Movie Review: Sentimental Value (2025)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Joachim Trier 

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning  

Running Time: 133 minutes  

Synopsis: In Norway, veteran film director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) abandoned his family years ago and now has a fraught relationship with his two grown daughters. Nora (Renate Reinsve) is a theatre star, while Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), a former child actress, has settled into domesticity. After their mother dies, Nora pointedly turns down her father's request to star in his next film, although he wrote the script for her. Gustav turns to American actress Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and they start to prepare for the shoot, while Nora and Agnes navigate around their father's proud stubbornness.

What Works Well: In this thoughtful exploration of awkward father/daughter reconciliation, director and co-writer Joachim Trier delves into a family dynamic beset by abandonment, death, and successive generations of grim determination. With the family house acting as a dominant presence harbouring decades of essential history, Gustav, Nora, and Agnes are unapologetic about their choices, and yet aware of the damage caused. Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas excel in creating real people grappling with essential discomfort, and Elle Fanning is the outsider tiptoeing into intensely personal space. Trier deftly drives the narrative towards a couple of exceptionally well handled plot curves, all while staying true to his characters.

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is long, and the pacing slow. The deliberate approach is essential to enrich the story, but can also create an endurance test.

Key Quote:

Gustav: Everyone's mad at dad, huh? You two turned out fine, didn't you?

Nora: How can you tell? You don't even know us.



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Movie Review: Teen Spirit (2018)

A routine teen drama with music, Teen Spirit is firmly stuck in cliche underdog territory despite a strong central performance and an off-beat location.

Violet Valenski (Elle Fanning) is a shy music-loving seventeen year-old of Polish descent growing up on the Isle of Wight. She loves to sing and performs at the near-empty local bar, but tries to hide her passion from her disapproving mother Maria (Agnieszka Grochowska). One night she is applauded by the frumpy Vlad Brajkovic (Zlatko Buric), a former Croatian opera singer now mostly living inside the bottle.

Despite Maria's concerns, Violet enters the national Teen Spirit talent competition for aspiring singers, and recruits Vlad's help first as a guardian then as a vocal coach and manager. She makes it through the first few rounds, and her local high school band starts backing her. When Violet surprisingly qualifies for the finals in London and in front of a massive television audience, culture shocks await.

Director and writer Max Minghella's father Anthony was from the Isle of Wight off England's south coast, and Max uses the island as a suitably quirky setting and symbol of isolation from mainstream culture. But beyond an enjoyable first act introducing Violet and Vlad, the rest of Teen Spirit is quickly swallowed up by television-level material featuring a teenager fumbling her way into adulthood with pitfalls around every corner.

Elle Fanning is by far the best thing in the movie and works hard to create a downbeat but determined young woman, and she sings with conviction. Between navigating her mother's anxieties and looking for an outlet to define herself, Violet never smiles, and Fanning's posture conveys a teenager carrying the strain of a foggy future.

But she is not well served by a script unable to get under the character's skin. Despite a dark and shiny aesthetic, some fine directorial touches, and a welcome depiction of immigrants, the problems multiply once the competition starts. The film wades into overly familiar territory and hits every longshot and performer/coach cliche. Never-developed side-stories are thrown haphazardly at the screen, including Violet's missing father, Vlad's life regrets and estranged daughter, a few barely-defined rivals, and clumsy encounters with alcohol and boys.  

Rebecca Hall appears late and for a couple of scenes as a music industry shark ready to feed on young talent. Vlad offers trite advice about breathing, but how Violet draws the strength to advance from stiff empty-bar singer to a dynamic stage performer remains a total mystery. Teen Spirit tries to rock out, but recycles tired lyrics.



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Movie Review: All The Bright Places (2020)

A teen drama and romance, All The Bright Places tackles the weighty topics of depression and suicide with delicate sensitivity.

In suburban Indiana, teenager Theodore Finch (Justice Smith) stumbles upon his classmate Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) seemingly about to throw herself off a bridge. He talks her to safety, and later learns Violet's sister died in a car crash on that bridge.

Finch has a short-fused temper and violent tendencies. At school he is on probation and seeing a counsellor, and other kids label him "the freak". But he is determined to help Violet break out of her depression and prods her to partner with him on a school project to visit various Indiana landmarks. She reluctantly agrees, and gradually his animated high-energy spirit helps her recover some joy. But Finch has dark and uncommunicative moods, and as the two teens start to fall in love, Violet realizes her saviour may needs saving.

