Mature themes, violence, coarse language, sex scene, drug use and nudity
Origin: USA 2009
Director: Christine Jeffs
Cast: Amy Adams, Steve Zahn, Emily Blunt.
Running time: 91 minutes
‘It’s a racket, you should get into it,’ Steve Zahn’s adulterous cop Mac tells Rose (Amy Adams) about the lucrative opportunities that crime scene clean up offers, as they are about to fall into bed together in a motel room. It’s an idea that has little appeal to Rose – until she is desperate enough to try anything. It’s tough bringing up a child on your own (especially a super bright one with disruptive behaviour) and now, working as a maid with only a distant memory of her college days when she was a success as a cheerleader,
Rose’s self image is all negative. Adams allows all her emotions to show in her vulnerable face as she takes charge of her life. Emily Blunt’s Nora is the damaged younger sister who likes weird. Blunt gives an edgy performance that couples sensitivity and daredevil. She is the sentimental one and cannot help but become involved with tangible items from the places they clean up. Playing a role not dissimilar to the one he played in Little Miss Sunshine, Alan Arkin is the sisters’ scenestealing, stubborn, supportive and unpredictable father Joe who has unusual ideas of his own.
Clifton Collins Jr. plays Winston, the sympathetic one-armed cleaning supplier who makes model planes in his spare time. It’s a great character and one we wish we could get to know better. Jason Spevack is well cast as Oscar, the 8 year old who thinks a CB radio has a direct line to heaven.
The best reason to see this film is the performance by the two most egnimatic young actresses today, Emily Blunt and Amy Adams.
Source: Louise Keller www.urbancinefile.com.au
Compiled by: Jack Morton
He goes to visit his lesbian daughter, Lucy on her remote farm, but while he is there an incident occurs that changes his life forever.
Asa, newly discharged from the Russian navy, has come to live with his sister Samal, her husband, Ondas, and their children. As the story opens, Asa, Ondas and his buddy Boni are negotiating for the hand of Tulpan (“Tulip”). Asa enthrals them with tales of the seahorse and octopus. They offer 10 sheep and a chandelier. But “no” the bride-tobe is fussy because his ears are too big. This means trouble, because the local sheep herding boss won’t let him have a flock of his own until he marries – and Tulpan is the only marriageable girl around.
Will the father discover the other’s presence? Will someone blunder into the room and shut the door? It’s the sort of situation usually found in an English bedroom farce or a Mozart opera. You might imagine that Two Lovers is a romantic comedy, one of the fluffier kind, or something more raunchy and tasteless. You might be wrong. Two Lovers is the most moving and beautiful love story I have seen for a long time.
Pietro takes his ten-year-old daughter, Claudia (Blu Yoshimi), to school, and decides – for no clear reason – to wait outside for her until the school day finishes. He does the same thing the next day…and every day thereafter. Rather than being an object of concern, or even a laughing stock, the seemingly calm Pietro becomes a sort of magnet to all the key people in his life. Work colleagues, brother, sister-in-law…they all visit him, and all “spill their guts”. It’s almost as if he’s a human black hole, or passiveaggressive, yet he resents most of the attention – Pietro is happier compiling mental lists of homes that he’s inhabited and airlines that he’s flown with. Is he in denial? Is he transformed by grief? Or could it be that, as he himself speculates, “If Claudia’s not suffering, perhaps it’s because I’m not suffering enough?”
Ray is a white woman married to a Mohawk, a gambling addict who walked out on his family a few days before Christmas. He’s probably taken the bus to Atlantic City to try his luck in the casinos there. She and her two boys live in a tiny trailer dominated by a big-screen TV and their deposit on a larger mobile home is at risk if Ray’s debts aren’t quickly paid.
Set in Edwardian England, Henslow Fisk (Jeremy Northam) has become increasingly depressed by his weekly visit to the world-weary and irascible Fisk Senior (played with gusto by Peter O’Toole) and to break the pattern of their battles of will, takes his father to a lecture on incarnation given by eccentric Swami Prash (Art Malik). There they meet clergyman Dean Spanley (Sam Neill) and the roguish “facilitator” Wrather (Bryan Brown). So begins a strange journey into the past life of Dean Spanley, which unfolds when he indulges in his favourite tipple of the expensive and elusive Imperial Tokay. Along the way the riddle of Henslow’s brother’s death and the reasons for his father’s lack of warmth become clear in this whimsical and gently humorous film.