Movie Review: Pretty Persuasion (2005)

Genre: High School Satire  

Director: Marcos Siega  

Starring: Evan Rachel Wood, Ron Livingston, James Woods, Selma Blair  

Running Time: 109 minutes  

Synopsis: At a posh Beverly Hills high school, 15-year-old Kimberly (Evan Rachel Wood) aspires to become an actress, but remains sore that her best friend Brittany apparently stole her boyfriend. Kimberly helps new Muslim student Randa adapt to her surroundings, and they navigate around English teacher Mr. Anderson (Ron Livingston), who has a reputation as a molester. Meanwhile, Kimberly's unpleasant home life is dominated by her father Hank (James Woods), a loud-mouthed racist. A school production of the Diary of Anne Frank provides Kimberly an opportunity to achieve multiple objectives.

What Works Well: This snarky high school satire takes aim at multiple targets, and often succeeds with cold-eyed efficiency. Lecherous teachers, catty best friends, self-obsessed wealthy parents, vacuous boyfriends, trophy third wives, attention-seeking journalists, sex-as-a-weapon, and showtime lawyers are all on the agenda. Evan Rachel Wood excels as the psychotically calculating calm in the middle of the storm, Kimberly's genius manipulations revealed with deliberate pacing through well-crafted flashbacks.

What Does Not Work As Well: The tone oscillates sometimes wildly between humorous, hurtful, and plain crude, before veering towards too-dark territory in the final act. 

Key Quote:

Kimberly: So, Brittany, this is Randa. Randa's from the Middle East, but she's really sweet. She doesn't say much, though.

Brittany: Hi! I know all about the immigrant experience, how hard it can be - I'm Canadian.

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Movie Review: The Missing (2003)

A soulful western, The Missing depicts a traditional rescue journey into hazardous terrain, spiked with moments of ferocious cruelty.

The setting is New Mexico in the late 1800s. Samuel Jones (Tommy Lee Jones) makes a surprise return to the isolated ranch of his grown daughter Maggie (Cate Blanchett). He had abandoned the family to join the Chiricahua tribe when Maggie was a child, and she never forgave him. Now Maggie is raising two daughters, teenager Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood) and the younger but more spirited Dot (Jenna Boyd). Brake (Aaron Eckhart) is Maggie's unofficial partner.

A renegade group of Apache sex slavers led by the evil El Brujo (Eric Schweig) kills Brake and kidnaps Lilly, intending to sell her along with other captive women in Mexico. Getting no assistance from the authorities, Maggie reluctantly seeks Jones' help, and Dot insists on joining them on a perilous journey to rescue Lilly.

Carrying strong echoes from the classic John Wayne western The Searchers, The Missing is an ode to the genre's fundamentals. Written by Ken Kaufman and directed by Ron Howard, the plot is anchored by a dangerous but necessary rescue campaign, with a sub-theme of forgiveness sought and withheld between father and daughter. The movie is slow but determined, dripping with the power of robust characters and the dangers of a challenging landscape captured by cinematographer Salvatore Totino.

Despite a long running length of well over two hours, Howard maintains interest with regular highlights. A jagged path through a rocky mountain becomes a drowning hazard during a downpour. The previously sheltered and unappreciative Lilly, now a captive, discovers her inner resolve during interludes with the slavers and their bounty of kidnapped women. A sub-plot of allies is introduced in the story of a Chiricahua father and son who join forces with Samuel and Maggie to try and free their own captive from El Brujo's clutches.

During the quiet interludes, Maggie refuses to easily forgive the father who abandoned her and hastened her mother's death. Jones can only be true to himself, and accepts the emotional punishment with stoic resignation. The sustained tension between them adds welcome character depth.

Violence spices up the mix. Kaufman and Howard do not hold back on El Brujo's willingness to use supernatural powers, witchcraft, and torture to intimidate and thrive. In a harrowing and difficult sequence, Maggie, Jones and Dot stumble onto the site of El Brujo's barbarism, and the remnants of his savagery are abhorrent. He is a formidable opponent, brought to life by a domineering Eric Schweig performance full of physicality and few words. Opposing him is Tommy Lee Jones at his craggy best carrying the burden of a mistake-filled life, well matched by a tenacious Cate Blanchett refusing to give up on finding her daughter.

The Missing lacks premise originality, but finds a rugged and respectful genre salute.