An adaptation of the young adult book by Jennifer Niven (who co-wrote the screenplay), All The Bright Places follows the familiar template of two less-than-well teens tentatively progressing towards romance with the danger of death, obvious or not, hovering over both. Director Brett Haley delivers a polished package, respecting the target audience with understated messaging and effective button-pushing at the opportune moments.

The opening act is solid if also solidly predictable: Violet is in a funk bordering on suicidal, and Finch is the loose cannon with a good heart who knows he can can mount a rescue. The school project construct is a pleasant excuse for short scenic road trip wanderings combining physical discovery with emotional healing, the self-effacing local "wonders" offering simple pleasure in folksy ordinariness.

The middle third sags, as the tables are turned and now Finch is in emotional trouble. His shift in gears is abrupt, transitioning from bouncy and happy to suddenly drop-off-the-earth inconsolable. As Violet and his sister Kate (Alexandra Shipp) attempt to steer him to a better place, dispositions gyrate wildly, and narrative emphasis is blurred.

With parents either absent or largely irrelevant, Elle Fanning and Justice Smith help ride out the rough patches, carrying the full acting load and creating an appealing couple. Both convey a fluid mixture of angst, uncertainty, playfulness and growing responsibility. 

Niven and Haley then gather up the pieces for a brave ending, teens thrust ever more firmly into the adult world of hurt and loss, forced to make sense of the senseless. All The Bright Places points to the beauty of colour and light without ignoring calamities lurking in the sometimes difficult to discern gloom.

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Movie Review: Galveston (2018)

A slow-burning drama, Galveston is a character study about the faint glimmers of purpose at life's dead ends.

In New Orleans of 1988, chain-smoking Roy Cady (Ben Foster), an enforcer for underground gangster and textile merchant Stan Ptitko (Beau Bridges), has a lung disease but refuses to seek treatment. In a simmering dispute over Carmen (María Valverde), Stan sends Roy into an ambush hoping to get rid of him. But Roy not only survives, he grabs evidence incriminating Stan and rescues professional escort Rocky (Elle Fanning), who was caught in the shootout.

Forming an uneasy alliance, Roy and Rocky go on the run and drive into Texas. They pass through her hometown of Orange, where she picks up her much younger sister Tiffany. The trio then hunker down at a seedy motel in Galveston. Roy has to find a way to survive, while Rocky is unsure how far she can trust her rescuer to stick around and is tempted to resume her sex trade.

An adaptation of the Nic Pizzolatto novel, Galveston is willing to take some risks. Working from Jim Hammet's patient script, director Mélanie Laurent studiously avoids familiar arcs and instead seeks the depths of emotional bleakness. The pacing is slow, the aesthetics gloomy and often downtrodden, and the overall ambience carries the weight of economic desperation, Roy and Rocky hiding out in corners forgotten by prosperity. 

In another fine and understated performance, Ben Foster's shifty stance, haunted eyes and tortured psyche drive the narrative through the slower patches. Elle Fanning finds matching intensity but is confined to a variation of the desperate hooker with a heart of gold cliche.

From his inability to even discuss his lung diagnosis in the opening scene and his insistence on smoking continuously, Roy is unsure about the point of carrying on. Instincts take over and he survives the ambush, and suddenly Rocky then Tiffany are all but dependant on him to live another day. This is not what Roy asked for, and with Stan surely in pursuit his options remain severely limited. The temptation to dig a deeper hole emerge in the form of sleazy motel room occupant and amateur thief Tray (Robert Aramayo) offering a cut from his next job.

Underpinning the drama is Roy recognizing, with no small amount of anguish, that he represents the best hope of survival for two defenceless victims. His bond with Rocky first cracks then strengthens as he awakens to her nightmare and Tiffany's vulnerability, providing him with a reason to try and survive. And here Galveston charts a unique course, Laurent demonstrating directorial flair with an impressive one-shot scene of escape then a worthy climax of revelation as a hurricane moves in. 

Galveston invests in the eerily quiet edges of the storm, where dread thrives and outcomes are uncertain.

