Tribeca seeks romance with 'Your Sister's Sister' and 'Take This Waltz'

Boy loses brother. Girl offers boy summer home to recuperate. Boy meets girl's sister, sparks fly. Complications ensue. Tribeca selection Your Sister's Sister has some great moments of comedy and truth. It's also moves quickly to the "complications ensue" part. Some twists and turns you don't ever see coming, and will have your mouth hanging open.

Mark Duplass plays Jack, who is still grieving a year after the death of his brother. His friend (who was also his brother's ex), played by Emily Blunt, offers him a family home to stay in. When he gets there, her sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) is mourning after a breakup with her longtime partner. Though she's a lesbian, the two hook up, and are totally unprepared for the other sister's arrival the next day. Did I mention Duplass' character may have a bit of chemistry with Blunt's character, even though she dated his brother and he just had sex with her sister?

One of the things I loved most about Your Sister's Sister was the setting, a beach house in the San Juan Islands, a few hours and a long ferry ride from Seattle. It's a beautiful, remote, and austere location that perfectly fits the narrative. Having been there a few times myself, I felt both sentimental and grateful for the refreshing change of pace--no Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons! Lynn Shelton, who received accolades for 2009 film Humpday, directs.

Your Sister's Sister does have some sections that lag. The (improvised) dialogue is real, but that also means it sometimes goes in circles or off in odd directions before moving forward. Still, this one is a "recommend" for indie film lovers because of one particularly satisfying twist and its interesting ending. It's already been picked up by IFC Films and will release June 15.

Take This Waltz also employs a love triangle, but its moments of drama and romance outweigh those of comedy. Michelle Williams plays a woman who's unhappily married to Seth Rogen, and has started to feel an attraction to her neighbor (Luke Kirby). The drama had one of the oddest narrative structures I've seen in some time. I kept waiting for the movie to end, only to realize after some time that in fact I was waiting for the second act to end--we still had a third! With an incredibly lagging middle (see the "waiting for the movie to end" part), this was a film that provoked a lot of frustration but had such a sensational point to make in its ending I forgave the movie's shortcomings. Writer/director Sarah Polley (Away From Her) doesn't make it clear if Williams' character is going through the normal boredom of an established relationship or if she's truly unhappy and a bad match with her partner. Her character doesn't seem to know, and neither does the audience. But as her character pursues a new relationship, we get to see a relationship cycle repeat itself. By the end, I was in possession of a strong opinion about Williams' character.

Although it has big-name stars, Take This Waltz has huge continuity problems that drove me mad. Williams' hair changes colors and styles between scenes. I spoke to someone in the screening who didn't notice, but I was amazed that such a huge lapse could not be addressed and fixed somehow. Now I know why so many film productions make their characters wear wigs! Take This Waltz has also been picked up for a post-festival release through Magnolia on June 29.

Check back for more Tribeca updates, which will conclude early next week.

Michelle Williams to play Glinda in 'Oz, the Great and Powerful'

By Sarah Sluis

2010's uber-successful Alice in Wonderland created a fairy tale frenzy among the movie studios. The surest sign that there's a bubble is the two rival Snow White adaptations (Relativity's The Brothers Grimm: Snow White and Universal's Snow White and the Huntsman), which are both set to release in 2012. Disney, which released Alice in Wonderland, is also seeking to replicate its success with Oz, the Great and Powerful. The film will take the characters in the Wizard of Oz in an entirely new direction. Glinda, the Good Witch, teams up with a snake-oil salesman (sounds kind of like the Great Oz to me) and battles her two evil sisters for control of the kingdom. Michelle Williams has just been cast as Glinda, which is as perfect a choice as I can imagine. James Franco is the snake oil salesman, and Rachel Weisz and Mila Kunis are the raven-haired evil sisters. Variety reveals that the movie could hit theatres as soon as fall 2012, which would sandwich the movie in between the two Snow White adaptations.

