A writer inherits a very large dog

  When I first learned that the writing/directing team of David Siegel and Scott McGehee had adapted author Sigrid Nunez's novel, The Friend, for the screen, I reacted with a mild shudder. Smart, moving, and mired in grief, Nunez's novel seemed an unlikely candidate for a move.

   Fortunately, the filmmakers capture enough of Nunez's tone to elevate a slender story while avoiding the kind of cheap sentiment that could have trivialized Nunez's work, which, simply stated, focuses on the bond between a woman and a dog.

    The Friend revolves around Naomi Watts's portrayal of Iris, a college writing professor who's coping with the suicide of her mentor and one-time lover, a writer of some repute. Iris's grief begins to sharpen when she inherits the author's Great Dane, a 180-pound creature named Apollo.

    Like many New Yorkers, Iris lives in a tiny apartment that's ill-suited for a large canine companion, even one with a touching soulful gaze. Watching Iris walk a Great Dane makes for an arresting sight, even though the aging and arthritic Apollo hardly can be called rambunctious.

    Bill Murray portrays Walter, the author Iris regarded as an invaluable confidant. Walter forged the connections that led Apollo to Iris. His decision can be read as an ironic act of cruelty or as a jolt meant to shake Iris from the torpor that has stalled work on her second novel.

   The directors employ first-person narration from Iris to capture a bit of Nunez's spare prose as they work their way through a series of episodes. Iris fights with her landlord about a no-dogs-allowed policy. She meets with one of Walter's three ex-wives (Carla Gugino) and with his daughter Val (Sarah Pidgeon), a student who's working with Iris on an attempt to turn Walter's correspondence into a book.

    Watts skillfully portrays Iris's hesitant but growing attachment to Apollo. Though limited to brief flashbacks and a fantasy sequence, Murray proves convincing as an unapologetic womanizer who's keenly aware of his many flaws and betrayals.

   Ann Dowd helps rounds out the cast as Iris's neighbor, a woman who's allergic to dogs. Felix Solis portrays the super in Iris's building, a kindly fellow who’s tasked with delivering ultimatums from the landlord. 

    Late in the story, Tuesday (Constance Wu), the last of Walter's three wives, offers to take Apollo off Iris's hands. Iris quickly realizes that Tuesday won't tolerate an animal that can't respect her highly refined choices in furniture.

    Tom McCarthy plays the psychiatrist Iris consults in her increasingly desperate search for a solution to her Apollo problem.

  Though less precisely honed than Nunez's foray into the literary world, Siegel and McGehee's movie does a better job of translating her novel to the screen than Pedro Almodovar did with The Room Next Door, his adaptation of Nunez's What Are You Going Through -- at least that's how it struck me.

   You may never have wondered what it might be like to have a 180-pound dog dropped into your life, but The Friend will give you an idea of how much upheaval such a bulky intrusion can bring — both literally and metaphorically. 

    If I were looking for an alternate title for The Friend, I might consider this one: “Chamber Piece with Very Large Dog.”

A determined rescue in blinding snow

 Not every movie wins the battle when it comes to fighting nature. Director Malgorzata Szumowska's Infinite Storm gets halfway there. The movie pits an experienced mountain hiker (Naomi Watts) against a raging winter storm. Not only must Watts' character save herself, but she must also rescue a discombobulated hiker (Billy Howle) who climbed New Hampshire's Mount Washington to commit suicide.  Based on a true story, Infinite Storm offers a powerful twist: Howle's nameless character doesn't want to be rescued — at least not at first. Scenes in which Watts (as Pam Bales) searches for the badly dehydrated young man have some charge, as do the ordeals in which Bales and her reluctant charge confront treacherous obstacles. Howle's character refuses to share his name with Bales so she calls him "John." Well and good, but flashbacks to Pam's past (perhaps added to provide emotional heft) disrupt the survivalist flow. John receives a bit of backstory, as well. The Slovenian alps substituted for New Hampshire and the mountain views can be forbidding but Infinite Storm might have benefited either from more depth or fierce streamlining. I'd opt for the latter: Caught in blinding snow, the only motivation that probably matters is getting out alive.

Inspiration with Naomi Watts and a magpie

 

   The Australian movie Penguin Bloom has all the ingredients required to produce a predictable piece of inspirational fluff. 

    A young mother is paralyzed after a terrible fall during a vacation. She withdraws from her husband and kids and laments the fact that she'll never be able to surf again. Sam Bloom (Naomi Watts) feels so useless she wonders whether she even exists anymore.

     I said the movie, based on a true story, is inspirational so you know from the outset that Sam will find a way to do more than simply carry on. She'll reclaim her life and thrive, and, yes, there will be pictures of the real people during the end credits.

    The title clues an audience into how Sam's life again will take flight.  One day on the beach, one of Sam's children discovers an abandoned magpie that has fallen from its nest. 

    The parallel between Sam and the magpie -- who the kids name Penguin -- is obvious. The bird fell from its nest, and Sam fell several stories when a rotted wooden railing gave way during a family trip to Thailand.

     The movie's two notable performances are given by Watt and the bird (or birds) who play Penguin.  Sam's husband (Andrew Lincoln) and her three sons (Griffin Murray-Johnston, Felix Cameron, and Abe Clifford-Barr) are around to provide upholstery for the main story. 

     Jackie Weaver plays Sam's mother, a woman who wants to help but doesn't really know how.

    At first resistant to Penguin, Sam eventually warms to the bird Watching the bird nestle in her arms is bound to elicit oohs and awws. The various birds that play Penguin also are charged with providing comic relief, stealing teabags from cups or hopping through the family's beach home with jaunty spring.

    A final push toward recovery arrives when a kayak instructor (Rachel House) gives Sam lessons that return her to the water. We're told in a postscript that Sam eventually competed successfully in water sports. For some reason, the movie never shows us that part of the story.

    Mostly, director Glendyn Ivin plays things straight, and with a movie such as Penguin Bloom predictability is unavoidable. 

     It hardly qualifies as a spoiler to tell you that Penguin learns to fly, that Sam rediscovers her humanity, and that the family perseveres. 

    If you're looking for emotional complexity, Penguin Bloom is not for you. Even Watts can't turn Penguin Bloom into anything more than a familiar tale made more disarming by the presence of a magpie.

      I did learn one thing, though. Who knew magpies were so damn smart?

