Demolition

Review by Pamela Zoslov

DEMOLITION opens with an auto accident that kills the wife of Davis, a successful Manhattan investment banker. A similar collision is taking place between the styles of the movie's writer, Bryan Sipe, and its director, the Quebecois Jean-Marc Vallée.


Sipe's screenplay is a conventionally glossy Hollywood weeper, which has Jake Gyllenhaal as the young widower unable to come to terms with the death of his wife, Julia (Heather Lind). Despite the urgings of his father-in-law, Phil (Chris Cooper), who is also his boss, Davis is unable to cry or grieve in the expected ways. Instead, he becomes obsessed with taking things apart, literally — the refrigerator his wife had asked him to repair; furniture, lamps and bathroom stalls at his office; eventually, his shiny glass-box house in White Plains, which he attacks ferociously with sledgehammers and even a bulldozer. It's a clumsy, heavy-handed metaphor for grief and the postmortem examination of a marriage. (He's “taking things apart,” get it?)

Repost: While We're Young (opens in Akron May 15th at the Nightlight Cinema)

[WHILE WE'RE YOUNG opens in Akron on Friday May 15th at the Nightlight Cinema.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

“I always viewed life as material for a movie,” Noah Baumbach once said, and having mined his own life for such films as his precocious debut, KICKING AND SCREAMING, and his breakthrough, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the 45-year-old writer and director now addresses the experience of middle age with WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, a comedy starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts.

Baumbach, the son of a novelist and a film critic, has described the pressure he felt growing up to read the “right” books — Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier rather than beach reading. His films have reflected a drive toward artiness -- black-and-white Truffaut-manqué (FRANCES HA); irritating, hard-to-embrace characters (GREENBERG, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING). With the new film, Baumbach sheds the pretensions. With a story reminiscent of his childhood idol, Woody Allen, it is Baumbach's most mature, accessible and entertaining film to date.

While We're Young

Review by Pamela Zoslov

“I always viewed life as material for a movie,” Noah Baumbach once said, and having mined his own life for such films as his precocious debut, KICKING AND SCREAMING, and his breakthrough, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE, the 45-year-old writer and director now addresses the experience of middle age with WHILE WE'RE YOUNG, a comedy starring Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts.

Baumbach, the son of a novelist and a film critic, has described the pressure he felt growing up to read the “right” books — Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier rather than beach reading. His films have reflected a drive toward artiness -- black-and-white Truffaut-manqué (FRANCES HA); irritating, hard-to-embrace characters (GREENBERG, MARGOT AT THE WEDDING). With the new film, Baumbach sheds the pretensions. With a story reminiscent of his childhood idol, Woody Allen, it is Baumbach's most mature, accessible and entertaining film to date.

St. Vincent

Review by Joseph Anthony

It wasn’t easy for first time director Theodore Melfi to find the star of this film – Bill Murray. Near impossible, really. In an interview with USA Today, Melfi described how difficult it was to reach Murray, who has no agent or manager. “You call a 1-800 number,” says Melfi.

Weeks of unanswered messages later, the hopeful director called Murray’s lawyer. “What number do you got?” the lawyer asked. “The 800 number.” “Well that’s what I got,” said the lawyer. He recommended snail mail. Melfi obliged. After months, Murray set a date to talk about the ST. VINCENT script with Melfi.

Adore (opens in Cleveland September 6th exclusively at Shaker Square Cinemas)

[ADORE opens in Cleveland on Friday September 6th exclusively at Shaker Square Cinemas.]

Review by Pamela Zoslov

A controversial premise and beautiful scenic cinematography are the chief assets of ADORE, a drama based on a Doris Lessing story titled “Grandmothers.” The story is about two women, best friends since childhood, who become the lovers of each others' young-adult sons. The affairs, and the cozy, quasi-incestuous quartet, continue for years — twenty in the Lessing story, considerably less in the film, before the women decide they'd best stop and let the young men find more age-appropriate mates.

In the hands of French director Anne Fontaine, the scandalous tale becomes a tedious exercise in artiness, in which photography is meant to fill in the lacunae of Christopher Hampton's screenplay. The seaside idyll is gloriously photographed, the camera savoring the muscular young men surfing, swimming and sunning themselves alongside the fit, bikini-clad mothers. The writing, however, is spare and vapid. In place of the interior monologues of Lessing's story, we have lengthy shots of the characters engaged in silent contemplation. Thinking, thinking. Also, imbibing endless goblets of wine. Drinking, drinking. In other words, it's a very French-style film, though in English and set in beachside New South Wales, Australia (relocated from Lessing's native South Africa.)