While Oz has an all-star cast of Oscar nominees, winners, and those that have appeared in Oscar-nominated films, the crew has a more variable pedigree. David Lindsay-Abaire may be a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, but he's still in the doghouse after writing Inkheart, one of the worst children's movies I've seen. The other credited writer, Mitchell Kapner, has very few writing credits but counts the successful mob comedy The Whole Nine Yards among his credits. The biggest signal of success on this project is Sam Raimi. He left the latest Spider-Man sequel in frustration, so this project should have his full attention and devotion.

I'm curious if the movie will be rated PG-13, like Spider-Man, or PG, like Alice in Wonderland. Despite its family-friendly rating, Alice drew many adults, in part because it came from director Tim Burton, who is known for his darker perspective. Fractured fairy tales are one way to convince adults to revisit familiar stories of their childhood. And when the next generation grows up, Hollywood may innovate by going back to classic fairy tales.

Release spotlight: 'Meek's Cutoff' brings indie sensibility to the Western

By Sarah Sluis

I was more than a little surprised to find out that director Kelly Reichardt's next film would be set in 1845. On the Oregon Trail. Like her previous film, Wendy and Lucy, the movie takes place in Oregon and centers on a journey, but all those bonnets and wagons in Meek's Cutoff threw me for a loop. The film centers on three families traversing the Oregon Trail in the route's early days. They have enlisted a wilderness man as a guide, but he has them lost in the middle of the desert without water. One of the settlers (Michelle Williams) spots an Indian, and fights against having him killed. She wants him as a guide. But will he be able to get them to water in time?

Meek's Cutoff touches on certain aspects of the Western genre, but lightly. Reichardt isn't trying to make an anti-Western, but rather provide a window into the day-to-day life of settlers. The days on the trail unfold with the precision, detail, and quiet of an Italian neorealist film. You feel the significance and tedium of the daily chores as if you were a settler yourself. Meek's Cutoff is also unique for its portrayal of women. Williams displays some of the spunk and initiative of the young Mattie Ross in True Grit, but Reichardt takes care to point out how customs exclude the women from decision-making. In more than one scene, the men discuss what to do next, while the women stand back a distance, unconsulted. Instead they listen, but with the concentration of someone calculating their next chess move.

As with Wendy and Lucy, watching Meek's Cutoff can feel a little tedious, since the movie focuses so much on minute details. While the tension builds, the ending is abrupt, which I kind of expected. There were no signs that the narrative would end up tied in a bow. Meek's Cutoff is best viewed as an experience, a museum exhibit with a point-of-view. While I was unclear on the historical background at the time, the title refers to a "shortcut" that guide Stephen Meek took 200 wagons and one thousand people through. Though they eventually navigated through the treacherous terrain, over twenty people died. I assume that the movie limited itself to three wagons for budgetary reasons, but it ends up providing added dramatic impact. With just nine people on the screen, it's easier to see how alone and lost these settlers are. In the desert, I'm sure the settlers felt alone even with a thousand people, which registers as a giant crowd on screen.

The Oscilloscope Laboratories release premiered at Sundance, where the wild landscape of the surrounding area must have provided a pause--how the West has changed in the past 150 years. The movie will release this Friday in New York City, with additional cities to follow.

Golden Globe nominations: A whole lot of 'Whaaat?'

By Sarah Sluis

So maybe this hasn't been the strongest year for movies. But does that really justify the Hollywood Foreign Press nominating the flop The Tourist in three categories? When I outlined the film's dismal box-office prospects the Friday it opened, I wondered if Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp would be enough to save the film. Well, it earned just $17 million opening weekend, but the star wattage of Jolie and Depp was enough to blind the Foreign Press Association to its negative reception stateside. I imagine the dialogue going something like this--"We need Depp and Jolie on the red carpet--we can't disappoint the people running E!'s Red Carpet show!" How big of a joke were The Tourist's nominations? They "drew audible laughter from the crowd of press and publicists assembled at the Beverly Hilton for the pre-dawn announcement," according to THR.

