Movie Review: The Estate (2022)

Genre: Comedy

Director: Dean Craig

Starring: Toni Collette, Anna Faris, Kathleen Turner, David Duchovny, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ron Livingston

Running Time: 96 minutes

Synopsis: Siblings Macey and Savannah (Toni Collette and Anna Faris) are struggling financially and about to lose their coffee shop business. Macey is more responsible but unlucky in life and love, while Savannah is flighty and scrappy. When they learn that their rich Aunt Hilda (Kathleen Turner) is about to die, they rush to her house to try and weasel their way into her will. Unfortunately, cousin Beatrice (Rosemarie DeWitt) and her husband James (Ron Livingston) are already there with the same agenda, as is cousin "call me Dick" Richard (David Duchovny). 

What Works Well: Some of the jokes land well and the quality cast members buy into the silly premise, with David Duchovny having the most fun as the oily cousin absolutely no one wants to have. A side-track involving Aunt Hilda's long-lost high school sweetheart (Danny Vinson) scores with all-out audacity.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director Dean Craig's flimsy script leans heavily on far-fetched character actions and frequent vulgarity, sacrificing smarts and wit along the way. Neither Aunt Hilda nor any of her relatives are deserving of sympathy, severely hampering enjoyment.

Conclusion: The crass treatment of a flimsy premise deserves no windfall.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Promised Land (2012)

An environmental drama, Promised Land applies a pleasingly soft and reasonably balanced touch to the fracking controversy.

Rising star Steve Butler (Matt Damon) is dispatched by his employer Global Crosspower Solutions to secure gas exploration leases in a small Pennsylvania farming community. Steve has a stellar reputation for convincing landowners to sign quickly, and now he sets about ingratiating himself with the locals, assisted by his business partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand). 

But their progress stalls when local high school teacher Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook) raises health and environmental concerns about the fracking process, and convinces the residents to hold a community-wide vote. Soon environmental activist Dustin Noble (John Krasinski) arrives in town to harden opposition to Global's plans. Steve and Sue have to improvise new methods to advance their cause, while Steve and Dustin compete for the attention of local farm owner Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt).

With a deft structure, Promised Land tackles the clash between economic development, resource extraction, and environmental impacts. While the plot leans - slowly but surely - towards arguing for protecting a traditional way of life, the screenplay by co-stars Krasinski and Damon at least gives all viewpoints a fair shake. Placing Damon's likable persona on the side of fracking is a wise move to stimulate debate, and Krasinski provides a solid counterweight, the two men sparring on opposite sides of a heated topic.

Both points of view carry weight. Damon's Steve Butler is provided a rural upbringing and a vantage point on the importance of industry. He speaks with personal conviction when putting forward his case for the farmers to accept and enjoy the riches coming to them from gas exploration, because otherwise their way of life is coming to an end. Krasinki's Dustin Noble is the scrappy but resourceful underdog, making life difficult for Steve and Sue by simply displaying blown-up images of dead cows on his family farm. Both performances are steady without requiring stand-out moments. Holbrook, McDormand, and DeWitt could all have been provided with more to do.

Director Gus Van Sant adopts a patient approach, matching the restrained attitude with a small and scenic community where not much changes from one generation to the next. Moments of quirky humour lighten mood: Steve and Sue organize a community fair that does not go as planned, and the puzzle of small horses is a running source of amusement.

The battle for a community's soul ramps up to a couple of juicy-good late twists. However, the subsequent denouement is a clumsy let-down, a moment-of-triumph transformation landing with an unconvincing thud on the gym floor. Promised Land is attracted to the greener option, but is better when contemplating both sides of the fence.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Kill The Messenger (2014)

A biographical journalistic drama, Kill The Messenger delves into the perils of exposing allegations of governmental dirty tricks.

It's 1996, and investigative reporter Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) of the San Jose Mercury News is contacted by Coral (Paz Vega), an over-sexed woman claiming her husband was caught up in the illegal import of drugs into the United States to help fund anti-communist revolutionaries in Central America. Encouraged by his editor Anna Simons (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Webb delves into the issue and meets with political operative Fred Weil (Michael Sheen) in Washington DC, who hints at a dark conspiracy.

Webb travels to Nicaragua and visits an abandoned airfield used for CIA flights to supply the rebels during that country's civil war. He bribes his way into a Nicaraguan prison and meets Norwin Meneses (Andy Garcia), a former Contra leader who appears to confirm that weapons flew in and drugs flew out. Webb publishes his story suggesting the CIA enabled the crack epidemic in America's inner-city neighbourhoods. He becomes the overnight celebrity of the journalism world, but his troubles start when the CIA fights back.

