Movie Review: Arlington Road (1999)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Mark Pellington  

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis  

Running Time: 119 minutes  

Synopsis: In suburban Virginia, Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) is a professor specializing in domestic terrorism, and still grieving the death of his wife, an FBI agent. Michael is now dating his former student Brooke (Hope Davis), and they befriend their neighbours Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack). Oliver claims to be an architect, but Michael starts uncovering evidence that Oliver is lying about his background, and that he may have violent anti-government intentions. Increasingly paranoid but undeterred, Michael keeps investigating and draws himself and his young son into danger.

What Works Well: Inspired by actual events like the Oklahoma City bombing and the Ruby Ridge stand-off, this is a slick, taut, and clever thriller about the threat living in plain sight and just next door. The Ehren Kruger script keeps the mystery alive by revealing only what is necessary and in small but steady increments, casting doubt not only on Oliver's true nature but also Michael's state of mind. Jeff Bridges (intense) and Tim Robbins (calculating) bounce off each other, and the final twist is a welcome departure from the usual clichés. 

What Does Not Work As Well: On the way to an effective and satisfying resolution, the action becomes frantic and dependent on plenty of back-and-forth traveling and some unlikely perfect timing.

Key Quote:

Michael: You can't ask government to be infallible, but you can ask it to be accountable.

Oliver: I can ask it to be honest.

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Movie Review: My Sister's Keeper (2009)

A family drama, My Sister's Keeper explores the exhausting emotional consequences of caring for a severely ill child.

Sara and Brian Fitzgerald (Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric) are raising three children, but 15 year old daughter Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) is their main priority. She has a rare form of leukaemia and has been undergoing treatment most of her life. Sara quit her career as a lawyer and dedicated her life to care for Kate. The Fitzgeralds even conceived younger daughter Anna and engineered her genes primarily to be a donor for her older sister. Meanwhile, son Jesse (Evan Ellingson) is dyslexic but has received little parental attention.

Now 11 years old, Anna (Abigail Breslin) decides she no longer wants to undergo surgeries and donate body parts to her sister. She hires celebrity lawyer Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin) and sues her parents for "medical emancipation". Sara is shocked that her younger daughter is rebelling, but Brian, a firefighter, is more understanding. As the court case proceeds with Judge De Salvo (Joan Cusack) presiding, flashbacks reveal Kate's life-long struggles and experiences, including a romance with fellow cancer patient Taylor (Thomas Dekker).

A finely-tuned weepy, My Sister's Keeper hits all the sad notes it aims for. The Jodi Picoult novel is translated to the screen by director Nick Cassavetes and co-writer Jeremy Leven, and jointly they don't miss an opportunity to cram agony into the lives of the Fitzgeralds. The journey through the parental nightmare of a child's horrific illness conveys acute pain, grief, and disappointment, but also grim determination to spare nothing in an effort to defeat a formidable disease.

The narrative core, and the film's strongest moments, are found in the time and space where the limits of caring infringe on irrationality. Sara is so consumed with Kate's survival that heroic efforts become routine, and she envelopes her entire self within the quest to prolong her daughter's life. Anna's action in suing her parents is the last remaining alarm bell that could awaken Sara from the singularly focused dark state she created for herself. With the prickly intervention of Alec Baldwin's slick lawyer, the debate over sacrifice imposed upon others is treated with sharp respect.

Elsewhere My Sister's Keeper settles down to a polished but standard recounting of cancer's ravaging impacts. From the horrors of shock diagnosis to endless rounds of treatment, the very few ups have to compensate for many downs, understandably fraying the bonds between Sara and Brian. When he finally puts his foot down and grants Kate some joy at the expense of Sara's rigid rules, their marriage threatens to rupture.

The flashback romance between Kate and Taylor is an adequate sub-story with its own highs and lows, and does present a moment of unbridled familial joy. The grounded performances by the stellar cast ride with the drama but avoid most histrionics, with Cameron Diaz delivering one of her finest dramatic roles. The two young actresses Sofia Vassilieva and Abigail Breslin forge a heart and soul of provocation and perseverance.