'Luce': a complicated look at hope and race

Watching Luce, a big-screen adaptation of a play by JC Lee, I kept thinking about playwright David Mamet -- not because the movie deals with middle-class delusions about life in a racially charged context, but because director Julius Onah establishes a climate that creates Mamet-like doubt about the truth of what transpires. Onah might have had just that in mind because he sets up a variety of oppositional forces: a mother’s belief in her son, a father’s hard-nosed skepticism, a teacher’s doubts, a bright young man's ability to role play and nearly everyone’s desire to see an outcome that confirms their preconceptions. A strong cast carries the story’s burdens with powerful conviction. Luce (a terrific Kevin Harrison Jr.) is an adopted child from Eritrea, who’s excelling his way through a college-bound senior year. Naomi Watts portrays Luce’s devoted mother and Tim Roth, his father. Octavia Spencer appears as one of Luce’s teachers; she appreciates Luce's intelligence but suspects that there’s something volatile brewing beneath the exemplary surface of the young man’s life. Onah, who also wrote the screenplay, adds a variety of additional issues to the mix, including sexual abuse of a female student (Andrea Bang) and the justifiable bitterness of another black student (Omar Shariff Brunson Jr). Unlike Luce, Brunson's character never gets the benefit of the doubt. The school's principal (Norbert Leo Butz) seems invested in telling whatever story he believes will make his school look great. I think it would be a mistake to view Luce as a movie solely about interracial adoption; it's more about the way people reveal themselves by investing their hopes in a promising young man. Onah deftly handles the movie’s many conflicting themes right up until an ending that isn’t entirely satisfying. Still, the movie’s willingness to tackle complex issues makes for provocative viewing, primarily because Luce pushes an audience to weigh the various positions of characters increasingly caught in a pressurized situation none of them entirely can control.

A new take on an old character

It boasts a beautifully mounted production, but this telling of Hamlet's story from Ophelia's point-of-view falls short.

Say this: director Claire McCarthy has made a beautifully appointed and carefully staged Ophelia, a lush adaptation of a Lisa Klein novel that tells Hamlet's story from Ophelia's point of view.

In McCarthy's Shakespearean inside-outing, Star Wars star Daisy Ridley portrays Ophelia, who -- in this version -- emerges a strong figure from the classic story about a Danish prince who can't make up his mind whether to be or not to be. But is Ophelia anything more than a gimmicky costume drama? That's the question.

The answer: Not entirely.

Early on, Queen Gertrude (Namoi Watts) selects Ophelia as one of her ladies-in-waiting. Before Hamlet (George MacKay) prepares to leave Elsinore, he begins flirting with Ophelia; it's clear that he's smitten.

To arrive where she wants to go -- the emergence of Ophelia as an independent force -- MacKay must alter the original story. Among other things, we learn that Gertrude has a long-lost sister who's also a potion-dispensing witch (also played by Watts). The witch becomes instrumental in the plot -- albeit not in predictable ways.

Meanwhile, Gertrude fights the temptation to start an affair with the king's brother (Clive Owen). Owen's Claudius -- in the midst of what looks like a series of epic bad hair days -- has designs on the throne. Once the king has been dispatched, he takes Gertrude as his queen.

The character of Ophelia has been modernized in ways that can seem a bit too on-the-nose. She can read and knows how to stand up for herself. She cautions the brooding Hamlet not to toy with her affections. Ophelia represents the antithesis of courtly hypocrisy; a straightforward young woman, she refuses to play games.

Tom Felton, of the Harry Potter movies, portrays Laertes; Dominic Mafham plays Polonius; and Devon Terrell appears as Horatio. All are more or less relegated to secondary figures but are made more interesting by comparing their portrayals to what we might have seen in past productions of Hamlet.

Shot in the Czech Republic, Ophelia looks great but its beauty can't overcome the movie's two big problems. Half the time, you may find yourself trying to connect the events on screen to those you remember from Shakespeare's play.

The other problem: The story seems to have been engineered as much as written. I'd have preferred to have seen the chips (not to mention the story's numerous corpses) land where they might have fallen. Instead, I was distracted by the strain of the plot manipulations that bring Ophelia's story into focus and sometimes make the characters feel more contrived than real.

No reason to open this book

The Book of Henry doesn't seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be and winds up abusing some serious issues.

Let me share several things that I hate to see in movies: 1. Loving but otherwise incompetent parents who are raising kids who are smarter than their elders. 2. Needlessly quirky touches -- say a house in the woods that a genius kid has assembled out of discarded household items. 3. Confusion about whether a movie wants to be kid friendly or adult serious.

Sadly, The Book of Henry commits all of these sins, the most grievous of which is its inability to encompass a variety of plot threads while also adding thriller elements about an ill-defined case of child abuse.

The Book of Henry isn't easy to write about without including spoilers, but parents who plan on taking kids should know that the movie includes the death of a child. If that ruins the movie for you, so be it. I'll say no more about it.

Director Colin Trevorrow, who wrote the screenplay for Jurassic World and who directed the well-received Safety Not Guaranteed, shifts from comedy to drama in ways that create an atmosphere that's shot through with improbabilities.

Absent much to say about the plot, I'll tell you about the characters. Eleven-year-old Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) lives with his single mom (Naomi Watts) and his younger brother (Jacob Tremblay) in a suburban New York town.

Mom works as a waitress. In addition to all his other talents, Henry excels at finance. He manages Mom's funds.

Not only is Henry a whiz at practical matters, he also holds his mother to a high moral standard, which he prosaically states: When others are being abused, we're obligated to intervene, Henry says.

Watts struggles to play a single mom who has turned her oldest son into a helpmate, a form of parental irresponsibility that sometimes occurs with single parents, but -- in this case -- has been carried to unbelievable extremes.

Watts's character seems to have only one friend, another waitress (Sarah Silverman), a woman who sports a large, flowery tattoo above her exposed cleavage, who may be an alcoholic and who hardly needed to be in the movie at all.

The movie's thriller component involves one of Henry's classmates (Maddie Ziegler), a girl who lives next door to Henry with her widowed stepfather (Dean Norris), who also happens to be the town's police commissioner.

In Rear-Window style, Henry observes the house next door and learns that Norris' Glenn Sickleman is abusing his stepdaughter. Henry documents his findings in a diary of sorts, the book that gives the film its title. He also authors a plan to halt the abuse.

Working from a screenplay by Gregg Hurwitz, Trevorrow fails to wring much emotion out of the story's soap-operatic elements. As a thriller, the movie comes across as absurdly twisted. Worst of all, it short-changes issues that deserve serious exploration.

Enough said.

Was he a contender or a pretender?

Liev Schreiber scores a knock-out in a so-so boxing picture about Chuck Wepner, the reputed real Rocky Balboa.

If I were considering making a movie about Chuck Wepner, the obscure New Jersey boxer who rose to sudden prominence when he fought Muhammad Ali in 1975, the last person I'd think of to play Wepner would be Liev Schreiber. Wepner was a hulk of a man whose native Bayonne left him with a raspy Jersey accent. Schreiber, on the other hand, has one of the most melodic and precise voices in show business.

But something about Wepner evidently caught Schreiber's fancy because he not only stars as Wepner in the new movie Chuck but serves as one of the movie's producers.

Schreiber knew what he was doing. His portrayal of Wepner, a boxer who was treated as the Rodney Dangerfield of boxing (no respect) is spot-on. Wepner was dubbed "the Bayonne bleeder," not exactly a moniker to strike fear in the hearts of opponents.

Schreiber ably captures the struggle that marked much of Wepner's life: He wanted to be somebody important -- not just a guy many regarded as a Bayonne-based club fighter.

