Little Children is a somewhat misleading name for a movie that doesn’t have much to do with children or anyone physically small. While a couple of kids are in this movie, they are non-descript and serve as props more than anything else. The leads are all middle-aged adults, though their undisciplined and erratic behavior suggests they are anything but. The protagonists act as entitled brats, while the antagonists are fundamentally flawed. It becomes apparent that we are on a collision course between all involved in a film whose setting is present-day New England, but that very well could be in any town in America.
Category Archives: Small Town
Before the Devil Knows Your’re Dead (2007)
Murphy’s Law. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Sidney Lumet’s (Guilty As Sin, Dog Day Afternoon) Before the Devil Knows Your Dead is a good-old-fashioned robbery gone wrong that involves older brother Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman – Capote, The Savages) and younger brother Hank (Sinister, Before Sunrise) fleecing the strip-mall jewelry store of their parents Charles (Albert Finney – Erin Brokovich, Tom Jones) and Nanette (Rosemary Harris – Spider-Man, Tom and Viv) on a day where neither parent was expected to be there.
Chocolat (2000)
Lasse Hallstrom’s (The Cider House Rules, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) brings a fresh taste to a small, mythical French village in 1959 in his new film Chocolat. This fictitious fable delivers a gentle, kind, and uniquely original message. Its peculiar characters, everyone-knows-everyone small-town vibe, new neighbor intrigue, and sympathetic humor mix together more sweetly than the many chocolate recipes created by the film’s protagonist, Vianne (Juliette Binoche – The English Patient, Dan in Real Life).
Wildlife (2018)
There is something very subdued from Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife that makes it a more meaningful movie than it probably is. I don’t know if there is a particular term for it other than it felt very Paul Dano-like. The man who never appears to age has delivered in a ton of movies you probably have never seen or left the theater scratching your head over (There Will Be Blood, Love & Mercy, Swiss Army Man, Little Miss Sunshine, Meek’s Cutoff, The Ballad of Jack and Rose). He plays some odd characters, so why wouldn’t his directing style be similar? Interestingly, the cast in his leads one of the most underrated and diverse actors of our generation in Jake Gyllenhaal (End of Watch, Prisoners), who is never afraid to take a risk in a role and is one of the most talented and underappreciated actresses of the same generation in Carey Mulligan (Shame, An Education) who prefers some of the safer roles.
Beast (2018)
The best thing I can say about Michael Pearce’s Beast (in a movie that is rife with good things) is that I can’t think of a movie where an unknown director directing his first feature-length film (Pearce), an unknown lead actress, starring in her first film (Jessie Buckley) and an unknown lead actor, starring in, really his first film (Johnny Flynn – Love Is Thicker Than Water) have excelled more. The direction is purposeful, stylistic, and detailed. At the same time, the performances between the leads are combustible. The story is rich enough to carry you from the starting line to the checkered flag in a movie that ultimately failed to live up to its initial promise, due mostly to errors in editing and an overall storyline that might have been a tad ambitious for this novice in their craft. It’s a difficult movie to recommend if you’re not a hardcore independent movie film buff. But, if, like me, you try to watch anything that comes close to looking like an intense, original, emotional drama, this movie will fill that need. And even if you leave feeling a little unsatisfied, you’ll leave knowing that the director and both leads left everything they had on the floor. If nothing else, it’ll encourage you to look for future films that any of these three people might be involved with.
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