Emotion-packed, sometimes melodramatic, but still compelling, My Sister's Keeper is propelled by the courage to confront, obvious and visible within a mother, more crafty in her offspring.



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Movie Review: Friends With Money (2006)

A drama and comedy about friendship, Friends With Money introduces four interesting women grappling with life's various challenges, but doesn't quite engage them at the required depth.

Olivia (Jennifer Aniston) is poor, single, and works as a maid. She is also timid, does not stand up for herself and starts dating good-for-nothing fitness instructor Mike (Scott Caan) despite all his obvious faults. Meanwhile her three best friends are all married and wealthy.

Christine (Catherine Keeler) is a script writer but unhappy in her marriage and clashing constantly with aloof husband Dave (Jason Isaacs). The perpetually irritable Jane (Frances McDormand) is a successful fashion designer but having trouble dealing with aging. She lashes out at all around her and refuses to wash her hair, while her fashion-conscious husband Aaron (Simon McBurney) is always mistaken for being gay. Franny (Joan Cusack) is independently wealthy and a happy stay at home mom married to Matt (Greg Germann), who tends to overspend on everything.

Christine's marriage disintegrates, and Jane's rage at the world reaches a literal breaking point. But the four women nevertheless do their best to support each other through their emotional ups and downs.

An understated tour of empathy among women, Friends With Money explores the differences that unite and the superficial veneers of happiness hiding misery underneath. Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, the film does focus on first world problems of the white class, and three of the four women enjoy wealth and supportive partners, so their despondency stems at least partially from a fundamental lack of perspective.

Within that context, Olivia is the outsider with her nose glued to the window observing the seemingly perfect life of her rich friends. While it is difficult to swallow Jennifer Aniston as a maid, making every bad decision, unable to launch a career and still stalking an ex-boyfriend, Holofcener's script at least allows Olivia to acknowledge her faults and wear her failures with dignity.

Christine, Jane and Franny are not as well served, and generally remain flat mirrors for Olivia to measure herself. Christine's marriage crumbles into predictable chunks and Jane's inability to deal with being in her forties barely evolves. Franny is most content and endeavors to support her friends, but is also the least defined character. Too much screen time is invested in the ultimately pointless subplot of Aaron fending off perceptions of being gay.

Friends With Money adroitly avoids histrionics as Holofcener stays close to the realms of reality, seeking both humour and pathos within familiar behavior. The Friends With Money ring true, but would have benefitted from a bit more to do.

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Movie Review: Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

A romantic comedy with a twist, Grosse Pointe Blank follows a cold-blooded but sympathetic hit-man as he attends his high school reunion to pursue his dream girl while dodging bullets.

Martin Blank (John Cusack) is an independent assassin for hire, receiving his missions through his assistant Marcella (Joan Cusack). Fellow hit-man Grocer (Dan Aykroyd) tries to convince him to join a cartel, but Martin wants to maintain independence. Starting to feel depressed and jaded Martin's mood is not improved when a couple of his missions are bungled. His shrink Dr. Oatman (Alan Arkin) is of little use.

After being nagged incessantly by Marcella, Martin agrees to attend his 10 year reunion at Grosse Pointe high school in a Detroit suburb, but only after his next target happens to also be in the same city. He uses the opportunity to try and win back the love of Debi (Minnie Driver), the sweetheart he abandoned on prom night ten years prior. He also bumps into other high school friends including real estate agent Paul (Jeremy Piven). As he makes progress in wooing Debi, Martin realizes that Grosse Pointe is crawling with hit men, and that he may be a target.

Set to a continuous soundtrack of mid-1980s hits, Grosse Pointe Blank takes a sardonic look at the love life of a killer. Directed by George Armitage with John Cusack co-writing, the film goes into rarely explored territory where killers need affection too, and laughs, love and hot lead collide. It doesn't necessarily always work as intended, but enough emotional mayhem registers to make the film stand out.