For Wepner, a loss to Ali became a triumph as well as the reputed inspiration for Sylvester Stallone's Rocky. Wepner made it all the way to the fight's 15th round before Ali finished him off. Most sports people thought Wepner wouldn't survive three rounds.

Wepner became a kind of fill-in fight for Ali after the champ's fabled Rumble In the Jungle with George Foreman. But Wepner, who actually had a respectable pro record, became one of the few men ever to knock Ali down, landing The Greatest on his butt in round nine.

Director Philippe Falardeau (The Good Lie and Monsieur Lazhar) sets Wepner's story against the well-defined Jersey backdrop that bred Wepner and his pal John (Jim Gaffigan). The two men drink, snort cocaine and party hard enough to ruin Wepner's marriage to his wife Phyliss (a terrific Elisabeth Moss).

Wepner later meets Linda (Naomi Watts), the woman credited with helping him straighten out his life after a stint in the slammer. Wepner was busted for cocaine possession about 10 years after his championship bout.

Additional support is provided by Ron Perlman, as Wepner's manager, and Michael Rapaport as Wepner's disapproving brother. Rapaport's John hated the way the increasingly dissolute Wepner treated his daughter. Wepner always seemed to be seeking public adulation rather than accepting the love of those closest to him.

Perhaps in an effort to distinguish his movie from Hollywood's large boxing-movie card, Falardeau puts the big fight in the middle of the movie, devoting most of the Chuck's post-fight story to Wepner's precipitous, self-induced decline.

At one point, Wepner meets Sylvester Stallone. I had trouble buying Morgan Spector as Stallone; Pooch Hall makes a more credible Ali, but these are minor distractions in a movie in which every actor works overtime trying to capture his or her inner Jersey.

None of this is to say that Chuck makes it through its 98-minute running time without being bloodied. We've seen too many movies about the way lives were ruined by drugs during the 1980s. We've also seen too many movies about the way a boxer reaches a peak and then squanders any success he might have achieved. The great distinction with Wepner is that his stature derived from a loss.

The movie also belabors Wepner's obsession with movies. His favorite: 1962's Requiem for a Heavyweight, which starred Anthony Quinn as Louis "Mountain'' Rivera, a down-and-out pug who spent his time clinging to a dream about what he could have been. When Rocky becomes a smash, Wepner totally identifies himself with the movie, so much so that he thinks he deserves congratulations when Rocky wins an Oscar for best picture.

Wepner's delusions are meant to be sad, but by now, we've seen so many boxing films that chart rises, declines and redemptions that the scenario feels played out, almost to the point where there's not enough film to support its many fine performances.

Still, Schreiber's knock-out work may be enough to carry you through the movie, and Moss, familiar from TV's Mad Men, again proves that she's one of the most capable actresses around. Her Phyliss is not a woman to be messed with.

So, a reserved endorsement for Chuck. Like its main character, the movie stumbles and lumbers, but manages to survive.

He destroys, but can he rebuild?

Jake Gyllenhaal plays a man gone numb in Demolition.

If Demolition were a novel, I probably wouldn't have finished it.

Although the movie deals with important issues surrounding the devastations of grief, it strains for metaphorical significance at nearly every turn, even as it tries to temper its seriousness with offbeat expressions of humor.

The story centers on Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal), a Wall Street type who loses his wife (Heather Lind) in an automobile accident that opens the movie.

Davis, who works for his father-in-law (Chris Cooper), feels nothing; the day after the funeral, he's back in the office -- much to the consternation of his colleagues.

But as the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Davis isn't simply callous; his emotional numbness touches nearly everything he does. Get it? There's something deeply wrong with Davis' life.

Bryan Sipe's screenplay uses an oddball conceit to emphasize Davis' inability to sustain intimacy. He begins sharing details of his life in letters he writes to the customer service department of a vending machine company.

The correspondence begins because a machine in the hospital where Davis' wife died failed to deliver candy or return his money.

Davis' persistence strikes a chord with customer service rep Karen Moreno (Naomi Watts). The two develop a strange relationship in which Davis takes on the role of mentor -- albeit a slightly twisted one -- to Karen's teen-age son (Judah Lewis), a surly kid who's struggling with his sexual identity.

On some level, Davis understands that he must take his life apart, and he begins to do just that -- all too literally.

He starts by dismantling the refrigerator in the ultra modern home he shared with his late wife, and extends his destructive impulses to his computer at work and to the office's bathroom stalls. He's working much too hard, and so, I'm afraid, is the movie.

Davis' DYI demolition derby remains problematic. Davis destroys the life he apparently never really wanted -- or, at least, never thought much about, but shows little interest in putting it back together.

Gyllenhaal does surprisingly well with a character in whom it's not always easy to believe; the always reliable Cooper grounds his character in credible rage at a son-in-law who appears massively insensitive, and Watts seems a bit stranded as another wobbly character.

The cast handles the movie's tonal shifts easily enough, and Jean-Marc Vallee (Wild and Dallas Buyers Club) directs with commitment and obvious concern for material that's trying to get beyond ordinary multiplex constraints.

But for all its attempts at quirkiness and creativity, Demolition fails to ring true. Before a movie can dig deep, it has to pay a lot more attention to surface details which, in this case, too often leave us scratching our heads.

Generations mix in 'While We're Young'

A semi-sharp comedy of manners from director Noah Baumbach.

There's a point during Noah Baumbach's While We're Young when one of the characters, a frustrated documentary filmmaker, refers to himself as an old man. Even as a comparative statement, it's a stretch. Played by Ben Stiller, the "aging" documentarian is in his mid-40s.

For those of us for whom the mid-40s long ago have slipped into (or perhaps out of) memory, Stiller's statement may prompt involuntary snickers.

But then Baumbach, 45 himself, isn't necessarily interested in actual aging. Among other things, his movie is about losing touch with the promise of youth. What happens when one realizes that the salad days are over and even the most exotic dressing can't put the crisp back into life's lettuce?

It's a potentially rich subject for a director who has been making films since 1995's Kicking and Screaming and whose filmography includes The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg, and Frances Ha, as well as the upcoming Mistress America.

With age 50 in sight, does Baumbach worry about reaching his full potential?

While We're Young can be seen as a zeitgeist comedy set in New York City, a place where success and failure tend to exist in dramatic counterpoint.

When things aren't going well, New York is an easy place to feel small and failed. That makes it an ideal spot for a character played by Stiller, a self-conscious sad sack who's flirting with defeat.

I had a conflicted response to While We're Young. I didn't care much about the concerns of its principal characters, a middle-aged couple (Stiller and Naomi Watts) and a couple still in their 20s (Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried).

At the same time, I found some of Baumbach's observations about these characters to be amusing and, on occasion, pointed.

Baumbach spends a good deal of time playing with generational styles and tastes, sometimes flip-flopping them between his middle-aged and the still youthful characters. The older characters, for example, are Google obsessed; the younger ones don't Google because they take pride in not knowing things. Why bother?

