthy scene where John discusses his life and ambitions with his guards and assistants over a fictitious game of baseball propels the story, but does so without a lick of brevity. However, as the D.B.’s ulterior motives are revealed and the film starts careening towards its conclusion, the audience is compelled to stand by John’s side against what they have seen. The film could have used some narrative tightening, but the end result is involving enough to make the entirety worth watching.