With so much going on some parts of the narrative kookiness understandably land awkwardly. Unless blatant satire was the goal, Debi's ability to look past Martin's profession and love him anyway was never going to be an easy sell. The music soundtrack also occasionally overreaches and gets in the way. While the selection of hits from the 1980s is a boon to fans of the decade, stretches of the film introduce a new track every 10 seconds, the songs disintegrating into useless snippet territory. And finally the big reunion scene is a messy series of encounters that seem to start and stop at random and offer nothing new.

But for the most part Grosse Pointe Blank delivers an irreverent mash-up of wild action, romantic pursuit, career depression and caustic comedy. And the genres somehow rub against each other at the right angles, the film emerging as a unique hybrid refusing to adhere to any preconceived notions of formula. Rarely has a love story with a high school backdrop been interrupted by an intense gunfight between two assassins culminating in a bomb placed in a microwave. And of course the battle happens to take place in a mini mart that displaced Martin's childhood home, just to add to the hero's depressed sense of aggrieved angst.

John Cusack brings his persona of intense cool to Martin Blank, and provides the film with its critical centre of gravity. None of the other characters are too important to matter. Even Debi is reduced to lazily orbiting Martin's disorderly life, Minnie Driver unable to exert much pull on the proceedings other than work through Debi's residual anger issues.

Grosse Pointe Blank bravely goes back home, and with a wicked smile gleefully breaks all the rules.

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Movie Review: Where The Heart Is (2000)

A drama about life and love, Where The Heart Is finds most of the right notes in the story of an underprivileged young woman determined to carve a life for herself.

Seventeen years old, penniless and pregnant, Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman) is abandoned by her scummy boyfriend Willy Pickens (Dylan Bruno) at a Sequoyah, Oklahoma WalMart. The kindly Thelma Husband (Stockard Channing), a recovering alcoholic, extends a welcoming hand, but with nowhere to go Novalee surreptitiously starts to sleep at the WalMart by night while wandering around the community during the day. She meets store photographer Moses Whitecotton (Keith David) as well as town librarian Forney Hull (James Frain), an awkward young man whose college education was interrupted.

Novalee gives birth to a daughter she calls Americus, with Forney instrumental in the midnight delivery at the WalMart. While recovering at the hospital she meets nurse Lexie Coop (Ashley Judd), a vivacious unmarried mother of four who easily attracts all the wrong men. Meanwhile, Willy heads to Nashville in search of a music career and connects with talent agent Ruth Meyers (Joan Cusack). After an unsavory encounter with her no-good mother Lil (Sally Field), Novalee moves in with Thelma to start assembling something that resembles a life, and there are plenty of ups and downs ahead in the pursuit of happiness.

An adaptation of the Billie Letts novel of the same name, written for the screen by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, and directed by Matt Williams, Where The Heart Is establishes a methodical one-crisis-per-10-minutes pace and does not stray far from the formula. And yet the film executes its mandate with admirable proficiency, and wins its audience with a heartfelt and well-intentioned portrayal of the human spirit hard at work.

Films populated entirely by relatively poor people are few and far between, and there is no knight in shining armour or rich saviour of any kind in Where The Heart Is. Nor is this a class warfare story glamorizing the poor but morally upright masses. Rather, this is a tale of gaining inches in the marathon of life. Novalee starts with literally nothing and the deck stacked against her, and works her way to something through sheer force of will and an always positive disposition.

Along the way she meets women of the same ilk, Thelma and Lexie fighting their own battles (against various addictions and insufferable men respectively) but just as determined as Novalee to fight back on their own terms of kindness.

Williams energetically works the film through the obstacle course of abandonment, poverty, abuse, natural disasters and awkward relationships, sprinkling enough small wins and moments of love and laughter to ensure Novalee always has the motivation and glimmers of hope to carry on. The outcome is a film that despite its sentimentality capably mirrors life's ups and downs.

All of 18 at the time of filming, Natalie Portman holds the film together and convincingly portrays Novalee from 17 to 22, adding textures of experience as the character ages. Ashley Judd is equally irresistible as Lexie, smiling at a life that serves her up a succession of adorable children but also a series of less than useless sperm donors.

Where The Heart Is finds a place that is honest and comfortably familiar, rich soil to help a young woman grow.