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Movie Review: Across The Universe (2007)

A jukebox musical drama and romance featuring the music of The Beatles, Across The Universe is a multifaceted but simple story inspired by the 1960s and the majesty of timeless songs.

It's the 1960s, and in Liverpool aspiring artist Jude (Jim Sturgess) leaves his shipyard job and girlfriend behind and heads to the United States for a life adventure. At the Princeton University campus, he meets free-spirited student Max (Joe Anderson), then finds his father, a World War Two veteran who abandoned Jude's mother when she was pregnant. Jude becomes friends with Max and also meets his more grounded sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). She has a boyfriend who has already been drafted into the army.

Max quits college and with Jude they relocate to New York's Greenwich Village, where they meet aspiring singer Sadie (Dana Fuchs) and guitarist Jo-Jo (Martin Luther McCoy), who fled a Detroit beset by race riots. They are soon joined by Lucy, as well as Prudence (T.V. Carpio), a young woman from Ohio. Jude and Lucy start an intense romance, while Max receives his draft papers conscripting him into the army. Lucy joins an anti-war activist group led by Paco (Logan Marshall-Green), and eventually her idealistic dedication to peace protests strains the relationship with Jude.

An experimental fantasy anchored to the music and events of the 1960s, Across The Universe is reasonably successful in casting a unique spell. Director Julie Taymor and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais squeeze in more than 30 Beatles tunes into 133 minutes of running time. Helped by key characters carrying names straight from The Beatles' songs (Jude, Prudence, Lucy, Jo-Jo, Max), the songs are performed by the cast members and often seamlessly weave into the film.

The movie is an undoubted salute to the eternal genius of the band and a reminder of their catalogue depth. But bloat does creep in, and a more disciplined edit would have resulted in a sharper end product.

Taymor ties the music to often fantastical imagery, allowing the film to work as a feast for the eyes as well as the ears. The visuals are hit and miss, a combination of alluring, perplexing and trippy. For better or for worse, Across The Universe often evokes the 1960s as imagined through the prism of substance-enhanced nostalgia.

Within the swirling artsiness it's remarkable the film contains as much plot and history as it does, and these elements not only work but provide necessary cohesion. Social turmoil, protests, riots, hippie-inspired attitudes towards love and a burgeoning peace movement grappling with tactics are all here under the ever-present spectre of a worsening Vietnam War. The cultural references are enhanced by Sadie and Jo-Jo channeling Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix respectively.

The story of Jude's father is a reminder these are the children of the World War Two generation, while the scenes back in Liverpool create a grim port city with a future fading into nondescript and depressing narrow alleyways. Jim Sturgess and Evan Rachel Wood delve into their roles as star-crossed lovers with appropriate solemnity, the cast playing it straight to provide necessary ballast.

A rich multi-sensory experience, Across The Universe is courageous artistry on film.

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The Movies Of Evan Rachel Wood

All movies starring Evan Rachel Wood and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Practical Magic (1998)

Simone (2002)

The Missing (2003)

Pretty Persuasion (2005)

Across The Universe (2007)

The Wrestler (2008)

The Ides Of March (2011)

Into The Forest (2015)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Into The Forest (2015)

A survival drama with suspense elements, Into The Forest explores the bond between two sisters as the world seems to plunge into catastrophe.

In the near future, teenaged sisters Nell (Ellen Page) and Eva (Evan Rachel Wood) are spending some time at their remote cottage in the west coast woods with their widowed father Robert (Callum Keith Rennie). Nell is studying for her SAT exams and pursuing a relationship with Eli (Max Minghella). Eva is practicing hard for a dance audition.

A power outage affects the area, and seems to be part of a much larger national technological failure. Communications are cut off, and the family has to make do without electricity or internet and limited gas for their car. A trip into town reveals people on edge, including supermarket clerk Stan (Michael Eklund), and mostly empty shelves, although Nell reconnects with Eli. Back at the cabin Robert has a bad accident, forcing Nell and Eva to face the sustained crisis on their own.

Written and directed by Patricia Rozema, Into The Forest is interested in people and a sense of place rather than a galloping plot. And Rozema is relatively successful, creating an emphasis on two typical sisters, generally adept at getting along but never too far from sulks and petty arguments.

The power outage and loss of all communications is the baseline premise to test Nell and Eva, and the film leaves the context at that. No explanations are provided, neither about the why nor the what next. Something big has gone wrong, really wrong, and in a world wholly dependent on technology, the sudden loss of all power effectively stops routine life in its tracks. No music to practice dance, no internet to study for exams, no functional phones, radios, televisions or refrigerators.

