Laemmle's Town Center 5

There are times during the affecting tumult of What Maisie Knew when you may think, "At last, a great American film about childhood!" And then there are times when, despite the scrupulousness of co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel's... More »

There are times during the affecting tumult of What Maisie Knew when you may think, "At last, a great American film about childhood!" And then there are times when, despite the scrupulousness of co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel's adherence to the perspective of this particular child being ground through this particular custody battle, you will think, "Damn, her Midtown Manhattan apartment has staircases in it." A plotless blur of a breakup and its aftermath as experienced by an observant grade-schooler, What Maisie Knew has been scraped free of all the hoary Hollywoodisms that have barnacled themselves to movies about kids. The title is a summation of content; all you'll see and hear is what Maisie (played by Onata Aprile) knows. Brisk scenes give an impression of her days: dashing about in a tiara with a school friend, waiting for Mom or Dad to pick her up or drop her off, digging into delivered pizza with the babysitter while her parents (Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan) shout "fuck you!" at each other a couple rooms away. When Maisie interrupts the grown-ups’ vindictive, circular battles, they playact that everything’s OK, that they just got carried away with nothing that really matters. "Oh, hey, baby," says Julianne Moore's rock-star mother, as if everything's OK, the words a kid-sized Band-Aid tasked with covering a family-sized wound. Maisie's life is so often upended that she becomes quick to adapt to each new situation; it's the transitions she struggles with, those days when she's handed off from one adult to another. Eventually, we see that What Maisie Has Learned is how to manipulate the chaos around her to achieve her own improbable peace. « Less

(1:50 PM), (4:40 PM), 7:30 PM, 9:55 PM

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's... More »

Jean-Luc Godard said, "All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun." But really, all you need is a girl, preferably a charismatic one with a secret in her heart. Director and actress Sarah Polley has found that girl: her own mother. Polley's documentary, Stories We Tell, attempts to unravel some of the mysteries of her own family's life. This wondrous, absorbing little picture covers a great deal of winding meta-territory, reflecting on the ways in which a single family's story can be told—or maybe, more accurately, examining the idea that there’s no such thing as a "single story." One girl, as Sarah Polley learns, can actually be many girls in one. Polley opens by introducing us to her cast of characters: her father, Michael Polley, an assortment of family friends, and various siblings and stepsiblings, all of whom look a little like Polley-- and yet don't. The director has assembled this tribunal to reassemble the story of her late mother, Diane, a woman we get to know gradually through home-movie footage, re-creations that have the look and feel of that home-movie footage, and recollections from the people who knew and loved her. She shapes the picture into a riddle that keeps us guessing every minute, and what she ends up with is so oddly shaped that it could be categorized an experimental film. But it's too warm to be off-putting. There's no way, Polley concludes, to tell a reliably true tale. But this particular story, which begins and ends with a woman’s face, feels true enough. « Less

(1:40 PM), (4:20 PM), 7:20 PM, 9:55 PM

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots... More »

Some things are charming about European films that ape Hollywood, the same way that seeing yourself reflected through a funhouse mirror can be. The sentiments aren’t quite as saccharine. The obnoxious characters are a touch nastier. Some subplots aren’t tidily resolved. Yet despite those deviations, the gist is essentially the same. Such is the case with Love Is All You Need, Susanne Bier’s take on a Nancy Meyers rom-com. It’s all here, from the house-porn of Italian seaside villas to the farcical tale of couples forged and dissolved. Philip (Pierce Brosnan) and Ida (Trine Dyrholm) are given a wholly unnecessary meet-cute (she crashes her car into his) on the way from Denmark to Italy, where Philip’s son is marrying Ida’s daughter. As extended family joins, the film veers from the dramatic (Ida has breast cancer and her husband has left her) to the comic (the husband arrives, floozy in tow) to the farcical and back again. Formulaic despite its trespasses, Love Is All You Need leaves the lingering sensation that more fun could have been had if the film cut loose and lived a little, as its central characters ultimately—if unoriginally—learn. Its strongest moments come when Bier exceeds the expectations of the genre, as glimpsed in an incorrigibly narcissistic aunt (Paprika Steen) or a key character’s uncertainty about his sexual orientation. In other moments the viewer may sense the whirring of an assembly line’s gears obediently at work. « Less

(1:10 PM), (4:00 PM), 7:00 PM, 9:50 PM

New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not... More »

New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not cutting it. Life with her best friend and roommate, Sophie (Mickey Sumner) has taken on the dull glow of old cutlery swiped from the college dining hall—“We’re the lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore,” Frances observes. When Sophie moves out to live with her boyfriend, Frances finds herself adrift, shoehorning herself into new roommate situations. She lacks a job and resources: Encountering a transaction that requires a credit card, which she of course doesn’t have, she blurts, “I’m not a real person yet.” At what age does one become a real person? Frances Ha may be director Noah Baumbach’s tenderest movie, at least among his most recent ones. Shot digitally on the fly, its New York streets rendered in satiny black-and-white, the film is a patchwork of details that constitute a sort of dating manual, one that fortifies you for all the crap you have to deal with when you’re a young person in love with a city that doesn’t always love you back. Frances moves from here to there without flinching, but as Gerwig (who co-wrote with Baumbach) plays her, there’s always a cellophane layer of wistfulness behind her optimism. When you want things you can’t name, how do you search for them? « Less

(1:00 PM), (3:20 PM), (5:40 PM), 8:00 PM, 10:15 PM

"A great singer, chandeliers, champagne, and costumes—we see this at a distance," Jean-François Sivadier says deep into Becoming Traviata, a spare and ravishing doc that positions viewers in the rehearsal room in the weeks leading up to his... More »

"A great singer, chandeliers, champagne, and costumes—we see this at a distance," Jean-François Sivadier says deep into Becoming Traviata, a spare and ravishing doc that positions viewers in the rehearsal room in the weeks leading up to his minimalist production of Verdi's La Traviata. Sivadier is encouraging his star, Natalie Dessay, before a gutsy, scraping-out-the-soul performance of "È Strano" on a stage stripped of the usual operatic extravagance. His vision-- shared by the film's director, Philippe Béziat-- is of that distance obliterated, of arias and singers and feelings laid bare. Dessay, as much a trouper as she is a brilliant vocalist, puts her head in her hands and then digs deep, pulling from herself a bruised and gorgeous lament, each note-- each tortured misterioso-- a raw and gleaming pearl. The film celebrates the sweat and prep that goes into such performances, showing us the rich collaborative interplay between the director and the star, who for most of the film is dressed for the gym and accompanied only by duet partners and rehearsal piano. Time with Dessay is worth treasuring, even when she’s not singing. "The music is almost orgasmic," Sivadier enthuses. "For everyone but the girl singing it," Dessay says back, bringing the house down all over again. The film is strongly focused, covering little but their work and her singing; Béeziat understands that anything else would be a distraction. « Less

(1:20 PM), (4:10 PM), 7:10 PM, 10:00 PM