Movie Review: Two Weeks (2006)

Genre: Dramedy  

Director: Steve Stockman  

Starring: Sally Field, Ben Chaplin, Julianne Nicholson, Thomas Cavanagh  

Running Time: 102 minutes  

Synopsis: Suffering from terminal cancer, Anita (Sally Field) is placed under home palliative care, and her grown children gather to provide support in her final days. Keith (Ben Chaplin) is a Hollywood actor, Barry (Thomas Cavanagh) is a businessman, Emily (Julianne Nicholson) is the responsible daughter, and Matthew (Glenn Howerton) is the disrespected youngest sibling. Tears mix with laughter as the siblings navigate their mother's health, moods, final wishes, and each other.

What Works Well: This standard family-coping-with-death drama appreciates moments of healthy humour, highlighted by the intervention of a less-than-effective Rabbi and one misfit spouse. Sally Field is reliably perfect as Anita surrenders to her final few days, and straight-to-the-audience flashbacks animate the role as a healthier Anita responds to her son Keith's from-behind-the-camera prodding. Elsewhere the four siblings' different personalities, levels of responsibility, and methods of coping are sharply drawn.

What Does Not Work As Well: None of the important clear-the-air conversations ever seem to happen, the aversion to difficult resolutions perhaps realistic but contributing to a narrative happy to amble along in blissful avoidance. A final let-it-all-out emotional release is just too contrived.

Key Quote:

Barry (to Keith): I've never been thrown out of a grocery store.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Blonde (2022)

Genre: Biographical Drama

Director: Andrew Dominik

Starring: Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Julianne Nicholson

Running Time: 166 minutes

Synopsis: In Los Angeles of the 1930s, a young Norma Jean Baker grows up without a father. She is raised by her unstable mother Gladys (Julianne Nicholson), who is eventually institutionalized. By the 1950s, Norma Jean is finding some success under the name Marilyn Monroe as a magazine model and in minor movie roles. Stunningly beautiful, she is soon elevated to a leading actress and becomes a sex symbol, and in her private life embarks on a polyamorous relationship. Fame, fortune, and a couple of high profile marriages follow, but Norma Jean is unprepared for the celebrity life, and is always haunted by her traumatic childhood.

What Works Well: The mélange of facts and imaginations does not hold back, writer and director Andrew Dominik (adapting the Joyce Carol Oates book) mixing oodles of style with an often harrowing story of loneliness, self-doubt, loss, and abuse. The mix of aspect ratios and colour/black and white cinematography achieves a hypnotic representation of a tumultuous life. Ana de Armas fully invests in the role, recreating some of Monroe's most famous celebrity moments for a lost-in-Hollywood portrait where screen personas consume reality.

What Does Not Work Well: Monroe's fixation on her missing father is allowed to dominate, and eventually becomes a tiresome device. The running time is inexcusably long, and despite the bloat, several characters emerge suddenly around Marilyn with neither an introduction nor context. Bobby Cannavale (as Joe DiMaggio) and Adrien Brody (as Arthur Miller) are reduced to stock representations, joining all other supporting characters in failing to leave a sustained imprint.

Conclusion: A suitably messy depiction of one fragile woman forced to deal with inhumane pressure unleashed by public lust.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

The Movies Of Julianne Nicholson

All movies starring Julianne Nicholson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Kinsey (2004)

Two Weeks (2006)

August: Osage County (2013)

Sophie And The Rising Sun (2016)

I, Tonya (2017)

Who We Are Now (2017)

Blonde (2022)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Who We Are Now (2017)

A drama about second chances, Who We Are Now is a finely crafted study of women striving for better.

One year after being released from prison, Beth (Julianne Nicholson) is trying to secure custody of her child Alec. She served 10 years for manslaughter, and Alec was raised by her sister Gabby (Jess Weixler). Carl (Jimmy Smits) runs a budget law firm specializing in representing prisoners, but during the custody mediation process Gabby stands firm and refuses to grant additional visitation rights, Beth's inflammatory behaviour not helping her cause.