Was Gary Webb an ace investigative journalist at an unheralded paper who blew the lid open on  story everybody else missed? Or was he an excitable wannabe with a chequered past who stretched his story well beyond the evidence and mixed a little bit of fact with plenty of imaginative fiction?  Did the CIA knowingly allow the dumping of lethal drugs into destitute lower-income American neighbourhoods, or was the drug trade a rogue side effect enabled by flying all things illegal back and forth to war zones? Kill The Messenger asks the questions and leans towards giving Webb at least some benefit of the doubt.

Based on real events and directed by Michael Cuesta as an adaptation of two books (including Webb's Dark Alliance), Kill The Messenger is two films in one. The first half is much the stronger, a worthy counterpart to the compelling stories recounted in The Infiltrator and American Made. While Webb may have outrun his own story, Cuesta nevertheless teases out a compelling narrative from the sordid tale of America's fight against communism in Central America and all the twisted sub-plots that emerged from the resultant dirty wars.

The second half is by necessity a smaller scaled story about Webb dealing with the aftermath of his unexpected fame and the mainly theoretical dark forces that line up to discredit him. The killing referred to in the title is metaphorical; the establishment's reaction is to assassinate his character, and Cuesta posits government types and the mainstream media in cahoots to bring down the scrappy upstart from an unfancied local paper. Ironically by creating a narrative where all the respected newspapers are in the pocket of the CIA and the US government, Kill The Messenger undermines its protagonist.

Jeremy Renner brings sufficient shadows of uncertainty to the central role of a small-time journalist with fire in his belly but also plenty of intriguing flaws. The cast is deep, but many big names drift in and out often in single scenes, creating unnecessary distractions. In addition to Garcia and Sheen, the likes of Ray Liotta, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt and Robert Patrick populate the small roles. Rosemarie DeWitt plays Susan, Gary's wife carrying the scars of a troubled marriage, while Lucas Hedges appears as their son, awkwarding navigating the teenage years.

Kill The Messenger is a useful contribution to one of the late chapters of the Cold War, but more as a pointy footnote than a central theme.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Your Sister's Sister (2011)

A three-person romantic drama with a glint of humour, Your Sister's Sister goes into the secluded woods to unearth and untangle quirky relationships.

In Seattle, Jack (Mark Duplass) is still depressed one year after the death of his brother Tom. Jack's best friend Iris (Emily Blunt), who was also one of Tom's former girlfriends, encourages him to spend a few days of emotional recuperation alone at her family's isolated cabin.

Jack arrives at the cabin and unexpectedly finds it occupied by Iris' lesbian sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), who has just ended a seven year relationship. After a night of heavy drinking Jack and Hannah have awkward sex. The next morning things get much more complicated when Iris shows up at the cabin, ready to start expressing her true feelings towards Jack.

An independent production directed by Lynn Shelton and filmed over 12 days for a budget of $125,000, Your Sister's Sister is an enjoyable hike through rocky relationship terrain. The film perhaps fails to reach any emotional heights, but maintains a steady pace of evolution as three adults arrive unexpectedly at the same crossroads.

The film features plenty of improvisation, and the naturalistic interaction between Jack, Iris and Hannah pays off. With limited camera movement Shelton achieves a perfect fly-on-the-wall perspective, providing the three characters freedom to just develop on screen unencumbered by a script trying to be too clever.

The superficial simplicity of the premise cleverly hides a few key hidden agendas. While it's logical to assume from the earliest scenes that Jack pines for Iris, the secrets carried by Iris and Hannah provide juicy onion layers for Shelton to peel away.

Your Sister's Sister convincingly creates real people carrying long-term commitments and relationship investments, allowing them to navigate choppy waters. The film captures the genuine bond of friendship between Iris and Jack, and the even stronger sibling connection between Iris and Hannah. Mark Duplass, the furthest thing from a handsome leading man, adds to the sense of reality, while Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt generate genuine sisterly warmth infused with the expected tensions.

Seductively sparse and simple, Your Sister's Sister does not try to shine bright, but certainly shimmers.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Rachel Getting Married (2008)

A dysfunctional family drama, Rachel Getting Married is an intimate intrusion into a private weekend. The film is a witness to dark relationship dynamics that are sometimes fascinating but also spread too thin.