Stiller's Josh hasn't come close to fulfilling his potential. He's been working on his second documentary for 10 years, and can't get beyond a six-hour, sleep-inducing rough cut.

Watts' Cornelia frets about being childless. She works as a producer for her father (Charles Grodin), an acclaimed documentarian who's at a stage where he's receiving lifetime achievement awards. He's the worst possible father-in-law for Josh, a constant reminder of what Josh hasn't accomplished.

Driver's Jamie and Seyfried's Darby latch onto Josh at a film class he's teaching. Gradually, the tables turn, and Josh and Cornelia begin clinging to this younger, free-spirited duo.

Jamie's so unconcerned about being hip, he's actually hip. And unlike Josh, he's far too young to fear making fatal mistakes.

For her part, Darby dabbles with entrepreneurial craft projects: She makes ice cream.

Watching Josh and Cornelia try to turn back the clock can be amusing -- in a painful sort of way. They attempt to keep pace with the younger couple, most ludicrously at an Ayahuasca get-together where everyone ingests a psychedelic brew before barfing out inner demons.

Baumbach sticks fairly close to the surface as he allows these characters to reveal their inner preposterousness, Cornelia's laugh-out-loud foray into hip-hop dancing, for example.

It's not entirely surprising to learn that Jamie may not be living in the moment as much as he pretends to be, a development that dominates the movie's third act.

The story pretty much derails when it gets caught up in ethical issues involving a documentary Jamie is making (yes, he's a filmmaker, too).

While We're Young proves entertaining enough, but its many small observations don't add up to anything bigger.

By the end, I found myself wondering whether the plights of these self-absorbed characters could have been reduced to one perceptively amusing New Yorker cartoon. Put another way, I had a few good chuckles, and quickly turned the page.

'Birdman' tries to ruffle lots of feathers

A vibrantly presented world, but what's there to care about?.

If you've been following this year's film festival news, you know that director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman -- or more pretentiously Birdman: The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance -- has taken flight in critical circles.

Michael Keaton, who hasn't occupied center stage in a movie for a while, has received raves for portraying a washed-up movie star trying to make a comeback on Broadway.

And even those who've objected to Inarritu's cacophonous, multi-story approach in 21 Grams and Babel seem to regard Birdman as a striking improvement.

I begin this way because Birdman arrives with a cache that proclaims the film a brilliant riff on celebrity, movies, stardom and heaven knows what else.

Obviously, I wouldn't have mentioned any of this unless I intended to take a different -- and less effusive -- tack.

Creative, willing to plunge into fantasy without apology or explanation and sharply acted, Birdman resembles, as someone has pointed out, a high-wire act -- except (and here's the rub) the wire might be located no more than two feet off the ground.

Put another way, Birdman has its virtues, but revovles around a less-than-riveting question: Can a movie star we don't particuarly like and with whom we may not identify earn a reputation as a credible actor?

Keaton portrays Riggan Thomas an actor who made his mark playing a superhero called Birdman. Thomas ditched the franchise, but eventually fell into hard times. Now, his money and self-respect are running out.

To redeem his reputation, Riggan has written a play, an adpation of a Raymond Carver story called What We Talk About When We Talk abokut Love. What rides on the play's success? For Riggan: Everything. For us? Much less.

Keaton does a fine job playing a man who's plummeting even as he's trying to take flight. Riggan is tormented by the blatant commericalism of his past success; his box-office triumphs drag on him like an anchor.

But even in a comedy this caustic, it would be nice to give a damn about whether Riggan saved himself or not. I can't say that I did.

Riggan fights an internal battle, even as he faces various obstacles that threaten his play. He often hears the voice of his Birdman character, either berating him for his failures or reminding him that he could (and should) reclaim his place as a bona fide movie star who doesn't need the pipsqueak acclaim of the New York theater crowd.

Working with the gifted cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity and The Tree of Life), Inarritu employs a ferociously mobile camera as he attempts to make it seem as if the entire story is unfolding in a single take, an approach that's augmented by Antonio Sanchez's solo drum score. It's a feat of sorts, but put to what end?

OK, so Keaton played Batman, and stopped playing Batman. For some, this shard of show-business reality adds resonance to Inarritu's movie, but I can't imagine anyone confusing Keaton with the character he's playing.

Most of the story takes place in the tumultuous days before the play's opening: Among Riggan's problems: A cast member has been struck on the head by a stage light that detached from its moorings.

Riggan, who's both starring in and directing the play, hires a replacement, an apparently well-regarded theatrical actor (Edward Norton), a performer whose attempts to find realism in everything he plays reaches ludicrous levels.

Norton finds comedy in the self-inflation of a talented actor who believes that he's fighting a lonely battle to save the culture.

Also along for what's mostly a backstage ride is Riggan's daughter (Emma Stone). She's fresh from rehab and almost always in couldn't-care-less mode.

Stone has a power moment when her character tells her father that nothing about him matters, and he'd best get used to it. Stone then shows us -- as anger drains from her face -- that she realizes she may have gone too far.

We also meet an actress who's finally realizing her dream of appearing on Broadway (Naomi Watts).Zach Galifianakis plays Riggan's attorney and principal advisor, a mostly exasperated fellow who's constantly trying to save Riggan from himself.

Low-grade contempt runs through the entire movie -- for Hollywood and its blockbuster lust, for actors who either are portrayed as deeply insecure or phenomenal twits and for the audience, which is left to ponder the meaning of realistically presented images in which Riggan moves objects with his mind. Power fantasies from a man who seems to control nothing?

The screenplay tosses in some additional characters, notably Thomas' former wife (Amy Ryan) and his actress girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough). Early on, she tells Riggan that she's pregnant, the last bit of news someone in his precarious position needs to hear.

Much of the movie is marked by scorn, but Inarritu really forces his point when we meet the drama critic for The New York Times (Lindsay Duncan). She insists that she's going to destroy the play, even though she hasn't seen it.

Why? Because she detests everything that Riggan stands for; i.e., Hollywood commercialism. Even in a movie with satirical aspirations, it's just another cheap shot.

Look, Inarritu's clearly trying to push his movie out of the usual big-screen comfort zones. But I found Birdman to be marching to a drumbeat of self-absorption, and for all of its agitated craft, it's not without dull spots.

Birdman is about the ways in which artists risk everything and bystanders (and critics) risk nothing. With all humility, I'd say that real risk takers don't feel the need to point out that they're laying everything on the line. They just do it.

You can spend a lot of time deconstructing Birdman, but you may find that once you've done with the exercise, you haven't arrived anywhere that deeply matters.

The salvation of a nasty old man

Bill Murray is at his scuzzy best in St. Vincent, but too much sentiment diminishes his accomplishment..

When we talk about movies that canonize their characters, we're usually talking metaphorically. Although St. Vincent, which stars Bill Murray, doesn't actually confer sainthood on the character Murray plays, it comes as close as possible without submitting its case to the Vatican, complete with two certified miracles.

