The script was adapted for the big screen by Aronofsky and Hubert Selby Jr., and is based on Selby’s book of the same name. It closely examines a small group of people and their addictions.  There’s Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), his mother Sara (Ellen Burnstyn), Harry’s girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly, and his best friend Tyron (Marlon Wayans), among others.  Harry, Marion, and Tyron are recreational drug users that decide to start pushing in order to finance other dreams.  Sara is blissfully ignorant about her sons indulgences, and chooses food as her fix.  Her obsession with becoming thins leads her to an addiction to uppers in the form of weight loss pills.

The film is most definitely too intense for some.  The film premiered at Cannes, and quickly after was given an NC-17 rating for a particularly aberrant sex scene.  It’s holds an extremely harsh view of the drug scene and seeks to make that clear at every point.  A lot of Selby’s original seventies’ slang is kept intact, and it makes for some fantastic dialogue.  Every performance is spot on, especially Ms. Burnstyn who received an Oscar nom.

Aronofsky’s specific style for the film is mesmerizing.  Requiem has over 2,000 cuts, as opposed to the normal six or seven hundred.  The whole thing is coupled with one of the most haunting and beautiful scores that’s been made for a film in a long time.  Yes, the film is incredibly bleak, but this is one of the best examples of the power and magic of film making.

4 out of 4 stars

The Day the Earth Stood Still follows brilliant Princeton scientist Helen (Jennifer Connelly) who gets roped into one crazy ass situation: a big colorful sphere landed in Central Park!  She’s got a step-son (a weak Jaden Smith) who is a remnant of a short but meaningful marriage that ended in the death of him, not her (not only has this film gone green, but it clearly supports interracial relationships!).  She’s part of a team that’s thrown together (by John Hamm no less) to solve the problem of an unidentified object traveling a bajillion miles an hour through space, straight towards Manhattan.  It turns out that the UFO contains Keanu Reeves in the role of Klaatu, the human–err–thing that will decide the fate of planet Earth, one of only a few planets in the universe capable of supporting complex organisms.  It’s up to Helen to use her wit to (and a Nobel Prize-winning friend played by John Cleese) convince Klaatu that there’s a good side to being human.

Keanu actually excels in this role that requires showing absolutely no emotion.  He’s found his pigeonhole.  Jennifer Connelly is the reason I saw the film (those hips could drag me to anything), and she’s okay.  But, like the film, her performance is unremarkable and overly done.  This movie is a literal remake, and a repeat of scores of films made in the last twenty years.  There’s not much to draw your attention here.  Director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) performed on par with the mediocrity of his past films.  Perhaps it wasn’t his fault though, the cliched script by David Scarpa (an update on the 1951 script by Edmund H. North) didn’t allow much wiggle room for anything above average.  It’s not that the film is terrible, you’ll probably consider yourself entertained for it’s one hour and fifty minute run time, but it’s just all been done before.  The biggest issue I have with the film is this: why are movies like The Road and Deception getting pushed back til next spring, when half-assed pieces like The Day the Earth Stood Still could have taken a hit for the team?

1 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 24% – Cream of the Crop: 16%

Sarah (Kate Winslet) is a feminist. A a former member of the intelligentsia who came this close to getting a master’s in English (but quit before writing her dissertation, a telling sign of her character), with a man-ish figure, who has strong opinions on literature and used to avoid shaving her legs. She somehow entered into an obviously loveless marriage to a middle aged man named Richard. Richard (Gregg Edelman) works successfully in advertising by day, and is a porn site aficionado by night. Sarah and Richard have a daughter, Lucy, whom Sarah resents, and she feels like a prisoner in her house decorated by Pottery Barn, stuck in the suburbs. Brad (Patrick Wilson) is an overly handsome stay-at-home dad, studying for the bar (which he’s already failed twice). He knows he won’t pass again (he doesn’t even really want to be a lawyer), but to shut his extremely beautiful, and intelligent wife up (played by Jennifer Connelly), he feigns studying each night and will attempt to pass the test one final time. Being completely selfish, bored, and forced to spend copious amounts of time focusing solely on the entertainment of their children, the two fall into a lurid affair, cheating on their spouses and telling themselves that they make each other happy.

The subject matter will deter many. The explicit love affair is gritty, and realistic. Central acts focus on a pedophile sex-offender (a completely disturbing Jackie Earle Haley who was coaxed out of a thirteen year retirement for the role) who sparks controversy in the town as he’s released from prison and goes to live with his mother (the impeccable Phyllis Somerville). But the real ugliness of the story can be found in the main characters. They’re not bad people, but they let themselves do bad things, convincing themselves that’s it’s romantic, and beautiful. Sarah even pontificates on why Madame Bovary is no longer the pathetic character she seemed to be while Sarah was in grad school, but now sees her as a hero, a feminist, who fights for a better life.

I can’t commend Field enough for his directing savvy. His proudest moment can be found in a scene at the town pool, where sex-offender Ronnie manages to sneak in and ogle the children with his diving mask and snorkel. The tension Field manages to build is tremendous, making even the least involved viewer shift uncomfortably in his seat. He also manages to ask the question everyone wonders but no one will ask out loud: why is it having children makes you a so much less interesting adult?  As mentioned before, the subject matter is without a doubt mature, but investing in this film will pay out ten fold as you’re sucked into this world that could realistically happen in your neighborhood. This was, without a doubt, in the top five films of 2006.

4 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 81% – Cream of the Crop: 89%

Reservation Road spends no time pretending like it will be a worthwhile movie.  It seems George’s thought process must have gone something like, ‘Character development? No time for that!’  The beginning of the film introduces us to some of the flattest characters in recent film memory.  We’re given the image of a picture perfect family: Grace, and Ethan (played by Joaquin Phoenix and Jennifer Connelly), and two talented and charming children Josh and Emma (played by Sean Curley and Elle Fanning).  We’re also introduced to the broken family: short-tempered, divorced, lawyer Dad named Dwight (when will we get tired of lawyers being a bad omen?) played by Mark Ruffalo, and his son, Lucas.  Dwight has just received permission from the court to have unsupervised visits with Lucas (it doesn’t explain why that right was revoked in the first place).  He takes his son to a Red Sox game, and on the way back home, he happens to hit the son of Grace and Ethan, who left the car at a gas station to release the jar of fireflies he caught for his sister after his cello concert on the beach.  In a moment of panic, Dwight leaves the scene, leaving the previously happy family broken due to the loss of a key player.  From this point on, Ethan can think of nothing but justice, even to the point of abandoning his family emotionally when they need his help the most.

In an attempt to cover the shallowly developed characters, George decided to exploit the sensation of losing a child, which is despicable.  The plot, and writing is so contrived, you’ll cringe when watching Road.  There was one scene where one character says to the other, without laughing, or giving off the impression of irony, “We had nicknames for each other: ‘Nitro’ and ‘Glycerin.’  You could say we had an explosive relationship.”  To mirror the poor choices of Dwight, his son takes part in a conveniently similar situation at school, to which Dwight preaches that he must take responsibility for his actions, and accept whatever punishment comes to him.

While the actors excel, they can’t do much with their parts.  Jennifer Connelly is the standout at the beginning of the film, but then resigns to the part that was written for her, and spends the rest of the film doing nothing but tearing up at the mere mention of children.  Similarly, Phoenix and Ruffalo act their hearts out, but can do little to change the horrendous direction the plot takes.

1 out of 4 stars

Rottentomatoes: 37% – Cream of the Crop: 27%