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Movie Review: Super 8 (2011)

A science fiction thriller, Super 8 borrows freely from the legacy of producer Steven Spielberg to create an engaging monster mystery with plenty of character texture.

It's 1979 in the small town of Lillian, Ohio. Middle schooler Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) loses his mom Elizabeth to a workplace accident, straining his relationship with his father Jack (Kyle Chandler), the sheriff's deputy. Four months later, Joe is helping best friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) film a Super 8 zombie noir thriller for a school competition. They recruit the aloof Alice Dainard (Elle Fanning) to be a member of the acting team.

Joe has a crush on Alice, although her father Louie (Ron Eldard) has a dark history related to Elizabeth's death. While out filming at midnight near the rail tracks, the students witness a massive train derailment caused by a pick-up truck driven by science teacher Dr. Woodward (Glynn Turman). A monster is unleashed from the train, and soon US Air Force types under the command of Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) are crawling all over the landscape, while the angry monster unleashes destructive mayhem.

Super 8 draws direct inspiration from Spielberg's alien and monster classics including E.T., Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Jaws and Jurassic Park. Common Spielbergian themes of coming-of-age in contexts of parental loss, incompetent authority figures, misunderstood beings, and peer friendships are prominent. Director and writer J.J. Abrams pays frequent but respectful tribute to his producer, but nevertheless crafts his own version of kids solving a mystery in an adult world gone mad, while a misplaced monster suffers mistreatment.

The carnage and special effects in the train crash scene are overdone to childish levels, and the snippet views of the monster are distractingly over-edited and continue too deep into the movie. But otherwise Abrams constructs a satisfying story with plenty of human interest. The dynamics between the kids alternate between spiky and sweet, but always anchor the film, while the two dads, both fighting against the same demon from the past, add to the spice. 

The small town feel and late 1970s vibe provide the film with a warm glow of nostalgia for the Spielberg generation. And while the Super 8 film-within-a-film is mainly deployed for comic effect, the drama of an evasive monster on the loose with its own emotions of fear and longing for home gradually builds intensity. 

Late in the film the characters start to understand and interact with the alien, and here Abrams relies on the familiarity of his core themes to take advantage of narrative shortcuts and charges at full speed towards a climax that is at once rushed, familiar and over-reliant on special effects. Nighttime falls, music soars, lights flash, characters stare in awe, and one final poignant moment punctuates a finale that follows every detail of Spielberg's template. When the formula is tried and tested, studious application is a simple path to success.

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Movie Review: 20th Century Women (2016)

A coming of age drama, 20th Century Women is a sincere slice of life, capturing a time and place in the interlaced lives of five people.

It's 1979, in Santa Barbara, California. Jamie Fields (Lucas Jade Zumann) is 15 years old, transitioning from boyhood to adulthood. His divorced and progressive mom Dorothea (Annette Bening) runs a rooming house, and is worried she may not be able to properly guide Jamie on her own. The only adult male presence in the house is William (Billy Crudup), a tenant and handyman helping with home renovations. Dorothea turns to another tenant Abbie (Greta Gerwig), and Jamie's long-term friend Julie (Elle Fanning), and asks them to be more involved in Jamie's life.

Abbie is a free spirited aspiring photographer dealing with the aftermath of treatment for cervical cancer while embarking on a relationship with William. Julie often platonically sleeps with Jamie, and wants to remain close friends with him although she is sexually active with others. Julie and Abbie do engage more with Jamie, introducing him to the punk music scene, feminism and female sexuality issues, and Dorothea starts to regret what she asked for.

Directed and written by Mike Mills based partially on his experiences during adolescence, 20th Century Women is an often fascinating look at growing up in a perfectly imperfect environment. Capturing the awkward era 10 years on from the end of the 1960s, with Dorothea's hippie generation well and truly disillusioned and dealing with the wreckage of  broken relationships and life's unmet expectations, the film plays out against a backdrop of President Jimmy Carter lamenting a trend towards selfish narcissism, the punk music movement tearing itself apart three years after birth, and the ideals of feminism clumsily starting to seep into mainstream pragmatism.

Mills clearly intended the film as a salute to his mother, and as brought to life by a sparkling Annette Bening, Dorothea is a fascinating woman. Always well-meaning and trying to combine natural parental anxieties with a genuinely liberal approach and a willingness to move along with the times, she acknowledges her shortcomings and turns to others for help, although the consequences are not what she expected.