Murray, who can look disheveled even when he's standing still, plays a man on the verge of dereliction. Financial troubles have put Murray's Vincent in danger of losing his Brooklyn home. But it doesn't look as if Vincent would need much by way of external pressure to have him heading for the local saloon or the race track.

Desperate for money, Vincent agrees to babysit for a kid who just has moved next door (Jaeden Lieberher). Newly separated from her husband, the boy's mother (Melissa McCarthy) knows no one in her new neighborhood and must rely on the acerbic Vincent for help.

So will a cute and very bright boy worm his way into Vincent's cold heart?

Come on, it's a movie, and no matter how gruff Murray plays Vincent, we know from the outset that he'll eventually prove himself to be a decent enough fellow.

The movie wastes little time reassuring us that hard-ass Vincent has a good side: Fairly early on, Vincent is shown visiting his wife in the upscale nursing facility where he's struggling to keep her.

Murray makes it touchingly clear that Vincent loves this woman, who's evidently stricken with Alzheimer's. Perhaps Vincent's life started its down-hill plummet when his wife was institutionalized.

Occasionally, Vincent has sex with a pregnant Russian pole-dancer and prostitute (Naomi Watts). He treats her with scorn, but we know that when the chips are down, he'll come through for her, too.

Late in the movie, Vincent suffers a stroke, which pushes him into disability territory, and perhaps opens an Oscar path for Murray.

It's clear that Murray, who knows how to play nasty, could have made a sentiment-free movie about a man who's going to spend the rest of his life stewing in his beer.

But director Theodore Melfi doesn't have the stomach for flat-out misery, and he pushes the film toward an ending that shamelessly tugs at happily-ever-after heart strings.

Murray keeps St. Vincent watchable, and it's refreshing to see McCarthy play a character who's not cut from the same crude cloth that seems to have characterized most of her work since Bridesmaids (2011).

Still, the main reason to see St. Vincent is to savor of the bitter tastes Murray brings to this character and to imagine the hard-bitten movie that could have been.

In the end, though, St. Vincent's sweet-and-sour mix doesn't totally compute: It's like getting a sappy Valentine's card from Charles Bukowski.

Lives the screen usually neglects

Credit director Laurie Collyer (Sherrybaby) for trying to illuminate a corner of American life that usually evades the shining light of cinema. In her new movie Sunlight Jr., Collyer focuses on a couple (Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon) trying to eke out a living in Central Florida. Watts's Melissa works at Sunlight Jr., a convenience store that gives the movie its title, and Dillon's Richie -- in a wheelchair after a motorcycle accident -- collects disability checks. In this world, nothing is easy. Melissa's lecherous boss (Antoni Corone) makes her life needlessly difficult. She's also being stalked by a drug-dealing ex-boyfriend (Norman Reedus), who happens to own the home that Melissa's mom (Tess Harper) rents. Melissa and Richie's minimal-hope existence shows signs of promise when Melissa becomes pregnant. The couple begins to see a future. Still, we know it's unlikely that Melissa and Richie -- well played and nicely shaded by both Watts and Dillon -- will be able to break the low-wage and dependency cycle in which they're mired. Sunlight Jr. is not a perfect movie, and it can feel as if Hollywood stars are slumming when they take on this kind of project, but Collyer's drama never dehumanizes Melissa or Richie, allowing them to emerge as feeling human beings whose need for each other might have a chance of surviving perpetual hard times.

Three from the indie side

Three independent films arrive in Denver this week, each operating in a sphere that might be difficult to inhabit in the mainstream.* Two of the films (Adore and Afternoon Delight) were directed by women, and attempt to explore subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of the female psyche. None of this trio of films qualifies as stylistically groundbreaking, but Short Term 12 -- a clear-eyed drama about life in a foster-care facility -- stands out because of its heartfelt power. So a look at all three:

A tough look at a home for teens

Short Term 12 debuted at last March's South By Southwest Film Festival (SXSW), and stars Brie Larson as Grace, a young woman who works at a group home for troubled teens.

As the movie unfolds, we discover that Grace -- now in her 20s -- may be especially qualified for her job: As a teen-ager, she got slammed around plenty, experiencing her own version of a troubled life.

When we meet Grace, she's living with co-worker Mason (John Gallagher Jr.), a sensitive young man who's attuned to the needs of his charges and to those of the woman he clearly loves.

Loving Grace isn't always easy. Grace knows how to mix discipline with kindness at work, but tends to keep her inner life walled-off from Mason.

Something has to happen to move the story forward, and it does when the particularly difficult Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) arrives at the group home carrying a carload's worth of adolescent attitude and hostility.

It may not be immediately apparent, but Jayden's presence will have a profound effect on Grace, who gradually begins confront the demons that haunt her own past.

Writer/Director Destin Cretton, who once worked in a group home, also introduces us to Marcus (Keith Stanfield). A young man who's about to turn 18, Marcus soon will outgrow the group home that has provided him with shelter from the stormy life that drove him there in the first place. Marcus knows a lot about rejection.

Cretton probably rounds off his screenplay a little too neatly, but by setting his story in a world where emotions never are far from the surface, he takes a big risk. His movie easily could have become sloppy and overly demonstrative, the dramatic equivalent of an oil spill. It doesn't.

The relationship between Grace and Mason adds additional richness. Early on, Grace learns that she's pregnant: She battles with herself about the wisdom of keeping a baby in a world that can deeply scar young people who receive the worst of things.

Larson's tough but vulnerable performance anchors the film, and Gallagher (familiar to those who've been watching HBO's Newsroom) grounds Mason in the kind of bedrock decency we don't often see on screen.

Cretton understands the difficulties of trying to provide a safe and reasonably stable environment for kids who live in unsafe and uncertain worlds. That understanding -- obviously shared by all involved -- makes Short Term 12 truly special.

Too annoying for redemption?

Short Term 12 has no shortage of heart-felt urgency. It's difficult to say the same about Afternoon Delight, a movie mired in the off-putting boredom and cynicism of its main character, a Los Angeles woman named Rachel (Kathryn Hahn).

Director Jill Soloway's movie makes the perilous journey from comedy to drama as it tries to digest a whopping contrivance. In the dramatic equivalent of bomb-throwing, Rachel invites a wildly uninhibited stripper, lap-dancer and prostitute (Juno Temple) into her home. Rachel's disenchanted husband (Josh Radnor) wonders whether this is the best arrangement for the couple's five-year-old son, but doesn't put up much of a fight.

So why would Rachel invite a prostitute into her home? The screenplay flirts with a lesbian attraction and with the possibility that Rachel really wants to help Temple's McKenna get her life on track. Of course, McKenna shows little or no interest in personal reformation. She doesn't consider herself to be a victim of exploitation, and she's more in control of her life than Rachel.

As a young woman who lives way beyond the judgment of others, Temple shines, and Hahn ably handles both the movie's comic and serious moments, including an emotionally challenging scene that casts a harsh light on Rachel's anger.