Jess (Emma Roberts) works for Carl and takes an interest in Beth's case while also trying to help prisoner Maria secure a spot in a high school completion program. Meanwhile Jess is navigating a fraught relationship with her theatrical mother Alana (Lea Thompson), and Beth meets army veteran Peter (Zachary Quinto) for a one-night stand or more.

An independent production set in Brooklyn, Who We Are Now elegantly weaves together the narratives of two women navigating redemption and justice obstacle courses. Writer and director Matthew Newton embraces realism and settles for no easy answers, the film dropping in on lives-in-progress and gaining momentum through the daily twists and turns accompanying a quest for determined self-improvement and an idealistic belief in helping others.

The journeys of Beth and Jess are full of frustrations, cruel set-backs, and testing confrontations. Beth is fixated on regaining regular contact with Alec, sacrificing everything including her dignity to try and secure a better income to upgrade her legal representation. Her biggest battle is against her own history of incarceration, an almost physically visible and permanent mark of disgrace sabotaging her efforts for a better future. Julianne Nicholson haunts the movie with an on-the-edge performance, displaying delicate fragility hiding just behind last-stand toughness.

Meanwhile Jess is young and utopian, finding her way in the world of law for the disenfranchised and radiating enough promise for Carl to fast-track her career. But Jess is chafing under the influence of a mother who smothers with theatricality, and Newton stages the scenes of Jess interacting with her family as a series of noisy overlapping conversations, superficial affection barely concealing barbed resentment. Emma Roberts delivers a grounded performance, embracing her character's gradual understanding of a flawed judicial system capable of merciless gut punches.

And to complete a triangle of characters carrying heavy luggage, Beth's one-night stand with Peter turns into something more, his eyes hiding behind the fog of war experiences but still recognizing the potential for good in Beth.

With no music and a dedication to close-up and intrusive camerawork, Who We Are Now salutes authentic characters with cultured empathy.



All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Sophie And The Rising Sun (2016)

A slow burning drama and romance, Sophie And The Rising Sun is a well-intentioned but languid story.

It's 1941 in rural South Carolina. A dazed and wounded Asian man arrives on a long distance bus in the tiny fishing community of Salty Creek. Mrs. Anne Morrison (Margo Martindale), a kindly widow, takes him in and nurses him back to health. Once he recovers, Ohta (Takashi Yamaguchi) reveals himself an expert gardener and helps Anne care for her yard.

He also demonstrates an eye for painting, a passion shared by Sophie Willis (Julianne Nicholson), a free-spirited single woman and crab catcher. Slowly a passion emerges between Ohta and Sophie, much to the disapproval of the local society ladies, especially the prudish Ruth Jeffers (Diane Ladd). Then the Japanese attack Pearl Harbour, and an asian man in a small community is deemed a most unwelcome presence.

Breathing deeply from a sense of a small and isolated place grappling with the sudden intrusion of the outside world, Sophie And The Rising Sun never rises much above its modest scale. Writer and director Maggie Greenwald adapts the 2001 Augusta Trobaugh novel with studious respect, and the metaphor for World War Two shaking a clueless nation out of its isolated slumber plays out along elementary lines.

The film unnecessarily extends to close to two hours, and the rudimentary plot simply cannot sustain the length. The pace is distressingly slow, long pauses, aching glances and repetitive scenes transforming the film into a proper test of endurance. The romance between Sophie and Ohta takes a long time to emerge, and once it does the bigoted disapproval of the local prudes commands more screen prominence than the lovers' passion.

And after the Pearl Harbor attack, the film further retreats into a basic hide and seek structure, the community split into enlightened progressives attempting to survive the torches-and-pitchforks brigade.

The absence of star power helps to maintain the largely featureless backwater ambiance, but also hinders the film's appeal. Julianne Nicholson does her best, but she joins Margo Martindale (brusque), Diane Ladd (stereotypically insufferable) and Takashi Yamaguchi (predictably stoic) as a secondary character in her own romance. Lorraine Toussaint as Mrs. Morrison's housekeeper Salome brings some quiet dignity to the cast in an underwritten role.

Sophie And The Rising Sun is pretty to look at, but nevertheless all too dreary.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.