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Movie Review: High Fidelity (2000)

A romantic comedy with some dramatic elements, High Fidelity goes for a grubby tone in both aesthetics and emotions.

In Chicago, Rob Gordon (John Cusack) runs a vinyl record store in a seedy part of town. Gordon's latest girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) has just walked out on him, accusing him of failing to grow up and not having enough ambition. Rob recollects his previous most memorable break-ups, including glamorous ex-girlfriend Charlie (Catherine Zeta-Jones).

Rob's co-workers are music geeks Dick (Todd Louiso) and Barry (Jack Black). Dick is a timid introvert while Barry is an over-talkative amateur band member. As Rob works through his emotions, including conversing with his sister Liz (Joan Cusack), he meets budding singer Marie DeSalle (Lisa Bonet) and they develop a mutual but superficial attraction. Meanwhile Laura starts a new affair with ex-neighbour Ian Raymond (Tim Robbins) but she also stays in touch with Rob, providing him with hope that their relationship may be salvageable.

Directed by Stephen Frears, High Fidelity aims for an edgy, knowing vibe but veers too far away from its own essence. While the search for an original angle within the romantic comedy genre is welcome, too much of the film is obsessed with music minutiae and the competitive bickering of Dick and Barry at the record store. Initially funny, this side quest into the juvenile antics of two socially awkward friends invades most of the film, and the endless music trivia banter becomes a cause onto itself.

Meanwhile, Rob Gordon is an unfortunately unlikeable character to place in the middle of a film. A prototypical immature man, Rob does little to deserve any sympathy as he wonders why all his relationships fail. His journey to self-awareness is both trite and tedious. Frears' decision to have Rob break the fourth wall and narrate directly to the cameras throughout the whole film does not help, as despite John Cusack's best efforts Rob comes across as filled with an obnoxious combination of smugness and self-pity.

Laura holds more promise as an interesting character open to the opportunity of rescuing a long-term relationship, but the speed with which she takes up with Ian undermines her apparent continued investment in Rob.

What remains is a film soundtrack filled with a mixtape of obscure and lesser known songs, High Fidelity proudly displaying its high hip quotient, but forgetting to add the necessary substance to actually be relevant.

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Movie Review: Nine Months (1995)

A romantic comedy about transitioning from couplehood to parenthood, Nine Months showcases Hugh Grant's emerging talents and achieves big laughs with some slick slap stick.

In San Francisco, child psychologist Sam (Grant) and ballet teacher Becky (Julianne Moore) are in a seemingly perfect long-term relationship. When she announces an unexpected pregnancy, Sam is frazzled and feels unready. His attitude is not helped by constant accidental interactions with the chaotic family of Marty and Gail (Tom Arnold and Joan Cusack), who have three kids and a fourth on the way. Sam's friend Sean (Jeff Goldblum), a struggling yet sophisticated artist, is also not a fan of babyhood, having just broken off a relationship to avoid becoming a father.

As the pregnancy progresses, Becky becomes more committed to the idea of having a child, while all Sam can focus on is the loss of his independence and the fundamental changes to their lifestyle. The couple reach a crisis point, not helped by the seemingly incompetent efforts of Dr. Kosevich (Robin Williams), a recent Russian immigrant with limited vocabulary.

Directed and co-written by Chris Columbus, Nine Months was Hugh Grant's first studio-backed Hollywood production. The film is perhaps overstuffed with Grant's signature mannerisms of rapid blinking, eye-shifting, stuttering and off-handed cynicisms, but overall this is a comedy that benefits from his talent and establishes the Grant screen persona as the likable but boyish urbane man who refuses to grow up.

This is rom-com where the romance eventually takes a back seat to the comedy. Columbus firmly sets his focus on achieving crowning laugh-out-loud moments, and largely delivers. Some of it is pure slapstick, including an encounter with a Barney-type dinosaur at a toy store, but it works. And thanks to Robin Williams committing to the insanity of a veterinarian insecure about his first foray into human medicine, the film's finale is a frantic classic.