Still, it's difficult for Soloway and Hahn to overcome resistance developed in the movie's first half, and Afternoon Delight doesn't dig deeply enough to get past a feeling that Rachel might just be battling with her own superficiality.

It's no day at the beach

I would have thought that a movie starring Naomi Watts and Robin Wright and stemming from a novella by Doris Lessing would have ranked among the year's better works.

But Adore -- a French/Australian co-production directed by Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel) -- revolves a conceit that's proves provocative but hollow: Two lifelong friends may be sublimating sexual feelings for each other when they start affairs with each other's sons.

The movie opens when Watts' Lil and her young son attend Lil's husband's funeral. Penn's Roz offers support during her friend's time of grief.

The story then leaps ahead to a time when Lil and her grown son (Xavier Samuel) and Roz and her grown son (James Frecheville) are living what appears to be an idyllic life in a secluded Australian coastal town.

The young men -- described by Roz as "young gods" -- surf, swim, languish on a raft and enjoy what looks like a convivial familial relationship with each other and with their mothers.

Only Roz's husband (Ben Mendelsohn) seems like an intruder, and the screenplay -- credited to Christopher Hampton -- quickly disposes of him, leaving the movie's mothers and sons to deal with sex, love, jealousy and everything else arises as these near-incestuous, sexual relationships take hold.

Originally titled Two Mothers, Adore ends with all four characters sprawled on a raft, looking a bit like squashed bugs. They're wrung out, and so are we.

Oh well, crossing psychological and sexual boundaries can be exhausting, if not especially illuminating.

*I somehow failed to pay attention to an e-mail revising the opening date for Short Term 12. The movie doesn't open in Denver until next Friday. Consider the above review an early heads-up.

'The Impossible' hits with real force

Naomi Watts takes a beating in a harrowing movie about a real-life disaster..

For 25 or so early-picture minutes, The Impossible is as compelling as moviemaking gets. Credit Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona with presenting a full-blown and entirely harrowing recreation of the Indian Ocean tsunami that struck Thailand on the day after Christmas, 2004.

The movie begins with a title card telling us that it's going to focus on the tsunami -- which claimed more than 200,000 lives throughout the Asian region -- so even its placid opening scenes keep us on edge. And in case we weren't already uneasy, Bayona -- who directed the horror movie The Orphanage -- provides a few ominous forebodings of what's to come as a family flies to Thailand for a Christmas vacation.

Using CGI and a variety of other techniques, Bayona has made the most convincing depiction of a natural catastrophe that I can recall seeing on screen. (If you want to know more about how Bayona accomplished this impressive feat, you can read an article about it in the New York Times. For my purposes, I'd simply say that you'll feel the full force of the tsunami, and you may have difficulty watching the havoc it wreaks.

Bayona's movie is based on the true story of a vacationing family that was stuck in the tsunami. That Spanish family has been converted into an English family for the movie with Naomi Watts playing the mother and Ewan McGregor, the father. They're Maria and Henry, parents of three sons (Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast).

The heart of the movie belongs to Watts and Holland. Watts portrays a physician who set aside her career to tend to her children. As the movie unfolds, she takes a major beating, and whoever did Watts's make-up deserves credit for making her look increasingly like someone with a foot on death's doorstep.

Separated from the rest of the family by the tsunami, Holland and Watts wind up together. Their ordeal is ... well ... just that, an ordeal, and it moves from devastated Thai landscapes to a makeshift hospital, where suffering has reached unbearable proportions and injuries are shown with a graphic realism that's not for the squeamish.

Watts gives a strong performance as an injured woman desperately trying to hang onto life, exhibiting strength of spirit even when lying in a hospital bed. Holland keeps pace as the oldest son, a kid who's forced to deal with a full plate of woe and who rises to the challenge.

Bayona does his best to suggest the scope of physical and human destruction that surrounds a family that was dealt a stunning blow by nature and then left to deal with the rampant confusion that followed.

Having said all that, I'm of two minds about The Impossible, which includes one sequence that seems too obviously manipulative for a film that's dealing so much death. I can't describe it without adding a spoiler, but you'll know it when you see it because you'll probably be rolling your eyes.

I also wondered whether a movie such as The Impossible isn't trafficking in a kind of weird and troubling voyeurism by flooding us with so much powerfully portrayed pain and suffering.

Then there's the other of those two minds, the mind that felt emotionally wrung out by The Impossible, which brought me as a close to an epic natural disaster as I ever want to get -- and which told me a truly remarkable story.

'J. Edgar' lacks a compelling point of view

There's much to admire about Clint Eastwood's look at J. Edgar Hoover, but the movie eventually becomes far too laborious.

He loathed Communism, saw himself as a staunch patriot and kept secret files on anyone he thought might threaten his ascendance. J. Edgar Hoover was a world-class intimidator, who used his manipulative skills and power to build the FBI into a national crime-fighting force.

It has been widely speculated that Hoover had yet another side to him, that he was a closeted homosexual who shared a marriage-like intimacy - if not carnal pleasures - with Clyde Tolson, his second in command.

This man of stunning contradiction is the subject of J. Edgar, a new and carefully assembled biopic from director Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. Eastwood needs no introduction: Black, you may recall, won an Oscar for his screenplay for Milk, the story of slain San Francisco board supervisor* Harvey Milk.

Eastwood and Black seem to have genuine sympathy for the torment of those who are unable to acknowledge important parts of themselves - in this case, gayness. Eastwood treats Hoover's death in 1972 with a tenderness that's almost mournful.

And then there's the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio, who creates a stark and convincing portrait of Hoover as a troubled man who seldom lost his composure. Heralded in a recent New York Times piece as an actor who welcomes risk, DiCaprio hardly seems a natural fit for the role Hoover, but he meets the challenge.

DiCaprio provides the movie with a solid center, and he receives able support from Armie Hammer, who plays Tolson. Depicted as cultured and witty, Tolson became the second most powerful figure in Hoover's FBI. He also inherited Hoover's estate after the FBI director passed away.

Overall, Eastwood and Black seem to be trying for a tempered approach to Hoover's story, telling us that if he had them, Hoover never acted on any homosexual urges, that he was an early champion of forensic evidence, that he sometimes abused his power and that, on at least one occasion, he put on his mother's clothes.

But what do we take from a movie that's beautifully crafted and earnest to a fault? Not enough, I think. I kept waiting for J. Edgar to catch fire, but it moves somewhat laboriously over its two-hour and 16-minute length, never really finding a compelling point of view.

Moreover, J. Edgar suffers from a depressingly conventional structure: An aged and embattled Hoover tells what he bills as his side of his story to various young FBI agents, dictating chapter after chapter of a self-serving autobiography. Eastwood uses flash backs to develop the story from Hoover's perspective.