And guidance for her son, if that's what it is, comes from two other women who help make the film a uniquely character-rich experience. Abbie is simultaneously sad and lively, Julie is brooding and precocious, and they both represent women who came of age in the 1970s. They are benefitting from a new world affording them independence, sexual liberation, and career opportunities, but anyway struggling with home, health and relationship issues while trying to decipher the much more chaotic societal signposts. Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning are both perfectly cast and with Bening create a triumphant triangle of talent around the willing Lucas Jade Zumann as Jamie.

Billy Crudup is not as fortunate, the character of William somewhat underwritten as Mills focuses on the female influences. And somewhat understandably, the film rather peters out in its final chapter.

With multiple narrators providing various perspectives, and with subtle use of humour, flashbacks, and brief flash forwards, 20th Century Women is an eloquent look back at how the future is shaped, warts and all.

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Movie Review: Trumbo (2015)

A biographical drama, Trumbo is a sharply written story of career survival set during the post-World War Two Red Scare.

It's the late 1940s, and Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) is one of Hollywood's leading screenwriters. He is also a proud member of the Communist party, along with several other prominent film industry figures, including fellow writer Arlen Hird (Louis C.K.). Dalton is happily married to Cleo (Diane Lane) and his children include the precocious Nikola (Elle Fanning). With the Cold War taking hold, a wave of anti-communist sentiment sweeps from Washington DC to Hollywood, fanned by gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren).

As a matter of principle Dalton and his fellow communists refuse to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Convicted for contempt of Congress, Dalton serves time in prison, and is placed on the notorious "Hollywood 10" blacklist, barred from working for any studio. Meanwhile, other communist sympathisers including Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg) do testify to save their careers. Once released Dalton has to find a way to make a living, and Frank King (John Goodman), head of low-budget King Brothers Productions, offers a lifeline of endless uncredited work.

Directed by Jay Roach and written by John McNamara, Trumbo is fascinating, witty and often quite funny. Both a character study and a cautionary tale about social paranoia, the film sparkles with the cantankerous yet phenomenally smart and articulate personality of Trumbo, and the remarkable post-war U-turn when communism was transformed in the public consciousness from great ally capable of defeating fascism to a feared existential menace.

The film does not shy away from presenting Trumbo as a man full of faults and contradictions. He enjoys his success, living on a large farm with all the luxuries afforded to the fortunate by capitalism. And when the strain of making a living through round-the-clock writing becomes nearly unbearable, Trumbo lashes out at his family members, hurting those he is trying to support.

And yet intellectually he never betrays his beliefs, and finds the unlikely path to expose the witch hunt by undermining it from within. Uneducated and fear-mongering campaigns devoid of evidence wilt when exposed to the light, and Trumbo's work ethic eventually forces the hypocrisy into the open

Trumbo boasts a remarkably talented cast in top form. Bryan Cranston delivers a career-defining performance, embracing the writer's flawed humanity and happily occupying the inconsistency of a proud communist enjoying all the riches that a life of celebrity has to offer. The character of Arlen Hird is an amalgam of other communist writers, and Louis C.K. portrays the more idealistic stream of left wing thinking, more willing to resist the system rather than work within it.

Helen Mirren makes the smug Hedda Hopper an obnoxious and hate-worthy gossip, a representation of self-appointed thought police, pouring gasoline on the flames of public fear and wielding disproportionate power. John Goodman as Frank King introduces bombastic levity, and his scenes add a whole new dimension to Trumbo, providing insight into the wondrous world of successful low-budget studios. Diane Lane, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Elle Fanning all make notable contributions.

Trumbo succeeds as a portrait of a remarkable man and even more so as a critical commentary on the lunacy of fear-driven social agendas.

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The Movies Of Elle Fanning

All movies starring Elle Fanning and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

I Am Sam (2001)

Daddy Day Care (2003)

Babel (2006)

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008)

Super 8 (2011)

Trumbo (2015)

20th Century Women (2016)

Live By Night (2016)

The Beguiled (2017)

Galveston (2018)

Teen Spirit (2018)

All The Bright Places (2020)

Sentimental Value (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Beguiled (2017)

A Civil War psychological drama, The Beguiled is a more lyrical remake of Don Siegel's 1971 classic. Director Sofia Coppola softens some of the edges but maintains a keen focus on the theme of emotional and physical survival.