Old fashioned books reclaim their status as the most advanced form of technology, and as food runs out and the sisters resort to foraging and then hunting, textbooks explaining the natural world become essential survival tools.

Gas for the car and the generator becomes the most precious commodity, and understandably a spark for serious disagreements between Nell and Eva. They are not only dealing with a changed world, but also grief due to parental loss. They only have each other, and take turns testing and then strengthening their bond.

Although a couple of episodes of shocking violence punctuate the film, the sense of suspense comes not so much from impending jump scares but rather the creeping sense that all the old rules have been swept aside and the world is a different place. The cottage is isolated and nestled in nature, and Into The Forest works its way towards comfort in seclusion and a return to basics. Other people, freed from societal norms, may now be the biggest threat.

Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood develop a warm affinity and are quickly credible as sisters. The film rides on their shoulders, and they both rise up to deliver layered performances, stitching the inherent independence of young women with the essential need to work together to survive.

Into The Forest does not search for answers, but does find the human spirit, throbbing amidst the rubble of modern society.

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Movie Review: The Ides Of March (2011)

An inside look at the United States political process, The Ides Of March delves into the ruthless backroom machinations that define election campaigns. The film is almost incredible, and also likely too close to the truth for comfort.

Governor of Pennsylvania Mike Morris (George Clooney) and Arkansas Senator Ted Pullman are locked in a tight race for the Democratic party presidential nomination. The next big milestone is the Ohio primary, and both campaign teams are going all out to win. Veteran Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) runs Morris' campaign, assisted by the young, bright and idealistic Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). Their opponent is Pullman's campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). New York Time journalist Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) is covering the nomination battle.

Stephen genuinely believes that Morris is a positive change agent who is capable of great achievements. His attention is momentarily distracted by attractive campaign intern Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood). They seduce each other and start a steamy affair. Meanwhile, Paul is working overtime to try and secure the critical endorsement of influential North Carolina Senator Franklin Thompson (Jeffrey Wright). Considered a king-maker, Thompson is negotiating with both campaigns, effectively selling his support to the candidate who offers him the most attractive White House position. All appears to be going well for Stephen, until he receives a phone call from Duffy, who wants Stephen to defect to the Pullman campaign. A rapid series of cascading events then throws the nomination race into turmoil, threatening to end Stephen's promising career.

Directed and co-written by Clooney as an adaptation of the play Farragut North by Beau Willimon, The Ides Of March exposes a two-faced political system that presents a fake public profile while running on a cut-throat culture of deceit, back-stabbing and betrayal. That politics is a blood sport is not new; that the participants engage with a deadpan matter-of-factness while twisting the knife is never less than disturbing.

The events portrayed are only loosely based on fact, but while too much drama is packed into a few days of campaigning, the individual misdoings all ring true as actual headlines from real political wars. Clooney moves the talk-fest along swiftly, allowing each event to shine brightly but ever so briefly in the glare of the 24/7 news cycle: there is always the next outrage waiting to feed tomorrow's talking heads.

Appropriately, the candidates are the articulate faces of their respective campaigns, but very much secondary characters in the overall context. The strategy, policy, negotiations and message control are the domain of men like Paul, Stephen and Tom. They are the backroom operatives who prefer to stay in the dark, spinning stories to reporters but manipulating events from behind the curtain. The film is a compelling chronicle of a battle of wills, and Clooney constructs it with zest, focusing on soul-destroying compromises driven by the rampant ambition to win at all costs.

A dream cast contributes greatly to the film's appeal, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti biting into their roles with glee, allowing Ryan Gosling to adopt the more cerebral and circumspect approach. Stephen is at the centre of the film, and Gosling treats the role as a story of awakening. Stephen transforms from idealistic bright young assistant campaign manager to a veteran of the political wars, a journey that will require him to taste bitter disappointment and discover just how far he will personally go to safeguard his dreams.

Evan Rachel Wood radiates an outer innocence and inner self-indulgence, always hinting that Molly wants to play in a league that may just be too tough for her. Marisa Tomei suffers somewhat from a vaguely underwritten role as the clinical reporter Ida.

Of course by the time Stephen emerges at the other end of the Ohio primary, his idealistic dream is a nightmare of corruption, his path to success littered with victims. But in the high stakes world of politics, the prize comes with the reward of enormous power, justifying all necessary means.

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