Recovering drug addict Kym Buchman (Anne Hathaway) is released from a rehabilitation program to attend the wedding of her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) in Connecticut. The wedding is taking place at the Buchman family home where assorted friends and family have gathered, including many musician associates of the groom Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe). Paul Buchman (Bill Irwin) is the father of Kym and Rachel, and he is divorced from their mother Abby (Debra Winger) who lives nearby. Paul is almost trying too hard to put on a happy face and hold the family together over the weekend.

Kym is very much the black sheep of the family, and the tension rises as soon as she arrives at the house. An addict since a young age, Kym was involved in the accidental death of her younger brother Ethan years prior, and those emotional wounds never healed. Sidney's best man is Kieran (Mather Zickel), another recovering addict, and he starts a quick affair with Kym. Rachel is desperate to avoid having her big day ruined by her sister's destabilizing presence, but there are plenty of accusations and recriminations lurking in the shadows.

It may be appropriate for a film about two sisters wallowing in self indulgence to be styled as a self indulgent production, but Rachel Getting Married does test the patience. Directed by Jonathan Demme with a free flowing, almost structureless cadence riding the eternal jerkiness of handheld cameras, the film often spins off into long interludes of music and barely scripted scenes that bloat the running time close to two hours. A pre-wedding rehearsal dinner goes on forever, only for a post-wedding party to offer immediate competition for the prize of longest and least meaningful scene of the year.

That Rachel Getting Married survives Demme's unchecked flatulence is largely thanks to the two leading performances from Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt. Hathaway creates the ultimate train wreck in the character of Kym, playing in the space where an internal battle rages between permanent damage and an eternal desperation for forgiveness and acceptance. DeWitt offers a terrific counterpart, unleashing Rachel as the principal beneficiary of Kym's black sheep status. Rachel is not only getting married, but also determined to remain the darling of her father at the expense of grinding Kym's psyche further into the muck. Debra Winger gets a short but critical role as the mother, a generous source of most of the tension that still crackles between the sisters.

Rachel Getting Married is much better when the drama cuts through the many distractions. The scenes of confrontation between family members are a visceral demonstration of a rampant me before family attitude. Even with the levels of melodrama and emotion amplified to almost theatrical levels of intensity and frequency, Rachel Getting Married is undeniably fascinating when the actors yank control and allow the sparks to fly.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Rosemarie DeWitt

All movies starring Rosemarie DeWitt and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Cinderella Man (2005)

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

The Company Men (2010)

Your Sister's Sister (2011)

Promised Land (2012)

Men, Women, And Children (2014)

Kill The Messenger (2014)

La La Land (2016)

The Estate (2022)

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

Movie Review: Men, Women, And Children (2014)

An episodic look at relationships and sexuality in the online age, Men, Women, And Children is a mildly interesting probe of modern family dysfunctionalities, but the film stumbles on unjustified pretensions.

The focus is on the loosely related lives of high school teenagers and their parents in a middle-class suburban Texas community. Helen (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Don (Adam Sandler) are parents who have worked their way into a stagnant marriage. Don harbours a healthy online porn habit and Helen is no longer attracted to her husband. Individually, they both use the Internet to spice up their sex lives with extramarital affairs. Meanwhile their 15 year old son Chris (Travis Tope) is so jaded by online porn that he can only be aroused by extreme fetishes. Chris' classmate Hannah (Olivia Crocicchia) is the high school's extroverted cheerleader and claims to be sexually experienced. Hannah has an online web site managed by her single-mom Joan (Judy Greer), featuring provocative modeling photos. Joan never made it in Hollywood, and is hoping to help her daughter into the career that she missed out on.

Patricia (Jennifer Garner) is obsessed with Internet safety for teenagers, and controls every online move made by her daughter Brandy (Kaitlyn Dever), who starts a tentative friendship with Tim (Ansel Elgort). Formerly the school's football star, Tim has quit the team and now immerses himself in online gaming as he drowns into a depression caused by his mother abandoning the family. Meanwhile Tim's dad Kent (Dean Norris) kindles a relationship with Joan. Allison (Elena Kampouris) is also a cheerleader, and friends with Hannah and Brandy, but she is suffering from anorexia, and turns to online support from fellow anorexics to ward off food temptations. Allison is looking for a her first sexual experience, and has a crush on an uncaring football player.

Men, Women, And Children is narrated by Emma Thompson, and frequently interrupted by pablum about the Voyager space probe hurtling through space and out of the solar system. Both the supercilious narration and the we-are-all-alone preachiness confirm the hubris hinted at in the film's title. Somehow director and co-writer Jason Reitman thought that he was making a deeply profound movie about humanity's destiny; rather, this is a modest film about a collection of people struggling with routine growing up and growing old issues in the Internet age. Men, Women And Children would have been better with more focus on characters and less galactic preachiness.

