Sunshine Cleaning

Rose Lorkowski's son, Oscar, picks up the CB radio, which he thinks broadcasts him to heaven, and asks, "If you already live in heaven, where do you go when you die?"

No one would mistake the lives of Rose, her sister, father, and young son for heaven. Former head cheerleader, Rose, finds herself as a maid still trying to take care of her younger sister and problematic son while continuing an affair with her high school boyfriend, who suggests crime scene clean-up as a lucrative niche to explore. A need for money leads Rose and her sister to dive head first into the gruesome and highly technical field of bio hazard removal under the name "Sunshine Cleaning."

There is something simple and satisfying about watching people cleaning up messes others leave behind in an effort to clean up the messes they've created in their own lives. From the same creative minds that brought us Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning offers many stylistic and thematic similarities. The most striking difference in the two, aside from the subject matter, is the lack of comedy in the latter film. There are certainly comical moments, but more along the lines of entertaining moments that happen in an everyday life and exaggerated circumstances. The serious subject matter doesn't have the same ironic approach as in Little Miss Sunshine. For the most part, when something is serious, it's pretty serious.

There is something raw about the story. In a few moments the drama becomes, well, drama, but many of the dramatic moments happen between the lines. The exposition is well-distributed across the film and not every question has an answer. The audience learns to understand the characters well enough to know their motivations without needing every action to be explained.

With the obvious contrast between hard-working but unsuccessful Rose and her irresponsible partying sister, Norah, the natural expectation is some sort of compromise between the two for a better conclusion for each sister. Thankfully, this film resists that urge. Both girls clearly must make some progress in their lives, but this means something different for each of them. The growth is in recognizing and accepting one's own defining qualities and doing the same for others.

It's a short film, but a full one. Encouraging and lighthearted, at the same time blunt and dark. Even though Clifton, the one-armed cleaning supplies salesman is my favorite character, Amy Adam's carries the film. She's got a way of being endearing and dynamic without always being likable. You root for her as if she's an old friend who's lost her way. Every character of the small cast carries his or her own weight in this film. Their chemistry is off just enough to believe the group as a dysfunctional family.

All About Eve

The film opens with witty but cynical narration as Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) is about to win a prestigious acting award. Those posed as her closest friends seem hardly pleased with Eve's accomplishment, and the film quickly moves back to the start of Eve's career to look at how the actress rose to success.

Wide-eyed Eve shows up as an obsessed, but extremely humble fan. By the time she shares her story of coming to New York and attendinging every performance of Margo Channing's (Bette Davis) play everyone is eating out of her hand. Margo takes in the young girl as friend and secretary, and no one can help but admire young Eve. Her reserved nature captures attention, even as she draws attention from Margo and her actor beau, Bill, engaging in a passionate kiss by respectfully looking away. It becomes increasingly apparent that her innocence is more manipulation than truth. Characters slowly begin to recognize Eve's sneaky cunning, but almost always one step too late.

Fortunately for the film, Eve's acting performances full of "fire and music" is left to the imagination of the audience. Davis's portrayal of Margo is so fantastic that I doubt that Eve would pose a believable threat to Margo's fame. Baxter does, however, have just the right blend of excessive modesty, mousiness, and determination simmering just behind her eyes. She's likable, initially, but not as dynamic as the other female leads. She is exactly the type she is accused of being. Margo, on the other hand, retains the personality quirks of an actress (late, dramatic, paranoid about her advancing age) but with depth. She is a unique, if not always likable, character who can sustain interest much longer than her conniving rival.

People always love a good love story. The love between Margo and Bill seems like another tale of short-lived, shallow celebrity news until it continues to endure and deepen through the screwball twists and turns of the plot. The "theatre" faces sharp-tongued criticism and bitter ironies from almost everyone wrapped up in the lifestyle, but at moments love, friendship, and forgiveness seem to outweigh the scheming, ambition, and glamour.

This film suffers from no lack of glamour, however. The mere presence of any of the leading women makes me wish for the chance to dress in diamonds and furs and speak in that quick, but softly enunciating voice. When a film that is nearly 60 years old can still sparkle with style and excitement, it must be something special.

Fargo

The Coen Brothers' 1996 film, Fargo, is a seamless blend of the extremely familiar and the amazingly original. Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard devises a fake kidnapping of his wife to save him from financial trouble. Naturally, everything goes wrong. In one sense, the film is a stereotypical crime thriller: a plot unravels, and a sharp cop follows clues to put the pieces together in the name of justice; but at the same time each piece of the story is full of incredible subtleties that make each moment exciting and unique. The film seems understated, but also one degree over the top in each scene. The rhythm of the film is sleepy as if affected by the frozen setting, but each scene is craftily developed to steadily advance the plot, which wastes nothing.

The Coen Brothers specialize in characters. These people are neither beautiful nor extraordinary. They are strikingly normal, but fleshed out with interesting quirks and truly amazing dialogue (though the variety of vocabulary is much narrower than in a normal movie, yah?). Even the minor characters are fully formed.