In its more serious moments Nine Months preys on the theme of men unwilling to mature. Sam is at the peak of his youth's fantasy, enjoying being in love, an emerging career, a new sports car and a beautiful woman by his side. The concept of abandoning what appears to be perfection to dive into the world of fatherhood is terrifying, and not made any easier by his superficial observations of what appears to be the anarchy of families in the full swing of parenting. His transformation is of course linear and predictable, but Columbus makes the most of a natural and widespread anxiety.

The cast members provide strong support. Moore registers as a woman fully embracing impending motherhood and unafraid to make difficult decisions when needed. Robin Williams has just the two prominent scenes but is unforgettable as Dr. Kosevich, while Jeff Goldblum delivers another version of his superficially smooth expert roles, gradually revealing Sean as a king of nothing.

Nine Months captures the emotional disarray of pregnancy: the gestation period is long, if for no other reason than to allow men to catch up with the drastic changes to come.

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The Movies Of Joan Cusack

All movies starring Joan Cusack and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Class (1983)

Sixteen Candles (1984)

Broadcast News (1987)

Married To The Mob (1988)

Working Girl (1988)

Say Anything... (1989)

Nine Months (1995)

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997)

Arlington Road (1999)

Runaway Bride (1999)

High Fidelity (2000)

Where The Heart Is (2000)

School Of Rock (2003)

Friends With Money (2006)

My Sister's Keeper (2009)

Toy Story 3 (2010, voice only)

The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (2012)

Instant Family (2018)

Toy Story 4 (2019, voice only)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: School Of Rock (2003)

A comedy with plenty of rock music, School Of Rock is about daring to be different. Jack Black shines as an aging rocker who surreptitiously takes over an elementary school classroom and molds the kids into a rock band.

Dewey Finn (Black) is a relatively useless rock singer and guitarist, well into adulthood but refusing to give up on his musical dream. Broke and fired from his own garage band, Dewey is at a dead-end in life and fully leaching off his only friend Ned Schneebly (Mike White), a substitute teacher. Ned's girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman) wants Dewey out of their apartment for failing to pay rent.

Desperate for money, Dewey pretends to be Ned and accepts a temporary teaching assignment at a prestigious private elementary school where Roz Mullins (Joan Cusack) is the principal. Initially Dewey is happy to do nothing and cash a cheque, but when he realizes that the kids have musical talent, he is inspired to try and form a rock band. Maintaining secrecy, Dewey introduces the kids to rock 'n' roll, and soon they are rocking out, revealing hidden talents, learning about life and aiming to participate in a local battle of the bands contest.

Directed by Richard Linklater and written by White, School Of Rock is a lighthearted and feel-good comedy musical. The film is inherently goofy in a good way, and bounces off the energy of its lead character, with Dewey Finn's refusal to adhere to the rules of growing up fueling his quest to solve the world's problems one riff at a time. Linklater injects plenty of laughs in scenes of Dewey being Dewey, from diving into the crowd and being caught by no one, to sarcastically locking horns with conformists like Patty and Roz.

If School Of Rock does suffer from an ailment, it's too much of a good thing, and in particular too much of Jack Black. Good as he is in the role, tip toeing along the enjoyable line of overstatement, there are just too many scenes of Dewey working himself into a frenzy and rocking out the tune of his own legend. While the kids are cute and enjoy individual personalities, the film does not boast much of a fleshed-out secondary cast, and beyond Black there is little talent to admire. So it's either Black or nought, and his overexcited demeanor does get laborious.

As Dewey works with the kids and gets to know them, there are hints of interesting sub-plots that would have benefited from more exploration. Guitarist Zack (Joey Gaydos) is suffering under the regime of a strict father; keyboardist Lawrence (Robert Tsai) has no friends, drummer Freddy (Kevin Clark) starts to get seduced by the dark side of the rock 'n' roll life, and singer Tomika (Maryam Hassan) suffers from body image problems. Dewey also never seems to get along with Billy (Brian Falduto), the band stylist. The kids get snippets of scenes hinting at what is going on their personal lives, but none move beyond the sketched-in stage before everyone arrives at the rousing finale.

