Hollywood has a long standing tradition of churning out holiday films in which large, loving but dysfunctional families gather to celebrate Christmas and end up bring up old feuds, swapping girlfriends (or boyfriends) and over-cooking the turkey. So the idea for The Family Stone, a new comedy starring Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker, isn’t a new one, but despite the ring of familiarity The Family Stone works as both a comedy and a poignant family drama.
The story centers around Dermot Mulroney—the oldest and favorite Stone son—who brings his uptight girlfriend, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, home for Christmas. The Stone siblings and parents take an instant dislike to her and united in the cause of tormenting her they try to drive her away. For support she brings in her beautiful younger sister, played by Claire Danes who only complicates an already strange situation.
This is normally the kind of thing that makes me run to the theatre—to see something else—but the great ensemble cast really salvages this from the treacly depths. As Meredith Sarah Jessica Parker leaves her Sex in the City character far behind daring to be unlikable and along the way proves that there is more to her than simply being Carrie Bradshaw.
We also get a welcome glimpse of Canadian actress Rachel McAdams as the nasty Stone sister Amy. This is her third good film this year after The Wedding Crashers and Red Eye, and in it she proves that she has mastered the role of the cinematic mean girl.
There are many humorous moments but the film packs an emotional punch in the scenes between the elder Stones, played by Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson. In their best moment together they tell us all we need to know about their relationship in one quiet bedroom scene and one gentle touch of a scar.
“The Grey,” the new Liam Neeson film, is an art house action movie. The bravado that colors most action flicks is gone, replaced by equal parts despair and intestinal fortitude.
Neeson plays John Ottway, a sharpshooter and Wolf Whisperer hired to keep predatory wolves out of an oil station in the remotest part of Alaska. He becomes the leader of a ragtag group of survivors when the plane transporting them to their oil job crashes in the wilderness. Hunted by wolves and exposed to the elements Ottway’s know-how is the only thing between freezing to death, or worse, becoming the big bad wolf’s dinner.
The thing that separates “The Grey” from other man versus nature movies is the characters. At first glance they are the usual assortment of rough and ready characters, the edgy chatterbox, the ex con, but soon nuances appear.
The point of the whole thing is survival, but along the way the cast (Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, and James Badge Dale) discuss the intricacies of life, shed tears, question faith and even recite poetry when not fighting off steely-eyed wolves. You won’t find this kind of behavior in other action movies because those films are about setting up the action and the payoff. “The Grey” isn’t, it wants you to get to know the men so when something awful happens to them, you care.
Mostly it works. (MILD SPOILER) The climax of Frank Grillos’ Diaz character is particularly effective as it gets to the very heart of why—or why not—this man will survive.
As good as the ensemble ism, this is Neeson’s movie. He plays a broken man who has recently lost his wife and the memory of her haunts him. He’s suicidal and lost, but learns a new lust for life in this adverse situation. Whether the tragic loss of his wife in real life informed this role, I wouldn’t presume to day, but there is a haunted quality to his performance that seems deeply felt.
Be warned, however, as intelligent as “The Grey” is, it’s also borders on horror, playing on fear of barren spaces—bring an extra scarf, the howling wind effect alone will chill you to the bone—and well, corpse eating wolves. But even though it is sometimes graphic, it still resonates emotionally.
Hollywood has a long standing tradition of churning out holiday films in which large, loving but dysfunctional families gather to celebrate Christmas and end up bring up old feuds, swapping girlfriends (or boyfriends) and over-cooking the turkey. So the idea for The Family Stone, a new comedy starring Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker, isn’t a new one, but despite the ring of familiarity The Family Stone works as both a comedy and a poignant family drama.
