The Jane Austen Book Club (2007) [PG-13] ****

Half a dozen strong characters share the stage in this ensemble romantic drama. Jocelyn (Maria Bello) and Sylvia (Amy Brenneman) are best friends from their college days; Jocelyn gave her college boyfriend to Sylvia when she was finished with him, and now, 25 years later, he has a mid-life crisis and divorces Sylvia for a younger woman. Their lesbian daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace) is passionate about relationships and experiencing life, and continually gets hurt by both. Bernadette (Kathy Baker) has had seven husbands, yet remains optimistic about her chances for love. Prudie (Emily Blunt) is a high school French teacher who has never been to France; she is torn between giving in to the advances of a younger student, and trying to rekindle her passion for her husband. And Jocelyn breeds dogs as a way of avoiding the mess and complication of a love affair.

Jocelyn invites Grigg (Hugh Dancy) to join their book club and tries to push him toward the wounded Sylvia, while Grigg is falling for Jocelyn. The club meets monthly, and as they work their way through Jane Austen's six novels, the characters and relationships of the book they are all currently reading are reflected in the lives and relationships of the six book club members. Some of the shared insights are quite interesting: that Jane Austen herself was never married; that she focuses on courtship and not on the married life of the main characters after they were married; that she never wrote a divorce novel; and that her characters continually fight for control over their emotions. While the screenplay is clever, the character and plot references are subtle enough that they will be best appreciated by fans of Jane Austen's novels, but may be lost on others. Nevertheless, if you love Jane Austen's novels, or even just the films of her novels, like Pride and Prejudice (2005), you might enjoy The Jane Austen Book Club. 

Labels: comedy, drama, Emily Blunt, lesbian, rom-drama-faves, romance
Internet Movie Database 67/100    
MetaCritic (critics=61, viewers=64)    
RottenTomatoes (critics=66, viewers=67)     
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James Berardinelli film critic's review

Becoming Jane (2007) [PG-13] ****

It is the late 1790s in rural Hampshire, and a young Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is developing her talent for writing. Jane dreams of doing the nearly impossible - marrying for love and earning her living as a writer. Her parents (played by James Cromwell and Julie Walters) understand that while romantic love is desirable, money is absolutely essential, and they encourage Jane to marry wealthy young Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox). But Jane is not interested. Wisley is a dull, uncultured booby, and the nephew of rich, arrogant local aristocrat Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith).

And then Jane meets the roguish, non-aristocratic Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy). Although Tom is from Limerick, Ireland, he lives in the London household of his wealthy uncle Judge Langlois (Ian Richardson) while he studies to be a lawyer. Tom's intellect and arrogance, as well as his penchant for bare-knuckle boxing, both irritate and fascinate Jane. The two soon find themselves romantically attracted to one another. But without Tom's uncle's blessing and financial support, if Tom and Jane marry they risk losing everything of importance in life – their family, friends and future fortune.

In order for Becoming Jane to work, we must be convinced that Jane Austen had a great unrequited love in her life – the reason she never married. While Anne Hathaway is convincing as Jane Austen, her chemistry with James McAvoy is not, and we find ourselves comparing the film and its leads with the 2005 major studio release of Pride & Prejudice, and its leads - Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfayden. Inevitably this film suffers by comparison. Admirers of Jane Austen's novels, and films based on her novels, as well as fans of Hathaway and McAvoy, will enjoy Becoming Jane. Others may want to pass. 

Labels: biography, drama, romance 
IMDb 70/100
MetaScore (critics=55, viewers=65)     
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=60, viewers=76)     
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James Berardinelli's review (2.5 out of 4 stars)

Feast of Love (2007) [R] ***/****

Rather than a feast of love, I'd describe this film as an economy buffet of love and lust. The film is set in dark, rainy Portland, Oregon, centered in the Jitters coffee shop, with several interwoven stories: a semi-retired philosophy professor and his wife (Morgan Freeman and Jane Alexander) grieve for their promising young son who died of a drug overdose; the coffee shop owner (Greg Kinnear) takes for granted the love and affection of his young wife (Selma Blair), who surprises him by leaving him for another woman (Stana Katic); a coffee shop barrista (Toby Hemingway), with a congenital heart defect and a history of drug use, falls in love with a girl (Alexa Davalos) who's looking for a job; an angry, abusive father (Fred Ward) tries to control his son and frighten away his son's new girlfriend; a cynical, amoral real estate agent (Radha Mitchell) carries on an affair with a married man (Billy Burke) while pretending to be in love with the coffee shop owner.