The other big "What" came from the HFPA's total shut-out of The Coen Brothers' True Grit. I don't see the movie until tomorrow, but it's currently tracking at 93% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. The Tourist? 20%.

Another big shut-out, but one that will receive less attention, was Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, which received zero nominations. Perhaps they didn't like the movie's jabs at press conferences and foreign awards shows? Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning both turned in solid performances, but at the very least a writing or directing nomination was deserved. Never Let Me Go didn't receive any nominations (though it was better than many nominated films), but that's less of a surprise as its early, October release shows that Fox Searchlight wasn't putting too much faith in it for awards season.

The Hollywood Foreign Press did make a couple of good decisions. It nominated Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine, one of the best movies I've seen all year. Jennifer Lawrence also got a nod for Winter's Bone, an Ozarks drama that's quietly powerful. But really, a lot of these nominations are a joke. The silver lining? The star power will make for an entertaining broadcast, and smart people betting on winners in awards pools may just get lucky.

Will the NC-17 rating of 'Blue Valentine' scare away audiences?

By Sarah Sluis

Blue Valentine is one of the rawest, real movies I've ever seen. It's certainly one of the best films coming out in 2010. It's also been rated NC-17 by the MPAA.

Last week, I went into a screening knowing that the movie had been assigned an NC-17 rating, which the distributor,Weinstein Co., is appealing. I heard the movie included sex, violence, and scenes from an abortion. I was expecting something to be so bad that it would really stand out and deserve such an extreme rating. I was wrong.

If this movie is guilty of anything, it's making such a compelling, real story that everything hits you three times as hard. The screenplay originated from a child of divorce, Cami Delavigne, and it shows. The dialogue captures the nature of a dysfunctional relationship perfectly. Even when one member of the couple tries to make nice, the other one shuts down their efforts. Dean (Ryan Gosling) tries to plan a romantic getaway, and Cindy's (Michelle Williams) weariness with every extra effort he attempts is excruciating. I have never before been able to intuit a couple's dysfunction from dialogue like this on screen. Their phrases are like psychological onions, with so much hidden meaning and rage and discontentment to unpeel.

According to The Wrap, the MPAA took issue with "a single sex scene in which there is minimal nudity and the sex act is not even entirely shown." Based on that clue, I suspect they're referring to a scene that could be considered the husband raping his wife. Though disturbing, and certainly not appropriate for children under 17, I don't feel it warrants a NC-17 rating. In reality, such a rating is a kiss of death, locking a film out from being advertised in mainstream outlets and branding it as exploitative, gratuitous, and near-pornographic, something that Blue Valentine most assuredly is not. Moreover, Blue Valentine received no comments at all on the festival circuit about "graphic" content--compare that to the outcry last year over Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (which didn't even bother to get a rating).

In the old days of the rating system, filmmakers could only show "bad things" if there was a moral message (e.g. gangsters dying at the end of the movies to show that bad acts are punished). I don't advocate requiring such messages, but context does matter. Blue Valentine does not glorify such acts but takes us to the breaking point in a couple's marriage. This is not "throwaway violence" but an emotionally draining experience that leaves you feeling a bit shell-shocked as you leave the theatre. If realism makes such graphic content acceptable in my eyes, the MPAA often takes a different point-of-view. "Comic book" violence often is considered more acceptable than realistic, bloody encounters. But this viewpoint can also lead to distorted judgments. There's a huge difference between truly innocuous, non-violent "fights," like the enemies just kind of disappearing in G-rated Up (it's unclear if anyone dies) and comic book heroes blasting or hi-yaing enemies to death again and again in PG-13 movies. When it comes to graphic portrayals of violence in R-rated films, there's also a split between spurting, gratuitous horror movies and similarly graphic but drama-driven deaths in war films.

Blue Valentine has a strong case for appeal. The film is stunning and could perhaps find a kindred spirit with Boys Don't Cry, which successfully appealed its NC-17 rating and went on to win an Oscar. The producers of Boys Don't Cry, however, re-cut the film to win an R rating, something the makers of Blue Valentine won't do.