This gives the movie a kind "Hoover's Greatest Hits'' quality; "J. Edgar" lacks the organic punch of a great biopic. Hoover tells the story of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and of his stormy relationship with Bobby Kennedy and more. But the movie has a near reportorial tone at times when outrage over Hoover's excesses (his campaign against Martin Luther King, for example) might have been more appropriate. Two women influence the story - albeit in small doses. Judi Dench portrays Hoover's strikingly imperious mother. She bossed him around; he didn't seem to mind. Naomi Watts fares equally well as Helen Gandy, Hoover's long-time secretary.

Any review of J. Edgar must also deal with the make-up issue.

I couldn't entirely shake my awareness of the make-up under which DiCaprio and Hammer (especially Hammer) are buried and which tends to give them eerie wax-works countenances, the look of the embalmed. If a character is aged for a final scene or two of a movie, it's easier to accept, but we see DiCaprio in full make-up throughout the movie.

Look, I respect Eastwood as a filmmaker, and he deserves credit for tackling a difficult subject, but he doesn't seem to have wrested his subject to the ground. J. Edgar moves from one incident to another, sampling an awful lot of history without ever quite knowing what to make of the man who gives the picture its name.

*In an earlier copy of this review, I incorrectly referred to Milk as having held the post of mayor.

A thriller built from real events

A family under duress in Fair Game.

In July of 2003, CIA agent Valerie Plame had her cover blown because of a complicated revenge plot hatched inside the Bush White House. Plame was outed in a column by the late Robert Novak, who said that he’d received his information from a couple of senior officials in the Bush administration.

Plame’s exposure – which endangered her and her contacts -- also happened to be against the law. It became a hot story for a time, and now has become the basis for Fair Game, a jittery Doug Limon thriller that casts Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Wilson had traveled to Niger on assignment for the CIA: He was asked to look for information about Iraq’s attempt to acquire materials used in making nuclear weapons. Wilson found no such evidence, but that didn’t stop certain factions within the Bush White House from pushing forward with a plan to invade Iraq, partly based on the assumption that Saddam Hussein possessed the now infamous weapons of mass destruction.

No need to reiterate the entire story, but some background is necessary before plunging into a review of Limon’s attempt to use Palme’s story as the basis for a movie that’s part thriller, part portrait of a strained marriage and part condemnation of the political maneuvering that allowed intelligence to be compromised for political purposes.

There’s no faulting Watts’ portrayal, which may constitute the best reason for seeing the movie. Watts’ plays a typical boomer mom. She’s overwhelmed by the demands of work, kids and marriage. The only difference between Plame and other suburban working wives is that she often leaves the country on sensitive and sometimes dangerous CIA missions in the Middle East.

Penn’s portrayal of Wilson proves slightly less successful, a portrait built on Wilson’s sense of self-importance and his justifiable outrage over what happened to his wife. Wilson seems the kind of guy you might not like, even if you thought he happened to be right.

When Plame and Wilson found themselves at the center of a turbulent news story, their marriage suffered. According to the movie, which is based on separate books written by Plame and Wilson, Plame was inclined to fly beneath the radar, even after her exposure. For his part, Wilson insisted on loud public protest at every turn.

Neither husband nor wife were entirely right. Limon (The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith) wisely acknowledges the complexity of their situation, and his stylistic choices – frenetic hand-held camera work, for example – create the sense of anxiety that arises when people try to cope with fast-moving events over which they have little control.

Fast-paced and far from boring, Fair Game is nonetheless a bit unsatisfying, like being thrown into a whirling story that has difficulty settling down and which seems to end as quickly as it started. We’re left with the impression that we’ve watched a slick and avid gloss on events that had profound consequences for the nation and the world.

I felt that something more was needed, although I’m not entirely sure what.

Woody in rueful form. What else is new?

Naomi Watts and Josh Brolin, not so happy.

It seems like lifetimes ago since we eagerly looked forward to the next Woody Allen movie. By turning out a picture every year, Allen seems to have deflated our expectations. It also hasn’t helped that many of Allen’s recent movies have been less than wonderful. As a result, Allen finds himself in an odd position: His concerns as an artist are universal, but the movies seem to have left him behind.
Allen’s latest -- You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger -- arrives on screen without much feeling of urgency. Although it balances equal amounts of wit and rue, Allen’s new foray into the sea of emotional desperation we sometimes call “life” doesn’t cut very deeply, and, as you reflect on the movie, you may find yourself thinking, “Yeah, yeah, Woody. We know.”

Allen begins by applying Macbeth’s worldview to the proceedings: “It (life) is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Brilliant words, especially when you remember that Shakespeare didn't spend even one evening watching cable news.

After providing us with this incisive view of life’s meaning (or lack thereof), Allen traces a drama that more or less illustrates the point, catching a variety of characters in mid-flight as they flail against the inevitable letdown that's bred by self-serving ambition.

Filled with the usual infidelities, foolish decisions and personal disasters, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger falls somewhere between Allen’s comic and serious mode, which, I suppose, makes it a seriocomic exploration of the ways in which characters can betray themselves, sometimes with the help of unexpected twists of fate.

Tall Dark Stranger returns Allen to London where he introduces a variety of interrelated characters played by a large ensemble of capable actors.

I’ll give you a sampling: Josh Brolin portrays a novelist who’s unable to get his second book off the ground; his wife (Naomi Watts) works in art gallery. Her father (Anthony Hopkins) has left her mother (Gemma Jones) and has taken up with a younger woman (Lucy Punch) who boosts his libido while emptying his wallet.

For her part, Jones’ character seeks solace with a psychic (Pauline Collins), who pretty much tells her clients whatever they want to hear. For good measure, Allen casts Antonio Banderas as the owner of the art gallery where Watts’ character plies her trade.

The men don’t exactly come off as role models. Fearing the limiting encroachments of age, Hopkins' character makes an obvious fool of himself with a younger and entirely inappropriate woman. Fearful of failure, Brolin’s character becomes infatuated with a woman (Freida Pinto) he spies on while gazing across a courtyard into her conveniently open window.

Both Brolin and Hopkins give performances that exemplify a trait common to many Allen male characters, the assumption that a new romance (or maybe just a new bedmate) will provide the necessary courage to continue on life’s hopeless journey. They try to reinvigorate themselves through women.

Allen doesn’t take us anywhere we haven’t been with him before, a familiarity which may not breed contempt, but which may also account for the movie’s slightly washed-out feeling. Or maybe that’s the result of the existential exhaustion that pervades the movie, sort in the way humidity can take over a hot day in muggy climes.

So there you have it: another Allen movie, another case of the big-screen heebie-jeebies.

"Yeah, yeah. We know."

Although...

It probably doesn't hurt to hear it again.

The director who loves women

Mother and Child, the latest movie from writer/director Rodrigo Garcia, is slated to open in Denver May 21 and is just beginning its journey around the country.

Garcia, whose previous efforts include the movie Nine Lives and lots of prestigious television work on HBO series such as Six Feet Under, Big Love, The Sopranos and In Treatment, might be dubbed the director who loves women, and in Mother and Child, he does something that has become increasingly rare in the current movie climate: He provides an uncluttered platform on which three gifted actresses can explore agonizing emotional issues.

