A&E Articles

Like a “Little Miss Sunshine,” this indie-spirited film has the distinction of both living up to the buzz and delivering a few surprises. To go down the laundry list of the film’s strengths: Performances? Check. The cast plays the right tune and Ellen Page, far better served by the script than she was in her role as Kitty Pryde in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” is a knockout. Direction? Check. Jason Reitman, who brought us the hilarious and sharp satire “Thank You for Smoking,” gets a “Napoleon Dynamite” kind of vibe. Or “Little Miss Sunshine.” Or any low-key character study that’s perfectly happy sticking with an un-flashy, naturalistic filming style to let the focus remaining on the actors, story and dialogue.

Now here’s a wonderfully weird chimera, a film of many parts; part music video, part homage to spaghetti westerns (and part pastiche), part delirium, part cult film.

The film came with a buzz so thick and praise so effusive that when my own reaction to the Coen Brothers’ latest film clearly cast me in the role of contrarian, I had to break my cardinal rule and read other critics’ reviews before writing my own. Result: I remain a contrarian, and am sticking to my impression of the film as a work more horrific for its pretentiousness than its bourgeois nihilism.

I have to wonder what Beowulf scholars would make of screenwriters Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary revisionist take on the famous Old English epic poem. “Hold me in your memory not as a king or hero, but as a flawed, fallible man,” Beowulf (voiced by Ray Winstone) says at one point. It’s as good a statement as any as to Gaiman and Avary’s agenda to ostensibly add dramatic depth to the tale. From Beowulf’s introduction as a vain braggart to his self-inflicted Faustian tragedy, with one arguable exception there’s not much shine left to his heroism by the film’s end, if there’s any at all to begin with.

Its premise fits in squarely with any number of family reunion movies – the ghastly, inferior “The Family Stone” comes immediately to mind – yet “Dan in Real Life” invites a stretchy and surprising comparison to “The Weather Man,” directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Nicholas Cage. Though tonally and stylistically very different, both films feature sad sack protagonists who, for differing reasons, can’t seem to pull their lives together. In the case of Cage’s character, David Spritz, the damage is largely self-inflicted through an inability to change what can be changed and, crucially, accept what cannot be changed. For Steve Carell’s Dan Burns, a successful advice columnist on the verge of syndication, the trouble stems from persistent grief over the death of his wife. Both men live in situations that hinder more than help, although Dan arguably has a supportive family to ease his burden. Both must learn how to move forward. These are kindred stories, in a way, although where “The Weather Man” employs fatalism that leads to cautiously hopefully stoicism, “Dan in Real Life” opts for the full-bore optimism of a romantic comedy. Unfortunately, “Dan in Real Life” doesn’t come to its conclusion with the same relentless honesty possessed by “The Weather Man.”

Comic Book History

The cartoon history of the Elizabethan age continues in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” the follow-up to 1998’s well-reviewed “Elizabeth.” It’s 1585, 27 years after the events in the first film, and Queen Elizabeth (Blanchett) has more troubles to contend with. The least of these is her persistent unmarried state – she’s not called the Virgin Queen for nothing – while the biggest threat to her reign is Catholic King Philip of Spain and his desire to rid England of her Protestant inclinations, a plot that involves the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots (Morton), and a Jesuit secret agent (Ifans).