Critic's Notebook

Pulling the Apron Strings

MOVIE REVIEW
Mother (2009)

By ROBYN CITIZEN

Magnolia Pictures

The intense and ultimately violent struggle one mother takes to keep her family together is at the heart of Bong Joon-ho's latest masterwork, "Mother." Wringing from the tale high melodrama, dark humor and taut suspense reminiscent of Hitchcock's best murder mysteries, Bong continues his trademark deft manipulation of multiple genres while narrowing his focus from vast national and societal issues to that of one woman on a mission.

Lore of the Claddagh Rings

MOVIE REVIEW
The Secret of Kells (2009)

By ROBERT LEVIN

GKIDS

“The Secret of Kells” shocked the punditry and just about everyone else when it earned a 2009 Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination alongside “Up,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and other better-known counterparts. Yet, this small, independent, hand-drawn film from co-directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey might be the most evocative movie of the bunch, a picture that relies on a potpourri of cubist and impressionistic sensibilities to tell a standard coming-of-age story in a way it’s not been told before.

The Beat Goes Off

MOVIE REVIEW
Howl (2010)

By MARTIN TSAI

2010 Sundance Film Festival

The Beat Generation should be fertile ground for cinematic harvest, but David Cronenberg's treatment of William S. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" remains the only worthy adaptation that comes to mind. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, documentarians behind "The Times of Harvey Milk" and "The Celluloid Closet," now try their hands at fashioning Allen Ginsberg's monumental poem "Howl" for the screen. The two had originally conceived the project as a documentary to commemorate the poem's 50th anniversary, but the dearth of available archival footage forced them to take the fiction approach.

Pat Answer to a Prayer

MOVIE REVIEW
Lourdes (2009)

By ROBERT LEVIN

Palisades Tartan

History has proven Catholicism to be the most cinematic of the Christian denominations. Drawing on a wealth of ornate iconography and millennia of artistic traditions/ceremonial pomp and circumstance, its practice incorporates sights, symbols and colors of remarkable visual beauty. There was, therefore, arresting potential for Jessica Hausner’s very Catholic new film “Lourdes.”

It depicts a mass pilgrimage to the mystical town in the south of France, said to be the site of repeated apparitions of the Virgin Mary. It centers on a busload of patients and workers from a Catholic hospital, who arrive in search of various forms of healing. Principal among them is Christine (Sylvie Testud), a nearly-mute paraplegic, content to look on at the righteous blur that surrounds her.

Not a Care in the World

MOVIE REVIEW
The Unloved (2009)

By SARAH MANVEL

Channel 4

Lucy (Molly Windsor) doesn’t say much, because she is too busy watching. She has learned to keep her own counsel, to follow closely what is happening around her and to pay attention to all the clues she can pick up. She lives with her father (Robert Carlyle), who clearly loves her but who equally clearly isn’t a good dad. When she comes back empty-handed from an errand, he beats her with his belt. We hear the beating, but don’t see it — but we do see Lucy lying in a stairwell for a night and a day, unable to move. Once she recovers, Lucy has the composure to go to school, sit through classes and eat a hot lunch before telling her teacher what has happened.

A Bad Case of the Blood Simples

MOVIE REVIEW
Terribly Happy (2008)

By ROBERT LEVIN

Oscilloscope Laboratories

Put the Coen brothers in Denmark, and they might come out with a film similar to “Terribly Happy.” An offbeat suspense thriller involving a corruptible policeman, a creepy insular town and a giant metaphoric bog, it’s made in precisely the sort of genre busting mode the brothers have perfected in everything from “Blood Simple” to “No Country for Old Men.”

City of Fights

MOVIE REVIEW
From Paris with Love (2010)

By ROBERT LEVIN

Rico Torres/Lionsgate

John Travolta descends upon “From Paris with Love” with gale force, sweeping up all the innocuous Luc Besson action-flick chop-shop proceedings in a torrent of flashy overacting. He’s the primary reason to spend time with what is otherwise a standard, thoughtless shoot ’em up. The actor has done the crazy rogue shtick before, but never with quite the mischievous gleam brought to the character of Charlie Wax here.

Art Debilitates Life

MOVIE REVIEW
Father of My Children (2009)

By ALEX BEATTIE

The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival

Mia Hansen-Løve’s second feature picked up the Special Jury Prize in the Un certain regard category at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, a prize that recognizes exceptional young filmmakers. With “Father of My Children,” Ms. Hansen-Løve certainly and confidently asserts herself as one such talent. Inspired by an encounter with legendary French film producer Humbert Balsan, Ms. Hansen-Løve delivers a touching, incredibly personal familial portrait that deals with artistic drive, pride, the inherent fear of failure and its tragic consequences.

The Born Identity Crisis

MOVIE REVIEW
Off and Running (2010)

By ROBERT LEVIN

First Run Features

Even by the standards of transracial modern America, Avery Klein-Cloud has had an unusual upbringing. The African-American, Texas-born adopted daughter of two Brooklyn-dwelling Jewish lesbians, they and her brothers Rafi (biracial) and Zay-Zay (Korean born) call their family the “United Nations.” With so many discordant background elements at play — such a clear sense of belonging in one way while being forever intrinsically removed in another — it comes as no surprise when teenage Avery begins an investigation of her biological background.

Cashing a Payback

MOVIE REVIEW
Edge of Darkness (2010)

By TIM HAYES

Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros. Pictures

Revenge tragedies should be hot-blooded and cold-hearted, but "Edge of Darkness" is blanded out into something just vaguely mild. It has the curiosity value of a returning Mel Gibson — now a very strange screen presence indeed — as Boston cop Thomas Craven on the trail of his daughter's killer, but that can't hide the fact that it's a weak thriller which forgets to do much thrilling.