The message in this film is that everyone is looking for love, and we all go about the search in different ways. While the acting is uniformly excellent, and the nudity and love scenes are vital to the storyline, the melodramatic screenplay has some uneven spots, and the production values clearly mark this as an independent production. Nevertheless, if you enjoy watching strong performances by Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear, and you like character-driven, multi-generational, adult romantic dramas such as In the Land of Women or The Jane Austen Book Club, I recommend you give Feast of Love a chance. Actual Portland filming locations include the Fresh Pot coffee shop on North Mississippi Avenue, the Reed College campus and PGE Park. 

Labels: drama, lesbian, romance, rom-drama-faves
IMDb 66/100    
MetaScore (critics=51, viewers=67)    
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=53, viewers=66)
James Berardinelli's 3 star out of 4 star review

Dan in Real Life (2007) [PG-13] ****

Dan Burns (Steve Carell) writes a newspaper column on parenting. He's a widower raising three girls, so he has had lots of experience, although his daughters don't think much of his parenting skills. Now it's the weekend of the annual family reunion and Dan and his girls have driven to his parents' lakeside home in rural Rhode Island where the rest of the large family is gathered. Going out to buy a newspaper, Dan meets Marie (Juliette Binoche) in a rural bookstore. The two are clearly interested in each other, but Marie is already involved in a new relationship, and they soon discover that her new boyfriend is Dan's brother, Mitch (Dane Cook), who has brought Marie to the reunion as a guest.

This film resembles a poorly-written and poorly cast, big-budget blend of The Big Chill and Parenthood. The screenplay is uninspired and derivative, with plot elements telegraphed well in advance, and a predictable ending. There are far too many characters and subplots and the film runs twenty minutes too long. This story would have been much more successful as a romantic drama, with Dan, Marie and Mitch all struggling to understand and resolve the secret tension among them. Steve Carell's strength is in comedy; he is out of his depth as a romantic lead, and he has very little romantic chemistry with Juliette Binoche. Binoche is an incredibly gifted actress; she's an Oscar winner for her role in The English Patient, an Oscar nominee for her role in Chocolat, and she's virtually a French national treasure. Although she tries to elevate this production, her talent, beauty and energy are just not enough to keep the film from sinking under the weight of its own mediocrity. Sadly, the supporting talents of Dianne Wiest, John Mahoney and Emily Blunt are also wasted. In the end, Steve Carell fans may be satisfied – Juliette Binoche fans will not.

Labels: comedy, drama, Emily Blunt, reunion, romance
IMDb 68/100
MetaScore (critics=65, viewers=72)
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=64, viewers=72)
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Roger Ebert review (3 stars out of 4)

King Corn (2007) [UR] ****

This documentary reveals some disturbing facts about our food supply. Over the last thirty-five years we have turned our national network of family farms into an industrialized farming system made up of highly-mechanized super farms. The major crop in this system is corn - but not the sweet corn that we're accustomed to eating at the dinner table. The corn produced in America by the billions of bushels is feed corn, inedible as harvested, but readily processed into three valuable products: high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), cattle feed, and ethanol.

HFCS has replaced most of the sugar formerly found in processed food, in everything from breakfast cereal to bread to soft drinks, and is essentially empty calories. The cattle feed is fed to cattle in large containment feed lots, and while the cattle are being force-fed corn to get them to slaughter weight in 180 days, the process results in a condition called acidosis, which is treated with antibiotics - in fact 70% of all the antibiotics used in America go into our beef cattle. Corn-fed cattle produce a highly marbled beef which is 65% fat by caloric content. The bottom line is that thirty-five years ago our free-range, grass-fed beef contained much more protein, much less fat, and fewer antibiotics (and hormones) than it does today. And given the quantity of HFCS we consume, it is no coincidence that one in eight Americans now have type II diabetes - either diagnosed or undiagnosed. So why are we doing this to ourselves? We do it because it's cheap. HFCS is much cheaper than cane or beet sugar. Corn-fed beef is much cheaper than free-range, grass-fed beef. If you're concerned about the food you eat, and you appreciated Food, Inc., you don't want to miss King Corn. 

Label: documentary
Internet Movie Database     
Metacritic 70/100     
Tomatometer (critics=96, viewers=77)

The 11th Hour (2007) [PG] ****

Imagine Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance meets Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. We're shown a series of disturbing images interspersed with a series of scientific talking heads, all reciting facts and statistics, and expressing amazement at our collective ignorance. Much of The 11th Hour is similar to programming regularly seen on the Discovery Channel or the National Geographic Channel. As a result, this film is unlikely to change many minds, or compel those in the corridors of political and economic power in Washington and New York to take forceful action. Corporations, the symbols of our greed, have an unbounded, limitless appetite for growth in a bounded, limited natural world; and in the world of globalization, the U.S. government exists to support U.S. multinational corporations.