Rural Virginia, in the fourth year of the American Civil War. While out collecting mushrooms, 12 year old Amy (Oona Laurence) stumbles onto badly wounded Union soldier Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) and helps him back to the school for girls run by Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman) and teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst). With the war raging, only a few students have remained at the school, including the eldest Alicia (Elle Fanning), who is bored of all the repetitive lessons.

Martha agrees to temporarily shelter McBurney and tends to his leg wound, but fully intends to hand him over to Confederate troops as soon as he recovers. The soldier's presence at the school disrupts the status quo, and he quickly appreciates that he has limited time to influence the women and avoid a prisoner's fate. McBurney uses a combination of flattery, gratitude and seduction to turn the women to his side, but also ignites jealousies and conflict.

Director Coppola also wrote and co-produced the film, and The Beguiled overflows with her hallmark soft veneer of natural beauty, gentle light and flowing aesthetics hiding simmering tension. The physical setting is a wooded corner of Virginia at the interface between battlefields - heard but not seen - and an old fashioned school clinging to the vestiges of a disappearing way of life. But the real location of the film lies in the hearts and minds of seven women, suddenly awakened by a manly presence. Coppola aims her attention at the women's emotional state, and McBurney probing for openings to chart a path to freedom through charm, flattery and deception.

Coppola spreads the 94 minutes of running time across four of the women. Miss Martha is the pragmatic leader, the woman responsible for the girls and the facility. Yet a man is a man, and despite her cold and calculating demeanour she is not beyond appreciating what McBurney may offer. Teacher Edwina is older than the other girls, caught in a nowheresville life with relatively plain looks. It does not take McBurney long to identify her as the weakest link.

Alicia is blossoming into a woman, her sexual awakening kicked into overdrive by the soldier's presence. And finally young Amy can lay claim to having found McBurney, and is just old enough to harbour a crush that he can exploit.

Despite the short length the film does drag in the middle act before picking up again as the climax approaches with an eruption of colliding aspirations fueled by alcohol. Compared to the original Coppola strips out some of the characters and more radical incidents from the narrative, leaving the mostly calm interplay between the central characters to carry the entire load of the film, and at times the energy dips to saggy levels.

But the performances are uniformly good, with Kirsten Dunst the most quietly expressive, her searching, desperate eyes betraying a heart all too ready to believe in empty promises. Colin Farrell brings to the role more charm and less obvious dominance compared to Clint Eastwood.

The Beguiled is a meditation on the damage unleashed when war seeps inside the walls of civility. The big guns rage outside, but they are no match for the turmoil within.

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Movie Review: Live By Night (2016)

A crime drama, Live By Night carries plenty of style but also too much plot. The story of an Irish gangster carving his way through a life of crime is scattered and fails to build effective momentum.

In Boston of the 1920s, war veteran turned independent gangster Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck) falls in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller). She's the floozy of gang lord Albert White (Robert Glenister), who is embroiled in a turf war with rival mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone). Coughlin is of Irish descent, and the son of respected police captain Thomas (Brendan Gleeson). Joe is eventually betrayed and almost killed by White, but survives. After a stint in prison Joe joins Maso's gang and with his loyal sidekick Dion (Chris Messina) relocates to Ybor City, an immigrant dominated, crime infested neighbourhood of Tampa, Florida.

Joe establishes an alliance with the local Cuban gang and builds an impressive crime empire capitalizing on the illegal rum trade. He also falls in love and eventually marries Graciela (Zoe Soldana), the sister of a Cuban crime lord. Joe maintains an uneasy understanding with Ybor's Sheriff Irving Figgis (Chris Cooper), but their relationship sours when Irving's dim witted brother-in-law R.D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), a member of the Ku Klux Klan, tries to muscle in on Joe's profits. Meanwhile, Joe tries to expand into the casino business, but there are more unexpected troubles in the form of Irving's daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning).