Police chief Marge Gunderson is one of the most likeable heroes I've seen on screen in a long time. She's seven months pregnant, and her husband is somewhat dull, but loving. Her distinctive Midwest accent and cheery demeanor almost hide her notable detective skills, but she's smart and extremely competent. She seems to exemplify the favorable side of the American values that the rest of the shamefully money-focused characters so clumsily deface. What a fantastic movie!

Up

One of Pixar's biggest strengths is their ability to create stories that are equally compelling for adults and children. Up is no exception. I hesitate to summarize any of the plot because it all develops so beautifully that I don't want to give anything away. Basically there is a remote location in South America known as Paradise Falls, and an old man travels there to have grand adventures in a house lifted by balloons.

Some of the humor in Up is more childish than Pixar's other recent films, but it's still light and entertaining. The story, on the other hand, is full of deeply emotional conflicts presented subtly with class and openness. Children will not be overwhelmed with heavy-handed plot elements, but I cried twice during this film. Pixar has mastered the skill of creating lovable, dynamic characters.

For me, Up is the much needed antithesis to Revolutionary Road. Instead of people who spend their whole lives waiting for adventure to start and self-destructing when they loose sight of their youthful dreams, this film features the joy that is possible through simply living life. Here, the greatest adventure is in living a full life with someone you love and treasuring the simple pleasures. Of course, real adventure matters as well--you don't discount the excitement of adventure in a film about a floating house--but Up acknowledges that dreams and expectations can change without a loss of individuality or idealism. By not moving to a far away country, these characters do not abandon all of their dreams for the mundane, but rather find joy that eclipses the desire to chase old dreams.

Dreams matter--they can be realized--but they do not always take the same form as expectation, and that's ok. This film is about imagination, but doesn't discount the value of reality. It's refreshing and simple.

This was also my first 3D movie, and the 3D makes a difference! It's not a gimmick, nor will it give you a headache like an amusement theatre attraction show. You forget about the plastic glasses, and it's really unique to see. I'm excited that 3D is catching on. It's worth the extra two dollars.

The Sting

Robert Redford and Paul Newman at their greatest.

The Sting is a 1973 con movie about a grifter (Redford) who tries his hand at the "big con" with the help of a washed up con artist hiding from the FBI (Newman) to get revenge against a bookie mobster. The iconic ragtime music sets the stage for the building excitement as the con unfolds. The honest motivation for running the big con wipes clean the audience's memory of the leading men's pasts as common street thieves. They become crooks we like, and it is easy to root for them to win.

One thing that film has lost over the last 30 years is the rhythm. Half of the time this film unfolds without many clues as to what's really happening. A lot of characters look alike, and the film doesn't stop to explain who they are or why they're there. People have quick-paced conversations where only half of what's said is comprehensible, but somehow it all comes together in the end. It's all about the details, but there are so many details hurled at the audience it is hard to know which ones matter. I think that's how the film manages to unfold with such a pace of anticipation. The audience is only ever half-aware of the con, so there are always surprises.

Star Trek

For all the overly-cerebral award season movies this year it's a good thing this summer is full of entertaining summertime flicks. If Slumdog Millionaire wasn't enough to get you in off the ledge that Revolutionary Road and The Reader may have pushed you to, Star Trek certainly is. Not that those other movies aren't good, but hot weather and long days should mean excitement and fun at the theater instead of introspection.

Star Trek comes out of the gate at full force with everything you could want in a good summer action film: a big fight, critical plot set-up, an explosion, and outer space. The film goes on to document enough of the lead characters' childhoods to understand exactly why they act as they do, and then it's back into space for some more explosions.

I feel obligated to mention that I've never seen Star Trek until this film. I didn't grow up on the show or the movies, so I have very little frame of reference for the characters and I can't speak to the prequel tendency to over explain mysteries of future installments of the franchise or inclusion of details meant for the thousands of true Star Trek fans. I do know that Star Trek is so much a part of popular culture that even I know many of the iconic phrases and characters and was able to pick up on them in the movie. I did not feel left out of some cult knowledge watching this film, instead I felt included in a very accessible version of that world.

Scripting is not this movie's strong point. In a few cases the chance to use a special effect or hold out for one last dramatic moment wins out over logical plot development. Events are explained and then forgotten when a second evaluation would reveal several holes in the explanation that was just presented, but by that point the Enterprise is facing another crisis, so who has time to wonder why future Spock must stay where he is, or how he eventually gets to Earth.

As an avid LOST fan, I could not help noticing director J.J. Abrams' authorial voice in some of the themes of this Star Trek. The entire film revolves around time travel and one's ability to change the past, present, and future. Time travel is a timeless concept in science fiction, and Abrams does well to include one perspective on the concept without turning the film into some kind of philosophical argument about why or how time travel must actually work; it's confined to the circumstances of the film.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. If you can gloss over a few details with a bucket of popcorn, this is a really fun movie. Brilliant but troubled hero fights odds to save the planet; to forge new friendships; to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.