On the positive side, the stories are provocative, as intended, and fuelled by the online world's dramatic facilitation of access to explicit sexuality and seemingly anonymous interaction. Reitman is able to generate empathy for all the key characters. Refreshingly all the men, women and children are well-intentioned and doing the best with what they know. The teenagers are grappling with generational angst and awakening sexual desire in a world seemingly drenched by sex, the adults are groping through the fog of middle-age and the complexities of parenting, where the theoretical and the practical collide. And it's all happening aided and abetted by screens of all sizes, their glow the new essential backdrop for every important decision and communication.

Whether intentionally or through oversight, the film omits any families and characters who can be classified as normally happy. While unconflicted characters are admittedly less interesting, they would provide a useful reference point in a sea of turmoil. Brandy is the closest thing to a normal teen that the film offers, but even she has online secrets waiting to be revealed.

The performances err towards the entrenched side of adequate, with both Jennifer Garner and Judy Greer not helped by over-the-top parental characters that push the boundaries well past reasonable. Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt and young Kaitlyn Deaver emerge with the most credit.

Men, Women, And Children is close to being a worthwhile chronicle of digitally-driven familial dynamics. The film needed less pomposity and more tenderness to properly wriggle into the heart.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Company Men (2010)

A corporate downsizing drama, The Company Men faithfully reveals the trauma caused by a contracting economy. The film works as a straightforward chronicle but without capturing any emotional resonance.

In a suburb of Boston, Global Transportation Systems (GTX) is a large corporation specializing in shipbuilding. With the great economic recession in full swing, business is down, the firm's share price is being hammered, and management responds with plant closures and brutal staffing cuts. CEO James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson) and his HR manager Sally Wilcox (Maria Bello) set their sights on the underperforming division run by Salinger's longtime friend and first employee Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones).

While McClary survives the cuts along with veteran salesperson Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), the casualties include young and ambitious marketing executive Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), who has an MBA, a large house, a larger mortgage, a Porsche, golf club membership, wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and two kids. Bobby struggles to come to terms with the seismic impact to his personal life, and refuses to accept the economic crisis that has descended on his household. But with months passing and no prospects for another corporate job, he has to seriously consider accepting the humiliating offer from his brother in-law Jack (Kevin Costner) to help out on a construction site. Meanwhile, back at GTX, the rift between the considerate Gene and the much more ruthless James grows wider, as another round of cuts looms.

The Company Man has sincere intentions to delve into the human cost of job losses. Writer / director (and co-producer) John Wells does a fine job of looking at the carnage from all perspectives, including the people at the top pulling the trigger (Salinger and Sally); the senior manager caught in the guilt-drenched middle (Gene), the susceptible old-timer (Phil), the young, relatively cheap early victim (Bobby), and the blue collar worker all too familiar with hard times (Jack). The main focus is on Bobby, but The Company Men gives each of the main characters the opportunity to tell a distinctive story.

And through Bobby's story The Company Men does question the priorities of the young and ambitious, as wealth is translated into a mountain of debt that leaves no buffer. A smaller house, a practical car, and less golf would have allowed Bobby to ride out the recession in better shape. At the top, the rich find the ways to get richer. Salinger's reward for initiating deep cuts is an improved share price and the opportunity to sell the company and cash in on a new fortune.

But while the film functions smoothly, it never latches onto an emotional vein. Unlike Up In The Air (2009), The Company Men does not get under the skin of any of the protagonists, and remains a superficial if well-meaning study of people struggling through a crisis. Almost mechanically, Bobby goes through the academic stages of anger, denial, and dejection before being picked up by his wife Maggie once he reaches rock-bottom. Gene demonstrates why he is not the CEO of GTX by displaying too much caring for people rather than share price. And Phil represents the most exposed corporate soldier, the loyal employee who worked his way up, but has been stagnant for a long time and is now too old to be re-trainable. All good stories that unfold with integrity, but in the context of an imploding economy, all also rather predictable, and Wells doesn't find too many new angles to explore.

The cast of dependable stalwarts is consistently good, and while Affleck, Jones, Nelson and Cooper perform admirably with no surprises, Kevin Costner and Rosemarie DeWitt grab the opportunity to shine in excellent supporting roles.

With their company exposed to an economic crisis, all of The Company Men will experience tumultuous losses. For most of the men the pain is raw and visible. And those who emerge from the crisis with much greater material wealth and little empathy for the misfortune of others have actually suffered most of all. They have lost their soul, although they may not know it.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.