An adaptation of the Dennis Lehane book written for the screen and directed by Affleck, Live By Night has a lot going on and nothing going on. The drama motors on from Boston to Tampa, featuring a dizzying number of gangsters hissing at each other, but the film never grabs hold of a compelling narrative arc. This is the story of Joe Coughlin and he is the one constant, but Affleck plays the central character as a laid back soft spoken type, his obvious narration droning on as he disappears into the set. It's a problem when the assorted villains who enter and exit every other scene are much more colourful than the presumed protagonist.

The film is a demonstration of more is less. A dedicated focus on fewer story lines may have improved control of the material. Instead the overflow of plot and characters eventually overtakes the film, and plenty of seemingly important conversations and incidents start to happen off-screen. Joe's father appears magically at the right time and in the right place to intervene in a murder-in-progress. Joe seems to take over Ybor City in a remarkable hurry, and wins Graciela's heart even quicker. After a long build up, the resolution of the KKK problem is rushed. Major chunks of Loretta's story are summarily dealt with in a few words. Late in the film two adversaries become allies with barely an explanation. And even critical battlefield tactics are botched, Affleck choosing to talk about rather than demonstrate Coughlin's ability to influence goons in battle.

Affleck does have an eye for creating beautiful settings, and the film is awash in vivid colours and plenty of artistry. The camerawork is fluid, capturing bustling neighbourhoods and idyllic landscapes. And some of the climactic showdowns with the head baddies are well constructed.

A large cast supports Affleck's docile take on Coughlin. By far the most memorable is Elle Fanning as the enigmatic Loretta. In just a few scenes she demonstrates what intense charisma can accomplish, and the film would have hugely benefited from investing more in her story.

Live By Night may suggest an adventurous lifestyle, but this is a fragmented, surprisingly dull and ultimately unsatisfying experience.

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Movie Review: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008)

A grand fantasy romance, The Curious Of Benjamin Button has a quirky premise but delivers an eloquent love story featuring a man living life in reverse.

It's 2005 in New Orleans, and Hurricane Katrina is quickly bearing down on the city. The elderly Daisy Fuller (Cate Blanchett) is on her hospital deathbed, and insists that her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) read to her from the diary of a certain Benjamin Button. Most of the story is then told in flashback.

In 1918, Benjamin is born with the wrinkles, cataracts, arthritis and failing body of an old man. His mother dies during childbirth and his father Thomas (Jason Flemyng) abandons Benjamin to the care of Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who works at a home for the elderly. As Benjamin grows older in age, his body gets younger in health. His hair starts to grow back, his eyesight improves, and a visit to a faith healer gets him out of his wheelchair and on the way to walking. In 1930 Benjamin first meets seven-year-old Daisy (Elle Fanning) and they become friends.  Around 1935 he leaves the nursing home and accepts his first job, working on the tugboat of the salty Captain Mike Clark (Jared Harris). Daisy pursues her fortune as a ballet dancer in New York City.

In 1941 Clark's boat is stationed in the port city of Murmansk, Russia, where Benjamin experiences his first true love and has a passionate affair with Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton), the bored wife of a British diplomat. The US joins World War Two and Benjamin has a harrowing encounter with the enemy on the high seas. After the war Benjamin tries to reconnect with Daisy (Blanchett), but their lives are on different trajectories. Meanwhile, his father Thomas reappears with surprising news about an industrial legacy awaiting Benjamin.

Directed by David Fincher and written by Eric Roth, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button is a loose adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Roth sprinkles the script with plenty of similarities to his own average man lives an extraordinary life as portrayed in Forrest Gump, and monumental but impossible romance through a diary lens popularized by The English Patient. Benjamin Button both suffers from comparisons to the two classics and benefits from the whimsical stars of destiny are aligning ethos. Meanwhile, Fincher makes sure that no matter what is happening on the screen over close to three hours, the film looks spectacular: Benjamin Button is frequently a sumptuous visual feast.

The film's weakness resides in the relative dormancy of its central character. Intriguing as his story is, Benjamin Button does not actually do much in his own life. He is swept along by the tide of history, navigating from 1918 to about 1990 in reverse health progression, things happening to him and all around him, but he himself instigating little. Daisy and Elizabeth steer the two big romances in his life, while his mother Queenie, the captain Mike Clark and Benjamin's father Thomas influence most of his life's directions. It is only late on that Benjamin independently insists on one key decision, but it's a relatively small contribution to a drama where he is most often a passenger and observer.