Thus, we continue to treat the Earth as our property, her mountains and plains, lakes and rivers, forests and oceans, fish and wildlife as resources to be harvested, clear cut, drilled, strip mined, polluted and despoiled as we choose. If we do not reject the growth model and embrace the sustainability model, our exponential growth will be followed by a devastating crash. And how many of our nearly seven billion will be left alive... one billion? And what will our planet be like? Will it be the lovely blue-green pearl we presently inhabit, or an arid, toxic wasteland? Most of us are still in denial; we cannot imagine how much we could all lose. But, after we've destroyed our biosphere and ourselves, what was unimaginable will have become obvious. Unfortunately, for our children and our grandchildren, it will be much too late. Sadly, we don't seem to care, possibly because most of us are focused on the past and the present; it is hard for us to plan for the future. And by the time our grandchildren are adults... most of us will have passed away. 

Label: climate-change, documentary, environment, prophetic
Internet Movie Database 7.3/10
Metacritic 63/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=65, viewers=74)

Across the Universe (2007) [PG-13] ****

A film review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews.net

One could never argue that Across the Universe isn't ambitious. However, like many ambitious movies, this one fails spectacularly. Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine called it the perfect disaster and, while I think that's a little harsh, I understand where he's coming from. Elements of Across the Universe are shockingly awful and the film lasts at least 30 minutes past the bearable stage. But if you like the Beatles, and the idea of hearing about 20 covers of their work fills you with a perverse joy, this may be the movie for you.

The film has had a troubled production history. It was reportedly taken away from director Julie Taymor after advance preview screenings resulted in jeers and catcalls. The producers re-cut the movie and it was received with more warmth, but Taymor went public with her gripe and this stirred up controversy. Apparently, the 133-minute theatrical cut is Taymor's version. If it's not, I shudder to think how much worse a longer edition could be.

The lack of anything resembling a compelling narrative is part of the problem. It's the 1960s and Liverpool native Jude (Jim Sturgess) has traveled across the Atlantic in search of the dad he never knew. He is befriended by Princeton drop-out Max (Joe Anderson) and falls in love with his sister, Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). Soon, these three are doing road trips, fighting against the War in Vietnam (or, in Max's case, fighting in Vietnam), and experiencing everything the era has to offer. They are joined on their odyssey by an Asian lesbian cheerleader (T.V. Carpio), a Janis Joplin clone (Dana Fuchs), and a Jimi Hendrix wannabe (Martin Luther).

Taymor has always been best known for the imaginative visual aspects of her films and stage productions (see Titus for her best screen work), and there's no shortage of tricks in her bag this time: animation, puppets, underwater sequences, psychedelic imagery, and more. Somehow, however, it all seems gratuitous - a way to distract the viewer from how pointless the story is. Like the shot of Wood's left breast (more nipple than one normally sees in a PG-13 production), it's all a bit of a tease. And none of these elements shows much in the way of technical achievement - they're the kinds of things any reasonably adept graphic designer can accomplish on a properly equipped home PC.

The songs are a bigger distraction than the visuals. With only a few exceptions, most of them are out-of-place. They are shoehorned in simply to increase the film's Beatles music content. The expected approach in a musical is for the songs to advance the story. In Across the Universe, the narrative pauses roughly every seven minutes so the characters can break into song, then resumes when they're done. This approach makes it impossible to identify with the characters or be interested in their circumstances. And, while the singing is of variable quality, most of the dance numbers are amateurish.

Jim Sturgess and Joe Anderson were obviously chosen more for their singing ability than their talent as actors. To their credit, they make a credible Lennon/McCartney pair. Evan Rachel Wood has a surprisingly strong set of pipes. The vocal styling of the supporting performers is variable, and includes a torturous version of I Wanna Hold Your Hand by T.V. Carpio which may destroy your ability to ever again hear that song cleanly. Eddie Izzard, Joe Cocker, and Bono have cameos. Oddly, Cocker does not contribute With a Little Help From My Friends, even though his recorded cover is arguably more recognizable than the original (thanks in large part to the TV series The Wonder Years).

I have heard Across the Universe being referred to as this generation's Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I can't refute the argument. There are also times when the film evokes memories of Xanadu. Neither of those stinkers is the kind of company any self-respecting musical wants to keep. It's hard to argue that the idea behind Across the Universe is a bad one - after all, Baz Luhrmann did something similar with Moulin Rouge and the Beatles music is incredibly versatile. The problem, therefore, must be in the execution, and it's a big problem. With a shorter running length, it might have been possible to appreciate Across the Universe as an entertaining failed spectacle. But, at 2:15, the word entertaining no longer applies in any context. [Berardinelli’s rating: ** out of 4]

Labels: drama, fantasy, musical, romance, Sixties

IMDb 73/100

MetaScore (critics=56, viewers=73)

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=59, viewers=82) 

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