School Of Rock overcomes its shortcomings with an attitude of unabated fun and enough sly commentary to keep both kids and their parents fully engaged. The soundtrack of riff-heavy hard rock and heavy metal classics from the 1970s and 1980s keeps the momentum hopping, and the theme of believing in dreams and pursuing wild passions gets the pragmatic treatment that it deserves: life is less about winning and losing and more about rocking out at the right shows.

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Movie Review: Working Girl (1988)

A romantic comedy drama set in the high stakes world of business, Working Girl celebrates the power of the individual to succeed despite any lowly starting point. The film is an effective combination of character-driven boardroom drama, unlikely romance and clever, adult-oriented humour.

In New York, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a working class Staten Island girl holding a job as an administrative secretary at a Manhattan investment brokerage. Just turning 30, Tess is smart, savvy and strives for admission into the firm's trainee program, but entry doors just slam in her face. A spark of hope is ignited when Tess is assigned to a new boss in the form of sharp young executive Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). Katharine promises to take Tess seriously and help her advance, but then proceeds to steal Tess' idea for a major media acquisition deal.

When Katharine is unexpectedly laid up in Switzerland with a broken leg due to a ski accident, Tess takes the opportunity to over-represent herself, taking over Katharine's office and wardrobe and playing deal maker between two major corporations, with help from mergers and acquisitions executive Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford). Jack and Tess push the deal seemingly towards success and start to develop romantic feelings for each other. But when Katharine reenters the picture, Tess is exposed and finds herself severely compromised professionally and personally.

Directed by Mike Nichols, Working Girl is a corporate fairy tale, a Cinderella-in-Manhattan where the corporation is the castle, dreams can come true, and the poor but good girl from the 'burbs has to try and overcome a horrid wardrobe, outsmart the evil schemer, and aim to win the heart of prince charming. Written by Kevin Wade, the film mixes humour, romance and business in a slick and irresistible package, and unfolds as a breezy romp through the extreme sport of office politics, where knives are plunged into backs as a matter of course and always with an icy smile.

Working Girl is also a quintessential piece of late 1980s filmmaking celebrating the decade of greed. Here executives are only as good as their last deal, barracudas like Katharine Parker slice through cocktail parties looking for their next victim, Jack Trainer and his ilk forgo sleep and crave the success of brokering an acquisition, boardroom deals are the pinnacle of excitement, and even the secretary aims for her piece of the me decade. Flattery, flirting and barely concealed sexuality are just more weapons in the business battlefield.

Tess has the scrappy streetsmarts but not the education to join the game, but her desire to climb this particular corporate ladder is never questioned. Her sacrifices includes cutting her working class hair, dumping the gaudy jewelry, and breaking off with oily boyfriend Mick (Alec Baldwin), who conveniently cheats on her just as she is starting to carve out a new life. It is an open question whether Tess' friendship with fellow secretary Cynthia (Joan Cusack) will survive her desire to rise above the secretarial pool.

The film chews heartily on several themes, including classism, careerism, women in the work force, the limits of ambition, and the rights and wrongs of the ends justifying the means. A unifying theme is the desperation to get ahead at all levels and at all costs. Just as much as Tess is eager to prove herself, Katharine and Jack are just as committed to their goals, and if nothing else, they serve as warnings of what Tess should expect once she wades into the dangerous waters of deal making.

Tess McGill is probably Melanie Griffith's greatest role. She brings Tess to life with cat-like agility, smarts, and intensity. Griffith keeps the character anchored in Tess' working class roots, which represent a commitment to dogged persistence and an inability to compromise when confronted with two-faced sleaze. Harrison Ford provides a steady presence, while Sigourney Weaver has an absolute blast turning Katharine Parker into the seminal surreptitious corporate conniver, trampling on the likes of Tess with absolute glee. Oliver Platt (Tess' first boss), Kevin Spacey (a coke snorting lusty executive) and Olympia Dukakis (the personnel director) contribute small roles.

Most appropriately, the impressively spiritual Carly Simon song Let the River Run won the Academy Award. After all, Working Girl is an ode to the career that glistens in the high rise windows of the Manhattan sky, where all shall worship at the altar of the next big commission.

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