The movie’s stars -- Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Kerry Washington -- play women who are dealing with mother/daughter issues, usually from both sides of the equation. Whatever audiences think about Mother and Child, it’s difficult to imagine that this dynamic trio of actresses isn’t delighted with the outcome.

If so, they have good reason. Garcia – the 50-year-old son of acclaimed novelist Gabriel García Márquez – provides them a showcase that allows for ample expression of complexity and contradiction.

Bening plays Karen, a woman who became pregnant as a teen-ager and whose mother forced her to give the baby up for adoption. Watts plays Elizabeth, the grown daughter Karen has never met, and Washington portrays a successful young woman who decides to adopt a baby because she’s unable to become pregnant.

With Garcia navigating choppy emotional waters, the talk in a recent interview gravitated toward acting. Movie acting can be difficult to write about and sometimes difficult to understand, even for a director whose work reflects a deep respect for character, an approach Garcia learned from early stints as a cameraman, with directors such as Mike Nichols and Robert Benton.

“I don’ t know how actors prepare,’’ said Garcia. “I enjoy not knowing. I like to have a couple of conversations just to make sure that we want to make the same movie. I don’t want surprises about what the story is, but I leave the details of how a role is performed to the actors.”

Allowing for a process that relies on equal amounts of preparation and spontaneous expression requires the creation of a calm on-set environment – or at least the illusion of one.

“With all the movies that I’ve done -- especially the three that I’ve written -- the budgets have been low and the schedules, frightening. (Mother and Child was shot in a fleet 29 days.) I have this memory of running 100 miles per hour before the actors arrived. Then when the actors come on set, you feel like you’re pulling the horses back so that everything can move at 20 miles an hour. The actors feel it’s all very relaxed, as if we’re just ambling. The moment they leave, the shit hits the fan, and it’s chaos again.”

Here, then, Garcia’s thoughts on his three principal actresses and the characters each of them plays.

Q. So what drew you to Bening?

Garcia: Part of it is instinct. You always have your list of who the great actresses for a role would be. Annette is able to convey a lot of intelligence, emotion, and strength. She’s a very natural actress. Maybe ‘naturalistic’ is a better word. I like an actor who can project different things at the same time – vulnerability, emotion and intelligence. Annette’s also very good with words. There are some great actors who aren’t necessarily good with dialogue.

Q. Does it take extra commitment for an actress to play a character who refuses to ingratiate herself with an audience? Karen avoids men, and isn’t shy about expressing hostility, even toward people who reach out to her.

Garcia: Karen is a prickly pear, a complicated person. I’m sure a lot of actresses would have been uneasy about playing her. They might have wanted to soften her, to pander to the audience. But Annette always understood that it (Karen’s insistence on walling herself off from others) was coming from a place of pain. She had been forced to give up a baby. She was protecting herself, like a porcupine.

Q. Karen’s also an older woman who’s not trying to disguise her age. She doesn’t spend much time on her appearance. Maybe that’s part of the way she keeps the world at bay, but I didn’t see any vanity in Bening’s performance.

Garcia: Karen’s not out to be liked. Annette embraced that even more than I thought she would. There was no make-up. The hair was always a little disheveled. Annette was able, very fastidiously, to track Karen’s journey.

Q. Naomi Watts also plays a character who’s not terribly sympathetic. Elizabeth is a hard-boiled attorney who keeps a tight rein on her personal life. She’s ambitious, ultra-competent and sexually aggressive.

Garcia: I made a point of proving that Elizabeth was a very accomplished lawyer. She’s smart. She uses sex to control the environment and people around her, but she doesn’t use it to get a promotion. I thought that distinction was important.

Elizabeth is very hostile in the way she controls things. She doesn’t care what you think. Naomi was the first person we went to. Like Annette with Karen, she understood that Elizabeth’s behavior stems from a wound she has inside.

In the case of Karen and Elizabeth, a big choice was made for them, to separate them against their will. In different ways, they decided to control their lives so that such choices would not be made for them again, so that they would not be exposed to pain.

Q. The role of Elizabeth requires a bit of nudity – both physical and emotional. How tough was that?

Garcia. Naomi probably thinks it’s worth it to her to do physical and emotional nudity if it takes her somewhere in her journey as an actor. Whether she’s comfortable or not, who knows? We had scenes that involved emotional and physical nakedness, and she did them five weeks after having a baby.

Q. It seems to me that Watts is willing to push boundaries, to really explore emotional extremes.

Garcia: She’s good at playing characters with strong contradictions, characters that are emotionally strung out. To play a woman like Elizabeth or the women she played in Mulholland Drive or 21 Grams, Naomi really had to go for it. Of course, when you spend time with her on the set, she ‘s also very funny. She has a naughty sense of humor. She could have a career doing romantic comedies or action stuff.

Q. Kerry Washington’s bio reads like a study in achievement. She’s on President Obama’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She graduated Magne Cum Laude from George Washington University. She’s currently working in David Mamet’s play Race on Broadway, and has a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Garcia. I had seen Kerry only in The Dead Girl and The Last King of Scotland. She registered with me. We worked for one day on a short subject we did for a charity, and I thought she would be a perfect Lucy. She’s nothing like Lucy in many ways and like her in others. She has this spunk and this desire to do really well.
 

Q: Lucy is nothing if not strong willed. Is Washington like that?

Garca: Kerry is tireless. She’s this dynamo. She taught me a lot about Lucy. I wasn’t in tune with the fact that Lucy is such a perfectionist. That’s what I started understanding from Kerry’s performance. Lucy saw her inability to get pregnant as a personal failure, a blemish in her record. That’s what made her so desperate.

Q. But it’s certainly not a one-dimensional performance. Lucy’s dealing with a marriage that may be in trouble, as well as with her own feelings about not being able to conceive. Garcia: Kerry also brought a lot of humor to Lucy. People find something funny in Lucy’s hysterical desperation.

Q. You seem to like writing about women.

Garcia: I find it hard to write men. Men’s lives often are about exterior pursuits. Success in work. Money. Conquering the girl. Conquering the mountain. Killing the lion. I’m more interested in stories about the complicated nature of two people relating to each other. The person you can’t live with and can’t live without. The person next to you. A parent, a child, a sibling or a spouse.

Q. We probably should say something about the men in this movie. Jimmy Smits plays one of Karen’s co-workers at the assisted living facility where she works. She does her best to hold him at arm’s length, but he pursues her anyway. And Elizabeth has an affair with her boss (Samuel L. Jackson), the lawyer who owns the firm where she lands a job. He’s older than she, but he’s clearly a man of conscience, accomplishment and compassion.

Garcia: So many times in movies about women, the men are the enemy. I already had a couple of women who had such confrontational relationships with the world that I thought, ‘Let me put two really good men in front of them.’ These women are so at odds with the world, what would they do if I sent them a couple of really good guys? I wanted to see how they’d deal with that."