The film's first half nestles the more magical spirit and is more powerful, Benjamin's childhood years in the more innocent pre-war era resonating through a New Orleans open to strange events. That no one pursues answers to Benjamin's curious medical condition both raises the eyebrow and helps add fairy tale gold dust to the story. The second half is still interesting but less compelling. Benjamin and Daisy have to wait for a sweet spot of harmony as he grows younger and she matures, and there are typical emotional trials and tribulations as they find and then struggle to retain their couplehood.

The subtle and progressive makeup effects are a marvel, with Brad Pitt thriving as he convincingly portrays a physically frail teenager growing into an immature 70 year old in a young man's body. Cate Blanchett is less effective, particularly as the bed-ridden near-death Daisy, her mumbled and drugged lines of dialogue extremely difficult to discern.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button reaches most of the sentimental high notes that it strives for, and contains enough of its own peculiarities to overcome the more derivative fundamentals.

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Movie Review: Babel (2006)

An interrelated multi-story drama set simultaneously in four countries, Babel is an engrossing film about the ties that bind across continents.

In Morocco, American couple Richard and Susan Jones (Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett) are part of a tour group as they try to rebuild their marriage after a family trauma. While on the tour bus in a remote desert region of the country, Susan is struck and badly wounded by a seemingly random bullet through the window. The accidental shooter is young local goat herder Yussef, whose father had purchased the rifle for his sons to scare away jackals. Richard rushes Susan to a local village to try and get the assistance of a doctor and call an ambulance. The shooting is mistakenly labelled a terrorist attack and triggers an international incident.

In San Diego, Amelia (Adriana Barraza) is the Jones' nanny, and the events in Morocco mean that she is stuck caring for their two young children Debbie (Elle Fanning) and Mike (Nathan Gamble) much longer than she planned for. Desperate to attend her son's wedding in Mexico and unable to find another caregiver, Amelia takes Debbie and Mike with her across the border in the car of her highly excitable nephew Santiago (Gael García Bernal) on a journey with many unexpected outcomes.

In Japan, Chieko Wataya (Rinko Kikuchi) is the deaf-mute teenage daughter of businessman Yasujiro (Kōji Yakusho). Chieko is still traumatized by the death of her mother, and her mood is not improved when a call goes against her volleyball team and boys either ignore her and or make fun of her disability. When detective Kenji Mamiya come looking for her father to ask about his possible connection to a shooting incident in Morocco, Chieko's already fragile emotional state shatters in an explosion of repressed sexuality and potential danger.

Directed and co-written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Babel is a modern story of an interconnected world where small events create ripples with an astonishing reach. The film jumps around in place and time but remains tightly connected, the stories distinct but inseparable. There is relatively little dialogue in the film: events speak for themselves, and Iñárritu emphasizes the common human emotions of shock, grief, loss, and dealing with adversity in any context.

When communication is needed, the characters speak in their native language (and in the case of Chieko, in sign language), and at the heart of each episode is a story of an aching loss. In the case of Richard, Susan, Chieko and Yasujiro, sorrow is a starting point. For Amelia and the rural Moroccan family of goat herders, misfortune is an unexpected outcome of seemingly innocuous, and indeed well-intentioned decisions.

Doing good and finding trouble is one of the themes that seeps through Babel. The rifle that derails Susan's life changes hands for all the right reason: a hunter gifting his local guide, a neighbour helping a fellow neighbour chase away jackals. Amelia genuinely cares about Debbie and Mike, and also wants to be a good mother by not missing her son's wedding. Unfortunate events stem from kind gestures, and the film explores how characters react when the normal orbit of life is unintentionally knocked into disarray by others.

And when things do go bad, it is the kindness of strangers that often comes to the fore. Local villagers become essential to the survival of Richard and Susan, much more so that their fellow tourists. And after feeling detached from her father and peers, Chieko turns to detective Mamiya to try and recover from her sense of loss and abandonment.

Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are the most prominent members of a large international cast. Pitt as Richard Jones gets overexcited on a couple of occasions to help confirm the stereotype of Americans as boorish travelers, while Blanchett spends plenty of time drifting in and out of consciousness. The two best performances are delivered by Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza, two women dealing with exceptional and trying circumstances.

In Babel the characters speak the many different languages, and some don't speak at all; regardless, their lives are intricately interwoven across time and space.

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